Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of
Joanne Lockwood: amazing people and simply had a conversation about the subject of inclusion,
Joanne Lockwood: belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to
Joanne Lockwood: thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me
Joanne Lockwood: a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You'll be able
Joanne Lockwood: to catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify, and the
Joanne Lockwood: usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab
Joanne Lockwood: a decaf, and let's get going. Today
Joanne Lockwood: is episode 40 with the title, rediscovering
Joanne Lockwood: lost knowledge. And I have the absolute honor and privilege to be
Joanne Lockwood: joined by Peter Edge. Peter described himself
Joanne Lockwood: who is someone who is a former senior investigating
Joanne Lockwood: officer for Merseyside Police, a professional speaker with over
Joanne Lockwood: 40 years experience speaking before dinner on the subject
Joanne Lockwood: of lost knowledge to customer service and after dinner on the
Joanne Lockwood: lighter side of policing the inner city. It'd be interesting to
Joanne Lockwood: find out what the lighter side is. When I asked Peter to describe his
Joanne Lockwood: suit, he said he's walked the Camino to Santiago
Joanne Lockwood: 3 times by 3 different routes. Hello,
Joanne Lockwood: Peter. Welcome to the show. Hello, Jo. I'm it's
Peter Edge: it's an absolute pleasure to be here, I have to say. I've been looking
Peter Edge: forward to it for quite a while. So Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: We've we've talked about it, and finally, we've got together. Got our diaries lined up
Joanne Lockwood: in the end, didn't we? Yeah. It's pretty difficult, which which
Peter Edge: you wouldn't believe really, would you, in this current climate? You'd think everyone would have
Peter Edge: all the time in the world, but it's so difficult to to to actually
Peter Edge: find the right time that coincides.
Peter Edge: Jo You spend a lot of time washing your hair for white hair.
Peter Edge: Yeah. That doesn't work too well on a podcast, does it really? Just for the
Peter Edge: benefit of your listeners. No. There's not that much hair on my
Peter Edge: head. There used to be a long time ago, but there's not been that much
Peter Edge: there for about the last 30 years. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So, yeah, washing
Peter Edge: my hair and all that all that, that hysteria
Peter Edge: about finally being able to go to the hairdressers that people were experiencing
Peter Edge: towards the end of lockdown was unfortunately lost on me.
Peter Edge: A quick robot with some wet and dry sandpaper, and I'm I'm usually good for
Peter Edge: the solution. It is.
Joanne Lockwood: You're probably gonna tell me you won't worry about the nail bars and having your
Joanne Lockwood: nails done either. What would yeah. Sausage
Peter Edge: rate. Sausage rate. Joking. Yeah. Yeah. I'm afraid,
Peter Edge: yeah, a a long time ago, I stopped looking in the mirror and thinking, oh,
Peter Edge: you look good. Nowadays, I just look away. I don't I don't
Peter Edge: I don't bother. It doesn't it doesn't appeal to
Peter Edge: you. The mirror, make sure that you you can see the breath marks on the
Joanne Lockwood: mirror still. Yeah. Yeah. You look good. I'm still breathing. Yes. Yeah.
Peter Edge: That's that's nice. Thing I check each day. And then as far as
Peter Edge: I'm concerned, that's a winner. I'm on it for on it for the rest of
Peter Edge: the day then. Yeah. So I can live with that. That'll do.
Joanne Lockwood: Another day done. Brilliant. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Okay. So tell
Joanne Lockwood: me, we talked about earlier, you talked about this rediscovering
Joanne Lockwood: lost knowledge. So talk to me about
Joanne Lockwood: this lost knowledge you talk about. Well,
Peter Edge: I don't know whether it's Jo much about rediscovering it. It's more about
Peter Edge: capturing and and retaining lost knowledge. And it's
Peter Edge: something I I I became interested in some years ago, not least of
Peter Edge: which because I I I thought to myself, here we
Peter Edge: all are as as probably the most sophisticated animal on the planet, and we are
Peter Edge: accumulating knowledge.
Peter Edge: Plug a USB stick into your left ear hole and download
Peter Edge: it. And, you know, what happens to it all?
Peter Edge: And particularly, what happens to
Peter Edge: specialist knowledge or, you know, really valuable knowledge that really, really makes
Peter Edge: a difference? What do we do with it? And
Peter Edge: we don't seem to to to to value it to the
Peter Edge: extent that we're we're gonna do it do anything
Peter Edge: proactive to to to save it or retain it.
Peter Edge: And and there were 22 little things which really, really got
Peter Edge: me going, one of which was a conversation with a really good friend of mine,
Peter Edge: called Jed, who was a was a teacher. And
Peter Edge: he was he came late to teach him. You know, he did
Peter Edge: previously worked on the production line at Ford's. And
Peter Edge: he he took to teaching like a doctor Walter, and the
Peter Edge: kids loved him. The parents loved him. Everyone loved him. He was
Peter Edge: a great teacher. And just before he retired,
Peter Edge: couple of years ago now, he went in to see his head teacher, and his
Peter Edge: head said, you know what, Jed? If we could bottle what you have
Peter Edge: as a teacher, this wouldn't just be a good school.
Peter Edge: This would be an outstanding school.
Peter Edge: And then he let him walk away. And Jed left
Peter Edge: that school in possession of
Peter Edge: knowledge, wisdom, charisma, x
Peter Edge: fact, whatever you call it, that had the
Peter Edge: capability of taking that school from being good
Peter Edge: to outstanding. And he let it walk away.
Peter Edge: And I thought, like, you know, that's a hell of a waste. What
Peter Edge: a waste of knowledge. And then shortly after that, I opened this Jo many
Peter Edge: times one day, and and there was a a headline. This is the thing that
Peter Edge: struck me as a as a police officer of a of a certain
Peter Edge: vintage. And there was a picture I don't even remember the television
Peter Edge: series, you know, Life on Mars and then the subsequent one, Ashes to Ashes,
Peter Edge: which was set in the sort of late seventies, early eighties with all these
Peter Edge: archetypal detectives and, you know, big collars and flares and
Peter Edge: all that sort of stuff. But it was a picture from that television
Peter Edge: series, and it was, I think, Keeley Hawes and
Peter Edge: Philip Glynnister were 2 of the main characters sat on the bonnet of a,
Peter Edge: I don't know, Cortina or an Audi or something that'd been using as a police
Peter Edge: car. And the headline read, MET Stumped by
Peter Edge: Case of Disappearing CID. And the
Peter Edge: article was all about how the Metropolitan Police in
Peter Edge: London, you know, the biggest police force in the country, the most powerful police
Peter Edge: force probably in the world with, you know, with a global
Peter Edge: reach and with, you know, a national responsibility
Peter Edge: for the investigation of terrorism and various other types of crimes,
Peter Edge: were losing detectives, the
Peter Edge: then assistant commissioner of what had happened was that the the then
Peter Edge: assistant commissioner for for crime operations, Pat
Peter Edge: Gallant, had written to every detective due to
Peter Edge: retire in that year and said and implored
Peter Edge: them to stay to stay on and to act
Peter Edge: as mentors for junior detectives coming through.
Peter Edge: Now it it appealed to me because I know Pat Gallagher, and
Peter Edge: she she wouldn't implore anyone to do anything, really. So
Peter Edge: it came as a real surprise that, you know, in in
Peter Edge: this very short time window, she
Peter Edge: had realized, hang on. We're gonna lose all these people, and
Peter Edge: we haven't got the experience and the knowledge coming through
Peter Edge: to be replaced. So what are we gonna do? And so, you
Peter Edge: know, cobbled with the the story from my other friend, Jed,
Peter Edge: and this, it it just really got me thinking about, you know, what do
Peter Edge: businesses, what do organizations, what do bodies do
Peter Edge: to firstly, identify the value of
Peter Edge: knowledge in their organizations and then do something
Peter Edge: to, to to capture it or to to
Peter Edge: safeguard their organization against its loss.
