Season 3, Episode 9: Benno Dorer | Clorox, COVID, and Good Growth

Benno Dorer, former chairman and CEO of Clorox, joins Cindy Moehring on this episode of The BIS to share his experience handling the increased demand for Clorox products during the global pandemic. Passionate about "good growth", he shares how he led Clorox to invest in its ESG programs to increase its sustainability efforts. Dorer also talks about where he sees the future of business ethics heading in the next 25 years and what academia, government, and business can do now to lead young professionals in the right direction.

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Episode Transcript:

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0:00:13.5 Cindy Moehring: Hi everybody, welcome back for another episode of The Business Integrity School, and I am super excited to tell you that today we have with us, Benno Dorer. Benno, welcome.

0:00:24.9 Benno Dorer: Thank you, Cindy. Thanks for having me.

0:00:26.7 Cindy Moehring: Absolutely, let me tell you a little bit about Benno. In his own words, he says he is passionate about growing business the right way, which to him is all about doing that profitably, sustainably, and responsibly, something that Benno calls good growth. Benno, for those of you who don't know, worked at the Clorox Company for over 16 years and he just retired as the Executive Chairman and CEO. And some really great things about the Clorox Company and Benno under his leadership, the company was ranked number 15th on the list of the 250 Best Managed Companies by OnePoll. He was number nine on the list of most inclusive and diverse US companies on his watch, number seven on the list of the most sustainable companies in the US, and number one most trusted and essential company in the US in 2020, something which I don't think would escape any of us given COVID and we'll talk a little bit about that in this video podcast. So Benno was also number one on the annual Glassdoor list of the most popular US CEOs in 2017. I'll tell you, if you do a little Google search out there, you can find some of his pearls of wisdom for what got him to be such a great leader, but that's not the topic of our podcast today. I'll just put that out there as a teaser for all of you to go figure out. We're gonna spend a fair amount of time today talking all about the environment, social governance, integrity and ethics in business, and how all of that moves together to be good growth.

0:01:58.9 Cindy Moehring: Now, today, since Benno is has just retired, he's focused on giving back and he's focused on passing on his experience from over 30 years in global business leadership as both an advisor, a board director, and a coach. It's actually more than both, three things, in addition to many other I know. He's a Senior Advisor at KKR now, and he's on the board of the Wella company and the VF Corporation. He's also involved in his family foundations philanthropic efforts in the support of children, the environment and the arts, in order to help make the world a better place for the current and future generations. Now, a couple of fun facts about Benno before we dive in, he makes wine, which I know I have enjoyed during COVID quite a bit. And he says he makes wine just for the joy of it, but also for the headache of it. Benno is a proud German citizen, and he's worked and lived in four countries, which included living in his favorite city in the world, which is Stockholm. So Benno, I've gotta start by asking you what makes Stockholm your favorite city in the whole wide world?

0:03:03.2 Benno Dorer: First of all, it's a really magical city, it's so beautiful, it's on the water, food is great. The summers are really magical, in part because they are short, it means that people really go out and enjoy it, but it also was the first city that I lived in after I moved abroad 25 years ago. So I find that life inflections are often the most meaningful to remember, and this was a very important reflection in my life and I always associate Stockholm with a lot of personal growth. So it has to be the number one for that reason mainly.

0:03:39.5 Cindy Moehring: That is great. Well, once we can all start traveling again, I have to say, I've not been to Stockholm but it has now moved up on my list of places that I wanna visit. It sounds fabulous. So now let's move on and talk about growing business the right way, as you call it, good growth, which I love that, talking and thinking about it in terms of profits and responsible and sustainable growth. But 25 years ago, Benno, that just really wasn't much of a topic at all. And 25 years really isn't that long of a period of time when you stop and think about it, and no one really talked about it either in business or in business schools. So what do you think really was the tipping point for that? What caused the change, if you will, 'cause we've removed, I think, from talking all about profits, to starting to get real leverage into the stakeholder theory, but it's relatively recent.

0:04:36.0 Benno Dorer: It's very true, as I think back 25 years ago, as you say, I've been in business for more than 30 years. It felt like self-interest and the common good were two different things, and that ethics in business just didn't matter to executives. And I know that sounds painful and harsh looking back, but I honestly think it's true. And today, I think that has flipped. I think that it does matter, first of all, and there's so many examples of companies that have done well and because they did things the right way... And I always hoped that Clorox is one of them. So this conflict that executives had in making decisions every day between taking care of themselves and their investors and making money and doing the right thing has completely gone away.

