Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Janine Yancey - Workplace Ethics

Speaker A: Hi and welcome to decodingaq. Helping you to learn the tools, mindsets and actions to thrive in an ever changing world.

Speaker B: Hi and welcome to Decoding aq. This is our, um, final episode live on the road from Transform in Vegas. And with me for this one I have Janine Yancey. She is from San Francisco. She's the founder and CEO of and, uh, that is a work. She's a workplace visionary, an entrepreneur and a lawyer. So we're going to find out that Journey, who founded M Train, a culture technology platform providing education, analytics and tools to help organizations prevent harassment, bias and ethics issues. She's advised the California Senate on workforce harassment laws and recognized thought leader, uh, on building healthier, more inclusive workplace cultures. Welcome to the show.

Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

Speaker B: So I hear this is your second Transform, is that right?

Speaker C: Yes, I think so.

Speaker B: So you've come back. It must have been, uh, valuable and interesting.

Speaker C: I think it's a great, um, conference. Um, lots of energy and a lot of people thinking about the future of work.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: And some puppies. We were just talking about puppies.

Speaker C: Some cute little puppies.

Speaker B: I've never been to a conference before where there's been, uh, actual playpen area for puppies. And we were saying, not sure how we feel about it.

Speaker C: It's a little mix. I mean, it's cute to have puppies. So from an ethics perspective, it's a little exploitive. It's a little exploitive.

Speaker B: So, uh, tell, uh, me about going from a lawyer, uh, into entrepreneurship and some of that journey. Um, and maybe some of the sparks. Because often. Right. We can connect the dots when we look backwards. It's less easy to connect the dots when we're trying to go forwards.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: Connect some dots for me of your

Speaker C: journey when we're in it.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Um, well, so I was corporate, outside corporate counsel to a lot of companies in San Francisco, um, and doing a lot of harassment and discrimination litigation. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. I mean, just, you know, you get into a groove and it's the same issues that come up over and over again.

Speaker B: But a tough, um, area to be in right. Of, uh, the emotions that that has by living through others experiences that are not nice experiences.

Speaker C: True. Although I was on the company side, so I actually started my legal career, um, representing two professors suing a UCSF for harassment. And it was actually too much emotion for me. Um, because as you said, it's. I mean, you're living it with them.

Speaker B: Yeah. You're living that trauma through you know, um, the representation, whichever side you sit on, you're still living that experience.

Speaker C: That's true for me. I decided that I was better suited to the company side. Okay. Uh, but there's a little bit of trauma there too, because, you know, a large percentage of claims against managers, the managers are not bad people, they didn't mean to do harm. We have obviously some that are bad aids, but I would say certainly over 80, 85% of them are just well meaning individuals. And ah, then they have their own emotional reaction saying, why are you making this claim? What's wrong with you? No, I did not do it. And then, you know, managing their emotions. So as you said, there's emotions, uh, on both sides. Yeah.

Speaker B: And I guess it impacts a whole host of things of not only each of those cases, but how do we deal with the, you know, the training, the prevention, the processes around that of learning to communicate better, to mitigate some of these risks. Because from my naive place at this point, so many cases, whether it's harassment, legal cases, are, uh, just misinterpretations, misunderstandings of community, poor communication. Would you say that's right, Ross?

Speaker C: Exactly right. Exactly right. And it's amazing to me, um, how little that is understood by the market in general. I think most folks oversimplify and they think, well, this is just a bad person, you know, grabbing a body part or saying something wildly inappropriate. That's obviously, you know, not right. And that's, that's a small, small percentage of, uh.

Speaker B: Is it the gray in the margins?

Speaker C: Well, in the gray, the margins are, are the vast majority. Yeah, let's just call it 90%. Right. And it's somebody, uh, listen, people are difficult. This is what I always say to people. People are difficult in our, in our personal lives. Our divorce rate, at least here in the US is 50%. It's been 50% for two decades. And I say that to demonstrate people are difficult.

Speaker B: Yeah, we evolve, we change.

Speaker C: We evolve, we change.

Speaker B: I fell in love with this person and where have they gone?

Speaker C: Well, and I guess the way I would look at it is we're all focused on, um, issues affecting us directly. There's issues affecting this other person directly. And we're all optimizing for different things and thinking about different things as we interact with each other. And it's just like we're electrons bouncing off of each other. And that's true in our personal lives. Now go to our work lives and take away the puppies, take away the shared vacations and houses, and there's no connective tissue there. So when people have a misunderstanding or, you know, one person's thinking A and the other person's thinking B, and there's all these assumptions that are erroneous. You just have conflict. Yep.

