YouSaid · the spoken record

Christian Busch

lines on the record: 43
first: 2022-01-24
most recent: 2022-01-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think, yes, and probably on both levels, to be honest, I think lucky in terms of I've had a lot of blind luck in my life. I was born in a country that gave me a lot of the things that made my starting position be structurally very good. And I'm very grateful for that. And I think that is part of my drive to say how do we create that for as many people as possible. And then also in terms of the serendipity that I try to cultivate myself, but most importantly also, I think what I've always found fascinating is how do you create the environments around you that make others have more of this? Because I think that's where it gets really exciting, that you can have other people have more luck. And I found that fascinating. And, you know, I've always loved”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is to really, you know, a lot of times people talk about innovation and change, but nobody really wants that, right? Nobody really wants to change too much. Most of us get anxious when there's things that are changing too fast. And so to me, it's really a lot about baby steps. It's a lot about saying, okay, instead of having to restructure the whole company and make everyone scared about it, how do we do small things? Like in the weekly team meeting, ask people, what surprised you last week? Oh, it surprised you that, you know, farmers used the washing machine for their potatoes. Great, that could be our new product. By doing this, what we're doing is we're legitimizing the unexpected. And instead of just talking about values like playfulness and innovation, but not really practicing them, that's a very concrete way to practice that and to actually say, we value that you bring these things up. And you know what? Your paycheck will reflect that you came up with that.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To make people believe in the bigger idea of where they're going together. I think Mastercard, for example, was really interesting in that respect where the CEO said at some point, if I just have a financial payments company here or a financial transaction company, people will not really rally around this for a long time. But if we actually say we can leverage this company to bring 500 million people into the financial sector, those people in poverty who didn't have access to it, now we have a purpose that we can rally around. We can say we're the company that brings 500 million people into the financial sector. And by doing this, you create more of a culture of wow, we're actually working on something impactful together. It's worth it to be here. And I think that's the kind of first pillar around the value-driven leadership and really kind of instilling and integrating that purpose. I think that's the whole conversation probably in itself how we can integrate that into everything from performance measures to incentives and so on. But the second part, and I think the part that really takes it to a team level then.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is interesting because there's, I guess, a lot of layers to your question, but the two things that I would probably start with and that I've seen work in different contexts is the first one, really thinking about what is it that truly brings people together that they can rally around. Is there something here that we believe in together that we can do together? I mean, I don't know who of you watched the show Suits, this TV show, but when you have Harvey Spector and Louis Litt, those two high-powered lawyers, Most of the time they're fighting with each other, right? Most of the time they're stabbing each other into their backs and they, you know, they all have the ego thing going on and whatever. But then whenever it is about their protege mic, whenever it is about that kind of common purpose of we have to help that guy, then actually they rally together and they make it happen. And so I think it's kind of this like, how do you create those excuses for people to rally around something being that the bigger purpose of where the company is going? And I think that's the CEO.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can develop relationships with people in different fields and set those hooks, the more likely it is that we actually find something that's truly meaningful to us.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can recommend you. I can put you forward. And so she landed that position then in that incubator. The long story short here really is if we kind of in a way cast a couple of hooks with friends of ours and others who can keep their eyes open but also maybe say, hey, I think, have you ever considered that your skill set might work in a completely different area? I think that can help us a lot. So I think the first one is the hooks. The second one is really serendipity mines and serendipity bombs, which is about saying, how do we just put some things out there by reaching out maybe to a couple of people we admire and say, hey, can I support you for a couple of hours per week and just kind of get into helping you a bit, volunteering, whatever it is? And by doing this, we build those relationships that then is essentially potentially serendipitously lead to the next step. So I guess the big long story short here is that I think we all know that most positions are not necessarily written out, but they emerge because someone likes one. And so I think the more”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we're socialized and so on, but there might be something much more exciting there. And so I'm a big fan of really saying okay, how do I, in a way, cast a couple of folks there, right? So