No Silver Bullet - Busting the Myth of Organisation Quick Fixes with Steve Hearsum - OrgDev Episode 17

Our latest episode of the OrgDev podcast is with Steve Hearsum. Steve has recently published his first book called No Silver Bullet: Moving Beyond Quick Fix Solutions in Business and the Psychology of Change Management. We had an energising time talking with Steve and unpacking why we are so tempted by quick fixes both as leaders.  We covered a lot of ground in less than an hour including the problems caused by the non-stop search for silver bullets to organisation challenges, the rise of the thought leader and what we can do to change these fixations. 

About our Guest
Steve Hearsum
  / stevehearsum 
You can find his book here:
https://tinyurl.com/mrxee9u6
You can visit his website here:
https://www.edgeandstretch.com/

Steve Hearsum supports and challenges his clients to discover their 'edge and stretch' when aiming for more than just 'better sameness'. Renowned for his ability to create useful discomfort in service of learning, he has been commended for having “a knack of not letting people off the hook, without leaving them feeling like they’re on the hook”.

In addition to his consultancy work, Steve serves on the faculty for the Masters in People & Organisation Development at the University of Chichester, managed by Mayvin, with a focus on the future of

Thanks for listening!

Distinction is an evidence-based Organisation Development & Design Consultancy designed to support modern, progressive organisations to bring out the best in their people and their teams through training, consulting, and coaching.

Our professional and highly skilled consultants focus on delivering engaging, results-focused and flexible solutions that help our clients achieve their business objectives.

Find out more at https://distinction.live/how-we-can-help/

💡 Stay Connected:
Looking for a consistent source of leadership & OD tips? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link below and receive valuable leadership tips directly in your inbox:
https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch/

Transcript

00:00.280 --> 00:03.566
Hi and welcome to the Dev podcast. Now, all around the

00:03.590 --> 00:07.542
world, organizations are investing in millions, and in some cases billions,

00:07.598 --> 00:11.806
in new ways of working to tackle their most persistent, enduring and complex

00:11.870 --> 00:15.510
problems, all in the service of achieving greater organizational

00:15.542 --> 00:18.926
performance. But one person, Steve Heerson, is on a mission to

00:18.950 --> 00:22.686
challenge the status quo. Why do we spend so much on consultancies,

00:22.750 --> 00:26.518
business schools and thought leaders to provide quick fixes for difficult problems?

00:26.606 --> 00:30.670
Steve is the author of the book no Silver Bullet. He's an experienced developer

00:30.702 --> 00:34.374
of change practitioners and consultants. He's a qualified consulting

00:34.454 --> 00:37.774
and coaching supervisor and works basically with change

00:37.854 --> 00:41.974
agents to create supervisory spaces to help them work through their most difficult challenges.

00:42.134 --> 00:45.094
Steve also practices as a consultant and he supports individuals,

00:45.134 --> 00:49.846
teams and organizations to increase their capacity for collaboration and experimentation.

00:49.990 --> 00:53.318
And he has a huge breadth of experience working with clients from lots of different

00:53.366 --> 00:57.006
sectors, from global motor manufacturers to digital services and

00:57.030 --> 01:00.926
telecoms, to the NHS and FMCG companies as well.

01:00.990 --> 01:04.822
He's also been heavily involved at Roffey Park, a trustee council member for the

01:04.838 --> 01:07.942
Tavistock, and also previously served as co chair of the

01:07.958 --> 01:11.806
organisation Development Network for Europe. He's also got a connection to

01:11.830 --> 01:14.238
a lot of the guests that we've had on. I think Steve, it's often,

01:14.286 --> 01:17.394
it's six steps from Steve Heerson is the way, isn't it?

01:18.654 --> 01:21.674
Sounds really incestuous, isn't it?

01:22.854 --> 01:26.206
But he's added a new title to his list of accomplishments and that's author.

01:26.270 --> 01:30.286
So his new book, no Silver Bullet, moving beyond Quick Fix solutions in

01:30.310 --> 01:33.854
business and the psychology of change management, is due to be published on March

01:33.934 --> 01:37.318
29. And we've been lucky to actually receive preview copies of the book to

01:37.326 --> 01:40.894
have a read of this in advance. So hide away your two by two grids

01:40.934 --> 01:44.614
and your iceberg models because Steve is going to debunk many of these myths around

01:44.654 --> 01:47.074
this critical areas for organizations.

01:50.254 --> 01:53.694
So welcome, Steve. Thank you. And just so you know,

01:53.854 --> 01:56.742
the wonders of Amazon mean that the title you read out is what appears on

01:56.758 --> 01:59.854
Amazon is slightly different to what you actually see on the book, which is a

02:00.354 --> 02:03.558
bit confusing. So on the book it says, no silver bullet. Bursting the bubble of

02:03.566 --> 02:07.862
the organizational quick fix. The Amazon thing. The subtitles

02:07.918 --> 02:11.434
there tend to be a bit longer so that you can work the algorithm.

02:12.454 --> 02:15.310
Right. So we're going to kick off with just an easy question. So we've given

02:15.342 --> 02:17.646
a bit of a bio view, but just tell us a bit about what you

02:17.670 --> 02:21.394
do, what you're older, what it bowls, how do you describe what you do?

02:21.894 --> 02:24.326
So the way I tend to describe what I do these days. And garen,

02:24.350 --> 02:27.754
you did a lovely job of, I should hire you as my pr consultant.

02:28.174 --> 02:31.440
You did a lovely job of framing, in a sense, that the spaces I work

02:31.472 --> 02:33.992
in. But if I was to nutshell it, the way I tend to think of

02:34.008 --> 02:38.248
what I do these days is probably three things. One is helping

02:38.296 --> 02:41.872
leaders develop their practice, and what I mean by that is with a focus

02:41.928 --> 02:45.604
on how they sharpen the impact they have.

02:46.144 --> 02:49.296
My own view is that conventional leadership development is a waste of time and money,

02:49.400 --> 02:52.164
and there's actually plenty of evidence to support that and it's in the book.

02:52.544 --> 02:56.392
The second thing I tend to do is work with both internal

02:56.448 --> 02:59.778
external consultants and practitioners of many a hue

02:59.896 --> 03:03.870
or design or development hr change to

03:03.982 --> 03:07.566
develop their consulting and practice skills so that they're more comfortable doing the work they

03:07.590 --> 03:11.006
do. And the third bucket that I tend

03:11.030 --> 03:14.310
to work with is, and it's a big bucket, is culture. So it's

03:14.462 --> 03:18.182
anything to do with the behavioural mess that we have in organisations that goes

03:18.198 --> 03:21.662
under the label of culture and they all link

03:21.718 --> 03:24.886
effectively. So I operate in those spaces, whether it be as a consultant, as a

03:24.910 --> 03:28.266
coach, or as a supervisor. That's kind of the spaces I play in,

03:28.430 --> 03:31.554
and that's kind of supporting people at the center of change, isn't it?

03:31.594 --> 03:34.930
So is that the node through which the crazy flows, as you describe it?

03:34.962 --> 03:38.254
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's. I suppose the core interest is.

03:38.594 --> 03:42.534
Is in. Is in building change capability in its broadest sense.

03:43.474 --> 03:46.374
Change capability with a small c on both words.

03:47.034 --> 03:49.786
What's it actually like to be in the middle of this stuff? Whether you are

03:49.810 --> 03:53.514
a practitioner or consultant, whether you are indeed a leader, how on earth

03:53.554 --> 03:57.008
do you develop the capability and the capacity to be

03:57.016 --> 04:00.592
at the center of change? Brilliant. So we always ask this question because it's

04:00.608 --> 04:03.712
a really important story, like, what was your journey into this field? How did you

04:03.728 --> 04:07.016
sort of find that this was an area for you to really focus your

04:07.040 --> 04:10.192
attention on and that people needed support in? I think there's

04:10.208 --> 04:14.232
a two part question there, Garen. In a sense. The first one is, I would

04:14.248 --> 04:17.848
be lying if I said I ever had a coordinated or strategic plan to

04:17.856 --> 04:21.442
get into this. If you know Baldrick from Blackadder, it was a

04:21.458 --> 04:25.706
bit more like a turnip in the sense that my

04:25.730 --> 04:29.186
cunning plan was no more sophisticated than which doors opened in front of me,

04:29.210 --> 04:32.650
that I was interested in what was on the other side. So literally,

04:32.802 --> 04:35.682
early in my career, the door that opened was one when I was at the

04:35.698 --> 04:39.106
Guardian, to have the opportunity to be part

04:39.130 --> 04:42.674
of a team of nine internal people working with a group of

04:42.714 --> 04:46.082
external consultants looking at the ways of

04:46.098 --> 04:49.638
working in the processes across the Guardian and observer. And I was the

04:49.646 --> 04:52.830
only person to volunteer to go onto that. And the reason I volunteered was because

04:52.862 --> 04:56.246
I was fascinated by, well, why this person not talking

04:56.270 --> 04:59.614
to that person? And if they did talk to each other wouldn't it be better?

04:59.654 --> 05:02.038
Or why is that bit not joined up with that bit? And this looks a

05:02.046 --> 05:05.366
bit mad, that looks a bit odd. And it was literally that. And from that

05:05.470 --> 05:09.102
point onwards my career evolved over time. They told me.

05:09.278 --> 05:13.006
So there's a difference between being a consultant that I did when I left,

05:13.030 --> 05:16.870
left the guardian and labeling myself as a change consultant and selling what I

05:16.902 --> 05:20.598
did or thought I did. And I think that the flip,

05:20.686 --> 05:24.326
that's actually a really interesting question that you asked me. What I'm just noticing is

05:24.350 --> 05:28.166
the difference is the moment when you start to listen to what

05:28.190 --> 05:31.462
it is that clients value in what you do and

05:31.558 --> 05:34.902
whether or not that's something you want to do more of. And I think in

05:34.918 --> 05:38.238
the last six to eight years, possibly ten years,

05:38.286 --> 05:41.846
I've got far more attuned to and more

05:41.870 --> 05:45.222
aware of and go looking for what is it that clients value about what I

05:45.238 --> 05:48.876
do? And I tend to find that what I do that

05:48.900 --> 05:52.268
they value links to what I enjoy doing. I was going to

05:52.276 --> 05:55.396
say that leads nicely onto my question, which, which bits of all of that stuff

05:55.420 --> 05:58.532
that you do do you enjoy most? That's probably really easy to answer. I had

05:58.548 --> 06:02.204
an email from somebody I work with. I've just finished a nine month program

06:02.284 --> 06:05.692
with a group of internal, they're a

06:05.708 --> 06:09.064
mix of kind of HR talent and change people within a very large

06:09.764 --> 06:13.132
services company. And I had this lovely email

06:13.228 --> 06:16.300
from one of the participants, Jake. He doesn't mind me using his name

06:16.332 --> 06:20.428
because I checked with him and he just sent me this lovely email describing

06:20.516 --> 06:23.972
how words the effect of he hadn't expected what he

06:24.068 --> 06:27.908
experienced, that we really did stretch them,

06:27.956 --> 06:31.740
stretched him and he enjoyed that. And it's left him in a place now

06:31.772 --> 06:34.916
where he's far more aware of his practice and who he is

06:34.940 --> 06:38.268
in his practice. And these are my words, not his. I'm kind of summarizing it,

06:38.396 --> 06:41.940
but those are the things that I really, I suppose I get a kick

06:41.972 --> 06:45.876
from. It's the people I'm working with, I have a sense

06:45.900 --> 06:49.484
of them going back into their organizations and stuff's

06:49.564 --> 06:53.050
probably going to be happening around them that wasn't before and

06:53.082 --> 06:56.602
they are probably in a more resourced place to deal with it.

