Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Dr. Nigel Paine on Agile Learning for Today's Organisations (#056)

Transcript

Dr. Nigel Paine on Agile Learning for Today's Organisations (#056) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and Bezos gives the example of uh a product that was being returned.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: So one product that was an expensive product, but Amazon was that something like a third of the products were being returned for a refund, which Amazon do automatically.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they they looked at this and they got in touch with the supplier and said, There's something wrong with your product.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to deal with this, you know, that I want you to get it fixed, otherwise we're going to stop selling it.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the supplier says, There's nothing wrong with the product.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the huge argument.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Bezos gets involved and he says, Well, why are people returning it?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And when it came down to it, the problem was they're returning it because there were faults in the product.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you found out what those faults were, you found they weren't to do with the way the product left the factory, they were the way the product was shipped.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you begin to look at the way the product was shipped, you then began to see that some of the packaging allowed extra pressures to be put on parts of the product.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: The packaging wasn't universally bad, but it was it allowed extra pressure to be put on some parts of the product.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: That in turn, when you looked at that, it created weaknesses in the product.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you looked at that, it meant that products were much more likely to fail.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some products were much more likely to fail.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Bizo's suggestion was working with the manufacturer was to change the packaging, to make it more robust and to protect the product more.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they went from 33% returns down to practically zero by changing something that is cheap and simple.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas at the beginning it was, it's your product that's wrong, modify your product.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the manufacturer could have gone ahead and modified the product again and again and again, would have done nothing to the returns.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it's only when he got down to that level that he realized that something pretty basic was going wrong, but it was invisible until you asked the questions.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: You asked those whys.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think the CEOs should ask the six, the Jeff Bees of six whys.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't take from the first person who says, We've got a problem here, this is the solution.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Find out what the solution really is.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is systems thinking.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another edition of Contraminds.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: We are living in a time of remarkable change in the world of learning.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Artificial intelligence, advanced digital tools, and immersive technologies are transforming education on a global scale.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: This shift isn't confined to traditional academic settings.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Organizations are also reimagining how people learn, how learning is institutionalized, and how newly acquired knowledge is applied in the workplace.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Today we're delighted to introduce a guest who has dedicated his career to this field, serving as both a change agent and a catalyst in revolutionizing learning for individuals and organizations alike.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Joining Swami is Dr.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Nigel Payne, a change-focused leader with a worldwide reputation in organizational development and learning.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Nigel brings a unique perspective having worked across public, private, and academic sectors.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: His impressive career includes establishing the BBC's learning and development operations.
• 2:58
  unknown: Dr.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Nigel's expertise lies in leveraging learning technologies to maximize human potential, foster innovation, and enhance performance in the workplace.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Throughout the discussion, Dr.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: Nigel offers numerous examples and engaging anecdotes from his vast experience, providing valuable insights for our listeners.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: If you find value in this conversation, we encourage you to like, subscribe, rate, and comment on this episode.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: By subscribing, you will receive automatic updates whenever we release new episodes.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Before we delve into our enlightening conversation with Dr.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Nigel, a brief word from our sponsors.
• 3:30
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• 3:34
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• 3:43
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• 3:53
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• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: Lovely having you here and really looking forward to this conversation.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a pleasure to cross continents.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking to people around the world, and you you're talking to me from Mumbai, which is one of my special places in the world.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very pleased to talk to you, Swami.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, uh Nigel.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to start off this conversation with uh something.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh when I track your career, uh, you've done many phases of uh transitions in your career, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_03: And uh what's been your learning across these years when you've transitioned different phases of your career, and what's been the learning that you've taken back?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose there are there are three aspects.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: The first aspect is that I really was quite embarrassed about my career because it wasn't logical, it wasn't linear, it was all over the place.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, I jumped from place to place.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what I came to realize is I I call it a scribble career.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of a nice straight line, it's it's like this, my career, that that is okay, that that and that is that can lead you to good places.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I try and persuade other people that just because you're a product manager doesn't mean you have to become a senior product manager and then the director of project management.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can do other things.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: The second learning was that every every time I chose a shift, but the fundamental basis of it was I need to learn more, I need to understand more, I need new challenges.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the third thing I learned was that I get bored with doing the same thing, and I'm not productive when I'm bored.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that that looking backwards, and it may be that I'm I'm just kind of over-egging the cake, as we say in in the UK, I may be over-egging the cake, but it seemed to me that I made good decisions, I focused on learning, and I I also learned more, grew more, did new things, had more challenges than if I'd stuck with one place and spent my whole career in that place.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant, brilliant summary, Nigel.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: I think it gave me a holistic view of how uh you know it's okay to be vulnerable, it's okay to be embarrassed, and uh not every career uh actually goes uh up and up, but you can actually take you know sideways, path sideways and then move.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_03: I think that example of yours was very interesting.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh now that you actually do this whole organizational learning, you are a coach, you are doing a transformation, you are probably one of the leading uh you know uh specialists on organization learning, uh one of the things that I wanted to talk to you was uh what is the most important shift that you are seeing in people wanting to learn, and how is it learning that was there 15-20 years back to how learning will transition over the next decade or so?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've seen a number of shifts, and I'm old enough to have lived through a number of fundamental shifts.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that you know I remember the 1990s when Senge published his book, The Fifth Discipline, and Argoris published his book on organizational learning.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: There was a real focus on what they called the learning organization.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And and if you read GE's 2000 annual report, in it the CEO of G uh of GE says if GE learns slower than the world, GE will die.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: If GE learns faster than the world, it will flourish.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he doesn't talk about individual learning, he talks about GE as a whole having a real grip on the way the world is changing and being on top of that.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a big flourish of interest in the power of organizational learning, which died entirely.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: By 2005, no one even thought about it, or just a few academic uh uh academic articles.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: There was no real focus on it.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason for that was that we suddenly became obsessed with personalization, the power of IT, the the one one for one, just for me, individual learning, and all of those things pushed aside a notion of organizational learning.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and that, in retrospect, worried me a great deal because it it seemed to me that you can't solve organizational problems by just boosting a few people or by saying, Swami, you're talent, but you, Nigel, you're not talent.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're not as talented as Swami.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to invest in Swami because he's talent.