when I was a young girl I thought I was
an alien from outer space my dad who was
an Olympics gymnastics coach had been
recruited to come to New Zealand to
train the New Zealand gymnastics team so
with his four young daughters under 12 I
was the youngest
we came to Christchurch in the seventies
we were the first Taiwanese family we
had a hundred and twenty US Dollars and
we didn’t speak English I felt like a
Martian my mother packed us fried rice
which we ate with chopsticks at school
the kids called us names we were told to
come to an event and bring a plate so we
did six of them for every member of our
family I remember the first day that we
were in Christchurch mum and dad would
try sort out the house so they said to
us go to the park and we caused a car
crash because the sight of four girls
Chinese girls holding hands and red silk
Kim and Mao suits for some reason was
not a sight that you usually see
crossing the road to Hagley Park and so
all my life I’ve had people yell at me
and say you should go back to where you
came from and I inculcated from a very
young age that actually being a migrant
was not a good thing and being Chinese
was not a good thing but that was last
century and so when I think about the
21st century I have realised something I
have realized something that I want to
share with you today that actually the
future has now come to meet me and that
in the 21st century when you have two
key megatrends which is digital
disruption and globalization that all of
that practice that I had starting at the
age of six makes me Malcolm Gladwell’s
expert and the 21st century it isn’t
enough to be smart
and in the 21st century it isn’t enough
to have EQ in the 21st century when you
are being disrupted and it’s quicker
faster all the time you need to be able
to adapt you need a cue that’s the
adaptability quotient the ability to
adapt and thrive in an environment of
change and a cue isn’t enough because
you need to have CQ because the second
key mega trend is globalization now I’m
in a good place to talk about this
because I am standing today in Auckland
and Auckland is the fourth most super
diverse city in the world so what a
super diversity means it means a country
with it 25% or more of the people are
not born here and where there are a
hundred and more ethnicities I know
they’re in Auckland right now in less
than 500 working days one in three
people in this city will look like me
yes it’s true the Chinese are taking
over the city and also I know yes let’s
let’s have a round of applause it’s
really true the alien invasion the other
thing that I know is that New Zealand is
the fourth most super diverse country in
the OECD
so you want to recruit those customers
you want to target those clients you
want to be able to manage your talent
pool and understand what attracts those
stuff then you need to have cultural
capability so AQ & Seek you are the new
IQ and EQ and I confidently predict that
in five years time when people are
recruiting they’re going to be looking
for people who are smart and who got EQ
but the thing that will distinguish them
is the fact that they can adapt and be
flexible to any sort of change and that
they can work with anybody not like them
I would like to say that I am the first
person who has had this amazing thought
but actually there’s a little-known chap
called Charles Darwin who kind of said
it better he said it’s not the strongest
of the species that survives nor the
most
intelligent that survives it’s the one
that is most adaptable to change but I
am the one who today for the first time
globally are telling you about what I
consider to be the migrant effect and
this migrant effect is the powerful
difference between adapting to cope and
adapting to one
I think this migrant effect which forces
people who are otherwise marginalized
and different with a Judah ethnicity
with sexuality or ability or disability
to adapt the mainstream have had more
practice than everybody else at being
disrupted and so they’ve had to force
themselves to confront uncomfortable
things and change and so as a
consequence of this they can use their
to win and so can I just say the show of
hands how many people here were not born
in this country whoa look at that the
overwhelming majority of the people here
who here has been marginalized because
you’re either indigenous or because of
your sexuality or you have a different
ability Wow okay so what I’m trying to
say to you is that in the past you
consider this to be a weakness you like
me try to hide this because you thought
it was something that you shouldn’t
share with everybody else well I’m about
to tell you that that is completely
wrong this is your superpower and I’m
going to make visible the invisible the
invisible was that we pretended that we
weren’t these weaknesses but I’m telling
you that you need to shout it from the
rooftops because this is the migrant
effect and it is hardwired now this is
my next point if you want to continue to
win you have to throw a rock at a tiger
I had discovered that if you throw a
rock at a tiger then you have to run and
that’s the motivation that you need now
I just told you about the first Tiger in
my life I didn’t throw the rock my
