Organisation Development in the Age of Uncertainty with Toby Lindsay - OrgDev Episode 74

OD in Complexity, Change and Transformation

What gets in the way when strategy and change aren’t truly connected – when the people leading strategy and the people leading change don’t even see their work as part of the same conversation?

We’re delighted to be joined by Toby Lindsay, Senior Consultant in Leadership and Organisational Development at The King’s Fund and Lead Consultant at Lindsay Associates

Toby has dedicated his career to exploring and supporting how organisations navigate complexity – and what it really takes to really align people, strategy and change

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About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

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Transcript

(00:00) Hi and welcome to the org dev podcast. So what gets in the way when strategy and change aren't truly connected? When the people leading the strategy and the people leading change don't even see their work as part of the same conversation. We're delighted to be joined by Toby Lindseay and Toby is senior consultant in leadership and organizational development at the Kings Fund and lead consultant at Lindsay Associates. Toby has dedicated his career to exploring and supporting how organizations navigate complexity and
(00:29) what it really takes to really align people, strategy, and change. Toby has a deep interest in the work of collaboration and integration and how people work with and acknowledge power. Research informed practice and practice informed research are his passions.
(00:47) And Toby has had a fascinating career with a blend of consultancy, teaching, and lecturing, including flagship organizations such as Rafy Park, Workforce Development Trust, and now at the Kings Fund. He's also an associate tutor at the University of Sussex. Naturally, Toby's extensive experience is underpinned by academic qualifications.
(01:05) He has a masters in people and organizational development and is currently midway through his PhD. Uh, so thanks for making time between all that busy work and your studies to join us today. So, thank you so much, Toby. A thank you so much, Gary and Donnie. It's really lovely to be here. We're very excited to have you with us today. Looking forward to it.
(01:32) So, just to kick us off, just tell us a bit more about the work you're doing and and explain who the Kings Fund are for for people who aren't kind of Yeah, the Kings Fund the Kings Fund is a charity that's uh was founded in the late 19th century. Um its mission is to uh you to to uh seek to provide best possible care for everybody uh working in the health and social care sector.
(01:56) Very much kind of interested in policy development and advising and contributing to key bits of data and information used there. Also we have a leadership and organizational development function where we are working to build capability in the system, build capacity in the system and consult on the kinds of uh changes and you know that's a very significant and opportune time um changes in the health and care system to make it uh more inclusive, more equitable uh more able to help more people more of the time.
(02:28) And what about your specific role? What are you what are you working on? What do you do? Yeah. Yeah. Mike, so I'm a senior consultant. I'm the lead for organization development at the fund. I uh one of the things that I love and I'm proud of uh being involved in is I'm um program director for our advanced organizational development capability building program which uh will start again in September.
(02:54) Um I sort of hold the alumni space so there's a you know there's a there's a community of practice that gathers around that. I'm currently working with, you know, a number of trusts. Um, one is a long-term organizational design and development piece of work which has been really kind of focused on the kinds of things we we often hear culture change um behavior change and we've been looking at that at both uh kind of both a kind of culture and behavior but and what are the designs and structures that that emerges from. I lead on a leadership development
(03:27) program. uh again I try and bring my leadership development work into the organization development space see it as part of that and connected to that not separate. I work with the digital fellow at the fund protesh mystery on something called adapt to thrive which is a community of frack practice looking at um digital digital being integrated into developing better health outcomes as well as leading digital change or the leadership that can be enabled through digital um mechanisms although as we might get into I kind of see uh the material and the social as being deeply entangled and it
(04:04) useful to think about that. That's that that's a brought you're part of a you know thriving community of senior consultants. The other day we were really doing a deep dive into our action learning practice and how we um how we see that and what we can learn from each other.
(04:23) As well as also I I um was on the previous cohort of our in-house activate program and anti-racism program. But I spent this week just sharing some of my experience of that with colleagues who are going on to the next cycle. Gosh, so much there we can unpack. As you said, it's a really significant time for the for the health care sector. How's what you're doing at the Kings Fund? Is it changing, evolving? How are you having to adapt and respond to to what's going on? I think we are really thinking about how to um or certainly you know I'm we're really thinking about how to support the system broadly how to maybe move from leadership programs
(04:56) which are taking people out of the system and developing them separately and bringing them back in to working with people whilst they're in role um in the kinds of uh constellations they're in to develop and change. I think the kinds of things we're starting to get quite excited and explore what might be the possibility of using uh AI tools for data feedback for rapid data feedback for then kind of you can turn around an analysis of in really I mean almost in real time and some of the tools we've been using kind of voice capture and so on to give kind to give people to give
(05:35) the system greater feedback about what's happening in the system and then greater capability to act and shift things. But there's some really interesting things in that about the psychological impacts on you know we we I have worked with some leaders who say I'd really like to um know more about what's going on and then you find out that maybe actually they don't want to know more about what's going on and that's you know that's not to be um but the challenge I mean I feel it you know if I said actually I want live feedback of
(06:00) everybody who I'm working with what they think of what's going on I'm going to pay attention to the stuff that's saying who is this guy what's he talking about so the kind of I think the some of the challenges of what highspeed data capture and analysis that AI can do is really interesting from the kind of psychological perspective. Yeah.
(06:17) So I guess is whether people can keep up with that and kind of respond to it and and process it in in providing it. Yeah. coping with cope with the feelings that it stirs up. Um the kind of I mean we talk a lot about moving from heroic individualized leadership models yet so much of how we structure and actually behave in organizations leaves leaders in a position where they think they really do need to have the answers. They do need to be leading the way. They do need to be out front.
