[00:00:00] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We, not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.

[00:00:12] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Dan Hammond, you're back. You went to quite an exotic location for the last week.

[00:00:20] Dan: I did Indeed. Yes, we, um, we decided to have a little bit of an adventure. Actually we haven't had one for a long time because of Covid, and our younger daughter had been in Jordan. And so yeah, we skipped off to Jordan for five, six days and then met up with our daughters in Beirut of all places.

[00:00:38] And I know, I dunno if this is the same for everyone, but that is a name that we were raised on really in a negative way, just always hearing about. Problems in Beirut with the Civil War starting in 75 and stuff. But it was amazing to revisit this city with this glorious past. 

[00:00:56] Pia: When you live as long as we have and you have that long history, yeah. Some of those places were just like in absolute no-nos. And you know, you and I read a stack of biographies, autobiographies of people who'd been captured and taken hostage, so it wasn't, I wouldn't, when you told me you were going there, you know, it was sort of, it wasn't, it wasn't the top of the, of the holiday list, but I'm, but it sounds like it was, it was amazing. 

[00:01:20] Dan: It was amazing. Jordan is a just stunning country. Um, really friendly people. And, and, and amazing and not a big country, but also fascinating I think cuz it sits there between, you know, we, we went and sat, we looked over this over Syria at one point, the Golan Heights and you know, you got Syria, saudi Arabia, um, Egypt and Israel, all bordering. So it's, they're in a tricky spot, but still the.

[00:01:45] The, the thing that we, not me point, I would say is that the, the kingdom of Jordan is determined to play its part in promoting what, they'd see as as what Islam should be, peaceful, inclusive. And, uh, they play an active role in that in the Middle East, but the, the, the practical thing they do is they have, actually, I don't know the numbers, hundreds of thousands of refugees coming across the border from Syria. So they are, they're really being impacted economically by the fact that they ha they sustain this, uh, huge refugee population, but they really, really play their part.

[00:02:22] it's particularly impressive when Britain is, gets very. Uppity about, um, small, really reasonably small numbers coming across the channel in boats to see

[00:02:30] Pia: not as Z as Australia does.

[00:02:32] Dan: mu Yeah, true, but much poorer country is actually doing to support these people. It's, it's really, really admirable. And I think it's, yeah, it's just, it's a, it's very, we not me, um, sort of country. They, they consciously do their bit for the, for the broader, uh, world, which is, which is great.

[00:02:48] And, um, trying to attempt a re incredibly nifty segue. You're right. When we were there, Juliet was reading, an evil cradling by Brian Keenan, who was one of these, um, hostages, which is, I, I dunno why she chose to do that while

[00:03:01] Pia: that's, that's a laugh a minute, that book.

[00:03:04] Dan: Yeah, it, it's a giggle a minute, but she, um, but Juliet is our Guest today, so, um, we're going to now have her on every season to talk about some data, um, from the Squadify data set, which will shed light for people on, yeah, how teams are today, and then we'll talk at the back of the show about some things that people can do about it.

[00:03:23] So it's a new regular spot. Juliet passed muster when we met her in the pub a couple of seasons ago. So, um, let's go over and hear from Juliet now. 

[00:03:31] Pia: And what a treat to have you back. Juliet, welcome

[00:03:39] Juliet: Thank you so much. Thank you. Glad to be here.

[00:03:42] Pia: Yeah, it's, well this is, um, I think this is a really great regular spot because you are our business analyst at Squadify and you have this incredible brain to analyze the data of nearly 2 million data points I think we've got now. So it's pretty large. And so we're sort of seeing some interesting insights, prompts, narratives coming out of the data. So we're gonna, we're gonna ply you for that.

[00:04:09] Before we start, and I do want to, I think there'll be many listeners who won't know the very special relationship you have with the card giver next to you. Um, but first we need to, to put you through the rites of passage that everybody who comes on We Not Me podcast, the conversation starter cards. 

[00:04:29] Juliet: Excellent. Okay. 

[00:04:30] Dan: Very good. I, I'm, look, we met at a pub last time to record this. This 

[00:04:34] is a nice, peaceful audio environment This time, rather than all that banging outta the coffee pucks that we had last time going on. Name, that name, that bar sound. Okay. So here is a car which I've chosen at random. When I was growing up, I wanted to be.

