#108: Why do some people see the future first?

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Steph Dobbs (Host)

Imagine seeing something other people can't. An opportunity, a problem, a completely different way forward. Would you trust what you see or assume that everyone else must know better? Businesses often depend on evidence, but by the time an idea is proven, your competitors may already be acting on it. So today we ask: Why does some people see the future first?

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Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

I genuinely believe most folks, if they're paying attention, can see problems.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

The core belief that I've lived most of my life by, in the business sense is, small, highly focussed, multidisciplinary teams can change the world.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

It's discipline in the face of jeopardy, in the face of ridicule in the face of failure.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

There is a very fine line between pioneer and stupidity. And so I would like to reframe pioneers not as the mavericks, but as the ones who really follow through.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

The pioneer also isn't the singular person. I think the pioneer is the collective.

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Steph Dobbs (Host)

Welcome to a brand new series of The Green Room by Deloitte, where progress and pioneers are our focus. I'm Steph Dobbs and I'm joined for the first time on the sofa by my new co-host, Gerry Popova. Welcome.

Gerry Popova (Host)

Thank you Steph. It's great to be here and I'm really excited about today's topic. I'm very pleased to welcome Anne-Marie Imafidon, who spent her career inspiring people and organisations, turn ambition into real change. She's the founder and CEO of Stemettes Anne-Marie, thank you so much for joining us.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

Thanks for having me.

Gerry Popova (Host)

And we're also joined by Deloitte’s Scott Campbell, who's actually a returning face to the podcast. He is an AI advantage partner and part of the Growth, Innovations and Ventures team at Deloitte. Welcome back Scott.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Pleasure to be here.

Gerry Popova (Host)

So let's dive into the detail. When we hear the word pioneer, there are usually quite big thoughts that come into mind. So Anne-Marie, we mentioned Stemettes in our introduction, what was that moment for you where you noticed a problem that other people may have overlooked?

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

So for me, the moment came later than one might assume from my story and from my life and from my achievements and milestones. I've always loved maths and technology, have always been one of these technical kids, have always spent all my time on the computer. I've always loved the logic and the repeatable and the deterministic. I still love all of that. And I love databases. And ended up working in industry in a technical role, which I was super pleased about. Really enjoyed, was very well paid to do, and I loved it so much that I ended up, again, having many other opportunities which I know we will cycle back to, kind of being opened up to me. So I ended up speaking at a conference in the States, having worked in the UK and London, ended up in America speaking at a conference that was for women in technology. There were 3500 technical women in this conference and it was really interesting, I call it a kind of road to Damascus moment, of me being in this space, of me seeing this sea of technical women and realising, oh my goodness, I'm a technical woman and I've never been in this kind of environment where it's... I've been in as part of a majority. I didn't realise I was part of a minority. But as I was there, I kind of learned a little bit more about what this meant to be a woman in tech. I discovered that at this conference. And you think, again, it's really silly. I've been a woman the whole time, been a girl beforehand, been into the tech. How had ‘woman in tech’ not been one of these identities or things I was aware of, but even more so that I was in this minority and that I was in a shrinking minority. And so that was the moment that it was like, oh my goodness. Yeah, that shouldn't be. I've loved it. I've enjoyed it. I've been good at it. I'm now gainfully employed in this space. The idea that I'm a shrinking minority is bad. Originally, as many pioneers, you know, you go on a journey of discovery. Originally, I think I thought it was an American problem. Did a bit more research when I got home and saw that, no, actually it's pretty much worldwide. For varying reasons. But for me, it was that Road to Damascus moment. It was being in that scenario. It was quite stark. It kind of slapped me in the face. And I think it's another one of those ones we can also say of pioneers, which isn’t often part of the storytelling, is that as smart and as clever, and as much as you might know about databases and about differentiation, there will also be other things that you miss, that you don't see. And I always joke that I loved all of that, but wasn't perceptive enough to see, that actually, in many environments, I was the only. And so my pioneering spirit, I guess, kind of kicked in with me then saying, “this is not right for so many reasons, on so many different levels. Let me do something about it.”

