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Reed asks Derek probing questions on how Essential Dynamics can really make a difference.
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
And that was me on the guitar and I'm so proud of it. My name is Reed McColm, and I'm your host here for Essential Dynamics, another podcast that it is born from the mind of my mentor here, mister Derek Hudson. Derek, how are you today?
Derek:Reed, I'm fine, but I'm a little bit nervous today.
Reed:Are you a little bit nervous because you know I've got some questions for you?
Derek:I am.
Reed:Yeah. I wanted to do this this episode for a few now. I am really going to ask how we make a practical application of essential dynamics. I guess my basic question is now what? Let me let me frame it in terms you can understand, and that is that the ring has been dropped into the mountain.
Reed:Sor Sauron has been defeated. The death star is destroyed. Javert has leapt from the bridge, and Jean Beljean has been welcomed into heaven by Eponine and Pontine. Why Eponine's there? I don't know.
Reed:But nonetheless, these things have happened. They've had their journeys, and their quest has been completed. What happens now?
Derek:Well, the road goes ever on, Reed.
Reed:Yeah. I think so.
Derek:And and the story continues, and each of us has a part to play. And I if I had the words, I'd quote Sam Gamgee's speech. But, you know, the the cool thing is that putting what we do in the in the context of a quest gives meaning, you know, to the the challenges of life or the challenges of, you know, that we face in the business or a particular project we're working on. But we never really get done.
Reed:That's that's sort of my point is how can we use essential dynamics? Because I guess we just have to start over.
Derek:Well, yeah, we do we do start over. And I mean, I you know, you and I are both 60 years old. And
Reed:Hey. Hey. Hey.
Derek:Hey. You know, like, it's true. It's true. And and so here we are 60 years old, and we haven't been head down on, you know, the same path for for sixty years. Things come and things go and priorities change.
Derek:I was just making some notes, maybe even yesterday, getting kind of introspective. I thought that, at one point my role as a husband and father was primarily to provide for the physical needs of my family.
Reed:Yes. Were you ever worried about that?
Derek:You know, I was from time to time. And, you know, I mean, we had kids young and there's four of them and, you know, stuff. And, you know, when we first wanted to buy a house, mortgage rates were 12.5%. And so we had to put that off for a few years. So anyway, there was a bunch of stuff.
Derek:Then I think now, of my children have their own homes. They have jobs, their spouses have jobs. There's they don't need me for that. Well, do they still need me?
Reed:Yeah. I see your point. I feel that as we get old, are we still necessary? I feel. I don't know.
Derek:And then then I think about the relationship that I'm developing with my grandchildren. Yeah. And how the relationship even with my kids has changed to more of a peer relationship. I think about the way I approached my career twenty years ago compared to what I'm doing kind of with my professional time now. And I think you can redefine your quest at any time, but you don't start at the beginning.
Derek:You start from where you were. Mhmm. And so you earn the right to start your quest, you know, where you are now. With advantages. Well, with advantages and and, you know, maybe some of those advantages are all of the things that were hard getting leading up to that point.
Reed:That's so the disadvantages were necessary too?
Derek:Well, you know, I mean, there's a lot of talk and I we probably shouldn't get into it about, you know, who's got privilege these days.
Reed:Yes.
Derek:You know, I don't I don't think much about that because, you know, I think there's this whole thing is rated on a, you know, a scale of degree of difficulty. Yeah. And I don't know, I don't I'm not in a position to judge anybody else's difficulty, but what we also have learned, you know, particularly as we've talked to these fascinating people over many weeks, is that it's the hard stuff in life that teaches you, that that refines you, that humbles you. And so maybe the the best privilege of of all is to have a hard life, You know, if it's not too hard. Like, you have if you have access to, you know, to things that you can grow with.
Derek:You wouldn't want to take that away from anyone, but you also wouldn't want anyone to have a life that doesn't have any any challenges.
Reed:Yes. It is. But you don't want to self inflict your challenges either. I mean, you don't want to sabotage your own career because it's not hard enough.
Derek:Yeah. I I've felt, you know, I've I've felt like from time to time that I've been so blessed Mhmm. To, you know, come from the the situation that I came from and have the opportunities that presented myself. But there's a flip side to that too. And it's the Spider Man line.
Derek:You know, with great power comes great responsibility.
Reed:Are you telling me you're a superhero?
Derek:No. I am not. I'm just saying that to the extent that you have things, you know, opportunities placed before you, the bar goes up.
Reed:Yeah. Yeah.
Derek:And it's not about what you can get for yourself. It's about what value you are to the world and to and to other people. And, you know, and we're never we're never gonna satisfy that quest. You know, we can't meet the needs, you know, of all the people in all the world. So I think every everyone can find meaning and grow from from where they are.
Reed:I appreciate that, and I think that's true. My question now is does our framework of essential dynamics cover everything? Is it enough? Are we are we being sensitive to what you do once you get there? There being in quotation marks.
