Episode 113

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Published on:

15th Jul 2024

Is Change Art or Science?

Business wants to be scientific.

Managers want to see data, facts and evidence to base decisions on. The last thing anyone wants to do is to put the company at risk. No-one wants to be blamed for being reckless.


So we buy based on logic.


But when we sell logic to people they resist. We buy proven tech and initiatives, but employees don't use it. Because people have their own opinions, preferences and concerns.


Every change is made with the promise of a better future.


But it's only scientific if we precisely know the outcomes of every eventuality. Science isolates variables and seeks to make choice into maths. Art is based on a best guess that we can make something more appealing.


Change in organisations is a guess that what we do makes a better future.


Better is subjective. Who is it better for? And how can we know another choice wouldn't be better?


We make business decisions never knowing if another is better


Never knowing how the variable of different people will respond.


In the clip Clark Ray, Tony Walmsley and I talked about change. From a football manager's perspective. To the implications for business and politics.


Links:

Clark's Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/10thman/


Clark’s Website:  https://www.clarkray.com


Tony Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-walmsley/


Tony’s Website:  https://theleadersadvisory.com


Rob's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmcphillips/

Rob's Website: https://robmcphillips.com/

Transcript
Tony:

His record is phenomenal.

Tony:

it's unprecedented, isn't it?

Tony:

And everyone can say, Oh yeah, what a great crop of players he had, but so

Tony:

called better managers had the golden generation prior and didn't succeed.

Tony:

You could say Pep Guardiola has got unlimited funds so

Tony:

he can buy the best players.

Tony:

Could he get, could he have kept Burnley in the league, for example?

Tony:

Who knows, it's a completely different proposition, so I think credit where it's

Tony:

due, and it'd be good for him to, whether he bows out, whether they win or lose it.

Tony:

Certainly I think it's the reaction the players have towards him is

Tony:

quite telling that they use the word.

Tony:

We love him.

Tony:

We love Gareth.

Tony:

I've heard a number of players use that terminology, which I

Tony:

find quite rare and telling.

Clark:

Yeah, we know that there are all sorts of different football

Clark:

management types, aren't there?

Clark:

He clearly is a sort of a father figure type.

Clark:

After the game, after every game, he's gone up to every single player.

Clark:

And given them a hug and clearly, that type of management works for him.

Clark:

Alex Ferguson was never that sort of, was never that sort of manager.

Clark:

And it's interesting because I remember when Stephen Gerrard was at Villa, and

Clark:

Unai Enri came in, the change, and you always expect a bit of a change anyway,

Clark:

because of the new management, manager thing, but clearly, there are ways that

Clark:

work for different groups of people, and the key to management, is getting

Clark:

the feel for what's going on within that group of people, reading the room,

Clark:

and then reacting accordingly, right?

Clark:

And he's clearly got that because when you listen to the after match comments

Clark:

from players like Bellingham, Harry Kane, Olly Watkins, they have not got a

Clark:

bad word to say about the whole setup.

Clark:

So clearly, they're growing into this competition.

Clark:

Let's face it, nobody expects him to win against Spain, but nobody expects

Clark:

it, so I think the hard part's over.

Tony:

Yeah, exactly.

Tony:

The shackles will be off to a degree, because they'll have to be thinking

Tony:

about we've got to dig in here, and if we can keep Spain out, we've got a chance.

Tony:

Because Spain are obviously the most free flowing team in the comp.

Tony:

Good to watch

Clark:

Slick.

Clark:

They're wonderful to watch.

Clark:

The biggest problem I think the English team have always had is and it's also one

Clark:

of their biggest attributes is the fans.

Clark:

The fans are a wonderful, terrible bunch of people.

Clark:

I remember I think I mentioned this before when David O'Leary said

Clark:

called Aston Villa fans fickle.

Clark:

He was right.

Clark:

We are.

Clark:

We spend our hard earned cash to go and watch These games and we expect

Clark:

something, but good grief, don't get on the wrong side of an English football fan.

Clark:

Yeah.

Rob:

It's been interesting to see, last night was completely different

Rob:

style of football from England.

Rob:

Because they did seem stifled, they did seem like they had a really defensive

Rob:

manager that was holding them back.

Rob:

And yet like you say, none of the players, even the players that are left

Rob:

out seem to be in, when they come on, like Trent came on Tony's come on and

Rob:

they've all done their bit and it doesn't seem to be that problem of disunity.

Rob:

I don't

Tony:

think they would ever have said to Declan Rice, don't play the ball

Tony:

forward quickly when the pass is on.

Tony:

I think sometimes he's adjusted to a new role.

Tony:

He doesn't play that role as a sole holding midfielder for Arsenal.

Tony:

He's got players around him that get on the ball and do stuff that he can't do.

Tony:

He's a galloper.

Tony:

He likes to run and he covers big spaces quickly.

Tony:

But he does things, it drives me nuts.

Tony:

He slows the game down and doesn't have the technical ability to get

Tony:

himself out of that situation.

Tony:

He's not that type of player.

Tony:

So he gets himself squeezed in and then we're in all sorts of trouble.

Tony:

He gets away with it more often than not, but he gets away with it, which is neat.

Tony:

Which is strange.

Tony:

Obviously he's there because of his attributes, but one of his attributes

Tony:

is not as the playmaker, in my opinion.

Tony:

So as soon as they changed the system and there were more players closer to him.

Tony:

So Foden's picking up deeper and more central and quicker

Tony:

and getting on the half turn.

Tony:

It's a whole different proposition.

Tony:

He's got more people to pass to quickly, but every time he slows it down and does

Tony:

a little drag back, he invites pressure that he can't get himself out of.

Tony:

He doesn't see it quick enough.

Rob:

That was the whole problem last time.

Rob:

I remember they were attacking, they had a corner a short pass and then

Rob:

they ended up getting caught and they had to go back to the goalkeeper

Rob:

in about 10 seconds from attacking and that seemed to be the problem.

Rob:

No one wanted to take that risk.

Rob:

There were a couple like Mainoo, Bellingham, Foden were trying.

Rob:

But yeah, there was, there's too much, seemed to be too much fear, but I was

Rob:

just thinking like a manager, we all have a different idea and we can never

Rob:

know whether our idea would work or not.

Rob:

As the manager it's the same in any change, isn't it?

Rob:

It's when to make a change, how to make the change, what change to make.

Rob:

And it all comes down to a judgment call, isn't it?

Tony:

Yeah.

Tony:

All the managers try to do is predict the future.

Tony:

And more often than not, it doesn't work out and this tournament, it has worked

Tony:

out, the changes that have been made sometimes reactively yesterday, maybe

Tony:

not so reactively, they weren't playing particularly well at the time he made

Tony:

the subs, but it was like 10 minutes ago.

Tony:

Let's do it's fairly late in the game, obviously paid off.

Tony:

But all of those decisions you've made a conscious and calculated

Tony:

decision to predict that what you're about to do is going to have

Tony:

a positive impact on the result.

Tony:

Obviously, none of us can know that because there can be stasis or it

Tony:

can backfire as easily as it can turn around like it did yesterday

Tony:

in the game with when Tony came on.

Tony:

As fans who are watching with enthusiasm and high expectation living in the future

Tony:

as well, if he makes these changes, this is what's going to happen in my head.

Tony:

We're going to be much better.

Tony:

None of us are right.

Tony:

And none of us are wrong.

Tony:

We just have expectations that and those expectations come with the pain that we

Tony:

feel when our expectations are not met.

Clark:

It's funny how we've got onto this subject because we were talking,

Clark:

I was hoping last week that we might talk a little bit about change.

Clark:

And the whole football scenario really lends itself to this idea of

Clark:

change because you both of you guys and myself, we all work in change in

Clark:

one form or another, and very often when you go to work with somebody, a

Clark:

person or an organization or, in Rob's case, often couples, for instance, and

Clark:

they say something needs to change.

Clark:

When you're watching a football match, you may think to yourself

Clark:

something needs to change.

Clark:

And the question is what?

Clark:

And how do you know that the thing you're going to do is going to be a change

Clark:

for the better because surely change implies that it needs to get better.

Clark:

And the interesting thing about as you just said, Tony you predict, the future.

Clark:

You're suggesting that this change that we're going to make is going to make all

Clark:

the difference and it's going to improve.

Clark:

What's that based on?

Clark:

You cannot measure a whole group of people interacting with each other and what

Clark:

happens when you just change one dynamic.

Clark:

So change is as much, An art as a science and having worked in manufacturing for

Clark:

so long certainly in the lean business improvement where things like Kaizen,

Clark:

the words that people love to throw around without really necessarily

Clark:

understanding what that actually means.

Clark:

There's another Japanese word that I've always liked called Monozukuri, which

Clark:

means the art of making, craftsmanship.

Clark:

It has to be beautiful and elegant to watch.

Clark:

Otherwise, if it's clunky, something's not working.

Clark:

And whilst you can scientifically measure processes and change different things,

Clark:

you know when something's working.

Clark:

That, to me, is the art.

Clark:

And this is where somebody like Southgate, we cannot say that he's doing

Clark:

something wrong when we just don't know all of the ingredients that are going

Clark:

into the recipe that he's creating.

Tony:

Even when he's wrong, he's not wrong.

Tony:

He was just acting on his best intentions with the information that he's got at

Tony:

that point in time, which is fascinating.

Tony:

And the other Japanese thing I love, I use it a fair bit is Kintsugi.

Tony:

Have you seen that?

Tony:

Which is pottery.

Tony:

So broken pot, instead of throwing it away they fix it with the gold in between.

Tony:

So the pot becomes more beautiful in its new state, it's changed state than

Tony:

it was when it was broken and it's obviously symbolizes the life journey.

Tony:

It's like saying you might be broken or you might have suffered a big

Tony:

setback, but put yourself back together and be more beautiful than

Tony:

you were before before it happened.

Tony:

It's a great analogy for change.

Tony:

For me, it's the demonstration of what can be at the other side

Tony:

of change when, it feels tough.

Tony:

A great example for me at the moment, we've just moved house and you're in

Tony:

a new kitchen it's the classic lean training exercise for me, you're in a new

Tony:

kitchen, you've moved, you've been in the previous kitchen for five or more years.

