Speaker 1: 0:00

So we're back with another edition of that Change Show. I can't figure out how to introduce these shows without sounding like a used car salesperson. Just, you know, you watch so many YouTube videos and you see this over the top characters and stuff. But I'm like, yeah, let's just start talking about complexity and systems thinking. So we're in closing out the end of our second season of that Change Show. You can find us on thatchangeshowcom and lean change tv if you want the video versions. And I would like to introduce my special guest today, donna jones, who I've known for 12 years. Wow, 12, 12 years. We met in talon, estonia, and you were talking about stewardship and I was like, holy smokes, where have you been? Agile community needs voices like you, and do you want to just give the listeners a quick introduction of yourself?

Speaker 2: 0:52

Yeah, I'd be happy to Thank you, jason. I remember that session well because I took in that big wall graphic which I can share with your community afterwards if you'd like. But the work began basically as a professional facilitator, moving right across sectors, and one of the things I noticed is that we're human everywhere, but our thinking and our mindsets and the frame that we perceive things through is different, depending on the belief systems of the organization, the sector, whatever it happens to be. So, and I also noticed that we were really not adapting very quickly and that was really problematic. I think that was 20 years ago and you could see what was happening today on the edge then and I'm thinking, wow.

Speaker 2: 1:37

So you know, estonia was the place where I just put out what I thought was logical and found out it wasn't. So this was. It's been a fun ride. It's been a very interesting up and down ride and I think we're in a place now where the complexity of being human and the complexity of organizations and the complexity of systems all kind of mash up into a yay zone of of learning, exploring and and really advancing our skill sets and consciousness at the same time.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Yeah, yeah, cool, I like that. The one thing that always stuck with me from there was a few times in that session you talked about when we were looking at that map, and I'll put it up on the screen here so folks that are watching this can see it. There wasn't a. This is right, that is wrong. It was context matters. You can be successful anywhere in this diagram. Uh, it's just different.

Speaker 1: 2:32

The context dictates, um, you know, maybe an approach that we take or mental models that we use for how we help our organizations evolve, and that's that's the thing that really stuck, because we're seeing so much of well, you have to be agile.

Speaker 1: 2:48

You can't do agile. We're seeing absolutes, you have to be adaptable, you have to do this, you have to do that and the other and I like to mix this in with something I saw from HBR a while ago. They had this quadrant of likelihood to be disrupted and there's so much context in there, like when you look at tire manufacturers, for example, there's what? Three big ones in the world that pretty much own everything. They don't really need to adapt compared to, say, consumer electronics, because we need to move shit around and that stuff needs to have tires on it. So until we invent hovercrafts, you know they're not likely to be severely disrupted, and then you go in other contexts and that will never. That approach will never work. That wait and see approach won't work because your context is different, and that that's what I really liked about that map.

Speaker 2: 3:39

Oh cool that's. That's nice to know. I mean, the other thing about it is that people often are behaving very oddly, like I used to notice. I go in an organization and work and I think, whoa, this is really adversarial behavior, and it's easy to blame the people because they're in front of you, but behind them is this whole system that's creating that behavior, and very rarely do organizations look at how the systems they put in place are creating the behavior they don't want. You know, it's also creating behavior they do want, but it's not good for people, it's not serving well-being at the same time. So so that's, I think the the real opportunity in all of this is to is to really expand the lens and deepen it at the same time, so we can bring more of ourselves into it, you know, and so to me it's very much about sensing.

Speaker 2: 4:27

How do we sense what's going on? Because if we use our cognitive brain to process everything, first of all it's really slow next to the information that's flying around the room, and and secondly, it processes very slowly as well, and it's very restrictive, because the brain can only hold so much, and so so when it hits the max out zone, it just downloads it and says forget it, deal with that later. And that's one of the reasons why organizations and people get overwhelmed. It's just too much and without a capacity to step back, which was that purpose of that big thing. Let's just step back, zoom out, take a look, figure out where we are on this, figure out what we want to keep, what we want to let go of, what we need to change and truly adapt in order for this whole system to stay very dynamic.