Derek:So so let me try this part of the question. Is essential dynamics enough? Well, you know, I I don't think it's enough, but I think it's quite comprehensive because here. What do we talk about? We talk about there's we can frame up what we're doing in the in the image of a of an epic quest.
Reed:So Yes.
Derek:So if we're not doing something meaningful that drives us to try and figure out, know, how we can do something meaningful, there's an element in the quest of the call, which is we didn't come up with the idea for the quest. You know, someone else's need or whatever was, you know, sort of thrust upon us and we had to rise rise to the occasion. That that's a fantastic way of looking at life. You know, you can walk down the street and say, I picked the garbage up because no one else would do it. And, you know, that may not be an epic quest, but it puts you in a different position.
Derek:You're an agent for something good who responds to a call or an invitation. You know, I mean, I think that's powerful in itself. Then the idea that we have these competing or complementary purposes, which we haven't talked a lot about in the last few episodes, that purpose x, purpose y, that puts us in the mode of being, again, an actor in a world where we have choices that we can make. And they're not easy choices. It's not just good versus evil.
Derek:It's how can I accomplish this good thing and that good thing? Right. And I think that's just a fascinating place to spend some time thinking. Then we talk about the path and I just really feel that this idea of balancing drivers and constraints is compelling. And it covers all kinds of stuff that people do in business and in organizations.
Derek:You can look at the pandemic response and think about drivers and constraints in different ways. And then when we get to the people side, you know, if we've seen anything from, say, a pandemic response, it's how do you balance the right of an individual to decide for themselves how, you know, what's gonna happen to them and the need of the group for individuals to consider the needs of other people.
Reed:Right.
Derek:Or on the flip side is how does an organization get people to do the thing that will add value when every person's got a unique story and comes from a unique place? You know, there there's other stuff out there. You know, at one point, I said, I don't think the essential dynamics model covers leadership. We had some conversations about that. And then I said, no.
Derek:Wait. Leadership is defining the quest, defining the purpose x and purpose y, and figuring out, you know, how you're going to balance those. Leaders are the ones who magnify the drivers and identify and manage the constraints. Leaders are the ones that pull the people, individuals into the group.
Reed:Right. Right.
Derek:Right. So
Reed:I find, especially with our conversations with with so many guests as we've had, one thing that's been repeated as a theme has been that these people are not afraid of the constraints. I have lived a life thinking that although they're necessary, opposition can be a very difficult thing and a negative thing. And none of our guests really thought of it as a negative thing. They thought of it as it's happened. How do we get past it?
Derek:Well, let's go back to let's go to your world for a second. So in the world of theater, performance arts, screen arts, whatever, there's always constraints that are predefined for a purpose.
Reed:Absolutely.
Derek:Right? So a stage play has the constraints of it being real time.
Reed:Yes.
Derek:And in a I don't know what a 20 foot by 40 foot box.
Reed:Yes. Depending on the on the stage, of course.
Derek:And and you're gonna tell a story and captivate people in that way. And that's part that's part of the game.
Reed:That is. Right? It's asking a lot of their audience too. It's saying and they they completely accept the convention. They go, oh, okay.
Reed:These are the conventions. These are the restrictions. I understand. And sometimes they get you know, you hope that they get pulled in so much that they actually think, oh, wow. This is really affecting me.
Derek:Yeah. So so then you could take that a little bit further and you do things like mime, and you say we're gonna throw in another constraint, which is we can't talk.
Reed:Mhmm.
Derek:Or improv. The constraint is we had no idea what we were gonna do before we stood up here.
Reed:Uh-huh.
Derek:And so constraints make things interesting. And so you can't avoid them all, but it's which ones do we want and how do we manage them.
Reed:Right. You choose them. I get that. I'm I'm I'm sorry. I was I was just going to you you Go ahead.
Reed:I've been you've said earlier about about people being called on their quest that they it can be a sudden thing. It can be it can be thrust upon you. And I've been doing a lot of research again while I've been working on a play that I wrote many years ago, but I'm I'm now finding a lot of it was about nine eleven, and it's the and I'm thinking a lot about nine eleven lately because as we record this, the twentieth anniversary of nine eleven is about to happen. And I am still in awe of the firemen who were called to the World Trade Centers immediately as soon as the the planes hit the towers. The play the first tower was the South Tower was hit first and then the North Tower.
Reed:And the North Tower stood longer than the South Tower. The North the North Tower was yes. The North Tower was hit first and then the South Tower. And this North Tower stood for a hundred and two minutes, but but though it was hit second, the South Tower fell first. Mhmm.
Reed:And the people in the North Tower had to have watched it fall. I had to have seen it go and felt it too because it's like an earthquake and and known their fate at that point. Nonetheless, firemen still climb despite a up those stairwells in both hours, despite a long parade of people coming down to get out of the towers. Firemen with 60 pounds of equipment on their backs, fully dressed, made their way their slow way up, and it was estimated about about a minute per per flight per story. So a little less than a minute to get through that crowd and up the stairwell.
