Human Wise

Ep34: Embracing Uncertainty: How writers, musicians & artists thrive in an unpredictable world with Margaret Hefferman

• Helen Wada • Season 3 • Episode 34

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Unlock the secrets to thriving in an unpredictable world by embracing creativity and innovation in your professional life. In this eye-opening episode of the Human Wise Podcast, host Helen Wada is joined by the inspiring Margaret Heffernan, a seasoned entrepreneur, CEO, and prolific writer. Margaret shares insights from her upcoming book, "Embracing Uncertainty," and delves into how artists, musicians, and writers navigate the ever-changing landscape of modern work.

Explore how Margaret's curiosity-driven mindset has fueled her success across diverse fields, from running companies to mentoring leaders. Discover why traditional management techniques often stifle creativity and why cultivating a culture of experimentation and adaptability is crucial in today's workplace. With vivid examples, Margaret highlights the importance of creating space for creative thought, allowing employees to solve complex problems and innovate fearlessly.

Whether you're a seasoned executive or an emerging leader, this episode offers valuable lessons on leveraging human potential for dynamic growth and success. Don't miss this chance to transform your approach to leadership and make a lasting impact in your organization.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

  • Embracing uncertainty in business
  • Creativity in corporate environments
  • Curiosity-driven leadership strategies
  • Enhancing human potential at work
  • Impact of complex systems on management

View extended shownotes here

Further links to follow:

Helen Wada: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/helen-wada

The Human Advantage: https://www.thehumanadvantage.co.uk/

Helen [00:00:00]:
Do the show right here.

Helen Wada [00:00:01]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Human Wise. I'm absolutely delighted to have this guest with me this afternoon. Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, CEO, writer, and keynote speaker, and currently a professional practice at the University of Bath School of Management in The UK. I was drawn to Margaret, not least because of of the books that she's written in the past. And Margaret, there's five of them, I believe. And also you've been chief executive officer of five businesses as well.

Margaret Heffernan [00:00:38]:
So there's something about the number five, but we've got a sixth book on the way. Embracing uncertainty, how writers, musicians, and art artists thrive in an unpredictable world. And that title really stood out, not just the title, but but the image on the front of that as sort those jumbling words, and I can see it there in the in the shelf behind you. But I've grown up in the corporate world. And, you know, I have a few friends that are artists, but I'm gonna be really honest, not a lot. And and, actually, the people that I work with are more often than not technical experts. Maybe they're engineers, accountants, lawyers. Some may have had a creative background in the past, but that's kind of almost long gone.

Margaret Heffernan [00:01:24]:
And so when I read your book and and as I said to you before we we got on the show, I I read your book, and I I kind of took a breath of fresh air, because what Margaret writes about, and hopefully we'll hear from her during the conversation, is really a different perspective, a different perspective from writers, from musicians, from artists about how they operate in this uncertain world. And I think what we can all take from that as we go through increasing uncertainty with businesses and organizations. So, really delighted to have you on the show, Margaret, and, look forward to the conversation.

Helen [00:02:02]:
Well, I'm looking forward to it too, Helen. Hugely. Thank you for inviting me.

Margaret Heffernan [00:02:07]:
No. No worries. And and we start off by, you know, we talk about being human. I've given a little bit of your your professional bio. Who is Margaret? Tell me a little bit more about how your friends and family describe you.

Helen [00:02:19]:
Oh, god. I I dread to think, really. I think, you know, I think I'm someone who is endlessly, endlessly curious.

Margaret Heffernan [00:02:29]:
Mhmm.

Helen [00:02:29]:
I'm hugely driven, by desire to learn, so I'm not terribly keen on repeating myself. Every book I've written has started with something I didn't understand and doing the research and writing the book was really my way of coming to understand it. I I think I'm a I'm quite I have quite a lot of well, my husband would say I have quite a lot of internal contradictions, which is, I am very driven by deadlines. I'm very driven by a need to learn, to achieve, to get stuff done. Mhmm. But I also am quite strikingly unstrategic in the areas I poke my nose into into the kinds of things that I read, into the kinds of people I hang out with. Mhmm. I mean, I tend to think of that paradox, if you like, as a strength.

Margaret Heffernan [00:03:30]:
Yes.

Helen [00:03:30]:
And I certainly think it's a strength in uncertain times when we don't know what we're going to need. It's quite helpful having more than one mode in which to be able to cope. But it's interesting because, you know, people always say, and what do you do? And, you know, even after all these years, I struggle to describe it. And I remember having a long conversation with my husband saying, you know, I need a pithy comment. And after about a three hour conversation, we decided there just wasn't a pithy phrase, you know, that I could lay down just this. You know, I mentor chief executives of large global firms. I am a part time professor at a leading business school. I'm obviously a lighter.

