00:00:00:06 - 00:00:22:19
Daniel Franco
Hey everyone. Welcome back. My name is Daniel Franco, managing director of Synergy IQ and host of the Creating Synergy podcast. And today on this show, we have Louka Parry, CEO and founder of The Learning Future. Louka is a renowned expert in the field of education and has dedicated his career to improving the way we learn and grow.

00:00:23:03 - 00:00:50:04
Daniel Franco
Louka opens the show with an acknowledgment of country in the Pitjantjatjara language, a language that he learned after spending many years in Central Australia. Louka is a former teacher who became a school principal at just the age of 27 years old and worked globally to support thousands of educators and leaders to increase their positive impact. He speaks five languages and has visited over 80 countries and brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to this conversation.

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Daniel Franco
He also has amazing. TEDx talk titled Words Can Change the World How Language Deepens Connection, which has had over 33,000 views. In this episode, Louka and I discuss the powerful role of language in shaping and deepening our connections with others, and the transformative impact that learning a new language can have on an individual, and how it can help us to better understand and connect with people from different cultures and backgrounds.

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Daniel Franco
We also discussed the concept and the importance of being a global citizen and what great communication does in building bridges and creating more connected and compassionate community.

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Daniel Franco
Welcome back to the Creating Synergy podcast today on the show. I've been really looking forward to this and I'm going to start off a little bit different. We've got Louka Perry on the show. Welcome.

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Louka Parry
Thank you so much. Great to be here.

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Daniel Franco
I'm a big fan of your TEDx talk. It's got a lot of followers, kudos. Anyone that wants to check it out.

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Louka Parry
Years ago now.

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Daniel Franco
But yeah, it's just I think it's this hits the mark on so many different things. So go check that out and we'll talk about a lot of those topics today. But in that you started off talking, now you talk five different languages, or thereabouts, one of them being you can speak in Aboriginal language because you spent some time in Central Australia.

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Daniel Franco
Can you do an acknowledgment of the country for us?

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Louka Parry
Oh, wow. Well, I can acknowledge.

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You know.

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Louka Parry
I mean, we're in Ghana dialect, so, you know, um, and I should have a Ghana welcome because I'm actually I'd love to learn Ghana, It's where I grew up

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Daniel Franco
Okay, so there's.

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No so yeah.

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Louka Parry
So you know Gani out the economy and I got to jump into it I want to pay my respects to the Ghana.

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Yeah.

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Louka Parry
You know custodians of the land that we meet on here today. But I spent a long time in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara land. And so the languages that I've been really, I think, privileged to be taught by Anangu by elders and by educators, uh, is Pitjantjatjara and the minority dialect Yankunytjatjara So yeah.

00:03:09:03 - 00:03:10:22
Daniel Franco
So whereabouts in Central Australia.

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Louka Parry
In the northwest corner of South Australia, on the border of the Northern Territory, Western Australia

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Louka Parry
so you know that's that's some of the Pitjantjatjara that are.

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Explaining to me what I was.

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Louka Parry
Just saying. You know, I feel very lucky to have been taught this language and this is what it sounds like. I spent five years in that part of South Australia. It's where I went out as a brand new, you know, squeaky clean teacher in my first kind of full time teaching role. And it was a it had a profound impact, not just on my linguistic interests, but but also on how I conceive of learning systems, how I conceive of wellbeing, how I conceive of leadership and strategy, and even more profound concepts around what does it mean to be human?

00:04:07:16 - 00:04:30:17
Louka Parry
What's what matters most, what success? What can we learn from the oldest continuing culture in the world? Uh, what kind of systems can we understand around literally living in a sustainable, regenerative way? And I think these are many principles that our Cartesian, Newtonian kind of current market economy is kind of forgotten about. And so we're having we're seeing, I think, the evolution of the business world appropriately.

00:04:31:20 - 00:04:42:11
Louka Parry
But again, if we return to the holistic indigenous worldviews, they've there's quite a lot of wisdom there I think that we can pay attention to and I've been doing my best as a non-Aboriginal person, as a Greek Welsh hybrid as I like to reflect.

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Right.

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Louka Parry
Um, you know, to do my part as an Australian and to realize actually it's an incredible strength that we have here and there's still more reckoning and reconciliation and recognition to come. But you know, if we get this right, we can become such a beautiful, multicultural, dynamic, holistic nation and that can go from the local all the way up to the national level.

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Daniel Franco
You talked about learnings from the elders and from the history, and you said if we can learn that one of the what about what is that? What is that? What are you talking about? When you said we can learn some of the the customs and the, you know, the learnings and experiences over time?

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Well, I would.

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Louka Parry
Point to some of the Indigenous theorists, educators, wisdom holders in this space. You know, I was lucky to learn directly from elders in the community when I was working as an educator and then subsequently the school leader for a time, you know, there are some wonderful people talking about this trust in younger, poorer, you know, wrote a great book called Sand Talk Why Indigenous Thinking Can Change the World, Maybe Save the World.

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Louka Parry
It might even be.

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The subtitles Felicity.

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Louka Parry
And then this, you know, phenomenal colleagues that we can we can see and learn from. Stan Grant, I think, puts forward such a powerful vision of what Australia could be if we have the courage to kind of look at where we are and what's actually happened in terms of where we've come from. And so this idea of like remembering the parts of who we are to come up with, the kind of more human centered model is at the core of my work and I wouldn't be surprised it's core of your work.

00:06:11:13 - 00:06:27:09
Louka Parry
You know, the idea of SYNERGIZE and how do you bring together all these different aspects, the IQ, the IQ, the IQ, all those different knowledge sets, all these different skill sets, and really critically the different identities that we also hold the intersectionality because it's, you know, it's who we are, what we can do and what we know in that order of importance, I would suggest.

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Louka Parry
And the challenge, of course, in my work is that both in the workplace, in terms of organizational culture and also in terms of the way we've designed and I say we, you know, the way schooling systems were designed some 150 years ago is that we placed all the attention on this obsession around the cognitive what you know, what do you know?

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Louka Parry
Tell me the question. But really, it's actually there are better questions that I think a lot of wonderful schools already operating on. It's not just invention and innovation. It's actually remembering, in my view, and that's both in the metaphorical and the literal sense. How do you bring how you remember things? Right? So what's the point of being super successful?

00:07:05:01 - 00:07:22:22
Louka Parry
And we can have this conversation around success, right? Yeah, super successful. And you look at a billionaire and they're on their fourth marriage, they're estranged from the children. They're on a whole bunch of, you know, anti-depression Right. Because, you know, that's not success. That's one narrow metric. And so how do we expand that? How socially connected do you feel?

00:07:23:03 - 00:07:38:16
Louka Parry
Can you emotionally regulate? Do you feel called to a purpose higher than the one that you might think as an individual, you know, the transcendent piece and that that can resonate for anyone that has a faith based tradition. But even if you don't as an agnostic or atheist, like where do you derive your purpose? What's your life for?

00:07:38:17 - 00:07:46:20
Louka Parry
Like all these questions is what we grappled with as a team of educators working in that particular place. And so that was my entry into the workforce.

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Yeah, well, and.

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Louka Parry
So it was quite different from the joy. I say it's like the I almost took a job 15 minutes down the road from I grew up in southern Adelaide and Westbourne Park. Right represent and I took 115 hours down the road right. And you know it's two, two turns to turn to get to Port Augusta turn right.

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Yep.

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Louka Parry
And then you go past mile and you turn left.

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Yeah. And that's kind of what's the journey of a 59.

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Louka Parry
But so for me, a really transformative, particularly as a, as a white man, I understood for the first time the concept of whiteness, you know, which again, for so many of us, we don't understand. Actually, we have so many, as.

00:08:24:13 - 00:08:45:00
Daniel Franco
I've heard you say this, I want to hear you talk about the concept of whiteness, because you're you were, you know, fish out of water and in a different world in that you you were almost you were part of the minority. When you go into Central Australia, what did what did you feel in that space? What do you I mean, what does the concept of whiteness mean to you and what you learn in that time?

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Louka Parry
Well, it's it's such a great question. I would say I want to respond with my favorite quote, one of my favorite quotes about I'm a real quiet.

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Kind of guy. I think this is going to be there's a lot coming. I apologize.

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Louka Parry
But it's like how young Ronnie says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And this is the whole piece is like what? What's the unknown unknowns in our lives? What are our blind spots? What don't we realize? And I think I grew up, you know, middle class, family, psychiatrist, father, educator, mother, both born overseas.

00:09:19:20 - 00:09:28:23
Louka Parry
At first my family were born in Australia, so I had this real sense around my connection to Australia. But I remember traveling around the world as an 18 year old who lived in Dublin. That was a real rite of passage for me as a.

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Young man.

00:09:29:19 - 00:09:49:00
Louka Parry
Playing Gaelic football and then backpacking across the continent. I'm saying I'm an Aussie, I'm an Aussie. And I realized at that point that I hadn't I hadn't really had an education around the First Nations history, like the true history of Australia, the broad history of Australia that has multiple perspectives, many of which are still being played out, you know, in.

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Public discourse now, right, in the media and and in.

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Louka Parry
Universities and beyond. So there's something incredibly powerful, I think, when we remove ourselves from a situation where we are perhaps part of a dominant culture or we are certainly part of a dominant race, um, or religion or creed, and we put ourselves into a space where, oh, well, actually I'm different. I stand out. It's such a powerful experience for, for me as a young man that, you know, I'm Greek and Welsh, right?

00:10:17:02 - 00:10:20:03

But I pay, you know, I've curly hair. That's fine. That's the face there.

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Louka Parry
But, um, so realizing I'm the only white guy on the football team, for example. And of course, the.

00:10:25:10 - 00:10:27:04
Daniel Franco
Photo of you in the football team.

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Oh, well, it's.

00:10:28:11 - 00:10:34:19
Louka Parry
Really profound for me, because I'm not all of a sudden, the whole opposition team, you know, pockets of magpies in particular, you know, they're.

00:10:34:21 - 00:10:37:04

Always a formidable opposition, you know.

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Louka Parry
But we're playing for memory players. I know I'm being targeted because I stand out. And so I was like, Get the white guy.

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Yeah.

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Louka Parry
And that that's like a just a glimpse for me as someone that comes from a privileged background in many respects in terms of intersectionality to go, Oh, wow, this is a glimpse into what it might feel like to be a minority in another space and so having that experience transformed, I think my ability to take perspective, to be empathetic and also my own worldview, it's like realizing that I went in is like, oh, this is what it is.

00:11:07:12 - 00:11:30:15
Louka Parry
No, it's not. That's just that's the construct that you're operating with and that's the culture scape. And so in my own kind of, I would say consciousness development, to be honest, or Robert Keegan's models out of Harvard, the adult development like how do we be deliberately developmental? I'm thinking, Oh wow. Okay. So I thought that this was the way it was or it is, but actually that's just because I'm my vantage point is here.

00:11:31:01 - 00:11:46:22
Louka Parry
So one and then one other way that I'll put this is I used to say I'm going to I work in the middle of nowhere and then and all the time that's out the back is out in the outback. In the outback. It's like, you know, 15 hours down there. That's such a metro centric perspective.

00:11:47:04 - 00:11:47:14

Of course it.

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Louka Parry
Is. And so for people that have had thousands of generations of continuous cultivation and of the land, their connection to country, that's the middle of everything. And so Hong Kong is the middle of the middle of everything. Of course it is. And so, again, I was so challenged, not just in trying to.

00:12:06:05 - 00:12:06:21

Be a good.

00:12:06:21 - 00:12:31:04
Louka Parry
Educator and inspire young people and, you know, interact with the community and learn the local languages. But that that is my best answer to your your question around whiteness. It's like any other aspect. Are you conscious of that? Are you conscious of who you are fully all the different aspects that make you who you are, because when you are, the more conscious you are, in my view, the more able you are to act deliberately in ways that uplift, that humanize.

00:12:31:11 - 00:12:49:03
Louka Parry
You don't need to project your blind spots onto others. And that, I think, makes a great leader, makes a great CEO, makes a great school principal, by the way, as well, I hope. And I'm you know, that was a really big couple of years in my life as well, stepping to that role, quite young. So, yeah, I think it's a journey for all of us, right?

00:12:50:00 - 00:12:58:01
Daniel Franco
So you're the minority when you're in in Central Australia. What's the what's the suburb is it like that.

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Louka Parry
Could minimally.

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Daniel Franco
Mean.

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Louka Parry
Okay, so it's a community.

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Community.

00:13:01:03 - 00:13:07:09
Louka Parry
One of mine across the the animal. Yeah. Pinjarra language I like. Um, yeah.

