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#91 - Philip Horvath | Partner @ Luman, Principle@ philip, LLC, Redner, Moderator, Berater
100 Plays2 months ago
Philip has spent over thirty years studying and practicing transformation, witnessing waves of new technologies and their systemic impacts. He combines wisdom from global transformational modalities and modern neuroscience to guide leaders in preparing their organizations for constant change. As a partner at LUMAN, he develops strategies to elevate leadership, culture, and innovation in the most innovative companies, serving as an inspirational keynote speaker and executive advisor.
Shownotes
00:00 - Intro & Context
05:30 - Happiness Linked to Purpose.
18:45 - Lifelong Mission as a "Cathedral Project."
32:10 - AI Integration Driving Innovation at Siemens.
Links
Guest Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philiphorvath/
Thomas Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kohler-pplwise/
Thomas e-mail: [email protected]
pplwise: https://pplwise.com/
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Transcript
Redefining Happiness
00:00:00
Speaker
Today's guest, Philipp Horvat.
00:00:06
Speaker
i really like that i'm just reading a book build the life you want and there um It said, I heard ah often that people say, I just want to be happy, but that's actually not and a good goal because I think um happiness based on the book is defined in um purpose and enjoyment and satisfaction. And in order to to achieve all of this, there is unhappiness associated with it because you need to work for
Ownership and Purpose
00:00:33
Speaker
it. You need to sacrifice. You just need to really keep going. um And once you achieve this level of happiness,
00:00:40
Speaker
It doesn't last forever. You need to get it again. Right. And I think it's not about, I just want to be happy for instance. And I just, um, let life happen. And I, I hunt a ghost. It's more like but that really perceiving the moment and accepting different phases and taking ownership on what do you really want to build for your life. And also in terms of organizations, what you want to build as an organization and what each individual.
00:01:08
Speaker
um Should contribute and if you're able to translate this and am somehow make it I would say um Relatable then this is where real Change is happening in in the mind of people and that's unlocking a lot of potential um that changes are happening and that things are just Going they're just working um and I think that that's also something what I saw in myself that once I had a real big goal that was a bit more feasible and that um was in the future and I know I probably never achieve it, but I feel really comfortable in just being on the journey achieving
Joy vs. Happiness
00:01:55
Speaker
it. um This really unlocked a lot of um
00:01:59
Speaker
creativity, a lot of inner peace, plus a lot of, um I would say, resilience towards independent of the circumstance. I just go through and and make it happen. ah there's I love what you're saying there. and There's a beautiful saying that happiness is getting what you want. Joy is wanting what you have. and When you think about that, being in the moment and really being present to your moment and understanding that you know your goals are always going to move further away. right In a way, there's a beautiful um a Metaphor and yoga about life as a bird right where the bird the heads always look into the horizon and as you're flying it's further moving away and always moving away and always moving away right and then you have your wings which is your ability to adopt new good habits and let go of habits that don't serve you any longer so you can course correct right and then you have your tail which is really the stability of habits in the first place because 80% of what we do is habitual right and so
00:02:53
Speaker
to learn to program yourself, to learn to adopt new habits. But then to understand that this is all serving this thing that you're always moving towards, that you have an aspiration that's always bigger than yourself. And you cannot understand it, you're never going to reach it. Like if I think about my life, I gave myself the overall task or purpose of really thinking about contributing towards a planetary society. I wish for one day that every single child on this planet is going to be born with welcome. Hello, welcome to this world. We can't wait to find out who you are. We're going to support the shit out of you while you're here. It's going to hurt sometimes, it's going to suck sometimes, teething hurts, this and that, you know, fall on your face. but
00:03:34
Speaker
We are here to help you be the best version of who you can be. And I wish for every single child, no matter where in the world, to be born like that. Now, that's something that's not going to happen in my lifetime in all likelihood. I'd like this notion of a cathedral project. and Back in the day when people built cathedrals, but the first person who started this, they knew they were not going to see the end of it.
00:03:53
Speaker
and They knew they're going to start this and it's going to take three generations or four generations even to to finish this church. right and so For me, it's a bit like that too. I have this cathedral project and I know every day I'm doing my best to contribute to that and that gives me a tremendous sense of joy. It gives me a bunch of resilience and lets me overcome all the moments when I'm too far ahead in the future and I'm incongruent with the time here and people tell me I'm crazy.