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is that if you split people and you divide them into talent and not talent, you end up fracturing the organization.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the ones with talent go because they think, well, I'm so talented, I'm too good for this organization.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the ones who are not talent stay because they feel, I don't think I can get any other job because I'm not very I'm not very good.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up diminishing the organization.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize that as we move into this next decade, just the speed of change, the amount of uncertainty, instability, incoherence in the world.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: How can we rely on a few people to keep big organizations on the straight and narrow?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: How can they align with the world relying on a few and saying the majority don't count?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do your job, that's fine, that's all you need to do.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: A, that it's totally demoralizing, b, it's massive loss of productivity.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And C, you're not gathering the diversity of your people.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's the diversity that leads to insight and leads you to make intelligent decisions.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't get diversity by focusing on six people or the or the executive team or these these 20 or 50 that we've we've decided are our top talent.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Top talent can't do it anymore.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, I came back to this notion of organizational learning and thought there was something really important that we lost, and I'm trying to bring it back into focus.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm writing about it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm slightly obsessed with it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some might say I'm healthily obsessed with it, but I'll take that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because I actually think the future of organizations will be organizations that are intelligent, react, and above all, organizations that know what they know.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of organizations, the bigger, the more true, have no idea what they know.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: They do not know what they know.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that means they reinvent the wheel time after time after time.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: They make the same mistakes, time after time, as generations of talent come and go.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: The next generation have to reinvent everything.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because the organization knows not what it knows.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to remedy that.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's incredibly important for organizations to really understand the nature of the embedded learning and the process of knowing that goes on day by day in organizations.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not formal, not packaged, not codified, but the general informal churn of insight and knowing that makes organizations work.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's what makes them work.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: People making arbitrary decisions based on limited information, saying, Well, I'll give that a go.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that worked.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll try it again.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not we go to a book, an encyclopedia, a database that tells us what to do.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: We can't do that.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's moving too fast to rely on the past.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have to build the future always, constantly.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you build the future with everybody involved, not with 10% or 11% or 21% or whatever it might be, I don't care.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You need 99% or 89% involved.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: The vast majority of people need to be committed and share that learning.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: So when you talk about that concept, uh, you know, I read that uh in some of the uh blogs and articles that you wrote, and in fact, in the book that you uh wrote.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so how do you really scale learning?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because learning by nature uh is uh, you know, being an individual, I learn a lot, and I don't think uh my colleague will learn at probably the same pace that I learned.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: Uh talent again has different connotations in an organization.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, when you're talking about the way you want to transform organization learning for the future, how is it that you believe this can be done and what are the components that you believe have to come together?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: The model that you're talking about focuses on individual ability, individual learning, and individual process that is outside the day-to-day churn.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: What I believe is that if you put people in the melee, in the community, working with each other, the learning becomes almost automatic and constant.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So taking people out of the flow of work and putting them in, quote, a learning environment has its place.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that is according to 80 2010, uh uh uh 70 2010, that is only 10%.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a there's there's another 90% somewhere.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that helping people learn from each other, building learning communities, working on really thorny, knotty, what I call wicked problems together is a way of accelerating learning.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we all have to accelerate learning.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that circumstance, it doesn't matter whether you grasp something faster than I grasp, or you learn this and I learn something else.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's together that matters.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do together?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee that if you have eight people working on a problem, that solution will be better than any single one person, however smart that person is, better than any single one person can come up with.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a great believer in focusing on not knowledge, but knowing.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you accelerate the process of knowing, that's informal, that is communal, that is in operational reality, not in fixed terms.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's what goes on in the day-to-day.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you can do all of that, then you're a long way to making sure everybody is learning, even if people learn at different paces and learn different things.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that that you if we were working together, you might focus on the quant side, you're really good at figures, you can produce wonderful graphs.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I focus on maybe the qualitative side.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good at analyzing trends and so on.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Together, we're we're the complete picture.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: But to expect me to do everything and you to do everything, and we do it in competition, it's crazy.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's completely crazy.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think we've got to stop thinking in the school model.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lecturer in a university is aiming at individuals who are given individual assignments which are marked for their individual competence or non-competence, whatever it might be.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Same in schools.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we transfer that model into organizations.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas organizations are way more complex.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you're working in an organization, it's not just about you and the organization, it's about what you can do for the organization to make the organization better, to improve its performance.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for you, that increases your productivity, your happiness at work, your feeling of satisfaction.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a much more complex interaction between an individual and the workplace than it is between a pupil and a school or a student and the university.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant, brilliant.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you used a phrase which I really picked up, not just in this conversation, but in some of your writings.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: You talk about knowing before knowledge.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Uh can you explain what does that mean really?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite simple.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Knowledge is something that's agreed and explicit and codified and packaged.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing is the messy process of experimentation, of testing, of conversation, of debate, and so on.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So knowing eventually becomes knowledge.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if you focus only on the knowledge, A, you miss that really important process of knowing.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And B, knowledge has to be replaced, upgraded, changed.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if all you're doing is waiting for the next piece of knowledge to be codified, you're missing that process.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what you should be doing, I tell people in learning, you should be encouraging that process of knowing.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Accelerate that in order to get to knowledge much quicker.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And don't punish people because they're not certain, because they they haven't got a complete view.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't punish people because they try something and it doesn't work.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You should be accelerating that because that's all part of the messy process of uh of knowing.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I you know, I think we should we should be focusing much more on knowing and much less on knowledge.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I've always had my problems with KM systems, knowledge management systems.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I always felt that knowledge management systems were so formal and structured that they wouldn't work for most people.