Tony:

You knew where everything was, you knew where the cups were, you knew where

Tony:

the coffee and tea is, and the the cutlery drawer and stuff like that,

Tony:

but the first week, I honestly, I haven't felt as stressed in a kitchen,

Tony:

frustrated about where is it, where, and you're going from one side of the

Tony:

kitchen to the other, looking for stuff that's not there, yeah, it's madness.

Clark:

It's a hard thing to bring into such a conversation, but when you're

Clark:

talking to leaders of organizations, especially people that are perhaps

Clark:

engineers or finance oriented, when you try to introduce the concept of

Clark:

bringing At least the idea of art into that conversation, it's a difficult

Clark:

one, but I think it's important because you cannot get art wrong.

Clark:

That's the point, isn't it?

Clark:

That picture, that sculpture, that painting, that dance,

Clark:

that song, it's not wrong.

Clark:

You may not be to your taste.

Clark:

And when you look at an organization that's not functioning as well as

Clark:

you would like, the question then arises, Was it good before and now

Clark:

the standards dropped and you need to get it back where it was or are you

Clark:

just trying to push on and get better, in which case we need to approach this

Clark:

whole thing radically differently.

Clark:

We're talking about football, but I'm just thinking that we've just

Clark:

changed government in this country.

Clark:

In a

Tony:

very

Clark:

British way.

Clark:

Nobody really noticed.

Clark:

Everybody's touched in and mumbling and muttering about it.

Clark:

But nothing really has changed.

Clark:

And the interesting thing I find is if you were to come from another planet,

Clark:

from another dimension and turn up and say this is how you guys run your country.

Clark:

Then there's 60 million people you've clearly just got rid of one group of

Clark:

people that are running the place.

Clark:

So obviously these are new guys are better.

Clark:

Oh no.

Clark:

They're not better.

Clark:

They're just different.

Clark:

We just don't like the old lot.

Clark:

And you say, wow, this is thousands of years of civilization.

Clark:

Civilization have gone into this concept where we replace one group

Clark:

of really mediocre people with another group of really mediocre

Clark:

people because that's change.

Clark:

Yeah.

Tony:

Yeah, it's fascinating.

Tony:

I was working for a Microsoft tech company, CRM.

Tony:

We, a primary customer were buying big chunky CRM programs.

Tony:

So typically going from manual processes to technological things.

Tony:

So you've got people that have built their own shortcuts for years.

Tony:

On how to track customer experience or whatever it was.

Tony:

And you're promising all of these great changes to the way they function,

Tony:

how much more efficient they're going to be, how much more money they're

Tony:

going to save, whatever it might be.

Tony:

But the biggest failure in a big CRM project is user adoption.

Tony:

People just don't accept the change that they've been given and the benefits that

Tony:

they've been given because the number of projects we picked up were failed previous

Tony:

projects because they never lined anything up to what the value proposition was.

Tony:

What was the business value that this change is going to serve?

Tony:

And the value has to be met at various levels within the business.

Tony:

Of course, the commercial community.

Tony:

There's a reason why you're going to spend 150 grand on a new tech product

Tony:

is because it's going to be commercially viable, but it's got to meet all sorts

Tony:

of emotional pains that everybody else is experiencing at their own level within

Tony:

the business where they're going to interact with this new beast of a machine.

Tony:

So there's a whole heap of work to be done.

Tony:

To onboard people to the idea, readied them for the chain, all of those classic

Tony:

sort of change readiness projects.

Tony:

But it was amazing that the number of projects that had been sold in by other

Tony:

companies who were just selling tech and then leaving them with this big white

Tony:

elephant that no one knows how to use, they just go back to the old ways quickly.

Tony:

So they've spent a fortune and nothing's changed.

Tony:

Other than people got very angry for a bit and upset with each

Tony:

other that it's not how it used to be and nobody likes it anymore.

Tony:

So it was a great example of this predicted vision of the future and

Tony:

the value that it's going to provide when it's all working, the value

Tony:

of making the subs in the game it's the promise of doing this, you need

Tony:

everyone to be on board with it.

Tony:

Otherwise it's got no chance of working.

Tony:

Even when everyone is on board.

Tony:

It's going to be tough.

Tony:

It's going to be hard.

Tony:

Everyone we're looking to tend to look for, ah, this is going to be great.

Tony:

It's going to be easy, but it's the bit I think where people need to be helped.

Tony:

It's actually going to be really hard to adopt this new way of working.

Tony:

So let's work together to solve the problem.

Tony:

I

Rob:

think any technology, it's such an uphill battle to learn anything new.

Rob:

Like things used to be simple, but the more that we have technology

Rob:

to do things, They enable us to do so much more, but there's that

Rob:

learning curve and it's tough.

Rob:

It's that struggle.

Rob:

This is me, I've decided that this is something I want to do.

Rob:

There's that whole change curve, isn't there, where you're down at

Rob:

the bottom and it's Oh, am I ever going to be able to work this?

Rob:

For someone working in a company, it wasn't their decision.

Rob:

They didn't have any control over it.

Rob:

They didn't really want it.

Rob:

It's so difficult, but I think the other part, because immediately what,

Rob:

when we were talking about football, what came to my mind was the election.

Rob:

Like you say, I don't think anything really changes.

Rob:

It's just every 10 years or so we change from labor to conservative

Rob:

from whatever, and they overturn everything that's been done.

Rob:

So we just end up in this stasis.

Rob:

What I always think about elections is I think there's a problem with democracy

Rob:

because basically the vote will go to the lowest common denominator.

Rob:

the same in organizations.

Rob:

Most people who are on the front lines aren't going to understand

Rob:

the full complexities of the reasons behind the decision.

Rob:

And sometimes they may know better.

Rob:

Sometimes the decision doesn't make sense, but there's that distinction

Rob:

between, understanding, like everyone wants politically, everyone wants a

Rob:

great health service, social service, welfare, all of that stuff for lower

Rob:

taxes and the two can't balance.

Rob:

So what we end up getting is we get people who are willing to promise

Rob:

something that they can't deliver.

Rob:

And this is why I think people who are honest and would state what it

Rob:

really takes wouldn't get voted.

Rob:

Maybe we should bring it before the adoption.

Rob:

So that people understand the thinking behind why it changes.

Rob:

And maybe if we got people on board before we introduced the change.

Tony:

That requires telling the truth, doesn't it?

Tony:

In order to.

Tony:

Ready people for say a health care change.

Tony:

For me, having lived in Australia for a long time, medicare's like their

Tony:

national health scheme, but everybody's making a contribution to Medicare.

Tony:

So it's already partly privately funded in a way.

Tony:

It's another taxation element but it makes it sustainable.

Tony:

Whereas in our current state where it's a provision and we now have obviously a

Tony:

high volume Of more people accessing it and a steadying level or lesser level of

Tony:

practitioners and nurses and all the rest of it to fulfill the increased demand.

Tony:

It's on its knees a little bit, so a change is required, but for politicians

Tony:

in a election campaign to come out and say, actually, we do want to change it,

Tony:

but we need to be really honest with you.

Tony:

And then here it comes.

Tony:

We're punching the face with the real facts, I think people might

Tony:

find it difficult to come to terms with that because, oh, the impact

Tony:

on me, is it going to take more out of my pay in order to Get something

Tony:

that was getting for free before.

Tony:

It's tough, it's complicated.

Tony:

I think the changes that our politicians have to make are enormous

Tony:

right now because of where we're at.

Tony:

We're not in a great state, are we?

Clark:

The thing there, Tony, though this idea of telling the truth, I find

Clark:

really interesting because you can imagine, I know you guys both have these

Clark:

conversations on a regular basis, but certainly myself in a factory setting

Clark:

and a manufacturing organization, you very often got a group of people around

Clark:

the table who are putting their point across with regards to how something,

Clark:

and there are vested interests.

Clark:

Obviously, there are silos where people are working within there's a cliques

Clark:

because obviously the engineering department has a lot more to do with

Clark:

operations and say the HR department.

Clark:

So there are all sorts of dynamics going on.

Clark:

This idea of the truth though, this is why I'm just in the process of finishing

Clark:

the introduction to my it's driven me mad because I'm trying to encompass

Clark:

something that's actually quite fluid this idea, as I've just mentioned,

Clark:

Monozukuri, this idea of bringing a a sense of art and creativity into an

Clark:

arena that gets extraordinarily messy.

Clark:

Change is messy.

Clark:

Sometimes it goes off without too much of a hitch and sometimes it goes

Clark:

completely pear shaped because people don't buy into the messiness of it.

Clark:

But when you're talking to a group of people who've all got their views on how

Clark:

this change is going to manifest itself, the idea of being honest is a difficult

Clark:

one because not everything is seen.

Clark:

Not everybody knows everything that's going on.

Clark:

For me, a really good illustration of how this whole change process works is a time,

Clark:

and I've mentioned this before, where I was stood on the shop floor, it was

Clark:

chaos, they were moving an assembly line, which was a big change, they still had

Clark:

to keep getting product out of the door.

Clark:

The general manager had put me in charge of this change process, and he came down

Clark:

about three days in and it was mayhem.

Clark:

He stood there next to me and I think he was being sarcastic,

Clark:

he said, how's it going?

Clark:

I said, it's going well, it's going as well as can be expected considering

Clark:

that this is a major upheaval.

Clark:

He said, it doesn't look like it's going well.

Clark:

I said, of course not.

Clark:

All change, there's a point between leaving one way of doing

Clark:

things and starting another.

Clark:

There's a gap.

Clark:

Sometimes it's really small, sometimes it's massive, where it's absolute chaos.

Clark:

That's the key to managing change, dealing with that liminal space between the old

Clark:

way and the new one and honestly telling the truth about such a situation is a

Clark:

very hard thing to do because nobody knows exactly what's going to happen.

Clark:

You're quite right.

Clark:

You need to be honest with people and say, look, this is going to get messy.

Clark:

I need you guys all on board with this, but the problem with managing

Clark:

that process is that you need to make sure that everybody involved,

Clark:

whether they're on side or not.

Clark:

Or agree with it or not.

