Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #099_ STORY INSPIRE: Unlock Your Full Potential 🧠🔥 — The Mindset Secrets of Matthew Syed

Transcript

#099_ STORY INSPIRE: Unlock Your Full Potential 🧠🔥 — The Mindset Secrets of Matthew Syed · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: In a fixed mindset, people think that success is all
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: about talent, having the gift. A growth mindset is saying, okay,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: talent obviously matters. It's a factor, but it's not enough.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It's what we do with our talents. I wasn't the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: best table tennis player in the world. I never got
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: into the top 20 of the world rankings. But with
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: that attitude, I maximized my own potential. I think leadership
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: counts when it comes to innovation. I mean, the way
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Amazon conduct meetings, and then when they start talking, the
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: most senior person always speaks last. you'll get an unvarnished
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: access to the insights of your brilliant team, rather than
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: speaking first and everyone basically converging on what you as
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: a leader has just said. There are a lot of
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: people with truly brilliant ideas, huge potential, who never act
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: on their dreams. But having the idea doesn't mean a thing.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: You've actually got to act on that idea. Honestly, I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: think we shouldn't underestimate how damaging it can be.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Matthew Saeed. He's written some of the most important, challenging,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: thought-provoking books in the self-development, self-improvement, team development, team building,
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: company building, leadership space. And his ideas are original. They
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: are challenging. They are fresh. They are important. He was
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: an elite level sportsman. And his ideas come from the
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: world of sport, but also the world of business, from politics,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: from writing, from culture, from society. He evangelises about diverse thinking,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: about including more ideas, about challenging leadership, about challenging yourself,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: about what it takes to start, and why most people
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: spend their lives sitting on ideas that could potentially change
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: their life, but are seemingly imprisoned, trapped and blocked by
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: their own mindset. He talks about how some of the
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: most talented people in the world can fall short of
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: their potential and how some people with seemingly no talent
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: at all can achieve miraculous things. If you apply the
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: learnings from this conversation, I have no doubt that it
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: will make you a better person. It will make your
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: teams more innovative and it will lead you to living
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: a more fulfilled life. So without further ado, I'm Stephen
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Bartlett and this is The Diver's CEO. I hope nobody's listening,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Matthew,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: everyone wants to be successful. Everybody. I don't know one
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: person that doesn't want to be successful. So I think
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: it's probably quite important to define what that word means
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: under your own definition of that word. The holistic definition,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: not just a professional definition, but how would you define that?
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Well, look, it's great to be here, Steve. I think
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that's quite a deep question, quite a philosophical one.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: We're only just getting started.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I know. What kind of opening question is this? Obviously,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: as a former sports person, I was a table tennis
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: professional for a number of years. Success was defined in
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: terms of winning matches and achieving very clear, tangible objectives
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: like winning the national championships or the Commonwealth Games. But
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I think when it comes to life beyond sport, it's
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: so objective in something like the 100-meter sprint. You want
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to beat your PB. And you can see it on
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: a digital readout at the end of a race, how
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: close you've come or whether you've achieved that objective. In
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the life beyond sport, I have to say one of
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the things that is quite difficult, I think, for sports
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: people to transition is it's more elusive, more subjective, more ephemeral.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And I think it is a really difficult thing to
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: define what you personally mean by success. I'm not 100%
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: sure that I've defined it for myself yet. Have you?
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm getting closer in a professional sense. How I'd
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: answer that question is I'd say, I think I'm successful
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: in my professional life if I am striving, if I'm
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: taking on a worthwhile challenge with people I love. So
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: the key terms there are worthwhile, subjective, define it how
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: you like, challenge, which I think is integral to being
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: motivated and getting up in the morning and all the
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: emotions you need to be internally fulfilled and motivated. And
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: then with people I love, which I think is just
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: a really, which speaks to community and human interaction, which
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: I think is part of our human. Yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And yeah, look, that makes a lot of sense to me.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: I have to say one thing that given what you've
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: just said, you'll probably agree with. I think the narrow
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: way that success has sometimes been defined in Western capitalist
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: societies has been deeply mistaken, that it's all about how
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: much money you have in your bank account. And I
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: think we all know, although it's a bit of a
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: cliche to say that it doesn't provide happiness, certainly not
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: of a sustained nature. I think that that thing about
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: social interaction, the thing that makes me happiest for sure
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: is putting one's heart and soul into a project, like,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: for example, writing a book, and then getting a letter
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: from somebody who explains in their own way how it
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: has positively impacted their life. And there is no feeling
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: like that for me as a writer. And that really
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: is a powerful engine to motivate you to come up
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: with a new idea for a new book. The fact
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: that you know it has meaning for other people. Not
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that they've paid money to buy it and that money
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: has been transferred via a publisher into my bank account.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: That is much less significant. I mean, it's great if
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: you do get money for it. You can look after
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: your kids or you can do something with it. But
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: it's that feedback, that sense of making some kind of
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a difference. I mean, in a funny kind of a way,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: that's why for a long time, as I came towards
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the end of my television career, I wanted to go
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: into politics. I thought that is the place where you
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: can make the most difference, right? You've got the levers
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to do something interesting. And then I realised it was
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: not quite as fun an avenue, perhaps, as writing.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Why is it that human beings seem to get so
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: much intrinsic joy from helping others?
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I think this is of great and deep significance. Just
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: to put a historical lens on this, after the Enlightenment,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: the idea was of human beings as individuals. Individualism was
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the great goal of political life. I think we conceived
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of people as deciding to interact with other people, deciding
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: to have families. You might remember Margaret Thatcher, once said,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: there's no such thing as society. There are just individual
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: men and women and families. I mean, she had more
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: to say after that. It wouldn't be fair to say
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: that was her entire philosophy by any means. I think
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: she was a great prime minister in many ways. But
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: if you actually go back deeper in human history, when
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: our ancestors lived at the same time as the Neanderthals,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the Neanderthals had probably bigger brains than us. They may
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: have been individually smarter. But humans lived in tighter, more
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: socially connected groups. What does that mean? It means if
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: somebody learns something useful, they can share it with one
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: of their kin. And therefore, they can also share it
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: with their children. They can get a cross-pollination of ideas.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: They can bring ideas together. And then it gets passed
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: down the generations. And it was that sociality that conferred
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a competitive advantage on our ancestors above Neanderthals. It is,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I think, our distinctive quality. We are social beings to
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: an extent greater, I think, than any others, except the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: insects like ants who, for slightly different evolutionary reasons, cooperate
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: at scale.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And there's an element of virtue signalling social media that
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: sort of seems to have exacerbated this amongst my generation
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: in particular, who all seem to want to change the world,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: but can't necessarily tell you what they want to change.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: They just want to be a person that's changed the world.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. That's interesting because about a decade ago, I
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: started looking at, you know, now I'm, I believe it
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: or not, 50. You look great. Well, I was going
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to say, do you remember Oil of Ulay?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: No.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: That's probably the slightly older people will remember. I don't
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: use that, by the way. But I started looking at
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: how aspirations have changed since I was in my childhood.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So when I was at university, everyone wanted to work
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: for the UN. That was kind of considered the great
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: sort of panacea of life. But 10 years ago, a
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: lot of people were saying in surveys of young people,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: what do you want to do in life? What do
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: you want to be in life? And the answer was famous.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Famous. Not to have a body of work that gives
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: you fame. You want to walk down the red carpet
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: having created an amazing film. But no, they just wanted
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the red carpet. And I thought that was... That was
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: a dangerous thing. And I'm sure there's been a correction
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: since then, but I think the obsession.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: There's been no correction. And I think maybe in some
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: respects it's got worse. It's a real phenomenon I've noticed
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: in my generation where after I'll come off stage doing
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: a public speech, whatever, the kids will come up to
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: me and say, I want to be a public speaker too.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, I never wanted to be. I pursued
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: my desire to start a business and a by-product of
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: that was they pay me to speak on stage now.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: And fame also, in my view, should be a byproduct
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: of the pursuit of something that's intrinsically important to you, right?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, 100% correct. And that's why the obsession with fame
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is a massive danger, I think, to a culture. The
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: thing about speaking, so a completely unintended side effect of
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: writing my first book. So I'm finishing table tennis and
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I'm like, what am I going to do with the
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: rest of my life? How am I going to define success?
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And I decide to write this book in 2000, when
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: did it come out?
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: 2010, called Bounce.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And An unintended side effect was being invited to give
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a speech at a big corporation, an investment bank, an
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: American investment bank. And obviously, as an ex-ping-pong player, I'm thinking,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: what is going on here? Imposter syndrome. And also, I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: went to a school, I went to a comp. We
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: didn't do any, almost no public speaking. We learned stuff.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: We learned things in the classroom. But the idea of
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: getting up and speaking in front of an audience was
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: kind of very alien. So I wasn't that good, right?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Because I hadn't practiced that. I'd never done it before.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: And I came off the stage and I thought, you
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: know what? I'm just not cut out for this. If
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I'm invited again to give a talk to a company,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I'll just politely decline. Then I thought, and it took
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: me about 48 hours to think, what a ridiculous way
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: to hijack my own development. If you actually had the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: right attitude, if you had the right mindset, You can
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: probably learn these skills and take advantage of these brilliant
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: opportunities because you always learn, don't you, when you go
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: and speak at an organization. So I Googled public speaking
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: practice and the first hit was called Toastmasters. And this
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: is like a global network of just public speaking clubs
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: where other normal people, um, go to the club to
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: develop social confidence. And the one nearest me in Richmond
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: was in Twickenham, just over the bridge. And there was
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Franco who worked at Lloyd's on the high street. Just
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a group of normal people. And you'd give a speech,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: they'd give you feedback. And the mentoring was a really
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: important part of it because you need a bit of
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: feedback and what you could have done better. And then
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: about two-thirds of the way through, there's something called table
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: topics where somebody writes a list of topics on cards,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: but no one else in the room knows what they are.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: So you have to go to the front, you pick
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it up, and then turn around and spontaneously talk for
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a minute about On whatever topic. The first one I
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: ever did was the Natural History Museum. You know, that's terrifying, right?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: You're not used to it. But you learn and you
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: develop that skill. So learning how to speak publicly, it
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: took me three or four years. And I'm not saying
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I'm brilliant at it now by any means, but my goodness,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: how much better when you have a can-do attitude towards it.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: And that brings us to the topic of mindset, really nicely.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: You know, I've heard you talk about having a growth
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: mindset and a fixed mindset. What is the difference between
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: the two?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: So I think, thank you, for what it's worth, I
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: think this contrast is so important. I mean, I can
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: talk about it through my own life, but in a
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: fixed mindset, people think that success, however defined, is all
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: about talent, having the gift, having the genetic inheritance, having
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the personality trait in order to excel. A growth mindset
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: is saying, okay, talent obviously matters.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: It's a factor.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: But it's not enough. It's what we do with our talents.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: So people in a fixed mindset have two massive risks. One,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: they think they're so talented, they don't even need to try.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: So think of a young person who's just been invited
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to join the Manchester United Academy. And they're suddenly getting
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: money into their bank account. They're able to buy the
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: fast car. And they think, I'm God's gift. And the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: amount of academy coaches who have come to me and said,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: we don't understand it. We had this hardworking youngster. We
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: invited them into the academy. And then they just went
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: off the rails. It's a fixed mindset. They think their
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: success is assured, so they stop putting in the hard
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: yards and don't transition into the first team. So that's
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: one danger. The other danger is people who don't think
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: they're God's gift, but like me at Goldman Sachs, you
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: make one failure and you interpret that as meaning, I
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: obviously don't have talent, therefore I'm just going to give up.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Do you see what I mean?
