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Welcome to "Visionary Voices" the podcast where we dive into the minds of business owners, founders, executives, and everyone in between.
Each episode brings you face-to-face with the leading lights of industry and innovation.
Join us as we uncover the stories behind the success and the lessons learned along the way.
Whether you're climbing the corporate ladder or just starting your business journey, these are the conversations you need to hear - packed with visionary voices and insights.
Let's begin.
So Matt, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Can you give us a top level view about what it is that you do right now and your journey
so far?
Yeah, thank you for having me.
So I describe myself as a company culture consultant, which is an alliterative mouthful,
but basically means that I spend my time with great organizations thinking about the
systems, the environments, and the cultures of that organization that enable people to
flourish.
And I kind of think about it as when you've got the culture right, it kind of is the
difference between swimming upstream
or swimming kind of with the current.
And I think the system is such an important factor that often seems invisible, that seems
abstract.
It's quite hard to put your finger on culture, but there are a number of ways that we like
to help organizations do it.
that's how I describe myself and my company is called The Shift.
And we like to think about mindset shifts and culture shifts.
So there's primarily the two ways we like to try and help people.
And it all really just comes down to
I'm just obsessed with people.
just want to help people, yeah, help them reach whatever their potential is.
And the way that comes to in work is thinking about what can we do at a systems level to
try and unlock that.
Amazing.
And that sounds like such an interesting industry.
So what was the steps for you to get into that industry and why did you decide to
actually, you know, run a business rather than just working in a company as well?
It's always interesting to learn about the entrepreneurial journey that's behind the
scenes as well.
Yeah, I massively fell into this job.
And I think if you asked me 10 years ago or told me 10 years ago, you're gonna be in HR,
which is kind of what it is.
I think I'd have said, you're absolutely mad.
HR had such a bad reputation, certainly when I was growing up.
I just think of things like the office, computer says no, HR, even the word human
resources, kind of like your cattle.
It just seemed to be about protecting the business payroll.
So it was so far from my mind.
There were so many other things that I thought I might end up doing.
And I studied philosophy at uni, which is a super broad open subject.
And I kind of described philosophy as teaching you how to think, which is very useful for
kind of any job.
But I was also very creative and I loved the two sides, the really analytical thinky
side but then also the very creative aspect and I started in advertising originally as a
creative strategist so very far from from culture and I guess the connection that got me
there was as a strategist you're always thinking about people so you're thinking about
what makes people tick what types of messaging will help shift behavior hopefully in a
useful good way
I like to think about many of the nudge theory things that the government did around how
do we help people, you know, exercise more, how do we help people stop smoking, little
things like that.
It's all about people, it's about how people think.
And there was an aspect of that which was like, loved understanding people.
But I think the bigger part was just, I was very fortunate to join an agency who was kind
of a startup at the time, around 10 people, joined as an intern.
eventually became a creative strategist, but because it was a startup, there was no people
function.
There was no HR.
There was no one thinking about internally in the business.
And I just started doing it.
I just started thinking, well, wouldn't it be cool if we got this person in and we invited
these cool people in.
and eventually that became like a learning lunch and learn program.
I definitely think there's different ways we could be holding meetings.
These seem to be really inefficient and started basically having a second job internally,
which was.
thinking about people and culture and then eventually pitched to the two founders either
bold or naively.
I think it was kind of, yeah, naivety of youth a couple of years in, literally into work.
It like, need a head of culture and it should be me.
And they were like, okay, we like the ambition, but maybe slow down.
But they were wonderful and started to help shift my role to thinking formally about.
culture and people and culture wasn't really a thing.
This would have been, I guess, so 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago, we didn't really
know of company culture in the way that it's so mainstream now, since the pandemic really.
It was kind of still this like people-y thing, like, are you wanting to go into HR?
And I like, I don't think so, but this feels different.
So yeah, it was, I think it was a very, it was not an intentional decision to move into
culture.
It was definitely very emergent.
was being alive to the opportunities and kind of going where my energy went.
You know, I've just realized I'm spending most of my day actually thinking about how do I
help other people do their job well, not what I'm being paid to do.
And that is definitely a signal that I need to pay attention to.
If that's where my energy is going, what is this?
Is there a role here?
How do I start to do more of it?
