Alex Budak | Becoming a Changemaker: Leading Positive Change at Any Level

Srini: Alex, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Alex Budak: Oh, thanks for having me.

Srini: It is my pleasure to have you here. So you have a new book out called Becoming a Change Maker, but as a person who has listened to the show and I both know we're not gonna get out of this conversation without talking about education, and I never wanna start by talking about the book, but you actually wrote in, and part of what piqued my interest was the fact that you are a professor at Haas, which is the business school at Berkeley that rejected me as an undergrad.

So I thought, what a perfect opportunity to air my grievances with a professor there. all joking aside I wanted to start by asking you what did your parents do for work and how did that end up shaping the choices that you have made with your life? And.

Alex Budak: My dad is a dentist and perhaps I was a change maker at a young age. I think he dreamed of having his firstborn son following to the dental footsteps. And I think at age like five, I said, Nope, not gonna be a dentist. So he gave up on, on that dream. And then my mom was a software and she worked at Google in the somewhat early days, which was nice for me as a kid growing up in the Bay Area because I got to visit her.

And that was before Google got all the healthy snacks. And so I got to enjoy all the unhealthy snacks as a high schooler

Srini: which you went to high school in the early days of Google.

Alex Budak: early-ish days. Yes, I graduated high school in 2002.

Srini: Oh wow. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. That is the earliest dayss. It's funny because I feel like the narrative around education seems to be really evolving with each generation of kids. I see. Coming out of high school, like you and I are close enough in age that we probably had a similar narrative because I graduated high school in 96.

But I'm curious, what did your parents teach you about making your way in the world, and then what was the role of the value of education in your household?

Alex Budak: Education is super, super important. I guess the other part, in addition to my family upbringing, it's also the school in which I was attending. So I grew up in Palo Alto, California, so heart of Silicon And I attended high school called Gun High School, which

is

Srini: I know it.

Alex Budak: yeah, so often ranked as one of the quote top schools in the country, but also as a student, an pressure cooker of a school.

So much so that fews, after I graduated the school was on the front cover of the Atlantic for a piece about all the that were dying by suicide. In many parts driven by the intense competitive culture there. And in some ways you're like a fish in water that you don't really know how intense it is until you get out of it.

But on one hand I'm grateful for and truly incredible education. the other end though I just think about all the intense that we had. Like I remember when instead of taking AP biology, I took honors biology felt like I was dumb for doing so. I felt what am I doing with my life?

There's just so much pressure at the school that I think in many ways was foreboding for a lot of the pressure that many students experienced today.

Srini: Yeah.

absolutely. Yeah. I remember Palo Alto being almost, cuz I think Sarah Peck was here and she also went to high school in that same district. And it's funny because I remember, if I remember correctly, when I was an Allstate band my senior year the principal flute player was actually from gun high school.

So not surprised. But you mentioned this sort of pressure cooker, an environment. So what are the good things that came from that and what are the bad you're at an elite university where, I don't know about you and ucla, but I know for damn sure that I would not get into Berkeley today if I had the grades that I had in high school then.

And I feel like everybody makes jokes about this. Like Scott Gallo and Antagonist people basically joke about the fact that they can't get into their own their own alma mater. They wouldn't be able to get into their own alma mater.

Alex Budak: That's exactly, I didn't, I joined the club. I would not be where I taught or where I went to school.

So on, on the good Hand, like people really cared about education, like people really thoughtful about it. And for the most part, students just didn't just mail in their assignments. I remember a lot of us went above and beyond, like we actually got engaged in the material and I think about like an English class, like we really engaged with the concepts and I think that was really special.

But one of the things that I really felt at Gun, and something that I think inspires my teaching today is that it just did not promote a growth mindset. So ironically, growth mindset coming from Carol Dweck who taught at Stanford right across the way. but this idea like are your talents fixed or can you grow into them?

And I think gun and so many of my friends had this feeling of a fixed mindset that just like you had some natural talent, that's as much as you could do. And either you're a naturally brilliant mathematician or you're not. And as I think about it, honestly, I was pretty good at math growing up, but then I reached this point in, I think it was geometry, where it just no longer came easy to me.

And at that point I wish I had a teacher who said, Hey Alex, you could do this. Keep working on it. Try things a new way, fail forward. But instead it felt like here I am, like the dumbest kid in the class, I'll drop down and drop out of geometry. And that changed my whole perspective.

Like I went from being someone who enjoyed math and thought maybe I'm good at it. To in comparison I'm not good. So what am I doing?

Srini: Yeah.

Yeah. I it's funny that you say that. One thing I wonder about, because I felt like I saw this at Berkeley to, you've probably heard me say this on the show before, is here you have some of the brightest sort of young people in the country going to these incredibly elite universities surrounded by equally bright people.

And yet I feel that there's almost this sort of conformist nature to the way that. Approach things. Cause I always remember thinking, I was like, Here's uc, Berkeley the most liberal place in the country, supposedly, and it's a breeding ground for conformity. It's basically a place that breeds future doctors, lawyers, and engineers.

If you, I bet you if you were to survey, maybe this isn't true now, but when I was an undergrad, if I surveyed 80% of the people that I knew, they were either headed to med school, law school, or at MBA program after some sort of management consulting or I banking job. That was the desire for the most part.

Do you find that was the case in an environment like Gun as well? That people just had this predetermined career path? Because as you write about in the book, you and I both know nothing ever turns out the way we think

it's going

Alex Budak: It's so interesting because we're forced on this path of at least external success of okay, take this prep class, do this activity, and that's what will bring you success. But I think often, and I find this in many of my students at Berkeley, they've been on this path without really questioning it.

