Performative PR and the Facade Falling Away

Alison Taylor is a Clinical Associate Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and former Executive Director of Ethical Systems. She is the author of Higher Ground: How Business Can Do the Right Thing in a Turbulent World, which the Financial Times named one of the best business books of 2024.

Over the past few years, Alison has cultivated a remarkably engaged and refreshingly human community of interesting people sharing interesting thoughts on LinkedIn. Fortunately for me, since I have not been on LinkedIn in a long time, Alison is now bringing this community to an email inbox near you with the launch of her Substack, Higher Ground:

https://findhigherground.substack.com/

I always learn a lot from Alison. She is one of those people whose perspective, no matter the topic or issue, is thoughtful, insightful, and routinely prescient. (This is why I have asked her, on numerous occasions, basically to predict the future.)

In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including:

* the state of corporate responsibility and sustainability;

* the impact (so far) of AI on the creative and consulting industries;

* the possibility that Gen Z will resist the phoniness and fakery that defines the digital age;

* the challenge of strengthening one’s attention muscles in said digital age;

* the trials and tribulations of building and sustaining a sense of community on platforms like LinkedIn and Substack;

* the uncomfortable overlap between elite corporate world-savers and the Democratic Party;

* the head-scratching shortage of companies willing to, as Alison puts it, “center human dignity and respect and treat people properly”; and,

* the hope-restoring power of connecting with people in person.

We even discuss the ethical leadership of—I can’t believe I’m writing this—JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

Speaking with Alison lifted my spirits at a moment when I needed it. I’m grateful for her willingness to surmount her own time constraints to record this conversation. It was delightful.

*****

Some interesting books and articles referenced:

Our prior Sunday Conversation:

https://adaml.substack.com/p/sunday-conversation-alison-taylor

My interview with Musa al-Gharbi, author of the phenomenal 2024 book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, for The Ink:

https://the.ink/p/how-wokeness-enables-inequality

Alex McCann’s viral essay, “The death of the corporate job”:

https://thestillwandering.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-corporate-job

The essay I published in January, which introduces some of the themes that Alison and I explore at the end of this conversation:

https://adaml.substack.com/p/on-choosing-patriotism-even-today

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