Gerry Popova (Host)

I'll be very keen to explore, Scott, from your perspective, you've worked with very successful businesses. Does that ring true with your work with clients? Would you say that pioneers are people who can see the future, or is it more people who are willing to question what's happening in the moment? To your point, Anne-Marie.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Well, firstly, I'm not sure that everyone that is in the business world can call themselves pioneers. I think it's a word that we throw around in business far too much, “everyone's a pioneer.” I think that the ones that do it successfully, it starts with curiosity. And I think that that's something which is quite rare. It's questioning why things happen, it’s questioning the status quo. I think that curiosity is so important. It's part of my journey as well, which was I found myself as the kid in class who was asking “why?” questions too often, and I was told to sort of quieten down. But that curiosity led me to being much more interested into problems and why they're solved. I find great organisations have curiosity at their heart, but I will say that in the best, they team that curiosity with discipline, and I think that's probably actually the unique quality of pioneers. I think if we all reflect on pioneers throughout history, there is a very fine line between pioneer and stupidity, right? Which is, I think there's a famous story about the person that tested the first parachute. One did it without... in an uncontrolled manner, and one did it in a controlled manner, we remember the one that did in a controlled manner. And I think that's true of all pioneers, the business you started in Stemettes, was curiosity, that idea, that problem. If you didn't have the discipline to execute it, it lies on the cutting room floor. Yeah.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

Maybe to that point then Anne-Marie, what are some of the other sort of instincts or common traits that pioneers seem to share?

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

Well I think... I want to build on the discipline because it's not just discipline for the sake of the discipline. It's discipline in the face of—

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Yes.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

—jeopardy, in the face of ridicule, in the face of failure.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Yeah. And so I think there's a lot of that that you get to see in pioneers is that—it's ridiculous, right? The things that you want to see, you want to make happen, feel quite silly. I talk quite often to audiences about Knight Rider in the 1980s. And the longer I do this, like, I guess the, kind of, the recognition kind of slips ever so slightly, right? So anyone that nodded keenly, I don't want to age you too much. But there was this show in the 1980s, right? You had Michael, you had his car called... KITT. There we go. And the idea that you talked—

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

—to an inanimate object

Steph Dobbs (Host)

We're already out of this subject.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

You're both just nodding along.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Talk to me Anne-Marie. We got this.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

Yeah, you understand.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

We were there in the 1980s. But it's so funny to consider that in the 1980s, it was a science-fiction exciting thing that you talk to a car, talk to an inanimate object. And it was exciting in the TV show. It was ridiculous to have done that in real life. And in the show he talked to the car and they’d successfully fight crime together. That's what happened without too much of a spoiler, I guess for folks who haven't seen Knight Rider. But it's interesting to think that that was only the 1980s. And we're not that far off the 1980s. However, now we do talk to cars. It's not something that would engender any ridicule or, you know, maybe not too much jeopardy, and you're probably not using it to fight crime. You're using it to change the radio station or turn up the AC or whatever it might be. But I think when we talk about pioneering, it is about working in the unknown, working in those spaces and having that discipline, having that curiosity. I would definitely lean into that as well. But the resilience to keep going, keep trying and understand and learn from those experiments. So about making almost high quality mistakes, but running at those and running with that, which I think when we look at organisations that are doing well now, in this fourth industrial revolution, another big term to kind of drop in there, it's the folks who were able to say, “Okay cool, everything has shifted and has changed. We've got a principal or we've got a central problem or a central thesis that we're working to, but we're going to be agnostic about how we get there, how we work at it, because the ground is continually changing. The data is now available. The electricity is this, the AI is that, the quantum is now on the horizon.” And so it's folks who are also able to adapt and change as they go with that discipline, right? With that curiosity and with a little bit of, a little bit of faith, little bit of magic, right? A little bit of humility, I think would be the other thing that, again, I don't feel that we often tell the stories of pioneers that are humble, and maybe because they're not the ones clamouring for their stories to be told in that kind of way. But humility, I think, is the other thing that ends up meaning that you're able to truly innovate in a powerful way because you don't assume that you already know where you're going. You don't assume that you know exactly what the future is going to be, which is why I love the topic and the conversation that we've got in The Green Room today.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

So, as you say, there's that piece around humility, and we'll come on to talk a little bit later on about when it comes to businesses, how you can actually create like a culture, for example, that sort of helps that progress. But Scott, maybe just on that sort of point around businesses, are businesses actually set up to make this easy, or are they basically just at risk of missing big opportunities?

