The CQ , Curiosity Quotient with Lynn Casey

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is what we need to be pursuing. We need
to be looking for feelings. We need to be capturing
these magic moments that people string together. I call them
the sacred ordinary, these moments that bring us this constant
feeding of joy. Right. I think where we get confused

(00:20):
sometimes is this pursuit of happiness, which I think most
Americans make, the pursuit of excitement, yes, thrill, right, And
what we actually need is that slow, iv drip of
joy which is always available to us.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to the Warriors at Work show. This is Genie Koomber,
your guide and host. This is a show for men
and women in the workplace who want to move from
the predictable to the potent. This is your weekly dose
of inspiration with an edge. I talk with CEOs and shamans,
sports marketing executives, and therapists. All of us are like

(01:00):
minded thinkers and doers who tell stories, share wisdom, and
challenge each other to have the best life possible inside
and outside the office.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Welcome to your Warrior Conversation. Hey everybody, it's Genie. Thank
you so much for joining me here at Warriors at
Work today. I'm bringing you a really beautiful conversation and
an important conversation with a highly sought after thought leader,
brand builder, and futurist who's also the founder and steward
of a fascinating organization called Shine Scout. Lynn Casey is

(01:38):
known for her unique ability to spot patterns and connect
the dots of e merging sociocultural, digital, economic, and behavioral
trends for organizations. She has traveled the world to guide
companies as diverse as Mattel, Activision, Facebook, Instagram, Citibank, Esday Loder,
just to name a few. She has keynoteed future trends

(02:02):
and all of these insights at Abu Dhabi, Oslo, Prague,
San Francisco, New York, and she sat down with me
and shared her wisdom, her stories. She also talks a
lot about this really powerful idea called the curiosity quotion.
Get your notebook, sit down, find a quiet space and

(02:24):
dig in. Lynn Casey, here you go. There's so much
I want to unpack with you. And one of the
things that I want to say, pretty much out of
the gate is a little bit about your background and
the work that you're doing in the world that is
so so important and it's very much aligned to the
work that I'm doing. That's why I'm so thrilled to
have you here. You're the founder and steward of a

(02:46):
fascinating organization called Shine Scout. You use words like cultural cryptographer,
crafting the vision and building the strategy for brands and companies,
which I know we're going to get into that, but
being companies create the future. And one of the things
that really struck me when you and I first met

(03:08):
is how deeply connected you are to this work and
this offering to the world better way to say it,
and you're in such alignment, And where I really want
to begin is I'd love for you to just take
a step back and tell us your story, like why you,
why this work?

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Right? Thank you, Jeanie, And just to go back to
the first thing you said, I am so thrilled to
be here today because I am so very much in
awe and in alignment with the work that you're doing
in the world today. Frankly, I think this is the
work of the world, and I think everyone's I think
everyone's catching up and we will talk more about that,

(03:50):
But why me and why? Now? You know we are
in the midst of one hundred year storm, right, and
when we think about what does one hundred year storm mean,
It means all these different elements from all these diverse
categories areas part of the world. Something is shifting and

(04:13):
changing at the same time. Right. That's really the difference
between a bad and a trend. A trend is one
of these sort of seminal shifts where things are moving
and changing, those tectonic play shifts that are happening that
impact every aspect of our lives. And that's what's happening
right now. And we all feel it right that there's

(04:36):
something very unsettled, there's something very uneasy, But yet it's
so beautiful because we know it takes chaos, right to
sort of crack that egg and to take us into
the next evolution of who we are. And I think
we've all been waiting for this, and we've all been
participating in the warm up to this, right, and so

(04:58):
here we are, and change is frightening, change is scary,
but change is so necessary for us to be who
we can be. And so to take you back, there
was a very seminal moment for me when I understood
that this was my work. So I was a little

(05:21):
baby advertising executive working on Madison Avenue. We were working
on a Folger's coffee project, which no one knows what
Folders is anymore.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Kids.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
This is before Starbucks and so they were trying to
launch this sort of hybrid instant coffee that tasted like
ground coffee product. So we were doing focus groups and
we were in Portland, Maine, and it was so fascinating
to me. So the moderators in the room and he
is asking this woman about her daily coffee, what does

(05:52):
your daily coffee taste like? And again for viewers at home,
this is before Starbucks. And she's like, ugh, it's like
it's a styrofoam cup and it tastes like I don't know,
hot water that someone stirred with a brown crayon. It's
just like, oh, not any good. He's like, all right, well,
well what's your weekend coffee like? And you watched this

