Foresight and Instilling Strategic Communication Frameworks with Kian Gohar

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This is a podcast episode titled, Foresight and Instilling Strategic Communication Frameworks with Kian Gohar. The summary for this episode is: <p>On today's episode of The Future of Teamwork, host Dane Groeneveld invites Kian Gohar, Founder and CEO of Geolab, to discuss the bionic age and how to utilize foresight to plan different scenarios and future-proof your business. Geolab has partnered with organizations like NASA, Google, the XPRIZE Foundation, and Harvard to help their teams create frameworks to work more strategically. During the conversation the two also touch on the power of AI in your software stack, crowdsourcing customer ideas in the innovation sphere, and the concept of "teaming out."</p><p><br></p><p>Key Takeaways: </p><ul><li>[00:11&nbsp;-&nbsp;03:16] Meet Kian and Geolabs</li><li>[03:17&nbsp;-&nbsp;05:04] The bionic age and what that means to Kian</li><li>[05:04&nbsp;-&nbsp;07:13] Taking the humans out of dehumanized work, and the pandemic as an accelerator</li><li>[07:13&nbsp;-&nbsp;09:06] Virtual training and the benefits to hybrid approaches in learning</li><li>[09:11&nbsp;-&nbsp;11:07] How the metaverse and online training could reduce global carbon footprints</li><li>[11:08&nbsp;-&nbsp;12:57] Pushing the edges of industries, and influencing others to follow</li><li>[12:58&nbsp;-&nbsp;15:19] Utilizing foresight in different contexts of growing a company</li><li>[15:20&nbsp;-&nbsp;17:19] Using foresight can create better commitment to problem solving long term</li><li>[17:19&nbsp;-&nbsp;18:46] Highlighting the San Jose Sharks and how it used foresight to plan out reactions to different scenarios</li><li>[18:47&nbsp;-&nbsp;20:24] How Kian and Geolabs help facilitate scenario planning</li><li>[20:26&nbsp;-&nbsp;23:06] Frameworks for encouraging how you show up to work more strategically</li><li>[23:12&nbsp;-&nbsp;25:03] Why teams struggled to communicate during the pandemic despite software solutions</li><li>[25:24&nbsp;-&nbsp;26:49] The employee experience and making collaboration more seamless</li><li>[26:49&nbsp;-&nbsp;28:52] Resilience and wellness, and being vulnerable</li><li>[28:52&nbsp;-&nbsp;32:04] The power of AI in the stack</li><li>[32:07&nbsp;-&nbsp;35:00] Embracing diversity and creating a sense of belonging</li><li>[35:01&nbsp;-&nbsp;37:13] Crowdsourcing and bringing key customers into the innovation sphere</li><li>[37:14&nbsp;-&nbsp;38:47] What "teaming out" means</li><li>[39:03&nbsp;-&nbsp;43:05] "Teaming out" and collaborating with small businesses and smaller ecosystems</li><li>[43:20&nbsp;-&nbsp;45:13] Crowdsourcing ideas to solve problems isn't new </li><li>[45:14&nbsp;-&nbsp;47:52] Shifting mindsets, ownership and responsibility, and time and resources</li><li>[47:55&nbsp;-&nbsp;48:42] Hustle culture and accepting working differently</li></ul>
Meet Kian and Geolabs
03:04 MIN
The bionic age and what that means to Kian
01:46 MIN
Taking the humans out of dehumanized work, and the pandemic as an accelerator
02:08 MIN
Virtual training and the benefits to hybrid approaches in learning
01:53 MIN
How the metaverse and online training could reduce global carbon footprints
01:56 MIN
Pushing the edges of industries, and influencing others to follow
01:49 MIN
Utilizing foresight in different contexts of growing a company
02:21 MIN
Using foresight can create better commitment to problem solving long term
01:58 MIN
Highlighting the San Jose Sharks and how it used foresight to plan out reactions to different scenarios
01:26 MIN
How Kian and Geolabs help facilitate scenario planning
01:36 MIN
Frameworks for encouraging how you show up to work more strategically
02:39 MIN
Why teams struggled to communicate during the pandemic despite software solutions
01:50 MIN
The employee experience and making collaboration more seamless
01:24 MIN
Resilience and wellness, and being vulnerable
02:03 MIN
The power of AI in the stack
03:11 MIN
Embracing diversity and creating a sense of belonging
02:53 MIN
Crowdsourcing and bringing key customers into the innovation sphere
02:11 MIN
What "teaming out" means
01:33 MIN
"Teaming out" and collaborating with small businesses and smaller ecosystems
04:02 MIN
Crowdsourcing ideas to solve problems isn't new, and we're all suffering through similar mistakes that could have been avoided with more open source in problem solving
01:53 MIN
Shifting mindsets, ownership and responsibility, and time and resources
02:37 MIN
Hustle culture and accepting working differently
00:46 MIN

Dane: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. This is Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group. And I'm pleased to welcome Kian Gohar, the founder and CEO of Geolabs to the show today. Welcome, Kian.

