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This is an English language episode with Erik and Elaine, both of whom can speak some Finnish.

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However, the topic legacy and its problems is so important that we cover the episode in English.

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old Cobol software that still runs an investment bank. Things that we do out

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of habit, a fear we inherited from our parents or a 100-year-old family company that suddenly lands

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on your shoulders even though you never asked for it. That is what we call legacy. It is situation

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your history has placed you in and it shapes the choices you have left far more than we care to

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admit. And here lies the paradox. The past can be a chain that holds you in place, but it can

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also be a resource, weapon to fight with today. It all depends on whether we use it and whether

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we dare to look it in the eye. Do today's guests have built their lives work on exactly this. Erick

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Åkesson is a Swede who lives in Finland. Behind him are 20 years in banking, captaining ships,

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military carrier, and constant reinvention of himself to the extent that he now lives here

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in Finland. Elaine Sterling is a second generation Finnish Canadian writer. She has published a dozen

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novels translated into 13 languages and spent years teaching executives to write with clarity.

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What brought them together was a coincidence and a bucket of blueberries. Together in just four

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months they wrote the book called Galista's Paradox. It is the story of a young woman who

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inherits a 100-year-old gemstone company problems and all and has to face everything the past has

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left behind. But beneath that runs something much larger. The book is also a handbook on

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these events. Some laws are universal. In a bank that has no choice but to be compliant. In an

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airline where safety comes before everything else. In an army that fights today's wars with whatever

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equipment it happens to have. And in artificial intelligence which does not replace the old but

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fundamentally reshapes it. Today we talk about why the past is so hard to get to let go of. Why

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we are afraid of risk and how you move on from an old structure without burning the whole house to

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the ground. Welcome to the negotiator channel. I am Sami Metin. Let's begin. Okay. Welcome to

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the negotiator channel. Uh we have a guests from the west end in Finland. Uh Ericson. Hi there. Uh

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you're originally from uh Sweden, right? Yes. Uh and uh we have uh Ela Sterling from Canada. That's

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right. Uh where from Canada? Uh near Toronto, a city called Hamilton. Perfect. And uh nothing to

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do with the Hamilton the US uh uh treasurer. No, this guy was a loyalist from the from the UK. Oh,

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okay. There we go. But that's good. Uh we are being recording this uh uh on the day after the

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Fins won yet another gold medal and uh Canada and Sweden did a bit less. [laughter] Yeah.

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But um this is about your book uh Kalista's uh paradox. Um but uh first if you can tell uh the

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audience a little bit more about yourself. Yeah, ladies first. Sure. Uh I have been a writer most

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of my adult life. I'm a second generation Finnish Canadian which didn't really seem relevant until

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very recently. Spent formative years in Central and South America and decided I would rather be

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Mexican than Canadian at the age of four. Um then as as an adult writer I wrote fiction

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um published 12 novels, a poetry collection and a business book and then the um what happened then

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there was co and I just sort of coasted until I met this fellow. Okay. And Eric. Yeah. So Eric uh

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I am Swedish. I live in Finland but uh I I have a couple of I have started off my careers a couple

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of times. I did the army back in the day when Sweden still had an army. Then I moved to Norway

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and I have a captain's degree. So that's like the one only cool thing with me. I can actually drive

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all ships now no matter how big and anywhere in the world. Uh but key takeaway from these years

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was that that was not for me. I went back took a like a masters of finance and then I studied

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in some countries Germany, Switzerland and then I started in London. I worked in the big banks for

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six years HSBC and then Royal Bank of Scotland and then I was in Nordia that all Nordic people

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know what it is in Copenhagen. Then I moved to Sweden. I was in Dansky Bank in Denmark,

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Sweden and Finland. And that was 20 years of banking right there. So I dare say I

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know something about banking. That's fair to say. And then I did a startup myself. So I have done

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true startuping tech startup in the garage and then I have I moved from there to being a tech

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consultant. So that is I do three things at the moment. I work for bearing point which is a tech

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uh consulting firm where my job is to speak to sea level bank executives about their tech problems

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and how we can help. Then the second thing I do is that I have Eric Ventures which is my own preed

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venture fund where I buy early day startups preferably fintech and three I am an author

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together with Elaine and we have just launched our first book and actually we will do a lot more

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books because we are becoming a publishing house. Perfect. And uh I have to I have to do this. So,

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so I get this as a a guest uh gift u so so a custom slogan uh and the front is of course

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branding but on the back it says um you don't get what you uh deserve you get what you negotiate

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which is my book's subtitle and talking about the books and their uh titles uh your book's name is

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Kalista's paradox but it doesn't actually say in the book what who is Kalista and who who is

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what what what is Kalista's paradox well it does say who Kalistas is but it doesn't specifically

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spell out what the paradox is. So, in terms of Kalistas, Elaine, why don't you? Yes. Kalista

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is a 26-year-old jewelry designer who has a fairly successful life in central Europe uh with account

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as an account manager and her father suddenly dies and she inherits a 120-y old gemstone company. She

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didn't want the job. She knows nothing about being a CEO or a shareholder or a board member. And her

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first experience of the company is that it is larded with problems uh issues that just go on

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for centuries. And and I like to use the tagline of Dante meets Doctor Who in modern-day corporate

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because she takes some time travel trips to find out the origins of the legacy of uh the

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Gemstone Company, which legacy being Eric's. Yeah. Specialty. Uh yeah. So I have to correct myself.

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It's true. This is a a fiction uh about the lady called Kalista. But then uh the kind of the theme

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of the book kind of conjures like a Greek uh Kalista Sparatus is like the Pandora's book.

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So something something grand from the uh the uh Athens. Yes. So uh but this is uh actually about

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a kind of a fiction book on the real situations people face when they are inheriting companies or

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getting thrust in the leadership positions. And I can tell you that the story of legacy which is

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the theme throughout and you have with you there some if you hold up the purple one. So for those

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of you that are interested in banking there was a purple three years ago we wrote a uh a white

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paper from bearing point where I work partly. uh it's about the Nordic bank in 2033 and how

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to get there. The interesting thing there it was a forward-looking piece on how bank technology is

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difficult and the feedback was that we met about 50 CEOs with that and the feedback was very pretty

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much the same. And they said, "We would love to follow your advice, but we can't because there's

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so much legacy problems." And then it dawned on us that this legacy is something that we all knew,

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but we had never really articulated. And then we set out, me and the co-author of the first one,

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Miko Aub, previous CEO of Axia Bank. And we started to talk to people that we know. And then

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we wrote the next white paper there a year and a half ago about legacy. And we did that together

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with a large group of very good people. I would dare say, you know, not maybe necessarily me,

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but at least everyone else is very good. So uh I am me I have 20 years of banking. I I know a lot

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about banking legacy problems. Miko has been CEO of a bank. He knows more about legacy problems in

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banks. And then we got Mikaskin the former CFO of Finire. He wrote a piece about aviation legacy.

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They have lots of similar but different problems. And then we got one of the Finnish top generals

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Yuri Ratasalo one lion general. He wrote about military legacy problematics. And we had I know

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Yusla a psychotherapist that is written about many books about inherited traumas. Inherited traumas

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are very interesting because they are someone else's you know it's an experience that you have

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had that's not yours and it still affects you and she has written books about that and that is your

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own personal psychological legacy situation. So that piece right there is very sort of dry in the

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tone and it targets seale executives. uh then we met more than 100 CEOs that's a lot during a year

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and we then collected more and more war stories sort of examples and we enriched this story and

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the feedback was basically unanimous that guys this is really good you should do a book and then

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we decided to do a book and there were some hoops and loops and not every one of the co-authors

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previously had time for a book so uh I set out myself and then slightly randomly on the internet

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I came across Elaine That's a really funny story that you might tell your maybe. Yes. Yes. So, um,

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the algorithm being what it is on LinkedIn, you just get these random people and I happened to

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land on a photo of a young Syrian teenager holding a bucket of blueberries. And the the poster who

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the who was Eric said that uh this young man, he had sponsored him as a refugee and the poor

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fellow wasn't able to find work. could we please uh help him out by buying these this bucket of

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blueberries? And I had this it's not a deja vu I suppose a flashback or something something maybe

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legacy related but because I remembered that my four grandparents had come from Finland to

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Canada in the 1920s and my father being an only child first generation u immigrant child his true

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joy was going into the bush of northern Ontario and picking blueberries. I looked at that and

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it's so odd that it's come full circle that now Finland is a receiving country of refugees. So I

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spontaneously posted and said if I lived closer I'd buy those blueberries. And Eric being one

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to act very quickly on on impulse connected with me and saw that I'd been a that I'm a writer and

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that I also had 18 years of teaching corporate executives how to write. He said, "Uh, I I I see

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what your experience is and I'm looking to write a book. I wonder if you could give me some tips and

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pointers." Well, I did a lot more than that. Yeah. And uh the book is about um combining the facts

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with fiction and also teaching with the kind of a natural progression on the real case which is the

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Kalista paradox and kind of a transformative journey. Uh Ela you you mentioned you teach

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um people to write. I mean that kind of reminds something we discussed on the on our lunch and

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u my favorite Canadian it is Keith Johnston and I did the master class with him in in London and

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uh um to is improvisation and uh part of the this journey and tell me a little bit about the Keith

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Johnston. Well Keith Johnston is the god of improv as you know and we are so proud that he lived in

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Canada. He was British to begin with, but uh uh he he taught theater first and realized that that

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the the joy of storytelling and spontaneity is is suppressed right out of us in in the uh education

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system. And he had he created uh systems that gets it back into our we get back into our spontaneous

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selves. So he created an entire foundation of of improvisation that is famous around the world.

