0:03

Welcome to the Practical Futurist

0:05

Podcast, a bi-weekly show all

0:07

about the near term future with practical

0:10

advice from a range of global experts

0:12

to help you stay ahead of the curve.

0:15

Every episode answers the question.

0:18

"What's the future of ...?" with voices

0:20

and opinions that need to be heard. Your

0:23

host is international keynote

0:25

speaker and Practical Futurist

0:28

Andrew Grill.

0:29

Welcome to episode eight of the Practical

0:32

Futurist podcast. My guest today is

0:34

Dr. Lynn Gribble, who is one of Australia's founding

0:36

coaches, an "accidental academic" and

0:39

an award winning author and university lecturer.

0:42

She's known as a digital innovator for her work in technology

0:44

enabled academia and she calls herself

0:46

a pragmatic futurist coach. She

0:48

also helps people to future-proof their careers

0:51

in an ever evolving workplace. Lynn is coming to

0:53

us live today from Sydney, Australia.

0:56

Welcome Lynn .

0:56

Hi Andrew. Lovely to chat.

0:58

Now we first met while working at the number two telco

1:00

in Australia, Optus back in the

1:02

late nineties and as I remember, I was working in the technical

1:04

training team. You were in the corporate training team.

1:07

Little did I know that 23 years later

1:09

you'd be on a podcast with me today and I'm so

1:11

glad that you're here.

1:12

Thanks for that. I think that that's also what we're going

1:14

to be talking about today, how the

1:16

future of work is really as much about

1:19

the past that you've worked in and

1:21

the relationships you build and actually

1:24

future-proofing your career is

1:26

about thinking not just

1:28

for today but for the future as well.

1:30

Now you're say on your LinkedIn headline that you are facilitating

1:32

learning at the highest level as a trainer, coach

1:35

and speaker, what does that mean for you

1:37

in practice?

1:38

I work with people to really try

1:40

to shift their thinking. So

1:43

to facilitate at the highest level is

1:46

to not just look at the answers, but

1:48

to look at what led to that answer,

1:50

to look at what led to the question. So

1:53

when people come to me and say, oh well I want

1:55

to do this or I wished I could do that,

1:57

it's what's underneath that, and when they

2:00

can unpack that, they can then harness

2:02

the power that enables them to

2:04

work differently and approach the challenges and

2:07

problems and the day differently

2:10

than from the current space that they're looking

2:12

at it.

2:12

Now this whole notion of people management, it's a very broad

2:14

term. How can you best define it and

2:17

do you think in this day and age that people actually want

2:19

to be managed?

2:20

Do you know, I think that very

2:22

few people want to be managed perhaps

2:24

in our space. So

2:26

once people have a certain amount

2:28

of education, they're actually very

2:30

self managing . Where the challenge

2:33

comes in is how do we get people

2:35

to come together to actually

2:37

give their absolute best? And

2:40

so it's not a case of managing

2:42

someone, but actually managing

2:44

the circumstances around them

2:47

and the things that will come to them - what might

2:50

get in their way, what might motivate

2:52

them, what might de-motivate them. So if you're

2:54

the manager of a team and

2:56

you start to think about what

2:58

are blockers that are going to hit my team this

3:01

week, or what things could happen that

3:03

might derail the team and you start to

3:05

manage that, then your people can really

3:07

soar. So it's about supporting

3:10

people and ensuring that those people

3:12

have the best chance to perform, not

3:15

just getting caught up in maybe a

3:17

politic that they're not even interested

3:19

in. They may not even understand what's going on. So

3:22

it's really important that people

3:24

who manage people recognize

3:26

that they're complex human beings and they come

3:28

to work with a myriad of things

3:31

on their minds and on their desks, and therefore,

3:34

how we deal with that is what

3:36

enables them to perform their best. So you're not actually managing

3:38

them, you're managing everything around

3:41

them to enable them to be best.

3:42

So true. So you believe the future

3:45

is all about the softer skills rather than disciplinary

3:47

skills. Can you give me an example of the difference

3:49

between the two?

3:50

In this day and age, more and more people have

3:52

degrees, have got fantastic disciplinary

3:54

knowledge, and the disciplinary knowledge is constantly

3:57

evolving and changing. I mean, you're a Practical

3:59

Futurist. You talk all the time

4:01

about how technology is going to change work

4:03

and all of those sorts of things. Technology

4:06

can do wonderful things, but the

4:08

thing that you can bring

4:10

to a job that nobody else can bring is you.

