Amer Iqbal, former Head of Digital Transformation, APAC, Meta: Channeling Anger Towards Change

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi, I'm Shannon Lucas, the co-CEO of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalysts to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break ship burnout, where we speak with catalyst executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. And today, I'm thrilled to be able to talk to Amr Iqbal. Welcome, Amar.

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Amer Iqbal: Hi Shannon. Thanks for having me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: He has spent the last 20 years leading innovation at some of the world's top companies, including Meta, ie. Facebook and Deloitte. Digital he helps organizations, think, act, and behave more like a startup in order to reimagine their future in a digital economy. He's the author of the upcoming book, the 5 ways to innovate and hosts the riding, the wave of innovation podcast which had some amazing conversations.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: He's been interviewed as an expert on Cnbc. Been published in fast company, the Economic Times and Warc. So you can see why I'm excited for this conversation, and I'm going to jump right in because you have such a fascinating background. But we'd love to hear from you about your journey, and maybe through the lens of a catalyst. If you could share a few, maybe career highlights that you're proud of that help us see your catalytic nature.

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Amer Iqbal: Absolutely. Yeah, thanks, Shannon. It's interesting. That Intro you just gave is kind of I do a lot of keynote speaking. So that's the Intro people give spent the last 20 years working at some of the world's top companies.

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Amer Iqbal: I've always been told you need to boil down your bio to kind of one sentence. So one of the things I say these days is as the CEO of 5 ways to innovate. I'm on a mission to help a thousand corporates reinvent themselves in order to build the business of tomorrow, which I've said that a thousand times, and it just comes out like a rope thing, but it's also, you know, there's no such thing as an overnight success story. There's always a backstory to it. So.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Amer Iqbal: I think probably the most useful thing I find is to talk about my backstory. I started my 1st business at the age of 8. I borrowed a bunch of books from the library and learnt how to code on my apple. Iie computer.

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Amer Iqbal: develop some computer games, shout out to my co-founders, Ben Pryor and Stephen Lamb in Grade 2. We were selling computer games to our classmates. That was my 1st business. My 1st real paycheck was when I was in college I was running a metallica fan site, and this is in the early days of sort of dotcom. I was running banner ads on this metallica fan site I was making. I used to receive a check for about $200

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Amer Iqbal: every couple of weeks, which is pretty good when you're in college, right? That definitely.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Amer Iqbal: It helped a lot. So I kind of got the bug for this digital thing, and then straight out of university, started a startup with my 6 best friends. If you've ever seen the show Silicon Valley, it's it was a little bit like that. 6.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Clock.

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Amer Iqbal: Not very hygienic. 20 year old guys living in a brick house, you know, developing software. But it was a lot of fun.

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Amer Iqbal: And then that was when this whole.com boom was happening. So I went into the world of digital advertising. In 2011 I was nominated for young executive of the year, and I always like to say, this is my great failure story, because I came second, not first, st and when I asked them, Why did I come? Second, they said, listen. It was a dead heat between you and the person who came first.st The only difference was, they have international experience, and you've never worked outside of Australia so

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Amer Iqbal: literally. 3 months later I hopped on a plane, picked up my life and moved to Singapore, joined Deloitte. I was employee number 9 at Deloitte. Digital. Now, it's obviously one of the biggest digital consultancies on the planet. So that was a rocket ship ride of just growth.

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Amer Iqbal: Then joined Meta as again, a 1 person team leading digital transformation, working with consulting firms in a region that has 3 billion potential customers. So it was again, you know, kind of being thrown into it. And then, yeah, 2 years ago, I decided to leave the you know, one of the biggest tech companies in the world to start a tiny little consultancy of my own and go go out alone.

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Amer Iqbal: So yeah, as I say, it's not an overnight story, even though it sometimes sounds like it. There's always a long backstory. But you know that whole thing about joining the dots, looking backwards.

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Amer Iqbal: tying back to the catalyst concept is, I think, what I've found is you can hear from that story. I'm pretty good at getting in at the start of things.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm.

