Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome to Essential Dynamics Podcast. I'm your host, Derek Hudson. With me is my colleague, Dave Kane. Dave, good to be back with you.
Dave:Yeah. Hey there, Derek.
Derek:On the Essential Dynamics Podcast, we explore the ideas of the Essential Dynamics framework through deep conversations with interesting people. Instead, we're gonna Dave and I are gonna have a conversation today. No. Actually, Dave's very interesting, and I really enjoy, his perspective on things. And, Dave, in our last podcast, I think you identified a concept that we thought we might pick up, and let's do it today.
Dave:I I just softened the wording. I think we were sort of talking about, I called it comfortably stuck. But a lot of times when we work with organizations, we sort of say, you know, you, you make a lot of the easy decisions, and you progress along until the decisions get harder and eventually you get stuck. And we spent a lot of time on previous podcasts sort of digging into that, but I think there's a different kind of stuck out there. And it's I don't know if the word's complacency or or comfortable, but, you just get to a point where a lot of times when we've gone out and spoken with companies, and you just sort of ask them how how they're doing or what are they stuck on, and quite often you get the response about, you know, we're fine, no, we're doing okay, no big problems here, and and and that in itself just sort of triggers more questions and more conversations because you kind of in the back of your mind start to wonder, well, are you comfortably stuck?
Dave:And so I thought maybe we could dig into that a little bit, and so, maybe I'll just get your thoughts on because we planted a bit last week, you've been stewing on it, so I'm sure you've got a few ideas.
Derek:Well, as an individual who, like my my entire professional career has been devoted one way or another to improving things. I find that being comfortably stuck might be the single biggest obstacle I've faced, both, working inside an organization and then as a professional helping people from sort of out there outside their organization. And also being in a complex environment where our organization was one of the one of the pieces. In all those cases yeah, there's a real challenge with being, comfortably stuck. I'm gonna get, like, sir, maybe macroeconomic for a minute, and that is in our wonderful Western society, we have figured out for most people how to provide for all their basic needs.
Derek:Clearly, there's a group on the margin where for for many reasons, it's it's not that accessible. But for for a lot of people, we've, we've got the opportunity to, not have to stretch too too much to get an education, to get a job. I suppose, if you're a little bit older than 27, you could even buy a house back in the day, and then you're good. Our our ancestors, and you don't have to go back too many generations, were, you know, breaking sod and fighting the elements and, and dealing with a a lot of hardship that that we don't have. And I think there's just lost potential if you're not trying to get better and trying to move forward.
Derek:That can hurt an individual and it can definitely hurt an organization, but I I think what I wanna do, just to to make the, the clearest illustration I can can going back to the roots of essential dynamics, is if we think about essential dynamics, uses the idea of the epic quest. My particular go to reference to that is the whole, Lord of the Rings body of work. The the purpose of the story of The Hobbit is to wake people up. And Bilbo is in the Shire, and he's comfortable. We don't even he doesn't have a job.
Derek:He has enough money to not have a job. We don't even know why he's so comfortable. But he's comf he's comfortable, and he's fine and he doesn't want adventures, and then the wizard comes and takes him and gives him the call to adventure and pulls him out, puts him on the road with a bunch of dwarves, and all of a sudden, all kinds of danger and and challenge and adventure ensues. And that's the only kind of story we wanna read. We don't wanna read the story about the guy sitting by his, fireplace sipping a cup of tea.
Derek:That's boring. We we need adventure. And I think when we think about, young people moving into organizations, we think about the the challenges of a more integrated global scale, and the fact that even though there's lots of food and housing, people don't have enough to eat in many situations, and don't have the basic necessities of life. There's no end of challenges that we can take on. There's, no reason to be comfortably stuck.
Derek:However, it's quite in our Western society and the affluence and comfort that we have. Just like speaking at that high level, I don't think it's good to be comfortably stuck. And I don't think it's good for an organization to say, well, we've got this figured out. We're fine. There's an inevitable deterioration that's gonna happen.
Derek:And so it's better to be, fighting for growth than it is to be complacent, and then just kind of lose your ground and lose your position and and lose your ambition as an organization or as a person. So I I guess I have a lot to say about that.
Dave:So, yeah, I guess you've been thinking about
Derek:that a little bit
Dave:since we brought that one up. So Yeah. Can I, sum that up maybe? It sounds like you're getting at sort of a balance between stability and change. Is that sort of it's like there has to be this balance of it.
Dave:It can't be too much of the same without enough change in there, both for the engagement of it, both for the resiliency of what future things may come and just for for the satisfaction of doing it? Is that kinda what you're talking about?
