Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Who Killed Creativity?" with Andrew & Gaia Grant

Transcript

"Who Killed Creativity?" with Andrew & Gaia Grant · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Can I humans? What kind of a safe space for dangerous ideas?
• 0:05
  Here's one for you. What makes Apple? Apple.
• 0:09
  And what makes Google? And what makes Tesla? Tesla.
• 0:15
  How much of that has to do with diversity of thought?
• 0:18
  And if so, with a lot, then what does diversity of thought actually mean?
• 0:22
  How do we bring diversity into companies and have companies
• 0:25
  be creative and agile in an increasingly chaotic world?
• 0:30
  This is something which today's guests have devoted their lives to.
• 0:33
  Their names are Andrew and Gaia Grant.
• 0:36
  They've written a couple of books. One is called Who Killed Creativity
• 0:39
  and how to get it back. The other is called the Innovation Race,
• 0:42
  how to change a culture to change the game.
• 0:45
  Andrew has presented at TEDx in Hong Kong at the Asia Pacific Economic
• 0:50
  Corporation CEO Summit at the Prime Minister's Office
• 0:54
  of the United Arab Emirates all over the place.
• 0:56
  And Gaia is an academic who has presented her papers
• 1:00
  on sustainable innovation leadership.
• 1:02
  What does that mean? We'll find out.
• 1:03
  It had a lot of global conferences and corporate events
• 1:06
  for big companies like PWC and Boeing.
• 1:09
  Their basic gist is how do we take what we understand about education,
• 1:14
  about educating young people, about creating creativity and innovation?
• 1:19
  And how do we apply that to capitalism, to big organizations?
• 1:24
  And at a time where it's possible for big organizations
• 1:27
  to fail very, very quickly and become behemoths very, very quickly.
• 1:32
  It's an interesting chat to try to dig into the minds of people who understand this balance
• 1:37
  between wanting to retain what's good about companies from the past
• 1:42
  but also be nimble enough to embrace the future.
• 1:45
  I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did with Andrew and Gaia Grant.
• 1:49
  So I'm fascinated by creativity obviously being a creative person.
• 2:03
  I'm fascinated by innovation.
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  I think if the two is being similar, if not synonyms,
• 2:08
  you guys don't seem to. What's the difference?
• 2:10
  Most people do into change them.
• 2:13
  So I don't think it's major, although creativity tends to precede innovation
• 2:17
  because you need creative thinking in order to innovate.
• 2:20
  But creative thinking was the buzz word about five or ten years ago.
• 2:23
  Now everyone likes to talk about innovation.
• 2:25
  But Gaia, you've got a different perspective because you've got the more academic version of it.
• 2:30
  Well, I would say the same thing. I'd say you absolutely need creative thinking
• 2:33
  before you can innovate.
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  Innovation being the practical implementation of creative.
• 2:37
  Yeah, we talk about innovation all the time.
• 2:40
  Without thinking, well, have we developed creative thinking?
• 2:43
  Have we developed a culture that supports creative thinking?
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  Have we focused on that capability, that skill?
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  And so we always start with creative thinking.
• 2:52
  Whenever we run an innovation program, we don't presume that people are creative.
• 2:56
  And we believe that people can develop their creative thinking.
• 2:59
  In fact, that's part of my research.
• 3:01
  And it's part of what we've looked into for a long time.
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  And then we focus on, well, once you've got those creative thinking capabilities,
• 3:09
  how can you innovate?
• 3:10
  So how can you come up with those practical ideas, models,
• 3:14
  inventions that are going to make a difference?
• 3:18
  And how do you stimulate those creative thinking capabilities in people who don't feel like they've got them?
• 3:24
  Well, first of all, I think what we've seen is 98% of children score high in creative thinking
• 3:28
  and only 2% of adults.
• 3:30
  So in someone along the line, we've lost it.
• 3:32
  Now, I don't know, Josh, you might be one of the 2%.
• 3:36
  Much as the teacher's tried to drill it out of me as to have a scary creativity.
• 3:40
  Well, it probably has been educated out of us because score rewards correct answers.
• 3:44
  It doesn't reward creative answers.
• 3:47
  So I think the challenge is...
• 3:49
  Well, this just pause on that for a second.
• 3:50
  That's fascinating.
• 3:51
  Right, the idea that we might have constructed a means of educating the next generation of people
• 3:57
  that actually impedes our ability to get our arms around the biggest challenges that we face,
• 4:01
  because it requires them to conform to answers that we've already figured out of the right ones.
• 4:06
  Yeah, the old fashioned way of school, it is changing,
• 4:10
  but traditionally it gives you information and then at the end of the term or semester it asks you
• 4:14
  to spit it back.
• 4:15
  So it's not asking you necessarily to be creative.
• 4:17
  Now, it is changing.
• 4:18
  They are trying to flip it around and get people to think creatively and think critically.
• 4:23
  Different countries are different.
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  So obviously, I think Australia is fairly advanced in that area.
• 4:27
  But typically, most people have just been fed information, told to give it back.
• 4:31
  And it's not really helping with creative thinking and critical thinking.
• 4:34
  Is there a...
• 4:35
  Sorry, Kevin?
• 4:36
  I was going to say, it's still not really about completely following your passion,
• 4:39
  following your curiosity, following your interests.
• 4:42
  It's about sticking to a curriculum.
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  So there are certain standards that you need to achieve, certain hoops that you need to jump through,
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  to get through the system and that can kill individual creative thinking.
• 4:53
  And yet, there's also a certain kind of satirical cliche of the Portlandia,
• 4:58
  Steiner, Montessori, Child, who is, you know,
• 5:02
  allowed to chase butterflies around the park all day and never actually learns anything
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  because they're following their spirit.
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  They're in a spirit.
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  How do you do the creativity stoking without falling into that question?
• 5:15
  I think you need to do both.
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  I think you need to allow people to be creative,
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  but you also obviously, we do live in society.
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  There is a, you know, we can't be too idealistic.
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  We do need to achieve things.
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  So I think the danger is the right learning type of school,
• 5:28
  which we're now moving away from in most countries.
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  And yet, I mean, but in a discipline like physics or engineering,
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  there really are a whole lot of right answers.
• 5:36
  Right.
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  So in that case, as you said, different.
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  So I think that brings us to a really core part of my research,
• 5:42
  which is that you need both.
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  It's both and it's not either or.
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  So yes, we need to have open exploration.
• 5:52
  Really, really important for creative thinking,
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  but we also need to learn to work within parameters.
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  We need to appreciate that there are going to often be restrictions
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  or limitations to what we can implement.
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  It's important to explore and push both boundaries simultaneously.
• 6:07
  So this then leads into the whole innovation process,
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  which is really about exploration and preservation.
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  So both those breakthrough, new ideas, risk taking,
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  as well as looking at how can you ensure that you're developing systems
• 6:24
  and structures and incremental development
• 6:27
  that ensure sustainability over the long term.
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  Are you talking about environmental sustainability,
• 6:32
  cultural sustainability?
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  What does sustainability mean?
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  Well, it means that you don't just have great ideas that die.
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  It means that we're thinking long term.
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  And of course, that incorporates also,
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  you know, the planet, you know, social systems, etc.
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  So that notion of let's just generate great ideas.
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  It's not enough.
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  Let's just stick with what we have and incrementally develop that.
• 6:58
  That's not enough.
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  So let's do both.
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  And I've looked into some really interesting research from 60 years ago.
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  There was this guy called Ariati who looked into creative adenic cultures
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  or cultures that produce an unusual number of geniuses.
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  And what he identified was that there are a number of different factors
• 7:21
  that support the development of creative geniuses.
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  So it's not just genetics.
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  There can be environmental factors,
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  socio-political factors, economic factors and so on.
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  And there are certain cycles, certain times,
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  periods of time in history,
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  where everything's converged and you get an unusual number of geniuses
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  like the Renaissance period.
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  And from the core factors, I distilled it down to four key factors,
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  which is you need freedom.
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  So you need a certain amount of freedom to think openly.
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  And that's supported today when you look at democracies.
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  You do get a greater number of patents.
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  You get a higher scores in global innovation rankings,
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  creativity rankings and so on.
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  You also need to have collaboration.
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  So there needs to be a agreeability.
• 8:06
  There needs to be support for each other.
• 8:09
  You also need flexibility.
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  So you need to be able to adapt.
• 8:13
  And you also need an openness to new ideas.
• 8:18
  So you think of the times like the printing press
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  when that was developed during the Renaissance period.
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  There were lots of ideas individually developed
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  in different cultures and countries around the world.
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  So China came up with an idea of the printing press,
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  maybe in collaboration with Korea.
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  And then you had Egypt was developing the inks and the plates.
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  It was more about the reeds and the inks and so on.
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  And all of these ideas came together in Europe.
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  And so there was that openness to new ideas,
• 8:52
  there was that connection, that creative collaboration,
• 8:56
  that freedom to think, and it all converged into a new invention.
• 9:01
  So those four concepts are really critically important.
• 9:05
  And yet think about...
• 9:06
  And so it was the fourth openness, did you call it?
• 9:08
  What did you call the fourth?
• 9:09
  Yes, so openness, yeah.
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  So think about though if you have too much of those things.
• 9:14
  So they're really important.
• 9:16
  If you have too much freedom,
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  you'll have no clear direction.
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  It could be chaos.
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  If you have too much openness,
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  then you're not going to have enough focus.
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  If you have too much collaboration,
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  that can lead to group think.
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  If you have too much flexibility,
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  that can lead to no stability.
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  So we actually need this balance
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  or to hold the tension between the paradoxical positions.
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  So while you need freedom, you also need some control.
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  And again, too much control is a pressure.
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  While you need openness, you also need some focus.
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  Too much focus can become disconnection, disengagement.
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  So while you need collaboration,
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  you need some independent thinking,
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  and why you need some flexibility.
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  You also need some stability.
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  So we've tended to focus on innovation as I said,
• 10:07
  this is a great idea of having open new thinking,
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  breakthrough ideas, taking risks.
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  Without recognising there's this other side
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  that holds the tension and ensures
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  that we have both creative thinking
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  and practical implementation.
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  If you have one without the other...
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  If you have one without the other,
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  it will skid off the tracks.
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  Whether it's a company or even possibly a country,
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  or just a culture.
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  If it's too much of one,
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  it's, you know, if you think of it going down a road,
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  it skids off.
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  I mean, it feels like, for the past 10 or 20 years,
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  the dominant industries that have been growing the fastest,
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  namely the tech industries and Silicon Valley
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  have very much had an ethos of fail fast.
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  I mean, literally move fast and break things.
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  Was the slogan...
• 10:51
  Was the slogan?
• 10:52
  Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?
• 10:53
  Well, it's changed.
• 10:54
  If you think of, you know, marks like a big key...
• 10:56
  For people that don't know,
• 10:58
  Facebook's original slogan was move fast and break things.
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  So if you could say that was heading down the exploration side of the road
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  as fast as possible.
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  And then last year, he decided to blow $13 billion
• 11:09
  on his great ideas that we don't, you know,
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  who knows where they've gone and the metaverse,
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  you know, well, maybe it was before he's tied.
