This is Part Three of a Three-part, wide-ranging conversation.  You can enjoy this conversation even if you haven’t listened to parts one and two, but you can find the link to them here.

Today, We explore a topic of great importance and impact - how to make a creative partnership work…something I am thinking of as being a “Conscious Cofounder”.

Carrie reflects on the journey she took in creating her book with her co-author, as well as sharing her lessons learned along the way about helping a partnership ride out the inevitable dips and bumps that happen along the way.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links

Communities are Conversations parts 1 and 2

Carrie's Website

Podcast episode: Being a Beginner is Often the Key We Need for Empathy and Creativity

Building Brand Communities, by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl

The Power of Ritual with Casper ter Kuile

In this conversation, I sat down with Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment. They are building a community of young people that utilize their personal agency to create a more just society. 

Changeist’s programs help 11-26 year olds learn a common civic language, engage in dialogue, and build community to investigate local and global social justice issues. Participants also work with other local community-based organizations to implement local solutions to local problems.

Together, Mario and Beth explore how they met, built a relationship and decided to work on this project together…and how they continue to manage themselves and each other in the entrepreneurship journey. 

A few insights we’ll unpack about conscious co-founder relationships:

• The key to a great co-founder relationship is that both of you do not fall apart at the same time!
• Fighting Well and how Cofounder Intimacy can help: With cofounder intimacy, there is an understanding that often there’s something else behind a conflict or a mood. Because when you're close, you tend to know about what’s going on or that it’s safe to ask.
• Knowing yourself and your skills
• The Power of working with someone with a Different Skill Set but Similar Values 

On Knowing yourself and your skills, and finding compliments on your core team: 

A great leadership team requires Comfort with yourself and your skills and Respect for the skills of others... and it takes Balance - but Balance of what?!

On a leadership team you need:

+ Architects and Visionaries

+ Multipliers - someone who brings something you do not have to the table, who is also committed to the vision and the journey

Another way to think about this is that you need:

+ A Balance of Openers and Closers on the team.

This is the essence of conscious collaboration - knowing if you are more comfortable in a generative or divergent mode, ie, opening, or are more natural in the “Synthesizer” role - organizing, closing, or planning towards action. Mario owns his limitations as a “closer” and intentionally chose Beth as a COO for her natural “shark” skills - her ability to move things forward with clarity.

Mario and Beth also talked about their balanced styles in “Speeding up”  and “Slowing Down” creative conversations - Beth will pump the brakes and ground ideas in reality when the time is right. Feeling that balance between creativity and clarity, speed and thoughtfully slowing things down, is the essence of conscious creativity and conscious collaboration…being comfortable with both opening and closing modes is critical, but collaborating with others who complement your natural approaches is powerful.

Be sure to check out my other co-founder conversations. I discussed building an Integrity Culture with the co-founders of Huddle, Michale Saloio and Stephanie Golik, and investigated prototyping partnerships with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist. (Which Mario and Beth absolutely did, as well!) 

I also sat down with Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, the co-founders of Range to unpack Healthy Conflict in Cofounder relationships. Conflict and collisions will inevitably happen in relationships, so you might as well learn to lean into it!

You may also enjoy my interview with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, where we unpack how they managed their working relationship and discuss Paired creativity, which is totally a thing!

And if you really want to dive deep into the idea of being a conscious co-founder, make sure to check out my conversation with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Changeist

On Healthy Conflict: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/managing-healthy-conflict-co-founder-conversations

I'm thrilled to be able to share this conversation with Carrie Melissa Jones with you! Carrie is the co-author of Building Brand Communities, with Charles Vogl, and she's kind of a big deal in the community-building world. She's also an alum of the facilitation masterclass and a friend.  This is Part Two of a Three-part, wide-ranging conversation. You can enjoy this conversation even if you haven’t listened to part one, but you can find links to that episode here. 

Today, We dig deeper on the subject of community as a conversation. As Carrie says, every community starts with a conversation, and conversations are what sustain communities and hold them together.

You’ll learn about the pitfalls of trying to manufacture and own every aspect of a community, the importance of many-to-many conversations in communities, and why you need to think about your community as a circle, not a megaphone. You’ll also hear more about Carrie’s perspective on the importance of inner work for community builders.

The less I say the better! If you haven’t checked out part one, you can still enjoy part two…but you can find the link to part one below.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links:

Communities are Conversations, Part 1

Carrie's Website

Podcast episode: Being a Beginner is Often the Key We Need for Empathy and Creativity

Building Brand Communities, by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl

The Power of Ritual with Casper ter Kuile

I can’t believe it’s taken me SO long to share this conversation with the Amazing Elise Foster.

Elise is a powerful coach, an accomplished author, and a friend. She’s the co-author of The Multiplier Effect with Liz Wiseman and Beautiful Questions in the Classroom with Warren Berger (who’s written several bestselling books on powerful questions).

She was a thinking partner for me when I was in the early stages of writing my second book, and I was shocked and honored when she decided to come to my Facilitation Masterclass and even more shocked and honored when she actually got something out of it - proving that it really is more about what they practice and the container I create than what I teach!

I’m also honored that she’s been a great member of the Conversation Factory Insiders’ group - we started 2 years ago with alums of the masterclass meeting monthly for experiments and intentional practice, and 2 years and 22 sessions later, we’ve all learned a tremendous amount about leading groups online. Elise was kind enough to lead a session for the community on the QFT, a Question Formulation Technique from the Right Question Institute which has shifted how I think about Powerful Questions and how I coach teams on them, too.

In this conversation, I wanted Elise to unpack not just some of her favorite “Eye Opener” warmup exercises to help get teams to think differently, but also how she thinks about bringing them into sessions with teams, and why they matter.

Lots of folks talk about icebreakers - and they can be helpful to help us connect to each other from afar…but they are such a broad class of activities - they can include games like “Two truths and lie” which are just about connecting people as humans or “three things”, a classic improv game which helps folks just warm up their brains.

Priya Parker asks folks to check into the chat with where they are and what actual substance is beneath their feet, to help ground and connect us.

Eye-openers are both about what we do, as leaders and coaches of people in the moment, in order to create an experience for people…and eye-openers are also about how we help people reflect and unpack that experience and how to connect it to a larger idea about transformation and development.

Elise kicks our conversation off by talking about the “Hand Clasping Game”, a classic exercise that you can try now since we talk about it, but don’t give it enough time to “breathe” in the conversation.

Just clasp your hands together naturally.

Of course, this assumes you have two hands. If this doesn’t apply to you, I hope you can imagine the process.

Now, unclasp your hands and “reclasp them” but shift hands - whatever hand was “pinky out” let the other hand be the “pinky out” hand. Elise calls this “reversing the weave” of your hands.

What do you feel?

Discomfort. Oddness. Weirdness.

That is a raw, visceral experience. Now, the magic happens when Elise unpacks this experience, and applies it to the context she works in - Leadership Transformation. 

Having a toolbox or a mental “file” of these exercises can be great…in fact, I have a whole online course about them. But as Elise and I discuss, having the wherewithal to bring one of these out in a session also takes some guts and some faith.

You take some trust the team has in you and burn it…risk it on an edgy experience…and hopefully you earn that trust back, with dividends, at the end of the unpacking.

Also worth noting is that this is the second episode on the theme of “An experience is worth a thousand slides” when it comes to coaching executive mindset shifts... The first conversation was with Jeff Gothelf, most notably the co-author of Lean UX, where we talked about the Vase and Flowers exercise, another powerful eye-opener that I love very much.

This episode is short and sweet, so without further delay, enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Innovation. We love to talk about it, everyone wants it. Innovation is critical for people and organizations to grow. But we all mean different things when we say it.

Today I have a conversation about how innovation is a conversation with Brian Ardinger. He’s the director of Innovation at Nenet (which owns my student debt! Hi Nelnet!) and the host of InsideOutside.io, a community for innovators and entrepreneurs that produces a great podcast and a conference that brings together startup and enterprise organizations to talk innovation.

There are three key conversations worth designing that we discuss and I want you to have your ears perked up for each as you listen to this episode. Each conversation can help you navigate the innovation process inside or outside your organization. 

These three are the pre-conversation, the conversation about where to look for innovation and the conversation about patience. Brian specializes in a unique perspective on where to look for innovation. More on that in a moment.

The Pre-Innovation Conversation

Before you even start to talk about ideas or technology, it’s essential to start with the end in mind. What kind of innovation is the company really looking for? Skip the pre-conversation and you have no idea of where you’re heading. As Brian points out “without having that definition, then it's sometimes hard to know if you're playing the right game to begin with...the process itself of level setting... I don't think it takes a long time.”

Brian and I didn’t dive into tools to help with that conversation, so I put a few into the show notes. Mapping the innovation conversation can be done in lots of ways. One is thinking about evolutionary vs revolutionary change, another is about tangible vs intangible change, like rethinking policies or business models vs remaking product or space design. 

I *just* did a webinar on this topic with my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, hosted by the amazing people at Mural. Templates of the two innovation leadership frameworks we outlined are there in Mural for you to download and use, along with the webinar video to help you along.

Also check out Mapping Innovation, by Greg Satell. You can download his playbook free in the show notes. 

Where to look for innovation

Brian’s Inside/outside perspective is that innovation can be a conversation between the inside of a company and the outside world. Some innovation will happen internally, and some innovation can be brought from the outside in: the exchange and acquisition of ideas and technology from outside your organization is an important conversation for enterprise organizations to be having.

When you’re trying to innovate, it can be tempting to look in familiar places. If you’re a financial technology firm, it can be tempting to look to fintech startups for what’s next and to try to innovate through acquisition. But you’ll also be looking were your competitors will be looking. Try an innovation approach based on Horizontal Evolution - look to the sides and edges of the landscape. Brian describes this approach as “playing a different ball game”. 

The conversation about patience

Innovation does not happen overnight. Real change takes time and that takes real patience. Brian also points out that organizations need to be having a bigger conversation, about what else needs to change to make real innovation flourish inside the organization. Hint: it's generally more than you bargained for. 

As he says “Corporations are doing exactly what they should be doing...They figured out a business model that works and they're executing and optimizing that particular business model...And to radically change that, the people, the resources, the compensation, all of that stuff has to kind of morph or change to play in a different environment. And so I think that's where the challenge really begins.”

Often people think innovation is about the idea, but it’s a much, much longer conversation. That is, in fact, the first “Myth of Innovation” from Scott Berkun’s excellent book: The Myth that innovation is about an epiphany, not hard work.

It was a real treat to have a conversation with Brian about some of these key issues...I hope you enjoy the episode and happy innovating!

Brian on the Web:

https://insideoutside.io/

https://twitter.com/ardinger

https://www.nxxt.co/

Innovation Leadership Models from the Mural Webinar

https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership

Mapping Innovation by Greg Satell

https://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook-Navigating-Disruptive/dp/1259862259

Download the Playbook for Free: https://www.gregsatell.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook.pdf

Horizontal Evolution

https://evolutionnews.org/2015/08/horizontal_gene/

An amazing summary from Scott Berkun about his solid book, Myths of Innovation:

https://scottberkun.com/2013/ten-myths-of-innnovation/

A few more gems from Greg Satell on the Rules and questions central to innovation:

https://medium.com/@digitaltonto/on-december-9th-1968-a-research-project-funded-by-the-us-department-of-defense-launched-a-ee063b7585f0

https://hbr.org/2013/02/before-you-innovate-ask-the-ri

Transcription:

Daniel: Welcome to the conversation factory. Brian, I'm glad we made the time to make this happen. Um, the reason I'm excited to talk to you is, is that not everybody is, is open or interested in the, the analogy that a company has to have a conversation with the outside world that they can't just, you know, put up some walls and just figure everything out inside those four walls that they have to go outside and have a dialogue with the world in lots of different ways. And the way you do that is, is through helping companies think about inside innovation versus outside innovation, which is my way of like teeing up the how you, how do you talk about what you do with people when you, when you meet people, like how do you contextualize what it is that you do?

Brian: Well, I think a lot of things, uh, Daniel around this particular topic, it's this whole inside/ outside innovation. It's kind of come to us over the years of working first on the outside with startups and trying to understand how do they develop new ideas and, and build things. And then, uh, you know, as I was having conversations with startups and helping them navigate that, I kept having conversations with corporations and bigger companies saying, you know, how are you doing this? How are you taking these early stage companies and through an accelerator program and that, and, and kind of getting them traction in that faster than we can do in our own walls. And so that started to have conversations with the corporations and the people inside organizations and saying, hey, how can we interact with the outside world and, and think and move and act more like a startup or, uh, become a little bit more adaptive in how we do that. So I think it was an evolution of just having conversations and figuring out what's working, what's not working in this world of change and disruption that we're living in.

Daniel: Yeah. So like there's two layers here, which I think are interesting to unpack. I've learned this new term, the idea of an accelerated work environment and this idea of like, let's speed up the conversation about innovation and let's not just put our feet up and look into space and hope a great idea comes to us. Like, let's structure it and let's do it faster. And so can you talk a little bit about like how you structure an accelerator? Like what does it mean to accelerate people through the innovation process from your approach?

Brian: Yeah, so I think a lot of it, like when I go in and talk to bigger companies, first thing I like to do is kind of do a level set of what does innovation even mean to the people in the room. Uh, because innovation has become such a word that's, you know, so limp, so to speak. It can mean anything to anybody. Uh, and so kind of understanding that level set of what does innovation mean to the company? How do they define it? Um, is it transformational innovation where it's, you know, we've got to become the next Uber and disrupt our industry? Or is it a innovation from the standpoint of value creation where we're looking at ways to optimize and incrementally improve what we're building? And so from that perspective, you know, it's, once you have that level set, then you can start thinking about, well, how, what are the particular tactics that you can work through depending on what kind of objectives you want to have and, and what you're trying to accomplish.

Brian: So I think that's the first place we start. And then how we do that. Um, again, I think a lot of is trying to help them understand that you've got to place a lot of bets on innovation and innovation is not, um, you know, it's by default working in the new, it's working in this area of gray and this area of uncertainty,

Daniel: which means there's got to be failure, right? Like there's going to have to be failure.

Brian: Yeah. So, yeah, this uncertainty by default, requires you to figure out and make assumptions and, work through this... Areas of the unknown. And that's very difficult for, a lot of folks to work through. You know, especially at companies and people who are used to having a plan or having an execution model that, that they just execute on. Corporations are doing exactly what they should be doing...They figured out a business model that works and they're executing and optimizing that particular business model…

Brian: And to radically change that, the people, the resources, the compensation, all of that stuff has to kind of morph or change to play in a different environment. And so I think that's where the challenge really begins.

Daniel: So...I'm comfortable with taking this seemingly simple question of like, we want to innovate more and turning it into this, really stretching it out into a much more complicated conversation. Like I'm wondering if people you deal with ever get frustrated with, (you): "well, Brian, you're just making this complicated. Like, we just want to innovate. Just teach us how to innovate. Let's get started." Versus like, let's talk about your strategic goals. Like I can see how some people might get a little impatient with the, with the bigger picture, with the strategic thinking approach.

Brian: Sure. Yeah. And I think, and I think it doesn't have to take a long time on to go through that particular process, but I think if you don't start off on that common definition, then you run the risk later on. And you know, why are we doing this? Why is it not working? You know, we said that, uh, you know, we need to have x, Y, z outcome and these brand new bets that you're putting on the table are not getting us an outcome that we want. Um, but you know, without having that definition, then it's sometimes hard to know if you're playing the right game to begin with. So I think, so the, the process itself of level setting I don't think takes a long time to, to make that happen. And I think, but I do think in general, to change a culture or to move the company towards having that innovation mindset set or innovation as a competency to so to speak, does take a long time. Um, but you can do that through a variety of tactics and in ways that doesn't, um, change, change it all overnight. You know, it doesn't have to be something where, um, you know, you're basically creating something brand new and, and throwing out everything that you've done in the past and, and hoping that the new thing works. Uh, it's really a series of iterative bets that you kind of de-risked these new ideas as you're, as you're approaching them into the world and seeing what happens.

Daniel: Yeah. Now, now here's the, the piece that I think that, that we were talking about that's interesting is that companies can innovate through outside acquisitions or through outside collaborations, like through working with startups. And maybe that makes it seem "like, wow, that's neat, there is an easier way to do this". we don't have to do it all ourselves. We can, we can turn outwards and see, uh, not just learn from other people, but actually like bring that outside innovation inside. Like, and that seems to me like, uh, a complicated process to navigate. Like how do you facilitate, how do you facilitate that conversation and make it smooth for people?

Brian: Yeah. So I think, at least for a lot of folks, you know, the idea of looking outside is not become, it's not a novel concept anymore. You know, maybe five or six years ago it was like, oh, what's one of these things called startups out there? And you know, we're, we're seeing more and more hearing more and more about it. So it's, it's not a novel concept that, hey, the ability for two women in the garage or in a dorm room to spin up something and get some traction and create something of huge value in the world...that's, that's there and that's not going away. And that's speeding up. And so I think, uh, that, uh, first part of the conversation happening, having people understand that, people have the power and tools and capabilities and access to markets and cheap technology, et Cetera, to really disrupt things is there.

Brian: So if we understand that, then what can we do to kind of help navigate that? And, and I think the first thing is just, you know, raise your hand and say, Hey, there are things going on outside. Let's, uh, let's take an inventory or a map on discover what's going on...and one of the, pitfalls I see a lot of companies jump into is let's look in our industry. You know, what's happening in our industry. And that's great, and that you should do that of course. But, um, that's also probably where 99% of your competitors are also playing in that same field. And so I find a lot of times it helps to look at adjacent industries or industries far and away, uh, different from your own to see what's going on, and look for clues or models or technologies or, or talent that may give you a different advantage, if you put those pieces together differently than playing, in the same ball game as your competitors are playing. So, you know, I, I see a lot of people going to these conferences and looking for startups in the fintech space and all you have are corporations in the Fintech area looking at Fintech startups where a lot of times I think, it's better to maybe go to a more of a horizontal conference and looking at AI or uh, you know, different types of data conferences and that would give you a different perspective on how those technologies could be used in your industry or in somebody else's, industry, for example.

Daniel: Do you have a story like, cause it's funny as you're telling me the story, like I'm realizing this is, this is the classic innovators trick, right? Which is, yeah, it's, and it's a classic trick from nature, right? Which is, people don't realize that evolution isn't just, um, vertical where you adapt and survive. But there's horizontal transfer of, of genes in nature. Like literally the reason we have mitochondria is because we ate them, you know, a billion years ago. And all of the energy in our bodies is made by an alien organism that has its own DNA, which I find a very, it's always just like an extraordinary fact. Um, but you know, and I've been telling my clients this for a long time too. Like what do you, do you have, uh, a story to share of a surprising transfer of, of innovation from industry to industry in case there's any doubters in the world.

Brian: Yeah, it's, let, I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head, but I know I've seen it on the reverse side. For example, we've seen, because I run a conference called inside, outside/innovation. And, one of the things we do is we, uh, go out and find startups in a variety of different markets, bring them to a showcase and then bring corporations around to kind of see what they're building and why and hopefully make some connections for that. And where I've seen it happen is a lot of times where, a startup will be working in a particular vertical market, early stage, uh, and they think they've got a solution in, you know, retail or whatever, and a corporation conversation will come around and they'll say, hey, I love your technology, but you're looking in the retail space. Did you know that you could apply this to insurance?

Brian: And the light bulb will kind of go off in the entrepreneur's mind. It's like, oh, this is an opportunity for me to potentially go into a different market or get traction with an early customer that I didn't have before. And so I need to happen that way. Um, and I'm sure the reverse could happen as well where a corporation, uh, is, you know, looking at a variety of startups out there and say, hey, that startup's, not in our industry, but we could definitely apply that technology to what we're doing and leverage it in some way.

Daniel: So that actually sparks, I mean, I definitely, I want to make sure we talk about the conference before we, before we leave, but in a way, like you said, this thing that was really interesting about startups, you know, they're, they're trying to, uh, you know, iterate and build their own, um, you know, their own growth engine. Right? Um, I would imagine that some of them are not necessarily open to this idea of like, well look, we're, we've got our roadmap and we're trying to build our own flywheel and move it, get that moving. This, they may not be open to this, this pivot or this expansion. Uh, there's like, oh, you know, well, we're just focusing on market X and like, do you want me to also like expand our, our code base so that we can also take advantage of, of why and collaborate with these guys. Like I how do you sort of, I know you've done a lot of work on building community through, through the conference. Like how do you find startups are expanding their perspectives to being open to this collaborative conversation versus like, nope, we're just doing our thing.

Brian: Yeah. And I think a lot of it depends on where the startup is in their lifecycle. A lot of the folks that we bring in are probably seed stage and so they, they haven't figured out their business model. They haven't figured out the exact markets sometimes. Uh, and they're looking for that early traction. And you know, one of the reasons we hold this in the Midwest is because, you know, venture capital and the traditional ways of kind of scaling a business in Silicon Valley don't exist out here. And so you've got to find customers. You've got to find ways to, um, to, to get that early traction. And a lot of that means, you know, getting out and finding those early customers. And so having conversations with customers, uh, real people out there and trying to define what problems are out there in the marketplace and then create a solution, uh, to meet those problems and then meet the market where it's at, I think is more effective way a lot of times in the Midwest here or in places outside of your core tech hubs that don't have the, the against the, um, the advantage of getting a venture capital and being able to have a year or two young, two year runway to figure out, uh, how, where that market is.

Brian: So I think, I think so part of that is that, um, I think when I'm talking to start ups, you know, I put my "accelerate" hat on and working as a person who is helping startups through that process, a lot of times I'll quite frankly tell them to stay away from corporates until they, until they figured out some of that stuff. Cause it's very easy to go down the rabbit hole of um, hey, if we just get this one big customer on our plate, we'll be good to go. But a lot of times you know that the timing of the two types of organizations don't match up and it can very, very easily kill start up really pretty quickly.

Daniel: Yeah. And it can kill them in that what they're, they're focusing, they'd lose their focus or their, they spread themselves too thin. You know, so like what, what sort of, I think beautiful about what you do is that there's this symmetry in a way you have a community driven approach to innovation through the conference you do building community, but building community so that you have a group of startups who are interested in this type of thinking so that companies can have an innovation community. So they're not just going it alone, that they have a view to what's, what's open in the world for them. I mean, I guess my question is like, have you always been so community driven? Like how did you come to value community as an approach, as in a solution to, to these challenges that you're seeing?

Brian: So, I mean, I guess I've always felt community is, is a way to accelerate your learning. Uh, and I think early stage ideas, no matter what they are, whether they're inside a startup or inside a corporation, the key to a lot of those taking place in actually taking hold is that the speed of learning. How fast can you, um, take your assumptions and navigate those and understand where you're on the right track or not, and, um, get to that next stage that you need to get to. So, um, community's always been away from me, uh, personally and otherwise to help accelerate those learnings, whether it's, you know, again, connecting somebody to somebody else who can, uh, an expert in a different field or, um, someone who can help me navigate to something else that I didn't know I needed. Um, and so I think it started from that perspective and it started because, uh, you know, quite frankly, when I started a lot of this stuff seven, eight years ago, uh, the, you know, entrepreneurship and startups were, were smaller, uh, both, you know, nationally as well as in our own backyard.

Brian: And so part of it was like, well, if we're going to do this, we're going to, we can't do it all are ourselves. So how do we create a community that allows startups to raise their hand and first say, Hey, I want to be entrepreneurial. I want to try some things. I want to build something. In my backyard. Yeah. And then what do I need and what am I missing and how do I then can be that catalyst to help, um, folks figure that out. Uh, and so it was an evolution of just having conversations, going to different cities, uh, meeting different people, starting a podcast, you know, telling stories, um, you know, starting a new newsletter and then, uh, eventually a conference and everything else around it. Um, and then all the while, you know, consulting and helping companies kind of figure it out on both sides.

Brian: And, um, it's been fun. It's been fun to see that journey and continue to figure out what the, what the next phase is as we build it out.

Daniel: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess I'd begs the question, what is, what's the next phase? Can you talk about it? Is it Secret?

Brian: Yeah, no! Um, so yeah, so inside, outside innovation, you know, we started four years ago actually with the podcast and the original idea was it was called inside, outside, and it was an inside look at startups outside the valley with the idea that their stories, outside the tech hubs that need to be told and how can we help our entrepreneurs, uh, figure that stuff out. And so that's where it started. And again, it'll happen with further conversations as, as we built that particular audience and had conversations around those particular topics, we kept getting asked by innovators in bigger companies, you know, it's like, how are we doing this?

Brian: How, how's this working? We want to be connected to startups. We want to understand this new way of innovating things like design thinking and lean startup in that work, uh, becoming methodologies and tactics that could apply to, you know, start ups outside of a big corporation or, or startups within a corporation that were trying to spin up new ideas. So through that we started the inside outside innovation podcast as the, as the way to have those conversations and talk about corporate innovation and how we're corporate matching with startups and how corporate venture play out differently and how we're internal innovation accelerators popping up all around. And what were the different tactics that folks were using through that. We've kind of created this weird community. It's almost like two communities, but the, the advantages by bringing them together, they both learned from each other. So that's kind of how, that's how it's kind of evolved. What's next? We're trying to figure out the third year of the insight off the innovation summit. Uh, we haven't got the dates and, and that solidify, but it's looking like we're probably going to do it sometime in the end of October. I'm in the process, I'm looking at writing a book around this concept of collaborative and innovation and this innovation as a competency. And then, um, we'll just continue with the podcast and the newsletter and keep growing our conversations with great people out there.

Daniel: You know, Brian, it's really, it's, I mean it's, it's lovely to talk to you about this stuff because, you know, the, the ecological approach you have to this, to this processes, you know, it's, it's clearly organic. Like, like anything else, it's starting a conversation and then you've gotten feedback from the world and over time you've, you've built more than you've added to it. Like it's, it's a, it's just guy. It's a wave that is sort of, it has its ups and downs clearly. But you're just continuing to, to ride that wave, which was really awesome.

Brian: What the, it comes back to, you know, my feeling is that obviously with the world changing in the, in the speed of change that's happening out there, everybody is going to have to take on some of the skillsets of, of the early innovator. You know, again, a startup entrepreneur or, um, or innovator are going to have to have kind of core capabilities or characteristics that allow you to adapt and be nimble and, and, uh, execute.

Daniel: Unless you want a robot to do your job!

Brian: Yeah. That's executing different ways that, that you didn't have or that were different in the way that you could execute in the past. So things like, you know, curiosity having a bias towards learning characteristics like having a, an a customer focus and this bias towards problem solving for that customer. You know, the, the skill of collaboration and you know, knowing that you can't build everything yourself.

Brian: There's bias towards team, um, you know, some of the characteristics of just speed, you know, how can you have this bias towards action and experimentation. And then finally having kind of the reverse of that you are having patience and that bias towards that long term value creation. You know, I think those are some of the core concepts that make up, um, this new world that we're living in. And the more individuals, whether you're, you know, a traditional manager or a entrepreneurial founder, those are the skillsets that are going to take you to the next level in the world that we're living in.

Daniel: It sounds like a good book already, Brian. I don't know. I like it.

Brian: I'm still outlining.

Daniel: It sounds like a pretty good proposal to me. Um, so listen, I, I, we're, we're up against our, our, our time together. Uh, is there anything I haven't asked you about that I should, that we should talk about? Any, any, any final thoughts?

Brian: Yeah, I'm curious for, you've obviously been in the space of helping people have conversations and that I'm always curious to understand what have you learned from helping companies and people kind of navigate a, this world of change, uh, and in this world of innovation, what are some of the things that are obstacles or things that stand out that, uh, I could take back to my audience as well? Well,

Daniel: I mean, do you have a hard stop in the next three minutes because, no, go ahead. We can go over a little bit. Well, I mean, for me, what really resonated in what you were talking about is the necessity for patients. And I think this is one thing that's really, really hard, um, for people because we want to go fast and we want to have results. Um, but we also need to slow things down. So one of the things that like I'm becoming more aware of in my own work is psychological safety, which people, you know, Google identified as like the main characteristic of effective teams. The ability, the willingness, the openness to saying what's happening, to be able to speak your mind, to say what's right or to say what's wrong. And that, I don't know, that stuff doesn't really come for free. Uh, it's a really, you have to cultivate that environment.

Daniel: And so for me, you know, my angle and entry point is always that somebody, somebody has to design that conversation. Um, if a group of, you know, if a group of people is gonna talk about what we're going to do next and how to innovate, we can either contribute content or we can contribute process. Um, if the, to me, the most important and precious conversation is when a group of people is coming together, the fact that you're willing to, that you have a framework, I'm guessing, to stretch out the conversation about what's our innovation roadmap and where are we placing our bets allows people to say like, okay, what's my holistic view of this? It creates, it creates safety, right? It creates a moment where, where we can have the conversation about innovation, we can have the conversation about how we're gonna brainstorm.

Daniel: We can have the conversation about how we're going to, uh, evaluate ideas and how we know if they're good or not. Um, and so for me, I think, um, I feel like I'm ranting now, but I was at a problem framing workshop, uh, with my, my friend Jay Malone, who has a company called new haircut. They do a lot of design sprint training and he was teaching a problem framing workshop. And at the end of the workshop, he presented, uh, you know, on one hand, a very straightforward, like, here, this is what problem framing is in the essence. Like, uh, who has the problem, uh, why does it matter? Um, when does it happen? Uh, like, you know, think about like, where to play and how to win. And this one woman said like, well, yeah, what about, uh, uh, how do we know when it's been solved? You know, how do we know if it's working? And this is, I think one of the biggest challenges with, with companies is we don't know like what good looks like. We don't know when to start. We don't know how to stop working and grinding it out. Um, well, and the metrics

Brian: are so different from existing business model versus a new business model that you don't even know who the customers are and the value proposition you're creating at the beginning.

Daniel: Yeah. So I mean, for me, like I find the, one of the biggest challenges of innovation is that people bring me in to say like, okay, let's help this team coach through this process. Meanwhile, they've already got a job that takes 100% of their time. Um, and they look at me and they're like, this guy has just given us extra work to do. You know, the workshop that I come in is taking them away from their quote unquote real job. The, the work that I asked them to do to go out and do the interviews and to, to get customer contact looks like it's taking away time for them. And so this idea that that innovation's like something you can buy or pay someone else to do. To me, I want people to be earning their own innovation. But the problem is that most people are at 110% capacity.

Daniel: And You bring in somebody like me who says, okay, let's do some design thinking stuff. Let's do a, you know, even if it's a week long sprint, which doesn't give you everything you need, you know, if it's a six week process, it's people are like, Oh man, that was great, but oh, that was hard and I never want to do that again. It's like, it's really, really challenging to get people to find time to innovate. And that's frustrating to me.

Brian: Absolutely.

Daniel: As a person who just really wants people to get their hands dirty with it so that they value it and, and participated in it. So, I don't know. I don't know what the balance is there. That's... I don't know. I don't know if that's a question with an answer, but

Brian: I don't know if there's a clear answer for that one. No, no.

Daniel: that, oh, so, yeah, I mean that, that's, that's, that's my perspective. I don't know if that, if that's helpful to you at all, but that's, that's…

Brian: Very much so, very much so.

Daniel: Is there, is there anything else we should I this, this is definitely the shortest episode. You know, I'm, I'm sort of enjoying or slash you know, floundering in the, in the 30 minute time zone. So I just want to make sure that we've covered everything that you want to cover …

Brian: No, it's been great, thanks for having me on the show and the opportunity to talk about insideoutside.io and everything we're doing.

Daniel: Yeah. So like that's the, that's the final question. Like where, uh, where can people find all things insideoutside and Brian Ardinger on the Internet.

Brian: Yeah. Thanks Daniel. Yeah. So, uh, obviously you can go to the website insideoutside.io that has our podcast, our newsletters sign up for that. Um, and obviously I'm very, um, out there on Twitter and Linkedin in that happy to have conversations. So reach out and say hi.

Daniel: Well we will do that. Um, Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time. It's really, it's always interesting to have some patience and just slow down and have some of these conversations about this stuff, that's I think really, really important. Like you said, the future is unwritten and uncertain and all of us need to have skills of adaptability, the inside and I think both sides of the ecosystem that you're a co-creating - the innovator, the startups need to learn from big companies how to scale and big companies need to learn from startups, how to be more nimble. So I think it's really a really important dialogue that you're facilitating. It's really cool.

Brian: Thanks for having me on the show!

Today’s guest is Robin Peter Zander, an author, strategist, and performance coach. (scroll down for Robin’s full bio and links)

The big insight for me in this episode is to ask myself a simple set of questions, often: why am I opening my mouth? What’s my goal?

Wanting the best for the other person you’re talking to is a fine place to start. But there’s a level of humility we could all benefit from: Starting from a firm belief that each person has their own wisdom, rather than believing I know better what they need than they do.

We talk about four levels of questions:

1. Fact based questions

2. Judging questions

3. Questions that elicit Stories and Narratives, ie, questions that pull at a thread

4. Loving Questions, which are present and non-judgmental

I shared a 2 X 2 framework I’m working on in my book, How Conversations Work, that contrasts these two question stances: Asking vs. Telling. We’ve all heard (and asked) these type of non-questions.

The other axis is being problem-focused or solution-focused in your questions. “Have you tried this?” is a really different question from “What have you tried?”

We reference two magnificent quotes about questions that I want to offer here in full:

In the word question, there is a beautiful word - quest. I love that word. We are all partners in a quest. The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours - and then there is dialogue. The moment we have answers, there is no dialogue. Questions unite people.

Elie Wiesel

Krista Tippett, the host of NPR’s On Being, suggests that “questions elicit answers in their likeness. It's hard to transcend a simplistic question. It's hard to resist a generous one. ”

If we’re willing to take risks in communication others can respond in kind. The shift has to start somewhere, with someone.

Bio

Robin Peter Zander is an author, strategist, and performance coach. With a diverse background ranging from management consulting to the circus, he has spent his life working with individuals and organizations to maximize potential. He is the founder of Zander Media, a creative agency which works with start-ups to grow brand and culture, and Responsive Conference, which convenes annually to explore the future of work. Learn more at http://robinpzander.com/

Links:

https://www.zandermedia.com/

https://www.responsiveconference.com/

http://www.robinpzander.com/show/

How to do a Handhandstand: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NRBACYI/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

www.Responsive.org

https://www.anatbanielmethod.com/

https://feldenkrais.com/

https://option.org/about-us/what-we-teach/

Art has the power to change and even lead the conversation, to spark curiosity and fuel real engagement.

But what comes first in a powerful creative project? 
The idea and the message?
The tools and the talent?
Or The Funding, that can make or break it all?

My guest today is Benjamin Von Wong, who creates art on a grand scale that goes beyond awe.

He is an Artist focused on amplifying positive impact. He does that both in the process of how he creates his art, through community, and in the images it produces, finding visual metaphors that stick with people, long after they’ve seen the work.

His mission is to help make positive impact unforgettable. For the last seven years, Von Wong and his team, under the banner of “Unforgettable Labs” have generated over a billion organic views on topics like Ocean Plastics, Fast Fashion, and Electronic Waste for organizations like Dell, Greenpeace, Nike, Starbucks and Kiehl's.

In this opening quote you can hear him wrangle with the dance between art and marketing, and his new mission to find ways to create sustainable funding streams that allow him to create message-shaping art in times and places where the world is gathered to solve some of our most pressing challenges. 

It’s a move that can make his work more deeply sustainable - for himself and for his team. Von Wong’s The Unforgettable Project leverages the collective power of philanthropy to help build broader campaigns around environmentally net-positive innovations worth spotlighting - instead of waiting for corporations that are seeking eyeballs and leveraging their funding for good, he’s building a funding source that actively seeks the next project that needs to go viral.

Some of his notable work includes the Giant Plastic Tap which used trash from the slums of Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya, to demand that corporations #TurnOffThePlasticTap. The Giant Tap was displayed prominently when 193 different countries and 1,500 delegates came together at UNEA 5.2 in 2022 to discuss what was then termed the “Paris Agreement For Plastics” and was eventually used in the United Nations official Plastics Report while raising over $100,000 for the Human Needs Project.

Recently he installed a grand sculpture at the Highline in New York City in collaboration with Kiehl’s to raise awareness and drive adoption of refillable products in the beauty world. Von Wong, along with a large community of volunteers, collected and assembled 2 tons of plastic bottles into a “single-use hydra”, seen by nearly 300-thousand visitors and close to 3 million social impressions for their message of #DontRebuyJustRefill…but as he points out in this conversation, most of the people on the High Line don’t have the leverage to change the system - which is why he seeks to place his epic art in places where the system changers meet.

I learned about Benjamin's work through his wonderful talk at Creative Mornings (a global, IRL community of creatives that hosts monthly talks all around the world). His presentation spoke to some beautiful topics - like the importance of nurturing the conditions of success (like inner narratives and cultivating community) vs chasing success, and the notion of sifting your feelings from reality when it comes to deciding what is enough - personally, financially, and in the work - ie, is my work having enough impact? Von Wong shared the ways in which he’s rewriting his inner narrative to balance his personhood and his purpose or impact. I found the talk profoundly moving and beautiful and highly recommend watching it.

In this conversation, you’ll find:

Ruminations on Creationships - relationships that exist to co-create something wonderful together (4:09)

The Importance of an Interface or a Container to foster Conversation (7:47)

Benjamin’s perspectives on going to where the conversations are already happening to have the deepest impacts. This is certainly true for the large scale work that he creates, but it is also true for anyone looking to change a big conversation. Making people come to you vs going to them means the activation energy of change is that much lower. (13:18)

Benjamin’s thoughts on Community Building and Co-creating art with a community (16:43)

The polarity Benjamin is threading right now: Balancing Speeding Up (to do more work and have more impact) and Slowing Down (in order to build deeper creationships) (26:21)

The difference between an Audience and a Community (32:44)

The power of creating a word that summarizes and defines an idea that people flock to (which we might term the Rumpelstiltskin or Le Guin Rule (as she famously wrote in A Wizard of Earthsea “To weave the magic of a thing, you see, one must find its true name out.” (33:39)

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.vonwong.com/

unforgettablelabs.com 

https://www.thevonwong.com/

How I made plastic pollution more shareable with a Mermaid and 10000 plastic bottles - 3/3

https://creativemornings.com/

Benjamin Von Wong Featuring Possibly Poet: "Is activism sustainable?"

“Stop thinking about drawing as an artistic process. Drawing is a thinking process. If you want to think more clearly about an idea, draw it.”

This is the simple essence of Dan Roam’s message. Dan has written five best-selling books about visual thinking and storytelling. Back of the Napkin was one of my seminal texts, Show and Tell is a blockbuster if you want to learn how to tell better stories...and who doesn’t? And you have to love the title of Dan’s book “Draw to Win”...maybe the most direct distillation of Dan’s perspective. Drawing is thinking...and thinking helps you do better work. 

Who should be drawing when many brains are involved in a complex project?

What Dan helped me wrestle with in this conversation is how drawing helps groups think, together and how he, as a model-making expert, can help push the thinking of a group. 

We talk through the yin-and-yang of a top-down approach of model making (with someone like Dan pushing the edge of excellence *for* a group he’s working with, vs a group hammering out a new model, bottom-up, doing visual synthesis together.

Both are powerful ways to lead a conversation. 

Making a framework for a group can shape their conversation profoundly - the right visual tool can frame a conversation and ease the progress of a team’s thinking: Drawing a classic 2 X 2 creates a frame, a container for a conversation. I’ve always found that, even if someone finds a case that falls outside of the framework offered, they speak about their ideas in relation to the framework - the conversation has been anchored - which is one way to think about what I am calling Conversational Leadership.

There is power and danger in shaping conversations. Leading the conversation can mean that we’ve prevented something else from emerging - something organic, co-created and co-owned by the whole group. This is the IKEA effect...even if something that Dan makes might be technically better than what a group can make on it’s own, they may value what they’ve put their hands on more.

As with all polarities, the middle path, approaching both ends flexibly, is the most powerful. I know from experience how transformative it can be when your client picks up the pen and adds their ideas alongside yours. Who picks up the pen first can shift the direction of the conversation profoundly. Stepping back and offering the pen to the group is a choice we can all take to shift a conversation.

Drawing is how to win in the broadest sense. If you’re the only person drawing in the conversation, you will anchor the conversation and lead the conversation. If you get everyone to draw, the conversation will be a win-win and led by anyone willing to take up the pen.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links, Notes and Resources

Dan on the Web (learn about his award-winning books and his work and more…)

Dan’s Online Learning space: Napkin Academy

Dan’s favorite, most fundamental drawing:

Some of my favorite visuals from Dan that you can find on the web...

The Power of Visual Sensemaking as an organic process:

How to think systematically about being visual:

The simple shapes of Stories:

Other books to learn more about visual thinking:

Gamestorming

The Doodle Revolution

One of my favorite quotes from this interview:

Data doesn’t tell a story

As I always like to say, data doesn't tell a story, people do. And Dan breaks down how to do that, in detail. As he says: 

"A good report brings data to life. When we do a report right, we deliver more than just facts, we deliver them in a way that gives insight. It makes data memorable and makes our audience care." 

These capacities are also powerful tools for managing a creative relationship.

I’m doing a series of interviews with co-founders on how they design their conversations (ie, their broader relationship) and manage themselves and each other while building and running a company. 

A book is a mini-company, and so when I met Carolyn through a friend, I thought she and Scott would be amazing folks to unpack how a high tolerance for dissonance, complexity, ambiguity, and chaos can help us make amazing things, together.

Creativity, making something new, isn’t ever a clear linear progression towards the dream, the magical ideal goal. There’s always iteration, recursion, re-invention…and being patient with the process, your creative partner and yourself - that last one is a truly powerful key.

One of my favorite insights was the idea of the importance of sensitivity and awareness of your own inner state and the willingness to take downtime…both to manage yourself, refuel and to trust that stepping back will always help - since constant production isn’t possible!

One thing you’ll hear over and over again is the complementarity and flow in a positive creative relationship: being able to feed back and forth between each other and also give and take, grounded in respect and admiration for each other's skills and contributions. This respect for the other’s skills allows for a dramatic increase in output through parallel work, or relay-race style collaboration.

Make sure to check out Carolyn’s other writing and book doula work at carolyngregoire.com and Scott’s podcast, course, and his recent best-selling book, Transcend, at scottbarrykaufman.com.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Carolyn Gregoire's website

Scott Barry Kaufman's website

Wired to Create, by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire

Trust the Process, by Shaun McNiff

The Messy Middle, by Scott Belsky

Origami: From Angelfish to Zen

Today I talk with Demetrius Romanos, SVP of Design & Development at Ergobaby. Demtrius has been my boss, my client and is also my friend!