Speaker B: And the perspective is in the eye of the beholder. Those things. Truth. Well, what is that? It's a subjective truth. And that version, it makes me think actually. Have you ever read Blink by Malcolm Glamour?

Speaker C: Yes. Yes.

Speaker B: A story that was coming to my head was around, um, trying to understand why certain doctors got sued or not. And they took out what was being said and just looked at the conversational fist. Is it, uh, how long they spend speaking? Is it how many certificates they've got on the wall? And it was. They were able to predict the level of likelihood of being sued by the fist of that conversation, of, uh, excuse me, how people are felt during an interaction of conversation. Whether they fixed you or not, gave you the right answer or not.

Speaker C: And so how does somebody make you feel? Yeah. And think about work. When you've got deadlines and you've got financial pressures and, um, maybe you don't like your team or your boss or whatever, you don't always show up as your best self. That's just being human or sleep or poor sleep.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Or there's personal. Whatever it is. And so whoever is working with you there that day very easily could take it personally. And then they. They paint a whole picture in their head about who and what you are, what you mean to be doing to them that often is not accurate. Um, you know, and that, ah, that was the world I played in for so many years.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we all have our own pattern of past experiences that we then experience the next set group. Right. Of course, uh, in the isolation of that interaction, you have no idea that they have lived that experience for their entire life. And this was then just a moment that straw, the. Broke the camel's back. So what led you to then creating M Train and tell, uh, us more exactly what it does through the tools, the analytics and the education process.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, um, I was motivated because I did start. Started to see patterns.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Um, and I could see there was, you know, managers who didn't understand their power dynamics. They would always have problems because they are, you know, talking to direct reports as if they're peers and friends. Oh, hey, let's go grab a beer or let's. Let's go, you know, do this. And not realizing the person feels like they have to say yes. Right. Um, uh, the ability or lack thereof, uh, to connect in group, out group. So sounds really basic, like we're back in kindergarten. Um, but I would tell you that like, half the claims are one person feels like they're on the outs. Right. So in any event, just patterns. Right. And I'm like, okay, if we can. And this is when, you know, online harassment courses were happening. So seeing a bunch of patterns and thinking, well, wouldn't it be helpful to have online programs focused on skills? Right. Because a lot of the compliance training and culture training. Well, the compliance training is basically communicating and socializing policies. Yep. I've written thousands of policies. They're not really, frankly, they're not written to guide behavior. They're just not, um. Ah. The laws, frankly, are not written to guide behavior. And so socializing policy doesn't really have any practical value for somebody.

Speaker B: That's an interesting point, actually. You know, policies aren't written or designed to help behavior.

Speaker C: No, they are not. They're not.

Speaker B: Whatever the policy is, you know.

Speaker C: Yeah. You know what? I need to think through that. But I can say in your field, in my field and all the employee relations policies, the policies about behavior. Policies about behavior are not designed to guide behavior.

Speaker B: Yeah. Isn't that an interesting. Just realization that it then needs other architecture around that?

Speaker C: Yes. Policies, uh, about behavior are designed for litigation defense. Yeah. That's why all of us lawyers are the ones that write them.

Speaker B: Interesting, isn't it? I guess it's a bit like the healthcare system, sick care system. Right. It's designed for you to be sick, not designed to be healthy.

Speaker C: Ross. That's funny.

Speaker B: The economics, uh, all of it.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: I wonder how much we're thinking about in the law system is designed to.

Speaker C: Well, Ross, funny that you say that because whenever I'm talking to, uh, certainly clients, but even companies that we're just meeting, I always use the analogy of, uh, integrative health. Like, if you approach this from an integrative health perspective, and we're going to develop and strengthen these skills because these

Speaker B: are education, the skills, then guess what?

Speaker C: You won't have turnover. You won't have claims like that should be.

Speaker B: Nobody wants that stuff.

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: On any side of the realm.

Speaker C: Correct. And so a logical output of doing good preventative work should be not having the bad outcomes.

Speaker B: But sometimes human nature, you can conceptualize that. We can articulate it. We can put the business case. But until you put your hand on the bloody hot plate and get burnt, you don't then change your resources, investment and behavior. Sometimes.

Speaker C: Okay, but. Yes, but. And there's another Nuance to this. And this is another pet peeve of mine. Um, just like integrative health, where, you know, the best practices show that you'll have experts from different, uh, kind of specialties meeting and collaborating. And this is D and I basically. Of course, that's now a taboo topic, but it essentially is depends where you're from. Yes, Touche. Yeah. Um, you know, in the world of compliance and employee relations, those are separate silos. So you'll have HR compliance professionals within an organization, and they're just focused on, I gotta get these programs out, I need to get my reporting, and I have to check the box. I'm done.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And they're not really collaborating with HR business partners and employee relations that are trying to.

