225. Reinventing Leadership: Adaptability in the Future of Work with Adeline Tiah

What if the future of work isn't about finding the right job, but creating one that's never existed?

Join us as we welcome Adeline Tiah, a trailblazing coach and author of "Reinvent 4.0," who shares her journey from the corporate world to becoming a thought leader in leadership transformation. Adeline introduces her REINVENT model, a groundbreaking toolkit for embracing risk, fostering emotional intelligence, and thriving amidst rapid change.

Our enlightening conversation navigates the evolving landscape of work, where adaptability and continuous learning reshape our career trajectories. With 60% of new graduates stepping into roles not yet imagined, Adeline's insights illuminate the value of transversal skills such as curiosity and empathy. Discover how these abilities not only unlock diverse opportunities but also redefine leadership in today's dynamic environment, as seen through Adeline's own transition to a leadership coach.

As we stand on the brink of an AI-driven future, the episode delves into the delicate balance of leveraging technology while maintaining ethical integrity. Adeline sheds light on the transformative role of AI, from preserving corporate knowledge to enhancing productivity, yet cautions against potential pitfalls. Explore the critical importance of ethical leadership and systems thinking in an era brimming with innovation and learn how to navigate these challenges with foresight and responsibility.

🌐 Connect with Adeline:
• Website: https://adelinetiah.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adeline-tiah/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/addysoh/

📚 You can purchase Adeline's book on Amazon:
• Reinvent 4.0: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BN6T2P9D/

Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
Learn the why, what and how of fostering a mentally healthy workplace with Dr Bill Howatt

Chapters

• 0:00 Embracing Reinvention in Leadership and Work
• 8:49 [Ad] Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
• 9:39 (Cont.) Embracing Reinvention in Leadership and Work
• 16:43 Navigating the Future of Work
• 29:04 Navigating Ethics in the AI Era
• 36:45 Navigating Ethical Leadership and Innovation
• 47:10 Leading With Vision and Adaptability

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:00

The world is now changing faster than it ever has before, but the scary thing it's changing slower than it ever will again. And if we are not constantly embracing reinvention, we're going to find ourselves left behind in today's episode of The Leadership Project. We're joined by the inspiring Adeline Tiah the author of Reinvent 4.0 in today's episode, we dive deep into what it truly means to reinvent yourself and the mindset shifts needed to thrive in an evolving world. We'll also unpack the principles of Adelines, reinvent framework, a roadmap for navigating the future of work with clarity and purpose. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Adeline Tiah. Adeline is a professionally certified coach with ICF, and she's also the author of a book called Reinvent 4.0 and she deeply helps organizations and leaders to reinvent themselves around the future of work. So that's going to be our two themes today. What does it mean to reinvent yourself, and what does it mean to prepare and adapt to the future of the work, with the world changing at an incredibly rapid pace at the moment, so I'm sure that there's going to be lots of nuggets of gold that we can all take away from today's discussion where we can continue to reinvent ourselves and to shape the future of work in a very fast paced, changing world. So without any further ado Adeline, I would love it if you would say hello to the audience and give us a little bit of the flavor of your background and what inspired you to become a coach, and then what inspired you to specifically focus on this topic of reinvention and the future of work?

Adeline Tiah: 1:58

Hi Mick, thank you for having me on this podcast and to the listeners out there. Welcome to this session. My name is Adeline. I would introduce myself as a I call myself a serial reinventor, partly because I published my book called Reinvent 4.0 and kind of adopted the name to it. But my background is I have been working in the corporate world for the last 25 years, you know, in telco space, in the banking industry, and post COVID, COVID has changed my perspective about what is important and and how much is enough. And I was working with a coach at that time, and the coach asked me this question, what would 80 year old Adeline Thank me for what I do today, and I've always wanted to publish a book. So I decided leave by corporate job, published a book, and I did my research about the future of work, and this book literally just, you know, helped me transit to a new career in coaching. Now I built my own coaching practice. I've been coaching for the last seven years as part of my own leadership development within the organization, and so when I transit to this role, it was a very natural transition for me as well.

Mick Spiers: 3:12

So congratulations on the success of the book, and that's a great path, and I'm glad that someone inspired you to stop and think about where you wanted to go and and then the writing of the book to be able to reshape some of your thinking. So tell me Reinvent, what does reinvent mean to you, Adeline?