4:13

And so you're unique in how you put

4:15

things together, how you see things, how

4:17

you can imagine things working

4:19

is so different than the person who's

4:21

sitting next to you. And so it's

4:24

that that we need, we need people

4:26

to connect people. We need people

4:28

to have empathy. We need to understand

4:31

broader picture things. So machines

4:33

can learn, they can learn from having

4:35

been exposed to something, artificial intelligence,

4:38

we can teach it that. But what we can't

4:40

teach artificial intelligence to do is

4:42

to make that human connection, which

4:44

is often the deep relationship that changes

4:47

everything. I mean, as you said, who would've

4:49

thought 23 years ago, we'd be sitting

4:51

here this afternoon talking halfway across

4:53

the world. So it's all about

4:55

keeping those deep relationships and

4:58

who knows where they lead.

4:59

So you work a lot in this whole discipline of people management.

5:01

Why is it so important in a digital age

5:03

to keep these skills current and to frankly

5:06

to keep teaching them?

5:07

I can get a machine today, you

5:09

can get a machine today and we can all go buy

5:11

the same machine today and it's going to do exactly

5:13

the same thing. What will make the company

5:15

better, what will make an organization

5:17

better, what will make you better at your job

5:19

is what you bring to that. So

5:21

it's about how you find those connections,

5:24

how your thinking about those things

5:26

so that all of a sudden you

5:28

can see a solution that you

5:31

hadn't previously thought of. Information

5:33

is all there today. Thank good ness

5:36

we can get things really at the

5:38

click of a button, flick of a switch that's

5:40

making businesses very

5:42

competitive with each other. The only true

5:45

sustainable, competitive advantage we have

5:47

is the difference that the people bring to it. We

5:50

can tomorrow go and get exactly

5:52

the same technology, we can recreate

5:55

exactly the same thing. We mightn't be first

5:57

to market, we could be second to market, but who knows, we

5:59

might improve on it? What we can

6:02

do though is have the people who are going to have the

6:04

right culture and a

6:06

couple of weeks ago you talked about this. When you talk to the people from

6:08

Atlassian and what we see is

6:10

those people make that difference and that's

6:12

what makes a company smart. So

6:14

if you can go in and build good relationships,

6:17

bring your whole self to work, that's empathetic

6:19

to the customer, there's empathetic

6:22

to the situation you're trying to solve, that can quickly

6:24

adapt because you don't have to necessarily

6:26

go and learn something new, your brain

6:29

is infinitely capable of thinking

6:31

about something in a different way, straightaway provided

6:35

you can shift your frame of thinking,

6:36

So it leads me onto a point and Dom covered it with Atlassian, this

6:39

notion of the future of work and everyone

6:41

has a different view. Dom talked about people, place, and

6:44

purpose and a few other things, that's something I talk about, but

6:46

big question, what

6:49

is the future of work?

6:50

The future of work is going to be self directed.

6:53

It's going to be asynchronous. It's

6:55

going to be at a time and

6:57

place that suits you

7:00

and then matches with an employer.

7:03

The future of work is going to be more about the

7:05

gig economy. Fewer people will

7:07

have a permanent place to go or

7:09

go there for a long period of time. What

7:11

they'll do is they'll take their skillset and

7:14

that skillset will be sought after today

7:16

in this organisation or in this situation

7:18

tomorrow in a different organization in a different

7:20

situation. So what it's going to take

7:22

more than anything is for people

7:24

to be agile and able and

7:26

willing to say that they don't need

7:29

the security of one particular

7:31

organisation, that they're actually

7:33

starting to take responsibility and ownership for themselves

7:36

and basically a free marketplace

7:39

of skills that are brought in

7:41

and work together and then disband and

7:43

go off to do the next thing.

7:44

I'm so glad you've talked about this because I'm a big proponent of this

7:47

whole gig economy, not just for delivery drivers but

7:49

for people like ourselves, you know professionals.

