Fireside Chat With Eleanor Winston

Hello and welcome to the Philanthropy Impact Podcast. Listen on for insights into philanthropy, impact investing, and sustainability. Screen recorded. Hello and welcome to Phantom Impact's Walking by Choose series for our members. Today we are doing something slightly different from our normal discussion.

As a catalytic organisation in this space, Philanthropy Impact works hard to ensure we are innovative and forward looking by nature. And so today we are talking to Eleanor Winton, who's the founder of Foresight. To learn more about how exploring alternative futures and building an inclusive vision of the future is the key to better business, and how that can be applied to philanthropy in creating impact.

My name is Sophia Sahanik and I'm the Director of Membership and Development here at Philanthropy Impact and the person to talk to if you'd like to know more about our training and how to make the most of your membership with us. You can reach me in the chat or my email is shared at the end if you're watching on our U. And it was it was great pleasure now that I hand over to John who

Uh thank you, Zophia. Uh Eleanor, thank you for doing this. It's really wonderful to participate in this. We will uh send this out uh in our bi-weekly to all our contacts and etc. etc. So um our purpose is pretty straightforward. It's to increase philanthropic giving. and to encourage and uh increase impact in ESG investment.

And our focus is on professional advisors to high net worth and ultra high net worth people across uh Europe. So that's private client advisors, wealth managers, private banking, legal tax, et cetera. So as we go through this, as uh as you talk about uh what you've been doing, if you can keep that context uh so that you can share with them uh so what the future is going to hold for advisors, et cetera, et cetera.

So maybe we could start off by uh could you talk a bit about who you are and how you got to where you are and what your journey has been. Yeah, absolutely. So um today so I uh run a business called Foresightfully, as you said. So Um and the purpose of that business really is to help leaders and leadership teams within organizations to really think differently about what the future holds and then build build a plan that acknowledges that the future is not going to stay.

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uh investigating conduct of legal professionals, uh investigating fraud and money laundering and all of those things. Hindsight's all well and good, but if you can't predict, if you can't stop the problem from happening in the future, then you've only really done twenty percent of your job. You know, they the real value is in helping clients to avoid those things happening again. Again, barriers uh that we uncovered there was that, you know, in trying to get people to be innovative.

They have to understand why there's it's worth taking the risk of changing their behavior and doing things differently. And so that's where the foresight piece comes in, the the the future piece, which is that for most individuals and organizations, uh to to want to change, they have to understand that there's a burning platform for change.

And so understanding what the future might hold, understanding uh trends, understanding where disruption might come from is really key to giving you that platform to do things differently and to persuade all of your various stakeholders, whether that investors or whether it's members or or whoever those stakeholders might be. So yeah, today I spend really all of my time working, usually with the leadership team, but doing that piece of really shaking up the way that they think.

So are you working primarily with the uh staff uh senior management people or are you working with boards as well? It's boards as well. Yeah, it's a it's a mix. It slightly depends on the size of the client, but um usually uh usually that will be the start point. So it'll be the CEO or the head of strategy or sometimes HRD who will get in touch with me and say we we think we're not

doing enough to understand that future picture. And then we'll start working with the board and then move around inside the organization depending on where the need arises. So what kind of organizations do you work with?

Wel, a real mix. So, it's funny, it's one of those things that... You know, the the I think we all have a view, don't we, that the the the future for our own organisation is going to be s really, really specific. But of course, in reality, most of the trends as they occur impact

multiple sectors or at the very least the impact our whole sector before they filter down to us. So that they I if you like, I sort of sit in the middle and pivot between lots of different industries, lots of different types of clients. um primarily big corporates, but I do do a bit with charities, I do a bit with government, a bit with membership organizations as well. But it's the the the the kind of

the the the thin end of the wedge if you like is is pretty much the same where whichever sector you're operating in. And so the the work that we then do together is how do how do we tailor that for our specific sector and organization and really, you know, get those bits that are sticky that we can act on. So mostly large corporations, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so um uh we work with large corporations, professional advisory corporations, but we also work with philanthropists.

Uh and charities, etc. Did you see any difference between Uh working with a large organization and working with a charity. I know your experience with charities is limited, but uh who's seen it? Well it's it's very limited experience. So we're talking about a handful of charities. So I I you know I these are just

You know, my sense has been as with so many things in the way that we operate, um, we tend to operate in our own little world, in our own little silo. And my my experience of working with the two those two categories of organization is that on the charity side, You've got a real engagement around purpose and value, but perhaps not enough rigor around some of the processes.