(06:14):
woman change before your eyes. She settled back in her chair,
she closed her eyes, this little smile like played on
her lips, and she said, Oh, I'm sitting out in
my Adirondack chair. I can smell the cut grass, I
can hear the leaves in the trees. I'm holding this
chunky ceramic mug one of my kids made, and the

(06:36):
coffee just smells so good, and I'm at peace with
the world and it's just one of the most beautiful
moments of my life. And I've looked around the room.
I'm like, no one has mentioned the taste of coffee. Guys,
there's no coffee in this room. And everyone's like, what's

(06:58):
wrong with her? I'm like, this is what we need
to be pursuing. We need to be looking for feelings,
we need to be capturing these magic moments that people
string together. I call them the sacred ordinary, right, but
they are Think about your favorite moments, Genie. It's the

(07:18):
moment you're sitting on your front step and your your
hand is resting on your dog's head, right, and you're
feeling the pulse of his little life next to yours,
and the sun is beating down, and it's the sacred ordinary,
these moments that bring us this constant feeding of joy. Right.
I think where we get confused sometimes is this like

(07:39):
pursuit of happiness, which I think most Americans make, the
pursuit of excitement, yes, thrill, right, And what we actually
need is that slow, iv drip of joy, which is
always available to us.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
So good, slow IV drip of joy. It's the moment,
it's the texture of the moments.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Life happens in the hallways, not in the big room,
in the hallways, and when I work with these big companies,
that's it's sort of like my sacred task is to
usher them into those hallways, right. Yeah, So that was

(08:25):
my big moment where I knew that was my work
in the world was to get anyone that I was
working with, anyone that I was assisting, was to introduce
them to that emotion, right to that place of feeling,
right to that what does it mean to be alive today?

(08:46):
Element of any place that a product intersected with a
human being?

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Right, So beautiful how you describe it. Your ability to
storytell and relay very connected language to some practicality is extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
Well, the funny thing is there are very few products
we buy practically, like snow tires. I mean, there are
very few products that we buy practically. You know, I
always like to butcher God bless you, and I'm sorry

(09:30):
Maya Angelou. You know she has that wonderful expression that
people will won't remember what you do, I won't remember
what you say but they remember how you make them feel.
That is the absolute fact of brands. That's what brands
have to focus on. How do you make people feel?

(09:51):
And I see it. You know, I've had the incredible
education Genie in my work. So a lot of my
work to get to future trends, to understand future trends,
My work is really a weaving together of what are
the macro trends happening in the world, and then what
are the super granular insights right that give us the

(10:13):
story behind those trends right? And so to get there,
I have been in conversation with and I've estimated I'm
using a little Malcolm gladwellism here, but if it takes
ten thousand hours to become a master at something, I
have had easily ten thousand conversations with different human beings
from every walk of life. And at the end of

(10:36):
the day, everyone has a story that will bring you
to your knees. Everyone has experienced some loss or is
in some state of longing for something right, and everyone
is desperate to be witnessed. And I think that's what

(10:59):
we forget. People want to know that their life matters,
that their life counts right, and sitting with people and
hearing these stories again and again. You know, it's a
mom in Minneapolis sitting in a minivan at ten o'clock
in the evening, you know, crying because of how hard
it is to be a mom today right sitting in

(11:20):
a coffee shop with a thirty five year old guy
who has a wife and a baby, and he thinks
he's going to be stuck in this little town in
Ohio for the rest of his life. And how did
he get here? Like, the stories are so similar, and
it's just like yearning, yearning to be more, yearning to
connect more, yearning to feel more right. And So when

(11:42):
I think of where we are right now with AI,
with technology, with all the dystopian events happening in our world,
I think we're on the brink of realizing that ability
to feel more, of realizing much fuller expression of what

(12:02):
it means to be human than ever before. I think
it's tremendously exciting. I literally think we're on the cusp
of our next phase of evolution.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
So something strikes me about I mean, you've worked with
companies like Shesido, Mattel, Facebook, what's going on in those
organizations that cause a pause for them to say, we
need to bring in someone to help us do what
they're struggling with the future they're concerned about. Are we

(12:36):
hitting in the emotion and the heart and the feeling
place of our clients. What's going on that prompts someone
to reach out to bring in your extraordinary talent.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
You're so kind. Typically what happens when I'm asked, I'm
tapped for an engagement is to put it in the
baldest way. We don't know what consumers want right. We're
making the thing, we're we're doing the marketing, we're pitching
the thing, and somehow there's a disconnect. So we think

(13:13):
we're doing everything right. You know, obviously they're something's happening
with them right, So it's it's an awareness that message
isn't hitting market right. So all come in and it's
normally like little, let's all take a step back. Let's
take a look and see what's going on in the world. Right.

