What are the big questions I should be asking as a leader to shape a better future?

Christine Renaud: 00:13

Welcome to the More the Brainier, the brave space where creative minds come to share and solve the most pressing burning questions. From Montreal, I'm your host, Christine Renaud, CEO of Braindate.

Also with me today is Jane Gibb, our Creative Producer.

Jane Gibb: 00:37

Thank you, Christine! We're delighted to be joined by Paul Propster, former NASA strategist and founder of their Story Lab, Jennie Glazer, CEO of Coqual, Center for Talent Innovation, and Fady Atallah, Creative Director of Cities at Moment Factory. The themes we'll be discussing this month are re-centering one's own purpose mid-career, the questions we ask ourselves as leaders, and the best way to move from passive to active citizen. Over to you, Christine.

Christine: 01:15

Thank you, Jane. Jennie, Fady, Paul bonjour and welcome back! So I just got back from TED in Vancouver where the theme was Humanity Reimagined. And AI definitely dominated the conversation. But what really stood out for me was the growing focus on psilocybin and its potential to heal trauma-related mental health challenges like depression and PTSD.

And it brought me back to the power of us gathering and exchanging knowledge and sharing most recent innovations and questions. And I'm wondering, you are all very involved in live experiences. You attend a lot of live experiences. You host, create live experiences. And I would be curious to know what would be the most recent live experience you had that was really meaningful to you.

Paul Propster: 02:10

Well, I'll jump in here. ⁓ Some new venues have rolled out recently. When one opened here in LA, they're called Cosm. And it's kind of this cool approach to getting folks out of here, headsets, and coming to a shared experience. But it's this huge, almost like a dome, sphere-ish. But it's really, it's a whole new experience. And it was very cool. They ⁓ invited me and my team

to come when they opened up the venue ⁓ last ⁓ summer. And they had a space-based, space-themed one called, in conjunction with Orbital. And it was about trying to bring the overview effect astronauts have when they look back at the Earth.

It was just super powerful. And they had these astronauts narrate how they were feeling. And it was like you were there, and you're there with another 600, 700 people and just all the oohs and the ahs and just having this visceral shared experience was really cool. I get no money from Cosm, but I would recommend everybody check it out. They're starting to get different venues across ⁓ at least the United States. I think actually they just talked about London as well, trying to get a venue out there. That was a cool one that I went to recently.

Christine: 03:36

That's wonderful. Fady?

Fady: 03:39

Yeah, I go to.. these days, I think that's really where I'm finding a lot of solace and happiness going to live shows more than usual. So I'm really hesitant, I'm in Paris, so I saw a couple of shows here, but maybe one that stuck with me that I saw very, recently in Montreal was the first leg of Pussy Riot’s tour in Canada. I think they're going to the US, although it was a Canadian tour. I don't know if they'll make it to the US or if they'll make it back.

But it was really interesting. So it was Pussy Riot multimedia show. And ⁓ Masha, who was one of the main ⁓ members of Pussy Riot, has written a book about the evolution of Pussy Riot since they did their performance in the Orthodox Church in Moscow. And then there's 11 or 15 chapters in that book. And the show is almost like a performance of the book in these chapters.

And what was interesting, because you did an intro on AI, and what's interesting in live shows is that that's for now, and hopefully that stays that way. It's something that humans do, right? That kind of conveying that level of emotion, engagement, and kind of the art delivery is a very human thing. And it happens in sports, it happens in music, in theater, in dance.

