Podcasts

Episode 9- Decoding AQ with Ross Thornley Feat. Barry O'Reilly - 'UNLEARN' to breakthrough

Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, everybody. I'm here with Barry O'Reilly, who is the author of this amazing book, "Unlearn". I had the pleasure to meet Barry at Singularity University's I think was a Leadership Forum in the new headquarters for Singularity University. After a few weeks after opening.

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Barry  

You know, a real watershed moment, then we were in NASA's Ames facility in Silicon Valley for many years. And now we've moved to a much newer building should I say, and, yeah, it's been an exciting move for everybody in faculty and in the company as well.

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Ross  

That's great. So we're gonna have a great session, a conversation that who knows where it may go, because we're talking about adaptability. So we can follow the train of thought of different things. But the main thing I wanted to start off with was just to give everyone a sense of perhaps your background, you know, coming from a software developer, and their 20-year journey to where you are now give us some highlights of what that is, so that we can get better context, Barry.

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Barry  

I think adaptability is certainly a word that resonates with me, both in terms of my lifestyle, and just generally the path of sort of work through. Even on my first day of university, I was doing a class called Business Information Systems and Management, which I thought was more of a management and degree and but on the set, this second class, somebody came in and opened up their laptop and started talking about a programming language called "Java".

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And there was sort of a murmurs around the class, and people weren't really sure what was going on. And then finally, someone pulled up the courage to put their hand up and say, Hey, I think I'm in the wrong class. And am I doing a business degree? And the lecturer just asked him what code of the course, it was exactly the same code. So literally, we were all sitting there going, what the heck was going on here? Well, how are we going to learn? Programming? I've no, I didn't know I was going to study programming. And it turned out most of the degree was actually based in computer science. And so for programming, which was a bit of a shock for about 50% of the room.

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Ross  

How funny.

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Barry  

It was funny. Yeah, so that sort of got me, because I was interested in technology. But I didn't really know a lot about programming software. I was interested in it, but I certainly didn't want it to be a vocation. But anyway, I ended up working my way through that course, and sort of learning to enjoy programming. And my first sort of then got some opportunities to work in Silicon Valley, and the startup scene here in '99, and then moved back to Edinburgh, and joined the first mobile games development company in Europe. And we were four people. Java had just been put on to these phones just after Nokia had sort of snake. So just after that, they started putting like very small compilers on phones that you could port over computer games from like the '50s, '60s and '70s on to phones.

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So we started doing this, and nobody else was doing it at the time. And suddenly, we had the most popular WAP game, people remember wireless application protocol, a terrible technology. But we had this game called wireless pets where people would look after a pet, try and keep it alive bit of like Tamagotchi on their phone. And that was again a great experience for me to learn how to not only build products, but embrace things like game theory and visit technology was terrible. And nothing worked. I was breaking. You know, as a result of that a lot of the stuff we were building I felt sometimes people weren't using. So I got more interested in less writing code and more interested into the product side of what should we build, rather than how do we build it.

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And over time, then I just started digging around in that space and got very into product management and spending less time actually writing code and much more time with customers, designing products and services. So it's been quite interesting, like, following these little parts of I never knew I would end up doing what I'm doing. But I've always sort of been able to find these threads that were interesting to me. And as I started to pull on them a little more, I often would find myself moving in different directions and into domains that necessarily I haven't been trained in. But what I found over time is that the more things you see, it gives you a very interesting perspective of how things work in different domains. And today now where I'm consulting with companies in retail, and biotech and finance and airline industry and obviously my work at Singularity University, there's people building crazy things from nanobots that are going to be now, all the cholesterol in your veins, right through to people who are trying to build elevators to the moon. So it's fun. And it definitely keeps me curious.

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Ross  

I think it's really interesting, you know, when we meet new people, and we learn about their stories, and how much is intentional. And how much is then also serendipity. You know, we put ourselves into situations sometimes completely unexpected. And we then have a decision. Do we lean in? And are we going to be present? Do we turn up but we check out mentally? Are we open there? Are we informed opportunists of these things? And do we then at what point do we reflect and say, “Ah I'm disconnected from who I really am, I need to find my purpose”. You know, we shift career, and yet all of it is part of our tapestry. And going through these changes is a natural part of life. Do you feel that in that period of those 20 years and now where you're working with these organizations, helping them go through transformations go through changes? Do you feel a sense of the speed has changed of the consequences of failing to change quick enough? You know, what's, what's the landscape shift? Perhaps from pioneering that new frontier in mobile gaming to perhaps some of your work now, what are some of those shifts that you've seen?

