Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward EP 122: Inside Out Futures with Jo Lepore
Welcome to Episode 122 of the Think Forward Show!
In this insightful episode, I sit down with Joanna Lepore, who leads Global Foresight at McDonald's Corporation. From her journey as an "accidental futurist" to co-founding FIG (Foresight Insight Group), Jo shares how real transformation starts at the core and ripples outward.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why internal foresight capabilities are crucial for large organizations
- How to break through the "baggage" of corporate futures work
- The evolution of foresight from trend-spotting to strategic thinking
- The importance of combining art and science in futures work
Jo's approach challenges us to think differently about how organizations build futures capabilities, proving that sometimes the most powerful changes start from within.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast, where we speak with futurists, innovators, and big thinkers. Come along with your host, Steve Fisher, and explore the future together.
Steve F:Welcome friends and fellow big thinkers to another exciting episode of Think Forward, where we explore the ever expanding horizons of the future. Today, we have a fascinating guest who's helping one of the world's most recognizable brands shape its future. She currently leads Global Foresight and McDonald's Corporation. But don't let her corporate title fool you. She's an accidental futurist turned trailblazer who's not just thinking about tomorrow's menu, she's revolutionizing how major organizations build their futures capabilities from the inside. From Mars Wrigley to McDonald's, she's proven that real transformation starts at the core and riffles outward. She's also the co founder of FIG, the Foresight Insight Group. It's a groundbreaking community that's turning corporate futurists into internal change agents. When she's not reshaping one of the world's largest companies from within, she hosts Looking Outside, a podcast that brilliantly connects internal insights with external perspectives. As an Aussie in Chicago, she brings an outsider's perspective to insider challenges. She's passionate about making foresight more accessible and practical. Well, challenging the notion that futures work needs to come from the outside in today, we will explore her journey from skeptical marketer to corporate foresight leader, uncovering how she helped McDonald's re imagine its future from the inside out and discover why sometimes the most powerful changes start at the core. So grab your coffee or your favorite McDonald's beverage. And let's dive into the conversation. Welcome to episode 122. Inside Out Futures with Joanna Lepore, Jo, welcome to the podcast.
Jo:Steve, thank you for having me.
Steve F:You have been quite the trailblazer the last, I would say year. I know you've been doing this a while, but I think your move over to McDonald's and your work building Fig is rightly so getting you accolades and noticed. So. For those who don't know you, let's talk about your journey, because you live in Chicago right now, but you don't sound like you're from the South side. So yeah, let's learn about you.
Jo:Yeah, so I'm an Aussie in hiding in this, in the city of Chicago. And before that I was in New Jersey, actually in Hoboken. But it's interesting that you say that because, you If somebody said to me once when I was leading Foresight for Mars Wrigley, which is what I was doing before McDonald's, Oh, you're, you're so well known now because you're leading Foresight for Mars Wrigley. It's like the brand association does so much for you. And so obviously now stepping into leading Foresight for McDonald's, which is one of the world's biggest brands. Of course, there's a credibility and association that's quite different for me now with that. But I'd like to think, as you said before, that I've been doing Foresight for about five years now, and I've done, obviously, Work inside of big corporates of setting up foresight and establishing foresight and growing it. And, but then alongside that, doing my podcast, which I've been doing for three years now, which has given me a little bit of a public platform. And then now for the last six months, starting my not for profit SIG, Foresight Insight Group, which has, has been going tremendously well. So I'd like to hopefully get to a point where people aren't like Joe from McDonald's. Although that's obviously what I am right now. But just to show that I've been living in the U. S. for almost four years now. Historically, before Foresight, a marketer, or as I like to say a strategist really, because I was doing a lot more strategic work inside of marketing, always tasked with basically pushing the business into a new direction with a new brand or brand adjacency or a stretch for the brand. And then accidentally found my way into Foresight and fell in love with it.
Steve F:That's a great segue to the spark, as I like to call it. Everyone has, I think everyone is a futurist is an accidental one. We don't, when we're five years old. We don't say, I want to be a futurist. Now, when I was 13, I read Top Third and I was like, oh, you can do this as a job? Oh, this is cool. Right. But there wasn't many, there weren't many around, right? And the different kinds of professions we want when we're five years old, we find us I think that's what I love about this field is there are so many different kinds of voices, people that have different walks of life, different experiences, and they bring those perspectives to this where so many other roles and jobs just have a straight out function. So what was your spark? Where did it come to get into this field?
Jo:I definitely consider myself an accidental futurist as well. And it's really funny when I got offered the role, I was very hesitant in taking it and taking that step into foresight and futures because I didn't know what it was. And I thought that I wouldn't be taken seriously. So because I've been working in business my entire life and career, 10 years up until that point, working for big companies in very established functions. It was the first time that I was offered a role in a function that nobody knew, that I had to explain what foresight was, that I had to go and learn because I wasn't an expert when I stepped into it, and had this reputation of being trend hunters, essentially, or crystal ball readers, or pontificators, or so disconnected, so in that ivory tower. That I know I had a lot of back and forth conversations with people saying, is this the right career move for me? Am I going to get pigeonholed? And am I going to actually make an impact? Am I going to be taken seriously? All of these things that in my career, I was working really hard to be taken seriously. So I'm so glad that I said yes, because. I think there's a lot of baggage when it comes to a futurist inside of a business, maybe outside of it as well, but certainly inside of the corporate landscape. And it's been shifting and evolving so much in the last five years. So the reason that I was given that opportunity and that I said yes to it was because What I recognized in Foresight and Futures in the business world was that it was the one true way of forcing opportunity that nobody else in the business could foresee. When you're trying to help the business to see what's around the corner, when you're trying to provoke it to think differently, when you're promising that you're going to find this new growth avenue. What better function to do that through than Foresight and really using this combination of, as I like to say, art and science of coming up with these new future forward opportunities. For me, it was more of the business application that really drew me to it. And then once I got into it, I realized it was so much more.
