Radical Changes to Work: The Fourth Industrial Revolution with Dr. Jonathan Reichental

Welcome to the Power Hour. I'm Adrienne Adamy, wellness coach, keynote speaker and author. Each week I speak to a variety of guests, from business founders to Olympic athletes, leading coaches, change makers and innovators to find out their daily habits, rules to live by, their lessons learned, as well as what motivates them. Personally, I'm on a mission to encourage and inspire, so I hope that the Power Hour podcast will help you to achieve your personal and professional goals. Welcome back to the Power Hour podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Jonathan Reichental, an award winning technology and business leader, author and founder of Human Future. I've recently had the pleasure of working with Jonathan on an exciting brand project and I always enjoy our conversations, so I had to invite him to join us on the podcast. Today we're going to be discussing emerging trends, digital transformation, the fourth Industrial Revolution, and what lessons from the past can help us to better prepare for the future. Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks very much, Adrian. I'm so happy I'm here with you.

Oh, ditto. And where are you joining us from?

I am just a little south of San Francisco here in Northern California.

So you're just waking up this morning and it's the end of the day here for me in great England. But as I said, thank you for joining, for making the time, and let's just get right into it because there's so many things that I enjoy talking to you about and one of those things is future. So there's nothing that I enjoy more than thinking, talking and daydreaming about the future. And it's a sort of passion and I guess, obsession. Hence why I'm always so keen to hear what you have to say. So can we start off with something that I think impacts most people and that is work? Can you explain to us the. Some people may have heard this term the fourth Industrial Revolution and what that means and how it could potentially impact all of us and our approach to work?

Sure, yeah. Well, look, we've been in a state of change, like almost radical change since the 1700s. Prior to that, for a couple of hundred thousand years, nothing much happened. But in the 1750s, you know, the, the first industrial revolution got kicked off and we started innovating using things like steam and new materials. And 100 years later, we had the second industrial revolution in the 1850s, approximately. And we had the first time we started to use electricity, leverage that incredible power in nature. And well, we know the result of that, you know, electricity has changed the world. It's a project by the way that's not finished, we started it 170 years ago, but there's still almost a billion people on the planet this morning who woke up without electricity. So there's still more work to do. Then you Fast forward into 1950s and you get the start of the third industrial revolution, the information age, the age of electronics and digitalization. And we're all enjoying that. In fact, what we're doing right now is a product of that third Industrial revolution. In fact, our lives are a product of all three. Now, when we look at what's happening in the world and we look around us, there seems to be a sufficient change and some leaps in technology that suggest we're in the beginning years of now, yet another fourth Industrial revolution. And I think what's really important when you think about the three that have already happened and the potential for fourth is, is that the world before each was very different to the world after each of them. You know, the world, if you were born before the first Industrial revolution and you lived through a good chunk of it, you had a decent life, you saw a very different world by the time you were in your older years. And so what we can expect as we enter this 4th is a world undergoing great change. The big difference is, you know, the rate of the change and the scope of the change. And ultimately what we like to say is the impact as well. You know, it's, it's the changes that happened in the previous industrial revolutions, particularly the first and the second were. They were localized, they were regional and they took time. Now when change happens, the deployment of a new application or a new solution, like artificial intelligence, like Chat GPT, it's sort of global almost on day one. And so we see that that, for example, came out and within just two months, 100 million people had access to, took something like the commercial airline, a commercial jet, over 60 years to get 50 million customers. 60 years. It took ChatGPT two months, 60 days to get 100 million customers, if you like users. So the scale of what's happening is important. The last thing I just want to say is a defining characteristic of this fourth Industrial revolution is the intersection of the digital world with the physical world, what we call cyber physical systems. Some people are using the word phygital, but I don't know that that's going to take off. We'll see, right? A lot of people don't like it, but who knows, right? And anyway, to your point, your question, maybe we'll get there is all of this sort of major change now that's taking place impacts every aspect of how we live, how we work, and how we play.

Yes. Oh, my gosh, it's absolutely fascinating. And I think, you know, we talked before, you and I, about how, you know, you did this great, I guess, a great example of the iPhone. And when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone, you know, people often think the iPhone was the thing that, you know, that's what changed everything. But actually it was the applications. It was everybody who came after who said, let me build an app for this phone. Because without, of course, without the iPhone, you know, those apps probably would never, would have existed. But if you think about all the things that we now use our iPhone for, for example, Uber, transportation or Instagram, social media, or even, you know, just to transfer money online, banking, these things, you know, I, I, I guess that's kind of the, the foam was almost the catalyst as well as being kind of, I guess, disruptor in itself.