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's the negative version.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've got the, I'm super, talent is everything.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: And I've got it, so therefore I don't need to try.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Talent is everything. I don't have it, therefore I should
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: give up. They're both terribly damaging, I think. A growth mindset,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that we think we're all going to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: be the best speaker in the world. I wasn't the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: best table tennis player in the world. I never got
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: into the top 20 of the world rankings. But with
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that attitude, I maximized my own potential. And going back
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: to your thing about success, that's not a bad definition,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: now I think about it, to try and be the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: best that we can be in our own lives. doesn't
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: mean we're going to be the best who ever lived.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Not everyone can be Muhammad Ali or Serena Williams or
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Albert Einstein, but to be the best we can be,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I think it's something wonderful. And just from my own perspective,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I think trying to feel one's own potential, going on
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: a journey that has some meaning, there's something wonderfully uplifting,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: something satisfying about that too.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: I really like the combination of those two ideas, this
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: idea of being the best you can be but realizing
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: that it's a pursuit towards something that you may never
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: get to, right? So the journey and the journey towards
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: being the best you can be at something which has
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: a lot of meaning to you. Maybe that's the definition
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: we were looking for.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I think that point you make about the journey is really,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: really important. What was it? I think it was Robert
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Louis Stevenson said, to travel is a better thing than
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to arrive. In a weird kind of way, I can
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: say I talked about trying to win the nationals, but
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: First of all, in the nationals, I remember winning, going home.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I was living on my own in a flat in Richmond.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And I got home and I thought, is that it?
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? The fun was actually the
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: training and the camaraderie with my practice partners and seeing
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: those small improvements through time.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's consistent with most high-performance athletes and business people.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: And I was reading this piece, and I think it
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: was in The Telegraph, about Olympic depression. where you have
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: the Olympians who train for the Olympics, and whether they
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: get a gold medal, like Michael Phelps, who fell into depression,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: or whether they lose, either way, the outcome is they
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: just lose orientation in their life. And this is why I,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: and also I felt it myself when a company came
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: along when I was 24 and offered to buy my company.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: And I go home, look at Rightmove, look at all
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: the cars I can buy and everything. And I feel
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: this sense of emptiness and like, but then what? What's
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: my life without this? And genuinely, that was like an
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: existential crisis because it was like, I can't sell this thing,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: but the insecure broke kid in me thought he was
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: doing this to sell this thing. And it was just
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: this really, you know.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: I think one of the deep paradoxes of the human mind,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, the sense of anticlimax when one achieves a
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: long cherished ambition, I want to be a millionaire, I
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: want to buy an Aston Martin, I want to win
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the Olympic gold medal. I remember talking to Victoria Pendleton Oh, yeah,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the Olympian. The cyclist, the Olympian. You live with this ambition.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: It's what gets you out of bed in the morning, right?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I want to win the Olympic gold. When you're on
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: the track, she was explaining, it's what makes you push
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: harder because you've got this goal, this destination that's pulling you,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: this magnet pulling you towards it. Then when you get it,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: you wake up the next day and what on earth
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: is getting you out of bed? What's causing you to
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: push yourself? That's one of the reasons I think people
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: who make money very quickly face massive, many, not all,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and this is well-documented cycle. I mean, you'll know about
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: the people who win lotteries, whose marriages can end, who
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: end up in often depression. I mean, that's not a cliche.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: This is well-established. And I think it's because you get
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: something and then it's like, what is left to pursue
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: in life? I do some interviews for the Times, sports stars,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and I mentioned Victoria Pendleton, Billie Jean King.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Exactly the same. David Beckham, Ryan Giggs. I mean, I've interviewed,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: you know, most of the, Ronaldo, most of the leading,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: many of the leading sports people, and it's the same story.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: And I think what I've noticed is that, as you did,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that capacity to take a step back and to say,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: you know what? I'm feeling low, feeling empty. I need
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: to find something else that's going to galvanize me. And
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that's what gets people back on.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: And I think the antidote is being aware of that.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: And because then now when I achieve things in my life,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: I don't come into those achievements with this expectation of
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: exponential joy. And so I can almost enjoy it more.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, no, I totally get that. I'm trying to think. Look,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: just one of the things that I've noticed from my
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: own personal life is the more busy I've got, sometimes
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: you don't take enough time to take a step back
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: and to say, you know, this was a great thing
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: that happened, or to be in the moment when something
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: is happening with one. Do you have kids? No. No,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: with one's children or wife or partner or whatever. And
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I think I'm slowly … I write books on this stuff,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: but I'm learning all the time. And that's one of
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the reasons I want to do the podcast. When I
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: read about you, I thought you've had such a different
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: set of experiences to me. I'll learn a lot from
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: you too.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: We've now had two subscribers come in and watch from
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes. We're going to start picking more. So
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: all you've got to do, if you want that to
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: be you, is hit the subscribe button. Let's talk about
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: failure then, something you talk about at great length. I
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: tend to believe that a lot of the reason why
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: people don't reach their potential, however we define that, is
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: because They are risk adverse. And failure is something they
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: just can't, their self-esteem just can't bear.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I think that's true. My own sense is that this
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: has been exacerbated by the social media. So you tell
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: me how the social media, it may have changed a
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: lot since I've wrote my first book for young people.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: But at the time, psychologists had come up with this
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: concept of the curse of perfectionism. And their thesis was
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: that young people are obviously now on the social media
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: a lot more And a lot of people, when they're
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: putting together their social media posts, they do it in
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: such a way as to make their lives look really good.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: This is the holiday I just had on this wonderfully
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: sunny beach. And they might even airbrush photos to make
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: themselves look better. And this is my wonderful performance on
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: the piano. And the problem is people then start to
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: think that success is about looking and acting in a
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: perfect way. That's massively problematic because why would you want
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to try anything new, which is inherently a risk? If
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: you're doing something the first time, you're obviously not going
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: to be perfect. And if you do mess up, you
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: draw the conclusion. It goes back to the fixed mindset.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: You draw the conclusion, well, I'm obviously not talented enough
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: because I haven't nailed it the first time around. I
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: think this was also bolstered by, and you're on reality
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: television now, I think reality television, the idea of instant success,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: instant gratification. overnight elevation into the heavens. And if particularly
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: young people think that success is like that, they don't
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: realize the incremental steps you need to take to fulfill
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: your potential. Because as you know, most businesses succeed because,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know whether you're familiar with the American jargon,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: but you get a minimum viable product, you test the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: value proposition early, you find out the inevitable deficiencies in
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: the prototype or the piece of software, And then you
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: make adaptations. In Silicon Valley, they call it failing fast.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: In other words, they're failing fast in order to get
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to a better answer. If you stop the first time
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: you fail, or if you don't try at all, you're
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: never going to get to an answer. If you think
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of the history of science, science is the most successful
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: human institution because scientists, by and large, are willing to
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: test their hypotheses. You know, they test it, they look
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: at the empirical evidence, and they change it in the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: light of what the evidence is telling them. That is
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the basic pattern of science. And I think the problem,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: as you alluded to, is that if young people are like,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: goodness me, I don't want to look anything other than perfect,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: it destroys their capacity to grow and to have a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: life of fulfillment. Because J.K. Rowling put it brilliantly. She said,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the only way never to fail is never to try.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: But then your life is a failure. Because you've just
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: stayed in your comfort zone the whole time.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: I see that. I resonate with all of that so much.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: And specifically this idea, I love the science analogy because
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: seeing it as a hypothesis, you're right, in science, you
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: start with a hypothesis, you're not romantic about it, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: then you go and pursue it and you agnostically go
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and test it. Whereas what you're saying is, you know,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: young people or ambitious people generally will start with a
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: hypothesis and they will long in need for it to
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: be perfectly correct. That's right. And this is also why
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: businesses fail because founders just, they just do everything. And
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: I failed in my first business for many years because
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: of that, because I was obsessed, romantic about my hypothesis
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: being correct, not romantic about the outcome, which was trying
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: to be a successful person.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's really, really significant. And I think that's
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: a great way of framing it. Look, By the way,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: some scientists fall in love with their theories, and they
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: can't adapt it. I mean, there's been a few examples
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: during the pandemic. And by the way, I don't know
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: if listeners are interested in this, but there's a brilliant
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: study by Philip Tetlock, who's an American psychologist, and he
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: looked at forecasters, so people trying to predict next year's
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: GDP or oil price or other things of this kind,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and he found a really interesting pattern, that the highest
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: reputation forecasters who are on television the most on average,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: make the worst predictions. And can you see what is
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: an error of ego? An error of prediction is an
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: opportunity to adapt the model in order to make it
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: more predictive in the long run. But if you've been
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: on the TV and you're supposed to be the god
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: of forecasting, you start defending your prior assumptions. And so
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: people who have an ego that gets in the way
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: of hypothesis testing, they are brilliant at creative self-justification. I
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: think the people who are most dangerous to companies and
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: innovation are intelligent, highly talented people in a fixed mindset.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: They're just inveterate obstacles to making the changes you need
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to change in order to get the business to where
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: you want to go to or where you want the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: economic model to get to and so on. So I
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: think it's the same in meetings. As you know, I'm
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: very interested in how businesses succeed and the forum in
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: which we take most key decisions are meetings. because no
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: one person has a monopoly on truth, so you want
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: to talk to other people. But these can be really
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: ineffective if people think that when someone challenges you, they're
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: insulting you. They're not. They're testing your hypothesis. We should
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: think of meetings as mutual hypothesis testing so that we
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: can collectively get to the best strategy or idea. I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: think when you frame it in that way, you take
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the stigma out of challenge and dissent and failure.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Let's challenge that then. So if we've got a meeting,
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: we've got five, 10 people around this table, we've got
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: an intern over there, we've got the CEO there, got managers,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: directors around the table, one new person, one person's been
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: here for 10 years. You've got all these different sort
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: of dynamics of people trying to get promotions, get a
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: pay rise. Oh my God, the CEO's at the table.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be an idiot. I don't want
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: to say anything dumb, you know, and all of those
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: like dynamics. How do you get those dynamics out of
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: the way and just become focused on Letting the best
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: idea win.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Right. So this is really well studied. I think the
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: thing to try and really convey is how dangerous the
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: dynamics you've described can be. Because what tends to happen
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: in a very hierarchical organization where the CEO or the
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: team leader has discretion over pay and promotion is that
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: people don't say what they think. They say what they
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: think the leader wants to hear. That's fine if the
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: leader knows everything there is to know because you're just
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: basically ventriloquizing. So in a simple environment, you don't need
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to have a team, right? You just have the leader
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: make a decision and everyone. But when it's a difficult,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: complex decision, in other words, the ones that confer a
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: competitive advantage on a business, the leader needs to hear
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the different perspectives to make a better judgment. But the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: extent to which this happens, a good example is in aviation.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So I'll describe a classic case in the– aviation is
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: a great– area to study, by the way, when it
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: comes to team dynamics. So this is United Airlines 173.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And it's a flight that took off out of Denver,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Colorado in December 1978. And it's flying to Portland in Oregon.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: And as a plane's coming in on the final approach,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: the pilot pulls the lever to lower the landing gear.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, when you're in the cabin, you hear
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: it go down and clicks into place. But on this occasion,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: there's this really loud bang, the plane kind of deviates
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and And the light that should illuminate on the dashboard
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to show that the wheels are down, it hasn't gone on.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: So the pilot doesn't know if the wheels are down.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: It's pitch black, so they can't ask air traffic control
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: to look up. So he puts the plane into a
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: holding pattern above suburban Portland. Then they try and troubleshoot
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the issue. So the first thing is the engineer. So
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: in these days, the cockpit had a captain, a co-pilot,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and an engineer. The engineer goes into the cabin. And
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: on this particular model of aircraft, when the wheels are down,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: two bolts shoot up above the wings. The bolts are up,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: but they're still not 100% sure, right? And you want
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: to know if the wheels are down before you come in.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: So the pilot, they radio to the manufacturer, and they're
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: kind of explaining what's happened. The manufacturer's like, yeah, we
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: think the wheels are down, but we're not sure. Then
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the pilot's like, I wonder if the reason that the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: light didn't go on in the dashboard is because of
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: faulty wiring. So he starts playing around with the light,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and the plane's still in the holding pad. as they're
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: doing all of these different checks. But at this point,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: another safety critical issue has come into play. The plane's
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: running out of fuel, right? And the engineer knows that
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the plane is running out of fuel because he can
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: see it going down to zero on the dials, right?