Helen [00:04:15]:
I now write my own sub staff as well. I do a lot of speeches for companies. And, you know, and I also read a lot way outside of the business domain, which I think which is my thinking. And I've written five plays, so, all of which have been produced. So so I'm somebody who's not very interested in brand new, which I think is a deadly concept, and actually who's deeply interested in understanding the world in which I find myself, interrogating it.

Margaret Heffernan [00:04:54]:
Fantastic. And, what what a contribution to the world that that you've made through through your writing and and what you're bringing to the world. And I love what you talk about that sort of that internal paradox because that's something that actually I I talk about, particularly human wise, one of the reasons that I set up my business, the human advantage. Because, actually, what I was witnessing was, you know, we still are I'm operating in a world where the commercial goals, the revenue, the profitability, the numbers matter, but, actually, so does humanity and so does sustainability. Uh-huh. And for me, it's how can we create that intersectional link really where we are both human at work, where we're focusing on sustainable causes and what's right. Not not just for the business, for that growth mindset, you know, from that beating the drum of sales sales, but actually who we are, how we grow, and how the business grows. And I think that external in perspective is super I always kick off these conversations with with a question that's, what does being human at work mean to you? And I'd really be curious in your perspective of that, you know, drawing on your perspectives from others from from the creative world.

Helen [00:06:15]:
Yeah. Well, I think being I mean, first of all, I don't understand not being human at work. Right? It's an Yeah. Concept. Yeah. And nor do I understand why we so fervently embrace a lot of management techniques which strive to get the human out of work. Mhmm. But I if I think of the companies that I run, for example, I think my view towards the employees was I've hired very smart, driven, curious people.

Helen [00:06:50]:
My job is to set them hard problems and create the conditions in which they can do the best work they've ever done that they can be with the ground up. That's and I think if I can do that, then the rest will follow-up. And so far in my career, which is longer than I like to admit, that's turned out to be very successful. I believe that all people are intrinsically creative and have imagination. I'm dismayed by the degree to which that is typically squashed through our education system and through a lot of our management techniques. I have routinely found in people I've hired that they are capable of infinitely more than their past, CV suggested. So I placed a lot of faith in people and very, very rarely have been disappointed. So I'm also fundamentally an optimist.

Helen [00:07:54]:
I mean, which sounds kind of weird at this moment in history. But I do believe human beings are capable of anything, good and bad. But I'm really focused on the good. We're extraordinary problem solvers. We are extraordinary inventors and innovators. And my I guess my current book is very driven by a sense that we mostly waste, denigrate, undervalue, underestimate, overlook that capacity. But, actually, we need all of it right now if we're gonna get out of the mess for it. It.

Margaret Heffernan [00:08:39]:
Yeah. I think you're you're absolutely right. And, you know, reflecting on, you know, why do we need you know, I sometimes wonder why do we need this conversation about being human at work? What are we doing? But but, actually, the more people I talk to, they're like, no. Keep banging the drum. You know? There is something here that that we really need to drive this. And and I do want to get on to those positives, but but for before we do, what's stopping us? You've done a lot of research around this. You what is stopping us as you look from the outside from really focusing on this

Helen [00:09:12]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:09:12]:
Humanity?

Helen [00:09:13]:
Well, I and I would say that a lot you know, all of my writing is informed by the research I do, but also from the lived experience of of running the various companies in The US Absolutely. I have. That's my kind of reality check on do I believe the research. I think increasingly, we have adopted practices that are about really trying to turn people into machines. They're trying to make them absolutely predictable, as as efficient as possible. So that means cheaper, faster, bigger.

Margaret Heffernan [00:09:46]:
Yeah.

Helen [00:09:48]:
And where there's sort of no there's no room for deviation. So very, very tightly managed systems in which humans reside. And clearly that has had all sorts of miraculous effects in terms of many of the things that we live with on a daily basis that work and so on. But I don't believe that efficiency mindset is enough. And increasingly, I think we use it to unthinkingly and to extremely. And what I mean by that is we know now, and all the academics and experts who study forecasting keep identifying this over and over again. We know that it's extremely difficult to forecast in the very, very complex environment, especially working environment that we've created for ourselves. We've created very complex systems, which while they may repeat themselves, they don't do so predictably.

Helen [00:10:53]:
There are also systems over which we have no we don't have total control or influence. We may have some control and some influence over bits of it. Yeah. We can't see them in in a single frame, so to speak. We can't see the whole system at work the whole time. Where expertise isn't always all it's cracked up to be because things change too fast. And in that environment, what it means is that we need margins for invention, innovation, experimentation because we don't know what's coming around the corner. So what we need to be is resilient, adaptive, creative, innovative.

