0:02
Navigating Information Overload and Embracing Not Knowing
We’ve never had more access to information, answers, and capability, but that doesn’t always mean we’re seeing more clearly.
Tie on Earth is a space for conversations with people whose experiences, ideas and perspectives might help us notice something we hadn’t before, question and assumption, or see what’s possible from another angle.
I’m Philippa White, founder of Thai Leadership and author of Return on Humanity.
For over 20 years, my work has taken me across industries, cultures and very different worlds, exploring how perspective shapes the way people think, behave and work together.
This is Thai Unearthed.
What happens when the people whose job it is to know to get increasingly comfortable with not knowing?
We have access to more data, more information, and more intelligence than at any point in history, and AI is only accelerating that.
Yet the decisions we’re making don’t seem to be getting any simpler.
If anything, knowing what to pay attention to, what to believe, and what to do with it all is becoming much harder, which makes curiosity, judgement, and the ability to see beyond your own frame of reference really important.
Welcome to episode 123 of Thai Unearthed.
My guest today is Michael Swiseland, vice president of consumer intelligence and transformation at Arla Foods.
He has spent more than 20 years working in insights, analytics and innovation, and what makes him articularly interesting for this conversation is that for someone whose world is built around knowing consumers, he is very curious about what we still don’t know.
I’ve also had the pleasure of working closely with Michael over the last couple of years.
Ty has been working with his team at Arla, experimenting with perspective, curiosity, collaboration and what actually helps people behave differently.
So this conversation comes from quite a personal place for both of us because we’ve been exploring many of these questions together in real time.
We talk about the strange challenge of having almost too much information, why expertise needs curiosity alongside it, where intuition and human judgement fit, when AI can analyze more than we ever could, and why the attention economy may be pushing us towards something else entirely.
And underneath it all is a question.
I just keep coming back to you.
As machines become better at giving us answers, what becomes more important about the way humans ask questions?
2:53
Consumer Intelligence in the Age of AI and Data
Michael, welcome to Thai Unearthed.
Michael, this is fun.
So excited to actually be doing this with you after so long, now working together, which is so great.
So I hope you’re well.
It’s lovely to have you here.
Thanks to Have me.
It’s always good to have a little bit of a chat about the way the world is at the moment.
So happy to have that with you today.
Yeah, exactly.
There’s a few things that we can cover off that I think our listeners will enjoy.
But just to kick this off, obviously you work in consumer intelligence and it is a discipline that’s focused on really understanding what people think, feel and do.
And obviously we’ve been working quite a bit together over the last little while.
And the more I seen someone who’s equally passionate about the human side leadership, but it’s at a time when so much attention is being pulled towards data and automation, I just love to kick off just understanding where this comes from in you.
I’m a human that likes data.
So I’m, I think it’s a very exciting time to be in this kind of role at the moment.
Because I think one of the challenges with people in traditional insights roles or intelligence roles in the past is access to knowledge and how it was siloed and how did it lead into a business to drive the right conversations and navigate change in an organization that was very much focused on growth and profitability.
And I think the current era where we’ve got more data on our hands than ever before and more consumer opinions than we could ever ask for based on how people are so willing sharing their life stories in in social media and in any other channel that’s open to them.
It’s very much harder today, I think, to distill what is going on because it’s a counterculture for every culture.
There’s a for and against on almost every topic.
And the micro debates that go on can get into the most niche areas.
So working in our area, I think you know what I’ll be doing with my team is about how do we build much more curiosity because we might not accept to understand everything, but there’s a need to be open to trying to understand the perspective that people are looking at the world and the lenses they’re looking at it through.
How do we understand that my feed in social and on TikTok is not the same as your feed and how we’re being served different media, different content and different perspectives.
And therefore, how’s that going to shape the role in the conversations that us as brands can have with our consumers is becoming ever more evolving.