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  I don't know, but the point is, you know,
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  that was like going so far off the road of freedom
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  and, you know, I'm going to go and do it myself.
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  But this year's now the year of,
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  they're calling it the year of efficiency
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  or the year of, you know, pulling back.
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  We're seeing a lot of jobs being lost.
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  So it's like they've got right across to that left hand
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  exploring side of the road for the last 10 or 15,
• 11:34
  five or 10 years.
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  And now, if they've gone too far on that exploring side,
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  so now they're pulling back.
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  And a lot of the tech companies are now pulling
• 11:40
  across to the preserving side.
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  So you see people cycle backwards and forwards,
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  to the companies that are sustainable,
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  are the successful ones that can balance that tension.
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  Everyone's got, everyone's got tension.
• 11:50
  It's whether they can use that tension to pull them forward
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  or whether that tension completely rips them apart.
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  So if the good, the sustainable companies
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  or countries that survive will keep that tension in check
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  and they go too far to one side of the road,
• 12:04
  they'll get pulled back again.
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  The ones that don't survive,
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  which is what I'd call back to your definition
• 12:09
  of sustainability, the ones that don't survive,
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  the ones that just go, you could think of a formula,
• 12:14
  one race, skidding, full steam ahead,
• 12:17
  hit that left hand corner and just keep going.
• 12:19
  And is there a natural trajectory that you notice
• 12:22
  among successful sustainable entities,
• 12:24
  but they're countries or companies in the Yinn and Yang
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  between those two poles?
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  Like do you start off in a highly exploratory mode
• 12:31
  and then move into a more conservative mode?
• 12:34
  Ideally, yes, you need to have that openness,
• 12:37
  that freedom for thinking, that collaboration,
• 12:40
  that flexibility to generate those original novel ideas.
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  If you don't, you're going to sort of be stuck
• 12:46
  in continuing to do what you've always done
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  or in your habitual behaviors or patterns or whatever.
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  So yes, ideally you want to start with exploration
• 12:55
  and at some stage you're going to have to then say,
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  all right, now we need to ground those ideas.
• 13:00
  We need to ensure that they're really practical
• 13:02
  and implementable.
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  And so, sorry to interrupt,
• 13:05
  but then how do you avoid stagnation and conservatism?
• 13:09
  Like at what point do you really do?
• 13:10
  Then you don't stop there again.
• 13:11
  You've got to keep that cycle going.
• 13:13
  So I've got this diagram of a spring
• 13:16
  where you're constantly stretching,
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  you're going from one side to the other,
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  stretching backwards and forwards.
• 13:22
  So after you've had that initial exploration phase,
• 13:26
  you pulled back, you put a few systems and structures in place,
• 13:29
  then you've got to look at, well, how do we move to the next phase?
• 13:32
  How do we ensure we're not stagnating?
• 13:34
  How do we ensure that we're pushing forward
• 13:37
  and continuing to innovate?
• 13:39
  So it's a constant process.
• 13:41
  And you need to know where the boundaries are.
• 13:43
  If you don't know, again, if you go back to the racing car driver,
• 13:46
  the really good ones can go right to the,
• 13:48
  almost millimeters to the side of the road
• 13:49
  as they take that racing line.
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  We're not really good, so I'm not going to go right to the side of the road.
• 13:55
  Good on you if you think like Mark,
• 13:57
  it's like a big thing, so you can go right to the side of the road
• 13:59
  and blow 13 billion.
• 14:00
  I don't have that sort of money to sort of throw around.
• 14:02
  Right, but isn't it the case that if he wasn't the type of person
• 14:05
  who had the kind of cajonus to do that,
• 14:07
  then he wouldn't have created phase two in the first place.
• 14:09
  So you don't actually know where the boundaries are.
• 14:11
  No, every failed Titan thought he or she knew where the boundaries were.
• 14:18
  And it's only through, I mean Elon Musk
• 14:21
  was only on Elon Musk because he hasn't failed yet.
• 14:22
  And eventually if he fails, then he will be that failure.
• 14:25
  And we won't hear about him because it's survivorship bias.
• 14:29
  So you, this is the danger of us worshipping these sort of entrepreneurs
• 14:33
  and thinking we can create a, you know, they go on
• 14:35
  and they do their TED talk and they come up with their five stages
• 14:37
  of how they were successful.
• 14:39
  We need to look at all innovation leaders,
• 14:40
  not just the outliers that happen to be the ones
• 14:42
  that were in the right place at the right time.
• 14:45
  And, you know, maybe, maybe Mark Zuckerberg was trying to pick up chicks at university.
• 14:49
  That's where Facebook came from.
• 14:50
  Right. He didn't have this strategic plan to build this huge mega.
• 14:53
  Well, I mean, to give him credit, I think that the proof is in the pudding
• 14:56
  in the terms of the longevity of that particular company up until now,
• 14:59
  you can tell me why I'm wrong on that.
• 15:01
  But I think, I mean, I take your point.
• 15:03
  The point is more starkly obvious in the case of, for example,
• 15:06
  I remember chuckling to myself when Captain Sully Salenberg
• 15:09
  I did a world tour about leadership in times of crisis or something like that.
• 15:14
  And I was like, I mean, yeah, yeah, it was one thing.
• 15:17
  Like it was, it was, it was, it was an accident.
• 15:20
  I think it was an error is exactly.
• 15:22
  And he was going, and he did your job as a pilot.
• 15:24
  You landed that plane good on you, but there are lots of other,
• 15:27
  there are thousands of other pilots around the world
• 15:29
  who would have successfully pulled that off.
• 15:31
  You got lucky in a way that you were in the one scenario
• 15:34
  in which your training was able to get you.
• 15:36
  This is a danger of, you know, we, the media tends to study
• 15:38
  and want to worship.
• 15:39
  I mean, any of these guys could write a book on the seven successful stages
• 15:42
  of leadership in that during the other thousands of stages of leadership.
• 15:45
  But because of survivorship bias, we've got to be careful.
• 15:47
  We need to look at the aggregate.
• 15:49
  And let's face it, most of us are a little bit more average
• 15:51
  than these outliers.
• 15:52
  And who wants to go to Mars with Elon Musk anyway?
• 15:55
  I mean, dear leader, that's going to publicly shame us
• 15:58
  and have a good time.
• 15:59
  Right, but he wants to solve a problem.
• 16:00
  So talk to me about these, about people
• 16:02
  who truly do stick out above and beyond the pack
• 16:05
  like the Zuckerbergs and the masks.
• 16:06
  It can't just be that they, like in the case of a mask,
• 16:10
  there are so many different frontiers
• 16:12
  of which he has done things that other people couldn't do.
• 16:15
  So toxic as his personality might be
• 16:17
  from his company that boars huge holes to SpaceX
• 16:21
  and to, I mean, to all of these different than to Tesla,
• 16:25
  you can't have a strike rate that's strong
• 16:28
  without bringing something to the table.
• 16:30
  What is that?
• 16:31
  So we need those people and we need the other people
• 16:35
  who are going to come in and help to ground the ideas
• 16:37
  and help to support them.
• 16:39
  So we need to recognize what is our own personal bias.
• 16:42
  Do I have a bias towards exploration?
• 16:44
  Great.
• 16:44
  You know, I'm going to bring a lot of genius ideas to the table.
• 16:50
  Can I work with others who are going to help to ground those ideas
• 16:53
  because we can't have everything?
• 16:54
  We can stretch in both ways.
• 16:55
  I just want to go back and charge
• 16:57
  and I'll face the same thing.
• 16:58
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
• 16:59
  Facebook's been around for a long time.
• 17:00
  In the scheme of things, it is about a blip of a second
• 17:04
  in the planet.
• 17:05
  Yes, of course.
• 17:05
  But just a long time in the sense of,
• 17:09
  in the world of tasks,
• 17:11
  you can things move so far.
• 17:13
  Just that, you know,
• 17:14
  and incumbent the size of Facebook
• 17:16
  where there's many liabilities
• 17:18
  as Facebook has had over the past sort of three or four years
• 17:22
  and there's much bad presses.
• 17:23
  It's had and as many false starts
• 17:26
  and as many successful potential intruders
• 17:29
  onto its turf like Instagram and Snap and so on.
• 17:32
  The fact that it's still as successful as it is,
• 17:35
  I mean, to me indicates that he has some idea of what he's doing.
• 17:38
  Well, at the moment, it's, you know,
• 17:40
  obviously the road's been navigated well.
• 17:42
  But I mean, if this was a couple of years ago,
• 17:43
  we'd be talking about my space and Netscape.
• 17:46
  Sure.
• 17:46
  So I think, you know, I think, you know,
• 17:48
  if we, if we use the innovation races
• 17:49
  like a TV reality show,
• 17:50
  we're in a season at the moment.
• 17:52
  So what did they do wrong?
• 17:53
  What did they do wrong?
• 17:54
  Which runs my space and what I think I don't think they could see
• 17:57
  the writing on the wall.
• 17:58
  I mean, Codex, the classic example,
• 17:59
  I know it's been over years,
• 18:00
  but they were, you know, they define themselves
• 18:02
  as a chemical company,
• 18:03
  not as a saving memories company.
• 18:05
  So when it, when tech moved on,
• 18:08
  they stayed as a chemical company developing film
• 18:10
  rather than seeing themselves as a, you know,
• 18:13
  creating memories.
• 18:14
  Ironically, Codex developed the digital camera,
• 18:17
  but it got pushed away because those in power
• 18:19
  that wanted to keep Codex as it was
• 18:22
  were afraid of the innovation that was coming.
• 18:24
  And they knew that if you're in power,
• 18:25
  an innovation comes, it tends to bypass
• 18:27
  everyone that matters.
• 18:28
  So those in power want to hold on to that preservation
• 18:31
  because it's very threatening for things to overtake them.
• 18:35
  So if you, it's better almost to look at the companies
• 18:37
  that have come and gone, you know, past seasons
• 18:40
  than the ones that we, than the ones we're currently
• 18:42
  in at the moment, because you know, in any of those TV shows,
• 18:44
  you know, you never know who the winner will be
• 18:46
  until the final, until the ultimate fight.
• 18:48
  And that's where they go.
• 18:49
  Get the rights of very good at picking us as I sometimes am.
• 18:52
  I'm like, master chef winner.
• 18:54
  So you get across that line, you know,
• 18:56
  and it's all manipulated by the powers up top.
• 18:58
  So I think it is actually better to talk about what,
• 19:01
  the ones that have cycled around.
• 19:03
  And who knows, maybe we'll come back in five years time
• 19:05
  and we might still be happily talking about Apple
• 19:08
  or happily not.
• 19:09
  Apple is interesting because it, it was at its best
• 19:12
  when it had the dynamic tension of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook
• 19:15
  because one of them was an incredible explorer,
• 19:18
  who by the way got, you know, kicked out of his company
• 19:20
  several times and if it wasn't for a couple of moves,
• 19:23
  we might never have heard about Steve Jobs,
• 19:24
  but there would have been another one.
• 19:26
  But there's the combination of jobs and cooks that were...
• 19:28
  Tell me I'm not sure about that.
