Hello, good afternoon. My name is Judith Mason, and I would like to welcome you to today's webinar Express, leading and managing through change hosted by CIM Yorkshire. Before we get started, I'd just like to go over a few things so you know how the event will work and how to participate. Presentational will last for approximately 30 to 35 minutes, followed by a short 10 minute question and answer session. You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the Ask a question chat box in the Q&A panel, which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen. You can send in your questions at any time during the presentation and will attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end. If you want to share your thoughts on social media, we are using the hashtag CIM Events. The webinar is being recorded and we will share a link to the recording with you over the next few days. You'll also be emailed a short feedback survey after the event, which we'd love you to complete. It'll only take a few minutes. All survey responses are anonymous, so please do let us know your thoughts. I'd now like to hand you over to Nick Girling, who is our guest speaker today. Thank you Judith, and good afternoon everybody. Yes, my name is Nick Girling and I'm a very, very lucky guy. One of the reasons I'm so fortunate is that I've been able to deliver training and coaching and consultancy workshops on leadership and change management on five different continents over the last 17 years. I've worked with people who speak over 50 different languages and I've met people I would never have normally met and I've been to places I would never have normally been to without being in this sector. I'm a really lucky guy. The clients that I work with range from small-medium enterprises, often owner-managed businesses, sometimes 10-15 employees up to 250, right the way through to global stock market listed organisations with literally thousands of employees around the globe. What I've found over the years is that whatever the business strategy is, whatever the change in direction of business has been asked to try and achieve, whatever the objectives they're working towards are, it always comes down to one thing, and that is to people. In marketing, of course, you guys have not only got to deal with changes yourselves, and that sometimes will be whether or not you believe it's the right thing to do at the right time, and that's something for later in the presentation. You also have to get your team aligned around producing the internal and the external messaging and the campaigns, and pretty much everything to ensure that everybody is on the same page across the organisation to support a transformation or a change effort. So that's what we're going to talk about for the next 35, 40 minutes or so. I have to say, I do feel a little bit like Robin Williams' character in Good Morning Vietnam, where in the movie he's a US soldier who's also running a radio show broadcasting to the US troops in the Vietnam Peninsula, and he's in his little studio, and he actually doesn't know if anybody's listening. Now, I believe there's around 400 people signed up for this, so I hope it's some folk out there are listening, and anybody who's under the age of 35, apologies for the reference to a movie that was made in 1987. It is, however, a really good movie. So, I'm guessing most of you are here today because either you're implementing change in your organisation or your team, or you are suffering the implementation of change of your working practices by your leaders and managers. And I use the word suffering in inverted commas. And I sometimes refer to this as having change being inflicted upon us, which seems like a really harsh word inflicted. And of course, not all change is harsh, and not all change is necessarily difficult by any means. But I use the word inflicted again, advisedly, because oftentimes the change wasn't our idea, and we probably wouldn't be doing it in the new way if something or someone hadn't forced our hand. And of course, the current situation we're in at the moment, particularly when people working from home, is a really good example of that. So you see on your screen, if you're looking at your screen, a beautiful image. Of a beach, which is actually in the Bahamas. And you can imagine we're going on a 12-hour flight to this beautiful beach destination, turquoise, beautiful coloured sea, golden sands. You can almost feel the ambient temperature of about 30-35 degrees with a little breeze to take the edge off. And this is where we're headed on our vacation. And when we arrive, we find that they are building this right in the middle of the beach where we want to have our relaxing two-week holiday. And this is some huge leisure hotel complex. Now this is a classic case of our preconceived image of reality, our ideas of reality being confronted with a change that was not of our making. And sometimes our desire for the preconceived or historic, because it's experiential, we've experienced it. So our preconceived or historic image of reality, i.e. the beach, is so strong that we have difficulty in working through, I don't know, a new process, new systems, personnel change, new boss or whatever it may be in a positive and engaging manner. So over the next 30, 40 minutes or so, what we're going to talk about is firstly, what is change? Secondly, how do people react to change and why do they react in the way they do? And thirdly, how can you help yourself and your team and others around you to manage through it? And as Judy said, we will also finish with a Q&A, so please do happily send in your questions during the chat box and we'll try to work with them. Now, I'm not going to specifically relate this to COVID-19 and many of us have faced enormous emotional and physical financial structural operational changes because of this pandemic. And it's highly likely because of the numbers on the call that some of us have experienced adverse effects for our family members or our friendship groups. And if that's the case, my thoughts are with you. So I'm not going to go too deeply into the pandemic. We're going to talk about high level generic approaches to understanding change and how it affects you and your people. And then, as I said, finish with some suggestions as to how we can support you through it. You will notice top right of the screen, a tiny little picture of me. That's my LinkedIn profile picture. You can search for me on LinkedIn and I will happily accept any connection requests with pleasure. You'll also see on every slide at the bottom in the footer is my email address. So if you want any of the resources or have any further questions, please feel free to engage. I'm very happy to work with the Chartered Institute. So please feel free to dive in and ask anything that you wish in the future. So I guess the first question really is, guys, is what is changed? Well, there have been millions of words written on this topic and some of them are in depth academic studies. There is huge amounts of research done on it. And some of them are more easier to read and relatable works. So I'm recommending two for you at either ends of the spectrum. The one on the left is a Harvard Business Review document, which I can send to if you wish, by Professor John Cotter, who's widely considered to be the godfather of change management. And it's entitled, Leading Change, Why Transformation Efforts Fail. And a horrifying statistic that 70% of transformation efforts do not succeed. So he talks very carefully about that. It's just a snapshot of his work. Search him out if you don't know him already. Read his books, look at his stuff online. He's got some great stuff online. And this guy really can help you with organisational and structural change. The other one is a little bit more light-hearted, equally good though in a different sense by Dr Spencer Johnson. It's an airport read or perhaps not at the moment, but you could read it on a train in an hour and a half. And it's a wonderful story about how people approach the opportunity in different ways of a change or change management. So sticking with this then, what is it? Well, in terms of a definition, the Oxford English dictionary would say it's an act or process through which something becomes different. That's kind of simple, right? I like simple, simple really works. And I like to make it even more simple because change is really just moving from state A to state B. So for example, we don't use digital marketing in our business. State A, state B is, we do now. State A, I have a job and a career. State B, there's some redundancy consultations going around. State A, we have a CEO of the business who fully understands and supports the marketing function. State B, she leaves and the new guy comes in and we have to sort of try and break him in and bring him around to some new ways of thinking. So moving from state A to state B. And if you think about this, we can get there in two very different ways. Firstly, evolutionary, gradual change. And you'll have no doubt seen this very famous image before. So an evolutionary system is often one step at a time. So for example, the implementation of a new quality management system in a business or a new CRM system is usually implemented in incremental steps slowly over a period of time. Or we can be quite radical or revolutionary. One day there's a government, the next day men with guns come, there's no government. It's a revolution. So if we were to announce a new CRM system, CRM system, for example, and say as of tomorrow you will not be allowed to use the old system, it's shut down, that's pretty radical.  Now what is interesting for me is that this change is often the same changes received in a different way. So the introduction of a new CRM system, for example, maybe at the company town hall meeting on a cold Monday morning in November, could seem to everybody that didn't know it was coming as quite revolutionary. But of course the team that have been working on it for months or in some cases years, it would be evolutionary because they've got to the stage they're at in incremental stages. So what that means for you guys, if you're involved in planning of any change of working practices with your team or with a wider organisation, by the time you announce it, it could be so familiar to you that you might overlook the feelings and the behaviours of the people that were hearing it for the first time. Now a good example of this is this guy.  He won the gold medal by coming into the arena and instead of straddling the bar, which all of his competitors have been doing in the past, he actually flopped over it backwards now using the Fosbury flop and it's still being used to this day. And for him, this was evolutionary change. He knew he wasn't able to be the current Olympic record with the straddle jump, so him and his coaching team worked on evolving and designing a new way of doing it. But for the watching world, it was absolutely radical. It was revolutionary. Some people even cried cheat and foul and how dare he and all these sort of great things. So, of course, a lot depends on who decides on the change. And in Fosbury's case, he did. So it was no problem for him, as you can imagine. So what I'd like you to do, I know we can't interact too well, but just for five or 10 seconds, I'd like you all to think about a couple or one significant change you've been through in your life. It may have been at home, it worked personally, it could have been at work, but it's something that was significant, but it was not of your design. So I'll just give you five or 10 seconds to think of something. OK, all got something in your mind. I'm sure you have good. So try and remember how you felt at the beginning of that change. And one of the best tools that we use, it's been around a long time, but one of the best tools we use to help coach people through change management and understand the feelings and the behaviors of their people. Is Elizabeth Kubler Ross and her morning curve. Now you will have seen this, I'm sure many of you and those of you that haven't great then welcome to the morning curve. There are different permutations of this tool, but the great thing about this is that it gives you a heads up on where people's feelings and therefore their attitudes and behaviors are as they transition through a change in working practices.  