Creativity Loves Difference

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Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary
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for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood,
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your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of
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inclusion, belonging and societal transformation.
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Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone
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not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone.
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Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge
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the status quo and share storeys that resonate
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deep within. Ready to dive in. Whether you're
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sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's
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connect, reflect and inspire action together.
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Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out
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to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
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to share your insights or to join me on the show.
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So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
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ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
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And today is episode 206 with the title
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Creativity Loves Difference. And I have the absolute honour and
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privilege to welcome Fredrick Harron. Fredrick is a global
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creativity explorer and author who has spent two decades
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uncovering how diverse cultures unlock human potential and
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fuel innovation. When I asked Frederick to describe his superpower, he
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said that it is seeing creativity as a global language that
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thrives, where every perspective is genuinely
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included. Hello, Frederic. Welcome to the show. Well,
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hello. I'm super excited for this conversation. Yes,
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we met six, seven years ago at a Professional Speaking association conference
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in the uk in Coventry or somewhere. Somewhere obscure like that?
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No, in Nottingham Forest. Nottingham. Nottingham Forest, that was it,
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yes. I remember your keynote. It was absolutely inspiring. And you did a
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deconstruction of a keynote you'd given to
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a, I think a 2,000 seater audience. It was a awe inspiring. No, no,
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no, it was 400,000 people watching because it
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was cast, video cast around the world for 400,000 people. It was
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10,000 people in the audience, but it was 400,000 people watching.
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Wow, that's almost like broadcast TV, isn't it? That's
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more than most news channels get. That's incredible. So when we first met, you
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were based out in the Far east, in Singapore, and you
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repatriated back to your home country of Sweden, is that right? Yeah, I spent.
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I moved to Asia in 2005 and I moved back
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during the pandemic. So I had about 20 years in Asia and
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now we're based in the archipelago of Sweden.
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Beautiful. It's beautiful. I mean, the skies, the sun, the atmosphere.
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It's a better experience, isn't it? It's a special. Archipelagos
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are not that common in the world, actually. So yes, it's a very special place.
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I love it. Yeah. And you actually own an island and that
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must be even more special. I actually own two islands to be business.
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Two islands, okay. Yes. I used to own three islands, but now I only own
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two. But it sounds very excessive for anyone except if you live in Sweden.
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It's a fun fact. Sweden has 25% of all the islands in the world.
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We have 265,000 islands in Sweden. So if you ever dream
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of owning an island, it's actually quite easy to get. While in Sweden it's not
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easy to get the ones I have because it's extremely close to this capital.
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It's actually part of the capital. If you dream of an island, you buy one
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in a far in lake somewhere in Sweden. Only 8% of the
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islands in Sweden are inhibited. So 92% have no one living on them.
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So please come and, you know, join me as an island owner.
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So I'm guessing that creates its own problem around utilities, waste, water,
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electric, Internet, those kind of things. We are off grid. I've been off grid
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since 1999. All our panels. I have my own
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fully, how do you say, confined.
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I like. Basically I turn my waste into compost. I make my own
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water. It's. It's super cool. Wow. So
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you are planning for a future, a dystopian future where you need
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to cut yourself off. I am very. If.
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If the shit hits the fan. We are more prepared than most. Definitely.
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Unfortunately, island is very small, so we can't grow all our food.
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Otherwise we're quite self resilient. Water and energy
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self producing. That makes you very like
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independent. I like to compare it to.
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What. Do you call that? Organic, like organic milk. To make your own
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energy and make your own water, it's like drinking organic milk. It's like,
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it's organic energy. It's very fulfilling to make your own
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water and energy. It just makes me feel good and happy.
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Yeah, I mean, I would imagine. And this is just me thinking off the top
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of my head here in this dystopian future where being off grid and being in
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island living is important,
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food is probably the easiest thing to come by. Whereas power, water,
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lighting, safety is probably the hardest thing to
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guarantee. And you're on an island, you could defend it.
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Definitely. We actually moved back during the pandemic. So
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if you live on an island, per definition you're in quarantine from the rest of
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the world. So Frederic, as you said, you're a
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worked across. I don't know, you Said this bit says in the notes you worked
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across 75 countries. I know you are a global professional speaker and you've worked in
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the HR space for most of your career. So
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when did you put that two and two together where you realised that
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diversity is important, creativity, in fact, it's the
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essential building block of it. Yeah, I was reflecting about that a bit when I
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know he's going to have this. I haven't really thought so much about the connection
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with diversity and creativity before. So I hope this will be a good conversation.
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Like you're going to get me to think out loud about things I normally haven't
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reflected on. So I kind of like that. I
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mean, from a broad philosophical point of view, creativity in
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itself is diversity. Right. If you think about it,
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because it's about doing things differently and differently in the meaning. Differently,
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meaning better. Right. There is this saying, when all think alike, no one
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thinks very much. Which I had as a quote in my first book and I
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just love that quote. It was one of my favourite quotes. So this idea that
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there are many, many different ways of doing things is. And then that is.
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And that is an advantage is to me what diversity is all about.
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That there's different ways of doing things. But you
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asked me what was the point? I have this one moment. Maybe one of the
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most decisive moments in my Life is In 2005,
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I left Sweden. I have a very successful career in Sweden. I was
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speaker of the Year in Sweden. Everything was going fine, but I guess it was
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a midlife crisis. I said, you know, there must be more to world
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to life than this. So I dropped everything I had in Sweden and I moved
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to China without knowing Chinese, without knowing the Chinese culture. And I became a speaker
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in China. But the moment happened a couple of weeks in because
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I didn't know a single person in Beijing. I was totally alone
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and I would go to. And I couldn't speak the language. I would go into
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a restaurant and I would order food and because I couldn't read the menu, I
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would just point at three things, hoping knowing that one of them I couldn't
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eat, but the other two I could eat and then I'll eat that. But when
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they served me the food they gave me because also they couldn't talk to me.
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They served me. They served the food and gave me a fork, a knife, a
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spoon, chopsticks and a Chinese spoon. And they gave me all of that
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because they didn't know how I wanted to eat it. And because I didn't know
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the dishes, I didn't know how to eat it. So for the first time in
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my life, I had no culture around me
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telling me how I was supposed to do something. So I
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decided how I wanted to eat this dish, no one else.
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And it's hard to describe. It was such a liberating
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feeling to not have this. This is how you do it,
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thing around it. And I felt so pure. I felt so
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myself. And I said, okay, so, Frederik, how do you think you want to eat
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this dish? And that's when I felt, I'm gonna be me.
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And I felt, if ever I hope everyone could have a
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moment like that and say, I just want to be me, and then you can
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go back into the culture again with that feeling. I had a very similar
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experience. I worked in Zurich for a while, and my
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German is minimalistic. And like you, I was eating out. Okay. I was with a
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group of friends. I wasn't on my own. And we were probably quite lucky
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that in Switzerland, most people speak a bit of English anyway.
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But I was ordering off the menu and I had this,
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you know, you could think about pork, chicken, beef, you know,
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the main food animals, if you like. I remember ordering pork
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and what I thought was pork, and in came this pig
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trotter, complete with the trotter and the whole
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bottom of the leg. I looked at it and thought, yeah, it's pork pick,
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not as we know it. So I know exactly what I mean. You're ordering stuff
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by what you think and guessing and pointing and think, now what do I do
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with this? So I learned pretty quickly that chicken was probably safest.
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Or veal. Yeah, yeah. I ate a lot of veal
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and Zurich. But, yeah, no, that's fascinating. It's almost like we
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hear this Storey about, how do you explain something to a Martian who has no
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concept of anything to do with the Earth? How do you
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explain something to somebody? And that must be a real novelty, not having
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any connection to what you're ordering or what you're doing. Yeah. But the other part
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is also that the fact that maybe the way you think things should be done
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is wrong. So the other aspect of this was because I married a
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Filipina, so I'm from Sweden and she's from the Philippines, and we lived in
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Singapore and then we had kids. And then the question became,
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so how are we going to raise the kids? Because if I married a Swedish
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person and lived in Sweden, we would raise them Swedish. I mean, no discussion.
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But now we had to talk about it. Are we doing Swedish way or Filipino
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way? Because they are very different ways of raising children. For
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example, in Sweden, we do not hit our kids. I was never hit, not once
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by my parents. And we were the first country in the world to make it
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illegal to hit children. And in the Philippines it's technically illegal to hit
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kids, but almost everyone does it and my wife was beaten as a kid.
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So now we have children. Are we going to hit them or are we not
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going to hit them? Right. And now we have. We can't just say, let's do
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like we normally do. We have to argue for our point of view and we
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have to decide one of them. And in this case, we decided not to hit
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them. She was the first person in her family ever to not hit her children.