Speaker 2: 5:15

I mean, the image I've always used and I love is murmuration. You know, sandpipers flying around in a flock and usually we see starlings, because it comes out of the UK, these great videos. But in my world, on the West Coast, they're sandpipers and the slightest little perturbation in the system, in the network, just they're flying fast. And it's like how do you? You know? So I looked at the physics of that and they said you know, don't hit anybody. It's a very linear one, two, three. I thought. Tell that to traffic. You know it doesn't work when you go into traffic. So but it's because these birds are paying attention to seven other birds and they're picking up signals in the system.

Speaker 2: 5:59

Now I even think that's an oversimplification. I think it's more sophisticated than that, but that's what we've got to work with right now in terms of the science, and people will nod to that and say, yes, yes, that's what it is. So that tells you, if we port that understanding over into organizations, that tells you you're really sensing the signals. What are the signals? You know, what are the signals that tell me what's going on here, and so the emotional self-regulation as a capacity, as a facilitator, is got to be very high, because it's usually people that are highly sensitive, it's people that have got, you know, are processing information differently. Anyone that's non-linear and on spectrum would qualify. Anybody that's been labeled ADHD and all of these other labels, they process information much more quickly, and so it's a real opportunity to work together on that, as long as those that are really adherent to linear thinking can embrace the idea that there's more than one way of thinking and sensing and processing information yeah, yeah, it's a rapid pattern detection and response.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Yeah, yeah, I, I mentioned, uh, I mentioned this to like change people that I talk to all the time and and some get it and some think I sound like a crazy person it's exactly what you described's. Do you ever walk into the office and you just feel the energy of the change has just fallen off of a cliff and just do you have a spidey sense that nothing's really going to work? But then all of a sudden, a window opens somewhere and you notice it and you dive through it, like that's the point of intervening in the system, and some will be like, yes, I know exactly what you mean and they have a story, because narratives are really important when we talk about patterns and systems and stuff and other people just go can I have my money back for whatever I've ever paid you for? Right, they don't see. They see it as well.

Speaker 1: 7:55

You know where is the things we can touch and look at and and concrete things we can see that tell us what the problem is, and then the concrete things we can use to fix it. They need those tangible things and a lot of the times I think, as change people, there isn't. You're relying on your intuition, you're relying on sensing, you're relying on other senses that are because you've been attenuated to fluctuations in the system, much like the Starlings Starlings, you said, right Out on the West Coast.

Speaker 2: 8:30

Well, on the West Coast it's Sandpipers, sandpipers. Right In the UK it's Starlings. Yeah, they're imported into our country, but no Sandpipers do that. So well, yeah, exactly. And I mean, I think it's also a bit of a contradiction of what you, you know, we're used to certainty, we love it, it's really important, and nothing about the environment says yes, that's a good idea, just nothing. And so that's where the sensing comes in in a big way, and especially in organizational change.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Because I've watched, you know, in my own work I've watched people go, go, you know, work along, make it look like they're doing, and all of a sudden just do a radical pivot and go back almost to what you might call the dark side. You know, it's like, oh and, and this is where you, you realize, oh, that was just fake, it was just kind of going with the ride until there's a point in someone or a group or a team I've seen it in many levels and they just sort of pivot and get out of there, and that you can detect long before it happens. I figured out you could detect that before it happens, because the first little times it happened in leadership work I was doing, I thought what the heck, where did that come from? How did that happen? And you know, you feel responsible because you, you know it happens so fast.

Speaker 2: 9:48

The pivot, I think in agile they call it a dark agile or you know, it's got different language but it's that place where there's fake change on the top and the real feelings are riding underneath, and so it's that sensing the whole thing, so that you can detect where there is these um, uh, anti-patterns I think is the terminology uh for it but you can feel it more as an undertow, like I. I experience it as an undertow. What's going? You know, people are saying one thing, but the, the feelings, the social and emotional data is going in a different direction yeah, so like change theater.

