Garrick (00:00.994)
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Garrick Jones. I'm one of the co-authors of the book, The Curious Advantage, and today I'm here with my co-author, Simon Brown. And we're delighted to be joined by Jonathan Besser. Hello, Jonathan.

Simon Brown (00:11.443)
Hi.

Jonathan Besser (00:16.33)
Hi Garrick, hi Simon, thanks for having me on.

Garrick (00:19.148)
Welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast. So Jonathan, you've spent your career helping people learn and grow, and now you've captured decades of insights in 50 ideas that changed the world of work, published by, remind me, The Economist Group, thank you. I'm gonna do that again.

Jonathan Besser (00:34.4)
Hi

Garrick (00:39.468)
Jonathan, you've spent your career helping people learn and grow, and now you've captured decades of insights in 50 ideas that changed the world of work, published by The Economist Group. Can you share a bit about your journey, how did you get here, and where the curiosity played a part along the way, of course, but tell us about these 50 ideas that changed the world of work.

Jonathan Besser (00:57.482)
Thanks, Garrick. Yeah, it's a idea to change the world of work. We published it earlier this year, co-authored with my friend and colleague Jeremy Curdie. It's been a fabulous journey. It's the first book I've written. It's honestly something I never thought I'd be able to say was that I was a published author. It's been all about curiosity and challenge. So curiosity to learn new ideas, curiosity to challenge oneself, to push the boundaries of what one can do.

It's curiosity about the idea. I didn't know about all of the 50 ideas, so I've learned along the way. I've learned new areas. Jeremy and I broke up a lot of the ideas as we went through, and I selected some of the ones that I wasn't too aware of. I through, I've worked in leadership development, come across lots of concepts over the 20 years I've been doing it. And this was a great way to learn. So that curiosity in itself, I suppose, all the way along.

Garrick (01:50.476)
I'm definitely going to pull out some of the ideas that have captured my attention from your book. But if you summarize some of your best business thinking out there, from classics to the modern frameworks and so on, can you explain what are the things that you feel are most relevant today?

Jonathan Besser (02:08.314)
I think they're all relevant. mean, yeah, but I would say that maybe from from Sansu's art of war, which is centuries old right through to some of the more modern areas such as lean in and grow. mean, you know, how about, you know, about growth mindset's been around since the 60s. I was delighted to see it really entering into business parlance as a, you know, as recently as five to seven years ago, coming through about the the intelligence of the way that we can work it and grow within ourselves.

So it spans a lot of the old ideas. You've got sweat swats, you've got pests, you've got a lot of different ideas coming through that have been written over decades and then sometimes centuries. They have relevance in what we do and recycling and revisiting for workforces right through from the most junior starter right through to your board level and executive level. It's about how you apply, it's about how you engage.

Garrick (02:56.28)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (03:01.385)
I'm intrigued Jonathan, how did you decide on these 50? So, know, of all the ideas across all time, if you went all the way back to Sun Tzu, how did you decide for the 50?

Jonathan Besser (03:10.847)
exit

It's a great question. We of course started with a long list of ideas and concepts, came through, discussed, debated. There were a couple of heated virtual arm wrestles about what we were going to cover. Some ideas that we've got at the back of it from the long list coming down to the short. It was really about what was relevant. Where are we in today's workplace and also in society? How do we need to operate? What do we need? How do we push curiosity and engagement? And what can be summed up in

you know, four to six pages of 1500 to 2000 words that can be a reference. I mean, the question I often get is, should these 350 odd pages be read from page one all the way through or dip in and come back? I think the answer is generally just yes. You can use it as a reference book you can go through because the ideas build upon each other and they're related into an area where there is crossover and cross-reference and other elements that are going through.

Garrick (03:58.914)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (04:10.42)
So we can answer your question, Simon. We had good discussions and interlinks about where it is, what we're seeing, what we knew and what we were willing to really see what was important. Our fabulous publisher with Profile Books, Claire Grace Taylor helped us with her views as well. And what we're seeing wider. Hopefully there'll be another 50 ideas coming through as well and love people to shape what they think is missing.

Garrick (04:35.096)
I've got a question about, know, many of them are old favourites, many of them are things we've heard about, they were new ones to me which I really enjoyed very much, things like the Eisenhower Matrix for example I want to explore further, but which do you think are the ones that are like most misunderstood, or the ones which are misapplied?

Jonathan Besser (04:45.653)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (04:55.07)
That's a great question. mean, if I misapply, that's a great question. I think misunderstood, perhaps. I think some of the SWOT and the pest analysis frameworks go back a long time. They are seen as old fashioned in a modern day world, which is very tech enabled. And you can get an answer through one of your large language models very easily. the ability to, was working with a client last week where we go through a pest and we do a SWOT, a cross-reference in helping come.

through a strategy and how are you going to direct what you're doing? Yes, it's gameplay. Yes, it's working through, but walking in your client's shoes. You need to understand what the marketplace is and how you do it. So I think there are a lot of and frameworks that are considered old fashioned and still relevant in what we do. Swat and Pest are definitely two of those.

Garrick (05:44.111)
It's interesting to me how frameworks, and all of these are frameworks in any respects. We may have used in the past, you know, one framework to achieve this, one for strategy, and maybe added two, three, four, five, six, seven, and so on. now, mean, frameworks are so much a part of how we apply thinking and decision-making, and they're very, very useful. To have 50 in one place is...