(13:33):
What are the big macro shifts, you know, from a
demographic standpoint, like when we think about your product, you
know who's driving that, Like, what is their age group?
What is happening to them? Where are they in a
life stage. And again it all comes down to emotions. Right,
Like when you're forty and you're in that Sandwich generation, right,
you're taking care of aging parents, maybe you've got kids

(13:55):
at home. There's a whole bunch of emotions that are
going on there, right, Or if it's a twenty, right,
there's a whole bunch of emotions. So it's like, let's understand, right,
the emotional see that your potential consumer is swimming in, right,
So it's making them. And that's where I talk about
cultural cartography because my work is to make maps. Right.

(14:19):
So when you think about you know, when you used
to go to the mall and you'd be standing there
in front of like where where the how do I
get to know? Ah? And m? And then you find
that the map and it's like you are here, right, Yeah,
So we always have to start with you are here, right,
so this is where we are, and then we have
to look at what's happening in culture, right, and all

(14:42):
culture is we always treat culture like I think some
people think culture is like cool sneakers and like what's
the hip jacket? And it's not. Culture is literally an
expression of desire, right, What is it that we desire.
It's all culture is. So culture is constantly changing and
more right, so it's to give them a map to

(15:04):
culture and help them understand how to navigate that. And
depending on the client, there's lots of different ways of
going about doing that. My favorite example is the work
that I did with Meta. So what's really exciting about

(15:25):
technology companies is they're big believers in fast failing. Right.
They'll make a ton of stuff. They have the brightest,
smartest people in the world working for them, and so
they can make a whole bunch of things. But then
they have to figure out do they work. It's very
reverse from a CpG company, right. A CpG company does
all this testing and it's like, okay, are people excited
we change the soap from like pink stripes to green stripes.

(15:48):
It's not going to work. Like it's this very slow,
laborious process just to make sure that they're not like,
you know, tipping over the wheelbarrow here. Tech companies just
make the stuff and then they sort of walk around
like does anybody want this? And so with Meta, they
had reached this point where they're like, we're doing a
lot more does anybody want this? And not having its stick.

(16:09):
So somehow we're missing something. So we were talking about
really really intelligent engineers from all over the globe who
were really committed to their craft. But what that meant, Jeanie,
is that they were working eighteen hour days in an
industrial headquarters with other technologists. So are they making products

(16:36):
that serve people? I don't know. They're not in contact
with a lot of people. So when they brought me
in and they're like, can you help us understand people?
Was basically the brief, and I'm like, WHOA, that's a
broad brief, Okay. So what I ended up creating was
an embed program. And I would take groups of seven

(16:59):
to nine leaders and we would embed them in small
town America. And I would pick a town that had
some sort of lynchpin event, Like we went to Knoxville,
Tennessee because they were having the big Ears Music Festival,
And we went to Bradleberg, Vermont because they were having
there walking up the steers right with cows walking through town.

(17:20):
So we would pick these sort of very homey, very
Americana type of events, right, and we would embed and
we would spend about four days, and I would we
would be so busy. We would kick off with an
event at a local restaurant and meet the purveyors and
the chefs and the owners. And then we would have
this whole night together as a team. And then the

(17:43):
next day we'd be hanging out with artists, or we'd
be out canning blueberries, or we would be refereeing a
little league game, or we'd be serving chicken pot pie
at a veterans you know, potluck supper. I kept them
embedded in the town, in the community, and no one
wanted to go first, and foremost people sure so annoyed.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
They're like four.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Days out of the office, and I had to take
two planes to get here, and I'm.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Like, and I'm refereeing a little game, little in game, Mike,
What am I doing?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Exactly? What the hell? By the last day, at least
half of them would be in tears. They would all
feel things they had not felt before, and they really
had been able to sort of pierce the fabric of
what it means to be in community again, the sacred ordinary,

