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A podcast about neither tech nor people but both and how, if we want technology to move as fast as the consumers want it to then we must admit it's time we started to consistently do the Human Work. With a total of 50 years in tech between them, author, start-up founder, thought leader and influencer Duena Blomstrom and VP of Engineering for Evora Global, Dave Ballantyne, the hosts of this show come from the two opposite sides of the equation above and debate how we can best meet in the middle. The hosts are also neurospicy, Duena is diagnosed AuADHD and Dave isn't yet formally diagnosed, the couple are (still) newlyweds and they won't hold back from real talk, banter or the occasional swearword!
Welcome to a new episode of People and Tech.
Duena:In this episode, we're speaking to an amazing couple, a couple that make change together, a couple that sees effects on organizations all over Asia Pacific and a couple that has practically reinvented the idea of solid values will make sure that your organization moves in the right direction. Doctor. Cherryhoo and Rob England are the founders of Tear Unicorn and I'm sure those of us that are listening to our podcast have already heard about the ideas they are discussing before. We are obviously all coming from the point of view of extreme servant leadership, fight against human deathcultural death, irrespective of what you want to call it. And we are all sharing the desiderata of organizations that will see value instead of resources, see people and humans instead of numbers, shackle themselves off from fear and will learn to treat their people in a much more efficient and high performing way by simply going back to humanity and solid values.
Duena:This episode dwells into their work in the region and discusses potential cultural differences whilst also grabbing an absolute load of optimism from the words of the amazing Cherry and Rob who emanate not only optimism towards the workplace, but an amazing joie de vivre and clear love for each other, which I'm sure inspires their clients. Enjoy this episode and I'm hoping to speak to many more couples who like us work together to change the world in the future.
Duena:Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the People and Tech Podcast. We have two very special guests here. We were going to hopefully pounce there for yet another episode of Marin to Tech, but for now, because this is a much more important topic, we have the amazing Doctor. Terry, I'll start with the important brand. Other support, scientifically, help in Glenn, have made immense differences in the world of organizational existence these days.
Duena:So we want to hear what they've done. We know that they've made amazing strides in their region and we got to learn as fast as we can. And we talk on this podcast a lot about the fact that there's human dead and very soon changed to a lot of term because we are perturbing hormones that we always want to for it. But we sit here and we talk every few weeks about what is it that the world could do to bring in faster because our kids are in a hurry to have a better organization or society. We're hoping to hear from you how the journey brought you here.
Duena:So hello and welcome to the show.
Rob:Thank you.
Cherry:It's a pleasure
Rob:to be here.
Duena:Thank you for, greeting us. Shall we start with whatever you like? What is the first thing you would like to say other than an intro? I know everyone hates angels. So do you answer with an affirmation?
Duena:Is that something that you believe in?
Rob:I think one that I was looking at today was that we use quite often is what got you here won't get you there.
Cherry:I that if we treat people like humans, they will thrive. Don't just treat them like machines of human resource.
Duena:They are people. Statements. One, we can't be doing the same thing again. And two, we are a human, aren't we? And if we just understood these two things, right?
Duena:So what do we think is keeping organizations on getting these two very basic stuff?
Dave:Is that it there? Humans as resources.
Duena:Is it this view that they're holding, charity dating?
Cherry:So organisations normally, they think that human, people are resources. We don't treat people as resources because what we do with the resources, we exploit it, right? We exploit resources and we try to squeeze every good thing from it, but we don't look after, like we don't care about their safety and their happiness. But if we actually do care about their safety, their happiness, and what they're willing to, or what is their best and look after them, then everything will be fine. People are great.
Duena:We will be fine, wouldn't we? The difficulty though is this stardom, right? I call human that, even culture that. What had happened to organizations, let's be honest, is that they ended up in a state where half hazarded state, a state of almost accident that wasn't designed or wasn't well thought out. They are where they are.
Duena:And whether or they react to where they are is very much a question of what the strategy they want to be very intelligent.
Dave:And the drive that for us is to have you bump up the human world up that company's listed priorities and actually make them see that perhaps your biggest problem is not this revenue generator, but if you treat yourself like this, then that revenue will die.
Rob:It it comes from the very top. It comes from the principles and values that that the the shareholder is still first in most commercial organizations, and And then government, the minister is still first, not the employees and not even the customer. So it's moving them through that shifting from value, money, to values. And and it is hope gradually happening, but the majority of organizations are still well dug in to Friedmanism and profit and greed, and employees are well down the list of priorities in that sort of value framework.