Because especially with the world of AI now coming through, it might not even be a conversation with a consumer or human you’re having, but you’re having a conversation to build the knowledge of an LLM so that it understands your brand, your context in different ways.
All of this is opening questions that I think many of us are still learning the answers to.
5:38
Staying Curious and Managing Brand Voice in Digital
I’m curious, you as an individual, how do you stay curious?
I think the challenge is, is how do you carve out time to be uncomfortable is the thing I try and do, because we’ve all got KPI’s, we’ve all got targets, we’ve all got a strategic ambition that our businesses follow.
And from my side, it’s to say, well, how do I look at the same problem from two different perspectives?
How do I understand what we want to say versus what others would say in the situation?
How do I know that every action will have a reaction today and not everybody is going to be your fan?
How do we plan for that?
Because I think a lot of the, the fear that comes from a lot of brands, especially the big global brands, is I’m nervous of what I allow to be in the consumer’s hands today because I don’t have control over what they say.
But I think the difference is, is that you’ve never had control over what they say.
They’ve just got a louder platform to air their voice today than they did in the past.
And that requires you to be very clear on what do you stand for?
What do you not stand for?
What conversations do you want to be involved with an add to because you’ve got a point of view and you’ve got a reason to play there.
And the times where actually it’s not your place to step into that conversation, maybe listen and be open, but it’s not your place.
Yeah, so interesting.
There’s always two sides and it’s so important to understand those two sides and be keen to understand about that other position.
You know, it’s interesting.
My my daughter’s grandfather just sent her a message and said, I’ve just got you a subscription to the Polio Sao Paulo, which is the newspaper.
And I want you to read this every day, you know, half an hour a day.
So you’re not just getting your information from social media or whatever.
I think that that’s great.
But it’s so interesting because because of course, I think it’s really important to read the newspaper, but I also think it’s so important to understand that that’s also we have to recognize that our understanding of the world is actually no longer through these specific channels anymore.
I think we have to be aware that there’s now with AI and also now with so many different opinions and so many understanding what is behind some opinions I think is so important and being curious to sort of really get under the skin of, OK, so I need different fonts of information actually to really be able to create an opinion or to be empathetic towards another opinion.
7:52
Evolving Marketing, AI, and Essential Human Judgment
Oh.
But we can so quickly get information overload and then you’re just in the analysis paralysis, as you would say, right?
Because it’s which direction do I go?
Because there’s so many sources that can contradict.
So I think my biggest thing that I keep saying to my team all the time is focus on what you know and what you don’t know and try and bridge the gaps between them.
So you were just at Cannes and you’re on the stage.
And when we last spoke, you mentioned and I loved this.
And I was, I was like, oh, I wish I was a family on the wall.
So I’m going to ask you this on the podcast because I’m curious as to what you said.
So you said that the skills most likely to matter in five years aren’t necessarily the ones organizations are developing today.
What did you say and what was the reaction of people listening to what you had to say?
People are much more open than I thought because I think we’re all living through a time of massive change where AI companies will tell us that we’re at the the mercy of the great dawn, where we’re going to all have so much time because AI can do so much for us.
But those same companies are also having their employees work 90 hours a week.
And by the optimizations that AI can bring, you have other time to fill with other tasks now.
So people are just working harder.
So that freedom of time, that many promise is not necessarily coming to the forefall for many individuals.
But if I look at it through a pure market lens, I think where marketing has gone on its journey in terms of media touch points and how we went from broadcast media to going into a more creator economy and, and, and social first platforms to now being in connected experiences where we’re looking at all the different touch points that you can have messaging to a consumer and your audience.
A lot of marketing teams are bogged down in how do I measure that?
How do I know what good is?
How do I know what successes?
How do I tell my finance guy that I’m a good bet to make?
And I think a lot of companies are in a state at the moment where we’re struggling to say, well, do marketeers need to know better financial skills?
Do they need to know better about ROI and why we would invest in certain areas than they would have learned as part of their language before?