They're really good at what they're doing, but not sure exactly why they're on this escalator that they're. And so perhaps it's not a surprise, but I teach change making. And so a lot of students come to me oftentimes in their fourth year, sometimes their last semester at Berkeley, and they come to me and I think one of the most common conversations I have with students is where they come in, they go, Okay I'm all said to accept my offer at, it's called the ABC's, Accounting, Banking consulting one of those.

And Hey I'm all said, I've got what everyone says is like the dream at Fillin brand name consulting firm. But they go, do I want this? What am I doing? And a lot of what I give students in the office hours is of course an ear, but also sometimes It's permission to zig when others add to go their own way, because you're exactly right.

Really talented students, but so much pressure to find themselves into one of three career paths, especially at Haas. And I think often I'm the first person that gives them permission to say, . You can do it if you really want to, but if you don't really want to, you're so talented. Is there a better way to use your talent, your skills, and your passions?

And often there.

Srini: So you know you may have heard me say this and I've written this down somewhere where I always say the options in front of you often blind you to the possibilities that surround you. And when you pick a college course, Cata go through a college course catalog. This is what I felt at Berkeley was these are the majors, these are the potential career paths they lead to.

And basically it's this funnel that just gets narrower and narrower as you progress up the funnel. So with that comment in mind, you probably have heard me ask this before as well, if you were tasked with redesigning the education system or redesign, The curriculum at Berkeley, if it if you got to basically just wipe the slate clean at a place like Berkeley at an elite institution, how would you re redesign it and how would you change things as a former HOS reject?

This is very important to me.

Alex Budak: Yeah, so sorry to any deans that are listening here, but I would get rid of all colleges, get rid of all major. And I would focus the whole education around themes because ultimately, as I think what you're pointing out a major is arbitrary. When I was at ucla, I did a major in geography and political science, loved those fields, but I also took classes in all kinds of random subjects, just things that interested me.

And so what I would do at Berkeley is you've got leading scholars, leading I would tear down the majors and instead we would focus on key themes. So maybe you'd come to school and you'd focus on water access, then within your water access specialization, you'd take some engineering, some anthropology, some psychology some political science, some public policy, and you'd piece together your educational journey around that.

It would no longer be about some arbitrary, this is my discipline, but instead, what are the meaningful problems that you wanna solve, and how can you get things from your toolkit that allow you to do I would also start segmenting the education experience a little bit. For me, it was absolutely transformational.

I studied abroad once in undergraduate and once in graduate school. in undergraduate, I studied abroad. Experience gave me the sort of confidence, It helped me find my voice, it got me out of my bubble. And then in graduate school I got to social entrepreneurship while studying abroad in India.

And that changed the whole trajectory of my career and life. as much as possible, I tried to segment the educational experience so that students get some of these transformational opportunities. So maybe you go to the UK to study English literature for a semester, you go to Shen to focus on engineering technology and Star, I don't know, there's so many places you could go, but to segment it up a little bit so you're not just getting learning in the classroom, You're also seeing firsthand, like how does different, do different places in the world, think about things in different ways?

Srini: No. Okay. Have you ever seen the movie accepted with Justin?

Alex Budak: I haven't.

Srini: Okay. You should watch that as a professor. I think you'll find it really funny. So he basically gets rejected from every college he applies to. So he has his friend make up a website and print out a fake acceptance letter to a college.

And he shows it to his parents and his parents write him a check. And his friend accidentally makes the website fully functional and he puts a button that says Acceptance one click away. And they call it the South Harmon Institute of Technology. And he opens the doors on the first day and there's 3000 people in line.

And he's Wait a minute, who are all these people? They paid tuition. And Louis Dean Lewis Black is the dean of the university. So the thing that was so fascinating was he actually went basically and asked each student at a certain cause he didn't know what to do. He was just freaking out.

Cuz this was just a plan to like have his parents leave him alone and suddenly he was stuck with these 3000 people are all paid. And Louis Fly, he was like, What am I supposed to ask them? He was like, Or what are we supposed to teach them? He was like why don't we ask them what they wanna learn?

And everybody is stunned that they're even being asked what they're interested in, and he appropriates their tuition to the bulk of their tuition, to whatever it is that they're interested in learning. So they end up fighting this big battle with the dean at a traditional university.

And then the Board of Education says, All right, we're gonna allow you to continue your experimental program for a year. The reason I brought that up was what you're talking about. What's the obstacle to doing that, even as a minimum viable version. What is it that would prevent university from saying, You know what?

Let's do a pilot of this idea for one year. Let's create an experimental curriculum. Because it seems to me we were earlier talking about bureaucracies, so I think it's important we actually hit that as well, that if we're sitting around waiting for. Government bureaucracies and educational bureaucracies for this kind of change, it's never gonna happen.

So you, the guy who wrote the book, Becoming a Change Maker, , why is it that, what is it gonna take to, to make this kind of a change?

Alex Budak: There are some bright spots. So I look at a school called Minerva University, which I think is really innovating the entire four year undergraduate curriculum in fascinating ways, including students who attend it. They end up going to, I think, seven different cities before They do sort of and around the world.

So there are some people that are innovating it, but I think we need to look at what are our reward structures, because the university is set up in such a hierarchical way, and a lot of it is led by faculty. And faculty with tenure and faculty their tenure based on certain disciplines. And that's the way the whole system works.

And so when we think about call for system change, it's hard to just put a bandaid on a cut. It's hard to just put sort of one little program on top of an infrastructure of 35,000 students. Then we need to be thinking about as a deeper approach to what are the systems that are in place that are blocking this innovation and how might we start to change.

