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When You're Not the Expert: Why Leaders Need Interactional Expertise
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In this episode of The Visible Leader, I talk to Ed Fidoe - co-founder of the London Interdisciplinary School - about a concept that could radically shift how leaders operate: interactional expertise.
What do you do when your team knows more than you do? How do you lead across functions where you don’t have the depth of knowledge? And how can you avoid falling into the trap of blind trust or dangerous overconfidence?
Ed shares brilliant insights from his leadership journey, from running a university to launching theatre productions, and explains why not knowing doesn’t have to undermine your leadership - if you know how to ask the right questions, build context, and read between the lines. We also talk about Steve Jobs, Dunbar’s Number, and what good strategy actually looks like.
Key Takeaways:
- Interactional expertise is the ability to understand and talk fluently about topics you’re not an expert in - vital for cross-functional leadership.
- Leaders "acting out" might look like not asking questions or pretending to understand, driven by a fear of looking silly.
- Build your confidence by reading beyond your domain - whether it’s marketing, HR, or science.
- Get better at decision-making and communication by knowing when to zoom in and zoom out.
- Small shifts, like asking for a podcast recommendation from your product manager or keeping meetings to 5 people, can make a big difference.
Find Ed here:
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Transcript
Breaking the Expert-Novice Mindset
00:00:00
Speaker
a people saying things like, I don't do maths or I'm used to languages. And this is another way of saying either you're an expert in something or you're not. That's the thing I'm trying to break here is this idea that you're either a deep expert and great at it or you just don't do it.
00:00:19
Speaker
Innovation is going to come from new connections. It's the connecting unexpected things together that will create something new. In order to connect unexpected things, you can't just be trying to learn what everyone else knows. That is going to be fine. It might get you to par, but it's probably not going to help you get ahead in the future or come up with any new ideas.
Corinne Hines' Introduction
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome to the show. I'm Corinne Hines, and this is the Visible Leader podcast. I've been coaching leaders and their teams, helping them transform their results, their relationships and their impact for over a decade
Leadership Focus: Decision Making and Resilience
00:00:55
Speaker
now.
00:00:55
Speaker
And as you can imagine, in that time, I've become a little bit obsessed with the art and science of leading effectively. So on this show, together with my guests, I get under the surface of topics like decision making, performance, resilience, all while making sure you get tips and ideas you can implement the next day or even sooner.
Leading Experts: Challenges and Strategies
00:01:23
Speaker
How do you lead, motivate and challenge someone in your team who is a deep expert and whose knowledge goes way beyond your understanding of their field?
00:01:35
Speaker
Do you employ the best talent and then trust them to keep you up to speed?
Interdisciplinary Learning: The London Approach
00:01:40
Speaker
Ed Fido suggests there is another way and another set of skills needed as organisations get ever more complex.
00:01:50
Speaker
Ed co-founded a new university called the London Interdisciplinary School. In it, he teaches people how to tackle complex real-world problems by integrating knowledge and methods from the arts, sciences and humanities.
00:02:08
Speaker
And he's going to share some ideas of things that you can do, which will help you develop these new set of skills.
Learning New Skills: Adult Challenges
00:02:16
Speaker
In this conversation, we covered everything from kite surfing, optimal team size, and his recommendation for the next business book you should be reading.
00:02:28
Speaker
hello Hi Ed, welcome to The Visible Leader. Hi Corrine, it's great to be here. It's lovely to be speaking to you about this subject. But first of all, when was the last time you were talking to an expert and felt totally out of your depth?
00:02:47
Speaker
Oh, right. I mean, i run a new small university, so I am regularly speaking to academics who are our expert in things that I don't even begin to understand. But actually, i actually don't need to understand what they study.
00:03:00
Speaker
So that doesn't make me feel out my depth. I actually think that as we get older, we very rarely
The Dangers of Pretending Knowledgeable Leadership
00:03:05
Speaker
learn new things. but I remember trying to learn kite surfing about six, seven years ago. And I was finding it just horrible. and i was starting to get quite angry with the instructor because he couldn't make me be great straight away.