Peter Edge: So that prompted me to do a lot of reading around the subject,
Peter Edge: and that prompted me then to to to come up with a a talk and
Peter Edge: and some various other things that I've done
Peter Edge: around the subject of lost knowledge with an overall framework
Peter Edge: of knowledge management, strategic knowledge
Peter Edge: management, risk assessments, preparation, all that
Peter Edge: sort of stuff. So so that's what I've been talking about recently
Peter Edge: and doing quite a bit of writing about as well. One, because
Peter Edge: it intrigued me, and 2, because I I hate waste. Any sort
Peter Edge: of waste, I hate. And and the idea that you can waste
Peter Edge: knowledge just it's it's sinful to to
Peter Edge: me. So does that does that put
Joanne Lockwood: that You're so right. Yeah. That's next.
Joanne Lockwood: Companies lose vast amounts of knowledge and
Joanne Lockwood: experience. And when we're looking at, you know,
Joanne Lockwood: building more inclusive cultures, when we talk about staff retention, when we talk
Joanne Lockwood: about the business because actually value the
Joanne Lockwood: staff retention in the lost knowledge, the retraining, the onboarding,
Joanne Lockwood: the empty seat cost and the opportunity lost. Oh, yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: People move on. And it is a real business expense that
Joanne Lockwood: people really don't always quantify enough, don't understand that cost is lost knowledge.
Peter Edge: Yeah. Well, one of the things that I did when I was reading around the
Peter Edge: subject, I read a report, and I think it was
Peter Edge: called pretty catchy title called The Cost of Brain
Peter Edge: Drain, which I think was done by Oxford Economics.
Peter Edge: And I think they surveyed
Peter Edge: across something like 5 sectors, so from retail through
Peter Edge: to legal. And they estimated, I think, that
Peter Edge: the average cost, average mind,
Peter Edge: of replacing a member
Peter Edge: of staff getting paid £25,000 a year.
Peter Edge: Salary was between
Peter Edge: £20,040,000. The lower end for retail,
Peter Edge: the higher end for for legal. And you think, hang
Peter Edge: on, 40 has about to replace someone. So that's, you know, all the
Peter Edge: different costs that you just described there. So, you know, the the recruitment
Peter Edge: costs, the retraining, the onboarding, the dip in
Peter Edge: productivity while they bring people up to speed. And there
Peter Edge: was quite a debate on on on the Internet
Peter Edge: connected to the to the reports, and people said, Jo, that's way
Peter Edge: too much. And then the more and more people came in, particularly
Peter Edge: people from, you know, established HR functions and some
Peter Edge: of the big hitters, it became quite clear that that,
Peter Edge: as an estimate, was was pretty conservative.
Peter Edge: And if you think about it as as an
Peter Edge: employer, as as an organization, and I I used this the
Peter Edge: the the other day, if that's happening to you time
Peter Edge: after time after time, then your
Peter Edge: your organizational performance is is gonna be on this roller coaster
Peter Edge: of, you know, dips in productivity while you retrain and recruit someone, dips
Peter Edge: in productivity while somebody else goes or you hadn't anticipated, and
Peter Edge: you get them retrained or you get somebody in or you get a temp.
Peter Edge: And who really wants to run an organization that's on a roller
Peter Edge: coaster of performance? Surely surely, your business
Peter Edge: trajectory should be smoother, slightly
Peter Edge: elevated, continuous improvement Jo you can plan, so you know
Peter Edge: and can predict where you're heading. But, no,
Peter Edge: organizations still seem to, not everyone, but
Peter Edge: still seem to have this, this this almost
Peter Edge: blind spot to to to knowledge and its
Peter Edge: value. And it all boils down to,
Peter Edge: for me, a reluctance or an inability
Peter Edge: perhaps sometimes to to recognize the value that
Peter Edge: individuals bring to the organization in
Peter Edge: terms of the knowledge that they have. And that comes down
Peter Edge: to leadership, it comes down to basic things like
Peter Edge: staff appraisal type reports, it comes down
Peter Edge: to performance measurements,
Peter Edge: you know, the sort of performance measures
Peter Edge: that the businesses use, what do they see as evidence of their
Peter Edge: success, and how do they tie that to individual employees
Peter Edge: and say, hang on. Hang on. Joe, get in here. Joe, do you
Peter Edge: realize you're brilliant at what you do? Why are you so
Peter Edge: much better than Peter? Where's the gap? Where's
Peter Edge: the gap in the knowledge? Where's the gap in in, you know, that x
Peter Edge: factor that you have that they don't? Because we
Peter Edge: we should. We've got a responsibility to use that. So
Peter Edge: we've not only got a responsibility to tell you that you're great at what you
Peter Edge: do, but as as your manager, as your leader,
Peter Edge: surely I've got a responsibility to find out why you're so good at what you
Peter Edge: do so that I can apply that knowledge to other employees in this
Peter Edge: organization for the overall benefit of the organization. Surely, that's what
Peter Edge: continuous improvement's about. But people
Peter Edge: don't. And, you know, they don't read the clues. And there are
Peter Edge: so many examples of this not knocking about. You know,
Peter Edge: I I use an example in in one of the talks
Peter Edge: of someone who who worked with my wife. Now my wife works for a
Peter Edge: clinical commissioning group, which is the, you know, the modern day
Peter Edge: iteration. It won't be around for much longer, I don't think, but of the primary
Peter Edge: care trust, so in the National Health Service. And
Peter Edge: she worked with someone who had worked with this
Peter Edge: particular group since its inception.
Peter Edge: So this person had seen it move from being a
Peter Edge: primary care trust through various,
Peter Edge: metamorphosis through to the clinical commissioning group. She had all
Peter Edge: the corporate memory, She had all the processes, all the
Peter Edge: people. She'd be in the journey all the way
Peter Edge: through. And she became, I suppose, a little bit dissatisfied
Peter Edge: or disillusioned or wanted to go somewhere else and
Peter Edge: started looking for a Jo, found a job,
Peter Edge: went to her bosses, her leaders in in this group and said,
Peter Edge: listen. I've got a new job. I'm quite happy to work my
Peter Edge: notice, whatever it was, a month, 3 months.
Peter Edge: But you might wanna put someone with me to, you know, to empty
Peter Edge: me out, to to to to shadow me in this next however
Peter Edge: many months and try and absorb all that and capture some of
Peter Edge: that accumulate. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much. And they never
Peter Edge: came back to her. And And she went back and said,
Peter Edge: remember, I'll I'll be going. It's it's only another it's only another 2 weeks
Peter Edge: now, and I'll I'll be out of here. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah.
Peter Edge: But they did nothing about it, and she left.
Peter Edge: And the next thing, immediately after she'd gone, you
Peter Edge: know, there's a knock on the door and, hi. Can you just tell me,
Peter Edge: who who did we go to for the maintenance contract on
Peter Edge: I don't know. She used to look after that. Oh,
Peter Edge: right. Somebody else had ring you know, who did
Peter Edge: the negotiations for the contract on such and such? No
Peter Edge: idea. She had all that. Oh, where do
Peter Edge: we get and it it was just one thing after another. And, you
Peter Edge: know, you okay. You perhaps don't measure the performance of an
Peter Edge: organization like that quite in the same way as you might have an organization
Peter Edge: that's making widgets and grommets. But, you know, their
Peter Edge: ability to to to perform and seamlessly
Peter Edge: and and in an upward trajectory was deeply
Peter Edge: affected just by this one person and this group. This one person was not at
Peter Edge: the top of the organization. This one person was
Peter Edge: way down in the in the organizational food chain, for one sort of a
Peter Edge: better expression, but their knowledge was
Peter Edge: absolutely vital, and nobody had recognized
Peter Edge: it despite all the clues, despite this person always coming and,
Peter Edge: like, sticking a post it note on the face of the boss saying, I'm
Peter Edge: important. No one acknowledged it. No one
Peter Edge: recognized it. Nobody took the time or made the efforts
Peter Edge: to capture the knowledge that she had. They
Peter Edge: walked out the door. And that's a sin. It really
Peter Edge: is. And you can almost understand why
Joanne Lockwood: they walked out the door because they weren't being recognized for
Joanne Lockwood: their their whole part of the bigger process.