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Amer Iqbal: I think there are probably a hundred other people who are as qualified, if not more qualified, than me, to run a business once it's up and running, and it's operational. But that design build, scale those very early stage things. I kind of have done that over and over again, and you shouldn't ignore those patterns. I think that's kind of where my unique strengths seem to lie.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I want to come back to that, because that's super interesting to unpack. But I'm curious, so we don't know if catalysts are born or raised. But you're like my story goes all the way back till I was 8. So there's some interesting right? What did your family think like? Was there someone who was modeling what it meant to start a company at 8.

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Amer Iqbal: I don't know if there's someone who is modeling it. My entire family, by the way, is in the medical industry, so I'm very much the black sheep of the family. My dad's a doctor. He's been running his practice since before I was born, so I guess I've always been surrounded by entrepreneurs. My brother now runs, you know, medical centers and stuff like that. So in my family everyone's kind of an entrepreneur. Uncles and aunts, and all that sort of stuff. So I guess just starting a business always felt like, Oh, that that seems like something anyone can do

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Amer Iqbal: which I realize now as a grown up. Well

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Amer Iqbal: in the corporate world we hear lots of people talking about. We need an entrepreneurial mindset. But then you look around this boardroom and nobody sitting around there has worked outside of a company with fewer than a thousand employees. They've all grown up in this corporate world, so you know, it's not really the school of hard knocks. But there's definitely definitely something you learn. I would encourage everyone out there to start their own business at some point in their life, no matter how big or small, you learn things that you wouldn't otherwise.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, and learn about yourself. Okay? And then one other question, follow up. Question to that, and then we'll get to your your sensing

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: through that lens. I love that like every startup you're like, it was my one friend, or my 6 friends, or lots of friends.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: How did you find people who could like see? You see, the unique talents that you were bringing? Did they show up in similar ways, or were you still the oddball as like this, this cohort of founders.

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Amer Iqbal: I think I've just been lucky to be surrounded by friends who believe in me enough, and possibly don't have a strong will of their own to say, Hey, here's where things can be going, and instead, you know, be the supporting role, which is very fortunate. And I say, friends, because genuinely. It has been friends 1st and then business partners. Second.

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Amer Iqbal: that's a blessing in disguise to surround yourself with people who can see your vision. See how much you believe in the vision, and then come along for the ride to support you in that vision, and be kind of a critical part of it.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's such a good segue back to what you were saying about. Like, you know, your superpowers are the connecting the dots, being there recognizing things early stage you know other people can take those things on and operationalize them and run them later.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Tell me a little bit about that process for you like, how do you like? How do you know like this is the thing this is the emergent thing that I'm gonna spend my time on, and then I think the follow up is, how do you get people to believe in that vision? Because often, if you're very early, that's not like, there's a market segment that's defined, or you know how much money you even need from an investment perspective.

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Amer Iqbal: Yeah, it's I genuinely think you kind of have this innate sense. If you're sitting there waiting for a business case, and you're trying to crunch the numbers and all that sort of stuff. It's not the right way to go about it, and I think people who lean into that method probably aren't going to be those

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Amer Iqbal: catalysts, or those founders, or the people who are the early stage type people. I think it is

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Amer Iqbal: people who have this innate sense in their gut, and are able to join lots of disparate dots. I had an article published way back in 2013, which was around the future of health.

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Amer Iqbal: And on that blog post I've been commenting for the last 10 years. I've been commenting every time a company comes out. I'm wearing an aura ring right now, you know, there's all of these biometrics and devices that measure our health. 10 years ago they didn't exist. But I could see, okay, well, there's analytics is becoming this big thing, the concept of the quantified self. There's a business model rife for disruption, which is healthcare. It's sort of a 200 year old business model. So it's taking all of these different dots and pieces and kind of

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Amer Iqbal: in a beautiful mind way, joining all the dots and saying, Hey, I think there's going to be an opportunity there. Why don't we

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Amer Iqbal: go and explore? And I think that second part is probably even more important than the joining the dots. It's let's go and explore this. Why not? I can always come back to the safety of the corporate job or whatever it is later, but this sounds like something interesting worth pursuing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So understanding all of that, how do you understand what it means to be a catalyst executive? And while we spend some time talking about like the entrepreneurial side of it. Most of our listeners are in large organizations, so I'm wondering, how do you relate to that concept? And how has it supported you on your journey, especially in like huge organizations, even though you started as a team of one. Meta was still huge.

