Lisa Gill and Mark Eddleston celebrate 50 episodes of Leadermorphosis

Mark: I imagine that the listeners are really, really curious about how you came to be so passionate and knowledgeable on the topic of self-management and progressive organizations. So, yeah, how did that happen?

Lisa: Yeah, let me see if I can find a kind of concise way to summarize it. I guess originally I studied drama, and after kind of failing in terms of my acting career, I worked in a number of different industries until I ended up kind of by accident in a learning and development, like a training professional training company in London. And that was my portal really into leadership development and organizational culture.

I started, because it was new to me, just learning about it, kind of furiously consuming books and going to conferences. Through that, I discovered the more radical side of things and came across companies at the time like HCL that were inverting traditional paradigms of leadership. I got excited about all that stuff, and then I decided to leave the corporate world and set up my own company with a very broad vision of trying to help reimagine companies and organizations, the way we work together, the way we learn together.

Around about that time, I read “Reinventing Organizations” by Frederic Laloux, which I know is for many of the guests I have on the podcast a real entry point to a lot of this stuff, a gateway. Through that, I met lots of peers that were more interested in that and getting excited about reinventing work. Then my kind of consulting and coaching work started to move in that direction more specifically.

Then I met Karen Tinelius, the co-founder of Tuff Leadership Training, in January 2016 and learned about how she had been helping transform companies to become self-managing since the 90s. She and I started to write a book together about the stories of 10 or so companies she transformed. In the process of that, I became a trainer with her company, Tuff Leadership Training.

Nowadays, it’s become my world entirely. It took a while to transition into that, but I was always interested in how we can tap into the collective creativity and intelligence of people because I was always frustrated when I was an employee at how little autonomy I had and how little I was involved in things that impacted me. I saw so much wasted potential, so I think that was the seed. Then reading books like “Reinventing Organizations,” I just became fascinated that this was possible and discovered all of these case studies. I just wanted more, so my learning appetite sped up. That was my way into this world really, and now there’s a growing community of people like yourself. The more people I connect with, the more I learn and the more we build together what’s sort of emerging.

Mark: Great, thank you. I think you mentioned that you kind of furiously consume books, and that’s one of the things that I most appreciate about you because you’re so knowledgeable. Then in your writing, and very often on your podcast, you’ll have the authors on, and in your writing, you’re able to kind of synthesize all the key themes that you’ve learned. So I think there’s a lot of listeners that really, really appreciate that. Now you mentioned your book. Would you like to tell us any more about that?

Lisa: Yeah, Karen and I, we’ve been writing it for I think three years now. We were quite naive, and we thought it was going to be a quick project, but actually it’s taken that long to really work out what our unique perspective is.

So it’s now that the title is “Moose Heads on the Table: Stories about Self-Managing Organizations from Sweden,” and it’s looking at self-managing organizations rather than from a structures and processes perspective, more from a perspective of how do we need to change relationally, how do we need to change the way we relate to each other—particularly those of us who are managers or who have been in leadership positions, but also those of us who haven’t. There are these shifts that need to happen in two directions.

We’re using the case studies of the organizations that she transformed in Sweden from the 90s onwards, most of them small organizations in many different sectors, and kind of the lessons, sometimes painful lessons, that she learned along the way. Then my input has also been to, I guess, I became a bit of a journalist, so I was interviewing her and interviewing some of the companies. Then I also brought in my lens of how this fits with the wider world that’s emerging in terms of principles for self-managing organizations. So the book is—we’re the publisher currently, and it’s almost there, so it should be coming out this year in 2020. So yeah, watch this space.

Mark: I think yeah, a lot of us are going to be quite excited for that. Yeah, and you’ve generously given me a sneak preview as well, so I can confirm it’s something to be excited about. I can’t wait for that to be released.

So that’s a bit about how you got into self-management and progressive organizations. Now I guess the listeners might also be curious a little bit about Lisa Gill, outside of self-management and progressive organizations. So yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Now, one thing that struck me when we met is that you’re kind of exactly the same in person as on the podcast. So I guess that’s kind of the wholeness aspect taken from “Reinventing Organizations.” Yeah, what are you passionate about? What are your interests outside of self-management and progressive orgs?

