1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:01,760 Most people don't know about bottlenecks. 2 00:00:01,880 --> 00:00:03,640 They do know about queues though. 3 00:00:03,880 --> 00:00:07,560 You see a queue of people lined up at a cinema waiting to get 4 00:00:07,560 --> 00:00:09,640 their popcorn. You know that there's something 5 00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:11,840 slowing it down. If the queue is growing, you 6 00:00:11,840 --> 00:00:14,440 know it's costing you money. If you're not cognizant of 7 00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:17,640 bottlenecks, there is an unbelievable amount of wasted 8 00:00:17,640 --> 00:00:20,760 effort, in some cases actually not even pushing the needle 9 00:00:20,840 --> 00:00:24,000 ineffectually, but pushing it in completely the wrong direction. 10 00:00:30,120 --> 00:00:32,320 We talked about the the bottleneck theory. 11 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:35,360 We're just talking about contrarian thinking unlocking 12 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:39,240 like unlocking complicated problems have been in a very 13 00:00:39,240 --> 00:00:42,000 simply. And then he mentioned your 14 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,120 theory or your, your, your book and the conversations you've 15 00:00:45,120 --> 00:00:46,600 been having around the bottleneck theory. 16 00:00:46,600 --> 00:00:50,600 And we're like, actually, we should make other people Privy 17 00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:53,800 to this conversation even more. So we should make sure that we 18 00:00:53,800 --> 00:00:56,320 get clock involved in one of these conversations as well. 19 00:00:56,760 --> 00:00:58,720 And then that got really, really exciting. 20 00:00:58,720 --> 00:01:02,600 And then so that's why this is a monumental moment and milestone 21 00:01:02,600 --> 00:01:06,720 for the Bottleneck podcast. But before we go and dive into 22 00:01:06,720 --> 00:01:09,680 the conversation, for those that are not familiar with your work, 23 00:01:09,680 --> 00:01:12,840 it'll be great for you, for you to give us a bit of a an insight 24 00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:18,360 into Clark, but then also Bottleneck from your 25 00:01:18,360 --> 00:01:20,440 perspective. Absolutely. 26 00:01:20,440 --> 00:01:23,360 I'm, I'm you've actually written the book called The Bottleneck 27 00:01:23,360 --> 00:01:27,560 Detective and it's subtitled by the way, the fast, no fluff turn 28 00:01:27,560 --> 00:01:32,680 around guide for struggling small businesses and a lot of 29 00:01:32,680 --> 00:01:35,360 your works obviously influenced by Eli Goldratt and the theory 30 00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:38,920 of constraints. When I first met Alfred, it was 31 00:01:39,320 --> 00:01:43,560 in the context of, I think you had on your, on your lanyard, 32 00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:48,280 the butterfly effects. And those, those are two things 33 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:50,240 that absolutely fascinate me. And of course they're often one 34 00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:53,080 and the same thing. A butterfly effect is actually 35 00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:55,440 achieved because there's a bottle back. 36 00:01:55,920 --> 00:02:00,560 So in other words, this is where a tiny intervention, sometimes 37 00:02:00,560 --> 00:02:03,360 psychological, sometimes mechanical, sometimes 38 00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:07,320 organizational, can just have absolutely disproportionate 39 00:02:07,320 --> 00:02:10,720 effects because you're actually kind of surgically, it's kind of 40 00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:13,600 the sort of, I guess, the corporate equivalent of keyhole 41 00:02:13,600 --> 00:02:16,040 surgery. You're absolutely surgically 42 00:02:16,040 --> 00:02:20,560 intervening in the place where change really matters rather 43 00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:25,360 than in the 50 other seemingly attractive and sensible places 44 00:02:25,480 --> 00:02:28,480 where change doesn't actually make any difference because the 45 00:02:28,480 --> 00:02:34,320 bottleneck's somewhere else. But by the way, one other thing 46 00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:36,920 I need to tee up is you've also written a book about Winston 47 00:02:36,920 --> 00:02:42,920 Churchill's ingenious problem solving skills, because that's 48 00:02:42,920 --> 00:02:44,320 something that's always occurred to me. 49 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:47,680 There are quite a few occasions where clearly in the same way 50 00:02:47,680 --> 00:02:52,320 that Warren Buffett and for example, well, I mean Elon, but 51 00:02:52,320 --> 00:02:57,560 also emphatically Jeff Bezos, part of the reason for their 52 00:02:57,560 --> 00:03:01,120 success is a really unusual approach to decision making. 53 00:03:01,600 --> 00:03:04,200 I think that's also massively true of Churchill, by the way. 54 00:03:04,320 --> 00:03:06,120 By the way, sometimes it was a bit silly. 55 00:03:06,480 --> 00:03:08,800 I mean, I'm doubtedly the people around Churchill had to spend 56 00:03:08,800 --> 00:03:10,440 quite a lot of time reining him in. 57 00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:14,360 But nonetheless, if he hadn't been there, things might have 58 00:03:14,360 --> 00:03:17,400 been very different. Yeah, fire away on the 59 00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:19,680 bottlenecks because we love this, right? 60 00:03:20,120 --> 00:03:22,840 OK, so I'm going to do a Rory and I'm going to start talking 61 00:03:22,840 --> 00:03:28,240 and you guys stop me. Stop me when you want to have a 62 00:03:28,240 --> 00:03:31,640 little interruption. OK, So, hey, look, it is 63 00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:34,840 absolutely delightful to be talking to both of you. 64 00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:39,480 I, I must admit, I, even though you're world famous on LinkedIn 65 00:03:39,920 --> 00:03:45,000 elf, I, I, I only came across you just just in the last couple 66 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:48,840 of weeks, obviously, but I, I've just done your course, the one 67 00:03:48,840 --> 00:03:52,800 unteachable, the public. What is it? 68 00:03:53,680 --> 00:03:57,280 Branding, personal branding and, and, and it's lovely, lovely, 69 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:00,280 really, really cool. I, I feel like I actually got a 70 00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:02,320 sense of who you are now. So yeah, that that was really 71 00:04:02,320 --> 00:04:04,240 neat. And, and if it, and now I'm 72 00:04:04,240 --> 00:04:06,360 just, I'm not going to get to the real bottlenecks, but one of 73 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:09,800 the bottlenecks in my life is always been that I've had an 74 00:04:09,800 --> 00:04:12,720 engineer's brain. And it's not until I got into 75 00:04:12,720 --> 00:04:17,480 my, I guess, late 40s that I understood finally the need to, 76 00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:20,800 to think about brand and perception and all that kind of 77 00:04:20,800 --> 00:04:22,520 stuff. And a lot of that's do to do 78 00:04:22,520 --> 00:04:24,920 with to do with Rory's influence. 79 00:04:25,120 --> 00:04:33,240 So I actually, I have two heroes in, in the world, in the 80 00:04:33,240 --> 00:04:35,000 professional world. And one of them is Ellie 81 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:38,760 Goldratt. And he was the creator of the 82 00:04:38,760 --> 00:04:43,160 theory of constraints, which has got this like the most boring, 83 00:04:43,160 --> 00:04:47,880 boring, boring name on Earth. It's like theory and of and 84 00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:49,840 constraints. It doesn't tell you what it is. 85 00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:54,440 But if if you just look where it came from, it started with him 86 00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:59,000 studying physics years ago. The the flow of fluid from a 87 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:01,440 physics point of view. He he got the idea of 88 00:05:02,400 --> 00:05:05,520 bottlenecks. And then he went off and visited 89 00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:10,720 his uncle who ran AI think it was a fun and they made poultry 90 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:14,560 cages or something like that. And he looked there and he 91 00:05:14,560 --> 00:05:17,360 realised that the that the place was not performing so well. 92 00:05:18,040 --> 00:05:22,680 So he went in and he'd found the bottleneck, which in this place 93 00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:23,720 had been running for a long time. 94 00:05:23,720 --> 00:05:27,960 He found this little bottleneck and he went in and he hired, he 95 00:05:27,960 --> 00:05:29,840 convinced his uncle to hire someone to put it in the 96 00:05:29,840 --> 00:05:32,480 bottleneck spot. And suddenly production just 97 00:05:32,720 --> 00:05:37,280 zoomed through the roof. Unfortunately, they actually 98 00:05:37,280 --> 00:05:38,840 made far more than they could sell. 99 00:05:39,080 --> 00:05:43,320 They used all of their cash, and within a few months, his uncle 100 00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:46,360 was bankrupt. But Ellie never told that story. 101 00:05:46,440 --> 00:05:49,440 In a sense, what he'd done is he discovered a new bottle back 102 00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:53,160 now, which was sales. With sales, sales. 103 00:05:53,160 --> 00:05:55,640 Exactly. So the bottle back was actually 104 00:05:55,640 --> 00:05:59,240 downstream of production, not upstream production. 105 00:05:59,600 --> 00:06:01,120 Fantastic. Yeah. 106 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:04,080 And, and, and that's actually when he turned his mind to 107 00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:09,320 looking at bigger things. Well, he obviously went and came 108 00:06:09,320 --> 00:06:12,760 up with some fancy algorithm that he sold to all of the 1970s 109 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:15,920 eighties manufacturers that was based on the idea of 110 00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:19,080 bottlenecks. But he also added a lot of work 111 00:06:19,080 --> 00:06:23,920 around accounting and accounting for for making money, not 112 00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:26,480 accounting for counting up stuff and paying you tax. 113 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:27,840 And there's an enormous difference. 114 00:06:28,200 --> 00:06:34,720 So he, he, he, I, I discovered his book, The Goal in 1996, I 115 00:06:34,720 --> 00:06:39,320 think it was. And then just Fast forward to, 116 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:40,920 to now. And that's what I've been 117 00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:44,720 basically doing since then. Is it I, I do it quite different 118 00:06:44,720 --> 00:06:47,080 to what Ellie did. Ellie worked with factories. 119 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:52,920 I work with knowledge workers and I, I, I work with managers 120 00:06:52,920 --> 00:06:55,160 nowadays, but I used to work with software development teams 121 00:06:55,280 --> 00:06:57,560 and now I work with the, the, the, the leaders and the 122 00:06:57,560 --> 00:07:01,960 managers of those teams. And it's, it's almost exactly 123 00:07:01,960 --> 00:07:04,560 the same and totally different when you're working with people, 124 00:07:06,200 --> 00:07:11,160 machines don't have opinions, machines don't play politics, 125 00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:13,880 people do. Machines don't have trust issues 126 00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:17,640 and, and confidence issues and, and so on and so on. 127 00:07:17,640 --> 00:07:19,960 So it's a really, really interesting world. 128 00:07:21,520 --> 00:07:25,160 We, I'll, I'll, I'll give you a lovely example of this, which is 129 00:07:25,560 --> 00:07:29,640 both psychological and by the way, people in marketing could 130 00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:33,000 benefit an awful lot from talking to people in, you know, 131 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:36,240 experts in manufacturing or supply chain or whatever it may 132 00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:40,920 be and vice versa. Because we probably don't 133 00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:44,480 consider the systemic elements of a problem enough and they 134 00:07:44,480 --> 00:07:46,440 don't consider the psychological elements. 135 00:07:46,440 --> 00:07:47,760 I'll give you a lovely example, by the way. 136 00:07:49,160 --> 00:07:52,680 London City Airport, which any Londoner will know, is just a 137 00:07:52,680 --> 00:07:56,960 freakishly efficient airport given its small size. 138 00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:00,640 They they're run by a company called Global Infrastructure 139 00:08:00,640 --> 00:08:04,120 Partners and they brought in people not with airport 140 00:08:04,120 --> 00:08:07,360 expertise, they brought in people with kind of production 141 00:08:07,360 --> 00:08:09,120 line expertise. Right. 142 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:13,360 But it could also be psychological, of course, 143 00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:17,360 because the way to relieve a bottleneck may rely rely in how 144 00:08:17,360 --> 00:08:19,600 people think. I'll, I'll give you, I'll give 145 00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:22,320 you an interesting idea of one that is a bit of both, which 146 00:08:22,320 --> 00:08:23,480 only occurred to me the other day. 147 00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:26,840 We have a problem with the NHS, which is too many people 148 00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:30,800 requesting GPS appointments, the things that don't really require 149 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:33,880 a General practitioner, or at least don't require a General 150 00:08:33,880 --> 00:08:37,960 practitioner yet. And it suddenly occurred to me 151 00:08:38,159 --> 00:08:42,840 that, OK, there's a, a, a, a systemic component to that, 152 00:08:42,840 --> 00:08:46,280 which is if you could get people to go to the pharmacist before 153 00:08:46,280 --> 00:08:50,160 they went to the doctor, the pharmacist could head off quite 154 00:08:50,160 --> 00:08:52,520 a lot of the past. And the pharmacist, of course, 155 00:08:52,520 --> 00:08:54,440 has an interest in doing this because you might buy some 156 00:08:54,440 --> 00:08:57,240 toothpaste, a packet of aspirin at the same time, OK. 157 00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:01,400 Also, pharmacists are vastly better trained than people 158 00:09:01,400 --> 00:09:03,920 think, I think. I think people generally think 159 00:09:03,920 --> 00:09:06,760 it's a shopkeeper in a white coat, whereas in fact, they're 160 00:09:06,760 --> 00:09:09,480 extremely highly trained. And then it suddenly occurred to 161 00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:12,520 me there's another psychological solution to this, which is, 162 00:09:13,320 --> 00:09:17,200 which is both psychological and systemic, which is if you made 163 00:09:17,200 --> 00:09:20,040 it widely understood that pharmacists could get you 164 00:09:20,040 --> 00:09:25,160 priority GP appointments if necessary, people who are 165 00:09:25,160 --> 00:09:30,320 desperate to see the GP would go to the pharmacist and 50% of the 166 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:34,080 time the pharmacist would say I can prescribe antibiotics, which 167 00:09:34,080 --> 00:09:37,320 they now can in the UK. Previously they couldn't, OK, 168 00:09:37,680 --> 00:09:40,000 because pharmacists couldn't prescribe antibiotics, only 169 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:41,960 doctors could. Now they can for a certain 170 00:09:41,960 --> 00:09:46,160 number of conditions. OK, that's actually quite clever 171 00:09:46,240 --> 00:09:48,720 because people would automatically go to the doctor 172 00:09:48,720 --> 00:09:50,240 because they go. There's no point in going to the 173 00:09:50,240 --> 00:09:52,720 pharmacist because if it requires antibiotics, I'll just 174 00:09:52,720 --> 00:09:55,080 need to go to the bloody doctor, OK? 175 00:09:55,240 --> 00:09:58,080 So it's a waste of time. So I'll go straight to the 176 00:09:58,080 --> 00:10:01,520 doctor. And here we have this very all 177 00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:03,760 credit to the government person who thought of that, which is 178 00:10:03,880 --> 00:10:07,120 once you, once consumers know that a pharmacist can give you 179 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:10,960 antibiotics, even if the pharmacist says I can give you 180 00:10:10,960 --> 00:10:13,880 antibiotics but you don't need them, OK. 181 00:10:14,280 --> 00:10:16,160 That's fundamentally changed things. 182 00:10:16,280 --> 00:10:19,320 And it's a classic case, I think, which is a mix of systems 183 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:22,640 thinking in an engineering sense, in a sense of, you know, 184 00:10:22,640 --> 00:10:26,920 order of events and psychology. US totally, totally. 185 00:10:27,080 --> 00:10:32,480 And and that's the that that that in my formula, the focus 186 00:10:32,480 --> 00:10:35,280 formula I have for managing bottlenecks is curation. 187 00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:38,120 That so that that's curating. It's looking at the stuff that's 188 00:10:38,120 --> 00:10:40,840 coming in and going, hey, how can we send stuff even if it's 189 00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:43,320 less efficient? How can we send it away from 190 00:10:43,520 --> 00:10:48,200 this really, really scarce bottlenecked resource? 191 00:10:48,560 --> 00:10:52,440 By by the way, my bottleneck book is actually has made it's 192 00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:58,760 way into the the civil servant part of Downing Street, but I 193 00:10:58,760 --> 00:11:03,240 don't know how far it's gone, but so I'll, I'll claim that one 194 00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:07,240 as my, my, my victory jokingly. Yeah. 195 00:11:08,120 --> 00:11:11,080 OK, so, so that's, that's good. I like that now, now I told you 196 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:14,840 there were two people, right? And the other one is the is is, 197 00:11:14,840 --> 00:11:17,920 is one of the handsome men on the phone on the on the Zoom 198 00:11:17,920 --> 00:11:20,160 call here. So I've got 2 great influences 199 00:11:20,160 --> 00:11:26,680 in my life and Rory, genuinely your way of thinking has just 200 00:11:26,680 --> 00:11:31,720 messed with my engineering brain so much. 201 00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:35,000 It's just wonderful. And I and I, I, I'm sure that 202 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:37,360 everyone that that listened to this has probably read your 203 00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:40,760 book, but if they haven't, they should go out. 204 00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:43,760 And it's fascinating, one of one of the best reviews I got. 205 00:11:43,760 --> 00:11:45,280 Well, I haven't done any shit reviews. 206 00:11:45,280 --> 00:11:47,360 I don't want a bit. But one of the most flattering 207 00:11:47,360 --> 00:11:51,240 reviews to me personally was one in the Wall Street Journal by 208 00:11:51,240 --> 00:11:52,880 actually a software engineer. Yeah. 209 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:57,120 And his conclusion was I suddenly realized I have a 210 00:11:57,120 --> 00:12:00,280 second string to my bow. Yes, totally. 211 00:12:00,280 --> 00:12:02,080 Which I which I thought was actually the perfect way of 212 00:12:02,080 --> 00:12:03,800 putting it. I don't claim, by the way. 213 00:12:04,160 --> 00:12:08,520 And I have huge, huge reverence for actually physicists, 214 00:12:08,520 --> 00:12:12,840 engineers and everybody else because they can often see 215 00:12:12,840 --> 00:12:17,400 things that we don't completely. And actually, you know, let's be 216 00:12:17,400 --> 00:12:19,840 honest, you know, the success rate of engineering has been 217 00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:21,040 pretty good. You know, we. 218 00:12:21,880 --> 00:12:24,400 But at the same time, what I, what I, what I am always 219 00:12:24,400 --> 00:12:26,400 cognizant of is there's the second string to the bone. 220 00:12:26,560 --> 00:12:30,680 I'll tell you a lovely story about that, which was I met, 221 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:34,160 this is about 10 years ago. I'm at an Oxford high table 222 00:12:34,160 --> 00:12:37,640 sitting next to a guy who's an absolute expert in green energy. 223 00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:40,320 OK, have I started talking about? 224 00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:43,760 Are there things we can do behaviourally which help solve 225 00:12:43,760 --> 00:12:46,120 the problem? EG if you put your washing 226 00:12:46,120 --> 00:12:50,360 machine or tumble dryer on at 10:00 at night in the UK, it's 227 00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:53,440 probably sort of nuclear powered or powered by clean energy. 228 00:12:53,440 --> 00:12:55,080 Or at least the odds are fairly high. 229 00:12:55,280 --> 00:12:59,240 If you put it on at let's say 5:30 in the afternoon someone 230 00:12:59,240 --> 00:13:01,520 might need to fire up a coal-fired power station. 231 00:13:01,720 --> 00:13:06,720 OK, so simply getting people to time shift would would 232 00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:09,960 effectively help relieve an energy bottleneck, which is a 233 00:13:09,960 --> 00:13:11,840 chronological bottleneck in this case. 234 00:13:12,320 --> 00:13:14,160 Anyway. The guy who was a brilliant 235 00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:16,760 engineer looked to me as if I was nuts, OK. 236 00:13:17,040 --> 00:13:19,200 And more or less sort of turned and talked to the person next 237 00:13:19,200 --> 00:13:21,760 door. And I literally for five years I 238 00:13:21,760 --> 00:13:23,920 thought, OK, I'm clearly wrong about this. 239 00:13:23,920 --> 00:13:26,640 I'm clearly talking bollocks. Don't say it again. 240 00:13:27,000 --> 00:13:29,000 Shut up because you're making yourself look stupid. 241 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:32,720 And then of course, in the UK, we now have octopus energy. 242 00:13:33,880 --> 00:13:38,520 Greg Jackson absolutely understands that a very 243 00:13:38,520 --> 00:13:42,440 significant part of actually of, of the green transition isn't 244 00:13:42,440 --> 00:13:45,040 necessarily producing or distributing energy in different 245 00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:47,680 ways. It's getting a, not necessarily 246 00:13:47,680 --> 00:13:52,400 everybody, but a significant number of people at a bottleneck 247 00:13:52,400 --> 00:13:56,240 moment in energy demand to shift their behaviour a bit. 248 00:13:57,320 --> 00:14:00,280 And I I I finally felt a bit vindicated because I literally 249 00:14:00,280 --> 00:14:04,040 spent after this guy was so weird, you know, treating me as 250 00:14:04,040 --> 00:14:07,440 if I was basically deranged. I basically didn't mention this 251 00:14:07,440 --> 00:14:10,400 point for about another 5 or 6 years for fear of looking 252 00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:12,800 stupid. It is funny a bit fresh eyes 253 00:14:12,920 --> 00:14:15,480 that that that's the whole thing in in my bottleneck detective 254 00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:16,760 book. That's one of the recurring 255 00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:19,680 things, a little character. And you know, it's it's it's a 256 00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:23,120 very, very short book, but it's got a little character teenager 257 00:14:23,360 --> 00:14:26,840 who can see bottlenecks. We can see cues and and just 258 00:14:26,840 --> 00:14:28,920 constantly this thing. It's just like fresh eyes, 259 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:33,600 people who are inside a situation just just can't see 260 00:14:33,600 --> 00:14:35,560 their own situation. I, I know it's true for me. 261 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:39,320 I know it's true for everyone that, that, that I know. 262 00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:43,680 And you get stuck just thinking that the status quo is what 263 00:14:43,680 --> 00:14:46,280 you've got. There's a, there's a lovely, 264 00:14:46,280 --> 00:14:49,320 the, the, the expression that you have that you mentioned as 265 00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:54,440 one of the physicists mentioned about the opposite of a, a, a, a 266 00:14:54,520 --> 00:14:56,640 good idea can actually be a good idea. 267 00:14:56,880 --> 00:14:59,400 And it's like, that's not intuitive. 