When we’re building internal cases, instead of saying that I want to create a campaign, are we doing a pitch to actually talk about which are the parts of our business that are going to give a better return to the organization?
These are multiple things I’m hearing happening in many different businesses.
We trial that within my own team where people get allocated funds, but we also have a central pitch fund where great ideas be supported.
If they can talk about what’s their business impact?
Is it about growth?
Is it about a transformation of some sort?
How do we give people the ability to unlock those areas that they can show a passion for and a business case for, which is a different skill set than most marketeers or insights people would have had.
It was very much an insights person was focused on delivering integrity data that would answer a problem, but not being very proactive.
A marketeer or branding person would have been through the lens of brand building and building their long term equity story and making sure that they’ve got an asset suite that would go to local markets.
But this pace of the way the world is going today, if you keep doing that, it’s not needed.
Yes, we need to be strong about our brands and what they stand for.
Yes, we need to have integrity in the consumer work that we do from an insights and research perspective.
But how we do that and the pace at which we need to do that and the frequency and continuous nature of how that might shift on a weekly basis on certain topics, on a monthly basis on others, How are we ensuring that we’re then delivering timely knowledge to the business in a way that is a bit more grounded in commercial realities than I think we might have been in the past?
It’s just so interesting how so much of everything that you’re saying is how much these human skills really matter.
That’s what so much of this comes down to.
And it’s so interesting because, you know, coming back to what this consumer gap reveals, which is the area that you’re working in and obviously spending so much time studying this gap between what people say they’ll do and what they actually are going to do.
And so it’s the analysts need to kind of really understand that.
But as AI becomes better at recognizing patterns and predicting behavior, what does this gap tell us about what technology may never truly understand about people?
I mean, I can’t speak for where technology is going to go, but at the moment I feel that if you need the human, the AI and the human and there needs to be our interface in there to make sure.
Are we talking about things from an ethical perspective?
Do we get the emotions and those tensions correct?
Because if you’re analyzing everything pure from a pure facts or patterns perspective, you’re often missing the sarcasm or the underlying aspect that sits there.
Well, the cultural nuance that saying something in one society means something different to saying the exact same thing in another society.
And that’s where the human is still the part that that brings that context together.
I also think that if we relied on everything to be done by a system to decide everything for us, we are going to become very lazy without the ability to have that, that cognitive thoughts and that critical thinking, which I think is a critical for how we as a society evolve.
Because if we leave all decisions outside of that, then it’s a system to system only.
Do we have a role?
And that’s a very awkward position to be in from a, an insights role where we’re thinking about the impact of everything we do on people.
And, and it’s so I have reservations on how much should be sitting in those spaces.
But I do believe that anything related to human impact and empathy and understanding the societal impact on things we, we should be having as a, as a real human consideration.
Does that mean AI doesn’t have a role to play in many of these areas?
I think it’s always evolving.
But I think if we leave our thinking to others, we lose the ability to, to have that rational thoughts.
13:17
Building Trust and Authenticity in a Falsified Reality
And, and that’s where I think we will have gaps.
And you can already see the differences in how different generations react to some of the things that are going on.
How how testing will need to evolve, how education will need to evolve.
And I think it’s getting there quicker than some of us might be comfortable for or even aware of it.
Is it’s those nuances, isn’t it?
And it’s so interesting because it’s one, being able to see those nuances, it’s also having the courage within yourself to recognize them and push back against something that you’ve got that sort of said, no, no, no, sorry, this isn’t quite right.
Because actually I think, you know, so it’s having that internal ability to be able to see it, the confidence to be able to push back the safety within the environment, to be able to say that.
Because if none of that is there, you just end up having a team that is just run by machines and that isn’t going to do any favors for your business because the consumer can see it and the consumer feels it.
