#13. Curiosity - Tom Goodwin
“The only way we learn is by finding the boundaries”
Futurist Tom Goodwin joins the podcast to discuss a wide range of topics, including the quality of authenticity. How is it to simply be you at all times? What does that do? And in being in those questions, the quality of curiosity emerges - a powerful learning frame, simply to be curious about the people, places and things all around us. Tom and Darius also share stories of learning and growing in work, being with people and entrepreneurship, as well as suggestions for a vision of the future.
Listen to full episode :
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Tom Goodwin is a world-renowned trends and transformation expert, and the founder of All We Have Is Now (AWHIN, Inc), an innovation consultancy. He also authored the business book Digital Darwinism, the second edition of which is published spring 2022. You can find him hosting The Edge on Euronews, at his website tomgoodwin.co, and on LinkedIn @TomGoodwin.
The quality of Curiosity is one of the foundational pieces of the Radical Employability methodology, pioneered by Darius Norell at People and Their Brilliance. You can find out more about Radical Employability here.
Interested in the idea of authenticity as Tom describes it? We have a blog post on our website about responsibility, accountability and ownership - being real with yourself and with others, and what that creates in the world. You can read that post here.
You can also listen to our podcast with Gamal Turawa, who speaks beautifully about recognising yourself and others, and owning your part in your own life. See what connections emerge for you.
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Intro
Darius Norell: Hey everyone! It's Darius here, host of What's Your Work? Today's episode I'm talking to Tom Goodwin. Different kind of conversation I think from the normal ones. In a way, it's a sort of paradox; we were talking about deeper topics, bigger topics that I hope you'll find fascinating, interesting, stimulating, thought provoking. And yet at the same time, my feeling was not some of the depth that we often find or I find we get to in some of the conversations. It didn't feel like we touched that sort of heartfelt side. So that's a little bit more reflection on the conversation. I'm often also thinking about, hey, what's the real lesson here? What's the kind of message and I mean, the biggest thing is maybe that the podcast happened at all. And you'll hear me start talking about just the risk that Tom took and doing this podcast where it new, low, relatively low number of listeners, someone who's got massive following. And yeah, I felt drawn to committed to doing what he thought was important, which was having real conversations, irrespective of reach, commercial value, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think that says a lot about him, and maybe, you know, real reflection point for us all about how we use whatever level of power, talent, ability we have. To what extent do we really follow what's important to us? Or are we governed by what looks good, or what we should be doing or whatever else? So with that, I will leave you to listen to Tom and I in conversation. Thank you.
Conversation
Darius Norell: Okay, welcome to this episode of What's Your Work? And I'm delighted to say I'm joined by Tom Goodwin. Thank you, Tom for being here and giving up your time today to be with us.
Tom Goodwin: I'm looking forward to it.
Darius: And I'm going to start by saying I'm really excited and pleased to have Tom with us. And it's rare that, you know, people really walk their talk, I think, and I'm gonna hold that even though I don't know Tom, just from what I've seen, in my experience setting this up: he's someone who does that, and specifically kind of was interested in having conversations that are not necessarily going to have the biggest reach or the biggest commercial value, but had a depth and quality to them. And with someone who's got a large following, I don't know what didn't check your Twitter following my nose, it was 700,000 followers on LinkedIn, and and and... that's significant risk. Look, I really appreciate you taking a chance on us as it were. And joining us today. So a big welcome. Tom's a futurist, a speaker. And I'd love you to add to that Tom, how would you describe yourself these days?
Tom: Whenever I describe myself it always sounds quite vague and pretentious, but I try to understand how technology is changing the world and what that means for people and business. And I have a massive sort of focus on now. You know, so, Futurism is quite a sort of helpful handle to have because it means people can put you in a bucket, but I'd rather focus on sort of now isn't almost, you know, what's, what's happening right now? What can people do with technology right now? What are the things that consumers are worried about? Because futurism always lends itself to, you know, sort of dystopian talks about, you know, skyscrapers that go into the solar system and small robots that crawl around your veins. And actually, I just quite like to be able to, you know, send a payment to somebody and to go through quite quickly, you know, it's more sort of pragmatic.
Darius: Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that's drawn me to you, as someone that I do follow is just that we are my experience of you, someone who's willing to think big see big, but always grounded in the now in the pragmatic in Turkey, what actual difference does this make and I loved the post you've had, you know, really challenging kind of all these some of these kind of big, crazy ideas about where technology's going and like, look, we can only set up a Zoom meeting with everyone are hoping on time and can't even hear each other. What are we talking about sort of version 3,4,5, 10, where we can't even get that bit right. And it's, I'd say, it's true, like, that's my experience. That's what I see around us, we can get carried away by the technology. And so I love that almost kind of paradox of what is the now given the technology that we do have available?