268 00:14:59,400 --> 00:15:02,600 But then if you talk to a scientific or mathematic person, 269 00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:06,880 you ask them what sqrt 49 is and then they go 7 and then they go, 270 00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:12,840 oh, no, no, no, it's also a -7. So the opposite of the right 271 00:15:12,840 --> 00:15:15,240 answer is actually also the right answer. 272 00:15:15,760 --> 00:15:18,840 I, I, I only, I honestly think that there's all these things 273 00:15:18,840 --> 00:15:23,640 that are as clever people learn, but there's nothing like getting 274 00:15:23,640 --> 00:15:27,000 someone with fresh ice to come and just look, aim, just, I 275 00:15:27,000 --> 00:15:28,720 don't know what. WTF. 276 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:32,400 Yeah, yeah. Going back to both of your 277 00:15:32,400 --> 00:15:35,840 points, I often talk about the art and science of things, 278 00:15:35,880 --> 00:15:38,320 right? A lot of the times, especially 279 00:15:38,320 --> 00:15:42,160 in modern day society, people see those as like not enemies or 280 00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:44,880 two different spectrums. But really, when you fuse the 281 00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:47,520 two, you realize that you're more alike than you think. 282 00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:52,680 And if you actually almost like act more like a Venn diagram and 283 00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:57,120 solve problems together, obviously blue sky thinking out 284 00:15:57,120 --> 00:16:02,000 the box, thinking with data and also almost like a logic to back 285 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:03,720 that up. That's usually the winning 286 00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:06,080 combination. That's the reason why often than 287 00:16:06,080 --> 00:16:11,240 not, winning start-ups or or founding duos often more 288 00:16:11,240 --> 00:16:15,040 successful than those that are only a singular right. 289 00:16:15,600 --> 00:16:18,160 Yeah, it's 1 + 1 = 3, isn't it so often? 290 00:16:18,840 --> 00:16:20,800 Yeah. I want to ask you a question 291 00:16:20,800 --> 00:16:23,400 because I think, you know, I've had the same experience. 292 00:16:23,720 --> 00:16:31,000 You, you I if I read correctly, you did your your dissertation. 293 00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:33,480 Yeah. And that changed your life 294 00:16:33,480 --> 00:16:34,760 because you went on and made it real. 295 00:16:35,160 --> 00:16:38,160 Yeah. And yet, am I right that when 296 00:16:38,160 --> 00:16:40,960 you did your dissertation, you were almost laughed at? 297 00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:45,880 Oh, yeah. So, so just a bit of background. 298 00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:49,720 So I was obviously born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 299 00:16:50,160 --> 00:16:54,520 moved to the UK when I was 14, my dad growing up as a doctor. 300 00:16:54,520 --> 00:16:58,680 And that was my life's ambition. If anything, when you grow up 301 00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:02,080 being African, that's almost like the only answer. 302 00:17:02,080 --> 00:17:04,160 You're either a doctor, engineer or a lawyer, right? 303 00:17:04,160 --> 00:17:07,560 And I had a doctor in my family. So it was almost like written in 304 00:17:07,560 --> 00:17:10,839 stone. And then I realized that I was 305 00:17:10,839 --> 00:17:13,000 shit at science, right? So I had to figure something 306 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:16,079 else out. And I never use a computer, 307 00:17:16,400 --> 00:17:19,560 never used. Actually, the iPhone was 308 00:17:19,560 --> 00:17:23,520 launching and Steve Jobs was doing the iPhone keynote. 309 00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:25,680 And that made me fall in love with storytelling. 310 00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:30,040 And then obviously I've never seen a business person like that 311 00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:31,360 before. I've never seen a business 312 00:17:31,360 --> 00:17:34,840 person not wearing a suit speaking in very like simple 313 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:39,360 languages, explaining and talking about technology and and 314 00:17:39,360 --> 00:17:43,080 intelligence that my simple brain couldn't comprehend. 315 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:45,200 But then he was able to do it in through storytelling. 316 00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:48,960 So marketing got me to fall in love with this space by Steve 317 00:17:48,960 --> 00:17:52,920 Jobs. Then Mark Zuckerberg's saying no 318 00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:55,960 to a billion dollars from Yahoo and building a tool that me and 319 00:17:55,960 --> 00:17:59,600 my friends were utilizing back home coming to fall in love with 320 00:17:59,600 --> 00:18:00,920 the social media marketing thing. 321 00:18:00,920 --> 00:18:04,040 But I decided to write about it because I felt that actually, if 322 00:18:04,040 --> 00:18:06,320 you think about marketing and and what we were learning at the 323 00:18:06,320 --> 00:18:08,520 time was all about product place, price promotion. 324 00:18:08,520 --> 00:18:11,840 So the four PS right. But when you realize that place 325 00:18:11,840 --> 00:18:14,840 doesn't necessarily need to be a physical space, it's where 326 00:18:15,440 --> 00:18:19,000 attention, where your mind is as well, it is just perfectly 327 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:21,960 logical to me that actually place could be where we live 328 00:18:21,960 --> 00:18:25,120 online, right? And if anybody can capitalize on 329 00:18:25,120 --> 00:18:30,760 that very underpriced resource, right, of attention, if it just 330 00:18:30,760 --> 00:18:33,680 made a lot of sense to me. And I just felt that small to 331 00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:36,600 medium sized businesses were going to move faster, innovate 332 00:18:36,600 --> 00:18:39,160 quicker, and we're actually going to dethrone the larger 333 00:18:39,160 --> 00:18:41,720 competitors. And my lecturer basically marked 334 00:18:41,720 --> 00:18:44,560 me down for being in cuckoo land and the fact there was a lack of 335 00:18:44,560 --> 00:18:47,320 Harvard reference. So then I decided to become that 336 00:18:47,320 --> 00:18:48,800 reference, right? So might not. 337 00:18:48,800 --> 00:18:51,480 Make it real, yeah. Exactly, exactly. 338 00:18:51,480 --> 00:18:52,880 Why not? Why not make it real? 339 00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:55,800 But going back to the whole concept of bottlenecking and, 340 00:18:55,800 --> 00:19:00,040 and I think that Rory touched on, on Elon, for example, 341 00:19:00,360 --> 00:19:02,480 basically all it is. I've got to go back on that a 342 00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:04,840 bit. You're literally marked down. 343 00:19:04,840 --> 00:19:07,320 Were you? Because effectively what you've 344 00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:10,840 done is you've come to something with a new angle and therefore 345 00:19:10,840 --> 00:19:13,960 it was treated as illegitimate. 100%. 346 00:19:14,720 --> 00:19:17,640 I mean, this is exactly. The same, I'd exactly the same. 347 00:19:17,640 --> 00:19:22,120 I'm sorry, I'd have to talk to you, but with my dissertation, I 348 00:19:22,120 --> 00:19:28,040 did it for a large life company in Scotland that no longer 349 00:19:28,040 --> 00:19:31,520 exists. I came and did my dissertation, 350 00:19:31,520 --> 00:19:37,320 went through it was a theory of constraints, analysis of big 351 00:19:37,320 --> 00:19:41,080 software projects. I came up with what eventually 352 00:19:41,080 --> 00:19:47,560 became my book that my business novel Rolling Rocks downhill and 353 00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:50,800 when I showed it to the internal people did this was my naivety. 354 00:19:51,080 --> 00:19:52,960 I think you you've had exactly the same thing. 355 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:57,640 The people that I worked with, the senior manager who I was my 356 00:19:57,640 --> 00:20:00,720 sponsor for this said picked it up when I after she'd read it 357 00:20:00,720 --> 00:20:06,600 and she said, don't worry Clark, I won't tell anyone who was just 358 00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:10,880 like and you know, went on and I, I swear I've sold 20,000 359 00:20:10,880 --> 00:20:14,200 copies of that book. It's been read and it's spread 360 00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:17,160 all around, but at the idea new new ideas. 361 00:20:18,040 --> 00:20:21,640 New ideas are easy to have, but good new ideas are hard to to 362 00:20:21,680 --> 00:20:24,200 actually bring to life. Like like your five year gap 363 00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:27,360 there with the the the coal powered stations. 364 00:20:27,360 --> 00:20:29,120 Rory. But then what you were just 365 00:20:29,120 --> 00:20:33,400 saying there, Clark about like even like rolling rocks down a 366 00:20:33,400 --> 00:20:37,760 hill that feels it's almost like almost like like a relief, 367 00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:39,840 because that's what everybody wants, right? 368 00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:44,640 You don't want ideas or concepts to be to be held back. 369 00:20:44,640 --> 00:20:46,880 You want it to be in free flow, right. 370 00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:51,400 And actually the the transition from stagnation to flywheel is 371 00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:54,480 effectively what butterfly effect and bottlenecking is all 372 00:20:54,480 --> 00:20:56,760 about, right? It's it's how do you make those 373 00:20:56,760 --> 00:20:59,240 unlocks that get you into flywheel? 374 00:20:59,240 --> 00:21:03,200 And often the knob people try to treat the almost like the 375 00:21:03,320 --> 00:21:07,960 outputs of an of of a of a of, of something that's almost like 376 00:21:08,000 --> 00:21:11,280 pausing momentum as opposed to actually getting into the weeds 377 00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:14,480 of what's the actual inputs. That that I find this question 378 00:21:14,480 --> 00:21:18,600 so important because so often. Are you familiar with Daniella 379 00:21:18,600 --> 00:21:21,440 Meadows? But I. 380 00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:24,800 Know. That the famous one is 12 points 381 00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:28,960 to intervene in the system. And it's a kind of, you know, 382 00:21:28,960 --> 00:21:32,360 it's occasionally treated as kind of, you know, the 10 383 00:21:32,360 --> 00:21:35,080 commandments of complexity thinking. 384 00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:39,400 And what's interesting is her top points are psychological. 385 00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:44,400 The biggest one is reframing what people think the system is 386 00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:48,480 for totally. So so and actually, sorry, 387 00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:52,560 actually if there's one big more than that, it's transcending 388 00:21:52,560 --> 00:21:55,880 paradigms. And then number one is the power 389 00:21:55,880 --> 00:22:01,400 to transcend paradigms, right? And the example would be if you 390 00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:04,680 think of a lake as merely a source of water for a factory, 391 00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:08,200 you will behave very differently to if you think of a lake as a 392 00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:11,640 local amenity and haven for wildlife. 393 00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:15,280 For example, Very interestingly in business, what I only 394 00:22:15,280 --> 00:22:20,040 realized recently in business was that if you go back to 395 00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:23,000 people like Herbert Simon, the shareholder value, profit 396 00:22:23,040 --> 00:22:27,760 obsessed motive is completely alien to Herbert Simon, who's 397 00:22:27,760 --> 00:22:30,040 one of the best business thinkers of the last century. 398 00:22:30,360 --> 00:22:33,520 His view by the way, was that profit was merely A constraint, 399 00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:37,080 which is that a business needed to make a profit in order to 400 00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:40,320 survive and gain investment and justify its existence. 401 00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:45,080 But the purpose of a business was to explore adjacent 402 00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,600 opportunities. So his purpose of a business, 403 00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:54,040 what the business was actually for, was effectively it was a 404 00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:59,320 discovery mechanism for new sources of value, and profit was 405 00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:02,120 merely one of the constraints on its ability to do so. 406 00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:05,960 He acknowledged that businesses needed to make a profit, but the 407 00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:09,840 idea that profit should be the primary target was completely 408 00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:11,560 alien to him. And the shareholder value 409 00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:15,640 movement is unfortunately, I think in business, fundamentally 410 00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:20,280 a massive mental constraint. And it's because it's it's such 411 00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:24,200 a dominant paradigm that it leaves people incapable of 412 00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:25,840 actually looking at things differently. 413 00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:29,760 And and it just, it turns a lot of people's stomachs. 414 00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:33,120 They're actually working the organizations and, you know, the 415 00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:36,720 discretionary effort is often, you know, not there. 416 00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:38,880 They find disgust if it's gone to extreme. 417 00:23:38,880 --> 00:23:41,520 But it's an interesting thing about it, which is you can bonus 418 00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:46,040 the people at the very top enough money so they 419 00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:49,240 fundamentally buy into shareholder value maximization 420 00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:51,760 or profit maximization. Yes. 421 00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:54,880 But the majority of the workforce, unless you're so 422 00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,720 successful a business that you can actually offer, you know, 423 00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:01,560 massive options to everybody. What it creates is a massive 424 00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:04,600 misalignment between senior management to a focus on one 425 00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:06,400 thing. Most people who work in an 426 00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,360 advertising agency do not or a hospital or anywhere else do not 427 00:24:10,360 --> 00:24:14,240 get up in the morning going, how can I actually, you know, how 428 00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:17,800 can I actually maximize? I mean, I don't know who WPP 429 00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:20,600 shell designed something that you know, the state of Wisconsin 430 00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:23,800 DMV pension fund. Well, you know, I'm they're 431 00:24:23,920 --> 00:24:27,160 animus towards those people, but I can't really say that their 432 00:24:27,160 --> 00:24:30,360 retirement well-being is what makes me get up in the morning. 433 00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:33,160 And so you create this fundamental disconnect between 434 00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:35,800 people that I would argue if you're a customer focused 435 00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:39,920 organization that can pretty much align everybody, you know, 436 00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:46,240 there is a fundamental human urge to do well by your fellow 437 00:24:46,240 --> 00:24:48,760 man. OK, There is not a fundamental 438 00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:50,280 here. There is a fundamental human 439 00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:51,720 urge to make money. I'm not disputing that. 440 00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:54,200 There isn't really a fundamental human urge to enrich other 441 00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:56,120 people. That's ridiculous. 442 00:24:56,480 --> 00:25:00,440 OK, You know, I want to make rich people I've never met and 443 00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:02,600 who will never thank me. No, I don't think so. 444 00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:05,520 If. You think about the the money 445 00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,640 side of things for, for for me when I was growing up, it was 446 00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:11,240 money was not a necessarily a good thing. 447 00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:14,400 Not having it was something we were actually quite proud of. 448 00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:19,080 But so I've I've had to wrestle a lot because the the bottleneck 449 00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:22,120 stuff when you look at it. Is that particularly a sort of 450 00:25:22,120 --> 00:25:25,200 New Zealand troll? Poppyish thing, I think it is, 451 00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:29,640 yeah, yeah, it, it's definitely that, you know, it's, it's very, 452 00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:31,960 very, very common. I think Australia has the same 453 00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:35,920 kind of thing the Irish did. I lived in Ireland for a long 454 00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:37,280 time. Something you say that the 455 00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:40,600 Irish, it's a Celtic thing, not an more than an Anglo-Saxon 456 00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:42,800 thing. So countries like Canada, New 457 00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:47,040 Zealand, which are sort of Welsh, Scottish, Irish tend to 458 00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:51,680 have lower power distance, they're less hierarchical. 459 00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,920 I mean, funny enough, being Welsh, my favorite airline is 460 00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:56,640 Qantas. I've never been on Air New 461 00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:58,040 Zealand. I'm sure it's magnificent and 462 00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:02,840 it'd be even better, right? OK, But the reason is that I 463 00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:06,440 like the I like, I don't like those airlines where people 464 00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:10,680 grovel to you, OK And Crumptus achieves this thing where 465 00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,800 obviously the person's there to bring you coffee, but they're 466 00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:17,040 kind of your mate, you know, there isn't a power relationship 467 00:26:17,040 --> 00:26:20,120 between you at all. And I think I I think that 468 00:26:20,120 --> 00:26:21,560 you're absolutely right. I think I think it is. 469 00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,680 It's an Irish and New Zealand, possibly a Welsh thing actually, 470 00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:30,800 what with all the sheep, but but there's something there which I 471 00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:32,840 think is is actually culturally significant. 472 00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,240 And for me it was quite a struggle because as I was all my 473 00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:42,640 work at the end of the day, it makes more people more money. 474 00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,880 If you debottleneck you, you can make more, you can sell more. 475 00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:48,440 And. And at the end of the day, it's 476 00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:51,400 a lovely engineering problem to figure out how do we make more 477 00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:54,040 money? So I had to try and square that 478 00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:56,360 away in my head that didn't want to chase that. 479 00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,560 And, and and it all clicked when I realised that next year's 480 00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:03,080 culture is often determined by this year's products, the 481 00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:05,400 profits. Yeah. 482 00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:08,280 What you make this year, if you have a good year this year, next 483 00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:09,680 year is going to be a nicer place to work. 484 00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,840 Your workplace will be nicer, nicer if it's been a bad year, 485 00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:16,640 there won't be bonuses. You may not be recruiting for 486 00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:19,440 the people that you need and this scarcity mindsets going to 487 00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:22,640 come in so that that was a thing where I had to I I I've now gone 488 00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:25,360 in my head. I want to create a better 489 00:27:25,360 --> 00:27:28,920 workplace bottleneck. Stuff creates a lot of that. 490 00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:32,360 It also creates money as a side effect, which then feeds back 491 00:27:32,360 --> 00:27:35,520 into the organization that creates next year's culture. 492 00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:37,200 But that's just my personal opinion. 493 00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,960 That's me messing with words so I feel comfortable with helping 494 00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:42,440 people make money. You'll be. 495 00:27:42,440 --> 00:27:45,400 Interested in the book called Abundance by Ezra Klein? 496 00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:48,720 You've just got it. Have a fantastic timing. 497 00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:53,120 And one of the things I think is that economics has given 498 00:27:53,120 --> 00:27:56,680 government and politics a scarcity mindset. 499 00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:01,440 You know, we're an advertising agency run by a holding company. 500 00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:04,320 And I always say you can't run an abundance business on a 501 00:28:04,320 --> 00:28:06,920 scarcity mindset. It simply doesn't work. 502 00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,280 And the first thing that happens with a scarcity mindset, of 503 00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,360 course, is absolutely crushing short termism. 504 00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:17,320 And the the most short term of all short term things is usually 505 00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:21,160 cost cutting because it's the one which makes most sense and 506 00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,600 has the most immediate effect. And I would argue that a large 507 00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:29,480 part of the failure of Western Europe to grow economically is, 508 00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:34,200 is, is mindset really, it's this endless scarcity mindset that, 509 00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:36,400 you know, the, the disproportionate power of the 510 00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:38,760 financial function within organizations. 511 00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:42,560 You know, So in government, I was talking to Matt Ridley at 512 00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:44,720 not Matt Ridley. I'm sorry, I was talking to 513 00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,280 Michael I. Love Matt Ridley. 