00:03:17
Speaker
And it did make me think, you know, wow, like we forget that young people are just having this all the time, every day. It's really hard and exhausting to learn something completely new. Great, great observation. mean, God, kite surfing. Did you ever get there?
00:03:29
Speaker
No, not at all. I think I'm a ton of mental or physical capacities that you need in combination. But I only tried for two or three days in Tarifa in Spain. it was a last minute thing.
00:03:40
Speaker
And it was it's just thoroughly miserable. Yeah, you didn't break through to that point where you... Can do it? I would never even try. i don't even really like waves, but, you know, but i can swim, but don't put me in waves. I get scared.
00:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's not for me, but I've seen it and it looks horrific. So well done for even going there and trying. But what great observation about how children are doing this and taking this in their stride, the fact that they're continually learning new stuff.
00:04:10
Speaker
ah What I noticed in myself is that I started acting out genuinely, like started being a bit kind of short and shirty because I couldn't do it. But I mean, i and I knew that's why I was getting short shirty is because I couldn't do it. But I was still sort of blaming the instructor, you know, for not being clear with his hand signals when you're in the sea, getting smashed by the waves. He's sort of doing this, which makes it look a bit like, you know, the lights are on us. You know, you've left your lights on, you know, he's trying to get me to let go of the I don't know. And then it reminds you, then you think, right, well, when young people are acting out,
00:04:38
Speaker
for a thousand different reasons, but one of it might be just, they simply don't understand yet and they get frustrated. But it's just a human thing is we sort of, we want to learn. It's a, that's a very natural desire, but we kind of get out that a bit as we get older and we've got to empathize that it's, it's a tough thing to be doing all the time.
00:04:56
Speaker
So acting out, do you see leaders acting out? Well, I think what I think we're going to talk about today is this idea of kind of when you need to be an expert and when do you not, and is there an in-between, which is really important.
00:05:08
Speaker
I think acting out for a leader might not be sort of petulantly shouting back across some waves. What it might be is a leader pretending they know something, pretending they know what you've just said and not asking the question, not double checking, being afraid to ask silly questions in inverted commas.
The Value of Asking Questions in Leadership
00:05:23
Speaker
These are the sorts of things I think are in a way ways of leaders acting out because they don't know. don't like not knowing. We don't like being told something that we can't do we're not sure about, particularly if it matters.
00:05:36
Speaker
But yeah, I think that's just as damaging a way that leaders can act out. Of course, they can act out in all these sort of more childish ways as well. But the saving face is is important. Oh, it's very under the surface, isn't it?
00:05:47
Speaker
This pretense that you might have. I mean, I've i've i've been, when I'm working with clients, they're always talking in jargon that I don't understand because I don't need to understand. don't need to understand their world to the point that I can actually do their job.
00:06:00
Speaker
But there's a certain amount that we'll talk about that I do need to, I need to know whether that's something I challenge not. or whether that's something that's part of the world that I don't need to know. So so it's this balancing act.
00:06:12
Speaker
Sometimes I'll ask a question, oh, what's that acronym? And it's I did this once, but it was like ETA. you know It was like something really non-jargon. I was like, oh, okay. And I did feel a bit stupid. I was like, oh, God, I should known that. but So it's knowing when to know what to challenge. oh anyway It's such a human thing. I just came from a meeting. My meeting just before this was with my chief marketing officer.
00:06:34
Speaker
And I can't remember what it was now, but she just showed me a slide deck that she's going show us to the leadership team later this week. And, you know, there was something in there didn't quite get. And I just thought to myself, I'll probably i'll just go and check afterwards, see footnote. I won't ask her right now. It's just two of us in the room, but I've got a great relationship. I'm the boss.
