Embracing Uncertainty: Nigel Smart on High-Performance Leadership and AI

00:00 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Last thing going Madeline.

00:02 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Welcome to Voices in Leadership, where leaders who connect, inspire and grow come to share their stories. Live. I'm your host, dr Angela J Buckley. Join us as we explore authentic leadership, gratitude and the power of connection through powerful conversations with inspiring voices. Let's inspire, uplift and elevate leadership that truly makes a difference together.

00:29 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Hey how you doing.

00:31 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Hello. Thank you, nigel Smart, for joining me. I am so excited for this episode of Voices in Leadership. We have so much in common with our history working with Lean and understanding how leadership impacts that and now to forward that conversation into AI. I hope I didn't steal a bunch of your thunder with all of that.

00:55 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
No, not at all.

00:56 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Welcome.

00:58 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
It's great to be here and thanks for the invitation. Yes, we do have a lot in common, as we've been talking a little bit offline and we'll follow up on that, but this is your show and I'm really happy to be here. I know you're going to make me think fast on my feet, which is something I love to do, so shoot, let's go.

01:23 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Okay. Well, I'm sorry to say you were going to have to sit there and smile pretty for the camera while I read to do so shoot, let's go. Okay, well, I'm sorry to say you were going to have to sit there and smile pretty for the camera while I read your bio.

01:30 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Okay, no worries.

01:31 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
I find that this is the most uncomfortable part for some of my guests, and yet it is so important. So Nigel is a serial entrepreneur who has had a successful career as a scientist for more than 30 years, making significant contributions to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, both in corporate and as a consultant. He is a successful author of several best-selling books, is a keynote speaker and an advocate for leadership and high performance in both personal and business lives. In pursuing these interests, he has developed this dual role for promoting excellence in life experiences, as well as processes and systems. In both areas, he promotes the concept that he terms the powerhouse performance and uses creative ideas to push the envelope, to imagine and generate new thinking concepts that increase performance outcomes. Using his technical life, he's identified common principles and opportunities which can be applied broadly to promote success and achievement. In business, Nigel's applying these principles to develop ideas for more effective management of organizations and more effective organizational structures. He is driven to achieve high performance In the areas of relationships.

02:53
Nigel has built courses and coaching to help divorcing men recover from their trauma, as well as building a fundamental approach to developing an extraordinary life based upon the mindset transformations. Two of Nigel's recent bestselling books include Bouncing Back from Divorce with Vitality and Purpose and the Unexpected Leader. He can be reached via his coaching site at wwwrelationshipsandlifestylescom and his tech site, wwwsmartpharmaconsultingcom. Nigel, welcome today. I'm so glad that you are here and what a great roundup of the last 30 years of your life.

03:39 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
It's been a ride. It's been a lot of highs, some disappoint, disappointments, but I work on the idea that I learnt from people like Tony Robbins that I met 30 years ago no regrets or minimise regrets, and I think you have to do that. Life is a rollercoaster a lot of doors open, a lot of doors shut. You've got to be prepared to grab hold of things sometimes and trust. I think it's really important that there is little certainty in life. The exciting part about it is the uncertainty actually provides the juice to some extent. The fact that things are uncertain and we don't know where we're going in creates that sort of trepidation, that, that excitement that, oh, I wonder what this ride's going to be like. It's a bit like going to the fun fair, which I used to love doing. I don't know if I can go to. I don't know if I can do that, and and you go on it and go. Oh, my goodness, I want more and I approach my life in that way.

04:47
You know, I think you've got to accept that you're going to make a lot of mistakes. I make mistakes every day. I've made some big ones. I've made some fantastic choices. I've had a lot of things happen to me that are unexpected. And you know, as I, as I tell everybody, you have to just power through, and this is where this idea, this concept that I have of powerhouse, um, high performance, um, I don't know anybody that is super successful that hasn't had a handful of massive disappointments. Most of the real successful entrepreneurs the name people, people that have made, if you like, a lot of cash and equity in their lives, they've maybe had five or six really horrible situations. I mean, think about Steve Jobs, who you know as a person very quiet, absolutely.