514 00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:48,800 He's. I'm meeting him actually in 515 00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:51,560 October. So I'll pass on I'll, I'll put 516 00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:52,640 it. I'll put him in touch with your 517 00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:54,080 work. Yeah. 518 00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,880 And I talked to Michael Gove who was a Cabinet minister, and he 519 00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:02,520 said effectively in government the Treasury has right of veto 520 00:29:02,520 --> 00:29:08,600 over anything and they demand absurd standards of proof and 521 00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,920 certainty before you can try anything, OK. 522 00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:18,880 And consequently, effectively, they also effectively look at 523 00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:20,920 things from a cost saving point of view, not from an 524 00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,960 opportunistic point of view. And so if you combine the two 525 00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:27,040 things with a ridiculously high burden of proof, which is 526 00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:29,160 impossible if you're doing anything new, because there's no 527 00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:33,800 evidence about the future, OK. And and then the scarcity 528 00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:37,280 mindset, which is the purpose of life, only finance people and 529 00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:40,160 some engineers like this, the purpose of my life is to make it 530 00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:43,240 more efficient, OK. I mean, there, there is a 531 00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:45,280 minority of people who think like that. 532 00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:47,120 Now, I've got a weird theory, by the way. 533 00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,720 I think a lot of people say homo economicus doesn't exist. 534 00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,240 You know, the economically rational man. 535 00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:56,680 My argument is in any category, I don't think there's anybody 536 00:29:56,680 --> 00:29:58,760 who's universally homo economicus. 537 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:02,000 But in any category there are people who behave like helmet 538 00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:05,840 economicus within your category. And you don't want them as 539 00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,160 customers. Yeah, Yep. 540 00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:10,760 That's, you know, that's so, you know, those people are actually 541 00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:14,360 at totally it. Always focusing your business to 542 00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,440 appeal to your most economically rational customers is actually a 543 00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:22,120 recipe for disaster. Everything gets commoditized and 544 00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:24,920 doubled down to the lowest common denominator, doesn't it? 545 00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:27,240 Yeah. But then going going back to the 546 00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:31,560 point about scarcity versus abundance, how how you do one 547 00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:32,960 thing is how you do everything right. 548 00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:35,640 And what you're realizing is that a lot of people, instead of 549 00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:39,240 focusing on how do we grow that focus on how do we keep where 550 00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:41,480 we're at, right? And, and if you think you can 551 00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,680 see it in sport as well, I think there was a headline about the 552 00:30:44,680 --> 00:30:49,520 fact that Manchester United let go of like 200 members of staff, 553 00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:52,240 but then still spend like 300 million in transfers or 554 00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,800 something like that, right? It's like it's, it's like it's 555 00:30:55,800 --> 00:31:00,200 almost like there's a lot of performative slash, almost like 556 00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:03,760 corporate actions that make it feel like a gaining momentum, 557 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:06,360 but you're not actually shifting the dial at all, right? 558 00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:09,480 It's almost like everybody's on their best behavior to put on 559 00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:11,800 this picture that they're actually doing something. 560 00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:14,120 But yeah, yeah. So. 561 00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:17,520 So my dad has always told me something that some people might 562 00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:20,520 find controversial, but I, I believe it to be true. 563 00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,960 He says that the best way to run a country, unless you do it 564 00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,640 pretty well, like the Swiss, is almost like a positive 565 00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:32,160 dictatorship, right? The reason being is because you 566 00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,720 have people that are committed to the long haul or the long 567 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,080 journey and are making decisions that are going to last the next 568 00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:42,120 20-30, forty, 5000 years instead of for five years. 569 00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,120 And the next party's going to come in and do what the previous 570 00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:46,240 party said they were going to do. 571 00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,200 And the next person comes in. You see that in football as as 572 00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:53,120 well when you have a football manager that has a great Academy 573 00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:55,720 of players that are coming in, but then they're basically 574 00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:59,000 categorized based on whether they can stay in the Champions 575 00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:02,040 League this season or whether they can avoid relegation this 576 00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:04,480 season. So all the thinking becomes very 577 00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:08,280 scarcity, short term thinking, and then they never evolve and 578 00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:10,440 move forward because they never give you the tenure to it's. 579 00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:14,840 Less than that, which is your you then get fired because you 580 00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,440 don't win, you don't get through into the quarterfinals of the 581 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:22,880 Champions League and then your successor gets all the credit 582 00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:26,160 for the young players that you hired at a bargain price. 583 00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:28,960 The the other place which which is obviously famous for this is 584 00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:32,800 the film industry, where people will overspend on films. 585 00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:37,000 They'll commissioning films. They then get fired because the 586 00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:40,120 film is very expensive. And then when one of those three 587 00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:44,120 films is a massive blockbuster, they effectively the successor 588 00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,960 inherits all the credit. So this this extraordinary 589 00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,080 disconnect between what you might call long term actions and 590 00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:55,440 short term credit seeking and, and, and on in terms of that 591 00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,120 positive dictatorship thing, I've got another friend of Black 592 00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:01,760 Rock whose point is that is actually the best form of 593 00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:05,160 government, but it requires an absolute Lee Kuan Yew 594 00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:07,440 thoroughgoing genius to make it work. 595 00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:12,240 And generally, the most you can hope for is maybe two of those 596 00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:16,040 in a row. And his argument would be, for 597 00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:20,560 example, in China, you, you know, they kind of lucked out by 598 00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:22,880 whatever you think of their system of government and so 599 00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:24,720 forth. The people at the top were 600 00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:27,960 startlingly clever at making things work. 601 00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:31,320 And actually it you know, that that that's the danger that 602 00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:34,360 actually democracy doesn't really exist to attain 603 00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:37,640 optimality. It's because it gets rid of bad 604 00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,840 people. I mean democracy is really if 605 00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:42,000 you look at the value of democracy. 606 00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,240 This is why I have often take issue with people who are 607 00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:47,560 obsessed with proportional representation and I get another 608 00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:51,000 proportional representation and democracy doesn't exist. 609 00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,720 So you can have an optimal representative government. 610 00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:57,160 The government has to be representative to have some sort 611 00:33:57,160 --> 00:34:00,640 of legitimacy that's valuable. But the real value of democracy 612 00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:04,720 is it's a non violent way to dispose of governments when 613 00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:08,760 they're either bad or as you know happens, they just run out 614 00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,520 of ideas. So would you therefore say that? 615 00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:14,960 So would you therefore say that Democracy is a scarcity mindset 616 00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:18,880 because it focuses more on what happens if you have the wrong 617 00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:22,320 leadership as opposed to how do you actually grow and build the. 618 00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:25,800 Country I would argue that actually there's there are two 619 00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:28,199 kinds of continuity. I agree with you that if you 620 00:34:28,199 --> 00:34:34,400 have that kind of Lee Kuan Yew system, and you could argue that 621 00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:38,199 until recently, the US had a weird kind of continuity because 622 00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:40,520 there wasn't that much difference between Democrats and 623 00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:44,360 Republicans, to be absolutely honest, you know, But what's 624 00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:49,480 what can happen is that, you know, the the system breaks 625 00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:51,159 down. But particularly, I think what 626 00:34:51,159 --> 00:34:55,560 happens is that if you, if you spend too long focused on the 627 00:34:55,560 --> 00:35:02,840 same things, OK, and neglecting other things, OK, then what 628 00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:06,560 happens is that that the Helen Taylor's theory is that human 629 00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:11,760 neurodiversity evolved because in any group of 150 people, you 630 00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:14,480 occasionally need to take have a different take on something. 631 00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:18,840 And the great thing about ADHD or you know, you know, the 632 00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:23,960 spectrum is that those people and I, I find them in included 633 00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,120 in both of those actually. But I find those people 634 00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:30,240 incredibly agreeable to work with because they don't, they 635 00:35:30,240 --> 00:35:33,040 don't automatically have what you might call, you know, a 636 00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,720 collective perception. You know, they don't necessarily 637 00:35:36,720 --> 00:35:38,320 see things the way other people do. 638 00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:40,920 And that's a necessary corrective, I think. 639 00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:44,360 You know, I would argue that, you know, neoliberal economics 640 00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:46,600 has had too long a run, you know, Yeah. 641 00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,600 When someone says, you know, there was a French experiment, 642 00:35:49,720 --> 00:35:53,960 why don't we look at, you know, gross national happiness, You 643 00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:55,640 know, a lot of people go, oh, you're cheating. 644 00:35:55,640 --> 00:35:58,160 It's really snarky, you know, changing the rules. 645 00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:02,960 But yes and no, because we all know that wealth does not 646 00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:06,040 linearly translate into happiness and well-being. 647 00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:09,640 And therefore, anybody who's coming along at least with an 648 00:36:09,640 --> 00:36:12,880 alternative take that might be valuable. 649 00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:15,480 And also, of course, what happens is you focus people 650 00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,240 focus on a bottleneck, they eradicate perhaps that 651 00:36:18,240 --> 00:36:20,040 bottleneck if you're really, really lucky. 652 00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:24,000 And then they continue to do what they've what they did 653 00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:25,800 before. Whereas of course, what are you 654 00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:29,520 like, you know, rats chicken cage factory should have done is 655 00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:32,520 said, OK, we've kind of cracked the manufacturing problem for 656 00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:35,480 the next 5 years. OK, we're making more bloody 657 00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:39,720 chicken cages than we need. What we need is more customers, 658 00:36:40,680 --> 00:36:43,800 possibly even what we need is more people to keep chickens 659 00:36:43,800 --> 00:36:47,400 that we the category problem. OK, we've seen that not enough 660 00:36:47,400 --> 00:36:50,480 people keep chickens for us to actually sell enough cages. 661 00:36:50,720 --> 00:36:53,560 Or it may be that the people are buying inferior cages from 662 00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,560 somewhere else. But you have to continually 663 00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:59,760 shift your attention because it's a bit like the bubble in 664 00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:02,160 wallpaper. You know, it keeps moving. 665 00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:05,640 And if you smooth the bubble and obsess about the patch where the 666 00:37:05,640 --> 00:37:09,120 bubble used to be, meanwhile the bubbles moved on somewhere else 667 00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,960 and too. Young to know about wallpaper? 668 00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:19,840 Yeah, I know about wallpaper. The the, the, the, the skin care 669 00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:24,080 makes me look younger than I actually am, but I know a little 670 00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:25,800 bit about it. But then going back to the 671 00:37:25,800 --> 00:37:28,400 conversation there, I think this is a very. 672 00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:29,840 Important conversation. Because. 673 00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:31,440 Why? Why did people stop using 674 00:37:31,440 --> 00:37:33,880 wallpaper? What happened to wallpaper? 675 00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:36,640 What did happen? That wasn't that. 676 00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:38,920 That wasn't a manufacturing constraint, was it? 677 00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,840 I mean literally, I mean high end interior decor. 678 00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,640 It's still used, but I mean, wallpaper was universal in my 679 00:37:47,720 --> 00:37:49,200 child. Fascinate. 680 00:37:50,840 --> 00:37:51,920 Yeah. But I'm going back to that. 681 00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:55,680 What you were saying there, Rory, about the fact that in the 682 00:37:55,720 --> 00:38:00,320 US there was no real differences between almost like the right 683 00:38:00,320 --> 00:38:02,560 and the left, which therefore meant that there was a level of 684 00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:05,480 continuity in terms of ambition. There was unity. 685 00:38:05,720 --> 00:38:09,760 I think that was like unity, continuity are all things that 686 00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,560 were kind of like losing right now in society and culture. 687 00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:14,760 It's almost like polarizingly one sort of the others. 688 00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,160 It's all the you have a abundance mindset or the 689 00:38:17,160 --> 00:38:21,040 scarcity mindset, right? You, you, there's never, it's 690 00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,800 always an all conversation, never an and conversation, 691 00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:26,240 right? And there's no commonality or 692 00:38:26,240 --> 00:38:29,080 people trying to realize why should we preserve certain 693 00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:32,240 things and why should we aim to innovate and create new things? 694 00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:34,520 There should be a conversation about how you merge those two 695 00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,280 different things. And I think that that conflict 696 00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,600 is a, a bottleneck in society right now is that you're either 697 00:38:42,240 --> 00:38:43,840 we're going this way or we're going that way. 698 00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,440 And we actually had a conversation around AI, right? 699 00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,640 And the fact that a lot of people are talking about jobs 700 00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:54,040 being lost in AI, where the world's going in AI actually had 701 00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:57,400 a really weird take, which was the fact that I believe that our 702 00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:01,080 trajectory into the world of the Internet kind of distracted us 703 00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:05,360 away from things that actually mattered in the world, right? 704 00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:09,840 In fact, you have the smartest brains and minds not going to 705 00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:14,880 build apps and things that happen on these devices and then 706 00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:17,320 these things that are happening in the world today that have not 707 00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:20,720 evolved at all. Like try, try and get a train in 708 00:39:20,720 --> 00:39:22,920 the US. It'll take you the same amount 709 00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:24,800 of time as driving, right? Try. 710 00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:26,200 If you think about some of the other challenges that's 711 00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:27,480 happening, we're talking about the housing crisis. 712 00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:28,880 We're talking about what's happening. 713 00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:31,360 I'm slower than driving, much slower than driving. 714 00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:35,160 The only real rationale for most Amtrak journeys apart from the 715 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:38,360 high speed routes down the East Coast is that you sleep on the 716 00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,040 train, which you can't do when you're driving yet. 717 00:39:42,320 --> 00:39:44,160 And you have to drive on the other side of the road. 718 00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,720 It's ridiculous, isn't it? I know they'll come round. 719 00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:49,520 They'll come round eventually. I know. 720 00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,360 Yeah, they're all hankering for a little king in in their life, 721 00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,680 aren't they really, You know, a little bit more monarchy. 722 00:39:56,240 --> 00:40:00,960 I I will actually, by the way, there is an extraordinary role 723 00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:04,560 to monarchs, which is in one case, which is that. 724 00:40:05,240 --> 00:40:06,920 Someone described them. I think you've probably been 725 00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:09,520 welted Badgers as like the the king on a chess board. 726 00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:14,200 It doesn't do very much, but the value is in in the space it 727 00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:18,880 denies to other pieces. And it's one of the arguments 728 00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,480 would be that if you become president of France, you 729 00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:25,560 basically become delusional after about five years because 730 00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,560 you live in a palace and you have all this bling and a 731 00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:31,560 retinue and, you know, trumpets. OK. 732 00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:35,120 And the point is, we allow the king to do the stuff with the 733 00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:39,680 trumpets, and our Prime Minister lives in a terraced house, OK? 734 00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:42,360 It's a very nice terrorist house, but it's still a 735 00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,760 terrorist house, OK? And I think there's something 736 00:40:45,760 --> 00:40:48,600 actually quite important about that, which is no, no, no, no, 737 00:40:48,720 --> 00:40:52,120 Your job is to, deep down, your job as a government is to take 738 00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:57,240 the bins out, right? Keep us safe and take the bins 739 00:40:57,240 --> 00:41:01,720 out, right? And so, you know, but also there 740 00:41:01,720 --> 00:41:04,720 are cases actually where having an extra piece on the board is 741 00:41:04,720 --> 00:41:08,440 decisive in the sense that if you look at the death of Franco, 742 00:41:09,240 --> 00:41:13,240 the Spanish monarchy, you know, let's face it, if we look at it 743 00:41:13,240 --> 00:41:15,680 in historical terms and not the world's most successful 744 00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:17,840 monarchy, it's usually, you know, like Philip the 745 00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:22,760 incontinent was succeeded by, you know, Amy the Mad or 746 00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:23,680 something like that. OK. 747 00:41:24,240 --> 00:41:27,480 But the king at the time of Baron Carlos was totally 748 00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,920 decisive in the transmit transition to democracy. 