Nongcebo McKenzie: The Podcast
Nongcebo Vukile McKenzie hosts authors, speakers, renowned academics and respected leaders for enlightening and insightful conversations in both isiZulu and English. Subscribe to the channel to get all the episodes as they are uploaded.
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Some content may include sensitive topics and discussions, listener discretion is advised. The intention is not to offend but to provide information. Proceed only if you are comfortable with potentially sensitive topics. The content on this podcast does not constitute financial, legal, medical, or any other professional advice. Users should consult with the relevant professionals for specific advice related to their situation.
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Nongcebo McKenzie: The Podcast
"Four Future Seasons: How to Anticipate and Prepare for Multiple Potential Futures" with Dr Craig Wing
Our guest on this episode of The Podcast is Dr Craig Wing, author of "Four Future Seasons: How to Anticipate and Prepare for Multiple Potential Futures"
In an increasingly unpredictable world, traditional methods of planning no longer suffice. Four Future Seasons offers a groundbreaking approach to navigating uncertainty, empowering readers to adapt to the future and actively shape it.
Drawing from international experiences, doctoral research and diverse perspectives as a global expert in futures strategy, Dr Craig Wing’s Four Future Seasons combines deep insights with practical strategies to anticipate disruptions and thrive in times of change. This innovative model draws from diverse and fascinating concepts such as Rumsfeld’s ‘unknown unknowns’, the Johari Window and the timeless wisdom of the Japanese four-season garden to offer a dynamic framework for identifying early signals of change and respond with agility.
More than a guide for business leaders, this book is for anyone who wants to create a better future for themselves, whether navigating personal growth, leadership challenges or unforeseen life changes. With personal stories of resilience and innovation woven throughout, Four Future Seasons equips readers with the tools, foresight and confidence to thrive through all seasons of life. SOURCE: Penguin Random House South Africa
The Podcast:
Camera: Mluleki Dlamini & Siyabonga Meyiwa
Sound: Sibusiso 'Dust' Nkosi
Editing: Mluleki Dlamini & Kwenza Trevor Masinga
Co-ordinator: Phumelele Khambule
Host: Nongcebo Vukile McKenzie
Contact: info@nvmckenzie.co.za
View episodes on YouTube : Link ➡️ https://youtube.com/@nvmckenzie?si=y8ZcaOQ0yYqjGhA8
Disclaimer:
Some content may include sensitive topics and discussions, listener discretion is advised. The intention is not to offend but to provide information. Proceed only if you are comfortable with potentially sensitive topics. The content on this podcast does not constitute financial, legal, medical, or any other professional advice. Users should consult with the relevant professionals for specific advice related to their situation.
The Podcast is not responsible and cannot be held liable for any damages resulting from reliance on the content provided through the channel's content. All content is provided without warranty.
His thought leadership has inspired thousands of executives and leaders worldwide to reimagine the future and seize the opportunities that change presents. He's a visionary futurist, global keynote speaker and trailblazing entrepreneur, renowned for his ability to shape the strategic futures of leading global institutions, including the United Nations, Google X and other major corporations. Dr. Craig Wing is our guest on this episode of the Dr. Wing, how are you?
SPEAKER_02:I'm doing really well, and so thanks so much for having me. I really do appreciate
SPEAKER_00:it. Thank you. Thank you for this body of work. I tell you, In as much as this book is written for organizations and it is a font of information, a well, a treasure trove of so much information and I'll get to that. I looked at this from a personal point of view as well. There are so many key takeaways, so many nuggets of wisdom that one can take away from this book and just in terms of assessing yourself in terms of where you are on whatever journey you are on and it's so easy to transpose those into a personal context. So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. I'm glad that you brought that up. It's interesting because as we'll talk through the course of this conversation right now, it's lifted from the PhD. And when I started the framework, as you said, it was really mostly around corporates and planning from that perspective. And as I went through this process, just like yourself, I realized it's not only applicable, but it's exceptionally powerful for the individual. And so in the book itself, there's a whole chapter around how to apply this framework for people. And for me, it also gives us language. And I think that's really powerful.
SPEAKER_00:So on PhD 17. You say, And then you continue and you talk about the illusion of a predictable future, embracing uncertainty, the power of adaptability and iteration. But what really stood out for me is the need for a flexible framework in futures thinking, in planning ahead, in scenario planning, the importance of a flexible framework. Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is part of the challenge. I mean, from my own perspective, my personal perspective, is as you've said right now, you know, I come from many lens, I come from many backgrounds, and perhaps my fundamental underpinning of trading, shall we say, was engineering. And a lot of the engineering work is built and premised around stuff that you know. So it's around specs, it's around data, it's around, you know, basically the technicalities of something we know to be true, and you build something upon that. And that's wonderful, that's great, but it doesn't work in all contexts. In the book, and we'll touch on this, you know, that kind of future would be a summer future. But the truth of the matter is the world we're moving into is so quick. It's changing so rapidly. Some of the listeners might have known or we might know the term VUCA, volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous. But it's really, it's more than just the complexity. It's the speed that's changing things. I mean, if you think just back to the last month, think about all the incredible change that's going on in our country, in South Africa. You know, we've got things related with a certain sub-sector minority that's going overseas, claiming refugee status. You know, we've got the third budget that's now going to be tabled. You know, we look at crazy weather patterns all over the place. Globally, we look at a place where there's more uncertainty and uprisings. And so the world is changing so quickly, and yet for many of us, plans are steadfast. We plan for something. We say, we assume this is going to be true, but that's not necessarily the case. The world changes. We don't often change our plans with the same kind of rigor, the same kind of cadence that the world is changing at.
SPEAKER_00:So, one of the things that you say on page 172 is humans dream of a better future when current and past events are so traumatic. Nostalgia is a longing that originates from the same source as nostalgia, an unsatisfactory present that pushes our imagination beyond temporal boundaries to conceptualize an ideal world as an antidote against feelings of doom and foreboding against our current malaise. Now, the reason I picked that up is because as I read the book, it's very interdisciplinary. Your UX background comes in here. Your engineering background comes in here. There's philosophy. That for me, that paragraph, in as much as it's in the center of the book, is such a powerful start because that's quite philosophical But it's also got business strategy, there's design, there's politics. It's all captured in this book. Was this deliberate or just stem from your interdisciplinary background?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's a bit of both. I mean, from a personal perspective, I've jumped around so much, you know, from the engineering that I mentioned right now, just starting several companies, living and working in the US, starting a non-profit to commercial businesses, and also just having a vast interest in different things. I think there's obviously a personal perspective that pulls through. But there's actually a solid business rationale when you think about you know, the future's thinking space. And that's because the future is diverse. It doesn't belong to any single subject, whether that's engineering or business or politics. It belongs to all of us. And all of us are incredibly diverse. And so... In a similar kind of vein, in a similar kind of light, the future is multiplicitous. And so we need more lenses to have a look at to say, how do we think about the future differently? There's a saying that many people have probably used and probably heard before. You've got to think outside the box. In the book, I mention that. It's not actually thinking outside the box. It's actually thinking within several boxes, which allows you to bring perspectives from different areas, different fields. As you mentioned right now, it's from UX, it's from design, it's from philosophy, from engineering, from business, and all these other beautiful areas And it's really about cultivating the best of what's worked in another area to then apply it into the current area that you're in, which brings about true thinking. That kind of new thinking then gives us the ability to think about the future more diversely. It's more of a uni, away from a unilateral approach to a multiple approach. And that allows us to see, you know, what are the gaps that we're missing? And using an approach called backcasting, how do we then see and envisage a future that we ordinarily wouldn't even be able to dream?
