How to Have Better Fights in Self-Organized Environments

00:00:07: Johannes Schartau: Welcome to episode 19 of Transform Together, the Holisticon

00:00:11: Podcast Meetup. I'm Johannes Schartau and today I'm talking to Richard D.

00:00:16: Bartlett. Richard is the co-founder of Loomio, director of Enspiral,

00:00:21: co-founder of The Hum, originator of Microsolidarity and co-host of Casa Tilo,

00:00:27: a co-living experiment in Spain.

00:00:30: He co-developed Fight Wise, a practice-based conflict course with the

00:00:34: goal of training habitual people-pleasers to be more confrontational.

00:00:39: Richard has spent years building and participating in self-organizing systems

00:00:43: and he joins me today to talk about his experience.

00:00:47: Richard, welcome to the podcast.

00:00:49: Richard D. Bartlett: Good morning. Thanks for having me here.

00:00:50: Johannes Schartau: I was thinking that we start really broad.

00:00:53: So in the past you've said that it's always a good idea to include more

00:00:57: people. Why do you say that?

00:01:00: Richard D. Bartlett: I think I had experiences that updated my frame of

00:01:05: reference. So in 2011, I got involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

00:01:11: And prior to that, I was an engineer.

00:01:14: I was operating in a framework where you really try and promote experts at the

00:01:19: top of the hierarchy and you trust the smart people to have the right

00:01:22: decisions. And then after I participated in Occupy, I had these experiences of

00:01:28: like, you know, sometimes there was one moment actually where we were trying

00:01:34: to decide together, hey, it's Labor Day.

00:01:36: We should take some kind of action. We're a bunch of activists.

00:01:38: What are we going to do about Labor Day? And there's all these very boring

00:01:41: suggestions about protesting at the stock exchange and things like this.

00:01:45: And then there was a kid who was maybe like seven or eight years old who said,

00:01:48: we should have a parade. And everyone immediately could see the genius of that

00:01:52: idea. And the whole group converged on, oh yeah, we should have a parade.

00:01:57: We should get cupcakes. We should have instruments. We should celebrate, you

00:02:00: know, the things that we're in favor of rather than fighting against the

00:02:03: things we don't like. And it was moments like that of seeing there's just a

00:02:08: lot of different perspectives in the world. And the traditional hierarchical

00:02:13: form is actually designed to exclude most perspectives.

00:02:16: And if you can design a way to include those perspectives, you can access

00:02:19: usually a broader range of intelligence.

00:02:22: Johannes Schartau: I'm with you on this. So I've also been championing this

00:02:25: approach of including more voices. And at the same time, I also know that it's

00:02:31: really difficult in reality. So what I would like to do is I would just like

00:02:36: to pick your brain a bit about some of these challenges that we might

00:02:40: encounter while trying to include more people.

00:02:42: And because I just recently had another experience of this.

00:02:47: I think the sentence that I hear most often in systems where people work in a

00:02:54: self-organized fashion is, I wish someone would just make a decision.

00:02:58: So does that sound familiar to you?

00:03:00: And what do we do about this?

00:03:01: Richard D. Bartlett: I'm currently doing some consulting work for an

00:03:06: organization with like three overlapping governance bodies.

00:03:11: And so much frustration, you know, so much despair even because

00:03:16: I'm witnessing all of these partial acts of leadership.

00:03:21: But there's no individual with the role to integrate all of that.

00:03:24: And so each partial act of leadership kind of is somewhat in conflict and

00:03:30: somewhat aligned with every other partial piece.

00:03:33: It's like an engine that's not really firing, you know, it's like, just kind

00:03:39: of spluttering and yeah, just huge amounts of frustration and stuckness.

00:03:45: And that's really common. Like the reason that people prefer to be in a

00:03:49: hierarchy, a lot of people would prefer to be in a hierarchy is because you

00:03:52: don't get stuck so often. You know, it's like, if things are getting stuck,

00:03:55: you can just fire the guy that's not doing his job properly, get someone else.

00:03:58: There's a kind of simplicity to it.

00:04:00: Johannes Schartau: Could you, I've asked people on the show before, what is

00:04:03: your one sentence solution to this problem that's going to solve it forever in

00:04:08: every situation for every person?

00:04:11: Richard D. Bartlett: Great. It depends. I can give you a direct answer.

00:04:15: I think the way that we usually treat these things is the first priority is to

00:04:22: build psychological safety.

00:04:25: Where people can actually be honest with each other and they can disagree with

00:04:29: each other. That's where my fighting work comes in.

00:04:31: It's like people need to be able to have conflicts. They need to be able to

00:04:33: say your idea sucks in a constructive way, you know,

00:04:39: that if we can build the safety, that, that means we get to look at reality as

00:04:43: it is that we get to disclose our positions honestly.

00:04:47: Then we can just run a load of experiments.

00:04:49: So it's like safety is the base. And then experiments on top of that.

