Cath Bishop: The Long Win

If a three-times olympian tells you, that the concept of winning does not serve a company well, you better listen. We talk to Cath Bishop, world champion, silver medallist and now speaker, facilitator and coach for organisations about how the idea and short-term goal of winning has too many downsides for an organisation to thrive on it.

Author page: http://www.cathbishop.com
Get the book: https://www.cathbishop.com/the-long-win

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'The Wicked Company' book on Amazon.co.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/WICKED-COMPANY-When-Growth-Enough-ebook/dp/B07Y8VTFGY/
The Wicked Company website: https:www.thewickedcompany.com

Music:
'Inspired' by Kevin MacLeod
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The Wicked Podcast: Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thewickedpodcast

The Wicked Company website: https:www.thewickedcompany.com

Music: 'Inspired' by Kevin MacLeod Song: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3918-inspired License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

Marcus Kirsch: 0:16

Welcome to the wicked podcast where we read the business books you don't have time for. I'm Marcus Kirsch. And I'm Troy Norcross. And we are your co hosts for the wicked podcast.

Troy Norcross: 0:28

So Marcus, after three false starts, you actually made it to the podcast, I'm really, really impressed.

Marcus Kirsch: 0:36

Oh, thank you for pointing out my flaws. I'm just not used to go. I'm just not used anymore to go through run and traffic. I've been travelling for a year traffic in London, as it turns out,

Troy Norcross: 0:51

there is traffic in London. And I'll be back and I'll be suffering it right along with you soon enough. But you know, whether we're going to go back to normal or whether we're going to go to a new normal, there are some parts of life that will be happy to see back again. But anyway, today is indeed a second attempt to record a first podcast with an incredibly impressive author who is on our show today.

Marcus Kirsch: 1:19

Yes, so we have a proper certified Olympian on our podcast today. Cast Bishop and her book, The long wind is about her as talking about winning, and being a high performing athlete, having one beat and having been at, I think three Olympic Olympics, she said, Actually, I thought it was two is actually three. And but actually saying the winning idea is not a great idea. There's a lot of things we should not consider. Exactly, exactly. But so. And it was a great episode I loved I loved I really loved this, because it goes so to the bone of certain things. But what were your takeaways?

Troy Norcross: 2:06

One of my takeaways was, and I wrote it down in big letters get passionate, because I swear to you, she is so full of energy and passion during this interview. And it's almost impossible not to listen to her, and to get on board with her ideas. So when we're talking to our clients, we need to remind them that what they need to do is to get passionate about what it is that they're trying to do, whether that's digital transformation, or cultural change, or whatever it happens to be, get passionate. The second thing is, think different. Don't just assume the same metrics, and be careful with the metrics. Because you know, what gets measured gets managed is an age old kind of mantra, maybe we should be measuring different things. And she makes the point, maybe we should be measuring the negative impact of a quarterly focus. And I was like, wow, okay, yeah, let's look at exactly how bad we screwed our customers, we screwed our employees, just to make our quarterly numbers, we're only measuring the positives, we need to start measuring the negatives to, which will give us an opportunity to think longer. Those are my two big takeaways, what about you?

Marcus Kirsch: 3:29

So I quite liked that, in the end, was to a second part of the interview that we quite got into a conversation triggered by you about experimentation, you know, try new things, try different things. When you're set to a particular condition to like, this is the condition to win, this is the target to hit. You're basically suppressing often the idea of, well, why don't we try this? Why don't we try it out, because trying different things sets you up to potential failure. And if it's particularly maybe a new way to achieve the goal, it's often not recognised because I know there's a way to get there, because you already measure it, therefore, you know how to get there. So let's get there as fast as we can, which totally excludes all the potential for exponential, more effectiveness, impact. And I've seen this again and again, and again. I've seen it too often where, especially in changing transformation, where it's more crucial than ever to figure out. So what we're looking at here, how do we get here, there's about 100 ways to get there. Why we're only focused on one thing and one thing only what we really totally ignoring everything else. And then you have people often saying just get it done. Sorry, we've got three months. That's it, like just the budget. That's the things that's the obvious way to get to the goal. totally ignoring better, smarter, more effective ways. And you don't Listen, and you don't learn. So the learning aspect here is what she phrased a lot. So experimentation. If you don't include it, you don't expect it, you don't allow it, you're taking yourself a lot out of the game and often is because the targets are set up in a way that excludes experimentation. And we know the most progressive companies are the ones that experiment most Amazon fuba will ever run 1000 experiments a month, they're doing really well. So we should really, really consider the target versus how we get there. And along for experimentation, there was the big one I took from that.

