Tech Can't Save Us

In this week's episode, we speak to Jonny Burch, Founder of Progression, about his goal to help teams around the world define the skills needed for their staff to grow. 

"If you're passionate about something, you'll be better at it," Jonny explains. "If you're not fundamentally excited by your day-to-day work, then it's going to be a miserable 8 hours."

He describes the relationship between passion and career using Japanese concept ikigai, meaning your "reason for being", and more practically, "that balance of what you love vs. what brings value to the world." 

Having worked in, built, and managed design teams for years, Jonny knows how much havoc badly made spreadsheets can wreak within a team. So he has created frameworks to alleviate miscommunication and disharmony and, instead, keep teams aligned and successfully in progress.

We also spend some time talking about Jonny and his team's favourite tech feature, 'wins', a tool that refines company culture by allowing employees to congratulate their colleagues on small or big achievements. 

Further down, we discuss the important role of mentorship in career progression: how having an experienced mentor to guide you is a crucial part of your professional development. A true mentor is someone who "really gets to know you and invests in you," highlights Jonny.

As the podcast heads home, we find out Jonny's dream tech product and what he thinks is the evilest application of tech in the world.

To get to know more about Jonny: twitter.com/jonnyburch and jonnyburch.com 
To learn more about Jonny's work at Progression: progression.co

In this week's episode, Paul Finnis, CEO of the Learning Foundation and Digital Poverty Alliance, lets us in on his inspiring work, helping children achieve their full potential through the effective use of technology, with an ultimate goal to end digital poverty by 2030.

"We kept finding enormous numbers of young people who were not connected at home at all or have limited connectivity," he explains. "Digital should fit into people's lives, particularly the most disadvantaged, and not be an additional burden." 

Paul gives us further insight into the real-life impact of digital poverty, causing many children and young people to remain at school without having their ambitions and their potential fully realised.

We discuss how with each new development in technology, more people are left behind, worsening the existing inequities around race, gender, age, ability, and income.

Further conversation leads us into the role of the pandemic in intensifying the UK's digital divide; now, only 51% of households earning between £6,000-10,000 have home internet access compared with 99% of households with an income of over £40,001. The link between poverty and digital exclusion is obvious. In this context, Paul emphasises that providing access to a device alone cannot end digital exclusion. 

As the podcast heads home, we learn a bit about Paul himself — the one tech product that has been a game-changer for him, and his idea of one problem tech can't solve (and why).

To learn more about Paul's work at the Learning foundation and Digital Poverty Alliance, visit: https://learningfoundation.org.uk and  https://digitalpovertyalliance.org

In this week's episode, we talk to Aerica Shimizu Banks, Founder of Shisho, about her journey in building an intersectional equity approach in tech and policy.

Aerica employs a holistic and data-driven approach to her work with Shisho, shaped by her own experiences with environmental justice, policy, and tech. Her triple bottom line is "people, planet, profit."

"Racism, civil rights and the environment and the issues we face in the environment are inextricably linked," the intersectional equity consultant explains, "and there's no way to work on environmental issues without addressing race."

As a black Asian woman who has had to endure racism and sexism throughout her career, the Forbes 30-under-30 social entrepreneur now offers strategic advice and support to empower other women of color who are battling the same journey.

Our discussion leads into sensitive topics around data privacy—particularly our ability to maintain everyday life as a hyper-surveillant nexus of governments and corporate entities encroaches upon our rights. There's a certain level of joy and convenience technology offers, but it often makes us pay for it with our boundaries.

Having worked in many sectors that address equity, it's deeply important to Aerica that Shisho continues to build new systems and frameworks to foreground and restore equity into our institutions.

We also dig deeper into Aerica's tech stack and her big prediction about the tech-for-good space this year and beyond.

To get to know more about Erica: @Erikashimizu.

For more information about her work at Shisho: shiso.biz.

