Leading Through Chaos With Futurist Thinking with Wendy White

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hi there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i am your host bill gilliland i am the principal at action coach business growth partners and one of the founders of the ashville business summit and that's a mouthful but it doesn't really matter because we're here to talk to my friend wendy white of continuum so wendy tell us a little bit about you and Continuum and what you're doing in our communities. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much for inviting me onto your podcast. I've been really looking forward to this. And so I'm Wendy White. I'm with Continuum Consulting Services.

1:14We're actually based in Colorado, although I am based in Asheville, North Carolina. We focus on leadership team, organizational development, so the people side of business. We started out, we've been in business for 30 years. So I'm one of the co-founders and CEO for Continuum. So we've been around a long time, have been consulting in all sectors, but especially in the biotech, biopharma, bioscience, a lot of startups have helped a lot of people start businesses. Primarily we consult in the U.S. and over in Europe is where our geography is. So yeah, I've been doing this a long time and really love it.

1:53Perfect. I love it. I love it. So So tell us, well, you've done this 30 years. So if you started over, what would you do differently? Well, what would I do differently? So I think one of the things is, you know, we've been in and out with having like my business partner, at least Murray Main and I kind of doing the business. And, you know, we did everything. We wore every single hat. And even when our business grew and grew and grew, we brought in other consultants to deliver, but we still did everything. If chairs had to be moved, we would move chairs. If we needed to do marketing, you know, we were trying to do financing.

2:35And I think if we did it differently, we would invest much earlier on in not only, you know, kind of solidifying an infrastructure that's replicatable, but hiring people that can come in and work on the business. So looking at somebody that's more like a contract CFO or somebody who can do marketing or sales operations so that we would be freed up to do the things that we do best, which is interacting with clients and solving kind of challenging problems and doing the consulting work and not trying to do everything. That would be the one thing we would definitely do differently. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

3:14That's a great learning. I know you've seen a lot of things in the leadership field over the last 30 years. So tell us some of the sort of things that you've learned and like what's changing now? Well, you know, we've learned how to adapt, you know. So I think, you know, when we got into business, we actually started out doing retreats incorporated. So we did adventure-based training and development. We were some of the first people that would take corporate groups out on ropes courses or learn about catamarans and kayaks and how we can use them to learn about change. So very much, you know, an adventure-based program.

3:53And so, like, when I talk about adapting, we did that, and it was a lot of fun, and we were very successful. But we realized that we weren't serving them as well as we could because we would have a lot of individual awarenesses. But then we would send them into organizations where they had the awareness, but they didn't have the skills. So then we adapted and we started doing a lot of skill building and leadership development and communication, decision making, that type of skill building. And then we're like, OK, well, they have the skills. They have the awareness. They're really bought in. But then they're sitting in organizations that don't support any of the things we're teaching.

4:33And so that's when we redesigned the business and we went from doing retreats, which we still do a lot of retreats, but then we shifted to do more organizational development, high-level consulting work. We went into doing change management, developing and designing cultures, employee engagement. So we started looking more at the systems and how can we get systems that support the organization and the people to do their very best work. And so that's an example how over the 30 years we just kept on adapting to what the client needs, but also really, really adapting to the changes. You know, if you think about it, in 30 years, we went through the downside, you know, the crisis, financial crisis back in, you know, way back.

5:22And we went through COVID and now like a lot of the changes that are happening now. And so, you know, we really learned how to be flexible and to sort of continually adjust and take advantage of the different changes so that we could stay strong and we can stay viable as a business over those decades. Yeah. So were your clients and potential clients coming to you with problems or were you out in front of it? Both. So, you know, we're always very much in helping people solve problems. So we're not like, oh, we're going to develop this and people will come. And like, you know, we have like a one size fits all.

6:02We do a lot of customized consulting to meet people's needs in order to make the changes. However, what we see happening now, and this is what I'm talking about being kind of ahead of the curve, is that we're leading and working in times that are unprecedented. You know, we've never been in this level of disruption and chaos that we are in now with what we're calling kind of novel unknowns. It's also being called, you might have heard the word, polycrisis. It's like things are changing so rapidly, and they're things we never could have conceived of. Like we never could have conceived that we would have a pandemic and then all of a sudden within like a week, everybody's home and we're doing everything online.

6:45You know, that's kind of crazy. Or like the disruptions that are happening with climate change. We never could have, you know, we never really are thinking about on a regular basis. I guess we could have conceived it. But, you know, that a hurricane would come right through Asheville and totally wipe everything out for a couple of months. You know, there's things that are happening that we haven't dealt with before. So one of the innovations and things that we're focused on now is leveraging technology and thinking and philosophies from futurists. Futurists have usually been just in academia, but there's things that we can learn about how can we predict into the future.