Scott Campbell (Guest)

I think the answer to that is it's not evenly distributed. You have to have the right conditions. And I actually might even challenge what a view of a pioneer in a large organisation is. I've worked with a client in the life and pensions world where someone had an idea. I would describe that person as a maverick. The pioneer was the person who backed him, came in behind and said, “do you know what? I'm going to challenge the conventions carefully, and I'm going to help this maverick to make that a reality.” I think that person was a humble pioneer. The maverick is often heralded as the pioneer, but often it's that second person through the door that a lot of businesses don't incentivise. I've been lucky enough to work with some of the pioneering organisations in the world and they separate the scarcity of scaling, from the abundance of ideas. They view pioneers as the ones that scale the idea. The ideas, are not scarce in their organisations, And so I would like to reframe pioneers not as the mavericks, but as the ones who really follow through. Now, the clients that I work with who have the best set up, have the structure which pushes curiosity out to their people. What a great thing to empower them to do. But then brings it back to use all the boring words of governance, tenacity, multi-year investment to allow that to continue to flourish, to back it. The CEO saying, “this is important.” Those are the conditions... it's not an ideas competition. That's not where pioneers come from. Pioneers come from the system that's created by organisations.

Gerry Popova (Host)

And I think this is a very interesting point that you're making, Scott, because there's a lot of this kind of pioneering ideas do not exist in a vacuum. Right? And I want to go back to something that Anne-Marie, you mentioned and really stuck with me. And it was about that curiosity, that ability to adapt, that resilience. And from your perspective, would you say that pioneers are naturally different individuals, or can we actually do something to train ourselves to get ourselves on that path and become one?

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

I think the pioneer also isn't the singular person. I think the pioneer is the collective. And so I think everybody has a role to play in pioneering, right? As a pioneer. When you look at, you know, ancient civilisations or whoever it would have been that had pioneering spirit that travelled and did the rest of it, you had different folks that were playing different roles, and it was the balance of all of that and the environment that allowed those different types of folks to thrive in those different ways that allowed that pioneering, you know, the outputs or whatever of the pioneering spirit to have been. And so I think it's about, as a business leader, cultivating environments where you're able to shift and adapt and recognise that talent in different types of folks recognise the skills that they have and the experiences that they have and recognise that in forms that might not be, kind of, categorised or part of a taxonomy that we already have in the current world, right? But you are able to set up those systems and those environments and those groups and those collectives. And it's not just about teams, right? We have all kinds of business books written about weak links across organisations and how that impacts Innovation, or you have different kind of ad hoc projects that folks do outside of their main work deliverables that allow them to explore and, kind of, go for this, to our earlier point, kind of new bit of knowledge that we don't know quite where it's going to be used or where it's going to land, but that's something that folks are then able to draw into their pioneering and their innovation process. So I think it's about... it’s not about folks all heading towards one pioneer archetype, but it's about environments that allow folks to pioneer together. And I’d labour that point, you know, even more so to say that it's not about that singular maverick, genius, prodigy, even... if I may, right? It's about those collectives. It's what you're able to do together. And there's not a single innovation. There's nothing that has come from just one person. It's always built on the shoulders of folks that have been before. It's built within the context of norms that already exists, and it's built with those kind of governance structures or lack of as well, in certain places, right? That we're able to see that pioneering. So it's not one destination, right? It's almost like a... it's an output and it's an outcome. It's a verb, it's a happening, it's a set of actions, rather than it being a status or a label that is just on that. That's the pioneer in the corner. And you know, you haven't got those skills, and so we're not going to allow you to be part of that pioneering.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

