He joined us on the green room sofas along with Deloitte's human capital consulting leader, Kate Sweeney.

think the interesting challenge is that probably businesses used to think that there'd be these big surprise disruptive shocks once every five or ten years and they feel like they're happening every year right now and so to some extent knowing that you're going to get something unexpected shouldn't be a disruption to the business plan it should be just an anticipation of the business plan i think that's the challenge that before that you might turn up somewhere and explain in your budgeting, look, this unexpected shock happened.

And I think to some extent now we just got to bake it in.

We've got to expect that there's going to be something that knocks the train off the tracks.

Obviously, it makes doing business immensely complicated because you lay down your best laid plans, you've got all your good intentions, and then something completely unexpected happens.

But I think that's the current reality that just the cycle of news, the cycle of global politics is just making things a lot harder to predict.

So again I think that that forward view feels like a really difficult environment to be making decisions within and having any sort of certainty.

I'll add something to that actually because I hear you exactly and the really interesting thing I turned up about three or four events in the last few months.

How would you advise organizations to try and get over that and try and create that sense of connection for people if they are remote or if they're hybrid working?

Yeah, societally, it's not the end of the world if work is no longer our identity.

You know, if you've got something outside of work that keeps you fascinated, interested, excited, societally, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

And it's not necessarily a bad thing for work.

If people have got genuine hobbies, genuine interests outside of work, it can make them more creative, more productive in the workplace.

But I think the...

The critical lesson for organisations is that the ways that we used to build those bonds before have... been changed somewhat.

Would you say the tech firms were really as good as we thought they were?

And I think until we get there, we're not going to see the big step forward.

Yeah, there was something really interesting I saw.

Microsoft run this sort of annual report called the Work Trends Index.

And they've been doing it for the last three or four years.

Yes, last year they said, we're entering an era where intelligence on tap will rewire business.

And what they meant was, some of us use chat GPT already, or use something when you're planning a holiday, or when you're planning a meal, or when you go there and you ask a quick question, you get something back.

In fact, it's why so many of us are using AI in our real lives.

Have you seen where firms, businesses have got it right and how they work with AI? And what are the characteristics that stand out most of that sort of best practice?

I spoke to him earlier and asked him what he made of the government's plans.

It very much has the fingerprints, the feeling of something that was invented last week when they were looking for a policy announcement for an event.

Firstly, I wanna clarify right up front that I am strongly supportive of the objective.

W-what I am questioning, Gov, is whether this is as easy for someone to actually achieve.

So you're gonna try and prevent someone to take an image.

Now, firstly you need to know who owns the device.

Currently, there isn't a system that does that.

In principle, though, is it possible to work out the age of someone who is using a device?

Bruce Daisley is the former vice president of Twitter in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa from 2012 to 2020.

He's definitely a difficult adversary because not only does he have unlimited resources compared to every other person on the planet, but he's also given himself the biggest microphone by becoming the, the biggest voice on his social media network.

So he's, he's made it a habit of losing cases.

He's, he's lost the case that made him buy Twitter, when he was trying to get out of that.

He's lost a series of, of other challenges there.

So he's, he's found himself, I think, on the wrong side of these decisions more times than he might like.

[laughs]

He certainly doesn't look like a, a contented man, does he? You know, it's really interesting.