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And often there can be a a disconnect between all of that process and then the values and purpose of the organisation. It's um It's still something that surprises me that there are still many organisations that I think don't really have a view of what their purpose is or what value they deliver to the world. And that's a bit that's a bit of a problem. Um so yeah, a lot of the work that I do is is yeah, is challenging those two perspectives really.

Or trying to bring them together. Okay. Um so uh organizational change is not an easy thing to do. Um and uh do you have a lot of bruises?

Yeah. Well it's one of these things, you know, and I think you and I talked about this previously that um You have to be you have to be prepared if you're gonna if you're gonna try to um help people to think differently and act differently, you have to be prepared for some pushback. And but I think it that's the nature of the the work. So I think for me, uh the most of the people that I know that do similar similar work.

we overindex on sort of energy really um and we get a lot of energy from each other because you need to keep getting back up again after those knocks. But but it's interesting, that's one of the the one of the interesting shifts that's probably happened over the last ten years or so since I've been doing this work.

that actually, you know, at the beginning, I I was in rooms of people saying, Oh my goodness, how many people do you think there are on the planet today? And people would wouldn't have a clue, you know. And over time, a lot of that Information about the planet and the connections between what businesses do and the impact that they have has become much more clear.

And as we've moved towards the world of ESG and so on, we started to get a clearer picture of the connection between the actions that we're taking in business and the link to the outside world. And that's really helped. from my perspective, to to to push. You know, it makes it easier to push because people have heard a lot of the stuff before and they understand that there's a need to do something. And the other thing that's really helped is COVID, because there's a realized risk.

But uh if you'd asked people before COVID, do you think this will happen? Everyone would have said, absolutely no way. But but having seen it happen, having collectively had to respond to it, I think helped. um people to feel that that some of these other big future ish issues are more real.

Uh and hopefully that helps. I don't know if you're finding the same thing, but hopefully that helps people to um engage with them more or at least start to plan around them rather than sort of like burying their head in the sand and hoping that they won't happen. So it's interesting though, because a lot of organizations when you're looking at bringing change, if you think people think in terms of the organization of work within those boundaries of the organization.

So it's difficult for them to push those boundaries out. So how do you get them to push those boundaries out?

Well, I really push people to think differently about the organization in exactly as you're describing. So we often tend to plan for the future from the inside out. So we take our organization as it is today and we we sort of increment that forward.

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uh and where is value created accrued all of those things um sorry the cats just appeared through the cat flop um the um you know where is value created what are the assumptions around it all of those things because if we understand that we get a better picture of what might happen to us in the future because we start to pick up on the signals. And that's been that's been a really powerful tool.

um to get people to think differently. So how do you get them to think about the future? Because again, they're still stuck on a day to day thing. They're still busy at trying to um uh be successful and stuff. So it it's still getting think in the future. What tools do you use?

Well, I try to make it as real as possible. So obviously you can do that with data and really emerge immersing people in information, but I actually thought I've I've got an example for you here of a prop that's really helpful. So Um this is something that uh the cats down here are getting very getting very grumpy. Um it's uh so back in and and this is something that I've I've used to use about sort of eight or nine years ago. So eight or nine years ago. Um we were starting to realize that meat.

um uh that consumption around the world was really damaging for the planet. You know, there's huge kind of carbon footprint, all of those things. So So how could we help clients, you know, these executive team members who were probably quite detached from

uh the some of the some of these trends as they were emerging and changes in consumer behavior and so on in a a traditional corporate non-retail, how can we make this feel real? So We got these, which are if you can see these are deep fried salted caramel flavour crickets. Um which we have crickets. Crickets. Crickets.

Because of course, one of the big trends around the future of food back then was insect protein. So insect protein was starting to make its way into the market. We had EXO, where which was a crowdfunded insect protein bar. Um and they were trying to disrupt.

That market. But when we would talk about it, of course, people in sitting around a boardroom table would say, Well, I would never eat insects, particularly in the West, right? That's not, it's not something that feels normal to us. So, so yeah, we would bring these insects into the

into the boardroom and have people eat them and then have a conversation about, you know, does that change their view? Is this different from what they expected? Where might there be a market for this? And actually what's been really interesting in this space is that we've seen The initial attempt was to try to break into the protein market for humans, but the success has been in the protein market for animals.