There was a bit of multimedia, not much. It wasn't like a Cosm immersion, et cetera. It was just some media to support the show, but there was such a strong conviction, you know, Masha ended up in the Gulag. So that's someone who has been through a lot for her beliefs and what she was fighting for. And then kind of had to go back to Moscow, stayed in Moscow. And then at the end, someone convinced her to leave to Berlin, where she lives now. But then you realize when you make such commitments in your life, how sometimes… minor are your daily concerns at least that’s kind of what I left with, that show and that’s something you can only experience when someone is sharing that story with you: the level of sacrifice and commitment… ok so my problems are possibly minor, so it felt great and the show was great as well, she was incredible⁓ her two colleagues – team members were also performing. It was a punk show

Christine: 05:52

And Fady, you also created, I think, was a very transformative experience for people in Montreal recently when you co-organized ⁓ the latest Patrick Watson show. Can you tell us one or two things about that?

Fady: 06:07

I can tell you a bit about it because that also is very much related to how I'm feeling these days and questions that are coming to my mind. So the idea of being kind of helpless, especially with the war on Gaza and all these kids dying and all the trauma and the drama that's happening there and us watching, just unable to do anything. And at some point when it got really, really bad, I said, there's no way that we can just cross our hands and I decided to organize a show, a fundraiser, basically.

done something for Lebanon in: 2006

And we actually raised ⁓ close to $30,000. But what's interesting is that since the beginning, I didn't want it to be just about the money. I wanted people to come together, to your point, Christine, earlier about being together and just kind of the feeling that I had of being helpless and just wanting to share and be good, close to people, feeling better and kind of sensing that I'm not alone. And I think that's what happened during the show. It was incredible ⁓the musicians, the technicians, they all gave their time: 200%, we shot, there was like a Hollywood movie set, the show, and then just people were silent all throughout.

But in a really good way, people wanted to feel the warmth. We didn't send any political message. I mean, there was enough of it out there. It was fantastic. We actually filmed it and hopefully we're going to edit it in a kind of a film show and replay it. So there was people from Tunisia, Algerian spoken word artists, and then a Palestinian old player and all these people and Patrick brought some of our Montreal friends also from the Jewish community participating. So it was really much a human experience more than anything else. It was incredible.

Christine: 08:39

Yeah, thank you, Fady. And Jennie.

Jennie: 08:41

Well i'm gonna give you two live experiences because they really stuck with me is the power of the underestimated performer so one was epic players spring awakening epic players is a neuro divergent theater company that is based in new york and they also have a group in L.A. I'm on the board incredibly passionate about these artists.

This show of Spring Awakening is a bit of a revolutionary show for people who are on the spectrum, who are developmentally disabled to put on. It's a show about adolescence, regression, trauma. It was electric. And these actors who aren't usually given the main stage were brought forth something so powerful, something that was so true to who they were. It reminded me that how we often miss genius because we don't give people the platform to have it.

And then another example was I'll just do a plug for LaGuardia High School, which is a public school in New York City performing arts high school and their senior chorus and senior orchestra did considering Matthew Shepard, the opera. I saw that production, the material is heavy because it's about his life and very tragic death. It's about hate and grief and identity and justice. And these teenagers didn't just perform it. They held it. They honored it. And their emotional presence was just astonishing. And I thought: we talk so much about developing talent, developing leaders, developing Whatever. But maybe they're already leading? Maybe they just need the space and the platform and our trust to get out there and tell these stories.

Christine: 10:42

I love it. At La Cabane, my charity, we say that youth are not the leaders of tomorrow, they're the leaders of today. And they're not the citizens of tomorrow, they're the citizens of today. And I love what you say about just allowing for the safe space for them to express that citizenship and that leadership. I think it's so important.

Jennie: 10:59

Yeah, I think we underestimate people all the time because they don't fit the mold. Absolutely. And so that really just opened up my eyes to all the voices that we should honor and listen to.

Christine: 11:15

I love it. Thank you for sharing, Jennie. And when you are not an enthusiastic audience member, you are also the CEO of Coqual. And it's a hot time to be doing the work that you're doing right now. Can you tell us a bit more about it?

Jennie: 11:29

Yes, So, Coqual is a think tank that's been around for 20 years, founded as the Center for Talent Innovation. And our core belief is that you cannot have real innovation without inclusion. We do deep research to uncover what gets in the way of people contributing fully at work, especially those who have been historically underestimated or overlooked.