Lisa: Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m happy to hear that I’m the same in real life as I am on the podcast. I think that is something that I’ve worked at or has maybe come with practice because I think in the beginning, I was much more “Okay, now I need to be professional and ask questions in this way,” and I’m trying to more be myself I guess in interviews nowadays. So happy to hear that.

My passions outside of work stuff—I guess I mentioned that I studied drama at university many years ago, and so I continue to be very passionate about film and TV and music. So I’m quite a creative person, quite an artistic person outside of work stuff, and I guess I’ve drawn on a lot of that in my work as well. But yeah, and I also love food, I’m a big foodie, and I also loved to travel a lot.

That’s also, I think, partly because I grew up in Southeast Asia as a child from the age of 5 to 18, so I’m quite used to being an outsider, a kind of a foreigner in another country, which I think also maybe led to me being a facilitator and a sort of reporter-type interviewing people in writing because I could observe from the outside and kind of move between worlds.

Mark: Interesting. Okay, so just very quickly before we go back into the world of self-management and progressive orgs—what have you binge-watched since we’ve been on lockdown?

Lisa: Well, I think like many people, of course, I watched Tiger King on Netflix. And I’ve been watching a new HBO series by the creators of The Wire, which is one of my favorite TV series, called “The Plot Against America.” It’s kind of a parallel universe in the States and looks at if Lindbergh became president in the States when Roosevelt became president. So what would have happened if he had become president instead, and what would that have meant for Jews living in America, and whether or not America went into the war efforts.

There’s lots of echoes of people saying, “Oh, he won’t win, he’s just a kind of character,” and how things won’t change—the sort of ripple effect of small moments in history and how that can shift things quite quickly. Because it’s by them, it’s beautifully written and acted, very slow build, very world-building, relationship kind of thing.

Mark: Brilliant. I have watched Tiger King, and I need something else, so grateful for that tip. Thank you.

And back on topic—the podcast. I remember the very first episode, and it’s one that I’m fond of with Perry Timms. I think it’s great fun. What’s changed in your thinking? Because that was, well, you tell me when—2017?

Lisa: Yeah, it was. So, three years on. You mentioned in your last episode with Skeena Rathor from Extinction Rebellion that this is a space that’s maturing. That really interested me, so what do you think has changed in your thinking over the last three years or so?

Mark: It’s kind of amazing to look back and realize just how much it’s shifted, and not just how my thinking has shifted, but I think I have seen the movement mature. When I say that, I guess I’m talking mainly about Europe, where I think this movement is most active and most mature.

I think it’s—I know that Frederic is trying to spread the movement more in the US at the moment because that’s where he’s living. I just recently been in Australia, and I know that the movement is still quite emergent there. There’s real appetite for it, but it’s still a little bit—it has a bit of catching up to do, I think, in terms of where Europe’s got to.

Just looking at the number of self-organizing, self-managing companies over the last few years and the familiarity with some of these concepts, I think has shifted a lot in the kind of collective consciousness. Terms like psychological safety from Amy Edmondson’s work, these things are kind of more and more common parlance, I think.

In terms of the podcast and my thinking and how that’s changed, when I interviewed Perry back then, I mean, it’s little format things as well—I used to ask guests for what books they were reading, and that was kind of supposed to be a regular feature, and then I stopped doing that.

But also, I think I mentioned in the Skeena episode that I started out asking quite technical questions: How do you make decisions? How do you do salaries? How is money distributed? And I was beginning to become interested in the more human, relationship sort of dynamics, but I think that’s become much more my focus. I think that’s largely because I guess I have been practicing these ways of being and working together myself now for several years.

But also, the communities I’m in, a lot of people are—I guess if you use Frederick Laloux’s terms, a lot of people have kind of reached Green, the kind of “everyone should be equal and let’s make decisions together.” I think people are bumping up against the limitations of that and really starting to feel what it actually takes to becoming a kind of Teal organization or really embracing those threads of wholeness and self-management and evolutionary purpose.

I really liked the way that Edwin Jansen from Fitzii framed it, where he said that at Fitzii, they had been four years into their Teal journey, I think, and he described these three stages of adopting self-management.

The first being “head,” the kind of intellectual stage, and then the second being “heart.” That when you really start to—you know, once you’ve read “Reinventing Organizations” or once you’ve read these different books, “Brave New Work” or whatever, blogs or whatever it is, you kind of get it intellectually, but then there’s this whole what he calls “messy middle” where you really experience, “Oh, this is tough, there’s some growth pain here because I have to let go of things that I’m very familiar with: habits, ways of being.”

