Simone Cicero 

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Boundaryless Conversations Podcast. On this podcast, we explore the future of business models, organisations, markets and society in our rapidly changing world. I’m joined today by my usual co-host, Shruthi Prakash. Hello Shruthi.

 

Shruthi Prakash

Hello everybody.

 

Simone Cicero 

And today we are joined by one of the most important, I would say the biggest names in strategy, probably, but also really thinking and organisational development and design. He has over 40 years of experience in the intersection of business, technology, and strategy. Welcome, John Hager.

 

John Hagel 

Thank you.

 

Simone Cicero

Thank you, John, for being with us. Thank you. John needs no introduction, but maybe a quick one nonetheless.

 

John is a management consultant and entrepreneur and an author. He was the founding member and co-chair of the Deloitte Center for the Edge and now is kicking off a new center, Center for Growth. He’s still doing consulting and advisory to lots of great brands and organisations all over the world. He also serves on the boards of institutions such as the Santa Fe Institute and contributes to the global discussions on platforms, systems, future work, for example, through the World Economic Forum Global Future Council. 

 

John also wrote several books, several influential books. I mean, personal opinion, the most iconic probably being The Power of Pull, which really changed my early career. And really, I cannot think of a more foundational piece of work for what I do in business. And his latest, The Journey Beyond Fear.

 

John has been continuous inspiration to many, I would say, who have explored how individuals, organizations can navigate a world of uncertainty and change. But I would say drawing on networks and opportunities and open-mindedness. So through your journey, you have helped countless leaders, to navigate these crazy landscapes over the last few decades. 

 

So we’re happy to have you here today. And I think I would really love to ask you as an opening reflection, how do you connect the moment we are are living now, which is clearly a pivotal moment in history, to earlier moments where you have been able to capture the change and the new opportunities that we’re opening up. So up to you, John, maybe for a reflection of where we are at the moment.

 

John Hagel 

Wow. Well, my passion for my entire career has been looking into the future to see emerging opportunities that can create significant value and helping to motivate people to address those opportunities. I think we’re still in a world that’s very rapidly and fundamentally changing. And I’ve spent a lot of time studying what I call the big shift, the long-term trends that are reshaping our global economy and society.

 

But over time, I’ve become more and more focused. As you’ve mentioned, I do a lot of work in strategy and I was taught to believe strategy is everything. If you have the right strategy, you win. Over the years, I’ve come to believe it’s less about strategy and more about psychology. That if we don’t understand the emotions that are shaping the choices and actions of people, the best strategy just sits on a shelf somewhere.

 

So I’ve become more and more focused on the emotional side and understanding because in my experience as a strategist, I’ve seen more and more resistance to change. It’s the notion that fear is holding people back. And if we don’t address the fear and help to cultivate other emotions, people are just gonna be held into whatever position they were in before and that’s. very scary because it’s not a sustainable position. So I believe we’re still in the early stages of very fundamental change and I’m excited about it.

 

Simone Cicero 

I mean, you have, I think, you started talking about these aspects very early when you started talking about the creation of narratives as shapers of ecosystems and people’s intentions and contributions. Also, I can recall the idea of creative creation spaces, right? 

 

So this I would say positive and opening elements of enacting a strategy in the world. It’s not just about where you want to go, but it’s also about the story you build around it and the spaces you create for the people to express themselves into this. So what is that in a world where, I would say, sadly machines can interact with humans, how is this changing the importance and the role that emotions and, you know, this type of personal drivers have in how organizations perform. 

 

So what is the change that organizations need to understand and address to really become proactively, positively shaped for interacting in world in deep change, like the one we’re living in now?

 

John Hagel 

Well, it’s important on many levels. I think one level is just the notion of how work is evolving going to generalize a lot here because we have limited time. But I would say that work historically for the past century has been defined by tightly specified, highly standardised tasks – manual, do the work, and everything will be successful. I believe that’s work that human beings should never have been doing. Machines can do that far better than humans.

 

And increasingly, machines are taking over that kind of work. And then the question is, then what should humans be doing? And my belief is that there’s an untapped opportunity for humans to be doing work in the form of creating new value, finding ways to respond to unexpected situations, challenges, creating more value for the stakeholders and being connected more effectively so they can come up with even more creative solutions over time. 