Life Goals and Workforce Dynamics
00:04:24
Speaker
Philip and I talked about life overall and the purpose, how it translates to what it does with the workforce and then also what it translates to um technology and the personal um life of an individual and um how maybe society um developed and can change or could change and what impact um big multinational companies can have on um the world and also on society.
00:04:52
Speaker
Then you can build trust and then you can spend less time communicating and more time just getting shit done. Then I went home and and thought about this sentence. We basically put it on the table. Hiring takes time. People are trained. How to objectively judge certain situations. It's very, very, very, very hard to change things. That was the learning. Entrepreneurs with empathy. To the people's side. I believe you got recommended um of a friend um to interview because um you have a lot of things to share and say. And he was um really um inspired by ah diversity of topics that you bring with you. And um I think that was cool. So I always like to take this recommendations. So maybe we start with a short introduction about yourself.
Leadership and Transformation
00:05:33
Speaker
Sure. Well, thank you for the welcome and thank you for you know taking a risk on me in that case. But yeah, now I've been studying transformation and leadership for 30 plus years since I was a teenager. Actually, I get really fascinated with this topic of leadership, especially also in the context of personal transformation. For me, those two things are very closely related and I find that Systemic transformation always also means personal transformation. And so after years of leading large scale transformation projects, you know, back then in the context of PeopleSoft and SAP, large financial systems own or organization, enterprise transformation projects, I found that then one key to all of this was always the human.
00:06:11
Speaker
but that most of the time the error was not in the system, but the error was between keyboard and chair. but in So many much money was wasted and so many projects went wrong because people ignored that humans are actually at the center of this all. And even if you figure out culture projects or cultural transformation projects, 80% of them fail because people look at culture as this thing, rather than understanding that it's an epiphenomenon of how individuals show up.
00:06:37
Speaker
Right now we're in this middle of this massive transformation, our planet is changing, our organizations are changing, supply chains are changing, everything is changing and not just changing but transforming, which is a bit of a different thing. We can speak to that. But now we also need different kinds of humans. And so a lot of this leadership development and personal development tools that used to be sort of a luxury outside of work are actually now crucial for work.
00:07:03
Speaker
And that's kind of what I facilitate myself with and think about every day, you know night and sometimes as well.
Shifting to Entrepreneurial Leadership
00:07:10
Speaker
and And what you're actually doing at the moment? Well, mostly I'm supporting leaders. I've been, you know for example, working with Siemens for the last eight years, helping them.
00:07:19
Speaker
I create an entrepreneurship program where my focus is on the leadership component and tri really shifting employees into entrepreneurs, right from people who are used to executing and ah externally manipulated to intrinsically motivated value creators. So this whole entrepreneurial leadership aspect.
00:07:36
Speaker
I do a lot of keynotes around the topic of transformational leadership because and there's a lot of stuff going on at the moment and I think people are aware of all these shifts, but it's hard to make sense of it. So a lot of my work is around sense making and really putting things into context and then developing workforces around ah who they need to be in an age of AI but because it's not just about skills and horizontal development ah because a lot of companies have all those skills trainings and all those courses are available but people are not taking them for various reasons. certainly ah One of them is lack of vertical development. And at what?
00:08:16
Speaker
And with what reason and maybe also with what business case or overall purpose and intention is a company like Siemens building an entrepreneurship program. What do they want? What do they expect from it? And what's the case behind it? Well, ah twofold. I mean, of course, on the one hand, it is indeed new business models and new tools and new ah probably even new internal solutions that are making processes better and using tools like AI to essentially replace anything that is you know replaceable you know in terms of ah that you can automate. ah So there's a business case in a more traditional sense of innovation. But then there's also sort of a secret hidden mission which is really about upgrading the workforce. ah They've done a program or they've done a research actually where they've shown that if we participate in our program, an average affects about 10 people around them and how they work.
00:09:05
Speaker
but and so It's a bit of a low-scale, organic culture change program in the sense that we've already now influenced thousands of people around Siemens. If you think about these typical curves, right of adoption curves, if you get these early adopters that self-select into our program to start knowing how to act differently,
00:09:26
Speaker
They're actually the ones who then inform the early majority. I don't actually change how we do things around here. And if you get those 11% of the system to change and do things differently, the whole system begins to swap. And this is really, for me, the future of organization is sort of intrapreneurs plus AI. Instead of humans executing on processes, you're going to have automation, you're going to have AI or executing processes and humans innovating them.