Troy Norcross: 5:41

And she really loved the personal story that you told about your big breakthrough in art. And as we're talking about breakthroughs, what should we break through and do now

Marcus Kirsch: 5:54

break through to the other side of the interview? Hello, everyone. Today, we're here with Casper sharp. Hello, cast. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to a podcast. Hi, great to be here. Looking forward to the conversation. Lovely. So as usual, we start from the top, which means please tell our listeners who you are and why you wrote the book.

Cath Bishop: 6:23

Sure. So I'm Kathy bishop. And I work now in the leadership development world as a consultant as a speaker, teaching at business schools on exact education. But that draws on two previous careers. One is an Olympic Rower for 10 years running for the British team, and competing at three Olympic games with differing different experiences and results. And then a career as a diplomat working for the British Foreign Office for 12 years. And within that specialising in some conflict issues around the world, and political negotiations as part of that. And the book really is drawing together a theme that has gone throughout all of those careers. And that continues very much in my work today, with organisations with teams with leaders around, what does success look like? What do we think we need to do in order to be successful in this, this sort of ever present language around winning, that I'd seen in all of these worlds from different perspectives, and that at times, I'd seen that it held us back. And it was that theme that the book explores from lots of different angles in the long run.

Troy Norcross: 7:38

And it's such an interesting perspective, because I think as human beings, and you actually talk about that, in the book, we are to some level kind of hardwired to be competitive, whether it's for food, or shelter, or for mates, or whatever. And one of your more main premises in the book, is that the kind of obsessive focus on winning ignores a bigger set of purpose and a bigger set of possibility. Can you can you tell the listeners a bit more about how that how that came to be as an idea? And and how people can start thinking about applying that?

Cath Bishop: 8:15

So I mean, this this question that we're hardwired to win is something that I hear a lot. And the thing is, it's only a part of our wiring. So we have a sort of short term reactive part of our brains, where we like to compete, we get a dopamine hit, if we you know, when something just as an addict gets a dopamine hit if they win on the slot machines or something. So if we play to that part of our brains, then we kind of like this sort of short term winning set idea, but it's, it's usually very short term short lived and has diminishing returns each time. But it's really only a part of our wiring. And it ignores the potential the much bigger potential, it comes from a different part of our brain that revolves around meaning and purpose. And this then brings much more longer lasting motivation, longer lasting, resilience, creativity, ways of thinking, ways of imagining that we shut down if we only play to the short term ones. So it's really thinking that, you know, it's been as powerful in our evolution, our capacity to cooperate, to find shelter, to find food. It's not always that we're competing against others, often we're actually cooperating in order to gain whatever it is that we need. And so it continues in our lives today that actually cooperation is often the the path that could enable us to explore more, to reach more of our potential to together achieve something at a greater level that just by seeing everyone as competitors actually holds us back. So it is about reframing what we think is going to get the best out of ourselves. reframing what we think performance and success require in terms of the way we think our behaviours and our relationships. And it is then about switching into much more of a longer term investment in relationships, developing a sense of purpose and meaning that again, it's over the longer term that then fuels what we do each day. So it really sort of almost turns on its head, that short term thinking. But it actually helps us to choose to do the right things in the short term, it helps us to prioritise because we're thinking about what what brings that longer term purpose, when we then apply the motivation that comes from that. If we think about purpose driven motivation, then we're actually much more creative about what's possible to achieve these visions of changing society in some way, or having an impact on our local community, or our environment, we're working with intrinsic motivation, that is, by itself just much deeper, much more powerful, and enables us to achieve much more.