06:56.778 --> 07:00.106
Not a finished article, because none of us ever are. But you just

07:00.130 --> 07:02.962
have this sense of them going, right. They're kind of rolling their sleeves up and

07:02.978 --> 07:05.694
going, that crap that I was dealing with before.

07:06.234 --> 07:09.674
Nah, let's try something different. Yeah, I really like the use of the word resource,

07:09.714 --> 07:13.610
doesn't it? Because you can give people insight and guidance

07:13.682 --> 07:17.242
and what? So you can never predict what they're going to face, but obviously they've

07:17.258 --> 07:20.202
got to sort of see themselves as a key part of that. And what's the

07:20.218 --> 07:23.218
kind of, sort of the roughy part. So it's selfish instrument, isn't it? Well,

07:23.266 --> 07:26.690
yeah, that's the Mian Chung judge thing. But the question I ask internals,

07:26.762 --> 07:29.770
I invariably say to an internal at some point when I work with them is

07:29.882 --> 07:33.250
there's two questions you've got to answer, and they are in direct opposition

07:33.322 --> 07:36.946
often. One is, what does it take to get on in this organization?

07:37.130 --> 07:39.882
And two, how do I need to be and what do I need to do

07:39.898 --> 07:43.698
to be of service? And it's surprising how often they are in opposition,

07:43.866 --> 07:46.802
because if you are going to do the second one, that might mean saying to

07:46.818 --> 07:50.350
your CEO or the director of something. Can I offer you an observation

07:50.502 --> 07:53.966
about how you're showing up? That might be a career limiting move, but it might

07:53.990 --> 07:56.726
be what the organization needs. And that links to the whole kind of self as

07:56.750 --> 08:00.014
instrument bit, you know, which is if you are really going to be doing that,

08:00.174 --> 08:03.782
then that might mean you stand out in a way

08:03.838 --> 08:07.654
that is of service, but is not necessarily comfortable for those around you.

08:07.774 --> 08:11.754
And so you've gone through this process of writing this book,

08:12.214 --> 08:15.966
and it has. It's taken a. You've obviously taken some time to read about the

08:15.990 --> 08:19.382
ideas, and it's something you've felt for a long time. What really inspired you to

08:19.398 --> 08:22.542
put sort of pen to paper and to go, right, I'm going to try and

08:22.558 --> 08:26.126
articulate what I'm thinking and I want to sort of provoke a conversation. I suppose

08:26.150 --> 08:29.554
there's three things going. So firstly, was I've always known that I would.

08:29.854 --> 08:33.118
I was kind of wondering if I could write one. I knew it would have

08:33.126 --> 08:36.478
to be something that got under my skin enough that I had the energy

08:36.526 --> 08:39.302
to do it because I'm not very good at doing repetitive things. You know,

08:39.318 --> 08:43.006
I'm a, you know, I like new stuff, so it

08:43.030 --> 08:46.854
had to be something that motivated me. The second thing that

08:46.934 --> 08:50.234
hooked me was, and it's in the book, it's. It's the. The moment where

08:50.274 --> 08:53.914
I, for the second or second time, I hosted the corporate rebels at Rothey park.

08:54.074 --> 08:57.506
And they said to the group of very experienced OD consultants

08:57.610 --> 09:00.730
and coaches, we started our journey two years ago,

09:00.922 --> 09:04.186
expecting to travel the world and find the magic bullet. And they used, they said,

09:04.210 --> 09:07.522
magic bullet, not silver bullet. And that was obvious to me. That didn't surprise me.

09:07.538 --> 09:10.906
What surprised me was that the room, several times after that kind

09:10.930 --> 09:14.282
of went, yeah, but there is an answer, isn't there? And that was what hooked

09:14.298 --> 09:17.602
me. How is it experienced consultants and coaches who, like the

09:17.618 --> 09:20.722
three of us, we imagine that we are very self aware and know there is

09:20.738 --> 09:23.682
no answer, are still telling people who just told them there is no answer.

09:23.858 --> 09:27.450
Have you got the answer? So that hooked me. And the third

09:27.522 --> 09:30.714
bit, which really gelled when I spoke to Graham

09:30.754 --> 09:34.498
Curtis, who's at Rothy park now, his PhD,

09:34.666 --> 09:38.694
where he talks about this idea of functional collusion and

09:39.354 --> 09:42.570
unconscious patterns of behavior driven by shame

09:42.602 --> 09:46.586
and anxiety that influence decision making. That conversation

09:46.770 --> 09:49.658
fueled the inquiry, because I started to go to myself.

09:49.786 --> 09:53.074
I think there's something here. It's the only thing that makes sense

09:53.114 --> 09:56.346
of what I'm observing. But I have got no idea whether this hangs

09:56.370 --> 10:00.022
together. So for three and a half of the four to four and a half

10:00.068 --> 10:03.338
years I wrote the book, until last summer, and I got. I spoke to

10:03.346 --> 10:06.234
the guy who chapter ten revolves around,

10:06.394 --> 10:10.170
I actually was still questioning fundamentally whether my hypothesis was right. I like

10:10.242 --> 10:13.546
using the word hypothesis because I think sometimes that's the way we need to

10:13.570 --> 10:17.186
hold our ideas, isn't it? Totally. And to prove it. But we missed that point.

10:17.290 --> 10:20.610
And for people that are joining this call, obviously they'll have an awareness of silver

10:20.642 --> 10:23.994
bullets, but it's good to define them as well. We've all worked in the organization

10:24.074 --> 10:27.562
where it's the next big thing, and it could be

10:27.698 --> 10:31.098
TQM, it could be agile, it could be.

10:31.266 --> 10:34.762
Name any listener as well. What is the concept of silver bullets

10:34.818 --> 10:37.122
in your mind? And what might be some of the silver bullets that people might

10:37.138 --> 10:40.602
be resting in their organizations right now? In mythological terms,

10:40.658 --> 10:43.786
there's always been this idea that we can slay monsters,

10:43.930 --> 10:47.818
mythical monsters, with silver. I mean, that's been inhuman

10:47.946 --> 10:51.734
folklore for a long time. In organizational

10:51.774 --> 10:54.926
terms, it's this idea of the myth

10:54.950 --> 10:58.302
of fixability, which is something that Mark Cole and John Higgins originally coined as a

10:58.318 --> 11:00.998
term, which I love as a term, it's really,

11:01.126 --> 11:05.190
really useful. But we see this actually at a very

11:05.342 --> 11:08.834
simplistic level in the language you use. So if you listen to

11:09.174 --> 11:12.870
organizations and indeed to practitioners, and consultants talking about

11:13.022 --> 11:16.354
landing the change or driving the change,

11:17.464 --> 11:21.296
they turn change into an abstraction because it makes it easier to imagine

11:21.440 --> 11:24.928
there's one thing we can do to move this monolithic object from

11:24.976 --> 11:27.964
one room to the other. So for me,

11:28.264 --> 11:31.696
it's anything that is sold with a certainty that it will

11:31.840 --> 11:35.520
fix things. If you buy this, if you use this, if you

11:35.552 --> 11:38.808
hire us, yes, this is the solution, and it will

11:38.856 --> 11:42.296
work. And if you look at the way that business schools and consultancies

11:42.360 --> 11:45.828
tend to present themselves, very rare. Do you hear them say,

11:45.936 --> 11:49.532
well, it might work. Should we try that doesn't look so nice on

11:49.548 --> 11:53.180
the PowerPoint. But it doesn't. But actually, it is the far more honest answer,

11:53.212 --> 11:56.540
particularly with anything to do with human behavior. To say you've got the cultural

11:56.572 --> 12:00.516
intervention that's guaranteed to work, to my mind, is a total absurdity. Now, how can

12:00.540 --> 12:04.028
you possibly know, and it's not the fault of consultants necessarily,

12:04.076 --> 12:07.340
or the clients. It's kind of both, isn't it? So why are we so drawn

12:07.372 --> 12:10.584
to these ideas and silver bullets?

12:10.884 --> 12:15.194
Why are we drawn to them? Because what gets

12:15.314 --> 12:18.826
missed is the excuse.

12:18.850 --> 12:22.254
Creaking chair, which won't sound good on a podcast, which.

12:23.594 --> 12:26.890
It's the fact that we often, as practitioners and consultants, are not that

12:26.922 --> 12:28.774
comfortable acknowledging our own majority.

12:30.074 --> 12:33.562
How okay are you when a client says to you,

12:33.698 --> 12:37.202
so, Danny, can you help me with this? Are you okay with sitting there

12:37.218 --> 12:40.120
and going, I'm really honest with myself. I don't think I can.

12:40.272 --> 12:44.272
I actually don't know that area, or I haven't worked in it, or I

12:44.288 --> 12:47.136
don't think, you know, there's something about you as a client, as an organization that

12:47.160 --> 12:50.672
freaks me out and worries me. So how are you

12:50.688 --> 12:54.336
saying no? Saying no, this is not for me. So we collude with

12:54.360 --> 12:57.760
that. We are part of that as well. It's attention. We manage constantly,

12:57.792 --> 13:00.856
I think, when we're working with clients. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

13:00.920 --> 13:03.672
So reading your book, it's obviously you've done, you know, you said it took three

13:03.688 --> 13:06.016
and a half, four years to write, and it's clear you've done lots of research

13:06.080 --> 13:09.766
and interviews and conversations. So was that a deliberate choice to really

13:09.790 --> 13:12.990
make it an inquiry as you went? There's two answers that

13:13.062 --> 13:16.542
one is a yes, one is no. The yes is absolutely a certain point.

