96. Why we all need to think like Futurists with Steph Clarke and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change the Workplace with myself, Brina Shah. I love what I do. I'm a global leadership coach, a consultant, a trainer, a keynote speaker, a podcaster. I help you to develop your leaders, your teams, and I help you to optimize your organizational cultures. I'm here to help you find ways to change your workplace. Why? Because we spend more time in our waking day at work than we do with our loved ones. It has to be a good place to be. So in this podcast, you can expect a mix of interviews with amazing thought leaders and then some solo episodes from myself as well. Strap yourselves in. Now, Steph is a wonderful big thinker, and I cannot tell you how much I love speaking with her. And the work that she's doing is really bringing organizations into a space where they not only consider the now but where they consider the future. And from the kind of work that I've been doing in helping organizations to improve their organizational culture, to improve their executives, and to improve their people aspects of their business, one of the big missing pieces is thinking ahead. And I talk about our lens with organizations to discuss what their current culture is and to define their desired culture. So now this is really future thinking. So if you are in the mindset of wanting to learn more about how you can be better prepared for the future, then strap yourselves in. It's so damn good. Steph is excellent. You also have to sign up to her newsletter because guaranteed you will learn so much. What Steph does, and I really like the way that Steph works, she iterates herself. So whatever she is learning here and now, she will share with you. And that's exactly what this conversation is, and beyond. It's beyond expectations. I hope you enjoy. Drop me a message, drop Steph a message to let us know what you got from this episode. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with myself Prina Shah. And I'm very, very excited to introduce you today, Steph Clark, who is on the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Steph, hello, welcome. Hi Prina, thanks for inviting me. I've been waiting for my invite for months and months, and I mean I'm very excited to be here. So it's here, it's happening.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Yeah. Exactly. And Steph, I today I want to talk to you about lots of things. And one of the things I want to talk about, well, the premise of this conversation is why we all need to think like futurists. And Steph, for people who don't know you, I've got a bit of a spiel about you. So let me do this. Steph Clark, based in Melbourne in Victoria, in Australia, is a futurist and a facilitator. She has a business called 28 Thursdays. Steph is known for challenging how things are done. She uses the best bits of facilitation, futures thinking, model learning, coaching, visual design, human-centered design, and a healthy dose of creativity to help organizations to elevate their thinking and their learning experiences for the future. Steph, hello. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

I'm good. Yeah. It's weird when someone reads that out when I'm when I'm on the call as well. Like, oh no, I can't believe I wrote that.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

The Steph show. It's all about you. So, Steph, I've I've I've read out, you know, a beautiful summary all about what you do, but in your own words, why do you do it and what do you do? What do you do and why do you do it?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

What do I do and why do I do it? This is an excellent question. I've commented on someone's post on LinkedIn the other day. Uh they were talking about how they had it had to re-explain to their mum several times what they what they did. Uh, oh yes, yeah. There was lots of people resonating with that post. And I was like, yes, I actually had to go as far as starting a shared note in iCloud, like a shared iCloud, uh, iMessage kind of note uh with my mum, so that then she can go to that mess, that note, and like read it out when her friends are like, oh, what does Steph do? I love it. Um, yes. So what do I do and why do I do it? Um, what do I do? So at the moment I'm helping a lot of clients with a couple of different things. Number one is with their rethinking then reimagining their learning approach. So, particularly for clients and organizations who came out of the kind of pandemic times and were like, oh, everyone's leaving and they're saying it's because they don't have any development opportunities. And for a lot of those clients, they're in a stage where they hadn't really done a lot of like LD kind of formal or actually in many cases informal stuff for a couple of years. And people were feeling that and they were then feeling the pain of that. So helping them kind of work out what is learning, what is good a good learning experience in an organization look like in 2023 and beyond, because people's expectations have drastically changed around learning. And it feels like, I think this is not just necessarily a feeling, but it's a there's a lot of truth in it as well. A lot of learning outside of work really rapidly evolved and the the quality and the standard and the innovation really elevated in that time and didn't really in a lot of organizations. It's very much stayed pretty the same as it was in 2010, 20, you know, 2000, probably as well. So yeah. So yeah, so helping people kind of rethink some of that and what that looks like now. Uh, and then the other thing I'm doing is focusing on a lot of futures type work as well. And that can take many different forms. So maybe just sometimes working with a team to help them think a little bit differently about a problem they've got, maybe before they go into their kind of planning or that type of work that they're doing. And that might be an exec team or a kind of functional team that's looking after a division of an organization who have maybe always approached the world, the business, their industry in the same way and need a bit of a an input or an injection of some imagination.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Oh, and Steph, so I know you are very, very well read. Um, given that, and we're chuckling about this because Steph has a podcast called Steph's Business Bookshelf. And Steph, how many books have you read on that podcast itself?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

