Systems Thinking and High Performance with Dr Ronald Skea, Aviva - OrgDev Episode 32

How do you lead a revolution in management thinking? How do you develop better solutions to solve the most complex customer and organisational problems?

We are thrilled to have Dr. Ronald Skea from Aviva, who is at the forefront of transforming management practices join.

Inspired by the concept that organizations should be managed as systems and the belief that changing thought patterns is crucial, Dr. Skea explores innovative approaches to solve both customer and organizational problems. Recognising that every service operates in a unique context, he identifies specific opportunities and challenges within each environment.

With extensive experience across various private sector industries and people-centered services, Dr. Skea provides a fresh perspective on management. He offers practical and straightforward solutions that lead to remarkable results.

💼 About our Guest
Dr. Ronald Skea FCIPD
Author and Systems Thinking Lead Consultant @Allianz

Connect with Dr. Ronald here:
  / ronskea 

You can buy his book here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-O...

Dr. Ronald Skea is a distinguished Leadership Coach, Organisation Culture Change specialist, and HR professional with extensive experience in utilizing systems thinking and Agile methodologies to inspire leaders to rethink their approaches to leadership and organizational structure. Currently, he serves as the Systems Thinking Lead Consultant at Allianz Insurance, where he continues to make significant contributions to the field.

Dr. Skea's expertise encompasses Systems Thinking Leadership, Critical Chain, Kanban, Scrum, and Scaled Agile, demon

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Transcript:
(00:00) hi and welcome to the or Dev podcast so why do so many change initiatives fail to achieve their outcomes everywhere you look you see transformation programs being launched with big mandates to deliver fundamental change but many of these expensive resource consuming programs will not succeed because they're too focused on the process of change rather than challenging the way leaders in their organizations think and behave in order to create lasting change one man who's dedicated over 10 years of research to the pursuit of understanding
(00:29) this is the accomplish Dr Ronald ski Dr Ron is the author of the book leadership organizational change and sense making it's actually been called the Heretics handbook is that right because it challenges the modernistic way of thinking his PhD in 2017 looked at when reality's Collide and that's the sense Bing that could promote and inhibit change of leadership mindsets now Ron is not just an academic and a published author he's a first and foremost a leading practitioner in his field working for globally renowned
(01:01) organizations he's currently systems thinking lead consultant Alliance Insurance and has worked for organizations such as Lloyd's banking group and has been Global Systems thinking consultant at aiva he's also had a variety of roles in different sectors including velic Vanguard Scotland Stockport Council and Dundee City Council as well as well as consultancy roles too he's got a really wide range of speciality skills including systems thinking canand scrum scaled agile operations management strategic CH to say a few and he's also
(01:32) been a visiting lectur at University of dundy and University of St Andrews as well Dr we're really glad to have you join us today thank you so much for joining us for this afternoon so to kick us off just tell us a bit about the work you do what does your role involve currently as as you just said I'm lead systems thinking consultant and Alliance and so my role is leadership coach using postmodern approach to leading and organizing or helping leaders to think differently about leading and organizing you started
(02:07) off by saying why do so many change initiatives fail which is quite interesting because there is this research and you've got the two different sources one say 75% one says 90% fail but actually that's only part of the story what they say is they fail to deliver their expected outcomes they all deliver something it's just not what was expected and not often what was considered desirable you can't even expect outcomes uh what what would surprise me is not that 90% failed to deliver their expected outcomes but
(02:37) rather that 10% did because in a postmodern perspective as soon as you set some expected outcome the environment that we Opera in is going to change I didn't even have to know if today's meeting was going to take place because we have a global outage caused by a a bad update things constantly happen the flux of the environment so setting objectives is a difficult ult task it's the the whole thing about predicting the future is very very difficult thing to do but what we do or what my role is as a coach is to help
(03:09) leaders take a different perspective exactly as you said focus on their thinking about how to lead organize rather than how to deliver specific outcomes my role therefore as I say as a leadership coach I don't do anything in terms of change the one thing that bugs me about change is the concept of it the modernist concept of change is a noun a thing that some somebody can do which just isn't the case change is just running a business that has changed so the idea that I rock up and do change someone just just doesn't work my role
(03:47) is to help challenge thinking and then leaders use their new thinking to deliver their business in a different way often and that can be quite a different way of looking at the world and operating for the leaders you're working I guess so how how do they respond to that initially this is not something that you can teach through a rational presentation um you mentioned heresy and and that's what it is because you're challenging lots and lots of the fundamental beliefs about how to manage and run organizations me turning up
(04:22) saying you know they Earth slat it's not round at all they're not going to they're not going to believe that so my Approach is to help leaders get mered in reflexive practice what we call in systems thinking a normative experience whereby we get into the work and we study their conceptions of how things currently work we then go in and say well let's just test that and let's have a look so we do and then quite often of course what we find is that what's happening isn't what was expected and