13:16.638 --> 13:20.078
Well, actually, from early on, I wanted to turn it into open. I use the

13:20.086 --> 13:23.278
language of open inquiries. So I posted all the chapters on

13:23.366 --> 13:26.846
a Google sites website and just

13:26.990 --> 13:30.726
would make it available. And some people, I had more of the people said

13:30.750 --> 13:33.966
they would look at it. I had a subset of people who had the kindness

13:33.990 --> 13:37.542
and generosity to actually genuinely read some of the early chapters and tell me what

13:37.558 --> 13:41.150
they thought. The webinars I ran were all part of this

13:41.182 --> 13:45.246
idea of, I want to test out the ideas and the

13:45.270 --> 13:48.702
whole concept of this thing and see how

13:48.718 --> 13:51.902
it lands. And my choice of people to do it with. People like Naomi Stanford,

13:51.958 --> 13:54.846
Simon Kovikia, Mark Cole,

13:55.030 --> 13:58.918
Doctor Wendy Sheppard from Cranfield. All of these people had different

13:59.086 --> 14:02.550
angles on the territory that I was exploring. So that was very much the open

14:02.582 --> 14:05.638
inquiry. But I also want to be really open about the fact that part of

14:05.646 --> 14:09.034
the reason it took four and a half years is I had caring responsibilities.

14:09.334 --> 14:12.512
My life got in the way. And there

14:12.528 --> 14:15.016
was about a year and a half to two years where I barely wrote a

14:15.040 --> 14:17.244
word, even though it was going through my head.

14:18.344 --> 14:21.072
So I'm saying that because I don't want to include with the idea that this

14:21.088 --> 14:24.760
was four and a half years of joyous and continuous and incredibly

14:24.792 --> 14:28.512
professional inquiry where everything went smoothly, because that would be a

14:28.528 --> 14:32.104
total lie. Yeah, but it's not the kind of idea that you just knock

14:32.144 --> 14:35.648
out, because it is. You're constantly reflecting on your own practice, you're speaking to others,

14:35.696 --> 14:39.322
aren't you, in conversation. Yeah. And it's also because,

14:39.458 --> 14:42.722
and you've read the thing I'd be interested in whether you

14:42.738 --> 14:46.370
have this, this sense. My, my sense, my experience is every

14:46.402 --> 14:49.922
time I reread some of the chapters and I had to re

14:50.018 --> 14:53.306
really carefully think about the wording of the language, what I didn't want to do

14:53.330 --> 14:56.402
was to, I wanted to challenge, say, take consult large consultancy.

14:56.418 --> 15:00.266
I wanted to challenge them really quite strongly, but I didn't want to be

15:00.290 --> 15:03.824
overly snarky. And so

15:04.324 --> 15:07.876
all the time I was testing out my thinking,

15:08.020 --> 15:11.580
does this make sense? Does it hang

15:11.612 --> 15:15.508
together? Does the task I'm weaving across twelve chapters or twelve

15:15.556 --> 15:18.504
sections that it turned out, does this actually hang together as an outage?

15:19.084 --> 15:21.988
And again, like I say, I didn't know whether it did until chapter ten.

15:22.116 --> 15:25.596
Yeah. And I guess sort of inputs from people like, no, mister,

15:25.660 --> 15:28.252
because I saw a webinar that you did with her and she was sort of

15:28.268 --> 15:31.836
sharing her experiences. And even when someone is sort of seen as very, very accomplished

15:31.860 --> 15:35.616
in their field, they kind of projected into the rule of, of guru, aren't they?

15:35.760 --> 15:38.776
And there were times when I think she was given an example where she did

15:38.800 --> 15:42.144
sort of three different organizations designs for a client and

15:42.184 --> 15:45.336
they just wanted to be told which one do you think is the right one.

15:45.360 --> 15:48.808
And she refused to say is that. Is that situation

15:48.856 --> 15:53.120
that you do see quite common in the research that you did? It doesn't

15:53.152 --> 15:55.576
happen with me so much because I think the way I shot these days,

15:55.600 --> 15:58.864
Garen, tends to probably make it clear there's not much point

15:58.904 --> 16:03.642
having that conversation with me. So I think I probably am

16:03.818 --> 16:07.786
repelling those kinds of clients quite early on is my fantasy.

16:07.970 --> 16:12.202
Do I hear stories about that? Yeah, loads. Loads. In fact,

16:12.378 --> 16:15.970
I was talking to somebody recently, only the other day, who told me exactly

16:16.002 --> 16:19.730
the same thing, you know, of doing.

16:19.922 --> 16:23.306
In fact. No, it was. It was somebody online. It's somebody who you probably know.

16:23.330 --> 16:26.322
So Nims, who works, has worked recently in the civil service,

16:26.418 --> 16:29.934
talking about. Talking about how a client saying,

16:30.054 --> 16:32.874
no, I don't want that. That doesn't work for me.

16:33.974 --> 16:37.806
And then twelve months later inviting her back in because she

16:37.950 --> 16:41.190
was not offering her the certainty, but eventually realizes

16:41.222 --> 16:44.582
that maybe that's not what's going on. And one of the things you

16:44.598 --> 16:47.022
talk about in the book is that the kind of whole social media stuff you

16:47.038 --> 16:50.326
talk about, Simon Sinek, and kind of people being drawn to those kind

16:50.350 --> 16:54.312
of sound bites, do you think the attraction of silver bullets is getting.

16:54.438 --> 16:57.996
Is getting greater and people are more drawn to simplification? You know,

16:58.100 --> 17:01.628
I was talking to Garen earlier, Simon Sinek, Steven Bartlett

17:01.636 --> 17:04.844
is another one. Kind of those kind of really short, pithy quotes.

17:04.964 --> 17:08.580
Well, yeah, because all this has to be seen in the context of what goes

17:08.612 --> 17:12.988
on in society outside of our bubble of being organisational

17:13.036 --> 17:17.628
consultants, which is we live in a world where nuance

17:17.676 --> 17:21.598
and ambivalence are eschewed in favor of. Of binary

17:21.646 --> 17:25.390
and or thinking, where unless you're

17:25.422 --> 17:29.590
taking a firm position on something, you're not being decisive enough.

17:29.782 --> 17:33.126
So, you know, we're expected to be for and against things.

17:33.310 --> 17:36.542
Very difficult to say. Well, actually, I'm really not sure about that. Can't you make

17:36.558 --> 17:39.086
your mind up, Steve? Well, no, actually, you want to think about it a little

17:39.110 --> 17:43.038
bit more deeply, which is why when you get politicians like, you know, Rory Stewart,

17:43.126 --> 17:46.846
who I think is a really interesting politician and

17:46.870 --> 17:50.686
human being, who's talking about as it. And I'm reading his autobiography

17:50.710 --> 17:54.550
at the moment, talking about politics and talking about his ambivalence towards some of.

17:54.582 --> 17:57.862
Some of it in there, he's a total outlier, you know, to have somebody like

17:57.878 --> 18:01.686
him talking about the fact that many, many of his colleagues are. There's lots of

18:01.710 --> 18:04.838
shame in the political system of government. We don't.

18:05.006 --> 18:08.566
That isn't. Isn't talked about much. You know, thumbs are weird when Rory Stewart's seen

18:08.590 --> 18:12.206
as a radical, don't you? Yeah, yeah. So, so in that context,

18:12.270 --> 18:15.166
you know, when you're saying, are we, you know,

18:15.270 --> 18:18.616
everything works against, against us being

18:18.640 --> 18:22.208
able to hold a nuanced position. If you look at

18:22.216 --> 18:26.164
the way. Let's take just one example. Two examples, actually. So with thought leaders.

18:26.504 --> 18:30.592
Thought leadership emerged pretty much from the

18:30.608 --> 18:34.128
business school and consulting world. Business schools

18:34.256 --> 18:38.224
sell their programs and sell executive education on the certainty that you will

18:38.264 --> 18:41.832
become a great leader and a better leader. You'll become a more effective, cheap executive

18:41.888 --> 18:45.512
or whatever. Consultancies sell

18:45.688 --> 18:48.784
pretty much on two modes of consulting. If you look at the literature,

18:48.824 --> 18:51.616
they sell on expert and they sell on pair of hands. We're going to deploy

18:51.680 --> 18:55.392
hundreds of consultants and we will do things for you.

18:55.528 --> 18:59.200
They don't tend to sell on the basis of the collaborative consulting.

18:59.232 --> 19:01.632
I mean, it's in there, but it's not really what they do. If you talk

19:01.648 --> 19:04.584
to people who worked on the inside, particularly people who've left,

19:04.704 --> 19:08.512
often for ethical reasons, they leave because they were sick and

19:08.528 --> 19:12.196
tired of being discouraged from doing anything that works

19:12.220 --> 19:15.756
towards capability building. So everything

19:15.820 --> 19:19.388
outside societally orientates towards

19:19.556 --> 19:23.324
us taking fixed positions. So thought leadership and big names.

19:23.484 --> 19:26.684
We like celebrity as well. So it needs to be easily

19:26.724 --> 19:28.824
digestible, charismatic,

19:29.404 --> 19:33.184
simple and profound and inspiring.

19:34.244 --> 19:37.824
But the easily digestible bit is

19:37.864 --> 19:41.744
not the same thing as consuming something where you need to really

19:41.784 --> 19:45.072
chew on it and establish what kind of flavor it is. I mean, you know,

19:45.088 --> 19:47.152
there's a metaphor there with food. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I'm

19:47.168 --> 19:50.824
sure there is one. But actually being invited to think bit more deeply

19:50.944 --> 19:54.216
is not something that's that common. There's a bit

19:54.240 --> 19:57.144
in the book about bullshit receptivity,

19:57.264 --> 20:00.952
and I think, if I remember correctly, what it talks about is that people who

20:00.968 --> 20:04.408
are incredibly good at intuiting and processing information quickly,

20:04.456 --> 20:07.752
part of the problem with that sometimes is they have a. They have got less

20:07.768 --> 20:11.680
of a filth bullshit because they will just suck it up. And there's so

20:11.712 --> 20:15.644
much going on the client side, isn't there? Like, what's kind of driving this?

