Jack Uldrich: Business as Unusual

We talk to Jack Uldrich, a global futurist and the author of thirteen books, including many award-winning bestsellers. He is a frequent speaker on technology, change management and leadership and has addressed hundreds of corporations, associations and not-for-profit organizations on five continents.We talk to him about his book: 'Business as Unusual', about believing the unbelievable, thinking about the unthinkable, listening to the unconventional, and questioning the unquestionable.

00:35 Insights & Takeaways
10:00 Interview

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Book on Amazon: here
Author website: here

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Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:15

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch.

Troy Norcross: 0:21

And I'm Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 0:23

and we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast.

Troy Norcross: 0:26

We take from the 1000s of business books out there and test the author's ideas by comparing them to real world challenges. With over 40 years or projects between us, we've got quite a bit to compare against. We give you the condensed takeaways followed by an interview with the author's

Marcus Kirsch: 0:41

we know you want actions, not theories and his actions that we want to help shape because that's what the wicked podcast is all about helping you to become a wicked company.

Troy Norcross: 0:52

Jingle bells, jingle bells, well, maybe it was Jingle Bells. It was Jingle Bells when we recorded this, but it's not Jingle Bells anymore. Is it?

Marcus Kirsch: 1:04

Now well, not when we go live, but it's now the What is it? 20 20/21 I think

Troy Norcross: 1:10

for more sleeps until Christmas.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:12

That's Hey. Yeah. and former former five Muslims to my birthday.

Unknown: 1:18

Ah,

Troy Norcross: 1:20

that's a bigger important. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, enough about Christmas enough about your birthday. You know, people do care about that. But not today. Who are we talking to?

Marcus Kirsch: 1:28

Yeah, let's talk about books. So today, we have Chuck Aldrich, with us. And his book business is unusual, a very quick read, but a very quotable read with a lot of interesting insights around, you know, new mindsets and sort of things we should consider. But before I dive into my side of things, what did you take away from it? What kind of actions would you propose to people?

Troy Norcross: 1:52

So I think one of my favourite questions I got to ask him was okay, yes, the rate of change is increasing. And the rate of change is exponential and getting worse. But people are not necessarily willing to kind of go along at the same rate. He said, Yes, technology is changing, lots of changes happening, but people aren't. So we need to find the right way to bring people along for the ride. He also made a really interesting insight when he said, that change used to be considered to be progress and change is not necessarily considered progress. So in order for leaders to help communities, help customers help teams, even have more senior leadership understand this rate of change is to bring it back and make it real, put it in the right framing on how it's going to benefit everyone and move in the right direction. The other one was, with the ocean of information that's coming in, whether through social media, digital channels, audio channels, you know, podcasts or vlog cast like ours, how do you deal with that? And he said, leaders should have and I agree with that completely, a 15 minute closed door policy just to contemplate and to think, to deal with their poverty of attention. So I think those were two really good insights, and I would be more than happy to recommend to my clients, but what about you?

Marcus Kirsch: 3:17

Well, Oh, that sounds like a great action. Should we take 15 minutes? I would say nothing and just have everyone think of it? Haha, No, I'm joking. But I think there's something where I, what I took away is an I think I might, for the first time disagree with you kindly on on one aspect around, you know, change is not progress. I think there's some progress in change and insights and learning iteratively every day. So I think, you know, I would I would like to rather describe it. As you know, every day we learn something, and we do every day, we do something different because as human beings who always do that, and I think organisations often prevent us from doing so. And I think therefore, we might become more human centric companies and organisations just by acknowledging that, you know what, let's improve something every day. Let's let's try something a little bit every day. That gets me down to my main insight with which is, so he. So Kota phases. Two, if you have 14 new platforms, you're not gonna have 14 new opportunities in business. Yeah, a few million because of the exponential intertwine networking that you can do between those platforms. And he described it with Uber, of using, you know, cloud and mobile phone and commoditizing people's cars. So there's a lot of different things that came together. And, you know, one of those ways to bring this together was Uber. So you know, if you think about it, you might have had 1000 permutations or 1000 options there to test and probably a lot of people in some companies actually tried that. Because I remember companies like Halo, which was a earlier than Uber cab company that sort of tried it in same way and wasn't quite right and failed. And it was just another experiment. So for me, it's really that if you look at it and you imagine as a business Leader, which is probably very relatable say, there's a million things out there to do, which ones are the ones that make us better? Well, you better start experimenting, and experiment by small, incremental, lots of things, trying to do 1000 a month. And don't go as far as building everything, you know, just try it in different ways. So that for me is the that inside where when you really look at the numbers, and you say, look, there are a million things for you to test as an organisation then you have to start experimenting, there's just no other other way and other sustainable way into the future to try this. And I think that's the change it to navigate your way into the wicked problem where you're positioned as a as a company and say, this is where we said, this is what we're solving. These are the things and then we try but more see how we can ingrain ourselves better and better into this into this uncertainty and make a few things right and more so and that that's what customer will approve. So start experimenting and set yourself up for that is my definite inside there.