Adeline Tiah: 3:32

Well, when I crafted this book, at that time, I was doing a lot of research, talking to futurists about what does the future looks like? And because of my coaching experience in the last seven years, coaching professionals, executives, getting them back to work or helping them in advancing the career, I noticed certain mindset shifts that they need to be successful. And so reinvent is actually an acronym. I'm going to just go through very briefly what it stands for. R stands for risk taking mindset and not taking a risk is a risk. And E stands for entrepreneurial thinking. In the future of work, we are no longer paid according to how hard we work, but how hard we are to replace and and more so in today's context, right with AI. So how can we think like an entrepreneur and I? Stands for inclusiveness. We are now working in a multi generation workforce. How can we embrace inclusivity and diversity? Right to in a multi generation workforce and N stands for noticeable, being really good at what you do to stand out in the marketplace. And V stands for vulnerable, teaching the Know It All attitude, but really being authentic and bring your best self to work. And E stands for empathy. N stands for networking. And T stands for trans disciplinary learning. And so that's how the Reinvent a co name came about.

Mick Spiers: 5:03

That's really interesting. I had no I didn't know that Adeline, so that's really cool. Let's unpack a few of these so that with the risk taking, the entrepreneurial mindset, the inclusivity, then the being noticed and noticeable, I like that being vulnerable. I think we're discovering the power of that more recently, having that empathy, being able to network and being able to learn across trans areas and across different disciplines. It's a really good model. I'm impressed with it already. Let's talk about this risk taking. We are, I'm going to say wired as human beings to avoid risk more than take risk, right? So we know that we have an aversion to loss, that where we kind of fear loss more than we appreciate gain. How do we step into that, this risk taking that you speak of?

Adeline Tiah: 5:58

Think really taking small steps to get out of the comfort zone. We all know that when you stay in the comfort zone, you don't grow. Right? It's just taking that small step. And taking intelligent risk is what I call right, because especially when it comes to the risks, really can be life transforming. But how do you take intelligent risk? And this is what I always use core, low cost pro meaning, try something first, be it building a side hustle or stretching yourself a little bit, and before you know it, you get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and then that's how you grow as an individual.

Mick Spiers: 6:36

Yeah, really like Adeline. I think that does capture what we can all think about it like everyone listening to the show, have a listen to the words that Adeline is saying here. Great growth happens just the other side of our comfort zone. We don't grow if we just stay in our comfort zone and there's there's no growth there. But you're also saying there is about intelligent risk and almost just taking those little steps outside your comfort zone, not reaching for the mountain in one go, which is where I think maybe the fear of failure, the fear of loss, might be too daunting for someone to take action and they get a bit frozen. Is that the key takeaway here Adeline, is it outside your comfort zone, but just outside your comfort zone.

Adeline Tiah: 7:21

Right. And if I just put it in the leadership context, right, it's the same as well, right? As leaders, how do you take the risk? How to encourage your team to take the risk and be comfortable with failures and reframe failures as a learning opportunity, and more so in today's context, where you know the future is unpredictable. You know, two years ago, there was no Gen AI, and now it is actually evolving. Everybody's job, right? Then, how do you then take a risk, to stretch your team and lead and be able to encourage your team to also take risk, to experiment.

Mick Spiers: 8:02

Yeah, really good, Adeline. And I think if we don't do that, we are going to get left behind. The key thing I was taking away there about the fear of failure is to recognize that failure is the part of any learning process. And, you know, some people say fail is first attempt in learning. That's That's what F, A, I, L stands for, right? And one of the key parts here is, when we look at any successful person out in the world, that success has come after 1000 failures, or even 10,000 failures, it's no one gets it right every single day. And we need to have enough self compassion to be able to just go, Okay, right? That didn't work. But what did I learn from it, and what will I do differently next time, how does that sit with you, Adeline?

Adeline Tiah: 9:30

Yes, and that thinking was also shaped by my experience working in the startup at my previous role, where we do a lot of experimentations, right? To test hypothesis and to also validate a certain thinking. And I think by doing experimentations, you de risk as well learn, and you test and learn so that you get better. There's wrong sort iterations, and this is what I meant by, you know, taking intelligent risk. You don't take a plunge straight away, right? I mean, humans are wired, especially when you are so comfortable where you are now, you don't want to disrupt yourself. But really, sometimes it is so important to look at from a different perspective and take low cost protest and learn before you arrived at, you know, making that decision.