Speaker B: Relations onboarding. L and D. Right. They're compliance, but not behavioral.

Speaker C: Exactly. Right.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: And so they're optimizing for one small little output without getting any of the upstream of the upstream benefits. And so it's just really interesting to me.

Speaker B: Okay. And so that problem statement and opportunity piece, uh, is that the heart of what you help organizations deal with, to harness that opportunity of. Okay, let's get some skills training in, let's get some education in. Let's use the analytics and the tools to be able to do that. Is that.

Speaker C: Uh, yes. But how we're doing it is pretty just direct. So clients come to us for a compliance course. Hey, we need a harassment prevention course. We need a code of conduct course, or insider trading, whatever it is. And, uh, we roll out the courses, but because the content is really shaped to develop skills, and we're pulsing for those skills within the course.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: So just within the course we'll say, okay, so power dynamics. Here's what good use of power looks like. We'll show a scene. Hey, does your manager understand power dynamics? Always, never strong, weak. And so they're fallible. Right?

Speaker B: Fallible humans, we can do things. We have a noble intent and yet still get it wrong.

Speaker C: Of course. Of course. So, um, within our actual learning, we're getting employee sentiment about their lived experiences with their managers and their teammates. And so we're getting all this, um, measurement about skills within that organization. So then we kind of show that to the organization.

Speaker B: It's interesting, you know, the, um, we've got to learn and we've got to train, we've got to educate, and there's just so much of it, right? All of these things. We need new skills now. We need the AI. We need these bits. Compliance training. Who wants to do another compliance training course? Right. And so how do we design these to be something that gets the end result, the engagement, but also is, uh, a process that lands. And it makes me think how sit at a conference a few years back and all the various different swag. I mean, I was so grateful here that there was swag of lip balm. I had no idea that I'd have saw lips. But I'm in the desert. And this one stand had, uh, toilet rolls as their, uh, they were a training provider. They had toilet rolls. Now there's a company called who Gives a Crap in the UK and it's all recycled toilet rolls. Um, and you get it direct, delivered, on subscription. It's now huge business. Ah. And the premise was in one of the feedbacks of their training courses, the feedback said, the least crap training I've ever experienced. And it just gave me such a sense of, huh, you know, they get it. Who wants to go and do another one of those? So they twisted it on the head. It was a beautiful positioning of, uh, something that in the realm of we've got to do this compliance training style, the least graphics training experience I've been on. And you just got a sense of what might that be like? What are the energy, uh, is it like, of the company, if you were to describe the kind of, um, energy and culture that you're bringing to this, is it very much it's about the legal side from it, or is it about the human behavior side? Because I've got my pre. Assumptions. Maybe some of the listeners have. How do you approach it in your realm?

Speaker C: Oh, it's all super practical and very behavioral. So, uh, like for example, our harassment prevention course, people really appreciate we color code conduct, not people. Okay. So we have, you know, we call it a shared language. It's our workplace color spectrum. Uh, green, yellow, orange. Red. Yeah. So green is like when you're your best self and you're not always your best self, as you said. Right. Yellow is like you didn't get much sleep, you're kind of impatient, you're a little bit reactive. Maybe you snap a little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Uh, you know, orange is when you're using some kind of a protective characteristic in your language and your jokes.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And. And that's a little bit, you know.

Speaker B: Okay, get spicy.

Speaker C: Get a little spicy. And then red, your. Your toxic. And.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And so clients have really appreciated, um, we hear it all the time where that shared language gives people, like, such comfort. And they'll say to even the CEO, hey, boss, that was kind of Orange, we hear about that all the time. Interesting. And it's not, it's not polarizing. And I think that's why it's so comfortable. It gives people the grace of like, we, we all mess up.

Speaker B: And I've got a question for you. Is it the categorization that you've just talked about there of behaviors, orange, yellow, green, red, always the same, or is it situation, condition, you know, contextual? Is it, uh, geographical, or is it. If that's orange, it's always orange wherever you are. Or it's orange in that setting, but it's green in that setting. Does it adapt?

Speaker C: So it does. It does adapt. It adapts in different regions because. Different regions. Um, so for example, in some provinces. Provinces in Canada, bullying is actually illegal. So even bullying, mobbing. In Europe, it's a. Might call it mobbing.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Um, so you might have a different legislation. Yes. Right. So in Canada, bullying would be orange because orange means you're on a legal slippery slope. Okay, Right. Um, but like within. So that's not true in uk. Right. So uk, the color spectrum would be the same as here in the U.S.