Very useful, I think. The thing about frameworks is that they give us, they're like a language in their own way. You kind of learn a bunch of frameworks and you can go, I need to apply this. I want to make a decision about that. Here is a framework that helps me get there faster. And I think there are huge implications for AI as well, because you get a better answer when you've got a better framework with your prompt engineering, don't you think?

Jonathan Besser (06:30.602)
Yeah, it's about a starting point. Yeah, it's about pivoting to your curiosity is the starting point working out what you're going to have and where you're coming from. Yeah, I love the podcast because it is about curiosity. And I truly believe that the curious, the more curious you are, the greater curiosity you have the greater starting point you have. And that's where you get different interventions, interactions and opportunities to think and develop and evolve.

Garrick (06:50.572)
Yeah.

Garrick (06:56.6)
Can I ask you about the Eisenhower matrix?

Jonathan Besser (06:59.316)
Yes, of course.

Garrick (07:02.22)
What is it and how does it help us prioritise and manage time, do you think?

Jonathan Besser (07:08.32)
The Eisenhower matrix really helps us distinguish between what is urgent and what's really important. And that distinction can be game changing in what we do and how we do it. Sometimes we get caught up in a whirlwind of do we answer our stakeholder, the personal or professional, do we reply to emails, do we send that email at nine o'clock or as a leader, 9 p.m. as a leader, should we be leading by example, what do we do, how are we going to be going?

What's the most important deadline? we knock off the small things that give us a bigger window later on or do we just try and focus to where we are? So, you know, the matrix is a very simple two by two, you know, what to do first, what schedule, what to delegate and what to eliminate. I'd say the bottom left is hugely important for leaders today. What do we delegate? How do we delegate? By delegate, I mean you can delegate to a large language model to help you go through that or you can delegate and grow your people as well.

So it's about making that choice. It encourages the ability to think and to develop. And it's hugely valuable about what you can do to make your little time to go through and understand what it is to use it, but then move on.

Simon Brown (08:20.539)
I never knew that that was called the Eisenhower Matrix I come across. That four box grid of urgent and important, but I didn't know that's where it came from.

Jonathan Besser (08:28.8)
And Simon, maybe that's one of the lessons I learned through this is that so much of the day to day and what we do and how we do it, certainly within learning and leadership development, is it comes from some of the elements that we've discovered over the years. And long time around.

Simon Brown (08:43.024)
So, yeah, of all the 50, is there one that is like your personal favourite? This is the one that everyone really needs to pay more attention to and take on board.

Jonathan Besser (08:55.508)
got two answers for that understated. So my personal favorite was one because I really it was a turning point for me, actually in writing the book is the first time author and you know, with huge amounts of imposter syndrome, I struggled along the way was, was always was an element. I really struggled with black swans. I knew about the concept where I was going through, but the struggle was actually about it was one of the earlier chapters that I that I challenged myself to go with. And I probably should have started with something I knew better.

Simon Brown (08:56.617)
Yeah, go on.

Simon Brown (09:03.272)
Uh-huh.

Simon Brown (09:14.665)
Hmm.

Jonathan Besser (09:24.67)
But it was, does this make sense? Am I doing a good job? Am I, you know, it's the little devil on my shoulder of imposter syndrome of where I was. And so I wrote it and I rewrote it and I ended up being more vulnerable, talking to Jeremy, my co-author and saying, can you help me with this? And he gave me some great advice, having not even read it. And then I was able to take that step back and revisit. So that was a personal challenge in a way. And it's become a favorite chapter because I was able to go down and then talk about the rhinos and develop my thinking. But it was the tipping point.

moving where we're going in what it is. The second answer for that is really probably growth. I think growth is at the heart of how we lead ourselves, how we lead others, how we manage, how we enable curiosity because curiosity is a launchpad to what we do and how we can do it. And so that's two answers to one question. I apologize. I'm sorry not sorry in that.

Simon Brown (10:19.155)
So, I mean, let's maybe dive a little bit into them. mean, the black swan, so COVID seemed to be the recent example, I guess, of a black swan. But tell us more around the, I guess, the model and what you came up with within that process of going through the imposter syndrome.

Jonathan Besser (10:40.006)
It was just, it was understand, I mean, Black Swans was something that I knew about, but it's, and it's a relatively simple concept. And trying to get my head around something that was quite simple to make it readable and understandable, but to understand that these are elements that can be foretold, foreseen and predicted. And then how do you overcome the elements that come back so that hindsight isn't always 2020 coming back to where you are?

How Does Black Swan Seek is a fantastic concept. It's been evolved into the White Rhinos, the concept of the White Rhinos. The White Rhinos was something I hadn't heard about. as I delved into it, was understanding more about foreseeing and foretelling events as we go along.

Simon Brown (11:25.353)
And the coaching model grow, but tell us more on growth.

Jonathan Besser (11:28.576)
Yeah, grow coaching model, sorry, assumed. Yeah, grow is a relatively, you know, it's an established methodology model. And there are lots of them for coaching. As you go through, you know, it's about asking the right questions. It's about, you know, what do we, you know, what do we need to work with ourselves as coach and coachee. And you can do this with yourself as well. And it's also applicable if you have someone observing for where you are, you know,

What's the what's your goal? What do want to achieve? What's the reality of the situation? Where are you today? What are the opportunities and then what do you need to work on to move forward on and grow as a cycle is brilliant. However, no one hour, 90 minute, two hour coaching session is going to encompass everything. So it's about taking the different elements and feeding in and revisiting and using the my one of my favorite phrases of two is one mouse.

