Unblock - Your Leadership Playbook for Rapid Results with Jurriaan Kamer - OrgDev Episode 45

Why don't leaders seem to be making progress on the things that truly matter? Why does it feel like everyone needs to be involved in everything? As organizations designed for predictability clash with an increasingly unpredictable world, the cracks are starting to show.

In this episode, we dive into why the "sense and respond" approach is overtaking the traditional "plan and predict" model as the blueprint for thriving in the future. Joining us is Jurriaan Kamer, a renowned speaker, author, organizational designer, and change agent, who brings cutting-edge insights into how leaders can unblock their organizations and create environments primed for agility, autonomy, and remarkable results.

💼 About our Guest

Find his book on Amazon
https://locally.link/pAYt

Unblock book website:
https://www.unblock.works/book

Jurriaan’s newsletter:
https://newsletter.jurriaankamer.com/

Jurriaan’s LinkedIn:
  / jurriaankamer  

Thanks for listening!

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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/

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Transcript

(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so why does it feel like everyone needs to be involved in everything why don't leaders seem to be making progress on the things that matter so we're absolutely delighted to be joined by yurian Karma today so organizations are inherently designed for predictability but that predictability is clashing with an unpredictable world and the cracks are really starting to show so in this episode we explore why sense and respond is overtaking plan and predict as the blueprint for the future now we couldn't
(00:30) be happy here to Welcome yurian to the session today he's a speaker an author an organization designer and a change agent as well and most importantly he's author of the book unblock and it's a practical book for leaders who need to drastically achieve better outcomes and quickly as well now Danny has absolutely devoured this book Danny do you want to just show the book and the bacon bookmarks it's the highest Accolade we can give to any author we have on there judging by the number of bookmarks that
(00:59) have on those are it's it's a brilliant book and it's really practical and we really want to make sure that this book ends up in the hands of HR leaders OD leaders and most importantly your leaders in your organization as well so it's all about unblocking your organization and clearing the way for results and developing thriving employees teams and your organization as well so it's a practical book and the really big thing is it's all about how you actually unblock your organization get it moving as well now we know yurian
(01:27) from a number of different sources we're huge fans of his we are regular subscribers of his newsletters we're Consultants we're out in the field doing our work and we go back to his work to help us feel grounded when things get difficult as well um he offers consulting services and he's also the co-author of the book formula X and that's a business book all about speed leadership and organizational change as you'd expect with the practitioner with this experience out in the field um he's
(01:51) got lots of professional qualifications underpin um his experience he has an MBA an MSC in Process Management and he has a Bachelor of Science in computer science as well and he's based out of utre in the Netherlands Sun snowy Netherlands today isn't he so welcome thank you so much for joining us today yeah thank you for having me I'm really looking forward to this conversation and uh you did your homework awesome thank you always do our [Music] homework just kick us off so unblock and say I'm a big fan of the book really
(02:25) enjoyed it just tell us a bit about it what inspired you to write it yeah so it's it's a collection of all the things I've been putting into practice over the last I did say I don't know like five to 10 years I've been inspired by by all the Frameworks and all the methodologies out there but you know what didn't work is implementing a big blueprint or like a framework from from start to finish so I've always been a believer in mixing things and and getting getting the things out of us out of all the
(02:51) inspirational things you can do and mixing them together but I found a bunch of things that consistently work and uh just decided to write a more more practical book about it there's lots of great books out there out there with with inspiration and lots of case studies and examples but I was missing the workbook and especially the leaders workbook so um that's what I Tred to write and what is it you hope that leaders are going to take away from it what would you they read your book what would you want them to do differently
(03:15) because of the modular nature of the book it covers six of the most common organizational blockers and I want them to really get started and and take one of those at least and start changing things and it could be anything like uh the start of the book is about strategy formulation strategy creation that's an important thing that leaders often get wrong then then there's a lot about decision- making and how to accelerate that there's a lot about how to create a culture of ownership how to build psychological safety so it's a lot of
(03:41) different things and the book is designed to be to be um you can you don't need to read it cover to cover you can actually go to the chapter that speaks to you most and then take that and that yeah that's that's in the end my intention with the book is that people use it for their benefits so for people who've not read it kind of unpacked a little bit there what are the six because there's six elements are't there of that you recommend what are they yeah so it starts with strategy creating creating a strategy that