Mick Spiers: 10:20

Yeah, really good, Adeline. Clear advice, and it's something for us all to think about and think about how we can apply in our own lives and in our own businesses. We could talk about the entire reinvent model and the framework, that would be an interesting discussion in its own but I want to go a bit deeper about. The need and the way that the world is changing. Why do you believe that people need a reinvent mindset?

Adeline Tiah: 10:48

Well, I would actually make reference to a recent survey that I've picked up. Is actually a survey that was conducted by PwC CEO. It's an annual survey. So this year, they released the survey results, and it shows that 50% of the CEO felt that their business will not survive in the next 10 years unless they reinvent and if you look at maybe, I'll just give another example, right in the 1960s the average lifespan of companies in S p5 100 is actually 60 years, right? And the average lifespan of expectancy of people in the 1960s is in the 51 and fast forward in the 2020s the average lifespan of companies in S on S and p5 100 index is actually 20 years. And the average life expectancy of people in today's landscape is probably 70s globally and is increasing right in Asia, is 85 so if you look at this now set of numbers here, what it means is that disruptions is happening more often. In the past, you probably have one job in your lifespan, and now, as people live longer, and you are facing many inflection points in our lifespan in the last two years, you probably have heard of read of news of big techs retrenching people laying off. And so why is it as individuals, we need to embrace that mindset of permanent reinvention to keep abreast, adapt with change. And if you look at in the organization context, look at what happened with COVID and blockbuster right? Codec did not reinvent themselves. Keep up with times, and, you know, identify the future trends that they got disrupted.

Mick Spiers: 12:42

Yeah, that's really some scary statistics there, Adeline, I didn't know that study. I'd love to get a copy of that. Maybe we can share that offline, and I might even put it in the in the show notes for everyone. So what you've got me thinking? I think about my parents and my grandparents all grew up in an era where they had one career, one chosen profession. That is that profession for their entire life, and they quite often worked for the same company for their entire working life. And now we're at a situation where our working career is longer than the life expectancy of the company. So we may have three, four or even five different professions along the way, and work for multiple companies. So we need to be ready to pivot, which is both scary and exciting at the same time. This is really interesting. So how does someone that is coming from a mindset of security and maybe the mindset of working for the same company for their whole life. Now, in a in an age where people end up doing jobs, I'll throw a stat actually, actually Adeline that 60% of people that are graduating from school this year. This was a stat I read a long time ago that 60% of the people that are graduating from school this year will end up doing jobs that haven't even been invented yet. How do we adapt to that world?

Adeline Tiah: 14:10

Well, I think it's really going back to what I shared earlier, the various threats, traits, right. Number one, building your network. I think that helps, because when you talk to people, you get fresh perspectives, building, trans disciplinary learning. Don't just stay in your own track, right, use from different domain and that that widens your perspective. And I think most importantly, really stay curious. And I'll share with you how you know or I get all this thinking right, because I was, I told a career break seven years ago, and I was actually coaching clients, helping them to place them back to work. And I actually encountered clients who have been working the same organization for 15 years, 17 years, and when they were disrupted, they were lost. What skills do I have? I can't do anything else. So I give you an example. I was coaching this top notch banker. He left his job, and he said, I had enough of banking. I didn't think I want to go back to banking. And he came to me and said, What do I do now? In my entire career, I have been just working as a banker. I've won many awards, and you know, I know the cultural nuances in the region. He's he's won many banking awards. And then I, when I tried to look at his skill set, and I look at what he can offer, and reframe right his thinking, and say, Okay, you have the skills that allows you to you understand the nuances of the high net worth. Work across different culture. He has selling skills, right? He's able to sell so when we kind of, when I have actually helped him reframe that, he actually looked at it, oh, yeah, actually, it's not about my job title or my job, but it's what problems can I solve? And the moment he got that, you know, there were many opportunities open to him. He was able to find roles in Casino, obviously interested in getting him to part of the team to introduce high net worth clients to the business. He was interviewed for property developers Iran, who are very keen to sell tap on his network, and concierge companies who were looking at how to build their concierge business. Wanted him to any perspective, and even nonprofit organizations wanted to tap on him. Right? Hire him because he could help them raise funds and grant so going back to your question about, How can we look at the future and be ready? Right? It's really take on an entrepreneur hat, right? Always continuously learn new skills. And when you learn new skills, ask yourself, what problems can you solve, and is there a market for you to solve that problems.

