The Route To Work: The Company Doctor LIVE at London Academy of Excellence #65

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to this extra special episode of The Company Doctor, recorded live at the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, London, in front of 200 of the city's brightest and most inspiring students. Over the course of this two-part episode, and with the help of an expert panel, our aim is to help students differentiate themselves when they go to get a job, identify what the future of work might look like, and navigate that journey from school to uni or apprenticeship Apprenticeships to Work. We were blown away by the hard work of our student groups, the insightful questions from the audience, and the shiny pearls of wisdom from our guests, and I know that you will be too. So without further ado, this is the LAE Special Part 1: The Future of Work, which begins with a message from LAE's Headteacher Alex Crossman.

Or even a bowl of fruit.

Hello and welcome to this joint production by the London Academy of Excellence and The Company Doctor. On the future of work. The LAE is a post-16 school based in Stratford in East London, and we are founded on the conviction that every one of our students has not only the right but also the drive, the enthusiasm, the opportunity, and the talent to compete in the most rewarding, most competitive industry sectors anywhere in the world. My name is Alex Crossman. I have the enormous privilege to be the headteacher of the London Academy of Excellence, and I am going to hand you over without further ado to Gary Gamp. From the company doctor. Thank you, Gary.

Take it away. Thank you, Alex. Good afternoon, everyone. You are— sorry, I know we said you shouldn't speak, but you've got a speaking part. So say a round of applause. Fantastic. And more importantly, I want to introduce you to the company doctor, but the company doctor is me and my colleague George Glowde.

Hi everyone.

Fantastic. They're not bad. They're not bad, George. We need to introduce what we're doing because a lot of people sitting there thinking, What is this? Why am I here? Anyone thinking that? Put your hand up if you're thinking that. Oh, wrong answer, wrong answer. So some of your student friends are here sitting at the front looking excited/nervous, and a few months ago we asked for volunteers to come and help us with the podcast, and this very cool group of people volunteered, have done a lot of work. There's 3 sections. The first one is the future of work, and I will explain as we go through. So it's about what's happening in the marketplace over the next few years. So by the time You've left school, the world might be a slightly different place. Number 2, the route to work. How do you get there? What do I need to do? Are there new ideas I can kind of use to make me even better than I would have been? And thirdly, the art of romance. And the art of romance is how you join the dots. It's not maybe—

it sounds a bit weird, but you like that? It'll be good.

Yeah, it's nearly Valentine's Day, George, so it's good. So, um, yeah, the art of romance is how you join the dots and what sort of things you need to do to bring to life all the work that you've done, the research, the CV, The jobs, the applications, how do you make it really happen? So I just want to quickly introduce the panel and then we're going to get started. And to our esteemed students here who've been working super hard, let me introduce you. So Ray at the end, we're really pleased to have Ray. Ray is a, a super successful exec who's worked at places like IBM and BT, and he's kindly offered to come here and share some of his knowledge through some of those organizations to help navigate the way through the careers. We have Geoff, my colleague, who has got an amazing amount of experience as a consultant, but also in public sector. So police, government, anything with a blue light on it, basically, he is your man. He can tell you that. And in government as well. Then we have Neil. Neil Anderson is the CEO of a company called Smart Tasking, and he's been working in lots of corporate jobs around, you know, technology and IT. So he can, for those of you who are slightly more geeky, you want to get into that world, then don't ask Neil. And then Eleanor is— yeah, I asked Eleanor to join because Eleanor has just— she's got a first honors in neuroscience. She's super smart and she's on that journey. She's left university, she's got a good degree, she's working towards probably a PhD. I think it's the next stage, but she started to tread the boards on some of this stuff and I want her to share with you some of the background to her journey so far because I think it'd be helpful. And then we have Lauren Lauren is an art editor for National Geographic magazine. It's very super creative, super smart traveler magazine. She's also my daughter, so she's obviously super smart.

She's also my wife, just full disclosure, just so everyone knows who everyone is.

Oh yeah, and George is married to Lauren. It's a family thing. And then finally, last but not least, um, I'd like to introduce you to Dave. I, I call Dave Mr. Business Strategy and Transformation. But he does a lot of work with different companies to help them be more effective selling and driving business strategy and make it— putting into action. So he's a really useful guy to know. Okay, so we've got an esteemed panel. We've got George, who's my co-host. So here we are, route to work. Let's introduce the panel.