05:54
But think of Steve Jobs. Look at how many disappointments he had before he came back to Apple and made it what it is today. I mean, that was almost an abject failure, uh, but he kept going and he was a an interesting man. I think that that he took a lot of inputs from a lot of different places. Um, so far from being the you know, the, the, the, the jack of all trades, a master and none. He was a master, but he took a lot of inputs from different places and actually molded that into something that was truly unique. Um, in my own way, I try to craft things and take that as a really good example. Um, and we can talk about some of those things. I'm sure you're going to probe me about one or two things that I've done.

06:46 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Well, I really appreciate your perspective on multiple inputs. I think there is quite a bit of value in understanding there's a lot of research that supports it as well. Multiple inserts, multiple perspectives at multiple levels of organizations, is how you build trust, but also build robustness and build sustainability in your projects right? Not just projects, your personal life, your research, new ideas. Okay, I have a great idea, but does it work right? And is it my idea because I live in this sliver, or is it something that's going to apply broadly? And the only way you can find that out is by getting many people's perspectives?

07:44 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Absolutely.

07:45 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
So you are also in the process improvement world.

07:53 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Right.

07:53 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
When you walk into a facility, what are you looking to do first? What's the first step that you want to understand when you're looking at the process, looking at how people are going to get on board? Maybe not get on board, what are they? What's that look like?

08:13 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I go in as a sponge. I go in as a sponge, seriously. I'm all about energy and I'm all about atmosphere, um, and I, I'm just a sponge. I look around, you know. I mean if you could see where my eyes were going or where, where the inside of my eyes was going, I'm all over the place. I'm in. I'm in like I've got like, you know, on star trek, you know, my scanners are going. All my inputs, everything I'm, I'm, I'm receiving from, or everything, um, I, I'm, I'm receiving the atmosphere from the people, uh, I'm looking at the facility or I'm looking at, I'm listening to the um, you know, to the team, the management. I'm listening to what their objectives are and I'm trying to see whether the, the management or objectives or the goal of whatever it is. You're trying to look at whether that's congruent with the messages, the, the unspoken words that I'm receiving from the people. I really do believe I'm a process person, I do believe in systems, but I believe that people. This is why I'm so big on human agency, especially in the age of ai, where ai is going to solve everything, right? No, um, I'm all about the idea that people are the things that will make a difference. People make companies, people champion ideas. So what I like to do is to absorb and I look around to see if there are any champions, because ultimately you can listen. You will then formulate your ideas. Maybe you've seen the same situation before of a fashion in sort of like a slightly different context or representation.

10:15
I often say to people people will say to me how do you know how to do that? And I say I didn't. I said that problem is like a man coming to me in a gray raincoat, but I've seen that same man in a brown raincoat before, or a green raincoat, and I said what the hell are you talking about? It's what I'm trying to communicate is look, if you look too hard you will miss everything. You just gotta listen and look and take pieces, because very, very often some of the things that you're trying to solve have already been solved somewhere else. You just have to take a few pieces from different areas and thread it in a different way, and then that gives you the angle that will give you the angle to solve this problem that you're trying now to, to, to come up with a solution for, and so to answer your question as quickly as possible I'm a sponge to answer your question as quickly as possible.

11:23
I'm a sponge, I listen, I look around, I pick up on body language, I listen to what's being spoken, I read whatever people are going to give me on a whiteboard or what have you, or on a computer, and then I start to think and I do all that as quickly as possible, especially if you go and maybe are taking around facilities I'm looking to see whether or not there are obvious things out of place. I'm looking at the good things that we can build into a new picture, whatever that picture solution is going to look like. But that's what I do. It's not about going in and saying, okay, I've got all the answers wallop. I like to get as much input as I can from people At some point, maybe stage. Stage two is I have tools that I build and I will talk to people at different levels and I build a, a swat kind of you know, opportunities for the people listening at home.

12:40 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
What does swat stand for? Um?

