Only Forward - Take 2!

This amazing inter-disciplinary panel reconvened to understand the implications of their podcast three months on. Things had changed.

They walked BACK into the bar...

Jen And hello, everybody. Welcome back. We are having a follow-up to the very, very epic May episode of Only Forward. And for those of you who are listening at the moment, we're also going to be recording this again as a video and host it on YouTube. But for now, I'd like to welcome back the panel from our last episode. And we have innovator and resident philosopher, co-founder of Phase One Insights, Tim Rayner. Welcome, Tim.

Tim: Hi, Jen. Great to be here.

Jen: Awesome. Also, back in the ring for round two is communications and collaborations expert Melissa Dark of Common Place Communications and also Busting Silos. Welcome, Melissa.

Melissa: Thanks, Jen.

Jen: And lastly, a very warm welcome back to Hayley Lewis of HALO Psychology, who is an esteemed organizational psychologist, my favorite one on tap, who you may know from her very clever sketchnotes of research articles. Welcome, Hayley.

Hayley: Hello. Thank you for having me.

Jen: Super. Now, I've got to share with you listeners, our intent with this was to review the last three months against what we said in our Only Forward episode, which we recorded back in May, and look at what stood up, what didn't, did anybody actually listen to our advice? Were we surprised by what happened? But last week we gathered to just review notes and check in with each other, and there was a really interesting turn of events. Now, Hayley, you weren't with us, but Melissa and Tim was. Perhaps, Melissa, would you like to share what went on when I asked how do you feel about what we recorded in May?

The conversation took a dark turn 

Melissa: Sure. Sure. I think our overall reflections were ... well, certainly mine, were that I was horribly optimistic last time we met, and that I felt a great deal of humility, I suppose, around some of the solutions and ideas that I had at the time, because we were trying to predict what things were looking like. And we said a lot about what might come next, assuming that we were through things and coming out the other side, and it hasn't exactly turned out to be correct. So, I guess, in comparison to last time where I felt I was really quite optimistic, I think this time I'm feeling a bit more pessimistic, to be perfectly honest.

Jen: Thanks for that, Melissa. Tim, what was going on for you when we caught up? Tim: Well, I've always been a bit of a pessimist, so I haven't been too surprised by the way things have gone since, but I guess I have been feeling a bit stuck in so far as ... I mean, I teach leadership and I try to enact the principles of leadership; I talk to a lot of leaders. And my overarching impression of what's happening in the moment is that people are just a bit paralyzed by the deep uncertainty of the situation. It's easy to take an abstract critical perspective on that and offer advice, but I guess when we met and I reflected on what I had to offer, I realized that I'm also feeling quite paralyzed by uncertainty and unsure of what to say, what to offer.

Jen: It was interesting, because, for the listeners' benefit, I'm in Melbourne, we are currently two and a half weeks into a stage four lockdown, which is quite restrictive. We've got curfews, we can't travel more than five kilometers, we can only have an hour of outside exercise a day, and there's only four reasons why you can leave your house. A lot more businesses have had to shut down as a result of this. And I think for me, what happened when Stage Four happened was this dawning realization of, "Okay, this is the cycles that we're now going to have to go through," that I may have once had a story in my head which was, "We can just get through this. Let's stay calm and push through. We'll come out the other end okay." And when the reality of Stage Four hit us, there was this question of, for someone who was always quite optimistic, "Oh, this is what pessimism feels like." And I had one of my friends say to me, "World War II, they went through this for five years. Lives were lost, workplaces had to change considerably, supply chains were disrupted, and this went on for five years." That conversation was really quite daunting for me. And it happened at the same time that I've been having this really strong puzzlement verging on scorn for why our leaders just focusing on tightening belts and no long-term planning? Or why aren't they looking for opportunities? And they're certainly aren't at how do we redesign the organization as a result of this.And then I stopped and went, "Well, crap, if I'm feeling this way, who might expect leaders to be feeling any different?" And I think as we had this chat last week, there was this sense of, well, do we do this recording, or are we charlatans, or is this actually a really important conversation to have publicly?So, I'm curious, Hayley, with your psychology hat on, and you weren't in last week's conversation. How do you make sense of what we've shared?

Hayley: I think there's a couple of things. I think first of all it's to be expected that we're all feeling this way. I came across a really interesting article from INSEAD by a professor of neuropsychology who was talking about the way our brains are wired, and because of the amount of stress and uncertainty people are facing at the moment, the feelings of confusion, and in some instances, depression, are to be expected, and we shouldn't necessarily rail quite against that, but recognize that that's a natural part of ... I want to say journey, but journey doesn't feel the right word, but you know what I'm saying. It's a natural part of what's happening. It's a way that our minds protect us and help us make sense of that. So I think that's the first thing, it's how we're all feeling is perfectly natural. And as you were talking, Jen, you used the word "humility." I think it was maybe Melissa who used it [inaudible 00:07:58] at the beginning, and what's been really interesting to me, and I don't know if Tim's been finding this as well, because I know Tim does a lot of work around leadership, is looking at organizational political leaders and how well or not they're handling what's going on. And I think one of the things I'm consistently seeing is either humility or a lack of. So when we have humble leaders, humble leaders are much more likely to say, "Do you know what? I don't have the answers about how the hell we're going to get out of this, but I'm going to speak to people who might well do." And then you have those who feel they have to be that strong leader and have all the answers. And I think we could make a good guess as to which country and which organizations have which type of leader at the moment. So those are the two things that popped into my head [crosstalk 00:08:56] that you were saying.Jen: Well, it's interesting. That's one of the things that we were sharing, because we were looking at some of the things we've seen in the three months. One of the things I've seen is there's some of the leaders who are very much embodying this autocrat on steroids, so quite the opposite of the humble leader, and not listening to their leadership teams, making wildly bizarre decisions, make no sense with strategy or any of the foundations they've built in their organizations. So it really illustrates ... It may be a bit difficult to guess which countries that's happening in, because I suspect it might be happening in all. That's a pattern we're seeing.