Yeah. Well, you can, you can do a little test is, you know, to two tests you can quickly do yourself. One is, what will you do today? That involves your phone? And my guess is quite a lot. And then the other thing, assuming a person is old enough, I think a lot of your audiences will be, is, you know, try to imagine the world, you know, without the smartphone or before the smartphone. Right. What was it like? And so we see the transformation of that. Your point about Steve Jobs is very interesting just to add to that. Yeah, he didn't necessarily, he wasn't a big advocate on day one of having an open system where people could build solutions for the iPhone. That happened a little bit later. And that, you know, that was the genius of sort of a little bit of good luck, but also, you know, some smartness saying, hey, that makes sense. And so what happened then, of course, is you, we created a platform for innovation, a platform for change, and that's had stunning impact on the world.

Yes, absolutely. And it's so interesting when you said imagine your day or, you know, how many things you do, can you do on your phone? Because, I mean, the sheer panic, the sheer panic when people's phone battery dies. You know, never, never mind losing your phone if someone's phone battery dies, and myself included, if my phone battery dies within about 10 minutes, you realize all of the things that you need that you can't access anymore. You suddenly, you suddenly just feel like, oh, yeah, it's very strange. So looping back to how technology, you know, how it interlinks, how it impacts every single industry. So from health care to travel Fashion, food, education, entertainment. Technology is now not, you know, it's not an industry on its own. It's. It's everything. So do you think that people have really accepted and fully embraced this? Because I, you know, there's often a lot of people will talk about digital or technology and they kind of demonize it and they speak about it in this way that, you know, we should be fearful and we are spending too much of our time looking on screens or looking at our phones or interacting via the Internet. And it kind of still feels as though there's a, there's a kind of reluctance to accept where we really are.

Yeah, well, I think it's, there's a humor a little bit in the person who sort of post a tweet, right. And they say, you know, I don't think a lot has changed in the world over the last 20 years. And it's that context, the fact that they're, you know, using a cloud solution on a mobile device and broadcasting to the world, that's the wonder of it. If they don't recognize, you know, that incredible power that wasn't available many years ago, then they're not recognizing the other changes that are clearly embedded in, in the way that we, we're just taking for granted how we live today. You know, I'll tell you a quick story here. I, I still come from the time when, you know, it. People and organizations desperately wanted to be in the, in the C suite. They wanted to be in the, in the room with the, with the, you know, decision makers. And over time, you know, the IT director became the Chief Information officer and we had the chief Technology officer, you know, and eventually they got invited into the room. You had the, you know, the CEO, the CEO and then the cto and, and that person would join the C suite and they would say they would have to sort of learn about human resources, about financial systems, financial stuff, operations. So they would have to learn the business. And so you fast forward, you know, just barely a couple of decades, and, you know, the CIO and CTO are firmly in the, in the C suite now. And when that person joins and enter or a new phenomenon is emerging, it's not that that person has to learn all the other parts of the business. It's all the other parts of the business have to learn tech. And so that's been an incredible 180. The CEO needs to understand the value of data. The CEO needs to understand the value of artificial intelligence or potentially blockchain or Internet of things. Any one of the remarkable Techs that are beginning to shape our world. So, so that has changed. The other part is it used to be that you had a business and technology was helping. You know, it was on the outside, it was, it was peripheral, it was augmenting. Every business today is a technology business. Technology has moved to the center, right? And so now you've got core, at the core technology and around that you've got the other services. So we've seen a remarkable shift in what it means to run an organization and be successful in this hyper connected, global, global world. Back to your point and sort of, I want to build, kind of use that as sort of the framing for this idea that I think in industry there's a, there's a great appreciation for the role of, of existing and new tech. But I think in the everyday lives of people, particularly in cities, you're really good. Tech almost disappears. Like if your experience is good, you don't recognize it. Things just work. And you know, sometimes I'm actually really surprised, you know, when I, well, I travel often as I know you do, you know, booking a car on your phone, getting to the airport, you know, now checking in baggage with self service, you know, there's no people involved. Walking through security where you have one interaction with a human getting on the plane like and then you get to the other side. All the fact that all of that works and often it's seamless. Now I, I do want to recognize it's bumpy sometimes, but there is some I find more often than not a good experience. And I'm not saying to myself, well that's amazing that that works. I'm saying to myself, I'm glad it works. Like that was nice. I'm very pleased that I got through the whole process very smoothly. Sort of is a recognition that when technology is really smart and really good, you don't even notice it. And I think that's the case. That will continue to be the case, yeah.

