The Better Business Analysis Institute Presence the Better
Business Analysis Podcast with Kinsman Walsh.
Today I'm honored to have two special guests with me, Marcella
Copman and Bartwin Van de Pols from the organizational change
consultancy Defiant. Marcella is the co-owner of
Defiant, a company dedicated to fostering ownership within
individuals and organization, ensuring conventional corporate
jargon and ineffective frameworks.
Her impressive background encompasses agile and
organizational development, having collaborated with
renowned companies such as Naviko Group and Assurity
Consulting. Moreover, Masala is an Encompass
author and public speaker advocating for a human centered
approach in business strategies and change management.
Welcome to the show. Thanks Ben.
Well done on the pronunciation of my difficult Dutch name.
It was also real good. Thank you for having me.
Not a problem. And joining Marcella today we
have heard Chief of Change at Defiant, which is Bartwyn.
Bartwyn has a mountain of expertise in agile
methodologies, having held various roles related to agile
consulting and delivery. And Bartwind's professional
journey is is is a wide journey with a whole lot of different
companies like Go, See and Assurity Consulting, where he
has excelled in program and portfolio management, developing
product management capabilities and even leading delivery and
project coordination roles to facilitate effective agile
delivery. Now, in the spirit of Full
disclosure, I've had the privilege of working alongside
Bartwin for a brief period at Surety.
Consulting after Marcella's time, and it's great to see you
again. Welcome to the show.
Thanks. Thanks.
That's that was an amazing introduction.
Happy. It's been recorded so I can play
it a couple times over for myself.
That was good. Not a problem.
And apparently a character in a book Bartwin.
Yes, yes, yes. Let's not steer into that one.
Why not? I think it's great to stare
into. So, yeah.
So we we have a, we have two very famous people here today
and one of the reasons we have Team Defiant joining us today is
that you've just released the book.
Congratulations. Amazing.
Yeah. We're so happy about it.
Thank you. And that's no small feat at all.
No, we thought it was at first, but we've quickly found out that
writing a book takes a lot of time, so we're happy to have it
released and and out there. And I mean, we'll get to this in
a minute, but I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of the
book well structured. It's it's really well put
together. It was, it was an easy read.
Awesome. Good to hear.
Now my take away, MY1 take away,
and I'm going to, and I'm going to throw it over to you to to
talk about the book, why you wrote it, what's it about?
But I mean my my one take away was the book aims to change
people's perspective on organizational change.
Exactly. Yeah, that that's correct.
And I think the book has started for us out of frustration and
intrigue. Frustration because we saw so
many organizational change initiatives failing and not
reaching the potential. Maybe changing one or two teams
but not the organization for which it was intended to change
and improve. And also intrigue because if you
just Google organizational change frameworks, books,
guides, coaches, consultants, there is just a mountain of
knowledge and intelligence out there.
So those are some smart people that put the time and effort
into this. So how come with all that
knowledge and all the expertise that we have, we still see so
many change initiatives fill? Yeah.
And you actually talk about some very shocking statistics when it
comes to change. Maybe that's important to
highlight in terms of we're spending all this money on
change, as you said. And I know from being in the
kind of in the trenches, you you're involved in change
programs and you're like, well, OK, the whole program's not
doing well, but at least my piece is doing well.
So what are some of those statistics that you said with
all these books? What are some of these
statistics? So I think one of the main
statistic that is for lots of people a shocking number is, is
the amount of change initiatives that that tend to fail.
So with failure it is, it is important to understand that
it's not like a complete burn down of the organization from
what it was, but failure is not achieving the goals or or the
ideas that that a company had before they started their
transformation. But that number is 74% and 74%.
It's it's like 3/4 of organizations that try something
end up with not liking the results.
And that was for us a point in time.
So we started writing this book and brainstorming about it when
when the pandemic happened and we we were in lockdown.
Umm, And what you saw in in New Zealand was suddenly a shift
from organizations that used to say we cannot be digital, we
cannot be remote, It's all too hard.
