How CMOs can win in the never normal with best-selling author and technologist Peter Hinssen

0:04Hello, everyone. Welcome to Question Everything, a podcast all about learning from the successes and the failures of those who dared to, well, question everything. This podcast is part interview, part therapy, and part price is right. We have our own game board stacked with questions that'll make even the most successful CMOs sweat. I'm your host, Ashley Walter, CMO and partner at curiosity. On today's episode, I sit down with Peter Hinson, global keynote speaker and best selling author of The Uncertainty Principle, to give CMOs a little pep talk about the future of AI. Between tips for tackling the day after tomorrow and getting your team excited instead of scared about the future, you'll learn why 10 % of your time should be spent experimenting, not with the shit of yesterday, how agencies can be extra valuable to brands in the post-AI boom, and why a positive outlook on uncertainty is the secret to outperforming your competitors.

1:07If this convo doesn't get you excited about the future of AI, nothing will. Let's get started.

1:20Peter Henson is a globally recognized keynote speaker, best-selling author, serial entrepreneur, and expert in innovation, leadership, and technology. As a self-described pathological optimist, Henson champions the idea that organizations must embrace the day after tomorrow, a future shaped by uncertainty and exponential change. He's delivered high-impact keynote presentations around the world for companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. With six books under his belt, including The Uncertainty Principle, Out Now, Peter uses a splash of wit to challenge leaders to think about transformation and resilience in the AI never normal era.

2:05Peter, welcome to Question Everything.

2:08Peter Hinssen:Well, very, very happy to be here, and thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure, absolutely. Awesome. I mean, we met at ANA just recently. You were the keynote for Masters of Marketing, and I was sitting in my little seat just taking notes as fast as my fingers could type. I was blown away by your presentation. The way I described it back here at the office, I said, it was the best optimistic view of AI I have ever heard. I learned more in that 45 minutes or so than I had in all of the articles I had read up until this point. So thank you for that. No, no, thank you for that. That's really kind.

2:48Peter Hinssen:And I mean, I have a special style of doing keynotes. It's rapid fire. There's a lot of information. I think what I love is that people in the audience take out their phone and then I'm just too late. That's exactly what I'm going for. That was me. I have so many photos in my camera roll of you. And so I have to ask, how many slides were actually in that presentation? So it's a good question. So I have an alarming rate now of 100 visuals per 10 minutes. So in a 45 minute presentation, I will go through 450 slides. And I think I remember one of my first trainings I ever had a long time ago was a PowerPoint training.

3:31Peter Hinssen:And I remember that the instructor said, it's very simple. One slide, three minutes. That doesn't work anymore. So yeah, it's 450 slides in 45 minutes. That's incredible. I was going to guess about 220. So we also, my team and I were talking about how you were also a master of the clicker. Like you have just claimed that. You could do a whole presentation on that, I think. I want the right image with the right words to really, the timing has to be perfect. So I'm pretty particular about the tools that I use. And I think we live in a society now where we're all visual animals. But I think in the TikTok generation, I think we're used to that rich dynamics of visuals and images.

4:16Peter Hinssen:And I want it to be just right. So I think the timing is crucial. It is. And the impact is incredible. Okay, so you just launched a new book. You just wrote a book. It's out now. You previewed a little bit of it with us. Tell the listeners a little bit about what you just wrote. No, I'm happy. I mean, the book is called The Uncertainty Principle. It's a reference to the world of quantum physics, where about 100 years ago, the whole world of physics all of a sudden changed, where we had the classic physics that gave us the Industrial Revolution. Amazing. But if you would go really quickly or very, very small, it just didn't work anymore.

4:55Peter Hinssen:And I think I've used that as a metaphor to say we now live in a world that changes so quickly. We see such velocity in every single day. I mean, we turn on our phone in the morning, we think, really, what just happened? And we probably need a different style of thinking about leadership and strategy in this crazy world. I call it the never normal, a world of constant change and volatility. And the basic idea of the uncertainty principle is three things. We need to be better at anticipating. We got to pick up the signals. We need to be much faster at adapting and being agile to turn that into execution.

5:33Peter Hinssen:And we're not going to get everything right. We need the resilience to actually figure out what to do in case we make a mistake. But that idea of anticipation, that adaptability and the resilience is the very heart of the idea of the uncertainty principle. Oh, brilliant. Okay, well, we will link to the book in the show notes as well. And we're going to dig into that today and more. So as you know, this podcast, we have a game board stacked with 12 spicy questions. Really cool. Really cool. I'm excited. We're going to put your improv skills to the test here a little bit. You don't know what's behind any of these numbers.

