Ep#48: Why Playing It Safe Is the Real Risk - A Dark Optimist’s Call to Action

What if the only real safety lies in continuous change and standing still is the true danger?

In this episode, Dr. Dani and Designer Peter are joined by Ralph H. Groce III, author of We Have Nothing to Lose: A Dark Optimist’s Call to Action. Drawing on personal stories, leadership insights, and a message forged in adversity, Ralph challenges us to stop waiting for things to "go back to normal" and instead start creating a path forward. In this episode, you will 

• Understand why the world needs dark optimists now more than ever

• Learn how to embrace change with clarity and urgency 

• Discover the high cost of clinging to comfort 

About Our Guest

Ralph H. Groce III is an accomplished entrepreneur, visionary thinker, and dedicated advocate for change.  With a rich tapestry of experiences in entrepreneurship, technology, finance, and philanthropy.

Ralph holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University Questrom School of Business, a Graduate degree from Boston University Metropolitan College, an MBA from Queens University McColl School of Business, and the honor of receiving an honorary doctorate from Johnson C Smith University.  His academic achievements complement his entrepreneurial prowess.

As a seasoned entrepreneur, Ralph has founded and successfully managed multiple businesses, amassing several patents along the way.  His ventures have been at the forefront of innovation, contributing to economic growth, and creating opportunities.  His experiences have not only shaped his career but have also offered valuable insights into the dynamic world of business and technology.

Ralph's professional journey is a testament to his versatility.  From entrepreneurship to financial services, his contributions have been instrumental in transforming industries, optimizing operations, enhancing security, and enabling growth.  He currently serves as President and Chief Operating Officer for Scroobious Inc.  A startup initiative focused on creating equitable access to investment capital.  Prior to joining Scroobious Ralph served as Chief Information Officer, Global Head of Operations Technology at Wells Fargo, where he successfully combined his entrepreneurial mindset with technology leadership.  Ralph also co-founded and serves as CEO of Knowhere Art Gallery, headquartered on Martha’s Vineyard, MA.  

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ralph's roots are in a city known for resilience and innovation.  He presently divides his time between Northeast Pennsylvania and New York City.

Beyond his professional endeavors, Ralph is an enthusiast of diverse passions.  He serves on the Board of Trustees at Johnson C. Smith University.  He also serves on the University Advisory Board of Boston University and is the Chairman of the Boston University Metropolitan College Advisory Board.  He is an avid sports enthusiast, a music lover, a published author, an ardent reader of literature, and a passionate traveler.  These interests reflect his belief that a well-rounded life fosters creativity and personal growth.

You can connect with Ralph on 

• LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhg3d/

• Website http://www.thedarkoptimist.com/

• Instagram @grossoptimist

Ralph's book We Have Nothing to Lose: A Dark Optimist's Call to Action is available on Amazon and other major retailers. 

Learn more about Arts for Humanity at  www.afhboston.org

Transcript

Designer Peter: [00:00:00] Dani. Hey, 

Dr Dani: Peter. 

Designer Peter: I'm fantastic. Thank you. How are you today? 

Dr Dani: I am very excited. We've got a guest with us today. Oh, yeah. I'm 

Designer Peter: excited too. 

Dr Dani: We'll have them introduce themselves shortly, actually, I'll have them themselves now.

Say hello to the audience and share a little bit about 

Ralph: you. I certain would like to do Peter, it's really nice to meet you, Dani. It's wonderful seeing you again and to the two of you. Thank you so much for having me. It's a thrill to be here. I know we've been talking about this for quite some time, so I'm really excited that everything has come together and here we are.

My name is Ralph Gross. I live in the United States northeast, Pennsylvania, New York and spend a lot of time in Boston and Martha's Vineyard. I,

I, I wrote a book and I'm not going to be really good at introducing myself. I've done a lot of things people can see that online worked in [00:01:00] corporate America started a couple businesses. And do a lot of philanthropic work and really just focused on, believe it or not, changing the world because the people crazy enough to think they can are the ones that do, and that's who I am.

Dr Dani: So Ralph is totally underselling himself. He is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. Ralph and I met in our MBA program, so he was, my upper classmate if you'll, because he was a year ahead of me. And my introduction to Ralph was one of our professors telling me, you need to meet Ralph because both of you have very ambitious ideas that somehow you seem to make happen.

And I feel like that sums up a lot of who Ralph is. And this book, Ralph, is amazing. It's been I think I mentioned in our [00:02:00] pre-chat, I'm actually reading it twice now 'cause it's been such a good read. Brilliantly written and such a cool message. We'll get into that as the episode unfolds. So welcome 

Ralph: so much.

Likewise, Peter. Thank you.

Dr Dani: So Peter, what are we talking about

Designer Peter: today? Dani, we're talking about something called dark optimism. I'm glad you asked me to tell you what we're talking about. I hear from you, Dani, that some people who listen to the podcast like to describe you and I as kinda like Tigger and Eyroe and no prizes for guessing who's who.

So I'll take it. I'll take the Eyore as a compliment. I don't think Eyore is quite my spirit animal. Not quite, but I do resonate with some of his slightly melancholic or bittersweet life perspectives. But I've often reflected that what, what interests me and keeps me interested in the work that I do in and [00:03:00] with organizations is some deep rooted sense of optimism.

When we come across situations, challenges, problems in organizations. I think people who do the sort of work that you and I do, Dani we have to have somewhere in us than optimism. A sense of we can actually change these things. We, whether it's changing one person or, significant part of an organization for the better.