Dave:Is there a section where you just think, have the rights of the channel, but I'm enshrined in the law in certain jurisdictions, but at what point are the rights of the employee enshrined these laws?
Duena:In all jurisdiction, they are, but it got done in an elegant and logical way, maybe not.
Rob:That true? It is a myth that shareholder value is is legally enshrined. Though it's a myth in The UK and The US. It's a widely held myth, but, there's a number of interesting, legal articles about how, in fact, that it's not a constraint that people think it is. But obviously the enshrining employee rights, you know, In social media, we see The USA a lot, of course, and that's a great example of how you don't treat employees is the American approach to employees.
Rob:Whereas you're in Europe where protections for employees are much better, probably better than here in New Zealand. So there are legal frameworks both ways. I think it's deeper though. I think it's sociological and there is now a change in values. The young people are coming up and they're not going to put up with this crap anymore.
Duena:Just that. You love that perspective. That's it. That's why it is. They will not.
Rob:We're lucky though. We filter our clients. Our clients self filter. They come to us, and so out of a 100,000,000 Vietnamese, we've we've found so far 20 clients. I mean, we're we're talking about a small minority who are amenable to these kind of conversations, aren't they, Cherry?
Rob:They're not the typical Vietnamese CEO.
Cherry:Yeah, no. They're all looking forward to build a good company where people are happy and not only happiness, but also share the profit and benefit from organization, not just them as owner who get it all. So people who have the mindset of bringing better life for people who work for them, who often, almost all of our clients have that kind of mindset. So they came to us because of that reason.
Rob:And it's interesting that I'm not a religious person, neither of us are, but there is a significant number of Buddhists amongst the executives who come to us. I think it is a big enough percentage to be notable that a number of them are driven by that Buddhist ideology of wanting to be better.
Duena:That's amazing insight. And perhaps we should dig into this a little bit. This thing of the concept of world called Nitro Rasa, and mean, some of us are a professor, but nitro muscle right there. But is it maybe that I have this continuous feeling and it is because my life exploded and so on, but I do have, even before this happened, I have had this heaviness feeling that the world is closing in and the world is getting less gripped and humans are less open handed. Over the last, it's been twenty years, I've spent it that way.
Duena:Maybe it's just my experience, but in organizations, this closing in feels more present by the year to me. Is this something you've learned?
Rob:Think that's very true. I mean, Terry knows I'm quite pessimistic in the short term, but in the long term I still believe humanity advances. We come two steps forward and one back. If you look back one hundred years, then you can have a more positive view of things than if you look back ten or twenty years. And don't say that to the Vietnamese because they're booming.
Rob:They're having a great time. They're thriving. So locally, they're not feeling that yet. I do agree that things are getting a bit negative around the world, but I think that's a short term thing. And I think longer term, if we can dig into these deeper values, not Buddhism, because we're not Buddhists, but we also talk about truth, beauty and goodness, the transcendentals and not being completely 100% focused on facts and data and logic at work and reintroducing beauty and goodness as elements in the workplace along with truth.
Rob:And so that's a non well, comes out of Christianity if you go right back but that's a non religious model that we use to talk about having those three sets of values rather than the one.
Duena:That's very courageous. You don't have to worry about this, Rolando, when you first put together the model, right? I suspect that coming out good, even the vocabulary around something like truth and beauty in a business context has been this record. Would you say that fair? And how about
Rob:we go? We don't lead with it. It's it's way there. It's way there in the back.
Duena:Brilliant. I
Rob:mean I mean, you you talk, Cherry, about when you're talking to executives, you're talking about truth, beauty and goodness, but you're talking in a very practical, pragmatic, advisory way rather than in a theoretical way, aren't you?
Cherry:Yeah, rather than, yeah, but it's more related to the daily life. Like everyone actually, no matter they are the owner, the boss, the manager, or the leader, or employees, we all have the same ideas of what good look like and what the environment of an organization that we want to have. Well, nobody have a different ideas. They all want the same thing. But it's just a way we organize a thing.
Cherry:We manage a thing around. It doesn't come to everyone to come to the result that they all want. So I talked about it. I said openly, what do you really want? So everyone wants the same thing.
Cherry:They want a better life. They want better society. They want to be happy at work. They want to be the family as a good community who love each other and support each other.
Rob:They want to succeed at work.