6:08And the power is all in your hands, my friend. So where do you want to go first? Let's take the last one, number 12. Okay, number 12. there has to be some like psychology behind the numbers that we pick too. Okay, well, I said this in my opening, but you describe yourself as a pathological optimist. How has this impacted your career? And how can others adopt a similar mindset?

6:31Peter Hinssen:So great question. And I think I'm, I'm, my training is I'm an engineer. So I'm a technologist by training. I did startups when I was younger. I love that world. And I think the interesting thing about having an engineering background is you kind of just fall into a sea of innovation and excitement about technology. I mean, I don't think you can survive as an engineer if you don't feel that excitement. And then it was really funny when I started with the startups and then later the strategy work that not always that excitement came across. I mean, I would do a presentation to a board on new ideas and I'd be super excited.

7:14Peter Hinssen:And then I could see they were staring back at me and they had no idea why I was so excited. And I think this is something that has served me well. I really believe in the power of positive thinking, but it's also been confrontational sometimes when I'm not getting that message across or I can't get people excited. So I think a big part of what I do now is to try and maintain that positive narrative. That is super important for me. I think in the world of technology and innovation, certainly AI, there's a lot of doom stories. There's a lot of negativity. And I'm really glad you picked up on that in the intro as well, that you said, wow, this is a positive story about what this could actually mean.

7:58Peter Hinssen:And I think for me, that is something which has become almost my... You know, my leitmotif, almost my the way I look at the world, I want to understand how we can use this to build a better world, to, you know, to advance as society, as humans, as individuals, as leaders, as organizations. And that enthusiasm is something that I try to get across in many of my messages. And it's not that I'm naive, that I don't know that there are darker edges to this, but I'm really, really, really careful about building a positive narrative because I think we need that more than ever in this world of the never normal.

8:37I couldn't agree more. I feel like, especially in the world of AI, there's so much fear and anxiety. And I think it's preventing some people from even starting or dipping their toe in it and being curious about it. And so I know for me, at least, I really appreciated your perspective. And you shared on both sides of the coin some of those darker edges, but then also some of the amazing advances that have happened because of AI. The Lego example that you gave was so interesting to me. I have three kids. and the technology that now you can just take a picture of your mess of Legos and it will develop creative projects that you can do.

9:17Peter Hinssen:Yeah, exactly. And I think I've been really influenced by a number of people. And one of the people that really had a great influence on me was Hans Rosling. And he was a famous, you know, statistician sociologist. And he wrote that book factfulness. And he was actually, you know, always giving examples of how over the last 200 years, technology has made our lives so much better, how innovation has really improved, you know, what we have as society at large. And he passed away, unfortunately, a couple of years ago, I had the chance to work with him on a few occasions. But that optimism, and that fundamental belief that technology could make our lives better, that is deeply rooted in my beliefs.

10:02Do you believe that advertising agencies will exist in five years? I've even heard that. There will be no more ad agencies in five years.

10:11Peter Hinssen:I don't think so. I think this idea of getting your message across about building a story and engaging people with that, I think that is as all this time. And I think that's going to pass the test of time. I'm not sure if the advertising agency of today will be the same, if we're going to have the same skills or the same competencies, the same format or the same dynamics, probably not. I mean, every industry is changing and advertising is no different, but the fundamental nature of what advertising does, building a story and engaging people, I think that is something that is here to stay. Absolutely.

10:51Agreed. All right. Let's go back to the game board. Cool. What about number seven? Okay. Number seven. Why should CMOs carve out 10 % of their week to focus on the day after tomorrow?

11:07Peter Hinssen:That's a nice question. So I have this model, which I call the day after tomorrow, which is a very simple idea. I wrote a book on that a couple of years ago called the day after tomorrow. And it's very simple. How much time you spend on today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. And today is just the hectic of everyone's lives. It's the hundreds of emails that you all get. And it's not just the emails. It's the text messages, the WhatsApps. It's the Slack channels. It's the Zoom calls at the TM. And I always make the joke, you know, how many people, you know, drive to work on Monday morning naively thinking today is going to be a productive day.

