WonderTour

Welcome to Lead Wisely by Wondertour.

We're back again this week in our Villain Series.

We're wrapping it up talking about the titular villain Sauron.

We got to see this awesome fleshed out version of kind of the history and the buildup of
Sauron in the Rings of Power.

So we're mostly going to be focused on the Rings of Power Season 1 and 2 in this episode.

Brian, we always start off with a tough question about leadership.

So talk to me again, he's a villain, but talk to me about

Sauron's leadership superpower.

Yes, I love this.

How to lead through influence the Sauron way.

What we see in this series, we're gonna talk a little bit both about Sauron's relationship
with Galadriel, the Elven hero, and his relationship with Celebrimbor, the Elven smith,

and maybe even touch on his relationship with Adar, who's the leader of the Orc tribes in
this framing.

And the thing that we see Sauron doing really well, know, his is sort of living up to his
master of deception, you know, his Lord of Lies sort of billing, but in a way that you

And the thing that we see Sauron doing really well, know, his is sort of living up to his
master of deception, you know, his Lord of Lies sort of billing, but in a way that you

might not expect.

He forges genuine connections with the people that he's influencing and he is incredibly
good at.

His superpower is listening.

His superpower is understanding what their

intrinsic motivations are, what their dreams about the future are, what things they're
scared about, what they really would work infinitely hard to achieve, and then aligning

himself with that and figuring out how to shape it just enough so that it achieves his
goals, at least as much as it achieves theirs.

So very briefly, over the course of these two seasons, in the first season, he encounters
Galadriel and she, of course, thinks he's a human named Halbrand.

But what Galadriel wants most of all is to actually defeat Sauron, but to keep the elves
safe, to be a hero who kind of, you know, protects the world.

And she's incredibly motivated to go clear out this, the Southlands and reclaim them for
men and kind of, you know, restore order to the kingdoms.

And so he senses this, like he very easily detects that she has this willingness to work
incredibly hard.

She's been pursuing this for like a thousand years and she's not going to stop.

She's incredibly isolated.

Her king isn't supporting her, her friends aren't supporting her, her followers have left
her, they tried to send her to a retirement community and she jumped off a boat in middle

of the ocean to swim back.

she's, you know, so she's A, incredibly motivated and B, kind of on her own.

And she desperately is open to the idea of an ally who encourages her.

And then over the course of the season, he,

drops enough hints that she concludes that he's actually the lord of the Southlands and he
could help her out by being the king and that she, you know, she talks him into doing the

thing that he wants to do, which is go back to Mordor and turn it into Mordor.

In the second season, he latches on at the end of the first season and then through the
second season, he latches on to this great Elven Smith, Celebrimbor, and senses that

Celebrimbor's ambition is to be even greater than his grandfather, to be the greatest
Smith of all time, and to craft the most amazing things that ever been made.

And so he talks him into

making these rings of power.

First as Hallbrand and then later he comes back as this disguised as this elven emissary
on the tar.

But he correctly detects that Kellebrimbor's weakness and his motivation is his pride and
his, you know, wanting to be great and wanting to lean into his skills.

so through his superpower of listening and being sensitive to what people want,

he manages to kind of get them pointed in a direction that he can find useful.

And this is not a Hans Gruber incredibly brittle, incredibly detailed point by point plan
where he's caring about what people are going to do.

This is a reacting to the opportunities that are presented to him and pulling on the
biggest levers he can find, aligning himself to the most powerful people he can find and

This is a reacting to the opportunities that are presented to him and pulling on the
biggest levers he can find, aligning himself to the most powerful people he can find and

then getting them to push the world in a direction that he wants, which is a very cool and
very different take on the supervillain.

mythology.

So what did you see in Drew?

Brian, is his name mean?

He gives himself this elven name, Anatar.

Yes, yes, and the inside baseball token version of this, Anatar, translates to Lord of
Gifts, I think, or Bringer of Gifts, which is fun both from the, like, here I'm giving you

this thing that you want, I'm helping you get this thing you want, but also works in the
sense of gifts as in talents, where he's really encouraging Galadriel and Celebrimbor to

lean into their innate talents, to the things that they wanted to be good at anyway, to
be...

heroic warrior to be, you know, incredibly the most talented technologist of the Elven
Age, as it were.

Yeah, we're going to talk about in the second episode kind of the downfall of that, but it
is really cool.

I think you did a great job of explaining.

He has this amazing ability to connect with people and it almost seems genuine because I
think it is in a way he does have genuine connection definitely with Galadriel, but maybe

even with Calabrimbor.