Helen [00:11:39]:
We mostly aren't that because we're still running on what I think of as twentieth century management, so called scientific management, where once upon a time actually forecasting was easier because we ran complicated systems. Complicated systems, you can pretty much see the whole thing. You may even own the whole thing.

Margaret Heffernan [00:11:59]:
Yeah.

Helen [00:12:00]:
You understand it deeply. You may even know all the people involved in it, And things do repeat themselves predictably, which means they are very well optimized for efficiency. But this is how once upon a time Detroit produced cars, Right? All the parts manufacturers lived within about a hundred mile radius. You know, their kids went to school with each other. Everybody knew each other. They knew the whole system from nose to tail, so to speak.

Margaret Heffernan [00:12:33]:
And that that was what we we we studied. Right? That that was what you know, when I think back to my business school experience thirty plus years ago, that's that's what we studied. But if we I think about now and I you know, the world has shifted so much, but, yeah, you talk about the education system. So when I work with a lot of technical experts that are absolutely brilliant at what they do, absolutely superb individuals, but yet, you know, I work lots of helping to think about sales and having conversations with potential customers about something that may not even exist yet.

Helen [00:13:08]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:13:08]:
And, actually, that gives a number of people, you know, it it makes them scared. They're worried about you. These are senior professionals.

Helen [00:13:16]:
Right.

Margaret Heffernan [00:13:16]:
Because it's stepping out of your comfort zone. It's it's no longer what you know. It's about having a conversation about what you don't know. I mean, you and I joked about it coming into this. You know? We've done a little bit of preparation, but, actually, we're having a having fun, having a conversation, seeing where it flows to. Right. But, actually, there's a lot of people in the world today that are are promoted and are successful because of their their deep knowledge. But yet now, as you've described it, we don't know what's gonna be coming around the corner.

Margaret Heffernan [00:13:49]:
So we actually need to have some of these adaptive skills, these creative skills to be thinking on to this on the spot.

Helen [00:13:55]:
Yeah. And I think that I think, actually, everybody is born creative, and they're born imaginative. And this thing that you refer to as a comfort zone, I think of as a prison. This is the box into which people have been shoved and had the nail and had the the top nailed down. I think many people sit in that box feeling very cramped with their knees under their chin, feeling pretty uncomfortable and alert to the fact that they could do more if only they were allowed to stretch. I've seen this time and time and time again. A lot of the hiring I did when I was running tech companies in The US was, you know, finding people in very strange places miserable jobs and saying, you know, you're better than this. Come and work for me.

Helen [00:14:44]:
And time and again saying, you know, they weren't they were capable of incredible, incredible stuff. So I think that, you know, what we have tended to do is we've tended to think that the mental model for a business is a machine. The people are widgets in the machine, and to the degree that they are standardized and they do the same thing the same way all the time, the machine will run smoothly. And there may well have been a time, I'm not convinced of this, but I'm willing to grant it, there may well have been a time where that was good enough. We are definitely past that now if it ever existed. We are in a moment where we can't see what's around the corner. We know there's some bad things around the corner, and we know that we're confronted already by deep, deep complex problems that our existing modes of working cannot address. And that seems to me a very strong argument for saying, okay, what else have we got? What other potential do we have? What other skills do we have? We need all of them now.

Helen [00:15:56]:
We can't just try to cut people according to these specific needs of the machine. We need something more organic, more capable of growth, more capable of adaptability that can spontaneously create what the moment demands. And I believe in our companies, we have many of those kinds of people. Some of them allowed to be that way. Most of them, while they're repressed. But I do think human beings, coming back to the theme of your podcast have all of this innately. And that if we can change in management and leadership, change a mindset, then we can wise to the challenges that that we confront today.

Margaret Heffernan [00:16:44]:
It's it's I've got such an image. You know, when I talked about comfort zone and you came back and you said that that prison cell and you know, I think about a number of the conversations I have people we know. I I coach on a one to one basis as well as the group work I do and so forth. And a lot of the conversations around, you know, feeling like there's a straight jacket and helping them to feel that, you know, this this box you know, how can how can we unleash I mean, you know, we we can talk about this, but I I talk with with the coaching sort of about how you show up. Like, really, before you get into conversations with customers, really understanding who you are, what's important to you, and taking time. Because until we really know ourselves, it's very difficult to say where I want to get to. But we can do that. But then there's the piece about as organizations, we have to be able to let people fly.

Margaret Heffernan [00:17:38]:
We have to almost unlock these cells for the people to thrive and embrace the uncertainty and not not with fear of failure.

