Donations, Collaboration, and AI in the Room

Hello. How are you both doing? Well, excellent. Um, let's dive straight into it, shall we? Ali, you had a story. Do you want to tell us your story? What's happened to you last week? Yes. So something made me think, reflect. Um and I went back to multiple times in the past week. So I was sitting having coffee doing some work and someone knocked on my door. So um I opened the door and I saw um a family uh father, mother and two children. And uh the mother immediately like she started talking and she showed me like a small flyer. The moment she showed me the flyer, I knew this is like one of those collecting the donations campaign for one NGO and of course I recognized the NGO.

I recognized the campaign because I was doing something similar just around two years ago. Um so what I did is u I grabbed my phone so that I you know like I send the money. Um, and while I was doing that, my brain immediately jumped into um, oh, is this going for overhead? Is this going to cover a loss, a financial loss? Is this going to go to some kind of like activities here at like their HQ level? Is this going to cover some kind of like I don't know um, uh, disallowed cost? And you know, my brain jumped into all that. And of course because I was on the other side so I used to work with headquarter and I used to manage this and restricted funding.

So I knew exactly how that money would be managed. So my brain went through all those things while I'm just like putting the amount and making the donation. But then I paused for one second and it was Sunday. So I looked at them and I started feeling that you know like most probably like this family they don't really know the flow of this like how the money will go and how things happening at HQ and in region and in the country and all those things about loss accounts or disallowed cost or XY Z but they chose to spend their Sunday going from house to house building to building repeating that monologue talking about why it is important for people living here and there to donate and mentioning all those things on a on a Sunday and all that.

And then you know when I closed the door I sat and I told you I paused for a second and I started thinking about it and my thoughts kept going right and left and through all those things and then I felt that there is one thing about a campaign like this or in Jenna when we are collecting donations or something like that the value of the public stepping into those institutions s spending their days showing their children those values and practicing those values and choosing to spend their time doing that and volunteering because they believe that this money that they are collecting is going to the people in need or going to support the mission or the vision that organization stand by. And the moment I started looking at it from that angle and that perspective, so many things changed in the way I looked at it.

After a couple of days, I received a message on my phone saying that hi, we just want to thank you for your contribution and to let you know that we collected I think they collected around 1 million plus uh dollars and I feel that those small like family or individuals here and there collecting going from house to another sharing those beliefs and values and showing their children because their children I don't think they had any clue about how the system works or the sector or what's going to happen and all that but this practicing those values and this volunteerism and all those things. It just made me think and to be honest, I've been talking to all my friends about that what happened and reflecting with them.

So, I feel like I want to share it with you and those who will listen or watch later.

So, as you're talking Ali, it's it's describing almost exactly this idea that I've been toying around with, which is it's not we talk about the funding problem in the sector and everything falling apart. It's not just a funding problem. It's a social contract problem. So your mind immediately went to the funding, the power dynamics, the processes, the system, but this is a family that is engaging in the social contract. And when individuals engage in the social contract, then we have a say in it and we have a stake in it. And then how do things change? So it's like both are right, both are true. Um but we often forget the social contract bit that we all have to do this together. It's not can't just be a profession.

Yeah. True. True. It's it's it's a lovely example of see seeing noticing acts of humanity, isn't it? Um, you've got a family by the way you described it who had no material need to go out and connect and uphold this social contract you refer to, Kim, but at the same time they felt driven. They felt that the desire to exercise those values of solidarity, of humanity, of volunteerism, of solidarity, etc. They felt so driven to exercise that they were walking the streets and they were doing that and they were teaching their children at the same time which I think is another powerful dynamic of the story you're talking there about how the lessons that you teach your children where kids start to see and feel those acts rather than just witnessing them and being told about them.

It's it is an interesting dynamic. I'm fascinated as well by the fact that it hit you so hard that moment was something that you were forced to pause and reflect on. What do you think was it about it that made you pause and reflect? So there were multiple things. One of them last year I wrote this article for um the Copenhagen Post here and it got a bit popular and it was titled where did my donation goes and I highlighted things like if NOS's organizations they want to collect donations and all that they should be fully transparent about where the money will go. not saying it's going to I don't know Nigeria, Syria, Ukraine, XY Z country while it's sometimes it's going for to cover a disallowed cost or a loss account or some events at IHQ or the region or summits or something like that.

