The Leadership Vision Podcast

Balancing Viking Individualism and Team Spirit: Lessons for Modern Success and Innovation

• Nathan Freeburg • Season 7 • Episode 48

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In this episode of The Leadership Vision Podcast, we sit down with Anders Indset, philosopher, futurist, and author of The Viking Code. Anders shares his insights on how leaders can bridge individualism and collectivism to build high-performance cultures that are deeply rooted in shared values. Drawing inspiration from his Norwegian roots and global observations, Anders explores themes of adaptability, trust, and the role of friction in fostering progress.

This thought-provoking conversation is packed with actionable insights for leaders seeking to embrace a forward-thinking mindset, navigate complexity, and create environments where teams and organizations thrive.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • How trust and friction drive meaningful innovation and progress.
  • Why balancing individual ambition with collective success creates lasting impact.
  • The importance of fostering adaptability and a generalist mindset in a rapidly changing world.
  • Insights into using play and curiosity as tools for creativity and growth.
  • The role of leaders in anticipating the future and embracing a culture of continuous learning.

Key Takeaways:

  • Trust and Friction: These two forces are the foundation of progress. Leaders who cultivate trust while allowing healthy friction can unlock team potential and generate innovative ideas.
  • Adaptability Over Specialization: In a fast-paced world, a broad “generalist” mindset allows for greater creativity and resilience in the face of change.
  • Play and Curiosity: Organizations should encourage play and experimentation to stimulate creativity and develop a culture of continuous improvement.
  • Future-Focused Leadership: Leaders must anticipate future trends and shift from reactive decision-making to proactive strategies that align with evolving realities.

Memorable Quotes from Anders Indset:

  • “To grow as an individual or team, trust yourself first; only then can you trust others.”
  • “Progress isn’t about reaching a finite goal; it’s about perfecting the next step.”
  • “The organizations that thrive are those that embrace adaptability, creativity, and the unknown.”

Resources Mentioned:

Connect with Anders Indset:

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Speaker 1:

If you do team sports and you relate to others, it's a very fulfilling experience to win together and have progress and shared positive experience. And also, you know, losing, and I think that is also something that appeals to me as you know, I am because you are. You know we need like a kind of sort of declaration of interdependence that we sign right. I like that. I like that. That is what I write about in the book and also that commitment to just doing stuff for others without getting a role or a direct reward, because you just have this sense of feeling Like back a thousand years ago when you had the Vikings setting out in open boats. Everyone had a role and inspiration and you would have Thor standing at the shore of the cold. You thought the world was flat and you thought it was going to end. And he would say are you coming with me? And they would say where are we going? I have no idea. When are we coming back? I have no idea. Are we coming back? I have no idea. Great idea, let's go.

Speaker 3:

You are listening to the Leadership Vision vision podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. To learn more about us and what we do, you can visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg and today, on the Leadership Vision Podcast, I am thrilled to share our conversation with Anders Inset, a brilliant thinker, philosopher and author of, among other books, the Viking Code. In this episode, Anders explores how blending individualism with collectivism creates a high-performance culture rooted in values, adaptability and trust. He shares insights into building meaningful progress, not just for individuals, but also for teams and organizations striving for a future focused mindset. As you listen, I want you to pay attention to two things here. Number one the power of trust and friction in driving progress. Anders explains how these two forces create an environment where innovation thrives and collective growth happens. Number two, the importance of adaptability and a generalist mindset In a world of rapid technological change. Anders emphasizes how leaders can succeed by fostering creativity, play and a willingness to step into the unknown. So let's dive into this absolutely fascinating and fun conversation. I ended up editing not a lot out, but a good amount, as we were just chatting and getting to know one another. It was just really a fascinating conversation that we think is going to challenge how you think about leadership, culture and the future.

Speaker 3:

This is a Leadership Vision Podcast, Enjoy. So there's a sentence in I think it's in the introduction of the book or the first section. The Viking Code shows how we can all lead more meaningful lives by rejoicing in our own success while simultaneously cheering on others to create a conscious culture of learning and progress. And why that jumped out to me and why I want to use that as kind of launch off of who you are in the book, is that for our American culture, that's kind of not the way we do things here.

Speaker 3:

America is more about individualistic. You know me, how do I succeed, how do I lift myself up? And something that we're trying to do differently here at Leadership Vision is say you know, yes, and it is about me and it's about the team, it's about the collective growing. So, by way to introduce you and the book, tell us a little bit about kind of where this whole idea came from, how the Viking Code came out, how you even began, you know, with all of the other interests caring about this topic. I think I've given you five questions at once, so just grab one, that's right, yeah, I'll play with that.

Speaker 3:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

I was writing a book about capitalism because I think that capitalism is the key to tackle a lot of the things that we are up to in terms of climate and you know the social stability. I think the incentive for change and the driving force of the economic is much stronger in trying to limit people. You know the Greta Thunberg it's a lot of engagement doesn't need to change. So I was writing about that and all of a sudden I see all these athletes coming out of my home country, norway, in the sports that has nothing to do with snow, right. So they were like soccer and tennis and golf and, yeah, the two best, best beach volleyball players in the world, triathlons, and I was like you know how is that? You know there is a huge global sports and it's mainly young men. Uh, very strongly tied relationship to their father. Still have a relationship to their high school girlfriend even so, it was like very interesting to see how similar they were in many ways.

