Innovation in Jesus’s name
Jordan Raynor sits down with Scott Stephenson, CEO of Verisk Analytics (VRSK), to talk about how to cultivate innovative ideas, how Christians can be both “ambitious and humane” in business, and the story that convinced Scott to say the name of Jesus whenever possible, even when leading a public company.
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work, for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world-class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits and routines and how their faith influences their work.
Today's guest is an extraordinary leader and CEO. His name is Scott Stephenson. He's the CEO of publicly-traded Verisk Analytics; an incredible innovator. Forbes Magazine has recognized Scott, as get this, one of the 25 most innovative leaders on Earth. That's a crazy, crazy claim to fame.
Scott and I recently sat down and we talked about how exactly to cultivate innovative ideas, within what Scott sees as the three buckets of innovation, which I think you'll find very helpful. We talked about how Christians can be both ambitious and humane in business, and we talked about the story that convinced Scott to say the name of Jesus whenever possible, even when leading a public company with 10,000 employees.
I think you guys are going to love this conversation with my new friend, Scott Stephenson.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:37] JR: Hey, Scott. Thanks so much for joining us today.
[00:01:40] SS: Jordan, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:42] JR: All right. Let's start here. Softball question for the CEO of a company whose answered this question a million times. What does Verisk Analytics do?
[00:01:50] SS: Yeah. What we do is provide large data founded, data analytics solutions to customers in a few different vertical markets. The largest market that we serve is the insurance world, also the banking world, and we also serve companies in the energy ecosystem, which is everybody from a large integrated oil and gas player to somebody that builds offshore wind projects.
[00:02:23] JR: Got it. Forbes has called you one of the 25 most innovative leaders in the world. I’m very curious, how you define the word innovation that's thrown around so much these days.
[00:02:36] SS: I really appreciate that question, because for some time, we at Verisk, I personally – we have really wanted to live innovation and really make it foundational to what we do. One of the things I did to try to support some of the direction I was trying to bring to the company was I accessed a lot of the literature. I found it relatively lacking actually, because there's this tendency, or at least there has been a tendency to describe innovation as this monolithic thing. It really is actually not.
At least in a business context, innovation can take at least three forms. One of them is product enhancement. You have something that you offer to the world today and you make it better. A second would be process improvement, which is you have a set of processes at work. How do you make them better? Usually, that takes the form of making them more efficient, or operating more quickly. Then the third is what I would call invention. Invention is bringing into the world something that didn't exist previously.
Long story short, for our company, I would argue for many companies, you actually have to be pursuing all three forms. One of the things about that is the way that you actually think and the way that you organize yourself is somewhat different, depending upon which of those three forms of innovation you're talking about. It's a great question. For all the talk about innovation, I think we can be even more precise about what it is we mean. That's what I mean when I say innovation.
[00:04:13] JR: Those definitions of those three buckets are really helpful. Basically, product development, process improvement and invention. Which of those three gets you most excited personally?
[00:04:25] SS: All three of them are really meaningful to me. I’m going to let your you let your question marinate for a minute in my mind. Let me offer this perspective as a way of warming up to the question. The people that study these things tell us that in the year 0 AD, there were about a 150 million human beings on the planet. The life expectancy of a human being at that time was probably measured somewhere in the range of 20 to 30 years. I don't have to recount all the things that could kill a person back in those days; lack of water, lack of food, lack of shelter, disease, etc.
Today, there are over seven and a half billion of us on the planet. In the developed economies, we can reasonably expect to live into our 80s or more on average. Not only that, but actually, if you if you were to also consider quality of life, today you and I are talking to one another at a great distance. We can access much of the world's knowledge through devices that we carry around in our pockets. We can mitigate disease and some of the pain associated with that, generally not worry about the ability to feed ourselves. Of course, there are people who are not enjoying all of these things, but I’m characterizing humanity generally.
