>>Eddie Obeng: Reset, rethink, educating the
next generation. But what if the next generation
happens to be us?
The world's changed. everyone says that. It
keeps changing, it's been changing for ages,
but look, organizations, they can't learn.
Institutions can't learn. Governments can't
learn. The only thing which can learn are
you, people. And they're all grownups. The
people making the decisions and deciding what
we should do with the world, we're all grownups.
We hear inspiring stories from the youngsters,
but what about us? How are we going to learn?
What do we need to learn? And that's what
I want to try to take you on a journey to
try to discover.
We've got to understand, I think, how to make
adults, grownups like us, want to learn, become
curious about learning. And then we've got
to think about, because most of you, I know,
are in organizations, institutions, businesses.
Am I right? We say how do we use this in our
organizations to transform our organizations?
How do we make it something better rather
than just continuing with what we've always
done?
And the third thing, as Jon said, is I'm going
to try to mix-in a little bit of what I have
been trying to do. So that's the plan.
That was my plan. I made it before I met you.
So now, please, for me, I want you to imagine
the next time, and this is brilliant, you
learn stuff about -- I don't know what it
is, but it's fantastic it makes the best nine
hours of the last of Zeitgeist. The best nine
hours of Zeitgeist. What is it you want to
learn? What are your biggest hopes?
And I want (indiscernible) the next nine minutes
is really terrible. It's not just bad, it's
awful. Worst nine minutes of Zeitgeist. What
went wrong? Please think a bit, talk to two
or three people. You have 15 seconds. The
world is moving fast. I'll collect two or
three, and then I'll make the presentation
out of your thoughts.
Shall we go? Go. Come on, talk! Talk!
Good grief. Speed up for goodness sake. Talk
to each other. Engage.
Okay. Time's up. Let's go. What hopes? What
hopes do you got? What do you want to do?
What do you want to do? Go! Go! Just shout.
We haven't got time.
>>> Inspired.
>>Eddie Obeng: Inspired. Anything else?
>>> Reset.
>>Eddie Obeng: You want to reset your brains.
I will do my best to reset your brains.
Fantastic.
One more, one more.
That was stereo. Go.
>>> Solve Siri.
>>Eddie Obeng: Solve Siri.
And yours was?
>>> (Off microphone)
>>Eddie Obeng: Okay. I think that's the long
version. I'm doing that over lunch.
[ Laughter ]
>>Eddie Obeng: Great. Anything you don't want
me to do? Go, go, go. We're running out of
time.
>>> Embarrass people.
>>Eddie Obeng: Embarrass people. Anyone in
particular? I should stop now, shouldn't I?
Embarrass. Great. Let's go for that, then.
I guess learning. Adult learning. Let me try
something on you. Very, very quickly, don't
shout out the answer. Just give me the next
in this sequence; okay? Don't shout out the
answer. We're going to do it together so no
one is embarrassed. Okay. Next one is -- Shh.
Don't say it yet. You've got it in your head?
Are you ready? We'll shout out the answers
together.
Okay. So let's do it together. 1, 3, 9.
>>> 27.
>>Eddie Obeng: And? 27 and? Fantastic. It's
a bit difficult and challenging.
2, 4, 16.
Okay. It's not too bad. How about A, E, F.
A, E, F, oh, come on. You see what happened
is the first one I put you up, oh, I can do
that, it's easy. Then I put the second one
up and you go it's all about sums. I know
that, I have to multiply stuff up. Then I
put a third one up and you're, oh, my goodness,
what's that? So you say to yourself A is probably
1, E is 5, there's got t be a 4. You start
doing sums. These are just capital letters
with straight lines. There's no connection
between them. But see the first two formatted
your brains, and that's the problem with you
as adults and with me as an adult. We're all
formatted. We take the learning and then we
extend it.
Now, this might not be dangerous except for
the world which we actually live in. I don't
know whether you've noticed or not, but if
I take for example now over here, I stick
30 years in the middle, and put over here
the past; can you imagine that? I will do
it in black. It might be easier. So this is
now. This is the past. Are you happy with
that? And this is 30 years. And on this axis,
all the stuff people have been talking about.
The pace of change, the complexity of using
technology. That's what's on this axis.