Helen [00:17:48]:
Right. Right. So I agree all that with all of that. I think I think there's there are a couple of things that are really important about uncertainty. One of which is that because most people regard uncertainty as an unqualified bad thing, what they tend to do confronted by it is hunker down and tighten all the screws. This is exactly, exactly the wrong thing to do. Because in a position of uncertainty, what you need are more options. To have more options, you need more creative thinking.

Helen [00:18:28]:
And, you know, what I for my book, I interviewed Andy Haldane, who used to be the chief economist at the Bank of England. He's very clear about this. He's a much more authoritative, capitalized on economics than I would purport to be. And he said in moments of uncertainty, you need to take more risk, not less. Because the if you if you only can think of one thing to do, you've now exacerbated your risk. You need lots of options, and you leave the capacity to try several of them. You can't just stick to the plan, which is the classic thing. Right? Stick to the strategy.

Helen [00:19:07]:
You know? The boat's not Yeah. Absolutely.

Margaret Heffernan [00:19:11]:
It's not hunker down. It's the let's hold on to what we've got

Helen [00:19:15]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:19:15]:
Because we might lose it rather than let's create something new.

Helen [00:19:20]:
Yeah. Let's see what else we could be doing in this situation, which having not done it before, we might have some reasonable expectation, might have a different outcome. And what I see most organizations doing is doubling down on everything they've already done even though that's where half the trouble came from.

Margaret Heffernan [00:19:43]:
And so there's a the piece there and, you know, this is where I'm really passionate about how we unleash this human potential. In in your book, you talk about improvisation. You talk about creating the space to be creative. You talk about, you know, walks outside and things, you know, wonderful, you know, insights, ideas. We all know that diaries are are very often back to back, and people have very little space rather than creating space. And I I guess I'm just curious from your perspective. Like, do we need to start shifting the dial here? Because this is a different mode of mode of

Helen [00:20:22]:
being

Margaret Heffernan [00:20:22]:
rather than doing. And I think so often we think about doing rather than being.

Helen [00:20:26]:
Yeah. I mean, the short answer to your question is yes. We need to, I think, we need to have a better understanding of where creativity comes from, which is why probably half the book is devoted to describing the way in which genuinely creative people work, which is partly about being very alert to the world. So I think of them as sort of street sweepers. You know, they're just constantly noticing stuff and overhearing things or asking questions of why is it like that? Or why is that person doing that? Or why is that color, this season's color? I mean, any number of things, but they're constantly paying attention to where they are. They're not sitting on the train or the tube, you know, with their laptop and their AirPods and all that sort of stuff for cutting the world off. They are

Margaret Heffernan [00:21:20]:
writing their phone.

Helen [00:21:22]:
Yeah. Really paying attention to the world and just reflecting on what might it mean or just kind of collecting stuff. Now why are they doing that? Because the more they notice about the wall, the more in tune they are with the wall, the more likely it is that they're going to start having ideas that are in tune with the present instead of with some very, very rigid concept of the past. It also means that when, when surprises come, they have very good well stopped minds with lots of information in it which they may not even be conscious of having absorbed. They may remember a conversation they had with somebody about a subject that suddenly becomes extremely relevant. But they are intrinsically curious people, so they are constantly learning about the world. And they do this for the pleasure of it, and they do it because they would rather have their own understanding of the world than have it algorithmically dictated to them or than have it they're dictated to them by mass media. In other words, they have quite an intrinsic desire to be themselves.

Helen [00:22:40]:
And this gives them a much greater capacity to come up with new ideas, to notice when things are going wrong earlier, and also a capacity when making a decision to stop and think. Now I know that sounds really basic. It is really basic. But in general, because companies so highly prioritize speed, what typically happens is you get a question, you instantly come up with an answer. And it may not be the right answer because the first, the quickest answer is always the old answer. It's always the thing you've done before, the thing you've known before. It isn't today's answer because you haven't stopped to think about it today. It's a habit, if you like.

Helen [00:23:28]:
It's almost an automatic response. And I'm very struck by this, you know, just watching myself. I may get an email and I'll think, well, that's a really stupid question. Your answer is obviously x. And then I'll think, hang on a second. They wouldn't be they know that. So they wouldn't be asking this question if that were really at the heart of it. So I'll just leave it.

Helen [00:23:51]:
And usually within twenty four hours, I'll think, okay, the question's really about something else. I can answer that now I've thought about it. So I'm very struck by the notion that we think we're being super productive when we're being fast, but in fact, the reality is we're just repeating ourselves. But the wall isn't repeating itself. Today's problem is today's problem. It isn't necessarily the same as yesterday's. So it's helpful to take a beat or leave the email till tomorrow and answer it then. But we are so driven by the notion that that productivity is just about input.