Learning out loud and with deep humility

So, I think this means that obviously we're going ahead with this podcast, but what it does mean that this episode comes to you from a position of learning out loud and deep humility. Because if the four of us as leaders in our occupational spaces are feeling this way, then it's a no-brainer that it's occurring in organizations. And so what we thought we'd do with this episode is also unpack how, personally, what were the tools or strategies that the four of us are personally using to navigate our way only forward at the moment?But before we get into some of those, if we look at some of the key takeaways from last time, let's just check in of, do they still hold up or were they wrong? Right? So we talked about the importance of having a transition period and revisiting purpose. Does anybody want to speak to that in terms of where you see that playing out? Did firms have a transition period, and did they focus on purpose? Hayley? Yeah.

In retrospect

Hayley: Yeah, a few of my clients. So I think as I said in the previous episode, the bulk of my clients are public sector. I work across other sectors as well, but the bulk [inaudible 00:11:13]. And I think when we spoke back in May, lots of my leadership clients were like, "Yeah, I know I'm dealing with a crisis in front of me, but we need to look at recovery plan and the transition." And I think it's safe to say that those conversations are still happening now in August. It's almost like the timetable keeps having to shift. And obviously with all organizations, you can't just look in, this is a conversation I've been having with a lot of organizations. I think those that just look in and look at their systems within and their departments and their processes are in serious danger if they haven't already shut down. Those that look up now at what others are doing and how that might impact their systems, so government decisions, policy changes, those are consistently looking up now and paying attention, I think they're able to navigate that transition. So the transition got longer and the importance of looking up and out consistently.

Jen: Yeah. That's a nice insight, actually. Yeah. Melissa, do you have any thoughts on either what Hayley shared or what we said last time?

Melissa: Yeah. It's interesting, because I was thinking that that one of the things from last time we talked a lot about purpose and that being connected to purpose was more important than ever. And to a certain extent, I think that's still true. I think the organizations that are really connected to their organizational DNA and very clear on it are possibly doing better. But at the same time, I think what we also have seen really interestingly in the last few months, is some organizations that have radically changed what they do, and been really successful at it. I'm thinking in Melbourne, there's a company called Stagekings that are responsible for doing staging for large events, so concerts and things like that. And they transitioned into using all of their equipment and their people to make desks and home office equipment, and they've been really successful. If they'd stuck to their original purpose, they'd be still sitting around twiddling their thumbs with no work to do so. So I think it's very interesting, that sense of knowing who you are and being really true to it in a way that's sensible... Does that make sense?

Jen: Yeah. Nice. Nice. So we also talked about, and I think, Tim, you were really strong on this, the human-centered organization. And I think we all spoke about self-compassion and being conscious of pacing. How would you give the organizations a mark in regards to those attributes?

Tim:Look, I think on the whole, leaders are doing a pretty good job of that. But I'm not sure that they are really connecting the right dots at this point, at least not in Australia. And I would link it back to what Hayley and Melissa were saying about purpose. I'm hearing a lot of talk about focusing the organization on big propulsive goals, reminding people about what the organization is really about, but I don't think I'm hearing a lot about reinventing the organization to make it more human-centered. And I think that's a real missed opportunity. I think that leadership is fundamentally care. It's fundamentally about looking after the people who are with you, the person to the left, the person to the right, taking them on a journey, giving them meaning, giving them purpose through those everyday activities that you conduct in the workplace.I think for a long time, many organizations, they've had their goal, it's way out there in the future, they're charging towards it, and they're just feeding people these little hits of purpose saying, "Come on team, let's keep on going. We just need to get there." The game has changed completely. You can't see all the way to the future now.

We're like scuba divers in murky water; we can just see a few feet ahead.

And leaders need to pull their focus in and in thinking about purpose, they need to zero in on the people that they're with and they need to think about, "How can I restructure this organization to make it an organization that is deeply compassionate, that is deeply rewarding for the people who are there, so that when we come out of this thing we're a different kind of organization, really committed to purpose from the ground up, from our everyday activities, from the way that we relate to each other in the workplace and work together?"So, yes, the purpose, but let's just pull our focus in and think about creating purpose within the workplace. I think that will set us in good stead going forward.

Jen: I think in general, we think about that self-compassion thing, I think in general, people really embraced that strongly over the last three months. I've seen a lot more relaxing of perfectionism and acceptance of where they're at, of people being really comfortable at pushing back on, "No, actually I need to have my video off because I've got a load of washing behind me," and the remote working and the schooling requirements and all the other negotiations created this necessity for self-compassion, that people learnt self-compassion through going through that process, or they feel like ... Well, I know I did, I really leaned heavily into it, but I was seeing it in a lot of other people that I was having conversations with them in meetings. Melissa or Hayley, any thoughts on that, the state of self-compassion in the last three months?