Now which is higher? Now or the past? Come
on! Come on! Math. Fantastic. How do those
two points join together? Come on. Don't be
embarrassed. Let's go.
Straight line? No. Technology, more people
on the planet. Great. (Indiscernible) interesting
point. How fast, how fast are we learning
and changing over the period? I know many
of you do things like budget and planning
and forecasting, which means once upon a time
that must have been useful. Remember there
was once upon a time you could look one year
into the future and you could see what was
coming. So your ability to learn was much
higher than the pace of the change of the
world around you. But what's happened to our
ability to learn and change over the same
30-year period?
I'm going to move the pen horizontally. If
you want it to go up, shout "up." If you want
it to go down, shout "down," and we'll get
a shared view and I can publish the results.
Are you ready? Okay. Let's go. Action.
Okay. So we have a situation where the lines
cross over, and when I'm talking with audiences
with a sense of humor, normally I describe
this crossover point here as midnight, the
points on the two lines, because I talk about
15 years, what happened while you were asleep
you didn't notice. But what's really, really
important about this is these two environments
work to different rules.
You see, if you can learn how fast the world
is changing, knowledge is important. It's
useful to you. It lasts a long time. If you
have a question, you go why are you questioning
it? It's (indiscernible) so relevant. The
world is changing faster. Not only is it complex
and ambiguous and confusing, but everything
you know is probably already obsolete. I don't
mean to make trouble but it's my job.
So if you want to know a little bit more about
this then what we could do is we could probably
experiment a little bit. Things you can look
up later. That's why we have Google. Isn't
it just marvelous?
So in a world where you extrapolate into a
Colorado which you don't understand, what's
the impact? Well, let me try and walk you
through it.
I meet people, strange people. You probably
know some of these people. I call them time
travelers. What they're job is they wake up
in the morning in a house with a perfectly
good connection to the Internet, and what
do they do? They get dressed, get into a car,
get into a train, jump on a bicycle. They
travel for 36.2 minutes, if you are in the
U.K., in order to go to an office.
In this office they have a computer which
is locked down in the 20th century. You can't
download to YouTube. You can't to did anything.
There's no space to store your emails. So
you can imagine the reason they traveled all
the way to these offices is so they can do
something other than use a computer because
there's a perfectly good one at home. 21st,
20th century. You think they would be working
together, white boarding, sitting with your
colleagues, drinking coffee. No! They send
each other emails. Bizarre! And when they
send the emails, no one reads them. And then
what's even funnier about it, they then discover
the people they want to talk to, who they'd
like to get to meetings with are in different
offices. They've traveled to different offices.
So they have this thing called audio conference.
My definition of audio conference is one person
talking while 12 people continue to do their
emails. So eventually they say -- let's say
the day ends. They have to travel back to
the 21st century. They are time travelers.
These are bizarre people. And in the U.K.
they even do other things like they're building
more railway lines so you can do more time
travel. And what's bizarre is because they're
so bored on the trains, they have to take
up (indiscernible) and mobile phones (indiscernible)
content.
Do you understand how mad the world is around
us?
We've built a multi-million pound industry
on the basis that we haven't moved to the
21st century.
Look, what I'm trying to explain to you is
not only is that crazy, your own organizations
are probably also crazy. Most of you, even
the ones who think you're really cool, probably
still work in hierarchies. Do you do this
funny thing with hierarchies? Where you have
these ideas; again, a little old-world idea.
We could learn how fast the world is changing.
We put the most important person in charge.
They make the decisions for everyone else.
We build one of these things. Have you seen
one of these things before? Okay. And then
we build it, and it's huge. And young people
come in and where do we stick them? We stick
them at the bottom. We tell them a specific
lie. The lie is one day you, too, will be
on the top. You with me? It's a lie because
they're never going to get (indiscernible)
because you guys are there and you're not
going anywhere. But they never notice because
what happens is next year younger people come
in, because we're doing more of the same.
We're doing growth. More of the same is the
safest way of growing our businesses. So you
have younger people coming in and you know
how when you're on a train and the train next
to you moves, you think you're moving forward?
So these young people, next year younger people
come below them. They've suddenly got their
own department. They go home and celebrate.
