Transforming Work with Sophie Wade

Lata Hamilton is a change leadership expert, change management consultant, and creator of the "Leading Successful Change" program. Lata has worked with some of Australia’s largest companies on operating model changes, global cultural transformations, and digital transformations. She shares her insights about leading people to achieve long-lasting change, especially paying attention to offline process elements. She discusses learnings from pandemic pivots, change leaders’ examples, and a winning top-down/bottom-up combined approach. Lata describes the emphasis shifting from tasks and roles to skills and expertise contributing value to deliver results.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [03:12] Lata starts her career in advertising to explore her creative side.   [05:35] Lata assesses the career model looking for balance—fulfilling work and being well-compensated.   [06:52] A graduate program offers many growth opportunities.   [07:52] Lata is ambitious, wants variety, and to make an impact.   [08:35] How pay should match professional growth and upskilling.   [09:48] Lata moves sector using her transferable skills.   [10:37] Process work becomes Lata’s focus.   [11:32] Lata leaves a graduate role having documented all the team processes.   [12:27] In financial services, Lata develops compliance and process skills and discovers project management.   [14:14] A colleague suggests change management after reviewing Lata’s range of skills and experience.   [16:00] What hadn’t Lata mentioned that is critical for change management work?   [17:48] The employee experience drives a great customer experience.   [18:39] How they pivoted at a major retailer when the pandemic hit.   [21:33] The deep caring Lata observed from people working on the frontline.   [22:34] How the change team led by example to demonstrate new ways of working.   [23:46] Affecting change, the critical work is off the system—offline process elements such as culture.   [25:33] During the pandemic, having had no preparation there was much remediation and helping to transition and cope after the fact.   [28:30] Change can be painful, taking much commitment and energy.   [29:16] Lata shares what can go wrong for companies not preparing for the future.   [31:08] Lata sees an explosion of AI automation and workforce transformation.   [31:22] Many organizations are recognizing they have low change management capabilities.   [32:58] Lata’s prediction that people’s roles will matter less than who they are, their skills and expertise used to deliver value and results rapidly.   [33:57] How “Business As Usual” roles and job descriptions need to be rethought and employees empowered.   [35:52] Lata questions leaders’ productivity baseline and metrics used to support Return To Office mandates.   [37:15] How should we be measuring success?   [38:54] Leading indicators for profit are a reflection of the employee experience.   [40:18] Why track sentiment and how confidence—determining how people show up—can bridge gaps.   [42:22] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To affect lasting change, lead from the top and model the change, and also open it up, co-create, and co-design with your teams. Invite them to provide feedback, give them tools, and teach them how to think critically and flexibly, building their capabilities to accept change in their personal and professional lives.   [45:30] – How a hackathon co-creates a new operating model and gets people committed to the future state.   [47:00] The multiple benefits of tapping into people’s desire to pass on their skills and knowledge.     RESOURCES   Lata Hamilton on LinkedIn Visit: www.latahamilton.com Leading Successful Change course     QUOTES (edited)   “Change management is really a focus on people in order to reach a result.”   “It’s not fluffy. We help people move from doing things in one way to doing things in a new way. We do it through communications, training, and business readiness. We do it to realize business benefit that is actually successful, sustained, and embedded into the future.”   “There is this big trend to build change capability. There’s also a trend around right-sizing teams and looking at how are we operating: ‘What do we need for the future?’ We are going is going require workforces that are more empowered.”   “From a workplace relations and employment relations perspective, we’re still stuck in the industrial era.”   “When people feel like they get communicated to, they are confident in what they are doing or the change that’s coming down the line.”   “If I am feeling really confident then I’m willing to be flexible and to adjust my approach.”   “I know I’m gonna be leaving a role, so I’ve always just wanted to come in, share as much as I can, and deliver as much value as I can. I want to leave the team better than what I started with. And I want to leave them with skills, tools, and capabilities to carry on this great work after I’ve gone.”   “When you co-create job descriptions you’re suddenly doing two things. You’re getting people committed to the future state. But what you’re also doing is you’re helping people to write themselves into roles.”  

Gary A. Bolles is Chair for the Future of Work at Singularity University, co-founder of eParachute.com, and Author of “The Next Rules of Work: The Mindset, Skillset and Toolset to Lead Your Organization through Uncertainty”. After a first interview in April 2020, Gary returns to the show to report on how he sees the Future of Work progressing and our ongoing adjustments for it. He shares insights about important work trends, mindsets, behaviors, and balance. Gary describes how concurrent waves of old work rules, transitional models, and the next rules of work are impacting leaders and our multigenerational workforce with its shifting weighting of employees and non-employees.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:20] Revisiting our first podcast discussion at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Gary recalls his article about the Great Reset.   [03:54] The helpful visual of multiple waves to understand the evolution of work.   [05:10] Some leaders have bungeed back to old rules of work while others have embraced new rules and operating systems.   [07:02] The effect of perceived incentives and disincentives on changing habits and rules.   [08:05] How to benefit from pandemic learnings and accept the messiness of adapting new practices.   [10:50] Zooming out to shift your mindset about how to solve problems across your ecosystem.   [11:36] Imagining leading without ego and with trust in order to alter leaders’ approaches.   [14:53] How media’s mischaracterizations don’t help as three waves of work try to co-exist.   [15:32] The inevitable trend of continuous co-creation which young people especially seem to embrace.   [16:30] The power dynamic had tilted towards employers which flexible work is rebalancing to some degree.   [18:29] Picture ourselves as icebergs. We employ entire people, not just the tip of the iceberg which we recruit.   [19:32] In the new era of work, leaders are responsible for workers, their lives, and communities.   [21:43] Sophie anticipates smaller core employee groups and more non-employee workers in future.   [22:50] Future employee “agency” achieved through a “worknet” - a flexible flow of talent with varying degrees of organization membership.     [24:05] How to help increase degrees of membership in your company, enable people to feel connected, co-create effectively, and be rewarded.   [25:00] Cybersecurity provides a similar framework for the worknet model.   [27:00] Using words and concepts that reflect people’s sentiments and realities helps us reach balanced understanding and outcomes.   [29:10] Aren’t young employees manifesting the Future of Work rather than disrupting work norms?   [30:15] How young people are responding to new market signals as new work practices endure.   [32:09] Why older leaders are bereft at Gen Z’s behaviors and miss the opportunity of co-creation.   [33:23] Why aren’t younger employees’ deciding their careers now, and other related outcomes?   [34:45] How the precarity of the world is driving youth to hedge their bets with a portfolio strategy.   [35:32] Looking at the three stages of life horizontally not vertically (sequentially) as proposed by Gary’s father who wrote “What Color is Your Parachute?”   [36:47] Parents ask “Why won’t my kid get a real job?” It’s a hedge strategy. It’s ensuring optionality.   [39:00] How culture can be a journey, defined by a mindset and behaviors that are reinforced.   [41:30] What is the process and ongoing actions that empower agency and co-creation?   [43:46] Gary defines empathy as lived experiences. He focuses on caring for coworkers.   [47:19] The sea change ahead as more capable tools come online.   [48:08] Work involving synthesis is greatly enhanced by AI-boosted tools.   [49:46] Leaders need to focus on helping workers be upskilled and utilize the tools to solve current problems.   [51:18] Starting with a growth (vs fixed) mindset and focusing on flex (or soft) skills for today’s business needs.   [52:15] Companies must invest in training employees as education systems are still biased towards teaching bodies of knowledge, not flexible skills that augment interactions and social situations.   [55:40] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Reframe managers and supervisors as team guides. Rethink the process, what their role is, and how you can help them to guide teams throughout your organization, “un-boss” meetings, and be there to remove roadblocks so team members can co-create solutions.   RESOURCES   Gary Bolles on LinkedIn Gary Bolles on Twitter @gbolles Gary’s book “The Next Rules of Work: The Mindset, Skillset and Toolset to Lead Your Organization through Uncertainty” Gary’s website eparachute.com Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfil Your Potential QUOTES (edited)   “We’re pattern recognizers, we’re general-purpose problem-solving machines.”   “I think that’s actually a failure on our part, wasting a perfectly good pandemic. We showed that we can trust. We showed that we can imbue teams with the power to be able to decide when and where and with whom and how they work. And then we took it away from them.”   “We’re going to find that once you’ve given people agency and some level of autonomy, they don’t want to give it back. And I think that’s a perfectly reasonable request.”   “Along comes a pandemic, and suddenly you and I are looking into each other’s homes on Zoom calls. And we realize: that’s a whole person and if I’m an employer I have to be responsible for their physical health, their mental health, their emotional health, the whole person. And that’s not what I signed up for in the old rules of work!”   “I don’t hear a lot of workers complain to me that they’re not engaged. That’s not the way that a worker would say it. A worker would typically say ‘I want to feel motivated by my work’, ‘I want to feel like I have meaning in my work’, ‘I want to feel well compensated’, ‘I want to feel recognized.’”   “Gen Z was born around 9/11. They were children through the global recession and young adults in a global pandemic, on a planet on fire. There aren’t a lot of other generations that have had that sequence of precarity.”   “In a world of almost complete uncertainty, there are no safe jobs.”   “Why are you waiting to enjoy life until retirement? Does that make any sense in a world on fire? No. We’re going to do it now.”   “We keep thinking “Just shove more bodies of knowledge into those little heads”. And that’s not the way the world is working. The shelf life of that information, of those skills, is decaying so rapidly.  We have to explicitly teach these much more flexible skills and then employers have to demand them.”     

Dave Cairns, SVP Office Leasing for CBRE, focuses on working with high growth companies in the tech sector. Dave is a futurist relating to the office market. He shares his views about commercial real estate trends including current realities, core issues, lease restructuring ahead, and future possibilities such as shifting to offer “Space As A Service” going forward. Dave describes the benefits of new richer community demographics as urban dwellers move out. He also sees great potential of virtual worlds to offer more options and richer experiences.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:40] Dave intentionally created a happy place.   [04:06] He gets a university degree although he hones other skills.   [05:10] Flexible studying allows Dave to develop his talents at poker.   [05:36] Competitive poker playing success gives Dave a cushion during the 2008 Great Recession.   [06:55] Trying to improve his game, Dave accidentally becomes a poker instructor.   [09:04] Dave loves playing live poker but the risk:reward ratio is much better online.   [10:00] Playing 8-15 hours a day takes its toll, but motivation and autonomy matter.   [11:55] The dynamics of poker—responding to your opponent.   [13:00] What Dave learned about reading people virtually.   [13:24] “Thin slicing” a person—making decisions based on a narrowly focused initial read.   [15:12] Exogenous events cause Dave to change direction—it seemed timely too.   [16:28] Exploring potentially viable work environments, Dave interviews with brokerages.   [17:12] Insurances brokerages hesitate over Dave’s poker history, but commercial real estate likes it.   [18:12] Dave uses his natural interpersonal and analytical skills.   [18:40] The work situation is not desirable, but Dave believes he will be able to improve it over time.   [19:23] When the pandemic hits, Dave quickly recognizes work will be structured differently in future.   [20:14] The pandemic expands Dave’s interests to include corporate culture, HR, and social justice.   [22:14] Pre-pandemic, WeWork’s consumer facing brand threatens the commercial real estate sector despite their limited footprint.   [23:42] Customers seek more flexibility, exposing issues with valuations and long leases.   [25:01] Dave describes the current and likely vacancy situation of Toronto’s tech submarkets.   [28:06] Circumstances are complex with dependencies on existing long-term leases.   [29:29] What new strategies are possible including conversions to residential?   [31:27] “Space As A Service” is a useful approach, especially to offer shorter team arrangements.   [32:34] More ad hoc arrangements or restructuring leases would provide more utility.   [33:27] Why many landlords are not trying to activate buildings differently.   [35:14] Dave benefits from knowing how to build relationships “remote first” as a poker player.   [35:57] The benefit of a multidimensional global perspective with a hyper-localized business.   [36:34] Dave explores different opportunities including remote work to help SaaS companies.   [38:34] Dave is passionate about helping reshape some of the industry sector’s problems.   [39:37] Is Dave gaslighting his wife about moving?!   [40:59] How richer communities are developing and socioeconomic divides decreasing thanks to distributed working.   [43:19] The Metaverse is not yet here, but Dave is convinced virtual worlds present much opportunity in the Future of Work.   [44:43] Earning people’s attention in virtual space by creating friction—having to develop an avatar.   [45:05] How can diversity and inclusion be supported in virtual worlds.   [46:00] Discovering they are embodying mission critical innovation/collaboration activities virtually.   [46:43] Media-generated perspectives and stereotypes about people who work outside the office.   [47:10] Dave anticipates many future use cases, different needs and possibilities convening in virtual worlds.   [49:26] Video game-based guild members’ interactions provide strong use cases for online collaboration.   [50:43] Not judging people who participate in virtual worlds.   [52:19] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: If you are starting a new company, test out collaborating in virtual environments before considering physical real estate — from a cost and risk mitigation perspective. People come first and foremost so the key is activating collaboration and the intention you put behind it.     RESOURCES   Dave Cairns on LinkedIn Dave Cairns on Twitter     QUOTES (edited)   “The most important thing that you're trying to do in poker, whether it's in person or not, is pick up on pattern recognition.”   “WeWork exposed the fact that office buildings have more risk in them than we all thought because the tenant — the customer in the conventional sense — is seeking far more least flexibility and service than they ever got. The employee wants hospitality, great technology, and network of spaces that they can use on a global scale.”   “The office environments in these tech hubs are ghost towns because all of the tech companies have embraced remote work. Either they're totally set up to work distributed or they're doing it from a talent and retention perspective: they can't afford to call people back to the office or they're gonna lose people. So you've got the restaurants in these areas, you've got condos that people are living in, and you've got office that nobody's using.”   “Talent attraction and retention needs to be a global thing out of necessity. It's not like a nice to have thing.”   “So much of the work that we do is “remote work”. You're just choosing to do it from an office and power to you if that's where you want to do it! But don't deny the fact that a lot of the work that we're doing in real estate is location independent work.”   “I'm far more interconnected with the fabric of my society than I ever was in the large city I lived in my whole life. And we're forging relationships with people all over that are both economic and social, and it's incredible. And more of it needs to happen.”   “A lot of the perception is you're either are all in on the metaverse and you want to live in a virtual world in your basement in pajamas and be a total degenerate, or you're going to go back to the office and be a normal contributing member of society. That's the juxtaposition and of course it's not that at all.”  

Joanna Parsons is the Founder and Director of The Curious Route and one of the leading experts in internal communication across the UK and Ireland. Joanna’s experience spans non-profit, government (the police force), and corporate domains. She brings new thinking and approaches to key employee events and environments to stimulate curiosity, develop connections, and nurture shared understanding of culture across disparate and distributed employee groups. Joanna shares the benefits of “unlearning” especially to collaborate effectively as we establish new ways of working. KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:39] Joanna is very curious about people, culture, social norms, and human behavior.   [03:35] At 12 years old, Joanna starts reaching out through communications.   [04:23] Joanna starts in internal communications for an NGO in India but changes sector to satisfy her ambitious nature.   [05:42] Getting to know her audience, Joanna draws on storytelling to create compelling messages.   [06:55] Changing company cultures can be jarring, but Joanna acclimates easily in financial services.   [07:54] Communication challenges across sectors are similar—eg relating to jargon and leadership communications.   [08:34] A poor personal experience of corporate induction, Joanna boldly gamifies the process.   [10:49] A speed dating approach builds relationships between new recruits and employees and executives.   [13:52] Joanna shares how the new onboarding process energized long-time employees as well.   [15:00] Having real conversations matters for building ties with new employees.   [16:05] The Irish police force recruits Joanna into a recommended new Head of Internal Comms role.   [16:45] Joanna walks into a divided “us vs them” culture—she loves a good challenge!   [18:05] After a great time in the interview, Joanna thinks they will never pick her.   [19:26] Joanna spends the first three months visiting people, listening, and watching.    [20:15] Understanding an organization’s information flow takes time, patience, and observation.   [21:47] Building relationships in personal ways and showing respect are critical for developing trust.   [23:42] After demonstrating she listened and is offering relevant solutions, leaders invite her to help them.   [24:43] During an early lockdown, the Swiss police reach out to the Irish police with a dance challenge!   [26:33] Once posted, the video goes viral and other groups start sending in their own versions.   [27:53] The dance challenge and great empathy demonstrated by the police during the pandemic changed public perception and improved trust in the Irish police.   [30:40] Internal communications is centered on shared understanding across all employees emphasizing the organization’s vision, mission, and values.   [32:42] “Unlearning” previous habits can be a helpful approach for adapting to new ways of working.   [34:21] The Curious Route describes Joanna’s approach to work and her newsletter.   [36:16] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: First—when creating a communication, think about the audience, not yourself, and connect it to them. Second—when you are writing something, get to the point. Say what you want to say, say it quickly, and stop. RESOURCES   Joanna Parsons on LinkedIn Joanna’s website TheCuriousRoute Joanna’s newsletter The Curious Route An Garda Síochána Dance Challenge Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less QUOTES (edited)   “It is really all about understanding the people before you start trying to create a message.”   “Even though you can switch industries—I was in the charity sector then financial services, then policing, and now in tech—all the communication challenges are actually more similar than different.”   “The first three months, it probably just looked like I was drinking coffee. This is where all my sociology training came in because I just listened and observed and ask questions.”   “The trick for anyone that is Head of Communications is to build really strong relationships across the organization.”   “The core of a really good internal communications function is to create a shared understanding across all the employees.”