[00:04:53] Juliet: Oh, well I have, that's a very easy one. I wanted to be a hairdresser. So badly wanted to be a hairdresser. I spent. Hours and hours and hours sitting on the back of the sofa, brushing my mum's hair, brushing it, doing it in various different plats and all kinds of styles. She has long, long hair. She's always had long hair, which she ties in a bun every day. And I used to just, it was like a playground for me and I'd still really like to, I cut my children's hair and I still have pretensions now. It might be a retirement job.

[00:05:25] Pia: And so what, at what moment did you realize you were not going down the hairdressing route?

[00:05:31] Juliet: I think probably as a, as a smart girl in the, you know, growing up in the seventies, I was directed elsewhere.

[00:05:39] Pia: Yeah. Well, I think you need to come back to your passion, I think.

[00:05:41] Juliet: Oh my goodness. Yes. It's still there.

[00:05:44] Pia: It's still there. Well, and, and who better to practice on than your husband, who's, right next to you? D that ever happen? D did that happen in lockdown? 

[00:05:53] Didn't get 

[00:05:54] Juliet: No, I drew the line there. Well, I did help a little bit, but mostly he's a self-serve hair clipper. But I do cut my girl's hair, both of them, and they've been through some interesting styles over the years.

[00:06:05] Dan: And actually I, I just, before we went away recently, I cut my hair and it was the first time it actually went wrong. So, um, I spent the hold of my holiday with just terrible hair basically. 

[00:06:18] So, and there was nothing Juliet, the aspiring hairdresser could do about it. Um, yeah. So that's, um, I'm gonna go to professional next, I think. I

[00:06:26] Pia: and it's not as, like you got long locks there, so that, that was actually quite, quite, an impressive job to stuff it up actually.

[00:06:32] Dan: It was, yeah, it's, it was, it was, yeah. It takes special skills to stuff it up.

[00:06:38] Pia: to hack hair is actually less than a centimeter long. That's, that is impressive. So, Juliet, so for, for benefit of, of new listeners who, dunno that you, who you are and your role, and just tell us a ,yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself, just to give us a bit of background.

[00:06:55] Juliet: All right, a little potted history. I started out as an economist actually, and I, I'm still really fascinated by economics and love it. Um, but then I moved, uh, went and did an MBA, worked in strategy consulting for quite a while. And then when the kids were little, I went back to university and studied psychology. And somehow the combination of economics and psychology or strategy consulting, it, it led me to leadership. It just sort of seemed like it combined those two things.

[00:07:24] So, uh, for the last 10 years I've worked in various different roles in leadership, but increasingly my, I. Sort of area of, of specialism, I guess, has been on the, on the data side and looking at impact of, you know, outcomes of training and, uh, different kinds of interventions on the people and the businesses that we work with. Um, and then more recently with Squadify in getting stuck into the magnificent data set that we have building, um, to try to help us to inform teams about, uh, what's going on out there, what are, what, what, what teams are doing well, what they're struggling with, and how we can help them to learn from one another.

[00:08:08] Pia: And you know, we, we verified the whole. Question set with London School of Economics. So, you know, we had, we had that as a, a verified. And that has given us this opportunity of all these data points for someone with your brain. Uh, and I've looked at some, I don't even understand the software, so, uh, you know, there's no way you're gonna give that job to me.

[00:08:31] And, but it, but it. It's interesting because what we do in the business is we test out hunches, don't we? So I'm at, I'm often at the coalface doing lots of debriefs and then we're, we come back as a team and test out hunches and then look into that big data set. Um, and that's really actually how, how this, how this whole clarity gap began. It was a bit of a hunch.

[00:08:54] Juliet: It really was. And it's, and and it's such a great cycle, isn't it, to constantly be hearing from our clients, observing them, and then going back and digging into the data and really looking to see if those hypotheses really do play out. And as you say, this hypothesis you had that, you know, going through Covid, the last two, three years have just been so disruptive for businesses, not just at that sort of, the obvious level of the health scare, making people concerned and anxious and, and, and raising uncertainty. But then at the next level, which was we had this massive move to working from home for a lot of people that we work with, people who work in offices.

[00:09:38] And so there's an a layer of uncertainty and then there's a layer of disconnection. And looking at the two of them, we wanted to really dig into what has that meant for teams? What has that done for their, in particular, for their clarity?