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: They would drive most people mad, and they indeed they drove me mad, completely mad.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that there's a quote from um David Niccolini, and he says, get beyond discourses, paradigms, logics, and get at the daily reality of local tactics, pockets of resistance, dialects, collusions, and contradictions.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I completely 100% agree with that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: David Nicolini in 2003, he was saying that.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he's right.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every organization has dialects.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you just focus on the formal received language, it's like if you say to India, uh you can only understand India by knowing English.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the main language of parliament and the language of law.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Go and learn English if you want to understand India.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's nonsense.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that's nonsense.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You understand India by the richness of its culture and its dialects that make India what it is.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when you explore the dialects, those pockets of resistance, the different views and cultures around the country, you suddenly get a sense of what really makes India tick.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it helps you understand some of the things that are surprising.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: You say, why would they do that in India?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is because if you listen to the dialects, the collusions, the contradictions, you begin to understand a very, very complex country.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying every organization is as big or as complex as India, but I am saying that very few organizations are straightforward.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: You just have your discourses, you have your written rules, you have your organizational logic, and that's all you need.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they tell you you need.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, if you want to understand, if you want to make a contribution, you've got to get beyond that.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's to me that's superficial because it's received opinion.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to get at the building of opinion and the building of knowledge.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So that there's uh Chris Argres talks about double loop learning.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what he says is to understand an organization, to look at the obvious answer, there's a problem, there's a potential solution, is to miss the double loop.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have an action and a consequence, what made the action happen?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was another consequence and another problem and another solution.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up digging down and you go round that loop till you get at what actually is going on as opposed to what appears to be going on.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if if everybody in leadership role in an organization said, today I'm gonna get beyond and below the superficial, that's a mistake, that person did it wrong, we will punish that person, and try and understand what made that person make a mistake.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's often nothing to do with the person, it's to do with the underlying system.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a great believer in systems thinking that you've got to get at the system that causes the mistakes to occur, causes people to be disappointed.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Disillusioned or to do bad work.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: What is causing that?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can't blame it on individuals and say that person is good, invest.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: That person is bad, fire them.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredibly superficial.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: As you know, and you've seen in your work experience, good people suddenly not perform.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason for it.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's external, but often it's internal.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So what is the cause of that disillusionment?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I there's one question which I've used a thousand times.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say ten thousand, but that may be an exaggeration.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: One question I've used a thousand times, which is what stops you doing good work?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: You ask people, they will tell you.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the place to start.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is where you get at the contradictions, the tactics, the pockets of resistance and the dialects.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: What stops you doing good work?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had wonderful conversations with people when they say, ah, well, and it's usually systemic.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not I do bad work because I'm bad, it's I do bad work because of this system and that system and that interaction and this process, all of these things are rotten.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you get at improving the system, by definition almost, you improve people.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very important, I think.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_03: So very interesting.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: So you're saying put knowing before knowledge is really the key, and ask the right questions and be observant.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, you know, uh don't be supervis don't be superficial, dig deep is really what you're talking about.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, is really what you're talking.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Nicolini talks about exploring the sight of knowing, the sight, the S I T E of knowing.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you see it like there are places where this knowing is evolving.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Get in there, see what's happening.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and often that can be at the front line.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not in it's not necessarily in the in the boardroom or in the executive team.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's at the site of knowing, wherever that happens to be in an organization.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it is at the senior level when they're they're confronted with, for example, AI, there's a big issue in AI.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if I were if I was asked to come into an organization and say, well, how do we tackle AI?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't go and talk to the CEO and say, right, I've got it now.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I would talk to the CEO, I'd talk to middle managers, and I'd talk to people at the front end and say, what are the blockages?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where could something like AI transform your life, make you work better?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are the dangers?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: How do we reorganize the organization in order to make AI work?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and it it's it's astonishing to me that many organizations are going hell for leather for AI.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're installing systems, but they're not fixing the organization first.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And AI in a bad, a toxic organization will amplify the toxicity.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It will split the organization, it will divide people from each other, and it will create an AI have and an AI have not generation in the workplace.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you fix the organization first and say, well, how can we make this work across the organization?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then you'll get the benefits shared by all.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it will genuinely enhance the organization and improve productivity across the piece.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is that that's not how it's looked at.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's again, it's looked at, it's a solution.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a problem, we need a solution, throw AI without looking at the underlying system, which will make AI work, but it can often make it divisive and really poor, poor result for the organization.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_03: So uh when you were confronted with a problem like this, and uh, you know, you you must have seen many organizations that you went in and did this organization learning model.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh can you give me an example of how you approached it?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_03: And uh you used a very interesting terminology, uh systems thinking, right?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so clearly uh there's a lot of connection and interdependency between organization learning and systems thinking, right?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_03: So uh can you talk to me a bit about how did you approach the problem?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: How did you bring in the systems thinking, and how did the organization start it transforming?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because change management will not happen overnight.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_03: But uh, what what is really the path that they went through?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's that's all true.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what I do with organizations is when when they bring me in, there's a problem.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: They say, this isn't working, we have poor leadership, or we're not performing well in this part of the organization.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I listen, but I don't accept any of those statements of what the problem is.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I send the people I'm working with out.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing I do is say, right, go and talk to these people, talk around these people, talk to others in the organization about this particular issue, and try to find out not what appears to be going wrong, but what some of the underlying issues are.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So once they've gone out and done their field work and come back, we then start to narrate and draw the system.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we so this has to do this and has to go there.