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A recap of what we've chatted about over the previous 13 episodes. Plus, for newcomers, we redefine what Essential Dynamics actually is.
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Hello. Welcome back to Essential Dynamics. I'm Reed McColm, your very good looking host and here with one of the smartest guys on the planet, mister Derek Hudson. And Derek, how are you today?
Derek:Hey. I'm fantastic, Reed. I don't think I'm one of the smartest guys on the planet, but I'm the but I am the smartest guy in the room.
Reed:Are you? That's great.
Derek:Because I'm here alone at home as we're set up on Zoom, so I'm pretty confident I'm the smartest guy in the room.
Reed:Or like the like that movie in book, The Martian, where the fellow says he's the best biologist on the planet.
Derek:Excellent.
Reed:Yes. That's excellent. Derek, we've come a long way on these essential dynamic conversations. And as we've traveled, I'm beginning to look behind me. I'm wondering if I can see my footsteps.
Reed:I'm not even sure where we've come. Could you, on the principle that repetition teaches even a donkey, would you please help me understand where we've been and how we got here?
Derek:Sure. So I set this podcast up because I try to understand and document how I have been solving problems in my life, I've been approaching my professional responsibilities in my consulting practice and how I've been approaching life in general. And I came up with this very simple concept, we've now been applying for, I guess, 13 episodes so far with no end to end sight in terms of the application. So set it up very quickly. Essential dynamics is the idea that there's really only a few essential elements in the things that we try to do in life, and those essential elements are subject to opposition or what we might call dynamic forces.
Derek:And the way I look at the essential elements is to make things fun or interesting or meaningful, we can take the things that we are trying to do in our lives and set them up in the with the concept of a quest. So so the quest is we're trying to accomplish something that's important and challenging. And if you think about the idea of a quest, there's three three elements, which I call the essential elements. There's this this thing we're trying to accomplish, the the wrong that we're trying to right or the the village that we're trying to save, and and that's the purpose. There's the people that we are with as we try to accomplish that, and then there's the the path that we take or the journey that we go on to accomplish the purpose that we set out.
Derek:So I put that as people, path, and purpose. And then the to recognize that everything's challenging in life, we look at the way dynamic forces impact each of those separately. So how how forces back and forth affect our idea of the purpose, how they affect moving forward and being limited in the path, and then how they affect the relationships between people and and people in the groups that they're in. So that's that's proven to give us a lot of material to talk about all kinds of things. And I continue to learn about it.
Derek:So this is not the smartest guy in the world telling everyone how it is. This is someone who's spent some time thinking about it, and I'm learning and observing. This is this is not my stuff, really.
Reed:Well, I'm sorry. I mischaracterized you. I can see that you're not as smart as I thought. Now I do wanna know, however, if if you put a value on, say, purposes x and y we've discussed, Mike, can you explain x and y for me again?
Derek:Sure. It's and I and I have said before that this is the one thing in Essential Dynamics that I think people can pick up really quickly and then and then not unlearn. So if you think about this idea of dynamic forces, it is that everything that has meaning in life, arises because there's some kind of opposition. And so the the Asian concept of yin and yang of these complement forces that define the universe actually holds up really well in physics. I wish I understood it better but we might get into that someday.
Derek:So I think that life is most interesting when we're not as single-minded as we like to think that we would wanna be because life is complicated. And most of the time when we set out to do something, we actually have to balance conflicting or complementary responsibilities. So, you know, one of the ones that we see today in in organizations and business is you have this responsibility to your shareholders to make money.
Reed:Correct.
Derek:And then you have this responsibility to the broader community to, you know, as a minimum, do no harm, but maybe be a major contributor into the community and to certainly not destroy the environment or our future prosperity because of short term decisions. So, you know, one of the things that I've really come to understand is that all of the opportunity for creativity and innovation is when we're dealing with two things that we wanna accomplish when it's hard to figure out how you do both.
