Decoding your Greatest Super Power: A new Operating System for Change in an Exponential World

🎧 Subscribe on your favourite platform iTunes | Spotify | Google | TuneIn

In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I’m joined by Ross Thornley, Author, Keynote Speaker on Adaptability & The Future of Work. Co-Founder of AQai.

The pace of change in the world today is faster than ever before. Expertise that once took decades to accumulate can become irrelevant in months. To thrive in this environment, we need to upgrade our operating system, both as individuals and organizations.

Ross highlighted the limitations of relying solely on expertise in a world of exponential change. "What if that expertise is no longer as valuable? What if the timeline of scale or the relevancy of the way we do something is now so short?".

Instead, Ross advocates for developing adaptability - the ability to rapidly respond to changing conditions and new information. This requires moving away from tradition and bureaucracy towards agility, innovation, and constant learning.

Ross is also the co-founder of AQai, a platform using people data to quantify and improve adaptability. By measuring factors like learning agility, creativity, and change resilience, AQai aims to unlock the benefits of enhanced adaptability. These include improved retention, innovation, and diversity and inclusion.

For individuals looking to boost their adaptability quotient, Ross recommends focusing on mindset shifts that enable agility. This includes cultivating beginner's mind, taming the inner critic, and developing growth-oriented thinking. Small, consistent actions to push ourselves outside our comfort zone also build adaptability over time.

The future belongs to the adaptable.

Ross’ insights provide a roadmap for how to thrive in a world of exponential change. By upgrading to a new operating system built for speed and flexibility, individuals and organizations can unlock their greatest superpower.

Episode Highlights

Expertise can become outdated rapidly as the pace of change accelerates
Adaptability is critical to thriving in today's exponential world of constant change
AQai quantifies adaptability using people data to drive innovation, diversity, inclusion and retention

Recommended Resources

Follow Ross on LinkedIn
Grab a Copy of the book
Learn more about AQai

Learn the 2023 Global Hiring Trends

In an age of evolving worker expectations, unpredictable economic conditions, and questions around the ever-changing future of work, talent leaders must keep their sights on attracting and hiring the people who will build and shape the future of their organizations.

Access the Trends

🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript

Ross 0:00

An operating system that's looking at productivity or efficiency or is about managing people around their expertise. What if those expertise are no longer as valuable? What if the timeline of scale or the relevancy of the way we do something a process is now so short rather than multiple generations or decades to now being, you know, years or even months, we need a different operating system.

Chris Rainey 0:31

On Welcome back to the HR leaders podcast, and today's episode, I'm joined by Ross Thornely who is an offer keynote speaker on adaptability and the future of work and co founder AQ AI, the world's largest community of adaptability certified coaches, and is also host of the decoding AQ Hall cast shows his research on adaptability across 2000 organisations in mapping employee adaptability, and how to use science back people data to drive innovation, dei and retention. As always, before we jump to the video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on notification bell and follow us on your favourite podcast platform. With that being said, let's jump in. Whilst Welcome to the show. How are you?

Ross 1:13

I'm doing great, Chris.

Chris Rainey 1:15

Nice to see you. I see. Got really serious question to start us off. Have you actually read all those books behind you?

Ross 1:20

I've listened to most of them. Oh, okay. So the combination is, I love Audible. Not so much on the physical book. But I like having the physical books. Before

Chris Rainey 1:30

we go any further. Tell us a little bit more about you personally and your journey to where we are now. Yeah, sure,

Ross 1:36

Chris. So I've been an entrepreneur for about 25 years, my journey has been, you know, really interesting. I started off when I was at school, I always wanted to do graphic design. That was my thing. And I remember at school, when you have your work experience, there wasn't any work experience for graphic design, that wasn't one of the lists on what do you do anything. And so at the time, I looked through the yellow pages, which for those in the UK, I know what that is, but a great big fat document of company listings, and found design studio to go and do it. And I contacted them and got set up. So my career started. And I call it Ross 1.0 in kind of graphic design, brand communications. And I just loved the idea of interaction of communication design, and people that really excited me and all does agree different things, what gets approved, what doesn't get approved. And so that transition over nearly 18 years around that, but that business from a lot of print to then new media.