So yeah, kind of started to gradually widen that into working full time in culture.
Yeah, amazing.
It's so cool how you managed to, you know, start to be attracted to certain things in your
previous role.
And then it's like, actually, this is what I want to do.
And then actually having the courage to pitch the founders at that company as well for you
to develop that further.
I think that's a really cool journey.
And I know you said like, you kind of kind of fell into it a little bit, but it seemed
like it was also intentional at the same time, right?
Because you kind of followed the path that you wanted to go down, that was kind of
attracting you.
But at same time, know, things just kind of came together in a way which maybe you didn't
expect it to on top of that.
But it's such an interesting journey.
yeah, I think that's definitely it was it was strategic, but not necessarily planned out
or like, you know, it's not like I had a five year 10 year plan.
But I definitely when I think about life, I think about almost like, there's many
different multiple life paths that I could go down.
And I try and keep them open and interesting and think about what that could look like
what that strategy might look like.
And yeah, as I started to notice that this feels like this is actually a job here, not
just something that's interesting.
Did some more research.
And yeah, when I put that presentation to the founders, I created a big presentation of
like, why culture is going to be a thing, why it's important, why you need it, why you
need a head of culture.
The night before the presentation, I was like, God, I need to add a slide that says why it
should be me.
Because I thought they could have just said, yeah, you're absolutely right.
We'll get someone in that knows what they're doing.
You
and final slide, the reason it should be me is, know, I really, probably didn't need to do
that.
But I just suddenly realized, because it's been such a, I think my imposter syndrome was
always, I will have not been formally trained in this.
So who am I to start to do this?
And I think formal training can be really useful, but there's so many other ways that you
can pick up the skills.
And I had been doing it for about five years at that time without
it officially being something, you know, I'd been learning along the way.
But yeah, it's just quite fun the night before being...
Have I just pitched someone else doing the dream job that I love?
Imagine if that came through and they're like, yeah, we're going to hire this guy now.
Yeah, brilliant.
Create the job description for someone else, spit it out.
Yeah, definitely.
mean, guess throughout that journey as well, what were some of the mindset shifts you had
to go through?
Because you've gone from, you know, kind of working within the business, then moving into
actually being, you know, co-founder within another business.
So you've taken on a ton more responsibility in that, in that regard.
So how did you manage that transition and going from, you A to B there?
So from working in the agency to then setting up my own company.
So the startup I was in always had a very entrepreneurial spirit.
In fact, it was an unofficial value they basically always talked about.
They loved people being entrepreneurial, whether that was someone in the agency wanting to
set up an initiative, kind of pitching to the founders and saying, hey, I'd love to go and
do this thing.
And if you gave me a couple hundred quid,
I think I could make a YouTube series and there'll be some tangential benefit to the
company.
It didn't even have to be like, here's how we're gonna make money from it.
But it was just a sense that if we have interesting people doing interesting things, we're
a creative agency, that's going to benefit us somehow.
So there was kind of that entrepreneurial spirit from my perspective.
The way that played out for me was them kind of giving me, yeah, the freedom and the trust
to...
turn what I thought would be something into a job.
They created that role, gave me the scope to figure out how to make it work.
And I think I just kind of had a bit of that entrepreneurial spirit.
I'd always been interested in started up loads of different side projects.
So the shift for me, I guess more than the more challenging shift was I had been
originally as a creative strategist in the agency.
I had the benefit.
because it was a service model business of getting to work with lots of different clients.
And I loved that variety.
That was something that works really well with my personality.
I love the energy, the excitement of new people, new clients.
The first shift that was challenging was then when I actually went to work on culture just
for that company, I was actually now only working with one company.
My client was the agency I was working in-house and I realized that the trade-off
of now getting to do this job was variety.
And I felt like after a number of years, if I want to be able to say that I'm good at
company culture, I can't have only done it in one place.
I have to go and do it in other places to understand how it plays out in nonprofits, law
firms, agencies, big businesses, small businesses.
So from my own learning, I then kind of needed to leave.
I needed to go and set something up.
Well,
didn't necessarily know I was gonna set something up.
I knew I needed to leave in order to build and get more variety.
And the idea of setting something up was really appealing because the best way for me to
get as much variety and learning as possible would be basically what's the agency
equivalent?
