EP 228: Innovation Breakfast Club Revival

October 22, 2023 Jens Heitland

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EP 228: Innovation Breakfast Club Revival

In our latest episode, host Jens Heitland reconnects with esteemed guests Josh, Werner, and Dennis for a stimulating reunion of the "Innovation Breakfast Club" from episode 138. This candid conversation traverses personal and professional journeys, while also addressing pressing issues that shape society today. Topics include the art of asking meaningful questions, the nuances of building trust, and the importance of a human-centric approach in business, coupled with reflections on the concept of time. Dive into this enriching dialogue and discover insights that resonate with our modern world.

Guest Links:

Joshua Nuttall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-nuttall-xyz/

Werner Puchert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wernerpuchert/

Dennis Luijer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisluijer/

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Transcript:

(This Transcript is AI generated)

It's been a while. I mean, I mean, the, the, the, The world was waiting for four old white guys to get together again to talk about stuff. I know, I know Jens is the, is the legend, but like the other three people in Dodgy. Jeez.

Yeah. I must say I, I haven't been on a podcast or on a recording uh, for a very long time uh, actually with you guys like the last time or maybe in interview somewhere.

long time ago. I was just checking before the call how long it is ago. So it was episode 138 on my podcast.

And

like five years ago.

and I've published already 222

That was going to be my next question. And your, your, your, your um, podcast is rocking and rolling. Right. That's like, it's um, but like, I'm, I started losing a little bit of track. Like, Are you, you still have the single platform? That's a single podcast, right? Cause I saw some other interviews happening with other kinds of themes.

I might be misunderstanding how you, you're putting your,

all in one podcast and it's still all the same.

Yeah, but I mean, I think maybe your, your themes are a bit different, right? Because it's innovation is still the overarching topic, but there's leadership things that I'm seeing coming through. Um,

yeah,

still the same because the angle of innovation I took always is the human part. How do you do that in an organizational setup? And that only works through humans. So there, there's no difference. I just frame it sometimes differently because people. You need to understand it, not just in my head

So it's, it's interesting because I've, I've been uh, you know, uh, and I am not a people person. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a content person. Uh, But uh, out of the uh, in the, I would say in the last uh, three years. Uh, I've only seen the issues that I, I ran into be uh, of human cause, which is, which is, you know, content is nice, you know, I make uh, make things uh, look nice and presentable, but then the humans come in and then this is where, this is where the interesting things start to happen.

So it's uh, yeah,

it's it's, it's always funny.

I'm going to do this.

um, uh, I have, I don't know if it's just swear or if this even is a swear thing, but I like, I remember in my career when I was still doing a lot of UX um, We were always talking about, and I think it's still true to this day and there's nothing wrong with it, is that usually when you get into a, you know, a session where you start talking about customers and how you work with people, I mean, most of them are awesome people, right?

And especially when you start engaging with them and working with people. Uh, But the thing is you sometimes forget, like Dennis, you say it's like people come in and they destroy things. Right. Um, And I think we're at some stage, I had the standing joke that I'm going to. I'm going to write a book because it was in the time of that, these catchy kind of book titles, like designing for assholes like, like to shift, to shift the perspective a little bit, because I think sometimes we make this ideal customer, like they're perfect.

They're brilliant, but there's so much more to humanity. There's all these angles and

Yeah. But that's the point. The point is to fuck it up, right? Is that you can make something, but then when humans interact, it's the, the point is to, to, to, to break it apart, to make it better constantly. Otherwise we have nothing to do.

Yeah.

Josh, you're silent. What's going on? Can you hear us? Yeah.

I'm just listening because it's uh, it's, it's quite fascinating to have us all back in the same virtual room after a number of months, maybe even, maybe even a year and a half, I would

say. Um, so I'm just, I'm sort of just listening and processing um, because it's quite something to have us all back in the room, like I've said, but also just to see where everyone has ended up over the last year and a half and what's happened, what's changed.

Um, I mean, Since you last spoke. I've uh, had the opportunity to meet Dennis in person, to meet Jens in person, to get on a plane and hop halfway across the world to uh, go and join Jens in Spain for a bit and uh, then spend some time with Dennis in Amsterdam. And then, unfortunately, I haven't met my fellow South African van in person yet, but that's still, still got to happen.

And I'm sure it might happen this year at some stage or. early 2024, but yeah, so I'm really just listening and sort of just absorbing and seeing and how things have turned out. But I find it quite interesting that you sort of ask the ends around also the direction that his podcast has taken, because very much, you know, when we started the Innovation Breakfast Club, it was really like an open canvas.

We didn't sit Very strict bounds on it. And I can still actually remember the first episode that we recorded. And there's always been the same common thread that's pulled through um, you know, different ways of thinking, creative uh, explorations and things like that. So it's also just, yeah, that for me is interesting to see how that's all turned up.

So yeah, that's why I've been uh, been quiet while uh, while everyone's been talking on the, on the call so far.

Let's, Let's do a quick round. I like that approach, Josh. So what has happened to you? You mentioned already a little bit. Let's start with Dennis. We have seen each other quite a bit over the last year. But

Not enough.

yeah, I agree, agree, but what, what has happened after the last breakfast club with, with you? Are there any specific things that stand out

Um, Do you want a practical answer or a very abstract one?

as you wish?

So I, I think a lot of the conversations of what happened during uh, after uh, COVID uh, talking with everybody. Um, uh, I think I got my mind around a lot of the things that I was um, uh, struggling with. And maybe I, I would say one of the biggest steps is the fact that it's not a struggle anymore.