(18:31):
what people really prized right, what they valued, and it
was very different than what they had thought because they
hadn't spent this sort of time, they hadn't lived in
these worlds, right, They weren't part of of a local
chapter where you know, in Brattleborough there's a big snowstorm.
You know, there's a certain group of people unofficially who

(18:54):
then go and bang on the doors of the senior
citizens to make sure their heat's on and that they're okay.
It's not this like warm, lovely thing. It's just what
you do, right, It's how you show up for each other.
So these were wildly, wildly effective programs because it did
the work for me right. Right, I could have stood

(19:16):
in front of them all day and told them how
people are and what they value and what they like.
I could have done a slide show. I could have
shown little clips.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
Right with all the data and all the metrics and
all the science. But you put them in a place
where they actually experienced it.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
They felt it. They felt it. And what I've learned
in my work is I believe in quantitative research. I
believe in data. I absolutely believe in assembling those facts.
But all that is is a platform for me to
stand on and then tell the stories, because the only

(19:51):
thing that changes the hearts and minds of people in
the room is an individual story about an individual experience.
It's the only thing that changes.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, you know, I know you're a recognized speaker and
an expert on all of these things. And one of
the areas that you are talking a lot about is
the curiosity quotient. And you told me this great story

(20:21):
when we were preparing for this, that I'd love for
you to retell around. Your dad said to spend one
hour a day on ideas. So take us through this.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, it's so funny. Again, we are at the cusp
of As I said, it's one hundred year storm. It's
a moment in time that has not happened before. And
it's like I say that, and I'd like the hair
on my arm stands up because I'm so excited by it.
But yes, it goes back to understanding that we are

(20:57):
now being given permission. In fact, we were being exhorted
to create, to be curious, to notice, to observe. Right. So,
so much of the work that we've done in the past,
Genie begins with the red, right, regurgitate, review, redo, revisit right.

(21:23):
Think about all the tasks that we do every day, right,
so much of them are these rethings. The only ra
that I think is going to be valuable is the
one that has a C in front of it. Right.
That means create, right, because all this other stuff is
going to be done by technology. But taking me back
to my dad, So my dad was a global marketing

(21:45):
director for a major airline and I was a very
important assistant media planner. And we were taking the train
home to New Jersey one night and I was frustrated
about something to do with a client, and he said, well,
what ideas have you given them? I'm like, ideas, I
get it. I'm like, do you know I don't know

(22:06):
if you know how much work I'm doing all day God,
but like ideas. He said, you're your number one responsibility
to your client is to shut your door every day
and put a blank piece of paper in front of
you and spend an hour creating something new. Thinking of
ideas first, I think it's adorable that my father thought

(22:28):
I had a door, But this expectation that as a
partner for any business, that we're going to bring them
someplace new, that we're going to give them. Think of
the word idea. When I say idea, what happens to you?
Do you get excited?

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Well, my brain immediately goes like this I go laterally
rather than the linear world that I typically operated.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Mmmmm, tell me more.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Well the nature of what I do. So, I'm working
with executives and all kinds of industries, all kind of
functional areas, and what you typically find is that you're
having discussion within those functional lines, hearing a lot of
the usual business vernacular, business competencies, and you're helping them navigate.

(23:17):
But when I hear the word idea, it pauses that
linear thinking and it often will take me into more
of my life experiences and.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
I immediately go to moretured, textured language rather than the
linear transactional language that I have to use in order
to relay or talk through something.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
But the texture is where the meaning is, and where
the meaning is is where the real expansiveness is.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Exactly beautiful catalysts.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
It's a catalyst for like it's bad, it's broader ways
of being.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
I mean, an idea is a thought in right, it
has energy to it, right, and so for us to
bring energy for us to move things forward, right, what
we need to do is be curious and you go

(24:16):
back and you think about, like what we've been given
over the years, the templates we've been given to sort
of judge our abilities by or other people's abilities by. So,
you know, first there was IQ. You know, our intelligence
question is not a smart person, you know, but I
cannot think of a more subjective term. Right, But you
know what's your IQ?

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Can?