11:48Peter Hinssen:And then you get that email at 9.07 and you think, well, there goes my day. And that's a problem. But the biggest problem I often find is tomorrow. Because many people, many organizations suffer from tomorrow thinking. It's where they extrapolate their comfort zone and hope that next year is about the same. And I always make a joke. You know, budgets is a great example of that. Budgets is a yearly sarcastic corporate ritual where people put fake news in Excel that's consolidate in something which rarely works now these days. And that's why I urge people to spend 10 % of their time on what I call the day after tomorrow.

12:25Peter Hinssen:And these are the new ideas. These are the innovations, things that are absolute game changers. And what I love about that is it's really stupid, right? 10%. The reality is most people don't do that. I always say it's not 70, 2010, it's 93, seven and zero because 93 % of our time goes up in these day-to-day hectics. We spend 7 % of our time, you know, making up budgets that really don't work anymore. And we rarely have the time. And I think certainly as CMOs nowadays days, I mean, there's so much going on. There is so much day-to-day activity, but carving out 10%, I think it's almost like a discipline.

13:07Peter Hinssen:And I urge people to say, okay, how many hours a week do you work? You know, 40, 45, 50, whatever. Can you spend four hours, four and a half hours, five hours every week on things that are not today, not tomorrow, not, you know, the shit of yesterday, but really things that are capable of really being complete game changers, learning new things, experimenting with things. And I think we're in a situation that if you don't do that, you're probably going to be, you know, bypassed by reality very, very soon. So that's why I think that 10 % is super important. I mean, I think it's such a good challenge for all of us.

13:45And when you put it into the context of four hours, five hours, it doesn't feel like that much. Yet as leaders, we're not doing it. It's funny, but that was one graph that I actually got a photo of. And I was texting it to my partners, my two business partners. And we were joking, saying like, we actually need to talk about this because there is a problem here. and when you put up the red box of the shit of yesterday like that just really brought it home for me because at least you know our president I mean he's very much kind of stuck in the grind of yesterday fixing the problems day in and day out and and you know our chief creative officer he's very much in the today the projects and getting the work through the house and I'm from a business development marketing standpoint I'm way more in the future and you know kind of six months ahead, a year ahead, where we're going.

14:34And it creates some tension even amongst us. And so I love that as a challenge for a leadership group too, to sit down and really think about where am I spending my time and where is it best used?

14:45Peter Hinssen:I agree. And I think, you know, even if it's just a jargon or a vocabulary or just a way of addressing things. And I mean, I've been using, I wrote that book the day after tomorrow, I think seven, eight years ago, and I've been teaching at London Business School and using that model and, you know, doing a lot of keynotes around the world. And I think it's probably what many people will remember. I think I probably have a shit of yesterday legacy. I mean, a couple of months ago, I was in Singapore in the airport and I was washing my hands in the bathroom. And next to me was a guy who said, I know you.

15:21Peter Hinssen:You're the guy from the shit of yesterday because he was in my class at London Business School years ago. So I'm OK with that. But even if you just address that in an organization, are we spending too much time in the past? Are we really addressing enough time in the day after tomorrow? In the discussion with your clients, in how you think about how you want to take the organization forward, even at a board level, right? I mean, I see boards where you spend so much time on the numbers and it's all about today and tomorrow. But are you really spending enough time on that longer term horizon? And I think it's crucial in a world which is now changing so incredibly rapidly in this never-known.

16:01That's great. All right, let's go back to the board.

16:04Peter Hinssen:Okay, I've had the last one. Let's go for number one. Number one. Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd one. So why do you know this to be true? This is a quote that you included in your presentation. Well, I think it's a wonderful quote by Voltaire. And Voltaire is a famous French philosopher. Hundreds of years ago, he wrote that. And I think it's probably more true today than ever before. And we see this, I mean, uncertainty has become the norm now. And I wrote the book, The Uncertainty Principle in 2024, because it takes about a year to write the book. And while 2024 was unfolding, I was super miserable writing the book.

16:55Peter Hinssen:I thought, oh, I missed the window to bring out a book on uncertainty. I'm now happier than ever that I brought out the book in 2025 because if you look at, there's this thing called the World Uncertainty Index and that has just spiked this year and it's, let's be honest, it's also the political, geopolitical situation look at the impact that tariffs have had on the world economy and the interesting thing about this is that when you are confronted with that much uncertainty and instability and a lot of people say, oh, this is really scary. And what we need to do is protect ourselves. We need to mitigate the risks and hedge our bets and we need to find a way to protect and isolate that.