The point I would make here is I think the primary way that we got from 0 AD, a 150 million of us in that condition to 2020 and seven and a half billion-plus of us, etc., was a gazillion little, little incremental improvements stacked one on top of the other. In other words, somebody had an acre of land and they used to be able to get two bushels of wheat out of it. Then they figured out how to maybe sow better, or cultivate better, or water better and they got two bushels up to two and a half. Then two and three quarters and then three, four, five. At some point, enough people have done that that somebody in the village actually doesn't need to grow wheat. They can focus on maybe bending metal, or something else, or creating metal, let alone bending it.
I think it's just like that. It's all of these. Now there are leaps. Leaps get made too. I think a lot of it is just this sustained level of incremental improvement, stacking itself up and up and up over an extended period of time. That would actually correlate more with my product enhancement and process improvement categories. The stuff that generally gets more attention is the wow, in a great flash, something came into the world that didn't previously exist. I think a lot of the well-being of the average human being is related to the first two categories. At almost a philosophical level, I may be drawn to those two a little bit more. A business needs, I believe, needs all three.
[00:07:32] JR: That's really interesting. It is the invention stuff that gets the most intention and frankly, creates the most market value in the short-term. I’m thinking of Peter Thiel's Zero to One.
[00:07:43] SS: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:07:44] JR: We’ll create an exponentially valuable organization in today's economy, is by going from zero to one and invention. You're right. What moves humanity forward most steadily is the incremental – I mean, it's the incremental gardening of the earth that started in way back in Genesis one, two and three. That's really interesting.
I’m curious, is there something [inaudible 00:08:09] Scott, maybe in your career prior to Verisk, or maybe even going back as far as your childhood that you think really sparked this love of creating out of nothing, of moving the world forward incrementally, going from zero to one or one to 1.1 to 1.2? What was it in your story that really struck a chord with you in this?
[00:08:32] SS: Well, the first thing I just wanted to comment on real quickly, Jordan, was I’m glad you referenced Peter Thiel's book, because it's actually a great book.
[00:08:40] JR: A terrific book. Yeah.
[00:08:42] SS: One of the reasons why I came up with the perspective that I just shared with you is because I found myself thinking that zero to one was not complete, that the one to end really, and he acknowledges it in the book, the one to end. I just find myself waiting it more than he does. Obviously, his experience has – I mean, what a remarkable career he's had and he's been involved in these huge innovations. All credit, all of that is great.
I would say, I guess, I would link it to a couple of things. One is my experience has been more with established entities, rather than the startup. I worked in the aerospace industry before I went to business school, then which was an established company. Then I went to work with a global management consulting firm named Boston Consulting Group. Then found my way over to the company that I now lead, Verisk.
In all cases, they were not startups. Work was already ongoing. Maybe just intuitively, I understood the value of the thing, which had been grounded, the thing that had been founded and the thing that was grounded. Then at least one of the reasons why I made the transition into what I do here away from the management consulting world, which is a completely honorable profession. I just wanted to be engaged with everybody, basically. Be a general manager. Be engaged with the team and the large team.
I don't know. It's just this perspective that the whole team matters and thankfulness for the people that preceded us, that created some foundation. I don't know. I guess, I’m somewhere located inside of all of that.
[00:10:30] JR: I could go on and on picking apart zero to one for another 30 minutes. I too love the book. I think it's really great. I do share your opinion. It's one perspective. It's a perspective of somebody who has spent his career going from zero to one. That is certainly valuable, but so is the marginal improvement that most people do every single day. Scott, you're not innovating on your own. You have a pretty sizable team. You're running this publicly traded enterprise. I’m curious what you think the keys are to encouraging and managing innovation well across a large team of people, a large company.
[00:11:09] SS: Yeah. I’ll say a couple things here. One is and this relates to the innovation agenda, but really, it more broadly relates to anything that we consider to be the most important thing, the leveraged thing, or things. That is you have to write down your big ideas and then keep going back to them over and over and over again. In my case, I am trying to communicate into a community of 10,000 people. The amount of time that I get to be directly in front of any one of our people, other than the small circle of my direct reports, it has its limitations.
It's interesting that we're talking today. I actually did two global town halls, where every one of our 10,000 people were invited and many, many came. I’ve always felt I have the secret knowledge, which comes from being a believer and from having essentially discovered the bible at the age of 23, having had no connection to it. That is my entire adult life has been being in groups and meetings and gatherings, etc.
