Simon Waller (00:06)
Hello and welcome to episode 11 of the Future with Friends. Today I’m being joined by a very, very dear friend of mine, Anneli. Anneli how good to have you on the show. It’s so exciting.

Anneli Blundell (00:18)
Hey Simon, nice to see you and not walking the dog in the dog park in the cold.
v
Simon Waller (00:26)
Yes, I know. So this is so I think that’s such a beautiful story. So we first met well, actually, do you remember how we first met? Let’s start with that.

Anneli Blundell (00:36)
I remember you from ⁓ a little thing called Thought Leaders Business School over a decade ago. And I remember you just being this big, bright, like bundle of unbridled energy and joy. And I’m like, ⁓ this guy seems like a cool guy. That’s what I thought.

Simon Waller (01:00)
See, I almost find I would have almost seen the same descriptors around you except for the bit where you say big. So a little bundle of joy and energy. And there’s always this a sparkle around you and your work and the way you show up in the world. And we had I think a bit of a kind of a connection back then that kind of carried us through a few years. And I think a lot of, you know, kind of

Anneli Blundell (01:05)
Yeah, that’s right.

Simon Waller (01:27)
so much friendships, but connections, we kind of got lost a little bit over the COVID years. And then you turned up in the most unexpected of places. Like you turned up in the dog park across the road from my house. Now to give context for people, I live about an hour, southeast of Melbourne down in the Mornington Peninsula. It’s not somewhere I would have expected to see you turn up. And you were dressed like a snowball at the time. It was a middle of winter.

Anneli Blundell (01:36)
You

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (01:55)
You were in a jacket that made you literally almost look as rare, like as wide as you are tall. And he was like a Michelin Man jacket. And you had like earmuffs on and the jacket over you and I could think of his little eyes. And then there’s like this little this little kind of snowball yelling out to me like Simon, Simon. And you’ve literally moved in to the like a street away from me. You’re you’re actually in a studio 200 meters from my house right now.

Anneli Blundell (02:01)
A Michelin man jacket. That’s my… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that’s it.

I am. Oh the irony. I know it’s so funny. But I have to say, I have to say Simon, I claimed the peninsula first because I grew up on the peninsula. I am from the peninsula. I just, you know, I did what all young people do. We have to go to Melbourne to make it in the big city, but we always come back.

Simon Waller (02:45)
Yeah, my story is a little bit different. I grew up in a little fishing town three hours north of Perth in Western Australia. So I suppose if I was going to claim something, I’d claim Cervantes. ⁓ But I did move to Melbourne for the same reasons to make it in the big smoke. ⁓ That being said, and my wife Nomes, she’s from over here. To me, being on the peninsula was actually been about around being near the water again, which is what I grew up with.

Anneli Blundell (02:55)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (03:10)
What a beautiful coincidence that we’ve turned up. You know, as I said, we share a dog park, we live 200 meters away, and we now get to do this podcast together. I think I actually might have even hit you up in the dog park. was like, oh, and the lady I was like, you’re gonna come like we walk in the dog is like, you want to come on my little show. And you said yes, which was very kind of you.

Anneli Blundell (03:20)
I know!

I did. And of course I had to ask the obligatory question, are we going to do this at your house, at my house, or do we do it separately? Because like we are literally just around the corner from each other. And of course tech and setup and everything means we are two seconds apart and yet here we are in our own home.

Simon Waller (03:43)
Well, do. Yeah, I

think probably with the exception, I don’t know the only other public sector with this, we’ve said Mykel Dixon, you’re the apart from any other guests I’ve had on the show, your studio is the only one that’s anywhere near as elaborate as mine. Like I’ve been to your place, I’ve checked out your studio, you’ve got multiple camera angles, seven different microphones, lighting and all the rest of it. It’s like with a little bit of effort, I’m sure we would have been able to host this in person. I do actually have intentions baby in season two of saying up this studio with

Anneli Blundell (03:49)
Hmm

Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (04:13)
that kind of set up, but I was like, weirdly, and this is finally an interesting reflection on your, on our conversation we’re to have today, by the way, that it was easier for us not to be together. ⁓

Anneli Blundell (04:20)
Mmm.

Oh

my god, the layers have begun already. Wow. Wow.

Simon Waller (04:28)
⁓

Okay, so with that as a little kind of segue, what is it that we’re talking about today? And Ali, what is your what future are we going to be exploring?

Anneli Blundell (04:33)
Yeah.

believe we are exploring the future of meeting strangers.

Simon Waller (04:46)
The future of meeting strangers. What an enticing title for a podcast. Do you want to share a little bit about what sits behind this for you? What led you to choose of all the topics you could have talked about? Why this one?

Anneli Blundell (04:48)
I don’t

Mm.

So I thought really hard when you invited me in the dog park, very formally and officially, if I would like to be a guest on your podcast. And I thought about the discussion we had around signals and what do I think is happening and where might the future be calling us based on my lens, my experience and what I’m interested in. And you specifically said, it doesn’t have to be around your expertise. It can just be something that’s sort of calling to you. And I thought, well,

my God, have so much to say on that because the stuff that I do in my work around communication dynamics and helping people get heard is very much a baseline lens through which I took this scenario. But it really made me lean into the stuff that I’d been secretly ranting about. Like, ⁓ wow, the world has gone to hell in a hand basket. All those late night rants and.

and me thinking, gosh, if this keeps going, blah, blah, blah. And I thought, wow, he’s inviting me to rant on a podcast about where I think this crazy world might be taking us. And I thought, that is really exciting. That is really exciting. And I loved the invitation and I am thrilled to be here.

Simon Waller (06:20)
Excellent. That’s two things I pick up on what you said there. So first of all, very, very reasonable that the topic that you want to explore is related to what you do. You know, it’s just probably not exactly what you do is this a kind of this kind of one degree or two degrees, tend gently to it. And I think that’s very much what this kind of scenario is about. The second thing is this idea of the rant and what happens if the world keeps going in this particular direction.

And one of the things the valuable parts of scenario planning is it does ask you to kind of explore what happens if we go in a direction, but also what some of those kind of counteracting forces might be that stop it. And over the last couple of episodes, there’s been a theme that’s kind of popped up around this idea of the pendulum that swings from one extreme to the other and never really stops. But at some point we have, ⁓ you know, in a healthy system, we have both positive and negative feedback loops.

And so the positive loop will force it further in a direction, but at some point the negative feedback loop has to kick in to bring it back again. And this is the same way that any healthy system works. And so I think as much as there’s an opportunity to rant, there’s also an opportunity for you to explore what are those counteracting forces and what is the complexity at play here that we might not have otherwise have picked up on.

Anneli Blundell (07:37)
Mm-hmm, indeed.

Simon Waller (07:39)
So,

so this scenario, the future of meeting strangers. ⁓ We will talk a little bit about some of the signals and things that led into this after you have a chance to share what your scenario is. But maybe as a starting point, where is this scenario set? How far into the future are we looking here?

Anneli Blundell (07:42)
Mm-hmm.

So this is set in 2095, so we’re 50 years into the future. And I think it’s used.

Simon Waller (08:10)
Sorry, can I just

do the maths with you? 50 years, 2075 or 70 years, 2090? 2095? 2075? 2025?

Anneli Blundell (08:16)
⁓ sorry, sorry. Hang on. What did I say?

What are we now?

That’s 50 years, is it? 70 years. What is it? That’s what it is. Thank you. Whatever. All right. It’s Monday morning. Okay. Like whatever. Thank you. This was a creative writing exercise. Simon, you asked me to turn on one very, oh my God, this is so funny given what we’re about to talk about. You asked me to turn on one side of my brain and the other side switched off.

