353 Confronting the Storm - Leadership, Hope, and Navigating Wicked Problems in the Age of Uncertainty with David Ross | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: David Ross, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:05] David Ross: Mahan, . I'm very appreciative to be here and hello to your listeners as well. 

[00:00:10] Mahan Tavakoli: I can't wait to get some of your thoughts, David, on the acceleration.

[00:00:15] We're going through the VUCA volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous environment we live in. As you are a VUCA strategist, you wrote a book on confronting the storm, regenerating leadership, and hope in the age of uncertainty. But before we get to those conversations, David, we'd love to know a little bit more about you.

[00:00:36] Whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing? Impact who you've become. 

[00:00:42] David Ross: That's a great question, Mahan, I grew up here in Sydney, Australia, and in some ways I had the boy's own adventure. I lived next to what Australians would call the bush, so it's remnant woodlands, big eucalyptus gum woodlands, My parents had no idea where I was during the day, I'd be out playing in the bush, and we had a lot of very cliched native animals living around us.

[00:01:08] The kind of things that say Americans, anyone probably overseas would anticipate that is everywhere in Australia. Kangaroos, etc, and echidnas and all these sorts of things were living happily near where I lived. Perhaps unbeknownst to me that by the time I left high school and I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do to cut a long story short, once I finally figured out what I was going to be, it was as an ecologist.

[00:01:35] So about plants and animals and how they can be conserved and managed in response to the development of land as well. And my first job was as a freshwater ecologist.

[00:01:49] Imagine being in a very hot Australian summer. About 40 degrees Celsius, 100 plus degrees Fahrenheit, and I'm in rubber waders up to just below my shoulders. Now imagine being in waders in rivers.

[00:02:06] And as you're trying to anticipate what that feels like, the rush of the water against you, also think about on a sunny day when you've removed a glove from your hand, a rubber glove, you can recall that smell you get. That's the smell that I had all over me as I was surveying fish. And a lot of other aquatic fauna and by doing so to cut a very long story short, by doing it at different stretches of a river, we could get a sense of where pollution was coming from and whether the waters were pristine or polluted.

[00:02:42] So bringing it back to your question as to how it has informed my life going forward. As a very shy scientist in my very early 20s I was coming up with people from the community, I was struggling to look at their shoes rather than my own shoes, I was that shy, I'm getting a lot of questions about what we're doing, and we would try to play a part through our monitoring in trying to inform policies for how we reduce pollution.

[00:03:14] And the more and more that I was having these experiences with my bosses present, it has. Informally about the importance of involving community initiatives and being truly appreciative of how communities are impacted by government by the private sector through their strategies or through their policies. I thought even then, as I was dealing with what we call wicked problems. That we were struggling to be able to deal with them. So 15 years ago, I set up my own business where I look at all the wicked problems or the controversy associated with resolving of wicked problems.

[00:03:50] And I love what I do. 

[00:03:52] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a great way of positioning how you got into looking at these wicked problems, David. And I would love to get your insights on that. But first. What do you refer to as a wicked problem? What are wicked problems in your view? 

[00:04:10] David Ross: , great question. Examples of wicked problems challenges like climate change poverty obesity, those sorts of things.

[00:04:17] So essentially, imagine through past centuries that we've had linear style problems. , in today's thinking that would be so you're rolling out an IT system within your organization. You've got a pretty good sense as to how it's going to roll out or alternatively, you set up your project plan.

[00:04:34] And step by step, linear step by step if you don't know exactly how it's going to be successfully rolled out , in the present moment, through time, if you follow the steps, you'll get to a successful solution in general. A wicked problem , requires a completely different mindset.

[00:04:53] So a wicked problem has an array of root causes as a result, has an array of different solutions. And often it's a case of in a world that is , becoming increasingly partisan. We don't have confidence about how to resolve them because we don't know which solutions to roll out. And what complicates things is that a wicked problem is in its own right, a root cause of many other wicked problems.

[00:05:23] So as you see with the examples that I described to you, we're just having no success at dealing with them. 

[00:05:31] Mahan Tavakoli: It is a struggle on the societal level, on the community level, dealing with some of these wicked problems.