7:51

I was actually talking to a client yesterday on the

7:53

phone in Canada and they are advising

7:55

a client on a building that they're building

7:58

in seven years time and they said, Andrew,

8:00

what will the future of work be and how

8:02

will we design the space? And I took it the other way

8:04

and I said, well, think about it. If we are

8:06

going to be in a gig economy, if I'm going to be working two

8:08

days here and three days there and one day here, not

8:11

only will I need to have transportable data

8:13

and security, I'll need to transfer my

8:15

insurance, my pension, my payroll,

8:18

but it means that I'm not always going to be in your space.

8:21

And I think companies will need to design

8:23

spaces to be completely flexible

8:26

that they may not have a five day a week workforce

8:28

. I think you're absolutely right and

8:31

it's a bit like a portfolio career for many people

8:33

that get sick of corporate life.

8:35

I think it's even bigger than

8:37

what you're suggesting. So rather than it being

8:40

a portable pension plan and

8:42

portable payroll, it will

8:44

be a case of spaces

8:46

where when I do go

8:48

to that place to work with that client,

8:51

that I can actually create - think

8:55

like an airline lounge where

8:57

there's a space to work. I can choose how

8:59

I want to work, how I use that space. It's

9:02

not about the tables and

9:04

the chairs, it's not even

9:06

about the room. It's going to be about

9:08

can I get great broadband from there

9:11

or I can't get it at home? Am

9:13

I going to be able to get a space that's quiet?

9:15

Am I able to go in and use a green screen

9:17

when I need to or a collaborative

9:20

space when I need to. So it's

9:23

the notion of what

9:25

was in the 1980s a serviced office

9:27

and people used as they needed it, expand

9:30

that, make it cooler and groovyer so

9:32

that there's some places to hang

9:34

out and some places to meet

9:37

informally as well. And

9:39

then as you said, there will be 24x7 and the

9:42

thing that will change with that is we're going to have to look

9:44

at child care differently. We're

9:46

going to have to look at schooling differently

9:48

because even schooling is

9:50

changing so that many of the high schools

9:52

now are doing lots of their lessons

9:55

on the web. And so this will mean

9:57

that we're going to have a workforce

9:59

that's learned to do things in one

10:01

space and then come together and

10:03

those workspaces are going to be about coming together.

10:06

So I think technology will

10:08

play here, and we spent the first part of this

10:10

recording talking about how people are so important. Do

10:13

you think there's one piece of technology that will fundamentally

10:16

be the driver of change in the workplace

10:18

in the next three to five years?

10:19

It has to be artificial intelligence because

10:22

just as computers and

10:24

word processing change the

10:26

nature of business, the next

10:29

thing that will change it has to be machine learning

10:31

and artificial intelligence, which is fantastic

10:33

because it's going to free humans

10:36

up to do far

10:38

more creative and innovative

10:40

and value-add work. Somebody said

10:42

to me today, aren't you frightened a robot is going to

10:44

take away your work? I said, please

10:46

find a robot to take all the things

10:49

off my desk that add absolutely

10:51

no value to the day that my qualifications,

10:53

that everything I can bring are

10:55

actually not used, but they're necessary, right? They're

10:58

important, but a machine could

11:00

do that. If I had

11:02

that amount of hours extra every day, how

11:05

much more creative could I be? How much

11:07

more innovative, how much more could I add

11:09

in terms of output, change

11:12

delivery by

11:15

just taking the fundamentals off my desk.

11:17

I'm sitting here smiling because I talk all the time

11:19

in my keynotes about the notion of a "digital agent".

11:21

If you think about the phone that's in front of you, it

11:24

knows everything about you. It knows your next appointment,

11:26

it knows your bank balance, it knows where you'll

11:28

be next week. If you could have AI

11:30

run over that and get rid of all the minute, so for

11:33

example, my health insurance is due in November,

11:35

so rather than me having to go to a comparison website,

11:38

see if I'm getting ripped off, it knows it's

11:40

due . It goes out and does digital deals with

11:42

digital agents from all the companies and in microseconds

11:45

it comes back and Google last

11:47

year launched a thing called Google Duplex. Not sure if you saw

11:49

it where basically you say to Google,

11:52

"hey Google, I want to book a restaurant tonight at 7:30"

11:54

and Google says is eight o'clock okay, if that's not available, yes it is. The Google

11:58

Assistant, the Duplex assistant actually rings

12:00

the restaurant and uses speech to

12:02

text AI to have a conversation

12:05

and negotiate with the restaurant about a time and comes

12:07

back and tells you its booked. When I show

12:09

that at conferences there is a two minute video, people

12:11

go, wow. And I say, would you like that now?