And it's so interesting. Well, two things that you said. Because I used to work, you know, for four and a half years I was, I was working in a fitness technology company, so an app here in the uk. And it's so interesting what you said about, you know, the CTO or, or the CPO and the decision making piece and the fact that actually they have to almost guide other people's expectations of what's possible or timelines, you know, keeping people's expectations on how quickly can we actually build and release these things. And that also made me think about what you said then around it being seamless, and it just works. Now, a conversation we used to have often was that when it doesn't work, I think consumer expectation is so high because we have products like Apple. So if you think about using AirPods, you take them out, you put them in, they connect to your phone or they connect to your laptop, boom, you're on. It works. And as you said, seamless. So I think we have an expectation that technology should always work. If it doesn't work, people have no patience. They have this frustration. And as you said, going through maybe airport security, if the face scanner doesn't work, or even if it's just buffering on the Internet is slow. Our patience is so slow that I just think for people to build new products and to create new things, there's just no Almost. Yeah. Margin for error. People, we've got used to this very, very seamless applications and technology. And it's. And I think our. Our barrier, if you like, or our acceptance for things to break is very. We have zero tolerance for that now.

We really do. And there's a great. There's a great bit of humor from a American comedian where he says, you know, we're. We're. You're up in a plane, okay, so you're 35,000ft up in the sky, about 12 miles up in the sky somewhere over an ocean, and you're trying to get on WI fi, and the WI fi doesn't work, and you're like, God, technology is terrible. You know, technology doesn't work. Can't believe I can't get WI fi. You have to remember, you know, you're in a sort of a tin tube, you know, traveling, you know, hundreds of miles an hour, you know, 12 miles in the sky, getting served warm food with functioning bathrooms. And, you know, you're. You're traveling through the sky to a different continent. Sometimes we lose. We do lose the. You know, we lack the appreciation for the bigger picture that, as you point out, are. Because we get used to it. Because tech is embedded in so many parts of our lives, and it is, you know, I think we should agree that it's in many ways magical. What happens, any slight disruption to that is very clear. And we don't have a lot of patience, but we need to have a little bit more. We do. You know, some of the stuff that I get to play with is so transformative that we have to sort of almost reflect for a moment about what we're doing. I mean, I even reflect on what we're doing right now. Right. You're in the uk, I'm over here in San Francisco. We're using a cloud service. We're on different technology. We're talking, we're recording, we're going to broadcast this thing. I think that's pretty cool. Like, let's not take it for granted right now.

And, yeah, and the agency and the freedom as well, to be able to do that without even, I guess, I don't know, what, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, having to have a station, whether it be the radio, whether it be. Be tv, whether it be media, whether it be all these gatekeepers in a way to be able to, yeah. Create and share the information that you want. And, and we've mentioned, we both mentioned the word change quite a lot and something that I always think about with change, of course, there is often fear and we talk about disruption and, and acceptance, but there's also opportunity. Change always creates opportunity. So what do you think are the biggest opportunities, either for individuals or for organizations? If you are looking forward, so maybe 10, 15, 20 years, what are the opportunities that you see?

Well, I think, yeah, now's the time to get a bit more serious. That's a great question. So with this change, we're entering this fourth industrial revolution. If you look back at the prior ones, yes, there were a lot of winners. You know, certain people thrived, certain economies did well. But we also have to recognize that some didn't. Some were laggards and some people really struggled. And now we enter this fourth, and we asked the same question. Will everybody be successful? Would everybody thrive? Well, one thing we can say for sure is you have notice, like we're saying to you, this is happening. If you believe the evidence, if you, if you want to go along with it, here's the sort of areas of change. This is what it may mean to you. Now it's up to you to take action. You got to make those choices. I often, you know, reflect on the fact and when I'm working with my students or coaching folks, is that, you know, we're all a product of our choices. Our lives today are cumulatively all the things we've chosen over the last few decades. Sometimes we make great decisions and we're proud of that, and often we don't. But what does help, and I know this from sort of researching a book on data for the last year and a half, is that the more informed you are, the more you understand patterns and sort of look to the future and say, well, I see a certain amount of things that are going to Affect me, let me make choices that are good for me and my family and my friends. That, that's really important here. The fourth Industrial revolution is not a time to sit on the sidelines and say, it doesn't matter to me, I'm going to be just fine, you know, or I'm not worried, or I work for a great company, it's going to be fine. This is not a time for that. You don't have to be overly anxious every day and panic, be in a constant panic mode. But I think you do need to be thoughtful and think about what that means ahead. No doubt automation will be a central theme of the next few decades. Right. And as we automate things that humans used to do and prospered from, well, they're going to be displaced. I think a lot of what automation and AI is going to do is augment what we do, allowing us, for example, to do less dangerous work. Right. That's a good news story. Right. If you're in a job that puts you at risk and by augmenting your work with robotics and AI, you can do more of the thoughtful work and the machines can do the dangerous work, I think we'd argue that's a great story. Now, if you do a job that can be completely displaced by automation and, or you anticipate that to happen, what you've got to be thinking about, well, what should I do? Should I be going back to school to grow my skill sets? Should I be looking for a completely different career? You know, so, so you've got to, you've got to be thinking about those, those, those tougher choices. And I think that's, that's a smart thing to do. Your question asked about the sort of 5, 10, 15 and beyond. We know quite a lot about the next few years and when a few years, every time I say that time passes, that timeline actually gets shorter. I think a few years ago I would have been very comfortable saying the next 10 years, this is what's going to happen. Now, I think as we enter, we're now into almost the middle of the third decade of the 21st century, it's much harder to say we have a good sense of what the world's going to look like in 2030. It seems to me that, you know, November of 2022, when ChatGPT came out, that potentially was a little bit of a game changer. And I say that a little bit tongue in cheek, it was a big game changer. And things are going to accelerate now in automation, in what technology will be able to do, whether it augments or displaces humans. So I think there's a little bit of a, an acceleration that's, that's taking place. But the, but the important thing I do want to kind of leave you with, beyond these key points I just shared, is it's actually really hard to know what to do in the longer term in the next five to 10 and 10 beyond. In a way, beyond 10 years is almost impossible. It really is. You know, we think the singularity could be here as soon as 2029. Right? Well, that's, it's 2023, so that was that six years from now. It's hard to imagine the time like six now when computers will be smarter than humans and that, you know, that, that all bets are off. Right? What, what does the future look like when, when we reach the singularity. And, and so we, we, we got to be thinking about greater disruption than, than ever before. But in summary, each of us, every one of us, is making a series of choices that are important. We have to do them in a timely way. May mean making some hard choice. You've got to be proactive around it.