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: You see the problem at a systems level, you get away from seeing the problem as a bunch of people who are good or bad, and that is always superficial and inconclusive.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: So once you see the system failing people, you then can say, Well, how what can we change and what can't we change?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't change everything, but often it's small things that are changed can make a big difference, big impact.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I always suggest start with something small, a few small things, make those changes, go back and do your field work.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Did it help?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are things different?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: What changes do you notice?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're on the right path, you then maybe do some more changes around the model.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Check your right, check the model is correct, but keep basically keep modifying the system till it's optimal.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when it's optimal, don't think job done for life.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: It will be optimal for six months, maybe, or three months even.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: You go back and you check and say, well, what has become suboptimal?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: How can we make it optimal?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you get people to focus on things that they can control, things that they can change, and but to focus on changing processes, changing beliefs, changing systems, rather than imagining that if there's a problem, give them a course.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Train them.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: They need to be trained.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Often that's got nothing whatsoever to do with it.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Highly competent people do terrible things, not because they're not competent, but because they're forced to, they're not interested, they choose to do something different.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, I I you have to get beyond blaming individuals.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And sadly, so much of the learning and development organizations focuses on poor performing individuals or good performing individuals and not on the underlying system.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if you you take Brinkerhofer's model, what what he says is if if you look at, if you deliver some kind of development program, maybe on the introduction of AI, you'll find that it doesn't work evenly throughout the company because of the pockets of resistance, the dialects and the contradictions.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: What you do is you track through to who did this really well and who did this really poorly, and you don't say, well, fire them, promote them.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: You say, what made them do it so well?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they will tell you, there's this and I got that support and my line manager, whatever.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you say, why did you struggle with this?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because I had to do this and I couldn't get approval here, and so you always find that the key, not always, but you mostly find that the key elements for success and failure are not good or bad training and development, it's good and bad systems.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can change the system to make all of the company reflect the quality of the good outcomes, you then spread the good outcomes across the organization without having to do anything to anybody.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: You just change the system.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I mean by systems thinking.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really important.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: And again, systems thinking, well, the fifth Senge's fifth discipline, the fifth discipline was systems thinking.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So Sengi saw it as seminal, seminal to creating good organizations for the 20th century.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, everyone ignored him.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_03: So uh so clearly, if I was a leader and uh I want uh to really think about developing my systems thinking, uh, how do I go about uh you know building this uh capability in me?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_03: Because most leaders uh actually don't, in my view, uh and correct me if I'm wrong, uh do not connect the unconnected, right?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh they see it in silos, uh, they don't see the connections between uh various parts of the organization.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: So, as a leader, if you tell me that uh you know you need to be a systems thinker and uh you need to look at it from a systems thinking view to really build what you also call uh call it a collective wisdom, right?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: That's really what you keep talking about.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: How do you build the systems thinking uh uh in my uh muzzle memory?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you follow Jeff Bezos, Jeff Bezos, the the founder of Amazon, no longer the CEO, but the the guy behind Amazon, if you follow Jeff Bezos, Jeff Bezos says uh he's got something called the six whys.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what that means is Jeff Bezos says that when he was running Amazon, he would never get involved in the simple problems that could be solved by his staff.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something went wrong, you fix it.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: He'd wait until there was a really, really big problem that Amazon faced, a really tricky problem.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then he'd get involved, and he'd get involved, and he'd get involved, not by saying, You idiots, this is what you do.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: He'd get involved by asking, why did that happen?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Well, there's this and then he said, So why did that happen?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then why did that happen?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: And why did that happen?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that until you get to the sixth level of why, you don't understand the problem.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, once you get to the sixth level of why, you begin to fix the problem at the sixth level, and that fixes the problem at the fifth, fourth, third, second, and the problem begins to go away.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: But you blame the wrong people and you implement the wrong solutions if you stop at why.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I would urge every chief executive who's worried about systems thinking, go and explore some of the tricky problems that confront the organization and ask, how did that happen?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: How did that happen?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: And how did that happen until you get at what you can call a base level of understanding of where things start to go wrong.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And usually when you get to third, fourth, fifth, sixth level, it's a long way away from the obvious first level.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and Bezos gives the example of uh a product that was being returned.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: So one product that was an expensive product, that Amazon was that something like a third of the products were being returned for a refund, which Amazon do automatically.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And they they looked at this and they got in touch with the supplier and said, There's something wrong with your product.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to deal with this, you know, that I want you to get it fixed, otherwise we're going to stop selling it.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the supplier says, nothing wrong with the product.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, the huge argument.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Bezos gets involved and he says, Well, why are people returning it?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when it came down to it, the problem was they're returning it because there were faults in the in the product.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: When you found out what those faults were, you found they weren't to do with the way the product left the factory.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were the way the product was shipped.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: When you begin to look at the way the product was shipped, you then began to see that some of the packaging allowed extra pressures to be put on parts of the product.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: The packaging wasn't universally bad, but it was it allowed extra pressure to be put on some parts of the product.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: That in turn, when you looked at that, it created weaknesses in the product.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you looked at that, it meant that products were much more likely to fail.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Some products were much more likely to fail.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: So Bezos' suggestion was working with the manufacturer was to change the packaging, to make it more robust and to protect the product more.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they went from 33% returns down to practically zero by changing something that is cheap and simple.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas at the beginning it was, it's your product that's wrong.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Modify your product.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the manufacturer could have gone ahead and modified the product again and again and again, would have done nothing to the returns.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's only when he got down to that level that he realized that something pretty basic was going wrong, but it was invisible until you asked the questions.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: You asked those whys.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think the CEOs should ask the six, the Jeff Bezos' six whys.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't take an answer from the first person who says, We've got a problem here, this is the solution.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Find out what the solution really is.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is systems thinking.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the system that led to the problem, not the individual who caused the problem.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty fundamental.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have a problem, change the system to make sure it doesn't happen again.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Don't fire the individual.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because it will happen again.