12:13

And they say, yes. I say, well, if you're in the US and have a Google

12:16

Pixel 3, it's available now. So the technology

12:18

is almost there and I really believe we're probably

12:21

a year or two away from someone offering this

12:23

service to basically scrape everything

12:25

from your phone and make your life

12:27

easier, and as you say, you can then spend

12:29

more time thinking and enjoying life

12:31

than booking restaurants.

12:33

I say that the hardest working

12:35

people in my home are my

12:38

robot vacuum and Google

12:40

home, Siri and Alexa.

12:42

So we do have all of them. And I have

12:44

all of them because at the moment they are not

12:47

integrated well enough, the technology is just not

12:49

quite developed enough. But with all

12:51

of those extras doing

12:53

that, I'm freed up probably

12:56

for 2+ hours a week. So

12:59

I just think about being able to magnify

13:01

that and right

13:03

down to the fact that work will

13:05

change because you will

13:07

no longer have the receptionist sitting

13:09

there meeting you and

13:11

saying, okay, let me check if so-and-so's

13:13

in. So they'll be meeting you, there'll be the

13:15

face of the company and there'll be the

13:18

"Director of First Impressions". But

13:20

what they will be doing is managing

13:22

multiple digital assistants

13:25

to make the whole place run. So

13:27

there'll become more technology

13:30

enabled and this is going to change

13:33

those jobs. And then think about

13:35

how far work has changed in terms

13:37

of that there are very few personal

13:41

assistants where it's one personal assistant to an executive

13:43

these days. We see it at

13:45

the very, very top of the tree, but we don't

13:47

see it the rest of the way down. When

13:50

that was first muted and you know you and I've

13:52

been around a while, Andrew, so we remember when

13:54

it was, you know you had a team assistant, people

13:56

went, ooh one team assistant for 12 people.

13:59

Now we look at it, we go probably you don't even need

14:01

that. Technology is going to mean that

14:03

those jobs are actually freed up to go

14:05

and do valuable work and

14:07

that money, that expenditure,

14:10

that space is going to be adding different

14:12

value. The machines can do all the

14:14

stuff. That's just the day-to-day.

14:16

I think it's an opportunity rather than a threat. Your

14:18

PhD thesis looked at the psychological

14:21

underpinnings of the effect of retrenchment

14:23

and so I want to explore that for a bit. Do

14:25

you think the stigma of retrenchment has been reduced

14:27

recently because it seems to be happening more and more

14:29

as companies need to cut costs and technology and

14:31

some of the job roles are being taken over?

14:33

Well, firstly, I have to thank you for not falling to sleep,

14:35

as you said, that very, very long title.

14:38

And there is a difference

14:41

now because we have fewer

14:43

people who are permanently employed.

14:46

And so now we have

14:48

a couple of changes. We have

14:51

millennials who've never seen a recession

14:53

and therefore they don't know what

14:55

it is to not have work or to fret

14:58

about work or to worry about will

15:00

there be another job, they just pack up

15:02

and they move to the next job. So

15:04

I think until we see a global

15:06

financial situation again that

15:09

impacts this, retrenchment at

15:11

the moment is not being talked about

15:13

at the same level it was, but

15:16

it is a cyclical thing. And

15:19

unfortunately companies still use

15:21

retrenchment in place of performance

15:23

management. So instead of saying, look, this

15:25

is not a match for our business and

15:28

having a proper conversation, there's a

15:30

people management thing for you really thinking

15:32

about is this person, despite

15:34

their best efforts, may not just be a good fit

15:36

for the company or the company may not be a good fit

15:38

for them, but for whatever reason they get

15:40

a little bit paralyzed and they stay there and

15:42

then the company says, well, we will force the

15:44

hand by giving you a retrenchment.

15:46

And that's where we still see it's got a bit

15:48

of a stigma because people know that if that

15:50

happened, why didn't you see the writing

15:53

on the wall? So I think it depends

15:55

on what industry you're in. I always joke

15:57

and say, if you haven't got at least three retrenchments

15:59

on your CV, you're probably not trying hard

16:01

enough. And at the same time,

16:04

because of this change to gig economy, we're

16:06

not seeing it at the same level we were.

16:08

Now you mentioned the word millennials , so I'm going to touch on that for a moment.