• 19:29
  I just don't believe that people who were that extraordinary
• 19:33
  another one in a billion.
• 19:34
  Like how many times does he have to get kicked out of his own company
• 19:37
  and kick to the curb and then come back?
• 19:40
  Well, that's his optimism.
• 19:41
  Before you're willing to concede that the guy is a freak.
• 19:44
  Oh, he was. There's no question about it.
• 19:46
  But in terms of it was the, it was the,
• 19:49
  it was the cook behind Steve Jobs that made things happen.
• 19:52
  Now that you've lost one of those,
• 19:54
  we're seeing a guy that is brilliant at processes.
• 19:57
  The innovations are still happening,
• 19:58
  but certainly not as much.
• 20:00
  Very incremental competitive.
• 20:01
  Very good at targeting things, buying companies,
• 20:04
  selling companies, really, really good at that.
• 20:06
  But it's going to be interesting to see where Apple goes
• 20:08
  now that it's lost that tension
• 20:10
  between the creative genius and explorer
• 20:13
  versus the more preserving process person.
• 20:17
  There's an interesting, by the way,
• 20:18
  if you sometimes see me typing,
• 20:19
  I'm making notes to myself.
• 20:20
  I'm not texting a girlfriend at the same time.
• 20:23
  I wanted to thought you were a brilliant multitasker.
• 20:26
  You were texting at the same time.
• 20:27
  We'll hit on the multitask today.
• 20:28
  We're going.
• 20:29
  Yeah, I'd love to.
• 20:30
  So one other thing while just before we leave Apple
• 20:34
  is that a lot of people attribute Apple's success
• 20:36
  to the fact that, in part, the fact that they've never tried
• 20:41
  to be the very, very first to do things, right?
• 20:44
  They do things very well a little bit later
• 20:46
  than everybody else does.
• 20:47
  The Blackberry already existed before they brought out the iPhone.
• 20:51
  They haven't really gotten into the
• 20:53
  artificial intelligence game yet.
• 20:55
  They haven't got into the VI headset game.
• 20:58
  Well, just started, right?
• 20:59
  But I mean, they're three years behind everybody else.
• 21:01
  So they sort of wait.
• 21:02
  They see the lay of the land and they go,
• 21:04
  well, we're going to do it right.
• 21:05
  And then blow everybody's minds
• 21:06
  rather than having a first mover advantage.
• 21:09
  Do you guys have any thoughts about that?
• 21:11
  I think they're just strategically very clever
• 21:13
  because the first mover advantage,
• 21:15
  the original explorers, as you said, survival die, literally.
• 21:20
  I think maybe the ones that are just hold back a little bit
• 21:22
  and let those first people go out and make the mistakes.
• 21:25
  I mean, we do a lot of keynote talks.
• 21:27
  Rule of a keynote speaker is never go first.
• 21:29
  Yeah.
• 21:29
  Because they're still playing around with stages
• 21:31
  and audiovisual, let someone else go first.
• 21:34
  So I think there's always a danger of going first.
• 21:36
  And I think maybe Apple have been, you know,
• 21:37
  very strategically careful in the way they do that.
• 21:40
  I've also heard Apple talked about as a design company,
• 21:44
  rather than a tech company.
• 21:45
  So the tech companies come along, they do their thing.
• 21:47
  And Steve Jobs goes, oh, let's put in a really simple design
• 21:51
  feature, which is one button.
• 21:53
  Yeah.
• 21:54
  And let's improve on the design of a product
• 21:59
  that's worked really well.
• 22:01
  And then they take off.
• 22:03
  Yeah.
• 22:03
  Make it sexy and charge a lot of money for it.
• 22:05
  Yeah.
• 22:06
  Consumers works.
• 22:07
  Yeah.
• 22:07
  So their branding is amazing.
• 22:08
  I mean, you know, everything they've got
• 22:10
  is got their own name behind it.
• 22:12
  It's a touch screen.
• 22:13
  It's whatever.
• 22:14
  It's not a brighter screen.
• 22:15
  It's a, what are they calling it, the new type of screen.
• 22:18
  They've sort of almost become that good branding.
• 22:20
  If you forgot.
• 22:21
  No, I was going to say, what is it?
• 22:23
  What is it?
• 22:23
  Oh, it's okay.
• 22:25
  It's fantastic.
• 22:27
  The name escapes me at the moment.
• 22:29
  But nonetheless, it was really good.
• 22:30
  But they keep away from generic type of branding.
• 22:33
  They've put their name on everything.
• 22:35
  Instead of earphones, they're earpods.
• 22:36
  Instead of the augmented reality, it's the provision.
• 22:39
  And it wasn't something like stories in your pocket.
• 22:42
  Or songs that there used to be.
• 22:43
  Oh, that's right.
• 22:43
  Yeah, I mean the costumes in your pocket.
• 22:45
  Yeah, the classic one is Bill Gates would get up at his,
• 22:47
  you know, his product launches
• 22:48
  and talk about all the specs of the computer
• 22:50
  and most of us would go.
• 22:51
  And the people in the room would go, wow,
• 22:53
  that's a great Bill, you know, you've now managed to squeeze
• 22:55
  this many megapixels into whatever.
• 22:57
  And then Steve Jobs gets up and says,
• 22:59
  10,000 songs in your pocket.
• 23:00
  And straight away, the world goes, yes, I want that.
• 23:04
  I can buy that.
• 23:05
  Now, it's funny that my son, who's heard me give that talk
• 23:08
  many times, said, that's interesting, Dad,
• 23:09
  because when Tim Cook gets up now, he goes back to selling specs.
• 23:14
  Which shows that he's going to purchase.
• 23:16
  Laura and the preserver, Steve Jobs was creative
• 23:18
  in his branding as well as his design.
• 23:20
  It was the whole concept.
• 23:22
  So it is interesting.
• 23:23
  But as I said, we're in the current season of Apple,
• 23:25
  so we'll have to come back and talk about that one
• 23:28
  at a later stage.
• 23:29
  And on the evolution of companies, I mean,
• 23:31
  you were just reminding me of a company like Netflix
• 23:34
  that starts by mailing out DVDs in this very narrow business model
• 23:39
  and ends up completely revolutionizing
• 23:42
  and overhaul how we produce entertainment and media,
• 23:45
  the world over.
• 23:47
  It begins with offering you essentially access to everything.
• 23:52
  You're going to be able to get any movie you want
• 23:53
  on your little DVD.
• 23:55
  Then, of course, it creates a whole new way of consuming media.
• 23:58
  Everybody else tries to get on the action and says,
• 24:00
  well, hang on why are we allowing Netflix
• 24:02
  to sell our Disney movies or our Paramount movies?
• 24:05
  We should have our own intellectual property.
• 24:08
  And all of a sudden, you realize that now you have a lot
• 24:11
  of different things to subscribe to.
• 24:13
  And maybe some of the movies that would otherwise have been
• 24:15
  available on a premium, a small boutique,
• 24:18
  premium cable channel, which is some 1932 black and white,
• 24:22
  I don't know, Buster Keaton film or something.
• 24:24
  It's no longer available at all, anywhere.
• 24:28
  And I've been wondering lately about the sort of,
• 24:32
  I don't know, the common, whether there's like a,
• 24:36
  nobody is looking after the kind of common interest of the culture
• 24:39
  as where as companies are trying to move fast and break things.
• 24:43
  Right? Everyone's in this very exploratory,
• 24:46
  creative phase of disrupting the industry.
• 24:51
  But I can no longer see Kramer versus Kramer to take an example.
• 24:55
  I don't know whether that's true, but some like movie that I love
• 24:58
  that is just no Arlington Road.
• 25:00
  That was the movie.
• 25:01
  I wanted to look at what Arlington Road,
• 25:02
  you know, like it couldn't find it anywhere.
• 25:04
  It's nowhere.
• 25:05
  Interesting.
• 25:06
  It's nowhere.
• 25:07
  So is there a, is there like a collective action problem
• 25:11
  in competition?
• 25:13
  I just think they're profit driven.
• 25:15
  And you know, I mean Netflix was successful.
• 25:18
  Again, it was able to transition back to the original thing.
• 25:20
  Netflix transitioned from mailing DVDs to streaming
• 25:24
  because its vision was so strong.
• 25:26
  It didn't define itself as a mailing DVD company,
• 25:28
  like Blockbuster did.
• 25:30
  So when innovation moved on and tech moved on,
• 25:33
  Netflix was able to move with it,
• 25:35
  whereas Blockbuster wasn't.
• 25:37
  So a lot of it is how you define yourself, the vision that you give.
• 25:41
  And you know, Netflix was very famous for its mission deck,
• 25:44
  whatever it's called, it was a PowerPoint slide deck
• 25:46
  that had a lot of visionary stuff in it.
• 25:48
  That was telling a narrative beyond just
• 25:50
  we are simply labeling DVDs.
• 25:52
  So we work a lot with hotels,
• 25:53
  and often laugh that the successful hotels,
• 25:56
  the ones that, I mean at the end of the day,
• 25:57
  hotel sells bums on beds.
• 25:59
  But the successful ones are the ones
• 26:01
  that are selling a whole image in a whole lifestyle.
• 26:03
  They're not just selling bums on beds.
• 26:05
  And so, you know, the hotel industry
• 26:07
  is being disrupted at the moment.
• 26:08
  And if you're just selling bums on beds,
• 26:10
  well, you could find yourself in trouble.
• 26:11
  So the ones that will succeed
• 26:13
  are the ones that are selling an organizational narrative
• 26:15
  or a story.
• 26:16
  They're not just selling a product.
• 26:18
  Is that what it changes?
• 26:20
  You can't keep up with it.
• 26:21
  Is that marketing bullshit, though,
• 26:22
  that they're selling on top of the bum on the bed?
• 26:24
  I think it's cheaper than that, though.
• 26:27
  So a company, we've worked with Mercedes-Benz
• 26:30
  and sort of in the past,
• 26:32
  they talked about we no longer a car company.
• 26:35
  And we're not about vehicles.
• 26:36
  We're about mobility.
• 26:38
  And that opens up your imagination,
• 26:40
  because then you're saying, all right,
• 26:41
  we're not just going to stick to producing cars,
• 26:44
  different versions of cars.
• 26:45
  We're actually going to think way beyond that
• 26:48
  to how is mobility going to be happening in the future?
• 26:51
  And what are we going to be doing differently?
• 26:52
  The interesting point that you brought
• 26:53
  is a bullshit from a marketing perspective.
• 26:56
  Look, yes, there's too much.
• 26:57
  I mean, those of us that travel on,
• 26:58
  and I know you do, you know,
• 26:59
  there's so much flurry stuff.
• 27:00
  You almost want to gag yourself.
• 27:01
  And when it hotels...
• 27:02
  Oh, I'm not saying it doesn't work.
• 27:03
  I mean, it's not working for me.
• 27:05
  When hotels and countries use brochures
• 27:06
  that are not in their own control hotel,
• 27:08
  which, I think, won't work.
• 27:10
  Which just happened.
• 27:10
  But just happened with the Philippines.
• 27:13
  And I tell in Bali that was the video,
• 27:16
  these beautiful beaches.