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly the same problem.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_03: So when you when you go through this process, uh Dr.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_03: Nigel, one of the questions that keep coming to me uh is uh as we grow in experience, uh uh what happens is knowledge becomes invisible.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_03: And uh that that's something that uh you know that becomes a problem for people who have had many years of experience, and therefore uh adult learning is something that you focus on.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, if I were uh an individual and part of an organization, how is it how do I ensure that there is rapid adult learning?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_03: Unlike the learning that you did in you know when you are young and when you are in school, adult learning is very, very different.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: And you are a big proponent of adult learning and you've done a lot of research on that.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, talk to me about what differentiates adult learning from the traditional uh you know uh learning that happens in schools and colleges, and how should adults learn to accelerate their knowing and therefore their knowledge and get into this continuous loop of knowledge and knowing?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when you are a child, when you're learning at school, most of what you learn is completely completely new.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you learn almost like an empty vessel in some ways.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: The teacher tells you something, you look at that, you understand it, you learn it, you know it, and you regurgitate it in an examination.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're good at that process of processing, you know, listening, writing, learning, regurgitation, you do well at school.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that if you apply that model in the world of work, there are three or four things that are fundamentally wrong.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that as an adult, you have a lot of experience in the world.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And your experience dictates your behavior to a large extent.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if what I'm trying to tell you to learn goes against your experience, you will resist.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: You may not obviously and say, I don't agree with that.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You'll sit there quietly.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the end of the session, you'll walk out saying, load of rubbish, not going to do it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's not right.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is what's right.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I've learned over 20 years or 30 years or 40 years.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: So adults have experience.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Also, adults have a lot of tacit knowledge.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: They may not have explicit knowledge, but they have tacit knowledge of how things work in the world and in the organization.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what they need to do is make that tacit knowledge more explicit, more conscious.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: They need to talk about it to be able to explain it and turn it into something that can be shared.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that is a whole process of learning that's got nothing to do with I'm an expert, you're not, I tell you, you learn.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: And too much development in organizations is focused on I'm the expert, you're not.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do what I tell you.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And often that is why it's ineffective, because if you don't respect the the lifetime of knowledge that you're dealing with, sometimes you're in the room there will be hundreds of years of knowledge and experience.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you just put it all to one side and say, you know nothing, I'll treat you all the same, we'll just focus on you learning things and regurgitate them to me, and now you're competent.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you're not competent at all.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: You may know things, you may even be able to know how to do things, but that doesn't mean you're going to do them in practice.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole point about adults is that one, they learn best from each other, so that the whole it goes back to Vygotsky.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back to the zone of proximal development.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you put people of roughly the same level together, they will accelerate their learning together.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a great experience.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not threatening in any way, it's not humiliating in any way, but you learn because you can ask questions and someone knows something, someone knows something else, put those two together and we learn.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you you need to learn from your colleagues and you need to be put into experiences, have experiences that work and make a deep, meaningful impression on your consciousness.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that if you have an experience that is so much more emotionally engaging than a fact.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we're learning from contemporary leadership development, that giving people abstract models and throwing McKinsey at them or throwing Harvard Business Review at them doesn't necessarily change anything to do with their leadership.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Put them in an experience where they see some of the consequences of bad leadership.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: You engage them emotionally and viscerally, and at that point they're learning and they're changing their behavior.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to focus in adult learning on behavior change, on building scaffolding, process what I call generative learning, building the skills that allow you to grow other skills yourself.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if we focused on those and not on the other skills, the other skills almost take care of themselves.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in an organization, if you give permission, people can help other people reach any kind of level.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's very rare that you bring in something entirely new in an organization that nobody in the organization has any idea.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Usually there are enough people who know.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you let them loose, they will share the knowledge and they will begin to work out the tacit knowledge that becomes explicit knowledge, that becomes processed, that becomes embedded in systems, and you move forward.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: So adults are way more complex than an eight-year-old in terms of their learning.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, an eight-year-old learns fast and is uh because they their brain is unformed.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: An adult learns more slowly because their brain is formed, and they've already got a ton of stuff in their brain.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what you've got to do is in neuroscience terms, you've got to make those neurons connect and connect in a way that creates good, strong connections that you remember and can recall.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is the process, and that is the way the brain works.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: The brain learns by building connections.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: But when there aren't many connections, you just put one and then another.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you've got a lot of connections, you often have to replace connections.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is changing habit.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Habits are trenches in your brain.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: You do things because you've always done them.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not intellectual, it's emotional.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: So many so-called intellectual decisions are actually emotional decisions.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to undo some of those connections in order to make even stronger connections to do something else.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, behavior changes.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got an adult community really excited by the power of their collective learning, you've got an engaged workforce and you've got a powerful, massive increase in productivity.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll never get that by just saying, You're talent, you're not talent, focus on your own, do this course for half an hour, do this course for an hour, do this course, then report on it to your line manager, and then go and do that's you know, that is not the best way for adults to learn.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sitting on their own in front of a laptop, or even sitting on their own in a room facing the facing the the front.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the best way you learn.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: In a room is turn the chairs round and see what other people think.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I've never in my entire life ever had a room like that, and anyone has said to me, Oh no, no, we don't need to talk to each other.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: We just just you just tell us, we'll just write it down.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because it that that would be a that goes against everything I've ever learnt, but it also goes against nature in a way.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: The nature of the human being is to be sociable, collective, and to work from each other.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: We learn from each other, and yet we we've somehow forgotten that.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: So simple, such a basic fact, and we organize organization.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: The systems pull people apart.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where I'm saying you have systems should bring people together.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's important.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: So, which brings me to uh one of the questions that uh you know came in my mind.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, therefore, how do you structure these interventions?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Can you uh you know talk to me about a particular interven intervention in adult learning that you built uh using technology, using the community uh as a uh you know as a platform for learning, and uh and what happened because of the intervention and uh how is that intervention different from the traditional learning interventions?