(04:55) that's what allows us to then reflect and discuss why that might be so we use a more of five different types of reflective practice which allows leaders to study their current systems but the outcome of it is the thinking what is it about how we think just now about how we should design and run the organization what impact is that having and so initially it's quite challenging because they're used to the modernist approach so first two questions a leader will ask me is how long will this take because change
(05:30) is a project with a defined start and finish date and secondly what exactly will it deliver I'm going in to help them with the thinking I don't do change so the answer to both the questions is I have no idea I don't know how long it will take because it's going to take forever you're always going to be using this methodology and we don't know what we're going to be able to do until we've studied and understood the current system and the restraints that we've designed into it but once it get through
(05:59) the the reflex of practice experience uh it becomes much easier oh yeah I can see now some of the stuff that I thought you were on cloud cucko land I can see some of this actually makes sense now so getting their engagement and maintaining it until we hit the point where they start to see there is something in this methodology is the most difficult B you mentioned two terms there modernist and postmodern thinking as well so just just for the benefit of definition what where are the roots of those two different
(06:28) types of thinking what might be examples of them in a workplace well as as with leadership there's as many definitions as there are rers on the topic so uh my definition of modernism and postmodernism is usually people talk about Adam Smith and and from then on in the development uh of of management thinking but actually you got to go back to 2000 BC if you want to understand where modernist thinking comes from because it all stemmed from two um debates that were taking place at the same time but independently Greece
(07:02) and in ancient China so in Greece you had permanas whose view was that reality is fixed it's external to us and it's fixed and it's permanent and so in many ways there's no thing has changed there's problems that you get until that's where we get the the stasis model and change seen as an interruption to normality where as um hertis is arguing there's no such thing as change there's just constant flux in the environment and we create the problems that that we think exist they're not real they're not
(07:36) out there so I use the example of current thinking around budgets I've worked in three different companies in three different countries so you think well we would all have the same reality we're all all commercial companies operating in in a capitalist environment if you in the UK the company I was working in the UK The crucial dates important dates big problem dates when all hell break loose was um sort of end of the financial year and quarterly the end of the financial year and this company was um December end of December
(08:08) so you can imagine at the end of the year it's a really important date everybody's focused on that problem and then March and so on I work in another company where the financial year ran from April in one company everybody's focused on this reality of December being the key day where you get everything done for the end of the year other company said well no it's not really all that important we've got till April that's the important date um and then I was operations director for the Danish company worked on trimesters so
(08:39) instead of quarters they were working on every four months so they they were working on days like a day and may this was the the important day everything has to be fixed and that's just another day for the other two companies so the point is we create what's important we create the reality that we operate in we've gone with a a philosophy of of change and Leadership not as activities but as things and so you have leaders and you have change projects Etc the postmodern thing have activities of leadership
(09:14) which don't reside in any individual there's no leader and I defy you to go into almost any organization and find somebody whose job title is leader very very few I've seen Chief this there head of that etc etc which is just capture and the fact that uh what we talk about as leaders are really just people who have been appointed to uh roles that have significant decision-making Authority but that's not leadership that's just management a leader is not somebody who drives change a leader is
(09:47) somebody who worked with others to help achieve change and the final thing about postmodernism and from the Chinese element and DSM which took the the Clon view was concept called wooi which is often translated literally is meaning no action or non-action and this is what effective leaders do it's not really right because a leader that doesn't do anything isn't isn't going to be very effective what it really meant was unnoticed action and so it's the concept of the most effective leaders are those
(10:17) who are almost unseen or unnoticed because they operate in the background so from a systems thinking leadership challenge working with leaders is saying you do not personally deliver change and organizational outcomes you may take the credit for it but you don't deliver it teams deliver it your role as a leader is to enable your teams to deliver those outcomes and therefore you should be in the background clearing the way to allow them to do that acting on the problems that they come AC come across or escalate to you and and that's all kind
(10:50) of mundane stuff but that's what delivers your effective leadership results so you mentioned their systems thinking and you've got systems thinking in your job title can you just tell bit more about system sying and your definition of that there's as many definitions of system there's fields and Fields of different definitions of uh systems thinking but for me systems thinking is probably not even the right term it should be thinking systems be a better description it's about taking a holistic view of an organization and an