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On the other hand, in the Philippines they have respect for old people. In Sweden,
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we don't really have that. We've lost that. So we took the best from the
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Philippines. Now, the. The point here is that every little aspect of
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parenting, we had to question it and say, is this really the best way to
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do it or is there, apparently there's another way of doing it, or there's a
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third way of doing it, which is a Singaporean way. And when you start to
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think like that, you realise, wait a minute, there are hundreds and hundreds of different
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ways to raise a child and I should take the best of them. So it's
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another way of getting you to realise that what you think is the way to
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do it is not the one. It's such a liberating feeling when you get
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rid of that weight on your shoulder, saying, this is how things are supposed to
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be. Yeah, you see it in our modern connected
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Facebook, social media world. Everyone has an opinion. So it's
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very easy to crowdsource different views, isn't it? It's trying to
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make sense of some of those views and also
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being open to listening to those perspectives is the hard bit. Because we
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all want to be right. We all want to have our own opinions, don't we?
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Yeah, exactly. No, it's very hard. To be able to change your
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opinion, I think is a sign of intelligence, actually. Or not
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be wedded to it in the first place is the hard thing, isn't it? It's
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being able to change it must mean you're open to it not being right in
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the first place. But we get invested in being right a lot of the time.
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Yes. And that is, to me, that's curiosity.
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To be curious about other people, other ways
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there might be a curiosity is the one thing that gives you the
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open mindedness and then open mindedness give you the ability to change. So the key
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is actually curiosity. Yeah. We got a new
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dog, a puppy, about three, four months ago. And it's taught me a
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whole new perspective on parenting, leadership,
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everything. Because you have to start with a rule. The puppy doesn't know any different.
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The puppy is just a puppy. Yeah. So if it's doing something you don't want
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it to do, it's because you haven't set the environment to
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prevent the puppy doing something you didn't want it to do. It's an
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excellent lesson in personal accountability and patience
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and understanding that you go, yep, my fault.
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Yep, my fault. You bit me. That was my fault.
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And the puppy is never vindictive. So it's really
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taught me a new dynamic on humans and how we interact with each other.
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That, okay, I've now got to take personal accountability. What could I do differently
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to influence this in a different way? Yeah. And I love that because
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you're not blaming the dog for biting. I mean, you're not blaming, but
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it's not. Blaming is not the right word. But you're taking accountability for.
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Yeah, what did I do? Because so that the dog bit me. I
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think that's a, a lot of times people should, should use that
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approach when they get annoyed at stuff. Yeah. And I, I can, I
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know now that our puppy will become very wired, that you can tell their
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brain is in that sort of reactive hyper mode. So I
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know at that point there, she's going to bite, going to be jumpy, she's going
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to be all over the place. So how do I de escalate her? And again,
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it's about moving from the prefrontal cortex back here to the logical thinking.
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So you calm her down. Don't try and interact with emotion until she's in the
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right place. And it's typical human lessons. We talk about all the
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time about our brains and how we have to connect with people.
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She is definitely teaching me in a different plane. And I recommend anybody who's
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listened to get a puppy if you want to understand human interactions
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better. And also because they do not speak and we also have a
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dog. The whole idea of being able to read is a body language.
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It's all, it all. It's so much body language and energy.
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You have to learn how to sense energy. Yeah. And just be
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aware. Please don't talk about, talk about my puppy for the
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whole episode. But when she needs to do things, she wants
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feeding, she wants water, she wants to go outside. She has a
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way now of just sitting there looking at you and you go, and you've got
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to pick up on that body language because if you wait for it to say,
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tap you on the shoulder and say, oh, yeah, I need to go outside. She's
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never, it's never going to happen. But she will, she now, she's now learned. So
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it's, it's a fascinating lesson in just
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connecting with a culture that you've got no common language on.
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Yeah, exactly. Which is the same kind of way when you travel to a country
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where you don't speak the language. You do the same thing, you need to observe
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the cues. But yeah, as I said earlier, the struggle here
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is trying to get people to be open to that
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opportunity to learn more and not want to bring their.
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We see this, tourists go to a country and want to eat their local food
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wherever they travel and it's. They're not willing to explore something, oh, I couldn't eat
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octopus or I couldn't eat this or I couldn't eat that. Oh, and people
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get really fixated on. They want to, they actually just want to, they want to
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be somewhere else but with a micro part of home with them, don't they?
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Yeah, I mean, yeah, there are a lot of Chinese restaurants right next to the
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Eiffel Tower. Yes, yeah, yeah. And
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I remember travelling with my parents in law and they're very much a traditional
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English roast beef, Yorkshire pudding type family
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and that's what they were looking for. So you miss out on all the culture
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and the diverse foods and the opportunity to explore things. Yeah,
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some people are just like that. I have a friend who has a friend who,
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he hasn't tried any new food since he was 15. He said, When I was
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15 I knew what food I liked and what I didn't like. And since then
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that's. He only eats the food that he had tried and liked before at the
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age of 15. So there you go missing out.
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How does this really intersect then with the. We think about problem solving,
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creativity. Where is this the foundation of those.
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That's why, I mean the curiosity is the antidote to, to
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this. Because then that's what you will say, oh, I wonder what this is. I
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wonder what it tastes like. Right. So if I. In Icelandic the
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word for curious is for witten, for means before.
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Witten means knowledge. So basically what they're saying is that the word
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curious means that which comes before knowledge. Right.
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So you need to be curious. If you want to expand your knowledge about the
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world, you first need to be curious. I think it's a very beautiful way of
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looking at curiosity. Yeah. But also they have. In Iceland, they
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have this beautiful word which I love. It's called heimskir. And
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heimskjr literally means moron or stupid person.
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And it's an old, old Viking word from like a thousand
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years ago. And if you were a Viking, you're supposed to sail south and steal
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as much as you could, you know, gold and silver and
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whatever. But more importantly, you're supposed to steal ideas. And
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you see, how do they farm in Denmark, how do they make weapons in
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Turkey and so on. And you take those ide and you bring it back to
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Iceland to your own farm. If you didn't do that,
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you were a heimscher. You were a moron. You're a stupid person. So this
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idea of leaving your home, and haim means home, it's the word for home.
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So basically the word etymology of the word is that
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the person who always stays at home becomes stupid. You need to leave. I
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think it's beautiful. I think it's great. I visited Iceland for
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about a week back in the 90s, and I don't know if you've
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obviously been there. We had this delicacy, this putrefied shark.
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Yes, I have that too. Isn't that the one that's ranked one of the most
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disgusting foods in the world? It is, yeah. You have to drink. You have to
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drink, Brennan. When you're. When you're eating the shark, obviously the antidote, it's Brennovan. But
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I remember them telling the storey. Cause we were. We were there with some. Look,
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with some friends and they were telling the storey about this shark. Apparently
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they catch these sharks by mistake, I thought. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah.
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And then you have to. You strip the fat off and you bury the shark
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for like six months or something. And then you hang it up for six months
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before it's. Before it's edible. If you. If you don't bury it and you don't
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hang it up, it's poisonous. There's too much urea or something in the fat.
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I thought, how do you discover that? How do you know that six months is
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the right amount of time to hang it and to bury it without killing you?
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Yeah. So you talk about the curiosity from an Icelandic point of view. And they
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must. They must have done a lot of curious foresight thinking.
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Yeah. Or. Or just a chance someone, you know, someone buried it because.
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And then suddenly forgot about it. Say, hey, wait, we found this and you had
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nothing else to eat. And Then you had to eat that and you didn't. There
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is a. There's a beautiful. Because a lot of. I've also tried it. It's disgusting,
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I think. But there is a museum in
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Malm in the south of Sweden. It's called the Museum of
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Disgusting Foods, something like that. And you go in there
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and they have an exhibition of disgusting foods from all around the world. In
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Sweden, we have a fermented herring, which actually tastes even worse
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than the Iceland one. But I went there
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and the funny thing with this museum is they showed you can actually taste it.
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So they have a tasting menu so you can taste disgusting foods from around the
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world. Like tiny bits of it. You have like
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20 different things. You get to try just a tiny bit of each.
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But when before, and I tried all of it before you start
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tasting, they tell you that we have chosen food that
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in some in the culture it comes from, it is considered a delicacy.
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They haven't chosen food that someone has created just to be
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disgusting. Somewhere in the world someone finds this yummy.
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And it was such a big change for me to try it because when
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I tried all of this different things, suddenly I could
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enjoy it because I said someone finds this
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yummy. So let's assume it is. And then it became much easier
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to eat versus, oh, you have to try this disgusting thing from the Philippines.
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No, it's not. It's. This is a delicacy in the Philippines. But we find it
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weird. I once saw a map of eating horse and in
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which countries eating horse is a delicacy, in which countries eating horse
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is considered, you know, weird. And it's just. It's
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just some humans have decided it's delicacy. Some people have decided it's
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weird. It's. It's strange how we decide these things. I guess it depends on how
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hungry you are and how you feel natural. If someone says
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horse is a delicacy and you grow up with that, you're going to think it's
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a delicacy. Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen a chart where you
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have all these animals in a row. And where do you draw the line?