 It took me a while to reconcile the slight side of my character and the sense of optimism. So to hear that somebody's written a book called Dark Optimism

I'm very intrigued and very excited because I think it's something that's absolutely needed right now and right here.

Ralph: So Ralph, tell us what does dark optimist mean? 

I'm actually a big fan of Winnie de Pooh and all the characters.

Ralph: So that's Dani, you might want to edit that out. I'll lose all my street credit if that ever got out. So I'm teasing. But it's true. Dark optimism is [00:04:00] something that came to me over the course of my childhood and early adolescent years. I talk a little bit about this in the book.

I was born to parents. I like to describe them as tiger parents on steroids. And their expectations were impossibly high and stringent, unrelenting and non-negotiable. And so the expectations were, and then to put the cherry on top and icing on the cake was that the way we were raised, my siblings and I was, we, there were these expectations.

There were these standards. And we had to figure out the path from where we were to where we were expected to be. So [00:05:00] we weren't told what to do in terms relative to the expectations and the outcomes. We were told what the outcomes and the expectations were, and then we were expected to figure it out.

And so when you talk about that in the context of design thinking and how do you go from A to Z without the benefit of a predetermined preuss roadmap, it was on us to figure that out. And again, we were held accountable for what we did, not doing what we were told, which only made those expectations and those outcomes seem even more impossible.

And I would often, approach those situations thinking I'm screwed, I'm really screwed. And the failure, which again, was not tolerated also came [00:06:00] with some very serious punishment. And so the only way to avoid the punishment and the consequences of failure was to win and to do that over and over again.

And then just to make it even more fun is I was not afforded the benefit of consistency or predictability. So as I seem to gain a level of mastery over a particular set of outcomes and expectations, everything would change just as it does in the world. And so those expectations would change, those outcomes would change.

And what I did yesterday was no longer acceptable today. Based upon a new set of standards, a new set of expectations, and a new set of outcomes. And so you start the process all over again. That felt really hopeless to me. At times it felt really dark [00:07:00] and, what I found is that in the midst of that understanding, understanding the enormity of the situation that I was in, how complex it was, how overwhelming it felt, how hopeless at times that I felt that seemed to

enlightened me. It seemed to empower me. And what I found was strengthen, stepping back from this very big picture. I. And recognizing that all I needed to do was figure out the next step, , not the whole path, not all the answers, just the next step. And find the courage and the strength to simply take that next step.

I remember being in church one day, and I think it may be in the book, and because all we did was go to church. My grandparents founded the church, a Pentecostal church in Pittsburgh that we [00:08:00] attended. And my grandmother was giving a sermon one Sunday, and I don't remember the entire sermon, and this was many years ago.

But she got to one portion of the sermon, and she talked about times in her life when she felt she couldn't go forward, didn't know how to go forward, didn't feel she could go forward, and her prayer was, I'm not gonna go back and I'm not gonna stop. If I can't go forward, all I'm gonna do is march in place.

Just keep moving, marching in place until I can figure out a way to move forward. And that has stayed with me my entire life. So there's the darkness of understanding I'm in deep. These are challenges. One of the things, you hear me when I speak, because I believe we speak our reality into existence.

So I typically don't talk about things as problems or [00:09:00] as insurmountable laws. I think of them as challenges because thinking them in that context takes some of the edge off of where I'm at now. I'm not trying to mitigate the complexity or how dire things may be. I want all of that. Give it to me because I, the more I understand about where I am.

What I'm up against, the more empowered eventually I can be. By simply finding a way to take that first step and the step after that and the step after that, and you begin to build hope. You begin to build confidence. You begin to see a pattern, a path that I can do this and I can make this happen. And that's the optimist side of it, but that only comes for me with a recognition of where I am in the dark.

Dr Dani: [00:10:00] Wow.

So many things to unpack there, Ralph. So one.

Just such an amazing story, and what makes the book so powerful is that you're pulling from all of these experiences that you've had in real life and there's proof in what you're saying because you've done it right and it's part of your journey and story. The other part of my brain is going, so I've been now researching design thinkers and problem solving and how humans are solving problems and how we need to be solving problems going on 10 years now.

And one of the things that came up in my research is what I call situation optimizing, which is this idea that it's not if you're just simply optimistic, that isn't necessarily helpful for problem solving. 'cause then it's pie in the sky, rose colored glasses thinking, but real productive optimism comes from [00:11:00] understanding the constraints.

What are all the things, what are the barriers? What is the, and having a good sense of reality and then going, okay, understanding all of this, I still believe things can get better. I still believe there's a better way to do this, a solution, and that's what the world needs. And when that doesn't exist, I.

We become very complacent in existing as we are, and we become very complacent with accepting less than, with accepting status quo. So it's really neat to see the research and your book and your personal story aligning in that way. For me, as a researcher, 

Ralph: I totally agree. And if nothing else, my life is a testament of exactly what you just described and exactly what I've outlined in the book.

And the beauty of that [00:12:00] is, part of understanding how to take that first step is a recognition and a recollection of past experiences. It's all relevant, but I've been here before, I've been at this place of darkness. I've been at this place of feeling despair at feeling. Some level of hopelessness.

I I've been here before and I found a way to overcome it. And so it's not an unfamiliar place. It's different. It, again, because I was taken from one end of the pool to the next end of the pool, to a different pool, to a river, a lake, a stream, a pool, finally the ocean. I've learned the benefit of not becoming complacent or relying on predictability or continuity, because that's not [00:13:00] really what the world is all about.