Within 24 hours they were freaking digital.
Yeah, it's like digital transformations were were
suddenly happening and we were we were at that point going like
wait, well how? How come?
How come this has been mentioned by consultants, mentioned by
coaches is what you need to do and frameworks telling you what
to do and how to do it and books about digital transformations
and normal transformations and still 74% ends up of agile is
not for us kind of conclusion. Did you think that the COVID
kind of situation forcing people interchange and did you find
that the frameworks were thrown out the window.
So for all the talk of you know very expensive consultants of
which we we back up some of those and going into
organizations helping out doing bits and pieces that for all the
investment in that when it came to COVID that the robot went out
the window and people were just suddenly doing things.
I I reckon that that definitely play part right.
So daily stand ups suddenly couldn't happen anymore because
there was no office to stand in. It's turned into let's use
digital tools like mirror and mural and Jira and whatever.
It's suddenly because yeah, what else you're not in the office.
We cannot talk. Lots of like middle management
that got stuck in this twilight zone of how do I now manage the
things getting done. Well I cannot manage my people
so that was that was a huge difference.
So yeah, I I do. Do you think the pandemic
definitely helps to show at least at that beginning point
that a framework is is just it doesn't do anything for you?
It doesn't maybe in a short term, but definitely not in the
long term. It's still depends on people
doing the work and two week springs or working from home for
24/7. All of that I guess motivated
you to start putting this book together.
It's got a very interesting name and and Bob would maybe you
could tell me about the book and and where you got the name from.
Yeah, essentially where we got the name from is, is for us
looking at the core reason identity, why changes were
failing. So what is the thing that would
make change stick? And we came to the idea of
leadership. Often you would hear, listen,
leaders need to be more advocates of change, be involved
in the change. But we felt that was like a
shortcut or or not, it sort of dismisses the idea that change
is for everyone. So the concept of leadership
that we came to is essentially labeling relabeling leadership
as ownership. So taking ownership of what is
happening or or taking ownership of a change at some level is
taking the lead into what's happening in your world and that
sort of brings back ownership or leadership to everyone.
So not just saying it's AC suite that needs to change, it's my
manager that needs to change and if only this would happen then
the change would be successful. So that concept of ownership
became critical in the book and therefore the title is own it,
our own shit because that's where we came about to go.
We need to be more, well almost aggressive to say we are dealing
with a very serious issue here. 3/4 of a change in organizations
is failing. I think to come back to that
earlier point of failure. When we think of failure, we
often think of complete and utter failure.
An organization ends. Failure in our book means
essentially we've started off something.
We try to framework roles and practices.
We sort of had a had a go at it, didn't work and now we're on to
the next thing. So to make it more practical,
maybe we started with sprints and Scrum Masters and product
Owners, but somewhere, especially the COVID time, we
went like actually we need to focus on being profitable here.
Yes, yes, yes. So we just do away with all of
that and now the next thing comes along and a new silver
bullet that will bring about real change.
So then nobody has talks about in our opinion about the success
level of that first change and then also talks about the change
fatigue it brings in the employees of the company to go
and like another change. Sure, I've been in many
companies as a consultant and coach in which a more senior
employee would come up to me and say listen Bart, great stuff and
and I understand it. But we tried something similar
like this ten years ago and it didn't work and also five years
ago by the way and that also didn't work.
So why don't we just sit tight and let this whole thing blow
over and then probably in three years we'll see you again
because you have some other great initiative to push.
So I'm painting a bit black and white picks here, but that's
that's what I think we are neglecting the the damage that
it does for employees, the impact on motivation of
employees, the financial damage as well.
So many of these consulting firm taking a lot of money of your
books, helping you with the change and then a lot of damage
ending up for your company. So that's why we wanted to make
a definitive statement to say this is the line either you
start owning this change or you're owning something horrible
instead. Exactly right.
So you've got this prerogative kind of statement about, yes,
ownership. So you either.