SPEAKER_00:So there are a lot of Pull throughs from examples from nature. the book itself, the title gives that away, for future seasons. But in terms of how you also make the examples in the book, you draw a lot from nature. I saw that you would write the seasons and you would describe the seasons and you'd have a quote and you'd have an analogy drawing from nature. I'm curious about that.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And it's really interesting. The genesis of the book was, I mean, it comes from our PhD research, which was well over four and a half years. But before that, I've been working in the area of futures thinking for over a And as I finished the PhD, I thought, you know, I want to write this. I want to turn this into a book. It'd be really interesting, I think, specifically to translate from, you know, this very heavy academic citation type world. And it's one where there's a lot of narratives, there's a lot of stories, a lot of anecdotes, which bring us futures thinking forward. to all people, because I think it's really important that that happens. And as I started writing this book, I couldn't get the framing. I had the theory, I had the examples, but I just didn't have that skeleton upon which to hang this body of knowledge. And so in 2023, I was actually traveling around Japan. And Japan is an incredible country, and I speak about this in the book. It's an incredible country that's been closed off for such a long time. And when they opened up, there was et cetera, et cetera. But because of how they did it, almost in isolation. They've got all these beautiful words. And one of those exactly as you mentioned right now, it's called Shikisanzuizu. And that comes straight from the Japanese word of four season garden. And the reason why that was so powerful to me was because What I learned in Japan was the aristocratic, the rich folks in Japan would segment the gardens of four different seasons, so flowers and foliage for each season, summer, winter, autumn, spring. And through this approach, you start seeing beautiful things. You start seeing things like, you know, the transits of nature. You start seeing the beauty of where something dies and something new comes about. You start enjoying the real seasons, not the one that they're supposed to be because times are changing. And I thought this was such a beautiful narrative. And so, you know, that's really the emphasis of the book for future seasons. So there's a piece there on nature And the verbiage and the words behind each one, just to stay true to this, each of those actual Asian characters are actually Japanese. So that is the Asian word. It's an Asian word for, you know, for summer, winter, autumn, spring. But you're right, because it is such a diverse body of work, I delve into so many other areas. Nature specifically. One of my favourites is Valkyrie Fond and Gabe Estate and how, you know, they used a different approach to stop rhino poaching and what can we learn from there. We spoke about... different areas within the book that comes from futures thinking itself. You know, there's the black swans and there's black jellyfish that I speak about in the book and there's all these other things. But even to that, we extend beyond that, beyond just nature into things like red oceans and blue oceans. I speak about the story when you speak about spring and mole at home, how mole cleans up his house. So it's really pulled from different areas and nature's one of those many areas that's touched upon.
SPEAKER_00:And as you mentioned that, I mean, you draw so much from literature, you draw from the book The Wind in the Willows you draw from so many examples that really made the book quite captivating if I can put it that way because just as you were trying to understand something from an engineering point of view you would then pull through a spiritual point of view and then you'd pull through a philosophical point of view and then you'd pull through an academic point of view and it really it was such an invigorating and testing read if I can say that because you couldn't enter into the book and I use this term deliberately you couldn't enter into the book and really get the essence of the book if you have myopic view and if you have linear thinking It really stretches you to consider other things. And this is where it stretched me, right? So when you hear people say, oh, I'm in the winter of my life, that really sounds bleak. And it sounds like they're going through a bad time. But you've really described now the Japanese garden analogy. and how each season is important. And so when I went and I did my quiz on forfutureseasons.com and it came back as you're a winter person. Initially, I was like, why am I a winter person? This doesn't sound good. But then it pulls through a report and it talks about your core, your strengths, your focus, and it talks about all these kinds of things. But I'm not going to go into that. I'm going to go into asking you about the four different seasons and the importance of recognizing the opportunities for those because I mean you talk about it and I'll again stick to to the winter example intuiting the unknown unknown you know but obviously you talk about all of them so let's talk about the importance of recognizing each of the seasons and how you can harness the positive from each of them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, before that, it's so interesting that you used the words myopic and linear. And I don't know if that was, obviously it was deliberate from your side, but it was just coincidental. Maybe otherwise, I mean, those are words that I use very strongly in the book itself, both from the perspective of people thinking about the future and being myopic. And one of the big drivers of that is actually, there's actually two reasons why. The first reason is in the work that I do, both locally, internationally, whether I speak to, you know, whether it's governments, whether it's corporates, whether it's individuals, there's two big mistakes that they make. The first is the belief that the future is an extrapolation of the past. So essentially what that means is, you know, we've done something and we'll always carry on doing that. From a business perspective, you know, revenues growing by 10%, per annum we'll carry on growing by 10%, 3% CAGR and so on and so forth. From individuals, you know, this is the work I've always done. I've always been in marketing for the last 20 years. I will never move out of marketing. And so the future must be an extension of that. That's the first challenge. The second thing is that there's a singular future. And we know this is not true, but somehow it doesn't trigger within our world. So that was the first big driver. And the second one, again, using the term myopic, is in the book I speak about my personal background where the first company that I started out of university was actually helping partially sighted children maximize their remaining vision and the analogy there is very similar you know how we see in the physical world is the same way we see the future we see it from our current point of view and we extend into the future but that myopic view that myopic lens gets us to see you know without without being able to have a more peripheral lens and that's one of the challenges of futures thinking to say how do we go out of myopia the singular lens into multiple lenses but to I got back to So the point that you mentioned right now, and it's such a powerful thing, there is no, and people have said this to me, they've said, oh, I've read the book, I've done the quiz, you know, which is the best season to be in? What's good and what's bad? The truth of the matter is all seasons are equally good and equally bad. It's the same as our natural seasons. We might have a favoured season, but they're all great. There's all strengths in all of them. And so to give the reader a bit of a primer, there's four seasons and summer's really the season, the future where we know things and we've got data and we can base our experiences upon that. And the strength And the strength there is really, we've got the comfort and we kind of expect certain things. So that's