Future Focused with Dev Patnaik

This week's episode emphasizes the critical need for future-focused leadership in evolving business landscapes. Dev Patnaik discusses the pitfalls of present-centric thinking and offers practical strategies for balancing immediate tasks with future opportunities, underscoring that successful leaders look beyond the now to innovate and adapt.

• Importance of future-focused leadership 
• Risks of being present-centric during rapid change 
• Implementing a time diet to prioritize future tasks 
• Neuroplasticity's role in shifting leadership mindsets 
• Divergence and convergence in innovation processes 
• Learning from failures of companies like Kodak and Blockbuster 
• Strategies successful leaders use to anticipate change 

Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO Podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at www.reALIGNforResults.com. You can find me, Benno, host of TGO Podcast, there as well. Just email Benno@reALIGNforResults.com. Let's keep growing.

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler 

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN 

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Hey, welcome to the Third Growth Officer podcast, where we talk about all things growth, yes, even and especially those hard parts where you shed some skin and pick yourself up by the bootstraps. Hey, I'm Benno Dunkelspüler, growth Sherpa and OG hashtag growth nerd. We're on a mission to redefine success inside and outside the business, one TGO episode at a time.

Speaker 2 0:35

I'm Dave Pitnayak, I'm the CEO of Jump Associates and I'm Benno's new best friend.

Speaker 1 0:41

And where are you located?

Speaker 2 0:42

I'm in San Mateo, california, california. Dave, I'm in San.

Speaker 1 0:44

Mateo, california, california. Dave, I'm so excited to have you here. So, first of all, welcome to Third Growth Option Podcast.

Speaker 2 0:52

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 0:53

Yeah, I am the host, and our friend and also former TGO podcast guest, peter Friedman from DEMDECO, introduced us. I want to give a shout out to Peter for putting us together and, dave, you are a business leader and an academic and a thought leader. On the business side, you have founded Jump Associates, a leading strategy and innovation firm, back in 1998. You are currently its CEO.

Speaker 2 1:28

That's right, 1998. That's a long time. We're going on 27 years or something like that, isn't it, my goodness?

Speaker 1 1:36

It's a year. I remember well, because my now wife and I got married, that year Great wife and I got married great um. You are also an academic, an adjunct professor at stanford university since 2003 is that right? 2003, it seems longer. But yes, yeah, okay, on your website or your linkedin.

Speaker 2 1:57

So all right that, if it if it's, if it says it on linkedin, it must be true. Right, it must be true. Exactly, it must be true.

Speaker 1 2:05

You're an author of several books, board trustee of Conscious Capitalism since 2018.

Speaker 2 2:19

You were a YPO member for eight years, until COVID, or so I think. Yeah, technically, I think I'm still a member of YPO. I'm not that Y anymore. They kick you out of the base organization when you're not.

Speaker 1 2:28

You're an OPO.

Speaker 2 2:29

I'm an OPO now, exactly that's right. But yeah, I think it coincided with COVID, because in 2020, I turned 50. And so then, they kick you out. They elevate you to what they now call YPO gold, which is really YPO old.

Speaker 1 2:48

That's funny, dave. You've also lived in Berlin, germany, so another connection between you and me. I was born in Germany, not in Berlin, but I've been there, and so you and I share, uh, or I. I have already learned in our last conversation and the email exchange after that you enjoy and value discussion and arguing in a good way, uh, so I hope we're going to get a little bit into you know, discussing and arguing I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 3:22

Right it's, it's how I learn. Right, because the best thing is is when you say something and then the person you're talking to says, no, that's totally wrong, because then it's an opportunity to learn something new that's exactly right, yeah, so, uh, the.

Speaker 1 3:38

You know what, when we talked a month or a couple months back about hey, you know how should we frame up this episode, I had put a couple different months back about hey, you know how should we frame up this episode. I had put a couple of different ideas around. You know, maybe I ask you some questions around being a purpose-driven company or around empathy. You'd write a book about a wire to care. Maybe we would talk about visualization, maybe we'd talk about being customer-centric and you're like no, no, no, we're going to talk about future-focused because you've just written a book.