So it's kind of to wake up, wake up.
Yes. We, like you just said, you're
you're in this cloud of spending a lot of money of never really
seeing if the benefits were met of what you did.
And I, I, I personally hate the concept of benefits realization,
not because it's not a good thing.
I love we want benefits. But the frame itself turns into
a framework and a bureaucracy in itself, which is also the reason
why it's not done particularly well.
No one ever goes back and actually sees whether or not the
true benefits of the business case, if you like, or what money
you're spending, whatever way your business casing actually
met the requirements. You're right because we're we're
busy on the next thing. It's like, you know, do we spend
the money? Did the did the did the money
get spent? Do we account for it properly?
OK, cool. Did something go in?
OK, great. We'll we'll move on to the next,
the next bit. And so you're right, the failure
is missed and around the own, if we just come to the own around
the ownership is key at those different levels.
So you've got the, like you said, this is a traditional kind
of who's the business owner, right?
I mean, even we've had that well before Agile turned up on the
sink and we still talk about it now the sponsor, the person
paying for it and ultimately they're responsible, but they're
not on the ground level. They have no idea what's going
on, especially in in an organization where you might
have three or four tiers so that they don't know they're just
getting a member of Red Amber Green.
So how much do you think ownership is important even at
the individual level? So you've got the individual
taking leadership, ownership. Maybe in COVID times you just
discussed that individuals had to like not be slack.
They had to work from home. There's a bit of a trust element
there of them actually turning up and doing the job and then
you've got the kind of the kind of team leadership or the one
taking responsibility at the actual coalface of change.
Do you think it it means for everyone?
I do, I do and I think if we that's the part of the book that
we we try to unpack ownership. So if you try to unpack
ownership, we look at those three ingredients that we
identified there. You have driver, so having a
plan for the change and you have actions on the other end, so
activities that you do to make that plan executable.
So those two things typically in any change program are there
people have sort of a plan, this is where we're going to do it,
whether it be training courses or role changes or whatever you
like. And then we have the actual
executional actions. But the big part that we, we
focus on the book is that third defining determining ingredient
of belief. And I think that's that that's
for us the the, the key take away in the book if you want to
get real ownership we need to talk about the elephant in the
room if you will. The the, the one thing that we
don't like to talk about. Do we actually have conviction
believe that this change will be significant, important to us and
everybody. This is for me one of the most
interesting things of the concept.
Everybody believes in a stood up to a certain level even if to
you or you been listening in to us or listener to this podcast,
you start to believe some of what we're saying.
Maybe not all of what we're saying or you're believing all
of it but you already have sort of a gut check kind of
conviction. Do I agree with this And that's
in the book, a large part where we connect things or believe to
our brain how our brain works to protect us or advocate for
change. Either you are for change
because your brain says, yes, I'm all in.
I like this stuff and it's it's you're safe here or your brain
goes. This is a change to my earlier
example of that senior employee going well.
Your brain maybe of that person goes, I want to protect you from
harm because we've been through a couple of these change
initiatives that end up burning you.
So we're not going to invest into this belief or we going to
believe that it's going to fail. It's also belief that's aimed at
the wrong thing. Yeah.
And then you won't be involved in it and you don't believe in
it. And then it will fail.
And then your brain goes, CI told you.
And is the point there about and we'll come to belief and I I
really want to keep in perspective on on belief because
it's actually this is a fascinating topic in 2024 anyway
around news and and and and what but but but you've got the
ownership so we talked about before so you've got the say the
senior manager who's responsible for a change that they're only
change and it's been enforced on them by their manager maybe
they've been told that they are now capable.
And so one of the points that you make in the in the book and
we'll talk about the personas that you use, which is really
helpful to to to kind of explain some of these dynamics, but is
it the overlap between you have to own, you have to, you can't
actually have true ownership if you don't believe?
In the concept how we how we painted it in the book explains
and and we pointed out actually quite quite black and white.
