Podcasts

Episode 22 - Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Professor Anna Tavis - End of Talent Management as we know it

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Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, listeners. Welcome back to our next episode of Decoding AQ. I have Anna Tavis with me today. She is an academic director. She's elected at countless universities around the world and her current home is NYU. And it's a real pleasure to have you with us today.

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Anna  

Thanks so much, Ross. Delighted to be here.

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Ross  

So we had an opportunity just before hitting the record button to have a bit of conversation and chat. And it's been fascinating just to understand and think about the world that we're living in right now, how much it's changed and what, even just a few months ago, we thought might be our future for the year and you would make our plans, we do our New Year's resolution and we have a vision for that year. And everyone's now facing an entirely different world, different world of work of those sort of things. Tell me about your experience of the last few months as a lecturer and somebody who learning is a key part of their life and has been and passion. How have you had that experience? What's changed for you? And how are you feeling about that?

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Anna  

I will start where I am to kind of situate myself geographically. So New York University is the largest private university in the US, we have 15 global campuses interestingly enough, and what we needed to do is to take that huge organization with about 25,000 and maybe more employees and 50,000 students and turn it around and go virtual overnight. It doesn't mean that we were not moving in that direction, one way or the other. We are a very innovative entrepreneurial school. And we always hosted a lot of Ed-Tech events. We have our own innovation lab, we have lots of researchers working on the future of learning, etc. So all of that has been in place. 

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But the majority of the school was business as usual, academically talking about disruption, but really not living it, in a sense that we have to experience when the COVID pandemic hit. And the decision was made literally overnight, to not go to the classes, evacuate our students. So there was a big kind of logistical undertaking that needed to take place. And then we found ourselves all on the other side of the screen, looking at our students who might have been then dispersed around the world. And trying to continue business as usual.

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So lots of adjustments. The one thing I want to say, and I would love to spend more time reflecting on the future and the solutions that we have finding in this kind of a crisis, that New York is somewhat more used to it than most places, dating back to September 11th. we are located in downtown Manhattan, our main campus. And so we've been very affected by all of the three sort of major disasters, disruptions that occurred in this century alone. 

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So in that sense, we're probably one of the most prepared schools and in the US, however, the uncertainty of the length of this type of disruption, the uncertainty of the solutions that we are going to have to come up with, creates an additional level of complexity in how we're looking at moving forward.

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Ross  

It's interesting, isn't it, because I'm sure many were in similar situations where, whether they were educational institutions, corporate, whoever they may be about an ambition to change at some point. We want to go virtual, we want to leverage digital, we want to do these things and that was kind of a burning ambition. But it doesn't necessarily catalyze and crystallize, it changes in the moment of now. The same way a burning platform does, and this catalyst event has suddenly said, it's not a nice to have. It's a necessity of survival. And I think that invokes such a rallying of people to take on new things, to go into the uncertain to say, “Okay, we don't have all the answers yet but we need to figure it out. We'll virtualize, we have to close off.”

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What's been some of the challenges for you, in terms of things that have gone better than you thought they would or maybe things that you thought, “Actually, that wasn't as good as I did expect it to,” in terms of dealing with your students and dealing with such a complex ecosystem of NYU in delivering better, not necessarily even just the same, it's different. Give us an idea of that experience.

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Anna  

First of all, Ross, I want to say that we are in a somewhat asymmetrical situation in Higher Ed, we have and were a very selective institution, it was very hard school to get into. We actually found that the student side of this change was much more agile, much more adaptable, our students who are very used to technology, they are online all the time. And so there was sort of a flipping of the classroom in a different sense that it was the professors who needed to be updated, who needed to be handheld to understand how to translate what they effectively could do in a classroom, to do the same thing in the class in a virtual setting. But the students in oftentimes, and I, as a department chair, for human capital management, I dropped in into quite a few classes, just to see how, how our faculty were doing. 

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And what I found myself, it was the students who were teaching the faculty to be actually operating this system. So it was absolutely fascinating to watch, this kind of reversal of roles. And the next generations are really helping us along to make that phenomenal 180°. And I think that's what accounted for a fairly fast and fairly smooth transition that we experienced. 

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And that was because the students were very helpful and very accommodating and collaborating in this type of disruption.