749 00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:33,920 And so you have the very fact that they in a sense, don't have 750 00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:37,960 a dog in the fight and of course, a very long termist. 751 00:41:38,600 --> 00:41:39,760 There's another point worth making. 752 00:41:40,400 --> 00:41:44,320 OK, Your fundamental thing is, you know, I need to make sure 753 00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:48,360 there's still a monarchy around my great grandchildren, which, 754 00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:50,640 you know, there are. You know, I'm, I'm aesthetically 755 00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:54,640 not in favour of despotic monarchy unless you really luck 756 00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,200 out. But and, you know, the 757 00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:02,200 hereditary principle is brilliant for, you know, finding 758 00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:04,480 those geniuses. But there is a mindset to the 759 00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:07,400 whole thing which is complementary to everything 760 00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,240 else. But then also, I know we talked 761 00:42:10,240 --> 00:42:13,240 about sports and we're talking about like the monarchy and then 762 00:42:13,240 --> 00:42:15,200 we talked about like politics and culture. 763 00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:17,760 But you just think about it there, the red thread is 764 00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:20,920 continuity, right? And sometimes, even if you do 765 00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:26,960 not completely agree with the decisions, the direction of a, 766 00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,680 a, a person in leadership, the fact that they're just going to 767 00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:32,680 be there for a very long time just gets you in line and on 768 00:42:32,680 --> 00:42:34,880 board, right? But if you if you think about 769 00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:38,360 it, OK, whatever happens, if Jeremy Corbyn had got in, if 770 00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:45,600 Nigel Farage gets in, you still have a king, OK, Right now it's 771 00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:51,320 largely the formative. It's like Chelsea we we talked 772 00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,320 about, we talked about full people. 773 00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:57,720 Sorry to jump in there, but it's kind of like the continuity of 774 00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:02,280 Chelsea was Roman Abramovic. Like the managers would change 775 00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:04,160 but they knew that Roman would always be there. 776 00:43:04,200 --> 00:43:08,400 Ranga or Manchester United with. Dealing. 777 00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:11,120 What you call it with? Yeah, with Norwich City. 778 00:43:11,640 --> 00:43:13,800 Exactly. Then you've got to remember if 779 00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,360 you're an American and you're a left wing American and Donald 780 00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,880 Trump gets in, you feel like you've lost your country, right? 781 00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:23,360 It almost completely. Your country has been taken over 782 00:43:23,360 --> 00:43:27,160 by an alien force. We don't really feel like that. 783 00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:31,840 And there there is weirdly a a kind of left wing group who are 784 00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,080 favourably disposed towards the monarchy because they think it 785 00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:38,480 is more possible to engage in left wing experimentation. 786 00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:43,200 If people believe there's a kind of like motif of stability, you 787 00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:46,400 know, which doesn't change. So I mean, you know, this stuff 788 00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:49,120 is, I mean, Stephen Fry's argument for the monarchy is 789 00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:51,520 just empirical, which is if you look at countries that are 790 00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:54,600 constitutional monarchies, you know, you've got the UK, Canada, 791 00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:57,440 Spain, Japan, Thailand. I guess that's a bit weird. 792 00:43:58,320 --> 00:44:01,920 The Netherlands, Sweden, OK Belgium, OK. 793 00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:08,720 It's it's, it's, it's not a bad collection of pretty sane 794 00:44:08,720 --> 00:44:09,880 countries. Now, we don't know which 795 00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:13,080 direction causation lies. Is it because the countries are 796 00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:15,480 quite moderately minded that they basically reach a 797 00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:18,160 compromise with a monarchy? Or is it because they have a 798 00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:21,080 monarchy that they're somehow, you know, more capable of 799 00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:24,040 continuity and stability? We we'll never know, but you 800 00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:27,360 could argue, well, correlation may not be causation, but it's 801 00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:33,040 still correlation. This is what when it comes to 802 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:37,440 like the process of uncovering, first and foremost discovering, 803 00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,800 uncovering bottlenecks and then the first step to getting them 804 00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:45,440 almost like fixed. Clark, what would your process 805 00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:47,400 be? So obviously you work with a lot 806 00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:51,120 of brands and you work with a lot of organizations and 807 00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:53,880 institutions. So what's the the first step 808 00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:57,960 towards identifying A bottleneck and then what happens beyond 809 00:44:57,960 --> 00:44:58,680 that point? OK. 810 00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:04,720 So probably the first bit about that is that most people don't 811 00:45:04,720 --> 00:45:07,600 know about bottlenecks. So, so that's almost the first 812 00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:11,000 step, get getting them aware. They do know about queues 813 00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:15,240 though, waiting queues. You know, if you see a queue of 814 00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:19,240 cars, if you see a queue of people lined up at a cinema 815 00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:23,520 waiting to get their popcorn, you know that there's something 816 00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,720 slowing it down. If the queue is growing, you 817 00:45:26,720 --> 00:45:28,960 know it's costing you money because people are walking away. 818 00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:33,000 So you've got the symptoms and the most obvious sign, and it's 819 00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:34,600 not the only sign of a bottleneck. 820 00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:37,160 And not every bottleneck will have a visible queue. 821 00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:41,680 But if you can see the queue and you can measure that, you, you, 822 00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:43,560 you suddenly you've got a lot of numbers. 823 00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,040 Oh no, no, you've actually got something that's really visible. 824 00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:48,800 People talk about system thinking, but so much of it for 825 00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,720 me is actually system seeing and, and being able to see the 826 00:45:51,720 --> 00:45:57,800 queue that's been held up by whatever is at the front of it. 827 00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,640 And when you look to go at the front of it, you'll be looking 828 00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:06,880 to find, you'll be finding one type of resource. 829 00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:09,080 And, and I know people don't like to be called resources, but 830 00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:12,200 it could be a person, it could be a printer. 831 00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:18,560 I don't know if you guys know of Derek Silver's, but he he's he 832 00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:22,040 again, is that, you know, got very popular with his books and 833 00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:24,480 stuff. And he once told me that he had 834 00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:26,400 a bottleneck that was sitting next to him and it was his 835 00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:29,000 printer when he ran the company's CD Baby. 836 00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:31,000 And they couldn't print off orders quick enough. 837 00:46:31,240 --> 00:46:33,600 And so they couldn't actually ship the CDs fast enough. 838 00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,680 So what you've got to see is a build up of things that are 839 00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:38,640 waiting. There's a queue and then you've 840 00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:40,640 got to look there. And then you look and you sit 841 00:46:40,680 --> 00:46:43,680 and you study. And it's not always the obvious 842 00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:47,120 thing that sometimes it is because normally the obvious 843 00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:51,800 things have been sorted out. But, but, but that's, that's, 844 00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:54,200 that's kind of for most people, that's how you do it. 845 00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:58,320 If you were in a factory, you'd walk around and you'd, you'd 846 00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:00,640 wander around the factory and maybe you start at the front of 847 00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:02,040 the factory with the stuffed leaves. 848 00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,400 That's, but you, you start at the, the finished end of it. 849 00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:10,000 You'd walk back until you got to the, the, the where all the raw 850 00:47:10,000 --> 00:47:12,920 materials come in at the other end and you'd look for the 851 00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:16,080 biggest pile of work and it'd be a big pile of work there. 852 00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:20,440 And it would be sitting in front of the slowest machine, which 853 00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,720 would be the, the bottleneck. And you go, oh, if we can just 854 00:47:23,720 --> 00:47:26,480 speed up that one, everything else speeds up. 855 00:47:27,040 --> 00:47:31,200 So, so that's when it's obvious. That's when you can make it 856 00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,600 visible the the type of work I do. 857 00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:39,720 I often use traffic analogies because if if the people are 858 00:47:39,720 --> 00:47:43,240 motorists, you explain that there's no point in widening a 859 00:47:43,240 --> 00:47:45,840 dual carriageway if there's a badly phased set of traffic 860 00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:48,440 lights at the end of the road, because all you're doing is just 861 00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:54,400 moving a jam somewhere else. And I keep writing about this 862 00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:57,480 business where sometimes you have to go slower to go faster. 863 00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:01,680 So smart motorways are massively counter intuitive because the 864 00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:05,520 idea that by slowing down from 70 to 50 you might arrive at 865 00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:10,360 your destination sooner seems mad to the individual motorist. 866 00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:15,200 OK, the individual motorist has a heuristic go as fast as I can. 867 00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:19,000 But because there has to be a gap between cars and the gap 868 00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:22,960 increases not exponentially, but non linearly with speed. 869 00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:26,640 There are literally situations where if you all slow down to 870 00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:30,640 50, you'll proceed to your destination at 50 miles an hour. 871 00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:34,920 If you continue driving at 71, person just hits the brake 872 00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:38,240 lights for a second and you end up with people driving at 5 873 00:48:38,240 --> 00:48:42,280 miles an hour or nought miles an hour for 10 minutes, which more 874 00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:44,840 than none does the benefit you gain from going at 70. 875 00:48:45,240 --> 00:48:48,080 So people have this. I I'm I'm a lone defender of 876 00:48:48,080 --> 00:48:50,920 Britain's smart motorways because I actually argue that 877 00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:55,560 the benefits are invisible to the, the, the, the costs that 878 00:48:55,560 --> 00:48:57,680 are visible to the individual motorist. 879 00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:00,720 But the benefits, of course, are a traffic jam that never 880 00:49:00,720 --> 00:49:02,840 happened, which they never get to see. 881 00:49:03,680 --> 00:49:07,480 When I lived in Scotland and I used to have to commute between 882 00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:13,840 Edinburgh and Glasgow to to get home, I would deliberately annoy 883 00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:18,960 the people behind me by leaving maybe 3 or 4 car lengths in 884 00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:22,840 front. And I did that knowing that if 885 00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:26,240 the cars in front slowed down, I had a buffer in front of me 886 00:49:26,240 --> 00:49:30,240 where I could slow down without causing all the cars behind me 887 00:49:30,240 --> 00:49:32,720 to suddenly do that. Brake light, slow slow so slow 888 00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:35,120 all the way back for for for miles. 889 00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,840 And I know it annoyed people that were behind me, but I 890 00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:40,320 actually speed up the entire traffic while I was commuting 891 00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:42,480 anyway. To a certain extent. 892 00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:46,720 It would be lovely if you wanted to dictate it. 893 00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:51,560 I had a friend who was devoted to complexity theory who became 894 00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:55,680 so obsessed with not breaking because he was aware that his 895 00:49:55,680 --> 00:50:02,280 brake lights created congestion. OK because she ended up running 896 00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:04,240 into the car at fright. OK. 897 00:50:04,720 --> 00:50:08,560 Because he, he basically optimized his driving around the 898 00:50:08,560 --> 00:50:11,800 minimizing use of the press anyway. 899 00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:13,640 But he was doing jobs. Work. 900 00:50:13,920 --> 00:50:18,480 Yeah, you've got to be careful. So if I take that your question, 901 00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:20,640 where do you find bottleneck? So that's the obvious one, 902 00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:23,080 right? If you walk into your hospital, 903 00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:27,280 you just look at the waiting lists and you know what sits at 904 00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:30,040 the end of them. There's you've got a candidate 905 00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:34,600 and, and my 2 bottleneck books have got lots of examples there 906 00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:37,760 where you just, you just look and you go, oh, OK, there's not 907 00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:40,720 enough operating theatres or maybe there's not enough nursing 908 00:50:40,720 --> 00:50:41,960 staff. It could be surgeons. 909 00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:45,560 You know where it is, but you don't know exactly which type of 910 00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:47,840 resource it is. So those ones are all when 911 00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:49,720 people are doing the work. If, if, if you're dealing with a 912 00:50:49,720 --> 00:50:54,400 leader, and that's what I do these days, it's a lot harder 913 00:50:54,480 --> 00:51:00,080 because leaders do not want to be called a bottleneck. 914 00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:02,880 And, and maybe Rory, I or actually both of you isn't your 915 00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:07,000 marketing geniuses. This is my can actually, can I 916 00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:09,240 tell you a story? I, when I was talking to Paul 917 00:51:09,240 --> 00:51:11,400 when we were sitting this up, he said, have a story to tell about 918 00:51:11,400 --> 00:51:12,600 botany. And I've got to tell you this 919 00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:16,760 one because I'm so proud of this and it will, will illustrate 920 00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:21,880 the, the, the situation. A colleague of mine, I sort of 921 00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:26,000 not a colleague, sorry, a client of mine, Angela, Angela G'day of 922 00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:29,520 she's works for a company called Wise Tech in Australia. 923 00:51:30,240 --> 00:51:32,560 And I started working with her about five years ago. 924 00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:37,600 And during that time, she grew her team from having about 25 925 00:51:37,600 --> 00:51:42,200 people up to having between 3 and 400 people spread all around 926 00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:44,240 the world. And just a few months ago she 927 00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:48,880 won the Australian Businesswoman and Tech award. 928 00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:50,200 So she's, she's done really well. 929 00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:52,160 She's got this amazing personal story. 930 00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:55,400 I, I, I was there sort of helping her, supporting her to, 931 00:51:55,400 --> 00:52:01,200 to just constantly, you know, to grow from 25 to 50 to 100 to 150 932 00:52:01,200 --> 00:52:03,960 to, you know, there's a lot of work you've got to do with your 933 00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:05,600 whole team, but also as the leader. 934 00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,400 Now the trouble, if you look, I've worked with a lot of people 935 00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:10,440 like Angel, but of course I mentioned here because I like 936 00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,280 showing off because she's just done, you know, she won 937 00:52:13,480 --> 00:52:15,960 Australian Businesswoman of the year award, right? 938 00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:22,240 But as we work with each other, it, it was really hard, even 939 00:52:22,240 --> 00:52:24,040 though she knows about the theory of constraints, because 940 00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:26,960 Wise Tech, the company that she works with, uses theory 941 00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:29,560 constraints all through them. She, she, she knows about it. 942 00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:32,320 It's really, really, when we first talked, she said, you 943 00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:34,000 know, it was, she was quite open about this. 944 00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:38,640 It's it's really, really hard to admit that you as the leader of 945 00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:43,200 a bottleneck and your organization cannot grow unless 946 00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:46,320 you can. Yep, you, you, you're basically 947 00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:47,880 you, you are. If you think of a bottom, the 948 00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,520 other way of thinking about you are constrained or you are 949 00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:56,720 limited by the number of hours that the leader can stay awake. 950 00:52:57,320 --> 00:53:01,280 So the the analogy I work with her and and I would have used 951 00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:04,560 Russian dolls, but she's Russian, so I couldn't use it. 952 00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:07,520 And what do you snakes? But it's Australian. 953 00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:10,360 So you people get offended if you compare them to snakes. 954 00:53:10,520 --> 00:53:13,400 You know, they that that snakes as they grow, they shake their 955 00:53:13,400 --> 00:53:15,240 skin. I've actually popped into chat 956 00:53:15,240 --> 00:53:18,960 cheat CP and I think I've found the most wonderful for me 957 00:53:19,960 --> 00:53:23,240 metaphor for, for how how people grow and how leaders grow. 958 00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:25,320 And, and it's like a hermit crab. 959 00:53:26,160 --> 00:53:29,160 So if you can, you can look at your own lives and you can look, 960 00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,640 say where you're going to be when you're say 70 compared to 961 00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,120 where you were when you were 17. And, and through your life, you 962 00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:38,680 will have been in one shell at 17. 963 00:53:38,720 --> 00:53:42,080 And then you outgrew that shell and suddenly you had to do 964 00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:43,880 something brave like like a hermit crab. 965 00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:48,400 You have to go naked for a little bit and then go to 966 00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:50,800 another bigger shell. And then when you got in that 967 00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:54,040 shell, you bought stuff with you, which you probably 968 00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:57,600 shouldn't have. And then you're missing things 969 00:53:57,600 --> 00:53:59,880 because you've got a bigger shell and your brain has to do 970 00:53:59,880 --> 00:54:02,080 so much more work. And then you just get 971 00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:04,080 comfortable in it. And what happens? 972 00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:06,960 You keep growing. So then suddenly you got to look 973 00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,160 around for another shell. You got to do that naked dash 974 00:54:09,160 --> 00:54:11,280 again from your shell to the next one. 975 00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:13,400 And you get to there and everything you knew. 976 00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:17,520 Some of it's actually slowing you down now, some of it doesn't 977 00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:19,480 belong in your head. So you've got to get rid of it 978 00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:21,920 And, and as you grow, you've got to learn to trust yourself. 