Demetrius has worked on leading design on products of all shapes and sizes, from chocolate bars to medical devices and from laptop bags to baby carriers...and everything in between.

I’m excited to share a deep conversation about design leadership.

We discuss how to invite more of the behaviours you want in your team, how to lead with humility and how working across the whole organization to build a design system can get the whole team to think more deeply about what they deliver...and more importantly, why they deliver it. So many people come to me asking me to help their team develop a shared vision and a shared language of problem solving...Demetrius shares his insights on how to do just that, gently and relentlessly, over time.

When I teach teams about problem solving, I often break down the most famous of Design Thinking tools, the “How might we” statement, into 3 key parts.

Might indicates possibility...it’s not about how *must* we or how *will* we solve this challenge...Might, in this way, helps make problems “huggable” (as an old business partner of mine liked to say).

We indicates that we are in this challenge, together. It’s not about how Must You or how Should They solve this challenge.

Demetrius embodies these two aspects in his design leadership: Possibility and Togetherness. But it’s the first word of the phrase that (surprisingly) does the most of all:

How implies that a solution can exist if we put effort into it. The core truth of the design mindset is that a solution is possible, that design can get us out of this challenge. It’s optimism

Everything around us has been designed, usually by someone else, in the past: our offices and digital tools, our calendar and clocks. Our financial structures and org structures. Choosing to look at the current state of affairs and *not* throwing your hands up in despair, not blaming whoever came first, but rolling up your sleeves and getting started, believing that design, that intentionality can make a difference, is the essence of design and the essence of leadership. I’ve learned a lot from Demetrius over the years, but in this conversation, I am reminded of the power of warmth and optimism to lead change.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources

Min 1: Design to me is about facilitating change in a meaningful way. It's not just about aesthetically making something better or focusing on this one aspect of a user experience, but really taking into account a big picture and a small picture, and doing it in a way that makes sense.

Min 9, on the value of doing the work to create a design system: 

the end benefit was that we got so deep into who we are and recognizing the values that our brand makes for our products and for our end users. It just changes now how people talk about what we do internally.

Min 13, on how to build alignment through design:

Small wins, I think is the best way to put it. My career, especially the last, probably 15 years has been very much about driving organizational change with through design, but I don't do it in a silo. It's all about collaboration, but you have to bring people along on the ride...People can say, "Hey, I see the value in this." It's simple as that. It's not about me, it's about the process. If they believe in what the output was and what they got out of it, if they felt better afterwards than they did going in, then I've done a big part of my job. By the time I got them to this design language workshop, there was still uncertainty, but they were comfortable with me being their guide along the ride.

Min 35 on Design Leadership:

You lead with what's the big vision. What are we trying to achieve? You lead by giving them a safe place to explore, you lead by assigning sub leaders, making people feel empowered to do what they do, and to come back and surprise you with something you might not have asked for. I think it's a bigger role, frankly. Bigger in the sense that you're not just the facilitator that's going to ask the questions and create the worksheets and all that stuff for like a finite period of time. You're really teaching skills and you're encouraging things that are different. It's forcing the folks that you assign as sub-leaders to really be that. I think it's helping people grow faster.

Min 44 on Humility and Respect Leadership:

I was always taught to respect ... you've heard this kind of stuff before, respect the janitor just like you respect the CEO. We're just all people. At the end of the day, we're just all little creatures on this earth trying to do our thing to move the ball down the field a little bit. So, if we just all have a little bit of humility, work well together, no one has to be best friends at work, but we sure work better when we like each other, and then we see a bigger reason for doing what we do. Getting people to sort of rally around that. Be honest and open. Say, "Hey, this is not my thing, but that's your thing. Or maybe if this isn't for you, try something else." I don't know. It's just a comfort in my own skin and trying to live through that. I think people respond to that, especially your younger designers when they see the boss say, "I don't know that, but I know this guy that knows that so we're just going to go ask him," and it's okay.

More About Demetrius

Demetrius Romanos is a business-minded, brand experience evangelist.  A consummate design diplomat, he’s been preaching the gospel that “everything matters,” from his time working in renowned consultancies to his present role SVP of Design & Development at Ergobaby.

For over 20 years, Romanos has applied his creative leadership, strategic thinking and deep empathy to help companies use design strategically to change corporate culture and drive top and bottom line growth. 

A graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s industrial design program, Romanos has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers, as well as being included in the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum’s first Design Triennial.

In this conversation I talk with Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, the co-founders of Range, software that helps teams be more connected, focused, and productive no matter where they’re working. Global teams at Twitter, New Relic, CircleCI, and more keep their teams in sync and connected with Range.

Jen is the co-founder and COO. Prior to founding Range, Jen led Medium’s organizational development team. Jen has partnered and consulted with startups and multinational corporations on empowering autonomous and distributed teamwork. She lives in Colorado with her two cats and husband.

Dan is co-founder and CEO of Range. Prior to Range, Dan was Head of Engineering at the publishing platform Medium. And before that he was a Staff Software engineer at Google, where he worked on Gmail, Google+, and a variety of frontend infrastructure.

He has an MA in Industrial Design from Sheffield Hallam University and a BSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Manchester. In past lives he raced snowboards, jumped out of planes, and lived in the jungle.

This is a fairly meta conversation (in the old sense of the word!) since we talked about how Dan and Jen structure their relationship and how they built their company…which is a company that builds software that structures relationships - specifically, effective teams.

As Dan outlines, “Human behavior requires structure to facilitate it…in an organization, software provides a lot of architecture, which shapes our behavior, but we're (often) not intentional about that software. The whole theory of Range was… how can we build software that acts as architecture that shapes the behaviors that we believe to be present in effective teams?”

My book Good Talk is built around the idea of a Conversation OS, or Operating System. 

One element of the Conversation Operating System is error and repair. As Jen says in the opening quote, conflict and collisions will inevitably happen in relationships.

Dan suggests that “if you have productive conflict or if you encourage productive conflict, there will be times when you step over the boundary and it's what you do then that is the important thing, in how you recover.” In other words, how you repair the error or breach in the relationship is often more important than the error itself.

Many folks shy away from conflict, or hope it never happens. Planning for it and knowing it will happen is a fundamentally different stance, a more effective Error and Repair Operating System.

I also love the “reasonable person principle” that Jen and Dan use in their relationship, as long as it never slides into gaslighting.

We unpack a lot more great stuff, from uninstalling Holacracy at Medium to the importance of being journey-focused in entrepreneurship relationships, and the power of crafting explicit processes ahead of needing to use them.

Dan and Jen are also big believers, like me, in the power of the “check-in''. For example, in my men’s group we share in 30 seconds how we're doing emotionally and physically at the start of every group. At Range, it can be as simple as a “green, yellow, red” check-in or as deep as going straight to the question “how are you…really?” 

They suggest that baking human connection into each and every meeting is much much more effective than trying to isolate connection into one “vibes” meeting.

As with many of my co-founder conversations, there is a common thread of clear roles along with an awareness of and respect for the Venn diagram of skills between the co-founders.

Another common thread, as Dan says at the end of our conversation: looking after yourself and attending to yourself is key, because “if you're not in a good state, you can't be a good teammate and you definitely can't be a good leader.”

Be sure to check out my other co-founder conversations. I discussed building an Integrity Culture with the co-founders of Huddle, Michale Saloio and Stephanie Golik, and investigated prototyping partnerships with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist. 

You may also enjoy my interview with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, where we unpack how they managed their working relationship. Paired creativity is a thing!

And if you really want to dive deep into the idea of being a conscious co-founder, make sure to check out my conversation with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Range

Lawrence Lessig’s Pathetic Dot theory

Daniel Coyle’s Belonging Cues: Belonging cues are non-verbal signals that humans use to create safe connections in groups. The three basic qualities of belonging cues are 1) the energy invested in the exchange, 2) valuing individuals, and 3) signaling that the relationship will sustain in the future.

Kegan’s Levels, specifically, Stage 4 — Self-Authoring mind

Lead Time Chats

Coming together is an essential human drive, one that not even a global viral pandemic can fully put a damper on. Many of us have been meeting *more* than ever before as workshops and conferences have gone online all over the world. With vaccines starting to be released in some countries, the question on everyone’s lips is “when can we get back together?” There are lots of guesses but no one knows for sure. If you’re planning events for mid-year 2021, I hope you have a crystal ball *and* that you listen to the rest of this episode.

Meredith Kaganovskiy shares her wisdom and experience with us. She’s a certified meeting professional, a certified digital events strategist and the Senior Project Manager of the DIA Global Annual Meeting. We talk about her herculean efforts in taking a 7000 person-strong flagship event into a virtual one with weeks to spare and dive deep into Meredith's philosophy of experience-driven events planning, as well as her “two experiences, one meeting” motto for the hybrid future on the horizon.

I feel lucky to have been able to work with Meredith and Robyn Weinick, the Global Program Officer on this project as their coach over a few very intense weeks and provide them a space and place to think and build a vision for the experience they were trying to create, working to think past the challenges and restrictions that technology placed on them.

The Hybrid Bridge

Meredith suggests that the old-school way of doing hybrid - a bridge to take questions and insights from the virtual space into the “real” space - is no longer enough. This once “wowed” audiences and helped in-person event planners expand their audiences and reach.

The Virtual-First Platform

Meredith believes that it’s now table-stakes to have a lively, interactive and self-contained virtual platform for remote attendees. The bridge between the in-person and virtual experiences used to be mostly one-way, with in-person taking the lead. Meredith predicts that the hybrid future of events means that the bridge between virtual and in-person needs to be more broad and two-way - a real conversation between equals. And that just like an in-person meeting, a virtual meeting has to provide a range of conversational spaces: from intimate opportunities to connect, to larger arenas for learning and listening, balancing curated conversations and more open-doors dialogs.

Meredith also shares her broader philosophy of event planning, how she visualizes the personality of a meeting and much more. Enjoy the conversation as much as I did recording it.

Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Sometimes the bold goals we set out to achieve actually happen, and sometimes something even more amazing happens - something better than we can imagine.

Usually that happens because of the people we meet along the way, the conversations we have, the unexpected connections we make that open up new doors - in a word, Serendipity. I had always wondered about what amazing, powerful and sustained conversations led to the High Line Park in New York City becoming a reality.

Have you walked the High Line? Literally millions of people a year walk some of its 1.45 mile length, enjoying expansive views of the city and hundreds of local plantings, as well as amazing art installations. But it was slated for demolition and considered an eyesore and a relic, as long ago as the 1980s.

Built in 1933, it was at the time a revolutionary elevated train line that was colloquially called the Lifeline of New York City since it was regularly bringing millions of tons of meat, dairy and produce by rail, directly into the warehouses and factories of lower manhattan for preparation and distribution. The rail line wasn’t just a lifeline because of the food it brought, it also moved the rail lines safely above the city’s growing traffic - in the 1910s, hundreds of people were killed by the ground-level trains that ran in the middle of the bustling 10th avenue!

By the 1960s the line was growing obsolete due to the rise of trucking, and by the 1980s, it was a hulking relic of the past.

In 1999, Robbie Hammond, my guest for this conversation, co-founded the Friends of the High Line along with Joshua David. The two met at a local community board meeting where the High Line’s future was being discussed. Rudy Guliani, NYC’s mayor at the time, had signed an executive order for its demolition - many property owners wanted it gone so they could take back the land occupied by the tracks and build bigger buildings - a dream of greater square footage and increased rent rolls.

Currently Robbie is the President & Chief Strategy Officer for Therme Group US, where he is leading an initiative to bring large scale bathing facilities to the United States. He also currently serves on the boards for Little Island, Sauna Aid, Grounded Solutions Network, and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

When I was a little kid in NYC in the 80s, I looked up at the hulking tracks and thought “what the hell is that doing in the middle of the city?!” Many adults thought the same thing.

Robbie and Josh looked at the tracks and thought “we should really do something cool with that instead of tearing it down.”

In 2009 the first section of the high line opened to the public. In 2019 and 2023 new sections were completed.

Against all odds, “two neighborhood nobodies” (as one writer described them!) created a coalition, learned to raise money and garner the favorable attention of local politicians, and persisted and succeeded. The park is maintained, operated, and programmed by Friends of the High Line in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation and is run on donations.

There are many amazing angles to the story of the Highline:

Maybe you DON’T need a coherent or complete Vision or Mission?!

Robbie makes it clear that they didn’t even have a clear vision or strategic plan for some time…just the idea that the elevated line was worth saving and doing something with…they discovered what they wanted to create along the way. He actually credits the vagueness of the mission with creating a “big tent” that attracted more people to the organization.

From a conventional dream to something better than anyone could imagine

One surprising insight is that the property owners had a rather conventional dream - tear the elevated tracks down so they could build bigger. Turning the High Line into a park seemed like a low-value, impossible pipedream - sex workers and drug users congregated under the overpasses, after all! But the High Line’s millions of visitors have transformed the value of the area far beyond the addition of a few extra square feet.

The High Line as a symbol for dreamers of impossible dreams

One of Robbie’s greatest points of pride is that the High Line now stands as a symbol to many “crazy dreamers” who find inspiration in the story of outsiders persisting and accomplishing more than they ever dreamed possible. The High Line is now a global inspiration for cities to transform unused industrial zones into dynamic public spaces. But Robbie loves the personal stories of folks who come up to him at talks, who are working on all sorts of projects and who find inspiration in Robbie and Josh’s “keep going against all odds” story.

The importance of Talking to People

Robbie talks about how he was always willing to pick up the phone and talk to anyone - the fearlessness of someone raised in sales. But the Friends of the High Line were also willing to host conversations with community groups and listen to them, and learn from them and communicate with them about why they were listening to their ideas and why, in some cases, they weren’t going to. Open lines of consistent communication made the High Line possible.

The Alchemy of the Co-Founder Relationship

In this conversation, Robbie is bracingly reflective and shines a sometimes harsh light on himself. Here at the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Highline and the 25th anniversary of the start of the project, the founding of the Friends of the High Line, Robbie looks back and is refreshingly honest about his own challenges and shortcomings, as well as missed opportunities along the way to do things differently.

What was truly surprising to me in this conversation is that Robbie was so open about his challenges as a co-founder, and is so open-eyed about how essential this most intimate of relationships can be…and how much he and Josh were willing to invest (in time, energy and resources) in that relationship to keep it intact, functional and flourishing.

The Energy and Anxiety of Creation

Robbie suggests that it is common for creative people (which includes entrepreneurs, and anyone that starts anything) to have a drive to accomplish their dream - that is what keeps them going… but that there is often “an undercurrent of anxiety”. Meditation helped Robbie reclaim a higher level of happiness as the High Line approached realization, but it took him years to undo the deep grooves anxiety etched in his psyche. It's a worthwhile lesson for anyone listening out there who's creating something, start taking care of yourself sooner rather than later.

You can follow Robbie on Instagram at thehighlineguy and stay in the loop on Therme’s projects at https://www.thermegroup.com/.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.thermegroup.com/

https://www.instagram.com/thehighlineguy

Therme post (2021) 

Robbie’s Book: The Highline:The Inside Story

https://www.thehighline.org/history/

Early documents from the highline: Reclaiming The High Line: A Project Of The Design Trust For Public Space With Friends Of The High Line (2002)

Talks:

Rail Yards Talks 2011

"High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky" - Richard Hammond

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_hammond_building_a_park_in_the_sky

My guests today, Ryan Horrigan and Armando Kirwin, bonded over their mutual fascination with the future of entertainment and their desire to do something innovative, which led to the creation of their current company, Artie. We talk about pivots and micro pivots and staying sane through the million tiny conversations Cofounders need to navigate.

Ryan, the CEO, and Armando, President and co-founder of Artie have a pretty radical vision for the future of social media— namely, to make TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and other social media apps the gaming consoles of the future.

Before co-founding Artie, Ryan served as Chief Content Officer of the Comcast-backed VR & AR startup Felix & Paul Studios. He oversaw the development and production of feature films, including Academy Award Best Picture Winner “12 Years A Slave.” at Fox/New Regency, and is a two-time Emmy Award winner for immersive entertainment projects he produced with President Barack Obama and NASA, as well as a Peabody Award winner.

Armando has been in the VFX world for over fifteen years, working with numerous award-winning directors, including two-time Academy Award nominee Lucy Walker,  Sundance Grand Jury prize nominee Sandy Smolan on The Click Effect, which was nominated for an Emmy; and Imraan Ismail on The Displaced, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes. He also produced Take Flight, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Fassbender, and Charlize Theron. His most recent VR film, Nothing is Safe (2022), was an official selection of the Cannes Marché du Film.

While movies are a wonderful industry, they both saw the power and potential of gaming as a storytelling platform - and a financial juggernaut. If you didn’t know: According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. Let’s put that into perspective: the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, and the movie industry at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is more than three times the size of the music industry and almost four times the size of the movie industry.

TikTok used to be where people just watched videos (as of this writing, TikTok and Netflix are nearly tied for eyeball-hours). Now, hundreds of thousands of people are playing games on TikTok thanks to Artie and the technology breakthroughs that make streaming app-quality games from within social media apps possible.

But how did they get here? Through a million micro conversations about data, signals, stakeholders and what it all means. Artie is where are are today not because of one big pivot, but many, many micro-pivots over the course of years.

Pivots impact the team - who you needed on staff  when you were focused on one path isn’t always who you need when you’ve decided to shift directions. Communication between departments and involving the team more is important - which means being intentional about regular check-ins and interdepartmental communication, but eventually, it comes down to the co-founder conversation - owning the choices that need to be made and moving forward, all while making sure you stay healthy and sane.

Pivots vs Shaping Clay

I loved this metaphor from Ryan, where he suggested that, from the outside, to investors, bloggers and customers, a company may have pivoted once, or a few times. From the inside, there are daily conversations, where the product is being shaped like clay, remade, refocused, almost constantly.

“Listen to your body, have a Coach and a Therapist”

This was one of my favorite insights from this conversation. It’s not often that men talk openly about mental health and needing support. Ryan and Armando both have a coach (although they meet with that coach separately) and Armando advocated for having a therapist, while Ryan discussed how they got much much more intentional about listening to their bodies and taking down time. Armando suggests that therapy focuses on self-awareness, learning about yourself and your patterns, while his coaching focuses on future outcomes and goals.

“You have to care deeply about your people, but at the same time, you can't care about what they think of you”

Ryan quotes what he describes as a harsh-sounding notion from  Dick Costello when he was at Twitter: In Ryan’s experience, when you make a tough decision, you can't worry about everyone's collective feelings (even though you DO care about them as people and teammates). You have to make the decision that you, as the leader, believe needs to be made.

As a founder, you have to make and own tough decisions.

Ryan points out that, at the end of the day, you can't ignore tough decisions. You can’t have someone else do it for you. He suggests that while these moments are hard, it’s helpful to focus on the people who are still with you and the ultimate goals you’re trying to achieve.

Links

https://www.artie.com/

Rabbi Tarfon said: The day is short, and the work is plentiful…It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.
(Pirkei Avot 2:15-16)

My conversation today with Jerry Colonna closes with him paraphrasing this powerful notion - and the work we are discussing is the work on yourself and the work to create a better world - one where everyone feels like they truly belong. In a world where many organizations are retreating from Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives, I’m grateful that Jerry is leaning into this conversation. I see the work of antiracism as firmly in the realm of what my peoples call Tikkun Olam, repairing the world.

It’s absolutely essential that men in positions of power and especially men who present as White, do not neglect this work. 

Jerry is a graduate of Queens College and a Brooklyn native.

Jerry helps people lead with humanity and equanimity. His unique blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial know-how has made him a sought-after coach and leader, working with some of the largest firms in the country.

In his work as a coach, he draws on his experience in Venture Capital as Co-founder of Flatiron Partners, one of the most successful early-stage investment programs. Later, he was a partner with J.P. Morgan Partners, the private equity arm of J.P. Morgan Chase.

As a partner with J.P. Morgan Chase, Jerry launched the Financial Recovery Fund with The Partnership for the City of New York, a $10 million-plus program aimed at creating grants for small businesses impacted by the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Along with a strong commitment to the nonprofit sector, Jerry is the author of two books: REBOOT: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up (2019) and REUNION: Leadership and the Longing to Belong. (2023)

Reboot was met with critical acclaim, stirring up a big question in the hearts and minds of people: “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” Jerry’s second book builds on this question, asking us what benefit we get from the conditions we say we don’t want - the systems of oppression that those who have eyes to see, can see.

Reunion is a highly personal book that asks us all to examine our history of longing to belong - and the ways in which we have been excluded or excluded others.

Key Threads in the Conversation

We discuss Jerry’s Journaling practice and how it is an essential conversation he has with himself, each morning.

We explore what it means to be a “good man” - and how in his first book, REBOOT, he questioned whether he was a good man, while in REUNION, he built upon the assumption that he is a good man and explored (and expanded) what it means to be a good man in a world where there is division and polarization.

And I get Jerry to coach me on one of my favorite questions: understanding the disowned parts of ourselves, exploring the reasons behind disconnecting from them, and the importance of integrating them back without denying them - very much in line with the process of REUNION. All while working to authentically grow in ways that matter, without self-abuse or denial.

Those parts of ourselves we wrestle with wrestle back at us. Many leaders I coach want to be feel or been seen as more or less of some quality or another - they, like so many of us, feel they must be other than they are in order to belong.

In my experience, fighting against our parts without understanding and loving them is a losing battle. Jerry asks us to understand the stories behind our self doubt, and to honor the ways that part of us has sought to care for and protect us in the past.

I find great empathy and lovingkindness in spending time nurturing my denied parts and my clients do, too. I’m so grateful to absorb Jerry’s approach to self-integration, and to expand our inner work towards creating not just a life we love, but a world we want to live in.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Reboot

Jerry’s profile at Reboot

Some other solid interviews with Jerry:

On Being with Kista Tippett: Can you really bring your whole self to work?

Noah Kagan, from AppSumo, interviewing Jerry on being a better human and a better leader

Warning - this episode uses a specific curse word - a lot. And once we started using one, we started using more of them. So…if f-bombs, sprinkled like salt are not your cup of tea, this is a good episode to skip!

My guest today is Rebecca R Block, PhD, who is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them more impactful and learner-centered. She has built R&D departments from scratch and managed large and small teams responsible for creating, measuring, and improving learning experiences.

She also wrote a book with the word “Shit” in the title…or Shit, with an asterisk where the “I” goes, which actually makes her book a bit hard to google!

The book is titled “Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life,” and she teamed up with Grace L Edwards, a current undergraduate student, to talk to young people across the country and gather their stories about what truly makes for engaging learning environments. In the process, she learned a lot about how motivation works for everyone, not just teens, and has taken those lessons learned into her work as a leader, parent, and educator. 

In the opening quote Becca outlines the ABCs of Motivation. These ABCs are true for children and adults - we’re basically the same species. And the work of luminaries such as Peter Senge and Amy Edmondson make it clear that great working environments are great learning environments - places where we can create and sustain positive feedback learning loops with ourselves and others. So it’s essential for anyone leading or managing others (or themselves!) to understand how motivation really works. 

We also talk about Becca’s essential values when it comes to co-creation - that is, making a systems change along with the people in that system who will be affected by that change. Co-creation is not just a good idea… it leverages the truths about motivation that Becca shared in her opening quote. People are much more likely to want to participate in change that they’ve taken part in forming, rather than going along with something forced on them.

Two Levels of Systems Change

We also talk about the need to work on at least two levels when engaging in systems change:

Helping people, now

Helping make a bigger shift, over time.

Given that Becca knows how challenging it can be to transform a system as complex as education, she focuses her work in this book on helping people, now, to work to create change for themselves, within the current system. This perspective is helpful for anyone leading a team in a larger organization or anyone leading an organization within a larger industry they are hoping to transform.

Listen in for Becca’s deeper breakdown of the ABC’s of motivation, as well, summarized here!

The ABCs of Motivation

Ability
Belonging
Choices

Ability: In any situation where you want someone (or even yourself!) to have sustained motivation, you need the Ability to do (or learn how to do) the things you want to do. Indeed, whenever you find that someone isn’t doing something you have asked them to do, it’s important to ask - is this an issue of Will or Skill? In other words, can they do the thing? If they can’t yet, do they have the confidence in their ability to learn the thing?

Belonging: Real relationships help us accomplish things. I show up for my Spanish lessons (partly) because I’ve paid for them, and partly because I’d feel bad for standing up my tutor, even though the classes are online. Ditto for my exercise classes. Real relationships create real motivation. In a recent episode, I spoke with Robbie Hammond, Co-founder of the High Line, who talked about how his relationship with his Co-Founder Josh David kept him going through a difficult decade of bringing their dream to reality - talk about Relationships = Motivation!

Choices: Having real choices means you have the autonomy to determine for yourself what you are going to do. “Liberty or Death” isn’t much of a choice - although it is one many have taken. Becca suggests that dysfunctional workplaces create crappy or fake choices, and functional ones enable everyone to see how the work fits into their own personal why.

I connect these ideas to my recent interview with Ashley Goodall, author of “Nine Lies about Work” and most recently “The Problem with Change." Ashley says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.” This is what every human (and teenager!) actually really wants, if they can connect to the ABCs of motivation.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Get the book here

BeccaBlock.com

Becca’s podcast

CanYouHelpMeGiveA.com. 

If you want to be on her podcast: fill out a form here!

I am excited to share my conversation with Leah Smart, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Culture Summit where we were both giving main stage talks. Leah is brilliant! She’s all about helping people become the authors of their lives, which she does through her work on the LinkedIn Editorial team and hosting her LinkedIn podcast, In the Arena with Leah Smart, which is out every week wherever you find your podcasts.

She loves facilitating human development work for leadership teams through coaching and workshops and sharing science-backed actionable concepts and strategies to transform your life, your work, and your relationship to everyone around you. 

Today we talk about how she approaches designing her conversations with guests as a dance, how she molds her conversations with herself through personal mantras, and her perspectives on the power of intention.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.leahsmart.co/

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is the first prototype, that I ran a few months back with two Alums of the Facilitation Masterclass, Meredith England and Jenn Hayslett. I won’t say more about them - they introduce themselves at the *end* of the episode... I like the idea of them just being trusted friends to you, because they are trusted friends to me!

If you haven’t listened to the episode where I interview Tyson Yunkaporta, the author of Sand Talk, about how Indigenous thinking can (and will!) save the world, I think you can still enjoy this episode...even if you haven’t read the book...although I think you should!

As Tyson says in his book:

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…This conversation is hopefully another positive step in that direction.

This conversation is a Yarn, in the Aboriginal sense of the word. As Tyson taught me, Yarning is the sharing of anecdotes, stories, and experiences from the lived reality of the participants. It’s the way that Aboriginal communities connect, learn and decide together. 

And actual Sand Talk is a part of Yarning. Sand Talk, the book, is grounded in a series of drawings, drawn, literally, on the ground, in the Sand.

Sand Talk, in another, more literal interpretation, is visual thinking as a grounding for a conversation. This kind of talk is something that I think is missing in nearly every kind of meeting...saying, "Can I draw this for you? This is what I am seeing. This is the way I am seeing what you are talking about right now.” ...and looking at those pictures of the world, together.

Most meetings are just a bunch of air talk instead of Sand Talk, and I would literally love more Sand Talk in more meetings.

That’s my rant for now. I hope you enjoy this conversation. 

If you're interested in supporting the podcast and potentially joining us for one of these book club conversations, subscribe to the Conversation Factory insider! In September we’re gathering to read and connect with past podcast guest Adam Kahane, to talk about his new book, Facilitating Breakthrough. It’s going to be awesome.

LINKS

Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta on The Conversation Factory

This episode features Michael Roderick, founder of Small Pond Enterprises and Host of the Access to Anyone Podcast. Michel is a coach and consultant who knows how to design conversations large and small. We talk about closing the loop on free advice (let people know if if it works…otherwise we’ll keep giving bad advice!), teaching through simulations and how to see patterns and build frameworks.

Michael sends a daily (yes, daily!) email that I actually read!

His claim to fame is that he went from High School English Teacher to Broadway producer in under 2 years, which is fast for *any* career shift, let alone a jump like that.

I first learned about Michael’s work years ago through his conference, ConnectorCon, which he designed to build a safe space to talk and connect, and to learn what it takes to be a great connector.

One of the reasons I was excited to bring Michael on the show is that he sees the world through a lens of frameworks, just like me! And we hit on several key ideas that resonate with some components of my Conversation OS, which is always nice.

1. The Power (and limits of) Narrative. We live our lives through the stories we tell. Stories help us build connections and relationships, but they can also limit us. A positive self-story feels better than a negative story, but it can also limit us and tell us what is and isn’t possible. It’s worth asking for time to time “what stories are serving me? What narrative can help me build a new future and a new identity? What do I believe is possible? What do I *not* try, because I believe it’s impossible?”

2. The Cadence of Connection. We talk about how Community is a resource you *can* draw from if you’ve built it up over time…and how you need to build it before you need it. Like sleep, it’s something you have to do regularly.

3. What’s On TV (or…the importance of perspective) Michael has many, many great aphorisms, but this one is amazing. The idea is that you will always be too close to your own issues to solve them… unless you take time to pull back and see the big picture. This is also why we’re always better at solving other people’s problems! And why having a coach is essential.

4. Competition doesn’t exist… just specialization and niches. We are in competition with ourselves, each of us trying to find our own niche. But watch out! All specializations aren’t compatible…what’s interesting about this to me is the idea that if we can’t connect with someone, it’s not always because of anything other than incompatible approaches, not something “wrong” with you or them.

5. The Power of Invitation. As Michael points out, “People love to feel useful, but they hate to feel used.” Pressure never works well as an engagement tactic, at least not in the long term. Asking permission, asking nicely and giving people the option to say no gives people choice and allows them to choose to be highly engaged.

Small Pond Enterprises

http://www.smallpondenterprises.com/

Access to Anyone Podcast

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/access-to-anyone/id1040351484?mt=2

Morning Pages

http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/morning-pages/

Liminal Thinking: an interview with Dave Gray

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/4/18/dave-gray-on-drawing-conversations-and-liminal-thinking

The Conversation Operating System (OS) Canvas

http://theconversationfactory.com/downloads/

It’s not every day that a patient-doctor relationship turns into a Techstars-Funded medical innovation startup. In this episode I sit down with Dr. Onyinye Balogun and Eve McDavid, the co-founders of Mission-Driven Tech, a women's health venture in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine dedicated to the transformation of cervical cancer care with modern technology.

Onyi, as her friends call her, is the CMO of Mission Driven Tech and also an Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine specializing in the treatment of breast and gynecologic malignancies and does research into improving cancer care in low and middle income countries.

Eve, the CEO, is a former Google executive who is also a Stage IIB Cervical Cancer survivor. Eve and Onyi met during the pandemic, when Eve was undergoing cancer treatment under Onyi’s care.

I heard Eve and Onyi’s presentation at the 2023 Techstars Demo day in New York and was stunned by the fundamental disparities in historical improvement in gynecological cancer outcomes - as they point out in this conversation, in recent years, Prostate cancer treatment has achieved a nearly 100% five year survival rate. In the same period, cervical and uterine cancer mortality has gotten worse, while cancer treatment for all other cancers has improved exponentially. Their company exists to change that story.

Co-Founder Communication Insights

This conversation is one of a series on co-founder communication. Check out my interviews with the co-founders of online gaming start-up Artie on Pivoting while staying sane (the secret - have a coach and a therapist!), a conversation with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, on navigating Paired Creativity, and this interview with the co-founders of collaboration tool Range, Jennifer Dennard and Dan Pupius, on the keys to healthy conflict. One key that Beth Bayouth and Mario Fedelin, the COO and CEO (respectively) of Changeist, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth empowerment, discussed was the importance of co-founders sharing how they are really doing so that they can be sure to not fall apart at the same time, a sentiment that Eve and Onyi echoed.

I also discussed the idea of “prototyping partnerships” with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist - and they helped me see that the healthiest companies have partners that have worked together in some capacity - and indeed, in this interview, Onyi and Eve called Eve’s cancer treatment their “first collaboration”.

Know yourself and each other

The start of a startup journey can be optimistic, so we explore what they have learned about each other that has helped them to better communicate and collaborate together since they started the project.

Accelerators can’t do it all for you

Eve and Onyi share how the accelerators can help with structure, mentorship, capital and community, but that ultimately you need to have something worth accelerating - a key customer insight or a core technology - both of which Mission-Driven Tech has!

Have multiple modes and frequencies of communication

Eve and Onyi have a weekly meeting just focused on their flagship product, the Blossom device, and another meeting weekly for other issues, and to simply connect. Meanwhile, they have a Whatsapp thread that enables them to constantly stay connected and in touch with each other. Balancing always-on connectivity and scheduled connectivity is key.

A partnership is a marriage and reflective listening is key!

Onyi shared their perspective that being in a co-founder relationship is like marriage, and that communication is key for any marriage to work. As she says, “The future of this company rests partly in how well we're able to communicate. So we tell each other the good, the bad and the ugly.” She shared their simple and effective approach to communication - making specific time for it, and using active listening intentionally:

“I hear what you're saying, I reflect it back to you. You hear what I'm saying and you reflect it back to me.”

Know who your real audience is

We discuss user-driven product development, which Eve and Onyi, as a former patient and doctor, are a unique example of…but we also discuss how in their current stage, investors are their actual “buyers”. Onyi discussed how she’s developed a keen sense of “push vs pull” when they are making their investment pitch - some investors just get the commitment required to make a startup like this successful, and those people are their real audience. It’s not about convincing the wrong people, it’s about finding the right people.

Balance Now and Next

Every startup needs to balance managing their current challenges and opportunities with putting energy into strategic vision and planning. Eve points out that this is a particular challenge for medical and device companies - the rate of change can be slow, due to fundamentals of the problem space. So, there needs to be more patience and intention put into planning and hypothesis testing. As Eve pointed out, There is immense pressure to achieve immediate results, but real impact takes time.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://missiondriventech.com/

LinkedIn:

Onyi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyinye-balogun-md-ms-22b57283/

Eve: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evemcdavid/

My guest today is Jason Knight, the creator, host, producer, editor and promoter of the One Knight in Product podcast, a B2B SaaS product consultant, and fractional Chief Product Officer for companies that have gotten to product market fit and need help scaling their product team. Jason is also the founder of My Mentor Path, an inclusive, accessible and cloud-based mentorship service. 

Sandra Monteiro, a Product Manager at SAGE Publishing and a mentee of Jason’s, joined us halfway through to share her own experiences with mentoring, how she found her way to working with Jason as a mentor and what some of her learnings and insights from working with Jason as a mentor have been. She also shares her thoughts on what mentees should be thinking about as they search for and work with mentors.

We explored Jason’s mentorship journey and why mentorship matters to him, the challenges of Industrializing mentorship pairing and productizing the matching of the lopsided mentorship marketplace.

We also touch on how to measure the impact of the work and the subtle and important difference between Mentoring and Coaching. Jason suggests that many people who say they want coaching really want mentoring from someone who has “been there and done that”…and that great mentoring leverages coaching mindsets and skills in a practice he affectionately calls “centering”.

Some fundamental questions we explored were the differences and relative merits of FORMAL vs INFORMAL mentorship as well as working with someone INTERNAL vs EXTERNAL to your Organization

One of the big insights Sandra shared was shifting her expectations on the nature of the mentoring relationship from one centered around SOLVING vs conversations centered around TOOLS (ie, being offered relevant examples, learning materials and frameworks, holding space for emotional distance, and being offered broader context for challenges).

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Sandra Monteiro

Jason Knight

https://www.oneknightinproduct.com/bio/

https://www.oneknightconsulting.com/

My conversation on Unapologetic Eating and Living with Alissa Rumsey is here

I’m thrilled to *finally* share my conversation with the amazing and electrifying Nikki Silvestri.

We connected back in early March and recorded our conversation in late May, at the height of the quarantine. It’s been a process to find the time to sit with this deep conversation and pull together some insights for you.

A friend shared Nikki’s work with me and I was hooked - Nikki was setting up a program to teach facilitation to Rural Women, and I was so curious to dive into her facilitation and leadership approach and her critical work.

Nikki’s core metaphor is soil - the complex place that gives life to us all - the source of our nourishment.

Monoculture vs Food Forests

Soil can be thought of as a series of inputs - minerals, water, carbon, etc. A mathematical equation for creating a space for life. But rich soil is not simple. It’s a complex, living thing that responds unpredictably to attempts to control it.

In agriculture we can have a food forest - a near-wild combination of plants and animals feeding each other and ourselves. Or, we can have a monoculture - sprawling spaces where we use as much science and technology as possible to sustain maximum outputs at all times and at all costs.

Nikki suggests, rightly, that monocultures can also exist in our own organizations...and that when we have such a monoculture, when we are not doing what she calls “basic diversity and inclusion work” innovation and creativity will be lost. 

Esther Derby, a noted Agile consultant, touched on this forest metaphor in our podcast interview - she said that she would rewrite her whole book about leading change using food forests and forest succession as her central metaphor.

Mechanistic thinking vs Complexity Thinking in Group Work and Leadership

We push this metaphor of soil and complexity deeper into growing personal leadership and holding space for deep group work. Nikki describes the central tension:

“I was trapped in mechanistic thinking because nonlinear complex thinking, it had too many unknowns and it made me too uncomfortable....With the amount of responsibility that I felt like I had, I needed to know. And frankly, I needed to know that I could manipulate my way into the linear outcome that I was looking for because there was "too much at stake" to not have that happen.”

After all, control is rewarded. As Nikki suggests: “The people who are able to manipulate, and dominate, and control the outcome the most are the ones who are rewarded.”

SUPPORT THE PODCAST AND GET INSIDER ACCESS

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Links, Notes and Resources

Nikki Silvestri on the web https://www.nikkisilvestri.com/

Nikki’s TEDx Talk

Nikki on Soil and Shadow

Gestalt Organizational Development

Carter's Cube (free login required)

On this episode, I’m talking with Bárbara Soalheiro, founder of the Mesa method, a five-day process for bringing people together and solving extraordinary problems. Sound familiar?

Think again. Mesa is unlike any other accelerated work environment I’ve encountered. And Bárbara  is the first facilitator I’ve heard say “don’t trust the process.”

We philosophize about power distribution, problem framing, Masculine vs Feminine leadership and the difference between a mystery and a quest. It’s a jam-packed hour of conversation, so buckle in. 

Bárbara started the Mesa method based on a few fundamental principles, essential beliefs abut human nature and the future of work.

1. That work is actually fun and what we’re here to do. 
2. In the near future, the best and the brightest people will be impossible to hire. They will be busy doing their own thing
3. If you want to solve the biggest problems you have to work with the best minds.
4. The only way to work with the best is in short, clear bursts.
5. The best way to work is to be 100% focused on results

The Mesa method brings together internal stakeholders with external talent – in Bárbara’s language, “pillars of knowledge” – for five days. This external talent shows up for day one with no briefing, with just the general mission in mind. And they end their week, not with user testing, like another sprint model you might have heard of, but with a prototype that is as close as possible to what the company will build.

Barabara’s perspective is a breath of fresh air and unconventional thinking, and her approach has resonated with some big names. She has been helping organizations such as Netflix, Google, Coca-Cola, Nestléand Samsung make bold moves and she’s worked side by side with some of the most extraordinary professionals of our time, people like Kobe Bryant, Cindy Gallop, Perry Chen, Anthony Burrill, Fernando Meirelles and many others.

Find more on Mesa here:

website

instagram

vimeo

twitter

The space is in New York and New York is in the space: tokoro and three other Japanese words for space

https://qz.com/1181019/the-japanese-words-for-space-could-change-your-view-of-the-world/

Oblique Strategies

https://www.joshharrison.net/oblique-strategies/

How do you make a friend?

How do you become lovers with someone?

How do you become business partners?

In RomComs, there’s a “meet-cute”...the hilarious and unlikely way two people in this topsy-turvy mixed-up world collide and fall madly, rapidly in love. 

In the real world, taking time and gradually testing, trying and yes, prototyping a relationship is ideal. In love, we call it dating. There’s no good word for “friend-dating”, especially when you’re doing it with someone of the same sex. 

And with founding a company…where does the conversation start?

In this conversation, I sit down with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist, on how they connected through shared communities, and learned how each other really worked through real-world, previous projects.

They also share their insights on setting the stage for both a long-term vision for building a company AND for a possible exit from a partnership through thoughtful conversations.

Userlist is a tool for sending behavior-based messages to SaaS customers and recently completed a pre-seed round with 21 angel inventors.

Benedikt is a software engineer from Germany who loves to plan, build, and grow web applications. He co-hosts the Slow And Steady Podcast and organizes the Femto Conference, a tiny conference for self-funded tech companies. Jane is a leading UI/UX consultant specializing in web application design, and has been the host and founder of the  UI Breakfast podcast since 2014 (she kindly invited me to join her show in early 2022).

Enjoy my conversation with these two delightful co-founders as much as I did.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

UI Breakfast

Userlist

benediktdeicke.com

Better Done than Perfect podcast 

Jane's Story: Turning Thirty: Story of My Life

Culture, Values, Operating Principles & More

Inspire, Not Instruct: How We Do User Onboarding at Userlist

Today my conversation partner is Matt LeMay! Matt is an internationally recognized product leader, author, and consultant. He is the author of Agile for Everybody (O’Reilly Media, 2018) and Product Management in Practice (Second Edition O'Reilly Media, 2022), and has helped build and scale product management practices at companies ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 enterprises. 

Matt and I met at UX Lisbon last year where he gave a talk that included him describing his extremely actionable recipe for team agility: the One Page / One Hour Pledge, a powerful commitment to minimize busywork and maximize collaboration that has been adopted by individuals and teams at Amazon, Walmart, CNN, and more. 

I was excited to bring Matt into a conversation about this pledge, because I know how easy it is to get caught in a rabbit-hole of perfectionism before sharing my work with others. Teams can work more fluidly if we reduce the cycle time between solo work and team work.

Matt is an advocate for the power of focus, subtraction and feedback loops over perfection - I mean, would you rather ride a bike you can only aim once or one that you get to steer continuously?

I never dreamed I’d get to have a podcast conversation that includes references to Alan Watts and the power of Ego Death to accelerate your team’s success and ultimately, one’s own success…but glad that we are! 

