Transcript

Matt Heine (MH):

Hi, and welcome to this episode today I am joined by Dara and Tane who collaborate on Future Crunch. Welcome to the show.

Tane Hunter (TH):

Thanks for having us, Matt. Hello.

MH:

Now, we met last week actually at the Netwealth Summit. You opened up the day with some incredible presentations and thought provoking discussion and really looking forward to getting into it. But before we do that, for those that weren't at the summit, Dara, why don't you just give us a little bit of background on yourself. Both got very different backgrounds and you've come together to collaborate in such an interesting way.

Dara Simkin (DS):

I have a marketing and events background, and when I first moved to Australia, many of you'll probably hear that I don't have an Aussie accent and neither does, don't I, we randomly are just both American. But yeah, I have a PR and marketing events background. When I came to Australia, I was in my mid twenties and did a marketing job for a couple of years and then one off to do some training around executive coaching. Worked with a couple of business owners, some startups, founders and things like that. And I just realised there was a lot of lack around creativity, innovation, and this sort of mindset around how to adopt a more kind of open and curious and playful way of doing business. So I created, originally my business is called Project Play and started running small lunch and learns for a NZ and other big organisations who are very curious about this kind of approach to bringing play into the workplace and how it affects business outcomes.

And then right before Covid, I rebranded to Culture Hero, which was a perfect time to rebrand. We had to pivot very quickly to virtual, we're able to really provide some amazing virtual experiences for a time that really required connection and belonging and intimacy. I've been running culture here and been in this play workspace for about eight years now, and it's really about looking at not to trivialise play as something that's frivolous or distracting or nice to have, but an actual way of creating really impactful and experiential learning. When we look at professional development and things like that, it really is a lens to look through that cultivates a sense of curiosity, openness, adaptability, resilience. So for me, play is a real vital resource when it comes to humanising the workplace, especially when we're in this huge technology age of disruption and everything like that. So it's a bit about me,

MH:

Huge humanity there to unpack during the show. I can't wait to get back to exactly what does play in the workplace mean, because not only does it sound fun, but you're getting incredible results. Tay, very different background.

TH:

Yes, I'm a science nerd. I've had a love affair with biology since I can remember being alive. And so really my passion has been unravelling the basic bits and bytes of DNA, what binds us all together, the code of life and some of the interesting parts of the universe. And so that unravels itself in storytelling because I think we need to tell better stories about facts and data.

MH:

That in itself is a very different approach for a scientist or a biologist. What's your formal training?

TH:

Biology and ecology and genetics. Genetics and bioinformatic as people often say, but bioinformatics. So applying machine learning to big biological data sets. Yeah, so I'm fully in the AI space, put it that way,

MH:

And I'm intrigued. How did you two meet and decide to collaborate?

TH:

We met through mutual friends, but also through mutual clients. Really, we worked with similar clients from a very different approach, and I think ultimately what we need in this world today is a holistic approach, both science and humanness. It's not the robots versus the humans, it's the robots and the humans defining co intelligence together. Intelligent augmentation rather than artificial intelligence.

MH:

We've often talked about that on this podcast actually. It's the concept of man with machine against man without and how do you actually use technology to improve everything that we're doing as opposed to being scared of technology where it's taking us.

DS:

Women are with machines too, Matt. I was just trying to think and they thems as well.

MH:

I was very conscious as I said that. I was trying to think how do I weave this into the conversation. It's a very valid point that I often pull people up on.

Speaker 9:

Yeah.

MH:

So you met through mutual friends and decided there was an opportunity to combine almost in some ways left brain with right brain. Would that be fair?

TH:

I mean, biologically and neurologically, that's incorrect, but yes,

DS:

That's been debunked. I

MH:

Feel I need to get corrected a lot over the next 45 minutes.

TH:

Let's just call it an apt metaphor to continue on with.

MH:

Okay, wonderful. Big part of your presentation at the summit was actually you set up just the fact that the world is changing rapidly and it's changing across every industry, every discipline. What are the things that are really, I guess, exciting you at the moment about change and technology and maybe as part of that you can explore the dark side, which are what are the things that are scaring you?

DS:

Well, I think the opportunity for the way that we language it is around playing with technology and having that space. Actually in the recent Deloitte human trends, rapport, they talk about having the opportunity to play within digital playgrounds and also the need for imagination. So really I think when we use generative AI and other technologies, we're relinquishing the need to do mundane tasks around simple things. I'm having a brain fart here.