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: He has a big incentive to tell the pilot that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the plane is running out of fuel because otherwise he
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: will die. So you have this juxtaposition between of objective
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: information and maximum incentive. But in the 1970s, it was
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: a command and control culture. You know, the pilot was,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: do you know what I mean?
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: The pilot was deemed to be the boss, the omniscient controller,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and the other two were supposed to basically carry out
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that controller's instructions. And they called the pilot sir. It
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: was almost always a man, right? And so imagine, if
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the engineer says to the pilot, now, why do we
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: have a team? We have a team because no one
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: person has all of the information. They're narrow in their
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: perceptual bandwidth. Other things are happening at the same time.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: But if the engineer says to the pilot, you know what,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: we're running out of fuel, the implication is the pilot
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: didn't know that already. The pilot might get offended. Isn't
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: he supposed to know everything? And we know... From this
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and many other incidents, in that situation, we don't speak
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to each other directly. We don't test hypotheses directly. We
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: code our language. We mitigate our speech. And from the
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: voice recorder, from the black box, we know that the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: engineer said, instead of, we need to land because we're
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: running out of fuel, critical information for the pilot. to
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: make the right strategic decision he said oh we're kind
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of getting low on fuel here and the pilot because
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of the insinuation he knows everything wasn't even listening so
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the plane crashes but not just that plane a number
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: of incidents in the 1970s of exactly the same kind
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: happened because communication was so skewed by this very steep hierarchy.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: It happens in surgical operating theatres famously, where nurses can't
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: speak up because they're worried, if I say something, this
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: is the surgeon, you know, the big cheese. And we
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: know from, you know, for what it's worth, from randomised
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: controlled trial evidence, Lee Thompson at North Western University, meetings
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: are a catastrophe, the vast majority of them. Absolute disaster.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: People are not sharing information. They're basically playing a political
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: game to curry favor with the boss. So the short
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: answer is you need what's called psychological safety. I hate
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the jargon. All that means is an environment where everyone
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: feels they can be candid and they can say what
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: they really think and hypotheses are tested. When Google did
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: a big data analysis of its most successful software development teams,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: psychological safety was the biggest predictor. of success because it
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: means you're getting that uh interplay of ideas that's so important.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because you know these big companies well big
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: companies by by definition i guess have more ideas right
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: but they are often the least innovative exactly and that
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: seems like a bit of a it should be the
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: other way around you would one would think that the
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: biggest companies would be the most innovative because they have
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: more brains more ideas but they're just.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: That's right Yeah, that's an interesting point you make there.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: You're right. Well, let's think about that. What would generate
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: good ideas? It's the number of ideas, not the number
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: of people. If you have an organization with a very
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: homogenous culture, very command and control, a lot of sociological convergence,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: you might have 10,000 people all thinking the same way.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've seen professional services companies where you see
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: the senior leadership team. And they may look a bit different,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: but they're all absolutely thinking exactly the same way. They've
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: been there so long. That's a big danger for companies. See,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: with cities, you increase the size of cities, they become
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: more innovative. Companies get less innovative because they get so
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: much convergence. They have a lot of people, but they
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: think in the same way. It's an echo chamber, basically, right?
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Whereas startups, sometimes a startup might be an idea that's
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: completely off the beaten track, and then suddenly you've got
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: this opportunity to scale. But even with startups, often when
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: they go public, they start to lose their capacity to innovate.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And I think that's why I've written a book on it.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: You need a culture of diversity so that you begin
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: to protect and value the diverse ideas that enable an
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: organization to anticipate future disruptions and come up with new innovations.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Talk to me about creating a culture of diversity in
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: your organization. in your business then if you're starting a company,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: if you're running a company at scale, how would you
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: increase the diversity of ideas?
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, so the, the most important for me, the
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: most important thing by far is landing the argument as
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to why it matters. A lot of people don't think
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: it matters. I mean, I remember going to an HR
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: conference and the, the, the, the speaker was talking about
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: diversity is a wonderful thing. You've all need more of it. And,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: It will always help you do better as an organization.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: And this really awkward customer at the back said, can
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I ask a question? And they're like, yeah, okay. Imagine
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I am the coach of an Olympic sprint relay team.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: And suppose I've got Usain, who was the fastest person
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: in the world at the time, was Usain Bolt. Suppose
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I've got Usain Bolt in my team. And suppose, hypothetically,
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I had cloning technology so I could clone Usain Bolt,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: have four Usain Bolts in my 4x100 relay team. There's
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: no diversity in that team. But they're all very fast, right?
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: If you said you need to diversify your team, that
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: would mean hiring slower runners. I don't want to do
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: that as an Olympic coach. And it was like the
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: air in the room had been punctured. And everyone was like,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: that's an awful thing to say.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: But he was right.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: That question was right. In simple activities, diversity of opinion,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: cognitive diversity doesn't help you. If it's obvious what to do,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: why would you want diversity? If you've already got a solution,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a canned solution, you just need to scale it. You
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: don't need diversity. But when there's a complex environment, that
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: logic turns on its head. So if you imagine, for example,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: you've got five people each one of whom has one
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: brilliant idea. You might think you have five brilliant ideas,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: but if they all have the same idea, you've only
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: got one. All you need is two different ideas and
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: suddenly you've tripled, 300% increase in the creativity of that group.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: That's where cognitive diversity matters. And if your mission is
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: to solve complex problems, diversity is the cornerstone of how
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: well you do it. And once you land that argument,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: people start to... At the moment, people say... too many
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: people think diversity is a politically correct box ticking exercise.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: And when diverse voices come in, they're condescended to, they're
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: not properly included. Once you realise it's a strength, organisations
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: start to harness it to do the great things that
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: they want to do.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: I can imagine that organisations don't, typically organisations don't know
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: what they don't know and they don't, they don't know
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: what they don't have as well. So if you, do
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: you see what I mean? It's like an unknown. So
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: when the board, when these like, let's say we've got,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: six white 60 year old board members sat around a
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: table of a company that's really successful. And then they go,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: you know, what's their incentive to hire? They think we've
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: been doing great. We're all very smart. You smart. Yeah,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I'm smart. Yeah. You smart. Yeah, I'm smart. Yeah. And like,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: how would you make the case to them that they
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: need to hire a black woman and that's going to
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: help when they've just been killing the game with these
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: six white men. Right.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: So again, you're absolutely right to ask the question. It
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: depends on the context. Let's say, for example, the organization
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: is an advertising company and they've traditionally been selling to
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: white middle-aged men who think rather as they do. If
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: they only want to sell to white men, then there
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: may be no advantage in hiring somebody with a different perspective.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: if they're seeking to broaden their capacity to sell to
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: people from different demographics, they won't have the tacit knowledge
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: that they need in order to do it. If you
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: think of the CIA, they hired brilliant analysts in the
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: post-war period, and they thought they were the best intelligence
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: agency in the world. But a lot of the information
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: was obviously confidential. It's only now we can see how
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: awful they were, because almost everyone, almost 100% of their
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: analytical team were white, middle-class, West Coast people. Anglo-Saxon, Protestant,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: liberal arts graduates. Nothing wrong with that background, right? But
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: if you're trying to assess threats emerging from around the world,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, how would you possibly understand the probability
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: of a conglomeration of different nations falling apart if you've
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: been brought up in a stable middle-class family in America?
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: How are you going to understand tribals? sectarianism and the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: risks of radicalization in the Middle East when you come
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: from that background. When the UK joined the coalition to
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: invade Iraq, there was a genuine view that you impose
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: democratic institutions and it will work effectively. There was no
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: real understanding of the history of Iraq and how those
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: institutions would be hijacked by sectarian interests because these guys
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: had gone to university, they'd learned all sorts of interesting things,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: but they had no deep understanding of the dynamics in
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: that country. So if I was talking to, for example,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: the Director General of the CIA, I would be explaining,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: you know what you know. But in the complex world,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: there's stuff that you don't know. There's stuff that people
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: who think like you don't know. Be creative about how
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you optimize the diverse insights that can help you do
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the job you want to do. Now, if it was
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the CIA, demographic diversity is critical. You need to have
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: people from different backgrounds who have had different experiences in
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: order to understand emerging threats. For an advertising team, it
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: would be different. For a team of economic forecasters, I
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: can tell you what it would look like mathematically. You
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: want highly accurate individual forecasters whose models generate diverse predictions.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Because when you average them, you get an incredibly– it's
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: called the wisdom of the crowds. So there are ways
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: to do it. I mean, there are tools that we
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: use with our clients to make this work. And for
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: what it's worth, the really– obviously– slightly self-serving thing to say,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: but I think most of the innovative organizations are thinking
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: exactly what you've just said. We need to figure out
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: what it is that we don't know quickly, have some
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: tenuous sense so we can start plugging these blind spots. Right.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: And on that point of innovation, which we touched on,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: what are the, so running a business, running a global business,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: as it scaled, I could see that we were getting
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: less innovative. You kind of get complacent, you build teams,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: you get, you know, your teams get more comfortable with
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: how it's always been done. And then just getting them
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: to disrupt themselves becomes increasingly difficult. Especially when more people
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: get involved, things seem to slow down. Someone goes on
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: annual leave. And then you've, so you've got a new
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: innovative idea. You put it on an email thread. It
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: stumbles around. the email thread for four months. Nobody's incentivized
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: to do that because they're all getting paid to do
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: their current job. And you don't typically have like an
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: innovation team. So when it's everybody's job, it's nobody's job.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: These are all probably, you know, and then these are,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: and then you talk about failure as well. People aren't
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: incentivized to fail in big organizations. What are the parameters
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: or the factors or the dynamics of a team that
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: does innovate?