Brian Elliott is a veteran executive leader, advisor, speaker, and best-selling co-author of “How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to the Best Work of Their Lives”. After several years in leadership at Slack, he co-founded and was the Executive Leader of the Future-of-Work think tank Future Forum. Brian shares wide-ranging insights including: executive/employee trust issues, how executives feel disconnected if not engaging in the (virtual) spaces where their teams are, how productivity can be gamed, the disease of meetings(!), building for the future based on where we are now, and the need to create constraints to channel new ways of working.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:38] Brian explores his desire to be a professor doing research and analytics as a case writer at HBS.   [05:02] Brian likes to put himself in situations where he has to learn and grow.   [05:41] Brian gets great feedback which helps him evolve and improve as a manager.   [07:25] Survival depended on culturally aligning people from different disciplines and backgrounds, sharing understanding of problems and solving them.   [08:35] Being transparent about the P&L was critical and treating people like adults.   [09:10] Getting to know each other was essential, regularly breaking bread together.   [10:33] Brian's resume redemption move—transitioning to Google doing product development.   [12:10] The first issue to address was mending culture—dysfunction across a diverse team.   [13:40] Establishing (early) protocols, enabling distributed teams to have effective meetings.   [14:50] Brian moves to Slack to help integrate a variety of partners.   [15:42] The origin story of Slack as a communications backbone.   [16:27] The impact of Brian’s team being 9 to 5 office-based but not co-located at HQ.   [17:49] Three things came together during the pandemic to create Future Forum.   [19:49] Brian repeatedly builds teams/departments and then moves on to something smaller.   [20:52] Brian leans into his experiences in external facing communications.   [23:15] Henry Ford experimented with five, six, seven, and even four day work weeks!   [24:17] We haven’t revisited our inherited systems of work, when offices initially did “factory” work.   [25:21] Why do we perpetuate past habits thinking they continue to be the “recipe for success”?   [26:40] Trust is the core issue, which wasn't questioned when we had to get through the pandemic.   [27:45] Trust is being questioned as executives to return to empty offices and they aren't where the conversations are happening.   [30:26] Disconnected communications across spaces are resulting in pushes to return to the office.   [33:35] Disparity in perceptions about transparency lead to discord, while planning without employees’ inputs.   [34:09] A consensus driven approach to decision making and anecdotal storytelling driving policy.   [34:40] Gen Z's are looking for a balanced approach—not all in the office or at home.   [36:07] If we get frustrated, we can't go backwards.   [36:37] Intentional design—who does the current office design actually work for?   [39:09] Feedback and the mediocre management problem.   [40:00] Productivity is easy to game.   [42:40] What date are we building from for our futures? Are we redesigning forward?   [43:54] Why returning to the office full-time is illogical and counterproductive.   [46:10] How to develop guardrails and prevent extremes.   [48:16] The “disease” called meetings which hinders offering flexible hours.   [49:22] Top reasons behind having too many meetings—including obligation and FOMO.   [50:54] Brian describes the need to put constraints in place to create new work habits.   [53:35] What worked for Brian at Future Forum for optimal teamwork.   [54:43] Brian’s hope for his children as we move further into the Future of Work.    [56:54] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Figure out what problem you are trying to solve, engage directly with a trusted group of your employee population, and listen to them.     RESOURCES   Brian Elliott on LinkedIn Brian’s book “How The Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to the Best Work of Their Lives”     QUOTES (edited)   “If there's a through line throughout my entire career, it's continuous learning and putting myself in situations where I am going to be a little—if not a lot—uncomfortable, but learn, grow, and develop.”   “The only way that we survived was figuring out how we got people from different disciplines and backgrounds aligned in moving together. Having a shared understanding of the problems we were trying to solve, and transparency about what was working and what wasn't in the business.”   “You hire adults, don't treat them like children.”   “It was about getting people who were more experienced to occasionally sit on their hands and listen to people who are more junior, who may have had a different idea of how to do things and giving them the space to bring those ideas forward.”   “We spent decades not questioning that even while technology changed really fundamentally, even while demographics changed fundamentally, even while the nature of the work itself became a lot less rote, and we still found ourselves in that rut.”   “As a leader, I experienced things as I was growing up that led to my success in the 1980s and the 1990s, and I believe that that's the recipe for success and therefore I think that the rest of you should follow my example.”   “I've had these conversations with a lot of people and the question often comes back to a couple things: What are you doing to measure outcomes in the business? What are you doing to see how the business is performing, how your teams are performing? What are you doing to train your managers to do that? But the other part is how involved are the executives themselves in where the work is happening?” “The challenge is those executives aren't where the conversations are happening. They're happening in Slack and they're happening in Teams. The executives are not where the team is.”   “If an executive says to their employees ‘I'm worried about productivity, so the answer is I need you back in the office three days a week.’ Everybody looks at them and says ‘what you're saying is you don't trust me.’ If an executive says ‘I think we have a problem with productivity and I think we have too many meetings.’ You know what happens? Everybody cheers because executives agree with this and so do their employees.”    