Speaker 1 (24:33):
They can they think cleverly? Well, we've got machines who
can do that at this point, right, I mean, I'm
not sure we don't want people who who aren't excited
by bringing their smartest thinking. But we know that the
real heavy lifting of accessing historical thought, accessing analysis, et
cetera is going to be done by AI is being

(24:55):
done by AI. Right, So then we move into EQ. Right, Well,
what's your emotional intelli? Which is great? I think emotional
intelligence is really really important, But that's not going to
get us anywhere. That's not going to get us to
the end. Right. So if we've got all these machines
now running the numbers and doing the work and running

(25:15):
the analysis and giving us all these amazing scenarios like
imagine this or imagine that, what's going to drive that,
what's going to drive the best use of technology is
our curiosity. How might we what would happen if could
we like that? Type of thinking, right, that fragmented, disconnected,

(25:38):
the holes barred, not worrying about the end result, right,
because that's where the magic happens. It's not thinking about
the end result.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, it's so true. And not thinking about the end
result freeze people to truly play the edges because if
you're always thinking about what's the goal, what's the deliverable? Again,
let's use all the business vernacular we both see and
hear every day. If you remove that and say, let's

(26:12):
look at this as a boundaryless space, then what's possible?

Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know, it's you know, when Uber first started, they
talked about mobility and access. They didn't talk about cars,
they didn't talk about getting from one place to another, Airbnb,
didn't talk about couches and bedrooms, right. They talked about belonging,

(26:42):
belong anywhere in the world. Right. So again they went
to those intrinsic human desires. And when you start with
a desire and you do what you did at the
very beginning of our call today, you're like, what we're
going to do is desire mapping. What are all the
places that we can intersect with the big, throbbing, pulsing
desires of humanity today. That's where you're going to win. Right.

(27:07):
So it's not like how does this mascara track to
that twenty four year old right, that's going to create
such a narrow lane for you. But what is how
does beauty manifest right now? For a twenty something? What
is beautiful? Like if you go on the Row, you're

(27:29):
familiar with the fashion line the Row. If you go
on the Roe's Instagram account, you will not see pictures
of clothing, because that's not what they're selling. You'll see
beautiful pictures of a piece of pottery, a gorgeous Italian villa,
the picture of the Adriatic Sea. It's these gorgeous, magical

(27:50):
places that inspire this sort of feeling of like longing,
this surrounding of beauty, right, just higher level of how
we can exist, the things that we can surround ourselves by. Right,
That's what the Roe is connecting you with. And I
think today more than ever with a I with all

(28:14):
the shifts, and we can talk about all the micro
shifts that are happening right now, but less and less
are people defining who they are by what they do.
What we're defining ourselves by is what we love.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, so true. Where do you want to take this
curiosity quotient? So how you've just articulated all of that
and there's so much there. What do you want to do?
What do you want to bring forward?

Speaker 1 (28:47):
I want to teach a course in every single school
in the world on the art of seeing? Right, how
do we see teaching people how to notice? Right? Giving
people that sort of cheat sheet of like what sort
of questions can you be asking that make your world

(29:10):
so much more alive and lead you to the biggest
possible outcomes? Right? Like that, to me is teaching people
how to see, teaching people how to wonder right, Like
I can spend an hour in an airport without a
book or a phone and be fascinated because I'm seeing

(29:33):
and I'm noticing, and then I'm putting those together in
different stories, like, oh, well, that person is probably like
an heiress from Dallas and she's on her third husband,
and she's like, I can put an entire story together,
And I mean those sort of magical carpet rides is
what we all want. You know, the suitcase brand Rimoa.

(29:54):
Are you familiar with them? So they did something earlier
near and I wrote about it and I didn't realize
I had hit such a nerve. It was one of
my sort of highest response LinkedIn posts, but not because
everyone was like, oh I love that. It was a
very fragmented response. So Rima had started to buy back

(30:16):
old suitcases. Right, So we're living in the sage where
people really sort of value secondhand goods. It's goods with history,
goods with story. And the suitcases that were selling the
fastest were suitcases that had all these stickers on them,
you know that were like Indonesia and Kenya and Tokyo.