I think people feel a lot at the moment and I think being overwhelmed and being anxious and, and a lot of the emotions that we’ve seen develop over time, you know, some people being pulled into too much screen time and too much overwhelmment of what is happening in the world of others.
I think we’ve obviously seen the journey of, of social media and the ideal lives that were once captured in the ways of Instagram.
How now that’s evolved into the world of TikTok, where it’s a bit more about imperfection.
And this will constantly evolve and how we express ourselves to the world is always going to be something that’s innate to human nature about.
We want to put a voice into the world.
We want to represent ourselves in certain ways and different platforms will give people the opportunity to do that.
I think the challenge is, is how we manage that in a way that leads to the betterment of individuals and society.
And I think we’ve been trying as as a society to to do that.
There’s people on many different stances on this, but I think when we look at it purely from a brand perspective and how you’re working in the in the, in the world of marketing, I don’t think we’ve got there yet.
I think different companies have are taking different priorities at the moment, but I don’t think there’s one single truth of what’s the right way.
Yeah.
I mean, there’s a question that I was going to ask you a little bit later, but I’m actually going to bring it in now just because it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about.
And it is this evolution from, you know, Instagram and people sharing their lives and people comparing themselves with their friends lives, which it was always clear that whatever you’re going to be posting is going to be a much better example of whatever it is your real life is.
But now this movement to this TikTok and Reels and this existence of people that probably don’t even exist.
This is all created realities to be able to get as much attention as you can possibly get with the brands also involved in all of that, to be able to help pay for this.
I mean, this is just, it’s the attention economy on steroids.
So much of it made-up which people sort of think that it’s real, but it’s not.
So much of it is fake.
And I just wonder where is this taking us?
Because I can’t stop thinking about falsified news, falsified realities on these reels.
And the last of 20 years has been basically building this attention economy.
But so much of business, it’s about capturing this attention and AI makes so much of this easy to create because we now have information at our fingertips and anyone can create these personalities and distribute content at scale.
So now trust is scarcer.
So before we were, you know, information was scarcer.
Now information we just have.
So trust is like a resource that we desperately now need.
And I’m just wondering, could the next 20 years belong to what we could call the trust economy?
And what does this mean for leadership?
What does this mean for brands?
I think trust is something that a lot of people don’t have at the moment for, for a lot of things because especially with AI, it’s very difficult for the average person to evaluate what’s real and what’s not real anymore.
And we could all, we all joked about the initial versions that came out in what, 2024 where we were seeing all sorts of famous faces put on on different situations.
And you could tell there was an element of this is not really real, but it’s funny and people were doing it.
But when I get to the place where you can’t tell the difference between something that’s fake or real anymore, I think that becomes more of a societal question on how do we want to label that?
What are we comfortable accepting?
What are we not comfortable accepting?
This is obviously the role of regulation and, and government bodies.
And I know that there are certain attempts that are being made from AEU perspective and from other societies on managing that.
But I think as an average individual, it’s a place of confusion in many of these situations.
And I think there’s almost a fear and some people that they don’t know what to do or how to respond or how to drive a different scenario.
It almost seemed as you, as you see the press releases on different things that we are moving in a direction from a technology perspective.
But there’s a lot of fear of that.
People don’t have a control over that.
So how we build back in trust is going to be a very deep question because we all know that it’s very, very hard to build trust, but very, very easy to lose it.
And I think that is something that won’t change, even though as technology changes, that’s an innate humanness that we have.
It’s way easier to get somebody to try to do something.
It’s much harder for to get them to believe you on many things.
But as we say, people are in echo chambers today.
They might believe things because they want to believe things in some instances or it’s a hope that they found a tribe that echoes their perspectives.
I don’t see the end in how we would solve that as a society based on the options that are out there.
I do see that there’s probably going to be some more transparency and rules that are going to come through to to some of these tech companies.
But that’s not something that companies are going to put in place.
That’s something that’s going to come from a governmental and society pressures.
Totally.
And I completely agree with you.
