231. The Business Philosopher with Anders Indset

What if success isn't about reaching the top, but rather about continuous growth and learning?

Join us as we sit down with Anders Indset, the renowned business philosopher, who shares his remarkable journey from being a hardcore capitalist to embracing a life steeped in philosophical wisdom and ethical decision-making. Anders unveils the profound insights he gained while navigating the complex landscape of philosophical texts in Germany and how these experiences now inform his views on the ethical challenges posed by modern technology.

In a world obsessed with social media and external validation, we explore how these influences can distort our perception of success. Anders and I discuss the transition from finite games to the infinite game of life, emphasizing the importance of reflection over reaction in our educational and social systems. With the rise of AI and technology, we ponder the future of social media influencers and the sustainability of attention-seeking models. We also delve into the intriguing concept of reclaiming personal agency through micro ambitions, inspired by Michelangelo’s creation of David.

Anders shares his thoughts on maintaining personal growth and agency amidst the algorithmic influence of social media, reflecting on life's path as a non-linear journey filled with infinite possibilities. We discuss Norway's emergence as a powerhouse in diverse athletic fields and the role of strong mentor relationships and a blend of individualism and collectivism in achieving success. To wrap up, we touch on critical thinking and existentialism, drawing inspiration from Albert Camus and Søren Kierkegaard, and reflect on the value of letting go of ego in pursuit of a richer, more meaningful life.

🌐 Connect with Anders:
• Website: https://andersindset.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andersindset/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andersindset/

📚 You can purchase Anders' books on his website: https://andersindset.com/books/

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 Exploring Business Philosophy and Communication
• 16:14 Navigating Success in a Digital World
• 20:58 Embracing Micro Ambitions for Personal Growth
• 25:20 [Ad] Exploring Workplace Mental Health with Dr. Bill Howatt
• 26:10 (Cont.) Embracing Micro Ambitions for Personal Growth
• 27:28 The Concept of Personal Growth
• 37:21 Unifying Growth Mindset in Society
• 52:59 Exploring Critical Thinking and Existentialism

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What if the key to your success as a leader was not just about making smart business decisions, but understanding the deeper philosophical principles that guide your choices? Can embracing technology and innovation while staying rooted in your core values be the secret to navigating today's fast changing world, and how can ancient wisdom and modern philosophy shape the way we lead and succeed in business today? In today's episode, I'm joined by Anders Indset, a business philosopher, four time best selling author, and a thought leader on the intersection of business, philosophy and technology in today's episode, we'll dive deep into Anders insights on what he calls The Viking Code, The Art and Science of Norwegian success, and explore his upcoming book The Singularity Paradox. There's going to be something in this for everyone. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Anders Indset. Anders is known as the business philosopher, and I'm going to unpack that term a little bit in today's discussion. Is also a four time best selling author, and has released a new book called The Viking code, the art and science of Norwegian success that will also unpack a little bit today, and an upcoming book called The Singularity paradox, which I'm also curious about. This conversation could go anywhere. As a business philosopher, you can imagine the deep thinking that Anders does around business, technology, innovation, the future, this is going to be a really interesting conversation. I know that we're in for a treat today so Anders, but as we get started, I'd love to know a little bit about your background and what led you to be the business philosopher, and what does that even mean? What's the role of philosophy in business and leadership?

Anders Indset: 2:06

Yeah. Mick, thank you so much for having me on, and that's a good way to start it off. For me. I was growing up. I was very interested in the economy as the operating system of our society. I was a hardcore capitalist, if you like, and I built my companies and went into these ventures, and I was an entrepreneur that defined as many my success based on, you know, the outside validation of extrinsically Motivated goals and but I was also very curious about the essence of learning. And I moved to Germany and started to read all these thick books about German philosophers, because I had had a hinge, an intuition that a lot of the magic of the thinking in itself would lay in that which you could not translate. So I wanted to learn German, and I was very interested in that philosophical contemplation, to think about the questions that drives, you know, the foundation of reality and how we perceive the world, and, you know, the ethical debates that have now entered our realms in terms of, you know, how we're going to operate alongside of technology. Very early I was very curious, and I've always been a passionate learner, so that led me to philosophy, but the first part of that was basically the optimization game. I was a professional athlete, I built my companies, and I didn't really feel success to that extent. So I I was just driving towards those finite goals and just comparing to the outside world for many that would be probably a sense of success. What I did achieve, but I didn't feel it, so I decided to flip it and let go of the things that was not a part of what I am. And I sold my company, and I let go of of these things, and I was sat down and thought, you know, what do you do now? And I find pleasure in writing, so I started to write to me. Writing is thinking. And it was basically my wife that I said, you what you want to do, honey? And I said, like, you know, yeah, I'm just going to go on this journey now. And she said, Well, you're you obviously know a lot about business, because you've been working with these large corporations, and you know that, and you're passionate about philosophy, so you're a business philosopher. And I said, that sounds good, so let's figure out what that is, and taking out that very essence of that story, which is, by the way, a true story, it was also very much about what I saw in the business world. So I saw that a lot of these philosophical questions was on the plate of leaders in the organization. So it was very natural to me to take that definition of the finitude of the finite goals and the definition of the static into more of a dynamism of progress and learning. And that's where. I found that, you know, today's leaders, looking at the challenges that we have, tackling the ambiguities and also coping with the technology, there are a lot of ethical or philosophical questions that you are confronted with. So it was a very natural evolution, if you like, that led me to what I now you know term as the business philosopher, where I unite the world of business and philosophy, and I'm very much at the beginning of this journey still.