(04:04) actually creates focus and Alignment at scale and then alternatives for the traditional um you know strategy Cascade uh yeah you talk about strategy integrating strategy don't you rather than cascading yeah so yeah exactly what that like yeah so so strategy yeah like I said like the Cascade literally means going from top to bottom it's it's like it's it's the waterfall that flows that only flows down I've never seen a water waterfall flow up or Cascade up that doesn't happen um and that's problematic because um a
(04:33) lot of strategy uh initiatives fail because when the moment they hit the plans hit the day-to-day reality they either fizzle out or they just don't work right um and so that's why you need to integrate you need to um connect the dots between day-to-day reality and your Ambitions and leverage the wisdom of the crowd um to to shape it and to to uh to find a way to actually get it in in place and that's often missed like it's often you know We R build the strategy we make beautiful PowerPoint decks we
(05:02) organize awesome leadership events to broadcast it to everyone and now we're done right now now we can just do it right can we just now execute and stop talking about the strategy yeah it's just something that that's missed a lot and especially in complexity that won't work um but it it's usually important to have good strategy and to position your organization and get everybody along yeah so strategies the first one then then yeah so it goes goes on so strategy is about that then we have
(05:28) steering which is all about setting goals creating a rhythm of outcomes and finding uh metrics and kpis that are helpful to measure rather than you know drowning in kpis um so with steering metrics so that's the steering chapter then I talk about decision- making uh because along the way you'll have lots of decisions to make and that's often um something that people get get stuck in I talk about developing an organization where people are willing to take ownership ownership is a big complaint from a lot of leaders that
(05:58) that I talk to like they don't see seem to take ownership and why are they not taking ownership and and then I've given them ownership which is another weird thing to say because ownership can only be taken not given so yeah there's a couple of conditions that you have to get right for that to happen then we go into teamwork which is the more foundational thing about um you know psychological safety uh develing developing a habit of reflection and Improvement uh and giving and receiving feedback especially at the leadership
(06:25) team level um that that is sometimes missing and then finally meetings so do you connect all the dots with your your meetings reducing Mee meeting overload in an organization and replacing unhelpful meetings with with the lightweight structure of uh of rhythms and the question I had I know you said it's modular and people can dip in and dip out where they kind of feel move if people just don't know they go this just isn't working where would you suggest they start so yeah I've be I've Beed a
(06:51) book with a self assessment that could help you answer that question it's a five minute survey that get gives you an idea I think people usually do know where they're stuck I think where people get stuck is maybe they think that everything needs to be changed and if they look at this these six elements they're like oh all of it is problematic like I don't know where to start but the point is more that you start and actually find a place to do something small to and then you'll uncover what
(07:14) else is behind that and what is next and if you follow the threat you'll you'll end up discovering the root causes of some of the challenges I mean people people drown in meetings but meetings is often not the it's more it's often a symptom of a of something else that's underneath so if you start you know um sending people um you know how to have a productive meeting and encouraging people putting posters on the wall like if there's no agenda we should cancel or you know all those things are great but
(07:40) there's often an underlying symptom of lack of UNC know lack of clarity about who can make make what decision or maybe there's a lack of prioritization there all sorts of things that are causing these meetings to to go on and just you know my point point I'm trying to make is start somewhere but you'll uncover what is really the challenge by by starting making some changes sorry gar you probably questions okay right it's almost like when you go to a meal and you love everything on the menu so it's right
(08:08) where do we start yeah so there's loads of interesting things there I guess just fundamentally because obviously you work as a consultant we work as consultants and you go in and organizations are full of very smart people but the things that they do are the mistakes or challenges they have are sometimes very basic fixes aren't they MH and what you're inviting them in to do which is you know to give up more control or whatever it is that that facade of control when you're inviting people into the Strategic
(08:35) process why why do you think organizations are so stuck in that way what do you think some of the the reasons might be I know every context is different but what are some of the key themes that you're seeing in organizations the people that are Empower have been growing up throughout their careers and throughout their organization and have been promoted for having the right answer have been promoted for uh getting things getting things getting things done sometimes by by by taking a lot of control and and
(09:01) reducing autonomy uh not all of them like there's there's awesome leaders out there that understand that you know if you want to have a a great organization with great results you want both autonomy and alignment and but but there's but there's a lot of leaders out there that have been growing up with these misconceptions about what leadership is and what management is and that just has a has an outsized effect on on how the organization is being built based on control systems on reporting lines on the the notion that