He's passionate.

He's excited about it.

He's working with him.

The problem is that

It's always disordered, right?

It's like his relationship with them is always subservient to whatever his overall purpose
is.

And so whenever he has to make a decision of what he's going to do, he will absolutely
sacrifice that relationship if it is going to help him achieve his purpose of, you know,

But I totally agree.

He seems to form sincere connections.

People, they feel seen as a modern phrase, right?

Like, Gil Adriel is like, finally somebody understands what I'm trying to accomplish.

Finally, I've got a friend who will ride into battle with me.

And Kelle Brimbor is like, finally I've got an equal who can relate with me on this very
important work.

And...

that relationship seems genuine.

think he genuinely enjoys riding around with Gawdrill.

He genuinely enjoys nerding out about Smithy technology with Kelvin Barley.

I think that's sincere, but he's got his set of motivations and what he's doing is he's
figuring out how to get them to just like run incredibly hard at the thing that he wants

them to do anyway.

So that's a...

What we see as kind of, like you said, the failure mode or the side effect of that though,
is that they tend to draw away from other people in their orbits, right?

Because he's encouraging them to be all about themselves, which we've talked about many
times on the Tour is not, you it's not about you is the lesson that the leaders have to

learn.

He's encouraging them to make it about them.

It's all about you, Galadriel.

You have the vision.

You understand the risk.

You should solve this problem.

It's all about you, Calibran Bore.

You're the only one that could possibly make these magical artifacts.

Right, and so they tend to disregard the advice of the people that they should be
trusting.

They tend to disregard the advice of the people that they have been historically connected
to.

Kellebrant Borda alienates all of his followers.

And so that's the warning sign, I think.

But the...

The connection is still genuine.

The connection is they are sincerely aligned on some piece of the mission.

that's hard to break, right?

You can get people to work incredibly hard with you and for you if they believe in a thing
above themselves that they're trying to achieve.

You can get people to work incredibly hard with you and for you if they believe in a thing
above themselves that they're trying to achieve.

Brilliant, Brian.

We're gonna continue to dive deeper into this as we go into our mountaintop.

But first, let's hit the intro.

Hi, I'm Brian Notwell.

And we are on a journey to lead wisely, to become better leaders by touring fantastic
worlds and inspiring lore by going on a wonder tour.

we connect leadership concepts to story contexts because it sticks to our brains better.

You can find out more at wondertourpodcast.com or by searching on YouTube, Lead Wisely,
all one word.

So let's get back to the episode here.

Drew, talk to me a little bit about how Sauron plays this game.

Because he's clearly kind of playing a game, right?

He's riding the currents of the world around him.

He's got a high level goal at the end of it.

But what's he doing here?

How is he approaching the world at the opportunities it presents him?

How is he approaching the world at the opportunities it presents him?

Yeah, he does something totally different than most of the other leaders that we look at.

We looked at Hans Gruber from Die Hard as the master planner.

We looked at the Riddler in the Batman and see how he once again, he's always trying to
stay a couple of steps ahead of everybody else.

Of course, any time that you're playing a game, you want to be steps ahead of other
people.

So Sauron's not against doing that.

In fact, he is staying a couple of steps ahead.

But the types of steps he's ahead.

are very different and I think it's fitting that this is our final villain that we look at
in this series because he is obviously more nefarious than any of the villains that we've

looked at thus far.

But more than that, he is perhaps the most skilled of all of them in that he, mean, in a
way, right?

He's like a lower God.

He's a Maya in the Lord of the Rings lore.

So he is extremely powerful, but we don't see him.

until the end of season two, even start to leverage that power outright.

Up into that point, he's just very subtly using that power and primarily using just basic
strategies.

He just looks for what is the biggest thing.

Like you said in your response to the question, what is the biggest thing that I can find?

What's the biggest lever I can pull?

And how do I get access to it as fast as possible?

And so he sees that with Galadriel.

It's like, hey, Galadriel is under-leveraged and extremely powerful.

She comes from a powerful line of elves and she holds influence with the elves.

How do I influence her?

And that's basically the simplicity of his strategy.

And look at how he interacts with Adar.

Adar is probably his, up until the end of season two, his number one nemesis.

Right.

a very spiteful person and Adar obviously robs him of what he thought was his when Morgoth
dies or gets, I guess he doesn't really die, right?

He gets taken back and imprisoned for eternity by the Valar.