 

But that requires people to be emotionally excited about that. If they’re just driven by fear, there’s no manual to read anymore. It’s all about being creative, being curious, being imaginative, and connected with others.

 

And so I believe that’s one of the big challenges and opportunities that we’re facing in the business world.

 

Simone Cicero

Shruthi go ahead please, I know that you have a question.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Yeah, no, so I mean, I’m extremely interested in this topic. My, let’s say, main takeaway is that how fear operates will affect, let’s say, how people think in terms of maybe short term versus long term, collective versus individualistic and operating from an emotional, point of view. Right. 

 

So how does all of that, I guess, play out in terms of value creation, how an individual approaches value creation, do they look at it, I don’t know, individualistically, collectively, from a fear point of view, how do we adapt and use that fear to create something more meaningful or bigger than us.

 

John Hagel

Well, frankly, my view is we don’t try to use that fear. We try to help people move beyond the fear because fear, as you said, I think is creating a situation where people can’t even see the need for change, much less be willing and able to pursue it and connect with others more effectively to pursue it. So until and unless, and I should say too, and a lot of complexity here, but when I talk about fear, I’m specifically talking about fear of the future. When you look into the future, do you see it primarily as a threat or as an opportunity? And more and more people around the world are seeing the future as very threatening, very scary. I don’t wanna go there. And as you said, it tends to shrink the time horizon. It tends to isolate people. And I’ve become a strong believer.

 

I have done research looking at environments where there’s sustained extreme performance improvement. So what can we learn from those environments? And they’re very different, very diverse environments. But one of the interesting things is all the participants in those environments have a very specific form of passion. And I call it the passion of the explorer, because the challenge is everybody uses the word passion, but we all have different meanings to it.

 

The passion of the explorer based on the research I’ve done are people who are excited about having more and more impact in a specific domain. The domain varies depending on the person. It could be anything from gardening to nuclear physics, but they’re really committed and excited about having more and more impact. No matter how successful they are, they want to have more impact.

 

Those people are excited when confronted with unexpected challenges. They’re looking for those challenges because it’s an opportunity to learn more and have even more impact. And their first response when confronted with one of these challenges is, who else can I connect with? Who can help me get to a better answer faster? So they’re extremely well connected.

 

They’re building deep trust because they’re expressing vulnerability, saying, ‘I don’t know, I don’t have an answer here, I need help’. And they’re becoming much more effective in learning and achieving impact because they are connecting with others to achieve that. So I think this passion of the explorer and the challenge, and we can go into it, but I believe in the cultures, the organizational cultures we have today, passion is deeply suspect.

 

Why would you want a passionate person? They ask too many questions. They take too many risks. They deviate from the script. Why would you want a passionate person? You want a person who is just committed to doing what they’ve been told, reliably and efficiently. One of my challenges to leaders is what organization do you know that has measured the passion of your workers? I haven’t found a single organization that measures passion. 

 

And I’ve actually, again, I do a lot of research, but one of the research things I did was to measure in the US workforce across the entire United States, how many people have passion about their work, the passion of the explorer about their work. And at best, based on the research, was about 14%, one four percent of workers have that kind of passion about their work, 86 % do not. 

 

And it’s not surprising to me because again, we are living in organisational cultures where passion is suppressed. You don’t want passionate workers. So anyway, I’m sorry, this going on here.

 

Simone Cicero 

Did you have follow up points?

 

Shruthi Prakash

No, yeah, mean, yeah, just one point, I think in the previous podcast that we had, we had Jos from Burrztorg, the founder, and he was mentioning how, you know, everybody essentially has some form of an entrepreneurship in them. have, you know, family lives, they’re managing, they have kids they’re taking care of, they’re taking decisions on a day to day basis, you know, outside of work. how do we translate that into work? And therefore, is it a matter of whether people have passion or the fact that everybody does have it but somehow it’s sort of reshaped into what an organization wants, right? 

 

I think that’s something we could discuss here. How do you think of that?