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Where what is food? What is. Peter? Yeah. Different
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cultures will draw that line in different places. You know, a rabbit. Yeah. A
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mouse, A rat. A horse, a cow.
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So what's the difference between a horse and a cow? They're both large
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animals and they're both edible. We decided the horse isn't. Cow is.
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But then you have all the other. You have vegetarian, pescatarian and all these other
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versions also within the country of or you have religious reasons for why you can't
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eat something or not eat something. And it's all good. Like I have, I have.
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My version of this is there's only two people in the world who do. Who
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is what I am. I'm an eatarian only
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me and my daughter. So what does an eatarian mean? It means I
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only eat meat. I eat meat, but I only eat meat
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from animals who kill. I don't eat vegetarian,
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non violent animals. So, for example, I can eat the lion because
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the lion eats the zebra, but I cannot eat the zebra because the zebra doesn't
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kill anyone, it just eats grass. So why.
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The moral logic here is why should I kill something that doesn't
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kill anything? But if something kills, I can also kill it. So
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I can eat most fishes and most seafood and I can
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basically cannot eat horse, cow, lamb, goat,
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a few of those. So dog, cat, absolutely fine.
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Because they kill and eat. I can eat dog and cat. I don't. I tried
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dog once in North Korea, but I don't eat cat. I mean, it means I
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can't. I could eat someone. Some people usually say, oh, so you can eat human?
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I say I could eat human. I don't want. For other reasons. I don't eat
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humans, but I can't technically eat a vegetarian or
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vegan. Yeah, that's right. So I've got to become vegetarian. So
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I'm safe in Frederick's company. It's not about I have to eat animals who kill.
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I'm saying I'm not going to eat animals who doesn't kill. That's the rule. Yeah,
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yeah, I've had, I've had crocodile in. I think it's in Australia. I had crocodile
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over there. Yeah, I've, I've had that too. It's. And the
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crocodile definitely kills. Yeah, that's. That's
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really interesting. Yeah, I suppose I like the fact. That I'm the only one, but
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then my daughter copied me, so now we're two. I like because it means I
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made up the rule for what I can and cannot eat. No, I didn't follow
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a book or a scripture or, or a cultural rule or something.
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I made up my very, very own. So most of the time you're,
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you would call yourself vegetarian. That, that has meat from a
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ethically sourced source in your book. Sorry, sorry, I
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didn't hear you. Generally, you're generally a vegetarian, but you also
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eat fish? No, I eat chicken and I eat pork and I eat
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fish and I, I Meet most animals, actually. I mean, the whole idea is that
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most animals kill. If you look at nature. Chickens are
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carnivorous, Are they? Or they. They kill other things, don't they? They eat worms.
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Okay, all right, so worm. Okay, that's good point. Yeah. Okay. Yeah,
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yeah. Okay. Pickling worms. Yeah. Any kind of as. As long as
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the animal eats another animal, it kills. And if that animal kills
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it should be fine with me killing it. That's the logic. Okay, yeah.
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Pigs will eat anything as well, won't they? They'll. They will. They will. They will.
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Yeah. They will definitely kill to eat, but they often. They also eat.
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They eat all kind. They basically eat everything. Yeah, yeah,
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yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. There's a logic. Whereas a horse and a cow.
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Horse and a cow are generally only killed by mistake. Eating a worm while they're
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eating the grass. Yeah. I can also eat. I could eat a non. I can
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eat a vegetarian animal by mistake, which happens sometimes. Someone gives me a
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soup and I say, is this. This cow or pork? And they say, it's pork.
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And then later I find out it's beef. I don't feel bad about it. I
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ate it by mistake. I can eat anything by mistake. Anyone can eat something by
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mistake. That's the difference. But to properly say I'm going to kill to eat you,
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that's a very different mentality. And I like to have the
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peaceful mentality of not eating those peaceful animals.
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It gives me a lot of karma. Yeah. I think it's a great.
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It's a great rule set. I think it's brilliant. But I like it mostly
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because it's a rule set I made up. No one told me that this is
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how you're supposed to eat. I made up my rules and then I follow that.
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Yeah. You see, my natural thinking would be that vegetarian side of animals,
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the meat is healthier. But that's
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my belief. I have no fact to prove that, right or wrong. But I guess
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with so much factory farming these days, what is. What is a health. What is
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a healthy animal these days? It's so many chemicals. Yeah. But I
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come back to this topic here. How do we persuade people, though, to
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open their minds up? Because, you know, we've had this conversation, this has been some
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fascinating sort of insights as to thinking differently and
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coming in their own rule sets. How do we get people to step back
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out of their beliefs into this world where they can start to be
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creative or in the Icelandic way, thinking about things in
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advance? Because we think about cultural intelligence. One of the first
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steps of cultural Intelligence is having the drive to want to find out more. If
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you don't care, you don't want to find out more, then you're never going to
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step forward and move into that learning space. I think it's a good
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question, but I think the answer is to better understand yourself. Because
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the more you understand yourself, the more you then make up your own
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ways of looking at the world. And if you do that, per definition, you will
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be different. Right? You will be unique and you will do things your own way.
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I once, I was in Bhutan recently and I interviewed a
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guy in Bhutan, actually a former Minister of tourism,
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and he has. Because I wanted to understand how does. Let me move back because
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the sun is coming out. So half of my face is in. The sun is
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better, right? Yeah. So I was interviewing this minister of tourism in Bhutan because he's
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Buddhist. I wanted to understand how does he look at creativity. And
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he said, you people in the west, you think creativity is about expressing
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yourself. Like you want to understand, how can I express myself? That's the. How do
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you get people to express who they really are? And he said, it's the wrong.
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I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but creativity is not about that. Creativity
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is primarily about understanding
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who you are. And I think this is really.
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A. Very profound way of looking at creativity. Because if
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creativity is, I want to understand who I really am, and
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if people really did that and went deeper to understand who they really are
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at the core, then what they do express, what they do create,
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will be uniquely them. Right? And I
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actually help people find what I call their inner theme. I've helped over
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400 people do this. Like the inner theme is like
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your core message that is in, within you.
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And I like to explain to people that an inner theme is a
437
00:27:51.470 --> 00:27:55.470
universal message that everyone needs to hear. So everyone in the world
438
00:27:55.470 --> 00:27:59.470
needs to hear this message, but only you can deliver it, which
439
00:27:59.470 --> 00:28:03.070
means it's a unique message only you can deliver.
440
00:28:03.390 --> 00:28:07.350
And if everyone found their inner theme, the message that
441
00:28:07.350 --> 00:28:11.150
only they can deliver, but it's important that everyone needs to hear,
442
00:28:11.230 --> 00:28:15.160
then, then that's what we should aim for. That's true of a lot
443
00:28:15.160 --> 00:28:19.040
of things where it starts with yourself. You can't truly understand others until you
444
00:28:19.040 --> 00:28:22.800
truly understand who you are, what your own person, what your values are, what
445
00:28:22.800 --> 00:28:26.640
matters to you. And that allows us to step out of
446
00:28:26.640 --> 00:28:30.440
judgement sometimes. Because if I understand who I am, I'd be less willing to judge
447
00:28:30.440 --> 00:28:34.400
you for who you are, because I want people to respect me for
448
00:28:34.400 --> 00:28:38.320
who I am. We Too often don't actually analyse what our
449
00:28:38.320 --> 00:28:41.930
core values are, do we? Most people have no clue who they really are.
450
00:28:42.090 --> 00:28:46.090
Most people have not done the work. That's my experience. And the funny
451
00:28:46.090 --> 00:28:49.930
thing is, even speakers and authors who do this for a
452
00:28:49.930 --> 00:28:53.250
living, most of them don't really fully understand who they are. And I think a
453
00:28:53.250 --> 00:28:57.130
lot of this is actually because we never been taught. Like when we are
454
00:28:57.130 --> 00:29:00.930
children and we are going to learn, that's when we are
455
00:29:00.930 --> 00:29:04.410
developing our sense of who we really are. At that age we are put into
456
00:29:04.410 --> 00:29:08.140
school and everyone is more or less being taught the same thing. So we
457
00:29:08.140 --> 00:29:11.260
become more similar and we become less ourselves.