Clark:

I'm not hiding anything and that when you talk about if there are other agendas

Clark:

involved, that's where you've got a real problem in this introduction to the book.

Clark:

I'm talking about the 10th man of somebody who is the arbiter of change, somebody

Clark:

that mediates that process and says, listen, you may have something in mind.

Clark:

For instance, you often see during the voting process or the lead up

Clark:

to an election where people are trying to tear their opponents

Clark:

down because they want to win.

Clark:

But the downside of that is that everybody may end up losing.

Clark:

You could end up bringing in a situation where there's an hung

Clark:

parliament or whatever, and it causes all sorts of problems down the line.

Clark:

So the truth aspect of it, to me, is all about, Everybody needs

Clark:

to get their cards on the table.

Clark:

And whether you agree with it or not, I think it was Colin Powell that said, we

Clark:

can argue as much as you like in this room, but once we walk out of that door,

Clark:

you all need to be on side because we cannot have somebody in the background

Clark:

trying to bring this thing down.

Clark:

And that really, I think, is the key to change.

Clark:

And that's what Southgate's done, isn't it?

Clark:

Regardless of how things pan out, everybody's on side.

Clark:

And that probably, I Is the most crucial factor to any change

Clark:

program that everybody wants it to work because everybody wants

Clark:

it to be better for all of us.

Tony:

Yeah, I agree.

Rob:

It's the idea of British government, isn't it?

Rob:

Is like the prime minister's first among equals and it's every

Rob:

decision is made by the cabinet.

Rob:

That, that's the whole principle, isn't it?

Rob:

Argue everything out.

Rob:

You make a law.

Rob:

You vote for it.

Rob:

And once it's passed, it's agreed and that's it.

Rob:

And then everyone's behind it.

Clark:

There's a problem with that though, isn't there?

Clark:

I was writing about this in my introduction, and I wrote it about four

Clark:

or five times because I couldn't quite nail down what it was that I didn't like.

Clark:

And it's this whole idea of an antagonistic approach to solving problems.

Clark:

The problem with it is we tend to come to a solution after two people or two

Clark:

parties or two groups of people have argued to the point where one wins, and

Clark:

we assume then that the person that won is the person that's right, or they're

Clark:

the group or the party that's right.

Clark:

However, they may just be good at arguing.

Clark:

They may just be really good at twisting the truth or twisting

Clark:

the facts, and that's a problem.

Clark:

This whole idea of reaching a consensus by virtue of whoever wins

Clark:

the argument is a massive problem.

Clark:

For me, this is where I think, again, the 10th man comes in,

Clark:

because you may be really good.

Clark:

Look at the whole Trump Biden debate.

Clark:

The fact that one of them couldn't care less about whether

Clark:

he's bending the facts or not.

Clark:

Let's put it that way.

Clark:

I'm not saying that the guy lies or anything like that but certainly

Clark:

he doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good persuasive argument.

Clark:

And then the other person, I don't think he knows what day it is or

Clark:

what are you up for breakfast?

Clark:

The problem with that is, it's all about perception.

Clark:

When two people are arguing about the best way to go about doing something,

Clark:

we all have to look at them and think, oh, yeah he made the best argument.

Clark:

Maybe.

Clark:

But he might be completely, completely wrong or completely mistaken

Clark:

or misunderstand the situation.

Clark:

There has to be.

Clark:

a better way of doing change.

Clark:

Because I come from a particular perspective when it comes to change, all

Clark:

lean practitioners value this thing called Kaizen, gradual incremental improvements.

Clark:

And the supposition behind that is that it's already okay.

Clark:

So let's just keep making it better.

Clark:

There's another thing called Kaikaku, which is Similar to

Clark:

Kaizen, but it means big changes.

Clark:

This clearly isn't working.

Clark:

We'll do it a different way.

Clark:

But there's another thing called Kakushin, which I look

Clark:

for, which really means reform.

Clark:

Just throw everything out the window, throw sort of

Clark:

the rule book out the window.

Clark:

Let's try something else.

Clark:

And of course, you need to think this through, you really need to

Clark:

do the change on paper before you actually put it into practice.

Clark:

But the idea to me of Kakushin, where you say, look, we keep electing people.

Clark:

They're all rubbish.

Clark:

Let's face it, none of them are serving the public, they're serving

Clark:

themselves or other agendas, and we are not benefiting from this.

Clark:

Let's try a different way.

Clark:

And whatever that might be, and how do you actually make

Clark:

that happen is another thing.

Clark:

This is a revolution, revolutions happen, right?

Clark:

People just say, we're done, we're taking over.

Clark:

And that's nearly always as bad, if not worse, than what was already there.

Clark:

But the idea of completely reforming the situation to me is

Clark:

a very interesting one because.

Clark:

How many times you have to do it wrong before you realize that doing the wrong

Clark:

thing more or harder isn't going to work?

Clark:

Let's do something different.

Clark:

That really is, to me, what change is all about.

Clark:

With regards to Southgate, he put three at the back.

Clark:

That was innovative.

Clark:

It was a big change.

Clark:

He reformed the way he was doing it and it transformed the

Clark:

way the team played, I think.

Clark:

But certainly, even yesterday, when they went back to a back

Clark:

four, it slowed down again.

Clark:

The idea of reform and innovation is fascinating to me because when you talk

Clark:

to a group of people about we want to change things, they nearly always talking

Clark:

about making the same thing better.

Clark:

But why not do a different thing?

Clark:

And that to me is what the 10th man is all about.

Clark:

He's the person that turns up and says, Why don't we try this?

Clark:

And, it's a conversation to be had, but most people don't even have that

Clark:

conversation, certainly not in politics.

Tony:

It's a great subject.

Tony:

I think, for me, when they're in that state of debate and like some of the

Tony:

examples we've used there when I mentioned the truth before, there's not a lot

Tony:

of truth coming out on either side.

Tony:

They just put a peg in the ground.

Tony:

This is what we stand for.

Tony:

And they say, this is what we stand for.

Tony:

And they're trying to whip up support external, which has got nothing to

Tony:

do with how things are going to work.

Tony:

How well they're going to work.

Tony:

And it's never then about a middle ground or a compromise or, cause

Tony:

none of that makes any difference is what is it that we want that will be.

Tony:

And a big step forward that we can agree on.

Tony:

And then what are we gonna do about it?

Tony:

And how are we gonna at least take the first step towards what good looks like?

Tony:

So for me, there needs to be absolute clarity right at the beginning about

Tony:

what it is that we're debating.

Tony:

What are we talking about?

Tony:

I'm telling the masses that this guy can't remember what he had for breakfast.

Tony:

I'm telling the masses that this guy should be in jail, and it's got nothing

Tony:

to do with how to run the country, and yet it's the game that they're playing.

Tony:

So I think when most people are not in that high stakes game, they're in

Tony:

a business environment or a sporting environment, and Something's not

Tony:

working or could be working better and they need to shift change of

Tony:

personnel or change of approach.

Tony:

They sit around the boardroom table or in a team meeting room and start to debate

Tony:

what it is that we're talking about.

Tony:

And I sometimes think they don't have absolute clarity on what is the topic

Tony:

of discussion, so they start to exchange opinions and differences of opinion.

Tony:

Often about without having agreed what is this contentious issue.

Tony:

So you end up having dialogue that can quickly disintegrate into right and wrong.

Tony:

I win, you lose type conversations.

Tony:

Everybody leaves dissatisfied.

Tony:

And the real issue that needed to be talked about didn't get even tabled

Tony:

because it lost it's way too quickly.

Tony:

So for me, the truth is about getting as much absolute clarity of the situation

Tony:

that we can and absolute clarity about what the next step or the end

Tony:

of this change process looks like.

Tony:

That everybody whether they like it or not agrees is the thing that we're

Tony:

at and is where we want to go, I think if you can get to that point even in a

Tony:

relationship with two people that are in a state of disconnect and then there's

Tony:

room for improvement in the relationship.

Tony:

It's critical to get absolute clarity because not all the relationship

Tony:

is to be thrown out the window.

Tony:

What is it that we're talking about that needs to be better?

Tony:

Can we have a mature conversation about that?

Clark:

Yeah, that idea of what are we talking about?

Clark:

I love that, Tony.

Clark:

That's, when you're sitting down with a group of people and you

Clark:

say hold on what, why are we actually trying to accomplish here?

Clark:

Because I do come across sometimes as a little bit paranoid, a little bit cynical

Clark:

and skeptical when I say that there are often agendas on the table that everybody

Clark:

else in the room is not aware of.

Clark:

The problem with that, for instance, looking at the way elections are run

Clark:

they tend to be one or the other, this whole line, and I know there are a

Clark:

lot of people voting, for instance, at the moment for people like reform,

Clark:

just because it's something else.

Clark:

You've got this either or situation, and somebody that can come in and

Clark:

look at a situation and say, hold on what's actually going on here?

Clark:

What are we talking about here?

Clark:

Because, This confusion this frustration that people are feeling in the

Clark:

room is serving somebody's purpose.

Clark:

As long as nothing changes, even though everything changes, then

Clark:

somebody's benefiting from that.

Clark:

As a British person, I refer back to the Magna Carta.

Clark:

There was a point in time when everybody said hold on, we're done with this.

Clark:

You're just messing us about.

Clark:

Nobody's benefiting.

Clark:

It's all to your benefit in this case, it was the crown that was benefiting.

Clark:

And they said, no, we're done.

Clark:

We've got to change that.

Clark:

So we want to agree what it is we're actually trying

Clark:

to accomplish as a country.

Clark:

And I think that was a game changer.

Clark:

700 years ago now, but it was something where people said, hold on,

Clark:

what are we actually talking about?

Clark:

Let's look at the agendas that are in the room, point them out.

Clark:

I've done this myself, I remember being in a meeting a couple of years ago you

Clark:

could see what was going on, it was not something that I could actually

Clark:

say, look you're up to something.

Clark:

So I engineered a conversation during that meeting and eventually that person told

Clark:

me to go and F myself and walked out of the room because they had been unveiled,

Clark:

if you like their true purpose behind the conversation had been made clear, and it

Clark:

was not to the benefit of everybody else.