Speaker 1:

But you know my background. As an athlete said okay, is there some magic sauce here? Is there like a code, like something that cracks in terms of performance culture? So I reached out to a coach trainer in Norway that has worked a lot of top athletes and we started to dig into it and as I started to play with this, I discovered what came to be the topic of the book basically seeing that they're not only the best at what they do as individual athletes, but they're also the most liked. So they practice team play, fair play, and that, to me, became like the narrative, and see how can you unite individualism and collectivism and how can you build a high performance culture that is deeply rooted in values and that's coming out of a country that does not value high performance, that has always been built on the collective. Then you know that was a narrative, that was the book, and then it felt very natural to me to write the first part, as you have um stated already. Um, that is a lot about my life and me growing up and autobiographical, and, and then I move into these athletes and they are a symbol of some of these things that I look at. So, but the second part of the book is basically what, when you come to the part, part of the progress, it's more of a life philosophy.

Speaker 1:

So, in a world where we have optimized the art of being right, an optimization society we now discover today, with the advance of AI and technology, that the optimization game is something that technology will always win, so you know. So what is it that we need? The understanding, the collectivity, how to build something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. The full essence of what we call a culture becomes the foundation of performance. So, as you said, the US has been built on a declaration of independence.

Speaker 1:

But in order for me to strive, there has to be someone else that I can strive against. So I am, because you are. And if you look at the teams today, in particular in sports, where you have all the data, you have the same training, you know path structures, everything has been optimized to the outmost. So the only thing that you have is to figure out how can you build like a reinforcement learning model where the team grows and the ones that are ambitious or has the aspiration to strive above, can rise above. And then you become very clear to you that if you have an aspiration to grow, it's better that you play in an environment of people that perform at a higher level, an environment of people that perform at a higher level. And so businesses were built on hierarchies and you're going to move the way up the ladder by kicking off someone else. But in today's world, where you have almost infinite access to free knowledge, every company can be like that. So then it comes back to what is the essence, and that is to have a culture where you have a dynamism of progress, so that becomes the only thing that can distinguish you and your organization from everyone else.

Speaker 1:

So that is the part that goes around the classic traditional management, leadership thinking and high-performance culture, and the second part is deeply about what it makes for a meaningful life. The second part is deeply about what is it makes for a meaningful life. So we human beings were brought to this world with two thumbs and the capabilities to create tools. So we have thought about finite solutions and answers, but what we do is basically to create better problems. So we have the capacity to create progress, and experienced progress is the most fulfilling thing to a human being.

Speaker 1:

And if you look at society today, where we react on an outside world with impulses of dopamine and what have you, you are lost your agency. We are like philosophical zombies, just functioning and reacting, and that becomes very exhausting. Just functioning and reacting, and that becomes very exhausting. So the book is also about that philosophy of what you in German would say lebendigkeit, a very powerful word about the vitality of life, but the word itself has five, six different words in English baked into it. It's the very essence of what it means to be a mensch, a human being, to be active and lively and to grow and experience your progress. So I think it's a book is. It's a simple read, but it's a deep book, philosophically speaking, about the challenges of our time. So with that I've also introduced a lot of what I stand for and who I am. So that's the Viking Code in a short, brief introduction for you.

Speaker 4:

Based on the assistant sitting. Next, a short, brief introduction for you, based on the assistant sitting next to you. Like, is this part of your legacy as well? Like sometimes, when we put our words out into the world, or our sentiments or the things that you value, do you see this as part of the message you're trying to extend into the world?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a really good question. This is the quickest book, fastest book that I've ever written and to me it's like a very accessible book to a very broad audience. And it's also my first official book that is published in the US. So it's for me also to enter a market where I think today that, seeing the division in the US and how we live, you can go to a game and have a deep sense of patriotism and collectivism. And when you saw Tim Walz come out all of a sudden out of nowhere, he was appealing to a lot that people could relate to the communes and the collectivism.

Speaker 1:

And so I think I wouldn't say that this is my legacy, because I'm very, very tightly tied to consciousness and what it means to be human in relation to technology, which is a much more complex topic.

Speaker 1:

But I think that a part of that is what I hold to be a self-evident truth for us human beings is that we are born to create, we are born to advance, we are born to experience our own experiences, and that means you know, if you are thrown back or something happens, you start at a new point, but from that point it's all about progress.

Speaker 1:

So all we have is an infinite capability to come up with better explanation or to move onwards, and the sense of being is to experience that journey, which is obviously also very philosophical in an Eastern term, but very simple in terms of saying that if I experience growth, if I experience something that I advance the next step when you run the marathon or triathlon, it's not about the goal, the finite goal, it's about that perfection of the next steps and all these small steps that you experience compounds into records and money and fortune and fame, but that is something that can never be the part of your life because that's a finitude of goal setting and it can only be part of a bigger journey, and I think that's about progress. So you are, in some sense, it is a legacy, but I think there is much more depth to this, in terms of technology and consciousness, obviously.

