Navigating the Future of Work: A Deep Dive with Martin Bean

We will have a grown-up conversation about what is the work that's gotta get done, what are the outputs I need, and then we will have a conversation about, and where's the best place to get that done? You are much better off focusing on culture, and more importantly, you're better off focusing on outputs than inputs, Dave. The 2 things that matter to people right now, what are your compensation and benefits, and how much flexibility are you going to give me in the way that I need to work?

Yeah.

It's about truly reading the mood of your people, the mood of your stakeholders.

Hi, this is Alex. Are you a business owner, CEO, or C-suite executive? If you're interested in finding out more about learning from lived experience, click on the link in this episode.

Hi, Martin.

Hey, David.

Great to have you here. Had the pleasure of introducing you to many of our members and you even look after your own groups here in Melbourne of executives. So great to sort of introduce you to our listenership today. And I know from personal experience that you're in for a real treat. So Martin, the first question is very open and I know we've been talking to lots of execs about this topic. topic. It's actually our greatest hit over the last 12 months, and obviously at the tip of the tongues of lots of execs around the future of work and talent and this general topic. So the question to you, Martin, let's get you talking. Tell me about future of work.

Yeah, thanks, Dave, and it's a real pleasure to be here. I'm glad we've got a chance just to have a nice, nice chat about what is without doubt, as you said, just this extraordinarily Topical question on everybody's mind, which is, so what is the future of work going to look like? And a lot of people think that the disruption was caused by COVID. But actually, if you look at the data, it was alive and well before COVID But COVID was undoubtedly an accelerant. It accelerated the pace of change. So some— so these trends that may have taken maybe a decade to unfold en masse almost happened in the blink of an eye. And it often gets characterized as hybrid work or work from home or go to the office, or it gets characterized as, you know, what is the, the app— the appropriate application of technology in the way that we think and work with each other. But, but the way I think of it, Dave, is that we've, we've sort of seen this Accelerant after accelerant after accelerant. It was COVID, now it's generative AI with ChatGPT. We've got wars in Europe, we've got inflation at levels that most managers haven't seen before, and it's sort of one thing after another that is all coming together to throw the whole concept of future of work up in the air.

Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, We, uh, in one of the sessions, I, I recall we sort of talked about the most unprecedented things, actually the word, the use of the word unprecedented. So yeah.

Um, and but I think what's important, uh, on that topic is that if you're a leader or you're an aspiring leader, don't think that it's going away. You know, one of the things I'm working on right now, as you know, is a book with a a buddy of mine called Toolkit for Turbulence.

Yes.

And we believe it's an important topic because if you're still running your 2019 future of work leadership playbook, it's out of date. And you actually have to rebuild yourself as a leader and have the right tools in your toolkit to be able to lead in this, not future of work, but the world of work today.

Yeah. Thanks, Martin. That's interesting. Would you be able to share with us some of the tools necessary?

Yeah, so it's really about how do you take challenge or adversity and turn it into advantage, Alex? So it's about recognizing that constant change, disruption isn't going away. You know that wonderful Australian expression, well, I'll just wait until the dust settles. Well, the dust isn't going to settle. And so what we talk a lot about in the book is how do you first of all start with your own mindset? I'm working with a lot of ostrich chief executives and executives right now, literally with their heads buried in the sand, just waiting for the dust to settle and hoping everything will go back to the way that it was so that they can lead the way that they are comfortable with. But actually, it's not going back. So what do you as an individual leader need to do to actually get your head in the right space.

Absolutely.

And so that's step number one. And we talk a lot about how do you move from adversity to advantage in your own mindset. And then we talk about a number of other tools that we think are really important. The first of those is all about team. How do you get your team to align effectively, collaborate effectively, but how do you become a learning team? How do you make sure that you're bringing the information you need into the room in real time, really putting your finger on the pulse. And it's not about putting surveillance software in place so you can see time on keyboards.

Yeah.

It's about truly reading the mood of your people, the mood of your customers, the mood of your stakeholders, getting that in the room in real time so that you can make the right decisions in the moment as you navigate through the swirl. Another thing, sorry, Dave, yes.