7:24So, for instance, how this might work on an everyday kind of thing is one of the things you do as a futurist is you're always looking for signals. So I think what's challenging today is leaders of companies need to not only deal with the everyday things that are right in front of them, which a lot of times there's a lot because of the level of change. It's really hard not to just look inside your business. But I think leaders need to lift up their head and they need to start scanning the horizon for not only what's happening now, but what are some of the things they see coming down the pike? and then how can they begin to adapt and prepare for that?

8:05What are the opportunities that could come with some of these rapid-fire changes and how does that impact your business? I'm happy to give you some examples. Yeah, no, I'd love it. My next question was going to be, how do you scan the horizon? Yeah. We'll share a couple. Well, let me, I'll give, I like to tell you. Yeah, do some case studies. I'll share a story and then I think you can kind of see. So for our business, a lot of our work was with pharma organizations. So back in probably late December, January, we were working with AstraZeneca, a team from there. And we were doing a lot of strategic planning and some team development.

8:48And we were getting ready to set our next meeting, which was going to be the end of February, early March. and one of the leaders looked at me and says, Wendy, I don't think we should schedule anything right yet. And I looked at her like, why not? Because we've been working for like a year or so together. We were always scheduling. And so she said, well, you know, this virus, we were kind of keeping an eye out. This is a little different. And so that was sort of the first time I heard about the virus. And so I started, I looked at that. So that's when I looked up and I said, this is pretty interesting.

9:19If I have a leader from a company like AstraZeneca, who is not planning in advance for March, I ought to take a look at that. So that's when I started looking and opening up my eyes and seeing what was happening in China. And I had enough of a global view to understand we're all connected, we're all interconnected. And so I watched as the virus started like escalating in China, and I knew it was going to jump. And then all of a sudden, And I started seeing cases in February in Europe. And so we quickly came together as an organization and we're like, it's going to come to the U.S. It's going to come quick.

10:02People are going to say it's only going to take a week or two. But looking at the signals, looking at the trends, not just what we're being told, what are we actually seeing happening? and then how do we prepare ourselves as a business for what we see is coming. So that's when you get into kind of scenario planning. So as soon as it started hitting the U.S., we had a pretty good idea we would head into shutdown at some point. And so we made a decision that we better, we started learning about how to do things online and we heard about Zoom as a technology even before my financial investor knew about it because I tried to invest in Zoom.

10:42That's another example is like when you see things coming down the pike, you can look at where areas you can invest that have a high likelihood of having a return because of what's happening. So we ended up deciding that we do a lot of training. We do coaching. We figured we have to figure out how do we do what we do and be great with it online. And so we started pretty quickly, like even during the first couple weeks of shutdown, redesigning our business to look at how do we translate everything we do to do it virtually. And because of that, we were ahead of the curve. We were able to meet our clients' needs and be sort of first on the scene.

11:25And COVID ended up being one of our most successful times after we kind of got going. because we saw it happening and we started looking at what are the opportunities. That's an example. We've got to lift up and look at what's going on and then what are the opportunities with some of the disruptions that are happening in the world today. Yeah, I love that. We were pretty lucky in our business because we were already using Zoom. Good for you. Yeah, we were way ahead. We were already using it in scenarios. is what I think, the reason we were lucky is because what it did was, you know, some of our clients didn't like it.

12:06And, yeah, but everybody had to get used to it. So pretty fast if they were going to continue to be in business or to learn or whatever. And so we were also lucky in that most of our clients were considered essential. essential. And so they could still work. But yeah, we were just lucky. I mean, that's all I got to say in that realm. In the global financial crisis earlier in the century, we were not lucky. There were plenty of people that got hit in that. So yeah, it's the way it goes. So what do you think some of the common misconceptions are around running a business? Oh, well, that I won't say that anyone can do it, but there's lots of people that want to run a business.

13:07And there's lots of really talented people out there, probably like in consulting, more talented than I am. But I think that what people don't get is that you have to be tolerant of risk. So if you're somebody that likes to have stability, and likes to know where their paycheck's going to be and wants consistency, and you're not comfortable with risk, not comfortable with knowing like when your paycheck's going to come, that, you know, that that's running a business is not for you. You know, so I think that's one of the misconceptions is, is, is that wow, you know, because a lot of people see other people in business, and they're successful in they're like, I want that.

13:50And so they don't always realize that, yes, there might be somebody who's at the peak, but they were not there with them through all the ebbs and the flows and the valleys and the successes along the way. And to realize that there's a lot to it. And it's the best thing that I've ever done. You know, I would never do anything differently. It's so playful and creative and I love being able to think of things and making it happen. Yeah. Well, I've always said that we're different. People who run businesses are different, but yeah, we just think differently, look at the world differently, the whole thing.