It's uh, it's, it's an accepted part of the stuff that I do. Uh, I would say the only uh, um, um, next struggle that I might have is translating what I've learned over the last couple of years into Into practical things. And I'm not as fast as you Jens, you know, you're doing testing and experimenting on the go and making things uh, reality uh, uh, really, really fast.

Um, But I have a uh, I have a uh, I would say incremental approach in my head uh, uh, which, uh, which puts a big lag on things, but I'm, I'm uh, I'm coming up to a point where I can start to say well, you know, The things that I see in the landscape of change uh, I'm calling movement now because it's just movement.

Uh, I'm not interested in change. I'm interested in movement because people and things are moving. And uh, what I do is I try to uh, visualize the path that lies in between movements. And uh, that's a, I would say a huge change in the stuff that I'm doing. I'm trying to not uh, put visualization first. I'm trying to put uh, thinking and uh, uh, uh, advisory uh, first, and uh, using uh, visualization as a, as a way to do that.

Um, And there's a whole lot of things personally that are just going great. I turned 50.

Yay.

That was a, That was a good party. And you were there.

It was.

Yeah.

Werner.

I also turned 50, that's like a milestone vibe. I was just a little bit more relaxed about the 50 thing. I don't want to celebrate too much. I mean, The, what can I say about the last year? I mean, I think the last episode, I kind of took a decision to jump into um, Kind of put my, my entrepreneurship consulting on hold, jumped into um, a startup or let, let me, let me be careful there.

It's not really like a startup pure. It's a bit of a more mature business that I jumped into with kind of two objectives to understand a little bit more about what it looks like on that side of the fence. And uh, also get a little bit more of a perspective on customer centricity. That was a, That was a great adventure.

He actually catching me in between adventures at the moment, because I wrapped up that adventure actually this week. Um, so, And also reflecting on that um, uh, a lot of people who watch this will probably also be aware of like the tech industry going through a lot of. ups and downs with layoffs. And that in itself was something that I didn't expect um, to experience.

Went through three rounds of that experience and to see the anguish, to see how leadership tries to deal with it. Um, And, you know, How it affects people, how it affects customers, you know, so, so I kind of lived that, that kind of rollercoaster ride. And at the end, I also had to kind of sit down and I had like these two things that I took away from this experience, which I think was, was awesome because I have this trajectory um, that I'm still working on is that number one.

Is that I got exactly what I signed up for. I think I said this to Josh in a separate conversation is that at some stage you go, ah, you know, this is not great. I'll do it differently. Like, why is this happening? And then when you step out of the experience, you can look at what you've just experienced.

You go like, man, this is, this is what I signed up for, right? So now I have total understanding and empathy for what happens there. The big thing that I took away from this, and this kind of like latches I think some of the work that Gaines is doing and is that. Um, You know, I also started doing, I started doing consulting work again, getting back into the field.

And I still think there's a huge challenge out there to understand what it is to really be human centric and customer centric. Um, I've sat through a lot of conversations the last couple of months about how people see they're going to shape organization, how they're going to do different things. And I don't always hear, you know, How it aligns with what the customer actually needs out of this.

So that, that's hopefully going to be my next, my next adventure is to really understand that, but I mean, I've taken too much of the space here. Um, I think Josh is your turn. Silence.

Yeah from, from one South African sitting on one side of the world to, to another and uh, with, with uh, with the German and uh, man from, from Dutchland, from uh, the Netherlands, it's awesome to be back together. Um, And I'm, I'm really fortunate and grateful to have had the opportunity to meet Deans and Dennis in the last year, since we last chatted and a lot has changed in uh, in my world gained uh, some different experiences and I. 30, this in the last year as well. So, um, It's a bit crazy to think of what uh, what, what, what the next chapter looks like anyway, enough about the philosophy of life and more down to some practical, practical things that happen. Yeah, beginning of last year, I sort of took a, took a leap of uh, adventure and got on a plane to Spain to go and meet a client that I'd done some work with and met through Jens uh, an international architecture firm.

And it was really that just a leap of adventure, leap of faith and saying, cool, but let's go and see what uh, what might come from this. Ended up spending a couple of months in Spain uh, really cool team. Spanish people are extremely friendly and they have a zest for life. That is a lot of, a lot like South Africans, but I'm sure you'll attest to that as well.

Um, And so that was really cool to broaden cultural horizons, do some work in a different field. And again, work with the people side of things, but also from a strategy and a brand perspective, a completely different field that I hadn't worked before. And then thought about sort of spending some longer time in Europe and maybe.

Looking to call Europe home uh, went back to Amsterdam or went back to the Netherlands in late September, early October and spent about six weeks there. Um, Spent some really cool time with Dennis, got to see his studio that he's sitting in right now. Um, Got to look through uh, the camera uh, that you might uh, bring out, got to see his big printer in the background um, and then also got to, got to link up with the ends again, which was cool.

Um, And that was also a really cool experience, got to also connect with Roel. Who is in the broader ecosystem and network that Jens has uh, brought together. And then came back to South Africa and sort of thought long and hard about where I wanted to be in the world, types of projects that I wanted to work on, people that I wanted to work with, et cetera.

And that's led to me joining a startup in Stellenbosch, South Africa, which is for those who aren't familiar with Stellenbosch, it's about half an hour from Cape Town. And the project is really around addressing Internet connectivity and providing fast township fiber uh, into townships in South Africa in first, in the first case, and then into Africa over the long term.