[00:05:39] But what I find David is in interacting with many of my clients who are primarily CEOs and leadership teams within organizations, also a lot of executives have. Grown up in a world where they have been taught linear thinking now, even within organizations, they're facing wicked problems and that complexity in the environment around them.

[00:06:09] So there is a mismatch, the linear thinking with the wicked problems that come at the organization that they have to have a very different mindset to be able to tackle. 

[00:06:24] David Ross: Said And in fact, I wrote down the name of one of the other people you had interviewed recently, a lady by the name of Andrea Sampson, a wonderful podcast where she talked about the power of storytelling.

[00:06:38] And the reason that I'm bringing Andrea into the conversation is that perhaps one of the threads that might come through our conversation today is that for me What I suggest that leaders need to contemplate and reflect on is the power of stories within organizations and within ourselves. We've lived to centuries old stories that , have created meaning for our leaders and organize our leaders into the actions and behaviors that they express.

[00:07:06] But I would argue that those stories haven't kept up with a context that is changing on a seismic scale. 

[00:07:15] Mahan Tavakoli: I couldn't agree with you more, David. Andrea will be proud because as you were talking about taking off your glove and the smell of the glove that was the smell you had, I could see that Andrea would be like, way to go, David.

[00:07:34] That's exactly the way to tell stories and describe things. So kudos to you for that. Now, , we talked about the fact that you've been focused on these wicked problems as what you call a VUCA strategist. VUCA, my audience is familiar with it, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous . I actually had Bob Johanson on a couple of years back, and he has done a lot of great writing and thinking on that.

[00:08:09] We'd love to get your thoughts, David. Why do you think we live in a VUCA world? I imagine if we had talked to people a hundred years ago, if we had talked to them about VUCA, they would have said, Oh my God, yes, it's VUCA with industrialization and everything else.

[00:08:26] And it's quite possible if we rewound few hundred years before then people would have said the same thing. What makes it really VUCA now, or is it just, this is the fact that humans always think things around them are not predictable. Therefore they live in a VUCA world. 

[00:08:45] David Ross: Mahan, if your listeners could actually see my face as I was listening to your question, they would have seen a huge smile on my face because time and time again, when I talk to clients or prospective clients about this concept of VUCA, they roll their eyes and they say, Oh, what about in the second world war?

[00:09:03] It wasn't that VUCA man, and while I'm not the youngest gentlemen nowadays nevertheless I appreciate that I wasn't around in the Second World War, so I can't speak to that context. But I would argue that firstly some U. S. management academics in the 1980s, A gentleman named Warren Bennis and a gentleman named Bert Nainis had identified then that organizations were facing increasing complexities and that it was typified by, I think they talked about more polarities, contradictions, and paradoxes.

[00:09:42] And again, like you said the U. S. Army War College picked up on it a few years later. I not only suggest that the world is now puker as opposed to 80 years ago or so, but it's becoming increasingly VUCA and it comes down to, for me, I believe that it comes down to the role that technology plays in society.

[00:10:06] We've got, technology is expanding and advancing at an exponential rate, and that's then having an interconnected impact On so many other critical things within the society and within the world. So what I'm getting at is that technology has played a part in climate change.

[00:10:24] And, we are seeing that within 10 years time, we're going to get to levels of CO2, et cetera, et cetera, in the atmosphere where it's going to have more extreme weather events. We're going to see ecosystem collapse. So if you've got Technological advancements that are making things easier for us.

[00:10:44] We've got ecosystems collapsing that we're not prepared for. We've got your stakeholders in your organ for organizations because of technology more. Coordinate more coordinated than they've ever been. They're becoming more sophisticated than they've ever been, and they are becoming more demanding than they've ever been.

[00:11:04] So you start to put all those things together. And as we've been seeing, say with the pandemic. Yeah. Where, we it might seem like a strange thing to say that I again believe that through society we've been wired to feel a sense of control and certainty. And then things like the pandemic come along and suddenly, this seismic spike of change comes along and we have not been able to deal with it.

[00:11:33] We're still seeing those ripples from the pandemic now work from home was never an issue really up until about four or so years ago. But essentially make no mistake to your listeners, but for me, I believe that normal has left the building and our leadership styles.

[00:11:49] I've got a long way to go to catch up. 