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: So I think, look, I think that's all right. And
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's a bandwidth issue. I mean, you talked
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: about a team that's been successful thus far. I mean,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: take the legal profession, which have used the billable hour
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: for a very long time, have done a particular, and
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: they're busy and they're making money. But I hope that
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: it's not a particularly unique insight to say that many
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: of these legal firms will be out of business in
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: a decade if they don't leverage machine learning and AI
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: in all sorts of different ways and start to disrupt
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: their own business. So you can carry on being busy
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: whilst your equity value is about to disappear. So unless
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: one is able to say not just we need to
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: be doing things well for our clients and doing what
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: we've always done effectively, but we need to also be
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: thinking about how we do things differently and better. You
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: may well be busy. You may well have satisfied customers,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: but it just takes one competitor to innovate and you're
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: out of the game. So I think that that is
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a good way to focus minds on sparing some bandwidth
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: to that question of innovation. So it doesn't just get dropped.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: It's tough, right? Because that often means a change in personnel.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And nobody likes that idea in big organizations. I think
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: this is about some of the big advertising groups. They
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: call them the big six. And the big six have
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: been around, some of them, one of them in particular
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: has been around for a hundred years doing advertising. What
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: are the big six? Like WPP, Publicis, those kind of,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: those big. And I was thinking, you know, in their
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: executive teams, you've got people that have been there for 20,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: 30 years. Then this thing called social media comes along
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: and they're thinking, oh my God, so it's not billboards
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: anymore and TV. Where does that leave me? And I'm
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: not going to know what TikTok and Snapchat are. And
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: the threat of having to replace oneself, I think often,
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: and your ego often means that you go down with
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: the Titanic.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And for what it's worth, you see this in
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: many different areas. So I think, do you admire Amazon
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: as a company?
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Admire? Yeah. I mean, in some ways, not in others.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they should pay more tax.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, what they've done is just staggering.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Right, but I mean, I think, so I think leadership
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: counts sometimes when it comes to innovation. I mean, he's
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: obviously no longer CEO, but I think if you read
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos's letters to shareholders, they're all about the stuff
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: that we've been talking about.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Failure, experimentation.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable commitment. You know, we talked about the meetings, you know,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: dissent and then commit. Almost all of the I mean,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the way Amazon conduct meetings, they will, as you know,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: they'll read the agenda item in silence so that every
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: single person is bringing an independent perspective to bear on
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: what are the risks of this? What might make it?
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: How could it be improved? What might make it fail?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: And then when they start talking, the most senior person
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: always speaks last. You'll get an unvarnished access to the
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: insights of your brilliant team. rather than speaking first and
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: everyone basically converging on what you as a leader has
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: just said. So they have a range of ways of
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: trying to ensure they sustain. But, you know, Amazon will
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: probably struggle, but they've done well so far. And I
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: think it's a good case study of how to sustain it.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: But I've got to say, honestly, one of the things
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I'm most interested in is, you know, I mentioned I'm 50.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I'm totally bewildered by social media. And you obviously, you
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: inhabit it. Right? That world. You know it. You've got
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: a nuanced, granular understanding of the whole thing.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Imagine you're me.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: So now, what do, you know, I don't know. I
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: don't have the faintest idea of how to youthfully engage
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: with the social. I came to Twitter late. My tweets
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: are rubbish. I mean, look, if anyone's following me, thank you.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: But I know I'm not very good at it. But
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: it's an alien world for me. And I've never been
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: on Facebook.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: So we're speaking. Sorry? So we're speaking.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: So what should I do? How do I learn?
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: How did you learn to speak?
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Toastmasters.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Well, it's a similar thing.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: But it isn't though, because is it?
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When I did my first public talk when I
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: was 14, and I always say this, I was speaking
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: in front of like parents' evening. I'm shaking. My hands
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: are sweating so much and this paper's shaking so much.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: I realised I'm not going to be able to read
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: the piece of paper because it's moving too much. So
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I just made up the speech. And it's a similar
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: thing with Twitter. You just said, I'd done my first tweet,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: awful tweets. And then you're like, it sounds like you quit.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Or you were disincentivised?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I'm still there, but I don't do it very much. Actually,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I say that. I've probably done a few thousand tweets,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: but I came to it late, and I still feel that... Okay,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: let me ask you this. If you had to summarise
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: what you know about the social media and how one
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: engages with it, how one wants one's articles to be read,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: is it impossible to encapsulate that in a minute?
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: I would say... So what I do... professionally, what used
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: to do professionally is I'd go and do these talks
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: telling people all about social media, all the tips, tricks, techniques, algorithms,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: all the psychology and really explaining it to them. And
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: then I'd end my talk by telling them that everything
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: I've just told them probably won't be the case in
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: three to six months because it changes so much. And
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: what that therefore means is the only way to know
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: what I know is to play with the toy as
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: often as you can. And so this is why I
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: say to people when they come up to me and say,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: how do I become a social media expert? I say
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: to them often, like, name something you're interested in. They'll go,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, cars. I'll say, go make
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: a car Instagram page and run it. Because then it
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: puts you in the trenches and it makes, it puts
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: you in a growth moment or. So I, and it's
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: just practice and it's, that's all it is. So. If
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: you want to become a master of this thing, that's
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: constantly changing. And there's 10 updates to the top four
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: social media apps every single week. Then you have to
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: have a reason to be showing up. Life has to
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: be giving you a reason to show up every day
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: and open it up and look at it and perform
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: these iterative tests, which give you this feedback loop. So
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: for me, the real savior for me as a social
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: media CEO, and most of the things I went on
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: to sell to clients were learnings that I got from
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: two places. The first is, in my company, I create
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: this thing called Ever Changing Landscape. Very, very simple, internal group.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Everybody shares everything they know every day. Oh my God,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I've just seen TikTok have launched this new button, goes
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: into the group. We then text it to all of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: our employees at 9 a.m. in the morning, every morning
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: on WhatsApp. So, and it's this constant loop of what's new,
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: what's changing. Our mantra as a company became keeping brands
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: at the forefront of what's possible. But that slogan appreciates
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: the fact that there's a marketing director shitting themselves because
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: it's changing every day. And they want to be at
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: the forefront of what's possible, but they're shitting. So it
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: feels like two jigsaw pieces. I'm shitting myself because this
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: thing's changing. You're saying you're going to keep me at
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: the forefront of what's possible, which is going to make
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: me look good to the CEO. We're going to help
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: your social chain. And the second thing that kept me
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: at the very forefront and made me good at social
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: media is I run my personal brand on social media,
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: which means that on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, every day, I'm
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: either tweet and I've got a team that helped me now,
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: but I'm tweeting. I'm looking at the numbers, doing a post,
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: looking in the comments. Okay. That didn't go well. Click
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: on the insights button. Loads of people seem to share
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: this one. Why is that? Oh, maybe that's because there's
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: eight posts and getting all the subtitles. Oh my God.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Look at the retention number. When we did subtitles, the
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: retention is so much higher. Click on the insights. Oh
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: my God. Look. So when we do that at the
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: start of the video, 80% of people fall off in
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: the first five seconds of all of my videos. So
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: I've got to do something special in the first five seconds.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: And it's that constant learning over 10 years, then people
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: call you an expert. It's not, I've just been playing
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: with a toy longer.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that, I mean, it's great to hear you
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: say that, because I think that's the pattern of learning
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: in pretty much all fields.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Every field in all aspects of life.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's science, right? You're getting the iterative feedback.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: And the more granular the feedback, I mean, if you know...
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: that people are switching off the video after five seconds
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: or ten seconds, that's better than just knowing that 50%
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: dropped off over the total time. So it's the granularity
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: and speed and objectivity of that feedback. So playing with it,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: do you think that, so you may think this is
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: a cop-out, but say you're, you know, here's me now
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: trying to get, if you're a writer and you obviously
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: got a lot going on, in terms of coming up
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: with a new book. Do you think it's outsourced? I mean, obviously,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: you could outsource it to a brilliant person to do.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: You could outsource it to a brilliant person to do.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: A lot of charlatans, a lot of snake oil salesmen.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: So it's fine. How do you know what's good when
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: you don't know what's good?
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Well, that's one of the reasons.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: As it happens... I have tried to do that, and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: I've had a number of proposals, and I'll check with
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: you at the end of this podcast.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, fine. That's what we'll do in exchange. I'll help
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: you find someone that is actually good.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: That's the quid pro quo, right? You can have a
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: lovely cup of tea. There you go. What I would
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: say is....
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: You can learn one channel, one or two channels with
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: no matter how busy you are. Um, and if you
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: do learn one or two channels, the impact it will
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: have on your business, your, as an author, as a, as,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: as a, you know, someone that, um, shares their ideas
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: with the world and creates blogs is tremendous. You only
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: have to learn one or two channels better than 95%
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: of people. And to do that, you just need to
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: use it every other day. And if I was you,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: I'd be thinking Twitter, I'd be thinking it depends. Medium
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: is an interesting one. I'm going to give you three. Twitter, LinkedIn,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: and Medium. I wouldn't bother with Instagram if I was you.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: If you're a Super easy to learn. And I know
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: that sounds like really, of course I'll say that because
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: I like, but those two platforms I think will have
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: a exponential impact on your business.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: It's interesting. So, so somebody in my office handles the
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: LinkedIn and Instagram, but I've not really been on them
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: enough and love. So look, this is really, really, really helpful.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: Do you think that social media has been a force
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: for good in the world? Because it's difficult. I mean,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you've been following the news on
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: that the last, well, you probably have the last 48 hours.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: But I see, you know, we talked a bit earlier
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: about how we can converge with people who think the
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: same as us. And we've obviously seen that on certain
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: types of social media where you get these echo chambers, Trump,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: the filter bubble, other things of that kind. But at
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: the same time, you have access, if you want it,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to lots of different voices and people in Certain types
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: of societies can blow whistles on things that are going wrong.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I think the political consequences of the social media are
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: among the most important of my lifetime. I obviously am
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: not a native and I have a particular analysis. What's
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: your take on that?