But yeah, so sort of right the way around the world, a whirlwind trip over the last 12 months. Um, And it's sort of interesting how sometimes things culminate uh, at a specific point and then say, okay well, This is the right time for, for the here and now. And so we'll see where this next little adventure leads.

Um, But yeah, that's a short update from my side of things. But Jens, tell us a bit about what's happened in your world over the last 12 months.

The last 12 months, yeah, a lot, a lot and nothing at the same time. I think it's even wider than the last 12 months since, since we recorded our last breakfast episode, that was the time when I was still living in Germany um, due to personal reasons and this personal reasons have then as well made me to move to Spain.

So that's where we met Josh uh, in early 2022 um, worked a lot with different organizations in different fields. And one of the things, and that's maybe where Werner, I lost you at least a little bit, what I've seen, and it was part of my theme all the time, innovation and organization only happens if you let it happen.

And it's not about the process. It's more about the humans in organization. And over the last. I would say over the last one and a half years, that's even stronger. So then what I've ever seen. So that's why I added as well to the podcast, the name of human innovation, because I think we need to go more into the human aspect in driving this.

So I've been working with extremely large organizations. And on the other side, as well with startups, startups, leaders in startups who struggle innovating through the humans they have inside of the organization. Because one example I've worked with a startup and this startup has grown over the pandemic and they have never met in person. So the humans have slightly different connections and Josh, we have seen that when we when, when I picked you up at the train station and we have first time met each other in person and then having a couple of beers, seeing you finishing your first marathon, like this stories that are connecting you in a completely different way than in a digital ecosystem.

So seeing this as well in large organizations, which you, they hugely struggled today. Some organizations, I guess you have heard that in the news, like push everyone back to the office for four days, five days uh, two days, one days. There are different uh, ways of dealing with that. And a lot of organizations struggle with that and linking that to the human innovation part.

I think that's something we need to figure out for all of us. What is the right mix? Is there one thing, or is it something which you need to do individual? Because everyone is in a different cycle of their lives. Every organization is in a different cycle. And. That's what I've spent the last year, basically on figuring out what that means for me.

So we moved then due to financial reason and business reasons to the Netherlands. Now living in the Netherlands, close to Dennis, almost what I did it in 22 minutes with bike, which is awesome. But as, as you said, we're not seeing us often enough, but one of the big things I have done over the last year was starting a startup um, next to what I do with the other business.

And this startup is about leadership education for startups. So we want to build the, the duolingo of startups uh, of leadership. So how do we help a leadership get fast and learning leadership on the flight? That's, That's a bit our theme. And I'm doing this now with a couple of startups in a test environment with a couple of accelerators and investors and test environments, and it's awesome to see the eagerness of.

Startup founders and startup leaders and managers to want to learn this because what I have seen, or I see in large corporate still on the same angle is in large corporate, everyone thinks they know how to lead their 20 years in their job and 20 years in the leadership role. And still see things like 20 years ago or like 10 years ago, like five years ago, but five years ago.

And today is a different world. The world has changed so dramatically. Yes, it has not changed in one angle, but it has changed from a leadership approach. Just giving you one example, leading people in a digital environment where you have distributed teams or being in the office. Having them sitting next to you 24 seven which, which was the case before is completely different.

And I can tell you large organizations struggle with that extremely. And I just see a huge angle. If we educate the leaders, which are building new businesses, they will build better businesses by learning to lead in a different way. And then we go back to innovating. They will innovate with people in mind that links to you, Werner, people centricity, customer centricity.

And on the, in the end, we will just have better lives if we, if we get into that direction. So that's a little bit what I am. That's why I'm speaking way more about leadership because I just see if, if we don't figure out the root cause problem of, of innovation, which is leadership, trust, community, culture in an organization, it's still not happening.

You can have the best processes, whatever, or the best people, even if a leader. can still fuck it up, then it's not worth it to do it. So that's why I focus more on leadership. Long answer. Thoughts.

Love it. Love it.

So here's a, here's a thought. So you, Dennis, you spoke about sort of the repositioning and the thinking, and I've obviously had a longer term view of, of that journey that you've been on. And it's awesome to hear how you've sort of. shaped and where you are ended up at the moment now around movement and the Jens what you mean, what you've just shared around sort of the challenges that organizations face around one thinking differently to encouraging people to collaborate across generations and then three, the leadership side of things is. The link potentially between where Dennis is in the world at the moment on this movement side and where you are going with the startup that you are shaping is energy. And what I mean by that is around how does energy flow between different humans, people, but also teams inside of organizations. And that already sort of comes down to, to movement.

And Dennis, it sort of reminds me of something that we worked on, not related to. You know, Human centered innovation or organizations that the wave of change and what does that then become and how does that then shift and that sort of thing ties into what what Werner you were saying around your experience over the last sort of 12 months and the team that you worked with is around sort of affecting that from a human centered design perspective and it's just interesting to see again these different forms of Synergy, but different spaces that, you know, they're unrelated, but there's this concept of one human interactions to change, which is like, what do you do once you create the human interactions?

And three is how does that then play out as you sort of build organizations, build teams? Consult with a strategist, build, you know, creative plans, et cetera, et cetera.

That is interesting. And I totally agree. It's all in the combination between what's doing and what I was doing is. That in between flow of energy uh, is a, is a good catch. So, uh, I think it's, it's interesting to see that uh, we are as four people going to uh, to our, each our own respective spaces. And I want to know a little bit more about the space you're in currently and uh, now Josh, because I don't have a good grip on that now, but uh, we are all value creators.

