Spill the Tea with Monica (2021 #GetChatty Series)

Monica Tan Jurin is an academic and professional executive with fabulous insights in innovation, interdisciplinary thinking and corporate governance. She also taught many students with her unique work-integrated & real-world-centric methods, which I wish my lecturers had done that for me when I was in uni.

In this episode, Monica and I chatted about:

• How our cultural and gender identities played into our mental well-being
• Ways that being Asian become somewhat tricky when it comes to finding the right way and right help
• The importance of lifting each other up, especially in workplaces, and do it mindfully

Transcript (from 00:22):
We just watched a very interesting video about Japanese TV shows. They have reaction videos called “wipe” on the corner of the screen showing people reacting.
What do you think after watching that video?
I must say that I kind of grew up with it, in Malaysia we watch a lot of Asian channels and it’s very common for us, to have that little box and watch different reactions at the same time. It’s entertaining because you can get different dimensions, sometimes it’s the actors or the entertainers looking at themselves, it is actually quite funny. I don’t think I’ve seen that quite common in Western entertainment shows… I think that have been replaced by youtube reaction videos, I think that’s how they’re west adapted…
I mean, that would probably help that Japanese channel quite a bit… one of my favourite shows on tv is Gogglebox which is very strange – you’re watching people reacting to tv shows that they watch… but it’s very entertaining, watching people like us watching tv shows.
It’s like (the movie) Inception, it can be funny and disturbing at the same time because it’s like instructing people how to react… I don’t like when I’m watching a sitcom and there’s a laughing track, “what, I must just laugh now?” When I was in the U.S., I attended one with my friend and I asked him “why is that guy holding up that board and say “applause”?” “oh, this is for us…” (to do exactly what the board says)…
Even for our generation or the younger – we grew up in the media culture that, there’s someone tell you how you should feel, and this is not a good idea. I found myself most comfortable when I get to express myself the way it is…
The thing is, I think, those laughing tracks, the applause or the wipe helped me enhance my experience or see my favourite celebrity dropping by, that would be great – as long as it is not instructing me how to feel. I need to know how I really feel otherwise I’ll be in a really bad mental state- many men don’t express themselves, if I have a bad feeling that keeping it in just like… have you ever want to vomit but then you keep that in, and you come up even nastier…

When i was doing my PhD, there was a period of time there’s too much stress inside, being Asian growing up, we are expected to manage it internally. Asian people don’t express too much of how they feel, how they think or whether they’re happy or not. Then there are hierarchical constraints, like whom you can talk and that sort of thing.
you are just trying to manage it yourself. You may talk to your friends, but sometimes you question would they understand and believe me? When you’re doing PhD, you don’t actually have many friends.

I started to bottle up… in Asian cultures it’s something that needs to be done in a very controlled manner – you shouldn’t have an explosion or, you shouldn’t have exaggerated ways of expressing yourself. One thing I never knew is why is the stigma that Asian people think? “If you go and see a counsellor you’re weak” “can’t manage yourself?” “You have to go and talk to a stranger, what’s wrong with you?” But I did, I went and I’m glad that I did. I saw the counsellor at the university. I sat down I said “I don’t know what is going on?! I’m so stressed, I think I cannot do this anymore.” and she’s like “…hmm this is called volcanic syndrome…” It’s like you something’s boiling inside and it’s building up the pressure, one day when you can’t cope with it & can’t put the lid on anymore – explosion…..
She’s like, here’s a little exercise i want you to do take it home – and this is a CD-ROM (ok, that’s how over old I am), there’s a very calming voice instructing how to meditate… It was a very simple exercise which I use until today and with some of my students. I said to them, “that is something really important, I’m glad you bring it up.” We shouldn’t be ashamed of it, you know and we should find our own way. (It’s not without hurdles to get there…) If I explode around my colleagues all the time, they would be like “What’s wrong with her?” I think when the explosion happens, that’s really when we haven’t found a way to express, manage our feelings & emotions. I’ve been through times in the past, where I bottled up too much and then it just went really bad – afterwards I thought “why did I do that?”.

Transcript (from 10:20):
It’s interesting that you mentioned the cultural influence in that because (in the last episode) we talked about growing out of our past & constructs that we were expected of. I mentioned in my early to mid-20s I rocketed myself away from what I was expected of. During my school time, I spent a lot of time within the Asian community, I don’t think it was ill-intended advice, but looking back, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t take those up. This is like diarrhea if you don’t even let it out when you’re on the toilet… seriously? you don’t do that! … I’m never ashamed of admitting that I have my mental health care plan organised, I am talking to a psychologist because I know that my life and my identity is complex, and that would affect how I personally expecting and interacting with the world – That’s why I think it’s a good thing. There are people who not only think that it’s weak, some even use it against me, but I know then those people are just should not be in my orbit with. Frankly, if someone in the workplace does that, they can get sued; if someone in my social circle does that, I’ll just know that these people are not my friend.
You know it might be a little bit heavy, but I think we just need to be mindful that – it’s true – someone’s cultural experience or cultural background would have something to do with how they deal with what they feel; as long as you don’t tell me how I’d feel – I can figure out how and then work with it, and then make it work for me
Maybe I’ll just use this video as an opportunity, to talk to anyone – no matter who you are, sometimes you’d let yourself feel bad and you don’t need to feel fantastic every single day.
Have you seen those horror movies? Like there are people “haha… having such a great time (and then smiling but they were tear coming out of their eyes)” that kind of thing…

Transcript (from 13:40):
someone related to me (is) against the idea of getting a psychologist and their theory is that (mental health care professionals) just want your money
Then I was like “well, imagine the shit that they have to hear every single day, five days a week, sometimes six days a week – they kind of deserve the money!
yeah, that’s right. I have heard some really bad ones but we must respect that profession. They are trained and they have methods to help people, of course, if you go to one and it doesn’t work for you – you seek a second opinion. Just like any other medical advice.
(don’t think that) if you go there, then you are not managing it yourself & you are not a strong person.
I have a very good friend and she was struggling to complete her PhD, she had given birth to a baby. Having a baby is stressful and on top of that, you have to finish your PhD, imagine that kind of pressure!
ah, they were so tough you know the person is trying to manage and seeking support (she’s from an Asian family) and she was crying. And I said, “okay, if I don’t give up maybe, I go take medication, I see a doctor”
she would come to me and cry I said, “look you take the medication if you think it helps you for this period of time because you can’t find any other way to manage this – choose not to give up your PhD” and I told her you’re so close, you only need three months
okay three months later, she managed and graduated with a PhD.
but that kind of pressure you can imagine you know it’s not just the stress and the pressure itself – it’s a people who have ways of their own thinking about how you should manage.
I must tell you that as an Asian woman, it’s not easy because we are brought up in that way that we should listen to advice by people who are older than us our family members, they care about us we should listen to their advice.

