So Joel, over to you.

Yeah, well, I'm going to try to bridge the obvious gap in what people are going to be thinking.

You know, what has this got to do with leadership and with us today? But I have been listening to a lot of podcasts recently, and pretty much in every single one, something comes up, something that some famous...

emperor, leader, king, whatever has done, where I've thought, wow, I've seen that.

I've seen that behaviour in the office.

So recognising we don't have a lot of time to talk about all historical implications, the thing that's kind of pushing me behind this is, if we've already seen this happen before, this kind of behaviour, why would we allow it? Now, why would we kind of let it continue? And so I'm thinking we should be in the office.

We should be thinking more about what's happened in the past.

And always leaving the last question open, like... you know is there is there is there anything else that we could have done or you know anything else that we could have sort of changed to improve what we do um because you you can get so much out of that and also the dynamics change they're leaving so they're much more likely to be open and honest with you um because you can't chop their head off you know as the emperor

And that's often, I think, where it falls apart.

Yeah.

There's so many things, though, from what you've just said there, which I think if you take a step back, you go, really? You know, like.

got the most senior leaders in the business, the most capable The people that are supposed to be there are able to stand back and be strategic, and yet they can't get off their laptop to listen to someone.

And we know this is the case.

We're spending a lot of money for prescribed materials, and yet we can't tell people what the point of the training is or what the deliverables are.

Really? How half-assed is that? That if you're going to give people this prescribed off-the-shelf material, have materials ready that go, these are the bullets that you need to take away.

I

And it... whilst it may be your boss, it could also be a colleague, and I think th- there's a real difference between leadership and management in this context for me.

Yeah, they're kind of roles, aren't they, and, and their responsibilities.

If you're a manager and you're, you know, managing, directing a team, giving them action, supporting them, that's... that, that works when it's quite specific and when, when that's your role to support those people, help them, and, and keep maybe, you know, the team going in the right direction and, and to achieve the objectives.

I think where that kind of then falls down, and I'm sure we've all experienced this, is where the person who is the boss basically wants to be seen to be in charge, wants to have power, and that's where it...

this thing of, you know, the need-to-know basis comes in, or only sharing information with a core part of your, your team, you know, that core group that are the, the sort of fulcrum around which they work because they then have power over the rest of the team and the control.

And I d- I do think that's anachronistic.

I think that's potentially something of the past.

So you've got transparency, authenticity, and but I think vulnerability is probably a really big one as well.

not just your duolingo it's

not just my duolingo you know maintaining my very important streak it's also things like maps right if you're trying to find somewhere now from a personal perspective if you're looking to travel you're looking for an activity to do that day the map is really important you need to have that connectivity equally Let's switch that to someone who uses their car for their job.

You know, let's look at the Environment Agency.

People going out to sites to review the conditions and look at environmental problems that may have been reported.

They'll need that data.

They'll need that connectivity to be able to do their jobs.

And of course, as you say, local farmers that may be in remote areas.

It was all fine, but it just suddenly became like really, really kind of like clear how dependent that expectation in both directions now is on connecting to it.

It's like, if you could tame the beast, if you could give the boundaries so it was more, to use the lingo, than probabilistic, right? Would you delegate to an agentic AI to go and do a job? And would you, you know, how involved would you be in supervising it? Just, you know, if we've ironed

out all the wrinkles, So I think I'm already doing that to some extent.

And I think this kind of brings us back to the leadership point as well.

But one of the activities that I've been doing while looking at Claude is having interactions with Claude as an option to brainstorm.

And I think that, in a sense, is giving it the task.

It's now become my partner in discussions.

And I think that's where actually this is, I'm seeing a really powerful way of using it because it doesn't matter if it gets it wrong to some extent, or it doesn't matter if it goes off on a tangent because I can draw it back and take from it what I want, even responding to it and say, no, no, let's just get back on topic and work on this.

And if that's not working 100%, why would you, you know, in your world, Chris, why would you hand your entire finance operation over to an AI? I know that's not what you're saying, but I just don't think we're quite there yet.

What do you think?

Well, it's similar to Mike in one sense.

This validation of your ideas is really important, especially when you're sharing them with other people and you're working with people.

And that's something I have acutely or become acutely aware of as a dad as well.

I share my ideas and thoughts, not just at work, but with my kids.

And I'm thinking I picked this up off the Internet.

You know, I read this in a blog or I read this off Instagram or as podcasts have become more part of my life.

I always saw management as a chance for me to express myself publicly.

Why do you want to talk about this beautiful subject?

I want to talk about this because it's actually such a broad subject.

And I think when we talk about it and when we talk about consultancy, what we tend to think about are the big four.

And I have a lot of interactions with various consultancies, various tasks they have, projects.

And one of the things that hit me was, one day while I was thinking about this, was actually we talk about the big four, but it's a bit like the big six in the premiership, in the English football premiership, right? That some people have their view on what the big six is and other people would suggest that other clubs are actually part of the big six.

And some of the clubs may drop out of the big six.

Depending on who or where you are, depending on where you were, the big four consultancies could actually vary.

it's