Matt and unpack how TIMEBOXING (ie, Tight-and-almost-thoughtless constraints ) helps shift the relationship between thought and action in teams and organizations…and can help move the conversation forward.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Matt's website

Product Management in Practice

https://www.onepageonehour.com/

Matt’s talk at UX Brighton on “You Don’t Get anyone to do Anything”

“When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us” Alan Watts

Alan Watts “The wisdom of Insecurity

I first met Avantika Daing, a General Partner & Managing Partner at Plum Alley Investments (and Tedx Speaker!) while she was onstage at an Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator event. She was there to share a bit about Plum Alley’s Investment thesis as well as unpack six pitches live from early-stage companies.

Let’s level set a bit so you understand Avantika’s and Plum Alley’s mission, which revolves around an important number that hasn’t moved much in years, despite a lot of effort - 2%. 

According to Pitchbook, in 2022, companies founded solely by women garnered just 2% of the total capital invested in VC-backed startups in the United States. Plum Alley only funds gender-diverse companies and works to create an ecosystem to help them not just get funded, but to grow and succeed. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to bring Avantika on, to share some of her ways of thinking strategically about funding as an investor, how Plum Alley is working to create a more sustainable funding ecosystem for diverse founding teams, and how she coaches founders to be more strategic about funding, too.

Watching Avantika on stage peel back the layers of the onion (one of her favorite metaphors!) on a company’s story in conversation with a founder and work to understand the company’s potential was fascinating - it’s a tremendous act of intellectual rigor and curiosity. Her questions also reminded me that founders can make an investor’s job a lot easier through more powerful and intentional storytelling.

Another powerful metaphor that Avantika came back to in a number of pitches was the idea of a Basecamp.

In other words, Avantika, as a funder, wants to know: Is your company building a core technology or defensible market position (a basecamp) that will provide you with multiple paths to success? 

Avantika acknowledged that a “single story” about how your company will “win” or “summit the mountain” is powerful, but she was clear that she prefers companies that are creating a powerful “basecamp”...why? Because:

🏒A “many shots on goal” strategy can help create longevity and increase options for success.

I’m so grateful that she was willing to have a longer conversation with me on the record to explain her ideals about storytelling and the basecamp-summit metaphor.

She also helped peel back some layers on another idea she loves to coach founders on: “Dressing their cap table” for sustainable success from seed to IPO and well beyond - since capital needs don’t stop at IPO.

I love how Avantika’s metaphors shift,  refocus and redesign the conversation about pitching, funding and sustainable success for startups.

Enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Plum Alley

Avantika's Tedx Talk: There is No Balance. There is Juggling

Daniel’s LI post on Avantika’s Entrepreur’s Roundtable Session, highlighting key questions and perspectives from Avantika, including the “base camp/summit” metaphor.

Today we are talking to my friend and client Jason Cyr, Director of Design Transformation at Cisco. We have a wild and rambling conversation about designing conversations on at least three scales: as a facilitator of workshop experiences, a designer of design processes and as a leader of a transformation effort in a larger organization.

Like anything else, conversations can be designed with a goal in mind: speed, effectiveness, clarity, joy. How do you intend to proceed towards your goal?

The very first story that Jason tells us shows how knowing your conversational goal is key: Jason tells us about his Uncle Rowley and how Jason’s mother pointed out the ways in which Uncle Rowley was as talented conversation designer. It seemed like he designed his conversations with an overarching purpose, regardless of the objective of any individual conversation. His purpose, his higher goal was to make people feel good. Did he do it in order to be successful, or was that an outcome of his purpose? Sadly, we can’t ask him...but there was clearly an aspect of his way of being that enraptured Jason as a boy - he wanted to be like him. 

As an aside: One of my favorite topics in conversation dynamics is about how power shows up...the type of power Uncle Rowley exerted over young Jason is called Referent Power - the power of charisma.

Jason is now responsible for designing a much bigger conversation at Cisco - how teams work together and how teams of teams communicate and collaborate. One key way he’s doing that is through enabling his organization to apply the tools of Design Thinking to their internal and external challenges.

What my conversation with Jason highlights, is that this conversation takes a long time....the cadence of transformation is not the quick rat-a-tat-tat of a stand-up meeting. It’s a steady drumbeat of regular workshops and consistent follow-through. It’s a healthy reminder that change takes consistency, clarity...and time.

Jason has a simple three step transformation process that he shares:

1. Start with the Coalition of the Willing
2. Make more evangelists
3. Craft stories that share themselves

How does Jason pull people into that conversation? It seems like he uses the same skills he learned from his Uncle - making them feel good, like they are part of a bigger narrative arc - a growing capability and practice inside the organization, one that can and does deliver value to the organization...even if it takes 6-9 months into the effort. This is charismatic power on an organizational scale. People want to be part of a positive story.

How does Cisco design the design thinking conversation? Jason shares four principles of Design Thinking at Cisco and they are so delightfully on point that I wanted to repeat them here:

1. Empathy. We are always designing for someone else’s benefit. Somebody else is going to consume the thing or the thinking or the product that you're making. Do your best to understand that person so that you can build something desirable for them. 
2. Go wide before going narrow, whether you're trying to choose a problem to solve or whether you're trying to find a solution to that problem, explore a little bit before making a decision. Try and reframe that problem and dig into that problem before tackling it. Try to generate multiple solutions before picking one. And it doesn't have to be a lot of work.
3. Experimentation. As soon as you think you have a good idea, how quickly can you figure out what's wrong with that idea? We do that by experimenting, putting it in front of people, having them react to it.
4. Diversity. Be thoughtful about who you bring into the conversation around the problems that you're solving. Make sure you have the appropriate definition of diversity and make people of all genders and colors feel welcome. Jason also asks: are we including the right people from across the organization, ie, engineering and product or design? Maybe we should be including sales. Maybe we should be including other parts of the business.

I’m so grateful Jason took some time to sit down with me and share some insights on how to lead a design transformation in an organization and keep the conversation on track, moving towards it’s ongoing goal...I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did! Also, be sure to check out the episode Jason referenced, where I interviewed Jocelyn Ling from UNICEF's Innovation team on Disciplined Imagination.

Referent Power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referent_power

(one of my favorite types of power!)

The six types of power

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/six-types-power-leaders-john-prescott/

Jocelyn Ling’s episode on Disciplined Imagination    https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/8/27/disciplined-imagination-with-jocelyn-ling

10 types of innovation: https://doblin.com/ten-types 

The book: https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Types-Innovation-Discipline-Breakthroughs/dp/1118504240

All process is the same

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process

https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/framework/loop

POST method: Purpose, Objective, Structure, Timing. Adjust your ST based on your evolving understanding of PO.

Facilitation Means design experiences and conversations: https://medium.com/@dastillman/facilitation-means-designing-conversations-24bac966076e

Creating Change in three steps:

1. Start with the Coalition of the Willing. 
2. Make more evangelists
3. Craft stories that share themselves

Full Transcription on the website

Today’s conversation with Dorie Clark taught me some essential lessons about how to build a following around one’s ideas - which is no surprise - Dorie has given several excellent TEDx talks on just this topic, and I’ll summarize my insights from our conversation in a moment. 

I learned something more surprising during my conversation with Dorie - that she is living her principles, constantly. I also learned that she’s into musicals, big time. I wasn’t expecting to learn this about Dorie, but I followed the conversation, as you’ll see. 

Dorie is the author of a trilogy of books all about reinvention.

Starting in 2013, Dorie wrote “Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future” which she followed up in 2015 with “Stand Out: How to Find your Breakthrough Idea and build a following around it” which was named Inc Magazine’s #1 Leadership book of that year. Most recently, in 2017, she penned “Entrepreneurial You: Monetize Your Expertise, Create Multiple Income Streams, and Thrive.”

Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I often expect people who have this much time to write about their ideas to have less time  to apply them. Dorie walks her talk, however. The opening quote is about Dorie’s dream to learn to write and produce musical theater...and how she’s going about it - slowly building skills, insights and networks, long before she plans to tap them. If you take nothing else away from this episode, that alone is a solid gold lesson.

This approach makes logical sense - you have to plant before you can reap - and networks are no different. What I loved learning about Dorie is that she’s not sitting still - she still has dreams of constant reinvention and she’s working to make those dreams possible, steadily.

In the last several years in hosting this podcast, I’ve come to see conversations in a new light - sometimes they can seem like a wave, building, cresting and receding. Dorie certainly treats her own musical reinvention in this way - like a conversational wave she needs to build. But I’ve also learned that conversations also have key sizes that act differently - small, medium and large conversations are all essential to master, as a leader or facilitator, and with reinvention, this is still true. Dorie takes me through three key conversational size “phase transitions” in building a following around a breakthrough idea. You don’t get to massive impact overnight.

Zero to one: Start talking about your idea. It may seem obvious, but many people just keep their ideas and their dreams in their heads. Getting it out of your head is like Peter Thiel’s Zero-to-One innovation and gets the ball rolling.

One to Many: Finding ways to get to talk to many people about your ideas at once, like writing for a publication or speaking to a group.

Many-to-Many: The goal, at the end of the day, is to develop a many-to-many conversation. You don’t want to be the only person talking about your idea. For me, the more people who see conversations as something worth designing, the better it is for me and for the world (at least, that’s how I see it) - which is why I keep making this show!

This episode is full of other insights, like how to write a great headline or choose a collaborator for a project. For the show notes and links to Dorie’s books and videos, click over to the Conversation Factory.com

Show Links

Dorie Clark on the Web

https://dorieclark.com/

How to Build a Following Around your Ideas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fQ92UVoXqc

Zero to One innovation: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

full transcript and show notes at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2020/a-game-changing-solution-to-gender-inequality

Eve Rodsky is working to change society one marriage at a time with a new 21st century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering the brunt of childrearing and domestic life responsibilities regardless of whether they work outside the home.

In her New York Times bestselling book Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live), she uses her Harvard Law School training and years of organizational management experience to create a gamified life-management system

to help couples rebalance all of the work it takes to run a home and allow them to reimagine their relationship, time and purpose.

Eve Rodsky received her B.A. in economics and anthropology from the University of Michigan, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. After working in foundation management at J.P. Morgan, she founded the Philanthropy Advisory Group to advise high-net worth families and charitable foundations on best practices for harmonious operations, governance and disposition of funds.

In her work with hundreds of families over a decade, she realized that her expertise in family mediation, strategy, and organizational management could be applied to a problem closer to home – a system for couples seeking balance, efficiency, and peace in their home. Rodsky was born and raised by a single mom in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Seth and their three children.

Have you ever found a framework, a diagram, that perfectly summarized an important and subtle idea? That somehow made that important idea concrete and easy to talk about?

That’s why I’m really excited to share today’s conversation with Emily Levada, Director of Product Management at Wayfair. We’ll dive into a Trust/Communication Map that, as a manager of a huge team, helps her navigate an essential question - is our team talking too much or not enough? 

On the conversation design, meta side, I want to point out this important idea: The power of a visual to focus and shift a conversation. All conversations have an interface - either the air, a chat window or a whiteboard - a *place* the conversation actually happens. 

A diagram creates a narrative space for a much more clear and focused conversation to take place - the diagram triangulates all of our individual inputs and ideas.

I stumbled across Emily’s medium article where she breaks down this trust/communication trade off using this simple visual map. She points out that the map we talk about is commonly attributed to technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz. In his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things he writes, 

“If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know that whatever you are doing is in my best interests.”

With Communication on the Y axis and Trust on the X, you clearly don’t want your team in the lower-left quadrant - low trust and low communication. Things will get pretty rocky there, fast. Increasing communication can help, but wow, will your team get burnt out, fast. The upper right quadrant, from a manager’s perspective, is waste - in this region, we’re having too many meetings. We can likely decrease communication, slowly, until we find a perfect balance - low friction, high trust teams. 

Emily, at the end of the episode outlines how she uses this diagram to have this crucial conversation with the teams she manages: Where does each member of the team feel we are on this chart? Are we spending too much time talking or not enough? If you use this diagram with your team, please let me know! Email me at Daniel@theconversationfactory.com

As Emily points out, when there’s total trust, there’s a sense of safety - When my collaborators trust me to make things work, I feel empowered to find my own way, even if I take the long path, down some blind alleys.

Psychological safety is at the absolute core of teams that can make great things happen. We need trust and safety to make good decisions. Amy Edmonson, who coined the term Psychological safety, opens her book “The Fearless organization” with this amazing quote from Edmund Burke, an English philosopher from the mid-1700s

“No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.”

With the right balance of trust and communication, teams can feel safe to act, learn and iterate. 

For all of this and a lot more, listen to the rest of the episode!

Show Links

The Trust/Communication Curve

https://medium.com/@elevada/the-trust-communication-trade-off-4238993e2da4

Agile at a large experience design organization

https://medium.com/wayfair-design/the-agile-methodology-of-a-large-experience-design-organization-178eccbb73c8

The Agile manifesto

https://agilemanifesto.org/

The Five Elements of User Experience from Jesse James Garrett

http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

Minimum Viable vs Minimum Lovable Products

https://themindstudios.com/blog/mlp-vs-mvp-vs-mmp/

Making Time in the Morning

https://www.jeffsanders.com/the-5-am-miracle-podcast/

Project Aristotle and Psychological Safety

https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/

Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization

https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247

The Learning Zone

https://hackernoon.com/great-teams-5f15cb718c20

The Trust Equation from the Trusted Advisor

https://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation

High CUA Organizations, from High Output Management by Andy Grove

https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884/

Helpful summary is here:

https://charles.io/high-output-management/

Full Transcription

Daniel:            Emily, we're going to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. Thank you for making the time to do this and for waiting for me while I fixed all of my technical difficulties.

Emily:              Thank you for having me.

Daniel:            Awesome. so you can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are and what your role is?

Emily:              I can start. Sure, sure. I'm a director of product management at Wayfair. I own a set of technologies that sit at what we call the bottom of our purchase funnel. So when you're shopping on Wayfair, that's the product detail page, the page that tells you about the things we sell, ah, they cart and checkout experiences. And then some other things like customer reviews or financing, how you apply for financing, understand financing on our side, our loyalty program. And I run a team of product managers doing that.

Daniel:            Yeah. And so we talked a little bit about how do you get a hundred designers to all talk the same language. Like, cause you've got to, you have a big team. How do you get them all pointed in the same direction as a word? Like tell us about managing that conversation cause like you literally can't have a conversation unless you're speaking the same language. And so like there's that step back that you're working with.

Emily:              Yeah. So I just shared an article that my design partner had written about our written design process or design toolkit as you might say. I think, you know, in any organization that scaling how you build the mechanisms for people to build shared vocabulary to be using the same tools. It's one that we invest time in. I don't know that there's any magic to it besides you know, making the time to have the conversation of what's the language that we want to use.

Daniel:            Yeah.

Emily:              ...And being really intentional about it, right? What's language we do want to use, what's the language we don't want to use? How do we want to talk to new employees about these things in ways that are simple and digestible for them. And then they can build on over time. And then creating the mechanisms to make sure that coordination keeps happening. And you know, I think as we get more into this, you'll see that for me, how, how people communicate across the organization is a big part of what I spend my time thinking about.

Daniel:            Yeah. I really enjoyed Jessie's article. We'll definitely link to it. One of the things that kind of blew me away was this idea that because I've worked with organizations where they're having a sense that, oh, we should have our own proprietary design thinking process. We should have our own flavor of agile. And he's like, we wanted something that anybody coming in would generally recognize. And so it's like, yeah, it's nothing. Here it is, it's kind of the double diamond. It's, it's the basics of design thinking, but doing it is the hard part.

Emily:              Yeah. And I think one thing that's interesting is that we're actually not that dogmatic about how those things get applied. So really there's a lot of license to do what works best for your team. Right. Designers are part of a cross functional team with engineers, and analysts, QA, product managers and the designer should bring the tools to bear that are gonna help us understand customer problems and talk to our customers and prototype and test things. But we, but we're creating a toolkit that designers can pull from in order to do their work effectively.

Daniel:            Yeah. It seems like a lot of work went into, into building that, that toolkit that they can pull from, but also like, I mean, this is the, this is the essence of agile, right? It's, it's, it's people and interactions over processes and tools or am I misquoting it? That's embarrassing. It's something like that. So like, let's talk about your origin story. Like how did you get into this work? How did you get your start and you know, where are you hoping to sort of ...what's next on your journey with, with the work that you're doing? Sure.

Emily:              More so. I, rewinding to, let's say college I have two degrees. I have a degree in psychology and a degree in theater production. I'm a theater kid.

Daniel:            That's amazing. I could see how that could prepare you for many, many, because everything's a circus and you know how to put on that. Let's put on a show like you know how to do that.

Emily:              Keep the drama on the stage, we say yes. I actually, there's a tremendous number of parallels that I think are really interesting. But psychology and theater, they're both studies of how individuals behave. One scientific and one's artistic, but that's a common theme. And as I transitioned in technology and got an MBA, I fell in love with the idea of customer insights. So that we could understand it and influence people's behavior with the technology that you build. And so that's kind of one thread that pulls through here. And then that, that also fuels a passion for organizational behavior. How do I understand the behavior of the people around me and how we interact with each other in the conversations that we have in our organization? And then I think the other interesting thing about theater, well there's a, there's a product management tie. Building theater is cross functional. You have designers, you've technicians. I've learned over the years that the conversation that happens between a set designer, a stage carpenter and a scenic painter is no different than the conversation that happens between the UX designer, a backend engineer and a front end engineer.

Daniel:            Okay. Can we, can you break that down? Cause like I don't think many people know those roles in maybe, maybe those words in either context. Yeah. Lay those out. Cause like this is the difference between like the, like the skin and the concept and how it works, Maybe....

Emily:              Right...Well, so, so in both cases you have someone like a designer who's coming up with a concept or understanding maybe it's user behavior or the story that we're trying to tell. The content that we want to have in what we're publishing. And then but having the concept or having the vision is different than having the executed product. And so then you have a technician, right? You have engineers you have carpenters and painters and, and then really that's really just specialization, right? Those people are delivering on the thing that's been designed. And and they may have different types of specialization. And then I think where the thing that's the same in my role about that is that what you deliver is never going to be exactly the thing that you designed. And there's a constant process of learning and discovering the unknown and prototyping or having to cut to meet a budget or a timeline changing scope.

Emily:              And that's the same, right? It's actually the same conversation. So I found a lot of skills in software development, product management that were skills that I had had developed earlier and loved that, that managing that conversation between those people and that translation between the functions. And then the other thing that I think is super relevant to the trust part of the work that I do is that the theater is a space and it's a workspace where coming to work emotionally available every day is part of what allows you to deliver the work. Like my, my early career, my conception of a business meeting was a bunch of people get in a room, we'd watch, a play. And if at the end of the business meeting everybody wasn't crying or laughing or right, whatever it was then like your product was not delivering the emotional experience that you need it.

Emily:              And so your ability to then work through you know, how do I build something that resonates more emotionally, it was a, it was a critical part of that experience. And so I think that in the business world that translates into being, you know, high EQ, whatever that means. But there are some notion that that idea that you sort of come to work present and authentic and kind of with your emotional switch "on". That is something that I'm just really interested in and passionate about. That's kind of the way that I'm built. And and so how that translates into a different, you know, range of the world that I'm in today has been interesting question. I mean, so like, let's, let's dig into that a little bit because I think the idea that our product should turn the customer on like that it should hit

Daniel:            Them and the gut the way like a great production should is a provocative one. And then like, so there's, there's these, there's that level of the, it should have that effect on our, our end user, but we should also be excited about doing it. And then I also need to sort of manage myself through that whole process of, you know bringing my best self to that dialogue, the interaction with all the people who are supposed to be making this thing. But there's a lot of, there can be a lot of conflict intention in that black box of making something that people are gonna love.

Emily:              Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I think sometimes it's surprising to people that even just this concept of, hey, I want to build something that people love, that hey have emotional reaction to that, that I might talk about ecommerce that way. Right. Can we stupid. You're selling stuff, right? Yeah. But we all have to buy stuff, right? You right. You still want an experience that people really love. And also, you know, your home is intensely personal. And so for us, the experience of finding the right things for your home and crafting a space, crafting an environment that is a backdrop for really important parts of your life and your family and your friends your kids that's very emotional. It's a very emotional process. And so you want the tools that you're giving people to, to, to go through that journey to be emotionally resonant for them.

Emily:              You know, I think this is, there's lots of conversations about this in the product world. This is sort of, you know, you're aiming for a minimum viable product versus a minimum lovable product, right? Yeah. It's that that difference. But I think for me the organizational side of it is equally as important. You know, we, we know that we, we all want to have teams that are creative, that are risk tolerant, that move fast. And then we have these really complex organizations and at the end of the day, like how do you build teams that can do those things? My point of view is that you really need to have the emotional component in order to build teams that can, can embody those qualities.

Daniel:            Yeah. So I want to go back, I want to, I want, I want to go deeper, deeper into the trust and safety piece because that's, that's important. But I was trying to find this diagram that I just sent to you. And the chat window, I need to find who originated it. This was like one of my favorite diagrams when I was getting started in UX, just to like talk about the difference between like vision and concept and details. This is another version of it. Product is functionality. Product is information. There's so many versions of this just the idea that like, there's all these different layers in the process of making something real and my own sense that like everybody wants a seat at the table, right? Cause like even those people are highly specialized where they're like, oh, I'm just gonna make an "x". If they don't understand the vision and if they're not bought into the vision, people feel excluded. Yeah. People feel like, oh, I'm just a doer. Like, so I guess my question is like, you as a leader, how do you make sure that the people who are part of creating that vision feel like they're all included? Like how do you create inclusion?

Emily:              Yeah. I mean it's interesting because yes, they want to feel included, but I would actually go so far as to say that they need to be included if you want to get the right product. Because if you tell people what to build, they'll build you what you tell them. If you tell them why you want to build it, they're going to build something better than what you asked them to build.

Daniel:            Yeah. I'm just...that's a solid gold quote right there.

Emily:              Uh and so I think that the question then very tactically becomes when is the right moment in the process to involve which person, what pieces of information are you giving them? But I think really it is about orienting around why, why are we here, what outcome are we trying to drive, not what are we trying to build. And you know, ultimately the conversation shifts to what are you trying to build. But I think partly there's a, there's also a listening aspect here, right? You listen to the conversations that people are having and if people are getting stuck and you start listening and are having conversation about the what you try to back them up to the why, right?

Daniel:            Yeah. No I agree. Yeah. I mean there's so many avenues to go down because in a way like there's another piece which is like how are you seeing the patterns and all of that and all of those conversations that you're, you're, you're pulling together cause you're, you're looking at this at an organizational level as well, right? Like you're in a lot of different places and listening to a lot of different things. Like how do you make the time to start to weave it back together for yourself and to a clear narrative like "this is What's happening?"

Emily:              Some of it is I think about pattern recognition, right? This is true of all feedback. So one thing that I say about feedback a lot is that you know, any feedback, whether you're giving, receiving feedback, it's a data point. And if you, if every piece of feedback you get, you took immediate action on and treated as equal to every other piece of feedback, like you'd go mad. And so when you get feedback or when you hear a thing, it becomes a piece of data and then up to you to look at all of the pieces of data, have you got and, see the patterns, prioritize which things you want to act on and then go act on them. And so I think, you know, as an organizational leader, as I'm doing one on ones or doing skip level meetings or listening to questions, people are asking in various forums or listening to the water cooler talk. It's sort of data that goes into the pattern recognition machine, right?

Daniel:            Which is your brain. Are you using a whiteboard or a like a dashboard or anything to track that? Or is it just really like just filtering …

Emily:              Yup. I have some, I have a notebook that I you know, clutch very tightly and carry with me everywhere I go. That I think is my primary, you know, hey, I'm just gonna write down things that I see or observe. I have a window of time. I get to work very early in the morning. I get to work at seven. And so from seven in the morning until nine when the kind of meetings start is my time to really kind of step back, reflect on what I'm need to do or what I've heard, what's new, where things are and get some focused work time. And so I think being able to just carve out the time to sort of step back and say, okay, is there anything here that I, that I need to be paying more attention to or taking more action?

Daniel:            I have to say like in so many of the interviews I've done, one of the insights for me is that of all the conversations that we have to manage and maybe design the one with ourselves is maybe the most important one. And so having just, just having a notebook is like, like that's, that's huge. Right? Yeah. Really amazing.

Emily:              Yeah. You know, I'm also very lucky, I have a wonderful set of people around me who are great sounding board for all the Times that I'm like, Hey, I think maybe there's a thing here, but I'm not really sure. I let me just say it out loud to you and play it back for me and you know, help me see if there's really a pattern or not. Yeah,

Daniel:            Yeah. Analysis through dialog. Super important. So I think it would be useful for us to talk about like, so I found that this medium article that you wrote using this, you know, don't I just love visual frameworks of trust versus communication curve. And how did you, like where did that how does that framework filter into your life? Where did it come from for you and how do you, how do you actually apply that in your own work you use? Just talk to us a little bit about that little knowledge chunk and then we'll, sure, sure,

Emily:              Sure. So we, we first introduced the concept of psychological safety, which related but not the same in 2017. I actually, so psychological safety I think was popularized based on Google work, Google's project Aristotle. There's a New York Times magazine article about it that profiles a woman who's on Google's people analytics team. And she was a classmate of mine in my MBA program. And so I had been following the work and thought it was really interesting. And we actually introduced a concept of that is one level higher than the psychological safety concept, which is the learning zone. So the, the researcher who, who came up with the concept of psychological safety actually has a framework that's two axes and psychological safety is one access. And the other access is accountability, accountability to results. And, and when you have both of those things, you get this magic thing called learning.

Emily:              And I think that what was really important about that, cause you ain't swim it cause like I'm looking at that as a two by two from like very accountable and very safe means I've learned something. Yeah. Put that together for me. Yeah. So, so very accountable means like there's pressure, there's pressure to do, right? Like you, you, you're gonna run fast because there's pressure. But if you have high pressure and low psychological safety, you get anxiety, you get fear of failure, right. That, that and that is a killer, right? Especially in an agile process where there's a requirement to like take risks and try things and it, you know, that every single thing you do is not going to be a win. What you want is for every single thing you do to teach you something, right. The, to be another step on the journey to understanding where you're going.

Emily:              Oh, this is incredibly important in spaces where I remember it's it's Andy Grove. It's from high output management. He has this concept of, high CUA organizations or tasks that is complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity, right? So you don't have a roadmap. You don't know where you're going. You have some idea where you're going, but you might be wrong. You don't really know how you're going to get there along the way. And there's a high degree of complexity that you need to be able to fail and you need to be able to challenge people's ideas. You know, we know that the creative process, it's not that people just have brilliant ideas, they actually have not great ideas that then other people add slightly less, not great things too. And then, you know, you build, you like you, you build on top of each other and you make connections and then all of a sudden there's an Aha moment that you, you've landed on something that has value, right?

Daniel:            So I would say that these CUA things can only be done through conversation. It's only through like one person can't do it by themselves. Through that, you have to…

Emily:              Right, right. And so you have to have a group. And that group has to be willing to say stupid things and to say that they disagree, to challenge the status quo. And you can't do those things if you don't have psychological safety. If you're afraid that you will be judged for what you say or for challenging, then you don't get any of that behavior. And so, so when you have psychological safety, that's when you get... And performance pressure. That's when you get, okay, we're going to try something and then we're going to learn from it. And so learning becomes the kind of cornerstone to continuous improvement with that flavor of, hey, we're willing to take risks.

Emily:              We want to move fast. We're listening to each other. We understand that the solution we get you together is going to be better than the solution any of us could come to individually. And so that, that, it was a few years ago that that really became an important piece of how my department was thinking about the culture that we wanted to build. And, and in that I was thinking about, okay, what does this mean for my teams and how do I figure out when my teams are feeling that anxiety and how can I help them have the right conversations to get them back into that learning zone? And one of the observations that I had is that we spend a lot of time talking about how we talk to each other, right?

Daniel:            Amazing!

Emily:              I say to the conversation designer but, but that in the organization that often takes the format of, you know, do we really need to have this meeting? We should add this meeting. We should remove this meeting. I think we should write a new update email. We're getting too many emails. I, everybody needs to go into this spreadsheet and fill out this information. And there's just this, there's a cycle of "add a bunch of communication and process and then think there there's too much and take it away. And then I think there's too little and add more."

Emily:              And there's a justification that, that sort of a natural cycle. And the observation that I had a, and I talk a little bit about where those pieces came from, but the kind of connection that I made in my brain at some point in doing this is that the amount of communication that you need is the dependent variable. The independent variable is how much trust you have. It's not an objective, hey, in order to do this thing, I need this amount of communication period.

Emily:              The amount of communication that you need to be successful is dependent on how much trust already exists between the individuals doing the work. And so for me the interesting moment was, hey, let's reframe all of these, communicate all of these conversations that we're having about communication into conversations about trust and what does that look like? What would that mean? Yeah. And that actually you, you these, the costs of all of this communication, we call it coordination cost often. Yeah. That it's, that it's not a given. Like as your organization gets complex, you will need more communication. That is true.

Daniel:            So I'm going to, I'm going to sketch, this diagram just for the listeners. So they don't have to go any place else like okay, it's the, the y axis is amount of communication required. The X-axis, is access trust between team members. And in a way what you're implying is that there's a, a curve, a line that goes from the upper left to the lower right where basically the more trust you have, the less communication is required.

Emily:              Right? That's exactly it. To accomplish any goal, the amount of trust that you have and the amount of communication that you need or inversely related. So if you have very little trust, you need a tremendous amount of communication. If you have a lot of trust, you need way less.

Daniel:            Can I push back on this concept? Just like, cause I feel like in a way like when there's a lot of trust, communication flows really freely to be like I can see on the graph anything that's above the line is inefficient use of resources and anything below it creates like friction of confusion or like, and I've seen this in projects where you're like waiting for someone else to like tell you it's okay to do what you think needs to be done. But at the same time I feel like my fiance and I talk a lot, you know, we, we have a lot of communication. There's also a lot of trust. Like I'm checking in with her and telling her my evening plans, not because I think she's worried that she doesn't, you know, where are you off with? She just wants to know and I want to tell her. So like maybe that's, maybe that's different cause it's, it's a personal context. I don't know.

Emily:              Yeah. Maybe trust and communication are actually self-reinforcing. And so when I say you have high trust and low communication that that implies that you actually have a higher degree of communication. I think, you know, maybe you could think about this as sort of additional communication or required communication, formal communication, right? And there are lots of different ways you could cut that. Although I do think that you actually just see less communication partly because one of the primary pieces of that is if I trust you, then I trust that you will understand when I need to be involved and you will proactively communicate to me and therefore I don't need to be doing the inbound communication to you. And so you know, you, I do think that there's an opportunity. I think the, and the really important piece of that is that we think we spend a lot of time talking about how we can add or subtract communication. And my thesis is that if you actually invest in building trust in teams, you can run more efficient organizations because you reduce the amount of communication that everybody to do.

Daniel:            Wow. So that upfront investment pays off. And your, I mean this is the classic go slow to go fast. Like you're like definitely has proved for you.

Emily:              Well yeah, I mean you, you, you invest in trust that allows you to pull out this communication. It certainly makes people happier and it gives you more of these other things like a willingness to take risks. You know speed to delivery risk tolerance. Yeah. Some of those other components that I think are really important.

Daniel:            So can we talk a little bit about the mechanisms, cause you, we talked about this in the pre-talk, like what are the mechanisms of creating value for the company through that, but then there's also the question of how do you actually, what is the process by which you create this kind of trust and psychological safety in your teams? So this is like the two side, like how do you do it and then how do you show that it's, how do you prove that thing that we, we were just talking about that it's, that the investment's worth it. Yeah. Cause people ask me all the time and I have a mixed answers for that.

Emily:              Yeah. I think, you know, I do think it's hard, right? It's hard. This is why the, some of these concepts like psychological safety and trust and vulnerability and Kulik they feel squishy cause it's hard to understand the value. But I do think that one of the things that's been interesting about this framework is that it is pretty easy when you start to look around and you start to diagnose, okay, where are my teams? And you start to actually selectively pull levers like, okay, I'm going to add communication here or I'm going to just remove communication here. That as a manager, having a framework like this just helps you be more active in how you manage those things, right? So if, if a manager can, if having this framework and diagnosing where their teams are effectively allows them to pull, you know, just a handful of pieces of communication out of the system without impacting the result, it's being delivered. You're delivering value right now. If you pull that communication out in a place where you don't actually have their trust, then you, you risk poor execution on the work. Right? And so the ability to make good decisions about where you can do that and where you can I think is what I'm trying to help managers do. I think in terms of actually building trust I have one go-to tool that I share. Although there's really many, many different ways to think about this. I'm a big fan of the trust equation, which is from the book the trusted advisor. Yeah. The trusted advisor is really about building trust in client relationships. But there's this concept in it called the trust equation, which is just a one way of breaking down what does trust really mean? And that trust equation says that trust is needed before components.

Emily:              There are three things that create trust, credibility, which is I trust your words. You know what you're talking about. You say, I don't know. When you don't know what you're talking about. That's one. Reliability is you do what you say you're going to do. So I'd say trust your actions. And then the third is they use the word intimacy. That can be a loaded word in business contexts. I tend to think of that as discretion is, is probably the closest thing. Like I, I trust you with a secret. Or I trust your judgment. It can mean I, it can mean you sort of know me personally. And then there's one thing that is sort of the great destroyer of trusts, which is self orientation. So if I believe that you will act in your own self interest instead of in my best interest then I don't trust you if I believe that you will take into account my best interest and think about my point of view, then we build trust.

Emily:              And the really important thing or the reason that that's my sort of critical tool is because it allows us to give feedback about trust that's much more specific. So it allows us to give feedback, allows me to give feedback about communication that's happening in the workplace. That is feedback about trust, but using those underlying concepts. So, Hey, when you well... Shit your way through the answer to that answer in that meeting and then had to go back and admit that you didn't know what you were talking about, you damaged your credibility with that stakeholder. Yeah. Right. Or when you didn't respond to that email, you damaged your reliability yeah. Or, right, then and then the positive version of that to hey, the fact that you thought to include that person in that meeting showed low self orientation and helps you build that relationship. And so more than anything that's just given people the vocabulary to have a conversation about trust without using the squishy word of trust.

Daniel:            Yeah. Breaking it down into components. Use the word levers, which I like. I talk about that a lot in my conversation design work, which is like, wow, how do we actually grab hold of this squishy thing and say like, oh, how do we manipulate it? How we actually move in? And you're like, at least you and you can focus on reliability, credibility, intimacy and intimacy is important. Like, I, I've begun to realize like the importance of actually spending time getting to know people. Like you forget this, otherwise people think it's just transactional. And that's, that's really, really critical.

Emily:              Right? And, and I think that also sorry, I just lost my train of thought for a moment.

Daniel:            I mean it's amazing by the way, like, I don't know like that you had the trusted advisor equation in your, in your brain. Like, so you get, you get a tunnel pass, it may come back to you.

Emily:              It meant that's okay. We can keep going.

Daniel:            What's that?

Emily:              I said we could keep going...

Daniel:            Oh, so we, yeah, we are actually getting close to our time. So like I usually ask the, what haven't we talked about that we should talk about, which may or may not jog your memory…

Emily:              I remember what I was thinking.

Daniel: Yeah. There's the key - distraction!

Emily:              So the other thing about the trust equation is that it's actually true that different people value different parts of that equation. Well, the other thing that it allows you to do is have the conversation of saying, you know, sometimes like I've had situations where I'm kind of not connecting with someone or we just seem to be missing each other and not building the kind of relationship that I want. And then the ability to have a conversation that's like, Hey, I, what I'm looking for really is, you know, intimacy. And the other person says, well, I really want reliability and I don't really care about intimacy in this relationship that that allows you to figure out what matters for trust in that relationship more effectively.

Daniel:            It does. And so when you, you talked about how you spend a lot of time in your team talking about conversations like this is, this is the conversation about what matters to you in your conversations with the conversation about how often you want to be talking, the conversation about all of these different pieces of it. And I just did an interview with my dear friend Jocelyn Ling. We'll publish soon as well. She was the first person who ever I sat down in a meeting with who said, let's talk about how you like to work. Are you a calendar person? I mean this was almost 10 years ago, so there was no Skype, there was Skype, there was no slack, there was, there were fewer tools, but it was still an important conversation to have.

Emily:              Right, incredibly.

Daniel:            Like I have a calendar/ spreadsheet orientation and that's like if somebody is making something in a word document that could be a spreadsheet. It, it, it, you know, cause me hives.

Emily:              Right, Totally. And you know, it's important to know if you're working with someone who really needs time to digest before they get into a room, then writing that preread is going to be that much more important. Right. Or if you know, obviously understanding the intimacy part, understanding what parts of the day are more difficult for people. You know, for me, I get in super early, but then I leave, I need to get home to my kids. And so, you know, if you catch me while I'm walking out the door, I'm not going to be, no,... I'm less likely to take the time to stop and have that conversation right.

Daniel:            And don't have an extra five minutes!

Emily:              I really don't. Yes. So I think that that's, those things are super important and, and actually just giving people the ability to have those conversations really openly, really directly or giving them tools to do that.

Daniel:            That's awesome. So is there anything we haven't talked about that we should talk about around trust, psychological safety, organizational conversations?

Emily:              Yeah, there's, there's no one big thing. I think, you know, my, the thing that I hope is just that people feel like this is a tool that they can use and, and to really think about that the next time they hear somebody having a conversation about communication, to think about, hey, are we really having a conversation about, about trust? Right? So somebody is asking you for communication, is it really because they don't, they don't trust some piece of this, they don't trust you're going to deliver something or we've missed an opportunity to, to keep them informed and vice versa. If people are complaining about having too much communication. Is that really because there's more trust than you're building credit for and how do we, how do we change the conversation more?

Daniel:            Yeah. Well that's awesome. We, I guess, I mean I'm, I'm going to try and squeeze in one more question cause like I said, I'm looking at that framework and I'm thinking to myself is that a framework for Emily to think more clearly and to talk with another manager about stuff or is it a conversation that a team can have? Like it's not like a two by two matrix. I'm not looking at it as like a importance difficulty matrix where somebody is doing an exercise with it. It is, it is both. So there's definitely, yeah, only a piece

Emily:              Of it that is as a manager, I want to have a sense of where my team is or where different project teams that I work with are and be able to actively manage. But there's definitely a team component here and I think it's a really interesting exercise to do. It requires a really good facilitator, which is get your team in a room, draw the framework on the board, two axes and a line, right? Make sure people understand it and then say, everybody grab a marker. Where do you think we are? Or, or if you don't think your team has enough trust to do that, everybody grab a sticky note and draw the framework on your sticky note and fold it up and hand it to me, right? We'll do this sort of anonymously and then you plot on the graph like where does the team think we are?

Emily:              And the interesting conversation is not about coming to objective alignment that "we are here today", but actually that some of your team members think your team has a high degree of trust and some of your team members go, right. And how do we, you know, some, some team members think that we've got too much communication and some think we have too little because they actually have different communications styles. And, and communication isn't connecting on the same for everybody. And then how do we use that as a lead in to this conversation of, hey, how do we work more effectively as a team?

Daniel:            I'm so glad I asked that question because I think that's a really, that, that's a, it's a classic visual facilitation move of where are we, where do you think we are? And then the, the benefit is not, oh, we need to get into the same place. It's like, Oh wow, you think we're here and I think we're there. Let me hear more about what you think, why you think that. And you talked to the other person about why they think they think that's what they think. That's awesome. Okay, then we're definitely out of time now, Emily, I really appreciate you making the time for this. This is really delightful conversation. I think this is super duper important stuff for everyone to get a grasp on.

Emily:              Thanks for having me!

Daniel:            Awesome. And we'll call it "and scene!"

My guest is Jeanne Liedtka, Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and an absolute rockstar of Design Thinking. She’s the author of (most recently) Experiencing Design and joins me this episode to talk about getting started with Design Thinking and some pitfalls that can happen along the way as you move yourself and your organization towards not just doing design thinking but experiencing it - the road to mastery, moving past the surface level with Design Thinking.

Jeanne’s latest book Experiencing Design is organized around a powerful framework that separates Doing vs. Experiencing vs. Becoming. This frame clarifies the transformational journey of an individual as they engage more deeply with Design Thinking. 

If you want to deepen and expand your understanding of Design Thinking past the Stanford Design School Hexagons, I highly recommend Jeanne’s books. Her 2011 book, Designing for Growth, co-authored with Tim Ogilvy, was a crucial moment in my introduction to the power and breadth of Design Thinking.

Jeanne and I have both had this experience with folks we’ve worked with, and maybe you have had it happen to you: you take a workshop and a lightbulb clicks on in your head... You find a new way of working that you see limitless potential in, that you want to implement and share with others.

People say, "I wish my team, my organisation, could work this way. Where can I start?" 

And when you bring the tools and tips back to work, something falls flat…transforming how we work together is non-trivial. It’s not just about the tools - the doing. It’s about the mindsets - the experiencing and becoming.

Jeanne and I talk about getting started with the tools of Design Thinking, some of the pitfalls that happen along the way, and how learning in action is a really fundamental and challenging shift both for the individual innovator and also for the organisation as a whole.

Many people who I train in these new ways of working say their primary block is that others are not doing it too, that *everyone* isn’t trained in these tools. And while I’d love to train the whole organization, it’s not always possible, or even wise. My advice is usually, "Start really, really small, and do it in ways that no one can tell you no. Ask for forgiveness instead of permission." 

The ROI of DT

Jeanne and I also talk about the real ROI on DT. Organizations focus on the visible ROI of Design Thinking - what we will see- first the outputs, the templates, the workshops, and then the innovation they hope for - moving the needle in the business.

But the real transformational aspect of Design Thinking is the way people are changed by the activities - what they experience and what they become. (check out the show notes for images of Jeanne’s Iceberg model of the ROI of DT)

Design Thinking is, of course, doing activities like gathering data, identifying insights, establishing design criteria, generating ideas, prototyping, and experimenting...but each of them results in the individual person experiencing sense-making, alignment, and emergence - some of the real gold in Design Thinking.

And all the while, they are becoming more empathetic and confident, collaborative, comfortable with co-creation and difference, able to bring ideas to life, resilient, and adaptive. This is the more deep, more durable transformation that is possible with Design Thinking...this is the real ROI of DT.