TH:

Brain farts are some of the simple things that human beings have, which makes us very human.

DS:

Just reporting and those kinds of

TH:

The remedial tasks,

DS:

Exactly

TH:

The stuff that is not so much human, but based on the construct of capitalism and how we have to show up in the world in this modern society where we've arrived. The cool thing about AI is twofold. It can make us more human, it can expand our creativity, but it's also going to unravel some of the biggest questions that we've had about physics and the birth of the universe and the basic fundamental questions on why we exist. So my favourite part about AI is it can help us with dealing with the existential risks like climate change, how things unravelling the human brain, for example, reverse engineering the human brain and finding out our place in the universe because pretty lucky to be here.

DS:

I think from a more practical perspective as well, for those entrepreneurs out there, it's also a helpful tool around marketing and reporting and branding and just things that you need around storytelling. Just having a bit of a creative assistant or a creative prompt to support in not having to sit and do all of the menial tasks that a business owner has. Usually you have to wear many hats. So it's almost having your own virtual assistant at your fingertips as long as you know how to use it.

TH:

Intelligent augmentation or co intelligent assistant.

DS:

Yes.

MH:

So something that I'm sure you've got a view on cognizant dissidence. Basically this idea that we can only hold one thought or idea, and it's very difficult for us to actually change our minds once we grasp onto this idea what you suggested and what you touched on before, potentially we're going to disprove everything that we've humankind have known or believed in for many, many years. How do you feel that we're actually going to adapt to that? And that's a big one. Before we get down to sort of how it applies to the workplace.

TH:

I think with difficulty, these are big questions, but being able to hold two ideas in your head at once comes from Hans Rosling, one of the great statisticians of history, human history, but I just like the idea that the world is getting better, but the world is not yet good enough. And holding those two ideas in your head and holding that space allows you to be more flexible in a cognitive sense and adaptable in the way you show up in the world. So brain flexibility and cognitive flexibility rather than cognitive dissonance, which we're going to face with the exponential nature of technological growth. Keeping the mind flexy is very important. Do you

MH:

Think it actually leads to conflict in the short term as people struggle with this reevaluation of ideas where there is going to be parts of society that just simply won't agree with the science as it sort of plays out and it's

TH:

Proved well? Science is true whether you believe in it or not, it's getting close to objective. Truth one interesting thing, speaking of AI and the advance of technology, the new GPT zero one model, it just came out four oh was the model before, but this one's much better at logical objective thinking, whereas GPT-4 oh is much better at the creative language play in writing. And so as we have these different models for different pathways forward, I think it's important that we analyse the models and be really careful about the information that we give them because the current value in society that I see are bits and bytes, zeros and ones, and it's the way we share information. That's the current, going back to financial advice, follow where the value lies, and currently it's in electrons and bits and bytes and information.

MH:

You might need to elaborate on that.

TH:

Okay. How would I elaborate on, because that's unpacking quite a lot following the value, like human beings have valued tulips more than gold, gold more than fiat currency, and now bits and bytes and electrons are becoming one of the most valuable assets that humanity has ever created. And so how do we harness that not only from the sun, but potentially fusion and how do we power this new intelligence that we're all diving into? I think that that's a really good point to deal with how you invest in assets following the true value. And I think it's in literally bits and bytes and electrons from the sun. And let's not get into the quantum.

MH:

We definitely don't have time for that. But your comment before just around the new JBT model and the ability for it to process logic, I mean that's a big step from where we are today and today's pretty incredible as far as what it's able to do day to day and for businesses. How does that extrapolate? What's an example of how it's able to use that new model in day-to-day?

TH:

So it's really good at understanding scientific papers and also business strategy with an objective truth. If you're talking about serious numbers, I mean mathematics is the language of the universe and it's really good at providing objective truth. It's good at unravelling mathematics, which is really important, but it's not as good at discussing riddles like trickery. So fuss logic is what a GI is working on, but currently a GI is nowhere close to anything like that. Artificial general intelligence, the fuzzy logic that human beings have to deal with markets and the weird play out in politics and the way human beings react with each other because we're a weird race, we're a weird biological entity.