0:05:31.4 Benno Dorer: And there are so many studies now, whether that's McKinsey or University of Chicago, you name it, that have proven that the shareholder return in the long run, that companies that do the right thing and that dedicate themselves to, as you said, the ESG is superior, far superior. And to understand why, I think it's a confluence of different factors as I'm thinking about this. First of all, I do think that there have been a lot of scandals and examples of companies that have failed or have really taken a hit in their reputation, and then ultimately also financially, because they perhaps didn't do the right thing consistently. If I give you company names like... Without throwing anybody under the bus, but Wells Fargo or Enron or Facebook, again, good companies but ethical issues.

0:06:38.2 Benno Dorer: And I think if people hear those names, a lot of... A lot more bad associations per studies come to mind, than good associations. And of course, there are good examples too. So I feel like there's a lot of negative examples where executives, companies, shareholders, communities, took a big hit from not making the right decisions. Consumers care. I grew up in the packaged goods business and spent 30 years in that business. Consumers really care. And there's a different generation of consumers that isn't just interested in whether the products work, but what the company that makes the products believe in.

0:07:24.5 Benno Dorer: And you know that's consumers have a lot of power. So if you miss out on those trends and you miss out being seen as a good company, your market shares, your sales will go down. Same is true with investors. ESG investing is the fastest growing segment in investing these days. And what that means is that as a CEO, you know you gotta attract investors, you gotta make investors believe in you. And if the fastest going segment discourages your company because you're not doing the right thing, you're missing out on a lot of investment dollars.

0:08:02.0 Benno Dorer: So what that all leads to, I think, is that the self-interest and working ethically have become one and the same thing. And I think that nothing perhaps is more responsible perhaps also for an increase in self-motivation, that I think plays a role as well from executives, as the environmental crisis. So I think that has played a very big role where executives realize that companies have to act, we have to do better, we have to do our own way, we generate a lot of profits, we also need to do a lot better to reduce emissions, use less packaging materials, etcetera, etcetera. That's very, very important. So I would say while there's a confluence of a lot of different things, I would say that the tipping point was very much inspired by sustainability and the realization that the private sector and companies, we need to do better. And the good news is that there's a lot of activity going on and companies are changing their ways, and it's sincere and it's here to stay.

0:09:14.4 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah. So that's interesting. You think the tipping point was actually the whole sustainability awakening, if you will, by companies. Obviously, Walmart was, I think one of the early companies there with Lee Scott...

0:09:28.4 Benno Dorer: Pretty much so.

0:09:31.1 Cindy Moehring: In the early 2000s jumping on, which helped move it out into the supplier arena and otherwise. Yeah. That's interesting.

0:09:36.2 Benno Dorer: Retailers for a company like Clorox also and Walmart, of course, being at the forefront of this have played a major role in that product listing decisions. The decision which products appear in a shelf, were tied to sustainability criteria, and if your products didn't meet retailers' sustainability criteria, which have become stricter and stricter and stricter, and that's a good thing, your products can't be on shelf and you can't be successful. So retailers play such an important role, and there are so many retailers, Walmart being certainly at the very forefront, who have put in a lot of leadership and who are influencing thousands and thousands of companies to do better.

0:10:26.3 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. And it's really important to see how that supply chain is connected. It's not just retailers, and then there's... It's not just there for the one step back suppliers, it's the whole supply chain. And working with even academics, John Johnson, who's the head of one of our departments at the Walton College at University of Arkansas actually helped come up with the sustainability index that Walmart started with. So I think when you put the power of academics together with companies and engage the power of the whole supply chain, and then you get governments to come in as well, you can really move all in one direction much more quickly. And then that type of collaboration seems to have really... Will come to the fore, I would say. But with business playing an important role, last year.

0:11:18.4 Benno Dorer: I think I agree whole-heartedly. And as I think about where ethics in the business and doing the right thing is going, one thing that will be vital is an increased collaboration between the public sector, private sector, and academia. We need to get much clearer on what metrics are important, we need to get... Be much more science-based. We need to realize that the private sector and the public sector aren't rivals, that business and governments want the same thing fundamentally. But that collaborative spirit isn't everywhere just yet. And one thing I would like to see is a much more concerted and collaborative effort between all the stakeholders to come together and align on what the agenda should be, and then get barriers out of the way to implement that agenda, because as much as we have made progress, in some areas, we also need to continue to make progress much faster and it will only go in a collaborative way.