12:43 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
what does SWOT stand for? It's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

12:52 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Yes, thank you.

12:53 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I had to think about that one for a moment.

12:54 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
I know because we use it so frequently.

13:08 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
The first time someone asked me, I was like you have to go review, yeah, and you know you can build you. I mean, that's one tool that I like to use and it's such a basic tool. But you can build that in conversations and you can make notes and then later on you can, you can formulate, uh, the, the, the, the strengths and weaknesses, and you can see. You can then build the opportunities. You can then maybe, maybe, ahead of time, you can build the threats you may be, depending on what the issue is. You know what the threats are because they're trying to, they're trying to enter an area where there's already a piece of technology or somebody's already done something and you're aware of it, and maybe they're not, um, and so when you build the threats, you can say you are going to need new options because this is already an area that maybe is covered with patents or some other know-how, some trademark or something, and so you will need to think about building new options. You, you will need to think about building new options. Um, so that that's one of the things that I would do pretty quickly um, over the next day or two, if we go into a, a place and for an assignment where you might be spending a week. Maybe that starts to happen towards the end of the first day, and I collect as much information as I can.

14:22
It's very important where there are in our game talking pharmaceuticals or in a process where you've got a regulated. It could be in the chip industry, it could be in the aero industry, it could be in the food industry. Where you're dealing with regulators, it's very, very important to get the inputs from the production side, but then you've got to listen to the problems from the production side, but then you've got to listen to the problems from the regulator side. What you will find and I know you've probably seen this organizationally in the things that you've done is the people here don't understand the problems of the people here, and converse is true, and so what I'm trying to do is to get an appreciation of understanding what each other's problems are and in that way, you collapse the silo situations that you tend to find when people are.

15:17
This is my responsibility. Why are you interfering? Well, it's a collective responsibility and, yes, you can have line responsibility for the technical side, for example, but you also have a collective responsibility Because you have a company goal and the goal is to, in this case, to make a new therapy, a new medical device, a new pharmaceutical product, for example.

15:45 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
But that's the way I go about it. What is your favorite question that has really allowed people to open up?

15:54 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
when you walk into a setting like that, what's my favorite question that people ask of me?

16:01 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
leading question that you ask them or that I ask them start the conversation it's really easy.

16:09 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
It's what do you think is wrong? How would you go about this? Or where do you think you're failing? Because a lot of the time in organizations, you know, we're layering up and again I've mentioned the silo type of situation, which that also occurs on certain levels, but people are not encouraged to fail it's a word I don't like to use but people are not encouraged to do something that could be a mistake, that could be failure, that something could not work.

16:57
But we learn through making mistakes. You don't want to encourage people to make humdingers repeatedly. I mean that's just incompetence. But look, every one of us makes mistakes. We learn through trial and error. R&d is trial and error, especially today.

17:18
We do a lot of simulations so we can minimize the amount of experiments we have to do because we simulate based on accrued knowledge from the past. This is why I like looking back and saying what can we pull from our experience? What can we pull from our database of knowledge that's going to enable us to be able to design a better experiment. Of course, today we've got artificial intelligence, which is going to be the universal panacea, right Wrong. What that allows us to do is when I do my simulations. When I do my permutations, instead of taking six months to do something, I can say to AI given these parameters, what's your best estimate as to what the probability is that this is going to work out for this, this, this, this and this set of conditions? And we can generate that information, simulated, maybe in hours, certainly in days, which then takes us down a much more directed path, and to me, that's the value of why people can get excited now about artificial intelligence. It's not that it's going to solve your problems necessarily. It's going to enable you, just like the internet could in terms of searching.

18:45
We would jump on the internet today and search for papers. Years ago, when I did my PhD, you had to go to a record card in a library and then search for periodicals and then write notes because you didn't have access to a photocopier, and it would take you days yes to research an area days or weeks maybe because a periodical wouldn't be there. Now you can get that in hours or minutes, and so it's another tool that enables you to come up with variations and permutations, which is exciting because it means now, what are we good at as humans? Thinking, being imaginative, coming and coming off the wall these crazy ideas, things that well, that's never going to work. Well, we can try it out now and get rid of that, and if that doesn't work, we can move on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one.