Tom: I get quite a lot of people saying, you know, Tom, all you do is you say what everyone's thinking. And you say quite obvious stuff. And that's completely true. And I'm continually continually surprised by how few people there are, that seem quite happy to stick up their hand and say, Hold on a minute. Because I don't think I've got real depth in any area. It's not that I'm sort of drawing upon incredible advanced knowledge about technology or deep psychological understanding, I just go to a shopping mall, and I look at how people behave. And I talk to people about what's bothering them. And I think about an education, I think about banking, I think about retail and humans are amazing. And they're both illogical and logical at the same time. And it seems like all of the answers are there. And as long as we look at people and listen to people and try to empathize, everything becomes quite simple, I think, in a way.
Darius: So I'd love to talk more about that. Because you're all sometimes courageous. Sometimes you write something like, oh, my gosh, that's, that's, like, I don't always agree with what you're writing, right? But it's kind of, there's a, there's a, there's a quality to your voice that I'm interested in, I'd love to explore more how you found it, how you have where your confidence comes from with it. Can you share a little bit about about that?
Tom: Yeah, this definitely isn't advice. By the way, sometimes people like me are given a microphone. And we've all been very lucky. And there's a kind of a subtext behind their journey that somehow presupposes that other people do the same thing. You know, they too, will get to the same path. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's not I don't know. But yeah, so before I kind of talk about my journey, I just want to make it clear that this is not a sort of advertisement for this kind of behavior. It's just the only life I've lived. I I'm not sure if it's boldness, I mean, in a way we live in such a sheltered world, you know, where our terrible days are probably the best days, anyone 300 years ago, would have had, like a bad day at work for us normally means, you know, someone said something nasty about us on the internet, you know, we haven't sort of lost an arm or a leg in a mine, or sort of fallen into machinery in a sort of Victorian workhouse or something. So I don't really think I'm brave. Everything I do just comes from me being me. Really, it's asking questions. I like that you say that you don't agree with everything I say. Because quite often, I'm just throwing out quite loose ideas, ideas that are quite sort of fragile, and precious ideas that maybe I think are a little bit wrong, but I'm just trying to sort of test the water. Sometimes people think that sort of contrarian ism. And this is one of the things I find most offensive actually, if anyone really wanted to sort of rile me up, you know, they wouldn't sort of mock my hair or talk about my family, they would just say, Oh, you're just being a contrarian. Because I think intentions really matter. And the intention behind everything I've ever posted with a tiny number of examples when the world is very emotional, has always been to try and learn. You know, we have this weird thing on social media where people think that arguments get scored by likes and retweets, and, you know, every like, Is someone going Yeah, I agree with you. And therefore, people become quite combative, and quite competitive. And almost everything I do is about putting out ideas into the world so that people who know a lot more than me can then comment, you know, so if I say, I don't understand what the excitement behind web three is, it just seems like it's driven by the commercial interests of companies with overinflated share prices. That's obviously quite punchy. But my hope is not that people say, you know, this is amazing, Tom, what an incredible insight, it's that someone who has just left metta says, actually, you know, there's real technology behind this, you should be aware of this use case, you know, check out this case study from Israel. And then we all learn. So that's my kind of goal. And think, I know, it's not difficult to be yourself really, again, it might seem quite hard, but the only other the only other thing we can do is to be somebody else, and to constantly be thinking about the impression we're giving and constantly been trying to sort of feel the frame of somebody else and constantly tried to project oneself in a way. And maybe some people do that. But that sounds completely exhausting. To me, that sounds like you'd have to be really clever. You'd always have to be thinking, it's much easier just to be quite comfortable in who you are, and be quite consistent through a personality. We have this sort of era at the moment of the personal brand. And I loathe everything about it. I loathe the sort of self promotion. I loathe this idea that we may have editorial calendars, or we may have sort of brand values. We are all people we all have personalities. We all have reputations. Let's just be the person that we are and see what happened.
Darius: Hmm. And that you wouldn't know, but part of the work we do is a whole bunch of what we call radical employability training. And working with unemployed people is kind of a strand of that. And that's really at the core, because a lot of them are feeling pressure to show up differently from who they are. And they might say - and it's a little bit as you positioned it of well, maybe this works for me, I'm not saying it works for everyone. And when people are in a state of hey, I don't have a job, I've got rejected 100 times, there's a there's a sort of real temptation to let go of, what actually we would say is deep inside them what actually they got to offer and go "Oh, I'll pretend to be this". The paradox as soon as they do that they don't come up believable or compelling, like, well, you know, so it's kind of a weird thing that people will feel a lot of pressure to present themselves different from how they are. I don't think it works anyway, even even at a very junior level, let alone the kind of levels that you are. So that really shines with. Yeah, certainly the approach that we've got.