Steve F:You mentioned, uh, words like baggage, shift. You have a perspective in marketing and then being approached to do this role. When you looked at it, what do you perceive as baggage and where it is in corporate foresight?
Jo:Yeah, well, it's funny, um, we were just talking about this at the Dubai Future Forum quite a lot and the panel that I was on of what makes a futurist and there's this, kind of perception that anybody can call themselves a futurist. Many people don't actually even know, or in some cases believe, that it's something that you have to go and study, that there are tools and methods, that there's a kind of a right way and a not so good way of applying future studies foresight practice. And so I think the baggage is really that it's like this ill defined field in many ways, because you can come into it from. UX and design, you can come into it from. Economics and numbers crunching and forecasting. You can come into it from geopolitics and understanding how the state of the world is being influenced by governments. You can come into it from marketing and you don't necessarily have to then practice it in the same way. So I think the baggage is that it's very broad. It can be done and applied in different ways. And at least in the business world, it's very new. I know that Shell has been practicing it for decades. And they do it in a very kind of specific way. But when you look at the kind of mainstream rollout of foresight in business, it's still very nascent. It's still very much forming and trying to establish what is it and what is the ROI of it and how do we place it in the right area and how do we make sure that this is really benefiting the corporation? All of that is still evolving.
Steve F:It's a ripe opportunity. I guess we've had so far on the show. You talk about John Smarter, for example, was on a previous episode. He's a longtime futurist, but he's an economist, right? Jake Soteriadis, who's awesome. Love Jake. Love Jake. I interviewed him a couple episodes ago. I've known Jake for a while and he takes the geopolitical, right? He's taking his background in defense and running foresight in the Air Force. And to your point about marketers, yeah, it's, I come at it from design, like I build pro, I make things, that's my thing, but I come at it as a design feature. And I found that, that convergence when knowing Jake Dunnigan or Stray Candy, I always studied and used strategic foresight. In my field as a product owner or product leader and running innovation groups, it's like a stealth futures, like I brought in the techniques, but I didn't overtly be like, we're going to do futures projects because I don't think the appetite was there or the those who are quarterly focused did not have that. But what's interesting to see has changed is. Before, so I like to say, futurist was like sexy. You couldn't just call yourself that. It had to be bestowed upon you. Now it just becomes a moniker. And I think what's happening is that there is a push through DFS and even South by to establish this as a common work function. It changes from what is foresight to why are you doing foresight? But so what is the shift that you've seen?
Jo:I think that the biggest shift is the application of it in business. So. I think it's no longer the case that you just bring in foresight to do trend analysis or horizon scanning, or that you bring it in to do scenario planning for your business, or that you help it to stretch corporate strategies. Lends into the further out future. It's all of those things. And in a way, none of those things. So the, what we see inside of particularly FIG and a lot of the corporations that I speak with is that it sits in any number of varied parts of a business. Like you have Foresight sitting in sustainability. With a pretty obvious task of helping to anticipate how you can prepare for climate change. You see it sitting inside of a lot more security teams and risk management teams where they're trying to navigate all of the crises in the world. You see it sitting inside of consumer insights, where we're trying to understand culture and how that's changing innovation, corporate strategy, marketing. So it's no one size fits all. And I think that's, what's really exciting actually about Foresight in the corporate space is that. If you have a company that really understands that there is so much benefit and potential in Foresight and then leaves it to hopefully a experienced practitioner to set it up, then you can find the right place for it. So I think often what's been happening with Foresight Incorporate is that it's like you place it in the most obvious area where you think you're going to be doing long term planning or you think you're doing design. That actually if you approach it from a very kind of. outside in perspective and really do a stakeholder map of your organization and see where is it going to be the most beneficial, which teams and functions can you partner with to make an instant and a longer term impact, then that can be incredibly powerful. And I think a lot of organizations are doing that. And in some cases we see these kinds of ebbs and flows. Of demand for foresight in business. They've had it for three to five years. We see that trough of disillusionment start to come in where they're like, this isn't really working, but it's not that it's not working. It might just be in the wrong place or applied in the wrong way. So it's still evolving from that sense as well, where companies are still trying to work out, where do I put it, how do I measure its impact, how many people do I need, what kinds of projects should I be working on, all of that is very much still being formed. And I mean, that obviously makes it really an exciting space for people who know what's between. The foresight practice and doing foresight right and the business world and understanding what internal stakeholders are really looking for and marrying those two things together.
Steve F:When you think of different roles like marketers or designers, there are aspects and skills to those roles and there are different kinds of marketers, different people that are brand. Some people are. So like different things that people specialize in. Do you think that the field should be more prescriptive of types of futurists? If you're a visual designer, you have tools you can use. If you're an interaction designer, you have tools and things. But you do different things, right? So you can have an economic futurist. You can have a market futurist. Like you can have different kinds. Do you think that we're far away from that, or do you think it just needs an understanding of the skill set that people do? Because I feel like a lot of executives don't, they hear the term, but they don't really understand what this means in organization.
