Vivek Ramaswamy: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. Well, look, I think there’s opportunities for the very best to have large scale impact in all kinds of different institutions in our universities to K through 12 education, through entrepreneurship, I’m obviously very biased in that regard. I think there’s a lot you’re able to create that you couldn’t create through government. But I do think in the moment that we live in where our government is as broken as it is and as responsible for the declining nature of our country, yeah, I think bringing in people who are unafraid, talented and able to have an impact could make all of the difference. And I agree with you, I don’t think actually most people, even most people who say they’re motivated by money, I don’t think are actually motivated by money. I think most people are driven by a belief that they can do more than they’re being permitted to do right now with their skillsets. I’ve run a number of companies and one of the things that I used to ask when I was, I’m not day-to-day involved in them anymore, but as a CEO, I would ask when I did interviews, in the first company I started, at Roivant, for four years in, company was pretty big by that point, I would still intent on interviewing every candidate before they joined, screening for the culture of that person. I can talk a lot more about things we did to build that culture. But one of the questions I would always ask them naturally just to start a conversation, it’s a pretty basic question, is why did you leave your last job or why are you leaving your last job? I’ll tell you what I didn’t hear very often, is that I wasn’t paid enough. And maybe they’d be shy to tell you that during an interview, but there’s indirect ways to signal that. That really wasn’t at all even a top 10 reason why people were leaving their job. I’ll give you what the number one reason was, is that they felt like they were unable to do the true maximum of what their potential was in their prior role. That’s the number one reason people leave their job. And by the way, I would say that as I’m saying that in a self boastful way that we would attract these people. I think that’s also true for most of the people who left the company as well, Roivant. And that was true at Roivant, it’s at other companies I’ve started. I think the number one reason people join companies and number one people leave companies, whether they’ve been to join mine or to leave mine in the past, have been that they feel like they’re able to do more than they’re able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve. And so I think that’s what people hung for. past, have been that they feel like they’re able to do more than they’re able to with their skillset than that environment permits them to actually achieve. And so I think that’s what people hung for. When we think about capitalism and true free market capitalism, and we used words earlier like meritocracy, it’s about building a system, whether it’s in a nation or whether it’s even within an organization, that allows every individual to flourish and achieve the maximum of their potential. And sometimes it just doesn’t match for an organization, where let’s say the mission is here and somebody’s skillsets could be really well aligned to a different mission, then the right answer is it’s not a negative thing, it’s just that person needs to leave and find their mission somewhere else. But to bring that back to government, I think part of what’s happened right now is that the rise of that bureaucracy in so many of these government agencies has actually obfuscated the mission of these agencies. I think if you went to most federal bureaucracies and just asked them what’s the mission, I’m just making one up off the top of my head right now, the Department of Health and Human Services, what is the mission of HHS in the United States of America? I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you… I doubt somebody who works there, even the person who leads it, could give you a coherent answer to that question. I just heavily doubt it. And you could fill in the blank for any range of… Department of Commerce, and we could just go straight down the list of each of these other ones, what is the mission of this organization? You could even say for the US military, what’s the purpose of the US military, the Department of Defense? I can give you one. I think it is to win wars, and more importantly, through its strength, to avoid wars, that’s it. Well, okay, if that’s the mission, then you know, okay, it’s not tinkering around and messing around in some foreign conflict where we feel like it sometimes, and other ones where we don’t. And who decides that, I don’t really know, but whoever the people are that decide that, we follow those orders. No, our mission is to protect the United States of America, to win wars, and to avoid wars, boom, those three things. What does protecting the United States of America mean? Number one, the homeland of the United States of America and the people who reside there. Good, that’s a clear mission. The Department of Health and Human Services, maybe, could be a reasonable mission to say that I want to make America the healthiest country on Planet Earth, and we will develop the metrics and meet those metrics, and that’s the goal of the Department of HHS, to set policies, or at least to implement policies that best achieve that goal. And maybe that’s the right statement of mission, maybe it’s not, but one of the things that happens is, when you’re governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it’s a company or government agency or bureaucracy. but one of the things that happens is, when you’re governed by the committee class, it dilutes the sense of mission out of any organization, whether it’s a company or government agency or bureaucracy. And once you’ve done that, then you lose the ability to track the best and the brightest, because in order for somebody to achieve the maximum of their potential, they have to know what it’s towards. There has to be a mission in the first place. Then you’re not getting the best and brightest, you get more from the committee class, and that becomes a self-perpetuating downward spiral, and that is what the blob of the federal bureaucracy really looks like today.…

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