979 00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:25,760 You've got to go through this imposter syndrome over and over 980 00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:28,320 and over again. You're almost like forming, 981 00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:31,680 storming, norming and performing inside your own head, but also 982 00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:34,920 with your own team. I, I, I find that really, really 983 00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:38,040 just just satisfying because I just think myself, I know the 984 00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:43,760 shell Lyman 5-6 or eight years ago I was living in Scotland and 985 00:54:43,760 --> 00:54:47,040 now I'm back in New Zealand and I had to choose a totally, 986 00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:50,720 totally different thing. And it wasn't just moving from 987 00:54:50,720 --> 00:54:52,240 physically from one place to the next. 988 00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:55,160 My mind had to move from one place to the next. 989 00:54:55,480 --> 00:54:58,680 And as I like working with people like Angela, you know, 990 00:54:58,680 --> 00:55:02,240 it's just so incredibly interesting. 991 00:55:02,520 --> 00:55:05,280 I don't know how to do their jobs, but just sitting down 992 00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:10,480 thinking, you know, what got you here is not going to get you to 993 00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:12,680 the next step. You need to grow. 994 00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:16,560 How, how do we do that? And, and, and actually, if I'm 995 00:55:16,600 --> 00:55:20,200 quite frank, and this is everyone that I work with, it's, 996 00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:23,680 it's all about trust. Everything is about trust, trust 997 00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:26,320 with other people because you grow bigger and bigger. 998 00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:28,280 You have to suddenly start working with the people that 999 00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:30,760 scared you. You've got teams that used to 1000 00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:32,600 work for you. Now they've got layers of people 1001 00:55:32,600 --> 00:55:35,000 working with you. But more than anything else, 1002 00:55:35,000 --> 00:55:37,600 that's actually about the trust of yourself. 1003 00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:39,840 That was a great good old finding wasn't it? 1004 00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:41,720 What they called psychological safety. 1005 00:55:42,360 --> 00:55:45,680 I think if I'm right, Google did a lot of research into what 1006 00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:48,600 created high performing teams. I think they did. 1007 00:55:48,720 --> 00:55:50,160 And they he wrote their book about it. 1008 00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:55,000 They got Yeah. Anyway, sorry, yeah, I know 1009 00:55:55,000 --> 00:55:58,080 you're an expert in Agile as well as being an expert in 1010 00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:00,880 bottlenecks. Out of the two out of the two 1011 00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:09,040 effectively inform each other. Oh, OK, so yeah, I'm, I'm both 1012 00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:13,400 and, and my book Rolling Rocks Downhill was about that and, and 1013 00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:19,160 I mentioned my new, new book that I'm working on before I 1014 00:56:19,160 --> 00:56:21,840 think we started recording when I, when we, we talked about how 1015 00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:23,920 I have to change the name because it sounds rude when I 1016 00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:28,200 say it out loud with my accent. So I won't say it here in case 1017 00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:34,880 you get expletive warnings and stuff, but this is so. 1018 00:56:34,960 --> 00:56:39,960 So what Agile does is, is it basically takes the idea from 1019 00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:44,280 the Japanese manufacturing, which we all kind of inherited 1020 00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:47,280 and understand now, which is that you don't leave all your 1021 00:56:47,280 --> 00:56:50,560 testing of your cars until the end of the line and then beat 1022 00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:53,440 out the, the, the, the, the fix the stuff there. 1023 00:56:53,600 --> 00:56:57,120 You build it as you go along. So Agile just works in small 1024 00:56:57,120 --> 00:56:59,880 chunks and it's so obvious everyone, no one knows it's that 1025 00:56:59,880 --> 00:57:02,360 this office built an agile today, but every app gets 1026 00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:05,240 updated every few days or every week that they've got agile 1027 00:57:05,240 --> 00:57:08,360 process behind them. Where it works for software is 1028 00:57:12,240 --> 00:57:15,240 you have to, if you just think about the bottleneck stuff of 1029 00:57:15,240 --> 00:57:19,480 it, you don't want the leader of your team, someone like Angela 1030 00:57:19,480 --> 00:57:22,000 who I mentioned, you don't want them to be the bottleneck 1031 00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:25,960 because you could have 3 or 400 people who are busy waiting on 1032 00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:30,440 strategic decisions. And forgive me for doing a Venn 1033 00:57:30,440 --> 00:57:33,520 diagram here, I know people can't see it, but three circles. 1034 00:57:34,280 --> 00:57:38,520 One, the two at the bottom are expertise and management skills. 1035 00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:41,520 So that's the stuff that every leader has in them. 1036 00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:44,200 And that the top one is the job they're meant to doing, which is 1037 00:57:44,200 --> 00:57:46,480 actually leading. And when they get really, really 1038 00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:53,440 busy, they sacrifice leading in order to be the expert in, in, 1039 00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:57,360 in the business domain or, or whatever it is they do and, and 1040 00:57:57,360 --> 00:57:59,280 to manage all of the day-to-day stuff. 1041 00:57:59,920 --> 00:58:02,320 And So what they do, they get so busy, they sacrifice. 1042 00:58:02,480 --> 00:58:05,720 Actually, leadership is the second thing that they 1043 00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:07,720 sacrifice. The first thing is their home 1044 00:58:07,720 --> 00:58:09,600 life. So they sacrifice their home 1045 00:58:09,600 --> 00:58:12,560 life, then they sacrifice leadership and then they just 1046 00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:14,640 become busy, busy, busy, busy bosses. 1047 00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:19,800 And then you've got, if you want to spot that kind of bottleneck 1048 00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:24,320 to go back to Elfs original question, you find that 1049 00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:28,480 bottleneck by going are they a leader question 1/2. 1050 00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:32,720 Do they have a whole lot of unanswered decisions and 1051 00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:37,880 questions in their inbox? And if they've got those two 1052 00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:40,560 there, they won't admit they're a bottleneck because it sounds 1053 00:58:40,560 --> 00:58:44,160 like a, an insult or an accusation, but they then need 1054 00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:47,720 help to claw back time because otherwise all of those decisions 1055 00:58:48,400 --> 00:58:51,080 are slowing down their entire organization. 1056 00:58:51,800 --> 00:58:54,320 So if you think about system seeing, that's a way of seeing, 1057 00:58:54,320 --> 00:58:57,280 is this person a bottleneck? And, and, and you'll know that 1058 00:58:57,280 --> 00:58:59,760 really good. No, not not good. 1059 00:58:59,760 --> 00:59:01,760 That's the wrong word. You, you know, when you have a 1060 00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:04,920 non bottleneck manager because they seem wise, they seem 1061 00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:06,840 thoughtful because they have time to talk to people. 1062 00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,360 They seem just really organised, usually because they have an 1063 00:59:10,360 --> 00:59:13,240 assistant or a chief of staff who who works with them. 1064 00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:17,800 And more than anything else, they have to, they have time to 1065 00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:20,880 do that top bubble on the Venn diagram, which is thinking, 1066 00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:24,480 which is what leading is. It's thinking about the big 1067 00:59:24,480 --> 00:59:26,720 things. And if you get rid of that, you 1068 00:59:26,840 --> 00:59:31,120 de strategize your business because your leaders aren't 1069 00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:34,480 don't have enough time to lead. Because I think, I think there's 1070 00:59:34,480 --> 00:59:37,720 a really interesting insight here, not only into leadership 1071 00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:41,040 as bottleneck, which is fascinating, but one of the 1072 00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:43,360 things those people do when they're very busy is they create 1073 00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:48,640 a bureaucracy around them, OK? And they try and devolve 1074 00:59:48,640 --> 00:59:52,320 decisions and the bureaucracy doesn't have the confidence that 1075 00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:55,720 a leader does. So it effectively defends itself 1076 00:59:55,720 --> 01:00:00,240 by creating highly systematized uniform modes of decision 1077 01:00:00,240 --> 01:00:02,680 making. OK, which then mean that the 1078 01:00:02,680 --> 01:00:07,000 organization is unable to cope with outlier in any respect. 1079 01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:09,680 But there's another interesting thing with the bureaucracy, 1080 01:00:09,680 --> 01:00:11,200 which termly occurred to me the other day. 1081 01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:14,480 We tend to get angry with bureaucrats or public sector 1082 01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:17,200 workers. Because we pay them a salary. 1083 01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:22,800 And my argument is most, in most cases, what they do is probably 1084 01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:28,040 worth the money. The cost actually is not the 1085 01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:31,200 salary you pay them. It's the extent to which they 1086 01:00:31,200 --> 01:00:34,840 create bottlenecks or inefficiencies in the fast 1087 01:00:34,840 --> 01:00:38,160 flowing of a system. And there's a wonderful have you 1088 01:00:38,160 --> 01:00:40,800 read, by the way, The Unaccountability Machine by Dan 1089 01:00:40,800 --> 01:00:43,480 Davis? You recommended it and I 1090 01:00:43,480 --> 01:00:45,440 purchased it. You may notice a patent here. 1091 01:00:46,520 --> 01:00:47,120 Don't. Worry. 1092 01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:50,080 Keep making me spend money and I want to read it but I haven't 1093 01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:50,800 got. Back to it yet. 1094 01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:54,640 So, so, so one of the things he, he's very interested now that 1095 01:00:54,640 --> 01:00:57,160 obviously when you're talking about agile and you're talking 1096 01:00:57,160 --> 01:01:00,200 about say, Toyota's Kaizen manufacturing process, that was 1097 01:01:00,200 --> 01:01:03,280 a guy called William Edward, William Edwards Deming, wasn't 1098 01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:04,480 it? Or West Edwards Deming. 1099 01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:07,960 Yeah, OK. And he was effectively in a 1100 01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:11,720 sense, partly the architect of the Japanese economic miracle 1101 01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,720 and understood things like to optimize the whole, you have to 1102 01:01:14,720 --> 01:01:18,280 sub optimize the parts. Now most people in a siloed 1103 01:01:18,280 --> 01:01:22,320 organization, procurement are optimizing cost savings, 1104 01:01:22,520 --> 01:01:25,760 marketing and trying to optimize customer satisfaction, OK. 1105 01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:30,080 You know, if you have both those entities entirely focused on one 1106 01:01:30,080 --> 01:01:33,720 thing rather than understanding the whole, it's effectively 1107 01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:36,840 completely counterproductive. But Dan Davis is also very 1108 01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:38,960 interested in, I don't know to what extent you've ever got into 1109 01:01:38,960 --> 01:01:41,440 cybernetics, Have you? I I. 1110 01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:44,640 Read a little bit about it, but you'll just. 1111 01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:47,320 You'll discover a bit which is it's effectively that we tend to 1112 01:01:47,320 --> 01:01:52,200 use financial flows within an organization as the the sole 1113 01:01:52,200 --> 01:01:55,480 form of information flow when of course there are lots and lots 1114 01:01:55,480 --> 01:01:57,320 of other information bottlenecks. 1115 01:01:57,600 --> 01:02:00,040 You say it's not just a financial bottleneck or a 1116 01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:02,120 production bottleneck. There are informational 1117 01:02:02,120 --> 01:02:04,640 bottlenecks and constraints and so forth. 1118 01:02:05,520 --> 01:02:08,440 And one of the things that drives him practically insane at 1119 01:02:08,440 --> 01:02:11,040 the moment is that if you want to get planning permission for a 1120 01:02:11,040 --> 01:02:16,440 house in the UK or, or a factory or whatever, you're allowed to 1121 01:02:16,440 --> 01:02:20,880 consult extensively with the people at the council who give 1122 01:02:20,880 --> 01:02:22,440 you approval. OK. 1123 01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:28,600 And that's all fine and dandy because you can find creative 1124 01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:30,880 ways between the two of you of overcoming problems. 1125 01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:35,320 And then you submit your proposals for approval. 1126 01:02:35,560 --> 01:02:38,400 None of the people who have spoken to you are allowed to 1127 01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:40,120 play any part in the approval process. 1128 01:02:40,360 --> 01:02:44,920 And the idea is it's to prevent corruption or right, whatever. 1129 01:02:44,920 --> 01:02:47,480 Maybe. But as a consequence, you're now 1130 01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:50,920 starting all over again with a group of people who want to 1131 01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:53,520 justify their existence by finding problems. 1132 01:02:54,120 --> 01:02:57,520 Yes. You effectively, you effectively 1133 01:02:57,520 --> 01:03:02,400 turned a one stage process into a, into a repeat process where 1134 01:03:02,520 --> 01:03:05,560 in many cases, and then of course your, your appeal gets 1135 01:03:05,560 --> 01:03:07,800 turned down and has to start all over again. 1136 01:03:08,120 --> 01:03:10,680 So the entire consultative process, which could have been 1137 01:03:10,680 --> 01:03:13,880 creative and valuable, now becomes actually largely 1138 01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:17,160 wasteful. And he gets really, really 1139 01:03:17,160 --> 01:03:19,360 obsessed with the order in which things happen. 1140 01:03:19,720 --> 01:03:21,800 And I think, I think there's this wonderful thing. 1141 01:03:22,360 --> 01:03:25,360 Greg Jackson, you you probably know, do you have octopus energy 1142 01:03:25,360 --> 01:03:28,400 in New Zealand? No no, but I know I still read 1143 01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:31,000 all of the UK. Papers, it's only a matter of 1144 01:03:31,000 --> 01:03:34,960 time again, but Greg, who I regard to be a thorough going 1145 01:03:34,960 --> 01:03:36,600 genius who should be Prime Minister. 1146 01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:40,440 Greg also founded a business which is I think called 1147 01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:43,240 Consultant Direct. And this was you go to the GP 1148 01:03:43,240 --> 01:03:46,680 and what used to happen was the GP would say I need to refer you 1149 01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:50,360 to a consultant. In the old days, my grandfather 1150 01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:52,960 was a doctor. You would actually be handed a 1151 01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:55,800 letter to take to the consultant, OK. 1152 01:03:56,240 --> 01:03:57,760 And then the consultant would open it. 1153 01:03:58,080 --> 01:04:01,160 Now what would happen is you, you, you then go home and then 1154 01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:03,920 you'd wait for a good for a consultant's appointment to 1155 01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:05,480 become available. And then you go and see the 1156 01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:08,800 consultant, OK. And Greg just had a load of 1157 01:04:08,800 --> 01:04:11,600 consultants who are available on the phone, OK. 1158 01:04:11,600 --> 01:04:14,240 This was his, the business he started up at the same time he 1159 01:04:14,240 --> 01:04:16,720 actually started on because he's no longer involved in it, but he 1160 01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:21,640 founded it and the GP with you present would call a consultant. 1161 01:04:23,680 --> 01:04:26,320 Three things. So by removing it, by the way, 1162 01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:29,480 when you had to take the letter to the consultants, there was a 1163 01:04:29,480 --> 01:04:32,800 colleague, my grandfather's, who wrote a letter to the 1164 01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:34,640 consultant. She was a friend of his which 1165 01:04:34,640 --> 01:04:39,080 started here with this old trout and the woman opened the letter. 1166 01:04:39,080 --> 01:04:42,600 So it was a dangerous thing to do anyway, but it was a 1167 01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:46,600 completely ludicrous sequential process when it should have been 1168 01:04:46,600 --> 01:04:49,400 a parallel process. What Greg's system would do is 1169 01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:52,120 you bring the consultant, and the consultant might say one of 1170 01:04:52,120 --> 01:04:54,080 three things, yes, I need to see this person. 1171 01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:59,080 OK, Second possibility, in which case it was pretty similar to 1172 01:04:59,080 --> 01:05:03,080 what happened before. However, 5060% of the time, two 1173 01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:06,200 other things happen. One, you don't need to see me. 1174 01:05:06,200 --> 01:05:08,400 You need to wait for eight months and come back. 1175 01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:13,280 OK, actually, or you don't need to see me at all because this is 1176 01:05:13,360 --> 01:05:15,520 a case of X and it's going to go away. 1177 01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:20,160 OK, Awful lot, by the way, of back pain and things like that. 1178 01:05:20,480 --> 01:05:23,640 Basically the best advice is to wait eight months, don't 1179 01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:27,480 intervene too soon. It's a third thing was, yes, you 1180 01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:31,640 do need to see me, but have these tests first. 1181 01:05:32,280 --> 01:05:35,120 So now by getting the test commissioned by the GP first, 1182 01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,000 you'd bypassed a whole extra weight in the process from the 1183 01:05:38,000 --> 01:05:40,000 patient's point of view. OK. 1184 01:05:40,440 --> 01:05:45,080 And another one is have these tests and unless it shows a GPOL 1185 01:05:45,080 --> 01:05:49,320 level of seven plus, OK, don't bother coming to see me yet. 1186 01:05:50,080 --> 01:05:54,880 OK, So it basically turned an absolutely moronic linear 1187 01:05:54,880 --> 01:05:58,640 process into regardless of the circumstances we go through the 1188 01:05:58,640 --> 01:06:02,640 we go through the motions into a depending on six or seven 1189 01:06:02,640 --> 01:06:06,200 different things, we will now create new optimal paths, each 1190 01:06:06,200 --> 01:06:09,880 of which is different from, you know, it's no longer a system, 1191 01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:12,920 but that that that kind of business is the kind of business 1192 01:06:12,920 --> 01:06:16,680 which literally we need to look for because it benefits 1193 01:06:17,080 --> 01:06:20,920 absolutely everybody, OK, It benefits the NHS, it benefits 1194 01:06:20,920 --> 01:06:25,120 the patient, it benefits the GP, it benefits, by the way, it's 1195 01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:28,280 especially benefits the consultants because they can now 1196 01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:31,120 make some money while they're on a golf course in Villamora 1197 01:06:31,120 --> 01:06:34,440 answering the phone, right? Which is without stereotyping 1198 01:06:34,440 --> 01:06:36,680 hospital consultants, you know, but I think that's what quite a 1199 01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:41,200 lot of them would like to do. So you watch it talking about. 1200 01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:45,440 Yeah, exactly. Can I tell you my wife's 1201 01:06:45,560 --> 01:06:50,240 bottleneck story? I think, I think your listeners 1202 01:06:50,240 --> 01:06:52,920 would would like it, but I got to tell you that what I'm about 1203 01:06:52,920 --> 01:06:58,400 to tell you is not the full truth because and it's not 1204 01:06:58,400 --> 01:07:00,920 wasn't actually my wife, it's a fictional blah, blah, blah. 1205 01:07:01,120 --> 01:07:03,880 Because I tend to tell it, I try and make it more interesting 1206 01:07:03,880 --> 01:07:05,080 than it probably was at the time. 1207 01:07:05,920 --> 01:07:08,840 So before we got married, I don't know how this happened 1208 01:07:08,840 --> 01:07:10,680 that we got married because we used to go out for dinner and I 1209 01:07:10,680 --> 01:07:14,400 tell her all about bottlenecks and theory of constraints, which 1210 01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:17,240 is is is is embarrassing in retrospect, but she married me 1211 01:07:17,240 --> 01:07:19,320 nonetheless. And then we moved to Scotland 1212 01:07:19,320 --> 01:07:22,560 and she got her first consulting job, which is an old age 1213 01:07:22,800 --> 01:07:26,280 psychiatrist. And the person who she replaced 1214 01:07:26,280 --> 01:07:30,400 had been there five days a week and we just had our first baby 1215 01:07:30,400 --> 01:07:32,960 and she was going back to work for three days a week. 1216 01:07:33,240 --> 01:07:39,480 So she was suddenly same, same area, same patch, same number of 1217 01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:45,560 patients, all of that, but she was doing three days rather than 1218 01:07:45,560 --> 01:07:49,800 five days, which is a big, big, massive opportunity to create a 1219 01:07:49,800 --> 01:07:52,960 bottleneck because you had five days capacity made into 3. 1220 01:07:53,360 --> 01:07:55,800 And when she got in there, she just looked around and I, again, 1221 01:07:56,080 --> 01:07:58,560 I'd make up a lot of the stuff to make it sound interesting, 1222 01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:01,640 but she looked around and she went and she, she just realized 1223 01:08:01,640 --> 01:08:06,120 that she's inherited a six month, 26 week waiting list, 1224 01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:10,400 which is not good if you for, for old age psychiatry that you 1225 01:08:10,400 --> 01:08:13,680 know, you, there's, there's limitation, natural limitations 1226 01:08:13,680 --> 01:08:17,359 at play here. And she was really unhappy with 1227 01:08:17,359 --> 01:08:20,680 that, that the end result that she got it down to, I think 1228 01:08:20,680 --> 01:08:25,720 about 10 or 12 weeks over a six or maybe nine month period. 1229 01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:29,240 And, and her first bit was going, and she didn't tell me 1230 01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:31,520 this for a couple of years until afterwards, because she went 1231 01:08:31,520 --> 01:08:33,160 around and goes, right, where's the bottleneck? 