Mick Spiers: 5:31

I love it, Anders, there's probably three themes that I'm picking up on in the thread there. It's really interesting. What you said about German. This is not the first time I've heard something similar to this, where you hear a cross cultural communication between people, and you hear something along lines of, I don't think there's an English word for this. And quite often, like in the German language, is, is very precise, I'm going to say. And quite often there's a very specific word for something in German, and for a German person, to try to translate that into English can be very difficult. And I see it the same even between New Zealand and Australia, which from a distance, probably looks like two similar countries, but they're not. They're very different. And there'll be terms in New Zealand, like the term mana, where you try to translate it into English, and you have to come up with three sentences to even get close to describing what it is. And there's an essence there around communication and and communication is so critical to leadership. So that was the first one. The second one was around this definition of success. I'd love to unpack that a little bit more, and then this role of philosophy in the way that we think, in the way that we approach either business challenges or ethical challenges, tell me more about this communication part this translation when you're learning German and you're you're trying to, like two people are trying to communicate with each other, but they don't always have the same common base.

Anders Indset: 7:05

Yeah. I mean, that's so much to be said about that, and I like that you you went there, because if you look at the European Union, there is just one chance we'll have a common language in Europe that is spoken. So it all sits through an intermediate, or now, you know, more and more through AI, but when I started to read, you know, the translation of the philosophical works that I wanted to dig into, I realized they were pretty much the same, but the essence of the thinking late in that was was not the same, you know, and that is true for Germanic and the English languages. And I'm not, you know, to that extent, someone who could reflect and feel these type of nuances in languages beyond the language that I speak, obviously, but I would see that as the foundation of that essence of what makes everything in life dynamic. And when I say so, I mean that there is, there is some kind of dynamism in navigating within the absolutes. So AI and technology is very good optimizing. So we have lived in a world of optimization. Over the past 50 years, we have experienced progress and we have maximized the art of being right. So it was about knowledge, and the knowledge game is about coming to a conclusion of what is right and what is wrong in a world of technology, what we have seen is that this becomes very confusing, because we have tied reward mechanisms to how we communicate. So it's not so much about what is actually right or wrong, but more about the reaction in itself, that you define something as binary right or wrong, your opinion, my opinion, and this is why we today feel a lot of division in society. So the communication skills that used to be built on the essence of the will to truth, if you like, or the essence of we want to achieve progress was built on two things. We have trust and we have friction. If we have a base trust, and we can talk about various opinions and dance into the nuances we can experience progress. And I think this is what like, you know, in essence, humanity was set out to do. We were, we were given two possible thumbs to create technologies to improve our lives and the state of being, you know, in a very simple term, put to create progress to come up with better explanations about our world. And if we take that and put it into the binary, which is a reactive mode, then it becomes, you know, a division, or there is one lucky. Monkey at the end, who has all the knowledge. And this is when you go back to the philosophy of Hegel or Kant 250 years back. This is what you find. You find the beauty of the thinking in itself. So we are all thinkers of our time, reflecting or our state of technology and surroundings on the strive towards positive progress for humanity. And if we take out that, you know, in German, including a word to kind of sort of emphasize what you said, the word of the bendish kite, which means so much more than the vitality and the liveliness of what it be means to be alive, this dynamic dance of progress that if we take out that, you know, we take out the very essence of what it means to be a human being, we become reactive. And I would say this is, you know, the state that we have experienced. We can look at the elections, the politics, politic again, agendas around the world, we can become divided because we are reacting to impulses and not reflecting. And this is a very exhausting, depressive state of being. And it's, you know, what I refer to also as a kind of zombie state, a philosophical zombie, where we just walk around and react to impulses as in comparison to act in an sense of agency and having the control of influencing our own reality. So the communication skill coming back to your question lies at the foundation of that if communication is an absolutism, holding on to self evident truth, then it's just a game of division or optimization. If the communication skill is about progress and the essence of learning and the will to truth, then it becomes a wonderful dance of nuances. And what I think is the very essence of what it means to be a human being or a mensch and to be alive.

Mick Spiers: 11:59

I really love this, Anders, what I'm taking away from this, I'll share it with you, is this, this dance of I'm right and you're wrong, and you thinking I'm right and you're wrong. If we go into any conversation like that, I think everyone is has already lost. We're already poorer for that conversation. If we're all going in, going my perspective is the only perspective, I'm right and you're wrong. And when we can break down those barriers, first of all, breaking down communication barriers. There's so many breakthrough moments in life where you have these aha moments where it's like, ah, that's what you meant, when we're truly listening to each other and finding that common basis. And then the second one, to have the open mind, to let go of what I know, to bring to the table what I know, but then to open my mind to what you know. Now we can co create a new reality that is the sum of the things, the sum of what I know, the sum of what you know, some of the third person that we're talking about, the sum of other works that we bring into the conversation, all of a sudden we have a richer view of the world with new perspectives. That's when the breakthroughs can happen. If we let go of, I'm right and you are wrong, and let go of the almost the feel that we need to win the conversation, that we all become richer. From that, I want to bounce from that. Then onto what you said about success, and you and I discussed a little bit before we hit record. Then I think there's the binary nature of success as well, this label that society puts on people, societal expectations of you're either successful or not successful, and this is what success looks like, whereas you've got a different definition of success. Let's unpack that.