I have to—I’m going to get lots more feedback from my colleagues in terms of how I’m showing up and the impact that I’m having. And if I’m a manager, having to let go of that power or influence or stepping in. And if I’m a non-manager or someone who hasn’t had power before, then stepping up, and that’s scary and risky, and I’m not used to doing that. I’m not used to having decision-making authority.

So that heart stage, I think, is where is the real test. And then Edwin describes that if you can get through that stage, then you get to this third stage of “habit,” where it just becomes the way you do things. Like, for you and I, Mark, it might be things like we always do check-ins and checkouts when we do meetings. It’s just something we do, and it feels a bit strange if we don’t, or something feels missing if we don’t.

So I think that has changed in terms of the questions that I ask, and I’ve been really hungry and curious to hear about how guests that I have on the podcast are navigating that. What are the practices that they’re cultivating from a human perspective? What’s the inner work that they’ve been doing? What are some of the challenges they’re struggling with?

And also, I think, really sparked by Simon Mont’s work around how it’s not enough to just change our structures and processes, we need to go much deeper to our relational power dynamics and how those are really ingrained, and how to really talk about that and do that work as well. I think that really started for me a much deeper, much less tangible, and in some ways messy journey of really digging into that. And so now I ask people much more about that. So that’s why Skeena was such an interesting guest because I know that that’s something they’re really putting a lot of attention into in Extinction Rebellion.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. So it sounds as though the shift and, sorry, the focus perhaps from the beginning—and this is something I recognize in myself a few years ago when I first experienced transitioning to self-management—I learned about the new practices. And then in my second experience, I thought, “Okay, so we just apply those practices,” and kind of hadn’t… I think it was thanks to—and one of my favorite conversations that you’ve had was with Miki Kashtan, and that was a bit of a step change in my thinking when I realized that the practices and the tools aren’t enough. There’s much more to it than that. So that was kind of a bit of an aha moment or the penny dropping.

The penny sort of dropped a little for me. Have there been any moments from conversations that you’ve had where your thinking might have shifted, or where there’s a bit of a turning point for your approach with working with organizations?

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, that’s a really juicy question. I mean, definitely you mentioned the episode with Miki Kashtan—that was definitely one for me and one that I keep going back to because there’s so much richness in what she shared in terms of the inner shifts that have to happen as well as the sort of systemic shifts for self-management to really take place.

I think one of the earliest episodes I remember a shift happening in me was with Helen Sanderson. I think there was something about the way that she showed up in our conversation where she shared her very personal reason for setting up Wellbeing Teams and really wanting to transform health and social care.

I really got the wholeness piece first of all, and Wellbeing Teams for me I go back to time and time again as a brilliant example of how to live that wholeness principle. But also, I think it was a reminder to me that we need to be human, that we need to be purpose-driven from a personal perspective, and the difference that that makes. So I remember that one being a turning point for me in terms of the podcast.

A similar turning point, I think, was speaking to Margaret Wheatley. That’s another one—I think it’s the most downloaded episode, that one—and it still challenges me. There’s still almost like a dissonance in me with that one because of this point that she made about filing, finding islands of sanity and letting go of the desire to change the world, and her very kind of—not cynical, but her thinking that we may not see this shift in our lifetime; it might take hundreds of years actually, which was very unsettling.

I almost, after that conversation, experienced a moment of grief, like, “Oh wow, can I let that go?” But at the same time being very liberated and inspired by what she said—that once you can do that, that kind of draw on even more conviction that the work I’m doing now with these few people around me, closest to me, this is still important, and I can do that with a deeper faith. So that was inspiring, and I’ve heard a lot of people describe similar experiences of kind of like, “What? Really? Oh, oh well, okay.”

So I think that one was pretty special. And I think also a favorite for me was to meet the nurses from Buurtzorg because I was such a fan of Buurtzorg. It was just such a surreal and wonderful experience sitting in the garden with those three nurses, having a cup of tea. It was a lovely sunny day, and they were so chatty and so down to earth, and like, “Yeah, of course we give each other feedback. Yeah, it’s really tough but it’s important.”

They were just living it, you know, on the front line, doing it, and couldn’t imagine why you would ever not do it that way.