Srini: Yeah. So one thing that I'm curious about, this is something that really struck me. William Dershowitz was here. You may have read his book called Excellence Sheep. But one of the things he talked about, and he worked at Yale as a professor. And I remember correctly, I think he went to an elite university as well, but he actually talked about this sort of entitlement that I, people who go to elite universities have in terms of feeling like the world owes them everything simply

,

because of the name on the degree and. This is one of the things that he says as two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there and for what being there can do for them. And the advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable.

You learn to think in certain ways and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life that is rich in all of society's most cherish words. But then he says, The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from. And the second implicit in what he's been saying is that an elite education ilk, inculcates a false sense of worth that, you know, as a Berkeley alumni.

That just struck me so much because I, You related to that, I thought to myself, Yeah I would say that I had friends who, despite being Berkeley undergrads, were idiots and jerks and thought the world owed them everything cuz they were smarter than the average. What do you find the, what do you find when it comes to this in your students?

Do they have the awareness that, by the way, this is not a reflection of reality. Going to gun is also not a reflection of what the rest of the world country is educated like. You and I grew up in relatively privileged circumstances. My dad was a college professor. It's taken 10 years of doing this show for me to realize, it's wow, that actually is a privilege.

Believe it or not,

Alex Budak: Huge privilege. I think it's so important to recognize that you mentioned Scott Galloway earlier. I think he's done important work around reframing the sort of shift from elite universities as. Like an educational experience to a

Srini: luxury brands.

Alex Budak: Yeah.

And I think that's a dangerous trend that we're on, and I certainly see that.

Now you think in some ways I'm lucky because students who take my class on change, making people that wanna lead positive change and wanna have an impact I think they self select or maybe some selection bias in terms of the students that I mostly get to spend time with. But I also run a program where students from around the world come to Berkeley halls and they learn about innovation and And so I have the great privilege of welcoming them. And when I do, I talk about a really important cognitive shift for them to make, which is the shift from going from a consumer of their education to a co-producer. when you're a consumer, you expect everything to show up for you. You expect the professors to perform for you.

You sometimes expect to get a good grade simply by virtue of winning that l of getting into your grade. instead, I like thinking of as a which means that you have as much opportunity, but also as much responsibility to shape the educational experience of those around you as they do for you.

So that means that when you see an opportunity, rather than complaining about it or sitting on it or setting someone else to fix it, you say, Hey, let me step up. Let me do something about this. It's that sort of sense of agency that I think many of our universities could do more for our students to support them in finding that.

But then I think to your final point, it's so important that any of us who are lucky enough to be at really any university, but especially some of the more elite universities, we just take a moment to recognize how fortunate we are, how lucky we are even those that get in, I think about a school like UCLA where I think the admissions rate is like in the single digits now they 130,000 people applying.

That there are so many students that could thrive at the university that just don't get in. And I think we have this false sense of self worth when we win that lottery because ultimately there is a lot of luck, a lot of chance, not just in our experience growing up, but also how those admissions policies work.

And whether we win it or not does not mean that we are necessarily totally worthy of it and that others aren't. There's so many people that can thrive in that position. So the question is do we take advantage of this to help make a more equal I just society for all.

Srini: Yeah. I don't know if you saw the Netflix documentary about the Varsity Blue scandal and Rick Singer at, and they were showing all these kids opening their acceptance letters. Not the actual physical letter, but clicking on the website cuz I, I don't know if you actually got a physical letter in the mail cuz I did.

I remember it was basically you got the big envelope or the small envelope and you just knew. and but to see the reactions, look, I didn't feel that when I went got into Berkeley, I just had this jumping up and down like my life as set reaction and I also didn't think, oh my God, my life is over when I didn't get into Northwestern.

But the way I saw these people react, I was just like, wow. That's the pressure we're putting on people these days when it comes to college. This can't possibly be healthy.

Alex Budak: It can't be healthy. It's not healthy, and we see that we wrap up so much of our self worth in those sort of use analogy. The big envelope or the small envelope. And it's also, I'm a relatively new dad. I've got 22 month old at. And I'm already starting to see all the pressure that parents put on themselves and their kids to quote, succeed.

And so we've gotten to the point where college acceptance isn't just a measure of you as the student. It's also measure of your parents. Did your parents give you the right opportunities? Were they good parents because you got into Yale or they knocked parents because you got rejected from UPenn.

There's so much that's wrapped up in that single admissions decision, which again, is ultimately a bit arbitrary. Anyway, it's so much pressure for students and for.

Srini: No. Let's get into the book. Talk to me about how came to arrive at this entire idea, and then what led to the birth of this.

Alex Budak: So I'm a social entrepreneur. Before joining ha a co-founded a social venture, and then through some good luck, I got to, I joined the staff at Berkeley. Ha. And then I remember had a conversation with the then senior assistant dean of instruction at hos. So the person who oversees all the faculty, all the curriculum.

And so I went to him for advice on a career transition, I think he could tell that my heart wasn't really in it. So I remember he said, what do you really wanna do? said what I really wanna do is teach. then I think I started mumbling something about how most faculty are older than me and blah, blah, blah.

But he goes, Alex, what do you wanna teach? And in that moment it became completely clear. I said, I wanna teach becoming a change maker. And to my shock and delight instead of rejecting me, he said, Okay, sounds Put together a syllabus, Show it to me and we'll go from there. So I literally left outta my seat.

I shook his hand, walked outta his office, closed the door, then immediately pulled out my phone and Googled how to create a syllabus. Cause I had no idea what

I was doing

But that was the start of the journey. And so this class that I started at Berkeley is the class I wish I could have taken at the beginning of my career.