Uh, And we, we create value in a different um, In all different ways. And it's interesting to see how when we get together uh, um, the different disciplines we own uh, and the experience we have, they come together in a way that uh, uh, Uh, I would say we should be put to work uh, to solve something, but we, we, we, as for um, unique value creators doing totally different things in, in, in an innovation space, you know, trying to help people to.

To either innovate or improve, develop, explore. Uh, I think those are all uh, different paths um, that we, we curate. And I like the word curate because we've been working on that a lot uh, Josh uh, and, and see how we become the people. Uh, That guides help other people guides through the past that they need to walk on the matter.

They walk the path. You know, that's That's up to the person that's guiding them. And in that sense, if you get back to the value uh, of what we do is that we all guide people down that path in a different way. And uh, I might pose the question to uh, to uh, to see it. How Um, we might be better at this as opposed to before COVID or starting, starting with the innovation breakfast, because we have more experience.

We have some perspective on other things. And if we restart the innovation breakfast now, it's like what's, what's, what's, how would we direct what we're doing towards creating value as a. Not a talking group, but a problem value creation.

So maybe before we, before we chat about that, just a quick um, in true innovation breakfast style, I wouldn't be holding or playing my part if I didn't drop a quick quote and around uh, something linked to energy. Um, So Nikola Tesla says, if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration. And again, to make that, you know, applied or practical in the, in the different spaces that we, and it's really about listening better, asking better questions and being more attuned to their interactions that we have with people, whether we're designing products from an overall creative flow perspective, or we designing teams um, or designing messaging, whatever you want to do it.

But I just thought that that's nice sort of a cherry on top with, with regards to the, the thoughts that you're sharing around energy. But Dennis, back to the question that you posed.

I love that. I, I'm, I'm directly jumping in, connecting these things. One thing I have learned for myself, even more so the last year um, is the perspective of time in all of this. I'm like Dennis was already kind of scratching. I'm, I'm a fast mover in a lot of things. Um, But what I have learned to recognize as well, some things need more time than we often think as entrepreneurs.

And linking this to what we could do to, to the world and how we could combine our superpowers and what we see happening in the world. I think it's also about finding the right time for us, finding the right timing next, next to that. And then looking into what, what is needed and which point in time for specific individuals and or organization, because if we.

I mean, Werner, you have worked in the big consulting company like I did in between. There it's one fits all. It's not about what is the right timing and how do you do that on a human centric level and how do you help an individual. doing things. It's more about how can you push as fast as possible and stay as long as possible and earn money.

It's not about the impact you do. It's, It's not about the timing. It's not about the individuals and the human part. Thoughts about that, Werner?

Yeah, I mean. I don't want to get into trouble with my consulting friends, but there's a definite, I mean, the thing is, I think what I've learned about um, you know, um, and I've, I've actually met with them recently to have conversations. Um, A lot of it is about scale. So being away from, from, from the big consulting space and doing what I'm doing.

The big difference there is scale, right? So, and, And I think the, the challenge there is also that uh, a lot of, of, of customers and I've experienced this, they expect that scale, right? There's an element of certainty around it. So if it's really big, it's going to be better. And I think that's a challenge that smaller consulting teams face, right?

Because we are bringing. A smaller kind of more human centric approach, because the thing is, the only thing that I have in my pocket is the fact that I can have a meaningful conversation, connect with people in a more meaningful way, and it kind of brings me back to um, just the one thought that you mentioned around um, and this is just an example, and it's not key to your original question, but um, this whole topic around remote right, and bringing people into, into the office.

And I've seen it in my own space. I've played now with the kind of remote work essence now for the last year and a half, two years. And a lot of times when it comes to remote work or hybrid work, it's not the actual way of work that's a problem. It's the actual organizational culture at the, at the, At the bottom, that's a problem.

And I think you can bring as many big organizations or consultancies in. If you don't fix that

100%.

matter. You can pile everybody into your little office, cover your rent, whatever you want to do, it's not going to make a difference. So yeah, I think it is. It is the scale thing. There is still a tendency.

I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll leave it here, but yes, it's, I think that the problem is, is that it's this. We, We kind of sometimes fool ourselves, the usual suspects that kind of break down um, you know, things in the organization is still here. I just dealt with something yesterday where silos, like people can't work across silos, they're in their own little, little wills.

They can't just, they can't, cannot break the breakthrough. And I'm going, one of the things, and I had a conversation with a client about this, is that I'm the, I have the ability to jump between that. Right. So I can help connect. And then um, yeah, like work with a couple of teams where they working on a product where they are unable to express the value proposition.

Now, imagine you're investing in a leader and you have people working on your teams, working every day, brilliant, talented people, but they cannot express the value proposition of what they building. And that's, That's small things that, that may be a bigger organization or, or consultants you will overlook, but that's the small things that I think is super important.

And

It's the smallest thing that is most important

know what

because it drives everything. You can, You can have every, everybody do everything and organize it in the greatest way. But if they don't know why they're doing it, we come back to the circles. We come back to all those types of things that we know. But uh, the difficulty lies in the fact that we don't.

Get to take or claim the time to be able to spend time on solving that. And uh, I would say um, I'm learning that um, uh, the reason I was one of the reasons why we're unable to express these things. We've never learned how to do that. Because we're, you know, you're, you're being uh, once you get educated over time uh, you get a little bit more perspective, but it's so strange that you, you need to experience uh, the idea that you uh, need to reprogram your value value over time, instead of knowing that you're supposed to, you know, I would say in indigenous cultures, you know, that you're going to go through phases in life because you're being taught to, you're respecting uh, the faces of other people as well.