(06:46) So that kind of practice of maybe kind of curating data making sense inviting and enabling people to have the power with to take action. There's quite a lot of work to do in that space. I think I can say I could sense the question. How do you know I've got I've got four questions right by the way to Toby you should go you should do voiceovers for adverts. You've got such a good voice.
(07:12) That's so that's a really unusual thing to say. That's really lovely. Thank you. I'm so relaxed. Sorry, I got to cut that bit out, but so and there's loads of interesting things that you've mentioned. I think there there's three things that have just drawn my attention there.
(07:28) So, um, one of the things you talk about there is leadership development, which is a multi multi multi multi multi-billion pound industry globally and and the results are at best inconsistent and at worst uh, Patrick. what what is like your approach to leadership development and what might organizations be getting wrong about that approach? I think when we think about making interventions in organizations to enable positive change to get to a place where there's more of what we want to have happening and less of what we don't to paraphase Dave Snowden I would
(08:02) whose real influence um amongst others but I mean you take it back to kind of Mary Parker Follet's work over 100 years ago talking about how we need to we could recognize how interrelated how relational and how entangled we we humans and also the material um material nature of our organizations are.
(08:27) So I think one of the things that we need to think about is when we think about making interventions in organizations is what organizations are. And I am liking thinking about them as social and material entangled constellations that are always in a kind of process flow which um is is you know is part of what I'm working through with my PhD research.
(08:51) I want to take that further actually to think about the kinds of things we do in organizational development that would make sense if that's how we thought we were. So what maybe doesn't make sense is to say that we can make change by just taking individuals if we see ourselves as being less individual as we'd like to think. Taking individuals creating a behavioral framework and if you like training the individuals to behave properly.
(09:21) Now, there are some real issues with that that run all the way back through the kind of history of organizational development and the um social science of it which could be challenged and critiqued to be more about controlling the labor market than actually enabling and um emancipating it. But just on a kind of fundamental, will this make the change? I mean, I started really thinking about this at Ruffy Park.
(09:39) Ruffy Park is a beautiful place, great tradition. People would come, we would do lovely work. and say this is amazing and then you know come back and say actually what's really difficult is actually making any of this have any difference when I'm in the workplace or connecting to it.
(10:00) So I thought when I talk about um organization as assemblage the idea is that we're all parts of something rather than the what what I am is inside me. It's actually we're part of something that's entangled and connected. So you can understand why a person at Ruffy Park in this beautiful scenery eating wonderful food with good facilitation and so on might be like I am really aware of how I can behave in this kind of ethical, thoughtful, reflective, leaderful way but go back into a context that's completely different and something completely different happens. So I think we need to think more broadly about what
(10:33) organization organization is and think about the context from which behavior emerges. It's great to have aspiration to move towards but we must recognize I was looking at a previous podcast so why you know why do good people do bad things this we will fall down if we think that it's enough just to have a set of standards and then train people to to deliver those standards and it's a it also creates some real problems with how people feel when they fail. And that's another interest of mine is how um actually fragile the capability of
(11:04) humans generally me certainly and leaders to to not know and to be in a place of not knowing to be able to cope with failing which actually is a necessary constituent of any learning process which which I think is the heart of development. And you've just mentioned uh a word there that sort of I've been thinking about quite a lot recently and you kind of use it a couple of times there. Um and I'm just interested to get your definition of it.
(11:32) You use the word entangled and and we kind of are entangled in the system even as external OD practitioners going into organizations the invitation is is to become entangled isn't it? What what is the definition and use of that view? So I I mean I think of um I think about mushrooms quite a lot and uh and um Danny's allergic so just you know but the when the uh analogy of fungi and uh Merlin Sheldre's book entangled life but other is really you know the um the network of you we see the fruing body we think that's the mushroom but actually the network of life is an entangled they use the word
(12:11) felted into each under the surface. I think of that as kind of like you know what what what we are is so much of our past, our histories, our roots, but also our contexts, our relationships. The fact that we, you know, this this conversation is is not three individuals having a conversation.
(12:36) It's three individuals plugged into technology going through systems that are so actually what's happening now is perhaps an example of an entanglement. the entanglement that is so much so the boundaries exist but they're less they're much more porous than we might think. So, you know, my to go back to behavior, my behavior here, my behavior, football matches, which I go to a lot, my behavior in other contexts, pub, dance floor, organization, boardroom. I'm not just kind of simply choosing to be different in different places.
(13:04) The whole entanglement, the flowing through, the the the in interconnectedness of all of that is having an impact. I don't know if that's helpful as an answer. I've never been more glad to ask a question than that one because I think it's but it's true, isn't it? We we we use terms and I think sometimes we need to just dig a little deeper metaphorically just to understand what it means. Yeah. Just to go back to that.
(13:26) So So all of that entangled life that exists below the surface. We see the mushroom and we think that is the that's the mushroom. It isn't. That's the fruing body of something far greater. So if we think about it in that way, you could think about the human self, th this body and voice as a kind of mushroom that is the fruing body of so much more that is entangled.
(13:52) And in that there is relationships, family histories, but there's also things like culture, stories, um the books that are behind me, the things that we've read, the shows that we might have seen, the music that we've heard. All of that is, I would say, entangled rather than separate. And I think that I was in preparation for this.
(14:11) I was reading back some of your blog articles and I think you've written one on the Kings Fund about practice models and the importance of us as OD practitioners spending time exploring our practice models and I thought that was really really an an interesting point and you I think you've done some work recently, didn't you? When you've been looking back at your own exploring that. So yeah, I think I think it's important to go back to that.