MH:

So if we just take that again to a practical sense within our industry, part of the process for delivering financial advice is to be able to provide or to do a range of calculations. So our projections on likelihood of running out of money, the ability to buy a house at a particular age, take a holiday and deal with different life events using the logic and the new models, that feels like it should be very achievable, the not too distant future.

TH:

I a hundred percent agree with that. And I think as far as financial advice, advisors that use AI will replace the ones that don't. And it's not that AI is going to replace financial advice, it's that those use it as a cooperative tool. We'll replace those that do not and don't get on board.

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MH:

I don't think there's anyone that's listening that actually enjoys the process of producing the documentation that goes with advice, but they love helping clients and sitting in front of clients and explaining what the numbers mean to them.

DS:

Exactly. I think it's about being able to a human skill building relationships, and those analysts and financial advisors are the ones that are using AI will then have so much more headspace in order to cultivate stronger relationships, greater empathy, looking out to up and coming trends and just being a bit more innovative and a bit more of a blue sky thinker because they've, again, like what I was talking about before, relinquish that need to be in the weeds doing the things that they don't actually necessarily want to be doing but are doing because it's part and parcel of the job. So I think again, it just creates a lot more head space and a lot more opportunity to evolve in any market, the evolution of whatever the job is. It's like there's going to be so much more opportunity to be imaginative and be creative and innovative because you're not stuck in the weeds trying to crunch out numbers and doing the things that again, would probably be a lot more correct. There'll be a lot less error when it's done by a machine versus a human.

TH:

A lot less error when it comes to objective truths, but I think it frees up people to be more human. It's a contradiction. As technology becomes a layer over almost every part of our society, it actually becomes more important to be human telling stories and working directly with clients and being able to connect on a human level because the human that's we do best. Yeah, well, the human race is full of human beings, and we don't work well with viruses and bacteria as we found out. So let's stick to our species

MH:

Whilst we're going down a bit of a rabbit hole and not only disturbing people, but probably confusing them. Do you have any views on longevity and what the likely age is that we're all going to live to in the next 10, 20 years? Because I think, again, that plays very deeply into everything that we're talking about and we'll come back to what sort of things we need to be thinking about to solve for it.

TH:

Well, have you heard the difference between lifespan and health span? Absolutely. Yeah. I think health spans going to increase, not more relevant, but lifespan is a bit more difficult because of telomeres and our basic biology and health span. Health span's definitely increasing for most people around the world.

MH:

I heard a great comment once, and it sounds very simple until you start to actually think about it. We've spent an hour listening to a longevity expert and scientist, and someone at the end said, that's all great, but what's the one thing that I can do to stay alive longer

DS:

Sleep?

MH:

And his response was actually stay alive for an extra year. And what he meant by that is for every year that you stay alive, you're likely to live one more year.

TH:

Yeah, exactly. It's exponential in it's manner.

MH:

Yeah. Okay. So we're living longer. Our health span's increasing. We've got a lot of technology to think about, and the new chat, JPT is going to do a lot of our work for us. So maybe a question back to you, how do we actually deal with all of this and how do we start to really take advantage of the opportunities out there, and in particular, how do we make it fun and use play to get to the right outcomes?

DS:

Well, at Future Crunch, we talk a lot about this idea of intelligent optimism. So how are you seeking out the facts and the information that are going to be able to help you foster a sense of optimism instead of a sense of doom and gloom? As far as our receptivity to bad news, we seek out the scary, the fearful, the crazy, the weird, instead of seeking out stories of progress. So I think it's really important to understand that while this is all kind of scary and what Tani's talked about is also a little bit difficult to probably comprehend for many people, I do sometimes go, what? Totally, you sound so smart, but I don't know what the F you're talking about. I'm

MH:

Glad you said that. It's not just me.

DS:

Yeah, no, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's just having a mindset of this is opportunity, this is exciting. We are on the frontiers of things that have never been possible before. And so I think it's easy to get scared and worried and fearful, but for the people who are stepping out and trying things and experimenting and really looking at as a chance to grow their own skills and their own humanity, I think there's a wealth of opportunity out there. And I've been in this business for eight years and I'm kind of waiting around for people for the penny to drop. I kind of feel like right now there's not enough pain around staying the same, and I think there's a lot of reactivity in business versus thinking about things to prevent. And so for me, it's like there's a sense of bravery that needs to happen in the business world where people are taking chances and doing more things that are unconventional, that are not the tried and tested methods that they used before, because those are going to be irrelevant incredibly soon.