Use the element coming through, using it proportionally to come down and reset because you have to meet people where they are and asking the questions to where people are. And it's how you do that. The open questions, know, the what, where, how, why, when, letting people talk, letting people self discover.

Garrick (12:42.05)
I'm fascinated by the white rhinos. I'm a little curious about, tell me more about, know, black swans have evolved into white rhinos. Why is it called a white rhino and what?

What are white rhinos? And I'll tell you why I'm curious, is because we've been speaking to futurists, a number of futurists in the podcasts before this one, some of whom say we can't predict the future, but we can look at the scenarios that are likely to emerge and plan for that. So we live in the moment, but we're keeping an eye on where things are coming from and where things are going. How is the white rhino useful for us?

Jonathan Besser (13:21.364)
Yeah, the white rhino theory and I don't honestly know where the name came from, other than it's the opposite color and an opposite size, perhaps. But it's about the visible threats. the it's the pieces on horizon that we see on choose to ignore. And you need to be able to identify them and almost stop yourself from ignoring them. So whether it be over people talked about pandemics for years and they're still talking about it.

we could get geopolitical, we're not going to about vaccine mandates in certain parts of the world going through and about how that will have an effect. We're starting to see things with measles and other elements. Another one was the global financial crisis about people could see where that was coming. And it was ignored for various reasons. We have to normalize the discussion about these elements coming through, about what's happening and why, to be able to see them. The futurists, I get where they're coming from. I work with a lot of futurists.

And you can't ignore what's in front of you sometimes, or you have to learn to be able to see it.

Simon Brown (14:28.009)
Are there any other models that help us in dealing with that? looking at that one in particular, there's a lot of these weak signals of where AI is going. And yeah, maybe we struggle to envisage that. Are there other models in your 50 that help us in how we manage through the change that we're seeing with AI at the moment?

Jonathan Besser (14:45.13)
Jonathan Besser (14:48.864)
Well, so the book was written before large language models really hit the marketplace. But of course, AI has been around for a long time. There's lots of the concepts that come into it from innovation, from thinking, future thinking for what we're doing. How do we work together? There's the collective viewpoints and mindset that comes together. How do you discuss? do you evolve where you're coming through? Do I have a distinctive?

other model that I'd call out probably not at this stage I have to say and that may be my my own black rhino moment.

Garrick (15:28.239)
I... No, Black Rhino Merman, what's your Black Rhino Merman?

What do mean, Black Swan?

Jonathan Besser (15:36.224)
I meant, yeah, I'm mixing my words up. I'm sorry. Yeah, let's scrub that really for where we're coming through from that. We could go back perhaps. mean, scenario planning, Simon, to your question, goes hand in hand with black swans about what you can do. If you can bring that in and you can apply it from a strategic point of view and apply the concept of black swans, you're going to get a better result, really.

Garrick (15:38.638)
You want to go back? That might be our Black Swan moment.

Yeah.

Simon Brown (15:57.106)
Yep.

Jonathan Besser (16:05.888)
It's always the three legs of a tripod.

Garrick (16:09.102)
I'm fascinated by Sun Tzu, of course, and the art of war and the idea that it still resonates with modern business leaders. What's your experience of how you see it being played today and where it's useful?

Jonathan Besser (16:24.576)
It's a great question. The fundamentals still apply even though it's centuries old. know, some who wrote about preparation, positioning, about knowing yourself, about knowing your opponent, whether it be a war opponent or a business opponent, or even when you're looking for government, it's about working what you're doing. How would your ideas apply to a new market? How are they relevant? How are you relevant? What value add do you do when you're coming into it?

I think modern leaders borrow it perhaps without even realizing because it's become part of our day-to-day thinking about preparation in what we're doing. How do we use the models, the technology out there to get intelligence, to be able to dive in, to have that competitive intelligence and that advantage, to be able to pull it out of our backpack, to have a difference, to make a difference, to understand better.

Garrick (17:06.403)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (17:22.42)
to be seen as intelligent, to be seen as relevant, to be seen as sharp in where we are. It's about preparation.

Simon Brown (17:31.539)
So I'm intrigued by within one of the models you talk about tipping points. And this is one I've been spending a bit of time on recently of also sort of crossing the chasm of utility as being, I think, a similar concept to sort of tipping points. tell us more around what you learned around tipping points.

Jonathan Besser (17:31.687)
Knowledge inside, yeah.

Jonathan Besser (17:36.117)
Yes.

Jonathan Besser (17:51.2)
Tipping point was written by my co-author, actually, but of course, having read it, I'm not as much... Yeah, tests my knowledge for what we have going through with it. Tipping point is a... It's, again, it's well known. It's in the marketplace of where we are and what we have. It's what do do from a knowledge point of view? At what point do you go too far? Maybe not too far, but at what point do we have enough knowledge to be able to... The inevitable can be through.

Simon Brown (17:54.601)
Ah, I chose that one to catch you up.

Jonathan Besser (18:20.848)
where we are. The analogy I suppose is for a rock rolling downhill. At what point did it gain momentum to go through is my simplest explanation for that.

Garrick (18:33.326)
So Jonathan Besson... No, no, no. I'm going to do your bio now. That's good. I'm going to ask you... Let me ask you about tipping weights before I get into the bio. Because I think that we can unpack that a little bit.