And I think if I just build on that to reframe what you just said, Anne-Marie, and give one of the problems that I see in big business, you described brilliantly, collaboration the weak links, all these innovation things. The need for R&D as curiosity. Some of the clients I work with would reframe those as inefficiencies. Right? And I think there is a very fine margin between what I would call traditional business school teachings about scale and inefficiencies versus allowing curiosity. A lot of my clients talk about R&D as a cost. It's interesting that I view it as a necessary part of a system for curiosity. Curiosity finds the opportunity, discipline executes and scales it. I worry that we... I think this is the third time on a podcast where I've blamed the invention of the spreadsheet, but, the ability to class cost in such grid-like ways, classes these things as inefficiencies, rather than, where, in my experience of great leaders, views those as necessary systemic things to drive that pioneering spirit. I agree that it's a a reframing which I try and discourage my clients from doing.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

As a lover of the database, which is a cousin of the spreadsheet, I feel like I have to come to the defence of spreadsheets.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Defend grids.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

Please do.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Spreadsheets don't fill themselves. Neither do they format themselves. It's a problem and it's an issue.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

And it does come back to this notion of the future, right? We don't know what the future will be. And when you are creating the future, it's a guess, it's a bet, right? Something that you're trying, you're giving it a go. And so I think it's harder then to say R&D is an investment. And if we normally measure against ROI, it's knowing when the R is going to show up, which I think also then is the trouble that you have with pioneers and that you have a geniuses. Like often, a lot of folks, they're not understood in their time, right? It’s after they've long gone that you start to realise this and recognise this. And it struck me the most studying maths, you know, there's so much that we have at the moment in cyber that's based on prime numbers. And I'm like, that was centuries ago. Those folks are long dead, gone. Their children, their grandchildren... Nowhere to be seen, yet that is how we're able to do so much of what happens in the modern world. And so I think you do also sometimes as a pioneer, almost have to kind of hold it yourself and be like, “do you know what, maybe 300 years time, we'll see.” But again, that won't fit in the spreadsheet, I'm sure the spreadsheets, I mean, 300 years ago, they didn't even have spreadsheets.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

I was going to say, definitely didn't.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

The abacus, the abacus was to blame. So who knows, maybe there's an abacus we need to go and dig out. And that will help us with some of our current ROI calculations.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

So as well as pioneers, as part of the series that we're doing, we're also going to talk about the concept of progress. So that's going to be a big part of it. What do you actually say is the link between those two things? Is it a case that a pioneer is where progress starts? How do you link those two together? Scott, let's start with you.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

the core belief that I've lived most of my life by, in the business sense is small, highly focussed, multidisciplinary teams can change the world, right? That is the premise of pioneering, of venture and it's always been true. Leaps are made by small multidisciplinary teams that drive forward progress. But progress is nothing without scaling and capturing and turning that into economic productivity and better benefits, better health outcomes, better citizen outcomes. And I think it's a very delicate ecosystem between big organisations, small organisation, pioneers. I'm sure you've all heard the phrase, ‘pioneer, settler, farmer’, which is someone finds pioneers the way the settler beds it down, and the farmer absolutely gets the efficiencies out of it. You need all three. And I think that too often we ask all individuals in an organisation or a nation to be all three And just to pick up on something Anne-Marie was talking about, that I'm seeing businesses not view their people in the silo with the function name above the door, an operations person, a finance person, the human resources person. They're seeing them more as, pioneer, settler, farmer. And that's a really interesting change to how you view your people. And I think that's necessary in the world of AI. Not because AI changes what the outcome is, but it changes the speed with which that happens. So it's no longer, “how can I use AI in my finance department?” It's, “how do I give AI to my pioneers in the business to help discover the opportunities?” That's a very different organisational construct. So I think it's a very delicate balance. Pioneers lead to progress, but not on their own.

Gerry Popova (Host)

Absolutely. And I think you're touching on a really important point, that there is a difference between finding an idea or challenging a concept and then bringing that to fruition. Perhaps from your perspective Anne-Marie, what was it that allowed you, for example, to bring that idea into something tangible, something that makes an impact?