Surveillance software. I know you've talked about this being the fastest growing software category currently, or at least within sort of 2023. But I mean, and you talk about, you know, it's not about that, but then that's the fastest growing category. So it's, and then you see examples of, you know, let's say it was at Merrill Lynch around probably one of the first ones, get back in the office 5 days a week. Can you sort of elaborate on sort of some of the examples where you're saying it's against what you know works?

Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating, isn't it? It shouldn't be surprising. So if you think about modern leadership or really leadership for decades, if not hundreds of years, we've always associated productivity with what we could see, Dave. I could see you at your desk, therefore, and I knew you were productive. I could see you work 5 days a week, 9 to 5, so you were productive. So if that's your starting position as a leader and all of a sudden you can't see your people, I can't stop by your desk, I can't chat with you when we're getting a cup of coffee about ABC.

Yeah.

That's why I need a new toolkit because actually, All of the tools I used to use that I relied upon as a measure of were my people on task, were they doing what they needed to do, and was I able to coach them in real time, that all disappeared. So I think in many ways, the reason why surveillance software and other systems have become so popular is because managers and leaders are trying to fill the void.

Mm-hmm.

But my belief is that instead of trying to fill the void, by time and task management. You are much better off focusing on values. You are much better off focusing on culture. And more importantly, you're better off focusing on outputs than inputs, Dave. If you get— if you negotiate and get commitments from people around what you need them to produce and do in their work and focus on that and measure that, and that isn't time on keys, That's outputs, things that you need them to achieve. Why wouldn't we want to celebrate people having as much flexibility and balance in their lives if they're still able to produce what we need them to be able to produce? And the really smart organizations are doing that. They're moving from inputs to outputs. They're having grown-up conversations with their people about what needs to get done.

Yeah.

And they're celebrating flexibility. Now, we can come back and talk about where there's some challenges in that, but the solution from my perspective is definitely not surveillance.

I guess that brings up the question of culture. How do you drive culture when you're not physically together or you're in this hybrid environment?

Yeah, and that's again a new, a new set of tools we need to master, Alex, because it's not going to be the same in hybrid or fully remote workforces. where you're largely working in 2-dimensional rather than in 3-dimensional. I believe that roughly 2/3 of the communication process is nonverbal.

Right.

So imagine just how much we're missing out on when we can't do what the 3 of us are doing right now, which is sitting in a studio watching each other and looking at each other's eyes and body language. Now, but that's just another constraint. So the key is how do you actually think about what you're going to do with your people over a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis to build in those moments of high touch so that when you are 2-dimensional remote, you are getting so much more out of the conversations and the interactions because they're punctuated with those deep, immersive, what I now call events, not meetings, where people come together to collaborate, to learn, to innovate. to problem solve. But again, that requires leaders being developed and taught how to run events in different ways. Because if you bring people in to simply have them sit so you can talk at them, just like you would do in Zoom or Teams or any other environment, then they will sit there that whole time saying, why the heck did I commute in to do this today? And it is all about earning the commute. That's what we've got to do now. That's a great provocation to all leaders, is that if you are going to ask your people to come in, then you'd better earn that commute.

Yeah, right. Thanks, Martin. I guess, are we sort of— is this a once-in-a-lifetime shift? Because I was just sort of listening to what you're saying there around moving from time output to outcome-based management style or way of working. And I think sort of, if I think about when the 9 to 5 sort of started around that industrial revolution, before this we had the dairy farmer who couldn't just log in at X time. And when the cows were milked, the cows were milked and the job was done. That was very much outcome-based. We've pulled everyone into these factories, realized that we could, in the industrial revolution, have them working 24 hours a day. Then we have employee Unions and stuff that load into that. I guess structurally from an employee instrument perspective, does that mean we're now moving to an outcome base? So away from time and materials into an outcome-based sort of engagement with people. Is the full-time employment dead, I guess?

Yeah, boy, there's about a million questions in there, Dave. That was a little unfair. Maybe a few starting points. I sort of despair when it gets characterised as work from home, work from the office. Because rough numbers, 8 out of 10 people have no choice but to report to a place to do their job. So I think part of the answer to your question is we need to stop thinking about work from home, work at the office, or 5 days of work versus 3 days a week work. Let's have a grown-up conversation around the work that needs to get done.