Simon Waller (08:27)
70 years, 70 years.

Yeah. And this is not a maths class by the way either.

Yeah.

Anneli Blundell (08:52)
Just let that be a precursor to what you’re about to hear.

Simon Waller (08:55)
I’ve

also that in the just before we jumped on air, we’re having a conversation around that you feel sometimes the need to test people about whether or not they’ve been listening. I just want I just want to let you know I was listening. Okay.

Anneli Blundell (09:04)
Yeah, that’s right!

Thank you. I appreciate you. Yes, that’s wonderful. But

also just a little bit of context so people can sort of follow along a little bit more easily. It’s a diary, it’s a couple of diary entries. It’s about a month apart for those diary entries. And it’s told from someone who’s very, very old. They’re probably now 90, I imagine. I’m thinking they’re about maybe 20ish in today’s world. But they’re talking about their kids and grandkids. That’s kind of what we’re…

what we’re hearing about.

Simon Waller (09:38)
And

there is, is there some ⁓ symbolism in that timeframe for you? What made you choose something that actually is in some ways quite a long way into the future?

Anneli Blundell (09:40)
Thank

Yeah, I wanted it to be far enough away that some cultural shifts could have had time to take place, assuming that they were quite accelerated. ⁓ But also far enough away that it’s almost like I was thinking about, have a 20 year old daughter and I was thinking about that she could be writing it from her vantage point. So she still has a connection through her grandparents, great grandparents to the analog world, the pre-analog world.

but she’s also right at the edge of or the end of, the beginning of a very different kind of world. So being able to hold those two timeframes, I thought was important to this story.

Simon Waller (10:29)
Yeah

Yeah, okay. That’s super cool. Actually, if you think about, as you said, the span of ⁓ cultural norms that she would have experienced, it’s quite extraordinary. You know, like you kind of go back to when she was born and you talk around like the early 2000s. And we just kind of gone through the Y2K bug and the dot com bust. We really were at the genesis of the internet.

Anneli Blundell (10:41)
Hmm

Yes. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (11:03)
but probably, I don’t know, when did we end up with lose dial up modems? know, like it’s kind of in that space though, isn’t it? And then you kind of take us, yeah.

Anneli Blundell (11:09)
Yeah, but see, that was her parents day, you know, by the

time she got to uni and school and whatever, she was like considered a digital native, you know, so she was, she was kind of she grew up on the internet, but she was the first wave going through the internet where we didn’t understand the impact on socialisation and loneliness and and stuff like that by being stuck to our phones and social media. But

Her parents had dial-up. Her parents had rotary phones, you know. So she’s familiar with these terms because she’s still heard about it in her world.

Simon Waller (11:47)
Awesome, that sounds brilliant. I can’t wait to hear this. In fact, I’m actually now going to throw to you, Anneli I’m going let you read your scenario from start to finish entirely uninterrupted. ⁓ Over to you.

Anneli Blundell (11:59)
Okay, Simon, it’s 2095, 70 years into the future. Dear Diary, today was Denim’s first day in Connection class. Olivia and Sam had known early on that he’d become a connector. He was curious and engaged and always wanted to be with other people. That was always the early sign of a connector. It’s no surprise really, my Nana had been a connector in her day long before we had the word for it.

And come to think of it, so had I. I remember back in the mid-20s when I was first at uni, the Great Divide was starting to happen. We didn’t know what it was at the time. We just knew the world was changing. We’d been through COVID, where we spent years scared of other people and how they might infect us. We went through political upheaval where it became uncomfortable and even dangerous to disagree. We learnt to fear strangers, fear opinions, avoid uncomfortable emotions. We spent less time with new people.

with any people really, and we began to lose our social skills. The world went back to normal for a period of time, but the genie was out of the bottle. For the first time, humans had a choice about how much contact they wanted to have with other people in the world. Working from home became an option, learning online became an option, using the telephone became an option, and people started to opt out. AI was on the rise and the ability to stop confiding in friends and even needing friends,

amplified the polarity and before we knew it, the great divide was upon us, the connectors and the creators and you had to choose. In our great haste towards maximising efficiency and matching people with their potential mastery, we put people where they would flourish or so we thought. I remember the day I had the first discussion with Olivia about the new system. It was careers day at school and she had to start making her choices.

As her mum, I’d always seen her ability to be with people, to make friends easily and put strangers at ease. But I also knew she had the technical smarts to build things, create things and invent things. She was one of the lucky ones who had a genuine choice. She could as easily have been a psychologist as she could have been an engineer. Little do we know the consequences of these choices. I wonder what she’d be doing now if she’d chosen creator instead of connector. Would she have met Sam?

Would they have had denim? Would she be happy? Dear Diary, I bumped into a creator today. I don’t know how it happened. It’s not supposed to happen, but it did. And we chatted. It was wild. I asked why he was speaking with me and he said he was on a program. His task for today was to talk to a stranger in the real world. At first he was sweating and nervous and his conversation was stilted, but I could see his determination to push himself.

to stay with the discomfort, to risk the rejection and just be with me. Like a man driven to a detox to save his own life, he knew he had to do this. Once we started chatting, I learned about a whole new world, an underground of extreme sports and tribal tests where creators were practicing connection in secret. What the government wasn’t telling us was that the Great Divide had made the world more effective, but we were not flourishing. We were dying.

and the creators were trying to save themselves from extinction. Without connection, they were dying out, literally and figuratively. They devised ways to build their social skills, to be with strangers, to discuss volatile topics that would elicit emotions, real emotions. They pushed themselves to be in rooms with strangers, to sit with them in silence and in conversation, both of which were as excruciating as the other.

This extreme sport for the creators was bread and butter for the connectors. But as a creator, you weren’t supposed to need people or be with people. People weren’t your thing and you got to opt out. We wanted your smarts, not your soul. But the cost was too great and over time an underground movement had begun. A few brave souls trying to save themselves. We should have seen the signs. I remember hearing about the bonuses government were giving out to citizens so that they would leave their houses after COVID.

I remember the rent-a-friend services that appeared and the meet-up groups aimed solely at discussing polarizing topics and trying to remain civil. You got extra points for disagreeing but still being able to continue having a pleasant conversation afterwards. And I remember the Great Depression and loneliness that would set in. I saw firsthand how people were struggling, but instead of supporting them and helping them build back these skills, we pushed them further into the emptiness.

dividing the world into the connectors and the creators in an attempt to make life easier, to stop making people do difficult things. We made them focus on their work. We let them recede deeper into themselves and ultimately we failed them. Dear Diary, I’ve become part of the movement. So have Olivia and Sam. It’s exhilarating. We meet up at the sign and we go underground.

We’ve been helping the creators stretch themselves by setting tasks for connection and conversation and providing support where we can. In turn, they’ve tasked us with creator challenges. It’s unbelievably satisfying to use my brain again to solve problems, to invent things, to use my brain for ideas and not just emotions. I feel myself becoming whole again and I see it in others. I’m starting to wonder if maybe, just maybe, by the time Denim becomes an adult,

He’ll be allowed to be anything he wants to be and everything he can be. I hope so.

Simon Waller (17:44)
wow, that is so beautifully read, by the way. Like, I know it’s probably not a surprise, given what you do for a living, ⁓ but that was just lovely to listen to. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Anneli Blundell (17:47)
Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I have goosebumps. That was a joy. What a joy. What an indulgence actually, Simon. Apologise to everyone else. That was just purely an indulgence for me.