Joanne Lockwood: They weren't badly used. They weren't treated as an important component.
Peter Edge: Yeah. And and that's one of the the the very points I make in in
Peter Edge: in the talk is that if you do
Peter Edge: recognize it really bothers me that that
Peter Edge: there is, there is a a a meaning attributed
Peter Edge: to that little sort of trite HR expression,
Peter Edge: reward and recognition. Reward and recognition is is about giving people, you
Peter Edge: know, a gold watch or a voucher for OZDA. It's not about saying to
Peter Edge: them, Joe, we recognize that, actually,
Peter Edge: if you didn't do what you do, this business would fall over. You're really
Peter Edge: good at what you do. That's recognition. And
Peter Edge: it bothers me that things like staff appraisal
Peter Edge: processes are so one-sided. They're things that we do
Peter Edge: to people. Whereas, for me, in this context of
Peter Edge: lost knowledge, it should be the other way around. It should be inviting
Peter Edge: in the a valuable employee and saying, how come
Peter Edge: you do so well? Tell tell us the organization so that we
Peter Edge: can capture it, as I said before, for the benefit of the organization.
Peter Edge: And actually telling someone that they're a key person,
Peter Edge: that they are valued, as you say, that might be the difference between
Peter Edge: them walking out the door and not. That might be the the difference between them
Peter Edge: sitting there and puffing out with pride in me. Oh, nobody's ever told me
Peter Edge: that before. I'm actually valued. And that, you
Peter Edge: know, it it it breeds loyalty. It breeds self
Peter Edge: esteem. It breeds cohesion in a team.
Peter Edge: Self respect you know, the the benefits of doing it are just
Peter Edge: immeasurable, but the downsides of not doing it are catastrophic
Peter Edge: potentially. So why aren't people doing it?
Peter Edge: That's the thing for me. Oh, and as
Joanne Lockwood: as we as we know ourselves, the facts don't change people. We know this stuff.
Joanne Lockwood: We don't address it, do we? And as you were talking, I was thinking,
Joanne Lockwood: well, are we still living in a world, this command and control
Joanne Lockwood: hierarchical infrastructure where everyone believes it's all
Joanne Lockwood: process driven and everyone's just a part of a cog? But
Joanne Lockwood: what the way that we're moving in workplace has become
Joanne Lockwood: more complex, we've got more parts, more interactions,
Joanne Lockwood: not just because of digital, it's because the way we're evolving as a society.
Joanne Lockwood: And we're all becoming artists and specialists in our craft,
Joanne Lockwood: and that craft may well be policy processing, it may be admin
Joanne Lockwood: but it's still we're putting our own knowledge and skill
Joanne Lockwood: into this, not just following a production on a process. I
Joanne Lockwood: don't think organizations truly appreciate the artisan inside us,
Joanne Lockwood: The creation we bring as an individual, they just see us as a
Joanne Lockwood: cog, replaceable cog, and that's exactly what you're pointing out here as well.
Peter Edge: Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, it dovetails so neatly
Peter Edge: with there was a piece I wrote some, like, probably years
Peter Edge: ago now on on on LinkedIn called lazy leaders leaders don't listen.
Peter Edge: And it's all about, if you're in a leadership role,
Peter Edge: you are obliged to proactively listen with
Peter Edge: all of your senses to what's going on around you. Because if you don't know
Peter Edge: your stuff, if you don't know what makes
Peter Edge: them tick, if you don't know and appreciate the
Peter Edge: contribution they make, you know, who oils the
Peter Edge: wheels, who do I rely on, who do we go to in a crisis, If
Peter Edge: you don't know those things, how are you ever going to protect
Peter Edge: the organization from losing the knowledge that those people
Peter Edge: hold? And so, you know, you you
Peter Edge: really do. You you you've got to let let well, get to know all of
Peter Edge: your people or as many as you can
Peter Edge: at a at a completely different level, you know, a level
Peter Edge: that that allows you to to sort of come into work and and look
Peter Edge: at Joe and say, I can tell right now. I know
Peter Edge: Joe so well. I can tell right now that something's not right.
Peter Edge: Joe, come on in. What's not right?
Peter Edge: Well, it's this. And when, you know, when when you get that sort of level,
Peter Edge: that sort of interaction, okay, you know, the person even if you work in a
Peter Edge: hierarchy, the person at the very top of the tree may not know that.
Peter Edge: But if the person further down who's managing the team or the person who's
Peter Edge: managing the manager of the team knows that, then at least there
Peter Edge: is a, you know, that there is a way of using that that
Peter Edge: that knowledge and that familiarity to to to make sure
Peter Edge: that you don't then lose the knowledge, that it doesn't walk
Peter Edge: out the door, that, you know, you Joanne you can turn it back on
Peter Edge: the organization for the benefit of the organization. That's
Peter Edge: that's that's what I'm getting at, really. But, of course, the one was you
Peter Edge: talked about artisan there. It's just it's really, really
Peter Edge: it it it rang home to me because it when I mentioned that I speak
Peter Edge: about this to anyone, anyone at
Peter Edge: all, Everyone's got an example of it. I was out for
Peter Edge: a walk a couple of weeks ago with a mate
Peter Edge: of mine and his son-in-law. I don't know his son-in-law particularly
Peter Edge: well, but he works in manufacturing, and and
Peter Edge: they they make electrical components. And I was talking about this. He says,
Peter Edge: god, you're so right. You know, we've we've got a fellow works for us.
Peter Edge: And he's the only person doing this particular
Peter Edge: job. Now they these people make specialist electrical components, for
Peter Edge: example, for wiring in space. So
Peter Edge: this one guy has been doing the same job
Peter Edge: for 40 years. Now that immediately should
Peter Edge: have hold the alarm bell.
Peter Edge: And if he falls over, that part
Peter Edge: of the business is gone. And it's not just gone for
Peter Edge: now. It's gone forever. But it's not even just about
Peter Edge: making the components. This guy weaves these these amazing
Peter Edge: cables, I think by Joanne, but he
Peter Edge: he weaves them Jo that they can withstand the temperatures in
Peter Edge: space because they get used in space. It really is rocket science.
Peter Edge: So he weaves these cables, but
Peter Edge: because he understands the process, he is
Peter Edge: also the only person that knows how to write the tender
Peter Edge: form. So when they're looking to win business, they rely on the
Peter Edge: sky to write the tender, to understand the market, to put
Peter Edge: the business cap. So you take that all all of
Peter Edge: that out of that manufacturing business, and it's a
Peter Edge: huge hole. And not only that, but
Peter Edge: it's, you know, it's a valuable piece of of manufacturing,
Peter Edge: the the the ability to to to complete as it which of which is
Peter Edge: gone. 1, you know, one of the guys I go
Peter Edge: out motorcycling with, he's the same. He's he's a he's an engineer who
Peter Edge: has a skill in what they call white meddling,
Peter Edge: and it's a dying skill. There's not that much call for it, but
Peter Edge: once it's gone, it's gone. And, again,
Peter Edge: the the sort of the the the waste of
Peter Edge: that is is is criminalized.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, I knew a person in my
Joanne Lockwood: network, this is probably 10, 15 years ago. And he was
Joanne Lockwood: now doing a role completely different. I got to know him one day and
Joanne Lockwood: I said, so what have you been doing? He said, well, I used to run
Joanne Lockwood: my own multimillion pound manufacturing company supplying
Joanne Lockwood: this product into this niche market for years. I was the
Joanne Lockwood: only person that made this in the world as a niche product. I said, oh,
Joanne Lockwood: what happened to that? He said, well, one of the key components of that
Joanne Lockwood: product became obsolete and nobody in the world
Joanne Lockwood: manufactured an equivalent component. We spent 5 years r and
Joanne Lockwood: d trying to work around this product, this component, see if we Joanne
Joanne Lockwood: reinvent it. And what we eventually had to do was say, there's only a
Joanne Lockwood: 1,000 of these left in the world, and then we we close our business because
Joanne Lockwood: they couldn't invent a a word about this this one component.