[00:11:53] Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely agree with that, David. Therefore, , where do you see things going before we see how should we adjust and lead through that kind of change? 

[00:12:04] David Ross: Think for leaders just as critical within those four letters of buka, maybe even more critical, is that final one of ambiguity.

[00:12:13] You give two people, one page of information, exactly the same words on the page, and they will take away very different meanings from the page. And you look at something like the U. S. is a great example of a nation that's becoming more ambiguous, more partisan, in its worldviews. So if you take that to VUCA and you take that to society and into the future I can anticipate that if we're struggling to deal with our wicked problems now, A, because of our linear style thinking patterns that have been embedded in us  forever. And then you add to the mixture that people are becoming very disparate in their views.

[00:12:52] It means that we're going to not only continue to struggle to solve these problems, and there are many that I haven't talked about today, many environmental issues that we've never come across before in our lifetimes. But because those issues are interconnected is it John Elkington who was. The gentleman behind the triple bottom line concept and the author of Green Swan talks about that we're going to have not only more wicked problems that we've never anticipated before and probably can't deal with, but that's going to translate into super wicked problems because of the interconnectivity.

[00:13:27] Mahan Tavakoli: So while there is a certain level of. Let's say fear based on a lot of what's happening in the pace of change. There can be optimism because we can do something about it. And I love the fact that you have the word hope in the age of uncertainty.

[00:13:47] Therefore, what can give us hope? What can give us that optimism? And how can we have the right kind of mindset? And skill set in order to be able to thrive in such an environment. 

[00:14:04] David Ross: Hope for me was critical in the title that even in these times of crises and poly crisis and permacrisis, we can still within our organizations and as individuals, as leaders turn those into opportunities.

[00:14:21] Jane Goodall for your listeners, you might recall, Jane Goodall is a wonderful lady. She's just turned 90 years of age. She's a chimpanzee expert. We know basically everything we know about chimpanzees because of what this impressive woman did in the start of the 1960s, late 1950s, at a time when women shouldn't be in jungles, for goodness sakes.

[00:14:47] And Jane makes this quote about every day You can make an impact, but it depends on you, what kind of impact you want to make., And she talks a lot about hope, it's very easy in the world today to feel like I just can't make an impact.

[00:15:05] I just can't, what's the point. Let's just keep doing everything the way we have been doing. Let's just keep taking the easy trotting path. Because there's no way I can make a difference. But absolutely, each of you can make a difference. And perhaps unknowingly, each day we are creating ripples that have positive impacts or negative impacts in the here and now and through the months and years to come.

[00:15:32] In this challenging VUCA world, I don't believe that any leader and this is no reflection on any individual leader, but no leaders nowadays have the time the expertise to be able to truly understand the context that they face, to be informed about society. I'm meant to make appropriate decisions based on what we're experiencing.

[00:15:59] So I argue in Confronting the Storm that one of the critical stories, coming back to Andrea once again, one of the critical stories that we need to change is that of the great leader that we've always had in society through the centuries that I make as the great leader. I make the decisions.

[00:16:20] I've got the grand vision. And you all behind me, my followers, you will follow me, and unquestionably it's just no longer possible. We need a more collaborative style of leadership. And that means Again, I've got a little bit of a smirk on my face. That means not only stepping out of our comfort zones and working with people we may not normally work with, people who have similar goals to us, but are coming at it from a different perspective.

[00:16:55] But the reason for the smirk was that can often entail if you're really courageous And comfortable with being vulnerable is working with those people who you normally dislike talking to, the noisy wheels and they might be within your organization. But what I often see is where true collaboration can come from and true innovation, I should say.

[00:17:17] Comes from those collision of different perspectives from working with people from outside your organization from NGOs from government and so on. So follow or flowing on from that change of story that I believe is required comes a few different skills also necessary as we really transform that story of emotional intelligence is a critical one.

[00:17:45] Being able to There's probably been other podcasts you've had or conversations you've had, Mahan, where people have talked about othering, that thing of labeling somebody as different to me and doing so to bestow on them a sense of inferiority in terms of their ideas, their solutions to things.

