Prepare to be whisked away on an insightful journey with Leila McKenzie-Delis, as I sit with the unparalleled Marc Coleman of Unleash. Together, we dissect the exhilarating evolution of the HR events industry and the nuanced art of fostering indispensable human connections in today's digital world. From Marc's unexpected shift from science to HR, to the extraordinary challenges and triumphs of a remote-first events business, his story is one of resilience and innovation amid the ever-changing corporate landscape.
As the conversation plunges into the metamorphosis of HR, feel the pulse of a sector once confined to the background now catapulting to the forefront of strategic business change. You'll be gripped by tales of technological revolution and how employee empowerment has reshaped the corporate environment, culminating in an era where Chief Human Resources Officers are the new architects of workplace culture and connectivity. Our discussion pinpoints pivotal moments, like our experience at a Chelsea football club event, that crystallize the importance of purpose-driven workplaces in retaining top-tier talent across generational divides.
Rounding out this deep dive, we explore the impending 2025 milestone set to herald a new era of global advancement and the sheer force of staying ahead in the leadership game. Discover the 'impact of inaction' philosophy—how inertia in the face of change can be the silent saboteur of success. We wrap up with a glimpse into the upcoming Las Vegas event, with its rich promise of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), laying the blueprint for the future of work. Join us for these riveting insights that are bound to embolden and inspire HR aficionados and leaders alike.
🎧 Check our podcast audio here: www.dialglobal.org/podcast
📱 Join our Membership to access our DIAL Global Community Network app here: www.dialglobal.org/community
📩 Contact us at hello@dialglobal.org or www.dialglobal.org/contact-us
🌐 Visit us on www.dialglobal.org
Prepare to be whisked away on an insightful journey with Leila McKenzie-Delis, as I sit with the unparalleled Marc Coleman of Unleash. Together, we dissect the exhilarating evolution of the HR events industry and the nuanced art of fostering indispensable human connections in today's digital world. From Marc's unexpected shift from science to HR, to the extraordinary challenges and triumphs of a remote-first events business, his story is one of resilience and innovation amid the ever-changing corporate landscape.
As the conversation plunges into the metamorphosis of HR, feel the pulse of a sector once confined to the background now catapulting to the forefront of strategic business change. You'll be gripped by tales of technological revolution and how employee empowerment has reshaped the corporate environment, culminating in an era where Chief Human Resources Officers are the new architects of workplace culture and connectivity. Our discussion pinpoints pivotal moments, like our experience at a Chelsea football club event, that crystallize the importance of purpose-driven workplaces in retaining top-tier talent across generational divides.
Rounding out this deep dive, we explore the impending 2025 milestone set to herald a new era of global advancement and the sheer force of staying ahead in the leadership game. Discover the 'impact of inaction' philosophy—how inertia in the face of change can be the silent saboteur of success. We wrap up with a glimpse into the upcoming Las Vegas event, with its rich promise of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), laying the blueprint for the future of work. Join us for these riveting insights that are bound to embolden and inspire HR aficionados and leaders alike.
🎧 Check our podcast audio here: www.dialglobal.org/podcast
📱 Join our Membership to access our DIAL Global Community Network app here: www.dialglobal.org/community
📩 Contact us at hello@dialglobal.org or www.dialglobal.org/contact-us
🌐 Visit us on www.dialglobal.org
Hello, my name is Layla McKenzie-Dellis, Founder and CEO of Dialglobal, and you are watching the CEO Activist podcast. We decided to start this podcast because we wanted to do something really special and really unique and something that involved the modern CEO, before thinking, innovative CEO of the current day times that really cares about putting the S in ESG and utilising diversity as a commercial lever with which to drive change for economic growth and long-term prosperity. Stay tuned because we have got some epic guests on the show Today. I'm joined by Mark Coleman, founder and CEO of Unleash. Mark is leading the charge when it comes to revolutionising human resources and the industry, when it comes to community technology, future trends and AI, so would love to kind of get into things and perhaps even unpick some of the how did it all happen? Because you know you really are revolutionising the way the human resources, the industry, comes together through community, with tech, with AI, and navigating what is, you know, not only a geopolitically complex landscape, but one that is in such a hot area, so to speak.