00:13:07:17 - 00:13:34:04
Daniel Franco
And I was skipping a few years but I want to get the learning here and specifically of the whiteness pace and those learnings that you, that you took away. You come back to metropolitan Adelaide or South Australia and and do you, do you behave differently, do you have a different vantage point looking now? Do you walk down the street holding yourself differently?

00:13:34:04 - 00:13:44:11
Daniel Franco
Is there anything that you took coming back? Well, that you kept when you came back, that you then you acted in a different way. Didn't you understand what I'm. Yeah, yeah.

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Louka Parry
Yeah, of course I'm. I can talk to the changes I feel I've I've undergone, but I can't run the Abby experiment.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. Um.

00:13:53:16 - 00:14:27:24
Louka Parry
But yeah, I mean, I would say I'm just, I was so much more open minded. I would say even I'd become humbled a little by my experiences there, not least of all in terms of like how hard life can be for some people and how intergenerational trauma can manifest, and what the responsibility of an organization or an institution like a school might be, you know, because at its best, a school in any community in the world is representative of of the best parts of that community, the collective dream, the collective vision.

00:14:28:11 - 00:14:47:22
Louka Parry
And it's worse. It's just perpetrating the same kind of outdated systems and models and structures and power dynamics that mean a lot of young people leave school saying, I don't I didn't like school. In fact, I don't like parts of myself. And I know what I'm not good at. I mean, you know, I mean, that's and that's, I think the legacy model that we've inherited.

00:14:48:17 - 00:15:12:00
Louka Parry
And so it's our responsibility to do something about that. And this incredible work happening nationally and internationally to do that. So I guess that's the first thing. I'm more open minded, uh, in terms of taking perspective. I think languages as well for anyone that speaks multiple languages. And I learned all of mine as an adult, by the way, I was monolingual at 18 and it took for me, you know, for a couple of moments overseas in Europe, where you've got people speaking for languages, you know, code switching seamlessly.

00:15:12:00 - 00:15:35:04
Louka Parry
And I think they probably should have paid more attention to this, you know, to be, you know, global citizenship really is a key focus of education systems. And frankly, nation states as well. It has to be how do we interact in this globally connected world that's increasingly connected? Uh, so I think that piece is what comes to me, you know, open mindedness, ability to take perspective, but also to kind of know who I am.

00:15:35:09 - 00:15:54:06
Louka Parry
I mean, in linguistics we call this contrast and compare in language acquisition. So, you know, when you you have your own language, what you do is you take a second language and you're contrasting and comparing against the linguistic data that you already have. And, um, and that's been how I've learned so many subsequent languages, always kind of, I learned more about English by learning Spanish in modern Greek.

00:15:54:21 - 00:15:57:24

For example, you know, I mean, this is a this is going.

00:15:57:24 - 00:16:10:04
Daniel Franco
To be one of the questions that I have. I mean, I, I can't even speak English properly or like if you think about the, the slang that I would use and the.

00:16:10:19 - 00:16:10:23

The.

00:16:10:23 - 00:16:24:18
Daniel Franco
Lack of vocabulary that I might have, you know, I work really hard on my vocabulary, but I'm still nowhere near where I need to be and not to the level that you are. Why am I concentrating on other languages when I can't even get the one I'm speaking right?

00:16:25:11 - 00:16:29:14
Louka Parry
Well, I mean, it's because because it's a false dichotomy.

00:16:29:22 - 00:16:30:04

Okay.

00:16:30:08 - 00:16:54:03
Louka Parry
By learning another language, your own grasp of your own language will increase, will improve, because you understand why concepts are the way they are, why noun phrases, why structures occur in a particular way. Prepositions in English are post positions in other languages, and so all of a sudden you start to pay more attention to at to with bi from because it determines the relationships between ideas.

00:16:54:03 - 00:17:00:07
Louka Parry
And so you start to realize, I mean, I and to be honest and you why why I think I care about this if I go and I've done all this in a work.

00:17:00:07 - 00:17:00:23

To be honest with you.

00:17:01:08 - 00:17:12:05
Louka Parry
Why I care about this so much, I feel, is for two reasons. Number one, when I was a young child, when I was a young boy in primary school, I was terrible at English. I remember I think I missed out on get my pen license, you know.

00:17:12:10 - 00:17:13:17

And for me you're like, Oh.

00:17:14:04 - 00:17:16:20
Louka Parry
So what does it matter? But you know, for a small.

00:17:16:20 - 00:17:17:13

Kid, that's.

00:17:17:21 - 00:17:18:12
Louka Parry
Really significant.

00:17:18:12 - 00:17:19:11
Daniel Franco
Back on my pen lesson.

00:17:19:12 - 00:17:21:18

I know. Well, I'm like, I didn't even get my back.

00:17:21:18 - 00:17:30:13
Louka Parry
I remember so and I had a lisp as well. So I went to a speech path as well as as a young kid. And I remember practicing seven slippers. Snakes slither slowly southwards.

00:17:31:00 - 00:17:32:03

You know that over and over.

00:17:32:03 - 00:17:56:11
Louka Parry
Again as just part of my memory. So I had this idea that I wasn't good at language. And then also when my when I was 16, my pupil, my great grandfather died of a heart attack suddenly. And I realized because he had emigrated here, I think in his forties. And so his English wasn't great and I was my Greek was non existent outside of being able to pronounce Luca, even though I was not even pronouncing that.

00:17:56:11 - 00:17:58:03

Correctly, you know.

00:17:58:21 - 00:18:19:13
Louka Parry
So those two things happened and I think subsequently I've kind of over, maybe over indexed towards language like I've done a master's in Applied Linguistics. I'm just obsessed about learning new linguistic data because for me, languages are an incredible way to take perspective, to empathize, to step into the shoes of another human being and see from the vantage point.

00:18:21:08 - 00:18:29:11
Louka Parry
It's the primary technology that we use to to get ideas across, to even understand our world. Um, so, yeah, that's kind of why I'm so passionate.

00:18:30:23 - 00:18:54:22
Daniel Franco
I'm going to go like 5000 course. The, um, the uberpool when he passed away, that was a profound moment. And you've said that that's a turning point, which is, you know, taking you down the career path that you have. I think one of my I'm not a person that leaves in regret too much. But one thing that I wish I had done was learn how to speak proper Italian.

00:18:54:22 - 00:19:10:06
Daniel Franco
My family's Italian, they all immigrated here back in the 5060s, and I never got the opportunity to sit down and have an in-depth conversation with my grandparents in all four of them.

00:19:10:11 - 00:19:11:04
Louka Parry
No, no, no, no.

00:19:11:04 - 00:19:34:02
Daniel Franco
Yeah. And I still to this day, like sort of wish because, you know, synergy, I hear the work we do we work, you know, in complex change in that space. But it's really always focused on core human behavior. Right. And that's, you know, when we work in change, we our specialties, the human behavior aspect of the change, not the technology, not anything else.

00:19:34:17 - 00:20:01:11
Daniel Franco
And so now I've become obsessed with human behavior. And and so I always wish that I was able to create a different view of my grandparents based on who they were as individuals and their behaviors, as opposed to what I saw on the surface level. So I really do understand that turning point. And for me, I was a bit I was a lot younger when my grandparents passed away.

00:20:01:11 - 00:20:25:01
Daniel Franco
So I didn't I missed out on that opportunity. But I really want to talk about I mean, something you just said now as well was language is, you know, is from an empathic point of view. And you can really connect and learn from other people. When you when you talk about language of I'm quoting, you've said language is super power.

00:20:25:05 - 00:20:44:24
Daniel Franco
It allows us to communicate and connect in some of the videos and YouTube stuff that you've got going on. You've said that when you talk about language, are you talking about all that involved with language like behavior, tonality? Is that what you're referring to or just the language itself, the words itself?

00:20:44:24 - 00:20:52:04
Louka Parry
No, I'm referring to what underpins that. I would say I mean, and to be honest, I often now say learning is our superpower.

00:20:52:04 - 00:20:52:12

Yeah.

00:20:52:20 - 00:21:00:21
Louka Parry
Because it's our because it's through learning and the curiosity of learning, which is built into our neural architecture. It's like we are born to learn.

00:21:00:21 - 00:21:01:11

Yeah, we.

00:21:01:11 - 00:21:02:05
Louka Parry
Are born learners.

00:21:02:09 - 00:21:17:07
Daniel Franco
Also this saying if you what is what is what happens to which a tree when it stops growing, sometimes it starts dying right and lucky and so that's yeah I think it's a 100% true learning and growth is it's core to what we do.

00:21:17:08 - 00:21:21:11
Louka Parry
Absolutely. I mean, and I think what's really important is that the language that.

00:21:21:11 - 00:21:22:15

We use, it's a kind of.

00:21:23:01 - 00:21:47:11
Louka Parry
So on the one hand, you know, we often conflate learning education and schooling. And learning to me is an intrinsic human trait like and so the superpowers. How do we tap into that deep curiosity that we all have as children, sadly, for some of us becomes, you know, dampened or doused by the kind of rigid systems in which we operate, be they workplaces, will be they school systems.

00:21:47:11 - 00:22:05:15
Louka Parry
Right. So how do we kind of nurture and cultivate and almost protect that ability to learn? And then, of course, the manual and this is Alvin Toffler, you know, the illiterate of the 21st century aren't those that can't read and write. It's those that weren't unable to learn, unlearn and relearn. Mhm. And I tell you what, I have been, you know, working in language and literacy.

00:22:05:21 - 00:22:21:05
Louka Parry
Yeah. It helps if you can read or write. In fact it's critical because only then can you be truly able to didactic and become a full self learner. But those are the floor, not the ceiling, as the saying goes, you know, so it's kind of the capabilities work is what I'm really interested in. How do you continually evolve?

00:22:21:05 - 00:22:33:20
Louka Parry
How do you let go allows you to die so that something else can be born? Like that idea of reinvention, especially in the kind of future of work conversation that we're all having, you know, there's no longer a career ladder. And so you can look at your career. I can look at mine.

00:22:33:20 - 00:22:35:07

If I can call it a career. I don't know.

00:22:35:18 - 00:22:58:14
Louka Parry
It's now career web. And particularly if you're a zolani, you know, coming out into the workforce, Gen Alpha's, you know, when they finish school and whatever it is nine or ten years time, you know, they, they're going to enter a very different place where actually their capacity to learn is the superpower. And of course, how do you learn what is through communication is through understanding the relationships between concepts and constructs.

00:22:58:18 - 00:23:06:09
Louka Parry
And that's a language piece in my view. If you can't communicate, you can't lead. And it's one of the key pillars for leadership.

00:23:06:09 - 00:23:12:01
Daniel Franco
Do you think so? Going back when we early in this podcast. Yeah, 10 minutes.

00:23:12:01 - 00:23:13:11

Ago you said.

00:23:15:15 - 00:23:43:09
Daniel Franco
You said you said we can learn from the elders past and present. Right. And we learn from their way of living. And you said it's who we are, what we do, and what we know. Do you think if we approach everything and then use, you know, the word curiosity and I believe, you know, a superpower of mine is the ability to be curious, unlearn and relearn sort of thing.

00:23:43:10 - 00:23:44:21
Daniel Franco
I absolutely love that.

00:23:44:23 - 00:23:45:05

Yeah.

00:23:46:13 - 00:24:10:23
Daniel Franco
Do you think that learning from who we are, is that the foundation that we should all start on first before we go to learn anything else? Does that give you a strong base? I mean, because the schooling system right now goes straight to what we know in reception year one, year two early in their schooling careers. Is it too early to learn about who we are?

00:24:10:23 - 00:24:12:24
Daniel Franco
Like, what does that look like for you?

00:24:14:02 - 00:24:34:11
Louka Parry
I, I like so I've done a lot of work in design and I don't mean graphic design, I mean kind of systems design and learning design and design, thinking through staff and a whole range of other work. So I'm really interested in the questions we ask and what the starting point is. And you're quite right, the current kind of, I want to say legacy schooling systems, right?

00:24:34:21 - 00:24:39:15
Louka Parry
Because we've inherited them like we actually didn't design them. Yeah. They've we've kind of soft.

00:24:39:21 - 00:24:40:17

Had been given to us.

00:24:40:23 - 00:24:59:04
Louka Parry
Oh absolutely. Henry for I mean yeah the committee of ten there's a whole whole bunch of how it's been standardized and you know, it was standardized to boot to re culture an entire generation for the industrial revolution, one for the second industrial. And and now of course, it's no longer fit for purpose. It's kind of palliative in some ways.

00:24:59:07 - 00:25:23:05
Louka Parry
Um, and so what we're seeing is the emergence of new systems, new practices that are really kind of being born as part of that change. So that, that piece on, on identity is something that is kind of when we think about what's true across the course of our lives, it's who we are, what we know needs to change, and even our skill sets need to adapt.