So I got the benefit of that. It was brutal, but I got the benefit of that. But I've been here before and having been here before, perhaps I can do it again. 

Dr Dani: I the world, as you say, is not predictable and it's becoming less and less predictable. Yet our brains crave predictability. That is, that's what our brains want. Our brains wanna know exactly what's gonna happen, when it's gonna happen, where it's gonna happen.

So there's this eternal and internal conflict between how our brains are wired and the world that we exist in. And I think what you are telling through your story is though that if we practice expecting things to not be stable and not be predictable, then we actually get we start to expect the instability.

Ralph: And I hate using this word comfort because there's nothing comfortable about it. But we do become more. [00:14:00] Comfortable with change. And here's the thing, Dani. Yes. Our brains crave consistency. It craves continuity. It craves predictability. The secret is, if you want that, then be the change, be the initiator of the change.

So you decide when things change. You decide how they change, you decide the direction they go. Because change, either happens to you or you initiate the change. So I find myself walking into organizations and, I tell leaders, executives, you don't think you need transformational change, but that's exactly what I am and that's exactly what I'm bringing.

Because to stand still is to move backwards. I played for a hall of fame coach, who's now the talk of the town in here in New York City [00:15:00] Rick Pitino. And one of the things that he used to say was, if it ain't broke, break it. Because you don't get to, you don't get to stand still that you've reached this place where it's perfect and you are gonna stay that way because the entire world around you is evolving.

Yeah. I'm a licensed scuba diver and one of the things that we used to do was drift diving so that the boat would let us off at one spot. And I remember the captain of the boat would say, I'm gonna meet you about two miles, south. And I'm thinking all we're gonna do is just go straight down why you go two miles.

And sure enough, we go straight down and we do our thing. And come up in an hour or so later, and we're two miles away from where we, we were let off because the world were unbeknownst to us and despite our inability to perceive what was happening around us, the world changed. The currents [00:16:00] moved us, we drifted two miles from, with no intention of doing so.

We were someplace different than where we started, and that's what the world is. So you don't get to, if it ain't broke, don't break it. You don't get to do that. . If it ain't broke, you better break it. And I tell my people, if you're doing your job the same way you did it six months ago, a month ago, maybe even a week ago, then you're doing it wrong.

Because the world has changed. It's no longer optimal and it grows less optimal by the day.

Dr Dani: Something else that triggered when you're talking about that, which is, by the way, a really great analogy. Not that I'm a scuba diver, but I could still relate to it. It's very easy for us to get caught up in our day-to-day and our monotony of life that we don't recognize that the [00:17:00] world is changing.

Do you think there's an element of that?

Ralph: Absolutely. Because in many cases the changes are imperceptible. They're they're microscopic, they're incremental, and so they don't appear to be changing. And even if they do, there's a fallacy or a notion in your head that tomorrow I'll just change it back. I know this went a little different today, but tomorrow I, I'll get back on schedule.

I'll get back into the routine. I'll follow the process more closely tomorrow because something happened today. This is an anomaly. This is out of bounds. This won't happen again, this is an exception processing. And these are things that, that only happen once in a lifetime.

And we, so we don't need to concern ourselves with this because tomorrow we'll just reengage the way we always have doing things the way we've always done them. And so there's a feeling, and again, a [00:18:00] fallacy, that these things are far more stagnant, static, unchanging than in fact they are. And that's part of, Dani, as you said, I.

Crave for consistency, predictability. Continuity. So we want to perceive it that way. We want to believe that these things indeed will go back to the way they usually go, which is why we use the words things like exceptions, exception, process, anomalies. Because we want to describe them in terms and context that indicate this is outside the norm.

This is operating outside of established expected boundaries and norms. The truth is, it's evolution. Huh? Yeah.

Dr Dani: The other one that I hear a lot is, when we get back to normal. 

Ralph: Yeah,

yeah. I hear that. I've heard that a lot. 

Dr Dani: And I heard that when I first went into the [00:19:00] corporate world. So I've been hearing that for almost 20 years now, and it's so when is it going back to normal? And what is normal? Because it's been set for almost two decades. 

Ralph: Exactly. Normal. Either we need to redefine that concept and notion of normal, or we just need to stop using that word. 

Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Hey, you look like you're in deep thought over there. 

Designer Peter: Oh, me. Oh, of course. I'm keenly listening to everything you're both saying. A word that's stuck with me, or a few of them, but one in particular, comfort. So you mentioned comfort. You don't especially like that word Ralph.

And I can probably guess why, but yeah, what you're talking about there is we're kinda wired to find our, comfort, comfortable, safe, secure place around the campfire in the evening. And, more often than not it's an illusion. You're going back to normal or things that we can describe things as exceptions, but it's exception after exception.[00:20:00] 

Maybe we're jump Dani, correct me if I'm jumping ahead too far here. 'cause we like to talk about, what something is then why it's important and then how we might practice it. So if you let me have a ec practice it questionnaire. Danny I'm curious about, I think again, because we're wired to want and need that safe, secure place even for a short period of time sitting round the metaphorical campfire, or to use your scuba analogy, being back on board the boat ready to take another dive into the the uncertainty and not know where you might end up.