Speaker B: uh, so one way of it adapts is from a legislative, ah, regional part. What about in terms of, uh, different teams or different, uh, functions that might require different levels of pushing the boundary to be psychologically safe to. I want to express something that might be my belief, my value and difference that might upset somebody else. Is it safe? Is it held against me? Am I now, um, we don't give those responsibilities to that person anymore. I'm, you know, cut out of future projects and rooms because I express something that. That felt was orange, but I was expressing it because I wanted it to be diverse. You know what? So to me it's so complicated.

Speaker C: So the value is that it's a shared language.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: So it does not change. Right. And then the definitions are super basic. Right. So green is obviously your best self. Um, if it doesn't concern a legal issue, it's always going to be yellow. I don't care how much you.

Speaker B: Interesting. Okay, so I could really upset you.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: But if it's not a legal issue, that's still yellow.

Speaker C: It's still yellow. And it's all about how we interpret these things. Because, you know, the way we're socializing this to learners is. Yellow is still a problem.

Speaker B: It's still a problem. It probably is so much yellow. I want to get it legal, but it's not legal.

Speaker C: Right, but that's what happens. Interesting. And so people, you know, will Tag a legal term to it. Because they want to escalate.

Speaker B: They want to escalate. But what happens, you've upset me. My value base.

Speaker C: Exactly. But it's a lose, lose. And here's why. So the person who's super upset and tags it as oh, this is harassment or this is, this is orange, even when it's not. So then the legal, uh, you know, wheel spin and people like my former self would come and investigate and say this is not uh, a legal issue. So sorry, goodbye. And then they get even more pissed off. Yeah.

Speaker B: You've then got the aftermath of you've now got a broken relationship.

Speaker C: Exactly right. So if on the front end of the situation you guide people and say, I don't care how pissed off you are, if it's not, uh, a legal element, it's still yellow. Now that's a problem.

Speaker B: We still need solutions.

Speaker C: But you solve it a different way.

Speaker B: We solve it a different way. Isn't that. And my bias and premise of America love to litigate anything and everything, uh, is a pre perceived bias. Now that might be based in some elements of data, uh, that I've seen, but it's still selective of what I've seen.

Speaker C: Well, but the US is very litigious. It is litigious. Now part of the problem. Um, certainly our laws and our courts support litigation. But then people. And uh, this is going to be my cynical side. It's people being people that are tough and anytime that they feel victimized or wrong, they want. And maybe this is a solution. Maybe this is Americans only because they

Speaker B: want, they want the solution. They want some kind of compensation and effect.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Effect on that other person and make me whole.

Speaker C: And they want to be right. I'm right. I'm a victim. Um, yeah, this is harassment or discrimination.

Speaker B: Um, so is it the absence of understanding of alternative solutions to make me whole, to have the things that doesn't need a legal.

Speaker C: I think so. Fanfare I think so. So I think I'm saying just one other thought on this one. Um, and so coming from California, like, like I do, which is really the leader probably in litigation. And, and I mean California, New York, maybe Illinois, I don't know too many other states that are at that level, those levels of litigation. Um, I was a very young, um, practicing attorney when the harassment laws opened up and we got the first really large harassment verdict. It was actually in San Francisco. I went to that jury trial every single day. I found it fascinating. And I think what that resulted in was just this open door. So it was a $6.4 million harassment verdict. This was years and years ago, like 30 years ago. Um, and she had actually been a temporary worker for like three weeks in a long time. And so that just has conditioned generation after generation of like you've got a problem, you just tag it harassment and there you go. It's become kind of this like cottage industry here in the US

Speaker B: and it is the, the full spectrum of the human condition, isn't it? Of the unconditional love, the compassion, the acceptance to the. I'll arrange for something, you know, uh, accidents, harassment, whatever it is, uh, at the other end of that spectrum where there's the um, chronic unhealthy behaviors that take advantage of that system, an ecosystem. And at the other end, the compassion, the love. And I'm m sure along the way you've got elements of naivety and the footfall parts for me, what I'm interested about, as organizations evolve from uh, in maybe size, in uh, region, in jurisdiction, often they're blissfully naive to these things, right. Until we come face to face with them, uh, ethical things. Until we exit out of our echo chambers of our value base, we rub up against another uh, zone in the world, another way of doing things, another um, entity. We don't know what we don't know. So as we go through those things, what advice would you give for organizations that are now entering into new places? New places in work where, you know, AI agents, ethical redundancies. Um, I was at conference last week where the volume of humanoid robots that are going to be deployed will be vast and sudden and quick.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And do we have the ethics in place and the structure in place of how do we humans interact with each other in that realm and world of I used to be the person who contributed that value. Now it's a piece of software, now it's a robot.