Everyone has always a level of ownership.
It is the question what level of ownership is needed to achieve
your goal. Your driver first is what is the
level of ownership that you show and and you act upon.
So what is what is really important?
When we took this out of, for example, the the business
environment, but took it more into a personal view of
ownership. The reason why why some people
are great in having New Year's resolutions and suddenly achieve
what they thought they were going to achieve in on the 1st
of January versus people who in February are already done with
it and and back to old habits, right?
If we take those both examples, both have a level of ownership,
but the first person have a very strong level of ownership that
they believe they can do it, they want to, they need to and
these are the actions and they follow through.
Whereas the other person could say I really want this.
If my family gives me the time to go to the gym, if I don't
have to pick up my kids, if I don't have a rough day in the
office, I will go to the gym. And that is neither wrong or
right. It's just the awareness of still
a level of ownership, but it's not the ownership that we need
in order to, in that example, go to the gym for five times.
And yeah, exactly. And and that's exactly how it
works with organizations as well.
Yes, yeah. And I think the, I think we were
talking about at the start of the podcast how there's a lot of
books on organizational change, which is generally frameworks.
But equally I think your book's kind of unique for me anyway and
definitely coming from like an IT realm perspective of change.
And I know that your book talks about all organizational change.
So I don't want to minimize that this applies.
It doesn't matter what kind of change it is.
But with basically human behavior, right?
You're you're you're you're you're talking about human
behavior. And the fact is like for
example, you know people talk about how to stick your diet or
you know how to stick to a habit.
I mean the word habit is is used a lot now.
And I I've, I've, I've read Atomic Habits which I really
enjoyed and it talks about the same concept you have to and
that's more about an individual keeping to their goals.
But it's the same premise that if you don't believe if you
don't insert it into your. If you're not structured
correctly, if you don't own the habit you want to change, you're
not going to achieve it. I think in that book even it's
it's very much relatable to our concept for saying maybe you
don't have belief for the entire end result.
We do have belief to make take a small step now.
So if you tune your actions and your plan to your level of
belief, having it small, I want to be a gym rat.
Let's first take a walk for 5 minutes.
I have believed that I can finish that.
Then sort of build on that. You get to the actual great
result in the end. Like I said, I think the book is
extremely well structured and you tell a story and you use
personas which which I love to highlight different
stakeholders, personalities and and provide insights effectively
along along the journey. So how did you come up with
these personas and are they based on real people and
experiences? Well, of course my lawyer has
told me not to point to the fact that it's nice.
I'm kidding. It's a it's it's a summary of of
all sorts of people. I guess we encounter in in
organizational change and then amp amplified, right.
So we we same with the title we amplify it.
This is the same with those characters because this is what
what what has creates, what will create some feature for people
to link into or link onto to go like, all right, so I've met a
person like that or I've seen a person like that, I.
Know Nick. I know, Nick.
Yeah, I think it's only fair to say it's a disclaimer as well to
turn the mirror towards yourself to go like we are actually in
some parts all three of those types as well on on any given
day. So it's not about picking a
person. So in advance we are we are
apologizing all the Knicks and Andy's and Nancy's in the world.
This is a generic name but we we we do we we did want to make it
as tangible as possible because we are talking about a concept,
right. So we want to make it as
tangible as possible. That's why I put future Acts as
a as a case study company into it and we put a fourth character
in there as well. Rowan, which I think is is, is
also very important, but we we do like to focus on those 3.
The fact, like I said in terms of when you do get a chance to
grab a copy of this book which is which I highly recommend, you
have structured the book. So you're doing the case study,
you've got the persona and then you make your points and it and
it kind of starts from ownership and then you've got kind of
linking to belief and and kind of linking the two together.
And I guess one of the what I'm amazed about is why do you think
there isn't ownership and belief and just project management and
product management and organizational change today?
Do you think it's there, it's just not identified as such?
Is that the, the hidden secret of you were to then go back and
look at successful projects? Do you think you'd find that
these were the two magical ingredients that were needed?