Melissa: I agree with what you've said. I think that there has been more of it evident, but what I'd also say is that I think I've also seen it more directed outwards. So there's just more kindness going on, I think, which is great. I think that we've become just much more forgiving of each other. I was in a meeting the other day, which was pretty high stakes, it was preparing for a pitch to clients and everyone was pretty desperate to win this work and there was a lot of pressure. And the lead person on the call, everyone working from home, had a child constantly yelling, "Mom, mom, mom," in the background, wanting to pull her out. And she said, "Excuse me, I've just got to deal with this." And the conversation after she left was, "Oh, we feel sorry for her," basically, "poor her. That's really hard. It's really tricky for her." No frustration, "Hey, this is important, get back to the computer." Which was lovely, especially in a stressful situation where it's easy to let go of that.So that, I think, is nice and something we needed any way. It's not something we should have to wait for pandemic to have happened, but yeah. Yeah. I think that that expression into kindness has been an upside.

Hayley: It's interesting. I was going to say something completely different from Melissa. I think, yes, we've been seeing increase in self-compassion. I think in some instances I've seen that bordering self obsession. I'm beginning to see compassion for others wane. And how I'm seeing that is I am now working with lots of middle managers who, if they're not burned out already, they are absolutely hurtling towards burnout, and it's because they're not experiencing a lot of compassion from their bosses. And people have fallen into that trap of, and feel unable to get out or the trap of back to back meetings which we would have had in real life have now gone to Zoom. People have been unable to push back because it seems unacceptable. So, actually I'm not seeing huge amounts of compassion at all, I'm seeing it wane, and that worries me a lot, because I'm dealing with the fallout.I just want to take a couple steps back though, because there was something that Tim said that really struck me. I loved the analogy of the scuba diver in murky water. And that got me thinking around managers and leaders having to trust their instinct a bit more, because when you said that, Tim, I had the Jaws music in my head. You don't know what's out there in the murk. And it got me thinking that certainly lots of the emerging leaders that I work with, and I think it's a culture in the UK, we're very rule-oriented, so policy and process [inaudible 00:21:33] not on a policy or process.And the rules have ... There are no rules. It feels very Game of Thrones. There are no rules any more. And you have to trust your instinct. And so how do we help managers and leaders, then, to re-listen to their instinct when they can't see in that murk around them? So that really resonated with me.

Jen: We talked about the importance of mindfulness as a tool, and I guess part of what you're saying, Hayley, is recognizing the role that our brains take during crisis, and the amygdala hijack and how important it was going to be to tap into mindfulness as a way to create a steady state for our brains to be healthy. Did you see an uptick in it? Do you think people are practicing their mindfulness more?

Hayley: Not enough in my book, but I don't see everybody, I can only base it on the people in front of me.

Jen: Yeah. You see the ones in trouble.

Hayley: Certainly, I'm a big proponent of mindfulness and meditation. I've done it myself for the last eight years, I feel it when I've done through my daily practice, it's something that I recommend to a lot of clients, and I can see the benefits and the impact for those who do do it and those who don't bother. But I think people have to come to that space themselves in their own time.

Jen: I think it raises the difference between medicinal mindfulness, where you're doing it for that purpose of making yourself better or feel better versus mindfulness in its true essence, that tapping into a state of equanimity, because you are much more conscious of everything that happens. You're more present. Tim, you're located in mindfulness center of Australia. Have you got any thoughts on this?

Tim: Yeah. Look, I'm a struggling mindfulness practitioner myself. And certainly I think that cultivating presence and calm and compassion and gratitude is absolutely vital for me when dealing with stress and uncertainty, as I imagine it's vital for others too. But, look, I think, really, we're talking about leaders here, and the problem I have with a lot of mindfulness discourse is that often mindfulness is presented as something you do when you're taking time out. You go and sit on a mountain and just recalibrate and get ready to come back into battle. But I think what leaders need is more the mindfulness of the warrior, because they are in battle, and they are like that scuba diver who's in the murky water, and as Hayley says, there could be a big shark just out of view, and they have to be wide awake. I'm a scuba diver as well as a mindfulness practitioner, and I love that experience of being down there in the depths and not really knowing my way around. I feel at once incredibly calm and incredibly centered, but at the same time, somehow exhilarated, excited, and my senses are heightened. And I think that's the kind of mindfulness that we need to cultivate at the moment, a slightly heightened sensibility that is yet present and composed and calm. It's a hard balance to achieve.

Jen: I think some of this taps into resilience and how resilient were we over the last three months? Melissa, you were sharing earlier, you've been coaching a leadership team across some modules and training in resilience, and they've shared some feedback with you. Without naming them, can you share a little bit of what they've said?

Melissa: Yeah. Look, I think it was interesting, their reaction to this. One of the participants was very struck by an element in the learning called Gratitude Builds Resilience, and had actually written that up as a poster on the wall for her team and introduced it as a standing agenda item in their team meetings, and that every second team meeting, they were finishing by going around and everyone had to name something they were grateful for. And she said at first people were a bit resistant to it, they thought it was a bit dumb, a bit twee, but she said that it's actually over time, and by time we mean just weeks, the last few weeks, it's really become quite an essential thing, and staff comment on it now and say that they do it at home with their children, and that it's really been such a valuable thing to start thinking about in these weird times that we're in. And she even had a staff member come to her who was having a bad day and lots of problems. And he goes, "I know. I know. I've just got to think of something to be grateful for." And I thought that was lovely, that something so simple could have such an impact for people. So, I think sometimes mindfulness can be a bit of a scary concept for people who aren't familiar with it, and it conjures ideas of gurus sitting cross legged for hours on end. But something as simple as that, a gratitude practice, I mean, in a way that's a form of mindfulness, of just taking a moment to center and be back where you are and think about what's going on for you. So just a simple practice like that can be really valuable.

Didn't see that coming...