Speaker 2:So, to go back on the early days of it, I'm a foreign researcher, so I'm a scientist by trade. My education is microbiology and biochemistry, which I think sets you up for the basics of event management, because I don't think there was any event management courses or did not know it existed as a discipline in my youth. But if you look at science it's kind of you look at experimentation, it's got a start, middle and an end, it's got apparatus, it's got magic ingredients, it's got procedure and it's got the conclusion or the execution, and there's no black. Like you know, for a world that's black and white, there's often a gray area, and that's what I love about research the most, which is that like regressive analysis it's called, it's like why is that dot there? And it shouldn't be there. And that's what I love about the world of events and the world of building events. I don't look to create, I'm looking for that dot. I want to be an out there and it's not about creating something else that's kind of already exist.
Speaker 2:Or you know, and I found that when I, when I got into the HR industry, that everything looked the same, it was tired. A lot of people asked the question how, how did you disrupt the, the events industry, particularly around HR and future work? And it wasn't. It wasn't that difficult, to be quite honest, because it was very tired. Everything was, everything looked the same and the events industry in general and I think the pandemic called it out hadn't innovated in years and years and years, and so this moved to digital and let's have, let's give virtual a go and we'll save loads of money on flights and in person. I mean, there was people on podcasts like this suggesting that the world of events was on its knees and it would never come back. But I think I think we're into the golden age of events. So I see this as being the really disruptive and innovative period of our industry and I'm loving it and hating it at the same time.
Speaker 2:So you know, 12 years later, it's about building a business that's remote. First events. People are social animals, so we like to get in a room together. That's why we've chosen this vocation. So it's trying to build a business with a group of people from the industry remotely has been probably the hardest thing I've ever done and we've gone through two years of it and you've enjoyed the most recent version in Paris and you know it's that kind of I would just say that cadence of the way the last 18 months have played out, since we kind of resurrected or kind of said we're still alive, we're still here. It's that cadence that we've gone through now and what the team have learned and that institutional knowledge that we lost that we bring forward now. So I'm really really excited for 2024.
Speaker 1:Mark, you've described that so beautifully and articulately, if you don't mind me saying and I'd love to pull back into something that you alluded to with this whole. You know, it's like the light and the dark of working not only as an entrepreneur where I mean I personally find that it is often an emotional roller coaster but also dealing with those fabulous people that say, oh, do you know what that's it? The events industry is over because you know you've absolutely proved them wrong and I don't know about you, but it gives me extra fire in my belly to then want to show that actually you've got to move with the times to nasty. Emotional intelligence and all of those other great aspects of humans is what makes them continue to kind of drive forward and strive into new and often better uncharted territory.
Speaker 2:That's it, it's the terra incognita, the uncharted territory, and that's what I love the most. I love to play in that area the most and if I, if I look at it, it's the suppose it's to your point the peaks and troughs, the, the mental well-being that everyone's gone through. I see I don't use it flip-and-plea, but I think we're into the golden age of events. I've talked to all of our customers recently and different customer groups. So what the analysts get from coming to one leash and in terms of that final face-to-face, because they spend an awful amount of time in the books, in the research, in the numbers, in the surveys and stuff like that, and so for them to get the briefings, to get face to face with everything that's it.
Speaker 2:You can't beat the face to face. You can't beat it. And I'll talk to our biggest customers and they've got significant pipeline off the back of, you know, the deal making that goes on at the show. It can be a sentence that changes people's minds. It can be one connection, and I see that all the time.
Speaker 2:Some people find a job at Omnich, a new job or a future employer. It doesn't have to be immediate, it could be in two years time or four years time, and that's the game and that's, you know, all of that together is community and so and that's where I find myself after a really tough campaign post pandemic that's where I find that the smile on the face, the energy, when people tell me it was really easy to have those big conversations, like they were falling into conversation, into conversation, and so when you have thousands of people in a room like that, you might not achieve the same result with 100 people in a room, but you know being able to create that. What would you call it? That safe space for everyone to have big conversations about their careers, what's their biggest pain point. I mean, that's often the thing where you want to hear other people that might be having or going through the same pain, because in that is a little bit of solace.