I think because it’s like a runaway train.
There’s just so much questioning that everyone has with everything and you just think, So what we need as teams, what we need as leaders, what we need as companies as well.
The more authentic, the more we understand that that is lacking and the more that we can really be there for our customers, for our employees and understand the importance of that.
It just feels like this is an area that is just going to get hopefully stronger because it’s an area that people are really searching for that authenticity.
And which is why I just think, you know, when you have these bots and these companies that just are so reliant on AI and, and you’re having to sort of constantly find a way around the bloody bot to be able to actually speak to someone.
And you just think that’s so crazy.
That is not the direction that this needs to be going in.
Because actually what consumers need is if you are a company that actually responds and is actually a person on the other end and who actually cares, that’s the scarcity.
That is the difference now.
That’s the differentiator.
It just feels like this is in so many respects, this is kind of where we need to actually be focusing now.
I mean, I think it comes back.
To just our our inert nature as a people for for connections and how do I have that that space where I can be heard because a lot of things are is the frustration that people get is that no one either doesn’t want to listen or there’s no platform to have a voice.
And therefore suppressing voices we know from societal history tends to come out with unexpected consequences.
So how do we ensure that we get to hear voices, but also how do we build an ability to accept and understand that we’re coming from different perspectives on topics and actually have a good debate and a good conversation around these things?
I think that’s the challenge at the moment is that we tend to have different groups of people shouting in different directions, but not hearing or listening or wanting to engage.
So while that’s different than the situation of a customer service, I think at the end of the day, customers from a customer service, protective people just want to get a result.
So how do I get to a painless result that solves my problem?
I think there’s roles for technology on that journey as a facilitation.
If you ever had to wait on a call centre for cancelled flights during COVID time, you would know how getting to a human was really problematic and how there are certain things that can be solved by technology.
But I think it comes down to how are we providing places where we can hear how people react to what we put into the world and what is our get engagement and conversation.
And I think that’s where where some brands are are being bolder than others.
Some companies are are much more there about listening to and capturing and building in those feedback loops and conversations.
And I think companies that are turned deaf to that will have problems in the future because it’s very easy for someone to elevate their negative experiences.
21:34
Fostering Human Skills and Collaborative Leadership
Totally.
So this is a great segue to something else.
I just wanted to understand from you because this again, this is talking about the human skills that matter.
And you’ve possibly already answered this because we’ve been kind of talking around it.
But you’ve championed developing leaders beyond these technical capabilities, which you are still.
I mean, of course, you’ve got a whole AI program happening now.
So I mean, of course you’re still training people in in technical capabilities, but you also have really made a point of training and developing people outside of just technical capabilities at a time when technical capability is becoming sort of increasingly abundant.
And if you strip away this corporate language, which human capabilities do you genuinely believe are becoming more valuable?
And not the ones that sort of appear on sort of the leadership framework, but the ones that actually make a difference.
And you might have already said it because you just talked about many of.
So to be clear, I mean, any organization will be investing in technology, data and automation systems and AI and exploring how we can utilize that to to manage the vast amount of knowledge around us.
But from a human side, I think for me, some of the stuff that we’ve done with with your organization, right?
How do we build that curiosity?
How do we build collaborative skills?
How do we foster ways of working that is a hybrid of human and technology and how we build that and know what the humans role in these situations is.
That’s what’s most important for me.
So how do I get people to air what they’re thinking, challenge, support or go against, have a voice?
I say to my team all the time, what do you want to be famous for?
And not everybody wants to be on a stage with a microphone for their fame.
But fame isn’t being known for something.
We all should strive to be known for something, I believe.
And whether that is the ability to listen, to be the person who is there in a crisis, to be the individual who knows how to navigate complex internal systems in any organization.
We all have different things that matter to us.
So for me, it’s about ensuring that we’re vocal about what matters and what we’re striving towards and then building that through collaboration.