Cherry:Yeah. So based on that, say, okay, so we cut all the crap, all right? We cut all the dirty waste and crap. And from now on, we set the value and we will follow. We set principle together, not top down, not bottom up, but all together.
Cherry:We open. We open and we invite everyone to come and contribute, draw a picture, paint a picture that we all want. And then we agree together, here's the picture we all want, here's the way we go, here's the value and here's the principles and who we do what. You know, it's all together, not top down and not bottom up and no cut all the crap. So that's how it works.
Duena:It's amazing. That is amazing. That is amazing from multiple point of view to me. Think the first thought that you can reach people with such a humour, you know, saying, I know how hard it is every day going like, come on now. We just need to do this humor.
Duena:It's not difficult. It's five days we've learned about EQ and then just having that continue.
Rob:Yeah. It's interesting that a lot of bosses around the world not this is nothing Vietnamese. A lot of bosses around the world, the only way they know to be a boss is to be an asshole. Right? That they think that being a boss is about shouting and ordering and commanding and being tough and and ruthless, and and they have this this alpha Donna Arty wrote a book in the nineties called the fall of the alphas, where she talked about alpha and beta management.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. And so the alpha that alpha management, that's all they know. They don't They're not even aware that a beta management is possible. They're not even when when Cherry says to them, you know, you could just try being nice, they're like, oh, I can do that?
Rob:Is that a thing? It's it's liberating for some of these people to be told that it's possible to be a nice boss.
Duena:Because all of these, there's basically there are sources of management around the world that are today telling them that top down management and the way that they the way that the CRM control is properly responsible for organizations is the only way to keep to do a good job as a manager. So force people.
Rob:Their MBAs tell them that, McKinsey tell them that. It's still the it's still the the the what is it? You know, the general accepted practice of management is is that command and control management. And they don't know. They just literally don't know the alternatives.
Duena:And they come into the workplace and they realize it does not work. And these are like you talk stuff, you know, of the newer generation. I really love that point. Think that's where where the hope is, if I fail and get excited like that about them, because I feel like there's a sense of of self respect boundaries that are coming with the new generation that will have to have us that don't want to jump and get to a better place. The values of sustainability, which are in a sense falling into the what do we do without resources in general, even if people are resources, is that how you treat your resources, is that how you treat your water, your land, your animals?
Duena:Can we all as humans do better, right? So that's the number one, but I think they come with that. They come with a consciousness of we can and should do better and so in the workplace they will expect the same thing. Obviously the secret is going in and meeting the structures that are absolutely, it must be such a shock for most people coming into the workplace. They are sold, at least in most places.
Rob:And you've got the changing values and the other big thing you've got is the, accelerating rate of change and VUCA, you know, the volatile, uncertain, complicated and ambiguous. The rate of change is intolerable. So as I said at the start, what got you here won't get you there. When you said it doesn't work, most of the managers around the world will say, yes, does. Look, I've got a functioning organization.
Rob:My staff do what they're told. We make profit every year. Of course it works. So in their mind it works, but they're also noticing that things are not working quite as well as they used to. These young people won't be managed.
Rob:Things keep changing. They can't get things settled. So it is actually starting to not work, but a lot of them are not realising that. They're still saying, I've got me here. I've done thirty years in this job.
Rob:This is how I've done it. I know this works. So they're trapped in that old thinking and they haven't yet realized that it's not working. So some of the people who come to us are ideologically driven, I want to be nicer. Others come to us and go, Help!
Rob:I'm in deep doo doo here. I'm in trouble. It's not
Duena:working.
Rob:They finally realize it's not working.
Duena:And in technology, it's not working very, very obviously. That's one of the reasons we chose psychological safety for technology teams is because you cannot write software if you do your task psychological safety. It's just not possible. We can stop pretending you yet. You can't write very bad software that's going to bring in twenty seconds or it needs to be write thirty seconds, you cannot have a functional organisation.
Duena:So I think the reason that I think in the technology sphere is more evident is because the need for communication and collaboration between people who have had no need for that before is stringent, it's urgent, and it's really making people go, everything I learned doesn't work. What do I do now? You do something completely different. You teach these people to be humans, and then you together make it work. So it's a big ask.
Rob:Even broader than IT is at the centre of something, which is knowledge workers in general. So more and more people are knowledge workers. More and more work involves not being a machine, as Cherry said, but you know, that machine work is fading and more and more jobs that people do are in the service industries, they're in creative, they're in software and they're knowledge workers. They have to be liberated. They have to be free.
