WB-40

On this week’s show, Matt and Nick meet Alexander Feick, Vice President of eSentire Labs, to discuss his book “On Trust and AI” and why organisations need fundamentally different approaches to govern AI systems. Alex explains that whilst traditional computers multiply human intent predictably, generative AI acts more like an autonomous agent capable of creating its own decisions—something between software and people that requires new thinking about trust and verification. Using the example of AI-generated legal briefs with fabricated citations, he demonstrates why hallucination isn’t just a model problem but an architectural failure: when systems lack transparency, explainability, and alignment, organisations cannot verify the outputs they’re trusting. Alex introduces the concept of a control plane—deterministic software and logging that wraps around AI models to verify outputs work-by-work. Instead of allowing AI to directly cite cases (which it could fabricate), the system only permits references to IDs in a verified database, creating verification breakpoints between untrustworthy model output and validated information. This shifts human work from production to verification, applying critical thinking and domain expertise to judge whether AI reasoning is sound. Alex argues that “when creation became free, trust became the product”—as AI makes generation near-costless, real value concentrates in verification systems. Organisations must ensure verification capacity scales with generation capacity, otherwise they risk producing “AI slop”: unverified outputs that erode trust and create liabilities rather than value. You can read Alex’s book here: https://www.esentire.com/on-trust-and-ai/ Show transcript – automatically generated by Descript – below. [00:00:00] Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 343 of WB 40, the sort of fortnightly podcast with me, Matt Ballantine, Nick Drage, and Alex Feick. [00:01:08] Welcome to the first. February edition of the show and the first show that I’ve actually been involved with. So the front of house I’ve obviously for all of them, I am doing my devious work in the background to be able to edit the things. But this is the first time I’ve been on the show, uh, in 2026. [00:01:29] And, um, I joined by co-host and also soon to be co-author Nick Drage. Nick, how the devil are you? [00:01:40] Nick: I’m alright actually. How are you? [00:01:43] Matt: I’m, yeah, I’m good. Having said that, I kept waking up in the middle of the night last night. I’ve got a little bit of a cold and as I woke up in the middle of the night, I thought to myself, I know what I can do. [00:01:54] I can, in my head, I can rehearse. The talk that I’m giving in a couple of nights time in Nottingham which is gonna be the first or big public talk about randomness, which is the thing you and I have written the book about. And so in my brain, in my half, half awake, half asleep brain, I started to do my presentation and by about, by about slide three, I’d fallen back asleep again. [00:02:19] And I don’t think this is really necessarily a good advert for the quality of the presentation I’m gonna be giving on Thursday, but you know. Apart from that, the reason why I kept working up as well though, is ’cause the night before I had the experience of what can only be described as the most tortuous user interface that there is on this planet, which is the, what happens when the backup battery in your smoke alarm decides that it’s not got enough power in it. [00:02:49] And what it does is it makes a cheer up, very loud noise, but it does it in such a way that there’s a kind of. Improbable gap between them. And if you’ve got as many of the things in, uh, your house as I have, it’s next to impossible to know which one it is. But it’s really annoying. So it keeps, ’cause it’s designed to be annoying and they always go off, there’s a physics thing behind this. [00:03:10] They always go off in the middle of the night because at the coldest point is the point where the batteries are least efficient, so therefore they will always be triggered. So two in the morning, I’m on a small step trying to not fall down 14 flights of stairs to be able to get the thing off. So just so apart from that, I’m fine. [00:03:30] Nick: I thought you were making that bit up, but that makes sense. It does, doesn’t it? About batteries? About And also, yes, the interface is, the interface to them is horrible. I think it’s fair to say friend of the podcast, Dave Gray, who we both know to varying degrees, uh, had one in his, I think his basement where he does his video calls, online meetings, and. [00:03:54] It was just, he didn’t know where it was in that huge, you know, sort the typical huge American basement. So we just all got used to it. There was just a beep sporadically in the video calls. He runs every week for something like three months and instead of one week, we all noticed, I think halfway through that it had gone and either, and I don’t think it replaced, but I think it was finally it’s died. [00:04:17] Now, you know, your basement might catch fire, but at least you can have decent video calls. [00:04:21] Matt: Uh, yeah. I, I, I need to look up at some point how many people are injured or killed through the process of having to replace batteries in the middle of the night. And then it’s the kind of having to shove screwdriver into the side of it. [00:04:34] And the one literally at the top 14 stairs, and the way the builders installed it was the way you have to push it. The direction of push is down the stairs, so on a tiny little stair Oh, [00:04:45] Nick: is the same. [00:04:46] Matt: Yeah. Hal. So anyway, I think what I’m completely, there’s, there’s [00:04:50] Nick: a, there’s a podcast in that, but not this [00:04:51] Matt: episode. [00:04:52] No, no, no, no. Absolutely. But all I’m concluding is I’m lucky to be alive and you’re lucky to have me here. There we go. Um, have you been up to anything other than risking life and death in the last few weeks, Nick? [00:05:02] Nick: Oh yeah. ’cause I just suddenly realized, oh yeah, it’s the bit where you asked what I’ve been doing. [00:05:06] Matt: Yes. [00:05:06] Nick: That’s great. So I grabbed my work calendar and kind of. And I hope this sounds cooler than it is kind of, I can’t tell you, but as much as I can say ’cause of like NDAs and so on, is fighting an a well-known online chat platform and losing, let’s just leave that there. Helping develop and. Plan and soon we’ll be running a multi-agency war game, multi-agency exercise, which has proven really challenging, but really interesting, especially for use of LLMs, which we might get onto later. [00:05:43] And just planning another exercise where. An industry is looking forward to what might happen politically in the UK in the next few years and is looking to plan ahead, which is really good to hear about, really interesting to be involved with. And, um, just an an interesting sort of business and research projects. [00:06:02] All the times I’ve popped into this podcast and see things about the way war, professional war games and exercises might go. It looks like it actually is going that way. Finally. [00:06:13] Matt: That’s good to hear. I was talking to some people at government department today in the current state of British politics. [00:06:17] They were wondering what would be happening in the next week, not necessarily the next, you know, couple of years. I think the short term thing has come back forward. It’s like 2018 all over again. [00:06:28] Nick: Well, I mean, we can’t, I haven’t looked to the news for like six hours, so we can’t comment. Even though you are led it this quickly and get it out in a couple of days, we, you know, we could be completely out of date, [00:06:38] Matt: who knows? [00:06:38] Nick: But anyway, anyway, so that’s, that’s, that’s where we are. [00:06:41] Matt: Excellent. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you for, uh, for joining us. Uh, uh, how’s the political state of, uh, ’cause you’re in, in Waterloo in, um, Canada. Are you in a state of relative calm? Is it total turmoil? [00:06:55] Alex: Uh, there’s, there’s been a lot of commentary since Kearney did his, uh, his big speech which everybody of course followed domestically at home. [00:07:02] But, uh, other than that not too much, I would say [00:07:05] Matt: relatively calm. So [00:07:06] Alex: we’re all kind of wondering to see what the follow out of that is gonna be. [00:07:09] Matt: Yeah, it’s, um, it’s terrible when you have a quite volatile neighbor. I think that’s the best way to be able to puss it. Um, have you been up to anything interesting in the last week or so? [00:07:21] Alex: Last week or so I mean, I’ve been just getting final stuff, uh, for the print copy of, of my book to come out. And, uh, I’ve been working on, uh, AI driven malware, reversing a little bit, exploring that. A few other things just with, uh, some of the soc flows and, and research arrangements coming through for work. [00:07:38] So it’s, it’s an interesting time at work right now, that’s for sure. [00:07:42] Matt: Very good, but you haven’t been having to battle things in the middle of the night that might have caused me a certain death. [00:07:48] Alex: No, not so much. We had, uh, a bunch of coyotes and foxes around our house, uh, the other night that woke us all up with, uh, they were playing out in our yard. [00:07:56] So that was interesting. But, uh, no, no smoke alarms. I did actually have my life, uh, saved by one of those, uh, a couple years ago though, like our carbon monoxide detector went off ’cause our furnace was backing. Uh. Carbon monoxide into the house. So, [00:08:10] Matt: see, this is the story I need to be able to motivate me to change the batteries in these things. [00:08:14] So thank you. That’s good. [00:08:15] Alex: Yeah, it, it, it absolutely did save my life just a couple of years ago. So they, they, they do work and, uh. I’m very thankful that we had them installed with batteries and we didn’t leave them run for three months and then die. So [00:08:27] Matt: Well that idea of staying with that, but I guess you do just phase this stuff out after a while anyway. [00:08:32] We, we used to live on the flight path to Heathrow and it’s incredible actually how much noise and disturbance you can just zone out. In your life. But, um, there we go. Anyway, you mentioned your book. We are going to be talking about that and we are going to be talking about AI and trust and governance. [00:08:49] So I think we should probably crack on. [00:09:48] Nick: Okay, Alex. And we’re both old enough that we’ve seen tech technological changes and they’ve, they’ve become relatively familiar in their lifetimes. But what is it about? Generative AI or LMS or whatever definition you want to use, what about it? What is it about them that makes them different and require the kind of thinking that your book contains? [00:10:14] Alex: I mean, if, if, if I think about it getting back to first principles, I guess it’s, if we look at what computers have been able to do so far, it’s all been essentially multiplying the intent of a person in a predictable, deterministic way. When you look at what some of the new generative capabilities are doing, they’re actually capable of creating decisions, right? [00:10:35] Like you can argue whether or not you know, they truly have intent from a philosophical perspective, but from an actual business and trust perspective, you have to consider them agents that can invent their own workflows, come up with their own decisions. And so, they allow you to do a lot of things that previously were impossible within software, um, that used to have to be done by people. [00:10:55] And so if you think about them from a trust perspective, you have to think about them both in terms of the software being capable of running at speed and scale. And also in terms of them being somewhat like people and that you actually have to look at the decisions that they’re making and what they’re actually deciding to do as being something that you have to secure on each individual call, because you can’t predict what they’re going to do with perfect accuracy under all data conditions. [00:11:22] So it’s, I think for those two reasons at the, at the very lowest level, I’d say that’s, that’s kind of why you need to think about them differently from a security perspective, because they’re not really. The old computers of before, and they’re not really the same as people. There’s something that’s a blending of both qualities and you kind of have to think about that differently if you’re gonna secure it properly. [00:11:41] Nick: Yeah, that’s an excellent point. Like the old problem with computers was that they will do exactly what you tell them, you know, regardless of whether it’s what you meant, what you type into the command line or whatever is what they’ll do or what files they’ll delete and so on. Whereas you say I really like the way you put that in, that they’re not. [00:12:00] What we’re used to from computers, but also, and I think that point, the second point is key, is that they’re also not people. They’re this different third thing that we, as you might tell by how slowly I’m talking, like we struggle to find the right words and language to describe them. Um, so your, you’ve got a book that’s proposing solutions. [00:12:25] What makes your work. Unique or noteworthy among so many people getting into this area right now. [00:12:34] Alex: So probably the. I, I was trying to write a book that fit the need for business leaders to sort of understand what they could do with ai and help them understand sort of like the conceptual reasons why it was different and what they had to think about from a security perspective. [00:12:50] Sort of from an approach of, of really like enterprise design and business first, and, and not really delving into the weeds. I think there’s a lot of like, really in the weeds technical books about the how. I think that there’s a lot of existential books that are like philosophy or, or, or sort of thinking about where this might take us, but there’s not a lot about how to practically lead a business through adopting AI in a way that’s safe for today. [00:13:14] From, from sort of like a people and process perspective, and that’s really the core of what the book is about. It’s not so much about, you know, the, the technical specifications of, of models and, how, how you actually implement nist. It sort of talks about business architectures and how you can actually think through those problems as somebody who’s not necessarily in the weeds as a deep technologist. [00:13:35] Nick: Yeah, it seems really, and I, I shouldn’t sound as surprised as I am. From skimming through it in preparation for this, it seems really practical, which as you say, is what a lot of authors have avoided because I think it’s easier to be hand waving and philosophical. But it’s easy just to quote, I mean kind of stat blocks about the technology that’s out there, which is always out of date by the time the authors put that together, whereas your seems more like a guide. [00:14:08] Aimed at people who know enough to understand the, the content of the book. But, um, what’s your plan with regard to keeping it up to date in such a fast moving field? Is it, uh, well, rather than guessing, I’ll let you explain what’s the plan? What, when, as we were saying about British politics earlier, you know, as soon as you turn your head and look at something else, potentially you’re out of date. [00:14:32] Alex: Yeah, so I do a, a, a couple of things. One, I’ve got some companion resources that are published on my website. So like, if you want to like, explore how the book intersects with something like nist ai, RMF I’ve put together something that analyzes the text and sort of, connects it. Um, I’ve tried to do the text as an AI agent as well as as a book. [00:14:50] So I have sort of like an evolving set of commentary that’s that’s kind of coming on around. The, the topic online. But I think the other thing is when I was writing the book, I was really trying to go down to what are sort of the fundamental things that you need to understand about building a secure system around the ai. [00:15:09] And I think that’s gonna remain relevant regardless of how things go with ai. Because at the end of the day, I think we’re always gonna have the question of well, what do we do with models that are both incredibly useful? But also something that we don’t feel comfortable trusting directly. [00:15:22] How do we actually guarantee that? And so I’m not talking about technical specifics, I’m talking about patterns that you can use in order to build that up. And I think they’ll remain practical for quite a while. I think that, that we might scale back their use, but I think that the patterns for how we actually achieve transparency, explainability, and alignment, they’re gonna remain the same whether we’re talking about auditing a small sample or whether we’re talking about having to apply them every single time to critical decisions and they’re worth thinking through. [00:15:51] Matt: There’s an example that you give in the book of, a legal brief being produced as part of a lawyer team and generative AI tools are used and it creates a very impressive, very detailed, very referenced output, but the citations are basically made up. Um, and you describe that as being. And you talked a moment there about it being architectural problems. [00:16:22] You know it’s gone wrong because AI hallucinates, but architecturally what, what’s going wrong in an example like that? [00:16:29] Alex: So I think those are, are a couple of failures there, right? So, in that sort of situation, if you think about a lawyer who’s asking it to generate a brief, if you’re not architecting your system right, there’s no transparency into what the AI was actually pulling and, and referencing. [00:16:45] There’s no explainability about how it’s actually like justifying each individual thing that it’s reasoning about and using. And so it’s really, really difficult to answer the question about whether or not the system’s actually aligned with what it is. That you wanted to produce. And I think there’s a new type of knowledge work that’s emerging, which is around figuring out how do you make the cost of verifying something much cheaper than the cost to produce it by hand the first time yourself. [00:17:12] Because AI can produce almost anything that you’re after, but if you can’t verify it, you can’t trust it. And we keep seeing these examples hitting the media. Like I was actually surprised I wrote the first, the boardroom pilot state study that I opened the book with was something where, um, that hadn’t happened when I started writing the book. [00:17:30] And then by the time that I got to the point where I was releasing the first versions of the book, it had happened several times and had made media headlines around. So I actually got to quote it and cited in there, and it was much stronger. But I see those sorts of things happening all sorts of times in the businesses because. [00:17:45] A lot of businesses mistake what it is that you mean by transparency and explainability, and they think that means that the AI should explain itself or that you should have transparency into the thinking process of the ai, and that’s not really it. What you want is transparency into what the AI actually looked at and did you want an audit record of the artifacts that it’s actually interacting with? [00:18:07] And when you’re talking about explainability, you actually want to be able to review the reasons that it’s attaching for each decision that it’s making. And then decide if they’re actually worth following along with or not. It doesn’t matter what the model’s thinking internally. It matters what it’s touching and how it’s justifying what it’s touching and if that’s actually in alignment with what you’re after. [00:18:26] Matt: Uh, and that feels like it’s quite a distance from what our expectations. It’s come back to your point about how, systems used to be predictable and so. Interestingly, on the one hand, we’ve got a whole bunch of assumption that has built up in culture of organizations around management and technology, which is whatever the computer says will be, right? [00:18:46] And the only reason it won’t be right is because of either bad data or bad coding, but not because it, there’s a mistake. The stuff that comes out of LLMs by Design doesn’t fit that model because it’s predictive. So therefore it just, it’s just a completely different sort of information that’s coming out. [00:19:06] The other bit’s interesting that I think that and this is something I’ve been observing for years now because it brings outputs that are almost humanistic in their approach. They’re producing pros, they’re producing long form text, which is something we. Or, or images. And those are things that we just simply haven’t expected computers to be able to do for many years. [00:19:28] We also anthropomorphize them as well. So on the one hand, a computer should provide right answers, and on the other hand it should be seen as being human because it looks like a human, the kind of deep cultural level. There’s a lot of stuff that we’ve gotta unpick in organizations to be able to dispel both of those. [00:19:47] I think. [00:19:48] Alex: A hundred percent. And it also has societal ramifications because it’s, uh, you know, when, when computers can generate those sorts of things. And we previously thought that they could only be produced by people. We attach a level of trust to the things that are that type of content, and we haven’t yet learned as a society how we’re going to be able to trust those types of content. [00:20:10] Now that they can be cheaply and easily mass produced by computer systems. [00:20:15] Matt: And those, those trust things keep getting pushed a bit as well. So, I’ve recently got a new phone, one of the new pixel the Google ones and it’s got a hundred times Zoom on it. Now, the a hundred times Zoom is mostly software. [00:20:30] It’s not through. Physics. ’cause I mean, the phone would be enormous if it could have that sort of size of Zoom on it. And so it takes a photo and then it uses ai and it’s, it’s transparent in saying it’s using ai, but it’s using generative tools to be able to make a fairly blurry pixelated image into something that isn’t blurry and pixelated. [00:20:50] And it’s not reality. [00:20:52] Alex: Nope. It’s, it’s, it’s entirely generated. And how do you. How do you handle that when, you know all of the media that you are looking at could be generated that way? You don’t know. And I think this is something that businesses really need to adjust to. I’ve I’ve, I have a whole section on that because I, I really believe that the value in most of the things that we are looking at nowadays is what is actually verifiable. [00:21:19] And what we’re asking enterprises and businesses to do for us is to take something that we could probably generate for ourselves off of chat, GPT or, or Claude or some other tool, and make sure that it’s something that we can actually trust. And so if the businesses don’t get the trust portion right, then why is it that I wouldn’t just generate whatever they’re producing and selling me off of chat, GPT or, or Claude or, or one of the others? [00:21:46] Matt: So. Think of that from a, a business rather than a technological perspective. You’ve talked about these sort of three pillars of transparency, explainability, and alignment. How does how does a leader in an organization even big begin to approach this though? ’cause this isn’t about, and again, this sort of, the established models are, we invest in some machines. [00:22:12] We, we still think of technology as being mechanistic, even if it’s now producing cultural artifacts, whatever else. So what, what are the things that need to be done to be able to start making a shift in an organization so it can even begin to start to be able to deal with these things in a different way? [00:22:33] Alex: So if I go back to that example that you were raising earlier with the legal brief I mean, at the end of the day we can all go. Read the contracts and make, come to our own conclusions about whatever it is that that was in them. But we could not get it right. And we could also, uh, go to chat GPT and we could ask it for a case brief and it could not get it right. [00:22:53] So when we’re going to the lawyer, what we’re really going for is we want the lawyer to be basically saying, yeah, that this is solid. I’ve, I’ve reviewed this. You can take this to a judge. They’re not gonna, throw you out of court with it. And so in order to do that, I think what you actually have to do is think about how you can. [00:23:10] How you can tell somebody. That this is without using an appeal to authority, that this is something that they can actually trust. And to do that, I think what you actually have to do is you have to show the reasoning process. And because that’s a new type of work that we haven’t done before, most businesses haven’t actually thought through what the software to support that would be. [00:23:28] But I actually think it for almost every knowledge work. Job type that you have out there, you actually have to think about building a new system of software that’s optimized around that work that is now unique that only humans can do, that multiplies the value of the AI outputs that your business can generate. [00:23:45] So in the case of the legal brief, you might want a system that actually takes the AI generated case and, you know, compares it to, to good law and jeopardizes all of the notes so that the legal reviewer can actually take a look and see. Where the AI is getting its cases, where it’s getting its reasoning, and then because they’re lawyers and they understand all of that stuff, they in, in the right ui, they can very quickly see if, if the draft is actually something that would pass muster in front of a, a judge or not. [00:24:13] But if you’re just going straight to the model and you’re asking it to. You’re not using pointers to a database, you’re not thinking about the system of work to actually verify the output. You just get three pages of text. And the fastest way that you would be able to actually verify that as as, as a lawyer is basically go repeat the whole process of generating the case brief. [00:24:31] And that’s the trap that so many businesses are running into is they think that, you know, they’ve got an AI that generates the case brief, therefore they must be almost there. And really that’s the first 10% of the trip. The next 90% is figuring out how you’re actually gonna be able to stand behind that and do that in a way that isn’t gonna cost you more than just doing it by hand in the first place. [00:24:51] Nick: Isn’t I dunno how else to put this. Isn’t that horrible? I’ve not been involved directly and it’s much more. Matt and Chris’s area and the other co-hosts and our audience. But so what you’re saying is we don’t need sort of more investment or arguments about resource allocation. This is like a change in thinking and a change in processes, which is traditionally the absolute worst kind of thing to have to do within an organization. [00:25:19] But this technology makes that essential. I think from sort of my general analysis, and especially from what you’ve said is a, there’s just a fundamentally different meta approach if that’s not too pretentious, but meta approach to how to make this work. Am I understanding that correctly and should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the ability of organizations to do that? [00:25:46] Alex: I think it’s, it’s gonna leave a lot of organizations flat-footed and unable to shift. It’s gonna be really, really challenging for a lot of the established players. I do really believe that it is a fundamental shift of that magnitude, though. I think it’s, it’s it’s actually fundamentally changing. [00:26:01] The boundaries around what’s possible to do with software, right? Conventional software gets you so far and this new type of software takes you through things that previously you could only do with people and every enterprise that you can sort of point to today that works in knowledge work is predicated around the computers, do everything the computers can, and then the people do what the computers can’t. [00:26:23] And the way that I would look at it is, it’s sort of like the transition that accounting houses faced when we developed. PCs and, and modern spreadsheets. Previously, people operated with ledgers and you would employ an entire floor of accountants to add numbers together in order to audit books. [00:26:38] And if you can’t adapt to the emergence of, spreadsheets and, and, and computing technology, I don’t think that you can still get by with the old processes and in the same way. I think that that’s, that’s a similar degree of disruption that we’re actually facing when AI’s hit businesses. It’s very hard to think through how the human roles have to change. [00:26:58] It’s very hard to get it right. But everybody out there is, is sort of experimenting with this and, in, in a free market sort of situation, somebody will get it right and when they do, they’re going to disrupt your business. And that’s something that I think everybody’s sort of struggling with right now. [00:27:13] Matt: I wonder if it’s actually even further than the, you know, the shift from accountancy on paper to accountancy in Lotus 1, 2, 3, and, and Excel? Uh, I was chatting to somebody recently that the evolution of power in manufacturing initially there was no power and everything was hand built. And then we had things like horses and then people started to realize that if you found a source of power, you could attach things to it. [00:27:41] So, uh, rivers providing water power, and then you’d have these very complicated power distribution systems, which were involving pulley and axles and wheels and cogs and steam engines worked on that same principle with rubber belts and, and all of that meant that actually where the work happened was where the tools were and. [00:28:08] Yeah, that meant that you would have factories where the distribution of labor was split by the type of task. So there’d be a drilling room and a sanding room. I don’t know anything about these things, but you, you know, the, the, you’d have a room full of the same machine, and then you would bring the product to the machine room to be able to have whatever it needed to happen next. [00:28:27] Happened to it, then electricity came along and still the distribution of power was working on the same principle until people started to realize that gave you much more flexibility. ’cause you didn’t have the constraints of whirring axles and stuff. And then barring the fact that the Venetians got there in the 14 hundreds first when they’re building ships. [00:28:49] But you had the production line model and at that point then you’ve kind of brought the machines to. The the product rather than the product of the machines. And that fundamentally with what Ford and Taylor did in the early 19 hundreds, that fundamentally changed the nature of machine work in an auto factory or in a carriage factory or whatever else. [00:29:12] And then further, you know, automation and, and, but the, where we are at the moment. Is that we’re not even beginning to think about how the, the nature of the work needs to change to be able to take advantage of these new technologies because we’re so early into it, realistically with, with LLMs. [00:29:33] But the, the, the changes that may well come outta that will be deeply profound because it will be that actually entire, entire ways of working will change, but probably not now or in the next couple of years. ’cause that’s what a change takes. 20, 30 years perhaps. And if you look at how we use, business technology, I’ve been working for 30 something years. [00:29:56] When I started work in, uh, the early nineties, we had network file stores. We didn’t have the internet, the network file store model of how we share information within organizations. Even though it’s now all on cloud-based systems, if people use ’em at the Microsoft platform, it hasn’t really changed very much. [00:30:12] Since the days of NT servers and Novo NetWare it takes a long while for that kind of human behavior change and, and organizational behavior change to catch up with the opportunities that technologies have got. [00:30:27] Alex: I think to some extent That’s right. I actually think that AI is a little bit different in that though, because the thing that it’s actually optimizing is the type of mental work for actually enacting that type of change, and so. [00:30:41] If you know what you’re doing and you wanna plan out a project for how you’re gonna change something. So like one of the things that we’re doing in, in my own organization is, um, we’re trying to think about how do we adapt security operations center processes and previously that would involve like, you know, getting interviews, figuring out what the processes look like, doing cognitive task analysis work to split all that stuff apart, redesigning the processes. [00:31:04] You would be talking about you know. Armies of people coming in to try and take a look at that. We’re actually able to use AI within that process and now we can literally just have an interview with somebody over the phone and at the end of the interview, AI will generate for us a complete. [00:31:21] A flow diagram of what that process actually looks like and allow us to actually like, review it and discuss it. And I’ve led sort of like some of those enterprise change processes before. And I would say that it’s, it’s easily possible right now to compress, six weeks of work into a 30 minute interview with some of the, the tooling outputs that you can actually get with this because you literally, you just have to verify that you’re getting it right. [00:31:46] And the AI can do everything from listening to your conversation, to transcribing it into well-written notes, to transforming it into a project roadmap plan, giving you a process description, recommending how the software could look, and you need to verify every stage of it. But once you’ve actually got that, you can accelerate your way through some of those changes so much faster than you ever could before. [00:32:08] Matt: And I guess that also those kind of planning processes. There probably isn’t a right answer. And so if you can accelerate yourself to a point when you can start actually doing the work to see what works and what doesn’t, you cut out a whole load of not only time consuming work, but also work that actually is just polishing the problem rather than actually trying to work out what to do next. [00:32:36] Alex: Yes. Very much so, and you can do rapid implementations of prototypes in 30 minutes. Whereas previously, if you wanted to implement a prototype for something, you might finish up your call, talk about it for a few days, get a plan together for what you were gonna do, then go off to a small dev team spend two weeks coming up with a pilot. [00:32:54] Now it’s interview. AI coding assistance quick review of the production code, test it in the POC sandbox, and you can be looking at, a new way of doing things in the span of an afternoon. [00:33:10] I don’t think most of society is ready for it. I think the primary thing that’s gonna slow us down is cultural inertia. But the startups especially have enormous advantages on their side when they’re approaching this. And I see a lot of. Like little companies that, you know, may entirely fail, but there’s a lot of them that are out there and they’re all trying new things. [00:33:28] So I think there’s, there’s definitely going to be a lot of disruption in a lot of spaces as a result of this over the coming few years. [00:33:37] Matt: You also talk in the book about the idea of, uh, the control plane. Um, and essentially, I guess to an extent, kind of observability about this stuff and what, what’s going on. [00:33:51] Can you just unpack that a bit? [00:33:54] Alex: Yeah, so essentially what I think the limit is around ai and I spend a couple of chapters in the book sort of discussing threats and break points. But ultimately what I get down to the core thesis of the book is, look, you just can’t trust a model. Um, we’re not at a point where we can trust a model yet. [00:34:09] We might never be at a point where we can fully trust a model, but that doesn’t mean it can’t do useful work for you. And so the control plane is the idea that in order to actually get value out of a model, what you need is a system of deterministic software and logging around what the model is actually producing for you. [00:34:27] So that work product by work product, you’re capable of actually understanding what is what is this AI decision gonna drive? What is that AI decision gonna drive? And, that’s essentially what the, what the control plane is for all of that. So if you think about in the legal circumstance, you constrain it so that when the model is generating its output, it has access to a database of case law. [00:34:50] And it can’t actually directly cite cases. What it can do is it can look up that database of case law and it can cite goid. And when it cites a goid into the response the software that is gonna be used by your legal reviewers will substitute that goid for the actual looked up case. So they know at that point that there’s a break point. [00:35:10] They’ve gone from something that is untrustworthy, that the model could have hallucinated and made up to something that is absolutely 100% verified by software to be real. And that system of injecting those break points into the out point, or sorry, into the output, is what I would consider to be the control plane for the model and everything is, is, is how do you build that in a way that that scales, [00:35:35] Nick: that just sounds really clever. Like, I’d like to say something more. Uh, I see Matt smiling. I’d like to say something deeper and more insightful, but just that. That way of working and that new way of working. And especially in that particular example you cite, I assume that means that someone over a, an overworked human can’t just say, well, that’s probably right. [00:36:01] These are usually right. I’ll just pass that along the process. It’s like, no, I have to look this up to, to make it make sense to other humans. So you are, you’re forcing people to do that kind of work and it sounds relatively. Interesting. Rather than you’re just checking like the output of a machine. It’s more analytical than that. [00:36:21] So you, you still [00:36:23] Alex: have, I think, I think it’s not even that the person has to do it. Right. Like the, the control plane could do it for the person and it could actually tell the ai. Okay. The, the case that you cited for me, right? You gave me a goid for a case, and I went to go look up that goid and it didn’t exist. [00:36:39] Fail. That model output gets rejected and the model has to generate a new one until it gets one that actually passes all the original checks. What the human’s doing is actually more valuable. The human’s gonna look at it and they’re gonna go, I know that case is real because the deterministic software told me it was real. [00:36:54] The model is saying that that case can be used in this part like this. And if they’ve got all the, the stuff that they trust beside them, they can look at it and they can actually reason about what the AI is saying there. And they’re providing that judgment as a lawyer, as somebody who actually has the technical expertise in the domain to understand that argument and just weigh in on it. [00:37:16] Yeah. That’s plausible or no, that, that, that, that wouldn’t make sense. That case doesn’t support that argument that you’re making. But it gets back to that core critical thinking skill. And I think essentially if we think about what people will need to be doing in order to be valuable in the modern knowledge economy, it’s not gonna be just producing rote task outputs anymore. [00:37:35] It’s gonna be applying critical thinking skills to something that they’ve actually, gone and gotten the critic credentials to be able to say that they’re an expert in that field and they can work with it. [00:37:44] Matt: There is though a, a school of thought that. Proposes that. The problem with that though is that how do you get the next generation of lawyers or other knowledge workers trained? [00:37:54] Because actually the, the drudgy grunt work that is done by junior people, whilst not very high value, gives people the exposure to just the material, the content, the ways of thinking that through repetition eventually gets them to be the sort of person who could make the judgment of calls that you’re talking about. [00:38:15] How do you, well, how do we break against that argument because it’s quite compelling. [00:38:21] Alex: I have thought about that from a systems perspective. And the way that I would look at that is that if you build your control plane properly the human’s job is to verify. What, like the AI is actually producing the cases that are unknown. [00:38:35] How do you keep the human sharp? How do you train the human? You would present them with cases where you know what the right answer is, but the human doesn’t because they haven’t seen that particular example before. And you would see if they actually get the right answer when you know it. So say you’ve got 10 lawyers. [00:38:50] Three of them are senior and seven of them are junior and they’re all reviewing cases. The cases that come in that, that get the highest scrutiny, get a senior reviewing all of the arguments, who has the highest rated accuracy rating across everything? But juniors could be contributing to some of that work and, you know, for less risky decisions. [00:39:11] And you could classify that in your control plane as to which decisions would go where you could shunt some of those cases to juniors. And you could also use the same system that you’re using for verifying. To train people on the skills that they will need to verify the more sensitive edge cases. And essentially, if you, if you think about it as, as sort of like a dial, that you could flip it, it’s like, you know the highest risk decisions that need to get verified by the most skilled professionals. [00:39:35] Go to your most expensive, most senior people, and then the ones which are, lower risk decisions. You can shunt to some juniors and maybe you can do two or three juniors instead of a senior in a certain circumstance if, if there’s an enormous pay gap between them. But I definitely think that there are systems of essentially throttling the severity of the work. [00:39:54] To, or sort of r routing, it rather not throttling it to the right person so that the highest risk decisions end up with the most senior people. And the interesting thing about that is that the whole system builds up training examples that you can use. And maybe it, it becomes a situation where we send some of those off to universities and we say, yeah, you’re training to become a lawyer. [00:40:14] Here’s the system of verification that the, that the lawyers are using. Here’s some of the, the sensitive, decisions that could have gone either way. And you can get yourself comfortable with that. With a system of working. [00:40:26] Matt: Interesting. Other than obviously get a hold of your book, which we’ll put links to on the, uh, the show notes. [00:40:33] If somebody wanted to be able to start to think about the better management of trust within ai, what would be the first thing that they should start to look at? [00:40:50] Alex: It’s a tough question. If they’re not sure about the consequences, I would say go into the business processes. And whenever you’re looking at, if you’re a leader and somebody’s bringing an AI project in, the question that I would ask is not could AI get efficiency outta this thing? [00:41:05] I would ask the question, what is the worst thing that could happen to you if the AI. Made the most egregiously wrong or bad decision at this stage of it. And build your system accordingly. Because if you can show your customers that when AI is acting in a bad way, when the model’s been poisoned, when it’s been prompt injected, or when it’s been data drifted away from where it should be, that even under all of those circumstances, you can still show them how it is that they’re getting something that’s worth paying for. [00:41:37] Then you’ve got yourself something solid and I would, I would probably start there and everything else follows from that. [00:41:47] Nick: That feels like. [00:42:52] Matt: Fascinating. And as I said, we will put links to, there’s a free online version of the book as well as the physical version you’re having produced. Is that right? [00:43:02] Alex: Yep. Uh, that’s, that’s right. So anybody can read it online if they want to or play with it as an AI agent. [00:43:08] Matt: Brilliant. We will, um, stick the links to that on the show notes. [00:43:11] Um, so that’s part of the show where we work out what is coming up in the future, but not too far into the future. ’cause who knows? The next week ahead, Alex, have you got anything exciting coming up for yourself? [00:43:23] Alex: I guess I, I got a few things I wanna try and, uh, extend the number of crosswalks that I’ve got for the book before the physical copy comes out. [00:43:30] And then I also have some stuff, uh, to do at work around, uh, pulling AI into some more processes and, and using it to build workflows faster. So looking forward to that as well. [00:43:40] Matt: Excellent. Um, and how about you, Nick? What’s the weak head looking like for you? [00:43:46] Nick: I’m intending to get some personal game development exercise development projects done to an extent where I can share them with people, but I have a worrying feeling. [00:43:57] That’s what I said the last time I was co-hosting, which I think was last year. So, so, so let’s see how that goes. [00:44:06] How about you, Matt? [00:44:08] Matt: Uh, well, as I I think mentioned earlier in on Thursday I’m up in Nottingham at the University of Nottingham’s Innovation Center to give a talk about randomness, which is the thing that you, Nick and I have been working on for the last two years. So I have got a bag full of props. [00:44:25] I’m taking a dice with me. The first part of the presentation will be like a normal presentation. The second part will be. Driven by what? Is, comes out with a throwing of a dye. And then the third part will be people being given parts of the book to be able to talk about in smaller groups. So it is, there’s lots of stuff that I have not done before, which makes it quite exciting. [00:44:46] And then, uh, the week after, ’cause I won’t be done doing a show next week. I’m going to goway with some friends for our annual Christmas dinner, which is always slightly delayed because reasons. But, um, there’s six of us heading out to Claire Goway, which is a small town, about 10 miles outside of Goway City itself. [00:45:07] And we will be enjoying, I mean, given that the UK has apparently had not a single day without rain since the beginning of the year. I thought I’d go and escape the weather by going to West Coast of Ireland. ’cause that’ll be dry madness. [00:45:21] Nick: Best of luck. [00:45:22] Matt: Thank you very much. Anyway Alex, thank you very much for joining us this week. [00:45:26] Some really thought provoking stuff. [00:45:28] Nick: Thank you, [00:45:29] Matt: uh, Nick. Always a pleasure. [00:45:31] Nick: Thank you. [00:45:33] Matt: And we will be back in a couple of weeks time. We’re back on a better thing now, and I think we will be talking about partnerships with Shalene and Chris which is really interesting. Very different tack, much more about people than about technology, but that’s how we mix it up here on WB 40. [00:45:51] So until then have a great fortnight and we’ll be back with you soon. [00:47:04] Alex: Thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us on the internet at wb40podcast.com and on all good podcasting platforms.