So last year I've been I've been talking about this a lot here in Denmark with many people and the moment I again I was in that situation where that was the first question that came to my mind and I was to be honest I was confident because I knew that NGO I was confident that most roughly they are going to cover some disallowed cost or XY Z but it hit me hard because I went I at that moment I felt my brain went so much into the system and processes and flow, financial flow, operational flow. And I didn't at that moment I didn't recognize that this is a small family. They could have spend their Sunday in any way enjoying the sun, um going in a picnic, doing something together, visiting extended family, XY Z.

But they chose to and you could you could see it on their face. You could see that they are tired. You could see that they spend time moving from here and there and you could see even the children the moment because when I open the door I could see the children they are sitting on the stairs. So you could see that they've been doing this and this is not the first house they are knocking on or something. So I feel that wait a second there is something bigger than thinking about that loss account or the disallowed cost or something you know I feel there is there is something this social contract that you mentioned today and also last time think sometimes we forget about it because we get so much involved in this flow and process and all those things so yeah that made me think and reflect

but I mean it's not I mean so the fancy word is relational infrastructure right but really what it is the people to people. So a social contract is just a person knocking on your door and saying, "Hey, I'm part of your community." And you are much more likely, Ali, to give money to that person than if you had gotten an email from the exact same organization. You would have been like all of those technical thoughts would have overridden your bias for action and you wouldn't have you would have been less likely to donate. But when there are children sitting on a step and it's someone saying like, "Hey, I'm walking the talk. I'm part of the fabric of this community and I'm trying to do it.

You're giving money to as that family as much as the organization and to that kind of that dynamic, that relational piece of it. And I mean, it's obviously a fundraising tactic and that's okay, but it's also how people demonstrate that they are engaged in the theory of change, in the premise, in the idea of helping others. And so it all comes down to people to people and then how does it flow up? Thomas, I know you've been thinking about that a lot lately. I have. Human to human connection. Absolutely. Um, and it's interesting you draw the equivalent there to a sort of a techbased campaigning model, fundraising model, because I think that dynamic between kind of how we engage with technology versus how we engage with people is very front and center of everybody's minds at the minute.

And maybe we can come on to that a minute, but there's there's something else in what that story you mentioned there, Ali, that has really struck me. Um, and it came to my mind as you were saying, Kim, about the kind of, you know, the face-to-face relational piece that was taking place. And it's that I mean, you're in Copenhagen, right, Ali? Um, this was a presumably a Danish family that were that were living in Denmark. Um, and they were making a connection with somebody else or multiple people, multiple houses within a very small community, right? there's a neighborhood style community that exists there. But they were making the connection to community elsewhere in the world and in the in the current climate that we live in within Europe in particular, but I know North America and other places are facing the same sort of dynamics, social dynamics, we are becoming increasingly insular and we're becoming increasingly retracted to looking after our own, right?

and sort of batting down the hatches and that kind of defensiveness is occurring where we're look after ourselves first. And yet here you had an example of people who were bringing bridging that distance to suffering and people who require assistance elsewhere in the world. And that's something quite powerful and that is striking me because I don't see that happening very often anymore. Um, certainly in the place I live in Somerset, I don't see that. I don't see lots of reference to challenge elsewhere in the world. I see reference to challenge at home. And I'm not dismissing challenges at home. They're very real and they're very front and center of people's minds and people have a have a right to feel in those and suffer or sort of bemoone a bit of any injustice they feel.

But at the same time, we can't move forward in this world if we only think about the people on our doorstep. We have to start thinking further a field as well. And that was just a lovely bridge that I thought that scenario that story you talked about was making there all.