20:16.104 --> 20:18.464
And I guess one of the things that sort of, we're taking away from this

20:18.504 --> 20:21.592
and Dan, you definitely picked up on this, isn't it is sort of the lack

20:21.608 --> 20:25.040
of time that people put into things and just the constant feeling of need,

20:25.072 --> 20:28.880
of speed and action and that as well. Yeah, but I

20:28.912 --> 20:31.824
smell a rat because. Smell rat for two.

20:31.904 --> 20:36.022
Okay. Yes. In many organizations, there's less resource,

20:36.158 --> 20:39.766
there's less money, there's lots of pressure on, there's more work

20:39.790 --> 20:42.886
to do with less resources, and time is one of the things that

20:42.910 --> 20:45.034
goes. So, yes, I accept that.

20:47.374 --> 20:51.182
But if what you're facing is a challenge which genuinely requires you,

20:51.238 --> 20:54.566
even for a moment, to slow down and go,

20:54.710 --> 20:57.790
hang on a minute, are we running 100 miles an hour in the right direction?

20:57.902 --> 21:01.186
There is no challenge that you face that

21:01.250 --> 21:04.706
does not. Particularly complex ones. That does not merit you stopping for a

21:04.730 --> 21:07.986
second. I'll give you a really good example. Think about

21:08.130 --> 21:11.466
what happens when somebody crashes with potentially some kind

21:11.490 --> 21:15.434
of medical condition in a and e. You need medical people who

21:15.514 --> 21:19.386
at some level have got a moment of tapping either into their

21:19.410 --> 21:22.698
tacit knowledge or into their experience to go,

21:22.826 --> 21:26.266
what's the choice I need to make here? They've got no time, so I don't

21:26.290 --> 21:29.746
buy it. So what's that about then? Do you think it's. If people keep

21:29.770 --> 21:33.266
moving fast, then, well, nobody questions them.

21:33.410 --> 21:36.074
If we move fast, we don't have to think, we don't have to feel.

21:36.194 --> 21:39.322
And it's probably the latter that actually is more is

21:39.378 --> 21:42.082
the first one. And when I think about the clients I'm working with at the

21:42.098 --> 21:45.594
moment and some I've worked with recently, what I notice is faster

21:45.674 --> 21:49.418
they move, the less they have to think about how they're relating

21:49.466 --> 21:52.934
with each other, the conversations they're avoiding having with each other,

21:53.564 --> 21:57.028
the conflicts that they have had, but they really don't want to

21:57.036 --> 21:59.132
go any further. And I'll give you a perfect example. I was working at it

21:59.148 --> 22:02.468
this year with a wonderful group of people overseas in the Middle east,

22:02.596 --> 22:06.196
very senior leadership team. And in

22:06.220 --> 22:10.304
that cultural context, they moved and worked together very much as one,

22:10.604 --> 22:14.172
very fast. But I had this lovely conversation with one of them who

22:14.188 --> 22:18.036
was one of the more introverted, reflective group members. And the conversation

22:18.060 --> 22:21.386
I had with them was, your colleagues are brilliant, but the value you bring,

22:21.410 --> 22:25.034
the difference you bring is that you actually ask questions and you slow them

22:25.074 --> 22:28.898
down. And they need you to speak up occasionally and

22:28.906 --> 22:31.802
just ask them whether they're running a hundred miles an hour over the cliff.

22:31.938 --> 22:35.386
Is that a good idea? And on the third day, it was really interesting

22:35.410 --> 22:38.826
to see him suddenly becoming more visible and these questions being dropped

22:38.850 --> 22:42.202
in and the rest of the group just going, wait a minute. So do

22:42.218 --> 22:44.494
you sort of see it as a way of suppressing their anxiety?

22:45.164 --> 22:48.796
Totally. Totally, yeah. And I recognize that. I know my

22:48.860 --> 22:52.148
counter transparency this, I know that intellectually and my own.

22:52.276 --> 22:55.292
I use my. I used to use my intellect and my own grandiosity as a

22:55.308 --> 22:58.860
defense to keep others at bay and keep my anxiety at bay? Well,

22:58.892 --> 23:02.460
absolutely. I'd say this partly because I'm deeply

23:02.492 --> 23:06.756
familiar with that internal psychological process. Yeah. And obviously,

23:06.820 --> 23:10.244
we're familiar with the extensive work you've done at sort of senior leader level.

23:10.364 --> 23:14.116
And obviously, we're just really interested to hear about your practice as a practitioner when

23:14.140 --> 23:18.996
you're in the room and you are starting to encourage the

23:19.020 --> 23:22.340
team to sort of pay attention to how they're feeling and maybe asking

23:22.372 --> 23:25.724
some of those provocative questions. How. How receptive

23:25.764 --> 23:28.596
are they to it? How easy do they find to start working on that?

23:28.620 --> 23:32.132
Or can it be sort of a challenge? It can be. And that there's.

23:32.188 --> 23:35.332
There's. You expect me to say, Garen, that there's no right answer? I mean,

23:35.348 --> 23:38.972
I was. What comes to mind is an experience I've had very

23:39.028 --> 23:42.652
recently with, with a group of leaders where myself and

23:42.668 --> 23:46.020
my colleagues have been scaffolding some

23:46.052 --> 23:49.740
interventions to get them to the point where they're

23:49.772 --> 23:53.252
actually going to be able to start to have the conversations that they

23:53.308 --> 23:56.380
may be. They know they need to have, but they've been worried about having been

23:56.412 --> 24:00.164
too scared to. And there's this moment, and it couldn't have been clear. You know,

24:00.204 --> 24:02.772
we. We've done the work of saying, what do you need to talk about or

24:02.788 --> 24:04.820
what do you need to focus on? Well, we need to talk about these things.

24:04.852 --> 24:06.948
We need to be more candid with each other. Okay. We need help to do

24:06.956 --> 24:09.428
it. We'll scaffold all these things. This is how you need to do it.

24:09.516 --> 24:12.552
This is how you can do it. Here's the space to do it. Bringing them

24:12.568 --> 24:16.088
together right now, move towards each other, have a conversation.

24:16.216 --> 24:19.112
And what you literally had in the moment was some of the people in the

24:19.128 --> 24:22.712
room going, real intake of breath, this sense of, I'm a bit scared,

24:22.808 --> 24:25.928
a bit nervous, but soddy, I'm going to go and do it anyway. But there

24:25.936 --> 24:29.064
was this other feeling in the room which felt a bit like and came across

24:29.104 --> 24:32.128
to me. My interpretation was, no,

24:32.256 --> 24:35.264
no, I don't think I want to do that. I've been led this far.

24:35.304 --> 24:38.992
And my fantasy is they would much rather be given another

24:39.048 --> 24:42.232
model that will tell them how to do it, but they won't necessarily then go

24:42.248 --> 24:45.968
and do it anyway because there's not much more we can do

24:46.136 --> 24:49.736
to get them into a space to have the conversation. We're now bordering

24:49.760 --> 24:53.444
on the stage of the intervention, which is we're noticing that

24:53.784 --> 24:57.328
we've created the conditions. But you don't want to move into this space and

24:57.336 --> 25:00.792
it's the anxiety that stops them. Yeah. And I guess, do you

25:00.808 --> 25:03.432
need to take the whole team with you to have those in conversations or can

25:03.448 --> 25:06.352
you sort of build out from just a few? It's the myth. The myth that

25:06.368 --> 25:08.464
you. That everybody has to be with you. I mean, the other, the other.

25:08.504 --> 25:11.768
One of my core assumptions is in any group of n number of people.

25:11.816 --> 25:15.564
I will guarantee you that not everybody's going to get what they need. It's impossible.

25:16.784 --> 25:20.352
I'm a bit wary of groups where they, where every person

25:20.408 --> 25:22.084
says, this is brilliant.

25:25.064 --> 25:26.284
Don't buy it.

25:28.624 --> 25:32.296
What are you not telling me? Somebody's got to be at

25:32.320 --> 25:35.812
least a bit disappointed or not like my style,

25:35.948 --> 25:39.788
because I know I'm Garen, I know I'm Marmite. I'm really clear about that.

25:39.916 --> 25:43.244
So I expect people to like me or like what I do,

25:43.284 --> 25:46.052
but I also expect someone to go, oh, no, I'd rather not have him.

25:46.148 --> 25:49.324
Which is why I choose to work with people often who are very

25:49.364 --> 25:52.508
different stylistically to me. Yeah, but again,

25:52.676 --> 25:55.868
that's an interesting thing, isn't it? Because we talk about, like our, the role of

25:55.956 --> 25:59.276
consultant participating in this as well, and there's a lot of ego involved there,

25:59.300 --> 26:02.476
isn't it? Like, in a way, it can be very tempting for the consultant

26:02.500 --> 26:05.588
to want to hear you all think I'm amazing. You all think I've given you

26:05.596 --> 26:08.924
a cathartic moment. Well, that's, that's a good job done, isn't it?

26:09.044 --> 26:12.900
I had this, the lovely Jake in his email, and when I was working with

26:12.972 --> 26:16.984
the group last week, you know, they all said to me, and, you know,

26:17.964 --> 26:21.412
we now say sometimes, what would Steve say? And he said in his email,

26:21.468 --> 26:25.308
I've got, I've got Steve on my shoulder or something, and that they were kind

26:25.316 --> 26:28.532
of very clear about saying, you know, they're saying it's like a,

26:28.628 --> 26:31.248
we're using you as a metaphor for something. But another part of me is going,

26:31.356 --> 26:34.336
oh, that's a nice stroke. The ego in me is kind of going,

26:34.440 --> 26:37.672
oh, I love that. You know, I'm not ashamed to say that, of course.

26:37.728 --> 26:41.376
Part of me loves that. But equally, equally, I really

26:41.440 --> 26:44.680
don't want to be on the pedestal where they think

26:44.712 --> 26:47.560
that everything I think, say or do or feel is right,

26:47.672 --> 26:51.312
because that that is putting me into the guru place, the thought leadership place.

26:51.408 --> 26:54.736
And it touches on another thing as well, isn't it? Which is, although it's not,

26:54.800 --> 26:57.792
you know, when you're on someone's shoulder. You're not getting paid to be on someone's

26:57.808 --> 27:01.200
shoulder. But it's that dependency, isn't it? That's can be developed on consultancy,

27:01.232 --> 27:05.446
too. And obviously, you know, with OD, the idea is temporary scaffolding

27:05.470 --> 27:08.254
and then out, because it's not doing them any service.

27:08.414 --> 27:11.750
Well, that's interesting. I mean. I mean, I've talked to you about this before,

27:11.782 --> 27:14.754
Garren. I have a slightly ambivalent relationship with the field at the moment.