(09:29) you know you you when you enter a new organiz Organization for the first time you have no uh Authority whatsoever until you get permission for it which is the default and and you know I I really strongly believe in trying to flip that equation and uh creating more initiative taking and an autonomy for for the better of the business so yeah I think so it's part of a generation that's growing up and uh the fact that a lot of the typical business books and and and mbas don't teach the more Progressive
(09:57) stuff yeah and I guess in organization there's a lot of learning helplessness almost isn't there we're in an organization this week and really really driven clever people but some of the things they were're saying which is like you know really basic sort of I need to ask my manager permission to have some time to do something and rather than sort of taking that initiative as well and and if you are encouraging people into taking ownership what how do you start start that process because sometimes people may have have taken
(10:23) ownership in the past and had their fingers burnt as well yeah that those past experiences really paralyze in organizations so you have to be careful I think the first thing if if you're a leader and you see this as a challenge then one thing you can do is to be more aware of it and break the self-reinforcing cycle of permission seeking and permission giving because the moment you somebody asks you for permission and you and you go along with that uh because you want to be helpful and you feel it's like a a mini dopamine
(10:50) rush like I can I can actually do something for someone else and I'll be so it feels good to give someone permission but if you so be aware of that break that cycle don't give the permission and Coach them to make the decision themselves and then and then figure out like why is why is this happening like why why is it unclear that I actually expect that people could can do this themselves and and and then then it's helpful to create some some explicit boundaries to say you know what um the Within These boundaries you are
(11:18) free to act and I don't want to give permission I don't want you to bother me basically with doing that and I actually expect that if it's within these decision rights or within within these these boundaries you can go and do it Do It um now one example that I really love using is the is the waterline you know it's inspired by WL Gore the makers of uh guitar strings and gortex they they said you know if if you're imagine you're all on a ship and something blows up and it's above the waterline it's
(11:45) definitely frustrating and uh the boat has to go back to Shore and repair it but the ship w't sink and um so so be careful especially for things that are under the water line and be more more risk adverse there but we can clarify what that water line is is for our organization our department our team and say you know what everything above that water line you know don't bother leaders don't go ask for permission just go and do it there's a lot of really good content that you put out on uh on YouTube and one of the things you were
(12:12) sort of saying about your methodology which we thought was really really interesting is that you don't necessarily do diagnostics in organizations what you do is you you actually bring them together and do this really exotic thing talk to to understand what's going on could you just walk us through that methodology how it produces different results yeah at unblock we're big fans of start start by starting by by being in the work with the with the people to understand what happens rather than either putting them in a separate
(12:39) research environment like a separate survey environment or a separate trading environment I think it's it's it's it's more helpful to to be in the work with leaders or with teams and say you know what you're you're facing a decision right now okay let's do that a little bit differently than what you're used to or hey you're your facil you're you're running an offsite okay what let's let's still do the offside try to achieve that objectives but do it in a more
(13:02) Progressive Way and that's how you teach and and make make an influence because I think Diagnostics are great they they might look good on paper but it doesn't change change anything most of the time right it's like like great you can spend a lot of time in organization and build them some money to to create a beautiful report of all the challenges and and definitely it's helpful there's a lot of leaders out there that really want to win and be the best so if they get a report which which shows them that they
(13:25) have a low grade on something of course it might create some momentum but but but most of the time people already know what the challenges are right you don't really need to do Diagnostic and also it there's also an illusion like we said before the complexity is high so if you think you know what the problem is well you only uncover if that's really the problem by changing something and discovering what really is happening now so yeah it's the survey instrument is overrated uh in my in my perspective and
(13:52) how do you work with clients because clients quite sometimes like certainty and they like to know what's going to happen whereas what you propose that and that methodology is much more emergent and we're going to kind of work with it and see what happens how do you square that in terms of kind of getting over that drive for I want to know what's going to happen and I want to know exactly the steps on the process yeah there's there's a coaching opportunity there immediately uh if somebody say say
(14:13) that um there's like there's often a false sense of control and a false sense of of certainty the thing you can make very certain is uh you know what we're going to every four to six weeks we're going to sit down and talk about how it's going uh we're going to make progress transparent we're going to make failures transparent we're going to involve leaders in in doing the change and we're going to try a lot of different things and see what what works and what doesn't work and uh and that's
