Edwin Jansen on how people adopt self-management at Fitzii

Lisa: So Edwin, you told me that every year on the 14th of February you celebrate this thing at Fitzii Valentine’s Day. What’s that? Tell us about that.

Edwin: Yeah, that’s our favorite holiday of the year, Lisa. It marks the anniversary of when we decided to move towards self-management. So it was February 14th, 2015, that we sort of made an official declaration. As you know, there isn’t a moment when you are entirely self-managed and everyone has sort of done the emotional and intellectual transformation, but we thought we would have a cake and have a reason to celebrate every year if we mark that occasion. So the anniversary was four days ago. It’s been four years now since our company has been entirely self-managed, and in that time we’ve doubled in size and just had an amazing journey.

Lisa: So if you go back to the start of your journey then, how many people were you then? And I know you’ve also written a really great blog about what you see as the three stages of self-management adoption. So maybe you could sort of signpost the journey with those three stages as you see them.

Edwin: Yeah, that was… it’s been really interesting. So I think we were eight or maybe ten people four years ago when we started, and we’d, like everyone, had read Laloux’s book and were quite inspired by that. And I think we were ready. We had seen the challenges or the limitations, I like to say, of the green-orange paradigm, and after reading Laloux’s book, we realized, “Oh, these are the limitations of the paradigm. If we shift the paradigm, those limitations can be gone.”

So we started off saying, “Well, what are all of the processes that require a manager?” So at the time it was myself and one other person who had managerial authority. So there’s obviously hiring and firing and performance reviews and compensation setting, you know, budgeting, strategy. So we just identified a few things that we wanted to start with, then the things that we wanted to tackle next and reorient, and then the things that we would punt until some time in the future. And it was, as you can imagine, compensation that we punted for the future.

And then we just started working through all of these practices and the redesign of these practices. We spent a lot of time looking at how other organizations had done it and sort of went on our way. And obviously we were a start-up growing fast, so we had a lot of work to do at the same time. So we took a very measured approach through that transformation.

And then really it was only recently, I’d say in the last six months or so, that we started to notice that individuals, as they enter into a teal self-managing environment, go through this transformation which we have found has three stages. And this is something that we’ve noticed. It’s not sort of scientifically or psychometrically true, but it is in line with a number of frameworks for adult development theory.

The first stage we call the “head stage.” That’s the intellectual understanding of the teal paradigm and how it is different from orange and green. And you know what? This is, you know, what you say it’s like drinking the Kool-Aid. So someone learns about it, understands it, you know, can reference how things would be different in orange and green versus teal, and then they want it. They say, “Yes, I want to be there.” And it’s actually… we can’t really hire someone unless they’re past that first stage of an intellectual understanding, sort of knowing what they’re getting into.

Then you have the messy middle, the heart stage, the emotional stage of the teal transformation. And this has been quite challenging because people believe typically that they’re ready for it and that they want it, but what it often requires is a very hard look at yourself and your own fears and biases. We found the Enneagram to be particularly helpful as a personality typing tool.

Typically, someone gets some kind of really difficult feedback or is in some conflict with someone, and then their deepest fear around how they operate in the world is triggered. And then we like to say leadership development is a team sport, so the whole team gathers around that person and says, “We got you. You don’t need to be afraid of this thing.” And so they ultimately have an emotional awakening around their deepest fear and realizing that they don’t need to operate out of that fear.

And we know someone is out of stage two, the heart stage, when they are now able to put the needs of the team ahead of themselves because they’re no longer afraid that they need to take care of themselves - the team will take care of them. And I think Simon Synek’s book “Leaders Eat Last” is a great sort of example and a description of what that kind of leadership looks like.

And then the final stage is the habit stage, the behavioral stage, and you never get out of this stage. It’s a constant thing. In fact, I was triggered just on Friday. When you have a whole bunch of orange and green habits that you need to unlearn, and if and when you get triggered, you know, you can then operate from that place of fear, and you can sort of regress into old or bad habits. And so that’s a constant behavioral change where you’re constantly trying to improve your teal leadership behaviors.

Lisa: That’s super interesting. It’s what you were saying about how you know people are out of stage two is when they’re able to stop thinking about themselves and kind of balancing the needs of the individual and the collective. And it makes me think about… I don’t know if you’ve read this book, “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect” by Matthew Lieberman?

Edwin: No, but I want to.

