Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Derek and Reed explore the natural tension that comes when individuals join groups to get things done.
Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Welcome back, everybody. It's time to discuss Essential Dynamics. I'm Reed McColm, your good looking host. And I'm here today with Derek Hudson, business guru, who's has been telling us more and more about Essential Dynamics' philosophy of life and business. Derek, how are you?
Derek:I'm doing great, Reid, and you're looking good. And isn't it great that we're in a podcast?
Reed:Think it's marvelous. Yeah. And I'm so glad people can't see us. Yeah. That's true.
Reed:Derek, I have a lot of questions, and one of them, we've been we've been discussing the people part of people, path, and purpose. We've discussed people, path, and purpose as our as a touchstone for us in this understanding essential dynamics. And the people part for me is extremely complicated. What are people problems, Derek? And, I mean, really, what are they?
Derek:What really? What are people problems? Well, a fantastic question. So in the framework that I'm using, the people are the people that we work with to accomplish the purposes that we've set out using some kind of system or process, which we're referring to as a path, so it sounds like it's an epic adventure
Reed:Yes. To
Derek:go to go slay the dragon. And the way I look at the people side is that the naturally opposing forces that natural dynamic tension is between everyone's desire to be their own person and their desire to belong to a group. And that's sometimes conflicting. Well well, they are because everyone everyone's desire to be their own person is almost by definition different from everyone else's desire to be their own person. Sure.
Derek:And so what we see is a lot of times what we think of as a people problem is the fact that someone is acting like an individual, that they're they're being different from what we expect or what we want them to be.
Reed:Contrary to the group's purpose?
Derek:Sure. Or, you know, if if you're thinking from a management point of view, I have employees. I want the employees to do the job the way I tell them to do the job. And I'd, you know, really like it if they don't slack off, get distracted, come back to me and try and argue about what I've asked them to do. I just you know?
Derek:From a from a management point of view, traditionally, what you really want is is robots. But we're we're stuck with working with people. And historically, one of the things you've seen is that when people can assemble enough power, they treat other people like robots.
Reed:Right. Right. Props. In my business, it would be
Derek:people are props to get your So you have let's maybe let's go with that a little bit. You have characters Mhmm. Who have agency, you know, who are, like, growing and progressing and making choices, and then you have the other people in the scene. Is that right?
Reed:That's right. That's right. Alfred Hitchcock famously famously was accused of treating people like cattle, his actors. And he says, I do not. I have never said that actors are cattle.
Reed:I said actors should be treated like cattle. And and, again, what he means by that is that he's there's a if you're directing, what you want are people to do things your way, in your style, as you say they should be done, and therefore, the the actors become props for your shadow play, if you will.
Derek:Sure. And and that's the same if you think about organizations for for one reason in my mind right now, I'm thinking of the Pyramids Of Egypt. I'm pretty sure that the slave labor that was used to construct the Pyramids Of Egypt didn't didn't have great working conditions, and, they probably didn't have a suggestion box.
Reed:I'm worried about their health care. But no. You go on. So
Derek:so there is this natural tendency of people in charge to want other people to do stuff their way.
Reed:At the minimum cost.
Derek:Sure. And the maximum efficiency and all that. But when we work with people as opposed to robots or Or slaves. Or slaves or stock animals or whatever, is that every one of those people is an individual who has their own personality and their own desire for self fulfillment. And so the challenge of an organization is how do I get two things?
Derek:One is I, you know, get the job done, and, two, get it done by people who all have a different idea about either what the job should be or how it should be done best.
Reed:That brings up a a wealth of questions then, Derek. Does management have the responsibility to fulfill the individual's desires?
Derek:Well, in in today's commercial environment, you know, every transaction is done by other than Facebook advertising, I think. But every transaction is done with, you know, two willing partners. Mhmm. So an employer is in a market trying to attract employees, and employees are in a market trying to get a job. And when each party agrees that, you know, they're gonna engage with each other, then the employer has the opportunity to channel the employee's energy and the employee has the opportunity to deliver value to the employer.
Derek:And so that's that should be considered a fair and balanced transaction that either one can opt out of. And if that if that's the case, then either it works or one of the two parties is gonna say, you know, no deal. I'm out. So It's not exactly like that, but that's good. That's that's how it's supposed to work.