Clark:

It was just to the benefit of this one person.

Clark:

And they don't like it when the actual truth about the situation comes out.

Clark:

That's absolutely key in any situation, certainly in elections.

Clark:

Football's probably by the by, but certainly when it affects people's lives

Clark:

and things like the health service.

Clark:

These things need to be discussed openly and whoever, it's the

Clark:

Emperor's new clothes and when the kid points at the Emperor and says,

Clark:

hold on a minute, what's going on?

Clark:

He's got no clothes on.

Clark:

When you can actually highlight what's really been brought into the conversation,

Clark:

then I think that's a game changer.

Tony:

And there's adventure in that though as well without it being a game, there's

Tony:

adventure in seeing where that goes.

Tony:

Because the alternative if you hold back.

Tony:

Is across multiple times of holding back.

Tony:

There's the accrual of resentment.

Tony:

So every time you leave that meeting, not having said what you said, not having

Tony:

gone on that adventure of I'm going to speak my mind and see what happens.

Tony:

You can end up being really resentful.

Tony:

And over a long period of time that can become really toxic.

Tony:

So I think that's happening a lot.

Tony:

The number of meetings where people have agreed on the surface.

Tony:

Yeah, we all get along great.

Tony:

Whoa.

Tony:

And nobody really spoke their mind, or when they did, it was about something

Tony:

that was really easy to speak their mind about, not about the real underlying

Tony:

thing that they wanted to have said.

Tony:

So they go away feeling, depending who they are of course, to different

Tony:

degrees of accumulation of resentment.

Tony:

And then it becomes I'm going to get them.

Tony:

I'm going to get them.

Tony:

This silo that they're saying we had, I'll show them what a silo is.

Tony:

I'll show him what, I'll show him how much what engineering knows

Tony:

about how this place is run.

Tony:

And the operations guys thinking lean and on this path to divorce.

Rob:

It's interesting in mediation and in relationships.

Rob:

Most people don't really know what they're fighting for.

Rob:

Because there's I think it's Howard Markman talked about the hidden issue

Rob:

in relationships, that there's an eruption and they fight about an issue,

Rob:

but there's a deeper hidden issue, which is something like control, care,

Rob:

love, respect, something like that.

Rob:

I could imagine it being very true in the boardroom because there's

Rob:

all these kind of underlying.

Rob:

So it's a lack of self awareness and some of that awareness only

Rob:

comes about through conversation.

Rob:

Like when we're having these conversations, it deepens my

Rob:

awareness of what we're talking about and takes it to new levels.

Rob:

And I think going back to what you said about, Clark, about the competitiveness.

Rob:

The original societies had an emperor or a king and often that king was a god.

Rob:

And so it was a dictatorship.

Rob:

It was the Greeks, Socrates and Aristotle that created the Republic.

Rob:

Basically our democracy is based on that Greek idea of adversarial, so the

Rob:

legal system is adversarial, political system is adversarial because it comes

Rob:

from the idea that the best idea wins.

Rob:

But sometimes it doesn't.

Rob:

In conflict management, there was some research, I was just looking

Rob:

it up when you talked about it.

Rob:

It was Kurt Lewin and a student of his, Morton Deutch, who were the first ones

Rob:

to really come up with a win idea and they differentiated conflict between

Rob:

when we have a shared goal, which really as a a nation, we have a shared goal.

Rob:

And when our goal is competitive.

Rob:

So if we're two different companies, then we don't really have a shared goal.

Rob:

But when we're within the same company, we're two departments, our well

Rob:

being and our health and our future security depends on working together.

Rob:

Ultimately have the same goal.

Rob:

And it's the same thing in relationships.

Rob:

The key with relationships is everyone thinks someone's just like us.

Rob:

Oh, we want the same thing.

Rob:

10 years down the line, they want different things.

Rob:

And one's pulling if they could just do this, they'd be perfect.

Rob:

And the other ones if they could just do this.

Rob:

It's because we have a, it's like you say, Tony, we have an idea of

Rob:

in order to progress and develop in the relationship or to develop in

Rob:

conflict, we have to let go of that.

Rob:

And we have to recognize that all of us are going out in the world and

Rob:

wanting to make our dream happen.

Rob:

But we're all the heroes of our own narratives.

Rob:

We clash with other people.

Rob:

And we don't realize that they only see us as a supporting actor.

Rob:

We're the villain or whatever it is in their narrative.

Rob:

So ultimately it all comes down to, when you're talking about people have

Rob:

hidden agendas, it's because they see their future as being better by them

Rob:

getting what they want, when actually really the best future has come when

Rob:

we let go of our ego and our ideas of what we want to be which comes back to

Rob:

what you were talking about, Tony, in the curiosity of going on the adventure.

Rob:

I suppose it's the fear that all of us have this idea of what we want

Rob:

and we're afraid to let that go.

Rob:

But actually we fixate on what we want.

Rob:

We fixate on a certain mechanism.

Rob:

Like money is a typical one.

Rob:

People fixate on more and more money without really knowing what the

Rob:

money is for is why you get miserable billionaires and lottery winners who are

Rob:

more miserable after having the money.

Rob:

So the basis is understanding that we have shared interest and.

Rob:

the personal growth in being able to let go of what we think

Rob:

we want for what could be.

Clark:

I think you nailed that, Rob.

Clark:

I've been thinking about something the last couple of days.

Clark:

I'm reading a book at the moment by a philosopher.

Clark:

I can't remember the guy's name, but the book is just called Truth.

Clark:

And it's called A Guide for the Perplexed or something like that.

Clark:

And it's about the idea of what's true.

Clark:

Clearly because I'm writing this thing about the 10th man who I believe

Clark:

is the person that stands in the middle of a room and says, hold on

Clark:

a minute, as Tony's just said, what are we actually talking about here?

Clark:

What's really going on?

Clark:

And as a consequence of reading this book, I've been thinking to myself, and

Clark:

I've always said this, when people talk about whatever their political, religious

Clark:

beliefs in UFOs, ghosts, fairies, whatever it might be, it's all just guesses.

Clark:

Everything's a guess.

Clark:

And I was there's a guy that I, again, I can't remember

Clark:

this guy's name either, but he.

Clark:

He's another philosopher because this whole conversation comes

Clark:

down to a philosophical viewpoint of, why we do what we do.

Clark:

But he basically said that every theory, every religious belief, every

Clark:

political idea, they're not mirrors.

Clark:

They don't reflect reality as it actually is, just as we would like

Clark:

it to be or the way we think it is.

Clark:

And the problem with that is, when, for instance, let's say, and I'll take

Clark:

an extreme example, when the National Socialist Party 30s decided that they

Clark:

were going to take over the world.

Clark:

and kill half the people in it.

Clark:

To a lot of them, they thought this was a good thing.

Clark:

They had a belief that in the end, we would all be better off if we

Clark:

all walked around in jackboots and, Hugo Boss uniforms and all that.

Clark:

And the same for any political ideal, communists all thought that,

Clark:

this is the way we should live.

Clark:

It's a belief that doesn't necessarily reflect reality because The minute you

Clark:

put anything into dogma, it excludes all the people that live outside of

Clark:

the boundaries of that belief system.

Clark:

And one of the things I, the very beginning, the first chapter of my book,

Clark:

as I go from the introduction out to the rest of the book the title of the first

Clark:

chapter is The Map Is Not The Territory.

Clark:

Whilst it's a representation of what you think is going on around you, it is

Clark:

not actually what's going on around you.

Clark:

And, you said, Tony.

Clark:

We need to know what we're talking about in this situation.

Clark:

We need to know, what's actually going on.

Clark:

And it really comes down to what do people believe.

Clark:

You may believe that if we do it this way, if all the engineers took over,

Clark:

then the place would be run perfectly.

Clark:

But that completely forgets HR, and it completely forgets finance.

Clark:

It completely rules out, like so many belief systems, it excludes

Clark:

a whole group of other people.

Clark:

The idea is that there needs to be always somebody that says what if this?

Clark:

What if we do it this way?

Clark:

Interestingly, this whole idea of the 10th Mandate I keep banging on about.

Clark:

The Israelis never called it that.

Clark:

It's just a Western invention of the name.

Clark:

What the Israelis call it is Ipcha Mistabra.

Clark:

Which means, on the other hand, or alternatively, and there always needs to

Clark:

be somebody that says hold on a minute.

Clark:

Yes, communism is great for this.

Clark:

But obviously also democracy is good for these other things.

Clark:

And there are other belief systems that also work.

Clark:

We must not just dump everybody into this one belief system

Clark:

because it is not a reflection of how people actually function.

Clark:

And as you said, Rob, even in relationships, the wife may say, oh,

Clark:

you don't pick up your clothes, you don't do this, you don't do that.

Clark:

She has a belief about why that's happening.

Clark:

And it's nearly always wrong.

Clark:

All the beliefs that we have about each other are nearly always completely wrong

Clark:

because it's from our own perspective.

Clark:

And so there needs to be somebody that lays everything bare.

Clark:

And that's the thing about change, isn't it?

Clark:

That's why change is painful, because we have to admit the things.

Clark:

We have to open the doors and let the skeletons out of the closet.

Clark:

We have to make everything transparent.

Clark:

And that's where it's really difficult because nobody

Clark:

likes to have their beliefs.

Rob:

It's interesting that you bring up religion because I think religion

Rob:

just explains it in a, in most wars have been fought about religion.

Rob:

And I'll, when you look at the currency, what do people get from religion?

Rob:

Why do they believe so fervently in it?

Rob:

It's because they want some certainty of how the world works.

Rob:

They want to believe that the world is a certain way.

Rob:

But when you look at like religion, Christianity has 32, 000 different

Rob:

denominations of so they say even people who believe in Jesus can't agree on What

Rob:

is the right way and Buddhism is the same?

Rob:

But what's so interesting about them is Buddha wasn't a Buddhist and Jesus wasn't

Rob:

a Christian if you look at the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus actually said,

Rob:

if that's a true account, he actually said exactly the opposite to religion.

Rob:

He said, don't go to the church and do this.

Rob:

Don't pretend to be a good person.

Rob:

Don't follow the, don't.