Speaker 1: 10:25

would that characterize it, where we're doing a change on the surface, because it looks like we're doing something meaningful, but nothing's really, really going on?

Speaker 2: 10:33

Yeah, that's good language for it, for sure. Yeah, yeah, we're just playing our way through this and I've actually had, in one of the workshops that Dave called navigating, I called it navigating the messy middle and then a couple of years later I learned that apparently somebody's trademarked that. But but you know, any facilitator has seen that mess where things are definitely not going according to plan. If you had a plan, it's it's, it's not complying with with reality at all. And so, yeah, it's one of those places where in that training, I had somebody say you know, I've done that, I faked my way through the whole agile change process and then I got to the end and it worked, because I just had to refill out my reports, send it in the boxes, all got ticked, everybody was happy, but nothing changed.

Speaker 1: 11:19

Yeah, and I thought yes change theater.

Speaker 2: 11:21

That's a good word for it.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Yeah, one of the companies that I was doing an agile transformation with, I think there were originally, there were 10 coaches and, you know, the body rejected the organ like seven of them, so there was three of us left and we had that same sense, right, and we're just like, hmm, something's not right here. We had people going on sick leave. We had, you know, actually, my second day in there where I was given my enterprise mandated laptop and cube to sit and I walked into the area where I was supposed to be and there was somebody just screaming at her team. I was like whoa, uh-oh, it's going to be trouble. Screaming at her team. I was like whoa, uh-oh, it's going to be trouble. And then after a month, we had enough data and we went back to the seven VPs, essentially to fire the client, which never happens. Like independents don't fire enterprise clients. That's kind of why I think they hire independents, because they can just say they can push them around, basically, and get them to do whatever, and we weren't going to do that.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So we basically disrupted that pattern, because the previous consulting firms that were in before us kept talking about, you know, how great the agile transformation is, and look at our metrics and look at our best practice guides and we know how to do this. They were really focused on making it shiny and hiding the stuff that was underneath. And we came right in after a month and just basically, you know, pulled the road up and looked at the sewage underneath and said this is really what's going on and we can't help you with Agile anything until whatever this is because it's coming from this room gets dealt with. And in a half an hour they called us back to have a meeting, another level up. We had the same conversation for two hours. Half hour later they call again. Now we're up CIO level having the same conversation, and then we sicked our leadership coach on them and he spent two to three years from like director all the way up, working with them to try to break those patterns.

Speaker 1: 13:24

So we're talking that whole story I just told was six years. Wow, right. And through those six years they're still doing these superficial bits. They're still like well, let's bring in another different agile framework and bring this. So it's kind of like how to change agents? This was my long-winded way of asking how do change agents take action out of this you talk about? We can see this as change theater. We see this as superficial. We know there's stuff going on underneath, but I, as an internal change agent who sits in the middle somewhere, I don't necessarily feel safe to kick upwards or swim against the current or disrupt that pattern. What action am I supposed to take other than just cope with it? Like what can I do tactically, instead of saying, well, see, here, the quadrant says you should sense and respond, you know? Like how do we make it real for for change agents to do that?

Speaker 2: 14:21

yeah, well, I, I don know, you know, I know the language of the kind of model is is available to your community, and so one of the words that's in all four quadrants is sensing, and few people actually recognize that until they take a closer look at the quadrant and go, oh yeah, it is. That's your key to everything, because when you get out of your head and you just take in the data, like it's kind of like being a parabolic microphone in a way at the galactic, you know, at the galactic level, or you know the big ones that they put on top of hills, it's listening for those kinds of signals that tell you not only what's going on, the deep dynamics that you just described, being able to see those and call them out, because they're not aware of them. It's about organizational consciousness, it's about awareness and they're not aware of what they've created in a way, but it's that those patterns generate from those deep dynamics. So you name those and then you go back and say what are the signals that tell me what's going on here? And I'm always looking for three. I'm always looking If I name a signal like, for example, are people congruent, are they saying one thing and consistently following through in their actions. That's congruency. If they're saying one thing and doing something else, that's a flag for me. There'll be a flag there. You'll also pick up the emotion and the tone in the environment. Do people feel safe in putting ideas forward? So how are they handling difficult conversations? That tells you about trust. It's just one signal, but it tells you about trust. So, basically, you list what you're looking for, because that gets your focus clarified. Am I looking for congruency or sorry, I am looking for congruency. What are my signals of that? And then you apply to get out of your head.