Simon Waller (18:07)
You mentioned before we jumped on the recording you were talking about the fact that you haven’t really stretched this kind of creative writing muscle for a while that you don’t normally journal ⁓ or kind of write in this way. Tell us a little bit about that process for you. How was that? How did you go about it?

Anneli Blundell (18:15)
Hmm.

Well, one thing I’m very clear on is I don’t do creative endeavors for the fun of it, right? So I will not journal. I’m not just gonna write a short story just because I’m killing time. However, I do love the process of creation and I do love the process of letting my mind bring to the surface whatever it wants to. And one thing I’m really clear about is, you if I’m creating a program or I’m creating an outline for a day, I…

I don’t want to be, what’s the word? I don’t want to ⁓ expose myself to other people’s thinking and ideas because I know how the brain works. I know we are just an absorption machine. so…

unconsciously, you’re picking up all these ideas and then you have a great idea in the shower. It’s not yours, baby, it’s not yours. It’s something you heard 10 minutes ago or 10 weeks ago. And so I’m really careful about protecting my creative space. And so as I was putting this together, you you sent us some very helpful ideas around, you know, you can go on the internet and you can use chat or you can listen to other people’s interviews that we’ve done.

I listened to one interview very early on just to get an idea about what this podcast was about. And then as soon as I heard the story and I thought, oh, okay, I don’t wanna listen to any more because I don’t wanna hear how anyone else has approached it. I don’t wanna think, oh, that’s a good idea. Now I can use that idea. I just wanted to approach this 100 % from my own unconscious mind.

putting in all the data around thinking about the signals like we talked about, where do I think the world is going and what is my unconscious mind going to feed me when I just put pen to paper and write, which is what I did.

Simon Waller (20:20)
Excellent. Yeah, and it’s interesting when you talk about that idea of not wanting to be overly influenced.

And yet we can’t help but be like all of these ideas that you have captured are still ideas that you have assimilated from somewhere else. And, you know, even within this, are you actually allude quite specifically to some of the signals that have inspired this. You talk through some of these kind of things we’re seeing in the world right now, or I’ve seen in the in not too distant past kind of coming out of COVID in terms of, you know, payments for people to re socialise and things.

Anneli Blundell (20:31)
Mm-hmm.

course.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (20:59)
Share us a little bit about what were those signals that influenced the narrative for you.

Anneli Blundell (21:09)
So there are a couple of things. I’m thinking about ⁓ the things that I read or hear about that make me clutch my pearls. ⁓ What? You’re joking. No way. They’re the things that really grabbed my attention. So when I heard, I think it was the Korean government was offering something like $700 payment per citizen to leave the house. And I went, what? That is wild.

I mean, aren’t we craving that level of connection? But then the more I was out in the world and post COVID, the more I realised that we had begun to fear connection. And people were asking me as the people whisperer and someone who’s in this space and working in and amongst connection and communication, know, people were saying, what do you think much to your point, Simon? You’re the futurist. So they’re asking you from the general future perspective.

And they’re asking me from the human behavior connection perspective, are we ever gonna shake hands again? Are we ever gonna gather in groups again? And I said, are you kidding me? Of course we are. We are wired to connect. It is what we are built for. We have these inbuilt mechanisms like emotional contagion and empathy and emotions to literally wire us together. And ⁓ of course,

of course that is going to happen. And if it doesn’t, it’s going to be a very different kind of world. So I was thinking about things like that, know, our reluctance to step back into the very thing that makes us human ⁓ and things. it was really clear to me that this idea of use it or lose it was something that we could really ⁓ lean into for better or worse.

So, you know, I’ve seen an article where we’ve got, we’re teaching Gen Z young professionals in the workplace how to use the telephone. And I’m like, what? The Gen Z in me is going at you for real. Nobody wants to use the telephone. I never wanted to pick up the telephone at work, but it was something you did as a professional. You just, didn’t have a choice basically. And so you built those skills because you had to lean into what was difficult. And nowadays there are too many ways to opt out.

And that’s really of interest. I saw lots of signals around being able to opt out of discomfort.

Simon Waller (23:34)
Yeah, so it’s really interesting and I really appreciate when you take this now and you place it so far in the future.

We’re part of a generation that dealt with the risk reward of in-person connection with people. We overcame the risk because you expose yourself and there’s a vulnerability attached to it. And achieved the reward for many of us in terms of rich interpersonal kind of friendships and connections.

Anneli Blundell (23:51)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (24:05)
And so we go through this kind of period of restrained connection that we’ve gone through for the last kind of five or six years, but we can remember what it was like previous and can have the, well, we can lean back into that again. But you’re talking about a generation that doesn’t have that same understanding of the reward and have an over-inflated sense of risk potentially attached to that.

Anneli Blundell (24:29)
Yes.

Simon Waller (24:30)
And so what you’re saying is as much as you’re at the moment out there reassuring people, of course we’re going to do that. That only necessarily makes sense to this generation, like our generation. It could be quite reasonable in this scenario that we go 50 years or 60 years in the future. And that is, that’s very much different for the millennials and the future generations.

Anneli Blundell (24:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and some of the things I see with regard to, you know, ⁓ the way we’ve got different leaders around the world, and we’ve got the polarization of personalities in the media and in our governments around the world are creating an inability to hold just a regular conversation. So in the day, we would talk about politics. We know we’re not supposed to talk about politics, religion, sex and whatever, right?

But we all still do and we, but we can still be friends and we can still be civil. But we’ve got to a point in some of our conversations and relationships where we can’t even be in relationship to someone who holds a view that is different to ours. Now, sure, that might be we have fundamental beliefs that sit behind that, but where does that end, Simon? You my thinking is if we can’t lean into difficult discourse or being able to hold ideas that challenge us,

and not be curious about it, be, actually let it polarise us and fracture our relationships, then that’s where my rank comes in. Where is the world coming to? Like what’s gonna happen? What would happen if I couldn’t have this kind of dialogue?

Simon Waller (26:06)
Hmm. So yeah, we’re gonna jump in a second into like a bit of that because you do kind of point out in this scenario what some of those, you know, we talked before about what are the negative feedback loops that could ultimately start to kind of pull us back towards an equilibrium again. ⁓ But there’s a couple of things I picked up in this that I wonder, weirdly, whether or not you actually go quite far enough in this scenario.

Anneli Blundell (26:20)
Mm.

Simon Waller (26:34)
And the thing that came up for me in terms of, know, there is a space that we are in at the moment where we are kind of almost like pursuing a view around almost like a scientificism, like a belief that it’s the sciences that drive truth in our world, that they are elevated over the humanities to the point whereby now government is actually defunding humanity courses at university. ⁓

Anneli Blundell (26:54)
and

Simon Waller (27:02)
relative to the sciences. So we live in a world that is kind of almost like over valuing the logical pursuit of knowledge over the philosophical pursuit of knowledge right. And in this world

Anneli Blundell (27:04)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (27:18)
What we also see is if you look out into the workforce, the latest story was that Facebook is paying $100 million sign-on bonuses for AI researchers to poach them from open AI. So you kind of have this idea that these types of skills are worth insane amounts of money or insane amounts of we attribute insane amounts of value to them. Yet, if you’re a nurse or a teacher or someone that works in that kind of soft

Anneli Blundell (27:32)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (27:48)
skill type space. Your wages are very limited. So I actually think that not only like one of the things I kind of picked up in this in your world, creators and communicators or connectors are still considered relatively equal. It’s just a choice, right? And I question whether or not they’ll actually be that equal in this world. Do you actually have it as like a, like everybody would want to be a creator if they could be. Some people aren’t cut out for it. Unfortunately, you have to be a connector.

