Organisation Development Pro Tips for Improving Performance - Part 1 - OrgDev Episode 88

op tips from leading Organisation Development and Design Experts
This is a special highlights episode.This year has been a big one for us.
We recorded 44 episodes, and the podcast reached listeners in 109 countries.

Our guests joined us from as far afield as California, Spain and Australia – as well as Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden, and together we covered a broad spectrum of practice – from neuroscience and psychological safety, to systems thinking, agility, self-organising teams, imposter syndrome, and organisation design.

What we’ve pulled together here is a curated set of highlights from those conversations. The video is divided into four chapters, so feel free to dip in where your interest takes you, or watch it end to end.

Looking ahead, next year is shaping up to be just as strong. We’ve got conversations lined up with leading practitioners including Dave Snowden, Gervase Bushe, and Rupert Morrison, and we’re really looking forward to sharing their insights with you.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
■ Key insights from the episode
■ A reflection prompt
■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

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.

Find out more at www.distinction.live

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

Transcript

(00:00) Hi, welcome to this special episode of the org dev podcast. So, this year has been a big one for us. So, we wanted to share some of the incredible insights, tactics, and experiences our outstanding guests have shared with us over the past 12 months. This year, we recorded 44 episodes and the podcast has reached listeners in 109 countries.
(00:22) Our guests have also joined us from across the world from California to Australia as well as Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and Sweden to name a few. And together we covered a broad spectrum of OD practice from neuroscience and psychological safety to systems thinking, agility, self-organizing teams, imposter syndrome, and organization design to name a few.
(00:44) What we've pulled together here are two videos which are both curated sets of highlights from these conversations. Each video is divided into four chapters. Feel free to dip in where your interest takes you or just watch it end to end. Looking ahead to next year, it's already shaping up to be just as strong. We've already got conversations lined up with leading practitioners, academics, and authors including Dave Snowden, Jervis Bush, and Rert Morrison.
(01:10) And we're really looking forward to sharing their insights with you. The mission from Danny and me is very simple. We want to bring together firstass OD practice into one place that is all in the service of transforming organizations, teams and individual performance. And we also want to inspire the next generation of organization development and design practitioners.
(01:30) It's basically the podcast that we would have dreamed out when we started many many years ago. Most importantly, we want to say thank you to you the listeners. So whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening on audio, your interests, your comments, your subscriptions generally make a difference.
(01:48) The more of you who subscribe and share the podcast, the easier it is for us to attract guests of the highest caliber and keep pushing the conversation forward. So please, if you haven't, subscribe to the channel and be part of something special that we're building together. So wherever you're watching this, thank you so much for being part of the community and enjoy the highlights.
(02:14) And the inflection point, you said it Garren, very nicely, is HR is not about HR. It's about winning in the marketplace. Because if we don't succeed in the marketplace, there's going to be no workplace. And so we're seeing an evolution that's a pretty dramatic one that when I in HR go into a meeting. I don't start by talking about my HR program, hybrid work, leadership, culture, compensation.
(02:40) I start by talking about what do our customers need? What do our investors need? And as TV said so well, what do our quality of life with families? So for me, an inflection point is HR is not about HR. It's more about building success in the marketplace and and that's different. When you can answer that, you will never need to do a podcast again.
(03:01) I mean, [laughter] it's it's it's one of the challenges. >> I think something really interesting what you said also about the fact that the chief people officer in that scenario, the pressure he was feeling culture for the organization as culture and so often we'll talk to HR professionals who feel like the culture sits with them which is flawed in my view.
(03:18) It's not the responsibility of the HR team even if it's called the people and culture team. That's a function of the weaponized ignorance in my mind though because if I am the CEO of an organization that then I I have the most visible profile and I have huge amounts of pressure you know I'm the face of the company and if if I say we're committed to this we're committed to creating a culture where people can perform at their best because we know how vital that is for our performance as an organization but then turns around and says okay HR it's over to you. I just
(03:51) said that on national television. Um, go and they separate themselves from driving that then it has a limited chance of success. It's not that it can't succeed, but you one one of the things that I know I've learned so many important things from John, but one of them was if you have people in the most senior positions in an organization who are willing to hand off responsibility for driving organizational culture to somebody else, then that sends a massive dog whistle that who we say we are here does not align with the lived experience
(04:28) that we actually want people to have. And the moment you have that disconnect between who we say we are here and how people actually experience the business, that is the thing that leads to all the stuff that we heard about the great resignation which is more accurately described as the great rejection. um then the number of people who will come into an organization and not stay through their probation period because they're like well this is not the picture that was created for me when I interviewed you know churn and and and
(04:57) it's a mistake for people to think that the only ones who are leaving organizations are younger people or more junior people or low performers they're not. There's incredibly capable, talented, high potential individuals who are looking at a to find a place that aligns with their personal values and doesn't expect them to just turn into an automaton and and have no feelings and no empathy and and you know that's the pathway to burnout.