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Ross  

I think you picked up on a couple of really interesting parts there in terms of how accommodating and how important it is for a team to work as a team. And the traditional kind of model of learning is the student is there as the student, and the lecture is there as the lecture. And the knowledge of exchange goes accordingly. Whereas such a big event, that relationship opportunity for students to not say, “Well, you should have all the answers,” but to turn up as a in service, as team support, to enable a change because it was requiring unlearning for the professors, they had all the things in place of how they delivered what they did, they had certainty, they had knowledge. When they then enter that they have to learn that's a vulnerable state for somebody to now say, “I don't have the answers so you need somebody to come along and say and support that.”

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What a wonderful story that the students, rallied to that and the professors embraced it. That's certainly from our view of adaptability, the environmental situation has such a big impact on adaptability success, that whether it's stress-inducing, anxiety-inducing, or it's morale-boosting and encouraging of those things.

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In terms of as a whole organization, that 180 shift that was done. You mentioned, as an area you'd almost become prepared because you'd had other tragic events that almost built up the muscle of, “Ugh things can change quickly,” and you build confidence because you overcame those others.

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Where do you think it has worked so well? You talked there about the students, what other things has helped you to engage and still deliver value? And in terms of such a large organization, it must have been difficult to rally across that volume. What's something that maybe a large organization could learn from in the way in which you may be rolled that out or communicated it or some of the challenges you addressed early on?

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Anna  

I'm sure you write a lot about it Ross yourself. It’s really a cultural phenomenon more than anything else. I think, despite the fact that there are some scaffolding built into the institutional roles, etc. When it comes to these types of events, it's really leadership, it’s initiative, it’s entrepreneurial sort of spirit, problem-solving mindset that takes precedent over, whatever the roles are traditionally in any organization. 

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So I feel that this kind of the ability to live with, in the moment to scramble the kind of traditional architecture, the lines of accountability of lines, that reporting lines, and just whoever has the best idea, go with it. It's kind of an indicative of how our classrooms are beginning to be run where it's not to your point, it's not the teacher who has all the answers, but it's a collaborative effort where the teacher is more of a coach. Same thing happened here, we needed to solve for issues, for problems, to assist those. I was really overwhelmed and impressed with how this assistance, across Peer to Peer Assistance occurred where people were reaching out to each other and making sure everyone was comfortable, everyone was in place. And unfortunately, we did lose some faculty to the disease, and how the organization handled that with full respect and empathy. The same thing to our students who found ourselves. A lot of them as you know, students in the US, they traveled far from their homes and some of them got trapped in one-bedroom or studio apartments in Manhattan without being able to leave their homes for days. And how this culture came through, not in the content that we taught, but obviously in the discussions, every class was about reconnecting, making sure everyone was safe, etc. And even across our campuses. I've done quite a bit of work in Abu Dhabi, we have a big campus in Abu Dhabi and just connecting with people in Abu Dhabi thinking, because they're also in the lockdown and have been there for a while, making sure that whatever they're doing if we could be of help from here, with some technologies, we use some solutions that we came up with.

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So I think, to sum it all up, I think it's in the culture of collaboration. That in the moment of stress, in the moment of tragedy, everyone matters. People step up, people reach out. And it's truly even though I know, there's been a lot of discussion societally about we are all in it together. I think on campus it is. And we are very, very proud of on-campus in our university community, we are very sensitive to racial and minority issues and we're going out of our way to embrace all members of our community at the same level.

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So I think you're gonna see that subcultures emerging that are more resilient, or they are more adaptable. And that has to be built year after year, regardless of the moment it cannot just be created at the time of the moment of truth, right?

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Ross  

Yeah, it's moments like this, it's sailors, good sailors are made in the storms. And we have an opportunity here and I think leadership, specifically, many organizations are facing the challenge of some leadership now needed to be instructional because there's a crisis, it's “No, we're going virtual,” we need decisive actions, and other areas where we need to be human. And we need to be collaborative and engage and be open to experimentation. To experiment means you don't know the result. So that you have to be willing to fail in that. So you need a culture of psychological safety and all of those things to kind of exist. So when you're heightened and it's stressful, and it's crisis, with great leadership and direction, plus experimentation, great things can happen in those environments.

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In terms of these skills that you've been nurturing and that you're seeing inside the faculty and seeing inside the students. What things could you say, you talk a lot about, your area of study of the future, the future of HR, the future of work, and even I think the title of your book that you're working on at the moment, sort of a working title of "The End of Talent Management," as we know it. Talk to us a little bit about what now is preparing us for the types of future? What vision do you have of the future, both of learning and of work?