And so instead of waiting for what you're doing to be irrelevant, you have the chance to really step out and explore what's out there, especially when it comes to technology, but also in just the way that you deal with your clients, your stakeholders, your employees. Again, we talk a lot about the need for more humanity. If we let this age of technology overpower us, we're just going to be hiding in the corner, shaking, waiting for a robot to take our job or our partner like you said in the talk. So yeah, I think for me, I feel like play needs a rebrand. I joke a lot with clients around how play has a PR problem. It's definitely seen as something like, oh, let's go have a drink at the pub and some pizza or wear a Hawaiian shirt and bring your dog to work. That's not actually what I dabble with when I talk about play at work.

It's really about creating a safe container for people to experiment and explore and whatever is relevant in your industry that you want to experiment and explore, it's just creating those moments and opportunities. Google is always a great example. They spend 70% of their time on their tasks. They spend 20% of their time getting better at those tasks and 10% of their time thinking about what's possible. And so I don't think a lot of businesses take a lot of opportunity to think about what's possible and kind of look out and look at other industries like we spoke about in our talk and gain some different diverse perspective. So it is just really about creating development programmes for people to have a play and ask questions and be curious. And when we are talking about human skills around empathy, resilience, flexibility, we're not giving them a PowerPoint presentation of 50 slides of how to be more flexible. We're actually giving them activities and opportunities and methods to try it in real time.

TH:

Experiential learning.

DS:

Exactly. Experiential learning. And I spoke about in my section of the talk around play, it takes 400 repetitions with rote learning to actually really digest a piece of content, but with play, it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions. So play is really the way that our brain wants to learn, but because of the puritan work ethic and success and salvation and all of this stuff around capitalism kind of takes away from that opportunity. And really seriousness does not equal success. I haven't in my travels of this methodology and idea found anyone that if I'm very serious, then I will guarantee success. So I think it's letting go of that old way of thinking where we have to be driving really hard KPIs and just overwhelming people. And burnout is on the rise and people are the most stressed. I think Australia is one of the most stressed workforces in the world. So what are we doing about it? How are we responding to it

MH:

Was a really interesting comment that you just made, which was that there hasn't been enough pain to force change. And I love that, and it really is. I've often said adversity is the precursor to innovation. And you're right, we're not there yet. And yet we're talking about innovation and wanting to change, but there's not, to your point, a real haste behind actually doing the things that you're talking about. So how do you start to create that sense of urgency regardless of industry? Because without that sense of urgency, you're not going to get people in a room playing or doing a lot of the things that you're talking about.

TH:

Well, I dunno how to create urgency besides climate change and all the existential risks that we face. But I think abundances comes with the problem. The more that you have, the more that sort of

DS:

Have to worry about,

TH:

Have to worry about, and also get distracted and placate. But I did want to come back to the point that Darren and I sound diametrically opposed with play and science, but they're actually both creative exploratory pursuits. It's about understanding knowledge both at an experiential level and a basic level. Anyway, I just wanted to say science is both creative and so is play

DS:

Play is the highest form of research,

TH:

And play is serious, and science can be fun.

MH:

Some of us would've been to the large consulting firms and sat down with a board of Lego for an hour and built cities. I know that that's not play, but it was probably my first experience, if you like, with experiential learning. What are some of the other techniques that you love and that have you seen be really effective in big business, but also I think more particularly in smaller businesses where it might be four or five to 10

DS:

People. I think it's just trying to approach meetings and ways of coming together in different ways. There's a methodology called liberating structures, which is actually a subset of different ways to come together. Instead of just having a chat, you can try and do a fishbowl where you set your chairs up into a circle. You have four seats in the middle, there's three people that are sitting there, and people kind of tap in and come in and out, and the discussion is just a little bit more exciting and interesting. I'm a huge fan of applied improvisation. So I think when we talk about how much of your day is improvised as an entrepreneur or professional, it's almost 95 to a hundred percent. And yet when it comes to having confidence around thinking on your feet and adapting to change and being able to really collaborate and make each other look good in times of strife, those simple concepts of saying yes and to build on each other's ideas and just being in the moment, Harvard and Stanford are now offering improv classes in their business programmes.