Troy Norcross: 6:01

Marcus, I hear the chorus in the background. They're gonna start singing my favourite Christmas song. Do you know my favourite Christmas song?

Marcus Kirsch: 6:09

I don't know that yet. Please tell me.

Troy Norcross: 6:11

Grandma got run over by a reindeer. And I'm waiting for them to start playing back. This grandma got run over walking off from our house Christmas Eve. And this is not a singing show. So why don't we go to the interview? Yeah,

Marcus Kirsch: 6:27

let's get let's think about grandma. Let's. Let's go to the interview please. Hello, we want Today we're here with jack eldritch. Hello, jack. And thank you for joining us.

Jack Uldritch: 6:44

Thanks for having me.

Marcus Kirsch: 6:46

So as usual, we'd like to start at the top which means we'd like to know. Please tell us a bit more about who you are jack and why you wrote the book.

Jack Uldritch: 6:55

Yeah, I'm a futurist. In the UK. We're known as futurologists. But from my perspective, what what I do is I like to use the acronym Aha. And what is the answer is awareness, humility and action, I make people aware of how fast the world is changing. Next, we all need humility to the idea that what served us well, yesterday might not work in the future. But the only way to predict the future is to create it ourselves. And to do that we have to take action. So that's the final a in the acronym, but I wrote the book because it is not one particular technological trend, cultural, political, that is the greatest change out there. It is the rate of change itself. It is accelerated in many cases, it's growing exponentially. And that's really what I wanted to wake readers up to is to that reality.

Marcus Kirsch: 7:47

It's great. Yeah. Well, I think this year, we've seen more change than usual. And a lot of change has happened without us maybe wanting to do it. And I think in our experience in our work, we often see that it's really hard for organisations, especially bigger ones to change, shift their mindset and do something different. So, you know, so by experience, organisations don't change easily. However, this year, we saw a bit of a different kind of pace. So businesses can change quickly when needed. But in your experience, or why do you think, you know, why does it take half a society to crash for business to change at the pace? There is so at places this year?

Jack Uldritch: 8:29

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that there's a wonderful quote from john Maynard Keynes and years ago, he said, society tells us it is better to fail conventionally than to succeed. unconventionally, I want you to think about that quote, again, we most people would rather fail conventionally doing what they've always done than risk taking, doing something new. And the reason I think that is it, it's almost an evolutionary reason. I mean, in the past, the world has always been changing, but the rate of change was quite slow. And so caution was actually rewarded. The big paradigm shift today is that the rate of change is now accelerating and caution doing what you've always done is actually going to get punished. And so this really requires people to embrace the UN's what I call is like, explore the unknown, embrace uncertainty, learn how to unlearn get comfortable being uncomfortable. But from my perspective, it's almost an evolutionary reason why people don't change quickly.

Troy Norcross: 9:34

And there was another quote that said, only in a crisis, real or imagined, can real change occur. And it's in those moments, it's the ideas that are lying around which get which get adopted. How do you see that kind of playing out with regard to the rate of change?

