S1:Ep86 The Antidote to Change Fatigue in the Age of AI: The Future-Ready Mindset for Success

My Ready Already guest today is Allister Frost from the United Kingdom. Together, we’ll explore The Future-Ready Mindset for Success and take a deeper look at The Antidote to Change Fatigue in the Age of AI.

Allister Frost is a world-leading business transformation and growth thought leader and speaker. He has given impactful motivational talks in over 30 countries to teams from Bosch, Hyundai, BBC, Bloomberg, Vodafone, and more. His revolutionary ReadyAlready® Growth Cycle inspires busy professionals to embrace a Future-Ready Mindset for a lifetime of success.

Allister was Microsoft’s first ever Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, helping steer the software giant towards new ways to connect with customers and generate new business.

In this powerful conversation, we dive into what leaders must do to stay grounded, human, and future-ready while AI accelerates transformation and compresses decades of change into months. You will learn how to navigate uncertainty with clarity, overcome change fatigue, and build a mindset that sustains performance, impact, and growth in the AI-driven era.

This episode is essential listening for leaders, executives, and business owners who want to stay relevant, resilient, and ahead of the curve.

Key Topics Discussed

• The real cost of change fatigue for organizations and individuals in the AI era
• Why leaders still cling to the illusion of stability and what blind spot they miss
• How the ReadyAlready® Growth Cycle moves leaders out of survival mode and into forward momentum
• The hardest leadership lesson from Allister’s time at Microsoft during digital disruption
• Where leaders are failing most in the AI acceleration and the hidden risks no one talks about
• The most powerful immediate move to regain balance and impact
• How leaders can protect the human essence while meeting the technical demands of AI
• The belief about success leaders must unlearn to stay relevant
• A clear, actionable piece of advice to cultivate a truly future-ready mindset
  
  

🔗 Connect with Allister Frost on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisterspeaks/

🔗 Allister's links: https://bit.ly/m/allisterfrost

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Human-Centered Stage
• 2:05 Meet Alistair Frost And His Path
• 4:08 The True Cost Of Change Fatigue
• 8:56 Why Stability Is A Delusion
• 12:12 The Ready Already Growth Cycle
• 16:10 Three Human Superpowers: Open, Surprise, Tell
• 21:20 Specialize And Focus In The AI Flood
• 25:20 Efficiency Traps And Invisible Risks
• 30:05 Practical Reset: Start With Follow
• 33:10 Holding The Human Essence In AI
• 36:20 Unlearning Knowledge-As-Power
• 39:05 If It Works, It’s Obsolete
• 42:30 Closing Reflections And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for humans with your host Amy. In this podcast, we'll delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation, and most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch, nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence, and building resilient teams. My ready already guest today is Alistair Frost from the United Kingdom, and together we will explore the future ready mindset for success and take a deeper look at the antidote to change fatigue in the age of AI. Alistair Frost is a world-leading business transformation and growth thought leader and speaker. He has given impactful motivational talks in over 30 countries to teams from Bosch, Hendai, BBC, Bloomberg, Vodafone, and more. His revolutionary, ready already growth cycle inspires busy professionals to embrace a future-ready mindset for a lifetime of success. Alistair was Microsoft's first ever head of digital marketing strategy, helping steer the software giant towards new ways to connect with customers and generate new business. Welcome, Alistair. I'm so happy to have you here in this studio.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29

Thanks. I mean that was quite an introduction. And I'm genuinely excited to talk to you about change fatigue and what it means for so many of us who may, if we're not careful, find ourselves obsolete in the workforce if we choose not to keep up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45

I'm so excited about hearing more, and we are going to dive into all of this very soon. Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. If you are interested in connecting or collaborating, you can find more information in the description. And don't forget to subscribe for more powerful episodes. And if you are a leader, business owner or investor ready to adapt, thrive, and lead with clarity, purpose, and wisdom in the era of AI, I would love to invite you to learn more about AI Game Changers, a global elite club for visionary trailblazers and change makers shaping the future. You can apply at AIGamechangers.club. Alistair, to start with, I would love to hear more about yourself, about your passions, about everything what brought you to today's journey. And specifically, I would like to learn more about those moments which were changing your path through your life.

