Future-Proof Your Career (Tom Cheesewright | Podcast.co)

If your ideas are too complex for others to understand, that’s your failure, not theirs. Plus, why knowing too much isn’t good for us.

Reviewing the newspapers for the BBC, Tom connects two stories about our faith in technology and the effects of that faith being undermined.

Tom explores the balancing act between health monitoring and invasion of privacy as Manchester hosts the Informatics for Health conference

With the NHS held to ransom by the WannaCry malware, Tom imagines how such infections might affect us as we become ever more reliant on technology - or even integrated with it.

Season four of Talk About Tomorrow begins with an introduction to Tom's new co-host, Katharine McNamara, and a story about the gamification of life in both fun and less fun ways.

In the first episode of this new format, Katharine questions Tom about digital inclusion and social credit, and coins the phrase 'digital Top Trumps'. Tom says 'you know' a lot in response (he promises this will stop).

The story on which this episode is based, replete with links and references is here: https://tomcheesewright.com/all-the-worlds-a-stadium-and-all-the-men-and-women-merely-gamers

Tom explores two possible policy responses to rising automation in the workforce: enhanced employment regulations and rising corporation taxes. Plus, how do you make a phone disappear? Three critical considerations for whatever replaces the smartphone.

Tom talks to Michael Taylor, journalist, author, and recent Change UK candidate, about choice in politics, the fracturing of old alliances, and whether choice as a message is always a euphemism for markets.

Tom talks to Janine Owen, specialist in recruitment marketing and technology, about the future of work in a post-COVID world.

What changes will we see to the way we hire and manage our teams? Can we expect dramatic shifts or just the acceleration of existing trends? How do we revalue humans in the new workplace? And what is the role of attitude over experience?

We have barely entered the quantum age, yet already our expanded understanding of physics has begun to define our world. What's next? Plus, moving money: how will we pay in the future?

Can we grow plants in space? Plus, Tom reveals his own challenges of working remotely: the need to always be in performance mode. 

Original posts:

• Will we grow plants in space? https://tomcheesewright.com/will-we-be-growing-plants-in-space-by-2100-askafuturist/
• The price of performance: https://tomcheesewright.com/the-price-of-performance/

Tom cautions that we must understand two types of change: plastic and elastic. Only one snaps back. Plus, will Strictly go on forever? 

Original posts:

• Plastic and elastic: https://tomcheesewright.com/change-separating-plastic-from-elastic/
• Will Strictly go on forever? https://tomcheesewright.com/will-strictly-go-on-forever-askafuturist/

In this season of the podcast we're going to explore a few big ideas in a bit more depth. These are ideas or theories that keep coming up in my work with global 500 brands and government departments around the world.

The first topic is what I have termed 'extended adolescence' - in short, are we now experiencing a longer childhood?

The ages at which we cross key (traditional) milestones in adult life have been shunted back by a decade. People now learn to drive, buy a house, find a partner, get married, have kids etc perhaps 10 years later than they did in the relatively recent past.

We try to answer:

•  Why is this happening?
•  Is it a good thing?
•  Should we be expecting young people to grow up faster?
•  Are we babying them?
•  What does this mean for companies/brands?

Check out the blog post here for more information:  https://tomcheesewright.com/extended-adolescence/

Tom talks to Ludger Philippsen of Sony's European Healthcare practice about the paper they have authored on the future of healthcare. How are organisations in this sector responding to the lessons of lockdown? How is technology transforming the operating environment? And why is it critical to shift their focus from optimisation to adaptation.

Read the paper here: https://pro.sony/en_SE/insight/digital-transformation-healthcare-insights/tom-cheesewright-whats-next

Laziness motivates us to find better ways to do things. Far from decrying ‘lazy’ home workers, we should be celebrating their instincts. Plus, why it's important to remember that we're still human in an age of digital communication.

Original posts:

- It's good to be lazy: https://tomcheesewright.com/its-good-to-be-lazy/

- We're still human: https://tomcheesewright.com/were-still-human/

Tom argues that the only way to tackle climate change is by offering people 'net luxury'.

Plus, Tom's talk to the property industry on the future of planning.

Tom and Katharine discuss the G7's moment of harmony, the solution to what Tom calls a 'small world problem'. What does that mean? And what is a 'big world problem'? Find out in this episode of Talk About Tomorrow.

Original story: https://tomcheesewright.com/small-world-and-big-world-problems

The 3D printing revolution is running a few years late. But there's still a chance it will change everything.

Plus, why milk tells us everything about the future of content.

In this episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we speak to professor of politics at the University of Manchester and frequent contributor to the BBC and other media, Rob Ford. Rob is the co-author of Brexitland with Professor Maria Sobolewska, and the author of The British General Election of 2019. 

We spoke to Rob about how you extract meaning from people’s words, even if they don’t always say what they mean. Here’s what we learned.

Think of leaders as politicians

Business leaders and politicians have a lot of the same pressures, particularly when they are trying to satisfy multiple audiences. It’s one thing leading - and championing - a single team. You can be absolutely partisan. But when you have to satisfy people across the company, customers, and shareholders, and deal with lots more information, it’s a very different situation. So people in senior positions are likely to be more conservative, more political. 