And to do it, I'm going to talk about a genuine and real client of mine who is an American organization, global organization, and they have everything outside of the Americas, they call the international business and that is run from Europe. And three years ago, the general manager of the Europeans of the international business decided to move back to the America and resigned his position. He went back into the into the mothership if you like, back into the States. And when this was announced to the business, the first thing they found themselves in was absolute denial. I can't believe that he's gone back to America. We had a five year strategy. We're only barely through the year three. I cannot believe that he's done that to us. Why would he make such a decision? So all of these expressions were being articulated in the business. And then you'll see the next guy on the curve who is actually looking pretty mad. He's hopping mad with anger. And expressions began to come out about the guy and how he'd let them down and how could the company have allowed this to happen. And then what was really interesting is they got wind of who they were hiring his replacement and it was somebody from a competitor company. Now, it wasn't exactly directly competitive, but they were in the same sector. And this newcomer or this new guy and the company was coming from had a reputation for quite a lot of hard nosed get business done type of approach. So the anger spilled into why have they hired this guy? That will never work here. What kind of a decision is this? And they began to question the decision making and also the fact that they haven't used the succession plan and recruited from within to fill this general manager role. A lot of anger, a lot of denial. Now you'll notice the colour of the curve is changing from deep red through to sort of ambery, then light amber, orangey into green, then fully green at the end. And you'll see why as we go ahead. Because the next stage, the guy with the old fashioned biplane in his head, that's a metaphor and he's got some tears coming out of his eyes, is nostalgia. It's always better before and this began to manifest itself in some of the behaviours and some of the commentary in the business. People would say things like, well, it was better when the last guy was here. We didn't have to do that. We weren't asked to do that type of reporting. We were not asked to engage with the market in this type of way. So lots of looking backwards, denial, anger, nostalgia. And then of course we get to this bit, the fear. And this is fear of the future. This is the fear of the unknown. Can I do this? Am I going to be under more scrutiny under this new regime? That was one of the big fears in this business. What was going to change in a different way to the way they've been working for the last three, five years? So lots of fear. The next guy's got a picture of a euro sign. It could be a dollar or it could be a pound sign, but it's to signify bargaining. And it's not the type of bargaining where you go to the boss and say, if you're going to do this to me, I'd need more money or better conditions or a better car, whatever it is. So it's not that type of bargaining. It's the bargaining that we sit at home, maybe talking to our partner, our family, or maybe lying in bed alone and go, am I going to do this? Now, if it's a huge change, it could be something as serious as, am I going to stay with the business? If it's a smaller change, it could be something as, do I want to get on board with this? Do I actually want to do this? Am I bothered? So this type of bargaining goes on as we transition through the curves. And we hear at this stage a lot of people using that wonderful expression, yes, but. So you'll hear things like, yes, I see why they're doing it, but it would have been better if we'd have done this. So as you take people through change in your organisations, we'll talk about yes, but again in a moment, but listen out for the yes, but attitudes that you see around you.  I'm making a decision and I'm going to move forward with this. The rocket is a metaphor for the newer technology moving forward as opposed to the old fashioned biplane. And then finally we have some commitment to move forward. Now, whatever changes you're going through or whatever you're asking your people to go through, whether it be now or in the future, there's no doubt they will travel through a transition curve, a morning curve like this. And sometimes it's a tremendous pace that can be done in a heartbeat, particularly if the change is not too much of an issue for them. So I've got another client who has a UK based in the UK. They have a US operation about 100 people and they decided to ask all their staff to come into work through the back door of the building and no longer through the main reception, right? So for most people, this was not a problem whatsoever. I doubt there was any bargaining, any readjustment required. Most people just sort of shrug their shoulders with an OK of acceptance, no skin off my nose and they started to come in through the back door. Now there were two people that absolutely hated the idea and they continued to let themselves into the front and they justified this because the whole reason for this change was they wanted to move to a more customer centric operation, really a customer centric culture. They wanted to create in the reception area, not a thoroughfare for people coming in and out, but mainly for guests and visitors. And their justification was they got in the office so early, there were no visitors there. So these guys, there were two of them, I remember them really well. They would moan about the change in the cafeteria by the water cooler. And more importantly, they'd linked their dissatisfaction to other decisions that had recently been made as part of the wider focus on this customer enhancement, this customer experience. And if we think about the curve, they were both in the denial and anger stage. And they said so often, which was a good thing. And then you might be wondering why I say it's a good thing. Well, if you look at the slide, it's because they made it clear to their managers they were not happy, which of course presented an opportunity to find out why. And like most things in life, if people express their feelings to us, at least we know where we stand and we can try and do something about it. My worst experience when trying to help and coach people through a change management program is the ones who get to the middle of the slide bargaining and choice and either consciously or subconsciously are not able to move forward. Now these are the most difficult guys and girls to recognise because they talk about understanding it. They say all the right things in the meetings, they say all the right things in the one to one with you if you're a manager, and they continue to do the opposite in terms of their behaviour. So if it was a cultural change initiative where we're trying to enhance the speed of response, they would miss deadlines, they would fail to communicate. Now interestingly, when you challenge them, they always have an apology and they often have a justification for the reason why. And sometimes there's even an uptick in the behavioural change trend immediately because as a manager or as a colleague you say, hey guys get with the program, they're really sorry yet, sorry you're right. But that change is usually short lived. And these are the hardest ones to spot. So this is why it's so important to have engagement with everybody in your team and making sure you can check where they are and what behaviours and what attitudes they're demonstrating. So the guys in your business or your teams that are vocal about disliking a change, they can articulate it and they're good to have around for a couple of reasons. One, because by speaking to them you know where you stand, as we've said already, but the other thing is they could be right. They could have a very reasoned argument as to why the new way is not as viable as you think it is. And that's really worth the engagement. So I guess the message here, ladies and gentlemen, is dialogue. You know, even the ones who appear to be accepting of the change on the outside, they need to be spoken to. Particularly if they are early adopters and change champions, because we need to recognise them and empower them and to evangelise about the change. And they will have good ideas and they will be doing great things in the workplace. They'll have tips and tricks and methods of working that you can share or help them to share with others. And Cota refers to these as ambassadors and they're vital. So if you are going through any cultural change or organisational change at the moment, find out who these people are, engage with them and recognise them. They're vital to leading the change forward.  Why didn't I consult more with my team before I'd started to drive a change? I can see why I should have done this. And this is a great question and there's a good reason why we don't do it. And over my leadership career, I've been completely guilty of this as well. So this is the reason why we don't do it. And it's the opposite of the morning curve. This is called the discovery curve. Now, many of you will have absolutely had some brilliant ideas through the course of your career. And even at home, you know, I know, let's do this. It's a great idea. And that sometimes gives us a certain sense of naive enthusiasm. Okay. The best example, and he's a fabulous friend of mine now as well, but I was working with a guy who's an operations director. And he was looking after three production plans for this for this company.  