Tom: It's certainly a lot harder, when you're younger, it's a lot harder in the early stages of your career, it's a lot lot harder if your career is kind of going in the wrong direction. So I have massive amounts of perhaps not sympathy. But you know, one needs to be highly aware of the fact that you know, if you are coming back from a difficult spell, if there are lots of hard things in your life, you're going to be full of a sense of confusion. I would imagine a lot of the traits that I show come from having very supportive parents, not parents who put pressure on me, but parents who made me believe that my voice was worth listening to that I had opinions, which might be interesting, you know, that I was, quote, unquote, a sort of decent person. And therefore it's very easy to be yourself when you've been sort of crafted in a way where you don't have doubt about who yourself is. Yeah, I imagine if you're coming back from a traumatic experience, or anyone that's young in the office, you know, no one teaches us how to behave in the office. Really. I remember the first time I had to sort of office job and I had to write a work email. And, you know, this is sort of 2000 or something I was asked like, what does a work email look like? I mean, I've seen letters, I've seen sort of letters written to Blue Peter, I've written a sort of thank you card to my granny. But I don't know what to work, you know, do I go this other way? You know, do I sort of do a comma after this? And I think we kind of forget, actually, that no one tells us how to do this stuff. It's a slightly sort of side topic. And the one of the things that horrifies me about working from home is that if you're young, you don't get to experience all of the sort of passive learning that we got from an office, everything from the global CEO comes into the office, how does one greet them? And you look at how other people are doing that, all the way through to actually I'm not too sure if this email is right, let me just get someone to look at it quite quickly. You know, these are very, very hard things to do. In a more sort of formal working from home environment, I think.
Darius: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Right. And I was cringing the other day, because I was remembering one of my first work encounters back in the day, which was later in the 90s. And it was, it was a really bad setup. Basically, it was young graduates sent out to kind of turn around the small business in a different country. And the people who sent me there, and oh, can you write a report on like, two weeks and of what you've seen, and there was a, there was a local manager in place, I wrote this report thinking, somehow I'd hidden that, you know, on the computer drive, sent it off, but of course, I hadn't any manager read it like two weeks into my new, I was there for six months. So this was like two weeks in. And it was just cringy. Like I thought, "Oh I think I've worked out how to use the computer" and clearly didn't have anyone to turn to.
Tom: It's worth saying, I think somehow we think of a good day as being a day when nothing goes wrong. You know, we think a good way for us to find our own voice and realize who we are, is to always act in a way where we never get fired, to always act in a way where we never offend anyone. And the beautiful thing about the working world is it's only a job. It's perfectly acceptable, you know, like you Darius to write a report, which ends up causing a massive problem for you. Because you will learn from that process. And the only way we ever get to progress in any form of life, whether it's science or design or engineering or medicine is by finding the boundaries by testing them. And by crossing over those boundaries. And I think somewhere we've entered an environment where we still think if you get fired, that's incredibly embarrassing. If you make someone upset in a meeting that's career ending, that any form of mishap any form of bad career choice, any form of learning about the core elements of ourselves by being in very difficult situations. I think somehow we think that's a terrible thing. The reality is we're all very lucky to live at this moment in time and a very Bad day, if you explained it to most people in the world, we've never seen that bad. And I think, you know, we need not not to be without caution. But we need to be a little bit less sensitive, I think at times.
Darius: What's coming across really strongly talking to you, Tom is just your, I guess just a frame that you look at the world through this, this really strong learning frame, that's, you know, I guess the technical term from the scientific position would be growth mindset of like, that seems like that's your primary way of encountering the world is, oh, well, I learned I mean, once gets there, I'm gonna learn something. And even, that's why I'm writing all this stuff is like the purpose is to learn. And one of the beauties of that is it's such a powerful, strong place to come from, right, because it's not right or wrong. It's like, "Great, I'm gonna, I'm here to learn something." And I think a lot of people when they're when they're, you know, just connecting back to finding voice, like, if I can get caught in this is, I do a lot of thinking, reflection, and like, Okay, I want to say something that I've that's really considered and that I feel in some ways, right? Rather than going like, this is how far I've got want to share this. And what's you know, tell me more, what have I missed? What's what he's, you know, so just that frame is so helpful to be strong in and coming back to people exactly what you said, this, this, worry about making a mistake, you know, you will just get smaller and smaller. And then and then the paradox is you become a low performer, but you know, you feel safe. I remember I had a friend who joined the Civil Service here in the UK, and she joined late. And, as in a kind of, you know, I think she's maybe five years, so somebody who joined early, you know, the left university, whatever she joined, five years later, the people were there, we're gonna basically be like, this is a job for life, I never want to be my one goal is never to make a decision, which I'm gonna get fired or be fired from. But that's like, that's how I stay here. And she came in going well, I'm here to take responsibility, make decisions. Within a couple of years, she'd got promoted so far, she was just like, this huge responsibility, because she was willing to make decisions and ultimately willing to be fired, if like, if this isn't right, or not one you want and fine. And that led to her being considered really high performer, but she was very able, but that willingness to take a risk, make a mistake, fail quotes fail, was what led to her being promoted.