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Amer Iqbal: Yeah, yeah, it was. I was one person amongst 80,000 others. So it's not like I was working for a small business by any means. I think the whole concept of a catalyst is someone who comes in and speeds up

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Amer Iqbal: the reaction or speeds up the process of change. So kind of an accelerator, right? And I've I've also been fortunate to have people around me. I had a former boss. I always joke his whole career path. If you look at his Cv. It's 2 years here 2 years here every 2 years he moves on which some people would say, Well, that's job hopping. But if you look at what that person has done, he's kind of gone into. These large corporates

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Amer Iqbal: started something. So he was kind of the employee number one of Deloitte digital started this thing, got it all set up, made the business case, convinced the leadership that we need to hire. You know. It was kind of funny where in a big office of people in pinstripe suits, and then all these kids in jeans and sneakers and beanbags rock up. Making that business case is kind of tough, but I think there is definitely a role in the world for those sort of people who can

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Amer Iqbal: every 2 years go in catalyze that change and then move on. So I've tried to take inspiration from that. I'm not quite the 2 years sort of person. I tend to see it through a bit longer. But

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Amer Iqbal: yeah, being that catalyst has kind of become my whole brand. I feel probably when I was younger I was arrogant enough to think companies are hiring me as a speaker or as a consultant because of something about me.

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Amer Iqbal: Maybe it's my experience or my intelligence, or they like my style, or something like that, but I got a very healthy dose of reality. This is about 7 years ago. It was actually the very 1st time I was presenting 5 ways to innovate as a keynote. So it was at a big conference called Digicon in 2017 October 2017, which, if you don't know, Digicon. They've had very high profile speakers, Adam Grant, Arianna Huffington, Scott, Galloway. They've had very high profile speakers in the past.

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Amer Iqbal: so I turn up. I'm kind of an unknown speaker

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Amer Iqbal: standing on a stage in this huge hall of 500 seats. I'm about to go on in 5 min, and only 10 of the seats are filled. So there's 420 empty seats that I'm staring out at. And I just kind of had this panic attack I'm like, oh, no, they've made a big mistake. There's

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Amer Iqbal: other much higher profile speakers down the hall in these tiny little 20 person rooms, so I kind of went into sales mode. I went out to the front door. I'm like trying to convince people, hey? Do you want to come in and hear a talk about innovation. After about a minute one of the ushers he comes up to me and he says.

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Amer Iqbal: Listen, Mr. Iqbal, don't worry. The rooms have been allocated, based on pre-bookings. The people are just running late. They're coming from this plenary session. Opening the conference. Can you please go backstage and get ready? Which I did, and it filled up in a couple of minutes, and I gave that presentation. But that dose of humility was very much look. This concept of innovation and catalyzing change has nothing to do with me. People had pre registered because of the topic

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Amer Iqbal: because there are these change makers in all of these big organizations who had come converge from all over the world to come and hear a talk that simplifies. I think the 5 Ways is a very simple way of thinking about innovation. So

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Amer Iqbal: yeah, they had come to hear this simplified version. And so since then it's been 7 years every single month since October 2017. I've given that keynote presentation somewhere in the world. So it has this enduring popularity. And

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Amer Iqbal: yeah, it's just kind of a lesson in humility to know that

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Amer Iqbal: my role is to find those catalysts and to help them drive, change, to be their champion, to give them the tools and frameworks, to drive change within their large organizations, where they may be struggling to to convince their leadership.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: All right quickly. We need to hear what the 5 ways are.