Yeah. And I want to give credit to the Danish NOS's and the international NGOs's registered in Denmark. every year around June they do like this massive public um campaigns where the majority of them they go to villages, rural areas, cities, doortodoor, neighborhood to neighborhood, area to area and they collect donations. Um and you know also my team and I we were working on such things and that's why it came to my mind because usually we collect like tens of millions of dollars um and the people get so engaged about it and I remember there were some times where people would say you know I could maybe I could give you some of my clothes or give you some of my furniture or something like that.

Like if you walk on the streets here, you would see so many uh Red Cross shops, um NOS's uh shops, civil society, voluntary teams. They collect those different things and sometimes they ship them overseas. So I really like this um I'm not sure what to call it but this environment at atmosphere where I see this solidarity practiced among people outside the sector language outside the terminology outside the classic way of processes workflows structure and all that. I like it. I like seeing it happening. I like being part of it. I feel the meaning and the purpose and at the same time I like that the new generation and the children's they are part of it and you could see them sometimes in those like secondhand shops or those uh flea markets or walking around with their families collecting donations or something.

I like this um atmosphere. It's it's demonstration of solidarity. Um so yeah it's it just I think it came at the right moment to make me feel like okay wait a second there are things outside the classic way of doing things. There are things outside the those governance policy conversations and there are things outside the classic funding flow and all those things. It just gave me hope.

That last word you said was exactly what I've had in my mind as I was listening to you that it's hope right. what you witnessed was a sign of hope and I haven't seen as I just said connection and bridging to crisis elsewhere in the world from here. But what I have seen when I open my eyes are acts of humanity taking place all the time. Um I had a meeting earlier this week with the dean of the cathedral in city called Wells. It's a spectacular cathedral. Um, and so we're in we're in this glorious space that's hundreds of years old and you're walking down cloister corridors and you're you can you can picture the monks were walking down and we're sat there talking and this dean of the cathedral um was talking with a group of us about the um the challenges that we're facing in the commercial business charitable world today and AI came up a lot and we'll come to that.

But what I loved was this guy talking about the history of the building and how the current dynamics we're living through are harking back to history and how we're just living through another cycle of very similar events. And on the side, colleague and I were chatting about um it's no coincidence that living memory of World War II is starting to die out at the moment. And uh we're starting to see retrenchment. We're starting to see events from the 30s start to play out again. Um and it just struck me that hope is something that we can't let go of. Um we have to continue to hold on to that one. um and to look and to notice and to champion when we see acts of humanity um being exercised.

I digress. Sorry. And that was the thought that I got reminded of as you were talking there. Um but one of the other things I know we said we bridge to AI and connection and human to human connection. Somebody in that same meeting mentioned um and they had a beautiful way of phrasing it. AI is not going to steal jobs, but it will fundamentally change the way we think about work and what work is. And it made me really think about then, well, if we don't have to spend our days and our time typing and doing all the admin stuff, that leaves space for creativity, for inspiration, for newness, and for the emotions that come with all of that sense of creation. And I think that speaks to what you're talking about a lot, Kim, at the moment in terms of collaboration and things like that.

Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking about So, how do you bridge AI and humanity? How do you think about using it to create space? I think I don't know what I think. I've been thinking a lot about this quite a bit uh recently. the power of technology to um to catalyze the work that we are doing. And then on the flip side, how do we use it in a way that encourages acts of humanity and balances it? I think is the question that many people are wrestling with right now. And um and so how do you how do we do what people do well while leveraging what technology does well and what does that mean for collaboration? Um I'd be interested to hear your thoughts because it's something that I've been wrestling with quite a bit.

there something you said there or the way that you said it and I don't know if you intended it this way or not but I certainly started to hear you talking about AI in terms of its autonomy and you were referring to AI in the same sense as another person

and so there's kind of equal mutual agency and subsequently a sort of an unknown about how or what that would go ahead and do and it just struck me because I thought at what point does AI stop becoming a human deployed tool, aid, efficiency mechanism, thought provocator, but under human direction. And at what point does it become something that we have to then react and respond to as opposed to dictate?

