The Future of Work Scotland team are delighted to welcome back Julian Stodd. Julian is someone whose work has been of great inspiration to the organising team.
Our experience of being human has changed: through radical
connectivity and now in dialogue with technology, our very
notions of identity, belonging, productivity and purpose are in
motion. Whilst our organisations struggle to define what the
‘future of work’ looks like, from both a technological and
social perspective, for many of us there is an underlying
disquiet, as we feel a sense of loss. A loss of simplicity, of
texture, of connection.
Drawing on his new book The Unreconciled Self: A Planetary
Philosophy, Dr Julian Stodd explores how the forces reshaping
identity, place, belonging, and belief are playing out inside our
organisations, and what leaders need to do differently in
response.
This session moves beyond the usual future of work
conversation about where we work to ask deeper questions:
How do we lead people whose identities are distributed and in
motion? How do we build organisations that thrive on
complexity rather than collapse under it? And what does it
mean to shift from extraction to regeneration - not just
environmentally, but in how we design work itself?
Learning Objectives - what you'll take away from this session:
- Explain how the fragmentation of identity, place, and belonging is reshaping the relationship between individuals and organisations
- Recognise what technology gives us, and steals from
us
- Identify practical shifts leaders can make to move from hierarchical, extractive organisational models toward ecosystem-based, regenerative ones
- Apply the concept of 'quiet leadership' to their own context, in a stronger dialogue with their intention, action, and impact.
Here's a little more about our guest speaker:
Julian's work builds understanding, and practical capability in
large, complex, global organisations seeking to adapt to a
rapidly evolving social and technological context.
Dr Julian Stodd has spent over fourteen years researching
how organisations work at the intersection of formal and social
systems, exploring leadership, learning, culture, and change
through rigorous, evidence-based inquiry.
He founded Sea Salt Learning, a global consultancy through
which this research has shaped policy and practice in
organisations including Apple, Google, Novartis, and The Red
Cross, and within various militaries and government entities.
He sits as a Special Advisor to the World Health Organisation
and is faculty on the University of Pennsylvania's Doctoral
CLO Programme, as well as Visiting Research Fellow at
Middlesex University.
His work over the last two years has focussed on the social
context of AI. ‘Engines of Engagement’ (with Dr Sae Schatz
and Geoff Stead, now on MIT's bookclub list) and
‘Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century’ (with Dr Sae
Schatz) set out what AI means for leadership, culture, and
what it means to be human in increasingly fragmented, digital
systems.
In 2026 he is working across over a hundred organisations on a new project titled ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation:
human, AI, and the space between’, which explores how
organisational structure, value, and decision authority need to
shift if organisations are to become more adaptable and
dynamic.