it could be like Michelle Kantos, for example, a friend of mine, what she did was she was about to rethink what she wanted to do. She used to work in a foundation and she was like, hey, look, I would love to do other things and find a new way. And so she sent an email to just a couple of friends, 20 friends or something, and said, hey, look, if you have any ideas of what could be interesting for me at this point, please let me know. And so what happened was a friend went back to her and said, oh my God, like I just interviewed with a tech accelerator and they are looking for someone who has an impact angle, like someone like you. And she didn't even think about tech incubators at that point or tech accelerators because that's the world she doesn't know anything about. But the friends saw it for her because the friend is from that world. And so the friend said, look, I just went through the whole interview process.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a big fan of really rubber stamping forward, so instead of saying, oh, I'm working in a bank and I'm really, I don't find any more meaning here, and I realized life kind of could be over anytime soon. It's almost like it was a collective near-experience for everyone, right? And so I think a lot of people try to find meaning now, maybe also more in their work and realize, oh, wow, maybe I have to change jobs for actually finding that meaning. And what I found interesting when looking at people who have done that successfully, they thought about it more like a portfolio, right? Where they say, okay, I'm in an XYZ job now that I don't find fulfilling. But instead of just quitting this, throwing it all away and then kind of trying to find something, they essentially say, okay, how can I put myself into environments where I make it likely that I bump into people who can actually give me an idea of what's out there? Because a lot of times we might not even know what that might be, right? A lot of times we only know the way of what is there because that's how we grew up.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had just caught COVID. I was in a very tough situation myself. But then somehow it was kind of saying, okay, is there something in that moment? Is there some kind of meaning in that moment?”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me, tell me. Just like, no, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. And she's like, no, no, no, I really want to know. I really want to know. And so at some point, she's like, all right, all right, I'll read them to you so that I can self-censor. So I'll read it to you. So she read the whole list. And the other person was like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. All the things he was looking for. And, you know, it kind of opened a little bit the mind to, oh, actually, this could be more than just a friendship. And, you know, a couple of touches and butterflies throughout the evening and so on. Now one and a half years later, Lexi is my wife. We just had a baby girl, Lola, who is now three months old. We just talked about the under our eyes. We have the, how do you call it, the blue lines because of the lack of sleep, which comes from the beautiful baby girl. But so essentially the long story short really being that she came out of an extremely tough period.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By Kube Ross that says that beautiful people, a lot of times come out of pain and distress and so on. And she deeply resonated with this. And so she sent that person a private message and said, oh my God, this deeply resonated with me. So he reminded her, hey, why don't you join us for this gathering? I think it could be really fun to catch up. Now she went to the gathering, met someone there, like someone else who she really liked. They went on a date and then somehow her friend and her kind of, you know, after two weeks like said, okay, let's go for dinner and catch up. Now during that dinner, you know, she brought up that in the morning she went for that long walk and she kind of had written down the things she looks for in a relationship now that she learned the hard way that you can fall in love but not stay in love if you don't have the qualities in a relationship that you're looking for. So she made that list of qualities of the relationship, not of the person but the relationship. And so the guy was like, hey, look, well, like tell me.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I could never do justice to the beauty of that person and her story. But, you know, so I've known Lexi for 13 years, but we hadn't really connected for a long time. And we had serendipities connected 13 years ago over dinner. But so, you know, now the pandemic happened and she went through a really tough period right when the pandemic started and she had just gone through a really rough divorce. And she had kind of a lot of things at work that were tough and so on. And so she wasn't this kind of period where despair. She got that email from a friend that said, hey, do you want to join for a socially distanced gathering and just kind of reconnect a little with a couple of other people? It was an email that person sent to 10, 15 people. And she first kind of was like, ah, whatever. I don't want to go out. I'll just stay here. Then a few days later, she saw an Instagram pop up where there was this quote.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Though, is that the second part can also be, you know, extraversion can certainly help, right? If you're willing to connect with people that makes it more likely that there's potential opportunities. But you know closet introverts like myself, we actually find a lot of our serendipity in calm and quiet spaces, right? We find that in watching a movie and thinking, oh my God, that could be a podcast or taking another way to work in the morning and open our eyes to the bookstore and we think, oh my God, that title of the book is amazing. Couldn't that be a new podcast? And oh, unexpectedly so. I have a new podcast. So the point is that, you know, serendipity is everywhere, but we tend to miss it all the time because we don't expect it to be there.