Transcript (from 17:55):
In one of my classes, I asked my students “foresee yourself in 10 years time – where would you be what would you be doing ? and they would type up a little survey about what they think they’d become in 10 years, and all my students in that class were Asian, (about) half of the class are female the other half are male.
male students were like “i’ll be doing AI”, “i’ll start my own business”; the female students “i will keep studying and i’ll build up my confidence” and one would become an accountant professional and keep learning. That was so obvious that Asian girls growing up taking too much advice, looking for too many instructions.
it’s a combination of culture and gender. On the gender notes, I just want to break it down with you. I don’t know if you’ve seen something similar – in the workplace, if there’s a male who has an idea like 40% or 50%, they will push it out there like they can do it even they are horrible at their job; but then, there are so many women that they are really talented, they know what they’re doing, they may be 90% 95% of something, but they want to wait until it’s perfect to put it out there. There are female colleagues that I used to work with that I’ll be like just “give it a go girlfriend” “you can do it” (Some may be a) bit more than their male counterparts to be honest. I’m not shit-talking the male in the workplace but it’s like a pattern?
I can also see it’s so tricky to get yourself away from it.
Sometimes that we might have the idea of “I’m abandoning my family or people that are advising me.” I can only speak for myself, but I take the advice I keep as advisement. I filter it – it may or may not fit me, and sometimes there’s something that doesn’t fit me now, may fit me in the future or the other way around.
I always try to tell myself to believe these people who gave me advice or ideas were well-intended, but I have to filter them out, it took me so long.
You have to make your own decision
I must admit that it took me such a long time to learn it, I’ve gone through really difficult times in my early to mid-twenties; it was really painful but um I’m so glad that I did… it’s so weird, isn’t it?!

Transcript (from 22:00):
10 years ago, a friend sent these random emails, says “If you have you heard of midlife-crisis – maybe you haven’t heard of a quarter-life crisis?” I’m like what’s that quarter-life crisis?
You were so confused, everyone’s trying to give you advice, you are told to do things in a certain way, express yourself in a certain way… You are struggling to find your own way of doing things. it is tough.
I must admit, same as you it was a confusing period. In the late 20s, you would think that’s the best time of your life… so young, you’re single, money to spend whatever but it’s just so confusing; (and on top of them there’s) gender, culture and everything spinning around you – so exhausting.
Now I feel much more settled. I know the way I deal with things, sometimes my mom said she doesn’t like it, but I’d say “well it’s me”
Quarter-life crisis is actually quite tricky because, for many people, there’s also a deadline of 30… you’re confused but you also have a deadline, that’s usually that’s how you fuck things up.
Audience in their 20s who’s going through the quality life crisis, I would put it this way: think about your high school exam – it’s the same with 30s (deadline), once you pass this, it’s like “Oh … that’s it?” There’s a lot more in life after that and in this day and age, I’m happy to tell people that I’m in my 30s. I made my mistakes but I’m glad that I went through that really tricky period, (and learnt) to look after my well-being and my mental health and etc

Transcript (from 24:54):
It’s 2021 and it’s finally good for people to talk about their feelings, finding tools to help them like you mentioned, going to see a counsellor, learn to meditate meditation; for me, I use my mental health care plan, talk to a psychologist.
I don’t want that to be a burden for my friends
and they may not know how to help you
maybe they’re going through something similar themselves
all of us have our biases, we are not perfect. We know we still have plenty to work on ourselves, but i think something like this series would be good for people to share experiences and be open about who they are and what they’re going through.
Just a quick reminder: we’re in the 2020s and it’s finally good and okay – it’s empowering for people to talk about how they’re feeling, how it is affecting them and learn the tools to deal with it.

Transcript (from 27:00):
At work, some men are generally more risk-taking and they’re happy to share their ideas even if it’s half cooked…
in the meeting room there are men like them, whom would agree to pursue with; but if women do that they would have been scrutinized more…. we should actually acknowledge the difference –
whatever the difference is, hear them out. Don’t put your own biases on, just listen actively,maybe there’s something good….
On the flip side after men are also less likely to share their feelings … reports said the suicidal rate is higher among men than women. As women are more open to share with their peers; men on the other hand, don’t do it enough – they may not acknowledge they have a problem or they were taught by the parents “you are strong” “boys don’t cry”. We should help bridge the differences and bring everyone together and say it’s okay to talk about it.
To have the courage to talk about something is actually not being weak – it’s strength

diversity can actually bring organizations or businesses more profit because it gives them more angles, in my opinion, this is an opportunity to lift people up especially the workplace. We can lift up other male identifying individuals to be open about how they feel to achieve a better mental health; for female identified people to empower them to voice out their ideas opinions and collaborate…
hopefully that would attract a community of people that we would lift each other up because if we find a way to lift each other up, surround yourself with your tribe, and surround yourself with people that means well but at the same time you know like you know you know where the boundaries are but then at the same time you know what’s going on. Just work with what you got uh and also be open to improve yourself and be vulnerable and just say “hey i’m having a bad day” or “hey i’m actually going through some trouble right now” or “hey i have an idea let’s talk about it”…

Talking about it may not lead to any action however you you make people aware of the issues. I must say it’s not easy for other people who listen to the issues they may not have the solutions or they may actually take a long time to realize the extent of the issues, or the complexity, the depth of it
When you talk about something to someone expect that that person can immediately bounce some ideas back and go oh okay this is what we’re going to do and i’m going to help you with this it may not happen that way sometimes it happen that way which is good but if it doesn’t happen that way we should not hold others accounts for not responding
because issues are complex. If you are if you are not the one who is going through the issues, it is even more complex right they may not understand the depth of this and they may not understand what actually causes it or a combination of things
both ways we actually need to acknowledge uh each other’s roles in the sharing of and managing the issues that we have
we do be careful with the person that listening to because for example if they’re just our friends or colleagues or our boss or whatever – they may be going through something themselves that they haven’t told us. That’s why that genuine conversation that having that genuine friendship to develop that with your friends or family or colleagues or just your social circle is very important
well look at me let’s put it this way it’s like a high fiber meal that some people digest quickly some people take a long time to digest
that’s right if you talk to my husband it will take a long time to digest ?