Rob:

mindlessly follow ritualistic words.

Rob:

And what do Christians do?

Rob:

They took something that they didn't understand.

Rob:

I often think of life is like a river.

Rob:

It's just flowing and it's moving.

Rob:

What we do is we try and capture a bit of it and put it in a box and

Rob:

siphon it off and say, this is sacred.

Rob:

And we take all the life out of it.

Rob:

We stifle the life out of it.

Rob:

It then becomes stagnant and it loses the vitality and the beauty that it had.

Rob:

And I think that's what we do with truth.

Rob:

Truth is inconvenient, but if we're not building on truth, then

Rob:

we're building on a house of cards.

Rob:

At any moment, the truth is going to reveal itself and the whole thing

Rob:

is going to come tumbling down.

Rob:

People don't seem to understand that if you're not really building on something

Rob:

that's solid, then nothing else can last.

Rob:

It's only a matter of time before everything can crumble.

Rob:

To your point about everyone, I can't remember exactly what he said, but

Rob:

it came to mind that sociologists, early sociologists thought that the

Rob:

world should be run by sociologists.

Rob:

Whichever viewpoint you have, everyone thinks everyone should think that.

Rob:

But all of us have different values for a reason, and we all

Rob:

have different perspectives, but we're all part of the jigsaw.

Rob:

It's only by working together that we can get the bigger picture.

Clark:

But Rob, here's the thing, right?

Clark:

This is a conversation I have fairly regularly.

Clark:

Obviously since when I had the motorbike accident, I had to transition across

Clark:

to quite a bit more one on one work.

Clark:

And that was interesting for me because having worked in

Clark:

organizations for such a long time to understand how groups of people and

Clark:

organizations are just a macrocosm of what's going on within people.

Clark:

I always want to know this when I talk to somebody, even just casually,

Clark:

if I'm just having a coffee and talk to somebody, my first thing

Clark:

is, what do these people believe?

Clark:

I want to know what they believe, because believing something is

Clark:

not the same as knowing something.

Clark:

If I believe in God yeah, okay.

Clark:

You don't know he exists, though, do you?

Clark:

I believe that if the communists took over the world, we'd all be better,

Clark:

yeah, but you don't know that, because it's never actually worked, has it?

Clark:

All of these things you believe, it almost seems to be like a self persuasion.

Clark:

I really want this to be true.

Clark:

It's like a, it's like a really deep help wish.

Clark:

And, if you can say to a group of people, to an organization, when they

Clark:

talk about their values, for instance, as an organization, the organization is

Clark:

basically saying, this is what we believe.

Clark:

And you start to interrogate that assumption and I do this, very often

Clark:

with bosses when you say things like why don't you devolve more authority

Clark:

and initiative down to the shop floor?

Clark:

Oh they couldn't handle it.

Clark:

Why couldn't they handle it?

Clark:

What do you believe about these people that make you think they can't handle it?

Clark:

Are they idiots?

Clark:

Why did you hire them then?

Clark:

All these people that you're paying good money to, to run your company,

Clark:

why are you not giving them a little bit more initiative and authority?

Clark:

Are you better than them?

Clark:

There's a belief, that people very often are not prepared to face up to.

Clark:

And when you talk to people and they say, oh, this group of people are bad.

Clark:

What is it about those people that you believe that makes them so bad?

Clark:

Because I think what we're talking about is not so much them, but you.

Clark:

Because the fact that you believe that thing is probably the problem, not them.

Clark:

That to me is the most interesting thing about change.

Clark:

You speak to somebody and they say, we need to change this.

Clark:

It's terrible.

Clark:

There are too many immigrants in the country.

Clark:

Okay what do we believe is bad about immigrants then?

Clark:

Let's have a look at that conversation first before we decide that this

Clark:

actually is a problem that needs solving.

Clark:

And that's the thing, isn't it?

Clark:

When people talk about change, they're basically saying we have a

Clark:

problem that needs to be resolved.

Clark:

And that problem is based on the belief that we have that this other thing is

Clark:

no good, that you're rubbish at doing this thing and we would do it better.

Clark:

Hold on a minute.

Clark:

I think that really says a lot more about you.

Tony:

It starts with that, doesn't it?

Tony:

It's that self reflection piece, which is, okay, I've

Tony:

identified that there's a problem.

Tony:

I'm going to have some agency and take some responsibility for fixing it.

Tony:

So I need to actually understand what part am I playing in the problem

Tony:

that we're living in at the moment.

Tony:

It has to start there.

Tony:

Otherwise it becomes an outward looking problem.

Tony:

It's everybody else's problem.

Tony:

I've just got a great idea of how to fix it, but actually I'm in the middle of it.

Tony:

And the more people can actually take responsibility for even the things

Tony:

that out of their direct control.

Tony:

I must have done something somewhere that's had some sort

Tony:

of impact on this thing over here that I don't like at the moment.

Tony:

What was my role in that?

Tony:

Can I find something that I can at least Give me something to go and

Tony:

take responsibility for there's so much growth in that so much

Tony:

pain that goes with that as well.

Tony:

Actually, instead of it being an externalized set of problems that

Tony:

other people are bringing to the table.

Tony:

Now, I'm going to take that responsibility.

Tony:

And if you do Clark, and if you do, Rob together, we will really take ownership

Tony:

of what the next step looks like.

Tony:

What that vision looks like.

Tony:

Once we've agreed on the vision we can start to map the journey towards it.

Tony:

And that's when all of the positive chemicals start kicking in.

Tony:

That dopamine kicks in when you're in pursuit of something exciting.

Tony:

You don't get the hit When you win, you get the hit when you're playing, you

Tony:

get the hit when you move in towards it.

Tony:

And then you set, Oh, we didn't make it.

Tony:

Let's go again.

Tony:

When you get another, Oh, come on, we can do this.

Tony:

We're together.

Tony:

All of that sort of stuff starts, all those chemicals that are relevant to how

Tony:

we connect, how we pursue what we want.

Tony:

All start to manifest in a positive way once we're clear about the

Tony:

vision and we're together on it.

Tony:

We become that unstoppable force that everybody wants to change project to be.

Tony:

But very rarely get there because it's your fault.

Tony:

Anyway, it was not nothing to do with me.

Tony:

I think, we could be better.

Tony:

We could be better.

Tony:

But you guys, honestly.

Tony:

this is what we should be doing.

Tony:

This is what we should be doing.

Tony:

I'm absolutely adamant of what good looks like through my own eyes, through

Tony:

my own crazy optimistic eyes that people go, yeah, but all the real clinical

Tony:

rational Thinkers will go, yeah, but Tony, don't you know if we did that

Tony:

would happen to these people over here?

Tony:

Like I need to balance myself out with the collective wisdom in order to get to the

Tony:

place where it might never be utopia but the place we all believe is worth going

Tony:

through the hardship to get there for.

Tony:

Otherwise, we'll just keep it.

Tony:

We've got the shortcuts.

Tony:

We're at the moment serving my needs to stay as we are.

Tony:

Emotionally, I'm fine.

Tony:

I've got security.

Tony:

I got my wage.

Tony:

My relationships are good.

Tony:

I go for a beer on a Friday with the lads, whatever it might be.

Tony:

This is just perfect.

Tony:

What might be around the corner, the uncertainty of that this change

Tony:

project that people are talking about really scares me, but I'm not

Tony:

going to tell anyone about that.

Tony:

I'm too cool for that.

Tony:

So this is what we should be doing.

Tony:

Something that serves me even better than it, than I am.

Tony:

And I'm okay right now.

Tony:

There's a lot of that stuff going on, I think.

Rob:

The problem is trust, isn't it?

Rob:

Is because communication comes from the root word of making common.

Rob:

And that's really what we need to do.

Rob:

Put everything on the table.

Rob:

So everyone knows what everything is.

Rob:

But it's the trust we talked about vulnerability.

Rob:

So the more social media comes across, the more judgment there is,

Rob:

the more social anxiety there is.

Rob:

And so the more fake people become because they don't feel able to open up.

Rob:

Especially if you're in an environment where where it's very

Rob:

competitive and dog eat dog then it's very hard to show any weakness.

Rob:

Because again, there's all these ingrained beliefs that not being able to do my job,

Rob:

everyone else is doing better than me.

Rob:

I'm just not doing well enough.

Rob:

I'm not up to it.

Rob:

They'll find me out.

Rob:

There's so many doubts that people.

Rob:

It does go back to that emperor's new clothes thing where people want to go

Rob:

along because they don't want to be seen.

Rob:

And that's so strong.

Rob:

We saw it in the Nazis and there was a whole lot of research.

Rob:

I don't know if you've ever seen the Asch study where people

Rob:

clearly know something is wrong.

Rob:

And you can see the anxiety that they go through and they're watching

Rob:

it and watching everyone say what they can clearly see is wrong.

Rob:

And almost all of them just go.

Rob:

Yeah, it's that.

Rob:

And no one stands up and says, no, it's not.

Rob:

And the same thing happens in in obedience what's the famous study

Rob:

where they electrocute people?

Rob:

I can't remember the study, but.

Rob:

Milgram, that's it.

Rob:

Yeah.

Rob:

Yeah.

Rob:

Yeah.

Rob:

And basically people will go to the point of killing people and they're not doing

Rob:

it lightly that you can see their stress.

Rob:

But because there's certain archetypes like authority, like someone in a

Rob:

white coat telling you it must be done.

Rob:

And there's something in that I think often people like.

Rob:

The comfort of knowing someone else is in charge and I'm just doing what I said.

Rob:

But it's so strong in human groups.

Clark:

I hate to keep bringing up the 10th man, Rob, but it's,

Clark:

this whole idea of groupthink.

Clark:

We are herd animals to a certain degree.

Clark:

And I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson that, that actually wrote

Clark:

about the concept of nonconformity.

Clark:

Because when you refuse to conform until you know you're doing the right

Clark:

thing then you're in a safe situation because if the herd's charging headlong

Clark:

over a cliff, and you're going because everybody else is going you're going

Clark:

to suffer the same fate as everybody.

Clark:

One of the things when I have to make change very quickly.

Clark:

Or when I'm dealing with a group of people and the problems are quite profound

Clark:

and causing all sorts of problems.