(05:25) >> And if you if you enter that atmosphere or that climate and you go, well, how do you feel? They were like, well, who are you and why are you wasting my time? So rather I' been what I've been doing is more like trying to assimulate that and be part of the debate and being a bit more well you're you're about to make a massive mistake.
(05:46) Have you thought about that? That doesn't sound like that's not a neutral coaching question is it? That's more like you know testing the wars is really sort of engaging with the leaders because they want that and and you know everyone's mileage will you know vary here. So this is not to be taken as universal advice, but this is a coaching stance that I've not seen that much explored, certainly not in literature, but what I've seen work rather well. Yeah.
(06:17) So go to war a bit with them and you know enjoy enjoy that. >> Yeah. There's a there's a kind of there's a a natural kind of style that you often see at senior team level which is more drawn to that kind of debate style and you kind of articulate it really clear which is like there is that kind of not so win lose but if I'm going to change my mind then you have to really get into my point and you've got to kind of convince me because my mind is pretty much made up already.
(06:40) You have it's like how do you do that in the most expedient and efficient way when you don't have a vast amount of time with them you don't have I'm assuming like twohour coaching sessions with them it's kind of short sharp sessions. How do I do that? Yeah, that's that's the that's the magic, isn't it? I think what I tend to do is to do the classic things like let's investigate.
(07:03) Are we using that word in the same way as a classic one? What assumptions are hidden beneath this? Um have you uh risk is always a a good one. We consider the risks and usually we find ourselves in discussions that are more temporal like when when do we do this and then you I become the one who talks about the cost of not deciding and you know what does what does standing still look like for you and and I guess I'm just trying to muddy the waters for them a bit which is which is sounds very counterintuitive but usually what what executives also do is that
(07:43) they come in with a solution and the way my engagement with leaders have developed is that I re I reduce as much clarity as possible around that solution because they think they have that clarity right so what I do is I muddy the waters a lot and I ask a lot of difficult questions and you know it's a bit like the double diamond of design thinking so you you open up and then you have to close in so at the end of a coaching session I try to clear the waters again, but now the the waters are even more clear.
(08:20) >> I mean, you talked about there's one particular example that's quite disturbing which about Wells Fargo where it's actually, you know, unethical behavior on an industrial scale like a 100,000 employees, 3 and a half million uh false bank accounts opened. It's just it just shows, doesn't it? The scale. Was that was that one of the examples that surprised you the most? >> I would say it surprised me.
(08:40) None of these things surprise me because the more you read on scandals, the less you're But what it does is it gives me the best example for the argument that scandals are not about some bad people, the top of the company as they are presented in documentaries on Netflix, 100,000 sales people committing fraud. You cannot explain this back unless you have an HR department that is specialized in hiring only crooks, which I don't think is the case.
(09:09) or people who are crooks think, well, I have to work at Wells Fargo because that's where I can live my my fullest life as a crook. No, that is not what drives it. What drives it is situations that are so desperate. There's so much pressure that one of my favorite quotes from a salesperson at so much pressure that one one of them later on I have been in the Gulf War.
(09:33) So he was a veteran soldier and well Fargo was worse than the Gulf War. So imagine that we or you have people who say, "Well, I couldn't sleep on Sunday." I couldn't sleep at night by thinking about the next day's shift or was hiding in a man's bathroom crying or someone says, "I was achieving my goals, but then they were never satisfied.
(09:49) I have to do more and more and more." So you're always running behind your goals. You get humiliated by your superior. You are fired if you don't achieve your goal. They yell at you. So it's it's a horrible horrible situation. You do what it takes to survive. And then you observe your colleagues doing it and they get promoted and their behavior get tolerated.
(10:06) their leaders push them to do it and then you think yeah what if they all can do that why not [music] so I guess that I've got loads of different things I could talk to you about here I guess the first one I would say is to learn more about what it is so really understand what psychological safety is before you start doing anything about it and commit to it personally so on a practical day-to-day level I would suggest starting with doing some inner work for yourself.