And our job is to make those dynamics visible, to help leaders build cultures where more people get to share ideas, speak up, shape what's next. Because innovation just doesn't happen from the top. It comes from everywhere if you make the space for it.

Christine: 12:10

Mm-hmm. And that has become, in the last couple of weeks, a radical idea. Was it radical when you came in as Coqual?

Jennie: 12:19

20 years ago, it was radical to get companies to be engines for progress and change. And we're finding more and more that the private sector is a place where they can continue to focus on the facts and the realities of what it means to be a worker in a global economy. And how do we create the right conditions so that people have thriving careers and access to great opportunities? And we're very fortunate to have 100 plus global multinational Fortune 500 member companies who are arm in arm with us really trying to create workplaces that are leadership academies to make the world better.

Christine: 13:04

That's great.

Jennie: 13:06

And also drive growth in all kinds of things that we want because we need companies to do things and hopefully for the greater good.

Christine: 13:15

Yeah, and these go hand in hand. I mean, you can have a double bottom line and these two bottom lines are feeding each other. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, basically.

And so this is bringing us to your burning questions. So please share it and also feel free to share any context that will help us to provide relevant insights.

Jennie: 13:43

So I've been thinking a lot about what are the big questions we as leaders should be asking to shape a better future? And the reason that I have been asking this question is that I feel that many leaders that I'm working with in these global multinational companies are in a bit of a standstill because of all the chaos with recent, at least in US political disruptions. And so I'm watching companies who are often beholden to quarterly profits, right? Quarterly KPIs.

And this really came to light recently where I had a C-suite person say, hey, I have a burning question for you, Jenny. It was, should we still be calling our talent function DEI or should we rebrand it? And not to make this a DEI conversation, but I sat with that because I thought that's a really safe question. It's a branding question. To me, the real question should be, are we willing to change the systems that make it necessary to even have those letters in the first place?

And so that brought me back to: we're in this moment where it's incredibly volatile, there's a lot of complexity, there's a lot of uncertainty, and I think we often as leaders fix things on the surface because everything feels urgent and overwhelming; and what if it's not about being in the surface? What can I do to help leaders actually ask and create space to answer the hard, real questions?

Because I think leadership right now is not about having the faster answers. It's about asking deeper, harder questions that are actually going to move us forward. And so that's why I thought, let's start with questions. Because I want to create, I'm in a think tank, a thinking environment. And the best way to do that is incisive questions.

Christine: 15:52

And how do you create a space for for folks to have the courage to be asking those questions? Because right now it's also about the courage. This is really powerful. Thank you, Jennie.

It's time for the clarifying questions. So Paul and Fady, as a reminder, we're not sharing our brilliant insights just yet. We just want to understand better where Jennie's coming from. Paul?

Paul: 16:25

Great burning question. ⁓ So your quest, so to speak, part of your question is around better making, kind of helping to create better leaders, right? Maybe a little more, I don't know if sensitive is right word, but you know, a little more empathy maybe in some of these leaders. And with that, giving a voice to the voiceless, kind of.

Jennie: 16:50

I would say, you know, as I'm thinking about it, if I'm sitting with people who can literally shape the future, how do I help them go deeper with some of these really important thorny things? Because while people are sitting in a standstill trying to understand the craziness, which has gotten crazier and crazier over the past years, it’s been like an ultra marathon of hyper uncertainty, the future needs to be shaped. And so how do we create space so that people can actually think and solve for things that are just going to happen, whether or not you actually address it?

Fady: 17:39

It is ⁓ quite an important topic you're dealing with here, Jennie. So if the questions that are needed are profound, what is stopping us from addressing… from being ourselves, from going for the better? There's the surface layer, which is politics, profits, fear, pressure from above not to ask the questions, to cancel the AI or to change the X policy, et cetera.