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: Can you give me uh you know, if it's not confidential, maybe how you you were brought in and how you structured that intervention, which then created the uh you know the aha moment, if I were to call it, and that that's really what I wanted to understand so that you know uh we'll be able to really understand and appreciate the deployment of the intervention, which is very very important because I totally agree with you that adult learning is completely different from a child's learning, and uh and I think what you are saying makes so much of sense, and uh we come with our cognitive bias, you know, there's a lot of uh you know, unwritten I would call it, uh, you know, resistance to change, and these are some of the things that you need to break really.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: And some of these decisions, as you rightly said, are not intellectual decisions but emotional decisions, right?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_03: So, therefore, uh, can you give me an example of how you structured that intervention and it created that aha moment?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a couple.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and from the BBC days.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, when the BBC used to have 15,000 journalists, the BBC was mandated and renowned for its objectivity, its lack of bias, etc.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was very proud of this.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: But there there were problems, and uh some of those problems were urgent.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: For example, uh, there was a mandate from the House of Lords, that's a very senior group of legislatures, saying the BBC didn't understand the Israel-Arab conflict well enough in depth.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it was at the very center, Jeremy Bowen, our Middle East correspondent, who's still in the BBC.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremy is an expert.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremy never makes mistakes.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get to a local news or you get down the way and there's some small issue that could that that involve Palestine and Israel, you ended up with some bad errors.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Calling the wrong people terrorists, to define some land as Israel when it was actually occupied, whatever it might be, big mistakes.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we were told that we had to get every single journalist in the BBC au fay with what was going on.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we can do it, we could have done it by giving them a lecture, by writing them, this is these are the facts.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Learn those facts.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: None of those things would have had any impact whatsoever.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: So what we did was we created an interactive program, but we did it, the people did it in groups, individually, and then in groups.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so imagine the thing starts, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, news, news flash.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a bomb on a bus in somewhere or the other.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bomb on a bus, it looks like three people are killed.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know exactly.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're the journalist, you have to write the first 50 words for BBC Online.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: You've got 30 seconds to write 50 words.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you begin, it looks like a terrorist attack on a you finish.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then suddenly, beep, beep, beep, beep, all the words that are contentious are highlighted in red.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at it and it says, you can't call someone a terrorist.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: You don't even know who they were, and you can't call them a freedom fighter because they're not necessarily freedom fighters, and you can't say that it was an attack because you don't know the circumstance.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: So then it says, okay, go back and rewrite the 50 words.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have another 30 seconds now.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you're right or there.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's better.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're nearly there.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the group, so the group, what did you learn?
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Share amongst the group, what did you get wrong?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: And someone says, Well, I I still don't understand the difference between freedom fighter, terrorist.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's the big deal?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Someone else says, Oh, there isn't blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually the the person running the session will bring in some relevant information, usually from Jeremy Bowen.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was the advisor.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there will be a bit from Jeremy Bowen saying, it is really important you do not confuse this and this and this.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, this is the terminology that offends the least number of people.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then it goes on and it says, update of the news, uh, update of the story.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then you it basically you work through the whole story.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: You have to write 200 words that are accurate, unbiased, and you have to react to the moment because we're doing it in real time.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know it's not three people died, it's it's six people have died.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Looks like one of them was was uh a Palestinian, well-known uh uh uh uh figure who was wearing a bomb in a backpack.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: How do you talk about that?
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so on and so forth.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole thing is focused on action and instant action, the j the journalist instinct.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get a story out quickly which is accurate?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are issues with geography, you know, that this is going on here.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've got 10 seconds, where is this happening?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can say the occupied territories, you can say Israel, you can say Palestine.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: But not all of those are correct.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you say the occupied territories, you offend somebody.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you say Palestine, you offend someone else.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you say Israel, you offend someone else.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to learn the whole sensitivity around the area.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: So each person was put through five scenarios, and each scenario, then you had the received opinion from BBC experts like Jeremy Bowen, but you learnt it viscerally.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: You learnt it by being involved and the pressure, you know, to say you've got 30 seconds to write 20, you know, it's difficult.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and journalists do have to operate, react in real time.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no point having an intellectual discussion saying, oh, yeah, we knew we could do this and we could do this.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: When in reality, as soon as they get back to the news desk, they have to react in real time.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole experience was entirely based on the reality of political life and journalistic life and the way news happens 24-7 in a news organization.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and the result was that we we we started the thing and but every single journalist went through it within six months.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: We did the whole thing in six months, which is what what the the House of Lords said, you should be able to do this, complete this in six months.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: If we'd have done it through 20 people in a room, it would have taken, you imagine, 15,000 people, 20 in a room, taken five years.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: If we'd have written a pamphlet, we could have got it out in a week, but it would have been absolutely useless.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: So what we did working with the journalists involved was something that changed people's views forever.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the end of it, people said, I really feel confident, I really am beginning finally to understand why there are such sensitivities in reporting on the Middle East.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that was very, very important for the BBC so it could go back to the House of Lords and say we've done it, and you will see a difference.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: You will judge us by our reporting.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, that the complaints about the BBC's reporting on Israel and the Arabs went down by you know 90%, something like that.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was a big result, a big result.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it the I as far as I could work out, that was the only way we could do it.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: In partnership with the experts, but doing it in that visceral, emotional, in-the-moment way.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: And another example is is very similar.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: We did a course for journalists where they're in the room.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we did it in journalist teams.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't every journalist, it was it was uh current affairs stuff.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: And someone runs in the room and picks up a phone.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's a phone on the table and says, I need to speak to someone on the news desk.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the person ran and said, Who's gonna be on the news desk?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: Go on, who?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: So someone says, me.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: So right, oh right.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've just come from Sunso Hospital.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't give my name, I can't give my name.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something really terrible going on.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: Patients are dying and they're dying, right?