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Barry  

It's very interesting question actually, like without delve, I noticed the rate of change is definitely higher tempo. Because I remember, technology innovations, the cycles would feel, even when we launched the mobile games company, you know, what was around for three to four years, and it was bad the entire time, right? It felt like it got like, marginally better, though, went from terrible to just bad.

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Ross  

Do you think that's the hindsight of now, or you knew it in the moment?

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Barry  

I liked this idea of when any new technology comes into the market, there's a certain type of character you have to be, and you have to have a certain sort of empathy for the technology as well. Because there's always a pressure to get new technology out. So people will invariably put things out for their perfect. And actually, the act of doing that is really, really important. Because the longer you hold on to something to try and make it perfect. Actually, you over optimize on many things, and you never you solve problems that maybe aren't the real problems to solve. And this is a, you know, pattern that I also learned in entrepreneurship as well. But if you've probably seen this, with the companies you've built in the products you've built. Shaping winds, putting stuff in front of customers early, gives you feedback. And then those customers actually embrace these technologies and support its growth. And that's a really important learning loop with any technology you do.

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Ross  

I think it's a shift of this creation, and launch versus co-creation with the market. And being comfortable with that. And as you say, as long as you've got a efficient feedback loop, then that works. And that takes respect and understanding of both sides, there's just not going to work and it'll break and you're going to require to do changes that you didn't expect. So as long as you know that contract to co-creation with the marketplace, then you can, you know, ride the benefits of that. Whereas the flip side that you talked about, getting ready to get ready and never shipping. Of course, you can go out there with something that now's an empty room. And you know, you've missed it, that you know, you've missed the fit, you've missed, whatever it whatever it may be.

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So when people are doing this, and I was having a conversation last night, actually with some of the people at strategic coach, Dan Sullivan was leading this and it was the context about talent stacking. So we go out, we acquire these talents, experiences, skill sets, things like what you described, you found yourself in a situation you weren't expecting, became a programmer went and did all of the things and you were stacking your talents and experiences. And that becomes then valuable for when you face a new challenge because you can pull out some of those things. And what I'm really fascinated by is some of your concepts and thoughts inside the whole piece of unlearning that some of those things that have been stacked in there that could have been a really good bedrock before now are actually a barrier and you've got to remove that from the stack. Where did this you know word concept and thought about unlearning come from? And how did it then manifest into a book as those things I'm really interested in sort of the background of it.

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Barry  

About getting exposed to was working with these phenomenally competent people, right? Like, especially after my last book, Lean Enterprise was published, right it, people had read the Lean Startup, they were loving our recent work, but they were like, but I'm not a startup but I'm not a scaled business. And we wrote Lean Enterprise, a lot of those people have jumped on that book and started to want to apply it in their work.

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So it afforded me this amazing opportunity to work with some of the largest companies in the world. And what I was continually finding with these readers was that while learning new techniques was tough, getting them to unlearn their existing behaviors, especially the ones that had made them successful to date was way harder. And the challenge for these people is you've been promoted up to the company or executive in a Fortune 500 company, all your feedback mechanisms are telling you that your behaviors are actually driving the right outcomes because you're getting promoted. The company's stock price is going up, it must be the things that you're doing.

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And when someone's there sitting, you need to think about adapting, you need to think about changing, need to start embracing things that are uncomfortable for you. It's sort of counterintuitive, whenever all your feedback mechanisms are saying, You're doing the right things, you're number one in your market. You're the highest paid person in the company. Again, what I've constantly learned is like the time to change, is when you're in that moment, that's the time to experiment. And yet, most people that complacency set in and they wait for these burning platforms, more moments where it's adapt or die. Rather than, well, why don't I experiment and learn and find out. So that was sort of like, in many ways, that was a real unlearning moment for me. Because so much of what I had been taught, or what I had heard, is you need to be a learner, you need to be learning everything you need to, it's like a cup of water. Like if you just keep pouring new content into the cup, it's just over spilling and half of it isn't going in. But you know, you sound really smart at dinner parties, because you can. 