Tom: I, I have to be very careful, again, to know how lucky I am and how privileged I am. And it's very easy to sound quite out of touch by saying, you know, what have we really got to worry about. But I do think fears are so much more dominant in our heads. It's a famous quote, obviously, than they are really in the realities of our life. And quite often things which look like horrendously unfortunate situations, they normally end up being situations that we learn huge amounts from. I, you know, it was interesting what you said about me always learning because none of the things that we're discussing now are things which I've sort of proactively decided to do, like, at no point was there a kind of a strategy to become someone that some people listen to, at no point did, I sort of sit down and think I need to work on my learning approach, or I need to develop fearlessness. I don't, I'm just sort of a human really, and this is what I do when I wake up and I read stuff. And I like talking to people, I like listening to people like saying the words I need to say, that allow me to listen to people in the most interesting way. And I worry about the people sort of losing the skills actually, I worry a bit in the area of sort of algorithmic news feeds that were much more keen to reinforce existing viewpoints, were much more keen to have a sort of comfortable life, which is tidy. And I keep on hearing all these reports about people who don't want to go back to the office because, you know, they hated commuting and they hated small talk. And it was really sort of shitty being at a Christmas party, because you'd have to talk to people from accounts, you know, there's always the smelly guy from it. And I It makes me so angry, actually, like, I'm not a particularly sociable person. I'm quite introverted. You know, I've not loved small talk. But I do quite like having a chance to be next to a sort of water cooler. And so, you know, what did you do at the weekend? And if, if you give everyone a bit of a chance to be interesting, you know, most people will take it. You know, if you show that you're interested in people, most people will offer you more information than they would in more normal circumstances. And I think it's quite again, I'm not the sort of world's most cheerful person. I'm not the I'm not the sort of motivational speaker by any imagination, but I think if you go around most days thinking, you know, Let's try and make the most let's talk to the Uber driver, you know, let's find out what their passions are, let's find out why they came to this country, you know, let's find out what they love about their job. It's always really interesting, it's way more interesting than most interesting conversations we have. You know, just think think of every little opportunity there is to learn a little bit from something.
Darius: First, yeah, so again, the quality of curiousness, that you have curiosity, I should say that you have, you know, sounds like for any situation, you're in one of the things, this, this is really an unthought through thought, so I'm going to share it because it was struck me I was thinking that the contact with people that we have, is actually quite useful in terms of some of our depth to our own devices, where our worlds do get a bit more small and a bit more comfortable that we get them all fixed in our ways, and actually knocking those edges off a little bit, even if it's a bit uncomfortable, because I've got to then speak to people that I wouldn't normally maybe in kind of, actually, I can see a real benefit to that I'm seeing some of the effects of even with people I'm working with, well, you've been by yourself too long, probably then thinking the same thing about me that actually you need to, you need to just have some more social contact wanted or not, to remember what it's like to be able to do that, and, and ameliorate some tendencies that we might have that actually are not that helpful, when we're working together. So that was a thought and again, that, you know, maybe speaking from a position of privilege, or whatever it might be, but it's, yeah, there's something I was thinking, you know, this is good for people actually, to be around other people, at least a bit, maybe not all the time. But
Tom: I mean, the discomfort is life. Again, you know, this isn't my area of expertise. But I feel like every time we're in a slightly tricky situation, you know, it's a bit like going to the gym a tiny bit, you know, it's a little bit of a muscle tear, it's a little bit of a workout. And I think I don't want to make this whole thing about the pandemic. But I think the pandemic has made people almost proud to be intellectually lazy, I think the pandemic has made people are most proud to be socially lazy. And I think in a way, you know, the muscles that we use, when we are sociable, have sort of atrophied a little bit. And, you know, everything from you know, I'm a sort of slightly left wing person. And every time I play golf in Miami, I'm always put in a cart with someone who invariably is quite a big Trump supporter. And I always have really interesting conversations, and I learned a lot. And I realized that I'm wrong about things, I realized that one has to be careful about how you express your opinions to people and people are quite quick to judge you. And these are all wonderful, wonderful, little micro tears are social muscles, where you realize, you know how to adjust your behavior, while still being, you know, key sort of core to who you are. These are all wonderfully important things for us to continue to develop. And somehow we're kind of celebrating, you know, the fact that we can all tidy ourselves into little social groups. I mean, one of the most important things I ever do is talk to people who've got wildly different careers. Actually, I think, part of the reason why I wanted to go on different podcasts is I'm aware that most of my life, I am operating in the world of marketing and advertising. And I'd love to go on an architecture podcast and you know, talk about the design process and have architects sort of test me on that and me to learn from them. It's wonderful to go to a kind of party and speak to somebody who's a psychologist, it's amazing to get in touch with an economist and see what they think the trends are in the world rather than advertising people. And it's that with that I think we're particularly lucky to have access to at this moment, like the Internet has connected every person on the planet nearly. And to use it only to listen to people that the closest to you. Seems like completely the wrong way to go about it to me.
Darius: So I'm curious about this. What's your experience? Because I, you know, you post, you get a bunch of reaction, which, as a layperson seems like "Hey, Tom, that's the greatest thing ever. Absolutely." Or, "No, you're" there's kind of people who I sort of missed missed the point completely. I'm not, I don't want to be told at this point. I can't I can't be bothered to try and explain what I think. So I'm saying here are people that are kind of just against, you know, against what you're saying, like, how do you how do you find that sort of experience? Or is that accurate, even as a-?