458
00:29:12.060 --> 00:29:15.300
I love to tell the storey of my mother because my mother used to be
459
00:29:15.300 --> 00:29:19.220
a normal regular teacher for, I don't know, 20 years, but then
460
00:29:19.220 --> 00:29:22.940
she reschooled herself and became a Montessori teacher and it
461
00:29:22.940 --> 00:29:26.820
totally changed the way she teaches. And I love
462
00:29:26.820 --> 00:29:30.580
a Montessori as a concept because it gets
463
00:29:30.580 --> 00:29:33.910
people, the children, to develop who they really are. So
464
00:29:35.110 --> 00:29:38.670
do you know how Montessori works? No, I've not heard that before. No, it's like
465
00:29:38.670 --> 00:29:42.590
this. Like a normal teacher says, today I want the children to learn to
466
00:29:42.590 --> 00:29:45.750
read. So now we're going to read. So it says to the class, okay, children,
467
00:29:45.750 --> 00:29:49.750
we are now going to read. And then everyone reads, right? Regardless if
468
00:29:49.750 --> 00:29:52.630
you want to read or not. That's fun. Today we are going to read
469
00:29:53.110 --> 00:29:57.030
Montessori teacher is like this, goes up to the child in the morning and says,
470
00:29:57.190 --> 00:30:00.550
what would you like to learn today and what would you like to do today?
471
00:30:00.550 --> 00:30:04.190
And the child says, I want to learn about dinosaur. I want to learn about
472
00:30:04.190 --> 00:30:08.150
dinosaurs. The teacher says, great, here's a book about dinosaurs. So
473
00:30:08.150 --> 00:30:12.150
now the kid is still learning to read, but now doing that from his internal
474
00:30:12.150 --> 00:30:15.870
drive. I want to learn about dinosaurs. If the
475
00:30:15.870 --> 00:30:19.750
teacher wants to learn, teach drawing, ask the kid, what do you want to do
476
00:30:19.750 --> 00:30:23.510
today? The teacher says, kid says, I want to learn about dinosaurs. The
477
00:30:23.510 --> 00:30:27.320
teacher says, well, here's a piece of paper, why don't you draw a dinosaur? So
478
00:30:27.320 --> 00:30:29.800
you're still teaching what you want to teach, but now you're doing it from the
479
00:30:29.800 --> 00:30:32.800
driver and then you go to the next and you do that with every child
480
00:30:32.800 --> 00:30:36.600
in the class. And one child is drawing dinosaur, one child is reading a book
481
00:30:36.600 --> 00:30:40.440
about dinosaurs. One person is making a, you know, origami version of
482
00:30:40.440 --> 00:30:44.160
a dinosaur. All are reading about dinosaurs, but they're doing it from their perspective of
483
00:30:44.160 --> 00:30:47.080
what they want to learn at the moment. And you see, you do that for
484
00:30:47.080 --> 00:30:51.080
nine years for the child. And out comes a thinking person who
485
00:30:51.080 --> 00:30:54.890
has learned a lot of things and more importantly, has learned a drive
486
00:30:54.890 --> 00:30:58.210
about who they really are and what they want to do. And now. So the
487
00:30:58.210 --> 00:31:02.130
class is full of people doing different things. That's diversity. If you ever, you
488
00:31:02.130 --> 00:31:05.690
know, that's the real meaning of diversity. But all learning about
489
00:31:05.690 --> 00:31:08.090
dinosaurs? Well, no. All.
490
00:31:10.810 --> 00:31:14.730
If the teachers, let's say, want to have an art class, then
491
00:31:14.730 --> 00:31:18.570
everyone will be drawing, maybe, but they will be drawing whatever they're interested in if
492
00:31:18.570 --> 00:31:22.130
that's what the teacher wants to do. But many times they will have one person
493
00:31:22.130 --> 00:31:26.110
drawing, one person reading. They will do different things in class. And the teacher
494
00:31:26.110 --> 00:31:29.710
just goes, now the children are super happy. You don't need to force them to
495
00:31:29.710 --> 00:31:32.270
read a book. They wanted to read a book. So the teacher is much less
496
00:31:32.270 --> 00:31:36.030
relaxed and doesn't have to focus on making sure everyone reads. Everyone is doing
497
00:31:36.030 --> 00:31:39.830
exactly what they want, but the teacher is just making sure that whatever they want
498
00:31:39.830 --> 00:31:43.510
is also aligned with what they need to learn. That also plays into the
499
00:31:44.070 --> 00:31:47.870
old adage that you haven't got
500
00:31:47.870 --> 00:31:51.590
time to do things. You always find time to do things you want to do
501
00:31:51.590 --> 00:31:55.260
or a priority in your life. Yes. If you're. If you're trying to eat that
502
00:31:55.260 --> 00:31:57.860
frog, you're trying to do things you don't want to do, you've got to reframe
503
00:31:57.860 --> 00:32:01.700
it and do it in a way that you. You enjoy doing it. So if
504
00:32:01.700 --> 00:32:05.340
you don't want to clean the toilet, put some music on and dance while you're
505
00:32:05.340 --> 00:32:08.420
cleaning the toilet. That will make it. Yeah, if you want to dance, you can
506
00:32:08.420 --> 00:32:12.180
do that same time. So. Yeah, I get that completely. That's. Yeah, that
507
00:32:12.180 --> 00:32:16.060
feeds into that. Yeah, I have a version of that. I hate to do invoicing.
508
00:32:16.060 --> 00:32:19.580
That's the one thing that I really hate. And nothing can make me make invoicing
509
00:32:19.580 --> 00:32:23.460
fun. Not even music or something. So the only thing I hate more than that
510
00:32:23.460 --> 00:32:26.360
is laundry. So I would go into the laundry, laundry room, and I sit in
511
00:32:26.360 --> 00:32:29.920
the laundry room and do laundry. Because now my body says, it could be worse.
512
00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:33.280
You could be doing laundry. But now you're just doing invoicing. So it's all about
513
00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:36.520
tricking your mind. I have a different way of looking at invoicing. I don't call
514
00:32:36.520 --> 00:32:40.080
it invoicing. I call it printing money. That's a great approach for you. It wouldn't
515
00:32:40.080 --> 00:32:43.480
work for me because I don't care about money. Money doesn't drive me. Okay.
516
00:32:43.960 --> 00:32:46.920
Not that I don't need it. I mean, I like to make money, but it's
517
00:32:46.920 --> 00:32:50.440
not the driver for me. So I could postpone it forever, but
518
00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:54.640
I can see how that definitely is a better way of calling it than calling
519
00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:58.470
it invoicing. I don't think it was admin for me. It's
520
00:32:58.470 --> 00:33:01.670
what's the objective. What you're trying to achieve with it is trying to. I like
521
00:33:01.670 --> 00:33:03.950
it. Paying for my shopping
522
00:33:05.470 --> 00:33:09.070
or buying clothes. I have to do invoicing. It's a necessary
523
00:33:09.550 --> 00:33:13.510
frustration. But you're right, I'm not a big invoicer either. That kind
524
00:33:13.510 --> 00:33:17.430
of admin is tiresome. All kind of admin is tiresome. There should be as
525
00:33:17.430 --> 00:33:21.110
little admin as possible in the world. If you ask me what kills creativity most,
526
00:33:21.110 --> 00:33:25.090
I say administration. All kind of admin rules that kills
527
00:33:25.090 --> 00:33:28.850
creativity more than anything else because the creative soul doesn't like to do
528
00:33:28.850 --> 00:33:32.850
admin. But that's why I love AI, because I could be creative. And
529
00:33:32.850 --> 00:33:36.410
the AI does a lot of the admin. It's wonderful.
530
00:33:36.970 --> 00:33:40.970
That's what we should use AI to. Not to make music and paintings. No,
531
00:33:42.170 --> 00:33:45.130
I've started. In fact, what I do as a result of this podcast is
532
00:33:45.930 --> 00:33:49.770
I feed the transcript into AI and get it to write a song
533
00:33:49.770 --> 00:33:53.670
lyrics from the, from the, from the podcast. And then I take the
534
00:33:53.670 --> 00:33:57.670
song lyrics and I put them into a platform called SUNO and I generate, I
535
00:33:57.670 --> 00:34:01.670
generate a song from the podcast, which I've now got. I've started building up
536
00:34:01.670 --> 00:34:05.550
a library now of podcast songs generated for the lyrics. And some
537
00:34:05.550 --> 00:34:08.630
of them I listened to and they go, that's really good. And the lyrics are
538
00:34:08.630 --> 00:34:12.590
really powerful. Yeah. And it was my father, father in law's funeral
539
00:34:12.590 --> 00:34:16.470
last week and I, I took his eulogy, which
540
00:34:16.470 --> 00:34:19.910
I wrote. Well, I say I wrote ChatGPT and I co created the
541
00:34:19.910 --> 00:34:23.870
eulogy and I fed that into AI and said, like, write me a song.