(11:22) external outside in perspective just as we Define problems so we Define systems and we do not operate in closed systems which we tend to think about our organizations as and they're not they operate in a much much wider environment there's there's never really a boundary so in systems thinking we we we take the customer perspective and we say right my first Tas with the leader is to challenge their purpose and the purpose of their system or their organization from the current perspective and if I
(11:54) ask any leader for the purpose of the organization it will gener be very internally focused and it will be around delivering profits and shareholder value Etc now you and I as customers to be honest don't really care about those things so what we say is what's purpose if I was a customer so I currently work in insurance and I would say so what is the purpose of insurance from a customer's perspective you taking a money out and handing it over to me why would you do it and of course don't about you but I certainly don't like
(12:29) insur I would much rather not have to pay for it but I do take it out because why I I'm buying is sort of piece of mind if something goes wrong it will be sorted out and I will get back to where I was beforehand something like that and he say right so if we do that that allows us to then get into this reflective practice and say well now if that's a purpose from that customer perspective how well do you think we we do against that we may have lots and lots of measures about all our internal stuff shareholder value and profit and
(13:00) efficiency how are we doing against doing what matters to the customer well we don't know cuz quite a lot of the time we don't measure these things so let's get in there and let's start measuring it and the reason we do that is it ding who was a system one of the fathers of systems thinking as we use it he used to say does nobody give a hoot about profit because if you go in and look at the way systems are organized just now usually hideously inefficient and expensive said but if you focus on
(13:29) just do doing what matters to the customer just delivering value to your customer that's where you get your shareholder value that's where you get your profit and so it's about turning around Focus from saying let's focus on share of value and profit and efficiency to let's focus on doing what's right for the customer knowing that an outcome of that and a benefit will be profit efficiency Etc it sounds so simple but so allic isn't it because you're you're shifting absolute paradigms here aren't
(13:59) you in so many different ways whether it's like you know you're surfacing beliefs in terms of how people believe and ideology about how the organization should be managed and how we achieve things to like where we actually focus our effort and who we're trying to please as well how do you actually go about doing your work then and reaching out to people and challenging people's belief systems well it is challenging because as it say you're up against the the current thinking I I defy you to
(14:27) find a leader that doesn't think that they are customer focused that their organization is not customer focus and I'm not arguing that they're evil people who are who couldn't care less about customers they genuinely believe that they are customer focused so first important thing is not to go in to tell people who don't know how to run their business so if I'm working with leaders you know I'm working with people who are very successful who have got very successful businesses uh and so me
(14:53) rocking up saying you know what you don't know how to run your business isn't going to get me very far so it's about acknowledging that there is success in what we're doing and it's is there opportunity for greater success and they say well yeah but how and I said well look let's try taking a different lens and you know if you look at something to one lens and a different lens you can see see things slightly differently and so I'm asking you to sign up to try something now in sense
(15:23) making that is I did for my PhD there's there's nine different elements and and one of them is is called cognitive dissonance and really what what I'm trying to do when I initially engage with leaders is get something called commitment compliance now in terms of cognitive dissonance if I if I said chief executive in one organization said to me go in and do systems thinking to this area they a pain in the backside I need them sorted out now I'm going to tell them the leader the chief officer in this area that they will work with
(15:57) you and they must do what you say again my better judgment I went along with that and it was a complete n disaster because from a cognitive differance angle what you had was somebody who was in forced compliance they had to go along with what I was saying so so they went along with it the chief executive said they must do it but there was absolutely no commitment to it another element of sense making is that they were therefore able to rationalize anything that they were finding and what I was trying to get them to do in
(16:27) reflexive practice so I remember another example where in one organization we had what was called the war room we were in a desperate situation we needed to get a radical think wethink of the structure of the organization so we got a team together and we collected masses and masses of information that just shows how bad and how inefficient and how unsuccessful the current setup was put it all up in a wall and then said we're going to take leaders in and show them this and it will shock them into thinking this this has got to change
(16:59) it didn't what it did was absolutely reinforced their current thinking and they rationalized it because it was too much of a shock and no no no no it was like us saying you guys don't know how to run your business and they rationalize it number of different rationalization techniques that you can use find one figure one tiny little error in a data you know of an a million data points and you say right there for everything everything's suspect I found one data or whatever or you you blame other people yeah yeah that's right you
(17:33) need to go and sort that lot out not me if you force people to do something they're not going to change or they might change in the short term but as soon as I walk away or as soon as the chief Executives gays like s and mov away to something else they just go back to what they were doing and that is one of the key failures in systems thinking is if we haven't had the right commitment you don't get the sustainability and it just reverts back to old ways of thinking so what you need to try and get as a a combination of