Who is the audience?

Think about the speaker’s audiences. Who do they need to impress or please? This will shape a lot of their message. If you don’t like it, you might not be their intended - or most important - audience.

Social desirability bias

People moderate their language because they’re trying to appeal to you or because they don’t think you will like what they really think. This might disguise negative feedback, people’s real opinions or positions.

We all have a hidden motive

We’re human beings with lots going on, both inside and outside the workplace. Accept that everyone has multiple motivations for their actions.

Sincerity is powerful - even when it’s faked

While we can’t recommend lying, the lesson from politics seems to be that we believe people who can perform sincerity. So try to be sincere in your message. But keep an eye out for those who might not be quite so sincere as they appear.

Separate the message from the packaging

Flowery language can disguise different intent. Take time to look behind the words and see the meaning.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

If you think you’re missing something, or you want someone to reveal a potentially hidden motive, get people to repeat the message until you get clarity. Use variations on a question to extract all the missing pieces of the story.

Foghorns, dog whistles, dead cats

We talked about some of the terminology of political communication, much of which can be applied to the business world. A ‘dog whistle’ is language designed to appeal to a particular group without making explicit statements that might attract public scrutiny - often where a policy might be deemed racist or otherwise offensive. Business leaders might signal to the markets that they want to downsize a business without explicitly talking about job cuts, though most people recognise what ‘rationalisation’ really means now. 

Sometimes there is no dog whistle and it’s an outright foghorn instead, and the message comes through loud and clear. Some leaders are incapable of subtlety or just choose to avoid it.

‘Dead cats’ are stories designed to distract from the bad news. And we see these in business all the time.

CYA

Often people will be motivated by CYA: Cover Your Ass. They will try to ensure that they are not left responsible if something goes wrong. Be particularly cautious about this if you are an external supplier - I speak from experience!

Personality not policy

Ultimately, remember you’re dealing with a human being and in most cases, you will want to maintain a civil working relationship. You may not like what they’re saying, but they may not like it either. In the long term, it’s the relationship that will count.

Augmenting your connection with customers is a critical component of building a future-eady organisation, Tom argues this week. Plus, is tomorrow's trucker a glorified hitch hiker?

Tom shares an extended version of the argument he made on Radio 4's Moral Maze for the future of cities. Plus, the four horsemen of disaster that will define the next few decades. 

Original posts:

• The city is dead. Long live the city: https://tomcheesewright.com/the-city-is-dead-long-live-the-city/
• A race between the four horsemen: https://tomcheesewright.com/a-race-between-the-four-horsemen/

When we focus on optimising our businesses, it's all too easy to engineer out the creativity. Plus, why tomorrow's Luddites will be raging against invisible machines.

Tom shares 10 trends that are transforming the future home, following his closing keynote at the Property Week RESI 2017 conference.

As we begin to adapt our cities to the challenges of climate change, should we be considering a more radical move to the stars? Plus, when does a company become too big to be regulated by the market - a market in its own right?

Tom talks to Chris Bishop, a man on his eighth career who now helps others to future-proof theirs. Tom and Chris chat about how music became data in 1985, why the best advice is to "chase the maelstrom", and why the future doesn't care how you became an expert (courtesy of Thomas W. Malone).

Find out more about Chris at this places:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisbishop 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherbishop123/

Website: https://improvisingcareers.com/ 

And check out his Future Career Toolkit - part of his LinkedIn Learning course called "Future proofing your data science career".

Interested? There's a 90-second overview on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/448958551.

In this episode of Future Proof Your Career we speak with Jon Bradford about iteration: how do you take an idea and improve on it?

Jon Bradford is co-founder & managing partner of Dynamo Ventures, an investment fund focused on supply chain and mobility. Jon is one of the most experienced early stage investors in Europe and launched the first accelerator bootcamp outside of the US in 2009. He went on to launch many more start-up programmes, earning him the title “Godfather of European Accelerators”.

Between this work and his own entrepreneurship, Jon has helped to refine many raw ideas into successful businesses, so he’s the ideal person to talk to us about this part of the creative process.

Here’s what we learned from Jon:

• Every proposal, every idea is a promise. You’ve got to make it and then deliver on it.
• Delivering a whole idea in one go is too much. Break any vision down into bite-sized pieces - each of which is a little ‘promise’ you can keep in its own right.
• At every ‘chunk’ there’s an opportunity to do things differently. Separate the objective from the approach.
• People should be measuring the progress of your project on ‘lines not dots’, as per this Mark Suster article. What they’re looking for is progress.
• Steer using feedback - and the most important feedback comes from your ‘customers’ - who will be buying or using your product/service? 
• Your mum doesn’t count as a customer for feedback purposes. She probably isn’t objective.
• Constant feedback will allow you to make small changes frequently and not pursue blind alleys: ‘fail fast’, as the saying goes.
• Don’t be afraid to pivot though: make a radical change of direction. The highest potential team in Jon’s portfolio have done at least two major pivots.
• Make sure you set the bar for testing each stage of progress appropriately. Know what is a stretch goal, but don’t set your sights so low the test isn’t meaningful.
• Sometimes the problem isn’t the idea itself, it’s the market around it. Sometimes - as Tesla did - you have to build the ‘full stack’

Tom reveals five trends for the future of energy from a new report produced with Nabarro, and debates the future of mobility at the University of Cambridge.