Clark:

One of the things I do is introduce something that I learned years ago, and

Clark:

it's a sales technique, funnily enough.

Clark:

There was a book, I think the guy's name was Neil Rackham, who

Clark:

wrote a book called Spin Selling.

Clark:

When I read that, and we were talking a good 20 years ago, it was radical in its

Clark:

approach to how you deal with a problem.

Clark:

I've used it ever since.

Clark:

And the idea behind spin selling, because a salesperson, one assumes,

Clark:

is trying to solve a problem.

Clark:

There's a need, they sell the thing that fixes that problem.

Clark:

So it's about problem solving.

Clark:

And spin selling, basically, it's an acronym, S P I N.

Clark:

And it asks four questions.

Clark:

What's the situation?

Clark:

So this goes to what Tony was saying, what are we talking about here?

Clark:

What's actually going on and when you ask somebody first of all, so

Clark:

just tell me what's going on like a doctor tell me what's the problem

Clark:

that gives you an idea of what their belief system is What is their belief

Clark:

about this particular situation?

Clark:

And once you've asked them that, the next thing you say, that P is,

Clark:

so what's the problem with that?

Clark:

And the, it's a brilliant thing because it's such an easy thing to teach people.

Clark:

S P I N.

Clark:

What's the situation?

Clark:

What's the problem?

Clark:

And the minute somebody says, oh yeah, but it's because it, P smells.

Clark:

Okay why is that a problem?

Clark:

How is that affecting you?

Clark:

How is that affecting production?

Clark:

How is that affecting efficiency?

Clark:

Tell me why you think that's a problem.

Clark:

You straight away get into the root of the situation and then

Clark:

the next one, I, is what are the implications then of that problem?

Clark:

What does this mean?

Clark:

Not what you think it means, not what your religion tells you it

Clark:

means, what does it actually mean?

Clark:

And then the end is what's okay, so what do we need to do?

Clark:

What's the need?

Clark:

You can teach it to a group of people in five minutes.

Clark:

And the minute people start saying to themselves, why are

Clark:

we all running for the door?

Clark:

What's the situation here that everybody's running for the door.

Clark:

I don't see any fire.

Clark:

I don't see any crazed ax man.

Clark:

I think I'm just going to stand here a minute.

Clark:

Cause there's a problem with this situation.

Clark:

And that is.

Clark:

that they're all going to get crushed in the doorway or whatever.

Clark:

The minute you can help people to start asking themselves, the critical

Clark:

questions that relate to the situation they find and conformity really

Clark:

basically just comes down to handing over your authority, your autonomy,

Clark:

your agency to a group of people.

Clark:

You're basically saying I don't know what's going on.

Clark:

They're all running in that direction.

Clark:

Clearly they know what's going on.

Clark:

I'm going to follow them.

Clark:

They usually don't.

Tony:

Yeah.

Tony:

Good old spin.

Tony:

Spin was a good model.

Tony:

Yeah.

Tony:

I did Miller Hyman.

Tony:

Did you do Miller Hyman as well?

Tony:

Have you seen those?

Tony:

With the blue sheets and green sheets.

Tony:

Like spin, for the interface of selling, whereas Miller Hyman

Tony:

was for strategic selling.

Tony:

It's like stakeholder mapping really.

Tony:

You're trying to work out what their needs are at each level.

Tony:

How you meet those needs and all of those kinds of stuff, but both together

Tony:

really strong set of sales tools.

Clark:

Sometimes it's really useful to keep things simple, I never disagree

Clark:

with you Rob, but I will take issue with that point that you made about

Clark:

all the wars being caused by religion.

Clark:

It's an assumption that we make, but actually most wars are territorial.

Clark:

The Nazis had no interest in religion.

Clark:

Stalin had no interest in religion.

Clark:

Pol Pot had no interest in religion.

Clark:

It's basically power.

Clark:

And the interesting thing about these assumptions is that we buy into them and

Clark:

people say, oh yeah, it's because of this.

Clark:

No it's not.

Clark:

We all think that it is, and we all agree that's a paradigm, and it's true.

Clark:

Things like the Inquisition and the Crusades, which were based on

Clark:

religion were catastrophic for people.

Clark:

But it's only part of the picture and very often, somebody, and, I get this

Clark:

a lot, for instance in, In meetings where HR nearly always says we need

Clark:

to empower people to do this thing.

Clark:

And we all go, yeah, of course we do.

Clark:

We've got to empower people.

Clark:

And, when somebody turns around and says, oh, hold on a minute.

Clark:

What does that mean?

Clark:

What are you going to do?

Clark:

Do they actually get a say in how things are run?

Clark:

No, I don't think so.

Clark:

The problem with empowerment and one of the things I take issue with.

Clark:

is that it assumes that you have the power and you're giving them a little bit.

Clark:

There's already a problem there, as far as I can tell.

Clark:

So why have you got all the power?

Clark:

Oh I get paid more.

Clark:

I'm the cleverest.

Clark:

I'm the boss.

Clark:

I think that's what we really need to talk about.

Clark:

Not that they need empowerment.

Clark:

It's the whole thinking behind that is an issue.

Clark:

And, they're simple things.

Clark:

When somebody can start to look critically at the assumptions

Clark:

that we made, this whole idea of beliefs, the map isn't the territory.

Clark:

I think that's when we can really start to, and we all do it.

Clark:

I constantly do.

Clark:

I assume that anybody that supports Birmingham City is an absolute idiot.

Clark:

What's wrong with them?

Clark:

But, there must be at least one or two decent ones amongst them.

Clark:

Okay.

Tony:

There's a a great analogy there.

Tony:

I think if you think about the term, oh, he's lost the dressing room.

Tony:

So when a manager's lost the dressing room, there's a person who's been

Tony:

given a key to the kingdom in terms of authority is in the position of

Tony:

power as designated by the board.

Tony:

But it's the players decide whether you've got authority over them or not.

Tony:

It's the same in business authority is given by those people.

Tony:

Who are by decree subservient to you, so you might have the title, but

Tony:

your authority comes from the people that you are leading effectively.

Tony:

They'll let you know if you have authority over them.

Tony:

They'll give you the confidence to lead them.

Tony:

They'll let you know that it's okay.

Tony:

You can lead me into this situation.

Tony:

I'm with you.

Tony:

Or they won't.

Clark:

Yeah, there's no traction, right?

Clark:

I find that interesting because I wrote a post a long time ago based

Clark:

on that old Pirelli tire advert that said that power without control

Clark:

is useless or something like that.

Clark:

And the point of it was that their tire is the thing that transfers the

Clark:

power from your car onto the road.

Clark:

The 600 horsepower engine in the world is no good if your tires are spinning.

Clark:

And I actually made the point in the post that, there are some And I see

Clark:

you two as this, I think I said this last week, that you guys are I start

Clark:

the fires, I poke things with a stick.

Clark:

Which is no good, if you're basically just poking a beehive and all the bees come.

Clark:

Somebody then needs to do something about that and that's the point of this whole

Clark:

this idea of an arbiter or a mediator.

Clark:

He's the person that is the interface between the power in the organization

Clark:

and the road the organization, the people that, that it's serving,

Clark:

there has to be some traction.

Clark:

As you said, if when you lose the changing room or you lose

Clark:

the support of the employees.

Clark:

That's when your tires are spinning.

Clark:

You're applying all this power, nothing's happening.

Clark:

And one of the most important things to do is to engage the one with the other.

Clark:

You need to be able to find a way of gaining some common ground where the

Clark:

belief systems of both people are aligned.

Clark:

They may not agree with each other, but they're both going to the same place.

Clark:

And that's the point, isn't it?

Clark:

That somebody needs to be that interface.

Clark:

I find you guys are the people that, you're like the steering wheel,

Clark:

you're the driver, you're the people that, that car's taking off down

Clark:

the road, but where's it going?

Clark:

It's people with the experience and knowledge that you guys have got that

Clark:

actually make sure it doesn't end up crashing into a lamppost, that it

Clark:

actually goes somewhere productive.

Clark:

People like me just get the traction and you could go spinning off

Clark:

and fly into a wall, but you need people that have got that ability

Clark:

to steer it in the right direction.

Clark:

For me, that really is the key skill.

Clark:

The fact that you guys and people like yourselves who are strategically

Clark:

minded and are able to guide the situation somewhere positive and useful.

Clark:

I'm useless in a situation like that.

Clark:

I can point things out, but then it's up to the organization

Clark:

itself to do something with that.

Clark:

And if a boss or a manager of a football team loses, the the change room.

Clark:

You might as well just leave since it's happening from that point.

Clark:

And it's a

Tony:

classic, and that's a classic scenario where you only need to

Tony:

hear the rhetoric of the pundits about their own past experiences to

Tony:

understand where that issue lies.

Tony:

If in those scenarios the manager's always blaming the players or the

Tony:

board or the fans or whatever it is, all of the above missing the point.

Tony:

What is it that I'm doing that's not working?

Tony:

And they're difficult conversations to have with yourself, no doubt about that.

Tony:

But having somebody To ask the right questions is a massive help.

Tony:

I don't think anybody should be without it.

Tony:

So the 10th man and all of that type thing because it's not something

Tony:

that, because the in internal people have all got vested interest.

Tony:

They've all got a stake in the game.

Tony:

They've all got something to lose if it goes wrong, whereas the

Tony:

independent person that sits alongside you with the same shared vision

Tony:

of what good looks like, but has.

Tony:

It doesn't matter if you can't fire me I'm not looking for a promotion.

Clark:

Yes.

Tony:

My aim is to co create this, go on an adventure with you.

Tony:

Let's create together what this looks like.

Tony:

It becomes an absolutely critical piece.

Rob:

Yeah.

Rob:

It's so important.

Rob:

I read some research that the biggest problems CEOs face.

Rob:

Is feeling they're not getting the right information, feeling

Rob:

that they, there's too many yes people, there's too many people

Rob:

telling them what they want to hear.

Rob:

But I just want to go back a minute to what you pointed out about religion.

Rob:

I knew this was going to come back to me.

Rob:

No.

Rob:

Not to contradict, but I think it's a great point.

