. this week on "press: here," president trump questions the future of the post office, a service small business depends on that much more in a pandemic. plus, he studies management and leadership at oxford. dr. chris bows weighs in on mark zuckerberg's leadership, and it's not good. and if you can bank on it, why not vote on it? using your phone to cast a ballot, this week on "press: here." >> good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. there is a phrase that facebook

executives use over and over, they've said it so many times over so many years. it is so common, "the new york times" charlie war zelle turned it into an acronym. we know we have more work to do. mark zuckerberg used it just recently when reacting to advertisers pausing their ad spending worried that facebook has not had enough to do with combatting racism and anti-semitism on its site. we know we have more work to do, said the facebook founder, but it's hardly the first time we've seen it. so why is facebook so broken that it gives a mea culpa so often? let's turn to an expert, dr. chris mose studies leadership and institutional complexity at oxford, and he joins us from the university this morning. good morning, doctor. our executives feel they're being pulled in

trying to bring the world together through social media at the same time the thing is us arguing with each other, so he's pulled in two different directions. >> facebook is very much based on the idea of creating divisiveness at the end of the day, a platform with ad sales. that's an inherent tension to bring people together and create the community. that's a tension that they experience and they have to deal with on their daily work. >> there are lots of companies that have to deal with tensions and problems, but in your research you're finding when the stated goal of a company and what's actually making the company work are two different things, that becomes an unmanageable situation. >> all companies, as you say,

experience tensions. but facebook is particularly interesting because what mark zuckerberg east been doing, he's been trying to embrace a strategy that we call making the problem bigger by bringing stakeholders and involving social activist groups in the conversation, and inviting them in. at the same time he's professed that he can stem these tensions alluding to the greater principle of freedom of expression that we all hold dear. what i would argue is that actually by trying to do both at the same time he has been achieving to do neither of them. >> which leads to all these apologizes. and then he's got president trump, you mentioned the freedom of speech and facebook said it was not going to get involved in some of the things that politicians were saying. of all the presidents, such an outspoken president makes mark zuckerberg's problem that much more difficult. >> yeah, that's right.

somebody who's extremely outspoken, sometimes he is offensive or other people on twitters say he actually is inciting violence with his posts. that's a particular problem every day in social media. but, of course, in the past we have had outspoken politicians on the platform, and within seconds everybody potentially can know. this is something that somebody like mark zuckerberg has to deal with because as he often says, the goal is to uphold democracy and the democratic process. but what happens if somebody like president trump has such tremendous amount of speech that he gets and voice, well, there are many other groups that actually marginalized and don't get the privilege of that space in the media. this problem that mark zuckerberg is dealing with. >> he'sn company like ford motor company

hasn't gotten organized states fighting what they're trying to do. but we are well aware there's least one and possibly more countries organizing against or using facebook to divide us. he's got to fight entire nation states in that sense. >> that's right. in a way, you could say that facebook has become the biggest country in the world with 3 billion active users right now. it's no wonder it's being enmeshed in politics. in some countries, facebook has been banned. in other countries, mark zuckerberg says -- some are censoring citizens. then there are fundamentalist groups who are very much using facebook for their illicit

purposes. a host of problems for somebody who profess this is all about community and getting people together. really what mark zuckerberg is into is politics. >> yes. i think that's a good way of putting that. further, if we were to give him some benefit of the doubt, he didn't invent social networking, but he practically did. it's the most important social network out there. nobody has a guide book how to put this together. maybe that's why what we're seeing so often is him making tactical moves instead of making strategic moves. seems like he's constantly putting out a different fire every day. there's a different controversy every day. perhaps that's because he has no way of looking back at how somebody else has done this in the past? >> that's right. he is a pioneer in his own way, but the greater problem is that, as you alluded to, he's trying to put out fires all the time, he's throwing money at activist

groups, professing he stands for racial justice. if mark zuckerberg doesn't find a global, a bigger principle waif dealing with this issue, for example, convincing people that he's here to uphold the greater principle that all activist groups, including black lives matter and all the others including trump will benefit, then he will continuously have to this problem and we'll hear this story again and then. it's to find an authentic way of dealing with a complicated issue that free speech brings to a platform like facebook. >> i'm not exactly sure how many day-to-day stuff he does as ceo, but he strikes me -- i feel the same way about elon musk. it would be better served if he were perhaps the chairman of the board, somebody who could have a greater vision but allow someone else to manage the day-to-day

and execute that vision, not be the same thing. do you see that in other companies? i know you research a lot of management. >> that's right. you see, this is a typical problem which we call the problem succession. we see, for example, with uber, people who founded the company, who make it grow, aren't the best people to manage them in the long term. yeah, mark zuckerberg stepping back, stepping down, like, for example, reddit. maybe in that sense, it's the ultimate act of leadership. >> he studies institutional complexity at oxford. we appreciate you being with us this morning to weigh in. "press: here" will be back in just a minute.