Jack Uldritch: 9:51

Yeah, well, I guess if I could tie it back to what we've seen in in the pandemic. I mean, one of the great lessons Is that we can change a lot faster than people expect. I mean, how fast we transition to remote working to online education to telemedicine. And e commerce is actually, to me, this is one of the most powerful statistics coming out of the pandemic is that e commerce was already a trend. It was growing, it's been growing for the last 10 years. But in the first two full months of the pandemic, April in May, e commerce grew as much in those two months, as it had in the last 10 years. I mean, that is to me, remarkable. And so the lesson that I take is, there's all of this opportunity inherent in change. But again, most people don't want to change because they want to keep doing what they've always done.

Marcus Kirsch: 10:51

Yeah, and I think even when we then look at not just the change that actually has been happening, or still is also happening this year, it also seems that a lot of times changes often try to, to to be applied around on delivery. When you look at a leadership level, there's often similar things sticking around for longer, which have often has to do with either politics or sometimes, you know, the business model being being hard to be let go. But, so So, but he says we need to have change that happens on every level, right? And correct me if I'm wrong of what what your notion to what set it up. But for that for leadership itself? Is there something we can do? or what have you seen around mindset change in leadership? And what can be done? And how that can be be addressed? A bit more appropriately?

Jack Uldritch: 11:47

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that leaders can do is embrace this idea that they don't have to have the answer, I think the world is changing so fast on so many different fronts, and many of these trends are converging with one another in unexpected ways, and then leading to social, cultural, political economic change, that it is impossible for anyone to have the answer as to what the future holds. But it is incumbent upon leaders to ask better questions about the future. And I think what leaders can then do within their organisation is actually have some humility, and acknowledge they don't have the answer, but to say, look, it's incumbent upon all of us to figure out, are we asking the best question and if not the best question, because we're never entirely sure that is the best question, at least a better question. I think if you look at all of the businesses that went bankrupt in the last decade, and I like to just start with the letter B, blockbuster borders, BlackBerry, they were all led by smart people with well motivated teams and C suites. But they were answering the wrong question. They didn't understand either how their customer was changing how their business model was changing, how their competitors were shifting, or how technology was shifting. And sometimes it was a combination of those. And so I think if they would have spent more time with questions, they would have been better off. The next part of this is everyone says they want to be an innovative company, and they want to create an innovative culture. That's wonderful. But innovation by its very nature entails risk and risk by its very nature entails failure at some level, not everything is going to work. And so I think the next important thing for leaders to do is really reframe failure, not as something bad, but as a learning mechanism. And I guess I have a lot of examples about this, but I'll just stop talking. What will keep asking questions.

Troy Norcross: 13:50

I mean, I think it's a real common theme, this whole idea of reframing what it means not to succeed. Is it failure? Is it learning, you know, is it experience? What is it? And part of that is also setting expectations?

Jack Uldritch: 14:06

Yeah, so could i. So the story I wanted to tell is, and I just came across this in an article last week, so I don't include it. In my book. 10 years ago, the United States government, President Obama commissioned a Blue Ribbon Commission to study what would it take to get us back to the moon? And the question then focused on what would it cost to create heavy left rockets and this Blue Ribbon Commission said, What's going to take 12 years and $36 billion? Fair enough. However, Ilan Musk, an entrepreneur did it in six years at a cost of $1 billion. I want to just break that down. So a single company individual did it 50% faster at a fraction of the cost, but the story and maybe you saw this Ilan Moscow, a number of his Falcon rockets have exploded and there was one recently and of course he doesn't like That, but he actually recognises that that's the price of innovation. And he says, look, that wasn't a failure. We have to learn from this. But it's by learning from his mistakes that he's been able to drive down the cost. And so I think that leaders of the future actually have to embrace that sort of mentality that the price of doing business in many cases is failure, and you have to embrace that. And it's really uncomfortable thing to do. And as I say, in my book, yet, the riskiest thing to do in today's rapidly changing environment is play it safe, do what you've always done, the safest thing to do is to take some risk, I'm not just saying risk for the sake of risk, be strategic, be thoughtful about it. But you have to iterate, experiment and fail your way into the future.

