00:00:07:01 - 00:00:41:23
Andreas
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to another episode of Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on leaders of businesses that people love to work for. My name is Andreas Konstantinou. I'm your host, and I'm also a micromanager turned servant leader who developed a passion for workplace culture. At Rethink Culture, our passion and ambition is to help 1 million businesses create healthier, more fulfilling cultures at work. And our latest project is the Culture Health Score, which is an online service that lets you build a high-performance culture.
00:00:42:01 - 00:01:22:14
Andreas
Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Dunia Reverter. Dunia all the way from Seville, Spain. She's the co-founder of Krisos, which is a company that buys and transforms businesses into a force for good. And she's also a guest speaker on new organizational paradigms. She's also a co-founder of JobsWithNoBoss.com. Self-explanatory. It's a job board where job seekers who value autonomy, responsibility, and collaboration can find other self-managed organizations that share the same values.
00:01:22:16 - 00:01:43:15
Andreas
She tells me she loves reading. She's an addict for change, and she's such an addict to change that she has moved homes countless times and gets itchy if she's in a place for more than two years. Fascinating person to meet. Very nice to meet you, Dunia. Welcome to this episode of Rethink Culture.
00:01:44:11 - 00:01:46:00
Dunia
Hello. Thank you for having me.
00:01:46:19 - 00:02:07:01
Andreas
So, you were telling me how you got or how you developed an itch for the traditional way of working in hierarchical organizations while you were at GE, and do share, do share this story with us.
00:02:07:09 - 00:02:33:10
Dunia
Yes. Yeah. I was, I was telling you, I… I have two lives, a very traditional corporate life. And then the radical transformer, sort of life. And, and when I was at GE, I thought the world was perfect, and, and whoever was struggling was because they were not working hard enough. And that GE
00:02:33:10 - 00:02:55:04
Dunia
and my company was wonderful. And it was I did grow a lot and I have a lot to thank my experience in GE for, but, but when I became pregnant, I had quite a high-up job, and I saw another side, right? I saw a side that was a bit more ruthless. At the time when maybe I,
00:02:55:06 - 00:03:23:17
Dunia
I cannot be so useful to you for a while, and that was a big disenchantment because I thought, oh, if it doesn't work in GE it doesn't work anywhere. And I guess that big slap I got at that stage started to get me to see, you know, something a bit ugly maybe about work and about the way we organize.
00:03:23:19 - 00:03:29:10
Dunia
And that's, I think, when my journey started on the quest for new ways of organizing.
00:03:30:02 - 00:03:33:16
Andreas
And then you found, you found your purpose while doing yoga and meditation.
00:03:33:16 - 00:03:59:05
Dunia
Yes, yes. After that, we moved to London, and I decided to become a freelancer. So I would no longer need to have to be in a hierarchy embedded in a hierarchy. Although, as a freelancer, I was still working for very traditional and hierarchical organizations, like Viva and Lloyds Bank. But then I started to…
00:03:59:06 - 00:04:25:15
Dunia
Yeah, to do yoga and to meditate. And somehow, this, this portal, opened up, of new things coming to me and also new quests. Right? Then I realized, okay, there's something wrong with the world. What is it? I need to find out. I need to read more. And I started to get books, and, as you were saying, books changed my life.
00:04:25:15 - 00:04:46:16
Dunia
And Frederic Laloux, the book on Reinventing Organizations, definitely, changed mine, like it has a lot of people, because I discovered that there's a new paradigm that is possible. There is no utopia. There are many companies that already operate like that in a new way. And I discovered that that's going to be my new purpose.
00:04:46:16 - 00:04:50:18
Dunia
It's to help organizations transition to this new, this new way of working.
00:04:51:07 - 00:05:23:10
Andreas
Yeah. I also find, like, we were chatting before hitting the record that most managers and most employees feel that hierarchical organizations are the only way that exists. Like you were telling me. This is what we get taught at school. This is the parent-child or teacher-student relationship. What you taught at school. And we think there's no other way, but there are actually organizations where people have almost complete autonomy.