On this week’s show, Lisa and Julia meet Emma Bruce, Software Engineering manager. The conversation explores the often-overlooked transition from individual contributor to engineering manager, examining why technical excellence doesn’t automatically translate to management success and what skills actually matter when leading teams. Emma discusses the historical lack of training for engineering managers and how the role has evolved into a more scientific one, with greater emphasis on metrics such as cycle time, throughput, and flow state. The discussion covers the challenge of aligning diverse stakeholders—from business objectives to compliance requirements—and the importance of consciously deciding what to deprioritise when focusing on specific KPIs, such as time to market. The conversation also touches on whether non-technical people can succeed as engineering managers, provided they partner effectively with strong technical leads. Show transcript automatically generated by Descript: Lisa: Welcome to episode 342 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Julia Bellis, and Emma Bruce. Julia: So it is great to be back here with you, Lisa. I think it’s been, well, this is certainly the first podcast that we have co-hosted in 2026. And to be honest. It was quite a way back, possibly in the summer 25 that we, um, did a double act. So it’s good to see you again. It’s been far too long. Lisa: It’s been ages, hasn’t it? It’s been, it feels like it’s been, last summer feels like a lifetime away and also feels like it wasn’t very long ago at all. But there’s been, I feel like there’s probably been quite a lot of things happening but. Bringing it back to slightly more recent times if we were gonna follow the format of the podcast, which also always is evolving. What have you been up to over the last week or so? Last fortnight ish, maybe, or since last summer. Julia: Wow. Um, let’s forget since last summer because I will just won’t stop talking. Possibly I have just come back from a really cool adventure. And, uh, I took Friday off work, got the train down to Pzi, and then spent three days walking from Pzi to Rye, which is, uh, a route called the 10 66 Country Walk. Lisa: That’s really far, isn’t it? How, what’s the distance on that? Julia: Yeah, it is really far. It’s very easy when you see it on a signpost and you go, oh, let’s do that. And then when you actually come to do it, it’s 60 kilometers. Day one we intended to walk 27 kilometers and we knew that was a big day because of various things happening and diversions and map reading fails. It ended up being 35 kilometers, which was painful. We sort of, uh. Battle is very beautiful. Very beautiful. You know, the Abby and the Castle and the church, we staggered into battle after dark and I have never ever been so happy. To see the pub where we were staying and stagger up the stairs in my backpack on and collapse into bed, actually. So yeah, it was a real adventure. Really good fun. So I’m glad I could come on the podcast and talk about it because I don’t often have such interesting weekends. Lisa: I’m getting horrible flashbacks. When I was in Central Ambulance as a teenager and we did a 75 mile walk around Surrey over five days. But we had a similar thing. The first day was the biggest day, but it ended up being a few miles longer than we were expecting. And it was just like, I mean, I was a, I was a teenager when it was hard enough, like I couldn’t imagine doing it now. So I’m in massive awe of you doing that. Julia: I am quite proud of myself actually. Yes, I made it and then, then the next two days you were saying how time walks. Distance warps when you’ve walked 30 K and you’ve still got five to go, that five feels incredibly long. But what about you Lisa? What have you been up to? I’ve Lisa: been entirely sedentary, certainly in comparison. I’ve been, well actually no that’s not true. The last fortnight. So since the last podcast, ’cause I was on the first one this year with Matt. Um, I had the color walk, although that’s not really a walk. It’s what? That, so the color walk is a thing that I do if I can make it work, allowing, it’s on the third Thursday of the month. And we go to old hospital fields market and meet up, and it’s on the flea market day and there’s between, normally between sort of 50 and 70 people wearing their most colorful outfits and all of your accessories. It’s like the opposite of what Chanel would say. It’s like before you leave the house, put more things on. Julia: Alright. Yeah, put everything on, but it is Lisa: more of a pose than a walk like I did. It did mean I left the house. But we don’t go much further than around the market. If we do any walking at all, we sort of meet up and chat and there’s a big group photo. But yeah, and I had a couple of events last week where I was at my desk, did a meet the author thing with my co-author and, um, the through, that’s Julia: exciting Lisa: talking about our book about accessible communications, which was nice. Um, it felt like the first joint thing me and Matisse have done for a while as well, so that was nice. I was sitting here at my desk, and then I also did a, it was a session called the Intranet Hot Seat, where I was interviewing Suzie Robinson from Clear Box, talking about the latest report that’s coming out. Oh, I think this Thursday now. It is Thursday. The T, no, Wednesday the 28th, I think. No. Yes. Anyway, at some point this week it’s coming out and it’s this massive tome comparing intranet products that sit on top of SharePoint or independent to SharePoint and communications platforms. And it’s something that I’ve been involved in over the last few years as an independent consultant. And we got to basically geek out about intranets. So that was also lovely in am midst actually doing some SharePoint stuff for a client. But Julia: yeah, I’m quite impressed at your ability to geek out over intranets actually. It’s quite Lisa: niche. There’s not that many of us do. Julia: We should find out more about that in future. How, how about you Emma? What have you been up to? Emma: Um. A couple of, couple of trips to the home counties over the last couple of weekends. One to Bahe to see my, my mom and sister. Another one to Redding this weekend just gone. And then, yeah, apart from that normal things during the week, but also I’ve been I sort of made the decision beginning of the year to, to look for another job. So I’ve been doing quite a bit of sort of research, trying to read up on, on various things and spending quite a lot of time kind of actually geeking out a geeking out a little bit more than normal even. Just just trying to get my, uh, get myself sort of back up to speed with some of the things I haven’t used for a little while. You know, in advance hopefully for finding a, finding another job. Julia: So this is really interesting actually. I think we could do a podcast on how to look for a job. After a number of years, or even dare I say, decades in your career, you know, it changes, doesn’t it? And then. You’re doing it in a new way that you’ve never done before. Emma: Yeah. And even the mechanism of actually looking so, going, I, I’m not a huge user of LinkedIn and every time I sort of log in, things have changed. First time coming across any kind of AI agent, doing a, you know, having a conversation with an AI agent not actually an interview. This was, um, a recruiter that uses AI to sort of screen people. Yeah. And things change every time. I, um, I, I look and as you say, yeah, it’s, I think there’s an art to becoming used to, you know, getting back into the job market again after a while. Julia: I had a slight anxiety pang actually when you were talking about AI agents. Crikey. Emma: Yeah. It’s, and, and so, um. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. And actually it was quite interesting ’cause I found myself having a fairly normal conversation with this, uh, with this ai. And yeah, what it produced at the end was a pretty decent summary of my career, what I’m looking for. All of those kind of things. What I would say is that in, in that case, and there’s a few different companies doing it, in that case they’ve then kind of not done a very good job of finding any roles for me. So it was a bit, it was, uh, maybe not quite as effective as I’d hoped, but yeah, I think, you know, there’s a, there’s a direction of travel and then some people seem to be even using AI for interview rounds. And I’m not, I’m not so sure about whether that’s. Something I would sign up for. Julia: It doesn’t say much for cultural fit or anything like that, does it, skill screening you can kind of understand, but then the interview’s a chance to get to know somebody and if you’re gonna delegate that to a machine. Yeah. Emma: Yeah, I, I would agree. And actually, you know, my role, I do an awful lot of interviewing from the other side of the table effectively. And I think. Every minute that you spend in an interview with somebody has a chance to learn more about them. And if, if you are gonna try and delegate that off to a, to an ai, they’re gonna miss the nuance. They’re gonna miss some of the detail of and, and maybe not. E you know, sometimes asking the right question opens the interview up entirely and you. You find out a whole load more about somebody you wouldn’t have heard. And I don’t think I would trust an AI to do all of that. And also, you know, as a candidate it sort of says the company can’t be bothered to you, you know, spend somebody’s time for an hour to interview you. And, and that’s not a great experience either. Julia: No, I can imagine. That’s not a great first impression. Is it? Anyway, this is fascinating. We should certainly do a, uh, podcast on recruitment techniques, I think. But that is not what we’re here to talk about today, I believe. Lisa: It might touch on that, but I think we’ll be looking at how roles evolve, how the, the differences between working as Matt’s favorite term, an individual contributor. Or a team member, I think, as he prefers it, versus becoming a more senior leader, particularly in the tech industry. Just before we do jump into it on first impressions, I know this is audio only, but I need to describe for listeners. So. Julia’s cat has been joining us and looking very interested in the conversation and in the background. We can see Emma’s office and I can only see three monitors from here, and I think that’s what, less than half of what’s actually in there. Um. Emma: Yeah, there’s nine. Julia: That’s impressive. This could be a record actually. Yeah, I think that’s more than Nick Jones. I get Emma: told off those are the ones that are plugged in. There’s about four or five more on the floor. Lisa: Yeah, I think that is more than Nick and I think I would love you and Nick to meet Emma because I think just looking at each other’s offices, there could be a whole, not necessarily an episode, but you’d certainly have an interesting conversation. Julia: That is one of the things that appealed to me about a career in tech about 25 years ago, was the idea of having loads of screens with stuff on it, and no one knew what it meant except for me. Emma: Yeah. A little bit like the matrix with all the sort of gibberish on the screen. I love that aesthetic. Yeah. Julia: It’s very appealing, isn’t it? Yeah. To a, if you’re in the right frame of mind. Lisa: Yeah. Alright, well, shall we get on with it then? So. I’m very excited about this conversation today. I’ve known Emma for a few years now, and. I’ve mentioned before my pub meetup that I set up a few years ago. ’cause I was sick of sitting on my own at home after working from home all day, not leaving the house and thinking I’d just like to go to the pub with some people. And so we are four years into that meetup now and one of the many spinoff conversations that we’ve had from that, and as my friend Emma is here as testament to that. We end up talking about life, the universe and everything, but particularly recently we’ve been talking about the challenges and the differences between working within a team, working as part of a senior leadership team. What those challenges are, what the different skills are, how you end up sometimes with the wrong people ending up in post, and how do people learn about it. You know, some people, my preference as a freelancer is I’m very pleased not to have line management responsibility, and I’m very pleased not to have several lines of line manager, although managing myself, I’m a terrible boss. So thinking about, I know Emma’s got this incredible background in some massive tech firms and medium sized tech firms and financial services, and you’ve seen all sorts of the industry and you’ve kind of probably techier than the average woman, would you say? Emma: Yeah, I guess so, but it, it varies. There’s some, there’s some others that you know are absolutely in awe of their skills. Lisa: Oh yes, but um, I’m always fascinated. So also I can’t, did we mention it in the preamble in the recording or not? But Emma also has her own GE counter, which sometimes comes out on the table in the pub, which is incredible ’cause we’ve found that some things are slightly more radioactive than others as well. Julia: So that must be so fun in the pub. Like Emma: it’s, I think people don’t expect that for good reason ’cause it’s a bit unusual. But then, you know, suddenly everyone wants to become a radiation safety officer and goes around the pub checking for hotspots and things. Yeah. Julia: What did what? Brazil nuts are highly radioactive, aren’t they? I have been led to believe. Emma: Yeah. There’s, um, various things have more or less than others. Uh, bananas are radioactive. It’s not like, it doesn’t set the counter off immediately, but if you sit the counter next to a banana for an hour or so, you’ll detect Yeah. Some this potassium in there that’s radioactive. Julia: So cool. Have you had anything surprising in a pub? Emma: The one thing I’m a bit n nervous of is that sometimes people are radioactive. And actually that’s something I, I don’t want to sort of, because, because if they’ve had some kind of a medical intervention, there’s a few treatments that doctors use that actually make you radioactive for a day or so. And the last thing I want is to actually sort of. You know, have the thing go off crazy because somebody’s been, uh, had a medical procedure that they don’t want to talk about. So I’m quite careful not to, unless I’m sure that the, the, that there’s no one in that situation. I try not to, get it out. But sometimes walking down the street, yes, it will go off and it’s because I’ve just walked past somebody. Lisa: And I’ve had some, one of those procedures in the past, I had, um, radioactive iodine, and I was told in my, you know, I had to avoid small children and pregnant women. I was like, what would happen if I chained myself to a school? I was trained to be a teacher at the time and the doctor looked at me a bit bit. Bit bemused. Um, and he is like, oh, just get a slightly unnecessary x-ray. There’s nothing more than that. So, um, I was hoping that it’d be much more interesting than that was, but yeah. Emma: Yeah, it’s like, it’s like getting a dentist x-ray. It’s not dangerous, it’s just, it’s best to avoid radiation if you can. But it’s not a dangerous amount. Julia: Do you know when I was very young, maybe, well, 12 or so, my grandma had all these old STR magazines from the early 19 hundreds and in one of those was an interview with Mary Curie. I hope I’ve got my dates right. And it was of an era when, you know, they knew absolutely nothing about radio activity. And I, as a 12-year-old read it and was ho horrified that they were, carrying this highly radioactive stuff around someone in his breast pocket took it home as a souvenir and, um, yeah it, it was a really eye-opening read about how much we had advanced in the. 80 or 90 years that it elapsed. I, I’ve forgotten my Mary Curie timelines, I must admit. Emma: It’s very interesting. She’s a hero of mine apart from anything else because, you know, absolutely brilliant women in science and there wasn’t a lot of them that got fame back in those days. Um, but yeah, you’re right. I mean, and a lot of what we know about radioactivity is because of. Things that she did. And, but certainly we didn’t realize quite how dangerous it can be until, after she died. And unfortunately part of the reason she died early and her husband, if I remember correctly, also did, uh, was because of the exposure they had. And apparently Thomas Edison convinced himself that x-rays would improve his eyesight. And so he would actually sit in front of a high power x-ray machine with the thing switched on. For way too long and it had the opposite effect of what he wanted, but you know, at the time they just didn’t know. I feel like, oh Lisa: my gosh. Emma: We, we, we are going off on a tangent, and this is my fault. Lisa: I’m very sorry. It’s not your fault at all. I took us entirely down this route. But, um, thinking back then to learnings in the modern workplace, modern being, whatever your definition of that is, but thinking about, so what’s your background, Emma? What kind of work do you do? Emma: Shall I talk about where I started or what I’m doing now or maybe a bit of both? Yeah, a bit of both. Okay. Um, so, um, I, I guess I, I didn’t train, I didn’t actually study computer science, but I was always really interested in, in computer science when I was a kid and any option, any opportunity I got, I studied physics. Any opportunity I got to do some software engineering, I would, I would take, my first job out of university, I joined IBM as a as part of their graduate scheme. Absolutely amazing scheme with lots of incredible training. Also them pushing you towards some slightly obsolete technology. So I learned COBOL and even used for a while. And then so, I worked as an engineer in a few different places. Then I think we’ll talk in a second about this sort of moving to management winding forward a little bit. My current role, um. Um, head of engineering, and I’ve been doing that for the last, uh, three roles that I’ve had. Generally now I’m managing managers as opposed to sort of directly managing engineers. So, of course my role is, you know, I’m, I’m interacting with engineers all the time. I’m involved in decision making and, and things that they do. But for me now, it’s on a slightly sort of bigger scale. Current place I’m working nine teams that I manage with a variety of engineers from a variety different backgrounds. So actually not just one type of technology, a quite a few different things all in the same area. Lisa: I. Nine teams. I cannot, I cannot imagine managing nine people, let alone nine teams of people. And that’s quite, that must be quite a challenge in terms of. I dunno how much, how much of your day job is now technical Have you been, when was the last time you, I’m also not a co or an engineer, so I use, I tend to use words in a way that infuriates people to actually do it. ’cause I, I play fast and loose with the definitions, but yeah. When was the last time you got your hands on sort of techy stuff in your job? Emma: In terms of actual coding, not in this job. My previous job, I, yes, I did do, I did do a bit partly because something came up that I. Used to you be an expert on technology, though, it’s, it’s interesting ’cause at the level that I’m at it’s usually now it’s more about we want to use a different technology or we want to standardize on something and being able to sort of evaluate like, I don’t know, maybe AWS versus Azure as a cloud provider. There’s, you need to understand a little bit about the. Quite a lot about technical things to make those decisions. So, so my kind of involvement is more on that level now rather than actually coding by myself. But at home, yeah, I, I still do quite a bit. Lisa: And did you say the other day that you’ve also been working on building your own LLM as part of that tinkering? Emma: Yes. That’s one of the things I’ve been doing since Christmas, actually. Yeah. Uh, it’s. But I feel like I’ve been, I use AI in my role. I’ve been using it quite a bit in, in a variety of different ways, but I looked into it many years ago and haven’t really gone on, looked under the covers for a while, so I felt that, yeah, I, I need to understand more about this. Uh, so yeah, I’m, I’m building something. It’s. Based on an early version of chat, GBT. And it run it’s, I’ve not finished it yet, but it will run locally on a laptop so you can actually kind of play around with it, see how it works, do different things, see what changes, that kind of stuff. Julia: So does that mean you get to curate the sources that go into. Emma: Yeah. Yeah. So you can, so you can kind of feed it any source material you want. The limitation is that there’s a lot of compute, and I think we all know that that’s one of the things about AI that is somewhat controversial because there’s a lot of energy, a lot of water used. But if you’re running it locally, yes you can. I think one of the things that, you know, for example, if you. Wanted to make something that is an expert in a particular area for your business. If you’ve got a lot of documentation about how things work, you can use that as a training material and it will start giving you half sensible answers, hopefully. Julia: Have you seen, have you, have you got that? Feedback loop going yet, or Emma: I’m not all the way to the end of it, so I haven’t, and, and I think it’s a great question because one of the things I was wanting to do was actually try and run it with some different source material, just see how good or how bad it actually works out to be. As with all of these technologies, you need to do a huge amount of training to, to get good results. And I suspect that when I get to that point, probably. There, I won’t have enough material about the topic to be able to really train it properly. So it, you know, it may end up not doing all that well, but yeah, I’m fascinated. I, I really want to get to the, to, to that point and figure out what, what happens. Lisa: I would happily test with that, test that with you, because I did some work. Wibbly wobbly time. I mean, beginning of last year, I think for a company who had done pretty much that they’re a little bit ahead of you, they’d built on an old version of Chatt PT, they’d built an internal, lLM, forget the word they wanted to use for it. They were, they kept putting me up on my use of terminology, but actually I think, I think I was more accurate than they were at the time. So that was quite interesting. There was a, there was a real, I really appreciated that they were experimenting and trying stuff out, but. Somebody at some point had put in, and I’m assuming it was part of some demo training stuff. Some like fake org charts. ’cause when I asked, I I, I wanted to understand what a good prompt would look like because they wanted to encourage employees to use it and test it out. And so I tried a few prompts that. Seemed to be a, a good prompt. And one of them, when I asked, when I asked who the CEO of the company was, it said it was the deputy product manager. And doubled down when I asked and gave me a, a completely fabricated history, how long they’d been working in that role for what their previous job was there. And it was fascinating how. Despite it having been trained on, and they’d gone through the whole rag process and upload and made all of these different profiles so that it would only look at certain information. I don’t know where it got poisoned, whether it was, but it was fascinating that it nev They never quite got it working while I was there. They, it did some things. Pretty well. But if you asked it to do any kind of fact-based recall, it just made stuff up. It filled in the gaps and completely fabricated it. Emma: It’s interesting because the way this works is the way you train language models is you give it an incomplete sentence and say there’s a missing word. What do you think it is? And then you, you know, it will have a guess at what the word should have been. And then you run through that. Millions of times, and eventually it gets to the point where it can accurately guess. It uses the previous results to sort of figure out was I right, was I wrong? But actually part of the way they work is guessing things that’s built in. So if you ask it something, it doesn’t know it, it will have a guess, and quite often it won’t get the right answer. Lisa: I’m enjoying this and I realize that we’re sort of tangenting again. So thanks listeners. This is one of our conversations in the pub. Yeah. But yeah, so going back then to the kind of different skill sets that’s needed for managers in engineering teams or sit managers of engineering teams, if not in them, what observations have you got from. By seeing yourself going through that process, but also seeing others around you. Yeah. Um, and I Emma: think it’s before I even considered management and in fact I, I would class myself as a reluctant manager when I first started to do it. I really I wasn’t, it wasn’t something I volunteered for and part of the reason was because. Back in those days being a, a, a, this dual track of careers for technologists where you can keep going as an ic, you can become more and more senior. The idea of having, you know, a principal or a distinguished engineer didn’t really exist. And so the way things worked in a lot of companies was you would get to a certain level. Probably around senior engineer, maybe lead engineer today. And then if you wanted to go any further, you would have to convert to being a manager. And so there was almost this sort of roadblock in your career. And so before I even went through the process, I knew a lot of managers who had. Done that previously and started managing, and they were great engineers, but they were pretty awful as managers. And so my experience of, of people being managers in engineering was there’s a load of people who are not very good at this, and I just kind of, assumed that’s what would happen to me if I ever considered it. Um, so that actually put me off for a while. Then, as my career developed, I was given the opportunity and, and I, I only really wanted to try to do this if I was able to continue, with the engineering side of my job. So I, I kind of dual hatted for a while. I was managing a small team, but I was also an engineer. And that went better than I thought it was going to. Uh, so. Uh, you know, I, I kind of developed onwards from there, but at the time there wasn’t really any any training on how to be a good manager. And that showed because there was a lots of people who weren’t good managers, as I say. So it did feel like it was kind of, I, I was about a bit in the dark about how to do things and I was having to sort of listen to people that I worked with, uh, and, and also people that had gone through the process before. Lisa: And thinking about, you mentioned there wasn’t much training then. Is that something that you think’s developed more now? I know we had, we’ve certainly had people on the podcast and I know Michelle, it’s something that Michelle does to an extent as well as one of our co-hosts. So have you seen that change in the last several years? Emma: The, it has changed. There is definitely more training available and there’s also more more introspection in management, in managers that people looking at what, what defines a good manager what do you look for? Um, so that happens more. I don’t think it’s done universally. I think there’s still pockets out there where people are they’re managers, but they’re not all that good at it. So I, I, yeah, I don’t think it’s universal. Julia: Well, it is such a different skill set, isn’t it? You know, to be a brilliant engineer, you are almost, um, relentlessly focused on elegant code. And to be a manager, you need a much wider lens, and you know that, or what am I trying to say? That sort of single focus. Detracts from your ability to keep on top of everything that’s going on. Emma: Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to be somewhat of a generalist as a manager. And yeah, as you say, a lot of engineers that they, they do like to focus on a single, single thing people skills. Um, as an engineer you can, you can get away without great people skills, though. It’s the sort of thing that. It will trip you up eventually. But people skills, you know, there’s a lot more emphasis on people skills, of course, as a manager. And yeah, as you say, it’s a totally different type of role. And I think it, it’s always surprised me that there was this assumption that a good engineer would turn into a good engineering manager. And I don’t think there’s any reason to think that’s true. But we still, back in those days, that’s what everybody did. Lisa: Do you think there’s an opportunity career pathwise for non-technical folks to come in to be engineering managers then? Is that something you’ve seen? Does that work? Yes, Emma: I have seen it. And it does work. There is so just thinking about the sort of things that, that that an engineering manager does. So certainly the sort of the more pastoral care helping people with their career progression. That side of things, people can be amazing. If they even, without the technical background. The area where people doing that can find it a little bit more difficult is where you as an engineering manager have to be able to look at what your team is doing from a technical perspective and say, does this. Does this make sense? Are we going off in the wrong direction? Some of it is somewhat formulaic. So if there’s, for example, if you’ve got a strong technical strategy in your company are we following the tech strategy? Is, is kind of a yes no question and you can, you can sort of answer that, but other times there’s things come up which you need a certain amount of. Engineering knowledge to be able to have a good opinion on it. But when I’ve seen people do this, they can be very successful if they are partnered up with maybe a strong lead engineer who, can bring that side of, uh, you know, bring that expertise to the table from their side. Julia: Yeah. They need to be able to acknowledge what they don’t know and trust that somebody else does know it, don’t they? Lisa: Gosh, you’ve just given me we, it is not quite the same, but thinking about when you get to, if you’ve ever worked or done a contract in the civil service, when different ministers come in and they’ve got ideas on how that department should be run and when you. If someone’s got quite a strong agenda, making sure that they’re able to actually listen to the civil servants who are advising them and trying to get that relationship. I feel like that managing upwards thing is quite an important, I mean, it’s quite an important skill to have at any level, but when you get more senior, that managing the other way as well must be quite a. Challenge, I suppose. Emma: Yeah, it, it, it is and I think it, and it depends on the people around you. But yes, um, having, being able to influence in, in, all sorts of different directions influencing peers is also important because. Quite often, bigger pieces of work, you end up having to work with people from different areas, they may not, may not want to help you all that much. So influencing them, influencing upwards in terms of direction of company direction, engineering direction. Are they. Paired up or are we kind of diverging? So yeah, the there’s quite a lot of different things you, you need to be able to do. And, and again, these aren’t necessarily the sorts of things that you would learn being an engineer, Lisa: something that we were. Considering the other day, and I know I did a brief stint as a product manager in the past, and I think that’s also your background, isn’t it, Julia? Julia: Well, yeah. I switched from being a programmer. To a product manager. Were Lisa: you a programmer as Julia: well? Yeah. Yeah, I did vb, C plus Java, all that old school stuff. No. COBOL though. Lisa: You didn’t miss out, you. Something that I found quite interesting. So I went into product from being a non-tech. Like I’ve always been interested as a sideline as well in tinkering, but I’ve never really done code. I remember having one job where it said I had to write HTML and CSS for a web manager job, and I did a tiny bit of jenning up and the night before my interview. And it’s clear that they just put it on the job description as a ’cause They didn’t know what they needed either. So that’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to tech. But I, what I found when I worked as a product owner is that I ended up basically managing Jira. Base, like all of the work I did was trying to push work through an approval process, prioritizing a Jira backlog, and then convince it, like listening to various stakeholders and making sure that what we were, what our team were doing. Was the right thing and I found it internally du as someone who likes to do a bit of everything. It was in a massive organization and my role was very specific and precise. I had very clear boundaries of what I could and couldn’t do as part of my role because I was a tiny cog as part of a massive machine, and I feel like it’s a challenge. In that organization, there was a bit of a challenge between what the product team were doing versus what the business needed versus what customers needed versus what financial compliance needed. How do you marry up those different challenges with stakeholders and get that balance? Yeah, Emma: it’s so I think. They used to be a sort of a non pretty unscientific. It was something that we didn’t, you know, it, it would, people would knew what we wanted to deliver, but actually it was a, a bit fuzzy the process to actually to actually deliver it. I think being an engineering manager has become a lot more scientific recently in that we kind of try to measure things more than we ever did before. And so, you know, in terms of keeping, making sure that the engineers are doing what makes sense for the other stakeholders agreeing what kind of KPIs you want to, you want to go after. Making sure that, okay, if we, and a conversation I’ve had recently is around, maybe time to market is something you want to, you want to go after because from a business perspective, you can, there’s value that you can have if you are first to the market with a, a new product, for example. And then how, as an engineering manager, one of the things you need to do is say, well, okay, now I know that time to market is what we’re going to do, what we’re going after, and it’s the biggest value and biggest impact. Um, how do I pivot the team? To do something that translates into a, an improvement in time to market. And but that process of agreeing, first of all, what is it we want to go after? And, and having everyone, all the stakeholders in the room, non-technical as, as much, a very important in this uh, and, and then, then the engineering team can kind of take some of that and, and run with it once, once you’ve got that agreement. So I think. And then within engineering you would probably have other things that you watched because some of these things like time to market, it’s a lagging indicator. It takes a while to filter through. So you may say, well, I won’t know if I’m successful for three months. So perhaps, um, I would have other things that I look at in terms of measuring, measuring how much you know, the flow state of the engineers. There’s a few, a few things like cycle time throughput, how quickly people can get things into production or, or staging. So you might look at those and say, okay, if. If engineers are actually able to push changes through quickly and they’re not being blocked, then that will translate into a better better KPI outcome. So I think another thing, yeah, that, that has changed since I started doing this as a manager is that we, we try to be more scientific than we were before, though there, there is still sometimes where it’s not as, maybe not as scientific and an analytical as it as it should be. Lisa: Does that, I want to ask that question back to Julia as well. Does that echo your experience? Julia: Yes, massively actually. I was thinking the joy of being a product manager with an engineering background is that you can work with developers to, build in where appropriate, depending on what the organization’s going for. But just things like sustainability and not doing something crazy just because somebody powerful has asked for it, you know, you can form a useful coalition. And then the other interesting thing is. Knowing what your trade offs are, you know, if you’re going forward, time to market, to use them as example, you can consciously deprioritize other stuff and say, we are gonna do this as fast as possible and knowingly create a number of problems for ourselves, which we will fix once we’ve beaten all of the competition to get this to production. And you can just, yeah, be a bit more strategic, but creating that alignment. Is not easy, especially in large organizations. Emma: Yeah. Yeah it’s such an interesting conversation. When you try and create that alignment and having done it a few times, quite often people you’ll have maybe four or five people in the room and they’ll, there’ll be four or five different opinions. But that says something in itself. It means that you are not aligned today, by the end of the process you need to be. So even just having that conversation does some good. You can see it might be that people from different parts of the business have different things that they think you should go after. And I, I’m sure there’s good reasons for each. And actually sometimes it, it can be a very, it goes up to quite a senior level within a company to, to make the decision because it’s like, we are investing money here. What do we actually want to achieve as a company? But it’s an important conversation to have. Lisa: Ooh. I feel like alignment might end up being the title for this episode. I feel like that’s one of the themes that’s sort of come out as we’ve been talking because actually getting everybody lined up, you know, it’s, there’s so many processes and different ways you can do it and different formulas that you could follow. But yeah, ultimately it’s about getting everyone to agree. In the time you’ve got, Julia: well, there is something about knowing what you’re going after and then you can stop trying to be all things to all people because you’ll never do anything. Well if you try to do everything and focus on what you really want to be the best at. Emma: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean, what you said a second ago, Julia, is, is so true that once you’ve got, once you’ve got the agreement of like, we, this is what we’re going after, some things will fall by the wayside because we don’t have an infinite amount of people and, and resources to to do everything. And actually doing that consciously is so much better. So saying like, okay, we are not going to do projects X, Y, and Z or, or, or deliveries X, Y, and Z. And yeah, just be very transparent about that. It’s like that doesn’t get us to where we want to be by the end of the time period, so we’re not going to be doing them. Julia: So the irony is a massive part of this job is communication and to resort to cliches. You know, the sort of people who, uh, start their career wanting to write code. It’s a great excuse to not have to communicate, isn’t it? You know, you, you communicate with a machine that does exactly what you tell it to do, um, and then suddenly people don’t do exactly what you tell ’em to do in the same way. Emma: Yeah. Most of the time. Julia: Yeah. And that’s a bit of a shock. Yeah. Lisa: I feel like on that bombshell, I always, always love these conversations, and I feel like it’s. If you’re still listening to us, thank you so much. You’ve basically been eavesdropping as if we’re in the rusty bucket in Elton. I’ve been very much enjoying this session. Speaking of pub meetups this week I have, we have a meetup on Thursday at the Green Goddess, uh, which is our first power o’clock of the year at the Green Goddess in SC three. I’ve also got, an early morning workshop with pod friend Mark Earls on Wednesday. Talking about, actually, I’m not quite sure what it is about. It sounds really intriguing and getting together with some really interesting people. ’cause Mark knows some really interesting people. So I’ll be up early in, in East London for that on Wednesday. I’ve got a couple of other things going on this week, wrapping up some more SharePoint stuff, talking to Matisse about some book things. But what are you up to this week, Julia? Julia: In fact, I am now working more closely than ever with fellow WB 40 host Matt Ballantine. Ooh. So he is running a workshop on Thursday that I am attending where we are attempting to get some sort of alignment, some sort of strategy fits in quite nicely with what we’ve been talking about actually in the work that we are both doing as our day jobs. So, um, I’m quite looking forward to that. Okay. That should be good fun. Lisa: Recovering this weekend, not got another 50 kilometer walk planned. Julia: No. I might attempt park run and my, I do like park run. I do park run quite often in the summer I speed up ’cause I go running in the evenings and then in the winter I never go running apart from on a Saturday morning park run. So you can just see my times getting slower and slower and slow. So I’ll do a. Slow park run instead. And actually I do it with my friend Karen, who’s the one who provides the impetus and we sort of chat and jog as we go around. So that’s quite nice. Lisa: Emma, what have you got coming up in the next week or so? Emma: I’m looking forward to joining you at, uh, the pub o’clock meet on Thursday. That will be fun. Yay. I’ve got some holiday actually, I carried over from the end of last year. So I’ve got a few days and I think, um, I’m. Thinking I might take a, a last minute break and go somewhere. I haven’t decided where, probably not very far, but and Julia: oh, good skills. That’s exciting. Emma: Yeah. A mystery holiday. Yes. I say probably not very far at all. Maybe somewhere in Kent. There’s some nice places to go out there. And yeah, hopefully make some more progress on this LLM that I’ve been writing that we were talking about earlier. And hopefully next time I. I, uh, talk to you. I can tell you a bit more about how you train them and whether or not they hallucinate when you do. Lisa: Oh, lovely. And if you’re gonna, if when you get there, write it up, we’ll happily share it as well. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. I look forward to it. Yeah. Wonderful. Great. Emma: Thank you for listening To WB 40. You can find us on the internet@wbfortypodcast.com and an all good podcasting platforms. Julia: So normally this would be the point where we, uh, give you a great hook to come back and listen to our next episode. However, we are not entirely clear who our next guests are gonna be. There you go. It’s a surprise. We’re just gonna invite you to come back to listen to episode 343 of WB 40.