19:38
Do you think how quickly Thomas Jefferson, not John Jefferson, edison, sorry, edison, oh, thomas Edison, yes, how quickly would Edison have come up with the light bulb if he'd had access to ai all those years ago? He may have done five to ten reps instead of a thousand reps, which is what is often quoted as. Edison didn't fail. It was all r d. He had 999 failures before he got the light bulb to work. If we'd had AI back at that time, he could have simulated all those permutations and he could have probably cracked it within 10.

20:20 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Potentially, what he added in that process. We always talk about the light bulb, but we actually didn't have a strong understanding of tungsten processing. Yes, it's true, what AI can't do is know about tungsten, right? So not only did he create a light bulb that functions, but let me expose my metallurgical background a little bit.

20:51 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Love it.

20:52 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
You have to be able to have some of the fundamental knowledge about the world in order to feed the AI.

21:00
His 995 failures that you say were about creating a body of knowledge about tungsten that then was stable enough to remain lit right. Of course we wouldn't be able to just go into a database and say, tell me everything about tungsten if he hadn't created the fundamental knowledge through that R d. Recently I saw a talk from the VP of NVIDIA and when people have been saying, well, ai is going to take over everything, what should my kids study in school? He's like AI will not take over everything, but if we don't have the fundamentals going in that are good, we won't have anything good coming out.

21:52 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
And that comes back to yes, you need fundamental understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology before you can do that.

22:01 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
And more and more specific.

22:03 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
And, more specifically, you're absolutely right. I mean, I use that as an example because you know your audience. It's one that people get and it's one that people understand. Yes, you know, I want the light bulb to come on in their heads and say oh.

22:16
I see what he's getting at. It's very, very important that you can understand, if you like, the process that's involved, that it doesn't just happen like that. That it doesn't just happen like that, but the tools that we have enable our imagination that's creating. It's the curiosity. I just did a talk a couple of days ago, which you're aware of, and the provocative title was in the age of AI, is humanity the weakest link, essentially, and my thesis is no, it's not, because, um, it's our curiosity which, as you say, feeds the capability of this enormous tool that is going to change everything, for sure, but without directing it, without saying okay, this is what I want. This thing is no better than the Texas calculator that we had as undergraduates. That helped us from having to do our differential equations longhand, you know.

23:27 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Yes, and I'm old enough for that. I don't know if my kid is doing it longhand, but he had almost the same calculator for a while.

23:37 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I'm sure I'm sure I tell a story when one's in a social engagement. I remember as an undergraduate running off to see a rock concert with a friend of mine who was at another university, who was becoming a dentist, and we saw this rock con together and we came back the next morning on the train and I got into the lecture theater. We had a late start that day. I think it was like a 10 o'clock lecture and I walked in the lecture theater and I sat on the front bench and everybody else was sitting towards the back and the professor that was giving the talk. It was quantum mechanics. Well, I mean, you have to have a certain type of brain to want to appreciate that. I think I appreciate it now, more now than I did at the time. I sat on the front row and about 10 or 15 minutes in my head went back and apparently I started to snore.

24:31
10 or 15 minutes in my head went back and apparently I started to snore and when I woke up there was this guy that was like the bird off Sesame Street looking down at me like this. You know, somebody prod me in the back to wake me up this is the sort of thing that happens to all of us.

24:53 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
To the best of us, especially when we're working hard long hours, it catches up with you. We are human right, Fundamentally human.

25:02 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Thank God we are, and I believe, though, that we have a responsibility, angela, to upgrade our skills. You know, I gave a talk to a half a million dollar, half a million dollar, half a million people in India almost three years ago. October, it'll be three years. I can't believe where the time goes, but 20 of us went over and I gave it. I gave a talk, and it was about leadership. It was about what's important, and what's important is you have certain skills and you run up against problems the type of things we're talking about and at that point, you realize you need to upskill.

25:47 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Yes.