Mark: I wondered, do you ever kind of take a moment to reflect and celebrate all of the wonderful guests that you’ve had? So we’ve mentioned some already—you’ve had Amy Edmondson, that’s a favorite episode of mine from Harvard Business School. And you’ve had London Business School Gary Hamel. And so there’s, yeah, and then the next week it might be Extinction Rebellion, fantastic. And Miki Kashtan, Margaret Wheatley, the creators of Liberating Structures and Holacracy, Corporate Rebels, Aaron Dignan, and Enspiral… you know, anybody who’s anybody in the world of kind of progressive organizations and self-management.

Yeah, do you—how does that—have you celebrated that? Because it’s a remarkable achievement, I think, and people have learned—myself, you know, speaking personally, I’ve learned so much. I mentioned that I was grateful for your devouring all the books because I don’t read them all. I read your blogs and listen to your episodes instead, which is fantastic. But yeah, have you reflected and celebrated that achievement?

Lisa: Yeah, I think I could probably be better at celebrating. I’m quite a self-critical person, so I’m often on to the next thing. I think I could definitely be better at stopping and celebrating and being appreciative and practicing gratitude.

I think what I’ve tried to do in curating the guests is—I mean, partly it’s often driven by a very personal drive to learn more about something. Or if I have a real learning question, then I’ll go and seek out one of those people. Or if I hear common questions or real thorny challenges people are wrestling with, I’ll go and seek out someone who I know is going to shed some really valuable insights.

I’ve also been trying my best to have a diverse group of guests, so not just people from Europe and North America, not just people who are white, not just people who are academics, not just people who are leaders of organizations, but people on the front line who are doing it—to have a real mix.

It’s been really wonderful to do some more digging and find examples like Vagas in India, or Nearsoft in Mexico, or examples over in Australia or in Southeast Asia. I’m on the hunt for more of those examples because I—another kind of thread I’m really interested in is, because I hear so often people saying (a mix of kind of Westerners and non-Westerners) like, “Oh, that wouldn’t work in Asia” or “That wouldn’t work in Nigeria” or wherever. I’m curious to really kind of bust that myth, and there are fewer examples, but I know they’re out there.

What’s fun is that people are reaching out to me now saying, “Hey, we’re based in this place, and you haven’t had anyone on the podcast from this place, and we’re doing this, and we’ve been doing it several years, and we’ve been following your podcast, and we’ve contacted guests on your podcast, and we’ve had conversations, and I’ve learned from them, and we’ve iterated some of their practices.” That’s really exciting that that’s starting to happen.

Mark: Are there any kind of stories that listeners wouldn’t hear about people contacting you to let you know that they’ve contacted some of the guests that you’ve had? Do any stories stand out? Because your podcast will have supported the journeys of and the transitions of many, many organizations. Are there any examples that stand out?

Lisa: Yeah, I mean, one fun example is two guests talking to each other. So after I had Vagas from Yash on the podcast, Edwin from Fitzii, who I mentioned, reached out to say it’d be really interesting to talk to him. Actually, Matt Perez from Nearsoft in Mexico—a lot of companies who have parts of their organization in India have reached out and said, “Oh, I’d really like to talk to Vagas to understand how he’s navigated those challenges culturally and what self-management can look like there.” So that’s been really interesting.

Then the example that I mentioned kind of generically was a guy called Jorge from a company called Tampines, and he’s in Buenos Aires. He reached out to say that he’s going to be on the podcast himself soon, but he reached out to say that he had been following the podcast for a couple of years. They’ve been inspired by many guests, and they had been implementing some of the practices and their own versions of it. Now their own version of self-management is starting to mature and develop.

He just reached out to say, “Hey, just wanted to let you know we exist, we’re doing this, and I’m setting up a community in Latin America of similar companies so we can share learnings together.” Examples like that really are such a joy to stumble across—that it’s making a difference with people and they’re actually doing it. That was always my hope, that these stories and examples and kind of warts-and-all stories and examples would help embolden people to actually do it, to feel like, “Okay, I can try this, and we’re all—there’s no perfect template, it’s gonna be tough, but it’s gonna be rewarding. Let’s just start, let’s try.”