Jonathan Besser (18:33.61)
So that was a bit of a week.

Garrick (18:47.998)
Tipping points are fascinating for me too, especially in this world of knowledge and we relate to knowledge and tipping points. We know that a system gets loaded with something and then something happens. It might be unintended consequences. We also know that if you connect lots of hyperlinked information together,

something else will emerge or something will emerge or something will happen when you get to a point where the system flips in some way and it might flip in a positive way or it might flip in a negative way. I mean and then there's also the unintended consequences if think of it as you mentioned the financial crisis you had a point where people were finding new and innovative ways to package up financial instruments and then people found innovative ways to package up those packages and sell them on and then packages of packages of packages

of financial instruments got put into sets and blocks and sold on to the point where they were completely very very far removed from what they were originally which was some kind of a cheap mortgage and those instruments then

were packed to a point where they caused a tipping point in the financial system. The financial system crashed. That was 2008's experience and it doesn't appear that we've learned very much from that because some of that behavior still goes on. Although the other thing about economics is that economists are trying to keep tipping points under control and to prepare for them, which is why when you link the tipping points with the idea of the black swan and what's coming and looking ahead,

or even some soup preparation, as you say. It's all about casting our net widely so that we have as much information to try and stay relevant and have a perspective. also think of the no plan, von Clausewitz, think said no plan ever survives its first encounter with reality. And the idea that, know.

Garrick (20:48.876)
The thing we have to do is continually take sound links from the real as much as possible from our customers and from our people we know and from things that are going on in information. And the thing about your book is that it gives us frameworks for doing that. And I feel a little bit like Neo in The Matrix, know, when he rings up and says, I need to learn how to fly Sikorsky and I need X numbers of ammo now and then you see it all getting downloaded.

Jonathan Besser (21:12.844)
Absolutely and you know that that feeds the point I've said before you know people have said do you read it from page one through to page 350 or dip in and it's both it's the reference it's the opportunity but it's also where curiosity can start. I need to know about Sun Tzu. I've heard about SWOT. I've heard about Grow or Lean In. What do I do? Oh here's a reference a reference and a starting point. It's not all encompassing and it is a viewpoint. The book covers

it is very similar in its format of how it works. So, know, we start with a big picture concept about what it is, then we dive into about the idea about what it is to get some more detail. You then can move into the next one, which is, you know, what are the, what's the, how do we develop this? What is it in practice? And then some thought starts is about how do you go with the recommendation of where you go? Where do you start to understand it? Whether it be TED Talk or whether it be actually reading the original book.

So to your point, Gary, absolutely. It's about a palation of knowledge to feed the curiosity of where we are.

Garrick (22:13.942)
I like also the thing that occurs to me is that some of the frameworks are, as you say, the kind of big picture stuff. They help us.

get more context, which is really important for curiosity, as you know, from our seven C's, as you know. And then there are other frameworks that are really helpful for organizing that information or curating or being critical about that information. And then as you say, there are other frameworks which are very practical and pragmatic. How do you implement and how do you move to them? Can you tell us a little bit about the pragmatic ones, the things that help us move things into reality?

Jonathan Besser (22:52.766)
That's a good question. It's broad question. I how do you move anything into reality? It's about taking the concept, taking the idea and moving it along. Where do you make that choice? Where's your individual tipping point to move it along from concept concept concept concept, from being a student and doing a lot of research, moving into your final thesis right through to what is a, are you reinventing or taking a new concept? Are you making

all the strategic inputs and moving it forward. When is enough information for what you have? And there are frameworks that you have to do. So SWOT, the elements that feed into that. The intention is that they are stepping stones to help you to take you along that pathway, understand where you're going, the way you are. If you want to pin me down to what would be a really good concept for what could do that.

Jonathan Besser (23:49.226)
Possibly the Eisenhower matrix, you could apply that to where you're going. It's the four box matrix of do first, schedule, delegate, and eliminate. You can apply that to where you are and try to move something from conceptual to factual and actual in where you are. What would you say, maybe, Garrick, would you do is to move that along?

Garrick (24:08.973)
Well, that's a I love that question. For me, it's about design thinking is very relevant there. And the idea that, you put a the best way to learn about something is to do something or to make something start, as you say, and learn from failure and go, but start, make a start, do something small, prototype something and just step up. That's right. And then

Jonathan Besser (24:14.121)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (24:22.046)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (24:31.838)
Yeah, yeah, fail fast. So you see, I'm. Go ahead, sorry.

Simon Brown (24:39.049)
Yeah, I was gonna say I wish I'd had this book 30 years ago. was, think, so first I probably came across some of these was was Swat and Pest Back, years ago in my degree. But many of these other ones that we've talked about have sort of been picked up either knowingly or sort of in passing over the years. And so I think

Yeah, this would have been a really useful book 30 years ago to give that broad brush of these are the mental models, these are the sort of ways to start thinking about things. And as you say, it's then a stepping stone off to deeper understanding potentially, but being able to get some of the most critical models or concepts in one chunk, if you like, feels like a very useful book.

Jonathan Besser (25:28.328)
is a really good example of a methodology and an approach to working through the progress of what you are. How do you take knowledge to apply? Where is just about enough to be able to get to that disruptive, fail fast mentality? Because how can you work? Do you have enough information to make that prototype and to amend from there? Because getting your hands on it.

Garrick (25:48.599)
Hmm.