Anders Indset: 13:50

Well. It comes back to what you just said. You know, if we look at that optimization game, the binary way, one can argue that there are not two losers, because you have the ego and you have the sense of fulfilling of the winning the finite game. And there are finite games, you know, if you play a game of of soccer or football or rugby or whatever, there are some set of rules, and there is some, you know, crowd that is cheering on, and there is some kind of structure to it. There's a winner and a loser. But life in general is not like that, and business is certainly not like that. It's more of an infinite game. And if you take away the essence of experience progress, that you have learned something, then you are just reacting to the outside world. And this is where performance and delivery becomes very exhausting. This is where we have to go on sabbaticals and retreats and work lesson we are, you know, depressed, because if you do that game of winning, in terms of winning a debate or discussion and the game of optimization, there is. Always someone that has more likes, more followers, more fortune, more fame. You are always miserable off if you live in a comparison to everyone else, if you have no connection to what you want to bring to the world or act, if you have no sense of agency, and this sense of agency is what distinguishes us from technology. At least, my perception of today's technology is that we can experience that moment of learning, the vulnerability where you catch me off guard with some terminology or some concept that I cannot lean into. And I would try to play with that to over compensate for my insecurity and try to be strong as in comparison to leaning into that intuitive feeling of the vulnerability. And this is where I can become a learner, a professional amateur, where I say to you that, oh, I never that's new to me. I cannot comment on that tonight, but let me go home and read about it together tomorrow and have a conversation on eye level. This is where we take out the progress part of the communication. So there is a two ways going into the discussion. And if we look at, you know, how the business world was prior to the pandemic. It was very much about, you know, the essence of a company where people came in, they had some kind of base trust, and they bumped into each other at a place that had exactly that. There was a billion dollar, a trillion dollar industry of progress, and that was at the sweet spot of the coffee place, the coffee machine, where people suddenly bumped into each other. And this gave people a sense of liveliness, of lebendish cat, and a sense of progress. And coming back to your question on success, this is how I experience success. So I had this career as an athlete. I had a career as a entrepreneur, and I didn't feel success, and today I consider myself highly successful. For me because I'm privileged, and I get to get up every morning to learn to experience my own experience of progress, and AI has the potential not to tell us what is right or wrong, because that's obvious. It will that, but it also has the potential to teach us how to learn and to think, and force us how to think. And that's the beauty of that experience progress, where you take back the sense of control. And I would argue that at least in the world that we live in and looking at the progress over the past 50 years that Never have we had more time and resources to influence how we perceive our own reality than today. So it's a beautiful entrance point, but we are so busy reacting that we just get sucked into that optimization game and compare ourselves to others, to likes, to followers and literally compete against technology. Our whole educational model is built on saving data for an hour, and this is not a good storage device. It's a beautiful thing for a lot of things, but data storage is not one of them.

Mick Spiers: 18:24

Really great, Anders, a few things I'm taking away, I'll share with you there one around the infinite game versus finite game. I'm gonna put to you that, yes, it is an infinite game, but it can be made up of finite games. So to use your your football analogy, I might lose today's match, but if I learn and grow from what I learned from my opponents in that match or from my teammates, what did we learn about ourselves? What did we learn about the others? What went well, what didn't go well, and then to think about, what are we going to do in the next match? I'm still growing. So the infinite game is you get to play football again next week, the finite game. Yes, you might have lost this battle, but what's what's coming next? Then, when I listen to you about this comparison world, this is, this is very real. Comparison is the thief of joy, in my view, it's always been there to some extent. You know, the I want a better car, I want a bigger house, comparing myself to my neighbor, etc. But it feels even worse now with the social media world, the Instagram world, because now you're actually looking at someone else's curated version of their life. It's not even their real life Anders, it's you're seeing on Instagram what they want you to see. And then you compare yourself to that, and you go this, you're looking for external validation with likes and things like this, and you're comparing yourself to the person down the road, there's always going to be someone that has a better Instagram account, not a better house now, a better Instagram account. And I think it's getting worse. The question I want to ask you, if people are listening to the show right now, going. Yeah, that's exactly I not getting fulfillment inside. I'm getting it from external validation, and then I feel bad about myself at the end of the day, because I'm comparing myself to others. How does someone start to break that? What's the first step?