00:05:23:12 - 00:05:42:11
Andreas
There are no managers. There are completely different ways of making decisions and making decisions in a much more egalitarian fashion, ways that, you know, might be considered heretical or radical but are actually very, very approachable today.
00:05:42:11 - 00:06:04:07
Dunia
It's actually natural to us. If you think about it, this should just be. It's just that we are trained out of them in the work context. In other contexts, like family context, we're okay with it, right? We are independently raising our kids. We don't have a boss telling us how to do it. Right? And it's actually a much more complex thing than working in an office or anything like that.
00:06:04:09 - 00:06:31:22
Dunia
But yeah, somehow, we are trained to become children, to work, you know, or parents and children at the same time, you know, so, but it is possible to do it in another way. Of course, there's training, there's learning that needs to happen. And as I was mentioning before, there's also structure that helps when we don't have that much practice.
00:06:32:00 - 00:06:39:04
Dunia
So, you know, it helps us, you know, to actually get it working. Right? Because we, it needs to be practiced.
00:06:39:12 - 00:06:53:07
Andreas
Yeah. And like. Like Lisa Gill says, who introduced us, a self-managed organization doesn't mean an organization without structure. It does have structure. It's just different from the one, the pyramid-like structure that we're used to.
00:06:53:14 - 00:06:56:10
Dunia
It's on the contrary, it has a lot more structure, I would say.
00:06:56:16 - 00:07:12:09
Andreas
So I definitely want to dive more into that in a little bit. Before that, tell us about your current work with Krisos, which is the company that you use to transform other companies.
00:07:12:15 - 00:07:45:17
Dunia
Yes. This is an impact fund. And we've set it up so that we would buy companies and transform them so that we can liberate them, and we transform them using the very inspired methods used by NER, the NER Group in Bilbao, in the Basque Country. They have a track record of over 100 transformations to this new paradigm, which is very compatible with what Frederic describes.
00:07:45:19 - 00:07:56:06
Dunia
And, and then our, our idea is to transform them, liberating, liberating to a point that they want to own themselves and turn to a co-op.
00:07:57:21 - 00:08:02:15
Andreas
And you were telling me that the reason for buying the companies is that you need complete freedom
00:08:03:19 - 00:08:04:09
Dunia
Yes.
00:08:04:09 - 00:08:06:23
Andreas
to, to change the organization. Right?
00:08:07:16 - 00:08:30:13
Dunia
Yes. We think that, yeah, some of our values are freedom, responsibility, and transparency. That's kind of the values that we profess. And when we transform companies, it's kind of what we implement. Everything we do is with radical transparency. And, yeah, our, why do we do this? Right? Because we think that the world needs this.
00:08:30:19 - 00:08:55:18
Dunia
We think that the world needs organizations that are serving us and that people in their organizations don't feel impotent but feel like actors who are able to steer the organization the right way. So if everyone in the organization is worried about steering the organization in the right way and feels that they can, they have a voice and they can influence it.
00:08:55:19 - 00:09:20:23
Dunia
So long as we know how to do things collaboratively, then organizations start working for us. We were talking before about when we say profit is king, really what we mean is that some abstract entity owns us, right? And we are their like their servants. And it shouldn't be like that. Profit should be like oxygen.
00:09:20:23 - 00:09:25:08
Dunia
We needed to breathe. But it's not our reason for being here.
00:09:27:08 - 00:09:50:00
Andreas
Correct. And an expression I've heard is, employees should not be functions of a company's pursuit of profit or resources. Yeah, and I, for one, hate the term HR because it implies that we are human but we are also resources, and we're human, but we're not resources.
00:09:50:00 - 00:09:55:05
Dunia
Well, we keep the acronym, but we call it human relations instead of human resources.
00:09:55:05 - 00:10:09:04
Andreas
Right. Right. One thing I liked from the things we were chatting about before is you referred to the term domestic hating organizations.
00:10:09:22 - 00:10:11:21
Dunia
Yes.
00:10:11:21 - 00:10:12:13
Andreas
Tell us more.