Lisa: Yeah, it’s really cool. And he talks about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and that actually it’s wrong. Before any other needs, we have social needs as human beings. If you think about when we’re babies, you know, we would die without some kind of parental figure that’s gonna feed us and shelter us and protect us and teach us things. And so it kind of carries on in life. You know, we’re social species, that’s how we’ve survived, and that’s why we perceive social threats the same way we receive physical threats. The brain doesn’t really distinguish the difference.

That would make sense to me that people in going through this transition to becoming a teal or self-managed organization, that’s scary and calls into question a lot of the things that I value and, you know, my self-worth and all of this stuff. So it makes sense that I have to go through that work before I can feel safe enough until my kind of basic hierarchy of needs are met for me to then start thinking about my teammates and the bigger picture.

Edwin: Yeah, it really is inner work. And we like to say at our company we get people done through work, not work done through people. So in many ways, the working together is the fodder for your own leadership development and your own inner work.

And you know, we have found that when people don’t get through stage two, or if it’s a particularly rocky path through the heart stage, it’s because they don’t feel safe or they don’t trust the intentions of the feedback that are given to them. And we’ve spent a lot of time working on a very clear expectation for how feedback is given and how feedback is received. And it’s just super important that we provide feedback as a gift and from a place of love, not from a place of fear. When feedback is delivered from a place of fear, it begets fear, and then it becomes kind of a spiral.

So we’ve really put a lot of attention into how do we help facilitate experiences for people to do that inner work and get through that emotional stage.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s very connected to… I’m always asking people on this podcast about human skills because I don’t like this phrase “soft skills.” I think it kind of belittles what are the very crucial skills, especially in a self-managing organization. So how, at Fitzii, how have you guys developed, you know, as you said, created spaces for people to develop some of these skills, like giving feedback in a way where it’s not coming from fear?

Edwin: Yeah, and I love that point. I’ve always thought “soft skills”… it doesn’t feel right. I believe these skills are the most important skills to learn, and it’s a real shame, a tragedy almost, that we’re not spending any time in schools teaching leadership skills and personal development skills.

But it’s a good question. I mean, I would say that our feedback practice has been the biggest accelerator to building these connections and these teachable moments for people. So we got a little book that’s called “Feedback That Works,” and they have a model called SBI. So S is situation - here’s what happened. B is the behavior - you did or said this. And I is the impact on me. So not what I heard or what I’m speculating, not a judgment or an opinion, but “I felt this.”

And in that, the feedback is given from a place of “I don’t think you wanted me to feel hurt or disappointed or anxious” or whatever that impact was. “And so I’m giving you this gift of feedback so that you can understand the impact of your behavior.”

And then the other thing that we’ve realized, this may be even more important than good SBI delivery, is how to receive feedback. And we call that TIR. So you’ve just given me feedback, Lisa. T stands for “Thank you.” Thank you for that gift. It took some courage and love and care for you to have given me this feedback. And the more difficult or the more deconstructive or critical the feedback, the bigger the gift and the harder it is to give to someone.

The I is for “Inquire.” So now, Lisa, let me understand: what did you mean exactly by this? And what were the other bad things? And have you ever seen me do this before? And do you think other people might feel the same way?

And then the R is neat. We call it, it stands for “Record.” So we’ve actually gamified feedback. So you’ve got to go into our Microsoft Teams, or you know, if you had a Slack channel, and you’ve got to do a hashtag TIR, and you have to thank the person who gave you the feedback. And then we have at Fitzii, we have a “Feedback-er of the Month” award. So whoever gave the most gifts gets recognized with a fun award every month. And that’s been an amazing way to not only increase but also shine a light on the people who are doing the most to help others learn and grow in their positions.

Lisa: That’s a really beautiful way to destigmatize feedback and turn it into something that we celebrate.

Edwin: Yes, yes. And for me personally, I realized, you know, fairly early on that it was important for me as the former manager to be the best TIR in the company because I’m, by the nature of my former position, and also I’m an Enneagram eight. I’m a challenger, I’m an opinionated, scary kind of person to other people. So I needed to do an over-the-top job of making the person feel safe and welcomed and rewarded for giving me the tough feedback, and to do that in a public way. So every time somebody gave me feedback, I would write a long post about how valuable this is and how much more of that I want.