00:04:52: And let's just say, you know, build up the habit of trying lots of things and

00:04:55: having rigorous experimentation and review to see what works.

00:05:00: And probably that's going to look like a lot of temporary hierarchies, a lot

00:05:04: of, okay, Johannes has got inspiration right now to lead on a project idea.

00:05:09: Let's follow him and see what happens. And at the end of the experiment

00:05:12: period, which might be three months long, then you lose that temporary

00:05:16: authority and we come back into the collective again.

00:05:20: But that kind of pulsing between divergence and convergence and between the

00:05:24: group and individuals seems to be a pretty standard recurring pattern of what

00:05:29: a healthy self-organizing group looks like.

00:05:31: Johannes Schartau: Do you know the work of Claire Graves that got kind of

00:05:35: bastardized into Spiral Dynamics at some point?

00:05:38: Richard D. Bartlett: Ah, right. I know, I know about Spiral Dynamics, but I

00:05:40: don't know about Claire's work.

00:05:41: Johannes Schartau: Okay. So in the past he did, because he, he looked at value

00:05:45: systems people have, and then he kind of did these experiments with people.

00:05:51: And what he found was that there are different styles essentially of groups

00:05:55: forming to be productive. And one of the big differences that he saw, there

00:06:01: was, there was one pattern that people have is kind of the circle, which is

00:06:04: where everybody maybe physically sits in a circle and everybody gets to talk.

00:06:09: And he noticed that these groups have a lot of issues making progress because

00:06:14: they were mostly concerned with their own issues and talking about how, how

00:06:20: does everybody feel? And then he described a different pattern where it was

00:06:24: kind of rotating leadership. So it was, and I was just reminded of exactly

00:06:30: what, while you were saying this, that there is like a constant mini hierarchy

00:06:36: that, is much more flexible, can rotate where people, essentially, if you look

00:06:41: at the power dynamics, it is that people willingly give someone the power

00:06:46: temporarily to be led.

00:06:49: But that can also be taken away. And that is like a different dynamic than

00:06:53: what we usually see in any kind of organizational structure.

00:06:56: Is that similar to what you're describing?

00:06:58: Richard D. Bartlett: Yeah, totally. And it's a consequence of the

00:07:02: psychological safety, like of the mutual understanding of people knowing each

00:07:06: other's strengths and weaknesses. Like, I love to take inspiration from

00:07:11: unexpected sources, like the Navy SEALs in the U.S.

00:07:15: They talk about dynamic subordination, meaning in a squad, people know each

00:07:20: other really well. They understand who's good at what. And in any given

00:07:23: moment, it's obvious who should be subordinated to who, like who should

00:07:26: follow whom basically.

00:07:29: And I think that's a really natural mode of organizing if you're in an

00:07:31: informal context, like when you're hanging out with a bunch of friends and

00:07:35: you're trying to decide where to go for lunch. You know, there's a lot of

00:07:38: informal decision-making that happens where if someone is particularly, if

00:07:44: they feel particularly strongly or if they've got a particular expertise, it's

00:07:47: natural to just sort of concede to their way of doing things.

00:07:51: And that we do that, like that's satisfying to do so long as it keeps

00:07:53: rotating. So long as I know that people are going to follow me when it's my

00:07:56: turn, like there's certain decision expertise that people really should turn

00:08:00: to me and other ones where they should ignore my opinion completely.

00:08:05: And that's really natural in an informal context. As soon as you formalize

00:08:08: things and you define job descriptions and policies and formats and, you know,

00:08:13: all this sort of concrete structure comes in place. It's hard to maintain that

00:08:17: level of dynamism.

00:08:19: Johannes Schartau: The patterns that I often see in self-organization is that

00:08:21: people often hold very strong beliefs that inform the way they structure the

00:08:27: interaction. So for example, so for example, in a lot of organizations that

00:08:32: have flat hierarchy, people are kind of averse to any kind of asymmetry.

00:08:38: So anything that is not equal and balanced feels off and needs to be adjusted.

00:08:43: And you were already hinting at this, that, one of the struggles I see often

00:08:48: is that what if you have someone on a team, for example, who's really

00:08:51: talented?

00:08:52: But it's, this person is not able to kind of bring their talent into the group

00:08:57: because there's kind of almost this fighting or trying to bring someone down

00:09:01: to an average level. Because the asymmetry is something that is not supposed

00:09:06: to exist. Have you seen this before? And how would you, for example, if you,

00:09:09: if you were to work with a group where you see this, what is something that

00:09:13: you would do? Does it like, because you were talking about conflict, would you

00:09:18: just go in there and

00:09:20: make sure that people can openly talk about this?

00:09:24: Richard D. Bartlett: Yeah. I think, honestly, I think what you're describing

00:09:27: are daddy issues. You know, this, this, which is a joking way to say something

00:09:33: serious, like that we show up with ideological commitments and very strong,

00:09:38: emotionally charged beliefs. Many of which are derived from our earliest

00:09:43: experiences in the family and

00:09:48: something about the self organizing, non hierarchical modes of organizing that

00:09:52: really attract people that,

00:09:56: yeah, have issues with authority. And not issues just purely from a, like

00:10:00: rational analysis. I've decided it's better to work this way rather than that

00:10:03: way, but like baggage, like psychological baggage, like unfinished business

00:10:07: hangups.