Troy Norcross: 10:58

Yeah, and what I find is kind of challenging. And I'm, I've read the book, and I'm saying the things that I know are kind of countered in the book. But we are driven so much by quarterly performance, you know, we're only as good as what the analysts say, of our last quarter is performance. When we think about what we're trying to do, as human beings, as individuals and society, we need to be thinking about, you know, 30 years down the road when we're doing retirement savings. And I don't think we're very good at doing that. Because we're always, as you say, focused on that short term dopamine hit. But if you compare that to China, where they have 100 year plan, and they absolutely see the benefits of long term vision, long term planning, strategy, collaboration and cooperation on society goals, and that's, that's where it gets super interesting. So how do you kind of talk to people that are in leadership in either public or privately traded companies? who say, I need you to make, you know, 10% growth next quarter? don't care how you do it.

Cath Bishop: 12:10

So it is about are you playing a finite short term game? is it all about what happens next quarter? Is that what success looks like? When I actually asked leaders who had systems that perpetuate that then they'll actually say, Oh, we want to do that in order to be able to grow in order to be able to do something else. So if you then follow down that route of why do you need that growth this quarter this year, in order to do what and we start to develop that bigger purpose behind it, then we get to a much more interesting place that actually enables you to hit that quarterly targets, if you have that in mind. But if that isn't expressed to a company, if the leader has that longer term vision, but just focuses on the next quarter, they're actually stopping the people in their organisations from tapping into that intrinsic motivation from being more creative, more resilient, more imaginative, more innovative, about the way they work, because actually, it's not very motivating to hit a target in three months time, we learn to do it because the system drives it. And so we learn some behaviours. That mean we can do it. But we're not doing it in a way that it's exploring our full capacity. We're not doing it in a way that enables us to explore what's possible, collaborate, and look left and look right, we just hit the targets, actually, we might be able to hit much more than the targets. But we've almost ruled that out because we're not measuring anything else. So you bring in this kind of really important issue of metrics. We are driven by metrics, we've created systems. And we need to be really careful about what the metrics drive and what they prevent. And we actually ought to start measuring a bit more of what's being prevented by the metrics we use, because we had that visible, that we might make some different choices. And we might use some different metrics.

Troy Norcross: 14:06

And I really hope there are a number of people in leadership and major corporations a that listen to our podcast, but be that read your book and see spend time talking to you because this is transformational, what you're talking about, and how businesses operate, how they prioritise and how they define what success looks like, What does good look like, and the best way to achieve what good looks like now, we talked about it before the show kind of started. I am indeed a blockchain consultant. I'm an enterprise blockchain guy. I'm not a cryptocurrency guy. And even though I've got a degree in computer science, really, I'm not a technology guy. But what I do know is that the best blockchain projects are built on consortia groups of multiple distrusting parties who agree to work together for the benefit of the ecosystem. And yet, when most of the work that I'm doing, when I start trying to describe this, the enterprise I'm talking to you says, Well, we need to make profit, you know, and we want to be centralised and we want to have control. And we only want to do blockchain in order to be able to kind of raise money. Okay, how do you, as a diplomat, in your experience in diplomatic corps, work with multiple distrusting parties to find the common ground to start those conversations?

Cath Bishop: 15:30

So, I mean, you, you've started it there, you need to first of all be on that quest for common ground. We, if we want to collaborate, then we need to establish that and what's often immediately obvious is what we don't have in common. So that might be, you know, amongst companies that might be different, you know, histories or ways of working or, you know, even feeling that you're competing for the same clients. But we need to counterbalance that with actually what is the bigger picture that we can do together? So are we in that zero sum game thinking where actually, I can only win if you do badly, because in that case, the consortia won't move forward. And we actually need to be quite explicit about this, not take it for granted, or make assumptions because that things just fall through if we're not really clear about how we are interdependent how we need each other, why we need each other, and then to start building on that common ground. So it can be really small at first, but that is your focus, what are the things that we can do together that we can't do separately? How do we then create that path co create that path? And you know, you set out at the end of your question, but it's how do we how do we create that what it is a creation, I can't tell you what it looks like. And that's part of the mindset shift, that we go into a world where we're exploring, not fighting, fighting sort of closes down opportunities, often it means we're, we're sticking to what we've always done, we're trying to do what we do well, you know, and beat the other person with it. So we do more of it, we do it hard that we do it, we do it again, again. But actually, what we want to do here is create something that hasn't been done before, that needs much more of an Explorer's mindset, if you like where we are, we are learning, we're experimenting, we're sharing information, we're challenging, we're supporting, because this is too complex for one of us to do on our own. So we need to acknowledge that this is too complex. I mean, a lot of the challenges that we face in society are too complex for any one of us to solve. A pandemic isn't solved by one person, the vaccine isn't created by one person, the environment environmentally sees will not be solved by one person. And we need to move on from what's a sort of 19th century mindset almost that somehow we are, we are just fighting individual battles where there is one winner and one loser. Our world doesn't look like that the issues that we are dealing with in business and in society don't look like that anymore. Actually, in our personal lives, it doesn't look like that either.