(10:36) So, work through pillar one, which is self. Focuses on self-awareness, authentic self, that kind of stuff. Um, if you want some ideas for that, there's loads of good stuff in the book. I talk through pillar one in a lot of detail. Loads of activities in there for you to work through. So, if that's something you want to work on, I'm going to assign push you to the book.
(10:55) Um, get everyone involved. So, start the conversation about bringing your authentic self to work. I always encounter this resistance for people to do this in the workplace. they don't want to have that conversation in team. So we we're usually brought in to facilitate that conversation. Um so we get people in a room and we start talking about who do you think you are? Um how do you think you show up at work? Those kind of things.
(11:18) What's the difference between your authentic self and your identity? Those kind of questions are really important for people to start thinking about personally. And then we start thinking about uh what's affecting your performance and behavior at work. Those kind of things. We get people to do that on their own. Then we bring people together and they realize that actually they've got similar lists.
(11:36) It's quite uh revolutionary for a lot of people. So yeah, that work on bringing your authentic self to work and having that conversation is really important. >> And you talk in the book about psychological courage. So that kind of idea of taking actions despite the imposter feelings, so not using them as a reason not to do something.
(11:54) Can you just explain a little bit more about that? And I'm glad you asked that one, Danny, because psychological courage is a concept that was new to me. But the psychological courage, when I found the research on that, I thought was really interesting in that it's the courage to challenge your inner psyche.
(12:09) So, it's the courage to challenge the view of yourself. But I looked at the courage to update and accept the view of yourself to one more positive positive psychology. taking the view of courage as being courageous enough to accept the positive feedback on the inside and then to update the view of yourself to one that is more positive because actually the external view can be more accurate than your own internal subjective view >> and there's an element of not waiting for the feelings to pass.
(12:39) You're going to sit there these feelings will go away and then I'll go and do the thing or then I'll take the promotion or then I'll stand on stage. It's not that is it? just kind of doing it anyway. >> It's got to be courage that actually helps you step out and do something to speak up to uh put yourself forward for a promotion to do that presentation.
(12:57) You know, some of it is courage and then confidence grows from the experience going well and you can say yes, I can do it again. I think that's slightly different from overcoming imposter feelings because you overcome the imposttor feelings by internalizing the success afterwards by changing that view that you have of yourself because the imposter feelings is the I'm not good enough.
(13:19) I'm not worthy of that promotion. And it's changing that inner mindset which is where the psychological courage happens. >> And and thinking about this word of not knowing, I was just the word that popped into my mind was being okay with uncertainty and accepting that you won't have all of the answers. And I think there's also something about being okay with saying I don't know or being okay with saying something if the situation transpires that it doesn't go the way you think.
(13:47) And when you feel the push back, it's really uncomfortable to stop and go, "Okay, I sense in the room that something isn't working or I sense that, you know, the the change that we're trying to make here isn't landing with you, you know, tell me more about what's happening." I think we need courage to do that, too. That's not necessarily linking to the courage that reframe it as from the imposter inside our heads, but I do think there is an enormous amount of courage to stop and listen and understand what's happening.
(14:15) One of the things that really stood out for me is you were quoting a senior leader in insurance company and and they said and and that's something you on to is the quality of that the interior condition of the OD consultant will make a difference in the quality of the impact they make. And one day he just said one of the things he noticed that the success of the project they were working on didn't depend so much on the degree the person had the experience in but the interior condition of the interior condition of the consultant
(14:46) very important because in terms of presence in terms of doing the work effectively we must do a lot of inner work you know at at one point I tell people when I'm training they out for students, you need to feel like you have a right to be there doing the work that you're doing that day.
(15:08) So, you know, sometimes we feel almost apologetic. We want to fit in and that gets in the way. But so, people who do the inner work. So in terms of my inner work uh besides learning and starting with NTL tegroups learning a lot about myself in that tea group I learned particularly that I didn't think I should be angry. So to I think to be an effective person it helps you to step outside of the science.
(15:38) So now we're into the art. This is the art of becoming the whole person who can, you know, who can do the work effectively. >> Emotions are kind of we don't do that. It's not for the workplace. We don't deal with emotions. But they're there, aren't they? Just >> they are unacknowledged. Yeah. >> Yeah.