SPEAKER_00: 2:58

I worked in the corporate world for 20 years with two big American companies and had a fantastic time there. And I learned so much in the transition between a traditional business and then going to the tech sector at Microsoft. And you know what? That really awoken me to the way the world is changing and how different it's going to be in the future. And I've just had an excitement for just trying to keep up and trying to be relevant and useful ever since. And uh yeah, for more than 10 years now, I've been helping people as a speaker around the world to talk about change and what it means for our future so that people can frankly keep up and do their very best in a world that's going to be very different to what we know today.

SPEAKER_01: 3:44

Your engagement and uh what you are doing for the world is truly invaluable. And I so appreciate your approach, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about the details. Leaders everywhere say that they are exhausted by non-stop transformation and pressure to adapt to uncertainty faster than ever in this new AI era. From your global perspective, what does change fatigue really cost organizations and individuals? And why is it such a dangerous threat right now?

SPEAKER_00: 4:20

Oh, that's a big question. Change fatigue. Yeah, I think I think most people know what change fatigue is. It's that feeling of feeling slightly uncomfortable because there's just more going on, and you just you get exhausted. Every day you go home and think, oh, I got through today, and then I've got to go again, I've got to go again. Um, and that that change fatigue presents itself in many different ways for different people, different teams, different organizations. But maybe if I describe some of the things, maybe some of your uh followers will will recognize some of this stuff. You know, we see it in people's attitudes at work and maybe the emotions that they bring to work. So sometimes when you're struggling to keep up, you end up being quite apathetic. So you have sort of apathy and disengagement, which is a real problem in many organizations right now. Um, when you're not enthused by change or by the new, we see people who are more cynical and negative because of that. And also there's a lot of mistrust that comes through because people learn that they don't necessarily like what's coming at them and they look for somebody to blame, whether that's the leaders, the organization, or whatever. And fundamentally, for individuals, um, if you're tired by change, if you don't take energy from change, you end up quite stressed and anxious about it, and that's really bad for your mental health. So, what it means for an organization, of course, then is that the behavior or the performance of people reduces. So you see people with who resist change, you know, or come up with their own agenda. They say, I I've got a better way, I don't want to do that, I want to do this. Um, you see the productivity going down, you see absenteeism going up, staff turnover going up, but also just quality dropping because people are they they're wasting cycles on the problem of change rather than on delivering what the organization should do. And the net result of change fatigue is fundamentally just means you're weaker. Competitively you're weaker, and you get these sort of long-term productivity declines that maybe your competitors don't experience. So it is a very dangerous thing for organizations when when people are not buzzing and excited for change.

SPEAKER_01: 6:33

I couldn't agree more. And um, as a former corporate leader myself, I've seen it from the inside. So I appreciate truly everything you are including into your activities and your philosophy because it is so needed today, and it is changing the way those leaders are also engaging into the topics which are not easy at all. And we have to understand that that it's not always easy, and it is also very difficult to keep up with this change.

SPEAKER_00: 7:10

I think we have to, it's also worth recognizing that this isn't this is a relatively new problem, right? Technology particular, which is the sector I worked in for many years, has fueled, has accelerated the way that the world changes. Previous generations, our parents, our grandparents, so their great-grandparents, they didn't have as much change. You could go to work, learn a profession, get very good at that skill, and you could rise through the ranks, knowing that profession, and and it didn't change that much. So this is a new skill. And so I'm always very forgiving of any organization or any leader or any person who is now struggling with this, because why would you know how to cope with change when you've you've not been trained? That's not been the world that you've grown up in. So it is a new skill, and that's why I think future ready mindset is such an important thing for so many people.

SPEAKER_01: 8:05

This is spot on, but I it makes me think also about my conversations where sometimes I discover that it's not accepted yet by the leaders. Uh, this need is still outside of their visibility area for some reason, and uh they do their best to push away the idea that something is truly different today, and they need to upgrade their leadership skills, and they need a different mindset in order to thrive. And uh, you often say uncertainty is the only certainty. If that's true, why do so many leaders still behave as if stability is around the corner? What blind spot are they missing? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00: 8:56