Joanne Lockwood: And that's exactly if you can do that with a component,
Joanne Lockwood: we don't see it with a person, don't we? And that's Absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. There are r and d teams in electronics, and and they're all looking for
Joanne Lockwood: different ways of Yeah. Working around when that transistor or resistors circuit
Joanne Lockwood: chip goes out obsolete. We think about that, but we don't think about the people
Joanne Lockwood: doing. No. No. And and, you know,
Peter Edge: well, one of the other examples I I use, which is not in in such
Peter Edge: a sophisticated field, if you think back to the Roman
Peter Edge: Empire and the construction of the Colosseum,
Peter Edge: the Colosseum and, I think, is it the Pantheon,
Peter Edge: are 2 of the last constructions,
Peter Edge: and they are both still with us today, which used
Peter Edge: a material called concrete.
Peter Edge: There was nothing made of concrete from the end of the
Peter Edge: Roman Empire in about whatever it was, 467 or
Peter Edge: something, AD, I can't remember the date exactly, until about
Peter Edge: 1783, I think it was, when concrete
Peter Edge: was used to make the Eddystone Lighthouse.
Peter Edge: So for about, you know, 1200 years,
Peter Edge: concrete wasn't used. Why? Because someone lost the recipe.
Peter Edge: Someone in the Roman Empire lost the recipe for concrete.
Peter Edge: Now you think how many things were built, how many
Peter Edge: civilizations were built during that period, that 1200 year
Peter Edge: period, and think how different a lot of that might have been
Peter Edge: if concrete had been available and been used.
Peter Edge: But it wasn't. And and that's just one example. And and I
Peter Edge: but worldwide, that would have been amazing. You know, you think
Peter Edge: about the bridges that could have been made, you know, the the thoroughfares, the
Peter Edge: roads, the sea defenses, whatever. It might it might have changed the
Peter Edge: whole shape of the globe as we know. We just don't know.
Peter Edge: But but all because someone lost that little snippet of
Peter Edge: information, that little piece of knowledge that said, oh, actually, if you
Peter Edge: burn lime like this and you mix it with that and then you combine it
Peter Edge: with that and put it with this and put so much water and so much
Peter Edge: stone, it makes this really dead hard
Peter Edge: compound. But, no, gone.
Peter Edge: It's fascinating. It's absolutely fascinating. Isn't it? We're doing that now, aren't we?
Joanne Lockwood: Even in the modern times, we're we're now devolving certain skills
Joanne Lockwood: where lock tables, slide rules, I mean, just an example
Joanne Lockwood: of that. If you showed a slide rule to a young person, they'd
Joanne Lockwood: look at you like you were crazy. You calculate
Joanne Lockwood: and even a slide rule that does log tables, what would you why would you
Joanne Lockwood: want to do with logarithms and it's like, oh, that's because you add instead of
Joanne Lockwood: multiply, it's a lot easier apparently And so we're losing the knowledge
Joanne Lockwood: of those things that have been succeeded. Yeah. We're losing the ability to
Joanne Lockwood: write. We're losing the ability to have conversations. We lose it
Joanne Lockwood: because we're kind of re evolving ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. We just have maths. We don't
Joanne Lockwood: do mental maths anymore, do we? It's I know. It's got a hair clip. There's
Peter Edge: Jo need. There's there's no need. But but it's not just about it's not
Peter Edge: just, you know, what I talk about, it's not just about saving, if you like,
Peter Edge: excuse me, knowledge in danger of extinction. You know, I use
Peter Edge: extinction in the same context as I might with with animals. You know, this isn't
Peter Edge: something that's just dying out. I I
Peter Edge: I think my my my interest in it is is in
Peter Edge: how it gets lost from organizations, how
Peter Edge: it's not used and not maximized for the benefit of organizations,
Peter Edge: and how organizations and business go through this
Peter Edge: this cycle of losing it, rediscovering it, losing
Peter Edge: it, rediscovering it, retraining, reemploying, recruiting
Peter Edge: when when they don't really need to do all of that stuff or they
Peter Edge: could avoid a huge amount of the percentage of the cost of doing it and
Peter Edge: the time of doing it and the impact on their business of doing
Peter Edge: it by thinking about it beforehand and properly recognizing,
Peter Edge: properly appreciating what it means, who that knowledge is
Peter Edge: vested in, and doing something about it at the time.
Peter Edge: There you go. That's me. I was actually chatting to my daughter last night, and
Joanne Lockwood: she my daughter is the manager of an early years,
Joanne Lockwood: playgroup for children preschool.
Joanne Lockwood: And she has a a really high staff turnover
Joanne Lockwood: for various reasons. Some of it is the culture. Some
Joanne Lockwood: of it is the the fact due to COVID, you could they used to do
Joanne Lockwood: it on the on the job. You you come and try out for a week
Joanne Lockwood: before you before you said, yeah, I like the job. So there's understanding what
Joanne Lockwood: it's like. It's not it's not just babysitting on steroids. This is like
Joanne Lockwood: proper childcare, the pause off schedule, this kind of thing. So
Joanne Lockwood: it's not just babysitting. A lot of people come into this as a
Joanne Lockwood: profession, not realizing the true depth of what it means to be an
Joanne Lockwood: early years carer educator. And so
Joanne Lockwood: what she's finding is is because she's the the manager of the of the of
Joanne Lockwood: the nursery where she is, most of her a lot of her role is
Joanne Lockwood: training and onboarding. So because she's got a high turnover
Joanne Lockwood: staff, she's always onboarding. She's always going through the same
Joanne Lockwood: process time and time again for people who often stay a week or 2 weeks.
Joanne Lockwood: And for her, it's obviously distracting her from being a
Joanne Lockwood: better manager and leader because she's so busy doing the training, but
Joanne Lockwood: also is demoralizing her because she feels so thankless
Joanne Lockwood: that she's not enjoying her role. So the knock on effect of this
Joanne Lockwood: retention challenge, the knock on effect of this constant replacement, the
Joanne Lockwood: knock on effect is you're demoralizing the people that are still there.