Tom talks to host of the Tech for Good podcast, and Reason Digital's Head of Strategy & Insight, Rebecca Rae-Evans about technology and society. Is tech a force for good? How will bots be applied in public service? And what's wrong with tech?

What skills do we need to survive and thrive in tomorrow's world? Tom talks education with fellow BBC tech commentator and UTC MediaCity's business engagement lead, Dan Sodergren.

The power of a good apology should not be underestimated, especially in the age of automation. Plus, why is it always two steps forward and one step back with progress?

In his #AskAFuturist series, Tom answer's Franck Nijhof's question: what will be left of privacy in 50 years?

Plus, what is the future of consumer credit?

We've spent the last twenty years trying to eliminate friction from the interactions between brands and customers. But is this always the right approach? In this episode we talk about the concept of 'good friction', those moments where you want to slow and deepen the conversation.

Why a return to austerity would be a disaster for the post-COVID economy, and where we should spend some stimulus money. Plus, why relationships are a window on the future.

Original posts:

 - You can't dig yourself out of a hole: https://tomcheesewright.com/you-cant-dig-yourself-out-of-a-hole/

 - Relationships are the future: https://tomcheesewright.com/relationships-are-the-future/

Download the Console Connect report referenced in 'Relationships are the future', "The Interconnected Enterprise": https://info.consoleconnect.com/en-gb/resources/console-connect-interconnected-enterprise-report

Our companies are slow to change, failing to adapt to the rapid evolutions in their markets. Why is this, and how can we change it?

Martin Lindstrom has proven to be one of the most impactful commentators and consultants on business change, working with some of the world's largest brands and producing best-selling books like Brand Sense, Buyology, and Small Data. His new book, The Ministry of Common Sense comes out this month and tackles the issue of bureaucracy, how it strangles innovation, and how we cut through it.

You can find out more about Martin, his work, and his books, at https://martinlindstrom.com.

In this latest episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we tackle the tricky topic of empathy. What is it? How do you use it? And can you grow - or shrink - your empathy? 

We all think we know what empathy is, but as ever, we ask a real expert. Dr Lauren Kerwin is a Harvard- and UCLA- Trained Psychologist with over 20 years of experience treating borderline personality disorder, autism spectrum disorders, depression, anxiety and trauma in teens and adults.

Lauren also has lots of experience in a corporate context, providing executive coaching and organisational psychology support to highly successful start-ups through to their public listings, with a particular focus on employee selection and training, information sharing, and interpersonal interactions.

Understandably this incredible CV has seen Lauren featured on CNN and the Today Show, and in Forbes, HuffPost, and the New York Times, to name but a handful of news outlets.=

We learned loads from Dr Kerwin, so here are the top tips that I took away:

Empathy is about understanding, not emotion: though compassion is important, you’re not trying to feel what the other person is feeling. You’re trying to understand why they feel the way they do.

Perspective adds value: no position is less valid or valuable because they’re seeing it through a different lens to you. 

Don’t walk in their shoes, keep one foot in yours: While trying to empathise don’t lose your own perspective. You need to try to retain some balance and objectivity.

Everyone has an answer: the role of a leader is increasingly to uncover those answers and give people the confidence to share them.

Respect not agreement: you don’t need to agree with someone to empathise. Sometimes the most important time to be empathetic is when you disagree.

Show people they are valued: even if you ultimately disagree, be clear that the other person’s position was appreciated, otherwise they might not share it in the future.

Tom and Katharine talk about laziness: as a motivator for innovation and as a challenge to wasted effort. Are you lazy enough to be useful?

Plus, it’s the end of this season for the podcast. Five seasons now! All very different in length and format. But this has been the first with a co-host and though we’re biased, we think it has been great!

We’ll be back for season 6 tackling some new topics in a few months.

Tom and Katherine round off the recent episodes with a broad discussion of the Metaverse: what is it? What are the implications? And should we be scared or excited?

Original story: https://tomcheesewright.com/entering-the-metaverse

Tom highlights the collapse in funding and student numbers in further education in the UK, and Katharine points to the risk of a 'skills timebomb' this presents for the future.

Original story: https://tomcheesewright.com/further-and-higher-education-the-dividing-line/

Tom talks augmentation to an audience of marketing professionals at this year's Tug Life conference, and about the trend of 're-intermediation', the growing market for middle men and women to help us handle complex choices. Plus, hyperloop and how a futuristic project faces some very old challenges: physics and planning.

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Canute, but there’s another version that has a very different moral. Both speak to the current Brexit crisis. Plus, how the car will continue to shape our cities, if we let it.

In this episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we speak to Caroline Keep, a data scientist, a teacher, a maker, and a researcher in machine learning. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Times Education Supplement teacher award, and a founder of Liverpool Makerfest.

We spoke to Caroline about how you extract meaning from data, and how we can all be more engaged in the effort to decipher the world around us.

Here’s what we learned.