14:27So I think it's good. So, I mean, you said you've had ebbs and flows, but in general, the trend's been up. What do you attribute your growth to? Well, I think one thing is always being flexible, diversifying. So, you know, it seemed like because we were in so many different sectors, so we would do a lot of consulting in public health, but then we would also do some with government and international NGOs as well as big business. So we work in like the Fortune 100 companies as well. And so it seems like whenever one kind of, you know, sector goes down, there's another one that's doing well. So having, you know, some flexibility and diversification, I think is really an important way to be able to keep your company sustainable and to be able to kind of deal with the ebbs and flows.

15:24Like, you know, right now, we, well, last year was a tough year, because there was a lot of changes in the geopolitical scene, and a lot of policies that came down that hurt a lot of the types of sectors that we tended to serve. You know, we did a lot like in environment with EPA and, you know, healthcare and all that. And so, you know, so it's taken us a while. I don't think we saw that so many of our sectors would be impacted in such a quick time. And so, you know, we've been regrouping a lot lately. And now we're back on the upward trend. But there was definitely a contraction. And now we're starting to grow again.

16:09Yeah. So how do you balance the sort of demands of business and personal life? I think that balance is sort of a, it's one of those things we strive for. I don't think it's ever quite a reality. So what I think it's more of an integration, I think even if you have a regular job right now, it's not so segmented like it used to be, like nine to five, go home, do something different. You know, that's kind of a thing of the past. It's more, how do you bring things in that you love at the same time you're working? And so I think as an entrepreneur, I love what I do. It's very playful. So sometimes it doesn't even feel like work.

16:57And I think as an entrepreneur, you can develop a lot, you know, we develop a lot of friends. So we really have good relationships with the people that we are. So that feeds a lot of that need. And then I make sure that I keep something sacred. You know, I make sure that I create time for the things that are most important to me. Like, you know, my relationships, that I make sure that I'm spending time with them. I'm spending time with my kids, that I'm doing my yoga and my bike riding and kayaking and the exercising that I love to do. that I'm doing things that feed me because the more that I, so to me, the balance is that doing things that feed yourself, give you energy so you can continue to do the work.

17:42If it gets to be too much drudgery and it's not fun, I'm not going to do it. Yeah. No, I really like that. That's a great, I love the word you used was integration. so yeah that was that's i've never i've never heard it put that way so so that's that's that's fantastic well um let me be epic is one of my taglines and it's an acronym so i want to get this is a sort of a quick fire round like maybe a word or two about each of the of the letters so the b i kind of throw that together i say that's bring energy so put so bring energy so what are your thoughts around that, bringing energy? So everybody on my team is a high energy, passion person.

18:31And so we've never had a hard time with bringing energy. Our challenge is keeping the energy tempered. I love that. We can tend to have a lot of passion on our team. And so I think that, you know, part of the energy is one is, I think one is personal. It's about taking care of yourself. The stronger you are, the healthier you are, the better you eat, the more you exercise, you know, have a deep spiritual practice, which is really important. That's all about how I keep up my personal energy. And then I think the other part is doing things I love and that I'm passionate about and doing things both at work as well as outside of work that help to give me energy, which then helps me to be better with the clients I serve and with the people I lead.

19:22Yeah, I love that. So the E in EPIC is education. Yeah, keep on learning. Yeah. So I, you know, it's like you think you know things, you know, I've gotten to the point, the more I learn, the more I realize I know nothing. I actually think that's a pretty good point to be at, Because, you know, regardless of your age and how much experience you have, it's about staying open and staying curious and always realizing that there's different ways of doing things than you've done before. And I think that's what keeps things fresh, even after 30 years, is being able to constantly educate yourself, learn.

20:06Yeah, no, I love it. Well, the P stands for planning. So what are your thoughts about planning? Yeah. Yeah. So I think, well, make sure you always take time with your team. Take time out probably a couple of times a year to look at not only what are you doing, but what is your vision? Again, that's part of opening up, scanning the horizon. And what are the opportunities that you haven't even seen before? And how can you bring that into your business and plan? So it's about having a strategy. It's about working your plan. But I think nowadays what's different, like it used to be we would do 30-year strategic plans, 10-year strategic plans.

20:49Now we do three-month strategic plans because things are changing so rapidly that I think planning is a little bit more of an ongoing process than it used to be because, you know, you have to have a direction, but you have to keep on tweaking that direction as you move forward based on the environment and what's going on in the world. Yeah, I've always found that three-month, 90-day kind of goal or plan to be critical all the time. So you could chunking down a longer-term plan into 90-day increments, I think, works really well. So that makes a lot of sense. All right. I is inspiration. Inspiration.