Yes. I mean, well, being proactive and taking action is something that I talk about probably on this show every week, regardless of the topic, regardless of the guest, because essentially I always want to bring fascinating, wonderful minds to the show like yourself. But if you just listen to the show whilst you run on the treadmill, whilst you walk your dog, maybe it's entertainment for you on your commute, then that's fantastic and I hope that it brings value to people. But the main thing is when people say, I listen to, to your podcast, I heard this person say this and I did this as a result. And that's happened to me over the years. You know, people, whether it's people that have met, have actually met in person or via email or messages where they've said, I listened to this and actually I took action as a result. And this is what happened. And it's always so exciting. So, and you know, when you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, obviously the industry that I've worked in for the last, you know, 10, 12, almost probably 13, 14 years now in, well, being in health and fitness. And it's interesting because obviously I've seen the disruption, the digital innovation. I've seen all the benefits of smart wearables, sleep trackers, continuous glucose monitors, you know, at home, fitness apps, all of it. You know, I've seen how the industry has changed and continues to Change. But I also see the, I think the desire, I suppose for the human element. So when it comes to exercise and nutrition and motivation and sleep and all these things, there's so much of that is the human element. So it might be for example, someone having the motivation to actually go and use the at home fitness equipment they've got or whether it's somebody who's actually taking action because of the data they're being shown by their watch. You know, just wearing the watch doesn't make you go for the run or do you know what I'm trying to say? So I think within, with when people hear as well what you said and when they might think, well, actually how is automation going to impact my industry? Or how is chat, GTP or any whatever industry you're in, whether it's, it's journalism, where it's, whether it's the creative arts, whether it's music, it's not necessarily that. Okay. Because it can't necessarily do your job for you today. That doesn't mean that you might have to think about the role that you play within your, within your job, within your work, your industry and how the whole industry is going to change and how your skill set, your particular skill set. So that might be communication, you know, right. What I'm doing right now, it might be storytelling, it might be whatever the skill set that you have is. I think it's about looking at how they layer together as opposed to just thinking my job's either going to be done by me or it's going to be done by AI.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, kind of well said and I agree with that. You know, in some ways the kind of change that is ahead of us could be a motivation for change that you need in your life. So, you know, I was thinking about my, even my own, my own journey. You know, over 10 years ago during the Great Recession, the company I was with, very large global consulting firm, was impacted like everyone else was by significant headwinds to the, to the economy. And so they offered folks packages to leave and they were going to outsource a lot of the technology work. It turned out that my work actually was going to be okay. But this overall change that was happening around me, to my colleagues and to the business itself got me thinking, like, what should I do something different? Is this, is this an opportunity for me to change? And I actually didn't have to. So, so this is the key learning here. I didn't have to sort of take the package and leave, but I said I'm going to do it. I feel this is a moment where I can make that big change in my life. Took the package, left the firm and moved to California, moved to Silicon Valley from Florida, actually was over on the east Coast. And it was a great decision. It was very disruptive. I mean, you know, uproot yourself and you know, leave friends and colleagues behind in your community and then start afresh. But I use the, the change around me to, you know, in some ways enhance my world and reinvent myself and, you know, haven't looked back. So, you know, one way to look at this moment in your life right now is you don't need to, you know, on Friday after you're listening to this podcast in the gym, say, I'm out of here. You know, I'm going to, I'm going to leave my job. But is the prospect of, you know, significant societal transformation over the next decade, is that, is that momentum enough to sort of suggest to me, hey, I'd be doing something that I'm okay with, I'm, you know, reasonably happy, but could I now change my own personal trajectory to do something that I love that I, that I wake up every day and I can't wait to do, you know, and that means I got to go back to school, I got to learn new skills, but yeah, I'll take that little detour just to get me to a place where I really want to be. So in a way, you know, embracing this disruption could, could be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Oh yeah, this very exciting and empowering to create change for yourself. Because when change is forced upon you, I think that's when it feels often like a failure or it's overwhelming, but exactly as you described. When you think, okay, I'm going to, you know, whether it is move to another city or whether it's just start something of your own, then yeah, it's a very kind of exciting and empowering. You know, I'm an entrepreneur at my heart, so it's kind of that to me when you were talking, I'm like, yes, that is what I want for everyone.