Anders Indset: 20:15

Is it let me just play with a little bit like so we created this thumbs up, thumbs down society. So we wonder why we are divided. The reward mechanisms are on a reaction and not a reflection. So you need to have that binary, thumbs up, thumbs down, right? That's the first thing. And the second thing is, if you learn how to anticipate potential future scenarios. So we have an exponential growth in technology for the past 80 years. Anyone I would argue that it would slow down or come to an halt, I would like to see the technologically driven argument of that statement so most likely will continue. So the Instagrams, you know, influencers and content creators are up for a ride, because now the authentic and real, like influencers that are AI bots and humanoids will take over because they're perfect in the communication and can tailor make the communication to you. So you know the whole essence of influencing. And if everyone wants to be on stage, and there's no one in the room listening, is a dead model, so it's a good game to be in right now, but I wouldn't argue that it would be a potential way for the future. So that sense of, you know, taking back that agency and coming back to your questions and what is the first thing to look at that becomes very relevant. And I think that, from my experience, was basically, I always like to draw the analogy to to Michelangelo and creating a statue of David. So we look at like, what is the perfect way to go about, to have a perfect life and to reach those finite goals? And, you know, what have you. And Michelangelo said, Look, how did you create that wonderful statue of David? And he answered, you know, very simply, so that at least from the telling, I just cut out everything that was not David, and this is how I like to see life in general. What I decided for me was to say, Okay, I'm not sure where I'm going. It's a journey, and I'm always something in the making, but I'm going to start to focus on not what I want to do, but what I do not want to do so every one of us could write down one, two or three things that sucks out energy holds us back, or things that we could let go of, and if you can remove one of those things, you become closer to putting yourself in a position that you can be aware of something because you're not reacting to the forces that is Driving you, or you put yourself in a position that you can be struck by something called happiness. I don't think we can make ourselves happy, but we can make ourselves less unhappy, and that as a starting point in a realization, at least to me, was a very powerful thing. And the other thing that I wanted to mention coming back to your comparison to the finite game. And I do agree with that there is much to be learned in the loss, but to glorify, you know, the whole failure culture principle a loss is a loss, and it hurts, but as long as the strive towards progress or victory, or, you know, improving stronger is than the fear of losing. We will always be in a game of trying to strive for learning and progress like a toddler. You know, if you hurt falling down on your butt, but you want to go, go up and walk, and you have your parents cheering you on, as long as the incentive for behavioral change or progress stronger is the loss can be painful. I think the magic lies not in the finite game, but on the practice field. So the micro ambition. And I write about this in the book in the Viking code, I have a chapter on being micro ambitious, and to simplify that chapter in a very simple term, is if you run the marathon, you could look at winning or losing the marathon in the long and the whole essence of the 40 something kilometers run. Or you could break it down to that next step, putting that perfection in the input of your next step is the micro ambition and experience that you did a good step, and continuing that over time leads to an outcome of a process which is a finite result that is likely to be very successful if the quality of the input was really High. And life is kind of like that. It's like everything in life is compound interest. You know, it compounds into something greater. And if the quality of the input, your micro ambitious, the small thing, if you're aware of those small micro learnings, and you do that over time, you are most likely someone who will end. End up with some kind of good, finite result. And those two things, the one letting go and releasing, and the one looking at it from a micro ambition standpoint, could be good pointers or starting points to answer the question how to get out of that, you know, reaction mode and that energy part of being dragged through life.

Mick Spiers: 26:01

Yeah, really, really good, Anders. There's a few threads that I'm picking up in our conversation today. One thing around the finite goals. When we have very discrete, finite goals, we can end up in a situation where we either succeed or we fail, but at the end of it, there's still a question of, what next? If I set my goal to win the marathon and then I win. It is that it My life is over. If I set a goal to win the marathon and I don't win, it is that, it is that is my life over. Whereas with these micro ambitions that you're talking about, the success is in the learning and growth and and to be 1% better than I was yesterday. And there might be little micro finite games along the way, but it's but it's actually about the continuum of success, and not just the coming back to the external validation of what other people might find successful. I think that's really interesting that then on. I'm going to come back to a term you used before, because it really captured my attention, the zombie existence of reacting and just going about life. I think the answer that you gave there, the answer is in authenticity and awareness. So if we come back to authenticity about who we really are, connect back to ourselves instead of the external world, and we have awareness of what does bring us joy, instead of autopilot, zombie world, when we're aware and we're paying attention, that's when we can find the seeds of joy, and this is and the seeds of our own personal success, so that we can go home happy at the end of the day that we did our best and we we got better. We learned something today, and I'm had a guest recently talk about this. I'm 51 years old Anders, so his idea was, I'm version 5.1 and version 5.1 is smarter than version 5.0 and 4.9 and certainly smarter than version 2.2 so how we growing over time makes it the infinite game. How does that sit with you?