25:47 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
You have to bounce up, you have to bounce forward and I talk a lot about this and then you get to a point where you kind of hit that glass ceiling again and you need to, you need to bounce skyward, as I call it. So you need to do moon shots. You need to get this idea into your head that you it's a constant, never-ending process that we have to go through, and I think, from a health point of view, or a mental health point of view, I think it's a must-have, because I think it's the thing that keeps you fired up and young. I think it keeps you with onsets of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and goodness knows what else dementia I think it's the thing that keeps you really, really sharp.

26:41 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Physically fit, mentally fit.

26:44 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Yes, and I, you know I'm a great big proponent of that. I mean, some days it feels like my brain is going to mush because I'm totally fried. But I crave new information because there are things that we don't know. And then, as you read some work a great book, certainly on the neuroscience stuff that is happening so fast you can then think about gee, you know, I had a problem some years ago and now I'm seeing it in a different light because I have new information and you've upskilled yourself and you don't realize it.

27:26
But people, my late brother-in-law, who was a biochemist, he had done his degree and all the rest of it and he used to say why are you doing all these courses? There was a mindset in and I loved him dearly, he was a great guy. Sadly he died of cancer about three years ago. But he was a great guy. He had done his training and he was doing his job very good at it. But he he was intrigued or not confused. But he always asked me why are you doing all this? And I said because there's always more to know and maybe through knowing more you're going to come up with something. That is amazing that somebody else is going to turn around and say, gee, you know, I wish I'm glad you did that, because you did that, that enabled me to do something else. And you sit back and you say, you know, I didn't invent this, but I influenced somebody that did go on and invent something. And that to me is like wow, you've influenced. And I think, as a professional, I'm sure you see this in your life too.

28:43
We have a great responsibility to influence and we are influencing people a lot of the time. Most of the time we don't realize it. We are influencing people a lot of the time. Most of the time we don't realize it. I crave people to influence me because I just want to expand my knowledge base as much as possible. It's enjoyable, yes, but that creative side as I listen and I'm glad that you shared that interview about NVIDIA Chip and those people, because they are at the front of that technology and so to hear them admitting look, this isn't, you know, going to solve everything, it's a tool that will enable humanity, humankind, human agency, to fulfill its wildest expectations or its wildest dreams, and I believe that I mean, I don't know any solopreneur right now who is surviving without the support of the various AI systems.

29:54 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Right the amount of work that's associated with being in a solopreneurship successfully is significant, and AI can take off some of that burden. Can it make decisions for you? No. Can it walk into the plant and solve your problems? No, can it walk into the plant and solve your problems? No. Can you use AI to identify problems if you're already putting systems in place. Where's your data collection? What does your data analysis look like? You can create that AI that can be supportive of, but it's not creating itself. But it's not creating itself.

30:32 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
That's true. That's true. One of the things that I was going to share something with you.

30:42 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
as I was listening, I lost that train of thought.

30:44 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Never mind, I apologize, no, that's okay.

30:46
I just think that it's really helpful to keep on growing and if we do that, then you know we give ourselves infinite possibilities.

30:58
The thing that I am emphasizing at the moment, as we share AI and we share problem solving, in the various things that we do whether or not it's in the tech area, which I work in a lot, or whether it's in the human experience side, which I do with my other coaching business we need to recognize that we're interacting with people and so that human agency piece, that interpersonal skill agency piece, that interpersonal skill, is going to be something that, as we, individually or collectively in companies, exploit the benefits of AI, we're going to need to enhance our capability to communicate with each other so that we're understanding clearly, clearly understanding what is the issue that we're trying to solve and are we communicating the needs and wants to enable another part of if it's a company to do their part on, which is, you know, a massive jigsaw puzzle where we all contribute certain pieces. If you don't, you know, I don't know about you, but when I do all the jigsaw puzzles, I always do the outsides first and then I work inside.

32:35 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
That's just my way of doing things. Always are the corners.