Speaker 2 4:06

Has it been published yet. I am in the process of writing it right now. What's happening is I'm putting things out into the world in small chunks and then we'll gather it all together and we'll make a book out of it, but the title of it is going to be future-focused, because we're seeing this for mid-sized companies, for large companies. The biggest reason why these organizations fail is because they miss the future, and so we want to help them not do that, so they can persist.

Speaker 1 4:36

Talk a little bit more about that itch that you felt when you started, when you wanted to write a book called Future Focused. Yeah, what did you see in the world that made you want to write that book?

Speaker 2 4:53

You know there is. It's such a great question, Ben. The world is going through massive disruption and massive change. You know we just had hearings on Capitol Hill on this week Monday and Tuesday where basically we have you know officials or former officials of the US government saying that you know UFOs are real and it seems like no one's like yeah, we're all just shrugging our shoulders Like you would think we would have panic in the streets on that. I don't want to turn this into a UFO discussion, but I think it is an indicator of just how numb, how inured we are getting to constant, rapid change. Right, it's like there's a flock of black swans that keep getting unleashed on us and I think that figuring out how to navigate that is crucial.

Speaker 1 5:48

Separating the wheat from the chafe. Is that what you're?

Speaker 2 5:51

Yeah, but even seeing the signals about you know what's going to happen in the world, right, not next year, but in five years, in seven years, right, and where the world is going. And what should you do as a leader? You know, know, certainly as a business leader running a company, but even just as a leader of people. What should you do to prepare for that? And, and it's a huge challenge that we're facing, even if the ufos are not real, how?

Speaker 1 6:19

so how do you answer the question? What should what I to do? As a business leader and a leader of people.

Speaker 2 6:27

Yeah, well, you know, I think number one it starts with the realization that. Number one most companies fail because they miss the future and we have good evidence for that. How do you end up as being Kodak or Blockbuster or Blackberry, all of these companies that fail, and we're using large companies just because everyone knows them right? But even for small, limited size companies, that's true.

Speaker 1 6:50

You're doing a great job. The highway is littered with, yeah.

Speaker 2 6:52

The highway is littered with companies that were managed incredibly well and yet, unbeknownst to them, there are exogenous forces that have rendered them obsolete, right, but what's the problem? It's not that people are stupid, right. It's not that they can't see this coming. It's that, and there's great, you know, psychological research that came out of, you know, my alma mater, out of Stanford, that shows that, you know, most people are not future focused, right, there's about 16% of human beings that can think about the future more than a couple of years out, imagine where the world's going, realize the urgency of it and believe it and get moving on it. There's another 13, 14% of the population who are completely past-focused. Their entire worldview is determined in terms of what they've seen in the past. What?

Speaker 1 7:45

happened last year, last decade last century.

Speaker 2 7:47

Yeah, Like we, our company's been around for 60 years. We'll do so. These are the people who will say you know, you know, Uber is just a blip. Taxi cabs will never go away.

Speaker 1 7:57

Right, amazon never made money in the year 2000.

Speaker 2 8:01

Right, that's what everybody was saying.

Speaker 1 8:02

It's never going to be a thing. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 8:04

It's never going to be a thing, right? I mean, they have all sorts of good arguments why the past will continue to be true, right, despite all evidence to the contrary. But you know, leave those guys aside, because that's only you know. 14%.

Speaker 1 8:15

So that's on the outside of the bell curve in the middle right edges of the bell curve.

Speaker 2 8:26

The future folks are getting going. The past focused folks are arguing for the past, but it's the people in the middle of the bell curve you just described. 70% of us are present, focused, 70% of us think about the here and now, and when you show them that the world is changing, their reaction is Benno, you're right, the world is changing, but we need to focus on this quarter, we need to focus on the here and now, and that is the worst of all three options. The future-focused guys are going, the past-focused people. You can disprove the present-focused people. They're talking like the future-focused people, right, and they're acting like the past-focused people. It's like they've-.

