S2 Ep20: Sarah Wilson on 'Giving a f**k'

We’ve covered a lot about green cities and the rise of blue zone city districts on LS:N Global, but what if we have been too simplistic, judgemental and morally narrow in our approach and understanding that green is good and the concrete grey of the city is inevitably bad for our physical, spiritual and moral wellbeing? Professor Des Fitzgerald reminds me in our latest Back to the F**kture podcast that this could very possibly be the case. 

In our latest Back to the F**kture podcast, Dr Susanne Etti talks carbon labelling and more collaborative and constructive ways to tackle the climate crisis through her role and work with sustainable travel group, Intrepid.   Dr Susanne Etti and I hit it off straight away. For one, she lives in Melbourne – my favourite maritime city and skinny white provider, no challengers – and for two, she pulls no punches when it comes to reminding the travel sector just how much it has contributed to the current climate crisis.   No issues there, except that Susanne, a biologist, and one of the BBC 100 Women (think Michelle Obama and global climate leader, Christiana Figueres) and one of National Georgraphic’s Travellers of the Year, works for Intrepid, a light foot, small group adventure travel business, and carries the title of global environmental impact manager. Both of these things make you hyper- aware that her observations about the sector come with much thought, careful knowledge, and a scientist’s understanding that to comprehend how and why we should change things, we need to truly appreciate what will happen, if we don’t. And Susanne, as you’ll discover in my latest Back to the F**kture podcast is pretty clear about the latter.   Climate boiling, instead of global warming. Wildfires, instead of campfires. Submerged coral reefs instead of above sea-water coral islands,. carbon passports instead of travel permits, trips that chase the shade, rather than follow the sun, climate refugees outnumbering economic migrants, and… Well that’s just it, the ‘and’ can be even more devastating, or it can be a turning point we can all contribute to, she tells me, especially if we begin to measure our carbon footprint, as travellers, agencies, hoteliers and corporations – and proactively take steps to reduce it.  

According to the World Health Organization, good health isn’t ‘merely the absence of disease’, but ‘complete physical, mental and social wellbeing’. Dr Tasha Golden, my latest guest on Back to the F**kture, concurs. But – given the fact that she is a poet, songwriter, performer and storyteller, as well as a public health scientist – she takes this definition a step further.  For her, aiming for ‘complete wellbeing’ means thinking about what humans need not only to survive but to thrive, and this has always included the arts. And that’s the short version! To explain and annotate the long one, she and her colleagues have collaborated on a hugely insightful field guide, called Arts on Prescription, which describes what arts on prescription is and why it matters, and provides the blueprint you need to follow. 

In our latest Back to the F**kture podcast, Beyond Luxury author and innovator Carlota Rodben discusses the future of luxury and emotion with The Future Laboratory’s co-founder, Martin Raymond.  There are two great quotes at the beginning of Carlota Robden’s latest book, 'Beyond Luxury: The Promise of Emotion', which very much sum up luxury’s future, ‘what got us here, won’t get us there,’ and Gabrielle Chanel’s observation that ‘luxury is a necessity that begins when necessity ends.’  Both quotes remind me that luxury, like art, is wholly ephemeral (and thus vital!) and that current attempts to anchor luxury to the past (cue provenance, authenticity, rarity) are increasingly challenged by concepts and technologies that are of the future– Ai, VR, AR and cloud anything and everything.