• 27:17
  And I said to the sales manager,
• 27:18
  that's the nurse that do a side of Bali,
• 27:20
  not Jim Brunch.
• 27:20
  She said, no, it's not.
• 27:21
  Because we lived there.
• 27:22
  We lived on the beach in Jim Brunch.
• 27:24
  Yeah, that's not.
• 27:26
  She came back to me a couple months later.
• 27:28
  She said, I would never do that.
• 27:29
  So, look, there isn't the degree of bullshit.
• 27:31
  But I think Jaya's point's really interesting.
• 27:33
  And that is that internally,
• 27:34
  it helps a company become more creative.
• 27:36
  Because if a car was just sticking to selling cars,
• 27:40
  yeah, then all you're going to be doing
• 27:41
  is innovating around improving the car side of it.
• 27:45
  If these new car companies want to innovate
• 27:47
  and who would have thought that,
• 27:48
  with Mercedes, that Apple and Google
• 27:50
  were going to be their competitors.
• 27:51
  Even with banking, who would have thought
• 27:53
  that Apple and Google were going to be their competitors.
• 27:55
  So instead of Mercedes trying to benchmark
• 27:57
  themselves against Mercedes or Audi,
• 27:58
  they need to benchmark themselves
• 28:00
  against something bigger.
• 28:01
  If they're just selling cars, they won't innovate.
• 28:03
  Or they might get a better engine or a better tires.
• 28:06
  If they now see themselves internally,
• 28:08
  forget about the marketing bullshit.
• 28:09
  If they see themselves internally
• 28:11
  as a mobility company,
• 28:13
  they're no longer just selling cars.
• 28:15
  And again, we're in that season.
• 28:16
  So who knows where the car companies will go?
• 28:19
  So it takes away the constraints.
• 28:20
  Yeah, right.
• 28:21
  So there are maybe two components there
• 28:23
  to that sprinkle of pixie dust
• 28:24
  that you're talking about that's on top of things.
• 28:26
  There's the internal component about what are we up to
• 28:29
  as a company and what is our mission.
• 28:31
  And then there's the consumer facing side of things
• 28:34
  which is how do we make?
• 28:36
  Yeah, because it works.
• 28:38
  If I have been away from Australia
• 28:41
  for more than a few months
• 28:42
  and I get on a quantest plane and I hear,
• 28:44
  I still call Australia home, right?
• 28:46
  Then the tugs plugs at the heart strings.
• 28:49
  I used to fly a lot between New York and LA on United
• 28:52
  and they'd always have George Gershwin's
• 28:54
  Rhapsody in blue playing when you enter the plane.
• 28:56
  And it makes you feel a certain way.
• 28:58
  If you know hotels, you know what a W hotel is.
• 29:01
  Like very strong brand, which I don't like.
• 29:04
  But like you walk in and you know exactly
• 29:07
  what the kind of mood is.
• 29:09
  And that to me is all fluff.
• 29:11
  I mean, it's just nothing.
• 29:12
  It's got nothing to do with the actual service
• 29:16
  that the airline or the hotel is providing.
• 29:17
  And let's see what an example of four seasons works.
• 29:21
  Well, four seasons will work with a lot.
• 29:22
  They have the number one branded hotel in the world
• 29:24
  in terms of their marketing value.
• 29:26
  And it's been really interesting
• 29:28
  trying to understand what made them so good.
• 29:30
  They, you know, I remember one GM
• 29:32
  that won the best hotel in the world three years in a row.
• 29:34
  Would used to start every meeting, morning meeting.
• 29:36
  Most GMs would start a morning meeting
• 29:38
  with the numbers and the figures.
• 29:39
  And then they'd be emotionally on a rollercoaster.
• 29:41
  If the numbers are good, everyone would be happy.
• 29:42
  If the numbers were bad, they weren't.
• 29:44
  But this GM would start every meeting by saying,
• 29:46
  what can we do better today than yesterday?
• 29:48
  Let's look at the customer reviews.
• 29:49
  And so he was constantly training and bringing up his staff,
• 29:53
  trying to say, what is our vision as the four seasons?
• 29:55
  What are we doing differently?
• 29:56
  And if you talk to people that have gone
• 29:58
  to four seasons around the world,
• 29:59
  there isn't that maintained a consistency in their brand
• 30:02
  that most other hotels can't maintain.
• 30:04
  And I think that's because they, again,
• 30:05
  they're back to their vision mission values.
• 30:07
  And so a lot of their decisions come
• 30:09
  from their mission vision values
• 30:11
  rather than a standard operations manual.
• 30:13
  And I think there can be an authentic connection
• 30:15
  between, hopefully, ideally,
• 30:17
  there is an authentic connection
• 30:18
  between the vision mission values and the branding.
• 30:22
  And then everybody is motivated and inspired
• 30:25
  by this vision, then the customer service is better
• 30:27
  than the whole approach is better that everyone takes
• 30:31
  within the organization.
• 30:32
  That impacts everyone externally as well.
• 30:33
  And then when one conference organiser hearing your words,
• 30:36
  bullshit, we ladies and gentlemen,
• 30:37
  serving ladies and gentlemen,
• 30:39
  and they got this whole spiel about what a great hotel we are.
• 30:41
  And she said, she saw the hotel conference person
• 30:44
  walk behind the door and yell and scream at the staff.
• 30:47
  And she said, oh, well, that is just purely marketing.
• 30:50
  Yeah, right.
• 30:51
  But, hopefully, if you can actually try and live it out,
• 30:53
  then that's a different thing.
• 30:55
  So how do you do that if the living it out
• 30:57
  is not about like, oh, we embody the spirit of the brand
• 31:00
  and we have Blue Sky thinking, but the embody,
• 31:03
  but what you do requires an extremely high level
• 31:06
  of what you just talked about, which is consistency
• 31:08
  and discipline and excellence.
• 31:10
  So you think about like another multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos,
• 31:15
  who has made his fortune by getting everything precisely right.
• 31:20
  When you order something from his company,
• 31:21
  it's going to get there on time.
• 31:23
  It will be what it said it was,
• 31:25
  like it's going to be a seamless experience.
• 31:27
  You're not going to have to fathom around with your passwords.
• 31:30
  It's not going to be complicated.
• 31:31
  You're not going to know what button to click.
• 31:34
  You're not going to know when it's coming.
• 31:36
  Like that's all just about the customer experience
• 31:38
  and with a brand that I assume like Mercedes as well.
• 31:40
  That would be an extremely important time
• 31:42
  would imagine to Mercedes executives to be renowned
• 31:45
  as being a company that you can take to the bank.
• 31:47
  You know what you're going to get.
• 31:48
  They're not going to deliver a car like Tesla does.
• 31:51
  Well, oh, we love Elon Musk and Teslas are amazing,
• 31:53
  but everyone is a little bit different
• 31:54
  and the doors don't quite close perfectly, right?
• 31:57
  And Mercedes doors are going to close perfectly every single time.
• 32:01
  I assumed that that's what they want.
• 32:03
  So how do you get?
• 32:04
  I'm according to my brother-in-law, but that's another story.
• 32:06
  Like that's the brand.
• 32:07
  Yeah, reliability.
• 32:08
  So you need both.
• 32:09
  You need that really great vision,
• 32:12
  a really great original product
• 32:16
  and you also need that reliability consistency.
• 32:19
  And that's why it's so hard to achieve
• 32:21
  because you'll often get reliable consistent companies
• 32:25
  that just can't make it in the markets.
• 32:27
  I mean, everyone knows you need both,
• 32:29
  but how do you do that?
• 32:30
  Is that going to be silo?
• 32:31
  Do you silo both?
• 32:33
  Do you have a creative group?
• 32:34
  Well, Google split off and created an alphabet for that.
• 32:38
  Right.
• 32:38
  Because they were realizing they were meant to be a creative company.
• 32:40
  They got too big.
• 32:41
  They got too bureaucratic because all companies go through cycles.
• 32:45
  You know, and so they get too big.
• 32:47
  They get too bureaucratic.
• 32:47
  They fall over themselves.
• 32:49
  As Jim Collins talks about, they get successful
• 32:52
  and then they get complacent with their successfulness.
• 32:54
  So Google created an alphabet.
• 32:55
  But let's just go back to Amazon for a minute.
• 32:57
  They, you know, you talked about the procedure side of it.
• 33:00
  But Jeff Bezos used to start every meeting
• 33:02
  with an empty chair.
• 33:03
  And that empty chair was the customer.
• 33:05
  So again, it's back to the narration
• 33:07
  and the story that he used to tell.
• 33:09
  So you've jumped into the procedural side of Amazon.
• 33:11
  But what people may not know is that empty chair
• 33:14
  was always there.
• 33:15
  So every decision that was ever made
• 33:16
  was what is the customer want?
• 33:18
  And it may well be the customer wants,
• 33:21
  they want it on time.
• 33:22
  They want it to work.
• 33:23
  But it goes back to what is the customer want?
• 33:25
  The procedure follows after that.
• 33:27
  And that's when you tighten it all up.
• 33:29
  And that was probably creativity to come up
• 33:31
  with an idea of putting that empty chair in the room.
• 33:33
  And lots of companies are now following that concept.
• 33:35
  And there is a concept called ambidextrality.
• 33:37
  And there's different ways that you can embed
• 33:40
  ambidextrality in the organization.
• 33:41
  So that is a focus on both exploration and preservation.
• 33:44
  So it can be done through different departments
• 33:46
  and having different areas of focus, which is contextual
• 33:49
  or structural ambidextrality.
• 33:51
  And then you can have contextual ambidextrality,
• 33:53
  which is about individuals and individual teams
• 33:56
  all being able to become ambidextrists in their thinking
• 33:59
  or have paradoxical cognition.
• 34:01
  So an individual is able to stretch in both directions,
• 34:04
  able to challenge their teammates.
• 34:06
  And together, they're able to perform both areas.
• 34:10
  So it can be embedded in different ways.
• 34:12
  And it can play out in different ways
• 34:14
  that are much deeper than just saying, siloing and saying,
• 34:17
  well, you do the innovation and the R&D.
• 34:19
  And you do the finance.
• 34:21
  You can also bring that all together.
• 34:23
  I know you don't like me putting on the spot,
• 34:25
  but you'll see a COO story where you're embedded yourself
• 34:28
  in an organization and watched the conversations
• 34:30
  between a visionary CEO and a more preserving COO
• 34:33
  that was really interesting.
• 34:34
  Because one of them, the other would have completely died.
• 34:36
  I've done some in-depth case studies,
• 34:39
  ethnographic research, where I've spent time
• 34:41
  embedded in organizations.
• 34:43
  And there was one organization in particular
• 34:46
  that I spent almost two years visiting that organization.
• 34:49
  Sitting in on all the executive meetings
• 34:53
  and just interviewing and observing all the staff
• 34:56
  at all levels and clients and so on.
• 34:59
  And there was a really interesting dynamic
• 35:02
  between the COO and the CEO.
• 35:04
  So originally, there was an entrepreneurial founder
• 35:07
  who'd started the organization.
• 35:09
  It was highly innovative and highly successful
• 35:13
  and created a large number of services for their clients.