Speaker 1 9:02

And they're not wrong. They do have to make the quarter right, I mean you know the old adage in the longterm we'll all be dead. So there is there, there is a certain limit to how future focused you want to be. You have to have one foot, and I think of it as one foot in the present and one foot in the future. I don't know, you're exactly right, you're exactly right.

Speaker 2 9:22

Future focus does not mean head in the clouds. It's just really looking about where the world is going, assessing like am I on the right side of history or not? No-transcript, so you have to deliver this quarter, but if that's all you do, you're going to end up like one of those. You know those people in the body count on the side of the road that you described.

Speaker 1 9:58

Right, right. How do you help leaders, business leaders, get that balance right? Yeah, right, because it's certainly not 50, you know, and there is no formula, it's not 50-50 or 40-60. But how do you balance?

Speaker 2 10:15

it. Yeah, you know that is, and this is part of what I'm discovering in the book that I'm writing. I'm looking at like so what are the habits of future focused leaders? And one of the things that they're really good at is these folks are really good at balancing the now and the next. They take an almost portfolio approach so that they say, okay, let's call it, 75% of what I'm doing is going to be about the now, but 25% of it is going to be about the next.

Speaker 2 10:44

I love that 25% is a rough Larry Page, who is the co-founder of Google. He talks about that when he was running the company. Think about it, google most of their money comes from advertising generated search and he would spend every Friday afternoon like half of his day on Friday, which, I mean, think about it, that's like 10% of his time. He'd spend it with this new little company that they had acquired called Android, their mobile operating system, and he says you know, I felt so guilty that, like you know, I should be spending all my time on search and instead I'm going and screwing around with this. You know this little OS and in reality, I'm so glad we did that because it's central to our future reality.

Speaker 1 11:34

I'm so glad we did that because it's central to our future, right, so it's so interesting. I mean these percentages that you know different folks have in their head about how to balance present and future, and I I actually in my weekly to-do list I have I break it down into three buckets.

Speaker 1 11:52

I have 30% of my time I want to spend finding future-oriented, finding clients, finding new ideas, 60% of my time just running the day-to-day and 10% of my time tracking. And Steve Jobs famously spent 20% of his time recruiting talent. Right, Because he knew I mean a lot of CEOs would say, well, that's HR's job, that's not my job he spent not Friday afternoon but all Friday right 20% of his time, so interesting.

Speaker 1 12:28

So I think part of being future-focused, you're saying, is being very intentional and mindful of where, when and how we spend time on the future versus the present.

Time Management for Future-Focused Leaders

Speaker 2 12:41

That's exactly right. One of the pieces of advice I give to our clients is that if you are like most of us, if you are like the 70% who is present-focused, don't dismay. Neuroplasticity is a beautiful thing. You can change how your brain is wired. If you were like the 70% who is present focused, don't dismay. Right, neuroplasticity is a beautiful thing. You can change how your brain is wired. So how do you do that? And it's exactly what you said, benno.

Speaker 2 13:01

We started with saying let's do a time diet, right. And so what is a time diet? A time diet is exactly just like a food diet, right If you wanted to lose weight or if you wanted to get in shape. One of the first things that a personal trainer or a nutritionist will tell you is well, start keeping a log of what you're eating, right, just to start to notice what's happening. You might even start to change your behavior if you're noticing.

Speaker 2 13:23

The same thing is true for your time outlook, which is, you know, many of us manage our calendars through, you know, microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar or something like that. Just every day, at the end of the day, take a look at your calendar and mark the time blocks and say you know, choose like. Give it an orange color if this conversation was thinking about the future, right, give it a green if it was about the present. Give it a blue if it was about the past. And notice how you are spending your time and you might discover like, wow, I'm spending more time than I thought justifying the past or tracking what happened last quarter or reporting out on a year ago.

Speaker 2 14:09

And you've got to spend a little bit of time on the past so you can learn from it sure right, but but but you know, not not 30, you know, and don't be surprised if, like your brain, 75, 80 of your time is on on the present. You know, another 10, 15 is on the past and you have almost nothing for the future. That's, that's very normal right, right, right.