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I read a post on some article on the five steps to prepare for a great meeting, and I can just reel them off. And I sound super smart. But it's super shallow. You know, and I think that was like one of the sorts of real aha moments for me. And that was really the inspiration for the book. I saw it as a system where I could help people start to understand well, where are you not living up to your expectations? Where are you struggling? Where have you tried everything you can think of, and you're not getting the results you want situations you're avoiding? And when I asked people those questions, and very quickly, they could sort of point to a challenge. That for me was like, well this is something you need to unlearn them. And then I just would say to them, what pattern you see a lot in the system is thinking big, but starting small, and how people can start to experiment with new behaviors that are uncomfortable for them, that are unknown to them that they probably suck at.

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But they try these new behaviors to see does it lead to the breakthrough that you want. And again, this system, the more you start to unlearn, the more virtuous it becomes. And the more you actually start to build this muscle of continuously adapting to changing circumstances, you have a system that can help you guide through uncertainty, ambiguity, recognize where your behaviors are working and not and essentially adapt. And, yeah, I've been coaching this system now, for the last number of years, and for great results for people and also for myself. So like, it's been very interesting to sort of share that back. And really, the book is just a collection of stories from companies that I've worked with, to help go through this process, from Capital One to NASA to British Airways to startups and scale-ups here in Silicon Valley.

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Ross  

It's interesting because you described there a sense of how difficult it is when everything is telling you, the way you're acting and behaving is giving you the results you want. And you almost need to hit that burning platform and rock bottom before you realize, “Ah no, it's not serving me anymore”. And it reminds me of this little book of I think it was “What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith”. Yeah, and I loved that whole thinking. And actually, my wife bought it for me a number of years when I was trying to transform and pivot, what I was doing in a previous business, and where we're taught all of these things about loyalties, good, you know, and length and 10 years good, and all of this, but if you're going at a pace different to what has served you before, then you need to break something, you know, if you can't move it, and it's hard, and I find it interesting that, is there a capacity.

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So, therefore, it's, you know, adding to it is going to overflow the glass of water. So we have this capacity, or is it ever-expanding? And actually, no, we need to just take a bit out to make room. What I think the shift is, the world that we're now living in, requires a different operating system for us to shift from what was successful before. So things like you talked about Lean, you know, Lean Startup, Lean Enterprise, and focusing on productivity efficiency, and all of those sorts of things, I think, have been super effective before a linear world. And part of it will be effective to take forward into our exponential world, but other parts aren't going to serve us. We can only make something as lean and efficient as possible, if it's the right thing. But if it's a new thing we need, we need imagination.

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And that's not going to come from the innovations of the data of looking at what you're currently doing, and just make it a bit better. So that's when you shift to what you described, are the time to take experimentations to do things that are more risky, is when you've got your oxygen. And you've got that ready when the burning platform is right there and you see that now it can often be too late. In terms of the different dynamics where you're working with organizations and are they're the biggest organizations and you can say a name and people know it. You can say British Airways, you can take afterwards, you can say NASA and know it, but of course every organization is made up of people, and leaders, things like that. And I'm interesting to understand where you've seen any correlation between the adaptability of people and the organizations and how that sort of plays out in your experience.

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Barry  

The companies I think that do very well. A lot of the personality of their leadership, sort of transcends through the company. I always say one of the most important roles of any leader is to role model the behaviors that you want to see in others in yourself. And, and I think the best companies I see is where you have leaders who are actively…

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Ross  

Do as I do, not just do as I say. You've got to live it as a leader.

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Barry  

Right. And I think, you know, I can think of a couple of examples recently, like I've been working with a financial services company in London, they're massively successful at what they do. But then the CIO was sitting there going, something doesn't feel right. You know, I feel like we need to be evolving the way we work and do things. And he was one of these people, he rang me up, he's like, I'm looking to try and change the way we're working. Now I'm running all these experiments on myself, I've tried, just keep trying things to try and get these breakthroughs in the way the company performs.

