Phil Thomas of Informa Festivals
How connected do your people feel?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 282: Phil Thomas
Here's a question. How connected do your people feel?
Hello, I'm Charles Day and welcome to Fearless Creative Leadership. If you believe that human creativity is the only scalable, sustainable, competitive advantage, then you're in the right place. Here we explore how people in all walks of life, from business leaders, to artists, to athletes, unlock creativity in themselves and in the people around them, and in the process how they move the world forward.
This episode's guest is Phil Thomas. He's the Chief Creative Officer of Informa Festivals. They're the company that owns Cannes Lions. And Phil has recently been named as Chairman of Comic Relief.
One of the things that I've learned hosting this podcast is that the most powerful leaders rarely get remembered for their titles. They're remembered for how they made people feel.
“So my dad had two funerals. He died a couple of years ago, and we had a little family funeral, and then we had a memorial. And he was old, he was 89, but we still had like 300 people at the memorial, quite a lot for an 80, 89-year-old. And I was looking around, I was like, are the people here? Because he was quite eminent. Are they here because of that or are they here actually 'cause of who he was? Which was a very, very kind person.”
In this conversation with Phil, what stood out most weren't his achievements. It was his perspective on making people feel connected. As you'll hear, when you emphasize connection in your leadership, kindness, challenges, accomplishments, language shapes the culture, and the trust that follows becomes invaluable currency that maximizes creativity.
Connection is also one of the 13 conditions that's measured by FORM, the creativity diagnostic that I've been developing. Because in every organization that I've studied, when people feel seen, heard, and respected, creativity is unlocked and businesses grow faster.
And, memorably, this conversation with Phil is a reminder that connection isn't a soft skill, it's the foundation of creative leadership and the impact that that leadership leaves behind.
How connected do your people feel to your organization? Do they feel seen, heard, and respected?
Here's Phil Thomas.
Charles: (02:26):
Phil, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Phil Thomas (02:28):
Well, thank you very much for having me, Charles. I really appreciate it.
Charles (02:31):
When did creativity first show up in your life? When were you first conscious of creativity as a force in the world?
Phil Thomas (02:36):
It was quite young. I was at a very traditional school, by which I mean, we did Latin. We got caned. That's how long ago it was. And there were no, there was nothing creative about school whatsoever. However, I was not remotely academic and I stumbled across photography when I was about 14 and took to it. So I went to art college and I did photography at art college. And that's really where I suppose you could say my creative life began and I sort of left academia behind. And really I've been involved in being creative or involved in the creative world in some form or another, more or less ever since.
Charles (03:24):
How did you get into photography? Because coming out of that world, which I know, I mean, it was a very narrowly trained existence, wasn't it? What, what was the, what was the access point of photography for you?
Phil Thomas (03:33):
I think when you look back at your life, you do realize that things are out of your control and good things that happen to you, you like to assign to your own genius, but actually they're pure luck. So my dad had a short term contract in Australia, so we left my austere school in Yorkshire and we moved to Perth in Australia just for six months. And the school I went to in Australia had as an object. And that's what opened my mind to it. Without that opportunity, I don’t know what would've happened. I wouldn't have discovered it.
Charles (04:16):
Your dad was a big influence on you, right?
Phil Thomas (04:19):
He was, yeah. He, he really was. He was a he grew up in a very poverty stricken, properly, like post-war, genuine poverty. His dad, his own dad was killed during the war. So his, he had a widow, his mom was a widow, war widow, and he escaped that poverty through education and, and became really quite eminent in education. And for me, the reason he was so influential was because when I went to him and I said, I'm not gonna be able to follow your footsteps, you know, he went to Oxford, he had like literally seven degrees. I said, I don't think I can even do one degree. I don’t know what's wrong with me, but I just don't think I can do this. I just wasn't very good at school. And he just encouraged me and he just gave me, again, lucky fortunate, very fortunate that you've got a dad who doesn't say, well get yourself to that third rate university (laugh). He said, you must do what you've got to do. So that's why I went to our college.
Charles (05:19):
I mean, the response is extraordinary and exceptional, but, but what strikes me is the other part of that story that's remarkable is that he gave you the confidence to be able to tell in that in the first case.
Phil Thomas (05:29):
Yeah, absolutely. That's right. I think about that a lot. About how, how education without education, he couldn't have escaped. And my family history is all by the farmers of fishermen. He would've been fishermen actually. 'cause That's where his escape from. I would've probably been one as well. Education gave him that escape. So the strength of character that he must have had to basically say it's okay, you know, go into the world without any real formal education, was, was really, really amazing. Incredible.
Charles (06:06):
I was also terrible academically. Likewise. I had a father who got himself out of working class situation in the Midlands by going to a school and going to Oxford. Oh, very, very similar. That'd be similar. But in his case, I think he saw it differently. He saw the value of education as being paramount. And so when I demonstrated a complete lack of ability to succeed academic, it's just not how I learn. Right. Probably the same way for you. He was insistent that I had to go and file a formal education path. And I, and it never worked for me. I was lucky enough to end up in an America, actually, but at a liberal arts college where you could kind of pick and choose the things you did. And I found myself more by accident than by judgment. So you, Gary was somebody who could support, who was brave enough to say what worked for me doesn't have to work for you is such a, is such a gift.
Phil Thomas (06:59):
Did you resent your dad forcing you to do that? Or—
Charles (07:04):
Well, well we could get (laugh) a long conversation about parenting. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I didn't, it didn't help me. It definitely didn't help me and I, and I, and I had to find my own kind of, I had to find my own path to get into the place where I'm like, oh, this is who you are. You are not bad or failure because you don't learn this way. You learn in different ways. But it took me a long time to kind of figure that story out.
Phil Thomas (07:29):
Probably set you back a few, a few years.
Charles (07:33):
Decades. Probably decades.
Phil Thomas (07:33):
In some ways. In some ways. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a journey isn't it, but it's funny though because education, I don't think even now takes into account different, no mindsets, different brain workings. I remember all of my reports at school basically said the same thing, which is he seems quite bright, he's just lazy. And I remember, I remember saying to my mom I took one of my reports home and she was like, you know, just, you know, at the end of a tether really says, you really lazy. I said, mom, I could not be working harder. I honestly couldn't work harder and I couldn't have done, I couldn't have worked any harder. So for me, when they were saying he doesn't try hard enough, I didn't even understand what that meant. Yeah, yeah, of course. Looking back on it, you kind of get it because there were kids in school who could work like that and they excelled. Yeah. but it's just, I think brains just work in really different ways and I hope now I really hope that kids at school now have many more different opportunities to learn.
Charles (08:40):
Yeah, I think that's really true. I mean, yeah. You come across the Ken Robinson?
Phil Thomas (08:43):
Yeah, of course.
Charles (08:44):
So I was very lucky that when we sold our film editor company, we were introduced and we worked together for two or three years. Because he really wanted to figure out could he take his sort of speaking platform and his education, and could turn it into something else at the end, for lots of reasons that didn't happen. But I was very lucky. I spent a couple of years essentially going around the world with them and he had this profound belief that the education system is designed kind of systematically to crush creative thinking. Yeah. Models, right. This is creating process and order and predictable results. And he was a big influence actually in helping me realize. Yeah, you know what? I think fundamentally human beings are born creative. And what we do with that is critical. And as we get into this conversation, the world of AI feels, to me anyway, like human creativity is gonna be the only thing that's actually gonna be of real discernible value. 'cause They'll be able to do pretty much everything else.
Phil Thomas (09:36):
Yeah. Ken, Ken believed that creativity's kind of crushed out of you. You know, I think that's true to an extent because they used to compare young kids and the creative, you know, give them a box with a toy there, they chuck the toy away and they make a house out of the box and all that sort of stuff, which is true. But I think also people become very pragmatic and they're trying to find ways to get on in the world, don't they? People are told they've got to be lawyers or doctors or bankers or all these different parts of things. And you're starting to find a way in the world because, because actually making your way in the world to create as a creative in dirty Commons is actually really quite hard. I mean, I, I went to art college, as I said, I did photography to succeed as a professional photographer, as I'm sure you know, you have to be really good. Yeah. I mean, not just good, you have to be unbelievably good because the competition is incredible and the expectations are high and it's a hard thing to sell to people. And there were people on my course who I could just see, they were just so talented. And I think people who are creative in things like novel writing, being an artist, these things, this is a tough life or actor to, you know, there's, there's a lot of precariousness going on in a life like that. You’ve got to be brave. So yeah, I think it's difficult.
Charles (11:04):
Did you always want to lead? What did leadership enter your life?
Phil Thomas (11:09):
Obviously, funny enough, I was thinking about thinking about this the other day, weirdly enough, because I remember I went to a concert, it was an, it was an orchestra concert. And I turned to whoever I was with, it may have been my parents, I can't remember who it was. And I, I was looking at the violin section and I said to the people, why would anybody not want to be the conductor? It's like, the contests had clearly the best gig. You know, why would anybody want to be in the violin section? And they said to me, because they're part of something that together they're creating something that's really, they're creating this noise, this sound together that is so magical. That's why they want to be in the, in the violin section, which of course is a really good point. But for me, I was like, why do you want to be the (laugh), the conductor [inaudible]? And I think when it comes to leadership, you know, people not everybody wants it. I think it's just a question of do you want to be the bossy boots and, you know, the kind of center of attention all the time.
Charles (12:24):
And did to you, what was it about leadership that appealed to you?
Phil Thomas (12:28):
I have, I like creating things and I like there to be something that you can actually see.
Charles (12:36):
Mmhmm (affirmative).
Phil Thomas (12:37):
So I like taking photos, I like writing, I like making films. I'm not very good at that, but I like doing it. And when it comes to business and, and leadership of organizations, I like to kind of mold things and create things. And I worked out quite early on, not exactly world shattering that in a corporate environment or in an organizational environment, you cannot do it unless you've got a team. And the only way to have a team to realize your vision is you've gotta be the leader of that team. Otherwise you can't create stuff.
Charles (13:12):
Where do you place a vision in that hierarchy and how important is having a vision to you from a perspec—?
Phil Thomas (13:16):
It's just everything. I think it's absolutely everything. Part, partly because you need a, a North Star yourself. Yeah. I've got a, I've got so if you think about, so Cannes Lions, I've been involved in it for 20 years. When I first went to it, I had a very, very vague vision, which is, this is really small and unimportant when it should be big and important and it should be culturally rather at the moment it's just, nobody knows about it outside of creative agencies, nobody even knows about it. So that was a vision, but it wasn't very well articulated, but it was kind of a north star that you can gradually move towards. So the first point is, I think you've gotta have one yourself. It's gotta be flexible. I don't think it should be too tied down, but it nice and flexible, but vaguely in this direction I would like, can lions to be bigger? You know, it's like and then the other thing of course is you've gotta be able to articulate it to everyone around you and try and excite them with that as well. And that's why you've got to have vision. Do you, do you agree with that?
Charles (14:30):
I do. I think whatever you call it, I think vision has become a word that some people just don't like anymore. It's a bit like purpose. I think people kind of step away because it's been used so much, but I, there's so many choices and decisions to make. But if you don't have a filter, I don’t know how you get up in the morning and figure out what to do today, you know, there has to be, to my perspective anyway, there has to be some kind of objective that's pretty clear in your mind. And I think you're right. You have to be a storyteller to get people to come and join you on that journey.
Phil Thomas (15:00):
I think I've always been even more prescriptive than that, really. So there's the, the sort of vision. And then there's your values and your purpose. And to be honest, your kind of audience and all of those things ladder up to the gateway to making decisions. One of the key principles, Cannes Lions is neutrality. And we would, and we still do, kind of drive that through the organization and it's so incredibly helpful. And the reason neutrality's important is 'cause of the lion. And we're trying to make it as neutral and as beyond reproach as possible. Not always succeeding, obviously, especially after this year. But that's the idea. So what does that mean, neutrality? It means that to get on a stage, it can, you can't buy your way on. So quite unusual in events actually, that it's not pay to play. So it doesn't matter. You could be our biggest customer or the smallest individual person. And if, if your idea's good enough, you'll get on stage means the juries will go through a huge amount of effort to make that as neutral as possible. And it just helps you make, it just really, really is helpful to when you're trying to make these decisions.
Charles (16:24):
I think that's right. I mean, I'm always trying to break it down into sort of simple reference points that people can understand. And so I feel running or building a business is like embarking on a journey. You have to know where you're going. You have to know what are the skills or attributes I'm going to need to get there. I have to figure out who's capable of delivering those and then which of people want to join me. I don't know that it's a lot more complicated than that. Really.
Phil Thomas (16:45):
Yeah. And it also, but it come, it also comes down to small decisions. So again, we can, another of the words we use to describe it is global. Now, why do we say global? It's partly to say to the team in London, this isn't about the UK isn't about just London. And that goes down to literally the words that are used in our marketing or our website. And if it's too colloquial and too UK based, we cut it out because that's not global. So these things are very important when you're trying to build a brand.
Charles (17:22):
I agree. I think language is one of the least recognized aspects. I probably not only building a brand, clearly it's understood there, but in terms of running a business—
Phil Thomas (17:29):
Mmhmm (affirmative).
Charles (17:29):
I think figuring out what's the language we're using, what are the words that matter here, what do they mean to us? I mean, everything you've just said, you don't find many people talking about that leadership's talent point and all recognizing the importance of that. I mean, obviously you and I have spend our, spend our careers in the communication business, but I think that's true for any kind of business.
Phil Thomas (17:47):
Yeah, yeah. These days. And it's, isn't it because it's cultural. So we have just been bored. So the company that I was CEO of was the owner of Cannes Lions and we got acquired by Informa, which is the world's biggest event organizer. And it's interesting, I must talk to them about this, but they never used the word star. They used the word colleagues. And it is relentlessly throughout the organization from the top down, CEO down, never talk about staff. They talk about colleagues. And you can say whether that's right or wrong, doesn't matter. They didn't suspect. They, they, we carefully thought through use of language. Respectful. Yes. And that's right. And so it's just these, I agree these things are
Charles (18:31):
Important. It's like the Masters calling everybody patrons, right?
Phil Thomas (18:33):
Yeah.
Charles (18:34):
Yeah, exactly. And you feel elevated when you walk in the gate. Yeah. the you like doing big things, don't you? Like, you are drawn to big challenges and I know you're involved in the BBC in terms of looking at what the future of AI is. You, you've just been named Chairman of Comic Relief. What do you look for in an organization that you decide I want to go and spend part of my time doing that?
Phil Thomas (18:55):
That's a great question. I want to make a difference. And the way to make a difference is in, in my life anyway, has been to try to choose the organizations and the activities that are gonna make the biggest difference. So when I was thinking about charity, there's nothing wrong at all with being the chair of our local Clean Up the Village charity. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that whatsoever. But something inside of me says I want to do something that's gonna have as big an impact as possible. 'cause I want to kind of be important and relevant. And I wanna make a difference. And again, it's a complete character floor, I'm sure. But that's, I find very heartening to do that. That's why I do that. That's why I choose those things.
Charles (19:55):
As, as you get older, does being important and making a difference matter that there's much to you more there that used to less than what, what and what's your kind of perspective on what your, what your life is about?
Phil Thomas (20:07):
I think it means much less in terms of what people think. And much. But actually paradoxically more in terms of what I think I can achieve. So I want to be able to achieve, I want to be able to make a difference on a scale. And I think in the past it used to be, well that means people can see how what a big deal this is, that is considerably less important now. And I think that's just maturity. And you also realize that no one cares anyway (laugh). It's like okay. And that literally no one is watching my LinkedIn and thinking, oh I, she's doing now (laugh). Because they're too busy tinkering with their own LinkedIn. I mean that's the thing you, you just got to realize that and you, it's just otherwise
Charles (20:53):
Yeah, it's exhausting, isn't it? If one of your constant reference points. How am I perceived by other people?
Phil Thomas (20:57):
Yeah,
Charles (20:58):
Yeah, yeah. I mean I think we all go through that. I was given a really good piece of advice I know two or three years ago by a therapist and we were talking about some version of this legacy and she said, you know, I don't think that that's particularly helpful reference point because your view about what was important changes, you know, annually and probably monthly at some points.
Phil Thomas (21:18):
Daily. Yeah.
Charles (21:19):
She said the question I find really helpful it is, what else do I want to find out about myself?
Phil Thomas (21:24):
Mmhmm (affirmative).
Charles (21:24):
And I, I had personally found that to be very invigorating. I really like that. It's good, isn't it?
Phil Thomas (21:31):
I really like that. And what you realize as you get older as well is that it was illustrated to me, actually my dad's, so my dad had two funerals. He died a couple of years ago and we had a little family funeral and then we had a memorial and he was old, he was 89, but we still had like 300 people at the memorial quite a lot for an 89, 80 9-year-old. And I was looking around, I was like, are the people here? Because he was quite eminent. Are they here because of that or are they here actually because of who he was? Which was a very, very kind person. Yeah. And you realize pip's definitely the latter. Always the latter. So none of that matters, does it? And literally none of it matters. Ultimately you've got to, you've got to realize—
Charles (22:18):
I mean, your closest friends, do you care what they do? They don't even talk about it. Do you never, you never quite work, do you? No. No.
Phil Thomas (22:26):
Oh yeah. Some of my friends, I'm not even quite sure what they do do. I'm sure it's the same with me, (laugh). So that is a really good observation.
Charles (22:30):
I spent the last night with some of my closest oldest friends. I was so struck by the kind of the, the intimacy, obviously the comfort level and the kind of conversation and the places you go and the absolute trust that that, you know, you have, you know, you'll be at their funeral and they will be at mine. For exactly those reasons. So we had those conversations, not because he did this, but she did that or I did this. There was an article written a number of years ago by a woman who's a palliative care nurse and piece of regret of the dying. Yeah. You should turned into the book. But when asked, you know, what are these people who are hours and days away from death, what do they remember, what they care about? None of them have said, I missed the, you know, I missed my earnings target in the second quarter to 2025. They, they regressed, they haven't pushed themselves further and take more risk and trying to do more things and spend more time with people they cared about.
Phil Thomas (23:17):
Yeah, definitely. And trying to make a difference to other people as well. Trying to be kind. These are the things that really matter. Because as you rightly say nobody actually cares that much. If you're trying to impress other people, you're, you are almost certainly gonna fail. Yeah. Because they're too busy. They're they and they're not even that bothered (laugh). Like it just really matter. No, they don't. David Droga is a good mate of mine. He's a really, really good friend. I don't care whether he's the CEO of Accenture or the vice chair of this or whatever. That completely not relevant, isn't it? So—
Charles (23:59):
I mean the only relevance of course is to the extent that you want them to be happy. So that makes him happy. Yeah. Then you're happy for them about that. But you know, it doesn't make them more or less valuable to you from a Yeah. Relationship standpoint. Yeah. You know, we get all this winsome as we get older though (laugh), we had it 20 years ago. I was really struck by your decision to join your appointment to the chairmanship and comic relief. Just tell me a little bit about that organization because it's at a time when my Lord do we need to laugh more and have more reasons to laugh. I was, I just, I read that and I just felt this kind of warm glow came over me that, oh Lord, somebody's serious is going to take this on to next place. What is it about that organization that matters to?
Phil Thomas (24:41):
Well, I have been kind of around the fringes of comic relief for a while. I was headhunted to run it at one point that didn't work out. What I think a couple of things appeal to me about it. First is its scale and its brain. So potentially touch absolutely everybody. And the purpose of comic relief is to use humor and entertainment to encourage generosity. So what we're trying to say to people is, let's have a bit of a laugh and let's do something generous. Just something really small. Doesn't matter what it is. Just something really small that could affect somebody's life and make their life a little bit better, but have a bit of fun when you're doing it. And as a son, a kind of fundamental principle that is just all good, as I had nothing bad about that was so right. The reason I joined it right now is partly, I thought I might have a bit more time, but also there are challenges around it.
So how good is the content? How funny is that content? How are we going to make it relevant for younger people? Because older people, it's much more resonant. How are we going to get it on multiple platforms? What does short form look like? On top of which you've got the challenge right now. Just charity generally is under a massive amount of pressure. Donations are going down, even governments are rowing back from giving. It's quite a dark time in that regard. So it just felt to me like there's some really, really interesting strategic challenges. It's about content, which I'm quite good at. We've just released a really good video by Lenny Henry. She's just talking about how it was created and Richard and him working together, creating it. And it's really inspiring 'cause it just reminds you, you know, why they did it in the first place.
And I'd like to get back a bit more to that feeling. I think it may have gone off the boil for a few years. Richard just seems like a really good man. He's an amazing guy. He's, he's a, he talk about creativity. He's genuinely one of the most creative people I've ever met in my life. If you have a meeting with him, it's just mind boggling. He's so, so creative. How is he expressor? He just riffs on ideas. I mean, you know, I'm sure a lot of the ideas don't come to fruition. In fact, he tells me they don't. But he just has, they tole out of it, you know, like and building on other people's ideas, coming up with thoughts about how this might work or that might work and then he'll build on that. Is really, really impressive. Fantastic guy.
Charles (27:28):
There's something about both people and organizations that are highly creative. They care obviously a lot about ideas, but they don't regard them as precious. They know that ideas always be there. So they don't have this kind, oh my gosh, it's hard to solve that problem, but find that consistently. Does that resonate for you?
Phil Thomas (27:45):
A hundred percent. What it means is you fail at so many of them. I mean, honestly, I do a balance sheet and the ideas I've had that have failed versus those who have succeeded massively, outweigh massively. And I ne never, it's funny because you say to people, oh don't worry. You know, I, any idea is a good idea. And we like people to fail and it's all good, but it's actually quite hard for organizations to live like that. I think a lot of organizations and they want everything to succeed, it's just not going to happen.
Charles (28:20):
Well if it's not in the P&L, right? If failure's not in the P&L in the balance sheet, then you know they're just talking at you. It's not real.
Phil Thomas (28:26):
Yeah.
Charles (28:27):
Some of these companies, I think they're great companies. They think absolutely, have put it into the, the DNA of who they are. Yeah.
Phil Thomas (28:33):
Yeah.
Charles (28:34):
Right. Ideas are plenty of thought. We're going to be able to bring them in and we're going to accept fact the most of the world work.
Phil Thomas (28:39):
Yeah. But going back to Ken Robinson, I do believe that everybody is great. Yeah, we do. Because everybody does it every single day. Because it depends on your definition of creativity. The best I've ever heard is I, I, I may have nicked this from various people doing John Ty and other people, but creativity is just, this exists now because of me and it didn't exist yesterday. That's it. So, but that can be anything. That can be a meal you cook for your friends can be a conversation. Yeah. and I think people put creativity into this box. Only certain deeper creative, only certain organizations, only certain situations. But I don't think that's true. 'cause Creativity is, this didn't exist. It exists now, but it didn't exist yesterday. That's it.
Charles (29:30):
What do you think the piece of human creativity looks like? I, I'm, I'm increasingly discerning between you know, intelligent, AI driven creativity. Because I think that can argue get a toss on that, but it feels to me more and more like it will be able to do things that look like it was created. Where do you think the line is between what that is and what we will provide as a species going forward?
Phil Thomas (29:51):
I think, and again, these thoughts are in the embryonic stage and that anybody that says anything about AI right now needs to preface it with this is embryonic. Because it's changing so much. Personally, I think it's about how much we are gonna care as consumers of that creativity about the provenance of what's being created. How much does that matter to us? And I started thinking about this when I went to the ABBA thing. So in London there is a show, an ABBA show where they're recreated as avatars on stage as their young versions of themselves. And it is breathtakingly realistic. And they walk behind each other and they interact with each other is absolutely during the concert, they've got a band that kind of is supplementing their music. And at one point the avatar say, we are going to take a break and the band is got to go on and this band takes over the stage and they do money, money, money.
Or one of those hits and place goes crazy. And after the show, I said to everybody I was with, I said, was it just me or did you just feel different when you watched the band from when you watched the avatars? Because when you watch the avatars, it's all unbelievable, fascinating, amazing. Mind blowing. But did you feel different when you saw those women sing their heart out as human beings? And everybody said, yeah, that's right. I just felt different. So I think that got me thinking it's like, will will we get to the point where we don't care about the province? And I think at that stage it all bets are off. But right now I think we do care about province. So if you saw an advert with George Clooney and Brad Pit in it and you know, it wasn't really then how would you, you know, you'd feel a bit different. Yeah. But I think as long as we're continuing to feel a bit different—
Charles (31:58):
Yeah.
Phil Thomas (31:59):
—with a human created thing, then I think we'll be okay. But who knows what's going to happen.
Charles (32:03):
Yeah. It's a fascinating reference point because if we are not the discerning difference with the thing that actually makes a difference, then I'm not sure what role we have to play anymore on, on the planet. That's big. I mean, because it's gonna do everything else. Right. It clearly is similar. Do everything else. I don’t know what else, what are the physical things that we would want it want done for us that it won't be able to do? I mean the development of robot technology and because all this thing is exponential. It was a really interesting podcast a year ago by, a New York Times writer who said, human beings intellectually understand exponential growth. We don't emotionally understand it.
Phil Thomas (32:44):
Oh really?
Charles (32:46):
So we can say if you take a penny and double it out, you know. Yeah. It'll be a million. It's a million. And it remarkably short amount of time. Yeah. But the emotional rea realization of what that means, there's just unavailable to us. And so we're constantly surprised by how quickly things change. And then there's that other adage which kind of lines up as well, which is how the things change very, very slowly then all at once.
Phil Thomas (33:07):
Yeah. But that all at once thing, you know, it surprises me how that's already happening. I went to dinner back in May and I was sitting next to a very, very senior guy from one of the big consultancy firms. Could have been Deloitte, could have been DWC. I won't mention which one. It was very senior guy. And he said our system before was like a pyramid. So at the top you've got the po, the partners generalists making an absolute fortune. And at the bottom you've got this churning machine of young graduates coming in and they do all the work. That's our legacy. It's already gone from a pyramid into a diamond. So we're still interested in the middle section, which is people who've been industry for a while. Maybe they're 35, they've got some domain expertise. Yes. We're interested in that. Young graduates, he said this to me, we're not interested anymore. And I said, what do you mean you're not interested? Anyway? He said, well we don't, we don't go to Oxford and Harvard anymore. We don't even bother. And we'd nothing. And I said if somebody had a young teenager, would you recommend they do an MBA? Like that's how people get into these companies. And he said, no, that's Western. Hm. And that, that's now charts in these huge organizations. That's now. So the speed of it is just amazing. Because a year ago he said that. Yeah.
Charles (34:41):
But where do you think we’ll be a year from now?
Phil Thomas (34:42):
Well, this is what I do worry for. I just worry for those young kids coming out of college right now. I think it's a terribly difficult situation.
Charles (34:52):
I've got friends who just had their first grandchild and their son-in-law is truly a technological genius and very early investor in crypto has built his own companies and was asked to some point by his very grandparents, what do you think the child will do? Your son will do them. He said, it'll never work. He said, there's no future in which he'll need to work. Not because they'll be financially well off, because there won't be anything for him to do by the time you get 18, 20 years into the future.
Phil Thomas (35:24):
So is it like the industrial revolution except for knowledge workers? Right. Because there will be jobs right there. There'll be plumbers, electricians people who run garden centers. I don't know. There will be jobs, won’t there?
Charles (35:39):
I don't know. I mean, what if you, you know, if we get to the point where a robot can diagnose the, the problem has all the right hit to fix the problem will show up on time and charge you a fixed fee and the problem will never come back. There's a few plumbers I would swap for that experience. I don’t know about you. And same with electrician. I had somebody come to the house yesterday for the third visit or going now is gonna be four or five to replace a tiny little, you know, like just diagnose it properly the first time they get the party in and they fix it. They just think the speed of evolution of robots. You get some of these newsletters and they're showing you bits of video and they still look kind of clumsy today. But that's today.
Phil Thomas (36:18):
Mmhmm (affirmative).
Charles (36:18):
Yeah. A year from now. I don't think they will be in five years from now. I don't, it will be a surprising to me if most of those menial jobs and [inaudible] somebody. But you, I bet your point about the bottom being taken, knowledge, jobs, what I'm looking for. Yeah. Yeah. How do you get to the middle group if you Yeah. Coming in. That's the big question.
Phil Thomas (36:37):
That's the big question.
Charles (36:39):
I know you have a day job. Let me ask you two last questions. So first of those is, as you look at the future, what are you hopeful for?
Phil Thomas (36:50):
I'm hopeful that the human beings will continue to be able to solve some of the problems that we've been discussing and evolve and remain viable. I suppose it's the reality. And I'm hopeful that people it's probably just a short term thing, but the world has turned very selfish, driven by politics and given a chance, people do turn back into that sort of selfishness and that's not the way forward. You know, I really feel like we've moved way back from where we were sort of 10, 15 years ago when the world was becoming more open, not less open, becoming more generous, not less generous. I mean, it's really not in the UK for instance, it's actually not that long ago that it was, it was a conservative government, right-wing government who put into law that 1.8% of the GDP would be spent on overseas aid. And, and that's like, now it's like labor government has now slashed that. So the world has become turned in on itself. My hope is that the world just becomes more open, more people become more receptive to each other. And the dream that I think social media had was to demolish the walls, demolish the borders, and bring humanity together. And of course we know what's happening. It's actually gone the opposite way.
Charles (38:31):
And last question, I think you were asked this in another conversation, but I'm still curious to know what your answers to today. If you could talk to yourself from 25 years ago, what would you tell that version of yourself?
Phil Thomas (38:42):
Oh, I would just say everything's going to be okay. I had this amazing, changed my life actually. An interview with a guy called Johnny Wilkinson, who's a rugby. Oh yeah. The UK. And he, he struggled with anxiety all his life. I've had anxiety on a couple of occasions, proper anxiety. And I wouldn't wish on anybody, I don’t know if you've suffered it, but it's a horrible, horrible thing. And he said he said this amazing thing, the light bulb for him went off when, when one of his therapists said, have you been okay up until now? And he's like, yeah, what evidence have you got that you're not gonna be okay from now on? And I know it's so simple. It's such a ridiculously, you know, in a way, if somebody listening to this is suffering from anxiety, they probably think for God's sake, it's not as simple as that. But it is quite an important thing to understand you've been okay till now you get it. Honestly, it's going to be fine. So I think that's what I tell myself, like, don't worry so much. Everything's going to be grand.
Charles (39:47):
Yeah. It's really, I have suffered anxiety. Actually, it's really powerful because you look back, I certainly have found this to be true. I find myself looking back and going, the amount of time and energy I've wasted worrying about things that haven't happened.
Phil Thomas (40:00):
Yeah.
Charles (40:01):
What might I have created instead? Yeah. It's really, really true. We spend all our lives trying to live in some future that we can't control.
Phil Thomas (40:09):
Yeah. We should spend more time in the present. It is the human condition. But there's an amazing book. I bet you've already read it, but it's called The Power of Now. You think, oh, this is the usual thing. It's about you got to live in the moment, blah. I've heard this a million times, but the way that it's constructed is really, really useful. So if anybody's thinking about how to live more than a now, that's a great book. That's a great reference point.
Charles (40:32):
Thank you so much for coming on here. You have been an absolute pleasure.
Phil Thomas (40:34):
Thank you so much, Charles. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
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