00:10:13:06 - 00:10:37:04
Dunia
What is what I was just referring to just now. We need organizations to start working for us, to serve us. And by us, I mean the people; societies, the planet. So, so, so that's kind of the dynamic we need, right? If we are able to do that, we will start to make sense as a species, as a civilization.
00:10:37:06 - 00:10:39:17
Dunia
So this is kind of the idea.
00:10:40:18 - 00:10:45:14
Andreas
For those in the room who would like to play devil's advocate.
00:10:45:16 - 00:10:57:15
Andreas
What are the financial results of buying a company and applying these self-management principles? Because you also mentioned that, you know, profit is important. It's the oxygen in the room. So I'm sure there is profit somewhere there.
00:10:57:19 - 00:11:23:20
Dunia
Yes. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, our investments and our transformations end up being quite profitable. In the Basque Country, as I was telling you, those 100-plus transformations that were done, were done as a way to turn around the companies that were struggling financially. So we have proven that we improve productivity, and we grow when we do these transformations.
00:11:23:20 - 00:11:52:02
Dunia
Just to give you an example, Indaero the Company that we acquired in Seville, which we are transforming now after one year, we have grown sales by 55%. And despite the salary increase of an average of 30% for all employees and giving a net 25% bonus based on the net profit, after that, we have still maintained the same profitability and productivity ratio.
00:11:52:04 - 00:12:01:05
Dunia
So we have grown with the same sort of productivity or, you know, profit ratios. And everybody's earning a lot more money.
00:12:02:09 - 00:12:09:18
Andreas
When you look for companies that would benefit from culture transformation, what do you look for? What kinds of companies?
00:12:10:12 - 00:12:38:21
Dunia
You know, everybody asks this, and that there are people. So if there are humans in the company, this is going to work. It helps that they're not too small because then the change is not going to be that significant. That they are not too large. Because although you can scale this, our way of working to transform a very large company brings a lot of resistance.
00:12:38:23 - 00:13:05:00
Dunia
So, we look for companies between 30 and 150 employees. That's kind of our range. And that's the biggest factor. And we try that they are concentrated in a physical location or in one place. So that because when we're talking about culture, we kind of need to see each other. So if it's very dispersed geographically, it's harder to do this change.
00:13:05:02 - 00:13:09:09
Dunia
But that's about it. We are quite agnostic on the sector.
00:13:09:15 - 00:13:13:14
Andreas
And do the employees have to accept the transformation?
00:13:13:14 - 00:13:46:18
Dunia
Yes, yes, we have to stick to our values. Right? And we talk about freedom, responsibility, and transparency. We couldn't force this on people. So once an owner decides that they want to sell, and we have done the due diligence and are comfortable with the company, the last step before actually signing is going there and explaining to all employees what's going to happen and asking for a vote after Q&A after giving them resources, videos, etc.
00:13:46:20 - 00:14:04:01
Dunia
And 80% have to say yes, minimum. Otherwise we won't do it. We need a qualified majority because it's such a profound transformation that if a vast majority is not on board with this, it's going to be very difficult. So.
00:14:04:01 - 00:14:16:23
Andreas
So Indaero, the company that you are currently transforming. What are some of the comments you're hearing? Six months or 12 months in, like, what is the wow moment that people are experiencing?
00:14:17:11 - 00:14:43:01
Dunia
I mean, we have many, and they come from different places, right? Because it's almost like there are two communities, right? There are the ones that were the parents, the bosses and the scepticism, and also the dual, the void that they experience at the beginning because it's quite difficult to let go of power. And then you have a bit of an identity crisis, you know, and how to help them cope with that.
00:14:43:01 - 00:15:03:01
Dunia
And then they're saying they're not going to be able to; they're not going to manage. This is going to go, you know, so that's kind of what, what, what they fear. Yeah. Whereas the other community at the beginning, they are like a huge celebration. Yes. This is going to be great. We're going to be free.
00:15:03:05 - 00:15:32:11
Dunia
No more bosses. Our salaries are going to increase. So this is great. Right? Then what happens after six months is that those people that were once bosses very quickly have learned how to operate in a very autonomous and independent way. So they're already being like, they're just speeding ahead, right? Whereas the other community is learning, and they're getting the vertigo and the anxiety of, oh my God, I have to decide on this.