Speaker 2: 16:15

I long ago observed that, and especially because I've got a noise sensitivity, you go into certain environments and right away you're flooded. You're, you know it's just, it's shut down, it's overwhelmed, it creates, it's not fun. And so the answer to that I decided on an experimental basis was just to background. You know, park, just suspend thinking, stop thinking and not stop, because that's virtually impossible, especially for someone like me. But but you just go in and you just listen with the widest lens possible for the signals you've pre-identified. You're listening for what's their focus would be one of them Energy flows. Where attention goes. Where's their attention going? In mergers, it's almost always who am I in this new environment? What's my you know, what's my identity and and where do I fit? Those kinds of security-based questions, you know. And so it focuses where their attention going, because that's going to tell you everything about the focus at the time.

Speaker 2: 17:13

Are they taking times out for getting contextual clarity? Are they reflecting? Are there deliberate times out for getting contextual clarity? Are they reflecting? Are there deliberate times where they sit back and say what's going on here? Because if they do that, the chances are they're going to be. It's like a map you can all of a sudden see oh, here we are. That's what that big wall chart was for. Here's our map. You know, this is who we are in, just just just inside, nevermind what's going on outside and where are we on it.

Speaker 2: 17:37

So you have to have those reflective conversations. So I've named a bunch of steps in there. One is to be quite conscious about what you're processing with. Is it your body or are you trying to shove everything through here? And if you're trying to shove everything through here, you're gonna know that you're doing it because, first of all, you're gonna be absolutely overwhelmed and and exhausted, um, and you won't get any, you'll do all that. There won't be any clarity, which is, you know, annoying.

Speaker 2: 18:05

So it is those combinations of practices which is like reflection times out, just getting a walk, something that allow your brain to clear.

Speaker 2: 18:15

It's listening with your whole body. It's. It's nothing that we ever taught in leadership about listening. I mean, we used to teach active listening and all these connected listening, and I can't remember the different varieties and in the end you could quite successfully not listen at all. If your agenda was to bring everybody back to what you wanted, people could quite successfully not hear a thing but practice all the practices. So that's where you know being very clear on what your principles are, what matters to you, and not being, you know, leaking them out to fit into this environment, but being really solid with what you're, who you are and what you're doing in that environment, and that's why you could do what you did you know, that's why you can push back and call on it, because you know why you're there, you know what's right, you know what's wrong in terms of the health and well-being of the people that are being served in this initiative, and that's where the strength and the moxie comes from, to call it.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Yeah, and it's a little easier when you're external too.

Speaker 2: 19:19

It's a lot easier. In fact, I've been brought in at times. I remember one session I was in and I don't know what I said to the CEO, but everybody around me was just kind of. You could just feel them palpably breathe. You know, there's just this. And I found out later it was because nobody had said, had the you know, they wouldn't have said what I said without fear of, and I thought, oh well, okay, if that's what the outside person can do, that's fine with me. I'm okay with that. If I can name what you know, the elephant in the room or can name something that they're not dealing with because they're afraid to deal with a, that's an important role to play because then we can actually work with it. We could stop fooling around with the surface and get down to it and really do the work.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Yeah, so how do you? How do you find, like, how amenable are leaders to those conversations? Cause I know you've got a lot of experience working in higher levels in the organization and a lot of change. Folks usually don't have access to that level like you're talking. Maybe senior vp and up, or their interactions are limited to it every two week 15 minute, 30 minute transformation update meeting, so it's not like they've established trust and relationship, but they know all the things that we're talking about. What do you find you know how amenable are leaders to getting that information?

