Latest / The Action Catalyst / Living in a Post-AI World, with Terence Mauri (Technology, Leadership, Futurism, Education)

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Living in a Post-AI World, with Terence Mauri (Technology, Leadership, Futurism, Education) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:01
  Adam Outland: One of the things that occurred to me, how
• 0:41
  valuable it must be as a leader to stay tuned in to the rapid
• 0:46
  innovations that are occurring, otherwise you can't leverage
• 0:49
  them. What do you encourage people to do, to stay plugged in
• 0:52
  to what's going on? How are people in your orbit receiving
• 0:56
  their information and staying tuned in to the future?
• 0:59
  Terence Mauri: Brilliant question, it's a little dividend
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  here, which is the science. The science shows, the research
• 1:05
  shows, we feel it at a heart a level as well. Is that when you
• 1:10
  part of a community, virtual or face to face, three things.
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  Number one, discovery, the ratio of new ideas, new perspectives,
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  counter intuitive perspectives. It goes up, and that's
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  important. So discovery. Another one is energy. You know,
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  actually, it's a great source of inspiration and action. And
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  number three is cross pollination, that actually, you
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  know, ideas need to connect together to create, to create
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  breakthroughs. And so discovery, energy, cross pollination, all
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  of this together, you need to be thinking about these three
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  dividends and how you activate them in your in your life. And
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  that can be done through reading, listening to great
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  podcasts, watching Tiktok videos, attending lectures,
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  speaking yourself, writing yourself as well, going to
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  events, conferences, dinner events, you know, do the basics
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  brilliantly. But also, once a quarter, do something that
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  scares yourself. It scares you or excites you or throws you out
• 2:14
  of your comfort zone. And yeah, for example, I did an event with
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  Google where they had a kind of dinner. Leaders came together,
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  and it was called the sweet and sour dinner. And the idea of the
• 2:27
  sweet and sour dinner is that let's talk about the good stuff,
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  but let's also talk about the bad stuff. Let's talk about the
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  stuff that should be said that's not being said. Let's ask the
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  questions that should be asked that are not being asked. You
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  know, because of fear or politics or whatever. Sweet and
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  sour is a really important point. So these sorts of
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  conversations, conversations that don't just make us feel
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  good, but make us think hard, gives you so much vitality.
• 2:54
  Adam Outland: I love that. Given that this is your whole
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  world and work, so you're very plugged in. What would you say
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  are your favorite either conferences or maybe it's
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  podcasts, or where are your best channels for staying informed
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  right now?
• 3:09
  Terence Mauri: I love, for example, masters of scale, a
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  great podcast. Reid Hoffman, that's a great one. I was on
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  disrupt TV with Vela Ashe, and that was an amazing
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  conversation. So disrupt TV, Web Summit in Lisbon is a great one
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  as well. Slush in the Nordics, that's another great one, which
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  looks at the future of work, the future of leadership, the future
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  of AI. These would be some examples of what I'm excited
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  about right now that I'm constantly engaging with.
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  Adam Outland: Coming back to the academics of things which
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  probably could use even more disruption. What do you think,
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  from your perspective, is the class that's not taught but
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  should be?
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  Terence Mauri: I think it's this idea of what happens in a post
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  AI world. So this intersection of psychology, anthropology,
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  humanity, sociology, that I think the olog is the future is
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  about the origins. It's not just about AI and technology. That's
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  one half of the narrative, but it's dominating every
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  conversation. The other half of the narrative is the origins,
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  because technology changes fast. But humans don't you know, we
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  have Paleolithic brains, God like technology, medieval
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  institutions, the complexities of the world are going like
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  this. Our Paleolithic brains, capacity to respond to the
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  complexities is like this. If you think about the processing
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  power of a chip, it's increased over a trillion times since the
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  1950s our Paleolithic brains have stayed the same. That
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  creates a wisdom gap, and we're not talking enough about that
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  right now in academia, academia as well, is still very linear.
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  It's kind of very, you know, siloed, and silos can blind us
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  to new perspectives. So I think the future is horizontal. It's
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  silo busting, its cross pollination. Collective
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  intelligence. It's the ologies.
• 5:03
  Adam Outland: Yeah, you said wisdom. And I thought to myself,
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  how does one teach wisdom? And maybe part of wisdom is
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  judgment, right? And how do you help people have better
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  judgment, or more effective judgment? And that is a
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  challenging question probably worth solving.
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  Terence Mauri: And I mean, imagine, you know, if university
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  there was a subject to University on wisdom. And
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  actually, when you go to university, you just don't, you
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  don't go for just three years, very transactional. But our
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  relationships with universities are stretched out over, you
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  know, maybe a lifetime. I think it's time, you know, this age of
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  AI, Age of convergence, Age of disruption, Age of possibility
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  means that we need to radically rethink, reset, reimagine these
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  outdated structures, institutions that we've been
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  holding on to. And this would be one example of how do we
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  reimagine our relationship with academia over a 50 year to high
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  horizon where we get mentoring, we mentor, and we're mentored.