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Amer Iqbal: Of course. Yes. So it's a framework that came out of a piece of analysis around. About that time we analyzed 100 companies to figure out what makes the best innovators on the planet tick. The 1st insight was when failure occurs. It's mostly because there's a lack of structured systems. So we just looked at. Okay, what are the best innovators doing? Sure, there are hundreds and hundreds of

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Amer Iqbal: innovation tactics. But when you really boil it down, there are 5 really common ones that show up every single time a company has been successful. So the 1st one is upskilling. They're training their people, giving them some sort of tools and methodologies to make their people more innovative. The second one, we've seen lots of innovation hubs, innovation labs and the like.

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Amer Iqbal: They can be very successful. We've also seen a lot of not successful ones when they're not tied to sort of key business metrics, but definitely a very common one is innovation labs. The 3rd one is becoming much more common now, which we call startup studio, which is where you see corporate ventures within the larger corporate. They're sort of launching these smaller speedboats or startups within a larger company. 4, th one is incubators and accelerators. Let's build an external space.

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Amer Iqbal: invite a whole bunch of external startups in. We'll give them some funding, some mentoring, some space, and then we'll invest opportunistically. And the 5th one is ecosystem, which is, let's just set up a sensing and scanning capability. Hey, we want to move into the space of Fintech. Can we scan the startup ecosystem to find potential startups that we could partner with in the Fintech space. And you'll see on that. There's also kind of a scale from invested upskilling and innovation labs means

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Amer Iqbal: your leadership team really needs to have their hand on the wheel and be super involved in the day to day. Of the innovation versus incubators and ecosystem type. Players are what we call more divested.

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Amer Iqbal: which is

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Amer Iqbal: particularly for more traditional companies who maybe don't have 5 Steve Jobs walking around the office. You know. It can be more helpful to say, well, innovation may be happening outside of our own 4 walls. How do we sort of dip into that and tap into that. So? Yeah, that's a framework that we've been delivering for the last 7 or so years and been super helpful for fortune. 500 companies, just to give that very simple system and structure around their corporate innovation, activity.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, clarity is so important. I mean, like I've I've had the good fortune to get to play with all of those different models, but I think one of the last things you said is just the being clear like, are we looking more internal? Are we looking external? Do we have the leadership capabilities to do more of the internal ones and the appetite versus not

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm curious. I want to go back to both the guy that you were talking about, and maybe yourself like, how do you make the case? There's this guy that you're like? Oh, that's super interesting. I've watched him do these things. He started. Bcg, delight. Digital sorry he started delight. Digital and but he never stays for more than 2 years, and I'm guessing that there's overlap with people like that that you would want companies to help identify like, who are they upskilling or like? Who are they tapping to do

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: the innovation hubs to get the stuff started like, how do you make the case to leaders to like

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: that? Those people who are moving around as long as they're having impact can be valuable, and then how to help them identify them.

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Amer Iqbal: I think the identification, you know, game recognizes game, so I think catalysts are pretty good at recognizing other catalysts.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: 100%.

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Amer Iqbal: To find each other and gravitate towards each other. I think there's a huge part of that. I definitely found that at Meta. As I say, I kind of joined as a 1 person team sort of leading digital transformation, working with consulting firms. So yes, we had all these partnerships setting up partnerships across a very large region of the world with these top tier consulting firms.

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Amer Iqbal: But then a big part of that was also finding the people within Meta, who are the catalysts? Who are the game changers who I can partner up with these consulting firms? And the truth was, there wasn't really a

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Amer Iqbal: a checklist of here are the personality traits that's going to identify a catalyst. You know. There wasn't sort of a they need to be at a certain level or working in a certain department, it really comes down to the individual, and I think a lot of it is unsurprisingly. A lot of them had come from the world of consulting themselves. A lot of them were working in teams where perhaps.