Reed:Okay. Let's talk the ideal company. If are are you saying that the management should not only take into consideration his own his or her own desires to make for the company and the company's goal prop the with purpose x and purpose y, but also the purpose x, purpose y of the individuals working for the company. Are they responsible for that?
Derek:Well, their their their job as a manager is to get the most out of the employee that's relevant for the work that the organization's trying to do. Right. Right. And so you don't necessarily have to get all the way inside someone's head, but you but you you should be clear about what you're trying to accomplish, what the the values of the organization are, how you wanna accomplish them, and then, you know, entice an employee with the compensation package you're offering to say, that's close enough to my values, but I you know, I'm gonna step in and and work there. I see.
Derek:If you wanna get, you know, beyond that, you know, an organization with a really clear sense of purpose that enlists employees who also have who share that sense of purpose, you know, a lot of things are gonna be easier. Yes. But day to day, you know, the company still is gonna ask people to do things they don't wanna do.
Reed:Okay. I run a family business. I I'm in charge. I don't let's say I make well, it doesn't matter. I make cheese from belly button belly button lint.
Reed:Now that's the goal of the company. I have, a dozen employees who are not related to me who are, disgusted by my cheese. They will have an they will have a big effect on how accept on how, my cheese is received in the world, in the in by the market. How do I reconcile those how how do I deal with people who don't like my product?
Derek:Well so I'm gonna flip it around and use the positive example. Okay. When I was at Edmonton Economic Development, and I mentioned this in an earlier session, we had all kinds of people applying for positions in the company. And when we interviewed them and said, why do you wanna work here? Invariably, it was because I love this town.
Derek:I love Edmonton. I wanna contribute. I like what the organization is doing. I like what they're trying to do, and I wanna contribute. And then and then we hire them and find out that they're individuals and they have their own unique ideas and they're you know, it's hard to channel the energy sometimes.
Derek:I would way rather be trying to channel energy than to create it from nothing.
Reed:And Yeah. I like that. That's true.
Derek:Certainly, as an employer, not want to have people on my team that, you know, thought poorly of the of the product or the value that we are providing.
Reed:Okay. That's an important part for me because I'm what I'm trying to get to is that people are perhaps the most intriguing or contradictory factor in people path or purpose. They may be certainly the most dynamic. They will change on a dime, according to mood. Those are people problems for me.
Reed:If I have if I have employees who are not, in my case, if I'm a director of a play and I have actors who feel very strongly that I should have directed it a different way, then they will be in danger of going back to their way of doing it if I'm not there.
Derek:Well, Reed, that's really interesting. So if you're talking about, live theater Yes. I suppose the direction is a little bit different than if you're talking about film.
Reed:Yes. In film, I can edit things. I can edit if I get four takes, I can choose the best of those four takes or even mix them up. In film, I've got a little more leeway in the editing room. On stage, I have no leeway.
Reed:A performance is is live every time, and
Derek:it can be different every time. Sheree, that is the case for most businesses these days. Metrics. Not most. But, you know, you you talk about the customer moment of truth.
Derek:And one of the interesting things about that in the in the services that we experience as consumers is often that moment of truth where we're really engaging with the company is with the person in the company who's paid the least.
Reed:Oh, so you spelled on that. Yeah.
Derek:Sure. So you go into the bank. You have a problem with your account. The person at the teller is probably the on the very the entry level in the company. Sure.
Derek:But they're the ones that are gonna either solve your problem or, you know, create your problem. You pick up the phone call to call your cable provider, your Internet provider. Uh-huh. You're not talking to a VP level.
Reed:Well, I am because they recognize my name. Sure. But, yeah, you go to Me? Uh-huh.
Derek:So this moment of truth can't be controlled by the executive officers.
Reed:Nor do they want it. They don't wanna deal with that minutiae.
Derek:Well but they do want it to be good.
Reed:Oh, yeah. They want the experience to be good, but they don't wanna get on the phone themselves.
Derek:So as the director of a play, you have your script, and you're blocking your rehearsals, and you're when this happens, I want you to do this.
Reed:Right.
Derek:And then in the moment of truth, they do it or they do it differently.