Speaker 2:But there is insight and advice and recommendation and of course it's like everyone, everyone wants to. You know fast tractor careers and most people in our industry have a growth mindset, so it's kind of a natural. I want to go, you know, I want to be successful in life. I want my team to be successful, I want my company to be successful. So, yeah, that's what I've taken off the back of the last three years.
Speaker 1:And I think it's also very sensible when you kind of look at it from afar. How else do we best learn and maintain our knowledge of the trends if it is not for that peer to peer learning, sharing transferable methodologies, viewing from a holistic point of view what other organisations are doing and keeping up with those trends in such a fast paced, vucal world, as they call it. And you know, I guess, before we kind of get into some of the future trends because I would love us to spend some time talking about the future of work, what we see into 2024, as well as how, you know, diversity, inclusion and the human aspects you know, start to start to align, because already you know ESG or the S in ESG, the role functions are significantly changing. Before we get into that, I'd love just to go right back into some of your you know whistle stop tour around your career, because you'd mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. You know you really you know kind of regressive analysis, data analysis.
Speaker 1:Being a researcher is how you came to be, but you know, doing the microbiology degree, microchemistry being analyzing things within corporates, for organizations like, you know, the Microsofts of the world, it seems from the outside such a big transition, but clearly there's a huge need there, and so I just love to know a bit about the founder story, because I think that's something really interesting that I've heard a lot about from peers of yours, and I think it would be remiss of me not to give you a moment just to talk through some of that and how you've seen the market change personally, professionally, over the years. Ah, cool.
Speaker 2:Well, I fell into HOR. I wasn't a founder that kind of stood there looking at the HOR industry per se. My career has always been in events. I've always had the entrepreneurial genes since a teenager.
Speaker 2:You don't get that career advice when you're in school per se. I don't know what your career guidance counselor was like, leila, but I was definitely not getting a sense of like I might have an entrepreneurial DNA or a world of events is kind of your future and you'll get to travel the world and things like that. So on the HOR piece, if I get into it, it was initially I started as a researcher, did some work for the Economist Intelligence Unit, if you're familiar with the magazine, and that was my intro. And then I kind of found myself working around companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, welles, hay Group there was a bunch of the big advisory firms that I was doing work for, whether it was research or helping them with their events. And I suddenly found I'm kind of meeting all the same people all the time and I'm meeting the same trends and stories and it was interesting.
Speaker 2:It was and I think everyone back then this kind of being. I'm not sure it'll ever go away, but the HOR in the street has an affliction of the people that are educated into it are not necessarily know what they're getting themselves into or by design they you know it's. It's quite, it's quite unique. There's a lot of people I put down to, especially in the old days, people maybe not getting into their psychological degree course with enough points from from school and then kind of going Organizational psychology Well, that's the next best thing, let's have a go at that, and and so what you're seeing is a lot of youth that have gone into H-org degrees, going in there and getting textbook stuff but then going into a corporate world. That's completely different. And I want to say this, and I Think there might be still a little bit of this not knowing how to have a meeting, not knowing how to project plan, not knowing how to make a phone call.
Speaker 2:I just the very basics of of day-to-day business and, and I think it was this thing where my observations were HR. Everything that was being designed was HR, for HR, if that makes sense. And I'm going to say that was in the early 90s or throughout the 90s and I think when the cloud came along, this tech revolution which was SAS and cloud you know, workday being the bell of the ball, exactly around that time you had this Massive movement where employees were able to decide on what technology they were going to use. And I was sat in Chelsea football club doing I suppose it was a round table for about 50 CHROs. I have a history of messing things up, so I got that one terribly wrong. I took them to the Champions League football as the kind of the first day, and then the second day was they were meeting a gentleman called Professor John Boudreau For a full-day masterclass on day two, and so we went out and did the football. Everyone had a few drinks that night and so People didn't feel the best for the workshop the next day. Let's say at that event there was maybe five or six people told me Mark, you've got to get your arms wrapped around this opportunity that is HR, the HR cloud. There's massive revolution going on at the moment and I Took a look at it for a few weeks and then decided, okay, the business I've been building over here for you know, chro for leadership it's quite tough, it's not really scalable.