But either way, after Morgoth, he thinks he's going to step up.

Adar stabs Morgoth's crown into his back and stops him.

And so he is coming after Adar, but he doesn't have this incredibly complex strategy of
how he's going to come and take

Aragion and then he's going to use it to destroy Adar.

Everything is just simple, right?

It's okay.

Well, we'll get him here and then I will be able to within a certain range exert influence
over his troops and he'll be angry.

So he'll be making less than optimal decisions and be susceptible to, know, his Sauron is
the deceiver.

He'll be susceptible to his deceptions, which is eventually how he kills Adar.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and what I love about this is that, you know, we can sort of forecast forward to the
Lord of the Rings where he's standing up in the tower or the battle that's coming where

Well, and what I love about this is that, you know, we can sort of forecast forward to the
Lord of the Rings where he's standing up in the tower or the battle that's coming where

he's wearing the one ring and he's got his armies around him, but he's not at that point
yet.

He is, with the exception of the flashback where Adar betrays him, right?

We don't see him trying to exert leadership at all.

Like he's learned this lesson that he's not yet powerful enough to exert leadership by
influence.

Even when he makes a stirring speech, the orcs are like, you're not one of us and he gets
betrayed and they try to murder him.

Right?

So he spends both of these entire seasons not putting himself in a position of authority,
rejecting authority.

Like Galadriel has to talk him into being willing to be the king of the Southlands.

Right?

He's, he is working shoulder to shoulder.

with the people that he wants to influence.

He's putting himself in their shoes, subservient to them as a person who seems like, I
need your help.

You're the one that's going to solve all these problems.

You are the leader.

He's kind you know, he's almost, you know, the whisperer character.

Like he's almost a little bit of an Obi-Wan for Killa Brimbor, right?

He's, he's trying to be more mentoring.

He's trying to be more, more of an ally for Galadriel and not to exert power at all.

So he's working entirely through influence and he's working entirely, not even through
making a detailed plan, like you say, but just like suggesting every once in while, like,

Hey, have you thought about this?

Like, have you thought, looked at the world that way?

maybe you should be worried about this.

Right.

And so what we see is that as people become more attached to him and more trusting of him,
then he's able to,

cast, pull the wool over their eyes, right?

He's able to change their perception of reality more and more effectively to the point by
the end of the second season, he is literally weaving magic or changing the world that

Celebrimbor sees.

But he doesn't start that way and he never positions himself as you must do this thing
until he feels like he's got enough power to say, all right, I'm tying you to your forge

But he doesn't start that way and he never positions himself as you must do this thing
until he feels like he's got enough power to say, all right, I'm tying you to your forge

and you gotta go do this thing.

He's incredibly patient.

is absolutely playing the long game.

And like you said, he tried to play the short game initially, learned that that wasn't
going to work.

And so now this attempt to take all the power, he's going to play the long game.

And in doing so, he's going to create these rings.

These rings allow him to play the long game in a new way where before, you know, his body
was able to be destroyed.

And so he ends up in this weird goop.

Has to like make a comeback that takes a really long time to Reconsolidate power and we
see that again in the third age right in the Lord of the Rings in the Hobbit is he's back

in that state where he's having to Reconsolidate power We get that in the Hobbit at one
point where they're like Sauron's back and they go to the I forget what the name of the

castle is that they go to where he's got his minions and stuff like that, but He has
figured out the way to do it and it's by leveraging

big picture thinking.

He's always thinking big and he's allowing the picture to evolve in front of him.

He's not getting locked in too much on one vision or one strategy.

He's just allowing the big rocks to fall as they will and everything else you'll just kind
of figure out as he goes.

So let's talk about the mountaintop so that we can dig into this maybe a little bit more.

So Brian, why don't you tell us about this week's mountaintop with CCelebrimbor.

So we talked about Sauron working through influence.

We talked about the way that he works through influence is aligning big picture goals that
the person already had their intrinsic motivations, the things that they want to achieve.

And the way that he corrupts those big picture goals is that he makes them selfish.

He encourages other people to be very self-centered and very narrow focused in pursuing
their goals to the point where they start to lose context.

And then he can really guide the way that they're going.

And so the greatest example of this is about halfway through season two, Celebrimbor has
been creating these rings and he's been told to stop by his king and there's some warning

signs going around.

And Sauron...

sort of pitches the, need to make more rings very mildly, but in a way that is very
motivational.

And Kelle Grimbor on his own initiative writes a letter to his king saying, everything's
fine.