00:15:32:11 - 00:16:01:07
Dunia
But this is a big decision. How do I do this? You know, so they encounter different emotions at different times. And then, yeah, you know, when we actually, the first time that we actually changed the salary loops and gave them this 30% increase, which for many was way more than 30%, they were almost pinching themselves, you know, they're like, until they didn't see it in the salary check, they couldn't believe it.
00:16:01:07 - 00:16:25:18
Dunia
It's like, oh, it's true. It's happening. You know. And then we continued to operate, and, you know, we, we continued to do well, and we started to grow. So then the others are saying, Oh wow, nothing is breaking. It's actually, this is actually happening. But... But... I'd say there's nothing. There's not one thing that you say, Oh my God, you know, we got this.
00:16:25:18 - 00:16:58:09
Dunia
We won this. It's all sorts of little bits and pieces that everybody's contributing. That is the beauty of distributed leadership. It's everybody cutting their own grain to the pot. And you cannot say, Oh, yeah, we grew because this superhero did this for us. No, there are no superheroes. Everybody is helping and supporting this. So, you don't know how or what it's coming from, but all of a sudden, things start kind of working the right way, in the right direction, and going up.
00:16:59:08 - 00:17:18:00
Andreas
For people who are not familiar with self-organizing teams and principles. Like, can you walk us through how such a team or an organization would work? Like, what's a day in the life of a team? How are decisions taken? Who's the boss? And so on.
00:17:18:00 - 00:17:40:20
Dunia
We don't have bosses, right? So there's this healthy tension that a boss brings. You know, we eliminate the power over others that a boss has. But we need the leadership, and we need healthy tensions. And we need commitment. Yeah? So how do we make sure that we have commitment? Right? So what we do is we have a triangle, let's say, of decision-making.
00:17:40:22 - 00:18:18:07
Dunia
There's, like, the kind of steering group that looks at goals, objectives, budgets, and investments. How are we doing with financials every month? So it's kind of like a monthly meeting. A steering meeting. And every team sends representatives to that forum. So there are reps that are responsible for attending the steering meetings. There's normally now we are getting into a rhythm of two weeks, every two weeks, the Relations or Culture forum.
00:18:18:09 - 00:18:47:17
Dunia
And that's where we deal with all the fun aspects of the culture, the relations, and the conflicts. How are we going to do salary collaboration? So they're the most controversial meetings. And here's where we have to be very careful because we are helping them make decisions that are coherent with the new values and with the new paradigm.
00:18:47:19 - 00:19:10:08
Dunia
But they don't; they are not used to doing this. Right? So there is where our intervention is most important because we cannot deal with a setback of something we didn't like by putting control over people. That's, you know, that goes against our values. We can... we do not control people. We trust people. So that's where we have those conversations.
00:19:10:10 - 00:19:32:23
Dunia
And we touch on all those social, liberal kinds of social aspects of the organization. And then we have the planning and commitment meetings that happen more periodically. They could be I mean in our case, now, for this company I'm telling you about, in Seville is weekly. Normally for an industrial business, it would be weekly, but there could be moments where you need to have a daily one, for example.
00:19:33:01 - 00:19:53:11
Dunia
And there we talk about meeting commitments to the customer and to the budget. And in terms of quality. Right? So work, getting work done, you know, on how to deal with all the changes of plan that we deal with on, you know, an everyday basis.
00:19:54:23 - 00:20:15:07
Andreas
So if you were to impart some of your wisdom to a listener who's like an HR person or a middle manager in your organization, you told me earlier your advice would be not to start a revolution but... What's a small step they can start with?
00:20:15:07 - 00:20:45:07
Dunia
Yeah, we do radical transformations. Right? And in order to do that, you need to have a very strong buy-in from everywhere. So I've seen middle managers, you know, people that are passionate about this way of working, trying to implement it in the midst of their own organization, a large organization. And that is, that could be dangerous because it's not understood by the rest, and it can even be seen as a threat.