00:09:55
Speaker
but and coming up with new ways of creating value for your customer. but do you think still needs to um happen from a technological perspective in AI that there is a high enough adoption for relevant use cases. Because I think currently it's often, OK, individuals are playing around. Some are really using it in the day-to-day work. But I never saw it really rolled out at at scale, where it really had a big impact at an organization. But of course, it's still early. But it's also moving fast.
00:10:26
Speaker
Absolutely. It's very fascinating.
AI's Role in Advancement
00:10:27
Speaker
thing we know but One thing to remember, know when people think AI, they think chat GPT, but chat GPT is just one you know geneator generative AI tool, large language model within the larger context of AI. but in soviet ah In a way, I kind of think of chat GPT as the MySpace of AI in the sense that it's made it accessible for people that allowed the people to actually play with it and do things with it and suddenly have, you know, like back in the day when you know people used to build their own websites, that was really hard. So MySpace came along and suddenly people could all have their own profile page. And then a couple of years later, suddenly there was Facebook. So I think we're still in that early stage, in a way, of now suddenly AI becoming accessible to people.
00:11:09
Speaker
But there's the larger picture where you still need experts. You still need people who are actually trained in using these tools. And this is where, for example, it seems what has been very successful was to put together technology experts with business experts and actually having them develop solutions together. And then you can use the real advantages of deeper AI, machine learning, deep learning tools that are not the pretty fun interface thing where you can say, hey, tell me about my lunch.
00:11:39
Speaker
more really real use cases for AI. you know For example, optimization of, you know we've done anything from the clean room optimizations, air flow optimizations, those kinds of things, production optimizations, you know and how things flow in a factory. There's all kinds of things there where AI is in a very, very different level than chat TPT is. I mean, but chat TPT is just what made it very accessible and put it in people's consciousness of like, wow, this is even possible that this can be there. And I think the interface, the relational interface can be things like large language models. but So I can just talk to something. But but then behind it is a whole slew of other AI tools that are going to be working in the back end. And I think the next step there is really going to be AI agents.
00:12:24
Speaker
like where you have tools that are able to execute on processes and make decisions semi autonomously but obviously this is where it also gets dangerous and we still need and especially now even more so need human intelligence to identify that.
00:12:40
Speaker
I saw it in my day-to-day work in two things. One is interview note-taking, for instance, and um customer sales conversations, where you get a summary, and then and or also a recording, and then a transcript or a summary, where you can then really build a database and can ask some questions. or build executive summaries from it. um It's more on the documentation piece still, right? So there's no real decision-making and so on, but I think it's adding value and it's it's comfortable, right? Because you can focus more on the conversation in the second place. And it was interesting because I had a workshop in Japan where I had a and translator and interpreter, and she's awesome because she's also understanding the kind of work I do in leadership training. She's done a lot of transformational training herself, so she could just translate not just my words, but the meaning of what I was saying to people. But then I also had a keynote, and we you know because I didn't have a budget to afford her to be there.
00:13:34
Speaker
um They just decided to use PowerPoint, but in PowerPoint, I don't know if you know you can actually have live captions on it, but and it actually auto-translates. I was literally giving my talk, my PowerPoint, and I was having Japanese captions. and I asked my audience afterwards, like how how good was it? and They said, it it was okay. Of course, it didn't quite translate state everything well and everything right.
00:13:56
Speaker
but It gave a couple of the key words that help people understand what I was talking about. So even there, it's pretty amazing that it's already at that level. And those are, you know, like you said, note-taking. And that it's happening live. That's the awesome thing, I guess. That it's happening live. Oh yeah, it's happening live. Exactly. And this is like, I'm speaking and it's translating and having live Japanese subtitles. And you know, technically you can choose your own adventure and have different subtitles on YouTube, etc. now too. In case you like my show, please subscribe. I would really appreciate it.
00:14:27
Speaker
The second thing I saw is on the organizational piece, and a lot of team members um have maybe different calendars to manage. And then within different calendars, they even have different types of, um let's say calendar blocks, because one is for meetings, the other one is maybe for tasks, and the other one other ones are maybe for interviewers or someone, right?
00:14:55
Speaker
And then you can even train this tool AI, I think it's called Reclaim AI, where based on your priorities and goals, which you define.