Kian: Thanks so much, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here.

Dane: Yeah, so you've got a pretty cool story and there's your book and being a former executive director of the XPRIZE, there's lots going on. Perhaps you could share with our listeners a little bit of a personal and business background that sort of brought you to be where you are today.

Kian: Yeah, I never thought I would be this deep in business. It's not sort of what I imagined growing up. I moved to the UK in 1999 to pursue a master's degree in international relations. And while there I realized that the interconnectedness of politics and policy with the markets and the business world was so profound. And it really picked my interest to better understand how those levers work. And so I started career in business. I joined an early stage venture capital firm because I was really curious about promoting entrepreneurship as a pathway to solving big problems. And fast forward, I became professor of entrepreneurship at a leading business school in China for many years. And then I ended up joining the XPRIZE Foundation as an executive director. And for your listeners who may not be familiar with the XPRIZE, it's a technology nonprofit in Los Angeles that tries to solve the world grand challenges using incentive competitions as a platform. And we are most well known for our first prize which was a$ 10 million prize to open up the space frontier to private aviation. And I was there for a very long time learning how to think about solving grand challenges using technology and innovation. And I would teach about these kinds of technologies to companies who are very interested in learning from our work. And for many years, I was very interested in the advances of exponential technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics and how that would impact the future of work. And about five years ago, I realized that technology is going to continue on its path regardless of what we do. And the most impactful thing that we can do is to learn how to become better humans. To combine with technology in a bionic age and focus on the things that we're really good at, which is collaboration and teamwork and empathy and problem solving. And so I shifted my focus from studying exponential technologies to studying exponential teams. And so my firm Geolab is an innovation and leadership training firm. And we advise large companies and fast growing companies on how to develop exponential teams.

Dane: Very cool. There's a really catchy sort of... I don't know, it just grabs me, bionic age. I always think about cartoons and seeing humans with technology in them, but what does bionic age mean to you as someone who's seen so much in technology in that innovation sphere?

Kian: Bionic to me means that we will be working side by side as humans and technology, whether that technology is soft algorithms or whether that technology is hardware robots. And so, I think we are starting the early stages of this bionic age. And we need to become better at how to interact and work with technology because it's going to be with us forever. And I think some of the concerns people have had in the past about technology taking away people's jobs, I don't like that argument a whole lot even though it can be true. It's been true for hundreds of years, but I think that's a natural human element and reaction to change. And I think the best that we can do is to figure out how can we fill in those gaps where technology may not play a role. And so I think technology is going to augment human creativity and human achievement and human productivity, and I'm very excited about that. And the opportunity is like how do we fill that and how do we find those white spaces.

Dane: Yeah, I like that. It's very optimistic viewpoint and I think it's the best one to take because like you say, the technology's going on its path. And to embrace what is human is exciting. And we'll probably shape our near term experiences in a far better way than us burying our head in the sands. One of my good friends always talks about taking humans out of dehumanized work. And when you stop and think about what is dehumanized work, you realize there's a lot of people today who are in jobs that don't really allow them to be their best self. It's very task based and maybe they're not being given a chance to talk about who they are or use their problem solving skills. So there probably are a lot of those roles that still exist today.

Kian: Oh yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest challenges that we found in the last couple of years of the pandemic was that we heard about this idea of the great resignation of people constantly changing jobs. And that was very real for people who were service workers, who were frontline workers, were hourly workers. These are the types of jobs that are rote, sometimes they're considered not particularly very skilled, but there are tasks rather that still need to get done. And so I think technology has an opportunity to automate some of those tasks that nobody really enjoys doing. But I think there's an opportunity for us to think about also how do we help individuals who are been in those kinds of jobs for a long time, and how do we help them upskill and get into new roles that are more exciting? Actually, the XPRIZE, I helped them launched a future of re- skilling prize at the beginning of the pandemic. And the idea was how do you take specifically this population, this demographic of individuals who are in rote work and not particularly very high level collaboration or thought work. And how do you help them re- skill for jobs in the future at a 2X speed using new virtual training technologies? And that is a competition that has been going on for two and a half years, and it's nearing its finale in the next year. And so, that's one to watch in terms of how some of these new virtual technologies can help some of those people really upskill to jobs in the future that are high in demand.

Dane: That's a concept virtual training. So it's not just sitting in a classroom doing a digital lecture, it's actually more hands on. Are we talking Metaverse, are we talking games, what type of approach are you seeing to accelerating training to a 2XP?