(18:01) what's called Force compliance in which case I'm trying to use my credibility almost like in a laboratory situation um the white coat and the stethoscope Etc I want you to engage in this experiment with me and and okay well you know you you are the expert here and I will agree and go along with it um so as a consultant I'm I'm trying to build up enough of a relationship with leaders and and credibility with leaders for them to say you cred able you're believable I'm not convinced but I'll go
(18:32) along with you and and and engage and do some study and it's it's a fine line because instead of force compliance they have agreed to cooperate with it and so you can't rationalize it a way as well it was forced to do it you chose to engage with it and then as they start to find stuff it's less easy to rationalize it it's a long-winded explanation but that's kind of tight R you have to work as a consultant you can already start to see how many change programs go wrong from the very isn't it just the way in which they
(19:01) communicate and you know start to roll that change out as well because often managers will look at a potential change and their belief system just doesn't match with it does it and they often believe that they're acting for the good of the organization by not going along with a new idea yeah you got to think about back to the point you made about 70% of initiatives fail or whatever I went to work with one director in a of Finance he said okay look I am interested in in in this methodology he said because we've had nine
(19:33) transformation in 10 years he said so good luck with you in this one he said you know he it was it was um commitment compliance he said I I need something so I am prepared to give you a chance but let me tell you my experience of nine previous ones is it's not going to work can I ask you a side bar question because um something that we're seeing a lot in organizations there are a lot of head of transformation being appointed at the moment transformation seems to be a particular name for appro I've been one I've been one I I
(20:09) would love to get your Insight it's one of my things is that trying to get leaders to position where they're taking a postmodern view of of leadership and organization and in a postmodern view change is not something that you is a standalone function and so the clearest sign that you have a modernist organization is if it has a standalone change or transformation function I was ahead of transformation I still argued that that wasn't the right thing to do because at the end of the day I've also
(20:40) been an operations director and and and in those instances I wouldn't have had I wouldn't have accepted a transformation or a change function telling me how to run my business that's essentially what we're trying to do change transformation HR and lots of other things should should be in the business not Standalone functions because they're there to help the business achieve its objectives so yes there are a l there's a lot of that going on it's the wrong way to do chain I'm starting to understand why it was
(21:13) called the Heretics handbook now I think Danny would as R just said the most provocative thing since someone said imagine a world without models yes but that grounding as an operations director really does give you an enormous amount of insight in terms of how change actually works in an organization doesn't it yes and it's also important when I'm trying to work as a leadership coach because it helps with credibility because the first question is well have you done this have you have you R an organization you know
(21:43) what it's like you know the pressures I'm under Etc well yes I do I have I have done it and I have results so that helps what was your journey to your career now you've had so many interesting things along the way but what has got you to this particular point now where you know you're an accomplished author and you're sort of lead in the way in systems thinking I know well that all sounds kind of like there was some sort of grand plan it was almost like I had a change project that got me to this point and uh the reality
(22:11) is it just happened you know I I kind of drifted if you like to this point I I mean I started off a long time ago um went to college to do business studies got engaged in in the student union and student politics this was in the70s were putting on live live music some of the big bands of today started off doing circuits like ours and uh had a ball had a ball but um and got involved in student politics and and then failed my business studies uh so left left college with nothing I then got a job as a clerical assistant in in Council I mean
(22:52) I was quite good in my job but I also got engaged in um the Trade union movement and and those two things the student politics in the Trade union movement I think kind of are what led me to where I am in the sense of my my beliefs uh as a trade unionist Trade union leader and I was very successful at it it was a difficult job because it's not like a leader in an organization where you are given Authority and power you know it's all referential power you have to be representative of the people that you're
(23:24) you're representing but you also have to try and take them along and that was a fantastic leadership lesson because I couldn't just say do it or else or anything else but also led to my a belief that uh all managers and leaders were basically incompetent got in the way of of our members doing a good job for the public which is what they were there to do however I was quite quite a thorn in the side as a trade unionist and this back in the days when had an industrial relations officers I don't know if they still have that nowadays
(23:56) and the industrial relations officer went off so they asked me if if I would jump the fence and become the industrial relations officer we from the Trade union side and much to the disgust of my uh Union colleagues I did I jumped the fence and coacher come gamekeeper so that got me into that's how I got into an HR department then went and and did a another qualification of diploma I did training and uh development and then went on into the Masters in HR but I still had that same view that there was a problem with the way we uh LED