Yeah. Collaboration fit into that. Well, and I've been thinking more along the lines of less that it's going to like have all of that agency, but more along the lines that we become we allow ourselves to become dependent on it. And so then it then it ceases to be a tool that we are actively using. when you when you can't when I can't open a blank word document and start writing from scratch without using AI as that brainstorming partner then it becomes a dependency that I no longer like when I start letting some of the other skills atrophy or the generation below me is not behind me is not learning those skills then we do become dependent on what used to be a tool and I think you know we're we did it and some people will say well we did it with cell phones and yeah but I'm seeing a backlash of with that where the my generation is saying okay we know we are addicted and we don't want our children you know where there's a whole movement to reduce screens in schools and there's a movement I just got my child a landline so that she can talk with a landline you know so there is this kind of backlash crash to it to say okay we need to rebalance.

Yeah. So I could actually talk about this topic for hours and days but there are two things came to my mind. The first one an observation I have so many people I know here or overseas they are now using AI as a coach or a mentor or um a companion. They brainstorm together. They talk about personal things together. They seek AI advice and I started seeing this trend among so many people. The second thing is that also came to my mind is something happened around I 3 weeks ago or something. I was supporting local NGO at country level uh in their proposal development stage and uh they were subgrantee by uh international NGO. The international NGO was the prime. So the international NGO um couple of days ahead of the deadline asked them for around 22 annexes policies or processes or XY Z for different things.

And I was supporting this local NGO and the executive in that local NGO said it's impossible to work on 22 annexes and have them in place like implement them. It's just not applicable and there are so many things they didn't even know what it meant or something. So in the process um this executive from that local NGO shared the 22 annexes and was telling me I had no choice. We want to get that um agreement and we want to move forward and all that we know it's not going to be applicable or something. I went to AI I used all those I used the tool and then I generated those annexes and he was like are we going to implement them? No. Can we implement them also?

No. Are they applicable in our context or organization? No. But it's part of the process. So it's all it started made me feel like okay this side is using AI requesting XY Z the other side using AI responding to XY Z. So I started feeling like there's something broken here.

We're building an alternative reality nothing. Yeah, I mean the a couple of thoughts, Kim, the atropy thing you mentioned 100% I think that is fundamentally the biggest risk that we face is an exgenerational challenge, right? And as the father of a of a young daughter, how do I how do I enable how do I continue to ensure that she creates the mental intelligence to be able to think independently and creatively and autonomously without the need the dependency on AI. Okay, that's absolutely right. I was talking to my wife about this as well at one point um and I ended up using the analogy of pilots and autopilot and you know modern day technology with planes a plane can land itself in almost any weather. I don't know aviation experts might challenge me on that but my understanding is that planes can land with autopilot pretty much anywhere these days.

Um and yet actually the pilots are dictate that there's there's conditionality in their contracts and for them to sustain the license that they have to do manual landings every x number of flights or however many it is and that's to prevent this atropy that's to ensure that they can continue to do it. And so I was like, if we're using AI, to your point, Kim, like, okay, we might use AI to do the first draft of a document for us, but maybe one in five, we go, you know what, I'm not going to use AI for this one. It might take me half a day as opposed to 20 minutes, but I'm going to spend the time. I'm going to start with a blank page.

And I think that's just a self-discipline that we can maybe sort of keep ourselves hold beholden to. And the coaching thing, I could talk a lot about AI and coaching. um because I do it I use AI as a as a sounding board to it and stuff like that but I'm still convinced it's not a direct replacement for human one-to-one coaching um and largely and the single tangible example I can give with this right is when you're holding a space with someone in a one-on-one conversation when you can look them in the eye whether it's virtually or face to face you can see when their brain is functioning and you can you can pause you can hold you can stop thinking Okay. Whereas if somebody types something into an AI chat, it's going to give an immediate response.

You're going to get an immediate text reaction to it. Even if you don't, AI is not holding space. A tech an AI chatbot is not holding space like you would be if you've got someone physically looking at you and speaking to you. And the thought processes that you have are very different. Complimentary. I think there's a space for AI and coaching, but I don't think it's a it's a replacement. So let me tell you something quick. Um around uh three years ago a bit more uh I was working with the one international NGO HQ. Um and my scope was mainly grants management and the cycle the grant cycle.