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  We're part of a long term community. For me, we need to
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  rather get stuck in these silos at such an early age and become
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  very transactional. I'd love to see societies and communities
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  where we're tapping onto this collective spirit, collective
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  generosity, generosity, reciprocity, and growing because
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  of that, for the benefit of society, the planet,
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  relationships, institutions.
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  Adam Outland: Yeah, well said, and you're right. I think about
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  the silos in particular, you know, in medicine, you see it,
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  it's siloed in the brain or the spine, and then, you know,
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  someone goes into someone's else's lab, and they find a tool
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  or a resource that they could have been using over the last
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  five years.
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  Terence Mauri: Some of the most pioneering innovations have
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  happened at the Cleveland Clinic, for example, to do with
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  heart disease. And one of the reasons why they've done that
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  their ratio of innovation is so high at the Cleveland Clinic is
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  because they got rid of silos that, you know, they made it
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  easier for happy accidents to happen. And what I mean by that
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  is doctors, surgeons from different parts of the hospital
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  coming together to talk, to share different perspectives on
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  the same challenge. And they found that by doing that in an
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  engineered way, engineering cross pollination, the ratio of
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  IDEA, the ratio of innovation, that's now saving more lives,
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  went up in a significant way, in a very measurable way, we can
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  learn from these sorts of courage leap examples.
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  Adam Outland: And that's a great example of disruption that
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  doesn't involve, sometimes people, I think, collate
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  disruption with a software and that's a great example of
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  disruption being in almost a human, organic meeting, where
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  it's it's simply, like you said, cross pollinating and breaking
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  down the silos to solve problems.
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  Terence Mauri: Exactly.
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  Adam Outland: You know, what actionable steps can a leader
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  take to sharpen their organization's readiness for the
• 8:00
  future?
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  Terence Mauri: I think, start with this idea of future
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  readiness muscle and, you know, we have muscle memory. So what I
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  mean by that is some mindset shifts the the future. And the
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  reality right now is that the future is not just about
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  technology or trends that's important, but even more
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  important than that, it's about mindset shifts and choices and
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  voices and so this future readiness muscle we need to
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  sharpen in meaningful, intentional ways. For example,
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  the curiosity to learn, relearn and unlearn, the clarity to
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  focus, because our attention spans now are one of the rarest
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  and purest forms of leadership, capital, the conviction to make
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  decisions, decision velocity, under pressure, despite
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  volatility, despite uncertainty, these would be some muscles to
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  sharpen, individually and collectively within the
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  organization. A practical example that of that would be at
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  Novartis, the pharma company. They have a 30 day curiosity
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  hackathon, where they sharpen three types of curiosity over
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  the course of 30 days, 100,000 employees. They focus on inner
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  curiosity, so know yourself, know your blind spots, know your
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  strengths other curiosity. Know, the people around you build
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  bridges and outer curiosity, which is, what's a point of view
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  you have about your industry? What's a point of view you have
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  about weak signals or big trends that are impacting your
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  industry? And what are you going to do about them? They call it
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  triple curiosity, inner, other and outer. That's one example of
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  how a company is bringing this future readiness muscle to life
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  in a really human way. So inner is yourself out. Other is other
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  people, and outer is really curiosity outside of the
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  business. So looking at external trends, inflection points,
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  competition. And even other industries, because with
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  industry convergence happening as well, we also can learn a
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  lot, not just from our own industries, but again, that you
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  get trapped in silo thinking, but also breaking into other
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  industries.
• 10:13
  Adam Outland: Love that. And just a little speed dating
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  questions that we love to end with, with a lot of our guests,
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  I wanted to ask you a few of these too, because I think you
• 10:22
  have a different perspective. We heard a little bit of what
• 10:25
  you're listening to. What are you reading?
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  Terence Mauri: I love Cal Newport, uh, slow productivity.
• 10:30
  That's a great book. Slow productivity, this idea of do
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  less but do better and practice reductionism, then we have this
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  brain bias, adding complexity to complexity. Again, it's not a
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  winning strategy. When the world is coming at you at light speed.
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  You need we all need to start thinking intentionally about
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  reductionism, and what I mean by that is doing less, but doing it
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  more intelligently. For example, once a quarter, look at your
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  business. Look at your workload. What do you need to detox? What
• 11:00
  do you need to declutter? What do you need to delete when you
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  practice the reductionism in a deliberate way? It's a
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  clarifier, an energizer, a multiplier. Gives you a no
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  strategy as well, which helps you to obviously achieve greater
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  things in shorter time spans. So reductionism. Cal Newport, slow
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  productivity. That'd be one book. Another one would be Paul
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  Oster, Brooklyn Follies. That's fiction. I think reading fiction
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  is really great for the imagination. We've got to be
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  careful about look at this little look down syndrome,
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  constantly looking down and actually reading fiction. The
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  research shows that reading fiction sharpens your
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  imagination muscle, your empathy muscle as well. It also puts you
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  in a slower, beater state of consciousness, which is
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  absolutely a source code for strategic thinking, big picture
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  thinking. The risk that we all take, these are addictive, and
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  what that does is it forces us to become very transactional and
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  very short term, and we get addicted to dopamine hits, short
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  term thinking, reactive thinking, at the expense of
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  longer term, deeper imagination and strategic thinking. So you
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  know, read fiction as well a couple of times a year, at the
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  very least, because that requires discipline. That's
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  important. But also you'll really cultivate your reservoirs
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  of imagination, which will make you stand out, by the way, in a
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  world of sameness, you know, when we've got access to the
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  same AI, the same chat bots. The biggest risk is this curse of
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  sameness and commoditization is going to be your imagination,
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  your onlyness that makes you stand out.
