Graeme Codrington — Futurist, Speaker, Author, Purveyor of common sense and logic

And it is yet another edition of What's Involved, my special guest who I haven't actually spoken to for a very long time and I'm very, very glad to have you on the show with us. Welcome to you, Graham Coddrington. It's great to be chatting to you again, David. It's been years. I actually was thinking about it the other day and I feel quite embarrassed because it has literally been years, but an appropriate time for us to be chatting. But before we get into the meat and potatoes of it, as it were, tell me a little bit about Graham. Where did you start off, you know, what did you do and how does one become a futurist?

Yes, well, a futurist is the label on my business card at the moment. And unfortunately, that doesn't mean I can predict the future. I wish I could. But what a futurist does is we try and predict change. So we try and anticipate how the world might change. And in my case, I specifically then want to help people to prepare for possible changes in the future. So we develop scenarios. We give people options about what might happen, good things, bad things. We try and anticipate new technologies, try and work out which technologies are just fads and which are really game changing, industry changing trends. And obviously try and help people to change their attitude towards change and towards the future. So a lot of the work I do actually is thinking about history because we look at trends, we look at things that have happened in the past, and then try and work out if those have any clues of what might happen in the future. So with COVID, for example, 15 years ago, our team wrote a series of scenarios that looked at all of the ways in which the world might engage with massive disruptive change. And we came up with four scenarios, an asteroid strike, the sun giving a solar pulse that wiped all the world's computers clean, World War III with nuclear weapons, and believe it or not, a global pandemic that shut down the world in a global quarantine. And our publisher said that that global pandemic was the least believable of all the scenarios. So we can't claim, yeah, exactly. We can't claim to have predicted COVID and certainly obviously didn't peg a date to it or anything which might have been useful if we could. But it's not something that is a, you know, some people refer to it as a black swan as if we couldn't have imagined it. But in fact, a lot of people have been thinking about what would happen if a global pandemic happened. And our job then is to say to people, you know, what do you actually do to anticipate that? What we've done is we've looked back over the last hundred years and we've said, well, what has happened during some of the previous coronavirus outbreaks? We've had 12 major coronavirus outbreaks in the last hundred years and there's actually a pattern that emerges and I'm sure we'll talk about this a little bit during the show. But that's what I do. I'm a futurist. I help people to imagine the future and prepare for it. And my background is I started life actually as an accountant at KPMG, did CA articles, went into the IT world, went into non-profit space, doing youth work. So a variety of different things. And then ultimately 18 years ago, started a company called Tomorrow Today. And that's what I've been doing for the last 18 years, the scenario futurist work. Fantastic. The other thing I've noticed from your website is you are an unlearned, did you say, which I also found quite amazing.

Well, again, so that's another label just to get people thinking. That comes from one of the world's great futurists, a guy called Alvin Toffler, who wrote a book in the early 1970s in which he was trying to think about what life would be like in the 21st century. And he was the guy who coined the phrase, you know, constant change, or change is the only constant in terms of thinking about what our world would be like now. And he said that the illiterate of the future will not be those people who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. And learning is not just about learning new stuff. It's also about our ability to look at what we already believe, and what we think we know, and actually say, either I was wrong, or it's now out of date. My habits, my ways of thinking, my approach to life is now out of date. And I need to unlearn my old habits and ways of thinking, and relearn new ways. And for me, that's probably the most powerful thing I try and leave with people. It's not saying that you have always been wrong your whole life, and you must repent and change and whatever other language you want to use. It's just saying the ways we used to live, the ways we used to think are no longer helpful or relevant, unlearn those, and relearn new ways. And I think when you get your head around the fact that that's the world we live in, it makes living in this world a whole lot easier. Indeed, I think it does. And this is one of the things that I think has shocked a lot of people in terms of this coronavirus and the lockdown and things like that, is that I believe people are having to face situations and things that they'd never thought about in their lives.