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The lucky person walks down the street, sees the five pound note, picks it up, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, talks with the businessman, they exchange business cards, potential opportunity coming out, we don't know that part, but they definitely connect. Now, the unlucky person walks down the street, steps over the five-pound note, so doesn't see it, goes inside the shop, orders the coffee, sits next to the businessman, ignores the businessman, and that's it. Now at the end of the day, they ask both people, how was your day today? And so, you know, the lucky person says, well, it was amazing. I found money in the street. I made new friends and, you know, opportunity, we don't know that part. Now, the unlucky person just says, well, nothing really happened. And, you know, we can put people into the same situations. You see that with couples as well, right? And one will say, oh my God, that was amazing and so much luck here. And the other one not at all. And I think what's interesting about this example.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always found extremely interesting because I think it's in a nice way, in a beautiful way, shows us how luck can play out, but also it's just kind of like it's a fun experiment which plays out, but you can replicate in different contexts. So what he did in that experiment was he took people who identify as very lucky, so people who say, good things tend to happen to me, and people who identify as unlucky, right? So bad things tend to happen to me and so on. I'm always an accident. And we all know people, I guess, on both sides of the continuum. And so he picks one of each and he says, walk down the street, go into a coffee shop, sit down, and then we'll have our conversation. Now, what he doesn't tell them is that there's hidden cameras along the street and inside the coffee shop. There's a five-pound note, so money in front of the coffee shop. And inside the coffee shop, the chair that's empty is next to this extremely successful businessman who can make big ideas happen. Now, the...”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were two researchers at the same time who gave rabbits injections and the rabbit's ears flopped. And that was unexpected, right? Both thought, oh, this is unexpected, right? So we have this unexpected moment. But only one of them followed up on this surprising thing and said, you know what, maybe there's something there. And he realized, oh, actually, that's about blood flow and so on and so on. And that led to kind of game-changing arthritis medication and so on. And that then kind of turned out to be an amazing serendipitous thing that happened. But now by seeing the counterfactual, so what could have happened if you hadn't acted on it, we can compare both had the same unexpected moment, but one acted the other. And then the third way, which I think is the most fun one, is actually experiments, right? Putting people into exactly the same environment and then just seeing what happens with them. And so there's one experiment by Richard Weisman in the UK that I've”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's three ways that I found useful. One is qualitative studies, which is kind of in a way saying almost like being an ethnographer and really just observing over time what is happening and what happens over time. A lot of our research.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you take that into context of a bank where usually the approach is cost cutting, you know, that's the easy way out to say, yay, like we just fire people and cut costs. Well, okay, that's the easy way out. But that approach would say, okay, if you have someone who is a cashier and now you don't need them anymore because you have an ATM machine and the bank is not open anyways, instead of just letting them go, you would say, okay, maybe that person could be a financial trainer. And maybe the office space could be the video studio for producing financial training education programs. You name it. The point is by reframing the situation, we can partly create that luck, especially in resource constraint settings.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Education methodology, things like 10 steps how you can use the local computer in the local university to consult on social media and to tell your stories. Something like this. It's a very low cost. And then they go into other local communities and they do the same. And they say, what's already here and how can we make the best out of this? And I find that fascinating because, you know, when they go into a community, instead of saying, oh my God, we will need so much money and resources to build XYZ at school, no. They're going in and they're saying, oh, there's an old garage. Fantastic. That could be a training center. There's a former drug dealer fantastic. That person will have a lot of creativity, a lot of social capital. And if we can turn them into a teacher, you can turn a community around. And that approach I found fascinating, that approach of not thinking about how do I get resources in, but thinking about how do I make the best out of what is happening here. And we can transfer this, right? They've been working a lot now with big companies.