And it's so interesting to see how, how we don't get taught that we get taught. You need to choose a specific thing and be really good at it. And then you'll be valuable in the grand scheme of things. And it's, it's difficult to, to get to a point where people are really able to express their value.

And I, I just want to, I don't want to like, because I, I tend to waffle on for too long. Right. But the one thing I just want to try and add in a short way is that the one thing that is sitting in the back of my mind for especially the last six months is that um, seeing what I've seen in the organization that I, where I worked is that.

Um, And I'll say this is that people think collaboration is this mess. And I think it kind of aligns a little bit with, with your leadership stuff. Yance is like, there's this kind of amoeba and organization that drives things. And, And what I'm thinking and believing in, and this is, this scares people because how does it scale is that it's all down to the individual. Um, It goes to the core of the individual in your organization, because what I've seen recently is that. Um, You require people in your organization to know where the organization's going. And I'm not talking about the fluffy mission vision. That's important. I mean, I'm one, I make a lot of like living on that is that's super important.

But if, if your team members aren't seeing that the organization is in trouble and they can't course correct, Or, you know, how, how do you run an organization? Then what happens is people just focus on their, their own little remit like, Oh, I need to make sure I do 10 phone calls today and I'm covered that, but does it really move the company forward?

And that comes down to, you know, how does leadership enable that? Does leadership look at individuals in the organization? How do you manage that? It's, It's complex. I know but, but that's the challenge because how else do you lead and. Kind of Empower folks, you know, in the organization.

And it's, I would say it's hard to know when to start where, because.

So he has a, yeah when, when to start where, but there's also that great, I can't remember exactly, I've been wracking my brain now around where this quote comes from, but it's got saying around, you know, the value of experience and know is knowing which screw to turn. It's something along the lines of sort of, you know being, being or going through the motions in different scenarios or different spaces and being able to selectively.

Identify and intentionally identify rather not selectively, which screw to turn to create that change. And that sort of links back to, you know, Jens, Jens and Dennis, what you were talking about, but also Dennis, your first question is, you know, what has changed since COVID has gone about? And what would we now do as the four of us, if we were thinking about creating an innovation breakfast, how would we share some insights or learnings or our own context to help other people go through that?

And potentially, it's also interesting to think about, you know, we've had these three years where the three, the four of us met during, during COVID hard lockdown right around the world. Um, And inside of that, the world is a radically different place. How much of the world has rolled back to pre COVID, i. e.

what parts of organizations haven't changed because of COVID, which parts have changed, how have people's mindsets changed, how has generational interaction changed. And that also then then ties to your concept of remote work, and it's quite interesting to think about, you know, over a longer term period, and you were talking about time earlier and things taking time.

What are the things that change quickly and are fast movers? What are the things that take more gradual things to change? And then ultimately, what are the most important things that People should be focusing and spending time on because I think sometimes the incentives that we are given as humans to spend time on things are not geared towards creating positive change.

It's because change is geared and a super loaded term, especially inside of organizations of, you know, KPIs that people are set for, you know, for Werner for, for your example, creating silos, for example, silos, in my opinion, are perpetuated because KPIs are considered only in their silos and not.

Organization wide, and that's when you're talking about big orgs, but you know, how do we start thinking about this more connected space and then it links back to Dennis, what you were saying around sort of people looking at things in different ways and bringing in different types of thinking into the mixing pot or boiling pot or whatever you want to call it, but allowing and then making So The space also translate and understand what has been brought to the table, why it's been brought to the table, how might we use this in this specific scenario and not simply just ignoring something because at first glance, it's got no relevance to me.

Yeah, for me, linking that to the fast paced world where we are in right now, I think sometimes we just need to go back to basics. And that means, Hey, let's talk to each other. Let, Let me be interested in you as a human being and what you're doing outside of the work. That's What I've seen over the last half year, specifically with public companies they're, they're jumping and trying to sprint from quarter to quarter just to, and that links to your incentives, Josh, just to deliver the numbers they have promised to the shareholders.

Has nothing to do with humans. It has only to do with what they promised to the shareholders. And it's only about growth over growth over growth. That's how public companies are measured. Has nothing to do with Hey, how important is the product you're selling? Do you really solve a problem in this world?

Do you help other people to be more successful, develop whatever. And then you see inside of a lot of organizations, things where people get kicked out, people get fired. Um, The big tech layoff, it's only because of the shareholders, most of the companies, if you take the big ones, they're all profitable. They have been profitable before. They make money. It's not that they don't make money. They make impact in this world. They're just getting rid of 30 percent of the stuff because they're not delivering as they promised and they could deliver higher. And that's the business cycles where we are in. And I think that goes back to Josh again.

How do we change the incentive structures? In our whole capital society or capitalistic society, which is in my eyes, nothing bad was that I think there, there are benefits of having that, but how do we bring the humans back into that and how do we do this with a more human focus where, where people are front and center of what we're doing and then the business is, or the result of the business is the result of the people moves.

enjoying themselves, enjoying their development and having fun with each other across silos, because for me, if we, if we take the silo thing, it's only because of power play inside of organization has nothing to do with that people don't like each other. It's just about, Hey, this is my group. This is my target.

This is my budget. And I'm not giving anything of, of that to you. As bigger the organization, as more you see that. And that's, that's why I focus so much on this things. How do you break this down early on in, in set of startups? Because if you're capable of doing that early on, you can prevent that from happening if you build the right incentive structures.