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Amer Iqbal: you know they were. You could notice these patterns of. They're working in quite a constrained area, but they are venturing out and maybe doing some other things proactively. So there are these signals that you can kind of see, and it's great working at a company like Meta, where we have great platforms like workplace, etc, internally, where you can

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Amer Iqbal: pretty easily start to discover people on the other side of the planet who are doing similar things. I remember I made one post about running a design thinking workshop, and immediately somebody from the New York office reached out to me and said, Hey, we have this little community of design thinkers. Do you want to join our community? And they're literally spread all over the world. So I think that's increasingly as data

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Amer Iqbal: becomes more common and more accessible across especially global organizations, those signals or those sort of traits that are a little bit harder to put your finger on. They're becoming easier to identify those catalysts.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah. And I think AI is gonna continue to help make that even easier.

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Amer Iqbal: Absolutely. Yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Okay. So you've been and like most catalysts, one of the things I love about the definition of catalyst is, we can just as easily start an early stage startup, start our own company drive innovation, or, you know, transformation and super large organizations. But so in your time, driving you know new things in a super large organization. What were some of the challenges that you faced? And maybe there's stories of failures that you can share. That'll help us see the lessons learned. Those are always interesting. You already shared sort of one fail story.

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Amer Iqbal: Yeah, I always like to talk about failure stories, because fail fast fail forward. That's we have that mantra. Many companies are scared of admitting failure. But I think

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Amer Iqbal: catalyst will recognize this. Every organization has an immune system to change.

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Amer Iqbal: especially in the field of innovation. That is the thing that we constantly come up against the case business case. For why do we need to innovate? I think that's a thing of the past. If you're trying to convince your leadership. Why do we need to innovate? Then I'd probably recommend, if you're a catalyst, maybe move to a different company.

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Amer Iqbal: 100%.

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Amer Iqbal: Most decent companies. Now, I think, and leadership teams recognize why they need to innovate. So then, really, the question becomes about how how do we innovate? And how do we come up against that immune system to change which is natural, to keep the status quo again. I'll talk a little bit about Meta, so my role there, as I say, is in a company of 80,000 people.

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Amer Iqbal: where the majority of those people are there to build and sell advertising solutions. 98% of Meta's revenue comes from advertising still today.

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Amer Iqbal: And so now I'm coming in and saying, Hey, leadership team, we need to partner with these consulting firms who they're not media sellers, you know. They're not media agencies. But do we agree that intrinsically, these consulting firms, you know, the Bcgs deloittes accentures of the world. They are there advising these top advertisers, these top clients.

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Amer Iqbal: these very large companies who are spending billions and billions of dollars on our platform. They're being advised by these consulting firms. The technology that the ads are running on is being implemented by these consulting firms. So in theory, yes, everybody agrees. Leadership agrees. Yes, they are absolutely critical to the future of our business. And yet, when it comes down to performance, metrics and those sort of things, how do you put performance measures on that. So for better or worse, I think

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Amer Iqbal: the way that the organization started to look at it was, well, you know, maybe we can start to put some advertising metrics around consulting firms, because we don't really have a better model, for, you know, measuring these partnerships and those sort of things which I think

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Amer Iqbal: it was something that we definitely had to navigate around, but absolutely made life difficult. And so, therefore my job became more of a diplomat. I think, finding those people who have a passion for change and are going to go above and beyond, they're going to stick their neck out and spend time working with consulting firms and champion these projects, and put their budgets towards these things, even though there's no direct roi in it for them, which is easier said than done.

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Amer Iqbal: And again, you know, that would often come back that immune system to change. Guess what? When quarterly performance reviews are coming around, people get really focused on their advertising metrics and kpis and those sort of things. And some of these other initiatives tend to fall by the wayside. So yeah, I think that was just a great lesson in not having kpis and Roi and all the metrics and numbers on my side. It was much more of a

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Amer Iqbal: soft power of sort of influencing and nudging people in this very sort of ambiguous environment, which was certainly a great learning experience for me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So I just want to understand. So the takeaway there is finding the people who are going to lean in, regardless of the incentive alignment like they can see the value inherently in what you're doing. Is that is that what you're saying.