good. But by the same token, that can be bad because we then expect the future to then be an extrapolation of the past. And as I mentioned before, that's not necessarily the case. Winter then is diametrically opposite. That's when, you know, we haven't got any data, we've got no experience, there's nothing there. And all we know is there's going to be huge changes. We don't even know what changes there are. What that then means is, you know, we have to be flexible, we have to be agile. And the strength, if you're a winter person, much like has come out the results of your test, He's someone who likes to follow and it's almost very spontaneous. They like to do things on the fly. They like to move very quickly with how things are changing. And that's a great strength. One of the challenges might be though, is about saying, you know, That's great and all, but we need to plan, but that becomes very difficult when things are always moving. So there's strength and weakness in both of those. Autumn is then, as opposed to winter, that's when we know that there are specific changes, we can name them. In the world today, you know, from a technology point of view, it might be AI quantum. From a politics point of view, it might be what's going on in the US and Europe right now. You know, from a society point of view, it's around what's happening with young people and old people and maybe for the older folks, retirement and so on and so forth. But we know there's some changes and It's like, what do we do with this? And the folks that are an autumn person, the strength of that is really that we like to move with the change. We like the change. We like to see this. We like to think and dream and imagine how does this affect us. But the problem there is sometimes we're chasing and we're not necessarily saying, what can we be anchored in today and where we are? And the final season is spring and that's sometimes called the forgotten future. That's where things have happened and we've kind of forgotten where we could be. So, you know, from a personal perspective, it might be a midlife crisis. So you're in your third or 40s and you thought you were going to be something different you thought you might be a different kind of job but you find yourself with a bond and children and wife and husband and all these things and it's not the life you wanted and so the spring future is the one that you've forgotten and how do we revisit those the strength there though is you tend to be someone who reflects very deeply that finds reflection that finds a place to say what could have been the weakness there is also you could be trapped in that past and not being able to see the current opportunities today so each season is incredibly powerful, but also to the point that you made around, you know, I'm a winter, I want there to be something else. These are not fixed. And part of the trick is, you know, how do I transition the different seasons? But more importantly, how do I see and understand this so I can move through these seasons both personally and professionally?
SPEAKER_00:So, again, just to draw from the book, I love how each chapter has obviously the The descriptors from the actual season that you are referring to, let me not say each chapter, each section, because the book is aligned to the seasons section by section, and then you've got the sub chapters in there. But you say on page 65... or rather you quote in page 65, winter is coming and when the long night falls, only the night's watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. And you quote there from A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin. And the reason I'm not focusing so much on the winter is because obviously that's what my quiz revealed. And it gave me such an insight into being able to intuit possibilities, but as you're saying, that in moving mountains, sort of going with the flow and intuiting what's coming and trying to sort of align with that. Where's the planning? But again, your character, your default position is to shoot for the stars. Where's the plan? And you can't plan too much because you don't know what you don't know. You don't have the backup of the data. And I'm trying to transpose that into an organizational setting. So if we're looking at futures thinking from an organizational point of view, the four seasons, and we're going to talk about ESCOM in a bit, but let's look at that. Let's look at the four seasons from an organizational point of view before we look at them from a country point of view.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. So the challenge is when you look at the four seasons as articulated right now, I reckon probably 90% if not 95% of businesses operate within that realm. Now, when I say businesses here, I'm probably mean your bigger organizations or maybe your medium size. Your startups tend to operate in winter, and I'll clarify that a bit shortly, but your big companies tend to operate within summer. Again, that's the future, that's the quadrant, that's the world where you've got data, you've got experience. You know, we've been doing the thing for the last 10 years. And most organizations do this, right? So in the book, I speak about many, many examples of this, and perhaps the most famous that many of your listeners would have heard, but it's worthwhile learning. speaking about, again, from this perspective, is Kodak. So Kodak, you know, the camera company, they said, you know, they were the leaders in this. We're doing normal kind of cameras, et cetera, et cetera. And lo and behold, what actually happened is the R&D labs in Kodak themselves, they developed the digital camera. And what's so fascinating about this is that digital camera was created within their own rules, but they were so tied, shall we say, they were so tied within rules within their traditional way of approaching things, that they thought this digital camera thing would die out. And so the proxy over there is we know what we have, we know what we want, this is the summer. Digital cameras represent something that's outside of summer. We don't know this thing, we're just going to discard it. As a result of which, their winter that came was one that absolutely destroyed them. That made them completely irrelevant because digital cameras took over, the world of photography then moved into cell phones and so on and so forth. And the reason why this happens is because of the It's fascinating that we link these two pieces together, summer and winter. And as you said, you know, I'm a bit of a nerd. And so, you know, Game of Thrones is a great book and series to watch. And what's really interesting behind that is that when you look at the Game of Thrones analogy, the story there is twofold. First of all, obviously, it's the quote, you know, winter's coming and so you need to prepare for the unknown. But more than that, in the series and in the book, and in my book as well, I reference that when Jon Snow, one of the protagonists, meets the Wilding across the wall, she says to him, she says, Jon Snow, you know nothing. And that's incredibly important because John comes from a world of military. He comes from a world of worry. He comes from like, if this, then that kind of thinking. He comes from the world of summer. And suddenly he moves on the world into a winter future. And as she says, you know nothing. So for most organizations, we plan for the stuff that we think is going to happen when we actually face a winter future. And the same thing holds true. John Snow, you know nothing. So you've got your business plans, you've got your swatanas, you've got your pestle, you've got your value chains that you set up. You've done all this other kind of stuff and something happens, aka something unexpected like a COVID, even though it wasn't a black swan, but it was a winter effect at that point in time. Something happens and all your planning goes for naught. And we all scramble along and say, oh, but what about this? What about this? Because we're trying to play within summer and it's winter. And the truth of the matter is exactly as it's saying is, John Snow, you know nothing. If you plan for summer and it's actually winter, you're in a lot of trouble.