Reed:Well, the North Tower was hit. The plane that hit the North Tower obliterated everything from 89 to 100. Floor is one nine to 94, I think, obliterated. And so they had to get up to the Ninetieth Floor, if you will. The firemen did.
Reed:They knew where they were going. It took a minute a flight, almost, a minute a floor to get there, it was hopeless. It was hopeless because the it was not enough time to get to where they where the people were Yep. At least above impact. And and yet they climbed.
Reed:And this was a this was a quest thrust upon them by virtue by virtue of their of their oath.
Derek:Right. Right. So they had a calling. And and a fire a fireman would not turn it down because it would be to deny who they are.
Reed:Right. Right. But that's I I'm just in awe that they they climbed to help those people. And in the South Tower, save some people who were above impact. In the North Tower, no one above impact survived.
Derek:So the the purpose of essential dynamics, if we go back to, you know, server, why are we doing this, is even though we're not all sworn, you know, like
Reed:Yeah. You you don't Yeah. I have
Derek:been sworn firemen or, you know, police policemen or anything like that, we can find meaning that's so high that we would do whatever it took. Right. And so sometimes it's a family obligation or a community obligation or, you know, you you find you find your your cause, I suppose. Sometimes it's not even it's not even framing the cause. It's just living a good life and, you know, and being a good neighbor and and things like that.
Derek:But I I think there's a lot of power when we recognize that we're doing something that's bigger than we are. Yeah. But that we still have a choice and that we can still we can act. And, you know, and I was thinking, well, essential dynamics, is it is this way more, like, psychological? And is this more personal development and and not about hard business and hard organizations and stuff like that?
Derek:And then I remember our conversation with Ellen a few weeks ago where she said people want to be involved in something meaningful. And Jeff talked about how you spend all your day at work and isn't it better if you're doing something that's meaningful to you with people that you like or people that you even love.
Reed:Right. Right.
Derek:And I know I'm an accountant by training, but it's never about the numbers. It's always about the people.
Reed:I'm so glad to hear you say that. Didn't Glenn Vanstone also emphasize that it's also about the people. I think he said that in
Derek:Well, was talking about in his sort of economic development context, he said, everyone gets up in the morning and they just wanna add value.
Reed:Yes. And that's universal. That's universal.
Derek:So, you know, how do you add value? Well, you move down the path. And and and maybe you don't carry, you know, the quest all the way down the path, but you move it down the path. You help someone else move down the path. That's value.
Derek:It's beautiful, Derek.
Reed:Thank you.
Derek:Great. Great.
Reed:That gives me a practical application for your central dynamics. I appreciate that.
Derek:So where where do we go from here?
Reed:Well, I am asking you, Guru. I need to know. I I'm finding all these applications for your framework, and I'm wondering now what what is missing, and I don't know what's missing yet. But I sure appreciated what was Katie's concern about thought about mentors. Maybe we should do an episode about mentors.
Derek:Well, you know, we talked about leadership kind of as a view of the whole thing. Mentorship is is part of that because one of the cool things about the quest is it fits the the hero's journey and that Joseph Campbell talked about. And one of the aspects of that is that there's always a mentor.
Reed:That's right. And Frodo didn't do it without Gandalf. So
Derek:and Obi Wan Kenobi and, you know, Arthur and or Merlin and stuff like that. So there's there's pieces of this puzzle that we can talk about because people can say, hey. I, you know, I could do that.
Reed:Yeah. Yeah. Hope more people do.
Derek:And and, you know, I think this is a good time for me. I know this is just audio only, but I'm gonna like I just gotta just take a look at my my own screen here. I gotta stand up again and I gotta call out my shirt.
Reed:Yes. And and maybe we should take a picture of it and put it on the website.
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. I think I'll do that. So
Reed:Yeah. Yeah.
Derek:So my daughter-in-law is a is a brilliant artist. And she she came up with this. So it was a sketch, which is obviously a view from behind of Gandalf and Frodo. And with cool Middle Earth lettering, it says consider your quest.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:And Yeah. So, you know, we might we might hear from Tolkien's estate on, you know, using using this stuff. But I think it's literature. Right?
Reed:I think it is.
Derek:I I think there's I think there's fair use for quoting literature. So Yeah.
Reed:And I I do appreciate your your daughter in law's skills in bringing that up, but I also I also just love that you have the shirt because I'm sure you're gonna be wearing it every day for the rest of your life.
Derek:Well, at least every podcast.
Reed:Derek, where can people find you on the web?
Derek:DerekHudson.ca is the place.
Reed:And that would be the place to leave some correspondence if they have any questions or comments.
Derek:Reed, thanks so much for for asking the questions today. I think I learned something.
Reed:Well, I hope so, and I certainly always have. I am grateful to you for talking about it so much with me. And I also wanna thank Bryn Griffiths in the studio for his patient. Usually sleeps during these these podcasts, but we are grateful to him. And for making them happen, and until next time with Derek Hudson here.
Reed:And I'm Reed McCollum. Consider your quest.