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uh he had uh uh theater in Calgary until very recently he passed sadly but every person who has

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studied improv including myself we we all start with Keith Johnson and Violet Viola Spolan in

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the states those were the two um masters so yeah and um so you need to combine also in my book on

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negotiation it's kind of a hero's journey so kind of a classic buildup story so is there something

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like a like bringing the arch types and kind of learning from the age-old wisdom you have which

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you have incorporated in the book very much so and I want to just uh circle back to the improv

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for a moment because what I've learned working working with improv is as you have as well it it

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works in every setting in life settings Eric is a very fast thinker and a fast talker and I learned

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through improv to just respond respond respond and it really got us through writing the book in

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a record time of four months did the complete book and then I have completely forgotten what was your

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next question Oh, the journey. Yes. So, Kalista was Kalista was originally a goddess. And so,

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I I used her name partly for the musicality. Um, but she also turned out to be a very misunderstood

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huntress. She was uh she was suppressed by the the gods and Zeus as they as they very often

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were. But she was a survivor. And so, Kalista in our in our novella is very much a survivor

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as well. The archetypes are there. And uh I would I would add that it's magical realism. Some people

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don't know what that is. They confuse it with fantasy, but it's actually a very deeply rooted

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um archetype of particularly Latin America, which where I had spent some formative years. So yeah,

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I I can see see that the like well but but the Eric if you bring this back to the like

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the [clears throat] concrete things. Um what kind of a what are the most uh common legacy problems

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uh companies have? Well, so [clears throat] legacy can be defined in many ways. So you

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can have legacy sort of many departments or you can bucket them differently. The the one that is

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easiest to understand and it depends on who you ask. But first of all, if you ask the common man

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on the street, they would if they think about the word at all, they will usually talk about

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some king back in the day maybe conquered a lot of land and that will be his legacy. You will

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be remembered for something. That's usually how people talk about work. For a consultant in tech,

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legacy is immediately the outdated tech stack. That's what you immediately hit. So bankers and

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and consultants. But legacy can also be cultural. you know all the structures we have in our mind

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and you can find process legacy this is the way we do it here and then people never question it so

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you can have quest and then you can have your own psychological legacy uh you know you're scared of

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something because of something that happened and now so you can't do certain things you know with

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the easiest one being you're afraid of spiders and so you cannot go and visit the zoo that's a legacy

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problem you have then so these are at least the four obvious legacy situation now uh the book that

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we have written here is it it there is three parts in the book. So, and it's very interesting because

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I have learned a lot and that's sort of maybe also a generic interesting thing about books. What is

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the main book buying audience? Uh it's actually younger women sort of 18 to 20 35. And that's

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what Elaine said to me first, Eric, if we're going to do a book, we should write a book that somebody

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is going to buy. And the way is to get it on many different genres. So, it can be a management book,

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but it should be a novella. Otherwise you will send maximum 5,000 copies globally and we are

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obviously going to aim to sell at least a million books. So you know why not? So and then we need

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to target the so we we decided to have a a book that would be in many layers. So the that book

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there has three parts. The first is a novella and if you like nollas you can read novella

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and you can ignore the rest and you will still find it very enjoyable and then you will learn

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something about legacy but you will not explicitly think about it. But if you read the second part

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which you can also read in isolation if you are a fact student you don't want to read any nollas

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you can get a lot of out of that too but the real learning we believe if you read the first

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the story and in the story you will come ac you know this Kalista will has to tries to rescue the

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company she comes across many situations that they appear easy to solve at first but when she starts

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to look at it the history is dragging this down and then when you read the second part of facts

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that will sort of look at the examples that so basically you can read the story and you will

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see the surface but then when you read the second part you will open the layers and you can maybe

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read it again and see it differently and then the third part is 14 very different point of view on

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legacy people that have had legacy problems people that managed to get out of them people that have

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seen somebody else in but 14 very different kind of people you should say some more about that yes

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well especially coming back to Keith Johnston because one of the contributing authors is Will

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Luera who is an American improv teacher well known around the world he's even taught the Saudi royal

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family and he specifically uses uh improv in his in his article as a means of overcoming legacy

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of of facing it and coming to coming to grips with it and bringing out new skills such as

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curiosity and spontaneity that that really speaks to improv. Uh we also have film and TV people and

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and business people. There's one woman whose names withheld by request because her family legacy is

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so horrendous. Um a great variety of people who are brave enough to tell their story. M and then

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uh of course it's important to see how many ways 14 ways or or more you can uh get stuck in time

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but then you need to be um uh solution oriented and um I mean um um the first book Palanter gives

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to the new people is Keith Johnson's improent theater. I don't know if that's cute or worrying

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but Volunteer is one of the most successful uh consulting uh transformational companies with

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AI. So they go to company whether it's a military complex or whether it's a company and then they

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fix it from the legacy systems uh using AI. uh but uh you don't necessarily need to use artificial

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intelligence but you you need to move from your uh legacy problems to uh it can be disruptive

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future but it can be also just fixing the systems how do you do that then what kind of guidance you

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give to how to fix yeah and that's of course very difficult but what the one important thing is this

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when you are a consultant like I am part-time is uh or partly so bearing point for example in any

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consulting firm They will come in and then they will do some sort of as is you know well first

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of all if a company has problems of any kind they will ask first themselves can we live with this

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situation and if the answer is yes we can live with it it's not optimal but then you live with

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it because there are so many other problems to fix but if the answer is we can't live with this well

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then you fix it yourself or you try to fix it yourself and if that doesn't work you basically

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ask yourself again but oh that was difficult but could we live with it anyway and if the answer

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is still no you get some help essentially That's when you call the consultants. So by definition,

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consultants will never be called in when things are good. So we will always come in and face

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an elegancy situation of some of some kind. And the first thing is always and some sort

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of asis analysis. What is the current state that is usually very shallow and quick because people

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are eager to move on and sort of dwelling in the past will look counterproductive and uh and people

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believe you are up to no good and you're wasting their money for talking about stuff they already

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know. uh but an as is as is analysis will happen but it's in my experience way too shallow far more

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often and then there will be a target state people will say target state is the word you need to use

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a lot if you are a consultant you know the target state it basically means where you want to get to

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and then you will define they will spend you know you will have millions of dollars in consulting

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fees and hundreds of hours internally that are not built for that will go into this target

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state and then you will make a strategy which is essentially how how to get from here to there like

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a string of plans to get there and then you will make assumptions about the asis. Yeah, the asis

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analysis were probably right. So that's where we are and and then you move from there. The problem

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is that what if you only look at the symptoms of the illness but not at the illness itself. So it

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turns out that you are not here, you are there. Well, the strategy that was supposed to take you

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from here to there will then take you there. And even if you are here but for different reasons,

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maybe you choose the wrong methods. So you end up only there and not all the way there. So what we

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are arguing uh is that when you set out on change journeys spend a bit more you know instead of

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spending 100 you know if you have 100 resources or money or whatever rather than spending 50 of it on

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target state and 50 on strategy and only sort of 0 point nothing on the asis analysis do 45 10 but

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upgrade the effort put on asis analysis properly so that you actually know where you are and why

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and we believe that is happening way too seldom. And that is a good advice on any change journey

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that we believe or I believe people do wrong. Yeah. Then on this Kalista's fictional story

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uh she was inheriting a family business on the on jewelry. I mean is um this inheritance and

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getting generational responsibility and inheriting somebody with the power uh and and the jewelry uh

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do those two things carry specific weight in the book? They do very much. Yes. So the the

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gemstone business has uh environmental issues and and employment and indigenous issues that

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had not been dealt with and uh she is it's landed on her on her shoulders. So she seeks out the aid

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of a disillusioned consultant who has given up on corporate because he's been trying to instill new

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levels of knowledge in corporations that that have been resistant. And I'll use a specific example

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that he most admires military for their legacy and their their um willingness to take it on

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and recognize the limitations and the world is so resistant to listening to anything from military.

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We have such black and white perceptions of these extremes. But Kalista is the one person who

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listens and that's all he's ever wanted is just one person to listen to what he believes is true.

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He has this mantra that the corporation that addresses legacy will outrun all competition.

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Trouble is he hasn't taken care of himself. He has a physical legacy and he may not live long enough

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to be able to give her the advice she needs and to see her through to the end of her journey. Yeah,

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that's also a personal theme. Eric, you mentioned um your past life and and health uh but also the

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the banking world where you were with a lot of kind of a legal legacy which is particularly

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toxic. uh can you talk about the health aspects and the banking legal problems? Yeah,

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there is one uh there's one chapter of the it goes under healthc care legacy and in the book we have

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a couple of examples. So I give a personal point of view of one individual's legacy situation. But

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then we have a health coach in Austin that writes it more on a systematic level. And then we have

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a guy called so we have Zach Rosenova. He is a health coach in Austin, Texas. Extremely good guy.

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And he has written this about how people get stuck and why. And then we have Matias Fanul. He's doing

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his PhD now in health care public sort of public how to organize healthcare. And he looks at health

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care as a systematic ear error. How we actually treat health care as sick care. Essentially we

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spend now there you know there's a certain amount of tax money available for different things. Among

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that a slice goes to healthare but healthcare is sick care the way it is done now. We essentially

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wait for people to get ill and when they get real ill we put them into these factories for

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treating them. It's called hospitals and there we treat them expensively and then we rehab

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them expensively and we send them back as good taxpayers. But actually from a taxpayers point of

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view, we should really take some of that money out and put it into preventive care so people

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don't get as ill. And there is sort of consensus on that this is the right thing to do. But no

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politician can win any elections by saying I will shut some hospitals now down now and actually yes

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some people will die in the next decade but after that we will have far better health condition for

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all of us because there will be less smoking, less drinking, more running but nobody can win

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an election like that. So that shift will not happen. uh in terms of if I look at that so

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these are the three pieces on the healthcare if I look at one example I have put in there myself is

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I used to be I'm 52 now and uh well it is what it is it's a sort of a numerical fact but I started

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off I did loads of sports when I was young ice hockey and football and this and that and tennis

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and handball and everything else and sailing and at some point I also did a lot of karate so full

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contact karate so really brutal stuff where you better know if you if you step in unfit you will

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literally be knocked out fully knocked out kicked to the head and you can really hurt yourself. So

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I was pure muscle only 76 kilos with virtually no fat because I had to be below 80 otherwise it was

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heavy weight and then you literally get killed. So it couldn't happen because 80 is unlimited. You

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can meet people at 120 30 kilos. So at that point I was extremely fit and I remember I got my first

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job in banking and I thought aha I'm a banker now. I bought an Armani suit. I remember it. Uh

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that suit fit for less than two weeks because I put on 10 kilos like that when I moved to London.