21:34So I think inspiration comes from, it ties in with that, you know, education. But it's really, it's listening to people. It's talking to people. I get inspiration from my clients. I love looking at where are there novel things that are happening that stretch my mind. I get inspiration by not just reading and studying the things in my field. but a lot of times inspiration comes when I'm picking up something totally new to learn it. So it might be like, you know, I'm kind of interested in quantum physics. You're like, that's kind of interesting to me. Or, you know, I'm interested in learning more about consciousness and what does that mean?

22:16You know, what are things around spirituality, bike riding and gardening. So inspiration can come in a lot of ways. I think if we become all business and that's your only focus, that it can become quite stale and it's really hard to be inspired when you're doing the same thing and you're just totally goal-driven. I always like to make sure there's something outside of my sphere of career that's juicing me up and stretching my mind. Yeah. I've always found that when I was working on something outside that really sort of had nothing to do, for example, like I got a pilot's license one time. I mean, working on that helped me with my businesses.

23:07So it was, you know, it was so interesting to me that, you know, achieving something outside of the normal business was good. So I love that. You know, I love what you just said. Yeah. One of the things that I've coined is we really, really need geographical resets. So to intentionally take ourselves out of our current environment and put yourself someplace totally different. And it could be a day where maybe you go to a town you'd never been to before and just explore. It could be, you know, I'm a big fan of traveling over to other countries, you know, did a sailing trip around Greece, the islands with some of my girlfriends on a little charter boat.

23:50This past weekend, I went up to Boone to the Art of Living Center, and I took a writing workshop with Jedediah Jenkins. He's a New York Times bestseller. And to me, that was a geographical reset. I left everything behind. We turned off our cell phones. We kind of got immersed into a very different environment. I ate vegan food all weekend, which I kind of like my meat. So vegan food was a little bit different for me. And that helps to shake things up a little bit and shift your perspective. And so I think those are also really, really important to keep yourself vital and alive so that you can do your work even better.

24:34Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I found the same thing. I love it. So the last letter is C, which stands for commitment. Well, you know, if you're not committed, you're not going to be able to do anything. And it's about being committed, not just when it's easy, but it's having the faith and having confidence in yourself that, you know, you're following. I'm a big, firm believer in following my intuition. So I think we have our head brain, we have our heart, and we have our gut. And so I'll often use my gut and my heart to kind of set my direction, and then my mind sort of gives me the analytics and the details of how to make that happen.

25:18And then being committed to it, following where that's leading, and knowing that you can do it even if you haven't done it before. So it's or knowing that you can bring in other people or find people you can learn from that will support you in being able to get past any hurdles. But it's keeping that commitment to your vision and your goal and driving it forward and having fun along the way. Commitment to fun is essential. Playfulness is essential, I think, to success. So what's the next big thing for Wendy and Continuum? continuum? Well, a couple things. We developed a process called Crossroads Collaboratories, and I'm pretty excited about this.

26:07So we're actually going back to our roots of retreats and what we're calling transformational gatherings. So we're doing a lot more retreats because we feel that, you know, right now, especially because of Zoom and all the technology and how AI is sort of taking over more and more of our work or they're in partnership. I actually love artificial intelligence. I do too. So this is not a ding about artificial intelligence. I think there's a lot that's going to happen that can be really positive. However, I think that it's made us very disconnected as human beings. And if you look at the surge in general, one of our leading epidemics right now is loneliness.

26:49And so I believe that our disconnection from each other is a big problem. And so that's why we're actually going back to our roots and doing more things where we bring people together live to have conversations, to be able to connect on a human basis so we can more effectively do work together. But the Crossroads collaboratories are taking it to another level. We believe there's so many challenges out in the world today, whether we're looking at reinventing healthcare, reinventing the education system, dealing with the climate crisis. There's really gnarly issues that we're dealing with as a society right now.

27:33And so Crossroads Collaboratories are a gathering kind of methodology we developed where we bring multi-sectors together. So we did one in Asheville last summer. It was on our earth shot moment. And we brought changemakers, we brought climate scientists, youth, and then we brought representatives from the Sequoia Nation and the Cherokee Nations together. And what we did is it was a two-day process where we really looked at how do we talk about climate change in a way that was not just doom and gloom and disaster, but that we could actually create a vision on how we can work together to begin to create solutions that are going to better our society and our communities and our environment.

28:20and it was so powerful. And we had actually formed different teams that were going to go out to lead efforts. One of them was going to be to reimagine Asheville as a climate city and how do we create Asheville with circular economies and pull all these different people that do great work together in Asheville to unify around a common vision around the environment. And thinking that, of course, Asheville was one of the best places to be from an environmental perspective, And then like six weeks after our collaboratory, the hurricane hit. And that kind of like dashed a lot of the efforts that we started.