00:25:23:05 - 00:25:39:12
Louka Parry
So if we're too attached to our knowledge, then, uh, that's going to places in a rigid position. Uh, people talk about the knowledge economy. I don't think we're in the knowledge economy at all anymore. I think we're in a creation economy. It's actually what you do with what you know. If you, you know, Tony Wagner's work out of Harvard, right?

00:25:39:17 - 00:25:52:11
Louka Parry
It's not what you know, it's what you do with what you know. And I just add another layer to that. I say, yes, it's what you know and it's what you do with what you know. But actually it's who you are as you do things with what you know. And that deeper level is, of course, the most important level.

00:25:52:11 - 00:26:09:03
Louka Parry
It's How do I feel about myself. This is why I'm such a proponent for social and emotional skills, or sometimes called problematically soft skills. But the human skills, it's actually how do I communicate? How do I have a relationship with myself, with others? How do I make ethical decisions? I mean, that kind of that's the foundation upon which.

00:26:09:03 - 00:26:29:01
Louka Parry
A skill set. What technical skill? Yeah, no worries. Oh, I'll take the LinkedIn course, I'll do a micro credential, I'll go through it or whatever. I go to Harvard, you know, I do a micro course, a fellowship or a macro degree if I need to, you know, although probably less, increasingly less, because looking at the way the kind of the future of higher education is transforming so that that piece on who we are, I think is the great question.

00:26:29:01 - 00:26:59:04
Louka Parry
And I think, Daniel, what we struggle to do is get beyond small talk. We start with the polite and then we listen to respond and some great work, particularly out of MIT from auto in theory, which you might know of, but the four levels of listening. So, you know, it's just factual listening. It's like, oh, just, you know, that I would want to go all the way to empathic listening or do we want to get to generative listening is actually where we're holding space to allow the emergence of a new idea, a new process, a new product, new service and new possibility.

00:26:59:16 - 00:27:02:17
Louka Parry
And so often we're just like, I'm. I'm waiting for you to finish.

00:27:03:04 - 00:27:05:23

Yeah. So I could speak. Yeah, yeah. Because not listening.

00:27:05:23 - 00:27:06:06
Louka Parry
Anymore.

00:27:06:06 - 00:27:07:11

So even Simon.

00:27:07:11 - 00:27:09:19
Daniel Franco
Garfunkel said it in their song. There's, there's a line.

00:27:09:19 - 00:27:13:12

In one of the sounds of it's like, Yeah, that's how the song is, right? People say a good track.

00:27:13:21 - 00:27:22:18
Daniel Franco
It's like, it's something that I always think about and it's people speaking, people talking without speaking, and then it's people listening without hearing. Right. And that's the. Oh, that's.

00:27:22:18 - 00:27:23:16
Louka Parry
You describing Twitter, by.

00:27:23:16 - 00:27:24:18

The way. Yeah.

00:27:24:23 - 00:27:45:17
Louka Parry
Everybody yelling no. Electric. Yeah. And so this is again, I think just the modes of communication in the modern world have become so much about broadcast and much less about the holding of space, which is why, again, if we come back to let's think how how we've done this in the past before we got so busy that we, you know, our calendars are like rocks completely solid.

00:27:46:00 - 00:28:05:01
Louka Parry
It's yeah, just how do we sit in circle, how we stand around a whiteboard and go, all right, what's possible here? No, not necessarily. What's the problem, but what's the possibility? And this is some of Charlie Leadbeater's work. He's a phenomenal systems thinker, an educator from whom I've learned a lot. It's you know, it's like, how do we move from problem to possibility?

00:28:05:01 - 00:28:33:02
Louka Parry
And as an aspiring education futurist in particular, I really like visiting the future, right? Return to the present and then powerfully develop intentional action, a.k.a a strategy to try to create your preferred future. But to do that properly, we have to think possibility, not just problem and fix it. And I think this manifests across government. It manifests across big corporates now because it's slower but more powerful to really listen well.

00:28:33:02 - 00:28:40:21
Daniel Franco
Start a podcast if you want to get busy. I'm telling you right now when I have, I think I actually even remember I'm a very self-reflective person and.

00:28:41:09 - 00:28:42:07

I see that.

00:28:42:11 - 00:29:08:04
Daniel Franco
I, I remember so vividly in my mind thinking I need to get better at listening. I have to speak. I cut people off, you know, and and it's not because it's not because I was ever I thought I was ever rude in the sense that I don't care about what you're saying, therefore I'm not going to listen. It's the way my brain worked.

00:29:08:04 - 00:29:29:05
Daniel Franco
I could figure out what you're saying. Therefore I'm happy. Let's just now move on right. And I've raised, like, through the idea of the podcast, you know, even, you know, you become a leader in a business and you have to become a better listener. You have to. Otherwise, you know, the alternative is not is not the right option.

00:29:29:05 - 00:29:50:00
Daniel Franco
We staff engagement all the above right. But the idea of where I was before and this is just a learning that I've I've got got out of these is when I could read the play and I could already figure out what they were going to say. I was like, okay, how do we quicken this up? I actually wasn't giving space to the person.

00:29:50:10 - 00:30:17:22
Daniel Franco
I wasn't allowing them to play in their mind what they were calibrating as they were speaking. Right. Because we often and you lose the power of thought, you lose the power of iteration. So holding the space is what you said before. Giving the person the opportunity to speak is so powerful because there's some things in our people off every now and again in the podcast, because I really just want to talk about that point because I like it.

00:30:18:12 - 00:30:24:03
Daniel Franco
But yeah, there is a real power in letting someone hold, holding the space like you are doing now.

00:30:25:17 - 00:30:29:18

You've got any questions right then? I just I.

00:30:29:18 - 00:30:47:02
Louka Parry
Think that's very powerful, even just a just a pause there for a moment like that. That is an enormous, I think, piece that is missing from the way we've designed our human systems, workplaces, schools, higher education in lots of different settings. How might we is the question run together to the design question?

00:30:47:02 - 00:30:47:07
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

00:30:47:16 - 00:31:07:05
Louka Parry
How might we create more space for deep listening and actually get down to the true potential to possibilities that exist for us as a team doing whatever the work is in service of this mission. And that's a real powerful piece. It's also just triggered a thing for me that I often think about, which is we often focus on the output, which is teaching.

00:31:07:21 - 00:31:30:00
Louka Parry
And so as an educationalist now and as someone that spent most of my life in education, I'm really curious about why we focus on the output and really what we're what we've been learning, what great educators have always done and great schools and I think great leaders have also always done is to focus on the outcome. And that's to say, to realize it's fabulous.

00:31:30:00 - 00:31:44:20
Louka Parry
An ego trip. I think I can teach you something. Let me let me tell you how it's going to be. And some of those very old school leadership, great man models of leadership. Right. They go way back to kind of Napoleon and the generals and that kind of stuff. It's like, let me give you some advice. None of that doesn't work.

00:31:45:12 - 00:32:11:17
Louka Parry
Doesn't work because I can't teach you anything. You can only learn. And yeah, I can be directive and I can be explicit and I can use a whole suite of different communications tools or learning sciences to make that happen. But ultimately do the like. The sign ups is in your brain change because of our conversation. And so that's a different way of since rather think of teaching and learning it's it's learning via teaching, right.

00:32:12:00 - 00:32:47:13
Louka Parry
And that's what's learning via experience, right. John Dewey said, you know, we all learn from experience within from reflection on experience. And that's really powerful, too. So how do you do reflection? You can hold space, ask some questions. How did Trayvon feel about that? What what's present for us? What resonates and particularly as we think about the increasing kind of automation of the workforce, like that's our deep humanity on show when we're doing that kind of work, that stuff can't be not yet pushed to open AI to do a push to, you know, Boston Dynamics Robotics to kind of get going because it's not routine.

00:32:48:03 - 00:33:11:11
Louka Parry
It's actually emergent. It's an emergent phenomenon. And I think that's the true beauty of working in a human system that elevates the human ness that we all have, that multi dimensionality because then we feel pretty aligned. We're creating something brand new, we're being novel, truly novel in the way that we're thinking about our next steps and our learning as an organization.

00:33:11:13 - 00:33:34:18
Louka Parry
So the last point I'll make on this, because I think that's so powerful, is that if any organization doesn't consider themself a learning organization, they're already a few decades behind. No, it's actually the human beings in the system that we've created a company, whatever the structure, it's almost much is almost irrelevant. It's like, what's the capacity for them to evolve and grow?

00:33:35:01 - 00:33:52:09
Louka Parry
How much do we invest in our leaders in particular, but all human beings in terms of their own experience, both in terms of their technical outer skills and also the inner social and emotional skills. And you've got to you've got to do those two things simultaneously. Otherwise you get highly technical people that actually have no.

00:33:52:20 - 00:33:53:13

Interact, interact.

00:33:53:15 - 00:34:09:03
Louka Parry
That's probably this is why we introduce, by the way, an interview for for medicine a few decades ago, because I had all these phenomenal technical people. They had the bedside manner. Yeah. So it's sad. We actually we want to try to be a balanced, more balanced, more human in the way that we show up at work, at school, in life.

00:34:10:14 - 00:34:52:03
Daniel Franco
But I love it. You talked about in then you just talked about learning and let me get my words right. Learning and learning through the art of teaching. Learning through the art of listening. Someone can be taught. They can only be. So you can't teach someone something they can only learn. Then what I'm hearing from that comment, and you've obviously done a lot of study research in this space, you know, and you're a thought leader in this space that tells me that the education system is wrong.

00:34:52:03 - 00:34:55:02
Daniel Franco
And what is that? That's kind of what that's how I'm hearing it.

00:34:55:14 - 00:35:13:02
Louka Parry
Yeah, well, I would say the here's the way I reflect on this. It's that the education system isn't broken. It functions as it was designed. Okay. That is no longer fit for purpose. Yeah. Because it was designed to dehumanize people, it's to standardize us.

00:35:13:13 - 00:35:14:11

To be Yeah.

00:35:14:11 - 00:35:20:09
Louka Parry
To be replaceable parts within a particular business model. To be literally on a factory line. Yeah. And you understand why.

00:35:20:09 - 00:35:21:24

That it was designed that way. That was literally.

00:35:21:24 - 00:35:23:23
Louka Parry
The design challenge for these industrialists.

00:35:23:23 - 00:35:24:21

That were creating that we.

00:35:24:21 - 00:35:25:07
Daniel Franco
Were living.

00:35:25:07 - 00:35:25:16

In these.

00:35:25:16 - 00:35:44:12
Louka Parry
Message creation systems. And so now, particularly with automation particular, when you look at any of the predictions from P.W saved from, you know, the Future of Humanity Institute around the shifting workforce, clearly it's not fit for purpose. And so how might we create a future fit education system that really is at the core of most of my work?

00:35:45:00 - 00:36:15:02
Louka Parry
It's how do we humanize it? How do you build the social and the emotional capabilities from birth alongside the academics critically, and even add in the physical and the spiritual? And then what you have, you have a multidimensional, whole person centered education model, which is what great education has always been. But again, what success? Well, if it becomes a single number after 13 years of schooling, which it is here, which by the way, is a national ranking against every other year, 12, and we're only one one of the few countries in the world to do it that way.

00:36:15:11 - 00:36:24:00
Louka Parry
Right. That that creates a narrowing of the model Yangzhou. He's an educational innovator and author. He calls it the sausage making.

00:36:24:00 - 00:36:24:12

Model of.

00:36:24:12 - 00:36:50:01
Louka Parry
Education. So I put all this diversity in and then we just get us ourselves. I mean, he's provocative, right? And so the question, it's easy to say education's broken and blah, blah, blah, but every single day, I mean, there's a million teachers in this country in different kind of contexts working really hard to inspire young people and adult learners with the skills, the knowledge and the mindset, maybe even the kind of self-concept, how they feel about who are they?

00:36:50:01 - 00:37:09:23
Louka Parry
They're that self-knowledge and understanding so that they can go and lead a really productive life, contribute to the economy, contribute to their community and thrive. And so I I'm cautious with this how education is broken or, you know, stronger language, which many people use. It's not fit for purpose. It's not. But we've got people working really hard, doing their best.

00:37:09:23 - 00:37:26:22
Louka Parry
Gosh, wouldn't it be nice if we could liberate them a bit more to do that work more powerfully? Um, and that's partially that we need to elevate the status of what it means to be an educator because it's the profession that creates all other professions. We've all, I would say, been influenced by, inspired by an amazing teacher in our lives.

00:37:26:22 - 00:37:44:21
Louka Parry
And we've all seen the teachers that are super overworked and slightly jaded and are projecting their own fatigue and anxiety onto others. And so we need to shift the system so it's more human for everybody. And If we do that, I think then we're entering kind of the post-industrial age. And first of all, we are in an education renaissance.