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Such a coincidence, my brother's friend went through a similar thing you just went through. I want to put you in touch with someone who can give you a job. The point is that in a room of 500 people, it's extremely likely that someone can help you out if you frame it in a smart way. So you're leveraging the social capital of the speaker in that way. And there's a lot of examples around this how we can do that online as well. But the point here is it's about putting yourself on the map in a very non-intrusive way that helps cast some hooks. A second way, a lot of my work is in sub-Saharan Africa and a lot of my work has been with an organization called Reconstructed Living Labs. And so they are, you know, they come out of an extremely rough context in Bridgetown, which is a crime-ridden high poverty context. And they essentially said, okay, we don't have anything here. But how do we make the best out of what is here? And so they came up with a low cost.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You jump up energetically, not too much, but you jump up energetically and you're like, hey, I have a question. You do it like in a really in a way that you can't ignore you in a good way, right? And so because people at the beginning are always shy, right? So if you're quick, then a lot of times that's your opportunity. And so you go up. And then what you're doing, the way you frame the question is you always make it about the speaker. You always say thank you so very much, Mr. Speaker, right? It's all about the person. And then you build in your hook. You say as someone who recently transitioned from X, Y, Z, and then whatever you feel comfortable sharing. It could be something like who came out of a tough environment and now wants to find something here and here, whatever it is, I wanted to ask you for advice on this and this. So again, you make it about the speaker and you ask a question, but that middle sentence is where you set your hook. And what always happens when you have a room of 500 people, after the session, there will always be four or five, six people who come to you and say, my God.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way of when you come from an extreme impoverished context, you have to fight for a lot of things that others don't have to fight for. And so then the question is, how do I borrow the social capital of others? So for example, one thing that I'm a big fan of, I've worked, for example, with people who just came out of prison. And people who just came out of prison, as you can imagine, they have a tough CV. It's a tough CV to go to someone with and say, this is a small lack here in the CV and I was in prison. And so what we talked about is how do you leverage the social capital of people that are around that you might not think you have access to, but actually you do? So if there's a public lecture at the LSE or the RSA or wherever it is, and let's say the CEO of XYZ company is speaking, you will go there in this room of 500 people and you will be the first question asking the first person asking the first question. Whenever they say, now we open up for questions.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's a great point, and I think it really comes from the premise also to say there's only so much you can do with mindset and it has to go hand in hand with structural change. Everything we talk about has to go hand in hand with thinking about how do you actually help people get out of poverty and so on, also from a government perspective and so on. So it's very complementary with approaches. And we actually do a lot of work around this as well on a more kind of ecosystem level. But on the level of individuals, what I found fascinating to see is two things. One is when you think about it, as someone who comes out of a poverty context, you usually have very little social capital, right? You don't have a lot of people. You know, if you didn't go to Oxbridge where you're kind of like have a direct kind of weigh in to particular areas, others not, right? I think in any context you have to fight sometimes in a lot of times. So I don't think privilege is always just handed. But I think there is a certain”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This intense search for meaning, and I ask myself, you know, what is life all about? And I started reading this amazing book, highly recommended Men's Search for Meaning by Victor Frunkel. And that book is all about how do we find meaning in the toughest of circumstances. And how do we find meaning in life? What is that all about? And what I realized is what gives me meaning is connecting ideas, connecting people and that spark that comes from doing that. And so it took me on a journey as entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, and community builder. And then later academia. And what I found fascinating is that on that journey of both kind of creating communities and creating...”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was a very Serenibus journey indeed, actually. So I used to grew up in Heidelberg and it's a very cozy city, but I was kicked out of school, had to repeat a year, transferred this slightly reckless lifestyle into my driving style, probably helped the inofficial world record of how many dustbins and trash cans you can knock over on your way to school when you're driving. And then one day I wasn't so lucky anymore. I questioned the four-part cars and all cars were completely destroyed, including my own. And I won't forget the policeman who came to the scene and he was like, oh my God, he's still alive. And you know that idea that I was supposed to be dead that stuck with me. And I asked myself all these weird questions if I would have died, who would have come to my funeral, who would have actually cared? Was it all worth it? And at that point, I only had depressing answers, you know. And so it took me on.