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Anna  

Okay, that's a really a deep question, Ross. So let me just take you back. I've been working now, I have to make a pivot, a little bit in my writing. But my thesis all along, I kind of came into the profession into the HR world. Because I was an academic, then I took a long sabbatical to work in a business and was fortunate enough to work in Europe for the majority of my career and then ended up coming back to the US. And worked on Wall Street, right at the time of the financial crisis. So this is not new to me, in so many ways. And in I came to the profession when the whole talent management revolution started. And it started with the McKinsey, doing a research if you recall about who really matters in the organization, and their thesis was, it's really the 10%. It's the 10% of Pareto Principle, it's the 10% of the high performing, high potential people who are going to be delivering 80% of the value to your organization, and what happened…

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Ross  

And cut the bottom, it created a culture that…

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Anna  

Exactly. And Welch with his practices of 10% out every year and I actually lived that because I was involved in the Mckinsey study and then was involved in crafting and implenting this whole talent management system. Which somewhere right around the financial crisis and a little bit for, I started questioning really seriously having worked in the organization. Because it's not about the 10%. What I saw is by focusing on the 10%, by over-investing in 10%, you're creating an entire population of executives. They are all speaking about bias and diversity in companies. They are all pretty much looking the same, because the people who are making those choices and that was kind of awareness of the bias in the system.

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Ross  

They were all inside the bubble, they couldn't see. And they had the pursuit of growth, the intention of performance, but couldn't see the consequence outside of the circle.

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Anna  

Exactly. And then gradually, right around that time was when we started more focusing on analytics and measurement, which I know you are committed to as well, I think it's really, really critical. When we started looking at the data, the data were telling us that it's not working. We are really disengaging the 80% of the population, who early on in the process do not get into that 10% track. That starts pretty, pretty early in your career in a company.

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And so we ended up again in this kind of asymmetrical structure where the whole almost of the HR with this whole trend in a talent management, etc., was about the elite 10% of executives. Who then they became executives and promoted people like themselves, etc., and I participated in that, I helped put it together.

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And so, right around that time after the financial crisis, it just became very clear to me that it is about 100%. And it is about how do we actually refocus on employee experience and with an intention and philosophy that everyone matters, that we don't leave people out there just because they don't fit the model. 

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And the way I'm trying to make it more systemic and science-based is that I'm embracing analytics and new technology that are harvesting the data on people and we can actually see a lot closer in a much more nuanced way what performance represents. And with the technologies available to us again, not that we just get the insights about what's going on, what the sentiment of the places is, but also we have the delivery mechanisms through digitization of the business. Services that are much more customized and personalized to everyone by that we're really allowing everyone to be the success they want to be and they could be.

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So that's kind of the main point for me. And I think the epidemic has confirmed and I just need to, from problem-solving every day to really focusing and reflecting on what we are experiencing. And it really confirms my point that talent management as we created it, as we ran our HR structures for everyone, all the organizations have had it and they still have them and their legacy structures do not work. In fact, they are harmful and they're one of the reasons we are right now in a crisis, in some ways in the corporate world as well. And we need to shift gears and transition to really caring about employee experience, rather than identifying the elite talent cohort.

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Ross  

It fills me with light, joy and energy to hear someone who didn't read about the experiences of the elite and the approach of HR, the 10%, all of those things and say, “That's not how I would like the future to be, I want it to change,” you lived it and then we're able to reflect and look at a recreation. And a future where every person has hope, has optimism that tomorrow is going to be better than today. That's the kind of world I want to live in. That's the world I want to create for my family. And in work shouldn't be any different. And we’re this pursuit versus expansion, gap versus gain, you are already enough. But you could be more if you would like to, and we'll help you to do that. And I think that's both a philosophical viewpoint. But I think now as you mentioned the data, we can see the evidence of the outcomes of it.

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Reminds me I love films. And it reminds me of Moneyball, I don't know if you remember the film, but for those who haven't seen it, watch it. It's baseball, a true story. And it's about looking at the data and numbers. So you might have these Maverick heroes that are paid all the big bucks, that you think that's why a team performs and wins. This is a true story of where looking at the data, looking at the statistics and putting people in positions and places according to the statistics to allow them to flourish, to allow them to surprise, to perform and amazing things can happen.

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So it seems no different in terms of this future opportunity we have. To create the work environments where no one's left behind. That's why we exist, during all of this massive transition of reskilling, they're still always going to be upskilling but a massive reskilling of society, and this opportunity of management versus development. Is it control or is it in service of? 

