Muse

Group health insurance can put businesses in a tough position, with rising costs and plans that don't fit everyone's needs. Now, a new form of employer coverage called an ICHRA or ICHRA can help. ICHRAs make costs predictable with stable pre-tax contributions, and they make health plans personal because each employee can pick any planning carrier that meets their needs. Get coverage you control. Learn more at ambetterhealth.com slash ICHRA.

Did you mess with my phone? Why is my connection suddenly good? We're trying T-Mobile. We switched to T-Mobile? No, we're doing a 30-day free trial.

So we're paying for two phone plans? I said it's free. We keep our phone and carrier. You download the T-Life app, and we just get to take advantage of their 5G network, some of their best benefits, perks, freebies, everything. And before you ask, they didn't ask for a credit card, credit check, don't worry.

So you did mess with my phone.

Well, yes. so you can help me make the decision to switch to America's best network.

All right, but no one messed with the thermostat. Test drive the best benefits in wireless and America's best network. Free for 30 days. Start your trial at T-Mobile.com or on the T-Life app.

Limited time subject to change. Data available for 30 days. Qualifying non-T-Mobile network user incompatible unlock device required. One per user coverage not available in some areas. See 5G device coverage and trial details at T-Mobile.com. Best mobile network in the U.S.

This episode is brought to you by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses and accounting firms scale with proven results. With AI-powered automation, Bill removes the busywork from your accounts payable workflow. They handle capturing invoices, routing approvals, and syncing with your accounting software so that your team can focus on growth instead of paperwork. Bill is so reliable, according to Bill, 98 of the top 100 accounting firms in the U.S. trusted to simplify and secure their bill payment processes. Bill's handled over a trillion dollars in secure payments and is ranked number one overall on G2's 2025 list of best accounting and finance products. So stop the guesswork and start scaling with the proven choice. Go with a company whose financial infrastructure is trusted by nearly half a million customers. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit Bill.com slash Proven and get a $150 gift card as a thank you. That's Bill.com slash Proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Back in 2016, I had the privilege of serving on the Cleveland Police Monitoring Team. The task force consisted of people from the local community and national experts from all over. Law enforcement professionals, social scientists, lawyers, and professors, all working to tackle specific challenges the Cleveland Police Department was facing. The idea was that we would pool our expertise to assist in the implementation of federally mandated reforms to the police department. Together, we asked questions like, how can there be more trust between police and local community members? How can we ensure that law enforcement doesn't violate people's constitutional rights? Obviously, these were complicated, difficult questions, but it was pretty transformational for me to see what happens when you bring a dynamic group of people together to address a major challenge like this. Our distinct points of view and past experiences made it a nuanced, thoughtful collaboration. One of the key things we implemented was regularly scheduled meetings between the police, community leaders, and community members. We held focus groups in different neighborhoods to understand their varied perceptions of the police, where changes were needed, where the police department was getting it right, and where it was getting it wrong. These small forums created an opportunity for people to feel like their voice mattered and that they were being heard in a way that wouldn't have happened in larger group settings. And some really good ideas came out of it. I'm Madhupak Inola.

This is TED Business, a podcast from TED. Our speaker today, international collaboration expert, Kahir Danani, knows we're living in a time where people across the globe are having a hard time trusting public institutions. So to meet this moment, he's saying it's time we rethink what global collaboration looks like. And instead of massive groups that mean well but move slowly, CAHIR makes the case for smaller, focused coalitions that can bring about big change and build the trust needed to tackle the world. toughest challenges. Then after the talk, how can you apply his message to your own workplace? But first, a quick break. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built HiringPro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you, so instead of sorting through applications, you can spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With HiringPro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash tedbiz, spelled B-I-Z. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by PACA. The best pieces are effortless, the ones that just feel right every time you put them on. The layer you reach for, whether you're heading out the door or settling in for the night. Lately for me, that's been my PACA hoodie. I wear it all the time now, and I think once you try it, you'll get why. PACA makes outdoor and lifestyle apparel from alpaca fiber, one of the most sustainable natural fibers on the planet. It's softer than you'd expect, warmer than wool, and breathable enough to carry you through whatever the day brings. Their signature hoodie is built for real wear, naturally odor-resistant, and easy to dress up or down. But the hoodie is just one of my favorite pieces. I've also loved their Essential Rainbow Mountain Crew Sock and the original crew sweater in blue. Both made with the same thoughtfulness and that signature alpaca softness.