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And I remember working with them after a month, like people around the company would stop me and go, it's great. We're trying to change as a company. What's even more impressive for me is to see the CIO who's been here for like, 20 years from when the company was like five people and they've now grown to like a thousand. He's the one who's trying to move things, to change himself. And he will create agency then for other people to sort of do that. And one of the other stories in the book is, you know, I was working with another actual financial services leadership team. And you know, they were trying to do that the agile transformation, or I always call it Project Phoenix, you know, that we're going to rise from the ashes.

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Ross  

You the need to be more agile. Let's throw the agile process in it or sell everything for us.

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Barry  

But they tried to start working. They were asking people to do this. So they tried to start working as an agile executive team. And very quickly, they realized that they were very output based, right there meetings, you come to their meetings, and they just say, Have you got your homework done? Did you do your task? Is your task done? And but very rarely would they talk about the increase customer satisfaction that they reduce the time it takes to open a new account, like real outcomes about what they were trying to drive their customers. And we did this retrospective, and it's the first time the CEO had ever done a retrospective. He didn't even know what it was about to review and reflect on work and see what's working and what’s not. And we did this and he put up a post, it said, agility is hard. And his team are sort of in shock, you know, and then he goes on to explain that, you know, he thought he was being agile, but he realized the team are very output based, they don't talk about outcomes.

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And actually, it's really hard to iterate when you only look at output but not outcomes. And his team, you know, sort of a seminal moment for that leadership team. But then he went back to his desk, opened an email, the subject line was “Agility is Hard”. And he sent it to 50,000 people in the company, saying, you know, I've just been done my first agile retrospective, just realize that, you know, I thought we were very experimental, we actually are just taking off tasks, we don't look at outcomes, we look at output, you know, this stuff is really hard. To look everybody out there, keep trying, you know, we're gonna keep trying.

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And again, you know, this is another sort of, like, seminal moment for this company. Where you know, their leadership team is up there, living it, walking it, creating agency for others. And I think those companies are the ones that magically transform. And there's a reason why companies like Capital One have the highest percentage of their software in the cloud, at the highest customer satisfaction scores in banking. Because, you know they're living this stuff, and it goes up and down the company, versus when you go into some other organizations. People don't believe the leadership, they just feel like it's the Project Phoenix. I often joke when they kick those off, they're always saying we need to transform, but they're really saying is everyone else needs to change, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. And people know that game. And I think, you know, that manifests in the company culture and the success or challenges that they have. So I think that's one of the reasons I really focus hard on role modeling the behavior you want to see in yourself as a huge network effect if you will.

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Ross  

It reminds me of a Michael Jackson song about change. Man in the Mirror, it starts with yourself. And one of the benefits of leadership is you have awake and affecting that wake that either is a positive or negative. So leveraging that is really, really important. And so modeling those behaviors, I really liked that idea and concept of basic grassroots, is it at the top? Is it all of these things? Well, it has to take courage and bravery, to do something that you're uncertain about, if we're doing something, and we've done it before, and it's given us a result. And we're just moving it slightly to make it more efficient, go back to where we were, that doesn't take much courage, it doesn't take much bravery, and it ticks boxes. And it can get you great results for a period of time.

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But if the world moves, and industry moves, and other things like technology come along, and you know, the convergence of all of these things that are asking us to adapt into new ways, new ways of thinking, new ways in which we solve problems, because solving problems used to be one of how much resources have you got, how much money have you've got, what's your team that you have. Whereas now that's flipped, in terms of how problems can be solved, can be solved just because people care about it. And that can be mobilized very quickly, and it can disrupt in deep position, people that historically solved it, you know, with with different ways. So in terms of, you've been working in this area now for a few years and this concept of unlearning, that is hard. Right? You know, you've been working with companies that recognize it's hard when they get to understand it, to be able to relearn something, first of all, you got to let go of something else that might be a barrier to get that breakthrough. What are perhaps some of the things that you do yourself, it may be your daily kind of program or activity that you've honed this continual learning piece that perhaps some people listening could learn from from you, if you were the leader of us. What are the behaviors that you've adopted that we could maybe pick up from?

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Barry  

One of my favorite examples I like to share with even how I created the book. I think everybody has a book inside them. Right? And it's that classic story. I think that but everyone you know, people are like, nobody would read it. I don't feel like a mammoth task to take on. It's hard to do. And believe me, I felt all those things. I'm dyslexic. I've started history of like the pluses and English literature to school. So everything in my makeup told me that I was never somebody who would ever do that.