SPEAKER_00:So talking about... Organizations being able to recognize which season they're in and planning accordingly. And you talk in the book about green swans and you talk about legacy and history. But, you know, an example that will ring home for most South Africans is where you go on in that in the spring section of the book where you talk about ESCOM. And you talk about ESCOM and you touched a little bit earlier on about the biases that inherently we bring into the organizations that we are part of in our decision making and that influence the business decisions that we make and you write about insular approaches and how that has impacted ESCOM and I touch on this there are many examples that you make about different organizations but the reason obviously I'm picking up on the ESCOM one is because it touches almost every single South African. And it's always been curious from, I mean, there are a lot of theories that are bandied about as to why ESCOM is in the state that it's in. Although, of course, there are some market improvements that have been communicated over the past year or so. But the reality is that there are some theories that are bandied about as to how ESCOM got to where it is. And you put forward a suggestion here on page 147. Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so just to one-to-one point for some of the readers which may not be used or may not be aware of if you use green swans. So some of the folks might know what a black swan is. It's a really high-impact event that's kind of hard to predict. And it kind of changes the way things are, but it's highly impactful, highly unlikely. A green swan event is something that's very similar, but it's likely has a medium-term event. It's probably going to happen, and it's a result of climate change and climate events. So there is a piece around those pieces. Just a rather human phrase, it is something for you and listens to know about. ESCOM is really interesting. And in ESCOM, you know, it's unfortunately, you know, one of those examples in South Africa that we use all the time. But I think from a futures perspective, the lens is very powerful because there's a few key pieces right here. One of those is, again, using the analogy of summer. ESCOM very much was in a summer, anticipated a summer future. They anticipated that, you know, the future will be driven by coal. And that's what it was going to be like. And as we shifted into a post-democratic country, all the signs were there. All the planning was there. You can see there's a lot of literature, evidence, both academic and otherwise, of the planners then 30, 40-odd years ago saying, you know, that we're not going to have enough electricity demands to move forward. So you think to yourself, well, if you're planning over here, surely the narrative would then say, well, how do we increase capacity? To ESCOM's defense, they did. But the problem is they were bound within that ESCOM world to say, well, we do coal, and so it must always be coal. There might be some hydro, et cetera, but primarily it was around coal. And so their view was around how do we extend and carry on what we've always done, the summer future of coal. And so they missed the nascent emerging areas of solar power, which would have been autumn, as a result of which the solar thing started to come through, and they kind of ignored it, and they carried on going back to coal generation. And never mind for now the inefficiencies and the other challenges behind that, but one of big problems around that is a syndrome called not invented here. And that syndrome is very, very, very powerful because it's something that we don't do for ourselves. It's not part of our DNA. Therefore, we can't implement it. From an ESCOM lens, we do coal. We burn coal to generate steam to drive the turbines to provide electricity. The solar thing is not our thing. It's not invented within ESCOM and so we've forgotten about it. And so part of the challenge over here is exactly the challenge that corporates and companies have to say, how can we embrace certain pieces, whether it's technology, thinking, thought leaders, consultants, whatever you want to frame it, that even though they're not quote-unquote homegrown, there's so much diversity to bring into our walls that we can learn from them, and we can shift beyond the non-invented here syndrome. If ESCOM was prudent, and there's still an opportunity now, they'd be able to say, you know, how can we move out of summer into autumn? And I suspect we're starting to see signs of that. Signs of saying, how do we break ESCOM up into three different areas around transmission and generation? And certainly the generation piece is my belief, using the four seasons framework, to say, you know, part of our business may be summer, because again, it doesn't have to be homogeneous, but part of our current generation capacity is still within core generation of summer. We can also move into the autumn which is embracing stuff like solar and wind. And more importantly, our business model needs to change so we don't have to be the sole generator. We can shift into a different kind of business model where not only is Eskom supplementing and augmenting solar generation, but perhaps we need to pivot a part of our business. And in a crazy future world which is driven by autumn, perhaps we're not an electricity generator. Perhaps Eskom becomes an electricity storer. So all these other players start to generate electricity, solar, wind, et cetera, et cetera. And our role as ESCOM is actually store that power and then to push it off grid. And that's a fundamental shift because that's not what ESCOM would be. They're a generator of power, not a store of power.
SPEAKER_00:What I also found interesting, and I'm sure this is not unique to South Africa, but a lot of businesses, and I'll put that in parenthesis because it does apply to some big business, but it applies a lot to SMEs, where it is somebody that started a cooperative with a group of women in their area, or it's somebody that started a taxi business, or somebody that started whatever small business that they started from their skills, from their talent, for whatever reason. Let's talk about prisoner of your name, because you'll see this a lot. We used to have a lot of general dealers. I don't know if you can remember. Now we've got spaza shops. But I don't know if you can remember way back when there used to be a lot of general dealers. So you would have general dealers. And you would find that when Mr. Kumete Sr. passed on, then it would then become criminal. Now, a historical reference, there used to be Kwakumet. How? What happened to Kwakumet as general dealer? Oh, no. After he passed on, the business sort of, you know, crumbled. Okay. There used to be so-and-so's taxis. Oh, okay. No. After he passed on, the wife tried to pick it up, but, you know, it just wasn't the same. There are so many examples. And you talk about this when you discuss the prisoner of your name syndrome, but you also talk about family businesses. And I was quite interested in that because that is– the reality of many South African owned businesses, especially SMMEs, especially in townships, especially in rural areas. Because this kind of thinking, this futures thinking is not only for big business. As I said, it also applies in a personal context. But let's look at the SMMEs. Let's look at township businesses. Let's look at family businesses in the rural areas.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so on that note, and you bring up an incredibly powerful point, I speak in the book, the example is around a company, a small family, it's a real company, it was called Swiss Time. And generally, you know, certainly maybe not now, but 10, 15, 20 years ago, Swiss Time generated this lovely image, this visage of precision Swiss engineering and the watch that, you know, the analog watch that ticks perfectly according to time and never loses any time at all. And the story that I put over here was about this company that was founded in 1977 and because of it called Swiss Time, they have to do watches. That's their game. They're sweet. Watches is the name of the game. And obviously, as you've mentioned right now, things change and things move, etc. But this family wasn't able to keep up with the times because out of that, watches evolved into more fitness trackers and fitness apps. But that doesn't feel and doesn't align with this purity of Swiss Time. And so they went obsolete. And this holds true across the board for SMU is exactly your point. You know, it's it's it's um i don't know it's dumasani and sons a transport for argument's sake uh you know and now the sons go well you know i don't want to do this anymore but this was dad's legacy we have to carry on doing this and maybe that changes uh maybe it's a tax thing as you mentioned right now and then the role of uber changes that and we can't move on there because we're tied to this our brand reputation our stakes are here but also there's legacy thinking where much like the individuals, this is what we've always done. This is the summer of the family business. But there's another piece over here, even if it's not directly tied into the name of the organization. And by the way, this runs true for giant organizations as well. You think about the likes of Anglo Coal. The name itself implies Anglo Coal cannot do more than coal, which is why they had to move into other areas. Not necessarily great to move into Anglo Gold and all the rest, but still the same thing holds true. But if you look at the SMMEs, there's another piece over here that even though it's not prisoner of your name, it's almost like prisoner of your process, shall we say. Prisoner of legacy. Prisoner of generational, whatever you want to call it. And I see this in the companies that I work with. Often you've got the first generation that have done incredibly well. And just as it turns out today, efficiency gains drives us. AI is obviously a big driver today, but even digitalization before that. And so what happens is when you have this transition from generational entrepreneurship and business owners from the first generation, the second generation, often the older folks have this say because they say, you know, this is the business we built, this is how it's always going to be. The second generation comes in and says things like, no, we need to change stuff, we need to bring in processes. Even if the product and name doesn't change, they say, we can do things better, we can put in technology. And the first generation will go, no, that's not the way we've done this. We don't do this, i.e., we operate this business in summer. And the younger generational comes in and go, no, the world is changing. We need to move into autumn. Or maybe even more challenging is we don't actually know what the future is going to hold. We need to rejig everything. And so you've got this challenge where even generationally within SMEs, whether it's generational between families, whether it's functional, the different pieces of your organization might see the future differently. But somehow we tend to believe that the other party sees the future the same way. So this president of your own name extends beyond just the name itself, you know, but also into legacy thinking processes and the like. But it really is, again, the challenge of we're in summer and we'll be in summer and that's not the case.