Helen [00:24:36]:
Right? I've sent 500 emails today. That's really productive. Well, no, it isn't if they're all stale ideas. It it

Margaret Heffernan [00:24:46]:
goes back to the it it goes back to that twentieth century economics, doesn't it, in terms of and and it it reminds me of, you know, where the human advantage was born from was because I saw the power of the the skills that I had as a coach were highly useful in in terms of, you know, talking to other chief executives, heads of HR, general counsel, CFO, whoever you it it might be. But, actually, the skills of a coach are that of curiosity, are that of diving deeper Oh. About taking time. And, you know, very often, I remember even when I first started coaching about ten years ago, I kind of had to do a a semi demo of what a coaching conversation might look like to see what that was accepted onto the program. And somebody came in with with a problem statement. And, actually, through even just twenty minutes of unpicking that through conversation, it was something completely different. And that happens so often that that really relates to to what you were saying there. And as a thinking partner, as a strategic thinking partner, none of us know exactly what the answers are going to be because in this increasingly complicated and uncertain world, if the answer was easy, quite frankly, we'd all put it into chat GPT, and we'd be done and dusted, and we could move on to something else.

Helen [00:26:11]:
Oh.

Margaret Heffernan [00:26:11]:
But but we can't. And there's a beautiful, example in your book where you talk about the Singapore Gardens and the design of that and how the team were approached, and and they didn't know necessarily where to start or what it might look like.

Helen [00:26:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I thought

Margaret Heffernan [00:26:30]:
You could probably tell it a little bit of than I can, but but the curiosity and the and the openness at which they explored it came to something quite phenomenal.

Helen [00:26:38]:
Yeah. No. It's a it's a very beautiful example, and it it came from my conversation with Andrew Grant who, if I called him a landscape architect, it would be a gross diminution of his unbelievable skills. But he was running a sort of landscape design practice in Bath when he was approached by some Singaporeans who said they wanted to build a big garden. And, you know, I know this world well enough to know that probably most of the companies that they approached will have recycled some old plan that they've used somewhere else in a pitch because they didn't want to expend a lot of time and money on coming up with something original. But Andrew was was really interested that this was you know, they clearly did want something new. And so he he and his team came up with some very original ideas. And much to their astonishment, they got the contract.

Helen [00:27:44]:
And this was an incredibly ambitious, incredibly well funded, daring project. And on some level, you know, I suspect that had they seen where Andrew worked and how small his team was, you know, they would never have been thinking. What they were drawn to was the quality of the thinking. And what was so brilliant about this was that every time there was a new technology to learn or a new horticultural problem to solve or a new engineering problem to solve, the whole team thought this is fantastic. We're learning new stuff. They didn't think, well, let's just find out what we you know, what did we do last time? Well, we can do a kind of half of that or whatever. And so you've got this absolutely classic, virtuous circle where the more they learned, the more creative their thinking became. And the more creative their thinking became, the more they needed to keep learning things.

Helen [00:28:45]:
And the more they kept learning things, the more they started bringing in other technologists, you know, so they brought in a lighting engineer who said, well, you know, we could wire up the trees in a way that they could talk to each other. Well, there's a night in that. Right?

Margaret Heffernan [00:28:58]:
Well, wow. And, yes, it's spectacular.

Helen [00:29:01]:
Yeah. So this becomes the Gardens By The Bay, you know, which is a landmark in Asia and has absolutely put Singapore on the map for all kinds of things because it's beautiful, because it's, you know, record breakingly innovative, because they've had to invent all kinds of technologies or ways in which technologies work together that nobody's ever seen before. And of course, this is unstoppable. You know, such unstoppable for the whole design firm because, of course, it attracts more really ambitious creative young people. And the place is packed to the ceiling with creative young people who realize that they get incredibly interesting assignments. So this is exactly the kind of business you want to be, right, where you have this kind of momentum behind learning, creativity, innovation, solve problem solving, and so on, and talent being sucked into that kind of flywheel. And that is absolutely not typical of the major organizations in the world today. And

Margaret Heffernan [00:30:13]:
and and we need to take learnings from that. We need to take learnings that actually we need to reshape our thinking to to let the people, the humans that we have within the big businesses flourish. Right. It's it's turning it on our head and saying, actually, yes, we can be commercially focused. Yes. We're focused on the the bigger goal, the bigger picture. But in order to do that, the the diaries that are back to back where we have no space, where where we are just sort of a rinse and repeat almost.

Helen [00:30:47]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:30:48]:
We need to be creating space and taking a step back to to let the other the other side of our brains

Helen [00:30:56]:
Uh-huh.