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But I think a lot of people, I had this like little voice in the back of my head going “One day, wouldn't that be amazing?”. So what I started thinking about, like, with the challenges that I had, it's easy to see the obstacles that are right in front of me, “Oh I'm terrible at writing, typing takes me ages to type something, I've always had loads of typos, the grammar’s terrible”, I just got was getting blocked by the obstacle right in front of my nose. But then, you know, one of the things about on learning is you sort of have to start thinking much more in terms of the outcome, and the vision that you're trying to create.

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So I would ask myself, in two or three years time, if I was to smash it out of the park and get and be an amazing author, what would I be doing? We start creating a story for yourself like, well, I'll be creating content all the time, I'd be making a blog every week, if those blogs will cumulate they turn into books. And by starting talking to myself in that way, I realized that, the vision I was talking about was not sitting at a desk and typing, it was about creating content. And then I started to think, well, there's there's lots of ways to create content. You don't have to just sit there and type, especially when you start to pair it with technology. So I just got to this point, then where I was like, Well, I'm just trying to create content, what's the best way for me to create content? Oh, actually, talking is my natural way to like create content, it comes very intuitive to me, I like doing presentations, my slides are normally just pictures with a word on them, I just talk to them.

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So what I started to do is just do that, and then record it and transcribe it. And what I would find is like that, I could turn a lot of my talks like a talk I have on leadership, that might be an hour that I would just do. And that's like 10,000 to 15,000 words, send it to a transcription service, it sends it back literally in minutes now. And I would have 10,000 words, and it would be like my first expression of the chapter in written format. And then I'd start reacting to it going, “Oh God no, I don't want that here, I need to move that here and I forgot about that story, and that's too much detail”.

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And so I was in this iteration process very quickly. So you know, it was this sort of breakthrough moment for me that if I wanted to write a book, it wasn't about, you know, the classical view of sitting down by a roaring fire in a purple velvet jacket and typing away, you know, with my red wine, it was just me being me, like we're having a conversation now and recording and transcribing that, and then getting a version of that as quickly and cheaply as possible that I could start editing and iterating. So that was just like a huge breakthrough for me. It was something I would encourage a lot of people to experiment with.

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Ross  

Listening to that story, you know, there's a lot of similarities in parallel of my life, in terms of, if we have a dream or an objective, if we jumped straight to our first thought of the how we then can often get put off, if the how that we think to achieve that it's something we wouldn't either not good at, or we're not prepared to do. And sometimes as you brought up, you know, you're told to do things that you don't enjoy, eat your veggies, or do whatever it is. And then once you do it, you suddenly end up being a vegan who loves vegetables.

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So putting ourselves into situations because we have a vision, or the goal can be helpful, I think, for many, they're going to be facing an uncertainty that they don't even know what their goal is anymore. You know, they've had a wrap up of who they are their identity that served them to date, whether that's a company or a person, I've been a customer services person. And you talked there about the scenario where you are intentionally choosing a different future, one that you desire and pick for yourself, I want to be an author, because I've got it in me and I like the idea of doing that but I don't like the current way in which I think of getting there so I'll find alternatives. 

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What I'm interested in is your perspective is, what if that comes on upon you that wasn't your desire? It can be your father telling you or you've got to go in a story next door to kick the ball over for the 10th time but don't want to do it. You have to go and do it and it's a growth opportunity. And you get a breakthrough and you realize it's not as bad. What if you've been somebody for 10 years, you're that person of your role in your job and many people are going to be facing a situation where that's not who they're going to be in a year's time, not through their own choice. How might there be some tips that you could take into that situation to help them unlearn all of those elements of their past, when, as I say, it's not their desire choice. So they don't even know what their vision or goal is, how could they do something very practical to help them transform and change and become more adaptable?

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Barry  

The key with a lot of this stuff is you need to try and help people start feeling successful quickly. But success is not, I was a customer service rep, someone told me now I need to be a salesperson. And then suddenly, I am this amazing salesperson that I didn't even know. Note, success is actually just attempting things, not actually the result. If you can get in the habit of just attempting, and seeing does like trying things. That's real success. Because eventually you will find the fifth. 