Oscar Trimboli is a marketing and technology industry veteran who consults to multinationals with a quest to create 100 million Deep Listeners. Over 28,000 people have contributed to his research about listening. Oscar describes how he learned to listen deeply and consequently improve organizational performance including shortening meetings. He shares useful insights and questioning techniques, demonstrated as he prompts Sophie to hone her own skills. Oscar is the author of “How to Listen”, and host of award-winning podcast “Deep Listening.”     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [03:01] To avoid drawing attention to himself, Oscar starts to ask people questions and be very curious.   [04:10] Oscar learned to watch and listen for signs playing cards with international students at school.   [06:58] Following his father’s advice, Oscar becomes an accountant, but his boss steers him to coding.   [09:17] “Which customers have you listened to?” Oscar asks engineers when developing new products.   [11:40] If people want to join Oscar’s team they are tasked to bring back a new insight about customers.   [14:11] Before becoming CEO, Satya Nadella was in a Microsoft division which was customer-focused.   [14:54] A concerning interaction with Oscar’s VP ends up with him being asked to code how to listen.   [16:45] Oscar audits a meeting starting to encode his observations and build his research database—now at 27,000--and listening materials.   [18:29] Researching non-therapeutic listening, Oscar discovers no commonality of approach.   [19:13] Observing interactions, Oscar starts counting the number of questions, types, and length.   [20:37] Good meeting hosts have empathetic curiosity to understand other people’s perspectives.   [22:48] Deliberate listening and questioning techniques can shorten meetings by several hours a week.   [23:55] Assessing appropriate use of open-ended questions and biased questions.   [26:00] Oscar believes many leaders operate from a place of unconscious bias vs dialogue and outcome.   [26:55] Oscar notes that Sophie’s question is long and complex and advises her to break it down to improve understanding.   [28:44] Oscar answers Sophie’s reworded question, explaining the five levels of listening.   [30:10] People only voice 14% of their thoughts, so the most important elements may be left unsaid.   [32:02] The importance of silence—appreciated more in indigenous cultures and Asian countries.   [33:45] The Bias Assessment: Oscar says 3 is half of 8 and shows he is correct!   [35:16] Using the Harvard Association Bias Assessment to help combat our assumption filter.   [37:40] Interrupting skillfully and elegantly—but not cutting someone off—can be a powerful listening technique.   [39:19] The question to ask at the beginning of a conversation to create common direction and shorten the meeting.   [43:15] How referring periodically to the question acts as a compass and tracks progress.   [44:08] How this listening compass gives permission for adjustments and shortens meetings.   [45:14] Oscar wonders if Sophie could shorten her question to one sentence.   [46:01] Sophie’s second question is short and direct, possibly too direct?   [47:03] Oscar shares the 1:25:900 rule, Sophie incorporates context, revising the question a third time.   [48:34] How leaders can hone their question skills, recognizing different orientation and perspectives.   [51:57] We have a listening battery with finite capacity. Ensure you recharge it or postpone the next meeting.   [53:29] The importance of carving out time between and before virtual meetings.   [55:05] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Before you go into a virtual meeting, use three minutes to charge your listening battery by listening to music. The music tempo should match the outcome you want. At the same time, get out of your chair, go for a walk.     RESOURCES   Oscar Trimboli on LinkedIn Oscar’s website Oscar’s book “How to Listen: Discover the Hidden Key to Better Communication” To explore your listening barriers www.listeningquiz.com     QUOTES (edited)   “Which customers have you listened to to form your opinion?”     “When you are the speaker, quite often what you say and what the listener hears is at the intersection of what's going through their mind. What you said and what you say may not be heard by them because they're processing this in a completely different way.”   “A good host will get everybody to listen to them. A great host will get everybody to listen to each other.”   “It's about empathetic curiosity to go “Can I seek to understand their perspective just a little longer?” because when I do, I may see horizons, I may see opportunities, I may see perspectives that I've never envisaged before and this only happens when you explore through questions.”   “If you ask questions with more than eight words, typically it is going to be a biased question. If you ask questions with less than eight words, typically it is going to be more open-ended.”   “So the five levels of listening: first is listen to yourself, next, listen to the content, what they say, what you sense, and what you hear.”   “So typically someone will speak in a range of 125 to 150 words per minute, but they can think nearly nine times faster. They can think of 900 words per minute. So the very first things they say is 14% of what they think and what they mean. So it means that most conversations have 86% of the conversation not said.”   “In high context cultures….silence is a sign of wisdom, respect, and authority. Silence is a magnet that draws out what's missing in the conversation.”   “If we're conscious of silence, we can draw out more of what's unsaid, because silence is that great universal cross cultural magnet that helps all of us listen.”   “What would make this a great conversation?”   “Hanging on every word doesn't make a good listening. Interrupting skillfully, professionally elegantly can be as powerful a listening technique. Most people confuse listening with therapy, where you have to be silent the whole time.”   “Managers get results when they're present. Leaders get results when they're absent.”  

