The Human Factor Podcast

As human beings – what do we set out to achieve every day? From a human psychology perspective we know that all humans want to have a productive day in a relative sense, need to have a feeling of achievement, attainment or a feeling of being appreciated. As we have said on a regular basis on the podcast – what needs to happen for a person to go home at the end of the day and say “I had a good day”...

In all walks of life, and one of the great natural feelings of being a human being is that gut instinct for something. That feeling about something, a feeling in the stomach, a nagging doubt or a natural intuition. It’s fair to say we will have all experienced it at some point in our life. In the world of business or sport or any industry where decisions made purely on instinct can be extremely co...

Guest Marc Starfield discusses the meaning of the connected experience, workplace experience, and emotional and technological connection. Over the last 15 to 20 years as the age of consumerisation and digital has taken hold – the fabric of how we live our lives has changed beyond recognition. We now have the capability to curate and design the experiences that help us to live our life the way we w...

Originally composed of 20 street performers in 1984, Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group completely reinvented circus arts and has become a world leader in live entertainment. Established in Montreal, the Canadian organization has brought wonder and delight to over 180 million spectators with productions presented in 450 cities in 60 countries. Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group currently emplo...

Inclusivity, parity, acceptance, fairness, equality, diversity – these are common descriptive labels that we hear and see every day. As we begin 2023 a question that needs to be asked – are we making enough progress? Last summer the England womens football team, known as the Lionesses, won the European Championship for the first time. It was an amazing tournament and one that will hopefully inspir...

Throughout our podcast series we have touched on the areas of performance and personal growth. A common thread throughout many of the conversations has been the importance of doing the basics brilliantly as part of our daily performance. What we haven’t perhaps discussed so far what “performance” actually means and how do we influence it, improve it and benefit from it. Over the last couple of yea...

A question – “how well do you know yourself?” Not at a superficial level, but really know yourself. Is understanding oneself something we need to do consciously, is it something that we discover across our lifetime – some may even ask “why is understanding self so important in the first place”? Aristotle once said – “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”. The author Doris Mortman...

In 2017, Googles DeepMind AlphaGo artificial intelligence defeated the worlds number one Go player Ke Jie. This was considered significant as Go is one of the worlds most complex games and this capability was thought to be another 20 years or so away. The AI built its capability by studying historical matches and playing thousands of games against itself to learn strategies. This felt like a tippi...

Guest David Perring, Director of Research at Fosway Group, provides insight on the role and deployment of technology in the digital age. Through the pandemic and coming out the other side, there were so many column inches on what happened through that time, what it meant for the future and coined the now massively evolved term “The Great Resignation”. There is no doubt that things are different, t...

The first definition of culture comes from 19th-century British anthropologist Edward Tylor: Culture…”is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Culture has been called “the way of life for an entire society” In addition to its intrinsic value, culture provides important social and...