Lisa: Yeah, you’ve hit the nail on the head there about another point that I’m so often talking to former managers about, or also kind of founders or owners or CEOs of businesses that become self-managing, is, as you said, the extra work you have to do to create that psychological safety for people to not just be like, “Yes, sir” or “Yes, ma’am” and, you know, or obey, or still feel like I can’t speak up, to really feel like the invitation is there to give feedback in all directions. So that’s really interesting that you touch on that.

How, I’m curious then, how else have you transitioned the leadership culture in Fitzii? For you and for others who were formerly managers, how’s that process been?

Edwin: Well, this is… I like to say that going teal is like leadership development on steroids. And in my former life, you know, was a manager for many years who was lucky enough to go through all of these different leadership development programs and courses and, you know, reading business books and whatnot. And I learned more in the first couple years not being the boss than I did in 15 years of being the boss.

And the biggest opportunity there is when you have positional authority, people don’t tell you what they really think. They don’t give you their real feedback. They don’t bring their whole selves to work because they’re afraid. And I like to say even if the CEO is the Dalai Lama, people are still going to be afraid to give that person feedback, to tell them what they really think, to ask the big hairy questions.

And so for me, and I think for anyone that’s a manager and transitioning into being a teal leader or self-managing, you know, contributor, you have to be proactive in addressing your perceived power and authority. You got to make fun of yourself. You have to admit every mistake that you make. You have to be the most vulnerable person in the room. You have to speak last, if at all, not first. You have to undo this tendency that people have, the dynamic that people have with you, for you to have power over.

And so it’s very difficult to change your dynamic with people. And so I found it helpful to just talk about it and to put it out there. But it’s been a lot of personal development for me, a lot, and some of it very difficult to go through. But it’s definitely a transformation that needs to happen, or you could have all of the practices, but if your former managers haven’t gone through that emotional heart stage and seen what triggers them and what they’re really afraid of and why they want to wield power, you’re gonna have some problems.

Lisa: I want to go back to those three stages of self-management adoption that you mentioned: head, heart, habits. And I know that many organizations that are developing themselves in terms of teal or self-management or decentralization really struggle with recruiting and onboarding people. Like, how do you help people understand what this means? I think people get very excited when they hear about it, like, “Oh, that sounds fun. Everyone gets to do whatever they want.” And we know in reality it’s very different. So how do you do that at Fitzii? How do you find the right people and how do you onboard them in a way that sets them up for success in a self-managing environment?

Edwin: Yeah, it’s definitely been interesting because, and you’re absolutely right, people read about self-management and there’s all of these misconceptions. And the things that they think are gonna be difficult aren’t difficult, but the things that they didn’t realize would be hard are hard.

And recently, in the last six months or so, we’ve updated our hiring process, and that now includes a bunch of core reading and understanding of the teal paradigm. And then we do what we call a “teal fit interview” where we have multiple people, and we spend a couple of hours with this individual, and we need to make sure first of all that they truly understand the teal paradigm and that they want it.

And then we start getting into the stage two, the heart stage. Are they ready for this kind of emotional turmoil that teal inevitably brings up? Our driving value or principle we call “radical responsibility,” which is every person is 100% responsible for their own engagement in their work, and they’re responsible for their own impact on the business and on the team.

And that essentially means that if you see any problem or opportunity, you need to do something about it or let it rest, and literally let it rest. So you can’t complain because you could do anything. And so we need to make sure that people are self-aware enough to realize how difficult that’s going to be when they run into some situation where their tendency will be to point fingers, but you actually can’t point fingers at anyone here.

And you know, I think that’s largely gone quite well. I know there’s a lot of debate. People have that they don’t think that most people could handle an environment like this. I tend to believe that the vast majority of people will thrive in a teal environment more so than they will in an orange or green environment. And that’s actually proven to be true.

We have had a couple of people who didn’t make it through the first three months of what we call the onboarding process, where they have a teal sponsor and a person to help them through. And we have had a couple of people who didn’t get through that phase, but the vast majority have gotten through it and are thriving and absolutely love this paradigm.

Lisa: I’m curious about, I guess, moving on to more of the realm of habits and processes and practices because I know at Fitzii you have your role advice. So you mentioned there about radical responsibility, and if someone sees something, rather than complaining or pointing a finger or whatever, they’re encouraged to do something about that. So what is the role advice process and how does that work?