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this major piece of news, and the other person has to react.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if they won't give their name, how are they gonna cooperate?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: If they just say, right, I'll come down, let me take your I'll take the story, we'll get that out today, that's wrong as well.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't dismiss it and you can't agree with it.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a process, and so everyone else is watching this poor individual grappling with a an emerging, potentially huge story.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when that person has done it, it's a the the the person says, right, I've got to go.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then three minutes later the phone rings again, and it's the same.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hi, hi, I phoned earlier.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Someone on the newsletter, pick up the phone.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: So someone else puts their hand up and they they do the next stage.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it it's all about verifying, uh, corroboration, attribution, investigation, doing your field work, all of those things which are core journalistic skills.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this was an attempt to beef up the journalistic skills, particularly for young journalists.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: Experienced ones would know what to do, but it was aimed at hundreds of young journalists, and we put it through.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the what the way we did it was they they had this kind of experience, and then at the end of it, the person running the session would say, Okay, what have we learned?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, give me some rules that we will live by.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing is I wouldn't uh I would never do this, right?
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, write it on the flip chart.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Second rule, well, I'd always ask these questions, right?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's write that down.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: So they'd walk out of the room with five or six key learning points that were then sent round to everyone the next day.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that meant that instead of coming in and saying, here are six key things that you've got to learn, you've got to learn this and learn that, and here's an illustration one, no one would remember them.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: But when they did it this way, everyone remembered those six points because they realized, oh my, I'm in deep water here.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm committing to something I can't prove, I'm agreeing to publish something that I shouldn't be agreeing, or I'm ignoring something that could be absolutely enormous, and my journalistic duty is to follow through.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, there's just two examples of how you can approach the learning differently, recognizing the experience that exists in the room, recognizing that people work better with each other, and recognizing that if you get people in the guts, you know, there's some nonsensical idea that learning is an intellectual process, it's equally an emotional process.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: If pe one of my colleagues, Nick Shackleton Joe's, used to say, you learn if you care.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he's right.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: If it's important to you, you learn.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you can think in your own life, you know, how many things have you learnt that you thought, oh, I'd never be able to do that?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do it because you really wanted to learn it.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: And how many things that were kind of obvious, but you couldn't care less, you you never learned.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: You went through the motion, but you never actually learned.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's true in organizations.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: People who don't care don't learn.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant, Dr.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, so if I juxtapose what you said, in a corporate environment, uh, leaders pretty much react like this, right?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_03: Which is really uh, you know, I just go there, say something, uh, I'm not sure about what's happening on the ground.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: So clearly, uh, I would also say that you know, you don't learn only from your industry, but look at adjacent industries or uh, you know, where you can learn from other industries, and probably you'll be able to apply it in uh in your own organization.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that's also something that adult learning is uh, you know, accelerates faster because you tend to think, oh, I am in this industry, I need to be trained this way, but probably you can look at adjacent and other industries for you to learn.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_03: Would you agree with me on that?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would and I wouldn't.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I would agree with you that we can accelerate learning by sharing more widely, but you also have to realize that unlike kids, most adult learning happens in context.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in an organization, the context of the organization is very, very important.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's particularly important for leadership.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you imagine that just because you say, Swami, you say to me, Nigel, oh, you've got a problem with that.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I do in my organization, you do the same.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't think what is the context that he's in and I'm in, and how can we make sure that the contexts align?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if they don't align, do some field work to see what would work and what won't.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to do things in context.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: But generally, yes, I think that the idea it's sometimes terrible in organizations.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just, oh, they're not in my organization.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: You get people saying, Oh, I'm not in that department, you know, I'm not in that team.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's their view.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is my my team, don't think that.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up fragmenting the organization and splitting off organizational knowledge into little pockets that don't align, and you forget about knowing because it because you you would be able to deal with that if you if you started with knowing rather than knowledge.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's incredibly damaging.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: So don't close down too quickly, but don't agree too quickly either.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: Look at context.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so my last question to you, Dr.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: Nigel, is uh uh in an organization, there are different motivations for different people, right?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: Say, for example, if I'm an individual, like you are an individual, uh you know you have a certain benchmark of excellence, right?
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: You have a certain discipline and learning uh quotient that you are willing to practice, but many a times I'm not in the same uh intrinsic motivation as somebody else, right?
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: So when as an organization we need to move uh in an aligned manner, how do I ensure that I have people with similar motivation and intrinsic drive to build excellence and uh be the be a world-class organization?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's a big challenge that leaders face, right?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I I would answer, again, I would challenge you slightly.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would answer that the the way you do that is through values, not through individuals.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't screen people out of my organization because they don't demonstrate a lot of resilience.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would make resilience one of the core values and help people understand that and develop themselves so they can demonstrate that value as well.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that I'm a great believer in values-led organizations, not where values are chiseled on the wall or set in stone somewhere else, and you you that uh as you walk in reception, you see respect, uh truth, that means nothing.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and often in those kinds of organizations you ask staff, say, what about the values?
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they just laugh and say, Oh, that's a joke.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's a joke.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: Respect.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: When was I last shown respect?