Oh wow, it's true, isn't it? That um, yeah, there are a lot of leaders who believe that stability is around the corner. I think that's what you said. And I I I see this so often. I used to refer to it as the the improvement delusion. You know, this this idea that things will get better when? And then there's always something. So where when we get the new IT system, this will be much easier. Oh, when we get the new team member joins, that that will be the time. When that when the new C A CEO takes charge, you know, this this improvement delusion um is just an excuse. And a lot of leaders sort of use that, and indeed team members as well, will use that as an excuse not to take action today because it's going to be easier to solve this problem in the future. And the the classic example is any new IT system, people often say, well, we'll make that change when we've got the new system, and because it will all be better. Now, anybody who's upgraded an IT system knows it's better in some ways, but it's a lot worse in others. All you do is you have a whole load of new problems to deal with that you didn't have before. So there's this idea that things are going to be easier in the future, which is a delusion, and they aren't. So what a lot of leaders then end up doing inadvertently because they're not used to the pace of change, is they'll put a sticky plaster over a problem when you know really what you need is we need surgery. We need we need it now. You know, we need to we need to operate and fix this thing, it's a big problem. But also, you know, we're not gonna just do it once and and future-proof it. That's what I'm I hate that phrase future-proof. A lot of people use it. It's a lie, it's a lie that's taught to us by the technology sector. Um, nothing is future-proofed because we don't know what the future is. So, what you need to do is you've got to recognize that we can't put a sticky plaster on this thing. Sometimes you need to do major surgery, and also we're gonna be in in a permanent state of well, I suppose, rehabilitation, you'd call it, if it was in medical sense, you know, if I continue that metaphor, you know, we're gonna we're gonna be constantly be exercising and learning to do this new thing as well as we can, because there is no stability around the corner. You know, there is just more uncertainty, there's more problems, and don't wait for X to happen because it won't be better. It would you'll just have a different set of problems. If it's something that needs dealing with, now is a good time to start.

SPEAKER_01: 11:24

This is so well explained, and all your comparisons, they are truly spot on because they describe the urgency and uh all this delusion and the narrative, which is actually so easy recognizable for many of corp leaders and business owners. And at the same time, we can see that it doesn't make so much sense anymore, and we truly don't know what the future holds. So it is just about becoming more adaptable and getting ready already for this growth in terms of uh unpredictability. I'd love to learn more about your ready already growth cycle. How does it move leaders out of survival mode and into a state where they can actually thrive in chaos?

SPEAKER_00: 12:25

Okay, well, so I I've got this book out. It's called Ready Already. I've got a copy here. I'm learning to hold up my book. Ready already, it's named that way because I want people to be ready already for the inevitable changes and challenges that are on the horizon. And the ready already growth cycle, which is what I describe in the book, is a really simple process that not only allows us to prepare for the future, but just to continually update ourselves on an ongoing basis so we stay relevant in the workplace and useful. And what I'm really describing is this thing that I call a future-ready mindset. It's it's different to say growth mindset. It's only 20 years, incredibly, since growth mindset became a thing. Not even 20 years, actually. And growth mindset is this, we all know it now. It's this idea that with application and perseverance, we can all learn new skills and develop all through life, right? That's that's we are we understand that much. The problem with growth mindset is something we all know as well. We're busy, we've got a lot to do, we're just about getting through the day, and then we go again and we go, you know, we haven't got time for self-development, we haven't got time to learn. And just saying I've got a growth mindset is not enough. So a future ready mindset is accepts the principles of growth mindset, but it gives you the fuel to want to do it. So it gives you a reason to want to develop your abilities through time. I call that your personal mission, but it also gives you the direction to go and do it. So it's a very simple process that will allow you to learn about something that's important to you, find out all you can, and then apply what I call three human superpowers to that thing so that you look at it in a way that will help you see new possibilities and help you work with your colleagues ultimately to make them into a reality for your work or your organization or whatever it is that you do.

SPEAKER_01: 14:21

This is so true because uh I've been developing uh and uh I apply with my clients in my work my framework around the winning mindset, and that's exactly not the growth mindset, and I loved how you described why the growth mindset is not going to really help long term because uh it's not enough. And I noticed as well that there is no this regeneration layer in the growth mindset, so people is just getting more and more efficient potentially, but also exhausted, and it also pushes leaders to take the decisions which are not always human-centric, but which are mostly growth-centered and uh business development applied, but actually uh there is not so much place for humans in that loop. And what are the superpowers? You just mentioned that there are three. So, which are those?