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

This links to the previous question of the links between pioneers and progress. I think the way I see it, business and beyond, is that progress whenever it happens, happens on multi-dimensions, multiple dimensions. often we think about progress as kind of we've gone from here and we've gone forward. Whereas actually if you think about it kind of multiple dimensions, four or five, however many you want forward isn't always forward, right? If you spin it around. So from where I'm sat and the work that I've done in the organisations that I've been involved with, progress isn't always guaranteed as we've said, right? Sometimes it won't be able to... you won’t be able to light that torch, to then be passed on to the others. But I think the environments that I was able to thrive in were ones where, again, like I said already, kind of talent has been recognised and talent is then supported and you're able to line up the fact that talent is evenly distributed, opportunities aren't. But I was able to then leap in and lean into those opportunities. So one would be that I was operating in the UK, which is a particular environment, right, where social enterprise has a particular role to play, which if you're, you know, if I was in other countries, is not something that is part of, you know, there's not even a legal structure for what a social enterprise might be and how that might operate. I was quite fortunate also to already be working, and so already have my own network of folks, that collective. That meant that from day one, putting up a blog post, setting up a Twitter account, having conversations, we had more volunteers than young people at the first event that we ran as a result of being in that environment. There was a physicality to the infrastructure of it all, whether that was having the internet and having social media, which again 13 years ago was very different to social media that we have today. You know, we physically held this event in a building that was made available, you know, for free by someone who wanted to be a part of those ingredients of supporting that pioneering spirit. So I think it's something that, again, I believe that business and society has a responsibility to give those ingredients, make those happen, and to understand what we can do. Again, when we think about the investments in that infrastructure, to say we don't have a rail network that allows folks to move across the country in a way that is simple and straightforward and reliable, then actually, you know, we're getting in the way of our pioneers. We're getting in the way of that innovation and of that progress that we would like to see on that particular dimension. The final piece I will say on the pioneering and the progress, is that we also... Time as a dimension, as a factor is something else that I think often helps. But I think we see that now with business as well, where maybe 15 years ago we had this kind of triple bottom line kind of notion that was kind of that was made prevalent. Now you've got B Corp and lots of different ways that folks are kind of measuring this. ESG has kind of ebbed and flowed and come back, but also that then becomes another lens for us to understand what progress looks like. And I think businesses should be mindful or should be keen or should continuously keep an eye on, when we say progress, it's not neutral. There is a direction, there's impacts, and there's things that have kind of moved. And so when you say that it's progress that we're using, AI in this particular way, understand it's progress for whom, from what lens. And actually if you can try and think about and pontificate and consider and evaluate that from various different lenses that also again, can sharpen the work that the pioneers are currently doing, right, the ideas that they have, the way that you're, pursuing them, but also what the farmers, how that's going to land with the farmers when it does end. Because the other thing we haven't mentioned is adoption, which of course is the real big one, right? For a lot of this progress, you can build the greatest thing ever known to man or woman with your small multidisciplinary team. But if no one logs on and uses it, blockchain, Bitcoin, you know all the other ones. But if no one's going to adopt it, then actually that progress ends up being muted, right? It ends up kind of just being in one... on one dimension.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Often when I talk to, what I would regard as pioneers, you get two types of reactions, ones that wanted to be a pioneer. And they don't tend to be successful. You mentioned a number of things there which wanted to be pioneering but weren't necessarily successful. And then you talk to a type of pioneer who says, I think I heard this a bit in your story at the start. “I felt like I had no other choice.” And I think that's about framing the mindset, isn't it? Which is often pioneers are so driven, so resilient, because they feel like there is no other choice. And I think that often a lot of pioneers come from backgrounds where they either, didn't have a choice or feel like they didn't have a choice. And then there's a group of pioneers who want to pioneer for pioneer sake. I work with a lot of businesses who say in their strategy, we are going to pioneer. I ask, “why? Do you realise that's vastly more expensive than others?" And they were like, “well, we wanted to do the cheap pioneering.” And you think, okay, right, well, that's slightly different. So there we go, yeah. And then so I just wanted to get your view on that, because some people would say, “I didn't realise I was a pioneer. I just felt like there was no other choice.”