On this week’s show, Lisa Riemers and Chris Weston meet Sharon O’Dea to discuss digital nomadism and the evolution of remote work. Sharon shares insights from her decade-long journey as a digital nomad, including her recent seven-week stint in Japan, where she worked from locations ranging from traditional coworking spaces to foot spas in town squares. The conversation explores how digital nomadism has evolved from a niche lifestyle to a mainstream working pattern, examining both the opportunities it creates for geographical arbitrage and talent access, and the infrastructure challenges that remain. Sharon highlights how towns like Nagasaki are developing specific offerings for remote workers, creating ecosystems that blend professional development with cultural exchange, whilst also discussing how these same principles can benefit people who simply lack access to reliable transport or need flexible working arrangements for caring responsibilities. The discussion shifts to the practical realities of making remote work sustainable, particularly around the thorny issue of time zones and asynchronous collaboration. Whilst tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom enabled widespread remote work during the pandemic, they’re still largely designed for synchronous presence rather than output-focused collaboration. Sharon argues that truly effective remote work requires moving away from managing presence towards measuring outcomes, breaking the connection between work, time and place. The hosts also explore the human side of remote work—the importance of intentional rituals and moments of connection that prevent teams from fracturing when they’re not physically together. The conversation concludes with a more cautionary note about ensuring remote work is designed for dignity and connection rather than creating new forms of digital exploitation. Transcript automatically generated by Descript. Lisa: Episode three 40 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Chris Weston and Sharon O’Dea. Chris: Oh, hello everybody and welcome to January, 2026, which is as I think Matt said in a LinkedIn post the other day. It’s the 11th calendar year of WB 40 which is a little bit, uh, scary, but we are, we have evolved. We’ve got, you know, he is, that’s not here. He’ll be, he’ll be. Pulling the levers later on. But, um, no. Today it’s, uh, myself and Lisa and Sharon oday and we’re gonna be talking about digital nomadism. And, um, but before we do that, we’re gonna talk a little bit about what we’ve been up to in the last few days, week. Uh, what whatever I think suits our purpose. Lisa, what have you been up to? Lisa: Well, it feels like 2026 has had a bit of a slow start for me. I’ve had a cold all year, which is fun. I did manage to get through most of Christmas, relatively healthy though. So we did have a really lovely run of it all. Had a lovely uneventful, festive period in the best way. Like everything ran quite smoothly and we saw friends and family and there weren’t any major dramas. So the last week or so have been kind of. Winding back up again into work mode and picking up with clients that I was speaking to in December, and some people are raring to go and other people are still trying to get back into things. So it feels like a slow start to the year for me. But lots of stuff going on. How about you, Chris? Chris: Funnily enough, I was with a colleague today. I was in Birmingham going to see somebody and we, we were walking through and I was saying that actually it feels like January has, has gone very, very quickly. And I think maybe that’s because I didn’t go back to work until like the fifth of Jan. So we’re, um, you know, we’re already a week in pretty much when you go back to work, but it’s nearly now the 12th. And I guess the, uh, impending deadlines that are happening this month and next month around various things at work mean that. It does seem like it’s the, the water’s draining away extremely quickly in terms of, uh, the time we have available. So it does seem to have gone quite quickly and I happen to be really busy. However, I haven’t had to go too many places. I’ve been out and about a little bit. So it’s been uh, head down planning, getting ready for what’s gonna happen in the rest of this year. So, uh, yeah, I can’t say that very much has happened. We had the snow last week, which, um. Which was extremely, uh, cold and, um, in my outside office here meant that I had to put the heating on about an hour before I wanted to come in here ’cause it was just too cold for my sensitive disposition. But other than that, yeah, I can’t complain. It’s been a decent start to the year. So, Sharon, welcome again, welcome back. Hey, after, uh, many years of, uh, A Gap, what were you doing this year, this week? Sharon: So actually I’ve been, we’ve been really busy. So, uh, the biggest thing is that we, me and my business partner, Jonathan and co-author, we sent in the final chapters and the last bit of the manuscript of our book. Uh, this is the first opportunity. Then officially I get to plug it. So, thank you. Should I, uh, it is out, it’s available on pre-order. Are you, what’s best? You’re not sure? I’ll say that again. Thank you. I’m really glad you asked. It’s called Digital Communications at Work and it is the book that I wish I’d had when I was in-house. It kind of walks you through the process of working out what your users need, what your organization needs, how to choose the right section of, uh, selection of platforms even, and configure them and manage them. For the long term. Uh, so it’s kind of about the infrastructure and plumbing of communications. But yes, Jonathan and I finished off the last sort of few edits and sent them in on Friday. So while everyone else was enjoying their mint supplies, I was hunched over my laptop at home. Editing and going over and over the same handful of edits. It’s really weird when you work in digital, you know, we always say like, done is better than perfect, but it’s not there, is it? It’s gotta be perfect. And it’s really counter-cultural. I dunno if you had it that experience, Lisa, but I’m like, oh, I could just change this bit over and over again. Lisa: Yeah. I mean book is the, the ultimate in waterfall launching. Sharon: Yeah. Lisa: It’s, you can iterate and do additional versions in the future, but each one takes, what, 18 months? So something like that. Yeah, it’s quite, quite the thing, and it’s. Sharon: It’s quite weird going, okay, what if everyone hates it or if they don’t agree with, anyway, so yeah, it was really weird letting go, like it was okay sending off one chapter at a time, but that’s what I’ve been up to. And then alongside that, there’s the day job, which has suddenly got really busy, like the end of last year was moderately quiet and now all of a sudden everyone’s raring to go, which is great. Uh, we’ve got some workshops coming up and I love doing that. That kind of just planning how we’re gonna get the best out of people in the room has been quite fun. So, yeah, it’s been, I can’t believe it’s the middle of January already. It feels like this month has gone super quickly already. Lisa: So, Chris, when’s your book coming out? Chris: Well, do you know what I’m thinking about that? I was, I was, I was thinking about it the other day actually. I’ve got, I’ve got the germ of an idea and. I’m not really the kind of person who thinks to himself I should write a book because I understand my own, uh, deficiencies in terms of, uh, ability to actually get on and do something like that for an extended period of time. But I thought my, I was just sitting there the other day and I was thinking, I was actually reading another book. I was reading a book called something like. Why is everything fucked? A book about hope by a guy called somebody Manson, mark Manson or something like that. And it was quite good ’cause it, it talked about the fact that you know, there’s a lot of like I would call standard, uh, psychology in it, but a lot of stuff about. About kind of narcissistic ways of thinking and why we, why we don’t, why we get into a bit of a, a model and don’t wanna move on with our, without what, whatever we’re doing. And we get rerun out of hope. And I realized that, that my particular way of tackling stuff. It does rely on a certain level of I think perspective on the basis that, you know, that sold saying that, uh, and I can’t remember who said it, a politician probably once upon a time, you know, nothing, very, nothing matters very much. And those things that do don’t matter very much at all. Right. It’s like something like that. It’s like, if you work in a job where people might die, if you press the wrong button, or if you don’t, go turn the wrong direction. That’s one thing. But everything else, much as we want to be. Professional, want to do our best the best we possibly can, which is we want to do the best for our colleagues and all of that kind of stuff. Alright. If we stopped doing it, if our company suddenly stopped working, somebody, another company would pop up doing that stuff, right? It’s not, it’s not the end of the world. It literally isn’t. And therefore, how people react to different things that work. I think. My own reactions aren’t the same as, as other people’s necessarily. And maybe there’s a pamphlet in it. I wouldn’t call it a book. Maybe there’s a pamphlet. Maybe there’s a, or maybe just a two sides of a beer mat. I don’t know. But you never know, Lisa, you know, now I’m feeling a bit left out. Now. Everybody seems to have written a book. Maybe I should, uh, maybe I should do that. Sharon: See, chat. GPT bullied me into writing my book, which is I, um, I had to write a conference biography like a bug, who myself and being British, that’s just mortifying. So I asked chat GPT to do it. And it was worryingly competent in that it got most right. I’ve got relatively uncommon name. I’m all over the internet. And that, except that. It then gave, there were a couple of things as always that just weren’t quite right, so it kept giving me degrees I didn’t have from universities. I hadn’t gone to much better degrees than the one I actually have. But also then it said, Sharon is the author of two books and um, and they were, uh. The Digital Workplace, a Practical Guide and the Future of Work, A Guide for Leaders. And I, I didn’t write that. I wonder who did. So I went off down this rabbit hole of first of all looking it up and then went, oh, they don’t exist. So that, then it was only just after chat GPT was launched. So then that led me down the rabbit hole of going, right. How does all of this LLM thing work? And, you know, the long and short of it, as we know is it’s something I could. Conceivably have written, just based on everything else I’ve done. So I, I ended up going down the road of writing this blog, uh, like a blog post about everything that, this book that I didn’t write told me about, about how AI works. And then a, a publisher got in touch and went, yeah, but would you want to write it? Uh, and the rest is history. Lisa: Amazing. Sharon: So there you go. Maybe you should ask chat gp, pt, what Chris Western wrote, and then sort of a little prob uh, fantasy. Fill it in. Retrospectively, Chris: I think I’m be a bit frightened to find out what it think wrote and, and, and the ensuing controversy or whatever it might say. Lisa: Well, I’m looking forward to Western seditious. Coming soon to a, coming soon to a pocket near you, Chris: Thomas Payne or somebody like that. Absolutely. Lisa: Shall we get on with talking about nomads and working from different places? Why, Sharon: where are we working from today? Chris: Well, I am working from where I normally work from, which is in my little kind of box office in the garden. Because when our, when our company was, uh, sold and, um, the company I worked for, uh, last year, or actually now the year before last we lost our, uh, most of our offices and now we’re, because we’re a very pretty international business, we’re all scattered the four winds. So we all work pretty remotely. So that’s where I’m at. Home. Lisa: In my office, in my house in southeast London. I say office, it’s uh, the other room that’s a guest room and a storage room, and it’s our room. But I’m in southeast London working remotely as I do usually. Chris: So are you, Sean? Sharon: I am actually in my office, which I know sounds a little bit counter-cultural for someone who largely is quite nomadic, but I, um, when I’m, I’m based in Amsterdam and I have a little office in a cowork space about 10 minutes from home because I live in a really tiny flat, and, uh, if I didn’t have somewhere else to go, I would never leave the house. So it, for me, it’s quite nice having a mental space, which I go to. And then leave again. But obviously it being about an hour on from here, I am the only person in the building. So just before we got on this, this call, I had to sort of run around waving my arms to turn all the lights back on. Chris: Is a, that is an issue we’re working on your, in the office. I do, I do know that. And likewise. I mean, I actually got this office about a year ago just because I needed to get out of the house. I couldn’t, I couldn’t work and live in the house. It was driving me absolutely batty. Just be, just through, uh, as you say, just seeing no other space at all. Even, even though I only have to like go four or five steps to hear. It feels like a. A change. It feels like a, a barrier has been crossed. That kind of liminal space has been, has been has been crossed not, and get to a different place. But, um, so think, talking about, I mean, you’ve, you’ve talked about digital nomad Sharon, you’ve, you’ve written articles about it and you, you know, it’s the kind of thing that you’ve talked about before. How did you when did you start, when was your first digital nomad experience? Sharon: That is a good question. ’cause it, where do you start from? So I’ve always had a job, or certainly, oh, since I started working in banking, I had a job that took me away, traveling quite a lot for work. So I inevitably got used to working on the road as a lot of people who have that kind of job. Do you know that it could be the odd few days here and there, but ultimately. Your work becomes quite mobile. And then when I quit that job and, and moved into consultancy, I just started to find that my work took me away a lot more than it used to, you know, to clients who were all over the place and then increasingly. I realized that, I could take my work to wherever I wanted to be as well. So actually reflecting on it, I, um, my first reaction after I left my big bank job was to book a one-way flight to Bali. So me and my laptop did all my business. Setting up from there, like sort of on reflection, set the tone for the subsequent decade. But I guess it I almost exactly 10 years we put it like that, but there was probably a bit of a lead up. And that’s obviously there was the, um, the 2020 period when the staycation trend went a little bit too far for my liking. But we’ve kind of, uh, since then started to ramp up a little bit to being much more flexible Again, maybe it was one of those post pandemic learnings. Chris: And when you went to Bali, you’re thinking back to that, that first period where you were doing that, what did you kind of find anything, do you remember anything surprising you about being there and what maybe what you could do or what you couldn’t do or what you wished you did have access to and didn’t? Sharon: Actually, you know what, I hadn’t actually reflected on it this way before, but if you read any books or articles about Global Nomadism, it’s almost the ground zero of the nomad movement. So people have been, you know, working remotely since you could get a reasonably priced laptop and a decent internet connection. But, um, there’s a book called Global Nomads by, and she talks about a bunch of guys. Tried to plan a yoga retreat that went wrong and then ended up just using that opportunity to just invite a load of people who worked in marketing and stuff to come and work from Bali instead. And that turned into one of the original kind of co-living, co-working space. It’s Hubbard in Hubbard, which interestingly is exactly where I began my no Badding journey by complete accident. I just quite like it. There’s a nice yoga space next door, but it does have the occupational hazard of potentially having monkeys trying to, uh, she on your laptop or steal eat food. Chris: Well, I mean, that’s a, you know, that is a, that is a drawback, no doubt. Think we’ve lost Lisa, my goodness. Least lost. Lost in the, uh, which Sharon: kind of segues back to some of the conversations Lisa and I had about potentially being somewhat suboptimal for working. Uh, you know, you’re midway through a teams call. He goes, sorry, there’s a, there’s a monkey trying to steal my lunch. Lisa: That’s amazing. One of the things that sparked this conversation was me seeing a picture of you recently in, was it in Japan when you were working out of a foot spa? Sharon: It was So just for context, I, yeah. I was in Japan. For what, seven weeks, uh, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in a minute. Um, working, living, and working as a global neighbor, but on one particular night out, we’re in this town of, which is a spa town, and it’s got little spas all around the town. Anyway, I, I had to jump on a call really briefly, but I just. It happened to be, I had my feet in a little spa in the town square Love lovely mall, but they sort of steam up was a little bit weird. But yes there’s a photo of me somewhere with, on a teams call with my laptop, with my feet in some. Delight. Lisa: Uh, there’s something about it it triggered the, my Inner health and safety manager, where I was thinking about what’s the workstation assessment for this and yeah, how safe is it? Because I remember years ago when I was in house, like one of the, the most common source of injury in the office was paper on the floor. Like a, a slight, a piece of paper on the floor is one of the commonest causes of slips, trips, and falls. In office buildings. Mm-hmm. And I think about the stuff that I’ve tripped over in my own house, that I need to do my own workstation assessment. ’cause we’ve been shifting stuff out of the attic to go back upstairs and I’m moving stuff about, and we’ve got a new sofa, so there’s boxes everywhere at the moment. And I need to be careful if I get up to dash somewhere that I don’t trip over the kettlebells that are on the floor next to me. So there’s something about. Doing this, taking part in these amazing opportunities, but making sure that we’re doing it in a safe manner. Sharon: Absolutely. And kind of the, you know, the stereotypical image of a digital nomad is someone sitting on a beach with their laptop with some sort of, you know, some cocktail, you don’t wanna work on a beach. Laptops and sand do not go well together. As any, you know, imagine how many laptops you must go through under those circumstances. Not just the monkeys, but the smoothie, the sand, the light bright. You can’t see a screen properly. It goes properly. Yeah, no, I mean, and the reality is, that image is nowhere near as, as two as anyone thinks it is. There’s a lot of. Four desks, suboptimal screen setups, but mostly just huddled over a kitchen table somewhere trying to get stuff done. Lisa: And I feel like something else that’s improved probably in that 10 years since you started doing this, is the kind of, well, I feel like the last five years, six years now, since we’ve all been working remotely, a lot more commonly. Hmm. If you are on V, if you are on tv, your backdrops really important. But if you are on a regular video call, it’s very easy to blur your background or put a different photo behind you. Yeah. And that never used to be a common thing. Like I’m sure I remember years ago when you were, you were on Tell somewhere Cheryl, and you were sitting under a table so that the view of your, from your laptop camera was a, an appropriate background. Sharon: Yes. Uh, do you know what it was? I was in California for the Facebook conference back in the day, and I’d long story short actually I won’t even bother going, sorry. I’d ended up on b BBC News three times in two days. Long story, but I’ll skip over it. And because of that, I then got invited on a whole load of other news stories. So I had to hop out and then. Get like just on the right level of me and my laptop and like a decent background and be able to, and I think it was Al Jazeera, so I had it on like a bench and then sat on the floor so I could get the level right of the light and, and all of that. Which was fine except the session in the main hall ended and then all these legs just started going behind me. So it just looked like I was in like pro or something. Anyway yeah, so these days you could probably blur it or something. Chris: Yeah, and I guess that’s, you know, that’s, um. An artifact really isn’t it of the fact that where whilst we were all working from home, you know, uh, from time to time, and then we went, you know, it depends on what job you do. Of course, you know, if you’re traveling a lot for your work, you know, you, you’re, as you say, you’re almost certainly gonna be flying your laptop up and working from different hotel rooms or sitting in airport lounges or whatever. But then the pandemic came along and everybody got a bit more, um. May, maybe lots of people realized they could work from anywhere if they needed to. And the technology of course had just about got there with regard to teams type or Zoom or whatever, you know, two or three years before it might would’ve been a different story because bandwidth wasn’t quite so ubiquitous, you know, it would’ve been a lot harder. But, so we got to that point where. Okay, so now we know we can, so the question is whether we should and what is the, what is the real benefit of that? And I’m thinking back to pre pandemic. So I, I did a job for a while, um, with a, a cryptocurrency project, funnily enough. Just part-time doing, helping a few, just helping them get to a. Through a particular problem, but our had developers that were all over the, the, the place, you know, in different parts of the world make finding a scrum meeting really, really difficult. Frankly, we had what, one hour a day we could do it. But the fact is that these people just moved around. They, they, they were, they were just doing whatever they did wherever they wanted to be. And I guess the question is, what’s the, what do you think the attraction is? What’s the benefit from your point of view as somebody who’s. Actually been out there, done it, and as currently, currently living in Amsterdam, you been there, what, four or five years showing now? Six years. Six years Blind me, so, you know, and but still managing to, to work with, customers in all sorts of different places. What’s the benefit, do you think, or the, and, and the attraction of, of moving around in order to work rather than staying in one place? Sharon: It classic consultants answer. It depends. Like, for me, I like the novelty. I like to travel and I, I’m very fortunate that I’m able to blend my work with going and, uh, experiencing new things. So the time I spent in Japan, partly it was. It was sort of exploring the local market, but, um, and for the, the community in Japan, in Zaki, it was actually a little bit of cross pollination. So sharing, uh, entrepreneurship stories of self-employment, but also helping them to shape their digital nomad offer. But for other people it’s actually, it’s almost like geographical arbitrage. So in a world where if you can’t afford to buy. If you can’t afford security at home to buy a house or whatever it may be, you might as well take a negative turn into a positive and enjoy the flexibility that lack of security affords you. So if people are effectively working in one place and living somewhere cheaper without the cost of maintaining a home in a big city, so most of the people I’ve met along the way tend to be in that position of not having necessarily a rooted home. They paid for. All the time. I guess the question is then what’s in it for employers, uh, which is the flip side of that, and, uh, it’s a little bit trite to say, but in, you know. Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not an inner world where particularly now as borders, physical borders are tightening. It used to be that people had to move to work, but we are putting the infrastructure of work in place. It means that work can move to where people are, and that opens up opportunity both. Geographically, but can happen on a local level as well. So it’s almost, I guess you could argue that digital nomads are extreme early adopters of that kind of work. But if we can get it right for people who want to work and travel, we can also get it right for people who want to work but live somewhere with a really bad bus service. That’s Chris: a good point actually. And you talked about Nagasaki and their, and their digital nomad offer. I think we’re seeing that quite a lot, aren’t we? Whether it be abroad or even. You know, towns in particular countries that are saying, actually, you don’t need to be in London. Or you don’t know you need to be in Paris or whatever, but let’s set up. A place where there are, there’s good internet connectivity, there’s kind of services that you want as a, as a remote worker. Those sort of things are happening as well. Right. Have you, have you seen any other examples of that? Sharon: Uh, annoying. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head, but there’s a few really good examples in Ireland. So what they’re doing, yeah. Grow remote. We had Crow remotes, uh, and, Chris: and they, those guys were on the podcast like years ago and Sharon: ah, yeah, that’s the one I was thinking of, which is, you know, in, in, where you’ve got a cluster of tech businesses in, in one place, we can encourage people who work remotely, but for a bunch of different companies who happen to live in the same area, to connect for the social side of work, which might be a sort missing if you’re remote, but to still be able to access good quality work regardless of where you are. But yeah. You know, if we can take advantage of the technologies that have emerged over the last, what, 10 years or so, like you say, they just about popped up pre pandemic to the point of being usable to make work a bit more accessible. But it means we can tap into talent markets wherever they are. Lisa: I Sharon: think Lisa: something that I’ve seen that’s worked quite well as well. I go away a couple of times a year up to ish year, and in Matlock there’s a lovely little coworking space that which, you know, you can book in for the day. I know the people that are in there. It’s, it doesn’t make a difference to most of my clients. And actually when I was up there last time, I was able to go and meet some folks in person, um, like friends of the podcast, Tony. To actually go and have, I mean, we had a, we did a workshop in a service station just off the M1, but actually we just needed to get together in person and it was nice and convenient and meant I could go to them. And I think there’s, one of the things that I’ve talked about a lot as well is that the thing that I miss working from home is going to the pub with people after work. Like I feel like that kind of. Camaraderie with people that you’re working with where you can actually have a bit of a decompress and have a chat about stuff. It can otherwise feel quite. Quite not well. It can feel a bit lonely, but I think also there’s all of that, when you are working in the same place that you live, that kind of work, energy doesn’t have a chance to escape if you just stay at home. Chris: Mm-hmm. Lisa: Um, like I remember during lockdown when everything else was closed, going downstairs and have, and just ranting to Nick about my work because my work didn’t slow down at all. And, um, I just remember being incredibly stressed and bringing that stress into the house. And actually what I wanted to do was go for a pint with people and just vent about it and then, and then just chat about snacks, which is what we do. And it’s, it’s now, it’s four years this week from when I set up pub o’clock as well. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to going to the pub on Thursday with some folks who I know it’s a real combination of people that might work from home a lot. Or have kids and just wanna get out of the house. Like it’s evolved a little bit. It started off as, are you stuck in the house a lot? Do you want to come and have a ramp? Sharon: And actually sort of drawing a bit of a parallel there, there is a, a kind of ecosystem of events for people who work in nomad ways. So the program I was on in Nagasaki brought people from all around the world to work together. And actually it was really fascinating to me how quickly all of that bonded. So some of that was about, the shared experience of working in that kind of way, but also that kind of cross pollination of people working together on projects of shared interest. You know, there was someone there who was. Who coached people on how to make good social media video. There was someone else there who I was a financial advisor, who was teaching people about investing in people’s skill shop. Uh, swapping actually that ability to get together and share and bond quite quickly was quite it, I thought there was a lot I could learn from it then that we can learn around how to build team dynamics as well. And I think, Chris: so what we’re not talking about, sorry, just, just, just on that point. Sorry, not what we’re, so, we’re not what we’re talking about in digital nomadism, it’s like digital hermit where you go away and sort of sit in a cave. Yeah. And work on your own. What we’re talking about is actually enabling, meeting different people and working in different environments. Sharon: Yeah. So there’s things like, you know, I was a, I was inaki, but. Just before I got there, there was a huge nomad fest in and for Roka, the other side of the island, which had hundreds of people from all over the world who work as nomads. Again, getting together, a lot of people see the same people around the circuit. Um, and there’s also co-working, co-living spaces. So, you know, you can drop in, in, I don’t know, say Bali or Thailand or wherever, Spain, and there’ll be a whole bunch of other people there who are doing the same thing. So you’ve got that kind of shared experience of you know, sharing a meal. There was one particular moment that stuck out to me ’cause I don’t, I’ve been there a week and there were two people, um, there from Israel and they were like, well, we always have a, a dinner with our family on. Friday. So we are gonna cook for everyone. And everyone kind of bought something along, um, managed to cook like chow bread in a rice cooker, which was surprising and had like a proper about dinner on the Friday, which was just a really nice way of kind of getting together as a group and breaking the ice and everyone sharing their week. Um, and it really reminded me of how quickly you can start to build that team dynamic if there’s that shared intent, that shared purpose. Lisa: I think that’s something that shared intent and getting together, it is something that actually, so just before we went into lockdown, I was working at Department for International Trade where I know Sharon worked previously and the digital data and technology department had a really good and active community manager who was. Proactively connecting people. So when most of us were working in the office for four or five days a week, we, there were some people already working remotely then. But having those, so it was, there were regular lightning talks where three people would do a five minute talk each, and there’d be one about a work project to show the work people are doing. One about a personal project and then a wild card, which could be about literally anything. And it was a really nice way of getting at getting away from your desk. And when we were all together in the office, going to the biggest meeting room and sitting around a table, also having people dialing in if they work remotely. And then when we did go to working Remote first, it was something that we continued and the Lightning Talks was still a time to get people together. ’cause you had five minute talk. Five minute chat about the talk. Then having that kind of scheduling, those kind of virtual coffees and they tried a whole load of things. And we had, there were some amazing calls where we got people together to talk about different subjects. At the time, like I remember around the kind of Black Lives Matter movement, there was this incredibly powerful talk where people joined the, it was already a quite a strong team dynamic and quite a good community going on, and people were sharing their lived experiences of racism, right. And it was really, it really showed the benefits of building those connections because people shared some very personal stuff and I’ve been working with them for ages and I had no idea that they’d gone through some of it quite recently. And I think it’s that setting, that intent setting, having those rituals, having those processes, not everyone comes all of the time, but it needs people, it needs somebody to care about it and other people to want to take part. And it’s finding those ways of getting people together. Sharon: I, I think the broader point there then is that, you know what office work could be lonely and and difficult too. And unless you, you design that with the intention of creating connection. And the same is true when you’ve got people working remotely. There is a bit of an assumption that culture just happens and that trust automatically builds. And I, we’ve all seen the reverse of that. I worked with a few teams over the last few years who are. 100% or, you know, 90% remote. And actually they’re really fray because they haven’t intentionally created those moments of connection. Um, and I, I think if you do that, then you can have a minor falling out over something work-based, and you don’t have anything to back it up with, to give people the benefit of the doubt. And you find that things get blown out of all proportion unless you’ve got that kind of role that you talked about, Lisa, where someone is kind of greasing the wheels a little bit and creating that sense of connection, then it, it can all fall apart. Quite, quite quickly. Chris: I think there’s a, um, sorry, carry on. Yeah, Sharon: no, no. I was gonna say, because I realized that we’ve blathered for probably about half an hour, an hour and not actually got into some of the meat. I’m actually, we really think it’s quite useful to talk about. You know what, it’s not all. It’s not all roses when you’re trying to remote work. A lot of the time it doesn’t actually work very well. Systems fray. Technology can be unreliable. But the biggest one for me is, is about time. You know, so we’ve got collaboration tools and we’ve got, you know, Lisa and I spend most of our lives trying to get people using Microsoft better. And the reality is. While we’ve got the tool, we’ve never really changed the processes and while we still live with the reality of synchronous work, remote and nomad working is always going to be difficult. Time zones still exists. Someone still has to get on the phone at 10 o’clock at night. So there are always like suboptimal setups that we work around and I don’t know if we’ve, if we can really release the potential of remote work unless we fully address the issue of time. Chris: That’s a really good point. So in the company I work for we’ve got, most of our people are in Vietnam, so that’s a fair old distance in terms of time zone away from the UK Now. But that’s a 25 year situation. So there’s been this customer practice and kind of routine has got into that. That means that actually rather than them being a, a, a drawback, you can use it as a positive and you can make sure that you, you know, you get into those, those routines of making sure that everybody’s got what they need before the other side goes to bed, so you know that they can then crack on. But that’s different. Having look at a longstanding management of that time difference to having people who are moving around, isn’t it? And saying, oh today I’ll be in GMT plus seven, but tomorrow I’ll be in g mt plus three. Sharon: Yes. Uh, actually interesting you said that. ’cause my business partner, I work in the same way. You know that I, if I’m a few times zones ahead, then I get stuff done, send it to him, he does it in his day and is, we actually use it to our advantage. We can keep things moving, but almost you can get two days worth of work done in 24 hours. And yes, it is challenge. I think the challenge though is if you’ve got one or two people who are remotely, if everyone is working asynchronously, that’s not the point. Uh, you know, and that means that you are making it work for someone who is. You know, over in Hanoi, but also for someone who can’t work till they put their kids to bed. And actually, if we can embrace that asynchronous ways of working, it’s not just about being able to work effectively with someone who is in a different time zone, which I remember painfully from when I worked for an Asian company. Someone inevitably has to get on a call at six o’clock in the morning and hate it. But if, actually, if six o’clock is when you do your best work, then fine. Why don’t we make that possible for people? So actually it’s about. We’ve got the tools, we just haven’t really used them properly. And I, I think that’s Lisa: also thinking about multinational companies where, if you’ve got something that does need to go out to everybody. I’m a member of a international membership organization who did their A GM at 10:00 PM UK time. And it’s not my primary work, so I’m not gonna join that call. But when I was in house, if we had an important meeting that we wanted people to come to, we did two slots. You just repeated it so that you can be inclusive for people in Australia as well as people in New York as well as pe you know, like when you’ve got op opposing schedules. It was basically, it was 10:00 PM UK time and the rest of Europe were dialing in at between 11 and midnight if they wanted to join. And I think it’s, I think it’s thinking about who, who it is that we need to connect with, talk to communicate to work with, and trying to make things work both ways. Like it needs, like there’s so many benefits to the employer, but also it does take a bit more thinking and a bit more time to make it right. But I think the benefits you get at the end of it are worth it. Sharon: That’s it, you know, because it’s not simply about making work available to people who wanna swan around the world, but actually be enabling people to participate in the workplace. So just to go off on a small tangent if you’ll excuse me, um, while I was in Tokyo, I did a, um. A tour, like a walking tour of Tokyo led by a little robot that was sitting on my shoulder, which had a camera in it and a little speaker. And it was led remotely by someone working from a completely different town with a disability who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to lead a walking tour. Um, and it was fascinating to me, not just simply the using the technology to ree people to the world of work, but that wasn’t just about making the nine to five work in a different way. It was going this is so, so this person had me, which. Co. Simply is, is the same problem my sister has. My sister’s been excluded from work for many years for exactly the same reason. If we can break work down into things that can be done in six hours, there are people who only have six hours of spoons in a week that would be able to participate. So, and that we should be able to do that with knowledge work. Global Nomadism is part of that movement, which is about breaking the connection between work and time, as well as breaking that between work and place. Chris: So do you think the tool, you say we’ve got the tools, Sharon, but I say a lot of this, a lot of the tools are set up for synchronous work. You know, mi you’ve got Microsoft Office and we’ve got teams, which is kind of predicated on the, you know, you’ve got the little avail availability, uh, circle, which came in, you know, many years ago. It’s like, well you are green so we can get in touch with you today. Um, so how do you see this changing? Do you see the, the. Is there a, is there an approach that you’ve seen or any, um, any ideas that you’ve come across around that, that asynchronous working? That, that, that do let that happen? I mean, you’re talking about your, the way you work with your business partner, so you know, is that something that could be, can and kind of reproduced? Is, is there a way to do that? Sharon: Like everything, it’s not a playbook is there, but it’s about management, isn’t it? That we need to stop. If, in order to get the most of this, you need to stop designing for presence so you know about who turns up and how long for and start managing for what gets done. Um, so it’s that outcomes based measurement rather than try facing it on how long your light was green for. You know, presence is a bit of a comforting illusion, but it is in the absence of any output measures, we kind of use it as a performance metric. So managers struggle with remote work because they don’t have any other proxies to go by. I guess. They struggle with not being able to watch people. It’s somewhat counter-cultural for people. Nomadism and remote work more generally, I guess, collapses the moment. Your job depends on someone believing that it’s about when you’re working rather than what you produce. So how do we break that? Where the organizations I’ve seen do it well are those that. Done it from the outset so that it was interesting to see, actually, I interviewed a bunch of the other nomads on the, uh, particular tour I was on. And it was notable that only one, no, sorry, two people had a job, everyone else was freelance. The one who had like a normal job really struggled. So it was almost like, but because her job was based in Europe, actually trying to get things done, you know, join all the activities, see the place. While trying to struggle with other people’s meetings and lunch breaks and things like that actually that connected. As soon as you’ve got meetings, you are effectively just commuting by Zoom. It’s not really asynchronous working. What was interesting was to compare it to someone else there who worked for an organization that quite global, like nomad focused. So they were sort of in the nomad in industry to a degree, and that was much more focused on what you got done rather than when you did it. So it has to be intentionally redesigning work, I suppose, around outputs based measures. Lisa: I think there’s also something which we touched on a little bit earlier on this and, and also what, um, the previous guest Mark heard was talking about, thinking about the kind of rituals and the processes and the. Things that we establish. ’cause we are as humans, even if we do get our work done better when we’ve got noise canceling headphones and we’re already in a quiet room, like we need that connection with people. And it’s very difficult to build that if your day is scheduled and back to back meetings that don’t have any kind of flex or any kind of connection built into the agenda. You can build it into literal meeting agendas, you can say at the beginning or the end. Or there’ll be a time where we actually just talk a little bit more about what we’ve done this week, like we do in the podcast. Or like I did my pub meetup. We have a question of what’s the best and the worst. We started off with biscuits thanks to, um, Sunday brunch, but it’s having that kind of, it’s just a, it’s not overly structured, but it’s giving people like a. A loose frame of reference to be able to actually not feel like they’re wasting time by spending time connecting and make, and building those relationships. Because ultimately, like you were saying earlier, if you are all working and it’s already a little bit fraught and you don’t have those types, you don’t have those bonds, it’s very easy for those relationships to fracture when you’re not, particularly when you’re not in the same place. Mm-hmm. I feel like one of the things that as we’re all very heavily online. How many times have you seen group conversations that you’re in blow up because someone’s misinterpreted the tone of a, of a post? Or actually, the, it hasn’t been misinterpreted, but it’s been blown out of proportion. If you’re sitting together in, in the office or in a coffee shop or in the pub or having lunch together, you can say, well, actually I don’t agree with that, but that’s all right. ’cause we are allowed to disagree. Sometimes those kind of conversations, if they’re only happening in via text, people can dwell on it for days and stew on it and then end up drilling down into it and, and becoming either withdrawing or going off to find only the people they agree with. And I think that’s where we kind of end up. It’s not, not, it is an echo chamber, but it’s, it’s finding the people that it’s, what’s the word, fractional. Fracturing thought a little bit. Sharon: Yeah. Actually, the way you describe it there, I wonder if almost there’s a tension there that on the one hand we’re saying work can only move to people if it stops being about people being in the room at the same time. So fewer meetings, more documentation, more async first collaboration. But if we are only focused on outputs. That it starts to atomize the people involved to the extent that we are not having those moments of connection that are not necessarily output focused. So there, I think there does feel like there’s a tension there to say, okay, right, in order to enable people to do their best work flexibly, remotely, whether that’s in a D different country or just from home. We do need to move away from supervision and your eight hour day towards what you get done while at the same time not losing those moments of connection that give us purpose and make work human. And there is a sense that if we redesign work to the degree that as I’ve been talking about, effectively it could be done by anyone, anywhere. You almost could build a, a, an infrastructure of outsourcing that your job can instead of, you know, moving entire offices to different countries. You can atomize work and, and send it out to people working undercutting people all over the world. So it becomes kind of a new, new class system with people with passports and flexibility at the top and everyone else locked out. You know, are we talking about offshoring of, of labor in tiny chunks? Digital sweatshops. Sorry, that was a rather depressing note to move that one too. But, uh, it’s actually, you know, are we designing work for dignity and connection or just for cheapness? Chris: Well, exactly. I mean, that’s the point, isn’t it, Sharon? What is the. The what is the business we’re in, right? And like I said earlier, you know, just because a, a business fails, right? If the demand for what they do, those people will probably get a job in a different business, right? In exactly the same, uh, service. The question is how do we make business sustainable? And my view is that it’s via those practices. Making it sustainable work is, is work that isn’t going to burn people out and isn’t going to exploit people and isn’t going to, put uh, one group of people above another because that will not work in the long term. We have to find those sustainable ways of working, which can include asynchronous. Sharon: And sustainable work is resilient work as well. When work can be done in any location, it means that, things like that we may be facing around cyber threats or extreme weather or any of those kind of big, uh, mega forces facing us in the, in the future of work is something that we might be able to weather better. So it’s not simply about designing work for people who wanna go on a massive holiday. You know, I remember reading somewhere. Oh, good few years ago now they said that by 2030 there’ll be a billion nomads bullshit. There aren’t a billion people whose jobs could potentially even sort that, you know, suit that type of work. But it is, you can definitely imagine a future where there are millions of people who can do work globally without having to disrupt their lives. So work can work for the lives people currently have or want to live, rather than people having to adapt their lives to, to work in the same way or be excluded from work altogether. Chris: I think we ought to wrap it up there ’cause we’re, we’re at 46 minutes and we, and I think that’s a good place to, uh, to draw a conclusion. Lisa: I knew this was gonna be an interesting conversation. These conversations always are interesting ’cause we know some lovely people, but I feel like we’ve covered some massive topics there as well as talking about biscuits, which feels quite apt. Chris, what have you got coming up in the next week or so? Chris: Well, uh, yeah, in the next week or so, really we’re sort of thundering towards the end of January and really, I’m just thinking about work, right? There’s loads of things going on around, in the house and whatnot, kids going back to university or whatever. But the, um. I’m thinking about work and we’ve got an event coming up at the end of February, a kind of practitioner’s AI event. We’re talking about, you know, how we, for example, implemented AI across the software development lifecycle in, you know, in various areas into, you know, whether it’s requirements or collaboration or coding, and. And that’s keeping me up at the moment. ’cause I’m, I’m, I’ve got some presentations to do and I need to build those. So I’ve got, I wanna get all those done by the end of the month. So that’s, that’s focusing my mind. And I’ve got a few places to go and I’ll be down in London end of the month seeing a few people too. So really it’s just getting through this month and making sure everything I need to get done is done right. So it’s, that’s why I was looking at the start of the program. I was. With, in some horror, the, the, the bathwater running out and as the, or the sons of time maybe. How about you, Lisa? Lisa: So we’ve got a couple of events coming up over the next couple of weeks. I’m doing a webinar with Suzie Robinson and a clear box folks next week talking about intranet and digital workplace trends and the latest. Massive ch of the Clear Box report is due out at some point in the next fortnight. I’m not sure when the actual launch date is, but at some point in the next couple of weeks, which is more pages than almost anyone in the world will ever read about reviews of intranet software. I’m a but a minor contributor to it and I’ve still not read the whole thing. And also we’re doing a meet the author as we, my co-author, Matis Il Neli, and I are doing a thing with VMA group next week talking about accessible communications. And in between that lots of client work ’cause it’s all ramping up again. How about you Sharon? Sharon: Uh, my business partner Jonathan, is gonna be in tomorrow, which we haven’t actually seen each other face to face before. Since we were in Berlin, like last May, so ages ago. Amazing. Um, but we are running a workshop with the guys over at Swoop Analytics on Wednesday. So tomorrow we’re getting together to do some planning for that. And then we do the workshop itself on Wednesday. And in between I’m meeting a whole load of intra nerd. And we are having a Boral, which is like Dutch for eating some snacks, um, and having a few beers, um, with some sort of digital comms, intranet, digital workplace folks. So that’s the big thing this week. I’m really excited about that because I, I basically work in this office on my own most of the time, so it’s quite nice, uh, being in a room with lots of nerdy humans talking about stuff that I like. So that’s my big thing. I am also. What else am I up to this week? Got some random stuff coming up. So I am going to a talk with the historian Timothy Schneider on, uh, the Arise of Tyranny. So that’s gonna be cheerful. Uh, I think I’ve got a gig or something. There’s, oh yeah, I’m gonna see a comedy show on Friday. There’s a PowerPoint based comedy night that I go to regular. I have delivered a award-winning presentation there in the past. That’s about it, I think, and probably lots of spin classes. Because that’s how I roll. Lisa: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. I think that’s it. Well, thank you for having me and yeah, have a lovely week whenever you listen to this. Sharon: So thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us all over the interwebs@wbfortypodcast.com and on all your favorite pod catchers.