He didn't change it completely, but he should play with the bonus and overtime structures across the three plans. Because they were tasked with driving some cost out of the business. And he said, I know what we can do. So we got the spreadsheets out and he had a look and it looked great on paper. And he spoke to his management team and they said, yeah, that looks good. And then he spoke to his boss and he said, yes, that looks good. And then he announced it and you'll see the image of the lady next. She's sitting up in bed rather starkedly awake with a rude awakening. Because when we then announced the decision, people are in the stage where they go, you are joking. What on earth have you done that for? And in this particular case, there was talk of unions being involved and strikes and goodness as well. So it was a pretty serious. Now that, of course, as the initiator of the change, because it's your idea, brings you to have a certain amount of doubt. You reexamine the situation, maybe look if it's a financial situation. Look at the figures again, maybe do a bit more consultation. Talk to your team more, find out what they're really feeling, which hopefully brings a revisiting of what you're trying to achieve, which gives a second wind and then some hope and confidence. And finally, we're rushing forward to achieve what we're trying to achieve. And this is why it stops us sometimes having a dialogue because we're so sure about what we want to do. But if you think about the two curves together, while we're having our fantastic, wonderful idea with lots of naive enthusiasm, somebody else is going, you're kidding. I can't believe you're even thinking of doing that. Then they say, and now I'm going to leave. I'm going to walk out. We're going to get the unions involved or whatever it is. The anger and the nostalgia comes around as we have our root awakening. As we start to reexamine it with a little bit of doubt about the reason behind why we're driving the change. We've got some fear and some bargaining going on with the team around us and so on and so forth. So you really do see how people are working through. So the key to this is to understand where they are on the change curve and how you are influencing them. Either as a good colleague or if you are in the wonderful position of managing and leading people, how do you do it as their manager leader coach? So how do we do this? Well, there are a number of things we can do up front. And the first and most importantly is to consult. I am asked and my organisation, the small team I have were asked to go talk to clients on a number of occasions. And the horse has already bolted because the consultation process about what they're trying to achieve has not been done before whatever they're trying to achieve has been announced and attempted to be implemented. So speak to your team. And if it's a wider organisation, a bigger organisation, create working parties, create focus groups, get people to discuss openly and freely in a trustful environment, how do they feel about what we're trying to achieve? What could the objectives be? Particularly if the objectives have come down from a group or from an HQ, for example. And Cotter would call this building the case for change and assembling a key set of advocates or ambassadors. And then most importantly, make sure you remember and remind people of what won't change. There is often a long and enriching list of things that are not going to be different and it's often overlooked. It's not mentioned and that's because we take the good stuff for granted and we focus on the stuff we think is going to be difficult. So find a list of things that won't change and articulate it. So a particular client that works in professional services had everybody working from home and she said to a team, she said, look, we're going to work from home on a short term, maybe long term basis. We don't know at the moment, but I promise you, my dear team, the regular one to ones you have with me as your manager will not change. We will still hold those, albeit over teams. And now that we've got to the place where we can come together in smaller groups, she's bringing them together once a month for the regular meeting. So she was able to say, we're going to continue doing this and we'll have beer and cake afterwards and whatever else they used to do in a safe and socially distanced way. But she made very clear that although a number of things about the way they were working were going to change, she made very clear what wouldn't change. It's a key problem with change management. We don't work on what's not going to change. So there are four levers and I'm conscious of the clock. So we're going to try and get through this so we have time for some questions. Four main levers to implement when we're leading and managing a change situation. The first one, understanding and conviction. It's really critical that the people around you, the people in your team fully understand why it's happening and what it means to them. It has to be meaningful. Now, if you take this on a high level, and I mean high level as in a helicopter level, how does that fit with the company or even the individual team within the company?  How does it tie in with the objectives and strategy? How does it fit with your own team members, individual personal values, which I'm sure will be pretty much aligned to yours and the company ones? So that's quite a high level of understanding. But then on a smaller scale, can they or a lower level, can they see the reason behind the change? So the backdoor example from my client in America. Once those two guys realised that by leading by example, they were helping to really drive a cultural customer centric changing culture. They were completely up for it because they realised it's experienced and long standing members of the team. If they were to actually do this, everybody else would do it as well. So it has to fit with people in terms of understanding and conviction on a very high level in the purpose of the vision of the organisation and the understanding on a sort of day to day operational level. And that speaks very much to the second one, which is role modelling. And again, if you haven't seen that paper from Cotter, you'll hear a lot about role modelling in that paper from Cotter. If people are leading by example, you have a heck of a good chance of the change being implemented successfully. There is absolutely no place for a do as I say, not as I do culture. They have to look around themselves and see everybody else trying, and I mean trying, you don't have to succeed necessarily straight away, but trying to do the same things and the right things. And you cannot do as I say, not as I do. And we've seen in our public life some examples of that over the last few months. Thirdly, talent and skills. So if you asked me to change my modus operandi and present this to you in French, I've had a few beers in French bars after playing rugby, but I'm not that good. So I would need a lot of training, a lot of talents and tools. So it's really important that if you're going to ask people to do stuff differently, for example a change in cultural emphasis, you've got to train and coach your leaders on how to deliver that, how to bring those new skills and behaviours. If it's a new product launch, for example, invest time in training the recipients of all of your wonderful support stuff on how they can use it and why they should use it. A change of reporting methodology, another example, train the people on how to use the new systems. Train their managers on how to follow up and coach them through so they actually get implemented. The last thing that we need to do when we ask people to change their behaviour is hamstring ourselves or make them hamstrung because they're not able to do it because they don't know how.  This can be really basic. If you want your people to report metrics in a different way, ensure the process or the tool that you give them is fit for purpose. Is it automated? I've got some clients who give people three different spreadsheets to answer ostensibly the same question. So, is the tool and the mechanism that you're handing to people going to work for them? If as part of the change you need people to have a one-to-one with you at the same time every week, make sure you formally keep that process in place. Don't pull them out to do something else. I've a client and met device and we've delivered them a fabulous new sales methodology and it's gone global, it's really great.  I've got one guy who's a lovely guy but he's a vice president of sales and he keeps pulling his people out of technical and soft skills training meetings so they can chase opportunity, which obviously we all love opportunity but if you're going to do that then it undermines by not having a formal process. I hope that makes a bit of sense. Once we're embarked on the journey and maybe some of you are already in a change journey right now, keep the dialogue open. Hold regular one-to-ones with all your key stakeholders and if it's a smaller team hold them with the whole team. If it's a bigger organisation then keep the focus groups going. Keep getting feedback from people on a wide spectrum of issues and be careful to use something that's on the slide here. It talks about emotion-based open questions. I know a lot of leaders who are quite good at asking open questions but they tend to only ask fact-based open questions. What do I mean by that? Fact-based open question gives you a fact as an answer. For example, I might say to my team, when did you roll out phase two? I'll say it was in August, Nick. How many new clients did we get? 167. What was the size of the percentage take-up? Who were the main stakeholders you've identified? You'll see that these are all open questions but they only give me facts which are useful. What we really need to do in terms of dialogue to help people come with us on change journeys is to ask questions that tap into emotions. For example, how did you feel when you first heard the news that we were all going to have to work from home for the next foreseeable future? For example, how are you coping with that? You look to me like you're doing great. What are you doing to make this go so well? I just noticed you had a fantastic success last week. What did you feel when you got that success? What was the practices that you used in order to bring that success forward? What are you enjoying about it? All of these questions are emotion-based questions which really tap into the feelings. Something a very wise man who I won't wax lyrical about but somebody I'm so pleased I met in my mid-twenties. He once said to me, Nicky said, if you're not getting good answers, you might very well not be asking very good questions which is a real reflective look in the mirror and he's absolutely right and you see that on the screen. So if you manage a small team, my advice will be checking with them regularly how they're feeling, what successes can you celebrate with them, where are the wins that you can replicate with others and also what are their fears? How can you help coach them through those fears? How can we get over them? Because the sooner you know about those, the better. Okay, so we're nearly done. The last slide is just a little reminder. I'm sure you'll have come across this before but maybe some of you have taken some notes. Maybe some of you have had some value from this little half an hour. The most important thing is what will you do with it? Because reflection without action doesn't mean much. So maybe you make yourself a little action plan. Maybe you already have. Thank you very much. I'm sure you all listened and you weren't doing a good morning Vietnam on me, so thank you very much. And I think it's over to Judith for some Q&A. Right, that's great. Thanks, many thanks Nick. We're now going to have a short 10 minute Q&A session. As a reminder, you can still submit your questions via the chat box in the Q&A panel. So obviously if you want to submit any questions and I'll ask the first question. Why does change take so long and why is it so difficult? Wow, is that a question for me? Why does it take? Well, it doesn't always, Judith. Change doesn't always take so long. It depends on what we're trying to do. If you're looking at changing people's attitudes and culture in the workplace, that can take a long time. And the reason it's so difficult is because we're all human and we all go through the change curve and the morning curve we talked about there at different paces. It makes sense to some of us immediately and to others it doesn't. And I think also one of the main reasons and I've already talked about this a little bit in the talk is we're not engaged with, we don't engage enough with people. Even if you think many of you I guess will