• 35:18
  But the culture was falling apart.
• 35:19
  So there were individuals who were feeling like
• 35:22
  there's no systems in place.
• 35:24
  We can't support this long term.
• 35:26
  So the board brought in a COO as a complimentary figure
• 35:30
  to help bring that balance.
• 35:32
  And between them, there was this really fascinating dynamic
• 35:35
  where the CEO was quite resistant at first
• 35:38
  because he was used to having his own way,
• 35:39
  doing his own thing and just pushing ahead.
• 35:41
  And the CEO on his own would have been unsustainable.
• 35:43
  It was unsustainable.
• 35:45
  There were huge issues and the organization
• 35:47
  would have fallen apart without some sort of intervention.
• 35:50
  The COO came in and he was actually,
• 35:52
  I could identify that he was very ambitious.
• 35:56
  He had this paradoxical cognition
• 35:58
  because I heard in his language, he'd talk to the CEO
• 36:02
  and he'd say, I realize we need to be highly innovative.
• 36:05
  I realize that we need to continue to serve our clients
• 36:10
  and we also need to be thinking about
• 36:13
  how we're going to ensure stability over the long term
• 36:15
  to support those services.
• 36:19
  And he worked hard to, behind the scenes,
• 36:21
  just to make sure that everything was set up
• 36:24
  so that the CEO could become more of a figurehead
• 36:26
  for the organization.
• 36:27
  He could go ahead and attract the funding
• 36:29
  that they needed, et cetera.
• 36:31
  And he could ensure that the staff had the support
• 36:33
  that they needed, they had the systems in place
• 36:35
  to continue over the long term.
• 36:37
  And that organization is still running well today.
• 36:40
  So you can see how that habit of austerity comes in.
• 36:44
  Because I know it's your first question.
• 36:45
  Yeah, certainly.
• 36:46
  I mean, as you talk about that, it makes me wonder
• 36:49
  whether or not there are any lessons for governments
• 36:51
  in this, in particular, the shifting of focus away
• 36:54
  from process to what the customer needs.
• 36:58
  Like the opposite of the experience of using Amazon
• 37:03
  is the experience of using a government department website
• 37:06
  where you're trying to log on and apply for your vouchers
• 37:10
  for whatever it is, right?
• 37:11
  One of my son's soccer dads is a, you know,
• 37:13
  high up in the airport security system.
• 37:15
  And I said, I am so sick of filling in paper forms
• 37:18
  in Australia, why the hell are we doing it?
• 37:20
  And he said, you're not the client, the government is.
• 37:23
  And I thought, that's interesting.
• 37:24
  I'm not the customer at the airport.
• 37:25
  The border security is not about me.
• 37:27
  It's about me.
• 37:28
  So I thought that was an interesting one.
• 37:29
  So that didn't care how long I have to sit in a queue for.
• 37:32
  I remember going to hospital the other day
• 37:33
  and I said, there's no, you know,
• 37:35
  sitting in the emergency room, there's no Wi-Fi,
• 37:38
  there's no charging ports, there's a brand new hospital.
• 37:41
  And she said, what do you think we are?
• 37:42
  We're a hospital.
• 37:43
  Yeah.
• 37:44
  That's right.
• 37:45
  Well, heck, who designed that?
• 37:46
  We do one thing.
• 37:47
  We do one thing.
• 37:48
  Americans hear about what socialized medicine is.
• 37:50
  Yeah.
• 37:51
  You'd get your Wi-Fi and a fancy, fancy Beverly Hills hospital.
• 37:54
  Well, that's true.
• 37:55
  But, you know, we're all sitting on plastic.
• 37:56
  We're all sitting on plastic.
• 37:57
  Well, that's why Jeffery Edison came along.
• 37:59
  That's why he did so well.
• 38:00
  For a time.
• 38:01
  For a time.
• 38:02
  But, yeah, you're all sitting on plastic chairs.
• 38:04
  I mean, you in an emergency ward,
• 38:05
  can we have a little bit of comfort?
• 38:07
  I love it.
• 38:08
  I love it.
• 38:08
  So, that's right.
• 38:09
  It's just not in the minds of bureaucratic people
• 38:12
  and anything that gets too big,
• 38:13
  and that's moving into the country or the government side,
• 38:16
  when it gets too big, it loses its innovation.
• 38:19
  What was it for you?
• 38:20
  I know you didn't like too many stats,
• 38:21
  but I'm not going to read this one.
• 38:22
  40% of companies, when they go public, lose their innovation.
• 38:26
  Oh, what measure?
• 38:27
  Just by the fact that I think they measure it by their tech ability,
• 38:30
  their patents, they are able to register.
• 38:34
  But it's, I think it was, I don't know who I'll have to look at.
• 38:37
  When is that also, is there a potential explanation
• 38:39
  that they've become more cautious?
• 38:40
  Because they have more of a fear of their own.
• 38:42
  They have to answer to their shareholders,
• 38:44
  and everybody wants to.
• 38:45
  So, you could say they skid right across to the preservation side
• 38:48
  of the road.
• 38:49
  Yeah, right.
• 38:50
  And that's okay, because if they kept going
• 38:52
  on the exploration side of the road,
• 38:53
  they may, well, as they take a corner, skid off it.
• 38:56
  And we all know that they good formula one car takes a racing line.
• 39:00
  They go to the left, they come across,
• 39:01
  they go to the right.
• 39:02
  And that's what they've got to keep doing backwards and forwards.
• 39:05
  But it has to be a conscious decision,
• 39:07
  not, not just let it happen and see where we go.
• 39:11
  So on those four metrics that you were talking about,
• 39:14
  freedom, collaboration, flexibility, openness,
• 39:18
  which ones are we doing well at as a culture,
• 39:21
  as a society, as a country?
• 39:23
  Just we.
• 39:24
  You?
• 39:25
  I suppose Australia.
• 39:26
  I suppose the, I suppose if one can generalise
• 39:29
  about the Anglophone world or even the Western world.
• 39:33
  Western worlds, well, where you have democracies,
• 39:36
  you have freedom, and ideally.
• 39:40
  And the countries that have democracies
• 39:44
  do produce more patents.
• 39:46
  So it has been, there has been a direct link
• 39:48
  with innovation.
• 39:49
  So there's, I mean, there's political freedom, obviously.
• 39:51
  But then there's also kind of a cultural freedom, right?
• 39:53
  And ability, a willingness to tolerate ideas.
• 39:56
  Yes, well, openness to diversity.
• 39:59
  Right.
• 40:00
  Silicon Valley didn't just happen on another so many countries
• 40:02
  and even where we live in Manley,
• 40:03
  they were going to have their own Silicon Valley,
• 40:05
  you know, if one wants to do it.
• 40:06
  Now Miami is Silicon Valley.
• 40:08
  Well, well, it's a real one.
• 40:10
  But with the aging population,
• 40:12
  I'm saying that facetiously, always.
• 40:14
  If there's people who don't want to be in California anymore,
• 40:18
  because they're too right-winged, they have to.
• 40:19
  Some of them went to Texas and some of them went to Miami.
• 40:22
  Now they're calling it a new Silicon Valley, it's not going to happen.
• 40:24
  Richard, well, I want to say is Richard Florida
• 40:26
  started what attracts the creative class?
• 40:28
  So where do creative people go?
• 40:30
  I mean, they make up a huge proportion of the financial population.
• 40:35
  And Silicon Valley happened, he said,
• 40:36
  because creative cultures happen because of three,
• 40:39
  because of three T's, talent technology intolerance.
• 40:42
  And so if you look at Silicon Valley, it had all three.
• 40:45
  It was tolerant of certain lifestyles.
• 40:47
  It had the tech and it had the talent.
• 40:49
  And when those three things happen together,
• 40:51
  that's when you're going to get a burst of innovation.
• 40:53
  And what's going to happen is more creative people
• 40:56
  are going to be attracted into it.
• 40:57
  So you can't just say we're going to open up a innovation lab
• 41:00
  or an innovation city or an innovation hub in a suburb.
• 41:04
  That's why money at it.
• 41:05
  I mean, the funny thing is we've been to companies
• 41:07
  where they've taken us up to the top floor
• 41:09
  and shown us the innovation lab.
• 41:10
  And it's like, God's making amazing.
• 41:12
  Where did they get the money from this?
• 41:13
  And they've got the lounge and the being bag chairs
• 41:15
  and all the creative stuff.
• 41:17
  And then the guy takes us into a corner and says,
• 41:19
  Ben Andrew, it's not working.
• 41:21
  We're saying, oh, why?
• 41:22
  I said, what have you done for the culture of innovation?
• 41:24
  Oh, nothing.
• 41:25
  We've just created the lab.
• 41:26
  We thought, you know, build it and they will come.
• 41:28
  Well, what would you do for the culture of innovation?
• 41:30
  Well, I think you've got to start with what kills
• 41:31
  the creativity in the first place.
• 41:33
  And so, you know, is it fear?
• 41:34
  Is it control?
• 41:35
  Is it narrow-mindedness?
• 41:37
  Look at all those things and address the issues
• 41:39
  that block people's creativity.
• 41:40
  It's back to our regional question.
• 41:42
  Why an 98% of children create even 2% of adults?
• 41:45
  What's happened to us?
• 41:47
  Right when we need it, because the World Economic Forum
• 41:49
  report for the fifth time in a row
• 41:51
  has said creative thinking is in the top three things.
• 41:53
  The idea of van critical thinking.
• 41:54
  Is in the top three things that are needed as we go for it,
• 41:56
  particularly with AI coming in,
• 41:58
  creative thinking is probably the one thing
• 42:00
  that AI is not going to be able to actually, you know,
• 42:03
  overtake too quickly.
• 42:04
  But so, what do you do in practice?
• 42:05
  I mean, sort of well.
• 42:07
  Well, I mean, you know, so the bloke standing there
• 42:09
  with his fancy lounge, right?
• 42:11
  And he's saying, no one's creative.
• 42:13
  So, what's the next step?
• 42:14
  Well, I mean, you have to go through stages of dangerous,
• 42:17
  what do you call it, safe space for dangerous ideas?
• 42:19
  Yeah, you have to create a place where people can openly
• 42:22
  question where people can openly challenge
• 42:24
  a place where people can accept ambiguity,
• 42:27
  a place where we're using both sides of our brain,
• 42:29
  not just the left and right side of the brain,
• 42:31
  a place where people can freely explore different paths.
• 42:34
  I mean, what you're talking about doesn't feel to me
• 42:36
  like the preside, like the prevailing attitude in corporate.
• 42:39
  No, in the global world.
• 42:40
  That's why we keep getting work.
• 42:42
  Biggest, funny banks are some of our biggest clients.
• 42:44
  And you think, you know, anyone that goes into banking
• 42:46
  did not go into banking because they wanted to be creative.
• 42:49
  Well, and so I'm sitting, you know, with a group of 30 people
• 42:51
  on the rim that are all left brain analytical people saying,
• 42:54
  creative thinking is the last thing I want to do.
• 42:55
  And I've got to say, well, you know, money's money.
• 42:57
  I know you can't, other than the GFC, you can't.
