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Transcript

Growing in an Interconnected World · Humanity Working

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Paul, you've said that growth used to be a solo pursuit.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's more of a networked one.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's changed?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um a lot.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: A lot in the last really 15 years, I suppose, something along those lines.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look, if you look back, say 15 years ago, really before um the networking effect of social media really came into play and and uh the internet became a much more networked entity.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um typically the way people approached growth was through fairly traditional means, right?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: You go to school, you go to college, um, you'd build a set of skills that were associated with the uh with the job that you were moving towards.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and maybe there were some books, and there were some books in the library that would be part of your reading list, and that might be part of your formal studies.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then once you entered into the business world, maybe somebody would like hand you a copy of this book or that book and say, hey, we really find this book really interesting.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that is very, is kind of very solo, um, even though you're attending classes alongside other people.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: But now what's really interesting is that with the explosion of online communities, but also peer collaboration, um, and with people sharing knowledge not just across the hallway, but across the globe, we are being constantly exposed to new ideas and new ways of working from people from potentially all walks of life.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so what that means is that the act of growth involves a community as much as it does a bunch of books and a bunch of courses and a bunch of uh of other things.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And really interestingly, all of that is happening while the close community, the the immediate community that used to set uh to surround us in the office, that is becoming broken down, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you think about it, in again that 15 years 15 years ago, your primary development of knowledge from other people would come from the grizzled veteran sitting in the corner of your office, or the person that takes you under their wing when you uh when you start to uh come into the office space.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you would learn by osmosis from those people in a small immediate community.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of gone as work has become more distributed, and replacing it has been this loosely connected network that you have access to.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we all have access to more information than we've ever had.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have access to information through this network.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and everybody's like a couple of degrees of separation from world experts on things.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that's happened while the other piece has gone, uh has gone away.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: The osmosis thing was really simple.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: You just showed up and it would just happen.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: This new thing is harder for people to navigate.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, there's there's you know, obviously an enormous upside, but your your osmosis has now expanded to global, constant, everywhere, everything, all the time, and you're in charge of curating it.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you you've you've exactly nailed it, right?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that upside for people that want to pursue that upside is massive.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is true to say that you could become a world expert with sufficient focus.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: You could become a world expert on more or less anything with appropriate focus and the ability to go after the uh the information you want to go after.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, you see this through the emergence of, yeah, you see it through emergence of a lot of disinformation, but amidst that disinformation, there are a whole bunch of, for example, citizen scientists who have emerged and citizen historians and people like that, who are developing real, real high-level knowledge.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they're doing so by tapping into that, that world of knowledge that is out there.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the upside can be massive.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a huge growth opportunity for uh for people that want to pursue it that way.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it kind of taps into some of the themes we talked about with growth mindset, right?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have this, if you do actually have this growth mindset as an individual and you're pursuing it, you can you can grow as an individual hugely in ways that would just not have been possible before by virtue of the environment that you're in.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: It it you can do your own research now.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: You can.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a dangerous phrase to say these days, but it's true that you can.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's an there's an underlying truth to that statement.
• 4:59
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's I mean, without a strategy, obviously you're you're drowning in information.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to process all that information and synthesize all that information.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So um yeah, how do people stay stay grounded in this, in this?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is something we have thought about a huge amount, obviously, because this is the this is the business that we're uh that we're in, right?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Helping people maximize their human potential.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um we believe that there's a you need a framework.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and what I mean by a framework in this context is you need to understand that that growth in this world is not just one-dimensional.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just picking up a book, it's not just um going to the internet and continuing down a rabbit hole for the, you know, for the for the next five years, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Those things can be part of it, but it's not just those things.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we developed a model for this actually in my company, um, Billion Minds, which we call uh Scamp.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Scamp stands for skills development, uh, that's the S, uh, coaching, advice, mentoring, and peer support.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Each of those is different, each of those is essential, and you need all of them in order to be able to truly grow the um to draw your uh to grow your skills.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when people like really combine those five things intentionally, they're growing faster, they're growing more sustainably.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as you can see, a lot of that is centered around the people and the resources that you're gathering around you in order to be able to turbocharge your own growth.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's almost like building an ecosystem for growth, as it were, that is essential if you're gonna do this this really, really well.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you've got to do them in different ways because um of that lack of osmosis that we talked about previously.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then you have to apply that and get the practical experience, but that can be so exponentially improved because of your ability to go get all that information to your point, like to get to the experts is so much easier now, whether the experts have a podcast, a video channel, they are now creators as well.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not just through books, but now you're getting an in-depth behind-the-scenes talk about the book, TED talks, uh, masterclasses.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's an incentive ideally for the expertise shared is much more valuable when shared.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's uh it's pretty fascinating.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: The the the growth potential that we have is is uh almost as fascinating and meteoric rise as the technology we're watching take off instantaneously, you know?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I agree, Matt.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the there's a couple of things to think about here if you're an individual and if you're a company.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're an individual, it is really taking those elements that the the skills development, the coaching, the advice, the mentoring, and the peer support, and questioning whether you truly have all of those elements.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Are you surrounded by all of those elements?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not, it is going to inhibit your growth as an individual and you need to find ways to get it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this new world of work and social media, that one of the benefits of it is that there are opportunities to be able to go after these things through a whole bunch of different ways, traditional ways, non-traditional ways.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as a company or an organization, you need to be setting up a mentoring program in its own right is gonna address part of this, but it's only gonna address part of this.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you should be thinking as an organization, how am I gonna set up an infrastructure that allows the people in my organization to be surrounded easily with all with all of these different things?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if I do that, then I'm gonna have people grow exponentially in my organization.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's uh it's an absolute must, it seems to me.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh a big shortcoming if you don't take advantage of it uh sooner rather than than later.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, you'd be you'd you'd be hard pressed to find I I bet you if you retrospectively looked at over the course of the 15 years, businesses, if you could capture their score on this type of thing, the ones that are still here and will continue to grow are the ones that score high in that you know uh that measurement of are we putting this out there for our teams to be able to grow?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna need to be there to succeed.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's now the criteria for success has shifted to adding this element, otherwise, you know, adapt or die.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe in the next episode.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Matt.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.