Hi everyone and welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast. This is one of our special guest episodes.

So you've got Sarah here, but no Helen this week. And today I'm delighted to be interviewing

Dr Margaret Heffernan, who is the author of a brilliant book called Uncharted How to Map

the Future Together.

And I say brilliant book, really, it's brilliant books, plural.

She's actually the author of six books, an amazing array of different articles that she's written for the FT.

And prior to that, worked at the BBC for 13 years, a serial CEO.

And her TED Talks, which is how I actually first came across Margaret and her work, have now been watched in total by 11 million people. So I feel very privileged and proud to be

spending today chatting to Margaret. So thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure.

I love your concept of squiggly careers since I've had one. So it's a real pleasure to be talking with you.

And I have to say, when Margaret and I first kind of set up this conversation, we were in a slightly different world.

And it's not often, I say the date at the start of a podcast recording, but it is the 24th of March.

We are in the midst of all things coronavirus and everybody dealing with that.

And if anything, I think the book that Margaret has written and kind of the concepts that she

explores feel more relevant and topical today than they have ever done before.

So it will be really interesting, I think, to kind of delve into this idea of

how we think about the future, how we do scenario planning, what we do when crisis or just

unpredictable moments happen. Talking about Squiggly Careers, the book actually opens by talking

about this difference between a complicated world and a complex world. So Margaret,

perhaps you could just start by sharing with us what the difference between those two things

are and kind of why you think it's important to be distinctive about the difference.

So, you know, for a long time, I used to think complex was just a terribly pretentious way

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