[00:09:52] Dan: So what do the data say?

[00:09:53] Juliet: All righty. So it was really interesting. We looked at clarity scores over the last three years, so up to the end of 2022. So through the, uh, pandemic period. And what we found was that 21 versus 2020, uh, scores for both importance and presence dropped. So just to be clear, the way the Squadify works is we ask teams to rate a set of conditions for the importance to them as a team to get their job done, and then the presence in the team right now.

[00:10:24] And so what we saw is that from 2020 to 21, both of those measures fell. Clarity fell. So the importance of it fell and the presence of it fell. And I, and I think what we concluded is that people were really just getting stuck into survival mode. It was really just about, you know, getting on with keeping the team busy, keeping work going, actually just moving forward, uh, as best they could.

[00:10:49] What's been really interesting is that coming out of the pandemic 22 versus 21, what we've seen is that the importance of clarity has gone up dramatically higher than it was pre pandemic. So people are really seeing, okay, I really need to understand better where we're going, what we're doing, and why. But the present scores have, have flatlined. So the gap has grown dramatically, and so we're seeing this clarity gap that people need clarity, and yet they don't have it.

[00:11:20] Pia: that's fascinating, isn't it? So, so let, maybe let's try and, try and understand what's been going on at the coalface. So what are you seeing, Dan, in the teams that you are working with? Is does this relate in? Last year and I, and I suspect going through to this year?

[00:11:38] Dan: Yeah. Uh, I, I, I felt this, this was. When I saw this simple little char with two, two little lines on, it just explained so much to me. Um, having seen teams last year who, well, I think we've talked about before, I think there was a lot of talk about where we work, not how we work. And, and there was a, and I could really sense that, sort of really weird inattention to actually, the task in hand, I, I think if I look back.

[00:12:07] But coming, moving through into the, the following year, there has been a shift. And not a positive one in a way, but you feel this sort of, yeah. You feel that lack of clarity. I've seen teams just, um, particularly well, a lot of teams working remotely, which can be very powerful, but they're doing it in a way that is leaving people quite individualized and they've lost that cohesiveness of a shared goal, a really clear plan. And, and you're seeing people getting very in sort of just focusing on individual tasks, and, and actually getting a little bit lost, really. That's, that's what I would say. I'd see, and I think that's what happens. And then you sp you then start, see, when you ask some questions about team goals, team plans, they start to realize, actually this is something I really want. And I think that's why that importance has gone up.

[00:13:01] But the, but I'm, I'm, I'm also not seeing, not seeing a lot of good work being done on actually getting clarity in this complex and ambiguous time.

[00:13:13] Pia: Where were the biggest drops, Juliet, where, where are we seeing that in, in these present scores?

[00:13:18] Juliet: it's, that's such an interesting question, Pia. If we dig into the numbers, what we see is that, you know, most of the conditions inside clarity are dropping. But two, two stand out as holding, holding their own and rising just a little bit. And they are belief in what we are doing and the goal is achievable.

[00:13:36] So in terms of kind of purpose, um, it feels like the purpose side of clarity is really holding strong. And so maybe that's been because a lot of these teams when they've been dispersed, have, have tried to hold each other together and, and keep the motivation alive by sharing that kind of why we are here.

[00:13:56] But the two conditions that have dropped most dramatically are clear plan and measures of success. So it's in that granular level of defining your, your clarity and really defining your outcomes that we're seeing that real drop off in, in shared clarity.

[00:14:16] Pia: Uh, I think that echoes with what I, what I've . It's a little bit like an energy thing, and an energy and a focus because there's so much going on and there is a lot of complexity and ambiguity to manage. It's how much energy and and effort can we put. Into really defining clarity. And the thing about clarity is it looks really simple on a superficial basis, but that's it. It, it is actually the discipline to go to the next level, which is where that granular piece happens. It it, otherwise we have. A nice superficial direction, which may actually look the very same directions most other organizations, whereas really the defining piece often happens in that plan, happens in which happens with, I think, determining the strategic priorities, and then the metrics and measures that, that sit under there.

[00:15:08] And certainly the organizations where, I've worked with the teams that I've worked with that have gone that extra mile to really define those metrics and measures are really starting to accelerate because that, that's what they're tracking and that's what unites actually is a point of unity for the, for the whole team.