Belief as a talking point is B is neglected in any boardroom.
Why? Because it's it's what we call
like with soft skills which in fact and turns out to be be rock
solid hard soft. You know these soft skills tend
to be really hard tangible stuff in the end, but very important.
So believe is very important as well.
So if we don't, before we start an organizational change
initiative, we don't talk about the level of belief or we don't
fine tune our plans and actions to our level of belief.
That's where things go off the track.
So when I've seen successful change initiatives play out
because they are still there, there's also 1/4 of initiatives
that do see, do succeed. They've always started small.
They've always started with acknowledging the fact that they
are experimenting, trying something new, having a small
portion of belief for that, identifying what success would
look like. So how might we tell that this
thing is working for us? And then also being able to
change and pivot when, when, when is, when that is needed and
and and and stepping away, being agnostic to frameworks and roles
and and all that sort. It's quite interesting you sit
there because I mean I've been involved in start up companies,
you know I've got got my own. It's an interesting side
question around belief and whether or not it's easier.
Is it easy to have the belief when there's, you know, 345 of
you in a room working on a small, like you said,
experimenting on a new idea, which of course is fresh, And
usually those ideas you have to have belief to kind of spend
money on them or spend some time on them.
Do you think it's easier there? And it gets harder if you scale?
I think so, if you're being honest, right?
Because you have all these tiers of people having some level of
belief into it, especially once that scales up, especially when
you don't see the results immediately.
Yes. Maybe then it will be a test of
belief to go like, do we actually still believe this
stuff because now something else is happening to what we thought
or believed would happen? Yeah, I think that that that is
the case. And and why do you think, I
think you touched on it before a little bit like soft skills
might be too soft to talk about at the boardroom level right.
And now now everyone talks about it.
I mean it's the same as mental health or anything else.
But in sport for example, belief is everything in terms you know
and so why do you think it hasn't the the word belief?
Maybe you know the eastern philosophies of belief haven't
just not landing on the shores and New Zealand talk been talked
about at the boardrooms at at our big companies in New
Zealand. I think because the the
perceptional belief is that it's about religion which is the the
like the number one topic that people just don't like and feel
comfortable to talk about with people that they don't know.
I think in in boardrooms especially so boardrooms,
executive teams in the line of of like making it a little bit
black and white if you understand what's going on.
Our view of executive and boardrooms is that there is
often this group of very smart and intelligent people that work
individually to get where they are.
And there is a level of ego getting in there.
And that ego is often focused on I need to know all the answers,
I need to have a solution for all the problems, and I need to
have the right people to make it all happen.
Talking then about belief is for some people the same or has the
same connotation to say how do you feel today why the great
coaching question like how does that make you feel It's it's
that annoying thing because you don't want to go there and I
think that's you you mentioned it as well been with with mental
health. It is that paradigm switch that
we have to make that it is OK to talk about that.
And I think it is important to understand that belief is purely
the combination of your thoughts, your perceptions, your
your attentions, everything that makes you, you and the hard
thing which we touch on in the book as well.
Knowing now that these three elements believe driver and
action form your level of ownership is great.
Why is it still so hard? Because this is not rocket
science. This is definitely not us doing
and Harvard University degree or something like that.
The the part that makes it so extremely hard is that it is
often a complete automated process in your brain.
So your brain protects yourself from all courses and a check on
what is going on in your surroundings is being made in in
not even accountable heart of a second for for human beings.
So to actually change your behaviour and change your level
of ownership, it's not something like, oh I now need to know that
I need to talk about my belief and then off we go it is oh,
it's sometimes so hard to actually understand what you
believe because your belief is already formed before you act.
Your belief is already there before you read researches,
before you find your proof. It is it is that that I found
mind blowing on my on my own to to read about the fact that we
as human beings often think I I have no clue.
I'm I'm not judging anything. So I'm just going to do research
and base my opinion on that. And we do research based on an
opinion that is already there and then we find articles and
say oh see drinking wine every day is good for me.