Anders Indset: 28:00

Yeah, I think that is something that many can relate to. But if I can play with that also, is also, if you have setbacks in life, you know something happened to you, or you do not win the game, and you go, it feels like you're thrown back to version 3.0 right? And then, what if you compare yourself to 5.1 then you're always been a miserable state. So having that very essence of understanding the beauty of progress, I think that's a foundational thing for human life. So it's very Eastern in terms of the philosophical thinking to see life as a journey. And you could, I always, I used, you know, the example of cleaning the stairs. So we clean the stairs from the top to the bottom. You get to a finite goal. They look up at beautiful stairs, and everything is picture perfect. Life is not like that at all. You know, there is constant thing coming, thrown at you, setbacks, new challenges. So you would sit there cleaning the stairs from the bottom to the top. So you start to clean, and you do all that stuff, and, you know, things are thrown at you, and you're thrown back. And you move on. And sometimes you just have to move on in life. You do something new, and you progress. And you go to the next level, you can say that the next version, and you continue like that, but you never get to the top. You always end up somewhat like a pretty decent pair of, you know, clean stairs, and you look down at the stairs and then you die, most likely. So I like to see like life has a wonderful journey to nowhere, and it's all about that particular journey. And that's why I always use that quality at a conscious experience, the beauty of what we cannot explain, the things that we you know, standing in front of the mirror when no one is watching, and you just smile. You know the perception of that smile, the very labendish kit, the liveliness. And coming back to the comparison to the zombie state, I'm writing on a concept called How to avoid the zombie apocalypse, and it manifests itself on, obviously, the one part related to reactionism and social media and how we go about in our daily life, just functioning and being dragged through life. You know, if you go to youtube today, it does not say this video could interest you. It just says next video. So it's kind of sort of taken over the control to just suck you through today, and that agency, taking that back, that to me, is about getting out of that zombie state of just functioning, you know, where the lights are on, but no one home to perceive them. And then there is also a new dimension to this that I write about, and this is get more in that technological. Visual realm, where we merge with technology, and there is a theoretically, at least chance that when we start to unpack the brain and we figure out how the neuron functions, and we take 10 neurons and 10,000 neurons and 10 million, 100 million, a billion, 50 billion, all the way up to 83, 86 billion neurons. Is there a spot or somewhere along the line where that conscious experience gets overwritten? So you and I could have the same conversation, but there would be no perceiver of this conversation, and that is something that, from a technological and philosophical standpoints, become the philosophical zombie state where we could create perfect ais that would be very much equipped to dance along the conversation that we have in a wonderful way that would have inspired someone to listen, but the listener has no perception of the listening in itself. It's just an ancient tapping in and this is kind of sort of the life that we are heading towards. That's why I think we ought to hold up that torch of being a human being, a mensch and having that, you know, that uncertainty, the aspect of the potentiality of the unknown, to have that, that we do not know. What does authenticity mean? What is what? Who am I? You know, the void that we fill between the two of us when we do that dance of the conversation, to have that very foundation of theoretically tapping into something new, something into the unknown, because as soon as we can grasp it and rebuild it, it becomes a part of physicalism and technology. And if we understand what it means to be a human being at the very core level of biology and chemistry and all that, then we can create it, and then we are robots. So I am romanticizing of that very notion of having the unknown and having the essence of progress. And I think that's a beautiful way to look at what it means to be a human being, that the essence is about, that about coming up with better explanation and experiencing progress.

Mick Spiers: 32:56

If we get some time later, I might come back to this, this merging of humanity and technology, and whether AI is we're going to allow it to replace our existence or augment our existence, I think there's some really interesting things there, and the reflections I'm taking about what you said around the progress was really interesting, and it's a good reminder for me and for everyone else that that progress is not linear, is even when you strive to be 1% better each day, there's going to be work days where you go backwards. It's also not vectorially linear, linear either, by the way. So you might think that you going on a certain path. The lessons that life are going to throw you might are multi factorial. They might be nothing about that linear path that you thought and to use a book analogy, the final pages of your life have a blank pages. They're not even an outline yet or a storyboard. It's an infinite possibility as to where your life might go if you pay attention to those learnings that come into your life and to reflect on the journey. It's not just about the journey, it's about who I became on the journey, and how I have wonderful conversations with people like you Anders. And I will finish this conversation today, and I'll go and think about it for the next few weeks, and it suddenly changes who I am and who I'm becoming, because I'm respecting the journey and I'm paying attention, which is where the awareness versus the zombie existence comes in.

Anders Indset: 34:27

No, I think it's beautiful. And to say that, you know, it's kind of like, if you look at that, that the development in the society today, we have so many, you know, people, human beings that are not tuned in, that are just functioning and reacting. And I think that's a very sad state we could. I mean, I love longevity and the optimization and enhancing our skills and so on and so forth, but I think it's pretty remarkable, you know, I don't need those, you know, blank pages all the way at the end, you know, lying in some lone hospital with 90 or 100 years old, you know, give me 10 more years between 30 and 50, you know, or 30 or 55, or 60, you know, he's like, it's pretty amazing, you know, to be alive and it's, it's pretty amazing to have that essence of having the privilege to learn something. And I think we forget that very often, you know, the even the small, simple fact of the likeliness of being born at all. If you look at I've heard different numbers, so I have to look this up. I've always used it the five, one to 500 billion chance of being born. And now I had a guy come up talk to me about the one to 400 trillion, whatever the number is. You know that one lucky thing that went all the way and became you, that's very unlikely, and then you're in a world where you're born into a world where you can influence your own reality, or at least influence how you react and how you see your perceived reality that's winning the lottery twice, and I think we forget that way too often.

Mick Spiers: 36:05

Oh, that's really interesting. We can't always control what happens around us. We can control how we respond, and then we can start architecting our own journey. Yeah, very good. Now I want to do a bit of a segue. Now I want to talk about the book, right? So the Viking code, the art and science of Norwegian success. And I would 100% agree with you that now I'm going to use some of those societal definitions of success, but for whatever reason, Norway is a very small country, but it punches way above its weight, very successful economically, very successful in sporting fields, in business fields. What is it about Norwegian success? What makes them different to the rest of us?