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have living values, living values tell you how to behave, and you judge your behavior by whether you're adhering or not adhering to those values, and that is incredibly important.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you build that unified view and you build unified behavior by adhering to the values, and making sure that every single member of your organization, whether you've got employed 10 or 100,000, understands that this value in my context for my role means this, and this value in my role, in my context, means this.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that everybody understands how they can live the values, and we are really hard on people who don't live the values.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: We give them a chance and say, that's not the way we live our values.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, I'm sorry you're right, I won't do it again.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: But if they do it again or do it a third time, then they're out because they they've they've demonstrated that they're incapable of learning to behave in the way that's appropriate for the organization.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: For me, that is the best way of unifying an organization rather than telling individuals you you have to do this, or by saying we only recruit people who demonstrate this, this, and this.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, recruitment for behavior is really important.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to recruit psychos who happen to be highly competent.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: You want to recruit people who will fit in, but you develop those people through their adherence to the values.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's incredibly important.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: Value-driven organizations are rich, rewarding, motivational, great places to work.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: Organizations without values are chaotic and often toxic because they have no values, they have no guidelines on how we live.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh on that note, uh, you know, we're coming to the end of this conversation, and I have a couple of uh rapid fire questions for you.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so what does uh success mean to you?
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it means uh it's mean meant different things uh going through my career.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, success is really in other people.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I want to influence and help as many people and as many organizations as I possibly can.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: And success to me means when someone says thank you, when someone says I couldn't have done that without you, when someone says my life was in a mess, and I really feel on top of it, or when a CEO says my organization was in a mess, but I really feel we're on the right track now.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's what it means to me now.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really I've reached a stage in my life where it it does it doesn't really matter what I think or or what happens to me.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is the impact I can have on others.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I try to have good impacts on people.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_00: I don't always succeed, but I try to have good impacts on people.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I I also work with younger people as well.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just you know senior CEOs.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I've got a I've got mentees who are under 30 and I try and help them as well as trying to help more senior people in organizations.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_03: Very nice, very nice.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh what what's one piece of advice that you will give to an 18-year-old in a university today?
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: Someone in university and coming out of university to go into work.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: I would say when you choose your first job, think about your second.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: Pick the job that will get you your second job.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Pick your job that will create the best opportunity for you going forward.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: Don't pick your first job because you're going to stay there for the rest of your life.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't pick your first job because it pays the most.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: Pick your first job because it will build skills and capabilities that will get you a second job.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: And think always one job ahead.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_03: What's one piece of advice?
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_03: You would have got in your career uh a lot of advice, and what's that one piece of advice that stayed with you till today?
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I think probably maybe there's more than one, but but one piece of advice was let it go.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: Don't bear grudges, don't get upset, don't start stomping up and down.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it wasn't good, yes it all went wrong, but just Marshall Goldsmith goes, let it go.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think letting it go is a really good piece of advice.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the second good piece of advice was, you know, I'm very emotional, I show my emotions, be more in control of your emotions.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't get angry anymore, I really get angry.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I and I sh and I keep my mouth shut.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the best advice is shut up, don't intervene, don't always have an answer.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: And th just one little third piece of advice, which comes from a an advertising executive who formed one of the big Madison Avenue agencies, he had a card in his pocket, and before every meeting he took it out and he read it.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: And on that card were the words.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember you could be wrong.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: Put it back in his pocket.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I that haunts me.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just remember you could be wrong.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're not always right.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: Very nice, very nice.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_03: Very inspirational.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you were to invite a couple of people, one or two of them or three of them, they may be living or dead, for a dream dinner, who would it be and why?
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'd I'd have to have a conversation with uh Chris Argris about organizational learning and what what what he what what he thinks and how he came to some of his conclusions.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: But but I'd also really like to talk to some incredibly powerful 19th century thinkers.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'd I'd love to have a conversation with Thomas Carlisle, the historian, or I'd love to have a conversation with with um Wittgenstein as a philosopher.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's 20th century, I know, not 19th century.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some some big thinkers.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know how they came to develop themselves and think what they what they did.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd also like to talk to Charles Dickens about his writing.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to know how someone could just write so much and and put himself under pressure and deliver for decades.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: For decades.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: How does what what was the process of writing that he went through?
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and George Elliott, the the novelist as well.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to ask her about her work is so beautifully crafted.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: How did she get the ideas?
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: How did the ideas become flesh?
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to talk to those people, but I'd I'd like to talk to some contemporary people.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to talk to Demis Hassabis, who founded Deep Mind, the AI startup which was bought by Google.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to see the way his mind thinks about machine learning.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I suppose above all, I would love to have had dinner with Steve Jobs.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to have sat with Steve Jobs and got him on a good day, in a good mood, just to have talked about the way his mind worked.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been an absolute joy and privilege.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there are a few people who are that and they're all men, which is apart from George Elliott, which is slightly embarrassing.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: Very nice.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's so so beautifully put and uh so beautifully uh you know I think articulated.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_03: Excellent.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so what's one piece of uh you know belief that you have which many people don't agree with you most often?
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that again a very good question.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I actually think it's to do with um organizational learning.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: That when I say we we have to switch the entire focus away from individuals and individual capability.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, a lot of people think I'm crazy.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that I I I believe that our brain, like we have neurons in the brain, what makes us smart is not the neurons.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have 80 billion of those, we have loads of neurons.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: What we have, what we we value are the connections.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: What makes us smart are the connections?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: And my analogy is in an organization, the people are the neurons.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: What makes an organization smart are the connections between people.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people don't like that analogy at all, but I do, you know, I really do.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think we need smart organizations, and the better connected an organization, the the the smarter it becomes.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_00: So those two things are tricky, contested, let's say.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thanks, Dr.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_03: Najel.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, it was fantastic.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, your conviction and your belief systems really came out of this conversation, and uh the articulation of the principles of organization learning was just brilliant.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks a lot.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_03: Lovely talking to you.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_03: Lovely talking to you too.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:10:07
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