Troy Norcross: 15:51

So one of the one of the things that I'm really interested in, in this whole kind of failure thing is short term versus long term. So in that really, really good example of what Elon Musk was able to do. He had a long term kind of view of things. I mean, a lot of publicly traded corporations, and even some privately held corporations are focused on the next quarter's numbers, that's the only thing they can think about. And if they're going to hit the numbers, they're going to have to play a tape. Because if they make a mistake, if they take a risk, and it doesn't work, it might be 234 quarters before they can get kind of back on track. How can people in leadership, encourage their shareholders, their teams, their other leadership, to take more of a long term horizon in looking at things I,

Jack Uldritch: 16:42

I did not include this example, in my book, I just came across it about four weeks ago, the CEO of Daimler just said, in the next five years, we have to get smaller. Now you would think that that quote, would actually send investors fleeing for the doors, but it was so unusual. I'm like, what, what does he mean? And he said, Look, the world is moving towards electrification of automobiles, it's just a reality that an internal combustion automobile requires 1200 parts electric vehicle about 200. So we're actually going to need fewer workers. But he was taking a long term perspective, he said, like, this is a really good thing, because electrification, if we're a leader in this is going to position us very, very well, for the long term. And so from my perspective, that That, to me is what business leaders need to be doing, they need to be taking a good hard look at these long term trends. And if necessary, get smaller, that one of the unusual things that business leaders are going to have to embrace is that quarterly success is not as important as survivability, the long term goal is to survive. And if you need to get smaller, to do that, that's what you have to do, you might have to get into an entirely new business, you might have to fundamentally change your business model, you might have to go after entirely new markets and entirely new customers. And I think if you actually look at the companies that have been around for a really long time, they've always taken a long term perspective.

Marcus Kirsch: 18:21

And I think, if we stick around the failure things So apart from that, we see it from a trend, you know, we had one or two conversations, if not more, or some of the episodes on, you know, doing maybe need another language, because if you're looking at design thinking and sanity, other human centred research that looks at problems and says, right, if we're looking at wicked problems, we need to understand the problem better to understand the problem better, we have to become better learning organisations, in order to do that. Yeah, we need to be able to fail, but actually, every failure is finding something that potentially doesn't work, and actually, therefore shows us where we need to look next. So there's some value in all of these. But the other part, and I found that really, really great. And then as a quote, in your book, you're talking about, I think, you know, if there's 14 new platforms, tomorrow, today, you're not gonna have 14 more options to explore, you're gonna have like, a few million or something because everything's exponential, right? So if you have that, then you'll have to try a lot of things, let's say, you know, a million things over the next 10 years, because you're gonna have to figure out which things are for you in which things sort of you where you will end up as a positioning after those 10 years because you will wiggle your way through it. And I find it really, really a great quote. So So tell us a bit more about these these exponential aspects. I think one is about the failure. But you also talk a bit about, you know that to to apply 10 times of success to the business, which is sounding a lot like these exponential aspects as well. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Yeah, I