The yeah, the podcast for I Retired It, which is recently retired, is over 200, over 200 episodes. So roughly 200 books. There's a couple of yeah, kind of um a couple of sort of conversation ones I did and stuff as well. But yeah, roughly 200. Congratulations. Thank you. Hats off to you.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So have s read many a book, you've got lots and lots of information in your head to be able to go into a team and to poke and prod effectively. But when I hear the term futurist, I still go to Nostradamus, you know, in my mind, like that big book of the middle name, my middle name. Def Nostradamus Clark. That's right, yeah. Def. What is a futurist or what's a future thinker? Tell me about what that is as well.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah. So futures, so I suppose I came into it's a little bit of a backstory, I suppose. So I a couple of years ago, like in the middle of you know, mid-pandemic, probably, if we're using that as an hour period of time, came became more aware of the term of the kind of field of futures and futures thinking, future studies, etc. Yeah, a few different kind of names for it there. And I was a bit like, this is the work. This is what I've been waiting for. It's like the ultimate generalists uh field of field of work. And as myself, as a wonderful, you know, very general generalist, I was like, this is for me. And it's a this beautiful mix of history and the future and technology and imagination and creativity in the arts and all of these other things as well. It's like all of my favorite things and design, a lot of design in there as well, mushed together into this discipline that really looks to stretch what we think the future may be like. So it's not about prediction, that's really important, that it's not about this will happen and this is when it will happen, but it is about stretching our thinking for what is possible or what is probable and what may happen in the future and being ready for that. And there's some fantastic examples of that in action and things which we might get into as we as we kind of carry on chatting. Um, but yeah, I was super sort of sort of excited and stimulated by that in in many ways, and was like, oh, this is this is you know, this is really exciting. This is what I'd love to learn more. So I did some study and stuff like that in that and started to collaborate and connect with other people and read differently and stuff around that. And then what happened around the same time was really having these conversations with particularly the more forward-thinking leaders that I tend to work with, who were all saying to me, and this is particularly as we were coming out of, so this is probably early last year, sort of 2022 by this stage, kind of saying to me, like, feel like my team like have no imagination, no curiosity anymore. And really, as leaders, we're really struggling with that. And some of them were like, you know, my phone is just full of like notes I've taken and screen grabs of things like videos I've watched, or you know, all of this other stuff. And I just feel like my team don't have that muscle. Now there's multiple you know, things, things that you know factor into that. Yeah, but it's sort of these two things at the same time. I was like, huh, this feels like actually this this is a real time and it feels you know, futures thinking is definitely having a moment at the moment as people feel that they're really caught out by the pandemic. People now uh, you know, with the kind of explosion of AI and those kind of things happening at the moment as well around technology. People are now feeling pretty exposed again in terms of their job, their industry, their company, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, and I was reading, I should have um double checked this stat, but there was the there was a stat I was reading just a couple of days ago. Something ridiculous, like 60 or 70 percent of leaders don't think their business will exist in 10 years' time because of where the industry is going, technology, et cetera, et cetera. And I was just like, oh wow, that's and this was you know quite a big study and things. So I was like, oh, that's that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