Kian: All of the above. And so you have the typical early stage ideas of online courses, which we know are sometimes not very effective but that's one methodology. The other methodology are looking at sensors and avatars. How do you use those kinds of robotic hardware to actually help you feel and understand in a remote environment and learn, maybe a physical job in a remote environment? Also, looking at augmented and virtual technologies. For example, training you how to... Let's say you are a worker in a clean tech factory and you're trying to learn how to manufacture, install something faster. And you can see that through an augmented reality headset to better understand right on the job how do you accelerate that learning. And so it's all of the above approach to using new technologies to rapidly help figure out what are the best ways to accelerate training for people into these new jobs. And I'm pretty excited about it because oftentimes when we think about future of work and future of jobs, we tend to think in a very headfirst way. And a lot of populations who are impacted by these technologies aren't right now being addressed. And so this competition was really trying to address a demographic to help them figure out how to get jobs faster. And I'm really proud of it.

Dane: Yeah. It's a great project. And some of the companies work heavily in hydrocarbons industries, refining, that type of thing. And when you talk to some of the larger corporations in that space, particularly to their foundations or their community affairs groups, anyone in sustainability, they're all talking about the fact... Which is good to see, that as these facilities decommission because we're moving towards a lower carbon world, what are those people that are running those facilities today going to do in the future? And I think having more of a conversation around that demographic in our communities will probably help overcome that point that you reference the beginning on the change resistance. People are afraid if they're not being told what's coming, but if we're showing them things like this accelerated training program and saying, we've got your back. We plan for you and your community to maintain economic viability even when we're not here. That's a way for big companies that have got big operations to play a very active role in re- skilling and sustainability.

Kian: Absolutely. And I think that re- skilling it's not necessarily a glamorous topic, but it's something that's really important. And we no longer live in the world where you have one job for the rest of your life or maybe even one job for 10 years. I think because technology is making the shifts in the world happen much more quickly than the past, people are changing careers even every few years rather than every five to 10 years. And so we're constantly having to learn. And in my work working with a lot of organizations, they're very aware of this and they're starting to think about, okay, what are the strategies we can put in place to not only improve our own workforce, but also the stakeholders and the communities that we are working in because that's just as important.

Dane: Yeah. How much does that come down to a near term license to operate driver versus a long term change the world or really move towards where the future of industry is going to be for some of these companies?

Kian: I think it's a two- pronged answer. I think there are some companies who are very forward thinking and have foresight and are really interested in progressing and pushing the edges of their industries. I would say most companies are quick followers and would like to help prepare the workforce that they need to address and also to retain. I think that a major issue right now is retention of workforce. And potentially as we look at an economic slowdown, which however way you define it, how do we think about engaging people with different kinds of demographics and generational levels? For example, our research shows that Gen Z which is the newest and youngest workforce coming into the working population, they're at the oldest right now roughly about 24, 25 years old. They're the folks who graduated college at the beginning of the pandemic. About 50% of them are looking for a new job right now. And so how do you retain talent when 50% of your workforce is constantly looking for new ways of working, and that has the economic cost. And so to answer your question, I think there are some companies who are just really proud to push and figure out what this looks like in the future. And then most companies fall in the second category of thinking about it because it has an immediate short term effect on the retention of their staff.

Dane: Yeah. Okay. Neat. And when you think about that foresight, I know in the book you talk about the... Is it the foresight five minutes?

Kian: It's similar.

Dane: The five minutes of foresight? Similar.

Kian: Yeah, exactly.

Dane: So you're trying to get... But that's more at a micro level rather than thinking about where an industry's going, it's where could we as a company go?

Kian: I think you can use foresight in many different kinds of contexts, whether it's for an industry or for a company. And we talk about the book, one of the things that we do at the XPRIZE for many years we design prizes and in order to design prizes, you have to figure out sort of what the future might look like. And then try to kind of push the future that you want to create in that direction. And so we are experts at foresight, and we are futurists by training which means we help understand what are the early tree leaves of change. And be able to identify those risks and turn them into opportunities. And so in the book I actually talk about how every company and every team can become better at that. And the really easy way to do it is to just understand as a team and identify, let's say the five or six domains that are most important either to your team, or to your company, or to your industry. And task your team members to follow them over the course of a month by becoming mini experts on following people on LinkedIn or on Twitter. And then at your existing team meeting once a month, ask everybody for a five minute update. What did you hear this month of that particular variable that even tracking that might have an impact on our business or our team or industry, and what should we do about it? And so I think foresight is oftentimes not given enough time in how teams and companies and organizations plan long term. And they think that the future is something that we can react to, that the future isn't something that we can create. And I think that's somewhat true, but we can be better prepared for the future.

Dane: Yeah, that's a powerful quick and distributed tool set for any size of business to be empowering the team to have that domain to monitor and report back on. And I would imagine it helps with the prioritization and the change management too, because I know one of my problems is always I'm out there scanning and I see something and throw it at the team. And they're like, oh, Dane's throwing another idea at us. Where it would be far more important if the team could be bringing ideas up for the group to select where we should spend more of our time and resources.