Edwin: The role advice process, I’m particularly proud of. I like to say it’s the closest thing to a panacea that I’ve ever seen in business. You got a people problem? Do a role advice process.

And we had read this book a few years ago called “Primed to Perform,” and it was sort of like Dan Pink’s “Drive” but a much more data-driven way. And they essentially looked at all of these high-performing cultures and said, “What do they have in common?” And what they found was that amongst all of these various HR practices, whether it’s having a compensation system, performance management, the biggest difference or the biggest driver of a high-performing culture was how effectively that culture did what they called “role design.”

And I remember reading this and thinking, “What’s role design? I don’t remember taking any courses in business class about role design. What is that?” Well, it’s what it sounds like. In an orange or green environment, it’s the manager’s job to design the roles, who does what, and then put people into those roles.

And so we realized, obviously, it doesn’t work that way in a self-managing environment. So we needed a way for people who weren’t quite maximizing their impact and engagement in their roles to evaluate doing different roles.

So we created this practice, and it has just worked so beautifully. Essentially the individual says, “You know, I think I could be maximizing things if I was in a slightly different role or maybe an entirely different role.” They announce that they’re doing this role advice process publicly. They ask some specific people to be advisors, but anyone can be an advisor. We use Loomio so that everyone can see all of the feedback and see the role as it’s moving through.

And the individual is essentially asked to understand themselves introspectively, but then also to get feedback from outside around three things. If you imagine a Venn diagram: what does the business need? What do I love and what’s very purposeful, meaningful work for me? And then, what am I good at, what are my strengths?

So they do a self-assessment first amongst those three things, and then they just get a whole bunch of advice. And so often it’s just amazing to watch in Loomio as they’re having conversation after conversation, everyone’s putting their notes and their feedback in there. You see this person’s getting bounced around like a pinball, and it can be very difficult, but it can be amazing. Or it’s almost always amazing because the person ends up in this much better place at the center of the Venn, at the center of those three questions.

And so we’ve had people that have done multiple role advice processes, like almost every year they end up… And that, you know, basically each person may not know where to be, but the group knows exactly where they should be. So the role advice process is just answering that question: what should I be doing, where should I be? And it works beautifully.

Lisa: And how do you make decisions generally in Fitzii? What practices do you have for that?

Edwin: Well, after reading Laloux’s book, we obviously started experimenting with the advice process, and that obviously works quite well. One challenge there is people not intuitively knowing in each case how much advice to get and what vehicles. Like, should I post this and seek feedback? Should I book individual meetings, group meetings?

Then as we started to help our parent company move towards self-management, we saw a need and opportunity to more formalize our decision-making process. We had also found a tool from my friend Samantha Slade, who just recently wrote a great book. And she’s been on your podcast, Lisa, so she’s… I’m a big fan of Sam’s. And she had written an article about generative decision-making, which I think she lifted from Holacracy or someone did, but wherever it came from, it’s really great. It’s a way for a group to make a consent-based decision and to really co-create decisions.

So we ended up creating almost like a flow chart that we called a “sensing and responding flow chart.” And it starts off with: notice a problem or an opportunity. If you’re not sure that you want to kick something off, you would post what we call an “inkling,” hashtagging “inkling.” I wonder if this is a thing? Does anyone else care about this? Does anyone else want to do something about this?

If you already know you want to do something about it, the core question is: if it impacts a lot of people, then you launch what we call a “sensing process,” which would end up with getting a whole bunch of advice and stakeholder alignment. And then it would end up with a generative decision-making session with those people who really care about it. If it doesn’t impact a ton of people, then you go through a typical advice process.

And so that flow chart helps people to navigate their options and ultimately make a decision that leverages collective intelligence efficiently.

Lisa: So you mentioned there that you’re starting to help your parent company now transition to becoming a self-managing organization. So say something about that. What is the landscape like? What’s the project, and how are you starting that?

Edwin: Yeah, that’s been really interesting. Our parent company, they’re called the Ian Martin Group, about a hundred and fifty employees in this division that we’re working with. And we actually… So the other manager who was at Fitzii when we went into self-management, about a year and a half ago or so, she moved over into the parent company and has been a fantastic leader there to help them to organize and to start moving in this direction.

And you know, really, it’s been such a fantastic success at Fitzii that they decided a few months ago to… They actually… they did a generative decision-making, the leadership team, and they decided to move towards adopting what they call a “teal operating system.” So they found that to be a useful analogy.