(14:27) We need to think about what do we think organizations are? What do we think we are? What do we think we're doing when we're intervening? and how coherent are those things. And I think sometimes I think sometimes I'll find myself going through a slice set thinking, well, I'm not sure how coherent this is. That's an area that I'm interested in kind of developing and pushing further.
(14:48) There are certain kind of personality profiling tools. I think this I'm not sure that that sits with that. And you could go deeper and say, I wonder what this is doing in terms of how it's constructing how we think about what what it is to be asked. So the practice model piece I think for me reflexive as well as I use the word defractive like we can be reflexive who am I and how is that affecting how I'm seeing the world and thinking the world but as we engage in those conversations we're always I would say we're always becoming
(15:18) we're always in flow but to different extents at different times but an intervention like a group gathering a group of practitioners to do a piece of work around practice model reflecting and actually becoming changed by that process of being with others in that exploration I think is really important.
(15:36) Um I do think it's really important ethically for us as practitioners to have a clear sense of what are we doing, why are we doing it and why is it this is the right thing to do and why we make why are we making the choice. Someone might disagree with me but I need to be able to understand why I'm making the choice I'm making.
(15:55) Yeah. Yeah. And it's really interesting because um and this person may be watching this podcast but so they shall remain names but someone I was speaking to about a week or so ago has recently uh enrolled at um Ry Park as they're getting into the journey of they're just like where's my tools? I want my tools what is this? Why am I where is the application? But I guess what you're sort of saying there is like you know you've got to do the first bit which is understanding how we show up, how we become what we become, all that kind of
(16:23) thing and then it's a work in progress as well. Yeah, I think so. I mean that that I I um you know was was fortunate enough to to lead that programs around OD development at Ry Park and I'm really remembering day one of people saying yeah I'm not really sure about this. This is not really good.
(16:41) I mean, I haven't really been given any tools and we were doing kind of lifelines and how did you become who you are and you know what what metaphors of organization do you hold and how do you and um I do also remember getting to the ends of those programs and people saying wow that was that was not what I expected that was brilliant taught me a way of thinking a way of being a way of conceptualizing what this is and what we are and there are all sorts of techniques um tools if we want to call them that things that we can bring to bear to use for that kind
(17:11) of sense making. I think that's right because um I'm always quite cautious about giving too much for people to grab on to because it's the kind of dependency you know the scaffolding is really useful but also um understanding that it's not it's not the truth. It's not reality.
(17:35) It life is doesn't work in four box grids or maybe 2 by3's or whatever it is or two pairs of eight or you know. Yeah. Yeah. resonates for me because I I did this the nine-day OD practitioners course with Rafie um many years ago. So a lot of that resonates with me and I think and what you said about the context also I remember feeling changed as an individual and then going back into my organization context and system and thinking I don't I don't quite know how to be anymore.
(17:57) I don't know how to work in this system knowing you know viewing the world in a different way and that that that hadn't the system hadn't changed. I changed. Um yeah, and that's hard. And I think we see quite often people going through programs like that and um perhaps moving making a shift.
(18:16) Great for them, maybe not so great for the you know, not so great for the organization that's that's sponsoring going that way. I mean I do think my experience I did my masters at Rafie um and then 10 years later was um was course director with with Cindy Cox a wonderful colleague on that which was again something I'm really proud of and it did really change me which means you you need to change but I think that's a really helpful thing is like when we think about context if we think about what what are the contexts that really help us come alive help us learn help us be relational help us be open and how do we create those in our learning
(18:46) environments ments or if we're working with leaders in organization ask them to think about how they create them and it is that moving to um a power with model to go back to fit than a power over and I think that again is very challenging um and very important um so my second of my three questions I apologize no no this is really good we're good I'll talk a lot no this is really good let's keep going lovely the other thing you talked out there is something that again is a term and it's something that you can breathe life into but to to to to give it life,
(19:25) keep it going and then for it to sustain itself. Action learning sets you mentioned as well and they're a wonderful way of extending the learning aren't they and building a sense of community in that as well. So I guess just for those that I think just to the audience are on the same what what view is an action learning set and what might be some of the applications that you do? Yeah, I always kind of teach action learning as a philosophy and a and and a and a set of structure as technique and philosophically it's that kind of grounded in social learning, open
(19:55) questioning um not moving fast towards solution, inquiry based curiosity to expand and make greater sense of what might be before us or or within us or us within to then find uh to then have greater kind of much much greater perspective and awareness of the corridor. doors and places and routes that we could travel and traverse that we might not have seen.
(20:20) And that kind of that philosophically can fundamentally underpin it probably is is a real underpinning part of my practice. An action learning set as um as I see it is is a group. Now this is something that I've changed view on over time.
(20:40) Usually a group that stays the same, but I think a group structure can be held where the actual individuals can shift. But a group that has some kind of contracted arrangement for how it is together structures its time. It might be a day, it might be three hours, it might be an hour with some opportunity for people to talk about what they're grappling with and how they might want to be supported in that.
(21:02) And then usually you'd have a somebody talking about what's going on for them, colleagues asking them some questions to get some clarity, then exploring with a range of open questions, then looking to kind of ask some questions about action, give some feedback, the presenter speaks last. That's something I hold.
(21:22) Um, close the session, and you've got some clear kind of uh commitments there to really support the person whose issue it is, and it's their space. So you are listening deeply, listening with every kind of level of listening that you can employ, really being there to support them, really coping with the voice in your head that's saying, "Oh, I know about this.
(21:41) That happened to me or why don't you do this?" Being open, asking questions that are maybe quite short. What haven't you tried? Not, "Have you thought about trying this?" Which is, you know, a different um and and that there's confidentiality. There's confidential outside the learning set and there's confidential outside the presentation.
