Abdullah Verachia — Global Speaker, Strategist, Entrepreneur

Once again it is "What's Involved" and a special guest this time, gentlemen I've been looking forward to chatting with for quite a while now and the reason is I first met him many many years ago when I used to live in Nalspray. To you and Zee, he is Abdullah Vareche. Hello Abdullah, how are you? Good day David, it's a pleasure to be with you. I'm very well on a cold rainy Johannesburg morning but otherwise very good. Yeah it has been surprisingly chilly and rainy especially in my side of the world, hasn't stopped for a while. Now Abdullah tell me a little bit about who is Abdullah, give me a bit of your background, where did you go up, go to school, those kind of things and then we'll jump into what I think is an absolutely amazing book that you've authored called "Disruption Amplified", reset, rewire, reimagine everything and it's fascinating. So before we get into that, tell me a bit about you. Yeah thank you so much. I actually grew up very similar to you, I mean I know you moved across to Nalspray, I grew up in the province of Mpumalanga. Initially in Woodbank, the cold city, I experienced high levels of pollution back in the day with all of the coal mines and the associated industries like high field steel around it but grew up in the community of Woodbank and then I moved across to Nalspray to go to high school across in Nalspray, stayed with my uncle who was in government there and had a really blissful time in terms of both primary and high school and then I went across to university to study law. I studied law largely because of what I see on television and I think it's an important anecdote because a lot of our career choices, a lot of the decisions we take, a lot of how we frame our thinking of what work might look like is determined by what we see on television or what we see in the newspaper, what we see in a magazine and so yeah I used to watch, I think it was L.A. Law back in the day and it looked particularly cool and so I decided let me become a lawyer and I went in studied law became a lawyer and after getting admitted as an attorney realized this isn't really what I'd like to do and then stuck in a conundrum partnered with a colleague Dr. Martin Davis who's really done some incredible work in the area of strategy and consulting and quite an expert on Asia relations and we together started up a corporate finance advisory firm called Frontier Advisory. The firm did particularly well, grew quite large and eventually got bought out by Deloitte and so I played a big role in that organization. At the same time I also started teaching at the business school Gibbs which is the University of Pretoria's business school, taught in the area of strategy and innovation and realized that perhaps I've now found a new passion area so moved from law into consulting into strategy and into education and that was perhaps a path in my journey. It's changed fundamentally since then but perhaps it's a good reflection of the title of the book Disruption because I think the very nature of my career has been quite disruptive but fun at the same time.

It's one of the things that fascinates me because I've sort of watched your journey through the years from when we first met in the Nalspray days and it does seem that you must love your work because you are always busy. Is this something that you should have each sleep and dream? Yeah, I think you know the Nalspray days is particularly interesting because in one of my other hats I run a youth organization that does corporate social responsibility for many different organizations. I mean we met on a program called the Anglo-American Soet and Young Communicators Awards. That program would find or engage with hundreds of thousands of second language English speakers across the country. We run workshops in various parts of the country. I recall going to places I've never been to in South Africa like Pudali Java and Kurman and Springbok and effectively we ran many other programs, the Model United Nations program and interestingly over the last 15-20 years those programs have produced a number of alumni that have gone on to do some very interesting things in politics, in business, in government, in academia, in this country. But I raised that because I got into that space and to a large extent getting into that space informed a lot of how I moved in my career. So I'll never forget sitting at a leadership camp out in rural Pumalanga. We went away from Nalspray to one of the forest areas on a leadership camp.