SME Chat with Lucas (2021 #GetChatty Series)

Lucas Merlo is the Founder and Principal Mentor at NewLedge. Lucas invented the NewLedge-Framework and CDI methodology (Capability-driven Innovation) during his PhD at RMIT and the CSIRO, to fill the transformation gap between ideas, innovations and new measurable values.

This episode was inspired by Lucas’s recent article What is knowledge? we went deeper into the concept of Creative Destruction, caused by clever industry reporting methods and gaps between data and knowledge.

In this conversation, Lucas and I discussed:

• how failed business can become part of stats that attract others to go into an industry
• some tips on how a SME owner-operator can use what they know to navigate
• the importance in constantly seeking to innovate but not to rely on using novelty or mystique as points of difference

In the months since the production of this episode, Lucas launched a special program NewLedge for STEM, to mentor upcoming/recent graduates to find their own paths.

If you’re interested in watching our previous chat about What is Knowledge, which inspired this episode, please head over to Spill the Tea about Knowledge. SME Chat with Lucas episode 4

Transcript (00:17):
Something called creative destruction – Lucas, do you mind expanding the topic a little bit?
Yeah, so when you hear the saying that “you innovate or die”, so it is true. We know that if you’re incrementally improving on your existing products, you’ll only have a finite lifespan. So technology and everything happens in waves and patterns, and more innovative companies come along and they destroy. They destroy the old firms who aren’t innovating and that’s what’s called creative destruction. So it’s a natural process that that happens in the market where the more innovative dynamic disruptive companies come in, and then they wipe out the old companies. You think about companies in the case studies, like Kodak and Nokia.
Creative destruction is really interesting because it is actually good for the economy and this goes back to why the government, the federal government, doesn’t actually pick individual winners/firms, they pick industries that we’re going to put our funds into because even a failing company is spending money.
It’s very interesting – imagine that someone who would enter the market of being an entrepreneur, maybe have developed something based on what is existing, but then turns out that actually is towards the end of the cycle for that particular way of operating. Although they will be destroyed (and become) part of this creative destruction, but of course that they would contribute to whatever sector’s contribution to the GPD.

When you look at how our gross domestic products are made up – a lot of it is consumption. That’s why they always say that recessions are caused when people panic and start to hide their money under the bed. Because the consumption expenditure goes down, there are two ways to look at it: one of the ways would be, to actually evaluate opportunities before giving funding to make sure that you know our investments are well spent. The problem is, if you’ve got a two-headed coin, you’ve got a 50/50 odds of correctly predicting an outcome – what that means is, sometimes, and this is actually proven in venture capital sector, sometimes they’re better off guessing – because it’s really hard to predict a winning company so the government doesn’t even try. If you look at CSIRO you look at innovations connections, if you’re in a particular industry and you’ve got the money to spend on doing R&D with a university, they’ll fill out your application form, they’re that desperate to play ball with universities so they’ll fill out your application form and they’re not going to evaluate the likelihood of success of your product or service, all they care about is you’ve been in business for a certain amount of years, overall companies got revenue to spend, and then let’s go.
The problem is it’s not actually predicting the winner that’s important, it’s the process of going through evaluating an opportunity, and I know this myself – Next week, I’m doing a business plan again for Newledge – people say “business plans, why would you bother?” but that process of stepping through your thoughts sequentially is what matters.

Transcript (04:28):
What I like about is that you have a 360 approach.
You encourage critical thinking, I felt that it could be a generational thing that critical thinking or just spending a little bit of time to evaluate, “is it going to work?” or “is it something that would make sense?” might have lost over the past years.
Exactly and one of the reasons is, we’re very cautious of giving criticism because society will jump on us and say that you’re cancelled. Now it’s like “whatever you want to be”, “you can be right” but that’s just bullshit because we know that the failure rates and the market doesn’t care and the market is not kind.
The market just cares about the end goal the performance can you outcompete, can you get the job done better cheaper or both.
Plenty of people go into business thinking and particularly the first time, thinking that I have a right to succeed you know because “I believe in what I’m doing” and it’s very problematic.
For example, millennials like myself, there’s a lot about side hustles or starting your own businesses and sometimes, because we are passionate about what we’re doing – we, unfortunately, would turn a blind eye about things that might not be the best approach. The reason I said that is because, at the beginning of my career, I work with a lot of like artists, art galleries, festivals and etc.
Good example industry
They have a great level of optimism and which I admire and I am inspired by them. However, one of the conversations that really stuck with me was almost more than 10 years ago – They were saying like “oh the Australian Council of Art reported the past financial year, there’s 10 billion GDP came through the creative art industry”, and then I asked them how many of them also include theatre, concert and music; and how many of them are actually like circulating in the visual art sector? which is where my client was. I guess it ended up becoming quite a heartbreaking conversation to them – the thing is for me because I don’t want to see them not knowing what they’re getting into. If you know what you’re going into and you still make that decision, fine go for it; at least make an informed decision – just imagine how many failed art studios out there or artists in a really bad financial position – but then they are still part of the GDP.

The thing is, when you’re starting a business, the saying is “friends, family and fools”, that’s your first source of support. And (many) fail once that runs out before you try and go the next step, but the thing is that majority of businesses that start out there, will only end up (if they’re successful) creating a job for themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you realize that that’s the expectation you should have.
Starting a company – if you’re giving up your old 9-to-5 job and you’re creating yourself a job – that’s what the majority do. To the niche leaders, that’s a huge leap/step and there’s no way that that’s going to happen easily. We see Facebook, Canva and Atlassian, those guys & girls have done so much hard work in the background to get to where they are, none of them just rolled out a napkin and came up with the business idea and said “let’s go!”
well, they might say that on their press releases
exactly! because that’s what sells!
I think it’s important to have a dream. For me I started my business working with a lot of friends, families and not fools, (but they said yes to a nut job like me, so hmm…). I think for me, building the right image, at the same time, getting the right referrals from satisfying clients – it should be 50% of my promotion effort; the other 50% would be advertising and such as. I know some people would put like 70% or 90% on the advertising, but for me, because I’m a content person, so ultimately having the right repertoire and having the right image, would actually make it easier – People would say “oh, I like working with Arthur, maybe my friend would like him too…”
and that’s actually that’s how I managed to survive.
Think about that, yours is a good example: you know what your core capabilities are, you know what you’re good at, and then you also have a point of difference in your brand. You stand out to other people, that’s enough. You wouldn’t need to do too much if you can pick one or two things that you do better than the majority of the market out there, that’s where you start your business. We all get influenced by what we all want, I’m shocked at this – I always want to do too much and I constantly have to reign it in and go, “well, this is the part that I can do better than other people in the market – this is where I have to focus”

Transcript (12:33):
… The other thing is, a lot of international students came from backgrounds that are not being empowered to think critically or just don’t ask questions.
Yeah and well that’s it’s difficult for them
That’s why I’m kind of circling back to our original topic – the article you wrote What is Knowledge? on your LinkedIn. There’s such a difference between data, information and knowledge yeah – you got to do your leg work…
I remember when I was like 19, 20 years old – I don’t even know what I’m doing -It’s such a long path and I think at the end of that article, I wrote my own experience. I was lucky enough to get into an honours degree and then get exposure to a project at the age of 22; and early publication, got into a really good brand company, during that time I got a scholarship and started MBA then experience overseas. Only now am I’m stepping out into starting my own company without partnering and I’m 42 – so it’s a long path…
If I am doing what I’m doing, when I was like 22, I probably wouldn’t appreciate it as much; If I read your article when I was 20 then I’ll be like “uh… whatever” I’ve done my leg work and it’s like “oh that’s the point!”

Transcript (15:52):
I want to ask you to draw the connection between creative destruction and what is knowledge?
It’s interesting, isn’t it? when you get asked a question like that our brains are like databases…
We have to have to build up.
Knowledge is like the precursor for innovation, you can’t have innovation without new knowledge – but that new knowledge doesn’t have to be new to the world, you can bring something in that’s new only to your firm. So we were talking about CRMs earlier, we’re not going to invent our own CRM but that is still innovation: if we bring in Newledge, we implement it and then we get some value right and value is measured in two ways: it’s economical which is really what matters right and societal which we want to do the right thing. We talk about purpose and so you’ve got new knowledge implementation, creation of new value – that’s what companies are always trying to do the problem is if you’re always just bringing in things that are new only to your firm, you’re not risking producing any products that are new to the market, new to the industry, the world & etc. Eventually what you’re doing, is going to be replaced.
If you look at digital marketing now. 10 years ago, it’s a relatively niche market, if you know what’s going on as an agency you can make money. My brother and I built a website yesterday with Squarespace, we built it in four hours; some digital marketers (on their websites), they’re trying to charge $1400 for one landing page – You see the conundrum, that’s almost bordering on unethical. Because of the advancements in technology those players, they will be destroyed, creative destruction will come along and knock them off.
At one stage, someone said to me that I was made for social media marketing. I was like “I’m very glad that you think that I’m good at it, but then I started years before social media become a thing…” Let’s say in 2010, digital marketing had a bit of a mystique, that image and narrative are very different now.
I think a disruptor like yourself, in the form of Newledge is great because it helped people to either do the best with what you got or try to do something completely different based on what they can do.
If I was going to give digital marketers advice now, I would say that the revision to your business model – technology is always the enabler but it can’t be your point of difference.
So you’ve got things like PowerPoint, beautiful.ai, you’ve got Canva, if your business model relied on you knew about technology like prior to the client and then you were hiding that from the client, and that was how you were making money, you’re going to be found out. It’s not like the agency is the only person that knows about this technology, as soon as it’s public knowledge, your business model is destroyed. If you’re a marketer, the one thing that technology will not replace is understanding the customer problem, breaking that down into a really succinct way things like, market research, you look at the things that ai and technology will not replace how you know you a position, your capabilities – the technology around is just an extra enabler of what you offer, but it’s not your core offering
it’s like um it’s like a cake and it’s icing
yes, that’s right and that’s the mistake people make they use the icing as their point of difference!

We’ve spoken about that the features and functionalities of technology – you know, customers are smart when it comes to partying with a dollar we are smart
oh yeah trust me
With me, it is like “kind of give it another six months to just plan yourself properly, before you push money out there…” I would never ask anyone to do an advertising campaign or do an event, before they have their brochure ready have platforms that people can learn who they are.
We had a good conversation before about how one can do a video and have that transcribed directly into audio. That’s fantastic assistance in itself, but it’s not going to be enough to write a clever blog post. We know we’ve got to have the heading 1 heading 2, we’ve got to break it up into bullet points, it has to be a certain amount of words and it has to you know resonate with us; the other one is taking pre-written articles now and you can turn them into videos, the AI will take your transcript and put clips to it, it’s good yeah but it’s not good enough.
I’ll tell you this those turning transcripts into videos the one that failed actually got more views because unfortunately, some people look at those videos as entertainment
You do need that human touch because otherwise, it’ll just be another piece of entertainment.
The technology is great because it can save us time, but it really comes down to the skilled coach, consultant, trainer who has to apply their expertise and that’s what our clients should be paying for.
I even made that mistake myself, I’m going to put together some time next month to revisit some of my article pages. I was trying to have the video transcript underneath, I really want to connect with my multicultural audience and I would love to do some kind of automatic translation app further down the track – but most importantly before I can do that I need to make sure that I rearrange the words and that’s the job that I need to do and without doing that would be I would be stupid to push the video or advertise the videos.
And you hear people complaining about cheap virtual assistants not being able to write your content articles, no shit. If you want to write a good article that resonates with who you are and what you’re trying to achieve. You have to do it yourself.
This is what knowledge is about like you know this is what you need to put in the legwork.
It’s complex it’s not it’s very different to information there’s all that information out there but how do you get the right piece of information in front of the right person at the right time when they’re ready you also like you said earlier reading a blog post like mine 10 years ago, you may not have been ready to absorb that into knowledge.
So you know companies have got a big challenge on their hand how do you manage your knowledge you know how do you create communities of practice and interest in blogs and get that sharing of information because it’s not like build it and they will come anymore we’re not impressed but we take a lot to be impressed.

SME Chat with Lucas (2021 #GetChatty Series)

Lucas Merlo is the Founder and Principal Mentor at NewLedge. Lucas invented the NewLedge-Framework and CDI methodology (Capability-driven Innovation) during his PhD at RMIT and the CSIRO, to fill the transformation gap between ideas, innovations and new measurable values.

This episode was inspired by Lucas’s recent article What is knowledge? I really enjoyed recording this episode, as we talk about the difference between data, information and knowledge; how gaps could form if SME owner-operators only focus on part of the value chain.

In this conversation, Lucas and I discuss:

• the difference between data, information and knowledge
• the danger in knowledge had been misrepresented by the abundance of information
• how we navigate ourselves outside the comfort zones
• how we would like to adapt these principals to help local SMEs

In the months since the production of this episode, Lucas launched a special program NewLedge for STEM, to mentor upcoming/recent graduates to find their own paths.

Transcript (from 00:47):
What motivated you to write this article?
I guess I went on a bit of a learning journey when I created a course for Victoria University and knowledge management.
You throw the terms “knowledge”, “innovation” and everything like that around – but it’s difficult to have a deep appreciation of what they actually mean and how they fit and in what order as a process. So I really learned a lot through creating that course and then teaching it over a two year period.
I learnt, like the history of knowledge management and the Japanese contribution to knowledge management mainly the differences between, you know, data, information & knowledge; where learning fits in and; how we have innovation… I think it’s just a really interesting topic and once you understand it then, you can understand and appreciate how to learn better.

Did you start the process before you do your PhD, MBA & etc?
yeah exactly so in 2014, I came back from overseas and then I wanted to do PhD and at the same time I started a company. That company was dealing with business opportunity evaluation, so people with new business ideas startups would come to us; we would evaluate their opportunity and then we would be able to tell them with pretty good accuracy whether they’d get funding and then go on and trade successfully.
I had a really good mentor, the creator of that algorithm, for my PhD, professor Kevin Hindle, he was one of the best professors in entrepreneurship globally and had some really good recognition. Over 90 peer-reviewed publications and is he is the consummate professor, he loves to profess. That was basically the genesis for my PhD was just seeing this amazing algorithm and we’ve recently sold it to a venture capital trading platform. Obviously, lots of companies want money, they want to raise money so we built a screening tool, that was based on a big pile of business plans, from the big pile of business plans the research found out with 89 accuracy – which companies would get funding based on a set of criteria; and from those companies that got funding, which would then trade successfully for three years (meaning fifty per cent increase in revenue for 3 consecutive years), could predict that with 79% accuracy.
We built it into a software program and that was really how my introduction into the appreciation of knowledge and innovation really grew.

Maybe we can start a little bit about the definition of data, information and knowledge?
If you take it even back before data: so computers are made up of just bits of things, a bit of thing that is data, on its own it’s there’s not much you can do with it; with data, data are simply facts or figures pieces of information but not the information itself.
We can collect data quantitatively or qualitatively: we can go and do a survey and then we can analyze that which is quantitative, or we can interview which is qualitative. I’ve always been a big numbers man, but after two years into PhD, I realized that quantitative was never going to answer the question of how can we increase innovation and competitiveness. I went to qualitative and started doing interviews so the data on its own doesn’t have much valuable information is where you’re presenting the data – so you might write a report, you put it in a thesis, you put in a presentation, so you make it explicit in some way so you take that data and make it readable or digestible to the user.
We’ve got a lot of information out there, we know that we can store our information, we can reproduce it, we can publish it, but information on its own is not knowledge okay – that’s where we all fall victim now in 2021 – we all want to become more knowledgeable from sliding on our iPhone and glancing at information and expecting to absorb, it’s not the way it works. We’ve become really demanding and selfish as knowledge consumers now, we expect to learn without actually becoming knowledgeable. The transfer of information to knowledge is where you have to give effort. I don’t know about you, I’m not the sort of person that can be listening to music, have the television on and soak it all in, I have to sit there and try, sometimes I have to read things 2-3 times, write it down and do a diagram – once the penny drops that information then becomes knowledge. the knowledge that you can transfer to somebody else.

There’s something a little bit frustrating as marketing managers is that, sometimes you come across people who just want a marketing plan, get you to run for it for a few months, and then get some new graduate to do it.
The thing is you do need the leg work, you do need the experience to develop that finesse to make things work – that is not just information, it’s not something that you can google, or just go through your smartphone and then learn it – you actually need to put in the work and then see: ah that works but that doesn’t work.
I think that knowledge had been misrepresented by the abundance of information. There’s a lot of information available, which is wonderful, but if you don’t have that ability to filter it, to learn it, to transfer it and translate it – then they’re just words.
That’s right and that’s why in the article I mentioned that I’ve always had a lot of respect for having a mentor
Friends of mine have said to me as far back as 15 years ago, they’re like “why don’t you just get out and do the business on your own? (you get less of a shareholding)”
I earn less, but that’s what’s enabled me now to start my own company and start to become relatively successful. I see the people who didn’t have mentors fledging and the reason is like: think about the best chef in the world – the best chef in the world can write down their recipe which takes that tacit knowledge and makes it explicit right in a codified form. You can study that recipe & try it a hundred times, but it’s not until you’re standing side by side with the chef, that you’re going to come up with a chocolate cake that’s you know nearly on par with the masters right!
We don’t have enough respect for that and I think universities really miss that too, I’ve got a bundle of degrees but I can’t say I ever had a mentor at university.

Transcript (from 08:20):
You shared your own story (on the article) and I really love one of the last lines, which is “the doubt came from the fear of knowing what you don’t know” I love that line.
i love it too … Bertrand Russell said “…the fundamental cause of the trouble in the world today, is that the stupid a cock-sure while the intelligent are full of doubt…”, and you’ll find that so many self-confessed coaches and facilitators throughout Linkedin and they’re the ones with the least experience and expertise, are often the most old and brash. So you need to sort from between the weeds don’t you – in the top left hand we see that we know what we know, we all whether a company or an individual, we know that we know things then; if we’re wise, we know that they’re things that we don’t know, okay and that’s where we go out and fill the knowledge gap: we find a mentor, we hire somebody, we speak to each other – we constantly fill those gaps consciously because we know that we’ve got knowledge gap. The other one is your company you don’t know what you know okay so we all know more than we realize and that’s where we’ve got to untap it, a lot of that comes from losing the shame and fear of you looking silly – we all know more than we actually know. The one to be really really fearful of is you don’t know that you don’t know and that’s the one that comes and bites you on the ass whether you’re a company or an individual, that’s when you get too cocky.

We’re in a day and age that… Let’s just say a couple of generations ago, that you can just do one job and that job can last you for the entire career, and that was good for its time – but right now, if anything 2020 had taught us, things can change any moment. Of course, there are also opportunities popping up any moment, who knows, maybe 10 years later and not a completely unrelated opportunity would pop up. If we just stuck with one mindset and not exploring what we don’t know or what we know we don’t know, we will only be trapped inside a small corner and what was, unfortunately, could happen is … look every year there will be some younger or someone fresher ideas to come into the scene you know it’s yeah it’s tricky

In 2016-17, i took almost a year off – I didn’t know why but nothing satisfies me & it doesn’t make sense, unfortunately, i didn’t have a mentor. I took off, went away and tried to start again by learning short courses, doing random jobs and doing some travelling, and learn about things completely outside of my comfort zone or knowledge. I didn’t know at the time that the need of change and after that time off i realized that – oh these are the things that i didn’t know… for me my attitude is – I’m gonna learn until the day i die…
That’s right, we all feel silly if we look back upon ourselves from a year ago, but that’s that’s part of being hard on yourself and committing to learning long term. This is why it’s so important to have a coach and a consultant facilitator. I saw my friend start a company two years ago and i said to him (sometimes you’ve got to deliver the hard truths, we always say like, when you’re evaluating businesses. Not all babies are beautiful, but it’s very hard to tell somebody with a new business that your baby isn’t beautiful, because we our first business we always get really attached, right?). So i gave him the hard truth, i said “look for these… this reason, this reason and this reason – it’s not just my knowledge, i’m relying on a proven system to evaluate companies and i told him, “look, i think in this period of time, this this business isn’t going to work (for this reason) and you’ll have to go back to this job and maybe he’s not ready to talk to me because he never had a mentor and he always said to me “i already know it” – “i already know that” is very dangerous…
Social media turns out to be a really good live example of echo chambers. If we (only) stuck with “we know what we know”, then we will only be able to surround ourselves with people like that. In retrospect, i do feel that might have been the reason why my well-being was declining before 2016 – i felt that i was just doing the same thing & what’s going on for the rest of my life?
Unfortunately the person that you were talking about, maybe at the time, he wasn’t ready for that information, wasn’t ready for that news; but of course even as professionals ourselves, even there’re news that are difficult to digest, i wish i had a mentor.
You interview professors and lecturers, part of what you’re doing now is in a way, you get to learn. You’re putting a clever way to absorb tacit knowledge, because you’re speaking face-to-face with people different areas and that’s the beauty of what you do.

Transcript (from 15:12):
The other interesting thing is when you’re starting your own business, like my previous company that we sold, we evaluated 144 companies, and of that 10 went on to raise money and they traded successfully. It’s very easy to look at somebody else’s company and make unbiased decisions and inform them, but it’s very hard to look at your own business when you’re doing it, and that’s why even at Newledge, i’m seeking out people for advice – i’m not too shy to say “geez i’ve got half a dozen degrees and phd and all this experience i’m like … no i i need advice as well”.
I think that’s that’s the great thing about just being open-minded
Like 5 or 6 years ago, i hate the word “entrepreneur”, whenever you see somebody say “i’m an entrepreneur” because everybody wanted to have their laptop, sitting at the beach and posting instagram photos “hey i’ve made it” but the the chances of success for small business it’s it’s really low.
Most businesses when they start will stay operational for two to three years because that’s the time you take to suck money out of friends family and “fools” until you really have to get funding but many have gotten too cocky. The other one is the cost of getting good advice, that’s where I think people like you and I as advisers – we need to work on that value-based pricing and say “well, we know you don’t have the money to pay hourly exorbitant fees, I don’t think anybody should be charging hourly fees anymore but – what if I could take your business from here to here and we measure the performance what would that be worth to you?” That’s the way you can help these people – you have to know in yourself that you can get their business from where they are now to where you’d take them to go, if you can’t then you have to tell them they’re not the client for you.
It’s like this it’s a supplier demand chain, after all, you got to find the right match. I think sometimes that people can take things a little bit too personally because, as you said, it’s all their babies but not all babies are pretty.
I don’t think there’s many successful entrepreneurs out there that haven’t had a failure. I started the business (the early 2010s) in Korea and it was for factors outside of my control – it was a long story but what happened in Japan with the nuclear fallout actually ruined my chances of getting some product into Korea to on sale and I lost quite a lot of money, and I took it’s really hard, I got really down about that it wasn’t an exorbitant amount of money but at the time and it was more than failure because I was just so cock-sure. A good failure will kick you in the ass and then you’re wiser you listen to people.
yes and that’s part of the experience that become your knowledge, it’s not something that you can just google up or just get a pamphlet and learn it. It doesn’t work like that…

Certainly, a bit of magic starting a business but there are certain things (and this is what our company did), we would look at the product, market, industry, people, and money. So we had five pillars that you would assess. There’s basically 15 criteria and they’re all weighted a little bit differently, if you scored highly in one you didn’t need to score as highly in another. The first one was basically looking at the product: is there something that’s novel and does it have a market impact; the next one was to look at the market and say: well is the customer receptive to the offering and how effective are the substitutes at filling that gap? because we all have competitors even if we don’t think about it, (where) our substitute products come from a wide range of areas; the other one is, is the industry attractive? okay so you want to get into an industry at the right growth stage, how much capital do we need to invest? is it marketing intensive…?; then you look at your people because when you’re starting a company, the people are really important they say “you back the jockey right not the horse”; then you look at the financials – financials when you’re starting a business. It’s difficult because if you haven’t got runs on the board, we can all do the most elaborate excel spreadsheets, and come up with a 24-month financial forecast – 3 months later go “what the hell?!” right?
There’s some criteria you can look at and you can give somebody a really unbiased explanation of how this relates to the likely success of their company, but the rest of it is you know that how much skin in the game have you got? do you wake up every morning just fighting off the down and getting into it? There are other things that come into it, but you can give somebody pretty good advice about the likelihood of success for a new business.
I came across some potential clients, that was like “okay I need you to backtrack a little…” and just “let’s be realistic for a moment…” because from all of the bibs and bobs that you talk about, for example, finance. Sometimes people do overestimate themselves a little bit or, they got a little bit too cocky, or they’re a little bit too confident in what they’re doing, or too hopeful… As professionals, we do need to be honest about: “okay, let’s step back for a moment, just look at it from a realistic point of view, what can we do? are you doing the right thing?
For any blind seller, there’s always a blind buyer – but let’s have a look at what can sustain your marketing? what can sustain your business?

I agree and like you said, it’s not to put them in the hot seat, you know you see shows like Shark Tank? I’ve met quite a few angel investors and I will categorize them all as one (for this conversation). It’s very easy to be in the chair, asking the questions to make somebody squirm if you want to – we can all pull out questions that somebody’s not prepared for – because when you (SME operators) want money, you’re desperate & you want to sell your business.
I really disapprove of that approach, that’s not a caring approach. It has to be you ask the questions but it’s a work in progress, like “If we don’t have answers for it, let’s go and see if we could work on it to get that score up?” Whether you’re just trying to get a grant or you’re trying to raise capital whatever it is. Venture capitalists are, most of them, make their determination based on gut feelings, so Shark Tank is actually pretty accurate. Think how stupid that is: you’ve got six people in a room; I don’t wake up the same every day – how the hell am I going to judge your business the same today as I would tomorrow?
That’s why my first company came in with a proven system to aid in decision making and that’s the combination you need of… let’s say information or a knowledge system and then the expert themselves right. So think about you’ve got decision support systems which aid in human decision making, so that’s what we had okay – you go through this criteria but then the team of people will still give their opinion right and that’ll have a lot of weighting; expert systems come along and replace the need for the expert – now I don’t know that there are many expert systems out there that truly work, because you take the human element out of it and computers really aren’t you know. I don’t think AI is where it should be…

Transcript (from 23:38):
well… at least right now, there’s still proof that a person’s knowledge and experience have something important. It is not something that can be easily transferred. Hey, we might have just discovered that something like Shark Tank or RuPaul Drag race provide people with some data and information, to refer to, as they are developing their knowledge.
The problem is, we’ve all got our bound and rationality. Like when I go home to my small town (I grew up in a tiny little country town, it’s still in a farming community), I remember being back in the days, Melbourne was scary; then as you get more experience and open up, we have a bigger sense of the world. When Shark Tank advisors are making their decisions, it’s like a computer system, they’re drawing on their experiences but still, that’s just case studies and war stories right – what they know today is not as much as they’ll know in a year – so that’s where the computer or the information system and the human decision making together, I think that’s where we’re at.

At the end of the video, we previewed our next topic, Creative Destruction. If you’re interested in finding out more, please head over to Spill the Tea about Creative Destruction. SME Chat with Lucas episode 5

SME chats with Lucas (2021 #GetChatty Series)

Lucas Merlo is the Founder and Principal Mentor at NewLedge. Lucas invented the NewLedge-Framework and CDI methodology (Capability-driven Innovation) during his PhD at RMIT and the CSIRO, to fill the transformation gap between ideas, innovations and new measurable values.

This episode was inspired by Lucas’s recent article What is knowledge? we went deeper into the concept of Creative Destruction, caused by clever industry reporting methods and gaps between data and knowledge.

In this conversation, Lucas and I discussed:

• Customers and clients have more ways to find solutions to satisfy their needs, so SMEs’ value propositions will need to be a lot more flexible
• Quick points to consider in order to enhance or transform how to apply one’s business to the customers or clients
• The pitfalls of looking at things too closely

Transcript (01:15):
In the early 2000s, apart from the pants and frosted highlights, there’s the mentality of “cutting out the middleman” among small businesses. It’s very interesting looking back at it now, because with the online space and digital transformation – even customers are looking for ways to get things done, and they can compare a lot easier.
There are some middlemen that I completely disagree with, and let’s keep it on the digital transformation. Digital marketing companies out there, what they want you to do is to come to them when you’ve found product-market fit, all of your communications are ready, you’ve identified the job to be done, you know your segmentation – and you basically hand them your content and a blueprint. What they will then do is go and organize pay-per-clicks, SEO, and they might create a landing page … they go and outsource it straight away. That I’m very critical of because you could do it yourself and you’re just paying a premium, what they’re really doing is putting another layer on top of freelancer, that sucks.
Where the value is, is in what you and I do – Let’s talk about the market, let’s identify the job to be done, let’s see if we can communicate your value proposition… That’s where the value is getting them to the stage where they become ready
That makes me feel a little bit upset actually because it happens a lot.
Digital marketing speciality of marketing is that they focus on the operational side of how to get the ads done. I had a really interesting conversation with someone in digital marketing before, he regarded things are “working” because it’s operational, it’s up and running, people can see it
I don’t see it as “working” necessary because it’s not targeting the right people. No shades to digital marketers, they are important, they deal with this complication of changing environment and I respect that, but what a customer is looking for? And things different businesses are looking for is different.
Most of them will work on a commission where they’ll take 20 of the increase in revenue that they create for you – so it’s in their interest to pick off the low hanging fruit and get quick sales. What that does to your brand and your product is another story long term right
It’d be about the customer’s perception and what you’re doing to perform and how you look at what the customers need…

Transcript (06:30):
I would imagine most of our (small business) clients don’t have that luxury to be spending too many resources to congratulate ourselves, isn’t it?
Now this is the interesting one, customer application, what’re your thoughts about that
So, in episode one we looked at the customer base and we looked at enhancing and transforming in our customer base; then we went across to product design remember we connect your marketing and technological functions, now we’re back to customer applications.
Customer applications build on both customer base and product design. We’re talking about – where does your product apply in markets other than your core markets – and it’s interesting that we look at firstly how does your product help the customers overcome their struggles? and again get the job done faster more accurately. Because it’s the struggle that causes the customer to look for and purchase a solution. so we know that outside of the industries is a terrible way to analyze thinking outside of your industry there are customers struggling with problems where our products might apply.
Firstly, the enhancing side is to look within our current customer applications or market applications and check back with the unmet needs and see where we can improve; but the enhancing innovation is the great one that’s where we’re creating a new set of applications or finding applications for our technologies outside of our core business.
And there’s a lot of opportunities that we can talk about um transforming customer or market applications. One of the big questions is “do you understand the entire process of uh like you know the purchase and the consumption?” like the process of why and what
There’s the core functional job that the customer is trying to get done and one of the famous examples, is we’re tr we’re driving we’ve got an import appointment it might be a date it might be a job interview and we want to know how to find the fastest route or route available to get to our appointment on time. so that’s a good way to define a job because it’s independent of any technology or solution it doesn’t say we’re looking for a better map to get here on time, if we were talking about the market by maps we know that nobody uses the Melways anymore right, but 20 years ago um i think it was 20 years ago we would use the mailways in our car to find out how to get from a to b on time so that’s an example

Transcript (10:45):
Remember in the earlier episode, we talked about all the numbers of toothpaste or razors, people just change the flavor a little bit or change the charging port a little bit, and sell it as a new product? It’s actually warrants a new question that we should ask our client “have you reassessed what the needs are?” After you have a product out there, there are things that are more than (what) you know; after a little while things do go obsolete – have you seen toys r us? We all grow out of phrases and sometimes we (SMEs) do need to transform.
That’s exactly right so if we look back at customer applications, so companies whether they’re talking let’s talk about a manufacturer. A manufacturer’s got a physical tangible product, so firstly you’re thinking well i might be selling this into medical device, manufacturing. I’m competing in that industry an industry is a group of sellers a market’s a group of buyers then you’re thinking, well what about defense? what about space? so what we advise companies to do is to not look at the product, is to look at the bundle of capabilities that makes up this product. So within this you’ve got capital equipment that you use to produce the product, you’ve got your technical skill sets, you’ve got your supplier relations so any of these capabilities you can leverage into new markets. and a good example again is is dyson’s vacuum cleaner dyson’s vacuum cleaners never competed in the medical device manufacturing industry, as soon as COVID hit, dyson’s was very quick to do this they were saying well we’ve got a vacuum cleaner: this is comprised of this this and this how does this part apply into ventilators because COVID in big native ventilators they did that. Applied their engine vacuum clean engine into ventilators in medical device pharmaceutical industry in about six weeks it was incredible
they just vacuum up the market
Think about how many untapped opportunities we have in Australia?
in the past year on the news, there’s things about solar energy solar panel and the micro grid. How the energy being resold back to the market. There’s a big story about, people thought that when they installed (their solar panels), it would save money but they actually cost them more – An interesting part hardly covered by the news was that, there isn’t a useful energy/electricity storage device that people can keep the energy in their home, so they can have a choice of use it or sell it to the market to the microgrid should they want to. That’s actually the thing that would barely cover on the news because they usually just say that electricity company have that power to control that but then that’s i that is a part of the transformation of like you know using what you got but then use it differently.
So you’ve identified one of the growth priority areas so it’s interesting and it’s another topic. Federal government won’t pick winners as in when you’re when you go for a grant or anything they’re not going to choose or evaluate you to see how strong your offering is they don’t care what they do pick is winners in sectors or industries. Recycling and clean energy is one of the six that have been identified, first they are identified in 2014 and it was late october last year this is where the government puts all of their money because we think that our future will be secured in our competitiveness with these industries; and you and i have touched on food and beverage; then you just introduce recycling and clean energy of course medical products medical devices and pharmaceutical that’s expedited now, defense believe it or not we’re putting a lot in space.

Transcript (16:45):
I saw a funny meme, somebody said “i’m dissatisfied with my job here in Australia and Elon Musk says, “come to Mars” and then you see that they’re in Mars doing the same job….
If SMEs or SMBs are out there listening now – it can be problematic looking at the competitor too closely, and it can be problematic listening to the customer too closely, and that’s a strange thing to say but that’s true. What they need to think is well maybe “i’ll do a patent search”, maybe “i’ll look at trade shows”… Let’s go and see what other technologies are doing or what other technologies exist in other industries and whether my products can be adjusted to substitute and do that job better – That should be something that that gets attention
If we’re looking at enhancing we’ll look very closely but then when it comes to transforming let’s not get too close. I have that problem i’m a content marketer, when i write something i do actually put it aside go to bed come back next morning, because if i look too close at things and i’m sure at least 90% of the population do, we don’t notice bits and bobs that we don’t know and then there’d be gaps out there. For example a product or service development that we can actually step a little bit away from being too close to it and just looking at “ah maybe this component of what i do can become something else”
It’s really interesting maintaining that balance of keeping your current prospective customer base happy, usually that’s with incremental improvements (you know the extra razor on the blade); but then on the other hand keeping that open mind to transform and going “well what else is out there?” Because we don’t want to be restricted by just focusing on our industry. The old ways of analyzing industries – i’ve done it in the past as a strategy consultant and it’s where you you basically look at all your features and functionalities and then, you look at the competitors, you see where you have features and functionalities they don’t and then you call that your point of differentiation and you market that that’s that’s not an effective way to compete.
It used to be a good idea but i think right now people have way more choices available, we have to be much more flexible now.
insurers are interesting though they actually they actually look at they can actually calculate the probability of you living to a certain age that’s how much they’re algorithm they’d use what’s called actuarial modeling which means they go back in past history with a pile of key factors and then they use those weighted key factors to determine your life expectancy and they’re actually pretty bloody good at it so we probably hope that we fall out we might be anonymous i hope that this is a great story that for people to just filtering out when they reconsider that okay i’m going to develop something new with my customers which angle we’re going for maybe enhancing maybe transforming but it’s always good to just uh talk to someone professional about that.