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: So the great things to come from social media, the
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: first things that spring to mind are important ideas being
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: shared at scale and change happening faster than it ever
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: possibly could have. So you think about key movements around
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: LGBTQ rights, you think about certain causes, you think about
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: atrocities happening in certain parts of the world, having a
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: window into those things and those ideas spreading very quickly.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: And the consensus being arrived at quickly therefore action been
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: taken quickly therefore change and political change happening at light
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: speed I think is amazing I think one could say
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: being able to make some type of connection with people
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: in faraway lands however on the adverse consequences of social
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: media the biggest ones for me are the things like
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Instagram which will ultimately lead you to believing that you're
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: a piece of shit and not enough.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: And how does it do that? Because everyone's life looks
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: so good.
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: Everyone's amazing.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: So that does happen on Instagram.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Of course. Yeah. I mean, the algorithm will show you
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: the prettiest people, typically. Typically the prettiest people that have
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: the best lives. And then obviously there's this almost like
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Black Mirror-esque ranking where... if I post a selfie and
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not looking on my A game, I'll get less likes.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: So that's like the world's going, five out of 10
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Steve today. And then I come back with the filter
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: and I'm posing and I've done the little Photoshop here
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: and the face tune here. And I come back looking
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: at my fake self and it was Instagram. Oh, well done.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: And then it's incentivizing me. It's positively reinforcing me to
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: live a more fake, more shallow, more materialistic life.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: That's so interesting. And people do, you know they change
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: their phones to look better i.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: Read about this in my book the the ceo of
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: an app called facetune said that um facetune is basically
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: an app that allows you to very easily without any
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: editing skills change completely how you look you can change
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: your skin color that make you make your face have
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: no spots on it you can suck your face in
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: your hips in and it's so easy to do and
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: um And so the CEO of that company said that
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: he hit a goldmine. And he says openly, he says,
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: it was just a goldmine. The amount of downloads that
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: app has had from young people who want to change
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: how they look is staggering. Then you have this other
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: thing now with these face filters, where I can put
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: a filter on and it will just clear my skin
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: up and suck my face in just a little bit.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: And now people can't operate without them. I think I'm
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: probably guilty of it too. If I can just press
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: this button and it's going to increase my prospects of dating,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to get.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Better positive feedback. Don't tell me you're having problems getting dating.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, that... I can't... Well.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Actually, people can't see you. But he's a handsome guy.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: And that's the downside.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: By the way, that's the other thing. Young people are
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: all so muscularly... When I asked about it, no one
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: was interested in kind of having... Have you met Ben Francis?
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: I have, yeah, yeah.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Because we interviewed him on this podcast. you've been on
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: it he's been on here oh has he's a great
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: guy but he was like i'm like all these let's
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: see the two sort of iconic young entrepreneurs but this
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: thing about instagram is really really interesting really interesting so
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: you think it is actually incentivizing people constructing.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: There is no way it isn't if you so let
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: me give you some more information on this so Um, when,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: when they did the stack, this vast report on which
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: social platforms are having the most adverse impact on young
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: people's mental health, Instagram was stand out. It's a visual platform,
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: which is, um, ranking you on how you look and
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: the algorithm will show you the richest smart, the richest,
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: most beautiful, most successful people. You've got the Kardashians on
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: there with 150 million followers who are literally have been
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: in the last couple of months, um, been like a
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: paparazzi person took the photo of them on the beach
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: and then you got to see what they posted and
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: they don't look the same. And you've got a hundred
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: million girls following this person who is lying about the
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: fact that they don't have cellulite and they're not a normal,
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: you know, because these are normal things. We all have,
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: you know, cellulite and this and this and the rationing
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: spots here. And you think about how we attribute the
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: value of anything in our lives through contrast in which
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: the context in which we see it. So if you put,
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: I talk about this in my book as well, if
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: you put three TVs on a wall in an electronic shop,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: people will think the most expensive TV is too expensive
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: and too bougie. They'll think the cheapest TV is probably
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: going to break and not very good. So typically they
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: go for the middle one. Whereas if you remove them,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: the two next to it, then they make different decisions.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: And you've seen this with like Ash's paradigm and you
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: see it on menus and the way that we attribute
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: the value. Like I would be the prettiest, richest, most
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: successful person on planet earth. If there was nobody else
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: on earth, because it's all a measure of comparison and
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: Instagram is a billion people measure of comparison. Where do
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: I rank?
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: You've written about this, haven't you?
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll give you my book after. Yeah.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read it. I mean, that would be
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: a fantastic one. What was it? How to Be a
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Happy Millionaire?
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: No, the title is Happy Sexy Millionaire. And I'm kind
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: of trying to Instagram people, Instagram bait people into buying
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: the book, right?
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Because much of buying books is virtue signaling. Right, right, right.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: So the other thing that intrigued me on the way
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: here today was listening to the podcast where you say,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: this is my podcast. I'm slightly embarrassed about it. Don't
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: tell anyone about it, whatever you do. I would never
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: have thought of that as a way of having a
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: handle on a pot. I love that. I absolutely loved it.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: In a funny kind of way, it's kind of like
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: … As a parent. It's a bit like reverse psychology.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Like vegetables. Or getting your kids to eat vegetables or something.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think the truth of human
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: psychology are probably, I mean, you mentioned Ash. By the way,
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: on psychology and on the global reach of Twitter, you
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: talked about Ash's conformity experiment. That varies systematically around the world.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: So in Western countries, more individualistic countries, people deviate more
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: from the herd.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Can you explain what that is?
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: So if you're thinking of the same experiment … The lines. Yeah, yeah.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: So Solomon Asch, one of the most famous experiments in
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: modern psychology, he drew a number of vertical lines which
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: were of the same length and then a fifth line
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: that was significantly different in length to the other four.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: And then he got people to answer the question, do
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: you think these, I think I've got this broadly right,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: do you think all of these lines are of the
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: same length? And if you have people answering that on
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: their own, like 99% say the fifth line is of
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: a different length to the other four. But what Ash
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: did is he got 10 confederates to come in and say, oh,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: they're the same. And then, oh, they're the same. And
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: then the third person, oh, yeah, they're the same length.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: And then the fourth person, they're the same length. Then
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: when it gets to the actual subject of the experiment,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, my goodness, if all these people think that,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: It must be the same. So they say, yeah, they're
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: all the same. So they're effectively disbelieving the evidence of
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: their own eyes in order to fit in with the crowd.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Now that conformity bias, which surprises a lot of people,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: is stronger in other parts of the world than it
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: is in Western.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: Can I just add as well on these lines? When
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: you see these lines, there is no possible way that
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: that small line is anywhere near the size of the
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: other lines. But as you say, because of conformity, these
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: participants just go along with it. And it's just Beggar's
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: belief that that's how human psychology works.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: But there is a good reason for it, if you
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: think about it. I mean, there's a number of different
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: theories about why it happens. But one of them is
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: that occasionally, one can get things wrong that seem obvious.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: And if there's a lot of people who are independently
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: saying the same thing, that's very good evidence of what
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: they're saying is true. And so humans, I think that
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: bias evolved probably to enable us to take advantage of
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: the wisdom of the crowd. Crowds can converge on things incorrectly,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: but not independently of each other. So if you imagine
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: a stock market bubble, that's one person buying, another one
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: seeing that person. buying, and then another person seeing those
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: two buying, and they get a bandwagon effect. Whereas if
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: 10 people independently say that these two lines are different
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: and you have no reason to believe that they're lying,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: that's a good reason to start doubting. But the reason
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: I mentioned it is, there is this global systematic variation
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: in psychology. So you may have heard of, uh, you know,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: something called the fundamental attribution error, um, where we tend
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: to blame people for things that are, things have gone
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: wrong because of the situation. Um, that's much stronger in
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the West than it is in the rest of the world.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Cognitive dissonance varies fundamentally, even visual illusions, um, vary around
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: the world. Uh, and the reason I mentioned that is
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: I think, um, It's helpful for businesses to understand it,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: but I think it actually reaches into our deep history
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: and how human societies evolve, which is the topic of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: my next book. But I thought you might be interested
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: in that.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, so you guys know how much I talk about
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Huel and how much Huel has changed my life and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: also how Huel is the reason why, much of the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: reason why I'm in the best shape of my life.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: I definitely think that if I hadn't had Huel ready
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: to drink, I would not be in the shape that
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: I am. And I'm stronger than I've ever been, maybe
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: two times stronger than I've ever been But what I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: want to talk to you about today is Huel's brand
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: new product, which has just launched last week, which is
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: the Huel Protein. And Huel have never had a protein product,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: but I was actually slightly involved in the testing of
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: this product, and it's amazing. So I have pretty much
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: all the new flavors here. And my favorite flavor, as always,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: if you know me, you'll know this, and a lot
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: of people send me this in my DMs, is salted caramel.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: If you're looking to increase the protein intake in your diet,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: and you're thinking about getting in great shape, over the
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: coming months, which I think a lot of people are,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: then I would highly recommend you try the salted caramel
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: Huel protein. Why try that? 100 calories per serving, which
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: is staggering, 20 grams of protein, and it's got like
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: 26 of your minerals and vitamins that you need to
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: function and have a healthy body. It's also vegan. and dairy-free.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: It's also gluten-free. No artificial colorings like a lot of
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: protein products have, and no artificial flavorings at all. That
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: is the Huel way to make nutritionally complete good food
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: for you. Give it a try. Send me your Snapchats, Instagrams, tweets,
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: whatever you do if you try it. And also send
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: me your progress because I get so many DMs now
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: from people that are taking Huel and that have seen
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: significant changes in their life. And it fills me with
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: joy that I get to talk about a product on
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: this podcast every week that you guys love. One thing
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: I certainly do want to talk to you about as
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: well is how, as an individual, because we've talked a
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: lot about companies and teams, how as an individual one
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: is to reach their, this is a super broad question
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: and I hate asking broad questions because you tend to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: get broad answers, but how as an individual one could
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: reach their potential or what are some of the fundamental
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: things that block people from reaching their potential? We've talked
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: about a fear of failure. We've also touched on the
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: idea that people don't start because of that fear of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: failure and they don't get the feedback loops. But what
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: are the other common sort of threads that you see
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: and the reason why people never get near their potential
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: in life?