[00:18:08] So we've got to transcend that. So we've got to be more empathetic. More patient, more understanding to different views. We often talk about great speakers in society, but we don't talk about great listeners. So I actively suggest to my clients about the importance of listening deeply, and by doing so, start to reflect internally so that you not only understand the other, but start to take the journey to understand yourself and your mindset, your blind spots, your biases, et cetera.

[00:18:42] Yeah, collaboration, emotional intelligence, we've got to be more agile. It's only too natural in society where we've had this linear style thinking, and we've Dominating our organizations to be rigid in our thinking, but now and rigid in adhering to the actions or strategies we've put in place, but now we need to be more agile.

[00:19:04] That's probably a pretty good starting point. 

[00:19:07] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, one of the challenges that I see, David, is it requires a different view of leadership within the organization. , even when we use the term leader or leadership, a lot of times, 

[00:19:20] there's a hierarchy and then there is the leader. We hear stories of outlier entrepreneurs who did great things, leaders, whether in military or politics or business whose organizations made a huge difference. So we do tend to gravitate toward that singular. leader who drives an effort or drives an organization.

[00:19:49] That is a major shift in mindsets that it requires for everyone involved, not just that one individual for everyone involved, how can we make that shift?

[00:20:04] David Ross: That's a great question. As I was listening to you just then I was thinking about before I went out on my own, I'd worked in government organizations where Again, to bring the conversation back to Jane Goodall unwittingly, the CEO of one of the organizations was like something out of a Jane Goodall documentary.

[00:20:26] He was a real alpha male that, slammed his fist on the table when he didn't get his way and the employees, the teams they just did what they were told to do.

[00:20:38] Fast forward a little bit of time, a new CEO comes in and talks to everyone about Hey this is no longer going to be a a blame culture. I want you to go out there and take risks. I'm here. I'm backing you. I value your input, all that sort of thing about people are our greatest assets.

[00:20:58] And he was surprised and shocked that the staff, in his mind, didn't take any initiatives, but that for me implies what culture is all about. Even people who hadn't worked with the former CEO, the Jane Goodall documentary style CEO, just saw that's the way we do things around here, that it takes a lot, it can take a long time.

[00:21:24] So with that in mind I completely agree with you that collaboration, et cetera, has been around for a long time. I think probably I'll share a couple of dot points off the top of my head. I think the really good organizations that are trying to transform themselves And have a sense of urgency about the need to transform themselves.

[00:21:48] One of the first things they do there's probably a couple of things that you can do, but one of the key things I think is bringing the outside voice in. So with my work, I often work, I think of a spectrum of, I work with CEOs and hear from them about how lonely they're feeling and at the other end of the spectrum, I work with communities.

[00:22:08] Who are concerned about how corporate strategies, government policies are impacting upon their sense of life, sense of quality of life and the impacts of the natural environment. These two groups, for example, have never come into contact with each other. By bringing them together it's almost with a sadistic glee, if you like, how rewarding I find that when I bring the two groups together, Mahan, because the CEO suddenly, or, or having the outside voice coming and talking to if you're in a hierarchical organization with your middle managers, et cetera, but suddenly their jaws drop because they're seeing the world from a vastly different perspective, And rather than if you like being informed by corporate comms about how great our organization is, again, they're hearing a vastly different perspective and that alone can motivate people to change their mindsets and to, again, I suppose about stories that it, it creates a new meaning and organizes us into a different way.

[00:23:15] But I see that within organizations, there's probably very quickly While bringing in the outside voice in is extraordinarily helpful, but a lot of the time there isn't just one silver bullet. Within your organizations say you have at your disposal your leadership. So having to look at bringing in new leaders with those sorts of skills at a high level and within middle management within your people, there's trying to ensure that you engage with them on this change that's taking place, creating that new story, embedding that new story in your communications through time.

[00:23:51] Training your people and probably mentoring or coaching your staff with the aim of coaching them and also senior management to ensure that when it comes time when we have some failures, when we have some slips, trips and falls along the way, it'll be only too natural in that situation for an old style culture to point the finger at the person who's made the mistake and scream at them and discipline them and give them a formal letter.