[00:15:30] Juliet: I agree. And I think what we've seen more broadly across the Squadify data set for years has been much higher scores for presence of clear goal. And then as we drill down into priorities, into planning, into more execution based items, the, the, the, the scores drop off. So there's a danger that you feel like you have a shared goal and everybody says exactly as you said, Pia, at that top level. We all know where we're going, but that's really quite generic and you could almost be in any organization. We wanna grow sales, we wanna be more innovative, we wanna, whatever. But actually it's that granular level that really demonstrates that you all agree, you all have that same vision. Otherwise everybody can define that vision slightly differently and be heading in different directions. And before you know it, you are, you are diverging quite considerably.

[00:16:26] Dan: Yeah. And if, if you, I think you're a hundred percent right, and if you look at the context that most teams are operating in, you know, you can either say it's a vuca inviting, a volatile, uncertain, chaotic, ambiguous, or you, you know, or complex as you sort of, that David, the David Snowden model says, um, which is, What is that? Well, that is where we don't really know. We've never seen the situation before. We don't know how the system will react to our own actions. Um, you know, and so everything is changing rapidly and it's quite un um, people can become untethered in that situation.

[00:17:03] And in that situation, what you absolutely need are these short term goals and constant experimentation, trying, probing, and, and assessing. But that piece, as you say, Juliet, that's I think probably always been missing in a lot of teams where that sort of short term focus is missing, you cannot, you can probably survive.

[00:17:26] You know, when I was. Back in the day in the corporate world, we had annual plans and if I was lucky, I'd get a mid-year review. You know, we literally planned for a year and I was held to those objectives. That is laughable now. Everything's changing so rapidly that you have to have much shorter time, shorter time horizons, and, and also a culture of reflection to actually think about those actions, but at least having those short-term priorities that everyone is aligned to is, is essential, and we are not, it's not a muscle that teams really have and, and I think it's undoing us at the moment.

[00:18:01] Juliet: Yes, I think that's right. And that gap has opened up. So it was always there, but it's extended even further through Covid and the disruption to teams. And maybe their focus has been more on, uh, Wellbeing. I mean, there was a lot of attention to wellbeing and taking care of people, rightly so, rightly so, during Covid. But I think we need to now reevaluate potentially and come back to, okay, everybody's fine. This is a new way of working. We're, you know, we, if we are dispersed and we're gonna continue this, how do we make sure that we continue to create that shared clarity? There's, you know, LSE defined it as those shared mental models so that everybody sees it the same way, so everybody is pointing in the same direction.

[00:18:45] And I think that would also help, Pia, you mentioned prioritizing. I think that would really help people to prioritize because I, there's always too many things to do, and that real granularity around clarity will help people to prioritize. Otherwise, everything seems important. And that's when we get burnout.

[00:19:04] Pia: I agree. And I think there's a danger here that we use the fact that we're working in hybrid to not double down on this clarity. It's a little bit like we're too busy, there's always an excuse. We've got covid, we're, we're now hybrid. We've now got economic instability and you know, I dunno, well, there'll be something else next week. There just will. That is, you talked about vuca, that that is, and it's literally about, it's a leadership moment of going, we need to focus on this and we need to take the needle off the record of what's going round and actually re-plan and just double check.

[00:19:45] And I think that, I think that, um, teams and leaders get stopped because they can't bring people together. And they gotta overcome that. You can do this really efficiently, and we'll talk a bit more at the end of this about how to do this, but being co-located, it's, it's not a good enough reason not to be doing this. You have to, you have to overcome that and great if you can be together, you make the most of that, but it's not an event. It's how do you ensure that you've got clarity and you're able to see that what you are doing on your day-to-day task is having a, having an dramatic impact on the longer term goal. I think that's, it's gotta become a well used muscle and it's gotta become a different way of operating.

[00:20:33] Dan: Just speaking up your point as well, just to add to that, I think people have been really sort of thinking about wellbeing, and that's really good, and the awareness of mental health in the workplace is obviously incredibly positive. But I think team leaders need to challenge themselves as well to realize that people without direction that, that, that, you know, it's not, this is not just sort of in our language, a climate thing, making things nice. For mental wellbeing, you need direction and clarity. This is a really important part of that, to know what you're doing, know what's expected of you, that's part of your safety in a team.