John Lee is the CEO and Founder of Work From Anywhere and a serial entrepreneur. John describes his experiences living and working in multiple countries and the complexities of intercultural communication across large multinational organizations. He discusses the opportunities and issues for employers who seek to offer employees options to work remotely internationally and increase their international hiring, which his company helps with. John shares his expectations about the Future of Work and the advantages for employers of accessing a broader talent pool.   KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:48] John studies accountancy — the “language of business” — to support his desire to become an entrepreneur.   [03:50] John was inspired to create something bigger than himself and leave an imprint for the better.   [05:00] John develops his natural language gift.   [05:45] John explains how learning other languages enables deeper human connection.   [6:10] John picks his worst skill to work on in college which propels him internationally at Deloitte.   [07:10] How John's language skills are useful working on performance improvement initiatives around Europe.   [07:35] Plant managers share many more issues when communicated with in their own language.   [08:20] John built strong relationships and learned much about the international businesses thanks to his communications and cultural sensibilities.   [08:55] A transition moment to leave the corporate world, catalyzed by John's mentor.   [09:18] John's wife, Dee, conceives of the first business concept focused on intercultural training.   [10:12] They launch a travel well-being community to foster and share travel related soft skills.   [11:20] John and his wife noticed their Lonely Planet guide didn't share information about countries’ cultures and people.   [12:14] Intercultural research was a core resource integrated to offer culturally-focused local videos and information.   [13:12] CultureMee wins a prestigious award for best business travel technology product.   [14:36] Dutch and Irish cultural differences had interesting repercussions when John worked at CRH.   [16:28] A yes/no Bulgarian example of communication differences!   [17:18] John has a deep curiosity about people, their cultural and other identities.   [18:20] The shift from studying national differences to encompass diversity, inclusion, and more.   [19:14] Pivoting to a business travel API, they have major growth opportunities in the US.   [20:00] The pandemic hits at the worst moment—John takes time off to regroup.   [21:55] What is the No 1 obstacle preventing internationally distributed working for millions of people?   [22:50] What is the right solution for your next international remote hire?   [23:51] Companies are exploring distributed work: temporarily working in different countries and structurally hire people in different jurisdictions.   [25:00] Key reasons include accessing a deeper talent pool or getting closer to customers.   [26:45] Cities are assessing the visitors they attract—from cruise passengers to digital nomads.   [29:45] Digital nomad visas—which had gaps initially—are accelerating the future of international remote work.   [30:39] Local economies benefit by encouraging new visitor types.   [31:16] The second accelerating factor is the “employer of record” arrangement.   [32:00] How businesses can expand internationally easily using new options.   [33:43] John on the recent partnership with Mercer.   [34:38] Some companies are adjusting better than others to new working options. John feels we are still working it out.   [36:25] John’s own preferences, perceived benefits, and balance.   [38:31] What are the implications for income tax?   [39:24] What will the impact be on traditional education systems?   [40:00] John is intrigued by Plumia, a venture trying to create a country on the Internet!   [42:02] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: If your company is interested in offering international remote working options, review useful white papers for benchmarks about global mobility, chat with a tax or immigration provider, and a good employment lawyer about new international working models.   RESOURCES   John Lee on LinkedIn Work From Anywhere SIETAR Europa Running Remote   QUOTES (edited)   “A lot of the talks I’d been to from entrepreneurs, those that didn’t have a finance background said they felt it held them back. They kind of described accountancy as the language of business.”   “I loved the fact that when you speak in somebody’s language, you connect with them on a much deeper level.”   “I was at the 10-year-point in my career and I still had a burning desire to be an entrepreneur. My mentor at the time said to me, ‘John, you have a great career here, but if you do want to become an entrepreneur, do it now. You can always come back but if you stay here for another five or 10 years, you’re gonna become institutionalized. It’ll be much harder.’”   “The Dutch tended to discuss things democratically but were very direct in their communication. Whereas, Irish people tended to decide hierarchically, but were indirect in how they communicated. And what ended up happening was there was a lot of intercultural friction because you’d have some misinterpretation.”   “And so that’s what we've built with Work From Anywhere, a platform that automates the ‘how.’ It tells you what the risks are. It tells you if you can or cannot do remote.”   “In Barbados, a year after they launched digital nomad visas, they had over a hundred million generators for the local economy. You can imagine they had a huge drop off in cruise passengers because of COVID-19. So obviously, launching this helped mitigate the shortfall from cruise passengers.”

Nina Bhatia is the Executive Director, Strategy and Commercial Development at the John Lewis Partnership (JLP). Nina discusses the business shifts that she and the rest of the JLP executive team are navigating during this period of economic and technology-driven change. She explains the characteristics and strengths of their employee ownership model including the power of transparency in cultivating an internal democracy and a culture of sharing and trust. Nina describes their approach to evolving work arrangements and their emphasis on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:39] Nina starts out as a consultant rather than a lawyer by chance.   [03:10] Nina gets a great range of experiences as at McKinsey.    [04:05] Nina finds herself drawn to integrative problems that don’t have easy solutions.    [05:01] Consulting was a new sector and the apprenticeship model shaped Nina’s experience and training.    [06:50] Nina learned to be resilient as she developed more understanding about her strengths.   [07:53] After years advising companies, Nina really wants to run a business with scale.   [08:35] Nina explores a wide range of opportunities as she chooses to transition to an operating role.   [10:01] It was initially hard for Nina to transition to a gritty business fixing plumbing and appliances.   [11:20] Nina accompanies the engineers and learns how to diagnose her own washing machine.   [11:42] The strategy work that led to building a tech-led business with a customer acquisition advantage.    [12:30] Transitioning to Hive was a steep learning curve, finding ways to make decisions quickly.   [13:22] By focusing on the functions that matter most, Nina can meet customers’ needs—even with limited resources.   [15:06] Nina joins the John Lewis Partnership in Feb 2020—very new in her role as the pandemic starts.   [15:59] Nina’s context when the business and its customers are going through significant changes.   [17:08] Difficult strategy work is involved when changing the modes of selling, delivery, and customer interaction all at once.   [17:40] Nina was challenged and inspired, experiencing the essence of JLP’s DNA. [19:01] JLP's employees own the business, so it's personal and change initiatives require care.   [19:30] “Love” and “trust” are words frequently associated with John Lewis and Waitrose brands.   [21:04] Employee co-ownership has three important dimensions: knowledge, power, and profit.    [21:34] Partners’ right to transparency has a powerful  effect on the organization in many ways.   [24:13] Founded in 1864, the Partnership has a surprising purpose that encompasses partners’ happiness.   [25:08] The purpose was recently expanded to include customers and communities with 12,000 partners actively contributing to the internal democratic process.   [26:26] Social mobility was very important to the Founder, John Stephen Lewis.   [27:06] How talent mobility works at JLP enabling partners to develop breadth in their careers.   [27:36] Considering the challenges facing the retail sector globally and exploring greater diversification for a well-trusted brand.    [28:42] Diversification to ensure continued quality earnings leads to exploring the JLP’s large asset base while the UK is experiencing housing shortages.   [30:45] JLP’s two existing successful retail businesses must be sustained while creating options for the future.   [31:31] The development of a cohesive employee ownership culture during and post pandemic.    [32:20] JLP’s general approach to workplace flexibility.   [33:36] JLP has no return to the office mandate, respecting teams’ different needs and letting them figure out what works.   [34:08] Nina observes experimentation and tensions during this transition as people change their lifestyles and work habits.   [36:05] Nina wonders if their least experienced employees can learn well in hybrid configurations.   [38:20] John Lewis’ purpose must be considered when developing strategies and making decisions.    [39:07] John Lewis spent $56 million pounds on UK farmers in the last year as a purpose-driven decision.   [40:03] The housing business being developed is also purpose driven, creating community for residents.   [40:30] Other initiatives also reflect that the driving force is not simply to maximize profit.   [40:59] Customers don’t just want to buy products from businesses, they want to know what a company stands for.   [42:00] With a distinctive standpoint, diversity at John Lewis sends a signal about what is possible.   [42:54] ‘It’s Not Okay’ partner-created film highlights the conversation about greater diversity and inclusion.    [43:45] Nina feels strongly about inclusion, growing up in the UK during the ‘70’s and experiencing ‘otherness’.   [45:06] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Transparency—the sharing of information and access to senior leaders—is very powerful, using an internal democracy to improve what you choose to do and how you do it.     RESOURCES   Nina Bhatia on LinkedIn The John Lewis Partnership  It’s Not Okay     QUOTES (edited)   “We're not just sharing the proceeds, we're actually sharing knowledge and information about the business and the ability to influence it.”   “There's a balance between happier people, happier business, and happier world. We've got to hold all of those in balance in making decisions.”   “I feel very strongly that we're able to do these things because we've put purpose at the center of what we're doing. And then, in terms of decisions we're able to make, we're not driven simply to make maximum profit.”   “Customers don't just want to buy products from businesses. They want to know what you stand for. And I think what we stand for is very motivating for customers.”   “When we deploy our internal democracy well, we can absolutely improve the quality of what we choose to do and how we choose to do it.”    