There's very well known improv teachers globally who are taking improv to places like Netflix and Pixar. So I think it's just a matter of starting to dabble in things a little bit. And for me, I think sometimes the way that I position it is much like we talk about your adaptability quotient as a muscle, so is play. So we get to this time in our lives where we have a job and we need to be serious and we need to grow up and we have a mortgage and we have all this stuff to do, and that ability to be curious and experiment and test and try things kind of goes out the window. And so we still have that inside of us, but it's just kind of calcified by responsibility. So it's like how do we start to cultivate, even in our personal lives? When I was a coach back in the day, I was asking my clients what their hobbies were, and it was like, I like to have a drink a coffee with my friend.

I'm like, that's not really a hobby. It's not stretching your mind and pushing your boundaries. So it's great to come in and do a Lego session, but then you go back to the everyday grind and there's no integration. So I think for me, it's really around how do you find ways throughout the day to promote opportunities for coming together, for having interesting conversations, for trying an activity in a different way, starting your meeting with a human question or a check-in or something like that. Just little opportunities of creating ritual within your organisation. I'm sure Netwealth does rituals where you have your summit every year, and I'm sure you do other things around coming together. So it's really about understanding what is the culture, where are the gaps? Do we need help with connection? And then using the power of the think of your people to go, how can we make these changes? What can we do? How can we get better at what this is? So I think it's really about looking inward and asking your people what do they need? How can they feel more human at work? What are they missing? And just opening the question up and letting them be a bit more in the driver's seat when it comes to their own kind of learning and development.

MH:

So practically, there's a lot of things that any business could be thinking about. So trying to come up with what are the most important things to solve First is often what we get from our clients. Where do I start? This is all too much. It feels like before you can start to play or have these sort of interactions or improv sessions, you need to try and actually identify what the problem is that you're trying to solve. So what advice would you have to even get to that point? Because I think for most businesses, understanding what their biggest one or two problems are that they need to solve is probably a great place to start.

TH:

How do you drill to the basics? Is that what you're saying?

MH:

Yeah. Where do you start? Where do you recommend businesses start? And as a scientist, there's a lot of things that you could be potentially looking to solve.

TH:

So this is industry agnostic, but I think really focusing on your information diet is number one, because what knowledge comes in. This is the same with AI models as well as the way we show up in the world. The knowledge that you take in feeds you and nourishes you and allows you to believe what is possible and gives you the amplitude to solve problems that you need to, but if your information is incorrect, so we're talking about longevity the same way that we think about culinary diets. To improve our health and our physical fitness, we need to think about the way we assimilate knowledge. And I think the concerns and problems the businesses face will be in that knowledge if you're looking in the right place. And also, consistency is incredibly important. We were talking about creativity, but also consistency is really important. Consistency in drilling down in the facts and getting the facts, and also playing around with new ideas. That's how you create new products, new ways of thinking and new ways of living.

DS:

I think also from a data perspective, a lot of organisations invest a lot of money on engagement surveys and data gathering and understanding what's happening, but then the question is, what are you going to do about it? So I think there's an opportunity to really mine that content and mine that information from your employees and understand where are the pitfalls and where are the challenges, but then really having an opportunity to invest in making those changes. Because I think what happens is you get very bitter taste in people's mouths when you're constantly surveying them and asking them what's wrong and nothing changes. And people are just like, oh, not another effing survey. I know Justin from Culture Amp came and spoke a lot about the data that they gather, and so it's like, great, you want to know what's happening. But now, so I think most organisations have people in culture leads and learning and development specialists and these people who are employed and tasked with finding those opportunities of improving employee experience.

And so how are those people coming together and really trying to define and understand and design opportunities where just talking to people, sometimes data on a spreadsheet is very different than just going out and being a scientist and surveying and doing a bit of research and just having a chat with your people and going, what's happening for you? What's going on? What do you need? What's working, what's not? And just being a little bit more human about it and real, and having those one-on-ones. I think oftentimes one-on-ones are compartmentalised as a monthly bimonthly, annually kind of experience when you can be just having casual one-on-ones as a leader all the time with your people, making them feel seen and heard and understood, and making it just a more casual experience. Instead of these kind of siloed meetings where people are scared of like, oh, I've got my one-on-one coming up.