SPEAKER_00: 15:28

The model itself has got three superpowers in it, and the reason I call them superpowers is because these are three things that I do not believe AI or technology will ever do as well as a human being. So I think these are skills that are gonna be absolutely essential for the future because AI can do a lot of things, but it cannot do these. And then I call them open surprise and tell. Um, open is about opening your mind to new possibilities. So it's recognizing that the enemy to your future is your experience, it's what you know. So sometimes we need to trick our brains to not see what we've always seen and to see things afresh, almost like a child would, you know, to like with new eyes. So open is about opening your mind with raw human curiosity. Now, anyone who's followed the development of AI will know that that's quite a hard thing for a large language model to do because it has to rely on what has gone before. It only has that framework to create sense for the world. But human beings can look at things afresh and see new possibilities when we're truly curious. So that's open. It's about creating space in your mind to recognize that things don't have to stay the way they are, they can be improved. The second one is surprise, which is about surprising yourself fundamentally with uh ideas that you didn't think you would have. So it's trying to be it's be braver with ideas, to be more creative, to have bigger imagination, to dream beyond the parameters of what you know, so that you have an idea that's maybe it's maybe too big to be reality, but it's a great place to start. Um, and again, AI is very good at creativity, it can give you lots of suggestions, but it doesn't filter them through your human brain. It doesn't do the invisible stuff that the biological brain does with an idea to sort of steer it in a direction that's unexpected, non-obvious, but potentially really valuable. And then the third superpower I call tell, which is about telling the right people about what you've been doing, what your curiosity was, what your creativity was, and having the courage to share an idea that is probably a bit embarrassing that you think this is a bit crazy, but I had this idea. What do you think? Um, but doing that in a way where the communication between those human beings is very additive and supportive, and we learn and grow together because we share the same goal and we work to make the ideas better. You see, when we have ideas, we often self-censor them because they're not because we're worried that people will laugh, we worry that it's silly, we worry that it's ridiculous, and we kill a lot of stuff off. Whereas if we have the courage to have an idea, but then to share it in a safe way, to communicate between human beings, then those humans can make that idea better. They will always make it better, but they will also steer it towards reality. So open surprise and tell are three steps which, if you do them in the right sequence, um, can really take you to a different place in your thinking, show you some new possibilities, and with the support of your colleagues, if you do it right, transform a thought process into collective action for the better.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

I love this. And this is so important truly. And I also thought about the fact that today, exactly today, I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn around the fact that social media changed our behavior towards becoming more angry towards each other, towards new ideas, and developed more aggression in us because any type of aggression causes more reactions. And those likes and comments, and it was actually based on the scientific research that many are ready to go into that dark space of negative response just to get any type of reaction. And uh, you know, for the PR basically any visibility is visibility, unfortunately. And that's how we are developing in the wrong direction, partially, because uh the kindness to be open to the new ideas, to just be respectful to each other's thoughts, there is so much innovation coming from that side of experimentation of what if, and when you open up the space for the constructive conversation and discussion, and uh it's not always the case, just because um the behavior is changing as well, we are getting more and more stressed, we speed up more and more. But I would like to take us a little bit back in time to the times where you were the company's first digital marketing strategy leader at Microsoft during massive disruption. What is the single hardest lesson from the time you believe today's AI era leaders must take seriously?

SPEAKER_00: 20:49

Oh boy. As I think back to my time in Microsoft, I was in the uh some of the very early days of social media. We were literally inventing technologies like blogging and uh so on that that uh that have transformed the world ever since. And we were trying to figure out how we could use these new channels as a way to promote Microsoft, I mean, fundamentally as a way to tell people about what we did and to help them and give customers a good experience. And the problem I think we had in those early days is one that I think a lot of organizations still have, is that we we tried to do a lot of things. Um, we were trying to, we were spread ourselves very thin. We were we never got really good at any one thing, we got average at lots. So the advice I think I'd give, you know, particularly in an AI era, I mean, it you see new things about AI every single day. I mean, probably every hour, there's something new. It is that quick. Um, and if you try to pay attention to all of that stuff, you're really going to struggle. So the very first part of the ready already growth cycle is called follow, and it's about focusing your attention on doing one thing really well, but picking that thing with great care. So I think I'd say specialize. If you see AI, really pick one area where you think it can be applied to your business and try to figure that thing out first and excel at that one thing, get really good at that one thing, and you know, don't get distracted by all the shiny objects. The true definition of focus is the ability to pick one thing, to focus on it hard enough and for long enough to decide whether it's right for you. And by doing that, you are actively choosing not to pay attention to other things that seem interesting, they seem useful, but you've you said, No, I'm gonna focus. That is the true test of real focus. So when I was, I remember one of my bosses would used to come into meetings and he'd have all these ideas, he'd always turn up with, oh, we could I've learned about this, I've learned about this, I've learned about this, and I'd write everything down in my notebook, and it was exhausting. And honestly, it would it was like I I likened it in the book too, it's like it's like watching a dog in a room full of squirrels. They're just chasing squirrels left, right, and so they're running around like crazy. And that's what a lot of people are like when they start to dip into technology. They say, Oh, I can do that, and then they, oh no, I can do this, oh, I can do that. Did you know? And you can get so randomized by that, you end up learning nothing. So, yeah, the one piece of advice from the early days at Microsoft would definitely be specialize, pick a lane, get really good at one thing, and don't get distracted by the shiny objects that are all around.