00:15:07
Speaker
The tool decides how you will be available to be booked and how you best structure your week maybe ah ahead. um And the tool is deciding, okay, for interviews next week, you will be available for Tuesday and Thursday in two, four hours blocks because um you have these and these things to do that are a higher priority. And the idea of it is to eliminate task lists because You can make a backlog of tasks, but then what it does is translating it into blocks in your calendar where already time is set for doing the task. And of course, some tasks are maybe urgent. You need to do them right away. Some you don't even put in because it's it's nonsense. And especially for the ones that are important um and not urgent, you have it all in your calendar. And I think that's really
00:16:01
Speaker
I was surprised because so I cannot work in that way because I need just space and then I do to do the stuff. um But some employees um and team members in in my team were really, I think, increasing productivity by maybe doubling or by 50%. I couldn't measure it, but I could see it from the outcome they delivered with the same time. And it was like amazing because I am um i'm selling capacity actually, right? So um if you're efficient, that's just profitable and healthy for the company.
00:16:35
Speaker
So the woman and also of course ideally that and ah the game should also come back to the employee at some point i think that's also something important to remember like but it doesn't mean that you know working a hundred and fifty percent in a minute but you actually.
00:16:48
Speaker
maybe do get to a four-day work week at least at some point. Or also get a commission because there is so much more um financial outcome from it right that they can even and benefit from it. That's very nice.
AI Tools and Productivity
00:17:00
Speaker
I've definitely increased my productivity in the last year by 30% just by using chat GPT.
00:17:05
Speaker
you i mean and it's just ah And, you know, those calendaring tools, those kind of things are super helpful as well. I personally like the process of planning my week. You know, only anybody thinking about it because there also there's a prioritization and a visualization component for me in there. So it's not just executing on tasks, but I'm also visualizing my tasks as I'm planning them.
00:17:24
Speaker
So there's a bit of that component. So I still like that person. And this is, I think, a good example because you get to decide what are the tasks that you want to do as a human versus what are the tasks you can offload to an AI. Because certain things, it's awesome to offload to an AI. Yeah, but they are doing it better than maybe you do it and faster. And you have helpful things. Like, for example, I have an AI that I chatted between the kid from a cooking.
00:17:49
Speaker
but where I gave it a bunch of my recipe PDFs that I liked and I told it what kind of kitchen I like. And now I can go and say, hey, I have these five things in my fridge. What can I make with this? you know mean And it gives me some suggestions. And I plan my menus basically but but based on that. right And I love cooking. you know I even have an Instagram account for just sort of for my cooking. but you know So I create entire menus with it. or you know Or I have a blog that is actually i've trained on my different tools that I use for workshop design, but anything from somatic experiencing, my violent communication, all these different different tools and exercises that I use. And I've given it all these tools. And I essentially have it, and I've told it also how I structure my workshops. And now I can go say, hey, I i want to have workshop, go make me an agenda.
00:18:31
Speaker
And it'll just make me an agenda and I can copy and paste into Excel and I have an agenda and usually I tweak it a little bit, but it's pretty much 80% there. And I think this is that 80-20 thing too, where AI and, you know, but large language models can get us 80% there, but then you still have to look at it yourself. And I think this is the important part that you still do that. i'd Like my, one of my employees, she actually took all my blogs and now has a Philip blog that she uses to, you know, simulate my writing.
00:18:58
Speaker
So when she does micro courses and you know we do a lot of micro skill courses. when she creates those and she needs a piece of writing from me. Well, she essentially just gives the keywords and then puts it through that chat GPT and it sounds like me kind of, you know what I mean? And then I still, of course, edit it a little bit and make sure that, you know, there's some anecdotes and there are some personal experiences in there that make it unique, that make it not just the generic AI stuff, but it's 80% there and it saves me a lot of time. And I mean, so why not? you know And I think this is again, the productivity gains that on the one hand are financial gains as well.
00:19:32
Speaker
And on the other hand, our personal gains in the sense that I have more time to actually think and read and learn and do things that I find meaningful. I think this is where it translates into the organizational context too. For example, just the CHRO of IBM, she just posted something about Ask AHR, which we're using. And you can do things like request vacation time or get job verification letters or always like basic HR tasks or the administrative shit. The AI does now.
00:20:01
Speaker
right And they're saving themselves a ton of time. but Back in the day when you think about you needed a verification as well from your employer, that sometimes took like three days right until someone actually got to your email and finally put that thing, put that form together, put the letterhead on it and send you this letter that says, yes, you actually work here. That takes 30 seconds now.