parents did we didn’t have a choice we
came to this country
and when I got really miserable and
stopped eating and got anorexia because
I was not happy in this country they
couldn’t take us home because we didn’t
have enough money to go home so we had
to stay here and we had to make the best
of it and I vowed and declared then that
if we were going to stay in this country
then I was going to make something of
myself so what is a tiger what is the
tiger you see a tiger is different in
everyone’s lives I can’t tell you what a
tiger is for you what a tiger is for you
is not for me and what is my tiger is
not your tiger a lot of tigers in there
but what I’m trying to say is this a
tiger is something that is a point of no
return a tiger is something that puts
you under pressure to change because
change is uncomfortable a tiger is
something that makes you have to run
faster dig deeper be more resilient be
brighter get yourself out of a corner
this ability to adapt has to be so good
otherwise you’re going to get eaten okay
so all I can do is tell you examples of
my own
Tigers okay so here we are and I cute
I’m the little and the little cute one
at the end this was us and Taiwan you
know my parents who are both elite
athletes taught us to swim so we were
all swim champions and you know the way
my dad taught me to swim is kind of a
bit like a tiger
he’d throw you in the pool this happened
at the age of three and just before you
drowned he put a rope around you and
walk you up and down like a dog you know
but but that meant that I was a very
good breaststroke champion before I came
to New Zealand and then of course this
is Iceland New Zealand and there’s my
father wearing his New Zealand blazer
and my lovely mother so this is
hardwired in me now so figure out which
one I am I’m not the Maasai
okay can I just say that this photo was
taken at 6 a.m. in the morning before it
got too hot in Kenya last Christmas we
were in the National Park and my Messiah
had a tattoo which signaled that he had
coup
two lions and he had to run with me
because there were lines in that park
and I just want you to know that I
couldn’t hear him and you could hear me
I was going and you couldn’t hear him at
all
he was running along and he was
soundless but anyway I was determined to
beat him when the photo was being taken
so what I discovered is that this
migrant effect becomes hardwired you get
used to having it to adapt and change to
being awake all the time and to being
resilient so I want to tell you about my
Tigers okay this is my first Tiger so I
come from a family of academics we were
always in education I was the youngest
senior lecturer in law in New Zealand at
the time my mum and dad desperately
wanted me to be the youngest law
professor but I quit I quit and I
decided to go and set up one of New
Zealand’s first boutique law firms and
Australasia is first public law
specialist firm that was a tiger because
I had no idea what I was doing but I
wanted to know whether or not I was any
good at practice I wanted to know
whether I was any good at business and
so the Dean said well don’t quit just
take leave but I knew that if I took
leave when the going got tough I would
just crawl back to the law faculty
because it was easier and thank God I
quit because it was really hard I think
I managed to lose $80,000 in the first
three months by signing the wrong lease
for our premises but it got better
it didn’t get easier but I got more
practice and I got better and so I
didn’t have a choice we were out there
I’d mortgaged the house we had to run
and the good thing was that over time we
succeeded but then 20 years on what
happened was I fell asleep
søren kierkegaard is a fantastic Danish
philosopher he said the trouble is we
are all asleep and so I was petting my
way to the office every day practicing a
little law going home we were doing
testicle II and I was so bored and I
could because I was fully adapted to my
new environment so I realized that what
I needed to do was I needed to wake up
and I thought the only way to wake up is
to find another tiger and to throw a
rock at it so I said to everybody I’m
going to Auckland and they said you’re
mad you can’t go to Auckland you’re a
public lawyer you’re a constitutional
lawyer you have to stone Wellington and
I said watch me and that was five years
ago so I went to Auckland and at the
same time as I went to Auckland I did
another thing which was throwing a rock
at a tiger I thought to myself after 20
years of being a serious lawyer and
trying to pretend that I wasn’t Chinese
because I didn’t want to be stereotyped
in Boxton as a lawyer that kind of did
tax for Asians I never talked about it I
just pretended I wasn’t Chinese
and I just want you to know how hard
that is when you look like this alright
so I decided that I was going to speak
out about super diversity because here I
was and the fourth most stupid of his
city in the world and I came out as a
Chinese person I set up New Zealand
Asian leaders I came out as the tiniest
if you don’t know I’m Chinese and if I’m
not for me who is for me and I’m proud
to be Who I am and I don’t want to be
made to feel that that is a bad thing
because what I haven’t learned is that