Speaker 2: 20:43

Well, the short answer is it depends. It depends on whether they got there through, because, you know, the rule seems to be that those who they get floated up in the system and they do not or may not add value. I mean, I fortunately was lucky because the clients that work with me are ones that that were bold enough to be buffers sometimes toxic buffers between what was going on at the top and and giving their team enough space to do what they needed to be to do. But that's a bandaid solution, because either they're going to get what they needed to be to do, but that's a bandaid solution, because either they're going to get sick or they're going to leave, and when they leave, then then everybody's fully exposed again.

Speaker 2: 21:25

So it's really this is where your intuition comes in quite strongly, and I find what always helps is just to listen to the thinking, listen to how attached people are to their thoughts and their ideas of being right, and how attached people are to their thoughts and their ideas of being right and how open they are to those more difficult conversations where you can put it out directly and say okay, we need to talk about this, and you will occasionally have somebody that says you're an idiot and you know, gives the list of what's wrong with Donna and all that stuff and and you kind of you know.

Speaker 2: 21:58

I mean, then if you're highly sensitive, it it burns, but then you get, so it's not. You just realize it's a defense mechanism, Right, it's just something that they're afraid about. And so that's when you change the venue of the conversation and you might, you might say, let's go for a walk outside. I mean, I used to send my construction teams off for a walk. I'd give them one question. They never, ever talked about it on the walk, but they came back with all the answers.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Right.

Speaker 2: 22:26

So because they just kind of put it in the background and then went out and had great conversations that had nothing to do with the topic, but yet by the time they came back they had insights that they didn't have before they left. So there's an element of trust that goes with it that just sort of says okay, if you're really protective and defensive right now, I need to go to you, not away from you, because it is a defense mechanism and you just want to help them get past. That it calls for. I mean, the first time I did this I had my, my stomach was in my mouth. I mean I was so scared and. But but you know, in the end you give people a chance to do the better thing for themselves and for their teams and they'll do it. There are some that just you know I mean have a temper tantrum, you know, throw everything up in the air and and and fine, you know I'll. I'll come back later or not at all.

Speaker 2: 23:25

You know, it just depends on on what they do with that experience and and whether they're aware or not of their own behavior.

Speaker 1: 23:34

I don't know. I guess that reactions, that reactions's pretty good too, because now you get a sense of how serious and invested the leader is in doing something meaningful. Once the noise wears off, you've got to pull the signal out of there. But even if they react in a negative, angry way, if you're attenuated to that because you know their temperament and you know that maybe they're more of a mouth thinker or they always react with emotion first, but then they let the dust settle a bit and then you can engage in a good conversation. And then there's others that just might want you well, I hired you to solve our problems and you're probably not going to make much of a dent there.

Speaker 1: 24:13

But I think as long as they're not surprised by bad news, as in they're the last to know and they're not publicly embarrassed yeah, yeah so I love what you mentioned about change the venue, because sometimes you know you can't have that conversation in a meeting with them and their peers no, or definitely not with them in their direct reports, but even with their, like you know, a group of vps or a group of C-levels, whoever's the CEO. Change the venue, have the conversation. I always like to ask for permission.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Do you want the kind truth or the brutal truth contract in the first place, like whether I'm in person or, sorry, whether I'm an employee or, uh, an outside consultant? It's that coaching agreement I don't even like to call it coaching agreements because that word has just been sort of I don't know, twisted over the years but an engagement agreement. You know, are you hiring me to be your friend and to be an enabler and give you some tips and tricks? Like, or do you want the kind truth? Do you want the brutal truth? Do you want you know where's our boundaries for what you want to get it? Get from me, and then I think that sometimes that makes it okay to maybe have some more those more difficult conversations that's excellent.

Speaker 2: 25:33

That's an excellent approach. I really appreciate that. I do remember going into one and this was in the early meeting, before we had anything nailed down, and and they gave me the whole story and at the end of it I said so, do you want to really do this? I mean, there's something you're not telling me, what is it? And then they just put, they dropped the facade and told the truth and again it's the same idea, you know, like just let's stop with the superficialities, let's get down to the nitty gritty. So I know what I'm getting into and you know what you're getting into. Because if we don't have that agreement on an honest and transparent level, our engagement is is just spending money Right.