Speaker C: So Ross, excellent question, because I've been thinking about this. So you've got two issues that are um, you know, generating my attention or catching my attention. So the bigger one that you're outlining is, you know, how are humans going to react? Because we are changing socio economic, um, world. Right. So just like a hundred years ago we went from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy and we just read about it in the history books.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're now living a transition.

Speaker C: We're living a transition and we just know conceptually that there was a whole lot of harm and uh, lots of, you know, just rough spots for that generation in the 1900, you know, 1890 to 1920 that probably were decimated. Yeah, we don't know it obviously, but we can guess at it or we're about to experience it ourselves. Um, it's going to be rough. It's going to be rough times. And I think that um, you know, most folks are going to be reactive because as humans we are all reactive. And it takes skill and experience and uh, discipline to be intentional, to be thoughtful, intentional about uh, how you're going to navigate certain situations. And there are going to be some cohorts of people that are more vulnerable than others. You know, at some level we are all vulnerable. It's just a matter of time. Yeah, but some are going to get

Speaker B: impacted first and it's that inability to adapt. How I show up, you know, how I provide value and is that, that's a dual responsibility. Right. It's the responsibility of the individual to uh, embrace that and the organization to teach it, Teach it and support it.

Speaker C: That's where we come in.

Speaker B: Dual reality of uh, those things we can't abdicate it to either.

Speaker C: Exactly. And then the second issue, so that's a big one and the second issue is, you know, and that's uh, this one causes me some angst, is you know, our organization is going to be thoughtful and deliberate about their uh, guardrails of using AI and robots. And we know history tells us that they will not be. I'm hoping that we, you know, learn a little bit, but I'm not optimistic.

Speaker B: Yeah, the founder of uh, figure one. I'm not sure if you've ever come across figure one, a humanoid uh, robotics company. So in that space there's let's say maybe two dozen main players of ah, looking at, from the Boston Dynamics that have been around for a long time, you've probably seen the you know, dancing dog robots, the parkour running humanoid uh, robots. We've designed the world for a human interaction. And so from the industrial robots doing things in manufacturing to now humanoid robots being able to do jobs that are dangerous, dirty, disgusting that normally humans do and potentially um, those we don't treat super well, ah, parts of society to do some of those roles and jobs. And it was interesting he was talking about. So figure one I think has been around uh, certainly under five years, a uh, fairly new player to the market. They're now worth uh, you know, in the billions. Been wildly successful of uh, intercepting various exponential technologies that have allowed them to uh, provide value very quickly. So whether that's material sciences, robotics or it's large language models that can help observe uh, multimodal inputs to train how they then do a job rather than oh, let's code how to do a baristas make a coffee to just put the thing in front of a human doing it. They watch a few minutes afterwards they can now do it. And they uh, deployed the first ah, hundred thousand of their humanoid robots into first client. And some headlines, I may have a few of the numbers and bits wrong but the principles are the same 18 months from beginning to fully functioning in that client environment. So all of the procedures, policies, training to get in up and running client 2, 30 days to do the same stuff they were talking about. There is no reason now why they can't go from requirement to full onboarded operational efficiency within 48 hours at scale. They say if they had a million units now they could deploy them into clients and from their version two which is the current one of humanoid robot to version three that they're just now manufacturing a new 90% cost reduction for them of the manufacture of these units. So we're going to very soon reach a point at which not only the knowledge roles that AI agents that we might have software as a service, SaaS that augmented us and co pilots to RAS results as a service. I just want this end result. The software gives me that result. We're seeing pockets of that with uh, ChatGPT's operator, uh I want a flight to Vegas end to end, go and book it and interact with the systems that exist, the ecosystems of booking.com or Expedia. Go and do that. We don't need to redesign the ecosystem for the AI agent. The AI agent has operated and does it so the same true then of these humanoid robots. This is going to displace a lot of processes and people and the challenge for organizations that are commercial entities of looking at well what are the economic responsibilities to their shareholders and what are the ethical responsibilities to ensure no one's left behind. The realities are uh, there is going to be a lot of people who are perf.

Speaker C: Can I just introduce you again? Because here in the US as I'm sure you appreciate, we're in the middle of the MAGA movement because people have been displaced over the last 50 years and NAFTA, which was uh, negotiated in the 90s under Clinton, basically displaced all of our manufacturing jobs here in the US and so Trump basically got elected by those constituents that were missing.

Speaker B: Want to bring that back, they want

Speaker C: to bring that back. And we've got ghost towns and so we've got all, we've got half of the us, basically, that got left behind.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: Because of, uh, we lost all of our manufacturing. So what I don't really understand. It's just hard for me to comprehend because it's so irrational. It's like, okay, so we're gonna go lightning speed ahead. I mean, is the whole country just going to blow up? Like, to what end?