(21:57) So if I share something with you, you're not going to come back to me and ask me about it unless I bring it up. Um that was a fundamental of action learning associates where I was a senior associate for a long time and I have some of my training.
(22:15) It was a bit like learning TR you quite a really kind of rigorous training in in holding action learning sets and there were times where I realized oh actually my interrupting this person who's telling a story because culturally that's how communication happens is having a detriment.
(22:32) So I was thinking the thing what we're trying to do in facilitating action learning sets is create the space for really generative exploratory conversations that can be had that are helpful. I've been working a lot lately with setting up communities of practice where action learning is the core and then non-f facilitated sets and I've learned quite a lot about how you need to kind of structure that and give real clear direction and guidance for people on how to how to maybe maybe like something to hang a framework off as you start do some demonstration but then give people the space to to self-f facilitate and I've been really struck by how people come back and say that was so insightful I realized that the issue
(23:07) wasn't n't the issue I thought it was. I found that really emotional. There was some kind of we were really close to each other and the things that you might expect when you're facilitating seem to be happening in in non-facilitated sets, which does go back to some of the things Red Revan said about if action learning gets taken over and turned into a business, it'll be a white collar crime.
(23:26) But but yeah, but and it's when it works like it it's it's not a drop in surgery, is it? It's it's where everybody if you're fully participating, everyone's gaining, aren't they? So the person gets a new perspective on their own issues, but people are then having an opportunity to practice the the consulting, the questioning, the the truly listening skills as well, aren't they? Hugely rich.
(23:50) It's a hugely rich practice because all of the transferable skills. You can have really great conversations about how can you use this? How can you use this when somebody comes to you wanting you to solve something for them, wanting you as their leader to to take something off them? How can you use open question? How can you hold yourself in a place of not knowing and actually see that as a valid place to take up authority, authorized credibility in authority and um yeah, we we might have someone take up an observer position. How often do you take up the observer position? What's it like to hold back?
(24:22) And what do you notice? How so? Loads of transferable skills. I think that real, you know, it's not a drop in session to have a chat and to find an answer. loads of transferable skills, a clear structure and intent to move somebody towards more action.
(24:40) Everybody's getting something out of I have had so what I'm going to listen to other people and just sit here and ask a few questions. But then you get people saying, "Oh, wow that that I went through so and I feel that I go through so much conscious and I think sometimes unconscious as well processing as you work in that social learning space that people get so much out of it." And then there's the kind of I realized I wasn't alone.
(25:00) we're all in different parts of the system but we've actually got similar challenges or but the way you were dealing that kind of stuff how do you keep the momentum going because so for example like you know often it's a it's a tool for keeping the learning alive after a program for example and whatnot too or between sessions how do you keep people going like it's not a mandated thing is it is about building that community of practice I think it's about building a community of practice it's about bringing people together who find themselves really gaining from the relationship and the
(25:29) relational learning and the relational support. And I think this is where we can pay more attention to structuring and diarizing and having things set up with a with an amount of time in advance. If an organization is saying, I'd really like people to carry on in action learning sets after they finish the program.
(25:53) I'll be saying, so what are you going to do to make that really visible? What are you going to do to make sure it's in people's diaries? What are you what are you doing to make sure that people who can willingly or unwillingly be putting pressure on people to come out of that um support it and recognize it as a valuable part of the system? How are you going to say, "Oh, just keep going for as long as you like.
(26:12) Why don't you say go for six and then we'll have a review point and we'll have so so creating structures that make this have some of those different elements. If we think of it as a as an assemblage, different elements of structuring rather than just thinking that if people like something they'll be able to keep it going and we can we don't have to have that much to do with it. Yeah.
(26:30) Because because in many organizations it's a countercultural move, isn't it? Yeah. Someone someone looks in the diary and goes right here there's two hours there I could. Whereas this is like a different type of space that's building capability and capacity isn't it? You need people.
(26:50) I I I'm thinking of a trust where I did a long-term piece of action learning and somebody uh senior person from from A&E to say I can't I can't be here. I shouldn't be here. I've just walked past something. And then at the end of the three-hour session was like, "Wow, I have more space. I can go home. I can think differently." So we need to really recognize um that they the kind of addiction to busyiness and to continually moving fast.
(27:15) There are a number of practices but we know that you know the the um the kind of our sense of the time we have is actually a quality of our relationship and space than it is the truth of actually we don't have enough time. People in action learning sets so often get to the end and say, "I have more space. I have more clarity.
(27:36) I've got" and we're not going to run ahead doing something and then realize that actually it was really unwise to do it in that way and we should have started, you know. So um it's really important that the value of thinking time, strategic time, relational time, spaciousness slowing down is supported and that can be so hard and that is so hard when things get very difficult and get very fraugh and I mean we'll always see this and we'll always be I think in a role of inviting the organization to row back into a place of going oh yeah no it is helpful to have islands
(28:13) space and recognize that when things get really pressured and we all do it suddenly you start going as fast as you can. I also think it can be countercultural because of what it does. If you set it up well and you have people from all sorts of different parts of the system in action learning groups and you find a way of then bringing them all together, you're doing something which is creating a network of relationships across the system which has power and you know Hannah said you know power is not the property of an individual it's the power of a group and
(28:42) you see groups when they become close and spend time working on things together becoming powerful. Now in an organization which has a really um you know a hierarchy that says that's brilliant that's brilliant all those things that you're bringing to us we just want to our job is to make make it possible for them to happen but we know that in organizations there is there are dynamics of kind of power over and is countercultural threatening to have people spending time in close groups close relationships talking about how
(29:12) the organization could be better kind of back to that thing of like fast feedback with AI what you say you want and what really want. What the system says it wants and what it really wants are not always the same thing. I think I was just struck when you were talking about that addiction to business.