16:10

We hear a lot about the fact that millennials expect a different

16:12

way of being managed. I've actually had first-

16:15

hand experience of this, IU had to train or actually re-train

16:17

some millennials on my team about simple

16:19

business etiquette, like not criticising

16:21

your boss in front of the client. And in this instance

16:24

when I provided constructive feedback to this particular person,

16:26

they actually thanked me. They said no one had actually taught

16:28

them this was the way to behave. So

16:30

perhaps a loaded question, but should

16:32

Universities be teaching these skills before

16:35

students hit the workforce?

16:36

Well, in the classes that I teach, that's

16:38

all of my focus is on these softer

16:41

skills and on how do we present and

16:43

how do we influence and how

16:45

do we think about ethical dilemmas, and

16:47

are we information literate

16:50

and things of that nature. I teach

16:53

in the management space, I work with undergrads

16:56

and postgrads and I'm always saying to them,

16:58

don't just look at the company, when you go for an interview you've

17:01

got to show how you are going to add incredible

17:03

value to this company that no other candidate

17:05

is going to do. I

17:07

think that the greatest challenge is that with

17:10

all of the rise of technology, we've got

17:12

an inflated disinhibition effect.

17:15

And so if you've ever sent an email

17:17

and go oops, or posted something gone, oops,

17:19

that's disinhibition of fate at , at it's sort of

17:22

height. And so what we see

17:24

for people is that they've grown

17:26

up with a mobile phone in their pocket

17:29

and if it rings, they just stop what they're doing

17:30

and answer that phone, nobody's ever said to

17:33

them, actually that's really rude.

17:35

So when you do say it for the first time, sometimes

17:38

they'll look at you quite incredulously and say, well,

17:40

you know, how dare you tell me that it's rude.

17:43

So I think you've got to handle the feedback really carefully.

17:45

But having just come off from a 10

17:48

week professional skills program,

17:50

I was really interested in how often

17:53

I had to remind people, I

17:55

can see you with your phone in front

17:57

of your face between you and me while

17:59

we're talking, and they would look

18:01

at me really stunned. Like, can

18:03

you really say that? I'd say think

18:06

about the message that that's sending. So

18:09

it's as much a case of

18:11

that we've got a new way of working

18:13

that the people before

18:16

them didn't know, so couldn't help

18:19

them to guide that change in

18:21

protocol. And I think that it's not

18:23

just about millennials

18:25

being managed differently, it's about

18:28

the fact that we are seeing situations

18:30

now where it's less clear what the protocols

18:32

are. So if you don't take some time to

18:34

learn those protocols, if you don't become

18:36

observant of how is it done

18:38

here and if it is done in a certain

18:40

way that's not getting you where you want to go ... Think

18:44

about when we were at Optus , you were not allowed

18:46

to have your phone on in a meeting.

18:48

Today if you said that to somebody,

18:50

they'd say are you crazy? But I always

18:52

remind people that probably they

18:54

don't need their phone on for that 15, 30

18:57

minutes unless there's an emerging crisis.

19:00

There are even people now that have like a phone "sin

19:02

bin" when you walk in. But I do remember in

19:04

fact, one of my colleagues at Telstra after Optus,

19:06

we used to text each other across the table,

19:09

almost like a running commentary of how the meeting was going.

19:11

These days, you'd use WhatsApp, but I

19:13

think you're so right, and even in the millennial

19:15

situation I had, I would have one

19:17

on one meetings, like a review meeting and they'd

19:19

have their phone out. I would actually not slam

19:21

it down, but say, look, can you please put your phone

19:23

down because you need to be in the room.

19:25

If you're in the room, be in the room as my friend Nigel Risner says. Now

19:28

I've known you for such a long time, one thing

19:30

that many people may not know about you is

19:32

that you were once an international ice skater. That's

19:35

a random fact and an amazing one. I

19:37

imagine this helped prepare you well for later

19:39

corporate life as you're able to draw upon your dedication

19:42

and grit as a skater. So what lessons

19:44

did you learn from this period of your career and

19:46

what do you pass on to your clients?

19:49

Skating teaches you that

19:52

no matter how hard you work,

19:54

something still on the day can go wrong,

19:56

right, and so

19:59

you work less from a space of perfection

20:02

and more of a space of recovery,

20:04

which is what do I need to do to make it happen?