Anneli Blundell (27:49)
Mm.

Hmm.

you

Simon Waller (28:19)
Like it’s almost like it’s a secondary, a secondary kind of job choice rather than a primary job choice. I imagine that’s confronting idea for someone who obviously is very much themselves a connector. But what do you think of my hypothesis? Do you think that really in this world creators and connectors are equal or do you see that there’s potential for there to be actually quite a massive divide between them?

Anneli Blundell (28:24)
Mmm.

Well, I feel quite frightened right now because I think you’re talking to the futurist. I think your scenario is highly likely. In fact, as obviously we’re seeing very strong signals of that right now. And I’m wondering if my story was more from a biased lens of hope, ⁓ a hope around the impact of humanity and humanities. But I agree with you and I’m seeing that for sure, which and

Therefore, I’m equally seeing the ⁓ critical need for the focus on the connection piece, on the human aspect. Because as much as we might value those IQ skills, we know the EQ skills are the things that hold everything together and keep the human race kind of ticking as a society. ⁓ So I do see, I see that future way too clearly, I’m afraid to say.

Simon Waller (29:21)
Mm-hmm.

I think there’s some interesting other kind of signals that would contribute to this. So even I think when we look at AI, I do one of my keynotes is this ⁓ keynote called Will technology make us more human?

Anneli Blundell (29:46)
Mm.

Simon Waller (29:53)
and it talks about these kind of different technological revolutions we’ve gone through in human history from the agriculture revolution to the industrial revolution and how at each point it challenges our sense of who we are in the world and the moment the dominant understanding of who we are in western society at least is we are the thinkers and we’re now creating technology that’s potentially better at thinking than us which is then going to challenge that concept

Anneli Blundell (30:20)
Hmm.

Simon Waller (30:21)
But what we’re seeing initially at least is when we get challenged is that we double down. We go like, no, I’m going to even be a better thinker than the AI could ever possibly be. I actually, know, the kind of optimist in me says that actually beyond that, we go, well, what’s our competitive advantage relative to technology? And it is in the ability to feel and to care and to love, right?

Anneli Blundell (30:30)
Yeah.

Mm.

Simon Waller (30:45)
But that’s not our immediate reaction. Our immediate reaction is to fight against the threat by doubling down. And so at the moment, we’re even making those skills the most valuable skills.

Anneli Blundell (30:49)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (30:56)
So it’s interesting that we could argue around timelines, but I do think the general trajectory of what we’re talking about in this scenario is very, very real. But what it is is in the short term, we will devalue the connecting skills even further before we get to that point of this inflection point. ⁓ Yeah.

Anneli Blundell (31:17)
And I

think we will dev, we are devaluing those skills because of what we’re seeing that’s happening. But what I suspect is everything is on a bell curve, right? And so we know that we’ve got ⁓ leaders and laggers as it were, and the middle majority in the centre. So if mostly we are seeing society pushing or leaning into the IQ over the EQ for

for easy phraseology if you like. What I still see is that we still have the ends of the bell curves. So for me, I’m interested in the people who are prepared to literally push to the edges and either be the pioneers or be the laggards who refuse to go onto the technology or to lean into the IQ and still wanna work.

in the old ways and have a cup of coffee with someone and go and stand in a queue and not have their phone with them. You know, the ones that will refuse to lean into that. And so I see these outliers as our potential opportunity. Certainly where my work is are the organisations and the individuals who are going, I know I am better when I am more rounded. I know I’m only as effective.

Simon Waller (32:24)
Yeah.

Hmm

Anneli Blundell (32:41)
as my human skills allow me to amplify my IQ skills.

Simon Waller (32:47)
Yes, and I do think that is yeah, it’s worth kind of reminding people that this is not a Debate of IQ versus EQ that people could have a measure of both But there’s potentially a world where we’re going for the sake of efficiency We’re going to get you to if you are in the IQ space at all you are going to be Elevated or you’re going to be pushed in that direction

Anneli Blundell (32:55)
Yes. Yes.

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (33:10)
But it also reminds me of this is like as much as people like the nurses and the teachers get frustrated and will strike against kind of wage and work conditions, they’re still going to be nurses and they’re still going to be teachers because there is a calling or a sense of purpose that’s in their work that is bigger than just the, that’s what related to the paycheck.

Anneli Blundell (33:22)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (33:36)
So this brings me to another question I had for you. was a line in this which I thought was super interesting. And it was when you talked about the choice to be a, if you’ve been chosen to be a creator instead of a connector, would she have met Sam? Would she have had denim? Would she be happy?

And the line I found was curious because part of it inclined in title, was she unhappy with the choices that she made? Was she left with a sense of unknowing? What is it that you see as the reason that she would have sought happiness elsewhere?

Anneli Blundell (34:10)
Well, the idea here was that, you know, ⁓ people were funneled as it were into the obvious paths. So you like people, so you’re a connector, you’ll do the social stuff. ⁓ You’re an introvert, you don’t wanna deal with people, that’s too hard, too risky, too vulnerable. Okay, cool, you can stay in the basement and code. Essentially is kind of what I had in my mind. ⁓ But then the idea of, well,

if because she was on the choice point and she was able to go into either of those camps, once you make that, it’s like being a generalist in leadership. Once you specialize, you start going down a particular path that becomes harder to come back and be a generalist, right? Use it or lose it again. So if she were then to become a creator and do the IIT work or the intellectual work, whatever it is,

Simon Waller (34:51)
Mmm.

Anneli Blundell (35:01)
and therefore not have as much access to connection and people and humans, would she have met her partner, would she have had a child, which seems to make her happy. So this idea that even because she was on, because she’s a human, she’s a representation almost of the potential idealised human in that she’s fully rounded.

because we are fully rounded, right? know, Jung talks about integrating opposites. We want to be fully integrated humans. We want to have our EQ and our IQ. We want to be introverted and extroverted. We want to be flexible humans to ⁓ feel whole and fulfilled. And so when we only get to literally hop on one foot and try and win a race, we’re not as effective as if we can run on both legs, right? So the idea here is she represents that she could be the human who could…

be both and be happy. It just so happens that she goes down this one path which enables her to have family and social connection because she’s a connector and they’re, supposedly that they’re all connecting with one another, right? And so they’re meeting people and talking to people. But if you’re a creator, you’re not doing that. And the assumption is that as long as you’re doing the thing that you’re good at, you’ll be happy. But actually we need to be doing things we’re not good at. We need to be stretched. We need to be challenged. We need to be, ⁓

We need the adversity to bring out what we’re actually capable of so that we can feel fulfilled and fully rounded and fully embodied as a human, but we don’t know what we’re missing out. And by missing out on the connection piece, the obvious miss out is family. And I thought that would be an easy kind of thing to notice, I guess.

Simon Waller (36:50)
Yeah,

so it would also just, and it’s just so coincidental that this morning, serendipitous if you want to look at it this way, but ⁓ there was an article I was reading in Psychology Today this morning called The Misery of Chasing Happiness. ⁓ And it talks through some of Victor Frankl’s work ⁓ around meaning and the pursuit of meaning. And…

Anneli Blundell (36:57)
Mm.

You

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (37:17)
they’ve done this kind of longitudinal study looking at the kind of relationship between the pursuit of meaning versus the pursuit of happiness. And so the pursuit of meaning can be found in things like family, where ⁓ raising kids is actually really hard. It’s not something that generally makes you happy on a day-to-day basis.