00:06:50
Speaker
What the hell am I doing? I'm about to talk to you about this idea of, you know, having the, you interaction expertise and I'm there like not, not asking the question. So it's a deeply human and we should, you know, not beat ourselves up too much for things.
00:07:04
Speaker
I don't want to ask silly questions you know we are going to start talking about interactual experience minute we're going to go around it but You do have to judge
Steve Jobs and Interaction Expertise
00:07:11
Speaker
it right because I think if I'm in a like a board meeting and I ask a stupid question that's actually quite stupid, that's not going to do my credibility any good.
00:07:20
Speaker
There's questions and there's questions. So it isn't just a matter of being so naive that you can be like, oh, can you just tell me what that means when you're like, no, no, you should know that. That's a level you should really know. Like ETA was okay. Yeah.
00:07:36
Speaker
So we're hedging around these words. Interactional expertise was not a phrase I'd ever heard of before. It's not one that I instinctively went, oh, this is what I think you mean. I did actually have to look at it quite hard to go, what is it?
00:07:49
Speaker
what What is this thing? So... I want you to define it, but I think a place maybe to start is, can you just describe what it looks like when it's not present?
00:08:01
Speaker
So a leader, senior in a role, they have experts around them in their various areas. What will it look like if it's not there? So I've been working on building it myself, but when I didn't have it, it might have looked like me working with my chief marketing officer. I don't have a background in marketing.
00:08:18
Speaker
I've not been part of the whole kind of digital marketing revolution, right? So I don't understand. oh there's a lot of jargon around digital marketing on online, right? So it would look like me saying, right, Gillian, you decide the strategy. Me just accepting that strategy wholesale, that's Gillian's department. Gillian's the marketeer. She's got 30 years experience. What do I know about marketing? She's the expert.
00:08:38
Speaker
And then, you know, you look at the numbers every month and even if they're kind of going badly, you just go, well, you know, basically I'm either gonna stick with Gillian or I'm gonna sack Gillian, but there's not much else I can do about it. Right. That's, ah but yeah. all but And that happens quite regularly when when it's an area that's not in your area of expertise. you're like, well, I've hired you, you're the expert.
00:08:56
Speaker
Now, I think that's what happens when it doesn't exist in the workplace. And then on a sort of a more mundane level, it looks like people saying things like, I don't do maths. We actually used to have somebody,
Cultural Tendencies: Expert or Novice Labels
00:09:07
Speaker
when I started at school, we had somebody who worked as business manager who said, I don't do maths after three o'clock in the afternoon, which I thought was a particularly peculiar a form of a lack of expertise. or But a lot of people now 40% of people take maths A level, which means that 60% don't, which is perfectly fine, but it does actually mean that probably they're not have done any maths since they were 16 throughout their life. And a lot of these people have become very low on confidence in maths and will say things like, I don't do maths, or I'm used to maths, or I'm used to languages. And this is another way of saying either you're an expert in something or you're not.
00:09:39
Speaker
That's the thing I'm trying to break here. is this idea that you're either a deep expert and great at it, or just don't do it. And that is not healthy dichotomy. Steve Jobs, I always remember this quote where he says, it doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do.
00:09:55
Speaker
ah We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do. Now, yeah there's obviously extremes to this, but I just wonder whether you'd think that Steve Jobs...
00:10:07
Speaker
had the kind of expertise you're talking about or whether he was sort of outsourcing it. So he's like, oh, I don't need to know about marketing because employ a really smart person. I need to do it. I think Steve Jobs is a really fascinating example of this because what saying in that quote would make you seem, well, maybe you just hire the expert and let the expert get on with it, right? That's what he's saying. Now, everybody who knows about Steve Jobs' management style is that he was anything but that.
00:10:29
Speaker
He huge control freak. But he had interaction expertise. Let me define interaction expertise for 30 seconds, right? It is a level of knowledge between expert and sort of generalist.