SPEAKER_01: 23:43

So true. And it makes me also think about the fact that this technology and its application is not better or stronger than our ability to think behind the processes and apply it to the right place in the right way. And of course, it also reminds me of the times of Martech development where we started with just a few solutions, and then it became such an avalanche of different opportunities and uh options. So today basically there are hundreds of similar solutions which can solve your problem in a similar way, and um AI is moving even faster towards similar trends, and it is increasingly important to be able to focus on what really matters exactly for you, for your organization and for your use case, and then apply that technology just to solve what you really need to solve. Not for the sake of technology, but for the sake of your business.

SPEAKER_00: 24:56

For sure. It's uh and I remember in Martech, the early days, and I think these things still exist. You know those slides that people will put up at a business conference, and it's got hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny little company logos on, and there's all of these different categories. And you sort of look at it and you think, I have no idea what that means. And it's so unhelpful. It's really the opposite to what we need. We don't need to know that there are 47 different companies or 47 different ways of using AI to solve that problem. We need to understand our problem and we need to focus on what we need to do for our customers, and then we pick one solution that believe may help us achieve it, and we go deep into that. We can always explore another solution, but what you mustn't do is get randomized by the choices that are out there because it is it's if you think it's hard now, I can't even imagine what it's gonna be like in five years' time.

SPEAKER_01: 25:52

Brace for impact. And it's getting faster, and uh, this story is clearly speeding up. AI is compressing decades of change into month. Where do you see leaders and business owners failing most in this acceleration? And what hidden risks aren't being discussed enough?

SPEAKER_00: 26:15

What do I see leaders doing? I think the the greatest short-term issue we have with AI is leaders see AI as an opportunity for efficiency. I remember that first time I heard that word efficiency when I was a leader at Kimberly Clark, and I didn't actually know what it meant. It basically means cutting costs for people. It's about getting rid of people, right? How can we do this with efficiency? And I think a lot of people see AI as an opportunity for efficiency. So we can get rid of the repetitive, simple, the easy jobs because we can automate that. The problem is if we automate something without knowing that that is definitely what our customers want, without knowing that is definitely a better way of doing things than we have in the past, that's unlikely to be useful for our business in the short term. But worse, and this is what I worry about, is that if we cut the junior level jobs in our organization, if we don't have people doing relatively simple, repetitive jobs because AI can do it cheaper, where is our future experience going to come from? Who are gonna be the leaders of the future? We we need those junior level people climbing the ladder so that we have an organization that's robust and can survive. And I think it's very short-termist to look at AI as an efficiency, as a cost-saving thing. I think you should look at it as a way of, as everyone says, of freeing up the time from routine repetitive tasks to allow us to use more of our brains to improve what we do, to solve problems, to make the customer experience better. That really worries me that we see we treat it as an efficiency thing. And secondly, I think that the particularly with generative AI, gen AI kind of deceives us into thinking it's a great solution, because you can type an art type of question, you get an answer back, and increasingly I see people taking that as the answer because it it seems good, seems like a plausible answer. It speaks in good English or whatever language you like, and uh it seems like it knows what it knows, but it doesn't. I I equate um a lot of Gen AI, it's like a magic trick. You know, when you get a magician who's got some cards and they do something, and your card comes to the top of the pack and you think, Well, that's how did they do that? Well, you you can look at a magician and say, that person has magic. They're magic people. There, there's a thing called magic, I don't understand. It must be possible. Or you can look at them and say, I think they played a trick on me. That's quite clever. I don't quite know how it is. I like it, but I don't believe that that card actually got to the top of the pack like that. It didn't, but that didn't happen. You've got to look at AI the same way. You don't just look at it and say, Wow, it's like magic. This thing has magic. It doesn't. It's technology companies writing software, presenting it in a way that seems human. It even talks to you in a human-type language, you know. So you think, oh, it's my friend. No, don't trust it, stay skeptical. Um, the answer it gives you maybe correct, but it's probably also wrong in some ways. And I don't see enough cynicism and critical thinking with AI. I think we're getting very lazy very quickly. And that really is a race towards the bottom. Um, because if we lose our ability to think critically and we just trust the computer to give us an answer, well, we're pretty much guaranteeing there's no need for us in the workforce in the future. Because if all we're doing is copy paste, copying the answer and pasting it into something else, it's really easy to get a computer to do copy paste. That's the easiest ever, right? So don't bring yourself, you've got to be adding a layer of humanity on top.