Tom: That is accurate. I mean, first and foremost, I don't take it too seriously, unless I genuinely have offended somebody in a way which is important to resolve. I never seek to offend people, but sometimes you accidentally accidentally do quite often is people taking offense when there's actually no offense there. And I tend to not respond that well to that because we can all take offense from anything if we fail. So choose. There's a lot to be post saying really nice supportive things. And I don't like that that much. Actually, I don't really like people agreeing with me and saying I'm great, because one is not very helpful. And two, it's not necessarily true. I quite like the people who Well, the best possible reply is people that say, No, you're wrong, you should be aware of this. Oh, that's interesting. Have you also seen what this person's written? I think one of the great benefits of LinkedIn is that people tend to behave quite nicely there because their career profile is attached to it. And therefore, it is quite a good environment for debate. And I law I learn, you know, I've sort of learned to craft posts in a way where they are more likely to sort of quote unquote, perform. And that's not driven by this egomaniac need to reach as many people it's just that the more people that see something, the more likely it is that people who know a lot more will sort of respond to it. And I think in a way, that's one of the tricks to social media really, is to sort of have a think about why you're there, you know, you there, because your career will depend on exposure, are you there, because you've got a sort of a sort of bone or a chip on your shoulder you there to learn you there because someone told you to be there. And this doesn't have to be written out in front of you on your computer as a sort of brand strategy. But I think it's quite useful to have an instinctive sense of what you're doing. And he's what you're doing helpful. You know, especially on Twitter, I tend to sort of misbehave quite a lot, because it's a more sort of aggravating platform. And these days, I tried to think, you know, is what I'm posting helpful, you know, my adding to a debate and like, sort of giving someone praise that needs praise, or am I just sort of, you know, on the toilet and bored.
Darius: You talked about doubts earlier, and I think you said, "Well, I don't I don't, it doesn't really come up" is that - do you have moments of doubt in? Or is it no, that's just not part of your makeup as it were so much?
Tom: I'm not sure why, but I don't. And it sounds enormously arrogant to say that. But I don't I mean, I'm not entering on conversations with incredibly deep expert knowledge. I'm genuinely talking about things which come from observation. You know, what I do is more akin to sort of bad stand up comedy. And I don't think sort of comedians have impostor syndrome necessarily about the quality of their observations they may have them about there, they may have a doubt about the quality of their performance, or whether their delivery is very good. But I think I'm just saying things which are quite obvious. And I am quite often quite gentle with how tightly I'm holding opinions as well. And I'm looking to be corrected. So if I am saying, you know, I'm not sure about blockchain, it kind of seems like a very complicated way to solve things which are better solved another way. I'm not really putting out an incredibly strong opinion with technical information behind it, where someone can sort of undermine me completely or make me look like an idiot. I'm just sort of gently floating an idea. So maybe that the spirit in which I don't feel this sense of doubt. I also think that I don't know the world's not full of people who are incredibly impressive with their observations that are published, I think loads and loads and loads of people have these conversations in private. Anytime I get together with most of my friends, I'm always incredibly intimidated by the depth of understanding that you have about topics. But when you're in the domain of keynote, speaking, or even writing, somehow, I think everyone has dumbed themselves down so much, that I never feel any sense of doubt. If you read any piece today about the trends for retail for 2023. They will either be clearly wrong, or just sort of fairly facile and in that context, I'm quite happy to insert my views. The same for TV, you know, people for years, they'll be saying, oh, you know, one day we're gonna get TV via the internet. Like you know, no shit. So I think it's that context in which I'm quite happy to sort of have my views
Darius: Can I give an example of one that I'm- you know, it seemed again, it seems very self evident, but it's my that's maybe this is my stuff, right? More than your stuff. Let me work it out with you. So you wrote about entrepreneurs, and the amount of time, energy, money that's going into, you didn't use the word pointless, but like ridiculous, like, hey, like, I'm gonna be the fourth person that's going to do this kind of crazy niche thing that the world doesn't really need. But everyone's getting super excited about valuations X, and a one of the legs that just seems so self evidently accurate, right of like, what is all you know, what all these talented people doing? What's all this money doing funding stuff that doesn't seem to be really helping us? Certainly, given the challenges we're facing. As a society and civilization. At the same time, there's quite a powerful critique, and there are many people's lives who are who are doing stuff that's maybe the same misguided, or that's the right word, but kind of at least questioning. What Yeah, how does that land for you?