it’s part of my superpowers it’s part of
what makes me me and so I set up New
Zealand Asian leaders and we bought
together all of New Zealand’s top Asian
leaders and I set up the super diversity
center and we wrote the super diversity
stocktake and we gave it out to
everybody and we had a hundred and forty
five thousand downloads in the first
year and I set up super diverse women
because I realized there was an emerging
market segment if half of the market in
Auckland and Mari Pacific or an Asian
then the client base is a quarter super
diverse women and they had a different
experience from everybody else because
that match between gender and ethnicity
meant that they were constantly
underestimated so that’ll be the title
of my next head talk and then after that
I decided I needed to throw another rock
at a tiger and I’m kind of almost done I
wanted to know whether or not I could do
this startup thing because it looked
kind of cool but it didn’t know whether
or not I could do it and investing
seemed like not throwing a rock at a
tiger it seemed like giving jelly meat
to your kid right so I thought no
we’re going to do this and so look I
don’t usually do wills but I just happen
to have a very very super rich super
powerful CEO client whose dad died
Nowell complete mess because they were
so wealthy and they had so many assets
and he asked me to attend the family
conference and so there we were all
these lawyers around the table everyone
arguing with each other and I had this
out-of-body experience I was watching my
own family arguing about the proceeds of
my estate I had died and I thought this
is ridiculous I went and looked at the
stats people weren’t making wills and so
when I got home I realized my world was
ten years out of date and I realized
that humans are the only body that knows
that they’re going to die but X as if
they never are and so
I discovered that death was the ultimate
motivator so I created my bucket list
dot k dot NC it and this C is come make
your bucket list think about what it is
you want to do I took the whole
fiduciary services industry online I
said why do we need to have funny bits
of paper that you scroll your name on
why can’t we make wills online the great
thing was perpetual guardian bought it
and they’ve done amazing things with
pushing that out in the UK in the US
this is my latest my advice dot legal
this is a legal matching market you’re
gonna say why is that a tiger it doesn’t
look like a tiger how is that a tiger to
a lawyer let me tell you that is a total
Tiger to me I have now been doing the
law for so long that I deserve to rest
on my laurels and sit in my office
forever charging a very high rate to fix
your stuff ups but I realized that I was
a digital immigrant because I was born
as my son would say mum was that last
century I was born last century I was
not a digital native so here I am
sitting on the BNC had bored talking
about being a digital Bank and being
disrupted but it was all I
don’t know anything about it because I
wasn’t a part of it so I thought to
myself law is not like selling sneakers
but law is about customer service and
the more I talk to people the more they
hated dealing with lawyers you know
they’re too expensive they talk
gobbledygook when you say I don’t
understand it they say it to you simply
and then charge you $3,000 you don’t
know who’s working on your phone they
never ring you back it’s kind of like
you know it’s a privilege for me to be
giving you all this money to give me
legal advice so I decided that I would
see that my advice start legal and
create a market and to be credible I put
myself on that market I didn’t have to
but hey you can’t start a legal market
and they’re not put yourself on it so I
put myself on it I put Jim Palmer on it
and that is a rock at a tiger because
I’m now running a digital company so I’m
having to run I’m not telling you
anything that I don’t do people say to
me you know
may yes cuz you’re a smartypants that’s
why you’re successful no I’m just
exactly what Darwin said I am NOT the
smartest in the room and I’m not the
strongest but when I was a very young
girl I learnt that I had to shuck and
jive I had to change I had to adapt and
I have found that that becomes the
secret to your success because you got a
IQ you got a EQ but you got a Q and I’ve
got a lot of CQ so my challenge to you
every single one of you in the room are
you asleep
are you fully adapted to your
environment because you know even on
boards today we do
skills matrix and we say hey we need
more marketers and we need another
accountant that’s the wrong question we
should be saying to ourselves we need
people who have the ability to adapt who
can deal with quicker faster all the
time who are those people and to
recognize the migrant affect IQ EQ so I
say to you are you brave enough to
figure out who your tiger is and to pick
up a rock I end with a story there’s two
guys and you’ve heard this one and they
meet a tiger and one of the guys starts
putting his track shoes on and the other
guy says what the hell are you doing
you’re never going to outrun that tiger
and the ghost is year but I can outrun
you and so I say to you if you are
outrun the other guy and not get eaten then get training