But what is the deeper motivation, or lack of, that you have found over time that kind of make people maybe change or open up or lower their defenses or be open to the hard questions. Because it's really questioned a lot about human nature also, not just about the system and the politics. And I just wonder what is stopping people? What is driving them to where they are today? Maybe that's where we can start this thinking.

Jennie: 18:34

So I think some of it, to give a very agile answer, it depends. So I'll give you two flavors. There's probably 10. I think for a company that is US-based, one of the things that's stopping them is the political turmoil right now and the lack of clarity about what to expect when there was a pretty solid, here's how things work. Here are the laws, here are the rules, here are the expectations.

And so there's a group of companies who are trying to navigate as companies, I mean, whether or not their talent strategy is there or not, there's a lot of uncertainty. Like, are we going to have tariffs? Yes or no? All those things are creating this churn, and they're not able to move forward because they're just focusing on risk mitigation.

If you're not based in the US you have this really interesting challenge of the power dynamic we used to think existed doesn't exist and so, is there an opportunity for us? and so there's a little bit of that. And I think that they are starting to ask big questions but I think that they could ask even bigger questions and I'm hoping to empower these leaders and companies to really shape a better future because when there is chaos, there's also opportunity. And so I would love to walk into there, and I get to walk in and talk to many leaders every single day who are in positions of power and to really give them something that they should be asking that will profoundly impact in all the good ways five, 10 years from now.

Christine: 20:25

And I guess right now the fear is very present.

Jennie: 20:30

Fear is so present and you know, we've thrown around the word VUCA, which is like, ugh, I hate acronyms, but you know, the volatility and uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity, we've lived with it for a lot of years, but it is in a hyper mode now. And so I understand, but it's not gonna get better. It's only gonna get worse.

Christine: 20:52

And that's what I'm wondering. I wonder what is at stake for those leaders.

Jennie: 20:58

I think for many of them, irrelevance. If you look at 10 years ago, companies that were at the top, and you look at where some of them are today, they're struggling. And I think that those who figure out how we are in the driver's seat will be able to shape a better future for their workers and their company and their shareholders.

Christine: 21:23

So you think that the threat of ⁓ irrelevancy is higher than the threat of losing my job as a leader?

Jennie: 21:34

I think they may not see what I just said. I think they may be focusing on short-termism for sure.

Christine: 21:45

Yeah. Okay, this is good crunchy stuff. I think it gives Paul, Fady, and I some good material to work with.

Jennie: 21:55

And it's pretty squishy. I hope you all forgive me for asking such a really meaty thing because I feel like all of us have some opportunity to shape a better future. And so if we just go big with something this meaty, what might we solve or move forward?

Christine: 22:18

Absolutely. We're there. We're on for the challenge. ⁓

So Jennie, time for you to sit back and relax and take it all in. Fady, Paul, it's our time to shine. I wonder, Fady, I see you writing down some notes. Are you ready to be our first insight provider?

Fady: 22:42

I could then maybe come back again with more ideas because Jennie, you're not easy on us. It's pretty hard topic to you ask.

Christine: 22:50

Yeah.

Fady: 22:52

So I'm sure this thing is going to evolve and probably more than the 25 minutes or 30 minutes we have together, hopefully we'll be able to change because I think you're kind of putting your finger on something really fundamental because companies, you mentioned the private sector, private sector is scale, private sector is the economy, private sector is people. So I think the, whenever you think about people who are addressing the food issue, they say, well, we need to have to impact the big corporation because this is where majority of food is ⁓ prepared, so if you want to, so I think you're in the same kind of ⁓ thinking here where you want to have major impact and I'm all for that. How do we scale the good?

You mentioned short termism, which I totally agree with. Maybe even it's worse than short termism. We're no termism. It's like “now!” what's happening now? What's happening this morning? What's happening this afternoon is the stock exchange up or down? So I think time is really, again, an important one here.