27:15.774 --> 27:19.254
And I'm in conversations with people with an ODN, OD and e at the moment

27:19.294 --> 27:23.542
about my ambivalence and what am I representing

27:23.638 --> 27:26.714
as part of the field in my ambivalence.

27:27.534 --> 27:30.922
But if. If Od as a field is really

27:30.978 --> 27:34.378
interested primarily in building the scaffolding, then why are we so attached

27:34.386 --> 27:38.898
to the label of OD, for example, if it's really about the scaffolding

27:39.026 --> 27:42.162
and being of service to the system, isn't the label irrelevant?

27:42.298 --> 27:45.090
And therefore I get very suspicious when I see,

27:45.242 --> 27:48.762
or I feel that there's a real clinging to the label, and particularly when

27:48.778 --> 27:52.650
it's used as an othering mechanism, a we're OD, your HR,

27:52.722 --> 27:56.474
which I've seen before. That's why I get a little bit suspicious.

27:57.094 --> 27:59.982
Yeah. And I think it's interesting when you look at the people we've had on

27:59.998 --> 28:03.318
this podcast, when you talk about what is organization development to

28:03.326 --> 28:06.622
you, everybody's got a different story. So many people don't even have OD in

28:06.638 --> 28:10.222
their title. I think we've got somebody coming up who doesn't even

28:10.318 --> 28:13.630
really describe himself, didn't really understand what OD was

28:13.662 --> 28:18.590
at all. But he's definitely working in ways that we would associate

28:18.622 --> 28:22.110
with it. There's a guy based up in Scotland called Phil Lewis who runs something

28:22.142 --> 28:26.026
called the change punks. So you should drop filler line. He's a really interesting guy.

28:26.170 --> 28:28.854
Look at his website. It's so wonderfully analog.

28:30.154 --> 28:33.706
Deliberately so. But you talk to him about his practice,

28:33.890 --> 28:37.842
you know, OD, you might as well be talking to him in Cantonese

28:37.858 --> 28:41.146
or something. He's utterly alien to him. But his practice,

28:41.210 --> 28:44.930
his change practice is really interesting. Really interesting.

28:45.042 --> 28:48.322
We'll put him on the list. Yes. Just for the name.

28:48.458 --> 28:51.912
Yeah. Yeah. I guess one thing you also want us

28:51.928 --> 28:55.312
done as well is we've all seen the scar tissue of silver bullets

28:55.328 --> 28:58.560
in organizations. What are some of the things? And we

28:58.592 --> 29:01.504
talked about suppression of anxiety in that. But what do you see are some of

29:02.004 --> 29:05.296
the consequences that concern you most about silver bullets in organisations? Oh,

29:05.320 --> 29:08.376
God, I'm going to try and make this a relatively short answer, Garen,

29:08.400 --> 29:12.296
because there's a whole number. So let's just

29:12.440 --> 29:16.120
pick some of the implications. So let's start at the top.

29:16.272 --> 29:20.404
At the top. What it means is you have senior leadership teams that are,

29:21.144 --> 29:24.696
worst case, spending a lot of money on stuff where they didn't

29:24.720 --> 29:28.888
really need to. Example, major UK bank refusing

29:28.936 --> 29:32.520
to spend anything less than 10,000 pounds on an external

29:32.552 --> 29:36.224
consultant because they don't believe. Sorry, 10,000 pounds per day, because they don't

29:36.264 --> 29:39.144
believe that anybody who charges less than that is worth a ton of money.

29:39.184 --> 29:42.656
So I know somebody who normally would be charged out at two grand a day

29:42.680 --> 29:44.552
saying, well, if that's what they want to pay. I see. Anyway, I'm going to

29:44.568 --> 29:48.490
still work with them. So there you go. There's one. Money is just

29:48.682 --> 29:52.814
shanked. Or as in Boris Johnson speaks, spaffed up against the wall.

29:54.874 --> 29:58.234
So that's the money thing. There's the human cost, which is you've got senior leadership

29:58.274 --> 30:02.634
teams who are far more anxious and

30:02.754 --> 30:06.466
going through an absolute mincer because they

30:06.490 --> 30:09.762
are being. They're deluding themselves and being deluded by others,

30:09.938 --> 30:13.146
that there are answers, there are silver

30:13.170 --> 30:16.306
bullet answers, and therefore they're in this cycle where they keep on buying

30:16.330 --> 30:19.298
these things, but they don't work and therefore it becomes even more anxiety inducing.

30:19.346 --> 30:23.338
The next layer damage is to people in organizations.

30:23.466 --> 30:27.114
Let's pick one example. If I think back earlier in my

30:27.154 --> 30:30.370
career, so, new technology, bring it.

30:30.402 --> 30:34.002
I remember vividly BCG coming into the organization I was working

30:34.058 --> 30:37.658
in at the time when they were starting to move classified

30:37.706 --> 30:41.560
advertising and magazines to online self service. So,

30:41.712 --> 30:45.160
silver bullet, online self service, classified advertising, you don't

30:45.192 --> 30:48.136
need at that headcap. So we'll get rid of these people. And I can still

30:48.160 --> 30:52.096
remember to stay walking into the offices somewhere

30:52.120 --> 30:55.232
up north of London and somebody saying to me as you walked in going,

30:55.288 --> 30:58.440
yeah, they're having to rehire loads of those people again. So they've,

30:58.472 --> 31:01.872
you know, they've. There's. There's literally, as with bullets, there's collateral damage.

31:01.928 --> 31:04.484
People lose their job, people lose their livelihood.

31:05.584 --> 31:09.004
And you could argue at a societal level, and it's

31:09.044 --> 31:12.624
laid out very clearly in the big con, the book that came out last year,

31:13.564 --> 31:17.084
it's well worth a read. We have the way in which large

31:17.124 --> 31:20.820
consultancies have people who move between government

31:20.972 --> 31:24.556
to large professional services firms and back again, and the way

31:24.580 --> 31:28.196
in which government policy is being set and influenced heavily by a

31:28.220 --> 31:31.404
whole value system that arguably is about

31:31.444 --> 31:35.046
maintaining a particular industry and sector, ie, consulting, rather than

31:35.070 --> 31:38.302
it is in terms, rather than it being about public good. So there's,

31:38.318 --> 31:41.374
there's multiple layers to this. Okay. Yeah.

31:41.414 --> 31:44.486
And I guess you got the sort of the law of unintended consequences because they

31:44.510 --> 31:47.566
all do a thing, don't they, that we don't quite expect.

31:47.670 --> 31:51.314
Totally, totally. And, yeah, and I suppose that the.

31:51.694 --> 31:54.926
You're then right to the heart of it, which is, which is how often do

31:54.950 --> 31:58.262
we offer to a client something and say we think this is what it

31:58.278 --> 32:01.434
will do, but there may be some other things that happen that we don't know.

32:01.614 --> 32:04.058
I'll give you a really good example. I'm right in the middle, I'm coming towards.

32:04.106 --> 32:06.802
I'm just in the middle of doing a culture review for an organization. And we've

32:06.818 --> 32:09.666
said to the client, we will hold the mirror up to you and there will

32:09.690 --> 32:12.786
be some. Most of the stuff you're going to know already. There may be some

32:12.810 --> 32:15.010
stuff that's going to come up that is going to be new to you.

32:15.082 --> 32:18.850
Now, the reality is, however we present that stuff back, there's a possibility

32:18.922 --> 32:22.826
that some people really will not like it. There's a possibility there could

32:22.850 --> 32:26.306
be some unintended consequences, but I don't see there's any way outside out of

32:26.330 --> 32:29.250
that if you are going to be totally honest with the client about what's really

32:29.282 --> 32:33.046
going on in their organization. So one of the secrets then is couraging,

32:33.110 --> 32:36.414
contracting with the client and actually getting their

32:36.574 --> 32:39.998
informed consent. Well, yeah, but even there,

32:40.046 --> 32:43.926
it still may not work. So if, you know, there's this lovely

32:43.950 --> 32:48.582
idea in transactional analysis around contracting around protection,

32:48.638 --> 32:52.662
permission and power. So protection sets

32:52.838 --> 32:57.114
the territory in which you're doing the work. It's the timeframe,

32:57.524 --> 33:00.788
the ways you're going to work, whatever all that stuff the permission is,

33:00.836 --> 33:04.620
I actually am going to give you permission to do this thing. And Helen Charles

33:04.652 --> 33:08.004
Edwards, who I do quite a bit of work with, who's, who's qualified in

33:08.084 --> 33:11.612
organisation, Ta. She tells this lovely story of contracting robustly

33:11.628 --> 33:15.036
with a client around permission and protection of stuff and thought she

33:15.060 --> 33:17.732
had it. And then when the crap hit the fan, she found that there wasn't

33:17.748 --> 33:21.148
a protection there, nobody had her back. The client was running over the

33:21.156 --> 33:24.420
hills as far as his little nose could take him. So even with

33:24.452 --> 33:28.220
robust contracting, you only really find out what that's

33:28.252 --> 33:31.364
worth when it's tested. Yeah,

33:31.404 --> 33:33.988
that's the only way. And it's one of the things you talk about in the

33:33.996 --> 33:37.332
book, isn't it, that the reason organizations and senior leaders aren't going

33:37.348 --> 33:41.164
to bring in consultants is because they're trying to outsource that kind of anxiety

33:41.244 --> 33:44.516
and have somebody to blame when things go wrong. It's kind of a defense

33:44.580 --> 33:47.740
mechanism to have somebody else to go. But it wasn't us.

33:47.852 --> 33:51.966
We brought in the best of the best, which is why some organizations

33:51.990 --> 33:54.714
will only hire in big four or big six.

33:55.174 --> 33:58.254
I'm far more of a risk because I'm not big name. Yes,

33:58.374 --> 34:01.446
absolutely. See, that's what I thought was interesting in your book, was you talk about

34:01.470 --> 34:04.782
the kind of mythologizing of theories and theorists and kind of the way that

34:04.798 --> 34:08.294
we simplify kind of people. Oh, yes, the field.

34:08.374 --> 34:12.150
Yeah, yeah. Regurgitation of three step

34:12.182 --> 34:15.902
change models. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Are you

34:15.918 --> 34:17.474
worried that's going to happen to your book?

34:20.233 --> 34:23.569
Look, if you ever see anybody describe me as a thought leader,

34:23.641 --> 34:26.049
you're at liberty with mail me and tell me where it is and I'll quickly

34:26.081 --> 34:27.413
run over or do something.

34:29.553 --> 34:32.753
I was just commenting on it, really. I think it's really prevalent, isn't it?