And then we’ve just been working through it. So we’ve done… we have a number of kind of committees or working groups that are working on what we call the common practices. So far there are six common practices that the company has ratified and put into place, and then we have a number of other potential common practices that are being worked through.

Like this decision-making workflow, the feedback practice is a common practice, the role advice process is a common practice. So they’re just working through the application of all of these practices. But I would say the most interesting thing is that these three stages that we were talking about earlier are… they still come into play, but we have various people at different stages in the organization.

So that’s what has proven to be challenging. Some people are in stage one, the intellectual stage. Some people haven’t even totally bought into it. Some people are in the messy middle, in that emotional stage. And so yeah, it’s been really fascinating, really great work, but a lot of positivity, a lot of energy around this. And you know, it’s difficult, but it’s going really well, and I’m sure it’s going to turn out for the best.

Lisa: What would you say, for the benefit of listeners, over the last four years and now with this transitioning project for the larger parent company, what would you say have been the most challenging aspects of becoming a teal or self-managing organization? And what are the things that perhaps people don’t realize they’re going to be challenges?

Edwin: Well, the first thing I would say is, you know, all or at least many of the challenges that people think they’re gonna have don’t materialize. Like, “Well, if people can set their own salaries, they’re all going to pay themselves all this money.” And it’s actually the opposite is true. People pay themselves less than they would have asked for from their manager.

And so the difficult thing is… it’s really this emotional heart transformation. Creating these new practices is fun. And the first time that you launch a new practice, it’s not optimized, it’s not optimal, you make mistakes. But it’s an iterative process where these things, these practices just get more nuanced and powerful over time.

So the challenge has not been in the development or implementation of these practices. The challenge is always in how the individual receives the feedback that they’re getting, or as they’re bumping up against the business challenges or fears that business just brings up in people, and not hitting performance targets or whatever that is.

And then you know, when we have power over people or we approach a situation from fear, that creates negative feedback. And then if they’re afraid to give that feedback or have that conversation with people, it’s all in those interpersonal, in the interpersonal work and the personal transformations. That’s where the challenge is.

But that’s also where the fun is. That’s where the development and growth and meaningful work is. So yeah, it’s nothing to be afraid of because we like to say you know, when you have an issue, you shine a light on it, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. So we just constantly are talking through things and working through things, and so yes, it’s a challenge. But I don’t know if that’s the right word to use. It’s the fodder, that’s the fodder that we have to learn and grow and develop as people.

Lisa: And you mentioned like self-set salaries there. What is the compensation model at Fitzii, and how did you develop that?

Edwin: Yeah, well, like I said earlier, we punted on it for a year or so. In retrospect, actually, someone asked me this the other day. I mean, as the parent company is considering which things to do when, I guess the common knowledge is, “Well, we shouldn’t do compensation now.” And I just found myself saying, actually, it wasn’t that hard. I wouldn’t even say you need to punt on it because of all of the things we changed, it was actually quite easy.

So what we did was, we first had what we called the “open the kimono” meeting. So we, it was only 10 of us at the time, but we had this meeting where everyone had to say, “Here’s how much I’m getting paid, here’s how that came to be, and this is how I feel about that.”

And what was interesting is there was a lot of trepidation, anxiety coming into that meeting. And then when you find out, it’s like, “Okay, now I know.” Like, now what is there to think? You know, now everyone knows how much Edwin gets paid. Now there’s no more… it really was this anticlimactic kind of experience where, “Okay, now I know, it’s not a big deal at all.”

And then we started doing what we ended up calling the “compensation advice process.” So anyone who wants to address their compensation would announce… We have the option of doing it in each quarter, and they essentially answer a number of questions around how they feel about their comp, how they got paid, do some market research, and then they go and get advice.

And just like with the role advice process, you can see all the feedback and advice that people are getting in Loomio as they’re going through. And there is a bit of pinball happening there as well. And ultimately a lot of fodder for personal development when, if there’s a situation where you think you are worth more or making a bigger impact than you are, and you’ve got people saying, “I’m not so sure about that,” as you can imagine, that’s definitely an opportunity for reflection.

And it ends up being… I mean, it’s quite an easy practice to administer, but it ends up being extremely difficult on the individual because so many of us, myself included, we tell ourselves these stories about what we’re worth and the impact that we’re making. And then when we’re confronted with the reality of how other people feel about it, that can be very tough to take.

So it’s actually not a thing that people want to do. And I think in the future, we need to figure out what our compensation principles are and guidelines so that we can make it a little bit easier on people. What it ends up being is you get all of these different, what I would call inputs - what I’m worth in the market, what my replacement cost would be, what people perceive to be my business value impact on the team in the business, how much money I need. There’s all these sort of things, and then at the end of the day, you need to prioritize one or two of them over the others and pick a number and tell everyone why you chose that number.

And so I think we’re just making it a little bit hard or unnecessarily hard on people by not saying we prioritize generally replacement cost over market value, for instance. Or to have bands or guidelines for people to work within.

I mean, I got some feedback from my colleague, and she said, “Do you ever wonder whether people like you are just sort of overpaid in the market and that maybe we shouldn’t align ourselves with this crazy market that overpays VPs of marketing?” And I’m like, “Yes, I do think that we are overpaid in the market,” and now I have to navigate that and I have to justify and think about, and everyone’s gonna see… so it’s very emotionally taxing on the individual, but it’s quite easy to administer.

Lisa: Do you think it will be more challenging in the parent company with a larger, you know, with 150 people? And in an organization where… I mean, I don’t know at what point you had the “opening the kimono” ritual in your journey, but I’m guessing that you had gone through some phases of the transition first?

Edwin: Yeah, it was about a year or so into the teal transformation that we had…

Lisa: Because I’m wondering if people are still in the head-only stage, for example, or they haven’t yet navigated through the heart stage, would those conversations be more tricky, more thorny?

Edwin: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I think that the biggest opportunity for the parent company, and the big thing that I think will make the transition as smooth as possible, is to get more people through that emotional heart stage. Because essentially, if any one particular group has at least one person that has passed that stage, then at least there’s going to be that voice represented in the advice process around compensation or role.

And that’s what we’ve noticed, is they really just need… like Laloux says, the level of consciousness of the group can only go as high as the level of consciousness of the senior leader of the group. And so we just need more heart-based leaders out there, and we need them sort of spread out amongst all of the smaller teams. And once that’s the case, then all the rest of it will take care of itself.

Lisa: On that note, what advice would you give people listening around how to navigate that messy middle, as you call it, the heart stage? You know, what can we do for each other in order to create the conditions for people to go through that stage?

Edwin: I wish that you would ask all of your guests that and then send me the answers, because that is the thing that I myself am sort of obsessed with right now. Is how do we identify where people are at and then help facilitate experiences with them that increase the chances that they will respond from a healthy place, a place of love and not from a fearful place?

So we’re actually playing around and testing a number of different assessments right now - leadership framework assessments, integral assessments, emotional intelligence assessments. Then this idea of leadership development being a team sport, it’s so fascinating because someone, let’s say, goes through a comp advice process, and they are proposing a $10,000 increase, and then they get a bunch of feedback saying, “I’m not so sure that you should take any increase right now.”

And it’s interesting because almost always the initial response is sort of a pointing fingers, blaming response. And then the team, the people that this individual trusts, they come around, they say, “Okay, yeah, maybe some of this is true. Other people could have done things better - yes, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about you. So we love you. Let’s really unpack this feedback that you’ve gotten around your impact not being as great as you think it is.”

And when we do that and we sort of keep with almost the tough love, like gently saying, “Okay, yes, some of that feedback, and that’s for them, but there was a gift that you’ve received. You haven’t totally received it yet, and let’s help you through it.” So that’s really what we do, and it works if and when the person is ready for it. And sometimes they’re not, and yeah, that is the messy middle.

But wow, is it amazing when people come out the other side and they realize that this thing that they were afraid of, they are no longer afraid of or they don’t need to be afraid of anymore.

One other thing that I would add is, we’ve been using the Enneagram for a few years, and it has been… it’s on a, my opinion, on a completely different level than any other personality typology. It’s a shortcut within for each individual because their heart stage is ultimately triggering this deepest fear of their personality type.

So my deepest fear, ironically, is to be controlled or to not be in control. And so my interest in moving into self-management was actually addressing the scariest thing for me, which is to give up my control and my power to the collective. But then whenever I see someone even theoretically subverting or challenging these teal practices, I get triggered and I get afraid, and I act out of that fear, and I get back into sort of dominant, control, push mode.