Speaker 2: 26:11

And it's not something I mean. You know. I'm sure you need money to do, but not at that, not at the cost of your integrity. That's just not.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I was going to ask. Next, there's a line somewhere where because I've talked to plenty of change people who are like, well, you know, if I lived by my values and principles a hundred percent, I'd never get any work. So sometimes you have to take a gig that you don't necessarily agree with, with your stance on the change that they're trying to do and forget. And when I say change, I mean transformative change. So I'm not talking about project-based change. Uh, because that stuff, you know your job is to kick dust up and expose what's going wrong. That's kind of what's expected.

Speaker 1: 26:52

But in transformative change it's a little more tread lightly somehow, and everybody's got a line that I'm not going to go beyond this. I may compromise to a certain degree, because I know that this organization or this system is probably going to prod on a little bit slower than I think it could. But I'll tolerate. It's not the right word either. I'm invested in trying to help you change in the way that you normally change, instead of being disruptive. Then, when the window opens, then I can do something that's more disruptive. But it's all down to, like you said, listening to the whole system, being able to pull the noise out or strip the noise away and pull the signal out and decide how, to what action is best to intervene, based on more so your intuition.

Speaker 2: 27:41

Exactly, exactly, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the other reality of all of these complex systems is that they're completely nonlinear and you can, when you practice thinking, you know, when you practice listening and you listen to people, go, well, if we do this and this will happen. It's like, yeah, there's a causality in non-linear thinking, but it's not direct, right, usually it's indirect. And so when you listen to that direct thinking, uh, you know, you're, you've got a, you're gonna have to bring in the. You know the stance or the understanding that these are all a series of interactions and so there's no rigidity in that. There's just there can't be any rigidity because it that just, it's stagnation at that point. And what's the point? Yeah, it's too easy, so, so, so let's get in and get you know, let's play with these complexities, let's understand them better, parse them out.

Speaker 2: 28:32

When people are behaving badly, generally it's system driven Almost 100% of the time it's system driven and or there's something that's not being addressed, that you know they're not. People aren't being recognized, they're not being, you know, appreciated. There's some thinking that's not being heard. That's. That's a frequent one. People are just shutting down, especially outlier thinkers. They're out here and they get marginalized right away and it's like that's your best thinking bring it in. You know, you have to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 28:59

Your cynics, you know, are your. You're bringing a lot of value if they'll contribute. You know, bring them in. So so this is, you know. This is the interesting part about these complexities is that it really calls for a switch in self, as a facilitator, from relying on the linearity of how things work to starting to see things in layers, you know, with the beliefs the highest leverage being. What are the beliefs running this operation? And if the values are showing up, what do they look like? Because that's the bottom tier, and then everything else is just sort of an expression of that, all the way up through the verticality of that inverted pyramid, if you will from the surface down.

Speaker 2: 29:41

So the surface, then, is where your signals exist. The surface behavior tells you what's going on underneath, what are the signals. So you cannot judge anything. That's, if you do that, you're you're, you're using this for one and you're acting out of fear of getting something wrong. You cannot judge it. You just have to listen for the signal and then be compassionate, or, if some people don't like that word, but everything is interrelated, absolutely everything in these systems, and so you listen for for those symptoms. You know those signals of behavior or the words, sometimes it's language. This is the way things are done around. Here is code, for we're really attached to our beliefs about how things work and so, yeah, it's listening.

Speaker 2: 30:27

For all of that, before you draw any conclusion, the opening will be there. For all of that, before you draw any conclusion, the opening will be there. When you finish, as you're listening, you start to see, you'll get the insights, you'll be able to see the opening and the space that says all right, if this is, you know, based on what I'm getting here, this feels like a good direction to go, and there's three ways of getting there. Use all three.