[00:24:21] Perhaps in, in that situation, it's better to have some processes in place, some contingencies in place so that when we've had a failure, let's all take a deep breath and call on the process, the procedure, the policy, follow that and see how we can debrief and learn from that. And through time, through our learnings, realize that those learnings can then be translated into further practices that can, and further innovative practices.

[00:24:50] That can be tremendously successful for us. And perhaps the final one I'll put is other than systems, people, leadership probably structure is also also can play a key part in making that change. So for hierarchical organizations is trying to become flatter or even ambidextrous so that perhaps you're too frightened understandably to transform everything within your organization to begin with.

[00:25:13] So maybe. Have a division within your organization that you pilot this change through and learn accordingly. 

[00:25:20] Mahan Tavakoli: Those are great pieces of advice, David, and I circle back to your point about wicked problems and wicked problems. There is a system and therefore there aren't one or two easy answers.

[00:25:37] There is the reflection on the entire system. There are different things in different parts of the system that need to be changed in order to tackle the wicked problem. It's not, let's do this one thing and we're going to be able to address it. Now, one of the things I love in your book is that you built on the concept of VUCA with banding, brittle.

[00:26:02] anxious, non linear and incomprehensible. How does that, in your view, build on the framework and extend the framework of VUCA?

[00:26:16] David Ross: That's a very good question, Mahan. And you've asked a lot of good questions and that's a great one. There are a whole array of acronyms around what we're going through from VUCA. To Barney to Tuna and R U P T they all have their place, they're all theories, no one can have with great confidence a sense of exactly one of those acronyms is appropriate.

[00:26:40] Before I answer your question, perhaps I'd like to just add my thoughts that it's important to be aware of all these different acronyms. I think the critical thing is that I've had many a conversation on LinkedIn with people when I've said, Oh, I'm a VUCA strategist, they've said, no, the world's not VUCA.

[00:26:57] And then I've wanted to have a battle over what the acronym is. I think the struggle then is that we get bogged down in , the pedantic issues rather than the transformative change and reflections that we require. Nevertheless, I think perhaps I'm about to contradict myself by saying that Barney is really important because it adds to Burku in that it gives a sense of urgency.

[00:27:21] That is required to make change and if you don't mind a very quick aside, and then I'll come back to answer your question. But in terms of urgency, I just wrote this down in terms of environmental issues, and I know I started off as an ecologist. So this is always part of my biases. But think of this that most people die from unsafe water.

[00:27:44] than from all forms of physical violence, including wars. In 2023, one in five deaths , around the world, were due to air pollution, compared to 2015, when it was one in eight.

[00:27:59] For an American audience we have over 500 pounds of plastics entering oceans per second. I say that to emphasize that, for me, Barney is trying to express the need for urgency. Our organizations, in response to all these wicked problems that I've talked about, the fact that we're not dealing with them, it's leading to more super wicked problems.

[00:28:27] That's leading to more and more conflict. Our organizations as a response are becoming more brittle. And in fact, what was interesting for me early this year was that PricewaterhouseCoopers brought out its annual global CEO survey. One of the key things that came out of that was that more and more CEOs are anticipating that within 10 years, their organizations will no longer be viable unless they make a critical change to their path.

[00:29:00] to their strategy, to their visions, et cetera. And for me, Barney implies that just like we are currently in the sixth wave of ecological extinctions that have impacts for your organization your organization itself is at risk of extinction.

[00:29:17] , because things are interconnected you'll suddenly see a spike in change, and it is, as the final letter in Barney suggests, it is incomprehensible, but it comes down to systems thinking, and so many little changes in society will become interconnected and result in further seismic changes.

[00:29:37] Mahan Tavakoli: So in order to address that, you mentioned some of the approaches that we need to take as individuals would love to get your thoughts on some additional approaches from an organizational perspective, David, in that. Is it a scenario planning? Is it these CEOs that you mentioned? And I've read similar statistics to what you mentioned.

[00:30:04] The PWC study of global CEOs showed a large percentage believing their organizations will not be around in 10 years. Therefore, the question is. What do we do? What are some of your thoughts with respect to how to maneuver and how to lead that organization into the future? Not how to lead yourself, but how to rethink the organizational framework.

[00:30:36] David Ross: One of the things that I would recommend that organizations start to embed in their collective thinking is training your staff and coaching your staff on different forms of thinking that will be important for the future.