Data is the real world, quantified

Don’t think of data as just endless spreadsheets and numbers. It’s a representation of the real world and the things that matter. Understanding the data is a way to understand the world.

Understanding data is a process

Caroline talked about multiple steps in the ‘data cycle’:

• Start with discovery: play with the data at your disposal to get a feel for it
• Create a hypothesis: what are you trying to test?
• Discuss your idea with other people and gather perspectives, check your reasoning
• Clean your data: the real world is messy and full of bias and noise
• Test your idea: does your hypothesis hold true?

Build domain knowledge 

Understanding the space you’re exploring is critical to give you a reference point. Otherwise you won’t know if the results you find are nonsense!

If the data you want doesn’t exist, you can get it

There are lots of sources of interesting data, but the Internet of Things makes it cheaper and easier than ever to collect data that doesn’t exist. Whether you want to track temperature, movement, light or pollution, or anything for that matter, simple sensors and cheap computers like the Raspberry Pi allow anyone to experiment (see links below)

Caroline referenced some great resources and projects, including:

• Kaggle: a data science community - https://www.kaggle.com/
• NodeRed: a drag and drop IoT platform: https://nodered.org/
• Kettle Companion: A connected kettle that helps carers keep an eye on vulnerable people - https://kettlecompanion.com/
• Rstudio: software for data science - https://posit.co/products/open-source/rstudio/
• Python: a powerful but accessible programming language - https://www.python.org/
• Jupyter Notebook: https://jupyter.org/

Agile organisations must take decisions more quickly. But how do you accelerate decision-making and become ‘hyper-decisive’.

Plus, Deliveroo for Builders: what happens when the digital age gig economy comes to construction?

Hobbies are a great opportunity to jumpstart your learning processes, and to get a dose of humility at the same time. Plus, what if we hadn't taken a step back every time a civilisation fell. Where would we be now?

Katharine and Tom discuss the concept of Net Luxury - an approach to addressing climate change based on the continuing reluctance of many people to make real change. Can we convince people to cut back? Or can we make saving ourselves (the planet will be just fine) seem even more appealing than you'd think it ought to be?

Before you set off for tomorrow, look closely at where you are today, or risk getting lost along the way. Plus, Bright but bleak: futurism and the climate.

Is Facebook forever? Tom doesn't think so. Mark Zuckerberg has led the company to sustained success through acquisitions and rapid change, but one day it is bound to be outpaced. This is how it will happen. Plus, why there is no single future for everyone.

New Year means curious journalists, wanting to know what's next. This episode features a round-up of the key technologies for 2018 that Tom's been talking about on the radio. Plus, why tech is the starting point for examining possible futures.

Automation promises to fundamentally reshape the traditional hierarchy of our organisations. Could we see future businesses with more people at the top than the bottom? Plus, how do we prepare tomorrow's workforce for a world where creativity is the most important human talent?

Tom speaks to Andrew Beechener, founder of 'Republic of Things' about the strengths and weaknesses of smart cities, and Manchester's CityVerve programme.

Tom talks to Simon Squibb about his mission to help a million people start their own business, and the need for entrepreneurship in the challenging times ahead.

In the future we may be able to ask whether a building, or even a whole city, is making us happy. Plus, what Apple’s announcements mean for the future of TV.

Kicking off a new season of episodes of the podcast, Tom shares some news about why he went quiet in late 2019 (it's all good) and invites you to #AskAFuturist your questions (Tweet him at @bookofthefuture with this hashtag or email hello@bookofthefuture.co.uk). Plus, an audio sample chapter from his book, High Frequency Change.

In the second #AskAFuturist series, Tom shows why people are right to be sceptical about self-driving cars, but why they will ultimately take over. 

Plus, why high frequency change doesn’t affect everything.

In the debate around automation, people often confuse jobs and work. Understanding the difference is crucial to successful planning for a brighter future. Plus, is that future fractured, or just diverse?

Tom catches up with fellow futurist Dan Sodergren, in an episode that was due to be recorded at Mobile World Congress, the first major event to be cancelled after the COVID-19 outbreak back in February. Tom and Dan talk about the future of work, and a post-pandemic world.

This week Tom speaks to principal lawyer at Slater and Gordon, and recognised expert on law, the internet and social media, Steve Kuncewicz, about calls to 'bring the internet to heel' in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Manchester and London.

John Keefe is one of the founders of Draw and Code, a content studio building immersive entertainment for the world's biggest brands. Tom speaks to John about the evolution of immersive media across augmented and virtual reality, the state of the art in hardware, and how big the coming revolution will be.

Just before we take a break for the summer, we jumped on a call to chat through what we have learned from the season so far. we're about half way through and we've learned from some incredible people.

Our first segment was all about Curation: how to discover and qualify information.

• The BBC's Chris Warburton joined us to talk about how to ask good questions.
• Psychologist Dr Simon Moore taught us about all the different ways of listening.
• Dr Lauren Kirwan helped us to understand empathy better - what it is, and what it is not.
• Gemma Milne talked to us about the importance of scepticism and our responsibility to challenge and ask questions.
• Elections analyst Professor Rob Ford helped us to understand the meaning in people's words - even when they don't say what they mean.
• Finally, data scientist Caroline Keep taught us how to extract meaning from numbers.