(14:40) you know in itself that that is helpful but the moment somebody asks for a six-month road map of the of the change we either say you know what let's let's talk about your your your worldview about how these things work or let's talk about the last time you tried that and how how accurate the plan was and how much time we're going to waste by making this plan you know so it's yeah and yeah you're naming it aren't you yeah and it looks and then and then some leaders don't want to work with us and
(15:05) that's fine not the right not the right fit is it exactly yeah there's loads of really lovely phrases that come out of the book and one of the phrases you talk about is harmony addiction and that gets in the way of things just for those that are watching that are introducing to that concept what is it and and how can you start to address it yeah Harmony addiction is a state where nobody in the in the team wants to create conflict and conflict is this word that feels bad or know has a of negative connotation but
(15:35) it's about constructive conflict and you know basically speaking up and disagreeing when you hear something that is not right or when you hear when you see actions being taken that is not good for the business you know it's it's about this this safety and psychological safety for people to speak up and part part of the problems with Harmony addiction is that you get a lot of slow decision- making because people want to make sure that all the voices are heard and everybody agrees before you move forward and that is paralyzing you've
(16:01) got a really interesting background and I understand that you kind of sort of started out in the IT world which is almost a culture within a culture in an organization isn't it because that's that's where things like agile can Thrive and it's agile is is you know it's not necessarily a process it's a way of being and an orientation To The World Isn't it so yeah how's that informed your work and your practice and and your writing as well yeah I did start out as a software developer myself
(16:26) so I I suffered through the you know as as a Craftsman you you sometimes suffer from from the management systems uh rather than that they are helping you and enabling you to make good stuff um so so I felt like firsthand the the problem sometimes in in more traditional project management that we had at the time so when when I was able to and over time I got roles as a chief technology officer and manager of of groups of software development teams so I started to became more obsessed with the problem of how do you you know how do you
(16:57) organize this and still be coherent and and create high productivity and high high productive software and good products CTO is the toughest job in an organization in some organizations it is yeah it really depends I guess but uh but yeah so that's that's the moment where I started to try to influence the the the rest of the organization to get along the Journey of you know what we're accelerating how we make software here you know we have to because we have to digitalize we have to make our products
(17:25) valuable and digital but we are held back by the rest of the organization so at the beginning there was a lot of frustration there but then I started on a journey to to find methodologies and um other thought leaders and other organizations that were modeling agile type principles or agile type ways of working completely outside of it um so I completely winded my field and discovered um sociocracy hocy I discovered responsive org um and I started working with Aon dignan from the ready who wrote uh Brave new work and
(17:58) that in itself was an interesting experiment with an organization that we grew to 50 people uh and being completely self-managed so yeah so so I really lean into trying to find other schools of thought and um and yeah it's all mixed in my craft these days and what aspects of your work whether it's the writing or the consulting or or the speaking do you find most fulfilling or exciting and why well in the end it's it's the the most fulfilling is being in the room running a workshop with with a
(18:28) team and and and coaching them and guiding them through through some of these changes and getting all these aha moments and seeing the impact over time I also really enjoy speaking it's it's just a a rush I think I think it's um it's it's fun and i' I've used a lot of metaphors from the world of Formula 1 Motorsport so it's always fun to fun to inspire others with something that you're very really excited about and uh but yeah over time like the the longer term engagements are are more
(18:53) interesting because then you'll see the actual change if you go and on stage and do a speech that usually doesn't change much uh yeah it might be in the moment entertainment but uh down the line it won't have a big effect unless it's connected to a longer term engagement and then on the flip side what do you find most challenging about the the work that you do well the thing I'm currently still stuck on is how do you get people to see this work as oxygen rather than candy you know so in in an economic
(19:20) downturn where a lot of companies are are cost cutting and getting rid of a lot of Coach positions uh that's the current reality we're in and uh there's definitely clients out there that are still you know demanding this work but there's a lot of organizations that that see this like ah it's like a luxury to get consultants in to develop organizations we can do without that for a while and um the reality is that a lot of the costs that uh that that are not on the balance sheet is actually hidden
(19:47) in their organizational uh depth and their their lack of uh adaptivity so yeah I'm still puzzling with that thing and I'm you know trying to put myself in the shoes of CFOs and talking to them and but it's something I haven't cracked yet so if somebody does reach out to me and love to talk about it I think the other challenge we see is is kind of when's the time time when when is the right time to do this work there's often like well when we when the team's stable or when this this happens there's kind of