 

John Hagel 

That’s an important point. One of the pushbacks I get from people when I talk about passion, passion of the explorer is, come on, John, some of us are capable of passion, but most of us just want to be told what to do and have the security of an income. And my response to that is, let’s go to a playground and let’s look at children five or six years old. Show me one that’s not really excited about exploring new things and coming together with others to explore.

 

We all had it as children. What happened? We went to school and we were taught, listen to the teacher, memorize what the teacher has to say, and then show that you’ve memorized it on the exams. And the result is, as I think you pointed out, I think we all have the passion within us, but it’s been suppressed. And the challenge is how do we create cultures and organizations that will motivate people to find their passion and pursue it.

 

Simone Cicero 

I was thinking to one thing. So you have been foundational to, for example, how we understand the platforms as learning engines, right? So the last 20 years, 15 years, we have seen businesses create these learning spaces. So I always make the example of how Airbnb, for example, has created this space where people can actually build their own livelihoods around hosting and creating a business out of a passion that maybe they have for hospitality and things like that. 

 

And of course, other companies have been, for example, in our analysis, we promote this idea of the platform organization where you as a company, you create these spaces where people can incubate their own businesses, their micro businesses and become leaders of these micro businesses and go and conquer market opportunities. 

 

Of course, as we move into a new, let’s say a new era, right? So society has changed a lot and AI and whatever is completely changing the perception of value, right? And you make the point that people need to be enabled to find this new value, essentially, right? So to create a space where they can find value, they can identify and understand new types of value. And I want to make a connection with your earlier, very early part of your career, where you were, if I understand well, from your LinkedIn, you have been doing strategy at Atari, right? Am I right? Yeah, for two years.

A long time ago, but again, I was thinking about video games and essentially at that time, the video game, the idea of a video game was really something new in the economy, right? So nobody was thinking about video games or, you know, as a business or as an object, as product, right? 

 

So my question is, how can you build an organization now that makes it possible for people to think beyond concepts of value which are the ones that everybody understands, right? So how can an organization be ready and open to people creating value beyond the usual, beyond the business as usual?

 

John Hagel 

Yeah, now it’s certainly challenging because I think it does require fundamental change and very difficult to happen, particularly for a large organisation. I’ve become a strong proponent of a specific form of strategy. I call it zoom out, zoom in. And it comes from my experience working with some of the most successful technology companies in Silicon Valley.

 

And their approach to strategy, it focuses on two time horizons. One time horizon is 10 to 20 years. And on that horizon, the question is, what is the really exciting, exponentially large opportunity we could be pursuing that would manifest over 10 to 20 years? Then that zoom in is six to 12 months.

 

And on that horizon, the questions are, what are the two or three initiatives, no more, two or three that we could pursue in the next six to 12 months that would have the greatest impact in accelerating our movement towards that longer-term destination? And I think this is a powerful approach to strategy on many levels, but I go back to emotions because if you focus on a really exciting exponential opportunity out in the future, you can start to help people overcome their fear. They start to get excited about that opportunity. 

 

But because they’re driven by fear, many of them are going to be very skeptical and dismissive and say, come on, that’s a fantasy 10 to 20 years from now. It’s never going to happen. We have to focus on today. But if you can show in the next six to 12 months tangible progress towards that longer term opportunity, now you start to overcome the skepticism of the people, “To say, my God, you were able to do that? How can I participate? This is exciting”. 

 

So it starts to help people move beyond the fear and find passion and excitement about opportunity. And then I’ll mention too, one other issue, which is this whole question of change. In my experience, if you try to do top-down, big bang change, change everything all at once and you know, move forward at that high failure rate in that kind of change. 

 

In my experience, the best way to drive change is what I call scaling the edge. It’s finding an edge to the existing business and organization that’s relatively modest today in terms of revenue and resources. 

 

But if you see that really exponential opportunity in the distant future, that edge has the potential to scale to the point where it becomes the new core of your business. Not just the diversification effort, but it will be the new core of your business and drive the change in that edge. 

 

Start to show how very different approaches to business can manifest really significant results and create much more value. And over time, pull more and more people and resources from the core out into that edge to the point where it becomes the new core. 