What if most organisational problems aren’t unique at all—and treating them as if they are is exactly what’s holding you back? Mark Earls joins Matt and Lisa to challenge how we think about innovation, time, and human behaviour in organisations. From why you should prototype multiple solutions before perfecting one, to the critical difference between product thinking (needing 1% of a market) and internal systems (requiring 100% adoption), this conversation offers practical alternatives to the endless search for “best practice” examples. Mark argues that recognising problems as belonging to familiar categories—and understanding humans as fundamentally social rather than individual—unlocks faster, more effective solutions than assuming every challenge is unprecedented genius-level work. This week’s trancript brought to you by Descript with associated errors… Matt: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to episode 340 of the WB 40 increasingly erratically produced podcast this week with me, Matt Ballantine, Lisa Riemers, and Mark Earls. Lisa: Hi everyone, and welcome back if you’re a returning listener and welcome if this is your first time. Very excited about today’s episode. There are a few things that Matt, [00:01:00] our guest mark this week and I have in common, and there’s. I think it’s been a long time coming. My, I hadn’t realized how massively overdue this episode is. But just in our little pre-chat it turns out that I’m much better than Matt at doing these things. And, um, so yeah. Matt, what have you been up to over the last week or so? Matt: Oh, the last week or so. It’s been 80 since I’ve been on here. Um, the last week has been, it’s quite a lot of book related stuff. So I, I’ve got the first physical prototype of the full book through from some printers. They’re not the, it’s not the printers we’ll use for the final version, but, um, so that’s quite good fun. I’ve launched what book? The, the random, the book, um, how to Survive in I can’t even remember what the subtitle is. It’s just random. That’s what it’s called. And uh, we’ve also launched as of [00:02:00] last Monday an, uh, a random, the advent calendar. So every other day there’s a new story about randomness related to the Christmas period. So, um, and I seem to be out unsettling certain people, including you by the sounds of it, Lisa, by un uh, unleashing the windows of the Advent calendar in random order. So today was Advent calendar window number two, even though it’s the fourth one, and that seems to be causing no end of challenge for people. Lisa: I just find it difficult when I’ve been conditioned to open things in an order over the, over the however many years I’ve been opening Advent calendars for. And I don’t if I’ve missed out a day, I dunno which ones today, I dunno. Which I, it’s hard enough knowing what day of the week it is now that alone understanding, oh no. It’s okay to unlock any of the windows that are open. Yes. I mean, that’s it. It’s breaking Matt: out of, of the kind of the structures that we are taught in. And, [00:03:00] and you know, being able to feel that that discomfort I think, which is, uh, quite entertaining. Uh, apart from that, last week was the. Annual WB 40 Christmas meal. I think it was 25 people out this year. A Spanish restaurant in Faringdon, which was great fun. Gotta to see lots of people. Gotta see Chris King, who made it down from Lee Ray, Chris King gotta see Dave Lloyd. He made it over from Wales. We got to see Sharon Oea. Gotta make it all the way from Amsterdam. We’ve gotta see Lee Cox. He made it all the way from deepest, darkest Kent. And some people, you know, there’s lots of other people as well. So that was about fabulous. Thank you to, um, cypher being the main organizer of that, and to you as well, Lisa. He did lots of work in the organizing of it, which was fantastic. And then it was our 17th wedding anniversary on Saturday. So we went out to this remarkable restaurant called Alba Dino in in Richmond. That’s Richmond Pond Thames rather than Richmond, north [00:04:00] Yorkshire. And it’s basically a restaurant where the meal is themed around a Sicilian wedding feast. You get what you’re given. It is usually six or seven courses and s and I just basically had far too much to eat, which was wonderful. So, um, that’s, it’s been an entertaining week. How about you? Lisa: So last weekend I did in my top, it’s my top two events of the year. The first of which was where I actually met Mark in person, where we went to the Speaky Summit in Bavaria, but equally as random and equally as difficult to get to from, from southeast London. I went to a thing called congregation in the tiny village of Kong in West Ireland, which I found out about by chance at the beginning of November, having a conversation with someone at the IRBC UK Conference in London. But [00:05:00] congregation, it’s an unconference that takes place over a weekend and you, to get your ticket, you write a blog post on a particular subject, and this year’s subject was chaos. It’s like, this is really in my wheelhouse. Um, and so I wrote my blog post. Also realized that my current client, who I’ve not met in person until this point, was gonna be there and is one of the sponsors, but completely unrelatedly to me finding out about it. So I basically went away with 97 strangers, someone I’ve been working with for a few months, someone I met three weeks ago, and the person who’s organizing it, who I’d emailed in advance, um, and we sat in different shops around the village. The f we were given like a you’d love this from a random point of view. I’d lanyards had like a bingo card on it in the morning where there are eight sessions throughout the day and four, there [00:06:00] are eight groups. Running at the same time throughout the day, and then four sessions and you get given a sticker as with your number on it. And then you work out where you are meant to be at the different sessions. ’cause you find your number on the card. And it was fabulous ’cause it meant that you all got sh you, you knew, you knew where you needed to go next and if you didn’t know, you could talk to someone and ask them. And we had long ranging conversations that covered topics from like really straightforward things to it’s just such a treat to be able to actually take a whole, a day and a half really. But having a whole day of just talking about the same subject and talking to people and bouncing ideas off each other. I feel like I came back like really restored and thinking about how, ’cause it’s so nice to actually be able to talk to humans who, and you can bounce off each other without that kind of. The brittleness that sometimes comes when you’re talking [00:07:00] online and tone doesn’t travel and then you don’t agree with someone and then you fall out with them when you’re in person and sitting around a table, you can actually continue that. And then we all went to the pub in the evening and continued the conversation. Uh, that was the main thing. I’ve also been doing a bunch of client work. Saw everyone at the WB 40 dinner, brought a bunch of intra nerds with me that were also coming to town for the day for an intranet conference from Interact. Um. Did an art challenge at the weekend. So it’s been quite a busy week. Matt: Sounds it. Yeah. You’re gonna need a, a bit of time off over Christmas to recover from all of that. Lisa: I hope so. I I do feel like I’m probably gonna get ill at some point in December ’cause I’ve seen so many people and there are so many bugs around, even though I’ve had my flu jab and I’ve been taking vitamins and trying to eat well. There’s a high prob there’s a high chance I’m gonna be struck down soon. But anyway, I’ve [00:08:00] talked a lot there. Mark. Hello? Hello? Hello? In England ish. You are? Yeah. You are. Religion? I am in England. England, yep. How are you doing? What have you been up to over the last week or so? Mark: So the last, last week or so has been, uh, dominated by my band’s annual Christmas charity gig which was the last Thursday, it seems like, both a year ago and only last night. And as the herd, meister and champion of all things social behavior, I still in a band, been played together more than three decades. And we love getting people to mix with each other and dance around and get overexcited and show those bits of themselves that they don’t normally show. And it’s always great, and one of the, and we’re of a certain age now, so that everyone’s kids are in their twenties. So, uh, and they’ve now decided on mass that Christmas doesn’t properly start until the big short customer. Do is done. [00:09:00] So, um, so that’s it. So that’s what I was doing, rehearsing for that and then getting that done. Also, I’ve been trying to knock out, um, uh, I’ve been working on my next book and which isn’t the time one that Matt wants to talk to me about, but um, is another sort of Hery thing. And, um, did a bit of client work last week with some lovely mates of mine who have run a, um, a B2B sort of marketing, branding consultancy and bringing the joy of our social selves to them. So that’s what I’ve been doing and realizing that it is two weeks now. That’s it. The panic setting, Matt: the two weeks. Yeah. So the new book you’re working on, the, um, the, her, was it just called Herd? Or the Herd? I can’t remember, but you, it was called Herd. It was called Herd. And that’s how I first got to know of you many, many years ago. Yeah. That’s when I Mark: first met. Yeah. Matt: Yeah. Um, and that was all about how you can, I guess, tap into a bit about social behaviors. Mark: Well, I, I think it’s more about if before we get tap into it, I think the first thing is to accept, um, you [00:10:00] know, the truth of our real nature which is that we’re a social species, a we species of dubbed it rather than a me species and our culture in the, in the anglophone world, it insists that we’re an individual species, you know, hyper-personalization, all that kind of stuff that obsessed people in the digital world for in recent years and now marketing. I think it’s just completely misplaced because we see it every day on social platforms, what’s become of them, which is how we shape each other all of the time. Um, so admitting that, I think is the first step. Like they say in, in aa admitting we’ve got a problem that we’ve misunderstood what is to be human. So I wrote that book, I mean, it’s two decades ago nearly now. And I wrote it as a sort of a polemic for that point of view. And, um, I still use it in all my work. That basic perspective and lots of tools. I developed example with some academics to under to, to triage behavior before you start kinda changing it. So [00:11:00] that kind of stuff. But I’ve realized and indeed my publishers realize that there is still a need in the broader population to accept this is who we are. Um. And so that’s what that book’s about. It’s, if you like, the idea of it is 70 odd field reports, bits of human behavior that we see around us, whether it’s something topical or something seasonal or something we’ve all experienced or I’ve experienced. And then to explain that that’s not some weird individual idiosyncrasy or some pathology, it’s actually us, just us being. Who we are, we are Weese fishes. So two examples from it, one of which is, you know, that I live around the corner from Amy wine house’s, old house. And so still every day, every time I pass, there’s a teenager either with another teenager or with a parent standing outside the tree that’s draped in. There’s a shrine to Amy and it’s really interesting to watch that behavior. Why are they doing that? Is it about Amy or is it about themselves [00:12:00] and their world? Is it just a behavior they’ve copied? They go through a whole bunch of rituals which seem to be copied off the tele and off, what they’ve seen of funerals maybe in their life or through various media, films and TV and, um, and they cry properly and they cry. It’s just really interesting phenomenon and it’s own not explained by the fact there’s something wrong with them. It’s the fact that this is what social creatures do Throughout human history, we’ve gathered together at shrines, even if we never knew the saint or the, the, the holy person or whatever we gather there for. To exercise stuff together and we do it together rather than individually. So that’s one example. Another example is linguistic. And um, you know, I was sitting this time last year in a cafe in Camden and this very smart young woman in her twenties, I guess in business outfit, came in with, uh, with a colleague. And she was clearly wanted to vent something. But my inner grammar Nazi was spiked by something she said, a word she used. And we’ve all heard this used, right, ’cause it’s now part of vernacular, London vernacular. [00:13:00] And she said, ax, rather than ask ax rather than us, so the S and the K, are, are inverted. And that seems to me inside, I just felt this pain. You know, how you go, that’s just wrong. That’s just, how do you not know that’s wrong? And then I went into clearly without thinking it logic, I went through the, that makes her seem, not very well educated or something like that. Uh, grammar Nazi again and judging her. So I went away and looked it up and it turns out that it’s an entirely acceptable use, both in African American vernacular English, but also in and a number of Jamaican driven Englishes in the uk. So it’s entirely acceptable there. It’s also in a number of English rural dialects went back further and discovered that the Anglo-Saxon word is both Axian and Ian. So both versions exist there and apparently it’s then also in Shora, and I’m told it exists in, uh, St. James’ Bible, king James’ Bible as [00:14:00] well. So what it revealed to me is how I was acting out as a grammar Nazi to, to police the border of us and them. So it’s two examples of this, you know, our social selves there, just so there’s another 70 odd of those to come, I’m afraid. But I. So there we are. So that’s what that book’s about. Matt: Sounds excellent. We will maybe explore that a bit more in, um, in the rest of this show as well. Mark: Great. Lisa: Shall we get on with it then? Matt: I think we probably should. Mark: You should count us in 2, 3, 4. Isn’t that how guys? That’s, that’s, sorry that was the last week. Me and the band, 2, 3, 4 Matt: with some. So as Lisa said at the [00:15:00] start of the show, there’s a few things that connect the three of us and probably the thing that connects the three of us most. Recently is the speaker conference that I went to. I and Mark was there for the first one in 2024. And then Lisa went to where Mark was speaking in 2025. And then Lisa, uh, asked you to come on the show, which is wonderful. And I’m, you know, as Lisa made quite clear earlier on, she’s far better at asking you on the show than I have been because I’ve asked you never got you on. But, you know, there’s so many things we could talk about this week. So I think we’ll just sort of see what happens. ’cause I think that’s the best sort of these conversations. But the starting point is the book that you alluded to in that last bit, that I’m slightly worried now isn’t happening or what is happening to it, which is about three years ago you told me that you were writing a book about time travel. And I have been fascinated by that idea ever since. And I don’t think you [00:16:00] intended it in the, I’m going to invent the new time machine, but more about how intellectually and psychologically we travel in time. Mark: I think that’s right. I think it’s mental time travel is the easiest way to describe it. And I I, I’ve been fascinated by this for a while. I’ve been trying to get my thoughts in order for some years. And we got very close to selling it last year to publishers, but they all said went, oh, that’s a bit hard, isn’t it? But maybe that’ll change. Change. Now I’ve got my, um, and I’ve got my time travel show. Um, in the essence of it, as you say, is, is, uh, this ability that we have as humans to move back and forth and sideways in time. We can do it in our heads. We do it with, you know, the drop of a hat as, as you remember, Lisa, are you. Uses a George. Michael, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna say the words. Well, maybe I’ll say the words. That doesn’t count as well. Mageddon does it this year. Of last Christmas. ’cause if you think about it, last [00:17:00] Christmas in four lines, he goes back to the past, back to the present, into the future. He doesn’t like back to the present and then into a desirable future. It’s, you know, last Christmas, last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away. But this year to save me from tears or a nasty outcome, I’ll give it to someone special. It’s really straightforward, right? It’s time travel. We can do it all the time. We do it naturally. This time of year as we approach this sort of the Christmas break it’s all of us have time rhymes, as I call them. We all of us connect to things that have happened in the past, this time last year, as George says. But also we, we remember, you know, we remember people who were not here. The ghosts of Christmas past are not scary things some, most of the time. But all of us have these with time rhymes. And every time you go to a new meeting, you’ve been in that meeting before in some way or form or other. Right? We’ve always, we have this experience again and again because it’s the same [00:18:00] context. And you know, it’s, it’s not that there is some weird loop going on in physics that no one spotted. It’s what happens in our heads that’s really clever. And I just think that having sat through so many presentations when either the project manager on the one hand. Or the person debriefing the debrief. Debriefing the data uses a time series as the only way to explain something just seems to me, and, and, and misses a huge point about what it is to be human. And also misses the opportunity to use these skills to do useful stuff. Instead of thinking about the future, we can think easily about lots of futures and work our way back from that. Or we can think about instead of thinking about the past caused this to happen, you go, well, probably it’s a bit more complicated than that. So let’s look at a number of pasts and what would happen, what would change our definition of where we are today if we upped that particular variable, that particular cause, and said, maybe that’s why we’re here today. If that’s the case, then action [00:19:00] today would be different than it would be if, uh, if another thing was dominant causing today. So anyway, it’s, I think it’s useful in lots of ways. Personally, I think it’s useful. I think professionally it’s useful if I have to never see. Another time series data set. I’ll be really pleased, um, presented back to me. But also I think professionally in another sense in the organizations that we work with and the organizations that we that we are part of. Thinking about time in this more using this time, mental time travel is the key engine rather than the bloody calendar be. So it’s Matt: interesting how besotted so much of organizational life in particular, actually, ’cause I don’t think it relates to outside of organizational life, is it’s besotted with the idea of a linear calendar that only goes forward. And it Mark: absolutely, Matt: and, Mark: and you can see why it is because most management theory and mo management culture is still based on factory ideas. And the factory absolutely needs things going through [00:20:00] in a measurable way into the future, and never look at that. It’s Matt: interesting as well though, that in some sectors more than others, I think in my sector of technology more possibly than others, there’s also a lack of willingness to look backwards and that’s a, a kind of a myth based on the idea that technology’s always about the future. I started, um, a new engagement with a client a couple of weeks ago and I had a chance to be able to address, I dunno, 25 people in a room at the kickoff. And so I talked about the coal mining industry in the post, uh, second World War. Post War Britain because. The, and this is a story I might have told on the show before, but the basic gist of it is that at the end of the second World War, the coal mining industry was absolutely on its knees. It had been massively under invested since probably before the first World War and coal extraction in the UK was a matter of blowing things up and then digging them out with shovels and picks. And there was no more [00:21:00] intelligence in it than anything other than the invention that noble had created with dynamite. So the newly formed British National Coal Board decided to look across the world to what would be the best. Most effective methods of being able to get coal out the ground. And they looked to North America in particular, and America had massively mechanized the production of coal. And of course at that point, coal was the source of energy for just about everything. Even gas was from coal. Um, and so they bought all these machines that were the same ones the North Americans were using, and they installed them into coal mines in Britain. And the productivity got even worse. And the point of telling that story to this group of people who we were working with to be able to try and help them improve the way in which they produce software, which is a modern day form of coal, sadly in some ways is using up energy like coal used to as well. But that, the learning that came out of that experience in the coal industry was that you can’t just push the one lever of new machines and hope that [00:22:00] you will fix your productivity and you know, production problems, it has to be multidisciplinary. It has to push multiple levers. And in the fifties and sixties, the sociotechnical systems thinking movement worked all of this out. And here we are, 60 years on still making the same mistakes, thinking bit of technology in, and that’ll solve all your problems. Mark: But I mean, it’s so, you know, we are sitting in a wave of tech technological, I don’t think it’s adoption yet at enterprise level, but you know, the AI wave is, is really interesting because it’s promising Yeah, absolutely. Matt: Intractable problems solved by magic. But yeah. Yeah. Mark: But by technological magic. Matt: Yeah. And that, that we are not able to be able to make that shift back. And I hope that that coal mining story will stick with people because who the hell starts off an IT project with a conversation about. Technological problem 80 years ago. Mark: But that’s the point, right? That you, if you did them, what they expected, the sensible thing to thinking about today’s technology, they wouldn’t have any, they wouldn’t stop, [00:23:00] they wouldn’t have any, any, not just a memory of it, but they wouldn’t have any change in their natural condition processes for dealing with the problems in front of them. I, I have a thing that I use quite a lot with my clients, and we developed it a few years ago, which is which is triage essentially. So you ask what kind of thing this is, what kind of problem this is before you go something, it seems really obvious, right? But we don’t, we go, this is a unique problem that no one else has ever had before. And that, and therefore, and I, I, I, I use the slogan of saying we need to be much less house. What, like as in Dr. House, much less looking for the N point naught, 1% of conditions that only a genius could spot and solve for, and recognize that most of the problems we’re gonna come across, whether it’s in organizational design, whether it’s in in productivity, whether it’s in process, whether it’s in sourcing, whether it’s in hr, whatever it is, most of those problems are a kinder problem rather than [00:24:00] just a unique problem that no one’s ever seen before. And that I think is really helpful to getting a good grip and moving fast to prototype a solution, which is, I think we all agree is a, is the way to do it. Rather than sitting around going, if I only get the perfect description of this problem, then I’ll, it’ll all, or the perfect data set to support my argument. This is this is the perfect descrip problem. Then, then we’ll all be better off it. Just, you know, I think it’s just much more useful to, to ask kinder questions. My friend John Wilshire who did the illustrations, my copy, copy copy book, hated it as in my publisher at Wiley’s me spelling it in the American way, but it kind of sticks a bit like, you know, using coal mining in a software business. Because it’s it, we are not comfortable with it. It’s got a bur to it and kind of what kind of thing is this. It’s just a much better place to start. Lisa: So if we are being less house, what’s the equivalent saying of it’s never lupus for inner business and their problems? Mark: Well, you, you go, let’s, let’s look at all [00:25:00] the different ways this problem could be, what are the different ways we could diagnose this and go, okay, let’s shorten the odds and try three or four of them and get a better idea, rather than doing it in series. ’cause doing things in series takes forever and you then you get people stuck in own, invested in a particular definition of the problem and a particular kind of solution that they can see coming out of it. So I think that is part of the answer to it. Lisa: And so, interestingly also, so probably my least favorite Marvel film was Dr. Strange’s Multiverse of Madness. Mm-hmm. Like, I found it, I found it infuriating partly because one of the characters just had a very. One dimensional fury That didn’t really make sense. But on a positive note, the way you were just describing it there, thinking about all the different possible outcomes and that kind of, that big beautiful brain trying to [00:26:00] imagine all of those different outcomes. If you’re thinking, well, this is where we’re starting from and here are some options of where we could go, how do you then explain that in a way that doesn’t need a massive cinematic budget? How do you actually get that across to people? I, I think, Mark: you know, we are all people who are quite used to making paper prototypes of things, so rather having the perfect PowerPoint or canvas slide that, that describes it in great detail. You go, let’s make some, let’s get it out in front of us and let’s be really clear what this. Definition looks like, and this definition, this definition, and let’s now engage with them in a different way than we are used to doing when something’s projected onto a wall or a screen. I think that that kind of engagement that we’re used to doing in our work is, I think something that that, that does help get people to see different things. I also think that very quick, getting a very quick prototype solution, you know, the, the roughest ba most basic thing out on the table [00:27:00] also really helps. Yeah. So it’s not just the problem with, so if that’s the problem, then what that kind of problem then here are some of the solutions we’ve seen from elsewhere, which one of those things. But let’s just package that together very quickly into a version of it. And now let’s do that for several different definitions of that problem. , If you get both very, a range of definitions of what the problem is, not all of the possible definitions, but get it down to a reasonable, a reasonable lot and then go, so what’s the obvious solution or what the solutions that we’ve seen for that kind of problem before that have worked in other contexts? Let’s, then you’ve got something that people can respond to and you can start because you’ve got a prototype, you can start, what’s the simplest way we can test that, that hypothesis of problem and solution and uh, that works against how, business culture tends to work in the Anglosphere. Mm-hmm. Which is, oh yeah. There must be one mighty thing. You know, one ring to rule them all in the darkness behind them. Lisa: Um, Mark: yeah, Lisa: I completely agree with the paper prototypes as well. [00:28:00] I know one of my first, I didn’t realize that other people didn’t work like this, but one of my first content design things that I did when I was freelance, I was working on a big project for a charity looking at the content for their new website, and I had big pieces of paper and pens, and I drew out prototypes of what I thought the pages would look like, because previously I found if you take something that looks even slightly finished to people, they’re like, well, I don’t like the font. And why is it in black and white? And why, why have you used that picture there? That’s not appropriate. And people kind of get tangented. Or distracted by the details, which are actually just placeholder details. So I I completely, absolutely. Yeah. I love a Mark: pen and paper job. No, I think that’s really important. And, and you know, the other thing is that executives aroused from their slumber decision makers aroused from their slumber, and you make them do something and write it down and, and you ban the words that, you know, I’ve got a particular [00:29:00] thing given my marketing background about what I call the B word that dominates marketing as a sort of a general excuse to avoid saying anything particular and to impose the b stuff on the rest of the organization. So I, um, I, yeah, no, I, I think that’s you get prototypes, get people to express things in simple terms. Make the thing as simple as it possibly can be so that you can test it. And I’m sure you’ve done this with your projects as well, Lisa, that when you have this a paper a paper prototype if you like, it’s really simplest thing you say, what’s the simplest way we can test it this week? Lisa: Yeah, Mark: what’s the simplest way we can test it this week? Before we go any further or before we leave the room, what’s the simplest way we could test this? And then you, then you get movement. ’cause executives are used to speculating. Yeah. And, and showing off. I mean, different, different organizational cultures are different national cultures different. It’s a thing with the French business schools that people tend to hold forth and, you know, just slip a little bit of Dakar in there if you can. Or maybe, maybe something from the 20th [00:30:00] century. Yeah. Boer, let’s have some Boer. Why not? And, uh, but, and German cultures seem to be more mechanical, but it stops some thinking. So you have to have to find a way to pull people forward with you into this making mindset. Matt: We don’t like people thinking in work though, do we? ’cause they might come up with ideas that are dangerous or challenge the status quo Mark: or Absolutely. What’s the rules of this game, Matt? How do I win? You know, the correct answer here is, and you know, the truth is, as we know from the work that we’ve been doing for years, is that there’s no correct answer. There are lots of different answers, some of which are absolute nonsense, but that doesn’t matter. We’ve at least we’ve got that out and when you’re getting people to generate alternatives, saying the stupid one at least gets that out and it’s not circling around behind individual’s ears or within the group. Shouldn’t we say that one? Should we, because that’s the thing that we’ve always done, is just say it, get it out. Let’s not be embarrassed anymore. Matt: So that seems like an [00:31:00] interesting point to then come back to these ideas of herd like behavior because a lot of the ways in which people are programmed to operate within the world of business, you know, if you say, I mean my favorite, my favorite thing that I’ve heard many times now is from people saying, can you help us to innovate? We’d like to see some people who’ve done it before. Please. And you go, can Mark: we all have a pound every time we’ve been asked that? Right? Yeah, I know Matt: exactly. And you know, there’s a bit of me that goes, oh, it rolls my eyes and go, you’re never gonna do this. But on the other hand, I kind of understand it. And a lot of it is because we have a lot of programming and we have a lot of social pressure about what it is to be work. Like, it’s a lot of pressure. You know, the work I did around play, and if you had a pound for every time I’ve mentioned the Protestant work ethic on this show, but the Protestant work ethic is deeply embedded in our culture. We’ve lost the religion, so we don’t know what it is, but there’s things that hold us back and make us feel guilty for doing anything that doesn’t feel work. Like, and that holds back. ’cause making a pro in a paper prototype Mark: that’s not thinking Matt, you see, that’s the trouble. Matt: [00:32:00] Yeah. Mark: Making something with your hands and writing it down it and then sharing it with other people is not working. It’s not like you’re supposed to do when you’re sitting in the executive suite. Exactly that. Yeah. And so, uh, if you take some of that herd thinking King and some of those ideas about how we’re, we’re programmed to be able to act in particular ways, is that basically much of your consulting then? Matt: Is that just basically trying to be able to disrupt some of that in a way that isn’t Oh, it’s totally countercultural. Mark: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s partly that it’s partly that because you have to help them. See beyond the programmed ways of doing things and ways of thinking and the map that program gives them the map of the world. So for example, you know, um, I’ve done, and I’m sure you’ve done this with your, with your tech clients making people in decision, making positions, forced to actually meet customers. It’s just really uncomfortable. It’s really uncomfortable unless they’re senior customers that I can bond with [00:33:00] and not have to talk about any of the dirty stuff that we do. Oh. Or I know that they’re Matt: gonna say nice things. Yeah, well, exactly, Mark: exactly. Yeah. We’d have to select those really carefully for interview. Yeah, so it’s partly that, but it’s also partly understanding how, how human behavior inside or outside the organization actually works. So this thing I mentioned previously about triaging. What kind of behavior is it when people say. Yes, absolutely. We’re all up for that transformation program. We’ve just got a couple of priorities right now. What kind of behavior is that and where have we seen that before? Rather than saying there are people who are blocking this or they’re saying the right thing in the meetings. So you’ve, we’ve seen that before in lots of other contexts inside this organization before, but also outside the organization and then in real life. And, and that just gets a much richer toolkit once you’ve triaged it that way. So there’s that. It’s a map that the one that I created with, um, professor Alex Bentley, the map of that I think in, I’ll have what she’s having in copy, copy. A very simple two, two by two of, individual choice versus social and [00:34:00] informed. It’s a really simple map and just makes you think a bit harder about what it is you are trying to change when it comes to customers. What’s really interesting is I. Is how difficult it is for anybody, whether it’s in marketing or beyond, just to actually plot customers, whether they’re end users or consumers, behavior according to a type of things. A kind of to categorize them, uh, for in different types. ’cause everything seems to be, ’cause we’re told, and this is sort of the, the terrible cult of the of the lords of strategy. That every problem is unique. Every problem is unique and you really need, if you’re can, it’s a really unique problem and it’s a really difficult one. And if you manage to solve it, senior executive, then you are a genius. What you need is people, consultants like me, who are also geniuses, who can make you look really good by solving this unique problem. It’s, it’s just a, it’s just a, like a Ponzi scheme, but, but not as rewarding in the end. So, uh, I think what, where I get to is [00:35:00] most of the problems that organizations face. And this is, this is true in the NGO sector, as it is in, as it is in the corporate sector. Uh, and it’s true in government as well, but that’s another subject. Um, most of the problems people face are to do with people. They’re not to do with the technology. ’cause we can, finding the right answer to technology isn’t that hard. You know, I heard a terrible stat the other day that, um, someone was telling me that, uh, the ratio. Of all investment in technology that U-K-P-L-C has made in the last 20 years. The ratio between the money spent on design and build of the technology and user adoption and support is nine to one, which is exactly the adverse of what it should be. I’m, Matt: I’m surprised it’s still one actually. Mark: Well, I mean, that’s, that’s maybe 20 years has, has raised that up a bit, but, um, but I, I, that’s the truth, right? Is we imagine [00:36:00] that, that the people aren’t being, aren’t gonna be important and they will do what we tell them. Just put a good thing in front of them and they’ll, and they’ll fall over themselves to use it. It’s just, we know that from making the number of things we’ve made in our careers that it’s just not true. Matt: Yeah, and there’s a, there’s a really interesting difference between. A commercial internet site where what you need to do is get enough customers to be able to be either profitable or to have enough customers to be able to make your business look like somebody else will want to buy it. And it doesn’t mean you have to get everybody and providing a service that is used within an organization where everybody needs to use it for it to be successful and the same is one of the things I’m struggling with at the moment is the idea of product thinking being brought into the world of business systems. ’cause I don’t think it works and it doesn’t work because of that dynamic. Because to make a product that is good enough, you maybe need to get 1% of a market [00:37:00] to get a business system that is good enough. You need to get it used by a hundred percent of the market. And that the, and the, the con, the confusion that product thinking, I think is providing into. Business systems, and to an extent, some government services as well is blowing people’s brains, quite frankly. I, Mark: I think that’s right. There’s another thing which the product thinking doesn’t help us with, which is the assumption that actually whoever makes a decision, makes it on the, on the basis that this is, uh, that they’re maximizing the utility from this, that there’s a better or best scale that people are gonna make a decision by. And mostly, most of our behavior, whether it’s a corporate or whether it’s an individual, it’s not made on that basis. And that come back to my simple map in, I’m plugging all four of my books now. This is marvelous. Um, on, on one podcast, uh, the map we created in I’ll have what he, she’s having in it’s MIT press, it was about 10 years ago now. Just there’s one box in [00:38:00] that four box, four box map, which is people making considered judgments based on the utility. This particular option gives them. Mm-hmm. And it’s just one, and it’s really rare. In fact, in the academic world in which this model is taken from in the academic world, there’s a huge debate about whether there is a best that you can find in any category. It’s really rare. And we, we found one in all of the, um, different, uh, consumer categories we looked at to build that model. And that was, that was deodorant format. But it’s not better, best, it’s just preference. So if you are, if you are used to using a roll on deodorant, you will not be upgrading to a different kind of different kind of deodorant. You won’t be going to an aerosol every year. Some bright spark somewhere in Colgate, Palm, olive, or Unilever or Proctors has this insight that goes aerosols use up twice as fast. They’re higher. Premium for us. Why don’t we get all of our roll on users to migrate over to [00:39:00] aerosols? And frankly, it’s always a disaster because roll on users go from, let’s say they go from Dove to Rex. It’s just, you know, it’s not ‘ Matt: cause they Mark: like the format is the thing they’re choosing, not the brand. The brand is sort of much more secondary in that, but that’s the only one we found that the patterns in the data support that. And you know, the, the model I say is based on academic stuff, which looks at looks at archeological data sets, um, as well as modern ones. And, uh, there’s some great, you know, our history of modern electronic innovation is littered with the best. Really not winning. Yes. This is the B max Matt: versus vhs. Exactly. And all those. Yeah. Mark: But it’s also true in the, it’s also true in the past, in Arrowhead, design repeatedly doesn’t go better, better, better, better, and increasing up until it gets the very best. And then someone bests the best. It doesn’t, it changes changes because people go with that, oh, that looks nice. Let’s have the shape of that arrow out of a different material and then, and and so on. Um, and so [00:40:00] it, it’s just not a escalation to maximum utility, which is what product thinking leads us to. And I because it don’t, they don’t understand people. They don’t care about the people at the end, Matt: uh, or they don’t understand evolution. There’s, um, that’s true. A little book a little bit in the random book about why pandas exist. Pandas tell me. That’s good. By any measure should not exist. They are useless. Useless at reproducing and passing together two days a year when they’re infertile thing if, if you’re lucky. Yeah. And all this sort of stuff and, and, and yet evolution because of the randomness that it goes into it, you end up with things that aren’t optimum by any stretch of the imagination. Mark: I think. I think that’s right. This is, there’s a huge, so the guys that I, I did this work with describe themselves as being from the world of cultural evolution. So they see cultural artifacts, practices, and and so on as being the spread and the rise and the fall of [00:41:00] them as being best explained by dynamic model, which is essentially Darwinian. They are really keen, and we come up against this when we, when we consulting uh, as a data business. A lots of people imagine that what Darwin was saying is the best will win out. And that’s clearly something that lives in, in product land as well. The best is gonna win. Whereas in fact, what, as you say, Panda is a great example of, essentially it’s drift. They, there’s been, uh, there’s been copying and variation over time and they’ve not really had to work that hard. That two, two days a year is enough, probably for enough pandas to keep going. Mostly. Lisa: This does make me think of there was a lecture at the Royal Institute last year which was talking about cats being perfect, evolutionary. Their dead ends basically. Yes. Yeah. A small, a house cat is exactly the same. Proportions and ratio as a tiger, but give or [00:42:00] take a little bit. So a tiger is basically a much scaled up version of a small animal. And that’s really, that’s really rare apparently. Like it’s not something like a big dog is different to a small dog. A small dog can’t jump as high, whereas a tiger’s just like a scaled up version. And basically cats are perfect. They’re evolutionary dead ends, and that’s probably why they rule the internet as well. Mark: Well, this is true. That is true. That is true. The dogs are pretty cool on the internet too. Lisa: Yeah, that’s fair. My Mark: dog’s very popular. Seriously. She is. She’s great. People love her. Every I walk down the street and people say, well, that’s a beautiful dog. What’s her name? But no, I think you’re right, Lisa. I think you’re right. There’s this misunderstanding though of that, that to survive, to succeed, it has to be the very best. And that somehow there is inherent in our attempts at innovation, at producing the very best, better than everything that’s gone before. And that is our, that is our, the, the, if you like, that’s the arc of [00:43:00] of innovation thinking. It’s just not true. Matt: And then, and then there’s just not true those two categories of people we haveI. Is it optimizers and satisfies? Mark: Satisfies? Yes. Yes. Well, I think we all are both, but we’re more often, more of us are more often satisfiers than we are optimizers. What are these, can you Lisa: explain this for me please? So Mark: optimizers, if you’re thinking, you know, that homo economicus thing as an economic rational creatures, looking at what’s the benefit of this versus the cost of sort of maximizing utility? For me, that is, um, as a maximizer. Lisa: Okay. Mark: A satisfier is someone who goes, will that do? And most of the decisions in most of our lives, including the big decisions that are being made on major investments are, is this good enough? We’ve been through the process to make ourselves feel better that we’ve got getting the best answer. Is this gonna be okay? Yeah, it’s gonna be okay. Yeah. And we can post rationalize it. Go. You see, we went through the process and it’s really amazing. It’s gonna be really fantastic. It’s gonna be the best it’s ever been, but much of the time the decision has actually made as a [00:44:00] satisfies thing. And I mean, that’s why fame is so important in as much in business to business context as it is in business to consumer context. It’s just so important. We know, oh yeah. Everyone else knows that this, of this one. So it’s just a short and it must be good if everyone else uses it. You know, that’s, that’s, you know, what you might call the, I’ll have what she’s having syndrome encapsulated there. If everyone else is having it, it must be okay. Oh no, I won’t get fired for hiring IBM. Matt: Yeah Lisa: you’ve just. You’ve just triggered the horrible analogy that I haven’t used for ages about how I think the global financial crisis and securitization and the way things were packaged up and the way everyone was just doing stuff, and there was a handful of people who understood how it worked, feels very similar to how people are just using AI now. So totally everyone else and how investors, investors are using ai, just got to get on with it. Everyone’s using it, and if we keep putting money into it, then everyone else will [00:45:00] keep using it. And nothing possibly can go wrong with this Mark: clearly. Well, exactly. That’s, that’s why the bubble in ai in, in spent, you know, it’s, what is it? Is it 40% of US stock value in the last year? Yeah. Matt: 20% of gdp. DP in the US at the moment, data, 20% Mark: of gdp, DP is data centers. It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And we all know where it ends. The question is not, it’s a Ponzi schema in that sense. We all know it’s not gonna end nicely for most people. Yeah. Yes. Meanwhile, some people be over the hills with the money. Well, very few people Matt: then. That’s the other thing. Very few Mark: people, increasingly few people, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Matt: Back to the time thing. Mark: Yep. Matt: When’s the book coming? Mark? I’ve been waiting for this for years. Well, I, and I know I need to be able to deal with Mark: me too. Me too, Matt. Me too, Matt. Well, um, good question. So I’ve, I’m writing the, the heard one with this herd spotting Matt: book. Mark: At the [00:46:00] moment, soon as we’re done with that in fact, before I’m done with that, ’cause I’ll get bored, I will be, um, resurrecting that that proposal and getting it to a bunch of new publishers, because I just think it’s really useful. It’s evolved over time from being something that was quite theoretical to something, which is I think, really tangible the way that you are. Remember Lisa, I was talking about when we met in Bavaria. It was very much about how we live our lives. You know, it started with me talking about, uh, I, I called it Now Stop the clocks. That, that scene from, um, four weddings. When John Hannah lost his partner, the very loud, very very gregarious Gareth has died a heart attack. And it’s this moment in the movie, which is the turning point that Greeks call it the Agnan Anagnorisis. When the hero realizes what his real quest is, when Hugh Grant’s character realizes what love looks like, John Hannah is standing there in a church in a cold, damp church. Damp church was in [00:47:00] West Thur. As it happens. That’s a bit of a geek information for you that you’ll never forget. And he’s lost for words like I have been, you know, I’ve had to deliver three eulogies in five years of people who are really close to my wife, my godfather, and my father. Now. Please God, that you don’t have to do that. And no one listening to this and neither you two has to do that. It’s hard, but it’s also important, that moment in the movie ’cause clocks that dominate so much of our lives that are so important in factory processes and in the way we think about our own productivity in our lives gonna be productive. A clock is just not a good enough container for what it is to be human. That moments when you’re standing there in front of, there’s a coffee in there and there, the family and I’m broken about it. You know, you a clock and clock time is just not enough. It’s just not enough human life. And what matters to us [00:48:00] is far more important than stuff, than we measure by a clock. And I think we went wrong some 250 years ago when we still start clocks in factories, that really has dominated all of our culture. It’s just not ’cause time is money. Right. Franklin said that. But so I think it’s really important to accept that other ways of being human and living in time differently will create or allow us to see the real values of what we’ve got.[00:49:00] [00:50:00] Lisa: Gosh, we have covered some subjects in this conversation. I knew we would, but we’ve gone from time travel to mi We didn’t use the phrase minimum viable product, but I think we’ve basically touched on that. AI got a look in existential crises maybe as well as financial ones. There’s so much to think about and it, it did make, it did remind me also of a few years ago when I was in Sydney at the step two conference. One of the exercises we did there was. What would you like someone to read about you at your 65th birthday party? Which for some people was in a couple of years time, and in other people it was like, whoa, this is quite a far in the future. Like, not thinking about your eulogy, but thinking about how, yeah, how, how do you want to be currently remembered in the future? You know, what, how do you want to be celebrated and [00:51:00] how would that cha would that change how you’re living your life? And I, it really stuck with me as well, as well as yours did. Mark. But so thinking about more recently, uh, or not recently, thinking about the future coming back to the present now and then the next week or so, and actually week or so, probably extends to the end of the year. Given that this is being recorded in early to mid-December, what’s coming up for you in the next week or so? Matt? Matt: For me this is the week of being sociable. I have got an evening out tomorrow night which has been organized by Julia Hospo. Then on Wednesday I am going to be potentially meeting up with some of my former colleagues at Microsoft and then going to meet my old school and university mates for our Christmas gathering. And then on Thursday [00:52:00] I’ll be meeting up briefly with. This is at the end of the day, this is, you know, there’s work and stuff as well. We’re reaching up with um, an old student of my father’s who I’ve done work bits and Bob Sco called Richard Hale, who’s one of the leading exponents of action learning in the uk. So he’s got a group of people gathering. So I’m pop to see him at the RSA and then go to our work Christmas party. ’cause I haven’t made it for the last two years. And then we might be meeting up with friends on Friday, in which case on Saturday I’ll probably not be worth the price of admission. But, um, uh, so that’s, I’m looking forward to it, but I’m also slightly daunted by it. That’s my week ahead. And how about. You Mark, what have you got coming up? Well, I’m gonna do a bit of time travel. My ambition is on Saturday, I’m going to go to the Monaco Christmas Fair, monocle Magazine, Christmas Fair. [00:53:00] Um, where’s that? Emma Ne Emma Nelson. It’s in their offices in Marla Band. On Saturday and Sunday. Mark: Emma Nelson, who we’ve all met at Friend of Marcus’s, she does the brilliant media training there at the Speaky Summit. She is a presenter on Monocle Radio and, uh, so I’m gonna catch up with her there. That’s if I live that long. I think that’s the thing. I’ve got a very busy week and, and this is the last week when any sensible decisions get made. I think in work, there’s lots of work to do after that. That’s the last time sensible decisions. Yeah. So working back from that, I’ve got my wife’s best friend coming to stay on Thursday night and she will be. Telling me how to decorate my house for Christmas, which is good. She’s brilliant. Jamie Cooper, wonderful lady. And then Wednesday I’m going to I’m looking forward to, this is again, evening. I’m looking forward to going to the actors carols at the Actors Church in Con Garden. There’s a, something that one of our chums from, uh, the No Names group, Matt is um, is organized there, but tomorrow night is when Christmas, it’s the first [00:54:00] time I get to cry at Christmas stuff and sing Christmas songs. I’m going to the Old Vic with a bunch of friends. We go most years to see the Christmas Carol Connection. It’s Carol, which is the same production, I think it’s the eighth or ninth year. They’ve actually had the same production. They’d swap in a new star every year. And that will be that will be my moment of going, yeah, Christmas is here. Matt: Amazing. Lovely. I keep, um. I keep saying to the family, we need to get that on the list for next year. So I, they’re definitely gonna try to make that onto, and no spoilers. It all Mark: ends well, Matt. It’s fine. That gets together, you know. That’s it. Matt: Yeah. Um, Lisa, how about you? What’s your, um, week ahead looking like? Lisa: Well, um, again, the week that’s just gone, I missed Mark’s amazing gig ’cause I had my annual, my new annual newish annual tradition of Crispus, where I host a crisp tasting in my local pub. And it’s Christmas is the best festive limited edition flavor. Crisp, [00:55:00] like potato crisp, not twiglets. That’s for the alternative crisps message that’s coming up in a couple of weeks. Um, so I had a, I had quite a crispy hangover on Friday because it turns out the salt in that as is as bad as drinking. Even more beer than I actually had. So this week it’s still quite a social week. I’ve got, um, the International Association of Business Communicators monthly year drinks, but the festive version of that on Wednesday, I’ve got a freelancers meetup, which is the festive version, um, in Elephant and Castle on Thursday. I might, I just trying to survive to the weekend. I don’t think we’ve got a lot on this weekend. And I think that’s probably for the best ’cause there’s still lots of Christmas admin that needs to be done and, uh, yeah, I, I completely hear you about the decisions. Like, there’s plenty, there’s lots of work still [00:56:00] going on, but I, it kind of feels like the week of the 15th feels already, like it’s gonna be a bit of a. Just a wrapping up or a write off one of the two, maybe somewhere. A writing for Mark: some of us writing. Lisa: Yes. There we go. Matt: Wonderful. Well, I think that brings us to the end of this show the end of, uh, the last show of 2025. And which means that we now have just 10 months of WB 40 until we hit our 10th birthday, which is a remarkable thing. But that’s in October next year, so you take this to all the way forward to there. We won’t be back next week. We won’t be back until January. We’ve got some guests booked in for January. So before then mark, thank you so much for coming on the shows. Mark: You’re welcome. It’s been a pleasure. Real pleasure. Lovely to see you both. Matt: And Lisa, as ever, an absolute joy to be able to, uh, present with you. Lisa: Ah, likewise. Matt: And we will be back in 2026 a year. So Unfeasibly in the [00:57:00] future. That surely by now we will have jet packs. Uh, have a great Christmas end of year break and we’ll see you in the new year. Mark: Thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us on the [00:58:00] internet@wbfortypodcast.com and on all good podcasting platforms. Share, share, share.

On this week’s show, Chris and Julia meet Claudia Plen McCormack and Mia Serra to discuss their newly formed leadership training company, Surface Deep, and their approach to “deep inclusive leadership.” Both late-diagnosed with ADHD, Claudia and Mia draw on their experiences of burnout and masking in corporate environments to help organizations move beyond superficial diversity initiatives and tick-box wellness programs. They introduce the distinction between “surface action”—where people mask their true selves and say the right things—and “deep action,” which embraces authenticity and vulnerability to build genuine psychological safety. The conversation explores how their methodology combines leadership theory with neuroscience and embodied movement practices to create real-time insights. Through simple but powerful movement exercises—like following and leading activities—participants discover their behavioral patterns and tendencies without needing to intellectualise everything. Claudia and Mia challenge the prevailing corporate culture where constant productivity leaves no room for reflection, and where wellbeing initiatives often backfire by missing what employees actually need. They argue that creating environments where people can truly be themselves doesn’t just improve wellbeing—it unlocks the productivity, creativity, and innovation that organisations desperately need, with research showing diverse teams are 60% more productive when they can work authentically. As burnout reaches crisis levels globally, they offer a different path forward: building psychological flexibility and safety into the very DNA of organisations. The full transcript, generated by Descript (so there are probably errors)… Chris: Hello and welcome to WB 40 Podcast, the weekly podcast with me, Julia Bellis, Claudie Plen McCormack, and Mia Serra. Everybody here we are again, WB40 and very good. It is to be here too. Julia, you’re gonna tell us what you’ve been up to this week, please? Julia: I recently got back from holiday and that was a bit of a shock I have to admit because being at work is very different being on holiday, but I think I’ve got used to the discipline and rigor and routine again now, so I’m feeling a bit more at ease with it, and I always look for an excuse to talk about tooting bet Lido on this podcast. And I did get the opportunity to go to the Lido at the weekend without instantly jumping into ice cold water. And I did a bit of a watercolor workshop, which was really fun actually. And I’m always a bit scared of painting ’cause I don’t know what I want to do. So it was quite nice to be with a group of people where it didn’t really matter and we could try out different ideas and things. So yeah, that was lovely. How about you, Chris? What have you been up to? Chris: Well, it’s been a, it’s been a busy week. I’ve been in London and I’ve been up and down the country. I think I went to Chester last week. That was that was a bit like a bit of a drive up to, up to the northwest, to the British Computer Society meeting up there where I was their guest, guest speaker. I’m assuming I got let down by a number of different people and therefore why was the last resort? And I’ve got a bit of a thing I’m talking about in the moment around software. You know, how BI versus Bill just changed and all of those kind of cool, cool things. So yeah, that was good fun. So yeah, it’s been a busy weekend. And then the weekend, it was my, my kids, they were twins. It was their, both their birthdays. ’cause that’s kind of traditionally how twins are. Unless you got right on the midnight, you know, you have one, one on each side. And also my wedding anniversary on the same day, which was you know, kind of coincidental. So that, and so. Very rarely do we get to do anything really. It’s always been the kids have, have dominated that day, but they’re getting old in now, so I can be a little bit less. Julia: So you have to share your wedding anniversary with your twin’s birthday? I Chris: do. I do. It’s like all eggs in my basket. I must never forget that day. Julia: Yeah, that is bad. Do Well, what Chris: can I say? I, you know. The gods with me. Julia: And what about, what about you, our guests? Claudia, what have you been up to in the last week? So I, Claudie: I have to say that I’m just really, really aware of the encroaching darkness at the moment. So what I’m finding is that every time I see a little bit of sunlight, like there’s been a couple of days with blue skies and I go running outside just get a little bit of nature. So walking in trees and. Julia: You know, brilliant tactic actually, and I think we should all try to copy at the moment. Grab the sunshine when you can. Mia: Absolutely. Julia: And how about you Mia? Mia: That’s true actually because I, on, on Saturday, I walk, I walk a lot with my dog. And I walked across the heath from Kenwood to Parliament Hill and they have a little farmer’s market there. And I go and buy tomatoes, really good tomatoes from the farmer’s market, from the isle of White. Highly recommended. And it’s just a really nice walk across the heath ’cause you just get to see exactly what’s going on with the leaves and the trees and where we are in the season and, and feel, you know, what the weather’s really like. And the dog just runs and runs and runs and runs. So it’s just really nice check in with nature and the weather and the same as Claud said, get a little bit of sun. So that’s really been lovely. Julia: The way to do that right now I think is early in the morning, isn’t it? There’s no light slot after work. Claudie: Definitely. Yeah. True. You can get yourself out there. That’s first thing. That’s the way to do it. Mia: Yeah. This’s. Quite late. Sunset. Actually, I have to wait for the sun to rise to walk the dog. So Julia: the image, the Mia: image Julia: popped into my head when you were talking about walking across Hamster Heath was the latest Bridget Janes movie. And she lives on the edge of hamster teeth, doesn’t she? And it features quite a lot. Mia: Yeah. Well, I didn’t see any park rangers, any Hanson Park rangers. None to be had on my way to Parliament Hill. What, next time? What a Chris: Well, Barry Norman, well done for bringing the film element into this. So thank you Julia. Let’s track on and we’ll talk about surface deep. Julia: Claudia m are here today. To talk about their recently formed leadership training company, I believe. Can you tell us a bit about what this company is and why you’ve decided to form it? Mia: Well, that’s a very good question. I think it’s, it’s something that came together very organically. We were brought together by a friend of mine who said, both of you’re talking very much about the same thing you should really meet. And, and we’ve found out that we’d had very similar experiences in the corporate world. And we’d got to a very similar point in sort of realizing that we were not working at our best in a, in a sort of average corporate environment with the kind of management and the kind of culture and the the the way things work. But we. We know and we were aware that a lot of people, for example, who are neurodiverse or are slightly different in other ways or would also be struggling or have been struggling with sort of your typical environment corporate environment. And so I think it was, that was sort of one of the starting points of understanding how we’d both experience burnout. We both experienced less than optimal environments where, and we have a lot to give. And it was, it was. This idea that we really want to help people to be able to work and sustainably and to be you know, instead of feeling like they’re burning out or they’re constantly exhausted or they’re masking their behaviors to try and fit in. You know, what about, you know, if you could actually truly be yourself, if you could actually be a, you know, all your talents could be expressed and everything that you, you, you can do. Could contribute to that company and that team and, and that has an effect on the bottom line as well. We know that diverse teams, teams that have many different types of people, and that can be neurodiverse as well, are 60% more productive than teams that are not diverse. And that’s an, that’s an HBR stat. So we know that there is a benefit to having. Many different types of people and styles in an organization and inside teams. The question is how to do it. Julia: What types of behavior had you observed as contributing to what did you call it, the sort of average corporate culture and what led you to want to change those? Claudie: You know, one of the things that brought Mia and I together actually there were so many things, but we both come from kind of quite big corporate environments. You know, Mia started in finance. I have moved through kinda big tech management consultancy. You know, we both worked in startups also, that kind of environment. And what we’d experienced was an environment where being different was not welcome. Where even though there was a lot of talk, maybe as we we say, you know, on the surface about we need to grow, we need to innovate, we need to have new thinking, all of that kind of thing. Actually, if you’re coming into that environment as someone who genuinely is almost like an outlier. Yeah. With your perspective, with your way of thinking. As you know, Mia’s mentioned both of us are late diagnosed, A DHD, you know, which also brings a different way of thinking all sorts of benefits, but sometimes you don’t fit. And you feel like you’re on the edge. And I think on top of that, what we’d noticed was that, you know, we’d experienced a series of life shocks, as everyone does. You know, you go through periods when you experience bereavement, when you’re experiencing, you know, some people might go through a divorce, they might be going through caring responsibilities. Yeah. When we were doing that, the support didn’t exist. What we have found both through those personal experiences, but also being really aware of, there’s some shocking statistics out there. Some of the research that we’ve been looking at recently that, you know, 48% of what workers globally are going through burnout or experiencing some form of burnout because we’re expected to do more with less. . We’re all going through, you know, stress mental health difficulties. Neurodiversity is only one form of kind of intersectional challenge. It might be gender based, it might be, you know, different cultures. And so bringing all of that kind of knowledge and experience together, what we became aware of was you know, some really big threats facing organizations today. One of them being the world’s going a little bit crazy. Everyone’s trying to innovate, everyone’s trying to grow, and people are falling off the radar and they’re struggling. Julia: So when you say the world’s going a little bit crazy, I mean there’s loads of things that that could be a reference to actually at the moment. But one of the other hot topics on this podcast is AI and I guess that has all kinds of reverberations through the workforce, doesn’t it? Claudie: Absolutely. One of the things I’m really conscious of is we are posting so much change and it’s constant and what we talk about is kind of storms approaching. . And one of them is ai. And actually one of the things that we were looking at today is not just. How do you engage with that kind of change? Julia: So is this a goal of your training? To be able to take a reasoned look at what might be ahead and plan for it, rather than being taken by surprise and reacting more reactively. Or is it different flavor? Claudie: I think it’s, yes. I think that is definitely, you know, potentially one goal of the clients that we work with. But actually, I suppose Mia and I have talked more about how we want to build psychological safety, psychological flexibility into the DNA of organizations into their strategic thinking in terms of giving leaders the skills to deal with whatever turns up. And do it sensitively and authentically. Mia: There’s also an element of, of, of reflection. I think that’s one of the things that we were talking about is that, you know, every, if everyone’s moving so fast and being constantly productive, there isn’t a point where people say, okay, what worked, what didn’t work? You know, what is working? What could we do better? There’s a sort of, you know, some, often there’s a nod to that or say, we should do that because somebody told us that we should. And, but a very authentic, you know. Reflection on and, and a listening process of understanding what is going on for everybody and what is working for them. And I think there’s, that’s, that’s the idea as well in, in, in the process that we, that we’ve developed is that people will get a chance to self-reflect on how they might. React in certain situations and what their patterns are as leaders and where they could look to including different kinds of tools and different kinds of kinds of techniques. And also how they can build in reflection. You know, whether that’s with the team or self-reflection. Claudie: Yeah, absolutely. I think the there’s a combination of different factors here. So me and I have developed an approach that we call deep inclusive leadership. So that’s really exactly answering this question of how do we not only just do what’s needed on the surface.. You know, being polite, saying the right things you know, which can lead to a lot of stress, but actually create kind of a deep sense of belonging, safety. And as Mia says part of the model and I can tell you a little bit about the model we developed that goes with that. Part of that is combining leadership theory. . Which is really old fashioned in a lot of organizations. People are still using the same models that someone was talking about the nineties or the forties or the 1860s. You know, they’re not diverse voices or thinking. Taking into account neuroscience, they’re not taking into account, you know, what happens to system as me just said. So we’re combining the theory and team development theory and communication theory with. Movement with everything you need to calm your nervous system down. Julia: So can I just dig into a bit of that? Actually these, this idea of, you know, how things operated in the 1860s and I don’t know much about the history of leadership, but if I am imagining it and filling in the gaps, I can see leadership being a sort of a top down military style operation. You do, as I say. Then maybe information feeds back up to the top where the decision making happens. And can you describe a little bit how you are trying to change that? Okay. Mia: Well that kind of links in with this idea that we include in, in, in our thinking, which is about force versus flow. And I think that the military style leadership format, which is. S really the benchmark for a lot of things. You know, whether it’s time management or whatever else, it’s always, you know, very sort of military and specific. And if you’ve got to make your bed and you’ve gotta get up exactly at six o’clock and all these things, and that might work for certain people, but that doesn’t really include a sense of, maybe that doesn’t work for, for others. And this idea of forcing we’ve had for many decades or many centuries that we can force people into. Being a certain way and being productive, or if we just tell them what to do, you know, in a scary way they’ll do better. You know? But actually, you know, we, there is a lot of research that shows that empathetic leaders get a lot better results than leaders that are forceful and also. This idea from a, when we’ve, there’s been quite a lot of re research recently on the flow state, and if you can create an environment where your team is in a flow state and where they are safe to make mistakes and say, you know, random things and bring up new ideas, they can. Be in a state where they’re being naturally innovative in a peak state, and that can be on an individual level, but also in a team level. And they can be going in directions that, you know, that weren’t, maybe not even thought of at the beginning in a very structured sort of, you know, military format. Not to say that there isn’t a place for structure, but I think it’s become the be all and end all of everything. And, and yet now we know and that that is not. Necessarily the best thing for everybody. And also that isn’t the state, the flow state isn’t a state of force. So it’s a question of when do you have structure and when do you allow, and, and I think there’s a certain vulnerability in allowing flow, in allowing a team to flow in the direction they’re going or to flow with, with a project that’s going in a certain way. And, and, and, and, and. Maybe not stopping or interfering if that’s actually going to be beneficial to the business. And, and that’s, some of that actually applies to the, to AI as well in terms of we are gonna, instead of saying we are bringing in ai, you know, and you are gonna have to deal with it. You know, it could be a much more flowing thing of like, listen, we want you guys to be able to have free your minds up so you can innovate more and be more in a state of creativity or innovation. And this is gonna take. The admin off your shoulders and all these basic tasks that you don’t really want to be doing anyway, and that’s gonna really help you to do these other things, you know, and, and, and you can, you can be more in flow. So there’s, there’s many different applications to that, and I think that. That was, that’s a really good point you made about this sort of military basis to things that still, I still get emails about time management, about, you know, making your bed and shining your shoes and that being the ideal scenario of the most in control person, Chris: So, I’m thinking when, when you’re talking about that leadership style from the 1860s Julia, that. Such a lot of the economy was then based on, on kind of manual labor or, or production of, of things where your process is more synchronous, it’s more reliant on the, on the person before you’re doing something at the right time. People have to have to work in context. It’s more repeatable. Yeah, and and we are working now far more in a knowledge based company. Where with far more people who aren’t necessarily working synchronously at all, they’re working asynchronously, they’re handing off work. You know, that doesn’t necessarily have to be done this moment or whatever. And that, that’s a challenge if you’ve grown up in a world where, I mean, I was just mentioning the other day to somebody I was at, I was at an event and I was wearing a suit for the first time in Lord knows how long. I dunno why I decided to wear a suit, but I. I thought to myself, you know, I hadn’t worn a suit for a long time and I wear a suit today. And then thinking back to a time when divas do just a fairly simple job, you know, crawling from the desk and plugging cables in, I, I would be wearing a shirt and tie and it would’ve been, oh, if I hadn’t you know? Mm-hmm. So some of the things that change in terms of why we manage people, the way we manage them and what we expect the outcomes to be. I think they’re probably down to, you know, sometimes the, the, that they, they change quickly and sometimes they take change slowly. And if you think about that kind of manual production line type of, you know, work where, or even sort of physical work with people doing calculations in a, in a, in an accounts department or in a typing pool or whatever it might be. When somebody is not performing at their best, it’s often because they’ve. You can see why, right? There’s a, there’s a physical manifestation of why they’re not working at their best. Whereas in knowledge work, it’s much harder to see the injuries or the reasons why people aren’t working out at their best. And, you know, I think we desperately need a different way of looking at things. It’s a, it’s a different world we live in and it’s different type of work we do. So I think it would be odd if we decided that we, we all had to, you know, work like you know people working in an enormous factory churning at machine parts. Claudie: . It’s really interesting what you’ve just said because this is really guiding all of the work that we’re doing, this idea that you cannot take at face value what you see on the surface. There’s so many different reasons. So just as a few examples. You know, post COVID, so many people are working remotely. They’re working in, you know, in hybrid teams you don’t see each other all the time. And so it becomes very easy to mask exactly as you said, what’s going on underneath the stresses you’re experiencing, what might be happening at home what might be getting in the way of your performance, your ability to deliver. And, you know, bringing in this idea of neurodiversity, bringing in the idea of, you know, caring responsibilities, all the stuff that. Sometimes we don’t. People talk about bringing your whole self to work, but it’s not welcomed.. Julia: Mia mentioned that word vulnerability which fits in with what you were saying, Claudia, about all of these life events that really do take up somebody’s mental energy but are not visible. Especially in this. A hybrid work environment that we all find ourselves in now. And then I was thinking about leaders being vulnerable, mm-hmm. Do you have anything to say about that and the impact that, that can have on a team? Claudie: this is, this is really interesting for us. So, you know, we, we kind of referenced this model that we’ve created that goes with a deep inclusive approach. And we’re calling it the tree model. For sustainable. Yes, sustainable leadership. And as you imagine, you know, the central image is a tree because what we were thinking about is actually being able to grow healthily. Yeah. The trees grow with an ecosystem, so you’re constantly connected. Your team members, your might be stakeholders, your family, the external environment. And you know, one of the things that we’re finding is. That vulnerability actually sits as part of that model. So where it starts, if you imagine kind of the roots being really strongly you know, the foundations of everything for a leader that they need to be stable. They need to be feeding themselves. They need to be, you know, there’s so much having that flow coming from the base, but also building trust. Yeah. Testing themselves, all of that kinda stuff. That’s the foundation of everything. And if your roots aren’t kind of. Strongly anchored into the ground, the tree can fall. Julia: In this analogy, is the tree a team or is it a leader? It can be both. Claudie: Of course it can. Yeah. That metaphor can run around. So a tree, we can, we talk to leaders about being the tree. Yeah. So really kind of, anchoring themselves into the ground building trust from the ground up. You know, when we get into the trunk, that’s when we start to promote resilience. Speaker 2: Yeah. Claudie: Which actually leads into this concept of psychological safety, psychological flexibility. But when these storms come, how do you bend and flow in the wind? Julia: Ah, that, that’s such a beautiful image. I was just coming up with trees flowing in the breeze. Not falling over and Oh, I’m sure there’s metaphors plenty about that. Claudie: Exactly. So this idea that resilience is partly that psychological flexibility. Julia: Yeah. Claudie: The psychological safety that comes from the trust in the roots. But also if you imagine that, you know, a tree has rings and every year as the tree grows, those rings almost represent wisdom that you are kind of learning from everything that’s happened. As, as Mia said earlier, you’ve taken the time to reflect. You’re looking at what worked, what didn’t work. Yeah. And then you build from that place and then, you know, in the kind of the tree canopy where the branches are kind of reaching up into the sky and the leaves are growing. We have empathy and equity, not because they are kind of fluffy concepts. You know, we all want everyone to be nice to each other, or we all want everyone to have an equal voice, even though, you know, a big part of psychological safety is having a voice. Yeah. And being heard. Listened to, but actually, because when you look at what drives innovation and business growth, those things are really central. Julia: I think it’s really hard in our hybrid working environment to create. An atmosphere where people who are more introvert and more reflective naturally and less kind of outward facing, it’s more of a challenge to create an environment where those people can speak up. Would you agree? And would you have any, well, can you help me actually? What are your tips, is what I’m asking. Mia: I tend to be quite introverted in my, in my working style. I think it’s, it goes back to that. Idea of understanding that everybody’s different and that you, you don’t have to do a training course on introverts to under, you know, you can just ask someone. You can say, listen, I, you know, I, I haven’t heard that much from you. And, and, and I’d like to make it easier for you to make a contribution. What would be the best way, what would feel easiest for you to contribute? You know, is it writing? You know, should we have a one-to-one rather than a group? Meeting, would you like to write your thoughts? You know, I’d like you to, to contribute more. And I think it’s having enough interest and, and again, empathy comes in here as well because you have to care enough to ask that person. Because I think what we’ve done a little bit with neurodiversity and what’s happened in society generally is that people have said, oh, neurodiverse people, they need headphones in a quiet area and they need. You know, dim lighting or something and, and it’s just like, what? I mean, you know, it’s okay. I mean, maybe sometimes, but that’s not gonna help if I’m, if I’ve got, you know, rejection sensitivity or I’ve, I’ve take, been offended by something and then. I don’t feel I can talk anymore because I feel like everyone hates me. You know? And the only way you’ll find that out is by saying, listen, you’ve been a bit quiet and I’d really like to hear from you. And actually taking the time to notice and ask. I think Claudia does this really well as well in the beginning of workshops, as well as just saying, what do you need in order to learn best? And you know, and asking people, ’cause we can’t assume to know. Each person says, you know what I’ll need, I need this, or I need that. And that really helps us to create an environment for, for, for the, the people who are present. They can say, you know, and we can, we can, we can try and guess ’cause we know a little bit about neurodiversity, but we, we can’t possibly read people’s minds. And that’s where communication and empathy really comes in, into its own. Chris: Does this, does this have an effect? Think about the neurodiversity kind of angle, the A DHD angle, you know, as we get older, if we’ve been masking for a long time, that’s kind of, that’s kind of how we are, right? That’s, that’s kind of how our, part of our working model. So is it, is, does it come a point where you, where you have to kind of accept that that’s, that’s how it is and actually you’re better off working with the mask? Or, or is it always good to get onto the mask? What, what do you think? Claudie: That’s a really good question. I think that in reality there are times when we all mask and we all maybe kind of flex and change a little bit to fit into our environments to fit in with the people that we want to connect with. Yeah. And there’s, you know, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that. I think that the danger is when this becomes, first of all, going back to Julia’s question. You know, Mia was talking a lot about this, you know, this week about the way that some kind of founders or CEOs hiring their own image. Yeah. So if they’re an extrovert, they will either just hire people that echo that, or they’ll hire people who can pretend Gosh. And Yeah. Julia: You, you have you just imagine this room full of extroverts. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Claudie: And so, and so the, you know, there’s a question for us about what’s the cumulative stress. And equally, what’s the brain drain that occurs if you lose people to stress, if you lose people to not being able to hold that mask permanently or every day? And what’s the, the kind of, I suppose yeah, the, the impact on the culture, innovation, engagement, all the things that we’re looking for if people are constantly hiding really wonderful things about themselves. Mia: I think it’s also to just interject there a bit as well, is it takes energy to mask. So we, we had this idea for Carousel, for LinkedIn is to have this, you know, pitch at sort of line drawing of somebody who’s working but actually spending 50% of their energy pretending to be fine. You know, or you know, actually Yeah. You know, pretending that you know that, that the environment they’re in is not disturbing them and you know. The, actually we have, you know, we have a certain amount of energy that we can expend and if we are using that for, you know, so, you know, to, to answer your question, Chris, yes, you could keep, you know, somebody could continue to mask and they’re in the habit of that, whatever, whatever else. But if they are, feel, if they get. To, to feel so comfortable that they feel like they don’t need to do that all the time. Then you are unlocking productivity and, and, and creativity and innovation and possibilities, which is beneficial for that person and for the business. So it’s, it’s, it’s a load. It’s, you know, and, and, and Chloe talked a bit about this as well, of this labor of, of you know, using your energy for the, for the kind of purposes of masking rather than for the purposes of productivity. Claudie: I think, yeah, just to, to drop that in there. There’s some literally brand new research out at the moment, which I’m finding fascinating. About the emotional labor that is the consequence of what they’re calling surface action over deep action. Yes. All. Tell me more Julia: about that. Claudie: So this is, this is really interesting. We were like, oh, coincidentally, it’s same as our company name. Brilliant. But really what they’re, what they’re finding is surface action is when you are masking, when you are saying the right thing. Yeah. When you are, you know, you’re not really entering into a difficult conversation or taking the risk of being vulnerable, of being yourself, all of that stuff. Whereas deep acting is that kind of authenticity. Which can be vulnerable, but is also enormously powerful. Builds trust, builds connection, builds psychological safety. And so there, there’s, there are real consequences for that Julia: masking. So this is really interesting. I think your. Now you are asking people or nudging people or creating an environment which encourages people to take that risk of creating those real connections, which I think is something that to lots of people, feels really scary. And you just alluded to the payoff, claudie, and the payoff is, are these real relationships? Can you talk a bit about what those relationships might lead to, or, you know, what, what transformation you could be able to kick off if this works? Claudie: I, you know what? I think it’s really interesting because people think about that relationship stuff. Yeah. Connection has been really fluffy, but actually if we go back to that image of the tree and we think about the connection between the roots and that innovation growth piece. Julia: Yeah, Claudie: they’re ultimately connected. You know, there’s a lot of evidence, again, a lot of research that looks at the difference between the performance of acquaintance groups versus friendship groups. Turns out if you have more trust, if you feel more connected, not that you’re best buddies and you spend every night together, it actually contributes to team performance. And so this, yeah, so this idea, again, going back to your question of, you know, is the tree the leader or the team both. Yeah, about that whole growth and connection. Julia: And I can imagine that being in a team that has somehow nailed this is very satisfying experience if you can achieve more than you otherwise could without those sorts of connections. Speaker 2: Yeah, Claudie: exactly. And I think, you know, we also talk a lot about, you know, everyone’s talking about burnout at the moment. But on an individual level. But what we are more interested in is you know, what does that look like at a team level? What does that look like at the strategic senior leadership organizational level when it’s literally, you know, we talked about it being built into the DNA of the organization. In terms of behaviors. In terms of culture. Like what can you achieve then, and this, you know, the risk of burnout at that kind of macro level. You know, it’s almost like we’re all driving along a motorway and you can see a pile up in the distance, you know, with flames and smoke and Exactly. Disaster occurring. Yeah. You’re not quite sure if you’re in that lane. Julia: Yeah. Claudie: Until you’re right. Kind of right up there. Julia: You can kind of hope that you’re gonna take a turn off before you get there. You Claudie: know. Exactly. But emphasis when we’re talking to leaders and, and organizations at the moment, this is what they’re frightened of. You know, we know this is coming. We don’t have the skills. We don’t have, how, how do we actually prepare our leaders and our teams to circumnavigate that to, you know? Mia: There’s also been a lot of talk about wellbeing and wellness and, a lot of. Fun activities and trying to, you know, sort of make people feel better on a sort of macro level. And that can really backfire. And I think, and also there’s some research that shows that eight, I think it was 8% of people would consider leaving their job if there were. Presented with benefits that they didn’t, that did not help them. And I think there’s that, there’s this kind of idea of that you’re give you, you are giving people something so you think that they, you know, they should be grateful and happy, but actually if it completely misses the mark and they’re dealing with, you know, some kind of issue and you give them something else and say, well just, you know, be happy with this. Then it really sort of shows them that the company’s not listening and it just magnifies that feeling. So I think we have to be a bit careful with, well, the general term of wellbeing and wellness and this sort of macro term of, of, of, you know, finding this way to make everybody feel better and, and go back to sort. Basics, which is again, going back to that sense of, of of people being feeling safe to express what they want and need in, you know, in a work environment. And leaders being, you know, able to actually listen and, and. Accommodate for different types of people. And I think that’s, again, like there’s a lot of money spent on wellbeing and wellness and, and there’s a lot of investment in that because that’s a real big buzzword at the moment, especially with a lot of people. I think it’s now 9.5 days of, of sickness. Days taken on average per year for employees, and that’s the highest it’s ever been. So, you know, there, there’s a big push to sort of get people back into the office and not off on sick leave. But again, it’s which direction do you go in? And this is, we are just presenting something different that we know from our own experience and from the experience of others and also looking at the research. This is effective and this is not just a sort of. We’ll just sort of put that on top of everything and make everybody feel better in a kind of wellbeing, wellness way. We’re tick boxing. We’ve, we’ve ticked that wellbeing box Chris: and that’s the, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Right. We sometimes, we all, as a business, we’ll say, okay, well let’s, let’s get someone to talk about well wellness. And that’s like a day or half a day or a couple of days, whatever it is, and it’s like, that’s done. Then we’ve done the wellness thing. Whereas really take your, you have to, you have to. Really commit to this and, and it has to be an ongoing, it’s a learning experience, right? It’s a, it’s a, it’s a way of thinking, a way of behaving that that, that you need to essentially commit to building into your, your business. Is that how you see your model working in terms of helping people to get through those times when actually they think it might be a bit. Actually we need to put all this well, on sort of one side, it’s just a, it is a bit expensive at the minute ’cause we’re, we’ve got a, we’ve got a serious problem. And how do you, how do you make sure you maintain it and live those values? Claudie: Well, I think that’s, yeah, I mean, you’ve really described it there because it can’t just be about, you know, as Mia said, you know, we’ve worked with clients who say. You know, we know there’s a problem with, you know, people struggling. Can you come in and run a workshop on, you know, work life balance for half a day? And the reaction you get is, can be actually quite angry, you know, because it’s so tone deaf. And actually one, this isn’t enough. If it’s not strategic imperative that prioritize within the business, you’re not gonna fix this problem. You know? And you will lose people. You know. You know, we talk about the fact that we need to stop breaking people. Julia: So, have you been asked that? Have you been asked to come in and run a half day wellness workshop and said no? Yes. Claudie: Well, I, no. I’ll be completely transparent. I have done it and I have experienced it. So I, yeah, I’ve had that experience and it was a learning experience for me because what I realized, I took it face value. I thought, you know, that’ll be useful. They know their people. And actually it was a really interesting response internally. You know how that felt, how it landed. Julia: Mia mentioned Claudia’s question at the beginning of a workshop, which I think is really powerful actually. What do you need? In order to learn best. Was that the question? To learn at your best? Yeah. And there’s an element of knowing yourself in order to answer that question. Do you prioritize a knowing yourself as a. Mia: I think actually that’s part of the movement element and you know, and that’s, that’s why it’s not just we’re discussing a concept, you know, in our minds, and it all sounds very clever, but actually there’s a lot of discovery that happens in the, in the movement exercises that we do. People start to understand. What their tendencies are. And I think, you know, one of the interesting things that we did in the movement exercise in the workshop last week was we, you know, I did a sort of following leading exercise and so, so people would choose to be, to follow someone else and just follow the way they were walking. We were doing, just walking around the room and just to experience what it feels like to follow someone and to copy what they’re doing. And then we would switch roles. The other person would lead. And just to again, notice if anything changed. So, you know, you know, are you now trying to impress that person or do something interesting rather than just walk? You know, and I, I would just give some suggestions of, has anything changed? And also what, what would you need? To come back to feeling authentically you and also leading. And, and we’ve had, we had some really interesting responses that people were saying, oh, actually I was really comfortable when I was leading, but following, you know, was really not very fun or boring or one, one lady saying, I didn’t do either of those because I always, you know, just. Do everything myself and I, you know, I found myself walking around the room on my own and, and thinking, oh wow, everyone else is leading and following, and I’m, I’m just walking on my own. And that’s what I do. So people have these very deep realizations from quite, actually quite simple, seemingly simple movement activities. And, and, and that’s just a very, very small element of, of, of what we do. So it’s actually that, it’s not like go away and self-reflect. But within the workshop. You’re starting to understand and a little bit more about what your preferences are and how you behave in a group or in a leadership role. And also as we do these movement exercises, we’re also working with the concepts of the tree. So we’re rooting and grounding into the floor. We are feeling our feet on the floor, and we are using our whole body. So again, we are not just thinking with our brain and trying to think our way out of a problem. But we, what happens when we start to use the whole body is we get insights or we get, you know, get a bit more creative in the same way as if you go for a walk or if you start to, you get more insights and you sort of get less rigid in your, in your thinking. So this is something that people were saying, they have never seen this. Done in leadership workshops and it’s fascinating and new and different and it really brings the work. You know, it makes it much more it happens much more in the moment that you’re not like then going away and reading your notes, but you’re actually having real insights in, in real time. Chris: Loads Julia: of food for thought there. Thank you, Mia and Claud. I’m really interested in how such a simple exercise can have such lasting deep effects and impacts. And I’m gonna be thinking about that question. About how can I feel authentically myself and lead. I think that, that there’s a lot to think about in that. But now I want to talk about what our plans are for the next week. Mia have you got anything coming up in the next week that you wanna share with the listeners of WB 40? Mia: Well, I do some interesting. Movement things. So I, I tend to do improvisational movement sessions and I get a lot out of that. I think one of the things I always say is, you know, I dunno how I am until I’m, I’m moving. And so yeah, I’ve got a couple of improvisational movement sessions in the diary and I’m really looking forward to those. Julia: Wow, that sounds amazing. I have recently after. About three or four even decades absent return to doing ballet lessons. Oh. And I’m really enjoying that kind of movement actually. And it’s a massive challenge for the brain. So I dunno how I am until I’m moving is a really interesting point. How about you Claudie? What have you got coming up? Claudie: So, you know, just to fit into, to, you know, what everyone else is saying. I am actually going dancing next weekend as well, but my major goal for the week is actually to go and watch the second part of Wicked in the Cinema. So that’s awesome. Awesome goal. I’m, I’m over excited. The, the triumph of good over evil, you know, green people magic. Julia: I hope, I hope you achieve it actually, and, you know, get satisfaction and joy from it. And how about you, Chris? Are you going dancing in the next week? Chris: Well, I dunno about dancing. I, I, I can’t see that in my immediate future, but you never know, you know, hope springs a eternal I. It’s, it is gonna be a bit another busy week. I’m been in London actually on Thursday, so I take making the trip down to the capital and I’m doing a, I’m going to, it’s like a security technology, security conference, which, which is always interesting. And I’ll, you know, and then meeting up with some people for lunch, so that’ll be nice to do that on, on Thursday. And otherwise it’ll be a, a frantic week, no doubt of other things. How about you, Julia? Julia: Oh, well, yes, I am working with people face to face on Wednesday all day, so I’m quite looking forward to that. Like to fit in with what we’ve been talking about today. It’s always nice to get that human physical interaction, isn’t it? And then at the weekend, I am not dancing, but I am taking my family to see ballet shoes at the National Theater, which I loved that book. As a kid, I probably read it about seven times before I was 11, so I’m interested to see what they have done with it. Chris: Very good. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you Claudia and Mia. It’s been fantastic and we’ll see everybody again in the next episode. WB 40, whenever that is. I have no idea. So, but you know, good stuff. Thank you. Speaker 2: Thank you. Chris: Thank you. Claudie: Okay. Thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us on the internet@wbfortypodcast.com, and on all good podcasting platform.