Rob:They have to be cyclically safe in order to function.
Cherry:For some leaders who say, When we say, what got you here won't get you there, can then say, no, we still have money. We still get profit. And yeah, as Rob said, that people still do what they've been told. But then the question I often ask them that, is that really the result that you want to have? How about the culture?
Cherry:Are people happy? Are you happy? Then the answer is always no. So can we change our mindset and our way of managing to make people happy and produce more profit and share with them, make people's life better. And then most of them, they kind of agree with that.
Cherry:And I think, yeah, we try to, in the boss or in the owner's mindset, I think they stay more towards the number, to the money. But then if we say like, if we have the same people and they create more value, how about everyone's winning? Everyone's winning, right?
Rob:Because a lot of them are really frustrated at the lack of productivity of their people. Say bad things about their people. They are managing to make a profit, but their staff are useless and they're lazy and they don't work hard and they're disengaged and they blame the staff. It's never been one, it's always the staff. So another conversation to have with them is if they are still sort of stuck in this old ways of thinking, is saying, how about if we could unlock more productivity?
Rob:You know? How about if we make you more money, boss? And and that gets them initially interested, and then some some of them turn off because it's all too hippie and lovey dovey for them.
Duena:Mhmm.
Rob:But others, I've watched Cherry take them on the journey of self transformation. We get this feedback from leaders. They say to Cherry, you've changed my personal life as well as my work life. You've made me a different human being, and they come on that journey.
Duena:This is all my work for is having seen those developers cry when they get to be actual oh my god. I am a human being, and I can be in Florida, but not the people. And I can have emotions, and it's okay. Literally, we'll sing Mhmm. In his team Yep.
Duena:Developers breaking the ass and, alright, there's no thing in this look going to happen through my life. These are people who we have because we work in the Alambridge, most of them are even more literated than many other places because there there is very little in terms of of kind of, if you wish, ring fencing, the sanity of people that have such emotional and informational overload. The fact that we talk to all these people that are not already tube of drawing form, most of the developers we talk to are either going through autistic burnout they can't even understand or family traumas that they can't talk to anyone. People we work with are normally the people that essentially have already said the effect of all this and they don't even know what to ask for better. It's almost like a segment of, tell for about like white collar slavery we have made in some enterprises.
Dave:They just
Duena:do it like horrible as it is. They go, do it and they don't think about it. So yeah, we've seen people cry when they realize their lives can be different and it should be different. And I think this is what's amazing, right? And what's empowering is and hard at the same time.
Duena:When we say to organizations is it's not just you as an organization, it's you as a human. It's all of everyone else's other individual responsibility as well. We all have to borrow apart. People are tired, aren't they, of the water? They're not that excited.
Duena:It takes a motive work to they're starting to see why.
Rob:But the results are explosive. The results are explosively good. I mean, we we Jerry gets extraordinary results within months, usually, in terms of money and productivity and morale and engagement and efficiency and just, they just take off. It's like you open the gates and let the people out. It's extraordinary to work.
Dave:Yeah. I was in the opener of V shape. The end result, I'm just, you and me stood out that first step. The C suite has to make is it almost a matter of trust and a matter of faith we can do this. And for the next X many months, our changes are effectively going to be unmeasurable, unmetrifiable, and we'll be able to feel it somehow.
Dave:We can feel that people are being happier. They're starting to make different progress.
Duena:Measurable. I disagree with you. I've worked
Rob:my day.
Duena:I have to measure the top of the list. I can measure if the people are stressed about it. They're happy. If they're resilient, if they're practical. I can measure everything you like, But it's not about measuring it.
Duena:It's about teaching them doing more of it. Let them stop them.
Dave:I think we'll read something on a house of. We we start into bit here. That's Friday.
Duena:As you know, because it made this software for the last fifty years, even when you can measure it exactly from here to here, the fear is the same. The fear is brother like, why is it probably look bad first, and I'm gonna lose my job? Do you is the solve this, the the the massive fear. So we talk about the massive fear. Right?
Duena:People on the inside have it. They gotta keep a job. People on the outside have it. They wanna make sure they don't wrap their boats. Is that fear everywhere?
Duena:No? I love Terry because she's seeing
Rob:it. Yeah. I was gonna say, Terry Yeah. Terry, you you tell us, especially those Apex execs, you spend hours on the phone to some of these people nursing them through this fear,
Cherry:Yeah. They do. They always afraid that the chance we lose their control and they won't, if you give people more freedom, then they will destroy everything. That's the fear that they often have. But again, I always said I understand that, but look, you've been holding people for how many years?
