Thinking creatively, flexibly and collaboratively: Q&A with Tony Golsby-Smith
Tony Golsby-Smith is passionate about encouraging people from all walks of life to think creatively, flexibly and collaboratively. He started his career as a school teacher and now leads strategic innovation firm, Second Road, working with some of Australia's biggest companies. This week, he speaks to Industry Moves about the importance of engaging both sides of the brain, why we shouldn't fear the automation of the human workforce and how the 'Experience Economy' is a game-changer.
You're speaking at The Banking and Finance Oath's conference early next month about 'Adapting to the work of the future.' What would you say are the major challenges facing the finance sector when it comes to successfully adapting for the future?
In Australia the finance sector is a fairly settled and protected industry; they've been there for a long while, they make a great deal of money and some people would argue that they're able to make all of that money because they have a lot of government and legislative help. They haven't got a history of competition. When you're in that mindset, you're less able to imagine catastrophe.
That's a problem for them because of the digital revolution. A good way to think of the digital revolution is that it's democratising scale. In other words, if you want to start a business you need a fair capital base and a large barrier to entry, but what we're seeing now is that two guys in a garage, with almost no capital, can start a business. They can cherry pick the attractive parts of another business and take it away from them. Banks already know that, they're worried about it and they're trying to do their best to be proactive but I think that the threat, from their point of view, is that digital players will come in more and more and steal their lunch.
Other than technological advancements, what are the major changes that you've noticed in the ways that organisations have embraced innovation in the workplace since you launched Second Road in 2002?
The major difference is that more and more we are moving towards an experienced economy. I think technology, in the old days, helped companies to be more efficient and now the big change is that the digital world brings about a whole new range of customer expectations and experiences around information and access to services. That's created what people call the 'Experience Economy,' where the name of the game is being able to service more and more of your customer's experience. I think the banks have nobly tried to keep up with that but they're doing it too slowly and I don't think it's radical enough.
What organisations tend to do is digitise their present business model; instead of getting my bank statement in the mail, I'll receive it online. That's good, but the real breakthrough for innovation and disruption is when they take a completely different part of my experience and offer services for it that I didn't know existed. When that starts to happen, that's when you get very different business models arising, like Uber. The 'Uber' of banking is probably what I'd worry about if I was a bank.
In the past you have discussed the idea of fusing art and science - left brain and right brain - in order to create 'a bridge' that allows us to fully comprehend data. How can you see this being a useful skill for those in the finance industry?
I think some of the people in the finance industry are smart enough to know that they need to hire more broadly, with more diversity. There are some senior level executives that come from a liberal arts background which is a good thing.
If you look at economies and societies that are robust and successful, they create a balance of education, employment and senior leadership between people who know technology, people who know the business, people who are brilliant at quantitative reasoning and logic; but those people won't actually disrupt the industry. You need people who think outside the box, who challenge, who are used to mounting arguments but can also get their heads around pretty complicated subject matters. By and large, you're not going to find them coming out of your normal business, commerce, engineering degrees, they don't create those kind of people.
I sold my company to Accenture last year, and of their new hires in Australia every year, 2 or 3% have liberal arts degrees. However, Accenture in Europe hire around 40% liberal arts graduates. In those parts of the world, they've just got it right. One example that I read recently was a female that has just become the Head of a major entertainment company in Europe and her degree was in philosophy. She said that philosophy is all about making models, constructing arguments over large subject matters and thinking in an agile manner and that's exactly what she's doing all the time in her role.
Do you see benefits for the human workforce as we see the augmentation of robotics and artificial intelligence?
This is the big question. I think it's a big ethical and economic question. Will automation destroy more jobs than it will create? I can tell you that Accenture's position on this is that it won't. All of their studies show that automation, in whatever form, will create extra jobs to the tune of an extra 20%. So it will destroy 100 jobs and create 120, that's what their research is telling them. In India, where Accenture employs around 150,000 people, they created an invitation for people to destroy their jobs by automating them but their promise was that they'd find a better job for them and a very large number of them did that and they got a better job.
That's quite encouraging, however, I still feel unsettled about it. I think it's a big ethical issue because if nothing else, the new jobs won't be in the same regions and they won't be the same people. There are going to be winners and losers and if you look at the macro-economic picture, the profile of jobs and remuneration is changing.
I think technology should be coupled with human centred design and strategic thinking, so it isn't just brute technology but technology that allows people be free to do smarter, better and more interesting work. That's the hope.
"The real breakthrough for innovation and disruption is when they take a completely different part of my experience and offer services for it that I didn't know existed."
What lead you to found Second Road and what fascinates you about this line of work?
I was a school teacher many years ago and I taught English Literature, so I've always been interested in how people think and helping them to think more creatively and clearly. I created a tool kit to help people across all subject matters and that was how I began my business. The aim of my business is to help people in organisations to think more creatively, flexibly and collaboratively. That's what lies at the heart of Second Road. The work that we do is very satisfying. It's very encouraging to help people think more effectively. That's always been my passion.
Who has had the biggest influence on your life/career so far?
Over my career, which spans 30 years in business, there would be 4-6 stand out clients, that ran big organisations, who were courageous, visionary leaders that I had the pleasure of working with and becoming friends with. Those people created a space for me to play right at the top of organisations. One of those clients has unfortunately since died and his daughter, who is a now a very senior executive, recently got in touch with me because she remembered clearly, as a young person, that her father would talk about the work that he was doing and about me, so that was very powerful. I dedicated my PhD to her father.
On the academic side, I'd say that it would be my friendship with Richard Buchanan, who was the head of design at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburg, where I was a visiting professor in 1995. Richard is the foremost intellectual thought leader of design thinking. He's had a big influence on me.
What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received?
Long ago, when I first stepped out of teaching and into the world of consulting, one of the very first people that I spoke with was Nick Stump, who at the time was the managing director at Rio Tinto. I was young and I had no training in management or consulting and he became one of my early clients. He told me something that I'll never forget: "Always remember this Tony, you excite us because you're different. Keep exciting us and keep being different."
Toby Golsby-Smith is speaking at The Banking and Finance Oath conference 'Banking & Finance Ethics 2017' on the 8th of June at Sydney's Swissotel Sydney. The conference is ABA endorsed and early bird prices apply to members - use the code ABABFE. Click through for more details.