Speaker 2:Again, founders tend to talk about this all the time I'm where can I make a difference? Where can I add real value with what I've learned over the last two, two and a bit years? And yeah, it was a no-brainer, I worked on this and again, as a researcher it's where my research skills come back to life finding out why all the other HR technology events in particular hadn't succeeded Before. Because there was plenty of them but none of them had gone to a v2 or v3. And in that I kind of saw this revolution of employee empowerment.
Speaker 2:For for all of those years where you kind of come up to date now and it's all about employee experience and we've been on that journey for a while and again, it's not going away. But yeah, if I look at it was really funny HR for HR, then HR for the employee was the biggest. Like that's what I enjoyed in my my first real decade working in HR. And now I'm into my second, and it's like its purpose. It's meaning its employee experience, its diversity, it's all all the things we've talked about before.
Speaker 2:It's does that answer the question sorry?
Speaker 1:And what I'm getting from that is essentially that you know, it has been an evolution this last decade, coupled with the pandemic, coupled with what, historically, the role of the CHRO or the HR people leader may have looked like before. Lairing top of that technology and the fact that actually, what was textbook back then is no longer the state of play, you know, is, how do you, you know, transform you know learnings into you know real world connections? Because had it have not been For some of those early interventions, the research background and the futurist in you again, I'm very similar myself. It was never an intentional piece but actually been drawn to it like a butterfly almost.
Speaker 1:But how that then has transpired into finding you know meaningful connections, opportunities, out of something that might not have looked like anything from the surface level and actually Running hard and fast, knowing that there is something that can make a broader Impact to the world. And, let's face it, you know, large organizations need that support, they absolutely need that support. We've got five generations in the workplace right now. So you talk of Purpose and finding meaning in what we're doing. That is absolutely critical and if we don't do that, we'll never retain the talent that's coming in right now and allow that to to break through the, the, the, the lofty levels of the, of the C-suite.
Speaker 2:It's a fair. It's a fair point. And even the history of of HR Even to make it simpler it's when it was this. It's been HR forever and lots of people have had the idea to change the name yeah, somebody's lots of people have said it to me this year again and then it became human capital, which the American government still adopts. So if you're at NASA, it's the chief human capital officer and then it's pre-pandemic. It was Chief people officer.
Speaker 2:I like to use the P for pan, chief pandemic officer. And you've seen HR go from from, kind of maybe the old seated table conversation. I was part of that back in the day. It was a long time ago and I've got the great whiskers to show for it, but it's really come up to date now and You've kind of you've seen HR, okay, seated the table. You've seen it come up right next to the CEO on most leadership teams and and if, if we were having an argument about what which is the most important function in an organization, Then it's never been more evident that it is talent, skills, purpose, meaning, and, and so the P would have been pandemic officer was like how do we keep our people safe? And now it's purpose how do we keep them? How do we retain them inside our businesses? So so, that's, that's the story I'd like you know. It's an easy story to weave, but that has been the journey for HR. I think it has another level of gravitas than it did before the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Look, I'm biased. So I Believe that the role of the, the chief people officer, the chief human capital officer, the chief diversity officer are, you know, the most important across the piece, because they are literally while mark that they're mile wide, rather, and they're mile deep In many instances sitting as a strategic advisor to the CEO, because it's the engagement piece. Internally, there's also, you know what is the external narrative that we're, you know, coming to the table with when it comes to even our investors. Now, you know, activist investors for for whatever people make up for their own. You know, activist investors for for whatever people may think of them. Amongst other, leading is meaning that that role is, you know, I don't think it'll ever need to find its way now to get a seat at the boardroom table, because without it there is no business 100%, especially that last piece through.
Speaker 2:You're talking about we reinvestors, more, more, more Literally, across all investors. I know it's so important to them.