Speaker 4:

Thank you for the answer, wow.

Speaker 2:

Andrew, something is sticking in my head from what you from where you started. Thank you for the answer. Wow, your original question about what makes these individuals unique and you're talking about the relationships they have with coaches, past girlfriends, expertise in their, their sport. How does that translate into another person's context where they're not experts at a sport? How do you connect it back to those shaping relationships at a time in someone's life where their brain is going through a formative phase, where that the physicality, the intellection, the relationality is like really getting a grip on someone's life. That's going to have lasting impact for decades to come. Was there a question there?

Speaker 1:

it's at the right moment when it's all happening no, and I I mean your relatability, that right, and and I think that is a very good question. It's a very good topic because, um, the expertise is something that we have always strived for right. We build a knowledge society of absolutisms. We said this is, this is what I hold to be true. This is the right way. It's a very binary way of thinking, and we have started to communicate like that by social media. We have thumbs up, thumbs down. There's an instant gratification, instant reaction, and there is no depth and reflection.

Speaker 1:

So what I write about in the book is how to build a large toolbox. I state this as living in the era of generalists. None of us know what kind of jobs there will be in 10 years from now, let alone how the sports will develop. So you have to be in a place where you can adapt to new circumstances and the complexity and the speed requires for you to have a broad toolbox. If you have that, in an intellectual sense, you could see patterns. You could, you know, go more towards a first principle thinking and ask the right questions. So, instead of finding the perfect answer to the wrong question, you could actually come up with something that is from that kind of you know, having that broad toolbox.

Speaker 1:

And coming back to that, what you're related to in sport, there are two models. Right, there is the hardcore put the kids with four years on a specialization camp, and many have tried to adapt this model. It works in the favelas in Brazil because there's a million young boys playing soccer seven hours a day. Right, it works at Barcelona because they have thousands of boys wanting to get in. It does not work in Røros, in my hometown in Norway, with 3,500 people and minus 40 degrees in the wintertime and you're going to play soccer there. It's going to be freaking cold and a lot of snow, so you need to have like.

Speaker 1:

So I was forced to. I wasn't forced, I liked it, I really did. I did biathlon, cross-country skiing, soccer, everything, because if I didn't show up for the other ones, they wouldn't come to my team game, right? So I developed that broad toolbox and that has been a model for all these athletes. They were very, very diverse in their focus and only like 16, 17, 18, they start to specialize.

Speaker 1:

And I think this is very relatable today, where we have this almost infinite free access to perfect knowledge perfect in the sense of the best that a computer can validate today, and if we discover that it's wrong, we're going to correct it and it's going to be right for the rest of eternity. And that way, I think, you know, being a generalist is that much more powerful. So we are less experts and more, I would say, professional amateurs. You know, we work hard, we carry a beginner's mind, we are learners, shouzen, as they would say in Zen Buddhism. So that is more the. I would say, like the tension of our time, that this has changed a little bit. But by all the respect there are, you know, value in specialization and the messes in the Ronaldos and all these superstars. They will have a job in future, but for everyone else it's probably more of having that adaptability, right.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so you have now mentioned either mindfulness and spirituality three times, so I want to now ask um? What's the connection there? What is your insight on that dimension of awareness awakening, accessibility of the, the spiritual, um meditative, mindful part of the book, or just what you're talking about in general?

Speaker 1:

no, I, I get that a lot and um, I, I cannot, um, I cannot relate to that in the same sense as a very spiritual human being. Okay, I cannot relate to that um, um with people that have gone down a deep path of meditation. I cannot relate to that in that sense of the word spiritual. I am by, I think, by nature a person of philosophical contemplation. I don't need a category or a firm ground to stand on. I know enough about the structures of our physical perceived reality through quantum physics to understand that that's not to the full extent explicable.

Speaker 1:

We don't know, and the same goes for the realm of spiritualism, various type of spiritual journeys that people have been on, and the same goes for religion and belief. I think many people need something to hold on to and a category of something, but I don't and I've talked about this in the past that when I've gone off stages where I've put in a lot of energy and spoken to thousands of people, some people come up to me that are very spiritual per their own definition or have gone through some terrible things in life. They come to me and they say I feel your energy and there are times where I have like that energy, but if I'm exhausted I'm more of a perfect ai, because I I would say the right thing, but I don't really feel that. So I cannot always relate to it. I don't think this makes sense, but but and that, um, it's not that I'm doing something on purpose, deliberately, but what happens with me then?

Speaker 1:

It makes me question the whole essence of this spiritual or energetic. Because if you can put an AI that you would relate to as if very spiritual, then it's very hard for me to relate. So it's when my cognitive brain is saying someone come to me and you say you're very mindful awareness, I don't know. It feels like something talking into this computer, right, but where am I on that journey? I have really no idea, and that is why this question is wonderful and beautiful, but it's also very difficult to unpack because I see it from all these different directions, from the, you know, as I said, the religious part and the physical part. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but this is like how I've been dancing around those various disciplines.