00:20:45:07 - 00:21:15:18
Dunia
So I wouldn't recommend starting that way. But you can hack culture to make it more participative within your own organization. If you're kind of a middle manager or an HR manager, the way I suggest to do it is in the meeting rooms, because in the meeting rooms is where we exchange and where culture happens. So to do it in a more participative way, and for that I strongly recommend looking at liberating structures.
00:21:15:21 - 00:21:41:23
Dunia
It's open source, liberatingstructures.com. They have 33 patterns or structures, almost like recipes on how to conduct a meeting or part of a meeting based on whatever outcome you want. Even like questions, asking questions, you can do it in a way that is more participative, and you get a lot more engagement than just, like, going to a large audience,
00:21:41:23 - 00:22:11:04
Dunia
and just, who has a question? Only some extroverts might raise their hand, and most people are quiet. If you use liberating structures, you're able to engage everybody in that conversation and in those questions, and the most important questions emerge. So, so yeah, I would suggest using participative techniques, check-ins, and check-outs, just having those reflective rounds on how we are arriving into this meeting and what we want to get out of it.
00:22:11:06 - 00:22:43:16
Dunia
How we are leaving and how the meeting went—just those two elements change completely the meeting… And if you're a boss, if you're a boss and you're running a meeting, even if you don't use any of these structures, just state your opinion last, make sure everybody has stated their opinion before yours. Because it's so beautiful when you do that, and you see new ideas emerge that nobody else thought about before.
00:22:43:17 - 00:22:56:23
Dunia
Yeah? And when you're actually taking the time to listen to what everybody else has to say, just amazing, amazing ideas emerge. The collective wisdom appears.
00:22:58:01 - 00:23:24:18
Andreas
I learned this many years ago, Dunia. Because I found that I was speaking first and then I was realizing that my idea was fairly dumb. So I was clearly not the smartest person in the room. So I decided I'm going to let everyone else speak first. And then, if my idea still has merit and no one has addressed it before, and I am going to speak at the very end, it has so many benefits.
00:23:24:20 - 00:23:53:07
Andreas
And I've also found the power of questions because, especially in an environment where you don't want to create any form of tension by, you know, implying or asking or telling, asking people what to do or telling them what to do, I think questions are the most powerful way because even if you're wrong, you know, the worst thing you've done is just showing curiosity. And you kind of give, give the power to the other person to express themselves.
00:23:53:07 - 00:24:14:05
Andreas
And you.... I usually find that I am completely refreshing my perspective and become much richer as a person. If I sit back and listen to what the other person has to say without assuming that I know how they're going to respond.
00:24:14:07 - 00:24:39:22
Dunia
Yeah, that's… That's been one of my biggest development needs. You know, I am such a solution-izer of everything. Like always thinking of what the solution is, right? So I just jump to it, right? And, and as managers, as traditional managers, another tip for somebody who's in an organization like this is to stop bringing solutions to the table.
00:24:39:22 - 00:25:00:04
Dunia
We're so trained that we have to bring a solution. If we're not bringing the solution, we're not a good manager. It's not true. Just ask your team, What do you think is the solution? Ask them. You might know already. Like if nobody has an idea, you know what you do. But just... and like, see what they come up with.
00:25:00:06 - 00:25:26:19
Dunia
And I love I love the integration. So, so one of the things that we do is we do decisions by consent. We use the consent decision-making. I don't know if you've heard of this pattern, it's a sociocracy pattern. And it's called integrative decision-making. Because it integrates, it integrates objections into your solution.
00:25:26:19 - 00:25:51:20
Dunia
So an objection is basically a way of seeing something that brings too much risk to the solution. If we find a way to reduce that risk or make it safe enough, you know, by changing a little bit our proposal, we have a more robust one. But we're integrating. We're no longer doing this like, black and white, winners and losers.
00:25:51:20 - 00:25:57:22
Dunia
You know, we're not doing either/or. We're doing both and more. And it's so...
00:25:57:22 - 00:26:01:08
Andreas
How does consent-based decision-making work?