0:12:32.5 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah, you know I think that's 100% right. Look how quickly we did move to get vaccines created for the global pandemic, that was unheard of and the world isn't gonna slow down, it's only gonna get even more faster. And all of this was pointed out in the Edelman Trust Barometer report that came out. The 20th anniversary report was last year when they noticed, they talked about two things really, both the ethics of a company and the competence of a company, and not just companies, I should say, of different sectors of society. So they looked at the business sector, they looked at government, they looked at media, and they looked at non-profits, and interestingly, they have the same findings that you just mentioned, which is, well, business is by far the most competent, so kind of furthest to the right on that, and is seen as more ethical than the government, if you will, and media, but not as ethical as non-profits, that it was really gonna be up to the business sector to help pull everybody else along in terms of competence, so that we could move more quickly all together. And so it really does rest on the shoulders of business to lead collaboratively, best position to do it and you probably had to do a fair amount of that last year in 2020, when Clorox, I would say was the it company.

0:13:53.7 Cindy Moehring: It's so funny, Benno. I, obviously living in Bentonville, Arkansas, I do a lot of my shopping at Walmart and Sam's Club and I've always had Clorox wipes in my house, and in my cabinet for forever. And I was at Sam's shortly before... About a year ago, shortly before the whole crisis hit and I walked by that aisle and I thought, "Oh, I've got a few left, I don't think I need to buy it quite yet," 'cause you gotta buy in bulk at Sam's. I just didn't think I needed that many and within two weeks, I haven't been able to find them for a year. They're back now, I have to say I know, but tell us a little bit about that whole experience and what that taught you about collaboration and ESG and leading with integrity.

0:14:35.3 Benno Dorer: Yes. So what an eventful year it has been for so many companies and certainly for Clorox as well. The good news is that because we have products that help people against the flu, we have a lot of metrics and a lot of trackers that we look at. So we saw early that there was something coming that was going to be unique, unfortunately, in scope, so we acted fast. But when you have a supply chain on any product, let's take disinfecting wipes as the example here, you try to run your lines at about at 85% to 90% capacity utilization. That allows you to be efficient and safe, which is very important, safety is a very core value in our manufacturing department.

0:15:32.7 Benno Dorer: And it gives you a little bit of cushion. If there is a wave of flu or other things, flooding, or other unfortunate catastrophe, we like to help. But 85% to 90% is how we like to run our lines. And what we saw was when the pandemic broke out, we saw demands spike by 500%. There's just nothing that anybody can do in the short term. So for us, you know what work looked like a year ago, was first of all, we needed to keep everybody safe. About half of our employees... We have about 9,000 employees work in manufacturing and those lines needed to keep running, and the plants needed to stay open. So it was very important for us to keep everybody safe and put measures in place to do that, and the good news is that we had no disruption at all, and that our plans remained fully operational throughout. So that was a major accomplishment.

0:16:39.6 Cindy Moehring: That is huge. Congratulations, yeah.

0:16:42.1 Benno Dorer: And of course we had to, like all companies, migrate to running the business online, which in the beginning was something that we had to get used to, but we lean into technology very aggressively and thanks to great new technology, but also a different way of running the business... We used to have weekly and monthly meetings, now we have daily meetings, we make decisions much faster, we empower people to make decisions because that helps you to pick up speed, but switching everything to remote was a pretty major undertaking. But you know a lot of good learnings and frankly, we're a better company today for it, and we're much faster. Engagement went up, people love the increased flexibility that working from home gives them and the work space in the future will look different than in the past, undoubtedly. We will not go back to what it was like and a lot of the good learnings will stay and we'll be better off for it. But for us in Clorox, the biggest thing was, how can we make more wipes quickly? We worked with third parties to convert lines that they may have used for other products. We invested early in additional lines, so we built additional lines, so today we make about 2x what we made of a year ago, which is a massive undertaking because these are not virtual products, they're real manufacturing lines...

0:18:11.5 Benno Dorer: And real materials, sourcing from all kinds of different places, this is complex. But I'm very proud of what our team has accomplished, and as you say, so we're in more and more stores now, and for most of our product, we're fully back. Wipes is still not exactly where we'd like it to be, but you can find it in Walmart, and in Sam's stores and elsewhere quite often now. But the biggest thing for us was so we had 100% of our volume available for our consumers and customers, yet demand was 500%, so because we talked about ethics, our dilemma was, how do we allocate? Do we allocate where we make the most money? Do we allocate... What are we using as a basis for decision? And what we decided early on that's the only way we're gonna make decisions, and the only basis for allocation is what is the right thing?