And I wonder if before asking the hard questions, we can work on the idea of time with leaders, because what's happening today and what's happening in three months is not going to be the same. And we know that the actions today are blinding us more than they should in the sense that, yeah, they're very impactful, very serious, very dangerous, but we want to project ourselves over time. So maybe contextualize the question.

We have scenarios of what can happen over time. We know that there could be recessions. We know there could be a state, ⁓ the state is weakening because a lot of the institutions are in the US at least, are being challenged, et cetera. So maybe project your audience into the future, not so far future, like three months, six months, a year. It's not so far. We can imagine things in that period of time.

And then maybe then ask the questions, for instance, in an era of beyond recession, economic crisis, et cetera. What kind of growth is necessary? Is growth necessary versus maybe a different sort of a business strategy? Maybe it's more of a defensive strategy. Stay there, renew, cut down, slim down. I don't know. There is a question about what growth is important because we take growth for granted as growth is the absolute god of business. Sure, but maybe we can qualify growth in kind of that scenario. So I don't know if they're obviously they're very kind of initial ideas that I'm thinking about that.

Because today we're unable to ask and answer anything. Nobody knows in that uncertainty, but there are methods of futurism or, you know, trend foresight and kind of establishing probable and plausible scenarios. can maybe start by doing that. Give them life. And I think Paul can help you with writing these scenarios in the sense that how can we kind of imagine future soon and then, then try to answer these questions in a maybe more relevant way. That's my first kind of hunch.

Christine: 25:45

Good stuff. Thank you, Fady. ⁓

Paul: 25:48

Fady, I love that. And I want to pull on a couple threads that you started there, especially this idea of here in the US for sure, you know, there's no solid ground at the moment, right? It's shifting sand. And so I think because of this turmoil, this uncertainty, a lot of folks are just frozen, right? And they don't know if they should move forward, right? You know, maybe we stand our ground until things kind of clear up. But unfortunately, I don't think that's happening anytime soon.

⁓And kind of also, how do you lower the signal to noise ratio? There's so much noise out there. How do you get leaders to focus on what matters most? What does matter? And to Fady's point, know, maybe it's not growth, maybe it's not profits? Maybe at this point in time, it needs to be people and providing that psychological safety.

Providing a way to give folks authentic agency to speak up and to contribute. And one thing that we discovered during COVID was, you know, we still had to work. We still had to ideate around ideas, but kind of a little bit of a silver lining was I was asked to help facilitate some of these first online meetings and the power of the mute button. And just to be able to, some of those louder voices, to be able to say, thank you, click. “Now, let's hear who else wants to…?”, you and when you're in real life, that's a little more awkward to do, but you know, so being able to control those voices and maybe you're able to do that through the right questions and being able to tailor those questions, you may have, already know about this MIT course with Hal Gregerson, “Questions are the answer”. And I took that a few years back and it was fantastic.

You know, again, just along these same lines of what you're trying to accomplish, use the power of questions to really understand what matters most and how it will change us and those “what if?” scenarios of a speculative future. How can we poke at that through asking the right questions that give a voice to everybody at the table?

Christine: 28:04

You know, something that came to mind, Paul, when you were speaking was, many of these companies have stood their ground before. Many of those companies have influenced laws when it was beneficial for their profit. And I think a question that I would like to ask is what were those mechanism of influences that you used when your profit was at stake?

And how can you use those same mechanism because now social order and social justice is at stake? How will you do that work? And how will you show up when it matters the most? Because a lot of these companies, actually, their reputations were built when they had to step up into ⁓ corporate responsibility initiatives because their reputations were at stake, because their profits were at stake. That would be the question I would like to ask. Any concluding thoughts?

Paul: 28:59

One of the things that ⁓ when you work with these mission teams is the what is and then the what if and then the what could be, those three things. The what is: right now is super fuzzy. It's a lot of error bars as we sometimes term it. The what if: are those questions, think, Jennie, that you're poking at and trying to curate to help your clients.