(24:30) organizations and designed the organizations and and what do organizations and unions get wrong because potentially it can work don't it but many times it doesn't work like what what are the ingredients of a a successful kind of organization Trade union relationship do you think well I always said as a trade unionist I always said to to leaders look you get the Trade union you did that I if you had a good leader I wouldn't need to be doing anything I'd almost be like insurance is to our customers now and there is a
(25:00) safety net and and you wouldn't see much of me if you did a good job so if you allowed people to do a good job if you recognize them for doing a good job and if you just focused on getting out the road and letting them do it um but no no no you insist on trying to M the manage them and getting away set up rules Etc I'm still uh a strong believer in trade unions because they're absolutely there to defend things that need to be defended but I still my argument still exists that they're only as active as
(25:33) you make them from a leadership perspective I couldn't really articulate particularly what it was I just knew that there was a problem about the way we approached the the design and running of organizations and that was when this is part of my own development and uh interest I got involved in the Demming Network and met a lot of systems thinkers came across John SED and Vanguard who uh was quite interesting because there was a diing forum and people were saying well you know this is a very difficult thing and really we
(26:05) will never understand systems the systems world you get people say you you'll never you'll never be able to understand a system and and John said was doing a presentation he said it's all fine and well he said but I'm working with leaders who saying to me yeah great what I do differently on Monday morning CU you know I haven't got 20 years to learn about systems thing um so he he was very active in developing a a systems thinking model that was still I still use today so that that triggered my interest and allowed
(26:37) me to start kind of articulating rather than just saying managers are hopeless I think the daming thing is he talks about 85 15% he said 85% of the performance that you get out of the system comes from how you have designed the system only 15% is a people issue and yet we've got HR departments and people management that try to manage 100% of the people um and he was making the point well just focusing the 15 are a problem and let the 85% get on with it uh and I think that was the same with leaders as well um they weren't all
(27:12) incompetent that was a wrong perspective I had 85% of them were R of the system leading in the system because they are a product of the system as well all leaders even the chief executive or a product of a system 15% of them are numpties and need' sorted out that was what got me interested I so I moved out of the industrial relation side into organizational development and started using the systems thinking methodology what long say Consultants from Vanguard to to help me learn how to to use that the methodology with leaders we
(27:43) delivered some stonking results and that got attention uh is always good when you can get uh evidence that uh a new type of thinking can deliver results so that gets curiosity so we had more results that led to maybe approach and moving into the private sector being the um operations director for Bellic which was a company that has a long time been using system syncing delivering outstanding customer service and guess what outstanding Financial results as well because they got the they got the concept right so said I was B in because
(28:20) of my system thinkinking which was quite an interesting example but having 20 years in local government to then become an operations director and a world lead window manufacturer there's a lot of people said what were they thinking it's a strange appointment but I wasn't there because of my technical knowledge and this is the thing we often promote leaders because of their technical expertise in an area when actually that's not it's was leaded what's needed is their leadership expertise um and in
(28:48) my case it was s sying leadership approach to to join various other organizations Viva set up a we Global team of coaches to go around their different operating Enterprises so I had a couple of years in Singapore and then a couple of years in Canada working there which was at the same time as the University where I was teaching at St Andrews it's the head of the business school said this stuff's really interesting that you do I I don't get it I don't know what it is but have you thought about doing a PhD into it that
(29:20) so I drifted into that as well I hadn't thought something that I want to to do I ended up doing it and I never forgave him 10 years of pain and agony but I did my PhD uh it was really interesting because that allowed me to to to think about and do my own reflexive practice on what I was doing as a participant Observer so I was trying to influence leaders but I was trying to understand what my role in that was and and what I was seeing in their sense making so that's that's how I did my PhD and the
(29:51) really interesting thing for me was working in Europe Singapore North America organizational culture trumps the local culture local culture has its impact but by the organizational culture the modernist thing it was the same in all of these places the same the same thinking the same structure the same problems and the same challenges I had a question about the organizations you've worked for so like AA and alance who've invited you into work in a system thinking kind of way and veux where does that come from in that organization is
(30:25) it in a particular individual is it something about the way the organization set up that means they're kind of open to to working in that way well it's a good question but I mean I joined these organizations because they were already on a system thinking journey and they wanted some expertise to to help uh as as the interest in in that grew so both in aiva aliance and Lloyds they had already gone on that Journey so I'm I know always starts with somebody has an interest in pools on someone I'm not
(30:56) sure who it was but that happened in each of these organizations again similarly the produced results that then generates more interest and that was why almost like The Germ is a tribe marious tribus we talked about germ theory of management which is almost like you go in and you infect an area and hope that it spreads and spreads and spreads so these are great analogies aren't they yeah because I'm building on D's Point like because these are en normal enormous complex Global Systems aren't they for for manager trying to effect