SPEAKER_01: 30:15

You just reminded me of my yesterday's conversation. I couldn't agree more with all that. Everything you just mentioned. Yesterday I saw some results from the Harvard research, where if before one senior expert had two juniors, today we count in a different way. One senior and two agentic solutions around, so two AI agents, it's basically the same. And um, I saw it in a chat where there are so many uh AI experts. Well, you know, I know that they are very technical and very much into this efficiency mindset, so it's not often that I participate in any conversation in that forum, but still yesterday I couldn't stay silent, and I I wrote, How can you think that this is great? because it was presented like a very positive shift towards the future. And I also wrote that there is no regeneration aspect, there is no long-term vision around it. How are you going to take care of the younger generation and support them while they are completely losing their hope into the future?

SPEAKER_00: 31:44

We need people to do a job, earn money, spend money, that pays for the services we need, that creates a better world, that creates prosperity and innovation in the future. And if we have a model where everybody is buying into the idea that AI means we don't need to pay people, then you won't have any customers. I mean, it is as simple as that. So I I get why people are enthusiastic about efficiency because it's what every business leader thinks they must do. Uh, and I also get why people who have a solution to sell, a technology solution to sell, would use that as a driver to get the sale. But we have to stand back and look at the bigger picture. And there is a real hidden risk here that uh we effectively eliminate the actual talent within our organizations, and in a few years' time we realize we don't have a business at all, and there is no innovation because AI will be a race towards homogeneity. You know, everything will be the same. It will be that's where the ultimate efficiency is. And I don't think that's what most people want. They want variety, they want brilliance, they want unexpected surprises, they want things to be delightful, and that's not going to come from an AI machine, that comes from human beings.

SPEAKER_01: 33:07

To be honest, sometimes I start wondering what they really want, because it is obvious that we're not going to come into a brighter future with everything you just mentioned if we have only performance and efficiency as our focal point. But at the same time, I see what is going on around and how many enthusiastic leaders are still protecting in a quite aggressive way this way of running business. And the good news is well that there are voices on the other end, and uh they are also getting louder. And I was so happy that you are speaking all over the world and sharing your vision with the leaders, with the big companies, and I just want to remind everybody that Alistair is available for the speaking engagement. So if you would like to invite him as your guest, then just come in touch with him, and the details will be in the details to this episode lower down in the description. You can find it there.

SPEAKER_00: 34:20

Thanks, Amy. That's very kind of you.

SPEAKER_01: 34:23

Of course. Alistair, for everyone who feels drained and overwhelmed, what is the most powerful immediate move they can make to regain balance and impact?

