Humans At Work Jules Harrison-Annear

“The present is already really messy.  What I’ve learnt is that the future will be really messy, too, and that there won’t be a single answer to everything.  Coming back to foresight then, I think good organisations should really do the work of imagining multiple futures and there’s some really well-designed scenario methodologies out there for working out which kinds of futures you might want to think about.  Let’s say you end up with four different futures for how you think the world might be, that’s really, really useful for strategising.” 

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features conversation with Melissa Clark-Reynolds, a futurist, technology entrepreneur and insightful and visionary speaker. She is the Managing Director at FutureCentre.nz and sits on the Boards of Atkins Ranch, Wētā Workshop Ltd, Alpine Energy Group, Daffodil Enterprises Ltd, NZ Future Bees Trust, and Iron Duke.

Melissa and I talk about the changing nature of consumer and employer influence, the evolution of executive governance, and the role of long-term investment thinking for future generations.  As an experienced Director, Melissa reflected on how Boards need to role model the behaviours and values of the organisation, how incentives for CE performance could do with an overhaul, and how to develop resilient strategies.

 

Melissa and I talk about:


Pattern recognition across multiple different systems
Food security and ethical labour and what it means to our ‘small pleasures’
Era of increasing transparency
Consumerism as voice and voting
Ethical alignment and the importance of visible integrity
Organisations as part of wider ecosystems
Intergenerational workforce strategies
Shifting nature of employer – employee relationships
Importance of holistic reputations for companies
Governance and Directorships – role of Boards in supporting and role modelling the company ethos and values
Relationships between CE and Board chairs
What success is for companies and organisations with a future perspective
Appropriate incentives for sustainable longer-term strategies
Board Director’s roles in supporting culture and succession
The importance of long-term workforce strategies
Planning for comprehensive integration of migrants into the workforce and communities
The need to review New Zealand’s labour market policies
Long-term investment in education and health
The importance of teaching critical thinking and creativity
Infrastructure and the challenge of government debt leaving stranded assets for future generations
Strategies that build resilient futures that future generations will have the most choice in
Te Ao Māori view in relation to valuing people with preferences for the past, the present and the future
The importance of handling the present as well as thinking of the future
The need to imagine multiple futures and scenarios to build resilient strategy
The importance of pandemic scenario planning.

 

Resources and Links: 

Connect with Jules:


Follow Jules on www.linkedin.com/in/julesharrisonannear
Need an engaging, thought-provoking, inspirational speaker or facilitator?  Talk to Jules about her availability via https://calendly.com/jules-jhaconsulting/speaking-event-preparation
To get Jules’ help with your organisational or leadership challenge, visit https://jhaconsulting.org or go ahead and book a time with Jules via Calendly on https://calendly.com/jules-jhaconsulting

 

Keep connected with Humans At Work:


To listen to more podcasts and read Jules’ blogs visit https://www.humansatwork.org/
To improve your ethical leadership, sign up to our free self-paced digital Matching Values to Action course https://www.humansatwork.org/store
Sign up to the human hub newsletter keep up to date with all things Humans at Work. Find more info here
Follow Humans at Work on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/humans-at-worknz/

And those of us who are 45 and up who are in that category of leaders at the moment, if you like, what if we’d all been through an education system which taught us to be ethically informed about what our actions were doing, not just on our doorstep but in other parts of the world?  Or about the climate or about how the economic system favours some people and definitely not the majority of people, might we have a completely different perspective? 

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features conversation with Sophie Howe, Sustainability Futures and Wellbeing Adviser, and the first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales.

Sophie and I talk about what the reality is of the ‘superhero’ job Future Generations Commissioner, how much more public and private sector can be doing to integrate our thinking systemically and holistically, and how to enable younger generations to think creatively, proactively and strategically to be better prepared for the future challenges. 

 

Sophie and I talk about:


The amazing British TV show Gavin and Stacey, and how well it captured the small nuances of culture and behaviour
Personal experience as valuable for driving your work
The breathtaking slow-ness of governments in thinking and planning ahead for social, technological and other shifts
The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in Wales
The national ‘citizens conversations’ that designed and developed the concept of the ‘Wales we want’ into reality
The 5 ways-of-working that embedded a fundamental shift in how government agencies, local councils, citizens and others work together systematically to create the future of Wales
Involvement of the private sector in national shifts in ethos
The value of a clear national strategic vision for certainty for all sectors
What counts as ‘future generations’ – in the Welsh context, 25 years ahead is the starting point
Tensions within government system settings between short-term and long-term decision-making and mechanisms to resolve those
Cross-discipline and integrated system thinking – e.g. applying a public health perspective to long term transport strategy
Education as a tool for embedding preventative and integrated thinking for future leaders
The role and tactics of the Future Commissioner
The fact that road building (and the future debt required) doesn’t stand up to scrutiny from a holistic wellbeing perspective
Building courage for holding the holistic, future lens ground in conversations
Social justice and the concept of intergenerational fairness
Public policy and its role in getting to the root cause of systemic problems rather than short-term sticking plasters
Her work with the UN system to reach a declaration for Future Generations
What everyone can do to bring a future generations lens to your influence and work.