Speaker 1 14:31

What other concepts maybe are bubbling up as you're thinking about writing this book?

Speaker 2 14:42

Yeah, it's so fascinating that the folks who are really these leaders, who are very good at navigating their companies to the future, they're also really good at looking out in the world and seeing things at the margins, seeing things at the edges right, they're very much to the rest of us. They look like they're big risk takers, right, and they're actually not. They're just really insightful. They're good at seeing changes that the rest of us don'ters right, and they're actually not. They're just really insightful. They're good at seeing changes that the rest of us don't notice, right.

Speaker 2 15:19

So I have a client and friend of mine, Lucian Grange, who's the CEO of Universal Music Group. Universal Music is every music act, from Taylor Swift and Drake to the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and Elton John, right? So I mean like something like eight or nine of the songs that you hear in a given hour on Spotify are universal. Lucian, as much as any human being I've ever seen is so good at looking around corners, right? And I'll tell him like Lucian, you take big risks. He says nonsense, Dave.

Speaker 2 15:50

He's like if you saw what I saw, it would be freaking obvious to you, Right, Because they're, you know, he, and he trains his people to do this as well. You know, especially in music, what's going on, you know, in a small town that nobody's noticing, right, what's going on in a new technology that nobody's paying attention to, right, what's going on in in markets that you know he's he's obsessed about things like what's happening in in in west africa, right and like because nigeria, in in his mind, is going to be a huge source not just of a new market but of kind of new music production capabilities. That's going to change how we think about music. We, I mean he can't just rest on elton john and and taylor swift right, right, right.

Speaker 1 16:33

You know when, early in my career, when I lived in your neck of the woods in the Bay Area as a buyer for Pottery Barn, the guy that sort of spearheaded reinventing Pottery Barn back in the 90s, who has now done the same for RH in an even bigger way, you know, he used to say, you know, or to all of us buyers and merchants he would say a good merchant simply has open eyes, open ears and is open to new input all the time.

Speaker 2 17:12

That's right and is open to new input all the time.

Speaker 1 17:15

That's right and that is different from you know sort of the historians of the business world. You know the accountants and the operations people that have to analyze what happened last week and last year in order to forecast for the future and get better, faster, cheaper. Right, they have to look at yesterday's facts and then analyze them. But in order for visionaries to help the rest of the organization infuse a little vision of what is happening tomorrow, we have to look. We just have to have our eyes and ears open.

Speaker 2 17:58

I think that's right. And you bring up a really good example with accounting, right, which is that if you've ever taken any finance classes or let's call it basic bookkeeping classes, right, double entry bookkeeping and all of that so much of it is tuned to what has happened, right. You know, double entry bookkeeping and all of that so much of it is tuned to what has happened. Right, where did the money come from and where did the money go? All of those same skills can be used. And at Jump, where I work, you know we spend a lot of time teaching people how to use those same financial skills to think about you know pro forma income statements of what might this look like over the next five years and how do we build that and what assumptions do we need to make about it. Right, mechanically they're very similar skill sets to build that P&L right, but it takes a very different mindset to say, okay, what would it take for this to be true in five years?

Speaker 1 18:52

Right, right, and you know earlier we talked about sort of time blocking these various activities. And you know, in my business we help companies enter new markets, get into new adjacent product categories, somehow expand their market footprint right.

Speaker 2 19:13

Sure.

Speaker 1 19:15

And I sort of break it into three different buckets, right? The first is let's take a couple, a week or two and just evaluate an idea, right? Just sort of fat finger exercise right.

Speaker 1 19:27

Is this a good idea or a bad idea, and why, and then take a couple months to roadmap, where you know now you're doing a five-year pnl forecast and you're doing gantt charts and active and you know time and action calendars, and then a couple years worth of executing against the milestones that you put into the roadmap. Um, um, what other um I actually? I I want to ask you a little bit about I love this concept, um, and the picture of divergence and convergence right.

