1877 – Business Futurism with Tabitha Scott

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0:58with us right now it is business futurist change advisor and best-selling author tabitha a scott tabitha you are found on the web at tabitha a scott.com thank you so much for joining us tabitha thanks for having me here josh well give us an overview of the work that you do um i should point out your books that you've got powering change the hidden resource to unleash potential productivity and profits. I'm interested. I'm leaning forward. And then as well, trust your animal instincts, recharge your life and ignite your power. Can't wait to hear about these. But yeah, Tabitha, in your words, I'd love to hear about your impact in the world.

1:36Yeah. So I have done tons of work with innovation and transformation. It's been kind of the theme throughout my career, whether it was it started in e-payments, you know, banking, finance, My business background is what led me to that. And yet I grew up on this small farm in Kentucky and had this appreciation for nature. And we learned all the things we need to know to run a very powerful business there on the farm. There is no waste. You use waste to fertilize something that grows. There are growth cycles that are very predictable. So you can predict where your business is going next, what type of leaders to hire, how to engage your teams.

2:16and diversity, you know, the more diverse your crops are and rotating them around. There's not one size fits all in nature. It adapts. It's complex. And so my first book is about burnout. It's a personal story of working in very large companies. I went from e-payments to renewable energy investments and sustainability side of innovation for companies that were based overseas. And in those days, they paid carbon taxes here in the U.S. We're just now starting to think about tracking emissions and things like that. So I've been in sustainability and innovation the last 18 years. And now I'm working with Gilbane doing that.

2:59They're a large construction company. And what all of this has in common is burnout, being off balance, the pace of change, the problems in business today, all of them can be solved by looking at the laws of nature. So the first book talks about burnout and what many people are experiencing and why that happened. It's a very personal story. The second book is all the laws of nature that we can use to drive our business forward. Yeah. Well, I am curious about this intersection of like, well, I guess I could ask you, what does the animal kingdom know about burnout? It's like, I'm wondering if there's a correlation there between what we can learn from other beings about, you know, because obviously they're on the hunt, they're all in.

3:47And then I would imagine there's going to be a season of rest and relaxation. And sometimes humans are not so good at that. Yeah. So humans, we're the ones that are disconnected and off balance and, you know, unhealthy and all of the things because we've gotten so far away from nature. And in the first book, some examples of some of the animals that I would just keep observing an animal as I was going through this personal regenerative phase. And like the snake is the first one. I kept seeing snakes and they have to shed their skin to grow into what they're supposed to be. They're held back as long as they hang on to it.

4:26And they can't grow, you know, unless they get rid of what's holding them back. And so we too have to shed, you know, our worries, our anxiety, whatever is not resonating with us, whatever's not helping us grow, it's holding us back, get rid of it. And they also have parasites that get into their skin and think about all the people in your life, or maybe your self perfectionism, your own self, you know, harming mechanisms that we have, we have to get rid of that and continually grow and move forward. And then you have like the owls, owls, their heads are even shaped like a satellite dish, right?

5:04To direct sound into their eyes and help their vision. So, and they can look almost all the way around and being aware of what are our distractions in our life? What are we, you know, our attention span is less than a goldfish now, right? It's nine seconds. We're eight seconds as humans. And so there's so many stats about distraction, thinking about the owl and tuning in and what kind of people, messages, voices, all the things that you're tuning into. And finally, you have like the bat. I'm giving you just three summaries out of probably 10 animals that came across my path during that journey in the jungle, living in the jungle.

5:47and bats well they have to risk dropping to their death to fly because they can't take off from the ground like other birds right so we have to take risks we can't just like be on the roof as the water's rising and say like well hey god you know save me and he sends like a boat and you're like no dude i'm waiting god's gonna save me and he sends like a life reserve and you're like no i'm waiting up, you know, get off the roof, you know, so take the help, take the risk, take the job, quit your job, whatever that is you need to do, uh, learn from the bats and take some risk. Yeah. Well, everybody knows that owls are the best animal.

6:25Those are my favorite. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's funny. Are you reaching for, and it's on the cover of your book too. And it's, I didn't even tell the designer to put it there. It was funny. I told her to put me walking through this tunnel when I was living in the jungle in Costa Rica. And she said, I know what you said and here it is, but I felt guided to put this on the front of your book instead, having not even read it. And it didn't know it was my spirit animal. So mine too. So in fact, I've got, I've got one that I'm holding it right now. I keep in my office. Number one, cause owls are just superb.

7:06But number two, and they're just badass in so many ways. But, you know, I generally, I think, and you mentioned this, like I associate them with focus. Right. And, you know, just imagining that, you know, kind of the patience and the watching and the kind of being thoughtful about the next move. Right. So I sometimes have the tendency to kind of shoot ready aim, I think, from a historical perspective, you know, personality perspective. And, you know, and there's so much to gain from, you know, and I think this gets into your work if we think about, you know, futurism and, you know, what what lies ahead.

7:44And can you tell me just a little bit about what it means to be a futurist and like, you know, what you have seen in your work with very successful and accomplished leaders and how they think about the future and how they plan and, you know, kind of what goes through their brain when they're trying to be thoughtful about big decisions? Yeah, I think the easiest way to break it down and in my upcoming book, actually, it just launched in February of this year, 2024. It's called Powering Change. And I take everything back to the natural roots of growth cycles and growth curves. So, you know, the old growth curve, which is at the beginning is like your birth and then there's growth and maturity and then you have decline at the end.