Mick Spiers: 16:54

Yeah. Really interesting, Adeline. I'm hearing three really key things here. One is always learning, always growing, always looking to build my skills, either build this, build on the skills that I already have, or build new skills. I'm hearing the importance of that network, so that you also have this growth oriented network where you're out there stretching yourself, and then the other one I'm picking up is this transversal skill set. So not just pigeon holing yourself and go, This is what I'm good at and being very industry specific, but thinking about how your unique skill sets might be transferable in other ways to solve other problems. And I'm going to throw an example at your Adeline and then just see how this goes for you, right? So what are the skills that make a really good salesperson? Really good salesperson is someone that's very curious, asks the right questions, is a very good listener, is able to reframe the customer's problems, etc, etc, right? Now, what are the skill sets of a coach, someone that listens very well ask the right questions, is able to reframe someone's problems. What are the great skill sets of a prompt engineer, a new job on the on the line. Now, with the advent of AI, someone that is able to ask the right questions follows the you with me? See, see other?

Adeline Tiah: 18:18

Yeah, you see that. You see the pattern, right?

Mick Spiers: 18:21

That three completely different jobs, but it's the same core skill set at the at the core of it, how does that sit with you? The example?

Adeline Tiah: 18:29

Um, yeah. I love how you can you draw out the common denominator? I think that that's so important, being asked, being able to ask the right question. In fact, in a lot of leaders, there's a skill that is lacking, right? And that was the reason, what that prompted me to to get myself certified as a coach seven years ago, not to become a coach, but it was more as part of my leadership development initiative, right? And when I got myself certified as coach, I realized it changed the way I lead. It was very refreshing. Instead of telling my staff, I was very mindful, taking a step back, listening and asking the right question, and before I knew it, I was honing the skills. And now I realized that, okay, this is a good skills that I have, and I understand the context so and that's led me to do what I do today, right as a leadership coach, helping leaders to think further and lead better in the future of work.

Mick Spiers: 19:26

And then again, it's that same core skill set that comes in. You go, okay, these are the skills that I learn as a coach. Now I'm going to apply them as a leader, and all of a sudden my leadership skills start elevating because I'm working on that core skill set. This is really interesting. Adeline. Now we've teased a little bit of this already, but I want to go straight at it now about the future of work, right? So we're talking about reinventing ourselves so that we don't become irrelevant, that we can move with the times, and we can do pivots in our career along the way. Tell us about what you see into the future of work, because, you know, we've already changed so much. What could possibly be coming next?

Adeline Tiah: 20:10

Yeah, that's a very interesting question, because I read fair bit trying to get give myself a breast and, you know, Sam opt actually said this in one of his shareholder meeting, he said that there are five levels of artificial intelligence. The first level is conversational AI, something that we are very familiar with, right? We all use it chat, GPT, convert, you know, large language models. And then we have reasonable AI, where we are also experiencing it into a. Certain extent, like Netflix, how do they personalize your entertainment experience through predictive modeling? And the next one is what we call autonomous AI, again, we are seeing it being more pervasive now with autonomous driving cars, autonomous robots in a factory, and the next one is innovative AI, where AI can look at past data and improve on it, right. For example, healthcare is one good example how they have actually innovate and create new drugs. And the fifth level, which is a scarier one, is organizational AI, where he predicted that one day, there could be a one person managing 100 a $1 billion organization. So in imagine you have several autonomous AI agents working for you and talking to each other.

Mick Spiers: 21:35

So that is daunting. It's amazing. It's fraught with opportunities, but also also scary. At the same time, I've got to say Adeline. So how do let's, let's take leadership as a topic. So if we're going to go through these five layers of AI, we're already at the conversational AI, and it's already going to say augmenting the experience at work and experience of leadership. How do we prepare for these 2, 3, 4, and 5 as a leader to make sure that we can keep up with the world?