an alien from outer space my dad who was
an Olympics gymnastics coach had been
recruited to come to New Zealand to
train the New Zealand gymnastics team so
with his four young daughters under 12 I
was the youngest
we came to Christchurch in the seventies
we were the first Taiwanese family we
had a hundred and twenty US Dollars and
we didn’t speak English I felt like a
Martian my mother packed us fried rice
which we ate with chopsticks at school
the kids called us names we were told to
come to an event and bring a plate so we
did six of them for every member of our
family I remember the first day that we
were in Christchurch mum and dad would
try sort out the house so they said to
us go to the park and we caused a car
crash because the sight of four girls
Chinese girls holding hands and red silk
Kim and Mao suits for some reason was
not a sight that you usually see
crossing the road to Hagley Park and so
all my life I’ve had people yell at me
and say you should go back to where you
came from and I inculcated from a very
young age that actually being a migrant
was not a good thing and being Chinese
was not a good thing but that was last
century and so when I think about the
21st century I have realised something I
have realized something that I want to
share with you today that actually the
future has now come to meet me and that
in the 21st century when you have two
key megatrends which is digital
disruption and globalization that all of
that practice that I had starting at the
age of six makes me Malcolm Gladwell’s
expert and the 21st century it isn’t
enough to be smart
and in the 21st century it isn’t enough
to have EQ in the 21st century when you
are being disrupted and it’s quicker
faster all the time you need to be able
to adapt you need a cue that’s the
adaptability quotient the ability to
adapt and thrive in an environment of
change and a cue isn’t enough because
you need to have CQ because the second
key mega trend is globalization now I’m
in a good place to talk about this
because I am standing today in Auckland
and Auckland is the fourth most super
diverse city in the world so what a
super diversity means it means a country
with it 25% or more of the people are
not born here and where there are a
hundred and more ethnicities I know
they’re in Auckland right now in less
than 500 working days one in three
people in this city will look like me
yes it’s true the Chinese are taking
over the city and also I know yes let’s
let’s have a round of applause it’s
really true the alien invasion the other
thing that I know is that New Zealand is
the fourth most super diverse country in
the OECD
so you want to recruit those customers
you want to target those clients you
want to be able to manage your talent
pool and understand what attracts those
stuff then you need to have cultural
capability so AQ & Seek you are the new
IQ and EQ and I confidently predict that
in five years time when people are
recruiting they’re going to be looking
for people who are smart and who got EQ
but the thing that will distinguish them
is the fact that they can adapt and be
flexible to any sort of change and that
they can work with anybody not like them
I would like to say that I am the first
person who has had this amazing thought
but actually there’s a little-known chap
called Charles Darwin who kind of said
it better he said it’s not the strongest
of the species that survives nor the
most
intelligent that survives it’s the one
that is most adaptable to change but I
am the one who today for the first time
globally are telling you about what I
consider to be the migrant effect and
this migrant effect is the powerful
difference between adapting to cope and
adapting to one
I think this migrant effect which forces
people who are otherwise marginalized
and different with a Judah ethnicity
with sexuality or ability or disability
to adapt the mainstream have had more
practice than everybody else at being
disrupted and so they’ve had to force
themselves to confront uncomfortable
things and change and so as a
consequence of this they can use their
to win and so can I just say the show of
hands how many people here were not born
in this country whoa look at that the
overwhelming majority of the people here
who here has been marginalized because
you’re either indigenous or because of
your sexuality or you have a different
ability Wow okay so what I’m trying to
say to you is that in the past you
consider this to be a weakness you like
me try to hide this because you thought
it was something that you shouldn’t
share with everybody else well I’m about
to tell you that that is completely
wrong this is your superpower and I’m
going to make visible the invisible the
invisible was that we pretended that we
weren’t these weaknesses but I’m telling
you that you need to shout it from the
rooftops because this is the migrant
effect and it is hardwired now this is
my next point if you want to continue to
win you have to throw a rock at a tiger
I had discovered that if you throw a
rock at a tiger then you have to run and
that’s the motivation that you need now
I just told you about the first Tiger in
my life I didn’t throw the rock my
parents did we didn’t have a choice we
came to this country