Jack Uldritch: 19:56

actually want to go back to the first part of your question. It's the convergence of all of these technologies, that there are 14 different and probably even more sort of technological platforms, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, 3d printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, blockchain technology. And so I think the best way to understand this is through stories and analogies. And I point this out in my book. I think that 15 years ago, most people, the idea of strangers giving strangers rides in their car would have seemed insane. Most of us in the US at least were grown up, our mothers told us never get into a car with a stranger. Well, today, Uber and Lyft are powerful platforms. But if you really sort of unpack what made Uber and Lyft successful, it was a convergence of three technologies. It was GPS, satellite technology, converging with the smartphone technology, converging with cloud computing, and they were able to take those three to create a platform that allowed people to essentially commoditize their automobiles and for people to find writers in them. And I think the challenge of the future is going to be this exact same thing, it is going to be a convergence of a lot of different technologies. And let me just give you a concrete specific example of this. A year ago, two years ago, I was out at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, and Amazon announced their new smart toilet, and people poo pooed. The idea they said, Who needs a toilet that just flushes itself without you having to touch the handle? Well, in today's world of the pandemic, suddenly that product looks a little more attractive. But I say to my readers, and my clients, I go, that's not their long term goal. My guess is and I don't have inside knowledge of this. They're going to put sensor technology into those toilets. And when you and I do our business in the morning, there are biomarkers in our urine in our stool that tell us that we might be about to get sick that we might have Coronavirus that we might be pre diabetic, that we might even have a particular type of cancer, they are going to figure out how to use the toilet to make money keeping you and AI healthy in the first place. And it is a convergence of the toilet sensor technology, artificial intelligence and 5g technology that allow that new crazy business model to emerge. And this is where business leaders really need to start thinking, unusual. I mean, play around with the convergence of these technologies. And I'll tell you, the few that I think we absolutely should be putting on your radar screen our artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, 5g and the Internet of Things. We can put sensors virtually anywhere. Artificial Intelligence is going to transform every industry blockchain if you don't know what it is start doing your homework on this. It is an incredibly disruptive technology. And it has a hell of a lot more to do with the world than just Bitcoin and digital crypto currencies, that the convergence of those technologies, I think are going to transform every industry and business model. And it's both frightening and incredibly exciting.

Troy Norcross: 23:14

Yeah, I've been doing blockchain consultancy for the last three years. So you have Yes. So it's looking at the blockchain and the convergence of AI and 5g and IoT and blockchain. You know, I couldn't agree with you. I couldn't agree with you more.

Jack Uldritch: 23:29

Yeah, I just think some of the things that it's going to allow in real estate transactions, fractional ownership, the idea that in the near future, renewable energy is going to continue to drop in price in not too distant future, I think I'm going to be producing my own energy. But if I have excess energy using blockchain technology, I might be able to sell it to my next door neighbour, or I might be able to gift it to a nonprofit, in my community via blockchain technology, this is where it's gonna get really disruptive. And so I'm sure you've had experts who are a lot more knowledgeable than I am on this, but I'm really excited. But it does require today's business leaders to begin thinking and preparing for a very unusual future.

Troy Norcross: 24:09

It does require them to kind of get ready for it. So we're always happy when people like you kind of put blockchain out there is something that they should kind of get stuck into. Yeah, I've got a different question. But it's one of those sort of related questions. There are so many things that leaders should be paying attention to so many different trends and emerging technologies. And there's practically an ocean of information coming at us from all the different media channels, whether it's broadcast television, Netflix, you know, social media, your or podcasting, and video blogs, like we're doing now. There's, as you put in the book, a poverty of attention. There's only so much energy that I can put into critical thinking. What can business leaders do to filter this flood of information and decide where to apply their limited resource of critical Thinking? Yeah, that's

Jack Uldritch: 25:01

a wonderful question. So the full quote, I think it comes from Julian Simon, who is an economist, he said, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. And this really hit home to me. I'm sure you're familiar with it. It was written 10 years ago, but it's Nassim Talbots book, a black swan. And the way he framed it up is, you know what a wealth of information is. It's when you're watching a financial news network, and they've got the ticker symbols, and they've got five Talking Heads, and they're all blabbering on about where the stock market is going. And his advice was, turn that shit off, just turn the volume down, that you're not getting any new information, what you can do then and and I like this as a metaphor for silence and thinking. It is absolutely incredible or imperative that today's business leaders take time to have what I call a closed door policy, close your door and just think I mean, read about one or two things. We're just talking about blockchain. If you don't know what blockchain is, do a Google search and put blockchain and your industry in it and see what articles come up, read one or two of those articles. And then think about what that might mean, for your business, your business model? Who are the people who are working on it? Are there competitors, you need to be aware of, might there be an innovative partner that you want to reach out to, and begin exploring how it might help you transform your business? Might there be a small pilot project you want to undertake, but the way and I speak so much on technological change, and after I'm done with my presentations, the audience feels as though I've opened up a fire hose on them, it feels like all of this change is coming at them simultaneously, which in some sense it is. But in silence, you can take a breath and understand this. And this is one I love paradoxes. When is the future created? By its very nature, the future can only be created in the present. So business leaders have to step back. Think, try and spend some time on asking a better question, you know, what is? Is it a threat? Is it an opportunity as a change in business? What's the best question? Then once you feel as though you found that best question, then begin focusing on some potential actions to address your question? So as I always say, I sum it up in seven words, as a leader, give up on answers, stick with questions. That's your primary responsibility. But to do that, you need to think and you need silence to do that.