Speaker 1:So can we get geeky and talk then about the future together and where we see some of the key trends? Because you know, for me, whether controversial or not, diversity is a commercial lever for economic growth and prosperity, and what we've seen is this significant rise of the social aspect Within ESG, even though I'm not convinced yet that people know exactly how to measure it, but you've alluded to it through a number of places within our conversation thus far. That is, you know, it's the knowledge capital, is the human capital, it's the social capital, it's the connections that bind us. How do you put a specific figure on that when it is the bread and butter of our organizations and the future and engagement? Ultimately, that equals productivity. You know, what else are you seeing? The HR and diversity leaders and even CEOs to that fact ought to be looking out at ahead of the 2024 world.
Speaker 2:I think it's interesting Because we've done advisory boards on this year and obviously diversity is being a big part of that. It's interesting America versus Europe. In America, a lot of you know, and it's it's red hot topic. It's almost scary it's like talking about Politics or religion in the States when you get into the diversity conversations. But and I think this is the outcome is that we've, you know, our research. It's telling us that a lot of diversity Initiatives in the US, in corporate America, are failing, they're not working, they're not punching through.
Speaker 2:I Think here in Europe it's different and it's it's different for for the reasons that were European, I worked on one of the early days. There is a thing called force quotas in Norway and it was about putting two women on every board. So a long time ago was again in the early Northeast, and it's quite an important project for where we stand today. I never did. I think how important it was going to be because, again, back then there was a lot of naysayers. There was a lot of a lot of people had an opinion women as well In that you had to earn that position or that seat at the table. But that's gone full ways around the world, but it spread through Europe in terms of the level of maturity before it's gotten to America. And then I would say, oh, mr, what's his name? At sales forces? Mark Benny off is probably a great example of somebody who's really took the charge or grabbed the bull by the horns in terms of Diversity and equal pay and stuff like that. Fast forward up to today.
Speaker 2:So comparison but this is the current status, or this is what we're hearing from our network in our community in the United States, versus Europe, which is more strategic and embedded and invested and More complex because of language and everything else, and I think maybe that flourishes as well. But but the common Union, the European Union I know it has its again has its naysayers, but there are a lot of directors coming through from the European Union that are both policy and and very well thought out. Because of the European Union, everything is complicated and built on the back of many arguments and Negotiations and everything else. It just doesn't land there and kind of go We've got a great idea, we spent three months on this. The reality is, if it's European Union policy, it's probably spent three years in the making or longer.
Speaker 2:So you've got a few Initiatives coming through where, if you're a company of 250 people in the ball, you've got to be hit in diversity metrics. You've got there's a new one coming up I was talking to any to letting go of this recently. Equal pay is Is the biggie and that's become a legislative. So was the top 100 maybe to 500 companies in Europe are Prepared, pretty prepared, for that? Most companies aren't, and you know that's a significant number of companies that are 10,000 above employees tend to be called family businesses in Europe. So so I think you know there's there's legislation on a number of different levels coming through in the next two, three years and and yeah, I think Europe gets to be lead the way. I love this from from where we stand, because we get to be champions, we get to be part of this. We get to lead the way with the European Union for the rest of the world. So so, yeah, really really excited by the way this is evolving over here and I think it has a different level of maturity.
Speaker 1:I agree and so what I'm getting from everything you're saying there and you know I've probably said I agree too many times, say I'm trying to find something I don't agree with you on. But 2025 and beyond, it's going to be a watershed moment. I mean, we know that legislation is changing. We've seen, you know, still very, very challenging geopolitical issues which are happening right now. Goodness you know what you can go into, kind of the Israel Gaza conflict and everything like that but supreme justice court action over in the states versus what's happening you know, with everything with you know, uk politics and the likes, you know is almost that and I'm not just saying this to promote unleashing anyway but it's almost the case that leaders cannot afford not to stay abreast of the trends and the changing legislation. One of the things that we have seen is an increase in the need for crisis communications as well, in particular, for senior leaders and even CEOs. So where you mentioned the safe space at the beginning of this conversation, having communities that matter, having communities to be able to share full knowledge, research, future trends and insights as, in my opinion, never been more critical than it is right now.