and when I got really miserable and
stopped eating and got anorexia because
I was not happy in this country they
couldn’t take us home because we didn’t
have enough money to go home so we had
to stay here and we had to make the best
of it and I vowed and declared then that
if we were going to stay in this country
then I was going to make something of
myself so what is a tiger what is the
tiger you see a tiger is different in
everyone’s lives I can’t tell you what a
tiger is for you what a tiger is for you
is not for me and what is my tiger is
not your tiger a lot of tigers in there
but what I’m trying to say is this a
tiger is something that is a point of no
return a tiger is something that puts
you under pressure to change because
change is uncomfortable a tiger is
something that makes you have to run
faster dig deeper be more resilient be
brighter get yourself out of a corner
this ability to adapt has to be so good
otherwise you’re going to get eaten okay
so all I can do is tell you examples of
my own
Tigers okay so here we are and I cute
I’m the little and the little cute one
at the end this was us and Taiwan you
know my parents who are both elite
athletes taught us to swim so we were
all swim champions and you know the way
my dad taught me to swim is kind of a
bit like a tiger
he’d throw you in the pool this happened
at the age of three and just before you
drowned he put a rope around you and
walk you up and down like a dog you know
but but that meant that I was a very
good breaststroke champion before I came
to New Zealand and then of course this
is Iceland New Zealand and there’s my
father wearing his New Zealand blazer
and my lovely mother so this is
hardwired in me now so figure out which
one I am I’m not the Maasai
okay can I just say that this photo was
taken at 6 a.m. in the morning before it
got too hot in Kenya last Christmas we
were in the National Park and my Messiah
had a tattoo which signaled that he had
coup
two lions and he had to run with me
because there were lines in that park
and I just want you to know that I
couldn’t hear him and you could hear me
I was going and you couldn’t hear him at
all
he was running along and he was
soundless but anyway I was determined to
beat him when the photo was being taken
so what I discovered is that this
migrant effect becomes hardwired you get
used to having it to adapt and change to
being awake all the time and to being
resilient so I want to tell you about my
Tigers okay this is my first Tiger so I
come from a family of academics we were
always in education I was the youngest
senior lecturer in law in New Zealand at
the time my mum and dad desperately
wanted me to be the youngest law
professor but I quit I quit and I
decided to go and set up one of New
Zealand’s first boutique law firms and
Australasia is first public law
specialist firm that was a tiger because
I had no idea what I was doing but I
wanted to know whether or not I was any
good at practice I wanted to know
whether I was any good at business and
so the Dean said well don’t quit just
take leave but I knew that if I took
leave when the going got tough I would
just crawl back to the law faculty
because it was easier and thank God I
quit because it was really hard I think
I managed to lose $80,000 in the first
three months by signing the wrong lease
for our premises but it got better
it didn’t get easier but I got more
practice and I got better and so I
didn’t have a choice we were out there
I’d mortgaged the house we had to run
and the good thing was that over time we
succeeded but then 20 years on what
happened was I fell asleep
søren kierkegaard is a fantastic Danish
philosopher he said the trouble is we
are all asleep and so I was petting my
way to the office every day practicing a
little law going home we were doing
testicle II and I was so bored and I
could because I was fully adapted to my
new environment so I realized that what
I needed to do was I needed to wake up
and I thought the only way to wake up is
to find another tiger and to throw a
rock at it so I said to everybody I’m
going to Auckland and they said you’re
mad you can’t go to Auckland you’re a
public lawyer you’re a constitutional
lawyer you have to stone Wellington and
I said watch me and that was five years
ago so I went to Auckland and at the
same time as I went to Auckland I did
another thing which was throwing a rock
at a tiger I thought to myself after 20
years of being a serious lawyer and
trying to pretend that I wasn’t Chinese
because I didn’t want to be stereotyped
in Boxton as a lawyer that kind of did
tax for Asians I never talked about it I
just pretended I wasn’t Chinese
and I just want you to know how hard
that is when you look like this alright
so I decided that I was going to speak
out about super diversity because here I
was and the fourth most stupid of his
city in the world and I came out as a
Chinese person I set up New Zealand
Asian leaders I came out as the tiniest
if you don’t know I’m Chinese and if I’m
not for me who is for me and I’m proud
to be Who I am and I don’t want to be
made to feel that that is a bad thing
because what I haven’t learned is that
it’s part of my superpowers it’s part of
what makes me me and so I set up New