Kian: Absolutely. And then they're more committed to that particular problem or solving for that issue. And so leaning into the team and helping them, asking them to identify the challenges and the opportunities is going to have significant more engagement. And I think that's a great way and we talk a lot about that in the book. One of the companies that I'm a big fan of, and I'm sure you're familiar with Indeed. com, which is one of the largest job board companies in the world. They have a very elegant perspective on foresight. And this company is privately held by a Japanese parent company. And this parent company really thinks in long term, decades long changes. And every quarter, Indeed's leadership team has a quarterly offsite like many companies do. And they devote actually part of that offsite to looking at and exercising foresight. So every quarter they're trying to figure out, how would we react if X were to happen? And so they developed this muscle for being able to look into the future. And when the pandemic eventually hit in the spring of 2020, they didn't expect a pandemic but they expected an economic downturn. And so they were better prepared for that reality. And so I think some companies have really internalized this kind of thinking of, okay, we need to be better at looking around corners. And if I can help anybody become better at that through the book or some of the conversations I have on podcast like this, then I'm hoping that's a little bit of impact and in helping people think clearly about the future.

Dane: Yeah, so it's less about being ready and it's more about being more ready because they knew a change was coming and they were becoming agile, which is I know is another big theme in the book.

Kian: Yeah, another company that I'd love to highlight in terms of an excellence in foresight is the San Jose Sharks, which is an NHL team up in San Jose. And when the pandemic happened, obviously their entire business model which was based around selling tickets where people come inside the stadium and concessions went to zero. And so the CEO, Jonathan Becher, a friend of mine, gathered up his team virtually and said we need to understand how the future's going to evolve. And you remember back to the first year of the pandemic, things were moving so quickly and changing week to week. And it was really hard to predict the plan. And so his team gathered virtually and said, okay, we need to identify for example, 30 most likely potential scenarios in six months time. And as a result of that ideation session, the team voted and the five most likely situations that they thought was going to happen. And based on those five likely scenarios, they developed a one page action plan of what they would do if that were to actually come to fruition. And this allowed the management team to really have a lot more clarity onto what to do and not be caught flat footed when that reality does come to fruition.

Dane: That's cool. The process for doing that by getting those teams and running those scenarios, is that part of what you at Geolabs do? Do you come in and facilitate the scenario planning and the way to run those workshops?

Kian: Yeah, absolutely. So we focus on two things, one is helping teams develop better foresight around these particular scenarios. And as a futurist, we can never predict a future accurately but our goal really is to help organizations become better prepared for it. So a visual analogy that might make sense is, if you look at when hurricanes are approaching let's say the United States, there's usually a path of likely where the hurricane's going to go. And this is sort of like the cone of probability. And what we do is help companies and teams understand what is that cone of plausibility for their organization in the short to medium term. And that's running through a variety of foresight activities and exercises. That's part of what we do. And the second part is really help teams become much more exponential in terms of high performing. And what that means is becoming better at collaboration in a hybrid environment, problem solving, using different kinds of tools like asynchronous collaboration tools. And we've been trying to figure out how does an organization solve its biggest problems without always being in the same space. And so our practice is based on helping teams figure out the foresight, and then also a behavioral change component through a variety of executive coaching with teams.

Dane: Nice. And on that exponential factor, the high performing teams, I know in the book you talk about collaboration before the meeting and you just mentioned asynchronous messaging and information sharing. How much are you seeing the role of technology play out in the ongoing work that you leave behind once you come in on an engagement? Are you setting up frameworks for these teams to be using on an ongoing basis rather than running a singular sprint?

Kian: Yeah, so I think we found out in the pandemic that collaboration isn't about where you work, but how you show up to work. It's not about the physical distance that we have between us, but the strategic and affinity distance we have between our teammates. And so having to rethink this assumption of what collaboration means and what work means has been a fundamental part of our research and our work for the last two and a half years. And so when we work with teams who are now oftentimes in the hybrid environment, some of the organizations I work with are some of the largest in the country and they have very distributed diverse teams. And they have different skill sets as to how comfortable they are with some technology versus having to be primarily in person. And individuals have had to really ramp up over the last two years for obvious reasons to get better at some of these technologies. So one point is an exercise to help them understand how to run this, but this behavior needs to become learned and internalized by the team over and over again. And so we help coach them to better understand how do you run these kinds of sprints? How do you use these technologies? One of the biggest challenges that we've seen is that companies are open to investing in new technology and new software. They don't necessarily have the connection from HR to learn how to use it. And so the CIO might actually buy the software or a license for the SaaS software, but the chief HR officer teams haven't really figured out how to really train individuals on it yet. And so some organizations I work with they don't have the technology to really help them work in an asynchronous collaboration environment and they're trying to ramp up. Others have it but they don't have the training to do it. So we need both. And that's part of also what we do at Geolab is to help figure out what are the right communication channels, the right collaboration softwares. And then how do you learn on your team to use it effectively.