Anders Indset: 36:50

Yeah, it was very interesting to me as I started. I mean, I was writing a book about capitalism, because I think the very notion of capitalism is something that coming back to progress, you know, tackling poverty, climate and some of these meta challenges that we have. It's a part of the economy. And all of a sudden I realized that my home country, Norway, which, you know, as you said, we have resources. You know, we're one of those lucky countries that could just stick a straw into the ocean and suck out some of that oil that was much of an entrepreneurial achievement. But, you know, they managed to privatize and make it a state oil government that could fill up the pension fund and so on and so forth. So resources were there, but they never performed at the pinnacle of that level in those sports that was outside of the winter sports, because obviously, if you have snow, you are of advantage if you're going to go skiing. So I was very, you know, curious about how it came to be that we produced the best soccer players, the best, you know, tennis, golf. We have the two best beach volleyball players coming from Norway to try athletes. You know, we had all kinds of runners, and this all of a sudden, most of them young men that had a very strong relationship to their father or the mentor as a father figure. That, to me, was very interesting. So I wanted to understand, what was the magic behind that, what kind of training facilities. So what did they do different? So I called a coach, a trainer, that has worked with a lot of these Olympia athletes, and when we started to dig into it, I realized a lot of these training methods were the same that I applied, you know, 20 years ago. But what I found was that they were not only the best at what they do, but they were also the most liked they were, you know, loved by competitors and referees alike, and their team even they were doing individual sports. So I said, this is beautiful. This is like a story about uniting or maximizing, if you like individualism and collectivism. And that was basically how the book came to be. And then it was a very fast, right? Because it took on my, you know, kind of sort of personal journey. And then I went into how I can apply this wisdom to business philosophy to education and politics, making it a book about living a lively life, a vital life of progress. So it was a very like natural thing that unfolded when I realized that if I have an aspiration to grow as an individual, wouldn't I be better off if everyone around me would practice at a higher level in sports. That's obvious in a team sport, if everyone around you plays better, you could rise even more so I like that analogy, and thought about that also for businesses. And I think this is in today's world where we have almost an infinite free access to knowledge, the cultural aspect or building something, I think you mentioned this in the beginning, something greater than the sum of its part. To have that very notion comes a lot about putting in the effort for the collective and being there for, you know, uplifting collectivism. And that turns into some kind of modern reinforcement learning model, where you uplift the collective, and then you can grow even more. You lift the collective, and you have a continuous upward spiral of progress. So that was the story of the book. And this is how you know that journey came to be, obviously, as we talked about before, leading to that definition of success, not in the finitude of goals, but in those micro ambitions and experiencing progress, which is a lot of that those factors. That these athletes mention as criteria for their progress, higher level of input, details, small progress, incremental progress over time, and then having the outcome and then drawing those results along the way.

Mick Spiers: 40:55

Yeah, really good Anders, and I'm seeing a really consistent thread of our conversation that builds in here. So first of all, if I have a growth mindset and I redefine my success by how I'm growing and the person I'm becoming, but then when I surround myself with other people that have a growth mindset, they're going to help me on that growth and we're going to help each other. We're going to challenge each other, we're going to challenge each other to become better persons and better versions of ourselves, but in a way that is collective. Like you said, the co creation. We're co creating something different as we go, something bigger than the sum of the parts, but individually, we're growing faster because we're part of that collective. That's really interesting, and I like the way that you then translating that that can be in I see in the back of the book about applying it to the economy and then to politics, and what? What if our politics was a co creation? There's lots of Parliaments around the world where it's a sport, where they're just throwing pot shots at each other instead of really thinking about what is better for their nation, right? Imagine if we applied this concept in politics. The world would be a better place, and we'd all grow together. We'd create something bigger, but we'd also all instead of just fighting who won who lost, coming back to I'm right, you're wrong, we'd all be richer, and I don't mean richer financially. That might come as a secondary thing. We'd be all richer if we opened up to each other and had that collective mindset of growth. How does that sit with you?

Anders Indset: 42:35

Yeah, if we ask AI on the long term goal, we will be confronted with that in near future. You know, I am a politician. I'm, you know, in front of an election, or post an election, then again, front of a new election, I'm elected for in many of these democratic system for four years. So I'm just playing the finite game. There is no, you know, genuine necessity, if you like, for a person to to build something beyond the four years, because if you build something that has consequences in the short term, if you would say, okay, in order for us to strive in future, we have to take on those trolley by examples of philosophy, to take on some, you know, difficult decisions now, in order to have on higher net outcome in the future. And if that these are ethical questions, they become really difficult. You know, how can you make it a bit worse on the short term to make it much better in the long term? No politician would do that because they wouldn't get reelected. So this is a pair design a challenge in the model of how we organize human life. Do I think it will be like that forever? Not necessarily. I think we have some challenges. You could look at the recent election in the United States. You could look at how things are unfolding in Germany or in Europe. These are symptoms that manifest themselves all over the place. It's not about a common truth, a common ground to stand on. It's more about, you know, their reaction on the impulses and the emotions, and tapping into that emotional system of the people to have that thumbs up, thumbs down. What do you think? Who are you gonna elect? There is no opting out, no reflecting. It's just, you know, one or the other. You have to pick one now, and that, you know, finitude of decision game. I think that's a very, very bad position to be in. If human is going to human other are going to run, run the show of how you organize human life. So I think AI will play a big game in this, and when it comes to having a common ground to stand on, at least in theory, with the two of us, can put on some glasses right now, and everything that I say that is BS could go on a validation criteria on the inside lighting up red, and you'd be lighting up red. You could continue to talk the same stuff, and I could continue to lie or talk BS. But eventually, at least then, you know, we would realize that we are consciously talking crap, and that's, I think, the first step to go about. And if we would have the same for politicians, you know, we could, today, obviously, have an instant validation running on some foundation models like GBT in real time, and we would just debunk everything, every statement, and we could blend it out or mute it, or whatever, and stop the conversation, and, you know, force every politician to just stick to truth. That would be, in theory, a model that we could use today with technology. And we should remember that if there are hiccups or bumps with the AI model, I'm. Model of AI or technology never makes a mistake, mistake twice, because if there's a human in the loop that does the error correction, we realize that this is not right. We would correct it, and in a very short period of time, we then strive towards a net truth on a basis that at least on the foundational level, we would have to agree upon, and how that would out, would play out. That's a very interesting thing to look at. And in theory, it could be possible, even today.