What's going to happen? I'm going to get feedback. And just letting people know, this is your time to give us feedback. And I don't think there's enough reciprocity in the feedback space. There's always a one way from leadership kind of downwards of how you need to improve, but where's the reciprocity and the people saying, okay, this is what I think needs to be improved. And I don't think sometimes leaders are prepared to hear that because a lot of it's a reflection of their own leadership style. So until you're a really self-aware leader who is prepared to take that on and not make it personal and make it about your people and not about you, then I think those are when those cultural shifts can start to happen and more opportunity to be human and play and experiment and try is available. So I think it definitely starts at the leadership level around how are you espousing those values around permission and creativity and innovation in your own life and how that trickles down.

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MH:

Tane, you look like you wanted to add to that.

TH:

Oh, I wanted to get into the conversation. To me, the brain fart, or sorry, the brain explosion that I had was it's about really being able to shift between the subjective and the objective. And that takes, we call it the spectrum or the per spectrum, shifting your perspective along a spectrum. If you look at an atom, it looks very much like a galaxy or a solar system. But if you shift, so depending on your perspective, that changes everything. I think it's really important for businesses to understand the subjective needs of their individual employees and the financial needs, but also the objective reality of the world is finite and pretty well objective by definition. That was what I wanted to say. Very scientists.

DS:

That's all I have to say about that.

TH:

Yeah,

MH:

They're all great observations, and I think equally apply all to customers. And presumably you've seen some great outcomes where companies have used improv or more interactive sessions with their customers to actually tease out what the real needs are.

DS:

Yeah. I've had businesses bring me in to run sessions for their clients as a way to bring them together to show appreciation and then to kind of mine some data around what are their needs, where are they at, et cetera. Because I think also from a play perspective, and I always use heaps normal as a case study because Andy Miller is the founder and he's awesome, and we've chatted before, and they're just sort of inherently playful because their marketing is very playful, the way that they just kind of show up in the world. And because they're trying to sell non-alcoholic beer to Australians nonetheless. And for them, it was not about making it like, if you drink, you're going to die and your health metrics are going to plummet, and your life expectancy is going to,

TH:

Your health spends going to drop dramatically.

DS:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Where it's like they made having non-alcoholic beer, fun and cool and silly and quirky. And so again, it's play is not about trivialising challenging issues. It's about creating space for storytelling and humanity to kind of feed into the space to make it more accessible, more interesting, more fun, more engaging, et cetera. I think there's a lot of opportunity for play on many levels of the way you engage with your stakeholders and your clients, the way that you engage with your people, the way you engage with your marketing and your messaging. And it's not about being slapstick and silly and ridiculous. It's just play is an incredibly innate human characteristic. If we didn't need it, we would've lost it through natural selection. It is 100% the way that we've evolved as human beings. And so technology wouldn't exist if we didn't have a play and experiment and try. So if play the word play doesn't work for you, you can talk about creativity or innovation or experimentation or curiosity,

TH:

Exploration,

DS:

Exploration. There's a very big difference between childish and childlike. And I know you just said your twins, you're seven, they turned seven this morning. Amazing. They have this childlike curiosity and space of non-judgment and just wanting to learn and grow and try and childish is really taking the piss and punching down humour and that sort of stuff. So I think it's really creating a different story and understanding around what plays uses in the workspace in order to really deal with all this change in a way that creates optimism and opportunity.

MH:

One of the interesting ways that you've managed to encapsulize all of this, and again, we talked about this at the summit, everyone's, I think very familiar with IQ and should be very familiar with EQ these days, but you came up with the concept of aq. So the adaptability quotient, which I just think is wonderful because it's getting harder and harder to be a specialist in any particular area, but more so we've actually got tools that allow everyone to be specialists in some areas. So this ability to be a generalist and to sort of be able to sit across a lot of things and be adaptable, I thought was wonderful. Do you want to spend a few minutes talking about the adaptability quotient and how we can all seek to improve it? And is it actually a muscle that we can build?

TH:

It's definitely a muscle we can build, but let's define it first. So aq, the adaptability quotient is defined as your innate ability to identify what is relevant, unlearn obsolete knowledge, and make a conscious and continuous effort to change real time. And you can work on adaptability by one, being playful and experimenting and having new experiences, but two, also by working at it being consistent. It's kind of like physical fitness. You can work at it, get better at it in the process and train for it.