00:10:41
Speaker
And it's the sort of expertise that a science journalist might have in science. They're not a scientist, but they understand science. They've got quite a few science friends. They talk scientists regularly. They might understand some science jokes, but they'll also have interaction expertise in other areas. They might also write as a political writer and they might write about sports.
00:10:59
Speaker
And then actually they can start to do some quite interesting linking between those three areas. Steve Jobs had expertise in computer science, but he wasn't a coder. He had expertise in design. He had expertise in marketing, but he wasn't ah specifically a marketeer, but he did note he did know his way around how he put together a marketing campaign.
Continuous Learning and Avoiding Overconfidence
00:11:16
Speaker
And he also, this sort of slightly left field one is, of course, he took calligraphy classes at university because he just wandered into them. into and And it was through that they invented fonts. So he wasn't an expert in any area, but the combination of those sort of that collection of interaction expertise that he had, a bit good at everything and could talk to all the people that were doing the work.
00:11:35
Speaker
He loved people that he needed people that were better than him at But the idea that you just let them get on with it, I just don't think that's a true from the stories you hear. And it's probably quite difficult working for him because he knew something.
00:11:46
Speaker
He knew good work and bad work in your field when he saw it and he let you know. ah Then you can get to some fantastic places and outcomes because of that. And I mean, he's obviously fairly unique human.
00:11:58
Speaker
We're not trying to emulate that. And he'll have massive flaws as well. But what we're illustrating is to kind of outsource all the thinking around each of these specialist areas, you're going to have blind spots. You're not going to be able interrogate it and challenge things.
00:12:15
Speaker
I think that's right. I mean, i so so my professional background, actually, I have moved around jobs where I knew everybody's job because I'd done it already myself. And then there's some sort of sectors where it's actually quite unusual to have done everybody's jobs.
00:12:27
Speaker
So, for example,
Building Interaction Expertise Across Departments
00:12:28
Speaker
I think in sort of in the in the more industrial manufacturing kind of areas, often people have worked on the factory floor and then become managers. and so they do broadly understand how to get the job done at the lower level.
00:12:38
Speaker
I was a management consultant um for a little while, which, by the way, it's separately is that all about having interaction expertise and not being an expert really in anything. But you can contest what how deep the knowledge goes in any area.
00:12:50
Speaker
But you work your way up. So you start as an analyst and you work your way up and you sent you're doing the slides and then you're person managing the person doing the slides. But everybody, even the partners and directors, very senior people, At some point, they were the person doing the doing the PowerPoint slides.
00:13:02
Speaker
So you don't really need this interaction expertise. But there's other areas. and As we globalize more and get bigger companies and all these multinational firms, people are managing huge divisions and huge departments. you're going to be managing people you've got no idea what they're doing if you're working for P&G or something.
00:13:16
Speaker
Or if you're running a social enterprise or a small business, you're gonna have people like the marketing team or the finance function or the ah HR function where you don't know. And it gets risky. I've had some of these cases recently where the HR advice just doesn't feel right to you, right? but you don't have the expertise and very technical area, but it's about trying to trust your guts But to your point, and I think this is what you're trying to get to, there is a point at which you don't know enough. You really shouldn't trust your gut.
00:13:42
Speaker
then So what's that? And that's got a name. Well, it's sort of, have you heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't know, you don't know. Knowing a little bit is really dangerous. That's the thing. It's like this learning curve is sort of, you start to learn more and then you're like, I'm an expert. I'm an expert. Yeah. I know all about this.
00:14:01
Speaker
And that I think is also, that would be very annoying for for people you're managing. But that's what you're trying to avoid. And sometimes you need to say explicitly, I'm going to learn more about this area.
00:14:11
Speaker
And I think that doesn't happen in the workplace. So for me to go and read, which I did when we started this university, some books on marketing, two or three books on marketing, just read. It doesn't mean you're an expert, but it means I can ask better questions.