And this concept of unlearning something, I cannot tell you, and I suppose you feel exactly the same, or you've heard exactly the same thing. People keep saying they can't wait to go back to normal. And I don't know if there's ever going to be a normal as in the way things used to be. If I take myself, for example, one of the things I always, being a radio person, you know, in my bones, I always used to believe in live interviews in studio, bums on seats, that's the only way it's going to work. And if people would mention telephonic interviews from me, I'd have absolute heart failure because that's not real radio. And yet, here I am. Exactly. You know, I've been trying for years with conference organizers to get them to change their mindset. I, my life for the last 18 years has been traveling around the world. I've been, I've gone to 100 countries. I was in 24 countries just last year alone. And, you know, going live on stage in person at conferences, doing keynote presentations about how the world would change. And I kept on suggesting to my clients, why don't I record a video in advance? We put a 30 minute video out. We say to everybody in the audience, you have to watch this video before you come to the conference. And then I will come and we'll just do Q&A. What's the point of me flying all the way across the world to Budapest and Shanghai and Benzoire Aries? And then just doing a keynote presentation in which I just deliver data to people. Surely the value of having me in the room is an interactive session.

So let's, let's put all of this stuff on video before I get there. And then we go Q&A only for an hour. Only one or two conference organizers even considered it. Now, of course, that I think is going to be the new reality. Even when we get back to traveling for business conferences, I think people are going to be saying, there's no value in just going to a conference, sitting in a darkened conference hall for three days and just listening to people talk at us. Let's never do a conference like that again. And for me, this COVID crisis is going to push people to do things and to change things that they should have been doing and changing for a while now with the digital transformation and, you know, all the changes taking place against us. So as much as it's a crisis and a disruption now, I think we'll look back and say it accelerated us into a new reality. And in the end, it was a good thing. Fantastic stuff. I want to talk more about this and about Corona and what it does when we come back. This is what's involved. My special guest is Graham Codrington. We'll be back in just a bit. And we're back with my special guest on what's involved. Graham Codrington. We're talking futurists. We're talking just how the world has changed, I guess.

And it's something that's been quite amazing to me because, I mean, I've spoken about, you know, things like I've never even got close to imagining the coronavirus, but, you know, about the digital transformation, the digital age, and, you know, taking stuff online. And when you talk about that, I do a lot of communication and sales training. And we also used to say to people, "Listen, why don't we, you know, be much more effective if we get the grunt work out of the way. We'll put together a video presentation, very much like what you did. And then the guys can look through that, work through it. And then when we arrived, we're about to get into the real meat and potatoes. And nobody wanted to do that. Suddenly, as you said earlier, everything has changed. Now, how did you handle things when this sort of coronavirus pandemic was announced? Because I know personally, for me, those first two months, I was a mess. I mean, I had no idea. It felt like somebody pulled the rag right out from under me. And it was doom and gloom. Well, I had exactly the same. You know, as I said, part of my job is traveling around the world to speak at conferences. And, you know, the travel was canceled, the conferences were canceled, and everything was canceled. And it definitely was doom and gloom. So, you know, we as a team shifted as quickly as we could to try and work out what is it that our clients actually needed? And then how could we deliver that to them? And initially, everybody was just in crisis mode. And we're not crisis managers, our company tomorrow, today, the whole thing is, yes, anticipating future change, and working out then today what we need to do about it, but not in the sense of helping somebody through an immediate crisis. It's more about scenario planning and so on. So initially, the first few weeks, we didn't have much work, we didn't have much interest. But luckily, because of what we do for a living, we had already been anticipating the digital transformation of our work. As I said, we had already been speaking to clients to suggest to them that we take some of our stuff online. We had created something called the Future of Work Academy, which is online, helping people to develop skills for the future through digital courses. So we had already anticipated that the future might require a lot more digital engagement, a lot more online. And all we had to do was just accelerate some of our plans. And then we began to see clients saying to us, okay, what are some of the scenarios? How long is this lockdown going to last? What's going to happen after the lockdown?

And so luckily for us, because of the work we do around anticipating the future, we had a lot of our clients connecting with us and saying, can you help us develop some of those scenarios and help us think through what needs to happen. And because we had the digital stuff online, we were able to move into that space. So as one of our team members said, in a moment of calm, they said, you know, the very best time to prepare for the coronavirus was about two years ago. You know, the second best time is today. And so we had luckily been making some of the shifts, and then we were able to just accelerate into that. So as it happens, we've actually been quite busy over the last few months, which has been a real blessing. But but, yeah, busy in ways we didn't anticipate for this year. Now, Graham, so you mentioned that are you guys behind, if I may ask, and I'd made just have missed that that future self academy, is that something that you're involved in? Yes, so I am involved with the future self academy. And that's a very similar thing to to what we were planning to do. So I actually put one of my books into the future self academy before lockdown, before the coronavirus hit, and I'm scheduled to put another one in the book down there as soon as well. Now, now that we're in level two, I suppose the studios can be open again. And I can go in and do some recordings. And so yeah, you know, for me, I am constantly looking for new platforms to get our work out to people for new ways to help people engage with thinking about the future. But our our particular product is called the future of work academy. Okay, the future of work academy. All right. Okay, great. Got that one. But Graham, you've been very outspoken during this this coronavirus, I've seen a couple of your posts and some videos that you put out about the fact that you know, a lot of people in this country and South Africans are strange, we discussed this briefly before we went into the show.

As as we're recording this, it is the first day of level two, this show is going to be going out, if you're listening to the show, it'll be a Monday night, we will have been talking about a week prior to you hearing this. So it is a Tuesday now. And we're discussing this. But I've been looking at social media today, for example, and people have been going nuts, and celebrating the fact that they can buy cigarettes, and that they can buy alcohol and this and that and the next thing's open. But surely, somebody's got to put up their hand somewhere and say that the coronavirus hasn't gone anywhere yet. What are your thoughts? You know, I think that COVID has shone a massive spotlight on on the world. And, you know, from a personal perspective, we we've learned this new word comorbidities. Well, it's a new word for me, pre existing conditions, I suppose is what it was. And that's why I've been a little bit nervous about getting COVID. Because although I'm a fit middle aged guy, I do have asthma. And I just we nobody knows how COVID is going to impact themselves. I haven't been scared. I haven't been fearful. But you know, if I can help it, I'd prefer not to get COVID. I think though, that the concept is useful, right? This big COVID spotlight is shining on the pre existing conditions in some of your relationships. I've got a divorce lawyer friend, and she says she's never been busier, sadly, than before, because the COVID spotlight is on some of our personal relationships. The COVID spotlight is on some of our companies and the way that your company operates. Does your boss trust you or not? Or is your boss forced you to put software on your computer to check how many hours you're online and micromanaging you from a distance. And I think the other way the other COVID spotlight that you're talking about here is the spotlight of personal responsibility. And for me, it's been very interesting to see the different reactions that people have had. And I must say I'm immensely disappointed with some of my friends, even and acquaintances of people who've just shown themselves to be immensely selfish, to basically say it's all about me. It's about my rights, my freedoms. These are the people say, well, I refuse to wear a mask. I don't have to wear a mask, or I'm going to continue to visit my friends, or I'm going to go running, or I'm going to go out. And we live in a society where we need to be considering each other and considering other people. And initially, people just wanted regulations to tell them what they weren't and weren't allowed to do. Now that we're at level two, basically, the government said, you make your own choices, but you decide what you're going to do.

And so many people have just said, excellent. Now we can do whatever we like. But that's not what the government said. The government said there are no regulations, but COVID is still in the system. So you have to think it through, people. You have to think about where you want to go, minimize your contact with other people, make sure you don't get COVID, that you don't infect somebody else if you do have COVID. And I think we have this massive spotlight shining on us as a society now, where we need to learn anew. And maybe I'm sounding very holier than thou. I don't mean to. So let me make this about me. I need to learn again, that I'm part of a society. You know, David, I honestly, I really do work at my company's got a foundation, my wife and I volunteer at a township school, we try and be good citizens in South Africa. But honestly, I think I need to admit to myself, I didn't know how poor the poor people are in South Africa, that millions of people would line up to get 350 ran from the government for a month, and that they would take the time it was worth it to go and get that money shows me just how little they had. And I hope for me for myself, and I hope for everybody else, that COVID helps us to think more about other people, and to contribute more to society around us. And sorry, it's a long answer to your question, but that's where my mind has gone during COVID. We don't think about other people nearly enough in nearly enough ways. And I hope that will be one of the lasting legacies of COVID that we begin to do that more. I'm with you 100% on that. And we're going to get into a little bit more about us as South Africans and what we tend to do. But I despair. I really do because I've seen what people do. And what scares me and has scared me through this whole pandemic to date is the youngsters. And the youngsters seem to have absolutely not a care in the world besides, and maybe I'm generalizing here, but you know, this immediate gratification. Why can't I see my friends? Why can't I do this? I'm young. Nothing's going to happen to me. I'm one of those people with a co-morbidity. I'm a diabetic. And I'm going, "Well, it's not just about you. Think about people around you." But I think, as I said, we despair. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit more about us as South Africans, where we're going, maybe touch on how our government is done. And then later on, we're going to wrap up with a way to. So there is some good news coming. I'm sure Graham's got some good news for us. We'll be back in just a bit. It is what's involved. And my special guest is Graham Coddrington. And we're back with my guest Graham Coddrington. What's involved it is. So good to have you along with us. Graham, just before the break, I was also going into a bit of a monologue there about the fact that I despair and about youngsters. Is this just a South African problem where we don't seem to care about anybody but ourselves? No, it's definitely not. We're seeing this all around the world. And if I can just say, I think you're being a little bit harsh on young people there. I know you said you were generalizing. And I think it is a generalization.

I have seen a lot of young people being very thoughtful about their circumstances, the families they're living with. I have friends who's going through chemotherapy and the children and the young people in that space were very, very protective of that sort of pre-existing condition. But having said that, you know, young people are bulletproof. At least they think that they are. I remember the days when I was back at Varsity and you do. You don't think anything will get in your way. That's part of what we want from young people. That's the energy they bring to society. But it isn't just a South African thing. This is happening all over the world. You know, you can look at places from Brazil to the UK, from Australia to America, and you see similar things happen in society. And I think the divide here is not old and young. I don't think it's black and white. I think the divide is between people who are thinking about others, people whose systems are set up to look for who is vulnerable in society and for helping the vulnerable. And in political terms, those are often seen as left-wing or labor or progressive parties. And then there's the other side, which are often seen as right-wing or conservative parties who are more about making space for individuals to prosper. That's, you know, neoliberalism and capitalism and so on. And I think this COVID crisis has shone a spotlight. And sadly, I think it's probably polarized that. I'm probably part of the problem at the moment in lockdown. I haven't been in a huge mood to be gracious to people who see the world differently, sadly. But I think we're going to have to find a way to come together after the COVID crisis because we've got to get both of those views in. Yes, we've got to make space for the individuals to forge a path, but we can't ignore the vulnerable in society. We can't ignore people who have comorbidities.

We can't ignore people who don't have the means to create their own wealth. We can't ignore people who've lost their jobs and can't just go into their network and get another job. And so I think we're going to come out the other end of COVID with a lot of work to do, to choose how we want to set our societies up, to choose the correct political frameworks in our countries. And that's not a South African statement. I think that's a country by country worldwide issue. Okay. But Graham, in your opinion, how have we done as a society to date? And I don't want you to sort of lead us into any sort of political orders, but I mean, this is something that needs to be discussed. How is our government done? Because I feel they've let the people down. Well, David, it's an interesting one, right? So if we're talking specifically as South Africans, I think they're three levels to look at. I think firstly, from a strategic level, from a big picture, high level, I think they've actually done brilliantly. We were one, we were within the first 10 countries to institute a travel ban, to put lockdown in place. We saw what could happen. And we knew we needed to flatten the curve. Remember that? Remember when we were all using that term? And the point of that was that we knew, we knew that we were a susceptible population because of poverty, wealth inequality, because of underlying comorbidities of TB and AIDS. We knew that we would be hard hit, that we wouldn't be able to escape like Australia or New Zealand or Germany, of kind of locking down and making sure we didn't get COVID. And what we needed to do was prepare the health system. Preparing the health system was making sure we had field hospitals, making sure that the current healthcare system became ready. We put protocols in place, we got PPE. We also had to give ourselves some time to learn about this disease. We didn't want to be the first country to spike, because then you're learning on the job. You're learning, do you put people on ventilators or not? What medicines do you use? People forget that we've worked very quickly, by we, I mean the entire world's science and healthcare professionals, have learned very quickly what to do and what not to do. And because South Africa locked down early, we've got huge benefit from that. My sister had had COVID just a few weeks ago and it got bad.

Her O2 levels were dropping, but here's the point. She knew to go and buy an O2 machine, whatever it's technical thing, to check her O2 levels so that it didn't crash. When it dropped below 90, she went to the hospital. She wasn't feeling horrible, but her O2 was crashing. They knew what drugs to give her. They gave her antibiotics. We didn't know that in March and April. And that's why people were dying in Spain and Italy and New York and why people haven't died here. So at a high level, I think the government did a good thing. Then the second thing is the healthcare system. So Dr. Mckissi, Professor Salomon, and we've listened to these guys, right? Professor Karim, sorry. We've listened to these people and the experts. And at a healthcare level, I think we've done a good thing. The problem is now that at the third level, which is government delivery, we've hit up against our South African co-morbidity. And the co-morbidity is corruption and incompetence. And we do need to separate those two things in our conversation. We can say congratulations to the government for strategically seeing the potential for harm and taking us into lockdown and making sure that we come at the other end with, yes, infections across the country, but one of the lowest fatality rates in the world, our healthcare system never being overwhelmed, more recoveries than almost every other country in the world.

We can say that. And at the same time, we can still say, why is there nobody in jail yet for PPE corruption? Why do we still have to face massive corruption and incompetence from our government and hold our government to account? And that then leads directly into our thinking about next year's election and hoping that this big COVID spotlight allows us to hit a big reset button in South Africa to say we've got to reset our political environment here. We can say both things. Congratulations and sort yourself out at the same time. And that is probably one of the best ways I've heard it put. And trust me, we get bombarded on all sides by apparent armchair COVID specialists and armchair politicians and everything. I think that's a very, very balanced view. And it is one thing, and it's something that struck me particularly during this time, is the difference between the haves and the have-nots in this country. And the have-nots have literally been trampled into the dirt. And I think it is absolutely shocking. And from my part in it, at a part that I played, maybe even unconsciously, I feel really badly about that. And as a result, we have started to try and do what we can with what we have. And I think there's many, many people like that. When we come back there, Graham, good news. Is there good news?

Can you share some good news with me? Absolutely. Don't go away, people. There is good news. Fantastic stuff. It is what's involved with my special guest Graham Coddrington. When we come back, the good news for our future and our country, at least the way Graham sees it.

And we're back with my guest Graham Coddrington, wrapping up with some good news. So Graham, this has happened. Everybody's fallen about the place. A lot of people have, and this is where the buzzwords come in again, become quite agile. They've pivoted. All of those wonderful words. For me, it wasn't so much as being agile or pivoting as scrambling and clawing my way into something that I could put food on the table for. But that's my story. What is the good news going forward for us? Look, I think there's a variety of levels of good news. The first is to recognize that the bad news is huge, right? I mean, we already had a tough economic environment. We already had lots of challenges as a country, and COVID isn't going to help us out. It hasn't removed any of those. So even if we recover quickly from COVID, we only recover to a point where all the other issues are still there for us. But for me, the good news in this is at a variety of levels. The first level is I do see South Africans coming together again. You know, we've had during the lockdown, we had the 10th anniversary of the football World Cup. And we reminded ourselves again of what it felt like back in 2010, to just come together as a nation and have the world's eyes on us and deliver big time. It was amazing. And we do that as South Africans. We do that regularly when we come together. And we focus our energies on doing something good. We can do something great. And now we have seen similar things happen. The amount of people who have got food parcels together who are helping each other, I think there's going to be a lasting legacy of connection and engagement. I really hope that there is. So the second level then of hope that I have is that I think that some people who might have known, yes, there are problems in South Africa, but maybe hadn't been fully aware. You know, as I said earlier, just obviously we all know that there are poor people in South Africa, but did I know how poor the poor people really are?

I don't think so. NHI, you know, there's conversation about a national health system. There can't be a single South African left who doesn't now realize why we need to have a good healthcare system for everyone in South Africa. No matter how rich and privileged I am, I am only protected from COVID in as much as the poorest person in this country is protected from COVID. And so we must build an NHI that works for everybody. And we must build an economic system that works for everybody. And the old school neoliberal capitalism is not working for everybody. And so I think we have an opportunity, and I hope, this is my hope, that we take the opportunity to hit a big reset button here and to find a new path forward. The old path wasn't working and we need to find a new path forward. And that also means that we've got to find new political systems. You know, if we think that the ANC is proving ineffective as government, the valid question is, well, who else would you vote for? Because I look at the current opposition political parties, and I think I'm not giving any of you guys my vote either. I'm really hoping that people will stand up now and get more involved in politics and give us viable alternatives so that we've got something to vote for in the next few years, that there's more coalition work done by the opposition parties, not these little kingdoms emerging. I honestly, David, think that we could look back in a few years' time and see that COVID forced us to make significant shifts. And I truly believe and I truly hope that we will see them as positive shifts and that we took the opportunity of being in the dark valley to find the path out the other side. I think we can do it. I hope that we do. Yeah, I would agree with you 100% there. Before I let you go, though, one of the things, and it's a couple of questions that I've been asked, is all of these people in our country that have been affected by this coronavirus, those that have lost jobs, you know, the employment, business-wise, where do you see us going business-wise? Have you spotted some trends in terms of the kind of businesses that are going to thrive? So maybe people should start looking at upskilling themselves in that direction? Well, let me do what I said right at the start of the show. You know, a futurist looks back at history, actually, to try and find trends. And there's great news there in two specific ways. The first is that after every other coronavirus of the last 100 years, all the way back to the Spanish flu of 1918 and '19, there's been a very quick economic recovery because infrastructure hasn't been destroyed, right? It's not like we've had a world war where half of our airports and our buildings have been blown up. We've just had to take a massive break.

It's been a big hit to the economy, but hopefully things can take off very quickly on the other side. So tourism obviously has had a massive hit, hospitality a massive hit, but as soon as people can travel and as soon as people can go back to restaurants, most people will. And so we have to set ourselves up as the first destination for international tourists who are desperate to go traveling again. So we've kind of got to gear ourselves up for a flood of demand in certain industries. And that would include agriculture and South African wines and tourism and mining and so on. So there is good news that there could be quite an increase in economic activity. At the same time though, we also see from history that deep disruptions produce innovation. And we, you know, after the Spanish flu of 1918 and '19, there was the roaring 20s of massive innovation that took place in many different industries as people began to reimagine what those industries might look like. And that innovation is normally fueled by entrepreneurship. So Dave, my answer to your specific question is, I think as South Africans, we need to stop waiting for government and big business to make jobs for us that then we can send our CVs off to find a job.

And we need to start focusing on building entrepreneurs and that's government policy and government providing support. That's banks giving loans to small businesses and entrepreneurs. But that's also us as families and friends, not looking at somebody who wants to become an entrepreneur and thinking they failed because they don't have a real job. There really is a South African mindset about saying, no, a job is a job and an entrepreneur is somebody who couldn't get a job. We've got to change our attitude to say, no, we support, we honor, we love people who give it a go, who turn a side hustle into a real business. And if our friends and families start doing it, we must support them, not pull them down. And if we can develop a million or two million entrepreneurs in the next two or three years, we'll turn this country around easily. Absolutely. I've often said that one of the solutions to our problems is to have more business owners, more people who are self-employed, more entrepreneurs. So some brilliant advice and definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. Graham, if people want to get hold of you specifically or tomorrow, today, what is the best way to go about that? Well, if you can spell my name, Graham Coddrington, just do a switch for me. I'm kind of all over the place from LinkedIn to YouTube. If you want to connect with my company, go to TomorrowTodayGlobal.com. So tomorrow first, tomorrow today, Global.com. And Graham spelled G-R-A-E-M-E. Not like I spelt it when I reached out to you the first and you were most gracious and not pointing out that I was an idiot and didn't spell your name properly. So thank you for that.

I do appreciate it. Along with many of my Black, South African friends, I am just used to people not knowing how to either spell or say my name. So thank you. All right. And one last thing before we say goodbye. What's next for you, Graham Coddrington? You know what? I am very grateful to have found quite early what I love doing for a living and discovered that people are prepared to pay me to do it. So you know what? For me, I love thinking about the future. I love helping people change the way they think. And I hope that people will continue to pay me to do that for the rest of my life. So I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. And I hope it makes a difference in the world. I have no doubt that it will. Thank you so much, Graham, for taking the time out and having a chat with us. And I do wish you guys all of the best. You've certainly given us some food for thought. My pleasure. Thanks, David. There we go. And that wraps it up. But to my special guest Graham Coddrington joining me here on what's involved and to you, each and every one one of you. Thank you for listening.