 

Simone Cicero 

Is this something that an organization, this kind of long term view, right? So this idea that you can picture something happening in 20 years, you can look at some weak signal that you want to amplify.

 

Is this something that in your experience organizations can still entertain in the times we are living now where everything happens in six months?

 

John Hagel

No, well, again, I think we’re in a vicious cycle, if you will, where leaders are more and more driven by fear. It shrinks their time horizon. 

 

One of the challenges I get a lot of response from leaders that they’re prisoners of their investors. Their investors want short-term quarterly performance. If they miss it by a point, they’re going to lose their jobs. It’s all about quarterly performance. And my response to that was, well, when was the last time you went to your investors and articulated a really inspiring, exciting, long-term opportunity?

 

They would say, well, come on, that’s impossible. The future is too uncertain. I can’t do that. It’s too risky. And my response then is, well, what do you expect investors to measure you on? All they have is quarterly performance. And the more they focus on it, the more you as leaders focus on it, and the more the investors focus on it and becomes this vicious cycle. And my one example, just to illustrate the untapped opportunity is, a friend of mine by the name of Jeff Bezos. 

 

And he, from the early days, said, if you’re looking for short-term performance, I’m not the company to invest in. I’m going after a really big opportunity out there. He did reasonably well. I think investors would be attracted if they can be shown a really inspiring opportunity and again in the zoom in show real tangible progress in the short term that demonstrates you’re actually going to achieve that opportunity.

 

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Yeah, no, I was just writing about, let’s say, similar to what you said as well, like, how do you not let the negative sort of snowball and become bigger than it needs to be? And especially when that comes from leadership and it sort of trickles down in the organization a lot further and yeah, it essentially snowballs. 

 

And also you have external environments which are like investors, like society, politics, so many other factors that are playing into this snowball essentially. So, how do you not let that seep in as much as it has already, and how do you change that narrative, I guess?

 

John Hagel 

Yeah, well, it’s not easy again. I don’t want to suggest this as something that can happen without much effort. It’s a significant challenge. And as you said, it’s not just within the organization, it’s outside the organization, all the forces that are shaping the fear that’s going on. 

 

And my belief is that the way to do that is to find within the organization, find one or two people who have this passion, have this excitement about an opportunity. And then ideally find, if not the CEO, at least somebody in the leadership group who is responsive to that passion and will provide support and protect those people from the forces that are gonna try to crush them. 

 

And again, then focus on these short-term small moves that can start to demonstrate real progress towards an opportunity. And over time, I think it helps to bring people, more people together. And I will say one of the things that in my research that I’ve done, one of the interesting elements of the passion of the explorer is people with this passion tend to come together into small groups. I call them impact groups.

 

but it’s typically anywhere between three to 15 people who share their passion about excitement about an opportunity. And on the one side, they’re supporting each other. If you fail not to worry, there’s more to come, but also challenging each other to say, how can we get even more impact? What do we need to do to have even more impact? 

 

And so it reinforces again, it’s now a virtuous cycle that you’re the more action you take, the more excited you become. And the group helps to build that excitement versus you’re just one isolated individual sitting somewhere and surrounded by people driven by fear.

 

Simone Cicero 

John, the impression I have is that you have been saying this for the last 15, 20 years, right? maybe paradoxically, maybe 20 years ago, there was no such pressure that we have today, right? Because of course, a change was happening, and big shifts were being put in motion. But now, if you look at what’s happening, the AI and this geopolitical pressures, everything is changing so fast, the pressure is so high, right? So paradoxically, 20 years ago, was maybe a bit more manageable, not the pressure was a bit more manageable, right? But at the same time, today, we really have the tools for to build an organization this way. 

 

So we have a much more easy coordination in organization. You can create much more easily spaces for people to be autonomous, use budgets, go and seek for customer validation and coordinate between them into these impact groups and creation spaces. But still, I don’t see that. I still paradoxically see companies that keep this ball rolling and a quarterly focus. 