Cherry:And now people are not, they just like they are in a cave and everything, you have to order them to do it. Otherwise they don't. So you don't want that. So let's give them some freedom. Just start from the small.
Cherry:Just start from small. Give them freedom to decide on how they want to do and what do they want to do first. Just tell them the outcome you want, or even discuss with them what is the right outcome or possible outcomes that we can all make. Don't just put the number and give them the number. And then they will be frustrated.
Cherry:And normally they don't understand why they have to do that. And it's very unreasonable. So just bring everything open, bring every single thing on the table. With that courtesy. All transparency, discuss with them.
Duena:What transparency? The creative organizations will always be transparent. Do not know. Anyway, this is not number one rule in every organization ever. And
Rob:that is one of our first steps or well, no. First step is, gaining the trust of this Apex exec to try. And I love what you say, Cherry. You always say to them, you don't have to believe me. I want you to just try it.
Cherry:Yeah, they don't believe it, but they like the idea. And also they see normally because all of our clients didn't come from the sky, you know. They all been introduced by another client. They know from
Duena:all the info stores that they work. And
Cherry:they like their results. But then again, it's still even a very best friend of one of my current clients is very successful clients. They introduced her best friend, but her best friend invited us to come and then she has a lot of resistance to change herself and a lot of things that it takes really long time.
Duena:It's a right? For everyone, you're taking people on a personal journey so that they can be courageous and the entrepreneurs enough to make some immense changes that aren't necessary for their enterprises. Of course, you may need a hard time thing.
Rob:Yeah. Once we get that first commitment, then to your point about transparency, a large part of the work that we do early on, as Cherry said, is to open everything, is to make the work visible, Kanban and that sort of thing, make the work current work visible, to make the workflow visible, value stream maps and things and visibility of process, open the books. So Cherry manages to persuade them fairly early on to open up financially to everybody to see show what's happening, and opening up the teams to be capability and skills based, not roles based. And so have transparency about what everybody's capabilities are. And so once you know who can do what, who's doing what, how does it work, why are we doing it, and the vision and the values.
Rob:We use the term obeyer for a big room, you know, the bridge, the ship, an obeyer wall showing all the information from the vision down through the values to what the work is and how we're going do it, what our priorities are and where should we start. Just opening it all up and opening the people up with, like Cherry said, invite everybody into the room. We do big room planning, right? Inspired by open space technology, we do big room events to open up the conversation and let everybody feel they're engaged. So that transparency, that visualisation of work, that opening is really what starts it all and lights the fire.
Rob:It's it's a go.
Duena:How
Dave:do you feel it's so instructional in the middle of this?
Rob:I'm just wondering.
Dave:Mean, it's obviously the OPEC companies you're working with, and how can we translate this more, you know, to The Americas, the Europeans areas? Is is there such a big difference to that? I mean, people are being hooked. Like, is there something about the Apex culture which I.
Rob:Something about Vietnam or Asia Pacific Court.
Duena:How how would you say the difference is? Maybe it's best maybe it's both. Horizon just getting numbered. Kids is the best place really from Gap interview. Is that a general thing you find over tradition?
Cherry:It's at the beginning, if we have a mandate and if we have a commitment from the top down, from the top, would say that it's easier to start with Islamist because they are kind of obedient. They listen to the boss. But in the long run, I mean, it's easier at the beginning, but in the long run, I don't think it's easier because I can see a lot of, like they tend to learn everything quickly, listening and do things, but they also not spending too much time to try to understand or read more, or even try to discover more about the knowledge, what linked to what. And I mean, logically, maybe they're too busy to learn more, to go deep down, to understand why they're doing that. Even though we try to explain everything we do, we always explain to them why we do that.
Cherry:But still, in order to go further, continue improving, you have to learn, right, by yourself. No one can spoon feed you for whole life. So I think I feel like it's, again, if the most successful organization that we have, it should be the organization that be able to turn themselves to be learning organization. Not in process, I don't measure companies that we have by how much money more they earned. I measure them by how much they turn themselves to be continuous improvement and learning organization because that would help for the very, very
Duena:long run. That's the disability care at all. It's where we have turned people to understand that there is an engine within themselves. They can engage so that they continuously do better. I
Rob:would say that, you know, if every group of humans is on a bell curve, right, that there are cultural differences, but the bell curves still overlap. It's not like the Vietnamese are down here and Westerners are up here. You know, there's a big overlap. They are still very similar people to everywhere else in the world. There's a few things.