542
00:34:24.350 --> 00:34:28.030
And it wrote a song and I put that into SUNO and generated a legacy
543
00:34:28.190 --> 00:34:32.150
sort of piece from the eulogy which I shared
544
00:34:32.150 --> 00:34:35.630
with the family. And everyone's, oh, that's beautiful. And it's kind of another way of
545
00:34:36.110 --> 00:34:39.710
taking one thing and using your
546
00:34:39.710 --> 00:34:43.670
creativity or my ideation and a tool to generate something
547
00:34:43.670 --> 00:34:47.429
else. But it's, it was my, I owned the thought process, the
548
00:34:47.429 --> 00:34:50.749
creativity to do that, but not the admin of actually doing the work.
549
00:34:51.149 --> 00:34:54.749
Exactly. I. That's it. But that's. You could call it different from the admin. I
550
00:34:54.749 --> 00:34:57.749
think this is. A lot of people say, why no. Oh, it's so sad when
551
00:34:57.749 --> 00:35:00.749
People are not writing their own speeches at funerals, or
552
00:35:01.709 --> 00:35:05.429
why didn't you write your own song? But I am with you because the
553
00:35:05.429 --> 00:35:09.349
alternative would have been maybe a less powerful, strong
554
00:35:09.349 --> 00:35:13.229
or speech, or a much more stress writing the speech. At that
555
00:35:13.229 --> 00:35:17.200
time. No one says, no one says, when you take a camera, oh, all you
556
00:35:17.200 --> 00:35:21.080
did. People say, all you did was enter a prompt. No one says, all you
557
00:35:21.080 --> 00:35:24.600
did was press a button. When you took a picture on a photograph, that's all
558
00:35:24.600 --> 00:35:28.240
you do. Like, before a camera, you had to paint that picture by hand if
559
00:35:28.240 --> 00:35:32.040
you wanted to keep the memory. Now you just press a button. But that doesn't
560
00:35:32.040 --> 00:35:35.640
mean photography is not a creative art form. Of course it is.
561
00:35:35.800 --> 00:35:39.520
And you give a camera to a professional photographer, it gets a much more
562
00:35:39.520 --> 00:35:43.440
beautiful photo than if you give it to an amateur. But more importantly, both
563
00:35:43.440 --> 00:35:47.200
of us are not taking much more pictures, which is great. So, yeah,
564
00:35:47.360 --> 00:35:50.560
use AI for AI is an amazing creativity tool.
565
00:35:51.200 --> 00:35:54.880
If used right, it will kill your creativity. If used wrong.
566
00:35:55.360 --> 00:35:58.880
Oh, yeah. A professional photographer will be looking at light. They'll be
567
00:35:59.440 --> 00:36:03.120
studying the landscape, thinking, where do I stand? Where's the light
568
00:36:03.120 --> 00:36:06.040
falling? What time of day do I need to take this? How do I crop
569
00:36:06.040 --> 00:36:09.360
that? How do I frame it? What action, what expression do I want? When.
570
00:36:10.160 --> 00:36:13.720
So you're thinking about the entire shot and then, as you say, click. And then
571
00:36:13.720 --> 00:36:16.400
AI in the camera these days is doing a lot of the work for you
572
00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:20.240
to tidy it up. But, yeah, I mean, photography more than anything
573
00:36:20.240 --> 00:36:24.240
is observing. Right. It's observing the world and seeing the picture that needs
574
00:36:24.240 --> 00:36:28.000
to be taken. Yeah. Like the infamous
575
00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:31.760
Tiananmen Square picture from all those times ago for the tanks. It was
576
00:36:32.160 --> 00:36:36.120
just that one person captured the entire mood of that
577
00:36:36.120 --> 00:36:39.610
event with that one picture. Just become iconic. Yeah, yeah.
578
00:36:40.170 --> 00:36:43.530
I like to tell the storey I was interviewed, and he's not a photographer, he's
579
00:36:43.530 --> 00:36:47.370
an illustrator. But he says, I don't see myself as a painter, I see
580
00:36:47.370 --> 00:36:51.250
myself as an observer. I observe the world and then I
581
00:36:51.250 --> 00:36:55.170
paint what I see. The key here is observer. This key is not painting. The
582
00:36:55.170 --> 00:36:59.170
key is observing. And he asked me, he said, frederick, do you ever walk in
583
00:36:59.170 --> 00:37:02.610
the forest? I said, yes, of course I do. And then he said, okay. How
584
00:37:02.610 --> 00:37:05.930
often do you turn around? Do you walk in the forest? In nature?
585
00:37:07.250 --> 00:37:10.690
Yeah. I take my dog, we walk through. It's not going to a forest, it's
586
00:37:10.690 --> 00:37:14.610
a wood, a thick wood. How often do you turn around? Often, because my
587
00:37:14.610 --> 00:37:18.570
puppy is sometimes behind me. But not generally. No. Yeah,
588
00:37:18.570 --> 00:37:21.370
good. So he's. I Said, what do you mean, how often do you turn around?
589
00:37:21.370 --> 00:37:25.130
And I said, I think I turn around if I hear a sound or something,
590
00:37:25.130 --> 00:37:28.490
like there's a reason. I said, how often do you turn around? He said, every
591
00:37:28.490 --> 00:37:32.450
50 metres. Because when you walk through a forest or a wood
592
00:37:32.660 --> 00:37:36.300
and you turn around every 50 metres, you will see twice as much forest because
593
00:37:36.300 --> 00:37:39.780
every tree, every stone will look. You will see it from both sides, so you'll
594
00:37:39.780 --> 00:37:43.700
see twice as much. But more importantly, the animals can sense you
595
00:37:43.700 --> 00:37:47.620
way before you can sense them. Like a deer will sense you
596
00:37:47.620 --> 00:37:51.100
when you're like, I don't know, a bear can sense you two kilometres away. Right.
597
00:37:51.100 --> 00:37:55.100
But so they will hide when before you come, but after you pass, they
598
00:37:55.100 --> 00:37:58.260
know you have now passed, so they will come out. So you'll see much more
599
00:37:58.260 --> 00:38:02.180
animals if you turn around, which I think is a beautiful observation. So, but that,
600
00:38:02.180 --> 00:38:06.160
that is the work of an observer, that's you than a person who has
601
00:38:06.160 --> 00:38:09.520
made it a mission to observe the world.
602
00:38:09.920 --> 00:38:13.840
And after him, after he taught me that I'm trying to be a better observer.
603
00:38:13.840 --> 00:38:17.520
I like that. I see far more of nature with a dog because
604
00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:21.840
the dog flushes a lot of the wildlife out. You see more
605
00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:25.640
squirrels and more things leaping around and darting for cover and the
606
00:38:25.640 --> 00:38:29.560
dog reacts in advance. Okay, what's up there? What can you smell? What can you
607
00:38:29.560 --> 00:38:33.540
see? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, walk in the
608
00:38:33.540 --> 00:38:37.260
forest without a dog and you see zero squirrels. Walk in a dog with a.
609
00:38:37.340 --> 00:38:40.860
Walk in the forest with a dog and you see 50 squirrels. Yeah,
610
00:38:40.860 --> 00:38:44.580
exactly. And the dog wants all of them. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, our
611
00:38:44.580 --> 00:38:47.980
puppy's only six months old and it remembers on our walk
612
00:38:48.060 --> 00:38:52.020
exactly where the squirrels are like to appear. It's almost like with excitement going, right,
613
00:38:52.020 --> 00:38:55.380
there's a squirrel going to be anywhere right now. Yeah. The next bit, not interested.
614
00:38:55.380 --> 00:38:58.940
But this one little stretch, it knows exactly that squirrels are going to be there.
615
00:38:59.100 --> 00:39:03.100
We can learn from the animals to observe. Observe. Because the whole funny
616
00:39:03.100 --> 00:39:06.860
thing also when you observe, the ego goes away. Yeah.
617
00:39:08.540 --> 00:39:12.540
So our world we live in today is, I believe it's
618
00:39:12.540 --> 00:39:15.820
becoming a bit more divided. You know, we're fracture,
619
00:39:15.980 --> 00:39:19.900
fracturing on and polarising on issues and we're
620
00:39:20.220 --> 00:39:22.980
in a world where you have to be right, so you have to be wrong,
621
00:39:22.980 --> 00:39:24.820
you have to be left, you have to be right, you have to be this,
622
00:39:24.820 --> 00:39:28.770
you have to be that. It's. We're getting more and more polarised, rather more educated
623
00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:32.760
about the, this diversity of thought. What's Been going wrong. I don't
624
00:39:32.760 --> 00:39:36.560
necessarily think that is wrong, actually. I
625
00:39:36.560 --> 00:39:40.480
think if. Yes, if you get polarised, it's wrong.
626
00:39:40.480 --> 00:39:44.200
But to have a diverse. Have a diverse.