 

So the question would be, why is that? why don’t, you know, besides the question of, you know, of course, you know, everybody, we have this culture of fear and we have these problems in, you know, the culture that the schools, as you said, has imparted to most of us. But so why is that we cannot really change organizations? And it seems like to me that the time available for organization is really shrinking now. 

 

Organizations really should get their stuff together and and be ready to embrace this new model, all decentralized leadership, autonomy, passion, creation, new forms of value. Maybe you have a couple of examples of companies that have cracked these that you want to share with us or maybe some of the companies you advise.

 

John Hagel 

Yeah, no, it’s interesting. I mean, there are not a lot of examples yet that I can point to of successful change. But, one interesting one is a clinical laboratory company. And they noticed that in their call centre operations, customers were becoming less and less happy and leaving the company at an accelerating rate.

 

They noticed that the call center operators were leaving their jobs at an accelerating rate because they were frustrated. And so the leader of the call centre operations brought all the people together from his department and said, first thing, I guarantee none of you is going to lose your jobs. You all have work. 

 

Second, your first assignment is to go work with the IT department to figure out how you can automate as many of the routine calls that you’re consuming all your time with. So you don’t have to spend your time on these routine calls. Then third is identify the calls and the problems that customers are having that you’ve never encountered before, and come together in small groups. He called them pods to try to come up with solutions, answers to those customer problems.

 

Long story short, in a short period of time customer satisfaction went way up, more and more customers stayed on, and call center operator passion increased. They realized that they were making a difference, that nobody else had been able to respond or answer these new questions that were being raised. They were providing the answers and they were excited. So I think it was an interesting example of starting that process focusing on a particular area of the business. 

 

I’ll just mention another company. It’s a little more complicated, but it’s a Chinese company, Li and Fung, that I’ve been working with, studying for decades. they’re a very old company. They’re over 100 years old. 

 

And in most of their history, they were basically a deal maker. They connected an apparel designer in the West with a manufacturing factory in China that could produce something. And they did the contract, got their commission and moved on. Two brothers took over the company back in the mid 1970s and discovered that the commissions on these deals were shrinking. And they said, well, we’ve got to do something about this. This is not sustainable.

 

And without knowing it, they intuitively did a zoom out, zoom in. They looked into the future of the apparel industry globally and said, it’s going to become more and more complicated, more and more rapidly changing. And the unmet need of the apparel designers is for what something they called the trusted advisor, somebody who could get to know them extremely well and provide help in connecting them with as many resources anywhere in the world that they needed at any point in time.

 

Long story short, they created one business unit. was called the Calvin Klein Business Unit. It had three people in it. Their assignment was to go work with the Calvin Klein organization get to know them extremely well. Over time, that business unit grew at a dramatic rate because they were addressing an unmet need on the part of the apparel designers. They created more and more business units targeted to specific apparel designers to get to know them, become trusted advisors to them.

 

And in a relatively short period of time, they scaled those edges to the point where that became their new business. And they significantly increased their profitability, significantly accelerated the growth of revenue of the business. So I think it’s again, an interesting example of starting with an edge and seeing a big opportunity out in the future that could be pursued.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

It’s interesting on the one side, let’s say the human aspect of it. I don’t know how, of course, we are driven by commercial, let’s say, success and money. I’m not saying we’re not, but there are other, let’s say, drivers or factors that impact how we work. 

 

And there’s also what you mentioned on let’s say depth of connection or whenever you put people together, they’re forming, let’s say smaller impact groups and so on. So I was just wondering like how that, networked ecosystem will sort of look like in the future, which is not purely commercially driven, but also driven by other forms of value.

 

Simone Cicero 

Yeah, I think also I want to resonate with this because one of the premise when you started this conversation, you said the objective, especially nowadays, is to discover new forms of value. So maybe what would be your advice in terms of where these new forms of value are coming? So what kind of new connections does an organization need to discover new forms of value? 

 

Because otherwise, it’s really probably difficult to discover new forms of value if you remain connected with the you know, the traditional context, like, you know just think in terms of we are the provider, you are the customer, and that’s it, right? So, you know, world that is changing so fast, there are many more roles, ecosystem roles that the company can play. 

 

What kind of patterns do you see in terms of discovering new forms of value?