Okay, so that's a human thing, right? So let me throw in something content wise. So I asked this question to the, to my kids yesterday at the dinner table. Like If you could get a map with, you can choose two maps. One has all the answers and one has all the questions. Which one would you choose? And then they thought not very long and say well, I want to have the one with the questions and it's like, Oh, that's good.

But why? It's like, yeah, you can try to figure out what the answers are. And if you have the answers um, we don't, we don't know what the questions are. We don't know what to do. It's like, and then I said, okay, so what, what happens when you uh, uh, learn for a test? So you get all the answers out of something that you, you know, you get a map and then you get tested.

And then uh, the weird thing is people want to have a map that has all have has all the answers, you know, because they want to follow it towards a specific, I would say, successful end result that might go to to a next phase. Uh, But giving them all the answers means that at some point you don't think anymore.

And I would say that's a lot of, a lot of the things that are happening now is that uh, uh, we try to curate and make things more uh, compact uh, to move quicker. Because everybody's still saying nothing very different than so many years ago. We need to accelerate. So if we truly say accelerate over the last 50 years, then we might spin out of control because everybody's constantly saying we need to accelerate, accelerate, accelerate.

It's like, you know, and there needs to be people who say, and you say, you might move and operate a little bit faster. Uh, uh, Jens, I tend to do the exact opposite. I'm a, I would say I'm a retarder. I make things go slow because I ask questions and uh, which are difficult to answer, which need time and you need to claim time to start to do and start to figure out and, uh. and in that sense I'm, I'm posing a question that if we do, we really need to change the cycles because it's difficult to change those type, those type of things, or do we, do we get to help people to move through them in a better way, a more conscious way, more aware of what's happening, which means you need to make them look at the bigger picture.

To understand what's happening and it's and that's a, that's a question to us to figure out how based on content and knowing and becoming aware of what's, what is happening around us and what might follow and how do you react to that, how that, how that could drive us to combine our thinking to uh, to see how we can help people together.

Thank you. Move through content.

Two things, Dennis, fascinating that you, that your kids already having the opportunity with a person like yourself to have the opportunity to think about the question that you just posed, because I think it's talks to the way that. The digital world has been designed. The digital world, and that I'm just talking about platforms, has been designed around answers.

It hasn't been designed around questions. It's all about getting you towards a destination. So if you think about Spotify, Spotify is all about, how do I get you to spend more time? Playing music and listening to podcasts and consuming content through the platform. They want you to have the answers. So they give you a discovery playlist, which is where the majority of people discover new things.

They're already providing you with answers. They're not allowing us as users to go and question certain things when we land on the platform. And why that is concerning for me is because we're moving to the space now where Humans we, we trust the recommendation. So we trust the algorithms a lot more than we trust ourselves. So we don't give ourselves the opportunity to question things at a, at a deeper level. We do question things, but we question things that are almost like a very surface level things. You don't go a step deeper because we inherently want to find answers. And again, this goes way back to sort of educational structures, all of those types of things that you designed to arrive at a destination. It's the same concept. When something is graded, you get a grading mark, but they don't necessarily tell you the logic behind that grading mark. So from my perspective, I think that it's got to do with not necessarily changing cycles or structures. It's got to do with the deep, deeper way that we design things, and that can be taken in a number of different directions.

Fair enough,

No, I mean, I just echoing, I mean, they're saying what I'm thinking, but uh, what I have seen though like, um, coming down to questions is also the quality of the questions that you ask, right? Um, I've seen in some of the work that I've done in the last couple of months is that there is definitely this, I mean, this kind of approach to like, I'm an observer, so I will observe behavior.

Okay. And then act according to what I see rather than engaging with people and asking questions. And that is hard, right? Because you have to practice asking good questions. Um, and, And I think it comes down to how really curious are you? I had a conversation with my, my uh, my wife. She's going to kick my ass.

Um, This week where they were exploring a fundamentally really complex topic. And she's like, and I said like, what can you do to become curious about this topic? And that's hard to do. Right. And as soon as you kind of switch that on, you start shifting things. Um, And also just um, to riff on what, what um, Dennis said about the questions and the destination, I think good questions have, can have different answers.

And my answer might be different. To what Josh's um, answer would be and what's really cool about it is that if you don't. If you have a trajectory of, of a direction where you go and you're on, on, you ask these interesting questions, you get the cool answers. You might end up somewhere where you didn't expect to be.

And I think what happens is that we, we fiddle all these little recipes and then we bake a cake and then the cake flops or we make the cake, but it's not, there's nothing special because we are working in this framework and we get exactly what we want. Sometimes you don't because something goes wrong, you know, economy or whatever.

But we're not, we're not we, we, we, I wonder if some, I was just thinking when you guys talking like, are we too scared to be daring these days? Are we so scared that we're not going to make the target that we aiming too low? And we go like, like, what if we, what if we surpass this? Like what, What if we do something that's really out there, you know? so yeah, I don't have the answer. I just have the questions.

Well, I think you have more uh, but it's just hard to, to just throw out because we, we are, we are, I would say a product of our, our experiences. And if we get posed to uh, um, a problem, we start to ask questions. We start, we observe, we listen, we start to look for things and we automatically go into something that's going to solve it.

In a, I would say, more interesting way than when you're stuck within a framework uh, we have our own framework and where we have a little bit more space to work with things, I think, I would say, because our intent is still, and that's why I resonate on what you uh, uh, said that you intentionally identify we, we, we pretty, that's a good thing that you just said uh, uh, uh, Josh, because I, it's the intent that you put in, in what you are trying to identify.