Frequently, what we do is we take out our holy text and everybody's going to the same verse, the same statement, exploring it, what does it mean and we come back to it time and time again. I know experientially the power of that, beginning in my own life, just to go back over and over and over again to the big ideas. It really has its effects.
One thing that I think is really, really important is to simply get down what your big ideas are and then keep talking about them. Related to that perhaps fairly directly, would be you have to ask for innovation. We've written down in all of our foundational statements that we make, which we put up on our website, we get onto people's – the screensavers on their monitors at work, etc. We've written these ideas down and we return to them a lot.
Specifically, with respect to innovation, my experience has been you actually have to ask for it and you have to keep asking for it, because it has at least two implications. One is money generally has to be spent to support innovation. You have to ask for it and then you have to show that you mean it by being willing to resource it. Or maybe to put it differently, if you use the word innovation a lot, you say that to all of your people. Then every time they bring forward an investment proposal, you say, “Nah. Well, we're not going to do that.”
After a while, people are going to separate the signal from the noise and they're going to say, “Well, they don't really mean it. They say they want innovation, but they don't really mean it.” The other part of it is, of course, there is a degree of uncertainty associated with pursuing innovations. The bigger they are, the more contingent they are. People stake their work and their careers to them and they need to know that they can do so with confidence.
One of the ways that you develop confidence is you ask for innovation and then you show up. When you're in the early stages of something and maybe it's not turning out quite the way you thought it would, or it's not developing quite as fast, the easiest thing in the world is to pull the plug. When people see you actually working with them to understand where are we. Then at the end of all that exploration, you're still in it and you're encouraging them to still be in it, that communicates so much. Write down the big ideas, ask for it and then live it like you really mean it. Even then, it's not easy.
[00:14:58] JR: Yeah. No, no. Innovation never is. One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is some of my most creative, most innovative ideas in my career as a tech entrepreneur, now as a writer, have come away from my laptop. I have come when I’ve taken a step away from my physical environment. I’m really curious for you personally, what changes you make to your physical environment to spark creativity and creative breakthroughs?
[00:15:25] SS: Before I was bemoaning a little bit some of the literature around innovation. One perspective that I found, which I agree with strongly. I’ve been intuitively on it, but it was really actually interesting and helpful to see it written down, is there were a couple of marks of people which tend to be the people who tend to more reliably be a part of sponsoring innovation, I guess is the way I would put it. One of the things which is true about people who tend to be in that place is they have an associative pattern of thinking.
Basically, they observe something over here on the left and then they say, well, how might that apply over here on the right, which is a place where I’m trying to get something done right now? Just that one's brain works that way a little bit is constructive for innovation. The corollary is well, okay, then get in front of a lot of observations, a lot of signals, see a lot of stuff, get a lot of input. Then through your associative, generalized linear model up in your head, see what you do with it. Associative thinking, plus a lot of observations.
One of the things I find really, really helpful is to just get in front of situations, information, knowledge people that are not necessarily in my normal pattern. Stuff sometimes really does tend to break free. One of the things that is so helpful in a business context is to go spend time with your customers. That's another part of get outside of your own four walls. Well, do it with your customers and establish trust, such that they will really give you good, helpful, direct, transparent feedback, you will definitely learn things. No question about it.
[00:17:27] JR: Going back to doing things that are outside of the norm, give some examples in your case – I’m a big believer in order to cultivate analogous thinking, in order to make creative connections from other domains to your domain, you got to look outside of your space. You got to look outside of your industry. You got to go hunt for ideas on the surface aren't relevant. First question, what are some examples of that for you? Two, how do you do that on a regular basis? How do you make sure you're continually looking outside your domain?
[00:18:01] SS: Yeah. Maybe starting with this the second first, Jordan.
[00:18:03] JR: Yeah, sure.
[00:18:03] SS: I have found it necessary to actually just reserve time to not do what is urgently in front, but to actually create space in order to be able to engage in this broader signal processing and synthesis. I find that if I’m not deliberate about it, it probably won't actually happen.