00:14:25
Speaker
And it means that I've got something to base gut instinct on. although by the way having put on theater shows which is what I did when I was in my 20s that I learned a lot about marketing there because you know if no one shows up to the theater that's you know you you really care about that so cut your teeth there but you're not marketeer but you still got sort of build up your gut in as many areas as possible I think if you're if you're leading in these areas so I know that the university that you run you have courses in this specific area, or certainly I presume you'll always touch on this, will you?
00:14:59
Speaker
We have a course called, yeah, cross-functional leadership, which is exactly this. So I'm going to steal from you because I know not all my listeners are going to be able to come join your course and some of them will. So I will certainly put details about it in the show notes.
00:15:12
Speaker
But for those that don't end up coming on your course, what can we steal from you, Ed? What can we do today, tomorrow as leaders that will make us more proficient in this area?
00:15:27
Speaker
I can talk a bit about the course and what's on it, but actually there's a difference between what you can do on a course and what you kind of do beyond that, right? ah What I would say beyond that, so medium to long term is just identify some areas where you're going to deepen your knowledge, where you've traditionally been a little nervous about it.
00:15:46
Speaker
I would change your habits of
Effective Leadership Communication and Dynamics
00:15:48
Speaker
not asking a question when you don't understand. But to your point, do it in meetings where it's like above the waterline. You know, the boat's not going to s sink if you ask the question and look stupid. So you're probably not doing it front of a client, maybe not in a board meeting, but make sure you understand every word on any slide in the end that is being presented to you, particularly if you're the leader.
00:16:06
Speaker
So you're finance director, you're not allowing yourself to get to that point where you're letting that numeracy skill issue bite you. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you really, if you see some numbers, you're like, Oh, i don't get that. I'm sure it's fine.
00:16:21
Speaker
He's the expert is just stop that narrative in your head. But there's some, there's the things on the course we work with are, uh, some of it's around communication because if you're leading across functions and across different levels of seniority and everybody has different expertise, so not everyone else knows everyone else's job, but think hard about how you communicate. So there we talk about zooming in and zooming out. So are you going to zoom in and communicate something in real detail?
00:16:42
Speaker
Or when you're going to zoom out and and communicate in something in in a more abstract way, kind of more broad brush type thing. And that being conscious of that and when you're having to do that is really important, I think. We talk about how to take decisions with people in the room who don't understand each other's job, how to synthesize. So thinking about how do you bring together and create a shared narrative around things?
00:17:02
Speaker
what everyone's doing that's so different. So if you've got, I've got here a marketing team, an admissions team, a registry, we've got a bunch of academics, weve people that run the building. How do you create a narrative about what all of those people are doing? Because that's really important for them to feel a sense of togetherness. It can't just be the marketing team's got a great culture as a group.
00:17:20
Speaker
You need sort of the whole team too. So thinking about that narrative is something else that we also do. Can you give us a tip? What can I practically do tomorrow? There's something about, this is maybe a slightly funny one. It's just, I've just remembered it about the um Richard Dunbar number. Have you heard about the Dunbar number before?
00:17:39
Speaker
I have, but I can't remember. I'm not going to, be yeah, I totally remember. Just share it with our listeners. now I have forgotten what it is. Is it the size of your network? Gotcha. Yeah, it's a bit linked to network. Usually people just talk about the 150 Dunbar number, which is the, usually you can't kind of,
00:17:57
Speaker
keep in your head or keep social connections with more than 150, it tends to top out of that. And there's sort of anthropological historical evidence of communities breaking down after 150. But the thing that's less talked about is that so groups of five and groups of 15 are also important numbers and groups of 50. There's something about number number five, clearly.
00:18:14
Speaker
But anyone who said, we've got two academics used to work with Richard Dunbar up at Oxford working with us now. And they swear that if you get past a group of five, it splits into two, it starts to create silos. So if you want a bit more cross-functional collaboration or people to get together to chat to make decisions, try to get them in groups of four or five and not more than
Optimal Group Sizes and Avoiding Silos
00:18:33
Speaker
that.