welcome back to "press: here." there has been a lot of discussion about how we can make voting easier. in a pandemic, that seems to be very important. but really in a democracy in general, wouldn't it be nice if people could use their voices as easily as possible? we ought to make voting easier, but we're seeing, really, the opposite, longer lines, fewer polling places. vote by mail is one solution,

and it's a solution that many states are using. but my next guest says let's jump ahead to the next technology, voting by phone or voting by computer. this is the ceo of port works, which helps companies manage data in the cloud. to be specific, marly, you're not building a voting app, but you say it could be done. my first question to you is, how would we know a vote is coming specifically from the registered voter, not necessarily, say, her phone or her computer? that's harder to tell, isn't it? >> you know, scott, i know the technology makes all of the methods of different voting irrelevant, really. it shouldn't matter how a vote is cast. what is important, though, is that the vote be cast by an electorate that has the opportunity to be educated in realtime about what they're voting on. you know, the technology exists today for evoting, to enable

that, and traveled the time for the evote is now. the pandemic, the covid pandemic makes it even more of an imperative. >> i suppose it would be fair to say when i go to my local polling place, i'm evoting in a way because oftentimes we are already using electronic ballot machines. this would just be a matter of using a computer that i'm more familiar with, right? >> absolutely. if you think about it, the good news here is there is no new technology that needs to be invented to make an evote happen. this technology has existed for decades. it's ready to fly off the shelf into the voters' hands. let's kind of just look at some of them, right? encryption, people today, you know, are sending wires for hundreds of thousands of dollars for real estate transactions,

for banking transactions. companies are using it to pay for goods. so encrypted data has been around for a decade. authentication, there's so many different ways to authenticate to show you are the person you say you are. many of you are familiar with that on your phone, for example. there's a couple other technologies. decades ago people talked about the great digital divide, but now everybody the bandwidth exists to make this type of thing happen. but here's the important stuff. two technologies now can really make a difference here, right? one of them is the fact that there's realtime data available. just think about it. if you're buying a hoodie on ye what it looks like in different directions. you can know if it shrinks. you can tell what other people have reviewed about it. you can see what other people

bought when they looked at that. think of the measures we get. that fat little booklet which says, hey, should you vote for water catchment in california. the opportunity is there to provide so much realtime information and pop-ups that tell you the pros and cons. so the data exists, and the information is there and really, instead of a booklet, you can be provided this in real time. and finally, you know what? in the comfort of your own home, you're more likely to vote. one of the great things about this is not only does the -- people make better decisions because of better information, but also greater participation in the voting process, which is something that we really, really want to have happen. voting, you know, is is really limited to sometimes 30% to 50% around the country, and that's

really abysmal and can be increased by 15% by making it available on a computer. >> it's important we trust the voting app-maker and then there would be transparency as to how the app works. i know this is something that we're pushing with electronic ballots as well, that people want to know that the vote they make is actually the vote that goes into the ballot box. >> and it's absolutely, you know, able -- it's very easy to be able to provide a confirmation about what you voted back to the voter. if you look at sort of why people are really -- why has this not happened? the technology has been available for decades. the real issue is one of political will and funding, right? the political will has not existed to push this as an issue. and when it has happened, it's not been funded appropriately. you may remember in the primary season that happened for the

presidential voting in the democratic primary in iowa, there was a few feeble attempts, but these were really, you know, you know, a dollar short and really not appropriately funded, things that were started a couple months ago just befobefos and were not delivered properly. today companies like ours and others around the world have been digitally transforming enterprises, and it takes nine months to a year to kind of put a good tested system in place with the existing technology, and that's what the voters deserve, is the political will to go fund this and make it available with a tested and tried application from vendors who have done this before for enterprises. >> you mentioned the idea of auditing back to the voter to make sure the vote is legitimate. that is the one perhaps downside of electronic voting. when i fill out a paper ballot and i drop it into the slot, nobody can attribute it to me

that they don't know how scott mcgrew voted. when it is electronic, it is traceable back to the voter. one of the things we value here >> you know, anonymous transactions happen all the time. a confirmation back to you that you have sent some money or you have replied to an answer a certain way, you know, those of you in the bay area are familiar with google forms know you can actually have an anonymous survey that can be done: we did one just for our company recently. and the results are all anonymized, but you get a confirmation that you have voted. so that technology has been around and is really readily available. that's not really an issue. >> murli is ceo. "press: here" will be right back.

welcome back to "press: here." i just got this package in the mail and i have no idea what's inside. i order so much stuff, everything i open is kind of a surprise. shipping and deliveries are up for all of us, right? we want to stay in our homes as best we can zpt means our postal delivery folks are doing a lot of extra work.