DS:

We also talk about how collaboration trump's genius, we idealise people who have Elon Musk, he's so amazing, but he's got a team of people behind him that are helping him go to the moon, for example. So I think in Western society, we idealise this individuality and being a hero and being able to do things on your own when actually being able to collaborate and have a team and have diverse perspectives helps you to be more adaptable because the more perspective you have, the more flexibility you have, therefore you're more adaptable.

TH:

Well, the universe is collaborating on a quantum level, and we're doing it on a human level. And also we contain multitudes. I mean, bacteria, viruses, protozoa, fungi outweigh our own DNA. If we boiled it down, if I took you Matt and boiled you down and did all your genetics, you'd be about 70% alien. So we're already in collaboration. So collaboration definitely trump's genius. That's why we're sitting here and there are people editing this podcast. So I think we need to open ourselves up to collaboration because it always trumps genius. And also be careful about diversity, diversity by design. I think the more diversity that we have, the better off everyone is. And every

MH:

Industry, including our own, has been subject to groupthink for far too long.

MH:

So you mentioned before though, that it's an innate capability, and yet we've all met and have people in our businesses that have fixed mindsets. So how do we really go about changing that? You've talked about a few other things. What should we be working with our colleagues on to help them flex that muscle and grow that muscle?

TH:

Well, getting outside of groupthink, I really think diversification of knowledge is really important. We were talking about an information diet before, really expanding your information and knowledge base is really important because groupthink happens by siloed thinking. As far as financial advice, I would start looking at ai, climate change, solving technologies and quantum computing. If you want to get into that sort of diversity of portfolios.

DS:

I think also a fixed mindset is learned. You are not born with a fixed mindset. So based on your own experiences and your own, that nature nurture piece as well, I think it takes a lot of self-awareness to be able to realise that you do have a fixed mindset. And we talk about in the aq talk about how being wrong is painful and uncomfortable and we don't like it. And so how do we start to acknowledge those parts of ourselves? And sometimes it just means going to therapy. If you want to be a better financial advisor, get a therapist if you're

MH:

Here first.

DS:

Yeah, exactly. So it's not rocket science. We have to look inward, and I'm trying to be woo woo and all spiritual, but it's like you talked about, everyone knows about eq. Emotional intelligence is so important, especially when you are in a space where you're dealing with people and money. Money is a challenging space for most people. I'm getting divorced right now, and it is horrendous because of the financial side of things. So when you're in this very delicate space of helping people trying to plan their lives and their future, the more you can drop into your own self-awareness and emotional intelligence and be able to support people and empathise, those are the people who are going to supersede the ones that are going to get the best financial outcome. Yeah, I love that. A lot of people want to stick with the same person and build a relationship and find that comradery in those people who are supporting them in all different parts of their life. If you get a good dentist, you're going to stick with that dentist for a long time. So the same thing speaks with financial advisings. If you can maintain a relationship and engage in people and ask them how they are and about their family and really understand them as a whole person, not just as their bank account, then those are the people who are really going to shine and prevail in this technology age.

TH:

Yeah, I a hundred

MH:

Percent concur. Unfortunately, we're about to run out of time, but we've gone down many, many different paths during this podcast talking about information diet. Where are some great resources that our listeners can go to, whether it's your own websites or places that you get your diet from?

TH:

Well, future Crunch has a subsidiary fix the news, which is evidence-based reasons to be intelligently optimistic about the future. Love it. It's got a bunch of stuff about climate change, human progress, and scientific research that is changing the world.

DS:

Stories of progress that you don't hear about in the evening news.

TH:

Yeah, exactly. That's about my only resource. Besides adding to the scientific literature, which I don't think is appropriate in this podcast,

DS:

I think it's just also about realising what are you reading, watching, listening to? Are You Doom scrolling? What are your habits online? And what are you filtering into your space? And perhaps there's an opportunity to remove yourself from the internet and go outside and find that hobby or find that thing that you used to do as a kid and just find those moments of joy. And again, giving your own self permission to feel good and experience life and try new things and go out and try something that you've never tried before and start working on that muscle of adaptability. Because the more we explore and try new things and see life as an adventure, the better our lives are going to be exponentially.

MH:

What a brilliant place to finish. Thank you both for coming in. Thank you for a wonderful presentation at our summit, and look forward to keeping in touch and hearing more.

DS:

We actually, we've had a webinar coming up a webinar. We're doing the webinar, so if there's anyone out there listening will be doing a webinar as well.

MH:

So stay tuned. Thanks to both of you.