[00:18:27] JR: You create time in your schedule to explore.
[00:18:32] SS: Right. We've actually even routinized that across the whole company. I’ll say by the way, our people seem to love it. We have on a at least an annual basis and sometimes on a semi-annual basis, held across the entire company what we call reimagine day. About the only instructions, you get on reimagine day is you and your team don't come into the office. Go have an experience which is different than the one that you normally have and that's about the only instruction we give. Then and then the only thing we require on the back-end is tell us what happened.
[00:19:15] JR: I love that.
[00:19:16] SS: I’ll tell you, our people love it. I mean, they love it. You can see how it opens up space and people's thinking.
[00:19:23] JR: Moving away from innovation specifically for a minute, to just the broader theme of leadership and business leadership, I’m curious in your opinion what world-class leaders do that their less masterful counterparts might not do. What's the difference between good and great in the CEO seat in a big company like yours?
[00:19:43] SS: I am on the journey of trying to be that leader.
[00:19:47] JR: I think that is the key, PS. Believing that. Truly believing that humbly. Yeah.
[00:19:53] SS: I might add to that. First of all, I think there's just an irreducible requirement for energy. There's just something about energy that pulls other people along and actually, finds the tuning fork in the other and essentially gets their tuning fork vibrating a little bit. I think that energy, passion and commitment are definitely a part of it.
I would go back to what I said before. I think you have to really decide what your big ideas are and then you have to commit to them, and you have to be a little bit of a preacher. Actually, you have to just over and over again go back to them. I see good leaders doing that. I see them modeling the values of the organization. You do get to these teachable moments where you get to make a decision, which actually demonstrates that no. I mean, we really mean what we say here in terms of what it is we value. I do think that a customer-centric view is always important, always works. Those would be some of the piece parts.
[00:20:59] JR: I don't think I’ve ever heard anyone answer that question with energy. I do think that's so important. Looking back on my career and some of the feedback I’ve gotten from investors is my energy as a leader of our organization is so important. I’ve never really grasped that, but it's feedback you get a lot when you are a high-energy leader. I think it makes a difference. I think it inspires energy in others. Usually, the person at the top is setting the tone for that organization. I like that answer a lot.
Speaking of energy and energy management throughout your day, I’m curious what your day looks like, from sun up to sundown. Or for at least, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed and how you manage your energy and time throughout the day. What's the tick-tock of your day look like, Scott?
[00:21:49] SS: When I wake up, I’m usually thinking about either Jesus or my family. That's just what's on my mind when I wake up. I’m not processing business problems or issues. I just am not. By the way, I am blessed with good sleep and I know not everybody is. I just learned, or maybe felt permission, etc., to just at the end of the day when it's a time when you could think about going to sleep, to just say, “I’m going to clear out my mind.”
[00:22:24] JR: Amen.
[00:22:25] SS: I’m just going to blank it out a little bit. Whatever was presenting – I mean, I’m still there with the people around me, the people that I love, but I’m not processing problems when I go to sleep. In fact, I’m specifically not doing that. I have shelved them. I know that I can pick them up in the morning. Boy, I’ll tell you, when I realized I could approach life like that, that was very helpful and it's liberating to know that I could do it that way.
Basically, so my day begins, I’ve generally been well-rested. Thank you, Lord. I’m in that place where entering the day, I want essentially immediate connectivity with God. Somewhere in the course of the early morning before I get into the day proper, I will have spend time with scripture. I will spend time in prayer. I almost always will have exercised as well. Then basically, I’m into the day.
I would say, in the course of my day, there's a purposeful interest in being with people to try to align, but also, understand how can I support and where I can also to maybe point a way, but in a collaborative way. There’s a person and communication intensity to my day, which I actually seek with the exception of the very apart times when it's nothing is scheduled and now I’m fulfilling. I’m trying to fulfill against what I think is one of the leader’s responsibilities, which is to really look five, 10 plus years into the future over the horizon and really, really think in a time frame that maybe most people aren't. Most people in your organization aren't.