Joanne Lockwood: You're also this is Groundhog Day again and again and again,
Joanne Lockwood: which erodes the business's ability to move forward. And and that's
Joanne Lockwood: where she's really getting frustrated with her job. And it struck me as you were
Joanne Lockwood: talking that that is another side effect of this churn and turnover
Joanne Lockwood: that people don't even always consider. Constant reinvention of the
Peter Edge: wheel, you know, which is swallowing up
Peter Edge: resources, time. It's swallowing up goodwill and
Peter Edge: loyalty. It's it's it's swallowing up all the positivity
Peter Edge: out of people. It's it's a proper mood over, you know, just constantly
Peter Edge: redoing the same thing when all it needs, really. Well, not be maybe
Peter Edge: not all it needs, but but one other thing is someone just to break that
Peter Edge: cycle, step outside it, and think, hang on. We
Peter Edge: need to take a different look at this. Why do we keep
Peter Edge: going through this cycle of recruitments and retraining and
Peter Edge: loss when we should actually be looking at our
Peter Edge: people and risk assessing the likelihood of them
Peter Edge: going. That's one of the aspects of this. And
Peter Edge: people say, oh, how'd you do that? You know? Well, ask
Peter Edge: them for a start. You know? What are your plans for the
Peter Edge: next couple of years? Or, you know, you look at someone and and you you
Peter Edge: can you can make reasonable comparisons. You know? Well, actually, if
Peter Edge: you're a lazy leader that doesn't listen, you wouldn't know this. But if you've done
Peter Edge: your listening, if you've paid attention, you say, well, I know Joe and
Peter Edge: her husband have just moved into, 43 Crowley Drive because they
Peter Edge: were talking about it at the coffee machine the other day. They've got a whopping
Peter Edge: big mortgage, but they've said that's their forever house, not least of
Peter Edge: which because they're planning to have kids. They've got a great primary school around the
Peter Edge: corner, and they wanna stay there. And it's really handy for for Joe's
Peter Edge: work here at our business. Well, you know, there's a load of clues in there,
Peter Edge: isn't there? But this person is unlikely to
Peter Edge: want to move on. If, however, you look at
Peter Edge: Peter and you see that, actually, you look at his HR record and Peter's
Peter Edge: had 5 jobs in the last 6 years, Every time
Peter Edge: he's he's taken a slight increase in salary and
Peter Edge: he's taken a slight increase, he's got he's got a career in mind. This he's
Peter Edge: ambitious. Well, that might be the point at which you
Peter Edge: get Peter Joanne you say, Peter, what are your plans? I
Peter Edge: noticed this about you, but, you know, we we really value what
Peter Edge: you do here. We don't wanna lose you. Again, go back to that
Peter Edge: valuing and that self esteem and all that sort of stuff. Well, Peter might actually
Peter Edge: then say, well, I'll tell you what. If you don't want me to to
Peter Edge: go, the reason I'd go is because I, you know, I need to
Peter Edge: have an increment or I need to have a bit more responsibility. I need to
Peter Edge: have some progression, and this place doesn't offer me a progression.
Peter Edge: Okay. Well, that's when you start looking at your HR policies, your
Peter Edge: HR services, and and say, well, maybe
Peter Edge: we can offer you that progression. What would it take to keep you? Because we
Peter Edge: don't wanna lose you. Now I'm not saying you let everyone hold you to
Peter Edge: hostage hold hold you to ransom, sorry, but but there
Peter Edge: are things that you can do if you're looking, if you're listening, if you're
Peter Edge: properly thinking about risk assessments of the people that are gonna
Peter Edge: go. You know, risk assessments is, you know, risk equals, you know,
Peter Edge: probability by consequences. You know, so how likely is something gonna
Peter Edge: happen? How much damage is it gonna do to you? If you've got
Peter Edge: 20 people all doing the same job, the loss of one of them
Peter Edge: doesn't really mean an awful lot. If you've got one person like this guy
Peter Edge: weaving cables for space, one person doing one
Peter Edge: job, he's been doing it for 40 years, his departure
Peter Edge: is a significantly bigger risk to the organization.
Peter Edge: It's simple as that nice mere cat on the telly says.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I I mean, we we
Joanne Lockwood: know that we should be doing succession planning. We know that we shouldn't
Joanne Lockwood: because for the individual, yes, they may feel special. They're the only person. They may
Joanne Lockwood: feel that give us an security. There's immense amount of pressure to
Joanne Lockwood: be the only one. Yeah. Because, I mean, I I've been an example
Joanne Lockwood: in my own career where I was always the one that people asked all
Joanne Lockwood: the questions to rather rather than spend time investigating, spend
Joanne Lockwood: time using their own brains, they
Joanne Lockwood: knew that if they asked me the question, they get an answer and it would
Joanne Lockwood: save them having to think about it. So the danger of that is you create
Joanne Lockwood: this environment where nobody thinks, nobody investigates, nobody does the finding out, they
Joanne Lockwood: just keep going back to the original person, which puts a burden on them as
Joanne Lockwood: being their expert. Also, it means they never learned, they
Joanne Lockwood: never developed their career, they never experienced it. And then when you're a
Joanne Lockwood: manager or you're a delegate, you say, who should I give this task to? You
Joanne Lockwood: go, well, nobody else knows. I might as well give it to the person who's
Joanne Lockwood: the expert. And so we never actually as a leader say, actually, if I can't
Joanne Lockwood: give it to anybody else, that should be a flag. I should be going, well,
Joanne Lockwood: actually, I need to be able to give it to somebody else Exactly. Because our
Joanne Lockwood: rocket scientist here is already working on the next space shuttle. We need to go
Joanne Lockwood: to Mars, so I need somebody else to come in. And Yeah. That's what
Joanne Lockwood: leaders don't always focus on is this succession. Yeah. And the as you say,
Joanne Lockwood: the lost knowledge, the knowledge that will be lost. Do that. I don't do that
Peter Edge: dynamically. You know, you can do that sort of risk assessment. You know, it doesn't
Peter Edge: have to be a big complicated process. But if you ask yourself a number of
Peter Edge: questions, as I said before, you know, is this the only person doing this
Peter Edge: job and they don't have a deputy? Is this person the go to
Peter Edge: person in a crisis? Has this person got
Peter Edge: all the contacts inside or outside the organization? Then that's gonna be
Peter Edge: flagging it up to you that you've got a problem,
Peter Edge: and that person represents a risk, and the loss of their
Peter Edge: knowledge represents a risk to the organization to do something
Peter Edge: about it.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I I I stick about the word prehistoric
Joanne Lockwood: just now as you're talking. And I was just, I just thought prehistoric, that's
Joanne Lockwood: dinosaurs, that's all this of
Joanne Lockwood: like meteors and volcanic
Joanne Lockwood: eruptions and prehistoric. I never understood
Joanne Lockwood: what prehistoric meant is pre history,
Joanne Lockwood: is before history was recorded. So we never had language, we
Joanne Lockwood: never had a way of recording it, or there was no humans
Joanne Lockwood: enabled to pass that knowledge down. So there was nothing existed
Joanne Lockwood: that we have any knowledge about other than what we could find out from the
Joanne Lockwood: past evidence. And we as humans
Joanne Lockwood: started creating history at the point where we became
Joanne Lockwood: or language evolved through cave paintings, through
Joanne Lockwood: round the fire storytelling, passing that
Joanne Lockwood: knowledge down through generations. But I'm guessing that in
Joanne Lockwood: those days, the process that we we worked on was
Joanne Lockwood: very simplistic. It was how to kill the mammoth. It was
Joanne Lockwood: how to cook or skin it. It was how to build a hut.
Joanne Lockwood: So the the process driven stuff was was our lives are much simpler,
Joanne Lockwood: but we haven't evolved the modern equivalent of
Joanne Lockwood: the, the sagas, storytelling
Joanne Lockwood: in a way that we always effectively pass down? Is it and that's I'd
Joanne Lockwood: like to think because a lot of our processes are now so much more complex
Joanne Lockwood: and I don't have that mentality of of of passing
Joanne Lockwood: it on so much. Well, again, and this again, this is one of the things
Peter Edge: that really interests me about this. I mean, my sort of I was lucky
Peter Edge: enough to to be selected for a scholarship to go to university when I was
Peter Edge: in the place, and I studied psychology and communication studies. And one of the
Peter Edge: things we did in communication studies was about
Peter Edge: storytelling and cultural transmission
Peter Edge: through myth and storytelling. And you talk about prehistoric.
Peter Edge: Jo some of the the most successful cultures and
Peter Edge: when I talk about successful, I mean in being able to manage
Peter Edge: some of the harshest environments on the planet. So so some of
Peter Edge: the most successful cultures, you know, never have
Peter Edge: access to an iPad. They they sat around a
Peter Edge: campfire. And by some means, as you say,
Peter Edge: through fireside chat,
Peter Edge: myth, whatever, they were able to convey all those messages,
Peter Edge: hunt the mammoth, how to skin it and make it into a kebab or whatever
Peter Edge: it might be. But but they did it, and and
Peter Edge: they survived today. You know, the the Aboriginals in Australia,
Peter Edge: some South American native Indians in in the depths of the
Peter Edge: Amazon. You know, they haven't changed for 1000 and 1000 of years in some
Peter Edge: respects, but they have survived this incredibly harsh
Peter Edge: environment and learned how to survive in that incredibly harsh
Peter Edge: environment purely by cultural transmission
Peter Edge: through myth and storytelling. An example.