Dane: So it really is an infrastructure, you come in and you coach and then leave the infrastructure behind. That's interesting. What you just mentioned there on all of the technology that's being adopted at times by the CIO or someone else in the organization, that's not necessarily responsible for the user experience or behavior. I read an article the other day, and I think it was a crazy number, it said$ 1. 3 trillion spent on digital transformation of which about 900 billion... So about three quarters, pretty much has been either underused or torn up and taken out because people are not thinking about the role of the human in the technology platform. They're just seeking the silver bullet of, hey, I bought the tech platform, we're going to be innovative now.

Kian: That's right. I would say a lot of companies struggled and a lot of teams struggled in the pandemic because they made the assumption that just by buying software, whether that was collaboration software, whether IT software like Zoom or Teams or Slack, that automatically made them a digital and hybrid and decentralized team. And that's just so far from the truth. You can't just layer Zoom or Teams on top of your traditional ways of working and assume that everything works exactly the same way. It doesn't. And teams struggled with that and they were exhausted by it. And then after two years they're like, this doesn't work. We want to go back to working in person because this technology showed that didn't work. And the reality is that these teams did not actually reassess assumptions that were necessary for them to rethink what it means to have a fully decentralized hybrid digital team. And the technology was part of it, and learning how to use it is another priority. And the second thing is, well, what are the other assumptions that we no longer need to make about what it means to work in a digital world?

Dane: Yeah, we've actually just hired in one of our businesses, he's a digital... Let me get this right, he's a digital employee, DEEM, it's a long one. It's not a good sign that I can't remember its name. But it's basically a digital experience manager for employees. So we're starting to think about... And the title may come back to me later, but what is the experience of the employee? How do we train them up for it? How do we select the right tools? How do we work out what we do in person versus digitally? And it's a role we've never thought of before, hence we don't have a good title for it. But at the end of the day, that's a shift we're having to make.

Kian: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a shift that many companies who are thinking about this are making. And I've seen a great title for this called chief remote officer be deployed. Obviously this is a more senior role than somebody who is maybe more in the depths of trying to... Deployed on a day to day scale at the front lines. But this chief remote officer is really responsible for figuring out what are the engagement platforms, what are the ways that we communicate, what are the ways that we maintain culture? And oftentimes the chief remote officer is working hand in hand with the chief HR officer or underneath that team to figure out what that means. But companies that are committed to working in a either remote first or in a fully hybrid environment need to figure out this element, whether you have that person in house or not or whether you hire a firm like mine to help you to develop that kind of skillset. That is really critical.

Dane: That's really neat. Are there any other cool jobs that you've seen roles created through this pandemic and this embrace of hybrid and remote work environments? You seeing anything else that's just a great practice?

Kian: So one of the things that maybe is not so much talked often in the world of technology is this idea of resilience and wellness has become very top of mind. Obviously because people were really struggling and exhausted for the last two years, anxiety level has increased 40% in 2020 in the workforce compared to previous years. And the idea of wellness became a really important topic culturally. And you do see companies who have chief wellness officers or people who are really thinking about how do we create psychologically inclusive spaces where people feel that they can be their true selves and show up as their true selves. Because ultimately, when we talk about having exponential teams, having trust, and being able to be very authentic, and being very vulnerable, and responsible for the activities that you are shepherding is really critical. And so this idea of wellness and inclusivity has become really important. There are technology companies who offer wellness apps to encourage companies and their workforces to be more thinking with wellness as part of their strategy, Headspace and common others, there's a bunch of them. So I think that's one area where I've seen a lot of growth and I think that's going to be prevalent. So Gen Z with this new research that we're actually coming out with, shows that Gen Z is really motivated by companies that prioritize mental wellbeing. And so that's different than other generations like Gen X or boomers or even millennials. And so being able to appeal to them as a workforce retention tool is really critical for thinking about wellness. So I think that's going to be there. The other thing that I think has seen an explosion of at least a short term on goal in the pandemic era, is the idea of how AI can facilitate further engagement. And also maybe not a perfect collaboration, but at least how can AI be used in the workforce in a more productive way? And so there's tons of experiments that are being made as you well know, on different aspects of AI to improve recruiting, to retention, to engagement. And so I think those are two areas that are going to stay with us for a long time going forward.

Dane: Yeah, there's actually a friend of mine who's started a business in the UK, Lupin, and that's what they're trying to do. They're trying to take these real time surveys, including things like your energy check in from the book, like what's your energy level today and what could we be talking about? And then it'll start to chart out the best ways for the business to respond to those departments or those individuals, because that's a lot of work as a manager. If you've got tens of thousands of employees around the world, how do you do daily check- ins or weekly check- ins with people? So I think you're right, AI needs to be part of that stack, that solution.

Kian: 100%. And I think in the pandemic we learned the things that are most important, sort of the kind of team skills. And we learned how to get better at them as team managers. And that's sort of what our research was on, like how do managers really get better at developing resilience and more effective collaboration in a hybrid environment. And I think what we'll see in five to 10 years time is technology that is going to complement that. And so we first got to learn what are the skills that we need to get better at. And we started learning them as humans, and now we're going to start automating them, digitizing them, and different tech applications will be developed on the stack to be able to help us better collaborate. And so I think again, that goes back to our conversation at the beginning is that we're living in a bionic age. And we are going to do some things as humans better and technology is going to do some other things better. And we have to figure out what our role is and what tech's role is in order to really be effective.