[00:21:08] So it's a mistake I think to sort of take your foot off the executional gas, if you like, or the clarity gas to say, let's just all look, all look after each other now. No, actually this is part of it. You have to have that and, and, and um, and make sure the clarity is there cuz it's an aspect of your, your wellbeing in this team and how happy people are.

[00:21:28] I've definitely seen people feeling quite lost and demotivated and unhappy in teams because they dunno what they're doing and a bit of clarity would really, would really help them. We know from the fear of motivation that it would.

[00:21:42] Juliet: And seeing that those purpose scores are holding steady, the positive out of that care has been that there seems to be an, an increase in that sort of shared purpose. And so that's, that's something that they can harness, right? People are enthusiastic and excited to be working together. Um, and so that's something to harness. And then as you say, give them the, the real clarity, that means they feel confident that what they're doing is gonna be useful, right? Because if you don't know what's expected of you, then you flounder and, and that's, that hits your motivation dramatically.

[00:22:17] Pia: And sometimes we, um, we personalized. We personalize aspects of teamwork. And what I mean by that is it's about whether people are introverts, extroverts, the way that their dynamics are, and sort of take a slightly different approach that. If you don't get clarity right, your work, you have no foundation, cuz you want to embrace diversity and you want to have a broad team and you want a whole mix of personalities. But if you don't have a unifying direction, And you haven't set that, it's almost, it's going to be incredibly difficult to harness the potential of the team.

[00:22:58] It just, I, I have, I haven't seen a team that has been in, you know, in, in, in these three intense years of working with these thousands of teams. I have not seen a team that has been incredibly successful without clarity, And it's getting harder and harder. So we, we need to 

[00:23:17] dig 

[00:23:18] Dan: just, 

[00:23:19] Pia: deeper on that,

[00:23:20] Dan: Yeah, it's gonna be a bit of, a bit of luck, isn't it? If you don't have clarity about what you're trying to achieve and then you achieve it. Um, it's sort of, it's a, it's a real shot. But, uh, yeah. So this is such an exciting topic, and I think you are right, Pia, we'll talk about this in the tail of the show.

[00:23:36] But there's always, I think, been a danger of shying away because of the difficulty to predict the future. You don't need to predict the future to have clarity. There's now an even greater one because we are not co-located. And so it's really di if I could have an offsite, we could do a strategic sort of review, et cetera. I think there, there are a couple of walls that, uh, team leaders need to take down, um, in order to improve life for themselves and their, and their teams and organizations.

[00:24:02] So Julie, looking more broadly beyond the Squadify] data set, what does the research tell us about the impact of clarity? 

[00:24:09] Juliet: Well, it's interesting. There's a couple of theories that really spring to mind that are particularly related to this. The first is the Locke and Latham goal attainment theory. Um, which basically says that people, you know, feel happier and perform better on their tasks when they have clarity and challenge, commitment feedback, and a degree of complexity. But the first one really I wanted to focus on is clarity. They really need to know what they're doing in order to perform well in a task. It seems obvious, but you know, there is research to show that that's. That that's important.

[00:24:43] And the other is, um, Gallup. So Gallup did a huge piece of research, um, about a decade ago and came up with 12 factors that drive engagement and productivity. And the first of those was having an understanding of the expectations of you, um, in your job. And so I think that, you know, that talks to not just the performance, but actually engagement. And so actually, if you understand what people want of view, you're gonna be more engaged and more. Positive about your work. And obviously we know that that then drives productivity and performance.

[00:25:15] So there's plenty of theory to back up our, um, our observations and our hypotheses that this degree of granular clarity is really important for people in order to be happy and productive in their work.

[00:25:31] Dan: Excellent. I do remember from data from before that, this point you've made about the sort of bigger picture, sort of possibly more fluffy, important sort of per purpose end, that that sort of seems to be reason well enforced, but as you sort of get down to the sharp end of the clarity pencil, um, down into those short term priorities, measures for success, things overall start to get less rosy in teams. And I think that's, um, we're seeing that picture again here, and that's just a huge opportunity for teams and team leaders today.

[00:26:05] Juliet: Agree. 