Then we kicked off our segment on Creation: how to make new things.

• Fashion designer Supriya Lele shared where she finds inspiration.
• And start-up investor Jon Bradford talked to us about iterations and pivots.

Coming up we have loads more great guests. Superstar DJ Graeme Park talking about remixing, acclaimed author Sarah Butler on the editing process, and the brilliant Bec Evans on how to write.

Listen in to find out what has really stuck in our brains so far. And what we've got coming up.

Even though this was a very short episode, it had a lot of outtakes. And we thought they were pretty funny. So just as a one-off, we thought we'd share them at the end.

Have a great summer!

Tom speaks to Professor Steven Cleveland, educator and filmmaker about his work on Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's time in Hawaii and the lessons from the past about the future of social equity.

Find out more about Steven's project at https://akinginparadise.com/ 

Thanks for listening to this first episode of our new season of Talk About Tomorrow, focused exclusively on how you can Future-proof Your Career! After each episode I’ll be collecting my notes from our guest here.

In this episode we spoke to Chris Warburton, award-winning BBC journalist. radio presenter and host of a series of excellent podcasts including Ecstasy: The Battle of Rave, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, The End of Days, and most recently, Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game, about Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto.

Chris covers a huge range of topics for the BBC, from major sporting events, to politics, to once even a live heart transplant. So he was the ideal person to talk to us about how you ask good questions.

Here are my key takeaways from the conversation:

Create a personal editorial policy

Think about how your own behaviour and presentation when you’re asking questions. Do you maximise the chance of getting the right answers? For example, think about:

• What tone should I be using?
• Do I have the right level of formality or informality?
• Am I using the right language to ask questions? E.g. jargon?

Prepare in advance

Do your research. You might not be an expert in the subject - that’s why you’re the one asking the questions! But you need to know enough to shape your questions appropriately and ensure that you’re asking the most important ones. Think about the audience for the answers too: are you asking these questions on someone else’s behalf, and if so, are you getting the answers that they need and in a format they can understand?

Have a game plan

Don’t just think about your questions, think about the answers that you might get from the person you are speaking to. How will you respond to those answers? What is your follow-up?

Switch modes - the ‘red light moment’

Chris talked about the difference between the off-air conversation and the on-air conversation - when the red light goes on to tell everyone that the mics are live and that you are broadcasting. Before the red light goes on, you might be putting the other person at ease, asking them social questions and building rapport. Once the light goes on, it’s about getting answers. Think about this in your conversations. It’s fine to switch modes between the social chit-chat and the important business. But think about the transition. And just because the red light is on, it doesn’t mean anything goes. You can be forceful but you want to be able to end the conversation on good terms.

Listen and take notes

Take notes of the other person’s answers throughout the conversation. It shows you’re listening, ensures you capture the answers properly, and helps you to structure the rest of the conversation. You can always refer back to them if you want to explore a particular answer in more depth, even if it was much earlier in the conversation.

Use open and closed questions

Open questions allow the interviewee to return long form answers that might be packed with information but that might be vague. Follow these up with closed questions that have a fixed range of answers to lock down critical details. For example, an open question might be “Tell me what you want to achieve with this project?” whereas a closed question would be “What is your budget for this?”

Useful reading:

https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-surprising-power-of-questions

https://www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2021/02/01/why-asking-questions-is-good-for-your-brand-and-your-career/?sh=6f0cff751c23

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/how-to-do-life/202102/the-art-of-asking-questions

This week Tom starts work on the '4G Kitchen' with famous designer Johnny Grey and the National Innovation Centre for Ageing at Newcastle University, and highlights the differences between 'smart cities' and 'living cities' at Pro Manchester's digital disruption conference.

Our digital identities are a mess, with ownership, control, and rights all unclear following the early 'wild west' years of the Internet and social media. Can we get our digital identities under control and if so, what is the right way to think about our personal data? Sarah Clarke brings her extensive experience in cybersecurity and data governance to bear on this critical future challenge.

You can find Sarah at @infospectives on Twitter and her writing on digital identity at https://infospectives.wordpress.com

Tom shares advice from his mentor about simply doing less: sometimes everyone needs an external perspective. Plus, the future of work: what matters?

The shape of the most successful organisations is changing. Companies are shrinking and distributing their work across partners and semi-autonomous units, giving them scale, agility and reduced risk. As usual, Tom explains and Katharine interrogates!

Tom and Katharine talk about the future smart home: transforming furniture, shared energy, and communal living. And about the pitfalls of smart tech, especially when it interacts with pets. 

Original story: https://tomcheesewright.com/the-future-home-a-smart-green-machine-for-living-in/

Tom takes a look at tomorrow's car, following his work with Auto Trader. Plus, what will the future world be made from?

Original posts:

• https://tomcheesewright.com/your-next-new-car-might-be-a-new-brand-and-a-new-shape/
• https://tomcheesewright.com/what-will-the-future-world-be-built-from-askafuturist/

Will we really all take to the skies? Or is terra firma a safer bet? Plus, have you ever thought about the bandwidth between you and your machines? It's falling.