have families and I've got 17 and 19 year old kids now and if I want to try and help them to do something differently because I think it would be better for them in the future, they've got to buy it. It's a bit of a sales job. So I think that sometimes change takes so long because we don't really think about the way we communicate and how we engage with people when we're trying to address something and make stuff move differently. So it doesn't always take long, but I mean I'm working with a client still from 2012 we're still going through a cultural leadership change. So what's that eight years and we're still working on it. People come and go and we're getting there but it's not where they want it to be just yet. OK, thank you. And then we've got a question from Natasha. Is it difficult without consultation with the team without prematurely giving away what the actual changes? That's a great question Natasha, depending on what it is of course because if you're in any sort of HR or legal space then you're not going to sit down and say OK guys we're thinking of losing five of you, which one of you is it going to be. So that would be hard. But if you were thinking about something like of changing working practices. So how do we get the best out of the situation where we're only allowed in the office at certain times? For example, sit down with the guys and say look this is this is where we're at. We have to abide by these new rules. We have to keep everybody safe. What do you think we should do? So you're actually asking for input. You're asking for ideas. So you're helping shape the future of the change because the change may have already happened and it could have been one of those that was inflicted upon us. So it was out of our hands. You may have a new method of education being passed down through the organization from head office. We're now going to do this instead of this. Particularly in a sales function. So you'd sit down with the team and say OK this is what it is so I'm going to announce the change but tell me a little bit how you think we could help implement it successfully. But if your question is leading towards things that you can't share just yet then yes of course that's more challenging and you can't share those until the change has been actually decided. Next question from anonymous. What do you do with staff that are change resistant? Any tips? Well Yeah Any tips I'm a great believer if you go back to the morning curve slider when you'll get these slides I think so there is only so long that you can work with folk to come forward with you. Now I'm assuming two ways one if you have the direct manager of this person and one if you're a colleague. So let's take the colleague first it can be extremely frustrating when people around you are not going the same way. There's something called Napoleon's Thirds which is a methodology using change management. It comes from when Napoleon used to take his armies across the plane you know 10,000 people and he'd say guys we're going over the top we're off to battle and a third of them would say yes Napoleon we're with you. And the third would say you're kidding Napoleon we're not going anywhere. And then another third would sit in the middle and just be resistant and wait to see which way the land lies and which one of the Thirds won. So one of the things you can do is really try and engender a culture around the change resistor of people who were succeeding and keep sharing the successes and the reason why they're doing so well with it and why it's a good idea. So I'm a great believer in doing that. I'm also a great believer in direct feedback. The coaching questions we talked about emotion based questions yes try and get to the bottom of it and then I'm going to be completely brutal with you Mr Ommis is anonymous. Some people are just not ready and there comes a time when you have a different conversation. If it's going to damage what you're trying to achieve as a team or trying to achieve as an organisation then there comes a time when you've given all the coaching you can give and all the explanations you can give and all the opportunity you can give there comes a time when you have to have a different conversation. And this sort of link to that question the next one is from Ashley. Could Nick suggest a couple of ways to identify those change ambassadors so the enthusiastic ones. Is it best to have a mix of enthusiastic and skeptical colleagues for instance? So no Ashley it's not. So the change ambassadors are the ones that are really winning with it. You can bring the skeptical ones in to discuss whether or not you think it's a you know is the idea solid and use them. Disney used to do this Disney corporation used to have something called the Disney triangle they would keep the creatives away from the people who go yeah that's never going to work because the poor creatives will get shot down in flames but the people who say that's never going to work are really valuable because they actually sometimes have some really valid views they're not just being negative. So what Disney is to separate them even put them in different cities. So I would yeah I would only have as change ambassadors folk who were actually really succeeding. They don't have to be gregarious and stand on a platform and and sing hallelujah but guys who were really working well with it so find out what they're doing. So if they're having a really good time with something they've figured a way through it and it then find out what it is and get them to share it with the others and praise them and reward them and recognise them publicly. Next question from Shelly how do you manage your work through lots of different changes happening at the same time? Carefully Is the short answer Shelly Carefully I wish I could speak to you because I don't know what you mean in terms of you know sometimes they're all linked to a bigger change that the organisation is trying to make so you may have six or eight different changes of working practices. One of the things that people do make the mistake of doing is giving people to do too much to do at once So there's certainly something called change weariness or change fatigue and I honestly have worked with some organisations as an advisor, as a consultant where you just want to say guys slow down you know it takes some more time so if there's multiple things going on pick the ones that are going to be the most beneficial pick the ones that really tie into the purpose and the vision and the mission of the business so that people can really hang their hat on that and try and work through them carefully. If I could talk to you I could maybe dig a little further with some questions but please feel free to email me if you wish. There's another similar question what would be the best way of keeping staff engaged when there's nothing further to tell them at the moment so in brackets they said they know there will be an announcement in November say so how do you keep people engaged in that? Right and again I don't know what the announcement in November will be but there's always something to tell them so it may not be specifically about whatever you're going to announce in November but there must be something that's going on that's good so you know keep telling them about what people are doing well keep telling them about how people are trying the hardest keep talking to them about how they're feeling because yeah to announce in what are we now 21st September to sort of say and I don't know the details so I'm not judging at all but to announce that something's going to come again in November there must be some idea about what that is so try and keep talking about whatever it is as opposed to just saying right guys see you in November sort of thing and I'm sure that isn't going to happen I'm sure that's not the case but there's always something to communicate on always if you look hard enough and then someone's asked a question why do some companies never follow through with changes Right so that's a fantastic question and on a big scale so this is when I said 70% of change transformation projects don't work they don't follow through because they're not able to create enough ambassadors who are living the change and that often is because they're not aligned at leadership level and what happens is it doesn't cascade down people are not held accountable to doing the right things on a daily basis so what then I've got so many examples I could share of this so they then just go find another new shiny toy to try and you say well okay the last one was more than good enough but we didn't implement it properly so it's to do with implementation it's often to do with real role modelling behaviour but it's also without being too sort of direct about it what gets inspected gets respected and often times managers are not strong enough to say to their teams okay we're doing this this way now let's have a catch up every Monday about X, Y and Z and then the following Monday they'll forget and then the following Monday they'll only talk about X and then the following Monday they'll forget again so the implementation, the real thorough follow through of coaching and helping them to feel comfortable with whatever the new thing is they're trying to achieve that's the key. I think we've got time for one more question this is from Thea do you have any advice for initiating change during this period of already intense change caused by the pandemic I feel people may be more resistant than usual. That's another good question it depends on what it is and if there's need then link it to everything we've talked about already in the webinar. That's all the time we have for our Q&A session today. I'd like to say thank you to Nick for today's presentation to CIM Yorkshire for organising the event and a thank you to you all for attending. We hope you found it interesting and worthwhile. Our next webinar will be entitled what the brain reveals about your marketing messages and that will be on Thursday the 8th of October at 1pm and that will be hosted by CIM South West. You'll find it listed on the events page on the CIM website where you can find out more information and register for the session. Once again you'll shortly be receiving a survey on today's event and would really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback. So on behalf of CIM thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your day.


Well to the ice one day away now from the start of the frozen for the XL Energy Center and for Minnesota Duluth. It's her second straight trip to the national semifinals, but for senior forward and former Grand Rapids Thunderhawk Avery Peterson. This is actually his third time at the frozen for two with the Bulldogs and one with Nebraska Omaha. It's the perfect end to his college career playing in his home state in front of fans also with his high school teammate Hunter Shepard for one final time. We've played together since we were little kids, you know, Grand Rapids is a good culture for that. And you kind of play with your buddies your whole your whole career. You know, I had the same line mates my whole career in Rapids. So yeah, luckily I feel lucky to come from Rapids and play for that organization. Like I said, like you said, played with Shepard all the way up to come here three times. It's special and you know to have the last one here at the XL Energy Center in Minnesota and her home fans. It's pretty good. Will third time be the charm for Peterson. Him and the Bulldogs take on Ohio State at five. The Michigan and Notre Dame follow right after both games. You can catch on ESPN too.