(31:30) change or whatever it is there's so many different variables at play aren't there it's difficult to actually understand what will happen as a result how do you even begin to think about all the different influences that may or may not get in the way of a of a change program I mean it's about the bigger the organization the more challenging it is from a theoretical perspective of course what you would do is you say well you look you start at the top of the whole system so you go in with Viva the chief EX
(31:58) itive and you look at it across the globe and say right have we got this right as an organization well you know your chances getting in any organization that size and doing it is just zero maybe if you're one of the big four cons or something and you've got that kind of credibility and you can uh get companies to hand out huge amounts of Doh for things that fail to deliver results but for for us it's a case of getting the balance right again you're going too small then you're not going to produce
(32:30) something that's significant enough for people to say yeah that was about a new way of thinking and designing of the organization that was just an operational Improvement you know so if you just go for low hanging fruit it's not going to work so you have to get leaders that have their arms around a big enough area of the system to demonstrate that like it's a business methodology and it's a we thinking at a business level that then starts to get interest in other areas of the business but if it's too low down or too small
(33:01) then yeah you'll not even be able to deliver the results because if you're trying to deliver systemic Improvement but you're looking at this area of that size of a system well you're not going to be able to do it because all the problems are happening outside the area that you have defined as the system it's not the system and that's often the first discussion that we have to have so if a leader uh says right I'd like to work with you U or you help me look at an area well what are you looking at and
(33:30) sometimes have to say it's too narrow I'm not going to be able to help you because um you're not going to be able to deliver the results and so Viva um Lloyd's uh Alliance they are not now 100% systems thinking organizations of course not they're huge but there's a lot of interest around systems thinking and it is growing and it is is developing and and what do you enjoy most about your role it's it sounds challenging going into challenging places you're you're you're guiding
(34:00) people you're com what what do you find most enjoyable is beinging beinging people develop and change their way of thinking I mean I think you going to ask anyway about kind of what's a success measure which is quite an interesting point is linked to this because um what I'm not delivering change I could say what I like is seeing the Fantastic results that I deliver well I don't I don't deliver anything the Le leaders and the teams that I work with and this is really important because I can't
(34:31) coach a leader on their own to change the system because if leadership is about understanding that in fact most of the time you're not a leader that it's your whole system we have to work together with a whole team um and it's seeing them deliver things and we've just done a retro in in one area that I've been involved in it was fantastic just getting the feedback from from the team about how liberated they felt how they were much more effective much more productive uh they able to do value work
(35:00) rather than all the nonsense that they were being involved in before so just that enthusiasm and to get that from the whole team and from the leader saying oh yeah this is this is definitely much better that's what I like to see I like to claim that all the results they delivered were mine as well but not and you mentioned retrospectives there for example it's means and ends as much as anything but what are some other approaches or tools that you really enjoy using and just like it's just something that you find really useful in
(35:27) different settings I do I do a guest presentation on systems thinking another tool for change agents and spoiler L the answer is no it's not it's not really tools it's methodology and it's principles that we just ask people to adopt and then they develop the the methods and the tools that they use having said that the systems thinking methodology is great and it does have a a simple model which is study experiment then act uh again sounds terrifically simple and obvious but challenge you to go into any any business and ask
(36:04) Frontline staff in that model study experiment act what is your experience of change it's always act because somebody just tells us that we're changing the way we do things and and and that's the model because you know why why would why would you involve them in it whereas what we do is we start the study and we pull the whole team from across the system and representative sample of people top to bottom left to right horizontally that have all the experience of the system and we study it and we reflect on what we're Lear and
(36:36) pull out the systems conditions that leads to the thinking that's where it gets uncomfortable for leaders but they're engaged by this point anyway and then it's safe change because we say right okay haven't done this we can now focus on just doing the value steps let's experiment doing that we have a hypothesis that if we just do these five steps instead of these 100 that we'll get better results uh for the customer and for the organization traditionally of course we say right that's it roll it
(37:04) out across the whole organization uh no what we'll do is we'll we'll feed some business through it we set a new business model feed business through it get the data demonstrate that that is workable and scalable and then start to roll more people in so that they get the same normative experience they understand the why we're changing things not just do it differently so I love it I think it's a great great simple model and it's really effective when you see that working but there's lots of other