Speaker 2:

No, it does make sense to me and I love your perspective because your posture in your explanation I'm hearing a posture of how you're aware of a reality and then also being able to say where am I on that, not certain.

Speaker 2:

I also think that people don't feel the permission to be able to say that because, like you've mentioned earlier, in a binary world where we feel like we're forced to make a choice on one side or the other and we feel like there is a side or another side, you're standing kind of in in this middle section saying there can be a reality that exists here, and I feel that that philosophy is also part of your perspective that you're bringing through the book is there's another way to stand with, like, stand with my talent, stand with the people that are around me and being able to accept how it is that we're showing up without any lack of expression or the need for an extended experience of something or to be able to grow in someone's expertise. So it's not that you're settling for anything. It's a very unique position to be in. I really mean it.

Speaker 1:

To me, the part of learning is the foundation. It's beautiful, I'm privileged. So I was a professional athlete, I built my companies, but I never experienced success. Today I can say I'm really successful to myself for me, right? Because I'm privileged to get up in the morning every day and learn. So of course I have an ego, of course I relate to that, but I'm also.

Speaker 1:

I recently published a paper on the simulation hypothesis together with three quantum physicists and they said try to prove to me that we are not living in a simulation. That's not the same claim as saying I'm confident we are, but it turns out it's almost impossible to figure out based on modern physics. And try to prove that we are not living in a simulation. And the same goes for monotheisms. Okay, if there are multiple. Goes for monotheism If there are multiple monotheistic categories.

Speaker 1:

I'm an agnostic atheist, you know. Gather up and agree on one and I'm open for that explanation or that experience, right. So it's just that if you listen to someone like Donald Hoffman explain that consciousness is the foundation and reality emerges out of that, you know I'm not saying reality. I mean I'm definitely on the side of saying reality is not how we perceive it, but it doesn't take away what David Chalmers also refers to as the hard problem of consciousness. It doesn't take away the actual experience of the experience. No one can take away the subjective experience that I have talking to you, regardless of if you're conscious and whatever.

Speaker 1:

That is right. So it is also to that extent that it's even more complex. It's that I don't even need reality to that extent to stand on, but I experience that, I take it for granted. So it's a glass. I know quantum, physically speaking, it's waves and energies, and we have no idea how it gets together. But I take it as a glass and I drink out of it and relate to that. I didn't go about and try to to suck it in and learn and that's. I think that's the beauty of of of life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel like I should be smoking a pipe listening, smoking a pipe, listening to you in like a yeah, I appreciate your perspective yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm not a smoker, but yeah, too many. That was like the one, the one the long, one the long pipe, the gandalf pipe, really going?

Speaker 1:

I had that. I came off a leadership conference yesterday and there's one of norway's I think she's most one of the most funny people in norway. She's like very you know with her words and how she plays around and after my closing keynote she came over to me and said I'm, I would be kind of um, some kind of um, what you call it like some kind of leader of a, like a, um, a clan or something like a cult cult yeah, like a cult leader.

Speaker 1:

And she looked into my eyes and said I want to join your cult I'm just, I'm just talking out what I'm thinking, yeah, of course, yeah, so so bring up the pipe, bring out the pipe, exactly and you're, you're giving other people freedom.

Speaker 4:

then because I, because I hear you, not us I hear you inviting us to consider some of your ideas and philosophies and I just I appreciate that. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I want to ask you about the part where we talk back to this binary thing, the part of the collective community, like we're being a collective volunteer, being a part of something bigger than yourself yourself. That seems to be a message we don't hear often enough, from my perspective. Do you care to like to to add some dimension to what it is that you're speaking about in your book around that?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I mean, if you can, you can go back to. I talked about, like the, the spiritual movements, and also religion. You have, like the church where, where you go in there and regardless of what you think is plausible and relatable, you let the ego out the door. You're a part of rituals and you're a part of something where you detach yourself from. You're not going to sit down if you're in a church and they're singing the songs, right, you're not going to go and take that agency back and do something else. So you're part of something bigger.

Speaker 1:

And I remember, you know, in my hometown and I had not very strong relation to religion, but on Christmas Eve we all go to this church and sing Christmas carol. Sing Christmas carol and it's one of the most beautiful experiences where everyone is there, everyone is together singing the same song, regardless of you know the meaning and the words and whatever. It's just that part of that experience and it gives you like a liveliness and a vitality and relatability to other people. So that's one part of it. The other part is, you know, if you do team sports and you relate to others, it's a very fulfilling experience to win together and have progress and shared positive experience and also, you know, losing, and I think that is also something that appeals to me. As I said in the beginning, you know I am because you are. You know we need like a kind of sort of declaration of interdependence that we sign.

