Rethinking Change

00:00:00: Speaker: Transform together – das Podcast-Meetup von und mit Johannes Schartau und Holisticon. Welcome to episode nine of "transform together", the Holisticon podcast meetup. I'm Johannes Schartau and today I'm talking to Sylvia Taylor. I was introduced to Liberating Structures in 2014 There was a map online to find practitioners worldwide, and I looked for people in Germany, and there was exactly one, and that was Sylvia. She's been pivotal in spreading Liberating Sstructures in Europe, but she does a whole lot more. Liberating Structures are only one tool that she uses to lead change in organizations and develop leaders. She is a proponent of the flux mindset and adaptability intelligence. She also created a conversation based card game that helps professionals and teams reimagine what they want to become at work. On top of all of that, she's also a terrific human being. Sylvia, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Johannes, It is great to be here. All right. Let's let's dive into this. So I mentioned flux mindset and adaptability intelligence. This kind of sounds like something from a sci-fi movie. Could you just walk us through this? Is it correct that ultimately all of this relates to change and the ability to handle uncertainty? Is that correct? Yes it is. And I would say more importantly, it's about our relationship to change. Both of those are tools that I discovered in the last five years, specifically flux and the flux mindset. The book is written by April Renee, and it is her framework that's codified these eight superpowers around our relationship to change and how we can actually shift our mindset to look at change as an opportunity, not just chaos or something that happens to us. And I would say that adaptability intelligence or AQ is really the next level of intelligence that we all need right now, and one that I had been looking for in my change career for years, because it's one of the only assessment tools and frameworks that actually looks at environment as one of the key pillars for understanding why is change hard? Um, and that's something that really helps me talk to other people about how to measure change. And then how can we develop skills and ways of working that actually help us navigate. And I want to use the big word metabolize change because that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get oriented. Is that sci fi? I don't know. I'm also not sure, the terms sound really cool. Um, that's that's why I said sci fi. So what you're talking about is that change is not something that is that just happens that we don't need to look at. That is just part of everyday life that I don't have to pay attention to. I can just expect people to kind of engage in, or I can just expect people to follow along. Is that correct? In terms of like how we think about change or like, yes, change happens all the time. Hey, it's winter, we have a change of season. Um, oh, hey, I need to change the wheels on my car or the tires on my car because they're no longer effective or, hey, I lost my job. That's a big change. So, like, what do you mean, exactly? I'm thinking mostly in organizations. So maybe, uh, for example, I'm an organizational leader, and I'm trying to do the big change initiative. I don't know, whatever it is or the the the flavor of the month. I know at the moment I feel like everybody's talking about AI, for example. Um, and I'm assuming that it's going to lead to a lot of changes. Can I just Expect all the employees to follow along. And just I, for example, I proclaim a change and then why doesn't everybody play along? Yeah, I think unfortunately, we all know that AI is changing things in organizations, changing things in our teams, changing things in our entire world, and we're all experiencing it. I think it's not so much that there is change because humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, and we're actually pretty good at it. I think what's been more difficult is the pace of change, and that it's constant, and we don't have time to orient ourselves. I kind of mentioned that earlier. We don't necessarily have the right skills or toolsets or right measurements to understand where are we now and then? How can we, to what degree do we need to shift or pivot? And leaders, especially in organizations that are bringing in more AI and more AI tools. They are thinking of this as just another toolset change, and like it'll be easy for people to get on board because they'll learn, they'll they'll see how helpful it is and how beneficial it is. But it's so fundamentally, I think, shifting how we do work together. And we haven't really stopped to think about our mindset, about how are we actually considering the emotional impact of change, for example. And that's a key for me and the work that I'm doing. The emotional impact is the key because we're humans. Great. So this for some reason I'm just getting really excited, but it's, uh, and I've been talking to other guests about this. It always, especially in Germany, kind of feels like, hey, at work, we're just rational. We're just task focused. Can you not just leave that those pesky emotions? Could you not just leave those at home? Maybe. Potentially we could. But the the challenge there is that we're as humans first, our understanding of what drives us. And it is often our emotions. It's understanding what triggers us. Right? Whether that's something that brings us joy, like, oh, this is a really good idea. We're excited about it as well as the ooh, I'm afraid of that. Or that made me really angry. Those are all indicators for understanding ourselves and what's happening around us. So somebody who's constantly fighting fear and anxiety is far more likely to get burnt out and to be demotivated and to resist a change which I think leaders don't want. They don't want people to resist the change. And yet that's what's happening, because I think people are exhausted because they're not really being supported from an emotional standpoint. And I think that most of the time people don't know how to measure that. They're just going by gut like, oh, look at our engagement survey says people are disengaged. We need to teach them how to be more resilient. For example, I've heard that a lot recently. And yet resilience is just one element of learning to be adaptable. It's an important one, but it's it's only one element of our capacity and our capability of being adaptable in change. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So when you say we can make this measurable, are we talking about the AQ framework. Is that correct? Yes. For me it's it's so it's I want to be very clear. It's not a personality assessment. There is one element that looks at your characteristics but it's also about your skill. So there's the model very briefly is there are three pillars your ability your character and your environment. And within there are fifteen different subdimensions plus a few other subdimensions like your ability to get reskilled, for example, or your readiness for change, but those fifteen different subdimensions are all correlated and are on a scale from high to low. To help you understand in what environment and in what elements are actually making it challenging for you or you're actually really good at, and a strength can come from it, like a strength for your team can come because you're you're really good at unlearning and you have very strong mental flexibility. Those are two elements in adaptive in ability, meaning you can also get better or get worse, right? When we stop strengthening something, it atrophies and it's no longer helpful. That could be a good thing. But in change these fifteen different subdimensions, if we're paying attention, they can help us understand where to take much more intentional action. And so this is what you help leaders and organizations with. And you kind of help to facilitate that change. How did you end up here? Was there anything in your history I know that caused some kind of frustration? Or like, why this this specific topic that makes you so passionate. I would I would almost say that it started when I was really young, but I didn't. It wasn't very I wasn't aware of it. Before I was five, I moved thirteen different times. I got really good at, I guess, rolling with it and picked up some personality traits that allowed me to be more flexible, to be more open, to be more curious. And then I think because of those things and the way that I went through my career, which is not so much up a ladder as it was really building a portfolio building like, oh, this looks really interesting right now, or I have a challenge over here and I need to learn a new tool, or that sounds just like the way to do it. And in fact, when I do it that way, for example, working in an agile mindset, working in an agile mindset with agile tools, I wasn't in a tech team when I first discovered those. I was in a marketing team and then in HR. And I thought, well, these just make sense to me. So I kind of follow the sparkle to see what sounds interesting and also what's really useful. And then what gives me the kind of outcome I'm looking for. And that's sort of the same way that I discovered I must have some very high level of resilience after my third layoff in five years. And everyone kept asking me like, wow, how are you doing so well? It's like, what do you mean? Like, this is just how I am. This is what other people aren't like. I mean, it's hard. Don't get me wrong, getting laid off sucks and I grieved. And yet I got back up and I started looking for other options. I talked to people, I looked at my skill set. I looked at what else was out there, something interesting, I don't know, it just kept moving. And yet a lot of that also comes from my, my characteristic of of looking at looking at the big picture, I think, and being a very hopeful person, I'm not. Maybe I'm not so typical in or anymore. Now that I've lived in Germany for ten years, I've not super positive about everything because I'm American, right? Everyone's like just so positive. I'm I'm much more realistic, I think, than negative. And I think this is maybe just the two sides now coming together to form a a more balanced Sylvia. Nice. Um, when you look back and, um, you have a lot of experience guiding personal and organizational change, what has changed for you as an individual? So were there any kind of beliefs that you had to give up along the way, or something that got shattered that you initially thought, this is how change works, or this is how organizations work? Uh, something that maybe I just had to shift for you to be closer to reality. Yeah, I had to, actually, you gave me this question ahead of time, and I really had to think about this question. So for me, I think originally I, I thought from a professional standpoint is if I design the change right then people will follow. This is what I went through my master's program in, and I really felt like my experience backs this up. If I can design change better, people will get it and they'll follow me. And I think in the last five years, especially with the last couple of of tools, with flex and with AQ and just so many more conversations and such a rapid pace of change, like there's almost no time to integrate anything anymore, is that I flipped that or have shifted it. And I think now it's if I can help strengthen people's capacity to adapt, then it won't matter what the plan is or how rapid the changes. People will be in the boat and they'll be riding along. To use that metaphor. Right. I don't I don't want to see if I can build a design a better river. That sounds insane, but I would rather say, hey, we can build a better boat and teach people how to navigate the river. I think you're just saying that you're already shattering some beliefs that if I just had the