Dane: And that'll take the humans out of the dehumanized work too, because rather than doing the rote jobs, they'll be actually doing more of the engagement with customers or the thinking about what's coming around the corner in the future. I like that a lot.

Kian: Yeah, definitely. And I think there still will be a role for humans in some of those jobs, especially the younger force, people who come into the workforce early in their careers. They don't honestly have the experience or even the professional development to have maybe some of the higher thought order context for work. And so they still need to get job experience. And so for a lot of the younger generations that kind of like entry level and fund facing road jobs, it's just a part of what it means for us to be good humans.

Dane: Yeah. With diversity and you mentioned diversity earlier in the piece that we talked about foresight, when you are pulling these teams, these workshops together, how do you go about embracing diversity, equity, inclusion in that work group? Is it part of the selection process? I'd be intrigued to see if there are any best practices.

Kian: So inclusion to me really means that everybody has a sense of belonging on the team, and everybody feels like their voice is heard. And we know from research that 74% of team members in a in- person meeting won't even raise their hand to offer a suggestion. And part of that is because maybe they think that their ideas haven't been fleshed out enough, they don't want to be criticized, or for whatever reason, maybe they're shy or introverted. And so you're losing almost 75% of your employee base to good ideas. And so when we saw companies who actually reinvented what this looked like by using hybrid and remote tools, the level of inclusion actually dramatically went up because people felt like that their voices were heard in smaller sessions. And that the idea of the person with the loudest voice in the boardroom or in a meeting room doesn't necessarily feel the same way when you're all on your Zoom, you have the same level of square footage on a laptop. And so inclusion really has been very powerful in terms of companies thinking about how they can get new ideas into the meeting, so that's just a context to start up with. The other thing to answer your question is, yes, I think it's really critical about thinking who should be in a meeting. And so when we work with companies, it's not just a leadership team or it's not just that specific team that they're trying to solve a problem. I think those are important. Those are the first stages of people who are involved. But then also thinking about, well, who else is impacted by this particular conversation? Who else is impacted by a solution that we might offer to this problem? And then thinking through one of those tasks, one of those people they should be involved in the conversation as well. And so they should have a voice in terms of how we think about developing a more holistic solution. And that comes from a diversity of background, a diversity of ideas, and having them included in the conversation. Now I'll say this idea of really leaning into our workforce to crowdsource and have inclusive voices to solve problems, doesn't mean we have a democracy of decision making. What it does mean is we have an open marketplace of ideas that we can share so that the final decision maker, or the team owner, or the problem owner, can have better insight as to making a more holistic decision for solving that problem.

Dane: Yeah. When you talk crowdsourcing you mentioned of the workforce, are you seeing any evidence so particularly in the larger corporations where supply chain's so critical and so disrupted through COVID, that there are... To answer your question, who else is being impacted here? Are some of your customers starting to bring in the key suppliers or even key customers if they themselves are a supplier, to be part of that innovation sphere?

Kian: Absolutely. We talk a lot about in the book, that some of the companies that really solved this issue of collaboration and supply chain problems early on in the pandemic, were those that actually leaned into their vendor base and their manufacturing base and their contractors to ideate solutions that they were having jointly together. It doesn't cost anything to set up a Zoom meeting and invite whether it's four people or 40 people. How you run that meeting to get the right insights is sort of the magic juice of how you make it a collaborative ideation session, which is what we do a lot through our work with our clients. But a company that everybody will know, Unilever was really forward thinking with their CEO and their chief HR officer to think about, how can we not just think about our existing team that's going to solve a problem? But how do we actually team out and invite the other teams who have, let's say maybe one or two degrees of separation internally from our company to come help us ideate? But also how do we involve our vendors and our manufacturers to participate in this joint solution together? And they were able to have significant improvements compared to previously when they hadn't done this. And so I think this idea of crowdsourcing is not just internal like we talked about on the foresight piece, but it's really how they do internally and externally to get the best ideas to bubble up. And then once you have those best ideas, then obviously you have to implement them. And that's sort of a behavioral change perspective which we help our clients with as well, which is the coaching and how do you really build infrastructure to get this done.

Dane: Yeah. The comment you made team out at Unilever, was that an official terminology? That's a word I haven't heard before.