34:32.833 --> 34:36.025
Again, it's that draw to we want to make the world as simple

34:36.049 --> 34:40.529
as possible. So simplifying somebody's complex research is.

34:40.681 --> 34:44.185
Yeah, but that's why I think something like pro Sci is such a sweet example

34:44.209 --> 34:47.600
of that, because at face value, ad car has got some

34:47.632 --> 34:51.944
utility. It's a really lovely model of

34:51.984 --> 34:55.232
personal change in the process we go through. But as I say in the

34:55.248 --> 34:58.432
book, to sit through three days of a certification of several

34:58.488 --> 35:01.592
hundred slides and to be, you know, to get into

35:01.608 --> 35:05.324
a conversation with a very good consultant who's running it and doing the training,

35:06.064 --> 35:09.160
and me pointing out that there's nothing in here about

35:09.272 --> 35:12.656
conversation and dialogue and stuff. And he went, yes, you're right. 70% of

35:12.680 --> 35:16.242
this is dependent on dialogue, but it's nowhere in the freaking materials.

35:16.368 --> 35:20.318
And the thing that just leapt out

35:20.366 --> 35:24.118
was the moment when there were two people from the same organization in the room,

35:24.286 --> 35:28.046
and their organization had sent multiple people on prosci trainings.

35:28.150 --> 35:31.478
And she said, I didn't realize how many people actually done this course until I

35:31.486 --> 35:33.878
said in the office the other day, I'm going on the pro sci certification,

35:33.966 --> 35:36.646
and all these people stuck their hands on and said, oh, yeah, we are too.

35:36.790 --> 35:40.286
And so this organization was sending people on this program as

35:40.310 --> 35:44.110
if that in itself was the answer, trying to achieve some kind of tipping point

35:44.182 --> 35:47.830
of, once enough people have done it, then, no, I think it was as simple

35:47.862 --> 35:51.314
as if we send them on pro si, that will be

35:51.774 --> 35:55.238
once we've got, we've got enough people trained in this methodology, then everything

35:55.286 --> 35:58.550
will be fine. And I. Silver bullet, isn't it? That was the silver bullet.

35:58.582 --> 36:01.694
I spoke to somebody else who was very senior in he, not long afterwards,

36:01.814 --> 36:05.062
who described a very similar thing. He said, yeah, our organization is looking at

36:05.078 --> 36:09.400
pro side and it absolutely was being framed as we'll

36:09.432 --> 36:14.768
wheel this in and then change will be fine. It's soothing anxiety and

36:14.776 --> 36:18.256
the conversations and the dialogue is the stuff that's really hard to build capability in

36:18.280 --> 36:21.656
and for people to lean into for all the reasons we've talked about around anxiety

36:21.720 --> 36:25.152
and shame and the things it triggers for people. I mean, a lovely example

36:25.168 --> 36:28.120
of this, which is not a methodology, but one of the things I observed about

36:28.152 --> 36:31.432
behavioral frameworks, and I was working with a client over

36:31.448 --> 36:34.978
the last year supervising some really lovely people in the NHS.

36:35.176 --> 36:37.998
And this organization has got a new behavioral framework,

36:38.126 --> 36:41.686
but it's, again, it's an abstraction. And whenever

36:41.710 --> 36:44.526
you talk to people in the organization about what it will take to turn that

36:44.550 --> 36:48.270
into genuine behavior change, they get really scared because

36:48.302 --> 36:51.566
what I say to them is, you do realize the only way

36:51.630 --> 36:54.782
you're going to get behavior change is if when you take your behavioural framework and

36:54.798 --> 36:58.486
you say, so, Danny, in that last meeting, I actually experienced

36:58.510 --> 37:02.142
you in a way where you weren't really respecting my contribution. We've got

37:02.158 --> 37:05.980
this value in the framework about expect. Can we talk about this?

37:06.132 --> 37:09.420
Scares them rigid. That to me is a perfect

37:09.452 --> 37:13.012
example of how we turn ideas into methodologies or constructs

37:13.028 --> 37:16.516
and abstractions to manage the anxiety.

37:16.700 --> 37:20.780
And then we were able to just move them to one side.

37:20.812 --> 37:24.420
We don't really have to engage with the reality of the conversations that are right

37:24.452 --> 37:27.788
to be had. So just to finish that, one of the things I

37:27.796 --> 37:31.632
say about my work is every single thing I do is all about scaffolding

37:31.648 --> 37:35.208
a conversation and inquiry. The only question is, what's the conversation?

37:35.256 --> 37:38.592
What's the inquiry? Yeah, and it's a really powerful point you're

37:38.608 --> 37:42.080
making. And I guess, like when you do actually see the authoring of things like

37:42.152 --> 37:45.552
behavioral frameworks, there's lots of multiple agendas at play in

37:45.568 --> 37:49.104
the design of the framework, isn't there? So they may be wanting a particular

37:49.184 --> 37:52.656
behavior to be complied to, or so

37:52.720 --> 37:55.612
it's often. It's the formulation that really matters, isn't it?

37:55.768 --> 37:59.556
Well, yeah. Have you read any of the stuff out of the Tavistock,

37:59.580 --> 38:03.060
the kind of social defenses against anxiety stuff? No, but I can feel I'm reading

38:03.092 --> 38:06.636
this, it's growing, which I'm enjoying this. Yeah. So when

38:06.660 --> 38:09.824
you posted a while ago, Garen, I remember you did this really lovely post about

38:10.684 --> 38:14.036
transference countertransferential projection and projection, and you were

38:14.060 --> 38:17.260
highlighting these as really important facets of practice and stuff,

38:17.292 --> 38:20.804
and that was. That was brilliant. I really liked that. And the

38:20.884 --> 38:24.600
kind of the Elliot Jake stuff about social defenses

38:24.632 --> 38:28.440
against anxiety is this lovely idea from the Tampersok

38:28.472 --> 38:32.096
tradition that the only reason we

38:32.120 --> 38:35.856
have things like job descriptions, business plans,

38:36.040 --> 38:39.816
strategy documents, memos, all these things are

38:39.840 --> 38:42.912
containers for anxiety. That's the only reason they exist.

38:43.088 --> 38:46.704
And I suppose the evidence for that, the simple evidence

38:46.744 --> 38:50.376
for that, is we've probably all been in organizations where when the anxiety's

38:50.400 --> 38:53.486
gone up, they've got more command and control and there's more process and there's more

38:53.510 --> 38:56.702
documentation. They're all containers for anxiety. Yeah,

38:56.758 --> 39:00.158
absolutely. You know, you see it in the HR field all the time. An incident

39:00.246 --> 39:03.542
will have a policy to, you know, prevent that from ever happening again. Well,

39:03.558 --> 39:06.462
that's not. That's not going to be the thing. Absolutely.

39:06.598 --> 39:08.994
Yeah. I'm having so many flashbacks,

39:11.814 --> 39:14.774
I might need to book myself in for a supervision session after this.

39:14.814 --> 39:18.854
Steve, that's all right. But it's, it's, it's, um. Yeah, we're delighted to.

39:18.894 --> 39:21.984
Yeah. But joking aside, you know,

39:22.144 --> 39:25.952
I mean, it's not that I'm saying that we all need to become therapists.

39:26.008 --> 39:29.056
And there's a. There's a lovely guy based. Who I've never met face

39:29.080 --> 39:31.544
to face, but I know him through LinkedIn, Ian Reid, who's based over in,

39:31.584 --> 39:35.560
I think, Switzerland, who gets very grumpy about the blurred

39:35.592 --> 39:39.528
boundaries between coaching and consulting and therapeutic

39:39.616 --> 39:42.976
practice. We are not therapists. We do not have

39:43.000 --> 39:46.528
the training. And any coach, for example, who says they do trauma

39:46.576 --> 39:49.866
work, well, no. Unless they've gone and done the years to do, you know,

39:49.890 --> 39:53.354
to do the proper therapeutic training to do that work, then they're actually

39:53.434 --> 39:57.202
profoundly unethical, in my view. But the

39:57.218 --> 40:00.938
reality is that most of what we're dealing with in organizations is that

40:00.986 --> 40:04.370
some, what we're called into as Od people, what we call ourselves,

40:04.442 --> 40:07.938
is going to have some anxiety flying around. Why else are

40:07.946 --> 40:11.194
they calling the three of us? I mean, if your clients don't call you both

40:11.234 --> 40:16.784
because everything's going brilliant, they do that and they're not worried about brilliant.

40:16.824 --> 40:18.992
Garen, Danny, come here. Come in. Because we want to tell you how brilliant it

40:19.008 --> 40:22.584
is. But it's easy to point the finger thing like senior

40:22.624 --> 40:26.324
leaders, but they're under a lot of pressure from boards. Aren't they like the boards,

40:26.624 --> 40:29.844
enormous pressure. They want to see some kind of action, don't they?

40:30.144 --> 40:33.720
Well, yeah, but they also, the kicker is we're also culpable

40:33.752 --> 40:35.524
because we expect so much of them.

40:36.224 --> 40:39.856
We've. I just wish that we could finally take heroic

40:39.880 --> 40:42.914
leadership out and shoot it, you know,

40:43.254 --> 40:46.326
needs to be laid to rest. But you can see heroic leadership

40:46.350 --> 40:49.710
is the zombie idea that will never die. Yes. The Alex Hasm paper,

40:49.742 --> 40:53.470
isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. That's the role model that people see. That's,

40:53.542 --> 40:56.526
you know, people have that in their heads because it's so prevalent, that role model

40:56.550 --> 40:59.422
of, that's what a leader should be like. And then it's, it's very hard to

40:59.438 --> 41:03.414
adopt a different, different style of leading or approach to leading

41:03.534 --> 41:06.830
when you've got that and that's expected. Well, also it means

41:06.862 --> 41:10.878
we know that nested in lurking, that is also what's our own personal

41:10.926 --> 41:14.670
willingness to follow. Now am I really okay

41:14.702 --> 41:18.766
with following these people? It's why my observation about he organizations

41:18.790 --> 41:22.358
is they're full of incredibly bright people who are really

41:22.406 --> 41:26.062
difficult to lead because they're incredibly bright. And the greater

41:26.078 --> 41:29.794
the propensity of the count of phds in the organization,

41:30.294 --> 41:32.766
the more likely it is they think they know how you should be doing your

41:32.790 --> 41:36.458
job, but at some point they also need to follow. And how

41:36.466 --> 41:39.874
do you manage that tension? Yeah, and I guess even the professional services firms,

41:39.914 --> 41:42.466
which we're talking about a lot, is similar, like the managing partner,

41:42.610 --> 41:45.938
how it is leading highly autonomous people and

41:45.986 --> 41:48.954
trying to get them work in a different way. Well, that's an interesting one.