My principal came through one of the evenings and said there is a Model United Nations debating competition. Is anybody interested in participating? You have to become quasi ambassadors of a country, represent that country and eventually if you win the Pumalanga competition, you go to Cape Town. If you win that, you go to New York and represent South Africa. And after a stony, eerie silence of five minutes because nobody picked their hand up, I looked at the guy next to me and I said Sakani, you know if we say we can do this, we'll probably get a day or two of school. And that was the motivation. It wasn't because I loved debating. I never knew I could debate to speak in public. And so we picked up our hands. We eventually participated. We won in Pumalanga, got to nationals. I then got selected to represent South Africa at the UN in New York. And interestingly, I met a girl who was representing the Eastern Cape Novice Amayema and the two of us then formed this company organization called the Collective Genius. And so my point is sometimes, you know, interesting moments happen at interesting times. It's inflection points, serendipitous, it's meant to happen. But yeah, I mean, so that's one part. And back to your question, I have what I call a portfolio career. And so I do five or six different things. I run a strategy consulting firm called The Strategists. I teach at the business school Gibbs and I also head up the Harvard Business Program for Africa. I then am a non-executive director on a number of different companies like General Electric, like Education Africa, like Twizzer, which is a great FMCG company in the country, and a number of other non-executive board positions that I hold. And then I also am very active as a speaker in the speaking circuit. So in effect, that's a portfolio career of different things that I get involved in. And every day is unique, every day is fun, every day is different. And every day I learn something new. And yeah, that's why I think I'm having a lot of fun. When I saw that that you published the book, I wanted to chat to you again, because it struck me right from those days, is your absolute passion and enthusiasm, and the way you embrace growth and change. And, and particularly in those days, I mean, when we were sort of worked together in elsewhere for that short period of time, our whole democracy was still very new. And it was very shiny, but people were very uncertain. And you just kind of came in there, and we managed to get this cohesive bunch of learners, and they presented some amazing stuff.

And this carries through in the stuff that I've seen you doing. So tell me about the book, Abdullah, why did you decide to write a book? So I think, David, one of the things that I think all of us experienced, I'm sure you two out in Hauteng, many of our friends who are listening in from different parts of South Africa, and even the world would have remembered and recalled, one of the most surreal moments in our human history, that on the 27th of March in our country, South Africa, our president called a lockdown. And that meant that a total shutdown of industry, shutdown of offices, a shutdown of schools, of universities, of institutions, of organizations, and we all then became insular, we all went home. I remember for the first two weeks, sitting around and thinking, well, perhaps this is going to be a five week story. And after five weeks, we get back and life goes back. And it became interesting because we started one understanding and appreciating parts of our home that we never even went to. But also we started doing things that we wouldn't otherwise do on a typical weekday, baking banana bread and figuring out board games and just perhaps connecting a little bit differently. But I remember getting a call from Tracy McDonald, who's one of the book publishers in this country, who's really published some extensive books and Tracy called me and said, Abdullah, would you be interested in contributing to a book called The Book Every Business Owner Must Read? And there are 47 other authors. And I want to try and turn this book around as quickly as possible. So at least I can get it into the business community as something to assist them. And I said, yeah, of course, I'm more than happy to. And Tracy, as she was putting the phone down, reminded me that I had wanted, I mean, she had wanted me to write a book for the last year. And I couldn't, I couldn't commit to it because I was traveling extensively and life was busy and I didn't want to over commit. And she said, Abdullah, would you be interested in still writing the book now?

I said, Tracy, I've just had nine out of 11 international trips cancelled in the last three weeks, which has meant that I've had nine weeks freed up. And so I do have time. And that's how the book came about. I did have to write the book at breathtaking speed, David, because, you know, it's a time sensitive book. And it was a book that I thought is necessary to go out to the communities that we have the business community, government, but also broader society. I'm sitting here and I'm smiling because you know how many authors I speak to? And when I say what made you write the book, how many of those answers start with Tracy McDonald? And I've been threatening her for the last more than a year now that I want to get her on the radio station and her on the show and have a chat to her about how she manages to get these amazing people like yourselves to actually sit down and write a book. We want to dive deeper into the book. And we're going to do that in just a bit. When we come back, this is what's involved. My special guest is Abdullah Viracha. He is the author of the book called Disruption Amplified Reset Rewire Reimagine Everything. We'll be back in just a bit. And we're back with my special guest Abdullah Viracha.