Adeline Tiah: 22:11

I think as leaders, we need to be aware of what is the impact of, you know, technology on on our work, right? And how do we embrace that paradox, and that's what leaders are facing today, right? Embracing the paradox of, for example, data versus intuition. You know, how do you balance that, the CO logic of data as well as a warmth of intelligent intuition? Intelligent intuition definitely comes with certain biases, right? And then there is also speed versus reflection. How do you execute at speed and be able to have time for deep reflection? So these are some examples. And even in the past, as a leader, you are expected to be a domain expert to know what you what do you do? Right your years of experience. How do you use that to make informed decisions? But today, artificial intelligence are they are trained to be able to provide information right? So what leaders need to do is be able to learn to synthesize information, connect the dots, develop the metal thinking skills so that they continue to learn. And in fact, I would challenge that to say that these days, AI could potentially be a supervisor. I have a friend who is a very experienced lawyer. He said, Okay, he's going to retire in a few years time and say that I have got this experience of the knowledge in my head and as well as all the written documentations, and when I leave, how do I leave a legacy? How do I ensure this doesn't get wasted? So now he's building his own private model where he could fit his years of experience into the private model where any new lawyers who come in can tap on his expertise and past knowledge. So potentially, AI is now could be a supervisor. So the people who are going to be most impacted are probably the mid level managers.

Mick Spiers: 24:12

Yeah. I mean the the opportunities there around the wealth of knowledge, someone that would like that would have. So we always worry about when our most experienced people leave a company, they retire, whatever we go, all this knowledge is going out the door. Well, well, here's an opportunity to not only capture that knowledge, but codified in a way that is faster than ever before. If you had that knowledge in an AI engine, this lawyer that you're talking about, and you could ask it the right question, it could codify all of that experience in in faster than the human being could do. That's quite an exciting revelation around corporate knowledge.

Adeline Tiah: 24:57

Yeah. So I think leaders need to be able to know how they can harness this. In fact, the greatest threat we face is not about how robots that robots will replace us, but it's our reluctance to reinvent ourselves, because in in the landscape, technology is moving very fast, right? With all the big boys, they are all, you know, trying to invest a lot to be better competitively, and so that's that kind of force the technology to move a lot faster. In fact, recently, a friend of mine just fit my entire book into Google note book, which is a large language on more. Though, translating the text to voice and what I get, my book that took like six or seven months to publish was actually produced into a podcast. So 37 minutes podcast where we have there was two person mentoring and just discussing what's about the key concept in my book, there was, there was interesting, right? And you know, so in every, in every one of our roles, right? Whatever roles we are in, think of how AI can complement what we do. So I give you an example, journalists. Okay, journalists used to do a lot of research, desk research, but these days they can actually go to chat GPT or AI to get information at the fingertips. So what they need to do now as a journalist is not to spend their time doing research, but actually rewire their brain to do a lot more investigative research, investigative work.

Mick Spiers: 26:42

Yes, really interesting. Because for a long time, we've always put a big badge of honor on knowledge and and the knowledge that might be sitting in a human being's brain, but now that knowledge is at everyone's fingertips, so that's that's not the thing anymore. So what the thing is now is the curiosity that we were talking about before. And then you said before about connecting the dots. It's the systems thinking. The systems thinking is going to be the the ability to know how to ask the right questions and then connect the dots. That's going to be the secret to the to the future leaders and the and the future drivers of industry. How does that sit with you? The knowledge is at everyone's fingertips. Now, it's now the ability to connect the dots.

Adeline Tiah: 27:29

Yeah, I would absolutely agree with you, right? These days, in the past, you know, as individuals or we would actually go to Google research different sources, but this day, it's how, what kind of command I can give to chat, GPT, to enable me to, you know, make the decisions due to my research.

Mick Spiers: 27:50

And then what we can do with that augmentation, and I see this one, very much real today, Adeline, is that we can use AI for, I'm going to say mundane tasks that might still cost a cognitive load on our brains, right? So let's say that you and I spoke. Last time we spoke together, we were talking about PowerPoint. I remember this conversation and about how we could use AI to create the PowerPoint for us. Now that for me, what I jump to here as the augmentation that can be very successful. Let the AI do the administrative past, and then the part of the job, and then let my brain concentrate on the value add, no longer the administrative task. And then I start unlocking new thinking, because my cognitive load is not so high. I can actually be creative now, because my brain is not full of small decisions, I can think about the big picture. How does that sit with you?

Adeline Tiah: 28:50

Yeah, yes, I absolutely agree. In fact, you know, we need to. I've used many AI tools, right? And these days with AI today's no excuse for work that is mediocre. So I give you an example I used to do, go PowerPoint, do presentation. And I would be worried about, I will be thinking about, how do I organize the content? But obviously I have the ideas. How do I, you know, design of of the PowerPoint slides. But these days, I just need to go to AI powered tools like beautiful AI or gamma app and just provide the content and even providing the commands you can give me a quote from Sam ultimate, for example, and then the app would actually pull out a slide with a quote from Sam optimum. So can you imagine what I use to spend maybe a day to do PowerPoint slides can be now reduced to maybe one hour or two hours, and that frees me up. Frees my time up to do more meaningful work.