Yeah, there, there must be part of your, the way things and do things that involves having those kind of safe campfire or aboard the boat kind of places and spaces where you can Yeah. Gather your thoughts. Jumping way o of course, here, but what yeah, I'm just curious about or maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe you, the way to do this is to learn to thrive without those safe and secure temporary kind of places and spaces. [00:21:00] By the way, I told Dani I work on for me, is to get to the point where a question, rather than,

I failed to do that. 

Ralph: I hope she doesn't end that out.  

It was perfect actually, and by letting you talk, you got to the answer. 

Designer Peter: Ha. Okay. Tell me what the answer was. 

Ralph: There is no, it was the latter. There is no safe. 

Designer Peter: Huh? 

Ralph: There is no comfort. Yeah. There.

This you don't, we don't get that. Yeah. People want that. People crave that. And my job as a leader is to begin to make them more comfortable with this constant evolutionary state of change and make them feel comfortable and confident about their ability to manage and actually thrive in that environment.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, it goes back to either being and we're not [00:22:00] victims. I, no one is ever gonna describe Ralph Groche as a victim but we can either be, we can sit back and wait for those things to come. Or we can venture out boldly and decide we're going there or here, and here's what, here's why.

Here's how and here's when, and here's who. And we get to decide all those things for ourselves. But what we can't do is stay here. I was in a a leadership program at JP Morgan called the Future Leadership Development Program, fl dp. And it was in the investment bank technology group and our CIO at the time, a guy named Mike Ashworth, hopefully.

Hi Mike. He decided that he wanted to create a program that helped future leaders become the leaders they needed to be for the benefit of the company and our clients or shareholders. Great vision great program, well [00:23:00] executed. One of the. More things that came out of that was we got to see this movie that I had never seen.

Chicken Run. It's a child movie Claymation amazing story. And hey, I'm sitting there thinking why are we watching? This is ridiculous. Why are we watching chicken? You gotta be kidding me. And I'm a guy who loves, animation. Adult Swim for your listeners, Rick and Morty. Those are some of my favorite programs.

But we're looking at Chicken Run and the premise of the story, looking at it from a leadership perspective, and I've used this at many other locations after leaving JP Morgan, was that the chickens the leader of the chickens, the young chicken overheard the owners of the farm, the chicken farm, that the egg business was no longer profitable.

Now. In today's world, at least here in the United States, it'd be highly [00:24:00] profitable. 'cause the cost of eggs are going through the roof, the price of eggs going through the roof. But in this environment, the price of eggs were, flat and trending downward, and it was no longer profitable.

So they began to think, we gotta go in a different direction and we're gonna instead use our chickens, sell our chickens, and make chicken pot pies. And so she overheard this and then went back to all of her colleagues and said, we can't stay here. We're not safe here any longer, because they're gonna, they're not harvesting our eggs.

They wanna make us chicken pot pies. And so we've gotta do something, we've gotta fly out of here. Chickens don't fly. So how are we gonna escape this? And what was fascinating is that the majority of. The chickens. A didn't understand, and b, didn't wanna leave the comforts. Why can't we stay?

We're comfortable here. We're being fed, we're being careful. Everything is [00:25:00] good. You can't stay here as good as it seems, there's danger. Here's problems here. We won't survive here. And so as you're talking, as I'm talking to my teammates, I know it's been good. I'm not here to denigrate the work that you've done and the effort you've put in, and the accomplishments you've made, the progress you've made.

I'm not here to denigrate that. It's all fantastic, but the world around us is changing. And to stay here is to put ourselves, our clients, our shareholders, all at risk. And the jobs and the security and the families you're supporting with, the work that you're doing is all at risk if we stay here.

If we stay like this, we have to go, we have to move. And I know we can't fly 'cause we're chickens, but we gotta figure out a way to get over that fence. And that's what I'm here to help you do. And so I've used that and actually shown, chicken run [00:26:00] to teams that I've led, who've looked at me like I'm out of my mind.

But it helps them get the message that safety is a fallacy. It's a trap. And to, I'm not saying we shouldn't seek it, but it's not.

Dr Dani: When you talk about it that way, it's the safety is actually in the continuously evolving. That's the only place to find safety. Yet it feels uncomfortable. It's effort. It's all the negative things that come up in us humans. But that's actually the thing that Exactly. Safety 

Ralph: is to keep moving.

It's like Dora and the, in the, just keep swimming.

Dr Dani: I love that all of these children movies are delivering such 

Ralph: heavy messages and leadership. 

Dr Dani: Yes. I love that too, 

Designer Peter: I love that too. I love especially that they're delivering them in with humor in a humorous way.

Okay. That's that, that's lots of food for thought. There, Ralph. Yeah. Thank you for that beautiful answer. [00:27:00] Maybe we can go backwards and to the why is it, it's almost kinda self-evident. 

Dr Dani: Could I ask one more question?

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Before we jump to why, I do wanna touch on something else that Ralph touched on earlier. Cool. Which is, Ralph, you mentioned you just have to take that next step and then figure out what the next step is. And what I find often in organizations is and some leaders, they want to have a whole plan.

We talk about the five year plan, the three year plan. The planet may not even be here in five years. Let's start moving.

I've always thought the whole like five year plan thing was, who knows? It's like looking into a crystal ball doesn't mean you don't have a direction and a strategy and some vision of where you wanna go. But to have it all planned out is that it's bs. So I wanna get your thoughts on how do you that the importance and the how around just focusing on the next step.