What happens when you bring together data geeks and sports enthusiasts? In this fascinating episode, Matt and Nick are joined by John Carney to explore the hidden world of sports analytics and the surprising role of randomness in athletic competition. John dives deep into the intersection of probability, statistics, and sports performance, revealing how data is transforming everything from penalty shootouts to player recruitment. The conversation ranges from the theatrical nature of sports as entertainment to the mathematical frameworks that help us understand (and predict) athletic outcomes. You can find out more about Field of Play here: https://www.fieldofplay.co.uk/ The Pydata London Conference here: https://pydata.org/london2025 And more about the PyData Manchester here: https://www.meetup.com/pydata-manchester/ Transcript auto-generated by Descript: [00:00:00] Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 338 of the WB 40 Podcast This week with me, Matt Ballantine, Nick Drage, and John Carney. [00:00:56] Well, welcome back to the reasonably, reasonably regularly on a fortnight basis. Podcast that is WB 40 now in, into our 10th year of putting this stuff together. Joining me hosting this week is my co-author, not only my co-host, but my co-author, Nick. I think this is the first time we’ve done the show together, where we have been the hosts. [00:01:18] You’ve, I think, interviewed me in the past, but this is the first hosting we’ve done together. That is a good point. Yes. Yes, it is. How very exciting. How have you been over the last week or so? [00:01:28] Nick: Alright. He says hastily, looking at what he’s done the last week. Thank, thank, thank God for calendars. I’ve been, and unfortunately the audience won’t see your response. [00:01:41] I’ve been teaching people about wardly mapping. I’ve been looking at writing. Interactive. Well, I’ve been looking at course at writing interactive cities in a language called Inc. Which is something I’ve played with before, and that looks really interesting, just a way to build small interactive demonstrations or games. [00:02:04] And then I was at a session at the weekend looking about building micro games, which are basically short, very short, very small war games , that take quite a while to design. But you can learn and play in like under half an hour, ideally like 20 minutes. If you wanna get a single point about an event rather than you play sort of the war for North Africa or something and understand it after months of replays, it’s like 20 minutes. [00:02:30] You get the rough idea of how something works. So, looking into, so did that really good session. I need to generate some, I need to write some now. [00:02:38] Matt: That sounds fun. How about [00:02:39] Nick: you? What about you in your last week? [00:02:40] Matt: Well, well, kind of related to that, I have started at last to read a book that I bought about a year ago which is, I can’t remember what the Intitle was, but it, it was originally the Oxford Book of Card games, and it’s not a book about sorry, the Oxford Book of Playing Cards. [00:02:55] I think it’s. It’s not about a book about rules of playing cards, it’s the history of playing cards and playing card games. And the reason I mention that is because one of the things that it says quite early on is one of the reasons why some people don’t like card games played with a 50 standard, 52 card deck is because the de cards themselves gives you no indication whatsoever of how the game is. [00:03:18] And so you have to learn the rules and the rules are completely independent. Whereas if you’re playing, I dunno, Scrabble or Ludo or whatever you, with the board and stuff, there’s, there’s information about what you’ve got to do and how it works right in front of you all the time. I also found out, which I didn’t realize, is that earlier versions of the game of chess were played for gambling and they involved dice and things like that as well, which is interesting ’cause we often, and I know we’ve been writing some stuff about how chess is very different to card games. [00:03:46] But actually they, they came from a similar route originally, so, so that’s the sort of stuff that I’ve been looking at in terms of reading. I have started my civic duty this week. I can say no more about it than that and we’ll see where that goes. And other than that, I’ve, I mean, yeah, mostly it’s been getting ready to have a break from work for a short period and then getting ready to go back to work in about a week and a half and. [00:04:12] Really getting into a new client. It’s been a very strange liminal few weeks where I’ve been sort of closing things down or putting things on pause and getting ready to start again. So, yeah. No, got it. That’s a bit odd. Anyway, joining us on the show this week John what have you been up to over the last week or so? [00:04:32] john: Hey it’s been a busy week, the past week. I ended up gonna gi at my best friend’s wedding, so I exchanged the grim and dark of Manchester, the bright sunny of gi which is lovely. It’s wonderful. See, my best friend get married, had a lovely wife, and. [00:05:04] On the flight home, I, I expect so I’m suffering at the moment, but been a lovely time. Was it warm? It was very warm. I’ve never been before, but very warm, very, very sunny. Not cloud in the sky. Very breezy at the same time. Very pleasant. I’ve never experienced that combination of 29 degrees Celsius and a nice core breeze at the same time. [00:05:24] Matt: Oh, that sounds, yeah, my wife was in Seville a couple of weeks ago, and so similar. I mean, that’s not that far away. No, no. Right. From [00:05:31] john: all aia, I believe. [00:05:32] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So and, and is it the monkeys, apes something in Gibraltar? Yes. [00:05:38] john: Monkeys on the, on the on the Rock. Can’t say I. [00:05:42] Matt: Okay. That’s, that’s probably for the best. [00:05:44] So we are are going to be talking this week about. At least two of about the six and a half dozen conferences that you apparently do in your spare time. One of which is the thing that originally brought me to your door, which is a thing called Field of Play. So I think probably we should crack on. [00:06:02] john: Yeah, I do. [00:06:59] Matt: I am a big believer in. How serendipitous events happen and how you and I, John got put in contact is one of those. I was at a conference about three months ago and I bumped into somebody who I’ve known for many years but hadn’t seen in donkeys and certainly hadn’t chatted to for a long while, and Andy and I were chatting away and he told me about a new venture that he had which involved sports data. [00:07:26] He was being a bit cryptic about it ’cause it’s one of those stealth mode things, which I know that people mostly do because they haven’t quite worked out what the idea is yet. But and he he said about whether I knew anybody who knew anything about Sports Station, I had a think about it. I thought, well there’s somebody I know who used to work for England Wales Cricket Board, so I can put you in touch with him. [00:07:44] And there’s somebody I know who works at the football association I used to work with at Microsoft, so I can put you in touch with him and I’ll have a word around and see if anybody else knows anybody. And so I had a word around, and you and I are connected through both being an equal experts network. [00:07:59] We will not talk about equal experts tonight other than just to get that disclaimer outta the way. And somebody said, oh, you speak to John because he’s organized earlier this year, an entire conference about sports data. We exchanged a few messages and out the back of that, it sounded like it would be quite an interesting thing to talk about. [00:08:15] So there, that is why we are here now today through that random chain of events. So field of Play happened March last year. You’ve got another one coming up. In 2026, which is so far in the future, it’s just impossible to believe numbers wise. And I realize it’s only like six months away. And I hope you’ve got the organization well in, in trail by now. [00:08:36] But tell us about it. It’s less than that now. It’s. Yeah, I, I was telling somebody else today that procrastination is the, the evidence of original thinkers. So keep that in mind. But tell us about it. What, what, what is field of play? What drove you to, to create a conference about this stuff? [00:08:55] john: That is a good question and a compelling one compelling one. Somewhere been a long story and a spiteful story. And I say that the most, the smallest of so let’s start with pie data because I promise it’s relevant. So I’ve been working in data for 10 or so, actually, no, sorry, 10 or 15 years. [00:09:22] It’s been been while. And hence this is kind of how we’re connected through through the network. As part of this, after my first ever job which is a lovely job I got not knowing how to, I started a local chat. Essentially a huge group which is lovely. And being, I’m proud the city, many people who know and there’s Divide Man. [00:09:53] I have many from down in London. Over large chunks of the story. A number of folks were saying to me, John, why don’t we create a Pie Data Manchester conference? You’ve been the Pie Data London Conference. We should have a conference. And I thought, yes, we should have a conference. Manchester’s. [00:10:12] Brilliant. We should. [00:10:38] Chester [00:10:41] folks, folks who’ve been coming for years and years. One of those folks is Dominic Jordan. When I first met him was head of data at in, I think possibly had moved. So one is kind of travel data, one is eCommerce ended up becoming first head of Data United. [00:11:08] Few of his. [00:11:17] Quite well. [00:11:21] We spent a chatting, but yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. So I think fantastic and a great history in terms of computing novel. [00:11:42] In computer. Can’t remember I world, [00:11:48] but obviously man, fantastic history, sports. And I nerd, I’m not very good at any sports, but I really enjoy watching. [00:12:08] One thing I can say that Manchester has an advantage of it is this combination of sports and data and computer. There is a conference in the us in Boston, the mit, the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. But other than that, I wasn’t really familiar with any other sport theater conferences. I’ve been on Twitter for years and years, and I followed various people who do bits of sports analytics, both in an amateur capacity and a professional capacity. [00:12:42] And I thought, well, something just so happened that a years ago I applied for a job in the sports analytics world, being the first, the idea was I’d be the first ML engineer. [00:13:06] But everyone was like, yeah, John’s great. John’s great. [00:13:13] Which, you know, he, [00:13:17] but he was doing a different sports conference and a few folks I knew kind of mentioned, well, it’s. People who look the same, with the same perspective, the same background, talk about the same things. And we thought, well, with pie data we try and make sure we’re welcoming many people as possible. Many different backgrounds, many possible, because that’s always been tremendously valuable to the work we’ve done, you know, in pretty much every dimension. [00:13:50] So we, that’s. One being geopolitical and one being that guy. I mean, [00:13:59] Matt: there are many things in this world that have been created through spite. I think the Manchester Ship Canal was one thing that was created mostly through spite. So and before we started recording, one of the things I find fascinating about the, the realm of sports data is quite how hugely diverse. [00:14:19] A set of subjects it covers because there’s a, I mentioned I know people who work at the football association and I know people who work or have worked at the England and Wales Cricket Board and those sorts of organizations have everything from the management of data around elite athletes through to all of the management of all the way down to grassroots level sporting activity, which includes things like you know, really important stuff like safeguarding, which is a big, big. [00:14:46] Concerned with those sorts of organizations. You, you’ve got things that are running massive sports rights enterprises. So, you know, within that, everything from, you know, audience viewership through to advertising, through to massive sales and franchising rights. You’ve got the running of massive event venues. [00:15:06] And the list goes on. And I mean, is that one of the things that you’ve been able to pick up within field of Play to be able to cover some of that data or have you put a, a focus in particular areas? [00:15:18] john: This has been something that kind of we wrestled with, I wouldn’t say struggled because frankly I wanna. [00:15:26] I wanna sit and chat to kind of almost everyone from every element of it. Being the type of nerd I’m, I wanna understand, oh, how do you measure every single event in a football game, you know, from the, the right back looking over shoulder while the striker scores goal, there’s so much collect, but also as you quite rightly say football clubs care about shifting and selling every single shirt in a club shop. [00:15:52] How do they handle that? How do they handle logistic networks? How do they handle the sports rights and the entire sports media is a, a massive thing that I would to understand how that works. They’ve got some work in different bits of the sports media environment, but in terms streaming stream your football game to however many millions of people across the globe is a massive endeavor itself. [00:16:17] So there are so many endeavors. If we just pick one. Football is one of the, one of the bigger industries, certainly one of most visible industries in our society, and it has all of the complexity of any other business. I’ve done a lot of work in eCommerce. Football has an entire e. I’m sure, I’m not sure what you call it, dimension, I suppose, to it. [00:16:44] Because there’s so many, so much stuff that gets at the same time measuring the this is, I’m not this type of data person, so I’m, but measuring athletes, measuring the. [00:17:04] Of breathing done in certain decile of intensity. All of this is also being measured at the same time. Football, tremendous being, I’m big baseball fan [00:17:21] and stuff that’s been done and I think that’s probably the most mature sport in terms of data analytics. You’ve got the great film a, a really good film with Brad Pitt, Moneyball. [00:17:36] And see how [00:17:42] way [00:17:47] in basketball, [00:17:51] the, because it became evidence that taking shots within the, within the three point zone. I’m not a basketball fan, but shots from long long distance were a lower percentage based on the, if you stepped outside the and took three points, it was worth it even though you were less to score the expected reward from the increased three points. [00:18:20] More relevant and you can see differences in heat maps of where shots were taken now be 20 years ago. So yeah, there’s a, there’s a ramble, but there’s a huge amount of things that can be collected. [00:18:31] Matt: Do you think that, I mean in, there’s definitely different types of sports that have got different levels of, of data accessible to them by the nature of the sport. [00:18:41] And. So I’m a Watford fan. It’s my only sporting allegiance really, and it’s something I carry with me as a burden for most of my, my life. But one of the things that Graham Taylor, I can’t remember the exact quote, but one of the things he said is that actually, ultimately this is also about entertainment. [00:18:57] Is there a, are we seeing in some sports the risks that actually the the data telling you how to be able to win leads to not entertaining sport? [00:19:07] john: Yes. Obviously beauty is the eye of the beholder. But this is certainly something that I think a lot of people have [00:19:16] complained about, I suppose [00:19:18] where to start. So in [00:19:21] baseball the, the number of home runs and the frequency which home runs have been hit has been increasing or blessed. Past that because hit runs you’ve got difference between kind of, I suppose, very broad trying hit home runs and playing what small ball. So taking bump, stealing base, hitting the ball within and. [00:19:59] Are pitching faster than ever to more increases in injuries, which again, in different therefore it’s harder to get a hit. So when you hit the and try, that’s what’s happening. Which to kind of, the game being a little bit more one dimensional because it was either the ball gets hit and goes out. So you get [00:20:26] Nick: far more strikeouts. [00:20:30] So I just wanted to jump in there because Please. Well, I’m sort of with mute on tapping away to make sure I get the title right. There’s a episode of the series Losers that’s currently on Netflix in the UK called Stone Cold, which is about how the sport of curling of all things with a, a player that looked. [00:20:51] The analyzed kind of in the sports analytics way, but sort of simpler like seventies, eighties, nineties looked at how to win the game and just demolished everybody and almost destroyed the sport ’cause it was, it was just sort of a really dull, low points fight, last man standing wins kind of thing. [00:21:11] Rather than, it was a much more in intriguing sort of tactical play before to the extent where they changed the rules in which. Because they changed the rules. The sport got so popular it made it to the Olympics ’cause it was so much more interesting, you know, for what is kind of just a Canadian sport. [00:21:28] Yeah. And a, you know, ish. But just an excellent summary of just analytics through sport and especially sort of being mindful of any listeners depending on what you can find that thing. I think more also than the other sport, the change in three point shooting in basketball, and again, not being a basketball fan, but just some knowledge of just how it’s completely changed the way teams play, the way teams try and score and therefore the way teams defend and also therefore, who you get, who you try and draft and trade for on your team. [00:22:04] Like it’s altered the whole thing. It’s amazing, the effect it has and especially. Thinking about sport as a business, I thought you made really great points in, in just sort of e, e-commerce is one dimension, and kind of you want to win because that makes your team more popular, which means you can charge more for everything. [00:22:23] But if you win in a really uninteresting way financially, your team loses. So you’ve got sort of two sets of analysts, almost presumably against each other. It’s like, well, we want the team to win, so we’re successful, but we want the team to win in as dramatic a way as possible. So we can so we can make as much money as possible. [00:22:43] john: Hmm. [00:22:45] Nick: It’s, [00:22:47] john: and I think that’s a really good point, and [00:22:53] I think these are often not even the data questions, but the overall strategy questions that, as you say, without data, we wouldn’t know that they were there, wouldn’t be able to ask them. But it’s kind of an overall organizational direction. One thing I do, people probably get sick of saying this, I’m working with them, but it’s very, very rare that data is a product and delivers value in of itself. [00:23:21] You have to use it to do something. It could be an automated decision through a machine learning model. It could be a report somebody reads, but essentially you an input to do something. This is often the way, I mean, oh, I think going back to, I think I’m remembering this correctly. Graham walked team in the early nineties. [00:23:44] One of the things he was trying to do was based on some analysis that had been done that was Charles had done in the fifties. Fewer passes we do the quicker we get the ball up field. I think the high pressure involved as well, the more likely we be successful. And you see variations of that at the moment, first with, and then with evolution pressing really high because that’s kind of partially what the data tells you, but partially how they understand the game itself. [00:24:20] I mean, there’s been old manner of kind of changes, especially in American sport. Not sure why they’re really open to having rule changes for better. But in baseball, because of this change in strategy, lot of focus on hitting, oh, one part of this was what’s known the shift. So normally there’s four baseball infields. [00:24:48] Second base, so side essentially. But what would happen is you could shift one infielders to where you thought hitter hit, sometimes player second base [00:25:07] not, but you’d be very, very imbalanced defenses and MLB decided to make a change to say you couldn’t do that. It was giving, not that it was giving too much of an advantage, but because it wasn’t fun people weren’t getting on base. An and I think this is another example, like you saying or tweaking the experience. [00:25:34] Changing the experience to make things more enjoyable, not just more efficient. In some ways, you could have to say see how this is going with. [00:25:46] Set pieces in football at the moment, arsenal being very at this and getting the arsen. But you were getting those whatever 30 years ago with the old Graham Taylor side. And that certainly wasn’t, as far as I’m aware, not data led. So it’s different ways to get to the same and result suppose, [00:26:05] Matt: I guess, as well as, I mean, there’s, I’m old enough to remember when it was two points for a win rather than three points at a win. [00:26:11] And that was a, a mechanism to be able to help. Get more people going for wins because it was, wasn’t worth enough and it was just two points to the win. And I guess there’s also, there’s a, because I’m a social scientist and I have these things, I have my favorite two social science laws, which are Campbell’s Law and Goodheart’s Law. [00:26:29] And Goodheart’s Law is basically if you, if you make a measurement, the outcome of some sort of change, then the measurement changes. Its its meaning and so it becomes therefore useless and Campbell basically, and people will game it to hit it. Now it’s really interesting within sport where you have the mechanisms of, of. [00:26:47] Points are literally what you are there to be able to deliver, whether that’s points in the game or points on the table. And that those, those changes in the rules do mean that it adapts behaviors, but then you, you do sometimes get kind of weird after effects as a result of the Yeah. And that, that [00:27:07] john: it, it, it’s fascinating. [00:27:14] Those are, those are laws that I often not quote because I forget the name of them, but I, you know, I certainly subscribe to them and certainly often because I do career advice helping people their, often I can, if you working eCommerce, it’s really easy to kind of show you’ve done a, got a good job and you can say, okay, we’ve optimized a number where the number optimizing is revenue. [00:27:56] Con. [00:28:13] People just playing sports really well, you know, an excellent pass, an excellent like movement off the ball in cricket, an excellent swing or spin, bowling executed perfectly. But end of the day, some people I know, they just care about winning. They just wanna win and who’s say which is right, or, but yeah, all kind of, all kinds of stuff up. [00:28:35] People diving or whatever. [00:28:39] Exploiting these spaces within those constraints? Yes. From a mathematical perspective. [00:28:44] Matt: Yeah. I mean things like why people who are into rugby and don’t understand why footballers play they fall over all the time is because in rugby you don’t get advantage for falling over. Whereas in football you do, therefore you make sure it’s obvious you’ve fallen over. [00:28:57] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Absolutely does. So, I mean in, in most, well, certainly professional team sports now, it seems that there’s data being gathered in real time across an entire team. You see, there’s little packs that players have got on their backs and they’re collecting presumably body biometric data or telemetric data and then also position data and all that kind of stuff are, are coaching teams using that data in real time. [00:29:25] Sometimes it [00:29:26] john: generally depends on the resources, and it also comes back to, again, how we plug data into a business process. How do we do something with it? I was chatting with a director of cricket and [00:29:45] I discussions in Major League Baseball. [00:29:53] You might, you might correctly guess that they’re massively differ in size, budget. So in terms of what you can do what the most impactful things you do [00:30:09] resource now I won’t go into too much detail for the sake of, you know, these are all private conversations. I’ve eCommerce with teams twice the size of professional sports, professional sports teams, you know, the Premier League, [00:30:31] some of those teams I’ve worked with, eCommerce. Fantastic been. It’s all to do with how well teams organized standard business, right? The same applies in sports. How can you, if you work with a [00:30:52] whatever reason they play best or their mentality is, I don’t wanna think about anything, I just wanna play my game. If wanna get the most them, they work hard in every way. They’re, they’re trying to learn, they’re trying to improve, but their learning style isn’t aided by data. How do you help them improve? [00:31:13] And it’s very, in those cases, conversation been very delicate and intentional conversations you have with them so you can support them, but in a way that works best for them. On the flip side, how much can you impact the overall performance of your team over the course of an entire season of several seasons? [00:31:34] Thinking long term is it by telling a striker you should score a goal, you know, shoot more if you’re position it rather than shoot, you know, and there data might be 90. [00:31:53] Professional footballer, 96%. A little bit extra tidbit of marginal gain. And that can be tremendously useful. But one, the other element you at in saying we spend 50 million quid on new, you wanna be sure you spend the money on the right person or even more so, and you don’t see this anywhere near as much. [00:32:19] Don’t spend 50 million on this. So the decision never gets made because analysts in the background are saying, Hey, here’s a risk. Here’s some elements of what information about how we make the decision massive risk. This money essentially risk. We play out the way we might hope it. [00:32:47] Be folks in America or folks in the cricket world where much, much lower [00:33:00] someone, [00:33:05] Aman role on your team, maybe play half the game, maybe play a third of the games. Are they gonna be able move? Hypothetical example. And it, it’s fascinating because it all depends on the organization and the way they operate, the constraints they have, the leaders they can pull. [00:33:26] Nick: I really like that as well. [00:33:28] Your, that to me, the, the real. Importance of analytics is through context rather than just the numbers itself. And I mean, this comes up a lot in the coverage of the NFL and going for it on fourth down. Do you give two points after a touchdown or one, that kind of thing. And the, the analytics tend to give very general answers based on the performance of all the teams in all the situations. [00:33:50] When of course, it’s much more about context and like not. Momentum because I think that’s been statistically proven not to be a thing. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s it’s feelings. But like how healthy are your team feeling? How are the, how, what’s the health of the key players for this play kind of thing, but that you are emphasizing. [00:34:11] As I say, so analytics I think are useful in context and also you are looking at analytics in context. Like you say, if you can improve the performance of someone amazing, slightly what’s, you know, what’s the point? But if you can raise the flaw of say, some lower players or pick the best ones, or as you say, especially not make mistakes, which must be particularly brave from a. [00:34:33] Analyst point of view because there is of course a chance depending on system fit and so on in whatever sport that that player will go off and be amazing somewhere else. And you are the one that said don’t pick them. And it’s kind of better for you to advocate for someone who’s then terrible and it’s like, well, you know this, this player was bad. [00:34:53] It’s not me. But if they go and be great somewhere else then, then you are sort of the one that that carries the can in that regard. Yeah. [00:35:01] john: And, and again, because I, I’ve got the way I, I’ve never worked in any a situation like that as, you know, a premier league club or anything, but I know folks who worked at I suppose teams that in the media and know slightly dysfunctional and teams that are known as Exact was. [00:35:25] And both of them, I’ve heard of stories of a manager or a director of football or whatever saying, nah, I think we should get this player, or, I think we should not get this player. Essentially overruling the, the analytics, and I don’t know that ignore analytics, but I think it’s decision that does not necessarily, [00:35:47] analytics is not the final site. [00:35:54] I, [00:35:56] whether it’s the, whether it’s, [00:36:16] so listen to interviews. Professional sports players who say, I know at this point we felt like we had the momentum with them. And then you get into latent variables and all kind of stuff. They’re very fascinating. But I try to think about in the world of sport, because it’s a hobby [00:36:32] Nick: not wishing to get you into trouble, but that, I mean, that raises an interesting point, whereby are the players of a game. [00:36:44] Other players of sport, the best people to provide that kind of feedback? Or are they too close to the actual events? And of course of everybody in a stadium, they’re the most emotionally affected, arguably by what they’re doing. Are they the best people to look at something analytically and pick out the optimum strategy? [00:37:05] For example, three. Three point shooting I gather, came completely from. From outside of the player base. I have a vague memory of without sort of, kind of trying that Wikipedia. Yeah. So I, so I, I won’t say anything. What, what do you think about that? Or are you willing to sort of say on a, on a podcast are players for people to listen to or not? [00:37:29] I go to be a very [00:37:29] john: difficult guest and really on the question. [00:37:36] The best place to make the analytically optimal decision. And to that, I think no, but I don’t think that, that’s not fault for winning the game. And those are the people who have to execute, go out, run 10 kilometers for 90 minutes, fight in the trenches in the NFL field. I’ve had in my head since, I think it was, I think it was civilization five. There’s a quote, make measurable, measure. What is measurable, make measurable, what not attributed to. I think, I can’t remember. But when I was doing my PhD, that was something I thought about a lot. And the more I spent time with data, I more and more time thinking all these things, whether it’s tracking data, whether it’s expected ones added. [00:38:28] Expected goal, whatever the measurement, we’re not measuring something. That is actually the thing. We care to optimize. We’re building models and all models are wrong. So what we care about is how best to, how best to win the game. Now, if you say to, if you say to someone. [00:39:01] The best point. I want many something on board without being no idea what opinions are. So I don’t wanna, but it’s, if you can understand, hey, strategy a. You say, alright man, United back in 99, bomb on down the gigs. You’re not doing anything particularly difficult, you’re saying, well is probably the best way of winning. [00:39:37] And I think most of the time in most books, it’s pretty well established, the best way of playing the game. Now obviously you’re quite right in there. Hadn’t been established the advantage of this particular strategy. And data can really, the fact. [00:40:05] I know this wasn’t the first, the first guy to do it, but I, and there was a, a high school coach a few years ago who would never, ever kick, never kick, never never kicked. Yeah. I was, I was [00:40:14] Nick: thinking I know him and he’s, yeah. Like I can see his face. But we’ll save either the audience listening to a search, the internet or Paul Matt editing out us, but yeah, someone who was, who took it to the extreme. [00:40:29] Mm-hmm. I, it gots publicity outta it. It seemed to get more wins than losses, if I remember rightly. Yeah. And from what I’ve heard, I think there have been other [00:40:37] john: people in the past who’ve done similar extreme strategies. But to your point earlier, it’s one thing to do at high school level, which again, in America can be very intense. [00:40:46] But doing that at the college level, [00:40:51] he tremendously different. I remember a few years, bill Belichick, the great new England Patriot, went down against. I think two yard big playoff and people were talking about what was he doing such a decision. Whereas nowadays it’s such an obvious go, people don’t even question because of evolution. [00:41:18] And I think in. [00:41:27] To exploring new ways of playing, but there’s been, there’s been such a big focus, for example, on how winning back and they’re undervalued, [00:41:44] but warning, never ever matter. You should only a pass as much as possible. That all depends on the context. If you’re playing against a defense who are only playing, stop the pass and don’t even try and stop the run, then you should run the ball. I can’t remember where I was going with this. No worries. [00:41:59] I was Sorry. Go on. Go on. I, the thing is, it’s always two sides playing and you’ve got variable conditions within the constraints of the game. [00:42:07] Matt: And there’s also to, I can’t remember where this is sourced from, but I’m, I’m relatively confident in this, in an area more broadly where I, I’m speaking with people who know a lot more about things than I do, but penalty shoot penalty kicks statistically, the best thing a goalkeeper can do is stay in the middle, because that’s the most likely place they’re gonna be able to get to reach the ball when it comes to them. [00:42:31] And they don’t. And the reason they don’t is because if you just stay in the middle and it goes either side of you, you get an awful lot more shit from the crowd than you do if you’ve dived, you know, manfully, but in completely the wrong direction. And so there is a thing around the psychology at an individual level and what that means in terms of the context of the. [00:42:52] The arena, the drama, and the fact that we should never forget that for all the analytics. This is also an enormous theatrical event. [00:43:01] john: Tremendously. I mean, and this like, do the amount of pressure that these people under when taking a penalty saying your penalty, do, do any of these things. If [00:43:10] Nick: I was them, like the, the analytics would be the last thing in my mind. [00:43:14] Oh, and can, can we just highlight that theatrical. It’s an excellent word to describe that when thinking about this and you think, yeah, you can see the numbers, you can see what you should do, and like you say, you should stand in the middle and so on. But then this is, this is theater with all the connotations of performance and being on the stage and you’re a star. [00:43:35] And all that. Yeah. You have to, all of that figures into your decision making rather than just what are the percentages for each of these actions I could pick. [00:43:45] Matt: And then the other thing that I’m reminded of, and this has come from some of the stuff that Nick and I have been looking at for the last 18 months, and then the role that luck might have to play. [00:43:54] I think the most extreme example of that in the last 12 months would be Adam Petey, who after four years of training to be able to try to retain his gold medal in the breaststroke at the Olympics, lost by two, 100th of a second, and then the next day found out he’d contracted COVID. And it’s difficult to make the distinction between two 100th of a second and being a little bit under the weather ’cause he had COVID and you know, what do you think? [00:44:18] And then you’ve got luck that he’s built into some games where, you know, the shape of the rugby ball of the American football is designed to be able to make it unpredictable in the way in which it, it will, will bounce. But even there’s a fantastic research I found that have been done by I think somebody in the Netherlands looking at the. [00:44:36] Track record of penalty shootouts in international tournaments and demonstrating that 60% of the time the the team that won the toss for the penalty shootout would win the penalty shootout, statistically significant. And the reason was the first mover advantage. So if you have. If you think you’ve got a stronger team and you get the chance to go first to stronger team shooting, you go first with the kicks. [00:45:02] If you think you’ve got a better goalkeeper than the opposition, you go first with being shot at. And that seems to be, you know, it doesn’t guarantee the win, but the toss of the coin actually has quite a big impact in a game that generally doesn’t really think that, you know, randomness and, and luck has anything to do with it. [00:45:20] ’cause it’s all just about skill and, and expertise. [00:45:23] john: Yeah. Well, and not to get, I’m gonna spend a little moment getting a little bit with this, but you mentioned the role of randomness and it’s interesting that you’re writing a book because I don’t think of randomness. I think of probability distributions in which you take, you take a random sample from a probability distribution, but the probability distribution. [00:45:51] How good a goalkeeper, how good is a, a suffering or whatever are all these things, which for some of which you can I take a moment to a little a of mine who works, Miami s Alex, who’s in play this year. [00:46:19] Is kind a school of thought around probabilities. S in which understand which we try and improve our prior expectations With the observed observations we made to come up with a better posterior understanding. So we evolve our understanding by watching things, and this is something that. School of statistics is kind of formulating in a mathematical sense. [00:46:50] One of the things with almost, in fact I’ll say every sport, even things like baseball, when you have thousands of at bats over season, it’s still incredibly small sample size. So when you’re a striker taking a penalty, you may only do that, you’ll likely do that less five times. A how do we understand and predict, which. [00:47:16] Goalkeeper. [00:48:24] Nick: Okay. Thank you very much for that. That was a, a great episode that I think could have gone on for several hours longer. But instead we’ll look at what we’re all doing next week. If John, what have you got to look forward to? [00:48:37] john: You said lot you mentioned earlier [00:48:47] of the Pennsylvania railroad, so that’ll, that’s one of things I’ll be doing. [00:49:01] Next week as we this, looking forward to that. [00:49:05] Nick: Excellent. For me, I was looking through, it’s, it’s mainly game design with lots of sort of open spaces. I’ve carved out to do it, so I need to get on with it. Especially after that, like I say, that session on micro games I attended and also discussing where to go next with a. [00:49:26] A kind of card game for children based on the survival rates of para lithic tribes and just how to illustrate that without it just being like a grim death march. You know, like we’ve said about thing like sports needing to be theatrical, you wanna educate children. But also the game’s gotta be interesting. [00:49:48] Otherwise, none of none of the lessons will stick. So discussing with a company on where to take that next, that sounds fascinating. It’s, it’s, it’s actually interesting to seeing how grim their, well, kind of how grim their lives were, how survival based they were, as opposed to. You know, the, the, the kind of time we’ve got now to do things like have a chat about things, things like sport, you know, all these things we, we do arbitrarily. [00:50:14] Meanwhile, Matt, as much as you can tell us, what are you doing for mostly [00:50:19] Matt: be doing civic duty, which I can’t talk about, but I will be continuing to go through the edit of the book which I completed the last picture for it. Today, which is very exciting. And the other thing which I’m looking forward to is I will, as I do every year, I will wish a happy birthday to my dear friend Daniel, because for some reason I have in my diary. [00:50:46] His birthday recorded as being the 11th of sorry, the 2nd of November because at some point in the deep and distant past, I had an app somehow that got American dates in UA UK date formats muddled up. And so it’s not his birthday at all. But his, his wife’s half American, so it seems apt to celebr. [00:51:05] In a, in a small and slightly tedious way, the fact that there’s this bad data in my diary, but I keep it there because it, it, every year it tickles me. So that’s, I’ll be looking forward to that on the weekend. [00:51:17] Nick: Does it tickle Daniel? I’m not sure we asked. I think he still [00:51:20] Matt: finds it quite amusing, but there’s a long story about how his 40 50th, 30th, 40th, and fifties birthdays weren’t celebrated on his birthday either, but I won’t get into that here. [00:51:31] Nick: Got it. Thank [00:51:32] Matt: you. Anyway, that’s it for another we, we’ll be back again in a fortnight. I think we have a a relentless fortnightly roster of guests all the way up to Christmas now, which is great news. I’m not sure who it is next week, but it’ll be fabulous, I’m sure. And so John, thank you again for joining us. [00:51:48] It’s been a fascinating conversation. Thank you very much and Nick an absolutely delight our first joint hosting. I think we’ve managed to get through it unscathed, [00:51:58] Nick: I think. I think we’ve managed, just to fill in one gap from earlier, Kevin Kelly, if you’re wanna look up a high school American football coach who. [00:52:08] Is 110% the kind of personality you think he is and always goes through on fourth down, K-E-L-L-E-Y is is the person to look upon. I have [00:52:18] Matt: no idea what most of that sentence meant, but I’m sure it’ll be enlight. Anyway, that’s it. Well thank you for listening and we’ll speak you soon.