Jonathan Besser (25:57.908)
getting LinkedIn, taking it, breaking it, applying it is the important part. How do you play to, how do you bring the right people in? How do you know to bring the right people in at the right times to be able to do that? And how do you get feedback on it quickly?

Garrick (26:14.606)
Jonathan Besser is an internationally experienced learning and development expert.

Diagnostician, Designer, Coach, Mentor and Facilitator. He runs Intrepid Leadership Consulting, which he founded in 2015 to partner with global organisations and individuals on long-term strategic and behavioural development. With deep expertise across a wide range of development, insights, tools and interventions, Jonathan has collaborated with international organisations, leading business schools and consultancies worldwide, contributing to diagnostics, programme design and delivery. His first book, 50 Ideas That Changed the World of Work, is a culmination of his passion for

learning growth and bringing practical timeless business thinking to life and it's great I highly recommend it I have to tell you that's extremely pragmatic and very useful and as Simon saying we wish we'd had it 30 years ago it's everything you need in one place if you're gonna want to start something

I want to ask you, Jonathan, about emotional intelligence and psychological safety, which is something which comes up a lot on this podcast. The need, you know, if you're going to be curious, you need to feel safe or you need to get to learn how to deal with feeling unsafe. And what are your views on emotional intelligence and psychological safety and how they impact teams, for example?

Jonathan Besser (27:09.898)
Perfect.

Jonathan Besser (27:31.57)
I think that as a starting point, they're the bedrock, they're the foundations that create high performing teams that allow people and teams to work effectively, evolve, to innovate, develop, and frankly to meet the challenge along the way. If you can have psychological safety, if you have high emotional intelligence, you're able to flex in the moment and be held accountable.

The concept of a feedback culture is embedded in the idea of emotional intelligence and psychological safety. Without them, you don't have them. And it's elements that it's from the contract when the set up the start about what you're doing and how you're going to operate together that gives you the ability to do that. Emotional intelligence is about how you read the room, how you read your colleagues, how you read your clients, how you read the experts coming in to understand what they're doing.

How can you manage your own emotions and that of others to get the best out of people with where you are? You have to start with yourself. No one knows you better than yourself. Apparently, some people maybe are less good at that, but there's certainly different elements along that. And psychological safety. know, Amy Edmondson's work around that. It's a really good starting point for that. She's encapsulated the viewpoints on that for what it is. It's about creating an environment where people

speak up, there is no fear of saying yes and or are you sure? What are you doing here and why? To holding people accountable without consequences, without the fear of negatively impacting and being a career limiting move for what you're doing and how you're doing. Ultimately, as foundations, we're talking about trust and you have to have trust. about creativity, about curiosity, you have to.

have that element. Again, I talked about the tripods in the store. How do you get that coming in? If you fester in silence and you just go along with the status quo, you're not going to have the innovation. You're not going to have the growth and development. You're not going to be able to have what we all crave and need, which is evolution rather than revolution.

Simon Brown (29:46.675)
We're big fans of Amy on the podcast here, having had her on as a previous guest talking around psychological safety and also her new book around failure and the right kind of wrong. I was intrigued as you were looking at the long list of models to include, whether there were any well-known models out there that you decided actually, I'm not sure that's so relevant in today's world, or we decided we wouldn't include this one in there.

I guess maybe what was the one you had the most discussion about and then decided that you wouldn't include it in the 50?

Jonathan Besser (30:23.232)
There were plenty that we wanted to include that sort of hit the editing floor, so to speak, as you went along. I pushed and backed off quite hard on Hoven because I'm a big fan of Hoven as a methodology, as a psychometric and as a understanding of what we can do and how you can understand people. And that feeds into the elements we've just talked about with emotional intelligence. You can know yourself.

Simon Brown (30:37.934)
yep, okay.

Garrick (30:40.258)
you

Jonathan Besser (30:52.094)
decided not to because it was a little bit too narrow in its focus of where it was. But I really liked Hogan for what we could do with that.

Simon Brown (31:01.959)
Yes, Hogan, remember Hogan's derailers and my 95 % propensity for mischief, which sticks with me.

Garrick (31:12.014)
That's right. Simon, you still have a 95 % propensity for mischief?

Simon Brown (31:16.975)
I first did it ten years ago and I did it again a couple of years ago and it had changed by about 2 % but it was still a very high propensity for mischief. I'm not sure what that says about me.

Garrick (31:28.718)
you

Jonathan Besser (31:29.306)
only good things. And that feeds into what we've already talked about, about knowing yourself better than knowing anyone else. And elements like Hogan and others come in and they help you understand. They help you understand yourself because as you move into an organization, as you move higher in an organization, you have to know yourself better than anyone else to know how to get the best about other people. I often talk about not about the

the manager's curse of firing yourself as a younger version and you realize and then you want to go back to your manager and say, I'm really sorry. And then there's the shadow. You have to hire and work outside of your shadow because that's where you get the best and most innovative ideas, the people who will challenge you, who will work with you, who will evolve and break things fast.

Simon Brown (32:19.017)
I'm intrigued whether as you went through the book, whether you also considered where ideas and models can hold us back as well as taking us forward. as an example, in the last few weeks, we were having a conversation around maybe some of the mental models that we hang onto and we hang onto them for good reason because they helped us sort of simplify and understand the world around us. But whether sometimes we need to discount or sort of

put to one side those mental models because I guess a little bit to the black swan piece if we hold on to a mental model that this is how things will always be maybe that actually makes it harder for us to predict where things are going. Did you go into that as well as you're looking at this?