Chris Rainey 2:45

So you also had to innovate and go from transformation.

Ross 2:50

Yeah, both Personally, myself, you know, from being a designer to then realising him, perhaps not the best designer, and employing other people letting go becoming a leader becoming a business owner. And I needed help with that, you know, I needed to, yes, learn out loud in the real life, but also go and study and be around other peers. And remember talking to you when we met before but joining and getting a coach, you know, I joined Strategic Coach and Dan Sullivan. And that transformed my own career in terms of building a business that was self managing

Chris Rainey 3:28

that a little bit more about the book, then whose books aimed at what was the inspiration behind it.

Ross 3:32

We're now in a different world called the exponential world, right? Everything's moving so quickly and so fast. So how do we navigate that we need a different operating system where prior we had an operating system that was all around lean productivity, efficiency, management of people and management of projects, when things shift and we're living in a VUCA world, you know, it's far more volatile. It's far more complex. It's far more ambiguous. It's uncertain all of those things, an operating system that's looking at productivity or efficiency, or is about managing people around their expertise. What if those expertise are no longer as valuable? What if the timeline of skill or the relevancy of the way we do something a process is now so short rather than multiple generations or decades to now being, you know, years or even months? We need a different operating system. So this book is aimed really at the curious leaders wanting to figure out how do we leverage this whole subject of adaptability in humans to ensure that we aren't just surviving aren't just coping but can thrive irrelevant of what the event is rather than, Oh, when I get there, or when this happens, then I'll be happy then I'll thrive when I started. Generative AI or when I sussed this particular piece, is actually to have peace in uncertainty. You know, to be able to live in a paradox to be able to Have this element of uncertainty and still be comfortable in our own skin to be able to understand foresight mapping to be able to understand experimentation and the shift, as I talk about it in there from a knowledge economy where it was all about knowing the answers to imagination economy, where it's much more about the questions and about experimentation and how quickly we can get those feedback loops in to learn. So it's aimed at those leaders who want to, in essence, harness what the key skills are, that are required for humans to be able to be valuable, thriving and productive in the future.

Chris Rainey 5:36

Yeah, I should probably we should probably talk about what is AQ?