Um and I went to my line manager I said hi I've been using those um like an AI tool and I also have an automation and I could feel that my workload dropped and I also mentioned that I've been observing also this Microsoft analysis of my engagement and all that and I could see I'm spending less time on emails documents XY Z and more time on discussions and all that and I said that my workload just dropped and I made it like a case and I said um I want to spend now additional time at that time I had around 30% of my time on things I like to do and I want to do within the organization and I told him I want to spend 15% of my time supporting HR on diversity inclusion initiatives and 50 15% with it raising awareness on AI and show how it helped me reduce my workload.

So I had this perfect case documented living example and at that time I was like head of unit. So I was also in a mania role. So what happened is that of course my line manager said yes let's do that and HR said yes let's do that and it and all that we all got excited about this but what happened because of NGO's culture and this always uh do more with less and all that mindset and all that I ended up covering additional three roles. So what happened is that free time that I managed to get from AI went into oh we need someone to cover the compliance here we need someone to work on this document we need someone to do this and then suddenly I was covering three roles with that 30% that I had to allocate for other things so instead of me having free time I was busier and I had more things to do and suddenly I was engaged with so many different things.

You are too transparent, Ali. Classic mistake. Yes. No, this is some this is a an ongoing debate. I mean, we know that right now there's so many organizations that are that are constricting that are downsizing. And so AI is a tool that can help us be more efficient and do more with less. And if we were being smart about it, the extra time savings would be reinvested in work life balance, preventing burnout, you know, increasing joy and meaning, doing projects that get us ahead and are proactive instead of reactive. Um, I think I like to think that if the sector was in a different place, we would have the wherewithal to lead into that more. Um, and some people still are, but yeah, it's definitely a distinction.

I think it's where I think it's where it's going to go. I don't think it's it's humanitarian sector specific. I think it's every sector is going to have this journey. I think it's global society, globally tech connected societies are going to are going to all experience this. And at the moment, we're just facing the lag, right? We're still operating with the mindsets of efficiency and time being the sort of valuable commodity, right? Whereas in an AIdriven world in the future, time is not going to be the valuable commodity, right? cont we're gonna have to somehow come up with a different framing for value and worth um and we're gonna have to charge accordingly for it in all sorts of metrics. And so I think that idea of how we how we connect, how we engage, how we communicate, and it's going to be a lot more emotionally driven.

It's going to it's going to I think elevate the role of feelings and emotion. And this comes to that human connection side of things a huge amount because it won't be and we might have to see generations pass before this happens but it won't be have you done the is it not an efficiency thing it's not a productivity point anymore that individuals are considered worthy and valued through it's going to be particularly in the knowledge economies right I mean trades and physical tangible jobs it's different but in knowledge economy it's not going to be experience or knowledge it's going to be the connection It's going to be how you make someone feel. And you know, they always say it. Kids don't remember what you say or do.

They remember how you made them feel. And I think in the future in the work space, we're going to be in the same sort of situation as well. And with the time savings that we have, we will be investing it differently. We'll be afforded to invest it differently.

But what are the cultural things of that? What are the cultural implications of that, Thomas? Like the example that comes to mind is LA two weekends ago. So at my organization at Himementum we have flex we have general we have flexible time but we have flexible Fridays and so two Fridays ago I had time in the afternoon and I was feeling burnt out because I had just come back from the travel to talk about this before I needed some time and so I worked from 7:30 to I think 11:30 which is not unusual for me because I often have meetings in the mornings and then I me and the dog went to Rock Creek Park which is a giant nature space in the middle of DC and went on a hike, sat in a hammock, took a nap, was three hours in the trees.

I came back in time for a 3:00 meeting. Had a great meeting, did some stuff, and this was my flex Friday. And I had this extra time and I invested it. And I can tell you this now because I then posted pictures in our company Slack channels and was celebrated for it because this is the culture that we do. you can balance in different ways. Um, if you choose and there is the space held for that. Um, and I guess but there's a there's a good amount of trust that's that's invested in people to know you know what your priorities are and you're still going to get the job done.