SPEAKER_00:So let's talk about why we miss the
SPEAKER_02:future. It's such a challenging area, but such an important thing to think about because it is incredibly important. important that people realize this. And the reason being is multiple. But we can dig down, and I would say that the genesis and probably the biggest reason why we do that is plain and simple because of biases. And the biases extend across the board all the way from, you know, this is the way I like things, to confirmation bias, which is I see the world in a certain way, and that's the way it'll always be. Sure. There's just so many other areas. I think one of the biggest reasons why this is the case, though, is because it's hard. It's hard. And in the book, I speak about many reasons why. You know, I speak about the things that we spoke about right now. We speak about things like the chrononomy, which is a big thing, and how people might mislead us because of this postulatory effect, a postulatory effect of wanting to have a better future. You know, there's the rise of this... almost techno-utopia, a techno-optimist view. But fundamentally, I think if you dig down and you scroll all those things, it lies squarely within biases. It's the motivational biases and the cognitive biases. And these two are different to you. I mean, the motivational biases are those that say, you know, it's kind of like the confirmation stuff. This is what it's going to be, and this is what it's going to end up being. And the cognitive ones, which are basically, it's a fundamental... biological imperative of how our brains operate. And to overcome the second one is the harder one because it's about understanding system one and system two thinking. System one is, you know, where it's road. It's like when you're driving the road right now and you see the robot turn orange, you slow down. Maybe some of us might speed up. Please don't do that, dear listener. But system one is basically, you know, you're kind of on autopilot. And system two thinking, and it's made famous by Daniel Kahneman, is where you have to think about how you think. And that's hard because you need to You really need to engage your thinking to say, why do I see the world this way? Why do I think that I have to carry on doing it this way? Why do I think that I must carry on doing it the way that uncle and mom and dad have done this business before? And the cognitive bias is there. that really push your brain to think are the ones that are really difficult because we have to move out of system one to system two and we have to be deliberate around challenging our own biases and the way we see the future because that's not always the case. So I'd say, you know, it's all the way from that to our belief and our desire to want to have a better future and there's folks who might slipstream into that who make it a little bit easier to believe them even though there's a lack of depth there but it would fundamentally be around biases, I believe.
SPEAKER_00:So one of the things you talk about And I actually didn't know that this was a real thing. Again, I will say this again and again and again. The book is a font of information, a well of knowledge. Because, I mean, it's through this book that I discovered why the QWERTY keyboard is the QWERTY keyboard and why it's remained the QWERTY keyboard. I didn't know that. But also, you introduced me to the theory of bullshit. I didn't know. I love that. And I'm going to read from the book, Bullshit. In contrast to merely unintelligible discourse, indifference to the truth is extremely dangerous. The conduct of civilized life and the vitality of the institutions that are indispensable to it depend very fundamentally on respect for the distinction between the true and the false. Insofar as the authority of this distinction is undermined by the prevalence of bullshit and by the mindlessly frivolous attitude that accepts the proliferation of bullshit as innocuous and indispensable, human treasure is squandered this is from the contours of agency and it's a quote from harry frankfurt but you also go further and you say on a subsequent page you say the clearest definition of a theory of bullshit was proposed by the american philosopher harry frankfurt bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth the liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false And I found that in the sales-driven world, in this, like you're saying, techno-utopia, in the rise, and this is what I really would like to get more insight on, the rise of the con on me, you find that a lot of people are BSing their way, even on a personal level, are BSing their way through most things. Let's talk about the theory of bullshit.