Speaker 1: 30:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:52

And there is not necessarily a predetermined destination, because that's engineering outcomes. There is just moving forward and taking the next step.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Yeah, and you can scenario test some of these things. Part of the stories and the interactions is, I think, people get locked into one course of action, whereas well, it's always a compromise to a certain degree. So if we've got at least a few options of how we're going to move forward, we can try as best we can to talk about direct and indirect consequences and try to pick the one that most of us can live with. And that's a scary proposition because we like to say things like get everybody bought in and then go forward, which is impossible. It can just never happen that way.

Speaker 1: 31:39

And then when we see those cracks in the surface, it's like, well, oh, there's a crack on the road. Well, just pave it, forgetting that there's a sinkhole underneath, like that's what's called a crack. And I think the more you get exposed to listening and seeing these things on the surface, you start to recognize, oh, that crack is because it's showing a pattern, that it's been created by a sinkhole. So there's a bigger problem. And sometimes it just might be a crack in the road, but you never know until you start fixing it. So if you can at least consider well, if we considered it's a sinkhole, our course of action might be these three paths, and if it's just sinkhole, our course of action might be these three paths, and if it's just a crack in the road, it would be these three. You know which of these six paths is best given our current context, knowing we can always change it right. We're so locked into this. How do we sustain the change is something I hear a lot, and for me that's just another status quo.

Speaker 2: 32:34

It's interesting yeah, well, it's another desire for certainty. You know, if this is the change we've got going, we want to make sure it stays that way so we don't have to think about it again. And that's just not, uh, flexible enough or dynamic enough for today's world. Uh, the whole business of murmuration is is those, those birds pick up on a signal? And it's an instant, millisecond response.

Speaker 2: 32:57

I mean, I hope for that with humans, but not in a judgmental way or a quick answer way, but in a way that holds an understanding that everything is connected and interrelated and whatever you do will produce either the consequences or the results you hope for, and it'll also produce a bunch of ones that you didn't see coming and and those are all part of the deal and they're great. So, um, you could deem them good or bad in the context you're in. But even the bat like, if you ever do that you know advantages, disadvantages and decision making you'll find there'll be two or three or four things that'll sit in the middle, where it's both, and that's an expression of systems. You know, that's just. That's just what. The way it is, it's like it'd be both. So the how we evaluate it emotionally it tends to be more binary. You know it's good or bad, but in reality it's both, and so let's just, let's just keep it at that level of of not making a judgment over it, but just just uh sitting with it for a while.

Speaker 1: 34:00

Right, awesome, oh, very cool. This uh. This time just like flew by. We could make this a five-hour episode, no problem. But um, what, uh? What else have you got going on, and where can people find out uh more about you or get in touch?

Speaker 2: 34:14

I've got a bunch of things going on. As you'd expect, I'm now part of the nonlinear movement with the octopus movement out of the Netherlands, and so that's a group of nonlinear thinkers and it's nice, it's fun because you know, in order to get to here you have to be pretty linear. But the real fun in the play is in the play, it's in the non-linear side of things. And so I'm sort of tinkering right now with a futuring project. Just to imagine what could we imagine 10 years down the road. I'm using Jane McGonigal's imaginable book and, with permission of the rights holder, one of the technologies out of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. So I'm I'm working toward that and there's a page on my website, which is donajonescom, that you can sign up for a futuring workshop. I'm going to test drive it with um, uh, with with the octopus movement folks. I'm hoping. I don't know whether we'll get it in before december or not, but that's the direction.

Speaker 2: 35:14

I'm still podcasting 16 years of podcasting and now I'm. I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I know I'm definitely moving it to a live format because of what we've talked about. It just the and you've helped me with it's just so much work to to do the post-production. So I'm just going to move it to live, uh, because I love talking to people and it's fun, you know, like conversations that we have are just so much fun. So that's going on.

