Sarah Tucker: The Risk of Free Speaking

Sarah Tucker

There are moments in life when one realises one has accidentally become an unpaid educational resource for highly remunerated people.

This is always an awkward discovery.

Mine occurred recently while speaking to a room full of senior professionals about lateral thinking, AI, perception, decision-making and the dangers of institutional certainty. At precisely the same time, somewhere across London, His Majesty Charles III was delivering the King’s Speech to Parliament.

I like to think we were both serving the nation in different ways.

He had the Imperial State Crown.

I had a slightly temperamental projector, several bottles of mineral water and a room full of accomplished people asking whether artificial intelligence would eventually make human judgement obsolete.

To be fair, they were engaged. Extremely engaged. Questions poured forth afterwards about leadership, difficult personalities, education, institutional blindness, younger generations and whether children would still be able to distinguish between what is real and what is synthetic.

I answered thoughtfully. Generously. Extensively.

I spoke about Edward de Bono, movement of perception, the dangers of certainty and why intelligence alone does not protect organisations from poor judgement. I explained why younger people may actually adapt to AI more effectively than adults because they already inhabit worlds saturated with information, filtering and digital manipulation.

I discussed polymath thinking, portfolio careers, humour, play, imagination and why schools may increasingly need to teach discernment rather than memorisation.

They nodded seriously.

Some took notes.

One or two looked visibly relieved when I suggested that the future might still require human beings.

Then, several days later, I sent my invoice.

This proved unexpectedly educational.

Apparently there had been “a misunderstanding”. The event, it transpired, had not been viewed as paid professional work. It had been considered more in the spirit of visibility, introductions and future opportunities.

Ah yes. Exposure.

The last refuge of people who definitely have a budget but suddenly develop philosophical objections to using it.

Now, before everyone rushes to outrage, let me say this: I do not think anybody involved was malicious. I suspect this is one of those peculiarly British collisions of ambiguity, assumption and social discomfort.

No one discussed money beforehand.

I assumed that a substantial speaking engagement involving preparation, travel, presentation and follow-up materials was understood to be professional work.

They assumed I was there primarily for networking opportunities and intellectual exchange.

This is, in many ways, a perfect example of lateral thinking in action.

Two intelligent groups looking at exactly the same situation and perceiving entirely different realities.

And here lies the uncomfortable truth: value unspoken is value undefined.

One of the most important lessons in professional life is that if you do not define the value of your work clearly, someone else will define it for you. Often downward.

Particularly if you work across creative, intellectual or interdisciplinary worlds where people struggle to categorise what you actually “do”.

People are surprisingly happy to pay vast sums for jargon-heavy reports containing arrows travelling diagonally upwards. Yet suggest payment for thinking, speaking, insight or intellectual synthesis and suddenly everyone behaves as though one has requested a small personal sacrifice involving livestock.

What fascinated me most, however, was that the entire experience inadvertently proved the very point of my talk.

The session itself had centred around how institutions become trapped by assumptions they no longer even recognise as assumptions.

And there is perhaps no more familiar institutional assumption than this:

ideas are valuable, but the people generating them somehow should not invoice.

Especially if those ideas arrive wrapped in conversation, humour or humanity rather than management terminology.

This is where Edward de Bono was so perceptive. He understood that intelligence and perception are not the same thing.

Highly intelligent people often become extremely efficient at operating within established systems while remaining surprisingly blind to alternative framings.

For example:

“This is excellent work and we should absolutely have it.”

and

“We should therefore pay for it.”

ought logically to belong together.

Yet frequently they do not.

Somewhere between admiration and accounts payable, civilisation falters.

There is also another lesson here, one more practical than philosophical.

Never – ever – do substantial professional work without clarifying terms first.

Not because people are wicked.

Because ambiguity is expensive.

Creative people often avoid money conversations because they feel awkward, transactional or faintly vulgar. We prefer ideas. Possibilities. Intellectual excitement. Meaningful discussion.

Unfortunately, utility companies continue to display a deeply conservative commitment to invoices being settled in actual currency.

The irony is that the people most comfortable discussing value are often those producing the least of it.

Meanwhile writers, speakers, educators and creatives quietly overprepare for free while apologising for existing.

I realised afterwards that I had spent days preparing that talk.

Days.

Researching AI, education, behavioural psychology, leadership structures, technological change and institutional blind spots. Carefully shaping arguments around perception, humour, imagination, ego and the future of human thinking.

And afterwards I produced additional papers and follow-up reflections because, professionally speaking, I wanted the audience to leave with something genuinely useful.

This, I now recognise, is known in some circles as “consulting”.

Still, I do not entirely regret it.

Firstly because the discussion itself was genuinely stimulating. Secondly because one should never underestimate where future work may emerge from. And thirdly because every career eventually requires one educational humiliation to recalibrate one’s boundaries.

Mine simply happened to involve highly polished shoes.

There is also something oddly liberating about recognising the precise moment one stops taking a certain category of risk.

Some risks are worth taking.

Others merely produce beautifully formatted disappointment.

The broader issue, however, extends far beyond speaking engagements.

As AI expands and traditional career structures fragment, more people will increasingly operate across multiple disciplines — writing, consulting, speaking, teaching, advising, creating and synthesising knowledge in ways that do not fit neatly into conventional professional categories.

This means understanding one’s own value becomes even more important.

Not inflated value.

Not narcissistic self-belief.

Clear value.

The ability to say calmly:

“This is professional work.”

“This required preparation.”

“This creates value.”

“This therefore has a fee attached.”

Without embarrassment.

Without apology.

Without emotional collapse.

That may ultimately be one of the most important future skills of all.

Not simply creativity.

But the confidence to recognise when creativity has economic value.

And to invoice accordingly.