Rob:

I will not have it.

Rob:

I will not have it.

Rob:

I'm used to this.

Rob:

Anyway, I've got to go.

Rob:

In the Bible.

Rob:

No I think you're absolutely right.

Rob:

I think the point is religion has never really been about religion.

Rob:

It's been about social control.

Rob:

So the way it relates is that organizations, I think CEOs aren't

Rob:

getting the full picture because there are so many structures, even if

Rob:

they're open to it, there's so many structures that have been typically used.

Rob:

And because we haven't challenged their assumption, because we haven't

Rob:

looked into them, we accept them as, okay, that's just the way it is.

Rob:

There's a fascinating Psychiatrist called Thomas Sasz, and I think he's dead now.

Rob:

Oh, yes.

Rob:

And basically, he said that there've always been people that don't fit in.

Rob:

He said, there isn't mental illness, there's just people

Rob:

that just are how they are.

Rob:

They are a threat to society.

Rob:

And because they're a threat to society, we've medicalised it

Rob:

and made it a mental illness.

Rob:

We shut them away.

Rob:

I think it was, I think it was Richard Bandler talked about, from

Rob:

NLP, talked about the way you make something unquestioned as you make

Rob:

it sacred, you make it important that you make it something else.

Rob:

There's three things.

Rob:

And basically when you look at like the Royals, the pageantry that we have of

Rob:

the Royals or when a president visits or something like that, all of that is so

Rob:

that no one will stand up and oppose them.

Rob:

No one will be that little boy in the Emperor's New Clothes.

Rob:

We create all of these structures that make it deliberately difficult

Rob:

for someone to challenge us.

Rob:

So over thousands of years, we've created this conformity and I

Rob:

suppose conformities, I think some of it is probably genetic.

Rob:

We're now fighting that tide.

Rob:

When you're talking, my work is the furthest from working in a factory.

Rob:

I know teams from individuals because I know what works in

Rob:

individuals and beyond a small team.

Rob:

Like where it's not about relationships and it's about processes and things like

Rob:

that, like I don't have expertise to talk, but I understand what works individually.

Rob:

Organizations don't work to the individual.

Rob:

What we need is more from the individual now.

Rob:

Whereas factories, I think you can get away with bad relationships

Rob:

as long as the factory line works.

Rob:

On the front line, you don't need people to necessarily to be brought in as long

Rob:

as they're keeping the factory line going.

Rob:

I may be wrong, but that's my assumption.

Rob:

But where it's really key is where it's creativity, where it's insight, where

Rob:

it's analysis and where we need real human insight, that's where we need people

Rob:

performing more and that is where the organizations that we've had don't work.

Rob:

I think we have to challenge all of the structure of our organizations

Rob:

because a lot of them are designed to stop people from challenging.

Clark:

I think one of the things that happens in most organizations now,

Clark:

whether it's a factory or, because I've worked in call centers and places

Clark:

like that, and what I've found is that most all of the roles within an

Clark:

organization are about what they do what's your job, so I manage the money

Clark:

I'm in charge of HR, so I'm supposed to make sure that everybody's happy, but

Clark:

actually where I am is the policeman for the organization, I'm the ops guy.

Clark:

I make sure that the stuff comes in and goes out on time.

Clark:

It's all about what they do, not about what they are.

Clark:

And the interesting thing, and I may not be right with this, because

Clark:

I'm really just in the process of thinking how this might work.

Clark:

But since I started really investigating this book about the 10th man, it

Clark:

made me realize, because that person has an important, although limited

Clark:

role within any organization.

Clark:

If things are going well, you don't need you just need him to be looking.

Clark:

But I then started to realize that actually, that's an archetype.

Clark:

It's interesting that throughout human history, these

Clark:

archetypes keep cropping up.

Clark:

In mythology and in stories and fairytales and all that sort of thing,

Clark:

and we talk about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey and that

Clark:

sort of archetypes keep cropping up.

Clark:

What I realized was, here's me been banging this drum for years about the

Clark:

10th man is just one archetype within a large group, and I've actually

Clark:

written down now, I've got nine.

Clark:

I was hoping to get 10 because it really fits neatly with my 10th man

Clark:

thing but I can only think of nine.

Clark:

But these nine archetypes are what I've thought of.

Clark:

There are people within an organization who are necessary, not because of

Clark:

what they do, managing the money or getting product out the door,

Clark:

but because of what they are.

Clark:

The 10th man is somebody who is authorized to dissent, to disagree.

Clark:

to ask what the alternatives are.

Clark:

That's what they are as a person.

Clark:

There are people like that within every organization and you want

Clark:

them to be able to speak up.

Clark:

But then there are other people.

Clark:

One of the archetypes that I thought of and then looked into it and started

Clark:

realizing these people crop up everywhere is the sacred fool who is an archetype

Clark:

who basically is the one that when you want change, when you want ideas,

Clark:

when you want innovation, they're the people that come up with the mad ideas

Clark:

that actually turn out to be brilliant.

Clark:

This person that's super creative within an organization, you need a

Clark:

pragmatist, who are the sort of the real engineers, they get stuff done.

Clark:

There are the alchemists that are all about change, how we change things,

Clark:

how we make things work differently, the way such as Gareth Southgate did,

Clark:

for instance, with the England team.

Clark:

But all of these archetypes, I think, I may be wrong, seem to crop up in

Clark:

organizations constantly, regardless of the type of organization.

Clark:

Business that they're involved in.

Clark:

I think I've only just really scratched the surface because you

Clark:

were just talking about Tom Szasz there Rob, and I love that guy.

Clark:

I find him fascinating.

Clark:

One of the things I like particularly about him is the way he attacks

Clark:

psychiatry and psychology, because, that's just another belief system.

Clark:

My mom was a psychoanalyst.

Clark:

She had a particular viewpoint.

Clark:

She was very much of the Freudian school and so were most of her colleagues, but

Clark:

she could have easily been Adlerian or Gestalt or Jung or whatever, and they

Clark:

would have had their own belief systems.

Clark:

But he attacked them and basically said that, all of these therapies

Clark:

and the psychoanalysis, they're just talking interventions.

Clark:

Which is a role that used to be fulfilled by priests and pastors.

Clark:

They perform a ministry to people.

Clark:

They're just perform a talking role and that is necessary within humanity.

Clark:

We need somebody that is the person that will listen to us and maintain

Clark:

our confidentiality when they're dealing with that problem and so on.

Clark:

All of these archetypes keep cropping up and I'm starting to think that we need to

Clark:

change the way we look at organizations and how they function, certainly

Clark:

within, politics, because all these politicians say we're going to do this.

Clark:

Yeah, all right.

Clark:

But what are you?

Clark:

Who are you?

Clark:

What do you stand for?

Clark:

What are the values that you ascribe to?

Clark:

Because they're really the most important thing.

Clark:

And I think I'm starting to formulate An idea myself that

Clark:

maybe we need to start looking at things a little bit differently.

Tony:

For sure.

Tony:

Interesting stuff.

Tony:

Can't wait for the book.

Clark:

Nor can I.

Clark:

You're driving me mad.

Clark:

When you start to write anything, and I know you're doing that yourself,

Clark:

Tony, and you've already done it, Rob.

Clark:

You have to start to examine quite deeply what you really think about a thing,

Clark:

is this going to stand up to scrutiny and, a lot of what I say doesn't.

Clark:

Certainly I will make comments about things based on certain assumptions.

Clark:

When you examine them you suddenly realize, hold on, I have no way of

Clark:

knowing whether this is true or not.

Clark:

And so you have to make that clear or you at least have to dig into it

Clark:

and make it a little bit more robust.

Clark:

So it's fascinating because for all the research I've done on the 10th

Clark:

man, there's not a lot out there.

Clark:

Obviously the Israeli intelligence used it as a as a device within

Clark:

their intelligence organization, but there's not much else about it.

Clark:

I'm very fortunate.

Clark:

I've been in contact with some people in the Israeli intelligence

Clark:

community that have helped me.

Clark:

with this, but I'm learning more myself in writing it than

Clark:

anybody that ever reads it will.

Tony:

Yeah, it's great.

Tony:

I'm in the same place it's not the same type of book, but because

Tony:

I've been researching for the last probably four years now all of

Tony:

the different psychometric tools and whether they're good or bad or

Tony:

indifferent, they're very popular.

Tony:

So I've been building my own tool.

Tony:

I'm now finally, maybe six weeks ago, maybe a bit more, I landed on

Tony:

the thing that unlocked everything.

Tony:

I've been torn for years on, had ideas and kept researching and

Tony:

had ideas and kept researching.

Tony:

I was looking at where these things I layered them all over

Tony:

each other because they're all trying to do the same thing, right?

Tony:

They're all trying to put you in a room and say this is what you like.

Tony:

And this is how you can get on better.

Tony:

And this is how businesses can benefit.

Tony:

But they all claim to be measuring different things

Tony:

and doing different things.

Tony:

And we know it's incredibly, it it's impossible to really

Tony:

measure psychology in that way.

Tony:

It's lots of neuroscience now that helps and stuff like that.

Tony:

So I've been researching this to the hill anyway.

Tony:

I'm in a purple patch.

Tony:

It's just come flooding out now.

Tony:

I've landed on this model and I, I absolutely love it.

Tony:

It's all validated.

Tony:

It's great.

Tony:

I can't wait to share it with you.

Tony:

I shared with Thomas a little bit of it yesterday in terms of

Tony:

how my own profile stacks up.

Tony:

And he was like blown away.

Tony:

Thomas comes from that industry.

Tony:

Thomas was in learning and development.

Tony:

He was with insights.

Tony:

There's so much more granularity The typing systems and the matrix matrices

Tony:

and the putting people in boxes and the labels and all of that sort of stuff.

Tony:

So it's very exciting in terms of that.

Tony:

But anyway, the reason I started talking about that is because we're talking about

Tony:

books, but I had a conversation with Thomas yesterday touching on archetypes,

Tony:

because out of this stuff that I sent him, prompted one of the conversations

Tony:

that Thomas and I have, and it was from an organizational structural point of view.

Tony:

If you get the alchemists, you identify who the alchemists

Tony:

are within the organization.