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You forget about it pretty quickly, but that kind of what could have been that really stays with you. And so to me, it was a lot about reframing and saying, and we see that in our research as well, like, how do you, in a way, reframe situations away from what's the worst thing that can happen here in terms of risk to what's the worst thing that can happen here in terms of the potentiality that could have been but isn't.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question. I fought myself with that. I think I have this big inner imposture that's always been there in the back. And I used to have a big fear of rejection. And what I found fascinating is, you know, fear of rejection in any kind of area, right? Imagine at a conference when there's this big speaker type person and you could now speak to them, but you don't because you feel, oh, they might say, oh, I'm sorry, I don't have time or something, or the coffee shop situation where you feel, oh my God, this could be it. But then you don't talk with that person. And one of the things that I found really helpful is to think about what's the worst thing that can happen here. And I always assume the worst thing that can happen is the rejection, right? The thing of that sting, that pain that comes from immediate rejection. But then it is, no, that's not the worst thing. The worst thing is this nagging feeling when you walk outside and you think about what could have happened and that stays the whole day, right? Because this thing is usually quick.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Strategies create more of these meaningful accidents that then, when we look back, say, oh my God, I found the love of my life because I actually talked with her in the coffee shop versus not talking with her. There's always this active element to it when you look at serendipity that when you trace it back decision moments that you took or you didn't take. And I think that's the depressing thing. When we think about how often we don't create that serendipity, I mean, we all know those moments, right? We might have said in a meeting where we had this unexpectedly amazing idea, but we didn't raise it because we didn't feel ready or worthy or in a coffee shop where we felt, oh my God, this person, like this could be it. And then we walk outside and we think, ah, if I would have talked with that person, what would that been? And so it's those kind of moments where the unexpected happens, but it depends on what we do with it, if it makes it lucky or not.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you do the dreaded question that everyone gets at a conference or wherever you meet? He wouldn't just say, I'm a technology entrepreneur. He would say I'm a technology entrepreneur. Recently started reading into the philosophy of science, but what I'm really excited about is playing the piano. And so what he's doing here is he's giving you three potential hooks where you could be like, oh my God, such a coincidence. My sister is teaching at LSE. You should come by and give a guest lecture. Oh my God, such a coincidence. My brother is hosting piano Martinez. You should stop by. The point here is that what we can do is we can create serendipity triggers, potential serendipity triggers that make it more likely that some sort of serendipity happens. And that really comes back to your initial question, can we create luck? The point here is that there's always this randomness that we cannot control, right? I can't control and I can't always know what that could be. But what I can do is I can either imbue meaning once it happens, or I can do via these things like hook.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you think back to the incidences in your life where you might have been lucky, there's probably two types of luck, right? The one luck is the blind luck, right? The luck where we didn't do anything about it. You can be lucky being born into a loving family, right? As much as I know, there's no way to really influence that too much. And so that's the blind luck. That's kind of passive. Like it just happens to us. But serendipity is smart luck. It's the luck that we create ourselves. And so to give you one example, I'm a big fan of the hook strategy. And the hook strategy is all about saying, you know, if you are having a conversation or so, how do you see the couple of information points where the other person can connect the dots for you and then unexpectedly, coincidentally so, might latch on something that changes your life, right? So there's this amazing entrepreneur in London, Ollie Barrett. If you would ask Ollie, so what”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You think about serendipity? I mean, serendipity is all about this idea that spotting and connecting dots. It's all about seeing something in the unexpected and then relating that to something meaningful. But it makes it much easier to see something in the unexpected and to relate it to something meaningful if I have an approximate idea of where are we going and what we actually, why are we here in the first place. And I think companies traditionally have thought around products and they would say, great, if I'm a refrigerator company, my next innovation is that I make a better refrigerator. So my team now is looking out for ways of improving the refrigerator. But if you are this Chinese company, for example, they would say instead of just framing the challenge around the product,”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To your point, have called divisions based on the solution, right? So you would if you have a Phillips company, they would say this is a tomography department. Well, by naming the department as a solution, you already restrict people's thinking because now they will only always innovate around tomography versus if you name the same department as precision diagnosis, they might think about tomography, but also about completely different ways to diagnose things. And so I think it's a lot about also how we structure departments, teams, and so on that allows us to actually cross silos if in the first place we don't create those silos.