(20:13) that we'll wait do you think there is a right time or is it just get going whatever conditions you're in do the work there's always a right time yeah there's you can always start because there's always something to improve I'm I'm thinking a lot about these shocks to the system like big Ys uh that still happen a lot uh either firing round or somebody from a big consultancy for firm coming in and drawing a new orc chart and then everybody has to reapply to their roles and those are pretty
(20:40) traumatic experience sometimes yeah I'm being triggered so oh yeah yeah yeah you need you need to take some breath yeah yeah the moment that happens like that's not the time I want to be around honestly because the moment the decision is made that that's the type of change somebody wants I'm not sure if I'm the right consultant for that uh uh but I often come after that to pick up the pieces and uh to put put teams back together and getting the the orc model to to work uh in practice because you
(21:09) know that's it often doesn't obviously you're releasing the book and you know big part of that is going out and speaking to lots of different organizations and it's just you know it's it's a really interesting process are you seeing any sort of emerging Trends or even sort of common themes that have emerging from all the organizations and people that you're talking to at the moment yeah a lot about it's connected to what I said earlier about the golden years of agile are over you know we had all these
(21:33) Trends we had you know we had a period where everybody was doing lean and we had lean Six Sigma Black belts running around then we had a lot of people doing agile and people were having agile coaches running around permanent positions with those names that that is definitely over at the moment and the thing that I think is is still helpful is and I'm I'm still experimenting with these terms because our our consultancy is very young I'm I'm focusing more on organizational Effectiveness as a term
(21:59) these days it's more broadly encapsulating the idea that the organization needs to be effective in achieving the or the organizational goals and whatever that means underneath you know you can have buzzwords but um that's in the end what it is right and uh that seems to resonate but still like it's it's still um a quest are there any questions about your work that people don't ask you you'd love to talk about H yeah I think the one thing that comes to mind is the the return on investment on
(22:26) this work and I think in the OD world we we sometimes underestimate the importance of that and we just say well everybody can see it's better right people are happy I feel better it feels great right to have more autonomy so so why you know why do we need to have an Roi on this and and obviously measuring the impact of work is U of this work is not always easy we we do do it consistently with our clients we we we do use surveys not to diagnose their problems but to measure the effect of of our engagements and often our
(23:00) engagements are Roi the ROI is positive um after only two or three months of work that you can you can see a measurable impact in terms of better collaboration uh letter less less wasted time in meetings less interruptions uh less time waiting for permission all those things they they they they look positive and if if you calculate that until like salaries that are being redeployed to more doing more useful activities um you can do that and you can can measure the the impact and I recommend everybody to um to get good at
(23:32) that it's not easy it's not something that we we learn a lot in in our field but uh it is helpful one question that Danny because we having a chat about the book yesterday and something that you talked about is an alternative to racy obviously it's that well-known management tool everyone walks away from the room F very confident and very clear yet we all know what happens don't we what what would what drove you to put it in the book and and what is that alternative that you were talking about
(23:59) yeah it's it's just sometimes nice to uh to completely break down a method that everybody uses and don't questions well there's a lot of people question questioning it honestly a lot of leaders hate it but still do it because there's no good alternative and you know the racy Matrix is um I I used the quote that somebody said which is like it's it's a cover your behind game before the work even starts right it's it's really it's really there like we we don't start
(24:25) to work here we're first going to write down who whose head we're going to chop off off when this go wrong um and then it is what it is and then and then you get in the discussion between what's the difference between responsible and accountable well you know if you go to the Oxford dictionary it's the same it's like they're synonyms so yeah anyway so of course of course if you do Rey really well um it might have benefits and and and the end I really believe it there that there's a lot of value in
(24:55) clarifying who can make what decision but the method is just archaic and outdated and uh yeah so in the book we we talk about uh role-based work and identifying roles and connecting connected to those roles are decision rights and um as a third layer you can have decision rights where you need to ask for advice before you can make a decision and those three elements are more flexible and uh can can be super helpful in uh in clarifying who can make what decision but also how you're going to make what decision and uh that's
(25:24) something that Rey doesn't support yeah because I think almost like it's a pseudo decision lots of teams make make pseudo decisions we we kind of agreed that we've done something but we haven't really and we kind of know that we haven't done it as well but we collude don't we as well what do you do to keep learning and evolving in your field you know you sound like you're very open you're always looking at new methodologies and are there any sort of particular practices or habits that you