Marcus Kirsch: 27:46

Yeah, I think that rings really well with sort of my background in design thinking and service design, because that does so much in my work that I do that actually just goes back to looking at the problem and figuring out if someone describes a problem in the right way, because it's the first step towards the solution. It's also should be your main focus, you know, to find out more about, what problem are you actually looking at? And what part of that problem do you want to help solve as an organisation? What's your purpose here? I think a lot of companies seem to miss stepping actually all the way back and going Hang on a second most probably wanted to solve in the first place, because not all this other stuff is around how can we do this differently? And in that, in that case, a bit, maybe a bit of a contentious question, but I like to ask, more often than not, is, if there are so many things out there. There's a lot of technology things out there. But we know we have to solve people's problems. And there's a lot of specialists out there that are very comfortable within their own vertical. And as you said previously, you know, things are exponential. It's not just about building these platforms, and using those tools in the right way to enable things but actually, interconnecting them and through interconnection, like with the example of Uber, that's where the next things are that were progresses. So therefore do we need How much do we really still need specialists that are looking at these very vertical things? And how much do we need maybe, jack of all trades? Are these connector types of people that think differently in this kind of lit in these liminal spaces?

Jack Uldritch: 29:24

Yeah. It's another wonderful question. And one of the things that I've really come to learn over the last 20 years working in this field is that there are so many incredibly bright, bright, intelligent people. But what's the one thing really smart people don't know? Well, they don't know what they don't know. And, I mean, that sounds a little flippant and obvious, but it is why they all miss the future. And look, I'm not pointing fingers. I actually direct this back on myself, I've been in this field, as I said, for 20 years, and 20 years ago, some of the things that I was thinking would happen, or were definitely shouldn't, they didn't happen. And I'm like, rather than try and dismiss it, I said to myself, where was I wrong? Where did I have an assumption of bias? How do I then correct that. And the reason you hear me write so much more in the book about humility is I've had to learn that lesson, the hard way that there are a lot of things that I simply wasn't aware of, I didn't know about, but I didn't take that into consideration. And so I think we can't afford to simply listen to experts. Or if we do, let's listen to those who truly demonstrate humility, who have an open mind, who are willing to listen to different and divergent voices, and give those voices a seat at the table. And that I kind of like that metaphor, a seat at the table, this does not mean that you have to always listen to these different or you don't always have to heed what these different voices are saying, but you do have to listen to them, because they're gonna challenge your assumptions, they might provide you an insight, they might show you where your knowledge is deficient. And I don't include this in the book, but I don't know how you operate with your viewers. But years ago, I developed something I called it my unlearning curve. And it's 25 questions that I constantly asked myself around this idea of challenging my assumptions, recognising what I don't know listening to different voices, and I'd be happy to share it with you. And you could push it out to do your viewership as well.

Troy Norcross: 31:53

And we'd be more than happy to include that in the show notes. It's exactly the kind of content that our, our viewership and our listeners love to go to get access to, because we keep promising them and we want to deliver on actionable insights. And those kind of tools are great. Okay, I've got one kind of wrap up question. You started at the beginning of the show, talking about the rate of change is what you're trying to pass along to leaders that it's, it's not slowing down, the rate of change is, is speeding up. And I'm going to get a little bit political, we'll see if we can navigate through it. If you look at what's happening in America, they wanted to go back to the seven days, if you look at what happened with Brexit, kind of going back to the 80s. And the general feeling is the public wasn't necessarily a okay with all of this change, be didn't necessarily say, well, there was some change, it didn't necessarily have a direct benefit to me. And I'd really rather go back. And there's some people, I'm gonna go really out on a limb here, there was an article in The Guardian that say that David Cameron pushing through gay marriage in the UK, was before the public was ready for it. And as a result, I put the referendum to the public in order to get the Tory party to come back from from you, Kip. I mean, this whole rate of change is happening. And yet the public, our customers, our team members may not be ready for it. How is leaders? Do we kind of say whether you're liking it or not? It's happening?