Speaker 1:

Right, I can only I like that that is what I write about in in the book and also that commitment to just doing stuff for others without getting a role or a direct reward, because you just have the sense of feeling like back thousand years ago where you had the viking setting out in open boats, everyone had a role and inspiration, and you just have the sense of feeling like back a thousand years ago where you had the viking setting out in open boats, everyone had a role and inspiration, and you would have, like thor, standing at the shore of the coast, you thought the world was flat and you thought it was going to end. And and he would say, are you coming with me? And they would say like, where are they going? I have no idea. Whenever they're coming back, I have no idea. Are we coming back? I have no idea. When are we coming back? I have no idea. Are we coming back? I have no idea. Great idea, let's go.

Speaker 1:

That was the all-in belief in inspiration, collectivism and exploration, and I think there is something beautiful in that, where you experience that sense of being and being a part of something. Sense of being and being a part of something and, um, yeah, I think it's a, it's an important part of us as a, as a humanities, in terms of, in particular, in today's society where, um, we are more detached, um, you know, the number of friends we have is going down. A lot of young men are struggling with loneliness and you have a loneliness pandemic, even like kind of sort of seems like, and I think that that that is the answer to that. And as technology advances, you know, probably that will increase and and therefore I think, the collective, the, even the rituals, or how has this very strong place in society?

Speaker 3:

I, I'm I'm curious I mean, this is a practical question and I'll get there the kind of second half of your book when you're talking about, like, the quantum economy, and you talk about education and politics, and it's all infused with this idea of centering on humanity's potential for creativity, adaptability, you know, more responsibility, the idea of doing good for the most number, you know for a lot of people.

Speaker 3:

And I'm wondering, you know, in your leadership, talk, your keynotes and conferences, how do you, or how do we and this is a part where I'm not quite sure where my question is but how do we sort of because that is an entire cultural shift in mindset how do we begin to get people that are, you know, so glued to their phones, that dopamine hit that you talked about, the, you know, the stressed out leader, the stressed out parent, the person who is like I got to look out for myself the idea and I think this is where Dugnag comes in here, if I'm saying that right how do we start to does this make sense? What I'm asking, what I'm trying to ask how do we sort of get to that where we can actually put some of these ideas into practice and actually change our families, change our schools, change our communities, change our businesses. To be a more collective minded. You know, let's all do good together. Yeah, like what's? Give me three quick ways to do that and then we'll move on yeah, that is.

Speaker 1:

That is where it becomes alice in talking to me, right, because it needs some kind of substance and uh, but no but um, the obvious one and the slow one is education. Yeah, I love that chapter in there. Yeah, so we have taught what you should think and not how to think. So, going back to the streets of Agora in ancient Greek, it's about that collaboration, co-creation, the dialogue and it's not about because today we are connected I mean, we're not like physically connected to the devices, but we have infinite access to knowledge just at the tip of our hands, but we never look it up. So we go about and talk a lot of BS and read headlines and media, but we could actually validate it in real time. Imagine a Google or an Apple Vision Pro or a glass where you have an instant validation against an LLM when you talk. So everything that comes out of your mouth is in instant time validated and everything you see is perceived and explained at the best LLM. So we have perfect knowledge. If it's incorrect in the language model, it will be fixed from humanity because we agree upon the right answer. So you only have wrong one time right, and that would be a model where you would be talking and you'd be lighting red on the sender and the receiver. It makes no sense to lie. So what happens then? Right, and that's why I think AI could be a source forcing us to learn how to think. So that would be a beautiful development if we could stay there. So education is very much a foundation.

Speaker 1:

The other part I would mention is if a company today understands that change and progress is all we have, because otherwise we would be replaced by someone that can do it more efficient, then we have to figure out what does change mean? Where does it come from? So certainly it does not come from two people having opposite opinions and never agreed to do something new. So that's like a left right, black, white, zero, one binary way. That will not cause progress. You have two people holding on to their self-evident truth.

Speaker 1:

So we had this place in the organization prior to the pandemic. It was a trillion dollar industry. It was called the coffee machine coffee place. So what happened there? People that worked in the same company had a base trust in each other because they were in a physical space and they figured out how to navigate and get along. There were awkward moments, days that were difficult. But you bumped into these people and could talk outside of Zoom sessions and figure that out. People bumped into each other that had never spoken and started to talk about ideas.

Speaker 1:

So the two forces of change, I believe, are trust and friction. You cannot trust, you know, you cannot speak openly about your opinion If you trust yourself. You can listen to someone else, you can get into that dance and maybe tap into the unknown or find some way to navigate. And if you don't have friction, you will never have something new. And if you have an absolutism, you will just have division, and that is what we're seeing in today's society have division, and that is what we're seeing in today's society.

Speaker 1:

So this just becomes a challenge for an organization to first build trust. So how do you do that? I mean the first essence of building trust is to start to train to trust yourself. If I trust myself, only then can I trust other people. So training on self-trust becomes then the leadership mission right. Training on self-trust because becomes then the leadership mission right. So building trust to you is therefore also a part of that part.