(29:30) Sometimes people need to experience the space they get from participating in an action learning set before they get it. You can you can talk to people about it and it's only once they've experienced it that they go okay now I now I understand the power of that. Yeah. So then we've just got to really work hard to kind of find whatever mechanism possible.
(29:47) I always think with actually there's people who come on the first session you say you got an organizational intervention and there sets of six or seven or eight and then quite often one or two you know some people who get in there and get into that experience very often come back every time. Sometimes you find the person who doesn't manage to get to the first one never gets in and it's Hi, we're just pausing this interview for a moment.
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(30:47) What was your journey into OD? How did you arrive in in this space? We love this question because it's always very often really interesting. Yeah, you you talk to ID practices think, oh, okay, that's I was doing this and then this happened. I was um so I I uh left school early, traveled a lot, um got into teaching English as a foreign language, set up a foreign language school, had real success in business and then real failure and that's another story and a long one or uh but a good one. Um but what happened was as we went in the organizations we'd set up from
(31:23) being one company to being three companies, from five people to being 50 people, things got a lot more difficult and a lot trickier. the leaving school thing. Uh, you know, I do love study and I had sort of felt I'd missed out and I wanted to go back and I wanted to study again.
(31:41) So, I started thinking, well, you know, um, maybe because of my experience, my my experience leading a few companies and stuff, I might be able to get on an MBA. So, I went looking for MBAs and uh, I found that Ruffy Park used to did an MBA, but they'd stopped. But they said, "Oh, we do an MSE in people in organizational development.
(31:58) " I was like, "Ah, what's that?" And I looked up Beckard's um you know top down organizationwide organizational effectiveness. I thought well that's what I do. I'm an entrepreneur business leader. I'll get on the program. Went for an open day. Did a little practice of being in an action learning set and uh experienced some of what that was like.
(32:16) Described myself then as a teacher and entrepreneur. Found myself really moved by the moved being there. Felt something was stirring. felt felt there was kind of patterns to kind of felt a way was opening up before me and I went in and you know my my one of my best friends who I met on the program will will laugh and say yeah you know you turned up and you did not know what you're doing.
(32:39) I went in and there was a there were there were maybe two or three men in the cohort. Um, majority female presenting, majority people working in kind of HR and areas like that. And quite quickly I fell in love with the way we were working and also had a relationship with OD was like, yeah, but you know, it's that's a bit, you know, sometimes if you're leading a business, I've got to fire someone tomorrow. It's can't can't really coach them through that.
(33:07) I'm not sure how that's going to go. So that's how I got in. Um through that period of doing the MSSE our business went through some really difficult times. Uh but I was also thinking I want to do this kind of work. I mean it's teaching English language I did a lot sitting in circles and helping people develop. I wanted to do more of that.
(33:26) So um few things led to another. I did transition my career in a way that was more painful than I had expected. Uh and started doing consulting tomemes because I had theme background. Started doing quite a lot of action learning work. went and trained as an action learning um facilitator and facilitator trainer did some coaching.
(33:45) So then kind of I was a bit of a journeyman just kind of trying to build up a set of practices. Um it was at workforce development trust when I started doing some really interesting uh pieces about transformation across national geographies and started having organizational development supervision with um yeah with Gene Newman which is wonderful.
(34:07) That was when I started really kind of I felt turning the dial on being an organization development and change consultant. And what do you enjoy most about working in this space in organization development? I find I mean I really enjoy I really enjoy um the kind of cycle of gathering data, making sense of data um designing. I I really love the creativity of working with colleagues to do organization to design kind of organizational change initiatives and learning. So I really love that. I really love the creativity of it.
(34:41) I love the re the relationships that I um experience through this and have made through this. That's a really good question and you know I I love working with people to kind of find ways to develop and change things that they weren't thinking that they hadn't seen and thought of. And I think I love the journey it's taken me on.
(35:02) So since that kind of um night at Ry Park seeing the new moon and thinking something's happening here. I love the journey I've been on. I haven't always loved it actually. It's horrible isn't it being human and learning and you know I so I love so I so I love I love the um the wholeness of it. the journey of learning and and the community and the helping and but and I find it fascinating.
(35:20) You know, I find people in organization doing stuff in the in the material in the world that we're in. I find that fascinating. I suppose what I really deeply love is that I believe that organizational development and change work is a is a is a practice and a work that is about social justice, about ecological justice. It's about it's about the betterment of the human and the beyond human condition.
(35:46) And I love being a part of something that is trying to make things better. I want to just ask a question just going back to when you sort of shared your career history as well. Um because I guess to to extent as a as an OD practitioner you're quite unique because you've got that commercial experience and you sort of talked about going from five to 50 and 50 like in group dynamics is Dumbar's number isn't it? Where things start to go like five I got my arms around all sitting around the table 50 like we're geographically dispersed from different
(36:15) shifts like all this kind of stuff as well. What was it like being in the seat seeing that growth and and how has it kind of informed your practice understand what it is to lead an organization and and to have a different sense of control? Well, it was really I was really um quite upsetting at one point to kind of suddenly realize that we weren't you know I would do things and that they would have uh unexpected consequences.
(36:42) That's a fundamental of my practice working with people say any change effort will have unexpected consequences. Make sure you get feedback and learn from it. But the experience of the personal experience of it was quite painful for like what people are cross with me people are upset with me. I've I know I like to be liked and but I was doing that with positive intent.
(37:00) So it caused me to really learn what it what it is like to be in a leadership position trying to do trying to work positively and with positively intent and finding that you're doing things and they're they're they're not having the desired consequences.
(37:18) I think that gives me a real compassion for people in leadership positions which is helpful you know to to to not get into a position of being judgmental. So, say it's really difficult and I mean at other times it was just it was really exciting. We were we were growing and we were achieving and and we were able to therefore develop people in different ways and put new roles in and so the the process of working through the and I was doing my masters at the same time.
(37:42) So I was kind of using my organization in a growth period as a as as um well I was applying a lot of learning and that was really exciting. So it's mixed, you know, challenging, exciting, interesting, difficult, um, all of those. Yeah. And at the very beginning, you sort of said because you mentioned in the story that it had enormous growth.
(38:01) And I think one of the things about language schools, it's it's very vulnerable to external conditions, isn't it? So literally the visas of an entire country can stop straight away. So it turns the tap off of all your customers, doesn't it? So you have to and and you sort of at the beginning like you've got some affinity like one of the sort of interests is about failure and how we fail and how has that sort of informed your practice? Well, we absolutely ran into that 2008 there was you know um financial crisis as things got harder financially.
(38:31) Um narratives about immigrants and um jobs tends to dial up. That meant that um it was it was the last previous Labor government, but I remember seeing on the news someone saying we we're going to kind of reduce the number of students coming in possible intermediate cutoff.
(38:52) I spoke to a very senior civil servant said one of the only ways that the government can actually really affect substantively immigration is through the student visa route and it knocked out 40% of our business overnight. won't go into detail but so and we ended up but there were you know other things happened tragically uh my business partner passed uh after a period of illness uh I think we had had enough but anyway so so went through um closing the business uh had signed you know personal guarantees as a young man ambitious ended up in a position where I declared bankruptcy there was no real further way to go and bankruptcy
(39:29) is a very particular type of failure. I mean we we talk about it a lot but actually my investigation into what it is. I mean debt in a financial capitalist system is linked to kind of moral failing and that was really painful and has taken quite a while to kind of come to terms with and work through and I think the um the ability to fail to really fail and failing is quite a personal thing.
(39:57) So, you know, if you fail, if you fail, it's something that you, it doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel helpful. It doesn't feel nice. It's something where actually you have this sense of kind of giving up on yourself. And it's only when you're kind of giving up on yourself that you realize that the only thing that really saves you is love.
(40:17) And that's whether that's the love of friends, family, love through relationships. For me, as a as a person with faith, it's it's love of God being loved. But being loved is pretty much the only thing that I find you know um releases and rescues and enables um the return from failure. I think my failing, my experience of failure primarily firstly, fundamentally is just connected with me how important is to be loved, how important it is to be open to be loved and how and how also that gets tied up in all of our kind of feelings about leadership, change, masculinity, power, being in a position of um
(40:59) authority, and feeling like you have to have the answers, you can't fail. I've done work with people, senior leaders around kind of let letting go of control, being in a place of negative capability, that not knowing, not knowing exactly what to do next. And just seeing how frightened people can be, and they can often be men, and how difficult it can be to stay in that place and stay in a place of kind of power with, which we say we want to do, and not revert to command and control.
(41:30) and um the kind of defenses against that kind of space. So I think for me, you know, that kind of failing and really being in failing and not saying, "Oh, I learned from my failure." It's just like, "Well, maybe I didn't learn. Maybe it wasn't a good thing.
(41:47) Maybe it's just part of being me and being human has been really fundamental. And when you can actually kind of accept failing, that's when you can learn. That's when you can really look at. So it's so vital for organizations, organizational change, organizational learning because it's only it's actually when you can actually kind of have overcome the trauma and the difficult emotional experience that you say, well, what did we do? What could I have done differently? What could we learn from this? And I think that's vital. So I think setting up spaces where people and organizational kind of systems cultures
(42:16) where where people can where we say we want people to learn means at some point, you know, I used to say I say I love learning. I love learning. I'm a lifelong learner. started doing a PhD. It's like I hate learning. It's horrible. It's awful. It makes me feel inadequate. It makes me feel exposed. I can't do this. It's a struggle.
(42:36) It's only the kind of community and um support of my supervisors and others and love of friends who want me to do it that kind of helps us stay in that. So, if we're going to truly say we want to be in learning organizations, we need organizations or learning groups. I think that's why the action learning set is so powerful because it has a it has a sense of real we I always ask people to do a um some kind of personal disclosure exercise at the beginning maybe a lifeline maybe talk about stories or pictures that mean something to them people connect so deeply and I think it is love that creates the container to
(43:08) allow people to do difficult work yeah that's so interesting yeah because like from my own personal experience like my my sort of uh late 20s I had a what I've sort of determined to be a significant fail Um, and that was just leading on a change project that just did not go the way it should.
(43:29) And it's one of sort of the drivers that took me into OD, which is like there must be another way to really work with. But but having kind of experiencing failure can go kind of two ways because you have to work through it, don't you? Because sometimes you can overcompensate, can't you? where it's almost like the bull whip effect where it's like and and you sometimes see it with people that have had like a painful redundancy or something like that where they then carry it into their next role where they haven't necessarily processed it and approach it in a certain way.
(43:52) So there is something around this the space there's the lessons learned from a technical perspective there's healing and there's also sort of a sense of perspective as well I guess yeah there that's absolutely right the carrying with I think you know if we don't do kind of endings well was I was fortunate through my time at roughie to spend quite a lot of time with Mayan Chong Judge and one of the things one of the many things she said to me uh was you if you don't do the ending well you're just going to take it with you you're just going to pick it up take it I want to plunk it down in the next one.