Speaker 1:We had a conversation with one of our members recently and she coined this term that I just loved. You know, we talk a lot about what's the you know what's the return on investment, and at times I find that a frustrating conversation because it's like, look, you know, do we need to continually talk about what the case for change and the reasons why diverse inclusion, belonging, equity, culture, people, resources are something that's absolutely necessary? It should be an obvious no, and it's the right thing to do. Of course there's a human need, but she mentioned the impact of inaction, or the Iowai instead of the ROI, and I thought, you know, I absolutely love that so much so we're making it one of our subjects for discussion in the new year at our online summit and I thought what is that impact of inaction?
Speaker 1:Because, as you say, you know all of these things are changing. You can't afford not to have the peer-to-peer knowledge and stare breast of things, because we've seen too many organisations and their leaders come crashing down because of someone saying something that has been either misconstrued in the media or has been something that has not been taken palliatively for right or wrong reasons. Because people can go on Twitter, they can be opinionated younger generation certainly can and when something blows up about certain human rights issues. The cost to the organisation is sometimes off the rick to scale, and so what's the impact of inaction versus the return on investment? I think it's a super fascinating subject and led with the fact that there are significant changes in legislation. I think that the wealth economy framework which is all around this knowledge, human, social capital, beyond GDP and beyond USD that'll be coming into play in 2025, and so it's a really, really interesting place to be over the next couple of years.
Speaker 2:You're right on that as well, and I forgot to say well, I talk about Europe and that way, excuse me, the Supreme Court have done a ruling on affirmative action as well, so which is causing organisations to reaffirm their EIB strategies and adopt new legal realities, and you've seen it recently, I would say, the pain of, like you know, when you talk about the conflicts in the world, where all Elon can keep his mouth shut on stage or on his own platform, and they've suffered significant consequences. So I don't know if he's trying to actually kill ex Twitter or is he trying to. Is it a kind of phoenix, like something that needs to, you know, die and he's trying to get it.
Speaker 1:It's odd, he's trying to find some how out of the ashes. Yes, he Patty.
Speaker 2:Cosgrove from Web Summit suffered the same affliction. He decided he wanted to have a political opinion and had to fire himself from his own company. So there's yeah, you're spot on. But I think there is a big move towards systemic DEIB and I'm not be careful here because Josh Burson and the gang have just launched a really cool report on systemic HR.
Speaker 2:But if we were to borrow that title for systemic DEIB and onto kind of authenticate that into the foundations of every organisation that's out there, instead of the current reliance on the high visibility or ad hoc DEI initiatives and I think that's kind of like that was my take from the advisory board we've had in the US that's what I was feeling off it and I think you know more equitable practices and you know HR needs to have a clear, clear voice in all of this and it's never owned by one department.
Speaker 2:So I think you know more targeted action around hiring, skills based hiring especially and exploring alternative talent pools. And if I was to give you a really cool story, I'm going to drop a name here, but he might not even know this. But I looked at the old Microsoft. One of my first jobs was at Microsoft in Seattle and and many years later. It was interesting to then invite the global head of hiring, which is a gentleman called Scott Petaskey. I think he's since been CHRO, starbox and a few other companies, but he was their global head of hiring and he for me he was ahead of the curve by a decade and more.
Speaker 2:So he worked for Steampharma. I don't know if you've ever. If you can remember you're probably too young but you might find him on YouTube dancing with Bill Gates and a few others. They were so disconnected from the world of work. I got like five or six software geeks down that's the funniest thing you'll see on YouTube.
Speaker 2:But Scott was hiring at that time for diversity, bringing some really interesting like the outliers into the business. And you could see Microsoft was just going on a downward trajectory and it wasn't just the regular tree kind of you know what had come in from the US government and they kind of got their knees cut off and weren't the same growth business that they used to be. And so I don't think Satya just arrived there and he's just a new guru. I think when he arrived in Microsoft he had a really good base from which to work from and I really put that down to Scott, whether he'd agree with it or not, but I put that down to him hiring for diversity.