(30:38):
So they had these travel stickers on them, and they
couldn't keep them in stock, and they were selling for
like four and five times their value. And I just
thought this was like so wonderful that people craved to
have in their homes something that had had those adventures
and had those experiences. Like we're sort of imbued with that, right.
It's sort of how I feel when I and I'm

(31:00):
in a consignment shop and I find this like beat
up leather jacket and you're reaching the pocket and there's
like some concert tickets from you know, nineteen eighty nine.
You're like, oh my god, Like the tails this jacket
could tell right, So that's what was I think attracting
people to these suitcases. And what resulted was this very
heated discussion online of people saying, oh my gosh, this

(31:22):
is so sad that people are caused playing as adventurers,
you know, with these suitcases. And I'm like, are they
or are they using them as sort of a platform
to stand on to launch their own adventures? Right? Or
is because of where they are in the world, whether
age or financial circumstances, Is this as close to adventures

(31:44):
they're going to get? But it fills a longing that
they have, you know, it's the same reason people have
postcards of Santorini or Paris as something that they're longing
for and that they want to get to. Right, But
why not? Yeah, I mean if you look at the root.

(32:07):
I'm a big fan of emtology. If you look at
the root of the word desire, it means from the stars, right, really? Yes,
So so if our if our desires come from the stars, right,
it's it's it's sort of our looking for and longing
for something magical. That's the work every company has to

(32:29):
be doing, and that's what people have to be curious about.
You're not going to find it in a data dump, right,
You're not going to find it in a cluster analysis, right,
You're going to find it by understanding and looking for
what is it that people love, what brings them alive,
what sparks them?

Speaker 3 (32:48):
Right, excuse me, that's your apology.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Bless you. You know we're shifting from an optimization culture
to a participation culture, right, We're not trying to like optimizing.
You remember this feeling with the last ten years. It's like, oh, okay,
you know there's.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
I'm sorry, this is so weird. You must be saying
something that is resonating. That is far.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Let's remember everyone in the sixteenth century walked around with
snuff so that they could sneeze. You know, it was
a very pleasurable experience for a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
So when you go back to that optimization state again, optimization.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
So I would say that we've spent the last ten
I would actually argue from the Industrial Revolution, we've been
in a culture that's extremely driven by rewarded for optimization, right,
how do we do things more efficiently? And then it's
turned into this whole particularly during the pandemic, this whole
cottage industry of how are we optimizing every hour? You know?
Is it cold plunging and a ten minute breath work?

(33:51):
And then I'm having a green drink and then I'm like,
how do I become more and more and more productive?
And we've hit a wall. We've hit upimization fatigue because
it wasn't making us any happier. Yeah, right, so if
we've crashed against that wall, and for a whole lot
of factors, you know, twenty somethings are very aware of

(34:12):
the fact that if they hitch their wag into a corporation,
that's not going to take care of them for the
rest of their life, right. And they also understand because
they were the recession babies. They watched their parents lose
their jobs, their homes, their cars, they sometimes had to
change schools. They're very aware that it's a sum zero game, right,

(34:33):
So they're much more interested in using this lifespan to
understand who they are. And the way we understand who
we are is by experimenting with what we love. And
so that's the sort of back door that I guide
brands through. It's not this front door of Okay, it's
a twenty six year old, they're going to want a house,

(34:54):
they're going to want to get married, they're going to
want a golden retriever, They're going to want two cars
in the driveway. It's like, that's not the equation anymore.
How do they want to feel? What lights them up,
what makes them happy? And what we're seeing is it's community,
it's friendship, it's passional passions and pursuits, it's learning, it's experimenting,

(35:22):
and it's loving. So technology is forcing us. I would say,
it's rewarding us for being the most human that we've
ever been.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
That is one of the most profound ways I've ever
heard anybody describe where we are in the world and
also what's possible. And it's a shift in shift what
you think is happening versus what's actually happening. And I

(36:01):
talk a lot about words like intuitive attunement because I
believe that that is going to pay and it has
already played, but it's going to play in a bigger
role in our evolution. And how you just articulated that
was really really beautiful. I'm curious when you think about

(36:24):
your work and the patterns of thinking and feelings that
you've seen, what are some of your favorite patterns that
you're seeing that, you're really looking to promote and expand upon.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, so many Genie. I honestly think
this is again, despite the isstopian world that we're living
in right now, and I can't make flight of it.
It's a very frightening time to be alive. But what's
exciting about it is if I told you that you

(37:00):
had one year to live, I told you one year
to live. You're healthy, you're not like declining, but it's
one year. Would you do things differently?

Speaker 3 (37:12):
I would worry a lot less, okay?

Speaker 1 (37:15):
And how would you spend your time?

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Not that different than what I'm spending now. I probably
would travel more and be a little bit more indulgent
in spending mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
And would you revel in the moment a little bit more?