41:48.994 --> 41:51.458
If you talk to some of the ex consultants I work with, and there's a

41:51.466 --> 41:54.994
quote from one who I worked with a few years ago and

41:55.114 --> 41:59.002
we stayed in touch, and their description of working in

41:59.058 --> 42:02.898
one of the big four is, was utterly

42:02.946 --> 42:06.162
psychologically damaging. You know, this, this phrase

42:06.218 --> 42:09.254
which, which several people have now told me since I first heard it,

42:10.754 --> 42:14.154
that they intentionally look for insecure overachievers.

42:14.314 --> 42:17.666
So the, the anxiety and the fragility

42:17.770 --> 42:21.026
is baked into the system from

42:21.050 --> 42:25.002
the moment they start recruiting bright young things out of unit. They're looking for the

42:25.018 --> 42:28.602
people who are driven by anxiety. So we've kind of looked at it from

42:28.698 --> 42:32.738
both sides, the challenges of the consultants being called in to

42:32.826 --> 42:36.306
fix these complex, persistent, enduring problems. And we've looked

42:36.330 --> 42:40.570
at the anxieties and the pressures upon the people actually commissioning

42:40.602 --> 42:43.354
the work as well. And I think obviously one of the things that we're sort

42:43.854 --> 42:46.778
of identifying here from what you said is the importance of getting comfortable with not

42:46.826 --> 42:50.194
knowing totally. How can we

42:50.234 --> 42:53.914
create places, containers, whatever it is that's going to encourage

42:53.954 --> 42:57.196
that on both sides. What might be some of the things that can help with

42:57.220 --> 43:00.908
that? Well, if we had the answer that Garen, we probably would make a

43:00.916 --> 43:03.344
fortune. Is this the sequel?

43:05.244 --> 43:07.756
It's funny to say that. I mean, I've been. Some of the articles I've been

43:07.780 --> 43:10.620
asked or piece I've been asked to write for press in the last couple of

43:10.652 --> 43:14.212
weeks have had a very strong, consistent thread through them of I've

43:14.228 --> 43:17.596
been asked to write stuff. I was asked to do one, I think,

43:17.620 --> 43:19.624
for one of the CEO magazines around.

43:20.844 --> 43:24.556
Not precisely that, you know, not knowing. How can you get more comfortable with not

43:24.580 --> 43:28.366
knowing? And the

43:28.390 --> 43:31.862
only kind of suggestions I've got are very tentative,

43:31.958 --> 43:35.390
but they do tend to orientate towards, you kind of

43:35.422 --> 43:38.942
have to do your own self work. You've got to do

43:38.958 --> 43:42.354
your own reflexive rather than reflective practice.

43:42.774 --> 43:45.974
But there's a gnarly kind of truth, I think, in this least, it's my truth

43:46.014 --> 43:49.614
anyway, which is if you are really going to inquire into not going,

43:49.654 --> 43:52.956
you are going into an existential place. If you're really going to go

43:52.980 --> 43:56.284
into not knowing, then you're actually going to have to open yourself

43:56.324 --> 44:00.276
up to the possibility that, for example, the world around the organizations

44:00.300 --> 44:03.664
that we work in at the moment is, quite frankly, utterly terrifying.

44:03.964 --> 44:06.596
Certainly is for me. You know,

44:06.660 --> 44:10.420
it's. So how can I possibly, you know, not knowing what will

44:10.452 --> 44:13.868
happen, for example, Ukraine, and whether or not something will happen there with,

44:13.916 --> 44:18.112
you know, low level or high yield nuclear weapons is utterly terrifying.

44:18.228 --> 44:21.736
But in organizations, they have their own different aspects of not

44:21.760 --> 44:25.080
knowing. You know, I don't know what will happen if I bring this consultant

44:25.112 --> 44:27.664
in. I don't know what will happen if I bring this intervention in.

44:27.784 --> 44:31.592
Okay, that is an existential question, and you mentioned the word reflexivity

44:31.648 --> 44:34.120
as well. So could you just give us a little bit of a definition about

44:34.152 --> 44:37.324
what that is and how it differs to reflective practice?

44:37.864 --> 44:40.964
The simple way I describe it, there's a more complex definition,

44:41.344 --> 44:43.600
which is in a book on my shelf, which I might be able to find

44:43.632 --> 44:47.442
if you wanted me to. But for me, the way I tend to think of

44:47.458 --> 44:50.746
it is if critical reflection is you thinking about the

44:50.770 --> 44:54.050
influences on you. You know, you're reflecting your feelings,

44:54.122 --> 44:57.410
your reactions, your responses, who you are, yourself and all

44:57.442 --> 45:01.378
that. The difference that makes a difference is that with reflexivity,

45:01.506 --> 45:05.506
you don't just do that work in yourself. You also then move

45:05.530 --> 45:09.378
into cycles of inquiry about noticing how you then experience yourself

45:09.426 --> 45:12.864
and what you experience when you go into work. And then you bring those experiences,

45:12.894 --> 45:16.372
experiences back into a cycle of inquiry in yourself and

45:16.388 --> 45:20.344
then you go back out. So this is process of looking at yourself

45:20.644 --> 45:24.156
both in and out of your practice context. And if your

45:24.180 --> 45:27.676
practice is as a consultant, then it's as a consultant. If your practices as a

45:27.700 --> 45:30.604
leader then it's in your leadership context. But it's that.

45:30.644 --> 45:34.484
That to me is why I'm a bit suspicious

45:34.524 --> 45:38.100
of when I experience practitioners talking about how

45:38.132 --> 45:41.586
deeply critically reflective they are unless I have a sense they really are

45:41.610 --> 45:45.854
prepared to work on their own shit. And they're. Secondly, they're also prepared to then

45:47.074 --> 45:49.922
really look at how that then shows up in their client work.

45:50.098 --> 45:53.218
Then I'm thinking you're not doing the work because if we go back

45:53.226 --> 45:56.810
to self as instrument, that's actually what that requires and that's the gritty

45:56.842 --> 45:59.602
work, isn't it? I think that's sometimes the thing that people underestimate when they go

45:59.618 --> 46:03.266
into the field like that, isn't it? Yeah. So I don't

46:03.370 --> 46:05.706
think I want to be really clear. So if it sounds like I'm not being

46:05.730 --> 46:08.976
compassionate, it's not that I expect everybody, because I'm not a finished article. I'm not

46:09.000 --> 46:12.320
saying that everybody needs to either a want to do that work or b,

46:12.352 --> 46:14.776
needs to be at the same level. It's not about that. You can be a

46:14.800 --> 46:18.816
really inexperienced inverted commons practitioner or leader or consultant,

46:19.000 --> 46:22.512
but my God, the admiration. I can think of

46:22.528 --> 46:25.936
somebody at the moment. There's one person I'm working with who

46:26.120 --> 46:29.312
in their background is professionally really competent and

46:29.328 --> 46:32.952
very skilled in their field, but has got a real

46:33.048 --> 46:36.296
fragility to them and other aspects. But they are throwing themselves

46:36.360 --> 46:39.560
into an inquiry and they're relatively early in that inquiry

46:39.592 --> 46:42.616
in terms of who they are and how that part shows up in work,

46:42.760 --> 46:46.084
but the courage they're displaying. Awesome. You know,

46:46.384 --> 46:49.208
and that brings me to one quote that stuck out for me in the book

46:49.336 --> 46:53.312
you talked about needed. We need thought partners, not thought leaders. And I think that

46:53.368 --> 46:55.792
that really resonated for me because a lot of what we talked about is we

46:55.808 --> 46:59.456
need somebody to help us kind of work through that stuff, not tell

46:59.480 --> 47:02.256
us what to do and tell us what to think, but yeah, to help us

47:02.280 --> 47:05.112
think differently and reflect. Yeah,

47:05.248 --> 47:09.284
yeah, it's. But then, you know, there's so many things that are set against that

47:10.064 --> 47:13.880
because you probably need to have the humility

47:13.992 --> 47:17.168
and the. What's the word. To merely entertain

47:17.216 --> 47:21.080
the prospect that you're going to get into a kind of thought partner relationship

47:21.112 --> 47:24.120
with somebody is to be open to the possibility that, you know,

47:24.152 --> 47:27.620
this might be an equal relationship and that they

47:27.652 --> 47:31.180
may disagree with you, but they may agree with you on things.

47:31.292 --> 47:34.692
It's not as simple as I'm contracting with you to give me the answer.

47:34.868 --> 47:38.436
And then last question that we always ask everyone that comes on, what advice would

47:38.460 --> 47:41.788
you give to someone who's thinking about taking their first steps

47:41.956 --> 47:45.796
into this field? And again, we've talked about the role of people might

47:45.820 --> 47:49.732
be working inside the organization that might be sort of seeing a fad

47:49.788 --> 47:53.382
coming down the road and helping them to create a better process,

47:53.548 --> 47:57.058
or someone who's actually an external consultant that's really trying to get into that space

47:57.106 --> 48:00.618
and trying to work more on an equal footing with their clients.

48:00.786 --> 48:04.306
What advice would you give them? The thing that popped into my head,

48:04.330 --> 48:08.002
Garen, was I occasionally get people approaching on LinkedIn

48:08.058 --> 48:11.442
who want to find out about how they get into OD. Or I had a

48:11.458 --> 48:14.454
guy who's got an amazing background in the States.

48:15.034 --> 48:18.634
He's a very senior leader, sold his business, and is now thinking about

48:18.674 --> 48:21.648
different career and thinking about taking what he's learned in one space into another.

48:21.746 --> 48:25.108
He was asking about, you know, organizational behavior and OD

48:25.156 --> 48:28.140
and stuff like that. And I've had people who are very early in their career,

48:28.212 --> 48:31.420
but the common thing that strikes me about lots of these people I've spoken

48:31.452 --> 48:35.092
to is, is the ones that really seem

48:35.148 --> 48:38.500
to me to then make decisions and

48:38.532 --> 48:41.220
choices that are. What's the word?