Reed:Yeah. Good. Good. So do you put a value judgment on these purposes, like good and bad?
Derek:No. There's there's that, but I think those are, you know, good versus evil in its sort of purest form is an easy decision. Mhmm. But, you know, I I'll share this story because I think it illustrates it well. It's been shared two or three times so far and that's my daughter's comment to me when she was a young university student.
Derek:And she said, know dad I was thinking that looking back at my childhood that your job as a parent was to make sure that I was happy. And I didn't think you did that good of a job. But
Reed:I always get a kick out of that.
Derek:Now now that I'm older and I'm thinking about it, I realized what you're trying to do is help me to be happy as an adult. And so there's your purpose x and your purpose y. Happy child, happy adult.
Reed:And Sometimes they are difficult to reconcile.
Derek:And so when in the moment, you can't do both. If you're trying to provide some discipline or long term thinking to a child who wants, you know, his or her own way, they're they're opposing. But they're really complementary because the best way to become a solid person is to both have that sense of joy and acceptance as a child and also learn how to do hard things.
Reed:So, Derek, are you teaching people to look in the long run? Or is that even am I misinterpreting you?
Derek:You know, that's a really good way to characterize purpose x and purpose y for you know, in a lot of situations is how do we like, you know and and I I think we'll get to this in a future episode. You know, what does a business do in a downturn or, you know, a crazy thing like a pandemic when
Reed:Oh, those never happened.
Derek:Those you know, they didn't used to. I don't know.
Reed:That's right.
Derek:But how do we survive in the short term and then flourish in the long term? And in fact, that's a that's a fundamental trade off that not just organizations, but also people have is what's what's gonna be good for me right now and what's gonna be good for me in in the future. Like, for example, you know, one example, you're 25 years old and you have, you know, and you have a, you know, reasonably paying low skilled job and you have to decide if, you know, that's your future for the next thirty years or are you gonna stop and go back to school? And, you know, that may include debt and stress and, you know, leaving the gang of friends that you have at work, for something far better. Those aren't easy decisions.
Derek:No. And just because it's a good decision once doesn't necessarily mean that same person should then get their master's degree and then their PhD and, you know, at at some point, there's preparing for the future. In other point points, there's, you know, living your life.
Reed:Right.
Derek:And so there's that that kind of dynamic tension that happens, all the time.
Reed:Okay. So we've got our purpose x and we've got our purpose y, and we're on a quest. Is it always a noble quest?
Derek:Well, you know, and and that's one thing that I I've thought of, and we may get to it when we talk about leadership in the future is I hope that these principles are used for good.
Reed:Well, I wouldn't want to misuse them, but I understand what you're saying. Let's just boil it down here. Frodo is sent on a quest to rid the world of the precious ring. It can only be done at one place. It's far away.
Reed:It's difficult to get to, but Frodo commits to the quest. Now Sauron, our villain, our his quest is to what? Take over the world, take over the make everybody bend to his will. Is it because he wants the power, or is it because everybody needs a leader and he's sick and tired of us looking for them? I don't know whether what I my question is I don't know whether he would consider his quest noble or not.
Reed:I'm sure he does or did.
Derek:So I you know, actually, Reid, I gave this some thought recently, and I won't go into everything that I thought because I don't wanna distract from from what essential dynamics is. But I would just say that I believe that there is such thing as good and evil. And I'm not interested in trying to understand evil. In fact, you know, for the most part, I feel kinda good about myself because I don't understand. Like, don't understand the will to dominate other people.
Derek:I don't understand why anyone would want to exploit someone else, or I don't understand why someone would just do stuff and not care about the impact. So I I don't understand that stuff, but I don't wanna kinda pursue that. So essential dynamics to my mind is about the noble quest. And the Okay. The principles maybe could be, you know, misused in other ways.