A lot of time with people, except when not. Then I highly value time with my wife, Beth. Then around all of that, basically, core commitments are to our church and some community good works that we feel very strongly about and our extended family. Our kids are all grown and out of the house and siblings and the friend who's closer than a brother. My day is a lot of relating, I guess, I would say on average, except when I step all the way back and try to receive these additional signals and think, maybe some new thoughts.
[00:24:49] JR: Yeah. That's really good. How many hours of sleep are you getting on average?
[00:24:54] SS: Well, I’d say between seven and eight.
[00:24:56] JR: Yeah, that's great. I love it. I am such a champion for sleep. There was a good article years ago, like sleep is the new status symbol, which I don't love calling it that. It was basically talking about how Bezos and all these guys and women in top leadership positions are getting eight hours of sleep, because they know how valuable it is. I love that.
Speaking of relationships and communicating with others, our mutual friend David Block, who's a former guest on this podcast, he told me that you respond to every e-mail you receive, which is mind-boggling to me, given the volume you've got to receive in a 10,000-person organization. I’m curious what your philosophy is behind this and how you think about this.
[00:25:40] SS: Yeah. I feel that one of the things that I can do for others is to affirm that they matter. The way that I’ve constructed my personal mission statement is to help people maximize their sense of personal value and opportunity. That's what I’m trying to bring, however imperfectly. I haven't had very many moments of transition in my career, but I did have one where I was a senior partner at this global consulting firm.
[00:26:17] JR: This is BCG.
[00:26:18] SS: That's BCG. I can remember when I told some of my friends that I was making a transition, like one eyebrow went up. Then they said, “Well, what are you going to do? Where are you going?” I said, “Well, I’m working on that.” Then the other eyebrow went up, because it was like, “Wait a minute. You're giving up this thing, this really nice thing that you have, but you haven't really determined where exactly you're going?” Yes.
Now I was partnered with my best friend in the world and that helps a lot. We had just said, let's come together and work together. That was definitely both incenting and calming. I can remember going from I felt like I could get a meeting with anybody. I had this global firm where I could call our man, or woman in Kuala Lumpur and get the download on Malaysia in 45 minutes. Then now, I’m in this two-person entrepreneurial thing.
You're trying. You're trying to establish yourself in the new mode. Obviously, you want to make progress. You want to make progress quickly. I can remember how it felt when I would send e-mails and messages out into the world and I didn't hear back. It was like, “Wow. Did I just fall off the cliff or something?” That made an impression on me and just also, the way I feel about people.
I feel like one of the things I can do is just without even saying the words, say you matter, because here, you sent something out towards me. Well, I’m coming back to you. I hear you. I see you. That and I’m also the original clean desk guy. I don't like a big cluttered inbox.
[00:28:10] JR: Yeah. I have to be at inbox zero every day.
[00:28:12] SS: Yeah, me too. I’d say it's probably both. It's a little bit of trying to clear the deck, so that I can focus on the really important thing. I do think it's an opportunity to just say to the other like, you matter. You reached out to me, that matters to me. I’m reaching back out to you.
[00:28:29] JR: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. We have a rule at Jordan Raynor and Company that if you send us an e-mail that warrants a response – If you just say, “Hey, I love that episode.” Actually, you'll probably get a response for that.” We respond to everything. We respond to everything. I don't personally respond everything like you. I’m not superman like Scott Stephenson, but my assistant at a minimum, responds to every single message and makes sure that I see what I need to see. I love that.
[00:28:57] SS: I just have to say, I think David said it a little bit strongly, because you and I and probably everybody that is listening to us, probably gets the e-mails that say, “Hey, I was just following up on the e-mail I sent you last week to see if we can get that time scheduled.” Then you look at the e-mail and you look at the first one and it's not somebody that you know. Something is being – a sales solicit –
[00:29:25] JR: Yeah. We don't respond all sales either. That’s a good point.
[00:29:27] SS: A sales solicitation is not the same as an outreach from a human being.
[00:29:31] JR: There you go. There you go. There you go. That's a good distinction. We're migrating this territory naturally, but we love to spend some time on the podcast talking about how the gospel impacts the work of our guests.