Jo:No, it's true. They don't. I think that you need to know the history of Foresight, and you need to know how to do the methods, and you need to be flexible in knowing how and when to apply which methods. So you need foresight training. That's I think really a mandatory. Now, other skills I think can be taught. I think actually the benefit of foresight practitioners is that they have the flexibility to be able to pivot into lots of different directions and they do have the more analytical brain and the strategic brain, but they also have the creative brain because you can't do great foresight if you can't have a strong skill or muscle for imagination. And you can't do foresight if you're not able to get really into the data and crunch the numbers. And you can't be a great foresight practitioner if you teach others and heard others. Because so much of what we do is training, facilitation, group interactive sessions. So I think those types of skills can be honed and taught. Now, if you're, if you're doing a UX design project, would you want a foresight practitioner that maybe has You know, an engineering background or a design fiction background, or, you know, product development background. Sure. That's going to benefit it. But I think that the real true benefit of Foresight is that we are accessing so much diverse information and perspectives. And if you have a Foresight practitioner that is not looking across the steep macro forces and if they're not knowledgeable on all of those things, knowledgeable enough, I like to say. Then you're missing a trick and let's go back to Jake for a second, who I listened to that podcast and he's brilliant. He's always brilliant. But what really stood out to me when I first started in Foresighter, I had a conversation with Jake. I'm like, oh my god, I can't believe he's giving me the time of day. But what was amazing was like, yes, he's worked in the National Intelligence University and yes, he does geopolitics. But he had so much expertise in technology. He had studied human behavior and culture tremendously, so he knew the economic conditions as well. So he was able to speak across the steep macro forces so that when someone at the National Intelligence University asked him a question about geopolitics, he can tie that into those other skill sets that he has. And then I think like more than anything, you just need to have as a great foresight practitioner, an open mind and an open heart. Because the one thing that I think is really. Oh, watch out for people in futures is that we're starting to dictate, this is very contentious, dictate. Oh, I love contention. That's
Steve F:what we're here. Be that, be the provocateur, Joe. Come on, bring it out. All
Jo:right. It's not that provocative, hopefully, but I do think that we're starting to dictate what is the right future and what is a better future, forgetting that one person's dream is another person's nightmare. Forgetting that we're tailoring to very different maturity levels across the world and that there really is no such thing as a bad or a good future. We're living in neutral futures that benefit people disproportionately and we should, when we're trying to create a space to think about the future, we shouldn't be thinking about the good guys and the bad guys. We should be a lot more. Objective.
Steve F:I couldn't agree with you more. And so many things in my work are around that, because you learn from the past, you stand on the shoulders of giants, right? You wouldn't have. The type of work we do now, if it wasn't for day or two by two, or some of the archetype methods, or even the HILES CLA, which is awesome. They all have their merits and they all have their benefits, but they also have their limitations. And I think you're spot on because I take the perspective of there are multiple simultaneous possible, like in a possible future. To your point, someone's transformation could be another person's collapse. I'll give you a good example. Generative AI, right? You're an independent filmmaker and you can't get into the mix and can't, you just can't get right. All of this stuff from Runway, you can make your own films. It's like, that's transformational. But then the other person is, I don't want to learn these tools and I get laid off and they're in a collapse. So that's just, that's a microcosm. You're right. I think that the risk we run. Is tuning, trying to be too prescriptive as future, like this is the way. Mm-hmm . It's, there are multiple ways and I think to your point about, I love how you talked about the data, you talked about the social aspect of facilitation. It is the art and science, and I think any futurist is multidisciplinary. Mm-hmm . Like have to be right and left brains. I think that's the key to being a good futurist. I'd love to look inward, or as you like to say, looking outside, but looking inward, looking out. Like your role at McDonald's, like you, you had a, you have a great mentor, the person that's in your leadership who recruited you over. You were together before in March, right?
Jo:We were for a short while.
Steve F:Yeah. And she saw the talent in you. She gave you that opportunity. Now let's do it over here. And when we talk about corporate foresight, what does a typical day look like for you? Like in the team, what does it look like at McDonald's? Nothing secretive, but just the flow of work.
Jo:Yeah. Yeah. Um, so no day is the same. I know that sounds like such a cop out answer, but truly so. Well, let me tell you about this week as an example. So I'm updating currently our midterm perspective framework. So we have one framework that the business lives and breathes when it comes to the midterm futures five and seven years out. So we're currently researching. Updating that. I'm also currently getting ready for a scenario planning workshop that I'm helping to lead next week for one of our functions in the business. So we're currently working together on helping them cause I'm trying to get other people to be able to run their own scenario planning sessions,
Steve F:helping
Jo:them to really think about what is the outcome that you want from this and what kind of questions are we going to ask people and what do we really want to get out of this. And then at the same time, we're doing things like futures training sessions. We're talking about annual planning, because that's about to start. I think that what's really different for me at McDonald's versus Mars, where I was before, was at Mars, it was a lot more, and this isn't a good or a bad thing, but a lot more partnership with functions in the sense that they would come to me and say, What is the future of snacking? What is the future of chocolate? What is the future of plastic? Like they really wanted a lot of answers to these big questions that they had around their strategic goals and intentions. So we wouldn't give them a simple answer, but we would help them to explore these topics. So coming out of Mars, I had like this array of case studies of look at all these topics that we investigated the future of, which was great. At McDonald's, because it's a brand new capability in the organization, and it's a almost 70 year old company. It's significantly bigger. It's like as big as, bigger than some economies in the world. It's been around for a long time in a very successful way, and Forsythe's only been around for about three years. So a lot of what we're doing is actually just going, we're starting from a really great place. How do we just help you to push a little bit further out? Or just to think a little bit differently. So building new types of skills and muscles in people and maybe reshaping how they run certain sessions, how they think about certain topics. And again, like this is the beautiful thing for me about Foresight is that it's every day is a little bit of a surprise because you could get tapped on the shoulder by market MD. Hey, can you, we want to run some scenarios. Can you come and help us do that? Or you're going in deep into the research and. At the moment, one of the things that I'm really proud of is we're setting up a horizon scanning