Mick Spiers: 29:57

Yes, spot on Adeline. I think that's going to be the immediate future. That's That's right now. That's where people can spend a lot of time. Let me go to where some of the fears come in with where AI is going. Let's start with something basic that's not too far away from what we're also talking about, which is the fear that critical thinking skills will diminish. So let's say, like you and I, our university days are a bit behind us. We're a little bit older now, but imagine the university students that are going through now with the power of AI at their fingertips. They could do all of their assignments, all of their turn ins, every. Think that they could do, probably without really thinking, just asking the right questions to an AI tool, and they're done, but they didn't learn the critical thinking skills that we had to learn when we were going through university and school. Is AI going to kill our critical thinking, or is it going to augment our critical thinking?

Adeline Tiah: 31:00

It can do both. I just give an example. Right? In the past, before the mobile phone, where we have calculated at the fingertips, used to do mental sounds, right? We go for two restaurants, and we split the views. We just do mental calculation. And this day is so convenient. I'll just pick up the phone, take the bill, amount divided by the number of people, and this how we split the bill. It does affect your critical thinking skills if you don't hone it, which is why, in Singapore and I talked to some educators, they say that the education system also is evolving. They cannot discourage AI, because they know that people are going to use AI, right? So what they do now is to ask the students evaluate the content that is being developed by AI, right? So they critique on what AI has given them. And it's very interesting, because I am an adjunct lecturer at the University, and I mark students paper, right? And we have this tool that is able to track the AI score, you know. And I noticed that those people who use AI can see the right, you know. And number two, they tend to maybe provide very superficial answers. So, you know, the tax Bloom taxonomy, right where we have the basic level, which is understanding. And then right at the top is your critical thinking skills, higher order thinking skills. So if you use AI, and if you're not good at prompting, and even if you you're good at it, the AI may not necessarily give you the application. So yeah, your scores may suffer. So that's what I discovered when I marked my students script. But when they have the high AI score, they tend to do not so well compared to those people who are really brilliant, were able to apply what they learned and write it in their own language.

Mick Spiers: 32:51

I really like that first thing you said, which is asking the students to critically assess the response that AI returned. That tells me two skills. One is the critical thinking skills to critical reasoning skills to go Was that a good answer? Was it not a good answer? What did they miss? What did they do? Well, what didn't they do well? But at the same time, you're also training the skills of how I would train an AI to be better. So you it's, it's showing the critical reasoning and thinking skills in that person's brain. But they're also learning a new skill, which is, how would I train an AI to have the right answers?

Adeline Tiah: 33:30

Right. So look at this, the education right, which is important in generating the next, the future generation of professionals and leaders. They are also evolving how to teach the students.

Mick Spiers: 33:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, very good. We're all on the curve, because, guess what, as well, you're adjunct professor. As professors, you need to be reinventing yourself every year too, by the way, otherwise, you're not going to be doing the best job that you can do. All right, let's let's go to one more fear, and this one plays dear to my heart, and that is looking at it all through an ethical lens. Now I'm going to use some controversial examples here. Adeline social media. I'm going to say that the forefathers of social media had altruistic intents to connect people, to organize the world's information, to even serve up the right video to the right person at the right time, which is, I think, YouTube's mission, etc. Like they all had their altruistic intent. But what has happened is the emergent properties have not all been altruistic. Some of them have been quite dangerous. We see a dramatic increase in the incident of mental illness in our young people that have grown up with social media. So when we're going through this journey of the art of the possible, and we're following AI and where we've got these emergent properties that are so exciting, how do we make sure that we also have the right governance, that we don't end up with unintended consequences?

Adeline Tiah: 35:12

I think that starts with leadership is very important. And I think ethical leadership, right? That's what I call, example, artificial integrity. How do you ensure that, as leaders, we actually take the lead to set the governance, the framework to ensure that you know, as individuals, how do we identify content that is big for. And back at home, right? As parents, right? How do you actually inculcate the right values to the children? So it's the same, it's the same principle, right? You know, inculcating the right values, building the right culture. I think those are evergreen aspects, right? Have you heard about what Peter Drucker said? Culture eats breakfast, strategy for breakfast and lunch, and it's and it is so important, especially at this time with AI, how do you build team psychology, psychological safe culture? How do we build team engagement? And this comes more upfront, right into the forefront in the future of work.