 How do you do that and how do you get the courage to [00:28:00] go, I don't know what's gonna come after this step, but let's take this step and see 

Ralph: you. You're exactly right, Dani. So the way I think about that and orchestrate that is to focus on objectives and outcomes. Not the five year laying out all the steps, because you're absolutely right.

And I've seen organizations do that and I, I resist that and I come off as something of a malcontent or insubordinate because I'm not laying out a five year, definitive plan. Organizations that do that, they spend an inordinate amount of time and one of the things that they don't do is to track the amount of investment in the plan itself.

So the fricking plan costs a million dollars. Just the plan. You haven't done anything, just a plan. All the people you have, involved in it, all the people around the fence posts all the paper, you print this thing on and [00:29:00] throw away, all that stuff adds up. I. And by the time the plan is finished, to the extent you've got some crystal ball and can see into the future, and this is all going to be valid three, five years down the road, guess what?

The plan itself is obsolete. So to me it's about the outcomes and even those may be subject to change based upon events that happen along the way. So that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with agile and agile development, because it's looking at, as I used to tell my constituents and my colleagues, look, you come to me and you want a Lamborghini, I know you want a Ferrari. I know you want a Lamborghini, I know you want a McLaren, but let's start off with a skateboard. Under the premise of 80%, we can capture [00:30:00] 80% of the value using less than something than a hundred percent of the investment.

And we'll continue to iterate on that as we move forward based upon the evolution of events around us. When I first introduced Agile to one of corporate organization I did some, I did a ton of research, and one of the things I discovered is that with our phones, we can do amazing things with our phones.

The truth in the matter is we use less than half of the functions and features available to us on our phones. And some people, and most people don't even use half. So if I deliver to you in a year's time on scope, on budget, exactly what you've asked for over the course of the year, the best return you're gonna get and it costs you a million dollars, the best return you're going to get on that is $500,000, because half of what I've given you, you're not gonna even [00:31:00] use.

But I spent a hundred, I'm on scope on, I'm on time, on budget, and I've wasted a half a million dollars. Conversely, with Agile, I'm gonna start off and I'm gonna give you I 10% of what you need. And then we sit down and we talk about how things have evolved, and the next sprint, we're going to deliver more of that value and more of that value.

And then as we get to a place where we are collectively understanding where we are relative to what. The opportunity is the event horizon is we can have an intelligent conversation about, what is the marginal utility of one more dollar spent relative to the event opportunity horizon? And if the marginal utility is not at least $1 or more the return on that, then we can pivot and go in a different direction.

And so these five year, three year, grandiose plans are [00:32:00] really a unbelievable waste of time. It's about that next step relative to the opportunity, the, the event horizon opportunity out there. And as that continues to evolve, so does our objectives and our approach to capturing the maximum utility of the opportunity that exists.

Hopefully that makes sense.  

Designer Peter: It definitely makes sense. Yeah. It's it resonates with some of the things we've talked about on, on a couple of the episodes, doesn't it, Dani? 

Dr Dani: Yes. Ralph, as you were talking about this, the thing that also came to mind is, you start out with the skateboard and then you have some intelligent conversations.

And in between starting with the skateboard and the time that you go, okay, how's the skateboard working out? The context changes, right? So where you might've started out thinking you needed a Ferrari, but you but you start with the skateboard [00:33:00] and then you realize, oh, now our roads are changing.

Or the source of fuel is changing. Or the cost of fuel is all of these things change that if you're working towards, building the Ferrari and you've got this plan, then you've gotta either stop and readjust the plan, which is wasteful and time consuming, or you end up delivering something that's no longer useful, 

Ralph: or a third, which is really where, and it goes back to something you said about our desire for predictability and continuity is this notion of sunk cost.

So now I'm going to people and I'm saying, you gave me a million dollars to build you a Ferrari and I'm coming to you and you intuitively know I'm right and not, it's not about me being right, but it's just an acknowledgement that the world is I don't care about being right. But that things have changed.

But because we've put a million dollars into this, we [00:34:00] can't possibly throw away a million dollars to go in a different direction already and spend a million more to go in that direction. We can't possibly do that, so dammit, give me my Ferrari and then I get my Ferrari. And not only did I spend a million dollars and you know I'm only going to use half.

20, 30, 40% of that. So I've already lost half of the investment from an return on my investment perspective. But there's an opportunity cost associated with that because if I hadn't delivered you a freaking Ferrari, if I had just put , a motor on your skateboard or some way to steer the skateboard, we could have been, again, captured 80% of the value with 20% of the, investment.

So there's an opportunity cost associated with, I could have, should have been over here doing this, but I was building you a [00:35:00] Ferrari that you're not, you can't drive a manual stick. So what good is the freaking Ferrari?

And it's, and we have those conversations over and over again. And what's fantastic is, to be able to talk to. My business partners and from a business perspective about the technology and the services that we were providing. And obviously this conversation doesn't matter.

Same thing with if you're talking marketing, same thing. If you're talking operations any of these things apply in terms of, hey, let's lay out this complex step-by-step. Plan that, over the next five years of what we're going to do and how we're going to deliver, gen AI or agent ai and this is the way it's going to go for the next five.

Guess what? No one was saying gen ai two years ago. No one was saying agent AI two years ago, no one was saying deep seek. Two months ago. [00:36:00] So it just shows you and the pace of change. There's a futurist called his name is Ray Ker. And he talked about the singularity is near as his book fantastic extraordinary individual you've ever sounds like you, or it looks like you both are familiar with his work, but I would encourage your audience to, look him up.