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And I'm fascinated by how is this from your philosophy and viewpoints, is that what’s happening inside universities and students? Are we preparing them to create corp environments and jobs and work that is going to be better by design? Or has that not gone into the youth yet, in terms of how HR should function? What human capital means and what data can be? I'm interested in, you've seen it in corporate, your writing and your view in philosophy is this. Is that what’s happening inside our education system. I'm fascinated to know.

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Anna  

So one thing I want to tell you is that I am doing it. I am the Department Chair now. And I'm looking and this is I think also a very strategic move for me having lived through, you know when I was an academic and just writing about these things and doing research. I didn't get the kind of feedback from the actual work that was being done in the system. That's why I left, I just left tenure, I left everything and I spent 15 years in the business.

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So returning to academia is also a strategic move for me because I do feel that that's the future. This is how I can have most impact. Yes, I can tweak things around in a corporate setting and I've seen it but the most and the broadest impact I can have is if I can change the way we teach, to change the philosophy that we promote to the next generation professionals that are coming in. And so Since I've taken my four years ago, I returned to NYU. I am fully, fully redesigning what the professional education of the future HR leaders looks like. We have put in and it's the first one, I think, at least in the United States, a special program that's focused exclusively on the analytics and technology in people management. Which is, I think, a very fundamental and important change from where we were before. You know, the 20th century was about psychology, the 21st century is about evidence and we can get that evidence from neuroscience, we can get that evidence from social sciences of various kinds, from economics, etc. Because HR is a practice, and the practice is a very eclectic kind of position to be in. And I think that the reason we were where we were, and we're talking now about people management and people management philosophies in the 20th century, is because it was primarily driven by psychology. Which was focused on an individual, that was focused on a certain orthodoxy of how to see a personality, etc, etc.

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Ross  

How to categorize, put them in boxes, so that we know how to understand and deal with it.

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Anna  

And I see it because I hang out with my psychology friends, as well. But I see the 21st century as a much more adaptive space where you are taking knowledge from everywhere, but most importantly, you work with data. And not that data cannot be biased. And we have a special class that I introduced, which is called Algorithmic Responsibility. And I'm not even just calling that ethic talking about ethics, just let's look at it again as an abstract exercise in what's right and what's wrong, but I'm making it actionable and I'm saying this is a responsibility, let's learn about what responsibility means.

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And so for me, foundationally, what's different and how we need to run companies, for example, and in society at large, I want to see this in the government. I am just really destroyed by how we manage right now. As opposed to what we are teaching our students how to manage in organizations. So foundations in data, in fluidity with technology, ability to bring in those new tools, to be more accessible, to broaden your outreach, to have the equity that we need that might not be available to for everyone. Why not make NYU, best NYU education for example, available to people around the world. And we are doing this. We are working on it.

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So to me, it's this kind of infrastructural issues right now that are really, really important to be able to scale the philosophy that I have developed by, hard work inside organizations.

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Ross  

I think it’s fascinating. And we go through phases of society and our race to correct before and create better tomorrow. So the drivers from psychology was because of what came before it. And we are expanding our understanding to create worlds in which we want to be in. Our vision of the future that I'd like to live in. One of the challenges, I'd love to know your thoughts on around data. In this, we are facing a future where there's going to be so much data, so much information from every source.

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You know I wear an aura ring that measures everything from my breathing rate, to skin temperature, to my heart rate variability and recovery and it gives me each morning a readiness score based on all these things. So I go, “Okay, am I gonna have a good day or not? Because this day just told me in.” And then sometimes I think, “Ugh I woke up at a terrible night's sleep, check my app, and it says, ‘No, you didn't you had a great night's sleep.’ ” So it changes my behavior. Asking the right questions to find the data and then knowing what's noise and signal, I think is a real challenging future that humanity is going to have.

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And I want to just share a quick story and I'm sure you know it, it's a famous one about planes in during World War. And they were coming back and looking at the data to find where should they put more armor? Where should they put more reinforcements on the planes to ensure more combat? They'd look at them and go, “Oh, this is where all of the holes are in the plane, they're on the wings, they're here, let's reinforce those reinforce that,” and someone came along and said, “We're not looking or asking the right questions here, the planes that we're looking at to look at the data are the ones that made it back. The ones that didn't make it back, that's the ones where we need to reinforce. So everywhere there's a current hole, we know the plane can make it back with a hole there. Where there's no holes, that's where we need to reinforce, because those are the ones that, fell in the sea.” 