(37:32) ones as well where I think can band's are a very effective tool and uh critical chain I'm just loving the words hypothesize study reflect it's just great and of course leaders leaders are very busy people so often they we've not got time to do all of that kind of stuff so that's part of the debate you have to have is okay I'm happy to work with you but you know sometimes later I'll say like uh it's great I like the sound of that can you go and work with that team pleas and deliver it you have
(38:05) to know the leader well enough but I might joke with him and say you resigning no why why are you saying that because you seem to be asking me to take on your role you need to lead it I haven't got time to do that yeah you have to make a choice then have you got the time not to do it there is a commitment that has to be made so is that the most challenging aspect of the work you do or is there there something else that you find really challenging IAL set up is really important what is it your expectations are of of working
(38:32) with me and we need to get that clear because if it's delegate me to go and sort out a change that's not going to work have you got the the time to commit to do this and have you got the will to do it as well a big challenge is getting a team together because although this is a safe methodology and it produces the results it's the it's the sort of the curve far as you've got a dip in performance because you take a team out and be for 6 weeks they're not doing any work cuz they're studying the system
(39:01) performance dips then you start experimenting well you know you got to learn you tast the first one we reflect on it take second one so they start to get better and better and then it shoots up in their product the challenge is getting a team together getting the time maintaining their commitment as they're in this depressing slump cuz after five weeks of study oh my God are we ever going to finish this and and it's depressing and what danger is that you can at the end of the study period just sit back and admire the problem well
(39:33) look at that just imagine that who an else is responsible for that and that's not the purpose of this the purpose is to say let's admire the opportunities that we've got here it's great there's loads of things that we could be do it probably one of the biggest challenges is that if you are not working at an organization wide level of intervention you will be up against the current systems conditions which will be silos and functionalization the modernest concept of the organization which is
(40:01) increasing levels of order are needed to cope with the complexity of the the environment out there and it's confusing order with complexity and so we end up with stos functions who can do what and from a system sying perspective we need to break that down so it's always really challenging because you get a team that's really enthusiastic and then to bump up against elsewhere in the system oh no you can't do that no you can't do that can I just pick up on you just said say confusing order with complexity I
(40:32) always people to to look up a a video Brian Cox did it on one of his Professor Brian Cox in one of his programs and he used it a than cattle analogy he's talking about entropy and negentropy the second law thermodynamics is entropy everything will tend to less order and that's not the same as atrophy it's not about wasting away and dying it's about just things will become less and less ordered that's the nature of things and it will become more and more complex so if you think about if you do an
(41:04) elaborate sand castle on the beach very highly ordered there's really only you know one design in this fantastic castle that you've built with the turrets and castellations and all the rest of it and what happens when you've built it what's going to happen well Tide's going to come in it's going to rain the wind's going to blow not be long before your cattle starts to disintegrate and therefore you're going to have to keep rebuilding it and maintaining it whereas the natural order of things with sand is
(41:33) what it's the sanun now these are infinitely complex there's almost infinite number of ways that a sandun can be organized and it's still a sandun there's only one way you can organize a castle San Castle is very high order only one way you can do it no complexity CU that is the only one whereas the San Junes infinitely complex very little order and that's now I like thinking about organizations that way we build fabulous sand castles functions and silos and departments all over the place
(42:06) and the first thing that we do and the first learning that you tend to see when you take leaders and teams through it is well let's just map that and then remember we're taking this from a customer's perspective what does that look like to the customer now what it looks like to the customer is exactly what I've been experiencing yesterday and today when I try to deal with an organization pass from pillar to post because oh and you need to speak to this department uh well can you not sort out
(42:32) no and so you start to see how stupid a lot of our design is from a customer perspective and that's very liberating because then you can say right okay how would we design it so that one person can do it now I did it when I was an operations director I and it was already a system syncing organization I was responsible for an operations Department had eight different teams in it that doesn't really make much sense to me could we could we get that down could we get it to one and it was no people's
(43:01) brains would explode you know the human brain could not handle that sort of complexity uh but we got it down to three and that's what we've done in lots of organizations since is strip out all of this order that is built because really what you want is an organization that is as flexible as a as a sand pile just as the environment changes no problem well we just we move with it um and John John said uses the phrase which I always remember because the first thing that will happen at the end of a presentation for study is our experiment
(43:34) is right well we need to capture that now we need these new policies we need another design document we need that and John Zen said oh no no no if you codify YIFY he said because as soon as you've written it as soon as you've chiseled it into stone in the wall it's going to be out of date what have been some of the biggest Lessons Learned so far in your career shut up my temptation is to jump in and if you want to be effective as a coach that's the worst thing you can do and act active listening I I got some