I guess that's having my own company or being freelance and working with lots of clients.
So I think there was a shift from, I guess being
internal on one company to then going back to that kind of agency mindset of having many
other companies.
The biggest mindset shift, which was more of a challenge, was being confident in my
skillset, like the actual doing of the culture work, the learning and development, but
realizing that that's maybe only 10 % of what you do when you run a business.
Like the actual doing of the work is kind of a small part of it.
Yeah.
know, you've got to do the marketing, the sales, the new biz, the brand, the design.
So yeah, it was really interesting.
And again, I love that because I love learning, but it was quite funny the first year
where I like, I set up a business because I like, and I'm good at doing culture and
learning, and I'm not doing that much of it.
Like compared to like the pie of what I'm working on, I'm not doing that much, which was
an interesting shift as well.
Yeah, no, definitely.
And what you said about varieties is so true.
I mean, I've experienced that myself where, you know, I kind of had my own company for a
little bit.
I then actually went to working into a company just doing their marketing.
And I was like, this is so strange.
Like just working on one, one client, one company, and that's it.
And I think for some people that's great because they like the routine of it.
But for others where you like to have just new things coming in, it is a bit of a
struggle.
But then also what you said about
you know, going and starting your own company because you want to do more of the thing,
you actually end up doing probably less of the thing because you didn't so many other
things.
And it's like, it's such an interesting kind of thought process you need to go through to
make that transition of, know, yeah, I love this type of work, but actually I need to be
doing sales and marketing because that's how we're going to grow this thing.
Right.
And that's what we need to be focusing our time and energy on.
And then service delivery obviously comes a little bit after that.
So, I mean, with the company now,
So you have a co-founder, how are you finding building a company with a co-founder?
Because I always meet a couple of different types of entrepreneurs.
Some people are saying, do you know what?
No, I just need to be by myself and I can go to the company.
Others saying, no, I want to have someone there or some type of team there initially just
to help support things.
So with you, what was the result been and how are you finding having a co-founder?
I think we have a very interesting dynamic because I met my co-founder when I was working
at Gravity Road, the previous agency, because he was brought in to coach me.
So he's about 15 years older.
He had his own learning and leadership consultancy and I would have been, yeah, five, six
years into my role and he was brought in to coach me to train a number of people and
I think I had like three sessions with him and after that third one he said, okay, so
let's get our diaries out.
Let's get the next one in.
And I remember thinking, I'm pretty sure we're not paying for anymore, but I'm not gonna
say that.
If he's up for meeting me again, then I'll definitely meet up with him.
I'm loving this.
So we met up again like a month later and same thing happened.
Like a couple months later, we met up again.
And by that point I knew like he must know that something, you know, and he clearly he'd
just taken a shine to me, which was really lovely.
And I think at that point,
I was trying to move internally to focus more on culture.
He was fascinated by company culture and what I was trying to do.
And we just kept meeting up, you know, every couple months have a coffee here.
kind of became an unofficial mentor and over a number of years just formed a really great
relationship to the point that when I then said, I'm thinking of leaving the company, he
approached me and said, well, why don't we consider if there's something that we could do
together?
And it blew my mind because I was thinking, why the hell would you want to do this with
me?
Like you're already, you've got something great, it's working, and I'm going to try and
figure out how to start something in this space.
So we did what we call business flirting, which was like, we knew we liked each other, but
can we work together?
And not only can we work together, once we figured out that we could.
Do we want the same things?
You he's 15 years older, he's got a kid, he's got a house, you know, we could just has
different life demands and therefore might want quite different things from running a
business.
So we knew we liked each other tick.
We knew we could work well together tick, but do we want the same things from a business?
So we sat down, had some really good discussions.
I'm not interested personally in scaling fast to sell.
It doesn't interest me.
It's not the model I want to do.
I love what I do.
I'm, you know, mid thirties.
I've got a whole working life ahead of me and I want something sustainable that allows me
to kind of have mini retirements now.
You know, I don't know who knows if we're ever going to get to retire.
I don't want to be prolonging or putting off enjoyment.
I'm curious about how do we weave life and work together now?
And he could have said, you know what, I've only been on the work for five more years.
I want to hustle hard.