627
00:39:45.640 --> 00:39:49.640
Have more diverse opinions being heard is not necessarily
628
00:39:49.640 --> 00:39:53.160
a bad thing. The problem is that people are. It's probably. It's not that people
629
00:39:53.160 --> 00:39:57.080
have different opinions or that more opinions are being heard or even that the
630
00:39:57.160 --> 00:40:01.000
opinions being heard are more extreme. The problem is that people are
631
00:40:01.000 --> 00:40:04.760
so stuck on not changing them that they are digging
632
00:40:04.760 --> 00:40:08.120
trenches and say, I don't want to hear what you're saying. I have made up
633
00:40:08.120 --> 00:40:11.920
my mind already. That's a bigger problem. Are we only hearing
634
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:15.840
from the loudest voices or the voices with money? Is
635
00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:19.800
that also what's going on? That's a different problem. That is definitely
636
00:40:19.800 --> 00:40:23.760
a problem. I think that's a bigger problem that we. Then that's not getting
637
00:40:23.760 --> 00:40:27.650
enough attention. Definitely. That is a big. That is a big, big problem. And
638
00:40:27.650 --> 00:40:31.490
I don't know how that's going to be solved. And it's polarising us
639
00:40:31.490 --> 00:40:35.210
into tribes, I think as well. Also, selling clicks, advertising revenue,
640
00:40:35.530 --> 00:40:38.730
selling pain is easier to sell than
641
00:40:39.130 --> 00:40:42.890
happiness, isn't it? Yeah. But I also think we are like.
642
00:40:42.970 --> 00:40:46.930
I was recently in Mongolia. Not recently. That was right before
643
00:40:46.930 --> 00:40:50.690
the pandemic. I was in Mongolia and I went and lived with the
644
00:40:50.690 --> 00:40:54.490
nomadic tribes of. Very exotic. But on the way back,
645
00:40:54.490 --> 00:40:58.270
I went to a tech startup and I met with like some
646
00:40:58.270 --> 00:41:01.910
web designers in Mongolia, I swear to God. And I also did that in Bhutan
647
00:41:01.910 --> 00:41:05.910
out of coincidence. And both in Bhutan and in
648
00:41:05.910 --> 00:41:09.390
Mongolia, I went in, you know, it's very exotic. And I open the door, I
649
00:41:09.390 --> 00:41:13.350
go inside and boom, I'm. I'm not in Bhutan anymore. I'm not in Mongolia.
650
00:41:13.350 --> 00:41:16.910
I'm in a web design bureau. And they look. They look just like they do
651
00:41:16.910 --> 00:41:19.750
in Stockholm or Berlin or New San Francisco.
652
00:41:20.550 --> 00:41:24.270
There's a little Star wars figure on top of the computer. It's a pool
653
00:41:24.270 --> 00:41:28.230
table, there's a Nike cap turned upside down. They're wearing. All wearing
654
00:41:28.230 --> 00:41:32.070
black. It's just the same. And then I go out and boom,
655
00:41:32.070 --> 00:41:35.910
I'm in Shangri La again. And I realised that
656
00:41:35.990 --> 00:41:39.750
These guys are 100% Bhutanese, but they're also 100%
657
00:41:39.750 --> 00:41:43.630
web designers. And they are surf. They are. When they have
658
00:41:43.630 --> 00:41:47.630
some free time, they join a Facebook group, which is web
659
00:41:47.630 --> 00:41:51.390
design. Facebook group. And now they sit and they talk with web designers, which makes
660
00:41:51.390 --> 00:41:54.950
them more similar to their profession than they are to their nation.
661
00:41:55.570 --> 00:41:59.330
Right. So. And I love that. I don't think this is a problem. I think
662
00:41:59.330 --> 00:42:03.170
it's amazing that we, as a humanity, I, like
663
00:42:03.170 --> 00:42:06.970
you and I, we are connecting because we are both doing similar things. We're
664
00:42:06.970 --> 00:42:10.810
trainers or coaches or speakers. So I have a lot of
665
00:42:10.810 --> 00:42:14.690
my speaker friends, I have hundreds of speaker friends all over the world. My
666
00:42:14.690 --> 00:42:18.610
Facebook feed, I think I have like 15, 20 different languages in my Facebook
667
00:42:18.610 --> 00:42:22.230
feed. Thank God they introduced translation. Yes.
668
00:42:22.470 --> 00:42:26.310
Now I'm. So I have a level of identity that is on a global
669
00:42:26.310 --> 00:42:30.270
level and I follow, like, if there's. Now there's fighting in Bangladesh and I see
670
00:42:30.270 --> 00:42:33.670
all my Bangladesh friends posting what's happening in Bangladesh from a
671
00:42:33.670 --> 00:42:37.670
Bangladeshi perspective. I love that. Does that make me
672
00:42:37.670 --> 00:42:41.070
a little bit less Swedish? Yes, it does, but it also makes me a little
673
00:42:41.070 --> 00:42:44.150
bit more human. Yeah, you're right. We're becoming
674
00:42:45.670 --> 00:42:49.470
almost like special interest communities, so it doesn't matter physically
675
00:42:49.470 --> 00:42:53.120
where you are. We talk about affinity bias, affinity
676
00:42:53.120 --> 00:42:56.800
groups. It's connecting people around the world who have a similar interest in a game,
677
00:42:57.120 --> 00:43:01.040
in a technique, in a profession. Yeah. And I like, if you
678
00:43:01.040 --> 00:43:04.720
want to be really philosophical, this is very big
679
00:43:04.720 --> 00:43:08.720
thought. But you think about this because people say tribes, right? Oh, we need.
680
00:43:08.720 --> 00:43:12.520
It's a tribal community. You can't have a global mindset because the Tribe is
681
00:43:12.520 --> 00:43:16.200
just 150 people strong, or whatever they're saying. And we're now seeing the
682
00:43:16.200 --> 00:43:20.120
antidote, like the world is closing up, becoming more local, less global. And
683
00:43:20.120 --> 00:43:23.340
people think this is where we're going to end up. Think so.
684
00:43:24.060 --> 00:43:28.020
Because what defines our worldview? This is going to be a little
685
00:43:28.020 --> 00:43:31.980
bit of a philosophical outlying here, but I think this is interesting.
686
00:43:32.060 --> 00:43:35.740
What defines our world? Like, if you're living in a tribe in Amazonas, one of
687
00:43:35.740 --> 00:43:39.380
those hidden tribes that never met anyone from outside their whole
688
00:43:39.380 --> 00:43:43.220
worldview is five kilometres outside of that village. That's all
689
00:43:43.220 --> 00:43:46.140
they know. They don't know about the Internet, they don't know about the moon landing,
690
00:43:46.140 --> 00:43:49.780
they don't know anything of that. Their whole worldview is five kilometres around the
691
00:43:49.780 --> 00:43:53.780
village. And because they don't have technology, then we invented technology.
692
00:43:54.180 --> 00:43:57.980
Like we tamed the horse and suddenly we could go 50 kilometres. And then we
693
00:43:57.980 --> 00:44:01.940
built the train and the telegraph and our technology made it possible for us
694
00:44:01.940 --> 00:44:05.780
to have a wider understanding of the world. And this technology that we're
695
00:44:05.780 --> 00:44:09.660
using now makes it possible for you and I to talk anywhere in the world
696
00:44:09.660 --> 00:44:13.380
and we can read newspapers and we can communicate and say, so now our
697
00:44:13.380 --> 00:44:17.180
community, for the first time in human history, it's possible to have a
698
00:44:17.180 --> 00:44:20.420
technology that connects Anyone, anywhere. Of course
699
00:44:21.140 --> 00:44:24.820
that is going to change how we look at ourselves. So from
700
00:44:24.820 --> 00:44:28.660
village, from tribe to village to city, to kingdom
701
00:44:28.900 --> 00:44:32.780
to nation to post. Nations would be
702
00:44:32.780 --> 00:44:36.700
like United States or the eu. And the next step is the human
703
00:44:36.700 --> 00:44:40.500
mindset. Of course that's going to take maybe 50 years or 100 years,
704
00:44:40.580 --> 00:44:44.100
and right now we're a bit confused. But in a hundred years from. Most people
705
00:44:44.100 --> 00:44:48.020
are going to have. Their main identity is going to be human, not
706
00:44:48.020 --> 00:44:51.790
nation or religion. And when that happens, that's. That's going to
707
00:44:51.790 --> 00:44:55.750
change so many things. Yeah. As you're talking, I was thinking that if I
708
00:44:55.750 --> 00:44:59.590
think about the community, the people I engage with, most of them are not
709
00:44:59.590 --> 00:45:03.190
localised and I don't. I don't feel that I need to have a local community
710
00:45:03.270 --> 00:45:06.710
because I've got a community of people around, as you say, around the world, different
711
00:45:07.110 --> 00:45:11.070
first languages, different cultures, and I feel as
712
00:45:11.070 --> 00:45:14.310
connected with them now as I would if they lived next door. I probably see
713
00:45:14.310 --> 00:45:18.160
them more often. Yeah, I interact them on LinkedIn, on Facebook and other platforms.