Alicia Serrani is a rising Millennial leader and serial entrepreneur. Alicia started at RBS and Morgan Stanley and got a law degree while launching several new ventures—spanning art, politics, artificial intelligence, and fashion. Alicia explains why her first boss had such an impact on her approach to leadership and business, why she deliberately chose the entrepreneurial route as a woman, and how working remotely supercharged her ability to innovate. She shares how she guides and mentors her employees while also trying to remedy some of Gen Z’s detrimental pandemic experiences.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:22] Alicia goes for political science as a means to enact practical philosophy.   [02:52] Being in NYC allowed Alicia to explore a wide range of early internship experiences.   [04:01] Fashion is Alicia’s family business.   [04:38] Banking was a fluke development at the start of Alicia’s career.   [06:10] Alicia discovers her banking colleagues lead rich personal lives.   [08:20] A hit and run causes brain trauma and it takes the first six weeks at Alicia’s new job to recover.   [09:23] Physically incapacitated, Alicia pioneers a remote finance career in 2014 doing data remediation.   [11:33] The contrasting office environments of RBS and Morgan Stanley.   [12:10] Alicia learns about good and bad bosses from her first boss.   [13:44] Contemplating the next career move—potentially venture capital.   [14:30] Alicia moves into a startup role after meeting her founding partner at a party.   [15:10] What New Hive is and how digital art, blockchain, and NFTs evolved.   [17:11] Alicia and Zach develop “survivable disagreement” to collaborate with parties that are at odds.   [20:01] Law school becomes Alicia’s pathway to enhance her business credibility.   [22:24] In the midst of her law degree, Alicia and Zach launch a second startup, Guardians.ai, and why the model wasn’t sustainable.   [23:17] They start tracking misinformation and narrative influence regarding voter fraud in 2016.   [24:41] The strange dynamics of a misinformation operation, and uncovering it.   [27:27] Third Web – Alicia and her business partner’s brain trust.   [28:03] Alicia’s philosophy on work—using a graduating lawyer as an example.   [29:34] Some of Alicia’s classmates from law school are already taking less traditional routes.   [31:08] Alicia shares her plan for her law degree.   [31:55] How Alicia thinks technology will elevate the importance of industry level expertise.   [33:09] Alicia discusses entrepreneurship as a way to embody your values and stimulate change.   [34:36] In entrepreneurial overdrive during the pandemic, Alicia speaks of her approach for developing new projects and ventures.   [36:50] How hard fashion businesses are which “hoodwinked” Alicia into actively running T.W.I.N..   [38:56] A boss of many Gen Z’s, Alicia explains her approach to onboarding after the pandemic.   [40:10] Isolation during the pandemic impacted aspects of Gen Z’s social comfort and professionalism.   [42:06] How Alicia sets clear expectations, identifies goals, and fosters ideas.   [43:42] Mentoring is a mutual investment for Alicia and extends beyond her companies.   [45:24] Diversity and inclusion requires keeping yourself in check.   [46:10] Alicia counsels young employees to recognize the difference between working in a small company and expectations in a large corporate environment.   [48:04] Building diverse and inclusive organizations has been a recurring conversation for Alicia.   [48:55] How organizational structures can evolve to support effective decision-making, engagement, and creativity.   [50:00] Alicia wants to balance and benefit from both physical presence and remote work.   [51:00] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: If you’re on the entrepreneurial path, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. Sketch it out, try it out, don’t spend a lot of money doing it. Don’t get in your own way. Be intentional about getting it started and sharing it with people.   [52:23] Alicia shares how she has been able to fund and grow T.W.I.N..     RESOURCES   Alicia Serrani on LinkedIn Alicia on Instagram Alicia and her twin sister’s shop T.W.I.N. IWR     QUOTES (edited)   “And when they offered me the amount of money they offered me, I responded with ‘you know, I don't know what I'm doing, right!?’ And they were like ‘Yeah, nobody does!’.”   “And I realized at that point you don't have to be your job.”   “A shaved head at an investment bank at 22 was a look.”   “Having someone who's totally different like a middle-aged man with kids just sit with me and teach me and talk to me like I’m an equal was so pivotal for me.”   “That's when I learned that I didn't want to be the smart person all the time. When you're working at as a consultant you have to be the smart person every single time. When you are the product the wear and tear is very intense.”   “I think the traditional idea that you are going to grow up, go to university, go to law school, become a lawyer, be a lawyer, and become a partner at a firm is just not the reality anymore. It's not my reality.”   “I think I saw that the way forward for myself as a woman, as someone who values collaboration, as someone who values partnership, as someone who values diversity and inclusion, that running your own business is the only way to create that.”   “The pandemic allowed all of my instincts around entrepreneurship and distributed work to absolutely go crazy, because it meant that I could be in one place and be intellectually or professionally everywhere.”   “I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about being young, but if there's a lack of professionalism and performance, if I see somebody not doing something that's of a professional ethic or standard, I will say, for the record ‘If you did that somewhere else where there was more hierarchy and oversight, it would be questionable.’”