In this episode of Future-Proof Your Career we’re talking about scepticism, the willingness, and the discipline, to question what we see and hear. And to have the skills to find the facts amongst the opinions and beliefs. 

As always, we’ve invited an expert guest to speak to us, and this time it’s Gemma Milne, writer and researcher, and author of the excellent book Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It. 

Gemma gave us loads to think about, in terms of how we improve our sceptical skills. Here are a few of the key takeaways from the conversation:

The skill of scepticism has never been more important

There’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. And it’s not just on social media. We need a level of awareness to all the places that people through motivation or ignorance might share hype or inaccuracies.

Scepticism is accessible. It’s something we can all do

You don’t need deep expertise in a subject to be sceptical. That’s not to dismiss expertise or experts - this is very much a podcast that believes in those things! But there are some basic questions we can always ask and things we can do to get a sense of truth.

Separate emotion from fact

We have to recognise that a lot of claims and ideas, and the stories around them are designed to play on our emotions. Can we step back from our emotional engagement and ask some logical questions?

Simple questions

We can always ask, even if just to ourselves: ‘What does this claim depend on?’,  ‘How do you get to that conclusion?’, ‘What is the underlying evidence?’

Big claims need big proof

It’s a good rule of thumb that if someone is going to make big claims, they need strong evidence to back it up. How good is the evidence?

Be empathetic

Understand why other people will reach certain conclusions. Why do certain ideas appeal to them? And what makes them so committed? Be sensitive to this when challenging someone’s beliefs.

Scepticism is a responsibility

If we want more facts and less hype and misinformation, then scepticism is a responsibility for us all. Before you share that chart, paper, or meme that confirms your beliefs, do some sceptical checks. 

Tom addresses the widely-shared myth that VHS won the videocassette format wars of the 1970s in spite of its competitor Betamax being the better technology. Despite being distant history, this debate continues to inform current practice. Plus, in this episode, why even the giants of the internet age will fall.

What connects Brexit, Coronavirus, Ayn Rand and air pollution? All tell us something about our instincts for self-preservation. Plus, will we ever have flying cars? 

As levels of faith fall, what replaces religion in tomorrow's society? Plus, Tom returns to the Cambridge Analytica story: how will we manage - and monetise - our personal data in the future?

Tom answers the trickiest #AskAFuturist question yet: what have you been most wrong about in the past.

Plus, why we need a new blueprint for the future.

Full show notes and references at https://tomcheesewright.com/podcast

This week Tom looks at the future of work - and what we do without it. How do we get the most out of our working day, and will the state support us when it's time to retrain with a Universal Basic Income?

As more and more of our daily experience is digitised, do we lose touch - literally - with the physical world? Tom doesn't think so. Plus, the TSB banking failure: what really happened?

Tom visits the Superyacht Design Symposium in Austria to discuss how tomorrow's technologies will remove the design limitations from these already-extreme vehicles.

How global communications technology has fractured our society into smaller and smaller tribes. Plus, why class is a critical conversation in this age of uncertainty. 

Original posts

• Hypertribalism: https://tomcheesewright.com/hypertribalism/
• COVID has highlighted continuing class divides: https://tomcheesewright.com/covid-has-highlighted-continuing-class-divides/

Our time-shifted lives have created a new extended adolescence, beyond childhood but before the traditional markers of adult life.

Plus, why we should stop looking for the next big thing.

Tom replays his talk from SCVO's giant charities conference, The Gathering, where he helped third sector organisations to understand how automation my benefit - and threaten - their organisations, and missions. Plus, takeaways from Mobile World Congress, one of the world's largest technology shows.

Tom speaks to Dominic Collins, co-founder and CEO of Darabase, a company built to solve one of the critical challenges of a world where physical and digital begin to blend together.

This is the first episode in our six part series on creativity and everything that entails. We're starting with inspiration: where do original ideas come from? And how can you have more of them?

We're convinced that inspiration is not something innate. It's a skill that we can develop by exercising it. And we need to. We operate in a noisy market of ideas, where original thinking is required to stand out. Where machines can knock out facsimiles of other people’s ideas fast and cheaply. So we have to keep creating new ideas to stay ahead.

As always, to help us understand the skill we’re focused on, we have a special guest who relies on their skill for their own success. Supriya Lele is a fashion designer described by The Face as “one of the UK’s brightest design talents” and her eponymous label counts Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid as clients. Her style has spanned noughties nostalgia, rave-ready party wear, and inspiration from her Indian heritage.

Here's what we took away from our conversation with Supriya:

Be opinionated!

Creativity is self expression. Don't be afraid to be bold.

Learn through play

Supriya learns through experimentation, deliberately trying new things that might seem odd, like turning the clothes back to front or upside down. Play keeps the brain 'loose and flexible' and stops you being too rigid.

Make mistakes

Don't be afraid to get it wrong. As long as you learn from those mistakes.

Start with research

Inspiration comes from all over the place. Supriya accumulates imagery, sounds and objects that help to create a sense of direction.

Curate your story

Once you've got lots of research, sort it to tell a story. Find patterns and coherence between the ideas. For Supriya it might be common patterns, colours, cuts and shapes, but for you it might be common words, design elements, behaviours etc

Self-reference

Don't forget that you can be your own source of inspiration. Look to work you've done in the past to see if it can be reapplied or inspire a new answer. 