SPEAKER_02:I remember writing this paragraph and doing all this research and going, I had no idea there was such a vast body of knowledge about this. this stuff. And this book, it came out three months ago, but it's been in written phase for a while, as you can appreciate. And I don't want to mention, and I don't want to make this a political thing, but when we say the word bullshit, I think we kind of all say to be triangulated to a certain politician overseas. I think in the course of what you're saying right now, it's very true, and I think this is becoming more apparent. The problem here is twofold. The first is there's a difference between a liar. They know they're lying. I know that I said, you know, I do this, I do this. But the bullshitter doesn't care. They just spew whatever nonsense. And, you know, this isn't politics. This goes across the border. And to the point that you make right now, we see this in everyday life. We see this in people claiming to know more than they don't. In addition to now being a Penguin author, I do keynotes. I speak. I speak at conferences and the rest. And there's many folks that have built their reputation around being able to bullshit. They might have one anecdote. They might have found this from an internet research in the future as well. It's called Horizon Scanning. They might have read one article and they built a whole presentation with this. And as you dig deeper, what you realize is these folks actually don't know what they're talking about. And they're the epitome of of the bullshit or the con-onomy, like economy, but con-onomy. And these are folks that have built up their reputation around essentially lying, whether deliberately or otherwise, and making up falsehoods around what the future might hold. It's scary because, again, this ties into this whole area around the nostalgia of wanting to know what the future's going to be and it's going to be better. And the world we're in right now, it's so chaotic, so confusing. If someone has a ounce of, of some kind of espoused or even actual knowledge and a little bit more information on what you do, you tend to believe them. Specifically, they can craft a compelling story. And so the chrononomy is really all about, you know, these folks that rise to the top through this level of bullshit, whether deceitful, deliberate or otherwise, and where they basically make things up. The truth of the matter is this held through, it's been there forever. And one of the things that I mentioned was the chess playing machine. You know, in the 1800s, where someone had invented a chess playing machine, and it was one of the first automatrons. And lo and behold, what actually happened, it wasn't a machine, but there was a person that sat underneath the chessboard and through a series of mirrors were playing as the human being. And so this fascination holds true, but even there, there's a cognitive bias, which I didn't know, or rather, there is no name for it, but it's like in magic. When you watch a magician do tricks, we want to believe, we want to be fooled. And I think that's part of the challenge we have right now. But if I may be so bold, because we're sharing right now, and I'm glad I've introduced you a few things, I want to share something with you that I found out about two weeks ago. And this came through in a paper. It's great. As opposed to propaganda, It's called Slop Agenda. It's a propaganda Slop Agenda, right? And Slop Agenda is basically AI-generated slop. And it's very much aligned to this economy where it's been created by AI and it's not curated. It plays on our emotional biases and it's not anchored in truth. And so that came out two weeks ago. It's not part of the book. But if I were to add an addendum to this or do a revision, Slop Agenda would definitely be there because it's AI-generated bullshit. frankly, that targets our emotional response, it plays an icon to bias, and it swears us in a different way. And again, this is another reason why we miss the future, because there's so much noise and or protagonists in the economy that get us to move in a certain way. And driven by AI, we can see that already, that sloppaganda is pushing us that direction too, but on a much more automated, en masse
SPEAKER_00:manner. And I think you can see it also in academia, because if you just read, if you follow any professors, lecturers, and so on, people that are in the academic space, you will see how much they are really, really frustrated by the quality of work that is being turned in by students because they're just using AI now. They're not bothered. So they're claiming to know what they don't know by just using AI. But it's so easy to detect because, you know, it's perfectly imperfect. And so it's all that is contributing to that economy because you've got people now turning in papers for their degrees, for whatever qualification that they're studying for, and they don't know the first thing. They're just putting in a few keywords, doing a search, getting AI to put it together, and they're turning it in. And interestingly, there was a tweet from one professor yesterday. He said his student turned in an AI-generated paper. So he gave him the feedback and he said, I cannot accept this because it's AI generated. And he said, the student then turned in an AI generated apology to apologize and to ask if he can submit again.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, goodness. I mean, I guess the question that remains is that student, even the student was just AI at this point in time. But this is such a vast emerging and we can have a full conversation around this at a later stage. But it really is part of the challenge that we see right now We're moving so quickly into this autumn and winter future where education that is premised around summer, i.e., this is the textbook. I know what the textbook says. I know what the answer should be. This is what the answer must be that you must give me. And the natural inclination that's built into that summer context is the student does the work. But now we've got tools from autumn. and now we're doing something different, right? And so suddenly now this whole model of education and qualification and criteria and screening and measurement is completely turned on its head. And again, from that perspective, I guess it shifts and maybe even from a lecturing or education or professor, this professor point of view, perhaps they're actually not facing an autumn because another autumn is the AI, but the winter would then be the result of that. And again, you know nothing in this case, Professor John Snow. So
SPEAKER_00:again, testament to the interdisciplinary approach of the book. One of the things that's talked about a lot now is the impact of trauma. And it's usually discussed again in personal context. And, you know, Thank you very much. on psychosis in adult years so in the impact of childhood trauma on the probability of psychosis in later years but also she then tied it into the support structures that alleviate that pressure from a mental point of view and therefore could curb the onset of whatever mental illness and it was quite interesting because in that conversation we were then looking at what really is trauma what can we define is there a single definition of trauma and that's a completely different topic from a personal point of view but you pull this through now also into futures thinking because you then talk about how trauma can significantly impact how individuals plan for their future and again if we link that to how biases influence decision making even within the workplace even within business strategy how that can impact how one makes decisions it then becomes quite significant because anytime we think about trauma we think about how it impacts you on a personal level and you talk about this and you transpose it into the four seasons of course into summer autumn winter and spring and how trauma influences those let's talk about that
SPEAKER_02:yeah i mean you know Through the course of this book, I try to leave pieces of me. I read once that a great author leaves a piece of themselves in the work that they do. Now, I'm not even, I'm not even coming close to say that I'm a great author. I'm really an author myself. But in the book, I leave so many pieces by myself, but in chapter 10, it's really personal. And in chapter 10, I started the story around how my family is hereditary genetic disorder called spinocerebellar ataxia. And it's really, it's really personal. It's super duper rare. The chances of getting it is like one in a hundred thousand. So your chances of being hit with, by lightning is seven times greater. It's an incredibly small chance of you getting it. But there's this false family, you know, part of the family genetics that has come through. That has led through to obviously a lot of trauma being felt through, and trauma from the Greek word means to pierce. And so when you look at it from the point of view of the four future seasons, trauma then manifests itself like it did with myself, where you see this everywhere and you see trauma everywhere. And if that's your summer, like the analogy for businesses and other, this is what you see, this is what you always have. So you might be experiencing, we might have experienced some kind of trauma. You might have come from an abusive family, unfortunately, and please, this is terrible, and I hope I don't disturb too many emotions, but the fact of the matter is, if you come up with an abusive household, that's all you see. It might be verbal, it might be mental, it might be emotional, and that's what you expect your whole life. And a lot of the work and literature shows us this, that you start to seek out those patterns in your life subconsciously or unconsciously, right? subconsciously or consciously. And so that trauma is an extension of your summer view. It's your trauma that carries you way across. But we can also see this kind of trauma manifest itself in a different kind of way if you believe that you can find a way out of it. So it's not so much trauma itself from a summer perspective, but also how do we use the model to see And how do we apply this where it might be coming from a trauma perspective? And this doesn't have to be traumatic. It doesn't have to be as bad as anything in my family. It doesn't have to be PTSD driven. But it can be just around saying generally, what is the life that we have? And again, I'll use an example from before. Let's assume I'm a marketing professional. I've done this for the last 20 years. I've studied marketing at school. Sorry, at university. And so the next job must be marketing. And so that's an extension of some of my next job will be marketing or maybe digital marketing, but it's an extension of marketing. So that's an example of summer carrying through for personal. For winter, it might be if someone's going to do something completely different that they've never experienced before, they know they're going to be changed, but they can't name that. And a great example would be like, we're having a child. Let's assume that there's young parents or old parents, but this is the first child they're going to have. And so the child will be coming through and now suddenly all you know is there's going to be change. And you might know that you might have less sleep. You might know there's going to be problems across the board, but you don't actually know no one can prepare you for having a child. And so that's a winter future. Or alternatively, it might be autumn. It might be saying, you know, I'm relocating to a different country to take a new job because my spouse is. So I have to learn Spanish or Portuguese or Mandarin. So you know that, you know, you have to learn about the train system. You know, you have to learn about new kinds of food.