Speaker 2: 35:38

And then I'm also working on a book of I'm still writing and I haven't figured out what I'm writing, whether it's going to be a decision-making book for the new times or making sense of life's interruptions. There is a course that I put together called revive and restore, which is about how do you self guide your way to emotional health, how do you keep healthy, emotionally in chaos when you're terrified of uncertainty, all of those kinds of things. So that course is is sort of sitting there waiting for me to figure out how to move it forward. But but yeah, that's what I'm working on right now, thanks, thanks for asking.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Very cool. All that stuff will be in the show notes below, but actually I did want to ask one more thing. Could you describe cause we've talked about a lot linear thinking versus non-linear thinkers? Sure, what does what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 36:27

Yeah, well, the easiest way I can remember doing this when I was training facilitators back decades ago and that was that linear thinking is this go here, this, go there, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, and with an outcome you know, a predictable outcome at the end of the line. That's very linear thinking. Now what happens? And there's a great slide that I had from Ksenia Benefan's presentation to Disrupt Innovation Festival back in 2015. She'd done her doctorate on it and she basically shows how, yeah, inputs plus process equals outputs and in our manufacturing system, something like don't quote me on the numbers because I'm terrible at that, but let's say, 80% is waste before it gets out of the door.

Speaker 2: 37:16

That's the product of linear thinking. Air pollution is the product of linear thinking. Everything that we have and are dealing with today is a product of linear thinking. So nonlinear thinking adds one more element to it at least. So there's a dynamic aspect to nonlinear thinking. When I'll come up with something, it'll be over there, like it'll just come out of nowhere and people well, how did you get there? What was your logic? Yeah, we've got nothing. I just can't tell you.

Speaker 1: 37:45

No idea.

Speaker 2: 37:46

And that's nonlinear thinking, because it just it isn't that it can't be substantiated, but it sure can't be proven by reductionist thinking. Nor can it sure can't be proven by reductionist thinking nor can it be proved by science?

Speaker 2: 37:59

that uses reductionist thinking. So when somebody says, well, is it proven by science? Well, if you're trying to look at a whole system through a small lens, no, you can't do that, it just doesn't work. Our research mechanisms, our research practices are not designed for whole systems. They are designed for very analytical. Let's look for the smallest dot. But what we're doing now in complexity is looking at the whole, zooming out and seeing the whole picture constantly, because otherwise you end up in that tunnel vision rabbit hole and you don't know how to get out of. You know the rabbits do, but we don't.

Speaker 2: 38:35

And so that's the best I can come up with right now is to know that. And the other thing about nonlinear thinkers you know ADHD and otherwise. They are very comfortable with chaos. Linear thinkers are not. They want a high level of certainty around that. And there's a lot of not. It's transgenerational. I did some research into it, and every generation has its non-linear thinkers.

Speaker 2: 38:59

What I see right now is that there's a lot of creatives in the younger cohorts and they're running into workplaces that are designed for more predictable, linear thinking and instead of the organizations adapting to fit or to take in this different level and kind of intelligence which could really benefit them, they're trying to force these younger generations to fit into this old style of thinking or this old way, traditional way and conventional way and familiar way of processing information when we've got so much more available to us. So I think we're at a really interesting crossroads as a species where we can take both kinds of thinking and put it together, but it'll take people who are both curious adventurers, explorers, willing to discover, and not being terribly attached to the outcome, which is a universal principle. It's just to be open to outcome, but don being terribly attached to the outcome, which is a universal principle, is just to be open to outcome but don't get attached to it. So let's try this grand organizational change and let's apply as many you know diverse thinking as we can to this, as we, as we're trained and skilled to do so. It sort of compels that and then of that we see what comes up next and we work with that.

Speaker 2: 40:14

So, very emergent, very iterative, that's a, you know, an agile thing so, but very iterative and um, and it will run into the, the old way. So you've got to pick the cultures. Well, there's some ones that are better oriented than others and some sectors will define that. You know, by definition, the sector will define it.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Yeah, marvelous. Thank you, it's a perfect way to wrap up. So if you were checking this out on the podcast, show Note has links to all the stuff that we're talking about, and if you want to see any of the video stuff, head over to leanchangetv. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this and if I don't see you before the holidays, have a wonderful break.

Speaker 2: 40:57

Thank you. You too, I'll be texting back and forth. A lot of fun always to talk to you, jason. Thank you, yes, indeed, thanks.