00:10:10: And that we have to, the reason I keep emphasizing the safety side of things

00:10:13: is like, we actually have to be able to be real about how people's psychology

00:10:17: is affecting how they're showing up in a decision-making process.

00:10:22: And obviously I'm not going to immediately show up in a new group and say, I

00:10:26: think your daddy issues are derailing the process.

00:10:31: But we have to sort of anticipate or understand the different value systems

00:10:35: and the different, allergies and strong reactions and impulses that people

00:10:40: have and design interventions that can kind of open up their minds or open up

00:10:45: their ways of participating to be more constructive. So for us, classic one

00:10:49: would be, so within the Enspiral, you mentioned Enspiral at the start with my

00:10:54: bio. This is this big network of a few hundred people distributed around the

00:10:58: world and we really try and experiment with different ways of working.

00:11:02: And one of the patterns that we've really stabilized on, like while the whole

00:11:05: network is very decentralized and no one's in charge, one of the main things

00:11:11: we do within the network is we have retreats. We usually have two retreats per

00:11:14: year in different regions of the world. And those retreats are operated where

00:11:19: there's a very clearly defined hosting team and the hosts make a whole lot of

00:11:25: decisions. They'll decide on the budget, the location, they'll outline the

00:11:29: agenda. The actual, the body of the agenda is going to be decided by whoever

00:11:33: shows up with whatever they want to do. But

00:11:36: the hosting team is making decisions about,

00:11:39: even, yeah, how big is the group or who could be invited or who couldn't be

00:11:42: invited. They've got quite a lot of authority, but the authority lasts for the

00:11:46: duration of that event. And we make a real effort that the host from last

00:11:52: year's group, they might offer some coaching or supporting to the host for the

00:11:56: next group, but there's always this, there's always this handover. And so

00:11:59: people get a chance to practice leading and they get a chance to practice

00:12:02: following. And basically if you don't like the way that the leadership's

00:12:08: operating, there's pretty strong impetus for you to host the next one.

00:12:11: And we try and keep the stakes low enough that lots of people can step into

00:12:15: that role and get a taste for it.

00:12:17: Sometimes we talk about goose leadership. Like if you ever see a flock of

00:12:20: geese flying in a, in a V, the one at the front will go for a while and then

00:12:24: they get tired and they go to the back and another one comes to the front.

00:12:27: And that's really, really how we operate is trying, trying to enable actually

00:12:31: like quite a strong culture of following and leading, but always temporary,

00:12:35: always rotating different people through that. And that we, you know, everyone

00:12:39: gets that developmental opportunity to see what it's like to be at the front.

00:12:42: Everyone gets to confront the trade-offs and the stresses and the anxieties

00:12:47: of, of trying to be that person who's integrating all these different

00:12:50: perspectives. And we're not stuck with one dysfunctional leader for a long

00:12:54: time, you know, that, that, has been super enabling for us.

00:12:58: And like, as I said about the psychological baggage, if you get a chance

00:13:02: to play that role for an event, maybe a week long event, you learn a lot more,

00:13:07: your, your perspectives on decision-making and group formation and conflict

00:13:11: and boundaries and so on gets refined through that practice in a way where if

00:13:16: you never get to play that role, you can, you can dwell in your fantasy land

00:13:19: about how things should be and never have that tested by reality.

00:13:22: Johannes Schartau: You mentioned psychological safety multiple times.

00:13:25: I'm noticing that at the moment this word is being used quite often

00:13:32: and it seems to take on a different meaning of when I first studied this,

00:13:38: what I believe it meant. So nowadays it often, it seems to mean there

00:13:43: shouldn't be any conflict. So in order for there to be psychological safety,

00:13:46: we should never fight. And you are the co-originator of Fight Wise.

00:13:53: So I already, or the way you talked about this already was that you believe

00:13:57: there should be conflict, and there should be of ways of.

00:14:03: Handling that conflict and engaging in conflict.

00:14:07: Could you just walk us through a bit what that means, especially in, in

00:14:11: organizations and self-organized systems?

00:14:13: Richard D. Bartlett: Maybe it's useful to distinguish,

00:14:16: harmony from unison. So I'm a musician.

00:14:21: And so I carry all this extra,

00:14:24: concepts around with me. And when I say harmony, sometimes people think I mean

00:14:29: unison, meaning everyone, everyone is saying the same thing in a unison.

00:14:33: Everyone, everyone is completely aligned. There's no difference between

00:14:36: people. And this is a, for me, a very dead environment where everyone is on

00:14:42: this exactly aligned on the same mission and the same values and the same

00:14:46: priorities and the same language and the same perspective.

00:14:49: Like that to me is very deadening.