So I can't. Exactly right.
Which, which is by the way. Yeah, I was going to say this is
solid. It's research on this.
It is, yeah. I mean it's that what what we're
just experiencing, you know worldwide with kind of news at
the moment with the fact that you know you believe something,
you will always find an article or or whatever or two or even
research and scientific facts that you've picked and choose to
support your own belief that's already predefined.
So it's difficult. Do you think it requires and I'm
going to jump to so solutions which is a terrible thing for
ABA to do. So forgive me, but do you think
we need to start accounting having an accounting method?
I don't mean that in terms of dollars, but I am talking about
the boardroom and a lot of that is just numbers on on on
spreadsheets for belief. Do we need to start actually
having some measurables there to know what's happening in our
organization? That we know that if you're not,
if you're not on the ship, you're not on the train?
Tell us why. Let us know what what your true
feelings are. Is it because of the individuals
involved? Is it because of the structure?
Do you think it's a bad idea? No one ever asks that.
Do they? They never ask.
Do you think this is a bad idea before we start?
Well, there's a whole thing to unpack there essentially,
especially when Nick saw the CEO in the book, right, starts
talking and raving on about the next silver bullet.
It's difficult to step up to Nick to say, listen, this is
very vague and a word, sell it. And I don't think this is going
to take us any further. So there is a bit of that
tension going on and potentially they believe that if I speak up
that my hat will get chopped off, right.
So I need to be smart about my career or I need to prevent
things from happening and then you have all sorts of biases
playing along. But I do think that just the
level saying a, do we have belief in the that this will be
worthwhile visiting? And two, if not, what would make
you believe what will be the first shoots that we can point
to that would be believed builders of sorts to go.
I think this is helping us further in the right direction
than where we are now. Fella you were talking about
almost evidence to support your own belief.
But I like Bartwin's point there, which is if you can take
an external source, say Customer insights, you're launching the
app and you were like, well, we don't, we, I don't believe that
this is going to be a success or anyone's going to want this
product. But one of the things about
using, for example, just taking it out and actually asking
independent people that aren't, you can start driving those data
points that you might need to start actually getting on the
train. Now, if I'm on a project, you're
giving advice to that one person.
Maybe they're a consultant, so they've got some level of clout
in in the project team. What would what would your
advice be? I would advise that person that
full ownership and full belief is not necessary to start moving
that that is 1 so you don't have to go to the 100% and then start
doing something. If you if you think of for
yourself about a situation where you can say that that is pretty
much a a situation in my life that I had complete ownership
because I was like getting through it, grinding it and and
the rewards came. That is often a feeling that
people really love. It's a feeling that they feel
autonomous and in control and energetic and all things that
happened, that having that feeling of ownership means that
you also feel better about yourself and what you're doing.
So if we then would take it into an advice, I would say start to
write down belief statements, which is also something we
mentioned in the book that are very clear sentences that start
with I believe and I believe that I'm capable of doing it.
I believe I have somebody I can ask for support.
Write it down. Start small, like what Bartwin
said. Start small.
Even if you don't believe everything and you cannot take
full ownership, there's always a certain part of belief and
therefore a certain level of ownership and start doing it.
Prove yourself that you were wrong or you were correct.
It doesn't really matter what it what it needs to be, but start
small and and focus on tuning into what you actually believe
and writing it down with the word.
I believe the believe word in the sentence is doing a magical
trick. Nice one and part one.
Yeah, I think I can only agree of course with with a statement
I and we have, we have tried out the belief statements with with
groups of people and found it to be really effective because
something fundamentally happens in your communication when you
start adding the word believe. You can say we value people some
of the value statements that many companies have.
But if you say we believe we put people at the core of our
business, it's a different kind of statement, it lands
differently for you. So I think to make it as
practical as possible, I would definitely start to unpack there
And similar to what our reference to Atomic Habits
before don't, you don't need to be 100% sold on the product and
sold on to say, listen, I need to be fully believing this thing
in order for it to work because that will never happen because
you have bad days or something will happen that you didn't
expect and then that whole thing starts to to crash in on itself.