Rob:There's things that sort of stand out when you're there that you see the differences. But the bosses are still command and control bosses everywhere in the world, and egos are egos, and politics are politics, and passions are passions. And They still remind me of people in New Zealand and The US and Australia. Some of the dynamics we see are still the same dynamics. There's just there are differences, but I wouldn't want to make too much of them, think is what I'm saying.
Rob:Terry, would you agree?
Cherry:When It's super we have organisation in New Zealand, I think the frustration that we got here is no different to Vietnamese culture. Nothing, really. Even though if we talk about system and productivity in more advanced economies like New Zealand or Australia or US, maybe better. But when we talk about the cultures, we face the same problem everywhere.
Duena:Right. I think you're probably exactly right. I mean, have one big or no decan and human that is something that after fifteen years all over the world and everyone asks me what is different and I keep saying absolutely really nothing. When you strip it all down to it, all humans need to do the same five things to keep themselves, you know, self soothing and capable of socialing without that solution. When you split it or down, you agree on a language that means the same thing to everyone and you give people the time and that is big to actually get into a habit of self improvement, be ridiculous.
Duena:The question is how do you
Rob:get that?
Duena:So I think we see the same things in cross cultures.
Dave:I don't
Duena:know if that's necessary.
Dave:Oh, absolutely. You read that first video about one restaurant, everyone says we are a generative culture. Show me how you'll be in a generative culture, and you're not.
Rob:We are a learning organization. A couple of times I've said to a client, you're not a learning organization, and they get really upset. Really upset. And even when you lay the evidence out, they're like, oh, I'm sure that, you know, don't want is to hear.
Dave:The hardest topic of change, which is accepting the public, accepting it is rationed.
Duena:That is what we let's face it. That's what the stories are talking about. Right? But just getting people to accept it is an issue. But I think things start look.
Duena:We we shouldn't be I I shouldn't always be this gal. Right? When I started this forward journey of like, let me put on my life and go fixing the universe, things were real worth. Let's be honest, right? So a party of things were real worth.
Duena:We couldn't be having this conversation. We couldn't have said crap out loud. We couldn't have said that if the sex are crap and they're joking these days, gotta go out or get better. We couldn't have said these things at all. Well, we would never have called for another contract.
Duena:The fact that we have a feeling that we can be honest and there is transparency is, I think, a testament to all of our individual desperate works for the last fifteen years. It's not also going to be honest, the people who are listening to this all need us to just be posturing, right? Let's be honest. There's almost like to me this in versus out situation that's happening. People that are within a job and they have been in a job for a long while and then there are people who are attempting to bring in new things to help them make that job better.
Duena:This is always, The problem is I feel like that there's a bigger and bigger separation between the two. The positive is there's new incredibly big things that have happened in the workplace. Let's be honest, right? One, people don't go into the office anymore like they used to. Let's be honest.
Duena:That's a big one. Second big one is execs have accepted that they have to deal with their people and take care of them. That's not gonna work otherwise. That's a big acceptance, whether it's, you know, with all the candidates. And then maybe the other big changes, we all as humans have went, oh, oops.
Duena:We have to fix the whole thing. We have a lot of things we have created, so I wasn't worried about human human, but we're worried about it everywhere. With all these together, it's good that we're working well with Walter, right, with COVID and what's in between.
Rob:I think we've learned a lot too, as you say, you go back to 2000. We didn't know what complexity was. The whole field of complexity is something that only a few mathematicians and philosophers had any idea about. And so understanding that as a community and as an industry and as, you know, so learning complexity, psychological safety, no one had heard of psychological safety or thinking about neurodiversity at work or, you know, DEI, not to mention, environmental sustainability and the planet's on fire and so on. So, things have come so far in terms of knowledge and awareness in the last twenty years.
Rob:And so many managers are starting to realize that they look around and go, Oh wow, the ground is moving under me very quickly. They're not all completely stuck in the mud. A lot of them are like, I want to try and understand these things that are going on around me, and if we can just tap into that, you know, and not get too frustrated by the other end of the bell curve. Very quick example, we work with a bank, and Cherry transforms whole divisions of the bank, unlocks millions of dollars. They make annual quota in a month or two, and you know, the staff are happy and they're all singing and it's just fantastic, but there's a 100 and something divisions and there's a whole bunch of managers running divisions in that bank, mostly old men, who are all going, It's not how you run a bank.