capability in the business for the first time ever. So there, there's just a lot of variety in the work. And I guess the challenge for foresight in business is really being very intentional about what you do and what you don't do, particularly when there are so many things that you can do, and you're only a small set of people. And I guess going back to what you were saying before, Michelle Gansley is who I worked with for a number of years, and she, shout out to Michelle, she is no longer my boss, she's been promoted, she's like the chief data officer now, it's good on her, she's a great example of people who get foresight, and know how to apply it in lots of different areas and ways, she worked with me for a short while and gave me that opportunity and kind of saw in me, what I didn't see in myself is that foresight capability. Gave me the opportunity to grow in that. And then, um, actually she didn't bring me into McDonald's. She was just there at the time, was an advocate for me right from the get go. And that's really important as well. So a part of an average day of a Foresight practitioner is to touch base with your advocates across the business, with the stakeholders that you have to keep checking in, to keep building relationships. So I think maybe going back to what we were saying before is like the worst thing that you can do is be biased in Foresight. The second worst thing you can do is sit in an ivory tower and just do your own work. And then here you go, passively deploy it to the business. So a lot of what I do is actually just engaging with people, getting their feedback, asking them questions. They asked me questions. We actually just had a, like a Ask the Futurist Q and A, open Q and A. I'm like, just what, what are the burning topics that you have that you feel like you don't have enough? Intelligence about when it comes to the future. So it's also a great, absolutely great job. If you are a people person and you're a collaborator and you love really helping people to think differently about the future.
Steve F:That's great. When you mentioned scenarios, do you have a battery of tools? Do you have things you like to use? Like when scenarios you do like archetypes of a customer, I'm curious to get a little. Not anything confidential, secret, but just like, how do you, because it's such a broad set of stakeholders, because I would imagine, and we'll talk about some of the challenges and opportunities in the food service space, but the different, this is global, it's a global mega corporation, different countries have different needs, different planning, different demands. What do you do?
Jo:Yeah, what I absolutely do every time I'm about to have a session with a team is, Really put the pressure on them, gently, to clearly define what does good look like at the end of this for you. What do you, when you, if you walk away from this, what do you want to have done?
Steve F:Very consultative. And then stress to them. Very consultative. Very
Jo:consultative. Yes. Yeah, for sure. And also stress to them that, The foresight exercise is not going to do all the work for you. There's going to be more work coming after that. So bear that in mind, but if you could like in an ideal world answer this one question, what would it be? And then we pick the method and the workshop components and build it out from there. So I'll give you some examples. Like we've done a lot of different. Sessions in the business where we're less focused on the scenario planning session or the workshop really getting like a plan on a page, if you will, because the ask has always been, we need to think longer term, like we're really good, very good as a business at looking one to three years, very efficient, sophisticated business. You'd have to be, if you're a McDonald's, right, it makes sense. So the thing that, that we usually get asked to do is help us to think outside the box, help us to stretch our imagination, help us to think about what we're not thinking about. And with that, then comes the kind of challenge of, okay, do I bring in. Something that gives people more responsibility in the room to play a more active role in the future so they can envisage themselves in it. Do we bring in artifacts of the future? Do we make prototypes? Do we get them to draw things? Do I assign roles? So that's worked really well, like particularly assigning roles to people in the room. If I know Steve, you're a little bit of a natural skeptic. I'm going to be like, Hey, we want Steve to be the skeptic in the room. Get all of that out of you. So we're not trying to like battle people and their natural personal styles. And what I've found is that generally what works really well, just more broadly when it comes to foresight and what I've seen at Mars and other companies. Even at training sessions that I've been a part of is one, it works really well when you can get people to be very hands on and hands on can be like, you create trading cards or you, yeah, you get people to like have to write things or draw things, people, when you make it more tactile, it's so impactful. And then the second thing is that I feel like we underestimate people. Like we say, this is going to be really hard. People are not used to thinking in this way, but actually just need to get from the space and the permission. And more often than not, people will surprise themselves. I'm always like, I know you guys can do it. I have no qualms. We're going to get to some really amazing future forward scenarios. It's the people themselves that almost feel like, I don't know if I have this in me and they just need the. The forum and the space to do it.
Steve F:Since it is such, it's a global corporation and the work is unique and the markets are unique in each country. What are some challenges and opportunities doing this kind of work inside food service in general?
Jo:I mean, I think it's probably the biggest challenge is the same as any industry, which is that you are so close to your industry. You're so close to your competitive set. And that's generally what people. Only look at, like they might get inspired by what a big company like Google and Microsoft is doing every once in a while. But generally speaking, they discount small players, they discount what's happening in other parts of the world. If you're in Germany, you're not really thinking about the U. S. cause it's very different market. You're thinking very intimately about your category buyer and their journey. And you understand how you compare to your immediate competitive set. And again, this isn't a McDonald's comment. It's a reflection of what always happens in every corporation. They look very closely at their category. So what we always say is that the future comes from the fringes and that it's the. It's the small changes that can lead to big changes, right? As things mature and as they transfer to other parts of the world. And if you're paying attention to that, it's really important because the future's already here, right? So we're paying attention to those signals and we're weighing them carefully. But equally, we're investigating. Culture, cultural norms like Sahel's models that you mentioned before, the myths and the legends that sit underneath cultures across the world and some of the more global forces that are at play. And if you're really paying attention to those, then it makes it a little bit easier to be able to break that kind of thinking out, out of the organization or out of leaders in business is to say. Yes, you're, we know that McDonald's, you are paying close attention to Starbucks. I'm not going to be doing any kind of analysis on Starbucks, like you've got the whole business doing that. But let's talk about some of the emerging plant based competitors. Let's talk about some of the loyalty digital programs that are emerging from outside of the food industry. Let's talk about how wearable technology is changing how people might be able to. Anticipate what food is better suited to them and their biology and how AI is influencing that. So it's bringing the outside in. I think that's been really beneficial for Foresight.
Steve F:Wonderful. It makes me think about connected devices, constant glucose monitors. If you wanted to get a salad, there's a lot of healthy options at McDonald's, but if you don't know what you can do today, you can, there are healthier options. God. Then just gimme, just gimme a filet of fish fries. Just, I'm old school. I'm as a kid, I'm in the backseat, the back of the, in the station wagon with peeling the thing apart with Oh no. Oh, I'm all about that. Jeez. Not wrap. Yeah. Or the french fries that stay eternal. They're like, and I think about the choices you want to make. Right, and, and just in general in terms of, of food. The behaviors people have. Yeah, it's fascinating. And it makes me think of, you also talk to a lot of people in a lot of different spaces, like I do in this space. And you started a podcast a couple of years ago, Looking Outside, which I love it. It's great. What inspired you to do this? I need to do a podcast like for me, like there's so many podcasts, what calling, I just love to talk people like you, like, what is, what inspired you to do this? Like, what was that spark, that motivation?
Jo:Yeah. So, you know, what's really interesting about this is that I get this question a lot and I think it's so easy to give a very retrospective answer. Like now I have this much more like grand philosophical answer to this question of what I want the show to be for other people and what I'm trying to get out of it and everything. At the time, it was like I was doing a podcast for Mars Wrigley. I was interviewing people because we were trying to figure out a way to make our foresight Intel published to our internal audience in a more engaging way. This was during the pandemic. We were like, let's just do conversations with people who know about this topic. If we're talking about the joy of snacking, let's talk to a joy expert. So just if it happened really naturally. And what I found was. Okay. I'm pretty good at this. Like, I'm pretty naturally curious, right? And podcasting so much of it is about asking questions. You have to be curious.
Steve F:You have to be curious. You have to be curious. You have to be
Jo:curious. You have to be a good listener. There's a lot of work that goes on in the background. But anyways, I'm like, Oh, this is great. I want to do more of this. I want to have more of these types of conversations. And because I was doing it kind of one on one with people, I'm like, I'm just going to do it on a podcast and see if people benefit from the conversations. And then what I realized really quickly was that the real kind of unique attribute of the show, because some people were like, Oh, you're going to do a futurist podcast. Right. Or like something that just makes sense for me or a marketer's podcast or something. I'm like, no, I just want to do a show where we're looking at very familiar topics that we think we know inside out. And I want to interview people who are doing it differently. Or I'm going to interview people who have nothing to do with my job and see what the commonalities are. Sorry. That's essentially what the kind of the heart of the show is, is just helping you to look outside of a topic that you know well or helping you to think differently. So one of my most popular episodes was I spoke to an LAPD detective about how do you interrogate someone and figure out that they're lying and how do you like use manipulative facts to get the truth out of somebody. Super interesting topic, obviously, huge honor to talk to this guy, but the commonalities between that and what we do. In trying to understand human behavior, trying to deal with stakeholders in business and try to get the truth, get closer and faster to the truth of a situation, like so many commonalities. So that's now like retrospectively, that's the heart of the show now. And I think it's actually okay if you start something just because you're like, I think there's something here. I'm interested in this. Then it naturally evolves and evolves and grows into something else, which is what happened with the show.
Steve F:Good retrospective. I can wait. I didn't want to clear my throat on such a large broadcast, so I got into podcasting for almost 20. It start like it was like 2000, like six, 2005. Did it for many years. Did it for companies. Really loved it. Technology was very nascent back then. And it obviously went through its trial disillusionment for many years, many, and obviously you think of large podcasts and they're just about conversations. They're not just the, cause you can differentiate between the corporate speak and when I thought about launch, bringing Think Forward back, I may interview a lot of futurists, but to your point, like I interview people that are in innovation, people that are just big thinkers. I want to talk to everybody cause there's commonality and things you want to find. The threads, the connective things that we all share. And I think you're right, the conversations and the curiosity is so important. Is there any other, like you mentioned the interrogator, is there any other insights or conversations on the, from different like episodes you really just, you're like, because if people want people to check it out, like they should definitely check these episodes. What are some
Jo:highlights for
Steve F:you? Yeah. Yeah. What's some highlights for you? Yeah.
Jo:Lincoln's shown. Yeah. Thank you the plug. And I love your show as well. And I love that you're like, like, this is my favorite type of podcast where you're just having a conversation because I think it's a lot better for people to listen to. I remember one of the first compliments I got on my show was It sounds like I'm eavesdropping on a conversation between two friends.
Steve F:Yeah, I get the same thing. It's like, I feel like I'm just listening to a few people talking in the kitchen. Yeah.
Jo:Yeah. And then hopefully there's a few aha moments in there for you. Yeah. Or some laughs. Yeah. So I think, like, I wrote down a few that I really am really proud of. I've had, I've been fortunate enough to have some Like fairly high caliber names on the show, like Byron Sharp, Marcus Collins, Tom Fishburne, the marketunist, Amy Webb, obviously the
Steve F:futurist,
Jo:but they've been really great, great and super interesting, insightful conversations, but I personally love the ones that are more from people who are doing very different things to me. And that's more of like where I'm getting my energy. And then when I hear. Because my audience is predominantly business people. That's where they're like, Ooh, this is so cool and different. Like I interviewed Ricardo Nunes, who's an airline pilot. I interviewed Anna Vaudenue, a French pastry chef. So like professions that I would never be qualified to do. I'm very qualified to eat French pastries, not so qualified to make them. And if you, I'll give you a really, very tangible example there. So. Arnaud, who's the French pastry chef, he was talking about how he learned to be a pastry chef over a six year period. He had to go to Paris. He had to study with the best. He had to do then his apprenticeship. It took him years to get to where he is now being a credible pastry chef. But people today are completely shortcutting that process. They're coming in with very limited experience. And because of technology, they're cutting how you even bake products, right? So the technology is helping you to shortcut that. Yeah. So you can make a croissant in a very different way now. So if you think about that in the context of Foresight, right? Very similar. You can shortcut. So he's, he was talking about when I'm trying to train the next generation, um, Of pastry chefs in this case, or in our case, foresight professionals. How do I understand the fact that they might be more impatient? They might be thinking about the education system very differently or the training system very differently. They just want to be hands on. We have so many more content creators and entrepreneurs in the world. So they're thinking very differently about how they create their career in a space that they love. Instantly, that just got me thinking about, okay, then that, that It makes me approach how I train my futurists in my team very differently because they have a very different mindset and a different path in different technologies that they're using for foresight. So that's a really very tangible example for me. And then the, there's one coming up that I'm super excited about, so I'm going to interview an experi, experimental philosopher, Jonathan Keats, who. Like it makes, makes artifacts and prototypes that capture hundreds of years. of time. So, he's a trained philosopher, but he said philosophy is just so esoteric and theoretical. How do I make it more real? So, I'm trying to create philosophical artifacts that help us to think differently.
Steve F:Is he a macro historian? Does he look at the larger spans of time? And he communicates that. I think he does.
Jo:I'm interviewing him next week, so I will report back.
Steve F:Yes. I am a big, I like that, that, that field as well. And you mentioned with the changes with Foresight, like, how do you see the role of, of this profession? Evolving over the next, say, decade, because it'd be like 2025 to 2035, because it's a little air. We're starting the new year, and what do you think, like, where it's going to go?
Jo:Yeah, I think it's going to, um, become more diverse, capturing new types of thinking, voices, geographical representation, um, new methods and tools. At the same time, I see it becoming much more polarized at the same time. In the same instance, because I can see this great division happening in foresight from the old school thinkers who probably have a master's or a PhD in foresight and who kind of abide by the future studies kind of core principles and then the other group of people who are trying to Coming in from an adjacent field and with a very different perspective of how do you apply futures thinking versus maybe futures tools to what you're doing. And these two are very at odds with each other, I would say, maybe surprisingly, the old school thinkers are very, maybe not surprising, very protective.
Steve F:Yes. They
Jo:want to make sure that it's done and they're getting very frustrated and flustered by the whole thing. But I think that there's a sweet spot in the middle, but I do think that we'll come into a point where there's even greater division and polarization in the field before we can find that, you know, the middle of that Venn diagram between the two.
Steve F:Yes, as one with a masters, I agree with you. I am of the latter in terms of the free, I see massive, and I want to talk to you about generative AI. Because I'm seeing what it's doing, you're talking about, I don't want to say shortcuts, but it's definitely, I think it's actually improving the field. I think your point about You can be traditional in that, but you have to learn because it doesn't apply. Some people think of foresight almost like classical music. I think of it like jazz. There are different eras of jazz. There's the swing era, the bop era, the fusion era. Smooth jazz, but it's all the improvisational piece of it that the genre evolves. And there's some people like look at fusion and then they look and they're like, Oh my God, what is that? You have an appreciation for all of it. You have an F down appreciation for it. You wouldn't have this without that. So I think to your point, there is a, I don't want to say a change in the guard, but there is a, there are, uh, generationally I've said a set of thinking and those can be cross generational. What I thought it would be, people, they talk about the specter of it taking away the jobs, which is hilarious because the people that built it, it's the ones that's going to take away their jobs versus the truck drivers and all the tradespeople. They're going to be like the millionaires, like in the South Park episode. Field itself, I think is going to give us an opportunity to apply. Like when I look at design, there's design systems. I don't really need to redo radio buttons and drop boxes and all the things I need to focus on hard problems. I'm very big on creating that AI system because you still need the human element and you have the machine element. And if you look at machines as like the partner, the collaborative partner, You still have to be there for the beginning, setting the framing, doing the strategy. But when it comes to a lot of the ideation, some of the scenario work, there's things that go beyond, like it becomes, it sparks things. Your point about people that are afraid of doing it, it can actually help foster the creativity. I think that's what I see. What is your take on AI? What do you think it's, do you think it's going to be a positive thing? Do you think it's going to, what do you think it's going to do for our field?
Jo:I think it holds great potential for our field, but I do worry about it as well. I think there's a difference between obviously knowledge and wisdom. I think it's giving us a lot of knowledge. And we're forgetting that we need to do the wisdom bit afterwards. I do think that the, the most beneficial part of futures when it's applied is the critical thinking part. Because, like, I've seen some AI tools that do a futures wheel analysis where it's spitting out implications for you. And I'm like looking at that stuff going. There's no imagination in that. There's no like true understanding of human behavior. There's no kind of unexpected wild card elements in it. I don't know. It's just I feel like it's best done when it is done in combination with people. And I don't think that you obviously can outsource that. But I do think that there it is. Very exciting, the ability for us to stop wasting so much time and gathering Intel and automate that process and make sure that we're getting like a really good, broad, geographically diverse set of Intel that is readily available to us, but no human being can access all of that in the way that AI can. And then once you have that in a way that makes sense, and I think applying that with a foresight brain, so with the ability to really think through the implications using the foresight training that we have, but it is a very divisive topic at the moment, obviously in the world, but also particularly in the foresight space. I'll tell you, I got really worried because I had a more junior person on my team who I tasked with doing some foresight work. This person shall not be named and shamed, and hopefully she or he doesn't listen to this. But I gave this person a topic to investigate. And then when it came back, I said, did you use AI for this? And they said, yes, I just pushed all the reports and everything and got the synthesis from AI. And I'm like, that. It's literally the part of the foresight practitioner is to not just read information, but to think through the implications of what you're reading and to put your own expertise over it. That's the bit that in this transitional period, as we're working out how to use AI, I hope that we don't lose.
Steve F:Yeah. I think of the graphic. There's a, like a percentage bar for each, for AI and human. And it's like the things in the various points, because it's not solely by a saying and empathy is not an algorithm. Uh, it's like, I say it a lot, it's like empathy is not, it'll give you certain things, but it is in the empathy, it is in the analysis, it's the human, like to your point, it can only do so much, but, and I think you mentioned earlier, you're setting up a trend system. It's, you have to be able, yes, it can crunch a lot of that and it can output certain things if you would. The things you ask it. You also have to be obviously concerned about hallucinations. But it could do other work, they could give you insights, but you still have to do the work. You still have to be the futurist. You still have to be the foresight practitioner. And
Jo:going back to what you were saying before is the curiosity. If you're building a foresight tool, like we're building ours with Apco. Don't be afraid to ask questions, like what kind of bias might be coming into this? When can I intervene in the outputs to do a manual interpretation of the data? How do I make sure that this is ethical and that it's not going to impact my brand reputation if we make decisions off the back of it? All of those questions need to be asked.
Steve F:So the system itself is taught by humans. So question is what goes into that? And you've. You've taken your role at McDonald's and your past and then, but the evangelism that you are known for and I share, and it's why I like talking to you so much is you and a few others got together to create Foresight Insight Group, or FIG, which is a great name. Thank you. When you've explained a lot of things you've gone through, what kind of had to come together? Why did you, why did you do this? Like what, what motivated you to, to build FIC, start FIC?
Jo:Yeah. Yeah. Obviously three minds is better than one. So when I was thinking about who to do this with, it was an absolute no brainer to partner with Adam Walker from Disney, who leads Foresight there. And Ben Moncrief from JLR, because they've both been working in Foresight for a number of years. They lead teams. They've seen the ups and downs of Foresight and they're the people who, when you have a conversation, they're like, Oh my God, yes. Facing the same challenges. And that's essentially what Fig is all about. It's about bringing together people who are in the exact same position that I am in, which is practicing foresight inside of a business, so that we can share best practice, so that we can hopefully provide a perspective of how do you do foresight inside of the corporate landscape, uh, where should it sit, how do you measure your ROI, who are the good and the bad agencies that you should be working with? And it's a completely safe space. So no agencies allowed, no independent consultants allowed. We love those guys, but we want to be able to create a space where we can talk really openly.
Steve F:And
Jo:we've only started it six months ago. We're absolutely amazed and wowed by the reception of it. We have 10 member organizations that have now signed on from the likes of Shell, Axon, Nestle, PepsiCo, Ford, so pretty major organizations and Foresight really differs across those different businesses. So it's been amazing to be able to, to build this community out with our members. Any
Steve F:learnings so far from building it? Just, oh, you said diverse voices, but you said diversity of approaches. Anything you've, anything you've gleaned like from this? Yes.
Jo:One thing which might not be a surprise is that we all face the same challenges, even though we work in completely different categories, like automotive versus snacking versus insurance versus software development, right? All the same challenges because we're all practicing the same field. The second thing is that it really matters where you place Foresight in an organization. It can. basically make or break your success. So that's a piece of work that we're working on right now, collaboratively to And we're actually partnering with, I don't know if you're planning on having him on your show, but Rene
Steve F:from Yeah, Rene, he's coming on early January. Yeah, he's coming on. I love, yeah. He's
Jo:great. Rene,
Steve F:just a sidebar is that Rene, when I built the Futures Practice at McKinsey, he, you know, his research, I want to, I want to be him when I grow up. Cause he showed, cause for all the finance people, all the operational consult, like all the, that if you have foresight, your corporate value and the overall stakeholder value is much larger. And he scientifically showed that. I use that thing so much for the people who are the naysayers of this is real research. I know he's doing more and I'm curious to get him on the show to talk about, it's almost 10 years since he did that. And what research has he done, and where does corporate foresight go as a function of value and value creation. That's what I'm looking forward to talking to him about that. He's a researcher.
Jo:And he's a teacher.
Steve F:And he's a teacher. But he brings that to, as a message to them. So I know we're, yeah, go ahead.
Jo:Sorry. The other two names that I wanted to drop in there, which like would be amazing to bring on your show is Fabien Boudet from the Nuremberg Institute,
Steve F:who
Jo:also did an amazing piece of research on foresight ROI that is like my Bible, my absolute Bible. And then Jan Olivier Schwarz from the Bavarian Foresight Institute.
Steve F:Yes.
Jo:Who is also an amazing voice in this space.
Steve F:Yeah. I've connected with him. I want to have him on as well. He's all both. I would love to talk to both of them because those types of voices, I think, give such unique perspectives and serve them so that maybe they'll, and they're not as maybe well known in the, in maybe they're doing in our space, but the broader, the business space of what they do. And I think those voices, their voices are, yeah, I would love, that would be great to have them on.
Jo:Yeah, and just a reminder that like anybody that we talk to outside of the Foresight space, you say to them, Faith Popcorn, Amy Webb, they don't know who we're talking about, right? We have to remind ourselves that this is like a very tight knit community that is often quite disconnected from the rest.
Steve F:Yes, yes, no, I know. So as we kind of wrap things up, I'd love to, there's a couple of things I usually like to ask, but you in particular shared the restart. Yes, the, the rapid. Restarting civilization questions. I only asked for some people can't handle it. Some people like, Oh my gosh, but if I gave it to you, like, reflect on this. So the two books, two pieces of music and two things, and people, some people were like, why would you want to restart it? I'm like, sometimes. It's the cycle of time. It's just, it's Toynbee. It's, it's like how many cycles of, of time, but yeah. So you're like killer. I want, it gets to know somebody instead of going through their, instead of going through their garbage or getting it, like, what is about you? What are the things for you?
Jo:Yeah. Okay. So I get two of each. Just to clarify. Get two of each. Yeah. Two of each. I have six items with me. Okay. So with the books, I would bring The Last Days of Socrates by Plato. Okay. Because I was thinking if we're trying to really understand where thought came from and examining a life unexamined is not worth living, examining life and we have to restart that process, I think we should listen to Socrates and start there. The second is Dostoevsky. Basically any book by Dostoevsky. Let's just say Crime and Punishment because it's a very telling of the human condition. So if we're restarting civilization, we might be like What are these feelings that I'm experiencing and what is morality and what is love and all of these things are explored beautifully in Dostoevsky's work.
Steve F:Nice.
Jo:So that's my books. My pieces of music are going to be Ella Fitzgerald, Going Back to You, Jazz, because that will be a beautifully soothing voice as we rebuild civilization and shows us what true talent is. And then I'm going to say The Beatles because it might be like a nice telling piece of music. kind of way for us to think about how culture can be completely shifted by a voice of influence, which we, I don't know if we forget that the Beatles were such a huge influence on culture.
Steve F:Yeah. People, young people today don't understand that. Yeah. Don't understand.
Jo:No, absolutely. They can walk all over Taylor Swift. I was gonna say, I was like, please don't
Steve F:bring Taylor Swift with you. Oh my gosh, shoot
Jo:myself. Okay. And then my two items. Okay. My two items. Number one is coffee because Let's just make sure everyone's sane and happy. And then my second one, I was trying to think of something really smart. So I was really stumped on this one. Something that would actually rebuild civilization. So I'm going to say the wheel.
Steve F:That's great. You're deep. You're, you got some deep stuff right there. The jazz, there's some deep books right there. Those are, you got a lot of time on your hands. Are you going to get working?
Jo:Yeah. Can I, can I bring a person on this journey or is it just me?
Steve F:So yeah, I mean, we got to, you got to repopulate for your husband and your friends. Your friend, for my family. But yeah, no, I say I, you've met a lot of, especially like DFF, you meet a lot of young minds, a lot of people really energized about the field. What advice do you give them like to make impact and if they're looking for perspective, I know you've, you say you're doing this certainly years, but you definitely have a really good perspective longer than I think than people longer than the field. So what do you offer when people ask you? Yeah.
Jo:When young people approach me, they're generally feel unqualified to be in the field or to be interested in the field or to be having a conversation with me in some cases, which is bizarre for me. And I try to reassure them that they have just as much credibility to be here as anybody else, that the field will be better with them being more active, engaged and vocal in it. So I try to relay their, promote their confidence and relay the fact that they have a place. The future and they have a place in foresight. And then I also encourage people to be really humble when they think about the future. Going back to the point that we were talking about around unbiased, objective futures. So really when you're thinking about creating a better future, try to do that with an open mind and an open heart.
Steve F:That's what's a wonderful answer. Yeah. Always. The legacy question. I close with the, when you look back Yeah. Being remembered about your like. Your work to be remembered the more more so than I think it's just about work. It's the impact that we have on the world What would you like that to be when you're looking back at, at things?
Jo:Yeah, I think this is a really, uh, big question and really important one. And it's easy, I think, to, to think in really grand ways about what impact you're going to make on, for example, corporate foresight or how people collaborate and, and evolve the foresight space. Of course, I'd love to be able to say that I had some small part in that. But. You know, um, the, the quote that often comes to my mind is Benjamin Franklin when he said lost time is never found. And I think a lot of what I do is just being present in the moment and trying to really be here and really engage with the world and with people. So I hope that's what I'm remembered for.
Steve F:That's wonderful. That's the best way to be. So for those hanging on here, listening at the end, finding you, and it'll be in the show notes too, but you'll learn more about your work, obviously the podcast, FIG, work, all the details about you, if people can find you.
Jo:Yeah. Come and find me on LinkedIn. So Joanna Lepore, and you can also check out my podcast. If you look up Looking Outside Anywhere, you can find it. You can also go to looking outside. com and with FIG, foresightinside. com. for there. No commercial consult. No,
Steve F:no. Consultants are agencies. You can
Jo:look, but you can't get close. Yeah,
Steve F:exactly. Yeah. Cool. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks Joe. Thanks for being on the show today. Appreciate it. Of
Jo:course. Thank you so much. You really enjoyed the chat.
Narrator:Thanks
Jo:Steve.
Narrator:Thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at www think forward show.com as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