Tony:

And it's not all of the time that they're going to be creating the right

Tony:

answers and the right solutions, but the time of the structured time when

Tony:

you put the alchemist together in a room, lock them down to create gold.

Tony:

It's not the fact that they may or may not come up with a brilliant solution on that

Tony:

day or during that time, but the amount of empowerment, the amount of energy that

Tony:

you because they're in their sweet spot.

Tony:

You're harnessing their individual expression, you're

Tony:

maximizing their potential.

Tony:

So giving them the room to be who they are in order to do what

Tony:

they do for me is foundational.

Tony:

And this is what my book and my tool is all based on.

Tony:

It's about giving people the optimal amount of, Opportunity to fulfill a

Tony:

potential if we want to harness individual expression in the pursuit of a team

Tony:

objective, which is what you want Trent Alexander Arnold to be optimal best.

Tony:

How do we do that?

Tony:

It's about that.

Tony:

How do we harness what he's got in the context of the team structure?

Tony:

For example, he's just an example.

Tony:

So we use that idea that creatives are sometimes going to be stifled in

Tony:

the day to day running of a business.

Tony:

Because it's not asked for, it's not sought after, it's not recognized that

Tony:

right now we need it, right now we need to get our hands dirty and fix all

Tony:

this stuff that's in front of us and get these boxes out by five o'clock.

Tony:

However, at the time when we give them their space to be who they are.

Tony:

To do their thing.

Tony:

Boom.

Clark:

Can I just ask Tony does the model that you've formulated,

Clark:

does that produce, Outcomes that align with certain archetypes.

Clark:

You just mentioned the creatives.

Clark:

For instance, just as an example, one of the things, one of the models that I like

Clark:

is MBTI simply because it's a rough and ready, I like things that work quickly and

Clark:

give me a rough idea of where I'm going, but it doesn't apply in all situations.

Clark:

And you do have to get much more nuanced if you want Yeah, but

Clark:

is it something similar to that?

Clark:

That's what

Tony:

my stuff's doing.

Tony:

So it's taking that type of approach.

Tony:

So what happens?

Tony:

So with the big five, which is a very academic research for years model,

Tony:

because it's so academic, it's very hard to make it applicable to the layman.

Tony:

So if I try to roll the big five out as a tool onto a football

Tony:

team, it's talking cackle, right?

Tony:

Forget it.

Tony:

But when you change the linguistics of it, but you retain the integrity of the model.

Tony:

You change the language that's used, It's totally different.

Tony:

So it's also because each of these things, so if you think of MBTI and

Tony:

your extroversion, introversion as a dichotomy, I'm either introverted or

Tony:

extroverted, extroversion is a continuum.

Tony:

It's a measure of positive emotion.

Tony:

On the one hand, how assertive am I, how adept at leadership might I be?

Tony:

On the other hand, is how sociable am I?

Tony:

Do I get energized by being in groups?

Tony:

All of that sort of stuff.

Tony:

It's a scale and it's very deterministic in terms of predicting job performance

Tony:

in much more of a profound way than MBTI or DISC or any of those sort of what I

Tony:

would call lower resolution things because you're asking questions that choose

Tony:

between this and that, choose between this and that, choose between this and that.

Tony:

So you try and take the social desirability bias out of your assessment

Tony:

in the first place to minimize as much as possible and You get this rich output that

Tony:

then the work that I'm doing is okay, so here's the output and all the granularity

Tony:

that goes with it, how do I package that up to make it as accessible and have

Tony:

as much utility as an MBTI or a DISC?

Tony:

How can we make it simple to use, but much more valuable to the leader, to the team,

Tony:

to the individual, to the relationship.

Tony:

And it's honestly, since one of the elements of the programs that I've

Tony:

been looking at for four years now.

Tony:

About six weeks ago it landed and I'm producing a lot of

Tony:

material that's really exciting.

Tony:

And when I laid it over my own profile, I sent it to Thomas, he was

Tony:

like, wow, that is something else.

Tony:

That's interesting.

Tony:

Are we going to get to see it?

Tony:

I'll send you, I'll send you it's only a short thing.

Tony:

I'll send it to you both on LinkedIn.

Clark:

Yeah, please.

Clark:

Because you just mentioned that I had nothing like that in mind when I

Clark:

was thinking about these archetypes myself, just because rather than.

Clark:

Taking a rationalist view, i.

Clark:

e., if I do this and this should happen.

Clark:

My thinking is always what's actually happening?

Clark:

What's going on out there?

Clark:

And when I look at organizations based on having to write this book about the

Clark:

10th man, I started to realize that there are people, friends I have one

Clark:

archetype that I was looking at I call Pathfinder, who is brilliant at gaining

Clark:

clarity in a situation, answering that question that we said earlier

Clark:

what's really going on and finding out what's going on and being fearless,

Clark:

in gaining clarity in a situation.

Clark:

Then I started to look around to see if this is an actual thing.

Clark:

I have no way of measuring this in an organization.

Clark:

I don't have the tools that you've just mentioned, but you see them

Clark:

and you see these people and you think actually these people are

Clark:

necessary within an organization.

Clark:

There are people who are important for there's another one that

Clark:

I call the sentinel, who is a guardian of the belief system.

Clark:

What do we stand for?

Clark:

What are our values?

Clark:

What do we believe as a group of people?

Clark:

And that's the person that has to stand there and say, hold on a minute, that goes

Clark:

against everything that we believe in.

Clark:

These people exist and they're not just part of organizations,

Clark:

they're part of communities, tribes.

Tony:

I'll tell you what my, I'll tell you what my tool can do.

Tony:

I think I'll put a peg in the ground.

Tony:

If you can just give me the broad characteristics of those nine types, I

Tony:

will, I think I can source a 10th type.

Tony:

Oh, brilliant.

Tony:

That would make it so much, that would satisfy my OCD massively.

Tony:

And that would be totally new.

Tony:

That would be like Maybe not even, it might exist somewhere else but

Tony:

that's definitely, because I've looked, I've modelled so as part

Tony:

of the research, I looked at the Enneagram, it's got nine types.

Tony:

I looked at the Belbin team role, it's got nine types.

Tony:

And I can map my system against, so the beauty of my system, by the

Tony:

way, is you don't need this, you don't need MBTI, you don't need

Tony:

CliftonStrengths, you don't need Belbin.

Tony:

It maps to all of those programs.

Tony:

So this is why I'm excited.

Tony:

It's got a real cut through in terms of cost effectiveness and utility.

Tony:

So it's.

Clark:

I think you've got a really good point there, because I remember

Clark:

somebody mentioned to me, I just had my accident and I was sitting there

Clark:

moping around, feeling sorry for myself.

Clark:

And all these people have been saying to me, these things happen for a reason,

Clark:

which I found profoundly irritating because the reason was somebody cut

Clark:

across in front of me and ran me over.

Clark:

But somebody pointed me in the direction of, and I'm not a woo person, but

Clark:

somebody pointed me in the direction of this thing called the human design.

Clark:

And I said what is this?

Clark:

And they said, it talks a lot about how you, your characteristics are

Clark:

imprinted before you're even born.

Clark:

I said that's nonsense.

Clark:

I'm not even going to look at that, which, and I had to challenge my own belief

Clark:

system because they said, just look at it.

Clark:

And I put the information in that it required of me, and I was shocked

Clark:

at the things that it said about me because I thought, my goodness, and

Clark:

what I realized is that the person that came up with this in the seventies had

Clark:

overlaid, as you've just said, things Te Ching, astrology, some other things,

Clark:

and that they're all ancient ways of trying to understand who we are.

Clark:

I thought what they've done is they've synthesized because they're

Clark:

all basically doing the same job, so they must be all operating according

Clark:

to the same principles, but just according to different templates.

Clark:

And that's exactly what you're doing.

Clark:

I think, yeah that's

Tony:

what my research did.

Tony:

My research was how do I create a hybrid of all these things that's got value.

Tony:

It's incredibly complex and a hell of a lot of research.

Clark:

But that needs to happen, Tony.

Clark:

I remember years ago, being in the military, obviously

Clark:

it's a martial environment.

Clark:

It's all about, fighting and combat and that sort of thing.

Clark:

And back in the day, people used to say, which is the best martial art?

Clark:

Is it boxing?

Clark:

Is it kung fu?

Clark:

And then MMA happened which was a synthesis of all of these things, and

Clark:

it's better than all of them, and you realize that as time goes on, and what

Clark:

will happen, of course, something else will come along to take over, because

Clark:

we're constantly optimizing where we're at, but somebody does need to

Clark:

come along from time to time and say, look, all of these dogmatic beliefs and

Clark:

ideas that we have need to be Mushed together so that we can converse in you,

Clark:

which is exactly what you were doing.

Clark:

I will be fascinated to see how that actually functions in real life.

Tony:

Yeah, it's exciting.

Tony:

Definitely.

Tony:

And I've written say written a book.

Tony:

I've got all the material that I've got.

Tony:

160, 000 words for the book, which I now need to, I need to

Tony:

pull it into as probably 60, 000 word book is the main book.

Tony:

Yeah.

Tony:

I've done a sports version of it so it's just flowing now I've got it's got so

Tony:

much applicability so yeah I'm excited I'll share that with you for sure but

Tony:

if you want to share those nine things I'm sure we can find a tenth Archetype

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About the Podcast

The Unified Team
One team. One Goal. How do we more successfully join with others to achieve more?
How do we join with others to achieve, belong and connect more with less friction?

Humans aren't the strongest or the fastest. Our superpower is working together. We are a social creature.

We need to belong and be valued within our tribe.

But we hit 3 main friction points in teams:

1. We lack trust because of a lack of integrity, suspicion and past resentments.
2. We don't communicate well because of fear, insecurity and feeling unsafe.
3. We have divided goals because of politics, power struggles and personality conflicts.

A team is two or more people joined to achieve the same goal. It can be a marriage. Or a multinational organisation.

The principles still apply

Every team needs communication, resources and energy to flow to where we need it when we need it.

The barrier is friction.

How do we reduce friction and get teams to flow?

That is the question we address in The Unified Team Podcast.