MVC: Minimum Viable Competencies

One of Jeanne's really profound contributions in the book is the idea of "minimum viable competencies": the things we can look for in the people that we are trying to transform and bring on board to this new way of working. Can they listen to understand? Can they separate facts from interpretations of the facts? Are they comfortable with ambiguity? Can they respect other viewpoints? Check out Jeanne’s book for a comprehensive list of MVC and a survey to help you benchmark your organization’s skills.

Jeanne and I also dive into how Design Thinking catalyzes organizational change at the conversational level. For example, in the Emergence phase, she talks about thinking broadly about who you invite to the conversation, and she highlights requisite variety: the idea that the diversity of people in the conversation should match the complexity of the conversation, of the challenge we’re hoping to solve. 

Refer back to my interview with Professor and Conversational Cybernetics expert Paul Pangaro for a deeper dive into requisite variety and how it applies to conversation dynamics. Also check out my interview with Jason Cyr, a Design Executive at Cisco, where he shares similar reflections on diversity and coalition building in driving a Design Thinking transformation.

We also talked about how Design Thinking has a lot of tools, a lot of doings, that help with upfront discovery and testing, but when it comes to learning in action and alignment folks find it challenging to find turn-taking structures that help scaffold the process - in other words, they need facilitation skills: structures to help our conversations be productive: listening non-defensively to critique, exploring disconfirming data with curiosity, accepting imperfect data and moving on... these are not Design Thinking tools, these are conversation design tools. This is where DT bleeds into leadership and self-management.

Another point from our conversation that is really important is that different people have different experiences throughout the arc of the design thinking process. Jeanne has this wonderful diagram in her book about how the different DISC profiles of influencer, analyst, driver, and supporter will have different emotional arcs as they go through the Design Thinking process from beginning to end. I think it's really, really important to understand that we need to have empathy with all of our collaborators. We may have a great time with the upfront part of the process, like discovery, and have a really hard time during prototyping and testing. We need a diverse group of collaborators so that we can draw on their perspectives and balance our experience with theirs. 

It's important to push against our own biases and to continuously ask, "What kind of diversity is needed for this challenge?" For that, I highly recommend you listen to my conversation with Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, who I spoke with earlier this year about Decolonizing Design Thinking. It's a really powerful conversation. 

It was a great pleasure to be able to sit down and talk with Jeanne Liedtka, and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Links:

Jeanne's Website

Why Design Thinking Works

Jeanne's books

The Iceberg of DT ROI: from Jeanne’s interview with Mural: https://www.mural.co/roi

Critique is one of the most crucial conversations there is. How to ask for and get feedback when you need it is a core life skill. Without it, we’re in the dark. Setting up a special time and place with clear rules and goals to get the crucial feedback you need to move forward…that’s designing the conversation, and I can’t think of a conversation that’s more critical. Pun Intended!

My guests today are the authors of the wonderful (and quick reading!) book “Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique” Adam Connor, VP Organizational Design & Training at the strategic design consultancy Mad Pow and Aaron Irizarry, Head of Experience Infrastructure at Capital One.

Critique isn’t just “fancy feedback”….Critique is about asking for and the designing the conversation you need to have, with the people you need to engage. Do you want: a Reaction, a clear Direction or deep analysis? That’s Critique: it has rules and boundaries, and if you don’t ask for critique, you can’t get it.

We dig into the 3 myths of Critique, how critique isn’t really a designers skill, it’s a life skill for anyone trying to bust out of the status quo.

I want to highlight a few things you’ll hear towards the end. I asked Adam and Aaron to discuss how they handle a few key aspects of the Conversation OS Canvas in their critiques, like power dynamics, turn-taking, and interfaces and spaces for the conversation.

Invitation: The core point (and what the opening quote is all about) is that you get the critique you ask for. And that if someone *isn’t* asking for critique it’s pretty tricky to offer it to them successfully. In those cases, getting permission to give feedback is essential.

Power:  Adam sets the ground rules that if you’re invited to the critique session, your voice should be heard, and that in this session we’re all equal. The facilitator is there to balance voices, to call out people who are to dominating or hiding in the conversation.

Interface: I always say that when you change the interface you change the conversation. Adam and Aaron both prefer in-person critique conversations – email isn’t designed to support the depth of communication real critique requires and as they say “Asynchronous feedback will never be the same as a live conversation.”  But as teams become more distributed and digital, they’ve found some benefit in doing a “pre-read” and a “notation round” in a tool like InVision or Mural, and then moving to a video call.

Turn-Taking: While I am pretty obsessive about turn-taking, Adam says that he’s sensitive to it, but doesn’t want to over-control it, preferring an organic flow. He’ll sometimes use a “round-robin” to make sure everyone speaks in turn and at least once. Finding a way to balance voices within an organic structure requires a skillful facilitator.

Adam Connor, Mad Pow

https://madpow.com/about/team/adam-connor

Aaron Irizarry, Capital One

https://about.me/aaroni

Discussing Design

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033561.do

Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zahbC1Mfks

Tomomi Sasaki and I sat down to talk in-depth about her journey of self-awareness and inner work as a facilitator.

We met at an advanced facilitation masterclass I ran for Google at their Sprint Conference, way back in 2018. She tweeted at the end of 2020:

I've been facilitating workshops for about a decade. The first few years were ferocious, needs-based learning. Workshops took a tremendous amount of energy to plan and run, and after each one, I'd faceplant onto the nearest sofa.

Once things became manageable, I plateaued. I worked on plenty of facilitation assignments (and did a bunch of public speaking about lessons learned) but I was coasting and I knew it.

Then @kaihaley and the @GoogleDesign Sprint Conference gave me the gift of a full day training from @dastillman, and I started to think of facilitation as a practice. (you can listen to my conversation with Kai Haley here.)

Building a practice sends a different kind of signal into the universe. This gives me watershed experiences that blows apart a door I didn't know was there. Behind each door is a whole new landscape to explore, and new friends to explore it with.

It happens consistently, once or twice a year. I don't know what's behind that cadence but it is an amazing thing. You *think* you know the edges of the land and then... ah hah! It gets me every time.

It had been a while since we’d connected, but when I read that twitter thread, I knew we had to sit down to talk about her journey to thinking about facilitation as a practice and what that meant.

Tomomi is a designer and partner at the independent design studio AQ, and a frequent collaborator of Enterprise Design Associates. She's also a top-notch facilitator and, as you might have learned by now, a very reflective practitioner, and in this episode she gives some invaluable advice about how to improve at the skill of facilitation - beyond tips and tricks.

I loved it when Tomomi said that “The insight for me was that I need to take care of who I am and what I'm bringing into the room as a facilitator because that's part of what's going to happen in the dynamics.”

Tomomi is essentially saying in her own words what Bill O'Brien, the late CEO of Hanover Insurance said, that “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.”

When we facilitate, when we lead a group, we are noticing the system...and what we choose to respond to, focus on or call out will shift what happens in the system. The question here is...how do you affect change in a complex system...that YOU are part of? 

Many people treat learning and change like a purely technical challenge: They have a deficit in performance and the assumption is that they can learn better ways of doing and apply them.

Similarly, we think we can apply a pattern or tool (like a facilitated workshop agenda, exercise or the like) and get a reliable result - like a baking recipe. But any bread baker will tell you that the weather, the flour and your mood can shift how things go. Dough is alive.

There are two challenges with this mechanical, recipe, way of thinking...one is that people and systems of people are complex...so, the likelihood of things going exactly according to plan without any need for adaptation and improvisation is...unlikely. People, like dough, are alive.

The other issue is that many people think it’s new and better ways of doing that are needed...where it’s actually different ways of thinking, different mental models and assumptions...which will naturally lead to different ways of doing.

Some folks (Chris Argyris and Donald Schön) describe this as the difference between single-loop and double-loop learning and others even point to triple and even quadruple loop learning...the core of which could be self-awareness, or seeing how we ourselves can affect the system. This is the transition from facilitation and leadership as “doing to” or performance to “doing with” and presence.

The way you show up internally will change what happens in the session.

https://organizationallearning9.wordpress.com/single-and-double-loop-learning/

As Tomomi says later in our conversation, 

“I think what struck me was that in facilitation, we think so much about the participants, and the first question you basically asked in the master class was who are you? Until that moment, I hadn't really thought about that, and I think that's why I was getting so burnt out. You give and give without really an awareness of what you're doing to yourself or what you need to be. Then the realization is that, oh, that's where your strength comes from, it's where the practice needs to be built on, because you can't change that much, right?... So, might as well work with what you have. “

I care deeply about this idea. I think that facilitation and leadership more generally, is about expanding your range of capabilities - your ability to show up, on purpose, as the occasion calls for it. Tomomi suggests we can’t change *that much...but we can try to grow. I have a free course on Exploring and Expanding your roles as a facilitator, which you can find here.

There is so much goodness in Tomomi’s reflections. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel PhD, is the Associate Director for Design Thinking for Social Impact, and Professor of Practice at the Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking at Tulane University, where she teaches design thinking from an emancipatory perspective.

Design Thinking is a powerful set of tools and mindsets that can help people solve problems. But which people and which problems?

So first off, if you’re new to this conversation, design and design thinking can be racially biased, because people are racially biased. As Dr. Noel says in the opening quote I chose, most of us don’t understand our positionality - especially if you see yourself as “white”. It’s essential to see and understand what position are we looking *from* when we look *at* people and the problems we seek to solve for them.

Design is, in essence, making things better, on purpose, and it’s a fundamental human drive: To improve our situation by remaking our surroundings. But when we design for and with other people, the process becomes more complex.

So, you might not see yourself as a designer, but if you solve problems for other people or build systems that other people use to solve problems, you might be a designer in the broadest sense, or design thinker, even by accident. 

So...you need to get serious and clear about how you learn about problems (ie, do research), frame them and solve them for others (ie, design - attempt to make something better on purpose).

If you do see yourself as a Design Thinker, you might feel challenged by Dr. Noel’s reflections on Design Thinking, not as a set of Boxes to be ticked, but as a universe of different ways of thinking and knowing. Dr. Noel makes beautiful diagrams and models for the creative process that breaks out of the hexagons and double diamonds beautifully. I recommend checking out the screenshots I’ve taken of some of these models from her talks in the Links section

Another resource I suggest you dive into is Dr. Noel’s Positionality Worksheet, 12 Elements to help you and your team see the “water they’re swimming in.” You can also check out a Mural version I mocked up.

As Dr. Noel writes in her excellent Medium article “My Manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity and bias in design” it’s essential to start with positionality, for yourself and for your teams. That’s point one. Who are you in relation to the people you are working with and solving for?

Point Two of her manifesto is about seeing color, oppression, injustice and bias. For this I recommend getting a deck of her Designer’s Critical Alphabet cards on Etsy. They’re awesome!

Point 3 might surprise you: Dr. Noel suggests that we “Forget Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”...and instead embrace Pluriversality. DNI assumes an inside and an outside, an includer and the included. Pluriversality looks to remove the center and honors multiple ways of knowing and doing, each with its own valid center. 

It’s nice to believe in a single ultimate truth for everyone...but that’s not going to happen. Pluriversality suggests that there are more than one or more than two kinds of ultimate reality.  Pluriversality is essential for our time - finding a path forward together while respecting other’s paths and ways.

Pluriversality was a new term for me. I suggest you watch Dr. Noel’s talk at UC Davis on Embracing Pluriversal Design to learn more.

And I suggest you read the rest of her Manifesto for yourself! 

I am thrilled to share Dr. Noel’s ideas on DeColonizing Design Thinking. It’s a critical conversation for our time. Design Thinking still has so much to offer the world if we are willing to lean into it and engage in dialogue with fresh and evergreen interpretations of it. People have been designing for as long as we’ve been people. Learning and respecting the pluriverse of Design Thinking in all cultures can deliver powerful progress.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Dr. Noel’s website

Dr. Noel at Tulane University

Dr. Noel’s Critical Literacy Alphabet

Alberini Family Speaker Series Lecture

Dr. Noel’s manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity, and bias in design

Natalie and I have three unexpected things in common: Ballroom dancing, an enthusiasm for Chaordic Thinking, and a deep sense that these two things are deeply intertwined!

Dancing looks to regularly resolve the dynamic tension between chaos and order, and find a state of flow between the two.

Chaordic Systems Thinking, if you’re new to it, was first coined by Dee Hock, the founder and former CEO of VISA. He felt an ideal organization would balance order and control with disorder and openness, moving between them as it grew. Chaordic is just a made-up word combining chaos and order. I made a basic diagram of Chaordic systems Thinking for my book, Good Talk.

Total Order (O, on the right) is oppressive and stultifying. It also doesn’t deal well with surprise or adapt to unpredictability. Total chaos (C, on the left) can mean a total collapse of a given system - as Natalie says, without any boundaries, what is it even!?! 

A chaordic system moves between the poles of chaos and order, spiraling outward, growing and expanding as it does. A conversation can be chaordic, too, by the way.

For example, in a workshop, I sometimes feel the noise of collaboration and conversation rise, and I wonder, “Is this the moment to rein things in and move the conversation forward?” After all, sometimes that golden “aha” moment is just around the corner, just past my capacity to enjoy the chaos.

In the chaos and randomness, new patterns are sometimes found. Like in jazz, those new patterns are then played with, firmed up, made more orderly…until they get too controlled, boring or repetitive. Then the chaordic cycle swings back towards chaos. 

This is why, as Natalie points out, good leaders are also good followers: they are open to changing environments, and take the best of what’s emerging, reading their team and adapting to new situations.

Natalie and I also unpack the misunderstandings many folks, leaders included, have around the idea of being creative - one of most damaging being that the word doesn't (or can't) apply to them.

Natalie's ideas on creativity and flow are critical for the future of work, and something that every leader, whether you lead a team of artists or a team of accountants, needs to hear.

Enjoy the conversation!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

figure8thinking.com

The Creativity Leap by Natalie Nixon

Your "invisible work" is key to your most productive self by Natalie Nixon

The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul

There is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, interview with Tyson Yunkaporta

What is a "perfect conversation"? 

What about the "perfect" conversationalist? 

I'm thrilled to share this discussion that Michael Bervell and I had around those questions and more. Michael is a Ghanaian-American angel-investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and philosopher. He currently serves as the youngest President of the Harvard Club of Seattle and works as a Portfolio Development Manager at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Capital Fund.

He's also the author of Unlocking Unicorns and the host of the blog "billion dollar startup ideas" 

He's also a conversation design nerd, like me… and his insights into conversation design are not to be missed. We unpack some essential questions, like:

• Understanding the types of Conversations with the “Concentric Circle” model of Conversations
• The Importance of Self-Talk in Conversations
• The Art of Noticing: What to “read” when you're reading a conversation.
• Being an “authentic chameleon”: Balancing being adaptable in conversation with being authentic
• The Power of non-questions and Questions with a period.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions. I sent the transcript to Rashmi so she could pull out what she needed from the conversation.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links

Unlocking Unicorns, by Michael Bervell

Michael's website

Billion Dollar Startup Ideas

Michael on TikTok

The TikTok Michael told Daniel to make

Recently, I’ve been reading a book called “Ethic of Excellence” by Ron Berger. He teaches teachers about how to invoke pride in students, to invite them to work through community engagement and thoughtful feedback, and multiple drafts of work. Check out his classic short video called “Austin’s Butterfly” here.

He asserts that thoughtful feedback (ie critique) is essential to making great work, which he also asserts is the whole point of life: Make great things.

He boils a philosophy of critique down to three principles:

Be Kind

Be Specific

Be Helpful

I wanted to bring together three of my favorite leaders to have a roundtable conversation about leading a culture of critique, and to open up about how to bring these ways of working together to life at work.

Aaron Irizarry has been on this podcast before, with his co-author of “Discussing Design” Adam Connor. He’s the Senior Director of Servicing Platforms Design at Capital One and is a deep, deep thinker on this subject. 

Aniruddha Kadam recently left LinkedIn, where he was a Senior Design Manager. He’s also an Advisor at Rethink HQ, which recently released an excellent guide to leading critique. 

One of my favorite points in that guide is: Make it clear what you are NOT asking for feedback on! 

And the roundtable is rounded out by the amazing and delightful

Christen Penny, who is a Design Educator & Community Builder and leads the Design Education team at Workday, an enterprise cloud application for finance, HR, and planning. 

I wanted to open with Christen’s quote about culture change being challenging, because it’s critical to have empathy for ourselves and others as we try to facilitate and lead change. 

Creating rituals around critique takes time. Getting people to lean into the discomfort takes effort. Building psychological safety doesn’t come for free.

We should remind ourselves that we’re asking people to lean into discomfort - to run into the fire.

Ron Berger’s perspective is ultimately the goal: 

We want our work and our organization’s work to be excellent. And we need outside feedback to make that possible. Critique before a launch is a lot less painful than realizing a missed opportunity after we hit “send”.

There is so much goodness in this conversation! I hope you take the time to absorb it all.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions. I sent the transcript to Rashmi so she could pull out what she needed from the conversation.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links and Questions:

Aaron Irizarry, Sr. Director, Servicing Platforms Design at Capital One  is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaroni/

Adam Connor & Adam Irizarry on a way-back episode: Designing a Culture of Critique

Aniruddha Kadam, Advisor at Rethink HQ, formerly Design at LinkedIn  is here:

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniruddhakadam/

Rethink HQ Critique guide: https://www.rethinkhq.com/design-critique/leading-effective-design-critiques

Christen Penny, Design Educator @Workday is here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christenpenny/

Some questions that guided our conversation:

Why is Critique important?

Why is a culture of Critique important?

What are the barriers to cultivating a culture of critique?

What are best practices on the individual, team and org levels to invite more critique?

Today I share my deeply lovely conversation with the amazing Esther Derby, Author, Coach and author of, most recently, 7 Rules for Positive Product Change.

Esther started her career as a programmer, and has worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant and manager. From all these perspectives, one thing became clear: our level of individual, team and company success was deeply impacted by our work environment and organizational dynamics. As a result, she has spent the last twenty-five years helping companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success.

She's a founder of the AYE Conference, and is serving her second term as a member of the Board of Directors for the Agile Alliance. She also was one of the three original founders of the Scrum Alliance.

Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership and a certificate in Human System Dynamics.

We discuss Systems thinking in problem solving, Clock time vs Human time, the power of invitation, Ritual vs Ritualistic thinking and how forests are a better metaphor for change than installing a new OS.

Enjoy the conversation!

Show Links

Esther Derby on the web

https://www.estherderby.com/

7 Rules for Positive Productive Change: https://www.amazon.com/Rules-Positive-Productive-Change-Results/dp/1523085797

Back when it was 6 rules! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDyoUdVHwbg

Kairos vs Chronos: Clock time vs living time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairos

Forest Succession as a metaphor for change: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/ecology/community-structure-and-diversity/a/ecological-succession

“People are easy to see. People are easy to blame. Systems are hard to see and you can't blame systems.”

The Laws of Open Space: 

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology

Ritual vs Ritualized: The Power of Ritual to create a safe container

Esther on Retrospectives: 

https://www.estherderby.com/seven-ways-to-revitalize-your-sprint-retrospectives/

https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

 How to facilitate Safety:

“I have people fill-in-the-blank in two different index cards. And the first index card says, "When I don't feel safe, I fill-in-the-blank," and then I collect all those, and I have them do another index card that says, "When I feel safe, I..." They fill-in-the-blank and I collect those, and I shuffle them all up, and then I read all the ones about, "When I don't feel safe, I..." Sometimes I hand them out to people in the room, just at random  and they read them.

Then I have people read the ones about, "When I feel safe..."

Then I say, "What do we need to do at this time, in this meeting, so we can live into this?"

The Use of Self in Change: “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor” – Bill O’Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance

Radical Participatory Democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_democracy

Virginia Satir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Satir

Today I have a deep dive conversation with the magnetic Kwame Christian, Director of the American Negotiation Institute and a respected voice in the field of negotiation and conflict resolution. Kwame also hosts one of the world’s most popular negotiation podcasts, Negotiate Anything. Kwame and I dig into how to be confident in the face of conflict: Confident during a difficult conversation, and confident in yourself, before you step into the conversation. As he points out, it doesn't make sense to give recipes to people who are afraid to get in the kitchen! So confidence is critical. 

This is one of the most fundamental points that many people miss about negotiating - they see it as a series of tips, tricks and tactics, but it’s really about a way of thinking. But before you start any negotiation with another person, you have one with yourself. You convince yourself that you deserve more than you are currently getting, you resolve to speak up. In Negotiation-speak, this is sometimes called the aspiration value - what you aspire to get. But often there’s another part of ourselves that tells us exactly the opposite - we don’t deserve what we want or we shouldn’t bother asking, or that we’ll never get it, no matter how hard we negotiate. These parts need to have a conversation and negotiate an approach that feels right to ourselves.

Kwame’s book, Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life spends a great deal of time on this inner negotiation and the tools to help you step up, including mindfulness and self-compassion.

What I love about Kwame’s approach to negotiation is that the patterns to shift a negotiation with another person are the same tools he suggests to shift a negotiation with yourself: Compassionate Curiosity.

Force and coercion are not effective long-term negotiation or conversation strategies with another person...and they don’t work very well when we apply them to ourselves, either. Forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do...it usually backfires, right?

Kwame suggests applying a 3-step process to be compassionately curious with difficult conversations - a way through challenging disagreements with others or ourselves.

1. Acknowledge emotions
2. Get Curious with compassion
3. Joint problem solving

About halfway through our conversation, Kwame talks about how it’s hard to force yourself to not worry and what to do instead: It’s better to admit that we DO feel worried and seek to understand why. Like in any negotiation, get curious about what data there is on the other side of the table...in this case, what there is to worry about…and then start problem solving. How likely are those scenarios? What can we do about each? It’s much easier to negotiate a time-boxed worrying session with yourself than it is to push it off. Leaning into difficult conversations is always more rewarding than avoiding them - this is doubly true with yourself.

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and make sure to check out Kwame’s resources on ways to transform negotiation, resources for learning negotiation, and useful meditation techniques: check out Kwame’s TEDx talk, the negotiate anything podcast and The American negotiation Institute.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access
https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

The American Negotiation Institute

Kwame Christian’s TEDx talk, "Finding Confidence in Conflict"

Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life by Kwame Christian

Negotiate Anything podcast

Ask With Confidence podcast

Linda Babcock study

Women Don't Ask book

In this episode, Glenn Fajardo joins me for a conversation about virtual rituals and their power to help us make sense of the virtual waters we are swimming in everyday. Glenn co-leads the immersive course Design Across Borders at the Stanford d.school, and is the co-author of Rituals for Virtual Meetings: Creative Ways to Engage People and Strengthen Relationships. His thoughts on ritual and using curiosity as a force for connection in virtual collaboration are just some of the must-listen moments.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is a round-table conversation with Adam Kahane, author of Facilitating Breakthrough, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven’t listened to the interview I did with Adam last season OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation.

Adam does show some slides during the conversation, so head over to YouTube if you want to follow along. 

A note on process: In this session, you’ll hear the panel share what parts of the book were most impactful to them, and then Adam responds to their comments with some deeper thoughts. The wisdom Adam drops here is absolutely worth the price of admission!

Check out the show notes on theconversationfactory.com for links to Adam’s book, our podcast conversation last year, and his work as a Director at Reos Partners.

If you’re unfamiliar with Adam and Reos, Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country’s transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid. 

He’s gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between.

Adam is amazingly honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy, Transformative Scenario Planning, and Solving Tough Problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt...or just get Facilitating Breakthrough!

It’s all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it’s an eye-opener. As you’ll hear, many of the panel members had an eye-opening moment, as I did, around the idea of Vertical and Horizontal facilitation.

Vertical and Horizontal Facilitation

In the opening quote, Adam points out that Vertical and Horizontal facilitation are two poles of a polarity. And like all good polarities, the key is to hold them lightly and dance between them mindfully.

Vertical Facilitation is focused on singularity: We have the right answer, and a right answer can be found and advocated for.

Horizontal Facilitation is focused on multiplicity: We each have our own answer, our own view, and there is no right path.

As Adam says...the “bad guy” isn’t one or the other pole of the polarity...it’s choosing one over the other.

I also deeply loved that Adam makes clear that the work of the Facilitator mirrors the work of the group.

Adam points out (on p.70 of his book) that:

A facilitator can only help participants if they, like participants, move back and forth between bringing their experience and also listening and adjusting to the needs of the situation

Again: it’s not about choosing verticality (finding a single answer) or horizontality (exploring multiplicity)...it’s about the opening and emergence created when we shift from one side of the polarity to the other. Can we move between Inquiring (the move to the horizontal) and Advocating (which shifts to the vertical)?

Complex situations rarely have solutions that can readily and easily be identified and advocated for. So, finding a path through truly complex challenges requires careful and artful shifting between these two modes of Vertical and Horizontal.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and that you check out Adam’s recent book, Facilitating Breakthrough.

If you want to take a deep dive into mastering facilitation and leading conversations through complexity, check out my Facilitation Masterclass. The next 12-week cohort starts in February. Learn more here.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

Go to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links

Facilitating Breakthrough, by Adam Kahane

Reos Partners

Adam Kahane on The Conversation Factory

My guest today is James Rutter, Chief Creative Officer at COOK, the pioneering frozen food company, where he oversees internal and external branding and communications. COOK is a founding UK B Corp, committed to using its business as a force for good in society, and has been ranked in the top 100 Best Companies To Work For every year since 2013. COOK’s award-winning frozen meals and puddings (which are desserts, btw) are made by hand in Kent and Somerset, and sold from 98 of its own shops nationwide, in 950 concessions and through its own home delivery service.

James joined COOK in 2010 after 15 years as a financial journalist and editor, and he speaks and writes regularly about purpose-driven business and brands. You should really follow him on LinkedIn!

James and I talk about the glory that is a proper Fish Pie, and about citizenship and participation. James’ leadership philosophy for his internal team is grounded in a sense of play and a recognition of community.

He shares some of his favorite insights from Peter Block’s book, "Community: The Structure of Belonging" and the deep value he’s found in working with Jon Alexander on Citizenship and Participation. Jon Alexander is the author of the bestselling book, "Citizens." James references Jon Alexander’s Participation Premium Equation in the opening quote.

There is so much goodness in this episode!

At Minute 27 James shares his community and transformation insights from Peter Block, including the essential idea that a small group, a community, is the fundamental unit of change, especially when that group is grounded in possibility. He also goes to share the impact that Block’s ideas of Inversion have had on him:

As James says, summarizing Block:

“It's not the performer who creates the performance, but the audience… And again, in a conversation sense… it's the listener who creates the conversation whereas we often think it's the speaker who creates the conversation… it's the child who creates the parent, not the parent who creates… this is (not) some kind of answer, but… a thought to play with. What if that's the way it works? How would you approach it differently? If the audience creates the performance, then how are you seeking to bring the audience into it? How are you giving them the power?”

At Minute 42 we discuss the importance of Connection over content: 

“...you've got to seek to build the human bonds first before you seek to do whatever the worky thing is you want to do.”

In essence, we are marinating in Danny Meyer’s ideas of an Employee-First workplace, which is why we talk, at the end of the episode, about how Happy Cooks make Happy Food, referencing an earlier conversation we had. 

And James insisted on talking about my Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry in 1972, hosting a historical cooking segment -  this episode is famous because it’s the first time John and Chuck met and Played together. You can see A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV here (most of them seem to get pulled down). At a crucial moment in the cooking segment, my mother, just 22 and not actually my mother yet (or anyone’s!) realized that the studio band was playing chaotic music, and that everyone was in a chaotic space, and she announced that unless we had a calm, peaceful environment, the food would taste chaotic - our intention and our energy would flow into the food. The Host, Mike Douglas, asked the band to play something quieter and more mellow, and John Lennon, assigned to cut cabbage, began reciting the mantra he wanted to suffuse the food:

“Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll…Rock n Roll”

What do YOU want to suffuse your work with?

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

James Rutter on LinkedIn

Fish Pie Recipes!

Peter Block on Community: The Structure of Belonging

Jon Alexander’s book Citizens

Jon’s Agency Equation: A Proposal

Agency = Purpose + Belonging + Power

Agency: the ability to shape the context of one’s life

Purpose: the belief that there is something beyond your immediate self that matters

Belonging: the belief that there is a context to which you matter in turn

Power: practical access to genuine opportunities to shape that context

Exit, Voice, Loyalty: An essential book on people and organizations

Finding flourishing and play at work - inspiration in https://www.punchdrunk.com/work/

Quotes no one said: “Teach Them to Yearn for the Vast and Endless Sea”

Via quote investigator: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/25/sea/

Minimum Viable Transformation

Matt LeMay on Agile Conversations

Happy Cooks make happy food: On Daniel’s Mom being on the Mike Douglas show with John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Chuck Berry Hosting a cooking segment: Context and History!

Why this episode is famous - it’s the first time John and Chuck met and Played together.

A Tiny Video Clip of my mom on TV! (most of them seem to get pulled down)

In this conversation, I sat down with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

Doug is a former serial entrepreneur turned economic developer and executive coach, and he’s committed to growing Northern Nevada’s startup and technology ecosystem. His community work has helped change the perception of Reno and lay the foundation for future generations of entrepreneurs to thrive in the region. Doug is proud to support entrepreneurs as they embark upon their own journeys.   

Doug shares, with great clarity, vulnerability and humility, his entrepreneurial journey and some key lessons he’s learned along the way.

I invited Doug to have a conversation with me about what it might mean to be a conscious cofounder, given Doug’s personal work on mindfulness. Towards the end of the conversation, we arrive at the idea that we are our own most important cofounder - the conversations we have with ourselves will either lead us to lean into or turn away from challenging conversations with our cofounders. And with the lens of Triple Loop Learning, we can start to create better cofounder relationships, not just with better contracts and financial structures, but from our way of being.

The basic metaphor is this: Work is a relationship. And relationships are made of conversations.

And you can hear this in Doug's description of a company as a “rebound startup” or talking about startups like a marriage.

And just like in personal relationships, sometimes, as Doug says, people want to turn away from the discomfort of having difficult conversations.

Doug mentioned research about splits among founders and how it related to the future success of the company. I did a bit of digging and... It’s counter-intuitive, that a startup with equal distributions is a red flag to investors, and that such a company is more likely to fail.

Doug suggests that unequal distributions are proof that the founders have had some hard conversations - which is a key skill in work and life.

However, roughly three out of four startups decide to split the business equally when they start up.

One of the main issues with this approach isn’t a question of HOW to make the split, but WHEN. A 2016 HBR article suggests that founders should wait to split shares until later, co-creating rules to determine the value of various contributions. (I recommend the book Slicing the Pie!).

The HBR authors suggest that “teams that negotiate longer are more likely to decide on an unequal split: the harder you look, the more likely you are to discover important differences. More generally, [they] argue that if cofounders haven’t learned something surprising about each other from their dialogue, they probably haven’t engaged in a serious enough discussion yet.”

The HBR article suggests that a hastily created equal split will sour over time - the percentage of founders who are unhappy with their split increases by 2.5x as their startups mature. That discontent can lead to rapid turnover, which can be problematic.

Another study, led by Professor David Noack, Executive Director of the Hall Global Entrepreneurship Center at the Goddard School of Business and Economics at Utah’s Weber State University suggests that an equal split, especially in early-stage companies, has another unexpected effect - making it unclear who’s driving the bus. According to Professor Noack’s research, if no one feels that they have ownership and responsibility, no one takes the wheel, which has a real effect: 

Companies with an unequal split were 21.7% more likely than other firms to be up and running a year later.

And just like in a marriage, having a “pre-nup” conversation can be awkward, even when people know the data about divorce. 

While it’s uncomfortable to do so, hosting a conversation to explore all the negative scenarios that might occur in the future, with corresponding actions to help avoid them, can help founders avoid headaches later on…and increase startups’ chances of success.

This is a conversation worth listening to…And I’m excited to share it with you!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

EDAWN - Startup Reno

Growth Pioneers Podcast

Today I talk with Adam Kahane, a Director at Reos Partners. Reos is an international social enterprise that helps people move forward together on their most important and intractable issues. Adam has over 30 years of experience facilitating breakthroughs at the highest levels in government and society. His own breakthrough facilitation moment came with an invitation to host the Mont Fleur Scenario Planning Exercises he facilitated in 1990s South Africa at the dawn of that country’s transition towards democracy and the twilight of apartheid. 

He’s gone on to facilitate conversations about ending civil wars, transforming the food system, and pretty much everything else in between.

He’s also amazingly open and honest about his growth and transformation as a facilitator, and his own failings along the way. It’s encouraging to hear him talk about feeling a little like a cobbler without shoes. Shouldn’t a breakthrough facilitator be able to facilitate the conflicts in their own lives with the same ease? It turns out, it’s not that simple.

Adam is also honest and open about how he looks back at his past books and sees them as not just incomplete, but sometimes dangerously incomplete. So, read Power and Love, Collaborating with the Enemy,Transformative Scenario Planning and Solving Tough problems (all amazing books) with a grain of salt while you wait for Adam’s 2021 book, Facilitating Breakthrough, to come out. It’s all about 5 key pairs of polarities in transformational, collaborative work and it’s an eye-opener.

I’ve had the opportunity to read a draft copy of the book and I’m really excited for you all to read it and learn about how to, as Adam says, “Fluidly” navigate these polarities in your own transformational work.

Just a side note: The opening quote for this episode is actually two quotes that I’m juxtaposing. I loved this simple summary of the book as a fluid navigation of polarities alongside the sentiment that the only action you can take is your next one. You make a choice, and see what happens. Designing conversations can become as static and dangerously waterfall as any old-school product design team’s backlog. Being agile and responsive in the moment requires clarity on your core values and principles...and Adam’s book and ideas can help us develop our own core north stars as we navigate complex and collaborative change.

Learn more about Adam’s work at www.reospartners.com , www.reospartners.com/adamkahane and find him on twitter at @adamkahane.

Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Links

Learn more about Adam’s work at www.reospartners.com  and www.reospartners.com/adamkahane 

Find him on twitter at @adamkahane.

Talks by Adam: 

Adam Kahane at Ci2012 - "Transformative Scenario Planning"

Power and Love: Adam Kahane at TEDxNavigli

How To Change the Future - Adam Kahane

Polarity Management by Barry Johnson

Adam’s Father’s Favorite Book: Science and Sanity

Barry Johnson’s work, which provided a foundation form Adam’s new book: Polarity Management

I first met Dr. Paul Browde as part of a multi-month intensive men's work program we were both part of. We were just about to break out into a few parallel sessions about various elements of running men’s groups when Paul raised his hand and said something to the effect of “would it be useful to have a breakout session about our personal narratives and how we use them to lead?”

I watched as the heads of 40+ men swiveled to focus on this one unassuming gentleman and witnessed nearly half of the group switch over from whatever session they were planning on going to and instead, go to sit around Paul to listen to him tell his story and share his wisdom about how to share our own stories. That’s the power of story!

Paul is a doctor of psychiatry and a TedX speaker. He has shared the stage with luminaries like Esther Perel, has taught Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, and co-founded a storytelling company called Narativ.

Paul has some profound wisdom to share about how to become aware of a different type of story - the stories that tell us, as well as the power of sharing our own stories, and examining the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves and to others. 

As Paul writes on his site:

We are born in connection, we are wired for connection, and it is through connection that we heal and experience our true aliveness.

I have always felt that stories can be the most powerful elements of communication - indeed, they are the thread that holds together each and every conversation. 

Stories are how we connect, heal and come alive.

Listen onward to learn about Paul’s mental models of how to become a space for others to share their stories - to shape your listening as a vessel, a bowl, to receive stories generously.

Narrative is powerful medicine that we can give to ourselves and to the people around us.

Enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Paul Browde: Healing through connection

The Power of Two: How Listening Shapes Storytelling

Two Twosomes, Not a Script in Sight

The Masculinity Paradox: Warmup with Paul Browde - Sessions Live by Ester Perel

Design means change and change means loss of the old. Even if a new design is better in every way, there is no design so perfect that you can “flip a switch” and step into the new instantaneously. Change takes time. And in that space between the old and the new there is a sense of loss. I’ve been doing my own work around trauma and healing it, and I couldn’t agree with more with Bree Groff’s sentiment that “Sometimes you have to step into the darkness with people” in order to heal things. Don’t fear the pain and loss, anticipate it, embrace it, design for it.

Today’s episode features Bree Groff, who at the time of the recording was transitioning from CEO of Nobl, an organizational change consultancy to Principal at SY Partners, a transformation agency based in NYC and SF.

Our conversation focused on a few key ideas around organizational design. Design, in the end always seems to require deep empathy and co-creation for it to be a success. Bree points out that the conversation about Org design should include as many people as possible, in order to make the change process as co-creative as possible. If you haven’t checked out the IAP2 spectrum, I’ll link to that in the notes.

Bree has identified six key types of loss to consider when designing organizational change: 

Loss of Control

Loss of Pride

Loss of Narrative

Loss of Time

Loss of Competence

Loss of Familiarity

I really love this framework to help focus our attention on the key needs of people we’re designing change for.

I highly recommend you also check out Krista Tippet’s interview with Pauline Boss on ambiguous loss to learn more about loss and how to process it. I’ll link to it in the show notes.

I’m also really excited to be working with Bree on a special project: She’ll be joining the Innovation Leadership Accelerator as a guest mentor. The ILA is a 12 week intensive workshop and coaching experience to help you grow as an organizational leader. I’ll link to the application in the notes as well.

Enjoy the show!

Bree’s Website

br.ee

finite and infinite games by James Carse

https://jamescarse.com/wp/?page_id=61

“anyone who must play cannot play”

The IAP2 Spectrum of Power in Collaboration

https://www.iap2.org/

On feedback: 

Adam Connor & Adam Irizarry

Designing a Culture of Critique

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/9/2/culture-of-critique

Being Soft on the People and Hard on the Problem (in negotiations and in life)

Robert Bordone on turning negotiations into conversations

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/9/27/robert-bordone-can-transform-negotiations-into-conversations

Krista Tippet on Ambiguous Loss

https://onbeing.org/programs/pauline-boss-the-myth-of-closure-dec2018/

The Innovation Leadership Accelerator

http://theconversationfactory.com/innovation-leadership-accelerator

We talk about podcast interviewing (meta, I know!) and we unpack a topic that’s close to both of our hearts: creative output.

One of my early podcast episodes was with Sara Holoubek, CEO of Innovation Systems consulting firm Luminary Labs. Sara introduced me to the idea of having what she called an “Intelligence Engine'' - a process by which organizations turn insights into action and action into opportunities, not just every so often, but consistently and regularly. It’s not a dissimilar idea from Jim Collins’ “Flywheel effect” in that, ideally, you tune up your engine often, and even upgrade it when you need to.

One of my core beliefs is that conversations exist at different scales, and that they act in similar ways at these different scales. I also might take the idea of a conversation too far…in that I feel that any iterative, adaptive cycle is, in essence, a conversation.

So, Sara’s Intelligence Engine is essential for a healthy, growing company’s conversation with the world - after all, intelligence at the product and/or organizational innovation level requires a consistent cycle of making or creating new things, testing or trying those things out and reflecting on how it went, ie, harvesting insights. That’s an innovation conversation, at scale.

That cycle is pretty much the same at the level of the individual. We all need to seek new input, make and try new things, and then reflect and inspect the results.

Serendipity Engine vs Intelligence Engines vs Curiosity Engines

As with organizational intelligence, individual intelligence engines need to have a balance of intention and wandering. We need to be actively seeking new insights and ideas that matter to us, while also being open and curious about the unexpected. So, having a curiosity engine, like my guest Glenn Fajardo suggested  in our episode on connecting remote teams, is a powerful way to rev up your intelligence engine, for yourself, your team and your organization.

Managing the flow of input, insight, and output

If there is one key takeaway from this episode, it’s that the open/explore/close // diverge/emerge/converge ARC of our own intelligence conversation is input-insight-output.

Srinivas’ top tips for building your own personal intelligence engine:

• Limit your Input
• Diversify your input
• Read books, not articles (they’ve digested complexity already!)
• Use a networked tool to capture your smart notes (srivas recommends Mem.ai which I also use!)
• Reflect and Connect dots regularly

Monotask to reduce the cognitive costs of task switching (check out my friends at Caveday and use the code 1STMONTHONE to get month of community-based monotasking support for $1 or use TRYACAVE21 to get your first cave free)

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

The Unmistakable Creative podcasthttps://podcast.unmistakablecreative.com/

Sara Holoubek on Human Companies and Solving Problems that Matter

Three Systems Every Creator Needs to Build by Srinivas Rao

You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy

The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit

Effortless Output in Roam course by Nat Eliason

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Maximize Your Output course by Srinivas Rao

I'm thrilled to be able to share this conversation with Carrie Melissa Jones with you! Carrie is the co-author of Building Brand Communities, with Charles Vogl, and she's kind of a big deal in the community-building world. She's also an alum of the facilitation masterclass and a friend. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, we dig deep on the subject of community as a conversation. As Carrie says, every community starts with a conversation, and conversations are what sustain communities and hold them together.

Some of what we cover in this 3-part episode:

• What community really is, and how organizations get it wrong

• The power of online relationships and how they can help us

• How the community-builder affects the community

• The inner work that goes along with community building, and how that affects brand communities

• The conversation that launched a book - the story of Building Brand Communities

• The difference between meaningful engagement and empty engagement

• Why brand communities? What role do they play in rebuilding our social fabric?

• How modern community-building efforts are still being shaped by outdated ideas

Parts 2 and 3 are coming soon!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links

Carrie's Website

Podcast episode: Being a Beginner is Often the Key We Need for Empathy and Creativity

Building Brand Communities, by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl

The Power of Ritual with Casper ter Kuile

I am excited to share my conversation with AJ Thomas, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Culture Summit where we were both giving talks. AJ was sharing her perspectives on being a Chaos Pilot at Google’s Moonshot Factory, Called “X”. At the time of this conversation, she’s been with Google for nearly four years, starting as Head of People. 

AJ is also A CxO in Residence at A.Team AND an Advisor at Magic Eden and SemperVirens Capital. She is also an Executive coach on the side. 

She’s got a full calendar.

X, A.Team, CxO. This is starting to sound like the credit roll on Sesame Street! That is a lot of letters, but we’ll add a few more, like T, I and Z.

You may have heard of being T-shaped, as in having breadth of knowledge in general and having depth in one particular area…versus being “I” shaped - having just depth, but no breadth. Breadth is important in any position, because having some breadth means you can more readily engage a broad swath of people in productive dialog, partially because you “get” their inside language enough to collaborate with them. This breadth of collaborative potential is especially important for Leaders.