On this week’s show, Matt and Lisa meet Tris Oaten to discuss whether writing tools actually matter—and the answer might surprise you. While musicians have interfaces like Ableton and sequencers that fundamentally reshape their creative output, Tris argues that writers’ real tools are invisible: patterns of thought, environmental context, and the mental associations we build with certain albums or spaces. It’s a fascinating reframe that challenges how we think about creative tools entirely. The conversation tackles why we’re still trapped by document formats designed in the 1980s, with passionate disagreements about whether Microsoft Word is an accessibility triumph or “awful garbage” that tricks you into formatting instead of writing. They explore alternatives like Typst and markdown, debate whether templates liberate or constrain creativity, and question why there aren’t more playful, experimental writing tools when musicians have entire ecosystems designed to spark new ideas. But the real insight comes when they dig into the relationship between consumption and creation. Tris claims that writer’s block is actually reader’s block—your creative output depends entirely on rich inputs. They discuss techniques for breaking out of established thought patterns, from Bowie’s cut-up method to the Surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse, and challenge the romanticization of suffering in creative work. Why do we assume writing should be painful when it could be joyful? It’s a conversation that moves between deeply practical advice and genuinely thought-provoking questions about the nature of creativity itself. Transcript automatically created by Descript: Lisa: Welcomed episode 337 of the WB 40 Podcast with me, Lisa Riemers, Matt Ballantine, and Tris Oaten. Well, we’re back here again, Matt and I, and we’re welcoming Tris onto this week’s episode. And Matt, how has your week-ish been? What’s been going on for you? Matt: My week-ish. So well a couple of weekends ago now. ’cause time flies like that. I had the delight of taking my mother to Venice for a long weekend, celebrate her 80th birthday, just her and me and it was amazing. It’s the third time I’ve been to Venice and I don’t think it’s a place you can tire of, or maybe I’m just getting old, I don’t know. But it’s just, I mean, it’s, it’s utterly surreal. It’s completely beautiful. It’s touristy as hell in many ways, but there’s bits of it. And we were staying in a bit with just a little bit off the tourist trail, which is quite nice. We went out to Lido, see the beach, which is totally different. We went out to Murano to look at very overpriced glass stuff that was nice. And then just pood around walking. Pops into a few museums, went to the Peggy Guggenheim Institute, which is a amazing modern art gallery , so that was great. And then I’ve been back, I’m taking taking a role at work with one of our bigger clients, which is, quite exciting. I’m also gearing up though for going on jury service in a week and a bit. And so trying to be able to fit what I can in before that. And it’s, it’s a strange thing, jury service. It’s the second time I’ll have done it. And it does mean that you basically had to put your life on hold for unspecified period of possibly up to two weeks, but maybe more or maybe significantly less. Who knows? So I’ll be pood along to a crown court near you soon to be able to do my civic duty. So that’ll be that. And apart from that, I’m, I think I’m losing my voice and I know that my mother is actually she’s fine, but has come down with COVID again. So I do wonder with my voice starting to fade out, whether I’m also gonna have COVID to delay on top of everything else, which would be great. Amusing fun. That, Lisa: that sounds like if that is the case, will that mean you won’t be able to do the jury service, I suppose. Matt: I think you might need to be actually technically dead to not be able to take part in jury service, but we’ll, we’ll see. They’re quite strange. Right. Lisa: Okay. Matt: Which, you know. Fair enough. But yeah, there we go. How about you, Lisa? What have you been up to? Lisa: So the last week or two has been quite manic. My end. The famous book that we’ve talked about on a few episodes has finally gone out into the wild. Friend of the podcast and according to his post on LinkedIn, friend of me, Chris King, hi Chris, found a copy in actual Waterstones in Leeds, which is very exciting ’cause I’ve not yet been into a physical bookshop to find it. And I wasn’t expecting it to be actually physically available for some reason. So That’s lovely. But yes, the last couple of weeks has been quite a lot of, I feel like I’ve become a bit of a content factory with it all. Because. As somebody else said, like once it’s, once it’s published, that’s just the beginning of all of the rest of the stuff that comes with. So that’s been keeping me busy except it’s not been that that’s keeping me the busiest. What I’ve actually been doing recently is swapping SharePoint for PowerPoint. So the last few weeks I’ve been working with an Irish client who are doing some innovation training for a bunch of businesses in Ireland, and they’ve got several different suppliers and several different speakers. And I’ve been trying to pull everything together into like a more cohesive templates and trying to make things a bit more keep things consistent for people. So I’ve swapped SharePoint for PowerPoint, which is a lovely change. But I did have a conversation again this afternoon about SharePoint, so I can’t. I can’t escape it. Matt: I think it’s worth pointing out at this point, my long held view that doing PowerPoint isn’t real work. But you know, Lisa: what is real work? Is it something that you do, that you get paid for? Matt: PowerPoint is the one of those things that you can just, I mean, so much time can be plowed into it. I guess putting the sort of work that you are into it is helps people to avoid that so they can actually focus on the actual bits that matter rather than working out whether 18 point or 22 point font is the right thing and whether it should be Crif or San Crif because you’ve gone through all of that for them. Lisa: Exactly. That’s exactly why I’m there. I’m helping ease their cognitive burden by. Bringing it all into one template. So I might be losing my sanity, but hopefully everyone else is keeping theirs. Matt: And how from a obviously your, you are specialist subject now around accessibility of content. How does PowerPoint fare these days, and especially how does some of those automated parts of PowerPoint enable you to be able to do things automatically? So Lisa: some of it is very good and some of it, the automated stuff that it spits out in the first place is very bad. The, the built in accessibility checkers in PowerPoint are great. All of the suggested color palettes when they create this, I, I love a smart art graphic ’cause if, if you use it, if you create a smart art graphic, it’s built off a list of bullets. So it’s already starting with a list of structured content. So it’s not a li it’s not 17 text boxes on a page that have got lots of lines between them that you’d have to try and describe. But the color contrast is often not right. It often suggests white text on a yellow background, which is hard to read for everyone. So yes, some things are really good. Once you’ve created, once you’ve done the work, making all the page layouts and templates, do what you need to, it actually makes it a lot easier to make a, a consistent experience and something that’s usable. But it takes some fiddling and also. Once you’ve made a template, when you actually start using it in earnest, you start finding it. Actually, that’s not a great color scheme. Or, oh, I, I didn’t make the text. Not autofit the placeholders. And you can get really nerdy about it, but it’s all right. And using the built-in checkers makes it better. But anyway, that’s enough about my content creation. Speaking of content factories, Tris, welcome to the show. What have you been up to? Tris: I’ve actually had an extremely busy time. I returned on Saturday from Paris. Mm-hmm. I was tending the Euro rust. Conference, which is a programming two day programming conference on the rust programming language. And I was a speaker on day two. I discovered one week before I, I knew I was gonna be a speaker for a couple of months beforehand, but I discovered one week before that I was on the main stage and I made the mistake of looking at a photo of how big the main stage is and how big the audience, the auditorium is. And so I was a little daunted. I, I’ve spoken at conferences before, but none quite this large. So it was quite, it was quite an exciting time and I, of course was writing the talk right up until the very moment I ascended the stairs to the stage. Lisa: Amazing. I don’t think that’s judging by the lateness that I’ve had some of the slides through for the, the training sessions that I’ve been sorting out recently. That is, you are not alone doing that. Tris: No, it is, it is an old writer’s adage, I believe. I believe this quote is by Bill Condo, C-O-N-D-O-N who I think was a reporter. I, I, I, I’m afraid. I don’t know exactly what, what he wrote about. No piece of writing is ever finished. It is only due. Lisa: Oh, I love that. Tris: And I think about that every day of my life because nothing that I nothing. I’m never satisfied with anything that I’ve written, but it is due and I must finish working on it because the next thing needs to be worked on. Matt: I can hear though, the voice of Marcus, John, Henry Brown saying, yes, but it is due at least six weeks before you do your presentation because then you have to practice. Tris: Now, that is absolutely the secret. Lisa, I’m sure perhaps you have spoken on this very pod podcast about the importance of practice like that, I think is how I, I have had the modest success that I have on my YouTube channel is that I practice and no one else in my field, which started out with programming practices. They just start screen sharing and breathe into their microphone. And I don’t blame them particularly, you know, they, they, it’s, it’s not even that They don’t know any better. It is not their skillset. Yeah. It sounds exactly up your street. This is something you would teach. Sure. Well, Lisa: it’s something that both Matt and I learned about. So a few weeks ago I went to Bavaria to the Marcus, John Henry Brown Speaky Summit, which was a few days staying in a lodge. Well, st a a, a small conference in a lodge. We weren’t all staying in the lodge on a Bavarian hillside talking about being better speakers. And I went to it for a few reasons. The latest reason was that Matt went last year and said it was the best thing he ever did. Marcus has also been on the podcast previously, and I found him terrifying because of how good he was at using the microphone and how he used his voice. His, his awareness of how he speaks and his presence, I just found it a bit intimidating. So, and I’ve also seen him at other events and conferences and yeah, one of the biggest takeaways of it is no one just turns up and wings it on the day, even if you are tweaking it beforehand, even if you are changing it or enhancing it because something’s come up practice and it, it’s showing respect for your audience and it means that you are panicking less because you know what you’re talking about. Tris: Absolutely. Would I, I have some thoughts about my own video process that might be relevant here. If with your permission I’ll talk about that. So I You, you’re absolutely right. The, the, the audience, the respect for the audience. That practicing gives you are giving up your time so that it can be multiplied however many times the audience is. If you have a hundred people in the audience, every hour you spend is 100 hours, you have saved everyone else in that that room. Absolutely. And of course on YouTube, the numbers are inflated insanely, you know, tens of thousands. If I’m particularly lucky with the video and I do not I run, I I run a very accessible, I try to run a very accessible YouTube channel. I don’t have sound effects. I don’t have animations, I don’t have motion I don’t have screaming and memes and things like that, what I have. But unfortunately, all those things are good for engagement. Keep people interested and keep them, keep them watching the video, which of course is why everyone uses them. So I only have one thing, and that is a tight script. That is well. Practiced. I suppose that is two things. Perhaps. I’ve got these two things, and so that’s all I can do to keep people engaged, but it, I think, makes a very satisfactory piece of content, piece of art, piece of and a video. And the practice is the most important thing. On the conference day for, I, I skipped like three hours in the morning of the conference because I was pacing my hotel room, speaking my script over and over and over again, and making fixes. Yeah, Lisa: and I think there’s also something, what you were saying about your channel being accessible. It’s also understanding your script is written to your audience. We talk a lot about plain language. And plain language is the, the language your audience understands the first time they hear it. So it might not be the, the language that everybody understands the first time they hear it, but if you know who it is you’re speaking to they will understand it and you explain the terms that are needed and you give the time and the space and. I think, I mean, I’m not quite your audience, I’m not a programmer. I was able to pick up some, know, some knowledge from your channel and also realize that I’m definitely never gonna be a developer, but I did find it very approachable and something that I appreciate the lack of Bellis and whistles. So thank you for that. Tris: Well, not at all, not at all. And only half of my, of my videos are, are programmed. The other half is like my random hyper fixations that I’m desperately trying to monetize. Lisa: That feels like a perfect time to get into the, the main part of this. So, shall we get on with it? Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Matt: So Lisa said to me that she thought Trish and I should be able to be brought together to be able to do something, talk about stuff. ’cause we had lots of things in common on the podcast. And that’s, that’s all well and good, but you need to kind of some sort of theme. ’cause otherwise it’s just random old blokes talking on the internet. Let’s be honest. There’s quite enough of that. And look where it’s got us. So to give a bit of context for this conversation and many places that we could go completely coincidentally, I got involved in a conversation on Blue Sky earlier today. The track called Paul Risin, who I, I think I only really know from social media, but have conversations with every so often he posted something about how he saw within the world of music. That there were tools to be able to help people create music and sequence music and explore music and experiment with music. And so tools like Ableton and tools like oh, I gave a long list of various things and I’m looking around me in my desk at, at, at home here, and I’m surrounded by the things. I’ve got an professional MPC studio thing. I’ve got a keyboard over there. I’ve got a ridiculously luxurious thing called a hap ax that enables me to be able to interact in music in completely new ways. I’ve got a digital saxophone as well as a couple of normal saxophones, all sorts of things there. And what’s really interesting is although the, the, the instruments that I play through these devices are pretty much the same things all the time, or some of them digital, some of ’em analog. The, the thing that I use to access them, the, the interface that I use has a massive impact on what comes out in the end. So if I use something that is like a saxophone to be able to interact with the, the digital instruments, it gives me a very different sorts of field of reference to play with. And if I use a traditional music keyboard or if I use drum pads, or if I use the hap acts, which is a sequencer that’s got like loads and loads of buttons, it’s a bit of a, a grid and you can, it’s very visual and it’s, I, I love it. It’s an amazing thing. And what I wondered from that and in conversation with Paul was whether well does the thing that you are writing on make a difference in that kind of way? Does it make a difference if you write in a notepad to, if you write on a an old fashioned typewriter to, if you write in se four than if you write using Microsoft Word, if you write using another piece of software that maybe wasn’t intended for writing? I’m not sure that answered the question that Paul was asking, to be honest. But it’s an interesting starting point about what do we have to be able to help us go beyond just the, I guess just the, the recording of the words. What are the tools in this amazing digital age that we have, all these sorts of things available to us that might. Enable us to be able to extend our creativity with words without it just being ask chat GP for some stuff, which would seem to be the tech industry’s answer to that question at the moment. Anyway, long rambling intro. What do you reckon? Tris: It’s a fascinating framework to think about writing the, the interface. You know, playing something on a piano is very different to playing it on a, on a trumpet say. I, I think everybody would agree with that. And of course we’re all using exactly the same instrument, the keyboard, and even different kinds of keyboards. Up to typewriters, I don’t think makes a difference. I would go as far as saying maybe even using a pen doesn’t make much of a difference. I acknowledge that I don’t. Tend to hand write things. This, this is a long habit since I was 11 or 12 when my teacher said, tr we’ve given handwriting a really good shot, haven’t we? Please use a computer. And then my dyslexia was managed a little better. I think our. As writers, our interfaces are patterns of thought, not physical patterns, not not physical interfaces. Our interfaces are mental, our interfaces are temporal and context based. Am I writing in Starbucks? Am I writing early morning before the kids have woken up? Am I writing in a very loud environment or when I’m tired or in a group situation? I think all of these would much more drastically change what I am writing than just the instrument that is under my fingers or in my hand. I am reminded of a quote by Paul Graham because I wrote it because I, I did it in my talk last week, but it sounds super, super. Super, super relevant. Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator, but a, a very greatly respected computer scientist in his own right before then. He said the programming languages are not, are not just technologies, but patterns of thought. And I suppose one could also extend that to natural languages. They’re not just ways of communicating, but they’re patterns of thought. So I think that these mental interfaces could be where we might find the writer’s interface compared to where the, where the musician’s interface is. The instrument. I would, I have more thoughts, but I will pass it back to you two. Lisa: That’s made me, I love that about the patterns of thought. There’s been a few linked experiences recently that I think has changed the rhythm of mine a little bit. So it started off, I think the first thing was when Cy Cornwell, also a friend of the podcast on the WB 40 Album Club a couple of weeks ago, brought Kay Tempest new album. And Kay is an incredible spoken word artist. And the rap, the, the, the rhythms, the way he speaks, the way he duets with a, a younger version of himself, it, it blew me away a bit. And I’ve been listening to that album basically nonstop since. And then I went with Paul Armstrong from who’s also a friend of the show, T of TBD fame. And we went to a spoken word, immersive experience, which had the, the spoken word performer and poet Miss Yankee, who spoke at the TBD conference last year, and I think she’s performed a few times on the agenda. And she was performing with some other fantastic performers on a stage. And it’s that kind of spoken word, cadence again. And it, I found that with, with Kay’s voice in my head and Miss Yankee’s voice in my head. The other day I posted a video, which almost had a bit of a spoken word cadence to it. I, I hate seeing myself on video and it’s something that I’ve been trying to get better at and more comfortable at doing, but I did find myself thinking about sentences in a different rhythm or pattern. So I love what you’re saying there. And I think also for me, when I write, I tend to listen to the same albums over and over on repeat. So years ago it was Neil Sissy Riga’s Mouth Moods Tris: love Neil SISs Riga. Yeah. My goodness. Lisa: I, I. But now I can’t listen to any of the tracks on that song without thinking that I should be writing, like I should be getting deep into writing. I find that it really became like the backdrop to my, to my work for a few years. So I kind of move on every, I don’t know, six months or so, maybe. It depends on the thing. What, when you’re thinking about the surroundings, I have to control the surroundings to be a, even if it’s just headphones on with no noise, a lot of the time I put headphones on, it’s almost like the equivalent of sticking my finger in my fingers, in my ears, and if I’ve got my headphones on, I can get stuff done. Tris: Right. Yeah. That you’ve, you’ve pavlov yourself into into, into writing. When, when when listening to that, I wonder if Pavlov thought of his dogs when he heard a bell. Do you ever wonder about that? Yeah, Matt: so I, this idea about us being in patterns of thought, a couple of things that I’ve been working on recently. The, my book project, which is hopefully coming to an end soon. But it will Lisa: never finish. It’ll just get to the next Matt: phase. I know. Yeah, I know, I know. With a due date on it. Oh no, there’s a due date, 30th of November. So that’s all good. No. So the, the, the, the two stories that spring to mind about this idea of patterns of thought are two things about intentional ways of using randomness to help people be able to break out of their established patterns of thought. One is the cut up technique, which is something that people like David Bowie, William Burrows used and literally taking some text, chopping it into small bits, throwing it up into the air, and then creating lyrics, or in Burrow’s case, entire novels from whatever is left on the, on the floor. And then also a thing that was kind of invented by the the surrealist in the twenties called Exquisite Corpse which is, you might remember it as a childhood game, which is where you take a piece of paper, fold it. And so you end up with panels that you can only see the top panel and then people either draw a picture and then they’re left with just the, the lines to attach the next bit and the next bit and the next bit or that you use it doing using text is the other way that you can do this. And so what you end up with is a number of people contributing and collaborating to create a shared piece of art where they don’t know what the others have created. And again, you get this, it’s again similar to the kind of cut up thing. And the thing I find really interesting about that, and maybe feeds more also into the, into the, the thing about writing is that I think a lot of the time people feel that those kind of techniques are cheating. ’cause they seem in some ways too easy. And often the results of it can be a little bit weird, which is a separate problem. But that actually we have so much associated in. The, the world of creating with it being about a, an act of sufferance, about it being something that should be painful and tortuous. You know, van Gogh held up, held up as the, the archetype of the tortured artist. And unless you chopped your own ears off, then you’re not trying hard enough. And maybe, maybe one of the reasons why there aren’t tools like Ableton for the, the world of writing is because nobody feels that that’s what you should do with writing, because it should be hard. Tris: There is assumption, some truth in that. I think very like the, it’s possible that it should be hard, not necessarily for dogmatic reasons, but perhaps because the struggle is. The work, wrestling with the ideas that are on the page in front of you. I’ve, I’ve I’ve read a marvelous book called writing to Learn by William Insa. And in, in there he presents a very, very, very good thesis of focusing your thoughts through the medium of words on the page in a structure, in a cogent argument, and then the act of drafting that sharpens up the concepts and, and so forth. I mean, you’re, you’re both writing books, you know, just what I’m, just, what I’m talking about. Like, it’s, it’s very easy to write a long book. It’s extremely difficult to write a short book. One of the, one of the clear examples of this is that I’m sure you, in, in, you will have exper, you’ll have found some of, what am I saying? I’m sure you will have come across some of the PKM books such as GTD, getting Things Done by David Allen, an enormous Goliath of a book. It is perhaps four times longer than it needs to be. Not that it is not a good book, but the first two chapters are really where, where the, where the good stuff lies. And Atomic Habits is another one. And various other things. These were all very large books and there’s good stuff in there, but the most impressive book I read recently was a very, very, very small book. On note taking called a System for Writing by Bob Doto. It is available DM free because I bullied him into making it DRM free. Originally, he just had it on Kindle. Bob, if you’re listening, thanks so much. And it is so short. It is obvious that the author understands exactly what is important to write about and nothing about what is irrelevant. And this struggle is obvious that he has had, because what is given to us, just like practicing a talk, is only the essence, just what the reader needs to know. Lisa: Tri, you said PKM. What does that mean? Tris: Ah, that is personal knowledge management. One of the nightmare deep dives that I don’t recommend any of your listeners research and look up, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Do not learn about PKM or kerning or any of these other things. I’m of course kidding. Personal knowledge management, task management, note taking. All of these were under the umbrella of PKM and it is a subject of my interest because as a writer I have an increasingly large body of work that I somehow need to externalize onto the page and keep referenced and hyperlinked and available for me to look back on. Because I can’t keep it all in my brain Lisa: on the tools front. Something that I’ve not used before, but I do know some other writers have used it. There’s a thing called Scrivener, which is like a, a proprietary thing that appears to be a combination of tools from mapping stuff out with the kind of notes and mood, not mood, mood boards, but storyboarding. And it makes it easier to look at chapters and to be able to flit around in the structure if you are writing quite a lot of things or if you’re writing one big thing. But it’s not something I’ve used myself when I’m writing. I tend to, I’ve got a, a messy combination of a random notes app on my phone that just takes a couple of ideas. Or I, I tend to use Word, I’m really boring, but I do use Word because I like using headings. I like them being able to navigate between the headings. I like structuring my content. Clearly it’s accessible to the reader, but it helps me when I’m writing because my head, my headings become what comes next. I’ve tried Google Docs and it’s, it’s okay for a blog post or a throwaway thing, but I do like full on word. If you wanna get right into things, Tris: awful garbage tools for people who don’t know better, and I don’t mean that as an insult. The, you mentioned earlier, if I may call back to your discussion about presentation and accessibility and theming, there is a sharp difference between writing the content. In a presentation or in a, in a document and fiddling around with how that content looks. I spoke with a lawyer friend of mine recently. I’m hoping to try and get her to start a podcast because she’s my friend, and therefore, when you solve that equation, it means I’m talking to them about starting a podcast, and she says that 80% of her negotiation with the other client’s, lawyers are about presentation of the contract, not the words in the contract, and she hates it. And I greatly sympathize, and I think that happens to us all the time. And Lisa, you must stop using Microsoft Word immediately because if you were to have an out of body experience and watch yourself, right, you would be horrified at the amount of time that you think you are writing, but you are in fact fiddling with formatting and, and who would blame you. You look at the interface of Microsoft Word, what is covering the interface? It’s covered with presentation options. Lisa: If you’ve got your template set up right in the first place, you just need to write and you can format it afterwards. I, that, that is the spirit. I love the fact that you can apply things consistently throughout. You can change things with one click. If you use it properly and you understand how it all works, you can get your footnotes and your ed notes and you can, you can put it all in and tie it up together into a nice, neat package. It does take, but mm-hmm. If you are not using all the features in it then I can see you can end up fiddling in the margins and you can end up fiddling with the formatting. But I do think that’s a different, different phase. Tris: Yes, you, you’re, of course, you’re right and I’m, I’m, I should have known better than to think that you would’ve fall fallen into the trap that mere mortals, such as I would, if I were using Microsoft Word, I wouldn’t. Lisa: You could take word or PowerPoint away from my cold dead fingers. Tris: Hmm, interesting. We are going to talk about markdown momentarily. Oh, go. I hate markdown. Lisa: I hate markdown. I hate wikis. It’s normal formatting that’s been made difficult for people that think like developers. Matt: Interesting. The thing, there’s a, but the thing with this is really I find fascinating. We’re in 2025. I first used a word processor probably in about 1982, and although the user interface around them has. Change dramatically. The outputs of those things has pretty much not changed in 45 years. And there’s an issue there, which is that if you create content in PowerPoint, if you create content in Microsoft Word, unless you are absolutely fastidious with the use of the formatting tools in Word and not at all with PowerPoint, the minute you try to look on it on a device that doesn’t have a screen shape like a PC screen, it all goes technically to tits because it doesn’t suit with the way in which a mobile phone screen operates, or the a, maybe a tablet screen operates with it being in portrait format. And the A Word document is aimed at being in. Portrait format and yet doesn’t scale necessarily to be able to deal with the mobile phone. And then it’s stuck into a PDF. So it can be a locked document in your, you know, legal contract thing. And then there’s no use to man or beast because it’s just, and that we haven’t actually moved on from what are essentially analogies to printed documents. We’ve got Word document, which is basically a typewritten a four or letter format thing. And we’ve got a PowerPoint deck, which is essentially a 35 millimeter slide that is projected on the wall. And everything else has never been able to get some sort of traction to be able to become useful. So we don’t, you know, I, I, I get your reservations about Wikis and markdown, Lisa, but that’s the route that we should be heading down because we’re stuck with these formats that also constrain how we think. You know, it is well known about how PowerPoint is able to be able to constrain thinking. There’s the, the the famous Tuft pamphlet about how it caused one of the space shuttles to crash because people were thinking in terms of bullet points rather than thinking about in terms of the messages they were trying to get across for I Tris: love Tuft work. If you were to go and please excuse the self-promotion to oatman.com, Oatman with zero you will see that I am using Tufts. Typography on my blog. I do not update the blog anymore, but I’m extremely proud of how I’ve wrangled Tuft’s design language into in, into that I have a halfway house between Markdown and Microsoft products. If you are interested, Lisa, Lisa: maybe Tris: it the, when I was at university, we had to write all of our our coursework and, and so forth using latex, which is spel latex, which is like postscript an awful punishment for those who those who want to. Make their their documents. And as a student, it was a complete catastrophe. I had to learn EMAX in order to use it. A double punishment for the the, the young programmer. There is a modern version that it takes inspiration from. Donald Knuth late Tech, but brings it up to date. This is called Types. Have you heard of types? Lisa: I don’t think so. Tris: It is extremely, it is, it has only just really come out and it is the learn the lessons of latex, which is don’t make a true and complete programming language that happens to be able to make PDFs. That’s a bad idea, but it is a, a type setting a very lightweight type setting, heavier than markdown. Lighter than latex, and it’s extremely modern. And you make your, you make your template using, using some extremely, like, simpler than HTML using using a simple, some simple rules, you know, what font you want and so forth. And then you crack on with just writing with some, some lightweight stuff. The, the reason I’m so keen, and I’m, I’m offering this option to you and your listeners to check it out, is that I’m certain there is such a huge gain in productivity that can be got in making templates. You’ve told us this, Lisa, this is a very important part of part of the process. I, I, I take that to an unusual extreme, which is if I am touching the mouse, I am slowing myself down. Now I, you please excuse me. That is of course a very programmer thing to say, but I’m now a writer, not a programmer. I, I spend all my days writing, not, not programming. And I think this, this idea that absolutely comes from the programming world of like the, the Uber hacker clicking away and never using a mouse. I think that is the extremely applicable to the writing world is that the mouse is sort of where you are. You are never typing on a mouse. If we’re talking about tools and interfaces that are designed for certain things, the mouse doesn’t get anything done. From my point of view as a writer now, I, I in a, in a presentation, there are boxes to be drawn and layouts to be made, but not much really. Lisa: You don’t need to draw a box if you’ve got placeholders in there. ’cause you set up your templates with appropriate placeholders. Tris: Exactly. So actually you should have done a small amount of, of setup there and like, you know, clicking around and, and doing, doing so forth, the rest of the day should be judged by how much typing and thinking and research and so forth is, is happening. So the more, the more you just spend doing that and the less fiddling around you do, the more productive as far as I am concerned. That is how I look at my as how as how I look at my days. And so a product like Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, imagine such a product that was designed for templating right from the start and had two, these two distinct sort of phases. You had the, this template building process, I’m talking about types now, and then using the template and instead of blurring those with an interface that has all kinds of boxes and stuff to click on, you had these two, these two. Two separate phases. It’s like the analogy, I’m sure you know, you, you and your, your listeners will know this, like bringing the marble into the studio is a separate step than carving it. You know, that, that old analogy writers often talk about free writing or exploratory writing, getting as many, hammering as many words as possible. Stephen King often talks about this and then editing it later. Hemingway very famously said write drunk, edit sober. And I think for the same reasons. Matt: So I, I get all of that in terms of being able to create consistency. But what about the other extreme? Because. I do think we run risk of, of actually any generation runs risk that they think that pervading technology is how humans work and therefore impose the worldview of the current pervading technology onto people. And then it constrained us. And we saw, you know, the, the, in the 1920s, I was looking at some stuff recently, some very early infographics from a German artist name of him. I can’t remember books over there somewhere. But in the 1920s there was a, a picture of the human body. And in the human body it was all represented as mechanical machines within the body because that was the pervading technology at the time. It was steam engines in the early ev e evolution of electric motors. And, and that’s how they were using metaphor to be able to explain how people’s bodies and brains were. Now, of course, it’s complete nonsense. That’s nothing like the way in which a, a human body works in the same way that using metaphors of. Processing units and random access memory and all the rest is complete nonsense and actually has nothing to do with the way in which human brains work. And so taking something to, to your point, Lisa, about the, you know, the, the, the struggles with things like markup that they, they’re trying to impose structure and order onto things can be helpful. Sometimes structure an order can be a creative creative tool in its own right. But what about completely unbounded, unstructured stuff? What about the ability to be able to, like my desk in front of me here at the moment have mess? So much of what goes into to computers tends to have to have order and structure because that’s the way the computer wants it. Or sorry, that’s the way the computer programmer wants it. Rather than being able to have the ability to just create mess. And maybe that’s what we need sometimes for creative process. Lisa: My process for mess. Well, my, my creative tool set also includes not what TRI says, but pens are important. I’ve got tombo pens, which one end is a brush pen, and one end is like a really nice flowing felt tip that doesn’t bleed through pages like Sharpies do. I use Dotty paper in my notepads, and I’ve always got a pad to hand, so I might be doodling to try. And if I doodle, it means I’ve, I’ll remember I’m processing stuff when someone’s talking to me. And there’s a process which I think I originally learned in design and technology at school. You know, and, and I do. I I think it’s a. It’s still a good way of going about things. But you know, when you are kind of like a, you’re in the very first stages of ideation. It might be a spider diagram or a mind map or just a load of words on a page, which either is in my Dotty paper or it’s on a mirror board, or it’s with post-it notes that you then group and shape and you start off with going broad and wide and then start grouping things. You start high, okay, let’s, let’s explore these ideas. These ones work, these ones don’t. I’m just gonna take these four forward or these two forward, and then you develop it and go a bit deeper. Like I’ve got, I’ve got some persistent notes on my phone, which, ideas that come to me, particularly if we have had a drink or like, so sometimes a couple of times a year we go away with a big bunch of nerds to go and play some games in Darbyshire. I’ve got a, a note in my phone of game ideas, which over the years has evolved and it’s massive. And I think one or two of them have actually made it off the note into a bigger thing. But I think the mess, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta let the mess out and then you can’t, but you can’t take all of it forward ’cause otherwise you end up losing your mind. So picking the things that work and putting them, whether it’s, you know, I’ve also got a sty on my phone, which I do actually use. I’ve technically got a sty on my laptop, but I very rarely use that now. I used to use it for note taking when I was out and about, and I’d use one note. Hi, Microsoft. You know, I’m, I’m a big fan still, but actually I found that using a pen and a bit of paper is generally better ’cause I’m not really gonna be using those. I I’m not a professional sketch noer who’s gonna be digitizing those pictures to, to, to write up about stuff or anything that’s beyond my own needs. But yeah, that’s how I do miss also looking around my desk. Tris: I think the, the capture part is extremely important. The ability to get all of the, the disparate ideas down in, in whatever way you, you like. I have a a remarkable tablet, which is an a simple E Ink sketchy tablet for exactly what you have said, Lisa, we’ve got the same, same idea there. Like if I’m talking to someone, I’ve got a pen in my hand. It just happens to be a digital pen. I find it works, it works much nicer with much nicer than a laptop. Like if I, especially if I’m like in a, like an interview situation where I’m sitting across from someone like, it, it, it’s, even if the person trusts that, I’m not like scrolling Reddit. If you see me with a pen in my hand and writing, not only can you kind of see what I’m doing, but I’m certainly not scrolling. Reddit, the, the capture process is, is so, so important. The, these as creatives, we’ve got two main inputs to our, to our brains. The, I Matt, I think earlier you were talking about like ideation and brainstorming and cutups, like the ways of, ways of making, ways of getting gen, generating new ideas. Did you mention Writer’s Block? I wrote down Writer’s Block. Was was that one of the topics you touched on? Apologies. It reminded me of Writer’s Block, and I’ve written down something that I believe very strongly. Writer’s Block is caused by readers block. Like the inputs to my system are the things that I’m consuming. What I’m reading games, I’m playing films, I’m watching people, I’m talking to experiences I’m having in the world. Like if I were to shut myself off, I would eventually run out of those that, that raw material that is coming in and inputs like that, which in the PKM world, we often call literature. As a catchall liter literature notes is one half. The other half are ideas that I have as I I, because I wrote about it in a video. I have the quote memorized, you’ll excuse me. Martha Graham, perhaps Marsha, I, I forget exactly which the founder of Modern American Dance said that there is a, a, a quickening that will only exist in you once in the whole world. And if you don’t act on it, it will be lost. The, the, the river will wash past and, and you will never have, have expressed it. And so it’s not up to us whether or not the thing we’re thinking of is good or not, or the thing we’re writing is good or not. That’s not us to judge that it is our, our job only to make the thing. And then. Other people in history can be the judge of that. And so the capture process, the note taking process is so vital because how many things do we forget a day? Some of those things I often worry might have been useful, and so I, I had this capture process just like Lisa said, like spider diagrams, note like lots and lots of this. This is all capture. And then processing it into what is good. Then you can consciously throw away stuff that I feel a lot more comfortable about, like distilling it down, distilling the thoughts down into what is good and what is bad, not what I happen to have forgotten and what I happen to have remembered. That sounds very dangerous. Capture super important. Lisa: So that was quite the conversation. I’m so pleased I managed to get you two together because I think even as we were going there. I wasn’t quite sure where we were going next, but I feel like there’s been a really lovely thread as we’ve been talking to each other and thinking about how we learn and document and write and process things and create things. But, oh, what a, what a joy. I always say that these are interesting conversations, mainly because talking to people is interesting in itself, but love this. So what is happening next? What are you up to in the next week or so? Matt, what’s going on for you? Matt: So alongside the day job. I am going to go to the freeze art fair on Saturday, which ooh, I’m gonna be taking my youngest is doing his GCSE art there, had the chance very fortuitously against some free tickets to it, so that would be interesting. And I am continuing to do the exercise of throwing away that Trish was just talking about there as Nick and I continue to be able to, well, partly throwing away as we work out which bits of the book are the ones we wanna keep and which ones are the bits of that we wanna discard. And also then creating the imagery for the book, which has been really interesting and for me has been the chance to be able to. With a limited but some self-confidence about what I’m doing, be able to create a visual style for something. And that’s been really interesting. And mostly inspired by walking past some posters outside the Young Vic Theater a couple of months ago, which gave me inspiration for a style and then really thanking goodness that I, for the last 20 years basically, have been taking photographs of all sorts of strange things, which has given me an enormous library of stuff, which has been ideals to be able to illustrate a book about randomness. So that’s, that’s my week ahead. Lisa: Oh, on that. I’m sure you already do this, but one of my fa ’cause I also take pictures all the time. One of my favorite things with that is to search in my Google photos because it’s very good at recognizing things. Oh Matt: yes, no, absolutely. And I, I will search on Google photos and then I will also often use things that it has correlated to be the result of that search. If you look at some of the pictures of Indeed this podcast some of the illustrative pictures, if you’re wondering why they are there, it’s because I search for something related to the show on my photos and it came back with that. So that’s what you get. Lisa: Amazing Tris. What are you up to over the next week or so? Well, Tris: A great deal. My first fiction show, lost Terminal is just started season 20 20. Yes. Yeah. So weekly show. Yes. Season 20. Lisa: It’s a weekly show. How often, so how long is the season? How many episodes is that? If you’re at season 2010 Tris: episodes, the correct length for a season, that’s a nice, sensible sensible thing I use I use a seven point plot system, which I then pad out with 12 extra sections to make, 10 episodes of four sections each. Four acts per it’s all very structured because I’m incredibly autistic about it. And I do it every week and then I take. A month off. And then I, I do another, I’ve since started taking two months off to help with my RSI though actually powerlifting lease, we should talk powerlifting has actually properly fixed my my my, my RSI. Amazing. And my back, like, I think that could be a life hack for any office worker is power lifting. Like, do your hands hurt, do your back hurts? Gr guess what? I’ve got one thing that will solve both of those things. I’m not a doctor. Do not take my advice. Lost terminal is is, is, is going. I’ve released another episode today. Every Monday I’m writing the Phosphine catalog, which season three drops on Halloween. This is a 1976 themed. 1976 set podcast set in an art auction house that sells magical artworks. You go to Christie’s with your Statue of the Madonna crying blood. They don’t believe you. You go to the Phosphine catalog, they give you a good price. That is my fortnightly show and by some Miracle Modem, Prometheus. My second show, which I don’t write, but I do produce is coming back. This back from a long two year hiatus back on Halloween as well. So October is extremely busy for me. I also had the conference at the start of at the start of the month. I’m sure I’m even forgetting things that I’m supposed to be doing. I’m probably gonna be writing some videos for the channel as well. But it is a nightmare and a blessing to be a professional writer with all of these projects. I also started my own Talking Heads podcast. Podcasts, much like the one we are doing now, which is called deencapsulate deencapsulate.com if you’ll forgive me. That’s my friend Robin and I who, Lisa, you will. Meet if you’ve not already very soon. Talking about tech similar stuff, Lavis, except that the he’s, he’s on board with Mark down instead of not being on board with Mark down. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same. It’s a, a very busy time and I write music every week for all these shows as well. Wow. I feel inadequate Lisa, but I don’t have, I don’t have kids, so it’s okay. What else am I gonna do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Matt: That’s fair enough. Lisa, what about you? What is what’s coming up in your week ahead? Lisa: Well, Thursday is my birthday. It’s also the color walk day. It’s also pub o’clock day. So this Thursday is a very big social day for me. Tomorrow night I’m also doing a storytelling. You might yeah, it’s, I’m, I’m going along to a storytelling evening, which is exciting. There’s five speakers doing five minute stories, so I’m looking forward to that. The book promotional schedule continues. I’ve got articles that I’m writing. We’ve got, I’ve got talks to write. I’m doing a talk in a couple of weeks time about accessibility, ’cause that’s what I talk about a lot now. Yeah, there’s, there’s lots of things. I’ve got a whiteboard or talking about digital tools. The only thing that works for me is a tiny whiteboard that I bought for 3 99 from the post office to actually capture all of the different buckets of things because it, it crosses clients. The only, the, the only tech problem with it is sometimes my cats jump on it and wipe it off. Tris: So you haven’t got bugs. You’ve got cats. Lisa: Yeah, exactly. Amazing. Matt: Well, that’s it for another week. Trs, thank you very much for joining us. Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. What a delight. Lisa, thank you for organizing that. Lisa: I’m so glad I managed to bring it all together. This is exactly what I was here for. Chris. I know Weston, if you listen to this. Yes. I’m trying to bring people together. I’m the puppet master here. Matt: We’re back in a couple of weeks time. We are going to be meeting with somebody who is organizing the second of an annual conference about sports data. So a complete change of of mood. But you know, that’s how we roll here on WB 40. So until then, have a great fortnight. Tris: I see. So I feel personally attacked because you’re getting the no boilerplate guide to write to, to read some boilerplate. Marvellous. Thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us on the internet at WB40podcast.com and on all good podcasting platforms.