I want to push it for five years and then I'm done.
I'm out.
That's what I want.
And we'd probably had to just shake hands and go, okay, we're not a good fit.
Fortunately, you know, he has a very similar mentality.
So that's what kind of brought us together.
And I think that's what made us feel very comfortable in starting something together.
But yeah, we can definitely talk about some of the challenges of that dynamic.
which there have been many and unexpectedly.
Yeah, no, definitely.
And I think it's so cool that you took the time to really think about, you want to work
with this person?
Right.
Because so many times, you know, bring it back to like a relationship point of view is you
can jump into a relationship very, very quickly without having the conversation of
actually, is this a match?
Does this make sense?
I'll be aligned on certain things.
You want the same goals, but also taking those lessons into the business sense with the
co-founder.
And ultimately going through that process, right.
You managed to see, yes, it does make sense overall.
So that's very cool to see and it wasn't just like blindly going into yeah, let's just
start business together But talk to me about those challenges that you had because it's
always interesting to learn like, you know What came up and how do you guys move past that
as well?
Because obviously for some businesses right is if the co-founders kind of get into it a
little bit and then the business will ultimately suffer and potentially split up as well
So how have you guys overcome those challenges and work through those different things?
Yeah, and I think what's really funny about the challenges, I don't think he would
recognise them as challenges.
They have mostly been in my head, to be completely honest.
I was, you know, he started as a mentor.
He started as someone that I placed on a pedestal, not to say James, that you're no longer
on a pedestal, but he was someone in my mind, you know, I was younger at the time, that I
really looked up to, impressed me that...
was doing something that I wanted to be doing.
So there was a power dynamic in my head, maybe not so conscious as a power thing, but
certainly, this is someone that's a mentor and a coach to me that I'm now going to need to
start to see as a peer.
And in order for this to work, I have to very quickly make that shift because it's almost
unfair on him if I'm not...
challenging in the right way if I'm not questioning if I'm not bringing you know if we're
not seeing each other if I'm not seeing us as equals Then why are we doing something
together as co-founders?
So again kind of going you know the initial challenge I talked about of Thinking that
you're be spending You know you're confident and good about the skill and the work that
you do But you actually don't end up doing all of your time on that I had a similar thing
which is I know I felt I knew the value I bring
I know the type of work that I do and the relationships that I can build, but I started
unhelpfully comparing myself directly to James.
And it would be even in terms of like, who's brought in the most money that month.
And he's 15 years old.
had a whole, had a, you know, has had longer working his previous business and has had
amazing clients, amazing relationships that we were fortunate to, to come and work with
the shift.
And it was a really stupid thing for me to do, just to start directly comparing myself.
And it took me...
And what was the challenge before I got onto like how the shift happened, sorry, the
mindset shift happened.
It was really strange because I'd been fortunate that mostly in my career, I hadn't really
ever doubted myself in quite this way.
I had had moments of imposter syndrome and doubt, but usually could quiet the voice.
because I could look back to past history and experiences and go, you know what though,
there's still a lot to learn, but I do think I'm good.
This was the first time where I had huge imposter syndrome of like, why would he want to
do this with me?
Like, what does he see in me?
What am I bringing?
So that played out and we would talk about it openly because he's so wonderful and his
background is communication.
He was an actor.
So we'd have really good open communication.
And this is why I say, I don't think he would recognise it as a challenge.
or certainly it wasn't for him because he would say, you he'd say all the right things and
I would logically know it, but it hadn't settled emotionally for me.
And it wasn't until the end of the first year where I realized what we do is so different.
You know, he is brilliant and does a lot of the learning development delivery, like a lot
of the work with the clients.
But what I do and bring to the company is I do a lot of the culture stuff.
But also I spend a lot of my time doing the business development, the marketing, the
sales, the growing of the business of thinking about this, not just as two individuals who
happen to share a bank balance, but of the great, you know, that what is it?
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
So I started to finally see that I was bringing, you know, different value, but God, it
took me a year and it was such a, I can't, wouldn't say it was it was pointless worries
because it was what it was.
But it was funny the fact that we were talking about it openly and I would say, I know
that you've said this and I know that, but it's hard.
I still had that, it took me a while to shift out of, I guess, the coach mentor.