00:26:02:22 - 00:26:05:03
Andreas
In simple and in just a few words.
00:26:05:03 - 00:26:36:18
Dunia
So let's just think that there's a proposal out there, somebody puts forward a proposal, and then what we need to do is, before judging, we suspend judgment, and we do a round of clarification because many times the problems and the conversations get all muddied, and we just haven't understood the proposal well. So before reacting, we differentiate in clarifications, you know, so we ask everyone to ask clarification questions.
00:26:36:23 - 00:27:01:21
Dunia
And the fact that there's going to be a round and everybody's going to have a chance to ask them gets everybody comfortable. Egos are calm. Once we've clarified we might no longer react the way we were going to, but then we have a round of reactions, and there, after all the reactions. It's not ping pong. So people react.
00:27:01:23 - 00:27:25:08
Dunia
And then with all those reactions, the proposer now has to make a decision: do I integrate already from these reactions? Can I, if somebody is telling me I think it is going to be too risky to do it for all this portfolio, I say, Oh no, well, let's then change the scope, and I keep my proposal, but I reduce the scope or things like that.
00:27:25:08 - 00:27:51:01
Dunia
So do I have a chance already to integrate? Because some of those reactions make sense to me. Do I want to record my proposal and work it a bit more? Because what I heard gave me all these ideas, and I want to work on it more, or do I keep it as it is? And then, okay, once we have a proposal on the table, after listening to all those reactions, the proposal says, okay, this is what it is, and then we object, or we give the thumbs up.
00:27:51:01 - 00:28:25:05
Dunia
So a thumbs up is I'm okay with it. Go ahead. We can say it like this. And this means I have some fears or suggestions or concerns. But you can go ahead. I just want you to hear my concerns and take them into account. You're free to go ahead, and we object. And we do this sign because it's a gift, because we are so stigmatized by saying, No, I'm blocking, but you're not blocking; you're actually offering a view that maybe others are not seeing that is making this not safe enough or not good enough.
00:28:25:07 - 00:28:45:11
Dunia
Yeah. And then I'm going to put that objection on the table. At least somebody else needs to agree that it's a valid objection. It's not just my thing, but yes, this is actually a big risk. And then we have to all work with you to figure it out what would make this proposal safe enough or good enough.
00:28:45:13 - 00:29:04:13
Dunia
And we continue like, and we do this round, so it might take us a bit longer than if we had an authoritarian boss that just said, This is what we're doing, period. Or, Okay, what do you have to say? Okay, boom, this is what we're doing. It takes us a bit longer. But then the solutions, the proposals that we come up with, are a lot more robust.
00:29:06:13 - 00:29:08:08
Dunia
And they have the buy-in from everybody.
00:29:09:07 - 00:29:24:02
Andreas
And so this is something a leader in an organization can apply. What about if a CEO is listening and is curious about what she can do to introduce these principles in the organization?
00:29:24:12 - 00:29:50:07
Dunia
So if you're an owner or a CEO and you have enough authority, like you're holding a whole space, so then I would invite you to be radical and do the sort of transformations that we do. Although I would suggest that you don't do it on your own, because, the first thing, you know, like, we… like, the organizations are our mirror, right?
00:29:50:09 - 00:30:26:01
Dunia
So, so we need to discover, you know, about our leadership style. How do we, how do we need to change from within so that this change can happen? Yeah? So it's hard to do that on your own. So find consultants and facilitators who are eager to work with you and help you with this transformation. We organize some field trips, excursions, or experiences, you know, where CEOs can come to the Basque Country so you can come and visit us and see how other CEOs operate.
00:30:26:03 - 00:30:47:16
Dunia
And how these companies work if you need to make up your mind. And then, yeah, try to experiment with your own organization; it's a lot different. There you can be as radical as you have an appetite for. Yeah? However, don't do it alone. Please.
00:30:47:16 - 00:31:03:19
Andreas
Right, right. You were telling me earlier that you're, you really enjoy resolving conflict. And how do you approach conflict at work?