32:37 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Start with the corner, the corners yeah, but I mean, if you have a particular set of skills, then, um, and you can't communicate what the color is, you know what, what the shape is on the other part of the puzzle, then they're never going to be able to find their part and it's never going to fit together properly in terms of the solution build. So that's something that I think that we're really going to have to get better at, because our communication skills universally is pretty rubbish. I think it is. I'm not trying to be disingenuous at all. I'm trying to be very honest. We also need to get more resilient about the challenges.

33:24
I talk a lot about being anti-fragile. People say what the hell are you talking about? What's anti-fragile? You have to push back. You have to have that, um, what sometimes in england is called a dunkirk spirit or the never, never say die, the never, never give, in which winston churchill is very famous for for it's um. You have to have a belief. You have to have the trust in your conscience and in your belief systems that you can achieve something.

34:02
Being anti-fragile is more than having the ability to bounce back in terms of a setback. It's being able to bounce forward and ultimately bounce skyward of a setback, it's being able to bounce forward and ultimately bounce skyward. It's being able to bounce to a place that is further forward than you were when you, when you incurred a difficulty, for example. And the reason why I put it in that way is time is moving forward, or always, and so if you have a setback, by by the time you solve it. If you just say I'm going to bounce back, you're not bouncing back to where you were before the event happened. That's already now in the past and life has moved forward. The situation in a process has already moved forward. The situation in your life has moved forward. It's think about a car traveling at 30 miles an hour and something falls off. You're already 100 yards down the road before you realize it. It's the same when we approach how we deal with changes. It's a difference in attitude of how we deal with change.

35:14
If you think about this like a hockey stick or like a if you, if, if one's familiar with the starting a new company, the hockey stick graph is shown where you go into the, into the red, into the negative end of the end of the equation, and then you come out and then you, you rise above the median line and then you start to be profitable, and attaching problems is a little bit like that.

35:44
You take a hit and you become resilient, you fight back, but then you have to find that other something special, and you're doing that because you're accessing something special in your brain and you're accessing your higher cognitive capabilities. What is that? Your brain operates in a conscious and a subconscious or a non-conscious way, and your brain waves move faster in an unconscious way than when you're conscious. We all need to be consciously aware when we're solving problems, otherwise we can't solve the problem. But if you can get yourself into a mode that allows you to think five times faster because you're accessing different brainwaves, then the possibility exists that you're going to create opportunities that currently, under normal circumstances, under normal conscious circumstances, you're going to be able to access new possibilities that were not available to you. That is so exciting. That is so exciting.

36:53 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Nigel, we have a comment here from a guest on LinkedIn, and Patrick said humans struggled to align themselves when things were slow, as in pre-AI. And now that things are going so much faster, humans will struggle to align more and more quickly.

37:13 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
That's correct.

37:14 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
We have about two minutes before we move on to the next segment, so can you address his comment for us?

37:20 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
What he's talking about is we're living in a VUCA environment. What is VUCA? Vuca is volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous.

37:30 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Yes.

37:31 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Get him to send me a message and I'll teach him how to be VUCA positive. There's a tool I can show you. I can show you. It's called the line tool. I gave it yesterday in my talk. I'll talk about the line tool. I think we did it when we did the thing together in India.

37:47 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
The mega hub With Arafat Mega global.

37:50 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Mega global group. I'll teach you how to be anti-fragile. I will teach you about VUCA. We have to be VUCA positive. What you're talking about, questioner, is you're responding to a VUCA environment and you're a negative VUCA. You're fragile and you're powerless. And I will teach you how to be anti-fragile and powerful. If you can get into positive VUCA, we can get you into flow.

38:21 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
I've never heard VUCA positive. I like it.

38:24 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Flow flow is being in the zone. This is accessing your higher cognitive capabilities, which will allow you to solve problems and perform better. We know this from athletics, we know this from physics, but you also can do this in terms of us as thinkers, in our business, in our tech, in our whatever it is we're doing. You know very, very quickly, Angela, I'll give him this. The Air Force aerobatic team the Thunderbirds there are six of them.

39:03
They fly 18 inches apart. They do loop-de-loops, rolls, all manner of things. If they're thinking consciously, they would collide right what those pilots do is that they go into a non-conscious higher faculty situation where they're operating intuitively. Yes, we have that capability, but you need to be shown how to get into intuitive thought patterns, into flow. I can teach you how to do that. If you're interested, you can contact me through Angela or through the information that she gave at the start, but please.

39:47 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
All the information will be on the VoicesInLeadershiplive website.

39:51 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I can teach you how to do that. Yep, great. Thank you for the question, byadershiplive website I can teach you how to do that? Yep, great. Thank you for the question. By the way, that was a good one.

39:58 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Thank you. Thank you, nigel, for sharing all of your thoughts and you have led us nicely into the next portion, which is our gratitude section of this episode, and one of the things that we talk about is the spirit of gratitude, and it's similar to SMART goals. It's simply a framework in which to provide feedback, and in this case we choose positive feedback. So the S stands for spirit, for specific, so what specifically are you thanking this person for? The P is for personal. What are the challenges? What did that person give up in order to be helpful or conduct the specific element that helped you? I is for impactful how did this person, how did these actions, impact your professional life and journey? And R is for relevant. This talks about your values, their values, how are they demonstrating their personal values through this action? And then the second, I and T are inclusive and timely. Inclusive meaning making this public, and T in general when you give feedback, you want it to be as close as possible to the time the event took place, right. In this case, we're doing a retrospective.

41:26 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Absolutely.

41:27 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
So that's spirit, spirit of acknowledgement. So who would you like to thank and acknowledge today?

41:38 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
There is a couple of people, a couple of people that I'm thinking of.

41:44 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Let's start with one.

41:46 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
The one I'm thinking about most of all is deceased, but I am so grateful to him. He was a japanese gentleman that I met at a conference that I went to in 1982 in tokyo and his name is masanora misawa and he was a director at a large pharmaceutical company that made anti-cancer drugs. And he came to visit my lab in England about six months after that and he had accepted a job with a new biotech company in Canada and he came to see what I was doing a pilot plant that I put together, um, a new bioreactor that I'd co-designed, which was gone into manufacture by a, a UK company for growing cells because we're talking about the early phases of biotech here in 1980s, the early phases of biotech here in 1980s and he asked me would I like to have an opportunity to come and work with him in this new company? And it was exciting for me, it was something new.

43:06
I just lost my parents, both that year due to different illnesses, and I wanted to go on adventure. And he provided me the opportunity to go adventure and I'm I'm enormously grateful for the fact that time and I walked my talk. I was unsure, I was scared and I said, no, I'm going to do something. I'm going to trust myself and I'm going to say yes, please. And eventually, after visiting this place in Canada, in Toronto, I said make me a formal offer and I will come and work with you. And I did. And in the beginning of 1984, 85, I moved to Toronto and went to work for that company. I worked with him and we did some great things together.

44:13 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
So, okay, okay. So he saw something in you. Let's, let's be specific. He saw something in you. He took the time to investigate who you were right and he made you a formal offer that was life what, what? So that's specifically what he did. Yeah, what do you think that cost him?

44:45 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Well, um, in a positive way or a negative way.

44:53 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
So kind of yes, I feel like he, I think he took a gamble.

44:59 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
He took a gamble. He came from a different culture. We were going to another culture again. He had lived in Canada a little bit himself. He had done a sabbatical, I think, in Canada at some point and he liked the lifestyle which was less regimented compared to the corporate life in Japan. But he took a gamble whether or not it would work out.

45:26
He knew my circumstances, so there was an element of faith yes, but I think he appreciated um my scientific capabilities and I'd already demonstrated um some capability I think, listening to you, that would have been what I heard.

45:51 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
So okay and then. So that was S&P and then I. For how did that impact your career and your leadership journey?