714
00:45:18.390 --> 00:45:22.070
Yeah, exactly. But it doesn't mean you don't have to have a local community.
715
00:45:22.230 --> 00:45:26.110
I'm sure you have neighbours and stuff. Like, the village didn't
716
00:45:26.110 --> 00:45:29.950
disappear because we invented the
717
00:45:29.950 --> 00:45:33.590
kingdom and the kingdom or the nation, we just added a layer.
718
00:45:33.750 --> 00:45:37.270
I'm still Frederick, I still have my family, I still have my neighbours, I still
719
00:45:37.270 --> 00:45:40.350
live in Liding it, which I'm still part of Stockholm, I'm also Swede, I'm part
720
00:45:40.350 --> 00:45:43.710
of the eu. And then now add one layer on top of that, which is
721
00:45:43.710 --> 00:45:47.030
I'm also a human being and I communicate with friends all over the world.
722
00:45:47.590 --> 00:45:51.250
So all the other layers are still there, we just layer. But
723
00:45:51.330 --> 00:45:55.170
while the person in Amazonas only has 12 layers, which is family
724
00:45:55.330 --> 00:45:58.450
or me, family and tribe. And that's it. It stops there.
725
00:46:01.810 --> 00:46:05.570
I've met people in real life, irl, as we. As we like to say these
726
00:46:05.570 --> 00:46:09.410
days, irl. And the first part of the conversation is
727
00:46:09.410 --> 00:46:12.290
we try and work out if we've ever met in person before. And we go,
728
00:46:12.930 --> 00:46:15.810
I don't know. But we seem to know so much about each other, we know
729
00:46:15.890 --> 00:46:19.870
everything. I know we both follow each other on Facebook, so we know
730
00:46:19.870 --> 00:46:22.790
a lot about each other's lives and what we've been up to the last couple
731
00:46:22.790 --> 00:46:26.510
of years, and we probably haven't met in person for at least two or three,
732
00:46:26.510 --> 00:46:29.910
maybe even four years, but it doesn't matter because
733
00:46:30.790 --> 00:46:34.590
we're building that human connection across the world. As you say, this
734
00:46:34.590 --> 00:46:38.550
disparate connected technology. Yeah. Which I think is beautiful.
735
00:46:39.270 --> 00:46:43.270
Yeah, it is, it is. I agree with the premise of. I think
736
00:46:43.270 --> 00:46:47.190
when we started this is those perspectives from different cultures.
737
00:46:47.190 --> 00:46:51.070
Because, yes, we are globally connected, we still
738
00:46:51.070 --> 00:46:55.070
are heavily influenced by our own local cultures. Yes. When we bring
739
00:46:55.070 --> 00:46:58.990
that together, we bring different perspectives, don't we? But I think it's a bug
740
00:46:58.990 --> 00:47:02.790
in the human DNA that we are not better at picking
741
00:47:02.790 --> 00:47:06.630
up good ideas from other people. Somewhere,
742
00:47:06.630 --> 00:47:10.550
someone in the world has invented a better way of doing what you're doing.
743
00:47:10.550 --> 00:47:14.370
And. And why are we not better at picking that up? It
744
00:47:14.370 --> 00:47:17.730
blows my mind that we are not better. I mean, we have Internet for 25
745
00:47:17.730 --> 00:47:21.330
years, so it's not that we don't have the technology anymore. We have the technology
746
00:47:21.410 --> 00:47:25.330
to look what other people are doing and sometimes we even
747
00:47:25.330 --> 00:47:29.010
see, oh, my God, look, they're doing it better than us. And then
748
00:47:29.010 --> 00:47:32.930
we're still not doing it. My favourite pet peeve example right now, because I
749
00:47:32.930 --> 00:47:36.530
moved back to Sweden, in Singapore, they have
750
00:47:36.610 --> 00:47:40.610
these automatic passport reading machines at the airport, so when you arrive,
751
00:47:40.610 --> 00:47:44.030
you just put your passport in. Actually, in Singapore they have face recognition now, so
752
00:47:44.030 --> 00:47:46.750
you don't even have to do that, you just walk straight through. But in, they
753
00:47:46.750 --> 00:47:50.350
have all these machines, you just put your passport in, Boom, down through, no queues
754
00:47:50.350 --> 00:47:54.350
at all. You have it in the UK too, Right. But we
755
00:47:54.350 --> 00:47:57.710
don't have it in Sweden. Like, how can you be in charge of passport control
756
00:47:57.710 --> 00:48:01.710
in Sweden when Singapore's had that for 15 years? UK has it for 10 years
757
00:48:01.710 --> 00:48:05.510
or something, I don't know. And Sweden doesn't still have a single airport
758
00:48:05.510 --> 00:48:08.750
with a single even test machine. And I go and
759
00:48:09.230 --> 00:48:13.110
think, it's working. It's everywhere, it's working. It's not like a dangerous new
760
00:48:13.110 --> 00:48:16.530
technique. It's working everywhere. And once I, when I fly, I go, I like to
761
00:48:16.530 --> 00:48:20.330
ask the Swedish passport control people who are still sitting there manually looking at passports,
762
00:48:20.330 --> 00:48:24.210
and I say to them, you know, they have automated this in Singapore, right? Why
763
00:48:24.210 --> 00:48:27.770
don't we have that in Sweden? And their reply is, oh, that's cute. And then
764
00:48:27.770 --> 00:48:31.129
I went home and I googled it. I said, what kind of countries have automate
765
00:48:31.130 --> 00:48:34.810
automated patch machine reading machines? Is it just like Singapore?
766
00:48:34.810 --> 00:48:37.770
Highly developed countries? No. Mongolia.
767
00:48:38.170 --> 00:48:41.410
Mongolia has it. How can Mongolia have a, a technology
768
00:48:41.970 --> 00:48:45.930
that we still haven't implemented, even as a trial in Sweden? It blows
769
00:48:45.930 --> 00:48:49.490
my mind. Is it down to the fact that when
770
00:48:49.570 --> 00:48:52.770
technology emerges, it's easy to adopt it
771
00:48:53.330 --> 00:48:57.330
in a, in a culture that doesn't have a Legacy of that. Of that thing.
772
00:48:57.410 --> 00:49:01.010
Mobile phone. Mobile phone growth grew more quickly
773
00:49:01.570 --> 00:49:05.330
in countries that didn't have a decent phone network. I remember going to
774
00:49:05.330 --> 00:49:09.330
Hungary and some. Of the eastern countries leapfrogging, and it's definitely a thing, but
775
00:49:09.330 --> 00:49:12.680
that doesn't mean, I mean, uk, you had. Every country has had manual
776
00:49:13.470 --> 00:49:17.190
ban, more passport controls. Every country has that. So in this case it's not the
777
00:49:17.190 --> 00:49:21.190
reason. The reason is that Sweden is, I don't know, so sure that what
778
00:49:21.190 --> 00:49:24.270
we're doing is the right way. We are not even curious to look what others
779
00:49:24.270 --> 00:49:27.950
are doing. I can list thing after thing after thing that someone
780
00:49:28.030 --> 00:49:31.950
is somewhere, usually China, but somewhere or Singapore, somewhere
781
00:49:31.950 --> 00:49:35.790
a country is doing something better than you are. Why don't we have also your.
782
00:49:35.790 --> 00:49:39.750
I mean, it's also true for your industry. Someone somewhere is doing something way more
783
00:49:39.750 --> 00:49:43.330
effectively than what you are doing. Why are you looking at. And just copy it,
784
00:49:43.330 --> 00:49:46.290
steal it. Does Sweden have a huge
785
00:49:46.930 --> 00:49:50.290
influx of people away? I mean, is it just down to the fact that
786
00:49:50.450 --> 00:49:54.450
Heathrow, Gatwick, for example, have tens and tens
787
00:49:54.450 --> 00:49:58.450
of thousands of people arriving at each hour And Singapore may be the same. Yeah,
788
00:49:58.450 --> 00:50:02.410
but now you're doing the very human thing of trying to find a reason for
789
00:50:02.410 --> 00:50:06.250
why Sweden shouldn't have these. I'm curious. No, no, no. Do you think Sweden has
790
00:50:06.250 --> 00:50:09.170
less people arriving than Mongolia? I don't know. I don't know.