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Amer Iqbal: I think. Yeah, finding those people who can inherently see the value also just getting airtime. You know, I was lucky enough to have a boss who would get me in front of the regional leadership

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Amer Iqbal: at least once a quarter, if not once a month, so I'm constantly just in their ear. They probably got annoyed with my presentations at a certain point. But at least there's always constantly this thing like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I know we're focused on metrics. But yeah, you're right, you know, almost begrudgingly. Yes, it is very important for us to be investing in these areas and partnering with. So I think.

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Amer Iqbal: Don't. Don't be afraid to be annoying. Sometimes you just need.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Amer Iqbal: Message front of mind. A lot of it is communications for better or worse. Just making sure that you are boiling down your messages to something very, very crystal clear. I would always get up with reports and stats and very clear things that people can then go away and present to their teams as well to say, here's why we're investing in these areas. So again, just equipping those people to make my case for me was a big part of it.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That such a good point to end on it's like the the power of creating change is what people are talking about or the narrative that they're carrying forward for us, because we can't be in all the rooms all the time. Right? And I took like when I was at Vodafone. It was a joke, but it wasn't. A joke is like, as a, you know, innovation lead. 50% of my job was marketing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But 50% or more of that was internally and it like when when you step into like, these official roles of innovation like that just didn't occur to me. But you realize like, and we'll get bored, especially as catalysts like when we teach our class. We're like, you might have to repeat this 20 times, which is like the anathema to us, because we're just like, let's get on with business. Can't say this thing again, but you have to.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm curious. So it sounds like you have the early stage detector

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and a desire to work in different capacities in the large organization, like one of the problems that we can have as catalysts and innovators in general. Whatever is, we can drink our own champagne, we can be convinced of our story, and we may actually be right. I mean that, like, there may be this like empirical, this would be the best thing to do.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But it's not always the thing that's gonna get through the organization. And so I'm wondering if you have advice like, especially if there's a misalignment of of incentives. And so you talked about, you know, failing fast failing forward. Maybe there's 5 ideas that you're actually trying to bring to the company. And you're you're constantly trying to sense which one has the the best.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: you know, chance of survival. How do you? You know? How have you historically done that assessment? Because it's like there's part where it's like you got to protect the seed. But then there's this other part of you also got to push it out and bring the organization along.

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Amer Iqbal: I'm probably a terrible person to ask this question to, because I feel, you know, I came from the world of advertising. I remember a very, very clear lesson. I was taught by our creative director. One time I was up on a whiteboard, and we were coming up with a pitch for a campaign. How do we get these marketing messages across?

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Amer Iqbal: And I'm like, it's this, and it's this, and it's this. And it's this. So then the creative director. You've probably seen this exercise. He picks up a bunch of whiteboard pens. There's probably 10 of them, and he says, Here, catch this, and he throws all 10 of them at me, and obviously I drop all 10 of them. Then he picks up one and he's like, Okay, now just catch this, and you catch the one. So the lesson there is. Yeah, don't try to push all 5 messages through, because it just creates noise, and you're doing yourself a disservice.

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Amer Iqbal: Now, okay, so we agree, there's only one message you're going to push through. Which one do you push through.

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Amer Iqbal: I have definitely made a career of not looking at, which is going to be the most receptive, and which one has got the biggest chance of success. I'm much more of the view of. Let me go away with myself and my team and my partners, and these sort of things, and figure out what is going to have the biggest impact on the thing that we care about, and often that may not be the most easily digestible.

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Amer Iqbal: But I also feel if you're going to be this innovator. If you're going to be a catalyst, if you're going to be a change maker.

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Amer Iqbal: you can't be a politician.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm.