I think that's exactly it. I think I think that's a great example of where culturally it could go and I think it should go. Whether it will or not depends on how we choose to shift it, right? collectively and transition. I think how we get how we consider renumeration and financing is going to be a huge component to that, right? Are we going to go into a world of universal basic incomes? Um, I don't know. I and how economies navigate this in terms of purchasing power and individual uh abilities to afford life is going to be a huge unknown. And I haven't heard anybody mention anything sensible or substantial on what the implications are for that. Um but I think from a cultural point of view, I think that's exactly where it could go, right?

And subsequently, I mean, you meant your example was a very individualistic one where you were giving yourself self-care and that I think should get more prominence in the future as well. I think also likewise there will be much greater focus placed on meeting people on spending time with each other on the communication the interaction that connection you have human to human um and it won't be based on the transaction of what can I get from you now right because the intelligence side of that I can get from someone else it's going to be based on back to it emotions and feelings it's going to be spent on I am uplifted I am feeling regenerative because I've spent time with someone rather than I need to spend time with that person to achieve my goal and my task requires that I spend this time with them, right?

We'll be a lot more discerning in who we engage and how we build relationships with people. Um, which is an opening to your bit on collaboration.

I was just going to say this is such a good segue to this thing that I've been grappling with. I don't even know exactly how it connects in but I feel like it does because it keeps coming up popping up in my head. So I have been thinking quite a bit about collaboration for the last uh this in the last month partly because I am engaging in it. I'm I'm about to engage in it in a professional way. But the this idea of collaboration keeps coming up in many conversations I've had. It seems to be like one of the answers right to all of our collective problems. right now there's there's less resources, there's less time to do things, we need to do more with less.

Um, and I think we recognize that we have this kind of collective problem. So, we should pull together our knowledge and that we there's a recognition of fragmentation. And so, the answer to all of that is let's come together. And that sounds really easy on paper, but it's really hard to do in practice. And so, a couple things that I've been circling around. The first is that collaboration is going to become one of those terms that means nothing, right? It's going to be like we believe in trust. We believe in equity and no one can be against it because you can't be against trust, equity or collaboration, but everyone means something different and we don't really talk enough about how to do it. So when we everyone means something different by it.

I've been thinking about this collaboration continuum where collaboration is at the one end of the spectrum and at the other end is competition. But in between there's things like well we can just coexist so we just you know we leave each other alone but we don't hurt each other or we can uh communicate better or we can coordinate better all the way up to collaboration. And maybe right now we don't all need this like heavy expensive collaboration tool. Maybe we just need to communicate and coordinate better and align and that's okay. So that's one thing I've been thinking about. The second is I read this article the other day that really was like a bit of a light bulb moment where that said that collaboration is um is a discipline not a value.

So we often talk about it as something that we value. It's a principle that we believe in but it actually is a discipline. And oftentimes we think of discipline as like a science but it is the art of holding space as you were saying Thomas. It is the heart of the art of looking someone in the eye and saying this is when I lean back and give you a pause and this is when I push you and make you feel uncomfortable. And it is an art that those weavers and those guides can hold and that many traditional leaders are not equipped to do because you are looking at things like competing uh motivations and you are looking at all of the systemic things and how they intersect with the relational.

So I have been thinking about this quite a bit and also that when we need collaboration the most is often in those kind of level two wicked complex problems where we often use level one tools. And so these are things that I have been grappling with. Um, how do you how do we move away from talking about it in generic values driven terms? Because then people just think it's going to automatically get done like it's magically going to happen and then we get stuck when it actually is a skill set and if we think about it in that way, what does it unlock? just to supplement this because there are so many questions they pop up immediately after collaboration or coordination or all the things under that umbrella when I look at site level or country level within humanitarian development sector we have so many platforms we have clusters we have working groups we have NGO form we have subworking groups we have so many platforms they are there with the goal of collaboration coordination All those who's doing what, where, and when, lobbying, mobilizing resources, bringing organizations together, are they effective?