00:37:44:22 - 00:37:49:17
Louka Parry
Yeah, no doubt about that. It's exciting, incredibly exciting. And goodness me, there's a lot of work to do.

00:37:50:02 - 00:37:51:12

So let's do it together.

00:37:51:13 - 00:38:04:11
Daniel Franco
I love what you said about there's been there's always a teach everyone that's come on this podcast we've had David Fogarty on recently who's the founder of UDI, which is of, you know, now $400 million early success in business. And I.

00:38:04:11 - 00:38:04:16

Think.

00:38:05:13 - 00:38:20:16
Daniel Franco
He he was talking about some of that is one of the teachers that, you know, sparked interest in him and actually took a liking to him. I'll never forget I had one teacher, not that it had a massive impact on me, but it had an impact on what I love and the way I think about things. And I walked into it.

00:38:20:16 - 00:38:22:23
Daniel Franco
I was a bit of a larrikin. I was a bit of a wuss.

00:38:23:00 - 00:38:24:04

Yeah. No, well.

00:38:24:04 - 00:38:25:04
Daniel Franco
I think a little.

00:38:25:18 - 00:38:27:03

Bit might surprise me at.

00:38:27:03 - 00:38:48:15
Daniel Franco
All when I saw that most of the people were this dickhead. But yeah, I walked into a room or I walked into class was the first year. It was year ten. Yeah. And, and he's perfectly self connecting with him on LinkedIn. He may be listening. He, his name is Rick somewhere ever. And I walked in and I don't know why I did it but I just remember I walked in, I went with some or even Mr. Rick, some Aretha.

00:38:48:15 - 00:39:00:06
Daniel Franco
Like I started singing a song and he goes, Excuse me, your name? I said, Oh, my name's Daniel. Frankie goes, Mr. Franco, sit up the front right until I say, You can move, huh? Stay there for the whole.

00:39:00:06 - 00:39:00:22

But hey.

00:39:01:07 - 00:39:22:06
Daniel Franco
He was my year ten science teacher, and from that I was a C student, like know talking about grades. I was a C student, became an ace student and had a love for science. After that, I just I just absolute I consume scientific I'm obsessed but I didn't get into the art of into the world of science. But so that's interesting.

00:39:22:06 - 00:39:33:01
Daniel Franco
I wanted to talk about because you talked about the sausage factory and the T number that we have as a grading system. Yeah, I am 18. I was 18 when I.

00:39:33:09 - 00:39:34:18

Made showing up. Yeah.

00:39:34:18 - 00:39:36:24
Daniel Franco
What did you want now? What was your score?

00:39:37:05 - 00:39:38:05
Louka Parry
92.8.

00:39:38:08 - 00:39:38:14

Yeah.

00:39:38:14 - 00:39:39:11
Daniel Franco
So you smart.

00:39:40:06 - 00:39:41:01
Louka Parry
Well so.

00:39:41:07 - 00:39:43:16

Well, this is how I reflect on that, right? I.

00:39:43:23 - 00:39:57:15
Louka Parry
I could play a game that actually meant I could maximize that school. Yeah. Into the top one of 8%. But as Howard Gardner told us, like decades ago, multiple intelligences. Yeah. Like the fact that we see academics as smart is partially the issue.

00:39:57:15 - 00:39:58:06
Daniel Franco
Yeah, correct.

00:39:58:06 - 00:39:59:09
Louka Parry
And also idea of like.

00:39:59:14 - 00:40:01:20

Well, this is divergence neurodivergent. This is.

00:40:01:21 - 00:40:18:24
Daniel Franco
Not point. I got 60 something, I think 69. I think I got as but I've been embarrassed to say that my whole life because it puts me in. I didn't even get into the uni course that I wanted to so I didn't even go to. I thought, yeah, that, that course is only like a human movement course or something like that.

00:40:18:24 - 00:40:30:10
Daniel Franco
That course is only 70. I'll be right. Like that's easy to get. I got 69 missed and I put one course down. So I never went to uni and then I got into business, you know, thankfully it's led me in the right direction and.

00:40:30:12 - 00:40:31:19

Seems to have my yeah.

00:40:32:10 - 00:40:49:11
Daniel Franco
But I think the learning aspect, one thing that I always had a skill set was being able to communicate, being able to hold a conversation. I had confidence in my own ability to, to, to talk to someone and that put me in sales and that kind of I then sort of grew into that world.

00:40:49:17 - 00:41:21:13
Louka Parry
So it's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. Daniel, first of all, because we should have more this conversation. You know, we we all feel bit, oh, we got to keep up appearances or whatever, you know. But there's that wonderful cartoon. I'm sure many of your listeners listening now have seen it's the scientists, a tree. And you've got in front of the tree, uh, an elephant, a giraffe, a lion, um, a turtle and a monkey and say, All right, everybody, let's see who's successful.

00:41:21:21 - 00:41:47:03
Louka Parry
Climb the tree. Yeah. And of course, like, so what we do is we lose the incredible diversity of skill, of possibility, of passion. We kind of prune it away from our young people. And that's because of the legacy system that says this is what success is. Success is a night owl, which, by the way, only one in four people in Australia use an eight are to go to university, really one in four.

00:41:47:19 - 00:42:03:10
Louka Parry
And that's many of the people that go to university. So, so think about that, that we have a single metric that's actually corrupting the entire system from the senior secondary downwards. And so the future of learning in my book is something akin to lifelong kindergarten, which is also a very good book.

00:42:03:13 - 00:42:04:13

By the way. Okay.

00:42:05:01 - 00:42:27:00
Louka Parry
Lifelong, lifelong kindergarten. It's the idea of cultivating the capabilities across the lifespan. And yeah, don't get me wrong, this is not we sit in a circle and just like play in the sandpit. This is rigorous work. This is rigorous. It's designed to stretch this challenge. But as soon as we start to standardize, particularly do exams, except when's the last time you did an exam running a successful company?

00:42:28:11 - 00:42:33:20

Never like a close look at that. That's how we think about it's what you write, what we.

00:42:33:24 - 00:42:35:21
Daniel Franco
The amount of nerves that you get from it.

00:42:35:21 - 00:42:36:21
Louka Parry
And so what.

00:42:37:01 - 00:42:37:13

The closest.

00:42:37:13 - 00:42:38:22
Daniel Franco
Thing would be probably a job interview.

00:42:39:09 - 00:43:01:23
Louka Parry
Yes. So so you have you haven't yet. You can't access additional resources in that particular point of time. That's Fair. But of course, so, so really we have a in dialog for an assessment in our systems, what we call collaboration in the business world. We call speaking out of turn disruption in schools, what we call sharing resources we call cheating.

00:43:03:00 - 00:43:04:05

It's called yeah.

00:43:04:05 - 00:43:24:16
Louka Parry
Isn't that interest? It's just interesting for us to note that because I really see for having this conversation in ten years time, we are having a different conversation about what's actually going on in our learning systems. And we're probably talking less and less about schools, in my view, and more and more about learning ecosystems. This whole idea, and I'm attached to some of this fantastic work happening out of the US called the Learning Economy Foundation.

00:43:24:16 - 00:43:49:21
Louka Parry
And the whole idea there is how do you how do you create sovereignty, mobility, inequity? So eventually I think what we're going to have is a verifiable credential. Wala we thought are going to be in blockchain probably need to be brought but the whole idea is like then you have all of your capabilities with you, you own your own data and that means all the micro credentials, your learner profile, which by the way South Australia's leading the nation in that work through the SpaceX board.

00:43:51:01 - 00:44:06:15
Louka Parry
Yeah, that's the idea of actually taking the data and putting it alongside a more holistic picture of who you are, what you can do and what you know. There's three aspects. It's a it's a more human picture. And I guess like if have picked up this trend, like I'm a bit obsessed and obsessed by.

00:44:06:15 - 00:44:07:18

Some science and I'm.

00:44:07:18 - 00:44:24:09
Louka Parry
Obsessed by the idea of humanizing our social systems. Yeah. How do you do that? Because that's what a great culture is. You step in and you feel seen, heard and valued and you're more able to do extraordinary work to your best capacity every single day. That's. That's what the work is, right? Yeah. That's what we want a school to be.

00:44:24:09 - 00:44:36:03
Louka Parry
It's what we want a high performing company to be is one that's deeply human, not one that's kind of know. Everyone is scrambling or trying to, you know, maintain a status pace. It's just a waste of time, you know? So what is it?

00:44:36:09 - 00:44:36:18

What is it.

00:44:36:18 - 00:44:38:13
Daniel Franco
Deeply human culture look like?

00:44:38:19 - 00:44:51:00
Louka Parry
Well, say, I literally feel like like so here's a reflection for me. Like we are emotional beings that think we're not thinking beings that feel. Mm. I dunno where that quotes from, but I.

00:44:51:06 - 00:44:52:12

I'm sure it's a quote somewhere. I love.

00:44:52:23 - 00:45:16:23
Louka Parry
That. And so this idea is what's the affective space. And this is what we know from Google, you know, work on psychological safety for example. What's the most high performing teams in that research? They found the number one predictor was if the team feels safe to fail to say something without fear of being kind of met. So that I'd be human is where you're you're seen as an emotional, social and cognitive being and well aside, physical.

00:45:16:23 - 00:45:23:11
Louka Parry
You can move around, you know, as opposed to having a body to move your brain around. Like, actually, embodiment is another face.

00:45:23:13 - 00:45:24:00
Daniel Franco
You're not a.

00:45:24:00 - 00:45:25:14

Vessel. No, you're not. No, it's.

00:45:25:14 - 00:45:44:09
Louka Parry
Not just about knowledge. Again, because this is as my colleague and friend Jane Clinton, Dr. Jane Clinton say, you know, we've got this tyranny of cognitive obsession where it's like you're smart, you're not smart, you have knowledge. You don't have knowledge. Like that is such a simplistic way to look at the world like we are. We have Venn diagrams.

00:45:44:16 - 00:45:48:22
Louka Parry
Here's, here's the thing I say all the time. Then we have Venn diagrams, not spreadsheets.

00:45:49:02 - 00:45:49:19

Yeah, with.

00:45:49:19 - 00:46:12:06
Louka Parry
Venn diagrams, not spreadsheets. So fully human culture is one that realizes our emotional tone. It cultivates social connectedness. And of course, it stretches us intellectually. Cognitively. It's not about this either. All Are we doing wellbeing now? Are we doing learning now? That is a nonstarter to me. These things are completely entwined, particularly if we think about the purpose.

00:46:12:21 - 00:46:16:23

Of I was going to say learning about this to say life is part of the.

00:46:16:23 - 00:46:39:04
Louka Parry
Life to thrive. Yeah, to contribute something to flourish. Absolutely. Like that really is the purpose. And until we can put that at the center of both our learning systems and our economic systems, we're going to continue to I think, walk a fine line with existential collapse, as we're seeing with all the overshoot work that unfortunately is getting kind of worse and worse, you know, from floods to fire to famine.

00:46:39:16 - 00:46:44:02
Louka Parry
I mean, yeah, it's it's it's kind of scary time in many respects. Yeah.

00:46:44:02 - 00:46:59:17
Daniel Franco
I want to just touch on the, the Excel spreadsheet versus the Venn diagram. I think one, um, and I speak, and I speak purely from self here, right? And I actually want to learn so I can improve.

00:46:59:17 - 00:47:00:00

Mm hmm.

00:47:00:09 - 00:47:18:06
Daniel Franco
You mentioned before about the looking at the ATAR score, and I said, Oh, wow, you're smart. I like. And then you said, that's a simple way of thinking. And which has got my brain ticking. Now, I'm not saying that I I'm not putting words in your mouth that you think I'm a simple person, but we'll take that on board and took that up.

00:47:18:06 - 00:47:22:21

Right. So, you know, work about that.

00:47:22:21 - 00:47:47:13
Daniel Franco
But the I think the point I'm really interested in is, is the Excel spreadsheet too, the Venn diagram, because I associate myself as a black and white person and I'm playing very, very well. And I always have these conversations, conversation with my business partner and my business coach, mentors, whoever it might be. I'm always saying, Well, how do I be a better father?

00:47:48:14 - 00:48:11:18
Daniel Franco
And then manage a very successful, you know, high earning revenue, whatever it might be, humanize culture, business. So how do I how do I do that? I can't be one or the other like I have put time and effort after sacrifice. You know, you hear all the hustle stories and you're putting time and effort into business. And, you know, you talked about the billionaire that's unhappy for marriages, all this sort of stuff.

00:48:12:24 - 00:48:38:17
Daniel Franco
And then I think one time someone pointed out to me, they said, then you, Roger Federer is all I'm going to say. I'm like, talk to me about that. And I said, Roger Federer has achieved all that you can achieve as one of the best tennis players in the world and took his family everywhere with him. If someone at that elite level can do it, then you can to just find a way in which you can do it.