0:19:11.8 Benno Dorer: So we did forgo profits because we didn't ship where it was most profitable to us, we air-freighted often instead of using trains and automobiles, which is a lot more expensive as you can imagine, but, you know it was the right thing to do to get products into people's hands quickly. And what we did was, and that was probably the toughest choice, we prioritized healthcare workers. So we sent wipes to hospitals to first responders, and we made less money on that, and that also led to out of stocks in stores. And I spent a lot of days engaging heads of merchandising, or CEOs or division merchandising managers, and explained to them why that's the right thing to do. And what was really great was that while people were disappointed that...

0:20:11.4 Benno Dorer: And we were disappointed too that we couldn't deliver products to them, everybody understood and supported us, and that was so heart-warming, that this idea of doing the right thing and putting the products into healthcare workers' hands first was surround... Was wildly supported by people who didn't benefit from that. And the pandemic was a wonderful example of people coming together to do the right thing as a community, and it's such a wonderful example of how business can be done successfully.

0:20:42.0 Cindy Moehring: Is there anything, let's say, related to the last year in 2020 and working from home and trying to get the supply chain, which is complex in a manufacturing environment, up to speed so quickly that worried you from an ethical perspective? I mean... Fraud is through the roof, they've shown that in the last year, a lot of reports are showing how high it is... Were you ever worried about anyone cutting corners or doing things the wrong way in order to accomplish speed, and how did you make sure they weren't?

0:21:16.6 Benno Dorer: No, first of all, because like I said, do the right thing was what we said is everybody will be measured against that...

0:21:24.2 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, that's great.

0:21:25.9 Benno Dorer: But then we have a lot of policies and checks and balances and boxes in place for sure. The biggest worry I had was price gauging or gauging I should say. So there were a lot of cases where you could go online and you saw third parties, not our customers, not us, but third parties sold wipes and other disinfecting products at wildly inflated prices, and that felt like not the right thing to do. So even though for us, self-interest, it didn't matter because we already sold the products to them, but we felt like it's the wrong thing to do, and it also hurt us as a company, so we worked with government agencies, with the Department of Justice, with retailers, to stop people from selling the products at inflated prices, so that today, if you look, there's barely anything and we don't blacker, and we always address it right away, but that was probably my biggest thing with people who are irresponsible, who aren't part of our company, would they try to benefit from this unfortunate situation at consumer's expense and that we found is it's just nothing that is acceptable to us.

0:22:45.1 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, well, that's great that you were able to play a role in starting to and trying to curb some of the fraud, I would say from third parties. That's great. So Benno, do you think after this unprecedented year that we've all lived through and figuring out how to collaborate and move more quickly and think differently than we did 25 years ago, is self-interest kind of now marrying that up with what's really the right thing to do and thinking about all stakeholders, do you think that's a movement that's here to stay?

0:23:14.5 Benno Dorer: It is, because as we discussed earlier, there's so many external stakeholders who will keep companies honest. And I think there's an additional factor perhaps also where... Previously people talked about work-life balance, suggesting that work and life are two separate things. And today we talk about work-life integration. I think increasingly, people realize that who you are at work and who you are in your life outside work, has to be one and the same thing. The separation between work and non-work, I think has gone away. And of course, the pandemic embodies that because both you and I are at our homes right now, and work days look very different, most people don't stop at five, but they might take a break during the day and then pick it back up once kids are in bed, or... So it's a lot more integrated. And I feel like this excuse of, "Oh, it's just business," has gone by the wayside, rightfully so, because people wanna do fundamentally, I believe in the good in humans, people wanna do good, everybody wants to do good for themselves, for their families, for their communities, and business is just part of that, and that gives me great optimism that not only is it gonna be here to stay, but will move further and more aggressively, and that this is an irreversible course and a good one at that.

0:24:48.4 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, yeah, I think so too. And I've actually heard some people starting to refer to it as not business in society, but business as society, kind of talks about the blending of it, which I think is a whole different... It's just a mind shift, if you will...

0:25:03.0 Benno Dorer: Yep, I like that very much.

0:25:04.8 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you to have a crystal ball here for a few minutes, we talked about 25 years ago, business ethics and integrity and ESG, all those topics just really were not discussed, weren't on the table. You know that they are squarely on the table today, in front and center and it feels very different; Moves from shareholder theory to stakeholder theory and beyond. So when you're crystal ball, if you think about what's on the horizon for the next 25 years, what would you predict? What do you think that it should look like? What's gonna be the next iteration?