AJ is a fan of being a Z-shaped-leader, which for her means having depth across many different areas, over time, and the ability to connect the dots between them. But while being able to connect the dots, to scan the horizon for innovation and emergent opportunities, to be able to see an Audacious and almost-impossible future AND communicate that vision to others is a powerful leadership skill, AJ sees Humility as an equally powerful leadership value. This puts AJ in excellent company with Dr. Marilyn Gist, PhD, Professor Emerita of Executive Programs at the Center of Leadership Formation at Seattle University, author of "The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility," and a past guest on this podcast! Check out our conversation here where Dr. Gist shares her Six Keys to Leadership Humility.

I love AJ’s idea of keeping Audacity and Humility in dynamic tension - staying “Humbacious”! That balance, the ability to “sprinkle” one quality or another into a conversation, shows up as tremendously powerful and generative in AJ’s leadership and coaching work. Audacity holds space for people to explore potential - the biggest vision and possibility. And Humility drives us to assume that we might be wrong and to leverage the mind of a scientist to de-risk the road ahead with powerful questions and intentional experiments.

Enjoy this powerful deep dive into these ideas and a lot more.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.couragetakesflight.com/

www.itsAJthomas.com

My guest today, Emily Levada, is a seasoned Chief Product & Technology Officer. Currently, she is the Chief Product Officer and Interim co-CEO at Embark Veterinary, a company dedicated to leveraging genetics to enhance the health and longevity of dogs. During her tenure, the company has achieved notable recognition, ranking as the #3 fastest-growing private company in Massachusetts and earning a spot on Forbes' list of promising venture-backed startups.

She also serves as a Board Member at JCC Greater Boston, bringing her expertise to contribute to the organization's growth and development and holds a significant role as a Member of the Customer Advisory Board at UserTesting, where she actively engages in guiding and advising the company.

Emily is also a two-time podcast guest, my first ever!  We did an episode a few years back where she shared some wonderful insights and frameworks about Trust, Communication and Psychological Safety in teams.

Emily was also gracious enough to be a guest mentor for the Innovation Leadership Accelerator cohort I co-ran with my friend Jay Melone from the product innovation consultancy New Haircut some years back. 

In this conversation, we sat down to talk about managing organizational emotions, especially negative emotions, and especially during critical junctures, like layoffs - something that many folks have been through, and many folks in the past year. I knew that Emily had some experience with this in the past and had some great thinking to share around this crucial leadership topic. 

There’s no *good* side to be on in a downsizing event - the people who are losing their jobs and income are also losing a sense of identity and need to navigate an uncertain future. But the loss of identity and the need to face an uncertain future is also true for the folks who are still with the company - both the “rank and file” and the leadership. 

Layoffs done poorly can dent a company culture.

Emily emphasized the importance of transparency in the period leading up to a layoff, as it builds trust and can mitigate negative emotions. 

On the other hand, leaders often have a desire to protect people from such difficult conversations until the last possible moment, so the whole team can focus on their day-to-day jobs.

I explored this polar tension between these two fundamental values, transparency and protection, with Emily using a tool called Polarity Mapping, developed by Barry Johnson Ph.D., the creator (and registered trademark holder!) of The Polarity Map®! You can read more about polarity mapping in my friend Stephen Andserson’s short blog post here and check out Dr. Johnson’s company, Polarity Partnerships here. IMHO, Stephen’s version of Barry’s diagram (below) is a bit clearer!

The basic idea of Polarity mapping is that often we feel pulled by two values, like:

Should we focus on Innovation or Efficiency? 

Should we prioritize Deadlines or Quality?

Growth vs. Consolidation?

Short-term Gains vs. Long-term Organic Growth?

Centralization vs. Decentralization?

(thanks for these examples, Stephen!)

In my own coaching work, I’ve found leaders can struggle to navigate conflicting parts of themselves, forming inner polar tensions that leave them feeling stuck, like: 

“I need to be flexible vs I need to be firm”

“I need to lead the conversation vs I need to let the conversation flow”

“I need to be aggressive or I have to be more passive”

“I need to listen more vs I feel the need to fix challenges”

“I want to be authentically myself vs I need to be a chameleon to get by”

And because we get pulled between them, and feel the polarity to be an unwinnable double bind of “damned if I do,” we kind of flub the balancing act. Polarity mapping asks us to be ultra-specific about the positives of both values AND to be very clear on the downsides of over-indexing on one value to the detriment of the other.

Doing a mapping like this can help us thread the needle of polarity, and look out for the early warning signs of over-indexing in one direction or another.

Below is a version of a polarity map for the tension Emily describes in our conversation, between Transparency and Protection.

Emily points out that these polarities pop up, not just at crucial moments in a business like layoffs, but in day-to-day operations, too.

Leaders can feel that Emotions are Inconvenient, but Team Emotions have real impact

Emily shares the top three negative organizational emotions she finds can deeply impact a team’s ability to learn (ie, be willing to experiment), be creative (ie, being able to innovate) and be fundamentally effective:

Anxiety (Fear)
Boredom
Apathy

Fear, anxiety, and boredom are detrimental to creativity and productivity in knowledge work. Leaders need to address these emotions and create an environment that fosters engagement and challenge - and ultimately, create a learning organization.

“People cannot do creative knowledge work when they feel fear and anxiety and boredom. Those things are just incompatible.”

Emily suggests that well-run one-on-one meetings are crucial for understanding how team members are feeling and detecting signs of overwhelm, underwhelm, or “whelm” in their job. One-on-ones can help build a foundation of trust and safety, on which we can build honest and productive conversations.

Emily also shares some straightforward approaches for shifting these key negative emotions:

Anxiety: focus on building psychological safety for teams experiencing anxiety, and provide more transparency and context.
Boredom: create relevant challenges
Apathy: create accountability and challenge for teams experiencing apathy

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Trust, Communication, and Psychological Safety with Emily Levada

The Joys of Polarity Mapping, by Stephen Anderson

Polarity Partnerships

Today, I sit down for a conversation with *my coach* Robert Ellis, about his new book, Coaching From Essence.

Robert has been described as “one of Silicon Valley’s best-kept secrets” and has been coaching leaders at startups, mid-stage companies, Fortune 500 giants, and nonprofits for over 30 years. Robert has taught leadership and coached entrepreneurs at Singularity University and developed Level UP, the leadership curriculum for the Global Startup Program, and taught leadership courses at Stanford University. We met through radical serendipity and I’m grateful for the generosity and grace Robert has coached me with. All of his teaching materials are now publicly available on his free circle community and on youtube.

Robert’s book is like sitting in a fireside chat with Robert, absorbing his profoundly wise and profoundly simple approaches to coaching. Sometimes, a new idea can feel so true that it lands like common sense - all the pieces fitting together so seamlessly and effortlessly. Roberts’ metaphors, stories and models hit like that - like powerful truths you knew all along.

Robert’s visual models help ground a coaching conversation, make it easy to follow along, and make the conversation incredibly sticky. And literally every time I’ve drawn one of these diagrams for a client, it lands with them and becomes a new metaphor for thinking about their challenge and their path forward.

This book isn’t just for coaches who want a more effortless and human approach to doing this work, it’s for anyone who wants to be deeply helpful to their clients, their teams, their organization, and to lead conversations in a more impactful way.

Coaching from Essence is based on the radical idea that everyone has an essence, and that, when we work from it, we can effortlessly create value and impact. Coaching from essence works both ways - the coach coaches from *their* essence, their natural approach…and the coachee is coached to work from their *own* essence - their own natural approach. We’re not telling people how to be. We are here to help them remove the obstacles that get in the way of them finding their own way.

According to Bill Gates, everyone needs a coach. 

I would flip this suggestion on its head and say that at some point in everyone’s lives, accessing a Coaching from Essence mindset can be a generous, powerful and transformative way to help someone in our lives.

Some of us choose to make coaching our life's work, but Coaching from Essence is a powerful, generous and transformative approach to helping people that everyone can (and should?) access at the right moment for the right person. 

Robert Ellis is the embodiment of what he teaches - he is a generous, powerful and transformative coach who I’ve had the pleasure of working under for several years. I’m so glad this book is finally out in the world so that everyone can have the experience of working with him.

Links

https://coachingfromessence.com/

https://www.futurosity.com/

Coaching from Essence, by Robert Ellis

I'm really excited to share my conversation with Kat Vellos, an amazing designer of experiences. 

Today we talk about the art of intentionality and the power of hearing yourself say something you've never said before. We also dive deep into some of the amazing insights in her book, "We Should Get Together: The secret to cultivating better friendships”

One of the things that I loved from the book was Kat's powerful metaphor about "hydroponic friendship," and how you can create a supercharged connection through intentional vulnerability and shared experiences. 

She draws on her long-time experience as a facilitator and designer to create what for me was one of the big "Aha!" moments: hydroponic friendship requires a container, and that's one of the things that leaders can do to design experiences: They can create the container. 

A container can be the question that starts the conversation, the invitation to the party. In Improv, it’s called the “Magic Circle” - the place where new rules and ways of being apply, the “game world”.

While Kat's book is about designing friendship in our lives, she points out that connection in one part of our lives leads to connection in all parts of our lives. We’re experiencing loneliness and disconnection not only in our everyday lives but at work ...and work is where we spend a lot of time.

Kat and I unpack four powerful facets of leadership: 

One: the ability to design experiences - the ability to bring people together to have a shared, transformative conversation.

Two: the ability to be flexible on outcomes while still being aligned on a larger goal. This is one of the most powerful Design Thinking mental models: focusing on needs instead of solutions.

Three: We also explore an absolutely fundamental capacity of leadership - the ability to listen and connect with people, deeply. 

Four: Kat also points out that actually doing something with what you’ve heard is the last, most crucial component of leading and caring for a team.

I'm thrilled to have connected with Kat, and excited to share her work with you. I highly recommend reading her book "We Should Get Together" and its addendum, "Connected from Afar," which is filled with ways to create more intentional connection in your life and your work - it was written during the height of the pandemic, so the tools are all zoom-friendly.

Also, make sure you check out the links below to some of her other projects, and to her amazing post on 40-plus alternatives to "How are you?" with different versions for work and everyday life. Enjoy the show!

LINKS

Kat's Alternatives to "How are you"

Kat's Website

We Should Get Together by Kat Vellos

The problem with how are you: brightsiding!

Inspiration

Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W4XPK7G/

https://www.antionettecarroll.design/

https://www.creativereactionlab.com/

This episode is about four really big conversations that are worth designing:

1.How do you shift an entire cultural conversation?

2.How do you build a sustainable business and team around it?

3.How do you sustain yourself as an entrepreneur though all of this changemaking? (that is, take care of your own internal conversation through it all!)

4.How do you get the help you need to grow in all of these conversations?

Dan Doty is the founder of an organization called Evryman that exists to help change the cultural conversation about men, to help provide support, tools, and experiences for men to build deep connections that unlock and accelerate personal growth. And it’s something that’s really needed in the world. The current cultural conversation about men is about Toxic Masculinity. Dan’s work is about shifting the cultural conversation to what Healthy Masculinity looks like, and how to build it.

I’ve been to a Men’s Emotional Leadership Training with Dan and his team (also called MELT) earlier this year and it started a new phase of growth for me...and my own dad went to Evryman’s men’s weekend called the Open Source Weekend and he experienced a major shift. My mom noticed it the moment he came home! So I’m a real believer in this work. In fact, I just started co-hosting a men’s group recently with Evryman.

Together, we build a conversation map for Dan. A conversation map is a reflection tool for leaders to examine key areas in their work and life and to get them in order. If you check out the video or the show notes you can see some of that visual work. I’ll link to some templates as well.

Dan is a coach and an entrepreneur, and he’s got an incredibly holistic approach to supporting himself as he leads change – one of the most balanced that I have seen. Of the four core conversations (Community, Team, Dialogue and Inner Dialogue) Dan is cultivating space and time for each. Leading a big cultural conversation while still making time for your internal conversation is a huge challenge for leaders.

Enjoy this episode and pair it with an episode from last season with Claire Wasserman, founder of ͞Ladies Get Paid͟, an organization which works to eliminate the gender pay gap.There are a lot of similarities in the patterns these two change-makers are building to help them lead a BIG change in the world – changing the conversation around gender is no small task.

Learn more about Dan here:

http://www.dan-doty.com/

Check out Dan’s Podcast here:

https://evrymanpodcast.libsyn.com/

Dan’s TedX talk here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdAHdbULmNg

Learn more about Evryman here:

http://www.evryman.co/

The MELT weekend we mention here:

https://evrymanswestcoastmeltretreat.splashthat.com/

And the Evryman Open Source retreat here:

https://evrymanopensourceberkshires.splashthat.com/

Women Teach Men:

https://womenteachmen.com/

And Owen Marcus, a co-founder of Evryman and leader of my MELT group:

https://owenmarcus.com/

And check out the episode about Claire’s Organization, Ladies Get Paid, here:

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/10/24/claire-wasserman-knows-how-to-design-powerful-experiences-communities-and-organizations

The 9 Conversations Map v2.0 can be downloaded here, so you can build your own conversations map:

https://gumroad.com/l/9conversationsmap

The Conversation OS Canvas can be downloaded here:

http://theconversationfactory.com/downloads

And you can check out the video of this episode here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-pdRRcCR_s__e

I’m so excited to share this conversation with Oscar Trimboli, author of Deep Listening, a lovely book/card deck.

We talk about the costs of not listening, the opportunities that are created when we listen and why hearing what's unsaid can transform your work and life.

In our western conception, we have speaking and listening, a basic duality. 

Oscar describes our normal conception of listening as monochrome, two dimensional listening rather than multi-color, multi-sensory listening. 

Oscar has worked to absorb traditional approaches to listening from Inuit cultures in North America, to Australian Aboriginal cultures, as well Polynesian and Maori cultures. 

Oscar breaks down a 6-dimensional listening model that leverages a deeper understanding of the Chinese word for listening, Ting as well as an Aborginal concept for listening, Dadirri, which approaches listening from 3 dimensions - Self, Peoples and Lands.

125/900 and The Cost of Not Listening

Oscar introduces us to the 125/900 rule - the simple fact that we can speak at 125 words a minute yet we can think at 900 words a minute. 

The basic math of conversation is that there will always be something unsaid.

The Impact of this fact is impossible to calculate. In our daily work this can mean a misunderstanding, an argument, lost work or a delay. 

But Oscar points to two shocking examples: 

+we lost three critical weeks in the fight against the Coronavirus because the Chinese authorities weren't willing to listen to a doctor. On December 30, 2019 Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist in a Wuhan hospital, alerted six of his friends on WeChat saying, "There's a SARS-like virus that has a huge impact on the mortality of aged patients.”  Li was later asked to recant his statements and also later passed away from the disease.

+August 27th, 2005, Dr. Raghuram Rajan, then head of the International Monetary Fund, spoke at the Federal Reserve annual Jackson Hole conference in 2005. Rajan warned about the growing risks in the financial system and proposed policies that would reduce such risks. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called the warnings "misguided" and Rajan himself a "luddite".

How to Listen to people you disagree with

One final idea I want to highlight is how Oscar suggests to go about  listening to those people we fiercely disagree with. 

He suggests, rather than work to convince them, simply ask”

"when was the first time you formed that opinion?" 

The immediate impact is that it gets us out of talking points and into the starting point. It’s a more human story. It’s the beginning of empathy and of understanding the data that they are working with.

Links, Notes and Resources

Start here with Oscar’s Listening Quiz

More about Oscar on the web: www.listeningmyths.com

I’m joined by 

Erica O’Donnell, a hybrid professional working at the intersection of design thinking, strategy, facilitation, and innovation,

Kyle Pearce, a leader in collaborative change with an extensive background in the health and social services sector.

Frankie Iturbe, a Program Manager at Newsela, a K12 EdTech company

And Kate Farnady, Director, Chief of Staff, Strategic Technologies at Autodesk, and also the community coordinator for the Conversation Factory Insiders’s Group!

We only scratched the surface, but there's lots of goodness in here.

Just a few of the things we discussed:

• How stated goals may not always have the whole group aligned with them, and what to do about it.
• Sharing responsibility for the agenda and outcome with stakeholders and session attendees
• How good insights can sometimes arise even in spite of (or perhaps because of) chaos
• Different approaches to facilitating agendas around messy goals and questions

If you want to dive deeper, check out my course on the 9Ps of meeting planning. I'd also recommend signing up for the conversation factory insiders group...we ran another deep dive on this question, reflecting on the question "why do I need an agenda?" and sharing our responses together. You can join here and check out that session as a subscriber here.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links

Kate on LinkedIn

Frankie on LinkedIn

Erica on LinkedIn

Good Seed Digital

Think: Act Consulting

My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback in an utterly wrong way - which is also an idea we dive into later in our conversation today.

Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. 

His book, "The Problem with Change: and the Essential Nature of Human Performance" is about what we might call lie number 10: the idea that change is good and that leaders must lead change in order to be good leaders. Wholesale belief in this lie has created what Ashley calls  “Life in the Blender” - driven by what I’ve heard some folks refer to as “The Reorg of the Day”.

I love love love the musical analogies Ashley uses to describe leadership - not as the lead guitar or first violin, but as the Ground Bass - the principal structural element of a musical piece. The Leader can help teams navigate change by playing a backbeat of stability and consistency, supporting a range of free expression and variation. Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here (which he mentions in the extended version of the analogy, later on in the conversation).

What is that Ground Bass? For Ashley it’s about helping people feel seen, connected, celebrated and clear on the story of the meaning of their contributions to the work. 

This perspective aligns very well with the message Bree Larson offered here some years back. Bree is a Partner at SYPartners and shared her framework around the challenges of designing organizational change - that most change can easily result in one or more of the Six Types of Loss she identified:

Loss of Control
Loss of Pride
Loss of Narrative
Loss of Time
Loss of Competence
Loss of Familiarity 

All of which Ashley suggests leaders can deflect or reduce through 9 key leadership skills that he outlines in depth in his book:

1. Make space 

2. Forge undeniable competence 

3. Share secrets 

4. Be predictable 

5. Speak real words 

6. Honor ritual 

7. Focus most on teams

8. Radicalize HR 

9. Pave the way

Prior to releasing the book, Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece which is a blockbuster and is an even more succinct, poignant and straight-on condemnation of modern corporate leadership - it is also highly worth reading. This book feels a bit like a Burn Book - Ashley is pointing out fundamental misconceptions at the heart of corporate life in a direct and unvarnished manner - in the hope that some leaders will listen and start doing things differently - Leading in a way that takes into account how humans really are and what we really need to thrive at work.

Ashley is very clear: companies need to look beyond wellness initiatives and corporate cheerleading and shift their focus to the fundamental environment of daily work.

The effects of a corporate life caught in constant change are more than clear to anyone who’s been through it: uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of unbelonging and of displacement, and a loss of meaning

As Goodall says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.”

Also - do listen for an extended exchange around minute 40 where we talk about the power of praise and the Paul Hollywood handshake - if you’re not a Great British Bake off fan, there’s still time to watch a few episodes to get in the mood - or at least witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here.

Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed which is a blockbuster

Take a listen to Ashley and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback utterly wrong.

Canon in D Major by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.

I’m excited to share my conversation with Kevin Bethune, a multidisciplinary design executive, entrepreneur, best-selling author and keynote speaker based in Redondo Beach, California. He’s been a VP of Strategic design at BCG Digital, A global process product manager at Nike and a Nuclear Engineer at Westinghouse. He currently leads his own firm, https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

One of his key ideas is “Open your aperture.” -ie, shifting the lens that you are looking at a problem from or through. Design and Design Thinking has so many tools to help us do just that, and find creative approaches to our biggest challenges.

In our conversation, we discussed the importance of embracing creative approaches (since our habitual approaches most likely can’t solve them!) and the need for bold leadership to optimize for curiosity and creativity - because going with business as usual is usually a lot easier than spending time on curiosity.

It takes a willingness to slow down to optimize for curiosity in a business environment that is often so focused on quarterly capitalism.

We also highlight the lack of diversity in design and innovation, particularly in black representation, and the cognitive dissonance of claiming to serve certain communities without actually representing them - an unresolved critique of many innovation firms.

The S-Curve and the Cone of Possibility

Kevin’s book, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation, is CHOCK A BLOCK with diagrams (and I love diagrams!) that will stretch your thinking, but we spent some time on one diagram in particular that combines two classic models of thinking: The cone of possibility and the s-curve.

The Cone of possibility is a cone on its side, with the tip at the present, and the sides of the cone stretching out like rays of sunshine to the right. The rays represent possible futures along the timeline. There are many versions of this diagram online. Kevin’s version calls the center of the cone the “most likely” or projected future. The cone of possibility invites us to consider widening edges - future scenarios that are plausible and even impossible or preposterous futures, not just the projected or ideal future.

Opening our aperture to consider multiple possible futures means that our plans can be more resilient, adaptable and even antifragile.

The S-curve is a visual representation of one of my favorite Shakespeare Sonnets. #15: 

When I consider everything that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and check'd even by the selfsame sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;

Things are born (or emerge), they grow, mature and then fade away. Kevin’s version of the S-curve includes more detail:

1. Emergence

2. A dip - the trough of disillusionment

3. A hyper-growth phase that slows into..

4. Maturity and then…

5. Decline, or retirement. 

Kevin overlays the cone of possibility with a set of cascading s-curves, representing a host of possible trends rising and cresting as we look out into the possible futures.

As Kevin describes this diagram in our conversation, his hands are making waves of opening and closing, diverging and converging. That's what he’s seeing when he looks along the cone of possibility: all of these different trends, multiple pathways. It’s this complex, undulating space that he tries to illustrate for the teams that he works with to help them see a bigger aperture to think inside of.

These diagrams, these mental models, help redesign the conversation about strategy and innovation. We’re not designing for a single, simple, ideal future. We’re looking out at a complex landscape with multiple possible twists and turns. That is how you unlock strategic innovation - step back, widen the aperture and change the conversation.

In short - creative visualization facilitates dialogue and widens perspectives.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbethune/

https://dreamsdesignandlife.com/

In this episode I talk with my friend Chris Murchison, who is a coach, a facilitator and a talented artist, too!

We talk about his Four principles of Communities of Practice and how building a positive culture within an organization requires, essentially, creating a community of practice. Your team, your organization, is already practicing something…and that practice is either mindful and intentional, or it’s habitual and haphazard. 

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a passion for something they do and so, have a shared purpose or goal for learning how to do it better…and so, they interact regularly with the intention of continuous improvement of that thing.

An example of intentional practice that Chris shares in the opening quote is what he calls a “Sunset Meeting”, a special, extended, and deeper version of a Retrospective, that asks, not just how did the work go, but how did we do? Stopping to look back and look forward means that the space for continuous improvement is being created.

But without fostering deep psychological safety for people to say what needs to be said, a leader and a team can never get the continuous relevant learning they need from the conversation. How to lead that kind of safety is a whole other conversation, but Chris and I do unpack some of the facilitation skills leaders need to master in order to be able to host these types of continuous improvement conversations.

Communities of practice require ongoing conversations and intentional practices. Chris shares four key principles to help you architect an effective community of practice for your own context:

1. Meaningful connection (In order to, as Chris says, plant the seeds of trust and safety)

2. Relevant learning (So people want to be full there AND so the organization benefits)

3. Purposeful practice (so we’re focused on what matters most)

4. Sharing and reflection (slowing down to notice and share what we’re each practicing and learning)

Make sure to check out the links and show notes which include Chris’ wonderful Community of Practice Guide and his more general Community Principles & Practices.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Chris's Website

Community of Practice Guide

Community Principles & Practices

Today’s episode features Kai Haley, Lead of Design Relations and the Sprint Master Academy at Google. We talk about design sprints and building a “sprint culture” as well as a much bigger question: The need for ethics in design. If you can build anything, faster, it’s a kind of super power. And with great power comes great responsibility. While you might have heard Spider-Man say that, it also made me think of my favorite Plato’s Dialog, Gorgias, which points out that power without knowledge of good (and evil) is pretty dangerous. Kai believes that training a sprint master means giving them the tools to keep people honest and mindful of their choices.

What I really love about this episode is how open, honest and humble Kai is about how hard this work is. The Sprint can make it seem like solving big challenges is simple – all you need is five days and Google’s list of activities – widely available on the internet! (and in the show notes!)

But Kai makes it clear that any attempts to “copy & paste” the Sprint (just like any new way of working) into an organization will experience some turbulence.

Adopting a new way of work can create a wave of change that will ripple out into the organization. To find sustainable success means changing rewards and recognition practices, building training and management support and lots and lots of flexibility and patience.

We don’t get into the basics of the design sprint in the interview so I’ll say a few words of background. A design sprint is a structured process for getting a group of people to get together and make a big decision in a shorter—than—normal period of time. Sprints are a general term in use in Agile software development for some time and they have become really popular in the digital product design world as User Experiences Designers have had to contend with the spread of Agile in the world.

In the last few years Google has developed an approach to design sprinting that blends parts of design thinking and parts of Agile into a powerful structure; building a clear, compelling narrative thread in the process. Inside Google, sprinting has developed into a key part of their culture, and the world is starting to take notice – starting with the NY Times bestselling book “Sprint” by former Google Ventures employees Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky who took their own unique flavor of the Sprint and wrote a clear, thorough, check-list approach to the method that made it seem simple enough for anyone to try.

While it’s often shorter inside Google and other organizations, the canonical structure is a five-day workshop that opens up a key challenge for a group or a company, explores several options to solving it and closes the loop with user research. Often workshops (that people like me run) *can* wind up feeling like Innovation Theater. Workshops can help teams get clear on a strategy and excited about big ideas. But those ideas can fade once the workshop ends. The ideas and the excitement get lost inside the organization. People who weren’t there can question the validity of the ideas and power of their shared conviction. The Sprint format helps a workshop gain momentum and power though a key difference from the average workshop.

For Kai, the key distinction between a workshop and a sprint is that a sprint develops a prototype and puts it in front of customers to get feedback on a key idea. A sprint helps end debate with evidence – and helps continue the conversation long after the workshop.

The Sprint makes use of the Conversation OS in some interesting (and totally unintentional) ways – pulling on a few key levers of conversation design:

 The cadence of work is sped up to force a decision and to create positive pressure, all while holding the work within a clear and powerful narrative thread. The visual map of the 5—day process helps get teams bought in on the power of working this way, establishing clear goals and agreements – regardless of how tough the middle of the week-long workshop gets, there are customers being recruited to test out the ideas, making it harder to give up and loose momentum!

Pair this episode with a few others for a ricjer perspective on thes issues:

- Dee Scarano, who’s a Design Sprint Trainer and Facilitator at AJ and Smart, for more background on the sprint and being an awesome facilitator

-Alistair Cockburn, one of the original Agile Signatories, if you’re new to agile or want to go deeper into it

-Daniel Mezick, who uses a unique, open-space approach to bring agile practices into organizations at scale

You can find links for all of this and more in the show notes!

Thanks for listening! Enjoy the show…and if you do, please take a moment and leave a review on iTunes.

Google Sprint Kit

https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/

GV Sprint on Medium

https://medium.com/@gv.com

Sprint Stories on Medium

https://sprintstories.com/

The Sprint Book

https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test-Ideas/dp/1442397683

Plato’s Gorgias

https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/gorgias/summary/

Gransfors Bruk Axes: We have unlimited responsibility for Total Quality.

https://www.gransforsbruk.com/en/about/corporate-responsibility/

Changing the Conversation with Sprints

https://medium.com/google-design/changing-the-conversation-with-design-sprints-3ba776145468

The Conversation OS Canvas

http://theconversationfactory.com/downloads/

 Everyday Design Sprints with Dee Scarano

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/8/3/everyday-design-sprints-dee-scarano-aj-smart

Agile and Jazz Dialog with Alistair Cockburn

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/7/19/alistair-cockburn-on-the-heart-of-agile-jazz-dialog-and-guest-leadership

Agile as an invitation to a game with Daniel Mezick

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/23/dan-mezick-on-agile-as-an-invitation-to-a-game

For some people, facilitation is a means to an end: Getting things done, more in less time. Taking the time to think and talk can seem like a luxury when your team just wants to just "get going". Facilitation, then, becomes like any tool like a drill, or a knife...you don't actually want the tool, you want a hole in the wall or a carrot sliced. When you're done with the tool, you go on to the next thing!

But for other people, this space between posing a challenge, thinking, talking and doing, is worth deepening. Facilitation then becomes more than a thing you do to get to the next thing...It becomes a way of being and approaching the world.  Facilitation becomes a core value, a principle.

The problem with facilitation as a means to an end is that facilitating well is a design problem in and of itself, which requires thoughtful work and practice. Focusing on the ends instead of the means, in this case, can cause people to give light consideration to facilitating masterfully. But when the conversation really matters, someone really should design the conversation.

It's really delightful to talk to someone like Alison for whom, like me, facilitation *is* the work...deepening it for ourselves and others is why we do what we do: Not just helping teams as a facilitator, but helping others to develop as facilitators.

Alison is the founder of Bracket, a consultancy based in the UK. She helps teams at companies of all stripes to work better together. She's also written a lovely book  “A Pocket Guide to Effective Workshops”. Alison is also, like me, a workshop geek.

Facilitation is a design skill, and like any design process, each facilitator is going to bring their own assumptions, good and bad, into the process. So it's critical to be self-aware: Why do you make the design choices that you make? Alison is a thoughtful practitioner who helps other facilitators become the same way.

Design is about intention. A facilitator needs to be able to visualize each and every step through the workshop process... What size paper will people be using when and why? What color and thickness of pen?

The sheer number of design choices involved in the process means that facilitators *can* fall into a rut. Finding fresh perspectives and approaches is crucial...which is what this podcast is all about! I hope you enjoy this episode!

We talk about:

• The importance of making time for silence and reflection in reducing power dynamics and "groupthink"
• Finding your own unique "stance" as a facilitator
• The struggle to find purposeful energizers
• How crucial it is to get people in the room deeply connected with each other's expertise
• Knowing your workshop's narrative arc

Further Reading:

Richard Florida "The rise of the creative class"

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Creative-Class-Revisited-Anniversary-Revised/dp/0465029930

How to Kill Creativity by Teresa Amabile

https://hbr.org/1998/09/how-to-kill-creativity

Gamestorming (of course)

http://gamestorming.com/

Collective Genius by Linda Hill

https://hbr.org/product/collective-genius-the-art-and-practice-of-leading-innovation/13296E-KND-ENG

https://www.ted.com/talks/linda_hill_how_to_manage_for_collective_creativity

the Progress principle by Terese Amabile

https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins

http://www.progressprinciple.com/

Twitter: @alisoncoward
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alisoncoward

Website: www.bracketcreative.co.uk

Alison Coward is the founder of Bracket, a consultancy helping teams in the creative and technology sector to work better together, with clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to startups. She is a strategist, trainer and workshop facilitator and the author of “A Pocket Guide to Effective Workshops”.

With over 15 years’ experience working in, leading and facilitating creative teams, Alison is passionate about finding the perfect balance between creativity, productivity, and collaboration.

For almost two decades, Amy Jen Su has partnered with investment professionals, CEOs, and executives to sustain and increase their leadership effectiveness as they drive organizational change and transformation. She is the author of the Harvard Business Review Press book, The Leader You Want to Be: Five Essential Principles to Bringing Out Your Best Self – Every Day.

Amy and I dive deep on leadership, and how who you are as a person affects the organization you're leading, for better or worse. This means that self-leadership and mindfulness are essential for leaders, and we unpack Amy’s approaches to these dimensions of leadership. 

This episode is a must-listen for anyone who wants to strengthen their center and be a more balanced, more effective leader. And as Amy says in the opening quote, there is no one way for everyone to lead...we each need to find our own north star and our own thread to follow in the story of our own leadership development.

Cultivating Our Inner Conversation

One insight that I was so glad to have Amy “yes and '' is my feeling about the deep importance of our inner conversation - the parts of ourselves that cheer and check us. As Amy says, 

“some of these voices no longer serve us, and in fact disempower us”

She suggests that we stay updated with our current selves, and know when it's time to let go of voices that no longer serve us.

Cultivating an outer conversation: Finding mentors and supporters

Amy advises us to consider:

“who are (your) cheerleaders and safe harbors (and how can you build) a network of support that can also live life with us and ride alongside us as leaders and as people.”

She suggests that you find and recruit folks like the 

“sausage maker, the accountability buddy, the mirror, the cheerleader, the safe harbor, the helicopter”

People who you feel safe sharing the nitty-gritty with, folks who keep you accountable to your goals, people who help you see yourself as you are, who cheer you on, who can be a safe harbor, and people who can pull you out of the dumps when you are down.

It’s hard to find that all in one person. For many, their spouses serve too many of those roles! Finding a coach like Amy or myself can help you maintain a regular cadence of attention to these modes of reflection and growth and get to your North Star...and find your next star, too.

Mindfulness is Key. But it’s not about feeling good.

Amy and I talk about how mindfulness is very popular right now, but often not considered in its full context. Amy points out that:

“I think one of the misnomers about mindfulness though is that somehow if you start meditating or having a mindfulness practice you're going to feel these wonderful happiness mood states all the time... It's getting to the truth, whether that's a painful emotion or a positive emotion, you're tuning into what reality is... Mindfulness... with razor clarity, (help you) actually come to reality.”

Amy Jen at Paravis Partners

Amy Jen's books:
Own the Room
The Leader You Want to Be

Thich Nhat Hanh: "How do I stay in the present moment when it feels unbearable?"

Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access
https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Conversation Analysis is a powerful tool that looks at large numbers of conversations to help build insights about what works and what doesn’t. 

Elizabeth Stokoe is a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, and shares some key insights from her excellent book, Talk, the science of conversation and her well-received TedX talk.

As she suggests in the opening quote, any conversation that you participate in has a landscape to it.

What Conversation Analysis can do - and we are all conversation analysts, just not professional ones - is show us the texture of that landscape, and how to navigate the bumps in the road effectively.

One surprising idea I absorbed from Professor Stokoe is in this quote, when she says that:

“In a way, the best conversations might have some clumsy, awkward moments and through that way, you might move past it and into something more mutual”

We know what is natural and easy because we know what feels clumsy. Seeing, accepting and moving past the clumsy can help us find a smoother path.

We are the Turns We Take

Elizabeth’s idea that we are the turns we take, that speech acts are real acts, is a powerful one. And so is her idea that non-responsiveness or silence in reply to an awkward turn can get things “back on track”. If someone comes in “hot” to a conversation an easy way to cool things down is to wait and let the person fix it themselves, as she says:

“People will figure out that they just did something that was a bit off and fix it.”

What I really loved about talking with Professor Stokoe is that she busts conversation myths with ease - and Science!

There are many popular ideas about conversations, from how they differ across cultures to how much communication consists of body language to how men and women speak differently - both in amounts and type. 

Professor Stokoe suggests that there are many more similarities than differences across cultures and genders. She is in fact, more interested in how we construct gender through speech, than how our biological gender influences speech.

And she also reasonably suggests that if body language is 90% of communication, why can we communicate just fine over the phone? There is, as it turns out, very little science to support many such figures.

Working with real conversations instead of simulations

Elizabeth also casts very reasonable doubts on some of industry’s favorite models to explore interactions, like secret shoppers - it turns out that people who are acting like customers don’t act like customers. 

She also suggests that using role-play in training is not as effective as it could be.

Conversational Analysis can offer better insights by studying real conversations en masse, in fine-grained detail.

Be sure to listen all the way to minute 45 when we dive into group conversation dynamics and how people learn what behaviors are acceptable in a session in the opening seconds of an interaction. It is shocking how quickly the landscape of a conversation is built and surveyed by the participants. 

Links, Notes and Resources

Elizabeth Stokoe’s TEDx talk

A deep dive on her work on the TED blog

More on CARM training

Elizabeth’s excellent book, Talk

On Body language: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Mehrabian “Mehrabian's findings on inconsistent messages of feelings and attitudes (the "7%-38%-55% Rule") are well-known, the percentages relating to relative impact of words, tone of voice, and body language when speaking. Arguably these findings have been misquoted and misinterpreted throughout human communication seminars worldwide”

Lenny the anti-cold-calling chatbot

More about conversation and gender from Professor Stokoe here.

In this episode, Alisa Cohn and I talk through Art of Coaching and also one of my favorite ways of looking at Leadership: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. A Coaching mindset is a transformative way to show up for others and yourself, so I’m excited to share these insights from Alisa, since she was named the Top Startup Coach in the World, and she has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. If you’re stepping up as a leader, or are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work.

Everyday Coaching

A coaching mindset can be powerfully transformative, so even if you don’t have a startup, even if you’re not a coach... if your you’re not even an official leader, or even if you just want to be a good friend, you’ll find lessons in this conversation with Alisa that you can use in your work and life, everyday 

Coaching is a conversational process that works with someone to help them improve, from the inside out. Alisa shares some of her most powerful coaching questions and all about how the most impactful coaching conversation she’s ever had was only 8 minutes long.

Alisa and I got right into the heart of coaching, with her sharing some essential, fundamental conversational approaches to the coaching process like: 

>>firm and gentle inquiry
>>moving from the presenting problem to the context
>>Trusting your curiosity
>>Staying Loose!
>>Trust that they have an answer...that the work is in them. 

As Alisa said:

“All my clients want me to tell them how to do it or what to do. They'll ask me a question and my answer is, "Well, listen, I wouldn't be any kind of a coach if I didn't get a chance to say, 'What do you think?"

>>Alisa will ask “What if you did know?” and push her clients to sit with the question. The act of reflecting is helpful no matter what springs up.

>>The ability to reflect will help with one of the absolute key executive skills: choosing a response versus having a reaction. 

Alisa actually quotes Victor Frankl’s blockbuster thoughts on this capacity:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

A coach isn’t all warm and fuzzy listening though…My coach calls his approach “tapping someone’s bottle”...pointing out the limits to someone’s thinking. When Alisa wants to push back I heard her use the phrase:

"Well, that's how I invite you to think about it." 

Alisa will step in with her perspective but without force. A tap isn’t a shove!

Asking “How is this situation serving you?” is a gentle challenge.

What to Expect in a Coaching Relationship...and why you might need a coach

If you are thinking about coaching, this interview will help you know what to expect in a coaching relationship and why you might want to bring a coach into your work.

Alisa and I talked through one of my favorite ideas: The Art of Showing up on Purpose. One huge challenge of being a leader is that, as she says “You have to grow and learn to communicate differently and behave differently as your company grows.” Alisa and I talk about how to find new ways of tapping into your inner humanity and show up authentically, no matter the situation. Just because the board says “you need to have more conviction” doesn’t mean you have to become a jerk, or invert how you want to be. It’s about finding ways to be passionate and firm that work for you. 

In my own experience, I’ve found that, as a coach and a coachee, a powerful conversation can help me find my own, authentic path forward, through having a conversation with my own inner parts. It’s hard to do that on your own...having a coach as part of the conversation can be transformative.

Alisa also points out that coaching has to be 3-Dimensional, because we are 3-Dimensional. As we grow as leaders, she thinks of three dimensions of growth: we have to grow in our self management, our skill in managing others, and, of course, in managing the business. A powerful coach is going to make you look at all three.

Alisa's website

Alisa on LinkedIn

Alisa on Twitter

Alisa on Jeff Gothelf’s Forever Employable series

Alisa Rapping!

Check yourself before you Wreck yourself

Enjoy the conversation as much as I did. And make sure to head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Imagine a world in which all leaders feel and display a deep regard for others’ dignity. This is the world that Marilyn Gist, author of The Extraordinary Power of Leader Humility, is working hard to bring about. Mariyn is a Professor Emerita, Executive Programs and Center of Leadership Formation at Seattle University and also a member of the MG100 coaches...a group of the top 100 leaders in the world, convened by legendary executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. Check out my interviews with other MG100 rockstars like Ayse Birsel, author of Design the Life you love, Dorie Clark, author of *several* books, including the upcoming “Long Game” and most recently, Alisa Cohn, the top startup coach in the world, and the author of the upcoming “From Startup to Grownup”

Marilyn is working to redesign the conversation around leadership. Many folks, when they close their eyes and think “leader” , picture a light-skinned man in a dark suit, exuding alpha energy. Just do a google image search to check in with this out-moded vision of leadership.

Leaders lead. They take charge and show the way.

But leaders also need to listen, learn and understand the people they’re meant to be leading.

Marilyn has been teaching and coaching about leadership for decades and she wrote this book so that the world would stop overlooking what she calls “the one variable at the heart of leadership”

Marilyn and I dig into what Leader Humility is, what it means to have it, practice it, and live it, and practical ways to incorporate it into your work and life.

What’s at stake? In human terms, Marilyn points out the Gallup poll that suggests that only 36% of Employees Are Engaged in the Workplace. While that’s actually the highest it’s been in 20 years, since they started measuring it, it’s still really low. Gallup claims that about 14% percent of folks are actively disengaged (rather than just the 51% that is just regular-old disengaged).

On your next zoom call, look around...it might be possible that only a third of the people on the grid really care. Again, in human terms, that 60-ish percent of folks is a drag on the small percentage of folks who really care.

In financial terms, some estimate $500 billion in total losses in the US. In any one business, estimate 34% of the total salary roll. Yikes.

If you ask the average worker in the US if their leader cares about their culture

31% of leaders don’t think they have the culture they need to succeed. Their workers don’t even think they care! 9%of workers say the leadership in their organizations are very committed to culture initiatives, and 58% of respondents say that their leadership either takes no action regarding culture or are merely reactive instead of being proactive.

Marilyn suggests that workers want answers to three key questions from a leader:

1. Who are you? (Not your name - who are you really as a person? What do you stand for?)
2. Where are we going? (What is the bigger vision?)
3. And do you see me? (Am I just a cog in the wheel or do you see me at all?)

Also listen for a few of Marilyn’s Six Keys to Leadership Humility:

1. A balanced ego, 
2. Integrity
3. A compelling vision
4. Ethical strategies
5. Generous inclusion
6. A developmental focus.

Listen on to the halfway point of our conversation to hear Marilyn tell a powerful story of generous inclusion and the generous question that Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft used to turn the lone dissenter on a team into a supporter of an initiative. While it would be easy and, as Marilyn points out, defensible, to go with the majority sentiment, using the skills of leadership humility can be more powerful and durable than conventional leadership.