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Yeah, sure, sure. You know, terms can be so useful and they can actually be sometimes not that useful. Smart cities is a term that just kind of stuck over the last decade. But what we're really talking about is the future of our, the future of humanity. I mean, this, this is the century of cities. We, we are now a, you know, a dominant urban species. You know, we, we are born into and live out our lives in cities, about 60% of the world. When we get to about 20, 50, that number gets, you know, into the, into the 70 percentile. And as we get to the end of the 21st century, you know, we're largely, you know, 80% or more of all humans live in a city. This is new, by the way. This is new. You only have to go back to 2007, 2008, by coincidence, during the Great Recession, where we did shift from being a majority rural planet to being a majority urban, urban planet. So we got, you know, we were at 51% to 52%. Today we're close to 60%, as I said. So the question then is, well, are our cities around the world. This is a global thing, not, not an American or a European thing or a British thing. You know, are our cities, you know, providing a very good quality of life for the people who live in them? And in some respects, yes, but in many respects, no. And the second question, the follow up, the obvious follow up is are our cities ready for tomorrow, you know, and the years ahead? And the answer to that is a little bit more sobering. You know, we're not ready for, you know, for the growth that we're seeing. We're in the, we're entering the era of mega cities, cities that are over 10 million people and beyond. And today, you know, that's about 35 cities in the world approximately are our megacities. But that's going to grow to about 100, you know, for the next few decades, you know, so, so we're going to see massive change to the, just the density and the, and the demands of our, of our communities. If everything remained the same, we'd be in big trouble, right? We wouldn't be able to provide clean water for everybody. Our transportation systems, which are already, you know, experiencing massive duress, would effectively implode upon themselves. We wouldn't have enough energy. All our, you know, efforts would be, would be spewing out much more carbon than it is today and the climate crisis will get worse. So the trajectory would be really terrible. The pathway to the future. So what do you do when you look at that? You say, well, we've got to do things differently. We got to think about the problems we have and how we solve things and how we create opportunity in a completely new way. And one of the levers to do that is technology. We actually, there's some things that are hard to control, other things we can't control. We can control what technologies we implement and how they're implemented. It gives us many more options. You just take the example of data. We live in the era of big data, the Zettabyte era, the Cambrian explosion of data in every part of society. This is giving organizations completely new insights on their organization, on the world and their relationship with it. Same applies to cities. Cities that use the data that they collect and store and generate can give them new insights on how to respond to community needs. So just using data in a very creative way and some of the new tools around data can change the game as can, you know, the migration from carbon to non carbon energy from, you know, greater use of public transport and electrification of our transportation system. So bottom line is we smart cities or the future of cities. And I like to think, by the way, smart and sustainable cities, smart and sustainable communities because it's, we have to have, you know, healthy clean air, clean water, you know, good green spaces for our mental health and for our exercise and for getting out. We have to have all of that to have the data is pretty, the science on this is pretty clear. To get there, we've got to use technology. And that's what I mean and that's what I work on a lot in my life these days.