Tom: That's a very good question. Yeah, that's a very good example, actually, of one where I can't sort of over think the audience, I can't really ever get to grips with the idea that the internet and social media is real, you know, always seems to me to be a bit like a sort of a virtual gaming platform where you type in letters, and then a score comes back. And, you know, there are apparently people that write replies, and apparently, they're humans, but you always think maybe it's an algorithm or something. So I can't really, again, I'm not smart enough to think about my audience and think about how they're going to reply. I occasionally write things which are pointed in a way which are perhaps a little bit unfair. But a lot of my writing is rooted in this incredible frustration. You know, I'm not saying these people are stupid. I'm not saying they're doing things because they're bad people. I'm not saying they're spanking their grandparents inheritance up the wall. I'm just coming from a place which is we live at this amazing moment where we have incredible technology, and technologies that can be combined in marvelous, wonderful, magical ways. And then we also benefit from this funding environment where there's huge amounts of money around to go into any great businesses. And we're also faced facing enormous challenges. But also, and it sounds quite cheesy, you know, most of these challenges are opportunities, you know, one can either look at something like recycling and go, Oh, my God, you know, we're screwed. We've got resource depletion, or we can think you know, what wonderful opportunities are there to recycle items a little bit more. So we have these incredible opportunities around a very real. And after years and years and years of going to startup events, going to sort of exhibitions like Viva tech, going to South by Southwest and seeing all the startups that come out of different countries around the world. I just slowly get more and more angry by the degree to which it's quite self indulgent. I think entrepreneurialism has almost become a sort of lifestyle choice. You know, every time you sit in Soho House, it's full of people with laptops out are talking about a new direct to consumer brand for bottled water. And it kind of it just seems like we're missing a trick. So coming from both the negativity of being oh my god, what on earth are we doing, but mainly the positivity of Imagine what we could do? That's where a post like that comes from? And that was quite an unusual one, actually. Because I think most people seem to take it in the right way. Lots of people are very quick to assume I must be incredibly miserable and sort of curmudgeonly, I'm saying that people are shitty people. And I'm this arrogant person that thinks that I could do way better. And they're always quick to comment on "Well, what are you doing about it?" Or "well, you wouldn't know because you haven't set up a company." And all of those things are very true. But in that particular instance, for some magical reason, it seemed to land in a way that people took quite nicely.
Darius: I mean, it's, it reminds me I was speaking of an article I read 15 odd years ago. And it was about, I'm gonna get this a little bit wrong, but it was something like Africa's youngest self made billionaire, and what he was going to do next, and then this article, they were interviewing him, he said "I'm going to take on Coca Cola", because then my head went to "Oh, wow, what an amazing thing to do. Obviously, all these you know that people drink Coca Cola, because it's quite safe from in terms of drinking water and that kind of stuff. You're going to take it on", and my naive brain was come up with a healthier alternative. Anyway, the article went on, it's like, "oh, yes, because the Africans have a sweeter palate. So I'm going to come up with a sweeter version of Coca Cola, right and that's going to be my next big thing." I'm like, did you miss the memo? Like Well, you know, what an opinion a little bit a what an opportunity, and you're gonna use it for that? How is that the best use of what you must be an amazing, amazing qualities, abilities, resources. And that's that's what's called you. So yeah, I think it is deeply resonant, maybe many of us are kind of looking for the purpose of meaning and work. When we, you know, many of us are involved in work, which seems like, well, what's the point of this work? It's very often most of us disconnected from anything real in terms of all this is a benefit in our game, not to make doctors and nurses etc, etc. But many of us doing office work, it's like, what's the point of this work? Does it really help in some deep, meaningful, useful? Is it even useful? So maybe that's part of what what connected people from that side? And I'd love to ask you a personal question. Alright, got it got it go-
Tom: no carry on. I think there's a bit of a time delay, by the way, so it makes it quite hard, because I think you've stopped speaking and then and then you carry on even though you weren't. So don't think I'm just sort of pouncing on you whenever I can. I mean, I worry a bit in this search for sort of purpose and a sense of sort of worthiness, that one we're kind of cloaking a lot of people who have sort of normal jobs with this sort of veil of dismissiveness, you know, if you work for the local council, and your job is to process parking tickets, you know, that shouldn't mean that you sort of hang your head in shame every day, because you're not, you know, helping people move towards public transport. And similarly, I think every job doesn't need to sort of make you feel good, because you are directly and immediately having a massive impact on the world. You know, maybe that you're just making pairs of jeans that people really, really like. And, you know, maybe you treat your work as well. Maybe you're just creating a social platform to allow people to have really nice parties. Maybe you're creating software, which makes it easier to learn a bit more about each other, you know, they don't all have to be sort of crunchy granola sorts of organic sweater, you know, bits of sacrifice. But I do think having a vague sense of what am I trying to accomplish? You know, how can I feel a sense of progress that I've made. And in particular, you know, this is a very interesting moment, because after the pandemic, everyone's going to coming back to their jobs. And I think people having quite so deep existential crises almost about, you know, what is their job their to do, and, you know, what is kind of life all about, for some people for the last two years, a good day was one where they kind of survived almost, I don't mean that once massively. And I think companies are very quick to reward people with the sort of the physical, and photographable trappings of what a good office look like. So it's all about sort of pool tables, and free food and sort of thirsty, thirsty Thursdays and, you know, fun slides in the corner of meeting rooms and Facebook, I think people just want to be told they're doing a good job. I think people want to have a meeting at the end of the week, and someone says, "Oh, if you've done that, you know, great, that's really helped us". They just want a sense of making progress towards a fairly definable goal. And no wonder what would happen if a company is really focused on that, like your company is really focused on having a kind of accomplishment meetings where people could go through all the stuff they've done, if companies can be really clear about what they need people to do. Because most people sit in status meetings, and they have sort of 70 different line items. And you know, one of them will be to sort of order some new paper, to send out invitations to the, you know, company's Halloween party, you know, another one will be to organize a kind of internal training program, and no one really knows the ones that matters. No one really knows the ones that are the most important. I think giving people a really clear sense of the most important things and then measuring progress towards that, I think would be enormously helpful towards people's well being