I brought together the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation, social impact leadership, change management, and really focused on how can we equip the next generation to lead positive change from where they are. We tend to do, especially in Silicon Valley, this concept of hero entrepreneurship.

We put the loan innovator up on a pedestal. but I believe that change comes from all of us. We can all lead change from where we are and. together this class of Berkeley was my attempt to make that case and to help these students lead change to work on their minds of their leaders and their action skills.

So they were equipped to lead positive change from wherever they might be.

Srini: Yeah. You open the book by saying there are three ways to rapidly accelerate your career and impact. The first is to become a changemaker yourself. The second is to surround yourself with changemakers. And the third and most trailblazing way is to help others around you become change makers.

So you also mentioned that you have these students who kind of self-select and there's a bit of selection bias because the, what you call the ABC career path seems almost contrary to this like the complete opposite path to this. So is this something that people have to want before they even make the decisions?

Cuz I feel like in a lot of ways, in the same way people think that college defines your life, people feel that first job defines everything. And as somebody who was a Berkeley undergrad who got fired from damn near every job I had until I was 30, I realized it just, I made a lot of the wrong choices.

So I, I'm curious, like when you. Encourage people to think about the choices that they're gonna make for their first jobs. Like how does this all play a role in that?

Alex Budak: Yeah. One of the things we talk a lot about in the class is taking a long term perspective, playing the long game. Change makers often have this, feeling if they this immediate of leading change and that's a healthy thing, that's a good thing, but also they need to recognize that change takes time.

I'm inspired by one of our guest speakers. We had in class or write about him in the book as well, Sit Espinoza, the first ever Latino mayor of Politic California at the time, the VP of Philanthropy at Microsoft. And so he talks about how we need to stop thinking about change as an individual sprint, instead start seeing it as a relay race.

That our job is to take the baton from those who have come before. And then in the 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, we'll be working on it, advance that baton as much as we possibly can. then when that time comes for us to pass off the baton to others to do so in a way that sets them up for success through mentoring, through support, so that the next generation is ready to go.

So I really try to get my students in the book, my readers, to think about that long term approach to change. Now, on a practical level, when it comes to taking that first job, we talk a lot about the work of Simon Sinek, which is based on the work of coast at nyu, playing the infinite game.

And so while getting that first job is finite, you win that or not, your career is actually And what I find and what I talk to my students about is they often over control for the short term pain of that first job versus the long-term benefit of thinking a bit more expansively.

There's so much get that first job because again, that's the next defining rung on the ladder. When you're 18, it's all about which college did you into, What's 22? It's which brand name are you working for? so many students are so focused on getting that job without thinking about what it is it that I want to do?

so a conversation topic I have so often with my students is that they're really focused on the name on the business card, so the McKenzie or the Deloitte. And that's fine, that's what you really want. But I really encourage 'em to think about, not just what's the brand you're working for, but who's the person that you're working for?

I've had the great privilege of working with a couple of amazing change makers, people who mentored me, who supported me and their mentorship, having them as my manager. Made way more of an impact in my trajectory than whatever company I was working for. And so I encourage students to think not just about what's the job, but who would be spending your time with, who will be managing you and who will hopefully be mentoring and advising you as you go.

Srini: Yeah.

We had Liz Wiseman here and it's funny you say that cause I know you referenced her, the book, and I remember distinctly her saying that she said, The most important chase you're gonna make is not the job but your first boss. And it's funny because if you read books by people like Bi Stone, who was one of the co-founders of Twitter, he references his first boss as being somebody who was instrumental.

And I jokingly say this is the opportunity that cost me $150 million. because I I met this entrepreneur in a coffee shop. This was summer after my senior year. I was a super senior at the one semester. The guy tells me, he is I can pay you $10 an hour. Another guy's I'll give you 25 bucks an hour.

And of course I took the 25 and the guy who gave me 25 shut his startup that summer. The other guy ended up going on to start three companies in Silicon Valley and ended up being worth like hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm just like, okay. And I think that's so hard when you're that young to have that long term view.

Because I also feel like there's this just competitive game. It's Oh, my friend got this salary so I need to get that. Cuz that's what I felt like, that's part of why I went to work in sales. I was like, Oh, it's the only way I can make as much money as my friends who are in banking or consulting.

Alex Budak: Yeah, and I'm not saying it's easy, but a lot of what I try to do with my students and in the book is to try to shift their locus of control from being really. Externally focused on success to be more intrinsically motivated internally, to focus a little bit less on what are the outward measures of success that you want, and what are the inward characteristics that you want to develop?

you wanna become more Do you wanna become more charismatic? Do you wanna become more curious? What are the things that you want to work on? Because ultimately, those are investments in yourself. Those are the things that will benefit you, your family, your friends, for the next 60 years, the outward measure success a bit more money a bit more prestige.

Those are things that may bring you short term benefit. And again, if that's what drives you, that's okay, but to not lose track of the intrinsic things, and especially those inner characteristics that you want to develop, which are truly change maker charact.

Srini: Let's get into some of those characteristics. The first one you talk about is effectively questioning the status quo. And you say, Effectively questioning the status quo requires two high level capabilities working together. The first is learning to recognize an established convention worth confronting.

The second is having the mindset and skills to take the risk to pursue the change and bring others along with you. What does questioning the status quo look like in practice? For many change makers, it begins with being willing to see the world both as it is and how it might become a bit different from others.

Now, I think this is the perfect example time to talk about the bureaucracy at Berkeley. Cuz you and I were talking about the fact the biggest sort of skill you gain from going to a large public school is to manipulate bureaucracies to your advantage. It's mind boggling how useful of a skill that becomes, even though it's just a giant pain in the ass the entire time you're in school. But I thought that's a perfect way to talk about this status quo idea.