• 42:59
  Sort of fiddle with it too much.
• 43:01
  But are there ways that we can use our creative thinking
• 43:04
  to solve different problems?
• 43:05
  And we've got to get people that are not necessarily
• 43:08
  feeling that they were born creative
• 43:10
  or feeling that they're creative to start thinking.
• 43:12
  And that might be helping them to understand
• 43:14
  it starts with asking questions.
• 43:16
  So it's a mindset.
• 43:17
  It's an awareness of how to become more curious,
• 43:20
  how to extend your imagination, how to have that confidence,
• 43:24
  how to learn to be more flexible,
• 43:26
  how to learn to take advantage of that freedom.
• 43:29
  And it's a skill set as well.
• 43:30
  So you can actually teach these skills, as I've said before,
• 43:33
  you can give people models and tools that help them
• 43:36
  to open up their thinking.
• 43:39
  So there's a lot of things that you can do
• 43:42
  through coaching, through workshops, et cetera.
• 43:44
  And we've done this over a two-year period in organizations.
• 43:48
  We've actually had this really intensive period
• 43:50
  of assessing what the challenges are, what are the blocks,
• 43:54
  what are the opportunities going in
• 43:57
  with a coaching program, mentoring, workshops.
• 44:00
  And we've seen a huge culture change.
• 44:02
  So up to 30% of people in an organization
• 44:06
  feel that they are more creative,
• 44:08
  that their team is more creative,
• 44:09
  that the organization is more creative
• 44:12
  after they've been through a program like this.
• 44:14
  So it is possible to make that sort of change
• 44:17
  and to see a real difference.
• 44:18
  It often starts with a leader.
• 44:19
  Right.
• 44:20
  Yes.
• 44:21
  I mean, I'm a one workshop with a leader
• 44:23
  who engages to do it, one of these long-term programs.
• 44:25
  And he comes in at the beginning of the workshop
• 44:27
  and condescendingly, almost perhaps he went on the head
• 44:29
  and says, enjoy your training.
• 44:30
  First of all, I hate the word training
• 44:32
  because we're not just implying a skill.
• 44:33
  We're better facilitated.
• 44:34
  A couple of days later, he comes back,
• 44:35
  and there's great ideas all around the room,
• 44:37
  and also terrible ideas,
• 44:38
  because brainstorming a lot of it, most of it's crap.
• 44:41
  And he comes in and he freaks out as soon as he sees it,
• 44:43
  because he looks at all the stupid ideas.
• 44:45
  And he sits in the room and each team
• 44:47
  was meant to present back to him.
• 44:48
  And the first team was so excited
• 44:49
  and they're all enthusiastic and they get up
• 44:51
  and they present back and he just sits there with his arms folded
• 44:53
  and you could just read it all over his face.
• 44:55
  By the time the fourth team got up,
• 44:56
  they were all pushing each other saying,
• 44:57
  you do it, you do it, you do it, you do it, you do it.
• 44:59
  He killed his own creativity within 20 minutes.
• 45:02
  Right.
• 45:03
  Just by his body language and the fact that he didn't need
• 45:06
  to be there.
• 45:07
  So you have to work with the whole culture at every level
• 45:10
  and you have to obviously have support from the top.
• 45:12
  Yeah.
• 45:13
  Another example and that is an organization
• 45:15
  that I worked with over a couple of years again.
• 45:18
  And I was brought in by the GM
• 45:20
  who wanted everyone to be more creative.
• 45:22
  So they were working on agricultural solutions
• 45:25
  for impoverished farmers in Indonesia.
• 45:27
  So it was a really important work that they were doing.
• 45:30
  And he wanted them to think about
• 45:31
  what was the individual farmer's needs
• 45:33
  and how could they come up with something
• 45:34
  that would support the farmers,
• 45:36
  given that they had a lack of resources,
• 45:38
  given that there were going to be certain challenges,
• 45:40
  environmental challenges and so on.
• 45:42
  And so he'd say, why aren't they creative?
• 45:44
  Why aren't they creative?
• 45:46
  Am I just had to watch one meeting, executive meeting,
• 45:49
  see him sitting in the corner?
• 45:51
  And I saw his team come up with a creative idea
• 45:53
  and say, how about we do this?
• 45:55
  And again, it's with his arms folded,
• 45:57
  similar sort of response.
• 45:59
  And say, oh, no, we can't do that.
• 46:00
  We don't have the budget.
• 46:01
  Oh, no, we've done that before.
• 46:03
  And he just shut down the creative ideas.
• 46:05
  Is that a cultural, I mean,
• 46:06
  quite outside of the culture of the organization.
• 46:08
  Are there differences in countries or countries?
• 46:12
  I mean, if we're going to use the bell curve
• 46:13
  because we're going to be very careful of the outliers.
• 46:15
  He was an Indonesian, by the way.
• 46:16
  No, he was not.
• 46:17
  No, and he was a foreigner.
• 46:19
  Yes, and I won't name the culture.
• 46:21
  I can't say the three strong-on-processes
• 46:23
  that invented a word with a car that we just talked about.
• 46:26
  OK, right.
• 46:27
  But you know, I mean, but then you know.
• 46:29
  Well, each country's got its strengths and weaknesses.
• 46:32
  But in that case, it very much shut down the process.
• 46:35
  Right.
• 46:36
  Because he just couldn't see it even though he asked for it.
• 46:40
  I mean, it's interesting there's a,
• 46:41
  anyone who's lived in different countries knows this.
• 46:44
  I mean, the difference between the permission
• 46:46
  to speak freely, sir, and the whether it's a culture
• 46:50
  of yes or a culture of no.
• 46:51
  I mean, this was once articulated to me about, you know,
• 46:54
  Aussie expats abroad often.
• 46:56
  We'll often articulate something along the lines
• 46:58
  of feeling like Australia is a bit of a culture of no.
• 47:00
  That the reason why they left is because...
• 47:03
  Nany State.
• 47:04
  Well, it's not, it's even more than Nany State.
• 47:07
  I mean, it's more that if you talk to Australians
• 47:09
  in New York or London or, you know, Paris or Berlin
• 47:13
  or Los Angeles or Singapore,
• 47:15
  they'll often have a sense that you suggest something here
• 47:20
  and people are like, oh, yeah, good on you.
• 47:23
  Or like, that's not the way that we do things.
• 47:26
  But you're related to cutting down the tall poppies, maybe.
• 47:29
  Yeah, it's a bit of a tall poppy thing.
• 47:31
  Whereas, I mean, when I was in New York,
• 47:33
  and you talked to, I mean, any hair-brained idea
• 47:35
  that you come up with, the response is invariably fantastic.
• 47:38
  How are we going to do it?
• 47:39
  How are we going to do it?
• 47:40
  What are you going to...
• 47:41
  There is a culture.
• 47:42
  Optimism.
• 47:43
  You know, we'll have to put a disclaimer here that, you know,
• 47:45
  as you said, the more cultures you see,
• 47:46
  the more you get a big picture perspective.
• 47:47
  So, if you live inside one culture, you can't see it.
• 47:49
  But I know that the three of us haven't.
• 47:51
  But if you do look at the American culture
• 47:53
  from the outside, which a lot of Americans can't probably do,
• 47:56
  because many of them don't even have a passport.
• 47:58
  But if you are looking at it, America is very optimistic.
• 48:00
  I talk about calves and the soon-to-haves.
• 48:03
  It's a land of opportunities.
• 48:04
  Yeah, it's a land of people.
• 48:05
  They think that way.
• 48:06
  It's a culture of yes.
• 48:08
  It's a culture of how we do it.
• 48:09
  I think we're a culture of pessimists.
• 48:11
  Right.
• 48:12
  We put people down.
• 48:13
  Well, we put people down, but I also just think
• 48:15
  we've got a pretty easy here.
• 48:16
  We don't need to supply some.
• 48:17
  We're at the top of that, you know, Ray Dalio's curve
• 48:20
  of great nations that have become successful.
• 48:22
  Who knows when the falls are going to start to happen?
• 48:24
  And we've got...
• 48:25
  Well, hopefully not in our time.
• 48:27
  We only see these curves happen once in a lifetime.
• 48:30
  So when they do happen, we're surprised.
• 48:32
  You know, right now we're seeing some countries rising
• 48:34
  and some falling that we thought would never happen.
• 48:37
  But then you've got countries like Singapore that are desperately
• 48:39
  and they send their kids to school for almost 16 hours a day,
• 48:42
  seven days a week for education,
• 48:44
  whereas we're lucky if we can get six hours out of it.
• 48:47
  You know, they may not become very creative,
• 48:49
  but they know what it is to want more.
• 48:52
  Whereas in Australia, we're at the top of that curve.
• 48:54
  We've had it great.
• 48:55
  Do we really need it?
• 48:56
  Do we need to come up with a new idea?
• 48:58
  Probably not.
• 48:59
  It works.
• 49:00
  This is the original thesis of the lucky country.
• 49:02
  Yeah.
• 49:03
  That Donald Horns...
• 49:04
  You know, Australians proudly call ourselves
• 49:06
  the lucky country not realizing that the term was coined
• 49:08
  as an insult by Donald Horns.
• 49:10
  I wasn't even though that.
• 49:11
  Donald Horns wrote it as a, you know, as a saying,
• 49:13
  well, it's the country that has been blessed
• 49:16
  with mineral riches and agricultural riches
• 49:19
  and tremendous space and a wonderful lifestyle.
• 49:21
  So it's never been forced to do anything
• 49:23
  if it's off its own bat.
• 49:24
  Yeah.
• 49:25
  So we have to go to school for six.
• 49:27
  We met kids in the Philippines that would walk three hours
• 49:30
  to school through a war zone just to get an education.
• 49:34
  I mean, I barely get kids to go to school
• 49:36
  because the surf school.
• 49:38
  I mean, I'm also reminded of talking to a quantist pilot
• 49:42
  about an in-air, a mid-air incident
• 49:45
  where the first officer or the, you know,
• 49:49
  someone who was below the level of the captain
• 49:52
  chose to speak up and criticize the captain
• 49:55
  that became a, I can't remember what the incident was.
• 49:57
  South Korea.
• 49:58
  South Korea.
• 49:59
  Well, you know, one of them, but the story.
• 50:00
  One of them chose, no, they didn't choose to speak up
• 50:02
  and...
• 50:03
  This was the green line.
• 50:04
  Yes.
• 50:05
  Because of the ratio of power distance between the leader
• 50:08
  and the non-leader.
• 50:09
  So in an Asian society, it's all very hierarchical.
• 50:12
  And so they didn't want to speak up.
• 50:15
  Yeah.
• 50:16
  And so anyway, this, you know, it sounds a bit racist,
• 50:19
  but this white Western captain was saying
• 50:21
  he doesn't fly East Asian Airlines
• 50:22
  because he doesn't, he doesn't believe
• 50:24
  that there's a sufficiently robust tradition
• 50:26
  of criticizing the captain.
• 50:28
  And if the captain's wrong, then you're going to get into trouble
• 50:31
  on an East Asian airline that you might not get into
• 50:33
  if you're on an North American carrier
• 50:35
  or a European or Australian carrier where there's a more,
• 50:38
  where you're more encouraged to speak up
• 50:40
  and criticize you, superiors.