In this episode, Chris and Nick continue discussions about the world of interim management and welcome Rebecca Fox to discuss her extensive experience across public and private sectors. Rebecca shares candid insights about the realities of interim work, emphasising that there’s no time for a hundred-day plan—it’s all about a day-one approach. She explains how interim leaders must quickly fill leadership voids, build trust, and create certainty in organisations facing strategic misalignment or transition. The conversation explores the relentless pace of modern CIO roles, the importance of commercial awareness, and why technology leaders must focus on outcomes that drive revenue, grow margins, or reduce risk rather than just managing technology for its own sake. The discussion shifts to broader challenges facing technology leaders today, including the pressures of cost optimisation in PE-backed and public companies, the increasing complexity created by SaaS proliferation, and concerns about AI adding another layer of complexity without addressing underlying process issues. Rebecca argues that organizations need to simplify before layering on AI capabilities, warning that simply bolting AI onto complicated legacy processes will create bigger problems down the road. The group discusses how AI might represent an opportunity for smaller, more agile organisations while larger companies struggle with vested interests and accumulated technical debt. Show transcript, automatically generated by Descript (so forgive errors etc). Chris: Hello and welcome to episode 3, 3 6 of WB 40, the weekly podcast with me, Chris Weston. Nick Drage. And this week Rebecca Fox. I. Well, welcome to WB 41, episode number 3, 3 6. We, we, we’ve got Nick and Rebecca, but our first day I’m gonna ask Nick, how are you doing, Nick? Long time no. See. What’s your week been like? Nick: I’m doing well. Just for the discussion I’ve been for the last week, I’ve been I’ve been vibe, coding, vibe, sorry, vibe coding, a bash script, just to run a stone, a survival game and see if, see if it’s actually gonna work. So it’s like a, it’s like a Monte Carlo simulation of the game rather than trying to play a card game like 2000 times just from the script. So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last week. Chris: Wow, that’s a whole week of trying to quite make a bash grip. Is that, is that, is that the right, is that the right tech tool for this? But isn’t AI Rebecca: also supposed to make things quite quick as well? If it’s taken a whole week to do, it isn’t, isn’t AI smashing? Nick: I, I have, Jesus, this is, this has started earlier. I have been doing other things in the last week, but that’s, that, that, that would be, that would be the highlight, but also. It’s been interesting to see how slow the process is in that. I’m like 90% of no sort of the way there with how the logic of a program should work. But still, it’s something I’ve done so regularly that I, I catch myself out and can sort of waste hours. I’m just making mistake. Rebecca: How many prompts did it get you to where you are now with this, with this bit of vibe? Oh, like like six. Okay. I think you’ve said about 600. ’cause you could have probably just written the code quicker then, right? Nick: See, well that would assume that one I know bash scripting, which I know enough to get it, like only slightly wrong. And two, I’m, I’m very much not a natural developer. Like the, the big stuff I can do quite well. The detail of make sure this punctuation is here or use spaces in this kinda line, but not that kinda line. Is, it feels like it’s designed specifically to trip me up. So that’s why it’s basically a case of asking the lille, what does this look like? Copy and paste that in, rename the variables. Take it from there. Chris: Absolutely. It is designed Nick: to, Chris: to catch you out Anyway, so but, so yeah, so we, we heard Rebecca there. So Rebecca, welcome to the podcast, Rebecca Fox Rebecca: to see you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you so much for the invitation. So last week, I, last week was actually pretty exciting. I went to an evening dinner on Tuesday. Which is great. Spon sponsored. It’s always nice to have a free dinner, which is talking about Ned how to become a ned, which I, I did a, a course on last year, but also being part of a foot C two 50 doing an NED stuff, but a really busy job that I’m currently exiting. You know, love to get a ned well and some fractional work. And then on. Thursday actually, my, my partner Hayley and I did a workshop as part of Manchester Tech Festival, which was great the first time. We’ve done a workshop together and interesting enough, we are still together after doing that workshop. So I’m very proud of us both for, for surviving. That and also well, we’ll talk about next week. And then this weekend we’re super exciting. My son’s just bought a house. My son’s 29. He’s just bought a house, so me and he went to see him and see what he’s bought and help him in able clean it and do all the little jobs that that he couldn’t do. And I’m sure there’s lots more work to do. So it’s been a really exciting and busy week last week. So yeah, it’s been great. Chris: That is a busy week and yes, you know, team handling a kind of a presentation can be a bit stressful. And Matt and I have done it actually. And you know, we we’re not, we’re not partners in that sense, but, you know, we’ve been together a long time and we’ve and we, you’re still Speaker 2: partners. Chris: We’ve never, we’ve never fallen out. You know, the, the, the, the relationship has, has, has, has remained, but yeah, that’s, that’s a difficult one. And then of course, houses so, you know, so this week for example, I. Actually my daughter came back from university. She’s only been there two, two weeks, which came back to pick something up or something. So I had that going on with you know, people going after university and, and new, new thing, new, new, new things. But I also did the UK IT leaders event in Manchester last week, which was nice because quite a lot of our Midlands tech leaders contingent were there. They made the. Arduous and app perilous journey at the M six to Manchester to to get there. And also, you know, met up with a, you know, a lot of people that I haven’t seen for a while which is always nice, isn’t it? And met a few new people as well. So, you know, new friends and new acquaintances are always welcome. So yeah, last week was pretty, pretty busy and busy work-wise as well. We, it’s one of those, it’s a funny time in business at the minute. A lot of it is a bit soft and people are struggling a bit, and again, we still talk to lots of people who are looking for work in, for CIOs or leadership type roles in it that, you know might not have been expecting to take so long to look for, look for a role. It, you know, it’s, it’s definitely. A tricky market, but it’s not dead by any means. And in terms of what we are doing, yeah, it’s, it’s busy. There’s lots of stuff going on, and I know lots of people who have exited a job and found a job really quickly as well. So I think it’s just one of those, it’s a, it’s a softish market, but yeah. Interesting stuff going on. So it was a, yeah, it. Rebecca: It was nice to see Manchester features part of it leaders as well, by the way, you know, I, I, I live in Manchester and it’s an absolutely amazing city. It Chris: is. It’s you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s got a good claim to be the, the fourth or third city in the country. And that’s you know, that’s good. You got Birmingham as the second city, obviously mean. It’s the fourth city, obviously it’s, it’s Rebecca: before London, Manchester, come Chris: on. Yeah, maybe. All right. And that I, I, I, I understand the point of view, but you know Yes. Fair enough. We, we won’t, we won’t go down. We beyond that route. But yeah, good week and I’m glad everybody’s had a good time. So what we’re gonna do is we, we’re gonna talk in a moment about interim CIO work. We had a conversation with Duncan. Stop. A couple of weeks ago about, about interim work in general. And because Rebecca is, has been a, a regular interim and even went into a current permanent role on an interim basis, and as we talked about with sometimes, sometimes that turns permanent we’re gonna talk about that and how it’s changed over the last few years and Rebecca’s experience in that. So Speaker 2: I’ll see you in a second. So then Rebecca, a fair, Chris: a fair chunk of time in interim in public sector, private sector. We talked with Duncan a few weeks, a couple of weeks ago about, about the kind of mentality of, of, of people going into interim and the kind, you know, they don’t necessarily have the time to, to sort of sit down and, and come up with a hundred day plan and all that kind of thing. How, how has you, how have, have you approached this over the years? Would you agree with that? Is it something you just sort of, you know, get in and crack on with? Rebecca: I really enjoyed that to the podcast with, with Duncan. I, I listened to it and I, I guess the one thing I didn’t do that I, I did do that Duncan doesn’t do, is he, he, I took the perm job, right? I took the perm job at NCC. I’ve been there for three months, took the perm CEO gig and I don’t regret it after four years. It was, it’s generally been a brilliant experience. You. Left it now, leaving it now. But there’s no a hundred day plan as a, as an interim you, it’s a day one plan. Right. You, your day one plan. You, you, I remember one kick, I I, I joined. It’s like there, there was a fire in the server room, you know, a server room 200 before I joined it. It’s just like, oh my goodness, what you are walking into. But what you are walking into is. Not necessarily chaos as such, but you walk into a place where people aren’t sure which direction to go in. The people aren’t sure. There’s often no strategy or the strategy doesn’t have full support of, of, of the board. You’re not going to chaos often, but you’re going into a lot of uncertainty and I think your job as an interim is to create that certainty, whether that’s strategic certainty or not, it’s about creating that certainty to give the people in the, in the technology team, whatever team you’re looking after. Some reassurance, and it’s also to make sure you’re giving confidence to the, to the board, to your boss, whoever that may be. There is no day under plan as a, as an interim. There’s just a day one plan. You, you take it from there and you are agile, your fleet of foot, you’ve got great leadership skills, you’ve got a great overview of what going on with technology, and you are very commercially aligned. I think if you do those things, you probably can’t go wrong. Chris: And we, and we, we also talked about the fact that as an interim, you’re probably going into another situation, which is. Not necessarily the happiest, either somebody’s been exited be for whatever reason. And they probably, you know, often it’s not entirely their fault. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s communication issues or trust issues that, that have happened, you know, or somebody’s left, you know precipitously. And again, that’s, that, that also may be because of the, of, of a situation in that business. And as a CIO, one of the things that you do. I have to be thinking about is strategic things. You wanna understand the business, you want us to understand the, what they’re trying to achieve as a, you know, strategically how technology plays a part in that and all of that. But when you go into that kind of situation, tactical stuff tends to be, you know, a bit like a fire in the server room, right? It’s like, what do I need to do, as you say today, one my day, one stuff. So how’s that work in terms of working? Enough with those high level stakeholders so that the strategy doesn’t flander, but also being able to pick up those sort of day to day, you know, let, let’s find out what on Earth’s going on here, things. Rebecca: Yeah, you, you, you do, you do get a little bit of, of leeway. No one’s expecting you to fix the strategy on day one, right? It, it’s that, that will never happen because they know that you haven’t, you don’t know the business, right? That’s, you know, it’s never gonna happen that way. But what they do expect you to do is fill that vacuum and that void of leadership, which clearly has pretty much 99% of the time left as someone’s left the organization, you know, fairly rapidly. You know, for whatever reason, you know, you know, typically, as you say, it’s because there’s a misalignment of, of direction probably between the CIO and, and their boss, ideally the CEO, it’s their boss, but the, some kind of misalignment or, you know, that’s, that’s what happens. And the reality is that’s okay, right? People. Don’t need to get on with each other. People do have disagreements and hopefully, you know, it’s works out really well in the end for, for that person leaving. But as a, as an interim, you’ve, you’ve gotta go in and, and fix that void. Fill that void as quickly as possible and build trust with everybody as quick as possible. And, you know, technology, yeah, it’s about technology, but fundamentally it’s all about people, right? So you get the people bit, right? Actually the technology just flows just flows behind it in my view. At some point you do have to step over and do the technology, but the people thing for me is the absolute first thing. You’ve got to get absolutely spot on. Chris: Yes. The, as you say, often that leadership part is, to be honest, I think it’s missed by a lot of people in permanent roles, incident roles anyway. So I mean, the leadership part is, is often lacking where you need to give people a kind of, okay, folks. I see, I see where, where you are. But you know, tomorrow we’re gonna be here and the next day we’re gonna be here and we’re going to get to a point where we can start to make some different decisions. And giving people that kind of, I guess, confidence that you are gonna be able to achieve some of those things. That, that to me is, is really important. That word, that leadership word. I think we don’t use it enough, if I’m honest. I, I, Rebecca: I don’t think we do. And I, and I, I, I do, I do see and feel it changing. But the, the reality is, is, is for far too long, by the way, and I’m, I’m, I’m a massive believer that that technology leaders or whatever domain you work in, whether it’s finance or marketing or wherever it is in the organization, does need someone in that leadership position to have, I’m not saying exclusively come up through the ranks, but do actually have some technical understanding, whatever discipline that was for you to lead that function. I, I, I, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve worked with people, you know, above me when I was younger who didn’t have that technical discipline, and they don’t fully get the picture. I think it’s absolutely essential. You do get it, but then of course you then still also learn those leadership and those people skills that, you know, sometimes is lacking in people with, with technical backgrounds, right? Of any technical background, whether it’s finance or marketing. Some people aren’t, aren’t leaders, but I think it’s absolutely essential to. Understand the, the basics and then then be a leader on top. I think if you’re a leader first and then technical second, I don’t really think that works. And I, I don’t really think that works really when you go into an interim role, especially because you do have to not panic about the technology, focus on the people first, then focus on the technology. And I also think that, you know, we, we, we talk about perm roles and we talk about. Now the, the pace of change that we go through right now in, in, in the, in the business world. Yeah. The, the economy kind of feels a little bit soft. It does feel rather relentless every day. And I, and I do think often the expectations of a PERM employee now seems pretty similar actually, to an interim. People are expected to deliver quickly, respond quicker than ever. You know, maybe it’s not quite the relentlessness of an interim, but people do need to react with urgency and pace. And actually when they don’t actually, maybe that’s why they’re exited. And when interim’s brought in, right? Chris: Yeah. But Rebecca: to do, yeah, Chris: I, I get that. Absolutely. And I think, you know, the, the, the, the days of people working for companies for 10, 15 years, you know, are, are rarer and rarer. But when you’re an interim, one of the things that you are definitely doing or you should be doing, you know, or I say I should be doing one of the things that will be on your mind. Is how do I, how do I exit? You know, how do I leave this in a situation where I can be replaced? Whereas if you’re going into a role that’s permanent, that’s probably not, you know, the, the first thing on your mind and, and probably shouldn’t be because you’ve got, we need to have a slightly longer yeah. View of that. Would you, would you agree with that? Rebecca: No, I, I, I definitely, I definitely agree. The, the one, the one thing I, I probably would disagree on is I think, you know, doing a, doing a CXO XO role is exhausting, right? Sometimes you do need to have a break in your career, and I think, I think there’s, I. You’ve got to go back to thinking about your health and wellbeing and actually no. Do doing a, a role of that level for any period of time takes a big chunk out of it. Yeah. You may get greater salary, that’s brilliant. And some Mel tips, but it is quite exhausting. Right. And actually, how do you. Maintain that year after year, after year, after year after year. I know four years of doing group CEO for a FSE two 50 is exhausting. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the last few months of I’ve been on gardening leave and that it’s been great. And I, you know, I’m, I, I, you know, took a bold, brave decision that I didn’t wanna be there. Anymore. Not because I didn’t enjoy what I was doing or the people I worked with, but you know, sometimes you just need a God break. Sorry. Goodness. Break whatever you wanna cross out that, by the way. Edit that out. Thanks. I think our, our, Chris: our listeners won’t be coaching their pearls at Rebecca: that. You, you just, you just need to give yourself a break. And, and I’ve certainly learned that in terms of, you know, looking after myself, you know, you’ve got to look after your mental health. You’ve gotta look after your physical health. ’cause if you can’t, you can’t perform at your best. You can’t perform at your main game. You know, and you need to do that. If you’re not doing that at a, at a, at a, at a CXO level, whatever that is, C-T-O-C-I-O-C-M-O-C-P-O, whatever it is, CDO, you’re not doing the best you can, right. You’ve gotta factor that into your career, I think. And, and, you know, interim is, you know, no different, right? You, you factor in a, in a break because it definitely is more relentless when you’re doing interim. ‘Cause you’ve gotta be absolutely on it. You maybe got a little bit of a leeway as a per rail, but I don’t think there’s that much difference now in the, in the, in the organization’s requirements of what’s needed from a CIO you know, technology and data underpins every single organization. If I think about. What has changed in the last 10 years Without technology and data, every single organization would not exist pretty much. And actually that has changed the pace of that usage is there. Chris: Yeah, I used to say that once upon a time. I’d say that, you know, when I started my career and even quite the way through it you could lose your compute systems for a couple of days, and as long as their business isn’t. Like, like completely white collar, you know, working in engineering and manufacturing, things like that. You know, you, you, you, you could get away with it. It wasn’t good, but you could, you could recover. Whereas now it’s essentially, you know, death if you, if you do that and j lr and, and Rebecca: we see. Okay. So we see every day with, with with cybersecurity. Right. You know, and, you know, that is raised at the agenda because you know, it, and technology is, is so fundamental to every single organization, you know, even when it isn’t the core business. Right. And it’s never been like that more now than ev you know, literally 10 years ago it was kind of there, but it wasn’t. But now it absolutely is. We should be running the show, right. As CIOs. That’s what I think. Too far. Chris: No, I don’t think it’s too far. I, I think rather you, than me, frankly. There’s, there’s a, there’s a reason why I don’t even do a CIO role anymore. Right. There’s, there’s, as you say, sometimes you just have to say, you know, I don’t wanna do that anymore. But you’re right. I mean, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of good skills out there and a lot of, you know, the CIO is, I always say you TIO role, technology roles generally are the best role roles in the company, right? You get to see across the whole company. You get pretty well paid compared to everybody else. You get to play with cool technology and, and talk to cool people, right? People just stop complaining. I dunno whether you agree with that. Nick. Nick: Interest, interesting points made lot of thoughts of that in that technology and data is the foundation for everything. Ah. But also the, the half thought I had is ’cause it’s so ubiquitous, it’s therefore not that special. It’s just something else that should be relatively dependable and relatively automated. Like finance, like power, like, like little electricity, is that kind of thing should be at the stage where you don’t need a specific person in the C-suite. To manage it. I mean, I dunno whether this will go down well or badly with you too, but I often think that what the, what the C-suite should be doing a lot is off on golf courses, playing golf, thinking, waiting for ideas to come up rather like you’ve, you’ve said sort of specifically Rebecca, sort of being on it immediately when actually I think at that level you should have a lot more free time for a lot more. Strategic thought and the people beneath you should be the ones that can do that. That feels, that feels sort of as a, that that feels like a problem, but that’s only a half considered thought, so I dunno what the answer is. I’m hoping shut it up and handing over to you. You are gonna give me the answer to my half considered thought. Well. Rebecca: First of all, I don’t play golf, so that wouldn’t be a, wouldn’t be an option for me, but, but what I would say, I think maybe that is the case or was the case a few years ago, right when the economy wasn’t as tight, when people weren’t constantly doing cost out programs. You know, you know, I think that probably was the case and it felt like we had more time to to, to do those things. And think the reality is, is, is twofold. First of all, the economy doesn’t allow that to happen. Everything is really tight on cost. Whatever organization you work in, whether it’s cash rich or not, it’s all about cost and ebitda. Simple as that. And, and I think that’s just what’s expected of, whether it’s in the Foote or PE or obviously that’s just what’s expected. So I don’t, I don’t think there’s often that time for that extra, extra bits, which is maybe the, the golf thing a couple of days a week. The other thing is, if we go back to technology, and I’m gonna compare technology to finance, right? I don’t think the basic principles of accounting and finance have changed that much in the last a hundred years. We’re fully to get a CFO on here. Nick and Chris, just to validate that, but when I spoke to a finance person a couple weeks ago, I said, Rebecca, you know that, you know, the, the, the, the, the basic principles of finance haven’t changed. You can argue the basic principles of technology haven’t changed the last, you know, a hundred years either. But, but the reality is they have moved at a much more significant pace and increasingly do so. And based on the last comment that all businesses now are built on data and technology, we haven’t got time. We literally have got to keep ahead of the game, ahead of the curve more than ever before. And we haven’t properly mentioned AI in this conversation. I think, I think that’s the first time mentioning AI in this podcast. But you know, that only just accelerates stuff, right? You know, it, it is just relentless and that’s making the business relentless. And I would even say that AI is probably the one bit of technology that has come around, certainly in my lifetime. That genuinely puts the power in the hands of the business. Whether it’s used or wisely or not, I don’t know. But it genuinely will put the how hands of the power in the business and possibly circumnavigate it to some extent. But actually if it does, it does it at its peril. Because actually we all know that AI is built on data. We know that ai, you know, is inherently probably insecure. And actually, if it doesn’t have some oversight and expertise coming from the people in the technology and the data function, then we can have a bigger mess in what we often feel like we have now in technology functions. It’s just we have so much complexity, partly down to SaaS, partly down to other things too. Probably lack of leadership from, from ai, from from IT leaders. You know, AI is gonna. Feel like it’s chaos, right. Chris: I think, yeah, I think that’s, that’s a good point. Alright. I, I’m gonna indulge myself for a moment now. Going back to the point you made about finance not changing and technology changing quickly, I wonder, so, no. Yeah. I mean, finance hasn’t changed. Obviously. There’s, there’s still, nobody’s gonna keep their ledgers and, you know, you sell things and you buy things. You mentioned ebitda, and I think that is a measure that has become important in the last 20 years. I don’t remember people talking about EBITDA back in my earlier days. Maybe Rebecca: they’re right. Chris: And the reason that people talk about EBITDA is partly because so many companies are now pe, PE owned, and the reason they’re doing cost and all the time is because they’re passing, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re flipping the company every few years that they, you know, they’re taking there. They’re biting into the neck, they’re draining out as much blood as they can, and then they pass it onto the next one until, until the, the, you know, lifeless Huss gets thrown on the on the scrappy Right. And the checker takes all the pain. So what’s, is Rebecca: that part of the check you think? Just a quick cut. It’s a bit like pass the parcel. Right. But you don’t wanna be the last one to have the parcel. Right. There is no private end. Right. It’s got chairs. Yeah. Yeah, it’s musical jazz. I think, I think it, I think possibly is right, and whether it’s, whether you, you’re working for a fse, a public listed company, or whether you’re working for a pe I think it is, right? I think there’s more pressure on everybody. You know, as much as we, we, you know, we, we all have ESG targets. Absolutely. I think that’s a really important thing to do. But certainly when the economy is tight, it is all about ebit, right? There is no. There is no fun and there is no joy. Sometimes it literally is just relentless, what’s right for the business. Chris: Yeah. And, and sometimes that gets in the way of thinking about what’s right for the customer. Right? And why, why are we even here? Because are we here to serve the customer and or are we here to return value to to shareholders? Well, I would say the two things going hand, hand in hand, but. The. Rebecca: I, I think, I think it depends on where we are with the economic cycle, right? And whether it’s a cycle of seven years, 10 years, whatever we, we agree on right now, that cycle feels like it’s a a stagnant cycle. Whether is, is is little growth or growth that’s not really catching up with you know, inflation and, you know, just feel like that. And that’s on the back of COVID and or whether it is COVID or whether it’s on the back of the financial crisis in 2007. I. Got to be really, really mindful of stuff and yeah, you do see some organizations that are. Throwing more cash around than, than before. But also COVID has changed how we work, right? We’ve got a whole lot of real estate that isn’t, isn’t filled. So how do we now, how do we even justify that, right? Having offices that people aren’t in every day or not in on a, on a Monday and a Friday, and there’s loads of stuff that we just don’t know any, this big economic thing. What I would say is A, as an IT leader, if this is you listening, is you’ve gotta be much more commercially aware If you don’t think you are. ’cause your job isn’t just data and technology. Your job is business. Your job is understanding commerciality and the direct impact that you have running your function, turning those binary naughts and wands and your data and your AI and your technology into sound commercial outcomes based on, you know, driving revenue, growing margins, or reducing risk. And if you are doing something that doesn’t impact one of those levers, you’re in the wrong job. Chris: Oh, that’s a good point. And, and I, and, i’ll come away from that. You, you, you press one of my buttons and I end up, I end up, oh. Which, which button Rebecca: did I press? Chris: Chris, come on. Yeah, come on Chris. Mention and, and I and yeah, I mean, I’ve seen too far, too many times I’ve seen, you know, people lose focus on what it means to be in business at all. What is the point of being a, of here? What are we doing for our customer? But no, I actually, I think what you said there, that brings us back to you. The, the, the thing we must always mention nowadays, which is AI and how lots of businesses suddenly want, you know, they, they, they’ve got, there’s a bit of a, oh my word, this is it. And agent ai and all of these things, they will say, we will reduce our back office functions. They will mean that we’re gonna be lean and mean and we’re gonna be automated and everything’s gonna be there. It’s not. I, no, I take issue with, with that. I don’t actually think that’s the best use of the technology personally. I, you know, I think it’s better to add value than to re What, Rebecca: what do you think the best use of the technology is? Nick? Chris: Really? Yeah. No. Well, so you don’t let, let. Nick: Yeah, let, let me jump in. ’cause I think that’s a, a really key point in that, especially with record. As you said earlier, the technology is fundamentally insecure, which I think it is in multiple ways and like, like arguably it’s frac, argu, arguably it’s fractally insecure. Like, would you ever level, you look at it, there’s a problem, and if you zoom out or zoom in, there’s still problems. I think it does. Amazing things as per, before we start the recording, sort of, you know, is it, is, can it be a colleague? I think in a way it can, the way the whole, the whole I am, I am laughing at the thumbs down. I’m being given by Rebecca For the audience At home or on your jogging or at work or whatever. Yeah. A colleague, never a colleague. No, I th I, I think with the whole second brain idea, like you said, about life and business becoming more stressful and faster, the number of people who are depending on. Sort of external facilities more than just sort of, I’ll, I’ll keep a notebook sort of thing. The whole settle cast idea and so on. I think LLMs figure into that and you can, there’s, there’s something about talking to something else that talks back. It’s not like as per rubber duck programming and so on, there’s, there’s something about that, that LLMs are capable of now that computers weren’t before. So I think there’s something here. I don’t think it’s worth the investment and. Let me sort of brush over and say the, the, the penalties it’s incurring. And also, like Chris was just saying, I think there’s a lot of functionality where it’s being forced in and you’re like, this is, this is the wrong kind of computing being used for that. You are, you are, you should be looking for something, some kind of simpler automation rather than it feels like it’s a GI because it talks back to you and. And just because it feels that way doesn’t mean it’s actually useful that way, is what I would say in answer to that question. Chris: Yeah. And the, the only point I would make on the, on the on the, what’s it good for is that it, it’s being seen as a way to cut costs right now. And I think it’s much better adding value and, and making, and making you more, you know, so for your pound, you can add more value to your customer through your value chain. Than you could before. I don’t think it’s very good at cutting costs. I think there are cost cutting elements, but, but at the moment, because you can’t give it decisions to make really of any importance, it’s more of a, it’s more of a multiplier and a value add that, you know, help you do a better job for the same cost and the same effort than you could before, I think. But Rebecca, I’m, I’m keen to hear Rebecca: your view. Hmm. Well see, I, I think it goes back to this thing, right? We, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve gone through this, this SAS phase, haven’t we? Where we’ve ripped out all our, our things that we could just sweat the assets on our ERPs, our CRM, and we’ve, we’ve now put all these swanky. SaaS products, you know, that, to be fair, like some of them are 15 years old and they’re still looking as cranky as the on-prem stuff. Right? And the difference between that and and on-prem stuff of many years ago is you have to keep paying for them every month. Right? And yet, and we’re just not getting the value. And I think your point Chris, about the value chain is absolutely crucial. Understanding your flow of. You know, the flow of process of how you create a business, how your business runs for value chain is absolutely essential. And I think a lot of those have got very complicated. Partly because of underpinning technology has got more complicated. We just bolted more stuff on SAS hasn’t helped. And I think now what we’re gonna go into this thing is we haven’t fixed those processes. We’re now just gonna put this magic bullet of AI on top, which is gonna lay another lot of complexity on there. It’s gonna be hard, right? For, for anybody in technology leadership to say, no, we’re not gonna do that With all the hype that goes around it, but also knowing it’s gonna be a quick fix, potentially. Right? And the reality is, the only fix to this really is to simplify the whole lot. Just strip it back to its bare bones, and then maybe layer some AI on it. But if you’ve just got a complex problem that needs to be simplified and you’re just making it more complicated. Yeah, it might fix it temporarily, but you know what? In five, 10 years time, you’d be paying for your SaaS product and you’d be paying for your AI on top, and your data will be in a worse place. It needs big, brave decisions for people to go, actually, let’s just stop and let’s just break this thing apart. Make it simpler. No, not start again, but just start driving value out of the SaaS products, which invariably have AI plugged into them and drive it that way. I don’t think we’ve got time to do that. Like I said, it’s like moving a relentless place. Does anyone have time now to do a two year transformation project or a one year transformation project? Do ever those do ev Do they ever get finished? I don’t know. Chris, I don’t blame you for not doing a CIO job at all. They’re bloody hard and you’ve gotta drive influence and, and all that kind of, it’s just that hard, right? And the reality is, is who everyone’s gonna blame. They’re gonna blame the it, right? Because that’s what we all do. Nick: That’s a really, I give Chris a chance to think some, that’s a, that’s a really good point about from on-prem to SaaS generally and how that has arguably been mismanaged from my own point of view in the. People have like taken on-prem and just picked it up and put it down in a data center or someone else’s data center or a bunch of virtual services. When, to me, looking at that from a relatively technical point of view was always, oh, there’s, there’s a whole new set of things you can do. There’s a whole set of limits that don’t apply anymore. IE. You know, just, just the obvious physical limits aren’t there anymore with regard to networking and compute and whatever. But so many organizations didn’t take that opportunity. So if you do that, but now add LLMs, which are going to be doing the same, are gonna be sort of slotted into the same bad processes thinking they’ll it just, it just sounds I’m far less optimistic. Now than I was sort of half an hour ago in this conversation. I’m so sorry, Nick. No, no, but no, but it also, what was, what I wanted to sort of jump in and ask was, do you think this is an opportunity for organizations who are brave enough to make those kind of choices? Because it feels like a lot of organizations will fail. Sort of slowly, but they’ll fail because they’ll keep doing the same kind of standard approach of piecemeal long-term transformations that don’t work. I, Rebecca: I think, I think two, I think two things here, right? First of all, do I think they’ll fail fairly? I, I think two org some organizations wrote fail. I just throw cash. You do. Although just. Type things off, or they’ll just, they’ll opt, they’ll have to optimize. Right? That’s what will, that’s what will happen. But it, I mean, they’re not properly driving Chris’s favorite ebitda, right? They’ll be, they’ll be missing a, they’ll be missing a trick. They won’t be doing strategic, they’ll be doing tactical stuff. I think there’s a real opportunity here for, for smaller organizations that are more agile, that haven’t created this spaghetti mess of stuff to, to really shine. I think IA ai, ia AI get, we get two letters in the right way around. What am I doing? I, I, I think AI will be a real opportunity because it’s. It’s a way for people to get that intelligence on tap. Right? By the way, I think Microsoft coined that phrase, but I’m gonna steal it from the right. That intelligence on tap, you know, into an organization that really wasn’t possible for organizations of a smaller scale than some of the larger ones, right? So I think that’s really gonna be a, a thing that’s smaller organizations can leverage more than larger organizations, but. I, I, I do think it’s, it’s gonna be a real problem unless you pair back and simplify your processes. AI is just gonna make them more complicated and you’re just kicking that can down the road, which all of us on this podcast have seen many, many times before, right? People not making the right decisions in time, A, because of cost, B, because of impact, or, or c, because of whatever it is. But it is about being bold and brave. And if you’re not being bold and brave with how you tackle, how to implement ai. Then I do think you’re just storing up problems for the future. And maybe that’s why people don’t stay in their jobs for 15 years anymore, Chris. ’cause they just don’t, don’t wanna leave the mess. And that’s what interims have to come in and clear it up or at least kind of put a, a, a, you know, polish your head on it. Maybe. I don’t know. I was Chris: I was talking to somebody about this the other day actually, and they were talking to me about, you know, oh, you know, is, it is really gonna turn, you know, businesses upside down so that you know, the, the business that you are in now will work completely differently because of ai. And I’m, and, and my take on it is, well, maybe but unlikely because actually the people, there’s too many people with a vested interest in it staying the way it is, more or less, you know, it’s paying their pensions. It’s, you know, they, they, they’ve got a team of people under them, which means that they have to get paid a certain salary to stay at the top of that particular pyramid. And if you end up with turning upside down because of ai. That all goes away. Right? So the, so the a, the, the vested interests in, in large companies means that they will probably stay the same. And as you say, it will be the smaller companies, it will be the younger companies and the, and the businesses that, that step in to the gap with the failed businesses have been. That, you know, will be an evolution that way and, and therefore it won’t be in the next five years, it’ll be in the next 15 years, 20 years probably. Rebecca: And, and there’ll be something else other than AI that we’ll be talking about, right? Whether there be, there’ll be another technology that we, you know, may maybe general ai general artificial intelligence would’ve, would’ve, would’ve emerged then. And generally, maybe they can be our colleagues at that point, right? And to be fair, maybe it can thick all the problems that the humans of course, right now, right. Maybe I’ll tell you what I do think will be an interesting technology, and, and if I, if I think back about a technology and I think about. You know, can I, can I name softwares? Like sa Well I’ve now named Salesforce Dynamics, all those tools, right? I think they’re in a really tricky place right now, right? Because they’re very structured bits of, of software, right? They, they do some error, a function. And what’s great about them at the moment, which you can lift upon it, we can see what they do. We can see the logic in them. Just like when you write code, you can see the logic or somebody can some software engineer can tell the logic. What I’d love to see happen with AI is if AI. Just replaces all those applications, all the application layer, and has a very dynamic way of building and creating stuff. So actually maybe Nick can divide coding with six lines of code about how to, how to do some amazing p and l in finance, or how to do some amazing marketing thing or, or some sales activity. But you just. Stick AI on a load of data, but the AI also produces a business logic. Now, just imagine how amazing that would be when you want then wanna do a, a business transformation. You don’t have to go through all those cycles of actually, you know, doing the code testing, the code. AI would just handle that for you. And that blows my mind. But I also know thinking about vested interest is, what does that mean for those players like Microsoft, like Salesforce, you know, like all the others. That have built that logic into that code, when actually, if you’re just building ai, just letting AI do that, I think that’d be really interesting. And I’d like to see the first AI ERP or the AI CRM, that’s not actually an ERP or him, it’s just AI logic. Yeah, there’s an ai, Chris: there’s a kind of Benedict Evans. Evan, is that his name? Somebody he, he he does a, a thing every year about his predictions and, and last year he was talking about, or the start of this year talking about you’ve got these two camps really. You’ve got your, you’ve got your AI pragmatists and your ai maximalist and the pragmatist think that the AI is a component of an existing type of system. Your ISTs think that the AI will become the system. Then you have components that, that, that the AI calls, but as you, to your point, Rebecca could write it could say, ah, now I need a thing to do that I’m gonna write the software, I’m gonna run it, and then I’m gonna start, and then I might delete it. Right? Or I might keep it for next time, because I think it’s important that we have a consistent process there. But there’s a, there are, there are definitely two schools of thought and where, where that’s going. Rebecca: If we, if we had the AI as being the, the, the, the systems architect, this is getting a bit kind of sky fi now. Right. But that was the thing. And I, and I do think we’ll get there, def I definitely think we’ll get there. I’m sure people are developing this stuff, but it, it’s just like, you know, as a small business. Right. And I’m restarting my, my, my consultancy. But the reality is I’m the brain of that. But in reality, you know, I, I do the CRM, do the EIP, do the finance. I guess they use my tools to do it, but actually as it grows, maybe I could just replace me with an AI that does all that stuff and because it would be much faster and probably much more, I’d be much more intelligent than I am. It could just do it much more faster, much more dynamically. Wouldn’t that be great? Nick: Ish Rebecca: on Nick. Great. Ish. Nick: Ish. That wa as in I’m, I’m struck by your in to, to an, to answer what seems to be a relatively throwaway point. Far too seriously. I’m struck by your insight and experience, but that whole idea of you tell something that interprets what you want, then that thing goes and deals with the tools. To me. Yeah, it sounds, I, I dunno if it’s possible, but to me that sounds ideal. And, you know, the whole point of all, all of this to turn ideas into things, to turn ideas into actions. Going back to your point about sort of leadership, that’s what leaders do is get people to turn their desires at work, to turn that into products or services or helping customers or whatever. Being able to do that, that efficiently. Sounds so enticing, but I’m really, I’m really not sure if it’s possible. The technology seems so. Potentially disastrous at the moment. I mean, it’s, it’s all, it’s all, it’s all really exciting, but the, the sort of cone of possibilities is so wide right now. Well, for what, Rebecca: how this Nick: all Rebecca: might turn out in 2025. Right. I mean, the enticing sounds really good. Right. Let’s be really clear. Like the world around us is burning, so, and it genuinely does feel like, yeah, you look, you know, just, I, I do not wanna open the newspaper in the morning to to hear what someone else has said or what other. Disasters happen, natural disaster, poly related climate change, or what the disaster human created has happened. Right. And it, and it, you know, may, maybe we need a bit of hope. Right? Maybe we need a bit of positivity to, to look forward to right now. Chris: Yeah. And it depends, it depends on which side of the fence you stand, whether, whether the AI Maximus view is hope or it’s or it’s the other one. But but no, it’s, it, it is fascinating, right? And, and this is our, I’ll tell you what, this is a really interesting subject and we could talk, talk about it for another hour. No doubt. We probably need to just cap it. But what I would like to hear just before we finish Rebecca, is because you are. You are exiting your current position. You, you know, you, you, you’ve taken some time and you’re gonna do something else. You are starting up your own consultancy or restarting it. Rebecca: I, I’m restarting, I’m reigniting lenika as, as I would describe it. So it’s, it’s the business I, I started when I did my interim work. I never, I never shut it down. I. I guess I’ve got COVID to, to end, you know, to say I had a couple of people running through it before COVID. Obviously COVID didn’t happen there and that’s probably why I took the perm job at NC. Not just ’cause it was an amazing organization too, but I just thought, you know, keep the risk down. And then there was a time more recently to be bold and brave, right? And it’s just like, now’s that time. So yeah, that’s that’s exactly what I’m doing. Somebody may come along and offer an amazing perm job. Possibly not after this podcast though, Chris and Nick, but you know, you’ll never know. But for now. Full steam ahead, focus on mea and we’ll see where that takes it. Right. You know, I’d possibly love to do some interim work as, as well, or certainly some fractional work. That’s certainly the, the place I’d like to be. And that was certainly talked about on, on previous podcasts, but, you know, it’ll be a mix and match, you know, and as I, as I enter the twilight decade of my career yeah, I’m, I’m quite looking forward to seeing what that looks like. You, I, I certainly. I do not worry about my future. Do you worry about the future of the human race? Yeah, probably. Right? You know, Arnold Schwartz think is just around the corner with, with his Terminator Act, possibly. I don’t know. Speaker 2: Well, thank you for that Chris: Rebecca. Another fascinating conversation and really one that I’ll be thinking about for some, quite some time respect. What we. Need to move on and we need to wrap up this episode of WB 40. And how do we do that? We always do it by talking about what we’re getting up to. So Nick, what’s your week look like? Nick: Ah the, the less exciting thing is basically I’ve was scribbling down there. Oh, thanks. It’s like some admin rubbish is basically what I’ve written. Some sort of accountant related stuff. But the other thing is, what I might have mentioned on here before is. A what I might start calling an ongoing dynamic exercise or an o an ODE, which is basically a serious game. Played over a series of turns of indeterminate length rather than you get everybody together for the same day. Everybody’s in the same room. Thinking about a thing is how to do that online, how to do that remotely, how to do that asynchronously. There’s an idea. I’ve been home for an age that I’m finally, I finally got some time to work on. For the rest, the rest of the week, so that’s fine. Br Chris: that’s al. Thank look. Rebecca: Well tomorrow I am, I’m joining Haley again to do a talk at Manchester Manchester Festivals Women in Technology Day. We’re gonna be talking about breaking down the fortress to get into tech on Wednesday am Downey London on a panel for ice, which is the International Cyber Expo. And then on Thursday, it honestly, it’s a packed week. I mean, Leeds, it’s like the amount of miles I’ve be clocking up around the uk. On a panel as part of Manchester, not Manchester Le Digital Festival. I’m on a panel talking about m and a and tech due diligence, which don’t quite that right before. And then maybe Friday, I’ll congratulations. I think that’s, that’s a fine Chris: way to end the week. So I this, this week actually is quite a bit like you, I’m trolling around, but. I think I’m, I’m in London for the next two days or maybe even three days. We’re going to an event tomorrow with a company called sibo who like a, they, they’re a bit of a sort of hosting type type company. And they’re really interesting, quite like those guys. So I’ve got an event tomorrow there and then and, and then yeah, we’re doing events and insurance assured, so in Nash Tech. So we’re doing an InsureTech event in London on. Wednesday morning with a whole bunch of people from the InsureTech UK community about agent ai. And we’ve been running, we’ve been running sessions the last few weeks on that. And we’ve got a whole bunch of people coming to that where we, where we’re gonna drill in some use cases and some of the regulatory issues with one of our legal partners. And one of our guys, Thomas, is gonna talk a bit more about the, you know, the real sort of rubber hitting in the road issues around it. So, and particularly in insurance. ’cause of course, yeah, we talk about regulated industry. How do you make sure that you you know, you do this in the right way. So that’s, that’s gonna be really interesting. So yeah, by end this week I’ll be, I end at the end of the week. I’m going to Wales walking in, in the hills for a, for a couple of days. So on Friday afternoon I should be off. So yeah, that’s my week as I, I look forward and it sounds like everybody’s got a week to look forward to. I’m you know, it’s in, in, they are different ways. I was just reflecting though, Rebecca, you’re talking about, you’re doing the. Manchester Women in tech and the digital leads Digital. And you here are on podcast talking to two old white guys, you know, with various of beard. Rebecca: That’s, that’s okay. Speaker 2: Listen, Rebecca: that diversity is about diversity, right. You know, everybody’s part of the diversity mix, right? Whether it’s two white gentlemen or whether it’s swimming or whether it’s people of color, whether it’s LGBT people, whatever, right? Diversity’s diversity. You need a bit of everyone Yeah, indeed. To make that diverse. Okay. Well thank you very much Rebecca. It’s Chris: been absolutely fascinating. And thank you to my co-host Nick. Once more, and thank you to you dear listener out there in podcast Land Listening because it’s, it wouldn’t be the same without you. See you next time. Speaker 2: Fantastic. Rebecca: Thank you for listening to WB-40. You can find us on the internet@wb40podcast.com and all good podcasting platforms.