Mick Spiers: 36:23

I think that has to be the heart of it. It's just really good Adeline. So I'm Yes, the culture, but the culture based on values, on ethics, on beliefs, and making sure that we don't lose sight of those along the way. And then I'm going to add something to you and see what you think of this. Systems engineers, inventors, innovators, we've all been obsessed with, what can I make possible? What I'm going to put to you is we should also ask the question, What have I just made possible? And make sure that the answer to that question is a virtuous answer, not a something that we didn't intend to make sure that it doesn't contradict our values and our beliefs. How does that sit with you? And those social media is a great example. I'm sure none of them were setting out to create a mental illness crisis in our young people, but what could they have foreseen by asking better questions early in the process. Does that make sense?

Adeline Tiah: 37:23

Yes, absolutely. Especially, you know, going back to leadership, right? It starts with that leadership, courage to be able to make a stand, and it always starts from the home. As a parent, I'm glad my son tell comes back from school and tell me that he doesn't have he doesn't believe in social media. I mean, he does have an account, but he doesn't post that frequently. I say, Well, this is really great, growing up in this generation where everybody is, you know, using social media a lot. And he says that the school doesn't encourage people to use social media, I think that it takes a whole of system approach, not just parents, the educators, and, of course, in the workplace, professionals, leaders. How do we inculcate the right values?

Mick Spiers: 38:12

Very good and that. And that's a great example of the leadership and the forethought that's needed here. The next chapter of it, then is I just spoke about unintended consequences. Now, what about malicious intent? So we invent a new technology. We embrace AI to help us do this, and you and I have spoken about tools like in video.io, etc, that do videos. You can type a script and it'll come back with an amazing video for you. So that's also come with the advent of deep fakes, whether it's someone that can take four seconds of audio from you and I talking today and then mimic our voices, or it could be all the way through to a deep fake video. I've seen one that is an AI version of Tom Cruise that if I showed it to you, you there's no way on earth that you can tell that it's not Tom Cruise. It's that. That's how clear these AI deep fakes are. Now, how do we avoid the malicious intent where someone takes the technology and rubs their hands together and go, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna create a dishonest business out of this and go and take money off people and scam people?

Adeline Tiah: 39:28

Well, I think this is a very difficult questions, especially people using AI to to mimic certain individuals and scam right retirees. We have heard a lot of this in Singapore and in other parts of the world as well, where people's hard earned money are being scammed. I think it's really also back to what I said, how do the various ecosystem partner? It's a poor systems approach, right where, for example, in this case, how do banks government agencies, regulatory agencies help to put together a regulatory framework to actually prevent this can from happening. So for example, in Singapore, the banks have actually started this, this new developed, this new feature on the banking app where you can lock your money in the vault, and you need to go to the bank or the ATM to unlock the money, which means, when you want to lock the money, no other scams, scammers can actually take the money out from your vault. So these are some of the things that authorities can can play a part, right? So, yeah.

Mick Spiers: 40:37

Yeah, that's so interesting. First of all, the forethought and the fact that they are taking some protective measures, I'm not at all surprised to hear that's happening in Singapore. Singapore is very progressive with these things. Then the other interesting thing that comes out is it returns us back to an old world where you physically had to go into the bank, which I kind of think is kind of interesting as well, an interesting part of our of our journey.

Adeline Tiah: 41:04

Yes, yeah, foster goes back to the bank, right?

Mick Spiers: 41:08

Yeah, that's really interesting. All right, Adeline. This has been an amazing conversation. I want to summarize a few of my key takeaways and then leave you with some parting words before we go into our Rapid Round as well. So the need to reinvent ourselves. That's where we started, as leaders, as workers, the world is completely different to what it was for our grandparents. You're not going to stay in the same profession your whole life. You're not going to work for the same company. The world is now changing faster than it ever has before, but the scary part is it's also changing slower than it ever will again. So if you're not adapting to change, if you're not continuously learning, if you're not out there growing and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you're not reinventing yourself. Listen to adeline's words. If you're not reinventing yourself, you're going to find yourself well and truly left behind. Then we start looking at the leadership lens of thinking about, well, how do we use AI in the right way? How do we make it an augmentation of our existence, and how do we make sure that we're applying the right critical thinking skills along the way, and the new superpower is going to be curiosity, connecting the dots, the systems thinking that Adeline is talking about, to make the art of what is possible with AI to make it possible. And then don't forget the ethical lens. Stick to our culture, stick to our values, stick to our behaviors, to make sure that the world that we reinvent is one that we would be proud of, and that we don't end up with either unintended consequences or we leave ourselves open for malicious intent. There's so many takeaways there Adeline, but that's what I took from our conversation today. Anything that you'd like to add before we go to the Rapid Round.