00:14:53: It means that to me, when you see that,

00:14:56: it usually means that most of people's inner reality is being suppressed.

00:14:59: It's not coming to the surface. And I talk about harmony, meaning difference

00:15:04: with attunement.

00:15:07: So each of us has different values, different history, different perspectives,

00:15:11: different expertise.

00:15:14: And in a harmony, those differences are being tuned with each other.

00:15:18: So I'm curious about the ways that you're different to me.

00:15:20: And I'm making adjustments to myself to try and make a good relationship where

00:15:25: we can coexist with our differences and that those differences can generate

00:15:29: interesting harmonic patterns. You know, that we have these like chords and

00:15:33: counterpoint and that, we don't have to collapse it down to this very boring

00:15:37: unison, but that our differences coexist peacefully.

00:15:41: And that creates like a dynamic tension between us.

00:15:45: That's all a little, you know, metaphorical, but in practical terms, it

00:15:50: means when you and I have different preferences, we can choose what to do with

00:15:56: that difference. You know, if you're a skilled, if you're skilled in conflict,

00:16:01: you can notice like, oh, we have different views about what our strategic

00:16:06: priorities should be.

00:16:09: And I can notice actually that difference actually rises in me as anger a lot

00:16:15: of the time, you know, as a protective impulse that you're trying to steer the

00:16:18: organization in a way that I think is counterproductive and it's unsafe.

00:16:21: And I'm going to fight you for it. Like there is a very constructive use of

00:16:26: that anger. If you can catch it early when it's like engagement and like me

00:16:33: leaning forward and getting on the edge of my seat at that point where my

00:16:36: nervous system is just starting to get activated. I'm feeling that current,

00:16:40: like that's the point to disclose, Hey, this is really important to me.

00:16:44: These are my values. This is what I want to protect. This is what I think

00:16:47: you're not seeing,

00:16:50: to disclose the inner charge.

00:16:53: Have capacity to receive the other person with curiosity and openness and

00:16:59: then see like, oh, what are you protecting? And how could we find some

00:17:03: productive synthesis between our two perspectives?

00:17:06: Most people in most groups, most organizations, that, that first impulse of

00:17:11: anger is like, oh my God, a warning sign.

00:17:14: I best do everything I can to hide that.

00:17:16: Or maybe I'll swallow it and it will come out as gossip later, or I'll just,

00:17:21: be resigned. I'll just kind of withhold my feelings and just gradually lose

00:17:26: respect for my colleague because he sees things differently.

00:17:29: And that all of that useful information kind of gets spilled out on the ground

00:17:34: instead of brought into the room to have like more collective intelligence.

00:17:39: This is like, what I'm talking about is risky.

00:17:42: Like I'm asking people to leave their comfort zone a little to like get

00:17:47: slightly out of control, not so far out of control that they say things they

00:17:52: regret or they harm relationships.

00:17:55: Or, you know, they're kind of flying off the handle, but just enough that

00:17:58: they're being real, that they're sharing about what's alive for them.

00:18:02: Like what's actually going on here.

00:18:04: And that to me is like, it's always

00:18:08: alive conversations that the real strategic breakthroughs come from the

00:18:11: great decisions come from that charge of aliveness.

00:18:15: Johannes Schartau: I wanted to share something with you because in your essay

00:18:19: about Fight Wise, or you have a blog post about it, you were telling this

00:18:24: story about Mark who needs to have a difficult conversation with his partner.

00:18:29: And you describe how doing a role-playing exercise, his conversational

00:18:35: partner, is just shifting posture a bit.

00:18:38: And then that is enough for Mark to kind of collapse and give up his position.

00:18:44: I was reading this and my first reaction was a four letter word that starts

00:18:50: with F. I feel like during my life, I learned how to have much better

00:18:55: conflict. Things like you described, for example, assess the state of my

00:19:00: nervous system, take anger as a really interesting information that, I can use

00:19:06: and check into what kind of values are kind of hidden beneath this.

00:19:11: But what is something,

00:19:14: for example, if I'm a relatively conflict avoidant person and you're saying,

00:19:19: we need this conflict and we need to feel alive and it's really helping us.

00:19:23: We shouldn't step away from this. What is something that I can do?

00:19:27: Is there a way that I can train this? How can I invite other people who are

00:19:31: maybe conflict avoidant into this style that you're describing to make it more

00:19:36: productive and at the same time make it feel safe?

00:19:38: Richard D. Bartlett: Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to self-awareness

00:19:41: and then safe places to practice.

00:19:45: So the self-awareness is, you know, if you ever did say meditation or martial

00:19:51: arts or any of these, these kind of, practices that are about cultivating your

00:19:55: awareness, getting, getting more refined in what you can notice.