17:42Peter Hinssen:And I think this is fundamentally wrong. I think what we need to do is embrace that. I think uncertainty has to become your friend, your ally. I think you need to find ways to use that as a leverage mechanism. How can you actually use uncertainty to your advantage? And that is the complexity that we have in the world of today. I meet a lot of business leaders who say it's never been crazier. I mean, our entire strategic plan, our entire budget of 2025 that we built in November 2024, we could just flush it down the toilet in March. And certainly in April, when the Liberation Day was announced, I mean, it doesn't make sense anymore.

18:25Peter Hinssen:And I think we're now seeing leaders that are trying to, or beginning to see that uncertainty is not going to disappear. It's not going to go away. It's probably going to maybe even intensify. The speed is going to increase. So let's find ways to use that, to leverage that. And the main message there is make uncertainty your friend. It's not your enemy. And I think that is so relevant across kind of the entire organization, even new employees coming into the marketplace right now, just embracing uncertainty at the jump all the way through the organization. Any advice to organizational leaders how to get their culture, their people more comfortable with uncertainty?

19:08Peter Hinssen:Well, I think it's a crucial thing because when you look at it, does leadership change as a result of that world of the never normal? And I think it does. And I think one of the crucial things is I think leaders have to build a sense of urgency without scaring people. And that is a very tricky thing to do because it's really easy to scare people. I mean, you can just open up the media and read everything that's been happening and you just, you know, you can easily spook somebody nowadays. But how can you build a sense of urgency without scaring people? How can you get them excited about this never normal?

19:48Peter Hinssen:How can you basically foster their curiosity in a world that is becoming more and more weird in a way? And I think that is something which, I go back to the narrative, that is the crucial thing. And building a positive narrative for your employees as a leader, you have people who want to hear that positive message. And I think the worst story to tell is, you know what, it's going to get better. I don't think that is the reality. You can't just wait for the world to become more stable and calm. But I think leading people into a positive message, into a sense of urgency, and where they get excited and even curious about that never normal, that narrative has never been more important.

20:39Yeah, that's really good advice. I love that curiosity plays into that. That's definitely at the root of our culture as well. Transparency, curiosity, and the optimism, I think, together is a great combination for leaders right now. All right, let's go back to the board.

20:54Peter Hinssen:Wonderful. Wow. So, okay, I'm trying to be, let's take number six, then we have a pretty symmetric pattern on the board. Okay. So the cost of doing has plummeted and the cost of waiting has skyrocketed. What does this mean, in your opinion, for client agency relationships? So I think the fundamental idea is that we're in that world where the cost of doing is basically going to zero. And it means that we have all these means and tools and technologies at our disposal where we can try things and experiment. And I think that is, I think, a challenging one. Even more challenging is that at the same time, the cost of waiting goes up.

21:42Peter Hinssen:because the longer that you have the complexity that you hesitate, the world is changing and you're going to lose opportunities. So it's really about how do you find the signals early enough that you're confident enough to make a decision. And we all know that the longer you wait, then your basically portfolio of options gets depleted. So timing is crucial. Speed is important. And I think when you look at the client's agency relationship, the fact that the experimentation has become so cheap, I think we're going to have to acknowledge that we're typically in the past, brands would farm out a lot of that experimentation to the agencies.

22:28Peter Hinssen:that's going to be effective. I mean, I think personally, I think it's a good thing that a lot of brand owners are capable of testing and trying things and finding out ways. And I think nurturing that experimentation is more important than ever before. But at the same time, I think when people say, yeah, that's it, that's what we need to do. Then putting that into execution at scale I think this is where that professionalism of the agencies is going to play into their favor. Because I think a lot of these tools are great for trying stuff and experimenting and having a feel of what works and what doesn't work.

23:13Peter Hinssen:But it's still an art to turn that into really scalable execution. And I think this is where the expertise of the agency lies. This is where they understand how to move the needle, how to do this at scale, how to do this in a safe way, how to do this with all the opportunities we have from an innovation point of view. So I think the dynamics there are going to be interesting because the dynamics could be affected. The traditional relationship between client and agency, we're not going to hope that that is going to remain. But I think it's an exciting new field. And I think agencies who understand that and who acknowledge that, I think, are going to thrive in this never normal.

23:57If you were an agency owner, you've owned a lot of businesses, started a lot of businesses. What's one thing that you would you would change or start doing right now as it relates to this topic?