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

I definitely identify with that, so when I started Stemettes, I mean, I'd seen the problem. I didn't realise the importance and the urgency of the problem I was trying to solve. And so a lot of folks, and this is what I said, like time is a fantastic factor. Now I can look back and think like, of course, like that was it. And that's why we're still going, that’s why we’re still doing these things. But I remember I was trying to solve it because it was a problem that I could see in front of me that I thought was important. And I felt a responsibility. I felt a duty. I felt I had no other choice, which I think if we look at the stories of a lot of folks that are being heralded as pioneers now, even though now they're in the big bucks and they're in the big headlines, a lot of them are, you know, if I don't build this, insert name of algorithm now, someone else is going to do it. And I would rather that I'm the person that has that sense of duty that is doing that and is making that. I think there's quite a lot of pioneers that are in that but I don't know whether your initial categorisation— I don't know that they initially— that they're mutually exclusive.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

No, it’s a good point.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

I think there are a lot of folks who they see that this is a problem that needs to be solved, and they run at it and they work at it, and they're earnestly doing the work and trying to collect and trying to have the right infrastructure, the right environment, the right ingredients. But that still doesn't necessarily mean that they're able to then achieve pioneer status

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Yeah, that's a good point.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

And so I'd say, there is something about the urgency and the spotting of the problem which I believe, I genuinely believe most folks, if they're paying attention, can see problems. It then ends up being, as you said, this sense of urgency of is this a problem that you must solve, you must handle, you must deal with that now, or is it one that actually your personal circumstances, your problems, your bills, your realities kind of win out against you, then pioneering and making those things happen? And I think, you know, to go back to your original question, that was the other one where it was, I was safe enough, I was employed, and actually ran Stemettes for two years alongside my main employment and only actually came across when it had been completely derisked that then... So within ten months I was at Number 10 at a table with Michael Gove, David Willetts who were the then education minister and universities minister.

And I remember kind of getting to the door and being like, “wow, this is a real... I’ve struck something real here” because they didn't call me before I started this. I didn't read from the book of Michael Gove on, you know, go and start Stemettes. And so I think it's an extra ingredient that frustrates me that there are many more folks that could be part of that pioneering collective—

Scott Campbell (Guest)

I agree with that.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

—who don't have the resources, or they don't have the situation, or they don't have the agency even, to step in and be part of those pioneering processes. And I think we all miss out on the progress that we would like to see, by not having that full pool of pioneers involved in the pioneering process.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

Could not agree more. And I have three young boys and I have been involved in the education systems. I've looked at big businesses. I worry we train that thing we've just all said is very important, curiosity, I think we train curiosity out.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

100%. I think it's... that's something I would hope that a lot of the clients we work with is curiosity is more important than ever. Try to encourage that back in.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

Definitely. And that, to be honest, you both have done a perfect transition for us there because we're going to make the point that actually spotting potential early is so incredibly important. So on that note, first we are going to have a very quick look at an example of potential being spotted early.

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Gerry Popova (Host)

Circumstance shouldn't stop children reaching their potential. Teach First, one of Deloitte's social impact partners are building a movement to rewrite the future for millions of disadvantaged children. They offer a unique opportunity for graduates and those looking to change careers, to inspire the next generation and tackle educational inequality by training as a teacher, become a changemaker and help rewrite the future. Search ‘Teach First’ today.

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Steph Dobbs (Host)

It would be good to look now at what makes progress actually happen, because we've been talking a lot about spotting ideas very early and backing them from a very sort of early on. But I suppose in terms of the progress, we need to think about how it changes behaviour, how it changes systems where the opportunities come from. So where do we actually start? Anne-Marie, I'm going to start with you, I'd love to hear from your experience, what practically are some of the first steps that somebody needs to take, in order to start things fresh?