Um, but again, if you had engaged with that trend at the time and sought to invest perhaps in a sort of circular Insect protein farm, for example, then you could have made a lot of money and had a lot of impact. But you know, it's it's trying to get people into the headspace of thinking, well, I I currently don't think this is realistic, or for me personally, or for us.

this doesn't feel like something that's real. So how do we get them into a headspace where they start to see that change happens really, really quickly? Uh and actually our expectations are often based on false assumptions that we need to challenge. So that's just one of the ways that what do you mean by that false assumption?

Well, we so we what what we tend to have is when we think about our own business and our own sector, we don't what we don't think about is the rules that exist behind, you know, the the rules of the sector, which are basically our assumptions about value. No one will eat insects in the West. There's a great example, you know, um that will never sell.

The the uh the the you can imagine the kind of, you know, in the professional services world, for example, if if you if I was still at KPMG turning up to a pitch. And there would be all the other big four there, and maybe there'd be a little digital agency there as well. And you'd be thinking, well, I mean. They're never gonna win the pitch because ha they don't know what we know. I mean we're

We're big professional services firms, we've got all this experience. And they would win the pitch because they they'd properly engage with what the client wanted to do and they'd stop making those assumptions. You know, they'd challenge thinking. So I think we have to be um we have to start to shake at as at particularly as the pace of change, sorry, that's my cat meowing at me, as the pace of change accelerates, you know, we really do need to start to engage with that more.

and the fact that these things can change quickly. And step one of doing that is actually sitting down and saying what are the rules and assumptions of our sector, our industry, our business, and then how do we go about challenging them?

So the issue for charities or nonprofit organizations, sector, whatever you want to call'em, is they don't have the same resources as a company, would a large organization would. Yeah. Uh we're extremely ambitious. So we are trying to change the culture and the behavior of the advisory marketplace of all the different groupings I mentioned earlier. And uh we're trying to do achieve two things.

Um, but both of them building on the fact that millennials, Gen Z, women of wealth, and even older generations now want to live their values through their investments or through their philanthropy or both. So uh we want to um have professional advisory firms support their uh clients on their donor journey. Which means being proactive, which is a really big shift. From the other side. is um around impact investing and the whole issue of suitability. So what are my values?

How do what are my ambitions? How do I live those through my investments and stuff? So uh what free advice can you give us to achieve that? Well, yeah, listen, I you know, I think it's such a great point because the the the the the I think the biggest thing we need to develop is actually something that's free, you know, as as leaders, as people operating in this environment.

And actually, the the phrase was coined by um Tom Friedman, which is this idea of building our CQ or our curiosity quotient. So Uh, you know, if if leadership was all about IQ in the 80s, then in the 90s, you know, we we had EQ and we realized we could be good to be nice people, you know, could understand other humans, that would be helpful. Maybe where we are today is that we need to build CQ because Fundamentally, most of what's happening if we are curious enough about it early enough.

then we can adapt cheaply. The expensive adaptation comes

if we are too late, you know, if if we if we fail to see the disruption coming, uh or we fail to see a new opportunity until five other people are all over that opportunity. So that's that's the free thing I think I would really yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl yw'n meddwl

yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw yw These disruptors are they're they're not well resourced, you know. In the first instance, they've got nothing. You know, they're just asking a different question. Um can I give you another example just to show you? Okay, so I brought another prop, which is um it's really nice to see all your toys.

It's just a helpful way to tell the story. So so if you think about the um drinks industry, so Very, very long established industry, big players like the Diagios of the world. Uh, and many of these industries have been around, you know, uh forever. So if if we talk about the Scotch whi whiskey industry, for example, it's been around. I think since I think the 1500s or earlier, um, it's uh basically the same process now as it was then. You know, we get some alcohol.

We put it in a barrel, we stick it in a shed, and you know, 25 years later we pour it out and hopefully it's delicious, you know. And that's been the model. There's been some some uh sort of technological adapt adaptation over time where instead of you know handwriting a label on a barrel in a shed, we have a QR code instead, you know, some little tinkering around the edges. Um but about five years ago, two students in the US they said, look.

It's really expensive. Whiskey's really expensive. You know, it's really expensive. We we can't afford it as students. And actually, we don't really see why we're paying, you know, a hundred pounds or a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars for a bottle of Johnny Walker Black or whatever. Um I I don't I don't I don't I think it's expensive. You always see it in the GCP, don't you, Johnny Walker? I think that's price for the American market. But so I see

But it's it's a great example of where that industry just functions on those assumptions, you know, people will pay for heritage and brand and history and all of that stuff. And so these two guys said, Well, hang on. Maybe we could ask a different question, you know, maybe instead of putting the whiskey in the barrel, maybe we could put the barrel in the whiskey. Maybe that would make it a quicker process. And so that's what they did. So they created this, which is called a whiskey element.