00:48:39:09 - 00:49:11:09
Daniel Franco
And so I want to ask the point and the question of how do we move away from the Excel spreadsheet to the Venn diagram? Looking engineers have this sort of linear way of thinking. There's so many different. Mm Yeah. It's one that I'm really struggling and trying to grapple with because my brain automatically goes to the back of what I do I don't position myself to thinking.

00:49:11:09 - 00:49:12:06
Daniel Franco
The Venn diagram.

00:49:13:06 - 00:49:39:15
Louka Parry
Is wonderful reflection. I think it's from Bertrand Russell and he said the definition of intelligence is being able to hold two conflicting views in mind without accepting either one. Yeah. And so this idea of us having to go black or having to go white in some ways limits us because, like to think of life as certain in any way is kind of a self-delusion.

00:49:40:17 - 00:49:43:02
Louka Parry
We've got no idea what's going to happen tomorrow.

00:49:43:03 - 00:49:45:10

We don't know what's going to happen in the next 5 minutes, you know.

00:49:45:22 - 00:50:09:19
Louka Parry
So I feel like it's just being how do we navigate ambiguity? And this is what I've learned through my work at the D school and at Stanford is they do a lot of work on building the capability to navigate ambiguity. It's like, okay, we don't know how, how do we do that? But we can we can put this forward as a thesis or a strategy, and then we kind of have to let go and be quite adaptable to the whole, as you would know, the whole rise of IQ and adaptability.

00:50:09:19 - 00:50:15:18
Louka Parry
Question or intention about tackling the question yeah. Agility, eccentric, etc. around agile sprints, blah blah blah.

00:50:16:04 - 00:50:17:07

Still so much to say.

00:50:17:18 - 00:50:39:23
Louka Parry
But so I really feel like like say you if you think about your life, think about all the intersections of roles that you have or any leader of an organization. You know, you've got all these different circles and the point is they all overlap and you're in the middle of them. And so at certain times one circle might be larger and the other might be slightly smaller because you're just having to hustle this week because you got a massive thing you got to close, right?

00:50:40:17 - 00:50:53:16
Louka Parry
And so you're kind of slightly not able to show up as with as much presence as you would as a father. And then and the other way you're like, okay, great. I'm actually going to really prioritize this because I know that my this one of my girls is going through a challenge, you know, whatever.

00:50:53:16 - 00:50:54:00

Yeah.

00:50:54:09 - 00:51:34:11
Louka Parry
So the point is, like, we are always these things, we are multiple things. There's this great like, you know, it's I am legion, I contain multitudes, right? And that's what women I think. And it's this idea that, yeah, well each we're literally multiple selves, so it's important. And then every single role that you play in life and we need the spreadsheets like don't get me wrong, I'm not anti spreadsheet, you know, but the spreadsheets come underneath the Venn diagram there, the operational model, you still need to have a strategy, but strategy for me is an amazing hypothesis, as Dr. Jason Fox would say, it's an amusing hypothesis core where we think this is the way

00:51:34:11 - 00:51:42:21
Louka Parry
we're going to go. We don't take intentional action in this direction. But yeah, we didn't see the pandemic coming or we didn't see this cataclysm coming. We didn't see this big job being put up.

00:51:42:23 - 00:51:44:22

Or this rug get pulled out of this rug and put.

00:51:44:22 - 00:51:46:10
Louka Parry
Out and made to come back to.

00:51:46:19 - 00:51:50:16

Like Roger Federer. First of all, what a legend. Yeah, you know, this guy.

00:51:51:05 - 00:51:58:11
Louka Parry
Just seems so humble and it's just almost impossible to not like him, you know, even if you're a big Nadal fan, you.

00:51:58:11 - 00:52:03:00

Know, Djokovic. So something about you respect you. Okay. So, yes, the question is.

00:52:03:00 - 00:52:31:05
Louka Parry
Like, let's have a look at that and I want to share some work here from David Epstein. He wrote a great book called Range, which I would commend to anyone listening. It's fantastic because it's funny. David Epstein Range, yeah. Range. And it's about it's kind of subtitle is Why Generalists Thrive in a Hyper Specialized World. And I would self-identify as an aspiring deep generalist and keep the word aspiring wherever you can, because as soon as you like, I'm now, I've made it yet the kind of expert paradox triggers.

00:52:31:05 - 00:52:34:04
Louka Parry
And then you're like, I don't need to do as much learning because I'm being paid for my not joining.

00:52:34:14 - 00:52:39:07

Yeah, totally. Yeah. The limbs stock getting clear tough again but he starts that book.

00:52:39:18 - 00:53:08:21
Louka Parry
Chapter one and it's literally Roger and Tiger and he talks about Roger Federer and his development into becoming the world's greatest tennis player. Now arguable, you know, Serena Williams might actually hold title and, you know, Tiger Woods. Right. And so Roger grew up with Range. He actually played multiple sports for most of his childhood. And he actually it could have gone either way.

00:53:09:04 - 00:53:19:24
Louka Parry
I can't remember the sport he was world class in, but he chose tennis like at 20 really full time. You know, Tiger Woods taught by his father. You know, it's a pretty rigorous way.

00:53:21:03 - 00:53:22:00

Maybe intense way.

00:53:22:11 - 00:53:23:24
Louka Parry
Like you're going to be a golf superstar.

00:53:24:02 - 00:53:24:09

You know.

00:53:24:09 - 00:53:54:10
Louka Parry
Specialized from the beginning. And I think we can just look at what like who these two people have become as human beings, as husbands. Right. Without passing too much judgment. But like, if you look at those two, you'd say one of them clearly is a better role model. Why? And I think David's hypothesis without, you know, putting words in his mouth is that because one has range, a range of experiences, they are more of a Venn diagram, they have more perspectives to take to come full.

00:53:54:10 - 00:53:55:18

Circle, more circles in there.

00:53:55:18 - 00:54:14:11
Louka Parry
We've traveled more I speak more language. You understand this? Yeah. So it's not just you're not just this one thing. And that means if you take that thing away, who are you? You've got nothing left. It's one of the big challenges that we're finding, I think, in the modern world. This is the call for constant reinvention, constant evolution, constant learning as the underpinning superpower.

00:54:14:21 - 00:54:15:04
Louka Parry
So that.

00:54:15:04 - 00:54:16:21

Roger, I love that you brought up Roger Federer.

00:54:16:24 - 00:54:35:21
Louka Parry
Yeah, right. Because I feel like that like his journey, it's actually something we can pay attention to in the way that we design our learning systems, maybe even the way we design organizations. Rather than taking just the technical skill that's important for that person's role, give them something radically different to learn. Go to an art class if you can't draw that.

00:54:36:01 - 00:54:43:08
Louka Parry
And literally, I think this is the way that we've become better rounded people. And to close out this mini rant.

00:54:43:08 - 00:54:46:09

You know, it's I feel it's like it's just it's.

00:54:47:04 - 00:54:49:20
Louka Parry
You know, if you want to be interesting, be interested.

00:54:49:23 - 00:54:50:07

Yeah.

00:54:50:10 - 00:55:13:06
Louka Parry
The most interesting people are the ones that ask the most questions that actually have kind of had the most curiosity across their lifespan. Yeah. And so tragically, I think what we do is that the legacy schooling system that we've all been through, they actually prune away part of our curiosity. We stop asking questions because we, we kind of learn the hidden grammar, which is you have to know the right answer.

00:55:14:01 - 00:55:20:01
Louka Parry
And so we go to convergent thinking instead of divergent thinking. We have to really learn that through very expensive executive programs. It's not.

00:55:20:09 - 00:55:21:07

You know, like that's kind.

00:55:21:07 - 00:55:38:09
Louka Parry
Of the get back out into the creative space. So yeah, that whole piece. But I'm really into this. How do you build out the Venn diagram in all of us and how do we think multi dimensionally if we were to just pass, you know, do a little self assessment? How are you doing cognitively? How are you doing socially?

00:55:38:20 - 00:55:53:19
Louka Parry
How you doing emotionally? How you doing spiritually? How you doing physically all those things matter if we're talking performance in anything beyond the most basic cognitive task. Yeah, which increasingly is what work will be for all of us.

00:55:53:19 - 00:55:54:24

Well, this is like.

00:55:55:19 - 00:56:14:22
Daniel Franco
No, I love it. I think the I want to touch on a few things in there, which I really want to expand on. And you mentioned the comment. I mean, you said the the draft, the elephant. And, you know, it's it's an Albert Einstein quote, too. You know, the ability, the why are we judging a fish is ability to climb a tree sort of thing.

00:56:14:22 - 00:56:16:05
Louka Parry
Yes, that's protective of them.

00:56:16:05 - 00:56:34:09
Daniel Franco
Yeah. We knew when you apply that to the learning of in school and then you talk about the Venn diagrams and we use the Roger Federer and Tiger Woods example, Andre Agassi might be another one if you think about, you know, how he was brought up. That book's amazing book, by the way.

00:56:34:09 - 00:56:35:21
Louka Parry
I haven't read it yet. No, I thought.

00:56:36:02 - 00:57:00:24
Daniel Franco
But the the thought that's going through my mind now and the question that I want to ask is you talked about art going and doing an art school. If you don't if you're not such a good draw and building building the opportunity to learn things that you're not so strong in, within organizations which bring this back to a business slash schooling perspective.

00:57:02:17 - 00:57:16:17
Daniel Franco
If, if you're sending someone off to do an art course, do they need to be interested in drawing? Do they need to have a passion about the drawing? Or do we just do it so we can get move in a lot more circles? And I've asked, you know what I mean?

00:57:16:17 - 00:57:19:16

Like all sectors equals better. That's what I'm saying.

00:57:19:16 - 00:57:42:04
Daniel Franco
Well, because like, if we add to that Venn diagram and we and we build the the learnings that we go through, it creates us and you never know. Right? You might go and do that, of course, and just end up loving art like I did with the science thing. So that's kind of my point is, is you often hear and it's something that you see on TikTok, Twitter, all the social media is follow your passion and follow your passion.

00:57:42:04 - 00:58:01:09
Daniel Franco
Steve Jobs comes out and he goes, If you don't love what you do, you can't connect with all this sort of stuff is a passion that we need to cultivate in the schooling system or in the business world. Or is it adding like literally adding more layers to who you are as a human?

00:58:03:01 - 00:58:29:09
Louka Parry
Great question, Daniel. That's really that's really interesting. Couple of things come up for me. One is let's start with schools and then go to business. So in education systems, some of this research will show us that one in three young people will change. They will they don't change. They choose their subjects in senior secondary away from things that make them feel truly alive, things they love to do for things they think will give them a better school.

00:58:29:12 - 00:58:29:19

Yeah.

00:58:30:04 - 00:58:44:20
Louka Parry
And that to me is system failure because that is a that's a dehumanize those choices to be made based on this hidden grammar around what successes and who you want to be. And so that's the first thing I would say. It's like I like the Ikigai model, which I know if you've seen before.

00:58:45:03 - 00:58:46:09
Daniel Franco
I think have a book on here.

00:58:47:05 - 00:58:48:16

Yeah I well it's wonderful.

00:58:48:16 - 00:58:52:18
Louka Parry
And I remember seeing that like years and years ago for the books came out, just saw someone put it up and I was like, oh, that is.

00:58:53:05 - 00:58:54:01

That's brilliant. Yeah.

00:58:54:02 - 00:58:57:21
Daniel Franco
And so when we talk about the book, it's it's a philosophy, isn't it?

00:58:57:21 - 00:59:00:15

It's a philosophy. But there's a book that people have codified it. Yeah.

00:59:01:14 - 00:59:16:05
Louka Parry
And just so that people understand what is, it's Japanese for purpose. So lovers on data and friends, you know what's our reason for being and it's, you know, what? What are you good at? What can you get paid to do? And that's a profession, you know, it's like, what are you good at? What do you love? That's your passion.

00:59:17:02 - 00:59:24:05
Louka Parry
And then it's like, what can you get paid to do and what does the world need that might be a vocation? And then what do you love.

00:59:24:05 - 00:59:24:18

To do.

00:59:25:04 - 00:59:49:24
Louka Parry
And what does the world need? And that's your mission. And so in the center of that is ikigai, it's your purpose. And so then we delve into the conversation around lifestyle design or career design, right? Particularly important for young people because the hyper engaged, not disengaged, hyper engaged, zealous skills and Gen Alpha that'll come into the workforce and the business sense, you know, they have a higher expectation for doing interesting work.

00:59:50:16 - 01:00:04:02
Louka Parry
They don't want to kind of plod along for 16 years and then get it's not it's not happening. And so it is career web, the idea everyone is a personal brand. All of that's going on. Yeah. And then I think your question to.