I’m curious to start here, you're a CEO of this large public company. I’m curious how you think about situations like this podcast, about talking so publicly about your faith when you're in this leadership role in this public company. How do you think about that?
[00:30:02] SS: I’ll frame that in a couple of ways. We have the teaching and first, Peter, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reasons, for the hope you have with them. Then the very next statement is do so with gentleness and respect. I’m aware of the place where I sit inside of this company. I’m also aware that that's both a platform, but at the same time, it could for an employee who is in the grading system six, levels away from me, or whatever, I could present myself in a way that I might imply that their alignment with my own personal beliefs is somehow related to their career opportunity. I want to be very thoughtful about that. The other frame for me, if I can just share an experience that I had in the marketplace very quickly, because –
[00:30:57] JR: Please do. Yeah, take your time.
[00:30:59] SS: - it'll explain where I’ve gotten to on all of this. Back when I was at BCG, we were a part of a merger happening. Though company A was more the acquirer of company B. Anyway, two companies are coming together. After it was announced very shortly into the process, the person who was named to lead, the combined entity called the meeting. He wanted to get the senior leads from both teams together and the assumption was that there would be senior leads from both teams that would be running the combined entity.
Because we had been deeply involved in the thinking and the process, he invited us to come to the meeting too. I say us. There were three BCG partners who had been involved in this. The day comes and we're seated around a horseshoe-shaped table. The fellow who's going to lead the combined entity is standing at the open end of the horseshoe. Everybody's happy to be there. It was morning. I think we had a really nice breakfast in front of us, probably.
Anyway, he said, “Well, let's just begin the process of getting to know each other and maybe what we can do is just go around the table and tell us a little bit about yourself and what your current role is, how long you've been in place, etc. Tell us who your hero is.” Which is a great question, by the way. If you're interviewing a slate of people, you'll remember the answer that everybody gives you to that question.
[00:32:31] JR: Wasn’t this a question in a republican presidential debate way back when, the George W. Bush era? Everybody remember the questions, because he said Jesus. I may be misremembering this, but it's a great question.
[00:32:44] SS: Yeah, it is. It is. It really is. By the way, in my experience, I would say something approaching half of the people that I asked that question of they will reference one or both of their parents, which is just so heartwarming.
Anyway, so I was third from where the horseshoe started, unfortunately, because I had just enough time to think about it. Because the name that immediately came to my mind was Jesus. Then I had just enough time to sit there and have a conversation in my head. Well, Jesus isn't in the category of – he's in a category all by himself. That's not what he's really asking anyway. By the time it got to me, I had had enough time to talk myself into saying Winston Churchill, who is somebody that I admire a great deal.
[00:33:35] JR: Yeah. I love Churchill.
[00:33:37] SS: Winston Churchill and I explained why. We keep going around the horseshoe and we eventually get to one of my partners at BCG. He said the Dalai Lama. When he said the Dalai Lama and knowing him also, I know that to him, the Dalai Lama is a divine figure. I have that experience. Then we broke the meeting and went our ways.
I was overcome with such a feeling of grief. It's almost hard to explain, but I really felt like Peter in the courtyard. I felt like I had denied my savior and lord, that it's very personal for me. I am very clear on the fact that Jesus sacrificed himself for my well-being. Then here I was and wearing a suit in a very comfortable, air-conditioned room with a nice meal in front of me and I had the opportunity to say his name and I didn't. It was a feeling of grief. It persisted for a long time.
In fact, it persisted until I remembered what the whole thing is about, because I was focused on myself and my own failure. I mean, I really, I went around feeling sick for weeks. Then I suddenly remembered, “Oh, what I’m supposed to do is actually confess and ask for forgiveness.” When I did, the forgiveness came immediately and the wave of love that follows.
When you have an experience like that and you feel how gut-wrenching sick it feels to not be loyal to your commitments on the one hand, and just the expansive loving embrace inside of forgiveness on the other hand, you just can't forget that. You can't walk by that.
Anyway, the results of all that for me has been anytime his name pops into my head and it occurs to me to say his name, I’m just going to say his name. I don't need to give the four spiritual laws and I don't need to do that. What I can have is a very natural, unaffected affiliation with him. In this world today, I mean, I feel like I spend a lot of time listening to other people's passions.