Aligning Values and Engagement
00:20:19
Speaker
you know a million so Amazing in terms of productivity. ah yeah And I think also um what I liked about your content is that um
00:20:29
Speaker
It really adds value once it's adding personal value also for the employees and overall organizational value. and um I think what is important to understand is also um that companies or companies need to make sure that the employees are engaged with the purpose and see the value from it um because I think you also wrote that ah McKinsey research um showed that um employee disengagement and attrition costs a million size S m&P 500 company between $228 million and $355 million a year in lost productivity. um And when you really nail or crack that challenge that the tasks that are maybe drowning energy can be not maybe eliminated,
00:21:21
Speaker
but done in a way that it's not drowning energy ah again. sort And that you also then don't need so much workforce that was maybe needing to be higher because of the high attrition and because nobody wants to do the jobs, right? um That these things are being taken over by technology or enabled by technology, that you maybe need less workforce rate and then um more workforce and creativity and energy is maybe being um available for value creating and adding tasks. And I would be interested in your idea on how you think about that. um and Ideally, come back to when for me, I always go back to, i I've got my first computer, I'm dating myself here a little bit, but I got my first computer 40 years ago when I was 10 years old.
Automating for Creativity
00:22:08
Speaker
And one of the first programs that I wrote was for my dad.
00:22:11
Speaker
And my dad was a doctor in the hospital. And once a month, he had to do this whole calculation for the hospital around, you know, time where he did his private practice in the hospital. So I had to give some money back to them. and it was This is very complicated calculation. He spent probably around like two, three, four hours on a Sunday once a month to do this calculation. And, you know, as I learned programming, I said, dad, will you explain to me how this works? And he explained to me, you took the patients and gave me all this data and showed me how he does this thing.
00:22:38
Speaker
And so I ended up writing a program for him that did the job. The next Sunday came and I said, here, give me your numbers. And I plugged them in and I pushed a button. I said, here's your results. And he still spent that Sunday know spending a couple of hours to make sure that the numbers actually were right. And I proved to him from all this historical data that that was actually correct.
00:22:55
Speaker
And next Sunday we play together. but And for me that's the promise of technology. That really in the end it allows us to have more time to be human with each other, to spend the time to talk to each other, to spend the time to listen to each other, to spend the time learning together to spend the time having fun together right and not spend time with drudgery and bullshit tasks. There are so many bullshit tasks. If you think about inspiration, I think 80% of the stuff that gets done there is bullshit, but it's things that are not worthy for a human being. like We are amazing creative beings. you know mean We have so much capacity. and Unfortunately, school is you know already drowning out some of this. but You might have heard about the statistics that essentially a five-year-old tests on an intelligence level of a genius
00:23:39
Speaker
and then you go downhill from there. but Essentially school, as soon as you get graded, as soon as you get judged for who you are, your intelligence level drops. and A lot of people are used to being good little factory workers. but My colleague Robert Keegan actually says that 65% of adults are on the socialized level or below, which means they're still trying to like do the right thing that they're supposed to be doing here.
00:24:01
Speaker
but instead of being authentic. And not thinking about thinking. and Not thinking about thinking, exactly. Not thinking about why they're even here. right They're just going to work and going for the motions. And then it's not ah and surprising that there's so much know disengagement at work. well I mean, actually, total, actually there's 8.8 trillion is what it costs the global economy. About 9% of our GDP is because of disengaged employees. i Understandably, if you have stupid drudgery tasks to do,
00:24:29
Speaker
Why would you be excited and enthusiastic about it? and That ultimately has a whole ripple effect. Because if I go to work every day and I do a job that I don't like, but there's also some psychological things that ultimately make me sick. That compounds into sick days, into ah mental health issues, into all kinds of things. mean If you look at depression, anxiety, suicide, they've all been massively on the rise for the last decades, even before social media, and now, of course, accelerated by social media.
00:24:57
Speaker
And, you know, essentially 84% of employees have mental health issues right now. Like 70, 71% of adults report stress symptoms at work. I mean, because they're doing stuff that's actually not made for humans. who yeah asend And then even getting unhealthy pressure from somebody that is maybe doing the same or is same and is caught in the same trap, plus um having maybe a bit of authority through hierarchy.
00:25:24
Speaker
um But you also need different kinds of humans to change that. I remember my first job that I had in a university, I had to go across the street to the computer department and pick up a big paper report. And then my job was to sort it by department and put it in interdepartmental envelopes and send it off to the different departments. And A, I got paper cuts on my fingers all the time. B, I was like, wait a second, this comes from a database. They print this out.