0:25:42.8 Benno Dorer: It's a big challenge because, I think, if 25 years ago, anybody would have predicted that we are where we are today here with so much progress, I think we couldn't. So, I'm probably, and what I'm gonna say, and that's gonna stretch enough, because I can't imagine how much progress we can make, but the first thing I'd say is collaborative, it's picking up on more collaboration. And we talk about public, private sector, academia. You know it's still, I think, business ethics and ESG is still somewhat compartmentalized. I would like to see it a lot more collaborative, so that'd be first. Second, perhaps is more global. I'm still a German citizen, even though I've lived abroad for 25 years and I've lived in this great country for 21 now.

0:26:35.7 Benno Dorer: The biggest problems that we face, that business ethics touch have to be solved at the global level collaboratively. I fundamentally believe that. No country can go at it alone. No country can win at another country's expense. We all share the same planet, and we have to solve these problems together. So I wanna see a lot more global collaboration. And I'm hopeful as I always am. And then the third one perhaps, is more value-driven. So I tend to be a person who doesn't think that ethics and making money is something that doesn't go together, or that you have to feel bad about doing things the right way if you make money because humans do have self-interest, and if companies do well and make a lot of money, then they can invest in research and they can pay higher salaries...

0:27:25.8 Cindy Moehring: That's right.

0:27:27.7 Benno Dorer: And good things happen. So I think that also with the help from academia, frankly Cindy, a better understanding of what the real metrics are and how companies and institutions can make a real difference versus just a perceived difference.

0:27:43.4 Cindy Moehring: Yeah right.

0:27:47.8 Benno Dorer: I think that would be helpful. So a really clear understanding of value would be important. For Clorox, for instance, as we did our latest round of our business strategy, which was in 2019, we fully integrated our ESG strategy and our business strategy, because we didn't want ESG to be a hobby. We need something that matters to general managers and marketing and salespeople. And we said, how can we dedicate ourselves, let's take sustainability, to things that make a big difference, but also have a positive impact on our profitability. And what we dedicated ourselves to was the objective to reduce the amount of plastic and fiber that we use in our packaging and products by 50%, five, zero in the next nine years. That's massive, and we don't quite know how to do it. But what we do know is that retailers will benefit, less shelf space, we will have fewer trucks on the road, we will save a lot of money because we will use less materials. Consumers will get products that they will like better, they're more... Often they're better, but there's a win, win, win, win, win. And if we dedicate ourselves to that particular metric as opposed to other metrics, it will stick because everybody in the company will be motivated. So this poll was created with a very keen eye on value creation, and I think that's probably a good example of how I'd like ethics to continue to evolve unabashedly with an eye on value creation.

0:29:29.4 Cindy Moehring: So let me ask you with respect to business schools and academia in general, what do you think are the most important things that academics can do right now to prepare their business students better to enter this, I would just call it this really disruptive world we live in now? 'Cause quite frankly, I don't think it's gonna change. I think disruption is the name of the game and it's gonna continue. So what can... Academia is a little more slowly... They move more slowly than the business world. So what can they do to help their students more, to be prepared for that?

0:30:07.2 Benno Dorer: Well, first of all, I think the skills in general of the future are gonna change. It's gonna be less about knowledge, it's gonna be more about critical skills. Critical thinking is one of them. Imagination, creativity, the ability to see the connection between seemingly unconnected things, the ability to collaborate beyond borders globally, the ability to understand different cultures. That's perhaps something that's helped in my career because Germans typically don't do well working abroad. It's not a cliche but a fact. And it's because Germans like things a certain way, and therefore when they come into a different country, where you just have to adapt and evolve as a person, they don't want to. And that's a barrier to success. But increasingly business is global. So the ability to create cultural empathy, sensitivity, understand what different cultures are about, is really critical, because collaboration beyond borders is absolutely critical. Second, the world's complex.

0:31:24.4 Cindy Moehring: It is yeah.

0:31:25.7 Benno Dorer: Right, I think where academia can help is simplify and really extract what matters from the noise. One way of course, how business schools in particular are doing this better than anybody else is through case studies, and by examples. I find that examples teach so much. We talked about some of the negative examples earlier. But there's also so many positive examples. You mentioned Walmart, other retailers. You got one that's... One of the most shining examples in Walmart, right next to where you live. I'm associated with another Company in the apparel space, VF Corporation. They have done so well, in particular when it comes to responsible sourcing and manufacturing, which is a huge issue in apparel. Popular companies like, I'm a basketball fan, the NBA. The NBA has done, and the NFL too, increasingly, organizations as diverse as those have done an amazing job becoming better, and I feel like these companies... Patagonia is a well-known one.