SPEAKER_01:Or
SPEAKER_02:maybe it's about not recognizing or rather recognizing as men that you're going through a bit of a midlife crisis. It's a spring future that you've missed. And you know, maybe you're not caught up in corporate and you're not doing something, but I really miss painting. for argument's sake. And maybe that's a future I need to bring back and find time for music and creative passions and all the rest. So, the model extends beautifully all the way from trauma, but even just to our personal life. And I think what's so powerful for me personally is when I, after this framework, and obviously you've been sitting with me for a while now, I can start identifying different areas of my life, whether it's summer, winter, autumn, spring, both personally and corporate, but it's beautiful because it gives the language. And what I hope is for listeners to actually then have this language to share with those around them, you know, And that's
SPEAKER_00:quite important by being able to capture it and give it a name or know what the name for this is. Then you know, okay, what follows this or how can I mitigate this or what are the opportunities in this? If you can't name it, It becomes very hard to build any kind of framework around it, I would think.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, one of the start list effects of that was I was in Russia giving a keynote to the place called Skolkovo. Skolkovo is like the Silicon Valley of Russia. And on stage, there were all these tech entrepreneurs talking about digital currency, talking about Bitcoin and all the rest. And they were so enthusiastic. You know, digital currency is amazing. It's going to change the world. Decentralization, you know, all that kind of great stuff that you hear through the narrative of why decentralization and digital currency is great. On the front row, they had all the government folks. And so the four panelists finished the conversation, and they were all high-fiving each other virtually in person. It was a great talk. I thought it was fantastic. And then the facilitator went to the first row, and they said to the politicians, what do you think about this? And the politicians were like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. That's never going to happen. We're regulated. People need banks to ensure there's no fraud. And it struck me in that moment, what had happened there was, The tech guys on stage were seeing the future as autumn, maybe winter, but the politicians were seeing it as really a summer. We've never had a digital thing. We don't need this. And that narrative, that inability to see the future from someone else, one, just because we can't name it. Again, the view is because most people see the future as an extension of the past and therefore everyone must surely see the same future that I do. So if I see there's a great opportunity of tech innovation or government safeguarding our citizens, why can't you see that? But even just by understand this language right now, we can start seeing the differences. And it runs true for corporates as well. R&D is likely, likely going to be in an autumn area. Sales will likely be in summer. You know, leadership in Exco might be in winter, but you might have your ops guys and your finance guys in spring. But we all talk about the future of the company, but it's four different futures. across five or six or 10 different organizations and the same thing with the family. So I'm so excited about this future that I have. I'm going to be, you know, as a couple, I'm so excited. We're moving to a new country. We're moving to China, to Beijing. And the one spouse is so excited because they have a personality of an autumn or a winter. The other spouse is so fearful because they come from a summer and a spring. And maybe there's some trauma involved in the back over there. But we speak about this future as if My future is going to be exactly the same as your future, but the lens is fundamentally different. The expectations are differently driven by the biases, trauma, and otherwise. And the model gives us a way to name these futures to allow other people around us to know what we're going through.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much for joining us. on in the book and you create a country Craigtopia and I love Craigtopia but let's bring it back home let's bring it to South Africa a lot of people again testament to the current situation that we're in let me not say a lot of people we saw what happened we saw with the applications for refugee status and all of that and there's been a lot of discourse around that and varying opinions and you can see how some people are coming in strong defense of that and there are a lot of people that are saying listen there's no problem with wanting to leave but leave on legitimate grounds and be honest and and all of that so you've been seeing a lot of discourse but that all stems from the current situation and our current situation our perception of that is different just as you were saying now you know my reality my perception my evaluation surely you can see this surely can't you see this that I see and our perceptions are all different some if you talk to somebody who's 90 their perception of where we are now is completely So let's look at South Africa. Let's look at which season or are we maybe. in several different seasons, depending on which sector you're in, which season are we in and can we plan? Should we plan? Should we ride the waves? These sounds like very mundane questions and sort of like very dark kind of questions. But, you know, we sit there and you look at what people are saying on social media and you really wonder, is it as bleak or is it as full of opportunity or is it, you know, just the same as any other country in the world? We just aren't exposed Yeah, I
SPEAKER_02:think it's... it's really difficult to, in fact, it's impossible to say where we are as a country as a whole, generally. I think the right answer would be to break it down into subsections in terms of where we are, perhaps from a different perspective. So I'll give you an example, right? Eskom, as I said, right now probably operates within a summer area, within a summer future of this is where we are, this is where we need to be. And contextualising becomes incredibly difficult. Craigtopia, as you mentioned, you know, from the name Craig, and you're right, I bring all these different areas of humour. Again, And there's a couple of Easter eggs, and we can chat about this at a different stage. But there's all these different Easter eggs that are brought into this. There's a few pieces over here that are so interesting. And again, using the narrative across the board, the example of the so-called refugees that have left to go overseas, and I don't want to make this a political conversation, but from what we're seeing over there is, for me, the greater narrative there around that using this model as a proxy is that's a spring future. And that spring future over there is we have created a South Africa that is not inclusive for everyone. And this isn't about minority to majority. It's not about right or wrong. It's basically about the future that we forget, fundamentally forgotten. And that future is a South Africa for all, right? It's the rainbow nation. I struggle how we came from the, it was such a beautiful analogy, rainbow nation, all the colors, we're all together when we make this beautiful rainbow. Whereas where we are now in 2025, I wouldn't be able to give you the strapline I wouldn't be able to give you the piece of what that is. And so I think for a lot of South Africans, We're facing the spring. What happened to the democratic processes that said we're going to have a country for all of us, that we're going to be moving us out of poverty? What happened to our belief and our alignment around the constitution, around fairness, around even global alignment of SDGs, around electricity and infrastructure? So I feel as in general, or as citizens perhaps, feel that we're facing the spring future, the rise of citizenship, of activism, of neighborhoods having to look after their own of us people putting in our own potholes. So I think there's a piece over there. I think there's a huge piece around organizations saying that we're in summer. And unfortunately, remember, summer is also not just those who see the future for what they are, but those who protect them. protect the status quo. And again, it might be politicians. And again, I don't want to make us a politician, a political player, but you can see how these players and actors who want to keep the status quo, they don't want change because of the inherent personal incentives slash biases for themselves. So I think there's a big section around that. We can have a look at policies and policies in the book as well. There's a whole section around regulation and GDPR and all this stuff around saying, well, what's the role of regulation and compliance, GRC? I think a lot of that world in South Africa is stuck within summer. We're still trying to create rules. There's also autumn, obviously, around emergent areas, around some of the best companies in South Africa or global players,
SPEAKER_01:the
SPEAKER_02:likes of the discoveries of this world or global players, or I sort of want to investigate global players. You know, we've got so many that play within that autumn area. But I think in aggregate, if I would have looked at it, again, There is no right and wrong. There is no South Africa, we must move out of season A into season B.