Which has the same effect, so that same sort of osmosis effect. But what they've got is lots and lots of surface area built into this. And with this, what you can do is go and buy a bottle of cheap whiskey, non-branded Tesco value whiskey or or similar. Pop this in it. and leave it for 24 hours and when you pour it out the next day, it will taste like a single mole.

No, it won't taste like a single malt. Well, apparently so. It's been taste tested. They're doing them for wine now as well, you know. Um taking away my dream. I'll send you one in the post. You could have a bit of a play. Because it it works for the great thing about this is that you know the lot you could you then as a so it it challenges all sorts of assumptions in the sector. So first of all the assumption that that time has translated it's into financial value uh or a cost.

Secondly, that heritage is important, that it has to come the whiskey has to come from Scotland and it has to come from a brand that's well known. Thirdly, that the consumer, you know, the the value chain in that industry is stops at the distributor. There's very little engagement with the end consumer. Usually there's a supermarket or some kind of supplier in the way.

And all of that consumer value is taken by others. And so what this is saying is that actually the consumer is holds all the power here to experiment with the product. And so they can create their own blend, you know, when friends come around for dinner, there's all this new value that's being unlocked there. Now this is never gonna uh challenge the current industry, right? Because these these assumptions, or not now anyway, these assumptions are really, really ingrained.

But it's a great, it's a great lesson in how different thinking can make us realize that those assumptions that we have. aren't necessarily valid. You know, they're built on hundreds of years of experience rather than seeing future value. So so just to interrupt for a second. So in the sector that we deal with, professional advisory firms, we have habits. It's havoc goes back and back and back and back and how you relate to clients. Yep. And for some, you don't talk to them about their

personal stuff except at a minimum. So if you're going to really engage with people today, like a millennials and things. Yeah. Um you're going to have to talk about their values or motivations or ambitions or vision, how they want to live their lives, how they want what their money is for, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So what we do. is that we talk to them about what uh millennials and women of wealth are doing. So for example,

We give one example of a person whose advisors were very traditional, tried to get them to change, they wouldn't change, so she fired them. Well, that's sort of putting the point across, isn't it? But but there's still a gigantic industry.

And so we've got a lot of habits to break in a way. Definitely. Yeah. And it's interesting, isn't it? You know, um, I remember someone uh once telling me that, you know, there there were three, you know, it's a director of lots of different change programs that there are three groups of people in any organization, you know, the ones that get it.

the ones that could get it and the ones that'll never get it. And so, you know, you're you always should be focusing on the top two. That's where you should place your effort. with with your curiosity, isn't it? You know, I think if um if we're having different, genuinely curious conversations with clients, then I think we're still valued as advisors. But I think if we're just trying to to hawk existing products um or or to match problem A with product A, then that's probably not going to last.

I I know we don't have a lot of time left. This has gone too quickly. So I have a couple of other questions, but like in three seconds, can you tell me how you get someone to be curious? Well, so I actually tell them to just change their habits. So, you know, uh in a world where we um, you know, get up and switch in our computer, read something different.

uh you know, drink a different beverage for your breakfast. You know, stop drinking your same old breakfast coffee and whatever. Do something to change up your routine because even that tiny little change will fire different connections in your brain. and you'll start to see things differently. You know, read a different paper, get on the train on a different carriage, not the sort of Reginald Perrin, same carriage every day sort of thing. Just those little things will start to shake things up.

Okay, I get accused of doing that too often. I'm going to the office and now I have this idea.

Oh no. No, no, not another one. Oh, I've been to this conference. I have this idea. Anyway, okay, so uh do you consider yourself a futurist? Well I I don't like that term really because I think um I think it sort of One of the assumptions that often goes along with it is that the future can be predicted. You know, it it can't be. None of us knows what the future holds. All we can do is engage with what the drivers of change are, really.

And so so in terms of what I do, it's much less about telling a story about the future and much more about engaging people with thinking about it. So So that moving from a kind of a short term view to a long term view and being much more creative and imaginative really about the future. Okay, so um Tiny bit here. Okay, so everyone's talking about technology. Yeah. And technology going to bring change. So you have augmented reality, you have AI.

you have virtual reality, um you have artificial intelligence. Why I mentioned that the metaverse, all of that. Yeah the metaverse and also in the future potentially impacts of of quantum Uh computing. Okay, so you have all that. So that's pretty obvious to most people that that these things potentially would have But on the other side, the human side, um, what trends are there, other than the stuff that we're trying to do around values and stuff, but what trends are there?

that are not counterbalancing that, but will support it and reinforce it or complement it. So there's a really interesting um Piece of thinking on this from Eric Teller. Um he's former s uh or he's the CEO of what I'm doing. be Google X and what is now X. And I'm going to try and draw something with my hands on the screen here to bring it to life. So if you imagine that this is the pace of change over time on this axis and then oh sorry, this pace of change over time um along the bottom.

technological changes doing that, isn't it? Really rapid, exponential change, you know, to you know, thinking about computing power, as you say, John. So, you know, to to all of the power of all of the brains on the planet for the cost of a thousand dollars. You know, that I think that's the point that we're at now. ond if that's the pace of technological change, then the pace of human adaptability...

snailing along uh underneath. You know, it's a much, much slower curve. So so the the key the key thing that we now need to do is to is to govern smarter around the gap between those two. um lines. I'm not convinced that's happening, but that for me would be the place to really focus energies. And that's where ESG is part of that picture as well. Because fundamentally for every new piece of technology, what we should be asking ourselves is, you know, Why why does this further our human aims?

And if it doesn't do that, then why are we using it? Because there'll be a temptation to adopt lots and lots of these technologies just to keep pace. five years is is how do we close that gap? So behavioralist social psychology concepts and stuff that underpin a lot of that are going to Essential for people to

adapt to this or moment or whatever. Yeah. And also just asking why, you know, I mean, why are we doing this? You know, so so often, you know, technology is the how that sits at the bottom of the funnel. And to to to use it To use it sensibly and intelligently, we need to have the right why at the top.

So we need to understand what we're actually trying to do with it to use it effectively. And so often people go straight to the how and just plug on lots of new technology that doesn't add value and actually sometimes has a really negative effect. So running parallel to that you have technology change. You have behavioral change. You have a whole range of issues.

Um sorry Zophia, I better just go through this for you. I know you're supposed to come in and cut me off. But you have a whole range of issues that are sort of impinging on that. So gender equity, racial equity, the environment, mental health. All these different things are impinging on that. So it seems like an impossible um

uh situation. Um do you have impossible dreams? Well, but I I think this is where that that point around um uh around undoing our assumptions is really, really important because So much of the data that we'll use to drive decision making around all of this new technology is based on those false assumptions. So Gender inequity, you know, the uh lack of diversity, all of those sorts of things. So that's why we really, really need to now think.

Do I have the right data to make the decision and to set rules for the future? Am I making big assumptions that are not valid? And how can I start to challenge? So great, that's very helpful. So Sophia, okay. Sorry to have to cut in now. We are going over time. That was so interesting. It was really great. Thank you very much. Very different to what we normally do. So

I hope that it's been an interesting break to people. I just have the final question. What would you like the audience to take away today? Yeah, um, so very quickly, disruption can we often think of it as negative, but it can be a positive. So really engage with it and leverage it. Um and then the second thing is.

Thinking is free. So all of these intellectual exercises that we can do, we should be doing more day-to-day with our teams and our organizations because they will help us to prepare for the change that's coming. Where do I start? Okay, I spent most of my life disrupting. Um and um um uh so I think that uh uh Zophia Raquelli and stuff take away from the fact that

It's good. But innovation is really important, but also I think it's really important to respect our core values and what we're trying to achieve. as us as people and as society. So is that okay, Sophia? Do you want me to add anything more? No, I think that that's, I think it's a really key point is understanding what it is you're trying to achieve.

More than anything. Um, we have a question from uh Victoria Townsend. I'm really sorry we're not going to get to it, but please uh do send that by email, Victoria, and I'll get that answer. We can make a question. What's your question? It's it's around how to pitch on something, but it's fine. We can do that offline, John. You and I can answer that one offline.

Right. Um well thank you everybody. We will be back next week. We are looking at um with this the school's white paper just coming out today. We are looking at education and fundamental. Um, at our next walk in my shoes. So have a lovely week and thank you again, Eleanor, for joining us. Eleanor, thank you very much. Cheers.