It's a huge problem, but I don't think we're even addressing it yet from a workplace perspective. And you know, ways to change your workplace is what this podcast is called. And I'm thinking, what the fuck? We're not even addressing AI or any of that stuff yet.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Oh my god. I think this is the thing, like this, and there's this real, there's definitely certainly in Australia, there's a real curiosity about AI. And as with most things, there's people who are much further ahead, people who are just like, what um AIA what? So chat GTP. Like, I don't know. I hear that quite a lot as well. Um, yeah, so I think, and I think look, and you know, this is not uh I don't think this is a too much of a controversial take that Australia is a bit further ahead in uh sorry, is a bit further behind in terms of their maturity around things like futures thinking. Again, there's exceptions, there's some organizations using it really well and you know building it into what they do and many other things as well, but compared to sort of like Europe and um Canada and the US, not so much.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Oh, 100%. I mean, Steph, I've been banging on about you know the the age, retirement, workforce, or if our baby boomers are gonna go soon, yeah, yeah. Still not considering that from a workplace perspective, yeah, generally speaking, from an Australian lens. Yes, yes, let's learn AI. So, yeah, there's there's so much to consider yet. So, in terms of uh futuristic thinking and work transformation, can you give us examples of how work transformation-related aspects uh that futurists should consider to create a more holistic view of the workplace? Like where do we begin?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, what yeah, where do we begin? That's a really good question. So I think it and where I'd say to begin would be looking at your industry. So let's take your example there, it's a really good one and a very uh topical one given the report that came out, the intergenerational report that came out here in Australia a couple of weeks ago, around the Australia's declining growth, because the, and this is not unique to Australia, certainly, that the the the age, the demographic sort of makeup of the country will become older and older. This is a big problem in many countries. Uh, I think the Australia actually isn't as bad as some countries, like um South Korea, for example, their fertility birth rate is something like 0.0.7, I think it was. Yeah, so which is seriously like that's problematically low. And lots of other countries are having some similar woes as well. So what we end up with then is a lot of aging people, people living longer, needing more kind of support from in terms of healthcare, age care, et cetera, et cetera, and not having kind of the retirement savings to support that if they're living for whatever, you know, however long. Yeah. So in terms of that, so let's take an industry, something like a maybe a utilities type industry or something like that, where you've got a lot of people who have been in the industry for 30, 40 years are now looking to retire. They're at the age where they, you know, they retire at 65 and they're kind of done. Yeah. So, in terms of you know, an organization who's got that kind of challenge, could or should be thinking about this in terms of their kind of workforce planning and thinking about what they need, but also thinking about there's another trend around unretirement and thinking about um people who come back to work either by choice or by um, or sometimes economically kind of you know needing to come back because they're like, oh, I've retired at 65, but I'm actually in pretty good health. I don't actually think I can afford to live the way I want to live for the next 20, maybe even 30 years. Yeah. If I'm not working. So they actually, you know, come back to work, um, you know, like I said, by choice or by you know, by need. So actually, if you kind of can even just taking those two kind of mega trends, I suppose, and combining those, it just makes you think a bit differently about, oh, actually, maybe we can afford to get have mentors who can mentor our newer, younger people coming in rather than this kind of battle we've constantly got in most organizations where the learning has to happen kind of in a classroom or in like a formal setting because no one can afford to teach anyone else anything. That we've lost this kind of apprenticeship model in a lot of in a lot of industries. So, is this a way of actually making real utility and meaningful, you know, creating meaningful work for people that is less labor-intensive in terms of physical labor that they maybe have had to do before, but is something that they've got the experience to be able to do, and then maybe giving them some extra upskilling around coaching, mentoring, that type of thing as well. So, again, just that those fairly simple examples, which and taking two fairly mainstream trends as well, around aging workforce and unretirement, sticking those together and being like, oh, how can we, how could we use this in our organization, which may then change the decisions you make around hiring, firing, retirement ages, you know, all of this other stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

It impacts so much, absolutely so, and that whole body system that you talk to, uh, you know, it goes beyond the development aspect. And yes, absolutely formal development, definitely definitely so. But it's all that tacit knowledge, all of that, that amazing, amazing knowledge, which is beyond a job description that that individual is going to leave the organization with.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yep. And that's that's not sitting in a database, it's not sitting in a database somewhere or in some knowledge repository. Absolutely. All in there's great way of it's a great way of you know helping those people and also you know, thinking about men's mental health as well. It's another kind of sort of subtrend happening more societally rather than necessarily with you know within, although obviously still exists in workforces, actually giving older men something to still have some meaning for once they've retired as well, because it's the most dangerous time in a man's life, is you know, that kind of 18 months post post-retirement.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

This is beautiful, Steph. So you're really talking now about well, so we almost think like a futurist, we're not only thinking about the here and now and the problems that we have as an organization. And I love that you said it's not about prediction, so let's just strap that. We're not making any predictions whatsoever, but we are potentially stretching our thinking you've said here about future scenarios, yep, yeah. And we're being ready for that, and um we've learned the hard way stuff as well. I'm gonna step back back to a couple of years and the fact that we royally screwed up, and you know, we were told many a many time. I remember in organizations. So when I used to work in corporate stuff, we used to have many, many incident management days, and you know, I'd be the people and culture incident manager, and you'd have you'd have, you know, IT and whatever. And we'd only talk about incidents which are yeah, you're gonna have a technology breakdown, someone's gonna hack you. We never ever considered a pandemic or any such thing like that in these real life examples we used to do. Yeah, but hello. So I think even from a risk management perspective, we really need to bring in that future speaking, yeah, because the way we are involved evolving as a workplace is evolving with society itself. So, how the fuck can we like you know, separate ourselves from the bigger picture? And you've already explained how we have separated ourselves from the bigger picture from that AI example you just gave, and the pains that organizations will feel in relation to that. So do you have any other ways where say say there was a complete novice and they had a complete problem about whatever? How else can they think about future thinking? Or if people are still not convinced, why do we need to think like a futuristic number one?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