SPEAKER_01:What
SPEAKER_02:I will say, though, as a blanket statement, if you're prepared or more prepared for winter, you're more prepared for the other seasons. So, i.e., if we can create a simultaneous planning process for NDP of G20, where we say we're not stuck and we're not tied in for 10-year plans, yes, we must plan and we must have a goal, we must have an end North Star. But can we plan for our processes, our systems, our democratic values, our citizenship, our citizenry, triple P, all that kind of stuff, to be entrepreneurial, to be agile, to move as the times change because the world is changing and South Africa needs to change quicker. I think that's the best way. But by and large, I think citizens by and large are probably stuck within spring. They're yearning for what could have been and what may still be. But I think our processes are caught in summer and the pockets are on autumn. We should be playing and should be operating and changing the way we do things towards winter.
SPEAKER_00:So, Craig, as we end our discussion, I mentioned this in passing, but I went on to fourseasons, fourfutureseasons.com and I did the quiz. Let's talk about the quiz and how it can be a springboard for understanding which season you, your organization, the context within which you're applying this, where you are and how this can then influence your thinking going forward and your planning going forward. Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so, you know, it's a really short quiz. It's three minutes. It's 10 questions, multiple choice. And I grew up and I always love those multiple choice quizzes, you know, specifically perhaps the ones that are a little bit more in depth with a little bit of academic stuff. So, you know, the Myers-Briggs of this world, the Enneagrams of this world. And I know some folks enjoy like, you know, what kind of cookie are you?
UNKNOWN:What kind of clothing would you wear?
SPEAKER_02:That's cool. And I think that's fun and interesting. And I guess my angle was, can I give a very short, that's based in science, but a lens of also how you prefer to work? And so you take this really short quiz and it pops out, you know, summer, autumn, winter, spring. You're this person. Now, when I say you're this person, that's probably your majority that you're inclined to be. There's no reason why yourself and several can't be a winter, strong winter, but maybe equally strong autumn. And elements and dashes are a reflection. In fact, I suspect all of us are. There's a few that are only one area. But the reason why I did that is one is to really understand what is your preferred working style and the kind of person that you are. Because like the natural seasons, we need all seasons for things to thrive. If you think of it as like a very basic premise, and I speak about this in the book, you know, the cycles of growth, of a tree growing, plants, crops, whatever you want to call it. We have to have four seasons to have a great crop season. We have to have four seasons to have a great team, whether it's a family unit or whether it's a business unit. And so part of this is about understanding what season are you as an individual? And therefore, what are we as a collective, as a team? Because we need people who can think about the future, who anticipate that, who are the autumns. We want people who move very quickly, who are able to thrive in the chaos of the winter. We need people who are reflective and say, you know, we need to remember what we used to do, what we can learn from the past. We also need folks from summer to say, how do we optimize what we have? And so mixtures of teams also need to ensure that you reflect all four seasons. And again, it's just a lovely roadmap to understand you as an individual because it's also placed around personal relationships. If you're a winter person right now and you're always on the go, you're looking at things and I'm a spring and I'm your partner or I'm a friend, you're probably a little bit frustrated with me because you say, oh, you know, let's go do this. I want to go to Uruguay. And I'm like, well, you know, let me just have a look at first, reflect first and see what it's like. Let me do the research. And I'm like, no, but Uruguay is incredible. It's just opened up. And, you know, they're having this great event. They've got a wonderful festival over there. And someone who's not like that because there may be a summer, maybe there's spring, say, you know, we have to investigate this. We have to understand this. Maybe you're saying, you know, you know what you should do? We should take the most amazing triple fly ABCD, but there are some that are optimized. I go, no, we should take this route. It's the most efficient. And you start seeing that you might be batting heads because it's driven by your season. But again, having the language for this is so important. So it's a free tool, really fun, very interesting. And I just hope it sparks conversations. It's completely free. And also, there's a course online that you can go through and you can do this season. So if you can't buy the book, whether because it's not available to you or it's a little bit expensive, you can do the free online course which explains the seasons to you. And that's one of my hopes as well through this body of work is this is not a commercial thing. Yes, it has to cover the cost, but it's all about saying how do I expose this framework to get people to understand the future differently? In the book, I make a very strong point. The future belongs to everyone. And so if I can make this thinking mainstream and out there and free, so be it. And so that's the reason for both the quiz, the online learning and so on and so
SPEAKER_00:forth. Craig, thank you so much for the book. Thank you for the insights. Thank you for the way in which you've written the book because it makes it, you remember they used to have Trivial Pursuit. They used to have Trivial Pursuit. They used to have that in the back of the newspaper. And had I had this book in my youth with all the information and the knowledge that's packed into this book, I would have been a master of trivial pursuit look I've learned so much but one thing that keeps on bowling me over is I finally know why it's a QWERTY keyboard I cannot get over it I cannot get over that but thank you so much for this book and also again for making it it's really practical it's really without it saying step one step two step three step four if you've gone through the book you sort of have a practical handbook as to how to manage and manage work within plan within live within leverage the strengths and weaknesses of each season and it's really really brilliant and again I keep on harping on this it's very interdisciplinary it can be transposed into your personal context as well so it's really really beautiful and looking at again the insights that you draw from from your own personal experience and from your own studies and from research and you can see how much work hard work and passion went into this book so thank you very very much it really does feel like one of the walks away with the peace of your soul because you can feel the passion oozing from the pages so thank you so much for this brilliant book
SPEAKER_02:Thank you so much for the comments. I really appreciate it. I know it can be a heavy read, and I really do appreciate, A, the fact you've gone through the book so thoroughly with stickies and highlights and notes everywhere, and thank you also so much for having me on your show. I really appreciate it, and thank you for using the platform to share this thinking, I think. And again, it's just not a model for corporates. I would strongly push the angle to say, you know, get this book to think about how you can plan better for the future for you personally. And so again, thank you to yourself and the team behind the scenes. I know often they're not getting thanked, but thank you so much to all of you. I've really appreciated it. And I hope we can all create better futures in all seasons of our lives together. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:And thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast. Remember, you can like, rate, and share this podcast on the channel you're listening on.