They imagine they've gone up. They stayed
in the same place. The organization grows
below them.
Now what this does is it means you're locking
people into a particular environment.
I'm going to tell you a little story. I worked
with one of my clients in the construction
industry, and one of the things they discovered
is about 10% of the cost of the construction
project is just inspections. Can you imagine
that? Inspecting stuff.
So one of the youngsters about here, we'll
call him Bob, he came with the idea that he'll
take his iPad on-site, do the inspections,
photograph it, update it. Solved.
No. Unfortunately, bumps into somebody who
discovers that's all they're supposed to do.
Let's call this guy Bill.
He's in the IT department. He complains.
He doesn't complain to Bob. No. He complains
to who? Bob's boss? No. To his boss.
How crazy? Why? Because in this organization,
they do this thing, they call it reporting
lines. I don't know whether you've come across
this. 400-year-old idea from naval history
when the ships used to have sails. You remember
that? (indiscernible) move the sails so the
ropes don't get tangled. Issues an order.
It's noisy at sea. Nobody can hear.
(indiscernible) "first officer here. Pass
it on." (indiscernible) goes all the way down
the chain. The guy who does the work he has
to report back so they can move the next rope.
(indiscernible) "hoist the main sail." That's
it. They didn't have mobile phones. They couldn't
communicate. That's why they did that reporting
stuff. Anyway, these guys do it. It goes up
and up and up. Each time, they change the
story. By the time it comes to you, it's all
about bring your own device and stuff like
that. So you say "No way, no way."
So two lightning bolts come down. One drops
Bills. One drops Bob.
Do you understand what this does? It means
that Bill is never going to show anything,
never going to learn anything and Bob will
never try anything ever, but (indiscernible)
to get revenge on Bob.
So what happens here is you are the ones who
drive the learning. You command learning and
it happens.
So it used to be in business schools that
you would incarcerate people for a minimum
of three weeks. We'd send them off. We'd choose
them individually. We'd send them off into
different parts of the business schools. We'd
lock them up. Nowadays we just do it at corporate
universities and the centers are just more
linear, so they're shorter. Basically 3 to
5 days.
So having done that to people, we then expect
them to come back and learn.
No. In the new world we're living in, you
can't do that. You have to learn and apply
at the same time. The learning isn't about
the content, not what's in the professor's
head. The learning is about what we create
together. That's why I wanted you to talk
to each other. If I've done a good story -- job
with a good job with this particular story,
you will have gone through a number of things.
The first is confirmation. I had to convince
you what I was going to say was useful. By
doing that, the only way I did it was to make
sure that you did something which you thought
was right and was wrong. The AEF8.
Then I had to make you curious by making you
laugh at your own behavior, working on -- you
think "Why do we use reporting lines?" I'm
making you curious.
And then I gave you a framework. Think about
your hopes and fears. Therefore, we could
align large numbers of people to collaborate
to work in the same direction. Are you with
me?
And then finally, I have to make absolutely
certain that you actually followed through
the story and that's why I was making jokes.
I have to give you more emotion, so this confirmation
doesn't upset you.
So that's what I spend my life doing it, but
I do it virtually. I spend my time, I built
a platform called Qube, qube.cc, if you're
interested, but it allows us to go into an
organization with all the stakeholders, so
Bill, Bob, the software programmer, the client
who's going to use it. You bring them all
together with frameworks so they can learn
new behaviors and transform their businesses.
You bring the learning into the organization.
And what happened to me is, having set off
to try and do this -- it's taken about 20
years to build a platform which is good enough
for my clients, but then we started using
it on our own business and I discovered something
really amazing.
My own business, I thought pretty cool, was
actually pretty old world because we were
still having meetings and doing some of those
behaviors. And by transforming how we learned,
I then managed to do that.
So I only have one request. Later this year,
I'm hoping to do -- to start something Hub
Cue, which will be a start-up hub which I'll
put on Qube for people who are starting business.
I'm basically looking for mentors. So if you
get an email from me, it's because I'm looking
for people -- grandmothers, effectively -- to
come and help people who are trying to start
businesses.
I've had a blast. I hope you found that interesting
and useful.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