Jen: Nice. So tell me, what surprised you over the last three months? What did you see that really surprised you? And I'll let you show me who wants to go first on that question rather than throw that at you. For the listeners, we have looks of deep thinking. Tim. Tim, talk to us.

Tim: Look, I'm not sure if this was a deep surprise for me, but it was quite a reminder and a bit of a wake up call, really. When we last spoke, I was advocating innovation. I was advocating that leaders return to a startup mindset and think about creating crisis response teams to innovate their way out of uncertainty. And I thought that was probably a bit of a stretch even at the time. There aren't so many companies that are really game for that kind of organizational renewal, even though it's absolutely vital in my view. But I was struck, and I'm still struck at the deep inertia amongst leaders to this point in the crisis, which is almost like there's unconscious resistance to very idea of trying to do something differently. I've spoken to a number of leaders who still seem to have this hibernation mindset, they're just tightening their belts and battening down the hatches and, "Let's wait and see. This thing can forever," kind of thing. And I think there is something deeply unreasonable about that, and it's really made me think more deeply about neuropsychology and the deeply ingrained human resistance to accepting change and the need for change.

Jen: We could talk for a long time about that, but, Hayley, you are perhaps either building off that or something else that's surprised you in the last three months.

Hayley: The thing that surprised me, well, I've always liked to think that I'm quite a savvy person, and the thing that I've been surprised by is how utterly naïve I've been and am about the extent of and the impact of privilege. So I think I touched on it in May, and I think with various events we've seen over the past few months, I've really seen that heighten through my own work, and the decisions that are being made. So I'll give you an example of how I've seen privilege play out. I got approached by one very large public sector organization, and the chief executive jumped to, "This is brilliant, everyone working hard and everyone's so productive and blah, blah, blah. And that's it. Now we'll never go nack to working ina n office, everyone needs to be working from home. [inaudible 00:31:37]. That's it." So commission there had a [inaudible 00:31:40] do a piece of research into why everybody forever should work from home. And I had to have a very tough speak truth to power [inaudible 00:31:55] with chief executive, highly educated, white middle-class male in their 50s, didn't understand that there was actually some of their social workers in their 20s living in shared accommodation. I'd have a call with a social worker when she was sat on the stairs with her laptop, because she lived in shared accommodation. Her boyfriend had nabbed the living room first, because he was on a call first, and [inaudible 00:32:21]. And so there's something about how privilege is playing out in some of the innovation or new ways of working that leaders think we now need to work to [inaudible 00:32:33] all wonderful. Well, no, it's actually not for a lot of people. And that's got me thinking about my positions that I take as a practitioner. And I felt a little bit ashamed, actually, about some of the recommendations I've made. So, yeah, that's where my head's at the moment. I've been surprised by my own naivety and the naivety of others around privilege.

Melissa Gotcha. Look, I think for myself, I think I've been surprised by my own, and other people's idea that we're facing a linear problem that has a beginning, a middle and an end. And I think, when I was listening back to our previous chat, that kept coming back into my head, that I thought I was in the middle of a story then that was coming to an end. And that was clearly not the case. Here we are three months later, and we're still in the middle, really, with no end in sight. And so I think that makes things really tricky for all sorts of things, but especially decision-making. And I know we've touched on decision-making a little bit and the murky waters and stuff, and I think we probably explore that a little bit more, but I think, yeah, the idea that it's not linear, and also that you can go backwards, like in Melbourne, for example, which seemed to progress through to a great stage and then regressed. And New Zealand has done the same thing. And so that's been a bit of a wake up call for me, is just to try and remember that it's not a nice, easily plotted story and you know what page you're on any more.

Tim: Could I just jump in there? I think that there's a really interesting comparison to be made between the way that Australia and New Zealand framed the crisis. The Morrison government came out with the roadmap to recovery. That was always their focus. It was we were traveling down, it had various stages and it was linear. So I think it's not surprising that many of us did just adopt that mindset. And now we feel we're going backwards. New Zealand didn't have that approach. They had a series of levels, and they were very clear about what each level entailed in terms of your responsibilities as a citizen and so forth. And I think that really subtly but decisively reframes the whole thing. At the moment I have family in Auckland, they're back in lockdown, they know it's just to be temporary. But I'm not sure that they think of it as a matter of going backwards. They've just shifted back to that level they were in. And I think they acknowledge that as the country goes on, there will be a lot of shuttling between these levels.I don't know if it makes a huge difference, all told, but I think it's a subtle difference in the way that the whole situation is framed. And stories, obviously, are really important, the way we understand things.

Jen: I think some of the things that have shocked me, and this plays to my naivety optimism bias. I remember way back then in April, I've written that there'd be four Rs of organizational change, there'd be re-imagining and reintegration and whatever my other two Rs were (Revolt and Renewal). And in fact what we saw was organizational change stopped. Unless it was mission critical and enabling a remote workforce, it stopped. So change consultants weren't being asked to help in "How do we create this new future for our organization, this opportunity?" Change managers were stood down from projects. You know, it was this real bunker down mentality at a time when intellectually the opportunities have never been more rich.

You know when you've got a destabilized system, you can create a lot of change. And so we had this incredibly destabilized system, but the response was to lock it down.