00:18:33
Speaker
Try to avoid meetings that are more than that because people will break off into their kind of cliques. And there's a lot of data and science around this. You'll even see it in the pub if sixth, the fifth or sixth friend comes to conversation thing.
00:18:45
Speaker
But who is it that said you should only be able to share one pizza? Yeah, that's that's a Bezos thing. Is Jeff Bezos the Amazon guy? Is it? Is it just Bezos? It's the same sort of principle. But I think it's a good, it's just a neat one for tomorrow.
00:18:56
Speaker
Because really, and I think the second thing I would say as a tip is, you will notice that there's questions you don't clarify. You don't ask the clarifying question that you wish you'd asked. You do it a lot, probably, for anything like me.
00:19:07
Speaker
And I think the other tip would be just stop doing that. Literally just stop doing it. I think we're trained into that at school. I think at school, you don't want to ask the stupid question and look silly in front your friends. I think that's quite a sad result of all those years of education that you don't were not particularly taught to ask good questions.
00:19:23
Speaker
I think when I was doing my coaching training, And we all had to give each other feedback at the end. People always said I was the one that asked the question that they were thinking. And I was like, oh, that's quite good. You know, I was just so desperate to understand and apply.
00:19:39
Speaker
was also in an environment where I didn't really care. People thought I didn't get it or not. I'm like, I am not leaving here until I understand that. So it was quite useful in that way. I noticed something change at school. something to do with the school I went to, but the the kids that asked questions in the class didn't understand it and they tended to be coming bottom. Whereas the kids, because school's such a mixture of different capabilities, the kids that got it never asked any questions because I sort of, whereas when I went to university, it was the reverse. So the people that were asking questions were the people that got the first class degrees.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. And everyone else was sort of drifting through. and and you know, so I'd be listening to a lecture for 20 minutes and then someone would ask a question. I'm like, my God, is that the first thing you've not understood? I haven't understood any of this.
00:20:20
Speaker
know, in a fluid mechanics lecture or whatever. So i was just like, wow, goodness, that's so impressive. It implies that you understood everything else. Yeah, yeah, you've asked a question that made sense in that moment.
00:20:31
Speaker
So think of it that way, I think. Yeah, so something around noticing that habit. and And I suppose it's understanding where your possible blind spots might be in all these different functions.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, check for the, where where do you think you might have a Dunning-Kruger effect going on for you? so where do you think you've got a little knowledge and it's probably a little bit dangerous you wrote because you're overemphasizing it. and And catch yourself when you say, well, I don't do that.
00:20:56
Speaker
You know, I wouldn't understand that or that's their area. This is not about getting to the same level of expertise as your colleagues and don't pretend you are. This is about, it's almost a form of respect for them if you sort of, if you dip into them.
00:21:09
Speaker
Ask your colleagues, what's the one book? What podcast do you listen to? I hired a product manager, which I'd never hired before a couple of years ago. i asked him what podcast to listen to. listens this podcast called Lenny's Podcast. This guy Lenny is just massive amongst product product managers. Have you not heard of Lenny, Ed?
00:21:24
Speaker
Come on. know. I knew for me. Exactly. Exactly. but So I was listening to Lenny for so six months to try and just understand this guy's world a little bit more. So I think ask them what books to read, who to follow, who to listen to.
00:21:38
Speaker
And when you think about the focus we're looking at is that you're leader and you have people in your team and you don't you couldn't do their job, but you you don't you know their expertise in their their field.
00:21:51
Speaker
How do you see that working with them setting themselves objectives for the year or what's achievable? what's you know If you're thinking about that world, what what would you say around that?
00:22:05
Speaker
I think that's really
Collaborating with Experts in Teams
00:22:06
Speaker
hard. I think that's really hard and I find it difficult. I mean, for me, this is, again, it's about the zooming in zooming out. So you've got to sit with them and be able to zoom out to the organizational objectives.