46:07 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
It was kind of seminal in many respects it really. I was in a new environment. I was in a high powered industry environment. There was a lot of expectations, there was a lot of edge capital, money, um, there was a a lot of responsibility that was thrust upon us, not the least of which was a hell of a lot of money uh, the like of which I'd spent quite a bit in the previous circumstance that I had but basically the budget I was given and the responsibilities to build things and to work with a lot of other people that were from very much more of an academic research background more of an academic research background, one had to demonstrate in terms of Okay, wait, we're done with that answer.

47:00 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Sorry, you're going down a side.

47:02 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Another rabbit hole?

47:03 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Yeah, go on then Okay, and what values do you, what values of the organization that you were putting together in Canada does?

47:22 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
his action reflect. If you ever worked in Japanese culture there's a high level of integrity and personal responsibility and I think that gave me whatever I was doing, whatever I was doing personally, I had a bigger responsibility to make sure that I conveyed that or brought the best or brought other things out of other people, people that didn't realize what capabilities that they had had in themselves. It's very, very true that people don't realize what people have inside of them and it requires somebody else often to bring it out of them or to bring them to a point of awareness so they realize what their potential potential might be, and I think he did that for me okay, so can I try to summarize what you have put together and see if you agree?

48:25 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
absolutely, I trust you careful, famous last words me, so I pronounce his name correctly.

48:34 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Masanora or Masa Masa Misawa. We know him as Masa Misawa.

48:38 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Okay, all right, risk-taking. In seeking out his creative and technical expertise as a young, developing biotechnologist, you took a step outside of your natural culture of rigid and took a risk with him moving to a new country both of you in a new country, creating a culture of integrity and accountability within the group, while also exploring new ventures. So new venues, new development, things that the industry had not yet seen. And the impact on Nigel, going from academics to large private equity, is that it has directly impacted his career and his career trajectory, not only as an expert within his field, but also launching into all of the skill sets that are necessary for a successful consulting and coaching career. Today. You created not only the financial bandwidth for his development and growth, but also the space within which he could develop as a leader of an organization and a department and a leader of leaders.

50:23 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Very good.

50:24 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
How is that, is it accurate?

50:27 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
I think so. It's a fair summation of what I've shared, as I think of him. Yeah, I think he would approve of what you've gleaned from the things that I've shared, and I think that to know if he was still with us, which you know to know if he was- still with us, which you know.

50:54
Maybe he is in a spiritual way to know that his life had impacted somebody else's in this case mine in that way. I'm sure that would give him great pleasure. Yes, he was a gentleman, very patient man uh, even when we got upset and annoyed and probably a bit reckless. He was a very understanding man and he did appreciate our capabilities and the richness that we brought together from different cultures and I really appreciated his depth of knowledge and to give him credit for being able to be that adaptable, especially coming from a very regimented culture which even at that time that was probably still the case in the 80s.

51:47 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Yeah, it was probably the beginning of some of the openness, but not quite yet yeah. So, Nigel, one last phrase that you would like to share, one leadership tip, and then we are going to head on out. What do you want to share?

52:14 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Be aware of what's going on around you. Always try to do the right thing with integrity. Listen to your gut and then act on that.

52:30 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
I like it. Thank you, listen to your gut. I think this is a great example Talking about VUCA positive, the stories that you've shared, the risks that people have taken to put you where you are today Such a great wrap up of where we are. Nigel, I look forward to learning more about you in these coming weeks and potentially working together. So thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you and I appreciate the impact that you have brought to the world through your leadership and coaching.

53:05 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Thank you, angela. It was really delightful to be here and to share a few thoughts with you and your audience and, yeah, I look forward to many, many more interactions with you.

53:18 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Have a great day. This is Angela Buckley and signing off until next time.

53:24 - Dr. Angela J. Buckley (Host)
Bye-bye, bye.

53:26 - Nigel Smart, PhD (Guest)
Bye. Thank you for joining us on Voices in Leadership, where leaders who connect, inspire and grow share their stories. I look forward to welcoming you back to our next conversation. In the meantime, visit wwwvoicesinleadershiplive to access show notes, links and to subscribe and stay connected, and in the spirit of gratitude, let's remember to thank one person near you Until next time. This is Dr Angela J Buckley. Signing off.