Ross 5:45

AQ, who needs another one of these cues, right? And I know we've got EQ social, yeah, all of these different bits, right. And I've been a big fan of people analytics, even when I was employing teams, we would run a lot of these to try and understand people and how to harness their best potential, right? So AQ stands for adaptability question. So it's our intelligence in terms of how, when and why we adapt as humans. So we, we look at it from three aspects. So we've got our abilities, right, Chris? So that can be things like mental flexibility. Can we hold different different ideas, different thoughts in our minds at the same time, we've heard a lot of talk about things like resilience or mindset with Angela Duckworth work on grit, or Carol Dweck, on mindset, unlearn all of these things, our skills and our abilities, and they're learnable. But that's just one component of our IQ. Second part is character, and we call it character, because we wanted to step away from personality and all the personality assessments of disc Myers Briggs, all of these kinds of things. And that's really just to understand who and why. So, you know, Chris, you might change and make an adaption, because you want to protect what you've got, right? There's nothing wrong with that. That's how, you know you choose to make a new change, but I need to know it, someone else might adapt because they want to win something, they want to gain a new advantage. If I don't know that I'm going to have friction and a mismatch in my communications and might get that person to change but through compliance, so it might be short lived or increased stress. It might be even, for example, extraversion, introverts and extroverts. We've had a society that has long given applause to extroverts throughout careers. It's not that introverts don't adapt and extroverts do, they both adapt, but in different ways. And if we can understand that we can give the interventions give the training give the support relevant to that individual. So there's a component of character, and then what we found through our research, most compelling parts, our environment is so valuable. So I might have all the amazing skills, I might have a particular character profile about how I adapt, and why, but when so what environment is there? Is it you know, we've heard a lot about psychological safety and team support. What's my level of workplace stress? How much does my company support me? Do I have a work environment that not only the people, my line management, or my bosses might give me some support? But does the processes of the company celebrate failures or not? Am I rewarded by the number of experimentations? Or just the outcomes? So our environment of when somebody might adapt? Can I adapt when I'm under huge pressure? Can I even think straight? Or do I need huge pressure to adapt? So the environment is often left? It's not thought about. It's not measured in the same way as you would if you did an EQ or you did you know, IQ or various other assessments, it doesn't take into context and environment that's really, really important for us is across those three different areas, lots of sub dimensions. And then we try and use predictive analytics to look at change readiness reskill index, adaptable behaviours, and we use a conversational AI as part of the way the assessments done to get more authentic results, less judgement, we can use sentiment analysis, all sorts of other things. So the research we went about about five years ago, getting just some really clever people together, Chris Wright, look at what research has already been done. Okay, so what is there in the top journals, peer reviewed journals to understand say resilience? So we've got the BRS brief, resilient scale, is that robust? How, you know what kind of evidence behind it? Can we use and adapt an element of that? Is it relevant for our input process outcome, kind of reinventing it, you know, trying to as opposed to reinventing it? So about 70% of our assessment is based on existing well researched, peer reviewed analysis and a lot of that work was done with our Head of Research at the time Dr. Nicholas de shell who's a professor at ie Business School, He's one of these interesting people that as an academic has also been on the other side. So he was a senior VP of HR at some big organisations before he went into the academic world as a professor. So this combination of academic world, real world, Hadar leaders getting in over a number of years to put this assessment together, lots of well earned money. We're a venture backed business. And we took a couple of years to really get to understand how do people change so that we can start to then implement some targeted interventions to help people through that that process of change?

Chris Rainey 10:37

Love it. You mentioned about innovation? Why is it important to celebrate failure?

Ross 10:43

That's a great question. And I think it does two things, if we are an organisation that is all about the outcomes, right. And that might be explicit or not generally, most performance is reviewed based on getting the hitting of results and targets, sales targets, you know, production targets of new products being launched, whatever it may be, is normally associated with the outcome result that the organisation wants that linked to stakeholder value, what can happen with that is it can reduce the amount of risk taking, because it's all about risk mitigation, because we're trying to get the outcome for it. So what happens is this celebrating a failure, they might celebrate it, but they're doing it in a limited basis, because the risks in the first place are small bets, because they're outcome driven. And so organisations, the larger often they get, the less able they go through a period of ah, we can't make innovations, you know, we can't really rock the boat, because it might disrupt current thing we've got, we've got to protect what we have. And that's been a continual cycle, right of organisations that they innovate to start with, they disrupt the market in some way. And then some get really good. IBM, you know, lots of companies have continually disrupted themselves through continually innovation by celebrating some failures by really understanding and building a culture that is happy to not celebrate it in silos, but celebrate it not just in departments, but celebrate it as organisations, and not only celebrate, I don't mean that in a rah, rah, let's clap and well done, you know, Chris failed at something is that we can put it practically into our processes of how do you reward people? You know, are you rewarding the failure, in essence? Or are you rewarding the experiment, and you're rewarding the experiment to give you information that changes what you do tomorrow? So we want experiments that are fast and quick to learn early, before we've gone too far in something. It's something that Astro Teller talks about who head of was x at Google, he talked about what are the two things you should do on this new project that are going to kill the project? I want to know how to kill it. Most of us all beat ourselves around how do we keep this project alive? Yeah, I've got to keep justifying keeping alive so I can keep the talent working on the project, I can keep the funding on it. Whereas he flips it completely and says, What two bits of information if we knew it, now we will kill a project? Do those first. It's intelligent failure. It's not just cheap and fast. It's intelligent failure, that we're actually celebrating that we can learn things to then redeploy our talent or our experiments or are learning into new opportunities.