Marcus Kirsch: 18:06

So that's a great point. Because yes, the world is not black and white. And and what you're referring to as well is like from a conceptual perspective, is this kind of wicked problems that are keep evolving hyper complex things that even when you apply a solution to it keep changing. And there is no way as you said that we can as individuals solve those, however smart we will be. The one thing I would, I wanted to ask about when again, we go into this kind of individual thriving for perfection, or winning or succeeding is also the potential of burnout, right? So in your book, you I think, describe where one of your colleagues one of your co athletes is getting a silver medal. And it's just like, one of the worst days and his or her life. Just because the top is not quite reached, which sounds to some of us ridiculous to feel down in a moment of, but look like looks like achievement, but because it's so black and white. It still isn't achievement for the individual. And I you know, with my background in I used to be a skateboarders I'm quite familiar with people like Tony Hawk or in Milan who've been excelling and keep winning, winning, winning in every contest that ever entered. And they were very empty at some point because there was no work, no place to go. There's nothing else to do, because the winning concept themselves isolated them to a point of depression, which was quite insane. So tell us a bit more about you know, winning. It's It's lonely at the top kind of thing and what it means to energy and in comparison to what you just said. We should actually do this together, we should collaborate, because that gives us different dynamics.

Cath Bishop: 20:05

Yeah. And it actually doesn't matter which step of the podium you're on, or which step of the podium you're not on. It's what you associate with that moment that goes beyond that moment that matters. So it's, you know, what, what does the metal have that has lasting value? Once you put that piece of metal down, and you're no longer got it around your neck? What does it symbolise that goes on after it, crossing the line, you know, finishing first, second, third, fourth, fifth, wherever it's just a moment in time itself, it doesn't last. But what last is the experience you've had on the way to crossing the line, first, third, fifth, wherever. And so it's really making sure that the we don't disconnect that single moment in time standing on a podium crossing the line with what's gone before and what goes after, that's when it becomes lonely. And it says lonely for the gold medalist as it is for the person who comes last. And that's what I think I found so shocking, almost, because for a while, I thought maybe you know, I had a silver medal at the Olympics. Maybe that's that's just what happens, you come second, and you're forever feeling you will one step off it. But then I looked at some gold medalists and spoke to them and increasingly found that in a lot of occasions, they felt empty, depressed, you think how is this possible, this picture, this myth of success that we sell, and that coaches will also, you know, perpetuate almost this moment will make your life you give up everything for it, you know, you won't enjoy it along the way. But that moment, suddenly, you know, everything will be alright, but, but it doesn't work like that. And we have people like Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals, a swimmer in Munich in 1972. And he never, ever recovered from realising that those medals didn't create the rest of his life. It didn't create a brilliant rest of his life, because it was then you've got to go and create that. So it's about connection of that moment to something that lasts, you know, whether it's targets in business, or medals in sport, they actually need to be part of something that goes on beyond that, what's the meaning behind your elite sporting journey? Why have you chosen to train three days a week, seven days a week, 49 weeks of the year for I don't know, a decade, five years? 10 years? 15 years? You know, What's the reason? Why does that matter? Why does it matter to other people? What are you part of what communities? You know, are you part of that actually, this this result? Good or bad? You know, what does it mean to them? It's that journey, it's the story, it's the things that you, you know, take with you afterwards that matters. So in a way, I'm most interested in what athletes say, you know, the next day, or five years after that, did they have you know, they're inspiring the next generation? Are they giving back into sport? Do they feel that they moved their sport on in some way, whether it's technically whether it's, you know, bringing it to new audiences, whether it's sort of moving on, you know, the women's side of the sport, or whatever it might be? These are the things that give meaning to the journey that stay with you beyond the medals. So we're back to that meaning question. And you're right, it can feel very empty, it can feel very burnt out. And the same thing I hear in business sometimes where leaders have got a great CV, they've had great results. They've hit all of those growth targets that we were talking about before, and yet they're going, he said it, I don't feel like the rest of my life is sorted. I feel like Actually, I'm wasting my life. Because what does this mean? After I've hit the target, great, the spreadsheet comes through, then what so it is this difference between almost the finite things that we achieve, which are great, but they're just milestones, and they need to have something underpinning them, you know, framework around them, that brings the ongoing meaning your values, that longer identity, that sense of the things that you want to do the impact you want to have through getting those results.