And then that what could be, how does that change their ecosystem, the larger ecosystem, their employees? You know, again, I think that can all be kind of wrapped in a shared story with some credible messengers to go out and deliver those stories. But we're always asking the what if, the why, the why now, why should I care? All those things.

Christine: 29:50

Yeah, and I think there's a lot of power in the stories of the small guys, because many of us small companies are already operating on a double bottom line hypothesis that you can do good, you can make money at the same time, and they're not mutually exclusive. And I think, Jennie, I would be curious to see because we're often turning to the big corporations to learn the best practices.

I think now they need help. And I think there is much to be learned from smaller companies, smaller guys, communities that are operating at a profit with benefit to the community and seeing what are those mechanisms.

Jennie, you are granted your right to speak again. So I would love to hear any takeaways that you have from our conversation.

Jennie: 30:41

Pages of notes. The time horizon I found to be extremely grounding. And I do think when you're frozen, it helps to really understand I'm frozen now, am I reacting and really trying to shape and frame what could a future look like. So I absolutely love that.

Project ourselves over time into the future, that idea of contextualize. I thought that was really, really powerful. And I love the question in an era of really beyond recession, what kind of growth is necessary? I thought that was just really powerful.

I also thought the ideas about the mechanisms, things like reputations and profits, the what is, what if, what could be is something that also could shape and frame the conversation. And I also am sitting a lot with now, wow, we could have reverse sort of corporate mentoring with the power of the purpose driven. Organizations that are also successful. And what are those things that you can learn in these moments and from those communities and how they're showing up and how agile they are. All those things I think are really powerful. So immensely grateful because I didn't give you an easy one, but I walked away with three pages of notes. So I thank you.

Christine: 32:16

And I can see that Fady has more to say. I see it in his eyes.

Fady: 32:20

I find that, I think the idea of, you what's happening now, you mentioned that there's also a lot of opportunities and in a way, at least the way I think about us in Canada, we are going into degrowth de facto. We're an export driven economy and the exports are going to go down. So inevitably we're going, even if we sell all our products internally, we will still go into degrowth. So I think that has been a topic for a while.

So I think we're going to have to deal with these questions: What do we produce? What's the way? And how do we create value and still value? And how do we distribute that value to people, et cetera? So I think these questions are going to be there anyway. It's happening. And in a way, that's the good side of what's going on now, because this kind of fast growth that we were engaged in is maybe, not maybe, it's surely not sustainable. We know that. So there's an interesting opportunity to frame all these questions in kind of this next scenario.

Paul: 33:17

Yeah. And I liked Christine, what you mentioned about maybe using some of the smaller companies as examples of leadership, right? This new type of leadership that maybe we've lost a little bit because at the top of the US right now, there's not a good example of leadership happening, right? In the good old days, you used to be able to look up to the President and say, wow, those are solid decisions or there's a solid path. I feel secure. To be able to have those powerful, strong examples, think, is also important.

Christine: 33:47

That's wonderful. Thank you all so much for your contributions. Such a great conversation. And many thanks also to Jane Gibb, our Creative Producer here at The More the Brainier, and to Jenya Sverloff and Chris Leon, our delightful sound engineers.

Jane: 34:05

Thanks Christine. If you have a contribution to Jenny's burning question, please share it on Braindate's LinkedIn page where we'll be posting this episode or send us an email at TMTB@braindate.com. In March 1931, the president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler gave a speech in which he said:

“The vast population of this earth may be readily divided into three groups. There are the few who make things happen, the many more who watch things happen and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens. Every human is born into this third and largest group. It is for themselves, for their environment and their education to determine whether they shall rise to the second group or even the first”.

On the next episode of The More The Brainier, through Fady's Burning Question, we'll be looking at what it takes to move into the first group. Join us next week!

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