00:22:16
Speaker
And you can you should that there should definitely be a point, but you're all clear about that and you can all you know agree that. And then you're zooming, start to zoom back into their area and you're then starting to articulate, right, well, what would have to happen with you for that broader goal to be achieved?
00:22:31
Speaker
And there should be a connection there. I mean, otherwise, you know, something's gone wrong anyway. So what's the connection there? How would you be ambitious? Generally setting goals, having people set their own performance targets, if you do in the right environment, is a good thing to do anyway, rather than impose them on them.
00:22:46
Speaker
So I tend to find that that's the way to do it. But it is it is hard when you start to zoom, really start to zoom in. So if particularly if you're working with a junior person, and you're sort of the their manager and they haven't really got experience, but they are quite expert technically, but they haven't got experience to do things like set themselves targets. I just think that's really hard. And I think it's about human to human. let's how do we How do we figure this out What would you feel good about the normal stuff?
00:23:11
Speaker
Yeah. That's how I do it. It's a great question, though, and I think it is the hardest part is is is the sort of review how you've got on. Because it's not always practical to phone up someone in another company who's got the expertise and say, what do you think of, you know, do you think we're getting on or what will kind of, can you chat to them?
00:23:25
Speaker
I do that when I'm recruiting. that's kind And don't know if you've got this question coming up, but recruiting someone who has expertise that you don't have, I think is vital to get an expert in the room for the final panel interview.
The Power of Unexpected Connections and Innovation
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah. do that in all time. You could get blindsided so easily, couldn't you? Yeah, totally. It's really important. What other things have I not asked you about this subject, Ed, that you think we need to cover?
00:23:48
Speaker
I'm naturally coming at it from a sort of university perspective. So I have a kind of passion around the power of learning kind of, you know, from various different, all different sources and how applicable and and and applying it to the real world.
00:24:04
Speaker
And I think almost all knowledge can be applied to the real world in in one way or another. I'm really enthusiastic about people broadening their intellectual range, really starting to read into areas that they haven't necessarily read in and to read things they might not think it directly useful into work. So we've talked a bit about things you can do tomorrow, like asking questions and how to recruit people.
00:24:25
Speaker
But don't be afraid to read books and listen to podcasts and and build up ideas. knowledge in areas that you just can't see, you can't see how it would be useful because the amount of times that something surprising will happen when you can then draw on it.
00:24:38
Speaker
COVID is a great example that people have been continuing to read around science who hadn't used it for 20 years, but suddenly just drawing on it and just understood the whole thing so much better. And they could make plans. They had a bigger voice in their organization and they were someone who was respected and could be counted upon to kind of translate what was going on in the real world.
00:24:56
Speaker
And I think in ah times of crisis and when things are happening that we don't expect, can't predict, it's good to have lots of people do it reading lots of different things, not just trying to read everything for Monday morning's meeting. you It feels like a big thing of what you're talking about, Ed, is these connections, greater connectivity within organisations.
00:25:16
Speaker
What is the future? That's potentially... and so So I think by definition, innovation is going to come from new bodies of knowledge or new connections within existing bodies of knowledge. So innovation, This is not my view.
00:25:27
Speaker
It's generally felt like the reductionist approach to research. So there's sort of just going narrower and narrower narrower into an individual subject, deeper and deeper. Most of the low hanging fruit have probably been reaped from from that approach.
00:25:38
Speaker
And now we need more of seeing connections between different areas, different disciplines. This is a bit of an academic thing, but I mean, it has been the case in the past. you think about what Einstein did and how he was combining various subjects and Darwin was combining economics with economics,
00:25:52
Speaker
geology, geography, biology, ah to make these kind of huge leaps of insight. It's the connecting unexpected things together that will create something new. And in order to connect unexpected things, you can't just be trying to learn what everyone else knows, right? So reading the business book that everyone else reads,
Diversifying Learning and Resource Recommendations
00:26:10
Speaker
that is going to be fine. It might get you to par,
00:26:12
Speaker
but it's probably not going to help you get ahead in the future or come up with any new ideas. If everybody's still reading stuff about psychological safety and radical candor, it's really good to know about that stuff. But unless you were reading 10 years ago, you're not going to be ahead of the curve and you're not going to come with anything unexpected.