And we've stopped making the rings and you know, we thank you for your advice and we're
following everything you said.

And then goes and does the exact opposite.

And he's like, he's abandoning his principles at that moment.

He's abandoning his people, he's abandoning his loyalties, he's abandoning.

kind of good sense listening to the people you should probably be listening to in favor of
listening to this voice that's telling him to do the thing that he really wanted to do

anyway.

But he's crossed over from like not really thinking about the context to actually putting
up firewalls to lying to people about it.

And so this is our this is our moment where this character is influenced to the point
where he starts to make really bad decisions.

Right.

And starts to, you know, even in the terminology of the of the series.

Right.

He introduces corruption into his product.

Like he's, he's no longer of pure mind trying to do this for the benefit of the world.

He's convinced himself that doing it by he's convinced himself that the ends justify the
means.

He's convinced himself that doing it by he's convinced himself that the ends justify the
means.

And so now he's starting to change the way that he interacts with those around him.

And from this point forward, Kellebrinborg pushes his workers incredibly hard and they go
from sort of adoring him to

Like being really frustrated, like, why aren't you listening to us?

This isn't going well, right?

He loses the trust of his followers.

He loses awareness of reality and he starts doing increasingly harmful things in the world
with all of the real power and real skill that he's developing.

So this is our, this is our mountain top moment is the point at which Caleb Rimbort starts
to abandon his principles.

And the way that he influences, this is where we want to learn.

think there's two things for us to learn here, at least right now that I'm seeing.

One is how do we influence like Sauron, but not do it in a manipulative way, not do it so
that somebody is able to just get short-term gains out of it, but to help them achieve

long-term goals.

And I think part of it is he really, like you said, he helps them even to understand what
their value proposition is.

And we can apply this to business.

Like what value are you trying to get?

And when we say value, we don't necessarily mean like a dollar amount because most of us,
a dollar amount is just a means to have some sort of an experience.

It's a means to some sort of a ideal world of flourishing, whatever it is, depending on
the goal there.

But he, so he helps them to find that value that they're looking for.

So in the situation with Kellebrimbor, right?

What's valuable to him.

is to have his name in the history books.

And he just twists it just a little bit because that's what a deceiver does.

There's nothing wrong with Celebrimbor having his name in the history books, right?

In fact, he could do it for a really good reason.

He could have his name in the history books because he created something that helped
humans and elves or whoever else to flourish.

But he kind of just slowly turns it so that he loses sight of that.

So for us, it's so important to be able to do both things, to help somebody to understand
their value statement, make sure our organizations have a clear understanding of what does

the user want?

What do our customers actually want out of this?

we understand that?

And then beyond that, and this is the magnanimous aspect of it, not just to capitalize on
that and then slowly, well, if I do the marketing this way, if I do that, but instead,

what type of a world are we creating?

And is this world going to create more freedom for the person, for our customer, for our
user?

Or is it going to create less freedom for them?

And that's a hard question to answer sometimes.

Right.

No, I think that's.

That's right, is that he directly, we see onscreen direct influence where he encourages
these people to do things that they sort of wanted to do already, but to sort of lose

That's right, is that he directly, we see onscreen direct influence where he encourages
these people to do things that they sort of wanted to do already, but to sort of lose

track of the big picture while they're doing it.

Like once they bought into like, I must be doing the right thing.

Once they get very focused on the task at hand, he sort of, you know, helps them lose
track of the fact that they might be drifting away from doing the right thing, right?

To some extent, you know, that short game versus long game is the same, the same effect
that the rings are having, right?

Giving all the dwarf lords rings makes them very focused on wealth and power in the
extreme short term and makes them sort of, they lose track of what, you know, what's,

whether they're giving up some of their authority.

loses track of like, these things aren't having the effect that I wanted, right?

Okay, so how does that play out then?

he plays, he understands somebody's value proposition, which we can also do, we need to
understand their value proposition, but then he's able to use that.

He's able to use the big levers rather than using all these complex strategies that a lot
of these other leaders use that become brittle.

Yeah, I think that's the big takeaway here is this, the idea that you can use a big
picture context and align it with people's intrinsic motivations.

If you can do that, if you can position, it's not really about positioning yourself.

It's about presenting a vision of the future that aligns with people's intrinsic
motivations.

If you can do that, they will work incredibly hard in that direction.

Like as a good leadership lesson.

that's valuable, right?

That's actually what really great leaders would do.

If you think of somebody that's inspirational, if you think of a Martin Luther King or a
John F.