Mick Spiers: 46:12

I love this real time fact checking. That would be amazing, and as that would make the world a richer place. But you said something interesting, that you said the human in the loop and the human stepping in. You're a philosopher, a business philosopher, you're a technologist. This is the one that does worry me a little bit with AI and with technology, is the lack of ethicists looking at technology. And I'm going to use social media as the real life example, and I put it to you Anders, that that when the forefathers of social media set out, they had virtuous intents. They didn't intend to create the world that we see today. They wanted to correct create a connected world, whereas what I see now is many people are disconnected. They're more connected to their phones than they are to other human beings. I'm sure they didn't sit in a boardroom and go right social media is going to create mental health problems for the youth of tomorrow. You know, isn't that great? I'm sure they didn't think that. And I'm sure maybe, I'm not sure on this one, the algorithmic bias that we see. So when someone is going through social media, and now I'm going to get to the fact checking at the moment, the fact checking isn't necessarily there. So if I, if I watch a a bunch of videos, let's use the US election. If I watch a bunch of videos that are let's get say pro Trump, and I pause on those videos for longer than I pause on, let's say some anti Trump videos. Now my feed is going to be full of pro Trump videos. So the algorithmic bias is not fact checking in fact it it could be extrapolating from non truths, but now, all of a sudden, if I see it in my social media screen, or my in my feed, 27,000 times, all of a sudden, I'm going to use one that happens right now, there's a lot of people out there putting out videos that the earth is flat, right? And if I pause on those videos, I'm going to get 27,000 videos that tell me that the earth is flat. I know it not to be true, but I start, I start questioning my own sanity, going, well, maybe it is flat. I don't think that for a second, by the way, but you know what I mean, the algorithmic bias is also not being fact checked. The human isn't in the loop as a bunch of leaders. How do we bring an ethical lens to what the technology makes possible?

Anders Indset: 48:41

Yeah, that's a very big question, and you see that now playing out. I mean, I think in a very simple, you know, term, it's about education, about, you know, parenting, upbringing, having a foundation in life, and changing our educational model that does not train people what to think, but how we have built a society of knowledge, the knowledge game we've lost. It's over to the AI. We should go back to the roots of philosophy and then the understanding, a society of reflection and understanding that strives towards progress. So that's in a more holistic sense. But I think, you know, how can we come to reason if the incentive models are fueled on the reaction? You know, we obviously communicate like this in real time with if all that we do is to try to gather likes and thumbs up and getting headlines and getting clicks, that's the optimization game, and that we build a society that communicates like that, and I agree with you, I don't necessarily think there was social media set out to be anti social, but the reward mechanisms are built on absolutisms and an instant reaction. And therefore, you know, if you have a deep reflection and you do not respond to a post. You know, there is no reward mechanism, and therefore the model itself turns out to be a very flawed model. And you know, it's the paradox of our time, is that there seems to be a very, very big disconnect that no one is addressing. I was just watching this morning an interview that President elect Trump did with NBC. I think it was and he was making a statement on the nastiness of the questions asked. And he said, as a then domination of his strength towards the interviewer. Said. You're very talented, but you ask nasty questions. I have seen you in the past that you have spoken to people like President Biden, and you asked other question where the journalist said, I've never interviewed President Biden, and then Trump reacts to that statement as I was using it as a metaphor, right? And just the whole fiction of how we communicate, just from that level of having a precedent that, you know, couple of sentences earlier, said, I would be the own one to own up to everything, that I would realize that I made a mistake, and then two minutes later, doing that example. And this is the world that we live in. And, and it's a very crazy, you know, it's a very absurd time to be alive when you experience those type of communicative skills that we bring to the table and, and mind, you know, it's always easy to wander off in some kind of simulation hypothesis created world, as you think this meme world, the craziness of having a dosh, like a dosh coin and a dosh government department, the Department of government efficiency from Elon Musk that relates to the dosh. It's just a world of memes and, you know, craziness. And it's hilarious how these things play out, but it's also very frightening when you think about the consequences and how we live. So it's a very strange time, and it's very interesting and to be alive at the moment, I think.

Mick Spiers: 52:12

It is a crazy time, and it is a little bit scary. I like what you said about not teaching people what to think, but how to think that's going to be the answer to the future is get back to critical thinking skills.

Anders Indset: 52:24

Learn how to learn. We need to learn, how to learn. And AI in theory, at least has the potential to force us, because when we understand how the brain functions, you know what we do when we say we think is not you know, we don't go behind the thinking in itself. We think about thoughts. We think about concepts that have already been processed. So brain functions on the neuron fires, and then we project it onto what we perceive as reality. We don't get behind the lightning of the fire of the arising of a thought. You know, the process of that, we have no idea what that is. So when we say thinking, it's actually thinking about thoughts, and that's how far we have come so far.