Alex Budak: It's perfect. One of the ideas we talk about in

,

the book is this idea of zigging when others zag. So if everyone's going one way, there's often opportunities if you can go the other way. And so what I learned at UCLA is that there's actually huge opportunities there if you're the student who can stand out a little bit, who can advocate for themselves or can maybe find opportunities where others may not.

so part of questioning the status quo is not just recognizing opportunities, but seizing them and taking action. I love the poem that Amanda Gorman delivered a inauguration of Biden and Harris. It's called The Hill We Climb. And the final three lines of the poem, I think really embody the way I think about questioning the status quo.

She says, for there is always light.

If we're brave enough to see it, if we're brave enough to be it.

This idea, there's always light, there's always another way that's possible. if only we're brave enough to see it. So many people go about the world, go about their lives and just accept things as they are.

Oh, a big bureaucracy. That's just the way it is. That's you got a waiting line. You gotta just do this or I can't get that because none of my friends got it. There's always light. We're brave enough to see it. But then the third part, if we're brave enough to be not change thinking. It's change making, and so can you take that action?

When it comes to bureaucracy, it's usually not a huge act. It's maybe one small thing to get started. It's an email that no one else will send. It's showing up when the bureaucracy opens, as opposed to wait until the end of the day. There's little things that you can do, but it takes that courage, and I think that's an important lens to think about that.

While so many people just accept the status quo, it takes a bit of courage. But if you can zig when others add, a lot of opportunities can open up.

Srini: Yeah.

In that article that I wrote about advice for freshman I basically said that with a little bit of swagger and a smile on your face, you can get away with almost anything. Like my friend who had the audacity to not get into hos and somehow still managed to graduate from

hos

So what is the difference in your students between those who recognize the opportunity for changing those who act on it?

Alex Budak: So I think the key here is what I teach is the art of agency. This idea of that the world isn't just happening to us, that we get to help shape it as well. And this is a hard thing for many students to learn because so often we are on that path. You think about the traditional trajectory of success, it's like this escalator.

It's like you get on oftentimes inspired or enabled by privilege, but you jump on this escalator, it seems going up and up and up, and you don't think about getting off. Whereas the students that really have that agency to question the status quo, they feel like, Okay, my life is actually mine to be.

Now that comes with risks because it's risky to jump off that escalate. It's risky to put yourself out there. But many of them are able to do what I call the risk quotient, the risk calculation to try to understand is this a risk that's worth taking? And I think what we find is that oftentimes we're not great at calculating risk.

That when we think about taking a chance, we tend to focus a lot on the downside. We think about all the things that could go wrong as opposed to what could actually go right. I think many of the students who are good at this are very good at what I call protecting the downside. So in other words, they think about what's the worst thing, what's the worst case?

How can it protect against that? How can make sure that like things don't go totally terribly, that I go talk to someone, the bureaucracy, I don't get kicked outta school as a result of asking. How do you worst case can happen? But then as long as you know that you can mitigate against that, then you find a lot of upside to taking.

Srini: Yeah. It's funny, we just did an episode of risk on the creativity hour or weekly segment the day with my friend Gareth. And we're talking about having a boundary of risk. And I was like mine are ridiculous. They're like, if it doesn't lead to potentially jail time, bankruptcy or death, it's probably not as serious as you think it is.

But let's talk about risk in the context of trust, because one of the things you say is as a global society, we're facing a paradox. Think about all the major trends that shape the world, Globalization, social media, online retailing, distributed and remote workforces. They all sit a top of bedrock of trust.

The ability to trust and be trusted has never been more important. And you talk about these three interrelated pillars of trust, trusting ourselves, trusting others, and earning the trust of others. Can you talk about how to develop those?

Alex Budak: And so I started thinking about trust. It's my own experiences, the co-founder of Start Some Good. So when I was first in the early days of leading the. I used to judge myself based on how many times my teammates would come to me and ask me a question, ask me for my advice, I started thinking, Wow, look what an amazing leader I am.

They're coming to me saying, Alex, what do you think about our social media strategy? Hey, Alex, what do you think about this Excel document that I made? I'm going, Wow, I am a great leader. But what I realized is that we had become like a merry-go-round. I was at the center of this merry-go-round, and there was all this activity swirling around me, but we were firmly stuck in place.

because I didn't trust my team enough, I didn't give them the responsibility to go run with things. At that moment, I made the shift and I started thinking about my own leadership based on how many questions could my teammates make without involving me? How many times did they not need me?

I did that meant that I had done a good job of setting the vision and values and the ways of working, but then given them the trust to be at their very best. I like the work of Rachel Botsman, who's A at Oxford and has done really important work on trust. And what she says is trust is a comfortable relationship with the unknown.

I really like that because many of us, especially those that are more to have this like rational calculation of beep, okay, this is a, I can trust them, but instead she actually realizes no, it's actually getting to be comfortable with the unknown, with taking what she calls these trust leaves not knowing exactly what will happen on the other end, but at least getting out there.

So one aspect of being a trust driven leader is being willing to trust those around you. Is summing, this ties back nicely to our initial conversation. get a lot of students who are very GPA driven, who do great work as an individual contributor, and that's what they've been rewarded over time from taking standardized tests just following through on higher education.

And in my class, I make them do a group project because what better way to learn changemaker leadership than actually leading with others? And the inherent tension and learning points that come from a team of four, where two people think one thing, two people think the other. How do you influence the other?

so the student came to me and said Hey professor, I just wanna do this by myself. Is that cool? And I think he assumed I would just say yes, but I said, Absolutely not.