• 50:42
  I don't know if there's any truth to that.
• 50:44
  I don't know if they've changed,
• 50:48
  but that was certainly the story behind that accident.
• 50:51
  Yeah, interesting.
• 50:52
  I think we're going to be able to imagine an Australian caught pit
• 50:55
  with Australian airline.
• 50:56
  Oh, absolutely.
• 50:57
  Yeah, very egalitarian.
• 50:58
  Yeah, exactly.
• 50:59
  You say it like it is.
• 51:00
  If we bring it back to the innovation, you know,
• 51:02
  in that case, Australia is not bad at innovating
• 51:04
  because we will challenge each other.
• 51:06
  I mean, how many other podcasts like you are around,
• 51:09
  you know, the hard-talking in BBC,
• 51:11
  but there's not a lot around that we'll are there to,
• 51:13
  you know, bring you in and challenge you.
• 51:15
  And that probably won't happen again on generalising
• 51:18
  in Asia as much because of the hierarchical system
• 51:20
  and the respect of your elders.
• 51:22
  So we, you know, we don't have respect of elders.
• 51:25
  So there's good and bad.
• 51:26
  Yeah.
• 51:27
  The downside of that culture of respecting your elders
• 51:29
  is you're not going to challenge them.
• 51:30
  You're not going to, you know, in school,
• 51:32
  you're not encouraged back to the schooling.
• 51:34
  You're not encouraged to ask questions to challenge the teacher.
• 51:36
  The teachers, the boss, they say what you believe.
• 51:39
  And at the end of the semester, you spit it back.
• 51:41
  Whereas here, teachers are not the boss.
• 51:43
  We can turn the piss off if we feel like it.
• 51:45
  And so there's the good and bad side of it.
• 51:47
  So in the airline industry, it's not a good thing.
• 51:50
  I mean, so in the broad kind of culture wars
• 51:53
  around cancel culture and wokeness and all this sort of,
• 51:56
  you know, social justice and so on,
• 51:58
  you do hear and one feels that certainly in the corporations
• 52:01
  that I've been in a certain tightening of the buttocks
• 52:06
  and tightening of the conversation around what people feel
• 52:10
  able to say.
• 52:12
  I mean, I'm interested in your thoughts about how one balances
• 52:15
  the need for equity and social justice,
• 52:18
  with the need for people to be able to also talk to us.
• 52:20
  Because we want to be in that conversation,
• 52:22
  we don't get it when that was going to come up.
• 52:24
  Are we under the pre-list to go apologize?
• 52:27
  I think it has to happen a bit, especially in Australia,
• 52:30
  where we got away with a lot for a long time.
• 52:32
  So there has to be come an awareness of racist issues, sexist issues.
• 52:38
  We have to have it at the front of our mind.
• 52:41
  Yes, maybe it's gone to an extreme,
• 52:44
  and maybe that's how the pendulum swings for a while
• 52:47
  until it becomes more part of our consciousness,
• 52:49
  more part of our language, more part of the way we frame things.
• 52:52
  When it becomes more natural, then hopefully we'll get
• 52:55
  a bit more of a equilibrium.
• 52:57
  So until then...
• 52:58
  You've done well.
• 52:59
  You're going to pick a five or two of us.
• 53:02
  But yeah, I think this is part of that stretching.
• 53:05
  You need that tension between the two sides.
• 53:08
  And for now, I think there needs to be a respect for the people
• 53:11
  who are saying these things and requesting that we think about,
• 53:14
  you know, what's the language you're using with me?
• 53:17
  About me, to me.
• 53:19
  And it's time to just say, okay, I need to listen.
• 53:22
  I need to think about that.
• 53:23
  I need to consider that.
• 53:24
  Once you've listened and considered to it and considered it
• 53:27
  and then don't agree with them, then what happens?
• 53:29
  If it's about them, I think they have the right to say,
• 53:33
  I would prefer not to be referred to in this way.
• 53:37
  But what do you mean about them?
• 53:38
  I mean, it's really, really is about an individual.
• 53:41
  Do you word, for example?
• 53:42
  In a particular word, a particular phrase.
• 53:44
  Right.
• 53:45
  I mean, I'm mostly talking about...
• 53:47
  I'm not saying whether or not you can call someone a tart
• 53:50
  or something in the office or whether you can say,
• 53:52
  hey, toots and stuff like that.
• 53:54
  So we have improved.
• 53:56
  You did that for a long time.
• 53:57
  What are you saying, man?
• 53:58
  Well, the downside is going too far.
• 54:00
  It's what I know.
• 54:01
  I'm not even sure it's going too far.
• 54:04
  When we do go too far, if it gets the point where the two extremes
• 54:07
  are not listening to each other,
• 54:08
  they're talking over the top of each other.
• 54:10
  We're polarizing each other
• 54:11
  and we're now back to banning books again.
• 54:13
  Right.
• 54:14
  Therefore, we're not having that challenge of inquiry
• 54:16
  and questioning where a free space where we can talk about ideas
• 54:19
  because if we say the wrong thing,
• 54:21
  someone on the two extremes are going to shut us down
• 54:23
  or you can't have that conversation anymore.
• 54:25
  That's going to stop the innovation
• 54:27
  because we're going to be too afraid to talk about things.
• 54:29
  Yeah.
• 54:30
  I mean, so I don't think anyone should ever be required
• 54:33
  to be in the presence of someone who's using a slur against them
• 54:36
  or something like that.
• 54:38
  We got rid of that a while ago.
• 54:41
  It's not a recent history that we haven't been,
• 54:43
  we haven't been slapping women on the arses
• 54:45
  and calling them toots.
• 54:47
  But there seems to have been a,
• 54:50
  I think a divergence of social,
• 54:52
  even just since sort of maybe 2008,
• 54:55
  you know, Obama era vision of social justice,
• 54:59
  which was a sort of Martin Luther King vision of social justice
• 55:03
  or a Gandhi or Mandela vision of a universalism, let's say.
• 55:07
  And now there's, I would say, a new ideology,
• 55:11
  which is not just, it's not that it's a good idea gone too far.
• 55:14
  I actually think it's a different idea.
• 55:16
  It's an idea that the way to truly achieve justice
• 55:19
  is to think of ourselves as tribes,
• 55:21
  pit it against each other fighting over a finite pie
• 55:24
  and that war against all is inevitable
• 55:28
  and will endure into the future as long as, you know,
• 55:31
  as long as humans exist.
• 55:32
  Does it have to be sort of a tie?
• 55:33
  I mean, is that the, is that the,
• 55:34
  I think that's something?
• 55:35
  Is that the, is that the mindset that's locking us in?
• 55:37
  Yeah, I mean, that may be the,
• 55:39
  that may be the cognitive error.
• 55:41
  So then the question is in that environment,
• 55:43
  I'm talking, for example,
• 55:44
  I'm not about using a certain word,
• 55:46
  but about an HR department requiring that,
• 55:49
  I don't know, you fell out of diversity quite as spreadsheet
• 55:51
  at the end of every, you know, session or something
• 55:54
  or something like that or, you know,
• 55:57
  whether or not that's good is in, is,
• 55:59
  is, you can have that as one question.
• 56:01
  Whether or not you have a right to argue against it being good,
• 56:05
  or say, you know, a land,
• 56:06
  a land acknowledgement at the beginning of every Zoom meeting
• 56:08
  that you, you have,
• 56:10
  and an alternative country.
• 56:14
  We're no longer, we're no longer having discussions
• 56:16
  about whether or not that's wise.
• 56:18
  We're having discussions about whether it's permissible
• 56:21
  to question whether it's wise.
• 56:24
  So is that corrosive?
• 56:26
  Is that corrosive to the free expression of creativity?
• 56:30
  I think if we're not allowed to question things again,
• 56:33
  it's risky because people will quickly get labeled
• 56:36
  for even just questioning something,
• 56:38
  that is going to destroy the innovation creativity process
• 56:41
  because we want to have that ability
• 56:43
  where we can, people can freely talk about it,
• 56:45
  but not as you said,
• 56:46
  if it's labeling people or judging people,
• 56:48
  but we still should need to be able to have those places
• 56:51
  where we can throw around the ideas.
• 56:53
  And I think there needs to be a bit of patience
• 56:55
  and respect and understanding
• 56:56
  while we're navigating these challenges,
• 56:59
  because yes, we're pulling in one direction, like I said,
• 57:01
  and it does seem like it's becoming militaristic,
• 57:05
  in some senses it may feel like that.
• 57:08
  So you would hope on both sides that there is, you know,
• 57:11
  a willingness to listen to the other perspective
• 57:13
  and say, okay, well, you know,
• 57:15
  I appreciate that you're coming from this perspective
• 57:17
  and that there are certain elements that are correct
• 57:20
  in what you're saying,
• 57:21
  and I'm coming from this perspective,
• 57:23
  and I hope that you understand that, you know,
• 57:25
  we're putting this in place for a while
• 57:27
  so that everybody becomes aware of the need
• 57:29
  to consider where we are and what we're doing.
• 57:31
  So it's a very difficult ongoing conversation.
• 57:34
  I think where companies get it wrong,
• 57:35
  and this is public knowledge,
• 57:36
  but when we were working with Google,
• 57:37
  they got in trouble for what was called the Google Bus,
• 57:39
  which was full of, you know, 30 people,
• 57:41
  that were 29 of them were white and in their 30s.
• 57:43
  And they were bussed down.
• 57:44
  They were bussed down.
• 57:45
  San Francisco.
• 57:46
  And they bypassed the local cultures.
• 57:49
  So they got out of the bus, you know, 70% was white male.
• 57:53
  So there was a lack of diversity.
• 57:54
  Yeah.
• 57:55
  So I think they got it wrong.
• 57:57
  From their perspective, it was a PR issue,
• 57:59
  but from our perspective,
• 58:00
  diversity allows innovation.
• 58:02
  And it's not about saying we want diversity
• 58:05
  because we've got to be seen to be doing the right thing.
• 58:08
  What we need to say is,
• 58:09
  back to the narrative,
• 58:10
  we need diversity if we want to survive and be innovative
• 58:13
  because we need to be exposed to different ideas.
• 58:16
  And Google's interesting because they've, you know,
• 58:18
  now created their own campus where you can eat,
• 58:20
  live, sleep, go to the gym, wash,
• 58:22
  and bump into more white males in their 30-year-olds,
• 58:25
  all thinking the same thing.
• 58:27
  And even though Google actually is a paradox,
• 58:30
  they created the canteen so people could bump into each other.
• 58:32
  They didn't do it just because they're nice.
• 58:34
  They've got this famous canteen where they know that people can,
• 58:36
  from different departments, can bump into each other.
• 58:38
  So that, they get the 10 out of 10
• 58:40
  because they know that that bumping in about a year's work.
• 58:42
  But it's an internal openness.
• 58:43
  And externally, they've sort of shot themselves off
• 58:46
  and become isolated.
• 58:47
  Well, they've realised it.