00:31:04:03 - 00:31:29:07
Dunia
Yeah. Yeah. I was also saying, of course, when conflict touches us directly, again, it's better that somebody helps us mediate, we're not finding the way to do it. But one of the things that happens when we are doing these transformations is conflict pops up, and conflict is an opportunity for growth and development. We make huge advancements.
00:31:29:09 - 00:31:51:22
Dunia
And it could also be a cause for regression if we don't know how to deal with it. Right? So knowing how to deal with conflict and how to help colleagues resolve their conflicts is huge. And also, there's a dynamic that changes because when we have hierarchical organization, we give the conflict to our bosses, and we ask them to take care of it.
00:31:52:00 - 00:32:20:22
Dunia
Yeah? For us. But when we're in a self-management organization, we need to own our conflicts. This is like the major paradigm shift that actually this is my conflict and I need to be proactive about how I'm going to resolve it. Yeah? And I cannot be shy of it. So, so, so, as I'm holding the space and I'm seeing these conflicts, this dramas, you know, I'm always asking, what is the drama of the week?
00:32:21:00 - 00:32:45:07
Dunia
Because this is kind of the place where we're going to grow, you know, it's like, where do we need to, you know, apply a bit of, like, magic? Yeah? And then the way we do it is by active listening. You know, again, I use a liberating structure called the Conversation Café. Works wonders for me. Give a talking object, and we do rounds where the person who's speaking is speaking, and nobody else can interrupt.
00:32:45:09 - 00:33:13:05
Dunia
And we hear how the different people are living their conflict. And it's amazing how much progress we make with just such a simple technique. Courses on emotional intelligence, I think, are also foundational. So we do emotional intelligence for all employees. Because there's so much, there's so much conflict that can be resolved when I have more self-awareness.
00:33:13:05 - 00:33:14:07
Dunia
Right?
00:33:15:12 - 00:33:30:13
Andreas
Absolutely. And after... Because if you share emotions with someone, if you practice empathy, and if you, for example, share vulnerability immediately, you connect emotionally with the other person, and that makes half the conflict go away.
00:33:31:00 - 00:33:31:05
Dunia
Yeah.
00:33:32:01 - 00:33:45:09
Andreas
You mentioned that you were fed up with helping organizations improve a little but not fundamentally change. How much are you able to change organizations now?
00:33:45:09 - 00:34:06:12
Dunia
Now it's like... you were also asking me what, you know, what would be my dream job or something like that. Is like what I'm doing now, I feel it's what it is. Because now I feel that the sort of change that we're doing is, is, is forever. You know, like, the whole view on what we're doing is so that it's sustainable.
00:34:06:12 - 00:34:25:08
Dunia
Right? And there's not going to be a naughty boy that is going to come behind my back and step on the sandcastle that I just built. Right? Which is kind of like the feeling I had from before that, no matter how much work you do with a team, then you know a boss comes and just kind of destroys everything
00:34:25:10 - 00:34:33:08
Dunia
you've been trying to work with them, right? So, so yeah, this is wonderful now that we're able to do it in this way.
00:34:34:18 - 00:35:00:18
Andreas
I was reading about seagull leadership the other day, which is the concept of a seagull flying over. You know, the supervisor flying over, checking in on the employee, dropping some shit over. You know, this is what you have to do, do it completely differently. And then flying out. So this is, I think, you know, there's a lot of malaise.
00:35:00:18 - 00:35:13:13
Andreas
There are a lot of problems that we are very well and painfully aware of. But now we have a dictionary, and a way of solving them in a way that predictably works is what I'm hearing.
00:35:13:13 - 00:35:14:06
Dunia
Yeah.
00:35:15:09 - 00:35:26:22
Andreas
Dunia, what would you encourage leaders to rethink when it comes to culture and how they run their organizations?
00:35:27:18 - 00:36:02:10
Dunia
Yeah. Well, what first, what we said about, it starts with you. So if you think your team or your organization are not working well, are not doing things, are not to be trusted, are not ready for this, there's something in you here that is all of that, right? So what in you needs to change, so this space appears right, for the rest of the team to rise?