I think it just I mean, this is probably just like a selfish perspective, but it's my perspective is it just makes things more interesting. Like we're looking at stuff like just sort of looking up, and I think this is this is when I run sort of many things in in organizations, but particularly sort of like future things, the biggest pushback is oh, well, I've got too much to do today, I don't care about tomorrow. And I just think like that just puts us in such a dangerous position because things are moving too damn fast now to be to be ignorant to what is currently happening and what's moving around. At the same time, I completely understand that is massively overwhelming because there is so much shit going on in the world. How do you stay across all of it? I mean, number one, you don't have to stay across all of it. That's one thing. And number two, there's there's people and organizations and really great sources where you can be following or you know, engaging with in some way, you know, passively or actively, who are kind of curating some of that for you. That's kind of the point of journalists. You know, some do that better than others, of course, and some news outlets are again better than others in that sense. Um, but you know, that's I mean, one of the things that I love doing is going like, here's 10 interesting things I saw. Here you go. Like that's you know, on LinkedIn or other kind of um other kind of platforms as well. So there's you know, there's a lot of interesting things happening there. So I think a really easy thing sometimes I get organizations or teams to do that I work with is start a Slack channel or a Teams channel, whatever it is you you you work with. I'm sorry if it is Teams for you, but uh start a start a channel and you know, have everyone once a week, whenever whenever they see something interesting, pop it in there for everyone to read. Simple. Super simple, super simple. And then maybe once a week or whenever you have your kind of catch up, you know, on a weekly, fortnightly basis, whatever it is, just be like, hey, who saw something interesting in the channel this week or last yeah, in the last kind of week or whatever? Have a conversation about it. Like it's stuff, something that builds into what you're already doing. Like you're probably already reading some stuff, you're probably already listening to some some great podcasts and things. Yeah. Share those, like have a conversation about it because that's where you go, oh wow, I never thought of that perspective of that. And yeah, some particularly someone who's coming in, maybe who's lived overseas or is from somewhere else or whatever, and be like, oh, well, actually that's been happening for years here. Or here's our take on it in the country I'm from or have lived in or you know, have seen you know before. I think that's where you get like a really rich conversation around, oh wow, we don't exist, like exactly as you say, Prina, we don't exist in a in a vacuum. And what's happening kind of societally will filter into our organizations, whether we like it or not. So we it's about being ready for it and being able to think about those possible scenarios and things where that might play out. And having even just having some fodder for those wildcard conversations, like okay, the risk, your risk management thing. Like the pandemic was not a surprise. We no one knew when it was going to happen, but it was overdue as well, in terms of that. So if people weren't, and you know, the WHO have been talking about that for you know a decade or so, so or a couple of decades, I think. So again, by being more across what's happening, who's talking about what, we get to then have more interesting conversations in our organizations and stretch this imagination muscle, which is the thing that we're all going to need more of, particularly as AI starts doing some of the skills and the work for us. What we're left with are is our ideas, our imaginations, our ability to kind of deal with complexity.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

Which is the stuff that is harder for AI currently to mimic or to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah. So it's definitely a case of the rise of the knowledge worker, so to speak. Absolutely, yeah. Uh, which is happening now and has to happen even more so. And then if you're thinking about the knowledge worker themselves, you know, if you're a you know subject matter in whatever you are, you need to know your stuff and you need to be on top of it. And I love the idea that you just shared about creating some source sort of a resource library, essentially. Braindow, chuck it all in, just let's share the love with each other. Because that that allows us to expand our echo chamber because what I know is here and what Steph knows is there. And once we marry those two worlds, oh my gosh, what a bigger world it is.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Stephanie, like there's some other really interesting things, like even just seeing possibilities. And I think this is the other thing. Like there's yes, there's the kind of the possible and those kind of like those extra bits of information and things like that. The other exciting thing is actually seeing the stuff that you maybe have discounted or been like, oh, that's not possible. We can't do that. Just having a look of finding someone who is doing it already and being like, oh shit, I that is that can be done. Oh, this company's been doing that for 10 years. This, yeah, this is not, this is not actually new. This is not actually that radical. It just feels like it to us because I've never seen it before. Yeah. And that's One example that I used with a workshop a few months ago, I was running with a team as more like a futures literacy. So, like more like a futures thinking 101 where I go through some tools and methodologies and things of how they can start using futures more day on a daily basis. One of the examples we talked about was this idea of AI, because this is the time when you know, see, this is a big conversation. And the example I, oh sorry, the someone had the idea. They were like, oh yeah, and what if um in X number of years we are actually AIs and we can work for like our knowledge works for multiple organizations. I was like, oh yeah, that's a really cool idea. And I shared the example of this woman in the US. And this is, you know, this example gets used quite a lot. So you may have heard of it before, but this woman in the US, um, her best friend sadly died. And so, and she was very sad about this and was, you know, obviously really missed him. So, what she did was she took all of their emails and messages they'd ever had, bit it put it into a chat bot, and basically created like a kind of digital replica of her best friend so she could still have conversations with him and share what, share what was going on in her life, and he would respond, he would respond in the way that he would respond. Um, so with between sort of her and a couple of his kind of close friends and family, they created this like digital replica of him, which is really beautiful. And it was this amazing, like the reaction in the room was really interesting. And this the stuff I love is this kind of like dangerously interesting kind of stuff that some people are like, oh no, that's super creepy, and other people like, oh wow, that's incredible. Like, I'd love that. It's very black mirror, yeah. Very black mirror, yes. Black mirror is also a good thing to watch to uh to get some ideas on this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