So if I look at my own team and the work that we’ve done with you, it’s saying, well, you might know your functional area very well, but how do you get to know people that look at the same problem through different functional lenses and put yourself in their shoes, Understand why, yes, your solution might be correct for the very specific lens you work in, but then that needs to work for multiple people in other parts of the business and in the parts of our team.
And there’s not always A1 size fits all to that.
And therefore there’s compromise that’s required.
And I think that’s probably the biggest skill I would say is how do we accept compromise while working towards the best possible outcome we can get to.
That ability to listen and compromise, I think is something that we we all need to be strengthening in the in the current era.
24:16
Balancing Data with Intuition and Embracing Vulnerability
So I’m curious about now you, obviously we’ve been talking about society, we’ve been talking about businesses, leadership, but you work in a world that’s built on evidence, data, consumer insight.
But yet I imagine some of your most, you as Michael, your most important decisions haven’t necessarily come from data and spreadsheets and results.
And I’m just wondering how you navigate this relationship between what data or what sort of logic would tell you, but also what your intuition tells you.
And has that balance maybe changed over time or is it sort of the same as it’s always?
Been.
If I’m honest, I think I’m the first person to say that I, I’m always learning and I, I hate any leader who pretends they know everything.
I think we all have to have that humbleness to know that there’s somebody who knows something better than us.
But if I’m serious, if I, if I look at it from, from my own career, I think the best way to learn is to fail, but fail in a safe space.
Because I don’t think if you’re, if you’re not really trying very hard on certain things and you’re playing it safe all the time, I don’t think we’re going to have those leaps that we need to have in ourselves.
Now we all measure ourselves in different ways, what success and what, what we’re looking for.
From my personal perspective, it’s about I like to challenge the status quo, understand why do we do something the way we do it?
Why can’t we do it differently?
How do we have a different conversation?
How do we talk about the evolution of what different parts of an organization do?
How the role of a consumer has always been second place in many organizations to other factors.
That doesn’t mean the consumer needs to be the first factor, but I think we’ve got more opportunities to elevate that and more consistently into the conversation.
So with my team and our touch points in the organization is how do I bring that earlier into to a conversation before people fall in love with what they want to do?
Because we all have a passion.
But if we’re not in that conversation at the right point in time, that’s where I feel that me or my team would be failing is if we brought in to validate something at the end.
We’re not really doing the justice of a consumer.
We’re doing a research tick box exercise, which I think is, you know, the way that many insights functions in the past have run.
But if we’re your partner and collaborator from the very get go, where you’re the brand owner and we’re the 1 shining the light on the consumer opportunities or pitfalls of the directions we could take, then you’re true partners.
And then we can span our lanes of what value do we both bring to this conversation?
And how do we then trust each other that we own our different spaces and that we’re accountable for what we do in each of our spaces rather than it being a space where an insights function would give advice, but there was no follow through.
There was no accountability on the actions that that would bring.
I believe that for our function to truly grow, we need to actually show that accountability, stand side by side with our partners, make a commitment and drive for a an opportunity that we think is there with evidence with the obviously the the end result of how do we drive growth for our organization.
Yeah, back to the sort of this feeling of intuition and, and I think that it’s interesting because your function is so focused on data and the individuals within it are so used to that being what drives everything, which of course is a big driver.
But do people on the team feel like they can have an intuitive feeling about something and say, you know what?
I think that we should focus on something.
I know that maybe this isn’t, but should we focus on something in a different direction?
You know, like, I think it’s that’s what’s beautiful about the work that we’ve been doing and this energy that you’re creating within the team.
It feels like to this more human way of being.
I think it’s about giving the.
Space for people to feel safe to raise the question right.
So it’s it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not so much about the gut feel or the data, because I think both have a role to play.
It’s about what’s the hypothesis?
Why do you think that?
What is nudging you to challenge the status quo or a different opinion or you just have a feeling right.
