Future-Ready Mindset: Breaking Free from Change Fatigue with the FROST Growth Cycle

Welcome to Stay On Course with me, Julie Riga. My life has been a roller coaster of highs and lows, but what I know to be true is that when we are grounded in our purpose and savor the sweet moments of life, we are truly a success. Today, you are going to get the ingredients for success because life is salty and life is sweet. Together, let's explore the possibilities of our own lives. and learn from thought leaders around the globe. Ready guys? Let's cook it. You were thriving on your own until leading others became your new reality. I'm Julie Riga, and I created Before I Lead for high achievers like you, CEOs, new leaders, and side hustlers who've hit that uncomfortable space from doing it all to having to lead it all. It's not just a skill gap. It's an identity shift. You're overwhelmed. You're doubting. You're stuck between growth and burnout. Let's change that. Join me at BeforeILead.com or visit JulieRiga.com because it's time to stop surviving the shift and start owning it. Welcome, welcome everyone to the next edition of the Stay On Course podcast. Today, we have Alistair Frost and he's a global keynote speaker and award-winning author who helps professionals break free from change fatigue and step boldly into the future. He's the creator of the All Ready Growth Cycle and former Microsoft leader. He's trusted powerhouse by brands like BBC, P&G, and 3M, and he spends his time energizing teams and inspiring lasting transformation. Welcome, Alistair, to the Stay On Course podcast. Oh, Julie, what an introduction. Thank you so much. I've got a lot to live up to. Yes, you do. That's a big background you have there, Alistair. big background but i'm really looking forward to talking to you today about the future ready mindset and ready already and all of the good things that i love sharing with the world i love that i love that and it's right up my alley but alistair i ask all of my guests before we get started what is your favorite food i love a pizza with seafood on it a seafood pizza so i just got some clams and mussels lots of tuna and and the more anchovies the better i adore anchovies uh And I'd have that with a little rocket and parmesan salad on the side, a bit of olive oil on it. Of course, yeah, light. Light Italian red wine, I think, Valpolicella or something like that. Nice Chianti, that sort of thing. That's my dream food. I just love it. And the anchovies are great because they make you really thirsty, so you drink more wine and it's always a good night. Okay, Alistair, I love a good seafood pizza. My father used to do that and bring it home for me because seafood is one of my favorite things, but not the anchovies. I've got to tell you I'm not going to put anchovies on my pizza. Oh, it divides opinion, but that's a hill I'm prepared to die on. A pizza without anchovies is not worth eating. Oh, that's funny. A hill I'm willing to die on for the anchovies. Okay, that's already funny. So, like, I'm not even sure where this conversation is going today. But we are talking about being ready. Tell us a little bit about your book and your system. Yeah, I've got this book. It's called Ready Already. it's available from all good and probably some bad bookshops i would imagine um it's about a future ready mindset this new thing that i've been talking about i've been talking about it for years but it's the fact that we've got so much change coming at us at all of us doesn't matter what you do the world is changing you know we were briefly talking about ai before we went on air and and that's changing stuff whether we like it or not and i think people need a new skill if they're to keep up and thrive and that's to be ready already it's a more it's kind of a just a proactive approach to thinking about the future about the inevitable and that's a really important word for me changes and challenges of the future because if we're honest if we all sit down and thought about it there's a lot of obvious stuff that's going to change in the future that we know is coming and we could perhaps get ready for some of that stuff oh we could be getting ready yes yeah exactly and but often we're caught up in the day we're today ready not future ready we get through the day and we put our feet up and I have a class of Chianti or whatever and think, phew, thank goodness that's over. And then we go and do it again and again until we pop our call and off we go. That's the end of it. What's the point? Now, I think because there's so much change coming at us, we have this wonderful opportunity to get out, not to get ahead of it, but do the things that matter to us, to focus on what's necessary for our future, not what the boss tells you or you read online. Think about yourself. Exactly. And we really have to get real here because what worked for us back then is not working for us now. Yeah. That's why I say that often in my talks, what got you here will not get you to where you need to be. But that is a change. You've got to remember that is a change. Previous generations could learn a skill, get really good at it. And frankly, they could kind of do that thing for the rest of their days. Things changed a bit, but not that much. That's all gone. That's gone. Because even if you