Never stop listening

Research is a continuous process. Keep a watchful eye for things that might inspire a future project and store them away.

Compound effect

Inspiration can be a build up of influences. It doesn't have to come from one thing, but can rather be about the intersections between many.

Separating influence from inspiration

Even original ideas have influences. What's critical is having a good measure for how much your inspiration moves things forward. There's no hard and fast rule but you get a sense of it over time.

Everyone gets blocked

Creative exercises are hard to programme in to a 9-5. Sometimes it just doesn't come. Don't get frustrated. Do something different. Step away and come back fresh.

That said...

Deadlines can be an incredible motivator! Even if they are artificial.

Collaborate

Creativity doesn’t have to be a solo exercise, all about you personal vision. Get other people involved.

Hobbies can help

Don't just have one creative outlet. Do something else you love, but without pressure. You can learn from it and bring that learning to your main discipline. And it can allow you to release pressure when things aren't going well on a project.

Accept vulnerability

Putting your creative work out there can be nerve wracking. Because really great work will usually take you somewhat outside of your comfort zone. It can be a vulnerable moment so prepare for it.

If you wanted to make a lever to move the world, what material would you choose? Plus, how different do you want the future to be? Past performance is no guarantee of future returns…

Robot-fan Tom speaks to Peter van der Putten, Assistant professor in AI & Creative Research at Leiden University, and Director, Decisioning & AI Solutions, at Pegasystems. Peter researches robots, in all their forms, looking particularly at the interface between human and machine.

He and Tom discuss emotional robots, misbehaving robots, and why it's important to experiment with machines that do bad, as well as machines that do good. 

You can find out more about Peter and his projects, both academic and corporate, at these links:

Academic page: http://liacs.leidenuniv.nl/~puttenpwhvander/

Bots Like You: https://sites.google.com/view/botslikeyou

Twitter: @PetervanderP

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petervanderputten/

Industry: www.pega.com, www.pega.ai

A critical part of the creative process is the ability to refine things, whether your own or others. Whatever it is you are creating, there’s almost zero chance that the first draft will be perfect. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing, drawing, designing in 3D, making music or a video, the editing process is absolutely critical.

But it’s not necessarily one that comes naturally. We get very attached to our own creations. And it’s not always easy to tell other people that their work needs improvement and change. No-one likes to hear that their baby is ugly! So it’s hugely important that we think and talk about this skill, and train ourselves to improve it as part of our career development.

To help us learn how to refine our ideas, as ever in this episode, we have a real expert. Sarah Butler is the acclaimed author of Ten Things I've Learnt About Love, Before the Fire and Jack & Bet. Her writing has been translated into fourteen languages. She is a part-time lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, and works with publishers and authors, reviewing and developing new work.

We learnt so much in the conversation with Sarah. Here are our key takeaways:

• As Hemingway said, "The first draft of anything is shit." Don't expect perfection first time!
• Get something down on paper or into some form you can mold. As Sarah says, it's clay to work with.
• The creative process is also a learning process: you're not just pouring out things you know. What you know is evolving as you produce, so accept that there will be iterations.
• The creative process can be like farming: sometimes you're sowing, sometimes you're harvesting, but sometimes there will be fallow moments as well. Accept that sometimes you need some fallow days and you can't always force progress.
• For big ideas you probably can't hold the whole thing in your head. Break it down into manageable chunks but make sure you keep a holistic view. Work on individual components but remember how they fit together.
• Appreciate the value of feedback. It can be scary sharing your ideas but the once you overcome that fear the benefits are enormous. Share ideas early with a diverse group - you might get different types of feedback from different people.
• This is much easier if you can grow a culture of sharing inside your organisation, so that everyone gets used to sharing their ideas - and gets practice at giving feedback
• Edit other people's work by asking questions. Don't try to impose your approach.
• Be generous and kind. No-one wants to hear that their baby is ugly!

Tom talks to Andrew Back (@9600) founder of the Wuthering Bytes festival of technology in Hebden Bridge, about this year's programme and the global open source project, collaborating to solve tomorrow's tech problems in everything from the Large Hadron Collider to NASA spacecraft

For the second interview in a series focused on the future of healthcare sponsored by Sony Professional Solutions Europe, Tom speaks to Dr Rachel Jenner, consultant in paediatric emergency medicine and associate medical director for quality and safety at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Dr Jenner speaks about healthcare through the pandemic and the lessons learned, and about her work with the Violence Reduction Unit, tackling knife crime.

Links:

 - Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit: https://twitter.com/gm_vru

In this episode, Tom looks at the two technologies competing to power our electric cars: batteries and hydrogen. Plus, building the bionic banker. How will technology transform the future banking industry?

Why we should only consider the far future when we have understood the near. Plus, the ideology at the heart of the web: why it’s critical to keep it open.

Tom explores the Cambridge Analytica story: will this be the bucket of cold water that awakens people to how their data is data is being traded by social networks? Plus, why the art of lying will be a growth business in tomorrow's mixed reality world.