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

So a first step would be for you to have a review of what is your environment at the moment, know where you're starting from and look for those, kind of, quick wins on where pioneer... where there's an opportunity for pioneering. One that I often end up speaking to organisations about is this notion of mistakes and failures and learning from them. Within IT we’ve... historically since the early 90s, I think it has had the agile framework and working iteratively and there's a whole, you know, mechanism of rituals and resources and practices that folks can engage with where you have retrospectives. And I think sometimes we take for granted what a retrospective is. And the idea that at the end of every project, at the end of every two weeks even, every two weeks, I say this to folks all the time, you've got multi-billion dollar, pound organisations that every two weeks have an update, every two. They didn't just do the first and ship it. It was like no, every two weeks now we have to be updating this. And so I think there's... look at that opportunity and say, “Ok cool. Where are we creating this space for folks to reflect on what has been, what the mistakes are that have been made and the learnings that we're going to have from those failures? So we create room and space for those failures.” Early on, I’d happened on this notion of failure parties, which every now and then we do at Stemettes on various programmes. Where it's like, actually, I don't want you to tell me the greatest thing that happened to you this week, tell me one thing that you definitely got wrong this week. One thing that went really badly. Say it. And air it out, right? It's like a culture of trying to... And these are the parts of kind of those rituals are parts of those cultures that allow folks to kind of, then be pioneering. When you open up the failure and the mistakes, you then start to show and signal that experimentation, with guardrails, is also important for pioneering. And so then you move to experimentation, which is, okay, cool. We've said the failures. Now we know the failures are going to happen. What's the new thesis and how are we going to go with this experiment? And an experiment means, you don't know what will happen next. So you also then have to open up that that kind of idea of the possibilities. So I think those would be my first two ones to start with and go from there. You'd be surprised at unlocking that for folks, right? Or evolving that for folks. You'd be surprised at what then starts to bubble up where that failure links up with that failure links up with that failure, and all of a sudden you've got Google Mail or you've got the Post-it note, or you've got the whatever it would be. Final one, because I've just said Post-it note and Google Mail, is this notion of hackathons. We run these several times a year at Stemettes It's a really exciting space for me to get to see at least the first time hack attendees, because they're used to coming into a technical space or a mathematical space or a STEM or STEAM space. And it's follow the instructions and do as you're told, right? Whereas for us it's like, no, I'm going to set a big brief. I'm going to give you a couple of tools and run at it. And so you start to again see these notions of ideas and open up these little pockets again of not just ideas, but pockets of understanding and of experiences and of learning and of high quality learning that, again, you don't have if you shut those things down and you don't give people that space to to breathe, the space to get creative, the space to be curious and the space to explore, in a way that's not kind of typical within their business.

Scott Campbell (Guest)

I always find myself questioning, what does progress even mean in an organisation? That’s a big, big question. And I think I'm often the boring guy in pioneering conversations. So when they ask me particularly always in the buzzword AI, it used to be about databases, but now about AI. They’ll say, “how do I progress with AI?” And my answer is often, “what do you measure?” You need to measure progress, not profit. And I think that you mentioned agile, Anne-Marie, There are many ways of measuring progress, and I think the challenges is that... I often talk to my clients about two types of ROI, and I actually think public sector and government organisations are much better at this. There's ROI, which is return on investment, and there's ROI, which is risk of inaction. I find that public sector organisations are actually much better at risk of inaction and understanding what progress means, and we have citizen progress. We have health. None of that is profit based. So I think governments make progress more efficiently than big organisations. Now where will I sort of hold back on that? Progress... Extraordinary progress often looks so ordinary when it happens. And I think that's one of the challenges when I've worked with big businesses that they haven't seen what significance that bit of progress was. It didn't return on investment within the same 12 months. It may have moved things forward. It wasn't even really a PR worthy story, but that was a significant unlock to what they were going to be in the future. The CEO would often reflect with me later on, a bit like pioneers are only identified later on. “Thank goodness we did that three years ago." Right? And I think that's the job of the executive to engage with what are those unlocks, what is the progress that will look ordinary, but you will reflect was extraordinary. That's not ROI. Return on investment in month. Now, I'm not saying that's a bad thing to track in your organisation. I'm saying that if that's your measure, it is unlikely that you will make significant progress into what organisation you need to be in the future.

Gerry Popova (Host)

I think to your point, Scott, progress is so dependent on the people around us. Again, going back to that point originally that we mentioned around environment, around spotting those opportunities and giving them space to develop and grow. Is there anything else from your experiences, and Anne-Marie, let's start with you that we might be missing from that story of progress and success at the end?