And even how I would describe him when I was introducing him has now shifted.
So I used to say, mentor and friend.
And then I realized, well, actually kind of like a friend and a mentor now, you know, or
partner and mentor.
But yeah, it took me a year.
to not only have the mindset shift around the dynamic to see ourselves as peers, but also
the mindset shift around we do different things.
And that's why he wanted to go into business with me because I bring a yeah, a different
area of value and to stop comparing ourselves directly.
Yeah, it makes sense.
And I guess with the different values that you guys bring, after the first year, you can
start seeing, okay, this is the work that I've done, let's say.
Whereas I guess from the get go, it's like, okay, I know I've got these skills, but we've
not actually executed these just yet.
So guess that can build on top of it and help that confidence point of view there.
guess shifting a little bit into the service delivery that you guys work through.
So how do you deliver your services?
What does that look like?
And how do you actually create this?
mindset shift within your clients because you know changing people is very difficult to
do.
So how do you guys do it and what's your execution plan?
Yeah, and so in terms of services, we broadly bucket the two things we do into mindset
shifts and culture shifts.
Mindset shift is learning and development training.
The type of service that many companies and people are familiar with.
There's been whole, you know, learning development departments in bigger companies.
There's often budgets for learning and development.
So people and the people we sell to, you know, essentially our clients are familiar with
learning and development and how that works.
So that's one side mindset shifts.
The other side culture shift, it's a lot newer.
Who owns culture?
You know, there's not a learning development, there's not a culture department in the same
way that there's a learning development department.
It's normally the head of people.
Maybe now there's head of culture.
They certainly don't have the same types of budgets that learning and development
departments have.
Sometimes it sits in the C-suite with the CEO.
So it's really interesting dynamic.
in terms of how we talk about what we do and I guess whether people understand it and get
it.
And the reason that we like to talk about Mindset Shift and Culture Shift is they're so
intrinsically linked that if you want to help someone, let's say become a better manager,
on the one hand, you can give them new knowledge, new skills, new behaviors, new ways to
see themselves and their team and manage differently.
And that is kind of the internal capability that happens in their brain.
But there's always still going to be the system at play, the culture that is going to make
it either easier or harder for that person with the new skills to put it into practice.
So you could train someone to be the best manager in the world.
But if the culture of the organization isn't giving them the time to have one-to-ones,
because it always says you have to prioritize clients.
If the culture is one of fear,
where people can't really make mistakes, they're not gonna be able to create an
environment where they can manage successfully.
So you kinda have to balance both of them.
The challenge I think from our business perspective is whilst people understand and know
how to look for and buy learning and development, it's harder on the culture side.
So it's harder to understand and know when it's a culture issue.
Whereas people can say, okay, well, we've seen in our ex interviews or surveys that we
need communication training.
Great, let's go out and find a communications consultant.
What does it look like when it's culture?
It's kind of a bit more abstract.
So it's harder often to have that conversation, which is why we like to do it together.
Often we'll start maybe on the mindset shift side and we'll I guess, show and surface some
of the cultural challenges.
that we're experiencing when we're working with people in their company to train them
around.
Again, it might be interesting if we also look at a few things on the culture side.
That might make it easier.
That often is how we kind of bring the two sides together.
Yeah, interesting.
I guess with that service delivery with, especially with the culture is there's that time
delay between like kind of doing that, know, that, that training, that shift, whatever.
And then them seeing that change kind of trickle throughout the company.
And so like, how do you balance that with clients?
Cause I know, but you know, back in the day I was doing a lot of web design and things
like that.
and trying to sell someone on a website can be very difficult, right?
Cause they're like, well, how's this, how's a new, you know, layout or format or design
going to really increase the business?
and you got to try and show that.
But we can obviously use data points to try and show the improvements that they're
getting.
within like culture and like mindset shifts, it feels like, you you can't really say,
okay, after six months, everyone in the company is going to be thinking this way.
So how do you navigate that?
And how do you show that to the clients as well?
Yeah, what's really interesting coming from a background of creative strategy and
measurement where when there's an advertising, you are being, especially when digital
advertising came around, you are tracking every single metric and there's no brief that
comes in where you're not being really clear on this is the outcome, these are the metrics
we're tracking, you know, what good looks like would be a bounce rate of this on the
website or this many views or this much engagement.