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Amer Iqbal: You either need to play the politics or don't, and I've made a very conscious decision in my career to not which can rub people the wrong way. But yes, it's once you've picked your idea, you need to get behind it a hundred percent. I have been accused of maybe having a reality distortion field at times. But I really think at times you need to have that

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Amer Iqbal: kind of almost delusional belief in this thing that you're pushing through otherwise. Guess what it's not going to if you don't believe in it, and you don't back it that much. How can you ever expect anyone else? Who's it's not their baby to back you all the way. So I think every idea, or I don't really like using the word idea. I'll say tactic or initiative

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Amer Iqbal: really needs that parent, maybe, who has a completely skewed view of the value, the innate value of this thing, who just believes in it all the way, and in doing so, that's how you're going to create these disciples around you who will come and follow you on the journey without that almost religious belief. I don't think it's going to get through just with pure pragmatism.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm guessing. I mean, I just hear you like there's a there's an emotional toll and emotional cost and energy. Let me say it this way. There's an energy that you're putting into the system when you're doing that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: How do you keep your energy fulfilled and sustained while you're doing that.

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Amer Iqbal: The nice answer to that question is meditation. I do meditate a lot. I've just recently completed my transcendental meditation training, but I've been doing. Have you also.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I was signed up for it, and I couldn't do it because I got sick. So it's like in in March. I'm so excited so we'll.

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Amer Iqbal: What type, thing?

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Sorry it's time.

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Amer Iqbal: You'll really enjoy that experience. I've just started doing that. But I've been doing mindfulness, meditation, and these sort of things for many years. So that's the the nice answer to that question. The truth is, again, a lot of my friends will tell you. Anger is my superpower. Get frustrated and emotional about things. But it's how do you channel that again? Coming up with the 5 ways to innovate came from a place of frustration with.

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Amer Iqbal: I think I'd just come back from a meeting where I had bumped into that organizational immune system talking to a client. And they're like, Yeah, no, we're not going to do that and come back quite frustrated and said, Okay, let's just look at what does good innovation look like. And then pouring that

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Amer Iqbal: energy. I suppose that could be anger, it could be thrown into punching a boxing bag or something like that. And instead pouring that into okay, let me just go really deep into this thing for the next 3 days. Let me get my head into it. Let me crunch the numbers. How would I think about this? How can I make an airtight business case

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Amer Iqbal: that is irrefutable

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Amer Iqbal: that you can't deny, and that I can then take back and say, Look, here is the reality of the thing and have that really strong belief behind it. That's probably where I tend to pour it into a slightly more productive way. But yes, there, there is a lot of meditation along the way to try and manage the energy level.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Okay, maybe that's the answer to the question. I, freaking love, how honest that answer was. And I'm like, I got goosebumps, cause I I so much of our audience, I'm sure, is gonna relate to that like, Oh, frustration, anger. Why can't you guys see this like it's so obvious.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So you ended with. Well, I can maybe use the meditation to channel my anger into more productive. But I'm wondering if you have any other hints, because, like it can be like debilitating sometimes the level of frustration. But I love that you're like, but it's so much energy and power that you're using that as a superpower for good. Any any other thoughts about how to help them productively use the anger and frustration.

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Amer Iqbal: Find your tribe. So I talked a lot about, you know, finding your friends finding your people. I also think your tribe doesn't need to be the immediate people around you. I've been fortunate to be surrounded by friends who will come with me on my journey and my co-founder Rosh, in 5 ways to innovate. We've had many a session where we'll go out to a bar and blow off steam, and, you know, complain about things. But then we'll come back to something productive. So I think having a release valve is important.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Amer Iqbal: Your tribe, but often also your tribe may not be. I joke with my wife. My tribe is people like Tim Ferriss and Adam grant people who, I feel are my friends because I'm listening to them on podcasts. Not that I've ever spoken with them. But

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Amer Iqbal: you know, I kind of feel finding that tribe, whether it's immediately around you or just feeling that you're not alone in this journey that other people are going through it, listening to podcasts, like your podcast I think, are real game changers to make you feel like, Hey, I'm not just this misunderstood problem, child off on the side. Other people are experiencing what I'm experiencing. It's okay, I think, acknowledging your feelings. It's okay to feel frustrated. It's okay to feel angry. That means that you really really care about this thing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I think it's.