(25:46) find like especially useful to keep that learning alive I do listen to a lot of podcasts read a bunch of books every year two other things I think whenever there's an interesting case somewhere or or hint of an organ iation that is doing it differently and it's Progressive I try to make an effort to to learn about learn more about them to to to either go visit them and over the years especially in the first couple years when I started learning about this I I went to a whole tour through Silicon Valley and spend uh
(26:14) spent a couple months at Spotify in Sweden when they were still growing so like those case studies are nice but the reality under theg ground is often different so go go and talk to people and uh ask ask them about their experience at work and see what you can learn from that is something I keep doing and and then on more on a personal development space I think roughly once a year I I do some some self-work that is more about um that could either be individual therapy if I'm wrestling with something or could be could more like a
(26:41) cohort-based uh learning experience where where it's really a lot more about your your inner inner self in the end you bring you bring your yourself as instrument to work so it's good to do some maintenance on it sometimes and it's really fascinating because um often organizations like Spotify are sort of cited as the and they're kind of thrown around with people actually really not understanding the reality so we've been an organization kind right we're going to have squads and guilds and all this
(27:06) kind of stuff and you're like really like is that is that really going to operationalize itself and do you know what's required but for you to actually go behind the scenes and actually see how it actually is in practice what how it when you see the it how it's talked about in the public domain versus the reality how different is that oh it's it's really different and uh it's it's it's missing the point on some foundational principles often like it's it's easy to see the orc chart and say
(27:33) ah we can copy that but it's much harder to grasp the the underlying principles but also the culture that enables it to work and that could be country culture like the Swedish have a specific way of talking to each other and uh being with each other that that makes the Spotify what it is the Spotify model what it is and then thirdly um the business context is often very different right the moment a lot of the banks started adopting the Spotify model I always asked them like you have an ambition to write to to to
(28:00) to uh grow a music player and uh you know be great at streaming music and they said no of course not well then why are you doing why are you copying this model because that was that was the model it was for you know and uh yeah one of my best read articles it's it's already a bunch of years old but is it's how to build your own Spotify model so what I advocate for in in that in that article is definitely look at it and definitely take your inspiration for from it figure out figure out what are some of the ideas in there that can be
(28:29) really useful but then take it apart and say you know these things are help are going to help us with our specific problems and these things won't and and just take it apart and build your own is is what I really believe in so if you reflect so far on the work you've done the experience you have what are some of the biggest lessons you you've learned that you think would be valuable for others to to know that's a really broad question yes I think I think one one thing that comes to mind is often when
(28:53) we go into into uh organizations we talk to to leaders and we talk to individual contributors or the teams or whatever you want to call them and we we sometimes hear leaders say you know what our people you know they they don't get it maybe we need different people we need new blood in the organization like they are stuck um we've explained the strategy so many times and they still don't seem to understand it but then when you go and talk to the people they're like oh man those leaders you know they they're just you this this
(29:20) they're just telling us uh the direction to go in but they really don't understand their day-to-day realities and you know uh whatever they're talking from their Tower it just doesn't connect with me it doesn't they don't listen to what I actually need to do my work better and I think there's a huge disconnect between those worlds sometimes and it's just extremely helpful to you know like like Garen said before get them to talk and to connect the dots to connect those layers not the
(29:46) dots but actually to get those layers of of of realities to talk to each other to resonate with each other and to bake that into the system so it is more uh it is more healthy right is there's a leaders have certain positions so they are able to see some things that the rest of the organization doesn't see but vice versa if you're if you're interacting with customers every day you have a perspective that the leaders probably don't have so lot of our work is about connecting those layers and
(30:14) it's also about um turning turning complaints and frustration into action I definitely have had my my grudges against the sea Suite when I was in a big corporate and uh I was just like why don't get it right you know it's it's not that difficult but then when I was able to actually stand next to them and work with them I I understood the complexity of their situation they were in so that's what it's about you know it's uh leaders are leaders in the end are doing everything with the right