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

There's something that Scott was just saying there about what you measure. When you collaborate with folks from a different world or a different space or even a different sector, the measures that they have, the norms that they have are quite different. And it's been really interesting to understand. So for us, it's been specifically around engagement. And when you do something like STEM or STEAM outreach, there are particular measures you might have on how many young people now have chosen a particular subject to study at GCSE or A-level, right? And it's been really interesting. So I’m in with folks looking at sport, looking at nature, looking at all this, and for them the equivalent would be how many of them maybe become professional athletes. Right? And it's been really interesting because you can't measure that because there's not that many spaces to be professional athletes, if we're going to be really frank. But it's been fun to then understand this notion of belonging or of identity, of community, of awareness and other things that we'd known and we'd seen in the lit review, but aren't prevalent across our ecosystem in the space that we're operating in. That might be new measures that we have to understand progress in a much better way than if we'd used the existing measures that we have already. I think the other piece, which again goes to the top point, that you said around what pioneering looks like is that pioneering isn't always about doing something that's completely ridiculous. Often it's you applying an existing, methodology, notion, concept, but in a new space. And I think that's the other thing that's beautiful about collaboration and co-creation, also with folks, is that you have a higher propensity of being able to do that when you are collaborating with people in that open way to be able to see, you know, whatever their methodologies might be applied within the space and with the customers that you're with and with the business that you're on. And so I think there's a lot of progress that comes from that, because then you start to discover and find new elements of that field, and new spaces and new innovations, right? We see AI meets quantum and what's able to happen at that nexus that the AI folks would have never got to and the quantum folks would’ve never got to. There's a lot of, again, progress on particular dimensions that happens and then progress also in learning from those mistakes to then refine what those models should really look like in real life. You almost have a bit more leeway to make those mistakes actually, when you collaborate because you're almost in no man's land. And the, expectations are lower because it's like what did STEM and sport have to do with each other anyway. That kind of thing, right? You're able to kind of take it. You learn from each other.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

Absolutely. So we're actually starting to get towards the end of the podcast now. So maybe if we finish on a bit of takeaway advice, Scott, let's start with you. Maybe picking up on that point that Anne-Marie is making about collaboration and the importance of it. What's one practical change that leaders can make to actually make sure that some of these great ideas that might be coming from collaborating are actually built through to teams in their organisations?

Scott Campbell (Guest)

So I'd advise them to remember just down the road from here in London, St. Paul's Cathedral, designed and built by Christopher Wren. Not many people know that he built... designed that and while it was being built, he also designed and built a pub called Ye Olde Watling on Watling Street, to sit and collaborate with the team to understand how to build it more. So I would say, what's your pub that you're building in your organisation? Because AI in particular, we’re coming to the end of the age of what I'd call ‘bolt-on AI’, which is can I use AI to make the thing that I do today more efficient? We are coming to the age of opportunity AI. Opportunity comes in the collaboration between the silos, between organisations. So how are you forcing and incentivising that collaboration to think about the future? And just to be clear, many organisations make a mistake which they think pioneer is prediction. Pioneering is about getting together, collaborating, spotting weak signals and understanding the discipline to execute that. So have a think about Christopher Wren and the pub that he designed and what is that that you are creating.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

Love it. Need more pubs. That sounds like a very good conclusion. So let's ask this final question then as we always do, we come back to it and say, right: Why do some people see the future first? Anne-Marie, let's start with you.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

I think some people see the future first because they're paying attention and they've got the resources, they've got the space, they've got the time, and they've got the ingredients to be able to do so. And we don't always hear from the people who see the future first, and we don't always listen to the people who have seen the future first.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

Ok, Scott?

Scott Campbell (Guest)

I think it's about the people who are closer by design or by accident to the weak signals. Right? They see the future first. You then need to have the discipline next to them to execute it. How are you as organisations, putting people closer to those weak signals? Not traditionally what most organisations do. How do you get closer to the weak signals? Not the strong ones. What does my client want? What does my customer want? What does my citizen want? The weak ones. The things you see out of the corner of your eyes. Those are the people who are curious, spot that and do something about it. They pioneer.

Steph Dobbs (Host)

Love it both. Thank you so much for joining us.

Anne-Marie Imafidon (Guest)

Thank you.

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Steph Dobbs (Host)

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Green Room, a Deloitte podcast. We release a new episode every other Tuesday with another big question, so don't forget to hit follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening or watching, and make sure your notifications are on, so that way you'll be alerted whenever a new episode drops. This podcast is produced by our very own Pod Squad. Original music by Ali Barrett.

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