Support the Podcast and Get Insider Access
https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Marilyn's Website (you can find links to her book there!)
Marilyn on Twitter

Reinvention is Building a Conversation with Dorie Clark
Designing the Life You Love with Ayse Birsel
The Art of Coaching with Alisa Cohn

Hey there, conversation designers!

Today I’m sharing a conversation with Larissa Conte, who I connected with last year at the Responsive Conference in New York.

Larissa is a transformation designer, systems coach, and executive rites of passage guide through her business, Wayfinding. Larissa specializes in facilitating aliveness and alignment across organizational scales to cultivate power that serves.

In her talk, she did a physical demonstration with the conference host Robin Zander that really inspired me to connect with her and have her on the show. (Also, you can check out my conversation with Robin on asking better questions here).

She and Robin did a sort of “push hands” play to show how you can push back against a force coming at you, or let it flow past you while holding your center of gravity. It was a powerful physical metaphor for dynamics we have all experienced in our relationships and work and illustrates different  choices we can take in these tense situations.

Larissa and I have a far-ranging conversation about power, structure and ritual in our work as consultants in team and organizational transformation. I want to draw your attention to a few interesting ideas:

Rituals can be designed. Teams run on rituals, day in and day out. Week by week, patterns are followed, usually without question. Re-designing those rituals takes time and consideration, but it’s worth doing.

Facilitators can use ritual to create comfort for themselves and others. There are lots of patterns and exercises I use to build safety or energy for myself and others. You can create your own safe space and the more often you do, the easier it becomes.

Power can be taken, given or used. You can also choose your own response to power sent your way. I like to say you can fight the power or dance with the power.

Larissa makes an essential point though: there is power that is socially or culturally conferred or inferred based on stories we tell ourselves and each other. These stories are based on nothing more than what we see: skin color, gender or other body characteristics. Power that is given through these cultural stories is privilege. Power taken through these stories is oppression.

One of the most powerful things we can do as change-makers is to notice and question these stories.

Seeing is the first step. Larissa points out that if you can’t feel the energy in the room, it’s hard to do anything to shift it. If you don’t see the effect these stories have on our day-to-day lives, it can be very hard to change them.

Wayfinding is seeing signs and finding our way on poorly marked paths. Wayfinding has it’s roots in traditional cultures: The Polynesisans could use the stars, wind and waves to find their way across tremendous ocean distances. Similarly, Native Americans used signals of all sorts to find food, shelter and sacred spaces. In her Wayfinding work, Larissa is calling our attention to these old ways of seeing and asking us to use our own senses to see the signposts in our lives and work.

Inner sensing is valid. One thing I always try to convey in my facilitation masterclasses is that you are in the room and you experience what is in the room. It can be hard to know if we, ourselves, are anxious about our role as facilitators or if the room is experiencing anxiety. It’s only by getting in touch with our inner sensations that we can ever tell the difference between our own experience and our experience of what’s happening in the room. Larissa points out that there can be a stigma to that which is felt and that which exists “only” in our interior, beyond the reach of measuring tools.

I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

Larissa Conte on the web:

http://www.wayfinding.io/

Larissa’s talk at Responsive 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lf2uOzr78

The Future of Work

https://www.oecd.org/employment/future-of-work/

The Teal Movement:

http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Teal_Organizations

for more on Self Management check out my episode with Sally Sally McCutchion on Holacracy and Self Management at all levels of organization

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/6/sally-mccutchion-on-holacracy-and-self-management-at-all-levels-of-organization

Othering and Belonging:

http://conference.otheringandbelonging.org/

Alan Watts on The Intelligence of the World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZbThJg6ehU

Jon Young

http://8shields.org/about/

Wade Davis: The Wayfinders:

https://www.amazon.com/Wayfinders-Ancient-Wisdom-Matters-Lecture/dp/0887847668

Tom Brown

https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Browns-Science-Art-Tracking/dp/0425157725/

full transcript here: theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/7/9/post-title-power-ritual-and-wayfinding

On today’s episode, I talk with Cameron Yarbrough, the Co-founder of Torch, a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and prior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve Huffman, Founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator Gary Tan, and a bunch of other well known startup founders. 

full transcript is at: theconversationfactory.com/podcast/scaling-leadership-development

Cameron offers some deep insight on how to step up as a leader and as a coach of leaders. We also dive into the challenges of designing a product for multiple customers and needs - his platform, Torch.io is designed for Learning and Development leaders to set up programs, and also for coaches and coachees to have a streamlined experience...all while working to deliver insight on the ROI of coaching - both top line and bottom line impacts on the business - spoiler alert - it’s a hard thing to do, but worth it. Why?

We close the interview with a Carl Jung Quote:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Cameron offers:

“To me, this is a perfect reflection on what it means to really look at your blind spots. If you do not look at your blind spots, if you do not do the painful hard work of bringing in, bringing attention to your blind spots, those blind spots are going to run your life and you're going to call it fate.”

That is what having a coach can do for a leader, and what a facilitator can do for a team, to be sure.

Cameron also shares his insights from his experiences in Zen philosophy and Psychology and puts much of modern facilitation practice in a larger context and history from T-Groups at MIT in the 1960s to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business’ Interpersonal Dynamics course today.

Torch on the internet: torch.io

Twitter at @torchlabs

Cameron on twitter @yarbroughcam

The johari window

The Peter Principle

On users, customers and power: Chelsea Mauldin, Executive Director, Public Policy Lab IXDA 2017 Keynote: Design and Power: https://vimeo.com/204547107 (ff to 7:00min for the “good part”

T-Groups

The Ladder of Inference

Stanford GSB Interpersonal Dynamics Course

About Cameron 

Cameron Yarbrough is the Co-founder of Torch, a leadership development platform integrating coaching, behavioral science, and agile feedback. Cameron is also a licensed therapist and prior to starting the company, applied his knowledge and learnings to executive leadership coaching, working with high profile founders like Reddit Co-Founders Alexis O'Hanian and Steve Huffman, Founder of Twitch, Justin Kan, Partner at Y Combinator Gary Tan, and a bunch of other well known startup founders. This is how Torch was created- Cameron wanted to create a streamlined process integrating a tech platform and real leadership coaching for executive level employees and founders.  Check out this article to learn more about Cameron: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/breaking-into-startups-torch-ceo-and-well-clinic-founder-cameron-yarbrough-on-mental-health-coaching/

Enjoy the conversation.

Today I talk to Gayle Karen Young Whyte, former Chief People Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation and currently part of the faculty for the Leadership programs at the Full Circle Group.

Together, we unpack the ideas of Conversational Leadership. In a conversation, there are usually at least two points of view, and movement forward comes through a give and take. The world asks things of us, and we ask things of the world...what we get is the conversation that is our lives. We can demand all we like of the world, we will get what we get. And just the same, the world will never get all it asks of us - we get to choose.

Leadership in organizations is absolutely accomplished through dialogue - leading through dictatorial fiat is not a sustainable model. That old mode of command and control is losing its hold on the world.

Gayle presents us with this idea of leadership as sensing and steering - of getting data and feedback from the world and “turning up the volume on what works”. Feedback loops are the essence of conversation and leadership.

The image brought to mind my episode with Aaron Dignan, founder of the Ready who asks leaders if they would like to ride a bicycle where they get to steer or one with a fixed steering wheel - you can only point the bike in one direction and keep going.

Everyone always chooses the steering bike, the ability to make little corrections to your course, rather than stay in a line….and yet most organizations are led like a fixed bike, with an annual budgeting and strategy process that isn’t conversational or adaptable mid-course.

In terms of the Conversation Operating System at the core of my book, this is about Cadence - having a lively pace of feedback, rather than a slow or non-existent one.

Gayle and I also dive into the importance of Narrative in leadership. Data is critical, but data, in the end, doesn’t tell us anything. We tell stories with data.

There are at least two ways to shift a story - one is with new data and the other is with a new story. And for this, Poetry is a surprising tool. Poetry can give us new words, the seeds for a new story.

My interview with Nancy McGaw from the Aspen Institute is another conversation to juxtapose here - she talks about poetry as a profoundly simple way to start a group conversation with depth.

Gayle offers that:

Poetry helps me tap into a deeper well, helps me get grounded so that when I go on with my day, I'm much more able to be responsive and not reactive.

 

Gayle reads us one of her husband’s poems, Mameen, which I’ll place in the notes for you to read along with. (It might help to mention that Gayle’s husband is the rather famous poet David Whyte!)

Gayle also helps us understand how to unpack poems with groups and help the words go deeper - starting with a story about why it’s significant to you or allowing people to choose a line that resonated most with them and to share it with another person.

Leaders need to be intentional in how they communicate with the world...and that’s work, to design all of those conversations. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and you use it to deepen your leadership.

Mameen

Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature

even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith

among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.

Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed

by circumstance, how great reputations

dissolve with infirmity and how you,

in particular, stand a hairsbreadth from losing

everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path to the north,

the way you came, as if seeing

your entire past and then south

over the hazy blue coast as if present

to a broad future.

Recall the way you are all possibilities

you can see and how you live best

as an appreciator of horizons

whether you reach them or not.

Admit that once you have got up

from your chair and opened the door,

once you have walked out into the clean air

toward that edge and taken the path up high

beyond the ordinary you have become

the privileged and the pilgrim,

the one who will tell the story

and the one, coming back

from the mountain

who helped to make it

Links and Resources

More about Gayle on the Web

The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity by Jennifer Garvey Berger  

Nancy McGaw on the Conversation Factory on Leading Through Asking

Naomi Shihab Nye on Kindness: https://poets.org/poem/kindness

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

More About Gayle

Gayle believes the world needs more leaders who are “able for” what lies ahead, who have developed the capacity to meet the complexity of global challenges. Working in the field of leadership for the past two decades, it has become abundantly clear to her that there are the visible, tangible, practical, and pragmatic aspects of leadership that need to be executed on a day-by-day basis, and then there is the work of caring for the the spaces between people, of seeing complexity and interdependencies, of understanding relationships and power and all the ephemeral things that still excise tremendous influence on the day-to-day behaviors of people. Thus it is the invisible work of leadership, the work of showing up, setting culture, and creating spaces for others to thrive that is the focus of her work. She believes in meeting people and systems wherever they are, and then developing people to work with the full range of who they are to meet the full complexity of the organizational system and operating ecosystem, working with the intangible but critically necessary human substructures to move a strategy forward.

Gayle Karen Young is a cultural architect and a catalyst for human and organizational development. She comes from a rich organizational consulting background with both corporate and nonprofit clients. She was in process of becoming a Zen monk when she became an executive instead, taking on the role of Chief Culture and Talent Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation (CHRO for Wikipedia and its sister free-knowledge projects) until early 2015 when she joined Cultivating Leadership. From high-level strategic thinking to practical implementation, her skills include leadership development, change management, facilitation, training, strategic communications, speaking, team building, and personal and organizational transformation.

Gayle holds a Masters degree in Organizational Psychology.

Gayle is passionate about global women’s issues and supporting women in leadership. She is also very much a geek that loves attending Comic-Con and reading science fiction, which inspires a passion for technology and its leverage for societal change. She is keenly interested in the intersection of technology and human rights and supports futurist humanitarian causes. She lives in both San Francisco, California, and Whidbey Island, Washington.

Full Transcript on the Conversation Factory: https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/conversational-leadership-gayle-karen-young-whyte

The Conversation Factory book club is an experiment I’ve been running for a few months now. I’m experimenting with deeper conversations and collaborations with the subscribers of the Conversation Factory Insiders group as well as working to go deeper with some of the ideas that have been shared on the Podcast.

This is a round-table conversation with Fred Dust, author of Making Conversation, with a few special guests from the Conversation Factory Insiders group. If you haven’t listened to the interview I did with Fred OR read the book, I think you can still enjoy the conversation.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

Links:

Making Conversation by Fred Dust

Debt, the First 5000 Years by David Graeber

Otto Scharmer's Presencing Institute

Our guest today is Dee Scarano, Head of Design Sprint Training at AJ&Smart. They're an agency based in Berlin that is 100% google-sprint-based. They have a *fire* youtube channel that you should check out if you want to run more sprints, well.

I met Dee at the Google Sprint Conference back in late 2017 and when I saw her run a large group workshop, I knew I had found a kindred spirit!

Dee is what I would call an Atomic Facilitator. Not because she's small and powerful (which she is) but because she has a tendency to break facilitation down into tiny, tiny components. I do the same thing, so it was fun (like, really fun: Bucket of puppies fun!) to sit down with her and dig into how she designs her group conversations and why.

Again - If you haven't checked out AJ+Smart's *aces* Youtube channel, you should - they have a boatload of helpful content, and they are launching an online course about Design Sprints which you'll hear about in the show and which I'll link to below.

Atomic Facilitators are different. Last week I was in Boston running a 3-Day Design Thinking Intensive at a giant consulting company and I was working with a facilitator who was a "big arc" facilitator. He gave the groups a task to do, a goal to get to, and didn't choose to manage the "micro process" of how they got there. Each team negotiated at their tables and chose a different path.

One isn't better than the other, but it's worth asking: Which of the tables had more fun? Which of the tables felt less tension? Which of the tables made a better decision? Atomic Facilitators like Dee have thought through and tested and tried many, many ways to get people to make better, smoother decisions together, and has chosen ONE that they love and feels great about. They hold that design choice in their minds and carefully guides a team through it, step by step.

Dee and I talk about Design Sprints, but we also talk about how to take that Atomic facilitation style that's baked into the standard 5-day design Sprint process and bring it into your work, every day. AJ+Smart uses the same tools from the sprints to facilitate  their Friday retrospectives (they do a 4 day sprint each week, with a day for reflection).

The clarity and confidence that come from examining your approach means you feel comfortable teaching it, which is something Dee does a great deal of. As Head of Design Sprint training, she's responsible for helping teams get the knowledge *and* confidence to get started on their first sprint, which we talk about, too.

Some things to look out for!

Why it's critical (and maybe obvious?) to map importance before (and separately) from difficulty)

How trusting a process can help you relax

How Reflection is key to AJ+Smart's process

How taking care of the people in the sprint is essential

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vrePSmQnJw

Cultural Change and how building a small coalition, underselling and  over-delivering on your process can help you start a movement

Why 3 X 5 stickies *might* be better than 3 X 3 (the conversation interface matters, people!)

How Aj+Smart handles power dynamics in the sprint compared with Google vs GV Ventures

You can find her on twitter

https://twitter.com/dhyanascarano?lang=en

I hope you enjoy the show as much as I did making it!

LINKS

 9 Conversations pre-order: https://publishizer.com/nine-conversations/

Design Sprint Masterclass

https://ajsmart.com/ajsmart-design-sprint-masterclass/

Aj and Smart

https://ajsmart.com/

Sean Sankey/Form Studios

https://www.form.studio/

Today I sit down with my friend Barry O'Reilly, who’s a co-author of the bestselling book “Lean Enterprise” and author of “Unlearn: How to Let go of past success to achieve extraordinary results”. He’s also the host of the Unlearn podcast. He’s also the co-founder of Nobody Studios, a global and asynchronous Venture Studio in the middle of raising a crowd-funding round (500K so far!) on Republic where anyone (including me!) can be part of their mission to fund 100 companies in five years.

As part of my ongoing series about co-founder relationships, I wanted to bring Barry on to unpack how he and his co-founder connected and decided to make this project happen, how they cross-pollinate insights from venture to venture and how they use a platform-centric approach to create synergies among their portfolio companies.

Along the way, we explore how Barry has learned to leverage serendipity and intentional connection to build his ideal life and lots of insights about how to run remote-first!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Back Nobody Studios on Republic

Learn about all things Barry here

I am obsessed with culture, change and transformation…and always puzzling over how it really happens.

One thing I know for sure: Forcing change, telling people to change, doesn’t make it happen.

I think there are two ways to profoundly facilitate change. One is:

💫 ASKING PEOPLE QUESTIONS THAT SHIFT THE CONVERSATION.

When I talk about Conversational Leadership in my book, Good Talk, this is what I mean: We can transform how other people think, not by telling them how or what to think, but by framing and fostering a new conversation.

The other way is by:

💥FACILITATING EXPERIENCES THAT FOSTER AN “AHA” MOMENT.

This means, for me, asking a series of questions, and making space for conversations that bring people into a new mode of thinking - the other side of an “a-ha”.

This is why I love to say "an experience is worth a thousand slides" We can throw a thousand slides at a group and never see the shift we want to foster.

Recently, my friend Jeff Gothelf did a lovely write up of an experience I led for one of his clients, one of my favorite exercises: The vase and flowers game. It's always thrilling to see one's impact through someone else's eyes. My reflections and his reflections are both linked here.

Back in May I offered a free workshop to subscribers of to my Conversation Factory Insiders group walking through this exercise and a few others. I'd love to have you join that conversation...we meet every month to learn and grow together!

If you'd like to join me August 17th, I'll be leading this workshop again, sharing my favorite exercises to help coach leaders to deep "aha!" moments about crucial mindsets at the heart of Agility, Design Thinking and Jobs-to-be-done. Check it out here, and pay what you can to attend. 

Use the code Pod20 to get 20% off the workshop.

I’m so grateful Jeff came on the show to reflect on his journey, how key partnerships and relationships have been essential to his success, and to share some of the most powerful questions he asks leaders to shift their mindsets and thinking.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

I'm so excited to share this book club experiment with you. I've been inviting alums of my facilitation masterclass and subscribers to the conversation factory insiders group into intimate conversations with authors of transformative books. In this conversation, my friend Brian Pagán, Author of "The Creative Empathy Field Guide," is our guest.

Brian points out early on that empathy is lauded by many thought leaders and no lack of articles - with the simple, inspirational message that empathy is good for you! And while that is absolutely true, what is missing is the how of empathy - not the why. Brain sought to fill this gap with his book, "the creative empathy field guide" which is a very short and very helpful book....and if you follow the links to Brian's website at the Greatness Studio, he's got a "greatest hits" selection from the book that you can access, free of charge.

So: Just to clarify our definitions: Creative Empathy is the use of empathy in the creative process. That is, we are making things and those things are not for us. So, we must learn to both connect with those people we are creating for and to detach from them - we have to tap into our skills of emotional agility to lean in and out of creative empathy.

One thing that you'll find most surprising (or at least I did!) is that creative empathy benefits from some of the tools of method acting - the ability to connect to your own experience and bring that experience into the present moment.

One thing that is missing from this conversation is my friend and guest from early in 2021, Dr. Lesely Ann Noel, who really helped me understand that there are limits to us-them dichotomies in design thinking and that designing for others can reinforce existing power dynamics, stereotypes and "othering" of people. Brian does address this in his book, but I recommend my conversation with Dr. Noel, DeColonizing Design Thinking. Dr. Noel has a complementary array of tools to help decolonize our thinking, like her Positionality Wheel which we turned into a Mural template to help you facilitate that conversation with your teams.

In this conversation, Brian and the Conversation Factory Insiders Community dives deep into The Empathic Design Process that Brian adapted: 

1. Discovery, 2. Immersion, 3. Connection, 4. Detachment

Discovery: As creators, we approach the other person’s world, which provokes our interest, curiosity, and willingness to empathize.

Immersion: We enter the other person’s world, look around, and absorb what we see without judgment.

Connection: Here, we resonate with the other person’s experience by recalling our own relevant experiences and memories.

Detachment: Finally, we leave their world to focus on creative action, before starting the cycle afresh.

Also check out Brian’s site for Free Creative Empathy Tools like an Ethical Design Checklist, his Journey Map Canvas and a Character Map Canvas (as an alternative to personas).

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also: I use and love REV for the accurate transcripts they make for me...it makes making my podcast notes and essays more meaningful and insightful. I love reading the transcript and listening to the session at the same time….it really gets the conversation into my brain!

I also use the automated transcription feature for my coaching clients to help them get maximum value from our sessions.

Head over to http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 too!

My guests today are Rei Wang and Anita Hossain, Co-founders of coaching platform The Grand, which was seed funded by Alexis Ohanian’s firm Seven Seven Six in 2023. Rei is the Chief Product Officer and Anita is the CEO.

I met Rei ages ago, in her early days in NYC at General Assembly, where she worked as a Product Manager and Global Community Lead, developing educational opportunities for students.

And I was excited to interview her about her work as the CEO of the Dorm Room fund at First Round Capital a few years back to get her perspectives around the intersection of community and product design…especially when the community IS the product. Check out that conversation here. Rei cultivated a vibrant startup ecosystem, mentoring over 250 entrepreneurs on various aspects of business management and fundraising. Their leadership garnered recognition, including the Forbes 30 under 30 award.

Rei and Anita met during their time at First Round Capital, where Anita was the Head of Knowledge. While there, she helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect deeply and vulnerably, to share their concerns and to learn from each other. Anita was also an executive coach with the renowned coaching firm, Reboot, and is a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner.

Key Advice for Working Through Challenges

• Prevention is first and foremost! Speak early and often to reduce buildup, bottling up and boiling over of tensions

• Make feedback about actions and behaviors, not about the person or their personality

• Rei suggests that using a simple framework like SBIO is a great way to frame feedback. (Situation or data, the Behavior you see, the Impact it has on you, and the Opportunity for improvement or transformation)

• Make sure feedback conversations are two-sided, with both partners regularly asking for and offering feedback

• Anita underscores the importance of Co-Creation of resolutions to challenges instead of telling someone to be different. Working on these tensions with a sense of collaboration can lead to reduced defensiveness.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

The Grand

My previous conversation with Rei Wang

In this conversation, I dive into the nuances of co-founder relationships with Clarity.so co-founders Richie Bonilla, CEO and Eni Jaupi, CTO.

Clarity.so is a y-combinator funded startup that has built a groundbreaking DAO contribution platform. DAO stands for Decentralized, Autonomous Organization, which you should totally google if you want to know more. 

While Clarity isn’t a DAO, you can see how the radical transparency that is at the heart and spirit of the cryptocurrency movement is also at the core of Richie and Eni’s relationship. I mean, it’s also the name of the company!

Like a few of the other conscious co-founder interviews I’ve been doing, these two co-founders prototyped their working relationship before jumping into their company together, which helped them build a foundation of trust and respect.

They also talked a lot. Like A LOT before even starting the company. Starting with a few times a week, they gradually transitioned to talking for at least an hour, daily, for a year.

What this conversation re-established for me was that it’s important to have agenda-ed conversations, and it’s also very important to have stream-of-consciousness, unagendaed conversations, too. Generally speaking, we’re great at structure, and less good at making space for wondering and wandering. For more on the power of wondering and wandering, make sure to check out my interview with Natalie Nixon.

Be sure to check out my conversation with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist, on how they connected through shared communities and learned how each other really worked through real-world, previous projects.

You may also enjoy my interview with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, where we unpack how they managed their working relationship.

And if you really want to dive deep into the idea of being a conscious co-founder, make sure to check out my conversation with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Clarity.so

Today’s conversation is with my dear friend Jocelyn Ling, a tremendously talented Business Model Specialist in the Office of Innovation at Unicef. She’s  currently on sabbatical from the Organizational Innovation consultancy Incandescent. She’s been an interim biotech CEO, an investment consultant at the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank Group, and even an instructor at Stanford’s DSchool.

The Show Notes section of this episode are pretty epic, since Jocelyn dropped a lot of knowledge and wisdom on me and you - frameworks aplenty for you to get a handle on designing the innovation conversation and leading the process, with, as she says, healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination. 

I wanted to give that Hubble quote it’s full space to breathe, because it’s so lovely...I’m going to read it in full here:

The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination. 

— Edwin Powell Hubble

There are a few subtle points that I want to tease out and draw your attention to as this all relates to conversation design and shaping them for the better.

Invitation

Jocelyn highlights one of my favorite ideas in conversation design - invitation. A leader invites participation through their own openness, not through force. Anyone can lead that openness to new ideas, even if they’re not an “authorized” leader, through their own example. Invitations can look like asking the right questions or hosting teams or creating physical or mental space for the conversation.

Cadence

Jocelyn talks about the tempo of a team or an organization, and these larger conversions do have a tempo, just like a 1-on-1 conversation does. Leading the innovation conversation often means slowing down or speeding up that tempo to create clarity and safety or progress and speed.

Goals

Conversations start when people have a goal in mind. Each participant in the conversation will have their own idea of what that goal is and the innovation conversation is no different. Jocelyn points out, rightly, that it’s critical for a team or an organization to develop their own clear, shared definition of innovation. I did a webinar recently with Mural and my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, on just this topic, and you can find a link to the templates we used in the show notes...I think you’ll find those helpful, too.

Narrative

Storytelling and coherent narratives are core components of everyday conversations and the innovation conversation is no different. What Jocelyn asks us to focus on is the idea of stories as memes - what happens to your story after you tell it? Does it communicate or convince? Great. Does that person retell that story and evangelize it for you? That’s even better. Leading change means being able to tell the second type of story - viral anecdotes.

That’s all for now. The full transcript and show notes are right there in your podcasting app and on the website.

Show Links and Notes

Jocelyn Ling on the Internet

http://jocelynling.com/

Making a Team Charter if you want a template (or just have the conversation!)

https://blog.mural.co/team-charter

https://www.unicef.org/innovation/

http://www.incandescent.com/

Michelle Gelfand’s Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire our World

https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Makers-Breakers-Tight-Cultures/dp/1501152939

All in the Mind Podcast:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/the-power-of-social-norms/11178124

Clayton Christensen, Disruptive Innovation

http://claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/

Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

https://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380

A blinkist version

https://medium.com/key-lessons-from-books/the-key-lessons-from-where-good-ideas-come-from-by-steven-johnson-1798e11becdb

Square Pegs and Round Holes in Apollo 13

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry55--J4_VQ

Google vs Apple in One Image, their patents map

https://www.fastcompany.com/3068474/the-real-difference-between-google-and-apple

Edwin Hubble Quote:

The scientist explores the world of phenomena by successive approximations. He knows that his data are not precise and that his theories must always be tested. It is quite natural that he tends to develop healthy skepticism, suspended judgment, and disciplined imagination. 

— Edwin Powell Hubble

In Commencement Address, California Institute of Technology

10 Jun 1938

More on Hubble: 

https://www.spacetelescope.org/about/history/the_man_behind_the_name/

The Innovation/Ambition Matrix

Core, Adjacent, Transformational

How to have the Innovation Conversation:

https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership

The 21st Century Ger Project:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/unicefusa/2018/07/05/redesigning-the-mongolian-ger-to-help-solve-a-health-crisis/

Doblin’s Ten Types of Innovation:

https://doblin.com/dist/images/uploads/Doblin_TenTypesBrochure_Web.pdf

Six Sigma and the Eight Types of Waste

https://goleansixsigma.com/8-wastes/

The Forgetting Curve (Distributed Practice!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

Behavioral Design with Matt Mayberry from Boundless Mind

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/6/6/behavioral-design-in-the-real-world-with-matt-mayberry

Transcription:

Daniel: 

I'm going to officially welcome you to the conversation factory. So we're going to start the real, quote unquote real conversation now. Um, because I feel like every conversation we have is like, is interesting and insightful for me and it's never on the record.

Jocelyn: 

Lets make this on the record!

Daniel:  

We're going to make this on the record! And if you ever want me to, if you want me to take any pieces off the record, you just let me know. I think the reason why I wanted to have this conversation with you about innovation leadership is, I'm going to go way back. One of my earliest memories of you is back when we were co-designing early, like an early iteration of what the design gym was going to be. we were sitting down with, you Me... Maybe it was Andy, it was probably Andy and you were like, let's have a conversation about our working styles.

Jocelyn:  

Oh Wow. I don't ever remember that. Yeah, that does sound like something that I do and I did. I still do it till today, with any new team

Daniel: 

Yeah. Well, so like that was my first time somebody had invited me into that conversation and it blew me away because I'd never really, I mean this is going back. I mean this is 2012 I guess this is a long time ago. I had never really thought about how I work. Nobody had asked me that question. I'd never had that conversation about how and where do I like the, what I would now call the interfaces of my work conversations to happen. And I'm just wondering like, who introduced you into that conversation and where did you learn some of these soft skills? I mean, this is a quote unquote soft skill. Where did you learn some of the soft skills that you do in your work that you use in your work?

Jocelyn:  

That's a great question. I think that probably learned a lot of my soft skills through day to day interaction. I think I've had the privilege, like in my job, given that I was an investor before, as well as in consulting to have exposure to a very broad range of working styles and leaders. And particularly so in the consulting world, you are especially attuned to how clients work. And so I always try and make sure that I am not only understanding how teams come together, but also how individuals work because as a consultant it's up to me to match and really tap into what is an invitation into their world. So I think that's how I survived, absorbed it over time. I think specifically maybe at that point in time and I continued to refine how I work with teams over the years, but maybe back in 2012 likely from, um, a really wonderful mentor in Boston, mine who I worked at International finance corporation at the World Bank. Um, my boss at that time, BG Mohandas is and continues to be an amazing person in my life. Uh, probably taught me that specific question and style.

Daniel: 

That's amazing. And like, do you ever feel like, um, that that's an unwelcome conversation or is it ever hard to bring that topic up for you?

Jocelyn:  

I often find it's as easy and very welcomed conversation and that is an investment of even 20 minutes with a new team member goes a very long way to setting the tone for their relationship and for the partnership.

Daniel:  

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting this idea of, of a pattern matching like perceiving patterns in somebody else's behavior and then making that effort to sort of like alter your own.

Jocelyn: 

Oh, absolutely. I think that, um, and this is something I learned in my incandescent work. It's like the concept tempo. And I think you and I might have even spoken about it before, that not only understanding the tempo of an organization and by tempo I mean like the speed of how a team comes together and moves and how an individual does work. So you can imagine and overly generalize and say a startup has a really fast tempo comparatively to a larger fortune 500 company, which runs a little bit slower. And it's in the more that you're able to understand what Beat and Tempo you're stepping into, I think the more than you can learn to be effective in the kind of work that you want to achieve.

Daniel: 

Yeah. Well so perceiving that tempo and then the ability to do something about it. I was literally, I'm bringing it up right now, so I'm just listening to a podcast, um, called all in the mind and they're interviewing. Who are they interviewing? Why is it so hard to find the show notes on these things? This is ridiculous. I can't believe I'm doing this on the phone. Um, Michelle Gelfand, she, she wrote a book, um, about um, making and breaking cultural rules and she has this idea of tight and loose cultures like cultures where social norms are tight and people follow all the norms and loose cultures where people don't. So I love the idea that you're also noticing, you know, there's, there's probably tight and loose work cultures but fast and slow ones. Right

Jocelyn:  

Absolutely.

Daniel:

I'm wondering, this seems like a good time. I feel like I have a tendency to like plop people in the middle of a conversation. Um, if you want to backtrack and tell the folks in radio land a little bit about your career journey, like what you're doing now and what brought you into what you're, what you're doing now.

Jocelyn: 

Yeah, sure. So my background, it's sort of like a combination of different things. Um, I like to think that, um, any exploration that I take always leads me to another interesting opening. Um, I started out my career in finance, um, with the Royal Bank of Canada and then followed a slightly untraditional path in that I then moved, um, from where I was living at a time from Vancouver and I moved to New York to then, uh, be in full exploration and ambiguity mode. And that's when you and I met Daniel to start this, start the Design Gym, which was something completely new, entrepreneurial in a new field. And that's also where I got introduced to the world design and absolutely fell in love with it. We started an accidental company together.

Daniel:  

Yup.

Jocelyn: 

And then along the way ran into visa issues. And got kicked out of the United States, if you remember that, too!

Daniel: 

I do!

Jocelyn:  

And then found myself in Kenya where I then work in impact investing with an amazing nonprofit and then later on the World Bank and then found my way back to New York. The US couldn't get rid of me that quickly! Came back to the US legally with a visa in hand and, uh, worked for a strategy consulting organization, design firm called incandescent. And I've been there for the past, uh, five plus years now and, and right now I'm on sabbatical with the firm and have taken up residency at a UNICEF innovation team. So it's been a meandering path, but all for wonderful teams and causes.

Daniel: 

So not everyone will know this, but like, I feel like, um, you are amazingly one of the many people try to get in touch with you through me on Linkedin. Um, when they're, when they're interested in organizational design and organizational innovation...incandescent, like is, uh, is a decent player in that space. Um, I don't know how they, how they managed to build their name. Maybe it's...I'm assuming they do good wor

Jocelyn: 

Oh, I hope so!

Daniel: 

I don't know none of it from firsthand, but like five years. Can you tell me a little bit about what, what organizational innovation and uh, and some of the tempo work that you're doing with that you did that incandescent? I'm asking you to sum up five years of work!

Jocelyn: 

I'm going to reframe your question slightly because I think that what might be more interesting instead of me naming off projects for folks is to share some first principles of how we work, which could be interesting cause we bring that into every single client engagement that we do. So Indandecent was founded by a man called Niko Canner, a wonderfully brilliant individual, also a mentor in my life. Um, and I've learned so much from him and joined the firm when it was just him and another individual. So I was his second hire. Um, and it was found with the focus of how do we understand, how do, how do we build beautiful businesses? Um, and how might we build this in an intentional way that you're really looking and thinking about the whole system from the start? So that's one of the principles of how we look at things.

Jocelyn: 

It's like how do, how does a organization as a system work together? I think oftentimes when consultants like step into a project, their worldview is a very specific task or project that has been carved out for them. When Incandescent steps into a project. We always ask the question, how does this touch our other things and how do we ensure that all of the nodes that it touches works together? So they were designing something that sustains and lasts and not just some designing something for in the moment.So that's one, one of the mindsets and principles are how we bring, um, things in l

Daniel:  

Long term thinking!

Jocelyn:  

yeah, absolutely. Long term thinking. The second one would be, um, we literally do our work in principles. We will spend a lot of time upfront, um, whether we're designing, uh, how a team comes together, whether we're designing a strategy. A lot of it, a lot of our time that's invested upfront is in what are the principles of how a team would work together, what are the principles of strategy? Um, and once you clarify that, it just unlocks so many things. It has a waterfall effect, um, in terms of just like designing everything else from that. So I think that's another way of how we work. And I think the third is probably a high amount of, um, intentionality and co-creation. So we always designed something with the client. Um, and I think that part of that then hopefully leads to really great work because we're not designing in a vacuum.

Daniel:  

Yeah. So a lot of it goes to like, this is, uh, I've, I've just recently been reintroduced to the term prejecting. There's the project and then there's the preject. But it seems like the prejecting phase where you really think about the whole system and the team principles and Co creation, a lot of that just sort of falls, falls into place from that, right?

Jocelyn: 

Yep, absolutely. And let me give an example of that, just to bring it to life. So about two and a half years ago, we were approached by three major foundations like the gates foundation, the Hewlett Foundation and Ciaran investment foundation and they came to us were referral and they said, we're interested in designing, we're interested in putting together a conference in the world of adolescent sexual and reproductive health and to bring together designers and global health folks and put them a conference together and on the call with them we set food. That's really interesting, but we're not really just conference folks and event planners. There are many people who do that, but if you're interested in what the representation of what this conference is, which is if you see this as a watershed moment for how design can be brought into the world of adolescent sexual reproductive health, let's talk about that

Jocelyn:  

Let's talk about like what this conference is enabling a strategy which hopefully the three foundations would might have or is interested in doing and the three program officers were really interested in having a conversation. They had an Aha moment on the call and said, we want that. You want to think about a larger strategy and how us as funders can come together. And um, that kick started two years worth of work where we did end up designing a convening and a conference. But we also ended up really bringing to life a strategy that, um, was unique to the field. And that was very much co-created with these three program officers through lots of working sessions remotely and we were all in different locations over time. So hopefully that example brings to life some of the things I think I've spoken on before.

Daniel: 

It does. And it also like is a wonderful case study of reframing and engaging stakeholders in conversation. Like not starting from a no, but starting from a, Oh, isn't that interesting? Or Oh well why is that important to you?

Jocelyn: 

Yeah, it's like my favorite Albert Einstein quote, it's like if I had 60 minutes to save the world, I'll spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes coming up with a solution. So like if you're solving for the wrong problem or if you don't even realize what you actually really want. I think there's a lot of room to think through that together.

Daniel:  

Yeah. Well, so I mean this goes to this, this question of like what innovation even means, what problem solving means and it seems like it's really attached to systems thinking for you and at least in your working in Indandecent like defining what the boundary of the problem is is really, really essential. In that sense it almost makes a like a linear or simple definition of innovation really hard I would think.

Jocelyn:  

I mean innovation is such a complex topic of which there are many, many definitions. Like you can range anything from Clay Christensen's disruptive innovation definition to um, I don't know, Steven Johnson's book, which I really like... Where good ideas come from. He defines innovation in a different way. And all that really matters is that the organization that you work for and the team that you are on has one single definition of which all of you agree on. And that's clear.

Daniel:  

We'll wait, hold a second.

Jocelyn:  

There are so many!

Daniel: 

Well, let's, let's roll. Let's roll it back. Cause like I'm, my, my brain is remembering Steven Johnson's book... It's like, yeah, I think of it as like, um, that moment in a, I think it's Apollo 13 when they like dump out all these, the bucket of parts that they're like, this is what the astronauts have on board and we need to literally make a square peg connect to a round hole. Like let's figure it out. And it always felt to me like Steven Johnson's definition was the more parts you have, the more pieces you can put together. Um, it's like, it's, it's having a wide ranging mind and absorbing lots of influences.

Jocelyn:  

Yeah. I mean, Steven Johnson, I think he talks about, I don't know whether he likes specifically names a concise one sentence definition, but I think he talks about the fact that innovation happens within the bounds of the adjacent possible. In other words, like the realm of possibilities available at any given moment.

Daniel:  

Yeah. Right. And that we build on those adjacent possibles. So I guess maybe where I would, I'm backing myself into agreeing with you cause like I was like, Oh, do we all have to have the same definition of innovation? Um, we, we do, in order to try something we have to say like, Oh, here's all these things we could try. I think this would be more, uh, impactful. Right. And that that's a conversation that, that somebody needs to be able to dare I say, facilitate in order for the innovation conversation to proceed.

Jocelyn:  

Yup. Agree.

Daniel:  

Okay. Glad you agree with me! Well, so then like what, um, what, how, how can I be more provocative and get you to disagree with me? What, like what, what do you, what have you seen in terms of like a leader's ability to, uh, foster, uh, or, or, or what's the opposite of foster disable innovation inside of a team, inside of an organization, in your own experience?

Jocelyn: 

Um, I mean, I think the role of a leader, I have a feeling you're going to agree with me, but I think the role of a leader is very simply to create the conditions that, that foster and support innovation. What I mean by that is openness. Um, and to extend invitations out to their teams, whether that's actually literally or even in a physical space or to, uh, lead by example. I think once you create the leading by example and the creation of conditions, there could be many other elements to that. But those two are to me, feels core to what a role of a leader should do.

Daniel: 

Yeah. Well, so then this goes to the, the idea that a leader doesn't necessarily have to be authorized.

Jocelyn: 

No, not necessarily. Yeah. On that note, I actually think that it really depends on the organization and, and how far the authorization can take you. So for example, if I compare contrast and apple versus Google, um, and does a really wonderful graphic of the number of patents that each organization has filed over the years. And in Google's, it looks like it's all over. You can see sort of like patterns that emerge like literally visually from all over the organization and from our authorization standpoint. Like folks are welcomed and encouraged to explore ideas and invent new things. And you see that through patents that had been filed across the organization versus apples, it's a lot more concentrated because it's a lot more centralized and they have much more of a stage gated process. I would imagine. I'm not to say that one is correct or wrong, it just, again, it depends on the kind of organization and how clear you are. Um, overall on how innovation is being fostered..

Daniel: 

Yeah. Well, I mean, how, how, how does a leader maintain that clarity I guess? Is, is, uh, it's an interesting question.

Jocelyn:  

That's a great question. Um, maybe they can think about in clarity in terms of creating a discipline and a ritual where, I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I think a lot of, when a lot of times people think about innovation, people think about it as serendipitous moments that come to you. I actually think that innovation comes to you in a much more disciplined way when you actually continuously put sustained effort, um, into exploring x, whatever that x might be. Um, again, very close. I'm gonna bring up Steven Johnson again. But like I think that his ideas around the exploration of the adjacent possible, unless there's sustained probing, you're not going to suddenly one day come up with a huge Aha if you've never thought about that topic. You know, for example, like I have never thought about a topic of um, the reinvention of, of uh, space rocket,

Daniel: 

I love that you're struggling to think of something you've never thought of!

Jocelyn:

Right! Like...How to I reinvent a space rocker, I don't know! I've spent hardly any time thinking about that. And so it's highly unlikely that I am sitting here with suddenly come up with something breakthrough right in that area.

Daniel: 

Whereas there's people who are literally pounding their heads on that boundary constantly. And of course those are the people who are going to be like, what if we...?

Jocelyn:  

Yeah, absolutely. And so as a leader, if you create the space of, Hey, every week we'll have a ritual and this is just a very specific tactical example of I'm going to solicit ideas from the team around the boundaries of building a new space rocket. Then maybe it will have interesting ideas. They eventually come up over time.

Daniel:  

So there's like my, there's a couple of things I want to probe on. Like one is we were talking about cadence and tempo of organizations and then you use the term ritual. Uh, and I feel like those two are really intimately related to, I'm literally working, the podcast interview I'm working on right now is all about ritual, uh, and designing rituals for people in it. And it's sort of an interesting thing to think about what the cadence of these, um, innovation rituals, uh, could be like. And, and what are you find are some, I don't know, do are, are there some that you're like, oh, here are the basics. Here are the essentials of innovation rituals. We talked about one, which was like the team.

Jocelyn:  

Yeah.

Daniel: 

Team alignment conversation. It's like a really powerful ritual for at least making sure that we're all working in this in, in ways that are harmonious, which is really, really valuable.

Jocelyn:  

...great question. Well, one ritual that I really like is something that I know, uh, the design gym that we do. And also folks that I you does as well is that they have inspiration trips. Um, that teams would go and say, hey, we're starting something new and here's a new topic that none of us have really thought about before. How, how might we go and get inspired? And if you have that as a ritual when you start, whether it's a new project or even midway when you're stuck, I think that could be a really powerful thing to get unstuck. Um, instead of churning internally. And I really liked that concept. Um, overall to just look externally, whether it's true, take a moment and actually physically be in another location or to learn by having conversations with others that are different.