Speaker 1 20:01

Innovation, uh, uh, best, you know, or I think, in the practice of innovation, uh, we have to be divergent, you know, sort of take the blinders off and look everywhere. But then at some point you have to say okay.

Speaker 2 20:18

Yeah, this is what we're going to focus on.

Speaker 1 20:20

We're going to do this next year and that the year after.

Speaker 2 20:24

Right, yeah.

Speaker 1 20:25

How do you think about divergence, convergence?

Speaker 2 20:28

You know, it's interesting, again, if you are one of these future-focused people or, let's say, you're doing the kind of work that you and I do, thinking about new business creation or growth or innovation, right? I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make and again this goes back to psychology is we tend to think in terms of upside. We think of like, oh, look at how much revenue this new business might create, and it's kind of forgetting our audience, right, who are all those present focused people? What is a far better calculation is how much we're going to lose if we don't do this, right, which is, you know, like it is again, another habit of future focused leaders is they tend to think optimistically, but then they tend to speak pessimistically, right. So they think about the big picture oh, we're going to go create this new business but then they build a case that says you know, if we don't create this new business, right, forget how much new money we're going to make. Here's all the money that is going to go away.

Speaker 1 21:29

That's going to go to the competition.

Speaker 2 21:31

It's going to go to the competition or we're going to be out of business. Or look at the decline that our you know our core businesses is facing today. Right, and this goes back to you know all the neuroeconomic stuff, you know Daniel Kahneman and you know Mr Versky, people who I'm sure you know some of your listeners know well. Right, that idea that loss aversion, right, is a much more powerful thing for people rather than upside realization. Right, it's like no, no, no. We need to be terrified of the future, not optimistic about the future, if we're going to get people on board.

Speaker 1 22:07

I mean, it comes down to the two basic human emotions of hope and fear. Right, right.

Speaker 2 22:14

Yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 22:16

So, you know, pie in the sky, you know, is all about hope, and isn't it great? And fear is like you know, if you, if you don't build, you know if, if, if you, if you don't replace the VC or videotape, mr Blockbuster, with you know, a Netflix model, you're going to go out of business.

Speaker 2 22:39

Right, okay, take that example. It's a fascinating thing, which is I think they were two or three years into their growth and Netflix was having financial trouble and they went to Blockbuster and they said buy us please, and Blockbuster said no, and Blockbuster said no, no-transcript, and they shut it down, right Like, but why?

Speaker 1 23:18

did they shut it down?

Speaker 2 23:19

was going and they shut it down, right, like, but why did they shut it up? Because they were like you know, they looked at that team and they said idiots, do you know how much money we make on late fees, right, I mean. And so to kind of to walk away from the now right and to build something new that you're not going to do that because of the potential upside, you're only going to do that because you're so terrified. If you don't do that, what's going to happen?

Speaker 1 23:40

Right, right. How many books have you written?

Speaker 2 23:48

I've written a few. I've published two of them. All right, all right, yeah, exactly right. The first one is Wired to Care and that was written about 15 years ago. That was about empathy and how empathy can drive business. I think that certainly any mid-sized company knows this, which is that you can't manage by PowerPoint. You need to be out in the world with the people that you're serving. The second book is really a book for the class I teach at Stanford, which is called Need Finding, and how do you actually understand what people need, as opposed to just what they're doing today, what their current behavior is?

Speaker 1 24:22

What is the main thesis of need finding?

Speaker 2 24:24

The basic thesis of need finding is that you gave me one sentence.

Speaker 1 24:28

Give me a paragraph or two.

Speaker 2 24:29

You know, need finding is really about saying that we all have needs that we might not be able to articulate to someone else, and we all have needs that we might not even know to articulate to someone else, and we all have needs that we might not even know that we have. So how do we use methodologies from psychology and anthropology to actually dig underneath the surface and say there's things that are going on in the culture that are kind of gaps and opportunities that we can serve people with, as opposed to just generating more crap that goes into a landfill? So it's really it's basically the social science for MBAs and designers as a way to do it.