It's super fascinating. And I think about how, you know, my own experience of cities, whether it's working in cities, living in cities, traveling to new cities, and I think about the most enduring change that I have seen since the pandemic and that is hybrid work. So, and especially amongst my peers, people who say, you know what, I've actually moved out of the city, or maybe they've moved kind of like a little bit further away from work because they're no longer required to be in a central location every single day. So they might only have to visit the office twice a week. Some people might work completely remotely now and say, you know what? I'm never going to this office again, so why would I live in, you know, such a crowded area? It's so expensive, especially here in. In the uk, In London, a lot of people are saying, hey, if I can live outside of London and I don't have to live in that city, then that's my preference. But we know that cities have. So there's so much benefit of young, especially for young people living in cities, not just the. The office and the work, but loads of other things, whether that's, you know, socializing, whether that's meeting a potential mate, whether that's, you know, all these other things. So, yeah, I guess you are the. The expert when it comes to cities. Are there any other, I guess, what are the big changes or things that you've seen since the pandemic and which of those are maybe going back and which of those are here to stay?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you hit the most. Probably the most important is how we work, and we're still not sure where things are going to land. You know, we've seen here in Silicon Valley, for example, people are returning to the office, but there's still a lot of empty offices, and there's a lot of people who have been able to continue to work from home. So we're still in the period of sort of like uncertainty where that is headed. I think the evidence is clear that we're not all going back to the office, you know, and what I mean by that is that commute to some other building somewhere. We figured out that a lot of people don't have to. So I don't think we ever get back to the status quo. So that's an area of phenomenal change. One thing that is worth observing is, you know, and this is sort of a criticism, I guess, of humanity, is we didn't embrace the opportunities as much as we could have. We are returning to many of our bad behaviors. Right. You know, one thing that I kind of. I think a lot of us enjoyed during COVID if it's. If it's okay to say that, because it was such a horrific time, was, was how much the traffic had improved and getting from A to B was easier and there was less crowds and, you know, just, you know, In Silicon Valley today, it's, it's, it's worse. The traffic is even worse. People, much more people are out. So we didn't sort of say we're going to have a different, completely different future. I think there's two other areas that, that are notably different. One is the whole delivery economy, the whole notion of delivery. And you know, my own story is I never got groceries delivered to my house prior to Covid. I'm a person who would go to the grocery store and pick out apples and you know, like groceries and come home. And so during COVID with things that were really bad here, when everybody was sort of not going out much at all, we, I ordered food and you know, groceries and they got delivered and I was like pleasantly surprised by the process. I don't know that it's environmentally good, you know, just the, the whole notion of everybody getting stuff delivered. But it certainly was a good experience. And so that has continued in so many aspects of our lives. We're more fully embracing and as a consequence that means things like what we call curb management. Yeah, not the most exciting work in the world, but if you think about London, London's a great example because the infrastructure is so diverse. You've one way streets, you've narrow streets and you know, you've got to have delivery trucks sort of park for a while in these one way streets and what does that mean to traffic? So we have to redesign the curb so that, you know, a truck can, can park for, for 25 minutes if it needs to and not disrupt the entire transportation system around it. And so that's, that's an area of continued change. I think we'll, we'll continue to see that evolve. And I suppose the last one, and this probably really resonates with you, is how we are getting our health care again. Another example of where I was a person who always went to a doctor's office. I would make an appointment and go to a physical place. And you know, it's quite funny because the first time in my entire life that the doctor called me proactively. They had so little business during COVID that they just started reaching out to patients and seeing how they were doing, which was lovely. Mind you, that stopped. But, but that was nice to sort of have that video conference conversation on my smartphone with, with my doctor and sort of share any concerns. And, and I got the confidence then to sort of next time I had something I wanted to share, I would do it with my smartphone and really take it offline or I should say Online, but not having to go to a physical place and have the, everything from. And this sort of combines all these notions, right. So sending a picture perhaps of something on your skin that you wanted to get, you had a concern about, you wanted to get some information, then having some medicine, sort of dispense by mail, getting to your house, that's changed, that whole experience has changed. And I think we're seeing that in cities, communities all over the world.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that you highlighted so with the delivery aspect and I suppose transportation in that sense of, yeah, being able to deliver goods and services. And as we know, Amazon being one of the biggest players, if not the biggest player in the world when it comes to home delivery service. And then, yeah, the, the medical profession and how they went online. And actually, you know, I talked about the fact Amazon acquired one medical. And that was quite a big, you know, new story. And the fact that, you know, the, the CEO of Amazon, Andy Jazzy, said that transportation and health, healthcare were the two industries that he would be focused on over the next decade. And the fact that, you know, we're gonna see a continuation, I think it's gonna, I think for some people it will be a surprise, but I think for others, you know, it's going to be such a. So fast. I feel like the, Once these things get in motion. So whether that's, you know, as you said, seeing a doctor online, whether that's getting medication delivered, whether that's the fact that actually after you have that consultation or you have that medicine, maybe a month later you get a recommendation that says, hey, maybe because you've bought this or you've had this appointment or you read a book about this, maybe you need this supplement or maybe you need this knee support, or maybe in your, this kind of ecosystem of data and sharing and information and it's, I feel like it's going to be so fast and so the, the, the disruption and the change will be so. It's just exponential, you know, and I think that's something that I'm really, really fascinated to see how, how the kind of, even in the fitness world, everyone who, for example, the whoop, the, so the, the Whoop trackers, the Apple watches, the Aura rings, all these products and services which at the moment the consumer. So me going to the gym wearing the watch or wearing the ring, you're taking that data and you're saying, oh, let me look at my heart rate. Oh, let me look at my step count. Let me look at, you know, track my, my menstrual cycle. But I think the power really lies when that information can be shared with the doctor or shared with a physician or shared with a psychologist or a dentist or anyone essentially, to give you a better service. And that's what. Yeah, I think it's going to be incredibly exciting, but it's going to be huge, huge, huge change.