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: So in addition to those things, so fixed mindset, fear
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: of failure, risk aversity, all the things we've addressed, the
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: other thing I think is I've become more interested in,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: it's related to what we've said, but I think it's different,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: is what you might call initiative or agency or proactivity.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: I remember having an idea. This is in the 1970s,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: early 1980s. I was going to table tennis competitions and
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: carrying this very heavy bag, blue hodl, ascot hodl, and thinking,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: my goodness, this is really doing my back in. And
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: it was just retrospectively obvious that the solution to a
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: problem that many people had who were traveling a lot
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: is to put wheels on luggage, wheeled suitcases, which we
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: all have now. But having the idea doesn't mean a thing.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: You've actually got to act on that idea. You've got
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: to say, right, I'm going to try and design something.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and sell it to a department store.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and market it. I'm going to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: try and buy a shop. I'm going to have to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: pay rent. I'm There is a massive difference between a dormant,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: passive idea and one that you act upon. Another example,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: I lived on a road in Richmond when I first
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: moved there in my mid-20s, and it had no off-street parking.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: What I didn't realize is that in Richmond, parking is
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: a nightmare because all the houses have less parking spaces
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: than there are Sorry, there are less parking spaces than
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: there are houses, and so people park on the street,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: and then they get taken up, and you end up
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: having to park 10 minutes away. A few doors down,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: I noticed at the top of the road, there's a
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: house with a parking space that is always empty. I
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: thought to myself, you know, I should knock on the door,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: or I should write them a note, and say I'm
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: willing to pay rent or to buy it from you.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: But I never got around to doing it, and then
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: a few years later, I was at a house party,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: And this person said, oh, I used to live on
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: Montesquieu Road.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. I lived there too. He said, yeah, I
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: had the house at the top. I said, what, with
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: the parking space? He said, yeah, what I never understood
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: is that no one ever came and asked whether they
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: could rent it out. And I thought, that idea was
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: in my head, and I never acted on it.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Because there is a fundamental inertia in a lot of us.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: It's easy to have an idea. It takes a bit of...
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: I remember when I was injured in table tennis and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: I wasn't practicing, I wasn't doing anything, and I sat
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: at home. Just posting a letter felt like an unbelievably
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: tough thing to do. You have to go all the
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: way to the post office. You have to buy a stamp. Oh, man,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: I'm struggling. The psychologist I've got interested in recently is
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a guy called Michael Fraser. He's a German, really interesting guy.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: And he looked at the unification of Germany after the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: fall of the Berlin Wall. And The West German business
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: was like, this is fantastic, we're going to have this
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: pool of really keen workers. And it just didn't work
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: out because the East German, generalising a little, but the
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: East German workers had worked in a communist system where
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: all the decisions are taken by the party bosses. And
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: so if a machine broke down, instead of taking action
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: to fix it, they would just wait for the boss
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: person to come along and fix it for them. If
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: they needed the telephone number, they would wait and they
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: wouldn't act on it. And I think that being able
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: to– Richard Branson, you probably know. I mean, I got
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: to know a little. He talked about how– I think
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: this is probably– well, this is the way he tells it.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: Virgin Atlantic, he was flying to the British Virgin Islands
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: to meet his girlfriend. He has a stopover in Miami.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: They're bumped off the flight. They delay it to the
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: next day, and everyone sat there going, this is a disaster.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Then he thought, well, hang on a second. I could
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: charter a private plane. which were in the airport. So
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: he took the initiative. Probably a few people had that idea.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: What about chartering a private plane? But he actually picked
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: up the phone and said, right, how much will it
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: cost to charter a plane? You know, $ 10, 000. He then
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: went round to all the people with a blackboard saying,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: you know, flight, this is the amount per ticket. Some
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: people bought it. They managed to take the flight. And
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: then when he got home, he rented a Boeing and
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: went from there. And I think that proactivity is absolutely critical.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: You go to school for all those years, you get
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: to 16, but what about going out there and you're
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: about to take a decision about what your future career
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: will be? In my day, when you came out of university,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: some people would be in the same career for life.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: And you take that decision without going and asking people,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: what was it like in this job? Could I perhaps
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: work for a day in this job? A lot of
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: people I went to university with took jobs without any
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: of that proactive analysis of what it would be like. Now,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: you as an entrepreneur have this in spades. I want
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: more entrepreneurship in schools. I want proactivity. Instead of learning
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: business studies concepts, this is another experiment by Michael Fraser.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: Instead of people doing an MBA... He gave them a
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: short course on converting ideas into action. He calls it
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the action cycle. Those entrepreneurs compared to a control group
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: had 25, I can't remember the exact amount, but five
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: times more successful businesses or 20% higher profits. It was
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: published in Science magazine. So I think that's a really,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: really big deal.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: That's a mindset. I just can't get over this idea
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: that you saw that car parking space and you didn't,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: You didn't knock on or send a letter. And I'm
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: trying to understand, linked also to what you then talked
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: about with Richard Branson at that airport with the Blackboard
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: going around and trying to sell this airline that he'd
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: just come up with. What is the mental, like cultural, mental,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: psychological difference between the people that sat there and thought,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to accept this situation as is, like
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: you did with the driveway, or like the other passengers
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: who had just been cancelled did? and the person that
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: takes the initiative? What is it about them? And what
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: is blocking? I guess a better question is what is
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: blocking those that are sat there on the airport floor thinking, fuck,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: my life is over, or I can't find a car
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: parking space. What is blocking them? And is it, this
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: is my hypothesis, there's some kind of mental equation we're
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: all doing very, very quickly that's weighing up the effort
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: it would take and also our perceived outcome of success,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: our perceived chance of success in endeavour and coming to
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: the conclusion that it's just not worth it or possible.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's what's happening. I would reject that hypothesis.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think people make a rational calculation. I think
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: it's more habit. Once you're used to doing things, if
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: you've been at a school, and some people are lucky
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: enough to go to school, where you are encouraged to
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: make things happen. Some schools, they are actually asked to
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: start a business, to pick up the phone, to engage
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: with other people as they seek to do something. It
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: becomes a habit sometimes. The idea of writing a letter
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: and dropping it, it's like no big deal. That isn't
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: a barrier for me. It becomes second nature. I can
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: tell you from this parking space, I was just in a,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: it was just pure inertia. I hadn't learned that entrepreneurial mindset.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, that took me a long time to learn
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: as well.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: And you think, I'm just thinking about how I would
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: teach someone. to be proactive. I, I, so for, I,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: I've thought a lot about this too. And I, you know, I,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: I think you get people to do it. So what
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: Fraser does in his courses, he keeps linking ideas to action.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: You're not allowed to have an idea without acting upon it.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: He calls it the, uh, the active ingredient. So you
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: get into a habit of, so, so one, uh, uh,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: one of the entrepreneurs, so, so he's done these experiments
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: in Europe and in Africa, uh, But in one of,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, he tells great stories about it, but it's
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: such a long time since I read the papers. So
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: I think habit, doing it again and again and again,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: you begin to get into the routine of linking ideas
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: to action. Honestly, I think we shouldn't underestimate how damaging
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: it can be if we just continue to go with
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: the flow and we're not prepared to break it from
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: time to time. Then you'll, kind of just a puppet
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: to the course of life, I guess, in some respects. Right.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: And I think there are a lot of people with
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: truly brilliant ideas, huge potential, who never act on their dreams.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: You had the dream, but think about your dream. That
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: would remain dormant in your head had you not acted.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: These are distinct phenomena, the idea and the action. You
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: can have ideas and dreams without acting on them.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: I just, my, yeah. So I get a lot of
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: DMs from people. You can imagine the DMs are, I've
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: got a great idea. And you know that 99% of
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: the people you speak to are never going to do
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: anything about it because the hardest part is doing, it's
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: just day one. It's like, think of the name of
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: the company, but they just, well, I call them sofa-preneurs.
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: They have the idea on the sofa. It never makes
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: it up out of the sofa. Right. And that's like
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: 99% of people. And I wonder what the barrier is
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: between like starting. I sometimes hypothesize that it's because of
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: this culture of perfectionism and this culture of needing to
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: start at a perfect point with all the resources, all
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: the knowledge, all the contacts, the right team, which is
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: not the case. I mean, if you look at how
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: Ben Francis started his business where I started mine, it's
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: Googling on a computer, how do you build a website
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: and doing that for three months, um, But I always wonder,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: I think we would unlock so much potential if we
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: were able to get people just to the starting blocks.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: And we can't. They're all on their sofas.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you describe it brilliantly. A couple of things that
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: might be worth throwing in. There's a guy called Mike Barton.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: He was Chief Constable of Durham Police.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: And he kept getting rated the highest by the independent
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: inspector of the constabulary. And I remember I was really
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: intrigued by this. So I talked to him and met him.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: And he said that if he could, he would ask
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: every wannabe police officer to take one year off to
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: start a business and for it to fail or to succeed.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: Just so they started learning using their own initiative. Because
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: that is what great policing is about. Stanley McChrystal. Stanley
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: McChrystal was the head of the task force in Iraq
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: after the invasion that were trying to quell the insurgency
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: of al-Qaeda. And at the time, it was a top-down model.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: People at the bottom were passive. If they wanted to
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: get anything done, they had to go up the chain
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: of command, get sign-off, and it would go back down.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: So lacking agility and not really using their brains. And
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: he pushed... authority down the chain of command. People could,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: they could, as it were, initiate action against al-Qaeda targets
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: if they thought it was sensible to do so. And
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: it had a big, big effect on the success of
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the army, the number of operations, but also the percentage
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: of successful operations. So I think that, you know, I
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of different people who are working
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: along the lines that we're talking about right now. But
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: for me, education is a key. And I'd like to
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: see more work done in schools to really equip young
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: people with this active ingredient.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: You've written, I think we said six books, right? Six
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: books now. They center around topics like high performance and
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: mindset and the like. What's the biggest thing that you're
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: a contradiction on in terms of what you can write
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: about and know and profess to the world, but then
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: you struggle with in your personal life to implement?
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: That's a great question. That's a great question. I've never
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: been asked that before. So one of the things I'm thinking,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: so I write newspaper columns or I write a sports
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: column for the Times and a political column for the
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Sunday Times, right? And I think one thing that I
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: try to do is read other people who disagree with me.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Because that's a really useful thing because either you really
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: understand why you think they're wrong or you realize there's
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: a weakness in your own argument. But now I think
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: about it, I think the last fortnight I haven't been
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: doing that enough. So I must remember that as a
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: discipline to constantly read those sources that I know are
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: going to be different. I've got a question for you,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: by the way. So this is another one that I'm
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: thinking about a lot. What's your view of the word woke?
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: So if you're my age, you know, people, you know,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: cancel culture. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: Which part? So, I mean, I was actually, funnily enough,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: I was listening to Piers Morgan talk about the word
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: woke last night. Where?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: Where were you listening to it? Why are you listening?