Daniel:  

Yeah. Yeah. I think the, and behind that is this idea of being able to identify what the real need is. I think about it in two ways. One is like, let me go see where else this problem is being solved. Like specifically like, and then there's like, let me see in a broader sense like what other types of problems are similar to this? And, and this could be like, oh, let me, like if, if any other countries willing to share with me how they're doing rocket flight, then maybe I can learn the totality of the problem. But you can also do the thing where like, hey, let's look at what bees do and let's look at what seagulls do and let's look at other types of propulsion. Um, and so I feel like that's like that that definitely goes to the like the breadth of, of inspiration...

Jocelyn:  

absolutely.

Daniel: 

Well I think, and I guess that's where like, you know, cause what I was excited to talk with you about is like good leadership and bad leadership skills. And it seems like a really, really powerful leadership skill is the willingness and the interest, the curiosity, but also the willingness to sort of like look at the boundary of the possible and say what else is possible.

Jocelyn: 

Yep. Absolutely. I also think that a great leadership skill in when leading an innovation team is, um, knowing what bets to place at any given period of time. So one of my favorite quotes is by Edwin Hubble. Um, and he says, and he said this in like a 1930s in his cal tech commencement speech being says that a scientist has a healthy skepticism, suspended judgment and disciplined imagination. I'm going to say those three things again because I love the combination of the three assigned. His has a healthy skepticism, suspended judgment and discipline imagination. And he talks about it specifically in the world science, but I think it's actually really applicable in the world of innovation because he describes a way of being, which is kind of strange. You're supposed to be skeptical, but you're also suppose to suspend your judgment. You're supposed to have the imagination, but this upland because you don't want me to go too wild. And I think that, um, the balance between the three of how do you actually observe ideas that come in, gathering facts, understanding it, testing your expectations against them, um, is I think a quality that I would hope anyone who's leading innovation would have.

Daniel:  

Hm. That's really beautiful. I, and when did you absorb that quote that's like, it's seems really close to your heart, which is beautiful.

Jocelyn:  

Um, great question. I learned here when I was interim CEO of a biotech company in incandescence portfolio, I'd taken over and I was new to the world of science, also new to being an CEO of a startup. And one of the biggest lessons I took away was that quote is I think that there is such a beautiful orientation in terms of how scientists discover things. Um, it's really their way of being. Um, and my brother actually is a scientist and I see how he thinks about problems and how he approaches them. It just, that combination of when is it the right moment to imagine something really amazing. Because a lot of scientists, they don't know what they're discovering. They're just out there. Yeah. Um, oh, when is it? The moment when you were gathering back a set of data and you're saying, hmm, does data's actually telling me that it's not that great and that is not the direction that I should go in? And just being, and really refining the balance between the three modes whenever you're faced with facts or contradictory pieces of evidence, I think is, um, something that I will always be very grateful for for my time. And as a biotech CEO,

Daniel:  

something I can't say at all, I've never done that,

Jocelyn:  

hey, one of my other lives, you know.

Daniel: 

Well, so this actually goes back to, um, like an organization has got to have multiple bets, right? And they need to have, uh, uh, a roadmap of, you know, crazy bets and less crazy bets. And in a sense like I would, I would integrate that as an innovation leadership skill. 100% is the ability to like, uh, you know, what would you call it? Handicap, um, various items on the roadmap, but then also like to, to, to, to make sure that those bets are spread out.

Jocelyn: 

Yup. Have you heard of the ambition matrix before or seen the framework of it? The ambition matrix?

Daniel:  

No. Illuminate me!

Jocelyn:  

so it's a pretty simple framework. Um, where I think on one of the axes is solutions. The other axis is challenge, but in any case it's basically concentric circles like moving out of core, adjacent and transformational... and where it talks about how do you actually categorize your bets in terms of innovations or core innovation is something that's very different but also very needed comparatively to something transformational. Um, and I think visualizing it that way could be really helpful when facilitating a conversation.

Daniel: 

Have, have you utilized that in your, in your own work?

Jocelyn: 

Uh, we are actually looking at the application of it at UNICEF right now where we're looking at how we're, how different projects could be core, adjacent and transformational.

Daniel:  

Uh, can you, can you say a little bit more about that and maybe tell us a little bit about, uh, the, the role you're, you're doing right now? because I don't know too much about it yet.

Jocelyn:  

Sure. I mean, and now we're getting sort of like a little bit into the new ones of like how has variation different in the world of international development versus in the world of the private sector? Um, there, there are different lenses that one might me take. Um, at UNICEF and my role is as a business model specialist on the scale team, the current innovation team is divided into three pillars. We have a futures arm where we look at what are new landscapes and markets are sort of shaping out there. We have a ventures arm which looks at um, deploying capital in frontier technologies. So think block chain, drones, all fall under the ventures arm. And then we have a scale team and that's where I sit. Um, and the way that we think about innovation is like how might we accelerate projects or programs that are demonstrating a lot of practice but need to go to scale and actually spread a lot faster than your current rate of expansion. So those are three different lenses. The very definition obviously of innovation varies depending on the lens that you take. Because like a venture's lens for example, is they're using capital...an now we're getting a little bit more into the strategy side, but were they using capital as an accelerant versus ... we are using actual internal capabilities on the scale team to uh, accelerate innovation.

Daniel: 

Huh. That, that's interesting. Well, so like can capital accelerate the innovation itself or can capital accelerate the spread of the putative innovation or learning about whether or not it is in fact effective at scale?

Jocelyn:  

Probably both. I think that UNICEF takes the fans that we are a catalyst in an ecosystem and if somebody else is doing something that's really wonderful, like what is the best role that we might be able to play? And in that case it could be the provision of capital. Um, in some other areas like in scale, it might be the deployment of internal capabilities and in the futures team it could be putting out a thought leadership piece on how urban innovation works or, um, one of our other projects is, you know, just to give you an example is, um, what we're calling a 21st century Ger project where we have brought together different partners in the private sector and academia. Um, Arc'Teryx, North Face, University of Pennsylvania to help us redesign a Mongolian Ger, uh, which is those Yurts that, uh, folks live in. It's a materials design project in order to increase an improved installation of these structures that folks live in, which would help with air pollution. Because right now these yurts are not insulated very well and families end up burning a lot of coal internally, which causes a lot of health issues. Um, but if we're able to actually improve the installation, then we're able to, uh, help from a health perspective for all of these different families. But that's a futures project... no one else is doing that in the market, it's pretty niche but much needed in terms of urban innovation. And we have a really fantastic set of partners that are working with us on it.

Daniel: 

That's so cool. And, and what that really illustrates for me is like how many levers there are for a change. Like, cause obviously you could also be working on the combustion side, right? Or on the electrical generation side.

Jocelyn:  

Absolutely.

Daniel:  

And, and doing and it sounds like there's been a decision and it makes a lot of sense actually. Cause this I've known about this problem, it's like I never once thought about it from the installation side, which is really subtle.

Jocelyn:  

yeah. Um, there's a really wonderful framework. I feel like I'm throwing a lot of frameworks,

Daniel:  

I love frameworks!

Jocelyn:  

I figured it's you, so I'll just throw out all the frameworks in the world because they know you love them. Um, if you haven't seen Doblin 10 types of innovation, sure. I would highly recommend that you take a look at that because he talks about, uh, it breaks it down into basically three large categories, configuration which is made out of your profit model and network structure process you're offering. So product performance, product system and you experience, so like your service, your cattle, your brand, your customer engagement, you can innovate along any of these things, um, and have it be a really wonderful type of innovation. Or you could even combine different categories together to actually have something more transformational. So for example, a core... Just use the ambition matrix against this new types of innovation.

Jocelyn:  

A core innovation for um, a, let's see, a channel or brand could be a new campaign that they have never thought about before. And it's fundamentally, you know, people, or a brand might choose to use Instagram, which is a channel they may not have ever used before in terms of reaching a completely new segment of audience. Or they could combine different things together, like a profit model combined with product performance combined with customer engagement, which are three different things, which is the example of the Mongolian Ger project that I just gave you, which is how do we actually improve not only on the product or on the distribution on it and involve the Mongolian government to help with the profit model side and then also engage users as part of the understanding from a health care standpoint that burning so much coal, um, would affect your health x ways.

Daniel:  

So this really goes back to the, the idea that this can be a discipline and Yup. And, and, and my mind is going back to, like, six sigma. Like here are the types of wastes and yeah, you could also think like, okay, well how can we improve this system? And what you're doing is you're reducing the loss of heat, right. As opposed to focusing on the efficiency of the generation of the heat. That's just really cool. Um, but at the same time, I feel like sometimes these, the, the discipline is not a replacement for somebody seeing potential. Like, so this goes back to like your skill as a business designer, which is like how did you do this? How does one decide if something's got a putative legs? You know, you're like, oh, this has got, this is there's some juice here that's worth the squeeze.

Jocelyn:  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that, um, on that particular project, I, I really have to credit the team behind that where it was not only the partnerships team that, so a lot of potential, but it was the futures team and also the head of the scale team that said, oh, there is something really interesting here. I think that this reframing of how we relate to heat could result in something really breakthrough. And we have a really fantastic partner arc'teryx who said, great, let's try it out. What's the worst thing, you know, in the spirit of design thinking, let's try out a prototype and see what happens.

Daniel:  

Yeah. Well, so then, yeah, this, this is, we're like building out a, a lovely model of innovation leadership here. Why don't we just like a fearlessness, a willingness to prototype, but I think there's also another piece which, which we're like getting towards which is like storytelling, which is like the ability to communicate to somebody an opportunity that you perceive that maybe they don't perceive.

Jocelyn:

Yep. How do you think that, given that you work so much in the conversation side of things, how do you think that storytelling or facilitation changes with this innovation leadership lens? Does it change or does it not change from a skillset standpoint?

Daniel:  

I mean, I think storytelling...you just reverse interviewed me, Jocelyn! I mean I believe that a storytelling is like really fundamental. Like I, my, my love for storytelling and narrative is like one of the reasons why I made a narrative phase in the design gym model. There isn't a narrative phase in ideas model, which I think is actually a major failing. It sort of stands outside of the design thinking process. Whereas I think that it is, it is design thinking is a way of telling stories. Um, I have to think in when we talk, each phrase that we respond to each other with is forming a story and like, what's like, if I say a non-sequitur, it's like we define a non-sequitur as something that's not linked to the rest of the conversation, it doesn't, it doesn't connect or it doesn't relate. So I think, um, great story telling makes things seem obvious, right? Like it, which is sort of like, hey, here's this amazing opportunity and here's this huge problem and we should do something about it right now. Like that's just the fundamental innovation storytelling model, right? That I know, like, I dunno what, what, what's your, what your core story telling you know, framework is like, when you want to make sure that you're communicating that value to someone else. Like what, what you, how do you make sure that rises up from all of the, the, the charts and figures.

Jocelyn: 

Yeah. I don't know if I have a storytelling of framework per se, but what I do think storytelling needs to be, are powerful anecdotes that somebody else can tell the story on behalf of you. So you maybe it needs to be memorable enough. Yes. And one of the stories that comes to mind, um, and this is not a client that I've worked with and is more of an anecdote that a colleague of mine has told me is that, um, when he was visiting the headquarters of Alcoa, which is a mining company, um, and he was running late for a meeting and he was in their London offices and arrived like just on time. They made him sit through a 10 minute training video on safety, even though they were in the middle of London. There were no mines around anywhere.

Jocelyn:  

They were in professional building. But you have to sit through 10 minutes of training because that was one of their core values, um, that it, that they really wanted to talk about in Alcoa. And the reason for that is when the new, and this is, um, this is definitely a couple years ago when a new CEO of Alcoa came in to take over the company. At the point in time, he decided that the way that he was going to turn around the company was through a message of safety. And so every single call that he did with his earnings, with his leadership team, um, with employees that he would meet, he would ask them, how are you actually talking or implementing safety in your teams? Um, and it's one of the safest places to work right now. Um, which is kind of insane. Well, for a mining company and even more so than than, um, other mining companies that are out there. But then he just really drove that message home by building it into one of the core values of the organization. And that culture is spread through asking that simple question and that people could retell and say, here's how a CEO and a thinks about it. Yeah. It's not really sort of like on the innovation lines, but I think it goes to your storytelling point around how the things get told, um, and emphasized upon.

Daniel:  

Yeah, it's that drumbeat. Uh, and whatever you are talking about is what will be on top of people's mind and it's what will happen. It's really cool. What a great story. I'll retell that. I don't think people often think about storytelling, uh, in terms of what will happen after I tell the story. Um, yeah, and designing for retelling is definitely a really important heuristic for, for, you know, if you're going to architect the narrative for sure. simplify. Um, so Jocelyn, we're coming up against our, our, um, our time together this time together. Is there anything else that, um, that we haven't talked about that you think is worth bringing, bringing up, uh, on these topics? Any thread that we've left loose that, that's, that's, uh, sticking out of your mind?

Jocelyn: 

Um, the only other thing that comes to mind is the topic on learning, which I feel like could take a whole other session on its own. Um, but I wonder whether there's anything that you would like to unpack around there because I think so much of creating a discipline in ritual for yourself is also paired from a complimentary standpoint of how does one learn and how does one practice? Because that's it goes hand in hand. You can't really create a discipline without actually practicing something. Yeah. Um,

Daniel: 

well you talked a little bit about this in terms of like, uh, uh, the organizational capability is part of the innovation, but then inside of that capability are people and people, uh, change at the rate of, uh, people, human conversation developmentally happens. Yeah. I don't know, at a certain pace, um, in which case like, how can you, you know, increase that for an organization? How can you increase that for, for a person. But I think it seems like you're, you're positing and I agree with you that like, um, having some, some discipline around it, having some frameworks about can, can really help people.

Jocelyn: 

Yup.

Daniel:  

Couldn't agree more. We just tied a bow around that. Yep. How do you feel like you've grown in your own capabilities? Like I feel like you've, you've gone from strength to strength, your increase in your career. How do you stay focused on, on your own growth?

Jocelyn:  

great question. I think, um, from a practice standpoint, I think something that I do, and I don't know how intentionally I truly do this, but definitely it's woven into, uh, my day to day is that I practice, I do a lot of distributed practice. I don't know if that's an that's an actual term. I don't know, maybe I just coined that.

Daniel:  

Well, it is now!

Jocelyn: 

And what I mean by that is, um, I try and make sure, like whenever I learn a new concept or a new skill set that I, I, uh, practice it sporadically and in a very spread out way. So for example, I'm not in the world of design thinking right now and neither am I a designer. There was a period of my life where I was very immersed in it and that was all I was reading and thinking and speaking about on a day to day basis. Now I have a different lens and focus, but I still upkeep my design thinking side, um, to whether that's like sporadic engagements or, um, and I teach stuff like at the d school and that's pretty nice, like longer term cadence to force me to actually think about like new concepts in design or I go to design events or read books and there isn't....it's no way near the intensity's uh, we read it, my intensity a hundred back then.

Jocelyn:

It's like now it's probably about 15 to 20% of my time and attention, but I kind of keep that on the back burner so that I don't actually lose touch of that. Um, and to also make sure that I remember a lot of the things that I've learned because I think it's easy to pick up something and just let it go and never touch it.. And what's learning something if you don't actually retain things that you're interested in?

Daniel:

Yeah. This is like, you are using the forgetting curve to your advantage. This is the forgetting curve. I'll, I'll send you a link. I'll put the link in the show notes. I, well, I interviewed somebody, a behavioral, a guy who works for a behavioral Science Company called Boundless Mind and behavioral change works with the, like if I tell you a number today like your, it has no emotional impact but you may remember it in two or two or three or five or 10 minutes, um, the odds of you remembering it next week and very slim. But if I call you up tomorrow and say, Hey Jocelyn, I'm going to call you tomorrow and I'm going to ask you what the number is, you might remember it. And then if like I call you up in, in like another week and I'm like, Hey, you remember what that number is? You're like, oh yeah, I remember the number. Or at least like what the range is like. So it's about like, just like, like, like the radioactive decay curve.

Jocelyn:

Um, oh, got it. Okay....that's the name of the concept. Not really distributed practice,Daniel:

but I like distributed, I think distributed practice is much better. But yeah, that's like, that's the idea is like you're making sure that you are being intentional about keeping it... As my father would say, a used key is always bright.

Jocelyn:

There you go. Yes. I love that.

Daniel:

Um, the, the fact that I got into a quote from my father means that it's time for us to stop.

Jocelyn:

Um, thank you so much for having me. Really Fun as always.

Daniel:

Yeah, it is. We enjoy our conversations. Likewise. I really appreciate you making the time.

Today I share my conversation with Ron J Williams. Fast Company rated him in the top 100 most creative people in business...back in 2012! He’s started some serious ventures - SnapGoods was an early vanguard in the sharing economy - and he’s also helped companies large and small get proof (rather than stay in conjecture) on their business ideas with his consultancy ProofLabs. 

He’s currently working as SVP & Head of Program Strategy at Citi Ventures. We also went to High School together, which is why he still takes my calls!

I brought Ron onto the show because of a conversation we had months back about how businesses ARE conversations - that they can’t just extract value from people without listening, adapting and relating to the people they serve. 

Ron offered the idea that each moment, each pixel, is an opportunity for a company to listen and to respond thoughtfully to their customers...this level of granularity and specificity in the opportunities for conversations between business and customers really lit me up.

Ron also happens to be a black man. This episode is coming months after we recorded it - I’m working through a backlog - and you’ll hear, at the end, my gratitude to Ron for bringing up the topic of racial inequality in corporate innovation...and the costs it has for our society as a whole.

I did not want to commit the sin of making a person of color speak for “their people”...it’s a burden that “non-minorities” don’t have to endure. I am rarely, if ever, asked to speak for all white men, as if I could.

Diversity is so important. 

Innovation isn’t just a conversation between a company and its customers...it’s also an internal company conversation. And who is in that innovation conversation determines what problems get noticed, which ideas get funded and for how long. With a large majority of white male voices in corporate innovation and silicon valley, the problems that get addressed and resolved are the problems of a very small, very privileged group of people.

Ron says towards the end of our conversation, and I’m condensing a bit:

“it's amazing to see many more people popping on the scene, both as people of color, women, LGBT...we’re capitalizing networks...and empower(ing) more folks...when there are more voices in the virtual conversation of innovation, more lived experiences means more problem sets that maybe you and I wouldn't think to tackle, come up with... if they were networked properly, resourced properly, supported properly, would build something huge”

I hope more diverse voices get included into the innovation conversation. What can you do at your organization to help make that happen?

Enjoy the episode. Ron is fun to talk to and really fun to listen to!

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Links and Resources

https://www.prooflabsgroup.com/

Jason Cyr on Designing the Organizational Conversation:

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/11/15/designing-the-organizational-conversation

More About Ron

Proven innovation leader and entrepreneur building mission-driven teams focused on solving hard problems.

Bringing together 15+ years of entrepreneurship, corporate strategy, startup advisory and product leadership, I have a unique perspective and an awesome network filled with doers.

I center my teams on the principle of customer obsession. I believe that sustainable growth comes from better understanding of and partnership with the customer.

Quick background:

I've founded, built, invested in and advised on peer-to-peer, sharing economy, marketplace, machine learning and social commerce companies. In varied roles as a founder, intrapreneur, consultant, Entrepreneur in Residence and Program Lead, I've helped Fortune 500 companies re-engineer core business strategies and innovation programs across industries.

Passion:

Working with smart people to solve problems that matter (one reason I sit on the Board of organizations like BUILD.org)

General approach to creating impact:

- Long-term shareholder value follows customer obsession (not the other way around)

- Values and value creation go hand-in-hand

- Diverse perspective is an organizational super power. It is not a box to check

- Cultivating a culture of trust and willingness to take risks is a competitive advantage

- The “why” is almost always more important than the “what”

- Mission and culture beat innovation theater every time

Full Transcript on the Conversation Factory

I’m so excited to share my conversation with Casper ter Kuile. He has a book coming out this month, The Power of Ritual. He breaks down the architecture of ritual and how to bring more intentional ritual into your work and life.

I love the four “categories” of ritual Casper lays out in his book- those for connecting with yourself, rituals that connect you to others, nature, and to something transcendent.

I first encountered Casper’s work through his company, The Sacred Design Lab, and their free PDF, which you should totally download, How we Gather. It showed how the breakdown of organized religion has opened up an ecological niche, if you will, for brands like Crossfit and Tough Mudder to become one of many places that we get meaning and belonging from - instead of just one place of workship.

Casper’s work is like Biomimicry (studying nature for design inspiration) ..but for religion. Whether you are religious or not, studying religion to understand how it plays a role in people’s lives delivers some powerful insights.

Casper’s work shows us just how powerful those insights are.

As he says in the opening quote, we need to be intentional about which rituals we lift up and celebrate because they each tell a story...every myth is communicated from generation to generation through the rituals that we maintain.

What rituals make up your work life and home life? How do you measure and mark time?

I hope you enjoy the conversation, and start harnessing the power of ritual!

Support the Podcast and get insider access

Full transcription and more on the conversation factory

Casper on the web: https://www.caspertk.com/

The Power of Ritual:

The Sacred Design Lab: https://sacred.design/who-we-are

Their amazing free resources are here

More about Casper

Casper ter Kuile is helping to build a world of joyful belonging. In the midst of enormous changes in how we experience community and spirituality, Casper connects people and co-creates projects that help us live lives of greater connection, meaning, and depth. Nothing makes him happier than learning from religious tradition and reimagining it for our context. Casper holds Masters of Divinity and Public Policy degrees from Harvard University, and remains a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.

He co-hosts the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, and is the co-founder of activist-training program Campaign Bootcamp. His book, The Power of Ritual (HarperOne) will be published in the summer of 2020. He lives with his husband Sean Lair in Brooklyn, NY.

Innovation Theater. 

Have you ever been guilty of performing innovation theater?

My guest today, Tendayi Viki, is a partner at Strategyzer (the company behind the business model canvas and other innovation tools) and defines Innovation Theater simply as:

ACTIVITIES THAT LOOK LIKE INNOVATION BUT THAT CREATE NO VALUE FOR COMPANIES

So:

A workshop that creates enthusiasm with no follow up.

A Hackathon that doesn’t solve real challenges.

Training everyone in Design Thinking but changing no internal policies to encourage experimentation and prototyping.

I’ve been guilty of it. 

How can we all do better?

This is a delicate topic, because it’s not wrong to want more people in your organization to “get” innovation and the practices that drive innovation. Then we’ll have buy-in to do more, right?

Support The Podcast As A Conversation Factory Insider

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Full Transcript at:

https://theconversationfactory.com/listen

Links and Resources

Tendayi on the web https://tendayiviki.com/

Tendayi at the Innov8ers Conference: https://innov8rs.co/beyond-the-sticky-notes-aligning-innovation-with-corporate-strategy-tendayi-viki/

Tendayi’s latest book: Pirates in the Navy

https://www.strategyzer.com/

“Somewhere between action and reaction there is an interaction, and that’s where all the magic and fun lies” So says author Tyson Yunkaporta, in his book Sand Talk, How Indigenous Thinking can save the World, my guest for this conversation.

Towards the end of the book, Tyson is explaining the meaning of Ngak Lokath, an Aboriginal word for the brackish water that forms in the wet season when fresh water floods into the sea...an example of what the Yolngu Tribe calls Ganma, a phenomenon of dynamic interaction when opposite forces meet and create something new…

...many pages later he picks up this thread saying:

“There are a lot of opportunities for sustainable innovation through the dialogue of Indiginous and non-Indiginous ways of living...the problem with this communication so far has been asymmetry - when power relations are so skewed that most communication is one way, there is not much opportunity for the brackish waters of hybridity to stew up something exciting.”

This is a powerful image, to have a real, two-way conversation, as equals, between modern and indigenous ways of thinking, and to allow something new to emerge from the turbid, brackish waters…

I see all conversations in this way, too: as flowing, tidal forces. We can push and pull the waters, like the moon, to exert force on it, but the conversation still sloshes around with it’s own inertia. Power can form, transform or deform conversations, and the historical power disparity between so-called mainstream culture and indigenous cultures has prevented a great deal of potential insight and transformation, the opportunity to live and work in accordance with a natural order, rather than against it.

Tyson’s book does an extraordinary job of grounding ideas in physical reality. Tyson offers us a thought experiment: Risk, viewed through an indigenous lens.

If you cross a river once, there’s a risk of being taken by a crocodile. The first time, the risk is minimal, but if you do it twice, the risk is greater.

Non-Aborginal statistics and risk calculation would take the risk and multiply it - It assumes that the risk is random each time. But it’s not.

As Tyson says “The crocodile is not an abstract factor in an algorithm, but  a sentient being who observed you the first time and will be waiting for you the second time” (emphasis mine). The risk goes up exponentially.

So what? Tyson asks us to think about the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, when non-Aboriginal thinkers insured bets against losses, and then bet on the outcomes of those insurance bets. As he says,

“In a cross--cultural dialogue, we might see that the problem with this model is that every time you create a new layer of derivatives...you double the size of the system, you do not merely double the risk...you multiply it exponentially”

I learned a lot from Tyson’s book, most notably, about Yarning, the Aboriginal approach to group dialogue, knowledge creation, sharing and decision making.

Also: Yarning about Yarning is fun, informative and oh-so-meta! 

Yarning, in Aboriginal culture, is based on sharing stories and coming to decisions through mutual respect, active listening and humor. There is no talking stick in Australian Aboriginal Yarning (That’s something the iroquois created), just an organic back-and-forth and the creation of a space without a stage to share experiences, to draw on the ground and sketch ideas out to illustrate a point.

Yarning is a rich and powerful tradition for anyone to transform their gatherings to be more deeply human. Sand Talk, the drawings on the ground that are a natural part of these conversations - roots the dialog in the land and makes the complex clear, if not simple.

Tyson’s book suggests that Indigenous thinking can save the world, and I agree. Our meetings and gatherings could use some more Sand Talk: More listening, more visuals, more mutual respect, more conversation.

In the opening quote, Tyson points to the idea that human cognition is rooted in navigation, spatial thinking and relatedness...all bound up in a place and a story. Modern living and modern work have resulted in a deep sense of disorientation and disconnection...and working online, remotely, has only made this sense even more acute.

Indigenous thinking, grounded in relatedness, rooted in and within a specific landscape, is deeply orientating and connecting. 

I believe it is a leader’s job to create a sense of orientation where there is disorientation, and connection where there is disconnection, always pointing towards the north star, or your southern cross. Especially when leading through a transformation. Change is disorientating. Moving to a new place, a new land is strange and painful. For more on that, it's worth checking out my conversation with Bree Groff about the 6 types of grief and loss in organizational change.

My conversation with Tyson is non-linear and complex...like any good yarn, it wanders a fair bit...so, I hope you’ll take the time to read his book and absorb the fullness of his message directly and understand all of the ways in which a conversation with Indigenous thinking can save the world! In fact, Tyson’s whole approach is to be complexity-conscious. The world and all of its interactions are complex - the alligator sees you coming the next time, and together, a system is formed. There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and Tyson isn’t selling a simple approach...he’s offering an embrace of complexity.

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

Tyson at Deakin University

Beer with Bella: Tyson Yunkaporta

Tyson Yunkaporta looking at the world through an indigenous lens

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

In 2019 My friend Philip invited me to a 2-hour cocktail party at his tiny apartment in the Lower East side. True to his word, the gathering, which was on a Tuesday night, started at 7 PM sharp, and at 9 PM he kicked us out onto Orchard Street to enjoy the rest of our night and/or to get to bed on time (since it was a weeknight, after all!)

I met a whole bunch of awesome people, and if I’m honest, I thought Phil was super cool for bringing such a lovely group of people together. The food and drinks were nothing to write home about, but no one cared. Phil stopped the party two or three times to get us to circle up and introduce ourselves and respond to an icebreaker prompt. It was pretty fun.

He mentioned during the party that he was following an early draft agenda, a recipe if you will, for such gatherings, that was being developed by his friend Nick Gray, who I knew of through other friends. Nick had started a company called Museum Hack that had blown up - in the good sense. They were leading creative tours in Museums around the city, so I guessed this guy Nick knew a thing or two about getting people together.

Cut to 2022 when Nick Gray’s book “The Two Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with small gatherings” came out. Here it was, four years later! I was fascinated to talk to Nick because I thought “How much could there be to this? Isn’t it all in the title!?” How much could the form have evolved over 4 years of prototyping and testing?! 

I’ll tell you folks…this is a polished gem of a book.

If you’ve followed my work, you know that I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to gathering/facilitation/conversation design. I love card decks about it, books, diagrams, narrative metaphors to fuel creative innovation in gathering science for skilled facilitators to bring diverse stakeholders together to tackle wicked problems. I have coached leaders on this skill, all over the world. I hosted many, many cohorts of my 3-month Masterclass on Facilitation that people lovingly described as “drinking from a firehose” of facilitation while somehow being spacious and deeply mindful of how we gather. Managing complex gatherings is a crucial skill!

Companies that can’t come together to discuss and decide on actions for their biggest challenges will not survive! And I love these types of gatherings - they are never the same, they have to be absolutely customized, and deeply considered. 

Nick, on the other hand, has designed the “CheckList Manifesto”, the “Design Sprint” or the “Joy of Cooking”...not for any and all types of gatherings - but for one, single, Life-changing, surprisingly powerful gathering - a 2-hour, midweek cocktail party.

Nick’s book is designed with absolute beginners, or those hesitant or nervous to lead gatherings in mind…but masters of gathering will be pulled in too…I was.

Nick designed this insanely in-depth book to cover everything from snacks to drinks to how to write an invitation to…everything. Where to put name tags. How big those tags should be. You get the idea.

While I am a nerd in the sense of being an omnivorous gathering nerd, Nick is an obsessive-compulsive nerd of this one form…and for good reason.

Nick believes, and I now do, too, that if more people felt more comfortable with having more gatherings we would all be more connected. The midweek 2-hour cocktail party just might save the world.

You can get the gist of the form from this conversation (I mean, even from the title!), but if you’re a gathering nerd like me, you'll absolutely enjoy Nick’s insanely thorough guide, which I found myself flipping through regularly as my wife and I prototyped our own first midweek,  2-hour cocktail party, which we titled a “Serendipity Salon”. 

I think we all need more serendipity in our lives, and that’s why I loved the opening quote I pulled from my conversation with Nick - the ability to take a short conversation with someone and turn it into a deeper one, to create a space where your old and new friends can connect with each other…only good things can happen from creating more of that type of serendipity in our lives. My wife and I have hosted two parties like this already and, as Nick has advised, we have our next one in the books! I hope you will, too.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Nick's website

The 2-hour Cocktail Party

I'm so thrilled to share this conversation with you. Meeting Fred Dust came, as all the best things in life do, through a series of random conversations.

Fred is a former global managing partner at the acclaimed design firm IDEO. He currently consults with the Rockefeller Foundation on the future of global dialogue, and with other foundations, like The Einhorn Family Fund to host constructive dialogue. His work is dedicated  to rebuilding human connection in a climate of widespread polarization and cynicism. 

I will tread lightly on this introduction. Fred’s book, Making Conversation, is both a straightforward and delightfully lyrical book about how to see conversations as an act of creativity. We are never just participants in a conversation...we’re co-creators. And we can step up and re-design our conversations if we look with new eyes.

I’ll share one surprisingly simple tool from Fred’s book that I’ve started to use in my own coaching work. A director I am working with sketched out a whole script about how they wanted to address some concerns her direct reports had. After reading over the approach, I asked them:

“If you could choose 3 adjectives to describe how you want your reports to feel after this conversation, what would they be?”

They thought for a moment, and provided some words. These adjectives are the goal and the way. 

“Looking over this conversation script, do you think you’ll get those three words out of this conversation map?”

On reflection, it was clear that there were some simple changes to make. 

Brainstorming adjectives also allowed us to have a deeper conversation about what their goals were - what were they really hoping to get out of the conversation? Searching for those adjectives was clarifying. 

This is the power of reflecting on your design principles. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of an agenda or a meeting...but if you know your design principles, why you’re committing to the conversation and how you want someone to feel after the conversation is over, it can provide powerful clarity when you’re sailing through the fog.

Finding someone else in the world who’s taking a design lens on conversations and communication is so delightful for me. Fred’s work feels like the other side of the coin of my own. Enjoy the conversation and enjoy his book, Making Conversation, which is out now.

You can also find Fred on twitter as @FREDDUST.

Links, Quotes, Notes and Resources

Find Fred on Twitter @FREDDUST

A video trailer for the book

His book on Amazon.

The origins of brainstorming

Min 7

I don't consider myself a facilitator. Certainly, I can facilitate conversations and that's what I like to do and I like doing that, but I really consider myself a designer of conversations. What that means is it allows us to kind of step back and say, “I don't have to be the one, I don't have to be in the conversation. The conversation can be successful.” Often what I'll do is I'll design structures for conversations where somebody else entirely can run them.

Min 8

when you start to think of conversation as an act of creativity or if you don't self-identify as somebody who's creative as an act of making, so just like something that you can make, everybody's a maker of some form or another. It allows you to say, “Wait a second, I don't have to just be a victim to this conversation. I can make the construct of the conversation. I can make the rules.” 

Min 11

Dining rooms became vestigial in America... Often dining rooms became offices and other things. Then not only that, gradually we put TVs everywhere and so in a world where the last thing… Not to get too intimate, but how does having a television in your bedroom affect your… If you have with your partner? The last thing or first thing you're seeing is something.

Min 20:

Have as few rules as possible

Right now I would say, what I'm finding is four rules are often even too much because I think I had a limit of four. I would say given our brain's capacity during COVID and during the political strife and just this, the social moment we're in and our fear and anxiety, I'm pretty good with two.

Min 32

Against Active Listening

The point is we've adopted active listening and put it into places it was never really intended to be. It was not meant to be the primary language of human resources, HR. It was not meant to be a boss's way of not listening to the complaints of a person who reports them and that's how we use it now. We use it as a way of signaling a subtle form of agreement but not really.

Min 49

On encouraging the world to start designing conversations...and taking time for self care!

“You can do this. Don't think you can't.” But by the way, if you can't, it's okay to just take a break and go lie down on the floor .

Min 53

On keeping a conversations notebook:

write down the conversations you thought really worked and you start to say, “What worked about those conversations?”... you start to discover in your own world, what those things are (that work)

Min 56

On Commitment:

commit to the conversation and the people in the conversation first, not your values and ideas first

Min 60

Re: Ending Principles:

“Anyone who ends five minutes early, an angel gets their wings.”

Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Mike Sagun is a certified professional men’s coach, and he has partnered with companies like DropBox, LinkedIn, and Google. Mike also partners with EVRYMAN, where he hosts men’s groups, facilitates men’s retreats, coaches individuals, and co-leads EVRYMAN’s diversity and inclusion program. I met Mike through the work we’ve done together in EVRYMAN’s programs, and I was delighted to have him on the show to get his perspective on facilitation, coaching, leading intimacy online...and just how important it is to create the space to connect with ourselves.

Doing deep, transformative work online is critically important...certainly in the pandemic, it’s essential to be able to keep connecting with people. And as we transition into a hybrid future, it’s important to remember how virtual connection has made so much of the world more accessible.

I always remember an NPR story from the start of the pandemic where a wheelchair bound individual was thrilled that they could finally go to church without all of the hassle of transportation. Worlds opened up for so many as well all went online. As hard as making space and time to connect online is, it’s worth doing and worth doing well.

Many facilitators and leaders still say that “in person was better” or “virtual will never be like in person” to which I say...yes, indeed. They are different animals. My conversation with Mike Sagun will help you see how deep online work can be, both in groups and one-on-one.

My own men’s group has struggled with the online transition, so I visited the Drop In Men’s Group Mike hosts each Friday to see how he does it.

I was excited to see that, in the first moments of the session, MIke formed clear and powerful boundaries for the group of 30 men, and did everything and more that I advise folks to do when they want to build a more powerful group connection. These’s nothing fancy to it. Like some of the best food experiences, it’s about good ingredients, treated with respect. My experience of Mike’s facilitative presence was just smooth, open and easy. His pace is not rushed. Some of the things I spotted him doing, which we’ll dig into in our conversation were:

1.   Greet the people. Connect with them, ask for how to pronounce names.
   1.   Being Explicit about agreements. What is this space for? What isn’t it for?
   2.   Slow Down. Close whatever came before with a moment of mindfulness.
   3.   Passing the mike - giving power and control to others in the group to lead parts.
   4.   Breakout to connect. Smaller groups help create more safety and connection.
   5.   Assign “captains” of each breakout and give a clear, focused prompt.
   6.   Get people to share from that breakout.
   7.   In larger groups, give someone the time-awareness job so you can focus on connecting.

That last element was one of my favorite moments, of Mike setting clear and safe boundaries for presence and connection. Mike asked someone to put in the chat when someone’s share out had reached four minutes. He clarified “When it's four minutes, it doesn't mean your time is up. It just means that you've been talking for four minutes.”

I sometimes call this practice “giving people jobs so you can do yours” and Mike did an amazing job of it. Giving away jobs helps people feel responsible for the space, in control...and it frees up mental space for you to focus on the most impactful aspects of your presence.

Mike also broke down three levels of listening, which are a powerful key to mastering virtual presence. 

Level One is where you are doing what some would call “cosmetic” listening. You're there with a person but you're already thinking about what you're going to say next. 

Level Two listening is being deeply engaged in the person. As  Mike says “We're listening to every single consonant of the word that they're saying and we are very fully tuned in to their story or what they're talking about. Level two listening is one of the most powerful gifts that you can offer for someone. Just being there for that person to use you as a sound(ing) board.”

Level Three listening expands to what's happening within ourselves internally and in the environment. I’ve heard some folks call this “global listening”. Here, Mike suggests that we might notice “what's happening in their body language and their micro facial expressions. Then also, what's happening in the environment... then also what's happening outside in the world. What's happening in the culture, what's happening in politics.”

This level of listening is tremendously powerful, to be able to hold the conversation with the other person, with ourselves and with the larger world, all at once.

As Mike says “Level three listening is one of the greatest gifts that we can offer someone but also what we can offer ourselves... especially when we're facilitating a space like this.”

So there you have it...the secrets to presence. As Mike said in the opening quote: 

“holding that space, I think what's most important is first checking in with ourselves and noticing how you show up. How am I showing up into this space? Do I need to let go of anything in order for me to be completely present for the person in front of me?”

mikesagun.com

The Unshakeable Man

Mike's TEDxKP Talk

Mike on LinkedIn

EVRYMAN

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Finding an opening quote from my conversation with Ayse Birsel – One of Fast Company magazine’s ‘World’s Top 15 Designers’ and author of Design the Life You Love was a challenge, mostly because I delighted in re-listening to each moment of it.

In this opening quote, Ayse is talking about the joys of having a process that guides her in her design journey. 

Her wonderful book, Design the Life you Love is not self-help BS...it’s a visual thinking masterpiece and a guide to one of the most powerful and simply stated design processes I’ve ever seen….and I’ve seen and made a lot of them.

The double diamond of design thinking was my first design process, the first map to creativity that I followed, and it helped me design entire work engagements, hour-long meetings and multi-day workshops.

But underneath that framework is a deeper one: Ayse’s De:Re map. De:Re stands for deconstruction and reconstruction, and this idea is essential if you’re going to design anything well.

In the context of designing conversations, meetings and workshops, the key question is: What are the parts that you can see? If you can’t see the parts, you can’t shape them.

That’s why we love frameworks...they help us know what to look for!

The idea of deconstruction is controversial in some spaces. It made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts... Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts—something is always created too.

-Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

What is created through deconstruction is the opportunity to reconstruct something new.

Ayse asks us to apply this framework, methodically, to our lives, so that we can build our biggest design project, our lives, according to principles we can (literally) live with.

What’s truly delightful about Ayse’s perspective is that many people still assume that design is for the few - designers. And that designers are akin to artists, disheveled and mysterious and creative. And that creativity is more magic than method. Watch Ayse’s TEDx talk, read her book, and you’ll see...design is for everyone.

The question is...when you look at a problem, what do you see? A messy mass? Or do you start to deconstruct the challenge into its parts?

This is true of a workshop or meeting or a conversation...what are the parts? Who are the players? What are the goals and constraints? Once you start deconstructing...you can start reconstructing a new configuration and a process to get there.

I could go on, but I don’t want to keep you from enjoying this conversation any longer!

Full Transcript here

Links and Resources

Ayse on the web

Design the life you love: The book

Ayshe’s Inc Column 

About Ayshe

Ayse (pronounced Eye-Shay) Birsel is one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People 2017. She is the author of Design the Life You Love, A Step-By-Step Guide to Building A Meaningful Future. On the Thinkers50 shortlist for talent, she gives lectures on Design the Organization You Love to corporations. Ayse writes a weekly post on innovation for Inc.com.

Ayse designs award-winning products and systems with Fortune 100 and 500 companies, including Amazon, Colgate-Palmolive, Herman Miller, GE, IKEA, The Scan Foundation, Staples and Toyota.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including Interior Design Best of Year Award in 2018 for Overlay, a new Herman Miller system, multiple IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Awards) and Best of NeoCon Gold Awards, Young Designers Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Athena Award for Excellence in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. Ayse is one of only 100 people worldwide to be named as one of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches—a program Goldsmith conceived during Ayse’s Design the Life You Love program—along with the President of the World Bank, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation and the President of Singularity University. She is a TEDx speaker. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the MoMA, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Born in Izmir, Turkey, Ayse came to the US on a Fulbright Scholarship and got her masters degree at Pratt Institute, New York.

In this conversation, I sit down with Huddle Co-Founders Stephanie Golik and Michael Saloio.

Huddle is a platform for designers and builders to invest in startups with their time. 

Stephanie has spent her career building alongside founders at studios and leading design and product at fast-growing tech companies. She was an early design leader at Cruise, building user experiences for self-driving cars. Before that, Steph was Head of Product at Mapfit (acq. by Foursquare). She's a proud Cuban-American born, raised and currently residing in Miami.

Michael is a product and team-focused entrepreneur and investor. He’s spent his career working with technology executives and investors. As an investment analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., he followed some of the biggest names in technology including Cisco, EMC, and Apple. Prior to Oppenheimer, Mike covered special situations at Sidoti & Co.

Over the past five years, Michael reimagined his career to focus on early-stage businesses. He was the first employee at SuperPhone, a messaging application backed by Ben Horowitz, Betaworks, Bessemer, and more. Since 2014 he has consulted with, invested in, or advised more than 35 startups that have raised more than $200M in venture financing.