Successful leaders are empathetic ones, according to author, leadership coach and strategic thinker Mimi Nicklin. They are also great perspective takers who understand the context of our decisions, as well as the moods and emotions that motivate us to make them.  If that sounds simple – it isn’t. In fact, as Nicklin identifies in her book, Softening the Edge, while CEOs think everything about the value of an MBA, they wouldn’t look twice at an MEA – a Masters of Empathy degree (my term). And yet the skills acquired here, if such a degree existed, would undoubtedly make their future happen, and profitably so.   For empathy, as she discusses in my latest Back to the F**kture podcast, isn’t just a nice-to-have softness or character trait, it’s a hard skill to master, and a tougher one to deploy; hence, her book that very much works like our mythical MEA.  ‘Empathetic leaders,’ as she tells it, ‘see how others are seeing the world, understand why they are doing what they are doing, but crucially, they are doing it with them, feeling it with them, being it with them, so that they can understand ‘impact’ and consequence from their team’s perspective. That in itself unlocks a new kind of flourishing that no amount of top-down, old-style corporate leadership will ever succeed in doing.   Surprisingly – given the amount of talking that the said CEOs tend to do – listening lies at the heart of empathetic leadership, something she discovered early on in her career as strategic director, vice-president and creative officer in places as far afield as Hong Kong, Dubai, Cape Town, London and Singapore: listening, but doing it in an open, active and collaborative way.  Yes, even listening requires us to be proactive in our supposed inactiveness, otherwise, as she tells it, we simply nod and get on with the job as we would like to be done.  And empathy, like charity, begins at our home quarters, or in our new hybrid work states, where we practise it with our teams first, then our customers – and not the other way around. Nor is it a skill to be housed in our HR teams, but one that must be set as a core KPI for all teams regardless of rank. Otherwise, we risk contributing to what Barack Obama once referred to as an ‘empathy deficit’, which doesn’t sound all that bad until you hear Nicklin explain it.  ‘In 2010, the University of Michigan released the findings of a study that tracked thousands of college students over 30 years and found that the current cohort were 40% less empathetic than their forebears.  ‘More disturbingly,’ she continues, ‘during the same period the levels of students’ self-reported narcissism had reached equally challenging heights, according to research by Jean M Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University.’ Simply put, as we unlearned how to walk in the footsteps of others – a key factor in developing our sense of community, cohesion, culture and common purpose – we were becoming more self-obsessed, more self-serving and less likely to be curious about, listen to, or support others in our networks.  And yet, when you identify the skills that are most likely to help us motivate teams, define vision, determine purpose and set future goals, the ones we have been pulling away from for all these years – curiosity, kindness, reciprocity, empathy and open active listening – are the very work state skills that tomorrow’s CEOs need to inspire people and drive profit. ‘Despite this,’ she says, ‘we still define these as ‘soft’ skills – and ones that sit outside the remit of corporate talents to have – rather than expecting them to be core requirements for the future CEO to demonstrate or learn.’  As to how we do it, again being empathetic lies at the heart of everything: so, decision-making that is participatory and consensual; a vision that is agreed and shared; honesty that is encouraged and rewarded; curiosity that is cultivated and embraced; active open listening that is demonstrated and applauded.  And finally, crucially, the removal of metaphorical walls, or hierarchies, that inhibit conversation and facilitate siloed thinking. The latter, as Nicklin reminds us, ‘as always, leads back to a place of isolation, and self-serving decision-making – a trait that becomes more apparent as leaders think about themselves and how to serve their positioning, rather than serving or listening to others’. And listening is the key, the cornerstone to becoming that brave, new empathetic CEO – as in chief empathy officer. Softening the Edge is published by The Dreamwork Collective and available from its online bookshop, or as a paperback, audiobook or downloadable from Amazon.   You can listen to Mimi Nicklin in conversation with The Future Laboratory co-founder and LS:N Global editor-in-chief Martin Raymond by clicking here, sitting back and listening to how to become a better leader. 

As private membership clubs try to regain their privacy and mojo, on this week’s Back to the F**kture podcast The Future Laboratory’s co-founder Martin Raymond talks with hospitality entrepreneur Peter Cole about how they could go about doing it – and at scale. The problem with most private members’ clubs is that they’ve become too public. While luxury itself has returned to being gated, exclusive, bespoke and more personalised as our Gilded Luxury macrotrend explores, members’ clubs, with few exceptions have become ubiquitous, inclusive, open and – depersonalised. You’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all. Same drinks, same DJ, same gong bath therapy in the gym, same Taylor Swift covers in the lift. Not quite what you signed up for!  But as Cole explains, this could just be the beginning of the Collectio journey. Naturally, he understands that property developers, faced with the on-going reality of TWAT days (Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the office), and global organisations that are keen to consider what community means in the new Work States landscape, could also avail of the service.  You can find out more about Peter Cole and the Collectio Group on the Back to the F**kture podcast 