Jack Uldritch: 33:24

Yeah, I will tell you that, you know, I talk about exponential change. But the one thing that is not changing exponentially is people, humans, we just don't change that rapidly. And the way I've framed it recently is 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, change was almost universally viewed as progress. But now, change is not viewed as progress. And that frightens a lot of people. And I think, here's, here's a counter trend. And it's it's one that I'm trying to spend more time thinking about myself, as I've had to step out of just this technological prism. And one of the really powerful trends I see out there is people's clamouring for community. And I spent a year at Durham University up in northern England and I'd love to go into a pubs but and what I like going to in the US are micro breweries and 20 years ago, I don't think if I was asked to predict the future of the beer industry, I probably would have said, Oh, the big guys are just going to get bigger. They're going to get economies of scale and the world's going to be controlled by Anheuser Busch, Miller, Heineken, Corona, whatever. I wouldn't have been predicting the extraordinary growth of the microbrewery industry and what I was missing was one really good products high quality but it is People like the sense of community, they like supporting businesses in their community. And I think one of the challenges for leaders is to say, Look, how do we begin leveraging technology to really create a sense of community. And this is where I want to tie it back to it your work on blockchain. blockchain to me 100 years ago, at least in the US cooperatives were a very powerful business model. They helped farmers, they helped bring electrification and blockchain as a way to begin allowing communities to reorient themselves to truly human values. I mean, I think the thing that's ultimately going to disrupt the disruptors, the Amazons of the world is blockchain technology. And so I think the other thing to say on this front is, when you think about the future, let's so many people have just this dystopian view of the future. It's black mirror, it's, you know, everyone has this dystopian view. From my perspective, technology's ability to begin addressing climate change, renewable energy, transportation, affordable housing, and preventative health care, are all real. And that is an incredibly beautiful and powerful future. But we have to recognise the reason we're doing that is we want to help people, real people, and we want to leave a better world for our grand curl children and our great great, great grandchildren, I would argue, so I'm not sure if I answered your question. Or if I was just rambling there,

Troy Norcross: 36:44

I think it's a really, really a good answer. And I appreciate you putting effort into it. And I think the rate of change will continue. People are not necessarily ready for it. But we can look as leaders to help people move along with it, and frame it correctly. And with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Marcus. So you were going to say, Yeah, I

Jack Uldritch: 37:04

guess I could just say one thing. The reason I'm really optimistic about the future is, as long as there are problems, and there are no shortage of wicked problems in this world, there are going to be opportunities. And we have an opportunity to leverage business to address many of those shortcomings. It might not be the way we've always done it. If I could just leave one recommendation for you try and get Kate rau worth the author of donut economics on your programme. She is fundamentally rethinking economics in a way that is truly sustainable, not just for the short term, but for the long term. And I think it's a real trend. That leaves me optimistic about business's role in creating a better world for all of us, but doing it within the constraints of the planet. Rule.

Troy Norcross: 37:51

Definitely that recommendation. Thank you.

Marcus Kirsch: 37:54

Yeah, thank you. So and I think it's a great sort of hopeful conversation to wrap up on and yeah, and in common and quickly under and donut economics. I think, you know, we had in our third episode of friend Graham Boyd, who's just launched his book with a brand new cover and everything that we had on a few months ago, and he's talking as well about new purposes and new models for for organisations. So I think it's a great it's a great way to finish this interview. It's the last episode we're recording still in 2020. So and it will go live it will already be 2021 which also explains choice headgear today. So jack, thank you so much for your time for the amazing insights book is so quotable. It's brilliant. And, and, and thank you for being with us.

Jack Uldritch: 38:48

It was a real pleasure. Thank you and Happy New Year.

Troy Norcross: 38:50

Thank you. You've been listening to the wicked podcast with CO hosts Marcus Kirsch and me Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 39:00

please subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 39:13

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked n beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm