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This week’s guest on all about business is Octavius Black CBE, the co-founder of MindGym, a corporate learning company that merges behavioural science with leadership development to turn struggling teams into powerhouses of productivity.
In this episode, James and Octavius discuss the psychology behind high performance, why most leadership programmes are a waste of time, and the psychometric test that can predict your team’s future.
About Octavious
Octavius Black CBE is the Founder and Executive Chair of MindGym, a company that delivers corporate learning and development programmes through 90-minute training sessions known as workouts.
Octavius has also co-authored several books that provide actionable insights and techniques to improve mental fitness and overall wellbeing.
In recognition of his contributions to business, Octavius was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2023.
Timestamps
00:41 the origin story of MindGym
03:50 the 90-minute learning revolution
07:11 coaching and performance improvement
13:24 the importance of belonging and inclusion
19:43 HR challenges and innovations
27:42 addressing workplace stress and wellbeing
30:15 five conditions for thriving at work
35:39 the role of feedback in the workplace
41:54 the importance of emotional self-regulation
49:06 the future of AI in talent development
Sign up for MindGym: https://themindgym.com/
Read Octavius’ book: https://tinyurl.com/n9bk57b5
James: [00:00:00] Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode I sit down with different guests of bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture.
James: 70% of workers say that performance management processes simply don't work, and with one third of workers leaving their jobs every year, how can leaders and managers get the most from their teams while keeping them engaged? Joining me today on all of our business is Octavius Black, the founder and CEO of Mind Gym.
James: He merges behavioral science with leadership development. To turn struggling teams into powerhouses of productivity. [00:01:00] In today's episode, we discuss the psychology behind high performance, why leadership programs are a waste of time, and the six step process for transforming your teams. What a wonderful name for a business.
James: I'm gonna ask my first question to you or say this is why mine, Jim, but just to give a little explanation, it's very much focused on learning and development in business, and you founded the company, as I understand, in 2001, and floated it on the AIM public market in 2018. So you've had 25 years now in.
James: Business quite a journey and I'm really looking forward to exploring all aspects of mind. Jim, with you, Octa, but let's begin. Why mind, Jim? Why did you call it that? What does it do? It started
Octavius: off, dare I say, a slightly drunken dinner where in the late nineties we were looking at each decade and what it had peaked at.
Octavius: So we thought that eighties with Jane fonder and jogging and exercising other than for sport was kind of the decade of the body. Then we looked at the nineties, it had [00:02:00] yoga and feng shui and uh, alternative medicine became massive. Well, maybe that's the decade of the soul of the spirit. And then we thought, what would be next?
Octavius: Well, mind body souls an obvious trinity. So we thought the next decade could be the decade of the mind. And so we thought in that case, why not create a mind
James: gym? That's really interesting. So that, that's pretty. Big picture stuff that sort of prompted you to the, so you just came across that name that evening or was it Yes.
James: They just sort of came to you? This idea.
Octavius: And we came up with this, uh, thought and then went out to physical gyms. Right. And the idea was in order to get people's attention in a gym, you couldn't last for anything longer than 90 minutes. Everyone thought of those days that learn anything useful, you need to spend a day doing it, which is clearly absurd now, and was ridiculous then.
Octavius: But we came up with the idea of doing a 90 minute workout. I
James: was in a physical
Octavius: gym. Gym in a physical gym. That's the maximum. You did kickboxing and then you might do conflict handling. Right. So we take Oh, so you
James: did both in the gym? That was the
Octavius: idea. Oh, I see. So you went out to all these gyms to push this idea and it was a complete [00:03:00] disaster.
Octavius: They could not have been less interested. The only way the modeling worked out was if you had. Zero marketing costs, zero winning business costs. You filled every session, then you broke even. So this was clear on a business model. So you began by thinking
James: that people who like kickboxing would also like conflict resolution.
James: They could do the mind and the body in the same place. I prefer the fighting. I don't know. So, but that's really good. I mean that's, putting that together is so interesting. It was a laundry idea. Yeah. Yeah. Totally
Octavius: failed as a business concept. Right. My background being as a management consultant. I've seen lots of recommendations, not succeed because businesses didn't think of the human dimension.
Octavius: So you'd have this fantastically clever strategy, brilliant analysis, but then it would flop because people weren't on board, they weren't engaged, you weren't using the psychology of behavior in order to get people to sign up and commit to things. So I thought, why don't we spin this and turn it on business and go to businesses and say, why don't we run the mine gym for you?
Octavius: So your people are more engaged, more committed, and faster at change and perform better. And did [00:04:00] you still. Stay with the 90 minute format we did indeed. Very importantly, the BBC was so skeptical about it. They managed have study to compare our 90 minute session with a day long session and found that our 90 minute session actually outperformed the day on four outta five measures, plus saving everyone four fifths of their day.
Octavius: So the case for it became pretty compelling after that. That's
James: very satisfying.
Octavius: So why was it that the 90 minute. Approach
James: outperform. 'cause
Octavius: we rethought what learning is about. So traditionally people thought you had to have a set of learning objectives. You had to move at the pace of the slowest learner.
Octavius: You had to make sure everyone covered everything. We were like, no, this is not how people learn. And what you want do is to stretch people. You have to think a little higher, go a little beyond, and therefore you. Pack the session with a day's worth of content and people would pick the two or three things they found most useful.
Octavius: And then we never have anyone sitting and listening for more than six minutes at a time. So you're constantly doing things like it's a gym after all. So you're doing exercise. I'll give you an example. We have a very popular session called Influence and Persuade and. Sitting in aew of [00:05:00] chairs and on alternate seats as a pen, and you come and you sit down and before even the introduction, you said those of you either got a pen or you're sitting next to someone without a pen.
Octavius: I'd like you to pair up and the one without the pen has to persuade the person with the pen to give them the pen. Right. And after two or three minutes, some of them have and some of 'em haven't. You know, why did you persuade? What worked, what didn't? Yeah. And suddenly in four minutes, everyone's, the way to persuade people is to appeal to their interests, not your own, for example.
Octavius: Right? So you're moving. So what's the best example
James: of that? You came across? Have you got one? Well, we, if you're trying to persuade someone to give you a pen.
Octavius: I, I do. It's slightly old interview question. Yes. Sell me this pen, isn't it? I remember years ago pitching to a bank called UBS and the. We'd pitch to the HR people and the directors of this and that and that, and suddenly the big cheese comes in and he's like the absolute authority.
Octavius: Everyone goes silent, quietly. He turns up and she said, okay, tell me what you've got. So I started telling him about influence and persuade, and he kind of status move. He stands up, turns his back on me, and starts pouring coffee. Hmm. So like in that moment, I could have just carried on talking, but if I did, I've kind of lost him.
Octavius: Mm-hmm. So I go [00:06:00] silent. No, no, no. Carry on. I said, no, don't worry. We will wait until you've done the coffee. So finally he turns the other people in the room he hasn't spoken to. You say Mine's a cappuccino at this point.
James: All comes in the moment.
Octavius: So then what happen? Yeah, so then he says, do you want a coffee?
Octavius: So I say, yeah. They say no. I say yes, and he gives me a coffee. Obviously I don't drink it 'cause that's all part of the status thing. Oh right. You know
James: this
Octavius: stuff. Yeah. You don't drink it then. So he's done the effort. He's had to serve me, but then I haven't. Seen it worth my while to consume it. Then he looks at me and says, what do you you got that's so good?
Octavius: I said, well have this great session on influence and persuade. And he answers this fantastic question. He asked me, he says, are you using it on me now? Which is really clever. 'cause if I say yes, he can go, it's not working. And if I go, no, he says, well, if it's so good, why aren't you using it? So what I said is the answer is yes, and we'll find out if it works at the end of this meeting.
Octavius: And he kinda smiled and thought, okay, we're on the same level here. And sure enough, they ended up becoming a client and we went from there.
James: I like that. You've gotta think on your feet though, but that's what mind gym's all about. Yeah. Yeah. So six minutes. You [00:07:00] don't get people to sit for more than six minutes.
Octavius: You are doing stuff, you're talking in pairs, you're doing an exercise, you're asking a, answering a quiz, you're, there's something going on the whole time. So you're not sitting with a boring lecture or boring video of someone. You're actually taking part in exercises and trying things out. See, how would I apply this?
Octavius: Or what is the blocker that's stopping me from doing something? And how many people would be in a typical group? Typical group, about 20 people, if it's in person and about 16 people, if it's virtual. Um, we also run large sessions like TED talks on speed and they can have fill the whole stadiums with people before, so there's a different kind of session.
Octavius: And we also do one-to-one coaching. Coaching's really interesting 'cause coaching can transform or it can make you worse and you don't know which until it's too late. So we That's, tell me about that. So why is that? How, how does that work? Well, you confuse likability with performance improvement. So a very interesting study in the states, the largest study of upward feedback is students rating their faculty.
Octavius: And you can also measure students' performance on their exams at the beginning [00:08:00] of the year and at the end of the year. So the question is, what is the relationship between, well, how students rate their faculty and how they do in their exams? The answer is, after a point, they are inversely correlated. So the more you like your professor, the less well you do or improving your exams because the professor's very likable.
Octavius: James is fantastic. Essay. A few facts are quite what I thought, and I never heard that view before, but I love your originality. Mm-hmm. Well, James, you can't get your facts right. You come up with a hypothesis that no one's coming a hundred years get back to work. And the first one you really like the advice.
Octavius: That's really helpful. The second one, you think, actually, I don't like this person at all, but you work doubly hard. So what we've found with coaching is often the coach wants to be very likable 'cause that's how they get more business, right? James, you're doing a fantastic job. Does your boss really know how good you are?
Octavius: I never get feedback like this.
James: Well, coach you might. Well, I'm shareholders. My professor was pretty blunt as well. That's why you've done [00:09:00] so well. I think I do respond more to sort of. Getting a bit of a shove, them being told, I'm marvelous, I think. 'cause that makes me think, I've gotta show you, I've gotta show you.
James: Well, a good coach will do, will do that.
Octavius: Yeah. But most coaches want to be liked, rather like the professors rather than to change behavior. Right. And so we developed a new methodology called Precision Coaching, which is all about driving performance. And it's shown a time and again to get better performance results.
Octavius: So what buttons does a precision coach push? Octavius, first of all, they, they imagine what you get you to imagine what good enough would look like. Right. So in cognitive behavioral therapy or in actually in all psychotherapy, one of the most successful versions of it is success-based therapies. You imagine what good enough would look like, and we start with that, and then we work out what are the things that are getting in the way, and therefore what are the first steps you can take?
Octavius: And we do a four by 45 minute journey. So you start off defining the problem, what good enough looks like. You work out what's getting in the way. You have a go at trying to fix that. You work out the next thing's getting way, you have a go at fixing that, and then you finally [00:10:00] finish off and then you work out.
Octavius: You've got good enough at something before you move on to the next thing and repeat the cycle. So the worst thing you can do in a coaching session is say what's on your mind today? Or where should we start? I. What you need to do is to have a structure which says, this is the goal, which we're going after.
Octavius: This is what good enough looks
James: like. Now let's work out the steps that get you that. So coaching in that sense sounds quite distinct from therapy, say, or analysis, or is performance coaching, is that similar to sports or is it different in business?
Octavius: Well, there's similarities and there are big differences.
Octavius: I mean, often people talk about sporting analogies.
James: Well, I know, and I've always been a bit sort of unsure about that. Your right to be unsure. Oh good. I wasn't very good at sports, but I wanna be good at what I'm doing now. Well, I mean, so
Octavius: why am I right to be unsure what's 'cause sport mainly takes place in a very defined period of time, between 10 seconds and 90 minutes.
Octavius: You practice a lot beforehand. You then get on the pitch of the field and you do whatever it's, that's required. And you're doing the same thing broadly. This every time, or very similar with a very defined group of people. I mean, the world's not like that. Business is [00:11:00] constant. Don't turn off, you don't practice.
Octavius: You might rehearse a pitch or something like that. Yes. But in the main, you're on the whole time. If you've got a large business, you don't even meet most of the people. Your individual contribution. Obviously you are in a slightly different situation, but for most people, most businesses, the individual contribution isn't moving the dial in a massive way.
Octavius: But the combined effort is what's moving it. So you have to think of it almost like an infinite game. And when it never stops, you never get to that wonderful sunny Upton. The CEO does this big speech saying, you done brilliant job. It's very tough. We're gonna do these changes. Then it'll all be wonderful.
Octavius: But then it'll all be wonderful. As a complete myth, it's not how business works. You're constantly No, because there's always tomorrow. Yeah. But sport does happen. Then you, the gold medal, you get the championship league cup or whatever it happens to be.
James: We are delighted that you are listening to this episode.
James: Hit the follow button so that we can continue to bring you the best business insight and actionable advice to help your business and or career. That's quite insightful, I think, because the sort of always [00:12:00] on aspect of work and life is very apparent to me, and yet we have this sort of, this conversation.
James: I mean, it is been brilliantly portrayed in the TV series severance about sort of somehow compartmentalizing work from. Thanks. What do you think about that? I think service
Octavius: is brilliant. It's an absolutely genius program, and I think actually we blurred the lines between homework too much, and as a result, we're making too many demands on each other, whether you're employer or employee, right?
Octavius: So the employee says, for example, I, I'm not feeling very well. I'm feeling exhausted. It's work's fault. And work is saying, in order to be part of this, you have to work, bring your whole self to work, and every part of your life is part of your working, being totally authentic and present and all of that, all incredibly
James: unhelpful.
James: Is it? Yes. So why so? Why is all that incredibly unhelpful?
Octavius: Because you are a different person at home from your work. There are different skills and attributes you bring and you want to keep those things. Two things separate, so we talk a bit about depoliticizing, the workplace, [00:13:00] right? And diversity and inclusion has become a hot topic at the moment, partly 'cause of Trump's executive orders, partly 'cause of the Supreme Court ruling.
Octavius: And actually what you want to do is you want to depoliticize work. You and I might be getting on tremendously while creating new products. And then we discover we have different view on trade. Or immigration or Israel Palestine. And the debate of the working relationship between us gets massively destroyed by that effect.
Octavius: 'cause we feel very strongly about these issues and that's really unhelpful for the business and it's really unhelpful for our work. I. So what we are very much encouraged companies to do is to remove the politics, not need to take a strong stance on issues that don't relate to the company itself, and create an environment where people from all different backgrounds, all different beliefs or different pathologies, can work in harmony
James: for the benefit of the company.
James: I think that's something sort of. Very important there about having a common purpose, a shared objective. And I also think that, I mean, in our business, I've always talked about inclusion and belonging. I want everyone to feel that they are [00:14:00] welcome in the business, that they can give their best in the business that they belong here and they, you know, whatever background.
James: You're from. So I think it's so important to bring people together, you know, behind a common objective or common purpose. But are we getting better or worse at that as a business community? It ranges. So
Octavius: some pioneering companies are getting brilliant at this 'cause They recognize that the things that are polarized people are best not included and therefore they avoid some of the diversity and equity and inclusion language and stances.
Octavius: Some of the focus on different kinds of representation targets, and they are focusing much more on what we can do to create your word belonging. So how can we say whoever you are, if you are talented and you're committed and you want to achieve what we're trying to do as a business, you are welcome here.
Octavius: So we're working with one company that's short on engineers, and engineers tend to over-represent representing Neurodiversity. So they're like, well, we've gotta get these engineers and actually we're not a great environment for neurodiverse people to work, so we need to change that so we can harm all of these great engineers.
Octavius: Makes perfect [00:15:00] sense. Yeah. Yeah. Other companies are still caught up in, the one company we've got has got 180 different, uh, employee resource groups who represent different criteria, whether it's vegans or menopause, or 180, 180. And they don't think this is the, the limit to much their charan. So what we're doing is we're helping them focus and coordinate those in order to get, uh, the benefit.
Octavius: Of a few that really bring people together and that help to address business problems. So for example, working at a pharmaceutical company that has a low level of Asian women taking part in clinical trials, and that's a big issue because then they're creating drugs that don't necessarily work for Asian women.
Octavius: So they're going to the employee resource group and saying, can you help us solve this business problem? What can we do about it? I know another who's failed to get in market penetration in certain markets, and whereas they just had no one from those markets on the project team. So where you use diversity and inclusion to further a business objective, you.
Octavius: Representing who comes to clinical trials or understand your audience. It's a really [00:16:00] important thing to do, and there are lots of ways you can build belonging, partly by helping people value variety in its infinite sense. Mm-hmm. So we, for example, got companies to talk less about projected characteristics and more about headwinds and tailwinds.
Octavius: So headwinds are the things you're born with that made life pretty tough. Tailwinds are the ones you're born with that made life a lot easier. We tend to overestimate our own headwinds. I had it really tough and underestimate everybody else seems. You had it really easy, had lovely family, very upbringing, very thank you.
Octavius: And
James: actually if we, well, you don't know, I mean, you dunno, it's the truth. Anything about someone who's just sitting opposite you and Yeah, I mean they might have had all sorts of things going on in their lives, even a hundred percent day before. So the headers, intes becomes really important. So you, when you, when you, when you sort of conceptualize that, are you trying to get people to think about that more in other people?
James: Yes. So you are trying to make people aware of headwinds and as a concept
Octavius: trying q empathy, yeah, and empathy about the individual rather than about the [00:17:00] category. So rather than all women or black people or whatever category it is, is actually thinking about the individual and saying, how can I understand them better and what can I do to help them be belonging?
James: Included
Octavius: part of the program.
James: All you can do in the end because you're gonna be sitting opposite Octavius or Frankie or Will, and they're the people in your world. So,
Octavius: exactly.
James: That's the best place to start.
Octavius: We worked with a very interesting psychologist, uh, called Lasana Harris out of UCL, and he ran an experiment in a school in Chicago where the kids, the black kids were getting more detentions than the white kids.
Octavius: So the traditional thing to do is to show the data to the teachers and say, of stop being racist. He's like, I'm not sure that's gonna work, because there are a lot of psychological effects like backfire and backlash and stuff. Mm-hmm. Basically means that's very unlikely to succeed, even though that's how most d and i programs tend to work.
Octavius: And instead he got 'em to say, well, why did you become a teacher? And they all basically say the same thing. I wanted to help kids, Greg, get the best chance of my
James: mm-hmm.
Octavius: What would make you James the best teacher you could be? Well, again, they all say pretty much the same thing. I teach shot individually, get know them where they are.
Octavius: [00:18:00] Mm. And that was pretty much all he did. Racial discrimination for detentions dropped by 45% within six weeks and continued low for the next rest of that school year and the next school year. So you've sidelined the effect of bias, even if you haven't necessarily changed how these teachers think. That's where psychology
James: becomes in really clever.
James: So what you're saying is what the teacher took more time to know each individual as a person rather than Yes, just categorizing in effect
Octavius: what they reinforced their identity. Why did I become a teacher and professional excellence? And then he got to empathize each individual. Recognizing in the, in the empathy said, what was it like that kid doing homework?
Octavius: Well do there a quiet place or do they have to compete with noise? Was like getting up in the morning. Did someone out their clothes and giving breakfast or they have to get themselves up and then suddenly little Tommy turning out five minutes late instead of saying, how day you five minutes late? It's like you made it in, it was quite result, only five minutes late.
Octavius: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
James: And you had more empathy, so excellence in what you're doing and empathy. Yes. As bedfellows [00:19:00] in a sense. Exactly. Fantastic. So you've got some views on hr. I happen to know. Yes. Onus. I'll let you share them. But I, I mean, HR is the, the world I operate in, in, in many ways as a recruiter. And obviously many of our clients and customers work in hr and I'm a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Per Personnel Development.
James: So I'm very interested in the future of hr. You've got some sort of interesting insight that I think you should share with our, I'm very happy to say, come on, far
Octavius: away. I'm far away that I think there's lots of excellence in pockets in hr. So there's some really great HR professionals who are very driven by numbers and data and evidence and outcomes, and that's exceptional.
Octavius: But overall on masse, the re, the report card is not that impressive. So since 2007, spending on HR has gone up by 35%. The UK has the second highest HR spend as a percentage of payroll in the western world, secular to the Netherlands. [00:20:00] Um, probably in the whole world, the data doesn't show the rest of the world outside the west.
Octavius: And then on top of that, we are seeing productivity has barely shifted. In the UK it's a few percentage points hard than it was in 2007. We're seeing absenteeism at all time. High sicknesses an all time high. We're increasingly seeing people doing two or three jobs simultaneously, full-time jobs and no one even noticing.
James: So I think, I think those are all sorts of, that's pretty bad. It's not good, is it? No, no, that's the bad, bad.
Octavius: A
James: call sheet. Yeah.
Octavius: The outcomes are not great. So I think the intent is really good, but quite a lot of tendency to follow fads rather than facts. And therefore we find that 40% of initiatives that started never actually see the light of day.
Octavius: Now there's, there's a $200 million I. On digital licenses for, uh, learning libraries that aren't used. So you have an enormous amount of waste because it seems like an interesting or fun thing to do, or 'cause people, everyone else is doing it or because it's the fat of the
James: moment. So, hey, so the $200 million, what people have been given this to spend and they're not using it, or they've signed up [00:21:00] for digital libraries, bought lots of licenses that aren't used, right?
James: And that's HR would be signing this. HR would signing on behalf of their employers. And
Octavius: it is a love day. You say, I go digital library and we've ticked the learning box and everyone's got access to it and they can learn reading body language or hadand boss or jam making or whatever, but actually usage is really low and link to business outcomes is very low.
Octavius: Right mean leadership development spend. The leadership development doubled over a period of 12 years and trust in senior leaders fell by a third at the same time. And you have to look at that and ask yourself questions. What went, what happened, and what could we do differently? So what
James: happened and what can we
Octavius: do differently?
Octavius: Yeah, I know the answer. Yeah. Well, what, what?
James: I mean, genuinely what did happen? That sounds terrible. Well, so you invest. So we as businesses investing in leadership development, the leaders are getting worse. You'll say Yes. So
Octavius: what happens? So we, what we're not really understanding is what is it that is like to be a leader and therefore, what can we make learnable about how to be more effective at it?
Octavius: And I'll explain that in a bit more detail. So the first thing in life is full of [00:22:00] tensions. There are things that are impossible to do both of 'em at the same time. Now, you would probably want absolute mercy. We want absolute justice for everybody else and we all feel the same. But you can't have absolute mercy for every individual and absolute justice for everybody 'cause they're logically inconsistent.
Octavius: So life and business is full of the same kinds of tensions. So you say to your team, I want re immediate results. I want this quarter to really deliver on the goals, but I also want you to think long term and plan for the future and invest in your ideas. I want you to coach people to make them great, but I want you to use your judgment to get on and get the results that you need now.
Octavius: And there are all these, sounds like you've done me quite well. Yeah. I to some
James: of your people,
Octavius: no other leader does this in the world. You the only one. Is that right? Yeah.
James: So you want everything.
Octavius: Then what happens? So what happens is you then get what's called cognitive dissonance. So you're trying to hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time.
Octavius: And this basically hurts. It hurts your head and you can't do it. So then you have something called displacement. You find reasons to explain it away. Uh, the wellbeing bit doesn't really matter. Now I leave it for later. It's the bosses that are [00:23:00] impossible. I would try and delegate more, but my boss won't let me.
Octavius: And you find endless excuses and reasons to justify why you can't resolve this impossible tension. Which then increases your sense of autonomy or agency. And the last thing you want is your leaders to feel less in control. So then that repeats the cycle and it goes on downwards. So there's a, so it's a sort
James: of downward spiral of loss of control.
Octavius: Yes. Because you these much being
James: given on.
Octavius: You're saying these demanded of people at the same time and they're dinged for not doing one thing or the other,
James: so, so the sort of leaders above them need to get better at saying, this is your priority, or this is our priority? Is that what you're saying? No,
Octavius: it's not.
Octavius: What is it I'm actually saying is the key,
James: the meta skill is this ability to handle tensions. Oh. So you've gotta train someone to be able to deal with all that at once. 'cause it's not gonna go away
Octavius: and it can't, it's logically impossible for it to go away. So it's not as if you, why can't it go away?
Octavius: Because you are gonna think you need short term and long term, and you are gonna need to look after people that make decisions half and quickly. This is the nature of running a business or running a division or running a team. Yeah, I accept that. This is the [00:24:00] essence. Of course I say that. Okay, so it can't go away.
Octavius: So you've gotta get better at dealing with it. And what the research has really compelling is the meta skill for successful managers and leaders is this ability to navigate tensions, right? So seeing tensions as a source of strength. So a bicycle without tension is a lump of metal on the ground. It's useless, but tensions is what drives things forward.
Octavius: So actually, how do you mobilize and use these tensions? And what we've done is we've created our team of psychologists, we've reinvigorated an old term psychological term called attunement, and we've made it learnable. So we've developed it into four practices. So the first is noticing, don't just do something.
Octavius: Stand there. People are forever rushing to take action or rushing to reach conclusions, but actually gathering information. What are people saying? What is not being said? What are the patterns that I'm starting to see going on? And then move to sensemaking. What does that tell me? What does that, how do I understand how the system is working?
Octavius: And then. Make a choice about what to do. So for example, one of the skills that's really important for leaders is managing [00:25:00] intensity. So you have too much intensity, people burn out. But too little, nothing much happens. And the natural force is to reduce intensity. And oh, you've got so much to you hear boss, you understand how difficult it is on short resources.
Octavius: No, no, no. You don't wanna do that. Yeah. And God, so you, and then the final one is acting on it and then you, it's like an infinity cycle. Then you go back to noticing and sense making and great leaders do this all the time, so, so noticing
James: sense making, sense, making, choosing. Choosing. And acting. And acting and choosings around the intensity.
James: Yes. For example, there'll be other choices you make, right? One. One other thing that you think about that you might decide
Octavius: whether to address the issue or not. Whether to call it out. How to call it out. Do you report and say, I noticed that you've been late for the last three meetings. Or do you say, I think you're lazy.
Octavius: You know, there are, at every moment there are choices that you can say or do or do nothing or bring people together or, and all of that together is called a tuning The tune, the, the full cycle. Yeah. You're a tune and you're constantly dancing around that cycle and greatly just do it instinctively. I'm sure you do, but I don't know.
Octavius: I'm gonna try.
James: Sounds [00:26:00] good. That sounds good. But what's never happened before is to make it learnable. Right. So this is a new
Octavius: innovation
James: of yours
Octavius: last two or three years? Yes. We just had a really interesting study with a company called Galderma, uh, which is a skincare company, comes outta Nestle and, and they were preparing for IPOs.
Octavius: They're really driven on business results. And we said, look, if you want business results, you should run a leadership program based on this concept. And they found that the general managers who took part saw growth in top line revenue and growth in ebitda. And the ones below also took part and saw growth in the both and then ended up running case studies that increased market share and sales by over a hundred percent in certain product categories.
Octavius: So you got this fantastic financial result off the back of attunement and one other concept that we
James: taught well, that, that, that's a very good case study for you, but I now want to know what the other concept you taught was. I certainly will because I wanna know more about how. Get these wonderful results, obviously.
James: Well, it's As a business owner, an entrepreneur, yes. This is about how
Octavius: do you get people who feel under love? How do you get the best from people? Exactly. Exactly. [00:27:00] Seems to me it's totally, how do you get the best from people? And there's a interesting study come out today that recruiters are finding it really tough at the market at the moment.
Octavius: And the reason is because more companies are saying. My solution isn't to hire lots of people from outside, but it's actually to grow people from within. Now the truth is both of them, you need to balance those two together. And you guys do a fantastic, fantastic job on the I agree. It's both of them and you cover both and you do wanna bring in Yeah, both.
Octavius: And you'll see more interim and so forth, which I know you guys are specialists as well, but what we've got is companies also thinking about how do you make the most of the people you've got. And people feel overwhelmed, they feel exhausted. There's a big issue with absenteeism going on in the markets at the moment.
Octavius: More people are, are sick. This is a disaster for business. It's a disaster for the economy, and it's totally avoidable. And so the other concept we focused on was how do you, what are the conditions you need at work in order to thrive? So companies spend $50 billion a year on corporate wellbeing programs, and I'm not even gonna ask you to guess how much impact they have because you probably know 50 billion.[00:28:00]
Octavius: Globally. Wow. No impact at all. Four different longitudinal studies all show no impact on zero impact. Zero impact. One that has 80 measures, two measures moved. One was intent to change weight, but body mass index hadn't moved at all. And that's my problem. You've already been on these corporate wellbeing programs there, so and so.
Octavius: We ident, we've built a diagnostic that shows people how, what, what's happening at work that reduces your chance of flourishing and what can you do to fix it. That also has a report for the manager and the leader as well. But the key is to take responsibility for this. You say the key is to take responsibility?
Octavius: Yes. For who? To take responsibility for the individual in, often in conjunction with the manager, but for the individual to say, works a nightmare if you make stress. Okay. So they say that. So then what happens? So the first thing is recognizing that stress is a good thing, not a bad thing, right? Or can be.
Octavius: And simply seeing stress as life enhancing reduces absenteeism by 15%. In a study by stress is life in high? Is there any medical [00:29:00] evidence of that or There's lots of medical evidence because the opposite of stress is total relaxation. Yes, yes. Basically you get bored. You've got nothing to do. Yes, it's like that other tension.
Octavius: No, I don't want that doing that. No, you can't have enough time and enough imagination. It's not possible. If you've got enough time, you haven't thought of fun things to do. If you've got enough imagination, you haven't got time to do it all. So what you want people to recognize, there's a certain level of stress.
Octavius: It's called you stress, euphoric stress actually makes you perform better. More resilient, more enjoy life, more happy and all, all sorts of things. So the first thing is to reframe stress as a good thing up to a point. And secondly, to reframe work as a source of a good stress up to quite significant point.
Octavius: Sure. So you, you meet more people, you have more interesting time, more challenged, more challenge, all of that. And therefore the first bit is to, is to framing the stress. And then we've identified the five conditions that create, uh, your chances of flourishing at work, which is certainty. Competence, autonomy, belonging, and [00:30:00] purpose.
Octavius: And then what we help people understand is which of those are high and low, and which are the ones you can do something about.
James: So your first model was called attunement? Yes. Do you have a name for this one? Thrive. Thrive. But the first, the first tenet of Thrive is to accept that stress is a good thing or be sort of a.
James: Persuaded that stress is a good
Octavius: thing. Yeah, up to a point. It's definitely a good thing. Yeah. I remember years ago in a session with a guy at BT engineer and he said, I never get stressed at all. He said, it's the only thing that ever stresses me is my colleagues getting promoted ahead of me. I'm like, well, I think we know why that is, mate, don't we?
Octavius: Well, they're awake, they're stressed because they're busy performing and that's why they're getting promoted.
James: So did you share that with him
Octavius: or did you in a more,
James: in a
Octavius: more polite way, as did
James: So they, he, he, yeah. He needed to switch on his stress. Well, there was a trade off.
Octavius: He could feel totally relaxed and calm and zen the whole time, but he wouldn't get promoted.
Octavius: He wasn't throwing himself in enough, or
James: if he wanted
Octavius: to. Yeah, get promoted.
James: You had to, to experience a bit more stress. So you mentioned six things there. There's quite a [00:31:00] lot, you know, purpose, competence. I mean, where do you begin with those?
Octavius: So what we usually measure, I. So one size fits, no one is one of our beliefs, right?
Octavius: So what you have to do is sheep boots are for sheep, you know, let's focus on what this matters to you. I actually launched this research, Oxford, a longevity forum. One of the people in the audience has started a, um, biotech. Mm-hmm. And she said, I now realize where I went wrong, because all these people were exhausted.
Octavius: And I kept reminding them why our work matters so much and why we're changing the world, and how we were all doing it together. Mm-hmm. So I was daring up purpose and belonging. But actually what they were quite high on purpose and belonging. What they were low on was certainty and competence. Mm-hmm. So what I should have been doing is more to show them what was happening the way power, uh, rather than the willpower, and more about how they had the skills to be able to get through this to, and we could all do this together, but based on what, so what I mean,
James: because it doesn't seem to me that much is certain.
James: So how, what is certainty in this, in this model? Certainly.
Octavius: Well, there's several things as to certainty. So at a meta level, you're absolutely right. The world is [00:32:00] uncertain, life is uncertain. Who knows what's going on. But there are lots of things you can increase the level of certainty on. And really it's the small things that happen every day might be we're working with one company where they were closing out a whole lot of sites and they were keeping some other sites open and they couldn't, for legal reasons to close which ones they were closing, which ones they opening.
Octavius: So people would come to us and really uncertain, is my site being closed down? We said, well, have you noticed in some sites they're putting new fiber optic cables in. Yeah, yeah, I've seen that. Do you think they're putting them in in the sites? They're gonna close down. Oh no, maybe not. So actually you can just pick up information, which increases your certainty.
James: Right?
Octavius: And there's a great psychological term called confident uncertainty, which I don't know exactly what's gonna happen, but I know I can cope with it, whatever it is. And therefore we help people establish confident uncertainty.
James: Confident uncertainty. That's a good thing to hold onto through life, isn't it?
James: It is because we're all in that situation all the time. Um, and that's the joy of living. Uh, you're right. So this model, I mean this, the, how, how long have you been doing this? [00:33:00] The, the Thrive
Octavius: piece, thrive program again in a couple of years now, right? Had a great professor called Amy Edmondson who brought psychological safety to the kind of four as a concept.
Octavius: Is she the Harvard Business School? Right professor. And she written the forward for it and has been very much positivity, endorsing. So she's about psychological safety. She's about psychological safety. Interesting enough, I said to her when I helped her launch a book in S over in the uk, I said, Amy, how much do you think psychological safety has been misappropriated to do?
Octavius: The opposite of what was intended table a scale of one to 10. I'll give it a nine. So what do you mean by that? What? What, where are you seeing that? That, what are you seeing? Yeah. Yeah. Psychological safety is supposed to be about us having vehement arguments about the issues in order to get to a better outcome.
Octavius: It's in the pursuit of the business, and we can happily disagree. So Pixar, for example, they rip each other's scripts apart. You know that character doesn't work and the plot line's boring and the subplot is irrelevant. And, and yet they still go out and perfectly friendly afterwards. Yeah. But it's all done in the spirit of making things better, making a really good film.
Octavius: Now let's be [00:34:00] misappropriate to say, I don't feel safe speaking out about here because someone might disagree with me or tell me I'm wrong. Actually, the whole point is to tell people that you have a different view and why you have a different view and debate those things through. So the idea of being psychologically safe is not about, no one's gonna say anything that offends me or upsets me.
Octavius: It's, it's the opposite. People are gonna challenge me, but not as me as the ideas or the concept or the product or the marketing strategy or the digital route or whatever else. Sure. It's not the person you are
James: challenging, it's the idea or the. The direction of travel or whatever, isn't it? I mean, I suppose they might be
Octavius: giving voice to it.
Octavius: The risk. Using a sporting analogy, if someone's running up the pitch, they're chasing the ball. Not you, but you can think it's you that they're chasing.
James: Yeah. So is that a problem? Do you see it a lot in business that people are too sort of tentative around people's feelings and ideas when they should be more?
Octavius: Absolutely.
James: I think this is a robust
Octavius: be taking care and come overdone strength. And actually caring as being frank and being candid [00:35:00] and saying things as you see them and reporting. Very interesting work on feedback, for example. So everyone says we wanna have more feedback, we wanna have feedback, culture.
Octavius: I remember gonna see Sears, big retailer in the States, I remember. Yeah. And they just want a, a award for the most feedback ever given and received in the company. I'm like. Are you sure? That's a good thing? They're like, we won the award, didn't we? Well, and we know what happened to Sears didn't. That's why I said I remember.
Octavius: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So feedback on Sears
James: for our younger listeners. What happened to Sears? Well, they, they, they,
Octavius: into administration. Chapter 11 don't, doesn't do they. Yeah. So feedback itself can be really helpful, but it candid an immense damage. And so what we've done is break it down into what's the bits of feedback that work.
Octavius: So describing things really helpful. So I noticed that you put sources in all your charts. I noticed that when the CEO asks you a question, you asked a question back, and then you can say, uh, this is what it tells me. So you can then own the interpretation. It tells me you're very rigorous. It tells me you're thorough researcher, or tells me you're willing to ask questions to power or whatever it might be.
Octavius: Now, you then on the receiving end, can go either I disagree with the facts, half the charts didn't [00:36:00] have sources or someone else put 'em there. Or you could agree with the facts give, but actually there's a different reason for it. But because by breaking down the, what you've noticed and described how you've interpreted it, you end up having a much more
James: constructive conversation.
James: Yeah. Feedback people find difficult to digest, don't they? Someone, someone said on our podcast that someone said to him, you know, feedback is like getting a. A jumper from an, you can always put in in a drawer and forget about it, which I thought was quite good. But you know, that's the other side of it.
James: You don't have to take it on. I mean, it's just, it's just information in a way, isn't it? It's in, it is useful information if it's what someone's noticed. Yeah. So the more factual you can make it, the better off. Okay. More factual. So based on what you've actually noticed. Yes. It was indisputable, you know, if someone had a video and recorded it.
Octavius: Or if you dispute it, you can hardly have a discussion about what happened. Yeah. You know, I, I noticed that you didn't speak for the first half hour of the meeting. Oh, actually I did. I said at the beginning, X, Y, and Z and you can agree or disagree on the facts. Usually there's fairly firm agreement on it, but that then gives you a base from which to say, well, [00:37:00] because you didn't speak for that long.
Octavius: I, uh, I think so the clients. Worried that you weren't part of the team, or you didn't bring enormous value or didn't give as much respect when you did speak about X, Y, Z at a later stage. Mm. Now the other person can then change their view on the interpretation, but at least you separated the event from the interpretation
James: of it.
James: So just listening to you, Octavius, you are doing a lot of analysis of when I was thinking about how you handled the bank, who turned his back on you to go to the coffee. You're doing a lot of analysis in the room of people's. Behavior and what's going on from their body language and who says what in what order?
James: And is this something we, I mean, I think you're gonna answer this question and so that we should all be much more conscious and aware of
Octavius: the basic principle of what Mind Dream exists to do is psychology can solve most of the world's problems. Say that again. Psychology, understanding human behavior can solve most.
Octavius: Of the world's problems, you know, loneliness, depression, bullying, polarization, they're all psychological issues. [00:38:00] Conflict. Conflict, absolutely. And they can also solve us the issues at work. So if you could equip people with practical, useful psychology, their lives would be a whole lot better, and their working lives would be a whole lot better, and their businesses would be a lot more successful.
Octavius: So what we do is equip people
James: with that psychology so they can do it themselves. A lot of young people are studying psychology now. Does that give you hope that the next generation of managers and leaders will be better or are they reading the wrong stuff?
Octavius: It gives me great hope and when I It does, does it?
Octavius: Yeah. Psychology has now become. Really mainstream. When we started, psychology was a, a side issue that people kind of, I remember saying to a, a client once, I said, he said, what do you do? I said, we bring psychology to help you grow your business. He said, you know, my view of psychologists? I said, no. He said, he said, I think they're like B days and bathrooms.
Octavius: They had a touch of class, but no one knows what to do with them. So that was put down on psychology. I think that's changed a lot with TED Talks and many great authors and behavioral science becoming mainstream. Yeah, I was just trying to think [00:39:00] of a good comeback for that, but I'll probably leave it off.
James: I'm off the podcast. I won't do that. So, uh, so that's very rude of him. But you recruit psychologists,
Octavius: you recruit lots of psychologists. We, we, that's your thing. You just, yeah. And then we're, and we're very data driven, so we recruit also Psychometricians. So we're very excited. We've got the world's leading IP on predictive assessments.
Octavius: So you want to predict whether someone will be a good leader or a manager or what they'll be capable of. We have got the most reliable diagnostic in the world for doing
James: that. And what does that involve? So if I want to do this diagnostic Yes. Bit late for me, but how, how, how would I go about if some of the people you're busy finding for your clients?
James: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it might be, or, or wanting to promote or Exactly that. So if someone in this thing wants to do that, how do they go about it on your website
Octavius: is we get in touch and we can have a con. We do it for companies rather than for individuals. Okay. So if your company and you wanted to find out who's most likely to become an effective leader?
Octavius: Or who's most likely to do some particular skill, be more agile and they're working or better at accountability or more likely to [00:40:00] collaborate. We've got the data that shows what are the skills and what are the personality traits that will most likely lead to that outcome. Okay. Give us some clues. So what's the data throwing up?
Octavius: If you wanted People who are accountable, you want people who are ambitious. For example, so ambition is really strongly related to why is that what the data says? I'm not sure I can give you the answer to that. So an ambitious person is more likely to be accountable. My hypothesis as to why that matters is 'cause they want to succeed and therefore they want to be seen to succeed and therefore they take ownership for things that they're asked to do.
Octavius: That would be, I, I can't prove that, but that's my hypothesis. It's very interesting.
James: We had a guest recently who didn't do very well at school, but he said, I've always loved responsibility, and he, and he'd been incredibly successful. Afraid. Yeah. So he must have Yeah. Sort of linked to that in I, I remember that was a striking remark.
James: So that's one. Is there any other things that. What's it? The psychometrician?
Octavius: Yeah, psychometrician is someone who does the, the data for diagnostics. Yeah. So,
James: so the [00:41:00] psychometrics, what else? This is interesting. What else are they telling us? So that's one example. Any other, the, the, you know, in terms of leaders?
James: In terms of
Octavius: leaders, what you, one of the things that's really strong for leadership is emotional self-regulation. So they did, we did an interesting study. It also, one of this diagnostic, an interesting study for. Partners of professional services firms. And what was the characteristic that most distinguished?
Octavius: Those who are more successful, build the most ours, solve the most business than the rest. It wasn't cognitive ability, how smart they were. It wasn't how great communicator they were or how collaborative they were. It was their emotional self-regulation, their ability to come into the meeting with you, not carrying in the mood from the meeting they just had before.
Octavius: And this comes back to you. You asked about certainty at work. The big part of certainty is how your boss treats you. So if your boss turns up in a mood, does that affect what's gonna happen? Or is your boss always quite calm and ready and listens to you and present, in which case you're pretty certain, you know what's gonna happen as a result.
Octavius: So the boss's ability to [00:42:00] self-regulate great increases certainty, which then increases wellbeing and the chance of people will thrive and so on and so
James: forth. So emotional self-regulation. So they're not wondering what sort of boss is gonna turn up today, but Exactly. Just kind of. Consistent like McDonald's.
James: Well, uh, you get what you certainly fairly level. Yeah. Yes. How do you achieve emotional self-regulation? Is that just sort of something some people don't have or something? You can learn all these things? How do you learn it? Yeah,
Octavius: I, you learn it by thinking about what is your triggers and alarm calls, so when are you likely to get into an emotional state?
Octavius: Right. When you feel your psychological or aala grew thumping away, but your emotional state is roused and you're seeing red mis, or you are angry or talking too fast or you are sweating, whatever, it's that you normally do in those moments, not of your Prince Andrew obviously wouldn't be sweating, but some of must do.
Octavius: No. And therefore you can then say, well, at this moment I'm not self-regulated, so I need to go for a walk or delay this meeting or not make this decision now. And the, you [00:43:00] start to notice the triggers. Then you start to choose to behave differently. Usually by deferring or delaying, there's a lot
James: of, another guest was talking about information or, or information.
James: Diet. Yes. Importance. Having an information diet because of all the toxicity that's being sort of directed at us on social media and you know, click, click on this, or you're getting served, sort of not the nicest of things. And how do we. How do we get away from that in this world? Or what Have you got any
Octavius: thoughts that or, yes.
Octavius: It's great research on happiness. Yeah. And as a lot, cram is a student of another brilliant psychologist called, he talks about intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and how we draw our strength. The more we draw from intrinsic motivations, the pleasure of the breeze on our face, or the joy of good company, or whatever it is that we are actually enjoying in the moment, or a range of moments.
Octavius: So we call that intrinsic. Intrinsic as opposed to external validation. I. So compare and despair might be your motto, right? So the more you go on social media and discover that someone's looking [00:44:00] more glamorous or more beautiful or going to more parties, or it's something you wish you weren't, the more you're going to be in a funk, right?
Octavius: So rec, and same comes with the news cycle. So if you, you, you tend to be happier if you're reading books, particularly novels, than if you are following daily news clicks and click RateIt. So reading novels is a good thing. Reading novels, um, uh, promotes empathy. Does it? Yes. You're more likely to be empathetic and understand other people you rather, rather than business books, I'm afraid.
Octavius: So business books are helpful for another reason.
James: Written a
Octavius: business book.
James: I should have written
Octavius: a novel. I read four books for holiday just now. Only one was a novel. So with you. Okay,
James: well I gotta write a novel next. That's good. So you are obviously, you are helping with wellbeing and with performance and with leadership.
James: What, what next for mind, Jim? How do you see your company evolving from here?
Octavius: We're very excited in Indeed because what we're seeing is all the pieces come together. So we've developed all these great units and the bite-sized workout and the precision coaching and the diagnostics, and we're now piecing 'em together into one talent ecosystem, for want of a better word.
Octavius: And therefore [00:45:00] we think there's enormous opportunity for companies who want to make their talent development, learning, and development culture, whatever they choose to call it. More cost effective by focusing on the few things that will deliver the greatest impact and making sure they all fit together.
Octavius: So the diagnostic feeds into the coaching, which feeds into the workshops, which feeds into the digital learning and can be hyper-personalized. So you can give people what they need at the moment they need in order to drive the business outcomes. You're trying, how'd you do that? I, I
James: like the word hyper-personalized.
James: If it's one word, it's probably two. But how do you do that? Is it digital or is it through other methods?
Octavius: It's a combination. So you, you might take our diagnostic, the world's most validated one, and it tells you that the things you need to get better at are decision making. And there might be some, uh, self-directed e-learning on decision making, which we've designed.
Octavius: And there's, uh, again, all our learning's been tested for 5 million people. So it's, it is got to quite a high proof point. So the diagnostic covers those six
James: areas,
Octavius: is it, or It covers a whole, it, it covers a range of areas more than that. Okay. To be fair, there are two [00:46:00] diagnostics. One covers specifically the six areas, and one covers a broader range, which is more about leadership in the main, right?
James: So, okay,
Octavius: so, and what we've got is, so what you might then you take complete the diagnostic, it gives you your profile, it gives you some, maybe some digital learning that you can go to immediately, specifically targeted for you. It can also direct you to certain bite-sized workshops, our 90 minute workshops and say actually the one on courageous conversations will really help you.
Octavius: We've also got a coach for Coach tough conversations called Leo, who's trained in mind gym, who will help you practice and
James: is audio visual you actually, so is Leo a real person, not Leo robot. Leo's a bot. Right. Yeah. So you couldn't talk to Leo, the George, Leo,
Octavius: and you describe the per It is, it's great 'cause you describe the person you, they're very argumentative or they're very passive or they uh Oh, the person you
James: wanna get better at dealing
Octavius: with.
James: Yes. Ah, and you
Octavius: describe the situation, they're underperforming or they're overperforming, or they're slacked off or whatever. Oh, right.
James: And then you practice it large. Well, Leo adopts the role of that person. Yes, exactly.
Octavius: And then Leo responds. As that person would. And then [00:47:00] at the end, Leo gives you feedback and says, this is the things you said that were really good and these are the things you could have done differently that would've got you to a better outcome.
Octavius: Should we
James: care about Leo's feedback? 'cause Leo isn't no person. Well, I think we should care about Leo's feedback much
Octavius: more because they're not pushing their own biases or assumptions about what's right. Yeah. They don't have an agenda and they're listening to you a hundred percent of the time we And they're paying attention, have agenda.
Octavius: Exactly. Exactly. They're not distracted. Very helpful. Yes. So then Leo will also create more data that will then tell you in light of this, what you really need to get good at is goal setting or feedback or whatever else it happens to be. And then you can point to other or get your coaching and your coach gets this feedback about you so knows where to start the conversation rather than dancing around.
Octavius: How did Leo learn his or their trade? Yes, that their trade, Jeff, gender neutral. Leo. We all the mind gym content. We got 25 years of ip, as I said, tested with 5 million people. So we've got all these workshops, you put all this and we put all of it and we taught Leo all the content we've got.
James: Is Leo gonna put you out of a job?
James: Octavius? [00:48:00] It might change my job like so much of AI does. So how might that happen? Yeah, how do you see that? Well, because I
Octavius: think AI is gonna transform the world of work. It's gonna make things, we're gonna need probably fewer people with higher skills that are more critical to the business. And a lot of jobs are going to disappear and change or form into new kinds of jobs.
Octavius: And so we're certainly seeing that AI can change the nature of business, probably not as quickly as people had anticipated. It's coming for sure, and it's changing our business because we're getting able to, to provide the same content through different routes. So this is you, we do it self-directed, we do it large scale events, small scale events, one-to-one coaching, and now through ai and different people in different situations will require a mix of these if you want to change behavior.
Octavius: But it's still the case that 75% of people's p and l is people. Sure. And if you don't realize that it costs, see well, it may cost, you soon need to get the most from that 75% of, yeah, exactly.
James: It's really important. So how long has Leo been sort of at work? Oh, Leo Leo's just arrived. Leo's New Years' new and, and what's the response been [00:49:00] from the first sort of Guinea pigs?
James: Well, the people who've used it love it. Oh
Octavius: good. What's interesting is how many companies are nervous and anxious? They're legal departments. So the HR departments, the leaders really wanted, but the, you
James: just thought us hrs broken. Yes. So they're like, well, let's, let's try this Might be an answer for them, might be an answer for them.
James: Right. But
Octavius: they, the legal departments are getting in the way. So what are the,
James: what are the legal
Octavius: departments? The one legal department didn't like it 'cause they were worried that the coach, AI coach might say something that contravene company policy. There are lots of safeguards. Coach what Leo might, Leo might, there are lot of ways that trigger words that Leo says, I'm afraid that's not acceptable and you can't use that.
Octavius: And there are ways that Leo will actually walk out the room if you, well, the
James: legal department's worried that Leo might say something that would then result in them being sued. Yes. I suppose that's exactly. We've actually got all the precautions and Leos behaves quite well so far. VA is
Octavius: impeccable.
James: You could just program than not to say I might get a suit.
James: Yeah, we have.
Octavius: That's not true. It's much easier to do that with a bot than a person. I, I remember years ago, legal department, not only people to have email 'cause they [00:50:00] might use it for personal reasons. I mean,
James: yes.
Octavius: Legal departments aren't always the first to embrace new technology.
James: No, that's probably an understatement.
James: Yes. Okay. So you see AI obviously changing a lot, but you see a constant in psychology being important. Yes. I'm hearing
Octavius: so when psychology meets technology, that's when you get the, the real magic. I. And so what you want to do is help people become more effective at dealing with other people and using technology to make that happen.
Octavius: So
James: when technology meets psychology, you get the real magic. I think that's a very good point to finish our conversation. Thank you very much, Octavius. I'm gonna ask you two questions that I ask. Everybody. And the the first is what gets you up on a Monday morning.
Octavius: I love what I do and I've loved it since I started doing it.
Octavius: I love it now. So Monday is like every other day for me. It's just exciting to get out there and try and change the way the world thinks. That's very good. 'cause we love Monday. Yes.
James: Um, and what about, um, so the last question I'm gonna ask you is a question that's in my interview book. Why you? Which is, where [00:51:00] do you see yourself in five years time?
Octavius: Where I see the future of this market is a very different kind of model. Where you've got an integrated solution that companies, if you like, outsource to in the way that lots of marketing departments have an expert outsource partner who's a insource partner, who provides the specialist knowledge, who provides the data and is integrated with the company.
Octavius: The future of HR I think is gonna move in this direction. I. Now some of the more operational bits of hr, like payroll and pensions management has already been outsourced. But the next stage is the talent part, and that's where I think we can bring incredible expertise and I'm phenomenally excited. I think the best is yet to
James: come.
James: Well, I wish you continued success and I'll have to get you back in five years time to see how that's evolved. Thanks very much coming to talk to you today. Thanks. Very shift. Enjoyed our conversation. Thank you Octavia, for joining me on all about business. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company.
James: If you'd like to find out more about Reed Octavia, or Mind Jim, all links are in the [00:52:00] show notes. See you next time.
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