Speaker 2:All that it's a long time ago now. So I've seen what can become of like a big company when they get that right, but sometimes it's a pioneer and that's the part of HR I love to wrap my arms, I like that's what we're always looking to showcase. To your point earlier on the trends Whatever you say about what's working and what's not working, everyone wants to know where you're going next. Or am I going in the right direction?
Speaker 1:I think pioneering is exactly the word for it and it does. It takes one or two, many more brave souls at times to put the head above the parapet and say right, I know I'm not going to please everyone, but we are going to hire someone who has a you know be a different race, ethnicity, gender, so on and so forth. But not just because that from a toast, not just that from a tokenistic point of view, but actually the lived experience is different, the skill set is different and hence that brings the innovation and the pioneering piece to the table. But you always get that people being up in arms to start with and then eventually everyone comes round to that way of thinking. I remember in some of my early days networking with you know very senior execs out on a golf club in Portugal it's another story and into itself and someone out there has said Leila, you put your head above the parapet and you're going to get shot at. And it stuck with me even to this day, because it was kind of this warning of don't break what is right now and it's very specific industry.
Speaker 1:I won't mention which industry it was, but it was quite an archaic industry and you kind of think, oh goodness, you know, do I risk the career, do I risk what people are going to think of me if actually I go out there, you know, as you have, and as every good founder CEO has, and said you know what actually you know, let's look at doing things differently. If you don't have the pioneers, you never have things move forward. One of my favorite authors again quite controversial is Robert Green. You sure you sure you know him, but you know those first people that have gone against the grain and, as you said before, you know these people that you mentioned. They were quite ahead of their time but eventually people come round to that way of thinking and start to own it. But being the brave ones to do that start with is always a challenging, challenging piece.
Speaker 2:I've got a quote for you on that and it's kind of it's a tease, right as a founder, because it's your ideas you get worried about people stealing your ideas or not even stealing them. It's just like if you give it out too early, but China, they have a saying of the first bird to fly is the first to get shot down. So like it's hard to hear it as a founder because you go well, if I'm going to be, am I going to get shot then? But I think that's part of being a founder being brave, taking that first step is always the hardest thing to do, and so I'm trying to. I've often kind of it's been a little bit of something I've kind of taken through my whole career To just be careful as well. Right, because, yeah, you've got to, you've got to make sure, if you are going to take flight, you're in a position of strength to do so.
Speaker 1:Indeed, take flight, have a parachute or two that help and support.
Speaker 2:And a bulletproof vest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bulletproof vest is an interesting concept. Without kind of going totally off on topic, you know he's spoken to I mean, I'm I namely kind of speak to similar individuals like yourself and you know, you see, you see HROs and the likes, but I think there is a fear of the idea theft situation. Actually, there is the, you know, collaboration over competition and there's also that piece around actually having an idea is one thing. We regurgitate them as the evolutions of each decade happen. The key is implementation, making it happen.
Speaker 1:The amount of people I've met over the years that said, oh, I've had this great idea and I'm going to do this, which is where I commend you and what on leash you're doing and I saw it firsthand when I met you in Paris is saying you're going to do something is one thing, but actually orchestrating it and bringing and convening all those people together, that is the harder thing, I think, than having the idea, because ideas are many.
Speaker 1:Orchestration and actually putting your foot to the pedal and getting it done is quite another, which I guess leads me on to actually let's talk about Vegas, because I'm hoping I'm going to see you in Vegas. With everything that is going on, I see that you've got already brilliant kind of lineups ahead. You mentioned name dropping, for I'm going to do it here for you. You have had some tremendous people at your events over the year Simon Sinek, who everyone knows to mention just one among some of the world's most thought provoking forward thinking organizations. So talk to us a bit about some of the name dropping and shamelessly tell us all about how fabulous Las Vegas is going to be next year.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be careful here, because it's an Irish thing, I can give up the ghost. But we were waiting till January before we make any big announcements on keynotes and stuff like that, because everyone's gone out for Christmas. Now we are working on a few big names you will have, you will have the usual suspects. Look, our events tend to be different to everything else that's out there. You will have CEOs on the programming. You will have, of course, your blend of CHROs. We will have the industry's leading labor economists on stage and it will be a, you know, a mad mix of about 250 speakers. It's three days. It's in Seas just for them, which is our new home we did. The first star, first rodeo was this year, which, for anyone in the world of events and even HR will know that you know, doing an event from the other side of the planet is not the easiest thing to do. We're there for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 2:It's we are going to or badging it differently to Europe. I think Europe has the legacy of being our flagship event. It's more sophisticated, has a lot of different formats going on for it. Whereas Vegas is a lot to do with strategic alliances, we have a strong vendor community base there. The future of work is born out of California nearby. We benefit in kind from that. What else can I tell you? We do pre events as well, so we do summits all across talent acquisition, learning, hr, tech and strategic alliances, and then across the main two days, day two and day three.