00:19:58: Because it's really useful to train that lens on my emotional state throughout

00:20:04: the day. And so like you might, you might do a journaling exercise for a

00:20:08: couple of weeks where you just note down,

00:20:11: at the end of every day, you note down where there are moments where I felt

00:20:14: really stressed out or moments where I felt like I needed to protect something

00:20:18: or that,

00:20:21: that I lost my cool somehow. And just training yourself to notice like, what

00:20:25: are the, ideally, what are the early, earliest signals that someone is

00:20:31: approaching one of your boundaries or that, that your preferences are coming

00:20:34: into conflict with someone else. Like most of the people who are bad at

00:20:39: fighting, they don't notice the early signs that say something is at stake

00:20:44: here. They've trained themselves not to notice because often they'll have a

00:20:48: definition of a good person as someone who doesn't get into fights.

00:20:52: You know, and so like when they feel that fight impulse, they just delete that

00:20:56: from their awareness. I'm a good person because I'm easy to get along with and

00:21:00: I don't cause trouble. And so first being able to just notice that actually

00:21:06: multiple times through the day, if you're having interactions with other

00:21:09: people, there's constantly these little small frictions.

00:21:11: Where you think, I'd actually rather that we didn't do that.

00:21:15: And being able to notice that preference, that contradiction of preference

00:21:19: early and notice that that manifests both in terms of like thoughts and

00:21:25: embodied sensations. Like maybe my voice goes up in a higher register or

00:21:31: my heart starts to beat a little faster or I go from a like wide open,

00:21:35: expanded awareness to a very like tunnel focus zoomed in.

00:21:39: Like I can't see anything in the room apart from you that if you can start to

00:21:43: notice those things that already, as we increase what we notice, we increase

00:21:47: our range of motion. Like we suddenly have space to try different things.

00:21:52: And then on top of the self-awareness, we have practice spaces.

00:21:55: So that was the whole idea with Fight Wise was we'll give you a little bit of

00:21:59: theory, but mostly what happens is we're going to put you in small groups and

00:22:02: you're going to practice fighting each other. And so we, we give people little

00:22:05: scenarios like the,

00:22:08: you're getting a taxi to the airport and the taxi driver's listening to awful

00:22:11: music. You know, do you want to practice?

00:22:14: How would you handle that in that situation? What are the different stances

00:22:17: you could take,

00:22:19: and get people to like role play as a character?

00:22:22: This is what a super aggressive Johannes would do in that situation.

00:22:25: Or here's someone that's super passive, how they might react and feel that as

00:22:28: a posture, as a tone of voice, as a sort of character identity, and then

00:22:33: gradually get to practice more and more realistic scenes.

00:22:35: So you might bring in a scene from, well, recently at work, I had this thing

00:22:39: where I felt really stuck and I backed away and I didn't know what to do.

00:22:42: So can we role play that?

00:22:45: Or I know actually that I have to have this confrontation soon because there's

00:22:49: this thing happening with my partner and we need to get to the bottom of it.

00:22:52: Can I role play that before I go into that situation and see what is the

00:22:57: repertoire? Like what is the different range of motion that I have?

00:23:01: And as I practice and probably make a mess of it a few times, what should I be

00:23:06: cautious of? So in my case, it's like my failure mode is being very assertive

00:23:11: about my boundaries, but losing contact with the other person.

00:23:15: You know, like I'll, my, I'll defend myself, but I'll lose the relationship.

00:23:19: Other people often will go the other direction. You'll have your own sort of

00:23:21: distinct pattern of your own failure modes. And if you can meet those failure

00:23:24: modes in a practice space,

00:23:27: yeah, you can be more skillful about how you hold them and more like, okay, I

00:23:31: need, I, I note to, note to myself when I have a fight with my partner, I need

00:23:34: to keep checking in with her. I need to keep reactivating my empathy.

00:23:38: I can do that. You know, I can go into that situation with a bit more

00:23:41: preparation and a bit more sobriety and a bit more skillfulness.

00:23:45: Johannes Schartau: Great. So this, this big aspect of my own self-awareness,

00:23:49: maybe training my own conflict style.

00:23:52: How would you handle a group where you feel like there is a lot of unspoken

00:23:58: conflict? Would you just kind of go in and maybe, I don't know, engineer a

00:24:02: situation or would you, I don't know, just share what you're noticing or how

00:24:07: would you, how would you help a group that feels stuck?

00:24:10: Richard D. Bartlett: I'm designing for one of these in a couple of weeks.

00:24:13: So that's a good question. It's a very live question for me.

00:24:17: Yeah, I keep coming back to safety. Like people, people are very attentive to

00:24:22: how safe they feel in a given situation. And so if conflicts are not being

00:24:27: disclosed, it's because people have reasonable concerns about what would

00:24:32: happen if I did that. You know, like maybe if I brought these conflicts to the

00:24:35: surface, the group is going to disintegrate or there's going to be some

00:24:38: negative consequences for me. Or I think I won't say things skillfully and the

00:24:42: other person's feelings are going to get hurt or you know, there's lots of,

00:24:46: reasons why you wouldn't want to do that. And I'd want to understand what are

00:24:51: some of those concerns. Usually I work with quite a lot of one-on-one

00:24:55: discovery, just having conversations with people, very open-ended, trying to

00:25:00: take the, heartbeat of the organization with these one-on-one conversations

00:25:05: and understand like, okay, people are afraid about this thing falling apart.