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Amer Iqbal: Worry when you're not having an emotional response. If you just walk away and go, I think that's the worst possible thing. If you're going to be successful in business, and you really really want to drive change in the world. You need to have that strong emotional feeling in your gut. Otherwise, something's wrong.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amen.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I could continue asking you questions for hours. I hope we get to have a beer sometime soon, and then when you're in New York. But I am going to pivot us to our last question as we wrap up. I'd love to hear about your favorite catalysts, past or present, who inspires you? And why do they stand out to you.

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Amer Iqbal: I've listened to your podcast a bit, and I love the answers to this question. Mine is maybe a little bit different. I thought about this? Who have I really been gravitating towards recently, and in the last few years I would say, the name that keeps coming up is Rick Rubin.

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Amer Iqbal: I don't know if you know Rick Rubin. So he he is the greatest living music producer on the planet. He is the the founder of Def Jam records. He started it out of his Nyu Dorm room. Actually, he.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Wow!

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Amer Iqbal: One of the co-founders of the Beastie boys.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I tried.

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Amer Iqbal: Run. Dmc. Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Johnny Cash, Red hot Chili peppers. He kind of revived Metallica's career. He's got a Hulu series with Paul Mccartney. So if you haven't checked out Rick Rubin, don't sleep on him. He is a very, very wise human being. Actually, he's got a book out now called the Creative Act, a way of being which I loved reading. Anyone who feels

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Amer Iqbal: they have a creative spark in them, which Rick will say, is everyone on the planet is a creator is an artist of some description. Please check out at least a summary of that book.

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Amer Iqbal: But the thing I love about him is, he's very, very blunt about saying I have no discernible skills. I work in the field of music. If you handed me a guitar or piano. I wouldn't know how to play a single note. I don't know how to operate a mixing desk, and so he's often been asked. So, therefore, what are you bringing to the table? And he's like well.

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Amer Iqbal: I believe, and I have confidence in my taste.

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Amer Iqbal: and I think that's a really powerful thing. He has this innate sense of what his value is. It's not guiding people on the music theory or the technical aspects. It's just being able to say, that's good, or that's not good, and having a really clear way of communicating that, and being able to sort of

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Amer Iqbal: be the person who brings the best out of others. That's really what he's created. He creates the space for others to find their unique voice. And I think if we come back to the business world again. One of my mottos is helping corporates unlock the capability to reinvent themselves.

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Amer Iqbal: I think you know there's that cliche in the world of consulting. Let me borrow your watch to tell you the time. That's the I think the antithesis of what good consulting should be

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Amer Iqbal: as change makers as catalysts. What we really should be doing is going out there, spreading our message, spreading our toolkits and our knowledge to enable other catalysts and other change makers to drive change within their organizations. So yeah, I look at somebody like Rick Rubin. He's done that on a global scale within the creative and especially the music industry, which gives me goosebumps just talking about it. The other thing, by the way, that I've totally copied from him. He's also absolutely Mr. Meditation, but

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Amer Iqbal: he lives in Malibu. He goes for a walk on the beach every single morning. I'm fortunate I'm living right near a beach right now. So for the last year every single morning begins with going for a walk on the beach, and either listening to a podcast or doing some sort of meditation which has been a game changer in my life, as well.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So you are also equally inspirational. Thank you so much for sharing so many amazing takeaways. Thanks for this lovely conversation.

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Amer Iqbal: An absolute pleasure. Shannon. Thanks.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And to our listening audience. Thanks so much for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world. Be sure to check out our book, move fast, break, shit, burn out, or go to our website at catalystconstellations.com. Also we'll put a link in the show notes, because the book is coming out 5 ways to innovate. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take 10 min to rate it on itunes, spotify Stitcher wherever you listen to your podcasts and

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: course. As we were talking about the importance of tribe. If you have other catalysts in your life. Hit the share button and send a link their way.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thanks again.