And I think it was interesting, because I was chatting with one leader, and his mindset was a real exception to what I was hearing from others, because he said, "Look, we made sure that our employees were safe, we made sure our customers were safe, we made sure our supply chains were safe. And then we accelerated every big moonshot idea we'd ever had of how we were going to build this organization further. And we'd been given a gift that we had license to do things that everybody would have pushed back on." And I loved hearing that story, but, gee, it's been a rare story.I think what's surprised me also is I guess some of the cultural nuances of this and how this plays out. So, I've seen organizations where, despite the government saying everybody should be working from home, they're organizing lawyers to try and find loopholes on that. And they want their employees in the workplace. And not surprisingly, the workers don't feel particularly safe psychologically or physically.But when you look at the cultural heritage of those companies, and there's been a couple that have bubbled up in this space, they've come from countries where crisis and more is the norm. And so there's this sense that what Australians are being asked to do is really quite soft. And we're a bunch of sooks. We haven't grown up being namby pamby to the potential loss of life. And I found that really fascinating, the juxtaposition of perhaps legal frameworks in the workplace versus the cultural nuances of who the owners are and what they expect. So I didn't see that coming.I think the other thing is what I'm seeing, though, and this will play back to my optimism state, is I'm seeing phases at the moment. And I think March and April was very much about, "Holy crap, we're in a crisis," triage, I think May and June was "Steady the ship," right? And this was this, "We stop all organizational change. And our leaders are expected to steer through uncharted waters," and then July and now coming into August, we're going, "Oh, holy crap, our leaders actually don't have the skillset to steer through uncharted waters. How can we get them help?" So it's interesting to track the data and see what's what's happening in terms of what we're seeing.

#BLM 

One of the things, and Hayley, you picked up on this, you mentioned privilege, one of the things that has happened in the time since we met last time was the murder of George Floyd in the USA. We recorded this on May 21st and I believe the murder was May 25th. So you saw the rise, or the invigoration and the urgency around Black Lives Matter, and certainly in Australia, there was renewed focus on indigenous deaths in custody and police brutality and systemic models of racism, which I guess added another layer of difficulty into what was a difficult world. Any thoughts around that? And I know that's a very broad question, but in terms of where does that fit into our consciousness of leading organizations?

Hayley: It's been fascinating to me, because I've been watching this really closely, and I've always been interested and paid attention to intersections. I've always been interested in intersectionality, because what happened to George Floyd shouldn't happen to anyone. And it's interesting to me, he's a black man, and you have the death of Breonna Taylor, black woman, didn't have as much ... obviously quite a lot of major tension, but [inaudible 00:41:56]. So we start to see intersections come into play and stuff around class, it's been really interesting for me seeing organizations of different sizes, different sectors handle that or not. So I think in the middle of the pandemic, when everything's already high and you then have this, and rightly so, but I think that's exposed organizations even more. And so those organizations who thought it was just enough to post a black square and put some platitudes, customers are leaving them.So we talked about this, didn't we, in May? I said people are thinking to becoming much more conscious about the businesses that they want to give their money to. And I think this has brought this to the fore. So that's one thing. I think there's also something, it's been really interesting seeing some of my fellow professionals, and you might well have seen this as well, dive into the diversity and inclusion space. And I think, again, it's incumbent on us as experts to know our limits of expertise. So I've been approached by quite a few organizations saying, "Could you help us with diversity inclusion D&D?" And I've had to say, "No, that's, that's absolutely not my area of expertise. I know some brilliant people who can help you." And so it's been really interesting to me seeing what I see as some shameful practice, actually, people taking advantage. [bad actors] sothose are the things that I think it's exposed organizations even further, but it's also made me question some of my own peers in my profession and how they behave. I feel like everybody's just exposed at the moment.

Jen: It was really interesting, because as a result of that, that prompted me to go deeper in my anti-racism work. And one of the things that I've learnt about it is, and I was looking at within my occupational space, so organizational change practitioners, and at the moment, you've got all of these organizational change practitioners going, "Woohoo! We're really good at creating change and managing change. Let us at racism. We'll be able to sort it. Let's come in with our capes flowing and do what we do because we do change." Whereas the deeper you get into it, you realize how humbling it is to know how much you don't know, and that your role in being an effective ally is actually to pause and to learn before you move to action. And in recognizing that, it's struck me the parallels between our last call. So we're leaning into actually going, "Woohoo, follow our advice, and we're the experts in this space," and three months later we're going, "Uh, actually we probably need to pause and reflect on our own struggle with this." It's a model.

Hayley: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:45:09] to jump in, but I saw you post something about a month ago asking if there were any non-white, non-Western change models, frameworks, and I've done the same thing, because I've sat here thinking I lecture [inaudible 00:45:25] I lecture a lot on leadership and organizational development, and I realize I'm part of the problem. I'm just constantly showing stuff from the last 50 years that comes from Ivy League Western thought processes, very white, very educated, very middle-class, so I'm part of the problem, because I'm sharing stuff. But when I ask, when I've been looking, what else is out there? I've struggled. I've come up short. And that's partly down to me, and I saw that you were struggling as well, Jen. I don't know the other two found that.

Tim: Oh, for sure. Sure. Yeah, yeah. I was reading the work of a design academic just yesterday who was talking about the lack of non-Western voices in the design thinking world. I think this is a really big and important issue. And the first thing I want to signal is that in coming from the startup and the innovation world, I have to acknowledge I come from one of those, the whitest, most privileged and exclusionary spaces of contemporary industry. Huge problems there need to be addressed. I think what the Black Lives Matter movement has brought to light is these massive inequalities and fault lines running through developed societies, which as white, middle-class, privileged people, we, mostly, to our shame, are quite happy to just forget about, until there is a massive explosion and suddenly we go, "Oh my God, life is terrible for these people. But the reality is the capitalist society that we all benefit from as professionals is pressed on structural inequality, and to a large extent structural racism, too.So it's a very big issue. I think we need to look to leaders right at the top of our societies for change in this regard. And I like to think that the Biden-Harris partnership in the States is up to that challenge, and it can really lead change from the US, because that country sorely needs change.

Melissa: I probably don't have a lot more to add than what's been said, I guess. All I'm trying to do personally is to ... I now lead by example. I'm trying to educate myself and to learn what I can and to give space and voices to diverse voices when I can. I'm just trying to do the best that I can in my little circle at the moment, which I don't know if that's enough, but yeah.

Tim: Actually, I've remembered what I was thinking before, I was going to make the point that if you look at the history of ideas, getting a bit philosophical here, you see that new ideas, new thinking, new knowledge, emerges out of centers of power. And so you really can't separate class and privilege from the production of knowledge. It's no surprise that when you look outside of the dominant centers to the [inaudible 00:49:36] communities of the world, you don't tend to find the same depth and richness of ideas to draw on, simply because knowledge tends to be produced in these centers of power. So I think that is precisely why it's incumbent on us to really heal these divides and address social inequality, not just in nation states, but globally, if that's not too big an ask, because if we do want, and we do need to draw on the richness and diversity of our global tribe, and the only way to really unlock all the knowledge and potential that we have in all our different cultures, is to empower those different cultures and get people out of poverty, it's about find ways to actually enable them to become centers of power themselves in their own right.I think we see a lot of interesting stuff happening in China. Everyone's terrified of China, and there are good reasons to be worried about the Chinese government, but the cultural evolution and the social, technological, cultural evolutions happening in China are just mind blowing. It's just great example of how knowledge just rides in on the back of new power structures.

Hayley: Can I just put something out as well? I'm going to call it out, because no doubt, somebody somewhere will put it in the comments box somewhere. There are four white faces, Brady bunch style.  So there's something about if we do one of these moving forward, I really loved seeing something called Pass the Mic. So I'm happy to pass the mic to someone else. If you decide to run one of these again, Jen, and I'm happy for somebody different to sit in my space who is completely different from me and has a different worldview. And I have some people I can suggest.

Jen: I think that'd be fabulous. I had attempted to pass the mic several times. It's interesting, it coincides with ... There's these great educators on anti racism. One of them is a woman by the name of EbonyJanice Moore, who did a really powerful lecture on why urgency is violence. And the concept that when they did Pass the Mic, so I guess my interpretation, we all rushed to tap someone who was a Black, Indigenous, Person of Colour (BIPOC) and say, "Please take my podcast," "Please take my ..." and then we let it go. We did our bit, and then we didn't.  And that's actually quite traumatic to black indigenous people of color. And so what I've said to the people that I've offered to is this is a any time offer. Any time you want to come in and take this podcast, it's yours, because I recognize that the moment, this heightened attention has an energetic level of demand that I would never experience. And so for me to say, "Well, look, here's my podcast. You've got to come along on the next one," is actually an unfair requirement. But I thank you for bringing that up. And, absolutely. I think that would be a really important evolution of this podcast concept. Yeah. Cool.

Tim: We'd miss you, Hayley.

Hayley: No, you wouldn't. Whoever I'd pass the mic on to, they'd be so brilliant, you'd be like, "Hayley who?" But [crosstalk 00:53:27] I want them to pass the mic on, and so you get such a richness of diversity, and it's not just about color either. It's about diversity in all its forms, neuro diversity, for example.

Jen: I am totally down with you being my podcast booker.

Hayley: 10% commission applies.

Jen: You'd get 10% of all the love that's fed to us.

Hayley: Exactly.

Tooling up 

Jen: Okay. So we did say at the beginning of this, we were going to unpack some of the tools that we personally have used over the last three months in recognizing our humility, our stuckness, our pessimism. Tim, do you want to kick off with what you found really helpful personally in leading in your space?

Tim: Yeah. Well, two things, I think, and both of them are kind of philosophical, or quite philosophical. The first goes back to our talk about mindfulness and the importance of mindfulness. I get a lot of value out of reading and practicing stoic philosophy, which is, I think, it tends to be misunderstood. When people think of the stoic, they think of the stiff upper lip, just deal with it kind of mentality, but stoicism is much more nuanced than that. It centers on acknowledging just how much of life is beyond one's control, and accepting that, and focusing on what is within our control, which is our capacity to manage our emotional responses, and fundamentally our judgments, the judgments we make about things, because often, one finds, if one can shift one's judgments, one shifts one's perspective on a problem, and often relieves a lot of the stress that one's dealing with. So I think stoicism is a really good practical philosophy to look into at this point of time. The other thing that's really interesting me at the moment is the work of a guy called Otto Scharmer, who teaches at MIT in business there. He's published a book called Theory U, and it's all about this rather strange idea of learning to lead from the emerging future. I think a large part of the reason why many leaders today are struggling to engage with uncertainty is because by and large, they lead from past experience. They just think about how we've done things before and they just try and reiterate maybe in a slight different way. And when the situation is such that that no longer makes sense, many leaders find themselves a bit stumped. Scharmer's idea is that when you are facing deep uncertainty, you have to go through a process of letting go of what you know, and engaging in a process of seeing and sensing what's happening around you, slowly forging impressions of what is emerging in this time of uncertainty. And of course, this is best done with a team of people. And then once you've identified a potential opportunity, prototyping a new way forward, testing, learning, and just slowly piecing together a new path into the future. It's a difficult thing to do, but it's possibly the only way to make headway when you can't see the way ahead. You've got to do a bit of exploratory work, and just feel your way forward as best you can. So those would be my two tools.  