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Working on RNA for years and years and years. And then COVID happens. You're like, oh my God, maybe that could make sense in the context of COVID and let's do something with it. And so I think to your point, crossing those silos, I think is one of the biggest management tasks, right? To really say in a world where if you are, imagine this Chinese company that produces refrigerators and washing machines, if you only have refrigerator and washing machine product specialists, in 10 years you might be out of the market because who knows if we need washing machines, refrigerators in 10 years, maybe people will just inject their food via a thing and you don't need a refrigerator. So you also need people who look at it from different perspectives. And so I think that's where it gets really interesting to think about stepping back and saying, you know, what are we actually about in terms of the bigger purpose rather than a particular product area or particular thing? And as a last thought on this, that's, I think, where it gets really interesting when companies traditionally”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think unfortunately that's very true, and I think unfortunately, you know, when you think throughout history, where do the really interesting inventions and innovations come from? They come from people who look at things from different perspectives and then kind of say, oh my God, have you looked at this from this angle? Oh, this makes sense and so on. And so one of the things that I've actually spent a lot of time on, especially as a community builder, is to think about how do you bring people together who have very different perspectives and very different ideas, but similar values, right? So if you believe in similar things in terms of kindness and things like that, but at the same time are extremely diverse, then you can actually kind of create innovation and come up with new things. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, that's what is, you know, when you think about even now the vaccine and other things, there's always some kind of like interaction going on between people from different areas. And then serendipitously saw something emerges now with people.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not feel crazy when they come up with an idea that doesn't necessarily fit into it because as we know, right, ideas a lot of times might not necessarily be bad. They might just be bad in a certain context.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bit more of a gossiping culture, right? Like where it's constant gossiping and so on. And gossiping throughout history has fulfilled an important function in terms of bringing people together, building trust and so on. But if that takes over, it creates a culture where you will not raise ideas because you don't want to be the one being talked about tomorrow because people will say, oh, like she had that crazy idea and XYZ. And so it's really about saying, and obviously these are extreme cases, right? So usually companies would be on a continuum in terms of their culture. But the more we can push it towards that culture where people really try to figure out, even when someone says something, quote unquote, crazy, that there might be something in there, the more interesting it gets. I think that's what we can learn from companies like Pixar, right? Where if you at Pixar, right, one of the most creative companies in the world, one of the founders at the beginning, they would always say at the beginning of a meeting at the beginning, all ideas are bad. Let's start. And so you give people the license to...”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I find that really interesting. And it's actually one of my favorite things to do that I would, let's say I go to foreign advisory engagement and I would come a few minutes earlier and then hang out wherever people hang out, right? It could be the water cooler, the canteen, the coffee shop. And then I just listen into their conversations while pretending to work on my laptop. And so it's fascinating to hear, right, what people talk about. In some companies, people talk about things like, yeah, I just came out of this meeting and I thought there was an interesting idea and we could even do that in Chicago and then we could do it in Manchester and then we could go to XYZ. And so it's really people building on each other's ideas. There's a culture of, hey, let's help each other out. And then other cultures, it's more this kind of idea of, oh, I just came out of this meeting. And, you know, Isabelle, I don't think she gets it, you know, like she talked about this thing again, but like it really doesn't make sense.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In this one example of a company, they had this window glass, and amazing technology that wouldn't reflect the light and so on. But they laid it to rest and said, look, we underestimated the market wasn't as big as we thought it would be. And so we underestimated that. And next time we'll do better. Now, someone in the audience goes, hey, hey, hey, have you considered what this could mean for solar? If you take that same technology into a solar context, how much energy could that absorb? And that is how quote-unquote serendipitously sew part of their solar division emerged. And it's really these practices that are about saying if we give people the opportunity to in a safe environment talk about the things that don't work, other people can help them connect the dots because an idea doesn't work in one context might actually work in another, but I can't know that if someone else doesn't help me with it. And that really comes to your question. Yes, that's become a bit more difficult, right? In a kind of world where we can't just say, great, everyone from different departments.