Kian: It's a terminology that my co- author, Keith Ferrazzi has come up with and we wrote about in the book. And the whole idea of teaming out it's not just your immediate team that you're trying to solve off the problem with. So I'm just going to make this up, let's say you have a team of 10 people. It's not those 10 people that you should just be trying to leverage their ideas. You actually need to team out beyond that to figure out who are the next layers, for example maybe within that organization who might be implementing the decisions that the team makes and having them involved in the conversation and ideation piece. And then teaming out even beyond that to layers outside of the company, vendors, partners, supply chain facilitators, who are again part of the overall solution that you're trying to make. And so coming up with the best solutions to a problem doesn't just rely on the immediate team that you have. But you have to really team out and figure out where those ideas are, so that way you can... You mentioned earlier that you have a new hire in terms of responsibility for user experience. And the similar thing is that the user experience for a particular problem set isn't just within your team, it goes beyond that. And so how do you make sure that you have everybody involved from end to end of ideation to delivery of that particular product, involved in the collaboration of the ideation for that particular problem. And that's what teaming out really means.

Dane: Excellent. Now I'm going to borrow on that and reread that chapter of the book.

Kian: Please. Yeah.

Dane: And I remembered the title, it was Digital Employee Engagement Manager.

Kian: Oh, great.

Dane: But yeah, we need to talk more about that job description. On the teaming out phenomenon, big businesses naturally command a lot of time and attention from their customers and their key vendors, contractors, but small businesses may only be a very minute fraction of spend or engagement. And we've always talked in industry about partner drag. So when it comes time for a collaboration amongst small businesses and ecosystem, are there any sort of approaches that you deploy at Geolabs that a group of small companies in a local community, or otherwise might be able to just grab a hold of and recreate to excite some more of this crowdsourcing, some more of this collaboration and foresight?

Kian: Yeah, I think this kind of perspective of how do you think about solving problems within your team and external to your team isn't just for large companies. Any kind of company can do that. And I think one of the best ways to think about it as a small company, small enterprise, who are the people who will be potential bottlenecks in delivery of your product to service, internal and external to your team that you can rely on to help ideate solutions? And those could be people internal to your team and your company. And there's going to be, for example external. I used to run a company in South Florida which was a very fast growing sporting goods business. And we had significant relationships with our supply chain partners and our logistics delivery partners. And so we constantly had a small company of 20 people and we had a global business. And we couldn't run a global footprint without really interacting very closely with our supply chain and logistics partners to deliver the products. And so not just thinking about ideas coming internally, but having sessions with people and inviting them to be part of the collaborative problem solving solution is really critical. So all of these perspectives that we talk about are directly relatable to whether it is a large company or a small company. And you can use templates and you can use tools to really help this kind of collaboration. So one of the things that I think is really useful is this idea of asynchronous collaboration. And we've talked about a lot of this, which is basically people can collaborate at different times in different spaces. And a very simple way that small companies can leverage this is to create a very simple Google doc or shared document and ask a very simple question. And the question is, whatever your company or team is trying to grapple with as an idea. And it could be a sales issue, it could be a marketing issue, it could be whatever challenge you're facing. And ask your immediate team members, and your supply chain partners, and your vendors who you have close trusted relationships with to help you come up with answers to this one solution. And ask them to share those comments on this shared document. And so set this out to these partners and ask them, hey, this is a challenge that we're facing... Here's for example the question, the market is changing, how should company X react to it? And then ask them to identify three different categories. What are some risks and challenges that you see for our business that maybe we're not thinking about? The second one is, what are some opportunities that you also see in this space that maybe we're not thinking about? And the third one is, do you have any offers of help of how you can help us get there? And so a really simple shared document like this can prove very valuable to identifying the right ideas within your team, external to your team, with your vendors, with your partners. And any size team or company can leverage this to come up with better ideas.

Dane: Which is a great example of going exponential because you're just a small company, but you just borrowed from the wisdom of potentially hundreds of other individuals and companies.

Kian: Exactly.

Dane: Yeah. And it is crazy to think that... Let's be honest, we're not... A good friend of mine said this to me the other day, I was telling him about a problem I'm having. He goes, hey, Daniel, you're unique but you're not that unique. We're all pretty much struggling through the same core set of problems. And yet in our own sort of closed off ways we're solving for those problems with limited information and duplicating a lot of work effort. And perhaps many of us are suffering through some of the same mistakes that we could have avoided had we been more open source in our problem solving efforts.

Kian: Exactly. This kind of philosophy of crowdsourcing ideas to solve problems is not new. It's been around for hundreds of years through competitions. It's what the XPRIZE does in terms of solving problems. And so over the last 10 years, I've been taking this idea of how do you really lean into your community to help you solve problems and find solutions to challenges to the corporate sector. And it's so funny because most companies say, wow, that's a genius idea. I never thought about that. And then some companies are often racist to try to solve it and other companies will find excuses of why it may not work, whether it's legal or marketing or what have you. And the biggest barrier that we see to actually accomplishing a successful crowdsourcing ideation exercise is mindset, to really helping change your team's mindset as to what's possible and what you can accomplish out of it. And trying to go away from this perspective of scarcity, of if we do this then this may happen and it has negative consequences to saying, yes, and what if we do it and we can have all these positive effect out of it. And so that mindset shift is really critical. And that's what I've seen has led some companies be more successful at using crowdsourcing as a tool for ideation.

Dane: Yeah. And on mindset, I just came off a podcast earlier today with Elizabeth Wong from Foundation Source. So she talks a lot about philanthropy and foundations. She mentioned something that really struck a chord with me, which is in busy businesses if we don't allocate enough resource there is always work to doing these things, even crowdsourcing ideas or asking people for ideas on where we should write grants to in our foundation. And that if you don't allocate enough resource, then you're not really starting with the right mindset that we really believe that we're going to do something here. So I'm seeing a commonality there. And I'm guessing that with the work that you do, Kian, it's important to have a team or an individual that really has the time and the resources to go through and take action upon these ideas and these offers of help.

Kian: I think that's a wonderful point. I want to double down on a couple of those things. So yes, you can't just have a crowdsourcing strategy and then throw it over the fence and ask your team to solve it. You have to train them on how to think this way. So you have to shift that mindset, which is part of what we do in these kinds of exercises with our clients. The second thing is, yes, there has to be a responsible party afterwards who then actually has to take the action on the next step. And so that's important too. The third thing I want to double click on is this idea of time and resources. Now, one of the things that a lot of companies and organizations don't think about is that the resources that you have most limited of all is not money, but it's actually your time. And I think this is one of the most important things where companies and teams get wrong when they're trying to solve a problem. Is they come up with a whole host of challenges that they face and they say, we got to solve for them. But what they don't do is they don't give enough time to their teams to actually solve for them. And so the calendar during the week is packed from meeting to meeting, and there isn't enough time allocated by team managers for their team members for dedicated deep thought. And that I find is very critical. So it's not just throwing resources at trying to ideate a solution. It's not just throwing staffing to help have a next step, but it's also really critical that we shift the time we have dedicated for individual deep thinking for us to come up with ideas to solve a problem. And making sure that we have those time blocks is really critical and very easy shift.

Dane: Easy shift. Yeah, I agree. It doesn't feel natural because we've all been living through this hustle culture of if you're not busy, you're not earning your stripes. But the deep thought is huge. And I often find myself, when I'm coming out of one of those moments I'm like, why don't I do this more? Because it creates that clarity and it helps you bring the team along. And yeah, it's very powerful.

Kian: Absolutely. And teams value it. Engagement gets higher. People feel like that their voices are heard because inclusion it means that new ideas are brought to the table and so it's win, win. But it does require a mindset shift by the team manager to say, we're going to work differently.

Dane: No, that's a really good note to end on. Kian, it's been an absolute pleasure today. So many great points. For me just a couple of the highlights we're talking about, exponential teams, technology's going to take its path but we can really do a lot with the humans and the human spirit. I love this crowd source concept and foresight and tying those two together. And that whole piece on inclusion and that stat, 74% of people that aren't willing to raise their hand. I love the fact that some of the technologies that a lot of managers have been complaining about through COVID and hybrid and remote work are actually driving more inclusion. I think if people shift that mindset, they're hopefully will be able to have more inclusive teams and give those teams a little bit more time for the deep thought as well.

Kian: Definitely. Dane, it's been a real pleasure and honor to be with you here today and share some ideas about the future of bionic work and bionic teams, and how we can really make the world a better place. And I look forward to following up and reading about all your successes.

Dane: Yeah, likewise, Kian. And how could any of our listeners find out more about you, about Geolabs? What's the best way for them to find you?

Kian: Yeah, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I share a lot of research on LinkedIn from my writing and from other research that we do. So probably LinkedIn's the best way. If you want to stay updated, just follow me on LinkedIn. You can also learn more about Geolab @geolab. com.

Dane: Wonderful. And the book was Competing in the New World of Work.

Kian: Competing in the New World of Work was published by Harvard Business Review earlier this year with my dear friend, my co- author, Keith Ferrazzi and Noel Weyrich. And take a look at it if you're interested in understanding some of the best performing teams in the pandemic. And how they were able to really thrive in the world of uncertainty and what that means for your future.

Dane: That's neat. Thanks, Kian. Thanks and congratulations for all the great work that you're doing.

Kian: Yeah, thanks so much. You could check out the book @ leadersguide. org and wishing all your listeners a great day.

DESCRIPTION

On today's episode of The Future of Teamwork, host Dane Groeneveld invites Kian Gohar, Founder and CEO of Geolab, to discuss the bionic age and how to utilize foresight to plan different scenarios and future-proof your business. Geolab has partnered with organizations like NASA, Google, the XPRIZE Foundation, and Harvard to help their teams create frameworks to work more strategically. During the conversation the two also touch on the power of AI in your software stack, crowdsourcing customer ideas in the innovation sphere, and the concept of "teaming out."

Today's Host

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Dane Groeneveld

|HUDDL3 Group CEO

Today's Guests

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Kian Gohar

|Geolab, Founder & CEO