Margaret Heffernan [00:30:57]:
Work. And and that's, you know, the way I describe it when we're coaching is is kind of another muscle. It's not that it's not there. Uh-huh. It's that it maybe just hasn't been used for some time. And so when, you know, when we're coaching, I say people say to me, gosh. This is hard work. I said, I I didn't say it's a chat.

Margaret Heffernan [00:31:16]:
It's not training. We we're withdrawing on different muscles that are, in my opinion, critical

Helen [00:31:25]:
for

Margaret Heffernan [00:31:25]:
that curiosity, creative thinking, questioning to to really knit things together, to create new solutions.

Helen [00:31:32]:
So I think that's right. And my my guess is from the way that you're talking, you have the same experience in your coaching that I'd have with my mentoring, which is that, that client discovers the answer that they had in them somewhere. Absolutely. Isn't that Absolutely. I mean, I never have the answers, and I don't know nearly as much about their business as they do, obviously. Yeah. I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of areas in which to poke around. And by dint of being there, the time has been made in which that poking around can occur.

Helen [00:32:11]:
And as you rightly point out, that's also usually when the nature of the true question emerges. But I think you're right about, you know, the over busy day. And part of that is, I think that there's a lack, frankly, a lack of discipline in terms of dealing with what really matters. I think that there's a lack of discipline in terms of asking for other people's time when maybe it's not needed. I think we should respect people's time much more. I think, and I've written about this on my Substack, I think we're spectacularly profligate with how we spend time. You know, we have a whole function called finance to oversee how we spend money. We don't have any function at all anywhere overseeing how we spend time.

Helen [00:33:08]:
But I can make more money tomorrow. I can't make more time. And I think the way in which we waste time and we waste other people's time, is one way that we burn people out. We destroy their energy, we destroy their imagination. And, you know, at the end of the day, people are exhausted with this horrible sense. It's like eating junk food, this horrible sense that they haven't done anything because you know what? Most of the time, they haven't.

Margaret Heffernan [00:33:39]:
I I couldn't agree more, and I was actually having a conversation earlier before I came onto this podcast with with somebody that, you know, we were talking about, you know, how can we get people out to have more conversations with clients, business development, etcetera, etcetera. And I I said, well, one of the fundamental challenges is that the diary is already stacked up. And unless you help them to release something, either by letting go, by delegating, or by frankly just saying no, we can't create more space without burning these people out. And and that's what we're seeing, and I think that's why we've got this disconnect between humanity and and results with that that just is clashing at the knuckles right now.

Helen [00:34:20]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:34:21]:
But we really do need to take a a completely different approach and to say, how do we put humanity creativity back into the heart of what we're doing? So I And let the results flow.

Helen [00:34:34]:
Yeah. I completely agree with you, but I do think that part of this has to do with being much more disciplined about time. Understanding how the human brain works, understanding how people get tired, understanding that productivity is about output, not input. That a huge amount of it has to do with the random casual conversations that people have at work, but not all of it. Not all work is the same. Not all work should be done the same way. But we just I mean, I can remember talking to several CEOs about the need to create quiet time. In other words, time when nobody can be interrupted.

Helen [00:35:12]:
Multitasking is a total bust. Monotasking is the way to get quality work done faster. But that requires that people are allowed to protect themselves from interruption. And I have rarely met a CEO who was prepared to allow their people to essentially put up a do not disturb and obey it. But that's how the best work gets done. So what do you want? The power to interrupt people or the power to get great work done? That's the question. And I'm always alarmed at the degree to which it's not really thought about. It's a huge waste.

Helen [00:35:55]:
And I think in The UK in particular, it's a very significant part of our miserable, levels of productivity.

Margaret Heffernan [00:36:05]:
I I unfortunately couldn't couldn't agree more, Margaret. And if this conversation could inspire even just a handful of people to think about what we're doing to our our teams and and our people by putting this this pressure on, then then, actually, it's it's a worthy conversation. And and you talk about the the artists, and that that's one of the things they do. They they really focus on that that deliberate use of time and creation of space

Helen [00:36:34]:
Yes. They do.

Margaret Heffernan [00:36:35]:
To to deliver an outcome.

Helen [00:36:38]:
Well, they're very outcome focused. They're very output focused. A lot of that is because they identify with their work. It has meaning for them. A lot of work at work has very little meaning for people. It's just a to do list to be worked through. That's really dismal. And it's a terrible way for people to spend their lives.