perfect recipe to design that change, or to make it more compelling than everybody will finally will finally be on board and there will be no friction. And then this is the one change that is actually going to go smoothly. Are you saying that it's not going to happen? I'm saying that I think a lot of change managers, people in organizational development, HR, agile coaches, people who are in the work of doing change work, whether they do it officially or informally. I think on some level everybody feels that is that it's there's always another tool and there's so many wonderful frameworks that actually do work. And I use quite a few of them myself, like Adkar. And it's what gets taught in school, because these frameworks do work on some level from a structural point of view, and also maybe from a process point of view, but because things are moving so fast, our ability as human beings to process the level of change from an emotional standpoint. Going back to that already, it's we just can't handle it because we aren't taught about those kinds of things in school, about how do we look at our own emotional responses to change. So maybe if we talked more about it, or if we shared with each other more about how things are going, if we had more room to experiment as opposed to just follow a plan, if we had more opportunities to instead of just rely on leaders doing information dumps to say, here's the plan, here's what we're going to do. Instead, we have more collaborative, right? Collective intelligence creation. This is where I think, for me, liberating structures came in because I saw that, oh my God, I don't have all the answers. Maybe that's something else I unlearned when I became a leader. I don't have all the answers. Who am I kidding? But my team has the answers. My peers have the answers, my colleagues have some answers, and if we kind of put them all together, we'll create a much better, richer, more dynamic solution that more people will be on board with. And I think that's also a missing component of a lot of change initiatives, not enough collaboration and collective intelligence harnessing. I think that's a very bold stance to take, to just admit I don't have all the answers. I know I in my experience, people really appreciate the honesty and they can kind of detect if you if you're putting up this facade of certainty that is not actually accurate when there's at least a part of the change that they can influence and maybe design themselves. My experience is that I still haven't seen, like the perfect change in any organization. But I always talk about like increasing the odds a bit so that the chances of some kind of success is maybe just a bit higher than with other methods. And that's that's why I wanted to find some way to measure it, because I wanted to increase the chances of even people who are highly risk averse, whether that's from a cultural standpoint or from a personality standpoint, or even from an industry standpoint, if there is a way for people to really think differently, to say we have some opportunities here, how can we know where they are before it's too late, or we have bigger risks in people leaving and people resisting? What can we do now to actually mitigate that or support that? And that's why for me, the adaptability intelligence was such an eye opener, because I feel like it does give me, or even the leaders a better language to talk about. What can we do to actually make this easier and have a higher chance of being successful? So I'm interested in the question. When you collaborate on a change, or when you help birth any kind of change in your organization, what are you looking for? How do you know that it's working? So because I picked up that, it's not about sticking to the initial plan one hundred percent, or that might not be indicator, might not be the indicator of success that we're looking for. What are some signs that kind of tell you this is moving in the right direction? So I actually made a list because I thought that was such a great question. And I think in some ways there are some things that are really obvious. Like you can tell a change is working when people are talking to each other differently, like they're more open, they feel more safe. They're actually maybe even asks more questions or better questions. I think both of those are relevant. I think that people or teams especially can clearly articulate why they're doing something, and that they're excited to do it because they've been part of the process. I think that conflict and maybe this will make sense, maybe it won't. But conflict gets cleaner instead of quieter. Like people aren't afraid to bring up the conflict. and they talk about it, but not in a super, maybe emotional or triggered way. And I think when it's not working, people still believe that the change is dependent on a very few people. Like, if I'm not here, this will fall apart. And actually, maybe that's true and it's not working. If the teams are all waiting, waiting for permission to do things. And if you hear people say, well, anything like complaints, but they're disengaged and they don't really want to do anything about it because it's above their pay grade. I think for me that's a red flag. When change isn't working, people are too afraid to step in, step over, step up. So what we're talking about big models and ways of measuring. Are there also small habits or small actions that people in the midst of a change can take or engage in that we often don't talk about? That in your experience might lead to success or might increase the chances of success in any kind of change or organizational change. Let's focus on organizational change right now, because in a way, I also think it's true. Many of the things that I have in mind are true for organizational change as well. So small things that people can do to ensure the successful change. Essentially listen more than you talk. Whoa. Um, maybe