Darius: Yeah, definitely echo that - the language we use around contribution, like, what's the contribution that you're making? Are you clear on that? Are you clear? Is the organization clear on the contribution they even want, which I think is what you're saying, and then just be able to celebrate that and, and that, to me is at the heart of a healthy work relationship, right? You're there to make a contribution. And so if that's clearly defined, and you can increase your contribution over time, then you become more valuable. You have some peace of mind. Oh, yes, I am. I'm here for the right reasons. And also you know when to leave because it's like, "Oh, I'm not making a contribution anymore. This looks like not the right place for a me shaped person. Let me find somewhere else where I can make a contribution." So I think it's a great example of how you cut through to the core of something that, again, for me is, you know, having done a lot of work on that areas is really clear. And yet we can get caught in all these bells and whistles. And as you say, lots of lots of accoutrement that, can we actually get the basis of the relationship? Right? What's the contribution you want to make? How can we help you make it or get out of the way so you can make it, you know, in the way that you want? And then how can we acknowledge it or check in on Hey, that didn't happen? How do we need to refocus are redirected to enable that to come? So? I think it's Yeah, I think you've touched on something huge, at least from my side.
Tom: I think someone did a weird post on Twitter the other day where they said something like, “Well, how do you know, what you want to sort of achieve””what's what's a good tip for improving the quality of your life”. And I've never really thought about it before. But I just said, you know, write down the things that you really liked doing. You know, write down the things that when you spend your time doing them, they're great. And then do more of that. And something that I don't do myself. And when I think about the other things I really love doing, it's playing any form of sport, it's going outside. When I think about all the things that I do that I don't like doing, it's being on Instagram, or social media, or emailing people. And I know it doesn't seem that hard in a way to just sort of double down on the things that we like, and to not do as much of the things we don't like. And actually, you realize that quite a lot of the things that we really like doing a free, you know, going out for a walk is free. Looking at the sunrise, as far as I'm aware, is free. Looking at the sunset and having a barbecue, you know, generally speaking, and every time you do it, you're like, Oh, my God, I should do this way more often. And then it takes another six months before you do it again. I'm definitely not some sort of life guru. And if I was I don't think people would pay for a book that just said, do the things that you like. But I think I mean, basically, we have all of the answers to these questions in our own self. And I think sometimes one of the things I'm very lucky to be able to do is to take quite a lot of time to stand back, actually. And I think if we stand back from most things, if we look at things from the right altitude, quite often really complicated, things suddenly become quite simple. And things which appeared to be overwhelming, you realize you don't need to do. And I think, I don't know, maybe this is a little bit of a cheesy thing to say. But there is something about screens, there's something about getting close to a screen, which makes us completely lose any perspective, like, quite literally. And there is something about focus where you know, our eyes are designed to see something and then to get into it. And we are only able to focus on the thing that we have chosen to look at. And therefore we need to be really careful about where we use our focus. You know, we need to be really careful about where we spend our time. And I think this was maybe what my next book would be about, we haven't really been designed for this age, you know, we are sort of designed to be sort of hunter gatherers, where everything is scarce, food is scarce, shelter is scarce, everything's supposed to kill us. If it moves, it's probably either something we should chase or something we should run away from. And in particular, we have an abundance of information. And that means anytime there's something there's information, we gorge on it, and the more it makes us scared, the more likely we are to read it intently because we're programmed to be scared. And then along comes the internet, which basically gives us an infinite amount of information every second of the day. And I don't think we've got the tools to know how do we consume this? And I'm not quite sure what the solution is. But I think everyday being slightly aware, is this a good use of my time? Which is a publication I really need to read. Is this a person that given all the people they haven't spoken to properly? Is there someone that I should be giving my time to? You know, would I be better off speaking to my dad right now? Then someone is arguing with me, and I think it's just a useful sort of background program to have in your brain.
Darius: One thing you said which I have been amazed at so some of the work I do is with senior leaders, and I'm continually surprised how little time they have to step back. They are scheduled literally. These are really senior people just back to back to back to even have three hours to step away and go But what what is my leadership? Who am I? And what am I doing here? And some things which seem honestly quite basic, that I oh my gosh, I just forgotten why I'm here. And so there is that luxury you talked about like, Okay, I've got time and space. And things become quite simple when I stepped back, actually, a lot of people just don't do it and then forget that you will forget, oh, there isn't that I can even step back. What you're saying about the screen, and that just made me think something, something big for me to digest there around what's happening when I you know, when I'm at a screen in my view, and sort of get stuck narrowing, I couldn't, I said something deeper that which I'm going to want to cogitate on.