And the The thing is, if you can’t explain that more clearly, then I think it dies organization.
You’ve got a hunch, right?
And you’ve got a feeling on.
Something, well, tell me more.
Why should I be interested?
Why do you think that this what do you want us to explore?
Why do you think that’s value?
It’s having that openness and space to have that conversation.
And I think that’s probably the part that’s that’s more crucial to create now is that is where is that openness to have those free conversations.
I think everything’s more a structured meeting.
You’ve got 30 minutes to land your point.
You want to move something forward.
That ability to have free space to have a free conversation.
I think it’s managed out of a lot of systems.
I think it’s, it’s, it’s right for us to try and bring that back.
Not everywhere.
Otherwise, we’ll never make a decision on anything and we could have a good chat about everything for in a circular fashion.
But I think there needs to be, well, where’s the space within things, preferably earlier on in a project, right?
Nobody wants to be having this.
It’s open everything just before you’re about to complete something.
But I think it’s it’s right.
I think the the challenges is that different types of people in different societies and different personality and profiles would attack that in a different way.
So if I’m looking at some of the deep data people, how in my team, how would they flag that versus somebody who lives and breathes creativity?
They will approach that and they might might be intimidating to each other.
So how do we find a space where there’s an equal footing for that to come through?
I think is is the never ending challenge of of totally and and.
That’s what I love about your team because I just find it, it’s so exciting how diverse it is now.
And that’s what I mean because you’re talking about different backgrounds from the point of view of skills, but also cultures, right?
And so you have such an amazing diverse team, which again, is, is, is so incredible to see.
And as a, as a result, you have so many different ways of approaching things.
But like you say, the ability to be able to push something or come up with something, feel able to do that.
I mean, it just varies completely.
And it’s, it’s, you have to wear so many hats and it’s, it’s not easy.
And I, and I, I can’t say I’m perfect at it myself, but one of the things that I, I, I would love for more people to be better at is how do we allow ourselves to be a little bit more uncomfortable?
Because it’s through that uncomfortable moments where we ask ourselves questions and we ask questions of those around us.
And a little bit of vulnerability I think goes a long way to getting to to the truth that we were talking about earlier.
Because it’s very easy for us to put on a beautiful facade.
And this is what I stand for.
But we scratch the surface.
There’s a lot more nuance to that on every person.
And giving us those little more vulnerable spaces is where the true insight, I think really comes out.
Because you know it as well as I know what people say versus what they do doesn’t always tie up.
And what they say on social might be because they’re wanting to project a certain worldview or be seen in a certain way or even in recent search, right?
You ask a direct question and people are going to be like, what does Michael want to hear from me?
Rather than how do we get to it through more nuanced ways where we can actually get to that more honestness that I think is sometimes hiding.
And I think if we just take everything at a superficial level, we’ll get to superficial results.
It’s a challenge to find that on everything.
And we don’t have the time.
We all work crazy deadlines and hours, and we’re never going to be passionate about every single project in the same way.
So it’s about find those few passion things that you want to drive and bring that voice to the table is how I’m trying to build that within my team.
I think the challenge is, as everybody says, Michael, you know, you want me to be more passionate about something.
You want me to be known for something, you want me to stand up.
I don’t have the time in my day because I’ve got so many other responsibilities.
And that’s a that’s very truthful.
31:20
Discovering Personal Purpose and Valuing Diverse Experiences
So I think as leaders, we need to think about how do we carve some of that space out?
How do we build those moments?
And you know, I’ve been attempting that with the team over the last while.
Have we done some good things?
Well, Yep.
Have we done some things badly?
Yep.
Am I learning?
Yep, every day.
And that’s great.
Because I think that’s it just shows we’re all human, right?
And you are too.
And OK, learn from that.
Let’s keep moving.
Like I love it if when somebody.
Tells me Michael.
I disagree.
And I was like, oh, tell me, wait.
Yeah.