We're talking about his book Disruption Amplified Reset Rewire Reimagine Everything. So Abdullah, you said that you had to write the book rather quickly because it is very topical. Take me through why you thought that this needed to come out now. I'm glad you use the word now because in my world of work, I help many, many different boards and executive teams craft strategy. And so in the period of April, May, I had an overwhelming amount of clients and companies who I worked with and others who come to me and said, Abdullah, we need some help. We need you to be able to assist us with your team in terms of how do we navigate all of this complexity and this ambiguity and this uncertainty and the physical distance with our staff. And let's put a bit of a plan in place. And I realized in engaging with so many companies back in the day that most companies were caught up in what I call the now, they were caught up and shocked and enamored by the very deep and pervasive impact of this health crisis. And rightfully so. But by September, October, I realized that very few companies were actually thinking about the next and thinking about the now is great, but we can't become paralyzed by something to the extent that it leads us to lead organizations on a day to day basis. We've got to do that. But at the same time, we have to think about the next. And so I often engage with many people who said, Abdullah, we can't think about the next because there's so much of uncertainty. And I said, I agree.

I don't think any president or prime minister or CEO or business school professor or leader in any society has the answers. But we do have the capability and the wherewithal to be able to look at some potential scenarios and to be able to wait those scenarios and to be able to use some strategic foresight and say, what is the potential of each one of these scenarios at a global level in terms of politics and economics and technology? But they're also at a sector level. And so that was my objective was to be able to say, how do I give something that could look at the next, not by saying I have the answers because I put that caveat right up front, but rather by being able to say, here are some potential scenarios. And so what I say is not everything I put in the book is definitely going to come through because none of us have that capability. But at least the scenarios allow us to see some potential ways in which the world could emerge and then to be able to proactively adapt, to be able to say, how do we proactively adapt to this new context that we find ourselves in? So I often use this analogy to say that the canvas in which we're painting on is very different. And if the canvas we're painting on is different, then without a doubt, we need a new set of colors or at least a new combination of colors to be able to paint on this new canvas. And if we need a new combination of colors, then we also need some augmented skills as painters who paint on this canvas. And you might say to me, that's quite romantic and esoteric. What does that mean for people who are running organizations or schools or universities? And I say the canvas is the external world. It's what's happening in the political, economic, social environment. What's happened as a result of COVID? What's happened because of the fourth industrial revolution?

How is the world shifting and changing? The set of colors are the choices that we take. Those choices must be premised on the changes because if the environment changes, so too must our choices. And then finally, the painters are myself and yourself and the listeners were listening in today. It's what we do and the skills that we have to operate in this environment. So yeah, that's perhaps a view in terms of some of my decisions around the now. We talk about the now, but what I like in this book is there's these various aspects that you look at and sort of the reasoning or the message that we need to overhaul, as you put it, and not just re-think something or think about this. I mean, we've got to completely overhaul the way we think about business, about education, about government. Talk to me a little bit about that. One of the things I'm very passionate about is our youth and it's the education and where they're going and the impact specifically that COVID has had on that. Let's talk a little to education and where you see changes being needed to happen there. So I think, David, I've really come across a number of people who say to me, when are we going to get to the new normal? And I say that very term, the very nature of that term is premised on a false assumption that where we came from was normal to begin with. In my view, a lot of our society was never normal in terms of where we started and let me reflect some personal examples to showcase that. One, it's never normal to have a society where billions of people all over the world get onto the road every single day between 7am and 9am and gridlock traffic no matter which part of the world they're in and then repeat the process in the afternoon. And we're all familiar with what that means in terms of productivity, in terms of efficiency, in terms of the capability of human beings to be able to do good quality work.

And so it was never normal to be able to have a society where we have that and obviously the consequential impact on the environment. It's never normal to live in a society that we never really appreciated the vulnerability of many parts of our society that were reliant on a daily source of income just to sustain themselves and their families in terms of getting food. And we only realized the nature and the pervasive extent of this when we lock down society and then people cannot get themselves to earn that daily income to be able to provide food for themselves and it created a massive food crisis in various parts of the world. And then to your point, it's never normal to live in a society where youth are caught up in a spiral where the only avenue to a large extent to be able to get employed is through a traditional view of education. And so for me, I talk about reimagined because the challenge is can we start to reimagine the type of world and can we start to normalize or at least create some new opportunities. So one, your point around education for me is something that's particularly close to my heart because I think the education sector especially in primary and secondary school education is one of the sectors that has not been disrupted and is ripe for disruption because when you think about the way in which education is provided and it's changed but it's changing way too slow is that it's largely centered around what we would call a rote learning fashion of education that a teacher would stand in front of a class of 25, 13 scum schools up to 60 young people, give them information and if those learners have the ability to regurgitate that information in June and November, they'll do particularly well. And that continues up until to even your university education. But we find in the theory, we find in the work that we do that not all learners are rote learners, not all learners think and operate and learn in that way. And so we in the process, we disenfranchise many people who think in another way, some people are sensory learners, some people want to see and smell and taste and touch, some people learn and think in a way that's different to being able to spread back information.