learn how to just write an email today, guess what? There's some new AI thing will come out tomorrow that does that thing for you or does it in a different way or helps you in some new way. If you're not paying attention to it, you're going to get lost. But it's not about AI, just to be clear. AI is just one of the very obvious examples in life today. It's transforming so much stuff. It's transforming the whole landscape of work, the whole landscape and the way we approach work. And, you know, I'm wondering if the schools are even ready to be teaching this sort of thing. I don't even think the teachers understand it. And professionals are sort of, you know, in it, so they can't really understand it. How do we keep that mirror of the future in our face while we're in the moment? What do you tell people? I tell them to start with themselves and say, what do you care about? And I know you want to talk about the ingredients of success. Yes. So if you want to get a future ready mindset, the most important ingredient that I talk about in the book is what I call a personal mission, is why do you do the job that you do? Because I don't believe that anyone ever created an amazing future for themselves without knowing why, without having some sort of reason to do it, You're just not going to put in the effort, do the work that will get you to that place. And a personal mission for me is the guiding thing that inspires you, that makes you feel special. And I remember when I arrived at Microsoft a few years ago and I was there for 10 years, the first job I had, they put me in charge of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. They were my products, right? So they're quite big, well-known products, but they're not very cool and sexy. I wanted to work on Xbox and smartphones and all this new stuff. And I got a bit depressed about that until I realized the whole world runs on email. And if I can make 1% of people 1% better at doing email, that would transform the world's productivity. It would go off the scale. So I sort of kind of reprogrammed my mind rather than thinking, oh, I'm working on these dull products that everybody hates. Oh, I make the world better at email. That's my job. Wow. I'm privileged to work at Microsoft. I'm going to make the world better at email. And suddenly I had a reason not just to do my job today, but also to look at it and say, how can I do more of that in the future? And then I was constantly striving for something else. So that my first ingredient is you got to have a reason heartfelt reason why you do the job that you do yeah and very often that something that that you well it should be unique to you it's based on who you are what you care about if you're if you're a mother if you're um a young adult if you're close to retirement you may have very different perspective on what matters to you um and you know you talk about restaurants and foods and things like that because of your background but if you work in a restaurant you might think maybe you're running a restaurant say you might think your job is to i don't know get make sure that you've got the ingredients in for chef promote the venue make sure the front house is looking good you know those are all important but they're just tasks that will be there every day to do until maybe a robot takes over some of those whatever so your personal mission then might be recognizing what's the value that you bring to the world in the service of others and and that might be if i don't know let's say you're in a business district or something like that, you might recognize that actually your personal mission is giving local business people a special place where they can talk, think, dream, refuel, so their own businesses will grow and thrive. And suddenly you realize you've got a bigger purpose than ordering another jar of anchovies because I'm coming in for pizza. Right. And the thing is, is that when you look at the service industry, you can really lean into creating experiences for people. Like you're there to create an experience for them to do and like hold a space for fun, for connection. So there's a lot of other things that is like the higher purpose of why you're doing the thing you're doing. I've been talking about purpose for a long time, Al, and to the point I told you the story before, I got in trouble at work for presenting personal mission statements back in 2009. And I got scolded by my employer. And they're like, why are you talking about a personal mission statement? I'm like, because it's everything. It's everything. It's why you show up every day. It's what gives you energy. It's what anchors you into the moment. It's everything for you to kind of understand your why is so critical. especially now because things are shifting so fast. We have opportunities that we never had before. If I was 20 years old right now, Alistair, oh my goodness, I would have been like ruling the world by now. 20 years old with the wisdom you have now, that of course would be an incredible recipe. But yeah, the reason why purpose is more important than ever is because we have to evolve and change and learn and grow every day. We do because the world is changing around us. And I talk a bit about your comfort zone and we all get settled in doing things a certain way because that's just what works for us. The minute we settle in there and we think that's how I do my job is the minute you are stepping towards obsolescence. And there'll be a point when actually somebody else, you might be a competitor, it might be your replacement, will take your job. Now, what I'd say is you've got to recognize what is it that you do in the service of others. And you don't have to be in the service industry to do that, by the way. Sure. You know, even at Microsoft making software, I was always thinking about who's the end beneficiary? If I do this job well, what happens? And if you keep looking down the chain of command and you go right to the bottom, you realize that if I do a great job of launching this version of the software, somewhere, somewhere, a family is going to be able to have a holiday because they'll be productive. their business will grow, they'll have some money, and a little boy and a girl will play bat and ball on the beach. And there's a ridiculous sort of extension of the reality. That's the truth. That is the truth. If you do a great job, the downstream consequences are remarkable. So look at those, find that, and then use that as the fuel to create your future. Don't feel I've got to be better because I want to make more money or I want to get through the day or I want a promotion. They're not motivations to do it because you want to create the best future you can possibly have. It's fantastic. And the downstream consequences, I'm going deep here, Alistair, is your legacy. Yeah. The downstream consequences of your purpose is your legacy. And I think that's a good way of talking about it. sometimes I describe personal mission as that thing that you might one day proudly say to your neighbor or your friends or your grandchildren or whatever, the thing that you used to be. And you'll say it with an immense pride because you knew that it wasn't just a job. It wasn't just going through the motions. You actually poured your heart and soul into that thing. And you're proud that you had the best go at it that you could. Yeah. I want, I want mine to just say facilitator of purpose. That's it. Nice. I want to be, I want to be that. I, that's that I, at the core of everything I am is purpose and it is that deep. So when I go and work with people on their businesses, to me, it's about helping them facilitate their purpose here on earth. Because if you're a small business owner, entrepreneur, that thing is very close and near and dear to you. I mean, even with professionals, it's, they're just realizing it in a different way, but there's a lot more creativity when you're sort of like running the ship and you're doing it yourself. So that's, I'm holding up for the benefit of anyone listening to audio. I'm holding up a picture of my, my model and right in the middle is a Pentagon shape basically. But in the middle of that connects to the five things on the outer, on the outer edges is personal mission it connects to everything you do and the beauty of personal mission is no matter where you are in the process that i i love to share and is written about extensively in the book no matter where you are you can always go back to your personal mission to reconnect with the miracle of what you do so you find that energy to say i'm going to keep going because you will have tough days you will have down moments you will question yourself yeah but that personal mission it's not perennial in the sense that it never changes through your life of course we go through many personal missions in our long quest through life. But at any moment in time, that's that one thing that you go back to and say, actually, I do really care about that. And I am important. And I need to trust myself and keep going. Yeah. Alistair, I don't know how exactly you found me or I found you, but we are resonating together at the same place. I think it's amazing because what you're saying is something that I've been talking about for years and then everything that I do is about being ready it's about you know how how are you now going to get ready for the opportunity because those opportunities are going to come and you're going to be ready or you're not and so and also you're going to create those opportunities as well if the more proactive you are in pursuing the thing that matters to you um you know I'm not a great believer in um these concepts if you if you hope for something it will happen you know i don't i don't think that happens but i do believe that if you are driven to do something you will put yourself in in in the way of luck in the way of opportunity that will allow those things to to appear as if they appeared by magic it absolutely is uh is on you um to be driven and that's why i call it personal mission it's you it's not something that the boss will give you it's not something you can read out of the company's value statements all that nonsense it's you yeah you hear what are you doing and how how do how does the work that you do if you have work allow you an opportunity to be the best in the world at that thing yeah again that another small shift that i found really helpful i used to think my company employs me to do a job and the day that i realized ah i been looking at this the wrong way i employ my company to allow me to do amazing things because if i wasn't at microsoft i couldn't launch an operating system i couldn't create uh do it doing a big event with bill gates or whatever it is i'd never get a chance to do that on my own but if i employ microsoft I take the job, I do this and I work well. That puts me in a place where I can be brilliant. And the minute you stop thinking of it as I must do the company's bidding and actually that I'm going to give as much value as I can to this company by being me, everything changes. Is that the next ingredient? What is the next ingredient? Well, look, in my ready already growth cycle in the book, the thing that's got personal mission in the middle, there are five steps on the pentagram on the outside. they they actually the initial spell my surname frost so they're very easy to remember the order follow react open surprise and tell but i think i think because we don't have forever today i would talk about follow the very first thing on that list because a lot of people are stuck in work and they're kind of like i don't know what how do i change well follow is the first step after you've got a sense of okay what's my personal mission and it's really simple it's about picking the one thing that's most important on your horizon that you need to focus on the one thing and all you do for this is you make a list of of all the things that you think you probably should be a bit better at in the near future and that that list is different for everyone and it might have might have technical skills you know if that's important in your job it might be soft skills like negotiation or presenting it might be it could be anything it really doesn't matter but it's that brilliant to-do list that we very rarely write for ourselves where we have absolute humility and honesty and confront the fact that we do have limitations in the future because we're not very good at some things that probably are going to be important right and again ai would be a classic example of that right now than every company i work with someone saying ai is my thing i need to be focusing on that because i've i've just kind of seen it in the periphery but i've never really got my head around it what is it great if that's your thing that's the follow step in a nutshell is about making the best to-do list you'll ever make because it's all for you, not getting to you by somebody else, and you only pick one thing on there to do. And the key to success in my model is that you only do one thing at a time. You really try to focus because it's so easy to do four things badly. It's better to do one thing well. And so I encourage people in the follow-ups to decide, what are you going to follow? And some of the answers I get are wonderful. There's a story in the book. a finance director conference and and the chief financial officer was sitting at the head of the table they're doing a bit of an exercise on follow and um i went around the table so who's got a follow what what's on your list and they were giving me these answers like oh this complicated legislation some new cryptocurrency thing none of it made any sense to me and i got to the the boss at the end of the table and he was really embarrassed i don't i don't want to say all my thing is i said no go on it's okay and he said look i actually think that the one thing that i need to learn about right now above anything else is microsoft excel spreadsheet i've never really been trained in it i've never really mastered it and and i get these amazing reports sent to me and i'm not really i think i could probably use it better and it was it was like it really was a mic drop moment because everyone in the room was like went well the boss doesn't know how to use excel well we can help you with that boss you know it was beautiful moment and and actually sometimes the thing that that we need to be good at we've been putting off so long that that we we kind of get embarrassed by it and it's just just if that's the thing that's been holding you back crack on you know where to start yeah really that simple yeah you know fix it and how hard is it to fix a limitation like excel you could go on a one-day training course you can probably watch and videos online, you just got to carve out a bit of time and do it. And suddenly you've got that monkey off your back and actually you're, you're back with your swagger again and you can move on to the next thing and the next thing, the next thing and the next thing. And that's how you do it. So that's, that would be my second ingredient, uh, follow, which is the first part of my five-step process in the book. Yeah. And I think it's the consistency of like, okay, once you do that, well, when then what's the next thing that you need to look at? Cause It seems like for sure we need to be in a constant state of learning now. We need to be in a consistent state of learning and a curiosity. Well, that's why it's a cycle, the process that I recommend. You don't go through it once and suddenly you're future-proofed. I hate that expression. We used to say how to future-proof things in the tech industry. We all knew it was a lie. Everyone knew you can't future-proof anything. because what is the future? I don't know. So I can't build a product or a service that is future-proofed. But what I can do is be future-ready for what I know right now. And you do one thing and you do it well, and then you move on to the next thing and the next thing. But for a lot of people, they're either in two modes. They're either not looking at anything beyond their comfort zone because they're just terrified that it might be a bit difficult and hard or whatever. They don't have time for it. There's a million excuses, of course. and the other one is they're trying to do four five six things and every time they see something they're jumping on the next thing uh and uh of course they don't get very far with anything they never get to go deep on anything because they're constantly oh there's something else well you know you know this judy as well as i do there's going to be more stuff new stuff in the future than there is today so if that's your model you're in a world of pain in the next few years because there's gonna me so much stuff coming at you. You'll have 74 things you think you need to do. So pick one, do it well, pick another, do it well, pick another, do it well. It's that simple. Yeah. And it's so easy to learn now too. There's so much information out there. You just, today, we did a session on personal branding and we're like, okay, let's look up a chat sheet PT. Like, what is it saying? How should we approach this? So there's so many new ways of learning that I love. what's the next ingredient Alistair well I think I have to pick one and of course within the frost cycle with all those five steps um I'm not really supposed to have a favorite like you're not supposed to have a favorite child but um there are three superpowers in there that I call superpowers the OS and the T of frost open surprise and tell so why don't we talk about open because you just mentioned what it is which is curiosity so after you found your thing there's a step called react which is about learning and validating that that's where you should be investing your energy. And then we get to open surprise and tell. So open is the first superpower. And I call it a superpower because humans can do this, but technology cannot. AI, large language models, any form of computing in the future cannot do these things as well as our biological human brains. We don't know how humans do curiosity because we don't understand how the brain works. but it's an incredibly powerful skill you can't ask chat gpt to be curious on your behalf because it doesn't know what the meaning of the word it doesn't it doesn't have that biological mechanism so what i open is is is looking at your world with a naive almost childlike curiosity um and looking at it afresh so imagine it was your first day you know walking into the place where you're recording this um podcast you you'd look around and you'd see different things and if If you were a child, you'd say, well, why is there a, I can see there's some plants behind you there. Why is there a guitar there? And why is there a wooden floor not a carpet If that indeed what it is I can see you ask why questions and we stop doing this as we become adults because well the boss says that the way it is and so open is about really looking at things afresh so that you start to open your mind to new possibilities you create the space in your mind where actually there is a new possibility it might not be a guitar on the stand tomorrow it could be a saxophone it could be a banana i mean It could be anything, right? Suddenly, your current state, the status quo, what you have, is not the way you think it needs to stay forever. And it's simply asking why. And it's such fun, this one, with people. I used to, the question I often cite is one from Microsoft. When I asked the team, I said, got a question. Why is the Monday meeting always on a Monday? And everyone looked at me like I'd lost my brain. And I was like, no, because it's the Monday meeting. So it has to be on a Monday. and i said well why is on a monday why and and we started really really simple exercise just examining why it was on a monday it turned out it was the guy sort of two two generations ago or whatever who started on a monday and we'd always done it on a monday and we were stuck in that cycle for the rest of our lives until someone has the courage to say why are we doing this this way could it be different what else could it be and the rest of the superpowers surprise and tell they exploit that openness in your mind by giving you a framework for having better ideas and for collaborating with others to make them into brilliant ideas. Yeah. It really is as simple as that. Curiosity is awesome. Yeah, because it also lets you show up in a very authentic way. And it's a high energy level. Curiosity is a very high energy. it's also quite a lot of people struggle with it because you do feel vulnerable being asking really daft questions sometimes does make you out to be people looking and saying what you've been paying attention um but you're not doing it to be difficult or to you're you're asking why because you want to you want to make sense of the way things are yeah and the number of number of times you'll ask why do we why do we do that there why is there an a board outside the restaurant or whatever and and and people say well it's for advertising but why why is it enabled well because that's what we've got but why is it enabled what else could it be and you can start having other ideas and you realize oh it doesn't actually have to be enabled outside the restaurant could be something that's lit up it could be something that walks around it could be something that moves it could be i mean you know there's so many possibilities now if that relates to your personal mission if that helps you to achieve what is important to you in life you owe it to yourself to question why the things are the way they are yes because everything literally everything we do can be improved and this came from something that bill gates said while i was at microsoft he pointed out today if something works it's obsolete it's already out of date everything every process every system every tool everything you know is already out of date because the world moved so quickly someone somewhere somehow has figured out a better way to do it you just haven't found that thing yourself you just don't know that thing yourself yeah you can look at everything you do the way we organize this podcast the way that we're speaking to each other the way we the tool we're using to do this the way that people are listening to us right now that can already be done in a different better probably cheaper faster easier way you just haven't discovered it yet that's a good point. That's the thing that's important to you. You owe it to yourself to go and explore. What else? How could I make this? How can I make it better? How can I make it better? I love that because we really do have all this technology out there. And the way we've done it is not the way people are doing it now. I love curiosity. I think it's a, it's a superpower and curiosity with AI. That's dangerous. we could really we could be really creative if you have enough curiosity yeah and i'm a big fan of using ai through the process that i explain in the book because if you use it as one of the tools to help you to nudge you along to to open your mind to different possibilities see things it's incredible but it all comes back to you and you have to put in the work yeah to figure out what matters most to you that's how you have a unique idea that's how you become truly committed to something that matters really to your heart and that's how you're going to have the energy to keep going keep going keep going because life is getting crazy it's getting faster and faster thanks in part to technology but also just the brilliance of human beings and our ability to to do things differently so if you want to sort of keep on the on the roller coaster you owe it to yourself to uh to to hold on tight and but to be in there for the long haul and to keep doing this stuff because you really want to make a difference. Awesome. All right. So we talked about having a purpose. We talked about the F, which was follow, follow the learning part. And then the next one was curiosity. So those are the three, which I call open. So you're the whole model is personal mission in the middle. And then there's follow, react, open, surprise, and tell. And there's a chapter in the book about each one of those things that explains simply how to do it. It's got some exercises and things like that. So you can really get started very quickly. And I, can I guarantee you'll get a good result out of the end of it? No, I can't, but I can guarantee that if you go through this, you'll start to see your world differently and you'll start to have better ideas about what your future could be. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you, Alistair. Tell us where our audience can find out more about what you do. Yeah, absolutely. Well, of course the book is out So that's called Ready Already. And that's available in all places and stuff as you'd expect. But you can also go online. If you go to readyorready.me, you will find a page that's got a bit about the book, about the process and so on, and a bit more to help you get started. Awesome. Awesome. Alistair, well, thank you so much for spending time with me today and being a guest on the Stay On Course podcast. Oh, thank you. I loved it. My dad, Ennio Riga, was not just a chef. He was my hero. From the hardships of World War II to the heights of culinary excellence, his story is nothing short of remarkable. Now, this story lives on in Stay On Course, a book that is very close to my heart. It's filled with his own words, his recipes, and the wisdom he imparted to me. Just imagine, four months before he passed, he handed me his life story, urging me to finish it. In these pages, you'll discover the secrets behind mouthwatering dishes and the lessons he taught me about leadership and perseverance. And trust me, there are some incredible tales in here, like the time he pulled off a birthday bash for Frank Sinatra with just 48 hours notice. So if you're hungry for inspiration and craving a taste of Ennio's legacy, go to julieriga.com. That's www.julieriga.com. Thank you for listening to another episode of Stay On Course. Please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so Julie can continue serving up delectable experts and appetizing content directly to your earbuds. And remember, right now you have the ingredients to be living the life you are meant to live. This has been a production of stay on course studios that stay on course. Dot studio.