(15:55) Yeah. And we want to just put them aside. You know, people get angry or people get frustrated or someone gets excited and everyone's like, "Why are you excited about this?" That's a fad, right? [laughter] But, you know, excitement is saying, "I'm interested." Right? I'm optimistic. I want to engage in this. Anger and frustration.
(16:09) Well, maybe we haven't found the root cause yet. And if we just say, hey, I'm hearing this anger. That's what it sounds like to me. Someone might sit back and go, well, I'm actually not angry. I'm just really passionate about this. Here's what's been nagging me. Right. And you might actually get some more information if you just put a name to it and let someone then further articulate what they're thinking.
(16:29) >> That's really interesting, isn't it? Because I think in in in my experience anyway, so at senior leadership level, a lot of senior leaders suppress their emotions. uh they may be feeling very emotional. So they may be feeling very anxious and you can tell the behavioral tells but they wouldn't necessarily name it.
(16:47) How for practitioners watching this how do you create the psychological safety where they they feel okay to actually name their emotion because although it's perfectly healthy they may feel making themselves a little bit vulnerable in front of their colleagues for example rather than sort of projecting this I'm in control this is all fine. >> Yeah.
(17:03) Well if you're in control and it's all fine why are you anxious right? [laughter] That's a good question. [laughter] >> I think that's where practitioners who have some experience with coaching, it benefits them. Um, I found that over the years that the training I continue to engage in in executive coaching helps me navigate those situations because you have to meet the executive where they are.
(17:26) But two, sometimes your job is to help name things as a practitioner. So if you're sensing that from a senior leader and you're in a room of senior leaders, there's nothing wrong with as as who you are in your role saying, "Hey, I'm sensing a shift in the room. I'm feeling a tension. Is anyone else feeling that tension?" And just you being the one to say this is what I'm feeling.
(17:46) Are you feeling it? And making it safe to just this this exists. And then they can all correct me if I'm wrong. Say, "No, no, no. We're fine. Okay." You know, but you you have to keep creating those moments where it's okay to surface it. And sometimes the group you're working with will acknowledge it and sometimes they won't. And if they won't, it's probably just a sign they're not ready.
(18:04) But you just keep gently nudging it over time. And again, that's where org development is not an event. It's a process because that process can take, you know, several iterations before folks are comfortable. >> Yeah. And you and you touch on something because that's that kind of the thing that you get with experience, isn't it? It's the I'm going to make a very light intervention.
(18:22) You can act on this or not, but it doesn't you don't have to respond perfectly to me now. You don't have to go, I'm having a cathartic moment because you asked the right question at the right time. You kind of sort of making a and if they decide to act on it, that's okay. We'll we'll move on. We'll try again in a different way. There's that kind of not feeling the need to be certain and be right at all times.
(18:40) >> It's uncomfortable. It really is because, you know, here's another difference with org development, a practitioner in it versus a consultant, right? Consultants are called in to be an expert. They're they're called in to say, "Here's recommendations on how you solve your problems based on what we know.
(18:57) " And if in my perception is what an org development practitioner is doing, you're not there to solve the problem. That has to emerge from the group that you're working with. Your job is to help facilitate the space and the conversations and the process to actually get to that result with the group who needs to own the result. So putting yourself in the position of saying,"I not here to solve this for you, but I am here to create that safe space and give you the opportunity to do it in a way that maybe you haven't tried before." That's uncomfortable. That's I
(19:27) think when we talk about the difference between an accidental and intentional practitioner, when you're an intentional practitioner, that's going to feel much more natural than it does early in your career. Cuz I have to admit that's probably one of the things that in the last eight years it's taken me a while to be okay with saying I don't have the answer.
(19:46) What are we doing here? What do you want to talk about group? [laughter] It's your conversation. It's your agenda. I set up an agenda with you. But if that gets blown out of the water because this topic is the topic to talk about, are you willing and able to stay there? And is that what you want? And if the answer is yes to all those things, then okay, let's stay here.
(20:04) Let's have this conversation because it clearly matters to you. So one thing 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 patchy what what is like your approach to leadership development and what might organizations be getting wrong about that approach.
(20:35) I think when we think about making interventions in organizations to enable [clears throat] 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 Paris phase Dave Snowden I would whose real influence 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. And I think one of the things that
(21:12) we need to think about is when we think about making interventions in organizations is what organizations are. And I liking thinking about them as social and material entangled constellations that are always in a kind of process flow which is is you know is part of what I'm working through with my PhD research.