1232 01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:36,080 And she went around and goes, right, I've got all of these 1233 01:08:36,080 --> 01:08:38,120 people working here. Where's the bottleneck? 1234 01:08:38,200 --> 01:08:39,760 Do we have enough nurses? Yes. 1235 01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:43,680 Do we have enough beds? Do we have enough food 1236 01:08:43,680 --> 01:08:47,319 preparation facilities? Do we have enough transport for 1237 01:08:47,319 --> 01:08:48,720 people? Because it was a rural area? 1238 01:08:48,840 --> 01:08:51,399 She went through all of these things with GPS, everything. 1239 01:08:51,520 --> 01:08:54,640 She's trying to go, if it was a crime scene, she was trying to 1240 01:08:54,840 --> 01:08:56,279 think of the bottling detective book. 1241 01:08:56,279 --> 01:08:59,160 She was trying to identify the suspects, right? 1242 01:08:59,479 --> 01:09:01,560 Who could possibly be the bottleneck? 1243 01:09:02,080 --> 01:09:04,800 And then I like to think that one day she's standing and 1244 01:09:04,800 --> 01:09:07,319 looking at the mirror and going, I've eliminated everyone. 1245 01:09:07,319 --> 01:09:12,120 And then she looks at herself and goes, that must be me as as 1246 01:09:12,160 --> 01:09:15,479 the IT was suddenly it was her and it was the least obvious 1247 01:09:15,479 --> 01:09:18,240 person. And so, so now Can you imagine 1248 01:09:18,240 --> 01:09:22,160 you're 1 consultant and you've got the these things that I list 1249 01:09:22,160 --> 01:09:25,840 off some things she did. So one of them was she looked. 1250 01:09:25,880 --> 01:09:31,040 And in my book, I have the focus formula, which is FOCCCUS. 1251 01:09:31,680 --> 01:09:35,680 If it's refined, the three things coordinate, collab, 1252 01:09:36,640 --> 01:09:40,520 collaborate, a curate. What she did is curated the 1253 01:09:40,520 --> 01:09:41,680 patient. She looked at them and her 1254 01:09:41,680 --> 01:09:46,240 predecessor had seen everyone on every year come back. 1255 01:09:46,840 --> 01:09:49,000 And she looked at them and discovered some people should be 1256 01:09:49,000 --> 01:09:52,040 coming back every three months. Some people should be coming 1257 01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:54,320 back to see a nurse. Some people should be coming 1258 01:09:54,320 --> 01:09:58,280 back to see her every two years or maybe just going to see their 1259 01:09:58,280 --> 01:10:00,200 GP if they thought they needed to. 1260 01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:04,160 So they curated the stuff and just like a curator in a museum 1261 01:10:04,160 --> 01:10:06,000 because. Previously, they were optimizing 1262 01:10:06,000 --> 01:10:08,520 for the average a patient was a patient was a patient was a 1263 01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:10,320 patient. And it was all average. 1264 01:10:10,480 --> 01:10:11,520 Yeah. So she did this. 1265 01:10:11,520 --> 01:10:14,120 This is my argument with airports, which is that they 1266 01:10:14,120 --> 01:10:17,440 curate that half the people want a shopping centre and the 1267 01:10:17,440 --> 01:10:21,040 frequent Flyers basically want a direct route to the plane. 1268 01:10:21,280 --> 01:10:24,640 Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, meant she has to just to 1269 01:10:24,640 --> 01:10:27,160 divert a little bit mention well, I shouldn't say divert 1270 01:10:27,160 --> 01:10:32,000 with airports in mind, but Manchester the the domestic 1271 01:10:32,000 --> 01:10:35,200 terminal used to I don't know if they still do. 1272 01:10:35,200 --> 01:10:38,000 It's been 10 years and I just kept to go through it every 1273 01:10:38,480 --> 01:10:41,440 every few weeks. They used to use as they would 1274 01:10:41,440 --> 01:10:45,200 have a deliberate bottleneck would be the rate that they let 1275 01:10:45,200 --> 01:10:49,240 people through security because it was limited shopping space, 1276 01:10:49,240 --> 01:10:52,160 limited seats and they couldn't let people in fast enough. 1277 01:10:52,160 --> 01:10:55,160 So they just slowed down security and if the worst place 1278 01:10:55,160 --> 01:10:58,120 in the world to be slowed down and having to stand and wait the 1279 01:10:58,120 --> 01:11:01,360 security and I'd hope I don't keep I'm just they were 1280 01:11:01,360 --> 01:11:03,200 assholes. There's no other name for it. 1281 01:11:04,520 --> 01:11:08,080 You've probably been up the ranks and and and iTunes ratings 1282 01:11:08,080 --> 01:11:11,440 and things now. OK, so Eurostar, Eurostar keeps 1283 01:11:11,440 --> 01:11:14,800 arguing we can't possibly have competitors on the high speed 1284 01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:18,480 rail routes because there isn't enough capacity at the lounges 1285 01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:21,680 at Saint Pancras and the and the boarding area at Saint Pancras 1286 01:11:21,960 --> 01:11:25,600 now, right, there are enormous potential boarding areas at EMS 1287 01:11:25,600 --> 01:11:29,520 Fleet and Ashford. If you said to people, if you're 1288 01:11:29,520 --> 01:11:32,440 prepared to use high speed one to travel to Ashford and you 1289 01:11:32,440 --> 01:11:37,000 board the train there, OK, we'll give you, you know, double 1290 01:11:37,000 --> 01:11:39,360 points on our loyalty program. All right. 1291 01:11:40,080 --> 01:11:42,960 And much nicer sitting waiting. And much nicer. 1292 01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:46,240 Some people do that anyway. I know people in Greenwich 1293 01:11:46,240 --> 01:11:49,480 should used used to drive to EBS fleets to catch the Eurostar 1294 01:11:49,480 --> 01:11:51,040 because the boarding experience was bad. 1295 01:11:51,520 --> 01:11:53,360 You know, you just get people to board somewhere else. 1296 01:11:53,360 --> 01:11:56,000 You only need this is the thing. You don't need everybody to do 1297 01:11:56,000 --> 01:11:59,320 it that an engineering solution will get everybody doing 1298 01:11:59,320 --> 01:12:02,200 something different. A psychological solution gets 1299 01:12:02,360 --> 01:12:05,400 the people for whom it's least inconvenience to do the thing, 1300 01:12:05,800 --> 01:12:08,960 and that's enough. And then the focus. 1301 01:12:09,000 --> 01:12:11,720 Coordination and curation. The 2GO together. 1302 01:12:11,720 --> 01:12:15,600 So she basically curates, she created the patients and goes, 1303 01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:17,520 these people don't need to come back every six months. 1304 01:12:17,520 --> 01:12:18,800 They need to come back every 12 months. 1305 01:12:19,080 --> 01:12:21,640 This is it's. So obvious, isn't it? 1306 01:12:21,640 --> 01:12:23,560 But hadn't we done before? So she did that. 1307 01:12:23,560 --> 01:12:26,200 Another thing she does is change the rural area. 1308 01:12:26,440 --> 01:12:28,320 She had to go to different hospitals and drive between 1309 01:12:28,320 --> 01:12:30,560 them. So she thought, oh, I normally 1310 01:12:30,560 --> 01:12:32,120 couldn't get away with this because it would sound like I'm 1311 01:12:32,120 --> 01:12:34,800 being selfish. But she went and talked to the 1312 01:12:34,800 --> 01:12:38,440 various old folks homes in the wards and stuff and said, would 1313 01:12:38,440 --> 01:12:41,880 you mind if we change the order? I did this because if I go in 1314 01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:45,640 the opposite order, I will be going against the bad traffic. 1315 01:12:45,640 --> 01:12:48,480 So I'll be here quicker. It'll give me half an hour extra 1316 01:12:48,480 --> 01:12:51,400 every day. So can you just see how clever 1317 01:12:51,400 --> 01:12:54,080 and simple it is that that's like maybe 10 or 15% more 1318 01:12:54,080 --> 01:12:58,320 capacity? She, she used to eat with old, 1319 01:12:58,360 --> 01:13:00,240 old folks. Again, this is just sort of 1320 01:13:00,240 --> 01:13:03,760 simple psychology and I've used this with a lot of business 1321 01:13:03,760 --> 01:13:07,360 people. Actually, no, I want to go into 1322 01:13:07,360 --> 01:13:11,800 that, but she's going to go along to she's got old people 1323 01:13:11,800 --> 01:13:14,520 don't always turn up for their appointments. 1324 01:13:15,560 --> 01:13:19,400 So and it's just the curse. And I'm sure you've heard Robert 1325 01:13:19,400 --> 01:13:23,680 Giordini's idea of asking people to commit to turning up and to 1326 01:13:23,680 --> 01:13:24,880 phone them if they're not going to. 1327 01:13:24,880 --> 01:13:28,920 And just stuff like that. That doesn't necessarily work if 1328 01:13:29,400 --> 01:13:32,120 you know, if you've got someone who's got memory problems. 1329 01:13:32,640 --> 01:13:35,040 So she just goes, sometimes it's going to happen. 1330 01:13:35,040 --> 01:13:37,000 And they would do all the follow up and encourage people to turn 1331 01:13:37,000 --> 01:13:38,480 up. But but for people that didn't, 1332 01:13:38,760 --> 01:13:41,800 she just started making sure that she is so obvious that she 1333 01:13:41,800 --> 01:13:44,760 had work that she could do if someone didn't turn up. 1334 01:13:45,240 --> 01:13:47,520 And then, quite often, she'd actually better do a home visit 1335 01:13:47,520 --> 01:13:51,440 for them on the way home. Because she because she got less 1336 01:13:51,440 --> 01:13:54,120 administrative work to do, so she had time to go and see them. 1337 01:13:54,840 --> 01:13:57,000 Yeah. She just did an admin work that 1338 01:13:57,000 --> 01:13:59,120 she may be doing at 4:00 at the end of the day. 1339 01:13:59,120 --> 01:14:01,880 She did it during the patients time when they didn't turn up 1340 01:14:03,040 --> 01:14:05,440 and yeah. There's a brilliant one, by the 1341 01:14:05,440 --> 01:14:07,640 way, in terms of bottleneck. When I went in for I think it 1342 01:14:07,640 --> 01:14:10,000 was a cataract operation. You have some really weird 1343 01:14:10,000 --> 01:14:14,080 things, like if anybody's got a latex allergy, they have to be 1344 01:14:14,080 --> 01:14:17,800 the first patient of the day because obviously surgeon 1345 01:14:17,800 --> 01:14:21,760 surgeons use latex gloves and it's rare, but it but it's a 1346 01:14:21,760 --> 01:14:24,640 really serious allergy apparently, but must be really 1347 01:14:24,640 --> 01:14:27,720 bad if you're, if you've got a sexual fetish for latex allergy, 1348 01:14:27,720 --> 01:14:39,720 that must be really awful. But one of the brilliant things, 1349 01:14:39,720 --> 01:14:42,640 by the way, was simply the they realized the bottleneck wasn't 1350 01:14:42,640 --> 01:14:50,040 shortage of surgeons OK. It was that you had to stop and 1351 01:14:50,040 --> 01:14:52,360 clean the operating theatre in between each patient. 1352 01:14:52,680 --> 01:14:56,520 If you ran one surgeon with two operating theatres, the old 1353 01:14:56,520 --> 01:14:59,760 theatre was being cleaned while there was an operation going on 1354 01:14:59,760 --> 01:15:02,320 in theatre too. And then you flipped and then 1355 01:15:02,320 --> 01:15:05,120 you flipped and you effectively double capacity with no increase 1356 01:15:05,120 --> 01:15:07,280 in employment. There's an even better story by 1357 01:15:07,280 --> 01:15:09,040 the way, which you'll absolutely love. 1358 01:15:09,360 --> 01:15:13,280 I've got some friends in Kent to run a waste collection business 1359 01:15:13,280 --> 01:15:17,600 and they've got the contract to for a London borough to collect 1360 01:15:17,600 --> 01:15:25,160 all their bins and they had a massive problem with effectively 1361 01:15:25,800 --> 01:15:28,120 missed collections. And then then of course the 1362 01:15:28,120 --> 01:15:29,760 people complain. They said you didn't collect my 1363 01:15:29,760 --> 01:15:34,920 bins, you didn't empty my bins. The problem was weirdly solved 1364 01:15:34,960 --> 01:15:38,960 by getting rid of one person on a garbage truck, because now you 1365 01:15:38,960 --> 01:15:42,120 had two people and one guy was responsible for the left hand 1366 01:15:42,120 --> 01:15:44,280 side of the street and the other guy was responsible for the 1367 01:15:44,280 --> 01:15:46,360 right hand side of the street. Right. 1368 01:15:46,720 --> 01:15:50,200 When you had three people, there was a level of informational 1369 01:15:50,200 --> 01:15:54,320 confusion eventually meant that that's not my bin, that's 1370 01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:56,800 Barry's going to collect that one, and then Barry didn't 1371 01:15:56,800 --> 01:15:58,960 collect it. I'm stereotyping garbage 1372 01:15:58,960 --> 01:16:03,680 collection people as male. They tend, they tend to be male, 1373 01:16:03,680 --> 01:16:07,200 right? And consequently actually by 1374 01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:10,880 removing one person, you actually improve the the level 1375 01:16:10,880 --> 01:16:14,000 of efficiency. It's surprising that how often 1376 01:16:14,240 --> 01:16:17,000 they actually. It's really, really interesting 1377 01:16:17,000 --> 01:16:20,040 because actually, if you look at informational bottlenecks or 1378 01:16:20,040 --> 01:16:25,040 general confusion, sometimes fewer people fundamentally 1379 01:16:26,440 --> 01:16:30,560 operate more effectively. And the conversation of, sorry, 1380 01:16:30,560 --> 01:16:32,760 just jumping in there, the conversation of like human 1381 01:16:32,760 --> 01:16:36,320 bottlenecks and and Clark, I think you said something there 1382 01:16:36,320 --> 01:16:40,400 about your wife that actually she if obviously if you had to 1383 01:16:40,400 --> 01:16:43,400 recreate the aha moment, it would've been like looking into 1384 01:16:43,400 --> 01:16:46,480 the mirror, which is basically identifying that you are the 1385 01:16:46,480 --> 01:16:48,400 problem. But that's very, very 1386 01:16:48,400 --> 01:16:52,360 interesting because it means that the, the, the likelihood of 1387 01:16:52,360 --> 01:16:57,840 a nation A-Team being over to go from stagnation to flywheel and 1388 01:16:57,840 --> 01:17:00,720 therefore unlocking the bottleneck also requires 1389 01:17:00,720 --> 01:17:02,640 self-awareness of the leader, right? 1390 01:17:02,920 --> 01:17:07,400 So you need to be able to look at yourself 1st and even 1391 01:17:07,400 --> 01:17:10,480 consider yourself being the problem. 1392 01:17:10,480 --> 01:17:13,480 So I had a lot of challenges when I was making that 1393 01:17:13,480 --> 01:17:16,920 transition from being an executor to being a leader 1394 01:17:16,920 --> 01:17:19,480 because 1. I loved getting involved in the 1395 01:17:19,480 --> 01:17:22,080 work itself. I loved being the creative. 1396 01:17:22,320 --> 01:17:26,240 But then also what happens is it almost like developed this 1397 01:17:26,680 --> 01:17:31,240 almost like history of success That therefore gets you thinking 1398 01:17:31,240 --> 01:17:33,800 that what's got me here is going to be the thing that's going to 1399 01:17:33,800 --> 01:17:36,440 get me to the next level. But the world changes. 1400 01:17:36,440 --> 01:17:37,840 I. Heard about chilled crabs? 1401 01:17:37,960 --> 01:17:41,360 They've got to be different. 100% And the thing that unlocked 1402 01:17:41,360 --> 01:17:45,480 that thinking was one had a conversation with Ben, Ben 1403 01:17:45,480 --> 01:17:49,080 Francis, who's the CEO of, of gym Shark. 1404 01:17:49,080 --> 01:17:52,680 And basically he told me that I should find an outlet, right. 1405 01:17:52,680 --> 01:17:56,680 So Lewis Hamilton, his bottleneck was the fact that he 1406 01:17:56,680 --> 01:17:59,400 took F1 was his everything, right? 1407 01:17:59,560 --> 01:18:02,920 So he put all his focus in F1 and when he started to get other 1408 01:18:03,520 --> 01:18:06,680 things to be able to transmit his passion, he was able to be 1409 01:18:06,680 --> 01:18:10,240 very rational in his car, right. So I, I started posting on 1410 01:18:10,240 --> 01:18:12,480 LinkedIn. So that was 1 unlock, but then 1411 01:18:12,480 --> 01:18:16,960 then so I was still able to get my creative edge, but then come 1412 01:18:17,000 --> 01:18:23,080 into the workplace unemotive very rational because it was no 1413 01:18:23,080 --> 01:18:25,320 longer about me. It was more about the work. 1414 01:18:25,720 --> 01:18:28,520 Now another trip that changed my life was going to matter. 1415 01:18:28,880 --> 01:18:33,760 And actually what the message was was find unlock the 1416 01:18:33,760 --> 01:18:36,400 bottleneck, but it actually was transmitted. 1417 01:18:36,400 --> 01:18:38,760 The information was transmitted looking at three main things, 1418 01:18:38,760 --> 01:18:42,440 which was the fact that you should not let yourself be 1419 01:18:42,440 --> 01:18:46,200 crippled by perfection, right? You should focus on impact over 1420 01:18:46,200 --> 01:18:49,120 effort, right? If you think about the marketing 1421 01:18:49,120 --> 01:18:52,880 world and just the way that agencies are almost like set up 1422 01:18:52,880 --> 01:18:55,840 and the fact that it's all about time, it's all about perfection. 1423 01:18:55,840 --> 01:18:59,800 It's all about the visuals. But really the how you make or 1424 01:18:59,800 --> 01:19:04,040 how you almost like contribute to organizational changes 1425 01:19:04,040 --> 01:19:06,920 through unlocking bottlenecks that are not necessarily things 1426 01:19:06,920 --> 01:19:10,240 that take you a lot of time. It's just about finding areas to 1427 01:19:10,240 --> 01:19:13,440 unlock and, and Gym Shark's whole model was all about 1428 01:19:13,440 --> 01:19:17,640 focusing on impact of effort. We did a shoot in Japan that had 1429 01:19:17,640 --> 01:19:21,680 a crew of 20 people that didn't shift the dial at all from a 1430 01:19:21,680 --> 01:19:25,520 sales perspective. But curating a flat lay image 1431 01:19:25,960 --> 01:19:29,720 from a lady that was part of our community that made the, the, 1432 01:19:29,720 --> 01:19:33,000 the content of the, the, the, the leggings feel like it was in 1433 01:19:33,520 --> 01:19:36,440 one of our ordinances wardrobe that actually got the 1434 01:19:36,440 --> 01:19:38,440 relatability factor that we needed to be able to ship the 1435 01:19:38,440 --> 01:19:40,440 dial. And we started to think 1436 01:19:40,640 --> 01:19:42,200 actually, is there a simpler way to do it? 1437 01:19:42,200 --> 01:19:45,720 So you actually had an access of impact versus effort, right? 1438 01:19:46,320 --> 01:19:49,040 The, the next one was all about false constraints, right? 1439 01:19:49,440 --> 01:19:52,200 A lot of the times we create constraints that tell us, well, 1440 01:19:52,200 --> 01:19:55,160 we can't do this because either somebody hasn't done it before 1441 01:19:55,280 --> 01:19:57,960 or we haven't done it before, or it's something new. 1442 01:19:58,160 --> 01:20:00,040 But often they're not. Those are false, right? 1443 01:20:00,320 --> 01:20:04,480 And if you actually try to have a a test and learn a mentality, 1444 01:20:04,480 --> 01:20:07,200 which is we're not going to. Now changes as a failure, we're 1445 01:20:07,200 --> 01:20:08,800 just testing and learning, right? 1446 01:20:09,080 --> 01:20:11,520 That is another thing that a lot of people are very fearful of, 1447 01:20:11,520 --> 01:20:16,240 especially when you think about European culture, if you will. 1448 01:20:16,480 --> 01:20:18,720 But then actually the the biggest one I think that a lot 1449 01:20:18,720 --> 01:20:21,960 of leaders are really scared about is this whole notion of 1450 01:20:22,600 --> 01:20:25,080 almost like taking yourself out of business. 1451 01:20:25,080 --> 01:20:28,080 Gary Vaynerchuk seems to say it's like, if you think like a 1452 01:20:28,080 --> 01:20:31,040 competitor that's trying to get you out of business and you 1453 01:20:31,040 --> 01:20:35,120 innovate on yourself, you're more likely to be able to keep 1454 01:20:35,120 --> 01:20:37,320 fighting another day. And, and the issue with a lot of 1455 01:20:37,320 --> 01:20:40,880 people is once they get to the top, they stop almost like 1456 01:20:40,880 --> 01:20:44,480 innovating against themselves. We used to say, think like 19 1457 01:20:44,480 --> 01:20:48,200 year old Ben, right? So Ben started Gym Shark at 19 1458 01:20:49,080 --> 01:20:53,120 in his mother's house and he would look at the Nikes and it 1459 01:20:53,120 --> 01:20:56,040 doesn't say where's the area that they're missing and how do 1460 01:20:56,040 --> 01:20:58,200 I innovate there? And Roy, you talk about this a 1461 01:20:58,200 --> 01:21:01,240 lot and I think a lot of people fail to do that to themselves, 1462 01:21:01,240 --> 01:21:06,240 even if it means hiring the 19 year old Ben to come in, audit 1463 01:21:06,240 --> 01:21:09,440 your business and then taking that on board for you to be able 1464 01:21:09,440 --> 01:21:11,320 to innovate and keep moving forward. 1465 01:21:11,320 --> 01:21:12,640 And. It's very interesting because 1466 01:21:12,640 --> 01:21:17,320 actually benchmarking is often a massive obstacle to finding a 1467 01:21:17,320 --> 01:21:22,240 bottleneck actually, because patently the benchmarking hasn't 1468 01:21:22,240 --> 01:21:24,560 solved the bottleneck problem, OK. 1469 01:21:24,880 --> 01:21:28,080 And what you're then doing is you're, if you like your 1470 01:21:28,080 --> 01:21:32,800 widening roads where it makes no difference because one of the, I 1471 01:21:32,800 --> 01:21:35,520 suppose one of the implications of bottleneck theory is that 1472 01:21:35,520 --> 01:21:38,240 there's an off if you're, if you're not cognizant of 1473 01:21:38,240 --> 01:21:41,440 bottlenecks, there is an unbelievable amount of wasted 1474 01:21:41,440 --> 01:21:45,960 effort effectively, in some cases actually not not even 1475 01:21:45,960 --> 01:21:48,960 pushing the needle ineffectually, but pushing it in 1476 01:21:48,960 --> 01:21:51,760 completely the wrong direction. Oh, you can totally. 1477 01:21:51,760 --> 01:21:55,240 Yeah, yeah, totally. You can totally bugger things up 1478 01:21:55,840 --> 01:21:59,360 by spending your money. One of the things you, you, you 1479 01:22:00,280 --> 01:22:05,720 know, like Perito 8020 rule. The roading systems are such a 1480 01:22:05,720 --> 01:22:08,520 good thing to, to look at, to understand the stuff. 1481 01:22:09,160 --> 01:22:13,840 If you're going to spend stuff money on roads in order to speed 1482 01:22:13,840 --> 01:22:17,440 them up, you identify the bottlenecks and, and London 1483 01:22:17,440 --> 01:22:22,840 probably has 100 in Edinburgh, where I used to live outside 1484 01:22:22,840 --> 01:22:25,040 Edinburgh, there were probably about 3. 1485 01:22:25,080 --> 01:22:27,960 And, and everyone knows where they are and you can look at a 1486 01:22:27,960 --> 01:22:30,120 map and you can spot them. But if you're going to do 1487 01:22:30,120 --> 01:22:34,800 advertising, so, so the bottleneck thing is maybe .1% of 1488 01:22:34,800 --> 01:22:38,440 the actual square meters of the city space. 1489 01:22:38,520 --> 01:22:40,520 If you're going to do advertising, you look along the 1490 01:22:40,520 --> 01:22:43,600 roads with billboards and you're going to do an 8020 thing, 1491 01:22:43,600 --> 01:22:46,880 you're not going to do all the side streets you're going to, 1492 01:22:47,240 --> 01:22:50,360 you're going to put them in the places where the traffickers and 1493 01:22:50,360 --> 01:22:53,160 they're very similar ideas of, you know, making the most of a 1494 01:22:53,160 --> 01:22:57,280 small amount. The the bottleneck idea takes it 1495 01:22:57,280 --> 01:22:59,360 to an extreme. And actually like from a 1496 01:22:59,360 --> 01:23:02,240 marketing point of view, My, my favorite marketing example of 1497 01:23:02,280 --> 01:23:05,840 this is so lame. You 2 will roll your eyes in 1498 01:23:05,840 --> 01:23:08,920 Edinburgh when you come up the steps from Waverly Station. 1499 01:23:09,160 --> 01:23:12,160 There's an Apple store there. And there was in the times 1500 01:23:12,160 --> 01:23:15,560 where, you know, replacing the screen was really expensive and 1501 01:23:15,560 --> 01:23:17,120 there are all those little places you could go get them 1502 01:23:17,120 --> 01:23:18,880 replaced. They probably still exist. 1503 01:23:19,840 --> 01:23:23,000 One of the shops went up there. They paid someone to stand 1504 01:23:23,000 --> 01:23:28,920 outside that Apple stop with a little sign that that said, is 1505 01:23:28,920 --> 01:23:32,080 your screen broken? Go down the steps and turn left. 1506 01:23:32,800 --> 01:23:35,160 We're down there. You know, it was absolutely, you 1507 01:23:35,160 --> 01:23:38,520 know, that was the extremely well placed version of that. 1508 01:23:38,520 --> 01:23:40,400 No billboards would have got them anything. 1509 01:23:41,920 --> 01:23:44,360 It's all about just being clever and thinking different, isn't 1510 01:23:44,360 --> 01:23:45,480 it? Can I? 1511 01:23:45,480 --> 01:23:47,000 I now? I don't know how much time 1512 01:23:47,000 --> 01:23:51,000 you've got, but considering I have two geniuses in front of 1513 01:23:51,000 --> 01:23:54,320 me. That's I wouldn't go that far 1514 01:23:54,320 --> 01:23:55,600 I've. Got a question? 1515 01:23:55,840 --> 01:23:58,520 See how I start? With I hate you when people say 1516 01:23:58,520 --> 01:24:01,560 that because it basically says you have to solve this problem 1517 01:24:01,560 --> 01:24:04,960 in you have. It's the same thing. 1518 01:24:04,960 --> 01:24:07,360 Yeah. Live on there, yeah, but OK, 1519 01:24:07,560 --> 01:24:08,760 yeah. Sorry, here we go. 1520 01:24:08,920 --> 01:24:12,200 It's just a little thing, right? So I'm writing a new book and 1521 01:24:12,200 --> 01:24:14,160 you know when you get, you're just inside it. 1522 01:24:14,880 --> 01:24:16,520 You don't like your own writing and everything. 