So I think it's important to say listen, start with don't focus
on the plan, don't focus on the driver and the actions really
hone in on that belief bit. And even if you say I, I really
don't have belief for it. That's a valuable thing in
itself. Yes, just acknowledging
acknowledgement of your own beliefs, be them positive or
negative. So because yeah, I know that
people might, I can imagine people saying I believe this, I
believe this, I really just don't believe this.
But if you do get to that point, that first step it would be
sharing those non beliefs and and and talking about them.
Well, the the interesting thing here is essentially it is also
belief. There's belief for the wrong
outcome, yeah. Exactly right.
So you know, your brain is saying, listen, we are super
scared about this stuff. We think you might be in
trouble. So we're going to believe for a
bad outcome to keep you safe. So don't invest into this.
You won't get hurt. So that's an acknowledgement of
that baseline. And then to go, what is the what
would make you believe for a positive outcome?
Exactly right. In small increments.
I really like that. I mean I've been in a number of
maybe stand up situations or equivalence of when you're
sitting around and everyone's talking and you know you're
doing your what you do today, what are you doing tomorrow?
You might have someone there and they're going, oh, I just know
this is going to be a disaster or we're over architecting it or
I don't think that's a good idea or that's not going to get past
the minister. I mean this is literally some of
the conversations I'm having last week and and everyone
thinks it, but no one will. It will all be smoking daggers
exactly like conversations over the watercolor.
Like, I don't think that's a good idea.
Like why we, why we, why are we doing that?
And then maybe, depending on your relationships, that might
get to the program manager who should be ideally wanting to
hear this stuff. Well this this is.
Can I intersect that for a second because that those are
essentially also believe statements?
Yes. I don't believe this is going to
work. I'm fearful of whatever we're
doing here is not going to reach the mark and somehow going to
fall back on us. And it's not about sure in the
in the hierarchy of sorts you would like to have a leadership,
personal, program director, whoever, trying to get things
aligned, but ownership start with you.
So if you yourself think hang on, I'm not believing any word
of this actually, frankly, I'm kind of scared about what's
happening. I don't know what I'm supposed
to do. Then having that belief
statement out there is a good step to set you on your pace to
actual ownership and not only shit because that's the the, the
the two lanes that you're you're stepping into essentially.
Disagreements and different beliefs are are not a, are not a
are not a bad thing. People can't believe different
things. So how do you go about
approaching that? Say for example, bartwin, you're
saying, I really don't believe that this is the right course of
action and Marcella is the one leading us there?
Or has the one proposed that? How do you bartwin approach
Marcella and let her know your belief without, you know,
effectively triggering conflict? Just keep in mind I'm always
right, bartwin. Yeah, yeah, saying.
There's a lot of. Always right people.
Out there. So how do you manage that?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think this comes back to the
human to human interaction, right.
So we're talking about a situation in which a person,
their brain goes, I'm super scared.
Maybe you've seen that movie Inside out, right?
Where people in the brain and. And and and smashing buttons.
Panic, panic mode. Yes, different emotions.
So in that brain that person might be going like, this is so
scary because I'm saying the thing out loud that potentially
everybody is he's also thinking so A1 on one conversation would
work best there. So in in Agile we have these
retrospectives. Maybe that's a bridge too far
because you're in a group situation, team situation and
whoever has the loudest voice maybe then will be the
prevailing voice. So maybe it's a one-on-one
thing. I think if if any manager would
be worth their, their, their while, they would be very much
interested into the dynamics of their team spotting things,
because you will see it, right? It's not a hidden thing.
If people don't believe it, they will.
You will see it. Yeah, even their body body
language shows it right. So we need to step away from all
the frameworks and practices and stuff and tense stances of
leadership and la de. Let's go like human to human
interaction, normal communication.