Troy Norcross: 24:03

So with regard to that, what you're really talking about are stories. And in the book, you make the point that sometimes we're listening to the wrong stories, were listening to the stories that say, all of this effort will result in ABC x, y, Zed, whatever it happens to be. You have done an amazing job and interviewed an incredibly wide spectrum of people. And you've heard the alternative stories. There's a particular story about Roz savage that you mentioned in the book. Tell us a bit more about that and and tell us about how we can learn to listen to more than just a single point of view stories.

Cath Bishop: 24:44

So Roz savage is an ocean rower who has wrote I think she's the first woman to row solo across three oceans, and I was really struck when I was talking to her about these concepts. And about the book that she said, you know, she'd had a real One of those moments recently that had really made her stop and think that she was listening to the radio and of course, she herself, she's a speaker. She's spoken all over the world. She's taught at Yale, and will recount you know, the the journeys that she's gone, what she's learned the lessons she's learned from, from all of these incredible adventures she's had, which is listening to the radio, and there was an interview with an immigrant. And they were actually talking about the absolutely perilous journey that they had been on in boats that are incredibly rickety. You know, and there's, there's no, there's no GPS, there's nobody helping you actually, none of the things that she had in her really well prepared ocean going boat, it was pretty small, but actually, it had all the latest gear, she had support at the other end of the radio. And this journey that an immigrant had gone on rickety boat, she thought was actually far more compelling in terms of resilience, the stories, you know, the, the bravery, the challenges that they had faced, and yet, that immigrant arrives, chucked in a detention centre. No one invites them to talk on the stage about their resilience about the stories that they have to tell of crossing the channel or the Mediterranean or whatever it might be. Real Savage. Yeah, we like that story of crossing the ocean, that's a comfortable one to listen to. So we'll have her come and talk at conferences and inspire us all. And yet, you know, as she said, actually, you know, which of these two stories has more bravery involved, and probably even more learning if we were able to listen to it. So we have very set ways of the stories we want to listen to, and we think we should listen to the ones we don't. And, you know, I've always really struggled with that narrative that, you know, Olympians get brought into school assemblies, and they'll say, Oh, I had a few difficulties along the way. But here we go, I've got a medal. As if life is like that, as if it's a little bit difficult. And then we all win a medal. And if you don't, then maybe that's a bad thing, to you know, hundreds of children, when actually all of these competitions are set up, where only a few people ever do win the medals. So you know, you're by by deliberation, we are creating a world where we're saying, basically, most of you won't succeed. That's madness. Because there's more than one way and you know, the stories in sport, they're just come from the person who comes first. Often, there are great things that have happened within a race, and others have made it a great race, the tactics, the decisions, the risks that people have taken, that maybe didn't pay out, but they made it such a fascinating race. And we missed that. Because we just look at what happened at the end, we really need to open our eyes to more.