0:32:31.9 Cindy Moehring: Yes, yeah.

0:32:33.0 Benno Dorer: So these companies are very successful, very successful. And they have become more successful by doing things the right way. And then perhaps lastly, what I'd say is, one thing I always fundamentally believe in as the most important skill for any student to acquire is leadership. And leadership isn't following someone, leadership isn't about doing things the easy way, leadership is about going where no one else has gone, leadership is about making other people rally, leadership is about telling the truth when telling the truth is not easy, doing things the right and sometimes the hard way. And business schools, that's not a... It's a skill that's quite difficult to teach and difficult to acquire. I'm still working on my leadership skills, it's not something that you're ever done with, but I feel like business schools can do a great job to get people on the right track, and in particular, teach things like courage. The ability to speak for what is right, the ability to embrace community and not just self. Those are fundamental leadership skills where universities, colleges, any school, frankly, much earlier than colleges, even high schools and middle schools, and elementary schools can make a tremendous difference. So I would like to see education move much more into that direction.

0:34:14.5 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, well, good, then I think that makes all the sense in the world and I think that at least at Walton College, we are certainly moving in that direction, so that makes all the... It makes all the sense in the world. Tom Peters, former McKinsey executive and now a well-known leadership guru, just wrote about that as well in Financial Times, about how not enough business schools are really focused on the leadership, the softer competencies, which in today's world end up being as important if not more important than the hard competencies. That's expected, that's the bar, you gotta get over that but to really succeed, it's everything on top of that.

0:34:52.3 Benno Dorer: That's it.

0:34:55.7 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, well, Benno, this has been a great conversation and I like to end on some fun questions at the end, with some interesting recommendations of things that you've either been watching or reading, or listening to in some of your COVID-restricted time that has been for fun, a bit of a release but also when you've sat back and think about it, it has a bit of an ethical dilemma in it. Is there any good recommendation you have for folks in terms of books or movies or series or podcasts?

0:35:25.4 Benno Dorer: Yeah, so let's see. So I just finished watching a British political thriller series called Bodyguard, which is doing really well on Netflix. You'll find it on Netflix and it's really... It's just six episodes, I think, it's gripping, you can't separate yourself from it. And as I was thinking about it, there's a lot of things going on and I don't necessarily wanna get to the bottom of it, so those of you who'll watch it can really enjoy it. But one of the ethical dilemmas that it deals with is, in the rightful fight against terrorism, how much can governments invade privacy and get into things that affect citizens individual rights? I find that privacy and this whole dilemma that I just described is a very relevant one in our lives today, and is not gonna go away with the importance of data. So it's one that... It's a great show that is easy to watch and you can enjoy at the end of the evening, so it's not one that's heavy and full of ethics but the underlying current is very much relevant as we think about ethics, and I really enjoyed that very much.

0:36:51.3 Cindy Moehring: Good.

0:36:52.7 Benno Dorer: And then maybe because it's so new to me, last Friday... I like listening to NPR while I drive, and I do drive quite a bit, and I listened to a show on NPR where an author and social activist called Adrian Marie Brown, I think it was, and she raised the question, "Is it okay, during the pandemic, where there's so much hardship and people are suffering and people are losing loved ones, and it breaks all of our hearts, is it okay to feel joy? And is it okay to do something that brings you joy?" And it's kind of a simple question, right, but if you think about it, it's a very much an ethical dilemma.

0:37:48.1 Cindy Moehring: Pretty much, yeah, profound question.

0:37:49.9 Benno Dorer: Yeah, the answer though that they had for the listeners, was absolutely, because first of all, you can... If you experience joy, it helps you to cope with pain and also it helps you be effective in everyday life. It releases dopamines, all the important things. And then, of course, you can share joy with others, and then if everybody shares joy with other people in this world, the world would be a better place. So I was happy they came to that conclusion, and it's certainly one I share.

0:38:21.0 Cindy Moehring: Well, that's great. Well, I think that's a great note to end this video podcast on. So Benno, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your thoughts, and just sharing all of that with us today and the audience, I know that they appreciate it very much, so on behalf of all of us, thank you very, very much for your time. I appreciate it.

0:38:42.5 Benno Dorer: Thank you, Cindy. It was a joy, so to speak.