Have a cup of coffee with somebody.
Approach the subject yourself if you suspect that person and not
believing in things like am I right to say, listen that you
having a hard time believing this at all.
Do you think there's anything in the air worthwhile now
especially just briefly touch upon the senior employee.
We are overlooking the fact that we have a gold mine, all
knowledge and and culture and and and smartness in these
senior people. So I would definitely involve
them to say I'm just starting up here, I need your help and
support to tell me where the team is actually at and what we
are doing. Yeah, no, that's really good
advice. And and and Marcella, just on
that, that example we gave, how do you think you, you as the
recipient of this information of this belief, how what advice do
you have for those people who you know?
Bartwin is like believing something and he is trying to
share his inner most thoughts at a human to human level,
one-on-one. How do you approach that as a
recipient? Is there something that you need
to switch on in your mind so you're not actively being
defensive? Yeah, I I think that this sounds
so cliche, right? Because we all know it.
I think it really comes down to listening.
If you do have a conversation where somebody is is expressing
their I believes and this is it, it's often comes from a negative
point so I believe we we won't get this done with the team.
I don't believe the deadline will will will work what is if
you're receiving that information.
What is actually quite helpful is to re rewrite the sentence of
I believe this won't work to AI believe it will do something.
So if somebody says I don't believe this will work is also
more related to a belief, I believe we're lacking an
essential skill in our team which is way more practical, way
more helpful, and looking from it from a positive perspective.
From an actionable perspective of actually to do something
about it, No, I like that. Like like the old alleged senior
management best senior management devices.
Don't bring me a problem, bring me a solution.
At the end of the day, I usually find from my perspective anyway,
talking to both of you two that when you are in those
situations. It's passionate people.
Generally, people that are in our professions, they do it
because they're it's not. It's not the easiest of of jobs
or the environments we work. Absolutely not.
So you've always got to assume the best intentions and like you
said, what you're actually saying to these people is that,
look, we need to own this or? We'll own shit, yeah, correct.
That's exactly it. So it's great to have You 2 here
today. I've really enjoyed the chat.
I'm sure we can speak again about other topics that we've
touched on. So where can our listeners get a
copy of your book? Yeah, I think that's the best
part even of this. The book is for free, so you can
get it for free on our website. So our website isgetdefiant.org
and forward slash book. We will really enjoy your
feedback of course for you Ben but also of the dear listener on
on this topic because we are we're obviously very
enthusiastic about it but we think it's also critical to
avoid some of the mess or a lot of the mess essentially we see
in organizations and that's the the serious note on this that
it's it's it's affecting people essentially in their work doing
the stuff that they like to do when applying the talents and
being bogged down with endless silver bullet frameworks and and
mishmash of sorts that that that would just end up fatiguing them
and causing burnout and very very serious stuff.
So we we would love for this to be a a topic that would be
addressed by by companies. Of course they can reach out to
Defiant to to get some help getting started on that.
But if if the topic itself would just be addressed that would be
great. And if I may add a little
challenge to the listener. Yeah we're talking about believe
and maybe a bit abstract concept but the challenge is little game
I would like to put forward is have a listen if you're
communicating with people at work how many times they use the
word believe in their actual communication and what they're
saying. I'll believe it when I see it.
Or can you give me a few examples of what you are
proposing is essentially saying I'm having trouble believing
what you're saying something tangible in order for me to make
it to make me believe essentially.
So it will be an interesting just have a listen in and and
see if you can spot the the amount of times the word believe
is actually used. So do you hear the challenge?
There, listener, we've got Believe Bingo Challenge for this
week, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Which is.
Why not? It's a.
Really, really really great idea.
And I think it's like you said, acknowledging that the word may
not be used, but that's what people are actually talking
about. Exactly lovely to.
Speak to both you too. And hope to see you again really
soon. Awesome.
Thank you so much Ben. It was.
Really cool. Thank you.
See you. Bye.