"Founders are facing problems that are not just hurdles — but ‘stop all work in progress,’" explains Charlotte Clark, co-founder at Base Ventures. “What is a deal breaker in your startup journey, versus something you just have to figure out how to manoeuvre around?" That question is at the heart of what Base Ventures offers the startup world.
Having experienced what it’s like to be lost in the startup ecosystem, Charlotte empathises with founders who face challenges around defining their professional journeys. That’s why Base Ventures has created a tool called Foresight, which helps startup founders articulate their entire process from creating the product to launching and connecting with investors. 
In line with her goal of developing a more sustainable startup ecosystem, Charlotte is also launching a boot camp to educate founders on inculcating a product-focused thought process particularly around user experience. 
Charlotte’s decisions are motivated by a desire to use technological innovation to provide cutting-edge support and education to startup founders. As she succinctly puts it — "Founder-forward first and technology second." 
We also cover a broader discussion around product development and its purpose within startups, including the all-too-common dangers of getting too excited about a product idea — to the point where you lose sight of the need it’s meant to address for your target market!
More insightful tidbits follow, including Charlotte’s idea of the evilest application of tech and her predictions on the exciting future of tech-for-good.

In this week's episode, Catherine Lethbridge, Head of Strategy and Marketing at Workfacta, lets us in on her innovative work at Workfacta and the product's ability to create "management zen."

"Anyone running a business or a team is constantly fire-fighting," she mentions, "and anyone who says otherwise is lying."

As someone who has managed across industries, Catherine has created the prized "star feature" in Workfacta — a system that alleviates the last-minute havoc of zoom meetings and google meets and instead automates everything from deciding what to talk about, setting the agenda, to taking notes.

We marvel at the fact that a global survey revealed that 90% of executives admitted to having failed to meet some of their strategic objectives because of problems in execution. This makes products like Workfacta absolutely necessary to achieve the goals companies set and prevent them from getting lost down the communication pipeline.

Being avid supporters of diversity and inclusion, we also chat about how Catherine has seen D&I play out across her various roles. Catherine emphasizes the importance of a perspective shift in implementing diversity-based policy. "Diversity is often understood as a difference in cultural background or gender; I see diversity as a different way of thinking."

More interesting conversations follow, including Catherine’s predictions for HR tech and her take on one problem that tech can’t solve.

To know more about Catherine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-lethbridge/

Catherine’s work at Workfacta: https://www.workfacta.com

In this episode, Phil McParlane, founder and CEO of 4dayworkweek.io, shares his insightful take on the four-day work week and why it’s a far more valuable practice than people give it credit for. 
“If you worked five hours in a row, the fifth hour would definitely be less productive than the first,” he explains. “It’s the same logic with the traditional work week; stuff just doesn’t get done on Fridays.”
As a pioneer of the four-day work week movement, Phil has changed the lives of thousands of employees, encouraging more than 100 companies worldwide to confront the evidence in support of the four-day week and realize the positive impact that this shift can have. 
Given that 99% of companies which have started the four-day week have stuck with it, Phil is not surprised at all that more people are embracing it as standard practice (including Literal Humans! Read about our four-day week journey here). 
Even so, we struggle to wrap our heads around the mind-blowing success that the four-day week has had as a job benefit (Phil has had to turn off job listings due to the sheer number of applications received!) Listen to us go over the challenges of a four-day week, possible limitations to making this practice global, and finally, Phil McParlane’s idea of one of the evillest uses of technology — see if it rings a bell?

Most people want a four-day work week, but most companies currently don’t offer it. That's the standard that Phil is trying to change — and he intends to change it forever. 

How do we use virtual reality (VR) to train the workforce of the future?
Professor Adam Ganz is doing the work to answer that important question.
As one of the leaders of StoryFutures Academy at Royal Holloway University of London, Ganz is placing innovative storytelling at the heart of next-generation immersive technologies like augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and virtual reality.
Professor Ganz also brings up their new immersive experience called Storytrails (coming soon!), where people get to use new tech to travel back in time. We have a lot of fun chatting about the VR, AR, and MR universe, its unique but powerful way of blending reality with fiction, and its place in our current reality. 
We discuss the need for VR in the future, its place in the standard workday, and whether we really aspire to be fully immersed in a two-hour zoom call without the luxury of the mute button. 
Finally, Professor Ganz reveals his dream tech product. Hint: it would turn our 9 am-5 pm workdays into an 11 am to 3 pm dream! 
Find Professor Ganz’s and StoryFutures Academy's work here: 

https://www.storyfutures.com/academy 

www.storyfutures.com   

A Masterclass on immersive storytelling by Professor Ganz, hosted by Céline Tricart and Liam Young: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60rJHsaLvFo 

Storytrails: https://story-trails.com/

Human resources (HR) often gets a bad rap.
Whether it’s forcing people back into the office after a pandemic or mismanagement of legitimate employee grievances around issues related to identity (race and gender, for example), it seems like someone always has a bone to pick with HR.
Joseph Ifiegbu is out to change that. Leveraging next-gen HR analytics, Joseph and his team at Eqtble are helping companies understand and address challenges around attrition, DEI, employee engagement, and a whole host of other factors that affect their growth.
In this episode, Joseph shared great examples of companies that have solved acute problems with pay equity gaps and lagging hiring timelines using the HR tech that his team supplies. His work is chock full of stories about HR data being used to shift culture and improve processes!
Ultimately, Joseph noted that the seismic shifts we’ve seen in the workplace–supported by recent HR tech innovations–have been long overdue as workplace preferences and priorities have shifted before, during, and after the pandemic.
When it came to the lightning round, Joseph astutely identified empathy as one of the key areas that he believes tech really can’t solve for us as a human race. He also mentioned that he is–like us–a big fan of Notion as a tool for founders to grow their businesses through better knowledge management.
You can find Joseph and Eqtble here: 

eqtble.com (Company Website)

eqtble.com/case-studies/online-marketplace (Case Study)

eqtble.com/hr-metrics (Curated HR Metrics for Organizations)

“Two things that were clear from how people spent their time during the pandemic – they were doing a lot of drinking and wanking."Heather Morrison doesn’t mince words.
As the Co-Founder and CEO of Bump’n, Morrison and her team have pioneered the world’s first accessible sex toy. The Bump’n Joystick is a flexible bed buddy with gender fluid design that users can hug and attach their favorite sex toy components such as dildos, vibrators, wands, and sleeves.
We first heard about Bump’n during our previous episode on disability tech with Giulia Barbareschi, so we thought it’d be great to invite Heather onto the pod and it sure was! 
Heather talked us through her team’s process to develop the Joystick through in-depth user testing as well as her journey as an advocate for her brother (and fellow co-founder) Andrew along with the broader disabled community. We discussed making pleasure more accessible through tech innovation and even how her team learned a few things about human anatomy during all of that user research.
When it came to the lightning round question about the evilest tech out there, Heather went with the tried and true answer of Facebook of course. We even touched on the role of the advertising and marketing industries in sometimes perpetuating false narratives about disabled people (or outright ignoring them), given Heather’s background in advertising.
This is a good one chock full of laughs and poignant insights about a sector (sextech) that’s become less and less taboo each day.
You can find Heather here: 

www.getbumpn.com 

Charlotte Cramer gets healthtech.
She and her team at Plastic Studio leverage their backgrounds in applied neuroscience and behavioural psychology to bring a human-centered and trauma-informed approach to user research and design in healthcare.
That’s why we brought her on the pod to discuss identity-focused healthtech startups (like Him & Hers and Folx), her work with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and how she filmed a show for plant-based eating that garnered over 1 million views.
We started off discussing healthtech headlines from Sifted such as Numan’s focus on addressing the stigma in men’s health as well as the lack of funding for research in women’s healthcare. 
Less seriously, Charlotte nailed our infamous question about the evilest application of tech out there (hint: they just changed their company name but they don’t fool us!). More seriously, Charlotte shared some sobering examples of hospitals that use technology to deter undocumented people from accessing healthcare and other technologies leveraged against people of color.
Charlotte also leaned into the idea of human connection as a matter that tech can’t solve for us–but can tech enhance it?
Be sure to check out Charlotte’s book The Purpose Myth as it provides an interesting answer to our final question about balancing profit and purpose in tech for good.
You can find Charlotte here: 

plastic-studio.com 

linkedin.com/in/charlottecramer 

http://getbook.at/thepurposemyth