this is specifically for leaders who really feel like, again, going back to I feel like I need to have all the answers, so I need to tell everybody what those answers are. Ask for more feedback. Don't just give it. So and again, maybe I'm talking to the leaders as if you're leading a project. If you're leading a team, if you're leading an organization more frequent and even maybe short feedback loops so that you can really start to gauge what's happening, you know, and and I know just just those two things can be key. Do you want more? I think it's enough to digest already. Just the first one. I think people have enough to do with that. Is there anything in the field of of change, whether individual organizational change that you feel is overrated or going through this hype phase that you might want to caution against, or that you feel hesitant about? I'm really glad you asked that question, because for me, I think one of the the things that I've heard from the beginning and it's not a fad, but I think it's a belief that people have because they may be scared to look at what the real challenge is and that they look at resistance as part of the problem. How do we mitigate resistance instead of how do we build up the capability of our people before this change, so that they can weather the change so that they can be excited about this change? And for me, that's again goes back to learning how to be adaptable, shifting our mindset to look at change as an opportunity and as the norm, really the norm? Yeah. I find that so fascinating to consciously invest in that change capacity instead of just kind of dumping change on people and then kind of assuming, hey, that's what I'm expecting of you. If you if you show any kind of resistance, then that is your problem and you just need to clear that away. I think that's, that's that's an interesting approach to say the least. Well, and really, I think everyone's new job is learning. And yet companies are still resistant to funding and investing in learning programs. And if you call it a learning program, you're less likely to get it funded than if you call it a change management program. But you can't have one without the other. Yeah, I know that's a big, big topic. All right. You invented a game and you recently you just kind of casually mentioned this, but there's going to be a Kickstarter campaign, I think. Yeah. Tell us more about this. So when is this going to start? What's the game? Um, when can I get it? Sure. So thank you for allowing me to talk about it. I'm really excited about it because it really just came out of this kind of long, sleepy period of mine of thinking that I must be the only one that this is this is happening to. So it's a game that I developed last summer called the Adaptive Identity Game, and it started out as something totally just something fun to do at this wonderful conference, this unconference that I go to every year. And I was really doing it for specifically that group of people agile coaches, consultants, people who were in the software industry who work with people. And I really just wanted to give them something that ignited hope. You aren't alone in this, and there's a way to reorient where you are, who you are, and everything that's possible for you. Because we hold multitudes. Human beings are amazing. And so I thought, okay, well, I want to look at our strengths and our skills, all the different traits and qualities that we have. And oftentimes having a metaphor or an archetype can help make make that picture clear and then reorient our identity and actually show us that we are capable of more than just our job title or our the role that we're fulfilling at work currently with our current employer. And this sparked so much more, and it became a card game that I'm developing that you play with real cards. And so I've designed those, and it's going to be ready with the Kickstarter on February tenth. That's when the Kickstarter goes live. And hopefully if I get enough people who are excited about using this for leadership development, team development, career development, or transitions, if they're trying to be more innovative in the way that they do work, um, people who are just doing their own personal quiet reflection of what do I want to do next? And who do I want to become next that they want this card game? Because if the Kickstarter is successful, then I can get it printed and really share this with the world, which would make me super happy. Sweet. So we're going to link to the Kickstarter in the show notes. So anybody who's listening, you click on the link, buy it no matter what time you're listening to this. So if this is twenty twenty eight or whatever, um, by then Sylvia has become super famous and you can probably buy it in the store by then. But if it's not, that's not the case yet. Um, we'll link to the Kickstarter and then you can find more information there. Thanks, Johannes. Thank you so much for your time. Uh, to everybody listening. Thank you very much. I hope this session has given you some concrete ideas for your own transformation challenges at holistic. When we put into practice what we discussed in Transform Together, we provide companies with holistic support throughout the digital transformation process. From strategy and technology to organisational change. We make our customers more resilient, establish a future proof agile culture, create new business models, and inspire people with better services and products. If you are facing similar challenges or are wondering how you can implement the ideas from this session in your organization, please feel free to contact us. You can find all the information you need at holisticonline and don't miss our next Transform Together session. That's on February sixth at four pm PST. I will be talking to Ines Garcia about such fascinating topics as biomimicry, edges in nature, and how this relates to organizations. See you then.