He talks about the singularity happening and says that within the next, I guess now 75 years, that we are going to see a thousand years worth of change within the next, by the end of this century. That's how quickly things are changing exponentially quick. And it just goes back to where we started this, the notion that you are going to stand Pat somehow is such a fallacy.

It's such a losing proposition right from the get go. And so the ability of leaders to articulate [00:37:00] change in a way that inspires, that encourages, that emboldens people to get on board to seek the safety of the flow, seek the safety of the change, to be the initiator of the change that they wanna see.

Those are the leaders that are going to, define life in the, in the 21st century and beyond. And that's the person that, , as difficult as my childhood was it definitely was preparing me, I think, for being exactly that type of person. 

Dr Dani: And so that is the, I guess the plight of the dark optimist is to recognize all of these things and still keep taking that one step forward, another step forward, and keep moving.

Ralph: Indeed. Never will I surrender or yield to despair. 

Dr Dani: Now we can move to your favorite part. 

This is why, okay. 

Designer Peter: The, yeah, so he it, I'll keep the sim the question very simple. [00:38:00] Ralph, why tell us, why is this so important? Why is this so important? 

Ralph: I don't mind all the context. Peter. I'm, I know I just met you, but I'm almost feeling give me more.

Designer Peter: Oh yeah. I think as Dani suggested, it's we're sitting here in 2025. I wholeheartedly agree with you that , the world is constantly in flux. I'll go on this little tangent. I recently read a book called the Web of Meaning and the author's Jeremy Lent and yes the his definition that he lands on of of life, and this could be too far, too deeply meaningful, but life is, he defines it as negative entropy.

In other words, any, anything else in the universe, in the cosmos that isn't life itself is actually going through this process of entropy. In other words, it's slowly but surely coming apart. And and life itself is actually doing the opposite of bringing things together. And I think this for me the message of dark optimism and everything is always in flux.

[00:39:00] Everything is always changing and always has been. It just doesn't seem like it in the snapshot. It's only when we pause and reflect and think about even yesterday or last week or 10 years ago, that we realized how much things have changed. And I think this is point you, you've made several times in our conversation, Ralph.

Yet it feels to me like a lot of people, like right now, the Mo Everett, there's a number of factors in the world, in the human world at least, that are coming together that makes it feel as though things are changing even more are what we thought was stable and secure, and a known way of human living is changing as we speak and is about to change even more.

So maybe I'm doing the same thing I did before in answering the question as I keep talking. But why is dark optimism even more important now than when the idea first came to you?

Ralph: There was something my uncle said to me many years ago and he said. It surprised him how easy it [00:40:00] was for bad people to get things done. Now he used expletives in there and you can add them wherever you think is appropriate. But he just found it amazing that bad people can just get things done.

And people with good intentions, good plans, who sought good outcomes, struggle to get things done. And so in this context of, and I'm not gonna sit here and define, what's good and what's bad, but I think we can see examples of change that we don't want. So here in the United States, for instance on New Year's Eve, I happened to be up and we had a very tragic event of a gentleman driving.

Celebration in New Orleans and driving a vehicle through a crowded group of people in New [00:41:00] Orleans. Someone who had driven all the way from Texas, to carry out this heinous act. And just made it happen. Just made it happen. And we see examples of that all across the world where people are doing things and they just make it happen.

And so in this, in the conversation we were having about this constant state of affairs where things are changing, people who want to do things that are detrimental, that are suboptimal, that don't take the notion of common good into account are simply making things happen. Yet good people are struggling to make good things happen.

Now, I'm sure there's on every day there is examples because one of the things that we don't do enough of is [00:42:00] celebrate all the good things that people are doing. We don't that doesn't draw the same number of clicks and eyeballs and attention that the, some of the negative things do. So I don't wanna act like or ignore the fact that people all over the world are doing really good things.

But it's really hard. It's harder than it should be. I know at many organizations that I've worked at, doing the right thing, doing the right best thing and getting it done was always, seemed always harder than it should be. Even though we all knew what the right best thing was there just seemed to be so much bureaucracy or rules, or resistance.

Some of that, just because of the, the regulatory environment or the risk, associated or perceived risk. Some of it because, people wanted to be the author of this and just because they weren't getting on board. It wasn't my change. I didn't author [00:43:00] this, I didn't approve this, I wasn't a part of this.

And so they objected to something that seemed very right, very natural very good to do. And we dance around and go around until we got in, buy-in and consensus and all kinds of things, mitigating the impact and the power of the change that we were trying to initiate again, now we gotta go back to the drawing board because the time to act was two weeks ago, two months ago, and now we've gotta reconfigure and, readdress and do all sorts of things.

So that's the why. That's part of the why, the optimistic and the movement part of this is so important because this, these changes are happening and the extent to which we want to optimize the benefit of change, then we need to be just as prolific. We need to be just as committed, just as focused, [00:44:00] just as energetic about the positive change and work that we want to do as some of the other things that are happening, which are less optimal, less positive and less positively impactful.

Because if we don't, there, there are consequences to, to suffer as a result of that. 

Dr Dani: Is that where the title of your book came from? We have nothing to lose. 

Ralph: Actually the title of the book came from and you'll have to indulge me a little bit to just take you on a slight journey, a Peter esque kind of journey.

I said to a friend of mine who's worked on presidential campaigns in his past, I called him up one day and I said, Hey, if I wanted to run for president, what do I need to do? And he said you should run for local office. You probably want to get in Congress, maybe as congressman Senator.