• 58:48
  And I know about this because I worked with Google
• 58:50
  at the Silicon Valley office and to their credit,
• 58:53
  they realised the bad press they were getting was going to be an issue
• 58:57
  and they worked hard on coming up with creative solutions.
• 59:00
  That's why I was part of this process.
• 59:02
  So they've looked into how to approach this diversity issue
• 59:07
  and initially maybe it's going to be quotas.
• 59:10
  Maybe that's a way of just re-correcting the balance.
• 59:14
  To me, it should be deeper than quotas.
• 59:17
  It should be, we actually need to first...
• 59:19
  Of course, eventually.
• 59:20
  We need diversity to keep the innovation happening.
• 59:22
  Until that happens.
• 59:23
  Well, I mean, also diversity.
• 59:24
  We're just missing those people in the room.
• 59:26
  I mean, the devil's in the details on what diversity means.
• 59:28
  It's like diversity of what?
• 59:30
  Diversity.
• 59:31
  I know, income or, you know.
• 59:33
  People talk about a diverse television show
• 59:35
  that's all black people.
• 59:36
  Diversity for some people just means
• 59:38
  is a proxy for non-white straits.
• 59:42
  So if we just go into the concept...
• 59:44
  If you want to...
• 59:45
  If what you're talking about is you want to strengthen the institution
• 59:48
  or the organisation through a diversity of ideas
• 59:50
  and experiences and backgrounds.
• 59:52
  Coming from people from different backgrounds.
• 59:54
  More likely if it's going to come from different backgrounds.
• 59:56
  Right.
• 59:57
  But I can point to television shows on certain public broadcasters
• 1:00:01
  which are scrupulously diverse
• 1:00:03
  and have panelists who are always saying the same thing
• 1:00:06
  in furious agreement.
• 1:00:07
  So they need to think about the principle.
• 1:00:10
  Not intellectually diverse.
• 1:00:12
  It's a great casting.
• 1:00:14
  They're great at casting in terms of people looking different.
• 1:00:19
  So let's go to the principles.
• 1:00:21
  It's diversity of thought.
• 1:00:23
  And that should technically play out to diversity of other things
• 1:00:28
  because you'd hope that different ways of looking at things
• 1:00:31
  through different cultures are going to create the diversity of thought.
• 1:00:33
  But from an innovation perspective,
• 1:00:35
  not the PR perspective and not what's right by society,
• 1:00:38
  from an innovation perspective,
• 1:00:40
  there's so much study that diversity allows innovation
• 1:00:43
  and lack of diversity kills innovation.
• 1:00:45
  I mean Google is an interesting case study on just going back
• 1:00:47
  to what you were saying about, you know,
• 1:00:49
  there are certain things that you shouldn't be allowed to say
• 1:00:51
  that are offensive to other people, to your colleagues in the workplace
• 1:00:54
  and me saying that that's not quite the issue.
• 1:00:56
  I don't think because I think we all agree that that is fair enough
• 1:01:00
  and nobody should be insulted.
• 1:01:01
  I think there are a lot of people who don't agree by any way.
• 1:01:04
  Really?
• 1:01:05
  Yeah.
• 1:01:06
  There are a lot of people who think that you should be able to insult their colleagues.
• 1:01:08
  Well, they don't understand that it is an insult.
• 1:01:10
  They don't understand that it's worse.
• 1:01:12
  It depends what we're talking about, right?
• 1:01:13
  It's very powerful.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah, what's an insult to you might not be an insult.
• 1:01:16
  I think everybody agrees that you can't call a black person the end word.
• 1:01:22
  You can't call a gay person the effort.
• 1:01:24
  I've heard people who don't agree with that.
• 1:01:26
  I've heard people who don't agree with that.
• 1:01:28
  Well, they are in any major organization they would be fine.
• 1:01:30
  They're out of touch.
• 1:01:31
  True.
• 1:01:32
  Yes.
• 1:01:33
  I think there are people who don't understand it.
• 1:01:35
  There are people who don't understand it.
• 1:01:36
  Right.
• 1:01:37
  But I mean, that's not...
• 1:01:38
  Yeah.
• 1:01:39
  There's not even on the table of real conversations that are being had in organizations.
• 1:01:44
  I mean, they're out.
• 1:01:45
  And rightly so.
• 1:01:47
  But Google is interesting because, you know, when they did their...
• 1:01:50
  You remember the James DeWore episodes where they invited contributions about why
• 1:01:57
  there was an under-representation of women in STEM fields and how they could create
• 1:02:02
  a gender parity.
• 1:02:03
  And one of their engineers said, well, I think there were probably, you know, biological
• 1:02:08
  reasons why women aren't as interested in these things as men are.
• 1:02:11
  And he was turned out on his ear.
• 1:02:13
  Well, okay.
• 1:02:14
  So is that the...
• 1:02:15
  Well, he was trying to...
• 1:02:16
  Again, he was trying to...
• 1:02:17
  Is that the kind of openness and freedom?
• 1:02:18
  No.
• 1:02:19
  So they very, very quickly went to the preservation side.
• 1:02:21
  Google didn't they say, well, boy, if we have too much of this free speech in their opinion,
• 1:02:26
  it was too much free speech from mine.
• 1:02:28
  Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  And the opinion of the mob on Twitter that they were afraid of.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah.
• 1:02:33
  Well, that's right.
• 1:02:34
  So now, again, now we've got this other sort of terrible thing that's...
• 1:02:37
  That's driving us and that is our, you know, our...
• 1:02:39
  What do you call it?
• 1:02:40
  The way we'd like to be seen or, again, PR.
• 1:02:43
  So maybe they had to do it either whether they agreed with it or not, which is a shame,
• 1:02:47
  because it's, you know, it's certainly an extremely controversial conversation.
• 1:02:51
  But to shut it up is not going to solve the problem.
• 1:02:53
  Do you agree?
• 1:02:54
  It's a shame that there's a lack of respect and the lack of understanding and lack of high
• 1:02:58
  level conversation.
• 1:02:59
  But the people who find him would say he's evening a dramatic lack of respect to women.
• 1:03:03
  Well, then you come down to science versus opinion, don't you?
• 1:03:06
  And that gets us into a very...
• 1:03:07
  You would hope you would have a rational conversation about it and refer to evidence-based
• 1:03:11
  research and rather than becoming emotional about it.
• 1:03:14
  And I think that's what happens in quickly escalates into an emotional.
• 1:03:18
  And then people take sides.
• 1:03:19
  I'm so longer doing that, you know, safe conversation anymore.
• 1:03:22
  It's a us versus them.
• 1:03:24
  Yeah.
• 1:03:25
  But somehow it has to be facilitated.
• 1:03:27
  That's what it needs.
• 1:03:28
  It almost needs a professional outside facility to come in and have the conversations through.
• 1:03:33
  And if James turned out to be a...
• 1:03:35
  You know, what do you call it?
• 1:03:37
  Not racist.
• 1:03:39
  Asshole.
• 1:03:40
  That's not racist.
• 1:03:42
  It's not racist.
• 1:03:43
  It's racist.
• 1:03:44
  It's racist.
• 1:03:45
  If you do turn out to be, you know, deep down a sexist person, then the facilitation process
• 1:03:49
  would bring that out.
• 1:03:50
  If, on the other hand, his intentions were 100% pure to try and understand why you're in a situation like that,
• 1:03:57
  then that's fine.
• 1:03:58
  I mean, when Jared Diamond wrote his book, Guns, Gems and Steel, which is, you know, to me,
• 1:04:01
  one of the most incredible anthropological researchers on why some societies moved ahead
• 1:04:05
  and others, I think it one stage had to have bodyguards outside his house.
• 1:04:09
  All he was doing was anthropological research.
• 1:04:11
  I mean, they kind of lived in New Guinea for so many years, looking at tribes and...
• 1:04:14
  And he was a...
• 1:04:15
  And they hated him, why?
• 1:04:17
  Because he was an apologist for Western supremacy.
• 1:04:19
  I mean, no, he made these...
• 1:04:20
  Well, he wasn't a apologist.
• 1:04:21
  He was saying...
• 1:04:22
  I mean, that was the argument.
• 1:04:23
  Well, his argument was when tech meets tradition, tech wipes it out.
• 1:04:25
  He wasn't necessarily saying that's a good thing.
• 1:04:27
  He was saying, looking at history, this has happened over and over and again with societies
• 1:04:32
  that it wipes it out.
• 1:04:33
  He wasn't necessarily making it as a great...
• 1:04:35
  Let's do it.
• 1:04:36
  Let's run it out.
• 1:04:37
  He was an anthropologist and historian.
• 1:04:39
  Then he was looking at why some countries...
• 1:04:43
  Some countries and societies were getting ahead of others.
• 1:04:46
  But, you know, looking at his intentions, we seem to be very pure.
• 1:04:50
  But nevertheless, the extreme mobs got a hold of him and he had to bodyguards at the age of eight years.
• 1:04:55
  So, I don't know if it was a couple of them that have written these types of books about bodyguards outside their house.
• 1:05:00
  So, you can try to research facts.
• 1:05:03
  So, as long as we have that sort of mentality, we're not going to be innovative.
• 1:05:06
  We're not going to move ahead.
• 1:05:07
  Now, I've done a quiz that you sent me, which is like...
• 1:05:11
  What is this kind of a personality test?
• 1:05:13
  What do you call it?
• 1:05:14
  Well, it's not looking at personality per se.
• 1:05:16
  It's looking at behaviours.
• 1:05:18
  It's not a quiz assessment, but...
• 1:05:20
  Well, yeah.
• 1:05:22
  It's mirroring back to you how you answer questions according to...
• 1:05:26
  Do you typically have more of an exploration mindset or more of a preservation mindset?
• 1:05:31
  Are we surprised with yours?
• 1:05:32
  Oh, I see.
• 1:05:33
  Okay. Now, we're going to reveal this for the paid subscribers.
• 1:05:35
  I'm going to be paid.
• 1:05:36
  Ah!
• 1:05:37
  I like it.
• 1:05:38
  So, I...
• 1:05:39
  What is it about?
• 1:05:40
  Everyone who's not a sub-status...
• 1:05:42
  Well, I think they've listened to your paid in their obviously junkies, if yours.
• 1:05:45
  So, they're going to want to just hang on and say...
• 1:05:47
  I want to know.
• 1:05:48
  Who is your...
• 1:05:49
  Subscribe on that on sub-status.
• 1:05:50
  But it didn't surprise us.
• 1:05:51
  Even though your results came in 30 seconds before...
• 1:05:53
  Exactly.
• 1:05:54
  So, what is this measure and what was my result?
• 1:06:02
  To hear the rest of this conversation, go to uncomfortableconversations.substac.com slash listen.
• 1:06:09
  You will get your own personal premium podcast feed...
• 1:06:13
  ...with at least three extra episodes of the podcast every month and heaps of extra stuff...
• 1:06:18
  ...including the remainder right now of the fabulous conversation you've just been hearing.
• 1:06:22
  If it was worth listening to this much of...
• 1:06:25
  ...don't rob yourself of the rest.
• 1:06:27
  Well, like your phone right now.
• 1:06:29
  And search for uncomfortable conversations on sub-status.