[00:30:48] One of those is strategic thinking, which is different to strategic planning and strategy. And it's about trying to understand at a holistic level, how all the different parts within your organization system internally and externally. How this, the parts fit together and trying to understand the relationships between the parts as an, as a probably elapsed ecologist.

[00:31:14] I've always seen it as if you can try and picture this visualization in your head. Imagine a three dimensional lattice, picture all the strands, how the strands come together to form nodes and that you're not at the center. There is no center to that 3D lattice. Nevertheless, and the nodes can represent.

[00:31:38] People, influential stakeholders, investors, it can represent communities, it can represent anything you like. But it gives, for me it's always given me a sense of when I make a decision, how the ripples of my decision could flow through and impact upon my stakeholders. Or alternatively, Trying to anticipate how decisions or actions within my stakeholders can have an impact upon me.

[00:32:13] And I've just used the word anticipation in there and bringing it back to, you talked, you referred to scenario planning. I think it's really important for organizations to become futures literate and climate literate. By futures literate, to embed foresight within your organization too. And, there are plenty of futurists out there who, they're skilled.

[00:32:42] is to try and use indicators within society to predict the future. My background in futures is using exercises, tools like scenario planning, and there's plenty more out there, but tools like scenario planning to help me anticipate possible options for the future, plausible options for the future, So imagine you're, and I say this because when we're dealing with the future, we as a race have always struggled to anticipate the future.

[00:33:18] We're often influenced by the here and now, things that are just loitering in the back of your head. By calling on tools like scenario planning, it can like we're dipping our toes into the future, getting a chance to feel what it's like. And by doing so, we can interrogate those futures.

[00:33:38] If we in our, as an organization. Do this. How will that play out? How will that contribute to a worst case scenario? Or if we do this collaborating with our external stakeholders, how could that play a part in contributing to a visionary scenario. So I think and for your listeners, when we talk about transformative foresight, yes, it's about anticipating the future, but there are a lot of tools out there that also help us to appreciate how the weight of history impacts upon our thinking and our organizations, our cultures.

[00:34:18] How that could be an obstacle or an impediment to actively shifting to a different future to actively shifting to a different business model, for example. 

[00:34:27] Mahan Tavakoli: That is great advice, David, and the best futurists that I follow and I've had on the podcast from Jane McGonigal to Daniel Burris or John Smart talk about the fact that.

[00:34:41] No one can really predict the future, even though they are futurists. The best futurists are the ones that, as you just described, are living in the future and projecting different potential scenarios and how they and or the organization would adjust based on a whole range of potential future scenarios.

[00:35:06] It makes them more agile. It makes them more likely to. Then as Annie Duke says, thinking in bets, have their bets. in what is a potential likely future scenario. So that's the way to do it. No one can predict the future. However, on the other end, it doesn't mean you shouldn't sit down and reflect on that future scenario planning and therefore adjusting based on that.

[00:35:39] David Ross: Well said. It means that organizations can be better prepared and many of your listeners. Might work and say high risk industries energy, mining, construction and it's often common in those organizations to do war gaming exercises, anticipating if we have a really terrible incident with that terrorism or A number of our staff, God forbid are injured.

[00:36:05] How do we run through that exercise internally and how do we deal with our regulators or emergency services, et cetera. So it's scenario planning, for example is a flow on from that exercise. 

[00:36:19] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, one of the other things that you mentioned, David, is the need for continuous learning, both for the leaders and then a learning culture for the team.

[00:36:30] I wholeheartedly agree, which is part of the reason I have this podcast and I enjoy having conversations with amazing Authors and brilliant people like you learning from your work, having the conversation, and I know the listeners are also in a learning mindset. That's why they choose, whether they're walking their dog, driving their car, ironing their clothes, whatever they're doing, they choose to listen to these and learn from it.

[00:36:56] That said, A lot of leaders that I interact with are stressed beyond belief and say , I have absolutely no time to do any reading, any learning while you say that it's one of the most important things we can do. So help me out here, David, what are we supposed to do when CEOs and executives, 

[00:37:19] they're getting much more information than their bandwidth and therefore it leaves very little to no room for the continuous learning that you say is crucial for them and for the culture of their organizations. 