Speaker 1:

But what makes you a leader? And that is tapping into your vulnerability. You know the things, understanding that you know. When you have people around, you know a lot more than you. Then you can dance with them, right as in comparisons to being a manager and hierarchical structure where you tell everyone what to do, what to think and how to act, and that model, I think, is rock dead. Um, that's a model for technology, uh. So I think that two topics like the one, education and the other one, uh, built trust and friction where companies understand that, oh, we can only make money if we have progress. Those forces are pretty strong because companies want to excel in advance and take market share and, in an educational perspective, we will just get. That makes no sense teaching kids about how to save data for an hour and to get a grade and get a role and be an expert for a job that doesn't exist in future.

Speaker 4:

Well, when you speak about trust and friction, I can't help but all the lessons we learned on the playground, and this would be a great entry point. I would love to hear some of your perspective on play, the risk involved, the opportunity for, I think, humans to experience change.

Speaker 3:

But tell us from your perspective. Talk to us about play, to add. I love that that chapter is joyful joyful from the cultivation of play to the mastery of the game. I love that those two ideas are connected.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I think so, and I wrote about this in my quantum economy book, and Simon Sinek has also written there a book on this topic, the Infinite Game, where we distinguish between infinite games and finite games. Inspired by a theologist, james P Carr's 1984, I think his book, and that was the inspiration that Simon Sinek so beautifully put into his book and obviously got all the credits for it. But it's a logical concept, a very thin book that is about play and many of us don't know that and it's very interesting to see that from a theologist that goes into that philosophical dance right. So I think one thing is the fun part, the playful part. I always say you know, if you stop playing you're risk growing up. You know everything becomes, you know, too serious. But kids see that they don't want to have playgrounds where everything is secured up and regulated. You know they want to go into the woods and the forest and play around. Or, you know, even to some place, a rural place, where you can just do things. That was how it used to be. You know, get up, get out, out, put on the clothes, regardless of weather, just get out in nature and play around, and even there.

Speaker 1:

We have now put it into a system where everything has a rule and a regulated part and a secured part and everything, and that becomes like borders of existence. It takes away a lot of exploration and you have many organizations today that spend a lot of time teaching people how to be creative, and I think that's awkward. Why don't we just stop training that out of human beings? I have never seen a toddler who is not explorative, active and creative. They're all born naturally with the empty storage and we want to navigate.

Speaker 1:

So the problem is not that we don't train enough creativity. The problem is we train it out of it, through our educational model, through kindergarten, through regulation, through rules and all that, and we put people into boxes and categories and then we optimize the category and then we realize that technology is much better at this category because the more we have written down, the more we have defined the rules, better ai and technology is that doing it. That's why everyone was so surprised that all of a sudden you know the lawyers and the consultants, and even in medicine. That's that I came after these jobs. Yeah, and that's isn't that obvious. That's where we have the most precise data right, more the most clear rules, and that's the best thing technology can have. So I think when we realize that there is a lot of potentiality to tap into that playful part and that joyful joyful as you referred to- have you ever slight tangent?

Speaker 3:

have you ever taken your kids to Wow Park in Denmark? To what? To Wow Park in Denmark? Wow Park, do you know what?

Speaker 1:

that is no, I don't know. I have. I've been to the legal land and through denmark and everything, but I don't know what you refer to as a wow it's called wow park.

Speaker 3:

It's in bill and it's essentially this. We went there with our family. It's this gigantic outdoor. I don't know if I would call it a playground. It's all of these, uh, rope, swings and bridges. It doesn't feel safe is where I'm going with it.

Speaker 3:

It is, but compared to a US and American playground or park, there's an element of risk and I think why our family loved it so much is because the kids just kind of went free and there was this element of a little bit of risk, a lot, a lot of play, and it was fascinating. I looked into a little bit more and I guess I of play and it was fascinating. I looked into a little bit more and I guess I don't know if this is danish or like all of scandinavia but that whole element of uh, because in the us, you know, they've gotten rid of all of the like wooden playgrounds and and they're so, um, just sterilized where the kids don't like playing on them anymore. Um, so how do you? How?

Speaker 1:

do you write that? How do you? I mean, because that was. This is something like Climbing parks, where you climb up, high up in the trees in balance, you're secure, but it's like a different type of playground.

Speaker 3:

It's kind of like that I'll put the link In the chat. Can I do that? Where's the chat here? I was trying to. I'll email it to you. It is absolutely amazing. There's this um, and now we're really off on a tangent no, this is that's good, this is beautiful.

Speaker 3:

This is a good conversation, it's so it was so much fun, but it like, as you were talking, I was like wait a second, that's exactly what, what we did there and again, the reason I bring it up is because I think sometimes in business and leadership we put so many guardrails on any levels of risk that play is removed, that any sort of danger, because we want the sure thing, we want the guarantee we don't want, you know, creativity just within these two lines. And so if we can go back to some of those ideas of you know, imaginative play, curiosity, I think you say in the book you know the importance of stimulating curiosity. How, again, in your work, how do you do that? Or how do you encourage people to have more of that play?