1523 01:24:16,800 --> 01:24:18,720 You can't. It's so hard to touch it. 1524 01:24:19,280 --> 01:24:24,040 I have a title that the, the, the book is like a really short 1525 01:24:24,040 --> 01:24:27,000 book. It's about how to deliver your 1526 01:24:27,000 --> 01:24:31,640 most important software projects on time to really aggressive 1527 01:24:31,640 --> 01:24:33,880 dates. And the metaphor I use is of 1528 01:24:33,880 --> 01:24:40,960 when Taylor Swift went to on whatever the Calgary, I think it 1529 01:24:40,960 --> 01:24:44,880 was whatever city somewhere in Canada, she went there and they 1530 01:24:44,880 --> 01:24:48,360 actually put a motorcade on for her and they shut down one of 1531 01:24:48,360 --> 01:24:51,200 the lanes so that she could get from the airport to the stadium. 1532 01:24:51,480 --> 01:24:54,120 And that was negotiated. And they basically said, you 1533 01:24:54,120 --> 01:24:56,120 know you are. Not one had that as well, I 1534 01:24:56,120 --> 01:24:57,960 think. Yeah, it was controversial, 1535 01:24:57,960 --> 01:24:59,280 Yeah. Totally. 1536 01:24:59,280 --> 01:25:01,600 But then they look at the the the value of it. 1537 01:25:02,000 --> 01:25:05,240 There's millions, there was hundreds of millions of dollars 1538 01:25:05,680 --> 01:25:08,800 in value in actually getting her to come there and she wouldn't 1539 01:25:08,800 --> 01:25:11,080 get there if she's going to be stuck in traffic or after 1540 01:25:11,200 --> 01:25:13,600 arrived the day before. And so they had all of these 1541 01:25:13,600 --> 01:25:16,080 countries are, you know, all these cities competing with each 1542 01:25:16,080 --> 01:25:17,920 other. So that's the metaphor. 1543 01:25:17,920 --> 01:25:21,360 And the idea is it's, you know, you set up a motorcade for your 1544 01:25:21,360 --> 01:25:25,000 most important projects and you make everything else sit in 1545 01:25:25,000 --> 01:25:28,800 gridlock because they are, you know, they're they're third 1546 01:25:28,800 --> 01:25:30,800 class citizens of all the other projects, right. 1547 01:25:31,240 --> 01:25:33,120 Yeah. The the name that I have for it. 1548 01:25:33,120 --> 01:25:36,720 And I love this name, but I would love your reflection from 1549 01:25:36,720 --> 01:25:39,520 people who aren't in stuck in my inside my head. 1550 01:25:40,080 --> 01:25:43,640 I want to call it cash cows make the best burgers. 1551 01:25:47,560 --> 01:25:49,960 You like it, Alfred? What do you? 1552 01:25:49,960 --> 01:25:53,560 Reckon so so so so on my side something that was kind of 1553 01:25:53,560 --> 01:25:55,680 similar and maybe this will help. 1554 01:25:55,680 --> 01:26:00,000 I, I think this is actually coined or something, but it was 1555 01:26:00,000 --> 01:26:02,600 a big unlock. I was listening to this another 1556 01:26:02,600 --> 01:26:06,240 podcast and there was a guy called Mr. Wonderful on it, and 1557 01:26:06,240 --> 01:26:10,080 he basically said that they talk about the fact that a lot of 1558 01:26:10,080 --> 01:26:13,960 people talk about intellectual intelligence, IQ, they talk 1559 01:26:13,960 --> 01:26:17,240 about emotional intelligence. And the big one is all about 1560 01:26:17,240 --> 01:26:20,520 focused intelligence, right? And actually, if you think about 1561 01:26:20,560 --> 01:26:24,480 the commonality between some of the most successful leaders, the 1562 01:26:24,480 --> 01:26:28,200 billionaires of the world, some might be more IQ, some might be 1563 01:26:28,200 --> 01:26:32,520 more EQ like Steve Jobs, IQ like Jeff Bezos. 1564 01:26:32,720 --> 01:26:35,080 But then I think that there's a commonality between all of them 1565 01:26:35,080 --> 01:26:38,000 is focus, right? And actually there was a metric 1566 01:26:38,920 --> 01:26:43,120 that they say Steve Jobs used and it was basically signal 1567 01:26:43,120 --> 01:26:47,080 versus noise, right? And it's like actually within an 1568 01:26:47,080 --> 01:26:52,240 18 hour day, there's five things that you have to get done that 1569 01:26:52,240 --> 01:26:56,320 are completely almost like significant towards moving 1570 01:26:56,320 --> 01:26:59,200 forward and closer to your longer goal, right? 1571 01:26:59,520 --> 01:27:02,440 And you should have those three things, only your five signals, 1572 01:27:02,480 --> 01:27:04,080 right? That should be done no matter 1573 01:27:04,080 --> 01:27:06,200 what. And everything else that is 1574 01:27:06,560 --> 01:27:09,360 almost like takes you away from that is noise, right? 1575 01:27:09,960 --> 01:27:13,760 And basically now when you're seeing things coming your way, 1576 01:27:14,000 --> 01:27:17,920 you're able to almost like this is the best leaders are able to 1577 01:27:17,920 --> 01:27:21,200 now distinguish what's noise versus what's signal, right? 1578 01:27:21,640 --> 01:27:23,720 And I think that's the effectively the thinking that 1579 01:27:23,720 --> 01:27:25,480 you're looking to establish, right? 1580 01:27:25,480 --> 01:27:27,840 It's like, what is one thing, what's in one pile? 1581 01:27:27,840 --> 01:27:31,680 What's in the other pile, right? What's what's gold and what's 1582 01:27:31,680 --> 01:27:32,640 shit? Right. 1583 01:27:34,040 --> 01:27:38,000 What is, what is, what is almost like momentum and what's tar, 1584 01:27:38,200 --> 01:27:41,000 right? If you're able to visualize the 1585 01:27:41,000 --> 01:27:45,400 feeling of what it feels like getting stuck, what's clutter 1586 01:27:45,640 --> 01:27:49,240 versus? I think a lot of people tend to 1587 01:27:49,240 --> 01:27:54,440 use a word that almost like feels like what it feels like to 1588 01:27:54,440 --> 01:27:57,400 get involved in that thing. It's almost like a noisiness. 1589 01:27:57,440 --> 01:28:02,080 Busyness versus like freedom. Right after that kind of like 1590 01:28:02,080 --> 01:28:03,760 feeling. I would go with something that's 1591 01:28:03,760 --> 01:28:09,280 a feeling as opposed to necessarily a a metaphor, if you 1592 01:28:09,280 --> 01:28:11,440 will. That's, that's the trouble. 1593 01:28:11,800 --> 01:28:15,200 I had someone else who's written a few books and I've got 5 or 1594 01:28:15,520 --> 01:28:18,000 got 5 now there's a bit, there's six. 1595 01:28:18,600 --> 01:28:24,880 And she advised to make it very, very, very agile on time, which, 1596 01:28:25,000 --> 01:28:27,200 you know, which is actually to some people's kind of appeal. 1597 01:28:27,600 --> 01:28:31,720 It's really hard to, to, to judge it, isn't it? 1598 01:28:31,720 --> 01:28:36,040 The, the to, to try and sum up something that's that's 1599 01:28:36,040 --> 01:28:38,800 attractive people actually because of you, the reason I'm 1600 01:28:38,800 --> 01:28:42,440 asking, I'm thinking, I'm obviously I want free consulting 1601 01:28:43,520 --> 01:28:48,840 advice. But for a lot of people like me 1602 01:28:49,240 --> 01:28:54,240 who come from an engineering background, we, we are the what, 1603 01:28:54,240 --> 01:28:58,760 Mark Watneys of the world, you know, the Martian, we are the 1604 01:28:58,760 --> 01:29:01,960 ones, the botanists that go up and grow potatoes and we science 1605 01:29:01,960 --> 01:29:06,600 the shit out of everything. It's very hard to, to, to put 1606 01:29:06,600 --> 01:29:10,400 ourselves to, to, to look at the, the stuff that you guys, I 1607 01:29:10,400 --> 01:29:13,560 don't know, I presume it comes naturally to you the way you 1608 01:29:13,560 --> 01:29:16,200 guys think. Or is it really really hard 1609 01:29:16,200 --> 01:29:21,080 work? Well, I don't know whether he's 1610 01:29:21,080 --> 01:29:23,280 going to come in here. I think he's thinking. 1611 01:29:23,280 --> 01:29:24,840 I think he's still thinking about it. 1612 01:29:26,560 --> 01:29:27,960 It's sort of mean. I mean it. 1613 01:29:27,960 --> 01:29:34,000 It does take hard work, but I mean, the one interesting thing 1614 01:29:34,000 --> 01:29:36,120 about working in an advertising agency, well, there are lots of 1615 01:29:36,120 --> 01:29:38,760 interesting things about working in an advertising agency, but 1616 01:29:38,760 --> 01:29:41,960 the thing of lasting importance about it is that it's a very 1617 01:29:41,960 --> 01:29:46,320 unusual incentive scheme. If you're in the creative 1618 01:29:46,320 --> 01:29:51,440 department, which is if you come up with an obvious solution, OK, 1619 01:29:51,640 --> 01:29:57,400 it's a bad career move and OK, at the worst level, it over 1620 01:29:57,480 --> 01:30:00,800 focuses you on the counter intuitive and the oblique and 1621 01:30:00,800 --> 01:30:03,960 the surprising. But on the other hand, you need 1622 01:30:03,960 --> 01:30:06,760 people like that in the world because everybody else, if 1623 01:30:06,760 --> 01:30:10,840 you're in a bureaucratic role, OK, and you say here is a 1624 01:30:10,840 --> 01:30:13,360 solution that makes perfect sense, we'll go. 1625 01:30:13,360 --> 01:30:15,960 Well done, Jeremy. You know, have a promotion to 1626 01:30:15,960 --> 01:30:20,920 G7, OK, in a creative department, an ad agency, you 1627 01:30:20,920 --> 01:30:24,360 know, if you come up with five completely obvious decisions in 1628 01:30:24,360 --> 01:30:29,360 a row, OK, you're out of a job. And, you know, it's artificial. 1629 01:30:29,360 --> 01:30:32,280 It's weird, but it's kind of important, I think. 1630 01:30:32,760 --> 01:30:35,560 I like that it's set up to weed out the boring. 1631 01:30:36,040 --> 01:30:38,360 Yeah, yeah, it filters out the boring. 1632 01:30:38,440 --> 01:30:40,720 I like that. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. 1633 01:30:40,720 --> 01:30:44,840 But it's not interesting that, you know, that is actually, you 1634 01:30:44,840 --> 01:30:49,600 know, in most cases, boring and logical is absolutely the way to 1635 01:30:49,600 --> 01:30:51,040 go. It's the best career move you 1636 01:30:51,040 --> 01:30:53,040 can possibly make. And the great thing about 1637 01:30:53,040 --> 01:30:55,240 working where I did that, interestingly, my brother's kind 1638 01:30:55,240 --> 01:30:57,240 of a mathematician and astrophysicist. 1639 01:30:57,240 --> 01:30:59,640 And of course, one of the strangest things that I've 1640 01:30:59,640 --> 01:31:02,600 started doing on YouTube is watching people solve 1641 01:31:02,600 --> 01:31:05,800 mathematical equations, which sounds like the worst idea for 1642 01:31:05,800 --> 01:31:07,600 television you could possibly conceive of. 1643 01:31:08,000 --> 01:31:12,280 But what I've suddenly realized is that all it's not about your 1644 01:31:12,280 --> 01:31:14,360 mathematical ability. Actually, it's about your 1645 01:31:14,360 --> 01:31:16,920 creative ability. You know, quite often there's a 1646 01:31:16,920 --> 01:31:20,440 geometric problem, a problem in geometry, which is completely 1647 01:31:20,440 --> 01:31:23,640 impossible. And then someone draws a line 1648 01:31:23,640 --> 01:31:28,000 between A and C and points out that these two angles must be 1649 01:31:28,000 --> 01:31:29,760 the same. And it goes from being 1650 01:31:29,760 --> 01:31:31,960 intractable to absolutely obvious. 1651 01:31:32,640 --> 01:31:35,480 And you know, there, there's an awful lot there which I found 1652 01:31:35,480 --> 01:31:38,160 fascinating, which is that in a sense with consumers or 1653 01:31:38,160 --> 01:31:41,400 potential customers, maybe you're just missing a single 1654 01:31:41,400 --> 01:31:45,320 line, which takes the problem from, if you've got to prove 1655 01:31:45,320 --> 01:31:48,960 that a triangle has 180°, the, the angles within add up to 1656 01:31:48,960 --> 01:31:52,720 180°. You draw a line across the apex 1657 01:31:52,720 --> 01:31:55,840 that's parallel to the base. OK, it's a straight line. 1658 01:31:56,000 --> 01:31:58,600 OK. And you can show that what angle 1659 01:31:58,600 --> 01:32:01,480 is angle B? The middle is angle A, and the 1660 01:32:01,480 --> 01:32:04,800 third angle is angle C. Since they make a straight line, 1661 01:32:04,960 --> 01:32:08,280 then those 3 angles within the triangle must also, but without, 1662 01:32:08,280 --> 01:32:12,960 without drawing that parallel line, you're literally just 1663 01:32:12,960 --> 01:32:19,360 staring into space. And so cognitive bottlenecks is 1664 01:32:19,360 --> 01:32:21,680 sense what advertising is designed to overcome. 1665 01:32:21,960 --> 01:32:25,200 It's, I don't get, one of the things that's driving me nuts at 1666 01:32:25,200 --> 01:32:28,240 the moment is, you know, I don't think anybody solves the real 1667 01:32:28,240 --> 01:32:32,080 cognitive bottleneck to overcome range anxiety in electric cars, 1668 01:32:32,640 --> 01:32:35,440 because I think everybody's looking at it by direct analogy 1669 01:32:35,440 --> 01:32:37,720 with petrol and they're getting panicked. 1670 01:32:38,320 --> 01:32:40,240 The actual truth of the matter is, once you buy an electric 1671 01:32:40,240 --> 01:32:44,440 car, the problem is, well, totally irrelevant I would say. 1672 01:32:45,760 --> 01:32:49,640 My my two friends that have electric cars both live up very 1673 01:32:49,760 --> 01:32:53,560 totally different parts of the country, up very, very, very, 1674 01:32:53,560 --> 01:32:58,560 very dark, windy mountainous roads and. 1675 01:32:59,120 --> 01:33:02,000 They. Reckon that they are just just 1676 01:33:02,200 --> 01:33:04,720 miles better for where actually for where they live because they 1677 01:33:04,720 --> 01:33:07,400 don't actually have to go there if they're running low, they 1678 01:33:07,400 --> 01:33:11,000 plug it in at home. But exactly, you don't have ABP 1679 01:33:11,000 --> 01:33:13,720 station at home. OK, that's one obvious thing. 1680 01:33:13,840 --> 01:33:16,680 We wouldn't need that many petrol stations if everybody had 1681 01:33:16,680 --> 01:33:20,320 a hose pipe at home that delivered a pint an hour of 1682 01:33:20,320 --> 01:33:25,320 petrol, right? But also also they will enjoy 1683 01:33:25,320 --> 01:33:27,760 their electric cars much more if they realize that they're 1684 01:33:27,760 --> 01:33:30,400 actually recharging while they drive downhill. 1685 01:33:32,240 --> 01:33:34,880 Yes, that once if they if they live in a hilly part of New 1686 01:33:34,880 --> 01:33:37,920 Zealand. Now, what you cannot do when 1687 01:33:37,920 --> 01:33:42,200 you're going downhill in a petrol car is convert carbon 1688 01:33:42,200 --> 01:33:44,440 dioxide back into fuel. OK. 1689 01:33:45,240 --> 01:33:48,480 But in an electric car, every time they're going downhill, 1690 01:33:48,480 --> 01:33:49,920 they're getting some of their money back. 1691 01:33:50,600 --> 01:33:51,880 Right. I like that. 1692 01:33:51,880 --> 01:33:54,200 Once. Once they're made, once they're 1693 01:33:54,200 --> 01:33:58,200 made conscious of that, they will find, I mean, my great joy 1694 01:33:58,200 --> 01:34:01,880 is literally I don't when an electric car, if someone slows 1695 01:34:01,880 --> 01:34:05,280 down needlessly in front of me, I don't get angry anymore 1696 01:34:06,040 --> 01:34:09,080 because previously they robbed me of my kinetic energy and 1697 01:34:09,080 --> 01:34:11,720 forced me to waste it and dissipate it as heat. 1698 01:34:11,960 --> 01:34:14,120 Whereas now I'm just getting my money back and it's fine. 1699 01:34:14,120 --> 01:34:15,400 I'll go on it. And of course, because the 1700 01:34:15,400 --> 01:34:19,080 acceleration was really good, you don't really care anyway 1701 01:34:19,080 --> 01:34:22,320 because you're back at 60 miles an hour and bloody 4 seconds. 1702 01:34:22,920 --> 01:34:26,680 So by the way, I'm being lent for a week and Lotus and Mayor 1703 01:34:26,800 --> 01:34:29,960 said to test drive. So I will report back on this 1704 01:34:29,960 --> 01:34:34,160 experience. Absolutely. 1705 01:34:34,160 --> 01:34:35,880 That is, they're the electric Lotus. 1706 01:34:36,840 --> 01:34:40,920 And I also, I also had a look at the Genesis GB 70, which is 1707 01:34:40,920 --> 01:34:45,400 unbelievable. I mean, it's partly that people 1708 01:34:45,400 --> 01:34:48,360 can't cope with the fact that you can have a luxury car and a 1709 01:34:48,360 --> 01:34:50,840 sports car in the same car. Same thing. 1710 01:34:51,080 --> 01:34:53,160 Yeah, because we've grown up with the idea that there's a 1711 01:34:53,160 --> 01:34:56,920 trade off between the two, which maybe an Aston Martin can solve, 1712 01:34:56,920 --> 01:35:00,800 or a Bentley. Top Gear years ago. 1713 01:35:00,920 --> 01:35:03,160 I just want bottlenecks aren't always bad. 1714 01:35:04,040 --> 01:35:05,560 No, OK. No, no, no, no. 1715 01:35:06,280 --> 01:35:11,000 So Top Gear, Richard Hammond, I must have been 10-12 years ago 1716 01:35:11,000 --> 01:35:15,160 now, was racing around and he had this car that was so fast 1717 01:35:15,160 --> 01:35:20,600 that she had to put a bottleneck and a limiter so that the thing 1718 01:35:20,600 --> 01:35:23,920 wouldn't go over. What say, I don't know, 220 1719 01:35:24,160 --> 01:35:26,120 miles an hour? I'm making up numbers here. 1720 01:35:26,120 --> 01:35:30,800 I know nothing about this because the tyres couldn't 1721 01:35:30,800 --> 01:35:33,440 handle it if it went faster. The tires were actually the 1722 01:35:33,440 --> 01:35:37,120 bottleneck of the car, but they put in the bottleneck, you know, 1723 01:35:37,680 --> 01:35:41,600 and probably some electric limiting thing, a deliberate 1724 01:35:41,600 --> 01:35:44,720 bottleneck that slowed the thing down so that it could actually 1725 01:35:44,720 --> 01:35:48,080 go faster, it could go as fast as it possibly could. 1726 01:35:49,000 --> 01:35:50,520 I'm going to give you another example. 1727 01:35:50,520 --> 01:35:53,800 I don't have it here. We just got a planning 1728 01:35:53,800 --> 01:35:57,040 permission got signed off today for our new en suite. 1729 01:35:58,920 --> 01:36:03,360 When, when the builder finished the the shower, I got in the 1730 01:36:03,360 --> 01:36:06,160 shower after spending all this money and I go, the water's 1731 01:36:06,160 --> 01:36:09,440 dribbling out like it, you know, You know, like if I go to a 1732 01:36:09,440 --> 01:36:12,080 massage, I want to hurt. If I have a shower I want. 1733 01:36:12,560 --> 01:36:14,200 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. 1734 01:36:14,480 --> 01:36:18,240 What's? Yeah, and so I rang the builder 1735 01:36:18,240 --> 01:36:19,640 and he said I'll send the plum around. 1736 01:36:19,640 --> 01:36:27,400 They put a little restrictor in the in the shower and you can't 1737 01:36:27,400 --> 01:36:29,840 remove it, but the plumber can remove it and it will let the 1738 01:36:29,840 --> 01:36:32,240 water flow faster. The plumber turns up and says, 1739 01:36:32,280 --> 01:36:34,360 oh, that's the safety thing because of some weird 1740 01:36:34,360 --> 01:36:36,480 circumstance that would never work in this place. 1741 01:36:36,800 --> 01:36:39,760 But there was a bottleneck deliberately put in as as a 1742 01:36:39,760 --> 01:36:42,960 safety mechanism. And then he he removed it and 1743 01:36:42,960 --> 01:36:46,800 the whole thing went faster. And if I've been open and 1744 01:36:46,800 --> 01:36:50,600 honest, I have a bottleneck in my tummy. 1745 01:36:50,640 --> 01:36:55,160 I had bariatric surgery about four years ago and. 1746 01:36:55,160 --> 01:36:57,440 They. To be fit to be put a bottleneck 1747 01:36:57,440 --> 01:36:59,440 in there so that I couldn't consume as much food. 1748 01:36:59,440 --> 01:37:03,800 It was almost like a much nicer version of wiring my mouth shut. 1749 01:37:04,280 --> 01:37:06,600 But it does another thing. It's not just a physical 1750 01:37:07,720 --> 01:37:10,280 restriction or limitation or constraint. 1751 01:37:11,080 --> 01:37:14,800 It actually turns off the the voices. 1752 01:37:16,640 --> 01:37:17,880 Yeah, kind of like Ozimpic Dozer. 1753 01:37:17,880 --> 01:37:18,840 Here's this. Saying so, it's both 1754 01:37:18,880 --> 01:37:21,040 psychological and physical at the same time. 1755 01:37:21,040 --> 01:37:24,360 It's it's both. Yeah, and and just so you got 1756 01:37:24,360 --> 01:37:26,360 without, I've got one other thing I want to tell you just I 1757 01:37:26,360 --> 01:37:29,120 have this list of things I I must share with the world. 1758 01:37:29,440 --> 01:37:32,120 This one. The the thing with bottlenecks 1759 01:37:32,440 --> 01:37:36,120 is it's actually all around us ways the way that people like me 1760 01:37:36,200 --> 01:37:38,320 think about it. And I only just realized this. 1761 01:37:40,240 --> 01:37:42,840 The, the, the perfect analogy for, for bottlenecks and when 1762 01:37:42,840 --> 01:37:45,520 you know, you have them actually not the analogy is that the, the 1763 01:37:45,520 --> 01:37:48,800 problems don't happen if your organization runs at the speed 1764 01:37:48,800 --> 01:37:51,120 of your slowest bit. It's every, everything's fine. 1765 01:37:51,520 --> 01:37:54,520 It, it happens when you try and run your organization faster 1766 01:37:54,520 --> 01:37:56,520 than the bottleneck. And the analogy is, it's like 1767 01:37:56,520 --> 01:37:58,720 when you remember when you were a little kid and you were 1768 01:37:58,720 --> 01:38:02,040 running downhill and suddenly you started running faster than 1769 01:38:02,040 --> 01:38:03,360 your little legs could carry you. 1770 01:38:03,760 --> 01:38:06,400 That, that that's what happens when you don't manage your your 1771 01:38:06,400 --> 01:38:10,040 bottlenecks because everything else tries to go faster and you 1772 01:38:10,040 --> 01:38:15,040 end up tumbling over and falling over, breaking your nose, 1773 01:38:15,040 --> 01:38:20,200 scraping your knees. And so obviously if you were 1774 01:38:20,200 --> 01:38:23,640 running as fast as your legs could carry you, you wouldn't 1775 01:38:23,640 --> 01:38:26,240 fall over, you'd be fine. It's it's trying to go too fast. 1776 01:38:26,680 --> 01:38:30,480 It would be like taking off that restrictor in the car, the 1777 01:38:30,480 --> 01:38:33,480 Richard Hammond car, and then racing like a Suddenly the tyres 1778 01:38:33,480 --> 01:38:36,000 explode because you of. Course, of course, of course. 1779 01:38:36,000 --> 01:38:38,560 That's brilliant. And that needs to be the 1780 01:38:38,560 --> 01:38:41,960 actually the the reframe for, for bottlenecks because that, 1781 01:38:41,960 --> 01:38:44,200 that, that the problem in the solution, but they're actually 1782 01:38:44,200 --> 01:38:47,360 not the symptom. Yeah, all the stuff from going 1783 01:38:47,360 --> 01:38:48,800 faster, that's all the bad stuff. 1784 01:38:49,560 --> 01:38:53,200 Yeah, I was, I was going to say because often than not when you 1785 01:38:53,200 --> 01:38:57,760 think about new startups and scale UPS, they always, if you 1786 01:38:57,760 --> 01:39:00,840 think about what metal used to use the whole move fast and 1787 01:39:00,840 --> 01:39:04,480 break things or, or, or build the rocket ship whilst you're 1788 01:39:04,480 --> 01:39:06,800 flying it. Those are all analogies that 1789 01:39:06,800 --> 01:39:11,840 basically talk about removing bottlenecks that are preventing 1790 01:39:11,840 --> 01:39:14,760 momentum, right. But if you think about the 1791 01:39:14,760 --> 01:39:18,080 chaotic nature or the culture within those organizations, 1792 01:39:18,320 --> 01:39:22,080 sometimes because there are no bottlenecks or the right type of 1793 01:39:22,080 --> 01:39:25,360 bottlenecks, you're not able to actually almost like preserve 1794 01:39:25,360 --> 01:39:28,160 what's very important and ensure that people don't burn out, 1795 01:39:28,680 --> 01:39:30,080 right? Which is super interesting. 1796 01:39:30,680 --> 01:39:33,840 That's the that's the ultimate I'll tell you how to ruin an 1797 01:39:33,840 --> 01:39:36,240 organization. If if you ever seen that, that 1798 01:39:36,240 --> 01:39:38,920 CIA guide, I think it was for sabotage. 1799 01:39:38,920 --> 01:39:40,600 Just right. If you want to ruin an 1800 01:39:40,600 --> 01:39:45,720 organization, get ACEO and his who says right got all these 1801 01:39:45,720 --> 01:39:47,840 leaders here and they look a bit relaxed. 1802 01:39:47,840 --> 01:39:50,160 What I'm going to do is I'm going to give them each a 1803 01:39:50,160 --> 01:39:52,960 special project that's going to take up half the time. 1804 01:39:52,960 --> 01:39:58,080 I'm going to take away their, their assistant so that they 1805 01:39:58,080 --> 01:40:02,200 have to schedule their own calendar unless you, you know 1806 01:40:02,280 --> 01:40:05,640 what they'll probably do. And then the leaders will all 1807 01:40:05,640 --> 01:40:08,200 get clogged up. All of their inboxes will get 1808 01:40:08,200 --> 01:40:11,600 clogged up, full of decisions that aren't made yet. 1809 01:40:11,600 --> 01:40:15,200 You remember, that's the for a leader, that's the most obvious 1810 01:40:15,360 --> 01:40:18,840 visible thing. And then all these decisions get 1811 01:40:18,840 --> 01:40:20,000 delayed. It's kind of like what you're 1812 01:40:20,000 --> 01:40:22,640 talking about with the, the, you know, the councils and the. 1813 01:40:24,200 --> 01:40:29,200 You, you, you just make it so that the the leader doesn't have 1814 01:40:29,200 --> 01:40:32,600 time to actually do all of the expertise, which is decision 1815 01:40:32,600 --> 01:40:35,040 making, all the management, which is decision making. 1816 01:40:35,440 --> 01:40:38,880 And worst of all, actually worst of all, they ruin their family 1817 01:40:38,880 --> 01:40:42,120 lives and then and they burn out and their partners leave by. 1818 01:40:42,160 --> 01:40:46,320 By the way, IT has facilitated a lot of this stupidity. 