Yeah. Can I just add to that, this is a little bit of speculation, but this is where we're maybe headed. And the. Well, look, the health care industry, I think, is ready for major change. It has to undergo its own transformation. But today you think about how we get health care in a community. Probably we all do a little bit of a search online first to see what might be going on. But at some point we then make an appointment, perhaps we do go to a clinic or we get, you know, provided service from, from a medical personnel over, you know, over our smartphone or our laptop computer. So there, you know, and then we have to go maybe to get a test and we have to go to a physical place, get, you know, maybe some blood tests. So there's this deep engagement between the individual and the healthcare ecosystem. It's possible that within a few years, as an individual, you'll be able to get diagnosed online from AI, get administered medication and, you know, take that medication, you know, and basically treat yourself. And what that means is the role of health care changes. Is it possible that we'll do the diagnostic and the administration of the, you know, whatever the responses to that and move on? In which case, again, I think, first of all, there's all sorts of questions about sort of liability and risk. Right. Of that. But also what does that mean in terms of the role of. Of the various participants in the medical ecosystem? So I think we need to be thinking as bold as that is. What happens when you take the medical system out of your medical attention? What does that mean?

Yeah, and what I'm thinking, you know, I mentioned before about the human element, but I'm thinking about patient care. So, you know, as you said, getting diagnosed with something, you know, the number or the, the marker that says, okay, in your blood test, you have this. That's one part of it. But the patient care is often the part which you need the person for, which is the person who sits you down and says, hey, this is the diagnosis and this is what's going to happen now. This is what steps will happen now. And that can be anything from, you know, pregnancy and miscarriage right through to cancers. There's all these things where actually patient care like if you take that human element away, you know, from a mental health perspective and emotional health perspective, how would it feel to actually, actually diagnose and, you know, test and diagnose yourself and then say, hey, I've just, you know, I mean, I mean, I can't imagine actually how, yeah. How people are going to navigate that, that challenge. Because I think the patient care part, I mean, we've probably all had good experiences and bad experiences when it comes to patient care. And I think the difference that that makes when you have a healthcare professional who is nurturing and wonderful and kind, and the difference it makes when you have someone who, not necessarily on purpose, but maybe they're quite analytical or maybe they're quite, you know, matter of fact, I know in the past I had that experience, experience and it, and it was, it was terrible for me personally to have just a very clinical person just say, you know, boom, boom, boom. It was, it was really terrible. And yeah, I think that kind of, again, going back to the human element, I think that's just a. It's going to be so many gray areas, isn't there, with this, this innovation, this disruption? And I think hopefully, I mean, we're still going to need, we're going to need humans.

Yeah, no, I think so. We'll figure that out. It will be surprising. Like, I think, what's the learning there? A little bit. We are, as humans, one thing we can say is we like predictability. We actually are nostalgic because often we like the way things were and we would like things to continue. And, and in a way, that sort of human response is both a good thing because it allows for a world in which disruption doesn't happen every 30 minutes, but it also is risky because we become complacent and we think about the future like a straight line. And I think what we need to do. Going back to some of the questions you've asked me earlier in this, in our discussion about thinking about the, you know, next 5, 10, 15 years is we have to think about possibilities of a world that is quite different. Like, I don't mean to suggest that you're wrong in any way, but is the, maybe the human element when it comes to healthcare, it's not going to be part of it, or 80% will not have a human element that's very different than how we historically think, but we have to kind of use that, that mindset thinking to inform us about a whole range of things. You know, if you're, if you're a leader of a business and you say, you know, our business is solid. I don't see big change. That might be a very bad starting point. The starting point might be to say, I anticipate massive change. What do we do right now? Or what sort of things should we thinking about or researching or experimenting with and be ready, be prepared for as best you can for, for that change. It's worth saying though, that some of that change, by the way, is unpredictable. And you know, some people will call me a futurist sometimes. I don't think it's a fair description because I, I think it's actually quite difficult to predict today, you know, anything beyond a certain amount of years, it becomes just a really good guess. Like it was always a bit of a guess, of course, but now it's like a really like random guess to some degree because of the significance of this future that we're headed into.