Nope This is a

group project. So let's find ways for you to work with your team. And what I came to learn is that he, his mo, his approach was that he would just take on everything, do it his own way.

He had very high standards and he just trusted, if I did it myself, I would do it the best. And I try to get him comfortable with loosening control, without losing control, with finding ways to empower those around him to give small parts of the project away so that others could contribute. And there's practical ways you can do this.

So I talk about being clear on the what, on the how. Imagine that you're planning speakers series. might, and you wanna delegate it. You might say, Okay, look, I want 50 people to be there. I want a panel of four people. I want two men and two women. But beyond that, I don't care how you get there.

I don't care if you do Instagram ads or Facebook ads or post flyers. I don't care if. People are younger or older or there's things you care about, things you don't care about. And so can you enable people to take some action because you've created that framework, which is, this is what, these are non-negotiables, but this is where you actually have some flexibility and then on developing trust in yourself.

Something that I find in many of my students as well is that they are very talented, having it developed that trust in themselves, especially the trust in themselves to navigate uncertain or ambiguous circumstances. So I love the words of general Mick Raven. He gave the commencement address at University of Texas, and what did this amazing general give as his words of advice, do these outstanding make your bed?

He says, Make your. Because, you start the day with a little win, you start building those trust inducing habits, and at the end of the day, even if you had a bad day, you come back and, hey, at least your bed is made. And so trusting ourselves doesn't have to be these huge steps. It can sometimes be as simple as making our bed, finding little ways to gain that trust in ourselves.

Srini: Yeah.

So it's funny, when I saw this part about collaboration, I kinda laughed because I'm like, Okay, this is one of my weaknesses for sure. You say, To be a great collabor reader often means going slow at first so that you can go fast later. The initial steps of leading with values and focusing on alignment are not quick, nor should they be if they are done well, where each party is fully engaged.

And I'm not a patient person like anybody who has worked with me. Always will tell you has very demanding standards for time. And he hates it when things take longer than they should. I will always challenge per a person who says something will take how, however long it's gonna take. I got this copywriter and be like, Oh, this is gonna take two weeks.

And we're like, Why the hell is this gonna take two weeks? You can do this in two days. And then I realized at times I'm like, Yeah, I can do this in two days. He can't. Whereas you, I had another collaborator who was by far my best teammate ever. She would tell me something would take a week and it would be done the next morning.

And I loved her. Like she it was just like, all right, that is the standard. Like I never had to ask her if I never had to once follow up with her about anything. And I loved her for that. And it just drives me crazy when people are not like that.

Alex Budak: I so appreciate that. When we think about going slow to go fast I like to make the case that change making isn't just for your career, it's also for your personal life as well. And so one of the ways that I've learned this lesson was when my then fiance, now wife and I were planning our wedding.

We had just been

engaged

And there's all this pressure to say Okay, let's get the wedding plan. We've been engaged for three days. Let's get the wedding. And so we started off, we were on a hike and I remember that we started getting into most ridiculous of arguments. We were getting in a fight about what our wedding colors should be, and honestly, I don't even care about our wedding colors, but like we somehow found ourselves getting in a fight about our wedding colors.

We hadn't even decided I don't know, where will the wedding be? Who will be invited? Any of those types of things. so we realized we need to slow down. We needed to slow down, and we took some time to just align on our values. was the whole point of doing this wedding? What are the things we want, the value, the wedding to enable?

And so we came up with some of our defining values, which included, for instance, that all of our family and friends are able to celebrate in our love and that we're really present and enjoyed the. and so much to our, I think parents' amusement. We presented our value statement to them, but the thing is, by going slow, by deciding what is it we actually want out of our wedding?

Why are we doing this? Why are we putting the money and the time and the energy into this? Then we could actually make decisions which flowed much more quickly. As a result, once we aligned on the bigger picture, the underlying values will then decisions like wedding colors or what kind of cake to have actually become a lot simpler because we're aligned on foundational element.

Srini: Yeah, let's talk about rejection and failure because I think this really struck me and there were some really hilarious stories that you shared about this. So I want to do, to share those with people. You say, Our fear of failure often holds us back from asking for something we clearly want. Sure. That we will be rejected when reality gets refusing to ask in first, in the first place.

That is the actual failure. I think that is so true. And then you say the second. Is that the sting of failures? Nowhere as near as painful as we make it out to be in our heads. So let's actually address the second. So how do we mitigate this sort of idea that this is so painful?

The way we make it in our heads? Cause my friend guys and I were talking about dating, right? And we were just like like when we were in college, when we're younger, like the sting of a girl saying no, if you asked her on a date was just like the end of the world. And now it's just okay, fine, whatever.

Got 40 something, you're just like, Yeah, okay, I don't care. But at that time it was just like, what I realized it took me a long time to, to learn this, but I finally, after a really bad breakup, which happened way late in my life, I was like, you know what? An individual opinion is not a universal truth.

Alex Budak: Absolutely. There's something called the Failure Paradox, which is this idea that when we look at the people who are most successful, we tend to think, Wow, they have a ton of successes, and that many failures, actually what we see is that many of the people who succeed a lot. Also have a ton of failures.

And so the question isn't, did they just get lucky and just hit a home run in their first bat, but rather we're just willing to go up to the plate again and again. And amidst all those failures were some really good successes as well. so in the book I read about the experiment that I do in my class, which I would've loved for you to have done this when you were a student at Berkeley, cuz I think

you've come up with

some things.

And so we spend a lecture talking about failure, failing forward rejection, then I put up two words on a slide, which simply says, Go And students kind of start looking around what's going on? And I go to the next slide and it says, Okay, you have 15 minutes. You have to go leave

,

the classroom and you have to go ask for something get a no.