I stopped watching it, it freaked me out. I was saying, yeah. I need to go back one day. Yeah, uh, I'll refer to Black Mirror and I show notes for anyone who's open open to looking at it. Steph, uh, when we're looking, so let's say our audience, someone's listening and thinking, yeah, yeah, all good, you've got wonderful ideas, but my team are so damn stale. This this is not gonna land. So this is something I really come across often. You know, people speak with me individually. So one counter-argument I have with them is okay, well, looks let's look at the kind of conversations you are having within your team. If you're not able to have a conversation in the manner that you've just explained, how can you kind of like by stealth, you know, a bit of a um Trojan horse kind of uh Trojan horse? That's the one I wanted. Thank you very much. Thank you, read my mind. That's right. I use that all the time. That's like, oh, yeah, a lot of Trojan horse. How can you Trojan horse some ideas through? And I think you've got a captive audience in a team meeting. So one thing I used to do, my team meetings, oh my gosh, the original format of them, historically, Steph, you've probably heard of many a boring team meeting. Oh, yeah, yeah. Around Robin, people go around blah blah. Yeah, no, so I scrapped that. We had some high-level, you know, information, and then there was always a learning section within the team meeting. So I think that's the best time you can all get your heads together and have an honest debate about well, Parina's brought forward this today. Do we agree? Do we disagree? And just have those big and open conversations about this is the latest thing I've learned. Valid for us or not valid for us, you know.

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Yep. Easy as that.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Easy as that. Yeah. Um, there's a client I'm working with at the moment, and we're doing that every couple of months. So the every fortnight I send them a newsletter with three curated links that are based on, yeah, it might be a podcast, it might be an article, yeah, whatever. It can be anything that I found on the internet that might be interesting, or just even, you know, it doesn't have to be directly related to their work or the you know, the kind of challenge they're trying to solve in their organization, but it can be like an adjacent or it can be something that's just interesting anyway, and just something they may not have heard. So do that every couple of weeks. And then every other month we get together virtually to discuss what they've been seeing and like some of those links and things like that. Uh, and then on the alternate month, we get together in person, do more of a well, you know, kind of deep dive workshop type thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Brilliant. So there's three touch points there, and you can go as deep or as not deep as you want, but there is always one deep dive every three months, every quarter.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Every two months, yeah, yeah, yeah. Every two.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Brilliant. Um, okay. So some argue that being a futurist can lead to overlooking current pressing issues right now, right? So, how do you balance the need to address our current challenges whilst also thinking ahead?