 

Resources and Links: 

Connect with Jules:


Follow Jules on www.linkedin.com/in/julesharrisonannear
Need an engaging, thought-provoking, inspirational speaker or facilitator?  Talk to Jules about her availability via https://calendly.com/jules-jhaconsulting/speaking-event-preparation
To get Jules’ help with your organisational or leadership challenge, visit https://jhaconsulting.org or go ahead and book a time with Jules via Calendly on https://calendly.com/jules-jhaconsulting

 

Keep connected with Humans At Work:


To listen to more podcasts and read Jules’ blogs visit https://www.humansatwork.org/
To improve your ethical leadership, sign up to our free self-paced digital Matching Values to Action course https://www.humansatwork.org/store
Sign up to the human hub newsletter keep up to date with all things Humans at Work. Find more info here
Follow Humans at Work on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/humans-at-worknz/

This episode of the humans at work podcast features a Postscript Moment – a special follow-up conversation with one of our previous podcast guests.  For those of you who can remember letter-writing, after you’d signed off your letter, you could write P.S. and add in one last story or commentary that you knew would appeal to your letter recipient!  You wouldn’t have much space left on the paper, so you’d need to be more succinct and often P.S. information was the most informal and ‘juicy’ part of your news.

 

“So, you cannot pretend those things didn’t happen and you cannot pretend that those things don’t have an influence on what happened a hundred years later, and how living with that legacy of that trauma can still have an impact in today’s world.”

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features a short(er) follow-up conversation with Enver Samuel, Documentary Film Maker, head of EMS Productions and currently a board member of the Documentary Film Makers Association.  It builds on the full podcast with Enver in episode 1.

 

Enver and I talk about:


The beauty of Kruger National Game Park
The peaceful sound of Africa
How social and economic imperatives take effort and investment away from environmental issues
The power of storytelling to fundamentally change the settings of the future
The success of impact campaigns – bringing forgotten voices back to life
Transgenerational trauma and the importance of addressing it to move forward
The need to acknowledge the past and its affect on people’s futures, particularly the impact of colonialism
The importance of taking breaks, particularly when dealing with trauma and hard topics
Techniques for keeping safe when dealing with difficult topics and working for impact.

 

Resources and Links:

To learn more about Enver: 

Visit EMS Productions

 

Join us at humans at work:

Sign up to the human hub newsletter today! Engage with Jules as she discusses important and thought-provoking questions and themes every month, and keep up to date with all things Humans at Work. Find more info here.

To listen to more podcasts, read the blogs, invest in some active community learning and mentoring…visit https://www.humansatwork.org/

Follow Jules on LinkedIn

Follow Humans at Work on LinkedIn

“Kindness can look different to different people as well. Kindness for me is very specific around boundary setting; by setting clear and not rigid but I’m very strict with my boundaries around my time, my emotional energy, my energy levels, my mental bandwidth around what I will and won’t take on and what I will and won’t keep."

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features conversation with Sophie Bretag, Kindness guru and CEO and Founder of Metta Leaders.

Sophie and I talk about what kindness looks, feels and sounds like in the workplace, the value of the Human Resources function within organisations, and the challenges and opportunities of adaptive parenting.

 

Sophie and I talk about:


Our journeys to not drinking alcohol
Adaptive strategies and applying them to parenting
Parenting opportunities and challenges
Choices and conscious risk taking
Change and opportunities to use scenarios to demystify the future
Organisational change processes and people impacts
The invisible value of Human Resources for the system that is the workforce of an organisation
Taking responsibility for your own health and wellbeing
The shift that COVID brought to organisations’ view of the value of HR
The intersect between HR and leadership, behind common purpose
Jules’ views on the true definition of an organisation
The return on investment from kindness in the workplace
Understanding what kindness looks like
The importance of personalising purpose and values
Modern offices that don’t encourage connection with nature
Opportunities to partner with nature in the design of healthier workplaces
The value of daydreaming

 

Resources and Links:

To learn more about Sophie:

Visit Sophie at mettaleaders.com/  

Follow Sophie on LinkedIn

 

Join us at humans at work:

Sign up to the human hub newsletter today! Engage with Jules as she discusses important and thought-provoking questions and themes every month, and keep up to date with all things Humans at Work. Find more info here.