[00:26:05] Dan: Excellent. Excellent. I thought I had that, had that right. Brilliant. Well, Julia, thank you so much for joining us, um, on the show. Again, we'll, we'll get you back in, uh, season seven, um, with another new more so, but I think clarity is the order of the day and we'll wrap the show with a few practical ideas of what team leaders can do to really sharpen that pencil.

[00:26:27] Juliet: Great. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. 

[00:26:29] Pia: I find working with a number of teams that they may have a, a clear purpose and that, I think that's actually often the easiest part to define. It's where the heart lies, why people get out of bed and what they do. And I think, I think people are, are more connected to that. And then there can be a notional goal, but quite often that's commercially driven for many organizations, and then we drop straight down into KPIs. And so you've got that sense of the individual is tied to the organization through their contribution and is somehow monitored by the manager in a notional team that isn't really a team, and it's not coming together to achieve that outcome. They're a group of individuals. 

[00:27:18] And so that's my observation, which, when the teams that we work with realize that they can, they can shift their thinking, look at the interdependencies, but also make really conscious choices about where they spend their prioritized focus. And that's the strategic priorities.

[00:27:38] And I think they, they're undercooked. And when you're working with the team and you're able to create what, what we call clarity, that Squadify clarity on a page, your, your why, your what, and your how of your behaviors as well, and then a clear metrics. It's actually quite freeing because then the team has a map. They've got a map, and this is where we're going and a bit of a North star, but it's more holistic.

[00:28:04] Dan: Completely, completely. And I think that in a way I sort of, this is in our work over the last few years, I've really started to see this as like sort of stitches. Can you stitch everyone together with the same purpose, with the same vision? Can you stitch people together with strategic priorities that are shared across the team? And can you stitch 'em together through their own roles and their interdependencies? It's sort of just those four things. Keep people together.

[00:28:27] And to your point about freeing, I remind this, this conversation really reminded me of a CEO, quite a while ago said to me, I've, I've realized that organization only joins at me. I'm the first place the organization joined, I think is what he said. And you think, yeah, that's right, because your top team is verticalized. And it, and it's quite horrific. But I, and I was talking to a team leader recently who was feeling the weight on their shoulders of, I'm the one who has to coordinate everything. And they're doing this one-to-one sort of hub and spoke thing. And having to coordinate.

[00:29:01] So this is also for the team leader or you know, senior leader, a way to share that responsibility of actually bringing the organization or the function or whatever together, one level below them if you like. So they don't have to do all that. They're just not doing, being the relay station to try to hold things together.

[00:29:21] Pia: it's a great question that we're gonna be adding in the Squadify team tracker is asking, what are the interdependencies of the team? Because we haven't asked that. And I think that really does promote a different type of conversation about, oh, and you, I need, I need to rely on you, and this comes from here and this is where the handoff is. And I think that could, that would be really powerful.

[00:29:38] Dan: because we, we've learned, haven't we, through observa, we, we sort of assume that would be obvious, but I think we've learned that team after team we go into, we find out, oh, it's not a team. It's not a team, it's just a group of individuals, and it's, it's a, I think we would say, wouldn't we, that it's the primary challenge we're seeing in teams now is that they're not one.

[00:29:57] Pia: And, and that's not to be taken by anyone that's listening to this as a success or failure or sort of like, oh look, they're not a team. It's just quite enlightening because you, you have that sort of definition of insanity that you keep doing the same thing, but you're not quite getting to where you want to be getting to. And then when you actually do have that realization that you are operating more as independent individuals, that happen to work in the same group rather than all the ways of interacting and those interdependencies in the communication, suddenly, I mean, you, you can getting a potentially a 20% uplift in performance. And that's been proven now by research that's coming out of the UK.

[00:30:42] Dan: So Pia, what would you say to someone who challenges this idea and says things are changing too fast? You know, clarity's dead. We, we, we can't, we can't do those things, so, dunno what the world's gonna do next. It's all too mad. What, what's, um, what's the response to that?

[00:30:59] Pia: my response to that is, yes, part of that is true. You know, I think when we started consulting, back in the dark ages, um, It was quite normal for a vision to last five to 10 years, and I've seen that par back, come back and, and so where, so we're still, where we're in danger now is say that a vision is a, is a one year plan and it's not a vision That's a one year plan. And so I think we do need to stop being busy and on the hamster wheel because externally things may have changed. And there is a period of reflection and there is, I think, an importance of having individuals meaningful work tied to an North Star, an audacious vision. That's exciting, and I think we need to make things challenging and exciting and worthwhile and valuable and motivating, and not just completing to-do lists. 