8:29And so companies like Blockbuster, they didn't jump onto the next new curve, right? Kodak, Compaq, pick a company that didn't innovate fast enough. And so they fell off the growth curve and died. And whether you're talking about organisms, all living things, humans included, or organizations, they are all living and they all follow the exact same curves. Now, why I mentioned that is because people can also be graphed somewhere along that curve. There's a tool called AEM developed by a physicist who's also a psychiatrist in the EU. And it's amazing. Like you can be graphed on the growth curve, but it has other areas that tracks as well about how you move.

9:16So instead of being a psychometric tool like DISC or Myers-Briggs, all of those that are based on Carl Jungian psychology, which is how you feel from the 1920s. This is how you move, how you adapt and get into motion. So of course I was geeking out on it because I'm all about energy and electricity and how we move and how we innovate. So innovators, people that are forward thinking, maybe your natural entrepreneurs, your Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, they are at the tip of that curve in the birth position. So they naturally live in the future. They're always thinking about what's next, what's next. In fact, right now, while I'm talking, they're going to be thinking about what am I going to eat for dinner?

9:56Where's she going with this? Like they can't, it's really hard to be present because they live in the future. As you get up the curve, then in the middle spot is kind of the connectors. Is this feasible? How do we execute this? How do we scale it? How do we get this done? And then as you near the top, those are your efficiency experts. How do I glean efficiencies out of this. And so those are your COOs are towards the middle, your risk averse people, your legal teams, your auditors are going to be at the top. And so if you get the wrong butt in the wrong seat, you're going to cause burnout. The person's not going to be happy.

10:31You're not going to be happy. You're not going to perform well. So in the book, I talk about this triple A framework to make it easy, assess where are you on that growth curve? What's your spidey power? because you're energized most there. That's why they call it a flow, right? Because everything is about what energizes you and keeps you from burning out. Where are you along the curve? Where's your job along the curve? And how can you do more in balance with what you love? Same about the team. If you have a innovation team for marketing and you wanna think about new markets that haven't been tapped before, you don't want a team that's at the top of the curve.

11:06That's your engineering team. And you don't want a bunch of engineers that are necessarily at the beginning of the curve if you're trying to refine and make things efficient. So it's very, very important when you're staffing, when you think about your own happiness, figure out where you are and then get your butt in the right seat. Yeah. So Tabitha, in addition to your books, it looks like you do some speaking. Do you consult as well? I have. I have in the past. In January, I took on a huge role at Gilbane, which is a$7 billion privately held company. and it's doing their sustainability programs from scratch.

11:43So they've done 25 net zero buildings. They do a lot of large commercial building and they've got a 2040 commitment to net zero waste, energy, carbon and some pretty ambitious water things. So it's my job to figure out how we're gonna do that when it sounds like a good time. Yeah, so are you available for hire? And I guess if that were the case, Are you just available as a speaker right now? Yeah, I do speaking. And then I have a company that does consulting. So we do consulting for like utilities companies, corporate strategic diversity, you know, getting beyond how you look and also getting into cognitive diversity and technologies because you can map like AI is at the beginning of that curve, right?

12:33And so if you're using innovation, you want to use generative AI. In the middle of that curve, if you're streamlining, you want to be thinking about data, data management, inputs and outputs, and then at the top, automation. So if your company's mature, if your product's mature, how can you automate? So getting those things aligned, I have a team of people that love working with companies, and I'm as involved as I can be right now. Yeah. So when you engage, what does that look like from a consultative standpoint? Yeah, it depends. I've done everything from tech strategy, which is, you know, working with large organizations on how do you move forward?

13:10You know, what's your three year plan? First of all, telling companies that if you think you can plan to 10 years in tech anymore, you're not going to take it at all because everything changes too fast. So getting them into an 18-year roadmap, and we've got some experienced enterprise architects that have worked with large organizations that can help companies modernize and just get through all of the noise and think about what phase of the growth cycle are you in? Now, how do you deploy technology? There are other engagements where people might have me or some of my colleagues come and just do workshops and map out their team or their region.

13:45that is like my favorite thing to do because you can see these differences and we've done all these blind live experiments and every single time your innovation activities your productivity go up with diverse thinking types it has nothing to do with what you look like male female it's about you do you like taking risks do you not like taking risks you know are you detail oriented? Are you generalist? Do you love working with people or things? So taking those things into account and just looking at the data, I really geek out on that is super fun. So Tabitha, your website is tabithaascott.com. So both of your books are on your front page.

14:30Again, the new one, congratulations. Powering Change, the Hidden Resource to Unleash Potential Productivity and profits. And of course, trust your animal instincts, recharge your life and ignite your power. Again, that's at TabithaAScott.com. To our friend that's listening, what else would you recommend that they do if they come to visit you? Yeah, I think the most important thing I would ask people to do is first take care of yourself. You know, think about what energizes you and then what's bringing you down. Avoid those things that are bringing you down. Find ways to do more of the things that are energizing you.

15:02It's going to help you with your health and wellness and your productivity overall. And then second, looking at your organizations and yourself with change and adaptability. I want to flip this absurd notion on its head that we have this poor, pitiful planet that needs saving and instead say, it's a badass. It's been evolving to perfect balance for 4 billion years. And modern business has been at it for like 300. So let's learn from it. Let's take lessons from it. And it can make our businesses a lot faster. Mm-hmm, you're correct. Tabithaascott.com. Tabitha, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

15:44Thanks, Josh. Have a great one.

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