Anneli Blundell (37:33)
Yeah.

Right.

Yes.

Simon Waller (37:39)
there is hardship in the cooking and the cleaning up because they make a mess. And the difficult conversations and the bits where they fight back, it’s like you don’t actually find happiness in all those moments, but they accumulate a sense of meaning. And the counterpoint to that is, often we talk about happiness as being something that comes from material pursuits. It’s lying on the beach chair in the Bahamas or something like that.

Anneli Blundell (37:44)
Hahaha

Hmm.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (38:09)
The ultimate outcome from this research suggests that actually there’s a, that both actually have value. That’s not the meaning. ⁓ The happiness is short-lived. The meaning is enduring, but the meaning without the happiness is also problematic. How do we have both? And so within this, kind of almost saw reflections of that in that, that little claim. Would she be happy is almost like, yeah, she’s doing the things that are meaningful in a world where though her skills are undervalued potentially.

Anneli Blundell (38:18)
Mm-hmm.

You’re right.

Mmm.

Hmm?

Simon Waller (38:39)
You know, just like we in the world that we’re operating at the moment, we see those pursuit of material, the material pursuits as being something to aspire towards as opposed to pretend say, you know, the challenges around volunteerism and things like that at the moment, getting people to contribute to the social fabric, something meaningful.

Anneli Blundell (38:43)
Mm-hmm.

And I think part of what I was thinking as I was writing this, firstly, just to be clear, I wasn’t thinking a lot as I was writing it. That was the point of the exercise for me. I I thought about a couple of signals, I thought about a structure, I thought, okay, a diary, these ages, his sorts of things. And then I just wrote and we got what we got. And now I’m making it mean like, I meant it, I didn’t mean it, it just came out. But now that as we’re unpacking it,

I can see all these layers in it. However, I was thinking before I went in that I am interested in this notion ⁓ of human behaviour in that we grow and develop at the intersection of support and challenge, right? So to your point, it’s almost like meaning and happiness a little bit, but not quite. But the idea is we need both. We need both. We need to be challenged, but not so much that we fall flat or we demotivated or we just feel bad about ourselves.

and not enough that we don’t feel like we’ve got any purpose. So we need enough challenge to feel like we’re striving and growing, but also enough support to make that worth as well. Again, so we’re not too demotivated. So that we need the balance of both of those things. And part of this scenario is you don’t get the balance. You’re only in support. You’re never challenged. And if you’re never challenged, you never fully grow. And the idea is by keeping everything comfortable and easy and just doing what you’re good at,

You will never fully know maybe that meaningfulness that you’re talking about. Yes, you might be happy, but you won’t be meaning, you won’t have that meaning. And I really like this idea of the balance because it is hard, it is hard to do things that are uncomfortable. It’s hard to do things that challenge us and the less we do them, the harder they become. And in my mind, I’m using the context of social skills, picking up the phone, sitting with a stranger, ⁓

you know, there’s research that something I saw the other day, 2000 adults were polled in 2000 working adults were polled and 74 % of them said that they were felt awkward in a kitchen scenario and in a lift scenario with another person. Right. And so, er, duh, we are not doing it enough. We don’t have that skill. So we are just doing things that are easy, too much support staying at home, avoiding those uncomfortable situations.

and not enough challenge. don’t put ourselves in those situations so we get better at them. And so I’m really always interested in how are we holding this balance? And if we’re not getting enough of it, what would happen? Hence the idea that at some point you might wake up and go, this isn’t working for me. There’s something missing in my life. I need to create whatever that is. In fact, it reminds me of a really funny, excellent book I read once called, I’m Sorry I’m Late.

I didn’t want to come. Such a good book. It’s about, it’s written by a wonderful writer. She’s an introvert. I’m sorry, I can’t remember her name. She’s fabulous. Just Google the book. She’s an introvert and she realised her social circle was shrinking. And so she spent a year extroverting. she makes all these challenges for herself and it culminates with her hosting a dinner party. Gasp, Clutch Pearls, right? The ultimate disaster for an introvert. And it’s just beautiful the way she writes about it and how she…

how she is demonstrating that beautiful intersection of support and challenge because she realises her life is not how she wants it to be if she lets herself get away with not doing those hard things essentially.

Simon Waller (42:42)
I love because you talk about in this which we’ll jump onto a second about the idea of these extreme sports I love the idea that catch not if with other people could be considered extreme sport I think actually reminds me a little bit of I don’t even jumped on Jason Fox’s website which is all it’s just beautiful but there’s a there’s a there’s a line in there that his extreme sports are like coffee snobbery and sun avoidance and it’s like

Anneli Blundell (42:46)
Mmm.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (43:06)
Catching lift with other people, I like it.

Anneli Blundell (43:07)
Yeah, yeah. That’s right. And it’s funny

because with extreme sports, so for me, the sport has to be what’s out of your comfort zone, right? So the interesting thing is for her as an introvert, it’s just like having to sit with other people and have dinner. my God, gosh, that’s awful. ⁓ And for me, I have done my own experience as I’m an ambivert. I’m very comfortable with people, but I do like a little bit of me time, a lot of me time, let’s be honest.

But I’m comfortable around people, right? So my extreme sport, which I have done in the past, is go away on a health retreat and sit by myself at dinner. No phone, no book, sit by myself, not another human being. And I’ve had people come up and say, is this seat taken? I’m saying, I’m sorry, I’m doing an exercise where I’m sitting by myself. I’m so sorry. You said, okay, if I just sit on my own like a dog. no, that’s fine, that’s fine, they’d say. And that was my extreme sport.

Simon Waller (44:01)
So this is interesting because one of the questions I had I picked up in here is you were very, you pointed out what extreme sports for the creators looked like. And I was like, ooh, I wonder what the extreme sports for the connectors look like. What is it that they would need to do to challenge themselves? so apart from having dinner by yourself in a crowded restaurant, what…

Anneli Blundell (44:10)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Simon Waller (44:27)
What would you see as being the way that the connectors would need to stretch themselves in this future?

Anneli Blundell (44:34)
So in this future, in my world, they are with people all the time. They are collaborative, they’re conversational, they’re meeting and greeting all the time, right? They’ve got a heightened amount of social connection. So the extreme sport for them would be to be alone. And not only alone, but to be okay with being alone. And actually this is something that I am seeing right now, is that we can’t sit with ourselves or be with ourselves, heck.

We can’t even go to the bathroom by ourselves without the phone. I know because I know I may or may not do it. I don’t know. I’m just saying I’ve read statistics, Simon. I know this is the truth. It’s like, and I remember Pete Cook, our dear friend once saying, he wrote a blog saying, you know, I’ve realised I’ve gotten too used to watching a show or listening to a podcast while I’m cooking dinner.

Simon Waller (45:04)
You

Anneli Blundell (45:25)
I’ll just put something on to keep myself company. You know, it’s like net time, Tony Robbins, no extra time. You can do lots of things at once. But actually, and sometimes I notice myself doing the same thing. And sometimes I will go for a walk with no phone, no podcast, no audio book, because the extreme sport is being still in my mind and being solo in nature. So that’s the world. That would be the extreme sport would be to be alone.

to not have distraction, not have disruption, to be able to sit or be in silence, either with somebody else if you wanted to, or in nature.

Simon Waller (46:06)
Okay, would it also be algebra?

Anneli Blundell (46:11)
If they are not one of the lucky few who could have gone either way, 100%. Yes. Yes. Correct.