Melissa  I would say I read a really great article recently, and I'm just going to look up the name of the author, because that's the right thing to do, John Hagel, about the trust pyramid. And he came up with a twist on different concepts of trust, and at the bottom of the model was humility. And we talked about that right at the beginning, a little bit. And I've been recommending this article and talking about it with the leaders that I've been coaching and saying that I think now is the time for humility, and humility is a great way of building trust.And I think for a lot of leaders, it feels a bit counter intuitive, because they feel like they should have the answers and that their people are looking to them for inspiration and don't want to hear that you as a leader are actually struggling yourself, and that you don't know everything. But I think it only takes a brief look at the headlines in the newspapers, as we talked about earlier, just to see the different leaders around the world, and those that are practicing a little bit of humility as opposed to those that are continuing in their very patriarchal authoritarian "I know everything and I have all the answers." We've just clearly seen the success of those two approaches. And so I've found that to be a really good and useful tool to talk to people about.The second thing has really been around decision-making. And this is a personal thing as much as a thing that I'm talking to others about. And that's just around the need to be less reliant on instinct, actually, and for decision-making, to be very data driven with your decision-making. I think we talked about the amygdala hijack and all that sort of thing. I think the fact that emotions are so heightened at the moment that our own mental states can be very chaotic, just from the environment that we're in, and if you're a leader, then you've got even more pressures. And I think that it's really important to take a moment and not just react from the hip. No shooting from the hip. It's take a moment, breathe, think, respond. It's more important than ever to just have that moment of thinking, and that's nothing new. It goes back to the whole thinking fast, thinking slow, all of that sort of stuff. I think now is the time for systems two thinking about, really just taking a moment to consider the data and not just relying on your gut instinct, because I think our guts are all a little bit unhappy at the moment. So that's the two things that I've been relying on.  

Hayley: There's a very simple, or deceptively simple technique that I've been sharing with lots of my coaching clients. But it's one that I use myself. It's a word that's popped up throughout this conversation, being conscious and mindful, and at a time when we feel completely and utterly out of control, getting some semblance of control back is really important. And we're not passive beings. We all play a part in whatever happens. We play our part too. I'll give you a couple of examples. Quite a few of my management clients talk about feeling, "I'm up til two in the morning going through my email." And my question is, "Well, whose choice is that? Who's forcing you to do that?" And that makes people stop. And so the technique I've taught people, the first thing is to notice that you've gone into behaving in a certain way, whether that's going through your email at two in the morning or not saying that thing that you really want to say to your boss, the chief exec. Notice that you're doing it. And this just takes a few seconds in your mind, just to position it as a choice.So, okay. So I can now either choose to keep looking at my email at two in the morning, and I can choose not to say anything to my boss. What are the gains of that? And what are the losses of that? Or I could make another choice, which is I could choose to shut my laptop down and go to bed, or I can choose to say that thing. What are the gains of that? What are the losses of that?And then quickly weighing that up in your mind. And you could then think, "Actually, I'm going to keep looking at my email, because the gains of that outweigh the not." But own your choice. There's been a lot of Tough Love Hayley with clients, so it means that own your choice. Because it's a choice you are making. You might like to let yourself off the hook that you're not making a choice, but you're not. You are making a choice every given moment that we don't notice the choices that we're making. And a lot of my clients have come back and just said that simple thing has made such a difference to them just being in control.

The final thing is at a time when we're feeling overwhelmed, we can forget to notice. So a trick that a few of my clients have used, for example, I've got one who's put a Post-it note in the corner of her laptop, which is gains versus losses. That is a trigger. And I've got another one, he's put alerts on phone that pop up every couple of hours, which says, "Are you making conscious choices?" And just taking that moment to take some control and ownership back is important.

Jen: Some nice tips there. I think, for me personally, what has given me the greatest gain is probably referencing Melissa's observations, and that is getting all over the data. So rapid cycles of data-informed decision-making, probably faster than I would've done a year ago, reviewing everything from the socials to the Google Analytics, to whatever source of data I have. I'm currently triangulating and reassessing which direction, how am I moving forward? Because I think in recognizing, it's not that I doubt my intuition, it's not that I doubt my gut. It's recognizing that I am in a different mental state than I would have been six months ago. And so doing the same thing in an altered state is probably not going to be a healthy way of going forward.

Only forward - the next three months 

Let's go around the traps. The next three months, where does this take us? Recognizing that nobody wants to be an expert any more or a guru, nobody has all the answers, we're just sitting across each other at a metaphorical bar, what's your thoughts for the next three months? The bar went very quiet. I think that silence is so telling, isn't it?

Hayley: I'll go. Coming at it personally, hopefully [inaudible 01:05:53]. I'm hopeful. And the reason I'm hopeful is because my diary is nearly full in September and October and November's filling up. So I think, because as lots of organizations have made sense and recognized this isn't going away, let's just convert everything and do also some new stuff, from a personal perspective as a business owner and a consultant, the fact that I've got loads of work back makes me feel hopeful that the organizations that I work with are back to navigating that twisty, turny road that we're all on. That's how I feel. Jen: Yeah, nice.