Speaker B: Where are we going bringing manufacturing back, great, I can get my job. Doesn't mean that.

Speaker C: No, of course not.

Speaker B: You know, uh, we're going to bring it back, but actually we're then going to create an economy of humanoid robots that will do a lot of those things, will have different material sciences of how those things happen. That, yes, economically, there's going to be some things. Elon talks about the Optimus, you know, humanoid robot from Tesla being way more impactful for their organization and revenue than the automotive cars. There's, you know.

Speaker C: Well, and he has been very consistent. He does not want employees. I mean, he doesn't do well.

Speaker B: He doesn't do well.

Speaker C: He doesn't do well. As a manager of employees. We've seen that they, you know, other than the very top echelon, most of them don't like him.

Speaker B: A lot of these people that shift how society functions. Travis was at the conference last week as well, from Uber. You know, we shift society. And I was at a dinner last night, a DEI dinner, and there was a black man who said, Uber changed my life. And I was listening to him, and he said, you know, I grew up as a black man who could never get a cab in New York. They would drive by me. For years, they would drive by me. And then suddenly this came along and I could use an app and get a cab, and it liberated me. And he said, I have had countless stories of marginalized individuals where Uber changed their life. And we, you know, depending where we've come from, you know, I'm a privileged white man. Uh, I didn't even comprehend that issue.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And that that organization had an impact on that group and people's lives in that way. And we might then see a, uh, Travis, this individual. Don't trust what you read all the time, uh, to what actually happens. You know, Elon Musk doesn't do well with people management, but yet they've provided society in different ways. Uh, a service.

Speaker C: Of course. I don't want to be a Luddite. Obviously, what Travis brought is amazing. I mean, senior citizens too,

Speaker B: suddenly mobile, free, liberated. And so we see a lot of these leaders and the ethical behaviors and we go, uh, will convenience Trump my disdain for how somebody operates.

Speaker C: It will always trump it.

Speaker B: And our hearts want to say I'm not gonna. We hear these stories of Gen Z. Well they won't go work with these if they're not aligned to the purpose or we won't buy from those. And yes, that's true to some extent. I want to buy you know, all plant based products in our life. That's a decision we've made as a family for all of our uh, ah things. And many people are making that because we're becoming more transparent, more aware. But there'll be other areas in which the convenience trumps the ethical margins of course.

Speaker C: Well there's that and then the entrepreneurs and founders, um, you know it's a race to grow really at all costs. And so they're, they're not going to be slowed down by ethics, they're just not. Um, and as long as the boards and the investors, you know, kind of counterbalance that with at least some um, professional on the team. But they usually don't because everyone's after

Speaker B: money, money and they conscious capitalism in terms of okay, making these right choices. A few years back, you know, as an entrepreneur you create something and you see all of these things that you could do right. It's never uh, uh, a lack of opportunity, it's a filter problem of uh, too much. What do we say no to? And I remember getting the domains having this whole idea about ethical redundancy because the reality of well we want to make sure no one's left behind. There is going to be people left behind and it's relative. Not my version of your left behind for you it's your own. Bit like the truth, subjective in a case. Right. What does that mean for me? That I can still contribute, I can still see value of myself tomorrow, all of those things. That's what I mean by not being left behind. So that they have hope, not hopelessness. You know, they have a goal or vision, they uh, have pathways and strategy to achieve it. The agency capability to get there. Without that I think we're in a very dark place. So this idea of huge volumes of roles and to me it should be roles that are made redundant and tasks that are made redundant, not people. Now that is a utopian view that yes, we're going to train them, we're going to upskill them, we're going to get them into these things. Reality is there won't be all of that. How do organizations that are dealing with this challenge of transformation, technological, political, that is going to mean Many people in their workforce are not going to be required anymore. How do we deal with that from an ethical point of view to get the right education, the right systems, the right tools in place to do that. And that was a big question.

Speaker C: Well, that's what I'm really passionate about. Yeah, me too. I think about it a lot. Um, especially I've uh, got you know, kids. You've got kids, right. Um, thinking that through, it's like what kind of a world are we leaving for the next generation? Um, I don't think it's a corporate responsibility. I don't. I think it's a government and social like NGOs and non profits and really all a community base because um, corporations

Speaker B: are UBI you're talking, you know that they need to change the legislative uh, protocols that then companies will follow otherwise they never will. Is that what you mean?

Speaker C: Correct.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: I mean companies, you can always count on companies just optimizing for profits. Yeah, you can become.

Speaker B: So if we're putting that.