Simon Waller (46:15)
Like you mean like so but I’m the reason I say this because obviously

you with the with the creators you’ll push them into a world that’s very a very different well it’s a world that’s right so the different world so you know like even when you talk about being alone time it’s still within the same context right like it’s the same EQ kind of interpersonal world

Anneli Blundell (46:31)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (46:37)
what actually

is that in the other world that there would be if there was an underground movement for connectors? What would that look like? What is it that you feel? Because again, within this, know it’s kind of like, you you even make the point in this that you were the connector and then you’re like, you come from a long line, a pedigree of connectors. I’m purebred. I’m purebred connector, right?

Anneli Blundell (46:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Proud line. That’s right. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Simon Waller (47:07)
So

in some ways this is a reflection about your own leanings and your own beliefs. If you were to really to be challenged, to be really challenged as a creator, like to be more of a creator, what do think you should be doing more of?

Anneli Blundell (47:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

⁓

Well, it’s funny because as you say that, I think straight away to the work I do when I’m coaching groups and in particular, I do a lot of work with women and one because, you know, for many, many reasons we’ve been conditioned to be this way. We’ve been socialized into these areas, a whole bunch of other things. But I see a lot of women in particular say, I’m a people person. I don’t do maths. I don’t do budgets, you know, and here’s me at the start. So funny. Anyway, hold another story.

just link it back, call back to the beginning. But the idea here is one of the challenges that we talk about is this idea of identity. So the more you tell yourself, I’m a people person, I don’t do maths, I don’t do budgets, the less able you will be to do them. So this whole idea of what is your stretch, your stretch might be learn how to do a profit and loss. Your stretch might be learn how to read a budget. It might be to, I don’t know, do some maths, math thing. I don’t know, did insert maths thing here.

see where I lean? So the idea, so yes, I’m doing that stuff even now, even now in my work is to hold, is to, is to sort of nudge people into the idea that their identity is not fixed based on what’s easy and natural and comfortable and that you can grow and develop skills anywhere you want. If you want, it just takes work and attention and intention. So for the future.

for these connectors to be more like creators, it would be a similar thing. It might be solve this challenge. Do a puzzle, do a Rubik’s cube. I mean, I don’t know, whatever the future version of that is, right? But do something where you’ve got to use your brain and not just use your emotional smarts to read the room and work out the situation.

Simon Waller (49:03)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so it’s interesting how this has to go underground, right, which we’ll talk about in a little sec, but I also wonder if there’s any way to play this out. There’s a game aspect to this, like you mentioned, it’s a puzzle or it’s a Rubik’s Cube or whatever. I wonder though as well if there’s a future whereby it’s actually the ability to fix something.

Anneli Blundell (49:13)
Mm. Mm. ⁓

Simon Waller (49:28)
Right, like it’s a, like, or a make something, like it’s a maker skill or a repair skill. And in a future where we’re really resource constrained, we can’t just give these resources just to anybody. Like, they’re pretty valuable now. And so in this valuable future, for you to get your hands on some, I don’t know.

Anneli Blundell (49:33)
Mmm.

Mm-mm.

Simon Waller (49:49)
some raw materials, some solder and some computer componentry. It’s like, you wouldn’t get that access if you’re a connector. We’re not going to waste that on you. That’s got to go that people can do something meaningful with it. So it’s almost like you’re withheld from some of those things. I kind of find that could be an interesting play on this. Now, let’s talk about the underground. Because this is what, I don’t know why, but I often go, what does this remind me of?

Anneli Blundell (50:00)
Right. Right. Right.

Mm-hmm. Mm. Yes.

Simon Waller (50:19)
reminded me was the movie Fight Club or the book Fight Club. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen. Have you seen Fight Club? Okay. Yeah, so I think Chuck Pollock who wrote the book and in this there is this kind of, first of all, there’s this underground movement and that was the first thing that came up for me was this idea of it had been an extreme sport, it’s an underground movement. Fight Club is what came to mind. But as you know you and I have both been taught there’s power in analogy.

Anneli Blundell (50:23)
I’ve seen the movie, I’ve seen the movie, yes, ages ago.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (50:48)
and exploring the analogy and understanding what actually really is at play here. And when you kind of reflect on Fight Club, the movie or the book, there is this concept of almost like there’s an emancipation that happens to the kind of the lead protagonist where he starts joining these kind of self-help groups and pretending to have these kind of, you know, issues because he just wants to feel something.

Anneli Blundell (51:02)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (51:15)
like he just feels kind of dead inside and hearing about other people’s pain actually helps him sleep better at night. Because it makes the thing feel more real and it kind of adds a sense of purpose to the world that seems purposeless to him. And I kind of see parallels of that in this, where it’s almost like you see these creators.

Anneli Blundell (51:26)
Yeah.

Simon Waller (51:41)
Like almost having lost that sense of purpose, feeling like…

Like as I said, that may be a sense of like, we’re doing all the things that society says we’re meant to do, but feeling slightly emancipated as a result. And how do I reconnect with this concept of feeling and even the concept of pain? Like how can I feel pain again, just so I felt something? And I don’t know, I said, don’t know if that was your, I don’t think that was necessarily your intent in that. But does that resonate with you in terms of like what you pictured when you saw this underground movement happening?

Anneli Blundell (52:02)
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Yes, yes. And I like that analogy because it does feel like Fight Club. you know, the premise works because it’s an underground way to tap into something that is taboo, essentially. That’s, you know, above the surface, if you like. The reason I went with the underground piece is because the…

The way that human behaviour works and has always worked and I’m sure will always work, assuming we are fundamentally as we still are, is that ⁓ what you suppress in one arena always expresses in another arena. it’s like, I call it the leaky system, right? So you see this ⁓ in groups, classic example, Catholic school girls.

being very nice, you have to be very ⁓ demure and a certain way and very pious and then you hear all these stories, they’re out on the town, they’re the first one to get pregnant, all this sort of stuff, right? It’s because we’ve suppressed a part of us that needs to be expressed and so it becomes a leaky system, it will come out. We see this with people who are nice all the time. I’m really nice all the time, I wouldn’t hurt a flea but get me in a bad mood.

to a customer service person, I’m gonna let you have it. It’s a leaky system. It comes out in a place that’s not my usual identity because I don’t want it associated with me, but quietly to this customer service person, I’m gonna let them have it, right? That’s a leaky system. And so for me, this notion of you can’t, know, the pieces of ourselves are like beach balls. You know, you can’t like push them all down without them pop. They need to be on the surface. They need to be expressed. So if we spend all our life

Simon Waller (53:46)
you

Anneli Blundell (54:03)
heading in one direction and we feel a need to express all of ourselves, it’s going to come out somewhere. And so in my mind, this group of people have gone, hey, it’s not allowed out. To your point, I can’t be used, I can’t build these skills in a safe space because no one’s gonna waste resources on me. I’m not good enough yet to be put in a room of other people who are talking and connecting. And so I have to create a safe space.

I have to create a safe space for me to practice and hone these skills at a really low level that’s embarrassing for how other people are doing in the world. But I need that place to feel fully expressed, to feel into all the fullness of my humanity. And this is how the world works. So in my own work, when I’m working with people, I’m always looking for the leaky system.

You know, what are they telling themselves? How are they presenting in the world? What’s a new piece of their identity that’s trying to come through that they haven’t yet honoured and honed? And how do I help them create spaces and experiments for them to be more fully who they are, whether it’s introverted, trying to be more extroverted by doing presentations or whatever it is. How do we help them do this in a way that’s safe and congruent so they don’t feel like it has to go underground?

because it’s taboo.