(44:22) So, whatever it is that you're kind of wanting to move on from the the as you say the kind of the the sort of pendulum swing the other way, I'm off. Well, it's still with you. So, that is really important. But I also think that the the to the acknowledgement that some of the um some some learning happens quite slowly. Some some learning happens some coming to terms with happens over time and does not need to be rushed.
(44:49) It kind of needs to be there are things we carry with us that we maybe maybe acknowledging we're carrying them. Maybe kind of acknowledging that they're there and that we're going on with them is part of what what it takes to ultimately maybe not even set it down and move on from it but integrate it. It's not about kind of getting away from it. It's about absorbing expanding beyond it.
(45:10) Surely we should just lock it away in a box. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I mean I there there were people when I was kind of going through people say yeah you know yes I failed and I've really learned from it and that's exactly the image that I always think with I think when you say you learn from it I think you mean you've locked it in a box and the learn I've learned from it is the way we lock it in a box and yes we are British we need to love that about ourselves too what you find most challenging about the work I think one of the things that is challenging is the the kind of am you
(45:41) know the ambivalent space you have to be in where you're you know it's it's all it's great to say you know I believe in social justice I believe in anti-racism as a way to lead into looking at all forms of oppression and I believe in emancipation and and you know that that's that's got to be balanced with my job is to support my client my job is to my my need is to win work from clients uh therefore would I turn down work I would turn down some but where's Where's the where's the where's the where's the borderline? So there's there are tensions there. I think it is
(46:17) challenging helping people understand that oh I'm not telling you what the outcomes of the project will be because I want to drive you potty. I'm not telling you I'm not not telling you what we're going to do because I'm trying to frustrate you.
(46:33) I'm I'm saying that what what we are bringing is an approach where we'll work with you. We'll gather data. We'll make you know the approach that we use we know works and we know we're doing it. So finding authority for gaining the credibility that it takes someone to take a risk and saying okay so you're going to charge quite a substantive amount of money and you're saying you're going to find some stuff out and then do something and then see what happens and then kind of do something next. That's challenging.
(46:58) I think there is a challenge that organizational development I mean it's wonderful that it's a plural field pluralistic field and it's also means that everybody's coming from different kind of traditions and spaces which is great and it means we need when we work together to really to really work through what our expectations are and assumptions and learn together and that takes us back into that kind of learning and failing thing.
(47:23) I think those are probably the three. I had a question three from earlier but I didn't quite get to it and I can't leave this conversation without asking the question. So in in three minutes or less suits and cardigans brilliant which is quite easily one of the best metaphors we've seen in a long time. Can you just just talk us through what this is and what it means for people? Yeah.
(47:46) So, it's something that um that Sarah a bit at um Metalogue and I got into uh uh thinking about thinking about the split between organizational development design looking back to say a period maybe 60s7s where they weren't really split out recognizing that when we say suits and cardigans, people get it now. We're starting to think we've created a monster because it actually furthers the kind of othering.
(48:07) You know, you got the cardigan saying, "We like to sit in circles and we like to really feel and we like to really get people to kind of we're really humanistic and uh then then this the idea that when you do an organizational behavior piece, they say, "Oh, we did this two years ago. We did values and behaviors. What did you do the year after? Oh, we did a restructure.
(48:24) What are you going to do next year?" Restruct. So, we'll do values and behaviors restructure. Values and behaviors trauma. And the idea that actually organizational development work and design work should be done together precisely because of the idea that behavior emerges from context not um is just some kind of separate thing.
(48:41) So we looked at the splitting looked at the kind we did some uh we looked at the language people came up with for the different ones and it's really interesting because they fall into quite distinct linguistic patterning and recognized that in fact for both sides there's a there's a value in the splitting. in the organizational development practitioner where I can really help people process what it's like to be affected by the suits.
(49:05) I don't have to hold um accountability for the fact that we do need to reduce uh we do need to address the fact that this organization is not making money. Goes back to when I was an entrepreneur. And I was like, well, yeah, organization development, great, but organizations are bound by needing to meet bottom lines or suits, you know, okay, we'll go in, we're going to be hard, wear the suit, and uh I mean, they're both types of armor in different ways.
(49:30) Both types of identity formation in different but and we'll do the stuff, we'll do it on paper, we're not going to, you know, we can we can we can maybe step away from being affected by actually that's going to really make people feel stuff. Now thinking about what that does, it enables perhaps really important work to be separated off into places where both pieces of the puzzle are less effective than they could be.
(49:53) So this is quite a big question as we're coming to the end. What's some of the biggest lessons you've learned when you look back at your career? Well, not to take myself too seriously, but I think that's um that's actually been learned by also becoming more confident.
(50:10) uh and probably their confidence is to degree uh based on capability and and learning and those things. I actually if I were to really say what I mean by that I mean to desenter myself. is not taking myself too seriously but recognize that once I've done you know the kinds of working through structures bringing people into spaces helping people get into a place where really trust the capability of people to have the conversations they want to have to to to go where the energy to do useful work um that it's not that I'm not that important in some ways in the process um I think certainly
(50:48) when I first started doing the uh you know uh well we've kind of noticed it working online they're like okay go off into a group and people go off into a room a breakout room on a virtual platform it's like you can't see them you don't know what they're doing you just have to trust just trust people if people want to be if people show up and they want to do some stuff they can do it if they want to do something else they have every right to do that so I think one of the most important things is what true kind
(51:13) of democratization of of work means I guess related to that but it's a sort probably another thing is you know where there is clarity or where there is a usefulness in guidance or structure direction bring it give it people often really want that and really benefit from that so again it's that kind of knowing what kind of style I'm using and when because I think for a while I thought I've always got to be facilitative and open and pull but sometimes direction is really useful and sometimes leaning into challenge is really useful then I guess the third one would be around It was
(51:50) really sort of apparent to me that my approach, my techniques, my practices are very much grounded in what is um you know, we looked at the reading list for the AOD um program at Kings Fund. We we've developed it, but it was kind of 98% by white people and 95% of them were men.