it's not just rain and heat and gloom of night. they are risking disease to continue to bring packages like this one to us. but even as we depend on the postal service more and more, the president is calling its future into question. he called the postal service a joke. he's also put one of his top donors in charge as post master general. the postal service is not a joke, and we recognize that the president is very afraid of vote by mail, but whatever the motivation he's putting those deliveries that we depend on in this situation at risk. laura rue is ceo of shippo. they send packages to consumers. good morning. leathers set aside politics for a minute and start with some statistics. we all have a sense of how covid has affected the delivery business, but you actually keep track. it's an enormous increase, right? >> yeah. thanks for having me today. it's been absolutely crazy for

e-commerce and with that also for shipping. so what we're seeing is just given that everyone is staying at home, people have to order online to get whatever they need, so that's on the consumer side. and then on the business side, everyone who's been running a business previously that was more of an off line business is moving online for the first time. as they move online, every single online business needs to ship. so what we're building is a platform that powers shipping in the background. in both march and in april this week, we're looking every week at volumes that were the equivalent for black friday and cyber monday week last year, which are normally the highest volumes of the year. >> that's impressive indeed. have you seen any drop-off in that as some businesses continue to open? >> yeah. i think now that people are able to get out again in certain parts of the u.s., people are able to go back to shop in

stores and we're seeing a little bit of a drop off there. however, i do think consumer behavior has changed fundamentally of it's moved from offline to online is not new. it's been happening for the last five years, maybe even eight years or ten years. given that this move has been happening, it's just an acceleration of that trend, and with that, i think it's irreversible. like, business is going to happen online more and more, and people are now becoming more comfortable with that. covid has taught people, like, older people like my mom and dad that it's completely fine to order groceries online and that behavior is going to stick. >> it's interesting you brought up groceries. that happened with me. i have been ordering online for many years, but i always went to the grocery store. i thought online grocery ordering was peculiar. but i order the same thing over and over. my behavior has absolutely

changed. e-tail is a small portion of retail, even though we think of it as being enormous. so you have a lot of growth out in front of you. >> it is really crazy. i think that's a super interesting point to make. we think e-commerce is big already. pre-covid it's roughly 15% of total market in the u.s. and it's grown significantly throughout the time during covid, of course. but it's only at 15%, and i complete agree with what you said. it's still day one for e-commerce and there's still a lot of growth to come. >> i think part of that is living in the silicon valley bay area, we just assume the rest of the nation is behaving the way we do. so i hear that 15% number and i'm absolutely astonished. now, you help businesses ship whatever service they want, fedex, u.p.s., usps. is there one that's a better deal? or does it depend on what they're shipping as far as what he they choose? >> there's no one size fits all

for shipping. it depends on what you're shipping. usps is good at lighter weight items and fedex, u.p.s., they're better at heavier weight items and sending documents. so there is no one size fits all. across the board in our customer base, what we can see, though, is that usps is the best value for money for a lot of small businesses and 98% is using usps for their shipment. >> is that because it's the good deal? this gets into our topic, this president's claim that usps undercharges for shipping. amazon in particular, he says. and i realize we're talking about small businesses. but do you feel that's the case? it's very hard to get the numbers out of the postal service to prove it one way or the other? >> the usps, it is really hard to get those numbers. i think you're right. they do have a regulatory --

their general month did you see opposite randy is they're not doing anything negative for their business. so i think generally speaking those deals, they're really, like, there is a board of oversight called the usps regulatory committee that is looking into that. on the other hand, we're looking at the usps just being a really good backbone for s & b businesses. we're not dealing with enterprise businesses such as amazon, but we're trying to bring next-level logistics to the smaller crowd in the e-commerce spa e-commerce pace. >> we talked to a lot of microfulfillment businesses taking on amazon with the quick fulfillment, the cheap if you hear. what would the loss -- let's theorize the loss of the united states postal service due to the small businesses. >> given that the majority of the smb businesses we work with,

89% is the stat i'm looking at, i woulri of smbs in the united states are using the usps for parts or even the majority of their shipments. if they can't use the usps to ship those packages, they would have to -- if the usps raises their prices, they would have to pay more for their shipping. the issue we're seeing here is that other companies that are significantly larger than smbs, enterprise companies, they're able to get access to discounted shipping rates and, therefore, offer free shipping to the consumers. these days consumers are expecting free and fast shipping from any retailer that they shop from, so smbs would suffer result given that they can't meet those customer expectations. b i have less things in my is there one piece of advice you would give people who are listening to both sides of this argument, the president, who are

also consumers as to what to think about this whole fight? >> i think right now especially given the covid crisis, the situation that's going on, we all want to support smbs. i think what a lot of people are not realizing is that the usps is the backbone for all of the smbs in the united states. every single e-commerce business needs to ship, and every business these days needs to be an online business because we just can't transact online anymore as easily as safely. so given that e-commerce businesses needs to ship and the usps is doing the most cost effective shipping for them, taking that away would be humgly damaging for the smb space. >> iwo ironic indeed if president trump made his arch enemy amazon that much stronger. she is the ceo of shippo. thank you for being with us this morning. presses here will be right back.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my best. a reminder, we have a sister podcast called "sand hill road" which takes a look at venture capital. you can find it wherever you find your podcasts. thanks for joining us.