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah. I mean, there's multiple ways of doing this because you're absolutely right. If you you're kind of failing overall if you're just looking ahead, and you're also failing if you're just looking at today. And I think it's actually finding the balance, like both of them, neither of them are healthy and neither of them are useful. So we have to kind of balance the both. So I think with part of it is number one, making sure the right people are kind of focused on the right kind of time horizons and things like that. Um, and feeding that into, like you say, that kind of every day of everyone, you know, again, weekly being able to share a link or, you know, something that someone's learned in one of your great team meetings or one of those examples. And then thinking about well, where do we actually more intentionally and actively do that futures part in our quarterly planning, yearly planning, yeah, whatever it is. Annually, probably at the moment, annually is probably not good enough anymore, I'd say. Yeah. It needs to be probably at least quarterly to be like, right, what is going on in this? And and doing the kind of the setup of that well so that you know what you're watching, what you're keeping an eye on, what you're already dealing with. Like maybe there's some of the demographic stuff that's coming back to an example like that. Maybe you're like, actually, we've got a plan for that. Great, cool. But actually, having done that, had that conversation, probably facilitated, you know, by someone you know, relevant to go, right, what are the things that we are unsure on? And that actually we need to do a little bit more work and actually do some scenarios around you know, when we do our quarterly catch up or our kind of half-yearly thing, uh, and then knowing what things are actually just maybe you've seen them, you've you've kind of looked at them, you're you'll maybe keep an eye on them, but they're kind of not as important for your industry or organization as well.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Brilliant. Steph, I I work with organizations, you know, organizational culture. I know you do a lot of culture stuff as well. And with when we're talking about organizational culture 101, right? You've got your current culture, we've got our today's culture. And then where do we want to head to? You know, the desired culture. Yeah, so many organizations still are not, uh they don't even have that desired culture vision yet. All of this, everything that you're speaking to can completely yeah, fit into that kind of thinking, that kind of work. Because this is the higher level strategic thinking work that we really need to do, given the you know, rates of uh the pace of change that's happening within the world, yeah. Compared compared to the kind of change that's happening within the organization, it is very different and it is slower in an organization. As much as I hear about change, fatigue, and whatever, societal change is just far more and far more rapid as it can be. Um, so that's where those two meet together. So when we're talking about organizational culture, Steph, do you have any bigger insights in relation to futures thinking?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