Speaker C: And then what I thought, I mean it's, and don't know how long the transition time's going to be but you know, theoretically five to 10 years.

Speaker B: Five to 10 years.

Speaker C: I was thinking 10 to 20 but uh, you know, so that's. It's a generation. It's going to be a generation. So poor list of my kids are in Gen Z. So poor Gen Z's are the ones that get screwed. They've already been screwed by Covid and all that. So this is going to be yet another thing to screw them over. It's kind of like in Britain World War I was the lost generation of men was the lost generation. So this is going to be the last generation. Sorry to be so cynical but anyways going on too. Um, because theoretically other opportunities, other economy, other economic opportunities will start to emerge. Yeah, we think but it's going to be a generation that gets decimated.

Speaker B: M and so that to me is a huge opportunity of how do we serve them rather than they're going to be decimated. They're going to be how can we harness that creativity, that innovation, that uh, that resource of soul expression from them rather than just say never mind.

Speaker C: No, I agree with you but it's going to be government and it's going to be non profits and then I'm going to get cynical again.

Speaker B: Why did I pan.

Speaker C: I'm an American in 2025. So it's a government politics.

Speaker B: It's all short termism. Next four years, next four years. So it's very Challenging to think beyond that, to solve these grand challenges.

Speaker C: Well, I don't see, at least here in the us, um, a majority yet. I think one might emerge. A majority of the population concerned about our kids and what we're leaving to our kids. The, uh, climate, the economy, the society. So I don't see it. Um, it's me, myself and I. That's why we elected who we elected.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's the reality.

Speaker C: It's like, don't care about anyone else. It's just me, myself and I. Now I'm starting to hear a little bit of like, oh, it's actually affecting me. Okay. So I think it's gonna. I think the pain's gonna have to get really pronounced until we start to see some, Some momentum of, um, people wanting to solve these issues. Corporations are not.

Speaker B: It's interesting because in some contexts, you want to serve self. Is why they talk about oxygen masks on yourself first before we can do others. Uh, is the plane going down in America? Maybe that's the narrative of we need to put our oxygen masks on ourselves. The reality when we, you know, um, what is our perspective? Is our perspective that borders are a construction, you know, companies are a construct. All of those things that know we are one collective human species and can we create flourishing for all? And those aren't the mechanics that move the mountains of the economy and social pieces currently. What I'm fascinated by is where previously it was the power sat with governments and big corporations is now shifting to entrepreneurs, shifting to entrepreneurs the likes of Sam Altman, Elon Musk, uh, these sort of things that can shift the needle of what can happen for society. I dream, I meditate, I manifest this emergence of a collective that see what we see and are able to do something about it.

Speaker C: I would love that.

Speaker B: It would be a beautiful story in our chapter, uh, of humanity.

Speaker C: And

Speaker B: whether that's living in delusion, um, or energy flows where attention goes. And if we put enough attention into that energy might flow, follow. I feel a something, a spark in a few, few rooms, a few places where it might just be possible.

Speaker C: Okay, I'm gonna get a little gendered on you here.

Speaker A: Go on.

Speaker C: So, you know, just like with the Industrial revolution, our titans of industry were, you know, these towering figures of men that were out to conquer the world. And, you know, did conquer the world. And now here we are, they're all men out to conquer the world. And as a mother of boys, three boys, um, and obviously this is, you know, vastly generalizing. So with that in place, my disclaimer acknowledgement in place? Um, not always obviously, but general generally. There's a very different focus of boys than girls.

Speaker B: 100%. 100%.

Speaker C: And girls want to nurture.

Speaker B: Uh, uh, this makes me think of.

Speaker C: And so when we're thinking about taking care of society and our next generation, I'm um, not placing my bets on Sam Altman and Elon Musk and any other, uh, certainly not Travis Kelvin. I just think that that's a little bit too unrealistic.

Speaker B: So I was at a talk, a chap called Salim Ismail. Um, and it was his m. More than 40th version of uh, this after event talk he does called the Meaning of Life. It involves lots of alcohol for him. Uh, very interesting character and the blend of metaphysics, all sorts of things of a debate, meaning in life. And um, some of these have gone on. I think his record was 11 hours. And they sometimes start at 9pm after an event. People come in, hang out and he goes through the human condition, soul expressions and metaphysics, all of these things. And has some conceptual thinking, uh, conceptual models of stuff and the room interacts. And to your point, uh, I want to remove um, gender, but the traits that are feminine.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: And masculine traits. Because I could exhibit very feminine traits, right. That we associate nurturing, caring of all of those things. And equally females can exhibit very masculine traits of power, control and those sorts of things. And I think when we zoom out, what has happened in society is we have been led by a very masculine trait function that has resulted in the reality that we've had the massive expansion of many things. Longevity, access to education, all of those things that have created what we've created. I think for the world that we need to have, we need the leadership of a feminine set of traits or