Speaker 2:The exhibition obviously opens up. It's got four stages 200 vendors across the floor, and then the other, like the big stuff, will be AI stage. Stage one, which is where you get all the key notes, like you know your assignments and Richard Branson, esther Pearls, those type of personas, as well as, obviously, the best of the best that we can find in terms of, you know, case information or or trends. You know. Again, it's people need to hear it. You know, are we going into a recession? Is the hiring market going to get more difficult? Is everyone having the same problem with skills? You know, they, you know, and, of course, darren, you know.
Speaker 2:I think I said AI just a minute ago, but AI is obviously is going to dramatically change work in the next two to three years. You know, whatever timelines people had, they've gotten shorter and it's now arrived without being Armageddon. So it's a choice of do we want to Star Trek world or or a Mad Max world? And, and I guess the market economy, the biggest thing, kind of pulling all of this together as well is going to dramatically, is dramatically changing as we speak and is going across a similar timeline. So we have never, ever, ever, like golden age of events is one thing, but we've never been in, you know, society has never been in such a you know that pivoting point in terms of exponential world. We are really on the exponential curve now and and yeah, it's mind blowing and and kind of you know we're all a little bit worried about it at the same time.
Speaker 1:I normally summarize at the end of a podcast, but I think you've absolutely outdone anything. I could say that exponential world is absolutely it. And you know, as the famous book says, feel the fear and do it anyway. And you do it tremendously well. So, mark, thank you, thank you ever so much. I'm going to give you 30 seconds to answer one of the lightning round questions, because I'm conscious that you and I could talk about trends literally until the cows come home. So I'll ask this one question, and possibly the hardest, actually. But but for you now, at this stage of your very successful career you know, liaising with some of the best in the world what would you say now is your secret to success?
Speaker 2:Listening to the customer.
Speaker 1:Great answer Customer always comes first. I would think like.
Speaker 2:I would think like so I would say that. But to your point on customer and I sorry I've just had a Christmas party with my team in London. I'm back here in Budapest now, but I would say it's team first, customer second. So if you don't have your team in a good place and they don't have the competencies and know how and tools to be able to do their jobs, they're never going to get that customer experience to that level. But I think, in terms of success, ideation of where we're going and what we need to do, we need to become the customer defines that and in a really fun way. It's obvious sometimes and then, in a kind of Steve Jobs way, the customers doesn't know what it needed until it got a smartphone, like they didn't know they needed an iPhone and it's not. It's not to be argued, but sometimes you've got to be, you know future casting what the customer needs, even though they don't need it. So so yeah, but I think listening to the customer, that's the best one I can give for any entrepreneur that's out there.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're absolutely right and it is to your point, caveated by having the very best emotionally intelligent team that can tune into, into that need. Yeah, mark, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. For those that would like to re listen to the podcast, share the podcast, please do so. You've been listening to the fabulous Mark Coleman, founder and CEO of Unleash. Make sure you check them out. We've joined before in Paris. It was a superb, superb couple of days and very excited about things to come, always nervous and in anticipation of some brilliant events that are going to be happening next year. My name is Layla Mackenzie Dulles, founder and CEO of Dialglobal. You've been listening to the Diverse and Inclusive Leaders podcast. You can find us on Apple, spotify or any of your favorite podcast channels. Otherwise, visit us at wwwdalglobalorg. Forward slash podcast. See you very soon.