That's what we're hoping to get.
Learning and development and culture doesn't really have a history of measurement.
There are ways of doing it.
I'm a judge on an award called CPD Gold, which is all about demonstrating an ROI on
learning.
But there's not many companies that do it.
And there's different levels you can do.
there's thing called Kirkpatrick levels of training where there's like, okay, well,
for learning, can measure the reaction.
You could just ask people, how was that training?
That's kind of like the baseline.
Like, yes, it was good.
Then you might ask them, what did you learn?
And if they can play back what they learned, that's maybe an indication that they
listened, something's gone in.
Level above would be behavior.
Can you start to track that people's behavior has actually changed as a result of this?
And that's where most companies don't get to.
They might send a survey after learning development of like, what did you think?
How's the trainer?
And what did you learn?
But actually following it through two months, three months later on, where have you put
this into practice?
What's shifted?
And then the final one is, and can you talk, you you connect that to a business outcome.
You know, we were on a pitch and I used the communications training that the shift did to
navigate a difficult conversation with the client.
And we ended up winning that pitch.
Now obviously, it didn't all come down to the shifts training, but you can start to draw a
link.
Very few companies do that.
So I think maybe what's interesting is we often will use the language of measurement
because we would love for the companies we work with to do more measurement.
And a lot of the time they want to, but maybe that's just too hard on the organization to
actually track that.
So how do we help show a shift?
We try and build in
Measurement as much as possible.
So if we're doing a like a six session program, which might last three months We'll have
like a final one-to-one with people on that program to ask them where have you put this
into practice?
What have you seen what changes?
But yeah, it's We might with it from a culture perspective ask upfront on your employee
engagement survey What question or number do you want to see a change because let's start
tracking that?
You know, if it's about we want to see employee score related to learning development go
up or we want to see employee engagement and leadership trust go up, that might be
something we can measure.
I would love to get to business metrics of like, we want to be able to show that retention
has gone down.
Yeah, the honest answer is very, the industry doesn't really have a history of that.
But yeah, we try and do it as much as possible.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I guess you're going to just try and find ways you can get that feedback loop back to you
so you can then improve and do we need to do from it.
But it'll be interesting to see if companies start adding that as a metric in, especially
their retention rate, right?
Because they can actually track that, say, okay, everyone that's went through this
training over this period of months, actually increased retention by X amount.
And then I guess from your business point of view, it becomes a little bit easier to sell
them on it.
Be like, hey, look, well,
on average, you can increase retention by X amount, which is really cool.
And so I guess with the future of the business, where do you see things like AI technology
coming into play on how you might have to shift within your own business and the of the
services that you do as well?
Or are you gonna keep things the same and just implement it in the little bits here and
there, or are you gonna make some big changes in the next few years?
Okay.
We use it every day in small ways.
Like chat GPT is my friend.
I think it's such a great way to beat the blank page, just that, you you're starting out
and it's very useful conversationally.
So we'll use that of like, I've got some ideas.
You just kind of use it to slowly build something as you would with if you're chatting to
someone.
So we experiment with it in small ways, I guess more operationally.
When it comes to learning and development or culture,
There's a lot of things coming out which seem quite interesting.
So there's a lot of programs where you can almost have a virtual coach who will literally
coach you virtually as AI.
There are some really great ones that seem to work around communication and presentation.
So like this, might record what we're doing and it will give you a score for cadence,
rhythm, pitch, language, ums, ahs.
I think that's great.
but not as a substitute.
I think that is an amazing tool for the embedding of the learning.
Once you've learned and have got, you know, I guess the theory, that's a great way to make
sure that, you know, practice it.
Because obviously practicing is the best way to learn.
So I think there's gonna be a lot of tools that are gonna emerge that are gonna be really
useful to complement and make and kind of ensure that once we're no longer there is the
shift.
that it isn't just left for the person to kind of either use or forget.
Like learning decay is such a huge challenge in our industry.
know, things up to 70 % of what you've learned in that workshop or that talk or that
seminar, you'll have forgotten in two weeks if you don't use it.
So how do we help people use it?
Well, we try and provide as much resources as possible, cheat sheets, different things.
But I think AI tools would be great to support that.