Mick Spiers: 53:09

Really unpacks a whole other topic around voluntary versus involuntary. And, yeah, that's a that's a big topic as well. And this has been a wonderful conversation. I feel like I could talk to you for no three days straight, and we still wouldn't have scratched the surface of topics that we could cover. We need to bring it to a close now so. So thank you so much for your time. Today, I'm going to take you to our four final questions that we ask all of I guess. So, what's the one thing you know now and as inset that you wish you knew when you're 20?

Anders Indset: 53:42

Yeah. Mick, I think, you know, having all the understanding and the experiences back then wouldn't be a part of the journey. Would it? That would be again, like looking for an optimization. But I think what I've realized over the years is the concept of striving towards something has become less important. As I said before, I consider myself highly successful today, to myself because I am, you know, privileged to get up, to learn, and that essence of understanding, the dynamism of life, the progress that I would have wished for at a much earlier stage, because I would state, because I would have let go, and I would not have been caught and held hostage in my self evident truth and my ego to that extent. So I think that would be the one thing that I, you know, wish I'd had even earlier in my life.

Mick Spiers: 54:34

That's really good. And as I like your answer on both levels, I like your answer, and then I like the fact that you stopped and thought about it? Well, I learned that at the right time like so that had to come in time. Maybe I didn't need to know that when I was 20, but I wish I did. That's really cool. All right, as an author, yourself a four Times best selling author, what's your favorite book?

Anders Indset: 54:55

Yeah, I get that a lot as a question, and I always consider myself a thinker in my time. So I think about things, and I find, you know, relationship to thoughts and reflections of the past, and it's a beauty, because it takes you into that, you know, understanding the nuance of your understanding first as a comparison to having the academia or the book basis when going out and seeking an answer. But one thing that I played with a lot recently, and that I'm working on in a forthcoming book, is a new kind of existentialism, the state of being undead, where I play with that philosophical zombie, and I very much liked the myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. I. The existentialist philosophers from 20th century, where, you know, Sisyphus is deemed to roll a rock up the hill only to see it roll back on the other side for eternity. And during that endeavor, rolling that rock up the hill and then going back and going back up, Sisyphus starts to discover those small things in life, or in that rock, has it, a rock changes in the very small little nuances of the rock. So he experienced that little nuance of the progress of life itself. And Albert Camus writes at the end of the book, you must consider Sisyphus a happy man. And I play with that because today I see that very challenge of rolling that big rock up the hill is something we do with superpowers. So we are light footed, kicking the rock up the hill while we are sucked into some kind of screen or Instagram or laptop. So we are being in that state of being undead. So the myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus led me to reflect on existentialism in the 21st century and to play with the state of being undead. So it has been a very monumental book for me.

Mick Spiers: 56:51

Oh, very good. I don't know that one, so that's going to be one that I research and have a look at myself. What's your favorite quote?

Anders Indset: 56:58

Well, I probably pick one again, from philosophy, and you mentioned in the beginning the singularity paradox, my forthcoming book with my co author, Florian neukert, a quantum physicist friend of mine, where we we call it sci fi, pH I science philosophy, and we look at technology and how it evolves, and basically how we think We need to create some kind of artificial human intelligence in order to merge with technology and with a single narrative paradox. We take on various paradoxes. And there was a quote from another existentialist philosopher, certain Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher who famously wrote about the paradox. And he wrote that a thinker without a paradox is like a lover without passion a faulty mediocracy. So I like that quote because it symbolizes the need for paradoxes. If there aren't paradoxes, then you know there is nothing to play with. And I very much resonate with the homeostasis as a static system being a dead system. So I think that also has a lot to do with liveliness.

Mick Spiers: 58:08

Yeah, really good. Very much comes through in the way you see the world and what you've described to us today. Anders, thank you so much. Final question, how do people find you? If people are enthralled by what we've been discussing today. They want to read your books, or they just want to have a conversation with you. How do people find you?

Anders Indset: 58:25

Mick, first of all, thank you for having me on. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I'm on andersindset.com is my website, The Singularity Paradox the forth coming book is undersingularityparadox.com, my most recent book, The Viking code, is under Viking Mine is code.com or wherever you can buy books. And I'm also posting occasionally on LinkedIn. So for everyone interested, feel free to link up on on LinkedIn, but on my website andres.com there are a lot of resources, and we'll be adding more in the months to come.

Mick Spiers: 58:58

Absolutely wonderful. And it's thank you for sharing your gift of your time, your wisdom, your insights today, you really made us stop and reflect and rethink some things that maybe we are going around in a zombie world and not paying attention to. Thank you for your time and for what you shared with us today.

Anders Indset: 59:18

Thank you, sir. Thank you so much, Mick for having me on.

Mick Spiers: 59:22

What a fascinating conversation, Anders Indset has given us so much to reflect on, from the importance of philosophical thinking in business to the role of technology and culture in shaping leadership. We've explored how embracing uncertainty, staying true to our values and applying ancient wisdom can empower us as leaders to create lasting success in today's rapidly evolving world. In the next episode, it will be a solo cast where I'll be sharing my own reflections on what I took from this amazing conversation with Anders, and what it means in terms of ethical management and ethical leadership in business today. Thank you for joining us on the leadership project. If you've been getting great value from our content, we would love it. If you would subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you video podcasts, weekly curated videos and our live stream show. 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.