Helen [00:37:03]:
But I also I want to come back to this thing that about loosening up because a lot of people will say, well, look, we can't loosen up because we got so much to do. I do think most companies need to be much more disciplined about saying, actually, there's a whole bunch of stuff we're not going to do. We need time for innovation. We need time for experimentation. I also think it's quite important to limit the use of technology, which is to say, I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world who is sick to death of of texting, so SMS, WhatsApp, email, online messaging, and I think everybody in the world boldly hates Teams. Now I'm not saying get rid of all the technology, but come on. Instead of just piling on one system on top of another, on another, on another, Make a decision, this is what we use, this is all that we use, and that's it. You know, we've done lots and lots and lots of studies into multitasking for over fifty years now.

Helen [00:38:20]:
And we've seen what it does to people. That a life full of multitasking gradually means that people lose the full range of their vocabulary. They lose the capacity for creative thinking. They're more susceptible to depression and early onset dementia. This isn't trivial stuff. This isn't just having a bad day. We are worth people badly, and we call it leadership.

Margaret Heffernan [00:38:49]:
Yeah. And and I I couldn't agree more when it's we need to take it on ourselves. We need to be doing more. And and I must admit, you know, even since I I set up my own business, it's it's been retraining these muscles

Helen [00:39:03]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:39:03]:
To say you you don't have to be, you know, 150% utilized or whatever. It's about creating that space for the creativity. I mean, I'm I'm halfway through my first book, Margaret, so you are, you know, a pinnacle up there, but it you have to let that creativity in.

Helen [00:39:20]:
Well, you have to make space for it, and you have to make space to listen to what your brain is trying to tell you.

Margaret Heffernan [00:39:26]:
And and sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And I think and the other bit and the other, example that I really loved in in your book was was about and about, you know, cutting through the noise in the conversations. And, you know, this comes back to sort of maybe the technical experts that I'm used to working with in my world. Ah. But where people are are solely focused on data or the numbers or and and, actually, in the rather example, you, again, show it better than I go, but you had the creatives coming and saying, well, what about this? And just arts taking a step back and asking some of those questions to sort of cut through the noise

Helen [00:40:09]:
Yeah.

Margaret Heffernan [00:40:09]:
To see really what's going on rather than sort of rinse and repeat.

Helen [00:40:13]:
Yeah. Well, it's a yeah. I mean, the the story you're referring to is when the took place when I was sat on the board of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And it was very interesting because it the board is loosely composed of half a lot of graduates, so these are going to be directors, actors, and other people, so business people like myself. And I was very, very struck that business people would kind of tiptoe around issues, try to avoid issues. I mean, it's classic example, willful blindness among other things. But the actors and directors on the board could tell something was wrong. You know, the language was wrong.

Helen [00:41:03]:
The body language is wrong. You know, something's clearly clearly wrong.

Margaret Heffernan [00:41:08]:
They were sent they were sensing it. They were tapping into their senses.

Helen [00:41:11]:
And, of course, you know, all drama is about conflict, so they definitely understand conflict, and they're not afraid of it. And so it was they that kind of, you know, tore the curtain down so we could see the nonsense that was actually going on at the time within the organization. Happy to say it since, you know, we had a healthy recovery, But, they weren't afraid to raise the subject and deal with it. And a huge amount of time at work is wasted in kind of tiptoeing around or trying very hard not to frighten the horses or trying to be very political about how it's seen. When in fact, really what one has to do is say, okay, this is where we are now. What are we gonna do about it? And, you know, this may sound terribly naive, but I have sat in a lot of a lot of board meetings like that.

Margaret Heffernan [00:42:14]:
Yeah.

Helen [00:42:14]:
I can remember another one where the founder of the business had died, so people were understandably quite grief stricken. But the management didn't really want to tell the workforce that the company was in a rather shaky state. And the workforce, of course, could tell that the business was in a rather shaky state because they weren't terribly busy. And, you know, the management thought that they were doing the workforce a favor, and the workforce were thinking we're being led by donkeys. They're not doing anything. Why aren't they doing anything? You know, this is a classic mutually assured stalemate, and it was a failure to engage with people as people. It was essentially treating the workforce like children. Actually, if you got people in the room and said, okay, this is where we are, what should we do? You would have come out of that meeting with something super productive.

Helen [00:43:11]:
Mhmm. But instead, there was a lot of bureaucracy. There were a lot of of processes that kind of impeded things. And all the time that those processes were impeding change, of course, the company was becoming more and more fragile. It did eventually recover, but it could have done so very much more quickly because there's no doubt in my mind they had the creativity within the business to address the problems that they had. And their workforce would have trusted their leaders very, very much more if they had shared the problem.