And so it’s just amazing how these things are interrelated. And we just find that the Enneagram is just this great shortcut to understand what triggers that person, what they’re really afraid of, and then how to help them, what they need to hear and feel in order to move out of that fear.

Lisa: That’s interesting. You mentioned to me before that part of the parent organization is based in India. What is your sense so far of, you know, is that a different landscape culturally in terms of helping people transition to self-management?

Edwin: Yes, absolutely. I mean, India, you know, has been working in a hierarchical, you know, caste-type system for many generations. So the deference that generally people in India have for their parents and for control and power structures is very different than we have here in North America. So yeah, it’s very different, and I think India’s version of teal will be a different shade than where we are in Canada in the United States. And we’re taking a different trajectory working through that.

That being said, every year we participate in an employee engagement survey called the Great Place to Work survey. And actually last year, we’re really proud, we were the number two mid-sized workplace, our parent company and Fitzii, in all of Canada.

And it was so heartwarming when you read the comments. One of the questions is, you know, “Why is this a great place to work?” And you could tell by the English writing style which of these comments were coming from people in India. And the comments were just so inspiring and so heartwarming because we realized that, you know, maybe in Canada here we can have a 97% employee engagement, you know, this is a great place to work, and maybe another good company might be 87%. But in India, we’re a 97%, and maybe the average is a 47%.

So the difference that we’re making there, the impact that we’re making is literally… many people in their comments, that is life-changing and shining and creating and raising the standard for what a workplace can be like in that country is just really meaningful work for us.

Lisa: Hmm, it’s interesting. I was having a sort of conversation on Twitter about, because I hear this a lot where people say, “Well, self-managing, can that really work in Asia or, you know, in Africa or places where the culture is very hierarchical?”

And I’ve just been in India myself doing a workshop with a self-managing company there. And my sense is that, yeah, it’s a funny paradox because on the one hand, yeah, there is this very hierarchical family tradition and caste system. And on the other hand, I see things like “jugaad” innovation and things like that. And Eastern philosophy as well, and I look to like China and places like that… In some ways, feels like there’s a lot of rich potential there for self-management. And perhaps it’s the influences of the West that have ironically slowed those things down or gotten in the way somehow.

So it’s really interesting to me, the different dynamics and the different trajectories, as you say. I think there’s no one-size-fits-all, so it would make sense that you would have a different path for different, not just organizations, but different cultures or countries.

Edwin: Yeah, what I love is that it really is about the collective intelligence, the ecosystem flourishing and being what it wants to be. And so it’s going to be different just because it’s a different place, and it’ll be really interesting to see how all that difference unfolds.

But what I always go back to is… and this is helpful because it’s the savior for me working against my deepest fear, is that as long as we’re harnessing the collective intelligence and as long as those really strong voices realize, like me, “Okay, I gotta tone it down, I got to subvert my power, I’ve gotta be careful about people who give me too much authority.”

As long as that collective intelligence comes to the surface, it’s… we can’t make any bad decisions. You know, we made the best decision that we could at the time. We can’t… there’s no regrets. And that is something that we can do. We can teach people equal talking time. We can create an environment of psychological safety. We can encourage people who have power over to tone it down. And we can encourage people who experience sort of power under to step up, and to create safety for them when they do that, and an expectation for them to do that.

That we can do, and then what happens in these cultures is gonna be… it’s magical as a result.

Lisa: Yeah. You mentioned at the start of the conversation that when you read “Reinventing Organizations,” you realize some of the limitations that you were… all the tensions you were experiencing as a company were kind of green or orange limitations that were dependent on that paradigm. What have been the biggest benefits for Fitzii in becoming a teal organization?

Edwin: Yeah, well, it’s interesting because before I came and helped to start Fitzii for our parent company, I was the director of marketing at quite a large technology company in Canada. And people used to joke with me that, you know, instead of being in marketing, you should really be in HR. You spend all your time on all this HR stuff.

And so I had read, you know, Jim Collins’s “Good to Great” and his books, and I was all about trying to understand what’s the purpose of organization, what are our values, and how do we create feedback, culture, and learning and development? And so I spent a lot of time doing all of these things.

And then when later on, we were at Fitzii and I read “Reinvention Organizations,” I realized, like, “Oh, you can’t push values onto people. You can’t force values onto people. You can’t, just because you put your purpose on the wall and try to hire people who say they care about that, that doesn’t mean that that’s actually the purpose of your organization.”