791
00:50:10.130 --> 00:50:14.090
Sweden probably doesn't not compare with Bulgaria. That's one logical reason for why we
792
00:50:14.090 --> 00:50:17.650
haven't done it. Except this idea
793
00:50:17.890 --> 00:50:21.650
that, no, we know how to do things and we are not curious enough to
794
00:50:21.650 --> 00:50:25.610
look at. They are aware that this technology is out there, but
795
00:50:25.610 --> 00:50:29.490
they have said, nah, it's not for us. But is it a
796
00:50:29.490 --> 00:50:32.930
pain curiosity ratio? There's not enough pain
797
00:50:33.740 --> 00:50:37.380
to spark a need. No, no, no, there is pain. Don't get. No, here is
798
00:50:37.380 --> 00:50:41.060
pain. There is pain because when you arrive in Sweden, especially if It's a non
799
00:50:41.060 --> 00:50:44.860
EU country aeroplane, there is 40 minutes or
800
00:50:44.860 --> 00:50:48.540
20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes queue, because they only have four people sitting there
801
00:50:48.540 --> 00:50:52.380
and there's like 400 people landing. And if you're not from Sweden,
802
00:50:52.380 --> 00:50:56.300
you have to wait for like. There's a lot. Actually, there's a lot of complaining
803
00:50:56.300 --> 00:51:00.140
in that queue because people are annoyed that they have to wait for so long.
804
00:51:00.720 --> 00:51:04.480
And of course, the Swedish passport police could do much more meaningful work
805
00:51:04.720 --> 00:51:08.600
than manually looking at. Manually taking a passport and then putting
806
00:51:08.600 --> 00:51:12.520
that they're still putting into the machine. They're just manually doing what the
807
00:51:12.520 --> 00:51:16.239
machine does actually not even what the machine does. They're doing what people are doing.
808
00:51:16.239 --> 00:51:20.120
In England, they're doing the job of putting it into machine because you're looking. In
809
00:51:20.120 --> 00:51:23.920
the camera anyway. They're doing like this. Yes, it's the same thing. They're not doing
810
00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:27.880
any meaningful work. There is no reason for why it is like
811
00:51:27.880 --> 00:51:31.740
this, except in people's inabilities to change. That's
812
00:51:31.740 --> 00:51:35.700
all it is. But imagine if they did. I'm a big fan of the author
813
00:51:35.780 --> 00:51:39.420
Rutger Bregman and he would term that as a bullshit job. It's a job that
814
00:51:39.420 --> 00:51:43.420
has no value. Yeah, exactly. And it's also. Yeah, exactly. But it's also
815
00:51:43.420 --> 00:51:47.380
a bullshit service, as in that job is actually. It's not
816
00:51:47.380 --> 00:51:51.140
only a bullshit job, the job itself is slowing people down. That
817
00:51:51.140 --> 00:51:55.140
doesn't need to be slowed down. In Singapore you wait for two minutes. In Sweden
818
00:51:55.300 --> 00:51:58.790
you wait for 30 or four minutes. So it's less than a bullshit job.
819
00:51:59.030 --> 00:52:02.950
It is meaningless and it ruins other people's lives. Probably.
820
00:52:03.830 --> 00:52:07.670
The automation is probably less prone to error. You're going to be able to
821
00:52:07.670 --> 00:52:11.350
spot patterns easier. You're going to. And also you can then resource
822
00:52:11.670 --> 00:52:15.670
the problem solving to less
823
00:52:15.670 --> 00:52:19.630
trained or different trained people. So you'd have an IT person or a
824
00:52:19.630 --> 00:52:23.590
machine support person rather than a border guard. So it's a different skill set as
825
00:52:23.590 --> 00:52:26.470
well, isn't it? Exactly. Or you can still have those four people, but now they
826
00:52:26.470 --> 00:52:30.330
can look at. At people arriving and look for suspicious people, which they can't do
827
00:52:30.330 --> 00:52:33.770
now because they're looking down on passports. And in Sweden it's even more annoying because
828
00:52:33.770 --> 00:52:37.650
they have four people working checking airport, but then they have three people managing
829
00:52:37.650 --> 00:52:41.650
the queue. So you're paying the salary of seven people. These three seven people
830
00:52:42.210 --> 00:52:46.210
managing the queue are only here because you're so inefficient. You could save
831
00:52:46.210 --> 00:52:50.170
seven jobs, not four jobs. People who could do other things. I
832
00:52:50.170 --> 00:52:54.130
would have thought the EU would have insisted that these machines are coming in, aren't
833
00:52:54.130 --> 00:52:57.880
they? As is that not the case? I don't think EU is known for speed.
834
00:52:58.280 --> 00:53:02.200
No, no, it's not. But you'd like to think with all these new border restrictions
835
00:53:02.200 --> 00:53:06.200
and this, these new processes coming in. But you'd like to
836
00:53:06.200 --> 00:53:10.040
think that. But the lesson is not passport machines in Sweden, the lesson is
837
00:53:10.040 --> 00:53:13.920
what thing are you doing that you shouldn't be doing? Because someone else somewhere
838
00:53:13.920 --> 00:53:16.280
has invented a better way of doing it and all you have to do is
839
00:53:16.280 --> 00:53:19.440
go and look for it. And you would save time, energy, money, whatever you would
840
00:53:19.440 --> 00:53:23.290
save. It's really interesting. What you're talking about here is in the
841
00:53:23.290 --> 00:53:27.170
UK we often cite Scandinavian countries as
842
00:53:27.170 --> 00:53:31.130
having your shit together because you do things much better than we do
843
00:53:31.130 --> 00:53:34.210
much this. And we should be taking more examples from Sweden. And now you're saying
844
00:53:34.210 --> 00:53:38.090
actually Swedish systems are stuck in the
845
00:53:38.090 --> 00:53:41.450
dark ages. They're not moving forward. And we're seeing those ideals. Some things we do
846
00:53:41.450 --> 00:53:45.450
is great and some things that the UK does is great. Something Mongolia
847
00:53:45.450 --> 00:53:48.690
does and great. Something that Singapore has done is great. So the whole idea, that's
848
00:53:48.690 --> 00:53:52.670
the Heimsker again. The idea of going out and looking what other people are doing
849
00:53:52.670 --> 00:53:56.550
and feeling that is a very, very, very valuable thing. And if you don't
850
00:53:56.550 --> 00:54:00.430
do that, you're stupid to say it properly.
851
00:54:00.910 --> 00:54:04.750
That's a great way to end the, the conversation. If you, if you're not out
852
00:54:04.750 --> 00:54:08.750
there expanding your mindset using the Icelandic definition, you're stupid. You're.
853
00:54:08.750 --> 00:54:12.590
You're not taking advantage of, you're living in your, your one degree of separation.
854
00:54:12.590 --> 00:54:16.110
You're not, you're not moving out. Or if you want to be nicer, a nice
855
00:54:16.110 --> 00:54:18.630
way of saying it is you're not as smart as you could be.
856
00:54:19.820 --> 00:54:23.820
Yeah, yeah. You're not, you're not crowdsourcing opportunities and ideas
857
00:54:23.820 --> 00:54:27.580
and then bringing them back and going. This could work for us as well. Yeah,
858
00:54:27.580 --> 00:54:31.460
I agree completely. Frederick. It's been fascinating. How can people get
859
00:54:31.460 --> 00:54:35.220
hold of you? I usually say just Google the Creativity Explorer.
860
00:54:35.220 --> 00:54:39.060
Hopefully I come up or my name. That's the best
861
00:54:39.060 --> 00:54:39.420
way.
862
00:54:43.500 --> 00:54:47.200
LinkedIn is a good place. Sorry? LinkedIn is a very good place.
863
00:54:47.280 --> 00:54:51.040
I'm quite active on LinkedIn. So just Google my name there. And then I share
864
00:54:51.040 --> 00:54:54.920
insights around the world about what I've learned about creativity which if it's
865
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okay, I'll also share that I just. Because we've been talking a lot about being
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open minded to new ideas. Right. So the book that just came
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out is called the World of Creativity. The subtitle is a journey across
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37 countries to discover the secrets of creative minds. And the
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whole idea of this book is to show how people around the world
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approach creativity differently. So it's the same thing. Now imagine if you
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were open minded and curious about how other people approach creativity
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and now you have more tools to approach your own creativity.
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So that's the main lesson of that book. Excellent. So
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Frederic is F R E D R I K and
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Haren H A R E N. So if people are googling you looking that up
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and it's the World of creativity with Frederick Haron. They can find
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you on Facebook as well. Fantastic. Frederick, it's been
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amazing. Thank you so much. Hey, wonderful. Thank you.
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As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express
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my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
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your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
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Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to
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00:56:05.140 --> 00:56:08.750
Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing
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00:56:08.750 --> 00:56:12.750
community driving real change. Share this journey with friends,
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00:56:12.830 --> 00:56:16.830
family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter.
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Got thoughts, storeys or a vision to share? I'm all
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ears. Reach out to
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00:56:23.110 --> 00:56:26.670
joe.lockwood@cchangehappen.co.uk
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and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this
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is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with
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more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and
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unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one
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episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.