Margaret Heffernan [00:43:44]:
And and that ultimately brings us back around to to being human, to treating people as adults Yeah. In organizations and to trust those within that if you have a an honest adult to adult conversation that that that creativity could thrive. And and if not, what you've also just described is is more wasted time going back to our earlier conversation. Yeah. That, you know, it just creates noise in the system rather than cutting through, you know, what what we might do about it. Margaret, I'm absolutely conscious of time. I could talk to you all afternoon. It's been really fabulous to have you on the show, and hopefully, there might be another time where our our paths cross as well.

Margaret Heffernan [00:44:24]:
But before we close the show, so much richness there and so much research. What would be the one tip for listeners that you would leave them with having listened to this conversation?

Helen [00:44:37]:
Well, I have lots of little sort of what I think of as tips and tricks. I mean, one of them which I adopted myself when I found myself in this kind of machine. I I live near Bath, and so I travel into London quite frequently, is I just decided the first fifteen minutes of any train ride, I had to stay outside the window. Just not do anything, but just stare outside the window. Now fifteen minutes doesn't sound very long. It isn't very long. It feels like a long time. But if you give yourself permission to do that, you start to hear what your brain's trying to tell you.

Helen [00:45:17]:
It'll remind you of things you've forgotten. It'll make you think of a problem that you kind of buried a while ago. All sorts of things will occur to you. I mean, it's quite extraordinary. And there are times I think, no. No. I don't want I know what I need to worry about. You know, I'll just crack on and then I think, no.

Helen [00:45:34]:
No. You don't do that Margaret. Come on. And it's just astonishing. I also, you know, make a habit of sitting on the London tube and just looking at people. Right? Just looking at people. I quite often, if I'm in a situation where I'm with people I don't know, I will be more sociable than I probably naturally am because I want to know who they are. I wanna find out about them.

Helen [00:46:03]:
And and it's funny because I know a lot of people are very hesitant about doing that and I think they underestimate the degree to which being curious about somebody is a real compliment. It's saying I'm interested in you. Trust me. People will not resent that, and you will learn something. So there are simple things that I noticed people not doing because they want to be efficient, But they're not being efficient. They're just grinding themselves into the dust where they could be being productive and creative. And my own view is when you start changing some of these habits, quite a lot of other things reveal themselves.

Margaret Heffernan [00:46:47]:
Yeah. I I I would absolutely agree with you, and I see that all the time in in the coaching work. That's that's a little bit of advice from you, but but we've talked a lot about curiosity and creativity on the conversation. And a good coach loves a good question. So if you were to offer a question to the audience to get them to think about something, because I think, you know, we all know that questions do percolate a little bit. What might that question be for them to reflect on?

Helen [00:47:16]:
Well, there are lots of things. I mean, I would ask them, what are they doing that they know they don't really need to do, and how can they stop? I might think about what are the issues at work that everybody knows and nobody's talking about, and what can you do to get that conversation going? Mhmm. I might ask them, you know, did you ever did you ever play a musical instrument or a sport or speak a language that you've let lapse? What would happen if you went back to it?

Margaret Heffernan [00:47:59]:
Three beautiful questions, Margaret. I'm certainly gonna reflect on that. I used to play the piano and the flute. So may maybe are we tinkling back on the keys at some point?

Helen [00:48:10]:
So I think it's very helpful and very healthy to be able because I used to play the piano, and, and I got a very big check for as an award for one of the books I've written. And I bought myself a piano, and I can't play nearly as well as I used to. I think it's quite important to be able to do something for the sheer joy of it. Not because I'm a great pianist, but because I lose myself in playing. And I don't care what it sounds like. I love the way it makes me feel, and I love how I feel after it.

Margaret Heffernan [00:48:51]:
Inspirational. I think I might get back to playing, but, oh, it's it's been a it's been an absolute joy, Margaret, to have you on the show.

Helen [00:48:58]:
Wow. Sure.

Margaret Heffernan [00:48:59]:
I I'm really looking forward to seeing the book on the shelves and spreading the word because, leading with humanity, managing through uncertainty, and and some really rich insights. So, if you've enjoyed this conversation, please please go out and buy the book. Margaret, where can where can people find you?

Helen [00:49:20]:
They can find me at my website, which is just www.mheffernan,all1word,.com. They can find me on Substack. They can find the book and the audiobook on Amazon, and that's probably enough places to find me.

Margaret Heffernan [00:49:39]:
Wonderful. Not not not not too much interference, not too much of those those messages coming in.

Helen [00:49:44]:
I'm sorry.

Margaret Heffernan [00:49:45]:
Well, look. Have a wonderful evening, and it's been super to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Helen [00:49:50]:
That was good. That was a wonderful conversation. Take care.

Margaret Heffernan [00:49:54]:
Thanks, Margaret. Take care.

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