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So it's really interesting this, “Oh we need data, we need data,” the challenges I've seen in organizations is, how to ask the right questions in the first place. And then how to make sure we understand what is noise and what is signal. What's your view on that. And how's that a component that balances academic learning and philosophy of questioning?

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Anna  

I think you put your finger on the issue here. It's not about data, it's really about insights. And it's about action afterward. I mean, the great continuum that I see is, there's a phenomenon out there an issue that we want to explore. And so we collect all sorts of data analytics, by that I don't mean just quantitative stuff. Because the point now is that we're beginning to get so sophisticated in the tools, as you were talking about your ring, that we can get all sorts of data, including qualitative data, natural language processing data. It's just communicating all this wealth of evidence. That's why data maybe a little bit more narrow but I want to use the word evidence. So this is where they are very different and you talked about it, I looked at your writing as well. The very different cognitive skills that need to be developed. It's about pattern recognition, about critical thinking, it's the ability to look outside the box and see the bigger picture. And this is where I believe the humans are at this point are really uniquely positioned at that final stage, in the first from the get-go. What it is that we need to look at, where do we need to see data, to what are the patterns. And in even technology, and I can now identify those patterns and present various scenarios for us. 

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And then the actual acting on it, understanding what the insights, what the meaning is. And then multiple ways in which it can impact the reality we live in. That's the hardest part of it. But what's important to us and that was absent in the kind of 20th century, the majority of 20th-century decision making is we relied on intuition that was narrow. I don't dismiss intuition it’s very important but it's a narrow set of data that conditioned us to think a certain way to a much, much broader base of evidence gathered. And it requires very, very sharp critical thinking and ability to see through this.

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And I see this as the primary goal for the education, not so much to communicate content to our students because I can just put them in front of “This is where online learning works,” you know there are some entertaining videos you can set in, you can learn everything Python, R or whatever you want to learn, Sequel, Coding that our students are learning. But bringing in into the classroom and talking about this expansive way of thinking about data, the patents that they discern and then thinking really deeply about the implications, the policy implications, the actions they want to take, the processes they want to develop, etc. 

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And that's where very different sets of priorities in education are surfacing right now. If before it was content, the professors to your point of teachers were just drilling the content into people, now we are looking at how we develop that critical thinking skills. And what we're finding and this is why the marriage is sort of quantitative, qualitative, arts, education and more specific science education are really, really helpful. And it's not just training people for skills. We can train them for skills and put them into jobs but where our role as the Higher Ed to make them leaders, to make them operate in very complex environments, that's a different kind of conditioning.

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Ross  

It is, it's where, the shift outside of deep into being able to understand the convergence of multiple elements in complex systems and to not create the bubble of the 10% without understanding the second and third consequences of those. I think there's an exciting for me future where a bit like in computer games and scenarios where we can put information in and start to look at scenarios of what might happen when and get better at predictive outcomes. Because in a world that's moving so fast, how valid that data is, from one day to one week to one month away, can displace us. 

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So I think the opportunity for us to run scenarios a bit like for example, I have friends in healthcare and a lot of things now are happening in Vitro, are happening in Silico, in terms of looking at studies of how it interacts in a virtual world much faster, tens of thousands, millions of times more complexities of variables than you can, in real example worlds of trials and things like that. 

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So I think there's such an opportunity for us to augment with technology and use it that it's inert, and how we then as the human beings leverage it for good and make sure it's not about leaving people out and behind get written rid of the bottom 10%. But being inclusive, whether that sort of performance of race of whatever it may be.

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To wrap up in the final kind of part, we have this opportunity of creating a workplace. Each time, there's a moment of pause, you talked about 911 a moment of pause, a financial crisis, COVID-19, where we can reflect and recreate the workplace that you would like to see of the next five or 10 years, paint me a picture for that, and then marry to that the two either tips or skills we need, either within youth and education or existing leaders need to obtain that future vision. So what does that look like, the workplace if you could create it in five or 10 years time, and if we have to map back to the things we need to take with us the skills today to do that? What would those be?

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Anna  

So I think that we are waking up with a pandemic to the realization that every organization, every company is a part of the ecosystem. Unlike September 11th, that was kind of the tragic terrorist attack, etc., and financial crisis that was a structural issue. That was purely, financial markets, financial services, have been running very risky, models and got everyone in trouble. So that needed to be fixed. And but it was still looked at as a kind of an isolated, very specific event, that where you could put a label on it, etc.