Would you want to be nursed by a machine when you're in your old age? Tom explores the adoption of robots in care. Plus, why transparency undermines trust and threatens human strengths in the workforce.

How do we prepare our children for the future? It's the question I am most commonly asked after speeches. And I always give the same answer.

I believe there are three critical skills we all need for future success, in our careers and beyond. I call them the Three Cs. The ability to Curate (discover and qualify information), Create (bring new ideas to life or improve and recombine old ones) and Communicate (to sell your self and your ideas).

In this episode, Katharine and I address questions like:

• What is more important, knowledge or skills? 
• How do you teach creativity?
• Why is scepticism so important now?

Read more at https://tomcheesewright.com/future-skills-what-to-learn-and-teach-for-success-in-tomorrows-world/

Tom asks whether digital entertainment can ever stand up to the experience of a live gig. Plus, why the future high street is about community, not commerce.

Tom explores the assumption that no-one will own a car in the future, and that we will all be serviced by self-driving fleets, arriving on demand. Is this realistic? Plus are futurists here to share a vision, or advocate for one?

How are leaders changing in response to these uncertain times? Fiona McKay works with the leaders of global corporations to help them to change and develop.

In this episode she talks to Tom about the results of her research into the gender pay gap and the critical differences between the feedback that men and women receive in the workplace.

Plus how the nature of leadership is changing - and must change further - in response to a very different business environment.

Tom and Katharine discuss our response to the explosion of choice faced by the modern consumer: the return of the intermediary, offering advice, direction and editorial input. Why do we value influencers? What role for AI in the future of our decisions on music, travel and finance? Find out in this episode.

Note: the book reference in the episode is Barry Schwartz's 'The Paradox of Choice - Why More is Less' from all the way back in 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

Tom examines what is - and what isn't - true innovation. Plus, fighting friction, what role does 5G have in saving us time and hassle?

Lots of people get stuck on the big idea, whether it's for a new business or a next step at work. It’s easy to believe that what separates the successes from the failures is that moment of inspiration. But the reality is that the answer often lies much more in execution. In hard work. It’s that cheesy but accurate Thomas Edison quote: it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Loads of people have good ideas. But they will remain just ideas unless you learn how to execute. How to take that idea from your mind, beyond a powerpoint presentation or a business plan, to something real and functioning.

Helping us to explore this topic in this episode, we have someone who has taken their ideas and made them real to great success, not once but twice. Jennie Jonson MBE is the CEO of My First Five Years, the next-generation parenting app designed to combat anxiety and give parents evidence-based tools, knowledge and support. Within a year of founding in 2021, MFFY had raised over £1.5m in seed-funding and is now growing at a fantastic rate. 

Prior to My First Five Years, Jennie founded one of the UK’s largest nursery groups, Kids Allowed, running it for 17 years before successfully exiting in 2020. She was the first female to win the UK Private Business Awards CEO of the Year and was voted UK’s Businesswoman of the Year in 2019. 

We took loads away from our conversation with Jennie. Here are the top tips for making it real:

• Validate your ideas with your personal experience - or someone else's. Sense check: will this work?
• Check what's already there: is someone else already trying to solve the same problem?
• If they are, that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it - maybe it's validation of the need. But maybe you should work with not against them.
• Find your 'brains trust': who's experience and talent can you leverage?
• Work fast: minimise wasted time and effort by filtering ideas quickly
• Accept feedback: Listen to what people are telling you. You don't have to agree with everything you're told but sometimes you need to accept the weight of feedback and make a change or walk away
• Can you make it real on your own? Or do you need a co-founder or sponsor?
• Make it simple: you need to be able to explain your idea very quickly and in a way that people can just 'get' whether it's in a few sentences or a couple of slides (and maybe even just one line)
• Be resilient: Take feedback, change as needed, but don't be dissuaded if you still believe there is the core of a good idea.
• What's your measure of success? Set yourself some goals and targets that you can benchmark against.

Tom explores the ethics and etiquette of resurrecting our loved ones as chatbots, following a recent patent filing from Microsoft. Plus, a longer listen about two key technologies that will affect the future: 5G and mixed reality.

Original posts:

 - https://tomcheesewright.com/digital-life-after-death/

 - https://tomcheesewright.com/long-read-5g-and-mixed-reality/

As digital experiences consume more of our lives, will we value the physical thrills of the theme park ever more? Plus, can the EU challenge the dominance of the big digital platforms?

Tom argues that the declining trust in media, politicians and experts is down to distance. We are too far from power and too unequal in wealth and education. Katharine brings the data, and connects questions of trust in our employees, our children, and in each other.

Read the blog post here: https://tomcheesewright.com/the-trust-gap

Welcome to Future-proof Your Career, your guide to the most important skills for a long, successful working life. This special season of the Talk About Tomorrow podcast will explore in depth the idea of the Three Cs, three skill groups that are critical to success, in a business or as an entrepreneur. The ability to curate information, create new things, and communicate ideas. In each episode we explore a facet of one of these skills, alongside a guest.

The first step to building the future high street is accepting that the one we know is dead and gone. Plus, casting back to the start of lockdown with Tom's predictions then of how COVID-19 would affect us.