I've just chucked this one at you. I know. No, no, no, no. This is this is a good it's a really good question. I was literally thinking about this last week, actually, because some of the frustrations sometimes I have with like learning and LD culture as well is exactly the same. It is uh and when I realized that last week, I was like, shit, this is the same problem, damn it. Um, it's exactly this that it's not actually embedded into the culture. You know, people say, Oh, we want a really good learning culture, blah, blah, blah. They don't give people time to learn. They think everything is done in a course. They, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and on and on. It's the same with futures, it's the same with anything. Like, if you're not actually embedding it into your very kind of your DNA of how you work, that's a process, blah, blah, blah. But if you're not actually embedding it into what you're doing, how people are measured and how people are kind of rewarded and what matters in the conversations and all of that stuff, yeah, like none of it matters. Or if you're doing those conversations once a year or once uh yeah, once every six months or something, but then never actually doing anything with it and still rewarding people for getting all their emails done today or getting through today's work, yeah, like you're on a hiding to nothing. No. And you're still gonna, even if you've done that thinking in the room and your strategy off-site or whatever, like it it's wasted money and probably effort because you might as well just carry on doing what you're doing, because that's what everyone else is doing, because either it's not communicated or it's not actually built into the expectations of your people. Same with learning.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Let's let's work with this uh stream of thinking then. So, same with learning, absolutely so. So, if we have a culture and a desire culture which hasn't been articulated, then we don't know where the hell we're going. Yeah, yeah. Translates to our learning staff. So I know you've been doing a lot of work in on learning. I love that, you know, and uh helping organizations to unravel everything that's happened over the past without breaking confidence. Are you able to share what you have learned? And these are how moments from your organizations that you're supporting to be more future thinking with the learning that they're offering their employees to retain them as well and to attract yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Couple of things. So, with a couple of the ones that I've done sort of chunkier learning projects with probably two things, main things. Number one, and this and all of this stuff is such baseline stuff, but it's it was coming for some of them, it was really getting back to basics. It was how are you communicating? How do people know what what learning experiences to expect? Yep. And it's funny, for like probably three, maybe I've probably actually four clients now, the biggest like, oh wow, moment they had was when I put together a learning brochure. And because I've got some graphic design skills and I also have a graphic designer worked in my business, so yeah, it looks quite nice. But it's that just that learning brochure of hey, for each level in your organization or each group, or depending on you know, job grouping or whatever it was, here's what you can expect this for the next either quarter of six months, 12 months, depending on you know who the organization was and what we were doing.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Simple stuff like that. So just expectations and communication basically what I want. Yeah. Number two was this really, which is still a work in progress, is getting moving away from the course. So understanding that curated content, books, podcasts, etc., are uh supplements and sometimes even actually as good, if not better, sometimes, than sitting someone in a room for three for three hours twice a year or something. Like that's where we can kind of get better at the curation rather than creation of content. There's so much available and with but by such incredible people that we would never have access to otherwise. That's it. And and in with that, which is kind of a sub point, is using internal podcasts as well. Haven't got everyone over the line on this one yet, but the ones who have are really enjoying it. And they're like, oh wow. And just simple things like people who are particularly people who are remote or working kind of, you know, in more regional offices and things, which some of my clients have, they're like, Oh, I don't have to like go home and log on for three hours and watch a webinar. You've built, you've broken this stuff into 20 or 30 minute kind of audio bites I can listen to in the car and actually make the most of the fact that I have to drive two hours each way to go and see a client sometimes. Yeah. Just stuff like that that actually makes it a little bit of it just reduces friction. Yeah. And it and it is exactly how people are learning IRL, like in their actual lives. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Exactly, which is exactly how you started talking to. And the way we learn has completely evolved, but it really hasn't spoken to the way we learn at work yet. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But we're changing it. We're changing it.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yeah. And there's still a place, and there's still a time and a place for getting people in a room. But I think it's just it's knowing what that is. So for example, when I do a presentation skills program with some of my clients, yeah. They're kind of more junior people, get them in a room. They're filming each other, they're doing the presentation. Great, fantastic. Yep. But for doing some of the other stuff we're doing, no, they can listen to something and they can watch something or they can do it and then they can use it when they need it and stuff like that. And you know, it's not just trends, and it's not just trends, yeah. And it's not just trends like micro learning and stuff like that. It's actually kind of meaningful, curated, yeah. Um, you know, information and then thinking about how do we bring the managers on board? Like, how do the managers know what their people are doing so they can actually support it? So sending them like here's three questions you can ask your pe your person who can went to this, you know, did this thing last week or whatever. Perfect. Because otherwise, again, learning is not just more content.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Oh, absolutely. Um, you you also have been stalking you very much so. So you also help organizations and individuals learn. So I'm talking about Steph's bookshelf. Yeah. So you can hold a book uh club yourself. And uh do you want to talk to me a bit more about that and how you actually help curate that as well with the packages and stuff that you offer? That's genius, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Well, it's funny because I was told several times that it was a really good idea and genius. Nobody bought it. Oh. So it just, you know, as we're going behind the scenes and getting into the guts of it. Like it's just not, it's so interesting that um I sent it to one of my clients for because I was doing some other work with them. So they got it because it was, yeah, kind of packaged up with what I was doing. And they already had a book club. So I gave them, I sent them the book club package, which was basically like 12 months worth of here's what to read, and here's some speaking notes or group kind of discussion notes for each book, which I wrote, you know, all the rest didn't just put it through Chat GPT. Um took a long time to make. And I was like, yep, yeah, this is yeah, this is the sort of thing people were asking for, like, how are we gonna get together? How do we learn together? You know, this sort of stuff that isn't the just the club, the course, this social connection, it can be done virtually or in person, and it's curation. Yeah, and you didn't offer the questions to ask as well. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I took away all they had to do is put the time in the diary, which I know sometimes that is hard enough, but yeah, it was pretty simple. But yeah, no, it was it was not a um not a goer in terms of the um in terms of the kind of yeah, the packages and stuff. So, and look, yeah, there's um, yeah, sure that's some of that's on me in terms of marketing and whatever, but I was quite surprised slash, you know, disappointed probably, but yeah, it's all it's all an experiment, so yeah, don't take it too personally. Um, but I was quite surprised given what I was hearing, given what people were sort of telling me and things, that actually there's people like, oh yeah, thanks. No, no, I don't need that. So apart from the client who did who, like I said, they already had a book club. So they're like, oh, fantastic. This has actually made our life much easier because they were having to do all of that themselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Leaders are readers, and for those ones who are readers, Steph, I'll put I'll put a link to that as well. So Steph offers an amazing book club which is curated.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

And I think it's DIY, it's the D yeah, DIY book club in a box. So it's it's yeah, it's a PDF that's got all the all the books you should read. Here's you know, here's why you should read this one, and then here is some questions or discussion points that you can have in your little book club afterwards. And it's completely kind of pick and choose. You don't have to do all the books, you don't have to do them every month. You can you know do whatever order you want. Doesn't, yeah, it's over to you. On my lap and ready for me to take on board.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Exactly. Exactly. Um, while we're talking about future thinking and learning, there's a lot that we can learn from the past so we don't make the same mistakes again. Yes, yeah. Steph, do you have any thoughts on organizations and learning from the past and any words of wisdom in that respect?