Derek:But in my mind, you think of the whole of it, it would never be about manipulating people. It would never be about just accomplishing what you want. Alright. And so and so maybe maybe that's something that we can dig into a little bit as we look at the other elements of essential dynamics. I don't know.
Derek:Where do you wanna go?
Reed:As a as a dramatist, as somebody who deals with yin and yang in trying to find out who people are in on stage or on film, I feel like the understanding of why people choose evil is fascinating and well, I can see where your your advantage is in not understanding it. But and I'm not claiming that I understand evil either. I've never been a very good I've never been very good at it. But I I do think that's that's something worth exploring, just trying to understand your opponent and coming to some some understanding of why people act the way they do, I think, is essential dynamics as well. Now I don't wanna I don't wanna go into that now.
Reed:We'll go into that another time. But but, Derek, I do want to know about constraints and the minutiae of of doing of applying essential dynamics every day.
Derek:So we talked about purpose. And so the other two elements are the people and the path. So path is where we encounter the constraints. So path is the movement. It's the it's the processing or the system or the the the activities that people do to accomplish the purpose.
Derek:And so constraints, first of all, can only be understood if you understand what the purpose is. Because constraints by definition are things that keep you from accomplishing the purpose. And the theory of constraints, which we've talked about, suggests that in any complex system, at any point in time, there's only one real limiting factor that makes a difference in terms of how you advance on on on your path. And so we've used some manufacturing analogies and hiking and
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:Even buffet lines to illustrate that if you fix any part that's not the constraint, you don't get more production. You only get more production when you deal with the constraint, and that's why complex things can be viewed more simply. So the flip side of that is the idea of drivers, which are those things which naturally take you towards your goal. Oh. And so if
Reed:you That's a good thought.
Derek:That's a big So if you define a purpose and then, you know, you can understand and deal with whatever constraints are in place, there's a lot of work that's been done in those areas in, you know, many fields of business and I think it's all fantastic. When you apply it to life and actually in business, I think there's another dimension which I'm interested in exploring and that is, well, what's moving us forward anyway? So you can use the example, it certainly has happened to me many times in my life where I could focus on the things that are holding me back from accomplishing something that I I want to accomplish or maybe should should be accomplishing. But when I finally tap into my sense of purpose, when I line up what what I want with what I think I want, and you turn it into something that's just run on pure motivation, then the whole constraints thing sort of takes a a backseat sometimes. You know?
Derek:And so we'll talk about let's talk about a student.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:You know, I I I was you guys probably remember I was a good student in school in terms of, you know, I got I got math and science, and I got good marks. But my struggle has always been that I will work really hard to learn about something that I'm interested in and be terrible at learning something that I'm not interested in.
Reed:Well, isn't that true of all of us?
Derek:Well, you know, I think that there's a lot of people that have way more discipline than I do. So if you're working with a let's say you got a grade nine student and, you know, I've had four kids who were in grade nine at one point.
Reed:Were in grade nine at one point?
Derek:No. I didn't no. At each each in a separate point. I don't have quadruplets. You know, they're starting to figure out that they, you know, they have some control over what they do.
Derek:Mhmm. And you could, you know, find someone whose attention is slipping and marks are slipping. You know, the output of their work is, you know, clearly not their best. And you could spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the constraints are. And you could say, well, like, let's get them a place to study that's got less distraction.
Derek:And they need new glasses. And, you know, there's a bunch of stuff that you can do to eliminate the barriers.
Reed:Yes.
Derek:But where you really make a difference when it when it really changes is when the student says, I want to excel in this because it's important to me.
Reed:Yeah. It really is self motivated, isn't it?
Derek:And and there's no, yeah, sort of analysis and consulting and, you know, problem solving that's gonna replace a motivated school kid.
Reed:Yeah. That's true.
Derek:But I think that's I think that's the case for for a lot of things. And in our complex society problems, it'd be great if we could get to spend more time on the drivers and and maybe less on the constraints.