Elias Baltassis is a Partner and Senior Director at the Boston Consulting Group. He has deep expertise in AI- and data-enabled strategy, data operating models, data governance, responsible artificial intelligence and ethics, and new data-driven business development. Elias is passionate about data and analytics and the transformative impact of artificial Intelligence on business and society. He shares his insights about generative AI and LLMs, their potential effect on business, productivity, and relationships, including our necessary attention to ethics and far-reaching implications of AI in the workplace and on the Future of Work.     KEY TAKEAWAYS   [03:42] Elias starts trading bonds after studying math, econometrics, and computer science.   [04:17] From notation calculators to basic spreadsheets to nascent AI, Elias sees patterns in tool evolution.   [05:17] Elias moves to consulting, always involved in quantitative fields.   [06:20] The significant AI break throughs since 2016-17.   [07:12[ Why self-supervised learning was one critical advance.   [07:50] New architectures--enabling much larger models—were a second step, leading to generative artificial (GenAI) models.   [08:55] What the “language” of Large Language Models (LLMs) covers.   [10:00] After training ChatGPT by absorbing the internet, “hallucinations” need to be eliminated.   [11:06] “Red teaming” to eliminate hallucinations.   [12:11] The next refinement step is “reinforcement learning from human feedback”.   [13:00] The issue of “jail-breaking” models to circumvent “blocked” answers.   [14:32] Data embedding or fine-tuning: using private data to train GPT.   [16:02] Why did ChatGPT stop data accretion in 2021?   [16:30] The considerable cost of topology, training, and refining AI models.   [17:43] User input in ChatGPT serves to refine the model more so than to teach it.   [19:37] The Future of Jobs: Will generative AI lead to mass job losses? If so, when?   [21:37] Why the impact of GenAI will be delayed in some areas.   [23:00] GenAI is impacting certain areas faster—such as coding and customer service—generally enabling significant productivity gains.   [24:35] Career progression must adjust as corporate pyramids’ bases shrink.   [26:00] Knowledge management will change appreciably, with new jobs created and new tools and processes invented.   [29:14] Different professions and companies try to codify their “secret sauce”—what can GenAI take care of?   [30:30] What will remain? How people show empathy, interact, and give emotional support.   [32:05] Many existing articles about GenAI contain factual inaccuracies.   [33:19] Training to understand applied technologies is becoming much more important.   [34:40] In a time of exponential curves, doom predictions are imprudent and never verified.   [35:18] What Elias is most excited about—especially leveling up the playing field.   [36:30] Likely effects: huge productivity improvements depending on the country’s social contract and a reduction in work time.   [37:40] Elias explains why timelines relating to GenAI are difficult to circumscribe and more than five years is now considered “long-term”.   [38:50] How Elias anticipates the dynamics of change over time due to GenAI.   [39:39] Why the “truth function” matters.   [40:26] AI may be capable of a kind of informed creativity, as humans do.   [40:44] The beneficial mix of technology, regulation, and internal company rules and the emerging need for a Chief AI Ethics Officer role.   [44:01] Misinformation is a major concern for Elias.   [45:22] The possible negative impact of generative AI on kids.   [47:02] We need a definition of what it means to be “human” and “intelligent”—remembering the movie “Her”.   [48:06] Comments on the open letter written by Musk, Wozniak, Harari, and others.   [49:47] What Geoff Hinton has achieved and what he has to say about GenAI.   [51:33] Fellow Turing Award winner Yann LeCun has a very different opinion about the potential impact of GenAI.   [52:25] Discussion on GenAI is something that will change at a fast pace: Elias will be back!   [54:04] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Leaders must drive the change—identifying what impact gen AI will have at their company and articulating the vision of what the changes will look like--for change processes, teams, and more. Leaders must make it real with a roadmap and commitment to new behaviors, new skills and making them stick.   [55:08] As at other critical juncture points when so much is changing, many companies will need to rethink what they are doing and how they are doing it.     RESOURCES   Elias Baltassis on LinkedIn Boston Consulting Group’s website Boston Consulting Group newsletters including the one specifically on AI Geoffrey Hinton Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter “HER” the movie     QUOTES (edited)   “People are often confused by the word language. They think only speech or text, but actually everything is language—code is language, music is language under certain constraints, an image is language.”   “If you’re talking about scientific questions, under the assumption that science is “true”, it’s very easy to say “Yes, this is true”. But when you arrive at political or, tomorrow, ethical questions, who determines what is true?   “What will remain, especially for client-facing professions, at the highest intellectual level or a lower intellectual level, will be how you interact with your client, with your customer. How do you show empathy and real interest, and how do you offer him or her emotional support?   “We live in an era of exponential curves. Everything evolves so rapidly that it's very difficult to predict when, how, and what the time horizons are. I’ve read some things about what AI will do in the next five years that I’m ready to bet will not happen.”   “If you ask an AI something about Galileo you can check in books if the answer is correct. But if you try to do prospective science, if you try to say “Build me a molecule that has these characteristics” and it comes out with a molecule, you will need to test if this is a real molecule.”   “Now, it’s another of those occasions. So many companies will need to rethink “What are we really doing? How are we doing it?”