the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow on this September 28th on Thursday. Hope everybody's having a fantastic week. Almost over. September's almost over. Get ready for the fall. All right, not the fall in terms of falling down, but the fall in terms of the season. All right, it seems a little quiet on the chat over there. Okay, it's waking up a little bit. All right, let's see. We have a bunch of different stories today. There's a lot of going on, although I don't think any of them is going to consume a big chunk of our time, so we'll jump right into it. The first, of course, is the debate last night. Now, I have to admit, I ended up skipping the debate, now watching it and catching up this morning on it, watching most of it clips, fast-forward clips of it. I think the consensus basically has been that it was just boring and irrelevant, and it doesn't make any difference, and none of them have done anything to chip away Donald Trump. I mean, they keep swapping percentage points between them, who's first, who's second, who's third, who's fourth, who's fifth, who's sixth, but no difference between first, right? Second, third. It's all about second, third, fourth, fifth, and absolutely nothing on the top there. And no impact on Trump. Trump seems to be dominating the field, seems to be dominating the field in every one of the primary states. He's dominating the field on a national poll. DeSantis seems to be holding on to the second place on the national polls, but not doing very well in places like New Hampshire, and we'll see what happens in Iowa and in South Carolina. He's not going to do well. So there's just nobody. And part of this is without question just too many people. Like, why can't the Republican Party just, I mean, don't you, Mr... I mean, none of you remember this, but it used to be the nominees, used to be decided smoke-filled rooms. And while I don't think it's a good idea to go back to those days, although it might be an improvement, the reality is that right now what the Republicans need is a smoke-filled room to pick between the seven people on stage up there, trim it down to three, and let them go at it. And maybe that way they can make a dent in Trump. I have only three debate, kick out everybody else. I mean, basically it should be, I think it should be DeSantis, Haley, and Vivek, and that's it. The rest should be retired. And maybe then, maybe then, one of them, before the primaries get started, could make a dent in Trump. But with seven of them, it just, you just can't do it. You just cannot do it. So I think the Republicans here committed suicide. This is, you know, it's basically guaranteeing that Trump will be the nominee. I think, as I've said many times, while Trump could beat Biden, given how weak Biden is, he is the weakest of all the Republicans in terms of beating Biden. So why do it? Why just let him roll over this? I mean, Trump is loving this, and he's never going to participate in a debate, because as long as it's divided up into six, seven people, he has nothing to fear, zero, zilch. He's got enough of the base to win every primary. And really, national policy is getting over 50%. So why would he ever participate in a debate? So yeah, you know, Christie had a good line about Donald Duck.  That's what they should be calling him. Nobody's calling him Donald the loser, Trump. And, you know, what's his name? DeSantis made a comment. But they probably made comments about, DeSantis actually made a comment about the deficits that Trump accumulated. That was good. But all the other comments were about he's not here. They seem like just whiny kids, whining that the guy who they want to beat will not play fair based on their rules. You've got to go to the jugular if you're going to have any chance. There's nothing to lose. Nothing to lose. I don't think the indictments are supporting, the indictments have people supporting him. I think the reality is that the Republican Party is Donald Trump's political party. The reality is that the Republican Party loves Donald Trump. The reality is that the Republican Party stands today for nothing other than for Donald Trump. At least 50 plus percent of it. That's it. And he's going to get denominations even if he goes to jail, which is, I don't know how the country recovers from that. It really is hard to tell how the government, how the country recovers from it. All right, let's see.  The government looks like it's going to be shut down. It looks like the Republicans committed to that. The Republicans in the House, that a small minority of them are committed to shut down the US government. Trump, of course, is supporting them. And he says that unless you get everything you want, keep it shut down. They'll never get everything they want. So the government is going to be shut down for a long time. I don't see where the compromise comes from. I don't see how, unless Democrats and Republicans unite and kind of outnumber the small number of Republicans that are going to vote against everything proposed, I just don't see how they avoid a shutdown. I don't think McCarthy can afford to do that. So we will see. I mean, we might be in a situation where if McCarthy tries to avoid a shutdown, the Republicans basically vote him out of the speakership. And then we're back to a crisis about who the Speaker of the House is. No Speaker of the House, right? No Speaker of the House. And then there's, and there's also a government shutdown. There's no leadership. How do you get out of that?  I don't think, and one of the interesting phenomena out there is the hysteria of the media and pundits about government shutdowns, how awful it's going to be the stock market, stock market will crash, the economy will crash, it's going to be devastating. It never has been and it won't be. But it is unbelievably inconvenient for a lot of people. And it will distort the, it will cause the economy to sputter a little bit. It does create uncertainty. The stock market will go down. Generally, it usually does if there's a government shutdown. And it just creates this massive uncertainty. Nobody knows what's going on, what's going to happen, how it's going to all play out. And with this group of crazy Republicans, there's a good chance that they don't come to any kind of agreement that there is no solution. And this continues. Who knows for how long. So a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unpleasantness, lack of leadership. For what? For what? What do the Republicans want? What are they asking for? I mean, I could understand this. If this was on principle, they want to cut government spending. They really, they want, they want to cut the budget. They want to, they, and that's it. And if they, if they get a deal where government spending is cut, they'll, but they're not doing it. That's not, I mean, there's that. There's abortion. You know that, that there's a senator, I forget his name, but there's a senator who's holding up all Pentagon appointments. Because he wants some abortion language to pass that's unequivocal and, and nobody's going to allow it to pass. Democrats are not going to allow it to pass. They control the Senate. So he's holding up all Pentagon appointments. This is Tommy Tuberville. The only thing that's important, not national security, not defense. The only thing that's important to him is abortion. So, right? I mean, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. I mean, we have nobody, literally nobody, literally nobody standing up for any semblance of rights, freedom, capitalism, markets, anything like that, anything like that. It's just, you know, one loser after the other, you know, pursuing all kinds of goals that have nothing to do with the well-being of this country. All right. So there's going to be a shutdown. Economically, it's not as bad as people will portray it. Politically, it's a disaster. And it's not good economically. It's just not as bad as everybody makes it out to be. The main issue of shutdown is the uncertainty that it creates. And the fact that this shutdown, it's not even clear what it's about exactly, what the Republicans actually want because they want a whole menu of items. All right. As you know, there is this big, there's this massive migrant crisis in the U.S. Migrants are crossing the border. Some of them are being shipped to places like New York. New York doesn't have the money and the, just the place, the infrastructure to house all these people and to feed them and to provide them with a stipend that's just not out of money. The same is happening in El Paso, Texas. El Paso, Texas is seeing a massive inflow of migrants and, you know, they just don't have the housing to provide for them and they don't have the resources. They don't have the money. And people, you know, these migrants are just being dumped in the middle of a city like El Paso and the expectation is that the city will take care of them. Now, of course, the whole issue of migration and the whole issue of illegal immigrants and crossing the border and entering into the United States and what to do about it and how to treat them and all of that, it's a super complex issue and we'll talk about that another time and you know my controversial views on it. But here, this whole issue of we don't have enough money to take care of them. That's the whole problem of illegal migration. The whole problem of the way the United States approaches this issue on a southern border is captured in that sentence. We don't have enough money to take care of them. Why are we taking care of them? Why do we have an immigration system that requires us to take care of them? Why has immigration become a global welfare program where anybody from anywhere in the world can come in and get welfare, get accommodation and get food and get all the stuff? Now, part of the reason is because we won't let them work explicitly. We won't let them work. Right? Oh, I have to comment on something Doron wrote here. Yeah, maybe later. I'll comment on that. I'll comment on that. If you don't let them work, then they're going to stop in the street. But of course, maybe if they stop in the streets, they won't keep coming. That is, this is the crazy system that we have. Why not just say and make it clear to everybody in the world that people are welcome to come here. They can cross the border. They can apply for asylum, but they will get literally zero help from the US government, not from the federal government, not from state government, not from local government. It's not the world of government to provide welfare to asylum seekers or migrants or whatever they want to call themselves. Now it would be good if we allowed them to get work permits and then they could get work, but the one easy straightforward solution to this is just not pay them welfare. Just stop. I mean, New York is about to do that because they just ran out of money. So the city is literally distributing flyers at the southern border and in immigrant shelters saying, look, don't come to New York. We don't have any money. We don't have any resources. We can't give you a home. We can't give you a stipend. The federal government won't allow us to give you work permits. So you can't work. And by the way, New York City is the most one of the most expensive cities in the world and we cannot help you get a work permit and you won't be able to find work here. Though from what I hear they're all working illegally in New York black market. New York is full. Don't come. But if that was, I mean, the message should be the U.S. government is not going to support give handouts to migrants.  