Yeah.

So in my ideal world, for every person in every job role, we will have a grown-up conversation about what is the work that's got to get done, what are the outputs I need, and then we will have a conversation about, and where's the best place to get that done?

Mm-hmm.

For some people, that will absolutely be wherever you want. Do that work from wherever you want. For most of it, it's going to require us being at a particular location or in situ for a large part of what we do. That's just the nature of the work that we do.

Mm-hmm.

But even for those people, I think it's important that there will be elements of their role where we want to give them the maximum flexibility that we can. And so if everybody listening to this podcast thinks about looking at their organization, looking at their people, and going job role by job role and rethinking it as, Where does this work need to get done, and how can I give this person the maximum flexibility in their life given the work that needs to get done? That's a winning recipe. So it's not so much that the 5-day work week is dead or gone forever, but it is— what has gone forever is this notion that that in itself is a definition of work. And what we all need to move to now is a recognition that human beings want work-life balance, and the smart organizations are going to do all that they possibly can to give their people as much flexibility and work-life balance as they can and not fear that. They're going to have to get comfortable with job sharing. They're going to have to get comfortable with permanent part-time. They're going to have to get comfortable with people working in different places to get their job done. And what holds a lot of that back are these old guard leadership assumptions, these tried and tested, often over decades, ways of leading and managing. And that's why, Alex, back to your question, that's why the book is all about it's got to start with you first. You've got to change your mindset. Now, if you're fine having mediocre talent, If you're fine having high staff turnover, if you're fine not being able to attract the best and brightest to your organisation, then stay old guard. It'll work just fine for you. But if your organisation depends on people to be successful, then you'd better get with it and embrace new ways of working.

Absolutely.

And do you think that balance, so do you think that's out of kilter at the moment in full employment? So flexibility is also part of an employee value proposition, and there's such a, what we call a war for talent, that's still probably easing up a little, but do you think that's overscaled at the moment because of that full employment in the local market?

Yeah, and that's absolutely, look, the war for talent, the global skills emergency, definitely has put the power in the employee versus the employer, but it's the number one excuse leaders give me for not doing anything, Dave. And I think that's a problem. That's a classic, but when the dust settles and the power returns the other way, it's all going to go back to the way that it was.

Yeah.

And it's not, it's just not. You know, COVID is an accelerant. Now we see generative AI as an accelerant. You know, it's changed forevermore the way people think about the construct of what is work and what isn't work. And you see it playing out in the anti-work movement. You see it playing out legislatively in countries around the world where they're starting to pass legislation around an employer's right to interrupt people outside their contractual work hours.

Mm-hmm.

You're seeing it in people withdrawing completely from the labor market. I know the media described it as the Great Resignation. It wasn't so much in my mind the Great Resignation as the Great Recalibration. There's a whole generation of people that have recalibrated what's important to them in life. And instead of it always being climb higher, climb higher, climb higher, it's I'm going to climb high enough And then I'm gonna go do what I really love doing in my life. And I come across those people all the time.

That's interesting. I guess, so you're sort of talking about, yeah, I think the last few years have rocked some people to the core. So this sort of flight to, I guess, certainty in these uncertain sort of times. How do you see that playing out in some of the actual moves? And yeah, I won't throw 5 questions in one.

No, no, thank you, Dave. I appreciate that. Well, first of all, this deeply held desire for more flexibility in our lives, it was alive and well before COVID You know, you look at a lot of the EBAs that were being negotiated, and sorry, for some people who don't know that acronym, sort of your enterprise agreements that were being negotiated in 2018, and 2019, you would have seen in the top 3 things that people, that workers were looking for was more work-life balance, more flexibility, more flexible ways of working. So this has been building up, I believe, for some time, which is why I describe COVID as an accelerant. But once Pandora's box opened and people understood that this is the first time in the history of mankind that technology was at a point that people could truly pick up and leave the office with 24 hours' notice and be remote and be just as productive as they were before in their minds. That's the big difference this time.

Mm-hmm.

And so, I don't believe that even when the labour market restores itself to perhaps have more balance, Because we're not seeing unemployment levels as low as they've been since 1973 in Australia, I don't think for a second that means that talent— and I use that word deliberately— that talent won't still demand more flexible ways of working as a condition of signing up to work for an organization.

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We haven't really touched on the downsides of fully distributed workforces or some of these hybrid ways, but those that are reporting it, finding it the toughest in these hybrid ways of working are definitely younger people. They're finding it very, very hard to be noticed, to have their voices heard, to have the sort of informal career development and coaching that you had in the office setting because a lot of it happened in the margins of the meeting. It happened over a cup of coffee. They are the ones saying, help.

Right.

So smart organizations are actually listening to that and they're thinking about ways of implementing better mentoring and coaching programs and induction programs for young people so that they don't derail them in their careers. And remember, a lot of these young people, went through their high school and their university in a lockdown environment or a COVID environment.

Yeah.

So they didn't have the chance to develop a lot of those what often get described as EQ skills before they started work. So it's even more important for the next 3 to 5 years that we double down on young people and help them build their networks, etc. It also, though, the thing that we do worry about is everybody's manicured and curated these wonderful teams of one. Alex, my team, we have our hybrid ways of working, working really well. But what we're losing rapidly is teams of teams across the institution or the organization, cross-group collaboration, mixing.

Yeah.

And actually the best problem solving, the best innovation, the best customer responsiveness, the best deployment of technology doesn't happen in silos. It happens by cross-functional teams coming together to work. So again, the smart organizations are recognizing that and they're rethinking the way they bring their people together for these events, as I described them before, where they're enjoyable, they're dynamic, they're successful, they're earning the commute, but they're also achieving what the enterprise needs, which is that networking, cross-group collaboration, idea sharing, problem solving, et cetera. And it won't just happen on its own.

No.

And so a lot of the work that I do now with Mentor List members and others is helping them put enterprise-wide strategies in place to allow their people to maximize their flexibility, but at the same time, are not giving up on really what will be the long-term ingredients for success for their organization.

Yeah.

And at your recommendation, Martin, that Team of Teams book, I did pick that up and have a read. General McChrystal.

McChrystal.

Yeah, it's a fantastic sort of story about how the US Army, I guess, changed their ways. And I guess a non-corporate example of how that— but I mean, you've sort of shared that as a scenario in other sessions. Do you want to maybe elaborate on that story? Because I think that's quite a good example.

And I hope I do General McChrystal justice in my paraphrase. But the book that we're writing, you talked about what's in the book, Alex, and I talked about align, collaborate, and learn. What McChrystal did was all about learn, Dave. So he realized that—

Mm-hmm.

What was going wrong in fighting a war that was largely a war against terrorist cells was that each part of their military forces would go do their job, but there was no shared understanding across the thousands of people that were fighting that campaign about why what they did mattered to everybody else. So, McChrystal largely threw the playbook out the window that was all about secrecy and compartmentalizing of information and—

Mm.

I'll only tell the people in my unit what's going on. And instead, would do a weekly huddle with hundreds of people dialing into the weekly huddle, where information was shared broadly with everybody. And you know what that did? Suddenly everybody realized why picking up that bag of documents after a raid—

Sure.

And those laptops and stuffing them in a bag and getting them back and getting them back fast and intact may actually be the secret for keeping some of their buddies alive tomorrow, because the intelligence that was in that bag made the entire team of teams better informed, understanding what each other was doing, and therefore more successful in what they were doing. So the corporate or business application of that is really learn. How do you broadcast what everybody needs to know in a timely, rapid fashion? But more importantly, how are you getting all of that information from the edges of your organization or your customers?

Mm-hmm.

back into the room so that you've got the best possible information to make the decisions that you need. And again, in a hybrid world, you've got to set that up differently. It's no longer about these beautifully sort of annual, quarterly processes. It's got to be about daily and weekly processes.

Got it. Yeah. What does that look like, Martin? Should companies be implementing technology to help with that?

Yeah. So, I mean, let me just give you one example. I'm a huge believer in dynamic sentiment mining, giving your people, giving your customers the ability to, in real time, they might be on a particular website, they might be in a particular customer environment, setting up ways where people can immediately signal what their sentiment is, Alex. Am I feeling great and fantastic about this?

Mm-hmm.

Am I feeling worried about this? Am I angry about this? that often can give you almost like a heat map, a really clear signal about what's going on right now. Now, it doesn't necessarily tell you what's driving that emotion, but it will be the signal for you to go find out.

Absolutely. It seems like there's a lot of data that needs to be processed in real time.

Yeah, I think in the world we live in now, it's not— we're information overloaded. So the smart organizations are helping human beings turn information into meaningful knowledge. I mean, if you think about— I've run universities, as you mentioned. I think the most powerful 2 attributes that a graduate needs now is, first of all, the ability to learn for life.

Right.

And secondly, it's about how do I take information and turn it into meaningful knowledge? I think the distortion of truth over the last decade is because human beings haven't been equipped well enough to look at all of the information that they're being confronted with and actually turning it into what they believe truth is based on their ability to take information and turn it into meaningful knowledge.

Yeah.

So Martin, I guess let's talk about engagement. So engagement has been written into the short-term incentive plans and long-term incentive plans of many executives and corporates across Australia. How do you sort of, is it still a valid measure in corporates? Does it equal retention? And maybe if you could talk about engagement.

Yeah, the heart, so pretty well my entire career as a senior executive, I worked with my people and culture organisations to put programs in place to drive values and to drive engagement with our people. And it's still an absolute necessity, Dave, but right now it's not enough. So for the first time I can remember, there has been a break in engagement and alignment of values with my intention to stay or join an organization.

Right.

And that's why A lot of senior executives are feeling hurt and let down. They're feeling kind of disillusioned because they're seeing behaviors from people that they might have invested years of time in developing and nurturing.

Mm-hmm.

They're losing top talent that they used to be able to recruit because of what they did around engagement and their values. Because the 2 things that are mattering— that matter to people right now Be it right or wrong, it's just the harsh reality right now is what are your compensation and benefits and how much flexibility are you going to give me in the way that I need to work? And whether we like it or not, if you don't dial into those 2 things with your employee value proposition right now, remember, Dave, the data I've been working with, half of Australian organisations are not planning on updating their employee value proposition from 2019.

They also—

Or fridges. But it's a damning statistic because the world of work has changed so much since the beginning of 2020. And if you fly— if you're in denial around why money matters and why flexibility matters, you will lose your best people and you won't be able to hire the best people, particularly in this global war for talent, Dave.

Right. So darling, so I guess, yeah, so that sort of brings light to the scenario that plays out that I'm leaving. Why are you leaving? I love my job, I love my boss, but the guy or girl down the road is gonna give me 30% more and that gives me more certainty and—

Yeah, and as I talk to a lot of leaders about it, most people, most of their people have never seen their mortgage interest rates rise the way that they have. Most people, with short-term debt on credit cards haven't seen the rates go up. Most people haven't walked into the supermarket and seen the prices go up almost overnight by what for many feels like, well, it's gone up by 30% and 40%. Well, it hasn't, but it feels that way when they see what the bill looks like. So suddenly somebody wanders along and there's some big bounties being paid right now, Dave.

Right.

If somebody wanders along with $25,000 more, $50,000, $75,000, or with a sign-on bonus. And in that person's mind, that helps relieve their stress around what's gone on on the cost side of their lives. It wouldn't surprise any of us why people are going after security versus necessarily sticking around because the values are great and I feel engaged and I love my job. Some of that will return to equilibrium, but not for a while. And I don't think any of us have the choice to sit around and wait right now. So the key though is to get that balance right, Dave, between the flexibility and the money, because most organisations can only go so far on the money right now as well.

And was that broken into, you know, is it, was that just across the board or was it different for, Female execs versus male execs, like that, those top 2?

Now you know the answer to that question, David, but thank you for asking it. But yeah, what was really interesting, what I find interesting was that in the work, the research that we looked at, number 1 for women was flexibility, with pay being number 2. It flipped for those that identified as being male. For them it was Pay was number one, flexibility was number two, but on a blended average for everybody, number two in terms of what they wanted was actually flexibility, Dave.

Right.

I think they're struggling with the same challenges as everybody else, to be quite frank. You know, the RMIT University, the wonderful institution that I had the pleasure of running, you know, over 10,000 staff, so, You know, they're big employers in their own right, so they too are going through the same challenges that most organisations are going through. I think that they've got an added challenge though, that most of us that were lucky enough to go to university, we got as much, if not more, out of our extracurricular activities, the clubs and societies, the, the hanging out, the sporting activities, the campus-based activities. So while most employers are having to worry about earning the commute of their staff, universities are having to earn the commute of their students too, who are not coming back at the same rates of participation that they were before. And often those students don't know what they're missing out on. And so the added challenge for universities is to make sure they get those students re-engaged in the life of the university, Because that's such a big part of what going to university is all about.

So teaching those sort of social skills to—

Yeah, yeah, not even teaching, just creating the environment for them to be developed. Just as organisations historically created the environment for their staff to learn because we were in physical proximity, just by coming together in formal and informal settings, we were enriched and and develops. There's something fairly cold and clinical about clicking that leave button inside Zooms and Teams. You know, you just— once you click, everything just stops. You're back in wherever you are. You don't have all that goes on after that you normally would have had as the meeting was breaking up, the walk back to your office, all of that stuff. We've got to find other ways of developing it.

As you know, I'm enrolled in an MBA program at the moment. I'm I feel like education's changing. They've just released this online MBA program, and at that cost, I feel like students are missing out on that whole networking element.

Yeah, and again, so what the smart universities will do is first of all, they'll change their instructional design so that there will be a lot more peer-to-peer collaboration, assignment-based work, put incentives in place for you to get together outside the formal structures of the learning and teaching. But they'll also be doubling down on hybrid. It won't all be online, particularly at an undergrad level. They'll be creating these wonderful punctuated events where they bring together, bring you together what might be for a whole weekend, for example.

Yeah.

To go through a super immersive workshop that when you look at the total number of hours actually could be just as many contact hours as you would've had in a normal semester. But it'll be very enriching and will be life-changing and shaping for you as you do that.

Excellent.

I think they had to keep that because, I mean, if you went to a local university, the whole thing's online, like you'd probably say, well, why wouldn't I do it at Oxford or Harvard? But if there's that hybrid component, then it still keeps you in the local option.

Yeah, I think there's a recognition though, Dave, that at a postgraduate level, when you're already in the world of work and what you're looking to do is to get that master's or that postgrad cert, I think that's where fully online is the future because we're just time poor and it's more difficult. But at an undergraduate level, I think it's absolutely essential that the instructional design and the universities provide an opportunity for people to still be able to—

Yeah.

collaborate, socialise, really learn from each other as much as learning from the university.

Fantastic. Well, Martin, we're gonna switch into a different gear now. Little linkage to your Formula 1 obsession and passion.

Can I take a sip of my coffee first, Dave?

You can take a sip of your coffee. Sorry, Martin, we've had you talking. I'll try and draw out this question so we can get your caffeine levels up. But one of the items on your bucket list was a hot lap of the Grand Prix, which we had the pleasure of witnessing you do, and your enthusiasm for that at the last round here in Melbourne at the Grand Prix. But what's next on your bucket list?

Oh, next on my bucket list, David, I don't know if I'll achieve this one, but it's going supersonic in an aeroplane. very, very sad person when the Concorde was retired because that was going to be my predictable way to go supersonic, Dave. So now I'm cozying up to all of my defense force buddies all around the world to see if I can figure out a way to get myself to fly at Mach 1. Of course, just as I didn't tell Mary before I did a hot lap at the Grand Prix, I won't be telling Mary that I'm going supersonic until after. I've got my feet planted back on the ground.

Well, hopefully she's not listening in, but if there is anyone in the Defence Force that's got a spare supersonic jet, uh, please come on through, let us know. Alex, fire away, mate.

Yeah, thank you. Martin, what would you say your favourite quote is?

Oh, I think probably, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there, uh, by Lewis Carroll. I, I think when, when I talk to people about planning their careers I tell them it is about knowing where you ultimately wanna end up because that way you never go in a straight line, Alex. But by knowing where you're going, you'll be able to do your tacking and jibing to use a sailing metaphor to always keep yourself headed in the right direction.

That makes sense. Thank you.

You talked about lifelong learning before, Martin, but if you're starting out, so you just finished high school, Which sort of direction would you head into or recommend someone that's in that scenario now?

I think if I was, and this is a personal choice, Dave, 'cause it's not for everybody, but I think if I was my younger self heading out again, I would've done part-time study straight outta high school. I would've got a job and I probably would've been picking up some microcredentials to the side that were highly valuable in the world of work. So sort of doing an undergrad degree, maybe at a 30 to 40% intensity, picking up some microcreds in project management, in coding, in some other hot areas, potentially generative AI.

Yeah.

And then by the time I was done 6 years later, I would've had a bachelor's degree, I would've earned a ton of dough, I wouldn't have had any university debt, And I would have guaranteed my employment by picking up those current in-demand skills along the way, Dave.

Very clever.

Obviously you're writing a book, but do you have another favorite?

Yeah, you know, without doubt the book that's, uh, had the greatest impression upon me and still to this day, uh, was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I think when I was young and I read that book, it opened my mind to the need for social justice of all types. And it did it at a level that resonated so deeply with me that it sparked a passion with me that no matter what I did in my career, it was going to be about advancing the cause of social justice in all of its forms.

Wow. Thank you.

Sounds like that had quite an influence. And on that sort of train of thought, Anyone you can think of that comes to mind that had a really profound impact or influence on yourself?

So, so maybe one that sadly has passed away and one that's still with us, and they're sort of linked. Nelson Mandela, huge impact on me. There was a man that just deeply understood the power of education to change people's lives. What a lot of people don't realize, but when he was in prison, he studied at a higher education level, some of which was with courses from the Open University in the UK that I had the chance to run, a wonderful institution in the UK. But he realized that true transformation and reform would not come through guns. It would come through having educated citizenry who were capable of fighting for and enriching communities for the long term rather than the short term. And then somewhat linked to that, somebody who I've had the great pleasure to get to know over the last few years is Dylan Alcott. Gee, I wish everybody could have a chance to just watch Dylan do what he does every day.

Yeah.

You know, there is a person that in almost every element of their lives is doing all they possibly can with every minute of the day to fight for what they believe in, live their passions, contribute and enrich other people's lives. I just think he's inspiring.

Fantastic. Thanks for sharing. So you can sort of see the flow. We're getting shorter and shorter and sharper questions here. I'm gonna put my—

Timer on.

Timer on, yes. So I'm just gonna see if I can get the tech working. And Alex, We're gonna give you 1 minute to ask as many questions as you possibly can with Martin. So go.

Are you ready, Martin?

Ready, Alex.

Here we go. Dogs or cats?

Dogs.

Netflix or YouTube?

Netflix.

Calls or texts?

Calls.

Mac or Android?

Mac.

Beach or snow?

Beach.

Home cooking or dining out?

Oh, home cooking. I thought you said hope something or other. Uh, dining out.

Okay. Passenger princess or driver?

Driver.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee.

Saw that coming. TV or book?

TV.

Beer or wine?

Wine.

Candy or chocolate?

Chocolate.

Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

No!

Electric or petrol?

Electric.

Cash or card?

Card.

Plane or boat?

Boat.

Excellent.

Done. That is 1 minute. And if I could cheekily throw in one more rapid fire at you, Martin, uh, in context of your career, beginning or the end?

The end.

Oh, interesting. Great. Well, thank you, uh, Martin, for, um, your time coming into the studio today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Um, you know, we have privilege of, uh, of seeing you quite frequently and looking forward to tomorrow where you're hosting our team offsite here in Melbourne. Um, so yeah, just like to thank you on behalf of the listeners for sharing, uh, about the future of work, and I'm sure they'll want to get in contact with you and can find you on our website. But thank you, Martin.

Thank you, Martin. It's been a pleasure. Very inspirational.

It was great fun. I really enjoyed every minute of it. And take care, everybody.

Hey, this is Alex. If you enjoyed the content so far and you want us to do more, if If you want to hear more, click the subscribe button. It allows us to bring on more guests in the future. Thanks.

Thanks.