Chris Rainey 13:38

What do you see as hrs role in in terms of adaptability and innovation?

Ross 13:44

They've got to take this seriously. First?

Chris Rainey 13:47

Why would you say why do you say, Do you think they're not taking it seriously,

Ross 13:50

I think what they're doing is they are under so much pressure from so many different areas. It's very difficult to know, what should I be doing? We're still reeling in this transition of how do I get hybrid even working? Right? Right. So there's still things that they see as very cool to a problem right now. And some of these other things that come along. Ah, how's that connection to my core problem? If it isn't, I need to focus on what's currently screaming you know, it's the squeaky wheel gets the oil. What tends to happen that I've seen is a lot of it is dealing with the symptoms, not with a root cause they haven't got the time to deal with a root cause issue because they've got so many symptoms happening in the business, I've got to layoff people or I'm losing people

Chris Rainey 14:35

I want to keep let's say we put that to one side, what should they be doing?

Ross 14:39

Once they then understand what adaptability is, they can then see how it can feed into as an undercurrent to all of those other issues and problems are deeper root cause of how people then either change or don't change to something new irrelevant to what that new thing is. You know where It's a new technical skill, a new product that's going in a new owner that's bought the organisation a new merger that's happening, a new shift from a regulatory impact in, you know, health care, whatever it is that's going on in the industry, they're just better equipped to be able to realise that shift and change. Yeah. And the other big thing I think, is, I would love it, if a lot of the compliance stuff could be taken care of by AI, so that they're then able to work on these more complex challenges. And I think there's still a lot of HR that's dealt with is compliance elements. And what I must do and have to do about

Chris Rainey 15:38

is AI ready to fit out, though, really, you know,

Ross 15:41

I don't think it's quite ready. There's

Chris Rainey 15:43

a lot of bias, for example.

Ross 15:45

Yes, there is. I think there's bias in humans anyway, that's true.

Chris Rainey 15:49

That's true.

Ross 15:52

About bias. That's true. And we're the ultimate bias is an individual that has bias towards liking to be in person or liking a particular style, or whatever it is, because we have experience. But I feel that AI can have a much broader experience than we can as an individual. And I think the technique of AI is then in the power of how do you want it to give you wider approaches than its bias. I've been surprised at how biassed I am when I feel I'm really open minded. And I've been using AI as like my news to say, give me a different opinion from this viewpoint, or this viewpoint or this viewpoint. And it's helped expand my thoughts for me to then make decisions with more informed areas where I haven't lived in India and understand that I can use with AI to give me some viewpoints from there and shift my own biases. So I don't think AI is quite ready there yet, but I think it's going to be southern. So where it is eating away at the heels and ankles of certain tasks. I think in the next three to five years, it will be there.

Chris Rainey 17:04

I know this is a big question. But if you can sort of encapsulate like, what does aI mean for innovation,

Ross 17:11

the way I think about it is a multiplier of whatever the intent is. So it can multiply good or bad, or pen in the hands of somebody who is bad for our future. And society can be incredibly damaging, as much as in the, you know, a disrupter or a creative person can be bad or disruptive. Ai, I think, you know, what does it do for innovation, I think it multiplies the diversity. It multiplies the opportunity of creators not being linked to those that have resources. You know, a few years ago, we saw the book, you know, company of one it was talking about, we don't need to build big teams to have big impact in big companies anymore. We can use technology in ways to create unicorns, and large organisations with large impacts with just one member of staff. So I think for innovation, what we're going to see using AI is a proliferation of creativity, of the imagination of going from idea to launch an app in a day, because we don't need to be a programmer, we don't need all of those resources we can use with a piece of AI to have a conversation and start collaborate with the marketplace. So I think this massive explosion of innovation is going to happen in the hands of individuals, ie the 14 year old Indian who can code or whatever it might be. Now, we just need to have an idea and have conversations with some of these technologies. And the same in education, we can learn much quicker. So in innovation, a lot of the big disruptions comes from naivety from somebody going into something that they don't understand and asking the stupid questions, innovation. Now we can ask those questions where we might have felt a bit of fear, because I don't want to seem like I'm silly. I can go and do that with an AI news and just start to learn and see it.