 

John Hagel

Well, it’s, again, challenging on one level, but I think I talked about the big shift and the long-term trends that are reshaping our global economy. The paradox for me is – the one side, the big shift is creating mounting performance pressure on all of us. And that’s driving a key driver of the fear that we’re experiencing, the emotion of fear.

 

But at the same time, the paradox is that those same forces are creating exponentially expanding opportunity. We can create far more value with far less resources, far more quickly than would have been imaginable a few decades ago. 

 

But the challenge is if you’re driven by fear, you can’t even see those opportunities, much less pursue them. And I think it’s a key theme in the work you’re doing around the power of ecosystems that the notion of connecting in order to leverage the resources of others as the untapped opportunity. 

 

But I think that, again, I see a lot of opportunity out there, but one of the areas that I really believe is significant and going to lead to very, very large businesses over time is what I briefly mentioned, the trusted advisor business. 

 

And what I mean by that is, a company that focuses on getting to know a customer extremely well, and then connecting them with a broader and broader range of resources that are more relevant and valuable to them at any particular point in time. And particularly, again, if companies are being driven by fear, if the customers are being driven by fear, if you can help them by connecting them to more and more resources more quickly that are valuable to them you’re going to generate some pretty substantial revenue. And the challenge, well, I think it’s still early stage, but one of the areas that I’ve been looking at to see the emergence of this is at least in the United States, there’s a growing business around what are known as wellness advisors. And these are people who focus on getting to know you as a human being physically more more deeply and becoming more and more helpful in connecting you with a broader range of resources that can be helpful to you in terms of improving your wellness.

 

And generating some pretty substantial revenue and growing as a result. But I think that’s just one example of the potential in a world of more pressure. Customers are in need of help. And somebody who can leverage ecosystems and connect people in a more broader way, I think is really exciting and untapped potential.

 

Simone Cicero 

In your earlier work, think if I remember well, you have been advising and noting that the performance pressure at some point, it’s also a force that prevents water gardens. It’s a driver for open connection, interconnection between ecosystems. my question, maybe the last question for you today will be – What is the impact that you see in a technology like AI? Because AI is coming up and showing up not just as a productivity enhancement technology, but also a lot as a coordination technology. 

 

So for example, the role of the trusted advisor that you spoke about, I think, actually, it’s a role that an AI can play fairly well already. So the potential that this technology has to enhance and make connection and coordination available at very cheap price for everybody is an extremely strong force of interconnection between industries, ecosystems, contexts, and so on. So what do you anticipate as an effect of this technology? 

 

Is this some positive effects or? There are some caveats that you have in mind. So what is your position with regards to generative AI, especially as a coordination technology?

 

John Hagel 

No, I think it has significant potential as a coordination technology, but in my view, AI is most helpful if the customer expresses a need. Okay, I need this, can you help me find it? And searches around and looks for the need. For me, a trusted advisor is somebody who doesn’t just wait for a customer to ask for something but actually will challenge the customer and say, no, you don’t need that. This is what you should be looking for. This is what your real value is because I have expertise and understand what your needs are. And I’m willing to challenge you. And that builds trust because you’re not just sitting there waiting for the customer to ask for something. You’re doing whatever is required to help that customer become more and more successful and achieve more value, create more value.

 

And so I think that’s where AI is not, that’s where humans can be much more effective as in asking the right questions and challenging and much more connected in an emotional level than AI. And now AI can be a very effective tool once you identify what the need is to connect to the right resource or provider. 

 

But to me, it’s all first of all about the human beings connecting and being curious and creative about what are your real needs.

 

Simone Cicero 

Right, which reconnects to this idea of breaking out of this performance focus and fear and having, you know, asking questions with regards to what is that you value as a human, as an organization, as a team. So I think somehow, you know, as a collusion, I think that these technologies and the times we live in are now

 

making possible to really achieve what you have been talking about for 20 years now. So it’s really now, it’s not too late, but it’s really time for organizations to capture this challenge and engage with this idea of creating creation spaces, making possible for people to find new value, express passion. 

 

It’s really the age of where these things should materialize.