00:25:51
Speaker
The people actually would like to have this electronically anyway. There's a beginning of Excel and stuff like that back on the day. And they're like, why don't we just do it electronic to electronic? And so I took her some of my work time and I ended up building a little database. I made friends with the IT t guys. I said, hey, can I tap into your data warehouse? And they let me, right? And so I got to you know build a little database where I could literally push a button that now pulled all this data, send it off an email to everybody, and that was it. And I eliminated 20 hours of my job every week, right? And so I eliminated myself, absoluted myself.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, Philip, that's an interesting point, what you then also made in the beginning to say, hey, um there is a legacy of you already, and now you train AI around your legacy that you are not eliminat eliminating yourself, but it's more like you're making interdependencies on you through technology um that You know, maybe others or maybe processes or systems or your service is reliant on you as a person, what you did in the past and how you did it. And now technology can leverage that. So for instance, like with an actor, right, that they can just.
00:27:01
Speaker
um record themselves and then um movies are made without them being um behind the scenes or um shooting, right? And of course, that's controversial. Some people think maybe, um is it a good thing or not? I don't know. I don't have an opinion on it yet. um But I think there's also a way how to think about it, right? And and how to maybe also think about yourself and take a bit of ownership um about your future and um how you think about you're thinking towards this change,
Self-Improvement Journey
00:27:33
Speaker
right? Because I think, I like one quote, what you said, at the end of this blog post, from Adler Huxley, there is only one corner of the universe, you can be certain of improving and that's your own self.
00:27:45
Speaker
Absolutely. And this is your life. And I mean, I remind people that they're going to die one day. I'm sorry if it's news to anybody that's listening to this, you know, i one day, you know, I mean, and with all the life extension and all that stuff, probably not going to happen in our lifetime that you're going to be, you know, living forever. i But that makes life actually valuable, the effect that it's end ending one day. And if you look at your moments and say, OK, how do I want to spend my moments?
00:28:11
Speaker
We love this whole notion that at the end of your life, you're going to go through this museum of your life. right and You're going to look at this, have there these museum moments walking through and see all these different things that happened in your life. and What are the things that you see in that museum? You sitting there filling out some forms? Probably not the most exciting thing that you want to see about your life. but and I think this is our invitation to really think about how can you make those moments matter. but How can you create more space for meaningful moments, right for things that are beautiful encounters with people and shared moments with other people or learning you something new? but How can you maximize for that in your life? I really like it. I'm just reading a book, Build the Life You Want. and they um
00:28:55
Speaker
It said, I heard ah often that people say, I just want to be happy, but that's actually not not a good goal because I think um happiness based on the book is defined in um purpose and enjoyment and satisfaction. And in order to to achieve all of this, there is unhappiness associated with it because you need to work for it. You need to sacrifice. You just need to really keep going. um And once you achieve this level of happiness, it doesn't last forever. You need to get it again, right? And I think it's not about, I just want to be happy for instance, and I just um let life happen and i I hunt a ghost. It's more like but that really perceiving the moment and accepting different phases and taking ownership on what do you really want to build for your life. And also in terms of organizations, what you want to build as an organization and what each individual
00:29:51
Speaker
um Should contribute and if you're able to translate this and am somehow make it I would say um Relatable then this is where real Change is happening in in the mind of people and that's unlocking a lot of potential um that changes are happening and that things are just Going they're just working um and I think that that's also something what I saw in myself that once I had a real big goal that was a bit more feasible and that um was in the future. And I know I probably never achieve it, but I feel really comfortable in just being on the journey, achieving it. This really unlocked a lot of um creativity, a lot of inner peace, plus a lot of
00:30:45
Speaker
um I would say resilience towards independence of the circumstance. I just go through and and make it happen. in case you have any feedback or anything you want to share with me please send me an email on thomas at peoplevis dot com or hit me up on linkedin and in case you really enjoyed the show please subscribe i would really appreciate it ah there's I love what you're saying there. There's a beautiful saying that happiness is getting what you want, joy is wanting what you have. i When you think about that, being in the moment and really being present to your moment, an understanding that you know your goals are always going to move further away. but In a way, there's a beautiful um a metaphor in yoga about life as a bird.