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But I think in our world, we only see success as a positive result. And anything that's a negative result is a failure, or failures to do nothing, failures not to try. You know, when I bring that back then to people who have things put upon them that they didn't choose, I often say think big and start small. Starting small is this very powerful mechanism that people don't really realize.

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You see because when you start small, as small as it's something you could do in the day to start finding out about a new role being given or a new responsibility, something you do in an hour, when things are small, and safer to fail, you get fast feedback loops. And you can start feeling successful quickly. Look, I'm trying to figure this out. I tried going and watching a 40 minute YouTube video about how to be a great salesperson and that just didn't resonate for me. Great. That's the next idea? You're going to read a book, are you going to go to a seminar? Are you going to talk to a salesperson? Are you going to.. Because that's the habit to get into to find your way to grow in these things.

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But if you're in the mindset of, just watched the video didn't like it, not for me, I'm going to fail at this, it's over. For me, that path is failure, a one and done. So I think this idea of thinking big, you know, again, being open, starting small. So you can iterate quickly, feel successful, quickly, safe to fail. It's a really, really powerful mechanism.

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So that's what I've been encouraging the listeners to think about is when these stuff is inflicted on you and you don't know how to do it, or you don't want to do it or think about how you can scale back different behaviors. As if you were doing that row, like right down to like what you do in a month, a week, a day, even an hour, and just start trying things. That's what I feel is a superpower that is sort of unknown to you.

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Ross  

And then I really liked the idea. For many years, I've had this burning thing in the back of my mind of a business concept called firsts. And it's a you know, you're building this thing that what am I going to do today for the first time. And what you're then doing is stacking this resilience and mindset of those things, because some are going to work and some won't. But if you get more comfortable with doing new, then tomorrow, which nobody can predict is going to be so different. You're going to do it with something that is, you know, far less corrosive for your confidence to your ability.

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And so I think this building up say a resilience, your ability to bounce back, if every day is the same as the day before, the world that we're entering into, you're going to be an alien really, really quickly. How often do we have these habits that get out of bed on the same side, we clean our teeth with the same hand, you know, and we build all of these things up. And the same is true in the majority of our lives. We buy the same food, we cook a similar sort of array of dishes, you know, we do those things, but how often do we go and do something for the first time when we're not 10 years or younger.

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As we get older, we fall out of love of those things to just experience something for the first time walk a different way. Go on little mini adventures that could be a mini adventure just from one room to the other room. Do it on one day. You know have fun with that I think is a real practical way that subconsciously can build this mindset of enjoying and embracing new, which is a must have for the future and the resilience that, “Oh I hoped and it didn't work I fell over” or whatever it may be of those. So I'm interested in this sort of balance between, we've talked a little bit about experimentation and innovation of mindset, these different words and things. How would you describe adaptability in the context of the work that you're doing? And things like that? How would you describe it?

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Barry

Well, I think a lot of it is just also encouraging people all the time. Like the simple examples you've described here, when you get out of the habit of trying new things, you develop a learned helplessness, that the thought of doing anything new, becomes scary. But when you're in this other mode of just naturally trying new things every day, the thought of not doing that becomes scary in some respects, right. And so I think finding, and being aware of that in yourself is really important. And like, you know, the classic become grumpy old men, because we don't like to do things that are different than our routine, that's not healthy for where we're going in the future. Because, as you see in your work, and in mind, like the rate of change is only increasing and going exponential.

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So you're going to have to embrace uncertainty and change as a lifestyle anyway, not only for opportunities that you could live healthier, happier, longer. But so you don't fight against this sort of thing that's growing, gaining momentum all the time, and hold yourself back from that opportunity. So I think what I feel we're going to see just continue to be more and more and more of is people who are self aware to recognize that they need to change areas that they deliberately would like to change about themselves or where their gaps are, I think is going to be very powerful mechanism. And any tools and techniques to do that are really going to help people.

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Ross  

I think that's, that's interesting, isn't it? When we when we want to change something, we need to know where we are, and where we want to go to having that kind of benchmark or measurement or assessment, you know, if I want to change, say, my weight, my health, I didn't have some scales, and I was doing different things exercise on nutrition, and I wasn't getting that feedback loop. I wouldn't know whether I'm on the right track or not.