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Uh because I started in corporate finance is like the worst place you can be in terms of hours. So

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uh I started as an M&A analyst in a big London bank and I worked insane hours sort of 16 18

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hours every day including weekends and they made damn sure that you didn't sleep much and training

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and eating and everything fell apart immediately. So I put on 10 kilos immediately in the first few

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months and then I was in London for six years. I put on another 10 kilos. So I came back like 20

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kilos heavier net and muscle mass mass dropped too. So probably 24 kilos of pure fat added

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really [snorts] bad. Uh and that combined with and also one of the reasons for that was that I moved

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from M&A to trade floor stuff for an exchange and commodity derivative sales trading structuring.

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So it's very very competitive environments where you have to be in at 6:00. You work sort of 12

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hour days and you travel and that's that's the easy days because you're on the trade floor but

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half of the time you're traveling. Then you work 18our days where drinking is half of the

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job. So you put on you wreck your health totally with extreme amounts of calories, no training,

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no sleep and loads of alcohol. That's extremely toxic combo. So I basically became quite fat

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and definitely very unfit and I had lots of problems with that. But you don't it happens

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gradually so you don't notice it. But then after some unfortunate events I decided I need to do

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something with this. And that's the journey that I described because I realized that I had sort of

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cornered myself in this physical personal legacy [ __ ] situation where I was in a hole that I just

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kept digging and I not only had to stop digging I had to find a way out and that's what this chapter

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describes how I was very deliberately observed my legacy and the interesting thing is that when

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I did that it's just around the time when I started to write the original legacy uh white

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paper [clears throat] so in the process when I see Now two years later writing a book I realized

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that what I did was that I had a legacy problem. I applied a very thorough legacy analysis. Without

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that I would not have been able have been able to find the right methodology and eventually this

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Zach Rosanova Austin Texas. I will can I do some ad for Zach Rosenova? Definitely. If you have a

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health problem, uh, if you're fit and you want to be, if you are fat and you want to be fit and you

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work way too much and you're sort of 50 and you're willing to spend a bit of money on fixing it,

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find Zack Rosanova on LinkedIn and connect and say hi from me. Um, he will basically give you all the

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tools you need to have a datadriven approach to fix nutrition, sleep, training, stress levels,

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everything. So now I dropped 20 kilos in a year and put on lots of muscles and I am where I want

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to be. That could not have been Yeah. And um uh that's um also what I did between the marriages,

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get a personal trainer and get the get back in the business. Uh so I and and I also was

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in Craig Swiss and other banks. So I absolutely know what you're talking about and also get a bit

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of a weight myself there. Uh but then the other question was about the then the uh the legacy and

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banking. I mean you you done the corporate finance and derivatives but uh we all know

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I also been in the in in the RBS and Norda by the way and uh I I was in the RBS times when they had

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already failed. So clearly they had some bad risk management on the M&A but then you have other type

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of uh legacy problems like you have a too eager uh regulator who prevents everything and wants just

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like admin and uh that's another thing. How how do you see the banking and risk management that and

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that's also and please Ela tell me if I forget something and you know do interrupt me the the

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um the the one interesting thing is this when we start to look at this you realize that these

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different sectors like banking and aviation and military they have their own legacy problems and

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situations and they solve them to some degree in different ways but there are some really

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good learnings across of course I am a banker and I am a uh consulting to banker so I think a lot

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But what can bankers learn from them? But there are other learnings too. But if I sort of answer

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that first, a legacy problem within banking. Uh banks are very conservative and they should be

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uh because we all want the payment systems to always work. We want the mortgage lending

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to continue and so on. Uh and people complain uh at the banks are so conservative. But hey,

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I can tell you it's better than the alternative. uh you know all the complainers should think about

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the payment system failing for a few days because somebody failed fast a little bit here and there.

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Uh it is actually in the interest of all of us that the banking system works really well

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and it's very well protected that that's why it's so heavily regulated. The problem is the

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following and here is a learning from aviation in aviation is also heavily regulated and for a very

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good reason. We don't want the airplanes to fall down so we die. So everybody can agree that it's

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really good that they have extremely strong safety first culture in aviation. Everybody loves it.

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So do I. So do them. The problem is this that there is sort of a negative halo effect of this

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that you know the all the people in an aviation company they will work in the same offices and

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they will talk to each other and then the people that do the website that are supposed to create

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the how you buy a ticket. They undergo the same scrutiny on safety culture. I know of one

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aviation company out there that had as a corporate policy. They had three priorities. first safety,

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number two is uh punctuality, and number three is service. It's always in that order. Safety

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first and then be on time and then service your clients. That makes a lot of sense when you think

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about let's never fall down with the planes. And the problem is that if you are responsible for the

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website to develop the new customer journeys for how to buy tickets, safety is not maybe really so

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important and you could allow for more fail fast culture in that part. And we have the same. So,

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so how to segregate a very very strong safety culture from other parts of the bank and

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deliberately deliberately let some parts of the organization live with higher risk. It should be

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a management decision and in the banks we have the same. Everyone knows in a bank that compliance and

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regulation and credit they rule everything and for good reasons. It shouldn't stop working and

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you shouldn't lend money to people that don't pay back. And the problem is that somewhere else in

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the bank you will have somebody working on the client UX and there will be some products that

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aren't that systemically important as payments and you can actually allow for some failing and trial

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and error there but it doesn't happen because the safety culture and the in aviation and in the case

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of banking the compliance will rule everything all the time and nobody critically thinks about the

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fact that is this part of the bank really that crucially important like corporate finance is

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not systemically important. Mhm. payments is but still they have to do the same and I think there

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you should have some critical thinking about that. That's one learning from aviation. Yeah.

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Ela then uh since you have written those other books and you spend time in in Latin America for

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example the the magical realism is interesting. I mean Gabriela Garcia Marquez and the 100 years

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solitude and then in the trivial and um Paulo Coyle that I don't know if that's [laughter] but

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but you can have a trivial learnings even from that kind of journeys or or high high brow

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uh uh culture but I guess we living in a kind of magical realism ourselves we have the sort

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of hard uh facts happening uh but then you need to take improvisation and see the take some kind of a

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magical journey of what could be and uh use your imagination to to make the world a better place

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or whatever you want to achieve strategically. Uh did you use that magical realism uh themes on

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this book? I absolutely had to magical realism plus improv because I could not have survived

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those explanations of legacy otherwise because we were an ocean apart and I'm seven hours behind. He

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would um he would arrange teams uh teams meetings with all of these experts, everyone from the

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brigadier general of the Finnish armed forces to the aviation fellow and and and many others. And

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it would be 3 in the morning for me and I would be hearing things like negative halo effect and

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having no idea what that is and thinking okay if that was magical realism it would probably

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mean this. So I had this whole other fantastical process going on as I was absorbing this uh really

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with zero comprehension. In fact, Eric says it very often that you really know writing, but

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you're so clueless about other [laughter] things. And he's right. And he's right. And and it's the

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ideal world for a fiction writer because uh you have to go into it with a beginner's mind. Much

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like improv, you don't pre-plan. You you're in the scene. You got to deal with the scene. [snorts] So

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it for for me the experience of absorbing that information was very much Kalista's experience

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in suddenly walking into uh Lex's pub giving a bit of the story away and uh finding out that it was

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much more than a pub. It was actually a portal to other worlds. Mhm. Yeah. Tell me a little

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bit about the other books. Do are they series or uh yeah some are out of print. Um the I started

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off as a romance writer which was the last thing I'd planned. I was a new mom uh with a baby and I

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had given up a really good corporate no corporate government job as uh as an immigration counselor

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and I was so offended when I brought the birth bag home because they had a harlequin romance in

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there. I thought what did they think that my brain is just going to die because I'm a new mother? And

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I must have bitched about it for quite a long time because my my husband said, "If would you

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just stop grumbling about it and just write one cuz you've read so many books." So I well, okay,

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I will. And uh I I spent three years writing a bunch of manuscripts that were all rejected. And

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just as I was on the verge, like I was really getting getting the hang of it, my husband left

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the house. And so suddenly I was a single mom with no job and a bunch of rejected manuscripts.

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And somehow the gods, thank the gods, 3 months later I sold my first two books, published 10,

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uh, translated into 13 languages and I was able to raise my kids and pay the mortgage and and it

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was a very good start. And it also teaches you to write fast or fail fast or however you might put

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it in the business world. And then uh, I thought I'd do something serious. So I I gave up writing

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00:36:33.360 --> 00:36:38.960
romance novels to write the great historical novel about a a famous woman in South America.

381
00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:44.000
And I spent 14 years failing. I mean literally failing. And while I was failing at that I was

382
00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:48.560
teaching corporate. So there were these parallel streams going on that I didn't realize that the

383
00:36:48.560 --> 00:36:54.800
corporate would then then uh give me the skill set to be able to communicate with people like like

384
00:36:54.800 --> 00:37:00.160
Eric because I had to stand in front of classrooms with 40 people from all different industries and

385
00:37:00.160 --> 00:37:04.160
levels who didn't know how to write an active sentence and would never start a sentence with

386
00:37:04.160 --> 00:37:09.040
I and just thought that writing was boring. And so there was a lot of u a lot of life lessons

387
00:37:09.040 --> 00:37:17.840
there and and gave me the kind of resilience that I needed to complete this project with Eric. Yeah,

388
00:37:17.840 --> 00:37:24.160
that's that's something. Yeah, but there's like in Argentina there was like a F Finnish colony

389
00:37:24.160 --> 00:37:29.360
and it's a [clears throat] that's in all old old times people tried crazy [ __ ] and they

390
00:37:29.360 --> 00:37:35.440
did some succeeded, some didn't. Yeah. Yeah. The romance novels. I'm not the expert of that

391
00:37:35.440 --> 00:37:40.800
genre. My wife is in the book business, but I remember she get like the early uh publishing

392
00:37:40.800 --> 00:37:47.040
copy of the the Twilight and then she was reading and then she said like, "Summit, why can't you be

393
00:37:47.040 --> 00:37:55.840
a vampire?" [laughter] So the expectations of the women say those vampires. Yeah. [snorts] Yeah.

394
00:37:55.840 --> 00:38:02.960
Yeah. But um yeah, good on the Kalista uh does the sort of hero's journey and uh takes on the

395
00:38:02.960 --> 00:38:10.640
legacy and brings her own talents to the table and then mixes the that with the legacy of the company

396
00:38:10.640 --> 00:38:17.760
to to try to transform it and and encounter some magical realism there. Uh so which of

397
00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:25.760
the three parts you think is the sort of the most important? The fiction obviously. [laughter] Yeah,

398
00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:32.640
I guess to be I'm very known for I'm very diplomatic always. [laughter] So it depends

399
00:38:32.640 --> 00:38:37.920
on who you are I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you well clearly if you if you are a facts guy

400
00:38:37.920 --> 00:38:42.800
then the second part is but if you are a novel reader than the first one is I think the third

401
00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:47.120
one is actually they are very short. They are sort of two three four pages each. So they are

402
00:38:47.120 --> 00:38:51.440
more easy to consume in that sense. You can read them and then maybe if you start to read one ah

403
00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:57.040
that was of me you can drop it and do the next. But I have a hard time to think that, you know,

404
00:38:57.040 --> 00:39:03.520
one of the 14 point of views should be appealing to everyone. Yes. The universality of the book is

405
00:39:03.520 --> 00:39:08.080
what I'm most proud of is that everyone who picks it up will find something that they will relate

406
00:39:08.080 --> 00:39:13.440
to that, oh, I have been through that. That's legacy. I had no idea that was legacy. So, yeah,

407
00:39:13.440 --> 00:39:18.960
it's an enlightening experience. And we've we've been told and and come to believe that

408
00:39:18.960 --> 00:39:24.400
um Kalista's paradox does for legacy what Sophie's World did for philosophy not that

409
00:39:24.400 --> 00:39:29.760
many years ago. And which is why we were very careful about giving it a a name so that legacy

410
00:39:29.760 --> 00:39:35.920
will be forever associated with the the the phrase Kalista's paradox much like Vuko's pendulum AAM's

411
00:39:35.920 --> 00:39:42.560
razor Archimedes principle. So we were going with that theme. Yeah. Yeah, I loved Sophia as well,

412
00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:48.320
Norwegian guy. But uh I mean it was I I had studied philosophy as a as a sort of a young

413
00:39:48.320 --> 00:39:54.160
person but that kind of was a very nice way of uh telling retelling the history of the

414
00:39:54.160 --> 00:40:00.480
philosophy and also in a kind of hero's journey way. I mean Joseph Campl had this theory that we

415
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:07.280
all live these arch types and uh then there's like a particularly appealing way of telling

416
00:40:07.280 --> 00:40:13.360
stories which is the hero's journey or growth story. So is this also a growth story? Oh very

417
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:18.400
much. Yeah. Hero's journey. I was a huge fan of Joseph Campbell back in the day. So once you

418
00:40:18.400 --> 00:40:22.800
start absorbing him you you never get it out of your system. You realize it's an intrinsic part

419
00:40:22.800 --> 00:40:29.360
of each of us. Yeah. Yes. So, we're going to encounter the mentor and the shapeshift. That's

420
00:40:29.360 --> 00:40:35.200
right. The refusal of the call, the false du. The false dawn. Yeah. And go through it all. Eric,

421
00:40:35.200 --> 00:40:43.989
you you if you this says nothing to you, think of Star Wars. Okay. [laughter]

422
00:40:43.989 --> 00:40:50.160
[laughter] Literary professors here. So, yeah. But it's it's a very interesting genre. I mean

423
00:40:50.160 --> 00:40:54.640
there's of course the danger that you you kind of um if you do it in three parts you say well

424
00:40:54.640 --> 00:41:02.080
here's the story and now I'll explain it to the dummies. Is that that kind of book? Well yes

425
00:41:02.080 --> 00:41:07.040
and no. I think it's more like you can read them separately. You don't have to read the

426
00:41:07.040 --> 00:41:12.720
second part. The story is interesting in itself but then unless you are unusually sharp you're

427
00:41:12.720 --> 00:41:18.800
going to miss some of the underlying layers. M I think when you read the second part I think the

428
00:41:18.800 --> 00:41:23.680
dream would be the following. Somebody reads the story and thinks oh that was a good story really

429
00:41:23.680 --> 00:41:28.960
interesting and there were some problems there and but yeah okay let's continue and then they read

430
00:41:28.960 --> 00:41:33.520
the second part and the third and then they read the first post again and they feel that they are

431
00:41:33.520 --> 00:41:38.800
reading a new book basically that sort of ooh it was black and white and now it's in color.

432
00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:42.800
I didn't see how this sort of came from there because that's one of the things that also comes

433
00:41:42.800 --> 00:41:48.160
up in the story that the whole family business builds on the myth of the legendary founder that

434
00:41:48.160 --> 00:41:54.160
turns out to not be so glorious. Uh so you know you have these legacy situations that people build

435
00:41:54.160 --> 00:42:00.800
on things and then when you sort of unearth what things are really like and people have to question

436
00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:06.640
the path of the past. your your comment about legacy for dummies reminds me of what Erica said

437
00:42:06.640 --> 00:42:12.480
about my writing when I first wrote wrote the initial drafts. Um he he said uh well first of

438
00:42:12.480 --> 00:42:17.200
all you're not a very good writer Elaine because [laughter] you haven't really touched on legacy at

439
00:42:17.200 --> 00:42:21.520
all and and he didn't understand the concept of a first draft but we were yelling at each

440
00:42:21.520 --> 00:42:26.080
other too much for me to even explain that to him. But what he did help me come to understand

441
00:42:26.080 --> 00:42:34.400
is that I do tend to write longer words. that is just my sty my style of writing and I was

442
00:42:34.400 --> 00:42:40.240
uh obliged to learn to write in a simpler style for the non-English-speaking or the non-native

443
00:42:40.240 --> 00:42:45.440
English-speaking population and we do see this as a global read. So I'm very grateful to him that

444
00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:49.520
he's taught me this whole new level and it's not a level for dummies at all. It's a level

445
00:42:49.520 --> 00:42:55.440
of clarity that perhaps I didn't have before because I do love complex sentences quotes

446
00:42:55.440 --> 00:43:01.760
along the way that are not for you know daylight but you know I will not effing dumb down this to

447
00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:06.720
please people like you but I think you know what I tried to say to Lane and I think that's sort of

448
00:43:06.720 --> 00:43:12.400
universal maybe universal thing for uh highlevel native English speakers that there are people out

449
00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:18.560
there that aren't dumb like I'm not so dumb but ling English is like my second language

450
00:43:19.280 --> 00:43:23.920
And some of these very long words that they use is like and I still have lived in London actually,

451
00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:28.640
you know, I speak decent English and I've lived in London for six years. You will find very few

452
00:43:28.640 --> 00:43:33.120
people that have English as a second language that are better than I am. So I said, use me as a

453
00:43:33.120 --> 00:43:38.720
proxy. If I don't get it, nobody will get it other than other real native speakers. And that was a

454
00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:42.560
bit of an anger moment for Elaine that couldn't use these really long words that no, at least

455
00:43:42.560 --> 00:43:49.200
I didn't understand. And I think it uh Elaine struggled to get uh you know you would have like

456
00:43:49.200 --> 00:43:54.080
the perfect word in store for like okay I will I will have this word and it will be what I want

457
00:43:54.080 --> 00:43:58.560
and then I said but I don't get that word and she would have to use like some less cool word and I

458
00:43:58.560 --> 00:44:02.160
think that might have disturbed you a little bit. I did, but then I I adjusted to it and actually

459
00:44:02.160 --> 00:44:07.360
came to enjoy it. And as when we were at the book launch the other night, we had um a senior woman,

460
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:12.320
a CEO of a of a prominent insurance company come up to me afterwards and say, "I think this is

461
00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:18.720
written at exactly the level for um high school or upper elementary school children to begin to learn

462
00:44:18.720 --> 00:44:25.920
uh English and and complex concepts uh in English so that uh it was the right level of reading." So,

463
00:44:25.920 --> 00:44:31.440
I was very pleased with that. Yeah. and uh and it uh sort of let's uh toy with Eric. Uh so uh

464
00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:37.760
when when I was learned to uh write I I very much uh like the guy called Laas Eric who had this art

465
00:44:37.760 --> 00:44:47.760
of dramatic writing and his uh book's uh theme was that um every great book will have exposure uh uh

466
00:44:47.760 --> 00:44:53.280
expo system management. So that means that you have to have a great theme and great books have

467
00:44:53.280 --> 00:45:00.480
a theme where you have a transition. For example, Shakespeare, all books have a [snorts] this expos

468
00:45:00.480 --> 00:45:06.480
the management of the of the underlying theme. For example, uh Romeo and Juliet is about uh how

469
00:45:06.480 --> 00:45:12.800
Lava conquures everything uh including death. So you start with two stupid teenagers and you

470
00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:17.920
end up with the mana who sacrifices himself for love. So he he does like this growth and

471
00:45:17.920 --> 00:45:25.760
it's different kind of a journey than the the hero's journey. So I I I'm saying that the this

472
00:45:25.760 --> 00:45:31.840
uh grand theme of this book is the legacy. So you have a person who starts at the under the

473
00:45:31.840 --> 00:45:39.920
uh uh sort of base level of legacy and then learns through the book that and she takes on leadership.

474
00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:44.320
That's the ultimate goal is she takes on the role of leadership which she had never seen in herself

475
00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:50.800
or imagined in herself. Didn't even want it but she takes that on. Yeah. Yeah. and sort of guided

476
00:45:50.800 --> 00:45:55.200
by this consultant in the book that helps her to sort of start to believe and trust in herself. And

477
00:45:55.200 --> 00:45:59.680
I think that's very important. I think I think maybe that is specifically maybe it's a Finnish

478
00:45:59.680 --> 00:46:04.720
thing like the lack of confidence in stuff like come on do it you can do it. I think way too many

479
00:46:04.720 --> 00:46:10.320
people hesitate like when we when we wrote this book there was many moments when people told first

480
00:46:10.320 --> 00:46:15.040
me when I was alone that this can't be done and come on Eric you going to do a big and I remember

481
00:46:15.040 --> 00:46:19.600
when I said to some people that the aim is to sell a million copies I was I was like laughed at I was

482
00:46:19.600 --> 00:46:24.160
made a laughing stock they thought it was insanely funny and that I dared to think about that and I

483
00:46:24.160 --> 00:46:30.720
think it's just pathetic not to like why not so and it makes me angry that people are trying to

484
00:46:30.720 --> 00:46:35.520
put their boundaries on me I'm not going to take that [ __ ] And the thing is this that maybe you

485
00:46:35.520 --> 00:46:39.680
set out to say, "Oh, the goal is to send 1,000 books." And then you do 10,000 and you call it

486
00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:44.560
a roaring success cuz you're 10 times above the So what if I aim for a million and sell only 100,000?

487
00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:50.160
Then am I a failure then? But I still send 10 times more than them. They define themselves as a

488
00:46:50.160 --> 00:46:55.840
success only because they have so pathetic goals. That's that makes me sort of sad and angry. And I

489
00:46:55.840 --> 00:47:00.240
think as a foreigner in Finland, I think you know you can allow yourself to dream more a little bit.

490
00:47:00.240 --> 00:47:04.640
There's nothing wrong. And there's a very big difference between dreams and illusions. Dreams

491
00:47:04.640 --> 00:47:10.800
can come true. So they are okay. And you I invest in dreams but illusions I don't invest in because

492
00:47:10.800 --> 00:47:15.360
they can't come true. It's very important to know the difference. Yeah. Still coming back to this

493
00:47:15.360 --> 00:47:22.400
um um exposition. And uh I mean I I love Milan Kundara's books because he takes some grandio

494
00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:28.160
philosophical theme from niche and then the whole book is about manage managing the expose

495
00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:34.800
uh onto that idea and exploring it and even in the sort of kind of micro level the chapters

496
00:47:34.800 --> 00:47:40.960
can be about that theme kind of moving but then uh a lot a lot longest time I thought that like

497
00:47:40.960 --> 00:47:47.680
you have to have like the Joseph Campbell's uh stuff and then combined with this kind management

498
00:47:47.680 --> 00:47:53.440
of the grand team and the movement and uh and uh skip everything else. But then that's why

499
00:47:53.440 --> 00:47:58.880
I started doing impro because it's not that you have to have the you have to take the breaks out

500
00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:05.040
uh from the main story and uh just go crazy. Yes. And and you have to accept what your scene partner

501
00:48:05.040 --> 00:48:11.360
gives you and and run with it. Yeah. You Yes. You can't block it. And then that's part of the book's

502
00:48:11.360 --> 00:48:17.040
themes I guess the kind of a scenario management. So if you bound by a legacy and path dependency

503
00:48:17.040 --> 00:48:22.880
and this is the things we do here you might say like you Eric said well we think we are here we

504
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:28.240
need to get there we just future cast ourselves there by step by step but that can be a mirage you

505
00:48:28.240 --> 00:48:33.200
could be completely somewhere else and you have to think of the scenarios and the world doesn't give

506
00:48:33.200 --> 00:48:39.360
you easy path it gives you randomness yes I think you know and I would like to say a few words I'm

507
00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:44.720
now just thinking back at what what can what can you learn from these industries. So if the first

508
00:48:44.720 --> 00:48:50.960
one we we're thinking that this safety [clears throat] first culture from aviation is the same as

509
00:48:50.960 --> 00:48:57.840
the credit compliance culture in banking. Others can learn from that and sort of look at in your

510
00:48:57.840 --> 00:49:02.800
industry. Can you separate what is systemically important and has to be run with an extremely high

511
00:49:02.800 --> 00:49:07.760
level of of sort of trust and stability and where can you and you need as management you need to be

512
00:49:07.760 --> 00:49:13.600
quite explicit about that and say actually dear company we know that in this part we can never

513
00:49:13.600 --> 00:49:18.720
fail but actually we have decided that there we can fail and and I think so otherwise these

514
00:49:18.720 --> 00:49:24.560
people don't dare to fail so so that distinction another thing uh that uh there are two things I

515
00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:30.720
would like to sort of say then one is the concept that we about optimal rate of change. Mhm. And the

516
00:49:30.720 --> 00:49:35.360
optimal rate of anything is quite interesting and in this case optimal rate of change. But if I'll

517
00:49:35.360 --> 00:49:40.720
get into that but before that a few words on so in the process of writing the first legacy white

518
00:49:40.720 --> 00:49:45.120
paper and by the way for those of you that want to you know if you want to read about legacy the

519
00:49:45.120 --> 00:49:49.280
easiest way is to buy Kalista's paradox and read it. If you want to dig down deeply you can go

520
00:49:49.280 --> 00:49:53.600
to you can go into Google or anything and search bearing point legacy white paper and you will get

521
00:49:53.600 --> 00:49:58.960
to a page where you can download that report for free. then you can dig down even deeper. Um but

522
00:49:58.960 --> 00:50:03.680
when we were writing that uh we had the pleasure of then working with Yuri Raitasal which is an

523
00:50:03.680 --> 00:50:08.000
very intelligent individual. I sleep a bit better at night now actually when I know what kind of

524
00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:14.080
because I did the army back in 1994 and I wasn't sort of overly impressed with like the lieutenant

525
00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:18.880
sort of general you know intellectual ability. I was kind of thinking sometimes are these guys

526
00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:23.840
going to lead me in war? How will that end? Mhm. But now I know what the top brass looks like and

527
00:50:23.840 --> 00:50:28.880
how they think and I sleep a little bit better now. Uh I'm very very impressed about sort of

528
00:50:28.880 --> 00:50:34.720
the intellectual capacity of these people. And uh Yuri first time we had a lunch with Yuri. Me and

529
00:50:34.720 --> 00:50:40.480
Miku. We had a lunch with Yuri and he sat down and said well thank you for explaining what legacy is.

530
00:50:40.480 --> 00:50:46.400
I know it military capacity planning on a senior level is about thinking in the decades. Legacy

531
00:50:46.400 --> 00:50:53.120
management is pretty much what I do. Uh I for me legacy is positive because it means that we have

532
00:50:53.120 --> 00:50:58.400
something to fight the war with today. Mhm. And I think that's a very sort of interesting viewpoint.

533
00:50:58.400 --> 00:51:02.800
He viewed this as a as a positive not as a problem not an aggregation of [ __ ] that can deal with.

534
00:51:02.800 --> 00:51:06.960
He said well there's an aggregation of war material so we can defend ourselves. Isn't that

535
00:51:06.960 --> 00:51:13.600
good? Then we want to improve on it of course. But the military have they they stand you know

536
00:51:13.600 --> 00:51:18.080
because of the technical nature of the systems and the interoperability between different systems

537
00:51:18.080 --> 00:51:22.800
they have a lot of path dependency. So once you steer down some route you exclude others. And he

538
00:51:22.800 --> 00:51:28.560
said that so if if the enemy comes for us today we will defend ourselves with the weaponry that

539
00:51:28.560 --> 00:51:33.040
we dig out of the mountains now and it will be anything from new back to 40 50 years old.

540
00:51:33.040 --> 00:51:38.080
But the human body doesn't know if it get if it gets killed by a 100-y old bullet or a hypermodern

541
00:51:38.080 --> 00:51:43.200
rocket for 100 million from outer space. You just die. Mhm. So it's irrelevant. You you

542
00:51:43.200 --> 00:51:47.680
what you need is the killing power economically because you have and that's a very harsh way to

543
00:51:47.680 --> 00:51:52.240
view it view it. But you have limited resources to kill the enemy. So you need to kill with a

544
00:51:52.240 --> 00:51:57.440
limited resources as little as possible. So what they said what he said is that we will

545
00:51:57.440 --> 00:52:02.560
fight now with the material we have now. We will not fight with the drones we will buy in

546
00:52:02.560 --> 00:52:07.440
2 years cuz we don't have them now. And the other interesting thing there is that everybody tells

547
00:52:07.440 --> 00:52:12.960
uh the military that you should buy more drones why did you buy F-35? Oh my god, how stupid.

548
00:52:12.960 --> 00:52:20.080
Yeah. The difference is that a drone nowadays has about 3 months technical lifespan because the the

549
00:52:20.080 --> 00:52:24.160
opposite side it will take them roughly and they see it in Ukraine now all the time and I'm not

550
00:52:24.160 --> 00:52:29.920
speaking as me. This is all knowledge derived from a general. So it is not me inventing this. What

551
00:52:29.920 --> 00:52:35.280
we can see now in Ukraine is that the the other when you have a new drone type the other enemy the

552
00:52:35.280 --> 00:52:39.680
enemy will take about 3 months max to figure out how to take them down electronically or with some

553
00:52:39.680 --> 00:52:45.760
other way. So if you buy a drone today the coolest you can find and you wait for 3 months and you

554
00:52:45.760 --> 00:52:49.840
send it up near the board line it will be taken out immediately. So to buy drones and store them

555
00:52:49.840 --> 00:52:55.760
is totally pointless. What you need to do is to reserve monetary capacity for future flexibility.

556
00:52:55.760 --> 00:53:01.200
You need to have ability to buy and you need to make sure that there is industrial power to build

557
00:53:01.200 --> 00:53:06.960
then that's why this industrial like the buildup of the western uh military complex is so important

558
00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:10.560
because we don't know now what we will fight within 10 years but we need to have the ability

559
00:53:10.560 --> 00:53:15.360
to build it then because we can't buy it now and even we could buy it now it would be stupid

560
00:53:15.360 --> 00:53:21.600
because by then it would be outdated but the big jet like the jet fighter the F-35 for example it

561
00:53:21.600 --> 00:53:25.840
is actually many it's a jet fighter yeah that's what meets the eye but actually it's a flying

562
00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:30.880
weapons platform. It's a fly it's a part it's a hub of the intelligence uh collection platform.

563
00:53:30.880 --> 00:53:35.760
It's an integrated communication platform. And the interesting thing is why once you buy into

564
00:53:35.760 --> 00:53:41.680
that you exclude many other it will also define what missiles do I have to buy now 30 years from

565
00:53:41.680 --> 00:53:48.080
now. So when they buy the F-35 they essentially dictate what Finland will defend itself with 30

566
00:53:48.080 --> 00:53:53.280
years from now. Mhm. And what the general said is this that right now there's a war going on in

567
00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:58.160
Ukraine and and Russia is sending older and older material into battle and people sort of cheer that

568
00:53:58.160 --> 00:54:02.000
on and they believe that it's a sign of that they will lose and maybe they will maybe they won't but

569
00:54:02.000 --> 00:54:07.760
what is what is sure is that they will wipe out the legacy stack of guns and ammo and they have

570
00:54:07.760 --> 00:54:14.320
a remarkable ability that to rebuild that now 30 years from now they will have a hyperodern

571
00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:19.600
army free of legacy and we will roughly have the same stuff we have Now the people living

572
00:54:19.600 --> 00:54:23.760
30 years from now should be really worried if they don't modernize the army now because

573
00:54:23.760 --> 00:54:27.760
it's [clears throat] a relative game. So that's the one thing now because legacy is so important

574
00:54:27.760 --> 00:54:31.840
in the military context then they are you know whether this is something they have thought

575
00:54:31.840 --> 00:54:36.400
about and decided or if it's an evolutionary thing nobody really knows but what they do is that they

576
00:54:36.400 --> 00:54:41.120
are very aware of the importance of the long-term decisions. So what they have is a separate think

577
00:54:41.120 --> 00:54:45.600
tank for that. It's called the headquarters. And the interesting thing is that every corporate,

578
00:54:45.600 --> 00:54:49.120
every big corporate would have a group strategy. Now the interesting thing is this and I have

579
00:54:49.120 --> 00:54:53.920
actually been in the group strategy of a bank and I was surrounded by the sort of the consulting

580
00:54:53.920 --> 00:54:58.560
reject club. A lot of ex consultants that couldn't move up so they moved out in there and then you

581
00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:03.200
were s sitting there working on the strategy with other people and I was the only one that had ever

582
00:55:03.200 --> 00:55:07.760
been in a bank and then I was thinking that's very strange but that's what happens. You have

583
00:55:07.760 --> 00:55:13.440
group strategy with x amount of ex consultants they have never been in the business and then

584
00:55:13.440 --> 00:55:19.600
they decide on the above for the business and then but in the military every single general started

585
00:55:19.600 --> 00:55:25.440
in the army nobody has started somewhere else. So what happens is this you start as a conscript

586
00:55:25.440 --> 00:55:29.200
and then you move up and when you are sort of after 10 years or so you're a major then they

587
00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:34.560
will say if you're promising enough hey you are promising we are the kind of thought material

588
00:55:34.560 --> 00:55:39.760
leadership kind of person we want to think about the future capabilities so why don't you take a

589
00:55:39.760 --> 00:55:44.240
you know a posting in the headquarters that's essentially their group strategy they take the

590
00:55:44.240 --> 00:55:48.480
smartest people after 10 years for a first stint there and then they are major and they maybe get

591
00:55:48.480 --> 00:55:53.120
become colonel there and then they work on these long-term strategic decisions But they have spent

592
00:55:53.120 --> 00:55:57.440
10 years in the business. That's not the case in the group strategy of most corporates. You will

593
00:55:57.440 --> 00:56:02.240
have the clueless consultants there. And that is a lesson that we think that they can learn from. Try

594
00:56:02.240 --> 00:56:07.120
to take some of the you can have the rate really good consultants too because they have other skill

595
00:56:07.120 --> 00:56:11.440
sets in terms of planning and driving change and all that kind of stuff. But the domain knowledge

596
00:56:11.440 --> 00:56:16.960
is not really up to scratch. What we think is that take some of the best people from the business

597
00:56:16.960 --> 00:56:23.360
and put them in these functions for a while. The problem is then that you will take the best P&L

598
00:56:23.360 --> 00:56:27.600
producing capacity out of production for a while. So the business will scream you no don't don't

599
00:56:27.600 --> 00:56:32.800
take these guys they are the best. Are they going to be doing these powerpoints now? Yeah well what

600
00:56:32.800 --> 00:56:36.720
are you going to do then? Take the dumb people. Then you will certainly have a bad future. So you

601
00:56:36.720 --> 00:56:42.080
have to take the liberty and you need to celebrate these people. You say we have elevated these guys

602
00:56:42.080 --> 00:56:47.920
to here. Now after 5 years there knowledge their current knowledge about the business

603
00:56:47.920 --> 00:56:53.280
is now eroding after 5 years in the headquarters. So they send them back as colonels then now they

604
00:56:53.280 --> 00:56:57.520
are a colonel and they are a brigade commander or something like that. So they top up again in

605
00:56:57.520 --> 00:57:03.520
a different function on frontline expertise and then they are back and then they are back again

606
00:57:03.520 --> 00:57:09.760
maybe as a like jury was he was the commander of a brigade. So in peace time 3,500 soldiers and I've

607
00:57:09.760 --> 00:57:15.360
actually been invited to an artiller artillery drill out there. Very very impressive to see and

608
00:57:15.360 --> 00:57:21.120
if there would be war he would have 35,000. Um and now he's back in headquarters again. So if

609
00:57:21.120 --> 00:57:27.280
you look at the LinkedIn profiles of top brass you will see that they move in and out of the actual

610
00:57:27.280 --> 00:57:34.080
business. That doesn't happen in the corporates. We have lots to unpack there. I I I think I agree

611
00:57:34.080 --> 00:57:41.520
with you on the uh kind of no no need to build uh store current drones things. We need to

612
00:57:41.520 --> 00:57:46.560
build build the capacity to have a factories to build and the logistics to build it. So that's

613
00:57:46.560 --> 00:57:52.480
uh the then of course if Ukraine would decide to attack any European country, they would just wipe

614
00:57:52.480 --> 00:57:57.520
anything because they are by far the best army in the world at the moment with the modern uh drones.

615
00:57:57.520 --> 00:58:02.000
So then you would u maybe a little bit uh regret that you didn't have at least something to count

616
00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:07.600
to the drone waves but that's very very unlikely. Uh I think the aggressor is more more likely to

617
00:58:07.600 --> 00:58:13.520
come from uh renewed Russia. Um but then uh on the Finnish army uh I mean we have a conscription

618
00:58:13.520 --> 00:58:19.280
so so we actually have a meritocracy. So I have spoken with a lot of the um uh top brass as well

619
00:58:19.280 --> 00:58:25.920
and they I I think it's safe to say that if you have a salaried army they are run by more idiots

620
00:58:25.920 --> 00:58:31.520
because then you the pool of the uh you have there in the command channel is not meritocratic

621
00:58:31.520 --> 00:58:37.440
whilst in Finland we it's conscription so it's it builds up on on the best on the best of the best.

622
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:43.440
Of course you have kind of a top gun culture in America and like elite elite marines and stuff.

623
00:58:43.440 --> 00:58:49.840
So which is a which is a a separate uh subset of good but in a lot of the European countries

624
00:58:49.840 --> 00:58:56.240
that's not the case. You have a hopeless uh kind of a [snorts] salaried personnel. Nobody takes it

625
00:58:56.240 --> 00:59:02.480
seriously. There's no merit crisis. So Europe is very dangerously uh inefficient in the in the art

626
00:59:02.480 --> 00:59:09.760
of war. And in addition to that, you know, because so until like 30 years ago or so, the the enemy

627
00:59:09.760 --> 00:59:15.360
the whole purpose of the armies was to defend our own territory against a big AR sort of open field

628
00:59:15.360 --> 00:59:21.120
tank war against Russia. That was the purpose of the army. Then that threat sort of disappeared.

629
00:59:21.120 --> 00:59:25.200
Mhm. And then little by little people were like, well, do we really need all these? No, we don't.

630
00:59:25.200 --> 00:59:30.320
Sweden famously decided not to have it or much of it, but we needed something. And then what we

631
00:59:30.320 --> 00:59:34.880
did but there was no war nearby and Russia would become nice. So what do we need them for? Well,

632
00:59:34.880 --> 00:59:40.480
there are people in Afghanistan that need some Swedish soft power projected to them and teach

633
00:59:40.480 --> 00:59:44.080
them democracy and other things and also stop them immediately from killing each other right now,

634
00:59:44.080 --> 00:59:49.680
but in the long term they should become more sort of European. So we started to actually have we

635
00:59:49.680 --> 00:59:56.080
had an army not for the purpose or scale of war to defend the country now that way. Instead they were

636
00:59:56.080 --> 01:00:00.160
going to project the country's values somewhere else in the world. So you started to have desert

637
01:00:00.160 --> 01:00:06.400
camo and Swedish soldiers. That doesn't fly so well in the Swedish woods with this brown camo and

638
01:00:06.400 --> 01:00:12.160
so on. And the whole warfare is different and it's all about sort of keeping tribes apart talking to

639
01:00:12.160 --> 01:00:17.680
leaders semi- diplomacy. That's not what you read. You know, go ask Ukraine if they need that. No. So

640
01:00:17.680 --> 01:00:21.680
the whole purpose of the army, they were way too small and they were for the wrong purpose. And

641
01:00:21.680 --> 01:00:25.760
now we are stuck with that as a legacy problem. But there's one other interesting thing where I

642
01:00:25.760 --> 01:00:29.840
think that we can learn from this and the drone discussion is very interesting because I think

643
01:00:29.840 --> 01:00:35.600
there is a good parallel to to AI in the banks for example and probably many others too. So

644
01:00:35.600 --> 01:00:40.160
what I see as a consultant is that everyone is very keen on AI because it's so hot and we need

645
01:00:40.160 --> 01:00:44.080
to do it. The problem is that people don't know really exactly how to do it and the implementation

646
01:00:44.080 --> 01:00:48.560
problems are well known for yourself. Yes. So of course you know everything but uh you know

647
01:00:48.560 --> 01:00:55.280
me and the rest of the world are utly clueless but um the problem is that I think that people

648
01:00:55.280 --> 01:01:00.640
try to sort of showcase a lot what they can do. So they select certain they pour the resources

649
01:01:00.640 --> 01:01:05.840
into quite narrow use cases that become a little bit pointless. Maybe they look fancy there is a

650
01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:10.560
chatbot and so on that this customer service can speak to but the interesting thing is that

651
01:01:10.560 --> 01:01:16.480
you still have an enormous legacy stack of pro the processes that run right now. Mhm. And they will,

652
01:01:16.480 --> 01:01:20.560
whether you like it or not, persist for some years, maybe three, maybe 10, I believe many

653
01:01:20.560 --> 01:01:27.600
more than that. But the interesting, if you have a drone in the army context, you can send it up

654
01:01:27.600 --> 01:01:32.400
and you can drop a grenade on somebody, it will have very limited explosive power right there. And

655
01:01:32.400 --> 01:01:36.720
then it might kill one or two soldiers. So, and that's bad, of course, but that's one hell of an

656
01:01:36.720 --> 01:01:42.800
expensive bullet to send that $1,000 drone there. Then you have over here hundreds of old cannons

657
01:01:42.800 --> 01:01:49.440
from 1970 with an unlimited supply of really old crappy shells and they are a little bit inaccurate

658
01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:54.480
and uh but if you use that drone to send it up, take a photo, go down and automatic communicate

659
01:01:54.480 --> 01:02:01.120
with all these guns so that all of the So if that little drone is used not to consume itself but

660
01:02:01.120 --> 01:02:08.800
instead to elevate the enormous amount of legacy material you have by even 2%. that fighting power

661
01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:14.400
increase of the drone becomes dramatically bigger. So use the drone strategically for enhancing the

662
01:02:14.400 --> 01:02:20.400
val value of the existing enormous amount of legacy. That's what our general said to us that

663
01:02:20.400 --> 01:02:24.640
is sort of a better way to use the drones in that sense. And when I think of it as a banker rather

664
01:02:24.640 --> 01:02:30.160
than to create yet another uh AIdriven chatbot that nobody wants to speak to look how AI can

665
01:02:30.160 --> 01:02:36.400
enhance all the processes in the lending how to do credit decisioning better all the existing things

666
01:02:36.400 --> 01:02:43.040
you should apply AI to lift the value of all of that I think is how the value of AI would become

667
01:02:43.040 --> 01:02:50.000
higher fast yeah and uh we had a little bit of a discussion on the AI dystopia and I think since

668
01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:56.960
I'm so frankly good user of AI I have several AI workers who are very good high quality and I

669
01:02:56.960 --> 01:03:05.680
can actually delegate them tasks not not as task lists and uh just uh actually enhance the my my

670
01:03:05.680 --> 01:03:12.720
uh day-to-day uh work skills. Um for example, this morning I had a weekly report on the EU

671
01:03:12.720 --> 01:03:20.880
um AI act. So it will scan all the legislative changes and uh it will make a uh um markup uh

672
01:03:20.880 --> 01:03:26.240
changes to the uh policy of Translink in like you should edit this based on this because this

673
01:03:26.240 --> 01:03:32.480
is the findings on the EU negotiation process and and the compass program. So it's very relatively

674
01:03:32.480 --> 01:03:39.920
easy for me to do that kind of a uh persistent uh jobs here there and everywhere and uh scan various

675
01:03:39.920 --> 01:03:47.760
um uh industries and uh opportunities stock picking global changes uh so and then of course

676
01:03:47.760 --> 01:03:54.560
you can do like what you in your example the one drone did for the Finnish artillery so you will

677
01:03:54.560 --> 01:04:00.160
have a infinite chain of agents enhancing all kinds of things and it's only a matter

678
01:04:00.160 --> 01:04:05.040
of the imagination of what I have and then the quality of the tools that I put in place that you

679
01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:11.600
can take. [snorts] And now we come to the kind of the uh dystopia discussion. Now Elaine, you

680
01:04:11.600 --> 01:04:20.000
you've been writing uh fiction and now non-fiction and uh about the need for lava and harleen type of

681
01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:27.600
books. I mean will there be kind of a something left for the us humans to do in the age of AI?

682
01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:33.840
Yes, we will still fall in love. We will still look into another person's eyes and feel the world

683
01:04:33.840 --> 01:04:41.280
move. That is going to go on. And we are at heart. We are all creatives. And I believe there's going

684
01:04:41.280 --> 01:04:47.920
to be a [clears throat] not a not a back what is that backlash. Not that a circling around back to

685
01:04:47.920 --> 01:04:52.960
realizing that we really want authenticity and we will learn to recognize that and appreciate

686
01:04:52.960 --> 01:04:57.280
it which we have not for many decades. we've just sped up the world and sped it up and so

687
01:04:57.280 --> 01:05:01.920
that we can't even enjoy success for more than a millisecond and I was talking to Eric about

688
01:05:01.920 --> 01:05:08.240
that today that he is [clears throat] such a fast learner and operator that and he succeeds moment

689
01:05:08.240 --> 01:05:14.800
by moment [clears throat] excuse me but he doesn't take time to just wow I succeeded with that and I

690
01:05:14.800 --> 01:05:21.040
think all of us as humanity are going to relearn that skill and and that's why personally I prefer

691
01:05:21.040 --> 01:05:28.320
to write myself I don't use those tools I probably will in admin situations as our publishing company

692
01:05:28.320 --> 01:05:35.040
grows. But for writing that that is my truest joy to be able to elevate out of this the mundane into

693
01:05:35.040 --> 01:05:42.560
a kind of time space or a timelessness which Kalista is uh given the opportunity to do as as

694
01:05:42.560 --> 01:05:49.680
she manages her heroes journey. Yeah. I think one thing uh what I learned on my hero's journey on

695
01:05:49.680 --> 01:05:55.520
the AI is that uh in last December like many many many times ago in ancient time when people didn't

696
01:05:55.520 --> 01:06:01.840
know anything about AI in December 2025 I started building my second brain so my thinking was that

697
01:06:01.840 --> 01:06:07.840
then I needed like a better notebook so I'll put important things like I store them and then then

698
01:06:07.840 --> 01:06:13.520
I use the AI to enhance them but it was more like a replicating my knowledge base and my situations

699
01:06:13.520 --> 01:06:21.200
but uh now this here um more and more I'm uh leaning on these AI workers which don't do that

700
01:06:21.200 --> 01:06:28.880
they have their own memory very uh well curated and own learning systems but they still lean on me

701
01:06:28.880 --> 01:06:36.400
for like the like the base truth so so important things I I I teach them like I would for kids like

702
01:06:36.400 --> 01:06:44.240
this is this is base truth uh keep this in as a sort of a in your mind unless I I I learn better

703
01:06:44.240 --> 01:06:49.840
the truths And once you do that persistently over time, use them to sort of explore the world on

704
01:06:49.840 --> 01:06:54.960
your task and improve their own tasks and and uh and anchor their like a base through to my

705
01:06:54.960 --> 01:07:00.240
thinking. Then it becomes quite a beautiful system and it's a better than you and it's definitely

706
01:07:00.240 --> 01:07:06.400
better than the just the AI. Yeah. It's it's a system. Yes. Yes. Learning better truths as you

707
01:07:06.400 --> 01:07:12.560
go along. That's fabulous. a really spiral rise to infinity and and then this this will change like

708
01:07:12.560 --> 01:07:18.720
what Eric was saying about the uh droids or or the or the military power or competencies. You got

709
01:07:18.720 --> 01:07:25.360
to have a legacy truths and but then you can like reframe them and uh use the even the old stuff in

710
01:07:25.360 --> 01:07:31.040
a better way and more efficient way and uh it's a system. So I'm building a system of human AI

711
01:07:31.040 --> 01:07:38.000
intelligence. So I I think that's maybe something where the our hero Kalista could join. Maybe she

712
01:07:38.000 --> 01:07:44.720
could meet or her her kid could meet AI and start this journey from the from the beginning. Well,

713
01:07:44.720 --> 01:07:50.160
we do plan to have sequels on Kalista because she's just beginning. Yes. Yes. I think there

714
01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:53.840
there's one interesting thing with that as a final note on the military. There's one very

715
01:07:53.840 --> 01:07:58.000
key difference between the military and all other organizations and that is that military

716
01:07:58.000 --> 01:08:03.040
can never recruit other than graduates. They can only take graduates then they can never recruit

717
01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:07.520
more to tell that what you know you cannot go oh [ __ ] we have some bad colonels let's hire

718
01:08:07.520 --> 01:08:13.760
some from some other army no but corporates do it all the time so you know go tell you know I

719
01:08:13.760 --> 01:08:18.400
don't know so take and take Microsoft whatever the highest HR person in Microsoft and tell

720
01:08:18.400 --> 01:08:24.080
them as of now you can only regra graduate fresh graduates is the only recarious you can ever do

721
01:08:24.080 --> 01:08:30.560
forever I think a couple of things would change with a the how many they hire and b how well

722
01:08:30.560 --> 01:08:36.400
they train them and then how much you invest in your people now that failure becomes so costly.

723
01:08:36.400 --> 01:08:39.040
I think you know I don't have a good answer to that. I just think it's a very interesting

724
01:08:39.040 --> 01:08:44.160
observation. Uh one more point that I would like to make which I think is very interesting is the

725
01:08:44.160 --> 01:08:48.480
optimal rate of change that we have introduced here in the white paper that we talk about here.

726
01:08:48.480 --> 01:08:53.840
So for for anybody with finance background you will have an in the portfolio theory there will

727
01:08:53.840 --> 01:08:59.600
be an efficient frontier where you have you can choose between this this possible return with that

728
01:08:59.600 --> 01:09:06.000
volatility and you are indifferent between sort of that and other combinations of risk and volatility

729
01:09:06.000 --> 01:09:11.920
or volatility and return that you are indifferent with. So something similar applies and that's

730
01:09:11.920 --> 01:09:17.440
thinking we took down to change management. So the thing is the following society will move at some

731
01:09:17.440 --> 01:09:21.520
sort of pace that would be in the in the portfolio theory of finance that would basically be the

732
01:09:21.520 --> 01:09:26.160
risk-free return of the government sort of the base rate that you can get risk-f free and that's

733
01:09:26.160 --> 01:09:31.680
society's rate of change. So if you move slower than society that might work for a tiny while but

734
01:09:31.680 --> 01:09:35.520
pretty soon you will basically be out of business because there are so many better alternatives. So

735
01:09:35.520 --> 01:09:40.160
that is the minimum level of speed you need to have and that you can have without causing much

736
01:09:40.160 --> 01:09:44.640
trauma to the organization. you got hey guys we need to move as fast as society people will go

737
01:09:44.640 --> 01:09:49.920
yeah that sounds smart let's do it and then you don't have to fire anybody you just do stuff the

738
01:09:49.920 --> 01:09:54.160
problem is that most people have a higher ambition level than that and that's how development happens

739
01:09:54.160 --> 01:10:00.160
so then the big bosses will say we need faster because we need to outperform the competition so

740
01:10:00.160 --> 01:10:05.040
we need to move faster than the average and that's when you need to start to put some pressure on

741
01:10:05.040 --> 01:10:11.200
organization somebody is going to feel squeezed uh and eventually you can push so hard that everyone

742
01:10:11.200 --> 01:10:16.960
burns out. You can put so high change pace that every single person burns out. That's not good

743
01:10:16.960 --> 01:10:22.320
either. But you need to find that balance between the speed and the side effect. So you know that

744
01:10:22.320 --> 01:10:29.680
we have come sometimes when you explain explain complex uh concepts the easiest is to take a super

745
01:10:29.680 --> 01:10:34.720
mundane example and I usually take an omeolet. If you are going to do an omelette you have to break

746
01:10:34.720 --> 01:10:40.400
the eggs. We all get that. So that's the minimum sort of drama otherwise there is no omeolet the

747
01:10:40.400 --> 01:10:45.600
but you can do an omeolet without breaking the eggs killing the chicken setting fire to the farm

748
01:10:45.600 --> 01:10:52.400
and kill the farmer you don't need all that to do an omeolet so the question is what is the right

749
01:10:52.400 --> 01:10:57.680
balance how much sort of side effects are you willing to do and I think that what there comes

750
01:10:57.680 --> 01:11:04.560
the problem in the risk averse businesses such as banking that the the good choice for the senior

751
01:11:04.560 --> 01:11:10.320
management is to oh I get paid a million euros a year for this job. Another four years and I'm

752
01:11:10.320 --> 01:11:16.560
done. Whoa. Um the and a big change program will be an 8-year thing and they are the big change

753
01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:21.920
programs core banking system changes are sort of 8 10 years or more and all the costs are frontloaded

754
01:11:21.920 --> 01:11:26.320
and all the benefits are far loaded. So you end up in a situation and then thinking about the

755
01:11:26.320 --> 01:11:33.120
average time of a CEO is around 4.7 years. Same with the board member. So now if you start if

756
01:11:33.120 --> 01:11:36.960
you're a new board member or if you're a new CEO it will take a year to figure out what to do and

757
01:11:36.960 --> 01:11:42.000
you likely now have three and a half years left in the job and then your choices are hm should I

758
01:11:42.000 --> 01:11:46.720
kick the can down the road and things kind of work and it won't be my fault and I don't rock the boat

759
01:11:46.720 --> 01:11:52.880
and there are no big costs here and things work and I get paid lots of money per year or should

760
01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:58.480
I launch this massive transformation product for for the benefit of the future and I have three and

761
01:11:58.480 --> 01:12:03.120
a half years left and all the costs with and in that three and a half years and then the benefits

762
01:12:03.120 --> 01:12:07.120
will land with the next guy if it goes right if it goes wrong it will go wrong faster and it will be

763
01:12:07.120 --> 01:12:11.280
my fault. M it's a very easy decision to decide to kick the car down the road then and sort of

764
01:12:11.280 --> 01:12:16.000
and that's why a lot of these things don't happen because people don't have the long the benefit the

765
01:12:16.000 --> 01:12:21.200
the incentives are not in favor of supporting the long-term transformational bets and I think that

766
01:12:21.200 --> 01:12:26.240
people need to when they set out on big change journeys they need to have this discussion that

767
01:12:26.240 --> 01:12:30.800
if we're going to push change fast how much side effects are we willing to take because right now

768
01:12:30.800 --> 01:12:36.400
that is sort of an unpleasant discussion we you know and I have done many big change journeys

769
01:12:36.400 --> 01:12:42.160
myself I have I been given a number of failed teams that I've had to clean up. H and the bosses

770
01:12:42.160 --> 01:12:47.200
all just said, they send you out like this. Hey, Eric, fix this team is broken. Fix it. I'm like,

771
01:12:47.200 --> 01:12:53.120
okay, I'll do it, but don't make them angry. Okay, I will try. And then a year goes and I go,

772
01:12:53.120 --> 01:12:58.000
I have to suck this and these guys cuz they refuse and they reject and they stop all the

773
01:12:58.000 --> 01:13:02.480
people that want to make progress. So, I'm going to have to suck them. So, I'll do it. So, I do it.

774
01:13:02.480 --> 01:13:06.160
And then they there is havoc in the Nordic. You know, it's very difficult to suck people in the

775
01:13:06.160 --> 01:13:10.960
Nordics. So, you're not even allowed. I've been in organizations where you're not even allowed to use

776
01:13:10.960 --> 01:13:15.440
the sword. They said, "Eric, you know, you be you were calling to me and said, Eric, you you said

777
01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:20.000
you suggested that some people might lose their jobs." I'm like, "Yeah, of course." That we don't

778
01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:24.640
talk like that in this organization. And guess what? A year later, they had to sack 20%. Sure.

779
01:13:24.640 --> 01:13:31.840
Yeah. I mean, that's a good analogies there. I'm a finance uh man myself on the efficient frontier.

780
01:13:31.840 --> 01:13:37.760
So you have a risk-free rate and then the uh very risky business with high beta but you still

781
01:13:37.760 --> 01:13:44.560
kind of make a first as a investor or or company your choice in what kind of risk level uh versus

782
01:13:44.560 --> 01:13:49.200
risk-free return you want to take what kind of a base volatility you're willing to accept and you

783
01:13:49.200 --> 01:13:55.760
can pick a safe uh uh regulated um infrastructure business where you have leisfolio yeah or

784
01:13:55.760 --> 01:14:02.240
portfolio or then you can go all in in some sort of a really uh distributive uh new technology And

785
01:14:02.240 --> 01:14:08.240
but then I think the Finnish society has um and that's I know that's the oet hate in in

786
01:14:08.240 --> 01:14:15.280
Finland. I mean uh is that the whole society has built all kinds of ways to kill the volatility

787
01:14:15.280 --> 01:14:22.320
and for example the options we killed options with the taxation. So they become completely

788
01:14:22.320 --> 01:14:28.080
unusable in Finland. Now this u right-wing gun has actually reintroduced them. So, so we now

789
01:14:28.080 --> 01:14:34.880
can use options again to because those will be the tools that can be uh create the help the CEO

790
01:14:34.880 --> 01:14:41.920
to take the risk beyond his like a three four year uh short-term risk-taking uh timetable and uh get

791
01:14:41.920 --> 01:14:48.880
some benefit from the uh transformative journey he or she has taken in in her time of office by

792
01:14:48.880 --> 01:14:55.440
cashing on the options and and then uh but we we we as a society we have been very much focused on

793
01:14:55.440 --> 01:15:01.360
like killing risk everywhere and that's why we are slowly being killed in the Finnish economy. Yeah,

794
01:15:01.360 --> 01:15:05.600
you have your Europe's highest unemployment of 10 and a half% and you know as a foreigner here

795
01:15:05.600 --> 01:15:10.160
having lived in eight or seven countries I lived first in Sweden then I lived in Norway then in

796
01:15:10.160 --> 01:15:13.840
Germany then in Switzerland and then in England selling to all the Nordics from England for six

797
01:15:13.840 --> 01:15:18.640
years then I lived in Denmark, Sweden and Finland again. So I have actually and I have four kids all

798
01:15:18.640 --> 01:15:22.560
born in different countries. One in London, one in Copenhagen, one in Sweden and one in Finland.

799
01:15:22.560 --> 01:15:26.480
I actually I'm one of the few people that can have an opinion because I have seen the alternatives

800
01:15:26.480 --> 01:15:30.400
and I am not surprised you have the highest unemployment in Europe given the extreme risk

801
01:15:30.400 --> 01:15:37.440
aversion that people have. Yeah. And that's why we I I now it feels this government even if it's just

802
01:15:37.440 --> 01:15:43.920
moved slowly [snorts] uh it's still changing those kind of fundamental structural problems

803
01:15:43.920 --> 01:15:49.920
uh they've been kind of the the negative legacy of of Finland. But uh let's not take it too much in

804
01:15:49.920 --> 01:15:54.640
the politics. I I think the important thing is we we change the society by changing the people and

805
01:15:54.640 --> 01:16:01.040
and the companies and uh this book Galistister's paradox uh is excellent way to achieve that almost

806
01:16:01.040 --> 01:16:11.040
like a handbook on that. So thank you um uh for your visit Eric uh Okason and Delane Sterling. Um

807
01:16:11.040 --> 01:16:18.400
I propose we have a short uh discussion on the inside channel. Uh and I propose we pick two

808
01:16:18.400 --> 01:16:24.480
completely different topics. uh one from Ela we talk more about the uh improvisation and the art

809
01:16:24.480 --> 01:16:30.160
of writing dramatic writing and Eric I think we should talk about the London city and the

810
01:16:30.160 --> 01:16:37.280
city boys London scene thank no we will spare that but as a reminder Finland is the world

811
01:16:37.280 --> 01:16:44.720
champion in ISO once again matsunden [laughter] matsund okay thank you guys thank you thank