Reed:Okay. Okay. So is there anything else about Accenture Dynamics that has brought us to this point where we're going to explore it and put it in put it into practice here that you want to say or emphasize before we move on?
Derek:Yeah. Sure. There's there's one the other thing is the people side. And, of course, the last several episodes, if people are listening in order, were all about the people side of people, path, and purpose. So I don't have to necessarily go through a lot of it, only to say that the people are separate from the process.
Derek:They're separate from the purpose. And the dynamic tension on the people side is between people as individuals and people belonging to a group. And there's and that's manifested in a few different ways, which I don't think I've fully understood. But one of them is that we all want to be our own person, and we wanna be part of the group. From the organization's point of view, we want a % compliance Yeah.
Derek:With, you know, our systems and policies and objectives, and we want people to bring their heart and soul and all their creativity. And I think there's a, you know, there's not there's a natural tension there. Yeah. And then the other thing we talked about is the idea that there's a relationship that we have with the groups that we're involved in that's separate from the relationship we have with the individuals in the group. So, you know, Brynn popped in in one of our conversations, and, you we're talking about sports teams and how there's a sort of locker room culture that, you know, pervades in the locker room even as the players come and go over the years.
Derek:And we also talked about the this idea that, you know, a country is really just, know, the people's ideas about how they want to be governed together. And and that we can be loyal to our country without, you know, even agreeing with our leaders.
Reed:Yeah. Yeah.
Derek:You know? And then the other the other example that I gave is, and this has been helpful for me even even recently, is in a marriage relationship, you know, you shouldn't conduct yourself based on how you interpret your partner's actions and reactions. First of all, your interpretation's always messed up. But second, you know, both people aren't necessarily always always at their best. And so if you hold yourself to a standard that this is a this marriage is the thing we're creating that's kind of bigger than each of us, then that gets, you know, the best out of both of us and it kind of is based on the best of the both of us and not best on either averaging or or the worst of us, which is you do see in some relationships Yeah.
Derek:As well. And, you know, I I'd love to see some of these concepts more at play in the in the political and political discourse that we have now because I think we've got a system set up that brings out, you know, sort of the the worst in us all the time when people's aspirations are really far higher than that on, you know, on all sides of any particular issue.
Reed:Derek, that's we've touched on many things that we're going to have to explore in greater depth in future episodes. But I think as far as looking at where we've been and how we got here, I think that's pretty complete. So I'm going to say I think that's a that's a wrap. Is there anything else you'd like to say?
Derek:Yeah. I think I think what I would say is, you know, if I if I kinda cap this off with why talk about these things this way. And I would say I would say that it's really easy for us to get bogged down either in the extremes of issues or the fatigue and challenges of just the, you know, the everyday grind.
Reed:Right.
Derek:And if we can step back and get a a better sense of purpose, a more real more realistic appreciation that, yeah, there are gonna be challenges, but ability to put that in context to talk about the challenges and the opportunities in a constructive way. And then what I found is as I apply this model to situation after situation, then I get better at it. And so as different things come flying at me, I just feel like I'm a little bit more confident in being able to take a look at a tricky situation and make sense of it fairly quickly, probably not to solve all the deepest problems, but to get confidence that we can get a good start on something and maybe even think about it in a way that hasn't been thought of before, which is gonna get us to a better place faster. So that's why I'm excited about it, and I hope that we can keep these conversations going.
Reed:Oh, I think so. Derek, you've given a lot to think about. I'm going to be thinking for quite a while until until my brain dies. Derek, how can they reach you? How can people reach you who are listening to this podcast have other questions for you?
Derek:So it's easy to find me. It's derek hudson dot c a, and there's, some links there, including how to get ahold of me. And I would be really interested in what people have to say about what we've been talking about.
Reed:Great. Well, for Derek Hudson and Decentral Dynamics, I'm Reed McCollum. Our engineer is Bryn Griffiths. And until next time, consider your quest.