Jonathan Besser (33:02.4)
Yes, and let's so I mean, you're talking about blinkers really about how do you move outside of the blinkers of what you have? We all as individuals, we're brought up with orthodoxies and best practice as we go along. And we have to move outside of our own mental models and norms to be able to challenge ourselves. And that comes from surrounding yourself with people who challenge your thinking or open your eyes to new, new ideas, new models, new methodologies of where you are.

So we didn't directly come across it. However, it's one of my founding beliefs and it comes down to the why it's the why question. Why are you doing that? Why are we going there? And there are ways to ask why without being super challenging and different people require different levels of challenge. Let's be honest. We've all been there ourselves and with other people. And it's about being that center point to ask the question about why you're doing something, why you are sticking with this.

It was Einstein who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I've butchered the quote, but you get the principle of what I'm saying. It's the same thing. Stop using the same models and expecting to get different results. And that's the foundations of it. So the answer is, as I said, yes and no. Yes, we did, but no, maybe we didn't challenge it as much as we could have done.

Garrick (34:25.25)
No, I really relate to that. This idea that blinkers and I like heuristics and I like models because they really help us make sense of the world. But if we get trapped by them, we have to have a healthy disrespect for our models in as much as we respect them. think we say that they can be blinkers and they can keep us from seeing things around us. And your solution to surround yourself with people who are challenging people higher outside of your shadow is really one that resonates with me.

talking to people who have completely different view on the world, which you might react to initially and go, why do you think like that? But when you spend some time understanding their experience and where you come from, it's enriching and it gives us some more. That's kind of why I love musicians and I love artists and people who are outside of business, for example, because they might have a completely different way of solving a problem.

or even finding a way through a difficult way. Artists specifically who make stuff and do stuff and as a result create stuff, they create new worlds.

Jonathan Besser (35:34.651)
That feeds to your point, Garret, that we talked about previously about making things, you know, unpack, discover, bring others into different viewpoints. You work in a parallel stream to be able to know what you're doing and how you're doing and invite others in. I will often invite my children who are now teenagers, but certainly when they were younger, because they have a different viewpoint, they've got a different curiosity, they've got a different mindset about how things work.

Garrick (35:45.858)
Yeah.

Garrick (36:04.408)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (36:04.604)
And asking others in helps it, helps everything.

Garrick (36:08.174)
I love it. My godchildren are all in there. There's sort of, you know, I've got a few of them, quite a few of them, and they're all in there kind of, you know, late teens and some early teens, but, you know, getting into their twenties. And it's very, it's, it's...

great for me because I feel like I've got a role to play now because I can connect them to people and I can connect them to ideas and I can go with them and we can have great conversations and they ask questions and or they're interested in something in the world and you can open them up and show them those things and that's challenging for me because they look at they're looking at things sometimes I go well why don't you know the answer to that or haven't you thought about this because you realize no they haven't they haven't had the experience and it makes you look at your own life and go

What am I taking for granted and so on. It's great for you.

Jonathan Besser (36:55.05)
Yeah, absolutely. And it also feeds into inputs. There are different inputs from different elements. The world is moving faster and faster. Technology enables so much more to come through in what we're doing. All of us carry in our pocket a computer that occasionally makes phone calls for us. And different generations have different ideas and different ways of accessing that information.

Garrick (37:02.552)
Mm.

Garrick (37:18.126)
You talk about the world's getting faster and faster, but have you got a view on things that have immediate payoffs or things that have long-term payoffs? What's your view on how we manage the timelines on things?

Jonathan Besser (37:34.721)
Great question. a good question to ask esoterically as well. So to get a viewpoint, I think in me, are all, you know, our human nature, our biology feeds the need for instant gratification. It's knowing oneself well enough to be able to take a step back and say, why has this happened? Why am I doing this? And what's it feeding into? For leaders, I encourage my coaches.

Be the last to speak. Contract with your team, but you don't have to. The urge is always to be the smartest person in the room. Take a step back and let others talk. It enables them, it feeds them, and you'll get better ideas that then riff off each other. It comes back to the psychological safety and creating high performing teams. you say, right, I'm going to contract, I'm contracting with you. I will be the last person in the room because I want everyone else's view. I want us to build on it together. It's creating that. But you get growth, you get evolution, you get

you get rid of ideas that build upon each other. It's the idea of a design party, I suppose, to evolve something coming through. So that's feeds the immediate gratification, but also the longer term evolution and development. How do we innovate? It's about bringing different ideas, bringing different viewpoints in and challenging.

Simon Brown (38:55.923)
So maybe a more personal question if you don't mind. you referenced earlier around the process of writing the book and the way it makes you feel very vulnerable. You sort of go through the imposter syndrome piece and I think I certainly felt that. don't know, Garrick and Paul, when you wrote the book previously, maybe you went through it the first time around and were experienced by this time. that sort of, I'm to put my ideas out there and people might not like them and they might be wrong.

Jonathan Besser (38:56.468)
As we go.

Yes, of course.

Jonathan Besser (39:25.781)
Yeah.

Simon Brown (39:25.867)
How did you overcome that? you clearly did because the book got published and you sort of worked through it. Can you tell us your journey there?

Jonathan Besser (39:31.818)
Yeah.