Now ideally, ideally, but I don't expect this, we say come and work. We're looking for people to work. Come and work. Here's a work visa. But that's not going to happen. So at least I mean, I love that everybody's worried about everybody talks about the migrant crisis. Everybody talks about how horrible it is. They're taking over the country. They're doing this. They're doing that. We don't have the wealth estate make up to the welfare state. New York doesn't have enough money, all this stuff. And nobody talks about why are they getting any money to begin with? Why are they getting any money to begin with? And you know, this is what we're seeing right now is, you know, the bankruptcy of the welfare state, the bankruptcy of altruism, the inability of anybody in our government to say, you know, we can't redistribute your wealth anymore, we're stopping. They do this with Americans. And they do this with anybody who questions the border who needs anything. And that now has become the standard. Welfare is you cannot question it. You can question migrants, you can question work, you can question anything. You can't question welfare. Why say let's just end welfare. Certainly we should end welfare for everybody. But as a simple solution for right now, just end welfare for immigrants, all immigrants, they shouldn't need it. Now again, we should also allow them to work. I find it, yeah, pretty amazing that the assumption of every single news article that I read about this is that the state has to take care of these people. They have to take care of them. And that, you know, that that's the problem. The problem is they don't have enough money. Or the problem is that too many migrants coming in. But nobody's willing to question the assumption of why do we have to take care of them? All right. Interesting cannabis cannabis cannabis is always interesting, right? So as you know, many states in the United States have legalized marijuana. So significant number of states now have legal marijuana dispensaries, businesses, businesses are now growing marijuana all over the United States and selling it in various forms. One of the problems with this is that it's still illegal, according to federal law. It's still a felony. It's still a crime to sell marijuana, to grow marijuana in terms of federal law. Now the feds are not enforcing that law very much. But there is one area in which they are enforcing that is since almost all banks are, you know, have a national charter have a regulated by the feds or banks are regulated by the feds in one way or the other. Then federal law applies to all these banks. And one of the one of the regulatory principles is that banks are not allowed to deal with illegal businesses. They're not allowed to actually sell, sorry, bank people who deal in illegal activity. You know, I'm sure there's a technical term for what that means, but it's a crime. It's a crime to bank an illegal business knowing it knowingly. So what happens is that you've got and this is true of credit card companies as true banks. So what you have is a whole segment of the economy, at least in the states where it's legal, that is functioning legally, but they cannot bank. They're an all-cash operation. They have to carry cash, they have to transact cash, they have to deal with cash. They can't open a bank account. They can't get a loan. They can't deposit money. They can't write checks. They can't use credit cards. So the whole supply chain of marijuana is a cash business, which means that it's an open invitation to robbers, muggers, money laundries, organized crime, and it's super inconvenient. And indeed, banks that have in the past banked marijuana dealers have gotten into trouble with the feds. Mergers have been stopped because a bank has been discovered that it has a lot of deposits of businesses that do marijuana. That's not right. Anyway, for a change, there's actually a building congress that's actually going to fix a problem and actually do some good. It's a new bill that aims to give the marijuana industry access to banking services and it's actually passed the Senate Banking Committee in a vote of 14 to nine. So, you know, it got some bipartisan support. I wonder who the nine who voted against it are probably nine conservative Republicans. It's being led by both Republicans and Democrats in terms of getting it through. But I can't imagine Democrats being against this bill given that they want to legalize everywhere. 39 states of legalized marijuana. So this will affect a big chunk. It'll affect a lot of businesses. It'll affect a lot of lives. I mean, what they should do is legalize marijuana nationally, get rid of the federal law that bans it. But short of that, at least make it legal for marijuana businesses in states where it's legal to be able to deal with banks. I mean, that seems to be pretty straightforward and pretty simple. You think somebody would have thought of this before, but we are where we are in the world. Not much rationality out there. All right. Yeah, we're going through these pretty quickly. That's good. You're covering a lot today. Okay, I'm going to say something controversial because I saw a post from Dawn that I just wanted to correct. Where did I see it though?  Dolan says, no one is pro-abortion. They are pro-individual rights for women, just as no one is pro-life. They are anti-choice. True. But I'm pro-abortion. I think abortion is a good thing. I think certainly having that choice is a good thing. So I don't want to run away from the idea that, yeah, abortion is a valuable option for women. So in that sense, I'm pro it. I'm not just pro her right to have it, but I must have pro the procedure. It's a life-enhancing procedure, certainly for the woman. And I'm pro-life. That's why I'm pro-abortion, because I'm pro the life of the individual that we're talking about. All right. I did as much damage as I can, as I want to do for now. All right. This is a recurring topic, but it's important, so we'll keep talking about it. And it again illustrates kind of the absurdities in the world in which we live, the false conflicts, the difficulties to move forward, the difficulties to have real breakthroughs. I mean, we live in a world that is so rich with such potential, with so many potential entrepreneurs, with so much potential in terms of the upside. And all of this is rained in, held back. And one of the things holding much of this back is environmentalism. Now, here's a great example of this, where even progress on one of the environmentalist's biggest agendas, which is electric cars and batteries and so on, is being held up by an environmentalist agenda. So one of the areas in the world that has the largest deposits of minerals, among them nickel, copper and cobert, but potentially many others, that are so essential for this whole industry of batteries and electric vehicles and so on, right? One of the areas in which that has some of the biggest reserves in the world for this is called the Ring of Fire in Canada. There are massive, massive deposits of nickel, copper and cobert and particularly a lot more in the Ring of Fire. But the problem is that the Ring of Fire is this massive area of swampy expanse. I don't think, whoa, the Wall Street Journal is using the word swamp. Swamp. I thought that was politically incorrect to use the word swamp. It should be not swampy, but it should be wetlands, right? So this is a big area of, well, I'm not going to use wetlands. This is a big area of swamps, spruce forests, meandering rivers, all in Northern Ontario. There are no major roads, there are no major settlements, there's no human activity. It's one of the most, and yet, so it's just nature. Now, not only is it nature, but given that the enemy is carbon, we're told, then this is one of the biggest carbon sinks in the world in terms of sucking carbon.  So he's got, in order to exploit this, I'm going to have to get rid of some of the swamp, but by getting rid of some of the swamp, we're going to increase CO2. That's not good. How do we resolve this? But how are we going to get batteries? How are we going to get EV vehicles? How do you go? How do you do it? How do you work it? Unresolvable conflict. I mean, plus, this is just nature. World mother nature, I think. And yet, there is this urgency to replace our dependence on China, to develop a domestic battery and EV industry, and of course, there's money to be made in mining all of this. So this is the kind of conflict that exists in the kind of the world out there, in the environmental world, where we can't progress because, wait a minute, we have to consider mother nature, or we have to consider this balancing act of our CO2 that is ridiculous and absurd. Of course, there's no reason to believe in all the data, so just otherwise, that electric vehicles or batteries are good in terms of, or reduce, actually reduce CO2 over the lifespan of automobile. We've done shows on this. There's no reason for that. But even if you accept all the environmentalist premises, they've got these conflicts that they cannot resolve. They created a world where there was endless conflict as long as human beings want to prosper on the world. And the only solution to the environmentalist problems as they portray them, as they set them up, is to get rid of human beings. I mean, the only reason we need electric cars and electric batteries is because human beings want to travel. Well, we can stop them from traveling. There's already talk in Europe about banning flights. We can stop them from driving. We can bring back horses and cars, although horses might emit a lot of CO2. We can walk. We can just reduce the human population significantly. That'll do it. But that's the only way. The point is, for the climate change catastrophists, for the environmentalists, the committed environmentalists, there is no solution, no solution to the problem, except a culling of the human race, a reduction in the number of the human race. That's the only solution to the problem. Reduce economic activity, reduce the number of people. Every other solution, electrify, creates more problems for them than it solves, and they're going to be against it. And that's where we are today. As the lawyer representing the indigenous groups in Ontario who are fighting the idea to mine this stuff, we are threatening to destroy so many forests and peatlands that eat the carbon out of the atmosphere. The impact will be catastrophic. We're all going to die. Not to mention the fact that you're violating the rights of indigenous people. Yeah, I mean, this is where environmentalists and Michael Knowles completely agree. The world was a much better place in 1220. 1220 is the goal today of both far left and far right. They all want to go back to 1220. And what do we do? Where are we going to be in this? We have to decide which 1220 we want to go back to, the 1220 of the left or the 1220 of the right. Good luck with that. All right. Yeah, last topic quickly. Armenia, as you probably saw in the news, the province of Nagorno-Karabakh, something like that, is basically surrendered. They are dissolving their state. This is after a 32-year quest for independence and international recognition they have given up. They will be part of Azerbaijan, which is how they've been mapped anyway, how they've been recognized anyway. Of the 120,000 Armenians in the region, over 40,000 have already left and gone to Armenia. Many others, I think, will follow. I mean, this is a tragedy, a huge tragedy. People's lives disrupted. People's lives, you know, they're now going to be refugees in Armenia. They've gotten their homes over there. They're giving up homes that have been with their families for many, many years. They're leaving. It's hard to tell if they're being forced by Azerbaijanis to leave or they just don't want to live in Azerbaijan. They want to live with their tribal members in Armenia.  They're all the same. They all look the same. It's more that they have to be people who have the same tribal heritage as I did, exactly the same. They're not that, you know, they're not that different, even tribally. But, you know, a thousand years ago they were whatever, right? Because all these tribes, some of these tribes moved into this. The Georgians claimed they were always there, but the Azeris who were Turks moved in there. I don't know what the history of the Armenians is. Maybe the Armenians have always been there as well, right? Just who cares? Where you've been? I mean, again, this is 1220. It's time that we just accept people as individuals. It's time that we reject tribal labels and tribal affiliations and tribal associations and any kind of tribal importance one way or the other. Get rid of them all. All right. I had one other story. I'll just mention this because it is worth talking about. It does appear that Saudi Arabia and Russia's attempt to manipulate oil prices at least somewhat has been partially successful. Crude now, Brett Crude at least is climbing towards $100 a barrel, which means Saudi Arabia is minting money.  The oil that they pull out of the ground is super cheap, and so they have restrained supply. By restraining supply, they have indeed caused prices to go up, which is what you'd expect. At the same time, Russia, which is also somewhat restrained supply partially because the difficulty of how to export the oil, but Russia is raking it in because it's got higher prices, so it's selling even though it sells at a huge discount to places like India and China. It's a discount off of the top line price, which is still significant. Both countries are raking in billions of dollars in extra revenue over the last few months because of their slowing down the supply. The US is pumping out more oil than ever. I think it's hitting record levels. We could have been pumping out even more oil even higher, so American oil companies are making a lot of money right now as well. The whole industry is making a huge amount of money. The challenges, and this is the challenge, the challenge is to what extent American oil companies reinvesting their money into new drilling, into producing more oil. Because yeah, the Saudis and the Russians might be able to influence prices to go up in the short run, but the more the United States pumps out oil, the less influenced Saudis and the Russians will have on global markets. The US is already, I think, supplying more oil than Saudi Arabia into those markets. If we got a boom in oil investment and in oil production, we would then have much more control, not we as a country, but American manufacturers by flooding the market with oil would cause prices to come down. So the question is, again, not economics. Economics, we know exactly what would happen. All this excess profits coming in would be invested in new production, which would ultimately lower prices. The question is politics. That is, if American investors, if American producers are worried that the government is going to restrict their ability to ultimately sell oil or to drill for oil, then they might not invest their money in new oil production. This is where Biden and Biden administration is really, really, really hooding. The economy is hooding future investment in fossil fuels. So this is, again, where politics interrupts with the natural flow of economics. The economics is simple. Saudi and Russia restrict its supply. The United States would invest heavily, increase supply, prices would come down. What's stopping that investment is uncertainty about the Biden administration and a future Democratic administration's attitude towards oil and gas. All right. Those are the stories. All right. So you can ask questions. We've only got three questions. We're doing okay. We're about halfway to our goal in terms of raising money, but only three questions, because we got a bunch of you doing stickers. Thank you for all the stickers. Dawn, thank you. Fred Hopper, thank you. Keyfax, thank you. And Wes, thank you. But the best way, really, to support the show and to frame what I talk about is to ask questions, and that way also to extend the show. I don't have a hard stop at two. So please, feel free to ask questions about anything you want to ask. Get over there and and ask. Scott says Donald Trump had all futures negative at one point. I mean, that's, I mean, he's attributing that as a virtue to Donald Trump, in a sense, right? Why otherwise say it, right? Because Trump didn't have futures negative at one point. COVID had futures negative at one point. There was such fear. I mean, this is the, this is the ridiculous nature of doing everything through politics, which people like Scott do. The reality is that during COVID, there was such fear that the economy was going to collapse completely. And that there would be no demand for oil. That you literally had to pay people to take your oil and store it because the storage costs were more expensive than the future, the price of oil in the future. That's what drove them negative. That nothing to do with Donald Trump. And I had everything to do with the fact that COVID crushed the price of oil because everybody was afraid demand was going to go to zero. But yes, let's attribute everything good that happens to Trump and everything bad that happens to the left and the Democrats because that's being objective about the world. Remo. Thank you, Remo. Yeah. So we're about halfway to our goal. So please consider supporting the show value for value. You can use the super chat button below. By the way, if you're new to the show, please press the subscribe button over there. And that that would be, that would be great if you subscribe to the show and then you get announcements when we go live, which is often eight shows a week. And in a normal week, granted, normal weeks are rare, but eight shows a week and a show every day to do a news roundup or five days a week at least. And then three longer shows in the evening or on Saturday. Let's see. Yeah. So just a reminder, we've got a bunch of people, 75 people watching right now. We're short about $130, a couple of bucks from everybody value for value. And we get to our goal. Thank you, Wes, for $50. That helps us a lot. But we still need, we still need those two to $10 from everybody who's watching would be great. And you can, of course, attach a question to it. And that that way you get a question answered. All right, let's do these three questions and move on. Why did I do that? Remo asks, thoughts and the assassination of a Masawi, Masawi, God, that's a long time ago. I really saw a documentary depicting several Mossad agents who opposed it because of the terrorist retaliations. But I think we should go after the religious leaders. God, I, yeah. I mean, I think Israel does too little of these kind of things. I think they should go after the religious. And I think they should go after the political, they should go after the military, they should go after anybody associated with these ideas. They should crush. They, you know, these are all members of organizations that are devoted to violence. El Masawi was the spiritual leader, one of the spiritual leaders of, you know, what was becoming Hezbollah, I think back then, if I remember right. And Hezbollah is an organization, even as far back as 1982, was responsible for the kidnapping of Americans. It was responsible for terrorist attacks against Israeli military. I think on the contrary, the fact that Nasrallah was the head, the spiritual leader and the head of the Hezbollah still alive, is only emboldens more terrorism and emboldens more attacks on Israel. The fact that the political leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and all over the Middle East are still alive. Every single one of them should have been assassinated. I don't think that is the solution. The solution is you have to occupy land and you have to destroy infrastructure. You have to actually, you know, engage in war.  So yeah, I mean, I mean, too many of Israel's Mossad's leaders are bleeding heart leftists or bleeding heart, whether they're left and right, bleeding heart generally. And that is a great tragedy for Israel because it needs people with kind of the moral fortitude that is committed to defending Israel and killing its enemies. All right, two last questions. Don't forget, you can use the super chat to ask a question. Go for it. But Sylvanos, thank you for another $50 sticker. Really, really appreciate that. John, thank you for a sticker. You guys can support. We're only $70 short of our goal. So, you know, at this point, we've got 80 people watching, do the math. Doesn't take much to get us to where we need to be. Michael says, how do we break the mythology that without state run safety nets, entire segments of our population would starve to death? I don't know how you break the mythology because, you know, the facts, the reality is so counter that that is a pre the welfare state people are not dying and starving to death in the streets of America. And with so much richer today, that the possibility of that is so much more remote than it ever, you know, ever has been. So that the richer you get, the easier it is to charity, the easier it is to just mutual aid to help the people who actually need the help. And in a world in which we live in, in America in which we live today where there are what, 9 million, 10 million unfilled jobs, the problem is not work. There's plenty of work. Now, there might be a mismatch of skills, but there's plenty of work even at the low end. I know lots of restaurants and that are constantly looking for dishwashers and waiters and people at the lower end of the skill set. And so there's actually no need for a safety net. And again, and the other thing is you don't need a government safety net. You could have a private safety net, which is what a charity ultimately becomes is a private safety net. Thank you, Michael, but I don't know how because ultimately, oh, let me say this, this is important. The issue is not factual. It's not about can we convince them that it's doable? We've done that. I mean, the arguments are sound. We've done it over and over and over again. It's a moral question. And so the real question you're asking, Michael, is how do we defeat altruism? That's the question. The only way to break the mythology is to defeat altruism. As long as altruism is the dominant view, the dominant moral view, we will have a welfare state. There's just no other way around it. Andrew says, PBS ran an admiring interview with FTC lead lawyer in the case against Amazon. It also invited Amazon, but no response. Why do companies in these positions issue lame statements or not defend themselves in public at all? I think because they're afraid because they don't have the self-confidence because they're afraid of a public backlash against them. They know the media is not on their side. They know the so-called experts are not on their side. And they don't have the moral backbone. They don't have the moral. I mean, what we need is an Alex Epstein of anti-trust. We need somebody with a law degree, somebody who can go out there and basically go economics and law and make the argument for every one of these companies on every one of these cases, defend them and defend them thoroughly and challenge anti-trust at its core. But Amazon, like most of these, they figure they're going to lose the public relations debate, so why even try? And they don't exactly know how to make a principled argument. They can make an argument, but will it be principled? And will it be one that's convincing? And will they inadvertently say something in an interview like that that the government will use against them?  You have to challenge anti-trust at its core. And they'd have to know a lot to do that and it'd have to have real courage to do it. Richard said, I just finished a highly recommend Uneven Justice by Raj Tanam. Have you read the book and did you ever meet him? No, I haven't read the book and have not met him. But you're recommending the book, so that's great. I'm curious what it's about. So I'm curious what it's about. But yeah, thanks Richard. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the book recommendation. All right, last question. We've met our goal, by the way, so thank you guys for jumping in there. Richard said, I just saw the highly rated movie Stalker. It's a tedious slog to the dead end of Russian mysticism. Have you seen it? It's a must miss unless you want a stifling emotion in peak irrationality. There's some good sentences there. I like this tedious slog to the dead end of Russian mysticism. Is it a Russian movie? Now I'm going to probably go see it. Tidious slog to the dead end of Russian mysticism. I like that. And then I like the stifling emotion in peak irrationality. Those are good phrases, good use of words. But no, I haven't seen the movie, I haven't heard about it. And is it an old movie, new movie? When's it from? Is it Russian? Is it set? It's from 1979. It's from Andrej Tekovsky. Yeah, I mean, I don't watch, I haven't watched, I tend not to watch movies from Russia during the Soviet Union. So no, I haven't seen it. Unlikely to ever see it. Thanks for the warning, Richard. All right. I do like the way Richard turned a phrase there. He was inspired. Thanks, everybody. Show tonight. I've got a tentative topic, which will be the opposite of the Dumerism one. It'll be on the dark skies for the economy moving forward. So where are we economically? What are the issues? What are the problems? What a lookout for why it's hard to be optimistic about where the economy is going, both in terms of what's going on in the United States and internationally and globally. So it'll be the opposite of my optimism talk. It'll be a little bit of a downer. But I forget we need some balance in life, right? Richard says, I want to reach out to Scott Linsick, and by the way, thank you for the $50, Richard, to learn more about the work in the private sector, his work in the private sector. It sounds very interesting to me, but I have little experience with cold emailing about this sort of thing. Do you have any advice for professional networking?  And you're very interested in how he got to this position and the specific questions you might have about the private sector. You can use my name if you want. You can say, I don't know if this is true, but you could say you learned about his work for me or whatever. But you can say you graduated, right, Richard, from law school, or where you are in your career and you're interested. Don't make it too long. One of the things I could tell you, two of me, I think two of other people were super busy. Don't have time for long emails. So don't make it a long email and make it a short email, short and to the point, right? And tell him you'll accept a response in any way you can.  Typical kind of cynical, silly reaction from you. All right, guys. Thank you. And I'll see you tonight. Don't forget 8 p.m. East Coast time tonight, probably about the economy. Richard said, yes, I graduated. I'm starting a job soon, but I'm really interested in his work. I agree, but so absolutely right to him.  So do you not morally judge Amazon for not defending themselves because of the reasons you gave? No, I mean, I think they're cowards, but I do understand why they're doing it. And I do understand also I understand that they don't have the knowledge to do it. They don't have the intellectual ammunition to do it. I mean, Bill Gates tried to defend himself during the Microsoft case. He actually tried a little bit.  And so, and it wasn't successful and he got ridiculed and he ultimately got thrown out of Microsoft. I mean, he left, but he left because of all this. So on the one hand, I do judge them morally because they could give up, at least try, but I completely understand why they're doing it and I understand the lack of knowledge that they have in doing it properly. This is why Amazon needs somebody like Alex. And that's why the world needs people who have a deep understanding of the philosophical, legal, moral and economic issues involved. And almost everybody has only the economic understanding. All right, guys. Thank you again to all the superchatters. Thank you to all the ones of the big, big sticker amounts. That's great. Richard, thank you for the $50 question.  Thank you to all of you guys. And I will see you all tonight. Bye, everybody. Have a great day.


So I guess, are we ready? Is everyone ready? So I have the pleasure to stand up in front of you here now and share the sad moment that we're coming to the end of this year's DEBCONF. I can repeat what our DPL has said at the formal dinner on Wednesday. We all think this was the best organized DEBCONF we have had so far. And I would like to make sure that everyone who was involved in the organization would please come up here and stand with us. That is all the volunteers, the entire video team, and everybody else who has contributed to this DEBCONF, please come up front. Andreas, that includes you. All these Debbie and Switzerland t-shirts make it really difficult now. So I would like to have a huge round of applause for all the local team. When this started on Saturday, on the 9th, no, the 1st or 2nd, 2nd of August, Saturday is usually the setup day. A lot of us got here a little earlier, but usually Saturday is that setup day. We actually, this year, declared DEBCONF to start with DEBCONF Day Zero because there was nothing done. Those guys did a fantastic job. But they aren't the only ones, and I'm not done with the superlatives. We also have, I think, the best video coverage of any conference that I know. Our video team has made it possible for everyone who couldn't attend to do whatever reason, and all the other people who are interested in free software and Debbie as a whole to follow all of the events. And not only that, but many of the videos are already encoded and available for download. So that's a splendid, magnificent job, and I'd like you all to join in. Massive round of applause for the video team. And I guess, finally, before I hand off the microphone to some other people who want to say something, I would like to highlight the fact that for the last two weeks, we've had working network throughout the entire hotel, Wi-Fi, and this is thanks to our admin team. And I would like to have the entire admin team come up forward, please. And everybody else who was involved in another round of applause. Okay, we still have a little announcement to make, which is the Assassin's Game, which has officially ended, and the best assassin had 10 kills. Place two goes with five kills, so he was really active. And the winner is Juan Díaz. You don't get it, Pony. I wanted to bring you a sock, but I couldn't find one. Anyone has a used sock for him? We just want to thank you, everybody. Again, thanks to our sponsors. We are not going to name them one by one again. But thanks to everyone who has come, who has made this possible. And we would like to see all of you next year in Spain, in Cáceres, Extremadura. Yeah, it's Debian's birthday today. Should we sing a song or something? Not the copyrighted one. I forgot one group that we should really thank, and that's not only the attendees, of course, because without you, this conference would be really boring. But all the speakers, and especially the speakers who jumped in at the last moment to fill in the slots that we couldn't fill, and presented us with a week of a very interesting program and made this room, and also the other one, the other one less so at times, but this room pretty full. So thank you all for delivering your presentations and for being so flexible with stuff. Okay, and there are apparently still proceedings up here, in case any of you still want proceedings and haven't picked any of them up yet. The conference network will be shut down after the dinner. So if you have anything to do online, like book tickets for something, you should do it now, before dinner. And Homer also has a copy of all those videos, the video team already prepared. So if you have a lot of space on your heart, just feel free to download them. And after that, the hotel network is still there. So you can still book tickets afterwards, but not in all areas of the hotel. You might need to go somewhere to find a spot to have network.


Today we're reviewing the 2009 film, Dragon Ball Evolution, so stay tuned. Welcome back to Comic-Ed and TV, we're all geek culture collides. If you're new to the channel, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on future videos. Dragon Ball Evolution is a 2009 film loosely based on the Dragon Ball manga created by Akira Toriyama and stars Justin Chatwin as Goku. Chaya and Fat as Master Roshi, Emi Rosam as Balma, Jamie Chung as Chichi, and James Masters as Lord Piccolo. Opening weekend in the United States grossed the film at $4,756,488, ranking in at number 8 at the box office. Rotten Tomatoes scored the film at 14% based on 58 reviews. Metacritic gave it a rating of 45 based on 10 reviews. Many fans often write off Dragon Ball Evolution because it doesn't follow the series. Originally Akira Toriyama suggested that fans should treat it as an alternate universe version of his work, which is exactly how I went into the film thinking of it. Fans are always so quick to point out how unlike the original work a movie is. But why exactly would anyone pay to see something that's exactly like something that they've already seen or read? As long as the heart of the story is still there, that's really all that matters. Was it a perfect interpretation of the original story in series? No, of course not. But was it an original take? The heart of the story was there, as was the spirit. Personally, I really enjoyed the film. As a casual fan of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, I didn't go into it knowing all the lore and expecting the perfect adaptation. Rather, I went into the film with fresh eyes. I feel the film share the right type of humor as the material it was based on. I really enjoyed Justin Chatwin's portrayal of Goku. I feel the scene that really brings Goku to life was when he was forced to take on Fuller and his cronies at Chichi's party. I've always really enjoyed that scene. The over-the-top acting was a perfect interpretation of the source material. Not just with Goku, but also the supporting characters as well. The only thing that producers of the film could have gotten better when it came to Goku, I would say would be his hair. His hair should really be a lot bigger. Chaoyuan Fat was perfect as Master Roshi characteristically. I really enjoyed his introduction for himself. It truly felt like it was pulled straight from the anime. The only change I would have made is that Roshi is known as a bald man with a full beard. The scene where Roshi makes Goku carry all his luggage while Bulma and he ride in a cycle is very reminiscent of the anime. I mean, that scene just looks like it was pulled straight from the comics, pulled straight from the screen in the anime. It was a nice interpretation. Jun Park's interpretation of Yamcha was spot on. Aside from his appearance as in costume design and hair, he was perfectly cast. I really enjoyed his scenes. Honestly, the only downfall for the film was James Masters Piccolo. It was far too dark and not very true to the source material. But as I said before, that's okay. He made it his own. I didn't care for his interpretation, but it didn't ruin the film. The film wasn't really about Piccolo anyway. He may have been an antagonist, but he wasn't the focus. The focus was exactly where it should have been, and that's on Goku and his supporting cast. I do really wish they could have included Krillin into the movie though. It would have given Goku another antagonist, but a more friendly one, like a brother. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie. When it first hit DVD, I watched it over and over. It was a pretty original interpretation of a very beloved franchise. Personally, I feel that if you want to enjoy the film, you have to watch it as a casual fan. Don't be so hardcore about everything, because that just makes you a fanboy or a fangirl. Learn to enjoy a film without expectations that it's going to be exactly like the source material. As an action film, I give it a 7 out of 10. As a comedy, I give it a 5 out of 10. As an anime and manga adaptation, I'd give it a 6 out of 10. I'd give the story and scripting an 8 out of 10, and the acting a 9 out of 10. For an overall film rating of 7.5 out of 10 stars, if you've seen the movie, but didn't like it because it didn't match up with the source material, give it another watch with an open mind as a casual fan. If you watched it as a film geek or someone who was looking forward to a really good action movie, but didn't understand the manga style humor, say watch a few episodes of the anime and give it another chance. If you haven't seen it because of the ratings it received, give it a chance, you may like it. Did the characters look like the originals? No, not really, but the spirit and heart were there. Final battle between Goku and Piccolo was a little bit anticlimactic, but given that the story and the character portrayals were spot on, I can accept that. Special effects weren't amazing, but they were good for the time. Does a film like Dragon Ball Evolution hold up over time? Well, I just watched it for the first time in 8 years while typing this review, and overall I'd say yes. I personally really enjoyed it. I kind of wish they would have done a sequel for it. So there you have it guys, my review on Dragon Ball Evolution. If you liked this video, make sure you hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on future videos. Also, don't forget to like, comment, and share with your family and friends. I'm Shannon for Comic-Ed and TV, take care.