Peter Edge: I I was on a call the other day, and and and someone
Peter Edge: sort of made the observation that the the the
Peter Edge: the office water cooler is is is prehistoric
Peter Edge: fireside, and it yeah. It might well be that there's an awful lot of the
Peter Edge: stuff that I'm talking about that does get passed on at the water
Peter Edge: cooler, at the coffee machine, in the breakout lounge,
Peter Edge: whatever it might be. But you've gotta be aware of it. You've gotta
Peter Edge: be alive to it. You've gotta be receptive to it, and then you've gotta
Peter Edge: do something about capturing it. So there needs to be perhaps some
Peter Edge: more formal friendly
Joanne Lockwood: workplace. I'm hearing a lot of that where as we're we're approaching the end of
Joanne Lockwood: this phase of COVID where lockdown's ending and and now
Joanne Lockwood: there's this huge debate around whether we stay
Joanne Lockwood: remote workers, whether we hybrid, whether we go back to the office.
Joanne Lockwood: And there's some big key
Joanne Lockwood: corporate influencers are saying that one thing that's been lost over
Joanne Lockwood: COVID is the the water cooler, that ad hoc
Joanne Lockwood: mentoring, that ad hoc help.
Joanne Lockwood: And and I and I was sitting there thinking, yeah, okay. I get that. So
Joanne Lockwood: we've we've when we've when we've got trainees, we've got people who are
Joanne Lockwood: learning their skills, apprentices. We've got people who have been mentored and
Joanne Lockwood: developed in the organization. And then maybe they haven't got that at close
Joanne Lockwood: contact where that's happening. I was saying, well, it's the only
Joanne Lockwood: answer to that to go back in the office. So we're saying is the only
Joanne Lockwood: way that paradigm works is by going back to the office. Or can
Joanne Lockwood: we say, what we're doing now in this hybrid world,
Joanne Lockwood: we're missing this element, we haven't got that right. How could we solve
Joanne Lockwood: that with the only answer isn't coming back to the office?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And there are companies out there that have never had
Joanne Lockwood: an office. Yeah. They've developed all their products with people around the
Joanne Lockwood: world. They have thrived and succeeded.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, nobody owns Bitcoin, yet Bitcoin has somehow become
Joanne Lockwood: pervasive. There's probably someone listening to this don't tell me actually
Joanne Lockwood: I'm wrong. There is somebody that's doing this and Elon Musk has the power or
Joanne Lockwood: something. But we've we've gotta say to ourselves
Joanne Lockwood: is just because that's the only way we could do it before, doesn't
Joanne Lockwood: mean to say that's the only way we can do it in the future. So
Joanne Lockwood: I think what I'd like to see is is business, working
Joanne Lockwood: habit, working practice evolving to a point where we
Joanne Lockwood: keep what we need to occur, but the answer isn't
Joanne Lockwood: always by the way we always did it. Yeah. Yeah. How do
Joanne Lockwood: we reinvent process? How do we create new spaces?
Peter Edge: Absolutely. And again, it's one of the key points I make
Peter Edge: in my lost knowledge talk is that one of the biggest casualties
Peter Edge: of COVID has been the
Peter Edge: absence of physical contact. And when I
Peter Edge: talked before about, you know, lazy leaders don't listen, you've got to be receptive to
Peter Edge: the clues, all the clues that come with
Peter Edge: that sort of three-dimensional contact rather than the two dimensional
Peter Edge: Zoom type call or Teams type call,
Peter Edge: all those little nuances of behavior, the body language,
Peter Edge: the little things you see, the gestures, the bit that you might pick up at
Peter Edge: the car park, the you know, Jo suddenly
Peter Edge: having a bit of a moment at her desk and rushing off to the toilets
Peter Edge: for a week or Simon on sale suddenly fist
Peter Edge: pumping because he's just, you know, secured. And you you don't see any of that
Peter Edge: because we live in this sort of sterilized little we've got a 40 minute zoom.
Peter Edge: It's in 2 dimensions, and that's it. So, yeah, you've gotta
Peter Edge: find a way of capturing all the other that third
Peter Edge: dimension of communication, all those little bits. But
Peter Edge: you're absolutely right, in my humble opinion. It may
Peter Edge: not be that, well, actually, we've all got to go back to the office to
Peter Edge: do that. Maybe there's other ways of doing that.
Peter Edge: I I don't know what they are, but as you say, there's gonna be businesses
Peter Edge: and organizations that are doing that. What are they doing?
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, the other argument I've heard is that we need to get to work
Joanne Lockwood: to socialize, to have human contact. There's a
Joanne Lockwood: stat on how many people's relationship and marriages have been
Joanne Lockwood: created in a work environment. I thought, okay, this is what we're doing
Joanne Lockwood: here. We're trying to retrofit observation with reality.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think, well, if you take the world of work back 50 to
Joanne Lockwood: 100 years, most of the people in work were all men, yes,
Joanne Lockwood: people still managed to get married. So we
Joanne Lockwood: managed to get married before workplaces were mixed. We managed
Joanne Lockwood: to evolve, we managed to socialize and contact before women went into the
Joanne Lockwood: workplace and when women were exclusively in the workplace when the men were at
Joanne Lockwood: war, we still managed to have families and get married as well. So the workplace
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't have to be the place where you can or have to meet your partner.
Joanne Lockwood: And when they were saying we have to go back to the office to socialize,
Joanne Lockwood: I said, no, we don't. What we need to do is we need to have
Joanne Lockwood: socialization. So if I'm not spending 3 hours of my
Joanne Lockwood: day commuting and working late and being in an office, that means I've
Joanne Lockwood: got 3 hours where I can go to the gym, I can hang out locally,
Joanne Lockwood: I can do enrichment in college, I can
Joanne Lockwood: meet other people in my community. So I can socialize
Joanne Lockwood: locally, not think that the work is my place for socialization.
Joanne Lockwood: So again, what we're trying to do is is trying to force the old
Joanne Lockwood: paradigms back into saying, well, we need it to socialize, we need it for growth,
Joanne Lockwood: we need it for networking, we need it for human contact. Now how about
Joanne Lockwood: we don't go to the office and we build that in our community and we
Joanne Lockwood: build what we used to have, the campfire, the
Joanne Lockwood: village faith, the church, whatever whatever our our root of community
Joanne Lockwood: is, and we reestablished that rather than people sitting
Joanne Lockwood: like drones on a train commuting for 4 hours, using this fossil
Joanne Lockwood: fuel, wasting their time, coming home drained, not having family
Joanne Lockwood: time, not talk not not pass on their knowledge to their children because they're
Joanne Lockwood: so tired, The children end up learning from somebody else's book and not
Joanne Lockwood: your knowledge. That's what I wanna see is the artisan
Joanne Lockwood: taking empowerment into our own lives and bringing
Joanne Lockwood: having control over our life again, not being a slave to the machine, and
Joanne Lockwood: that's that's really why. And I it really frustrates me when people
Joanne Lockwood: say the only answer is go back to work. No. That's that's
Joanne Lockwood: an answer, but not the answer. Yeah. Yeah. No. That I
Peter Edge: think you're entirely right. And I'm hopeful
Peter Edge: hopeful that some of the more forward thinking
Peter Edge: organizations will have picked up on that and
Peter Edge: will have alternatives. If they've not designed them yet, they'll be
Peter Edge: thinking about them and doing some research on them because there will be.