So everything that we’ve talked about, I’m curious, what genuinely gives you hope about people and organizations?
Oh my gosh.
Deep one.
I think the fact that no matter what we hear, the majority of people still want to leave something positive to the world and they want to leave an impact and they want to be remembered for something by their friends and those that matter to them.
And I think if we can leverage that as a societal mindset more than the more media focus, which is all about get rich and be famous, that’s what people really mean about.
And I think the more you speak to people about what matters, it’s not about that they delivered a business case.
It’s not about that they made X amount of money.
But when they talk about things, it’s about those moments, it’s those, those connections.
It’s those times where they felt something and they felt something with other individuals.
Those are the moments that most people live for now.
Those are the ones that will be ingrained and deeper in their in their psyches and mindsets.
And it’s not about saying, ha, that’s a great another thing for a marketeer to leverage, because I think that would be the wrong direction.
It’s understanding that it’s about knowing those moments and, and and knowing that people want to make things better is how do we then channel that in a world that we feel we we’re all having a little less control over?
Yeah, nice.
What’s one question you think we should all be asking ourselves more often?
Why am I doing?
What I’m doing nice.
And if you don’t know.
The answer to why you’re doing what you’re doing, I would really suggest you spend some time to think about it then, because every day we do work, we contribute to something and we’re playing one role in a much bigger organization and society.
And if you’re doing something that matters to you, that’s great.
A lot of people, it’s just a job, but there is something underlying that matters to them.
And if you know what you’re looking to get out of it, that’s what I think is the most important thing and how you can contribute.
Love it is there.
Anything I haven’t asked you that you wish I had, we’ve come from From.
Different societies, right?
We’ve, we’ve approached this, well, I’m, I’m living in, in Europe, you’re in, you’re in Brazil.
We might have a common background of South Africa, but each of the different places we’ve both moved has changed our perception on different things.
And I think the one thing that people ask me often is, Michael, you’ve lived in lots of places, you’ve moved from different industries and different companies, right?
And I’ve worked across so many different industries in the past that was seen as a negative because you had to have 1015 years experience in this industry to be successful.
And people wanted a carbon copy of somebody who knew exactly that industry.
Whereas I think today we’re starting to see that those diverse experiences of life are what truly bring the value to your organization as we move forward.
And that’s what I look for in people.
I look for people that are curious.
And I’ve, I’ve tried different things and, and I’ve got that broader mindsets of, of looking at being able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and not necessarily fully understanding what someone’s been through because we won’t fully understand everybody’s circumstance, but at least having a better context of how something’s being looked at.
And I think that’s for me is, is, is what I value.
And I think it’s, it’s scary to put yourself into a new place.
I remember the first time I moved to a new country, you were terrified about, what would this mean?
Can I get through?
How do I juggle a new society and rules that are different than but it’s in another language?
In the bank system and you’re like trying to get your SIM card on your phone working.
Oh my God, that’s great.
Birth comes.
From right.
And I think we we all have an innate fear of failure, but I encourage everyone to just take that one step.
And what that size of that step is, is different for each of us.
But as long as it makes you a little uncomfortable, then you’re at least challenging yourself.
And I think that’s all that matters, totally.
Oh this has just been amazing.
Thank you so so much for your time.
I know how busy you are ’cause I know.
So thank you for giving me an hour of your time.
I really appreciate it more than happy.
To and I’m sure we could talk about many other things at.
Until the next time, Michael.
Thank you, all the best.
Thanks.
So much for.
Listening to Tie on Earth, If this conversation gave you another way of looking at an idea, raised a question, or simply made you want to keep thinking, please do share it with someone who might just enjoy the conversation too.
You can find every episode, along with more of our thinking and work at tieleadership.com.
And a huge thank you to Pete Morgan for producing the show.
Follow or subscribe to Thai Unearthed wherever you listen or watch.
And until next time, I wonder what we might notice differently.