Tim: Look, I feel hopeful, too, I must say. I think that the second waves around the world have been a real wake up call for leaders. And I think that should be enough to make us all realize that we are in a state of crisis and we need to shift up a gear, or is that down a gear? I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I drove a manual car. Looking back to the GFC back in 2008, lots of organizations just hunkered down through that period and tried to ride it out. And many of them went under, but the organizations who actually invested in innovation and attacked the problem on the front foot, well, research shows that in the States, they outperformed the Standard & Poor's index by 10% through the crisis, and then coming out the other side of the crisis, these companies outperformed the market by 30%. So, yeah, I mean, the statistics are clear there is great gain to be found in actually innovating through a crisis. Actually my partner and I have we decided we would not let the crisis go to waste, and we've put together a research business, which is specifically for companies that are dealing with uncertainty and thinking seriously about innovation. And we put our foot out the door, and, yes, there's a lot of interest. So that does make me feel hopeful.

Jen: Awesome. Melissa.

Melissa: I don't know that I'd say I feel hopeful. I feel like there's a lot of work ahead of us. And if I am, I guess addressing my comments to people who work in communication or who are responsible for communication in some way, I think there is a very, very big responsibility on you to create good narrative that is instructive and trustworthy and truthful, but that doesn't mistakenly, even accidentally, lead people down wrong paths. And I guess I'm reflecting a bit on what Tim said earlier about that difference between a roadmap and levels, and I think that there's some something interesting there, without wanting to get too caught up in terminologies, but I think that's really interesting. I've been reflecting a lot on trust. There's a saying now that we're not in a post truth world, we're in a post trust world, and I think that our communication and our media have a lot to answer for in that space, and I really do worry about the future of how we digest the information that we need. It's difficult to know even whether to trust the news outlets that you trust.   And so, I think if you're in any way responsible for communication, you have a very big responsibility, and you should ... I'm in mind of the, is it Spiderman, I think, with great power comes great responsibility? Yeah.

I think we're not superheroes, but we have great power and we need to take that great responsibility very, very seriously right now.

Jen: So it's undies on the outside and more presses with Hayley's sketchnotes, basically. That's how we're going to digest information. Lovely, lovely. I think for me, whilst, as I said, I am seeing now that organizations are turning to, "How do we support our leaders through training around their mindset and skillset in being more agile?" it's a bit of a self-serving observation, I will acknowledge that one too. But I actually think there's something about community, an increasing focus on community. And I think for many of us that will mean different things. I think as we continue to have restrictions through stages, you'll come to depend much more on your local communities, that hyper localization that's going on.But I think in business, it also means looking at strategic partnerships and alliances because your business community will be your safety net. Now, the interesting thing, I guess, is that's probably easier to conceptualize when you run a small business or a consultancy like we do. What does community mean to Australia Post, the big government agencies, Telstra, those kind of things. Got no idea what that actually means; I just have a feeling that it's going to become very important in not just surviving, but actually reorienting your whole organization.We are coming to the close of this. The three of you have once again been extraordinarily generous your time and your thoughts and your humility. If we can go around the room, what would you most like the listeners to know or help you with? How can our listeners help you with what's going on in your world? Tim.

Help me, help you 

Tim: Oh, look, just be kind, I think. Just be kind. I know that this has be the theme of all our discussions, and actually it wouldn't have been something that I would have said three months ago, but it's a reflection of how I've learned from our conversations. I think community is really important, and I think we need to we need to just double down on building good relationships, being empathetic and kind to one another, because we're going to need a lot of that going forward.

Jen: So you want people to be more kind to you?

Tim: I am sorely mistreated, Jen, if I could explain it to you. I can't.

Jen: Hayley, how can the listeners help you? Hayley: Recognizing there's no shame in asking for help, whether that's asking me or any of you, in fact, the best leaders know when to ask for help and who to ask for help. That's the first thing. The second thing is a bit Jerry McGuire: Help me help you. We're just going to run in circles now. For example, I put out on LinkedIn the other day, because people go bonkers for my sketchnotes, which is [inaudible 01:14:37], but it feels a bit selfish. I draw ones that I'm interested in. So I put a little message out saying, "What's going to help you? What would you like me to draw a summary of?" One person came back. So help me help you. Tell me what you'd like to learn more about, or know more about and I'll draw it or write about it. Just drop me a line."

Jen: Okay. Challenge accepted. That's fabulous. Melissa, how about yourself?

Melissa: Well, I'm going to take Hayley up on that, definitely going to ask for something. I love Tim's idea about kindness, because I'm a kindness advocate from way back, and kindness has been a bit of a personal mantra, philosophy, I don't know quite what the word is for me for a long time. So I think kindness in the world, it's never been more true that we have to be kind because we just don't know what battles other people are fighting. It's always been true, but it's especially true now.Being a little bit cheeky as well, I, along with Jen, we've just made our weekly collaboration program Busting Silos available on demand now. So you can just go to the website and sign up and get weekly e-listens in how to better collaborate with your colleagues and pretty much anyone in your life. So, I would also say there's never been a better time to be kind and never been a better time to know how to collaborate with other people. So check out bustingsilos.com.au.

Jen: Terrific, terrific. My request of the listeners, I'm getting in with requests, I just think there has been some incredible gems dropped in this podcast. This may not have been our smoothest or eloquent podcast we've ever done, I think the minute we dip into how do we do this from a position of learning out loud and being a little bit more humble about it, it gets awkward, but that's the point. These conversations are awkward, and it's really important to have them out loud. So, listeners, if you've got someone you think should listen to it, please share it with them. If you've got leaders in your organizations, please put it on your Yammer, put it on anywhere, we don't care. But we would really welcome you sharing this with the people who you think need to hear it. But for now, stay safe, stay well and stay very, very kind.Connect:Jen Frahm - LinkedIn, Twitter.Melissa Dark - LinkedIn, Twitter.Hayley Lewis - LinkedIn, Twitter.Tim Rayner - LinkedIn, Twitter.