Rob:I don't want a part of it. A lot of them have embraced it and jumped on, but there's still some holding out, and there's money on the table and it's still holding out just because, you know, lot of that. I
Duena:wish I could say that's shocking, Jerry, but I did sixteen years in fintech and all I did was change CEOs of banks' minds and go like, but please, you get the pain. You cannot be there. And the reality of it is this that's why I fear human death because I've seen it in big banks. I've seen it in forty, fifty big bags.
Rob:What I'm saying is we have to let that bottom third of the bell curve go, you know, and not let them stress us. Teri's really great at focusing on what she can change and what matters and just shutting out. If people don't want to play, they don't want play. Okay, fine. Move on to the people who do want to engage and do want to be part of it.
Cherry:You have to find the right battle to fight. Right?
Duena:So they were hung up at the very massive problem like we did, like just fix your organization, that was wrong. So when we first started, you were mentioning Rob that nobody really knew what psychological safety was. I mean, obviously Amy and Elizabeth from Alphabet didn't have the consent for so long. We just haven't done anything to do anything about it until both Amy and El Bugal came up with the Aristotle approach. And even then, when we arrived there in 2018 and so, there was obviously a conversation within our multiple circuits that keep on the list and this, but we have circles in government in agile communities, in organizational development communities.
Duena:That's one of the problems, I think, if you ask me. But that's a bit of a conversation for another time. When we came to Psychology the DEC, the term existed. People kind of knew that it made a difference to money. But by the time that we managed to get people to go like, oh wow, 40 more money is a lot better than not, it took years of awareness.
Duena:And I think you're right, awareness on this awareness on DEI, neuroadversity awareness, it's all for me to Is it though, a fear though sometimes is that we are in a crisis situation, not enough of us are doing the right things currently and in the right way. But hopefully, by people listening to your success and by people seeing these thoughtful experiments we're doing so that we move people faster. Ideally, things have changed, and, you know, we'll get that.
Rob:I think we're moving into more turbulent times, and we were having a personal conversation the other night, Tray and I, with someone about, you know, in in life, you go along on rails steadily, and then I don't have to tell you guys, you enter a period of massive turmoil, and and everything's up for grabs then and everything changes. I would actually throw other things in the pot at the time and say, well, if all this has changed, let's change this as well. And then eventually you come out of that node of turmoil into another reasonably steady state. And I think the world does the same thing, and I think the world is working itself up for another big bang, personally. I think all hell is gonna break loose, I'm afraid.
Rob:But that will be a time of change and we'll come out of that. I hope, I believe, come out not in the stone age, we'll come out for the better. We'll come out into a next renaissance of humanity, but it could be a little bit it could be an interesting ride for a few years, think. We'll see.
Duena:I love that message. So I think we need to buckle down, do better because unfortunately, we're we're buckling down for a possibly bumpy ride for the next few years all of us.
Rob:But that's an opportunity to change even during that time. People are desperate. People are unsettled. People are willing to change because they've been shocked out of their rut, and they are willing to look at options.
Duena:You guys are the most optimistic to people I've ever met. Are you doing that while trying to fix organizations?
Rob:Yes. It's The dedication. Absolutely.
Duena:I mean, you guys have had an absolute hesitation. We do wanna get you back one time. So you explained to us maybe step by step kind of how your process works. But meanwhile, we'll put the links to your site underneath here so that people both find out how you do it. It's it's an amazing process, you guys.
Duena:Please listen to. I've met two organizations that had met you guys before, and one of them was actually, I think we have applied in common for a very busy period of five people who care about psychological safety. But what I wanted to say is please go and look at their world because if you start doing the serious amounts of human work in the way that the things that they described it, there is no way you cannot win. So thank you so much for coming over, guys. We'll make sure we get you back.
Duena:We are really all pre owned from each other and everyone listening to you has a lot to learn.
Dave:Yes. Thanks very much for having us.
Cherry:Hopefully, we will see you in person in Spain.
Duena:Yes, absolutely. Please come over. It's a rainy place, which is why we're in the studio, but it is an amazing place in general. We would love to. Yeah.
Duena:We'll be there. Thank so much, you guys.
Cherry:We'll be there.
Duena:See you again. Thank you. Bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.