Kennedy or somebody who's like really good at standing up and saying, let's go this way,
or this is the thing you wanted anyway, let's go do that.

We should go to the moon.

That would be so cool.

We could go to the moon and we have to beat the Soviets.

That would be so important.

We have to beat the Soviets,

People thought those things were great anyway.

And so they were able to kind of get spun up on them, the compelling vision.

Like that is the positive lesson from this style of leadership.

And the other positive lesson, I think, is the, like I said, the willingness to work
shoulder by shoulder, the willingness to not present yourself as a director authority, but

And the other positive lesson, I think, is the, like I said, the willingness to work
shoulder by shoulder, the willingness to not present yourself as a director authority, but

as a co-conspirator or an ally or an advisor.

Is a, is a style of leadership that allows people to feel very empowered.

And that part is good.

Right.

Getting people to work on things that they're passionate about is, is.

Important getting people to feel like they're empowered is important.

Right.

What we see Sauron doing is very skillfully here is then twisting it to his own ends,
which is maybe not what we desire in our Magnanimous Leaders.

but I think that's the fun part about watching.

this evolution is this idea that he is actually very, good at what he does.

And like you said, unlike the Hans Gruber plan for diehard or the Silva plan from skyfall
or the Riddler plan for Batman, it's not brittle.

It's not a very specific plan that requires other people to behave in specific ways.

And it's not short-term focused on just achieving this one thing.

It's high level and it's iterative and it's reactive and it's robust.

And so that's what makes him one of the most compelling villains, I think, that we've
studied.

Yeah, and it does relate back to Silva in Skyfall.

We talked about simple strategy.

This is the simplest of strategies.

And I think this leads us to our practical application where we can talk about the, you
know, are big levers the only thing that matters in the end?

And I think this leads us to our practical application where we can talk about the, you
know, are big levers the only thing that matters in the end?

Obviously you have to do a lot of small things in order to be able to get enough leverage
to get the big lever to budge.

But in the end, are the big levers what organizations should be focused on and

Is it a risk or a defect in the organization when there is not enough focus on the big
levers, not enough clarity on what the big levers are?

How do you feel about that?

like the big levers idea because I think that you can't get the, you can't get the extra
effort without the, without knowing what the big levers are without, you know, without

like the big levers idea because I think that you can't get the, you can't get the extra
effort without the, without knowing what the big levers are without, you know, without

aligning to the big picture, but also knowing how to change, you know, people having a
sense that they're making a change, making a difference, having a sense that what they're

aligning to the big picture, but also knowing how to change, you know, people having a
sense that they're making a change, making a difference, having a sense that what they're

aligning to the big picture, but also knowing how to change, you know, people having a
sense that they're making a change, making a difference, having a sense that what they're

doing is actually really transforming their experience.

but I think also the,

the classic lesson of like, don't work on the little stuff, right?

The thing that's going to unlock a different future are the things that are really
standing in your way, getting them out of the way, moving the big rocks as they say,

whatever.

Right?

So that's what we see really skillfully here is like, what are the main things that, you
know, that need to have happened that don't have, that are not in the world today that

Sauron is able to influence people to do.

He's very good at that.

So we talked about this a little bit in the pre-show, but we, think we have some examples
of both organizations that were very short-term focused over their long-term gain, right?

So we talked about this a little bit in the pre-show, but we, think we have some examples
of both organizations that were very short-term focused over their long-term gain, right?

That sort of fell victim to that deception and examples of organizations that are, that
did a very good job of aligning those factors and about kind of pushing the big levers to

get really outsized changes in the world.

So do you have, do you want to talk about some examples here?

Yeah, let's just talk about the SpaceX example.

And it's a easy one to pull from because they do innovative things and they are able to do
them in a way that it seems like no other company would be able to pull off.

But the whole chopsticks catching the reusable rocket was truly one of the most incredible
things I've ever seen from a technological perspective.

It just seems like it should not be possible.

And the fact that they're able to do that so quickly.

You have to question, what can I learn from this?

Right.

And as we apply it to our conversation about big levers, the thing here is what is their
KPI?

What are they trying to, what is their target?

What are they trying to do?

Well, really they're trying to do a very simple thing.

They're trying to reduce the cycle time, meaning they can launch more rockets faster,
which will allow them to gain dominance, which will allow them to make quicker gains.

The more you can iterate, the faster you can learn, the more advancement you can make, the
more money you can make, et cetera.

And in doing that, shorter cycles also lower your expense.