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  Adam Outland: I love it. I mean, to some degree, we're pretty
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  complex computers ourselves, and so that power for creativity one
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  of our biggest strengths that it's been a trend I've seen from
• 13:01
  a lot of interviews. Thank you for that. You've been through,
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  you know, obviously a lot of personal transformation yourself
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  when you think back. And the question I ask all of our guests
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  to the part of your life we probably didn't talk about as
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  much, which is the pre 21 year old Terence. What's the message
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  you think you would go back and deliver having lived the life
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  you've lived now that that young man would benefit from hearing?
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  Terence Mauri: I think, don't, you know, don't get I mean, it's
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  easy to say this with hindsight, but we're forced into boxes. We
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  force ourselves into boxes. You know, I remember everyone asking
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  me questions from from about the age of 10, what, who do you want
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  to be? What do you want to do? And I understand the intention
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  behind these questions, but who the hell knows at that age, I
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  didn't know, and I think it puts unnecessary pressure. So I know
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  that it's positive intention behind a long time, but the risk
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  is we put ourselves into boxes. We get stuck with perfectionism.
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  We also get really obsessed with getting everything right first
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  time. And of course, sometimes it's impossible not to escape
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  that, because that's the way that college and school work.
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  You know, you pass or you'll fail. So there are some
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  institutional constraints that we have to deal with. I would
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  say, be easier on yourself. Focus more on experimentation,
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  and don't get so obsessed with a plan at such an early, early age
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  focus on developing curiosity skills, relationship skills,
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  conversational skills, presentation skills, skills that
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  will define you and make you more distinctive in a world of
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  sameness where everybody's got access to the same tools, these
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  would be some sort of early reflections and Find yourself
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  mentors. You don't even have to label it, but surround yourself
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  with people who are different to you and your divergent
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  perspectives, younger, older, different cultures. Go
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  traveling. These are, these are great, you know, great
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  initiatives, great actions, and practice courage. Redefine your
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  relationship with. Failure as well. And ask yourself every
• 15:02
  year, what have I done this year where I've grown, where I've had
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  a setback, where I've shown courage over comfort?
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  Adam Outland: I love it. I think one of the words I latched
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  on to, that you just said, was experimentation. I think when
• 15:17
  I've looked back that whenever I've even while we're in
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  academics, it doesn't prevent us from being able to try things in
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  the real world scenario, especially with our connectivity
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  nowadays, and it's so valuable every time you go out and you
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  test an idea instead of just reading about it. This has been
• 15:34
  a phenomenal interview, where can people go to just stay
• 15:37
  connected to Terence and understand more?
• 15:40
  Terence Mauri: Well, first of all, you know, thank you for
• 15:43
  such an incredible interview. I've loved your questions. I've
• 15:46
  loved our connection, and all the themes that we've discussed
• 15:50
  are so close to my heart, and I know they're close to your heart
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  as well. It's always great. It's always an honor to meet a
• 15:56
  kindred spirit, and you never know what's going to happen. So
• 15:59
  thank you. Thank you for that opportunity. And so for me, you
• 16:03
  know, I'd want to pay it forward. There's a couple of
• 16:07
  platforms to stay connected, to reach out part of this community
• 16:12
  that were constantly part of building and nourishing number
• 16:16
  one is LinkedIn. Obviously, LinkedIn is a big one. Terrence
• 16:20
  Maori, LinkedIn. Another one is my website, terencemarry.com
• 16:24
  check out my podcast show, hack the future. And these would be
• 16:28
  two or three, and then obviously my new my latest book, The
• 16:31
  upside of disruption, is another great resource to check out the
• 16:35
  upside of disruption. And you know, I wish everybody good
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  fortune, health and happiness. I leave everyone with the words of
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  the late chemist Marie Curie. She said, in life, nothing is to
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  be feared, only understood, and the more we understand, the less
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  we will fear. But also Ted Lasso, my favorite coach, he
• 16:57
  said, stay humble, stay teachable.
• 17:00
  Adam Outland: Couldn't agree with that last one more. Thank
• 17:04
  you so much, Terence, for your time. This was fantastic. Was a
• 17:07
  great interview. I learned a lot.
• 17:09
  Terence Mauri: Thank you so much, Adam.