And this was less than 10 years or so ago. And I said to him, no [00:45:00] one, I don't have the patience for that. And patience is not Ralph Groche. And two, you haven't been paying attention of what's transpired over the course of the, this new century. He said then you need to write a book.

I said, man, I knew you were gonna say that because I've heard several other people say when you're gonna write a book. And I, while I try never to say never I always thought that was just an absurd idea that I would ever write a book. But he said, you need to write a book. And so the idea of, and I knew that was something coming to me from a place that, was instructing me what the next step in the path was.

But I couldn't figure out how or how to get started. And so the original title of the book was going to be, let me tell You Why, with me explaining why. I should [00:46:00] be, taken seriously as a presidential candidate. But in the summer of 2021 August, I'm in Martha's Vineyard and my spouse says to me, we're gonna go to church.

And I'm like I'm not gonna church. Beautiful. August day I'm not doing, drives me kicking and screaming. The church is a good size, but no air conditioning, the benches and it's packed and it's hot. I'm not doing it. I did it and I'm sitting there in church and at, and two of the speakers was Senator Raphael Warnock, who did an amazing.

An amazing set of comments and insights about, he had just become senator from Georgia, the freshman senator from Georgia. And his perspective on his place in history was just phenomenal. You can go to YouTube and find this union Chapel church. [00:47:00] And then the next speaker who gave the sermon was 

reverend Doctor Otis Moss III pastor outta Chicago. And he spoke and said the title of his sermon was, we Have Nothing to Lose. And he started off the sermon, and if you only listen to the first five minutes of it, he started off the sermon telling the story about his fascination with the circus.

And his godfather or his uncle who used to take him to the circus every year, and the animals that really inspired him and awed him were the elephants. These majestic creatures, their size their grace, their power just was just amazing. But he found it curious that these huge animals were being controlled by this little man with a whip in a chair.

And he says to his uncle, how is that even possible? How's that little man controlling these, not just one but multiple [00:48:00] elephants with a chair and a whip? And his uncle tells him that the elephants at birth are put in these large chains around their neck that are and confined, and the purpose of their confinement.

And these change were to shape their perception of their size and their place relative to the world around them. So they thought of themselves as something smaller than they were. They never realized the power. They never realized their space. They never realized who they were and what they were capable of.

He said, but if those elephants ever got to a place where they had nothing to lose and began to understand their place in the world, said, revolution is coming. Change is coming. When they get to a place where they have nothing to [00:49:00] lose. A revolution is coming now I'm sitting as I'm facing like right now, talking to the I'm to his his right.

So on the left hand side of the, and I swear it was like there was no one else in that chapel, but he and I, and he's saying over and over again, we have nothing to lose. We have nothing to lose. And that was like an epiphany, from some place in the universe. And I knew that was going to be the title of the book, that we have nothing to lose.

We are at this place where all the events that are happening have put us into place. Those people who want to do good, who want to be the change to optimize change, to optimize the positive impact of change. We're at a place now where we have nothing to lose. The urgency. The book is all black and white, the cover of the book the whole notion of dark [00:50:00] optimists is there's a clock and I, there's a story about the cover of the book that I'll share with you in a second as well.

But it's all about on or off, hot or cold in or out. This, there's power in choosing a side, making a choice, being in, being out, being on, being off. And we are at a place where there's a sense of urgency about getting on with this, the changes happening around us. And if we don't begin to make these changes for the power and the positivity that we wanna see that we're running out of time.

And no, no action is a choice. So that's the why. That's the how. That's explains the cover of the book, the title of the book. And that's where we are. 

Designer Peter: Thanks Ralph. For that story. And I'll take it as a huge compliment if you consider that to be Peter esk. I think you're being, being a bit too kind and I'm very glad you [00:51:00] went to church that day. To, to 

Ralph: I am too. I am too.

Yeah. And again, the universe acting in a very intentional way. Yeah. I was where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there, 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Dani, go on.

Dr Dani: You said there's a story about the cover book. 

Ralph: Working with the publisher, they gave me some amazingly interesting cover ideas. Dani, I may even send them to you and share them with you. We represent an artist, a brilliant artist through my art gallery. When he heard that I was writing a book, said immediately I want to do the cover.

And he's a brilliant artist, but nothing like really clicked. And my spouse, she said, why don't you speak to this group called Artist for Humanity? Now they designed the brand for our art gallery called Nowhere, K-N-O-W-H-E-R-E. And it's an amazing brand and you'll see it in black and [00:52:00] white. The philosophy again, and it's actually a lotus flower that we turned on its side to form the K in nowhere.

And so we have nowhere Art Gallery, and we have the Center of nowhere. We have two locations in in Oak Bluff. And so I went to the Artist for Humanity and they said no, we don't really do political stuff. And I said it's not really a political book or intended to be. It's about change.

It's about being the initiators of positive change. And I walked them through the concept of the book. And so they came up with an amazing storyboard of design. Artists For Humanity is the largest employer of teenagers in the Boston area. So one good thing, there are many good things that come out of Boston.

This is one of the best things that come outta Boston that is the end of the podcast. You might wanna edit the one good thing out. There's a lot of good things that come out of Boston, and this is one of the most brilliant things that, [00:53:00] that has come out of Boston. They're an extraordinary organization.

And so the cover of the book is by a group of teenagers who designed the book. Through a series of design sessions that I held with them and all came together. 