20:06

So I think that's the first thing that skating really

20:09

teaches you to do. Skating makes

20:11

you incredibly resilient. Trust

20:13

me, nobody gets up in the morning at 3:30 or

20:15

whatever and basically pounds

20:18

your body against something that's harder than cement,

20:21

minute after minute after minute. And

20:23

you keep getting up and you keep going because

20:25

of that ultimate goal

20:27

of when I master this, and so the

20:30

other thing skating teaches you to do is to

20:32

keep working towards mastery, and it

20:35

doesn't matter if you can do something then keep

20:37

practicing it because it will get better and better

20:39

and better if you push for that.

20:42

And I think

20:44

there's a lot of joy when you realise

20:46

that you can

20:49

actually overcome just about any hurdle.

20:51

So I think that we need to

20:54

really look for things

20:56

that we can draw upon our strengths. And say,

20:59

this is what I'm really good at. The analogy

21:01

I used recently was somebody asked me

21:03

how did I go? And I used

21:05

a skating analogy. I said I went out

21:07

and did what I had trained to do, and

21:11

they looked at me and I said all I could

21:13

do was what I had in my

21:15

bag and I had trained to do. And

21:17

I then used the analogy, but I hadn't planned

21:19

to do a quad. I don't even have one in my

21:21

backpack. So I just went out

21:23

and did all my triples really

21:26

well. I executed really well and I'm happy

21:29

and I realised that that's a very valuable thing

21:31

to know.

21:32

You're a different academic.

21:34

You're not just teaching all the time.

21:36

You have worked in corporate life and you sort of

21:38

span both. So you're a bit more pragmatic, a bit more practical

21:41

in your approach, like I am. So

21:43

what are organisations getting wrong

21:45

in terms of how they manage talent?

21:47

I call myself an accidental academic because

21:49

this was not planned, but it's

21:51

sort of evolved. But what organisations

21:55

often can't tell their people

21:57

is that their technical skills

21:59

may be brilliant, but they might

22:01

just be approaching a situation in a way

22:03

that's not helping. So often

22:06

for organisations, it's

22:09

very hard for them to unpack the

22:11

banter, so the conversation

22:13

that you and I might have socially as

22:16

to is that's what's really happening when they're with the client

22:18

or when they're at their work? So as

22:22

the boundaries between work and home have blurred

22:24

and we have more social time at work, et cetera,

22:27

organisations are struggling to

22:29

know how to give that feedback

22:32

and how to mentor, and how

22:34

to help people to look beyond

22:37

the day to day. They're so busy and

22:39

it's all about delivery, delivery, delivery. If

22:42

you don't get some space to think beyond the delivery,

22:44

then you'll have nothing to deliver tomorrow. So

22:46

we've got to ensure for organisations

22:49

that they allow and encourage risk. If

22:52

they punish risk, then

22:54

you'll get no innovation.

22:55

This is something that's keeping me awake at the moment,

22:57

because I'm actually doing my fifth TEDx about

22:59

the corporate spark of innovation. And when I go and

23:02

talk to boards, they're all saying, you know,

23:04

what do we do? And I say, you need time to think.

23:06

You need time to allow your people

23:08

to fail. Oh, we can't do that because failure is bad.

23:10

And so I'm slowly, slowly trying to

23:12

encourage people to take more risks. Final

23:15

question before I ask you a few three tips for next

23:17

week. This is a biggie . Ethics in business

23:19

is something that comes up a lot with my audiences. Are

23:22

we adequately addressing the question of ethics

23:24

in business at all levels in vertical organisation

23:26

and how can managers learn to be more ethical?

23:29

The ethical question comes down

23:31

to fundamentals.

23:35

Would you do this to somebody

23:37

else? How would you feel

23:39

if somebody did this to you? So

23:42

we often sort of say, well, it should be buyer aware

23:44

or buyer beware . And I

23:46

go, but if the buyer doesn't know

23:49

and it's outside of their conscious competence

23:50

to ask, then we have

23:53

a responsibility. To be

23:56

ethical is to be able to

23:58

put yourself in somebody else's shoes

24:01

and think about the outcome for that person.

24:04

Think about what would happen if this affected

24:06

my family, my friends, my loved

24:08

ones. Would I still take this action?

24:11

Go back to the Norman Vincent Peale view

24:14

of if this was on the front page of

24:16

this splashed all over, I don't know,

24:18

social media tomorrow, would I still do it

24:20

and if the answer is no, then stop.