00:26:28
Speaker
You know, there are some areas which everyone knows it would be better for them to kind of know more about and knowing about the basic functions in the business. But, you know, just take a risk and read some stuff about science that you wouldn't necessarily, you know, pick the science that you like the most at school and just choose a couple of books and start reading.
00:26:44
Speaker
And you but what I found in that and doing a lot more of that in the last few years is that you start to go down corridors and rabbit holes that you didn't expect. And it can be brilliant. It's brilliant fun, but it can also be useful.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, i do I know myself if I'm reading, li you know, true crime podcast, you know, totally irrelevant for my job. Yeah. But it's amazing. There'll be something in there about some psychology or something, which is all around like teams or leaders and I think.
00:27:13
Speaker
Hey, see, I knew back to back true crime was going to fail. hey All to all true crime is going to get you down edge. Yeah. and think that's it. But I've been feeling like I've just listened to way too much political podcasts over the last, well, probably 18 months.
00:27:27
Speaker
And I can feel it. I need to broaden out. I need to start listening to something completely different content. Yeah. because it's It's starting to eat itself now. I'm not learning anything new. my learn might you know I kind of know what everyone's going to say.
00:27:38
Speaker
I'm similar. I've been listening to it going, I know there's nothing else here, but it's like comfortable and I'm still there. But hey, maybe i should listen something about history, which wouldn't normally do.
00:27:50
Speaker
Just the final point. What is the book? And I know that we've said read something out there, but what's the business book that you think is the radical candor of the future yeah that we should be reading? Yeah.
00:28:03
Speaker
I'm going to give you an old book, but I think it's one of the very rare business books that I love. Have you come across a good strategy, bad strategy? Do you know that one? Richard Rummolt, I think he's called, something like that. and No, I haven't. I would highly recommend that it. The book itself is probably 10, 15 years old, but it's about strategy being an insight that other people have not had. The sort of the kegels of the kernel of the strategy is something which you have pieced together. So I run an interdisciplinary university and what I would say ours is, is that We have degree awarding powers, which is very hard to get from a regulatory perspective, and an interdisciplinary offer, which is very hard for existing universities to provide because they're so siloed.
00:28:41
Speaker
And so we don't think many people are going to be able to come into the market because of the regulatory thing we've got. And we also don't think the existing market is going to react to do ID. So that's the kernel. So everything else we do, that's always the
Engagement and Feedback Encouragement
00:28:53
Speaker
kernel of the strategy. Now, I might be wrong, and no one may care and no one may want interdisciplinary education, and that's fine. Or we may never able make the economics work.
00:29:00
Speaker
But how do you get to that? and How do you get to that in original way? So I would recommend good strategy, bad strategy. Yeah, it's a good read as well. It's a very good writer. Great. Well, it's always good to read the books that are actually really easy to read as well, isn't it? they're more like a novel that can get you sucked into it.
00:29:18
Speaker
It was a pleasure to talk to you, Ed, about this subject. Where can people find out more about you? Well, you can only find me on LinkedIn, but will be feel free to connect to me, Ed Fido, or LIS.
00:29:33
Speaker
Well, the website is lis.ac.uk. And then we're on Instagram and Twitter. Fabulous. Thank you very much. I will link all of that in the show notes. And it was a pleasure to chat.
00:29:43
Speaker
Great talk to you, Karine. Thanks very much.
00:29:47
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Visible Leader podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episode, hit the subscribe button. And I'd love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review.
00:29:59
Speaker
If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me, Corinne Hines on LinkedIn.