Speaker 1:

You touched on it a little bit but yeah, for me it's easy because I don't have all these boundaries and ruptures that I have to relate to. So I am a very I'm a nerd in terms of you know math and programming, I used to write code and all that. So I like a plausible explanation, I like a factual, but I'm also creative in terms of I like to play the free piano and write, so I don't have all these boundaries that I have to relate to. That's just an advantage in terms of not relating to structure. So what I think is that, if you could see, in Germany in particular, they have taken up this notion of creating a failure culture. So you cope with failure, and I get the aspect and the essence of that, but I think this is the wrong way of looking at it. So we don't want to have a failure culture. It's when, if you lose, it's not about celebrating losing, it's not about like it's it should. It shouldn't feel right to lose, but as long as the drive to win and you know it's stronger, you will always continue. So you want to have an incentive for change, you want to have that light um, you know to move on.

Speaker 1:

But then there are times where you know failure culture becomes something that you know. You wouldn't have a failure culture doctor doing an open heart surgery. You wouldn't have a pilot trained on failure culture. It just has to function right. So you have that finite game where you win or lose and you play. But when you play on that game you play at the expert level. Everything has to function and work. But then, if you have in sport, you have the playing ground, you play through the training pitch where you go beyond, you try something new, and I think this is where organization can learn from sport.

Speaker 1:

Also, when are you doing the game where you have to deliver? You know when is it, you know agility and you need high stability, secure processes. You want to speed up. Everything has to function right and then you need some time where you can go beyond, where you can play around, and one company that I I remember reading early and I've reread the book a couple of times to function right.

Speaker 1:

And then you need some time where you can go beyond, where you can play around, and one company that I remember reading early and I reread the book a couple of times it's one of my favorite on this topic is by Ed Catmull and Pixar Inc. Yeah, where, how they built Pixar inspired by the Disney vision and talk about plussing and adding to it, and how that really high-performance culture that is also built on playfulness and that's like with Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull. I think that's a very good book on the topic. But I always like to distinguish between when there's no room for playfulness or failure. There are things where it has to just function right and then there are parts where you want to learn and adapt and move on and tap into the unknown. And where is your training pitch? Where is your training ground in your organization? When are you doing that, pushing for that right? That's my question on that topic.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, I love that we were working with an organization the top 40 leaders of this org and the leader said, in this room right now, as we are together in this quarterly meeting, this is where we can fail, because this is where we can practice. There are no eyes on us in this room, so let's risk. And she invited the group to play, and that's why it's not just like playing Can you push me on a swing or can I go down a slide or climb something? But it's this, um, we like to call play practice in disguise where we're deliberately practicing something that then will lead to when it's game time.

Speaker 4:

We've worked out those kinks, we've unlearned the things that we need to unlearn and the things that we need to unlearn and are able to to step into those others. So I I appreciate your sentiments on that as well.

Speaker 1:

It's good, yeah, thank you just a short note in that letter. You already got before with the invitation to think or the questions, right? So so I, I don't think you know. If you're postulating facts, you are not open to the other. So you know I, I don't think you know I'm.

Speaker 1:

Whatever I read or know, I don't want to teach people what to do or how to do and what to think, but, but I want to teach them how to think. You know to think for himself. You know I'm just thinking out loud and if that resonates, I want to learn. So I want to have friction, I want to have opinions and I think, if you invite that in a boardroom, that is very healthy. So, even though you might have a strong opinion, you first want to hear everyone out and you're open to their ideas right, because if you, as a leader, take a strong claim on something, they're not going to follow. But first I want to hear everyone else's idea, right, and then I can come back to explaining how I think it might be in a different way, or I see it like that how do you think about that? And that gets the best out of people. That gets the progress part going.

Speaker 1:

I think that's right, that's right, very important part yeah oh, so good is there.

Speaker 4:

Okay, we, uh, this is flown by we're um clock, we gotta is there any? Is there any question that we can ask you that that could just set set you up that maybe in this conversation with us, your imagination is kind of going? Is there any question that we can ask you to pull something out of you or give you a platform to speak, something that you haven't yet?

Speaker 3:

Anything to set up a final thought that you want to leave us with.

Speaker 4:

What can we ask you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's a very good question. I mean, that's that. That just set me up right there.

Speaker 4:

So that's all, I think. What are the questions?

Speaker 1:

that's the best question you could ask. No, I think. Yeah, no, but but asking about the implications of technology. So what is the most needed leadership skill today? It is to anticipate future and to anticipate plausible future scenarios, and we're not good at that. We have 80 years of exponential technologies and I always ask leaders I say do you think we will go back and play Snake on our Nokiaia 5110?

Speaker 3:

that's a great game, but yeah yeah, no, no.

Speaker 1:

All due respect, there are many great games in the past, but but do you think we will go there? You are thinking we have progress and everyone said, yeah, progress. Do you think we'll speed up? Yes, so that, but why are you acting based on research of the past, then why are you not projecting into the future? If the battery cost of an electric vehicle has dropped 90% in the past 10 years, do you think the battery will be slightly better in 10 years or worse?

Speaker 2:

Slightly better.