01:00:04:12 - 01:00:09:07

How do we be? Is that just about adding an exercise and a business.

01:00:10:02 - 01:00:11:09
Daniel Franco
That's from a labor perspective.

01:00:11:10 - 01:00:13:24

And I get that. So do you have to love.

01:00:13:24 - 01:00:31:11
Louka Parry
Art to go to an art class or. You know, it does have to be a passion. Absolutely no. Because I it took me a long time to work this out. Right? For a long time, I was very much in the, I would say unconsciously privileged position of saying it's about doing what you love, do what you love. Young people go that way and yeah, it's that.

01:00:31:11 - 01:00:33:05
Louka Parry
But that is such a privilege thing to say. Yeah.

01:00:33:12 - 01:00:35:20
Daniel Franco
If I'm going to play PlayStation all day long only you know.

01:00:35:21 - 01:00:37:02

Well, that's well that's true too.

01:00:37:02 - 01:00:54:14
Louka Parry
But also if you're coming from poverty or if I think about some of the young people with whom I've worked, I've I've been in like a learning teaching relationship with. I said, hey, just do what you love. And they're coming from a place where there's intergenerational unemployment and they're like, Well, I might love to do this thing. Yeah.

01:00:54:15 - 01:00:57:06
Louka Parry
And you're like, Well, they don't have the social capital or the financial capital.

01:00:57:06 - 01:00:58:02

Yeah, I don't know.

01:00:58:06 - 01:01:04:17
Louka Parry
I'd love to go to Harvard. Okay, great. So, you know, I think we've got to be careful when we took that take, the kind of street jobs thing.

01:01:04:18 - 01:01:09:18
Daniel Franco
Can I jump in there for what? I think I'm reading the book, Psychology of Money at the moment.

01:01:09:18 - 01:01:10:23
Louka Parry
Oh, okay. I've had.

01:01:10:23 - 01:01:11:12

A it's.

01:01:11:12 - 01:01:20:07
Daniel Franco
A new it's a new one out there. It's quite interesting. It gives you it gives you a bit more of perspective of money and where it came from and how everyone perceives it.

01:01:20:07 - 01:01:20:17

Right.

01:01:20:17 - 01:01:20:24
Louka Parry
Yeah.

01:01:21:07 - 01:01:54:23
Daniel Franco
And so when you talk about it comes from a position of, of, of what did you say, position of privilege. Sorry, I lost the word there for, say, a position of privilege. There was an example within this book in the first couple of chapters where they were talking about Nike and the sweatshops. Right. And so in America, there was this big uproar of you know, sweatshops and people getting paid $2 an hour.

01:01:54:23 - 01:02:22:09
Daniel Franco
And that's slave labor and all the above and and rightly so, right from that position of privilege, that's not the way we want to treat. And then what actually shook everyone to the core was when it was a young Taiwanese boy come out and said, well, actually that sweatshop for my auntie was the best thing that ever happened to her because before that she was a prostitute.

01:02:22:17 - 01:02:29:19
Daniel Franco
Mm. That's sweatshop. Took her away from being, from having to sell her body for a living.

01:02:30:01 - 01:02:30:08

Well.

01:02:30:18 - 01:02:57:03
Daniel Franco
To being able to respect herself in a role. So now you're taking away our opportunity to elevate ourselves out of a poverty stricken lives. And not I'm not condoning or sorry, I'm not enforcing and promoting sweatshops. But it's about perspective, isn't it? Yeah. And when you say things come from privilege, we really need to consider that whenever we think about it.

01:02:57:10 - 01:02:57:19
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

01:02:58:02 - 01:02:58:16

Absolutely.

01:02:59:17 - 01:03:01:06
Daniel Franco
So carry on. If I cut you off.

01:03:01:06 - 01:03:02:10

No, really. I mean.

01:03:03:04 - 01:03:19:19
Louka Parry
I just want to reflect on what you've just said. It's really profound. I think what what we need to be conscious of is that this is nuance. This is complex. Yeah, it's not. It's not black and white. It's hard because it's not one or the other. This is the thing. It's like there's a post your view to this.

01:03:19:19 - 01:03:23:04
Louka Parry
So it's not just it's not do what you love.

01:03:23:04 - 01:03:23:13

So we will.

01:03:23:13 - 01:03:30:18
Louka Parry
Say that and it's why you got so powerful because the whole idea that it's of then guess what, it's Venn diagram. You know, I love in diagrams, I'm a nerd for the Venn diagram.

01:03:31:05 - 01:03:32:06
Daniel Franco
I've seen a few of your.

01:03:32:12 - 01:03:36:10

You tell me all colorful circles. That's all I do. I like to.

01:03:37:02 - 01:03:38:13
Daniel Franco
See color in the lines you go.

01:03:38:13 - 01:03:43:13

Out along the lines. I really could be a bit imagine myself. But this idea.

01:03:43:14 - 01:04:03:22
Louka Parry
Yeah, it's like, how do you actually design your life forward? And so yes. Do what you love. Yes. Try to find your passion and go for it. Absolutely. But it's bad advice to young people. Just say find a passion and go for it. It's better advice to say, actually, what would be a meaningful life for you? What might be your purpose is a better question.

01:04:04:06 - 01:04:23:21
Louka Parry
The same reason that we shouldn't say happiness. You know, I was like, Yeah, the purpose of life is to be happy. I disagree. It's not. The purpose of life is to create meaning, create meaning in community with others, do good work, build new businesses, create new products and services, do something, do something really interesting and kind of dangerous, you know.

01:04:23:21 - 01:04:24:03

Like, yeah.

01:04:24:11 - 01:04:35:12
Louka Parry
Add value because then and then guess what? If you do that well, happiness will ensue. You can't pursue happiness. It can only be a byproduct of a life. Well, if that's my view and, you know.

01:04:35:23 - 01:04:37:04

More smart, philosophical.

01:04:37:04 - 01:04:58:24
Louka Parry
People like Bertrand Russell say the same thing. You can't pursue success. You cannot pursue success because you never arrive. You get your first hundred million. Great. But now I'm like hanging with billionaires and I'm poor. And then, you know, and we know the psychology of money. And you'll see this in the book, of course. Right? It's like, you know, we relative so quickly people that are super wealthy but hang around with wealthy friends.

01:04:59:10 - 01:05:01:14

Fuel poor, feel less happy.

01:05:01:24 - 01:05:22:14
Louka Parry
Than someone that objectively has got far less financial resources but actually feels like they're in it. So there's all these kind of crazy things that go on in this space. But so this idea of it's yes funds, it's like, create your purpose, don't even find your purpose. It's not out there to be found. It's through experimentation that perhaps we kind of unfold all these different parts of who we are.

01:05:22:14 - 01:05:22:20

Yeah.

01:05:23:07 - 01:05:38:05
Louka Parry
What can we do, what we love to do. And then, you know, what do we need to know? The last thing I'd say is this like, do what you love is one perspective, the other is love what you do. And so one thing that has always stuck with me is if you've got two people in the chiseling stone, right?

01:05:38:20 - 01:05:50:22
Louka Parry
And you go past one person and say, Hey, what are you what are you doing this. I can't you see I'm chiseling some stone I walk past and the second person said What are you doing? And say, well I'm building a cathedral.

01:05:51:04 - 01:05:51:12

Yeah.

01:05:52:00 - 01:06:11:10
Louka Parry
And so that's called cathedral thinking and that is powerful because what you've realized is that you, you're loving what you do. You realize that you're in service of something greater than yourself. That's the spiritual question. It's transcendent. It's now that I'm part of something bigger than me. The other study that I love comes out of hospitals and working in the health sector.

01:06:11:10 - 01:06:30:10
Louka Parry
Where is the same question asked of cleaners? And some cleaners would say, I'm a cleaner at a hospital, and another group would say, I help people heal. I help people on that journey. And that second group would do things like change the pictures on the walls in the ICU so that when this woke up, there was a new picture for them.

01:06:30:17 - 01:06:47:21
Louka Parry
Put fresh flowers and cleaning. Yeah, but their orientation to towards what they do. I came from a place of love. Absolutely. And so when we talk about human centered organizations in the business world that we want to create, I mean, that's I think what we're trying to create here is this idea of, yes, you want to have a skill set.

01:06:48:06 - 01:06:49:24

You know, you want to be you.

01:06:50:01 - 01:06:51:02
Louka Parry
One of attunement, I think.

01:06:51:02 - 01:06:52:00

Daniel Yeah, it would be.

01:06:52:00 - 01:06:53:15
Louka Parry
Like a terrible musician.

01:06:53:22 - 01:06:57:09

Trying to go and become a professional musician.

01:06:57:09 - 01:07:00:01
Louka Parry
I'm never going to be an NBA basketball player because I'm five nine.

01:07:00:01 - 01:07:04:17

Yeah, you know, it's like that, you know, so, but that so there's.

01:07:04:17 - 01:07:21:21
Louka Parry
All of these kinds of things in this nuanced conversation, but really it's what's the life well lived is the big question and especially when we think about in a business sense, yeah, from time to time we should be a bit more radical when we think about our own growth and development as a learning organization. What don't we know?

01:07:21:21 - 01:07:44:13
Louka Parry
What blind spots can we try to now find? And yes, sometimes failing publicly is the best thing for you, especially if you're a C-suite, right? Because you're probably used to being really capable. So what scares the living daylights out of you? Have you tried that recently? And this is why I love language learning as adults, right? Because speaking another language means you have to fail in public time.

01:07:44:21 - 01:07:45:21

And time in really.

01:07:45:21 - 01:07:47:10
Louka Parry
Embarrassing. And I've said.

01:07:47:10 - 01:07:50:16

A few stories and said, Oh, but now I got some real shockers. You know.

01:07:50:17 - 01:07:52:03
Louka Parry
I was like, Oh, okay, that was that.

01:07:52:03 - 01:07:53:05

Was the word. But, you know.

01:07:53:06 - 01:07:54:04
Daniel Franco
The pregnant story was.

01:07:54:05 - 01:07:55:17

That that's the Spanish one I've done.

01:07:55:17 - 01:07:59:21
Louka Parry
Before in Brazil. There is a false cognates. It's false friend. And yeah, I thought.

01:08:00:19 - 01:08:04:13

I thought I think probably the same in Brazilian. It's like, say, you know, you go and.

01:08:04:13 - 01:08:10:14
Louka Parry
You're trying to learn Spanish and say, oh, I story more in Brazil, though, which I think means I'm really embarrassed because it means I'm really pregnant. Yeah.

01:08:10:23 - 01:08:15:10

Of course. You know, your man walking around, people are like, Oh, that's nice. But I've got all sorts of I'm from.

01:08:15:10 - 01:08:17:09
Louka Parry
All different language contexts. You know, I thought.

01:08:17:18 - 01:08:18:21

The word for book.

01:08:18:21 - 01:08:20:23
Louka Parry
And vagina in Pinjarra is very similar.

01:08:21:08 - 01:08:26:09

I'll just leave it there. I mean, a real faux pas. I'm going to read and you're like.

01:08:26:09 - 01:08:27:03
Daniel Franco
Oh, they don't.

01:08:27:04 - 01:08:33:13

Know. I'm teaching a class. And everyone's like, Oh, like, eyes are wide open. That's so that that.

01:08:33:13 - 01:08:55:08
Louka Parry
Part of me. Because I think what that does, when you are going and doing art and you feel that you're not an artist, what that does is it shifts your orientation. You become more of a beginner. You have to get more comfortable. Discomfort and great learning organizations in business are comfortable with discomfort. They can navigate ambiguity because they know that actually it's progression.

01:08:55:08 - 01:09:01:13
Louka Parry
This is the old fixed growth mindset work of Carol Dweck, right? It's been around for a long time and I think is now being iterated in some ways as well.

01:09:01:13 - 01:09:23:06
Daniel Franco
So yeah, I'm a firm believer if you if you're moving into a leadership role or into into C-suite role or whatever it might be, you're choosing stress, right? You choosing the the option of living every day with ambiguity, not leaving every day with the unknown, that that becomes your new reality, right? So your new reality is being comfortable with the unknown.

01:09:23:06 - 01:09:51:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah. And you almost forget what it's like to live any other way. I do want to touch back and we've talked about success and we've talked about schooling. And, you know, we we can define success. And I'm really interested in in what is the responsibility of a school when it comes to us. So let's sort let's cut back a bit.

01:09:51:13 - 01:10:12:18
Daniel Franco
Let's look at the Industrial Revolution and the way it was set up so that we could go out and we could help grow the world in a sense, from cars to all the above. And that's the era that we went through. Yeah. Now we're in the world of what is essential services. That is super importance and nursing.