To listen to more podcasts, read the blogs, invest in some active community learning and mentoring…visit https://www.humansatwork.org/

Follow Jules on LinkedIn

Follow Humans at Work on LinkedIn

“One of those examples is, we talk about articulating strategy, because strategic thinking is no good if it just stays in your head.  So, we talk about articulating strategy and how you can get clear on that in your head, in order to communicate it and articulate it. That’s not just how do you write a strategy document, that’s how do you have day to-day conversations where you’re being clear with people, you’re leaving space for them to come up with their own solutions.”

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features conversation with Nina Field, Business Psychologist.  Nina shares her journey from her love of water to joining the Navy and then designing her own highly successful strategic thinking programme.

Nina and I talk about what its really like in the Navy, how organisational psychology and a love of strategy led to Nina designing a programme to help people translate the process of strategic thinking into tangible actions, and the value of understanding how you think.

 

Nina and I talk about:


Working in the Navy
The focus for organisational psychology
The training foundation of defence work that enables readiness
Strategic thinking from a psychological perspective
Nina’s strategic thinking framework and programme
Metacognition – the process of thinking about your thinking
Jules’ decision-making practice work
The link between thinking and decisions, and decisions and actions
The need for clear articulation of your strategy
Use of assessment tools in selection and development
Cognitive Profile process and the value of understanding how you think
The value of knowing your strengths and weaknesses and recruiting for complementary skills and capabilities.

 

Resources and Links: 

To learn more about Nina:

Visit Nina at ninafield.co.nz/

Follow Nina on LinkedIn

 

Join us at humans at work:

Sign up to the human hub newsletter today! Engage with Jules as she discusses important and thought-provoking questions and themes every month, and keep up to date with all things Humans at Work. Find more info here.

To listen to more podcasts, read the blogs, invest in some active community learning and mentoring…visit https://www.humansatwork.org/

Follow Jules on LinkedIn

Follow Humans at Work on LinkedIn

“I think that’s where we need to use our power as global citizens and keep putting that pressure on Governments and corporates. I believe that corporates are driven by profit and Governments are driven by votes. That’s what they want, so it’s us that we can actually force them to change. If we start putting pressure and being loud about what we want, ultimately, when we build this critical mass of people, they’ll have to change.”

“But if you can connect with three, four, five people in your street, in your neighbourhood who has aligned values to you and want to change the world, that gives you a really special power that virtual connections can’t give you. Suddenly you can go for a walk and have a chat face-to-face; you can have a meal together, talk about it, come up with ideas, brainstorm and start running things locally. I think once we tap into that power of seeing how many people there are around you that want to change the world, I think we will change the world much, much faster.”  

 

This episode of the humans at work podcast features conversation with Carlos Terol, Impact Entrepreneur, owner of Terol Engineering and Good Ripple champion.

Carlos and I talk about what it takes to make change happen, how to be an active change maker, and what drives him to champion the concept of community collaboration and community action. We dive into his personal journey to knowing his purpose, and how incentives need to be rethought to drive innovation and regenerative approaches to building, infrastructure, government spending among other things.

 

Carlos and I talk about:


His journey from wanting money and sports cars to being a globally-known influencer for good
How civil engineering can contribute to sustainability
Better incentives for sustainable building and infrastructure planning
Biophilic design opportunities and changing traditional mindsets
The geographical roulette of where you’re born dictating your opportunities
The concept of global change makers and how to connect and collaborate
Finding your sense of value and contribution
Not postponing starting doing something for impact
The joy and inspiration of conversation and connection
Defence against despair and inaction
The criticality of non-measurable things
The Good Ripple concept and the power of local connections.

 

Resources and Links:

To learn more about Carlos:

Visit Carlos at carlosterol.com

Follow Carlos on LinkedIn

 

Join us at humans at work:

Sign up to the human hub newsletter today! Engage with Jules as she discusses important and thought-provoking questions and themes every month, and keep up to date with all things Humans at Work. Find more info here.

To listen to more podcasts, read the blogs, invest in some active community learning and mentoring…visit https://www.humansatwork.org/

Follow Jules on LinkedIn

Follow Humans at Work on LinkedIn