Life is f**ked – then you make it happen. And this epithet seems to embody the life of Australian author, broadcaster and entrepreneur, Sarah Wilson. Not that her life has been fu**ed –if anything, the opposite is very much the case - but that her journey through it is a constant reminder to us all that when the chips are down the only person who can save the game is you. With, of course, a little help from your friends – and in Sarah’s case we’re talking the Dalai Lama, Michelle Obama, and Beyonce – and yes, you can imagine who I was most impressed with – Beyonce.   In her latest book, 'This One Wild and Precious Life', we encounter many such friends and experts, a thousand of them to precise, and all helping Sarah - and us, as it turns out, to do one thing – make a meaningful life happen. Spiritually, physically, but crucially in terms of how we build up our resilience to the many slings and harrowing moments life itself can throw at us.  But harrowing in Sarah’s case doesn’t mean failure, in the Noughties she was at the top of her game, everybody’s game for that matter. She had been hallowed editor of Australian Cosmopolitan, went on to present Masterchef Australia,  launched one of the best food-addict platforms ever, I Quit Sugar, wrote a best-selling book about depression, First We Make the Beast Beautiful, and then, in 2018, as the anxiety and depression she describes in her book took hold, she ‘sold her company, donated the proceeds to charity, packed a rucksack and set out on a three year global journey or reflection, discovery, resilience, and looking to nature,’ as a way to reboot and mend her soul. Tune in to hear more from Sarah as she shares wisdom and insight on this episode. 

It’s November 2019, and an associate of Scott Perugini Kelly suggests that he adds a World Health Organization pandemic preparedness paper to a brief he’s currently readying for the head of the department. But Kelly isn’t at all convinced, as he tells me on the latest Back to the Fu**ture podcast with Sally Washington. At the time, he muses, the subject seemed too fantastical, too far removed from the politics of the everyday.   Fast forward a few years and this strategic foresight director and his team monitor anomalous and extra-ordinary signals of change as a matter of course.   But for governments and ministers who have more immediate, everyday concerns to juggle with, these initiatives tend to sit in what one UK aide humorously described to me as Boris-in-tray content: something to be read when the former UK prime minister needed to be amused and castigate civil servants for wasting public money.  A few months later, the world – and Australia with its 19,265 Covid deaths – became a changed place.   And while Australian fatalities were a lot fewer in number due to the country’s stringent lockdown measures, they were still high enough for Kelly and Washington (in New Zealand, where the Covid response was lauded) to wonder how different these outcomes could have been if, as Kelly says, ‘we [had taken] a more long-term view on the future and how we might, by more proactive and strategic interventions, make it different’. Tune in now. 

  Design and experience strategy isn’t a top-down process for the privileged few, but a collaborative engagement along a narrative arc of surprise and transformation that changes audience and designer alike, according to The Experience Book authors Adam Scott and Dave Waddell, interviewed by The Future Laboratory’s co-founder Martin Raymond. The age of experience, as we learn in the latest LS:N Global Back to the F**kture podcast, has been replaced by the age of transformation. Or rather, as The Experience Book authors Adam Scott and Dave Waddell explain, one has been subsumed into the other, so that when we talk of experience, we are really speaking about transformative moments that take us along an unexpected, and sometimes unknown and unknowable journey of change, challenge, and if we get it right, catharsis. To be truly transformative in the audience sense, experience needs to begin with, and embrace, the audience it is targeting, says Waddell. ‘It needs to be a co-created and co-conceived journey that follows a narrative arc of exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action resolution and dénouement – but that arc needs to be set by the audience as much as by the design or experience strategist.’ In other words, a more collaborative, interactive and shared narrative approach than the one used by more traditional experience designers and strategists. Tune in now. 

Reluctant futurists is the collective descriptor used by Henry Coutinho-Mason and Rohit Bhargava to describe their current career trajectory. Their preferred term is near futurists since their work is invariably about a quest to catalogue and understand the implications of the biggest innovations on our lives today and over the coming years.  The Future Laboratory’s co-founder and LS:N Global’s editor in chief Martin Raymond discusses all things normal (but not so everyday – yet!) with Future Normal authors  Henry Coutinho-Mason and Rohit Bhargava in our latest Back to the F**kture podcast episode. Tune in now and discover the future normal.