(30:43) intentions but uh but sometimes the methods they deploy is not helpful and um it's our job to make them aware of that and give them Alternatives more organizations did that they would be a lot less work for us to do so obviously you've got your book unblock is there another resource you you'd recommend or you particularly love that you think you you know if other people were aware of it you you'd love them to know about it I think one of the biggest experiments right now in or or cases in our field is
(31:09) the the world of higher and the the the Chinese appliance manufacturer that is working in four or 5 th000 self managing teams uh microenterprises they call them so if you want to learn more about that unfortunately a lot of the documentation out there is in Chinese so it's it's not so easy and not so accessible but uh Gary haml and um Mikel anini did a great work in their book humany to unpack some of those ideas in principle so I would definitely let people look at that and also attend some of the public webinars
(31:38) of the the Agriculture and pharmaceutical company Bayer who is pioneering this at the moment so Bill Anderson uh the CEO he joined I think about a year ago and he is announcing the a new model called Dynamic shared ownership which is basically in a lot of ways applying the principles of hire moving uh The 100 200,000 people that work at Bayer into self-organizing teams and um yeah they're pretty public about it so that's nice like there's there's videos out there and articles to give a sense and uh I'm yeah hopefully time
(32:10) will tell uh what we can learn from from those two uh Progressive organizational changes and final question one of the regional drivers behind this podcast is to inspire the next generation of organization development and Design Consultants whether you're internal external whether you're just starting out or whether you're just you're considering what advice would you give someone who's starting out now in today's context about how can you less make this learning C A Little Less steep
(32:34) for example there there's a couple things that come to mind but I think I think the the skill of facilitation is something that could be built more in this world both in practitioners but also in in leaders themselves I think if you're able to facilitate groups of people of all sizes to to get to meaningful outcomes together that's just such a powerful skill that is underutilized there's companies like there I've discovered companies out there for example Ikea they have a lot of people on the on the payroll that are
(33:05) that have really good facilitation skills um it's just a huge competitive Advantage if you're able to do that and I think it makes your work as practitioner much easier it allows you to get out of this idea of Death by PowerPoint in in large Gatherings right and uh yeah I think so facilitation and workshop design is is something that uh that that is more practical than than you know being able to site all the theoretical models and all the and all the case studies out there it's in the end it's all about people getting to
(33:33) talk to each other and getting to meaningful outcomes and uh you know liberating structur is a great great way to start great place to start at least to get some ideas and in the end facilitation is only learned through practice but uh yeah urian we want to say a huge thank you it's been like an injection of caffeine into our PS after a very busy week to to to spend some time with you and reading the book has been a real source of joy and we really recommend people to read that people want to follow your work or you know
(34:00) find the book obviously all the things we're going to share in the show notes so whether you're listening on audio or watching the video all of those links will be in the show notes but how can people follow your work and keep up to date yeah I'm pretty active on LinkedIn so uh follow me there um the book can be found on Amazon and unblock book.
(34:15) net is also a place where you can find more information about the book and I yeah LinkedIn is the Main Place uh where I publish everything and Danny what do you taken away from today's conversation like where to start so many things I loved what you said at the beginning early early in the conversation about breaking that kind of power giving power asking kind of cycle and breaking that down the thing that will stick in my head is the idea of the work that we do is oxygen versus candy is it a nice to have or is it just the foundational
(34:38) things that kind the organization living and breathing and I think context is King as well when you're kind of applying techniques and models you know don't just replicate something that somebody else is doing and you you really need to understand what you're trying to achieve and and tailor it for your organization brilant and for me did all of those things just to answer to it I think you talk about the the facilitation for leaders you know how to convene groups together to exchange information and dialogue and build
(35:04) connections is so important um and also just challenging tools that we just use that we know are crap just somebody say stop and can we just do this in a different way just so that this works as well so so thank you so much we we as practitioners we're so glad that authors like yourself are bringing consultant experience and applying it into books we really want to make sure this books gets into the hands of leaders and HR leaders across organizations as well so so thank you so much urine's episode joins our brilliant
(35:34) and building portfolio of different OD practitioners internal and external from across the world so if you've enjoyed the episode please feel free to hit the like button if you've got a comment on any of the amazing things that you're in has shared today we love that um and also subscribe to the channel as well because obviously the channel gets bigger all the time and also the algorithm Gods really appreciate it too so so thank you so much and but most importantly thank you so much you're it's been a brilliant brilliant episode
(35:58) I can't wait to sit down and edit this and watch it all over again so thank you thank you for your time I really enjoyed it thank you [Music]