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I think with the pandemic, we are realizing that no business is on an island. I think we've been operating in kind of a world of interconnected silos. You know, every organization was creating its own mission, putting it on the wall, and there's a lot of competition created for the best place to work. We kind of have created that environment of even competing for being better, etc. I think what I am seeing and again, it's more philosophical than tactical, is we need to learn how to be an ecosystem of communities where business is important. And that focus is important, education is critical, health care systems are important, governments are absolutely critical to our well-being and the decisions we're going to make. 

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And I think we are learning the lessons of neglecting all of this. Unfortunately, at a very, very high cost to us. The hope for me is that we are going to wake up and, and really make very, very big decisions about how we're going to move forward as a society And in business has to play a huge role in it. Because I think we've been practicing the right things to do in individual cultures. I think we've had better examples of resilience, of better examples of adaptability, creativity, etc., at least in our society here in the U.S. on the business side of things. 

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And we kind of created again, this kind of corporate elite people who work for companies, and we're just changing brands and going from Amazon to PepsiCo to all of these big companies. You go to any conference, Ross and it's the same old names that pop up all the time. And I think we need to be just like with my theory of the case, from the 10% to 100%, that we now have to start thinking much more inclusively that what happens in an educational pipeline. And not only in the elite universities that we've been looking at ourselves at NYU included, but what happens downstream and educational pipeline, what happens with the climate, what happens in our communities, that we can just isolate ourselves in this oasis of wealthier neighborhoods in New York City, for example. I think this is the realization that pandemic is sending, making us all come to at this point, at least those of us who are on the HR side and in education of the future, professionals going and leading hopefully, organizations 20 and 30 years from now. I think that's where we need to focus. How do we educate, not just civic-minded, but globally-minded and skilled professionals, who will be able to take us to the next level as a community. Rather than just advance and bring more revenue to their business.

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Ross  

Yeah. And the skills in terms of creating this harmonious, inclusive, functioning society, as opposed to this interconnected silos vision. Those skills that you talked about, what would they be in order to do that? Is it that they are taught the skills of non-biases, is it a skill of inclusive? Is that a new skill that we need to teach people how to be that? Or is it things like adaptability, flexibility or is it critical thinking? If you had to focus on the ones that would be most critical to create that future, where would that be?

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Anna  

Yeah, I think it is that critical thinking and expansive thinking. We've been in our education system, we've been very specialized and very narrow-focused. And it doesn't mean that we don't have to do that. But that's not the only thing we need to do. Just to give you an example of how I am building my curricula here at NYU, if I'm talking about algorithms and teach people, coding languages, etc., etc., then I would have a course on this algorithmic responsibility. So I will have a course that is talking about or have an environment where people are talking about what the impact of what they're creating is. And then from there, again, not just theoretically saying, “Oh, if you create this, you're gonna exclude 80% of the population or you’ll exclude certain types of people because you are programming in a certain way.” So no technology and no data are free of bias. And that's just one example.

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But also what actions are you going to take as a responsible leader, who is looking at those data and what actions you're gonna take. So it's kind of a proactive, everywhere from getting those insights, understanding those meanings, the ability to communicate clearly, and then taking responsibility and driving action with the outcomes and impact that will have a broader footprint than and just again very narrow goals of shareholder values.

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Ross  

I think that's a beautiful sort of summary and in terms of this view of being able to be holistic, and thinking about impact beyond the obvious, being open-minded. And for me fundamentally hope, to have hope, to have optimism that they can make a difference, whoever they are to do something that is intentionally better for many. And if we can do our little bits, I now having had the real pleasure to spend some time with you, understand why you're in the Thinker's 50, why you are, where you are. And I feel very grateful and blessed that the education system has people like you in it to create a world that is going to be better than yesterday. And that's what, what we all need to do. We're custodians of the future peace. 

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And to be thoughtful and thinking the right way is in everybody. It's in everybody to be able to do that, and share it and question things in the right way. So it's been a real pleasure. I look forward to following more of your work. And perhaps when we're able to travel next time I'm in the States and in New York, we'll share a coffee. And yes, just a real deep heartfelt thank you.

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Anna  

Thank you so much, Ross. Thank you for everything you were doing as well. Thank you. We'll be in touch bye bye.

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Ross  

Great.

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Voiceover  

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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