Zealand Asian leaders and we bought
together all of New Zealand’s top Asian
leaders and I set up the super diversity
center and we wrote the super diversity
stocktake and we gave it out to
everybody and we had a hundred and forty
five thousand downloads in the first
year and I set up super diverse women
because I realized there was an emerging
market segment if half of the market in
Auckland and Mari Pacific or an Asian
then the client base is a quarter super
diverse women and they had a different
experience from everybody else because
that match between gender and ethnicity
meant that they were constantly
underestimated so that’ll be the title
of my next head talk and then after that
I decided I needed to throw another rock
at a tiger and I’m kind of almost done I
wanted to know whether or not I could do
this startup thing because it looked
kind of cool but it didn’t know whether
or not I could do it and investing
seemed like not throwing a rock at a
tiger it seemed like giving jelly meat
to your kid right so I thought no
we’re going to do this and so look I
don’t usually do wills but I just happen
to have a very very super rich super
powerful CEO client whose dad died
Nowell complete mess because they were
so wealthy and they had so many assets
and he asked me to attend the family
conference and so there we were all
these lawyers around the table everyone
arguing with each other and I had this
out-of-body experience I was watching my
own family arguing about the proceeds of
my estate I had died and I thought this
is ridiculous I went and looked at the
stats people weren’t making wills and so
when I got home I realized my world was
ten years out of date and I realized
that humans are the only body that knows
that they’re going to die but X as if
they never are and so
I discovered that death was the ultimate
motivator so I created my bucket list
dot k dot NC it and this C is come make
your bucket list think about what it is
you want to do I took the whole
fiduciary services industry online I
said why do we need to have funny bits
of paper that you scroll your name on
why can’t we make wills online the great
thing was perpetual guardian bought it
and they’ve done amazing things with
pushing that out in the UK in the US
this is my latest my advice dot legal
this is a legal matching market you’re
gonna say why is that a tiger it doesn’t
look like a tiger how is that a tiger to
a lawyer let me tell you that is a total
Tiger to me I have now been doing the
law for so long that I deserve to rest
on my laurels and sit in my office
forever charging a very high rate to fix
your stuff ups but I realized that I was
a digital immigrant because I was born
as my son would say mum was that last
century I was born last century I was
not a digital native so here I am
sitting on the BNC had bored talking
about being a digital Bank and being
disrupted but it was all I
don’t know anything about it because I
wasn’t a part of it so I thought to
myself law is not like selling sneakers
but law is about customer service and
the more I talk to people the more they
hated dealing with lawyers you know
they’re too expensive they talk
gobbledygook when you say I don’t
understand it they say it to you simply
and then charge you $3,000 you don’t
know who’s working on your phone they
never ring you back it’s kind of like
you know it’s a privilege for me to be
giving you all this money to give me
legal advice so I decided that I would
see that my advice start legal and
create a market and to be credible I put
myself on that market I didn’t have to
but hey you can’t start a legal market
and they’re not put yourself on it so I
put myself on it I put Jim Palmer on it
and that is a rock at a tiger because
I’m now running a digital company so I’m
having to run I’m not telling you
anything that I don’t do people say to
me you know
may yes cuz you’re a smartypants that’s
why you’re successful no I’m just
exactly what Darwin said I am NOT the
smartest in the room and I’m not the
strongest but when I was a very young
girl I learnt that I had to shuck and
jive I had to change I had to adapt and
I have found that that becomes the
secret to your success because you got a
IQ you got a EQ but you got a Q and I’ve
got a lot of CQ so my challenge to you
every single one of you in the room are
you asleep
are you fully adapted to your
environment because you know even on
boards today we do
skills matrix and we say hey we need
more marketers and we need another
accountant that’s the wrong question we
should be saying to ourselves we need
people who have the ability to adapt who
can deal with quicker faster all the
time who are those people and to
recognize the migrant affect IQ EQ so I
say to you are you brave enough to
figure out who your tiger is and to pick
up a rock I end with a story there’s two
guys and you’ve heard this one and they
meet a tiger and one of the guys starts
putting his track shoes on and the other
guy says what the hell are you doing
you’re never going to outrun that tiger
and the ghost is year but I can outrun
you and so I say to you if you are
outrun the other guy and not get eaten then get training
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