Simon Waller (55:32)
Hmm. Yes, yes. There’s so much interest in, and I don’t profess to have a lot of depth of understanding around things like the science of attraction. But some of my understanding, or some of the theory at least is, is that we are attracted to people who are different from us. Because from a ⁓ evolutionary perspective,

Anneli Blundell (55:42)
Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (55:57)
there’s a better mix of genes, like a greater diversity of genes means there’s a greater opportunity that your offspring will then have a better balance of genes than you did. And so in this, I feel like there’s an interesting thing emerging here as well, where we have almost like this imposed class system between the creators and the connectors where the creators…

Anneli Blundell (56:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Simon Waller (56:26)
in my version of this at least, a kind of this elevated group, right, because of their, scientificism that we’ve pursued. And they therefore have been kind of forced to believe that obviously being with people like them and partnering with people like them is good, but they’re actually growing the deficiency.

Anneli Blundell (56:45)
Mm.

Simon Waller (56:47)
and the connectors are doing the same thing. It’s like it’s what you mentioned before around, and we see this in the US around the percentage of Democrats who have Republican partners is actually super low because we’re not willing to deal with that level of conflict anymore. Part of me though goes with this is well the natural thing here is that if we can break down those barriers is actually we create a re-flourishing.

Anneli Blundell (57:02)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Simon Waller (57:14)
where it’s actually people start to fall back into perhaps what is a natural trait around attraction, which is to be attracted to difference.

Anneli Blundell (57:21)
Mmm.

Mm. And that’s so interesting because I talk about difference a lot in my work, right? Because when you’re helping people influence and engage and compel people to do things and follow your lead and all that kind of stuff, you have to deal with difference. You have to deal with people you don’t know, you don’t understand, you don’t respect, you don’t like, right? Difference is a huge part of my work.

and helping people find ways to stay in connection with people they don’t understand, like, respect, whatever the case is, because of their difference. In fact, this is the underpinning work of most of the DEI work, right? Is how do we make people feel like they’re not the other because they are different from the social norm? So the difference piece is really huge. And I think it really is the key to ongoing human connection is our capacity.

to sit with the discomfort of difference, to use it as a basis for understanding more about ourselves. Why are we uncomfortable with this difference? What is it saying about me? What’s it bringing up for me? What is it that is, what part of myself am I, let’s get really, really deep now. What part of myself am I disowning as I reject your difference is actually the question we’re probably answering. ⁓

Simon Waller (58:41)
Mmm.

Anneli Blundell (58:44)
Because if all I do is if I have the option to just reject the difference, I do not build the human skills required to be in the world with however many billions of people there are.

Simon Waller (58:58)
Wow, that got deep. I like that a lot though. think that we often, yeah, we point to other people’s difference, but we don’t actually realise that we’re different.

Like this concept of normal is something I really push back against. And because what is and who is normal, like what does normality mean? When we try and pitch someone at the middle of the bell curve, like on everything, ⁓ that person doesn’t exist. It’s purely theoretical person. ⁓ But also it’s not even, I think, desirable.

Anneli Blundell (59:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (59:33)
you know it’s something that we actually need just like we need the pendulum to swing we need the extent of the bell curve we need us to be stretched in different ways and as said in that pursuit of identifying how other people are different we’re often ignoring how we’re different ⁓

which is very interesting, very interesting, very deep. ⁓ So tell us, you know, like in this whole process, you obviously, you said nice things about the process, initially, at least. I’m interested in what you have taken away from it. Well, actually, before we get to that, what do you hope that other people take away from it?

Anneli Blundell (1:00:00)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:00:10)
So if we kind of look at this future, you are pushing back against this separation that you see happening, pushing back against this divide between the creators and the connectors, this scientificism. Often when we write these scenarios, it’s because they’re written either from a place of our hopes and dreams or our fears and concerns.

Anneli Blundell (1:00:22)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:00:33)
What is it that you hope other people take away from this? How would you nudge the world slightly in your preferred direction having written this scenario?

Anneli Blundell (1:00:43)
For me, this premise is around leaning into discomfort, whether that’s ⁓ putting yourself in uncomfortable social situations, because it’s a skill that is necessary, or whether that’s leaning into an identity that you don’t have for yourself, whether that’s, you know, to be more of a maths person, do a profit and loss, whatever that is. But there’s some sense here of embracing the opposite.

of being brave enough to sit in the discomfort and see what the possibilities are for you from that space. Because for me, the whole premise or the whole message of this is the danger of doing the easy things, particularly from a social aspect.

particularly when it comes to social connections and social skills, is what’s the impact of doing the easy things. Right now, it might be easy to play on the phone. It might be easy to send a text instead of picking up the phone or going over to someone’s desk. It might be the easy thing, but what’s gonna happen if we just do the easy thing our whole life? What is the cost and what is really at stake when it comes to humanity if we take the easy road when it comes to social connection?

Simon Waller (1:02:07)
I think that’s super interesting as a takeaway. I would love to expand on that just a little bit because I feel like that is very much written or said from your perspective. But is it also about, you know, when we see these points of difference with other people,

Anneli Blundell (1:02:17)
Mm-hmm.

Yes indeed.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:02:36)
and we kind of go, if only they could see what I’m talking about. Whereas the reality, it’s just as true for us then to say, how could I see more about what they’re talking about? Like, how could I lean in to be more like them, just as much as I’m asking them to lean in to be more like me?

Anneli Blundell (1:02:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yes.

Absolutely, absolutely, yes.

Simon Waller (1:02:57)
Right, and

again, we’re looking at only these two, like two variations on the complexity of human nature. We’re talking about EQ and IQ, right? Or we’re talking about connectors and creators. But…

say justice is valid for asking the people who are the creators to continue to lean into an experiment with their ability to build relationships and connections and stuff. do deeply agree with the need for that, especially in this kind of post-COVID, asynchronous communication world where we can suddenly get away with not having to have as many difficult conversations.

Anneli Blundell (1:03:25)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes, yes. And it’s mostly because as you said, the signals are pointing us towards the fact that we are going to be over investing in and over amplifying the value of IQ, which is where that that feeling of urgency towards the IQ skills and my bias comes in.

Simon Waller (1:03:48)
Mmm.

But is there, what is the flip of it? Is there a flip of it? And I do agree that the pendulum is swinging in a particular direction and you’re saying, how do we just drag it back a little bit? How do we avoid the worst of the extremes? But if we actually wanted to build those, like almost like in your capacity, potentially your capacity to influence those creators is partly in the ability for them to see a connection between them and yourself.

Anneli Blundell (1:04:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Simon Waller (1:04:17)
like a common ground. Like how

do you build that common ground to make it easier for them to hear what you’re saying?

Anneli Blundell (1:04:25)
It’s not by demonstrating my math skills. ⁓

Simon Waller (1:04:29)
It could be done more in like even a valuing or an interest like it’s almost like how do we get better at acknowledging like this push we’re seeing or this pull we’re seeing towards a particular direction in human history towards scientifism is not done in a vacuum.

So there is probably us, and again, I’m just riffing here and I don’t actually propose to know the answer, but more that if we can acknowledge what is the deeper thing that sits behind that right now. And yeah.

Anneli Blundell (1:05:00)
Yeah.

So, so I can tell you how I do it now, just we can extrapolate the I guess the methodology into the future. But because I work with a lot of people who are very smart and very effective in their work. And some of them need to build engagement skills, influence skills, EQ skills for one of a better term, An overarching term. And so if I’m working with someone who’s very, very smart,

Simon Waller (1:05:04)
Hmm.