(44:05) fantastic coaching when I was on the start of my career about the ability to actively listen not just s of shut up and look at somebody but try and get underneath what they're saying why they're saying it where that might be coming from the other thing I have learned and I know I know Badger all the people I work with about is not solutionizing easiest thing in the world is to look at something ah I know what need to do to fix that I I never do as we get into working with a team and leaders and study that's the first thing
(44:35) that they will start to do first time to see something that doesn't look right oh well we could do this say no no we're not going to solutionize you're not allowed to do that yeah I learned a lot about listening about not jumping to conclusions and solutionizing uh but also I think the biggest lesson is learning when to say no uh and that's difficult when you're an internal consultant as an external I guess difficult because you're turning down money but you can you can walk away and say no you're
(45:03) you're not serious about this or you're not committed it's more difficult if you're on the payroll but you still have to be able to do it and say no this methodology works but only on certain conditions so where where are you investing your time in terms of your own Learning and Development now what's sparking your interest following the PHD uh I was asked if I wanted to write a boot on it which I I did I was obviously not a bestseller because I'm still working um but it was an academic text
(45:28) and and I've then contributed to another text my interest is following up on some of the themes that I explored because you know as soon as you've written a PhD the next week you think oh my god I've missed this or I could have been doing that so I'm just following up on on the sense making elements of things and then last question what advice would you give somebody who is interested in kind of moving into kind of a systems thinking field or this this type of work there's two things first of all I trying trying
(45:57) about bit experience I don't think it's something you can do without having had had a go doing some of this yourself how can you take others through the fact of practice if you haven't you haven't done it now that doesn't mean you have to spend 20 years working your way up in the business or whatever but I'm I'm working with a team that 've got apprentices and we've got people that have come through who've worked on a a team that's gone through a cycle and help pull other people in and they've
(46:26) loved it and they've moved then moved into helping with system sinking because they know what it's like they know what to do so that's the first thing get a bit of experience I suppose the other thing is depends what you want to do I mean organizational development is a very wide field so what really grabs your interest and make sure that it does because I went through down a couple of rabbit holes I'll do this and I thought oh my God I hate this this is not not what I want at all and the third thing
(46:52) is if especially if you are going in for the sort of the coaching or Consulting is don't go in for it if you want the glory if you're any good as a coach or a consultant you'll get a little thanks for it and quite rightly so at the end of the day their team produced the results um they should be very proud of that there no point in me saying but it was me it was me well thank you so much on I've I've really just there's there's so many interesting takeaways from this we're only allowed three each but I just
(47:20) just some side ball words I just that you you get the Trade union you deserve which is tell there A really lovely takeaways from here so I really like the thing about is it wooi wooi which is like non-action and and how you go back practicing it and you said that all leaders are a product of the system and you you know in terms of how leaders become what they become as well and and you also talked about the dangers of solutionizing and how seductive it is and and not jumping to conclusion and and that is a a discipline and a skill in itself isn't
(47:52) it because everything about group process or individual critical thinking leads us to that as well so those are brilliant what about you Danny yeah I was going to say a couple of those but different ones for me so a reminder that organizations aren't closed systems I think it's easy easy to forget so that felt really important uh that change transformation HR shouldn't be Standalone things they need to be in their part of the part of the system the reminder have you got the time not to do it so if we're thinking this is going to
(48:16) take too much time I don't have time to do it really challenge people have you got the time not to not to do it and lastly I I love the bit about admiring don't admire the problem don't spend your time admiring the problem your time admiring or thinking about the opportunities CU it is really really tempting isn't it to sit back and go look at this is this is awful look at the problem we've got but then what yeah really well well thank you so much for being so so generous with your time and
(48:41) your expertise and all these wonderful lessons that you've learned along the way as well if people want to follow your work or if they'd like to connect with you what's the best way for people to do that I'm on LinkedIn man happy to connect up with people on LinkedIn happy for them to have my email if anybody wants to have an offline CH happy to do that we will also add a link to your your book as well to bring that retirement a little bit soon absolute snip at 120 bones it is a good read though enjoyed it but thank you so much
(49:09) R really appreciate it Ron's interview joins the brilliant collection of other interviews that we've got with other uh practitioners and leader thinkers in their field as well so um we're building a really brilliant range up so um as we said these interviews come out every week um so they should come out every Monday at 7:30 in the morning and the audio version comes out every Friday at 12 o'clock Danny is that right about 12 yeah about 12 but if you subscribe to our BR Sprout Channel or our YouTube channel they' be
(49:38) notified when every new video or podcast is launched as well so thank you again Ron for your time we've really enjoyed it hope everyone who been tuning in today has enjoyed it thank you [Music] [Music] he