00:36:02:10 - 00:36:23:23
Dunia
Yeah? So work on yourself. Work with people that can help you see, we were talking before about blind spots. Your blind spots, the good ones and the bad ones, because we were talking, how many times we have strengths that are amazing, and that people take for granted that we know about, but we don't?
00:36:23:23 - 00:37:10:10
Dunia
Yeah? So, so self-discovery, and then those, you know, all those techniques that we talk about just kind of look, be hungry for the collective intelligence to arise. So be happy when you join a meeting and the outcome from it is different from what you envisaged it was going to be. You know, like go with the curiosity of seeing what the solution will be, as opposed to how am I going to convince everybody that my solution is the one. You know, go into the meeting thinking, I wonder, I wonder what's going to come out of this one. You know, so if you don't get too attached to your solutions, that's when you
00:37:10:10 - 00:37:12:05
Dunia
know the magic happens.
00:37:13:22 - 00:37:26:19
Andreas
And where do we start? Where does someone start becoming more self-aware about either themselves or the organization? Like what baby steps, can someone take?
00:37:29:15 - 00:37:29:21
Dunia
Well.
00:37:29:21 - 00:37:33:17
Andreas
To put it otherwise, what would you recommend we read or watch?
00:37:34:03 - 00:37:56:08
Dunia
Yeah. Okay. So books. I mean, I have a lot of books. Obviously, Reinventing Organizations is a must-read. I really like Brave New Work, by Aaron Dignan. It also gives really nice ideas in that. I like Moose Heads on the Table by Lisa Gill and Karin Tenelius. And they are also practitioners of tough leadership.
00:37:56:10 - 00:38:31:12
Dunia
And that's, they train managers on how to have adult-to-adult conversations as opposed to be directive in their approach. So if you want to retrain your style or your way of being as a leader, that's a great, great course to do. All sorts of facilitation coaching courses are great and highly encouraged because they will also help you explore those new aspects of leadership that we need in order to be more participative leaders.
00:38:31:14 - 00:39:02:01
Dunia
And we talked about emotional intelligence. Again, foundational, I think, for anybody, anyone. So, yeah. Well, there's Sociocracy, the S3 patterns are also very useful. We talked about consent decision-making. So, so I mean, that's my own little recipe, right? A cocktail of trainings that I have been taking that have been helping me through the years.
00:39:02:03 - 00:39:04:22
Dunia
But there are many out there. So, you know.
00:39:06:22 - 00:39:11:01
Andreas
And where can people find out more about you, Dunia?
00:39:15:08 - 00:39:17:14
Dunia
Krisos.eu. LinkedIn. Dunia.Reverter.
00:39:18:09 - 00:39:24:10
Andreas
Very good. Dunia, thank you for sharing your energy with us.
00:39:25:00 - 00:39:25:11
Dunia
Thank you.
00:39:26:02 - 00:39:27:13
Andreas
And
00:39:29:04 - 00:40:09:14
Andreas
for inspiring us a little bit to challenge what we have been taught with top-down organizations with a lack of autonomy and a lack of self-determination, and for showing us there's a better way and for actually daring to prove that there is a better way, because, you know, you're not just out there having a discussion, but you are actually, sleeves up, doing the work of transforming the organization you've acquired and moving to acquire a second one.
00:40:09:14 - 00:40:17:16
Dunia
Well, thank you for giving this to everyone who's listening to you, so that it catches on.
00:40:19:02 - 00:40:33:22
Andreas
So I'm hoping that, if you're listening to this, you have been inspired to challenge, even slightly, the habits and the structure and the way of working of the organization you work for.
00:40:33:22 - 00:40:47:06
Andreas
If you enjoyed listening to the podcast as much as I enjoyed listening to Dunia here, please leave us a five-star rating and tell your friends about it, because that's how more people find out about the podcast.
00:40:47:08 - 00:41:14:15
Andreas
And, if you like to learn more about building a high-performance organization, you can always visit rethinkculture.co. Do email me. I'd love to hear about your favorite episode or a favorite guest you'd like to bring on board. Email me at andreas@rethinkculture.co and keep leading and keep creating healthier, happier organizations for you and especially for those around you.