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Oh? Yeah, I would. I would let go. Well, that's
why I said, the lot of the worry. A lot
of the worry robs me of presents.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
And would you maybe try more new things? Because what
the hell? Yeah? Okay, we have an entire generation, We
have an entire cohort of people who are living with
that mindset. The numbers vary, but the last stat I

(38:05):
saw was approximately one out of five of Generation Z
don't believe that the planet will live will be viable
for the full extent of their lifetime. Okay, so huh
so how much time do I really have? Right? This

(38:25):
is a generation that, despite the fact that a lot
of them are saving for a down payment, they don't
believe that they will own a home. Right. They absolutely
do not believe that we're working for the same company.
They estimate they'll have between fifteen and eighteen jobs, right,
and at the end of the day, they're really going
to be relying on themselves. So they're sort of entrepreneurs. Right.

(38:46):
So now you're taking so many musts off the table, right.
So they're much more interested in discovering what do I love?
What might be fun? How do I experiment? Right? I
think I'll try that. Their definition of their life is

(39:07):
not what do I do? Right, They're trying to figure
out who am I? So there's a pursuit of passions.
I saw a statistic that said seventy three percent of
young people would trade in their Netflix subscription before they
would trade in a hobby. Right, So they're trying pickle

(39:31):
making or ice skating or baking parties or bee keeping.
They're really so curious about exploring all the different ways
we get to human today, Right, not how do I work?
But how do I live? And it's so exciting to

(39:52):
see what they're doing with that. Right. Of course, they
know they have to work because there has to be
a degree of income, but it's much more in service
to Well, I'm going to try to throw this dinner
party and you know, we're all going to make like
a weird appetizer and what does that look like and
how fun might that be? Right? Or I'm going off
this weekend because someone's having like a line dancing party

(40:15):
and we're all going to learn how to line dance. Right.
So it's this this joy and this pursuit of the
experience that I think is really really exciting. And they
value belonging, they value participation. They want to find others
sort of like, oh my god, like you like one
eyed huskies too, Like, tell me more about that. Right,

(40:38):
they're joiners, And you know, the smart brands are seeing
this and creating what I call choreographed collision. So you
and I grew up with the termin of serendipitous collision.
You and I will walk out of like two opposite
buildings and run into each other and like become best friends. Well,
we have a generation that grew up on digital. They

(41:00):
don't know how to do things in real life, right,
but they're really eager to learn. So brands that create
this sort of choreograph collision. You know, I don't have
to talk to you about like the rise of gaming clubs.
And by that I mean, you know, Majong and remy Cube,
like silly games that everybody can play. But if I

(41:21):
show up there and I don't know anyone, I'll be set.
I'll be put at a table with three other people
and then someone will explain it to me. And then
through this sort of learning and experiencing, I'm going to
make new friends. Right. I'm going to go to a
flower ranging class and we're going to do that. I'm
going to join this group that's doing a scavenger hunt
throughout my city. You know, nikes run clubs. They're not

(41:42):
about making people run better, right, You're about saying to
people on the Tuesday night at five o'clock, you're going
to meet a bunch of people that might be kind
of like yourself. Right. So again, this idea of choreographic collision.
There's just such a desire to come together, you know,
to commune, to learn from each other, could more.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Absolutely, people are starving for community connection, smaller groups, more
real conversation.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Smaller groups. Yes, I oh my god, you're like, I
preach this all the time. Right, Help me find my tribe,
give me a small, bite sized group of them, and
let me connect in a safe space where I can
learn about myself and maybe make a friend. You know,
the millennials. Millennials grew up in real life, right, So

(42:38):
these things didn't show up until they were about fourteen
or fifteen, Right, So they went you know, they jumped
into digital because it was exciting and fun, but they
did it collectively. That was Facebook, right, That was like, hey,
three hundred my friends, help me choose my prom dress. Right.
It was used in a very different way. Gen Z
grew up with these So what's exciting for them is

(43:00):
the opposite. Right, Ooh, what would it feel like to
go on a picnic with a bunch of people? Right?
How might I connect if? Right? How do I do
this in real life? That's what they're hungry to explore
the world that they didn't have growing up. So I'm

(43:21):
so excited about this yearning, this push to be human,
to move into what it really means to as you
discussed before, the sort of flatter what are the textures,
What does that smell like? What does that feel like?
What does that taste like? Because we have to focus
on what can technology not do for us? Yes, those things,

(43:42):
so our skills, the things that we are going to
be prized for, are our human qualities. It's curiosity, right,
it's sensorial, right, it's intuitive, it's emotional, So empathy, But
empathy is an equation, Okay, empathy is an equation, Genie.