Jonathan Besser (39:36.577)
The journey for me and my imposter syndrome was one that started a long time ago. And I identified my imposter syndrome sort of when I went through some business coaching myself. We'd walk around the local park with my coach at the time. And my simple goal was to be able to publish a self-written article on LinkedIn. it was, it's that whole, am I good enough? Do I have a point of view? Where am I coming from? The questioning, I talk about it as the sort of little devil on my shoulder, which I still flick off at times.

And it's identifying that element coming through with regards to the book. There was a big upfront piece about how can I do this? Do I have a right to do this? Who am I to be able to be bringing this along? I full credit to Jeremy, my co-author for helping me through that journey and say, yeah, JB, you can do that. Deal with it. You can approach it. And it has truly helped me to be able to hold this manifestation in a copy and to be able to say, yeah, I can do it.

I had to deal with the, you know, people will disagree. You're putting yourself out there, you're putting a bit yourself out there. You've got everything from some of big book publishers who can do online reviews anonymous or otherwise, and people will do it. Have an opinion. It's been a great journey. I have an opinion. I am an opinionated person. I'm also someone who listens and invites feedback. I said, I've got a teenage, I've got two teenage kids. I live in a feedback culture the whole time, frankly.

But if you don't put yourself out there, how are you going to grow? How are you going to evolve and develop if you don't take it on? Now, you don't have to agree with the feedback the whole time, whether it be personal development, professional feedback. It's about how you take it around, how it affects you. And people have opinions. I have opinions. Other people have opinions. It's how you evolve and work through them. So I dealt with it by leaning into it in a way and trying to recognize what were the elements that were challenging to me and being brave.

We created a psychologically safe environment. We created an environment where we supported each other with fabulous support from, know, Claire Gris-Taylor at Profile Books as well to help us through. And she gave us some very tough love as we went along. And we tried to learn, we tried to evolve and hopefully the product that's come out is better as a result of that.

Simon Brown (41:32.626)
Yep.

Garrick (41:55.602)
I have a question about imposter syndrome. It's funny to me because one of the...

band, know, music bands that I'm obsessed with at the moment because I that's what happens. And also some Argentinians called Catreal and Paco Amoroso, these two young guys in their 30s, 20s, come out of the trap hop hip hop scene in Latin America, singing Spanish. And, you know, very localized Argentinian. They were famous there. But, you know, that was where things were going on. They did a NPR tiny desk. They were invited to do that where you can't use any electronics. It's all got to be

real instruments and they put a band around them and they reproduced some of their songs and it just went viral you know 35 million hundred million people watching this thing and now they're on a world tour and they just played Glastonbury and they've done Coachella and they played with the London Philharmonic and the LA Philharmonic with Dudamel I mean and now they're all over the world and they're going to Japan next week etc etc just incredible. 200,000 people in the movie star in Madrid the other day just incredible.

So everything comes out and the very next song that they put into the market is called Impostor Syndrome.

because they suddenly blew up. Everybody's watching them on their phones and they say that we couldn't sleep for two weeks and they're so and they write about it. And the thing that's refreshing about this generation is they're quite cynical about social media. They're quite cynical about the world they live in and all the technology, but they also talk about it and they laugh about it and it's fun. And you deal with imposter syndrome by just being open and honest about it. And that's one of the things I'm hearing from you.

Jonathan Besser (43:34.856)
I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful in its evolution. It's very much generational.

Garrick (43:36.748)
Yeah, it's a lot.

Yeah, two ears, one mouth, know, these kind of things stay with us, listen and so on. My question is, what do you think is the potential to become the next big shift in how we work? Where do think it's going?

Jonathan Besser (43:57.857)
That's a great question. think as we come, the generations hitting the workforce lived through COVID and lockdowns and being away. And they are braving that. They're like a sponge. want to, they're curious. They have knowledge for knowledge, insight, but most importantly, interaction. How do we work together? What can you tell me? How can I do? And the expectation that they have a viewpoint that is also heard and taken in. So I think

the movement forwards of how do we work with that? How do we not view, use old-fashioned orthodoxies about, I'm the boss, you're coming in, you will learn from me. How do we learn from the expertise that everyone brings in with what they're doing? And how do we harness that energy and that wish and that will to do and to be heard? You're seeing smart, right people coming in who are

hugely knowledgeable, hugely capable. They have their idiosyncrasies the same way we did when we hit the marketplace and we still do. How do we stop being the sage on the stage and harness that? The person or the group, the network that can do that. And we're seeing little smidgens out there. I see that with some of my work with big clients, recognizing that within work environment. Large language modules, AI.

the the the the how do we we're seeing that coming in and using it as an enablement as a springboard that's where the next shift is coming

Simon Brown (45:35.239)
And are there any uniquely human skills you think that will help us as that shift takes place? What are the skills that people in school or leaving school at the moment need to be thinking about as the things that will carry them forward in their careers?

Jonathan Besser (45:51.293)
it's the name of the podcast, it's about being curious. You know, I'm glad to be here with that and I'm glad for the question. It's about being curious, but it's being curious about yourself. It's about being curious about other people. You know, I mean, I've been through a long learning phase with my eldest daughter who, you know, she's there's some neurodiversity and she uses her phone in a very different way and uses it to come down. And the curiosity that comes in, Grigor's my orthodoxies about

everything that I read and what you can do. And it's about harnessing that to get the best out of the environment. So the most human basic knowledge, basic facet is curiosity, is about asking why, and why do you think that? And two is one mouth, wait until you the answer. And then that's three second rule, take a breath.