[00:31:57] Dan: I think that's a great response. And I think the thing I've learned, as well, through that time, you know, as you say, when I was back in the corporate world, these one year plans were so solid and you'd sort of set them and then you'd be assessed on them and paid against them at the end of the year. And even when I was there, there's even in the early two thousands, people were starting to say, hold on a second. That's, I'd go through under the, my direct reports. Oh, that's, that changed. We changed our plan on that. So you were bending it like Beckham a little bit even then. But now I would say these goals for me, these, this clarity on a page needs to be really important and inspirational and held, but also held lightly, because it might change. But if it does change, I think that's a question of saying, okay, actually we're not doing that anymore. Now we're going to aim for this, um, which is slightly different, but to have clarity at any time is important, I think. So we, we used to sort of say, oh, this never changes, but actually you need to potentially flex. But at any one time people should know what we're shooting for. But it's a bit lo, a little bit more live than it used to be, I think.

[00:33:04] Pia: Agree, and, and there is a, there is a particular moment, a lot of ambiguity, so you're trying to seek what that clarity may be and, and what is an unde, undeniable. You can overwhelm yourself, and almost catastrophize the situation and not bother trying to find a goal. I mean, that's, that's just a natural human relation. So I think, I think it is worth going, actually, we still sell shoes, we still sell technology we're still trying to, to make a difference by doing this service and doing that. That's it. And therefore, for the moment, this is where we're going to focus on.

[00:33:39] And I think, you know, you and I have talked about that before. That's Agile methodology is really important here because that enables you to have that/ flexibility and to be able to make this bite size. What/ are we gonna be doing, you know, in this sprint, this month, focusing on this part, and how do we adjust so the micro adjustments rather than completely sailing down the wrong route for a long period of time.

[00:34:03] Dan: Yeah. I sort of feel like there's in, in our world where we use this approach, I know what our purpose is and what our three year vision is. I can see that out there. And also then I know exactly what to I'm doing this month and this week. You know, I, those sort of in between, I really don't know yet what that journey is, but I can see the summit and the star, if you like, and I know what my steps are today, you know, what this next little bit of snow holds for me on the, on the mountain and, and that that really works, I think for me, those two, it's quite binary, but I don't really know what's gonna happen in six months time, um, towards that because we, we are learning as we go.

[00:34:48] Pia: And, and what happens is the, there is an emotional, psychological response to continuing pressure and overwhelm and chaos, and that's when we sometimes then become incredibly transactional and just focus on the things that are there. And we don't try and raise our sights and see what the context is of change, and then we don't become innovative. And if we're not talking together collectively, we then became feel quite isolated and it becomes almost fearful and, and a degree of anxiety.

[00:35:17] So I think this is really important. Whatever your situation's in, I, I would just advocate to get that plan on the page, to get people together to be able to look at that. And I think we should put a little link to where you can find that with us, because I, I, I, we, we are seeing some pretty amazing results from people, from organizations and teams that are applying this. And it simplifies the complexity that's going on.

[00:35:44] Dan: Absolutely. I think that, uh, yeah, the Claraton page piece will leave something in the show notes for that and, and also just working out, just really getting these time boxes in place so everyone knows what to do now. And also to your point about overwhelm, knowing what they're not doing.

[00:36:00] I was, I was working with the team yesterday and they had a massive kanban with so many live cards. You know, one of them being, you know, deliver an exhibition in the autumn or something, and knowing that they could just split that down, push most of it into backlog and just do one little thing. It just, you could feel in the room, it just relieved the stress. So, so knowing what you're not doing is, is really part of it as well. So, um, yeah, that's, uh, that's the sort of micro clarity I was talking about, the sort of now, but it does mean what, what am I not doing now is really important too, which is very exciting.

[00:36:36] Excellent, excellent. Clarity is such a fascinating topic these days and certainly people sort of challenge whether it's still important, but we really think it's the, it's just renewed, refreshed, and even more important than ever, um, to spend that time putting the work into those things with your team.

[00:36:53] But that is it for this episode. You can find show notes, as we said, and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. If you'd like to contribute to the show, just email us wenotmepod@gmail.com. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:37:19] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.