Reed:Right. You
Derek:know? And if you have a play with a longer run, sometimes I I would expect that would change maybe time. It does. It does. That's a
Reed:hard thing to keep a show in, yeah, in running. Like, Wicked, for instance, who's been running for ten, fifteen years, it's the same every night. Right. That's important to the people who make it. Therefore, the people who are on stage tonight, if there were a show tonight, we're in COVID right now.
Reed:But, when the shows resume, they're going to try to make it as tight and as identical to opening night as possible, which means that the people performing now are actually repeating or imitating the performances of the people who did it first.
Derek:So that's probably not what aspiring actors were hoping to do when they got into the field.
Reed:They want every actor wants to come in and have a little leeway, and every actor comes in thinking they can do
Derek:it better the person before. So what I'm really interested in in in these thoughts is the idea that today, most people are knowledge workers. Oh, yes. You know, most people don't have a series of repetitive tasks they do on an assembly line.
Reed:Correct.
Derek:And so we want people to bring their motivation, their creativity. We want them to bring all of that into their job. But at the same time, we've got standards. We've got, you know, operating procedures or rules. And we want some kind of compliance as well.
Derek:And
Reed:Is that why we is that why we separate people from path and purpose? It's because it's the unknown variable?
Derek:Well, it's it's a huge variable. And then there's this balance between, you know, the assembly line requires you to just act like a robot and do your job even if that's on stage in New York. Right. However, we also want you to bring, you know, all your passion, all your motivation, and all your best ideas. But we just don't want you to be inconvenient about it.
Reed:Yeah.
Derek:And people people can't disconnect themselves from that. So so my experience in my assembly line job as an auditor back in the day was I hated it, and it was boring.
Reed:Really? I didn't know you hated it. That's interesting to me.
Derek:Oh, no. It was it was terrible work. But the the job of the organization is to get people who, you know, are aspiring CFOs or whatever to do this rote work for a period of time because the work needs to get done, and you want to get people to comply. But you don't wanna break your spirit because they're gonna learn from this and be able to do something else in the future. You know?
Derek:And I'm I'm thinking about your stage actors. It's kinda the same thing. You don't wanna break their spirit, but you also want conformance and compliance.
Reed:You want a uniform performance. You want you want to be sure that the show that you produced on opening night will be the same the next night.
Derek:So at the beginning, you asked the question, you know, what's a people problem? And I usually don't think it's because there's a crazy person. And I don't think it's usually because people are bad. Those are my coaches. Often, I think it's because the systems that we create or have are, you know, have by default don't allow the individual to be the individual and to be the contributor that the organization needs.
Reed:And you think it is ideal to allow that individual contribution?
Derek:Well, you know, that's what we want, and that's what people wanna bring to work every day. It's just it's just not an easy thing. So I don't I don't I don't have the prescription here. But I but I think if we identify that, you know, a manager comes into, you know, their manager's office and says, I got a problem with so and so. I think you can step back and say, well, we have a system here that we're, you know, we're trying to get this person to work in the system, but we also have an individual.
Derek:And then going back to your going back to your language we talked about, you know, earlier, what's that person's motivation?
Reed:You're getting pretty good at this.
Derek:You're gonna Where's person coming from in the system that we've placed them in? So, you know, it's not like that's a bad person. It's, you know, what would we expect when we take a person like that and put them in a system like that and treat them like that? You know, and I I hope my daughter Jade is listening to this because Jade is an occupational therapist. She works with children with challenges in the public education system.
Derek:And I think she I'm gonna hear from her, I'm I'm sure, but she's gonna tell me, that's right. That's the problem in schools. There's no kid problems. The kids are fine. It's it's the system and what we are expecting of the child in the situation given the capacity of the child and the interest of the child.
Derek:And her job is to help the teachers figure out how to line that up. I might be wrong, but I think I'm pretty close, and I hope you hear from her. So it's not even it's not a business thing, and it's not a theater thing. It's this is life in when we're trying to take individuals working in groups, this is the challenge that we have.
Reed:Derek, as always, you make me think. I'm very glad you do. I think that's about all the time we have for this podcast, but I just wanna say to our audience, Derek, where'd they find you?
Derek:So if you're interested in reaching out, or for more information, you can find me on the web at Derek Hudson dot c a, and I'd be really happy to hear from what you think about what we're doing right now.
Reed:Yes. I would too. I'm Reed McCollum. Our engineer is Bryn Griffiths. And until next time, consider your quests.