Marcus Kirsch: 27:41

Yeah, and I think there's I think it's interesting for me, as well, apart from that. So last year, I ran my first marathon, I didn't do any running before, until three years ago. And that was a weird mental journey. And there was a clear goal there. And it's it was a not an Jesus's to the way I was brought up with my education, which was in design and art. So I remember one of my probably best tutors I ever had in painting was that, you know, I walked in this painting for like, three months, kept trying, kept trying, kept trying to improve. And eventually, I got to a point where it was like, I was quite proud of it, because it looked like typical painting, like the stuff you see otherwise on the wall, and I was quite happy about myself. And he said, Okay, so now destroy it. So what do you mean, they just take some colour and just go over it just break through, go beyond that point, because that point doesn't matter. It's like, What do you mean? Like, well, you know, it's a painting. So you stop at an interesting point. But as an artist, your life is about the process, you will do this for the rest of your life till you die. That's the whole beauty of it. That taught me so much more than any other, you know, later here, you know, working in advertising, or ever opening awards and all this stuff, and you go, Okay, so you got a statue, trophy, whatever, and then you move on. The point is never quite about that. So, if we look at that. And, as you said, it's quite weird dead. Demisse we have is a lot about individuals and personal individual success. And it often gets, like ignored that. It's not that one person, there's 100 people behind that person that made this happen, right. Because we're community, people as human beings. When you then talk to leaders, how do you how do you help them rephrase targets, rephrase purpose, rephrase to say, look, there's a long game here which might be about maybe about maintaining an organisation for 2030 years. Taking care of the people who work in the organisation. And if you keep that all alive enough, that's a success. That's a heritage you bring along that is great, that something may be valuable. But there's what's what's your angle normally to move from those, you know, quarterly targets that are often very arbitrary, to something that actually has potential purpose.

Cath Bishop: 30:24

So, yeah, and there's a lovely piece of research that you remind me of written about organisations that have been around for over 100 years to centennials. And, you know, like NASA was one of the examples. And, you know, they looked at what was it that enabled them to have such longevity, and it was because their aims were always about being better, not bigger. So that is that really important shift on to quality rather than quantity in terms of what you do, which can enable you to get bigger. In fact, it's the best way to get bigger is to focus on the quality, because if the quality of what you do is really incredible, then the rest happens. So there's a shift in that sort of focus. So we'll often think about, actually, what is the quality, the value of what you do? How can you increase that, rather than simply try increase the quantity of what you do, which often keeps the level of quality where it is, and in fact, sometimes drops? So let's, you know, shift that focus on to where's the value coming from? And part of the value does often come from the why question the purpose? Why do people need your organisation? And why will they still need it in 10 years time? Why might they still need it in 50 years time? Do we have to start thinking and of course, you know, we don't know. But by asking that question is starting to think about in a different perspective. Then again, you know, we imagine different possibilities, that broadens out our thinking from just the next quarter. So we will very much look at that, you know, why? Why Why should you? Why should you be the best company? Why should you have longevity? Why should you grow? Why should people want to invest in your company or work for your company? So it's all the time deepening the why question, I think the other thing then is to, is to think about the learning. So if I think of the three C's of along, when it is working through that clarity of purpose, the clarity of broader success criteria, then this constant learning piece, because you know, in order to stay relevant to stay offering value to customers, then we need to keep thinking, how do we adapt? How do we create the value that we need? Now, you know, in a world with completely different technology in 10 years time, 20 years time, it's that process that has helped companies to adapt over the last year through the pandemic, to think, well, I can't do things the way I used to do them. But do people still need what we offer? Yes, they do. And then I can find a different way of getting it to them or creating a different way. But if I don't really know what the value is I'm offering, then that bigger impact piece, and it's really difficult to adapt. That's why we have to keep going back to this sense of good. What else could I be learning about the value about the impact? I'm having? Not just our intentions for the company, but actually, how are we being experienced at the other end? How are others seeing our company? How is how are we going to fit into social trends of caring about the environment more? Or, you know, wanting more equality? How do we become relevant to those however small we might be? What's our role within some of those developments that we can see which which direction? They're going to go? Yes, there'll be some bumps along the way. And so that sense of how can we keep learning and learning in needs to be in itself a measure of success? So not just what did you achieve? But what did you learn by achieving it? Because it's the learning that goes into the next achievement. So again, if we want to continue hitting the results, we need to invest in that learning piece. What else do we need to be doing whilst we are churning out whatever we're doing at the moment that will enable us to adapt and be ready to shift as a society as the marketplace shifts around us? So having learning as an aim in itself, not an add on? It's absolutely vital. And we need to be measuring and exploring how we learn how can we learn better? And then the last thing, of course, is this connections, piece connections within a company. So you know, how do we all feel part of what we're doing? And then how do we feel part of the sector we're in the communities that we affect the society, we're in the different layers, if you like, again, the human meaning to what we do, you know, ironically, as our world becomes, you know, what AI will play a greater role in the world. That means that we actually should be moving much more towards what can we bring as humans, and yet our systems are somehow set up. To prevent that at the moment, we need to kind of override that emphasis and ensure that all the time we're thinking about what's the added value that we as humans can bring to what we do and not somehow Just keep measuring the short term stuff that the Franklin machine and a computer will soon be able to do much better.