Yeah, and I haven't met them before, so it's weird that Gary's given me the, the responsibility of introducing them. So I'm not going to introduce you all because I've never met, but hi, lovely to meet you. As Gary says, they're a very cool bunch of people who put together some really interesting questions for a great panel of people. And just for my own sort of curiosity, can I just get a show of hands of how many of you currently have an idea as to what you want to do after school? Okay. And so for the benefit of people listening at home, that's about, what, 50%, I would say, of people. Okay, great. I'm going to come back to that later.

Did you know what you wanted to do?

No, that's— and that's why. And I think there are loads of unconventional ways you can get to where you want to be, and we'll talk about that, of course, and we talk about that on The Company Doctor. But perhaps we'll kick off with our first question. For our panel.

Oh yeah, I think we're straight into it. So before you ask the question, let me introduce the topic so everyone understands what we're going for. By the way, George is a senior commercial editor at The Independent newspaper. He didn't— we didn't introduce him, but he's super smart also. When he's on the podcast, people always love George because he asks really good questions. Super smart guy. And I just kind of come along for the journey. So if you've got really difficult questions to ask of the panel, which you will have hopefully, when they're really, really difficult and spicy, ask George, okay? Makes sense?

And also you will all get a chance to do that at the end of each section. You'll have a chance to ask questions directly off the panel. So have a little think as we're going along about what sort of questions you want to be asking.

Okay, so the first theme is the future of work. And before we get into the questions that the, the team have been working on, I just want to explain what it is. So the world is changing really fast. COVID has made a massive difference to the world, actually. It's kind of accelerated a lot of people's thinking about work and where they should work and the obvious things about, you know, working from home or in the office. But more importantly, technology's been moving really fast as well. And, you know, you can't pass a day without hearing about AI. I think yesterday Mr. Musk was talking about telepathy from your brain so they can work out what you're thinking. Hope that doesn't happen. You don't want to know what I'm thinking.

It's already happened, I think.

Has it happened? I know what you're thinking.

What is it?

I don't know, when we're going to get on with it, I think you're thinking.

It's that.

So Basically, the world's moving on, and the reason for this, starting with the future of work, George, is when you go to get a job, which is in— how many years is it? Between 1 and 4 years' time. Interesting, right? The world might be a slightly different place, would you agree? AI, technology changes, there's a lot going on, right? And because of that, we've asked the team to research what might the market look like in the next 1 to 4 years, what roles does that affect, What should I be thinking about for my career because of those changes? Where would be the place to place my bets that will be a really good place to be rather than something that might have been taken over by a robot or something? Does that make sense? Good. So George, let's do the questions.

Question 1. Yeah, who's up?

Hi, how can schools equip future generations with the adaptability they'll need to navigate the future of work?

Okay, who wants to go first? Geoff, you're looking like you really wanted to answer this. Well, hold on, give me the microphone.

Hi guys, thank you for inviting us here today. I think it's— adaptability requires a mind approach. So you can learn a particular discipline, whether that is to do with engineering, medicine, whatever it might be, but if you keep an open eye— mind, and if in your schoolwork you can approach things with an open mind and a curiosity to things, then you're going to take the basic skills you've learned, the capabilities, your interests and be able to develop them. Tiny example with me, I actually didn't do A-levels, but that's a bad story. I quit school early, traveled around the world, came back 3 years later and thought, hmm, I want to get a job. Got an apprenticeship, and I started doing an apprenticeship in engineering, and I pretty quickly realized I didn't like it. So I carried on doing an apprenticeship, but I turned to IT. And the point of that story is, because I was interested in IT but not really in heavy engineering. That led me on to the next phase of my career. So I think if in your school life you can keep a curiosity and an openness of mind, it'll help you great as you go on.

Thanks, Geoff. Just, just something to throw in. So because the world is changing, the regular pattern of following a career has really changed. No, I'm going to ask Ray in a minute actually, because when Ray used to work at BT and IBM, they used to have a very static career path, but that's changed now. And so one of the things you want to be thinking about in the future of work is there might be different ways. And George, I know you had a story to tell on that, but I'll ask Ray first.

So good afternoon to you, uh, I'm Ray. First of all, those people who put their hands up just because you don't know what you want to do next, that's okay, that is okay. You've just heard from Geoff. I left school, I didn't like school, I love sports. The only thing that I loved was business studies. Now I know the teachers might not like this, but here's the thing. Like Jeff, I realized later down the line that actually I needed to do my education. So education absolutely plays a place in this, and that's important. So you'll be getting pressure, and it's part of what also schools should be doing is letting you know it's okay not to know what's next. But they will be there to help you. So don't be scared to say, I'm not absolutely sure, but they'll be there to help you. The world's changing. It's companies like IBM. Uh, I spent years at Airbus engineering. So a lot of you do engineering here. People like IBM, they build big technology things. The new world of quantum computing, it needs engineers. How do you think these things get built? It's with engineers. So those of you that are doing and studying microelectronics or stuff like that, building stuff, it's really important. But as an organization, we absolutely have two tracks where people are important. There's an engineering track and you become fellows. And in the world of industry, being a fellow at IBM is probably the pinnacle of any technology company. Any industry, and that's recognizing engineers. The other side is services, consulting. It's people with business information. It's people who can help companies change like Dave does, like I do. My experience is in cybersecurity, risk. It's all in that space, which is the future. So areas like AI, quantum computing, it's absolutely an area which is gonna grow. And going to be an area that is going to be of interest. And that's how the world's changing right now.

Thank you very much, Ray.

Nice.

Well, they still need podcast hosts. That's what I want to know.

AI podcast speaking. I'll tell you what, we'll go to the next question. I was going to ask Lauren a question. Uh, actually, I'm going to ask her anyway. So Lauren, here's the point. I want you to think about what you'll get. The message you're getting is you've got to be flexible and you don't know what you don't know. So when you get out there, you'll know from the careers advice you'll get, you might find other things out once you're in the workplace. And, you know, when Lauren started out— she's looking at me, giving me daggers— she wanted to be a fashion designer, but when she went to get some work experience, she changed her mind about what she wanted to do.

Tell us about that, Lauren.

I did, it's true. I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer. I'd always sort of do sketches and thought that was my path. So I started looking into doing work experience, but I sort of was calling on connections that I had. A friend of a family had a connection at a press office, a fashion press office. So I thought, that's, that's something. It's fashion, it's not design, but we'll give it a go. And I absolutely loved it. And it was sort of the background to the brand, so a sort of way of looking at it I'd never thought of before. And press office sort of arranging the fashion shows, and I was being sent out to buy the tights, and it was all just very exciting. And, um, you know, sending out shoes and things to shoots, and I just really, really loved it. And then I kind of changed track and thought maybe I want to be in the PR side. I didn't end up doing that, but what that showed me was that there were so many more jobs out there I didn't even know existed. Because when you're at school, it's geography, maths, English, and you kind of don't really think about all the jobs that are out there. So that really kind of opened up my mind to the idea that there might be other things, and that kind of took me down a route in choosing the university course that I did choose, which was a fashion communication and promotion, which is essentially branding, very, very broad. But that eventually ended up shaping the path where I'm now designing magazines, and it all just kind of changed.

Thanks, Lauren, that's perfect. Okay, I think we better go to question number 2.

Yeah. Raffi's up next.

I had a question. In STEM fields, robots and AI are taking over routine tasks. Will this make humans obsolete or will it ignite a wave of innovation?

Great question. Who wants to ask the question about— Lauren puts the microphone elsewhere. Do you want to start, Geoff, and then maybe Ray? These guys are super smart. I don't understand the question. Can you help?

So if you think about AI, does anybody nowadays just take an output of AI and use it. You use it, but you do something with it, don't you? You, you have to scrutinize it, you have to vet it, you have to develop it, whatever it is— a report or a document or a critique. So I think of, of AI and similar developments a little bit like the Industrial Revolution. You know, there were farmers who were wandering up and down fields with a plow with a horse behind it. Along came the tractor that enabled them to do the work a lot easier and a lot more productively. Didn't do them out of a job, it just removed what was a pretty mundane job. I've got two daughters, one of who's very heavily into STEM, and the opportunities that she's seeing coming up for her in the computing area are enormous. So I'm a firm believer, to answer the question, that this is a great force of innovation and development of jobs. Jobs will change, the mundane jobs will go, but jobs will change. And for IBM, I think this is probably bread and butter, wasn't it?

Yeah. And to that point, the change— we saw a change back in the, uh, the '80s and '90s with robots taking over on automation on the engineering. And we didn't see a decline in jobs. We saw a change in jobs. And that's exactly what we're seeing. And AI is a growth area, right? It is just, as I said earlier on, that and the areas like quantum computing, if you're interested in those spaces, It is an area where we'll see jobs change, which is exactly what Geoff's saying. So it's something not to be scared of. In some of the mentoring I've done with friends' children similar age to you, they were saying to me, what jobs will we have in the future? And they're gonna be different jobs. Some of them will be similar in engineering, cuz we still need the computers, we still need the engineering, but it's just gonna be more different roles, and it means we'll be more efficient. And people will be doing things better. So it's really not about being scared, it's about saying, what does it mean for me and what other opportunities will it create down the line? And the word flexible.

Thanks for that. But before we go to the next question, can I ask the team, the Future of Work team, you, when you did your research, did anything else come up that you wanted to share? When we're talking about, you know, are there opportunities for work and should we be worried about AI? Putting you on the spot.

Uh, one thing that we found out while doing the research is that AI would certainly take over some jobs, but it will also create new more jobs. And according to the World Economic Forum, I think it was around 20, I think 20 or 30,000 new jobs will be created thanks to AI, apart from the ones that are being replaced.

Yeah, I remember you sharing that. So, so basically there's going to be more interesting jobs and the more mundane jobs could be done by AI, right? So the world isn't scary, the world is exciting.

That's very different from what a lot of mainstream media will say, which is AI is terrifying, no jobs for anyone. So I think it's, I mean, it's really good to hear that because—

but not for you.

Not for me, no.

But maybe the podcast full-time?

No?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's what we're moving to. But no, that's really interesting and really good to hear and great research. Thanks, guys. We've got one more question on this topic from Ciel, if I'm pronouncing that correctly.

My question has two parts. So the first part is, did you experience any major changes throughout your career? And if you were me facing the changes that we do now, how would you adapt?

Great question. Really good, good question. Who wants to answer that one? Oh, Dave.

Good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, as you've heard from a lot of my colleagues here, I think everybody here throughout the career has been through change. And I saw a lot of hands up when you said you want to know what you wanted to do. I can pretty much hand on heart say when you're 50, you won't be doing what you want to do today. So with that, I'd say embrace change. Just to give you a little story, again, the teachers, a bit like Ray, won't like this. When I left school, I opened my exam results and it spelled fudge. So I ended up going into a blue-collar role. And then throughout my career, yeah, change happened. Doors opened for me. I push doors open, doors open as you go through that journey. So all I would say, and, you know, the question about how you adapt, embrace change. We're doing a lot at the minute in leadership and with senior leaders around growth mindset, and it is a big topic behavioral-wise within corporate organizations of how you grow and how you continue to grow and how you embrace that change and transformation. Get out of a fixed mindset. Fixed mindset was '90s, '80s, you know, 2000s. We can all learn, we all continue to learn, and how you adapt is enjoy the journey. Yeah, you will change, things will happen. As I say, doors will open. You probably won't be doing what you're thinking today, but enjoy it and embrace it.

I'm going to hand on to Neil. So I think the message is change is okay, it's actually a good thing. Put your hand up if you like change. Put your hand up if you're not going to put your hand up no matter what I say. Just joking. Okay, good. Neil, go ahead.

Yeah, good. Yeah, thanks again for inviting us today. I think what I'm hearing is a few things, right? So you're going to need some behaviors and some skills that I can give you for the next part of your life and career, right? So to Dave and Ray and Jess's point is what you start doing will definitely change. I'll leave you just a thought of my change, the questions around what's happened in the workplace. Yet when I started work, there was no internet. I think about that. I don't know that I want to know that, but there was no internet. Which meant no mobile phones, which meant the only way I could learn or research was by reading physical things. So imagine, you know, the life we lead today. Who uses their phone all day long? In the evenings, clean up work, right? Who knows, are addicted to their phone? Okay, not quite that, but use it too much, right? But things are freely available to us, but it's our mindset we apply to how we're going to use the information, because it's there. So there's no excuse for not being prepared. And not being doing some research and thinking about how I might embrace the change that we're gonna go on together over the next 10, 15, 20 years, right? Which is, as your lives will change a lot. So underpin what we do with a mindset. You heard a few of the colleagues mention it around the growth mindset. If you like to read a book, just read one called Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck. You can get it on e-reader or on Amazon, whatever. It's a really good read and it's designed to help us think about our mindset and how we approach things But more importantly, how to react to things. So most of us probably don't like change. We have to learn and teach us as go, actually, I quite like change because I actually get quite bored. So a changing role, a change in work is good for me. And that, if I look back on my career, I've always done that, you know, because I know if I'm not being challenged and developing, it has a very strong link to my level of motivation. So motivation is a big link to our happiness. So I know that through change, learning things and developing, it keeps me motivated.. And I think that's the world you're going to move into in a workplace is really embracing change.

So brilliant.

Thank you guys.

That's great. I'm inspired. Are you inspired?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Does that answer your questions? Do you feel like you've been satisfied?

I mean, listened to. Yeah. Any, any, any more thoughts before we, we're going to go to the audiences? You're on. This is your time now. You ready for it? Yep. Any, any other thoughts from the Future of Work team?

You're good.

By the way, good job. A round of applause for the Future of Work team. I must admit, I ran a few classes and they were talking about stuff I had no idea about. It really opened my mind, so, and blew my mind a little bit, to be honest. It was a small explosion, but it was good.

Any questions from out there, quickly? Anyone got any burning—

Yeah, so we've got a microphone at the back. Don't be nervous. It's your chance to ask questions of either the team here who've done the research or the panel. What's on your mind? The future of work. What's going to change? What do I need to think about? Which jobs are going to be the ones I should focus on? Is the path I'm following the right one? Who's going to be brave enough to go first? Gentlemen here, thank you very much. In the future, what job sectors do you think will be the highest paying? Great question. That's a damn good— I think that's a great question, George.

It is a good question.

I, by the way, can I warm the panel up? Because you've done— I'm going to come— I'm not going to put you on the spot, but you, you looked into this. Which, which jobs were the ones in the future that look protected, look better? Don't answer it yet, but have a think about it. Um, let's go to the panel here. Ray, a quick, a quick brief one.

So a couple of areas, right? Finance is always good, but you're talking about data scientists in finance, so they'll be the guys and girls who are actually, uh, looking at it from that perspective. So very much in demand, will continue to grow with technology and growth, but finance sector data scientists Data scientist basically means people who can manipulate and understand patterns and trends within lots of data.

Thanks, Ray. Thank you. Um, can we just quickly go back to our, our esteemed student panel? Because you've done so much work on this, what's your thoughts? What did you find out?

No pressure. There's one more question here. I saw a fella here put his hand up.

Yes, I'll take the question here, then we'll come back to Rafi. Uh, this is a question to basically all of you. How many of you are actually happy with what you're doing and enjoy what you're doing? And if not, What would you look to do?

Good question.

Okay, I'm going to pass this on. I want to, I want to answer myself a bit now. Yeah, what, what, what, who's happy with what they're doing? Is that what you're saying? Who's happy in their jobs? That we're saying.

And what would you do if not?

Do you enjoy it? Are you happy in your current position and do you enjoy it? So, so before I answer, so here's the thing, this is a really important question, by the way. When you, you're driving to get a job, it's really important to get a career. At this time in your life, you need to focus on what you're excited about. And then stick to it because you should follow your dream. And what tends to happen is that sometimes people, they're so keen to get into the workplace to get the money or whatever it is, they end up in a job they didn't want, doing the thing they didn't want to do, and they dream of something else. I mean, as you can see, I want to be a rocket scientist— not really, no— but I didn't do— I didn't end up doing the thing I wanted. And then after 5 years, I realized I just took the job because, yeah, it paid me, right? So I think this is a really important question. You should definitely follow your dream. But the question is, who's happy in that? Geelong, go first, and then I'll go to Geoff.

I really love my job and I don't feel like people say that very often, which is a real shame. But I am in a creative sector job. And so I knew from the start that I was basically choosing loving my job over money. I do make money, but no, there is basically a ceiling and I'm only going to get to a certain point. If I want to go more, see, much more senior than I am now, it won't be the creative part anymore. I'll be a manager, I'll be doing numbers. My boss will listen to this as well. But I basically have chosen getting up every day and loving my job over astronomical salary. And I think I'm okay with that.

I think so. There's an important message in there, isn't there? So what's more important, money or enjoyment? Probably a bit of both, right? But it's something to consider because some roles will have a ceiling on them, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue them. Money's not everything, right?

Geoff? Yeah, thank you. I'm going to link two things, the adaptability and the change that we've spoken about, to the question as well. I'm absolutely enjoying what I've been doing for the last 10 years, which is consulting. And the reason I'm enjoying it particularly is the variety. At any one time, I'm probably working with half a dozen clients, half a dozen different people in half a dozen different organizations. Amazing amount of variety. But when I made the switch, because the first 30 years of my life was spent growing up through some big companies, and I ran some big companies, and it was— I thought it was good fun to be the big fish, to be the, the CEO of a really big— and it was fun. And I was worried that when I worked to consulting, could I really handle being just a little guy again? And of course what happened was the change brought around all that variety and all that flexibility. So yeah, absolutely enjoying what I'm doing now, but I think that's because of the change in adaptability.

Thanks for calling that. You want to say something, Ray?

I'm going to say something slightly different to the panel. You can pursue the money and still have fun and enjoy it. Yeah, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.

You can have both, right?

I've been kind of lucky over my career that I've enjoyed it all the way through, and I've done some really rank jobs. But I've enjoyed them because I just said, I'm doing this, I'm going to go and enjoy it.

I think it's a fair point. So yeah, it's not one or the other. I agree with that, that's a good point.

Uh, George?

Uh, well, what I would say is also, even if you are doing a job which isn't making you super, super happy, the key thing is to pursue passions and dreams on the sideline. And I know that's more and more prevalent now. People are doing their day jobs whilst on the side working on a side hustle, wherever that may be. And I think that's really important. I know a lot of people who earn mega bucks, but they're totally miserable and they haven't got anything else going for them because they're working so hard. And when they come back from work, they just lie on the sofa and think about what a terrible life they have whilst counting their money. That's an exaggeration, but you know, there's, there is a balance there. And I think it's really important to, if you are interested in something which in your mind isn't going to make you loads and loads of cash, make sure you keep doing that on the side because one day it might, and also it's going to keep you happy. That's my two cents.

No, I love it. So just that George is a creative, he's a a musician, he's a writer, he's a very smart man. So, you know, George has been able to pursue his dreams at the same time as his job. But, you know, I think, I think the message you're getting from everyone here is follow, follow your dreams, don't follow the cash. You can have both, but follow your dreams first. Is that good? Do you agree? Any thought? Anyone else want to say anything else? Hands up for anyone.

Um, so do you believe in the phrase that money doesn't buy happiness?

It's an interesting question, so thanks for asking. I think the reality is, right, is you can have all the money in the world, but you might not be happy if you're not enjoying what you do. So there's a there's a balance. And as your life— when you leave college and move into the workplace, it will change at different times. You might need more money for different reasons, you know, as you move on to buy properties, you know, get married, have families, your life will change, right? But I think you're a long time at work if you're not happy doing what you're doing and following what you care about. I think it could be a challenge in life, right? And at some point you, you'll fall out of love with the job you're doing. Um, so we've covered it a few times. I, I definitely believe that you will do jobs that don't even exist anymore, right? But they'll be linked to things you care about. And if you care about it and can make enough money to what you want your happiness to be, then you're on a good track, right? And some of those jobs, you know, hot markets right now, definitely sustainability, right? Every board I work with are thinking about what's our strategy around sustainability, what are we putting back into the community? These jobs didn't exist a few years ago, right? So things are coming on, right? But I think money is an enabler for happiness depending where you want it to be. I know plenty of people got lots of money, they're pretty unhappy. So there's a link between the two.

No, good, that's very wise. So yeah, so some people say money is the root of all evil. It isn't, it's the love of money. If you're hugging it, you've got a problem. But it can give you freedom, it can get— no one's saying you shouldn't chase the money, but just, you know, being happy is more important. We've got one more. My question is, when you were younger, was there anything that at the time you had viewed as something terrible has happened to you, which only when you were older did you realize that it was really a miracle in disguise? Oh, that's a great question. You should have been in the group here. That was awesome.

Jeff, um, let me see if this answers your question. At the age of 10, and that was a long, long time ago, I was in West Africa with my parents and I attended school in West Africa for 2 years. And I had this— the teachers will love this— the most inspirational teacher you can imagine. And I didn't know it at the time, absolutely did not. And this is the bit about looking back. And later in life, I look at the person I became, not so much about education, not about academic, but about character and about purpose and about interest. And that headmaster was absolutely inspirational. I would argue is, is largely formed the person I am today.

So yeah, but that's good.

That happened to me at Thames.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Company Doctor. A huge thanks to Alex Crossman and the team at LAE for having us, to our panel of sagely experts, and enormous gratitude, of course, to the brilliant students of LAE who formed the working groups, and to everyone in the audience for your participation and attention. We hope you can join us next time for part 2. Until then, why not visit thecompanydoctor.com to subscribe to this podcast and listen back through more than 60 glorious episodes.