[00:37:34] David Ross: I feel your listeners pain. I can

[00:37:41] deeply agree with your listeners that with the precious time or precious little time that they have available, that the most critical thing for them to do is to keep listening to Mahan's podcast. But

[00:37:52] I'd suggest that perhaps from a collaborative mindset comes not just relying on what information you have to absorb and that means not just having to go out yourself to try to find information and learn. But I think , it sends a really lovely signal to your teams. For you to perhaps you've never done it before, but to just start sharing with people that you're keen to find out more about whatever issue and how can your teams play a part of that?

[00:38:27] How can your stakeholders play a part of that? So I talked before about bringing the outside voice in that alone plays, can play an incredibly important part in your learning from the tapes, take some, like I said it might be a bit challenging, but those people you've normally disliked talking to.

[00:38:47] You can have a bit of joy shocking them at inviting them out for lunch get your stuff. You've got teams at the forefront of these challenges, whether they realize it or not your sustainability teams your customer service teams, you might have community relations teams. They're all dealing with these problems that we're facing.

[00:39:07] So they might be a few levels down from you in the hierarchy, if you're in a hierarchical organization. But I would fully recommend just talking to those voices you don't normally talk to that aren't within your management team. They're not your peers. They come from different perspectives and just have a conversation with them.

[00:39:31] Try to understand what are the challenges that they face? What are the risks that they are seeing within your organization? And hey, What do you think we might need to do to try and improve our situation? What are we facing now that we can turn into an opportunity? 

[00:39:51] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that recommendation, David, , which is more of the collective intelligence and swarm intelligence, because There is so much more capability to tap into that group, being that we are flooded with so much information and there is so much brilliance that we can tap into.

[00:40:10] It requires a shift in mindset, it requires a shift in language, including the way we view how organizations operate. Now, would love to know, in addition to your David, are there resources that you typically rely on to increase your intelligence and you recommend, because part of the challenge I find is there is a lot more noise than signal in the information that we come across.

[00:40:44] . What are some sources of signal for you? 

[00:40:46] David Ross: Oh, wow. One of the ones I go to which is readily available, comes from the Journal of Future Studies. It's amazing transformative futurists using scenario planning To try to find solutions to the challenges we're facing and to shine a light on our dominating mindsets and how they impact upon where we're heading. But because of the nature of my work I get to talk to people from all runs of life or walks of life, I should say.

[00:41:17] And by listening to them, and just giving them enough chance to just talk about themselves, the number of times that people have said to me, I've never shared this with anyone else, but, and they've talked about things like mental health issues, suicide, the way they see the world, their hopes and fears for the world, and that lives with me and stays with me all the time.

[00:41:41] And it plays a part in informing my thinking too. Even if it means. When you bump into somebody on your weekends, ladies and gentlemen, somebody who you know, but you've never felt you've had the time to properly talk to them. Again, it might seem like a strange thing for me to recommend, but can I suggest that you just go and start off with asking somebody about how has your week been and then starting to take the conversation from there.

[00:42:07] Yes, there might be people who it's great for my ego and that they confirm my views of the world. But when I talk to those people whose views are completely different to mine and, it might be really out there.

[00:42:21] To a very reasonable people. That does a lot to almost force me to confront myself, confront my own thinking. And learn from them accordingly. They were my two main signals. 

[00:42:35] Mahan Tavakoli: It's a beautiful recommendation, David, because part of what we need to tap into in ourselves is the humanity that then enables us to connect.

[00:42:50] Therefore, in this fast pace of change, accelerating through technology, where we want to learn, sometimes all it requires us to do is to pause. Connect with our humanity and in a genuine way, connect with another person's and listen to them how can the audience find out more about you, your book and follow  your work. David, 

[00:43:19] David Ross: Thank you for that, Mahan. So they can find me on LinkedIn at David Ross, VUCA strategist, or my website phoenixstrategic. com. au or 

[00:43:31] Mahan Tavakoli: I really appreciate you, David, and your insights on confronting the storm, regenerating leadership and hope in the age of uncertainty. 

[00:43:43] Thank you for this conversation, David Ross. 

[00:43:46] David Ross: Sue too. Maha.