Speaker C: at least that influence, that influence in

Speaker B: decision making from all areas bottom to top, from one pocket of the world to another pocket of the world. I don't care whether that comes from a man or a woman.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker B: What I recognize and what resonated from this talk is that the female energy, uh, that we associate as the female energy because it is all energy and frequency. We need that frequency shift and excited for that to emerge because from a quantum physics basis my senses we can't stop it but emerge. Uh, that emergence might come from the death of something else, you know, of something to your point, needing to break before it can then flourish a fire before we get new emergence of hope that that death is on the right terms. You know, in my book I talk about, you know, the Four cycles of, uh, you know, from flourishing collapse. You need some death before you then have growth and those phases. And we can shortcut it through intentional adaptation. This has gone on a way longer and in a way different way than I thought it was going. But that's the beauty of these conversations. Right. What shows up is what is interesting at the time and the how do we design the environment in which when that spark emerges, it's not snuffed out and it's found. And I think it is places like here at transform. It's the rooms, it's the conversations, it's the pieces that shift from policy to the behaviors. That is more nurturing, that is more caring. That isn't about the control, the litigation and the power. What if instead of protecting and litigating and building my moat, we were co. Elevating, we were collaborating, we were true team ship over leadership. We were in that way. And the more voices that think that way and start to express that way, the more likelihood the spot that exists will be found.

Speaker C: Excellent. I'm gonna think about it. Yeah. Think about it long enough.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Maybe it'll manifest.

Speaker B: Yeah. And maybe in my own reality, it manifests and I, you know, live life in that way. Two final things before you go. Uh, I ask the same question to every guest on the show. One day, maybe it will make its own book or something, uh, of this. And it's around curiosity. When was the last time you did something for the first time? And what was it?

Speaker C: I went to a tennis tournament for the first time.

Speaker B: How's that? Okay. What was that like? What was that experience?

Speaker C: It was very fun.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: Very fun.

Speaker B: I've asked that question now. 150 guests.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And I'm fascinated as to the response from people. Quite an arresting question of, oh, what really was it? And the logical process and the, uh. Is this answer mundane or is it. Is it going to be a good answer or not? Is it. Does he mean literal? All these things and what comes from that inquiry and that conversation and something for our regular listeners, maybe some of you are, uh, new listeners, is the realization of the balance between. It was a genuine first time. Right. You share something. Hadn't been to it before I went, and we might reflect on it in different ways. It was fun. Um, it wasn't fun. Uh, I do something. My encouragement to you and to listeners is the duality of genuine firsts. Uh, do more of them. It will help us prepare for uncertainty that's coming. Second part is the same thing with new eyes. So how many Times, uh, you know, have I hugged my wife many? Could I hug her in the sense of it's the first time I've hugged her? How would I feel? How would I express that? If I'm driving somewhere, doing something, if I'm having a conversation, if I'm at work, do it with those new eyes as if it was the first time. What would I now see? What would I experience? What would I now uncover with those new eyes?

Speaker C: So I do more of that, uh, uh, and I would kind of shift it a little bit. I am pretty, uh, frequent in thinking through, like, a conversation. Okay. How did that person experience that conversation? And just. Just trying to put myself in their

Speaker B: shift into their eyes. A perspective shift could be one aspect of that. Um, and another thing. Just in your own. In your own life, you know, when you do something, when you walk somewhere, what if it was the first time

Speaker C: you walked that way?

Speaker B: How would you be? How would you hold yourself? How would you behave? How do you greet somebody else? Rather than, what a conference? It's the 40th person I've met the last hour. Ah, what if this is the first

Speaker C: person I've ever met?

Speaker B: If I've been in isolation? Silo, you know, um, what if that was. What version of me? Is it the shadow version that got no bloody sleep? Or is it the best version of me?

Speaker C: It shows up.

Speaker B: If people want to get in touch, uh, and find out more about what you do, they're intrigued about your platform and things. How do they get in touch?

Speaker C: So certainly would love for people to go to our website. It's, uh, mtrain.com that's E, M, M, T R-A-I-N.com um, or just do infobtrain.com and find me M or LinkedIn. Janine.

Speaker B: Perfect. Been an absolute pleasure. I'm totally. Who knew where this one would go? But thanks for playing along.

Speaker C: Same. Thank you.

Speaker A: Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill, and break through? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ. Visit AQAI IO to gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability. AQAI transforming the way people, teams and organizations navigate change. Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding aq. Please make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcast directory and. And we'd love to hear your feedback. Please do leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.