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: It was a 60 Minutes Australia interview. And I don't
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: know why, it just came up in my, I watch
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: 60 Minutes Australia because I'm in the algorithm. So, I'm
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: in the echo chamber, so it's serving it to me
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: every day. And he's done an interview in the last
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: 24 hours regarding Meghan Markle and explaining, you know, he's
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: being a bit of a crusader now saying, I was
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: cancelled for standing up for my opinions. He's like really
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: going for it now. And so I don't really want
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: to get into definitions because then people are just going to,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: but so cancel culture, I think is a bad thing
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: because I think, I mean, we saw one yesterday where
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: the cricket player who said some very, you know, racist things,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: things 10 years ago when he was a teenager has
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: now been suspended from the England cricket team 10 years
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: later he said a couple of things you know about
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: You know, he said something.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: I've seen it.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: I don't want to repeat it because someone's going to
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: clip it in the Daily Mail.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: That's my column.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 2: Is that what you're writing about? Yeah. I mean, it's racist.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: I'm a person of colour and I think it's ridiculous
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: that he was cancelled. Yeah, he said some stupid jokes,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: some stupid, slightly racist jokes 10 years ago. Are we
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: really going to create a culture where we're going to
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: rid him of his livelihood for some stupid tweets when
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: he was a teenager? Because I tell you what, I
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: don't know a single human being that's not cracked a
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: slightly inappropriate... either slash partly racist joke in their lifetime
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: and this idea that publicly we're all angels perfect angels
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: who are here to judge others to the same standard
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: of false perfection that we portray is just like deeply
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: toxic and then also we're now uh on the on
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: the idea of like free speech we're now stopping the
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: best ideas because we're judging them based on whether they
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: fit or not And this is, again, we talked about
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: divergent thinking and thinking, having more diverse thoughts and accepting
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: them and welcoming them and interrogating them for their merit,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: not whether they fit, I think is awful. And my
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: last point, again, is there's been a couple of moments,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: Black Lives Matter, some other issues where my opinion has
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: been in neither camp. And it's just, you know, totally unacceptable.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: Because I would say Black Lives Matter issue, I did
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: a post, you know, the narrative was if you don't,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: speak out, then you're a racist. Silence is violence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: And after George Floyd was tragically murdered, I did a
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: post saying, listen, people process traumatic events in various different ways.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: Going to social media and posting about it isn't actually
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: a very human way to process trauma. So if someone
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: isn't speaking, it doesn't make them a racist. And also,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: you know, and the problem with the thinking there is
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: people will look at your opinion and say, he's not
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: wearing our football kit. He must be one of them.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: And because he's not wearing our football kit, the socks,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: the shoes, the shorts, the shirt, he must therefore believe
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: all of the things that the right believe. And it's
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: so binary. There's no appreciation or space for nuance. It's
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: not the way to get to the best ideas, right?
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: Look, I'm really glad to hear you say all that.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: I agree with everything you said. And I'll add one
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: other thing, so I concur with all of those three points.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: I think they're they're very powerful. Um, the other thing
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I'm from a half Pakistani, half Welsh background, you know,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: so I've had the P word a lot in the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: seventies and eighties and I'm sensitive to, to, to racial discrimination.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: Now I saw my father not get from a brilliantly
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: talented person, not get promoted because of his color. Um,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: and that, you know, it leaves a real scar on
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: someone growing up. The other thing is, I think it's
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: a complete absence of an analysis of how to improve
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: the lives of people from ethnic minorities. Um, canceling somebody
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: who sent a tweet nine years ago in their formative years,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: it is almost like a fig leaf for true action.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: Civil rights movement is a great thing in America, in
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: my opinion, Martin Luther King. the Civil Rights Act, the
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Voting Rights Act. But I think we have to acknowledge
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: that it hasn't achieved many of its most basic objectives.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: If you look at the number of black people in prison,
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: the education gap, the income and wealth gaps, I think
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: there's a real empirical question about what we do. And
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: it's not going to help those massively important demographic statistics
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: to cancel somebody. And it's almost like it's a, It's
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a surrender when we should be doing things that can
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: have a tangible effect.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: This is what my post said. It was nine slides
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: long or nine tweet threads. And the conclusive point was,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be black forever. So if you want
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: to help me and my future kids and my kids' kids,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: a black tile on Instagram or a hashtag doesn't actually
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: address the problem. Cancelling someone, telling organizations they need to
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: donate doesn't actually help the problem. If you really cared,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: if your care was genuine and not... survival orientated or
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 2: virtue signaling orientated, you'd probably be thinking about systemic issues
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: and you can't capture or, you know, or you'd be
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: reading or educating yourself, which are all things that won't
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: take place in the public forum. So go at the
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: systemic stuff or, you know, educate yourself. That, that to
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: me feels like a more genuine way to change things. Hashtags,
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: black tiles, cancelling. Does it just seems like you care
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: more about yourself? Right.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: It's kind of not, it's a kind of, it's a
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: kind of narcissism, I think. At its worst, it can
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: be that. How do people react to that post?
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: Do you know what? On that particular one, everyone agreed.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: And that's crazy because no one was saying it. And
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: it's like, because I'm a black guy, it was like,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: I gave them space to disagree. So it was actually
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: on Instagram. It did 600,000 likes on, which is a
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: lot of likes, right? It did hundreds and hundreds of
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: thousands of shares.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: I think my record is probably 50.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: It's one of my best, I think one of my
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: best performing posts ever. And it was funny because you
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: had like, I don't know, three black people in my,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: in the comment section being like, yeah, you know, you
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: meant to be like angry at me. But then when
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: I'd ask them, I'd say, which one of the slides
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: do you disagree with? And tell me the sentence you
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: disagree with. You can't find something you disagree with in
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: the post. It's the sentiment that this is not the
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: party line. Yeah.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: By the way, one other thing, the Wisden, the cricket magazine, Wisden.com,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: have managed to find a post from an England player
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: that was controversial, I think racist or misogynistic, but before
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: they were 16 years of age. So they haven't published
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: the name yet. But can you imagine if that person
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: was suspended for something they said when they were effectively
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: a child? Because we talked about failure.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: If.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: Anyone who aspires to the England cricket team never says
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: anything publicly, never writes a school essay that might come
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: back to haunt them. The way we learn is by
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: saying things and then being challenged. You don't lose all
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: of that if you basically just either toe the party
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: line or say nothing at all. That would be a
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: catastrophe for a dynamic liberal society.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: Imagine all the progress that would have been lost had
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: people not have stepped outside of the party line and
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: stood on top of podiums and made speeches that people
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: disagreed with and got them stoned and shot. I mean,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: that's where most progress seems to come from. It seems
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: to come from an outlier, an original thinker.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that's right. And, you know, I mean, it might
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: sound old-fashioned to say this, but, you know, John Stuart Mill, Locke,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the founding fathers in the United States... what used to
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: be called the Western miracle, you know, the fact that
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: economic growth was, was very close to 0% for the
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: first 2 million years of, uh, the species to which
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: we belong. Right. I mean, it was very, very tiny
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: throughout our history. You know, somebody who was born in
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: 2000 years ago and somebody was born 1500 years ago,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: it has seen very little change in society. And then
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: economic growth started taking off in the 18th century. And
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: now obviously it's, you know, doubled and trebled and quadrupled.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: And we expect growth to be 2% to 3% a year.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: And if we have two consecutive quarters of negative growth,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: we call it a recession. One of the reasons that
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: happened is because of exactly what you say. People were
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: freed from the constraints of the party line. You could
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: say something that, for example, the religious authorities didn't approve of,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: that the sun is the center of the solar system,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: not the earth. You can test hypotheses. You can say
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: the world is older than 6,000 years. You start to
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: adapt your understanding of the world. That's science. That's technology. Now,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: free speech doesn't seem fashionable these days. But those ideas,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: in addition, by the way, to things like due process,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: the thing that has made me trend, the only time
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: I think I've ever trended on Twitter, is when I
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: defended due process. So the idea that in order to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: be punished for something, you have to have had some
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: kind of an independent process, some independent tribunal to establish,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: having listened to different sides of the argument, whether the
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: crime had taken place. Now that, again, is something that
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: takes societies a long time to create an independent rule
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: of law. you know, judiciary. And people were like, that's outrageous,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: because I was defending somebody who had been accused of
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: a racist remark. And I said, yeah, racism's wrong, but
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: let's wait for the process before this person is sacked.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: The implication was I was defending racism itself. But that
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: is not the same thing. But I worry a bit
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: that we're losing that distinction.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: I think there's certain people fighting back.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: And that'll be, maybe it'll swing back the other way.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope so.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: I would hope so too. Self-belief. I'm very intrigued as to,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: you know, certain people in our society are more self-believing
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: than others. You see differences in genders and races and backgrounds.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people in my DMs,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: and this is where the question comes from, I have
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: so many young kids in my DMs that are struggling
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: with confidence or lacking self-belief. And I wondered if you
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: had any words of wisdom for those in my DMs
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: that can't find confidence and self-belief.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: I think, for what it's worth, that self-belief, self-esteem, other
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: things of that kind are overrated. And the reason goes
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: back to something we said earlier. I mean, there was
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: a movement in the 70s and 80s in Western education
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: to build self-esteem in young people. And the way to
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: do it was to let them succeed all the time, right?
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: So you might remember this, but you give them easy tests,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: get them to pass, and then praise them for how
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: super talented they were. They get all this self-esteem and
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: they can change the world. It's People were so worried
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: about undermining self-esteem that there were no losers in sports
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: days at some schools. I don't know if you've heard
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: of this. Everyone's a winner.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone gets a sticker.
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: And that was all about building. It was called the
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: self-esteem movement. But it failed. And the reason it failed
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: is because people would keep succeeding and they'd get all
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: this self-esteem. And then they'd be given a difficult test.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: or they would leave school and they'd actually hit the
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: real world where they would fail. And what happened? All
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: the walls of their world would come crumbling down. Oh,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: my goodness.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: They never failed before.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: Right. Self-esteem that is fragile. And people would protect their
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: self-esteem by not trying new things, right? And that's a disaster.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: Self-esteem can be very fragile. I like to talk much
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: more about resilience. I want my children to be resilient,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: to try new things, to mess up. but not to
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: be devastated by it. And that I think is a
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: much better course. Now, it may be that when people
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: are talking about confidence, what they really mean is resilience.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to walk into a room,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: give it my best shot. Things don't go slightly wrong.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to carry on regardless. Every person who's a
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: success has had some really tough, difficult moments. And I
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: just think that's an inevitable part of learning.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: How do we build resilience in ourselves?
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: Both mindsets, very strongly related to it. So instead of,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: you know, for parents out there, you probably have a
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: very young audience, but the parents out there, it's very
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: easy to praise young people for their talent. They've just
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: drawn a picture. You're super talented. You're the next Picasso.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: You think they're going to develop all this self-esteem. The problem,
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: as I've said, is that, you know, the they draw
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: something that isn't Picasso, as soon as they get negative criticism,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: oh my goodness, I'm no Picasso after all. Much better
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: thing to do is to praise them for the effort
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: or the process. Well, I love the way that picture,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: the colors fit together. They think, oh, right, if I
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: want to develop as a painter, I have to make
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: the colors fit together in a more sophisticated way. You're
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: aligning their mind and motivation with the journey they need
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: to take to fulfill their potential. So it's good experiments.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: Praising for effort, praising for process is a much more
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: positive thing than praising for talent and fixed attributes.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because in my company, I came to learn
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: that the most effective way to get my teams to
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: innovate was to praise them for the effort and the
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: process as opposed to the outcome. Because if it became
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: about the outcome, the success or failure of the experiment, then,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: which is largely actually outside of their control, right? When
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: you're doing, so if I say to my team, right,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: we're going to build this website and we think it's
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: going to do this. whether it does that or not,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: whether there's product market fit, whether it's a success or
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: a failure, isn't actually in their control. The bit they
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: can control is starting doing it and the process of
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: getting to the point where we press go live. And
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: so what I learned in the last year of my
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: business was we would celebrate conducting the experiment, not the
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: outcome of the experiment.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. That is exactly the same thing. And it's
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: interesting that if you look at R & D, have
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: you heard of Six Sigma?