So I think the education system needs to start to think about other forms of education, flipping the classroom, giving people project-based learning, participant-centered learning, teaching people in multi-sensory ways, providing spaces where young people can learn about empathy and curiosity and innovation. And so that's for me, the challenge. And then the second is this movement away from the view that the only vehicle in terms of success is a tertiary qualification. I think we've got to start to think about avenues of providing skills, avenues of teaching and stimulating and actually getting people to become more entrepreneurial in their thinking, avenues of creating more gig economy workers who aren't tied to a traditional company but work for multiple organizations by selling their skills. So my point is that the education system, one, is right for disruption and two, perhaps needs a new way of thinking. And I think it's particularly important in Africa where the average age of this continent with 1.2 billion people is 19.7. This is a young society. And so we need solutions that address the future of young people. And unfortunately, I think we fall off because the average age of heads of state in Africa is just under 17.

That in and of itself is scary. But interesting that when we're talking about this, one of the things that I do as well, and that was my little aha moment during our lockdown, is being a radio person. I was very stuck in what I used to call bums in seats in the sense that I wanted my guests to sit opposite me, that I could talk to them, I could look them in the eye, I could interact with them. And when it was ever suggested to me that we do even a telephonic interview, I was like, ah, not going to happen because you lose so much when you do that. Along comes COVID. And I'm like, well, now what do I do? And I had to embrace technology. And I had to literally change my way of thinking. And out of that, another portion of my business developed, which is hosting, running, editing podcasts for professionals and organizations. And back to the point of education, one of the shows that I do is something called The Education Show with an organization called zibruza.net. And I've had my eyes opened over the last couple of months, just with the kind of people that I've been talking to, and to see the dire need we have for change and disruption in our education system. But I want to talk about business as well, Abdullah. So when we come back, let's dive into the business side of things. This is what's involved. My special guest is Abdullah Viracha. He is the author of an amazing book, Disruption Amplified Reset, Rewire, Reimagine, Everything. We'll be back in a bit. I will be back with my special guest Abdullah Viracha. Abdullah, I said just before the break that I wanted to chat about business and the way forward in reimagining business. One of the things that I've heard said often during these times of lockdown and pandemic is that it's okay for big corporates. They've got the Christians, they've got the buffers, but what about the small, medium guys? The people I believe should be the heart and soul of our economy are these small, medium, micro enterprises. What is your take on that and where is big business going to go? Yeah, I think it's a fascinating question and it depends on what you said before the break in terms of how immediately you had to rethink your business model. And in a very weird way, you created new opportunities. I've gone through the exact same process. So one of the things I do is I speak extensively in various parts of the world to companies. It did come with many limitations. If I'd be invited to do a talk to a company in London, I would need to take off three days in my diary, which meant that it would be three days in terms of being able to do other pieces of work, three days of traveling on a 12-hour flight to London, sleeping on the plane, getting onto the tube, dressing up, going to the store. And last year, I realized that I could, and one day, David, I actually did four different talks to different organizations. I did a talk for a company out in Mumbai, India. I did a talk for a company out in Cape Town. I then did an afternoon session, which was a facilitated dialogue with a very, very interesting company in Silicon Valley. And that night I spoke at the award ceremony of one of the banks here in Johannesburg. If we were not in a COVID world, that would have been impossible for me to do. I don't think that it's a digital-only context. We're going to move into a hybrid world, a hybrid world of what I call physical plus digital engagement. And that means that we will start to see, hopefully as the vaccine becomes equitably and inclusively distributed and people start to create more herd immunity, that we will start to see perhaps people going into workspaces again, but not necessarily in the traditional management of time, but in a much more distributed way that it's actually going to work in specific slots dependent on your team, dependent on when the need arises. And so we start to think about shared office spaces. We start to think about the amount of office space that's needed. And so for me, what small and medium businesses need to do is they need to start to think about proactive adaptation, this ability to proactively adapt based on the context of where we are. And I'm reminded of a fascinating individual, Ryan Bucker, who's the CEO of NetFlorist. And I attended a talk where he was talking about NetFlorist being affected and impacted by lockdown. And his view was we then started saying, what are the capabilities that we have as NetFlorist that we can't utilize for opportunities as a business in a COVID world, but in a non-COVID world, and how can we adapt? So in effect, what do they have? They have a fantastic brand, they've got a huge customer base, they've got the right amount of data and analytics, they've got a payment capability, they've got a delivery and logistics and warehousing capability.

And so can they take all of those factors and translate them into new opportunities? And so what they did was they went to one of the fruit and veg suppliers, and they put fruit and veg onto the NetFlorist app and started delivering that, because that's what consumers wanted in a COVID world being locked up at home. Then they went to Massmart and negotiated with macro that they would put macro products onto the NetFlorist app. And they would physically have people at the macro stores. And as your order came in, they would get it picked and delivered, because that's what consumers wanted. But that's proactive adaptation. That's being able to say, well, how do we take these capabilities that we have as an organization? And can we translate them to new opportunities? So you've done that in your business. I've experienced that in different ways, and many other companies. So my view is sometimes to step away from the challenges and the fear and the anxiety, and to look at your business from another perspective. And one of the ways I say you should try and do this is to get somebody who is not active in your business, somebody who has a fresh pair of eyes, somebody who looks at things from another perspective, to be able to say, well, think of it from this way. And then you start to experiment with new opportunities. And often you'll find that those opportunities sometimes create a whole new business model for you.

They do. I saw a very interesting post the other day from Dr. Graham Coddrington. And he was putting forward this theory of in terms of a work cycle where you do two, three, two. So two days working from home, three days going into the office in a staggered way, and then two days weekend. And it was very interesting to see some of those responses, because I think, and Abdullah, maybe you can tell me because you've got a bit more experience than I have in this field. I think South Africa is still, in a lot of ways, very stuck in a very hierarchical, patriarchal, old fashioned way of thinking. Because some people were going, yeah, brilliant idea. And others were, if you don't have the staff at their desks at 7am, you'll get no productivity out of them. What is your thoughts on that? Are we are we sort of kind of a bit behind the curve in terms of how progressive we are compared to other countries? Yeah, 100%. You know, I'm good friends with Graham, and I read the post in some of the comments. And you're right, I mean, we are very conservative types of environments. And there's still a dogma that somebody needs to be at the office to be able to track their time, track their movements. And unfortunately, we think that work is premised on the amount of time that's available. So let me give you an example, a company that I'm working with in Southeast Asia, took a decision that they're going to trial in three divisions, what we would call a four day work week. So in effect, what they said was, let's one psychologically contract with our staff that we were going to get you to opt into a four day work week. Let us put some measures in terms of each one of the people that sign into this, what are the outcomes and outputs expected of you. And once you're able to complete those, what are the additional elements that would be great for you to be able to contribute to the company. So in effect, if you've been able to do all of your outputs, these are additional sets of pieces of work that would add a new contribution to the company. And thirdly, they then try this. And we did this between July and November. And we found that in these three teams, when we compared productivity in 2019 of these three teams versus productivity in 2020, we found that actually they were 19% more productive in a four day work week.

Why? Because we've moved away from treating people as if they must be directed to empowering people and psychologically contracting with them. So being able to say you manage your time, but these are the outputs. And we've got to have to think about an outcome, output based type of context in the world, because that makes things a lot more easier. Now, once again, some very, very valid points there. We're going to run out of time very soon. And I still want to talk about a couple more things. But I've done it in terms of because I've seen a lot of people going, okay, big business, big brother, those guys are going to fall by the wayside. And it's going to become more of this, this loose connection of these smaller businesses, etc, etc. I don't see it like that. But a lot of people do. What is your thoughts? Is big business going to remain, but will have to change rapidly? Look, I don't think it's going to go that way. I definitely think we're going to start to see an increase in terms of localization, we're going to start to see a partiality towards more intimate spaces, we definitely going to see the cognitive we already seeing the cognitive rewiring of human behavior, that human beings start to adapt to a new context.

And for those of you who are listening in, you remember the days when you used to move around with a BlackBerry phone, and you had a QWERTY keyboard that was physical in nature, and BBM was your messenger service. And at that time, you probably had somebody who came to you and said to you, would you be interested in using a touchscreen phone? And your response probably was, no, it's really difficult. I don't know how to use a touchscreen phone. And please leave me with my BlackBerry. If I had to reverse that today and ask you to take a BlackBerry phone and use it as your primary device, we'll say, no, Abdullah, what's wrong with you? Because what has happened to things? Well, we've had mass adoption. And in the diffusion of innovation theory, we find that when mass adoption happens, the price of that technology goes down, but also to it's very difficult to be able to go back. So this has been a mass experiment for society, that we've experimented in terms of having Zoom birthday parties. We've experimented in terms of doing board meetings online. We've experimented in terms of using companies like Checkers 60 Minutes and Pick and Pay Bottles and Woolworth for their 60 Minutes. And I'm not saying it's the end of physical retail, but I'm saying we're going to move into a hybrid space where we become accelerated in terms of our adoption of e-commerce, our adoption of digital meetings. And so companies in the large spaces need to have three very important skills. One, they need to be able to have the absorptive capacity to take all of what's coming at us like a fire hydrant and to determine, and this is also relevant to all of us as listeners, what type of absorptive capacity do you have? Can you absorb all of the oversupply of information? Secondly, do you have the adaptability? Can you adapt? Can you change? And it's fine to be able to have the adaptability, but then do you have the requisite and concomitant agility? In effect, do you have the speed to be able to change faster and quicker than many of your competitors or players in your ecosystem? And those are going to be important skills, absorptive capacity, adaptability, and agility. And why large companies struggle with this is because of their size. It's very difficult to move a big ship. It's much easier to move a speedboat. And so my view to companies I work with is try and try to get the agility in your organization. And the way to do that is to be a lot more experimental in your approach. So let's look at the examples of retail I've given. I don't think any of those retailers who have gone through the acceleration of delivery within 60 minutes had it not been for the last two to three years of technology adoption. And we see now that they've been given a golden plate of accelerating it. So that's my view. The advice for companies who are still caught up in what I call an analog world is one to transition to digital, but not to lose your physical presence. Because I think successful companies are those who are going to create magical human moments, magical physical moments, bringing people into their stores because you have an expert there, you're able to touch and feel the product of the device or the clothing, but then also being able to give the flexibility of online. So it's not going to be a binary conversation of either physical or digital.

I think it's going to be a mix of both stuff. It is an amazing book. And I just yeah, it's one of those things that when you read it, you start to think, wow, there's so much, so much more that can be done so much more that needs to be done. When we come back, I'd like to wrap up and I'd like to discuss Abdullah, if you can, the humanity side of this as human beings, and what we're learning and what we're going to need to do going forward. We'll be back with my special guest, Abdullah Viracha. He is the author of Disruption Amplified Reset, Rewire, Reimagine Everything. This is what's involved. It's so good to have you along with us. We'll be back in just a bit. And we're back with my special guest, Abdullah Viracha. Just before the break, we talked about this, this humanity because that's one of the things that came through for me a lot last year in a lot of my interviews that I was doing with people was this, this idea of us becoming more human. A lot of people were afraid with the fourth industrial revolution, that we were going to become less human, lose our jobs, et cetera, et cetera. But humanity seemed to be coming to the fore, as well as something which certainly warmed my heart. And that is that concept of empathy and of being more inclusive, of being a lot more fair in the way we deal with things.

To wrap it up, give me some good news about that. I think four important points. I think the first one is there's this misconception that all of the sectors in the world have been decimated. And we've got to look to the world and our economy and our sectors with a lot more colors and with a different lens. There are many sectors that actually grew during the last 12 to 18 months, and that growth has just started. And so that's the one. I think the second is that we also have a number of people who are quite caught up in the fourth industrial revolution. And the common premise is that it's going to result in job losses. And I was part of a fascinating study with Oxford University, the Bull and Melinda Gates Foundation, and its Genesis Analytics and Gibbs My Business School, called South Africa in a Digital Age. And we looked at, can digital create inclusive economic growth and employment? And the results of the study that's available online is that we actually, if carefully managed, will be able to use digital to create jobs, because platforms in many cases require individuals to be able to do that work. So think about the fact that in the last two or three years, we've had more than 25,000 people now being employed by Uber and by Taxify and all of the platforms who provide delivery and who provide movement and mobility of people. And there are many other similar examples. So I think if carefully managed, digital will be able to create inclusive access. But then to your point, and what I often say is that we're not creating machines for other machines. And what's going to happen is that anything that can't be digitized or automated is going to become so much more valuable.

And those are the skills that are necessary for us as human beings to start to think about. And so empathy, the ability to step in the shoes of somebody else, the ability to understand their context, things like active learning, and learning every day and not reliant on outsourcing learning to institutions only, but being able to say there is formal education, but also there's learning all the time every day. So learn from young people, check to kids, drive new routes to work, talk to people who are different to you, eat different types of food, try and learn words from different languages, being able to create complex problem-solving environments in our homes, in our organizations. Because I often say that today it's COVID, but tomorrow it's something else. We've got this term called VUCA, world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. And so we've got to become comfortable with leading in uncertain contexts, and we need more adaptive leaders who are comfortable with the uncertainty but are still willing to be able to run in that context. And so that requires us to, to my third point, to bring in more skills of curiosity, of empathy, of innovation, and of problem-solving. And then finally, I think we must all become comfortable that we are going to emerge hopefully in the next 12 to 18 months with some return to the world in which we were accustomed to, but I think it's going to come with a different set of principles. And what it, what COVID has taught us very interestingly is that there is a magic to human connection. There's a magic to being together. So we will go into a hybrid model and we will get back to some physical and some digital, which for me is exciting.

I'm looking forward to that. I must tell you, you know, in terms of this digital world, et cetera, et cetera, and everybody sort of hearkening back to the good old days when everything was normal and this return to normal, it was broken. We've been given a chance to fix it. Let's get on with the fixing of it. And I like your idea and your concept of this sort of blended mode, because, yeah, there's nothing that can replace those magical moments of human touch, human interaction. And, you know, digital just doesn't quite get there, but it helps us do a lot of other things. I don't know, we're out of time. I can't believe it. But just quickly, your book, where is that available now in all good bookstores online? Yeah, so my book is available on all of the online platforms that are available. It's available at Take A Lot. It's available at Amazon. It's also available at all of the bookstores, the small bookstores, the larger ones. And then also, if you go onto my website, you're able to purchase a signed copy that gets created to you. So my website is www.avarachia.com. And you'll see there's a link there to buy it online. So there's a few options, but if you'd like a personal signed copy, that's an option on my website, but then available at all bookstores and also all online platforms.

Well, there we go. It is a fantastic book. It's a great read. I'm a bit obsessive about my books, and I do love physical books. And I've got to tell you, this one's a little dog-eared already, so I'm a bit upset about that. But no problem. It's one of those things when you have to read through it a couple of times. Abdullah, before I let you go, what's next for Abdullah Racha? Sure. I think it's a great question. I obviously have opened up new spaces in terms of time. I sit on a few boards, and many of us are no longer required to go into the week. So freeing up some time, I'm working on a second book this year. I have just taken up one or two new board positions that are interesting. And then I also want to, you know, I'm currently doing my PhD, and so that's a big focus in terms of the area of dynamic capabilities and strategy. It's something I pushed out for 10 years, but now jumped into it and I'm loving the journey. So looking forward to contributing a lot more in the thinking, in the narrative, and also very importantly to the society that we have in some small way. Fantastic stuff. Abdullah, we wish you all the very, very best. That is my special guest Abdullah Racha. The book is Disruption, Amplified Reset, Rewire, Reimagine, Everything. Whatever you do, do go out and get it. It wraps it up for this part of what's involved to each and every one of you. Stay safe, take care, and thank you for listening.