EP256: Future Readiness, Immersive Theater, Artificial Intelligence, Organizational Culture, Crisis Preparedness
In this episode, Jens Heitland sits down with David Bassuk, immersive narrative designer and theater professor, to explore future readiness, artificial intelligence, and the lessons theater can teach large organizations about preparing for crisis.
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What Immersive Theater Teaches Us About Building Future-Ready Organizations
Six years ago, I recorded an episode with David Bassuk from opposite sides of a lockdown, both of us adjusting to a world that had just moved online overnight. This week we sat together again in the Netherlands, in the same room, and the distance between those two conversations turned out to be a useful place to start talking about readiness.
David has spent the years in between working across theater, game design, and artificial intelligence, teaching in the United States and Austria while running an immersive production company in China. One of his current projects, called Aurora, blends live theater with a video game system. Actors perform on stage while an AI platform tracks audience reaction through a phone app and feeds it back into the story as the performance continues. It is already commercially funded, and it points to a wider shift in how technology, culture, and human behavior are converging inside a single experience.
What interested me most in our conversation was not the technology itself but the concept underneath it. David described future readiness as an extension of ordinary readiness, the same alertness a person has when entering unfamiliar water with a snorkel. Every sense opens at once. The moment part of that awareness gets blocked, whether through fear, denial, or habit, a person or an organization becomes vulnerable in ways they cannot see coming.
That pattern shows up everywhere in organizational life. Over twenty years inside large international companies, I have watched management teams go through the same cycle. They bring in one of the largest consulting firms, spend significant budget on an executive offsite, and walk through scenario planning in a conference room. The work stays theoretical. Nobody gets tested under real pressure, and the investment rarely pays back in the way the board expected.
The consequence becomes visible only later, when a real disruption arrives. I have worked with a multibillion-dollar organization that depended heavily on materials moving through the Strait of Hormuz. When tension in the region escalated, their plan for the next three months was solid. Their plan beyond that did not exist. The business was already affected before a plan B started to take shape. The same pattern showed up during COVID, when distribution and electronics supply chains broke down faster than most scenario plans had accounted for. History carries larger versions of the same lesson. Sears once looked as permanent as any company could look, built on mail order catalogs that shaped American retail for most of a century. AT&T carried a name that outlived the company itself. Both collapsed once the assumptions underneath them stopped holding, and both collapses happened faster than anyone inside those companies expected.
David and I spent much of the conversation exploring what a genuine future readiness lab could look like, one built on the same principles as immersive theater. In David's Aurora production, actors step into an arena where the pressure is real, and the audience response changes what happens next. A future readiness lab would ask the same of an executive team. Instead of watching a presentation about risk, a CEO, CFO, and COO would step into a constructed environment where a shock actually unfolds, and their decisions carry consequences inside the exercise. It borrows something from the internal prototyping units I built earlier in my career inside a large retail organization, small teams working at the edge of the business, testing what the rest of the company was not yet willing to test.
David added an important layer to this. The team being tested is no longer only human. Organizations are only beginning to work out how human and artificial intelligence function together inside a single team, and most have not yet built the culture for that integration. A future readiness lab has to account for that combination directly rather than treating it as a separate conversation.
None of this removes the uncertainty of the future. It simply changes how prepared a person or an organization is to meet it. David closed our conversation with a line from the poet John Keats, that readiness is all. After twenty years inside large organizations, I have come to see that readiness is less about predicting what happens next and more about how deliberately an organization has practiced being tested before it matters.
Human Innovation with Jens Heitland is produced by Heitland Media Group.*
Guest Links
David Bassuk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dbassuk/
Website: https://www.davidbassuk.com/
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Jens Heitland: David, welcome to the Netherlands. Great to have you in the same room again, and it's awesome to have you back. Episode 53 was our last episode, which is, I don't know, six years back? I have no idea. It's so cool to meet you in person again and record the next podcast with you.
[00:00:17] David Bassuk: Yeah. In fact, I think our last podcast was during COVID, so we were-
still remote.
[00:00:23] Jens Heitland: What has happened since? I mean, you were still working in the college in Purchase
at that time. Mm-hmm. And now you kind of live in Europe.
[00:00:34] David Bassuk: I live in Europe now, yeah.
[00:00:35] Jens Heitland: Tell me
[00:00:36] David Bassuk: More. I think I started to begin to think about that in that year.
[00:00:42] Jens Heitland: Ah.
[00:00:43] David Bassuk: And, I don't know if it came up in episode 53, but I know it was on my mind and came up in other conversations. So you and I met at this place called the College of Extraordinary Experiences, which for me was a major kind of coming out party into the world-
and meeting people who I didn't know existed, with jobs and positions, including yours, head of innovation at IKEA, which I didn't even know until the last day that you were, we were all leaving. we'd already become friends by then, so- Yeah ... it was too late to be afraid. And, meanwhile, after that, I just began to continue to develop friendships.
Then COVID hit, and when COVID hit, suddenly I was a theater professor, teaching theater without the ability to be in a real space with people. So because of the College of Extraordinary and making all these friends remote, I understood what Zoom was, I understood what teleconferencing was.
So I immediately took my classes into not just a Zoom main room, but into multiple digital excursions.
[00:02:00] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:02:01] David Bassuk: You know, day trips. And we would go into the emerging forms of- sort of desktop virtual reality. So Rec Room and Mozilla Hubs and a few others.
And to facilitate my teaching, everyone was home and everyone was kind of lost at the same time. I used the opportunity of LinkedIn to just reach out to people I didn't know and say, "Hey, can you give a theater professor some help here in figuring out how to iterate-
[00:02:36] Jens Heitland: Yeah ...
[00:02:36] David Bassuk: out of this?"
So I started iterating both creatively, and it was right at that time that we did that talk. so it was just at the sort of, you know, it was just sort of in the embryonic form of who I was about to become, but I didn't know that yet. And a lot of those friendships led to more training, more conversations, understanding the relevance of what my background as a person who works in space telling stories, how that related to the emerging virtual and augmented mixed reality universes that were just in formation.
[00:03:12] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:03:13] David Bassuk: So the idea of thinking about world building, immersivity, what it means to tell stories among multiple mediums, transmedia, all became now part of my teaching, part of my in- personal exploration, my artistic work. And also, I think at the time, I imagined that I was leaving the theater, like permanently.
That the work that I'd done just directing actors on stage was shifting out of that. And I began to realize that was actually a prejudgment that didn't bear truth because I do continue to work on stage, but I use lots of technology infused in production. I also begin to think that the kind of work that I do involves space and getting people to understand both how people interact in a physical space but also the social space can also be non-present or digital, and the ways in which imagination plays a role across all of these areas.
And that actually builds greater connection between people. Actually, what I went into theater in the first place to accomplish. So it wasn't actually leaving the theater, it was expanding the definition of theater-
[00:04:32] Jens Heitland: Yeah ...
[00:04:33] David Bassuk: in ways that continually give me a, a wry smile because I had thought back six years ago that this was an either/or situation, but it's not.
[00:04:45] Jens Heitland: What I'm super fascinated about is with the technology and how much you worked with it. Your project in China, in all these projects, they were not existing. The way of thinking was not existing at that time.
[00:05:01] David Bassuk: No.
[00:05:01] Jens Heitland: May- may you talk a little bit more about what you did in China, just, just for people to understand the context of it?
[00:05:06] David Bassuk: Okay. In China we have a production company called White Horse Immersive. Around this time in 2020 when we met, we had already done a preliminary project in 2019. We were working with Chinese companies remotely on designs. So I created a design for the China Eden Project in Qingdao.
I created a design for Ocean Flower Island's, fantasy world, a fairy tale world, based in, a story of a mythology of a magical story tree that involved lots of technology, augmented reality, but really not yet virtual. The project in Qingdao was the first time anyone asked me to think about, creating a digital twin and using AI.
[00:06:08] Jens Heitland: Hmm.
[00:06:08] David Bassuk: And I came up with a very elaborate plan that did not get funded, but it put in my mind the idea of how could you create a relationship between something digital and someone remote and someone live in a venue. So that thinking, and I, I didn't understand the tech yet- Hmm ... of how to do that- Hmm ... but now I do.
So that emerged. In China, the two productions that we're in the midst of right now, one is a musical love story based on Dante's Inferno, and yet it's all set in China, between a gamer, his love, and her enemy. And the three of them actually play out their triangle relationship inside of a video game called Aurora.
And Aurora is both a video game and an AI control system. So the actors, we see them on stage in street clothes playing the video game.
[00:07:16] Jens Heitland: That's important to explain because it's not just a video game like you sit at home. It's a live environment video game with people on stage.
With people on stage. E- explain that. I think that's, that's important.
[00:07:26] David Bassuk: Okay. So Li Wei, our lead character, is playing a video game on a controller that we've devised. As he plays, battling various monsters in different layers based on Dante's Inferno and The Seven Deadly Sins, the creatures are adapted from the Chinese Book of Mountains and Seas.
These are extraordinarily beautiful 3D creatures designed by part of our company working in Ireland. We see simultaneously to the actor playing the game in air, behind them is a motion-captured live AI video of the actor's avatar in the game.
[00:08:25] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:08:25] David Bassuk: So we see the avatar in the game, real time, actor moves, avatar moves, and it's all in the classic, traditions in the, in the video game that we see. and as they said, as they say in the markets, "But there's more." and that's the audience opens a phone app, and through that app, it's an AR app.
They see the stage. They see the actor. They see the, the-
[00:08:52] Jens Heitland: So they're in the room like a stadium.
[00:08:54] David Bassuk: Right. They're in a stadi 600 seats, and they also see the creatures that Li Wei is fighting. They also can get to fight. so they see the creatures through their s- their phone, appearing.
[00:09:08] Jens Heitland: Mm.
[00:09:08] David Bassuk: And they are not only shooting them, but the creatures are shoot- are, are attacking back, flying over their heads in the auditorium.
Currently we're using the mobile phone because it's the easiest, but it won't be long before we're into some sort of glasses or goggles. It's an experience where the actor is playing a role and the audience is playing a role. As the audience plays, their way of playing is calculated, runs through the Aurora game system, and tells the actors at the end of each round how the audience feels or thinks they should behave next.
So there becomes a feedback loop between the audience play and the actor response, sometimes in change of script and improvisation, sometimes in change of the way the actor plays the next scene. But there's a, there's an immersion of interactivity between audience, stage, and the technology.
[00:10:23] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:10:25] David Bassuk: and insofar as it's still theater, it's a s- with music-
[00:10:30] Jens Heitland: Mm
[00:10:30] David Bassuk: Incredible ballads and songs. Technologically, it has taken augmented reality, mixed reality, and gameplay into what I feel is the emergence of a new hybrid medium of game and theater.
[00:10:47] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:10:47] David Bassuk: And highly entertaining, meant not, only as a beautiful artistic expression, but as a commercial vehicle, which we have, at this point, about a million, US dollars investment in it so that it establishes itself moving into a tour across China.
[00:11:05] Jens Heitland: Yeah. The interesting thing for me on this kind of concept-
[00:11:11] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm ...
[00:11:12] Jens Heitland: As an innovator, creativity is starting at the edge where technology merges with human elements. From a business perspective, these are leverages you can utilize to embed in an organization in a completely different context.
but if you-- I'm always thinking at it from a business perspective. Yeah. From a business perspective, this are leverages that you can utilize to do business with, but also to embed in an organization in a completely different context-
[00:11:49] David Bassuk: Right ...
[00:11:49] Jens Heitland: Technology is evolving rapidly. When we met last time, AI in the context of how we use it today in 2026 was not available for personal or business use, at least not widely.
for personal use and business use- Right ... at least not widely. I think there were a couple of people already playing with it, but not to that extent. Yeah. So the ChatGPT, what was it, 3.0 moment was- ... was after, after that.
[00:12:17] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:12:17] Jens Heitland: But that means the, the technology's just getting better in the context of what you did already in, in the early stages of- Right
This project is going to rapidly change. If you have this immersive theater experience, the AI utilized is getting smarter and faster. With connected compute, you can do many things in a commercial setting.
for me, is fascinating because, um- There's so many opportunities that, especially the world where I come from is, which is corporate business- Right ... the corporate world, which is inherent and slow all the time, so it is always lagging when it comes to technology. I think they can leapfrog certain things if they just look at this kind of things on the edge, and then say, "How could we embed that into what we do?"
[00:13:22] David Bassuk: Creatives often come from a culture where you think of putting everything on the table.
[00:13:40] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:13:40] David Bassuk: And rather than seeing that as the step one of a business plan
[00:13:47] Jens Heitland: Hmm
[00:13:47] David Bassuk: Because the arts are an extraordinarily pl- place for, doing R&D for a demo
[00:13:54] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:13:55] David Bassuk: If creatives understood the value of what they were creating in different sectors, they could get different types of investment. Many of us in the arts put it all on the table, and the final show comes and it's depressing. It's the same problem in universities where everything is about the graduation rather than the extension of what follows.
and it's depressing. Yeah You know? It's the same kind of problem in universities where, like, everything is about the graduation rather than the extension of now you've learned this, what follows?
[00:14:32] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:14:32] David Bassuk: And how are we part of that, you know, ongoing relationship with our alumni? You know, there's, there's scant little done in that regard, and there's scant little done in the extension.
And I think part of it is this, real false equivalency in the arts and in education that we reach these, like, conclusion points rather than inflection points, and not recognizing that there's a world that actually unders- that we don't understand enough in the, in the creative era, in the creative field, what our real value is.
So we undervalue ourselves, we underprice ourselves, and we think about working for someone rather than being an entrepreneur and actually taking on the risk, which we're already doing anyway.
[00:15:23] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:15:24] David Bassuk: But, you know, somehow, you know, there's this idea of, like, there's some sort of papa who's gonna actually make it okay for us to be the child.
You have to be parent and child at the same time. I think that's a major pivot. Now you're seeing the introduction of entrepreneurship into arts training because schools are making an investment in the future of these people and this culture.
[00:16:09] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:16:09] David Bassuk: And that relationship's kind of stopped with this high emphasis on individualism.
[00:16:15] Jens Heitland: If, if we take your experience, if w- we just look at the last 10 years, so you have- Yeah ... obviously worked a long time in, in the US. Yeah You worked in China, and you, you, you now work way more in, in Europe, at least the last- Yeah
half year.
[00:16:30] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:16:31] Jens Heitland: What are the differences? The Chinese understood the commercialization opportunity of Aurora in a different way than Americans or Europeans. Do you see differences or opportunities for other parts of the world?
[00:16:58] David Bassuk: my, I have a strong feeling about why China as opposed to not only not why US or why anywhere else.
[00:17:05] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:17:07] David Bassuk: In China, seeing opportunity is key. That's their drive towards innovation. They don't just pick successful companies; they make lots of investments. They are interested in how technology, human life, and culture emerge together.
Mm. That, but they do make lots of investments. Now, not only the corporates, but also the government makes lots of investments. And one of the things that they are interested in is how technology and human life and values and culture will emerge together, not separate.
[00:17:53] Jens Heitland: Mm.
[00:17:53] David Bassuk: And so there's a question that gets asked a lot in China that it's not asked the same way in the West.
They will ask, "Will people like this?" Now, in the context of producing theater or film, that is not a question.
[00:18:10] Jens Heitland: Mm.
[00:18:10] David Bassuk: The question is, will this make money? Yeah. Will this have a big opening? Will this actor produce the people to come to the theater? you know, what is the return on investment for this much you put on the screen?
Will people like this? If you introduce that conversation, it'd be like, "Well, yeah, yeah, of course. Will people like this? Will they pay money?" But in China, it's actually the first question, and then it'll be, what is the risks of it, and what are the costs- and what are the potential? So the investment that I've seen in China has much more to do with not only will people like this, but will this reflect well on me that I funded this?
Will this bring me the appreciation, the status to have been part of something?
[00:18:57] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:18:58] David Bassuk: You know, and you know, in the West, people think, "Oh, that's censorship." No, it's a different value system, and it's much closer to my value system than the sort of more, like, you know, just making money.
[00:19:10] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:19:10] David Bassuk: You know?
And, like, just m- making money is not a bad thing, but if it's the motivating factor, somehow you actually might not make money.
[00:19:18] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:19:19] David Bassuk: Right? I mean- Yeah ... and I think, like, the best films, the best plays, they had a stronger intention, and people caught not just the work, but they caught the intention, the human intention, and it didn't matter whether it involved technology or it mattered just, like, was this made for us to value, right?
Not just like it, but to value. Yeah. That's the difference.
[00:19:43] Jens Heitland: It's interesting that they have a different perspective of the future with that as well.
[00:19:47] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:19:47] Jens Heitland: Because they- They, they, like you said, the, the value set is different and, and through that then they're just looking-
[00:19:55] David Bassuk: No ...
[00:19:55] Jens Heitland: into the future in, in a different way.
Talking about future, one of the things we have talked the last couple of months a lot about, I mean, weekly- Mm-hmm ... is future readiness.
[00:20:08] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:20:08] Jens Heitland: S- and I would love to explore together what future readiness is. So I think there are a couple of perspectives of, of- Yeah ... future readiness. let's start maybe with, like, personal perspective.
Yeah. G- looking at it from my perspective right now. Yeah. So it's, it's me. How am I future ready? How do I make sure that I'm future ready? But also how do I enable my daughter, as an example, to be future ready? Because I'm obviously biased with all the technology and business stuff that I'm doing, is if we t- just take one example, AI is coming.
You, you basically cannot switch it off anymore, or I, I don't think we are going to switch it off anymore. So that means for myself, how do I take a perspective that I at least start learning, immersing myself into the future in trying to understand? That doesn't mean that I like, I have to like everything.
No. And I, um... But, if I try understanding and then leveraging it as a tool, if we, if we keep, keep at AI, then I will be more future readiness, ready than if I wouldn't, let's say if I block it completely out, and I've seen that as well in big corporate, but let's stay on the, on the personal level.
What, what's your perspective on that?
[00:21:27] David Bassuk: If you go into an environment that is new to you Different country, different natural space. You're in, a forest. You're, floating around underwater with a snorkel, right? Whenever you're in a new environment, the human being immediately snaps into a form of presence.
[00:21:51] Jens Heitland: Hm.
[00:21:51] David Bassuk: And suddenly every sense is aware. And the last thing you would want is for any part of your vision to be blocked, to be like with the horses, you know, the track horses, they put blinders on them. Yeah, yeah. Right? And so if you are fully present and you are capable of catching everything possible, including the things that don't make sense, right, you but in fact, what happens in society is we have certain truths which are actually, you know, so firm that we don't believe it, like, the idea that, you know, there is no such thing as the United States without democracy. Well, n- we're suddenly recognizing that this is actually something to be aware of, and some people respond, some people freeze, some people...
Like, and that's happens, okay, in a society.
[00:22:59] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:22:59] David Bassuk: Happens in a business, could happen in the idea that somebody has, "I'm going to study this." All signs that are, "This is not true, I will block." Now, once you do that, you are Vulnerable. You know, if it's in the jungle, it's to being eaten. If you're Yeah ... in, in the ocean, it's to being eaten, right?
but you're also not driving well if you're not fully- Mm-hmm ... using all parts of peripheral business. What sound is going on- Yeah, yeah ... what's happening all the way down the road. That is what humans understand as readiness. So future readiness is an extension of readiness. It's just looking out a little further, deepening the periphery, without losing what's right in front of you, and forecasting, right?
And knowing for sure that you will not be able to know for sure, because the future by definition is a crisis, because it's an unknown.
[00:24:03] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:24:03] David Bassuk: If it turns out well, okay, fine. That wasn't a crisis. Maybe it's somewhere else.
[00:24:08] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:24:08] David Bassuk: It doesn't mean you have to be paranoid, but you do have to be present. And right now, AI is this crisis.
and it's only a crisis because we've not included it in what we're ready for.
[00:24:23] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:24:24] David Bassuk: And while we don't know where it will go, there's a lot about what will be happening that is in the at least near future that we're actually not practicing, rehearsing, preparing for. So a future readiness stance would be one where it's not so much, you know, a crystal ball, Nostradamus.
Yeah. it's much more a factor of how am I standing? What am I listening to? How am I provoking myself to, with things that I don't believe will happen? What if they do happen? Yeah. Let's practice that.
[00:25:04] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:25:04] David Bassuk: You know?
[00:25:05] Jens Heitland: Let's take that from a business perspective.
[00:25:07] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Jens Heitland: So if, if we look at future readiness from a business, how can a business in that context...
Le- let's give maybe... Go back in, in my corporate career.
[00:25:18] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm.
[00:25:19] Jens Heitland: I have worked in several large international organizations with multi- Billion dollar of, of revenues. And some of them were better in getting future-ready at that time, at least, than others. What I have seen, i- in the end, it goes back always to the human beings.
[00:25:39] Jens Heitland: The starting point is always someone curious about the future who understands that crises are coming. If I can foresee that, I can prepare different scenarios to understand how we could react.
[00:25:39] Jens Heitland: The starting point was always there's someone who is curious about the future, and understand that what you said, there will be crisis coming. We don't know which crisis, but there might be a multiple of potential crisis. And if I can foresee that, then I can prepare different scenarios and can try to understand how we could react.
[00:26:04] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:26:05] Jens Heitland: And you can do that in theory which a lot of people do, and now they use AI in trying to do it.
[00:26:12] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:13] Jens Heitland: But the tricky thing what I have seen in practice, being inside of an organization, theory doesn't help you.
[00:26:19] David Bassuk: No.
[00:26:20] Jens Heitland: So when... A- as an example, we did a project where we looked into building a different business model on the edge of the organization, and it took us weeks and months to be immersed in the details of that project in the live space retail environment in that context-
[00:26:38] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm
[00:26:39] Jens Heitland: where we needed to be there. We needed to interact with the customers to understand if our assumptions and the ideas that we have are even at least close to what is possible.
[00:26:51] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:26:52] Jens Heitland: And I think that's, if we, if we go back to the other companies that definitely don't do that, they're in the, in the today, but they're even not looking at tomorrow.
They're just happy to survive today because they're in reaction mode all the time because the pressure from the outside is so much. And, and for me it was always working with innovation. I, I was always saying, "Of course, because you haven't done your homework like five years ago, so you now you- you're forced to react- Right
because you haven't done the work before." But it's then so hard to stay, okay, but how do we get ahead with our thinking? How do we go ahead and get the future readiness today if we haven't done that the last 20 years?
[00:27:36] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:27:37] Jens Heitland: So looking into that, how can organizations... What are the different toolboxes from your perspective that organizations can leverage?
[00:27:47] David Bassuk: Before you get to that- question. There's a bigger problem in education and in corporate, bringing people into companies, which is creativity-
[00:28:02] Jens Heitland: Mm ...
[00:28:02] David Bassuk: and imagination are devalued. Not only not taught, but devalued.
[00:28:08] Jens Heitland: Yeah, and sometimes even worse case, they, they are not wished to be there.
[00:28:12] David Bassuk: They are not wished to be there.
Okay, so now essentially you're asking someone to do work with hiding whatever real skills they have to help the future of the company.
[00:28:25] Jens Heitland: Mm.
[00:28:26] David Bassuk: Okay, so now you've got that problem, and then you've got this other problem, which is people don't, practice through immersive learning versus, like, PowerPoints. So PowerPoints, the, the, we know this.
The degree of retention on guidebooks and PowerPoints is very low compared to doing. With doing, takes more time, takes more practice. People don't wanna do it, especially in a culture which has devalued creativity. Yeah. I've just been working with a- one of the top tech companies in Europe right now.
Actually, it's the top tech company in Europe, here in the Netherlands, and they're shifting into this immersive learning because the retention is weaker in the traditional learning.
[00:29:16] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:29:18] David Bassuk: to do that requires a, a lean forward into human potential, whether that includes factoring in how AI now works or not, the human potential is key.
another understanding that I've gained from working with this company is there are two things going on simultaneously in manufacturing and in most businesses. One, there is the, the creation of the product that is going to market, whether it's a piece of technology or whether it's a, a piece of furniture.
Like, the creation of that thing Work has a whole production system
[00:30:00] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:30:01] David Bassuk: Simultaneously, there are people who work at this company, some of whom will retire, some of whom will pass away, some of whom will get other jobs, some of whom will, move up in the company out of the positions that they had. So there's an ongoing challenge to maintain the level of quality of personnel keeping track with the manufacturing- Yeah, yeah, yeah
or whatever the product line is. So the development of that personnel, both for replacement but also the skills that they needed in this company 10 years ago, five years ago, are different. So now you have not only, retention of quality employees from the other pieces, but also retraining-
[00:30:52] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:30:53] David Bassuk: simultaneously. So you have immense amount of learning needed, and setting up something like an academy within the corpor- within the corporation is And the two o- too often that's not the plan. The idea is to bring in consultants who will do it, rather than consultants plus an in-house academy.
[00:31:15] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:31:15] David Bassuk: And 'cause consultants don't have the, the knowledge of the company.
I mean, good consultants do. I pride myself in being that- ... kind of consultant. But the degree to which you come in and really understand the company and how it sees itself, how it will see itself, like, that kind of knowledge needs to be funded within a corporation because while it doesn't appear that that's the key thing for shareholder value, it ultimately is, because if you can't produce, it's not necessarily about the machines that are either making it or being used, it's about the integration of the human and the manufacturing, and I think that's all sectors.
So that requires, a rethinking of why are we... Like, why are we using humans at all? Yeah,
[00:32:10] Jens Heitland: yeah.
[00:32:11] David Bassuk: Right? 'Cause that almost is what you begin to feel like from when you listen to, to the Musk heads of the world, right? It's like at some point we won't even need, we'll just replace you. But in fact, that's not true.
We're seeing companies laying off lots of people with the excuse that now we don't need them, but in fact then they're rehiring them or they're retraining them 'cause they actually can't operate. In some fantastic imaginary day where companies and society won't need humans to produce things, I think that's one of those ideological things that is not proven.
It's a speculation, and it's a speculation that is currently reducing value- Yeah ... rather than increasing value.
[00:32:53] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And the, the key part of that is... So, so one part is the human element and the culture that goes with that.
[00:33:02] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:33:03] Jens Heitland: But it also, in my experience, you, you need to look into the organization and even look into how do we need to redesign the organization.
I was talking, with that in my former episode with John as well-
[00:33:15] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm ...
[00:33:16] Jens Heitland: where the, the key part is understanding how do you design the company so that it is future-ready into- Right ... in today's, and that means technology is gro- going to evolve very quickly, as we see. I mean, the speed of technology development, even since we talked last time officially, at least on the podcast- Yeah
it's crazy how fast all of that is. And if we just now look and it's going to accelerate even more-
[00:33:40] David Bassuk: Yeah ...
[00:33:41] Jens Heitland: with AI development and so on, that means you need to understand how do you build an organization where the human is-
Enabled through different mechanisms, through different ways of thinking, to be future ready on an individual level, but also enables with- within an ecosystem of the organization to get the organization- Right ... future ready as part of their role almost. Right.
[00:34:10] David Bassuk: Yeah. So developing their creativity doesn't mean you have them writing poetry.
[00:34:13] Jens Heitland: Exactly.
[00:34:14] David Bassuk: Right? It does ... So it's like-
[00:34:15] Jens Heitland: I will never be able to do that. I'm German.
[00:34:18] David Bassuk: No, no. We have, uh... AI can do it now. But the, uh... So the development of creativity and flexibility, resilience, these are skills that are not only, teachable, but they're measurable.
[00:34:34] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:34:34] David Bassuk: Right? I mean, there's a lot of things that are, you know, when with fear, you invest in this, and it's all kind of like some sort of dark arts that are not...
You couldn't put on a spreadsheet. But you can actually put them on a spreadsheet because you can look at the differences, like the differences between memory retention and use and incorporating, things learned into things practiced, of being hungry for criticism, rather than fearful of criticism, because all criticism at its heart is additive.
Like, criticism adds to. Right? Doesn't take away. Personally, it might feel like its criticism is a shaming or a bullying, but if that's the culture, there's value being left on the table that is not being brought into the system. I think it's partially why that kind of culture means that people, you know, go hiring these major consulting firms.
[00:35:31] Jens Heitland: Yeah,
[00:35:31] David Bassuk: and then
[00:35:32] Jens Heitland: fail.
[00:35:32] David Bassuk: And... But they fail, because they, because... And they actually have people who working.
[00:35:36] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:35:37] David Bassuk: I mean, I remember this at the university in New York. They kept bringing in consulting firms to basically tell us who we were as if we had no idea of-
[00:35:46] Jens Heitland: Yeah,
[00:35:46] David Bassuk: yeah ... articulating that, you know? So they came up with, like, these branding ideas and this, like, the...
Everyone, you talk to people in these interviews, and they took notes and they transform it, and it was, like, not a bad process, but somehow it was so externalized that it wasn't intrinsic enough to be meaningful, that we all felt part of something, and thereby the university, like, even though it's a university and an academic, it's similar to a lot of corporations where the identity of the company and how it feels to work at the company are two distinct things.
Yeah,
[00:36:23] Jens Heitland: yeah. I still remember 2020 when, I, I was building my first consulting business as at that time. Mm-hmm. And I was always- Like forcing not to be a consultant. So I, it, in the end I was a consulting business. Mm-hmm. But I always, had the, I, I still remember I had the tagline, "The non-consulting company."
didn't work out, but-
[00:36:48] David Bassuk: Yeah ...
[00:36:49] Jens Heitland: the interesting thing, I was too far ahead at that time with my way of thinking because it was all about how do you build an innovation ecosystem from within the organization? That's right. That's in the end what we are talking about today when it comes to future readiness.
In the end it's how do you build an engine inside of the organization so that you get to be always ahead of, o- of time- Yeah ... and be flexible so you can act quickly if something is changing, and you can almost forecast the changes that are needed. To get practical, I have worked years and years and years in retail, and what I have seen with different organization, in the end you have a base layer.
If, so if you take a retail store, there's a base layer of functionality of a retail store. You need to have the product at the right time in the right space. Mm-hmm. You need to have enough staff that is enabling the customers that come into the store to buy the right things that they need, and you help them in the best way so that they go from being a visitor that comes into the store to being a real customer that is buying something in the store.
[00:37:57] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:37:57] Jens Heitland: And that sounds very basic, but it's all about culture, going back to, to what you said. If the humans that are in the store are not motivated, don't have the knowledge, don't, are not interested in the customers that come or visitors that come into the door and the customers that are leaving the door, it's not going to work.
It's, and it's, it sounds super, super banal, but I know a lot of retailers in Europe, they struggle a lot right now because they don't do the basics. That doesn't mean they're future-ready, but the tricky f- thing for them is if they don't get the basics right, they're never going to be future-ready.
[00:38:36] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:38:36] Jens Heitland: And it's, has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with culture and how do you enable the organization to get into, in- into the future. But that means you, you need to work on today, going back to be present and, and, and understanding when you're snorkeling, what are the things that are around you and how do I swim better with my snorkel and stay afloat- Right
and not be eaten by a shark or a crocodile, depending where you are.
[00:39:03] David Bassuk: And that's ultimately why despite all, you know, claims that it's an irrelevant word, immersive still is the best word.
[00:39:10] Jens Heitland: I agree.
[00:39:11] David Bassuk: Because- Yeah ... in an immersive environment, clearly immersive, I mean, every day is in a, you know, across the street here in The Hague, it's an immersive environment, right?
So, um- being aware, being present, right, is requires perception, which enable, which if you say to yourself, "This is an immersive environment," great. So now you're talking about a culture, and well, we all know what that culture is, that we could write it up, and it's in our motto, it's in our value statement- Yeah
it's all of that stuff. And great, but what is it actually like to work there? Can we study where people move in a space? Who talks to who in a space? Yeah. Like, really do a study of everything that is the culture. How much time do people take to commute? Like, what are the, what are the pain that people suffer to work at the company in the beginning stages?
At what point is there mentoring? All of that is the culture. That's the immersive environment, right, of a culture. Yeah. Now, if you're gonna do a training to get people better ready, you, it first better get them really present, immersed in understanding what there is at the, at the start.
[00:40:28] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:40:28] David Bassuk: Right? So, like, what you're saying is like they're not doing that, how are they gonna be ready?
Well, of course. So part of being ready is to really start from, you know, day one or from, you know, from, from scratch. Like, here we go. Yeah. And that's, where are we, what are we looking at right now in the company? How good are we about all these things that we say we need to be good about? How good are we about the things that we have already in the company, you know?
And it's not just, um use of materials, development of personnel. It's, it's also how are we responding to the daily interferences of things that are going wrong? Do we have a way to catch these better and, like, not make the same mistakes over and over again? not hire a person who once again does something like that- Yeah
without being penalized or, you know, s- rewarded depending on what they did. So to go into the, a readiness, like a future readiness like we've been talking about, the question is certainly starting from now with a really full knowledge of the company, and embedding that, knowledge into a form of immersive learning where people get to practice or rehearse, how they behave.
And in the workshop or in the development of the, you know, the, the piece, we could actually begin to see, oh, look, you went this way. Perhaps going this way. Let's try it again. Go the other way. Okay, okay, try this. And, like, begin to actually play through the sort of grand assumptions that lead to fail.
[00:42:05] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:42:05] David Bassuk: And do it in a way that does not involve, like, the c- criticism that is harmful but is actually additive. And that culture, the a- a criticism is additive culture, can become something that generates, enthusiasm, which is, not a bad thing.
[00:42:26] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:42:26] David Bassuk: Engagement-
[00:42:27] Jens Heitland: Yeah ...
[00:42:28] David Bassuk: an even better thing. And then preparation, even better still.
[00:42:32] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:42:32] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:42:33] Jens Heitland: I think out of my experience, but I have been in many different transformations of many different organizations- Mm ... and it's always Either failing, most of the time it's failing unfortunately. But one key thing I have learned from that, and that's a lot of people say, "Yeah, that's obvious. Start with the top."
So a big transformational project, couple of years before we have recorded the last episode- Mm-hmm ... was how do we transform the organization not, it was not called future readiness, but it's kind of to solve for the future. Mm-hmm. And a key part of that was you do workshops, you do different, different things, but it was always theoretical.
It was not like I was explaining. You, you- Yeah ... do an experiment at the site, and what you just said is you're testing, you're failing, you're, you're learning, you get pushed back. specifically not from the top management. The top management goes to an offsite. Mm-hmm. every big company's doing that.
They get the biggest and most expensive consultants out there most of the time from the Big Four because the Big Four are the credited- Right ... long-term partners of this big organizations. And the board says, "Yeah, because it's this, this four letters or whatever the company is, we trust that the investment that we put into this executive offsite is, is worth it."
What happened in every single organization that I have experienced over the last 20 years, the investment never paid back. The reason for that was it was theory. It was a little bit innovation game show or something sometimes. So if you, if you, if you had someone who is getting a little bit into, into that, they're at least getting the management team a little bit more, let's say immersed, but it was never stress testing.
It was never pushing, pushing them in, into a direction where I think in the world where we are in right now, linking this to Aurora is basically what you need the, the management n- team to do is have a stadi have different players around, have immersive environment where the management team is on stage and is basically in the moment and, and, and testing all of that.
And, and I think that's-
[00:45:02] David Bassuk: Yeah ...
[00:45:02] Jens Heitland: which would help the management team and top executives to get into that space. The question always is, are the companies ready to look into that and, and go that, or will they be pushed into that?
[00:45:16] David Bassuk: Yeah. I mean, you're referring to the stage, but I would use another word, the arena.
Like, if you're in the arena, you now- Feel the pressure
[00:45:29] Jens Heitland: Yeah
[00:45:30] David Bassuk: Okay? And that pressure creates a different mind. It's the mind of a, a participant, right? Not an observer. There's no, place to go, sit with your coffee. There's no place to, watch others and be critical. You're in it. And when you're in it, a different mind kicks in, right?
It's the immerse- the mind that is, happens when we are immersed- Mm ... in an environment, in a space that is as live as we are. Now, once you're in that, I mean, one of the reasons that, you know, that's interesting about, like, the theater background is that most people F- what the, one of the greatest fears people have is not even, violence, it's having to talk in front of other people.
Yeah. Like, that is the number one- Yeah ... fear. And it's one of the reasons I think actors have a certain kind of, allure and glamour because-
[00:46:33] Jens Heitland: Superpower,
[00:46:33] David Bassuk: yeah ... and like we'll say, "Oh, how did you learn all those lines?" But really what we're saying is, "How did you have the courage to stand up in front of people?"
[00:46:41] Jens Heitland: Mm.
[00:46:41] David Bassuk: You know? And, you know, I'm not an actor, but, as my wife who is an actor will say to me, "Oh, yes you are." Because I'm very comfortable talking with small groups, large groups. I don't know what I'm going to say in a script, but I have it from years of experience.
[00:47:01] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:47:02] David Bassuk: But I st- when I cross from the sidelines, right, onto the stage or into the arena, you know, I'm in a game on mode,
[00:47:12] Jens Heitland: right?
Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:13] David Bassuk: And I can field any question, criticism of any other kind. And we see this with public figures who don't know how to be in public, which is- Yeah ... extraordinary. Fair enough. Now, that skill is not a rare skill, it's an ancient skill. We have going back to, you know, our ancestors who lived in caves, the one who comes back and tells the story, and actually gets the challenges, you know, o- of the crowd, you know, or the cheers.
One or the other. The oral tradition. Now, that requires, not so much courage, although yeah, it, it... Yeah, you would say in a cur- in a society that's largely fearful, that looks like courage.
[00:47:56] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:47:56] David Bassuk: But it just means aliveness. And in aliveness, we actually have all that we need, because that's what we need in order to be present.
That's what we need in order to be listening carefully, immersed. And there's nothing like an activity or a game or a process, like the ones we've been talking about developing- Yeah ... that will challenge people. And of course, you know, people don't wanna be challenged. The- you're not gonna be future ready, because the only...
'Cause the future will be challenging, but you won't be prepared for it. But you can prepare for it much better if you're in an environment that is set up as an arena for you to react, where we, where you can discover how you react-
[00:48:45] Jens Heitland: Yeah ...
[00:48:45] David Bassuk: and you can, now use tools like, agentic AI to sort of support and defy using red team structures, using contradictions, and respond real time to a series of shocks, moving through stages of crisis- And I don't mean crisis as a bad thing.
Crisis as, it's called reality. Yeah. Reality is a crisis, right? Until the life is over, it's an ongoing series of challenges/crisises. So what's wrong with being ready? You know? What... We don't send people into battle without battle practice. Yeah. But we send people into the, the next, quarter without it.
And similarly, now, it's, it's a different type of game. Yeah.
[00:49:32] Jens Heitland: And the, the key part of that is not just as an individual- Yeah ... as a team. As a team. So going back to the executive- Absolutely ... team is doing that as a team will give you the understanding how you, how you behave in- Right ... pressure situation.
Right. Which means if we just take an, an example, so the CEO, the CFO, the COO- Yeah ... the chief HR digital, and, like, that team, the CEO will be able to observe, and they will all be able to observe themselves with each other when S hits the fan-
[00:50:07] David Bassuk: Right ...
[00:50:08] Jens Heitland: and a crisis happens, which is happening all the time, how do they behave?
How do... And, and, and one of the things that I, I think is critical as part of that is- Being able to jump into different scenarios as part of that and on different time horizons. I was talking with the CEO the other day, I mean, it's already a couple of months ago when, when the Iran war started, because they were dependent on certain things that come to the Strait of Hormuz, and I was, I was talking, "So what's your scenario?"
"Yeah, we are fine. Like, the next three months is no problem." I said, "Okay. What's, what's after the three months?" And it's, it's a multi-billion organization. It's huge organization, and they have, I think that she said like a 40% dependence on, on the material that comes from there. So I said, "Okay, what is, what is, what, what is your plan B?"
And she w- she was saying there is no plan B right now. They started then to build, we s- I'm still in contact, so they built the plan B and getting, getting there, but the business was hit already.
[00:51:18] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:51:19] Jens Heitland: So... And yes, you cannot maybe forecast a war like this, but in the end, there were a lot of signals before that you could have had a scenario plan almost a year before-
[00:51:31] David Bassuk: Absolutely
[00:51:31] Jens Heitland: to understand what are the potential scenarios, and in case that happens. Same with COVID. We had a lot of, problems with distribution. ships are not coming, electronics didn't work.
[00:51:46] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Jens Heitland: And maybe you cannot forecast that a pandemic like this happens, but you can, you can look into stress testing the different value streams that you have in an organization on an ongoing base, where you say, "Okay, in case this happens and there is this value stream is not happening, we are not getting this raw material if we are production company, one of our suppliers is not be able to do that."
And a lot of organizations have that in a mathematical perspective. They see that from a number perspective because the finance team most of the time is ahead of the things they do forecasting, they do scenario planning. But when it comes going back to the immersive, the team of the management, they're not in that.
[00:52:29] David Bassuk: Right.
[00:52:29] Jens Heitland: Team members are changing on an ongoing base. they have different incentive structures, which is sometimes completely against that. I think that's also going back to the organizational structure and how do you design an organization. It's all enmerged into this.
[00:52:45] David Bassuk: Yeah.
[00:52:47] Jens Heitland: Linking this, going back to your consultants, I think if you take the big four or even the, the big 10, they're all not into this because what they do is their playbook is different.
They take the examples from all organization that they have worked with and the knowledge that they have gained over the last, I don't know, 50, 100 years, and then look into what are the playbooks that we can replay with the same company again and can sell to them, and how can we do that so that we as an organization make the biggest profit possible.
And I get that from a capitalistic perspective, but being... Like, I have been inside of the organizations where these consultants had multimillion dollar deals to change the organization. The answer is in the organization. The answer is always in the organization. There are so many smart people- Right ... in any organization.
[00:53:40] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:41] Jens Heitland: You just need to bring that to the surface, and a lot of consultants just do that. Like, they, they a- they a- ask a lot of questions like you mentioned with the, with the college, and then the internal team members, they're kind of put, put back with like, "Yeah, I, I could have told you that two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago."
With
[00:54:00] David Bassuk: the salary you're already paying
[00:54:01] Jens Heitland: me. Exactly. Without any additional. Yeah. It's just that the organizations are not building something, let's call it future readiness lab, where you build an immersive environment that enables, I think starting from the top, to build this, this kind of muscles almost, like- Right
different ways of working, different ways of thinking, different ways of stress-testing each other-
[00:54:24] David Bassuk: Right ...
[00:54:25] Jens Heitland: to be able to then act in today's situation, but even kind of forecast future scenarios and how would we react as an organization in different ways to that.
[00:54:37] David Bassuk: Yeah. And, back to the future readiness lab.
If you're developing the team, you're ultimately informing the culture from within.
[00:54:49] Jens Heitland: Absolutely.
[00:54:50] David Bassuk: Let's talk about the meaning of the word team in 2026. The team is not only humans. Integrating human and AI culture has not been at the forefront of agendas.
There's a sort of a, there's a weird secondary status either of the AI or of the humans. So integrating the culture of human plus AI has not been at the forefront of companies' agendas.
[00:55:25] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:55:26] David Bassuk: That's what I think what we're talking about addressing.
[00:55:29] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[00:55:29] David Bassuk: So in addition to, I mean, the key idea is bringing the team together in order to sort of build a resilience, presence, and a ability to navigate the rapids, right?
I mean, years ago, they used to... There were corporations who would take people whitewater rafting to sort of, like, create a company culture. So we're kind of doing the same thing, but without... A little less, little drier version of it. So we don't need the rapids, but we'll create rapids for them in terms of a stepped process through crisis, through future shifts, and see how people respond to the bends in the road.
And certainly Things like the crisis in the Gulf of Hormuz were predictable.
[00:56:19] Jens Heitland: Yeah,
[00:56:19] David Bassuk: for sure. Certainly there were most... There are many things. I mean, sometimes the future throws a curveball that no one could have seen, a black swan- Yeah ... to quote Taleb. But but even black swans are just a lack of evidence that people- Yeah
haven't been everywhere to see that there are swans that are not only white, right? As the metaphor. So a black swan actually doesn't mean, like, a once in a lifetime, you know, a comet that... But even a comet you see coming. Right? And a black swan you can find if you actually ask everyone, "Any, any swans there that might not be white?"
Like, if you're not asking the questions, you're not finding out. So there's a lot of evidence being overlooked for lack of questioning, and teams are operating more as individuals in competition rather than as a culture of us r- or we versus a series of Is. And the compensation structures reinforce this.
and that's all well and good for individuals, but unfortunately it means that they are standing on icebergs or ships that are sinking because what actually needs it to run is the group acting in a coherent way. This is why we love these war movies. You know? I mean, the war movies or, any kind of, you know, film or story that's about a team.
Like, the s- TV series that's, like, hugely popular right now, The Bear, which just had its final season. I've
[00:57:45] Jens Heitland: never heard.
[00:57:45] David Bassuk: Oh my gosh, you have to see this. It's, it's- I'm not a TV person. I am not watching anything You gotta change.
You need to change that now. Okay. 'Cause there's a thing called The Bear you have to watch. I
[00:57:53] Jens Heitland: will check.
[00:57:54] David Bassuk: You'll be quoting it through- ... every and many podcasts. Well, the thing about The Bear is it's one of these workplaces which people are all working against the s- the central- Yeah ... idea. And then over a series of six seasons, they actually find the rhythm as a we, and their s- And how they operate changes, and the m- f- the relationship with the customers change.
And you actually see, it's not a fantasy, but we see it so rarely in life that it's deeply powerful and it's gained huge audiences because we actually see what happens when a series of Is become a we. And that's, I think, what we're trying to accomplish. Yeah. And the we is not a, a humans versus AI or AI versus humans, but it's bringing it together.
So it's two things that are very powerful, and both of them very missing in the equation of future readiness.
[00:58:54] Jens Heitland: Yeah. And as, as part of that Future Readiness Lab is not this executive training thing. I think it need to be embedded into the organization- self-improvement process over time. Going back to the example, these, I, I think that's something that every organization should do- Yeah
is having a mechanism at the edge of the organization where literally prototyping, testing something in, in sprint fashion, let's say a quarter maxim where you, you say, "This is a problem that we see. This is a problem that might occur in five years- Right ... in two years, in three months. How do we tackle that?"
Right. And then have, we, we called that at that time a suicide squad. So we had suicide, suicide squads and that we had tiger teams. Tiger teams are the teams that are kind of working in an, in the known, and suicide squads are- ... squads where, where the ones that are there to, to figure things out, and worst case, they're getting killed.
Obviously not in an, a organizational context. But their goal was to figure out the future, test and stress test it on the edge of the organization, which 99% of the organization is even not aware of. Because the internal immune system of a, of a large organization is always working against stress tests.
Mm. It's always working against to keep the status quo. Right. And that's a human thing that every organization has, and if, and we see this in, in politics, in, in environments, in, societies as well. But specifically if we talk about organizations, you need to push on the edge. And that's where I think this future readiness concept that we're developing right now is, is really all about how do you get the executive understanding the importance of all the different elements we talked about, putting that into a financial concept so that the CFO, which at least for me is important, understands the, the possibility ups- the possible upside of what it means to get future readiness.
Right. Because what they always do, they, they do not always fear-based scenario planning, but quite often it is. They don't do opportunity scenario- Right ... planning in a real immersive environment, and specifically not stress tested from all organizational peop- pieces and team members. And then putting these things on the side where you say, "Let's, let's develop different stress tests.
Let's develop different opportunities." And that can be in the now, in five years, in 15 years, but also 2040. What does it mean? Right. And, and then say, let's, let- let's figure out how we as an organization- Would organize us in that way, but then as well, as well let's use AI and build AI, let's call it agent.
That's the future customer in 2040. That's the future competitor. That's the future society in 2040- Right ... with all of these preconditions. Right. And all of that is possible today to construct in an immersive environment, going back to our Aurora example-
[01:02:12] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm ...
[01:02:12] Jens Heitland: so that you and your organization can t- stress test these things on an ongoing base.
So it's almost something that goes along the, the, the business, and it will be part of a business engine strategic support and even operational implementation straightaway. Because most of the times what we experienced when I was in IKEA and we did these things on the edge of, the organization, there, there are elements of that that will directly improve the whole business.
Right. So you put that in and you directly see an upside on the bottom line. And if you do that smartly as an organization, it's, it's just a, a recursive self-improvement towards a future readiness with a financial upside that then rectifies the investment that the CFO will give into the small, let's say, suicide squads.
Because what, what we did at, as, as well, we were starving the suicide squads. They didn't have a budget. They needed to earn money s- because it was commercial organization and retail. Understanding how you earn money as quickly as possible, like a startup does-
[01:03:17] David Bassuk: Right ...
[01:03:18] Jens Heitland: is all not that difficult.
[01:03:20] David Bassuk: Yeah, and see, that's the mentality.
A startup, you know, has to do everything to capture a piece of the market, right? And it will iterate and reiterate if it's gonna survive. I mean, there's nothing more ridiculous than a startup that's playing it safe. But, like, a startup that actually aggressively develops a kind of, uh Asking impossible questions just to see.
[01:03:49] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[01:03:50] David Bassuk: Right? finding the weaknesses com- in competitors, finding the opportunities, that is, like unmet needs or things that other companies are just leaving on the table- Yeah ... 'cause they're not paying attention. Like, doesn't have to be a startup. It's a s- it's a kind of startup mentality even for a, a grown-up business.
And how do you get a grown-up business that has, you know, established financials to actually have an edge? Because it's not for certain that their advantages remain, right? 'Cause advantages, like human life, is temporary, right? It has its lifespan. Companies that f- were, like as forever, you know, forever would never be gone are gone.
[01:04:44] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[01:04:45] David Bassuk: And sometimes so quickly that it's breathtaking. I mean, in my life, it's Sears. Like, Sears was like granite, and suddenly it's not even-
[01:04:55] Jens Heitland: Explain what Sears, uh- Okay ... company is, just for those that are
[01:04:59] David Bassuk: not familiar. Okay. So, so Sears begins, like, beginning of the 20th century, I think, maybe even earlier, and it does mail order.
So it sends catalogs all over the United States, and you can buy from the catalog, and you can buy everything from a dress to a house.
[01:05:16] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[01:05:17] David Bassuk: You know? And the catalogs begin to sort of create commercial industry, a retail industry through mail order, and they move from mail order to stores to digital, but then their digital strategy isn't innovative, and along comes these startups that go, "Sears isn't doing it."
So companies like Kmart and companies like Amazon begin to-
[01:05:42] Jens Heitland: Shopify, yeah ...
[01:05:43] David Bassuk: wipe them out They also have some really bad management as well who acts- Mm ... which just happens everywhere, but it's the kind of thing where they leverage the value of the company into debt, and then pretty soon the company's hollowed out, and it's basically real estate that's left and- Yeah
sold off for parts, right? And it was like it was gone within so few years, and, you know... Or AT&T. I mean, now we use AT&T now, but actually AT&T is gone. A company called Cingular bought what was left of AT&T and renamed Cingular AT&T because the brand name was good. But the original AT&T, same thing.
[01:06:20] Jens Heitland: Yeah.
[01:06:20] David Bassuk: Like, you know, when I say AT&T is gone, people go, "That's crazy."
It's like, no, no, it's gone. The name exists, right? So there's a lot of things that happen, and we all know this. And so the pain of knowing how fragile suc- you know, maintaining. You don't, you don't maintain success by attempting to maintain success. You maintain success by fighting for what you don't have yet, and having the power to do not one thing, but two things.
It's not unlike what I talk to, you know, people going into the arts. It's not enough to be, happy with trying to find success in one medium. You know, if you're in theater, you also must know film. You also must know game design. You also- must know how to sort of build projects within community like, you have to have all of the core skills, but multiple mediums, multiple venues, multiple demographics.
And the more you have, the more robust is your plan. And that's for creatives, right? from the business, it's actually the same thing. What are you not doing that you could be doing, or you should be doing, or the future you would wish you to have done now? Yeah. We cannot... It's not so much test, but we can recreate those conditions in, an intense rehearsal process.
I'm gonna use the theater word. An intense rehearsal process, which is, basically about creating readiness.
[01:07:50] Jens Heitland: Yeah. '
[01:07:50] David Bassuk: Cause as the poet John Keith said, "Readiness is all." Right? Readiness is everything, right? We don't... What we don't know, we don't know. What we did know, we don't know now. But being ready, to be in that position of readiness, to be able to spring or to st- be still, that's the place.
[01:08:12] Jens Heitland: Using this as, as the end of the podcast, which I think is beautiful. Mm-hmm. So if you're a listener, if, if you're someone that is interested in exploring the future readiness concept, which we're right now in the midst of developing and using this conversation for us to learn about it in the same way-
[01:08:30] David Bassuk: Yeah
[01:08:31] Jens Heitland: I think it's interesting for boards of organizations. It's interesting for executive teams. It's interesting for people that work inside of the innovation and see that the organization is not there, like myself couple of years back.
[01:08:46] David Bassuk: Mm-hmm.
[01:08:47] Jens Heitland: Critical thing for those that are interested and, and maybe want to do a pilot project with us is you need to get the top management involved.
You need to get the board approval for this. Because if they're not involved, it's not going to happen. Doesn't mean we don't want to help you, but I think a critical part of at least my experience, the, the, the owner of the business need to be involved in this- Mm-hmm ... because it, it's radically transforming the business towards the future, and if they're not involved, they will be fighting against it.
So it's critical part of that. David, thank you very much for the great conversation. I'm really looking forward to spend more time with you today in person-
[01:09:27] David Bassuk: Yeah ...
[01:09:27] Jens Heitland: and get the Future Readiness Lab in, in, into the world, and helping many, many, many organizations and humans out there to kind of solve the big problems that we have in this world.
Thank you very much.
[01:09:39] David Bassuk: Yeah. Thank you, Jens. Working with you and being your friend over these years since even before our podcast number 53 has been one of the great pleasures and privileges of my life.
[01:09:51] Jens Heitland: Appreciate it.