Well, I mean, I love Jesus, so I can certainly say that. Anyway, that was something I came to a long time ago. Now even in a business context where you're sharing your resume, I’ll just add and I’m a Jesus follower. I mean, I haven't had people throw water in my face, or get up or walk away. They may have feelings about it. It also creates room for other people, I will just say that. I mean, there are not a few people that want to talk about spirituality and their spiritual commitments. That's essentially the way I approach all this.
[00:36:43] JR: I love that perspective. I’m curious, other than being prepared to give an answer and being prepared to say the name of Jesus, what do you think would be different about Verisk if you weren't a follower of Christ? What are the non-overt things that would be different about the company if you weren't an apprentice to Jesus?
[00:37:04] SS: Well, and I don't want to overly feature myself in all of this. I mean, we have 10,000 great women and men that are doing great stuff every day. We have a board of directors. I had my predecessors. That foundation was laid. I really, really don't want to make it about me. I will say that the feedback I get and just observing our company in the world, the kinds of signals that I pick up are we seem to be more focused on the long-term, maybe than the average publicly traded company out there. We get that feedback.
Also, the nature of our culture seems to catch people's attention when they get a chance to encounter it, which I think is characterized as being simultaneously ambitious and very humane. I mean, the whole of scripture is basically about us being God's image-bearers and the enabling that Jesus did of that and then being that way and trying to live that out. I think that you just start out saying, “Okay. Well, is this working for people? Is it working for the people who are our customers? Is it working for the people who work here?” I think it makes it more personal, I guess is the way that I would put it.
[00:38:32] JR: I love that tension between ambition and humanity. You look at a lot of great founders; Elon Musk comes to mind, wildly ambitious, wildly “successful.” Not known for being super humane. I think that is the delta for – one of the deltas for Christ-followers, is we are to love people radically as Christ loved us and be wildly ambitious for our work, because he created us to work. He created us to as my first book, the subtitle my first book said, to create and innovate and risk.
Speaking of which, I am curious to ask you about this. I’m curious if there's anything in scripture specifically, or anything relevant to your faith that spurs you on to take risks and to innovate? Innovation is such a big part of Verisk’s brand, of your story. Is that at least tangentially related to your faith?
[00:39:33] SS: Yeah. I mean, definitely. I would say that maybe not anyone verse, but starting with the notion that in the Christian worldview, time progresses to a culminating point. There is a sense of time as a commodity and it's a valuable one, that it moves ultimately to a point of wholeness and resolution. Moving into that stream of time and moving into the future is a good thing, first of all. At the end of it is ultimate security. It’s like, go. Move your feet and go, because it's forward. It's out there.
That's a whole council of scripture, just eternal security, plus we're operating inside of a design by our creator. Participate. It's good. Same way that he declared it good when he looked at it. It's like, this is good. Yeah, so participate in it. I would say that's part of it. I would say that part of it for me is also, Colossians 3:23, and all that you do, work at it with your whole heart, as working under the Lord, not men. For you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.
There's just this sense of – and we read it in so many other places too. It's the Lord Jesus that you are serving. There's just something about like, I could be sitting alone in my office, but my sense is I am observed and therefore, I’m accountable.
[00:41:12] JR: Yeah. It is amazing to me how much scripture talks about rewards for our work and how little the church talks about that. To be crystal clear, all of us as sons and daughters of Christ have equal status as his God's children. That is unchanging. We all have very rewards for how we work and how we live this life. I think we need to be talking about that more and more. I love that perspective.
By the way, we talked about Peter Thiel. I’m curious if you've watched Peter Thiel's talks with N. T. Wright about time and innovation and the new heavens and the new earth and what we Christians should be building towards. Have you seen these videos?
[00:41:59] SS: No. But thank you for the tip.
[00:42:01] JR: They're exceptional. I’ll make sure I send it over to you –
[00:42:05] SS: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:42:06] JR: - and we'll drop it into the notes of this episode for everybody listening. Yeah, it's really, really good. Really, really good. Scott, three questions we love to wrap-up every conversation with; first, I’m curious which books you tend to recommend, or gift most frequently to other people?