00:25:08: That's what's going on here or whatever it is. There are usually specific

00:25:12: risks that they're protecting against. And then I'd have to design a sort of

00:25:17: choreography or

00:25:19: a facilitated conversational process that is attentive to those risks.

00:25:23: So often that would look like working in small groups.

00:25:27: So you might not want to bring your frustrations and dissatisfactions to a

00:25:32: full group meeting of 20 people.

00:25:35: Maybe if we are doing an exercise with three people, you can, you can be a

00:25:38: little, you can disclose a little more, you can be a little bit more honest.

00:25:41: Like the threat level goes down, the complexity goes down.

00:25:44: It's a bit more digestible.

00:25:47: And usually we would start, like I described with the Fight Wise process, we

00:25:51: would start with role-playing fake scenarios.

00:25:56: Like we would say, let's have a training about, maybe we have a training about

00:26:00: giving difficult feedback or something like that. And we would start people to

00:26:04: practice a form of giving feedback with fake content.

00:26:08: And even just getting contact with that form.

00:26:13: If I tell you, hey, we're doing an exercise about how to give feedback, like,

00:26:17: okay, I can focus on the form, but you know that you've got specific content

00:26:22: that comes along with it too. It brings it closer to the surface and

00:26:26: some of the, some of the people without us specifically inviting it, some of

00:26:29: those people will naturally make the connection between, okay, I've got this

00:26:33: new feedback practice. I've also got this issue that I need to disclose with

00:26:36: my colleague and they're going to take that moment. So we're like gradually

00:26:40: trying to turn the temperature up, not saturate the system, not overextend,

00:26:44: but like gradually bring a bit more disclosure, a bit more honesty as the

00:26:48: safety allows for it.

00:26:50: Johannes Schartau: I'm not sure if I'm the only one noticing this, but I

00:26:52: started doing this kind of work in the agile space specifically and

00:26:58: self-organization about 15 years ago. And back then it just felt like there

00:27:02: was this big wave and we were going to change the world and we'll see

00:27:07: completely different types of organizations in the future.

00:27:09: And now in the past, maybe one or two years, it felt like this whole movement

00:27:14: has kind of taken a big hit or there's been a shift that's been happening.

00:27:19: And it feels like people are turning more towards authoritative

00:27:25: structures, I would say. How do you see this play out at the moment?

00:27:30: Is there something you're also noticing? Should we give up now and just call

00:27:34: it quits? Or like, is this maybe like a, like a new beginning?

00:27:39: Richard D. Bartlett: I see the same thing as well.

00:27:42: I see that a lot of very skillful, well-meaning people gave their best effort

00:27:47: to building non-hierarchical organizations and found they weren't as effective

00:27:52: as they wish they would be. And so naturally people reevaluate their

00:27:57: hypotheses and their commitments and say, wait, is this actually realistic?

00:28:01: Was this wishful thinking?

00:28:04: I think my takeaway, having gone through that process myself as an individual,

00:28:09: as well as a coach and consultant working with other people,

00:28:12: there's some degree of wishful thinking in there, you know, like trying to,

00:28:16: trying to project my ideological commitments and assume that the world will

00:28:20: somehow fit onto those. And I want to fight against all of the, you know, the

00:28:26: actual reality, the, human nature and the reality

00:28:33: of the people that we're actually working with. The conclusion I came to was

00:28:37: basically rather than focusing so much these days on non-hierarchy or

00:28:42: self-organizing, but much more of a focus on developmental organizations.

00:28:46: So that's about creating a context where everyone is growing and we do

00:28:51: anything we can to remove obstacles to people's growth.

00:28:55: And that I think that trends towards a more self-organizing system where

00:29:00: anyone can take authority.

00:29:03: But doesn't start from a premise that, like you said about asymmetry, like I,

00:29:08: in previous years, I would have come from, we must eliminate all asymmetries.

00:29:12: And now I'm like, no, some, some people are more skilled than others.

00:29:17: Some people have more commitment than others. Some people are just at a time

00:29:21: in their life where they can commit much more than other people can.

00:29:24: And it's fine to have an asymmetry around them.

00:29:28: So the thing that I'm protecting against is the sort of calcification where

00:29:33: people get stuck into positions because, well, that was the, that was the way

00:29:37: we designed things. Like I want an organization to be fluid.

00:29:39: I want there to be loads of opportunities for people to step up into active

00:29:44: leadership. And that when people step up, they get encouraged and supported

00:29:47: and they get good feedback. And that, like I said, everyone's growing.

00:29:50: I think one of the reasons the movement towards self-organization has kind of

00:29:55: stalled out is because you're reaching the natural limits of where our

00:29:59: society's at. Like when I'm talking about this, self-awareness and emotional

00:30:04: intelligence and willingness to be straightforward about conflict.