Tom: And then you have algorithms, but then even reinforce that. So wherever you become focused on it's not just what you read, then it's, it's what your algorithms will then sort of decide is interesting for you moving forwards. So you can decide to I'm very sympathetic towards the believing conspiracy theories, actually. Because all they are as curious people that are logical, and then spend time on the internet. And then the internet sort of concocts itself around that belief system to give you infinite access to people that think the same and more. But yeah, we tend to be quite dismissive of those people. Like if anything, we should be way more in praise of conspiracy theories and way more, sort of concerned by people who were ignorant about everything. Or dispassionate. I do have to go in about three minutes. But I think I would love to speak to these people who are too busy, I would love to get in touch with someone who when you try to arrange time with them, they say I've got a slot free, you know, in June. Because I do wonder what's going on. I do wonder whether they are workaholics that are sort of obsessed with busyness, whether they are people that literally have such an overwhelming amount of work to do, that's how they have to operate. Were they are people who are a bit too afraid to say no to things and sort of people pleasers. And I wonder sometimes if people are almost trying to keep life out, if actually, you know, being in bank to bank meetings, give them this enormous sense that they're sort of hitting the scores, you know, if you can sort of fill in your timesheets and show that you were busy, then that means you're doing your job. And they're almost sort of terrified. They're if they take a step back, they'll realize quite how hopeless what they're doing is and quite how pointless you know, two thirds of the projects are, and they're almost sort of keeping busy to sort of stop that niggling doubt coming in. I don't know. But I'd love to know, because it's clearly not a very good way to do your job.
Darius: Yeah, I think it's much more benign than that people are dealing with huge amounts of complexity, huge amounts of overwhelm, and just forget, oh, I could you know, Can I schedule a coded scheduled time out? Not doing anything? Sort of, oh, my gosh, you know, just I think people just forget, yeah, that might be too naive. But that's, for the most part a lot. So, you know, there's definitely pieces of visual saying that accurate, but for the most part, I think people just forgotten.
Tom: It would be very interesting to talk to these people. And it could be anything from a very defensive answer, you get all the way through to someone and going, you know, well, you're right, I would say that I can say with absolute confidence that about 80% of the work that's done by most people at a high level is spent on complete distractions. You know, it's it's sort of work that genuinely expands to fit the time available. It's people having lots of conversations about the paper stock used, you know, to send out for the internal meetings, talking about the intranet that isn't needed anymore. It's that kind of thing.
Darius: Cool. So we're at time, you need to you need to run, we've kind of run a little bit longer than we'd originally scheduled. Any final reflection, how have you found this conversation? Anything you want to say?
Tom: No, it's been great. I mean, I love the idea of coming on this and being asked a lot of interesting questions that made me think, you know, I worry a bit when I feel a bit comfortable in life. That's generally when I'd feel slightly uncomfortable. Yeah, and I think it's not my place to give advice. It's not my place to give tips, but I do. I encourage people to do a bit more thinking about themselves on what matters and I encourage people to enjoy the process of being quite scared. You know, I don't want to sound like a sort of the Baz Luhrmamn sunscreen song. But, you know, get addicted to being quite scared. You know, try things. See what happens. I know there's these horrible cartoon image I used to put on my office in one of my jobs, and it was a picture of Kermit the Frog on the handlebars of a bike. You know, going life doesn't have to be serious. None of us are gonna get out alive and it is obviously deeply distressful for some people to realize we're all gonna die. And it's deeply distasteful to be quite so flippant about life. But I don't care. Like that's, that's the motto I live by.
Darius: Yeah. And it's also true. So you know, at some level, you know, like it don't like it doesn't change the truth of it and getting comfortable being uncomfortable. That's a great way to finish. So, Tom, thank you so much for your time. Great speaking to you.
Tom: Thank you.
Darius: Thank you so much.
Outro
Darius Norell: So here's my reflections on the conversation with Tom. I was really struck by, I use the word commitment, but it feels bigger than that. Just his commitment to learning that frame that paradigm. Just to me just demonstrates how powerful being curious you he talked about that a lot. Just being curious, interested in the world in people. What a powerful frame it is, how it's clearly a sense of power for him. At least, that was my interpretation. How clear it is that this is motivation in terms of engaging the world communicating the world speaking. And being in that continual state of learning thinks huge. And what a great thing it is, a great example of it and an impressive one. So I wanna name that, and constantly, I guess a lot with that the failing isn't failing, we're going to learn something so many of us are risk averse. And we could all probably do with taking some more risks, and what seems like failures and mistakes in the bigger picture, maybe our greatest learning moments, greatest moments of breakthrough. And we never really know what our limits are, what we're capable of. And thus, we really stretch ourselves and push ourselves and by extension, if they were gonna make mistakes, things are gonna go wrong by definition, if we're experimenting, doing something we haven't done before. And so yeah, just feel something powerful in that that's what I really come away with. So I'd love to hear your take on that. Do message, comments in the chat or however you want to communicate, love to hear. Have a great day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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