Derek:You know, the the balance between stability and change or stability and growth is, is a really good example of what we talk about when we talk about purpose x and purpose y. There's two things you need to accomplish. You actually need to accomplish both. It's critical that you accomplish both, but in the moment, choice will either, satisfy one or the other, and sometimes make the other one worse, so it won't satisfy both. If we are only about stability, maybe that's the comfortably stuck.
Derek:And I would say sometimes we don't need we're gonna protect, we're gonna protect the stability. We don't need to think about that. We need to think about growth. We need to think about adventure. And we'll have somebody in the finance department remind us that we need to buy insurance and and keep a cash reserve.
Derek:So I I'm I think I'm more interested in how could you, you know, kind of issue that call to adventure to an organization, and and recapture people's imaginations.
Dave:Okay. So we've talked a bit about the balance and growth. Right? I think there's a few other reasons why, you know, doing fine or this sort of getting too comfortably stuck isn't ideal because, yeah, you need the balance and growth. You need that engagement.
Dave:You need the challenge. You need the quest. And the and sort of it fits really well to the purpose x and purpose y. But I I think from an organizational point of view, there's also just this need for what's to come is sort of unknown. So if if you're doing fine now, does that mean you're going to be doing fine later when things you can't control change?
Dave:And so to me, a lot of times with the, the issue with this sort of mindset is you're, you're creating in the organization, you're not sort of training in that, that reactiveness, that ability to take on challenge. And so when things do change, you may not be ready for it. If you're not looking for it constantly, you might miss an opportunity. You might miss an innovation. You might not see the market change come.
Dave:It it just to me, it it builds in a risk within the organization. Yeah, I'm fine, but what happens how are you going to do when things do change? And so, I mean, it it just goes even deeper. If you're fine and you're not looking for these things, are you ignoring hidden issues within the organization? Are you missing opportunities to do better?
Dave:It's just to capital to me is is just risky.
Derek:Yeah. So so Dave, that's the paradox. Right? And I think you stated it really well is that, you're trying to protect protect the organization and hang on that stability, and by doing that, you introduce risk because, the muscles, that you need to be able to respond to challenges are becoming atrophied because they're not being used and tested.
Dave:Right.
Derek:And and so if you have an environment where you're using and testing and trying to grow, the unexpected challenge can come, and you can redeploy the the skills and the and the and the strengths that you've learned on something else to deal with that challenge. I I'll I'll just share an example. I don't think I'm gonna get in too much trouble for this. It's, 15 old, and it been it involves a company whose challenges are very obvious and very public. When I was at Microline, we had a a customer that, we did great work with over many years.
Derek:It was really awesome, but they got purchased by Kodak. And they got purchased by Kodak just as digital photography was starting to take off, and Kodak was looking for other ways to advance their business other than selling photographic film. And I remember, our first visit from the guy from Kodak head office, the purchasing guy from Kodak head office, and he was there to tell us how, working with Kodak was gonna be awesome. His answer was the suppliers were are going to take less money from us. And, like, we are our pricing our pricing to them was gonna go down as it was with all their suppliers because Kodak was not no longer financially sustainable unless they could get, you know, their input costs down.
Derek:Of course, that ultimately wasn't enough. And, Kodak is is a shell of of of what it of what it wants to work.
Dave:It's a brand now. Yeah.
Derek:Yeah.
Dave:Brand that you can put on your product.
Derek:And and so there was complacency. I mean, and it's this is this is no criticism of Kodak specifically, because you can see it over and over again. There's complacency when they were literally printing money, with photographic film and, to a lesser extent photographic paper. And they did not learn how to respond to an environment where the technological change, which they could have been totally on top of. I think they invented the first digital camera, but their business model didn't support it.
Derek:Business model was and and it actually you can easily go to Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma to explain why that happens. The organization is, the business model is challenged by the new technology, even if it's coming from the own company, and they and they can't they can't invest in it until it's too late. Mhmm. So that's a that's a big that's a big example, but it's not
Dave:Well, it's a common one. Right? Because, I mean, we spent enough time in in in the economic development space through a few booms and busts and and through the booms that there's, I don't wanna use the word complacency. Maybe you build up an inertia.
Derek:Mhmm.
Dave:And then when things do require change and you do need to get going, that inertia from a big mass is just hard to get going. Right? So we've seen it.
Derek:Yeah. We've we've seen it. We've seen it. There's lots of examples out there. So let's talk about, you know, our
Dave:How do you recognize it then? Right? Like, so you're in an organization, or you're working with one. How how do you recognize inertia or comfortably stuck, versus, you know, just chugging along, going in the right direction, and things are good?