(21:34) 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.
(22:03) Now there are some real issues with that that run all the way back through the kind of history of organizational development and the social science of it which could be challenged and critiqued to be more about controlling the labor market than actually enabling and 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.
(22:25) 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 so I thought when I talk about 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
(22:57) 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 organiz organization is and think about the context from which behavior emerges.
(23:23) 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 uh actually fragile the capability of humans generally me certainly and leaders to to not know and to be in a
(23:53) 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. What I'm interested in is the human being and the flourishing of the human being individually and in groups and it just so happens that work is a good place to do that kind of work because we spend so much of our time there and also all of us as human beings without sounding too kind of Adleran here all of us are hardwired to contribute that is fundamentally I
(24:23) believe what we're on the earth to do found a fascinating thing out last year which is you know how the retirement age was originally calculated this blew my mind you may know this but this blew blew my mind. The retirement age is calculated by in the in the first instance the mean average age of the human male upon death minus one year.
(24:44) So basically it was [laughter] you finish work, you've got a year to put your affairs in order and then tatty by right that was literally how retirement kind of came about. And what I took from that is oh my god this is it's as human beings we have to have use. We have to have a means of contribution, right? And if you come back to what work is, work is a means of us expressing our desire and our will to contribute.
(25:08) >> You you're touching on something which is just so fascinating, which is because what is our role? People want to invite us into the role of judge or they put they plunk us right in the middle and that's not necessarily where we're most useful, right? >> And we have to listen to ourselves, don't we? We go, well, this doesn't feel right.
(25:26) Am I in the right place? Am I am I going to take your invitation to be in the middle and try and sort this out? Am I going to How do you know when you're not in the right place and you need to maybe step aside or something there's something wrong about the process? >> Yeah, I think in this case there wasn't something wrong with the process because the thing is is you put the process in place.
(25:43) You put the governance in place and for me that's I have a very clear visual of what that looks like. In this case, I can tell you we had our core project team which was like doing the work. It was me and a couple of really fantastic right right hands basically like putting this process in place doing the workshops doing the the facilitation.
(26:02) We had identified subject matter experts that would be brought into the conversation as needed attending our I think that they were weekly core team meetings. Then we had our steering committee where we identified these are our real decision makers and here's the executive sponsor who can like kind of trump everybody else. That's how we did it.
(26:19) And I knew that my job was never as a decision maker. My job was to put a really clear and concise process in place with core milestones that we're all working toward together and celebrating the success when we've achieved them. Moving on to the next thing, bing bang boom. But what I'll say is because these conversations are so intense and so just like loaded and personal for people, I I got caught up in the drama of it.
(26:45) And that's really easy to do. And that imagine having these conversations without the process in place, without the governance in place. And that's often what people are doing. It makes perfect sense while you avoid this like the plague. This comes up a lot when you think about performance management. Like managers can't give tough feedback and they sort of like just give them the the pay bump or the like next level up just to you know do it. It's the same sort of thing.
(27:08) Without the infrastructure and like the education on how to have these conversations and recognize what your place is in the process, you can get turned around. So for me, my role is never as decision maker. It's always as facilitator and expert. And my job is to tee up the really sticky wicket questions and usually say here's option A, B, maybe sometimes a C.
(27:31) If it's really sticky, this is what I recommend. And I leave it to them. And I tell my teams because they can get frustrated because they want to be more powerful. And I'm like, "No, no, this is actually quite powerful. You can really set the stage. You can build the world for them and you can put forward your recommendation.
(27:48) You're not the first one through the wall. That's a blessing. You're there as like an advisor, right? And you really make that clear because you also need the leaders to take ownership of this. It's not for you to be the scapegoat, which I think by the way also was was happening when I was leading out these conversations in that forum.
(28:07) It's really easy to blame the consultant, to blame the external person coming in. And so being really clear, this is my role and this project sponsor is your [music] I did a very interesting experiment. I've actually experimented a bit with uh with a big audience uh and uh asked them if they would prefer decisions in terms of resourcing meaning if you were to undertake a new project or a new opportunity uh and this decision was made uh by your manager a physical person or if this was if this decision was made by AI which one you would actually prefer more and you would find
(28:52) uh more uh more asked. Interestingly enough, but that was during the early times of AI, people still preferred resourcing decisions to be made by their manager. They prefer the human task allocation compared to AIdriven task allocation. And I think that this says a lot about uh our perceptions and the unconscious biases as well to move back into the unconscious bias uh topic now because AI is still something new for many people.