[00:42:22] SS: Yeah. I tend to gift a lot of books, first of all, across –
[00:42:26] JR: Yeah, me too.
[00:42:27] SS: - across a very wide range of topics. I will give you two books. One of which is the one that I probably gifted more than any other book, probably with the exception of just giving people bibles. Then the other one is a book that I gifted very, very recently, actually to quite a few folks. The timeless one for me is called Christianity for Modern Pagans written by Peter Kreeft, the long-time faculty member at Boston College. What he does is he takes Pascal's Pensées and he – I think he grabs a 100 of them and he expands upon them and in a very lively way, very thoughtful way also.
I’ve given this out to both Christians and non-Christians, because I just think it's that helpful. Also, I actually think of it as an evangelistic tool, because the title is interesting like, well, what does that mean and what is a modern pagan anyway? Are you telling me I’m a modern pagan? You can get into a lot of discussions. Then the book really carries its own weight. I’ve enjoyed giving that one out a lot.
Then a book I gave out recently to maybe the top, I don't know, a 150 or 200 people in our company is a book called How to Be an Antiracist by a man named Ibram Kendi.
[00:43:54] JR: Yeah, it's on my list. Yeah.
[00:43:58] SS: Our company, I had an awakening, which was partly a function of watching that awful nine-minute video of George Floyd's life being squeezed out of his body. There just comes a point where the injustice just, you see it. I mean, I would have acknowledged. To watch that, to watch the inhumanity of the man who had his knee pinned to the dying man's neck, it changed me actually.
A lot of conversations with our colleagues of color inside of the company. We sponsored an open mic. We schedule it for one hour. We said, anybody can say anything they want to. This was in the immediate wake of George Floyd's killing. I thought we would be there for 30 or 45 minutes. We were there for four and a half hours. People had so much they wanted to say.
[00:44:51] JR: I love it. Real quick, who would you most like to hear on this podcast, talking about how their faith influences their work?
[00:44:58] SS: Do you know a guy named Henry Castner?
[00:45:00] JR: I love Henry.
[00:45:01] SS: Have you had him on the program?
[00:45:02] JR: I haven't yet, but he's been on the list for a long time. I’m a huge Henry fan. Yeah.
[00:45:07] SS: Yeah. I mean, what a wonderful human being, who’s –
[00:45:12] JR: He’s one of the best. I’ve interviewed him for books in the past. He's a good friend. We're definitely going to have Henry. I love that. That's a terrific answer.
[00:45:22] SS: I’ve got a second one for you, by the way. Have you had Andy Mills on your program?
[00:45:25] JR: I have not. I don't know Andy.
[00:45:27] SS: Yeah. Andy is currently the – I believe he's the CEO of a hedge fund. You might recall earlier in our conversation I said, I stepped out of BCG with one partner colleague. It was Andy Mills. What a brilliant businessman he is and also, deeply of faith and leading this very integrated life.
[00:45:52] JR: I love it. Scott, one piece of advice to leave this audience with who is seeking to do exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others.
[00:46:01] SS: If it occurs to you anywhere you happen to be to say the name of Jesus, just find a way to make it comfortable for yourself to do that.
[00:46:13] JR: I love that. Scott, I want to commend you for speaking the name of Jesus so boldly. Thank you for the exceptional, redemptive work you do in the world and for taking risks to create new things for the good of others, just like our father did at the beginning of time. Hey, if you want to learn more about Scott, or Verisk, you can find them at verisk.com. Scott, thanks again for being here.
[00:46:36] SS: What a pleasure. Thanks, Jordan. Great to be with you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:46:39] JR: That was such an encouraging and educational conversation. I hope you guys really, really enjoyed that one. Hey, if you're enjoying the podcast, make sure you subscribe to the Call To Mastery, so you never miss an episode in the future. If you're already subscribed, do me a favor, take 30 seconds right now, go leave a review of the podcast so more people can find this content.
Thank you, guys, so much for tuning in. I’ll see you next week.
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