Are they impactful? Do they fit for purpose? Are they really building that collaboration and bridges among those uh those organizations? I will leave the answer to those who joined any of them those meetings. Um this is one. Two, from strategic perspective, who are we collaborating and coordinating with as nonprofit organizations or foundations or XY did within that atmosphere? because we have um policy makers, we have uh those private sector, we have um the different initiatives within community, we have we have multiple stakeholders that they are totally outside the ecosystem, totally outside the sector. So are we also collaborating or working with those or the definition on collaboration and the stakeholders are only within the sector. I will also leave this for those who work at strategic level.

Internally, one of the challenges that I have witnessed and the issues that I have seen within organizations is if you are a coordinator, you collaborate, you coordinate. If you are a manager, you manage. But collaboration is the responsibility of a program coordinator, technical coordinator, XY Z. and the responsibility of managing budget oversight project cycle management XY Z is with a manager. So in a way or another and I've seen that in so many organizations we took collaboration coordination we put it under a specific role and also the answer to those questions I will leave it to those who are working at that level but I think the moment we start looking at the details of this is also the moment we start finding okay how it's going to be implemented how we are going to move toward what you mentioned Kim that overall let's say vision or value or even a principle that we want to achieve So I sorry I want to hear what you have to say but I want to add one thing to what Ali said because when what you just said is

if we treat collaboration like a project or a program like you give it to the coordinator you give it to the project manager that's a level one skill set and tool set there's nothing wrong with that but that's like problem tree problem identification then you know what is what are the milestones all of these things and that's treating it like a two maybe a 3D problem but the collaboration is like a 4D the enigma that requires a different set of skills and tools that we're all many of us are just learning as we go or doing it intuitively to be quite honest with you. I agree, Kim. You were going to say basically what I was going to come in with here. You we've we're having or have just had a really wonderful creative, curious, explorative type conversation that starts to unlock kind of the whatifs and the hows will things materialize in the future.

And we weren't in any of that previous conversation sort of using current normative frameworks and structures as kind of immovable. And yet when you start to then look at the current systems, how starkly the difference is, what the contrast is between the rigid stuff that you say there, Ali. You mapped out the kind of current coordination mechanisms that we have. And I would argue that they're there to control rather than coordinate and collaborate. they're there to conform rather than anything else. Um, but just in the presentation of them, I thought we saw how starkly archaic they have become, right? When you're faced with the dynamics and challenges and in the future things that we'll have to navigate. And exactly as you say, Ken, collaboration is a prerequisite.

It's it's going to be a core competent skill to exist in the world moving forward, right? rather than just a part of a job title and a responsibility of a of a layer of a system because we are needing to move out of these isolated mechanical hierarchical linear structures into this kind of ecosic interdependent world and life that's going to demand collaboration to exist in that space and as we've we've mentioned already that collaboration may not be purely humanto human that may be collaboration that includes a tech dimension to it and I'm I'm currently delivering um a sort of leadership development program. I've got two cohorts that are running in parallel with each other. One of them is for senior leaders that have been in the sector for years and they're former country directors and SRT global SRT members.

And the other cohort are emerging leaders. They're kind of in their first job as a leader, so to speak, right? Or their relatively early career is the term they like to consider themselves as. and running the same or introducing the same topics to both cohorts is fascinating to then see the difference in how they're they grapple with the different topics, right? Just this week we did ecosystem mapping um and we kind of each cohort went through their own process of conducting ecosystem maps and of the emerging leaders one the thing that came out so dominantly was the role and they didn't use the language but the insinuation was dependency on technological connection because of the hybrid working environments that we've got. they no longer have this sense well arguably they never did have the sense they are feeling the void where there is a projected expectation that teamwork happens by default because you exist together and you work together right whereas I think that's actually something that we're bringing from a precoid prehybrid working space where you sit in the same office together and you can just go up to someone and chat to them and things like that way of working doesn't exist anymore and yet for leaders that were leaders pre-COVID That's an expectation that's sort of unspoken.

Whereas emerging leaders will say we don't see that. We don't feel that. That expectation feels alien. Our expectation is the tech side conversations. But we don't see it all. You don't see the same as you see when you are on the same. If you open plan office, you see who goes to lunch together and you see who talks to each other on the side and you see people's physical responses and reactions and you get those moments of cynicism that people say and stuff, right? Whereas here in the current world, you don't see the side chats. So your visibility of the shadow world of an organization is far less than it was before. And as a leader, that makes your ability to kind of understand the field, the fabric, the culture very difficult.