Yeah. And to add to that as well, I think I always say I'm an eternal optimist and I feel like it's even right down to looking to the future and thinking actually what if the assumption is that it could be even better. So whether that was the healthcare example that we had, whether that's transportation, whether that's what anything. What about, you know, what about the assumption that whatever is going to be, whatever's going to displace whatever we're going to create, it's going to be even better because we couldn't have imagined it. You know, the examples that you gave before with, you know, electricity or with digital or with even just the Internet, you know, I'm sure there were people, and we know there were, that said, oh my gosh, this is going to be the worst thing ever. Everything from, you know, when, when radio came along or when TV came, or when newspaper and print, or there's always been people that say this is bad for society, this is bad for humanity. And now, you know, we, we definitely hear that around social media and different things. But I think, yeah, I, I'm, as I say, an optimist and I think that we, I hope anyway, I have faith in humanity that we will create things that everything can't exponentially get better. But I do think, I do believe we can create things that will be better.

Yeah, yeah. Well, the evidence is there. I mean, we, we. If you turn on the TV right now and you, and you looked at what was going on in terms of the news, you might say the world is in bad shape and we've got a lot of problems. But that's not a Good way to look at the progress of humanity. You have to look over the last few decades or even centuries. And overwhelmingly, the human condition has improved by leaps and bounds. So I'm with you. I'm an optimist. I think we have at our fingertips remarkable capabilities ahead of us to be able to transform the future in a very positive way.

Let's hope so. So I have. Oh my goodness. It's gone too quickly for me. I love this conversation so much. I knew that I would. But at the end of every show, I ask every single guest on this podcast to tell us about their power hour. And the power Hour, put simply, is the first hour of every day. And I'm not super strict about what time that is. I know for some people that's 5am and for others it's lots, lots later, depending on what they do and who they are. But I ask everyone to share with us what you include in the first hour of your day.

That's great. Well, you're the expert on this and maybe in the, in the next few days and weeks you can give me some advice. Well, I will say this. As I have got, become older, I get up earlier, which is, which is good because the day is longer. But it's also, you know, I used to be able to sleep in and these days, you know, I'm waking up very, very early, so there's more time in the day. That first hour allows me to sort of do things like, of course I check email. I do. Unfortunately, that's one of the first things I do. Check social media channels, see what's going on. I, I always have breakfast. I, I, you know, my father told me there was a, like a Eastern European saying that you shouldn't deny your enemies breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day. So there is a breakfast in there. And, and every day I exercise. You'll be happy to hear that, but it's not always at the same time. But when I do predictably exercise, it's in the morning. I do like to get that over with, sets me up really well for the day. I get energized and has, you know, all the benefits of exercise. And I work from home, so I have a home office. So, you know, after I have breakfast, I've exercised, cleaned up, I will sit at my desk here and get a few things pounded out in terms of some requests online and urgent emails, that type of thing. So unfortunately, it's not as glamorous as maybe you thought. But that's the first hour. Typically of, of my average day, I think.

Yeah, no, it's great to hear and I know, obviously, because I know you personally, I know that you do so many things. As I said in the show, we could have talked about a number of things today. So if people have enjoyed hearing your viewpoint, hearing what you do, where can they find more of your work? Tell us about some of the books and online things that you share.

Thanks for that. Let's see. Well, my personal website is really easy. It's just my last name, dot com, so it's reichental.com r e I c h or reichental dot com. So you'll find a ton of videos and, and articles and, and all sorts of things that are useful there. Mostly almost all free. So tons of content and, and insight for free. I'm very active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my sort of preferred channel for engaging with people and so I encourage your listeners to connect with me, to write me questions and that would be, would be a terrific channel. Yeah, I'm on Twitter, of course, definitely observing it, going through some, some interesting times. Right now I am on YouTube, so you can, you can watch a lot of my videos and podcasts and things on that. So yeah, if you go to, I mean, if you go to reichental.com, you'll find all my books and my training videos and things like that. So you'll see that I've written books on the future of money, on the future of cities, data, the role of data, and some other things. So would love to answer your questions or have you benefit from any of the content that I've created over the last few years. So thanks for the opportunity.

Yeah, well, I'm sure you will. It is fascinating and really fantastic work. So I encourage you to dive in. And as you said, so much of that content is free. Watch the videos, read the, the books. It's, it's, it's fantastic. And I've, I always love working with you, Jonathan. I always enjoy talking to you and listening to your, your viewpoint. So thank you so much for agreeing to come and be a guest on the podcast.

Thank you, Adrian. Thank you for doing this. You do fantastic work yourself. This is a wonderful podcast and, and I'm, you're, you're an inspiration. So, so thank you for everything.

Oh, it's great. Well, tune in everyone next week as always, because I'll be back with another episode. See ya.

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