You have to get rejected before you can come back. So again, imagine these really high achieving students used to succeeding in most of what they do. they start acting, they start responding somatically. So like they start. Beating arts are beating faster and start sweating a little bit. And I go, Okay, look, I'll be at the front of the room.

If you need any coaching, any mentorship, I'll be here. But yeah, go leave the classroom. Go ask for something and get rejected. And so students shuffle nervously out of the room, but when they come back, the energy is just off the charts. So much so that at once had a next door professor come over and ask to keep the noise down cuz students were just so pumped up from this experience.

And so as you suggested in your lead to the question, two things happen one third of students. They're sure they're gonna get rejected they actually get a yes. I think about one woman who went to say hey downstairs. And she went to the breach and said, Hi, could I have a free orange juice?

she expected to get a no. And he said, Yeah, okay. And she said, Uhoh okay could I have two orange juices? And again, to her shock, he said, Yeah, okay. She's Oh, I'm supposed to fail. Could I have three? And he said no. And so she finally took

her two orange juices

came back in class with the orange juices for folks.

So often we are sure we'll get rejected, and so we set ourselves up to fail from the beginning because we just don't ask for what we want. That in the second case, which dovetails with a number of things we've talked about so far, is students realize that failure isn't fatal. They ask for things, they get a know, no one laughs at them.

not, their egos aren't destroyed, and if often come back to class with a little bit more confidence because they're proud of themselves for getting themselves out of their comfort zone a little bit for asking for something and for having this experience and some of the spontaneity magic that happens.

And I think that perspective can change a lot of lives when they realize that failure isn't fatal and that it can't hurt to put ourselves out there and ask for what we actually want.

Srini: Some, so many students have gotten dates out of this experience too, right?

Alex Budak: Yeah, they've gotten dates, they've gotten they've gotten Instagrams they've gotten an internship. Amazing things have happened as a result of putting yourself out on the line and asking.

Srini: Yeah. So talk to me about this idea of both networked and micro leadership and how it plays a role in your ability to make change.

Alex Budak: Yeah, Micro leadership is one of the new concepts I put forward in the book, and it comes from my belief that while leaders might be scarce, is abundant. There only be one ceo, five vice presence at a company. But I believe that each of us can practice leadership when we start seeing it not as a title, but instead as an act.

And so what I like to do is break leadership down into its smallest, meaningful unit, which is a moment. And we think about it, we have these leadership moments that appear around us dozens of times per day, No little chances where maybe colleague of yours has been quiet during a meeting. You say, Hey haven't heard from you.

Did you wanna share your perspective? Or maybe it's having the courage to say no when everyone else is saying yes. maybe it's willing to stay late to help a new colleague clean up after an event. are all tiny little leadership moments. Then when you start seeing things through the lens of micro leadership, you'll see, oh, there's actually moments around me all the time, every day where I can seize them, where I can step up, I can take action, I can servee others.

And when we do, so the whole concept of being a leader feels much more inclusive. We so often tell the story of leadership through the lens of the single heroic leader. We think about qui scaling the wall, or Steve Jobs pulling the iPhone outta his pocket, or Rosa Parks refusing to get up.

But when we talk about leadership this way, it can often feel exclusive we can think I don't have their charisma. I'm not extroverted, not as courageous as them. Does that mean I can't be a leader? But no, through the lens of micro leadership, we see that each of us can practice leadership no matter who we are, no matter where we are.

It's all about seeing these moments and seizing them.

Srini: So you talk about three groups of people that play a role in our ability to make change, which are the champions of cynics and offense sitters. You say champions are inspired by the possibility of the change that we're articulating. Cynics are those who actively oppose change. Face sitters are those who aren't sure what to think when it comes to change.

So how as aspiring change makers do we navigate the dynamic of these three groups of people?

Alex Budak: Yeah, thanks. And that's based off of the work by Nobel, that's N O B L, which is a change consulting firm that I quote in the book. And yet they identify these three different groups. And to me this is really elucidating because at least in my own experiences of leading change, we tend to spend a lot of time focused on the fence sitters.

here's what Nobel says. Nobel says champions, especially early get them involved as early as you can to them. Make them feel empowered, make them feel part of the change. Make them feel like they are involved in this. So get the champions then, whereas we tend to spend a lot of time with the fence sitters.

They say, actually hold off on the fence sitters and instead spend a bit of time on the cynics, the change cynics. I love the way that they frame the idea of a cynic. They say that often a cynic just a disappointed So in other words, they may wanna believe in your change, but they've just had enough experiences where someone hasn't come through or changes failed that they feel let down.

so Nobel says Here, these people out. I reflect back on my own experience in buildings Start some good where were a young, scrappy social enterprise. and we had a tech team which was super talented, but only working very part-time. And so we had a lot of features missing, especially when you compared our site to some of our competitors like Kickstarter.

so I would get these emails from people and I would be honestly shocked with the passion with which they would write about how this early stage startup lacked this feature that they really wanted. And of course my first inclination would be like, don't you understand we've got a team of four people, like we're going up against these behemoth, like we can't possibly have every feature.

I wanted to be really defensive, but instead I started seeing it through this lens of a disappointed idol list of someone who actually believed enough in the vision of our. Site our company to spend the time to detail a like very specific feature request that they want. so what I realized is to stop seeing them as cynics and instead seeing them as ilist people who wanna be involved but just feel disappointed.

so I'd make a point of whenever we would get that feature shipped, I would send them a personal note, thank them for their feedback, ask them to test it out, be our beta testers and see what they thought. And oftentimes we shifted a lot of these cynics into some of our greatest champions. Doesn't happen always, but that perspective shift made a lot of a difference for me.