Chris Rainey 19:09

I'll give an example. Like last night I was using this. There's a couple different websites. But I was using one last night to basically build an app where you basically input what you want the app to do in text and it automatically codes the app and builds it in real time, which is just insane.

Ross 19:26

We are just at the you know, whilst AI has been around for a long time. We're just at this dawn of a new era, a new age. And I know there's been a lot of talk about a lot of hype about it in the past. But if we just look at about to just over 2 billion people are suddenly about to have aI copilot think of onboarding. You know, if you now put all of your policies all of your, you know, procedures bits in place into there. That person then doesn't have to go through this 90 Day programme at the beginning and only these things and try and retain all of these complexities when they have an issue or a question rather than bugging their team member or somebody, oh, how do I use Slack? Or what's this for or how to do this, they can just do it in real time with the company's policy documents added into their own layer vault that's unique to them, I think it's going to entirely shift the speed. So one of the challenges about you know, knowledge is it takes a long time to get them, get them in a place where they're then valuable. And then we want to retain them because if we leave and we've lost all of that, that value and knowledge, if it's so quick to onboard and off board, I think that transient nature then have a real portfolio of careers a fluidity and mobility internally and externally for organisations is going to have another new awakening because of this mobilizer. So if we talk about innovation, and AI, it will mobilise talent from department to department and from company to company without that same negative feel. So the concept I think, of big layoffs, or big recruitment drives or retention, I think we'll change the script and language of that over the next few years. Because it'll be much easier to move around in various ways that it's then about, hey, I want to hang out here for a while, and company owners, you know, leaders being okay with that, for people to move around, you know, that thought of, we're competing, I think competing will shift to collaboration for the companies of the future. So we'll be less about that competitive piece and more about the collaboration to solve what the world really needs. At least I hope,

Chris Rainey 21:42

no, yeah. There's also something to be said about knowledge, right? Because like, I mean, retaining the knowledge and IP, because we always talk about the knowledge walking out the door with the person. But if we're actually using AI, to train the AI, to, to kind of store all of that wealth of information from that person or those people becomes accessible.

Ross 22:02

Yeah. And what is the concept of knowledge in the knowledge economy was built by the fact that you'd spent years acquiring knowledge and expertise, because it's relevant to apply to a new decision that you'll face today. And you can use that information to get a predictable outcome. Now, if that knowledge that we had before is less likely to predict the outcome we're going to get? What value does it have? So our view of experience and expertise and knowledge walking out the door? What we're looking at now, I think, is imagination walking out the door, not knowledge. And that's what I think we should be focusing on is how do we harness the imagination of people, not their knowledge, because that's going to be it just again, in my opinion, in my view, from what we're seeing is that that's going to be the abundant, you know, the answers are going to be accessible and easy. We've got to imagine different things. And we want to make sure that doesn't walk out the door. So our adaptability, intelligence, knowing when to stick, you know, when to change, when to quit, you know, how to build resilience for all of those things, when we think ah, this is how it's going to be and it isn't, how do we still come back with a smile and use that opportunity? And support each other through that journey? is the number one thing that humanity needs to be looking at?

Chris Rainey 23:28

Yeah. Oh, man, I love that so so Douglas loved I loved the way you put that as well. About the imagination walking out the door not the knowledge is such a powerful and it's such a different way of looking at it. Is it very different way of looking at Yeah, and that's what people want. I'm it comes in, like we discussed at the very beginning of the of the podcast,

Ross 23:49

and it comes back to then what are we training for? So we went to school, we didn't have a career, that we then go and apply that career and top it up with bits of knowledge. So continued professional development around mastery, what we're now shifting to is imagine the five year old child where they are discovering new things. So I've got a pen I can write on a wall. I can write on the sofa or I can write on a bit of paper. Parents say not on the wall, not on the centre on the paper, please. We're going to be shifting from where Oh, no, it should be on the paper back to where else can I write on the wall or on the sofa? And so training people on what the skills are required for that is a different way of thinking in the traditional structure of our unique programming. So we we've got 30 million people employed as programmers next five years, that's going to entirely shift