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think there's two parts to it. The one is one of the practices that I found to be very effective, especially in companies where there's a spirit of collaboration. We can talk more about later if there's companies where there's less of a spirit of collaboration. But in those practices that have worked really well is project funerals or post-mortems, where the idea is to say whenever an idea doesn't work out, whenever something quote unquote failed, instead of just hiding it, what happens mostly, right? And then we don't really learn from each other because everyone wants to talk about success, but nobody wants to talk about the things that don't work, even though that's where the real learning is. Essentially, what they would say is, you know what, let's not just hide that. Let's say you take that and lay to rest in front of people from other divisions and you reflect on why it didn't work. You're not celebrating the failure. You're celebrating the learning.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come from unexpected places, like in this case with a potato washing machine. It's not a threat to our authority. It's actually we're cultivating an environment where that is possible. And I think that's the shift with this work to say at the end of the day for a long time we thought that quote unquote imperfection is a bad thing and that bad things kind of like threaten our authority but at the end of the day when we make that part of our leadership that we say it is human that things will go wrong as long as we learn from it that's great because then we can actually improve and innovate. That is actually at the core of this work and giving people an active vocabulary to not have to say I was surprised by the unexpected which seems like oh you didn't plan enough but rather to say no I cultivated serendipity I developed a culture that allows for that to happen I think that's the kind of making it more active as a leadership skill also”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I found that extremely fascinating because that's actually at the core of the work to say the old school leadership style is to say I have to control everything, I have to know everything, and if there's anything like this where a customer might unexpectedly have an idea that I didn't think of, it's seen as a kind of threat to my authority because I didn't think of this. And so the new leadership style, though, is to say, you know what, if I'm the CEO of Mastercard and I go into a board meeting, I don't have to pretend that I have to have it all figured out. Nobody believes that anyways, right? Nobody believes me that I know exactly what will happen over the last five years. But instead, what I can do is I can have a certain sense of direction. I can have a certain idea of where we're going, right? The purpose, a North Star, and then an approximate strategy, right, to say, hey, great, this is where we're going. But now we need everyone to chip in because the world is changing so fast that actually by having ideas.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A company in China, they received calls from farmers and the farmers told them, you know, you're crappy washing machine is always breaking down. It's a company that produces washing machines and refrigerators. And instead of just telling the farmers and educating the farmers to not use their washing machine for potatoes because they told them, you know, the washing machine broke down because of washing their potatoes in them, they said, you know what? Why don't we build in a dirt filter and make it a potato washing machine? And it's really those incidences where something's going wrong, right? There's some kind of mistake, accident, but then it's up to us to imbue meaning in that and to say maybe there's something in this moment that could somehow bring us some kind of positive unexpected outcome. And that's what Sarah Dibby, what smart luck is all about.”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that's interesting because up to 50% of innovations, inventions, they are serendipitous, right? Everything from think about Viagra to penicillin to post-it notes. I mean, one of my favorites definitely is Viagra because I think it illustrates the point, right? Where they, a couple of decades ago, gave people medication against angina. And the researchers realized, oh my God, there's some kind of movement happening in male participants' trousers. And what would we usually do when something unexpected like this happens would probably be like, oh my God, that's embarrassing. Let's either ignore it or try to find a quote-unquote better way to cure angina that doesn't have that quote-unquote side effect. They did the opposite. They said, you know what? That is unexpected. But there's probably a lot of men in the world who might have a problem in that department. So why don't we somehow try to develop a medication around this? And this is how, in fact, a lot of times you see innovations emerge. One of my favorites is the potato washing machine, where a couple of years ago”
2022-01-24 · Intelligence Squared · Business Weekly: Connecting the Dots, with Dr Christian Busch · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT