Tap into your creativity and innovation mindset with guest Duncan Wardle-former head of innovation & creativity at Disney

You're listening to TFR, This Feels Right.

Hello and welcome to TFR, This Feels Right. I'm your host, Joel Silverstone, and for over 20 years I've been helping people in business and Sometimes in life to be more influential using their communication skills, to influence without being manipulative. So what that means is to be able to communicate and connect to the logic, and most importantly, to be able to communicate and connect to the emotions. Today's show, I'm really excited. It's about tapping into our creativity and innovation mindset. This is so timely for where we are at in our lives. And we've got the right guest for that. We've got Duncan Wardle, the former head of innovation and creativity at a little company called Disney. Duncan and his team were involved for innovative and creating magical new storylines and experiences for such companies as Imagineering, Lucasfilm, Pixar, and of course, Disney Parks. Duncan is now the founder of Idea8 and Innovate. He's a multiple TEDx speaker, and he now shares his unique approach and insights and experience around the world on how people can use their creativity and innovation to create those better storylines. So without further ado, let's get into our discussion with Duncan and see how you listeners can be able to Learn about maybe changing some of your mindsets and challenging the way that you are thinking. You know, we're, we're all a little bit lost. We all of a sudden have a blank canvas in front of us. The world changed a lot faster than anybody could have predicted. So what everybody wants to know, Duncan, and this is why we're gonna look to your expertise on this, is how can we Redirect ourselves? How can we tap into our creativity and innovation to really maybe change our way of thinking or change our approach to how we're gonna work moving forward?

Well, I think there's a couple of approaches. I guess the first one is do the right thing. Do what you think is the right thing. So everybody's trying to step up right now, and— but Richard Branson went further than anybody else. Richard Branson said, look, I'm an airline, we're in trouble, I'm going to personally give out of my wealth $250 million. to help save as many jobs in my company as I can, because he could, but I haven't heard a single other executive on the planet say the same thing. So if we think about doing the right thing, I once worked out when I worked at Walt Disney World how many directors, vice presidents, senior vice presidents, executive vice presidents, etc. This was after the mortgage crisis of 2009, and I calculated what their bonuses and share packages look like. And I said, you know what, if we gave up one of our— one year, one year, our annual bonus and our annual share package, we could save X thousand jobs for 3 years. And I just challenge everybody in every industry is to think about doing the right thing first. And I think that should be the first thing we do. Secondly, I think I look around for very practical examples of what people are already doing. We are— the wonderful thing about the human race is the biggest skill set we have is creativity, which is one of the few skill sets that won't be programmable in the next decade. For example, a very small distillery company in Western Canada started to reproduce, change their production facility into producing hand sanitizer because they could. 2 gentlemen in Italy were contacted by a hospital that couldn't, because Italy is going through awful problems at the moment, they couldn't produce enough filters as quickly as they could the ventilators and people were dying. So these guys came out of nowhere, 2 young entrepreneurs, they brought their 3D printer in, it took them about 2 hours to create the model, and then they were banging out ventilators, goodness knows how many per hour, for less than $1 a unit and saving hundreds of people's lives. Now you take the young people, so there was a high school in Japan who, they were going to miss their high school graduation and they were distraught, but so one of them was a Minecraft player, he plays Minecraft, And he said, you know what, I'm going to recreate our school gym. I can recreate all of our faces from our high school book. I can recreate all of the teachers' faces, and we're going to do our high school graduation live in Minecraft. And just before I got on this podcast, I live in a subdivision in Florida, our local high school, the Panthers, God bless them, 350 cars came past our house. They asked us all to come out and wave and cheer, and all we did was cheer as loudly as we could because this was the only graduation ceremony these seniors were going to have. to get. And so people are— and that costs nothing, right?

Yeah.

So it's just about thinking differently and asking ourselves, how might we? I think the other thing is the rules have changed, right? So look at all these— so for example, the airline industry, the rules just changed. The cruise industry, the rules just— but there's also industries that have been around for a very, very long time that nobody's ever challenged the rules. So for example, go back to 2004 in Central Florida. And this is why I think there's going to be the acceleration of lots of industries that will go under if they don't pivot and think differently. I'm going to give you a tool to help you think differently in just a moment.

Yeah.

To set it up, before the hurricanes of 2004 rolled through Central Florida, everybody used to drive up and down the I-4 to get to work. There was a loop road called the Greeneway, but nobody wanted to use it because you had to pay a toll until the 3 hurricanes came to town. Suddenly, we couldn't get up and down the I-4 because it was blocked with trees. Suddenly, everybody started to use the Greenway. And of course, they discovered it, they realized how much quicker and faster it was, and eventually everybody evolved to the Greenway. So now take a look at the different industries. Physical retail was already under challenge and being challenged by online services. Well, probably the late baby boomers probably haven't all discovered online shopping yet, but you know what? The next 90 days, they're going to discover it really quickly.

That's true.

And so the acceleration of online shopping is coming really, really really, really fast. Sports are going to big sports venues. Already, online gaming is beginning to challenge what— I've done some work recently with the NBA. They've put a stake in the ground that they believe virtual basketball revenue will exceed real basketball revenue within less than 20 years from today. So they piloted, I think it was last year, the Orlando Magic against the New York Knicks, the virtual team instead of the real team. So they draft kids—

Yeah.

Just like a real draft, and they get paid lots of money.

Right.

But instead of getting 12,000 or 14,000 people to a game, they got way more than that at Madison Square Garden, plus millions of people online. And so I actually— and look at the closure of the Olympics this year. Do I believe there will be a virtual gaming Olympics by the year 2040? Yes, I do. And so, but again, so sports has to think about how they will pivot. The conference industry, the work industry, we're going to learn very, very quickly in the next 90 days that a good 50% of us don't actually need to go into an office every day, because guess what? We can do the job from home. Suddenly, that industry, the online conference industry, Zoom that we're using right now, is going to be— the rent I could save, so that's going to have to pivot really quickly. Then you look at the conference industry. Will we all still go to conferences where thousands of people sit together and hear people? Think about the carbon offset emissions of bringing thousands of people together to sit in the conference. Virtual conferencing will start to accelerate. These industries that have stayed behind as it is. So for example, I call it— I gave a talk recently about the death of the marketing economy and the birth of the experience economy. And what do I mean by that? Well, Generation Z will not— but Generation Z, these young people are coming up, they're not going to own houses, they're not going to own cars, they're buying experiences. How do I know that? They're already telling us. Where do we think Airbnb came from? Where did escape rooms come from? Where did craft breweries come from? Where did the Museum of Ice Cream come from? They're all creating experience. The experience economy will dominate the traditional economy. If you're a physical retail store that sells products and services off a shelf, then that's all you are. I can buy you on Amazon. Create an experience where I can come and be engaged. Some brands have got it right, some brands— for example, museums. Let's be honest, museums are boring. I'm sorry, that was my inside voice. We heard it. I watched a little boy in Brussels about 6 months ago, I felt like a dinosaur. He reached out and tried to swipe a painting because he thought he could.

Right.

Because he's used to being able to touch the screen. And I thought, God, so to him this is really boring, but it's an amazing painting. But what if Vincent van Gogh could pop out of the painting through augmented reality, tear his ear off, and tell this little boy about why he tore his ear off? Suddenly that would bring that painting to life in a way in which this— and augmented reality is not expensive. And so if you look about, you know, so physical environments, you know, a very small way of pivoting and getting people to engage, you know, I worked for somebody recently, did some work for somebody who runs their own Planet Fitness franchise, and they said, well, we can't create enough marketing. We don't have the money. We don't have the people. I said, well, how many people you got? She said, 2. I said, okay. I said, how many members do you have? She said, I think it was— it was over tens of thousands of people anyway. And I said, well, okay. I said, wait a minute. Why don't you stop doing your marketing and let your consumer do it for you? And she said, well, what do I mean? I said, you've got tens of thousands of people coming through your gymnasiums month in, month out, and what are they doing? They're taking selfies. Why are they taking selfies? Because they want to show their mates they look better than them. And I said, why don't you curate that content and allow the consumer to create your content for you? It's far more authentic, it's far more credible. You can reach people with paid advertising, but there's no credibility to it. So how might we, for certain brands, actually curate the content, not create the content, but become content curators. It's just a different way of thinking. And so in these times, I think one of the things, one of the tools I would like to give people is what I call what if.

What if?

What if is about challenging all— we all have rules in our industry. It doesn't matter which, you know, you hear people say, oh, I work in the healthcare industry, we have more rules than you. I'm like, no, you don't. Walt Disney World hosts tens of millions of people a year. You can believe there's lots of rules around architecture, engineering, public safety, etc., etc. And it's about taking the rules of your industry and challenging them. So why do we do weekly reports? Because we've always done weekly reports. Why do we do weekly meetings? We've always done weekly meetings. And so, so to give you an analogy, in 1940 Walt created a film called Fantasia, and it was a classical masterpiece set to classical music, but he wanted it to mist inside the theater during the sequence of Sorcerer's Apprentice when there was water on the screen. He wanted heat pumped in when there were flames on screen, and the theater owner said, no, Walt, That's not the way we do it here. We've always done it this way. And Walt said— so he listed the rules of going to a movie theater. I must sit down. I must be quiet. I must watch a movie. Must watch the previews. Have to go at a set time. And he chose the rule, I, Walt, can't control the environment. He said, well, what if I can control the environment? Well, that's not provocative enough. The more absurd and provocative your what-if question, the faster you'll get out of your river of thinking, your area of expertise and your area of experience, and think differently. So he said, well, What if I take my movies out of the theater? Well, if you know how to do it, it's not innovation, it's iteration. And he said, well, okay, if I take my movies out of the theater, well, clearly they couldn't be 2-dimensional because I don't own the screens and the screens would fall over anyway. But what if I made them 3-dimensional? Well, that's interesting. But if I made them, how would I do that? Well, I'd have to make— I'd have to have people play the characters. Well, if I had people play the characters, they'd have to wear a costume. Well, if they have to wear a costume, they'd need to be themed. So I need a theme land around them so people will be immersed in their stories. Well, if I'm if I need to immerse them in this story, Cinderella couldn't live next to Davy Crockett or Jack Sparrow because people wouldn't be immersed in her story. Well, what if I put them in different lands? Oh, wait a minute, I'll call it Disneyland. Now fast forward to the year 2005. You and I used to go to Blockbuster Video. You probably had more late fees than I did, but I probably had more late fees than the rest of the country. So, um, the founder of Netflix had $130 worth of late fees on Apollo 13, so he listed the rules of going to Netflix. I must drive to a physical store. I can only go during opening hours. I can only get 3 at a time. They never have the one I want on opening day weekend. I have to have a membership card. I must take them back or I must pay a late fee. And he took one rule, the rule of drive to a physical store, and he said, what if there was no physical store?

Mm-hmm.

And that's an absurd question, but because he asked the absurd question, he got out of his river of expertise and experience and said, well, wait a minute. YouTube existed 10 or 15 years ago. Well, wait a minute, YouTube streams amateur content. Well, what if I stream professional content? Well, if I stream professional content, what if I did a deal with the movie studios where I can actually create a streaming service where nobody drives anywhere, everybody gets what they want opening day weekend, and nobody has to rewind anything, and nobody has to take anything back? I'll cut the rental off after 24 hours, nobody pays a late fee. I'll take my idea to Blockbuster Video 5 times, They'll turn me down 5 times and I'll take them out of business in less than 5 years. Now it's easy for very small organizations and small entrepreneurs to look at this and say, well, how the hell could I do that? Disney has millions and Netflix has millions. I would respectfully disagree. Walt had no money in 1940. He was bankrupt. And Reed Hastings was working out of a garage in 2005. However, I'll give you a smaller analogy to bring it home. Very small company in Nottingham in Great Britain in the '70s. They had 26 employees, they made glasses that we drink out of, and they noticed during the packing, shipping, and wrapping too much breakage and not enough production. So they went down to their shop floor and watched the production process and listed the rules: 26 employees, conveyor belts, cardboard boxes, 12 glasses to a box, glasses separated by corrugated cardboard, glasses wrapped in newspaper, employees reading the newspaper. So somebody asked the relatively provocative what-if question: what if we poke their eyes out? Well, that's against the law and it's not very nice, but because they had the courage to ask the absurd what-if question, somebody sitting next to him said, well, wait a minute, why don't we just hire blind people? So they did. Production went up 20%, breakage went down over 70%, and the British government gave them a 50% salary subsidy for hiring people with disabilities. You want to know where Uber came from? Uber came from 2 blokes walking into a bar. Sounds like the front line of a joke, but it was 1 o'clock in the morning, they were in— I believe it was Chicago, I can't remember where, It was raining outside, they couldn't get a cab, they'd had too much to drink. So one of them asked, what if everybody— what if every car was a cab? And guess who went on to create Uber? So it is about taking the rules of your life, the rules of your business, listing them as quickly as you can, picking one and asking, what if that rule no longer applied? And getting out of your river of thinking and thinking differently. So that's one tool people could use. Another tool people could use is to help them stop thinking like they always do. is to re-express the challenge. So for example, if I were— where are you based?

Toronto.

Okay, so if I would come to Toronto and you and I are going to go into business, we're going to open a car wash together. Tell me the 3 or 4 essential items we would need to put in our car wash.

Uh, well, water, soap, and hoses and brushes.

Okay, water, soap, hoses, and brushes. All right, well, screw that. Never liked car washes anyway. So you, you and I are gonna go into business, Joel, We're going to open the most amazing auto spa. Now, what is it? What could we put in our auto spa?

I guess something that creates an experience because people don't— it doesn't feel like a chore. So something that— the word spa, I hear luxury, I hear experience. So something experiential.

Video screens. What else could we put in there?

Yeah, I don't know that business well, so that is a good one.

Come on, spas. What do you see in spas?

Yeah, well, I guess there's some sort of luxury when I hear the word spa. So I guess—

So close your eyes, walk into a spa, tell me what you see.

Music, smells, comfort. Somehow your tension is just released as soon as you walk in because you hear the music.

Right, so you said water, you said, you said masseuse, barista. So all I did was stop you from thinking as you always did. When I said car wash, you went into your river of thinking what you know to belong in a car wash. You said water, brushes, soap, and vacuum. I said spa, suddenly we're into robes, baristas, and masseuses. All I did was re-express the challenge to stop you thinking the way you always have and give you permission to stop, think differently. Walt was the master.

Right. Yeah.

On July 17th, 1955, he created a level of hospitality that's never been replicated or duplicated simply by re-expressing the challenge. He said, we will not have any customers in our park, we will only have guests. Now think about how you're treated when you go somewhere as a customer and think about how you're treated when you go somewhere as a guest. He said, we will not have employees in our park, we'll only have cast members. There'd be cast for a role, They'll wear a costume, not a uniform, on stage or backstage. And with that, simply gave everybody a badge of honor. So fast forward to 2011, if we ask the same question we ask every single day, how might we make more money, we could have put the gate price up at the theme parks and we'd have made our quarterly results. That's called iteration, not innovation. But instead of saying, how might we make more money, and companies that continue to ask themselves, how might we make more money, are going to go out of business because Generation Z are going to— because they're still product-centric and they need to become consumer-centric. So instead of saying, how might we make more money, we said, how might we serve the biggest consumer pain points or solve the biggest consumer pain points? We all know what it was— standing in line. So we said, what if there were no lines? We used the what-if tool. We didn't know how to do it. Again, if you know how to do it, it's iteration, not innovation. So we said, well, what if we eliminated the front desks in our hotels, the turnstiles to our parks, the lines for your favorite attractions or character meeting groups or to pay for food or to pay for merchandise? And sure enough, we looked around the world and look, RFID technology. And so now when you visit Disney World, you get Disney's MagicBand in the mail if you're staying in one of their hotels.

Mm-hmm.

And it is your room key. You don't wait to check in or check out. It is your theme park ticket. You just swipe the turnstile and go. It has your reservations for your favorite character meet and greets and rides on it. You don't stand in line for them anymore. You want to pay for an item of merchandise? Touch it once, it goes to your hotel room. Touch it twice, it goes to your house. Food— I've saved my hot dog with my pickles on the side. I'm going to Pinocchio's Village House for lunch today. I'm sitting at table 47. The restaurant knows I'm here. The food comes fresh to me. Had we have asked how might we make more money, which is the question that will continue to put people out of business—

Yeah.

Because that's the way we used to do business, not the way we should be doing business— we'd have raised the prices 3%. But because we asked how might we solve the biggest consumer pain point, the average consumer now has between 90 and 120 minutes free time a day, which has resulted in record revenues. And not only that, but data. Millions, tens of millions of people pouring through the gates every year are live crowdsourcing the future design of every product and service Disney Parks creates by simply telling them what they like and what they don't. So those are 2 tools. So the what-if tool is about listing the rules.

Yes.

Picking one and saying, what if that rule no longer existed? And then the re-expression tool is just about, are we in the car wash business or are we in the auto spa business? Do we have guests or do we have customers? How might we make more money? How might we solve the biggest consumer pain point?

Duncan, there's so much gold in there. You know, this permission to think differently, you know, ties in with looking at the— they tie in so much, right, with the what if. Looking at, you know, example, the car wash and staying stuck there and saying, well, how can we make more money from the car wash? And go, well, hang on, what if, you know, looking at what's What are some of the standard rules that you have? And then saying, well, let's, let's not be focused on the money. Let's give ourselves permission to think differently. And, and yeah, I think, you know, the Disney example is so good because everyone wants to mirror that or copy that, but that's not innovative thinking, right? That's—

But here's the thing. These are just creative problem-solving tools. I don't care if you're the Walt Disney Company with the resources you've got or 2 guys and a dog, you can still list the rules of your industry, pick one, and ask what if that rule no longer took place. Another thing you can do, which is cheap and easy, is you can bring a naive expert into every session you run. What is a naive expert, and why should they be in your session? They don't work for you, and they don't work in your industry. So what does that give them permission to do that you can't? It gives them permission to ask all the silly questions you're too embarrassed to ask in front of your peers. It gives them permission to throw out the audacious idea ungoverned by your politics, your turf, your hierarchy, and your constraints. And this is the way we do it here. They will not solve the challenge for you, but they will stop you thinking the way you always have and help you think differently. So an example, do you have a pen and a piece of paper in front of you?

I do.

Good. All right, so we were designing a new retail dining and entertainment complex for Hong Kong Disneyland, and I invited into the room We had in the room 12 white male over 50 American architects. That's called groupthink. So I invited into the room as my naive expert a young Chinese lady who was a chef because she was the antithesis of everybody else in the room. And I gave them the same 7-second challenge you're about to take on. Okay, so I'm going to name an object, you're going to draw it, but you only have 7 seconds. Okay, and then don't, don't show it to me.

Sure.

So I would like you please to draw a house.

Okay.

7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Pen down, don't show it to me. So did you or did you not draw one door, and did you or did you not draw it in the front in the middle of the house?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, 2 windows and bars over them?

Close, one window, no bars.

Okay, all right. And oh, let me guess the shape of the roof. Hmm, triangle?

It's like you're here.

So here's the thing. So here's what happened. All the white male American architects drew what you did. They all drew the same thing. They stayed in their river of thinking what a house should look like. The young Chinese female chef drew a dim sum bowl that we eat our dim sum out of with a shrimp ball and a pork ball and a little Chinese lady waving out of the window. So when we all showed our pictures, all of ours looked identical except hers, and we all laughed because we realized we stayed in our river of thinking what a house should look like.

Right.

She gave us permission to get out of our river of thinking and think differently. And our challenge was to create a new retail, dining, and entertainment complex for Hong Kong Disneyland. And what she gave us permission to do was consider audacious architecture. And on the way out the door, somebody slapped a Post-it note over her drawing that simply He said, dim sum architecture, distinctly Disney, authentically Chinese. 7 years later, the strategic brand positioning for the Shanghai Disney Resort, the guy did everything we did, including the design of the park, was distinctly Disney, authentically Chinese. But here's the point, and here's the point most companies don't understand. We hire African Americans in and we tell them to work on the African American business. We hire Hispanics and we tell them to work on the Hispanic business. But nobody's yet walked in the room and said, well, then you should all be working on the old white men business, because we'd be offended. But we treat other people like that every day. What we don't understand is the power of diversity. Diversity is innovation. If somebody doesn't look like you, they don't think like you. And if they don't think like you, they can help you think differently.

Well, that's exactly like your NBA, about the virtual NBA, right? If everybody's in the NBA, that's all we know. But if you bring in That next generation that isn't interested in live sports, but they're interested in virtual sports. But if they're not invited to that meeting, they never got that. They never got that memo.

Yeah, and we still don't invite our interns into our senior meetings.

Yeah, this is— so this is good because this is, I think, where we are at in the world right now, is that we're feeling paralyzed. For so many people, we're feeling paralyzed with the fear, with the anxiety of What is going to go next. So it sounds like if we're able to step back and, and expand our perspective and invite the people that we would not necessarily think of inviting into that discussion to look at ways to rebrand or redevelop or take our business, whether it be one person or a company, to, to another level. It's, it's— we need diversity of thought. We can't just surround ourselves with the same people who Look like us and think like us.

No, and it's easy for people to say, oh, he was an executive at Disney, he doesn't have to take risks. Okay, well, after 31 years of the Walt Disney Company, I threw myself off a cliff and said, I'm out. And people said, are you mad? Why would you do that? Are you screwy? You were head of innovation creativity. Well, yeah, okay, I was there 30 years. 30. 3-0. And I was given the— and it was a wonderful company to work for, and I was given a bronze Jiminy Cricket thank you for 30 magical years of service statue. And I kind of looked at it and thought, you know what? I got to do what I want to do. And here's my message. At school, you were either good or crap at math, and you were either good or bad at history. And chances are you were either good at the sciences or good at the arts. And whichever you liked the most, you got the best grade in it. It's called common sense, by the way.

Mm-hmm.

So if you pick your— what are you really passionate about? What do you love doing? I don't care what it is. If you do what you love, you'll be really good at it. And so when I left Disney, I spotted this, what I call a gap in the market plus my passion point. The gap in the market is this: innovation was trendy 10 years ago, and now it's about survival for most of the big legacy brands, and most of them won't make it because they'll continue to do business as usual. But all the C-suites are standing up there saying, we must take risks. You must innovate, we must think differently, we must be brave, and all of their employees are sitting there going, yeah, that's great, you're going to show me how? And nobody's showing people how. Giving people a simple toolkit that makes innovation easy, creativity tangible, and the process fun. Why should you make it fun? Because Fred and Sally are good people, they've worked for you for a year or 20 years, but they have no incentive to use this toolkit if you don't make it fun. fun. If you make it enjoyable, you can't change a culture by talking about it. You can only change a culture by giving people a toolkit they choose to use when you're not around. And so, and here's the other piece, I am very passionate about if you do what you're good at, you'll— if you do what you love, you'll be really good at it. I firmly believe everybody is creative. Why do I believe that? Because most people will put their hand up and say, no, I'm not. And then I'll ask them if they were a child once. And they'll laugh and they'll realize, oh yeah, that's right, I was. And then I'll ask them about the biggest toy they were ever given for their birthday that came in the biggest box. And I'll ask them after they took the toy out the box, what did they end up playing with for the next 5 days? And everybody's going to tell me the box. Because the box could be anything they wanted it to be. We all grew up with an amazing— we're all creative.

Yeah.

We all are born with an amazing imagination. And then we go to school and it starts getting shut down because the teacher says it's just a box. We're all born curious. Do you have children?

I do. I have 2 boys. Yeah.

How old are they?

16 and 12.

Okay. Well, when they were 4 or 5, what was the number one question they used to ask you every single day, multiple times? Why? Why? Why? Why? And why? Children are curious. Then we go to school and we get a job and we're told there's only one right answer. So we stop asking the second why. Actually, the insights for innovation come on the 4th or 5th why, and your data probably doesn't go deep enough. Children are really good at getting to the core consumer truth. If you tell somebody, why do you go to Disney? My data would tell me, well, we go for the rides. Well, that's a million, couple hundred million dollar investment. But if you pause for a minute and act childlike, not childish, and ask, well, why do you go for the rides? Well, I remember Small World. Why is that important to you? I remember the music. Why is it you like the music? Well, it reminds me of my mum. Why is that important to you? I take my daughter now. On the 5th why, you've just got to the insight for innovation. She's not coming for a new ride at all or a new capital investment. Strategy. She's coming based on her memory and her nostalgia. That's a communication campaign, not a capital investment strategy. But we tend to stop at the first why. And the last one is intuition. And I won't go into the whole story, but I will tell you— so 2 things: you have 100 billion neurons in your brain, you have 100 million neurons in your stomach. As a consumer, the clothes you're wearing right now, the car you drive, the place you go on holiday, the restaurants you choose, every brand and product and service you choose to engage with, you went— you said, I went with my gut. It's a very powerful computer. Now, have you ever stared at the back of the head of somebody who you thought looked really hot and they immediately turned around and stared at you and you had to look away really quickly?

Yes.

We all have. How did they know you were looking at them? Intuition. It is a remarkably powerful computer. I won't go through the whole story, but I will tell you through just using intuition and not data, we created record revenues for one of our parks in Paris. by just purely using our intuition to find what our data couldn't find. But here's the important point: we're all born creative.

Yeah.

We're all born with imagination. We're all born curious, and we're all born with intuition, and we've still got them, but we've been put— we've tucked them away in favor of strategic thinking, critical thinking, planning, analysis, and strategy. Well, and for the last 20 years, the left-hand side of the brain has dominated the way we do business, and rightly so. However, The left-hand side of the brain and all the skill sets associated with it can be programmed into artificial intelligence and will. So, so, but the right-hand side of the brain— I've spoken to 3 or 4 AI experts who have categorically told me that creativity, imagination, curiosity, and intuition will not be programmable into AI anytime soon. Will they in the future? Who knows?

Yes.

But in the near future, probably up to a decade away from now, the skill sets that we're actually born with will actually become the most employable skill sets simply because they can't be replaced or programmed by AI.

Absolutely.

And so I would encourage people to bring back out the skill sets that they— and that's basically what I do. I run workshops. A, you've got to remind people they are creative, they've got intuition, they are curious. And then B, you've got to give them the tools to do the job.

Absolutely. Well, first of all, I mean, this— the whole idea for this podcast, This Feels Right, is exactly about that. Is that too much time— again, when I hear someone talking about strategy, my eyes start to roll because yes, people need some logic, but they also— we also need to be able to connect to that emotional level, what we call our gut instinct. But that's really— that's our primal thing that's going on in our brain is that gut instinct. So absolutely, I agree with you. There's Um, when we make a decision, even buying a house, uh, you might have a list of everything you want to see in that house, but you walk into the house and it just feels right. Uh, so there's certain things, but it also is a feeling. It has to speak to that intuition. So I totally agree.

And here's what my intuition tells me. Go home, go and hug somebody, go and tell them how much you love them. Go do a jigsaw with them. Go for a walk outside, not away from other— away from other people. Go and just call anybody you haven't called in a while. Your mum, your dad, you thought I should call, get on the bloody phone. Forget all of this. Nothing is important right now other than your health and your family. Go home and love your family.

Lovely. Duncan, thank you so much. And that, that again is that it's giving yourself permission, which I think is such a theme to this, is giving yourself permission to think differently. And in this time with everything that's going on, It's giving yourself permission to, to just be present and be with the people that are important. Duncan, thank you so much for your time. I'm sure this has created a lot of questions and people want to learn more. So Duncan, where can people learn more about you and, and maybe connect with you?

Yeah, sure. On social, it's just Duncan J. Wardle, which is D-U-N-C-A-N, initial J for John, W-A-R-D-L-E. Again, D-U-N-C-A-N J. W-A-R-D-L-E. Or duncanwardle.com.

And is this on— do you like to connect through LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter? Is there a preference?

No, all of the above.

Lovely. Duncan, Duncan, once again, thank you so much for your time. These are— this is great. The, the what-if question, the permission to think differently, tapping into our intuition, and finally that, you know, giving ourselves permission to, to be present and And be with what's important and put those strategies aside. Thank you for your time and all the best and good health to you.

Thank you, and to you.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to This Feels Right, and we will talk to you next week. Thank you so much for listening, and if this felt right and you would like to see this interview, then come on over to our YouTube page page at youtube.com/thisfeelsrightpodcast or join the conversation with our Facebook group at facebook.com/thisfeelsrightpodcast. Or if you just want more influencing tips and communication skills, then please connect with me on LinkedIn, Joel Silverstone, or come on over to Silverstone Communications at www.joelsilverstone.com. I look forward to connecting with you.