Simon Brown (46:45.789)
funny my, I was at my

Jonathan Besser (46:45.802)
Silence is golden.

Simon Brown (46:47.709)
daughter's middle school graduation a couple of weeks ago and the teachers were talking about some of the pupils that had won prizes and the number of times that curiosity came up in those conversations. was a bit of a running joke that my wife would nudge me each time it got mentioned, but it was a theme around the people that they selected as the award-winning pupils from across the year and curiosity seemed to be the common trait across many of them.

Jonathan Besser (47:17.364)
Don't get me wrong, it's maddening for leaders who are used to being listened to. We have to retrain ourselves to harness that. Because frankly, we should all be looking to hire and bring on individuals who want to take our jobs because we can't move on either professionally or as a society until we have people ready to evolve and take forward what we do and how we do it. We should be harnessing and nurturing those, in my humble opinion.

Garrick (47:42.51)
You haven't come to the end of this conversation, but I have to ask you, what are you personally most curious about right now, Jonathan?

Jonathan Besser (47:52.093)
I'm curious about where the bright young minds I'm working with are going forward. I'm asking people about what they think and how they use it. And it's what I do with that. I'm curious about how I can evolve my thinking. I just turned 50 this year, so I've got more years behind me than ahead of me potentially. And I'm seeing people much smarter than I am, much more knowledgeable. So my curiosity is how do I stay relevant and how do I stay connected?

to evolve forward. Where's my point, my place in technology youth and I'm somewhere sandwiched in the middle?

Garrick (48:32.462)
Perhaps you have the 51st idea.

Jonathan Besser (48:34.95)
I maybe, maybe I need to do a self-wai office.

Garrick (48:40.608)
It's fantastic. This series is about how individuals and organisations use the power of curiosity to drive success in their lives and businesses, especially in the context of our new digital reality. And it brings to life the latest understandings from neuroscience, anthropology, history, business, arts and behaviourism. Curiosity makes these useful for everyone. We can talk to Jonathan Besser. He's covered a huge range of topics because he's written a book, 50 ideas that have changed the world of work.

50 ideas that have changed the world of work. And he's taught us things like challenging and pushing boundaries, learning, Sun Tzu, the art of war, growth mindset, swats and pests, those are all favorites. And your personal favorite around black swans, great conversation around white rhinos and their relationship, and then the grow coaching models.

You talk about two ears and one mouth and I think that's going to stay with me. We've got two ears and one mouth, so keep it in proportion. Talk about normalizing the things that are in front of us and not ignoring the stuff that...

we don't pay attention to because by paying attention to these things, we can find things that may be standing in the way or things that can really help us move forward. It's 50 ideas that change the way of work, including, know, Sun Tzu and his importance today around preparation and positioning and knowing ourselves, which is a point you've made a lot, but knowing ourselves first and knowing your opponents, still relevant.

The way I think about everything we've been talking about is you've kind of had this deep dive and you've got the synthesis of things we take for granted around us, which is super useful. You ask the question, how are we relevant and how do we intelligence and use that for our advantage? And we talked about tipping points and crossing the charm of utility. Sorry.

Garrick (50:35.98)
We talked about tipping points and crossing the chasm of utility. And so where does that take us? Where does curiosity start and what is the starting point? 50 ideas are just great starting points, provide us with big pictures and then moving down into the detail. We talked about design thinking and how to do things and move things into the real flow.

psychological safety and being curious and the need for trust and how these things allow us to be curious and creative. Tripods and stools and of course evolution and revolution. Then we're looking for evolution rather than revolution. Questions about what you left out and Simon's 95 % propensity for mischief which I'm going to hold on to.

Simon Brown (51:22.363)
Yeah.

Garrick (51:23.084)
knowing yourself again and the importance of the leaders shadow and how important to bring in people from outside of our shadow because that's where we learn.

How can these models that we hold and these heuristics hold us back if we're not careful? And how do we get rid of the blinkers? Ask ourselves why. And another point you made a lot about asking ourselves why and why are we doing things and what's getting us to the basics of what it's all about and how not to just focus on instant gratification. And then a conversation about what the next big stuff is and what's going on. The post-COVID generation, is you talk about them being a sponge and open to learning and figuring out where

to go forward which gives us hope. And how do we plug into the energy of the next generation which is very interesting. mean, just on the side, I've got a bunch of young friends who had a party and they asked everyone to leave their phones at the door. They're not playing. I've got other friends, young friends who don't, you're not using social media the way you would expect them to. They're voting with their feet perhaps. Talked about how AI is an enabler for the future. And you talked about how all of these are skills for carrying ourselves

forward most important, thankfully for us, is curiosity, which we completely agree with. Jonathan, if there's one thing to leave our listeners with, what would it be?

Jonathan Besser (52:47.216)
Garak and great summation of a great conversation. think the one assumption, sorry the one thing to leave you with is check your own assumptions. Ask yourself why you're doing something. Why are you doing a certain thing? Why you think in a certain way yourself in that moment? Apply that curious lens to yourself. Don't be afraid to ask why and have a moment to understand why of the why.

Garrick (53:18.232)
Thanks so much for joining us, Jonathan. Great.

Jonathan Besser (53:20.864)
Thanks very much for having me. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

Garrick (53:23.448)
Great conversation.

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