Chris Rainey 24:43

prove that last night I could write code just by right. I even had a voice assistant on one of them where I wasn't even right are saying out loud,

Ross 24:49

and the transition of how value is created today to that place on a much faster process. So the innovation killer is the heel dig In a try not to and to be honest, where that would have had an impact won't have an impact anymore. They'll just be dead. Yeah, they just won't exist anymore. I think it is that profound that different, and this is going to happen far quicker than we can even imagine it.

Chris Rainey 25:18

We've already realised that, haven't we, over the last couple of months,

Ross 25:22

the slowest pace of change that we'll ever experienced is today, every point forward, it's always going to be fast. And we think, Oh, we've experienced that already. Well just look at the last six months that will bear into insignificance in the next six months in the next six months. So we need to balance that also, Chris, I think with the focus on mental fitness, that this can play havoc with our well being physically and mentally. So how in that period, can we create rather than quiet place? How can I create quiet within me when there's a rave going on? around me?

Chris Rainey 25:59

I can tell you right now, as Shane and I were sitting in the office yesterday, having that exact conversation of are we going in the right direction? Should we looking at something specifically around AI? Are we missing the boat here? You know, we're like caught between those two to, you know, deliver? Yeah, two paradoxes. And being able to hold both of those in the same at the same time is a completely new way.

Ross 26:23

Very new way of thinking. And it's also one that can be quite challenging. It's overwhelming. Yeah, it's overwhelming. If we don't have the language around it. That's true. You know, we measure it, we give language and then you start to build intervention. So how can I live in that space? Rather than saying, oh, I need to live over here or here. I remember a conversation I had with Naveen Jain. He's the billionaire who started one of his latest companies. VIOME. So it's your gut health microbiome health. It was at a conference, we were both speaking at the success network. And it was the conversation about balance or insert balance into something in a work life balance, this this balance, and he said, I completely fundamentally disagree with that concept of balance and how my ears pricked up and I lent him and I thought, what was he going to say here? And he said, Imagine your heartbeat your heartbeat, right? If it's imbalance, a flatline, was that mean? Means you're dead. Is it life, if you look at your heartbeat, it picks up and it pips down and it picks up and it pips down. If you zoom out enough, it might look like a flatline. But if you zoom in, it's incredible moments of presence in opposites. And that's a life. So I think this opportunity of what we're looking at here of all utilising improve or exploring, exploring transform two dimensions that we look at of adaptable behaviour, we need incredible moments of utilise and improve what we currently have, and incredible moments of exploring transform the next piece, and that by going intensely in present to those two extremes regularly, you know, how many times a heartbeat 60 times a minute, you know, how can an organisational heartbeat live in the extremes of these paradoxes regularly enough that that then looks like balance from behind? From a distance?

Chris Rainey 28:18

I think that's a perfect way to wrap things up. With that analogy, all of that, I could talk to you forever. Ross. Before I let you go, where can people learn more about you? Where can I grab a copy of the book reach out to you directly?

Ross 28:31

So going on to aq ai.io? Is our domain we've actually opened up a lot of our training and certification for HR practitioners. So previously, you know, we've got certified practitioners in about 43 countries, our assessments been implemented in just over 2000 organisations. So if they're interested in intrigued about their use case, how do they apply it? How do they get started, go to aq ai.io. Amazing, and then they can find out stuff there. And if they want to hang out with me on LinkedIn, then check me out. I'm sure we'll put it in the show notes. But we're 100%

Chris Rainey 29:06

on LinkedIn. And also I'll add for anyone listening, make sure you check out the decoding, IQ podcast, Willie, all of those things in the chat. As always a pleasure my friend chatting to you and I wish all the best until next week. Thanks so much. Thanks, Chris.