So I'm looking forward to that.
I don't think it's going to change how we deliver really in a big way.
We've been experimenting over the last few years as everyone has and trying to keep track
of what's the impact when we do virtual sessions versus in-person sessions.
I think there's trade-offs in both instances.
Personally, I think in-person for learning is so much more impactful, especially if
they're taken to a different space.
There's a lot of science around...
Psychogeography so the impact of being in a different space will have on your brain,
especially when it comes to learning Retention and the idea that if you're igniting the
different senses because they're in somewhere new That's gonna have a big impact.
So we love it really Exciting in person different training, but it's not always possible
You know if you've got a distributed team and working with one company someone's in Canada
someone's in India Obviously virtual there is incredible
because they maybe wouldn't have got the opportunity to learn at all.
And there's obviously great tools at breakout rooms.
So yeah, I think we're open to seeing how we can use the AI tools to support what we do.
I personally don't think a tool is, at least not for a long while, is gonna replace the
evolutionary psychology we've developed over thousands and thousands of years of when you
have people, humans together.
something magic happens.
Yeah, I completely agree.
think the core service of what you do, like that's not gonna change, but maybe some of
those additional things mixed into it could obviously be improved.
Like we were talking about tracking, right?
Is, well, if the AI is tracking, as you said, the communication, for example, they've just
gone through a communication workshop, they can kind of see the different data points of
how it's been improving and what that looks like as well.
So yeah, I completely agree.
And I think it's the same in a lot of kind of service-based businesses where you do
require that human to human, you know,
touched, let's say, where when you're speaking to someone, you know, the conversation goes
into all different areas, different ways, shapes and forms, which I don't think you get
with talking to, for example, AI, right, where you don't actually connect on that level.
But it's gonna be interesting to see how that, I guess, shifts over time as well, and how
maybe the next generation can connect more to AI and all these different things.
But yeah, no, I agree with you on that one.
Yeah, something just you were saying what made me think around like the human to human.
I every business is a people business, at least at the moment.
And every business what I'm learning is a sales business.
If you're not good at sales, you don't have a business.
And sales is people to people.
So yeah, I think every business is a people business.
Obviously, I would think that because I'm a culture and people specialist.
But I kind of think it is true maybe even outside of my bias.
Yeah, no, I agree.
mean, sales and marketing is in some regards is more important than product, right?
Because if you can sell and market something, then you have a business where you can have
a great product, but if you can't sell it, then there's no business anyway.
And as you said, sales and marketing is all about understanding people, talking to people,
building relationships.
And so you're completely right.
They are all people businesses.
But again, it's going to be so interesting to see with like AI and technology now is
you will there be like a billion dollar company, which is literally just one person and
one AI, right?
Like, it's gonna be interesting to see how that's going to be built up over time as well.
And how, you know, how the teams might shrink or how the teams might actually have to
change in how they're kind of using them as resources within the business.
Because like we saw with, you know, with technology back in 2000s, right, where a lot of
jobs kind of left, but then software engineering roles and tech roles start to come in.
And now we're seeing maybe a decline in some tech roles, right?
A lot of tech companies are kind of losing their employees, but then they're hiring
heavily within AI, machine learning sectors as well.
So it's kind of moving some job opportunities away and adding more as well.
So again, it'll be interesting to see how that shift continues to happen over time and how
companies will have to shift their teams around.
Yeah, and I can't, I mean, I can't also work out how much of this the AI is a bubble.
You you saw with DeepSeek disrupting Nvidia's dominance in the market because of how
inflated everything was in the US around tech.
So it's no doubt that the AI is going to have a huge, huge impact.
I do think the tech companies are over inflating how much it will have because it's very
profitable for them to do that.
Yeah.
yeah, there's no doubt we'll have a huge impact.
I think for most people, it's going to be a useful tool.
There will be some jobs that are going to be radically enhanced by it.
One of the challenges that I'm seeing of AI when it comes to people and culture is a lot
of the entry-level tasks that a new person would do when they enter the workforce that
helps them understand
the context of the business, how things work together, who's this person, what's that
department, listening and taking notes, having to then think about those notes and
understand what were the themes that emerged from that?
Oh, that's interesting.
It seemed to be that this meeting had like these five themes.