Derek:Well, when when I think when you're when when you're good, I mean, in in the sense that when you're productively challenging yourself, when you're good, you don't feel comfortable. So let's say, it was another example, you're training for a triathlon, you're training for an Ironman. You're gonna be in a lot of pain, like, a lot of the time. You're gonna do a long run, big workout. You're gonna feel you're gonna feel pain the next day.
Derek:That's not comfortable. If you're, sitting on the couch watching, triathlon races on TV, you don't feel pain. But, let's say now that the doctor sits down to you and says, you need a lifestyle change. The person who is who has no act activity in their life has a big lifestyle change to make. One who's out of training and used to pain can go through all kinds of stuff.
Derek:They can just change their focus. So so that capacity to do hard things, to set goals, to work through pain.
Dave:So you're not saying companies should always be inflicting pain on themselves. You're you're sort of suggesting here that it's just they need to be constantly challenging. Constantly Yeah. Like the status quo.
Derek:Uncomfortable. You know, uncomfortable conversations. Is that the best we can do? What, you know, what are we not seeing?
Dave:Yeah.
Derek:And and a lot of that is we've talked about this word. We have a hypothesis. We have a hypothesis that this is how we create value in the organization. What if one of those variables changes? What if we can think of a different way of doing this?
Derek:Let's test that hypothesis, and let's be good at testing hypothesis because something's gonna change, and we can't be ready for it, unless we know how to deal with with things. So I think there's a there's a lot to, recognizing that productive growth, it has this uncomfortable. And it's, I think it's Jocko Willink, who was a Navy Seal, and he he may may have captured the phrase. He may have he made it up himself, but it's there's no growth in that comfort zone, and there's no comfort in the growth zone. And so let's be let's be in the growth zone, and then you can manage that stability and growth, paradox, but you can't manage it from just being in this, in the comfort zone, in the stability zone.
Derek:There's no way. There's no way. And so what you've, what was comfortable will suddenly be uncomfortable, and you'll be the Kodak guy coming in to visit us and saying the solution is you're gonna make the same stuff and charge us less.
Dave:Yep. Okay. So if I'm in an organization or I'm working with one, one of the ways of sort of recognizing this is this lack of challenges, not pushing themselves, sort of the satisfaction with status quo of, you know, we're we're good. We don't need to do anything. One of the other ones that comes to my mind through it is it's just that resistance to change, and that kinda, I guess, goes back to the inertia side of, you know, we don't need to change.
Dave:We don't like to change, change is hard.
Derek:Well, it so it's there's a couple of things there. One of them is, early on in my consulting career, I found that every organization was unique. And one of the reasons that they wanted to be unique was this like, well, that doesn't apply to us. All all that good all that good I all those good ideas out there for a radical change, well, that doesn't apply to us. We're unique.
Derek:Guess what? You're not you're not that unique. So there's that. And then there's this this thing about, well, it's hard.
Dave:What's hard? Do you hear that a lot? Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. And and so but then people complain, And they complain about this and that in their organization, and I'm like, Well, what you just described to me sounds hard. It's hard to, it's hard to Yeah, yeah, that's right. My boss, they don't give me good direction. You know, customers aren't happy.
Derek:That sounds hard. So why don't you fix it? Well, that would be hard. Well, choose your heart. And go back to you, do you want the pain of, of training?
Derek:Or the pain of having poor health? Let's get the productive, let's get the productive pain. And so I think that that sometimes that satisfaction isn't in the face of comfort. It's just you're used to you're used to the, the stuff that's not going well. You get numb to it, and you'd rather have that than some different change, which could be scary.
Derek:So that that's another way to look at resistance changes. It's not resistance to pain. It's just I'm used to this pain.
Dave:K. And then I think the other one that that sort of triggered as you're talking there that popped in my mind of of sort of recognizing this, I think we've talked, before about, sort of feedback surveys and and pulse checks and those kind of things, or even just going out and surveying your customers. And I think another example of, of seeing the inertia is we go off and we do these exercises, but it rarely leads to change. It's very easy to go out and sort of find out what needs to be fixed, and then it just gets harder to go implement it. So I I think that was in couple examples of my past, I can sort of see, that's when we are comfortably stuck is yeah.
Dave:We'd go out and we'd ask questions, but that's kinda where it would stop.
Derek:So are you saying that, sometimes it's it's not that we, are so comfortable that we lose our ambition to change and we get stuck, it's that we're stuck. And we tried a few things and we haven't got unstuck. And so we start to get comfortable as being stuck because we don't know know another way out. So we just kind of, like, accept it.