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: Six Sigma is a great process, like lean manufacturing or
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: things of that kind. It's basically squeezing out variation, isn't it?
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: So if you imagine making a car, a manufacturing car,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: all it takes is one component in the engine to
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: be of the wrong size or specification, and the whole
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: thing won't work. So Six Sigma is about delivering and
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: executing with no variation. But when you're innovating, you need variation.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: You need to try new things. If you're trying to
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: create a new computer program, a new website, or a
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: new drug, and you don't know which combination of ingredients
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: are going to create it, you need to try lots
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: of combinations. If you penalize people for failure, and you're
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: only judging them on the outcome, and it fails, and
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: then they're stigmatized, they will never try. That's where fail
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: fast comes in. Yeah, you've nailed it. That's exactly the
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: insight that I think is important.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: And I guess the last thing I want to talk
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: to you about is leadership and how one can become
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 2: a better leader in whatever field of life you're in,
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: whether it's sports or whether it's business like me. What
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 2: are the attributes of successful leaders?
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's a very difficult job.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: Leadership. Leadership.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, extremely difficult. I don't know if you'd agree with this,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: but I do think even in a psychologically safe, you know,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: where people can speak up, a leader still needs to
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: make the decision. I think it can often lead to
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: confusion over who's in charge if it's a completely democratic organisation.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, God, yeah.
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: You need leadership. So I believe my own view, based
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: on evidence, is that you need social hierarchies in order
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: for organisations, institutions and societies to succeed. but you want
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: those hierarchies to work. So leadership, I don't think you
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: can outsource it. You need to make judgments. You need
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: to take ownership of those judgments. But I think if
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: I had to say one thing, okay, I'll give you my,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: and this is based on knowing a lot of like,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: you know, many, many leaders in lots of different contexts
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: over a long period of time. I think the best
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: leaders have a hybrid approach to leadership.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is When you're evaluating
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: what we should do next, you need to be humble.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: You need to encourage different ideas and you need not
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: to be threatened when people dissent because that encourages people
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: to speak up. But when you've made a decision and
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: you've found the destination and you're going for it, I
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: think you need to then have confidence and, you know,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: you need to galvanize. That's where charisma comes to the
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: fore when you articulate the mission. Because at that point,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: having different ideas, you know, you're already on the way.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: That can often be quite disruptive. I mean, obviously, you
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: do need to change the trajectory if, you know, something.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: But I think that, and funny enough, in sport, you see,
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: so humility and evaluation, confidence and execution. It's the same
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: in sport. So, if you imagine you're a surgeon or,
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: or in, or in surgery, if you're humble, the time
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: you wield the scalpel, this might go wrong. I don't
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: know everything. You know, your hand is going to be,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: if you're Tiger Woods in the 18th, you want to
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: be absolutely confident when you take the putt execution. But
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: then if the surgeon says, I'm a genius, I'm brilliant.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm confident. I don't need to learn. They'll
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: never evaluate what happened and therefore won't improve. I'll tell
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: you what made me think. I once, um, ghosted David Beckham.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 2: Fixed mindset, right? Complacency creeps in and, You're talking about
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: the surgeon that's sure they're right, and it's the fixed
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: mindset analogy you made, and then complacency creeps in.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: It's a disaster because what you want to do after
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: a surgical procedure is review it in a completely honest
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: way so you can find out things that you did
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: wrong and could improve. But if you have utter self-confidence,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: I don't need to improve, that's exactly, as you say,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: a fixed mindset response. You don't improve through time. Beckham,
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: I ghosted his autobiography a few years ago, And he
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: told me about when he took the free kick against Greece.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: How old are you, by the way?
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: 28.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: So you won't remember this guy.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: I remember. I will never forget. It was the World
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: Cup qualifiers. And he ran to the left corner. I'll
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: never forget.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. So it was extra time. He
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: needed a score to get through. And Teddy Sheringham tried
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: to take the ball. And you see on the video,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: Beckham snapped. And he said, when I took that free kick,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: I was 100% I was going to make it. That's
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: a useful thing to have, right? But you meet Beckham
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: away on the training pitch, the humility. I need to
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: improve the way I take free kicks. I need to
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: look at the things that went wrong in the previous game.
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: I need to see that. So leaders need to be
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: both humble and confident, depending on where they are on
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: the performance side. When they're out there executing– Confidence. When
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: they're evaluating, reviewing, humility. I think most of the best
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: leaders have it. Satya Nadella at Microsoft is a great
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: example of that. Humble. Their market cap has grown over
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: a trillion dollars since he took over. Very humble person.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: I've met him a number of times. Great, great person.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: But there is confidence when he's galvanizing his team towards
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: a decision that they've debated and discussed.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: I think that's so true. I was just running through
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: all the great leaders that I know and those attributes
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: seem to be there. Even, you know, a good example
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 2: is Sir Alex Ferguson. Rhea Ferdinand sat in the chair
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: and he told me that Sir Alex Ferguson is obviously
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: known for the hairdryer and being very clear on what
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: he wants. But then if Rhea went to Sir Alex
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Ferguson after a game and said, you know, you didn't
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: support my brother. Anton got racially abused and then Rhea
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: wore a shirt in protest of it. Sir Alex Ferguson
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: was really angry and Rio went to him after the
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: game and had a chat with him and Alex or
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: Alex admitted he was wrong and held his hands up
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: and somehow managed to make it up to Rio within
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: a couple of words.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: But you know, that's, that's right. That's exactly right. That's,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: but it goes with, with Ferguson. He always hired constantly,
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: you know, assistant managers who challenged his perspective, you know,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: Carlos Quiroz, Mike Phelan, Mullenstein, McLaren, He also would often
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: do competitions for his players to guess who would be
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: in the opposition team. He would go to other clubs
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: and watch the way they trained. Ferguson came from Govan,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: from a very working-class background. He never lost his capacity
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: to learn.
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: Never.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: And he always had a certain level of humility. But
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: once they were out there and performing, he was incredibly self-confident.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that's a contradiction.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting. It makes me kind of, I was reflecting
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: then on how important it is to be curious throughout
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: your life, even when new technology like social media pops
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: up and you're a little bit disorientated by it. And
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: I see that in really great successful leaders that I
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: know in my life, business owners, CEOs, the ones that
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: are the most curious tend to have the best long-term
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: outcomes and longevity. And I think it's hard to teach curiosity.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: I do wonder myself because obviously I made my money
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: off social media. And even now, I'm getting too old
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: for certain things.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Are you still working in the business?
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: No. I'm not working in the business anymore, no. I
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: resigned at the end of last year. So now I'm
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 2: a free agent working on a new business, but in
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: a similar industry, slightly different, much bigger ambition, I guess.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: And I'm working across multiple industries. So I'm working in
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: a psychedelics biotech firm that's about to list for several
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: billion dollars. I'm working at Huel. I'm on the board
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: there and work with that team. I'm working in... variety
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: of different companies all around the world that are in
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: mental health, consumer goods, social media. Um, you know, and I'm,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: I think I've done that as well because I, as
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: I talk about my book, I want to like resist
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: my labels. I want to stay curious. I want to
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: stay emerged in worlds that I don't know. I'm working
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: on a blockchain company at the moment, which is web 3.0
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: using Ethereum and smart contracts. And it's my, I like
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: being diverse in my thinking because I actually think that's
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: where creativity comes from in a weird way. And the,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: one of the things that enables me to have this
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: podcast is I have a very diverse view of the
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: world and a very diverse view of organizations and people.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: And that will make me good at, it sounds like
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: a crazy thing to say. Like we're putting on a
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: theatrical show in Manchester and, sold out. It's like this,
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: it's called the Diary of a CEO Live. There's a
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: big choir, all this, all these really amazing things. And
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: when I look at that show, what it is, it's
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: a culmination. It's a very, very different show, but it's
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: a culmination of all these random experiences I had in
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: my life, going to the theatre for the first time,
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: listening to a choir, watching Kanye West, a light show
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: I saw, and all of these little things. And so
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, you write about it, you talk
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: about diversity of I do.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to send you a copy. So my latest book, well,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago now was called the power
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: of rebel ideas, a power of diverse thinking. I'm going
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: to send you a copy. I want to have a
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: copy of your book. I'm going to read it. I'm
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: going to read it this week.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. That's fast.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: Well, how many words is it? Is it very long?
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 2: No, 17,000. No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: It's 55,000 words. It's not very long.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. it's interesting you'll be particularly intrigued by i
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: think by the first couple of chapters which focus on
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: social media the world we're living in keeping up with
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: kardashian's generation etc etc.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: Well i've got to say uh you know i know
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: we're coming to an end you are you're exceptionally articulate
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: oh that's a huge compliment so i i kind of
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: you know i uh i'm interested in that because i
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: think um I definitely didn't have that when I was
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: at school. I wasn't able really to put sentences together.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: You should do a podcast. You just have the most
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: amazing voice.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: I've got to tell you, my brother found an old
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: tape of me being interviewed as a 15-year-old when I
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: got selected for a national team. I think we need
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: more of that. Communication is so important. Getting our ideas
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: across so that somebody can understand not just what we say,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: but what we mean.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: And I think that's a radically learnable skill. A lot
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: of the top speakers have practiced it.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: YouTube aside, it's one that's in decline because of screens, typing.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't have to talk.
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: To each other anymore.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: Zoom.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: Anyway, listen, thank you so much for your time. It's
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: been such a pleasure to meet you. I mean, you're
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: an individual that's had such a tremendous impact on thinking,
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: especially of people in the professional, but also self-development world.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: I remember reading your book a long time ago on
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: a plane bounce and how intrigued I was by, um,
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 2: the emphasis you put on this growth mindset and practice
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: and being teachable and your, your, your way you are
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: in life, not being set in stone, if you're willing
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 2: to put in the work and practice. And, um, yeah,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, my team here are also huge fans of yours.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: Matt over there has read all your books. And he'll
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: read them in 24 hours. This guy's a monster.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: Matt, thank you. Love that. It's been great to see you.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: It's a tremendous honour.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much. For me too. And good luck
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: with it. I'm going to follow you with huge interest
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: from now on. And you're about to hit the mainstream,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: aren't you? Dragon's Den hasn't.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: Been broadcast yet.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: Not out yet.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: January time.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: Good luck. Thank you.