I met Michael years ago and have tracked his rise…when I saw that his latest venture raised 3.3M and was a co-founded company, I reconnected to include him in my co-founder conversations series.

My question throughout this series has been simple - what does it take to build and sustain a powerful co-founder relationship? 

Michael and Stephanie shared some of the insights and principles that helped them do exactly that.

The biggest aha was the umbrella concept of an Integrity Culture, and how many powerful values fall into place with a focus on Integrity.

As Michael points out, it’s not just “I do what I say I will” it's also about a culture of Coaching and Feedback to help everyone right-size their commitments and to give themselves (and others) feedback along the way when they find themselves falling short.

Stephanie and Michael share a conversation format that they use over the course of each week to keep their team on track and in integrity!

Integrity Culture also implicates one of my favorite words: Interoception, a concept I learned from Food Coach Alissa Rumsey.

Michael and Stephanie’s vision of an integrity culture is one where you commit to a thing because you are intrinsically motivated to do it, not through force or pressure…you self-select the thing you are going to do. And that means you know what you want! Interoception is the ability to feel and know your inner state. 

Some additional keys to a powerful co-founder relationship that line up with the other conversations in this series are the ability to have Healthy Conflict (rather than an unhealthy “peace”) and the regular asking and giving of generous and generative deep feedback.

One other insight that was fresh for me in this conversation was Michael’s idea of a good co-founder relationship as one that is “Energy Producing” vs. energy sucking. A powerful co-founder relationship is like a flywheel - the more energy you invest into it, the more energy it throws off.

Be sure to check out my other co-founder conversations, like this episode with Jane Portman and Benedikt Deicke, co-founders of Userlist, on how they connected through shared communities and learned how each other really worked through real-world, previous projects.

You may also enjoy my interview with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create, where we unpack how they managed their working relationship.

And if you really want to dive deep into the idea of being a conscious co-founder, make sure to check out my conversation with my friend Doug Erwin, the Senior Vice President of Entrepreneurial Development at EDAWN, the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Huddle website

Today I share my conversation with Suzanne Vickberg, aka Dr. Suz. She is a social-personality psychologist and a Research Lead at Deloitte Greenhouse. Along with her Deloitte Greenhouse colleague Kim Christfort, Suzanne co-authored the best-selling book Business Chemistry.

But there’s another type of Chemistry - or Alchemistry - that I sat down to talk to Dr. Suz about - shifting the default track of a conversation from protection and opposition to collaboration,

Some years ago I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Stokoe, a Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, who speaks in her book Talk about conversations as having a landscape or a “track” that participants asses and orient to rather quickly…and that we glide down that track, while we monitor the texture of that landscape, and navigate the bumps in the road…so that we can keep things on safely on track. Check out our podcast conversation here and her TEDx talk here. In the opening quote to this podcast, you can hear Dr. Suz describing this process of “landscape orienting” happening very rapidly in a divorce context.

Knowing the default path is very helpful when navigating a “hello, how are you?” kind of “small talk” conversation in a non-wierdo-way. Knowing the default track can help make things smooth and easy…when you’re visiting the store, or a bowling alley. And when you don’t know the basics of the track, things can be hard - Doing simple things in a different culture can be surprisingly slippery to navigate when you don’t know the basics of the track. 

But sometimes the default path can be extremely detrimental - especially when the default is ineffectual or becomes unconscious and habitual - we keep doing things out of rote, not intent.

In business, a common default/habitual conversational path is looking at an underperformer and putting them on a Performance Improvement Plan in order to be able to fire them more easily,

A non-default, more conscious conversation is taking the time to learn *why* they are underperforming and helping them actually transform themselves, their work performance and their lives….and in the process deeply benefiting the company and even the community.

Seems impossible, right? Or grandiose? Carol Sandford, in her book about Regenerative Business talks about an organization that did just this… a manager discovered that a chronically underperforming and late employee was just functionally illiterate. That employee, once they felt safe to share more, helped that manager learn that many of their employees were facing similar issues. Instead of a PIP, this employee got literacy training, and became an advisor to a new literacy program developed inside the organization, which spread out to the larger community, in ripples of growth and transformation.

That is a *non* default conversation - turning a PIP conversation into a community-transformation conversation.

On a micro-scale, Dr. Suz’s book tells the story of rethinking or re-designing the “default track” for a very, very common conversation - Divorce. When that word gets said out loud, people find lawyers, put up a shield, and start digging trenches. 

There is a better way! It takes effort to deeply empathize with your “opponent” in a difficult conversation. It takes patience and imagination to collaborate with your “opponent” to design a win-win scenario. 

But the default design for divorce doesn’t usually create ideal outcomes…just conventional ones. It’s possible to create something better than you can imagine if you create the space for a transformational conversation.

Dr. Suz helps break down how “design” in these situations just means really understanding the REAL problem we’re solving and what our IDEAL outcome really could look like… BEFORE we jump to solutions.

Also check out my podcast conversation with Adam Kahane, author of, among many other amazing books, the book Collaborating with the Enemy - which is what I know a divorce can feel like. Some of his perspectives take this “divorce by design” mindset into the broader business and strategy arena.

Enjoy this conversation as much as I did…and think about how you might transform the most challenging conversations in your life and work. With more conscious creativity and intention, with empathy and collaboration…with more design you can create more of what you really want, just like Dr. Suz did for her own divorce and for her own life.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://www.divorcexdesign.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzannevickberg/

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/svickberg.html

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/facilitating-breakthrough-with-adam-kahane

Today I’m sharing an interview with self-described On-Air Personality on SiriusXM and Idiot Grand Random. 

Grant has had  a long-time career in radio: In college he was hired to board op Christmas music for WLS-FM in Chicago when it was transitioning from Talk to Country music. He was at the controls the day the station flipped to "Kicks Country," which was really cool in a geeky radio kind of way.

He now hosts on SirusXM’s Octane channel. 

Grant has interviewed some big names: from Billy Corgan to Marilyn Manson and many, many in between so as I transition the show into its fourth season, I thought it would be awesome to sit down with someone who interviews people for a living! We all need to get amazing information from people at work and in life...and doing it in a way that makes people feel comfortable and excited to share that information is a tremendous skill. So even if you don’t work for a radio company, I suspect you’ll find some gems in here...or at the very least enjoy Grant’s sparkling personality.

Grant was kind enough to host me at Sirus XM’s amazing studios in Midtown Manhattan and share some insights on how to interview people like a rockstar. 

Spoiler alert: Ask interesting questions, prepare...and do it, a lot!

Enjoy the conversation...

Show Links

Grant Random on the Web:

https://twitter.com/grantrandom

https://www.instagram.com/grantrandom/

Grant and Marilyn Manson text Justin Beiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbAwXgPphw

Daniel’s Conversation OS Canvas: https://theconversationfactory.com/downloads

Full transcription at https://theconversationfactory.com/episodes-all

Daniel Stillman Interviews Ian Altman

I am so thrilled to share this conversation with author and speaker Ian Altman about a conversation we all have to contend with one way or another - sales! Everyone sells something at some point, whether it’s in a job interview or a client presentation...and at some point everyone is going to be sold to.

Ian’s book, Same Side Selling, asks “Are you tired of playing the sales game?”

The most widely used metaphors in sales are those related to sports, battle, or games. The challenge with this mindset is that it means one person wins, and the other loses. Instead of falling victim to a win-lose approach, what if you shared a common goal with your potential client? How might things change if the client felt that you were more committed to their success than making the sale?

As Ian says in the opening quote - it’s not about a series of tactics, it’s about selling something you care about that helps people solve real challenges that you also care about!

I wanted to share my own takeaways form Ian’s approach that have helped me facilitate deeper conversations with my clients and potential clients.

1. Stay in the problem space slightly longer than feels comfortable. My listeners with Design Thinking experience will not be too surprised to hear that jumping from problem to solution quickly is not any more effective in sales conversations than it is in innovation conversations. Staying in the problem space means listening longer and more deeply to people before you share your amazing solution to all their worries. Ian’s “same side quadrant” notebook has actually been a helpful reminder to do just that.
2. Ask “what’s the cost of not solving this challenge?” Make sure you understand not just the problem today, but the cost of not solving the problem in the near future. This conversation can help you both understand how to measure the impact of any effort you make to solve the problem.
3. The Cost of your solution is often irrelevant in the face of the cost of the problem. Once you really know the cost of the problem, talking about your fees can feel less challenging.

What is particularly interesting me to are the wider implications of Ian’s metaphor driven-approach. What metaphors are driving the key relationships in your life? Those metaphors are narrative threads that link (and color) each and every moment of the relationship. The simple shift from a game to be won to a puzzle to be solved is a profound one. If you think of your marriage as a battle or your job as  circus, the way you name the game will affect how you play it. 

I’m really grateful to Ian for this new metaphor - and I think you’ll enjoy it too!

Ian’s Same Side Sales Podcat: https://www.ianaltman.com/same-side-selling-podcast/

Your Chocolate is in my peanut butter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLDF6qZUX

Same Side Sales Journal: https://www.ianaltman.com/store/Journal/

Full Transcription at 

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/12/04/what-is-your-sales-metaphor

Diane Mulcahy is an advisor to both Fortune 500 companies and startups, is a regular contributor to Forbes and is the author of the bestselling book “The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want”

Diane was early to the party: When she started teaching MBA students a course on these ideas, some people thought she was talking about Computer Memory. But what made me really want to talk to her was how she decided to go deeper into the topic via teaching - one of the most powerful ways to learn anything! I was also eager to learn more about how she helps organizations work with these trends, rather than against them - I wanted to learn about her approach as a coach and advisor. And you can see, her secret is slowing down conversations.

The future of work is more than gigs on Lyft and Uber or Taskrabbit. 

Barbara Soalheiro, of the consultancy Mesa, in our conversation on the podcast back in season three posited that the best and the brightest wouldn’t want a full time job in the future...which is why she’s designed her innovation sprints to be one week - to help brands bring the best brains in for short sprints.

This is why Diane finds tremendous opportunities to coach and advise organizations to adapt to and survive this transition in what people want from work.

Traditional orgs need to put significant effort into shifting their cultures on:

Trust in Management- Facetime isn’t the same as work (ie, Clock and Chair Management doesn’t work in this new world - for more on this, check out Diane’s Forbes article on Trust)

Projects over Jobs - Define clear outcomes and break up jobs into clear projects and deliverables.

Processes and Systems - Internal systems have to adjust to be more nimble and customer-grade.

We talk about the importance of slowing conversations down when there’s internal resistance:

Diane relates her sense that Orgs seem to be saying.

“We know these things are happening. We know we have to respond," 

...but then it turns out, they want to respond without really changing anything. Diane points out that that's not possible.

The way through is patient conversation, and Diane gives me some deep pointers on shifting challenging conversations with silence.

We also reminisce about travel and I try to get her to tell me what her next forward thinking, trend-setting MBA course will be on...which you’ll have to listen to end to learn all about!

Explore all things Diane Mulcahy Dianemulcahy.com where you can find links to her other books (she also writes about venture investing) and to many of her online articles.

Head over to the conversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access

Link: https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Influence and Leadership aren’t things you turn on and off...it’s a muscle you have to practice all the time. And while being “on” all the time might sound exhausting, Stacey Hanke, my guest today, suggests that the key to leadership is being consistent. Leadership and influence is something you practice “monday to monday” and every day in between.

Stacey is the author of Influence Redefined and Yes You Can! … Everything You Need From A to Z to Influence Others to Take Action. Her company exists to equip leaders within organizations to communicate with confidence, presence and authenticity, day in and day out.

One thing I really heard from Stacey is that in order to grow it’s critical to see ourselves from the outside. That can mean recording yourself speaking or presenting or it can mean having a coach or trusted advisor who can give you honest feedback  - and that you have to prepare for that feedback. If you want to dive into how to develop a culture of critique and feedback about your work, check out the show notes for my interview with Aaron Irizarry and Adam Connor, authors of “Discussing Design”.

One of my favorite questions in this episode came from Jordan Hirsch, who was in the most recent cohort of my 12-week Innovation Leadership Accelerator: 

How do you lead from the middle, without formal authority? Stacey had some solid, down-to-earth advice:

1. Don’t waste anyone’s time - be brief and clear in your communication
2. Have your message clear and crystallized so you can speak to it without notes
3. Be clear on how you want to be perceived and how you are currently perceived
4. Deliver value, consistently
5. Show up for others - listening deeply means you can respond deeply

If you want to connect with a community of innovation leaders keen on growing in their authentic presence, you should apply to the upcoming cohort at ILAprogram.com

One other fine point I want to pull out from this interview is how influence shifts depending on the size of the conversation you’re holding space in.

1-to-1 : It’s easy to adapt and influence one to one: Stacey suggests that we listen deeply and get our conversation partners to do most of the talking. Also, mirroring their body language can create connection as well.

Groups - if it’s more than five people Stacey’s rule is to get on your feet. You’ll have more energy and the group will feed off of that.

Large Groups - be “bigger” - use more of your voice, and use the whole stage. Connect to the whole room, purposefully, with your eyes

One side note: I misquote one of Newton’s Laws. The Third law is about how every action creates an equal and opposite reaction, not the second law! How embarrassing!

Check out the show notes for how to find Stacey and her work on the web as well as links we mentioned in our conversation.

Show Links

https://staceyhankeinc.com/

The trusted advisor

Ed Sheeran on giving up his phone: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ed-sheeran-doesnt-have-cell-phone

Deep Listening on Ian Altman’s Podcast: https://www.ianaltman.com/salespodcast/deep-listening-impact-beyond-words-oscar-trimboli/

Developing a culture of critique: Designing a Culture of Critique http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/9/2/culture-of-critique 

Today my guest is Yehong Zhu, the founder and CEO of Zette.

We discuss three key layers of conversation design: 

+ The conversation with yourself - even with so many companies founded…why not me?

+ The importance of community, community building and hosting as an integral part of staying sane, informed and productive as a founder.

+ The broader, cultural conversation - how does a founder design the conversation around why does this company matter? Shaping this narrative arc can help you connect your company’s mission to the mission of potential funders and advisors

Prior to starting Zette, she worked as a journalist at Forbes Magazine, where she reported on business, market and technology trends. She also worked as a product manager at Twitter on two consumer teams—the Tweets team in San Francisco and the Events team in London—where she shipped features on desktop, mobile web, iOS, and Android to 330M users globally. She graduated from Harvard College in 2018 with a degree in philosophy and government.

Be sure to check out my conversation with Michael Bervell about his “Conversation Onion” model that we reference in the conversation.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Playing Nice with Paywalls

Zette

Buckle in, ladies and gentlemen, for some straight talk about the future of work, the nature of the universe and the power of changing systems to change behavior.

Today I’m sharing a deep and rambling conversation I had a few months back with Aaron Dignan, author of Brave New Work and founder of the Ready, an org transformation partner to companies like Airbnb, Edelman and charity: water. He is a cofounder of responsive.org, an amazing community of like-minded transformation professionals. If you haven’t checked out their conference, it’s great. I co-facilitated some sessions there last year and I can highly recommend it. You should also check out the episode I had recently on asking better questions with Robin Zander, who hosts the conference.

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/4/23/robin-p-zander-asking-better-questions

I owe a debt of gratitude to Aaron. It was his OS Canvas, published in 2016 on Medium, that got me thinking differently about my own work in Conversation Design and led me to develop my own Conversation OS Canvas. His OS Canvas clarified and simplified a complex domain of thinking – organizational change – into (then) just nine factors. In the book it’s evolved into 12 helpful prompts to provoke clear thinking and to accelerate powerful conversations about how to change the way we work – if you are willing to create the time and space for the conversation.

Aaron doesn’t pull any punches – as he says, “the way we work is badly broken and a century old”. And he figures that “a six year old could design a good org, you just have to ask the socratic questions.” His OS Canvas can help you start the conversation about changing the way you work in your org and his excellent book will help you dive deep into principles, practices and stories for each element of the OS.

You’ll find in the show notes some deep-dives on the two core principles of org design from the book. The first principle is being complexity Conscious. The second is being people positive. For more on complexity – dig into Cynefin (which is not spelled the way it sounds). And for more on people positivity, there’s a link to Theory X vs Theory Y, a very helpful mental model in management theory.

Another powerful idea that I want to highlight is Aaron’s suggestion that we all have our own “system of operating” or “a way of being in the world” which is “made up of assumptions and principles and practices and norms and patterns of behavior and it's coded into the system.” 

Aaron goes on to say that “people are chameleons and people are highly sensitive to the culture and environment they're in. And the system, the aquarium, the container tells us a lot about how we're supposed to show up. And over time it can even beat us into submission. And so we have to change the system and that's hard to do when we're reinforcing things that we ourselves didn't even create,”

From my own work on conversation design, it’s very clear to me that communication is held in a space, or transmitted through an interface – the air, the internet, a whiteboard. The space your culture happens in is one very key component of how to shift your culture. Check out my episode with Elliot of Brightspot Strategy for more on changing conversations through changing spaces:

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/7/24/elliot-felix-of-brightspot-strategy-on-changing-conversations-through-changing-spaces

Changing your physical space is easy compared with shifting power and distributing authority more thoughtfully in your organization. To do that, we need to shift not just our org structures, but our own OS:  we need more leaders who can show up as facilitators and coaches rather than order-givers. And that takes, as Aaron points out, a brave mindset. 

If you want to become a more facilitative leader of innovation and change in your company, you should definitely apply before August to the first cohort of the 12-week Innovation Leadership Accelerator I’m co-hosting with Jay Melone from New Haircut, a leader in Design Sprint Training. It kicks off in NYC with a 2-day workshop in September, runs for 12 weeks of remote coaching and closes with another 2-day workshop. We’ll have several amazing guest coaches during the program – a few of which have been wonderful guests on this very show: Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences and head of Customer Success at Mural and Bree Groff, Principle at SY Partners and former CEO of change consultancy NOBL.

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/2/5/jim-kalbach-gets-teams-to-map-experiences

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/season-three/bree-groff-grief-and-change

Show Notes

The OS Canvas Medium post that started it all for me:

https://medium.com/the-ready/the-os-canvas-8253ac249f53

The Ready

https://theready.com/

Brave New Work

https://www.bravenewwork.com/

Complexity Conscious: Cynefin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

Being people positive: Theory X vs Theory Y

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_X_and_Theory_Y

Capitalism needs to be reformed: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/04/05/capitalism-needs-to-be-reformed-warns-billionare-ray-dalio.html

The Lake Wobegon Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon

Game Frame

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Frame-Using-Strategy-Success/dp/B0054U5EHA

The Four Sons as four personalities at work in us: 

https://reformjudaism.org/jewish-holidays/passover/which-four-children-are-you

MECE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle

Fish and Water: 

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/97082-there-are-these-two-young-fish-swimming-along-and-they

The Finger and the Moon:

https://fakebuddhaquotes.com/i-am-a-finger-pointing-to-the-moon-dont-look-at-me-look-at-the-moon/

also from Amelie!

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/am%C3%A9lie

Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

https://www.amazon.com/Zen-Flesh-Bones-Collection-Writings/dp/0804831866

Agile

https://agilemanifesto.org/

Open Source Agility: http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/23/dan-mezick-on-agile-as-an-invitation-to-a-game

The Heart of Agile 

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/7/19/alistair-cockburn-on-the-heart-of-agile-jazz-dialog-and-guest-leadership

Lean

https://www.lean.org/WhatsLean/Principles.cfm

Open

https://opensource.com/open-organization

Information Radiators

http://www.agileadvice.com/2005/05/10/bookreviews/information-radiators/

Asking better questions:

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/4/23/robin-p-zander-asking-better-questions

Loss in Change: 

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/season-three/bree-groff-grief-and-change

Mapping experiences:

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/2/5/jim-kalbach-gets-teams-to-map-experiences

What on earth would a podcast about designing human conversations, facilitation, leadership and organizational change have to learn from a coach and an expert on Food and Eating? Quite a lot, as it turns out! One of my favorite design thinking principles is to learn from “alternative worlds” - absorbing how other people and communities are solving similar problems in different contexts.

My guest, Alissa Rumsey, is a registered dietitian, nutrition therapist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and the author of Unapologetic Eating: Make Peace With Food and Transform Your Life.  

It’s always interesting to learn from reflective practitioners - people willing to think about how they do what they do. Alissa designs many human conversations in her work and life, from her coaching work to her group programs to her book, and the marketing thereof - a book is a conversation, after all. Alissa’s whole business is a series of conversations designed to shift the larger conversation about food and dieting.

Food and eating can be fraught topics, but Alissa's approach of connecting with and learning to trust your own body is inclusive, empowering, encouraging and wise. She places dieting in a much larger (and longer) conversation about historical racism and gender dynamics. At the core of Alissa’s work is an idea that is of deep interest to me: Interoception.

Interoception

Lately, I’ve been using this word in my coaching calls a lot, and it’s Alissa’s work that put it back at the top of my vocabulary. You might have heard the word proprioception: It’s how you can touch your fingers and toes with your eyes closed: You know where your body is, physically. Proprioception is sometimes described as almost a sixth sense, the sense of self-movement and body position. It’s essential for navigating the world in three dimensions, and survival.

But if proprioception is a sixth sense, there’s a seventh: Interoception: One’s sense of one’s internal state. When we say we feel fine, or feel sad, or angry or hungry, we’re interpreting a multitude of internal sensations and summarizing them into a simple word. It’s how we know what we need and start on the path of getting what we want in response to those needs.

When we feel sad, what are we feeling that lets us know that we are feeling sad? Where is it in your body? Think about that...and feel that!

When we’re hungry, it can be physical hunger (like when I do a 16 hour fast...I know that I’m really hungry at the end!) or “mouth hunger” ...like how it just feels GOOD to eat ALL the popcorn. Or it can be emotional hunger that we soothe through eating.

The challenge is that, unless we are attentive and aware of what’s really going on with ourselves, we can’t take care of ourselves, we can’t give ourselves what we really want and need...and we can’t grow. For example, for me, getting a massage is a much better way for me to soothe my emotional hunger...because I can tell you, no amount of popcorn will do it!

In leadership, facilitation, coaching and transformation work, we need to learn to take deep care of ourselves since we are constantly caring for others. 

It’s only when we give ourselves real nourishment, that we can care for and nourish others.

Like the sign in the airplane says “Put your own oxygen mask on first”.

The Work is in You & The Leader you want to be

If you listen back to my episodes with Alisa Cohn (a different spelling and a very different type of coach!) she talks about how “the work is in you”...the idea that as we grow and develop, we have to find new resources in ourselves: ways to be firm and decisive, to be bigger and the CEO others need us to be...while being and staying true to ourselves. As Amy Jen Su (Author of The Leader You Want to Be) said in our conversation about leadership development coaching, “we need to find our own North Star”.

I truly believe that Interoception is an absolute key to personal growth and transformation from the inside out.

Also..we all eat and try to diet, to control ourselves...so stop! Eat ALL the popcorn and mac-n-cheese if you want to...and listen to your body when it says you have had enough.

The Body Keeps Score

If you can learn to listen to your inner signals,you’ll know when your gut tells you your client is gaslighting you, or if the deck isn’t actually right (versus all the changes everyone wants to make!), or when to say what needs to be said. 

In my coaching work, I have to hear the voices in my head and trust that sometimes, it’s intuition...and sometimes I’m getting ahead of the conversation - that rushing feeling in my stomach could be my excitement to share my insights instead of bringing them out of the person in front of me. It’s a dance.

I like to joke: If we don’t listen to our intuition, it just might pack up and head off to someplace where it’s more appreciated. So, welcome your Interoception, your body wisdom, and give it a place of pride. Honor it!

Alissa’s book, Unapologetic Eating could also be called “Unapologetic Living”...if you want more of that in your life and work, check out her book. I’ve enjoyed it.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Also, check out http://bit.ly/tryrev10off to get $10 off your first order with Rev, my favorite tool for getting accurate transcripts for the podcast and automated transcripts for my coaching sessions. In full transparency, that’s an affiliate link, so I’ll get $10 if you give it a try, too!

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access: https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Links from the episode:

Alissa's Website

Unapologetic Eating

Fearing the Black Body

The Beauty Myth

Today my guests are Lisa Kay Solomon and Chris Ertel, the co-authors of the powerhouse 2014 book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year! I devoured this book 10 years ago and I think you might enjoy it, too!

Lisa Kay Solomon is currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, where she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of 21c core curriculum. She has also been named to the Thinkers50 2022 Radar List and is one of ixDA’s Women of Design 2020.

Chris Ertel is a managing director of Deloitte Consulting LLP with a specialist role designing and providing high-stakes strategic conversations for clients and priority firm initiatives, in the Deloitte Greenhouse® signature environments. Chris is an innovation strategist with 18 years of experience advising leading organizations. He holds a PhD in demography from UC-Berkeley.

We talk about 

• What it really means to be a facilitative leader, and why it’s so impactful. As Lisa and Chris say in MOI:

“At these critical moments, everyone will be looking at you, not for all the answers, but to help them unearth the answers together”

• The Five Core Principles of Moments of Impact, which can form a Design Process

1. Define your purpose  (your design intent!)

2. Engage multiple perspectives (with your facilitation skills!)

3. Frame the issues

4. Set the Scene

5. Make it an experience (even an intense or challenging one!)

• How designing conversations is different from facilitating them: Lisa makes it clear that Conversation Design is about intent and purpose while Facilitation skills are the tool that helps orchestrate those Moments of Impact.

• Why Conversation Design isn’t taught to leaders but should be (Lisa also tells us why it’s so hard to teach, since it brings together strategy, psychology and emotional intelligence)

• Why Chris always coaches leaders to condense and delete content from their strategic meetings (to 10 slides!) instead of making what communications expert Nancy Duarte calls a “Procument” (something that’s neither an easy to use and digest presentation or a leave-behind document!)

• How crucial discussing decision-making rights are - as Chris suggests many leaders want to keep their options open and wind up creating an “air of democracy without the reality of it” 

• Why You should start becoming a junkie of learning theories

• The importance of balancing humor and levity with challenging-ness and sparkiness to create productive environments

• The importance of knowing that the “yeah buts” will come when we’re hosting challenging conversations as in: 

yeah, but, that won’t work here! or…

yeah, but, what will we be able to report next quarter? Or…

yeah, but who’s budget is going to cover that?

And so much more! If you have Moments of Impact that you need to shape, design, and lead and you *don’t* have Moments of Impact on your desk - get it!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Get Moments of Impact! 

https://www.lisakaysolomon.com/about

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/profiles/certel.html

A plan is not a strategy: The short video from Roger Martin we were talking about!

Hey there Conversation Designers! Today I’m talking with Author, speaker and advisor Greg Satell about going beyond innovation to driving transformation. His recent book, Cascades, is about how to create a movement that drives real change and he’s teaching a workshop in Austin November 21st with my friend and podcast guest Douglas Furgueson.

Greg is also the author of Mapping Innovation, which was all about stepping back from a monolithic idea of innovation and turning it into a conversation - what do we mean when we say innovation? And by we, I mean whoever is coming together to make a change. A team, an organization, has to define for itself what change and impact means to them.

And this is the essence of the conversation Greg and I had - the importance of empathy across the board - not just with customers but with your internal stakeholders. It’s only through this kind of “mass empathy” that we, as change agents, can begin to find the shared values that will power change.

While we didn’t use these terms in the interview, the act of empathy and seeking shared values means you can shift your transformation from a ”push” effort to a “pull” effort - in other words, leveraging Invitation rather than Imposition. The core of any productive conversation, of any communication is invitation: the choice of all the participants to actually choose to participate.

There is one other idea I want to explore and that is making problems okay to talk about inside of a culture. In many of the transformation cascades Greg talked about in this episode, broad silence about a challenge was followed by everyone pulling in the same direction. What changed?

Some suggest that change only happens when we all feel like we’re on a burning platform, a phrase coined by John Kotter in the late 90s. But Greg is talking about change being driven by shared values, not just fear and panic. What seems to be happening in each of these instances is that stakeholder groups who initially thought that they had different goals and values suddenly saw a shared goal and shared set of values.The burning platform just makes the act of finding shared values easy - the need to focus on survival is a powerful motivator.  But understanding that the fear is just one type of motivation is clarifying. This makes the job of a leader of change simple - or rather, one of simplification. Change is about making the choice simple - simple to see (through storytelling) and simple to make (through clear shared values).

You can learn more about Greg’s work (including seeing the entire eight-step cascades process) and the upcoming workshop in Austin @ GregSatell.com Enjoy the conversation!

full transcript and show notes can be found at https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/10/28/from-innovation-to-transformation

David Hoffman built and sold big-data and data analytics company Next Big Sound to Pandora in 2015. He's now building Beam, which helps people create shoppable mood boards for DTC brands.

David reflects on his experience with mentorship and the long arc of the conversation that is being a co-founder and being in community. We unpack the Techstars motto "give first" and discuss the power of the Techstars community and the importance of community relationships in entrepreneurship.

We talk through the complex evolution that is founding and scaling a startup, his experience doing just that with Next Big Sound, and the challenges of becoming a leader inside a growing company.

One challenge is always scaling culture as a company scales, and David outlines some of the routines and structures that helped in defining his startup's culture. David also shares some insights on the post-startup-sale emotional roller coaster and the decision to build another company. Some of my other favorite insights from David:

• Living the “Give First” motto requires approaching everything with curiosity.

• “Grown ups” is a construct: When it is your idea and your company, you can make the decisions you need to make.

• Your Culture is made of your routines, whether it’s Friday bagels or snap-clapping after people share wins.

• Your MVP product can be much, much more simple than you think if it creates value for your customers.

David’s nuanced reflections are a gift, and I’m so glad he sat down for this conversation.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

Beam

My guest today is Jay Ruparel, co-founder and CEO of VOICEplug AI, a Voice-AI company empowering restaurants to leverage AI and automate food ordering using natural language voice ordering at drive-thrus, over the phone, websites, and mobile apps. VOICEplug's technology integrates with existing systems and apps, allowing customers to interact with the restaurant using natural voice commands, in multiple languages and be serviced seamlessly.

I wanted to sit down with Jay to unpack what he has learned about how conversations are structured (for computer-to-human interaction) that he brings into his CEO (human-to-human) conversations - crucial conversations, with his senior leadership team and his broader organization - does an AI-savvy conversation-aware CEO approach conversations and interactions with a different eye?

We also focused on a few questions of deep concern for our culture today: the responsible and ethical use of AI and how it might impact the future of work.

Through our conversation, it became clear that:

AI is great for:

Repetitive or highly similar and constrained tasks. Ordering fast food at a drive-in, VOICEplug’s use case, is a perfect context for AI. In these kinds of conversations, there are boundaries on the scope of the interaction and a clear set of intents and possible goals.

Jay also points out that his AI is trained on many, many different instances of people ordering food from other people. So,the voice-driven bot can get better and better at these kinds of conversations, all the time.

Humans are best for:

High-risk and high-complexity conversations with no clear comparables or no clear scope. For Jay’s conversations with key industry stakeholders, at company-all-hands, and with his leadership team, AI can give him ideas or first drafts, but ultimately, he needs to navigate nuance with his human conversational intelligence

++++++++++++

AI is great for: 

Crunching lots of data (which is always from the past) and summarizing it. 

Humans are best for:

Deciding what kind of future they want to create.

Jay points out in the opening quote that the Human mind can think, reflect, envision and CHOOSE an ideal future, creatively. AI can do a lot of that…but it can’t choose the future it wants. That is still a uniquely human strength - to dream and to choose to create that dream.

Jay dreams of a future where work is a deeper and deeper collaboration between humans and AI, where humans focus on higher-value activities while AI takes over repetitive tasks.

Jay goes on to suggest that curiosity and powerful questions are THE most critical of human skills.

When I asked Jay to share his favorite ways of designing conversations, he shared three tips:

1. Take just a few minutes before a meeting to be very clear about your key one or two objectives for the conversation. In other words, start the end in mind. Another way of putting it is to take time to set an intention. You might enjoy my conversation with Leah Smart, the host of one of LinkedIn’s top podcasts, on just this idea.

2. If Jay is meeting with folks he doesn’t know as well, from outside the company, like new clients or stakeholders, he’ll deliberately slow down the conversation and delay getting to the core objective. Instead, he’ll spend 20-30% of the meeting time getting to know them, talking about other things, all in service of trying to understand them as people, and their conversational style

3. Jay consciously chooses some conversational areas to NOT be highly scalable or automated - he shares a story about being offered an AI tool that would send automated and personalized birthday emails to his employees. As he says
   
   “What is the point of me having to use that as the CEO (when)…that relationship, that wishing someone on their birthday as a personalized conversation means so much to me. That's the last thing I would want to ever automate.”
   
   Not all conversations, even ones that can seem small and inconsequential SHOULD be automated. It is possible that a real, human touch will be the ultimate in luxury in the future.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

https://voiceplug.ai/

Jay on LinkedIn

Questions need silence. Great questions are provocative. Great questions defy easy answers. Answering them takes time - they can be the work of a lifetime or a workshop. A great question can guide an organization, a Design Sprint or an educational program. Great Facilitators ask great questions - on purpose.

In this episode I sit down with the effortlessly scintillating Nancy McGaw, Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program (Aspen BSP). Nancy also leads corporate programs designed to cultivate leaders and achieve Aspen BSP’s mission of aligning business with the long-term health of society.

In 2009 she founded (and still directs) the First Movers Fellowship Program, an innovation lab for exceptional business professionals who have demonstrated an ability and passion for imagining new products, services, and management practices that achieve profitable business growth and lasting, positive social impacts.

I would suggest you listen to this episode at 1X speed if for no other reason than it’s good to slow down sometimes - it’s a point that Nancy makes early on in our conversation.

Nancy and I meditate on the power of questions: Asking instead of telling lights people up and will surprise you, the asker, if you design your questions with care. 

Nancy shares three of her favorite questions.

1. Tell me about a time when you were working at your best…?
2. What would have to be true…?
3. Why do you do the work you do?

Starting with Stories

The first question shows the power of Starting with stories. Any user experience researchers or Design Thinkers listening will know this to be true - if you’re talking to a customer or a client, the best way to get rich and detailed information is to ask a “tell me about a time when…” question. Stories light up our brains in ways facts cannot, and starting our gatherings with a story is a luxurious and powerful way to generate energy and connectedness.

Appreciative Inquiry

This first question also connects to one of the most important ideas in this episode - even though it’s mentioned only briefly: Asking with focus on the positive and the functional over the negative and dysfunctional. Appreciative Inquiry is a rich body of work and a unique approach to change.

The Art of Possibility

Nancy’s second question is an excellent act of conversational Judo. Asking “What would have to be true…” can transform conflict into collaboration...or at least, honest inquiry. Asking this question can allow skeptics to dream a little and open the door into possibility.

That question came out of another question, from Michael Robertson, who attended the recent cohort of my 12 week Innovation Leadership Accelerator. He wanted to know if an “us vs them” mentality is ever appropriate when trying to lead deeply important change. Nancy’s answer is profoundly empathetic. As a side note, the next cohort of the ILA is in February - we’re accepting applications through January. If you want to dive more deeply into your own personal leadership, head over to ILAprogram.com to learn more and apply.

Why over what

I love the idea of asking people “Why do you do what you do?” without even knowing what they do. This question also points to understanding people’s history, which is one of the key components to change - how did we get to now? What was the arc of the story?

Nancy has added some amazing books to my reading list - check out the show notes for links to them all and enjoy the episode!

Nancy at the Aspen Institute

Business and Society Program

First Movers Fellowship Program

Edgar Schein’s Humble Inquiry

The Four Quadrants of Conversational Leadership

Appreciative Inquiry

John McPhee’s Draft No. 4 

The Four Truths of Storytelling

 Carmine Gallo’s Storytelling Secrets

Rosamund and Ben Zander’s Art of Possibility

Leading change with and without a Burning Platform

Hal Gregersen’s Questions are the Answer

Elise Foster’s The Multiplier Effect

Full Transcription at

https://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/12/24/leading-through-asking

This episode is a little different than most…Today I do some live-coaching for Rashmi Sharma, a Global HR executive and TedX speaker, on shifting what she wants to be known for, evolving what she wants to offer to the world and how her work can heal for others, while she heals herself.

I’m so grateful that Rashmi reached out to me for some coaching after we were both speaking at a virtual conference in Southeast Asia. As Rashmi has evolved as a leader, she wanted to do some deeper thinking about how she can evolve her thought leadership, and offer something to her community from a deeper place in herself. 

I really commend Rashmi’s courage in sharing her process with so much vulnerability. As you’ll hear in the conversation ahead, Rashmi and I talk about (although very indirectly) the ideas of sublimation - healing your own wounds through helping others.

We also dive deep into how she can hold space and create more depth in her conversations, as she interviews her community to understand what wellness and wholeness really means to them. 

Make sure you check out the show notes for Rashmi’s full notes reflecting on her insights from the coaching conversation, but, two that I want to highlight here are:

Using all of yourself to Lead

Joseph Campell famously said “it’s the privilege of a lifetime to be as you are”...

Finding and highlighting her phrase “use all of me to help people” was a golden nugget in the conversation. This is what Rashmi’s interest and work on wholeness and wellbeing is really about - allowing our whole selves to be accessed in our lives. So, it makes sense that Rashmi wants to do the same for herself!

Creating Depth in Conversations

One powerful way to create more depth is to go there yourself...Rashmi and I talk about asking and listening from a deeper place in herself.

We also highlight the idea that "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast," a motto from the Navy Seals. As she interviews her community to gain insights on her new area of focus, Rashmi realized that slowness and smoothness allows people to get comfortable and to think more deeply in her interviews. 

Slow and Smooth can mean slowing down your own voice, creating a little bit more space between your words, and it also means waiting a little bit between what they've said and your second question, your response. (Extra credit for not thinking about what you’re going to say or ask next while they’re talking!)

Slowing yourself down can help others slow down and connect. Active listening helps me really hear, and also helps my partner hear themselves. Depth in a conversation can be hard at high velocity. 

One piece of advice I shared with Rashmi as she prepared to head into her next round of community interviews was to simply take a deep breath and ask her partner to tell a story. Narratives can pull a conversation from a back-and-forth of questions and answers. Narratives can help you more deeply enter into the world of the person you’re talking to and hoping to get insights from.

I love to work with leaders trying to define their thought leadership, leaders trying to scale their impact and leaders working to transform their organizations. I only work with a handful of high-performing folks each year. If you’d like to reach out about coaching, head over to DanielStillman.com/coaching

Links from this episode:

Rashmi on LinkedIn

Rashmi’s TedX talk

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access
https://theconversationfactory.com/conversation-factory-insider

Hey there Conversation Designers! Welcome back to the Conversation Factory, Season Three! I’ve got some amazing interviews lined up for the coming weeks and months and I’m excited to get cracking.

Douglas Ferguson is a deep and brilliant facilitator, entrepreneur and technologist. Douglas and I met at the Google Sprint Conference and got to know each other a lot better when he came to NYC to join my Facilitation Masterclass. It’s always humbling to see the caliber of leaders who come out the masterclass.

Douglas’s Innovation Agency, Voltage Control, is hosting a Facilitator Summit in Austin May 23rd and I’m excited that he invited me to do a session on Narrative Models for facilitation. We’re also co-hosting a pre-conference Masterclass. I’m really excited about it and I hope you can make it out. Learn more and get tickets here: https://voltagecontrol.co/the-facilitation-master-class-with-daniel-stillman-douglas-ferguson-c827a62d8a71

Douglas and I go deep on Innovation, Co-creation, sprinting and he talks about his journey as a facilitator and how he keeps learning and growing.

At minute 19, we dive into why and how diversity helps groups solve problems and towards the midpoint Douglas reveals his facilitator’s secret resource: Camp counselor activity books.

By minute 35 we muse about a leader as someone who sets the cadence of work, and who makes sure that cadence doesn’t become a rut or burnout.

At minute 40 we talk about the Austin facilitation summit and why we’re co-running a masterclass together.

Finally, at minute 53 we talk about how to talk to a CTO and how, not surprisingly, they are people.

Some other episodes you can dig into to learn more:

·        Kai Hailey, head of the Google Sprint Master academy on the importance of Ethics in a Sprint culture

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/9/26/building-sprint-culture

·        Dee Scarano, who’s a Design Sprint Trainer and Facilitator at AJ and Smart, for more background on the sprint and being an awesome facilitator

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/8/3/everyday-design-sprints-dee-scarano-aj-smart

·        Paul Pangaro, professor at Carnegie Mellon University about cybernetic theory in conversations

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/12/16/professor-paul-pangaro-on-the-cybernetics-of-conversations-and-a-theory-of-everything

Things we dig into, and some links to help you dig even deeper:

Co-Creation cultivates Advocacy, ownership and Mutual Understanding

https://voltagecontrol.co/co-creation-is-a-powerful-tool-for-digital-transformation-5cfd942702bf

Co-Creation builds requisite Variety/Diversity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_(cybernetics)

IAP2 spectrum as a model for the spectrum of co-creation

https://www.iap2.org/

Complexity Theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_theory_and_organizations

Liberating Structures, a model for modular workshop mechanics

http://www.liberatingstructures.com/

Cynefin (kuh-nevin)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework

The power of Making and Sharing Tools (The Voltage Control Sprint Scorecard)

https://voltagecontrol.co/the-voltage-control-design-sprint-scorecard-503b1fc1b8be

The History of Design Sprints and the power of AWE (Accelerated working environments)

Jake’s Book:

https://www.thesprintbook.com/

Google’s Toolkit

https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/introduction/overview

Timeboxing and Raising the Stakes

More on Holocracy in my Interview with Sally McCutchion

http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/6/sally-mccutchion-on-holacracy-and-self-management-at-all-levels-of-organization

Liberating Structures: Troika Consulting

http://www.liberatingstructures.com/8-troika-consulting/

Liberating Structures: 1-2-4-All

http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/

Note and Vote as a Modular Component (thinking alone before thinking together)

https://www.fastcompany.com/3034772/note-and-vote-how-google-ventures-avoids-groupthink-in-meetings

To Engineer is Human

https://www.amazon.com/Engineer-Human-Failure-Successful-Design/dp/0679734163/

Places to Learn about Douglas and Voltage Control:

voltagecontrol.co

twitter.com/voltagectr

https://www.instagram.com/voltagectrl/

https://www.facebook.com/voltage-control

https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasferguson/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/voltage-control

In this little audio experiment, I read aloud an essay of mine about Conversational Range. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Support the Podcast and Get insider Access
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Link to original article:
https://www.danielstillman.com/blog/conversational-range