(44:05):
Curiosity plus vulnerability equals empathy. We don't just get there.
I have to be curious about you. Then I have
to be vulnerable enough to show you something about myself
to allow you to show me something about yours. Right,

(44:26):
So we're sitting on the brink of the dawn of
the greatest expression of humanity that I think we've ever had,
and it's going to be exciting.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
That leads me to my final question. The way you
just set that up is so beautiful. So asking someone
like you, who spends all of your time in the
world of being in the future look out in your future.
What do you see and how have you had impact?

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Hm hmm.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
The most.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Powerful thing people can say to me after I've given
a talk or run a workshop is there, like, you're
the first person who has shown me a future that
I can be excited about. And I always joke that
it would be really bad to be a futurist who
didn't believe in the future, you know, kind of tricky

(45:33):
for the work there. But we have to be optimistic.
We have to be optimistic. And I believe human beings,
It's baked into our DNA, you know. We want to
be alive, right, We want to live, and we want
to live in the best and most beautiful way possible.

(45:55):
So that's the through line I'm always looking for. Right,
There's plenty of things that will tell us otherwise. But
when people are like, oh, we've never lived through times
like this, I'm like, can you imagine? Can you imagine
being a thirty old woman in nineteen forty in London. Okay,

(46:19):
you've come through the depression, you've come through World War One,
you've come through all the cholera and typhoid and death
and destruction of all of that, and you're taking a
really big breath, and you're like, Wow, we've been through
the worst of it, and we know that World War
two is right around the corner, right, But those people
survived and thrived and changed the world. Class structures fell,

(46:42):
Women gained so much more power and ability. Right. The
world shifted and changed, the un was created. So much
good came out of so much evil, right. And so
I look at where we are right now, and I'm like,
we're capable of so much magic. And now we have
the tools to free us up from task orientation and

(47:06):
allow us to shift into dreaming, into imagining, into the
alchemy of what it means to be human today. So
when someone finishes hearing me, or like I said, participating
in a workshop, or you know, wrapping up a research
project and seeing their excitement, right, seeing a gleam in
their eye, seeing ideas, seeing the sense that they can

(47:27):
create something new, That's the impact I've longed for, and
that keeps me excited about the work that I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
The word that's coming to mind is you are such
a spark.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
I love that, and I am so grateful that you
are doing this work in the world. This conversation has
been so fascinating to me, and I just feel so
excited about the possible abilities of where you're going to
take your work. And all of the people that you

(48:06):
just spoke to that are in my universe, I know
that they're going to leave this conversation feeling inspired but
also excited about Well, I can play with that, and
I can push that forward, and I can ask more questions.
I don't necessarily need to just subscribe to this transactional

(48:28):
way of being. There's so much more if I just
lift my head up, look around and ask more questions.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
It's all we have.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
Yeah, all we have.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Anything that we have been taught that's functional and practical.
It's going to be obsolete, right, So the only thing
we can be sure of is the power of our
own imaginations. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Amen to that. Yeah, Lynn, thank you so much for
sharing your heart, your wisdom, and your mind in this conversation.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Well, thank you, Genie for the work that you're doing
and for inspiring and reminding people you know to work
from their intuition, like to trust their own internal magic,
because that's going to be our strongest guide for our
best and most powerful future.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Thank you for joining me for another episode of the
Warriors at Work Show. If you are interested in learning
more about what we do at the Warriors at Work
Show and platform, be sure to go over to my website,
Genie Komber and subscribe to my monthly Warrior Playbook newsletter.
I share everything that I'm up to month by month,

(49:46):
as well as some lessons and insights that I've learned.
I'm also interested in hearing any feedback you have about
this conversation or future topics, so reach out to me
directly on JC at geniecoumber dot com on LinkedIn. Be
sure to tell your friends and your colleagues about this
Warriors at Work conversation, Subscribe.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Review and rate us.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
It's the best way to get this message out into
the world.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Be well,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Ruthie's Table 4

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The CQ , Curiosity Quotient with Lynn Casey

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Ruthie's Table 4

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

The CQ , Curiosity Quotient with Lynn Casey

Stuff You Should Know