To grab your Paka hoodie, go to www.pakaapparel.com. That's www.pakaapparel.com. And now, Kahir Danani takes the TED stage.

The next time you take an international trip, do me a favor. Take a look at your passport. On the cover, there's your country's coat of arms. And then you open it, and there's your photograph. The best one you've ever taken, right? On that page, there's two lines at the bottom, letters and numbers. That's called the machine-readable zone. Those two lines are magic. The product of international cooperation. Because without them, you wouldn't be able to get on that plane. You wouldn't be able to cross immigration. You wouldn't be able to travel the world, see your family. Now, what I find fascinating is that those two lines came about in 1980 when the International Civil Aviation Organization set about standardizing passports. At the beginning, only three countries adopted the standard. Today, just about every single country has that standard. This is international cooperation at its best. And it doesn't stop there. Did you know that 160 years ago, 20 countries came together to lay the foundations of our global telecommunications networks? They founded something called the International Telegraph Union, or the ITU. It's still active today, although it's moved on from the telegraph. Even in times of conflict, global cooperation continues. In the midst of the war in the Ukraine, representatives from the United States, China, Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Russia were sitting in the same room at the ITU, continuing to negotiate things like internet protocols or global digital governance. Did you know that time zones exist because of a multilateral agreement? or that green means go because of a multilateral agreement. Our lives are made better when countries collaborate. It is the infrastructure of the modern world, and we can't live without it. But today, we're facing a crisis of trust. Trust in the internet. system. I see this every day because I work with international organizations and their leaders trying to make them more effective. And I'll be the first to admit that talking about multilateralism and effectiveness in the same sentence sounds a bit complicated. Many think about these organizations and they see a mesh of red tape, or they see endless bureaucracy or political posturing. They wonder, is there any tangible impact? It's making people lose faith in international organizations. I get it. In our constantly changing world, is it any surprise that the institutions crafted around the geopolitical realities

of the end of the Second World War 80 years ago that those organizations are struggling to keep up? It's making us ask, is international cooperation even worth it? Well, I'm here to persuade you that it absolutely is. I implore you, take another look. And I give you fair warning that staying in the arena and giving multilateralism another go means one thing for sure. We cannot continue with business as usual. It is time to rethink, to reevaluate, to recalibrate how we collaborate on a global scale. And in my humble opinion, this starts with rebuilding trust. How? allow me to offer something rather provocative. We must stop insisting on inviting everybody to the meeting. Sounds a bit hard, I know, but hear me out. Imagine trying to get your slide deck together or your project budget or your memo written with 200 of your most well-meaning colleagues working with you on it. Sounds pretty difficult, right? Which is why trying to negotiate anything with 193 countries at the outset and trying to achieve global consensus on that issue will deliver one thing for certain, if anything at all. And that is the least objectionable outcome. but to rebuild trust and take on the most difficult challenges of our time we cannot settle for the least objectionable outcome we need the most ambitious the bold the transformative outcomes so let's take an alternative an augmented path forward one that is rooted in the art of diplomacy one that has served us for over a century but one which we seem to have lost. Let's unleash coalitions of the willing to show what 21st century multilateralism and cooperation can and should look like. I define coalitions of the willing as small, dynamic groups of like-minded and sometimes not so like-minded actors coming together. They can be some combination of countries from the South and the North, the East and the West. civil society organizations, academic institutions, religious organizations, and, and this is important, businesses. They come together with shared purpose, to solve a problem larger than themselves, a problem that requires genuine collaboration and co-creation to solve. Problems that require a committed group to act first and to act boldly. The coalition takes on the risk. It serves itself up as the guinea pig.