Speaker 1 25:09

And it sounds very much design thinking focused. Is that?

Speaker 2 25:15

fair Very much. You know I used to. My mentor when I was in school was a fellow by the name of Rolf Fasti. He's actually the fellow who coined the term design thinking decades ago and we co-taught that class together for many years until he passed away. So yes, it is very much a central part of design thinking as is practiced in the world these days.

Speaker 1 25:41

You know, and when I talk, first of all I love every book I've ever read around design thinking and whenever I talk about design thinking to my designer friends, most of them just shrug their shoulders and say you mean thinking?

Speaker 2 25:59

Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly Right.

Speaker 1 26:04

I mean. To me, design thinking is future-oriented and going into the. You know what we were talking about earlier, that it's more about asking the customer what would they like, what would they, what needs do they have, rather than asking the ops people and the accounting people. What happened last year that we could, you know, retread.

Speaker 2 26:26

Yes, that's right. And look, it is really useful to do an audit of what happened last year. But if you know to your point, if all you do is that audit about what happened last year and call it as job done right, you should not be surprised if your beautiful business, you know, is suddenly out of you know a future like running out of rope, and I think especially for it gets worse for midsize businesses, ironically, and it gets worse for midsize B2B businesses, right, ironically. And it gets worse for mid-size b2b businesses, right, the kind of like you know, we make, you know, widgets that go into other people's products. It's even worse. The situation is even worse for them why do you say that?

Speaker 2 27:07

because often, if you think about it, you know let's say, you, you make things for an end consumer or something like that you can notice these changes and you can, you know, start to pivot on this. If you're a B2B manufacturer, you're one step removed. So often you don't see the signal or you are kind of like chained to your downstream customers. You know past focus thinking. You know the classic thing is you don't want to be making buggy whips, right, but what if you don't make buggy whips? What if all you do is you make the handles for a buggy whip manufacturer downstream? At that point it's like, well, I just make handles. How is that a bad thing?

Speaker 1 27:51

Because you're a couple of places separated Because you're not making steering wheels.

Speaker 2 27:57

Exactly, that's right. But to see that, and then I have to look at a completely different customer base, because the steering wheels are going to go to.

Speaker 1 28:05

You might have to hire people like you or your company or my company.

Speaker 2 28:10

God forbid exactly, or get started and do it yourself, and the biggest things that's going to get in your way is a mindset that you're going to be too focused on the present, like a lack of exposure to those distant early warnings that things are changing, and just a belief that this might be true and you should do something about it. Ironically, it's those same midsize companies, though, that, if they can put that in place, they're far more nimble than the bigger guys are.

Speaker 1 28:38

Oh, absolutely Right, Because if they can actually believe in place, they're far more nimble than the bigger guys.

Speaker 2 28:41

Oh, absolutely right, because they can actually believe it.

Speaker 1 28:43

They can get going faster. We could. We, we work with mid-sized businesses and, and and that is one of the things I love uh, that it doesn't take an act of conquest to make change that's exactly right yeah, so this, this was a wonderful uh intermission to my day and hopefully to your day and hopefully to our listeners and viewers. I'll invite you to give any parting words of wisdom, if any come to your mind.

Speaker 2 29:14

Benno, it is a joy to get to know you, because you're just a voracious and hungry learner for things, and if your clients are smart, they will argue with you a lot because they will get something out of it. In the process, they'll learn something which is the thing they should be most grateful for.

Speaker 1 29:32

Well, thank you so much and I can't wait for the book to come out. Can't wait for the book to come out and next time I am in the Bay Area or you in either Cincinnati or Mexico City, let's meet each other.

Speaker 2 29:45

Oh, sounds great. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 29:46

Thank you so much, Take care Thanks. Thank you for listening to this episode of TGO Podcast. You can find all episodes on our podcast page at wwwrealign4resultscom. You can find me, Benno, host of TGO Podcast, there as well. Just email Benno B-E-N-N-O at realign4resultscom. Let's keep growing.