00:30:09: How many people are actually willing to do that. You know, like what's the,

00:30:11: what's the percentage of the current population that's willing to do that?

00:30:14: You need, you need really exceptionally mature people to operate a

00:30:18: self-organizing system. The organization can only produce so much in terms of

00:30:23: people's growth and development. Some of that needs to happen at home, some in

00:30:27: extracurricular activities and schooling.

00:30:29: And yeah, like I said, family relationships, like all of those factors

00:30:32: have a part to play. And from a sort of Spiral Dynamics point of view, I think

00:30:37: I come from a position that society is evolving, that humans are evolving,

00:30:41: that consciousness is evolving, and we're heading in a direction of progress.

00:30:44: But it's maybe slower than I would wish. And just because I've got a

00:30:47: commitment about how I'd like things to be doesn't mean that's how they are.

00:30:51: Johannes Schartau: I work with a lot of organizational leaders who say

00:30:54: something like, I wish people would be more autonomous, or they would

00:31:00: step in to this position of being more self-organized, taking more

00:31:05: responsibility. I know that they're really doing their best to their ability,

00:31:10: or their heart is in the right place.

00:31:12: They really just don't know how to build a system or a structure that really

00:31:18: encourages people to do that.

00:31:21: You just mentioned it takes very mature people to work in an environment like

00:31:27: this. So how do we, for example, if I am in some kind of leadership position,

00:31:31: and I would like to create a system that is more inclined towards

00:31:36: self-organization, what is something that I can do?

00:31:38: Richard D. Bartlett: Yeah, I think you should have some rough framework about

00:31:42: development, like your own understanding of what is maturity, and what causes

00:31:47: people to mature, and what gets in the way, and how much of those obstacles,

00:31:53: those obstacles to people's development can be addressed in the workplace.

00:31:59: Because there's a certain dimension, which is a kind of personal growth that

00:32:03: you have no access to, there's another dimension which is therapy, and then

00:32:06: there's another one which is about working relationships, and you only get

00:32:09: access to the working relationships. So you have to sort of relax your grip on

00:32:14: some of the other bits and just say it's not my responsibility. But the way

00:32:16: that we're structuring authority and decision-making an agency in the

00:32:20: workplace, a leader obviously has a huge amount of influence on that.

00:32:24: For us, we would usually have a quite explicit definition about

00:32:30: roles of apprenticing of peers and of mentors.

00:32:37: In the ideal developmental context, everyone has apprentices, peers, and

00:32:40: mentors.

00:32:42: And you can name who are the people in each of those three categories that I'm

00:32:47: learning from, I'm learning alongside, and I'm teaching.

00:32:51: Because each of those roles play an irreplaceable function in people's

00:32:57: development that they have those things in place. And then, like I said with

00:33:01: the example of the Enspiral retreats, we're constantly looking for

00:33:06: opportunities to promote apprentices into positions of authority, and give

00:33:11: them a chance to get to the front of the room, and make that normal.

00:33:14: And that looks like a lot of shoulder tapping.

00:33:18: Like a quiet conversation from a more senior member of the team, going to a

00:33:22: less senior member of the team, and saying, I think you'd be perfect for this

00:33:25: role. I know you probably feel nervous about it.

00:33:29: How can I support you? You know, I've got your back, but you're going to be

00:33:33: the one calling the shots. And I'm going to make sure that nothing terrible

00:33:36: happens. But you're going to be the one feeling the speed wobbles or leaving

00:33:40: your comfort zone. And that private one-to-one relationship, I think, is,

00:33:46: at the current stage of where I'm working, that's like the biggest lever that

00:33:49: we have to pull on. And get everyone constantly in the process of overstepping

00:33:55: their zone of comfort and getting into that developmental growth zone where

00:33:59: they feel, I call it the speed wobbles. You know, when you're racing your bike

00:34:01: down the hill and it starts to go like, oh gosh, this is terrifying.

00:34:04: We want people to have speed wobbles at work frequently.

00:34:07: Johannes Schartau: Fantastic. I'm noticing that artificial intelligence at the

00:34:11: moment, it's not just a technology, but it is really affecting how people

00:34:15: behave. We know from studies, for example, that people are now using

00:34:20: artificial intelligence to have really deep conversations and maybe even like

00:34:24: a therapeutic context or something like this.

00:34:26: And I'm wondering, it feels to me like it could be very enticing for

00:34:33: people instead of engaging in any kind of conflict or facing the world of

00:34:37: actual interaction with people. So it's much easier to interact with an agent

00:34:42: that is kind of designed to give me what I want and take out some of the

00:34:46: friction. How do you feel about this?

00:34:48: Like if we fast forward maybe 10 years, where do you see this going?

00:34:52: Is there potential for us?

00:34:55: Or is that, do you think that is maybe like a threat to the way we interact?

00:35:00: What's your take on this?