01:10:13:06 - 01:10:13:22

And.

01:10:14:01 - 01:10:47:20
Daniel Franco
What else is there policing? And we know for a fact that they're struggling with nurses, with getting police on board and recruitment and that sort of space. Is it a school's responsibility to educate on the for success in roles that will help the environment and and the community? Or is it a school's responsibility to educate in a way that fosters entrepreneurship and other opportunities?

01:10:47:20 - 01:11:00:11
Daniel Franco
And you talked about the brand, everyone becoming their own brand and or or again or does it fall into the Venn diagram of it's the school's responsibility to do all the above?

01:11:00:11 - 01:11:05:02

She sounds like it's a lot of responsibility on schools. Daniel, that's how I read your question. Well, I.

01:11:05:02 - 01:11:08:01
Daniel Franco
Think I think well, it starts with education. I think this.

01:11:08:01 - 01:11:27:20
Louka Parry
Is I agree. So of course I agree with your premise. But what I would say is it's a shared responsibility. This is not out. So I'd say it's accurate but incomplete. This is a community responsibility. This is a societal responsibility, because if we put it all on schools again, which and, you know, schools have got a lot on their plates.

01:11:27:21 - 01:11:57:04
Louka Parry
Right. And the next thing is, okay, we're going to add this. We don't we're not good at strategy. When big education systems, we add things, we don't subtract. And there's the power that comes from doing less right. And I think good strategy when I step into that strategic space, it's actually about subtraction. It's about what not to do as well as what to do for the intentional action and so, yeah, schools, the role of a school, I mean, there's so many ways to frame this, you know, individual fulfillment for collective well-being.

01:11:57:15 - 01:12:22:05
Louka Parry
That's a pretty good frame you could use. You could also talk about collective thriving and individual empowerment. You know, the idea here is that we need to move from standardization to personalization and so that every young is a person is kind of on their own journey. Because if you're if you got someone that really wants to be a nurse, yeah, they should be fully supported to discover that's the case.

01:12:22:05 - 01:12:40:22
Louka Parry
Um, but simultaneously, if you've got someone that kind of really doesn't like the way they kind of a bit of a different thinker, they want to be an enterprise or an entrepreneur. They've got to start up. Yeah, we should be supporting that too. So I don't think these things are either or propositions. But the big shift here absolutely is from schools and even the word school.

01:12:40:22 - 01:12:50:19
Louka Parry
I think we're not saying in 30 years, I think it's different what we're probably learning ecosystems, the learning village. It's the hub. The learning hub. Right. That's from birth to grave.

01:12:51:00 - 01:12:51:15

Yeah.

01:12:51:15 - 01:13:06:22
Louka Parry
So yeah, like young kids are there in the morning set with the elders, you know, with 60, 70 year olds, 80 year olds, because that's really good for cognition as well with them. It's a really great study is looking at that when you put it early, you're sitting in a nursing home. Amazing stuff, right? That's interesting system design.

01:13:07:09 - 01:13:29:17
Louka Parry
Right. And so I think it's the shift from schools to learning ecosystem. And that means the role of parents, the role of industry, the role of community and nonprofit sector, and yes, the role of formal education. Because the future of learning is informal, non-formal, informal convergence. It's social, emotional and academic converged like this idea of literally, I want to say Venn diagram again, but I will Venn diagram, it's like bringing.

01:13:29:17 - 01:13:30:15

Back together.

01:13:30:24 - 01:13:54:19
Louka Parry
These these aspects and not saying that's the school's responsibility and that's a parent's responsibility. That kind of division as a spreadsheet is, is A.C.T. call to what we know about how systems work systems are all about interrelatedness, profound interrelatedness, interconnectedness. And so and I need to make an economic point here, right? So I'm not I'm an amateur economist.

01:13:54:21 - 01:14:18:12
Louka Parry
I care really interestingly about business model, the way that's evolving. And, you know, I've been around the B Corp movement as well. For example, triple bottom line, ESG, all this stuff. It's really powerful. And yet we're still in the space where stakeholder capitalism, I think, is kind of in its late stage. We're going to have to see some kind of significant step into whatever, you know, Mariana Mazzucato, who's at UCL, is a professor of economics.

01:14:18:21 - 01:14:22:24
Louka Parry
She says we need a moonshot to changing capitalism because I don't think we.

01:14:22:24 - 01:14:26:04

Can bring back communism that's going away and socialism.

01:14:26:04 - 01:14:46:16
Louka Parry
You know, for you know, that's also that's kind of returning to the past really. It's like what's the evolution of a more humane way of doing capital investing and using capital in service of human flourishing social foundation whilst also paying attention to the ecological ceiling. And that's the donor economic model from Professor Kate Rae with at Oxford University.

01:14:47:04 - 01:14:53:09
Louka Parry
And so those are the new models, right? Because again, simultaneously, if you think we can have externalities in the business model but kidding ourselves.

01:14:53:21 - 01:14:54:23

We're talking about I'm not.

01:14:55:05 - 01:15:06:05
Louka Parry
You know, I'm going to do this kind of stuff, economic activities. Good, I'm going to pollute over here. But we're going to actually not include that pollution on our on our you know what? I'm on a high set. And that's not how systems work.

01:15:06:05 - 01:15:06:15

As we are.

01:15:06:15 - 01:15:30:05
Louka Parry
Discovering with all of the crises that we're seeing around our climate, social cohesion, etc., etc., etc.. So I think the future of business is really interesting. It's purpose oriented and it's profit with purpose. It's not a not everything's non profit. No, no. I feel like this is really powerful thing with enterprise when you when you're on the line, you know, and you and I are both in private industry, it's kind of like you've got to you've got to come up with something.

01:15:30:09 - 01:15:48:02
Louka Parry
But I think that it's really powerful an innovation engine. And so how do you use the power of business to kind of get to that? But it means having a more holistic worldview. I think Patagonia has taken some pretty amazing steps into that making Earth the shareholder of the company. I mean, that's probably a pretty, pretty big step better.

01:15:48:15 - 01:16:07:01
Louka Parry
But you know what I think will be judged by history to be absolutely right and that maybe we've stayed in this kind of late stage space for too long. Like if we're not thinking about the economic, the social, the governance, parts of our business models, we're also not paying attention to what maybe the planet is saying and increasingly what the marketplace is saying.

01:16:07:01 - 01:16:24:09
Louka Parry
You know, purpose oriented businesses actually outperform non purpose oriented businesses. And if you look at the data financially, even though they're meant to be doing more complex stuff and actually, you know, paying their employees, more to your point around, you know, sweatshops, I mean, Amazon is a great example of this. I mean, how much money does Bezos actually need?

01:16:24:13 - 01:16:48:17
Louka Parry
You know, I mean, same with Elon. Like, sure, I'm awful. A bit of philanthropy, capitalism, but do we have to rely on any single individual to kind of save us from ourselves? I don't I'm not so sure about that. I reckon we've got enough smart people working in businesses, working in the kind of third sector social sector that we can kind of think pretty cleverly about how we partner in a public private way to kind of transform stuff.

01:16:48:17 - 01:17:12:17
Louka Parry
So come full circle. It's like, is it the responsibility of schools? Yes. And the responsibility of companies and the responsibility of community centers and the responsibility of families. And so that move from different institutions where we have a pretty, you know, these big gaps you have to leap across in transition in early years to primary, primary to secondary, secondary, tertiary, tertiary workforce or vocational workforce.

01:17:13:02 - 01:17:35:19
Louka Parry
We just got to get rid of all those big jumps and just think of it as an ecosystem where you know you have a human being, a person that's multidimensional, they're learning really rigorously. You know, they're being challenged, but they're also being supported socially and emotionally to kind of become this holistic individual that can be a great employee, can be a great entrepreneur, can be a job and a job maker.

01:17:35:19 - 01:17:37:24

If we want to give some of the political language.

01:17:39:00 - 01:17:59:01
Louka Parry
You know, and a job keeper and, you know, it's all about jobs and I'm all black pro job. Yeah, I get me wrong. But it's also like job is maybe the primary part of human flourishing. But a lot of people have jobs and we still, you know, have the greatest burden of disease in our world is mental health and increasingly depression and anxiety.

01:17:59:16 - 01:18:08:14
Louka Parry
And, you know, this is trillion we're talking trillion dollar impacts. And so, yeah, what are we doing about that? So maybe we shouldn't just say job. We should say yeah, like good good life keeper.

01:18:08:15 - 01:18:10:08

Yeah. You know, life satisfaction.

01:18:10:08 - 01:18:33:14
Louka Parry
Yes. So employment skills and also social skills and also your social support. I mean, this might sound a bit utopian, but this is the vision we have to have for the future, because otherwise we're going to end up in a different place, more fragmentation, more international conflict, more emergency crisis settings. When the climate starts, you know, the planet starts starting to kick us off in some ways.

01:18:33:14 - 01:18:49:03
Louka Parry
Right. And, you know, some of us might want to go to Mars. And I'm a big space nuts. I'm really excited in that space. And we can learn a lot about space from space work, about, you know, Adelaide, we have the Australian Space Center, this amazing um, but it's also like what are we going to do for a planet?

01:18:49:12 - 01:18:55:00
Louka Parry
And on how do we play. You know, it's not just the technologies we need, it's the shift in systems. Yeah, I think as well.

01:18:56:24 - 01:19:00:02
Daniel Franco
I'm sorry to say this, but we have to. You're on a tight.

01:19:00:12 - 01:19:01:16
Louka Parry
Oh, my time frame.

01:19:01:16 - 01:19:05:15

What is what is time? We will endure, you know, long after we're going to.

01:19:05:15 - 01:19:28:15
Daniel Franco
Have to start thinking wrapping up at the moment. So I have about 15 questions that I didn't ask. So maybe we can maybe maybe we can go round to in the future. So I'm going to wrap up the podcast now. And before we jump into some quickfire questions, I asked you on the phone a couple of weeks ago when.

01:19:28:15 - 01:19:54:15
Daniel Franco
We did chat a week or so ago when we had a chat. Yeah. I said, What would you do if you had to ask yourself one or two questions? What question would you ask yourself? And you you said to me, what advice would my 65 year old self say to me, Now, can you answer that question? What advice would your 65 year old self say to you?

01:19:54:15 - 01:19:54:23
Daniel Franco
You know.

01:19:54:23 - 01:19:55:20
Louka Parry
I'm waiting for my 60.

01:19:55:20 - 01:19:56:12

Five year old self.

01:19:57:22 - 01:20:26:22
Louka Parry
But I feel like you look up every year at 65, would say something like, remember the small things and remember what really matters, especially as the world gets faster. That would I think that would be like it be pay more attention to where you actually are. Uh, particularly in a dopamine loop, third world rights, the age of distraction, the extraction economy.

01:20:26:22 - 01:20:35:09
Louka Parry
It's pretty hard to do that. So yeah, I think it's that trust yourself for me is always a good advice from another self. So yeah. Trust yourself. You're doing okay.

01:20:35:15 - 01:20:35:22

Mhm.

01:20:36:01 - 01:20:41:22
Louka Parry
Oh. How's this one. Okay. This is, this is what it might be. It's, you have everything you already need.

01:20:41:22 - 01:20:42:04

Mm.

01:20:42:24 - 01:20:52:07
Louka Parry
I really resonate. It's like oh I get and then from that place of fullness and completeness do really interesting things, meaningful things, maybe, I hope.

01:20:53:13 - 01:20:55:13
Daniel Franco
Well, you know, trust yourself is being.

01:20:55:13 - 01:20:56:04
Louka Parry
Lost to itself.

01:20:56:14 - 01:21:03:07
Daniel Franco
That's huge. Right. We're going to jump into some quickfire questions right. What are you reading right now?

01:21:04:03 - 01:21:06:18
Louka Parry
Uh, she's right now I'm read about ten books, and.

01:21:06:18 - 01:21:07:21
Daniel Franco
I think it's a.

01:21:08:13 - 01:21:26:23
Louka Parry
Tricky one. I would say. I'm reading, uh, becoming supernatural, but Octavia Spencer, that's really interesting. Yeah. Um, the parallel sayings, which is actually about looking at the words, of Buddha, Jesus, Lao, Tzu and Krishna and thinking like what underpins all religions. That's an interesting.

01:21:26:23 - 01:21:27:06

Question.

01:21:27:12 - 01:21:34:16
Louka Parry
As well. Um, and then I'm also reading, uh, a lot of education books, right? You know, yeah.

01:21:34:24 - 01:21:35:21

Very good stuff.

01:21:37:02 - 01:21:43:02
Daniel Franco
If you from a self-development point of view and could recommend a book to someone.

01:21:43:07 - 01:21:43:13

Yeah.