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Ah, it's a good question. I watch, I love watching documentaries from the 70s and 80s, particularly music documentaries and social kind of documentaries. Like this is like my just you know, personal love and uh something I really enjoy. And it's so interesting. Like the more I watch them, the more I'm like, oh my god, we're doing all the same things. And yeah, that's more societally necessary than in organizations. Like, yeah, obviously stuff has changed. You know, there's fewer, I was gonna say, there's fewer mullets around, but actually not so much in Australia. So might be yeah, exactly. Um, but uh and yeah, people got mobile phones, yeah, all of those things aside. We're having all the same conversations, like these people are excluded, these people are like protesting about these things, like these workers are not being like valued and are being treated really badly. So in some ways, I think it's really depressing to look to look at the past because you're like, oh, we've learned nothing. But at the same time, I think in some ways it's like, shit, how are we still doing this? And sometimes that is an impetus to be like, this needs to change. Like, and for for the right person at the right time, with someone with courage, yeah, who doesn't want to just repeat history. And I think we're getting we're that feels like there's a bit of a change coming, you know, with the sort of different generations aging out of certain organizations or roles and things, and others kind of you know coming into them. But it's what's also really depressing is you look at the it's sort of the 70s, you see all the kind of riots and protests about various things.

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

And then you look at the people who basically those same people, that same age group now, and some of the attitudes there, you're like, oh, what happened? Yes, they were the revolutionaries, yeah, exactly. And again, I'm sure there's still some people rocking the purple rocking the purple hair at 70 and are still kind of fighting the fight, fighting the good fight and stuff. But you know, you just sort of look at that statistically, a lot of those are now the ones who are gatekeeping, closing doors, saying no, no, this is all we've always always done it, like that type of thing. You're like, oh wow, and I think for me personally, that's that is a real motivator to not be that person.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yes, exactly. That wish in front of you is your teacher, even if it's a bad teacher, we still have to put that.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

I personally, I get I personally I get a lot more from that, like from the this is what I don't want than uh that this is what I do want.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah. And okay, so when I work with teams as well, so happy to share this. Yeah, you know, there's also uh a lot of angst when people are feeling like this, like, oh my god, there's so much change that we can make, and there's big dreams, and you know, organizational culture, you'll have a culture, and then it's about creating a subculture. And you can absolutely within your own little way, your own remit, the little control that you do have within the workplace, go forth and do whatever you want to do in respect to that without obviously breaking any corporate rules.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Yeah, well, I don't know. Some of those, some of those could probably be broken as well. Oh, indeed, indeed. Look at what's okay, don't go to prison. Like, there we go. That's my that's my baseline.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Don't go to prison, break rules. Actually, ask why the rules are made because they're from the 1970s often as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's be honest. Steph, I could talk to you forever, but I've got one big, very important question for you. Yeah. If I was to hand you a magic wand, Steph Clark, yeah, what is one way that you would change the way of the workplace?

SPEAKER_00 40:15

I would since I've got a magic wand, physics and things probably aren't super relevant here. I would somehow bottle that kind of impetus for change that we had three years ago. Yes, and I would sprinkle it across organizations now. There was so much courage on show, and it was courage through necessity, but it was people just going, this doesn't work, we're gonna have to change. Because they had to, and like again, there was a very strong burning platform, whatever you want to kind of call it, that they had to do something differently. And my biggest fear was always that. I mean, obviously there was lots of fears, it was a pandemic, but my biggest kind of fear from an organizational perspective was that we'd be exactly where we are now. And here we are. Yeah, because no one has taken the time to re-imagine. There's this horrible, we're in this horrible vortex of the past and the distant past, basically, the kind of recent past and the distant past, trying to not quite unsuccessfully coexisting, and ending up again, as we are with many things in society, ending up with this like false binary of office or home, office or home, like that, and that just such a non-conversation. It's such a non-conversation, and just those things shouting at each other and actually not having any sensible conversations. Yeah, look, it's keeping it's keeping business journalists in in ink, or you know, it's keeping ink printers in ink. Um, but it's not really getting us anywhere. And we're massively avoiding the or missing the opportunity for really interesting conversations around what does work look like in extreme heat. Yes. Which we're about we're we're gonna have to talk about in about four months' time.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

Hello, and yeah, extreme cold in the UK. And Steph, you've got a beautiful language about you. You talked earlier about having uh conversations which are dangerously interesting. If anyone does this, please go back to your workforce, go back to your team and have some dangerously interesting conversations. Yeah. Steph details are all gonna be in the show notes. Carry on the conversation. Thank you so much, Steph.

SPEAKER_00 42:27

Thank you for your great questions. Really enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

My pleasure. Sign up to my newsletter, which is detailed in the show notes if you stand against crappy cultures, lousy leaders, and toxic teams. And I'll see you in the next episode.