00:35:01: Richard D. Bartlett: It reminds me of social media, where there's a kind of

00:35:06: gravitational field around social media, which tends towards political

00:35:11: polarization.

00:35:14: You're sort of rupturing your attention span.

00:35:17: It's very easy to just waste a bunch of time and get a whole bunch of

00:35:21: misinformation. And social media can be a very negative influence.

00:35:25: And I think it has en masse been a negative influence on democracies, for

00:35:29: example, on people's attention span, on mental health in young people, et

00:35:33: cetera, et cetera. And I use social media all the time and I love it.

00:35:37: Like many of my best friendships have come from social media.

00:35:40: Most of my work opportunities come from social media.

00:35:43: And I've learned how to develop the metacognitive capacities to

00:35:48: sometimes be awake and alert when I'm scrolling Twitter and not always be

00:35:53: subservient to what the algorithm wants me to do.

00:35:58: And that takes a particular kind of maturity and skill.

00:36:01: And I think the same is happening with AI.

00:36:05: In the morning when I sit down with my agents and I say, these are the

00:36:09: projects that I'm working on and can you help me make decisions about how I'm

00:36:12: going to design this training and work with that client?

00:36:16: It gives me a bunch of ideas and I engage with that as an equal and we make

00:36:19: decisions together and I feel like my AI assistant is a really helpful peer.

00:36:25: And then in the afternoon, if I've been running at that pace all day, I get

00:36:29: lazy or I get tired and I lose my discernment and I'm just like, sure, sure,

00:36:33: sure, whatever you think, whatever you think is fine. And I've got to learn to

00:36:36: recognize, hey, I'm no longer in the driving seat.

00:36:39: Like I'm handing over what should be human discernment to this robot that

00:36:45: doesn't know what's best, doesn't have any stakes. And I need to, at that

00:36:50: moment, I need to stop and take a rest and only be using those things when I'm

00:36:54: awake and alert and have my sovereignty, have my ability to make choices.

00:36:58: And that's a sense that I'm developing after a few months of working with

00:37:03: these tools really, really closely. And my hope is that it's just another

00:37:07: professional competence, just that you know, sometimes when colleagues come to

00:37:11: you, what they need is confidentiality. And they might not have explicitly

00:37:14: said that, but you've learned, oh, this is an important sensitive issue.

00:37:17: I'm going to be confidential with it. Like, I think we're going to develop

00:37:19: these kind of professional competences about how we work with these digital

00:37:23: assistants. And they're just going to keep getting more and more intelligent,

00:37:26: as far as I can tell. And they're more and more alluring that, well, the robot

00:37:30: said I should do this, so I'm going to do this. We're going to have to really

00:37:33: put considerable effort in to maintain our humanity and our wisdom when it's

00:37:39: going to be so easy to always just defer to this very convincing, persuasive,

00:37:43: intelligent looking thing.

00:37:46: Johannes Schartau: Okay, last question. I usually ask people, and I'm going to

00:37:49: ask you as well. Do you have anything like a small nugget or something that

00:37:55: people can try right away that you believe is going to help them become, for

00:38:01: example, more skillful when navigating conflict?

00:38:05: Any, like, someone listening to this right now, anything they can try right

00:38:10: away?

00:38:11: Richard D. Bartlett: Think of one relationship where the other party would

00:38:16: actually be interested in practicing with you.

00:38:19: I probably wouldn't start with my boss or my mom, you know, but maybe a friend

00:38:24: or a colleague or something like that where you can say, hey, I've been, yeah,

00:38:28: I've been wondering about how to be more skillful. I want to be more

00:38:31: assertive. I noticed that, like, I avoid a lot of conflicts that would be

00:38:34: better to be direct with.

00:38:37: And I wonder if you'd be someone that I could practice on.

00:38:39: And that, like, that would mean, if you bother me, I'm going to tell you, you

00:38:44: know, I'm not going to sweep things under the rug so much. And I don't expect

00:38:47: to do it well. I just want to try it out for a little while and you can give

00:38:50: me feedback. But would you be up for that? Like, finding these ways of

00:38:54: creating little practice spaces in your everyday life, I think, can be really

00:38:57: transformative.

00:38:58: Johannes Schartau: Where can people go to find out more about you and your

00:39:01: work?

00:39:02: Richard D. Bartlett: If you go to richdecibels.com, that's my personal

00:39:05: website, which then links out to my 17 other websites with all of my various

00:39:10: projects and communities and organizations.

00:39:13: Johannes Schartau: Thank you so much for your time.

00:39:15: Richard D. Bartlett: It's been a real pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:39:17: Johannes Schartau: I hope this session has given you some concrete ideas for

00:39:20: your own transformation challenges. At Holisticon, we provide companies with

00:39:24: holistic support from strategy and technology to organizational change.

00:39:28: If this sounds interesting, please feel free to contact us.

00:39:31: You can find all the information you need at holisticon.de.

00:39:34: And please don't miss our next Transform Together session.

00:39:37: I'll see you then.