01:21:44:04 - 01:21:46:07
Daniel Franco
What would book book would come to mind.

01:21:47:14 - 01:21:48:01
Louka Parry
Just one.

01:21:48:18 - 01:21:49:21
Daniel Franco
I, there's so many but we.

01:21:49:21 - 01:21:50:12

Can't visit like.

01:21:50:13 - 01:21:52:04
Daniel Franco
So what's one that you've gifted the most?

01:21:53:04 - 01:21:57:13
Louka Parry
Um. MAN Search for meaning, I think. Oh, it's.

01:21:57:13 - 01:21:58:06
Daniel Franco
My favorite book, of.

01:21:58:13 - 01:22:29:00
Louka Parry
Course. My on the shortness of life. Yeah, I. SENECA Mm hmm. And the last one is actually Designing Your Life, which is by Bill Bennett and Dave Evans, who are colleagues at Stanford. And it was a lifestyle design course that they used to give to Stanford, still give to Stanford students. And that book, I swear, I've recommended about 50 people and they've all bought it because it's back to our Ikigai conversation is how do you design your life, how you use design thinking for your life, like around your career trajectory or around decision to moment making?

01:22:29:08 - 01:22:34:15
Louka Parry
Odyssey Planning is one of my favorite tools ever and I use it all the time. It's just a really beautiful way.

01:22:34:18 - 01:22:34:23
Daniel Franco
In.

01:22:35:07 - 01:22:37:08
Louka Parry
Designing your life. Bill Bennett David.

01:22:37:17 - 01:22:42:00
Daniel Franco
You put them in the show notes. Got to listen to any of the podcasts.

01:22:42:16 - 01:22:50:05
Louka Parry
I, I used to at the moment. I'm like, I'm almost too much in the creation space because I've just been consuming so much noise.

01:22:50:05 - 01:22:50:21

For so long as that.

01:22:51:08 - 01:22:54:15
Louka Parry
But I would say my favorite hidden brain. Absolutely brilliant.

01:22:54:15 - 01:22:55:04

Yeah. Great.

01:22:55:05 - 01:23:06:03
Louka Parry
Opie Marcus podcast I really like. That's interesting. Kind of cutting edge spirituality stuff. Um, I used to love TED Radio Hour as. Well, I spent a lot of years listening. That too. Yeah.

01:23:07:00 - 01:23:08:09
Daniel Franco
Creating Synergy 90 favorite.

01:23:08:21 - 01:23:13:13

Right. I don't know if this is the quality. I don't know. I don't know. Scott.

01:23:14:05 - 01:23:20:05
Daniel Franco
What's one lesson that's taking the longest to learn?

01:23:20:05 - 01:23:21:24
Louka Parry
Maybe that there's not one lesson.

01:23:23:11 - 01:23:23:23

I don't know.

01:23:24:06 - 01:23:25:08
Louka Parry
It's that actually.

01:23:27:20 - 01:23:28:22

I actually did all of this.

01:23:29:06 - 01:23:37:20
Louka Parry
Is that life is really simple. It's just be curious, be honest and be kind. Yeah, that's that's that's.

01:23:37:20 - 01:23:38:05

Kind of.

01:23:38:19 - 01:23:39:12
Louka Parry
What I'm learning.

01:23:39:24 - 01:23:41:09
Daniel Franco
You know, when you overcomplicate things.

01:23:41:10 - 01:23:41:16

Oh, my.

01:23:41:16 - 01:23:43:01
Louka Parry
God. So much the mind, the.

01:23:43:01 - 01:23:43:23
Daniel Franco
Story we talk about.

01:23:43:23 - 01:23:56:21
Louka Parry
So, yeah, we make things complicated. Exactly. And that's the that's the most important story we ever hear, by the way, is the one that we are telling ourselves consistently. And if we can change that, I think unlocks our true potential there beyond even.

01:23:59:02 - 01:24:02:02
Daniel Franco
So, you could invite three people for dinner. Who would they be?

01:24:03:24 - 01:24:28:10
Louka Parry
Oh, well, if I you know, when I ask that question, I think, well, he's the most influential person ever, and it's probably the spiritual master like Buddha, Lao Tzu and Jesus. They'll be kind of an interesting chair in it, but I actually think would be my yeah. My grandma and my older self. Mm. Because they have my elders that I call upon really um, you know, the ancestors sort of passed on.

01:24:28:23 - 01:24:33:03
Louka Parry
Uh, and also I need that old look just to give me that simple answer.

01:24:33:20 - 01:24:35:07

Yeah, let's go to that would.

01:24:35:07 - 01:24:36:04
Louka Parry
Be interesting conversation.

01:24:36:04 - 01:24:36:21
Daniel Franco
That's true.

01:24:36:24 - 01:24:37:06

Mm.

01:24:38:05 - 01:24:49:02
Daniel Franco
Oh that's so interesting. That's made me think about if that could actually come to reality. I'd go back and learn Italian and invite my grandparents back. Oh, I never even thought about it like that. That's amazing.

01:24:50:01 - 01:24:52:23
Louka Parry
Never too late. It's never too late. Brain plasticity. It's over.

01:24:52:23 - 01:24:55:00
Daniel Franco
Yeah, well, it's definitely on the bucket list.

01:24:55:11 - 01:24:55:21
Louka Parry
And that.

01:24:56:01 - 01:24:56:19

A yeah.

01:24:57:24 - 01:25:04:00
Daniel Franco
What's the, what's some of the best advice you've ever been you've ever received? Um.

01:25:05:24 - 01:25:20:03
Louka Parry
It's actually that somebody said to me, a, a dear friend who's an amazing social entrepreneur in India, changed millions of lives. Actually, he said, and I've, he said this, but he said, imagine if you.

01:25:20:08 - 01:25:20:14

If.

01:25:21:06 - 01:25:46:07
Louka Parry
Why don't you just start with the assumption that you already have everything you'll ever need. Mm. And so that's that peace around abundance as opposed to scarcity. If we can create an abundance mindset in our leaders, in our business, working through our schools, in our world, I think we can actually create a better future for our grandkids. And so, yeah, you have everything you're ready made.

01:25:46:07 - 01:25:55:14
Daniel Franco
I love that. I have 10,000 questions. I got to stop myself from us ahead. If you had access to a time machine, where would go?

01:25:57:04 - 01:26:18:09
Louka Parry
I would go to actually go to 2100 and I'd see what we've created and invented exist. Looks like absolutely what scoring system looks like. What are the business models of that? What technologies are at play? And I would bring back those technologies and I think the most important one is the one that we are still missing today is it's not just converging tech, it's human tech.

01:26:18:20 - 01:26:34:17
Louka Parry
What's that? How do we develop and cultivate the type of capabilities, type of character, type of human beings that help us live in a more a peaceful, compassionate way with all life around us, not just each other, but also, you know.

01:26:35:07 - 01:26:36:24

The ecologies that sustain us.

01:26:37:00 - 01:26:43:14
Louka Parry
Yeah, I think that I'm very curious and as a futurist, I'm always interested in what the speculation of that could look like.

01:26:46:00 - 01:26:56:02
Daniel Franco
If you had if your house was on fire, your family, your pets, everyone, they're all safe. You could run back in and grab one thing. What would it be there?

01:26:56:04 - 01:26:56:16
Louka Parry
My guitar?

01:26:57:01 - 01:26:57:22

Yeah. Yeah.

01:26:58:09 - 01:26:59:10
Daniel Franco
You play music as well?

01:26:59:13 - 01:26:59:23

Yeah. Yeah.

01:26:59:23 - 01:27:01:13
Daniel Franco
Just to add to the neuroplasticity.

01:27:02:09 - 01:27:04:18

What is the connection? It's a mathematical musical.

01:27:05:01 - 01:27:17:19
Louka Parry
Yeah, I do. And actually, when my grandma died, she gave us all $1,000 to get the grandkids. And I bought a guitar, a beautiful tailor, three quarter guitar with that. And I'm more of a.

01:27:17:19 - 01:27:19:17

Pianist and a guitarist, but it's a beautiful guitar.

01:27:19:17 - 01:27:21:09
Daniel Franco
So as you play piano as well.

01:27:21:22 - 01:27:23:01
Louka Parry
Piano is the bass instrument.

01:27:23:01 - 01:27:24:15

And if you love piano. Yes.

01:27:24:15 - 01:27:26:11
Daniel Franco
And a marathon runner and only about.

01:27:26:17 - 01:27:28:21
Louka Parry
A couple of weeks out from that. So, yeah, looking for.

01:27:28:21 - 01:27:30:09

A circuit struggle if.

01:27:30:17 - 01:27:31:07
Daniel Franco
You don't do.

01:27:31:23 - 01:27:35:04

Trauma. I don't join class. Yeah.

01:27:36:12 - 01:27:38:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah. So if you had one superhero, pal, what would it be?

01:27:39:17 - 01:27:52:17
Louka Parry
Oh, it would be to help people see how powerful they truly can be in a positive way.

01:27:52:17 - 01:28:01:13

Mm. You don't want the negative one 9999 powerful. I just take over the world. I had to at the end of the day that's not going to fly.

01:28:03:02 - 01:28:07:05
Daniel Franco
And all of this one event, that joke.

01:28:07:05 - 01:28:09:15

She joked that Sarah was, Oh, look.

01:28:09:21 - 01:28:17:16
Louka Parry
I'm yet to become a dad, so I feel like I have an end to this one. Yeah, but, um, what kind of PS are Dad's favorite?

01:28:19:03 - 01:28:20:18
Daniel Franco
What kind of pays or dad's favor?

01:28:21:03 - 01:28:21:21
Louka Parry
Peace and quiet.

01:28:22:24 - 01:28:27:12

Yes, it's. You could speak to that. Yes, they do. It is.

01:28:27:12 - 01:28:34:11
Daniel Franco
Brilliant. Look, thank you so much for your time today. I'm barbecuing over two or 3 hours with this one.

01:28:34:18 - 01:28:37:00

You know, we really could we could have double clicked.

01:28:37:00 - 01:29:05:11
Daniel Franco
It's like we I think, you know, see if we can touch on your part two next to you some time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. You're doing in this space. I really believe your thought, leadership and your passion around what you're doing, especially within the schooling system and setting up the future in a better way is like it's it's world leading and you know, no wonder why you're getting asked to go around the world and speak and do this sort of stuff.

01:29:05:16 - 01:29:19:22
Daniel Franco
You're really passionate it and absolutely amazing. Your message is really strong. And you know, I'm going to continue watching from the sidelines as a fan. And so, you know, kudos to you. Thanks again for coming on Daniel night.

01:29:19:23 - 01:29:23:12
Louka Parry
Thanks for a wonderful conversation. You've absolutely convinced me long form is the.

01:29:23:12 - 01:29:24:14

Way to go. Yeah, really.

01:29:24:15 - 01:29:26:08
Louka Parry
It's really it's been a delight thank you.

01:29:27:07 - 01:29:29:14
Daniel Franco
Where can we find you? Where can we follow you?

01:29:30:06 - 01:29:37:24
Louka Parry
Uh, well, I have to say, I'm both lucky and curse to have a unique, competent name population. So look up.

01:29:38:14 - 01:29:39:10

Greek. Welsh. Yeah.

01:29:39:20 - 01:29:55:20
Louka Parry
So it's a UK p, a double r y. And if you put that into any search, then you'll find a bunch of moderately interesting things I'm working on. Yeah. So and the learning feature dot com is the work we do with learning systems and a little bit in the innovation organizations base search we.

01:29:55:20 - 01:30:01:09
Daniel Franco
Didn't even really touch on today so I'm sorry, sorry. But yeah, I'd love to talk to you about that and what you're doing in that space as well.

01:30:01:11 - 01:30:04:05
Louka Parry
The most important the most interesting thing is actually who we are.

01:30:04:05 - 01:30:04:22

Yeah.

01:30:04:22 - 01:30:08:01
Louka Parry
And that's kind of like I'm a big proponent for big talk, not small talk.

01:30:08:01 - 01:30:08:11

Yeah.

01:30:08:11 - 01:30:26:02
Louka Parry
And I can tell you all the stuff, the cool projects we're working on in the system change the transformation agenda and stuff. And that's all really interesting. But I really just like the way you've asked the questions as well, because it's been such a deep vein of deep self conversation and like this is the holding of space, the generative listening, because then new questions emerge, right?

01:30:26:13 - 01:30:29:04
Louka Parry
I think you're a fantastic question and like interview. I think that's really clear.

01:30:30:00 - 01:30:34:01
Daniel Franco
Thank you very much. You know, take some time.

01:30:34:05 - 01:30:34:23

I'll take time.

01:30:36:18 - 01:30:45:12
Daniel Franco
To appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, everyone, for all for coming and listening in. We'll catch you next time.