That's quite interesting.
All of that is kind of gonna be done by an AI.
So I don't really know, and not only that, but...
A lot of companies are now mostly hybrid or virtual.
So then there's not only going to be the same entry level tasks that would have helped
someone understand how business works and what their role is, but they're not even in
person.
So they can't overhear, you know, how that person picked up the phone and chatted with the
client and they would understand, that's really interesting.
They use that language when they're chatting with that client.
And maybe now I'll ask that person, do you mind if you just explain to me?
I overheard you have a conversation with the client.
You said this, this and this.
Can you help me understand that?
So I think there's gonna be a huge, there's potential for a huge gap in a chasm, we're
gonna go big there, a chasm of knowledge, skill and behavior of people entering the
workforce where AI is taking a lot of what we would have seen as more trivial admin jobs
that yeah, you you don't wanna be lumped with them the whole time.
It's great that now more junior people aren't just gonna be doing
trivial tasks, but to a certain extent, there was utility in some of them.
And not only that, if we're virtual, it's just really hard to get a sense of the system
rather than just seeing ourselves as single nodes.
So I think that's a huge challenge that many companies are gonna have to figure out.
I think it's possible.
They just need to be really intentional by designing a good learning onboarding program
for junior people.
But if they're not intentional, I think they're not going to realize
quite how much is gonna get missed in that kind of learning.
Yeah, it's so interesting you raised that point because a couple weeks ago I was speaking
to someone else on the podcast and we're talking about communication and how, you know,
now you have AIs that can sit in your inbox and, you can help draft emails and it speeds
up the process a lot.
But then she raised a good point saying, even that micro action of having to write an
email, right?
That skill of communication, cause those are all skills as well.
That will start to get lost even more and more and more.
And it's kind of what you said, right?
It's where all these little mundane things actually do add up to some value.
Yes, it might take more time and it's not the most efficient way, but ultimately it's
going to give them the foundation they need to then build off and then do what they're to
do in the company as well.
So I think you're right.
I think that's going to be an interesting challenge for companies to overcome.
in the next five years for sure.
And so yeah, it'll be interesting to keep our eye that.
And so one of the final questions we always ask guests on this show is if you can go back
to your 18 year old self and you can only take three things with you, whether it's some
mindset, philosophy, some technical knowledge, whatever it could be anything, what would
those three things be and why would it be those things?
I'd take my therapist.
I'd take my therapist.
Wonderful person that is really helping me understand my own belief systems, the
interconnectedness of them, and where some of them have been quite unhelpful to me.
Because I, you when I was 18, I fell into philosophy, I fell into stoicism, into, you
know, which I still love.
I fell into a lot of things that helped me create a, I guess, a system of operating in the
world, which was very useful and helpful.
But I think there was a lot of bad things I picked up along the way.
So I would take a therapist with me, if I'm 18, that'd be great, to help me kind of
navigate and understand my changing brain and the world around me.
What else would I
If I'm 18, I would take probably, I do still love the Stoics and the philosophy.
So something to do with that, but at least I'd have a therapist to help make sure I don't
just fall down the, the broicism pit with it.
And I, what I think I didn't manage to balance well was, I was my drive, my ambition and
my love of learning.
I think I prioritized, as philosophy in the West often does, the brain.
And it took me a long time to understand that the body was important.
And I think I've had a wonderful journey, but it would have been helpful to me if it
didn't take me so long to stop preferencing the brain and cognition over everything else.
So maybe along with my therapist, I would take a...
a dance instructor or a yoga instructor to help get me out of my head and into my brain.
So what have we got?
We've got a therapist.
Let's take a big book of philosophy.
Maybe Marcus Aurelius or maybe like, I don't know, some big book philosophy and then a
yoga instructor to just help me like chill out.
Yeah, I don't think we've had someone say that before on this show.
So that's amazing.
And it makes so much sense as well.
So that's awesome.
So where can people find you if they want to learn more about your services, about you as
well, and maybe just connect with you?
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn Matthew Cook as the shift, the shift.com company.
More so on TikTok, I think at Matthew Cook and recently in Metro talking about why
everyone needs to do a relationship review.
You can find that on my LinkedIn as well.
Amazing.
Thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Thank you so much, this was so much fun.