 

John Hagel 

Absolutely. To me, again, I’m an optimist in general and I’m very excited about the opportunities that are emerging. I think it’s something we should all be mobilizing to address.

 

Simone Cicero 

Right, let’s close on this optimistic note then.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Yeah, it’s extremely hopeful in which case, so I’m happy. John, yeah, towards the end of the podcast, we have a section called as the breadcrumbs where, you know, you could share maybe some inspirations that you take. This can be the, I don’t know, books, podcasts, videos, or even themes that you follow, maybe that inspire you and something that our listeners can also gain from.

 

John Hagel

No, how many hours do we have to focus on this? There’s so much, so much to me. No, no, as you can tell, I’m very passionate about the opportunities that are out there. And I think there’s a lot that we can learn as we move forward. 

 

I do a lot of writing. I do a blog that’s available on my website, johnhagle.com. So I would encourage you to follow that. And I would mention the Center for Growth is a new organization that I’m creating. We have a website, centerforgrowth.net, where we’ll be offering programs to help people in moving beyond fear. 

 

But as was mentioned at the introduction, I’ve written a lot of books, actually eight books. So I won’t go into all eight books, but certainly the most recent one is The Journey Beyond Fear, which focuses on this whole notion of the emotion of fear holding us back and the opportunity we have to cultivate other emotions that will help us to have more impact that’s meaningful.

 

And then in my earlier books, one book, The Only Sustainable Edge, which was written about 20 years ago now, really focused on this notion of the restructuring of the business world around three very different kinds of business types and the need for companies to really become much more focused on one of these business types.

 

So that I think can be very helpful. And then The Power of Pull is another book that I wrote. It’s really, again, a lot of my work has been challenging conventional views of how to succeed in business and life. And The Power of Pull was all about challenging the model that I believe is still very prevalent which is the key to success is to push the right resources into the right place at the right time to achieve what you want to achieve. So it’s all about pushing versus creating an environment where you can pull and attract whatever resources are required at any point in time, that ultimately, again, it goes back to the power of ecosystems and the untapped potential of ecosystems. 

 

And the biggest form of pull in my view is the pull of creating new knowledge, pulling new knowledge out that has never existed before. I think one challenge, we haven’t really talked about it, but when we talk about learning, most people, in my experience, most business people talk about learning in the form of sharing existing knowledge. We have training programs, we have workshops, that’s where people can learn. 

 

No, in a rapidly changing world, the most powerful and necessary form of learning is creating entirely new knowledge that never existed before. And that was one of the key elements or themes of the power of pull is how do we pull out new knowledge from around us versus just sharing existing knowledge. So anyway, I’ll stop there. A lot of breadcrumbs.

 

Simone Cicero 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but I think it’s very relevant today. And I think at Boundaryless, we kind of embrace this approach, right? It’s really create learning spaces together with customers, partners, and our friends on podcasts like you. I think that’s a very important point. Thank you so much, John. It was great to have you. I think you helped us remember what are the small things smartly made that can put the big things in motion. 

 

And yeah, yeah, really, I think it’s really impressive how much what you’re being saying for 20 years is so simple, clear, important. And nevertheless, companies won’t do that, right? It’s really crazy, you know, after 20 years that we’ve been, yeah, some companies, of course, have been doing it. And these are the most successful one. You mentioned Amazon.

 

But I think most of the companies we work with sometimes are so oblivious to how obvious it is now that you have to really create these learning spaces, these creation spaces, follow passion and overcome the performance pressure and the fear that is running markets and society for so long. 

 

So thank you so much, John. It was a pleasure to have you. I hope you also had some fun today with us.

 

John Hagel

Very much, I really appreciate the questions and the interest in the work you’ve been doing.

 

Simone Cicero

Thank you so much. That’s been foundational again. Shruthi, thank you so much for your time today.

 

Shruthi Prakash 

Thank you. Thanks, John. Thanks, Simone.

 

Simone Cicero 

And for our listeners, of course, you can head to boundaryless.io/resources/podcast, where you will find John’s interview with all the links to his work. And I think, you know, really, if you haven’t engaged with John’s work, it’s really time to do that. And until we speak again, of course, remember to think Boundaryless.