Peter Edge: I read a book, it was recommended by Allan
Peter Edge: Stevens, actually, by a fellow called Ricardo Semler. I don't know if you have read
Peter Edge: it. It's called Maverick. And this is a guy
Peter Edge: who who ran a company called Semco in Brazil, big
Peter Edge: manufacturing company. And basically, he turned the whole sort
Peter Edge: of organizational management norms
Peter Edge: on their head. You know? Well, how much
Peter Edge: holiday do you give your employees? How much do they need?
Peter Edge: Jo I let them decide. You know, they're grown ups. If they need a day
Peter Edge: off, they can have a day off. Well, what hours are you gonna tell them
Peter Edge: to work? Well, why would I tell them what hours to work? You know, they
Peter Edge: know what the product is that we wanna do. They know how many we wanna
Peter Edge: produce. If they can do it in that time, and, you know,
Peter Edge: just everything, really, that that
Peter Edge: was, oh, well, how can you do that? Are you We've never done that
Peter Edge: before. Nobody ever does that. Well, why not? Why not give it a will?
Peter Edge: And his his company, I don't know what it's doing now because it's quite an
Peter Edge: old book, but he's now, I think, a lecturer at some, like, Harvard
Peter Edge: or Yale or some top American business
Peter Edge: school. And his business at the time just went from
Peter Edge: strength to strength to strength to strength, you know, because they
Peter Edge: found different ways of doing things instead of just rooting
Peter Edge: everything in the past and chop chop, busy busy work, work, bang
Peter Edge: bang, we're just gonna do the same as we've always done because, as they say,
Peter Edge: you do the same as you've always done, you'll get what you've always got.
Peter Edge: So, yeah, it was a really interesting read. Yeah. And if you get good shareholder
Joanne Lockwood: return, you you've got good good income. Well, why do I need to
Joanne Lockwood: change? What we're doing works. But it never evolves. And I
Joanne Lockwood: think I mean, I love that concept where there's
Joanne Lockwood: plenty of organizations now where you get unlimited holiday, you you you pick your own
Joanne Lockwood: holiday, you pick your own hours, and there's still this command
Joanne Lockwood: and control traditional way of working with, I can't see you at your desk,
Joanne Lockwood: this presenteeism mentality, if I can't see you, I can't trust you. If I can't
Joanne Lockwood: see what you're doing, I don't know what you're doing. I've got a I've got
Joanne Lockwood: a spy for the watch. I've got a police you and make sure that you're
Joanne Lockwood: you're delivering. But but we forget often that I
Joanne Lockwood: think 67% of the UK population adult population
Joanne Lockwood: are working for small businesses of that number. A large
Joanne Lockwood: percentage of those are solopreneurs, managing
Joanne Lockwood: and building their own businesses that they've built, and they manage inherently
Joanne Lockwood: their own time and react to customers. So what we're doing is we're effectively
Joanne Lockwood: telling employees they can't be entrepreneurial or
Joanne Lockwood: entrepreneurial as is we've got to treat them like children, we can't treat them
Joanne Lockwood: like adults. And, okay, there are some people who need structure, they need
Joanne Lockwood: to have work in that environment. But when we start treating people like children,
Joanne Lockwood: they start acting like children and they want to be spoon fed, they want to
Joanne Lockwood: be told. Whereas you look at all the people maybe that they've been
Joanne Lockwood: parents, there's no time scale on being a parent, you just be
Joanne Lockwood: a parent, so your children don't die, they still survive. So
Joanne Lockwood: you're gonna be really, really careful that we what we Jo, we we put these
Joanne Lockwood: biases on people and these believing that they're gonna
Joanne Lockwood: slack or not do their job or their role if we can't see them at
Joanne Lockwood: all or keep control of them. I'm gonna have faith in people that by treating
Joanne Lockwood: them in that way of allowing to have unlimited, allowing
Joanne Lockwood: to pay them whatever their hours are and measure them on
Joanne Lockwood: output of real value and delivery and and set
Joanne Lockwood: clear expectations about what their output is, then they
Joanne Lockwood: can match their own. If I if I wanna get up at 3 o'clock in
Joanne Lockwood: the morning on a Saturday and go, oh, I haven't done that presentation, let me
Joanne Lockwood: do it now for Monday morning, and then I can have line on Monday morning,
Joanne Lockwood: why not? Why can't I work at this house? But the expectation today
Joanne Lockwood: is that if I want to wake up on Saturday morning at 3 o'clock and
Joanne Lockwood: do that, I still have to be there first thing Monday. There's no pre quote,
Joanne Lockwood: quote. There's no sliding scale where I Joanne adapt. It's it's what I was saying
Peter Edge: before. It's it's about recognizing where the value sits in the
Peter Edge: individual and the way they do their job and their knowledge. You know, your value
Peter Edge: in that scenario sits at 3 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, not
Peter Edge: at 9 o'clock as you Lockwood, ka ching, walk through the door of
Peter Edge: of your factory or your office block or your training room or whatever
Peter Edge: it might be. But, you know, you'll never
Peter Edge: establish that if if you don't trust people. If
Peter Edge: you don't trust people, then you can never properly see the value
Peter Edge: of what they they do because they won't let that out.
Peter Edge: They they won't give you it. They'll they'll hold it and they'll be that. Then
Peter Edge: particularly around things like knowledge and specialist knowledge, they'll hold
Peter Edge: that that in in some sort of very
Peter Edge: selfish golem sort of like way. Am I crazy? I'm going to
Peter Edge: hold my knowledge Joanne no one's gonna share it because that's my
Peter Edge: power because no one trusts me. But I've got this. And
Peter Edge: as long as I've got this, I'm safe.
Peter Edge: And, you know, part of this process for the day will be is still what
Joanne Lockwood: happens because Oh, yeah. Of course it is. Of course it is.
Peter Edge: But you've gotta sort of prize that out and say, hang on. We're all in
Peter Edge: this together. You're doing a great job. What happens if you
Peter Edge: fall over? Well, that's not my problem. Well, it's gonna
Peter Edge: be my problem, so I wanna equip myself to deal with it. So let's sort
Peter Edge: of why are we gonna deal with it?
Joanne Lockwood: But that's that's about, again, about how you value people, how you create this culture
Joanne Lockwood: of belonging. When people have this psychological safety, they don't
Joanne Lockwood: feel in fear of their job and they don't fear
Joanne Lockwood: if they share their knowledge, that devalues their contribution. And that's what
Joanne Lockwood: we're gonna try and do is make sure people are valued for the
Joanne Lockwood: sharing, not the hoarding. And I think the other thing
Joanne Lockwood: that's evolving at the moment is this concept of asynchronous communication.
Joanne Lockwood: In the past, we had to have that interactive chat at the cooler, we had
Joanne Lockwood: to have that phone call, Joanne you, you answer it, but we it's
Joanne Lockwood: real time. But now we're moving on to a more asynchronous
Joanne Lockwood: way where you say to me, I'd like this done at some point
Joanne Lockwood: in the next few days to do the task. I then receive that in my
Joanne Lockwood: timescale and I reply to you within the timescale required. We don't need to have
Joanne Lockwood: an interactive conversation. So I'm not interrupting you, you're not interrupting me. I could
Joanne Lockwood: pick off my work queue and put it back on the done queue. I
Joanne Lockwood: think we're evolving that with messaging and chat and people Jo, well, we're
Joanne Lockwood: losing the human content. Well, fine, let's keep the human content in
Joanne Lockwood: our social life. We don't have to socialize in work. As
Joanne Lockwood: we're reminding ourselves, there are other opportunities to socialize if
Joanne Lockwood: we're not tied to the desk. And
Joanne Lockwood: we can be very efficient in communicating asynchronously,
Joanne Lockwood: delivering work queues, delivering output, and give ourselves real
Joanne Lockwood: time to enjoy our family, enjoy lifestyle, enjoy
Joanne Lockwood: well-being, enrich ourselves where work isn't the
Joanne Lockwood: hub. And, of course, that scares the bejesus out of the
Joanne Lockwood: boss. Bosses want to own you. They want to know they've got you
Joanne Lockwood: because they're scared that your knowledge, as you say, your knowledge will walk.