Troy Norcross: 35:06

So clarity, connection, constant learning, great principles. One of the books that I read many, many years ago talks about the fact that we, in our current educational system, focus on an environment where people are risk averse. If I'm going to get an A, I'm going to take the safest path to get an A, I might try three or four other things I might fail along the way, I might learn a lot more. But I might make a B, or worse get to see in the process. I think that, you know, very, very early on in our current educational system kind of moves us away from constructive failure and constructive learning. How can we in organisations get more comfortable with experimenting, trying different things failing, as long as we learn?

Cath Bishop: 36:06

I think this is a real challenge, because it's such an early experience, as you say, of life. So we arrived in the workplace having learned Yeah, not to experiment. So there is a kind of huge need for us to, you know, as parents as you know, part of local communities to bring this thinking into schools. And to understand that actually, success at school really predicts career success, it might predict some college success, because that's still in the same system University success. But at that point, no longer do your bagfuls have a grades a star grades actually predict how you're going to be a leader, because you're then looking at completely different sets of skills and traits that almost sum opposite things. And sometimes being an A star student, actually, you know, it really holds you back from being a leader, because you're looking for the right answers. You want to know things all the time, you're very compliant, because you're doing only exactly what you're asked. And those are traits that aren't very helpful in our complex world at the moment. So, you know, yes, we are wherever we can, we need to be bringing this into their education system into the way that children experience sports, and music and art. And often, these are really great ways for introducing those lessons such as I absolutely loved that story about the the paint on the canvas of destroying it. You know, those are the things that are huge experiences, that would be so helpful arriving the workplace, but you know what, we can continue with those sorts of experiences in the workplace too. So again, it's what we reward in the workplace that will encourage behaviours to continue or to shift. So again, if we only reward you getting things right in the short term, then those metrics will hold us back from the sort of thinking that we all agree is necessary. So we need to think about rewarding and recognising and measuring how much we're experimenting how many new things have been tried. You know, what new things we're learning what new collaborations we're trying out, so that we actually reward the process, and not just the outcome, we have to accept that. You know, we need to experiment in order to get better outcomes in the future. But it's absolutely impossible to experiment and always have a good outcome. So we need to determine what are the things we want, we want really limited outcomes in really limited ways. Well, that won't help the longevity that won't help us to innovate, that won't help us to be adaptable. So therefore, okay, well, now we need to look for something different. And we need to recognise that and we need to Yeah, you know, if the language of recognition is measurement, then we need to measure it.

Troy Norcross: 38:33

Well, I hate to tell you this, but we probably have another 10 questions, but we don't have any more time. On behalf of Marcus and myself. I want to tell you, we were terrified that this was going to be an inspirational discussion that we would want to go on for a very long time. And we were right. We would love to have this go on for quite a long time. Thank you so much for being with us on the show today. We wish you great success with your career with your book writing and with your consulting. Thank you very much. You've been listening to the wicked podcast with co host Marcus Kirsch and me Troy Norcross,

Marcus Kirsch: 39:10

please subscribe on podomatic iTunes or Spotify. You can find all relevant links in the show notes. Please tell us your thoughts in the comment section and let us know about any books for future episodes.

Troy Norcross: 39:23

You can also get in touch with us directly on Twitter on at wicked and beyond or at Troy underscore Norcross also learn more about the wicked company book and the wicked company project at wicked company calm