Uh, Which makes it different from wandering around because you can start, you can start to explore, which is a great thing to be able to do. But at some point you need to bring it back to um, uh, an intense that you're going to identify something towards an end. And it's, it's interesting to see how we how, how we are able to do that.

And when we break down innovation, when we, you know, I thought, I thought of uh, uh, we have an innovation breakfast, but it's actually what we're doing is the innovation breakdown, we're breaking everything down uh, to uh, to uh, to help other people build their renewal and to build their stuff up um, because it's so hard to figure out where to start.

And if you know what the building blocks are uh, and you can figure out where you can start from anywhere, but some, some spaces are more interesting to start than other ones, but they take more time. It's difficult to claim time for that. And it's just interesting to see how the difference between our approaches.

Um, Comes together very nicely, I would say, in a dialogue. The only thing we might try to figure out how to put in is a little bit more friction.

to see how we, how we can challenge each other to be critical uh, and, and mirror towards opposite um, uh, things to try and, try and find where the, the boundaries are of where we, Where we get into a discussion uh, and maybe even an argument.

Josh,

Amen to

that.

Here's something to, to provoke that potentially is. It's It's partly the world has become too agreeable, and that's because younger generations have never built something physical. They've always lived in something physical that's been built by previous generations. So I've been thinking a lot about this. Uh, Virgil Abloh has a great quote, which I'll share this now.

But essentially, what at its point is it's saying that, you know, architects of previous generations built cities. But what does it mean for young architects to not build cities and to create change? Because that was the marker when you, you know, previous generations built these environments that we live in and that we now call home.

And we live in these great cities that are built by people that live before our time and a lot of, you know, even our, even the team sitting or the people sitting in this call today, a lot of the stuff that we built has been around digital systems and not necessarily big physical. infrastructural changes that have shaped the way that our lives work.

And so that's maybe just something to think about is, you know, what does it look like for a kid who's 15 today in 2023 to imagine that they're going to be a city planner and Design an entirely new city in 10 years time when they turn 20, 25 or 2020, or when they turn 25 in. What that 2038.

Yeah, I love that. And linking that to what Werner was saying more than from a risk perspective, I think that Not everyone has the risk appetite at all. And just giving you the, the real life example with Joss, jumping into an airplane, going to, to Spain, not knowing what's going to happen and, and then staying there for more than three months.

Obviously, that was a kind of calculated risk, but something a lot of people in this world would never do. And that's just one of the examples where... We, We need to think about this a bit more, what are the risks we are taking and are they really risk or are they already so calculated that, you know, it's not really a risk.

And, And I think comparing that with Josh, you didn't know at all what's going to happen. Maybe you go home in a week. Um, Maybe you will never go home. That was the risk level where you have been in. But I think if we, if we link this to us as individuals and or the organizations we work with or in. are, Are we truly risking? I see a lot of organizations. They say they are risky and things, but then you look under the hood and zero risk on an individual level, there's zero risk. Everything is de risked and everything. And then on an organizational level, there's no risk as well. Everything is safe because they need to deliver towards that.

And that's just what, what I see a lot as well from a personal development opportunity. Who is really taking risk? I may be a little bit extreme, at least if you ask my mom um, because I've lived in three countries over the last three years and a lot of people are saying you're completely nuts and that's super risky, but I'm just saying, Hey, this is, this is my life and I'm just doing this.

One thing is it's fun. Sometimes I don't have a choice. And, And the third time is. I just believe that something good will happen in the end, but that's, I mean, it's face it's, it's, it's risk seeking this. I have no idea how to explain that, but I think if we look into innovating, if we look into developing ourselves and organizations, we need to go more into this and finding out what that is.

That links us back to the questions as well. What are the questions we truly ask us? Are these the easy questions? Or are these the difficult questions which you put in a table if you have a team meeting?

yeah um, if I may, I want to be a little bit like Josh and I want to recommend not a book, but a podcast. So Josh, kind of like in, in the, in the vein of your, your previous. Uh, kind of Adventure with reverse mentorship uh, a younger colleague actually recommended this podcast to me in a, in a, in a meeting.

And it comes down because I think the risk that you're talking about Jens is also risks that we take in society. So the podcast, just before I forget is the witch trials of JK Rowling um, really well produced um, give it a listen. Um, And it comes down to, I mean, and I've lived this now for a little while, like there's a lot of authoritarianism going on in Europe.

Um, Uh, On this side of Europe, we know what's happening in the Ukraine. We've seen what what happened a couple of presidents ago in the States. Um, And what might happen in the future, but then also. Um, I had a, I had a conversation with someone uh, in Barcelona where we were really having a debate. And it kind of brings me back to what we were talking about.

Um, What you were mentioning is that we are all agreeing because in a way we, we having this podcast, we all agreeing with each other, like high fives where we actually. It's actually more interesting to start talking to people where we disagree with each other, right? Um, And I think we've, we've, we've moved into a space and I see this with companies and brands trying to play it safe and cancel culture and all these things where the biggest risk of what's happening is not that anybody gets like disempowered or whatever is that we are not actually having the debates anymore.

Um, And that's not democracy. So, and, And I think you can see it going, like going down into teams, into the organization, but then also in society, we like, there's this ideal state that we're trying to move into where we all agree. And fundamentally that's a challenge. I mean, I'm not saying like invite all the neo Nazis for your next barbecue, but um, You need you, you need to kind of, we need to have conversations and, and share really what we feel and ask questions about like, why is this?