SPEAKER_00: 34:35

Ooh, okay. Um gosh, I'm gonna go to my ready already growth cycle. I put it here somewhere. Um, if anyone's watching on video, I'm holding up a sort of Pentagon shape, and it's my ready already growth cycle. This is, I cover this extensively in the book. This is the process. And the very first thing at the top of the model is called follow. Follow is a way of starting your journey to the future, to creating a future where you're ready and prepared for the inevitable changes and challenges that lay on the horizon. The word inevitable is really important there. There are a lot of things, if we're honest, that are sort of inevitable. I mean, we've been talking about AI. AI will get better, it will be able to do more things, it will be more useful. This much we know. We don't know exactly how, but it will. So if you think about your future, um, follow is the process of identifying what you should follow. And the best way to do this, as I describe in the book, is to write a list with absolute humility and honesty. Write a list of all the things that you think you should probably understand a little bit better in the near future. Right? So we've all got a gap between who we are today and who we may need to be, two, three years from now, let's say. Not a long way in the future, just a few years. And think about your job, think about your career, think about your interests, and write down the stuff that you don't properly understand. And so I'd I if I was better at that, that might help. Or if I understood this thing, that might help. And for many people, AI would be on the list. But the best answer I ever got, I I got the stories in the book, was from a chief financial officer who said, the thing I need to understand better in the next year is Microsoft Excel. And it was a chief financial officer. You think, Well, Microsoft Excel, you need to understand a spreadsheet. It's like, yeah, because he'd never been trained, he didn't know how to use it, and he figured that if I could finally get this monkey off my back of knowing how Excel works, then I think I could do my job better. I think I could help my team better. That's amazing. And I bet we've all got books piled up somewhere, podcast episodes we've never listened to, post-it notes on our desk. There are loads of things. And to write all of those down, this is the best way. If you're feeling drained and overwhelmed, as you sort of described, write that down. Because this is the best list you'll ever write, because you don't have to do it all. You need to pick the one thing, the one thing that you really must do above all others, the one thing that talks to you most loudly, and just do that and take that through the rest of the ready or ready growth cycle, the steps in the process, and see where it takes you. And it's as simple as that. And you just do one thing well, but tick something off so you feel like there's progress, so you feel like you're doing something that's sort of cleansing, that's cathartic, it's it's moving you forwards. Um, because otherwise, we just we we I describe it as today ready in my talks. We go to work, we know what we've got to do, we try to achieve as much as we can, we go home exhausted, and then we go again the next day, and we try to get through the day, and then we go home, and then we try to get through another day. That's today ready. I want people to be future ready, which is they're carving out a bit of time and space to think about something that will make the future easier for them because they've dealt with it rather than ignoring it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:02

This is so good, and I also believe it is important to understand where to focus, so to find those 20% of efforts which are going to give you 80% of results according to Pareto's rule. And uh I remind about it uh quite often. And I think this is also one way of approaching that when you are writing down a list of what you would like to learn, where you would like to get better, you start thinking about how you prefer prioritizing your activities and uh your needs, and it takes you closer to the thoughts about what is your North Star, what is your focus, and uh where should you actually focus instead, potentially? So this is such a powerful process. I agree, this is worth to invest time into definitely. Future readiness isn't about tools alone, it's so much about people. How can leaders hold on to the human essence while still meeting the ever-growing technical demands of AI?

SPEAKER_00: 39:26

How do we hold on to the human essence? I I think that the leaders' job now, more than ever before, is to create an environment where team members feel like they can spend time on things that matter to them. They've obviously everybody's got to do the day job. That's not going away. But we all, if we're honest, do have time. We have space where we could spend thinking about the future, thinking about a new skill, developing learning and so on. And it's the leader's job to give people permission to explore and to experiment and to have ideas and to be bold sometimes. So that that's the number one thing for leaders. It's also to recognize that AI doesn't always have our best human interests at heart, you know, as I've described before. It's a tool that's pretending to be human, and it's very clever in the way that it does that. Um and it's very useful, but it's not always acting in our best interests. The leader's job is to do that, is to look at the people, the talent within their organization, and to nurture that talent, to give people the opportunities that they believe in, that they want to be part of, so that they're fully invested, they're committed. Um, I write a lot in the book about personal mission, which is sits at the heart of my cycle. It's this reason why we do the job we do, why we love our work, because we're doing something meaningful in the service of others. And and it's a leader's job to remind people of the brilliance of their work and how important it is, and how it the downstream benefits are very significant in every job. Every job, doesn't matter what you do. So I think I think that's really key. And it's also leaders have to keep reminding their leaders that artificial intelligence without a human being involvement is is really useless. AI relies on the humans to use it to do something that's for our planet. It's just a tool that responds to human instructions and and and guidance. Without us steering that thing, it's useless and it won't give us the answers we need. So I think the leader's job is to really recognize the humanity in the team and to celebrate that and to give people a chance to be themselves as much as possible, not to put them into a position where they're they're just a cog in the machine or they're just doing a job that the AI can't yet do. That's a horrible place for anybody to be. That's the leader's job. They've got to make people feel wanted and valued in their work.

SPEAKER_01: 42:04

Sometimes I wonder how far we are from the place as now where AI is still more of a tool to the place where AI is considered more like another type of entity where they have their rights and their abilities. Because when I think, for example, about those AI artists which are selling their albums and they make millions of followers on social media and on the platforms like Spotify, they are truly competing. They have their personality, they have their talent, their creative side, and they are competing with real humans. And the question is where this edge of intellectual property is as well. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 43:00

Real challenges, real challenges for us all. But there have always been it with every every revolution, there are people who will dig for gold and make a lot of money very quickly, and there are others who will build the sustainable platform that the world will benefit from for years and years to come. So it's a choice I think we all have is as to whether you want to just make some quick bucks in the immediate or whether you want to create something that's got a long-term vision behind it.

