Lots of people get stuck on the big idea, whether it's for a new business or a next step at work. It’s easy to believe that what separates the successes from the failures is that moment of inspiration. But the reality is that the answer often lies much more in execution. In hard work. It’s that cheesy but accurate Thomas Edison quote: it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Loads of people have good ideas. But they will remain just ideas unless you learn how to execute. How to take that...

A critical part of the creative process is the ability to refine things, whether your own or others. Whatever it is you are creating, there’s almost zero chance that the first draft will be perfect. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing, drawing, designing in 3D, making music or a video, the editing process is absolutely critical. But it’s not necessarily one that comes naturally. We get very attached to our own creations. And it’s not always easy to tell other people that their work...

In this episode of Future Proof Your Career we're looking at recombination: how to bring old things together to make something new. To help us to get our heads around mixing and remixing, we have a real expert in the studio today. Graeme Park has been one of the biggest names in the house music scene since the late 1980s. Well known for his residency at the Hacienda and long stints on a number of major radio stations, Graeme remixed tracks by the likes of Brand New Heavies, New Order, Eric...

Just before we take a break for the summer, we jumped on a call to chat through what we have learned from the season so far. we're about half way through and we've learned from some incredible people. Our first segment was all about Curation: how to discover and qualify information. The BBC's Chris Warburton joined us to talk about how to ask good questions.Psychologist Dr Simon Moore taught us about all the different ways of listening.Dr Lauren Kirwan helped us to understand empathy...

In this episode of Future Proof Your Career we speak with Jon Bradford about iteration: how do you take an idea and improve on it? Jon Bradford is co-founder & managing partner of Dynamo Ventures, an investment fund focused on supply chain and mobility. Jon is one of the most experienced early stage investors in Europe and launched the first accelerator bootcamp outside of the US in 2009. He went on to launch many more start-up programmes, earning him the title “Godfather of European...

This is the first episode in our six part series on creativity and everything that entails. We're starting with inspiration: where do original ideas come from? And how can you have more of them? We're convinced that inspiration is not something innate. It's a skill that we can develop by exercising it. And we need to. We operate in a noisy market of ideas, where original thinking is required to stand out. Where machines can knock out facsimiles of other people’s ideas fast and cheaply. So...

In putting this podcast together, we had a whole range of fascinating conversations, not all of which fitted into the standard format for this series, where each episode is focused on a particular skill. One of those conversations was with Korn Ferry, the global consulting firm.  Korn Ferry works with companies and leaders to help them put in place the optimal structures, roles, and responsibilities, hire the right people to fill those roles, and advises them on how to reward and motivate...

In this episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we speak to Caroline Keep, a data scientist, a teacher, a maker, and a researcher in machine learning. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including the Times Education Supplement teacher award, and a founder of Liverpool Makerfest. We spoke to Caroline about how you extract meaning from data, and how we can all be more engaged in the effort to decipher the world around us. Here’s what we learned. Data is the real world,...

In this episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we speak to professor of politics at the University of Manchester and frequent contributor to the BBC and other media, Rob Ford. Rob is the co-author of Brexitland with Professor Maria Sobolewska, and the author of The British General Election of 2019.  We spoke to Rob about how you extract meaning from people’s words, even if they don’t always say what they mean. Here’s what we learned. Think of leaders as politicians Business leaders and...

In this episode of Future-Proof Your Career we’re talking about scepticism, the willingness, and the discipline, to question what we see and hear. And to have the skills to find the facts amongst the opinions and beliefs.  As always, we’ve invited an expert guest to speak to us, and this time it’s Gemma Milne, writer and researcher, and author of the excellent book Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It.  Gemma gave us loads to think about, in terms of...

In this latest episode of Future-Proof Your Career, we tackle the tricky topic of empathy. What is it? How do you use it? And can you grow - or shrink - your empathy?  We all think we know what empathy is, but as ever, we ask a real expert. Dr Lauren Kerwin is a Harvard- and UCLA- Trained Psychologist with over 20 years of experience treating borderline personality disorder, autism spectrum disorders, depression, anxiety and trauma in teens and adults. Lauren also has lots of experience...

Thanks for listening to this episode of our Future-proof Your Career. After each episode I’ll be collecting my notes from our guest here. In this episode we spoke to Dr Simon Moore. Simon is a doctor of Psychophysiological Psychology and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. He leads a team of researchers at IB, a business he founded to help brands to better understand their customers and employees. Here are my key takeaways from the conversation: What are you...

Thanks for listening to this first episode of our new season of Talk About Tomorrow, focused exclusively on how you can Future-proof Your Career! After each episode I’ll be collecting my notes from our guest here. In this episode we spoke to Chris Warburton, award-winning BBC journalist. radio presenter and host of a series of excellent podcasts including Ecstasy: The Battle of Rave, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, The End of Days, and most recently, Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game, about Rockstar...

Welcome to Future-proof Your Career, your guide to the most important skills for a long, successful working life. This special season of the Talk About Tomorrow podcast will explore in depth the idea of the Three Cs, three skill groups that are critical to success, in a business or as an entrepreneur. The ability to curate information, create new things, and communicate ideas. In each episode we explore a facet of one of these skills, alongside a guest.

Tom and Katharine talk about laziness: as a motivator for innovation and as a challenge to wasted effort. Are you lazy enough to be useful? Plus, it’s the end of this season for the podcast. Five seasons now! All very different in length and format. But this has been the first with a co-host and though we’re biased, we think it has been great! We’ll be back for season 6 tackling some new topics in a few months.

Katharine and Tom discuss the concept of Net Luxury - an approach to addressing climate change based on the continuing reluctance of many people to make real change. Can we convince people to cut back? Or can we make saving ourselves (the planet will be just fine) seem even more appealing than you'd think it ought to be?

The shape of the most successful organisations is changing. Companies are shrinking and distributing their work across partners and semi-autonomous units, giving them scale, agility and reduced risk. As usual, Tom explains and Katharine interrogates!

The shape of the most successful organisations is changing. Companies are shrinking and distributing their work across partners and semi-autonomous units, giving them scale, agility and reduced risk. As usual, Tom explains and Katharine interrogates!

Tom and Katharine discuss our response to the explosion of choice faced by the modern consumer: the return of the intermediary, offering advice, direction and editorial input. Why do we value influencers? What role for AI in the future of our decisions on music, travel and finance? Find out in this episode. Note: the book reference in the episode is Barry Schwartz's 'The Paradox of Choice - Why More is Less' from all the way back in 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

We've spent the last twenty years trying to eliminate friction from the interactions between brands and customers. But is this always the right approach? In this episode we talk about the concept of 'good friction', those moments where you want to slow and deepen the conversation.

How do we prepare our children for the future? It's the question I am most commonly asked after speeches. And I always give the same answer. I believe there are three critical skills we all need for future success, in our careers and beyond. I call them the Three Cs. The ability to Curate (discover and qualify information), Create (bring new ideas to life or improve and recombine old ones) and Communicate (to sell your self and your ideas). In this episode, Katharine and I address...

In this season of the podcast we're going to explore a few big ideas in a bit more depth. These are ideas or theories that keep coming up in my work with global 500 brands and government departments around the world. The first topic is what I have termed 'extended adolescence' - in short, are we now experiencing a longer childhood? The ages at which we cross key (traditional) milestones in adult life have been shunted back by a decade. People now learn to drive, buy a house, find a...

Tom and Katherine round off the recent episodes with a broad discussion of the Metaverse: what is it? What are the implications? And should we be scared or excited? Original story: https://tomcheesewright.com/entering-the-metaverse

John Keefe is one of the founders of Draw and Code, a content studio building immersive entertainment for the world's biggest brands. Tom speaks to John about the evolution of immersive media across augmented and virtual reality, the state of the art in hardware, and how big the coming revolution will be.