Anneli Blundell (1:05:29)
and very intellectual and has a strong identity around performance in that space. And I’m coming in essentially to do the warm and fluffy and hey, you need to say, how was the weekend? know, or people won’t like you. They’re not interested in that kind of conversation or my approach to it, right?

But what I do and always have done is meet them where they’re at. This is the basis of connection. You have to find that common ground. And thankfully nowadays we have so much research from neuroscience, God bless neuroscience, thank you, hooking people up to ECG machines and MRI machines and all these ⁓ studies to validate the impact of social connection. So if I say to someone, hey, you know, it’s… ⁓

It’s a good idea to smile at the start of your meetings. You know, it just relaxes people. It’s a good idea. I’m not interested in the warm and fuzzies. Okay, cool. So if you smile at the start of a meeting, you will release oxytocin. The person next to you releases oxytocin. This is a feel good bonding chemical. What it means is it builds trust in that moment. What it means is that thing you want that person to do, they are more likely to do because they now feel more connected and trusting to you. ⁓ okay. there’s science behind it. Got it. That’s more of interest to me, right?

So from that way of finding the common ground and building the bridge, I’m going in, I’m leaning into their identity. I’m leaning into the things that I think they value and building the bridge to what I know works. And I’m not gonna call it fluffy stuff and I’m not gonna just, you know, ask them to do something without giving them some basis that sits behind it that links to their value and identity.

Simon Waller (1:07:05)
I think that’s a really great insight. It be very easy to play an us and them game with this and it’s like no no no it’s it can’t be like that. It has to be about how do you frame this in a way that actually appeals to their own sensibilities in terms of as scientificism or logic. ⁓ Yeah that’s super interesting I like that a lot.

Anneli Blundell (1:07:12)
Yes.

Correct.

Yes.

Yeah.

So influence is always an inside game and it also works for things like religion, which is really interesting because I’ve coached lots of people from different religions and they will use the language of their religion and I will use it with them. So all the things that I know, the principles I know, I won’t use science, I will couch it within terminology and a belief system that I know they adhere to.

because I know that it doesn’t matter whether we use a scientific study or we use the language of God or whatever it is for you that works, whatever works within your internal belief system and your value set is what’s gonna be the most influential and impactful. And if it serves their greater good and that’s what I’m here to do, then that’s what I’m gonna do. The principle works every time.

Simon Waller (1:08:22)
If you haven’t read it, you should also check out a book by David McCraney called How Minds Change. Yeah, and it talks about the scientific approaches to how people change their mind. And it doesn’t come from telling people, you’re wrong.

Anneli Blundell (1:08:29)
and mind change,

Mmm.

It never comes from,

in fact, then we get the back, well, and in fact, the more you try and change someone’s mind, the more you push them, the more you’re setting them up for the backfire effect, which is I now on principle don’t believe you, even if you’re right, because I don’t want to be forced to change my mind.

Simon Waller (1:08:58)
Yeah.

Yes, it’s a really great stuff. It’s really a great book. It’s I found it very inspiring. But a lot of it is around asking people where the genesis of their beliefs came from and also asking them to articulate those beliefs on a scale like how strongly do you believe this and what would it require for you to believe it more or less. So you’re starting to examine how their own beliefs came to be. But that’s my little gift back to you. I suppose you’ve done all this great work. Hey, we’re about to wrap it up. But before we do so, that last question I was going to ask you, which is

Anneli Blundell (1:09:01)
Yeah. Okay.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Thank you. Yes.

Simon Waller (1:09:29)
about your, through your own personal perspective, apart from the joy of the Creative Writing experience, is there anything that’s come out of this for you in terms of deepening your own understanding or inspired you? As we talked about before, one of the things I know to be true is that from now on, having done this, you will become so attuned to those signals in the environment that are related to this unfolding of this story. You actually gave me the

Anneli Blundell (1:09:34)
Yes.

Simon Waller (1:09:59)
the term for this before when you you buy a red car or a Volvo and something you see them everywhere it’s kind of a bit like that but in the moment where you are now is there something that’s come out of this you kind of go like wow I feel there’s a newfound appreciation for this topic or something to do with it

Anneli Blundell (1:10:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Funnily enough, I think my very… ⁓ I lived into the theme of what I was writing about in a strange way in that I was doing the very thing I’m not comfortable doing because I don’t normally do it because it’s not my identity. As I said to you, I don’t write creative stories for a hobby or I don’t journal, I don’t do any of that stuff. ⁓ And yet I really enjoyed the stretch.

And I enjoyed the process of doing something that I could have easily said to myself, oh, this is hard. I don’t do this. This is not my thing. Right. And yet I went, no, no, no, this is kind of about discomfort. This is kind of about leaning in. This is about being, you know, a fully expressed human. So just go with it and see what happens.

So apart from the fact of living into the story for myself, which I really enjoyed, I love a layered ⁓ metaphor, if you like, that was really enjoyable. But I think that the, as someone who works in this space and social skills and working with people and connection, I get asked a lot, know, what do you think is going to happen? And people say, ⁓ we’re now seeing this trend and what’s going to happen?

They almost catastrophize and it’s nice to have, I feel there’s comfort in having pre-thought through, you know, the full extreme of where I think it could go. And what it’s made me, I’ve always believed this, but it’s become extra clear to me. It’s crystallized for me that I have a hopeful approach.

Simon Waller (1:11:40)
Hmm.

Anneli Blundell (1:11:57)
that there is a dystopian view and a utopian view, like, yeah, there’s a good one and a bad one, and a pessimist or an optimist. And I see the things that are happening. And I think it’s too easy to overvalue or overinflate the size of the bad and forget that the majority of the world is good and that the majority of our experiences are great. And that as human beings, I think we’ve got this.

We’ve had this for a long time. We’ve had many wars. We’ve had many dictators. We’ve had many shit show scenarios where I’m sure we thought human nature and the world was going to collapse, but it didn’t. And even if it did for a little bit, it came back. So I just have a fundamental belief that the world will write itself, that we do as humans enjoy and employ balance and that we will write ourselves in the end.

Simon Waller (1:12:52)
Hmm. I think that’s a really good takeaway. I think you’re right in the moment and we see a trajectory of the world and it’s hard to imagine well what like gosh if we extrapolate this out, we’re all doomed and We kind of ignore what those possible negative feedback loops are So I think yeah in this process actually been I’ve got yeah, but what is going to bring this back again? That itself is actually actually ultimately quite empowering to have that knowledge

Anneli Blundell (1:13:03)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Simon Waller (1:13:17)
⁓ Last thing I’d say is a mutual friend of ours, Adrian Medhurst, who was on the show, he did I think episode two, the future of work-life balance. He had a similar like, know, said it’s not normally something he would do in terms of writing a scenario like this, but it actually found himself using it to open a conference that he went and spoke at in the Netherlands because it was around, you know, sharing this through story, what this future might look like and then kind of almost posed into

Anneli Blundell (1:13:27)
Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Mmm.

Simon Waller (1:13:47)
the room what are we going to do about this now I’m not saying you have to do that but it’s good enough you should you could try yeah hey this has been brilliant thank you so much for being on the show I suppose we’ll see each other around the dog park sometime later in the week and I do think definitely in season two when we’ve got the whole studio set up we’re gonna do this in person it’s gonna be amazing

Anneli Blundell (1:13:53)
Wow. I love.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, probably.

Yes, I love that. I love that. Thank you. It’s

been an absolute pleasure. I’ve really genuinely enjoyed the process, the preparation and the conversation.

Simon Waller (1:14:19)
It’s a pleasure, Anneli. Thank you so much for being on the show. We’ll see you all again soon.