24:23

If the answer is, ooh, I don't feel comfortable about

24:25

that, stop. If you wouldn't

24:27

want it to happen to yourself or somebody else,

24:30

then stop. Ask yourself, can

24:32

somebody get injured or killed and

24:35

then really stop and ask

24:37

yourself, will somebody be hurt? Because

24:39

if somebody's going to get hurt, that's not okay.

24:42

We can come from a place of good so

24:44

quickly by just asking

24:47

those fundamental questions and

24:49

then we can get it right, but I also

24:51

want to touch on Andrew, your comment about

24:53

risk-taking because if we

24:56

punish people when they get it wrong,

24:58

if the reward system only

25:00

rewards short term thinking or

25:02

only reward the outcome, not

25:05

the input. If we don't look at how

25:08

did you get there, then that leaves

25:10

the door open for unethical behavior.

25:13

If we say to somebody, okay, we didn't

25:15

get there, you know 100%

25:17

but we got there 90% and guess

25:20

what, our clients really love us and we're

25:22

getting great reviews and we're doing all this and

25:24

we've really taken some time and some thought

25:26

around how we've done this and we've cared for people.

25:29

We won't get it always right because there are always

25:31

unintended consequences, but we will get

25:33

it more right than wrong if we take

25:35

that time and think about others in the process.

25:37

I love the link between risk

25:39

and ethics and I think if people thought more about

25:41

that, we might have a better business

25:44

environment.

25:44

You and I could talk for hours on that.

25:47

That would be podcast number 12 or something. I've

25:50

got to hold your feet to the fire because this is the Practical

25:52

Futurist podcast, so what are the three things

25:54

our listeners can do next week to ensure

25:57

they have leaders ready for the digital age?

25:59

First thing, stop worrying about building

26:01

a network and start building a deep relationship

26:04

with people. Really connect.

26:06

The second thing is find something that

26:08

you can take a small risk on and

26:10

go out and take that risk so that you try something

26:13

new and challenge yourself to do something

26:15

new frequently. Whether

26:17

that's once a week, once a day,

26:21

set yourself a time frame . Make sure you do something

26:23

new and something that will make you

26:25

a little bit uncomfortable, but that you can

26:27

ultimately master or determine that it's really

26:30

not for you. And the third

26:32

thing is actually say, how

26:34

can I be kinder and

26:37

more connected to the people I

26:39

work with? Because I believe that every

26:41

single person gets up every day to

26:44

fundamentally do good work

26:46

or be good. There are very few

26:48

people, in fact, we know that. You know people

26:50

who are basically bad in the

26:52

world end up in prison . So we'll just park that to the

26:54

side. But in corporations, they're fundamentally

26:57

full of good people. If you look for good

26:59

and you focus on good, you'll get

27:01

more good. If you're constantly telling people where

27:03

they get it wrong, guess what? They just get frightened. They

27:05

get paralyzed, they can't grow.

27:07

Three brilliant tips. Thank you. Lynn, how can

27:10

our listeners find out more about you

27:12

and your work?

27:12

Well, they can reach out to me via our website

27:14

through talkingtrends.com.au and that's

27:18

the easiest way to get me. And of

27:20

course there's lots of other

27:22

talks that they can access. Just

27:24

if you look up Lynn Gribble , you'll find my

27:27

views on mobile phones and how disruptive

27:29

they are to our mental wellbeing

27:32

as well.

27:32

That's had 20 million views so far, that video its huge.

27:37

23 million we clicked last

27:39

night.

27:39

That's worth watching. Lynn , thank you

27:41

so much. I do hope its not another 23 years

27:43

before you're back on the show, but thank you so much for

27:45

your time today.

27:46

Thanks Andrew. It's been great to chat.

27:52

Thank you for listening to the Practical

27:54

Futurist podcast. You can find

27:57

all of our previous shows at futurist.london

28:00

and if you like what you've heard on the show,

28:02

please consider subscribing via your

28:04

favorite podcast app so you never

28:06

miss an episode. You can find

28:09

out more about Andrew and how

28:11

he helps corporates navigate a disruptive

28:13

digital world with keynote speeches

28:16

and c-suite workshops at futurist.london.

28:19

Until next time, this has been

28:21

the Practical Futurist podcast.