It proves the model. It makes it easy for others to join in, and it pushes the snowball down the mountain. This is how we've done diplomacy for decades. We've just forgotten. I love this example from the 1950s when banks started issuing credit cards. There was one problem. Some cards were small, some cards were large, some were made of paper, some of plastic. There was no interoperability. So a few of them came together, American Express, Diners Club, and a few others. They came together and they adopted a uniform standard for a credit card. So what you have in your wallet today is standard. It has your name and a number on the front and a metallic strip on the back. And then they worked with countries to enshrine this in the International Standards Organization. So today, when you go to a restaurant and you tap your card, or you go to an ATM machine and you take out some cash, if people still do that, you trust that it's going to work. But you don't attribute that to multilateralism or to the ISO or to a coalition of the willing. But that's how it started. imagine we had to renegotiate or start afresh negotiating what a standard credit card looks like today. What would that look like, insisting on inviting everybody to the meeting? Well, it would be an idea we put to a committee. The committee would run consultations, endless consultations with hundreds of actors, those that are super relevant and those that are less relevant. Then it would craft a convention or a resolution or a compact and put that forward for 193 countries to negotiate. There would be co-facilitators appointed to run this process. Their objective would be to reach global consensus among 193 countries. And the result? The least objectionable outcome. Which is why today we need to start with coalitions of the willing to make things work ambitiously for the future. I would be so energized to see the United Nations or other multilateral organizations invite coalitions of the willing to take on some of our most difficult challenges. AI governance, migration, food security. It's not happening at the rate we want it to happen, but it is actually happening. And I have a lot of hope. One example that gives me a lot of hope is the LEAF coalition. the lowering emissions by accelerating forest finance coalition. It started with a handful of countries that were donors, a handful of countries that had forests, a handful of

corporations, and a handful of civil society organizations. They all came together and they sat at a table, a small table, and they tried to figure out what do we do about deforestation? How do we protect biodiversity? And so they didn't wait for 200 countries to negotiate the last clause of a treaty. They acted. They put billions of dollars on the line, and they created a new market for protecting nature. And now everyone is rushing in to join that coalition. This is what 21st century multilateralism and international cooperation can and should be. And so we have a choice. Should we stay together and take this new path forward or should we walk

away? I hope we stay together. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money, and momentum. A good hire, they can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built HiringPro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you can spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With HiringPro, you can hire with confidence knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash tedbiz, spelled B-I-Z. Terms and conditions apply.

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With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply.

That was Kahir Danani at TED at BCG.

Even if you're not a global leader or a leading global expert, I think there's a lot of useful information in this talk that we can all learn from. Namely, that it might be useful to identify coalitions of the willing in your own workplace, and that smaller, more dynamic groups could solve big, unwieldy problems. So I want you to identify a problem in your organization that has long needed to be addressed. Is there a way you could devise a small coalition of the willing to address it directly? What would that look like? Who would you assemble? What kind of expertise would you pull from? And what would be the outcome you'd hope for? Sometimes this kind of advice can feel intuitive, but implementing it is a whole different matter. Hopefully, this talk feels like the first step towards making change feel possible. That's it for today. TED Business is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Hannah Kingsley-Ma, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact-checked by Julia Dickerson. Special thanks to Maria Ladias, Farah DeGrange, Daniela Ballarezzo, Tansika Sangmanivang, and Roxanne Hylash. Nola, thanks for listening.

Did you mess with my phone? Why is my connection suddenly good? We're trying T-Mobile. We switched to T-Mobile?

No, we're doing a 30-day free trial. So we're paying for two phone plans? I said it's free. We keep our phone and carrier. You download the T-Life app, and we just get to take advantage of their 5G network, some of their best benefits, perks, freebies, everything. And before you ask, they didn't ask for a credit card, credit check, don't worry.

So you did mess with my phone.

Well, yes, so you can help me make the decision to switch to America's best network.

All right, but no one messed with the thermostat. Test drive the best benefits in wireless and America's best network. Free for 30 days. Start your trial at T-Mobile.com or on the T-Life app.

Limited time subject to change. Data available for 30 days. Qualifying non-T-Mobile network user incompatible unlock device required. One per user coverage not available in some areas. See 5G device coverage and trial details at T-Mobile.com. Best mobile network in the U.S. based on analysis by Uclo Speed Test Intelligence. Data 2H 2025.

Group health insurance can challenge company budgets with large and unpredictable rate increases. Now, a new form of employer coverage called an ICHRA, or ICHRA, can help. ICHRAs make health plan expenses more predictable and affordable by tapping into a much larger risk pool. That means businesses know what to expect and what to budget. If you're tired of expensive surprises, plan on something predictable. Plan on an ICHRA. Learn more at ambetterhealth.com slash ICHRA.

With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.