(52:11) So, if we look at the field, recognize that it is really culturally grounded. It's really grounded in in a particular way of thinking about the world and what it is which means that for for different people whether it be all sorts of um difference protective characteristics neurode divergence racialization and so on the way I'm bringing it might be no it doesn't work for me and I need to not say no no this is the right way to do it I need to think how do I adapt how do I learn so that be open to the kinds of learning and challenges that you're asking other people are there any partic Is there a particular book or resource that's
(52:46) really struck you that you'd recommend that others? Something that's been that's spoken to you as you've Yeah, I saw that question on the on the sheet and there's quite a few here. We want a tour of your bookshelf by the way. Yeah, I think um I don't think there is. I think there is.
(53:10) I mean, I've been uh looking at the Kneffin framework recently and trying to think about how to use that with uh narratives of Winnie the Pooh and the Fellowship of the Ring trying to cross the Caradras past before going into the mountains of Moria. So, that gives you a sense of where my brain goes. Um I think what what do I kind of keep coming coming back to and returning to? It's always changing. It's always developing.
(53:32) I think probably um and that's integrating both theoretical literature, theoretical modeling, um narrative stories, the books that have stayed with me from my childhood that I've read read to my children. I mean really kind of embracing the richness of all of all of that to think what's it telling us? What does it mean? But I suppose the fundamental thing is the kind of practice, the philosophy of inquiry, questioning and relational sense making together.
(54:03) One of the original missions of this podcast when we first set out was to inspire the next generation of organization development and design consultants coming through wherever they may be and they come from many different places.
(54:22) So far we've had the army, we've had journalists, we've had social workers, psychologists, everything. What advice would you give somebody just starting out? I would really say, you know, it's so wonderful that you're wanting to move to this field and you want to come to this field. I'd say don't be disheartened by not seeing the the ladder and the rungs and the progressive steps that you might be hoping for. Have faith that you will find a way and the way will find you.
(54:50) Find ways in which you can apply your learning and your practice whether that be working pro bono for an organization whether that be doing something in a field that maybe isn't you you know I wanted to work in health but this was engineering but find ways to practice be curious build your network build your community um show up to uh all various kind of network meetings events listen to podcasts and trust because there the way will kind of find you and I do think there's an area where more later career practitioners can um can think about
(55:30) this a bit more about how how how do we create a kind of career pathway for early stage practitioners to come through that's something I want to think about more yeah be be very welcome and be very curious keep trying stuff out and um and it'll and it'll come because like you said earlier whenever I talk to anyone on about their how they got into being where they are now. It's a fascinating rich journey.
(55:55) Well, Toby, I want to say a huge thank you. It's been a really really brilliant conversation. I I don't know if you've done it, but it feels like we're just scratching the surface. I think we need to bring you back for a round two at some point if you'd be happy enough to accept our invitation. It's been really good. You just opened up so many different interesting fronts, I guess. So, Denny, do you mind if I go first? So, you go first. You go for it.
(56:14) So, some of the things that have stood out for me, I I love the kind of sort of the the light that you've shown on action learning sets and about, you know, it's not always the the go-to tool, but gosh, there's some value in there, isn't there? And the way you can help sort of be self- sustaining and the skills that people get and it's counterultural, but you can make it work.
(56:32) I love the fact that you said that, you know, some learning is slow. You let's not, you know, a retrospective in 40 minutes. Sometimes mad, bad, saddle, glad isn't quite enough to to bottom this out. The learning will come. uh and come in surprising ways as well. And also that thing you were talking about in terms of you know leadership development and and how there's different ways of looking at it and it can be much more effective if we really approach it in a different kind of way. Danny, what what stood out for you? Oh, so many things. I think it's been a
(56:57) really lovely conversation. I think it's a lot of it's made me think that's given me lots to think about. So I appreciated the whole conversation around action learning sets like Garren did. I think what you said about having a really clear sense of the choices we're making when we intervene and how important it is to really understand the choices and why we're making them and what that means and then I'm left really curious about the idea of love as a container for the difficult work that we do and what that might look like in our
(57:22) organizations and the work that we do. So, thank you. It's been it's been really lovely. There's a book in that. Yeah. I yeah I think um there's there's a lot to do there and I think again we might think about you know how we bring more love in or we might actually think about how do we create the conditions for what's already there to flourish and that takes us back to kind of mushrooms and manure and creating the the conditions for Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. It's been a joy. Oh well thank you. Thank you so much
(57:55) Toby. If you are watching this and I know that a lot of people will think, "Oh gosh, I really know someone that would really benefit from this from hearing Toby's perspective on all these different aspects that we've looked at, then please do share it." We always have so many shares every week.
(58:12) And it's just a great way to sort of spread the word of great OD practice by people like Toby that are out in the field making significant and meaningful difference as well. And also what we love as well is if you've enjoyed the conversation, please hit the like button because it uh pleases the Google algorithm gods. But most of all, we just want to say a huge thank you Toby. keep doing the great work that you're doing.
(58:28) Keep posting and sharing the things that you're doing and keep doing brilliant studies like suits and cardigans because I think it only can only help the field. So, thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Danny. Thanks, Garen. It's I really really really appreciate you you reaching out and inviting me to talk a bit and um yeah, it's been a great pleasure.
(58:48) Heat. Heat.