Dave:Well, that that could be it could be the the cause led to that. And in the examples I was thinking of is just, you know, it was just we were more comfortable, and we just didn't wanna do the hard work.
Derek:Just don't wanna do the hard work. Yeah.
Dave:Don't wanna do those things, so
Derek:So so we talk about that, you know, that hard hard work has been more possible if, if it means something. If you're trying to accomplish a goal, there's, there's justification for hard work. So one of the ways you get stuck is you don't have any context for, for hard work. And then the other thing you said, we talked about feedback, is, in a really complex organization, when you don't understand how value is created, you can try to do something, but you can't see it come up the other side. And that gets really frustrating.
Derek:And so then, at some point, you're like, well, I don't know why we would try anything, because we never see anything come up the other side. Like, we don't have the visibility. We don't know where the customer is in this. We don't know what other parts of the organization need to use from the input that we create. And so we don't even, like, we have no context for adjusting our work because we don't see what happens with it.
Dave:Yep. Well, great sort of segue into my question in my mind here. I came in with it. Okay. We we see that somebody's comfortably stuck.
Dave:What how do we break out of that? How do you get moving?
Derek:Well, based on what I just said, one of the first things that comes to mind is you have to get connected with the customer and the purpose of the organization. And and I don't think customers, are getting all that they deserve. In most cases, I think they could get better service, better value, You know, products could last longer. Services could be more on point. If you go into the public service, you know, until the hip replacement happens in a week, we clearly aren't meeting the requirements that the customer might set up.
Derek:And so our institutions could do way better, but we need to be connected to the reason the organization exists and then especially the customer. So if you could see the customer, if you could see the customer's pain, and then go home at night and say, I can't believe that we're not doing better at that. That's a that's a a start of a way to get unstuck.
Dave:So without sort of saying that the health care system is complacently stuck, I think it's more that out. We're going towards the alignment of, you know, going back to purpose, going back to the the two things and sort of saying, are we still striving are we still moving forward towards both of those? And then because of of sort of, you know, there's a bit of conflict or tension between your two purposes, that's gonna introduce enough to help break the inertia, to help move the organization forward.
Derek:Hey, Dave. That's great. I don't know that I've ever thought of it that way. So let's, let's mark that one as a as a new insight. As that even understanding the dynamic tension between purpose x and purpose y, if you set that up right, you can never be comfortable.
Dave:Right?
Derek:Yeah. Right? Like, it's it's never enough because you can't, pile on one side, and so the tent that tension changes.
Dave:And it it also helps you set up the right purpose x and purpose y. You you have to have that tension in there.
Derek:Right. You have to have that tension. And so, so we've we've used the example of parenting before, and having, a happy child and a happy adult. Well, guess what? What you have to do with a three year old is different than what you have to do with a 17 year old.
Derek:And that changes constantly, that tension between those things constantly changes as young people get more and more independence. There's, you know, no parent says I got this figured out. And, just in case parents ever think they do, that's why people sometimes have more than one child, because then all the real real real change again. But that's the same in organization. If you really understand the dynamic nature of your purposes, you can't say, well, we got this figured out.
Dave:That's that's good. I so and I think that's probably only sort of one of the ways to sort of break out of this complacency. I can think of a few others, but I'm not sure we have enough time to go into those today. No. I mean, it's I think it's out there a lot and and once you sort of stop and look for it, there is a lot of this, a lot of organizations that sort of get into this position over time and they become a bit stuck, and and not for reasons that the easy decisions have have have gone away and the harder ones are still there.
Dave:It's just because of that lack of of balance and they've just sort of evolved into this state, I guess, it's there. I just I would we'd we've spent a lot of time earlier on talking about the productivity, issues within the country and all these sort of things. To me, it comes down to there's a lot of organizations that may not realize they are stuck in this way. And so I I just love the idea of being able to easily identify it by just when you go talk to a company, it's like, oh, we're fine. And then, okay, well, let's start digging into it.
Dave:So I think this is really helpful for to start the conversation. I think we can keep going, with it to help try to figure out, okay, if I ask these questions, I get these answers, so what do I do about it?
Derek:Okay. Well, you got some good notes, so we'll pick it up in a couple of weeks and, carry on the conversation. So thanks for, thanks for the conversation today. I hope, everyone's feeling a little uncomfortable after having this conversation. So Dave Cain and I are at Unconstrained.
Derek:Greg Griffiths, thanks for your help. Until next time, as you sit comfortably on your couch, sipping your tea well, get off the couch and consider your quest.