(29:21) It might be a black box that we can't really understand. We can't comprehend how it works. And uh sometimes we might think that it has all of the right solutions and the right decisions for us. Some other times we might think, oh yeah, but uh what if AI is wrong? You can see that GPT can give you still wrong results.
(29:39) It can provide you with wrong inputs. What can we do during that situation? And it's interesting because another another researcher Margaret Mitchell that I follow and she's very passionate about AI and unconscious biases she has done a big research on that topic and essentially where the the outcome of that research is that we need to trust algorithms we still need to trust uh AI and everything.
(30:09) However, what we need to question is what kind of data are we feeding the AI? Because you need to imagine that AI is still is is a baby, right? It's behaving uh like you are behaving. So if you're feeding the AI incorrect kind of data, if you're feeding AI incorrect, if you're making wrong calculations in the algorithm, it is still going to produce wrong uh wrong assumptions, wrong decisions.
(30:34) And uh from some experiments it has been identified that uh there are still unconscious biases uh in the in the AI within algorithms. And I think that the one that uh has stuck with me and it's an example I'm sharing with everyone uh someone actually asked AI I can't remember if it was GPT or if it was another model but asked an an AI model.
(30:57) It asked a couple of question about two two kids a boy and a girl and uh he started asking more questions and challenging the AI about uh some classes uh that they enjoy at school and the boy enjoyed let's say maths and wanted to become a doctor and then the girl enjoyed more literature and wanted to become a teacher and this is clearly biased because of the data that has been fed into the algorithm the AI and the AI I clearly took the most popular opinion or what it identified in that data and produced those uh let's say those
(31:34) outcomes. So we still have to take everything with a we have to challenge everything and that AI says but at the same time we need to actively train them to become better and uh remove those unconscious biases. What are some of those myths that exist out there that are just sort of seen as common practice or that's just the way things are that the organizations or ro people or HR people might just be getting wrong? >> One of the things that I do encounter when I go to conferences is that people say you know I'm a really good
(32:07) organization 100% of my workforce has gone through unconscious bias training. I have to pause and go. I know you mean well, but we've studied the literature for a long, long time, and there is empirical evidence, strong empirical evidence that unconscious bias training has no effect.
(32:29) Unconscious bias training cannot exist in isolation. It must be part of a whole culture shift within the organization with behaviors modeled and carrot and stick put in place consistently. So if you think that you can just put everybody through unconscious bias training, tick that box and everybody is going to be fine.
(32:52) One, you're deluding yourself and two, you're doing a disservice to your workforce because that work life is not going to get better. How does it come to the point where that's that lives and people investing so much and they feel that it's done? Where does it break down? Do you feel because at the core of it was an initial good thought, wasn't there? [laughter] But it hasn't worked necessarily.
(33:11) >> The thing is I don't think it's I don't think it's not that it hasn't worked, but it doesn't work in isolation. And organizations when they approach something like discrimination with a tick box of mentality, you find that nothing changes, right? and you're surprised that nothing changes. And I'm going, why would you be surprised, you know, if your board is is entirely male and your seuite are all middle-aged men and you're telling the rest of the organization that you're an equal opportunities organization, right? And
(33:47) that everybody, including the CEO, has gone through non uh through unconscious bias training. And I'm going, that's not enough. It's it was never ever going to be enough. And I think even people who design unconscious training packages see this as part of a journey of change. But most organizations have seen this as the be all and end all of their obligations.
(34:10) >> What's particularly interesting you in the field at the moment? So in the field of neuroscience and and science of of the brain and body, I'm just really interested in the work that's going on that is beginning to show us far better how I mean, you know, it's obviously brain and body are connected, but there's some really interesting stuff going on that really show, you know, how our microbiome, what we eat, that microbiome within us, how that really impacts on our thinking, on our behaviors, you know, even on our
(34:40) behaviors. So I think that's fascinating. So, it's that kind of holistic thing. And I I read a book fairly recently, the extended mind, the power of thinking outside the brain, which I just really loved because it's really talking about, you know, our brains are not just they're not just a thing that lives in a bottle.
(34:56) They're a thing that lives in a physical entity that lives in a world that is a physical entity. And it's about how all that impacts on us and changes how we how we behave and and what we do. And I just think that's yeah, very very engaging. >> [music] >> Hey everybody.