And so new leaders, emerging leaders are going to need to navigate that. It's going to be a new competency and a new skill that they're going to have to develop. And I would argue being able to collaborate as an art form, as a science, as a human behavior is going to be central to that. It has to be. Otherwise, they're gonna

Yeah. And what I mean, what you just said about not being able to see the shadow systems is so important. And I don't have an answer for it at all, but I think it's important that we call it out. We acknowledge it. One of in this article that I was reading the other day that stood out to me was this idea that those in our current world, those who are good at collaboration mostly do have done it intuitively. They've done it. It's it's in them or they've they've kind of worked out through trial and error what's happening. But the challenge is when it's not recognized as a skill or a discipline is when those people leave because oftentimes even the ones who are doing it intuitively don't know what to call it.

You know my child the other day asked me what is my title and I didn't know the answer to it. Like he's like what do you actually do for work? Couldn't tell them. I went to chat GPT and asked and it couldn't tell me it start it started hedging too. It was like the problem is that you do three or four different things. it couldn't it couldn't synthesize it either. And so we don't have a term for it. And if you don't treat it as a skill or a discipline, then when someone who's been kind of holding those pieces together silently leaves, the whole thing falls apart. And as you say, we are going to need it more and more. If it's if it's going to be less mechanis less mechanistic which many of us are really hoping to build and if the world is going to become more if we look more at that social contract if we look more at the peopleto people and the humanity and if we really just kind of want to be more collaborative as a society then we're going to need to learn what that looks like in practice and that is not like all kumbaya that is like how do you grapple with intrins competing motivations, incentives, and systems that don't align.

Like, these are hard things to grapple with.

There's there's it reminds me of the World Economic Forum report that came out last year where it looked at the core skills for 2013, and I've just brought it up and the of the 11 core skills that are going to be expected in the workforce in 2030. I think what quick scan of them eight of the 11 are all human- centered skills. Creative thinking, curiosity, lifelong learning, analytical thinking, leadership, social influence, motivation, self-awareness, empathy, active listening, and the others are all techreated, AI, big data, technological literacy, etc. So I think this fusion of human skills and a sophistication of human skills that currently do get battered away as a bit wooha and I heard a narration of a of an SLT meeting where they were talking about culture recently and one of the leaders turned around and goes wait so we just have to be nice to everyone and it's kind of like well yeah you do right but the fact that was the response was fascinating.

Um, and the being able to have those human skills and the depth of those human skills coupled with tech literacy and awareness of tech integration into life. That fusion is the skill set I've just taught myself what I need to tell my daughter and raise my daughter to be able to do.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me let me supplement this with uh with something I have been seeing so much with um organizations that's integrating AI and AI agents. One of the things that I noticed and this one of the key challenges that whenever we are setting those AI agents to support individuals doing different tasks they until this moment even when using uh enterprise accounts for those AI agents there is no one environment where those AI agents they could go together and collaborate on doing something and even when you ask those AI agents to do ABC and another AI agent to do 1 2 three they come with their own findings and their own results but they are not collaborating to work on the final thing.

So in all those organizations that I have been working with all of them the one that using AI agents they are still having the people coordination collaboration communications being together engaging together as a key foundation because the AI agents they started supporting with multiple things but until this moment they don't have one specific environment to collaborate and do things together and even yes we put them on Slack we put we gave them access to emails we gave give them access to teams or different chats but when they are going there they are individual AI agents they are not coming together as one so in all cases the foundation for sitting those systems where humanto human connection people engagement and that communication and those soft skills among uh the people who are prompting those AI agents

Ali you are you are going to continue to be my guru on AI experimentation I think um this has been great. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much you two. Um I hope people enjoy listening to it as much as we've enjoyed having it. We'll keep it going next time. Keep it going next time indeed. All right. Take care both. Love to speak to you.

Byebye. Bye.