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And I think one of the challenges where people talk about transformation, or change or adaptability is, if it's just, Oh we tried, we had a go and that's the only feedback loop we've got. And the outcome or output is a bit too far in the distance for us to get through that to build enough resilience and to build enough of these muscles to show that, you can thrive in a different way. I think it's important to be able to measure it and have those tools to even just start the common language, the conversation with people of where are they at? Where do they want to improve or not? Things like that. And how might that change your work?

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You know, in the sort of, we've got about five minutes left or so of this piece. And it's been really enjoyable to talk to you. So I want to thank you for sharing some of your journey and insights. And in terms of this idea of if we're talking about changing and improving, how important is it to measure and reflect in any of these concepts of what you've seen? And what might work well, for either people or organizations that you're working with, in that sense?

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Barry  

If anything, having a definition of your outcomes. And is probably more important than just the things that you do. Even if I go back to, you know, the example of the CEO and the 50,000 person company, they were doing lots of stuff to transform. But they weren't looking at outcomes to say, “Are we moving in the direction we want?”.

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So until you have an outcome, it's not clear on the direction. And it's not that the outcome is going to be perfect. It's just your best guess, time. And then this power of reflection against that outcome to measure, are we moving in the direction we want? And what might we do differently? Those two mechanisms are probably the two most important. If you speak to scientists, you know, the whole point of a good experiment is you have to describe success before you start.

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Ross

The hypothesis.

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Barry

Yeah and you have to review your results and decide what you're going to do next. So the outcome and the reflection. Because the experiment is just a step to get to keep measuring against is your outcome, correct? You're moving in the direction you want and adapt. Sadly, the majority of transformations we had personal and organizational is people just doing experiments with no outcome and no reflection. So it's busy work and it chews up time. And it's not deliberate and intentional.

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And I think what I always find is that the highest performers use good systems to manage uncertainty, by defining outcomes by trying things and reflecting on results and adapting their behavior. So I think those are the key parts for me. And if they're missing, it's a really good indicator I would ask listeners to think about is, “Do you know the outcomes you're aiming for with your work? Or your transformation with your own goals? Because if you don't, you're wasting your time”. I think that's a really good place for people to start.

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Ross  

It is. And I think, to kind of wrap up, that the world that we're living in now is data rich. And lots of people have talked about big data. And actually, that can be really ineffective in my view, because it can be noise. And what we've got to find is the data that's going to help us shift from looking at what happened or why it happened, but starting to use that data and analysis to predict what will happen when.

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And so as we're building these experiments and building all of these different things and muscles that we go, Oh that was the outcome, we didn't get it, so therefore up? Or did we now have this kind of thing happen to our emotional state, to our mindset to the resilience of the organization that actually they can get through that dip. And if we're getting this predictive analysis, to then show that the direction of travel is correct, even if it wasn't quite what we expected as the outcome that can build confidence and can inform, I think the transformations required in the future.

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And I love the aspect in a lot of your work and thinking that it isn't a big one a done. It's a continual process of this. And learning to continual, being adaptable is continual. It's not, “Oh we'll go and do that workshop, we'll get that done in a week, 10 week program of those things”. It's a new habit that we need to form and constantly reflect on. So let's say I really enjoyed it. I can't wait to see what we can both achieve together in collaborations to improve perhaps how we're measuring adaptability, and how we're preparing people and organizations to adapt better to thrive. And perhaps some of your interventions and coaching can become part of that model for people to do it at scale. So thank you again, and I look forward to seeing you really soon.

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Barry  

Thanks very much. It's a pleasure to be on the show and I'm excited to see where AQ goes.

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Voiceover  

Do you have the level of adaptability to survive and thrive in the rapid changes ahead? Has your resilience got more comeback than a yo-yo? Do you have the ability to unlearn in order to reskill, upskill, and break through? Find out today and uncover your adaptability profile and score your AQ visit "AQai.io" To gain your personalized report across 15 scientifically validated dimensions of adaptability for limited time enter code "Podcast65" for a complimentary AQ me assessment. AQ AI transforming the way people, teams, and organizations navigate change.

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Outro

Thank you for listening to this episode of Decoding AQ. Please make sure you subscribe to your favorite podcast directory, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Please leave a review and be sure to tune in next time for more insights from our amazing guests.

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