1819 01:40:46,640 --> 01:40:47,400 OK. Yeah. 1820 01:40:47,640 --> 01:40:52,640 Because in the day, I actually am old enough to remember when 1821 01:40:52,640 --> 01:40:57,240 most people in in the office of any seniority didn't type 1822 01:40:57,440 --> 01:41:00,400 anything. OK, That was that. 1823 01:41:00,520 --> 01:41:03,720 That was woefully inefficient because very often the typing 1824 01:41:03,720 --> 01:41:07,840 pool was the bottleneck. OK, Now I'm not making this up. 1825 01:41:07,840 --> 01:41:11,160 In Ogilvy in the 1970s, people I spoke to who went there in the 1826 01:41:11,160 --> 01:41:16,240 1970s said the shrewd career move was to spend an hour a day, 1827 01:41:16,280 --> 01:41:20,720 Terry Thomas in the typing pool, which is you go and go there. 1828 01:41:22,720 --> 01:41:26,200 You'd charm the typing pool and bring them presents because then 1829 01:41:26,320 --> 01:41:29,000 you could get things typed faster than your colleagues. 1830 01:41:29,000 --> 01:41:33,160 Good, because they liked you. OK, Now the typing pool went. 1831 01:41:33,160 --> 01:41:35,800 That was inefficient. That was that was ridiculous 1832 01:41:35,800 --> 01:41:39,760 duplication of effort that way. But now you have senior people 1833 01:41:39,760 --> 01:41:42,960 doing their own calendar management or doing their own 1834 01:41:42,960 --> 01:41:47,040 timesheet. OK, you know, and it looks 1835 01:41:47,040 --> 01:41:49,360 wonderfully efficient because you get rid of people who are 1836 01:41:49,360 --> 01:41:53,240 generally in overhead. But the productivity of the 1837 01:41:53,240 --> 01:41:57,400 people who actually add the value has now gone down by 50% 1838 01:41:58,320 --> 01:42:02,480 if I mentioned. Angela With Angela, it was when 1839 01:42:02,480 --> 01:42:06,200 I started working with her hermit crab, Angela, Woman of 1840 01:42:06,200 --> 01:42:09,560 the Year, etcetera. When I first went there, the 1841 01:42:09,560 --> 01:42:14,800 obvious thing that she needed was either APA or Leo McGarry. 1842 01:42:15,000 --> 01:42:16,800 You know, The West Wing, the chief of. 1843 01:42:16,800 --> 01:42:17,920 Staff. Yeah, yeah. 1844 01:42:19,120 --> 01:42:24,440 And we had to sneak in a chief of staff disguised in another 1845 01:42:24,440 --> 01:42:28,640 role just so that it could take a lot of the management stuff 1846 01:42:28,640 --> 01:42:34,320 off her. And then suddenly she was able 1847 01:42:34,320 --> 01:42:38,680 to do so much more. She had time to think and, and, 1848 01:42:38,680 --> 01:42:41,080 and so much of her time was thinking, how do I grow this 1849 01:42:41,080 --> 01:42:44,760 into the next hermit crab shell? How do I do that 20 times? 1850 01:42:44,920 --> 01:42:47,480 There was always a bottleneck, Dee bottleneck, bottleneck, Dee 1851 01:42:47,520 --> 01:42:50,440 bottleneck. But to get us a chief of staff 1852 01:42:50,440 --> 01:42:55,360 and it, it involved skullduggery and sneakiness. 1853 01:42:55,840 --> 01:43:00,760 But then three years later, everyone in that position was 1854 01:43:00,760 --> 01:43:03,640 saying I need a chief of staff because they could actually see 1855 01:43:03,640 --> 01:43:05,680 the difference. But but you can't see the 1856 01:43:05,680 --> 01:43:08,240 difference if you've never if, if you're not as old as I think 1857 01:43:08,240 --> 01:43:10,240 you're a couple of years older than me, Rory. 1858 01:43:12,000 --> 01:43:16,600 And it's horrifying, isn't it? My hero Ellie Goldrich said. 1859 01:43:16,600 --> 01:43:18,520 He, you know, you know when you've reached that age, when 1860 01:43:18,520 --> 01:43:21,880 you've been down to do up your shoelaces and you when you're 1861 01:43:21,880 --> 01:43:23,640 down there, you think, oh, is there anything else I can do 1862 01:43:23,640 --> 01:43:27,040 while I'm down here? I think I've, I've reached that 1863 01:43:27,240 --> 01:43:29,720 that age and I've just completely lost what I was going 1864 01:43:29,720 --> 01:43:31,480 to say. No, no, if if you've got not got 1865 01:43:31,480 --> 01:43:35,280 the experience of seeing what it was like to have assistance, 1866 01:43:35,800 --> 01:43:39,320 it's very, very, very hard to come up with a, a logical 1867 01:43:39,320 --> 01:43:43,800 explanation that, oh, I'll get more done and I'm the bottleneck 1868 01:43:43,800 --> 01:43:46,480 and therefore everyone will actually benefit and the whole 1869 01:43:46,480 --> 01:43:49,360 organization will run faster without people. 1870 01:43:49,560 --> 01:43:51,760 It's it's quite a big mental leap for people to make. 1871 01:43:52,760 --> 01:43:54,000 Very, very interesting deal. Yeah. 1872 01:43:54,120 --> 01:43:57,400 That I, I, I mean, I think that's been genuinely 1873 01:43:57,400 --> 01:44:02,480 catastrophic that in other words, what we've generally done 1874 01:44:02,480 --> 01:44:07,640 is we've replaced people who are support staff with, with HR, you 1875 01:44:07,640 --> 01:44:11,240 know, legal compliance. We've replaced them with bossy 1876 01:44:11,240 --> 01:44:14,680 bureaucrats, and it's a double loss for people who actually 1877 01:44:14,680 --> 01:44:16,160 create value. You know, if you're a hospital 1878 01:44:16,160 --> 01:44:19,920 consultant, you've got fewer orderlies working for you and 1879 01:44:19,920 --> 01:44:22,840 you've got more assholes without a medical qualification bossing 1880 01:44:22,840 --> 01:44:27,000 you around. Story with that orderlies or. 1881 01:44:27,200 --> 01:44:28,440 Yeah, you please. Yeah. 1882 01:44:28,640 --> 01:44:31,440 All right. And there's AI Wish this is my 1883 01:44:31,440 --> 01:44:36,880 story, but it was the CEO of three hospitals somewhere in the 1884 01:44:37,560 --> 01:44:40,600 East Coast of the UK. It was sort of at a conference 1885 01:44:40,600 --> 01:44:42,960 and I think his name was Michael, who knows. 1886 01:44:44,360 --> 01:44:48,360 He pops up picture on the on his slide deck there and he says 1887 01:44:48,680 --> 01:44:59,880 this is what it cost to increase ophthalmic surgery by 23%, the 1888 01:44:59,880 --> 01:45:02,640 productivity. And there's a picture of two 1889 01:45:02,640 --> 01:45:04,440 chairs. And he said it wasn't actually 1890 01:45:04,440 --> 01:45:06,760 these, these are my kitchen chairs. 1891 01:45:06,760 --> 01:45:10,760 Two of them in the real world back in the hospital. 1892 01:45:10,760 --> 01:45:13,960 I went to visit the ophthalmic surgeons. 1893 01:45:14,360 --> 01:45:16,920 And they were, I was sitting down talking to them and they 1894 01:45:16,920 --> 01:45:19,200 were saying, hey, we're really, really, really busy. 1895 01:45:19,600 --> 01:45:21,800 And he goes, I know you're busy and I'm worried about that 1896 01:45:21,800 --> 01:45:25,320 because your job, you know, you, you can't be tired. 1897 01:45:26,760 --> 01:45:30,600 And I don't want you guys and you're currently working 110% of 1898 01:45:30,600 --> 01:45:32,440 your hours. And they go, no, no, no, we're 1899 01:45:32,440 --> 01:45:34,960 fine. And then one of them says it's 1900 01:45:34,960 --> 01:45:37,120 actually OK because we get a lot of breaks during the middle of 1901 01:45:37,120 --> 01:45:41,120 the day. And you go, oh, OK, what's what? 1902 01:45:41,120 --> 01:45:42,360 What's happening? There. 1903 01:45:42,880 --> 01:45:44,720 And they say, oh, you know how it is. 1904 01:45:45,040 --> 01:45:49,320 We're wrapping up one surgery. So the one of the nurses will 1905 01:45:49,320 --> 01:45:54,920 call down to the waiting area 200 yards away and say, bring 1906 01:45:54,920 --> 01:45:57,440 down the next patient, please. And then they'll go to get the 1907 01:45:57,440 --> 01:46:00,520 patient, but they have to be wheeled down in a wheelchair and 1908 01:46:00,520 --> 01:46:04,400 they have to have an orderly. And sometimes that might take 10 1909 01:46:04,400 --> 01:46:06,360 minutes. So we have a little, you know, 1910 01:46:06,360 --> 01:46:08,000 little actually, they don't drink caffeine, so they don't 1911 01:46:08,000 --> 01:46:09,840 have a cup of tea. We have a little rest in that, 1912 01:46:09,840 --> 01:46:12,840 that that break there while we're waiting for them. 1913 01:46:13,240 --> 01:46:15,760 So he goes, oh, that's interesting. 1914 01:46:15,760 --> 01:46:19,440 And then he pops down to the storage area in the basement, 1915 01:46:19,440 --> 01:46:23,280 gets 2 chairs, gets an orderly, I presume to help them carry 1916 01:46:23,280 --> 01:46:26,200 them up, puts them outside the surgery and makes that the 1917 01:46:26,200 --> 01:46:32,560 waiting area you see, you know, simple and just. 1918 01:46:33,000 --> 01:46:36,520 But he again, he had that kind of that quirky cleverness 1919 01:46:36,840 --> 01:46:38,080 because they feel a little differently. 1920 01:46:39,880 --> 01:46:43,880 Well, so this this conversation for me, it's almost like it felt 1921 01:46:43,880 --> 01:46:47,120 like inception, right? A bottleneck within a bottleneck 1922 01:46:47,120 --> 01:46:49,520 within a bottleneck. And I think that we've probably 1923 01:46:49,920 --> 01:46:54,160 have definitely throughout this conversation, I just wanted to 1924 01:46:54,160 --> 01:46:57,600 almost like sit down, experience it and make sure that the 1925 01:46:57,600 --> 01:47:01,200 listeners got the time to listen to both of you geniuses speak, 1926 01:47:01,200 --> 01:47:03,240 right? Because if you just think about 1927 01:47:03,480 --> 01:47:06,480 where the world is right now and we were just talking about 1928 01:47:06,480 --> 01:47:10,840 bureaucracy and the fact that actually often than not movement 1929 01:47:10,840 --> 01:47:14,440 happens at the top, at the bottom, the middle is, is often 1930 01:47:14,440 --> 01:47:18,840 people trying to justify or, or individuals or societies trying 1931 01:47:18,840 --> 01:47:22,080 to justify their worth, right? It actually deters as a way from 1932 01:47:22,080 --> 01:47:24,160 what's what's supposed to actually be doing right. 1933 01:47:24,560 --> 01:47:29,720 And I feel like if you have more people, I'm not just focusing on 1934 01:47:29,720 --> 01:47:33,400 the individual word, but think about the bigger picture and how 1935 01:47:33,440 --> 01:47:37,760 them as a vehicle within this wider system is actually 1936 01:47:37,760 --> 01:47:39,800 contributing towards the direction that we're going into 1937 01:47:40,040 --> 01:47:41,440 that. I think the society would move 1938 01:47:41,800 --> 01:47:44,480 further a lot quicker, right? I think there will be more 1939 01:47:44,480 --> 01:47:45,680 innovation. I think there will be more 1940 01:47:45,680 --> 01:47:47,480 growth. And I think we talked about the 1941 01:47:47,480 --> 01:47:50,920 importance of abundance, right? I feel like we're in our society 1942 01:47:50,920 --> 01:47:55,040 right now where scarcity is prominent and effectively 1943 01:47:55,320 --> 01:48:00,080 everyone thinks what's in it for me and what we got to lose, not 1944 01:48:00,080 --> 01:48:01,840 necessarily what have we got to gain? 1945 01:48:01,840 --> 01:48:05,200 And how do we how much more can we grow as a civilization and as 1946 01:48:05,200 --> 01:48:06,120 people? And I think that this 1947 01:48:06,120 --> 01:48:09,360 conversation is very, very important depending on who's 1948 01:48:09,360 --> 01:48:11,880 listening, right? And I think that it can 1949 01:48:11,880 --> 01:48:15,440 influence a lot of different spectrums because of how big of 1950 01:48:15,440 --> 01:48:18,880 a universal unlock this is. And that's the reason why me and 1951 01:48:18,880 --> 01:48:21,520 Rory decided to to do this thing is because we feel like it's 1952 01:48:21,520 --> 01:48:25,640 important to have these conversations as society moves 1953 01:48:25,640 --> 01:48:27,560 forward. But Clark, I actually, I was 1954 01:48:27,560 --> 01:48:31,640 just going to ask almost like parting message, final message 1955 01:48:31,640 --> 01:48:32,920 for everybody that was listening. 1956 01:48:33,000 --> 01:48:35,000 It is one big take away for people to take in. 1957 01:48:35,000 --> 01:48:38,280 But then also, I think it'll be great for you to let us know 1958 01:48:38,480 --> 01:48:40,640 where people can find you some of the work that you're doing 1959 01:48:40,640 --> 01:48:44,080 right now to ensure that we send some great traffic your way all. 1960 01:48:44,800 --> 01:48:46,120 Right. I like traffic. 1961 01:48:46,200 --> 01:48:47,880 That sounds like a really good idea. 1962 01:48:49,720 --> 01:48:54,480 OK, actually I got can I offer a suggestion for you, Alf? 1963 01:48:54,920 --> 01:49:00,760 OK, take the course that you've done on personal branding, copy 1964 01:49:00,760 --> 01:49:05,960 it and rename it Personal Branding for Left Brain 1965 01:49:05,960 --> 01:49:09,320 Thinkers. I will do that right now. 1966 01:49:11,600 --> 01:49:15,920 Because it's it's, it's something that that people like 1967 01:49:15,920 --> 01:49:18,240 me in my 20s, I probably would have rolled my. 1968 01:49:18,240 --> 01:49:21,760 Eyes also, if you do that, put the price up because the more 1969 01:49:21,760 --> 01:49:25,000 specific the target audience, the more you can premiumize. 1970 01:49:25,480 --> 01:49:29,080 There you go. I think, and I think it will, 1971 01:49:29,120 --> 01:49:32,760 will you could do it for doctors. 1972 01:49:33,640 --> 01:49:38,920 You could have this same content, but it's it's like the 1973 01:49:39,400 --> 01:49:42,960 I was at nurofen for back. I actually went night like I 1974 01:49:42,960 --> 01:49:46,440 heard this from Rory, you know, have I, I went, I had a 1975 01:49:46,440 --> 01:49:52,560 toothache and, and I went and I was looking for nurofen or it 1976 01:49:52,560 --> 01:49:55,960 was ibuprofen and I wanted one that was specifically for sore 1977 01:49:55,960 --> 01:49:59,080 teeth and they didn't have 1. And I got in a Strop in the 1978 01:49:59,080 --> 01:50:02,880 supermarket and I just grabbed the same 1 and I knew logically 1979 01:50:03,040 --> 01:50:04,960 that it had for teeth, it would be the same thing. 1980 01:50:05,320 --> 01:50:07,360 And I went home and then I refused to take it because it 1981 01:50:07,360 --> 01:50:10,400 wasn't for teeth. So that's rational for you, 1982 01:50:10,400 --> 01:50:12,960 isn't it? OK, if OK, I'm just going to 1983 01:50:12,960 --> 01:50:15,080 think what's really, really useful for people. 1984 01:50:17,480 --> 01:50:20,160 There's, there's lots of things you can do with this stuff, but 1985 01:50:20,160 --> 01:50:22,480 I, I think that the most important, but, and, and you 1986 01:50:22,480 --> 01:50:25,840 both repeated it. I'm going to use a slightly 1987 01:50:25,840 --> 01:50:29,040 different way of putting it. And it's not about bottlenecks. 1988 01:50:29,040 --> 01:50:32,160 But if, if you do, if someone does happen to look at the 1989 01:50:32,240 --> 01:50:34,640 bottleneck detective book, you'll see there's actually 2 1990 01:50:34,640 --> 01:50:36,680 halves. And I pointed out the first half 1991 01:50:36,680 --> 01:50:39,680 is about scarcity, which is about bottlenecks and the 1992 01:50:39,680 --> 01:50:43,400 second-half is about abundance. And when you, and it's all the 1993 01:50:43,400 --> 01:50:47,440 same very short story, but at the midpoint, the manager 1994 01:50:47,440 --> 01:50:50,880 involved suddenly realizes she's been trying to save a lot of 1995 01:50:50,880 --> 01:50:55,920 money and now the debottleneck and they've got more money 1996 01:50:55,920 --> 01:50:58,640 coming in. And, and it takes quite a 1997 01:50:58,640 --> 01:51:02,360 movement for her to switch from trying to save with escape 1998 01:51:02,360 --> 01:51:06,520 because of the scarcity to, to be in the abundance world. 1999 01:51:07,040 --> 01:51:10,040 And if there's anything that the analogy I have is when people 2000 01:51:10,040 --> 01:51:13,640 are walking along the street on a rainy day, they look down and 2001 01:51:13,640 --> 01:51:17,600 they, you know, they, they look at the footpath and they try and 2002 01:51:17,600 --> 01:51:19,680 keep the rain off and they don't look around. 2003 01:51:20,440 --> 01:51:23,160 That same St. a couple of days later when it's sunny again, 2004 01:51:23,160 --> 01:51:24,800 they look up and they're looking around. 2005 01:51:25,200 --> 01:51:26,880 And that's how I think there's that scarcity. 2006 01:51:26,880 --> 01:51:29,520 It's all it is actually a physical thing. 2007 01:51:29,520 --> 01:51:34,000 You're not looking around. And but then if you can just 2008 01:51:34,000 --> 01:51:37,080 figure out how to lift up and look around and see that bigger, 2009 01:51:37,080 --> 01:51:40,520 wider world, It's almost the opposite of like whether one of 2010 01:51:40,520 --> 01:51:44,400 those that you know the good. Cameras you have. 2011 01:51:44,560 --> 01:51:47,160 Where you can focus in and you can get that boker effect and 2012 01:51:47,160 --> 01:51:50,280 blur out everything else. Sometimes you have to do that 2013 01:51:50,280 --> 01:51:54,520 and you focus in and find the bits where you have to focus 2014 01:51:54,520 --> 01:51:56,600 literally your attention because they're the bottlenecks, 2015 01:51:56,600 --> 01:51:58,680 whatever way you think of a bottleneck. 2016 01:51:59,000 --> 01:52:03,320 But sometimes you'd have to unblur the background and make 2017 01:52:03,320 --> 01:52:05,680 sure that you can actually go wide angle and just see 2018 01:52:05,680 --> 01:52:08,560 everything. Both of those views are really 2019 01:52:08,560 --> 01:52:11,360 good. So, so, so I'm going to end on 2020 01:52:11,360 --> 01:52:13,440 this by saying your books called, of course, the 2021 01:52:13,440 --> 01:52:16,640 Bottleneck detective. And obviously we're a bottleneck 2022 01:52:16,800 --> 01:52:23,120 podcasts, but the word detective is also inordinately important 2023 01:52:23,360 --> 01:52:26,960 here because actually this isn't genius. 2024 01:52:27,080 --> 01:52:29,560 It's just noticing different things. 2025 01:52:30,360 --> 01:52:34,000 It's genuinely it isn't, you know, internal. 2026 01:52:34,320 --> 01:52:36,920 Well, actually come to think you in a lot of genius is just 2027 01:52:36,920 --> 01:52:40,840 noticing different things. I mean, Einstein, really, you 2028 01:52:40,840 --> 01:52:44,600 know, I'm suggesting I was dumb, right? 2029 01:52:44,880 --> 01:52:48,760 But he simply asked questions and saw things that other people 2030 01:52:48,760 --> 01:52:51,480 hadn't seen. Or he looked at things in a way 2031 01:52:51,480 --> 01:52:54,720 that was from what would it be like to ride on a particle of 2032 01:52:54,720 --> 01:52:56,240 light, for example. We know. 2033 01:52:56,880 --> 01:53:01,080 And the detective question is all about effectively. 2034 01:53:03,400 --> 01:53:06,600 And I always make the point about detectives, which is you 2035 01:53:06,600 --> 01:53:09,000 don't start by trying to prove things. 2036 01:53:09,000 --> 01:53:12,240 You start by trying to find out. And there's an investigative 2037 01:53:12,240 --> 01:53:15,200 phase and then later there's an evidential phase where you have 2038 01:53:15,200 --> 01:53:18,760 to prove it in court. And what I think business has 2039 01:53:18,760 --> 01:53:21,840 done is it's conflated the two, which is it said that everything 2040 01:53:21,840 --> 01:53:25,520 you do has to be evidence based. But sometimes the evidence tells 2041 01:53:25,520 --> 01:53:29,040 you what to do. And sometimes it's by doing that 2042 01:53:29,040 --> 01:53:32,400 you create the evidence. So sometimes the evidence drives 2043 01:53:32,400 --> 01:53:35,560 the action, and sometimes the action uncovers the evidence. 2044 01:53:36,600 --> 01:53:41,000 And we've created this weird linear, one unidirectional world 2045 01:53:41,240 --> 01:53:46,560 where you have to, everything has to be data-driven, but which 2046 01:53:46,560 --> 01:53:49,760 means you could only do the things the data tells you to do. 2047 01:53:50,200 --> 01:53:53,520 But what the police would do is they would do things which 2048 01:53:53,520 --> 01:54:00,120 generate information, OK. And I, I think there's 2049 01:54:00,120 --> 01:54:02,920 something, you know, I think in a way that if you look at the 2050 01:54:02,920 --> 01:54:06,720 scientific process, 80% of scientific breakthroughs 2051 01:54:07,080 --> 01:54:10,960 actually occur through chance observation or inspired 2052 01:54:10,960 --> 01:54:15,040 experimentation, not through sequential application of, you 2053 01:54:15,040 --> 01:54:19,560 know, of, of, of, of, of existing pre-existing 2054 01:54:19,560 --> 01:54:22,880 information. And I think, I think that, you 2055 01:54:22,880 --> 01:54:25,360 know, there's, there's a really, really fundamental problem here, 2056 01:54:25,360 --> 01:54:29,720 which is probably the bottleneck in many cases of discovery is 2057 01:54:29,720 --> 01:54:34,960 not actually that we're not doing science enough, It's that 2058 01:54:34,960 --> 01:54:36,960 we're too reliant on what we already know. 2059 01:54:38,000 --> 01:54:39,480 Yeah. And going back to what we're 2060 01:54:39,480 --> 01:54:43,480 saying at the very start, and I'm and I'm going to almost like 2061 01:54:43,880 --> 01:54:49,040 at my words on here about my lecturer marking me down because 2062 01:54:49,040 --> 01:54:50,840 of lack of Harvard references, right? 2063 01:54:51,040 --> 01:54:53,760 It's all in the same thinking. That's all scarcity thinking. 2064 01:54:53,760 --> 01:54:56,120 Where's your evidence before you've actually done the thing, 2065 01:54:56,200 --> 01:55:00,600 right? And if just to go even bigger, I 2066 01:55:00,600 --> 01:55:03,200 was having a really great conversation with my Co founder 2067 01:55:03,200 --> 01:55:06,600 Michael about the current state of Britain or Europe. 2068 01:55:06,720 --> 01:55:09,560 And obviously we all know that scarcity mindset is the 2069 01:55:09,560 --> 01:55:11,760 bottleneck that's keeping us where we are. 2070 01:55:11,760 --> 01:55:15,600 But if you think about it even deeper, it's, and I think that 2071 01:55:15,600 --> 01:55:19,600 Jeff Bezos was asked what's the main difference between the US 2072 01:55:19,600 --> 01:55:24,080 and Europe when it comes to like economical, almost like growth. 2073 01:55:24,440 --> 01:55:27,800 And it's fear, right? The fear of risk, right? 2074 01:55:28,160 --> 01:55:32,200 And if you think about where a lot of the money in Britain is, 2075 01:55:32,200 --> 01:55:37,600 is either in the ground, so land or in the bank account or in the 2076 01:55:37,600 --> 01:55:40,480 pensions, right, where don't make our money work. 2077 01:55:40,480 --> 01:55:44,960 We actually need that money to be reinvesting in the future of 2078 01:55:44,960 --> 01:55:49,080 the country. Rising property prices are a 2079 01:55:49,080 --> 01:55:52,520 massive economic bottleneck which have been not, which have 2080 01:55:52,520 --> 01:55:56,120 not been captured by existing economic models because they 2081 01:55:56,120 --> 01:55:59,000 don't distinguish between land and capital. 2082 01:55:59,600 --> 01:56:02,920 Yeah. OK, that's all down to how you 2083 01:56:02,920 --> 01:56:06,000 define something will determine what you see. 2084 01:56:07,520 --> 01:56:09,680 And by the way, the other reason I think detective, by the way, 2085 01:56:09,680 --> 01:56:12,200 is a great world is, is that sometimes the breakthrough comes 2086 01:56:12,200 --> 01:56:13,920 from noticing something really trivial. 2087 01:56:15,320 --> 01:56:18,160 And every case I read about where, you know, the Joanna 2088 01:56:18,160 --> 01:56:21,760 Yates case, the Dutch guy, you know, they asked him to account 2089 01:56:21,760 --> 01:56:24,840 for his movements and then said he says, you know, and then, you 2090 01:56:25,000 --> 01:56:27,600 know, one PMI went to Asda. But of course, you'll know that 2091 01:56:27,600 --> 01:56:29,440 already. They what? 2092 01:56:29,440 --> 01:56:33,320 All right, OK, why would we know that already? 2093 01:56:33,480 --> 01:56:37,800 They got CCTV at Asda and they asked a perfectly reasonable 2094 01:56:37,800 --> 01:56:40,360 question. Who the fuck thinks like that? 2095 01:56:40,800 --> 01:56:42,880 You've done something about anything, right? 2096 01:56:43,480 --> 01:56:46,960 OK. You know, really, really tiny 2097 01:56:46,960 --> 01:56:48,520 little things. It's like poker. 2098 01:56:48,680 --> 01:56:51,680 It's the towel, OK? There's information that is in 2099 01:56:51,680 --> 01:56:54,160 the public domain. That information, by the way, 2100 01:56:54,160 --> 01:56:56,680 that's in the public domain is generally pretty worthless. 2101 01:56:57,040 --> 01:57:00,880 The information that is, that you notice, that everybody else 2102 01:57:00,880 --> 01:57:03,760 ignores, that's the stuff that's really valuable. 2103 01:57:04,800 --> 01:57:07,800 The dog that didn't bark. In the night, which is my 2104 01:57:07,800 --> 01:57:13,400 favorite, my favorite ever case of by the way, I was talking to 2105 01:57:13,400 --> 01:57:16,800 someone in the British Special Forces and whenever they go into 2106 01:57:16,800 --> 01:57:20,080 a situation, then notice they're told they're taught to look for 2107 01:57:20,080 --> 01:57:24,520 two things, which is the presence of the unusual or the 2108 01:57:24,520 --> 01:57:31,440 absence of the usual. So, so, so the, the point is 2109 01:57:31,440 --> 01:57:34,240 that if you're going into a market in, you know, Iraq or 2110 01:57:34,240 --> 01:57:38,800 something and you know, and obviously if there's something 2111 01:57:38,800 --> 01:57:41,240 there you weren't expecting, that's important, but we're very 2112 01:57:41,240 --> 01:57:45,360 good at noticing that. But if the usual falafel vendor 2113 01:57:45,600 --> 01:57:50,800 isn't there, and that's also something to make you alert. 2114 01:57:52,640 --> 01:57:54,480 All right, Well, well, Clark, this. 2115 01:57:54,520 --> 01:57:57,200 Has been this has been AI think we should do a bloody second one 2116 01:57:57,200 --> 01:58:00,240 of these because I think this has been absolutely. 2117 01:58:00,280 --> 01:58:02,440 I absolutely love this. Every moment of it. 2118 01:58:02,440 --> 01:58:05,160 It's lined up, it's lined up sensational. 2119 01:58:05,240 --> 01:58:07,080 What a pleasure. Amazing. 2120 01:58:07,280 --> 01:58:09,920 Great interview. Well, thank you everybody too.