00:31:29
Speaker
right where the bird, the head is always looking to the horizon, and as you're flying, it's further moving away, and always moving away, and always moving away. right And then you have your wings, which is your ability to adopt new good habits and let go of habits that don't serve you any longer, so you can course correct. And then you have your tail, which is really the stability of habits in the first place, because 80% of what we do is habitual.
00:31:50
Speaker
i don't so to learn to program yourself, to learn to adopt new habits. But then to understand that this is all serving this thing that you're always moving towards, that you have an aspiration that's always bigger than yourself. And you cannot understand it, you're never going to reach it. Like if I think about my life, I gave myself the overall task or purpose of really thinking about contributing towards a planetary society. I wish for one day that every single child on this planet is going to be born with welcome. Hello, welcome to this world. We can't wait to find out who you are. We're going to support the shit out of you while you're here. It's going to hurt sometimes. It's going to suck sometimes, teething hurts, this and that, you know fall on your face. but
00:32:32
Speaker
We are here to help you be the best version of who you can be. And I wish for every single child, no matter where in the world, to be born like that. Now, that's something that's not going to happen in my lifetime in all likelihood. but made Like this notion of a cathedral project. and Back in the day when people built cathedrals, the first person who started this, they knew they were not going to see the end of it. right They knew they're going to start this, and it's going to take three generations or four generations even to to finish this church.
00:32:58
Speaker
And so for me, it's a bit like that to have this cathedral project and I know every day I'm doing my best to contribute to that. And that gives me a tremendous sense of joy. All right. And that's me, like you said, you know, it gives me a bunch of resilience and lets me overcome all the moments when I'm too far ahead in the future. And I'm incongruent with the time here and people tell me I'm crazy. Okay, that's fine. I don't care. You know, I'm going to do it anyway. All right. And that's, like I said, then it becomes the journey. It becomes that process of every moment learning something new. And I think it's a,
00:33:28
Speaker
fallacy to think that it's all about being happy. This is like the last century in particular, we've gotten this idea that it's all about consuming. ah like Maximize and supersize me. Consume, consume, consume, consume. when when your Instagram is all about the villa and the big fool, the you know yacht and whatever. But consumption doesn't make you happy. Consumption is actually a deaf thing. Because when you consume something, it's gone.
00:33:52
Speaker
no but Then you need it again. Then you do it again and again and again. You keep chasing that. But when you look at what really gets you excited and high, it's creating value for someone else. and it its All life produces more value than it consumes. Otherwise, a tree wouldn't grow they would you know because they're taking minerals and light and water and they're making something.
00:34:14
Speaker
And mean you when you think about my own life, and I've tried a few highs in my life of different you know substances and this and that, but the best high I know, the coolest high I know, is when you created value for someone else. When you see them, their life being better, and you know you did this. i That's the cool, that's really truly being a life. And I think that's what we need to focus on again, is to say how can I you know get people and you know orient people towards creation, towards like adding value to the world.
00:34:44
Speaker
and making it not just for the financial results of the company, but doing it for something meaningful. This is actually, if you translate into an organizational context, you financial metrics are important or questionable. You need them because if you don't make money, you don't have a business, but it's a very small purpose. and At this point, multinationals in particular are in a position to actually address our global issues much better than most governments or even the UN.
00:35:09
Speaker
ah a global company like a Siemens or like a GE or like a T-Mobile or whatever, that they can actually really make an impact in the world. i'm Because they have this multinational workforce. They have you know interest also in making sure that this people work together globally. And when you see some of the movements of nationalism or you know those kind of contractive fear-based things that are happening, this is where we really have the opportunity, and i think especially also some of your audience at CHROs, to have the opportunity to to really create and a counter-medicine for this, right to to really help the world go together, become together, become a planet, and address our planetary issues. And that's meaningful work. That's way beyond some financial metrics. Of course, again, it's not an either-or. It's not purpose or profit. But it's actually about understanding that profit doesn't just mean financial metrics. but The word actually from Latin means poor esse, which means maybe beneficial.
00:36:05
Speaker
then And yes, the measure of effective efficiency is your financial metrics. The measure of effectiveness is not that. The measure of effectiveness is how are you impacting people's lives on this planet and how are you impacting the planet. That's a really much more interesting story. And this is why we have the opportunity to really shift our workforces to orient them towards that and use technology to free themselves from some of the drudgery so that they have the capacity to do that.
00:36:34
Speaker
Philip, that's great final words. Thank you so much. And it was really great interviewing you. Thank you so much. Thanks for your excellent questions and your beautiful inspirations.