Speaker 1:

So it's very interesting and you think about Volkswagen in Germany that are holding on to gasoline and diesel driven cars, so fossil fuel vehicles. And it's not about you know the ideology and the climate debate. It's not about you know the ideology and the climate debate. It's just a simple truth that as of 2025, a fossil fuel car will not be competitive for many reasons. One is that a fossil fuel car has 2,000 parts and an electric vehicle has 10 parts. Which car do you think will cause more issues in terms of service and you know.

Speaker 1:

The other one is, regardless of how efficient you are with fossil fuel, you have to transport it to an area where you fill it up, as, in comparison, just sucking the sun out of the sky that you can do all over the world. You will see now, today, that an electric vehicle can fuel your house for three days with energy. So it means if you can charge your car, you can have energy for your house. All right, so in Michigan and Idaho and in Sweden they are building induction street. Induction streets are where you load while driving. Right, oh yeah, walmart, take all these huge spaces that you have in the us. If all of them has solar panels on the roof, they will have an overproduction of energy most of the year. With today's technology, how do you think it will be in five to 10 years from now? So they will say, okay, what do we do with all this extra energy? Well, they give it to the people that come and buy stuff. So you take your electric car, you have a supercharger, you go and buy your groceries, you come out, your car is fully loaded, you drive it back home, you plug in your house and you have free energy. Hmm, that is a scenario that is, technologically speaking, in a very near future. It is all about storage and distribution and execution, and do you think we will figure that out? I think so. So this is when everyone comes to a conclusion and say that okay, so that means that we will have probably literally infinite access to almost free energy. And when I say free energy, the marginal cost of energy Even today, the next kilowatt hour of energy, when you have that green energy, is literally free.

Speaker 1:

And the challenge here is that it will not be about sustainability, it will be about efficiency. If you don't use resources efficient in your company, it's not about being sustainable and green and ideology and saving the planet. Then it becomes something else. It becomes the essence of making money. Our sustainability will slowly fade out of our vocabulary because in 10 years from now, if you're not efficient, you will not have EBIT, you will not make money, and the ones that get that amongst them are the Chinese. So if you have a competitive environment where they speed up all these green energy and the battery evolution, what have you not? What will follow? Market economy?

Speaker 1:

So this is the last thought on that topic. This is one example of things that will happen. I could do the same for finance and health and a lot of industry. But it's very simple If you just think about a technology, you predict a slight increase and the investment and the impact of the current investment and the exponential curve, you could project pretty much what the scenario will be in 10 years. And leaders are not good at that. They react and they don't reflect. That's the biggest challenge to anticipate plausible future scenarios. You say to me, anders, you have provocative ideas. I say no, I have really stupid, boring ideas I haven't thought about them and you're just saying them out loud.

Speaker 4:

I love that. Yes, you're saying them out loud, well.

Speaker 3:

Anders, thank you so much. This has just flown by. I really appreciate not only the book but just all the thinking around it and the different ideas that I feel like are so applicable to so many different areas of life. So, thank you so much. Appreciate it, brian Linda. Any final thanks?

Speaker 2:

No, this has been phenomenal. So thank you so much for the conversation. What I really enjoy is the guests we have in our podcast. That and this is important from my perspective it's clear they've done the hard work Like they've done and continue to do the wrestling with whatever their content is to make it accessible to other people.

Speaker 2:

From an athletic point of view, you're always making progress through the practice and through the iteration of what it means to be an athlete, to watch you take the knowledge you have, continue to work through what it is so that it can be accessible to other people. I think that's phenomenal, especially when someone can take complex thoughts and break them down for us to agitate our thinking. Because from just how you ended there with the need for leaders to be not just focused on the future but leaning into a future specific mindset, I know from our work that's not a practice that we find very often where there's a leader that's stuck leaning forward. That part that you said about studying the past, like why would you do that? That just makes so much sense to me because it's rare that you have that future-leaning leader. So I really appreciate your approach, the strength with which you are wrestling with these topics and the invitation for us to lead with that more futuristic lean.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, thank you so much for being with us.

Speaker 1:

Brian Nate and Linda. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 3:

Another big thank you to Anders Insett for taking the time to chat with us. Brian, nathan, linda, thank you so much for having me. Another big thank you to Anders Insett for taking the time to chat with us. It was such a fascinating and fun conversation. He's an interesting guy. He is one of the most unique people, I think well, we've ever interviewed on the podcast and there are links to his book and some of his other his website and some of his other stuff that he's done and is a part of in the show notes and the accompanying blog post for this.

Speaker 3:

I just love his diversity of thought. We didn't even get into some of his stuff on, like the quantum economy and some of that stuff. He has a new book coming out. I don't know when in relation to when this is going live, but around something they did with a bunch of physicists and astro and it's just. It's just. It's way above my head. So anyway, thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast. Go check out Anders Insett and all of his just amazing work and stuff that he's doing with leaders. You can subscribe to our podcast if you found value from this, but I think what we would appreciate even more is just sharing it with someone that you think would benefit from building a stronger culture in their organization. You can visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom, follow us on the socials, all that stuff. Blah, blah, blah. My name is Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.