48:41.412 --> 48:44.916
Well, I'll turn, I'll say this. They go and talk to lots

48:44.940 --> 48:48.206
of people to get lots of different perspectives. So they'll go and

48:48.230 --> 48:50.622
talk to people who they, who might be an OD. They'll go and talk to

48:50.638 --> 48:54.326
people in leadership roles. They'll follow their curiosity to talk to different kinds of people,

48:54.470 --> 48:57.838
to then compare what they're hearing. And so,

48:57.886 --> 49:01.078
for example, if it's within the Od space, there was one person I spoke to,

49:01.166 --> 49:03.342
and I encourage them. You know, go and talk to Rothy. Go and talk to

49:03.358 --> 49:06.446
Maven about the masters there. Go and look at NTL. This is what I

49:06.470 --> 49:09.958
do. It's cheaper. It's this, it's different. You know, come and have a conversation with

49:09.966 --> 49:12.806
me. Don't be mine. These are all the different kinds of things there. You can

49:12.830 --> 49:16.526
go and talk the, the, the igold program and relational

49:16.590 --> 49:20.526
change. There's all these different types of programs in adjacent spaces.

49:20.710 --> 49:23.990
Go and talk to them and see what floats your boat, what are you repelled

49:24.022 --> 49:28.102
by and who you drawn towards and worry less about the,

49:28.278 --> 49:31.594
the tribe or the guild that they associate with,

49:31.894 --> 49:35.382
tune into. Does this feel like the kind of work you want to do?

49:35.478 --> 49:39.414
And people who are open to that kind of conversation seem

49:39.454 --> 49:42.710
to make choices that are, are closer

49:42.742 --> 49:46.454
to meeting their, their needs at a human level, at a practice level,

49:46.494 --> 49:49.686
rather than I think I should be doing this qualification. And so what's

49:49.710 --> 49:52.394
next for you? Another book? Have you got the next book in your head?

49:52.934 --> 49:56.542
I do, actually, and I've got somebody who has said they

49:56.558 --> 50:00.166
will write it with me, but I'm going to call him on it, see whether

50:00.190 --> 50:04.062
he is. But yeah, there is another book. I'm happy

50:04.078 --> 50:07.746
to tell you what it is because I'm, as you say, I like doing my

50:07.770 --> 50:11.794
stuff in the open. So I have another hypothesis which

50:11.834 --> 50:15.514
is there is tons of stuff written about change capability, but what I don't think

50:15.594 --> 50:19.346
has been written is, or been thought through clearly

50:19.370 --> 50:23.274
enough is when organizations say they want to build change capability,

50:23.354 --> 50:27.266
they tend to think of it in terms of either change leadership or

50:27.370 --> 50:30.738
change practice. What they don't tend to do is say when we want to

50:30.746 --> 50:35.094
build and change capability, we want to talk about building change capability

50:35.514 --> 50:39.010
across the piece. That means board level

50:39.162 --> 50:42.818
through to whoever it is we want to facilitate and actually do it,

50:42.946 --> 50:46.298
and also how that lot joins together and the conversations they need to have and

50:46.306 --> 50:49.282
the relationships I need to have and the contracts I need to have. And I

50:49.298 --> 50:52.762
have heard, I think somebody told me about one organization where they

50:52.778 --> 50:56.930
did that, but I'm really unaware of organisations and leadership

50:56.962 --> 51:00.830
teams that do that. So the book I have in mind is,

51:01.002 --> 51:04.782
is how do you do a genuinely integrated and holistic process

51:04.838 --> 51:08.806
of change capability building that doesn't silo practice

51:08.950 --> 51:12.758
and silo leadership. That is an important book because encourages everyone to

51:12.766 --> 51:16.454
take their share of their responsibility to make sure that it works as well.

51:16.534 --> 51:19.150
Well, it's the thing I say in the book, Garen, about the number of times

51:19.182 --> 51:23.190
I've seen organisations spend a fortune on developing change practice and then immediately

51:23.222 --> 51:26.896
put those people into the pool for redundancy as

51:26.920 --> 51:30.792
they decide to restructure. I mean, it's. There you go. It's totally absurd.

51:30.848 --> 51:34.272
Totally absurd. And on the subject of the absurd, we did have one question that

51:34.288 --> 51:37.536
we introduced out of context, but Danny,

51:37.560 --> 51:40.768
the panda, we're asking about the panda, don't we?

51:40.896 --> 51:44.752
Yeah. Yes. We just really enjoyed the story you

51:44.768 --> 51:48.232
shared in the book about the PA, I think was a chief execs PA or

51:48.248 --> 51:51.432
big bosses Pa who had a panda on the desk. Do you want to tell

51:51.448 --> 51:53.924
us a bit more about that? Is the idea that.

51:54.594 --> 51:57.778
That the senior leader in

51:57.786 --> 52:01.042
the organisation in their office, if you were

52:01.058 --> 52:04.658
going to approach him about some blinding idea you had, and you wanted to go

52:04.666 --> 52:08.730
in and talk to him, that what his pa would do would

52:08.762 --> 52:12.146
put a toy panda in a particular place in the office and

52:12.170 --> 52:15.706
have it facing a particular way, so you'd know whether or not it was safe

52:15.730 --> 52:18.586
to go in and talk to the big boss and share your idea. If the

52:18.610 --> 52:21.292
panda was facing the wrong way, best not to go in.

52:21.308 --> 52:25.024
That really not a good idea.

52:26.004 --> 52:28.964
So, yeah, in fact, it's basically. It's the basis for a whole new field for

52:29.004 --> 52:32.516
panda based OD. I think at

52:32.540 --> 52:36.564
every level, that story's wrong, isn't it? Yeah, it really is.

52:36.644 --> 52:40.124
But it's really interesting. It's really interesting as well, though, isn't it? The way people

52:40.284 --> 52:43.204
develop systems, and in unexpected ways.

52:43.284 --> 52:47.268
Yeah, but it's. What brings to mind is it's. It's. It's just how innovative

52:47.316 --> 52:51.236
people are. They will develop workarounds that cut right against the

52:51.260 --> 52:54.500
grain of all organizational processes. And the last wee story,

52:54.532 --> 52:57.956
I'll tell you with donkeys, years ago, I used to work in doing consulting

52:57.980 --> 53:01.516
and magazine publishing. And you may remember there was a heavy

53:01.540 --> 53:05.516
metal magazine called Kerrang. Right? You're both novel, so you'll

53:05.540 --> 53:08.612
have to remember that. And I was told this story when I was

53:08.628 --> 53:11.912
doing requirements gathering for a new sales order processing system,

53:12.068 --> 53:16.336
that the way in which you got an ad in to Kerrang was

53:16.480 --> 53:20.944
it would bypass the main sales ordering process. And there was a bloke called Brian

53:21.104 --> 53:24.804
or Eric at the end of a telephone line. And Brian

53:25.104 --> 53:28.536
would take your ads if, Danny, you wanted to recruit

53:28.560 --> 53:30.964
a new lead singer for your punk rock band.

53:31.384 --> 53:34.576
So in would go your advert and Brian would take your

53:34.600 --> 53:38.216
credit card details. And if you're lucky, he'd actually process the

53:38.240 --> 53:42.004
payment at some point. But if he did, your name and details were outside

53:43.304 --> 53:47.134
the kind of the main system. So it was totally against all

53:47.254 --> 53:50.782
GP, you know, all data protection regulations. But what he'd done was,

53:50.838 --> 53:54.662
what they'd done was they had bypassed the really crappy,

53:54.718 --> 53:58.294
poorly functioning sales order processing system that they had.

53:58.334 --> 54:02.206
And it was just a wonderful piece of ingenuity. So it's the metaphorical

54:02.230 --> 54:06.414
equipment of a panda. And all of that ingenuity and innovation is laying dormant

54:06.454 --> 54:09.940
in our organizations, waiting to be unlocked, isn't it? Yeah, it was a.

54:09.972 --> 54:13.372
Yeah, it was brilliant. You're absolutely right, Karen. It was brilliant innovation. It was

54:13.388 --> 54:17.076
a response to something that wasn't working and the absence of the leadership

54:17.100 --> 54:20.508
of the organisation, or the organisation as a whole responding to that, they found a

54:20.516 --> 54:24.596
way around it. Brilliant. Well, I just want to say a huge thank

54:24.620 --> 54:27.268
you, Steve, for your time. We were looking forward to this conversation, weren't we,

54:27.276 --> 54:30.128
Danny? Because we knew we were going to get really sort of. One of the

54:30.628 --> 54:33.532
things that we like to do is get our own practice provoked and for us

54:33.548 --> 54:36.276
to challenge it as well. And we've had loads of that as well, so thank

54:36.300 --> 54:39.266
you. Obviously wishing you all the best with the book.

54:39.370 --> 54:42.274
It's a really good read. As I said, we're going to have a copy of

54:42.314 --> 54:45.066
the book, link in the show notes with this.

54:45.250 --> 54:48.226
It is a really good read, isn't it, Danny? Absolutely. I really enjoyed it.

54:48.290 --> 54:52.090
Yeah, yeah. I think some of the things I'm taking away from today's conversation are

54:52.242 --> 54:56.354
obviously the heroic leadership's time has come and the longer it exists,

54:56.434 --> 55:00.298
the more damaging it becomes. The importance of being comfortable with not

55:00.346 --> 55:03.852
knowing, and that's something to be celebrated in

55:03.868 --> 55:07.204
this age where we're asking for decisiveness, it's not always the right thing.

55:07.284 --> 55:10.452
The importance of reflective thinking, holding the mirror up,

55:10.588 --> 55:13.812
making sure that we're challenging the assumptions that we're operating under.

55:13.948 --> 55:17.860
The just critical importance of humility and really

55:17.932 --> 55:21.540
shifting from thought leaders to thought partners, and that

55:21.572 --> 55:24.988
that requires effort on both sides of the equation to make that work as well.

55:25.036 --> 55:28.196
Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time. Everybody wants to get hold

55:28.220 --> 55:31.590
of you. Are you happy to field inquiries and questions from people?

55:31.732 --> 55:34.858
Yeah. Yeah. And even if they want to tell me how wrong I am,

55:34.986 --> 55:38.010
because then I still have this thing about, you know, I'm still not 100% sure

55:38.042 --> 55:41.722
I'm now. I'm now 90% sure my hypothesis is right from probably 30% to

55:41.738 --> 55:45.282
40% a couple of years ago. But if somebody's got. You know, if somebody's

55:45.298 --> 55:48.610
got the silver bullet or wants to tell me where I'm wrong, then please tell

55:48.642 --> 55:51.962
me. I'll have this. Have the conversation. That's a really refreshing thing to

55:51.978 --> 55:55.570
hear from an author. Steve, thank you for the Simon

55:55.602 --> 55:57.174
Sinek, are you watching?

55:59.054 --> 56:01.134
Brilliant. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Thank you.