And then they say with fence siters once you have the on board and some cynics converted, that's when the fence siters will come over. And another interesting data point we have from start and Good. So we are a crowdfunding site for social impact. And this was a few years in, we recognized this magic tipping point.

We found that cases where a social enterprise raised 40%, 42% of its funding goal, 100% of them reach their total goal. In other words, if you could reach 42%, you are virtually guaranteed that you would reach a hundred percent. Now why is that? We realize it's because the fence sitters fence sitter.

Someone who like likes your idea but isn't sure they're never gonna be the first money in. But if you can prove you've got support from your early and you get to that 42% mark, in our case that shows there's traction, that shows there's people behind it, and that's when the fence siters start jumping in as well.

And so that's how you get the fence siters involved rather than trying to rationalize with them early on.

Srini: Yeah. Let's talk about this change maker canvas. Cause I think this was the part of the book I felt was like one of the most tactical and probably one of my favorites, where you break it down into this mental model for making change where you have the why, the core problem, the consequences systems and substantive impact as well as scalability.

Talk to me about those and how they play a role in more importantly like, where do people screw that up? Like where do they over.

Alex Budak: Yeah, thanks. So the change maker campus came out of my own work working with of change makers around the world. People who wanna lead change, change can just feel completely overwhelming. It can feel like I don't even know where to get started. Based on my experience of mentoring, advising, coaching them, put together this campus, which I hope is a tool that takes even complex change efforts and breaks them down into small, meaningful, actionable steps.

I've seen it with my students where it shifts change from being a strategy to instead being an execution question. That once you've got the strategy in place and the canvas walks you through everything from what's the root cause that you're trying to address here, to who are the evangelists, who are the people that might not be active day to day, but who support is crucial helping you make this change effort happen.

So once you go through the strategy and all the blocks build upon each other, then you've got this canvas, and then at that point, it's no longer a strategy question. Now it's all about execution. And this helps so many change makers go from that overwhelming first step of action where it's I feel paralyzed with fear.

I don't know what to do. And the canvas helps you say, Okay, you know what to do now. It just takes that one step, that courage to see a different light way forward, and then to be the change.

Srini: Yeah. Wow. So we're getting close to the end of our time, but I think there was one other thing that really stood out to me and it got thinking about something that David Brooks talked about and it was this idea that often we're not going to see necessarily the impact of the change.

David Brooks writes about this in the road of the Charact. Where he talked about all these people that had a profound impact that nobody's ever heard of. And I think that so often you, we read books like yours, we listen to podcasts like this one. We hear people like you come and speak. We almost dismiss any change that doesn't have this sort of massive ripple.

And you say, in fact, you may never know about all the people whose lives you impact through your changemaker actions. But no matter who you are, where you live or what change you've gone to, to lead the ripples of your work will reach places you never thought possible. And I'm always stunned when I hear things from listeners.

I had a listener and once who told me that she was a heroin addict and our show replaced therapy for her.

And I couldn't believe that because I there are times where I'm just like, Yeah, I'm not as successful as I want to be. We haven't reached as many people as I would like to reach.

Are we really making that big of a difference? So talk to me about that. I think that where I'm going with that is, How do you get people to believe that the change they want to make is valuable regardless of who or how many people it reaches? Cause I always say like the quote unquote, influencers don't influence shit other than their own egos.

Like a mom who works three jobs to keep food on the table and the lights on is more of an influencer than any person on Instagram with a million followers who's famous for being famous.

Alex Budak: Absolutely. And so first we need to rethink what it means to be a change maker. And so that's why my definition is simply someone who leads change from where they are and make no mention of roles or title or even scale. And so a Nobel Prize winner has just as much claim to being a change maker as a solo contributor, a product manager comes up with a new way forward.

And I think a key is thinking about change, not in terms of what's the one specific thing that I know for sure I can take credit for. instead, being a network based leader, I'm really inspired by a number of the people especially Gen Z that are working on climate and climate justice. Climate is probably the definition of an overwhelming change effort where you can't possibly solve it by yourself.

It's just impossible. so seeing how these network based leaders are and taking action in their little way they're creating change for their communities. They're creating change in their sectors or their silos, but then by working together, that's where amazing things start to happen by learning from and with each other and by not caring so much about who gets credit for it, but rather does the work get done.

To me, that's an inspirational way to think about being a change maker, how are you contributing to what all of us are doing? And perhaps a good way to end is my fundamental belief, which is that change making is a team sport. gonna do your best through and with other people. And once you stop caring about what specific credit you yourself get, and instead what change you make possible, then everything changes.

Srini: I want to finish with my final question, which I know you've heard me ask, and that is, what do you think it is? That makes somebody do something unmistakable.

Alex Budak: I think it's a belief that the future can be better than the present and that I can make it it sounds like a cliche phrase, but fundamentally it's someone who steps up and believes in that sense of agency. And through our conversation today, we've talked on a number of different examples of that from the student in a uc, Berkeley bureaucracy that for themselves.

They can walk across the stage a graduation to someone who just sees the light when others don't. Someone who's a micro leader, who sees leadership moments around them, Someone who questions what do I actually want in terms of success in my life? Is it to have that ABC career or is it to have a greater.

So I think someone unmistakable is someone who willing to question the status quo and willing to not just believe that tomorrow can be better than today, but decides to take action to ensure that it is

Srini: Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your wisdom and your story and your insights with the listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything that you're up to?

Alex Budak: Oh, thanks. Changemaker book.com to find out all things about the book. I would love to connect with your community on which is my main social network.

Srini: Awesome. And for everybody listening, we wrap the show with that.