Dr Dani: So the reason I wanted you to share that one. I wanted you to talk about them, but also when, you had sent me a couple of versions of book covers and they were very well done. That's not Ralph. That's not Ralph. And then when I saw this, I'm like, this is Ralph. I just think it just very much encapsulates who you are and also the message of the book so well done. We'll put a link to their website as well on the Yeah. In the show notes. 

Ralph: Yeah. They're phenomenal. And interestingly, Donnie, just one more. As you talk about design thinking, they may be an organization you and Peter might wanna, reach out to and, speak to and see if there's opportunities to collaborate. 

Absolutely. [00:54:00] Yes. Okay. So the second part of your title is A Dark Optimist Call to Action. So for everybody that's listening to this episode, what is the call to action? 

I listed some of the very complex issues, at least as they are transpiring here in the United States, that I think need to be addressed.

Ralph: And they just represent a subset of many things that we need to address. But it's about taking that first step as we talked about earlier. And the point is there's a sense of urgency around this that. In many regards, in many ways, we are, running out of time to find solutions that benefit the whole, the many and not just the [00:55:00] few.

And the longer we take as people committed to doing positive things to forcefully get behind taking action, the less optimal the solutions are going to be relative to some of these issues. Climate change is real. And it's affecting this entire planet. And we don't have a plan B, we don't have a, another planet that we can go to.

I pass a climate change clock in in New York City near a place called Union Square Park. And I'm always amazed at how that clock doesn't seem to advance in a linear kind of way., I remember a year or so ago the clock read that we were, eight years or so away from a temperature raising the temperature of the [00:56:00] planet to a place that would be irreversible without some kind of amazingly drastic changes.

Today that clock reads less than a year later, little over a year, later it's down around four years. So it's amazing how. This is just marching on in an unrelenting kind of way. And we can see the effects of this, at least here in the United States and in other places, the effect of these changes, the hottest temperatures recorded on the planet have transpired.

These fires that have been burning outta control in Los Angeles there's a town that I've visited many times in Hawaii, a beautiful town on the island of Maui that burned to the ground. And part of the factors that contributed to that were unusually high winds that were, that just.

Spread the fire [00:57:00] uncontrollably. So these things are happening, storms in unusual places. And it just goes on and on. We have United States, we have gun violence and I purposely avoided the word gun control. But it should be unacceptable for someone to walk into a school and kill children wherever you stand on the issue of guns.

That should be unacceptable and we shouldn't wait another day to see the change that makes that kind of activity non-existent. In the United States, we have a mass murder every single day, mass murder defined by the death of four more people via guns. That happens every single day and we just, we've become just numb to it unless it's something spectacular.

And so these, [00:58:00] again, the dark part of that is recognizing these situations for what they are. The optimist part of it is we can take that one step, let's take that one step and let's, whether that's me as president or just everyone here deciding we're going to be different. This is no longer acceptable.

The status quo is no longer acceptable. Change that we are not initiating for the benefit of the many is not acceptable. And that's the call to action. And we can do that. It's the people, the few who believe they can change the world are the ones that do.

Dr Dani: That is such a great note to, to wrap up on, 

Designer Peter: Thank you, Ralph. That is a perfect place to wrap our conversation up. I, again, we could listen to you and have a conversation for many more hours.

But what we like to do to wrap up our episodes, Ralph, is is talk about takeaways. And so we usually take one or two [00:59:00] things we've taken away from our conversation, and when we have a guest on our podcast, we offer them the opportunity to start and tell us what their takeaways are from having this conversation with us.

Ralph: One, I love that you both enjoy Winnie the Pooh. And I've got, so that's a takeaway for me, a big one. And two, I think your your audience needs to go out and look at Chicken Run.

Designer Peter: Yes. I love it. Thank you, Ralph. Again nice serious messages in a lighthearted way. I'll go next. And then Dani you can finish this off, I think. And I will I'll I'll stick to one. Usually I have two or three, but I'll stick to one. And that is , have the courage to take the next step.

That's it. Thank you, Ralph. Dani. 

Dr Dani: This is freaking me out. That was so concise, Peter. 

Designer Peter: That's how powerful Ralph's message is. Dani, 

Dr Dani: I'm throwing Ralph. I 

Designer Peter: know. I've changed already.

Dr Dani: See Ralph, that's how powerful you're 

Ralph: I'm [01:00:00] impressed.

Dr Dani: So my takeaway is when Ralph, you were talking about this idea about going in, your scuba trip, and we talked about the only safety comes from continuously evolving. Which is ironic because , we think that stability means staying still and safety means staying still, but the reality is the only way to be safe is to continuously be evolving.

 That is my takeaway, so thank you. So where can people get your book? 

Ralph: Two of the more prominent places are obviously amazon.com and Barnes and Noble both of those sites have copies of the book, the hard copy, the soft copy and the digital copy.

Dr Dani: Nice. Nice. And then where can people find out more about you? 

Ralph: That's, oh, that's [01:01:00] always a problem. 'cause I try not to let people know where to find me.

But I'm on LinkedIn. I'm working on a website. It's called the Dark Optimus all one word.com. Instagram I think it's called Gross Optimus G-R-O-S-S Optimus on Instagram. So those are all places where folks can find me. So LinkedIn and Instagram 

Dr Dani: Awesome.

 Thanks. We'll make sure that we'll include all of that in the show notes so that people can find you even though you like to.

Thanks everyone so much for tuning in today, and thanks Ralph for joining us and we will see you.