And yeah, so we after moving into teal, I had extremely high expectations for what this could mean to our little organization, because I had been so beaten up by the limitations of orange and green. And it was almost… I’d become quite cynical of the ability of orange and green to really be effective, things like employee engagement.

And so my expectations were high, and I have to say, in the last 18 months, I’m regularly like jaw on the floor, can’t believe how amazing this is, in so many and in almost in literally every different way.

But the highlights for me is the connection that people have with each other, the level of trust and vulnerability, genuine care, people bringing their whole selves to work. I remember we had a feedback session, one-to-one feedback session, at our last retreat, and I remember looking out at this sort of field of people connecting one-on-one, almost like a speed-dating, giving each other feedback. And just the feeling of connection and care of all of these very diverse people was just amazing.

Then the leadership development, the personal growth that I have seen people go through is nothing short of amazing. And then, you know, the boring business stuff, the business strategy, the results that we’ve been able to get, the fun that we have, the quality decision-making that happens when you can harness collective intelligence.

I just really feel like the company is thriving in a way that it could never thrive in an orange or green paradigm. There would be too many limitations.

So yeah, we… I started by drinking the Kool-Aid, and now I want to serve it to as many companies as I can. But we really feel like our next step is to help make this work really well for the hundred and fifty people in this, our parent company’s main division. And then there’s another company that they had acquired last year, which, you know, will probably get to after that.

And I think after we’ve proven how amazing this is a few times, then we can start thinking about how to take over the world, paint the world teal, which is something that you’re engaged in doing.

Lisa: Well, on that note, do you have any sort of final words of wisdom or advice that you’d like to offer listeners that are in this journey themselves, either they want to become a self-managing organization, or they’re in the weeds of it and navigating all these opportunities and challenges? What words would you like to give them?

Edwin: Well, it’s like preaching to the converted, right? I’m sure if someone’s listening to your podcast, they probably know more than I do about what their situation is and what they’re trying to accomplish.

The one thing I would say is that I was two years into not being the boss before I realized… I got some feedback from my colleague. She said, “You, you know, I noticed in these last three or four group meetings that you got into push mode, and you started…” and this is my personality type, “to really get persuasive and pushy with my thoughts and opinions.”

And she said, “Now here’s what that did to me. It shut me down and made me feel like my opinion wasn’t valued. It made me question whether I should even bother engaging because you were gonna do it anyway.” And all of these things. And she said, “I know you don’t want me to feel that way, so I’m telling you.”

And I said, “Well…” you know, that was shocking to me because I had always thought that that was a good leadership trait, you know, that I had, which was being, in my mind, I was being persuasive and compelling, not controlling and domineering.

And she said, “Yeah, and I think if you were to ask some other people, they might have something similar to say.” And so I went around, I talked to seven different people, and I just stopped after seven because they all said the same thing. I did what we call a “stop-start-continue” exercise - stop doing, start doing, and continue doing. And then I published my takeaways and how I was going to change and what I was looking for to the whole group.

And what I realized was that I didn’t need more work on practices. I didn’t need to know more about teal. I needed to get more feedback, and I needed to do some more inner work and realize why was I behaving like that in those situations but not others. And it was when my fear was being triggered. And then how do I need to change as a result?

So my only advice to everyone, it seems like, as people are getting into self-management, thinking about it, they’re quite focused on how everyone else will handle this and what everyone else needs to do. But ultimately, it took me a couple of years to realize, no, it’s… you got to start with yourself. You have to take a hundred percent of responsibility for your own personal development and impact. And only in doing that can you actually create the kind of change that you’re looking for. So yeah, that would be it.

Lisa: Edwin, thank you so much for having this conversation with me and sharing all of these wonderful insights and practices. It’s just packed full of stuff that I know people are gonna find so helpful and inspiring. So thank you.

Edwin: Well, thank you for having me. I told you before we got going that I’ve been voraciously listening to all of your episodes, and so it’s just an honor and a pleasure to be a part of the great work that you’re doing out there. And I hope you keep these interviews coming because they’re very very helpful for people who, I like to say, we’re not on the leading edge, we’re on the bleeding edge of this movement. And we all have to share what we’ve learned and the mistakes that we’ve made with each other so that we can accelerate all this. Thank you.