SPEAKER_01: 43:28

I love this. Alistair, what is one long-held belief about success that leaders and business owners must unlearn if they want to stay relevant in these exciting times?

SPEAKER_00: 43:43

Unlearn. I think the obvious one, um, it's a bit of a cliche maybe, but um the idea that knowledge is power. That if you're a leader, you've got insights into the business, you know things that other people don't know. And therefore you're you're the boss, so you must know best. And I think the best leaders in this era, certainly those who have a future-ready mindset, they accept that knowledge isn't power anymore, because you can find an answer to anything if you want to. It's about it's they recognize that their experience actually is probably the greatest thing that will hold them back because they know how to get things done around here. They don't have the same hunger that they used to have to maybe to, you know, to create the way things should be around here. So I think uh that's what you need to unlearn. You need to unlearn this idea that you have all the answers, that that that you can solve people's problems, uh, and instead create an environment where people feel comfortable asking you questions where you are comfortable admitting what you're not very good at, and showing that you really just want to create a culture where we can solve these problems together. I may be the boss, but I don't know best. You know, it's as simple as that. And I I I sometimes reflect in my in my talks. As I rose the ranks, as I became more senior in my work, I I didn't get better at predicting the future. I didn't get better at knowing what the next thing should be. If anything, I got worse because I was more entrenched in a way of thinking than some of my more junior, more uh inexperienced colleagues. So I think you know, when you accept that, you realize that actually we're all on a very when it comes to the future, we're all on the same level playing field. None of us know what it will be. Uh, but together we might be able to work it out.

SPEAKER_01: 45:46

This is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. If you could share one piece of advice to help our listeners and viewers cultivate a truly future-ready mindset and strategy, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00: 46:00

Oh, I'm gonna go. I my mind immediately goes back to something I learned when I was at Microsoft. And I'd come from a traditional manufacturing business. I'd worked at Kimberley Clark, they make paper products, uh, big brands like Kleenex and Huggy's Andrix in the UK. And it was very much traditional business. And the philosophy there was this is a little unfair, but it was very much if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Have you ever heard that expression? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And I'd learned to do very well by keeping things the same, making them more efficient, running the machines faster, you know, all of that stuff. And it's when I got to Microsoft that Bill Gates said, today, if something works, it's obsolete. And that really shook me because I was like, what do you mean? If it works, it's it's working, right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. No, if something works, if the process works, if the way you do something works, I can guarantee that there is already somebody somewhere in the world who knows how to do that better, faster, cheaper. Just you know, be better than what you've got in some way. It just will. So accept that would be my piece of advice, except that everything you know, everything that works is already obsolete. That doesn't mean you've got to change everything, but it does give you permission to improve anything, right? You don't have to leave things the way they are. See your world, see everything you do as unfinished, incomplete, and then focus on creating an environment where you as a leader, if you're a leader or a team member, where everyone can just go about every day making small improvements that collectively will make a huge difference. If everybody in the organization makes small improvements, learn how to use Excel, improve the way we sign off an email, little things, it doesn't matter, but if you're constantly improving things, you're moving forwards. It's as simple as that. Everything is obsolete, everything can be improved, and that's a really exciting opportunity if you choose to see it that way. I really hope that everybody who's uh who's joined us today looks at the world that way from now on uh and sees a world of opportunity ahead of them and is inspired to go and pursue that and create the bright future that they deserve.

SPEAKER_01: 48:23

Alistair, I absolutely loved this eye-opening conversation, and uh I'm so happy that we've got a chance to discuss so many crucial questions and uh create some kind of playbook for the leaders, not only for today, but even more so for the future. And this is truly future-ready and uh applicable. So I'm grateful for your insights, for your golden nuggets you shared with us today. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00: 49:00

Oh, it's been my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 49:04

Thank you for joining us on digital transformation and the eye for humans. I'm Amy, and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature, how we think, feel, and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. If this conversation resonated with you and you are a visionary leader, business owner, or investor ready to shape what's next, consider joining the AI Game Changers Club. You will find more information in the description. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections, and leading with heart.