They lower your costs.

So it ends up being this incredible goal.

But, Brian, that's not really the big lever that everybody gets excited about.

People are not lining up to work at SpaceX because they're thinking, we can shorten the
cycle time to be able to launch these rockets.

We can increase the efficiency of getting objects into lower Earth orbit.

We can increase the efficiency of getting objects into lower Earth orbit.

Yeah, exactly.

So this is great.

the technological achievement of I can catch a rocket which lands on its tail with all of
the control skill that requires is sort of the, that's the crafting the rings, right?

know, nobody woke up in the morning and say, I want to catch a rocket by landing, by
landing it on thruster downwards, right?

The business unlock is reusable rockets for low cost and low cycle time.

So we can put a lot of stuff in low earth orbit.

Like that's what's allowed that.

SpaceX to be an incredibly powerful organization and what's now inspired a bunch of other
people to try to do sort of similar things, right?

But what people get up in the morning are like, I want to make Star Trek.

Like I want space for humans.

I want a colony on Mars.

I want to repopulate the moon and live in the moon base, right?

That's the big picture goal of like, we should get off of this planet and we should be the
technological species that lives in the science fiction worlds that we've all been

watching movies and reading books about for 100 years.

That's the high level goal that SpaceX and Elon Musk has the kind of founder CEO character
tapped into.

And so the people that are working at SpaceX, most of them are people who are like, this
is awesome.

This is what I want to do is I want to be, I want to build Star Trek.

Like I want to, I want to build that future.

And then as a way to that, the only way we get to that future is if the cost comes way
down and the reusability, the cycle time goes way down.

So the only way we get to that is if we can reuse rockets and if we can do all these other
crazy technological challenges.

Now I'm going to work incredibly hard on that.

That's my ring of power that I'm building is I'm going to do that thing, but not because I
really, not because that thing was what I am intrinsically motivated about.

What I'm intrinsically motivated about is building this grand future that I'm now bought
into.

And so that's a really powerful, that unlocks incredible creativity.

And so that's a really powerful, that unlocks incredible creativity.

It unlocks incredible initiative.

It unlocks incredible, you know, willingness to work over and above.

the come in and put your clock and work for eight hours a day situation, right?

And if you can do that successfully, then yeah, you can unlock substantial changes in the
world, right?

Our ability to put things in near Earth orbit, our ability to iterate on space flight has
moved faster in the last 15 years than in probably the 30 years before that.

Yep, I think that's a perfect example.

This really did nail it.

I like how you bring that back and talk about it in terms of rings of power.

That is exactly right.

So I think the challenge to each of us is to consider within our own businesses, you know,
what would that look like?

What are the big levers?

What is the what is the metric that you're trying to go towards?

But more than that, what is that value proposition that you can get people to rally
behind?

And of course, when we talk about that.

there's going to be a risk because we're not outright comparing Elon to Sauron, but also
when we talked about the leadership superpowers that Sauron has, it was the most obvious

comparison that we could make.

There are people who make that comparison, let's just say it out loud, Wondertour is not
today saying Elon Musk is Sauron.

However, he's clearly using some of the same techniques, so you can draw your own
conclusions.

So in the next episode, Brian, we're going to talk about how we do that in a magnanimous
way.

And I think we've tried to so far this episode, but I think we really need to think about
then in this next episode, how not to fall into the trap of becoming like Sauron.

Or, you know, when we look up to a leader at the company, we look up to a leader in the
world that is using this big lever strategy.

How do we know if this is like a righteous person to follow, if this is a thing that we
should be actually putting our effort behind, if it's really gonna make a change that's

gonna make an impact for people?

Yeah, I don't feel that I am at personal risk of becoming a Sauron, but I am absolutely at
personal risk of being a Keldrune Borg.

Head down, working on my forge really hard.

This is gonna be amazing.

I'm never looking up.

I'm not thinking about my context.

So next episode, we'll talk a little bit about how to not to do that.

Brian, we're going to build the next black box algorithm and it's going to keep people
inside their houses 24 hours a day, but somehow there's a silver lining on this.

Yes.

Virtual reality is going to be great.

You never have to leave the house.

I have a question.

So, all right.

So, looking forward to that discussion.

We will continue our leadership lessons from Sauron next week, and then that will wrap up
our villains series, and we will pivot to a new theme.

We're looking forward to next week's episode, where we talk a little bit about how not to
follow the Saurons of the world.

Hope you enjoyed this one.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And just remember, as always, character is destiny.