Adeline Tiah: 43:05

No, thank you for being such a great listener and summarizing everything so concisely. Again, you are ready for the future.

Mick Spiers: 43:13

Oh, thank you. Adeline, greatly appreciate. All right, so let's, let's go to our Rapid Round. So these are the same four questions that we ask all of our guests, what's the one thing you that you know now, adelinia that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Adeline Tiah: 43:28

Oh, good question. If I am in my 20s now, I would say that I would take more risk if I had been in my 20s. Looking at 20s many years ago, it would have a different context. In today's context is about being able to get out of comfort zone and take more risk to travel, to do things that I really enjoy, and not just work and work.

Mick Spiers: 43:52

Yeah, wonderful advice. Well done. Adeline, what is your favorite book? As an author, yourself curious to know what your favorite book is?

Adeline Tiah: 44:01

I have many favorite book, but the one that actually shaped my thinking in my last book that I read was this book, 100 year life. I'm sure many people have come across it. It's about how, in today's context, people are now living longer, potentially living up to 100 years? How we need to, actually, if we take short breaks in between, right? The traditional notion of a three stage life where you study, you work and retire is no longer relevant. We need to have, there will be many sig curves in your life, right? What they call this S curve, SIG, one curve where we constantly need to reinvent ourselves. So that was a book that I would say shaped my thinking around what I write.

Mick Spiers: 44:51

Yeah, I love that, Adeline. It's a very sobering thought. It's it's not the same as it used to be, yeah? And it makes me think, even around things like retirement savings. Do any of us have enough retirement savings to retire at what was the previous retirement age? The answer is no, it's everything's longer and in different cycles now. So they're really interesting. What's your favorite quote?

Adeline Tiah: 45:16

Well, this would be going back to risk, not taking a risk. Is a risk by Park Seger,

Mick Spiers: 45:22

Yeah, very good. It's so true. But we do get stuck. A lot of us get stuck on that, but that's some wise words for us to think about.

Adeline Tiah: 45:31

But if you think about it, taking risk, if you think about it as just getting out of your comfort zone, there are many levels of risk, right? Sticking getting out of comfort zone, could be a risk that somebody, initially very risk adverse, can take, and you if you continuously do that over time, you would have you would have gained enough experience and knowledge to know that actually date, enough data points to know that you know there are some risks worth taking and be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Mick Spiers: 46:03

Yeah, I really like that, Adeline. And we do often think about the risk of acting. We don't often think about the risk of not acting and the benefits of getting out of that comfort zone and taking action. Yeah, really good. And finally, Adeline here, people are going to be really interested in this, from your reinvent model through to your coaching skills, through to the future of work. If people want to get in contact with you and know more, how do they find you?

Adeline Tiah: 46:32

Or they can connect me on LinkedIn. I'm quite a prolific writer on LinkedIn. I write every day. So can find me on LinkedIn, or you can, well, get a copy of my book on amazon.com. I have a kinder version as well.

Mick Spiers: 46:48

That's wonderful, Adeline, and we'll put the links in the show notes as well, to your to your LinkedIn profile, to your website, to your book, Reinvent 4.0 thank you so much for your time today, for sharing your your insights and your wisdom, but also your foresight, your foresight to be stopping and not just thinking about today, but thinking about what the world is going to look like in the future. Thank you so much.

Adeline Tiah: 47:13

Thank you, Mick, for having me.

Mick Spiers: 47:15

Some amazing insights here from Adeline Tia on reinvention and the future of work. They were a timely reminder of the importance of adaptability and clarity in our lives and our leadership. Journeys her reinvent framework really challenges us to think boldly, embrace risks and shape our futures intentionally. In the next episode, it's going to be a solo cast, where I dig deeper into the lessons that Adeline has shared with us and give my reflections on what I think we need to do to be ready for the future of work. If you're getting great value from our content, we would love it if you would leave a rating and review on Apple podcast or your preferred podcast service, and don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you video podcasts, the weekly curated video and our live stream shows, all designed to help you become the leader that you wish you always had. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo And my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.