Or, but that's very hard to do very hard to do.

but something's growing in me. And uh, it grew when Jen said appetite for risk. And because I have a background in hard rock, metal, and stuff like that, I instantly go with my mind to uh, Appetite for Destruction. And uh, at the time, in the uh, end 80s uh, it was the end of the 80s, when the uh, Guns N Roses album came out uh, Appetite for Destruction.

It, It felt destructive. The whole album cover was offensive. It needed to be redone, because it was a... A monster going over a fence that was going to attack a robot that was raping a nun. Which was something you could absolutely not do now. But that was the front of the appetite for destruction. And in order for sales to make it better, they had to do a different cover.

And they came up with the cross with the skulls on it. And it's like, um, um, but that at that time they were, they were hungry. They were just hungry for, for ripping things apart. And the agreeability we just uh, touched upon of stuff happening in the world. Um, I'm seeing, you know, I'm also a victim of stuff going on, on Instagram and, and, and going through things.

But sometimes you see some light in people who reflect on things. And I saw a mother. Who was reflecting on the fact that in the 80s or in the 90s when somebody was sick uh, she would say, oh, here you have two uh, two aspirin uh, and a cup of teas downstairs. Uh, No uh, no fucking around. You go to school.

That's what they said in the eighties and now you have those uh, parents are like Oh, Oh, but how you're, Oh you, you need to express how you're feeling. Uh, We worked on that, right? I said, Oh, you don't think you need to uh, go to school. Okay. That's fine. And what you would like, you would like a grande latte and an iPhone 14.

Okay. Yes. Okay. I will do, I will, I will we'll, we'll talk about that. It's like, it's totally different. And that's, in that sense is bringing it up to me, the. The lack of appetite and let's not say destruction, but I would say I like the appetite for destruction. If you look at it in the, in the perspective of saying that you need to destruct, destroy things in order to make place for something new or find a path towards something that you might do uh, want to do next uh, you need that.

Otherwise you won't survive. Otherwise you stay stuck in one place constantly. And uh, uh, you know, you have those. Um, Retreats where they're having men come together to get back in touch with their, their, their uh, manly self that there's destructive self, you know, it's almost like fight club trying to get back into with primal feelings.

And it's not that I'm saying we need to go towards that, but it's trying to figure out a way to with the tone and state of the world as it is today to figure out what tools we do have to navigate towards. Analyzing something and making space for something new because there's a different thing we, we need to, we don't, we don't get to have an appetite for destruction, but there needs to be something else.

How do we wrap this whole conversation up?

Let's, Let's zoom it, zoom at home. Maybe, Maybe a a, a closing, closing thought from each of us. Um, Could be cool as a touch point to sort of signify the, the re, the recognition of the OG Breakfast Club

I think I just gave mine and that's it. So I, I, you know, I think, I think the, the, the, the,

I agree.

with. Everything that has a uh, no, I don't agree. Come on, guys.

We need to find some space and, and, and, and, and um, uh, to a point where we're able to take people along because they need to be taken along and then see that they can do it themselves, you know, and that's, I would say that's, that's, that's a real need. Uh, It's difficult to sell, you know, because uh, companies like say that they're risk free.

Oh, no, we don't want to do that. Takes it into a different tangent. It's like, ah, we need that. We need that. But it's difficult to figure out how to get to in the space that you get to do that with people. So for me uh, I would say one of the biggest things we could do with our combined Uh, uh, uh, uh, intelligences and experiences is to see if we can get to those spaces and get people into those spaces and also out.

So that's my, my two cents on that.

Fener

Um,

I can't be as lyrical as Dennis, but for me, it's like, as a rap, like at the end of what Dennis said um, I know he went into the, into like the manliness of the forest and all that kind of stuff. I would just bring it back to say like reframe question, like ask, and we spoke about asking why, but something that I see really working so awesome in a lot of work that I've done recently is like asking or questioning why you're doing something in the first place.

So, you know, Because I'll give you an example. Um, I was working with a team and we were, we were kind of exploring how they do login for this thing, how customers will experience it. And we were really kind of focusing on like the latest things. People were coming up with great ideas. And then someone said, why the hell should I do this in the first place? And it really, it shifted the whole conversation to to, to really ask, like, why are we actually doing this? And um, I think um, sometimes we, we are so stuck in the, in the trench doing the thing that we're not actually going, like, where are we going and why are we actually doing this?

Josh,

Number of things, but I'm going to just pick one and that is we shouldn't take time for granted. And the reason why that has become so important and apparent over the last 3 years is that we did take time for granted. And that means that we are in a situation today. Where we could have potentially avoided some of the decisions that we're having to make as a society if we'd been more intentional with the choices that we've made. And that is sort of the framing that I've taken away from today's conversation is because beauty and rebirth that Dennis was talking about, challenging distraction, what Werner just spoke about, about questioning and a number of other points inside of the conversation is that I think that We've taken time for granted in different shapes and forms uh, over the last couple of years as a global society.

That's maybe playing out in the way that it is today because of the decisions that we've made.

Beautiful.

my one is trust. Trust. And first and foremost, trusting yourself, because one of the things I see and I believe is you are asking a question, you need to be confident. And that means you need to trust yourself to be confident over time. And then that links as well to towards taking the risk and be being on on a journey that's maybe not clear, step by step. And this self confidence is something everyone can work on, on a day to day base. So, If everyone in the whole world would work on their own self confidence, being able to speak up, asking the difficult questions, finding out how, how yourself relate, how I self relate to the world, but being confident in being in that space will change a lot of things. So that's my two cents. Let's keep it at that. What's awesome to see you all again. Thank you for organizing, Josh. Super, Super good. We should do that more often

much appreciated.

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