This week Matt welcomes back Lisa alongside guest Matisse Hamel Nelis to chat about their upcoming book “Accessible Communications: Create Impact, Avoid Missteps and Build Trust.” The duo spent 18 months crafting what sounds like a much-needed guide to creating digital content that actually works for everyone – not just the mythical “average user” that so much design seems targeted at. They dive into why accessibility isn’t just about compliance checkboxes or helping people with disabilities, but about recognizing that we’re all temporarily disabled at various points (try reading a restaurant menu in candlelight without your reading glasses, or navigating a website on your phone while walking). The conversation takes some detours through the world of inaccessible tech design, from VR headsets that don’t work with glasses to meeting software that assumes blind people simply wouldn’t use their product. Lisa and Matisse make a compelling case that accessibility problems often stem from a lack of diversity in the rooms where decisions get made, and they share practical tips that anyone can implement immediately – like actually using Word’s heading styles properly, writing descriptive hyperlinks instead of “click here,” and understanding why those bullet point emojis on LinkedIn are driving screen readers bonkers. The book launches October 3rd in the UK and October 28th in North America. You can pre-order now from Kogan Page at: https://www.koganpage.com/marketing-communications/accessible-communications-9781398621848 And WB-40 listeners can get a huge 30% discount with the code PUBMON30 This week’s transcript (automatically generated by Descript, so there may be a few oddities) Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to episode 335 of the WB 40 Podcast This week with me, Matt Ballantine, Lisa Riemers, and Matisse Hamel Nelis.[00:01:00] Well, it’s been a while and I’m back. Woo hoo. And it’s. Me just presenting on my own or hosting on my own this week, because I’ve got two special guests this week. This, we’re gonna mix it up a bit but one of them is somebody you’re quite familiar with. I’ll talk about all of that in a moment. But Lisa how have you been? It’s been ages. Lisa: It has been ages. It’s certainly been ages since we’ve spoken. Although I was on the show I don’t even know what weeks mean anymore. About three beats ago, a couple of episodes ago. Yeah. lot over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been to a couple of different accessibility conferences and meetups. I got to, on the way up to Newcastle, managed to catch see a Papa Georgio, who’s normally in Australia, but she was flying from Greece into London. Just as I was leaving London. We had half an hour for a coffee at St. Pancreas Station. Went up to [00:02:00] Newcastle for access given, then went up to Edinburgh, got a train down to London, and then flew to Salzburg to then drive to Hoop Holding to go to the Speaker Summit, which I didn’t know apart from. Having met Marcus online and having met Mark Earls online, I didn’t know anybody there and I basically went there off the strength of your recommendations from last year. ’cause I, and as I said to people while I was there, yeah. That Matt said this was the best thing he’s ever done. And I hate to admit it, but he’s probably right. Matt: Well, the best thing I’ve ever done isn’t necessarily the best thing you’ve ever done that That’s true. But it’s certainly the best event I’ve ever been to. And like I’ve been to some pretty good events over the years. You know, I’ve talked about it before on the show. I love meeting people in person. Lisa: But what Marcus has created, it was so well [00:03:00] thought through and. I learnt loads and I got to, I think I improved my speaking abilities while I was there. And although there was, there was a massive transformation overnight from when I did a dry run on the Friday to doing it properly on the Saturday after running part, running it through with our other guests this week, Mattis. But you know, there was weeks of prep and we spent 18 months writing a book about the subject matter, but it was an overnight, it was an overnight transformation, like in, in such a short period of time. I feel like my ability to tell a story about what we’ve been doing was massively improved. And everybody was lovely and the food was terrific and. There were tiny Bavarian children dressed up dancing on the last day. And some of it was [00:04:00] really surreal. I got to meet the international, incredibly prolific, despite being, like, considering her age, Brianna Weiss, who’s written 15 books, I got speaking notes from her as her and Marcus sat listening to us do a talk. Like it was just, I didn’t really know what to expect and I was actually expecting it to not be very good ’cause I had high expectations. And thankfully they were blown away. Like it was so good. Matt: I, I was so relieved to hear that. And actually there’s a couple of other people who I recommended the thing to, and everybody came back saying it was a fantastic thing for them, which is, I didn’t expect anything other than that. But it’s, it’s always when you properly recommend something, as opposed to saying on a, a sorting. NPS score that you are likely to recommend something actually properly going out there and going, no, [00:05:00] spend money on this thing. It will be brilliant. That’s proper skin in the game stuff. This is another essay I need to write about how terrible NPS is, is, but no, so pleased, so please, how Lisa: terrible NPS is part 17. Oh, Matt: 1700 probably. There you go. And Matisse, how about you? Welcome to the show. How’s your recent week been? Matisse: My recent week has been busy with some incredible client work, working on training materials around accessibility and creating accessible communications, which Lisa and I have been writing about. So it fits right in my wheelhouse. And also doing some presentations for A 11 Y Toronto or accessibility Toronto on the matter of accessible marketing. So it’s been a jam packed week of all things comms and accessibility, which has been fantastic, and Matt: just to be able to place you. Geographically in the world. Whereabout, whereabouts are you joining us from? Matisse: Oshawa, Ontario, which is just outside of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That’s Matt: the east side [00:06:00] of East. Are you like erecting walls to be able to protect yourself from the south? Matisse: It’s interesting times, that’s for sure. I am actually ge gearing up to Head South for a conference at the end of October, which I am not gonna lie a little scared about. It’s in Washington DC but trying to stay positive and, you know, not say anything too controversial, if you will, and go like that actually. Yeah. Matt: Yeah. You have to be very careful ’cause anything you say could be listened to and at least you don’t have to fly that far back if you do get turned away at the gates. Matisse: Exactly, exactly. Luckily in Toronto customs is at the Toronto airport, so if they do turn me away, I just cop in the car and head back home. Excellent. Matt: That’s great news. Matisse: Matt, what have you Lisa: been up to? Matt: Well, I mean, it’s been a very long time since I was last on the show, so there was summer holidays and trips to Malaysia and Singapore, which is fabulous. Fabulous. But in the recent week I’ve ended up in a position where I’ve got an awful [00:07:00] lot of business development work mostly because most of my colleagues are working on live gigs and I’m ending up picking up everything else. And it’s just got to now a certain point where I’m starting to get scared that if we win more than one or two of them there’s a workload problem, especially ’cause I found out recently I, I’m going to be doing jury service. At the end of October, which adds a certain free song to the whole thing, which is good fun. And then, so yeah, just lots of stuff going on. Lots of really interesting conversations. Actually getting to spend some time with clients, although we’re not at the actually engaged with them yet, but really interesting. Actually, we ran a workshop last week for about four and a half hours with a company that we’ve been talking with and actually said to them, can we come in and get some of your people in the room and we can talk to you about what it is your challenges are? And it just changes the dynamic of then we can say, look, this is what we think you should do. And we can say that in a way that if you just have the paper exercises of [00:08:00] typical procurement exercises, it’s all weird made up stuff and it’s so nice to have proper engagement with people to try to work out how and if we can help them. So that was good. Other than that last week was my mother’s 80th birthday, and so on Saturday we did. A drive up to Suffolk where they live up to rural Suffolk and had a nice lunch and then drove all the way back. It’s quite a long way to go. It’s about three, three and a half hours. So it was a lot of driving, but it was good to see her. She’s in very good form and I’m taking her away to Venice for a weekend in a couple of weekends time as her 80th birthday present. So I’m looking forward to that as well. And other than that, just the day-to-day trials and tribulations of being a parent of two teenagers, you know, that’s the way it goes. Lisa: Lovely. Matt: So on this week’s show, we are going to be talking to the two of you. I, I am going to be talking to the two of you. You’ll will be talking as well, hopefully. So it’s gonna be a very dull show indeed. [00:09:00] And we’re gonna be talking about the work you have been doing over the last 18 months into your book. So I suggest we should probably crack on. So another book is being brought into the world and you two are responsible for it. Tell us a little bit about what it’s about. Matisse: So just like the title says, it’s all about accessible [00:10:00] communications. So creating accessible documents, how we write in plain language, making sure that the most people have access to the content that we’re sharing, and understanding it in an easy way. You know, our book is called Accessible Communications. Create Impact, avoid Missteps and Build Trust. And we believe that when you are being accessible we’re able to really. Communicate effectively or more effectively with our target audience and those that we may not even think are our audience, but actually are as well. And it’s not just communication professionals that need to communicate accessibly, it’s anybody who communicates. That’s sort of our philosophy behind this. So when I thought of the idea of, you know, there isn’t anything on the market around accessible communications, and I for one wish, I had known that when I first started out in the industry what it was I knew it was something I couldn’t take on by myself. I knew somebody amazing who would be an incredible partner, and that was Lisa. And luckily she heard my idea, didn’t run the other way [00:11:00] and jumped on board and said, yes, let’s do this. And so you know, we thought that we could fill this gap that is so desperately needed in the communication space in particular around accessibility because as Lisa and I have been talking about quite a lot lately, it’s not taught in curriculum. So we have all these communication professionals graduating schools where there’s legislation already in place around the world, but not knowing how to meet their legislative requirements to be accessible. So we just thought, hey, we can be that stepping stone and help people get in there in an easy, accessible way. Matt: So can we just unpack the title a little bit just for making sure that everybody in the audience understands where it’s coming from. So let’s talk first of all about communication. What sorts of communication are you talking about? Matisse: We are talking particularly about digital communication, so anything in the online space, but we also do talk, touch on concepts like your print documents so think posters and things like that. What fonts we’re using. Color contrast but primarily we’re looking at [00:12:00] the digital space, so web content, social media, videos, podcasts you know, anything that is in the digital realm, making sure that that is accessible and easily digestible, if you will, for everybody who’s trying to access it. Matt: And then you can imagine what questions coming next, the accessibility piece here. Can you give us a, a broad definition about what accessibility means in this context? Matisse: Yeah, so I would, for this, I would say that accessibility means ensuring that anybody, regardless of ability or disability, is able to access information independently online. So if they’re using something like assistive technology like a screen reader for example, where it’s text speech they’re able to navigate it if they have site loss on their own and be able to get the same information and the same content out of it and context independently versus requiring somebody else to read it out to them, if you will. If it’s a podcast or a video, having captions and [00:13:00] described audio to ensure that everybody can access the information, things like that. So really ensuring that our digital presence is available to anybody and everybody in an easy to use way. Lisa: something that I’ve got in common with Jay Rayna, the food critic, is, you know, if you go out to a restaurant and you try and read the menu and you can’t read it because you’ve got gray text on a light gray background and it’s a tiny italicized font and you’ve got candle light and you know, it could be that your environment is also, you know, we’re all temporarily disabled at different times of the times of our lives and it ruins the vibe much more if you have to get your phone torch out. I’ve gone out for dinner with people and you see people like that, oh, I’ve forgotten my reading glasses. Or they’ll take a picture of the menu, get their phones out, and then be zooming in and enlarging it or getting their torches out. And it’s one of those [00:14:00] things that affect so many people and when you, and once you start thinking about it, it’s everywhere. And it’s like one in 10. So, and one in 10 people are are dyslexic. So that’s 10% of people in a room, or, you know, 10, 10% of people are estimated to be dyslexic. So making sure that your words are clear, that your text isn’t in block capitals, that you are making it easy for people to read what you are writing. You’ve got one in 12 men, a colorblind. So if you’ve got one in 10 people who are dyslexic and one in 12 men that are colorblind, if you’ve got your average board of directors in the uk this is gonna affect what this is gonna affect some of them as well. So it is, we are talking a lot of it comes from the position of making sure that things are meeting our legislative requirements, but it’s not somebody else’s issue. It’s [00:15:00] everybody’s issue. Something that I was talking about in my little talk in at the Speaky Summit is that it’s not, it’s not what Douglas Adams referred to as somebody else’s problem. A lot of the time accessibility seen as this big complicated thing that you don’t really understand. And actually somebody else must be responsible for this. There must be someone in it or someone in the digital team or the head of diversity, equity and inclusion that cares about this stuff. But actually there are steps that we can all take to make sure that whatever, whether we are writing a report to people, sending an email, delivering a presentation, it’s something that we can all make clearer because everyone’s tired. You know, people are stressed, they’re tired, they might be neurodiverse. You wanna make it as easy as possible for people to get your message straight away. Matt: So, to play devil’s advocate a bit on that, I take something like the, the restaurant example, the challenge is that you run the risk of ending up with a world that [00:16:00] looks like the Gov UK website everywhere. You end up with something that is ending up so anodyne, so without interest that nothing differentiates, Lisa: that’s bad design, not accessible design. No, that’s not true. The gov.uk website has been very carefully designed to be nice and clear so you can do exactly what you need to do and move on with your day. People aren’t coming there to be entertained or to to spend time browsing. They, they’re coming there ’cause they wanna apply for a passport. They wanna do a service, get some advice, and then go again. But accessible design doesn’t have to just be plain. There are so many examples of using beautiful color contrasts of making sure that you’re not overcrowding information in your designs so that your message is impactful and still beautiful. Yeah, it, I think that is a common myth that accessible design has to [00:17:00] be black and white. And actually a pure black and white contrast is harder to read for some people as well. So, black with off white or dark, dark, almost black with white works a bit better. D within that though, then that whose responsibility is this whilst everybody has to be, have a concern about it and everybody at some point in their lives will be impacted by it one way or another. Matt: When it actually comes to the execution of making sure that we have good accessible design and digital and other media, that does feel like a designer problem. It’s everybody’s responsibility when it comes down to it because we can’t ask a designer to write copy that is accessible so that it’s in plain language and meeting you know, specific requirements for that reading level. Matisse: We can’t ask a [00:18:00] designer to create a video that’s accessible that would be part of maybe the communications and marketing team or their videographer if they happen to have somebody like that on the team to understand that it requires captions and that it requires described audio, whether it’s post-production, so that secondary audio layer where it says like, man walks into room, woman sits down, or it’s integrated where it’s. It’s naturally woven into the script where what you see is what you’re saying as well, but in a more fluid manner. When we’re talking about web stuff you know, the, yes, the web designer and the, or the web developer needs to ensure that the pro programming of the actual website is accessible, but the designer needs to make sure that the color contrast and the flow of the design itself is accessible while the copy, the writer has to ensure that the copy flows well in that too, and is accessible in its own manner. So everybody ha plays a role in making something accessible. It’s not just that’s it’s problem or that’s the designer’s problem. It’s everybody’s. Not even problem. It’s everybody’s responsibility to ensure that [00:19:00] their portion is accessible and working as a team to say, Hey, how do we ensure that we are meeting everything that we need to meet to be accessible? How can I support, maybe not even realizing, you know, the designer puts in an image, doesn’t know how to write alternative texts. So describing that image, and that’s where the writer can come in and assist, right? So working as a team to ensure that we’re meeting our responsibilities to be accessible. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just one person. It’s everybody’s role to ensure that accessibility is there in what we do. Lisa: I think there’s also something there that if you have brand guidelines, making sure that you are, that there is a color palette that suggested that is accessible. I did some work for a client recently where we were reviewing their existing brand guidelines to make sure that the, that you started out with an accessible template. But you can have the most accessible template or branding in the going and the content itself or how people use it becomes completely [00:20:00] inaccessible. I had a great example recently where somebody who is quite a senior communications professional so knows how to write has wr also written a book. And they sent me an email that was a kind of a big block of text and and they were in amongst all of this. They were saying, would you like to come to my book launch? And I replied saying, I’d love to, can you send me the details? And I got a one line email back saying, Lisa, the link was in the email. I was like, I read it. I’m interested in it. I didn’t expect the sort of frosty response when I was showing interest in going along to it. And it. It hadn’t been written with mobile in mind. The paragraphs were quite lengthy and dense, and the hyperlinks were written as click here. So I didn’t know what the links were and they were beyond the email signature. So it [00:21:00] just looked like that kind of wallpaper that you see on people’s email signatures, you know, like it, I didn’t realize that that was one of the actions. And I think writing clearly does take longer than that first draft. You know, going back in, putting subheadings in, so it’s easy to scan what’s there, making sure that your hyperlinks are clearly, you’ve got clear text in them. So there’s action words in there. So you know what click here means. So it’s like, register for our online event, register in person. There are lots of really small tips that people can start doing almost immediately. And as, as Matisse was saying, and as you you were asking it, it is all of our responsibility, but it’s also not necessarily our fault that we don’t know about it ’cause it’s just not been included in education. It wasn’t in my marketing communications [00:22:00] qualification years ago. It might be now. I haven’t checked the current syllabus, but I doubt it. I know when Matis was integrating accessibility into her PR syllabus that she was teaching, I was blown away by it because it was really integrated and embedded into everything from making videos to social media. And I think it’s also. Another thing that’s changed with the responsibility of it is now we’re all citizen publishers. We’re all designers. You know, we’re all using these tools to publish stuff online. We are using things like Canva, which does actually have a built in accessibility checker, if you know, to look for it, to help you with your color contrast, your font size. But we’re all creating stuff now, so we all need to learn to be better at it so that our messages aren’t lost. Matt: Do you think there’s a, a, a function of the problems that you identify and try to address comes or a, a multi [00:23:00] multiplier? The problems that you address actually comes from a lack of diversity within the professions who are predominantly responsible in the comms world, in the PR world, in the marketing world, and that they bias us towards. Able-bodied people who are mostly young. Matisse: I think so, I think because the lived experience isn’t in the room when decisions are being made, when things are being created, when things are just being ideated at that time it gets missed and it’s left as an afterthought. And then, you know, at the end they’re like, oh goodness, we need to make this accessible now and we don’t know how, or it’s gonna be too much on our budget to retrofit a new website to be accessible or to add in the post-production descriptions into a video and things like that. And that just comes from a, not having the right people in the room b the lack of representation of that lived experience from the disability perspective. And see just the lack of knowing. When I speak at [00:24:00] conferences and do training sessions, commun communication professionals across the board, whether it be in North America or or in Europe, have said, we don’t know what we don’t know. And that’s why these sessions are so jam packed. With people because they know they have to do it. There are good intentions to want to do it. At least that’s how it comes across, and I’m gonna believe that positively. However, we don’t even know where to start. Even for myself, when I started my career, I started working at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, CNIB. And on my second day, fresh Outta school, I was asked to. Put out a tweet from the national account and I said, yeah, sure, no problem. You know, back in the days when it was 140 characters, no, you know, no big deal. I’ll put some stat out. So I used the hashtag d, k and some stat, right? For did you know hashtag d, k did, you know, whatever, put it out. And within 10 minutes, one of my colleagues with site loss called me, and aside from welcoming me to CNIB, was very quick to [00:25:00] say, FYI, your tweet is inappropriate. It comes out as reading as Dick or dyke to a screen reader. And I said, no, no, no, it’s did you know. And he goes, no, no, no, no. That is not how it reads. Which in that moment, you know, I’m thinking, great, day two, let me pack up my things. I’m fired. Perfect, wonderful. And after he calmed me down, he just sort of said, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that people in communications don’t realize or don’t know when it comes to accessibility or how things are engaged with, from an accessibility perspective when it comes to content that it led me down my path to just say, all right, well. I need to know this if I’m gonna be communicating with a broad audience. And that sort of led me down a 10 year rabbit hole and then to this book with Lisa. So it’s, we don’t know what we don’t know. But at the same time, we need to be open to asking questions. And I think there’s also that fear of, if I don’t do it right the first time, I’m not gonna do it at all. I don’t wanna get in trouble. I don’t wanna, you know. Cause any issues or rock any boats, when really, if you’re able to [00:26:00] integrate one thing at a time and practice and get used to it and understand that making mistakes is okay, getting feedback is not a negative. It’s a learning opportunity to do better and to learn more on how to make things a bit more accessible. It changes that cultural mindset within an organization. So if you don’t have somebody from the disability community on the team who can speak to that lived experience, at least we’re asking questions and bringing in maybe those with lived experience to provide testing and things like that as well. And I think, Lisa: sorry, there’s no you going, I also went to a tech show fairly recently where they were demoing one of the, I can’t remember now, whether it’s from Meta or apple, one of the new headsets and it didn’t work with glasses on. So I took my glasses off and I couldn’t see anything because the augmented reality headset, it, it was just all a blur. Then I spoke to a guy who, and he was [00:27:00] a product manager for this, it was an online meeting software, but it was like augmented reality as well. Like you, you kind of walked in a bit like second Life. It was like a cross between second Life and gather town that you could walk around a 3D campus or or building, walk into a meeting room, have meetings with people in a meeting room, but it looked almost photo realistic. But I asked him how if someone’s sight wasn’t great or if they had, you know, if they were blind, how would they know that they’d walked into a wall? How would they know that they were stuck in the corner of the room? And he was like, well, I don’t think a blind person would use my software. It’s like, but blind people work. You know, I remember when I was doing some training at DIT and one of our blind colleagues came in to join the training session with, and I didn’t know who was coming. But thankfully my presentation was accessible because we would, I was doing training on accessible content [00:28:00] and he was able to walk around the building, an actual 3D building, you know, like in person. And he had his cane and he was able to detect where walls were and he could see where the edges of things were. And I was explaining that to this tech guy. It was like a little light went on above his head and he’s like, oh yeah, we could put in some kind of feedback. So if you did walk into a wall, you could turn it on or off. And then he said, oh yeah, but we’re only gonna do it if our clients demand it from us. We’ve gotta prioritize our, our backlog. It’s like, oh dear. Okay. And there was one other guy at this show, which was, and it was it was this like a 3D. You got into this seat and you put straps over you and it, you flew and you had a screen in front of you and you were kind of getting jiggled about and upside down, and you were in this video game. But I was like, so I won’t fit in that seat ’cause of my size. [00:29:00] And what about someone who’s like five foot two or something, or children? He is like, yeah, but no, it fits me. All right. Like the guy in putting. In that was in the seat was around five 11 and about 25. I knew what he was doing and it had only been designed for him. And people sort of plus or minus a slight size difference, like much shorter people wouldn’t have been able to use it either. Like that diversity thing, you’re so, like, it’s such a good point because if you’re not involved in the conversation, you know, I think Caroline Cri Perez wrote a whole book on how the world’s designed for men and not women, and how the astronaut suits didn’t fit women because they just designed it for a standard man’s size. And I think. I can see why sometimes I think the phrase reasonable adjustments gets weaponized and it’s seen as, oh, [00:30:00] that’s not a reasonable adjustment to make. But actually when you look at the stats, we are not talking about edge cases. This is quite a high percentage of the population that’s gonna be affected by this stuff. And ultimately, when we’re all really busy people, what we are talking about doing makes things easier to read for everyone. Matt: So I think it, it, those examples of, of new media I think are really interesting. ’cause one of the things that’s going through my mind is that the, the bulk of the, the media that we still use. Even digital actually has its roots into media that are far older and come from a time when accessibility was simply just not a thing. So, you know, most documents of any sort go back to things that were produced on typewriters or similar. Most slide decks go back to things that used to be shown on 35 [00:31:00] millimeter slides or overhead projectors, spreadsheets go back essentially to Venetian. 14th century accounting practice. You know, there’s, there’s a lot of legacy that goes into these things, and there’s a bit of me thinking, well, at what point are we gonna say actually those things aren’t fit for purpose anymore because you have to make so many adjustments, reasonable or not. If only we could design media so that it could be accessible by design as opposed to accessible after the fact we’d be in a position. And, you know, it still amazes me in many ways that we, we haven’t really got any media that doesn’t have stems back in the analog world. 30 years after the beginning of the, you know, the digital revolution in the nineties. But then you, you hear examples like that and you see things like virtual reality or the, the apple. I think particularly the Apple AR thing, what really frustrated me about that [00:32:00] was that if you had glasses, then it was an extra $300 for the special glasses inserts. It wasn’t even that, it was an inaccessible, inherently inaccessible technology, but it was also you got charged a premium for having any accessibility issues, which is just perfect Apple, quite frankly. But would Debbie be ways or are there examples of accessible by design media? I think one of the things that out of the box is accessible, but we don’t get taught how to use it properly, is something like Microsoft Word. Creating a Word document, but actually using the properties and the functions within Microsoft. Matisse: So for example, using the Styles pane to create your heading structure. A lot of people don’t realize what that’s for and they see it in their top navigation and avoid it like the plague. ’cause they’re like, it’s gonna ruin my, my document, I don’t know what it is. When instead by adding that in, you’re adding the structure that and the hierarchy that’s needed in your [00:33:00] document to be easily easily navigated by anybody, especially those with disabilities who are using assistive technology. And I find that really interesting because I wasn’t taught anything about the styles paint until I started learning about accessibility. And I was like, oh. Well, this is, this is nifty and this is handy. But also if you think from a student perspective or anybody who’s writing a long report, by adding in that structure, you’re then able to pull a table of contents in very easily. Versus what I see a lot of people do is type in whatever the heading was supposed to be and then put period, period, period, period, period, so on and so forth, and the page number, and then try to line them up in each line, right? I’ve seen it time and time again, and when I show people the functionality of a styles paint and what it does to a table of contents, it’s like this massive aha moment. And why had, was I not taught this when I was little? Because the software is accessible. Like they’ve given the functionality for the documents to be accessible, but without [00:34:00] people learning the actual product properly, they’re missing this opportunity to create these accessibility accessible documents. Same goes with video. So using the example of Adobe Premier, which I use, if you’re able to create a transcript, you’re able to caption you’re able to add in your, you know, your audio descriptions if need be. If it’s post-production you’re able to add them in relatively easily if you know how to use it. But in a lot of cases, people don’t realize the functionality of the transcript and the captions within Premier. Again, it’s not a matter of the software not providing you the opportunity to make accessible content, but rather people just don’t know because they’re not being trained or not being shown the, the software the appropriate way. And this goes on for so many other things, social media, Instagram, people wanna post something and they, you know, an image, great, fine dandy. They can make it accessible by adding in their alternative text. However, if you’re doing it on your phone, Instagram has it hidden under [00:35:00] the advanced settings on the post, like it’s super hidden instead of it being readily available on that main. Page where you’re adding in your caption. But if you’re using Instagram on your computer, on your desktop, it actually has the accessibility tab just underneath the caption. That makes it easily visible to say, okay, this is where I add in my alt text. So it’s also looking to the platforms themselves to add in functionality that’s easy to find. Not just a matter of, you know, the end product being accessible, but can I find what I need to find easily so that I can make it accessible? ’cause I do have the right intentions in mind to do it. And you know, hiding something under advanced settings, nobody’s gonna look there. Nobody, everyone’s afraid to look there because you don’t wanna accidentally, you know, turn something on that you didn’t mean to, and you’re like, oh, well there goes my post. Right. So it’s it’s, it’s still a work in progress, whether it’s the learning component or even the platforms themselves. If we’re talking social media, getting to terms with what [00:36:00] is needed from a professional communications perspective, we love bullet points. Absolutely love them. We love the formatting functionality if something needs to be bold or anything like that, but platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram and you name it, don’t have that functionality in place. So we’re seeing people trying to make do, especially with bullets, by adding emojis, right? Because they want the functionality, which now has actually made your posts more inaccessible in a sense that each emoji has its own alternative text. So it has a description built into it, so you’re hearing that description and then your actual content and then to the next description and to your content. So while it’s trying to make it easily readable for others, because we’re adding in our quote unquote bullets we’re actually adding in a functionality that’s being more inaccessible than accessible. But at that same time, we also have to think about. The fact that what is accessible to one individual with, you know with site loss doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna be accessible to the next individual with site loss. There’s a [00:37:00] great saying where the individual said, you’ve met one person with autism. Congratulations. You’ve met one person with autism. That is their, their lived experience. It’s not gonna be the same across the board. And I think that’s also something that’s important for us to consider is that. Whether it’s the actual platforms themselves or the products themselves being accessible or not, that end user experience will come into play in terms of how accessible or usable is it to them. So we can do everything that we want to or we should be doing, but if for them, for whatever reason, it’s not usable or accessible, then we have to understand what it would take for them to have that same access. And it might simply be a color contrast issue. It might be you know, too many emojis and it was just overwhelming. It might be spacing, it, it, there can be a variety of different things, but having that conversation as well and taking that feedback to say, okay, how do we now implement that in what we’ve created? Whether we innately [00:38:00] made it accessible or it’s an afterthought. It, it’s something that we need to consider and really look into as well when we’re creating our, our content and, you know, using these platforms and devices to ensure that they are accessible. Matt: I am reminded of a conversation that we had on this show many years ago now actually with Simon Minty, who’s a disability rights consultant. Actually he is probably better known in the UK now as a national TV treasurer, but that’s another story blessing. And he talked about how you should think about what is it you are doing to be able to make your services inaccessible. Mm-hmm. And actually changing the agenda there, which is that there are conscious decisions or unconscious decisions that have been made along the way that makes things inaccessible. Yeah. And that, that’s putting responsibility onto the service providers to be able to fix things. Yeah. Rather than the responsibility of the person with some sort of accessibility issue to try to work out a way around the problems. Well actually another conversation I had with Simon [00:39:00] not on the show, but. As Lisa well knows, I’m, I’m a little bit obsessed with the playing card as a medium for being able to do things with, and I produced a few decks over the years now, most recent of which was a kind of tarot deck. Now had a conversation with Simon about accessibility and card decks and that’s interesting ’cause there, there are times when you I think do have to be able to make trade offs. So a, a pack of playing cards has accessibility issues for people with dexterity challenges. It’s got issues for people who have visual issues. Now I’ve done what I can with the last couple of decks with, I’ve got digital versions of them, which can be screen read but they’re not as useful as a card deck. But then there’s how, how do you draw those boundaries because there are sometimes surely times where you do need to make a decision about what you are going to compromise. Lisa: I think [00:40:00] when I think of cards, something that I found from playing a lot of board games over the years, particularly again in a dark environment. You, you go, you, you go to somebody’s house and unless they’ve got it set up as a perfect gaming table, you’re probably not got the light that you need to be able to see stuff. And it goes back to that not trying to overcrowd something with too much information. I’m just thinking of some of the terrible board game cards that I’ve played with over the years. And like my vision when I’ve got my lenses in is, is, is great. And I’m like, I dunno what that tiny little symbol means. And there’s a thing of when you, when you start learning about game design. Actually all those symbols do mean something. They’re not just there for decoration. And I think there are ways to make cards and printed things.[00:41:00] There are design considerations to make it better. It’s not gonna ever be perfect. You know, people have different needs. They might interpret symbols in different ways. So making sure that you have keys and guidance and if you are, if some, you shouldn’t be relying on color to tell a story. ’cause again, if you, if someone’s got one of those hue light bulbs going on, it changes the color of your card. So which is, it’s, that’s probably one of the easiest ways to synthesize if you colorblind, is to change the color of the light around you. Does, does what you are trying to say still work? But I think going back to your question of how do you decide, I think it’s, it’s going back to that stage of reasonable adjustments, isn’t it? If you’ve thought about it, if you’ve made, if you’ve got alternative formats available, if you’ve designed with users in mind, and especially if it’s a game, actually tested it with users and [00:42:00] play tested it to make sure it makes sense. We can only, I feel like there’s a phrase that we, we come back to sometimes about progress. We wanna make it more accessible than it was before. We might not get to perfection, but I think trying to make things better for people is all that we can aim for. Matt: And then one last thread to pull on. We, in the last few years have seen an explosion of new. Forms of technology that can do things like interpret images or take text, sorry, take spoken word and convert it into text or do it the other way round. Or, or, or, I’m desperately trying to have a show where I don’t talk about ai and I’m failing miserably. But the, how’s that impacting and [00:43:00] going to impact? ’cause one of the things I can imagine will be that it becomes a get out clause for people who don’t want to put the effort in because they can say, well, they’ll be able to deal with it because of tools that they have. Are you starting to see that impacting into discussions about what’s going on with making things accessible? Lisa: I am sure we can both talk on this, but I’ve, I saw a really interesting post recently from Leoni Watson who is blind and works in technology and she was saying that the risk of not, of having bad alt text to describe a picture is not really any worse than not having anything at all. You know, it could be a mis if, if there’s a misleading description of a jumper versus no description of a jumper. If you’re gonna buy something on a site, is it worse to not have something? And I think it can be a starting point, [00:44:00] but I als I’ve also seen examples where if you, you know, PowerPoint will do this for you. You know, you, you can ask it to generate a description of a picture. It won’t necessarily. It won’t know your intent. It won’t know the context. If you’ve got, imagine a picture of the Sydney Opera House alt text an ai alt text generator might know that it is the Sydney Opera House, and it could give you that description. But why have you got that picture of Sydney Opera House? What is it showing? Is it a travel blog? And you’ve written up, you know, I was at Sydney Opera House last week and here’s a picture of Sydney Opera House. That’s fine. But if you work in an office that’s based in Sydney. It might be that you are just using that picture of Sydney Opera House to show the weather. ’cause it was a really gray and overcast day. Or there’s been a storm, so you want to, so the description is actually, you know, it’s a really cloudy [00:45:00] day in Sydney last week. Or it might be that it’s framed from the, the botanical gardens nearby. And it’s actually, they just, the, the opera house is incidental. You are actually talking about the flowers from in front of it. So you can use these tools to help you, but it will only be a starting point. It, it won’t get your context. And it might also exacerbate some of the equality or the, you know, we know that with all of this data that’s available, there’s a lot of biases that have built up over decades of people being biased and the lack of. Diversity in some of these processes means that the vast quantities of data that these models have been trained or already biased, it might misgender someone in a picture if they’re not, if it’s not sure, it will just have a guess. And that’s be, it would be better to not put someone’s gender in if you don’t know. Like it, you know, there’s lots of quirks and things that come up. [00:46:00] It doesn’t like they, I I’ve it, they don’t like we, the, if you ask the model to transcribe something or to pay something, it doesn’t like accents, non-standard spellings of things. It will make mistakes and it will sometimes completely fudge or make up things that just sound more logical because it’s not the, because it’s the more general expected next step in the series of points. Matisse: And, and to think of, you know, I know we were trying to avoid ai, but with AI particularly, it does also have some positives to it. I know Lisa and I are always like, but human context, we need the human insight and oversight no matter what happens, particularly with image descriptions or alt text, but it can assist if you’re writing something and you’re, you’re struggling to put it into plain language or write it in active voice or shorten your [00:47:00] sentences. It can be you know, a helper in that regard. It can help with captioning and getting you started auto captions on YouTube, for example. Now don’t leave them at the auto caption stage, like stage because there’ll be spelling, grammar mistakes. Your company name might be misspelled. So you still wanna manually go through and edit, but it’s a great starting point. So it limits, or it reduces the amount of time required to make your content accessible because it’s there. So it, it’s. Still sort of the wild, wild west, I would say, when it comes to what does AI look like for accessibility? There’s still, there’s good, there’s, you know, not so good as Lisa mentioned as well. But only time will tell. And no matter what, the LLM will only be as powerful or as good as we need it to be based on what we train it to be. So if we’re using it ourselves and we’re training it to really amplify and understand different accents or different spellings and that sort of thing, it [00:48:00] will get stronger with that. But it’s something like an image description or alt text no matter what. You’ll always need that human oversight because of the context like Lisa mentioned. Matt: [00:49:00] Fascinating as ever. Thank you both for joining us. Joining me. I’m getting very confused with this. Having one host and two guests. It’s, it’s like the old days in a weird way. Matisse looking ahead to the, actually no. The first thing, the first big question is if people want to get hold of the book, how do they get hold of the book? Matisse: So you can order it through Kogan page, which right now we actually have a promo code to get 30% off. Through the Kogan page website. While she is looking that up. Matt: I’ll tell you what, we’ll, we’ll put the discount code on the website, WB 40 podcast.com. Matisse: Perfect. Or you can get it off of Amazon or any of your local bookstores. Will be carrying it in the UK as of October 3rd and in North America come oc October 28th. Matt: Excellent. And so, yes. What, what have you got in the week ahead other than getting ready for your book launch? Matisse: Launching the book next week. I’m so excited. I can’t believe [00:50:00] it’s next week. And then also I’ll be doing a really cool webinar series for the Public Relations Society of America around the Beyond Compliance, being accessible in your communications. And just, you know, as Rihanna said, work, work, work, work, work, work. That’s, that’s the plan for next week. Brilliant. Thank you Matisse. And Lisa, other than getting ready for your book launch, what are you gonna be up to? Lisa: Other than getting ready for our book launch. So I’m continuing work with a new client, which is kind of interesting content work. They do things about innovation and I’m helping tie it all together. I’ve also, I can’t believe it’s that time again where the clear box software reviews have come up. So I’ve got my first demo with an intranet software provider this week. And I’ve got a bit more, I’m nearly done with the share pointing for now. I’ve got training to deliver next week. And then the SharePoint work is hopefully parked for tech for the time being, even though I obviously [00:51:00] love and hate SharePoint. But yeah, so mine’s all also working. How about you, Matt? Matt: So work stuff my other half is going to a long weekend with some friends of hers. So I’ve got the weekend I’d say with both boys at one’s is going off and doing something on his own. So I’m gonna take youngest to one of my favorite places in London, which is Japan House, which is the Japanese overseas cultural thing that is in Kensington, just next to High Street Kensington Tube. And every quarter or so they have an exhibition of something about Japanese culture. So the first one that Milo and I went to was the Japanese thing of having incredibly intricate models of food that go into the windows of restaurants. So you can see what it is that you will be. Eating in the restaurant, even though the thing is made outta glass and plastic. And there’s a wonderful exhibit or exhibition there of how they manufacture those [00:52:00] things. It think there’s about two factories in the whole of Japan that make it all. They’re incredibly expensive. They being Japanese, put ridiculous amount of effort into making them. The most recent one was about Japanese carpent. And the exhibition of how they go about building temples including lots of bits of wood and saws and things. And the new one is about pictograms, so Japanese diagrammatic form and how they have designed an entire design language around pictograms to be able to make signage and the like clearer. So we’re gonna go and have a look at that. Lisa: More accessible, if you will, well, absolutely accessible. Other Lang, I went to see the show. It’s brilliant and it’s, but it, one of the things that it came from is when you’ve got a multilingual environment, how do you have universal signs that everybody can understand? And there’s a really cool bit in there where there was a guy saying when they first, when they first designed the pictograms for showers. They’re like, well, we didn’t really have showers in Japan, so we [00:53:00] had to ask people what they looked like. And we, we designed it off a description that someone told us about. ’cause we’d never seen one ourselves. It’s fascinating. I really enjoyed it. And like there’s some 3D bits you can get involved with. So yeah. Enjoy. Matt: Thank you. And it’s all free as well, you had to register. ’cause sometimes it gets quite busy, but it’s as I say, I think it’s all run out of the the Japanese equivalent at the foreign office to be able to promote cultural value for Japan across the, the planet. It’s a, yeah. Remarkable place. So that would be in the week ahead. That’d be quite good. And then getting ready for the week after to take mum to Venice to celebrate her 80th birthday, which will be delightful and I’m thoroughly looking forward to it. So that’s all good. Right. There we go. Another show done. Matisse, thank you so much for joining us as a guest. Thank you so much for having me. This was lovely. Lisa, thank you very much for joining us as a guest. Matisse: Thank you. Matt: And we will be back next week. It will be, I think, Mr. Wein and Emergency [00:54:00] what do we call him? Host of, of of last resort, Nick Drage. Weapon of last resort. Weapon of last resort to be interviewing somebody about something. I’m not sure what, who, when, but that will be next week. And so until then, goodbye.[00:55:00] [00:56:00] Matisse: Thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us on the internet@wbfortypodcast.com and all good podcasting platforms.

Welcome back to the WB 40 Podcast! In this episode (334), Chris and Julia sit down with special guest Duncan Stott, an interim CIO extraordinaire, to really dive into the high-stakes world of interim management. We explore how the role of the CIO has completely changed, especially since COVID brought tech to the forefront and now with the massive focus on AI disruption. Duncan shares a fascinating insight: interims often benefit from a “quirk of human nature” where organisations listen to them more and offer more respect than their own permanent team, because the outsider is brought in with a specific label to perform a defined job. The decision to become an interim is often driven by a crisis, appealing to leaders who have high confidence in their discipline, crave variety, embrace the high-risk/high-reward aspect of the career, and know they can deliver results repeatedly across different sectors. These roles are urgent, sometimes requiring someone to start within two weeks, typically to handle M&A, an ERP project, or fill a gap left when a permanent CIO is “released”. But this career choice is definitely not for the faint-hearted, as Chris points out. Unlike permanent staff who might get 100 days to find their footing, an interim typically has to move incredibly fast, often expected to deliver their initial assessment or view within the first five days. This intense pressure requires interims to constantly focus on succession planning and ensuring they leave the situation ready to be handed over to a “grateful client”. Crucially, success requires balancing speed with empathy, especially since the permanent teams often feel “bruised and wounded or bewildered” by previous organizational changes. Duncan highlights the goal of leaving a “double legacy”: achieving the technical delivery while also coaching and mentoring the permanent team to leave the people in a better state. Sustaining this self-employed path requires tremendous effort: you have to treat it as a business, aggressively self-market, build authentic, respectful relationships with a “good handful” of headhunters, and meticulously prepare for interviews—which interims might practice a dozen times a year to stay sharp. You can find Duncan’s own podcast, The Interim, at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-interim/id1787889240 or https://open.spotify.com/show/6ylPRtkqWOQWrmfyStQWjA?si=137a1966e4cc4efb

In the first WB 40 Podcast of our 10th Season, Lisa and Julia delve into the critical, yet often overlooked, area of internal crisis communication with expert Alison Arnot. Alison emphasizes that the biggest misconception about crisis communication is its external focus, arguing that employees feel crises personally and are crucial to an organization’s recovery. She shares her deep passion for this subject, which stems from her experience at the Glasgow Airport terror attack and subsequent observations about the varying preparedness of organizations. Alison introduces her new framework, the “Seven Ss of Internal Crisis Communication,” detailed in her book Internal Communication in Times of Crisis: How to Secure Employee Trust, Support and Advocacy in Crisis Situations. This framework outlines seven needs that must be met in order for an organization and its people to recover effectively from a crisis. You can find Alison’s book on Amazon here, and get in touch with her via LinkedIn here.

While AI tools promise to revolutionise work, the reality is far more complex – and unequal. Guest Susi O’Neill shares her research into “inclusive AI,” revealing a stark 25% gender gap in workplace AI adoption, with women significantly less likely to use these tools than men. Income plays a massive role too: those earning over £100,000 are far more likely to receive proper AI training, creating a widening skills gap that reinforces existing inequalities. The problem isn’t just access – it’s deeply rooted in social conditioning, with “good girl conditioning” meaning women feel pressured to prove their worth through hard work rather than AI shortcuts. Matt and Lisa probe deeper into the hype around AI productivity gains, which deserves serious scrutiny. Despite grand promises of saving 20 hours per week, many organisations are struggling to see real returns on their AI investments. Ironically, while leaders demand AI adoption, only 6% actually use these tools themselves daily. The consulting industry is making a fortune selling AI transformation strategies, but the fundamental question remains: are we optimising for genuine innovation or just doing inefficient work faster? Perhaps most concerning is the risk of “brain rot” that Susie highlights – students using AI to write essays can’t remember what they wrote months later, and AI hallucinations remain a persistent problem. As AI systems reflect historical biases and cultural assumptions, we’re at risk of embedding inequality even deeper into our work processes. Subscribe to Susi’s newsletter at https://rethinkhypecycle.substack.com/

On this episode, Matt, Lisa and serial entrepreneur Rufus Evison delve deep into the challenges and potential dangers of current Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs). Rufus argues that LLMs inherently lack three crucial tenets: they are not correctable (corrigible), transparent, or reliable. He asserts that LLMs are “none of the three” and have become “good enough to be dangerous”. A core issue, according to Rufus, is that LLMs have no concept of truth. They operate probabilistically, predicting the “most likely word to be put next,” which often doesn’t align with factual accuracy. He vividly describes LLMs as capable of “lying plausibly” and even fabricating references when challenged. Rufus contrasts this with knowledge representation-based systems, such as the original Amazon Alexa (developed by True Knowledge, where Rufus was company secretary). These systems build a “structured knowledge version of the universe” based on facts and logical deductions from axioms, similar to mathematics. He highlights their incredible efficiency, being “six orders of magnitude more efficient” than LLMs. Looking to the future, Rufus proposes a hybrid approach where LLMs’ plausible “gut feel” outputs are then rigorously checked by a fact-checking mechanism based on knowledge representation, akin to human logical reasoning or “peer review”. This structure, he suggests, could mimic how humans often think: acting on instinct, then applying post-rationalization to verify. Beyond the technical, Rufus raises profound philosophical concerns. He echoes Stephen Hawking’s warning about AI’s potential for a “convergent goal” leading to the removal of people. He also expresses worry that an AI-driven utopia, where money and work become unnecessary, could strip humanity of its intrinsic drivers: mastery, autonomy, and purpose. This would leave individuals without a reason to strive or engage, potentially leading to self-induced societal decline. Despite these grave concerns, Rufus remains actively committed to his purpose: “trying to fix AI” to ensure a safer future for his children. He backs this ambition with an extraordinary track record: between 1996 and 2016, he was involved with 30 UK companies, achieving a remarkable 95% survival rate, starkly against the industry’s typical 95% failure rate for startups. His past ventures include contributing to Amazon Alexa, Global Diagnostics (now part of the NHS), and Cambridge Trishaws (the UK’s original bicycle taxis).

On this week’s show, Chris, Lisa and Michelle dive deep into Agentic AI, exploring how it differs from traditional automation and current AI tools. Chris explains that while regular agents follow basic rules (like a thermostat) and AI agents respond to commands (like Alexa), Agentic AI systems work autonomously toward outcomes – they’re proactive, learn from mistakes, and can collaborate with other AI agents. The discussion illustrates how these systems can take on complex, ongoing tasks that would be tedious for humans. The conversation also tackles the significant challenges and risks of Agentic AI implementation. Key concerns include maintaining human accountability when autonomous systems make decisions, the degradation of AI quality due to increased demand and training on AI-generated content, and real-world legal issues like the Workday class action lawsuit involving age discrimination in AI screening.

On this week’s show Julia and Matt interview Matt Cockbill, an executive search consultant specializing in hiring tech leaders for over 20 years, A fundamental challenge for organisations is finding experienced leaders to navigate the new wave of AI and generative technologies. While the possibilities are vast, Matt emphasises the crucial need for leaders to focus on the value case – defining what will actually be useful and deliver tangible business outcomes. Finding leaders with proven experience specifically in generative AI is challenging due to its relative novelty, sometimes requiring organisations to be bold and partner with academia or research institutions. Leaders claiming extensive generative AI experience warrant careful scrutiny. The discussion highlighted the evolution of tech leadership, with CIOs and CTOs increasingly focused on shaping strategy and enabling value for the business, a trend accelerated by events like Covid-19. The rapid arrival and hype of AI necessitate leaders who can assess organisational appetite and marshal resources towards valuable activities. Ultimately, succeeding with AI means balancing a compelling vision with a clear understanding of where the return on investment lies. This requires tech leaders to leverage essential skills like storytelling to build confidence and clearly articulate how technology, including AI, can deliver on strategic objectives.

On this week’s show Matt and Michelle are joined by Professor Nancy Doyle to talk about her new book, and what we can all learn about better leadership. You can find Nancy’s book here https://uk.jkp.com/products/learning-from-neurodivergent-leaders

On this week’s show Lisa and Matt talk with community builder and poet Janice Whyne about her work, the need to understand culture to work with communities, and the power of peer mentorship amongst many other things. You can find out more about Janice on her website here: https://janicewhyne.com/, and more about Luminary Bakery here: https://luminarybakery.com/ (The stunt bread in the photo is Matt’s own)

On this week’s show Chris and Michelle are joined by data specialist Tia Cheang to talk about increasing diversity in the field.

On this week’s show Lisa talks to Matt and Nick about their ongoing literary project, Random the Book. You can follow the progress of their writing (or not) at randomthebook.com

On this week’s show, Matt and Lisa are joined by Tom Whitwell, the designer of modular synthesisers and synthesiser modules. You can find out more about Tom’s work at https://www.musicthing.co.uk/ Tom mentioned this article from Andrew Chen about Vibe Coding: https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/predictionsthoughts-on-vibe-coding And here is Lisarbie: