00:03
This is Reinamoto's podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone. Welcome to The Creative Mindset,
a podcast about what the future holds at the intersection of creativity and technology.
I'm Reinamoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Today's guest is Richard Tobokawara. He's someone I have admired for more than 10 years because we
ran our professional lives in similar circles within the marketing and creative industry.
I was very aware of the work he was doing. He's a best-selling author and his second book called
Rethinking Work, Seismic Changes in the Where, When, and Why is being published in February 2025.
This is part 2 of my chat with Richard and if you haven't listened to part 1 in which we focused on
companies and organizations, please have a listen. He's one of the clearest thinkers and speakers I
have ever come across. As you may notice, he speaks in an extremely organized manner by
utilizing lists and bullet points, making it easy for the listeners to have a clear takeaway.
キャリアの relevances
In this conversation, we focus on what the individual should do for our careers.
He shares with us what he calls the three-step relevance program,
and it's something everyone can follow regardless of their experience or profession.
So let's get started.
So I'm going to turn our focus towards the individuals.
Yes.
But specifically, I want to talk about relevance.
Yes.
There was one article that you talked about three relevances.
Yes, the three relevances. I do. Yes.
Yeah.
So I said everywhere I go in the world, both when I was at Publicis and over the last five years,
right? While I quote-unquote do not run a company and do not do real work like you do and other
people do, I still advise people, I speak, I do other things, right? So over in that function,
I basically met with or spoken with about 150 companies in the last five years. So it's almost
one every two weeks. And then obviously, I spent a lot of time at Publicis working with lots of
different clients. In the last five years, I was very senior. And everybody in the world,
regardless of the size of company or industry always has the same three questions.
Okay, so question number one is, do I have the right business model?
Okay.
Question number two is, do I have the right organizational design talent and suppliers?
Right.
But then if you give them enough sake or beer or whatever it is, right, they ask,
are they themselves still relevant? Personally, are they still relevant?
Right. And that's, I think, what you want to talk about, because that's really what they
are most interested in, less than the business model, less than the organizational design,
are they still relevant? And the way they ask me that question is not asking about themselves by
saying, am I still relevant? They ask me how after all these years, I have fooled people into
believing I still remain relevant. Okay. And their old stuff is you grew up when they were typewriters,
you built the case for cable television, then you built the case for the digital internet
agencies. And now you're running around talking about AI and writing about the future of work.
Yeah.
Okay. You are older than us, you're on Medicare, I'm now 65. How the hell are you doing this?
And these are people in their 40s and early 50s. Right. And so I basically say,
so they're asking me that question. But they're not really asking about me, because that's not
キャリアにおける持続可能性
what they're really asking. They're asking how do I remain relevant, which is they remain relevant.
I truly believe that world-class talent and world-class leaders are struggling with that.
Yeah, yeah.
And that is what makes them do stupid things. So I as a leader, I'm not personally relevant. So
let's get everybody back to the office five days a week. Okay. So my old stuff is like,
why are you doing that? Why don't you first figure out your own personal relevance?
And in the personal relevance, I have a three-step program, which I refer to everybody. Again,
this could be done in any market. It can be done in Japan, India, US, you know,
Senegal, whatever place you want to do it. And it can be done by the individual without asking
permission for anybody. Okay. Right. So because this is not like you got to go get a budget,
you got to ask a boss or anything of the sort. So what is the three-step program? Step number one
is allocate an hour every day to learn. So you basically set every day you have a learning hour.
And a lot of people will say, well, Rishabh, you don't have a job. So you could have a
goddamn learning hour. So I said, when I had a job, and I was working with Maurice,
who was amazing, and I was working for a big company with 100,000 people,
I still spent an hour learning, right? And you take that hour from everything,
excepting from your family and sleep. Okay, so let's assume that you have to sleep seven hours.
Yeah. Okay. And let's assume that you'd like to spend two, three hours with your family, if that.
Yeah. My favorite time of the day is between 4.30 and 7.30 in the morning.
4.30 and 7.30. Okay. What I do between 4.30 and 7.30 is my time. So what happens is I get up and
spend an hour reading or learning. Then I go working out and then I go and then have breakfast
in those in the early days when my kids were here, but now my wife, so we have a little breakfast.
Yeah. And so I basically say during those three hours, the day is already a victory,
because I've learned something by the reading or learning. So that's my mental operating system.
Yeah. I've done some exercise. So I fed my physical operating system.
Yeah. And I've talked to my wife and had breakfast. So I fed my emotional operating system.
Yeah. And what happened is because my boss used to be seven hours ahead of me. He was in Paris. So
once I put on my email at 7.30, it's a life of trouble. Yeah. Okay. And you lose control of
your day the moment you open up your email when your boss is in France or anywhere that they're
in the world. And so whatever would happen in the day, I said, the day has been good. I've run,
I've learned something and I've swum and I have to deal with all these crazy people all over the
world. So how long have you kept a habit? 30 years. In fact, it happened because of the first
child, because I began to realize that once she woke up and we have now two daughters,
once she woke up and once they woke up, it was pandemonium. Yes. Right. You couldn't control
anything. I know exactly what that. Yeah. And the other, the issue was, so a lot of people find that
time in two places. They find the time in the beginning of the day or they find the time at
the end of the day. Yeah. So at the very end of the day, if you have kids, hopefully they've fallen
asleep. Right. But what used to basically happen is by the end of the day, I used to feel tired.
効果的な時間管理
Yeah. And what I began that I was most productive in the morning. So that's when I write my books,
I write it in the morning. Yeah. Right. So that's become my favorite time. And it's sort of a time
which you control. Yeah. Because and wherever you are in the world, you can control it. Because if
I'm going to learn and I have a book with me, I can obviously open up the internet. I'm in a hotel,
I can go run. Right. My wife often travels with me. If not, I'm having breakfast with a colleague
and, you know, we're building a relationship. So that all works out. So I've kept that little
habit. And I always tell people, if you want to control your life, you got to control some part
of it because you can't control all of it. I have been a night person all my life.
Yeah. But once I passed 40, I would say. Yeah. Staying up has become difficult.
Yeah. And by the way, when you get older, here's what happens is getting up earlier becomes easier.
That is true. Right. So it's almost like when you're young, you're built for the night.
Yes. Yes. And when you're old, you're built for the dawn. Yeah. I'm not suggesting that people
get up at 430 in the morning. They can decide they're going to spend two, three hours on a
Saturday or they're going to do that in their day. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And especially by the time you're
middle management, you have enough control over your calendar to find 15 minutes, do 15 minutes
less of this meeting, 20 minutes less of this meeting, 15 minutes less of watching sports.
I see. I see. So it doesn't have to be one hour. Yes. So you could say I'm going to do
two 30 minute sessions. OK. OK. But the idea basically is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,
find two hours each day. Yeah. Because Saturday, Sunday, I'm not working or whatever it is. OK.
Full time work. And if you tell me you don't have the time to learn, what you're telling me is you're
OK to becoming irrelevant. OK. Because if I hadn't been learning an hour or two a day for the last
five years, nobody would talk to me today because I would have knowledge of five years ago when I
was working at Publicis, which is less and less relevant even at Publicis. Right. Right. Right.
OK. In fact, I can give advice to Publicis better than when I was at Publicis because
I actually have seen the outside world. Right. Right. Right. Right. OK. So that's number one.
逆の視点を考える
Number two. And this is very true for middle to senior, but particularly senior management or
people who are accomplished. OK. Once in a while, build a case for the exact opposite of what you
think is true. OK. Break it down for us. You say I'd like to get Rishad in my podcast. He's
writing. He's written a book. I've met him. He seems to be good. He seems to have achieved stuff.
OK. OK. That's that's a case for. But then I would ask you to write a case against.
OK. Which is the case against could be he's not worked in the real world for five years.
He might be giving academic nonsense that people don't actually know.
He's 65 years old. Most of the population in my audience is 35 years old. OK. Right. I have a lot
of people with Japan. He doesn't know anything about Japan. He's been here two or three times.
OK. I can get better person than this clown. OK. OK. So so you build that case. Right. And then
what you basically do is you then say, actually, maybe he's not that aged. Maybe he's reinventing
himself, you know, and therefore I got to get it. So when I would make a recommendation or work with
the board to make a recommendation for an acquisition at Publicis, I would write a deck
for the acquisition and against the acquisition. OK. And that's because you have to stress test
your thinking. Why is this important for senior management? For two reasons, three reasons. One is
the likelihood of a senior person being defeated by another company is low.
The likelihood of being self-defeated is very high. The world's best companies and the world's
best leaders defeat themselves. They don't get defeated. And the reason they defeat themselves
is they no longer can think outside of their own brain or their own mindset.
Right. They have become so self-reinforcing that they think they know the answer.
And the world changes and they don't know the answer. Right. So I'm really good at internal
combustion engine and hardware. I'm a great leader of an automobile company. That's great
till the future is software and electric or hybrid. Right. What do you do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But
also when you get very senior and this is true in every country, it's very true in Japan,
very country in Asian economies, but it's also true in the U.S. economy. People are very scared
of senior talent. So they tell them what they want to hear. So what happens is all of us begin
to believe when we're senior that our flatulence smells like Chanel 5. Yeah. Okay. So we become
full of ourselves. People around us say we're really good and we miss the signal. So I always
say, if you believe this is true, can you actually think the exact opposite? Yeah. Yeah. The third,
and this is very important in the you and I, I mean, you're a creative, so you actually do this
and I'm a writer. So I pretend I'm doing this. Okay. I think it's very, very important to spend
at least half your time doing one of the following building, making, creating, mentoring or guiding.
Yeah. So what you're doing is you're either making things or you're helping people grow.
So you're in the growth business. Yeah. And you should spend less than half your time doing what
most managers do and try to reduce that to even less than half because most managers spend most of
their time on the other five, allocating, delegating, measuring, monitoring, and reporting. Those five
don't actually create any value. What management is doing is they're not actually creating value
very often, they're shuffling value. Most bosses don't realize is their talent is not their talent
doesn't want to come back to the office. Their talent says, tell me what the benefits of being
in the offices versus being in the home. Yeah. And the talent also doesn't want to be monitored,
allocated, delegated, and measured by their bosses all the time. Yeah. So those are the three
relevance, which is spend time learning, build a case for the opposite, make sure you're building,
making, creating, guiding, and mentoring. I see myself struggling with this and I see
this with a lot of other people struggling is discipline. I eventually built discipline
because I read a line, but the line is this, are you ready for it? Okay. Discipline is freedom.
I see. Which is the exact opposite because, you know, you think about discipline as hard and rigid
and as a prison and things like that. And I said, yes, we all want to have basically freedom. And
自由と成長を求めて
over time, I basically said, I want to have freedom. Here's why this is important. So let's
suppose you want to work for yourself or you don't want to work for a company. Okay. So in order to
do that, you're going to have to have three types of discipline. One is you're going to have to
learn an art or craft so you can actually sell it. Building a art or craft takes time as you and I
know, right? So that's number one. The second one is besides, you know, sort of art and craft,
you want to basically at some stage have economic freedom of some sort. Okay. It doesn't mean you
have to be rich, but it's like, you can say, okay, I'm going to have a less, I'm going to have a
sparse lifestyle, but I need to basically have economic freedom. So if you want to have economic
freedom later in your life, you have to save money earlier in your life. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So in effect, yes, you have to the discipline of saving, but by why? So that you can be free later.
Yeah. Right. So that's why I like this discipline as freedom. So it makes discipline both less
hard to think about and the benefit is freedom, which is what we all want. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Now there's another thing that we want, which is a line that I often tell people, which is
discipline is growth. That the only way you can grow yourself, your skills is through discipline.
Right. And we all want to grow and we want to be free. So what I've discovered is most people
in the world want freedom and growth. And what I've discovered is one of the ways to get to freedom
and growth is discipline. But if you say discipline is really hard, if you say discipline is say, hey,
every day, spend an hour learning or two 30 minute period learning. Yeah. Right. There's this book
called tiny habits or atomic habits where you start with small things. And so this is, okay,
I'm going to learn 15 minutes a day to 15 minutes. I want to take it eventually to 30 minutes.
Right. So it becomes less unveiled. It becomes a habit. And that's the key thing to also think
about. And, you know, it's to inculcate good habits. We all have bad habits, but we can also
have some good habits. Continuous learning. Yep. Something that you started a long time ago.
And now you've reached a point in your career where, you know, your kids are growing up. Yep.
Perhaps, you know, you're, you're not tied to one company. Your company will one, as you said. Yep.
And I'm assuming, but you can probably manage your own time way better than you were able to
10, 15, 20 years ago. Yep. Right. Yep. But let's say like when you were a middle manager,
when you're 40, 45, 50. Yep. That sort of prime years of your career, when you have reached a
very senior status, you're in demand, you have assistant, you know, you have a calendar full of
meetings and whatnot. Yep. How are you able to keep up that kind of discipline?
I had to carve out my day before it started. So I did the 430 to 730 thing. Right. Right. Right.
But the other one, the way I did it is when you're a manager and you work globally, or you work
inside a country, you spend a lot of time on airplanes. Right. Right. And what I would basically
say is if it wasn't an overnight flight, and not everything was an overnight flight, right?
I would basically say in the plane, I'm going to give that time to myself and not to work.
Mm hmm. So over time, because the technology improved, so now, you know, people say,
キャリアに必要なスキル
where do you watch your television shows? I said, a lot of them are on my iPad on a plane,
or movies. Where do you read your books? Like, I flew back from New York, and I spent an hour
reading short stories. Okay. So what I tell people is, you should put a bit of poetry into
every crevice of your life. Okay. So in the course of a day, we have these little crevices, 10
minutes here, 15 minutes here, 20 minutes here, where we might stare or pull out our phone and
look at X or, you know, Instagram or whatever it is, right? Instead of that, say, okay, how do I
make these 15 minutes really meaningful? Should I go for a walk? Should I take some photographs?
Should I read something? Should I listen to music? Right? Yeah. So I always basically say,
joy can be found in the crevices. And what happens is, you may not control your entire
thing, but it's not usually a not like working morning to night with no time at all to do
anything. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You sometimes get this, okay, I've got a 15 minute break. But
usually what we do in the 15 minute break is let me check email. Yeah. Right. We've got a 15 minute
break, don't check email. Okay. Yeah. Read something, listen to something, watch something,
talk to somebody, make a telephone call, right? Which gives you joy. Right. And then the other
one that I would say, which a lot of people now ask me, what should I be learning? Or what should
my kids be learning? Or what should young people be learning? And this is what I do, because I think
I'm still a kid. So one of the ways on this personal relevance. Okay. So I tell everybody
who's senior or even young, keep growing, but never grow up. Right. So with that, I say, here are the
six things that I believe I continue to do, which I believe everybody should do. Three of them have
to do with you as an individual. One is curiosity, be curious about the world around you. Yeah. Second
is cognition, spend an hour learning. Yeah. And third is creativity. Everybody's creative, just
connect dots in new ways. Okay. But we don't only work with ourselves, even as a company of one,
we work with different people. So the other three is how do you work with different people?
Or how do you work with machines? And for that you need collaboration, which is a little bit of EQ,
right? Yeah. You need convincing, because everybody's a salesperson. When everybody's
got the same data and facts and knowledge, convincing. And last and most important,
which people are under appreciating is good communication skills, particularly writing and
speaking. So I often tell companies, please invest in writing and speaking skills for your management.
Okay. Because that's, what's going to differentiate them from the machines.
若者へのアドバイス
It's going to help them convince, it's going to help them collaborate.
Knowing that you have two daughters, I believe in their twenties, right?
Thirties. In the thirties. Okay. Yeah. But so they have career progression in the past, say,
decade or so. Yeah. Yeah. Do you tell them, like, if there's one piece of advice,
would you give them the same piece of advice? So I give both of them the same piece of advice,
which is what, when people ask me, what do you tell young people besides these six C's,
but the other two are not, are not skill sets. Yeah. Yeah. And there are two of them and they
have used it against me. So they said, dad, you gave us this advice. So I wish I hadn't given
them this advice, but these are the two. So one of them is do not live in other people's minds.
And what I mean is very often what we do is we say, I'm going to do this because it'll make
me look good versus this person. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I may not really want
to do it, but I'm living in other people's minds. So it's like giving a remote control to your life
to somebody else. Okay. Because it's status and all that other kind of stuff. So I said, do not
make decisions by living in other people's minds. It doesn't mean don't care about what
other people think, but just don't make your whole life's number one. Yeah. The second one
is do not price yourself out of your dreams, which is don't go get yourself as a consultant.
If you don't want to be a consultant and get a high salary and then find your entire miserable
life, because you've now got used to a high salary that you can't do other things. Right.
Okay. Now, both my daughters use this against me. Okay. And I'll just give you one simple person
who did use it against me. Yeah. And, you know, you may have seen her for a little bit, but she
was actually at that Athena project that you spoke at. So she spent her first six and a half
years at Google being very successful. And then she told me she wanted to become a filmmaker.
And I said, you do realize that working at Google, you make a lot of money and Google's
a big company and a filmmaker, you go back to school and it's insecure and nobody knows what's
going to happen. And she says, dad, one, it doesn't matter because I do not live in other people's
minds because you told me. And she says, my problem is the more I stay at Google, the more I'll get
used to this income. And I left myself out of my dreams. Good for her. Yeah. Good for her.
Relevantなスキルの維持
So that was part two of my conversation with Rishad Tobokoala, an author, speaker, teacher,
and advisor with four decades of experience specializing in helping people, teams,
and organizations reinvent themselves to remain relevant in changing times. He said that there are
certain questions that he gets asked all the time. How do I, as a professional individual,
remain relevant in this competitive, increasingly AI driven workplace? And because of his seniority,
because of his experience, he gets this question, how do I stay relevant? Not just from entry and
middle level people, but especially people who are over 40, 45, if not even 50. When we reach
a certain stratosphere of our careers, we may be successful. But at the same time,
the job options that we may have as we get senior might be less and less. So he advises this three
step relevance program. Number one, allocate one hour for learning every day. Number two,
build a case for the opposite. Number three, spend most of your time making and doing and less time
managing. So step one of this three step relevance program is to allocate one hour for learning every
day. He wakes up every day at 4.30 and between 4.30 and 7.30 is when he manages three operating
systems that he has. And by operating systems, he says there is the intellectual OS, physical OS,
and emotional OS. And in the first three hours of his day every day, between 4.30 AM and 7.30 AM,
he spends about an hour each in maintaining the different operating systems. So intellectual OS
that's about thinking. He spends the first hour using that time to write and think whatever that
時間管理の重要性
comes to his mind and that feeds his writing. The second hour, physical OS, he uses that time to
exercise. He often swims on a regular basis and that's the way to maintain his physical OS. And
then the last hour, emotional OS. So that's approximately between 6.30 and 7.30 when his family
starts to wake up and he spends with his wife and when his kids were small with his children. So
the first three hours for him are his favorite time of the day, but he actually uses that time
very intentionally and strategically by dividing it into three ways of maintaining
multiple modes of operating system that exists in everybody's body and mind. And that kind of
discipline is something that I wish I had and something that I'm sure everybody wishes that
they had so that they can maintain and grow as an individual. A side note, I asked him how long
he's been doing that routine, expecting that this was something that he started to do say in the
past five years or so after he retired from his day-to-day job. And he said that he's actually
been doing this for 30 years since his kids were in the first few years of their adolescence.
And he said that he needed to create that kind of routine so that A, he can have his own personal
time to maintain his intellectual OS, but also his physical OS as well as emotional slash family OS
that he can use to dedicate each day one hour to himself, one hour to his body, one hour to his
mind, one hour to his body, and one hour to his family. So that little anecdote that he shared I
thought was so telling of the level of mental discipline that he has and that speaks volumes
in terms of his success, not just his career but intellectual success that he's had now that he
is avidly writing. So the step one of this relevance program, allocate one hour for learning every day.
逆の視点を持つ
Number two, build a case for the opposite. So best leaders and best practitioners, they
find a way or ways to know what could destroy the businesses or companies that they're managing.
So they either in advance notice those trends coming at their way and create a way
to either defend or avert those forces that might destroy their business, or if they run into
problems that may be destroying their business or practice, then they find a way out of it. So
thinking actively about these changes and these forces that could replace us, how can we get ahead
or at least go around it so that we don't get crushed by those forces? And to do that we need
to build a case for the opposite, especially senior people. Number three, spend most of your time
making and doing and less time managing. So the more time we use to allocate, to manage, to report,
to measure and delegate, increasingly those are tasks that machines can do, say today maybe 50%
of the quality, tomorrow it might be 75%, but say next week or next year it might be 90 to 95 and
then before we know it, it can do as well as a human being can do in order to allocate, manage, report,
measure and delegate. So we need to minimize time for those things and then maximize the time for
making, creating, mentoring and guiding. To summarize the three-step relevance program, according to
Rishad Tabukwala, number one, allocate one hour for learning every day. Step number two, build a case
for the opposite. And step number three, spend most of your time making and doing and less time managing.
成功するための自己管理
And lastly, I just thought about one more thing that he shared with me, which was discipline is
freedom. From a Navy SEAL, discipline is freedom. So, you know, we don't have to necessarily
follow exactly the same routine that Rishad has or even anybody else has. The thing is, we all need
to find a routine and a system that works for us, but at the end of the day, it's not the discipline
that we are after, but it's the freedom that we can gain from that discipline. If you're listening
to this on Spotify, there's a Q&A field, so please do send us your questions and comments.
And if you like our podcast, please leave us a five-star rating. We'll be so grateful.
I'm Reina Moto and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