Joanne Lockwood: But have faith in people, they won't walk if you love them and value them.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. That's the that's the that's the ratio we gotta change here, where
Joanne Lockwood: people feel valued, and they they have the power to lead but
Joanne Lockwood: never want to. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's
Peter Edge: that's one of the the sort of key foundations of this
Peter Edge: if you're gonna make it work in an organization. I remember
Peter Edge: seeing something that might have been on Facebook or LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago
Peter Edge: now, and I think it was the boss of Netflix. And he he was
Peter Edge: exactly the same. You know, Netflix, Gunnar was absolutely successful they
Peter Edge: have particularly in the last 18 months. I think everybody if
Peter Edge: you were to drain a pint of blood off them, all the red blood cells
Peter Edge: would have Netflix
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I think they've done
Peter Edge: really well out of things, but, you know, their
Peter Edge: their sort of management structure, the way that they they
Peter Edge: manage their staff is is very much along the sort
Peter Edge: of collaborative, participative
Peter Edge: sort of framework that that you described there. You know, it's very loose, but it's
Peter Edge: very sort of appreciative. Yeah. We know
Peter Edge: the contribution you make. Again, no hard and fast
Peter Edge: rules about things like time off, annual leave, whatever it might
Peter Edge: be. You do the job and you're grown ups.
Peter Edge: And I think some of the most successful businesses in the
Peter Edge: in in the world are very much like that.
Peter Edge: And people need Positively do we do recognize that not
Joanne Lockwood: everybody not everybody wants to work in that way. We have people
Joanne Lockwood: who are neurodivergent, people who have different ways of thinking,
Joanne Lockwood: different ways of being valued, we know it doesn't suit
Joanne Lockwood: everybody. So we Joanne, yeah, whilst we're doing this work
Joanne Lockwood: evolution, we have to recognize that some people still need structure,
Joanne Lockwood: some people still need routine, some people still need to be
Joanne Lockwood: told. Yeah. And sorted to that. And that's it.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And and, you know, you and and, you know, in terms of
Peter Edge: the sort of the inclusion bites side of of of your podcast,
Peter Edge: that that is a realization, I think, that an awful lot of people
Peter Edge: need to come to that. Actually, there isn't one size fits all
Peter Edge: for for employees. You know? And whether that's in in,
Peter Edge: whether they work in an office, whether whether that's whether they work with computers, whether
Peter Edge: they work with other people, whether they need to
Peter Edge: communicate verbally or whether they can communicate
Peter Edge: electronically. All of those different variables that exist in the
Peter Edge: workplace will suit somebody, but they won't necessarily all
Peter Edge: suit everybody. And and to
Peter Edge: to try and inflict that. And we should look at the people who are displaced.
Peter Edge: Yeah. Yeah. We'll look at the people who are being displaced because
Joanne Lockwood: if we're not traveling to the city, we're not working in office buildings, we're
Joanne Lockwood: not buying lunch, we don't need security guards, we don't need
Joanne Lockwood: transport. We don't need as many buses or trains. The
Joanne Lockwood: infrastructure that we needed in the past where we had 100 of 1000 of
Joanne Lockwood: people commuting in and out of cities, We don't need that anymore. The
Joanne Lockwood: people involved in repairs and maintenance, we don't need to do
Joanne Lockwood: that.
Joanne Lockwood: No. No. Because we could just hop off. We got the in the Internet superhighway
Joanne Lockwood: as we It was faster.
Joanne Lockwood: Speed lines. Up in the air, doesn't it? Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Doesn't it? Think about who's being displaced. Yeah. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: So it's very important to think about who's being displaced, not look through our
Joanne Lockwood: own privileged lens of this is how I think it must be good for
Joanne Lockwood: everybody. So it is important to think about the impact
Joanne Lockwood: on people who are being displaced by this change of working, and
Joanne Lockwood: what can we do for their future of work to
Joanne Lockwood: reinvent their roles in society or their career paths or their opportunities?
Joanne Lockwood: And what does that look like in the future rather than just saying, well, we
Joanne Lockwood: want a lot of IT whiz kids, or we want a lot of high flying
Joanne Lockwood: solicitors or lawyers who can do things remotely, or AI is gonna replace all
Joanne Lockwood: that. So, yeah, I think the future work has to consider
Joanne Lockwood: all it, yeah, holistic, inclusive, and not just follow
Joanne Lockwood: the money. It has to be there has to be some social equity in there
Joanne Lockwood: as well. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow. We've been talking for nearly an hour. That that's
Joanne Lockwood: flown by, and we chat, obviously, for half an hour before we started on the
Joanne Lockwood: on the recording. So amazing. I've actually loved this
Joanne Lockwood: conversation, and and I always enjoy talking to half of them like anything else,
Peter Edge: but I probably haven't got time to. No. We didn't we
Joanne Lockwood: didn't talk about your 40 odd years in the in the, in the motorcycle police
Joanne Lockwood: and your your stories from the Yeah. From from that time. To sign.
Peter Edge: And I'm able to do a follow-up. I took yeah. We Jo yeah. We do
Joanne Lockwood: a follow-up. Go on. But tell us how people can get a hold of you.
Joanne Lockwood: So, I mean, why not? People can get a hold of you. You know, you
Joanne Lockwood: you They can they can they can find me on LinkedIn, are you? Yeah. You
Peter Edge: can find me on LinkedIn, where my sort
Peter Edge: of persona at the moment is certainly all about the lost knowledge speaking.
Peter Edge: The the after dinner side, find me at the website, which is
Peter Edge: www. Dotpeterege.net.
Peter Edge: You know, all my contact details are on LinkedIn, or you can
Peter Edge: email me at PeterEdge@sky.com. If you wanna
Peter Edge: listen to some of the stories from the Camino, I
Peter Edge: did 2 Camino podcasts. So
Peter Edge: just to reiterate that, it's the Camino plugcast.
Peter Edge: If you search that on Google, it will go straight to one of my 2
Peter Edge: Caminos that I actually recorded, so either the Camino Portogues
Peter Edge: or the Camino Primitivo. So there's plenty there for you to get to get your
Peter Edge: teeth into. And we've got lots more to talk about
Peter Edge: on another one of these at some stage in
Peter Edge: the future, Joe. We have. No. And
Joanne Lockwood: I think you you you wet my whistle with the the whole
Joanne Lockwood: aspect of this lost knowledge. And I just thought it was really,
Joanne Lockwood: really interesting to follow that. So thank you so much, really insightful.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, a huge thank you to anyone who's listening in and made it to the
Joanne Lockwood: end, really impressed. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for
Joanne Lockwood: getting this far. So please do subscribe to keep updates on
Joanne Lockwood: future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast, that's
Joanne Lockwood: B-I-T-E-S. I'm sure you've got some friends. I'm sure you must have some
Joanne Lockwood: colleagues somewhere. So please tell them all about it. Share this with everybody you know
Joanne Lockwood: because I've got a number of other exciting guests lined up. I'm sure
Joanne Lockwood: you'd be inspired by over the next few weeks months. And, of course,
Joanne Lockwood: maybe you, you're listening. If you'd like to be a guest, then come and let
Joanne Lockwood: me know because I'd always welcome your suggestions, your feedback, how I can
Joanne Lockwood: improve future shows and how we can improve things. So my name is Joanne
Joanne Lockwood: Lockwood, jo. lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. It's been an
Joanne Lockwood: absolute absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next
Joanne Lockwood: time.
Peter Edge: Bye.