Mark: Yeah, yeah, and I know myself that there’ll be loads and loads of stories that you’re not aware of. So it’s one of my go-to resources when I’m working with clients, and then particularly when you’re working with a client and there’s some people in the team who are really kind of into the ideas of self-management and looking to be a champion in their team or organization for the transition. Leadermorphosis is one of the first resources that I point them to, to kind of learn more about it and kind of dig a little bit deeper.

Now, for those sorts of people that might just be, you know, the listeners that are perhaps newer—I think there’s 40-something episodes at the moment, so quite a lot to catch up on. If someone were new to the podcast, where would you say they should start? So there are a few episodes that kind of stand out?

Lisa: Yeah, I think I often say if you’re in the beginning of your journey, I think quite a good one to start with is the episode with Chuck Blakeman because he does quite a good job of sort of giving the context, mapping out the industrial era all the way up to what he calls the participation era where we are now, and all of the limitations of that paradigm of work and why it needs to be reinvented. It’s quite a fun episode; he’s quite provocative.

I think also the one with Gary Hamel for similar reasons that he gives quite a good sort of bird’s-eye view almost of some of the things, some of the patterns that are going on from an academic’s perspective. Chuck is not an academic, but he’s an author—he’s written a great book called “Why Employees Are Always a Bad Idea,” which I really enjoy. But also, he’s been a practitioner of this stuff. So those are two good ones to start with to kind of get an overview, if you like, an introduction.

And then it really depends on who people are and where they are in their journey and what sector they’re in or what kind of organization they’re in. So there are quite a few case studies and episodes now from health and social care companies, so I can point people in that direction if they’re in that space, or if you’re a small organization, or if you’re geographically in a particular place and you’re interested in examples. So it then it really depends.

But I think the few that I mentioned that have been real turning points for me are often the ones that I say from a personal perspective you should listen to, like the ones with Helen Sanderson and Miki Kashtan, Margaret Wheatley—a couple that I think are easy ones to engage with. They’re pretty resonant with most people, I think.

Mark: Yeah, those are three great episodes there. So yeah, and particularly—when I think about the ones that have really stood out for me, I kind of think of the one with Miki Kashtan and Margaret Wheatley as well, and Amy Edmondson. And I was wondering, we spoke a little earlier about your mentioning that the space that we work in is maturing. Now you answered the last question with “it depends,” and I find that’s how I answer when people ask questions about self-management—very often that’s the answer I give.

But if we kind of just imagine that the space that we work in is maturing, how do you imagine it might be looking over the next year, and particularly with what’s going on at the moment? Mindset’s been mentioned, and that’s the focus of the episode with Miki Kashtan, which is really worth a listen.

I find that often people say, “Oh, that wouldn’t work here.” Now with kind of remote work, which we can all kind of relate to at the moment, and only last month, a lot of people were saying that wouldn’t work. So do you think that perhaps there might be an opportunity to sort of accelerate some of the more progressive ways of working because we’ve just had a live—well, we’re experiencing now a live example of adapting quite quickly to something that we thought wasn’t possible?

Lisa: I’m in the process of having some follow-up conversations with some of the guests. Like I spoke to Tom Thomison from Viisi the other day, for example, and how they’re responding to coronavirus. I’m also going to have a conversation with Edwin from Fitzii because I’m really interested in all of these organizations that are decentralized and are much more intentional about how they work and how they are together.

I think these organizations will be much more resilient, will be much more able to adapt and support each other to come up with really creative and innovative solutions in tough times. So I’m really curious to see how those examples come out, and I’m planning to share some of them on the podcast and in some of my writing.

I also think it’s maybe accelerating, as you said, some interesting questions about things that have been broken or limiting for quite a long time, like how we do meetings. Like face-to-face meetings, by and large, are often not very productive, not very human. Often there are the same few people dominating them, and we’re realizing all of these things even more so now that they’ve been transported into the online meeting space.

Also things like how we distribute resources like salaries and money. If you have transparent finances, people are much more responsible and able to together decide how do we make tough decisions together. There’s so many wonderful examples of companies where people have voluntarily reduced their salaries in order to save—to avoid layoffs, or getting really creative because they can see the figures and they feel this collective sense of responsibility to do something together.

So I think my hope is that we’ll see more of that. I think also I’m really interested to see how things develop in terms of governance and the legal structures of companies because I think those are really not fit for purpose. At the moment, a lot of organizations are having to kind of bend and create these workarounds in order to fit into those structures.

Or if you’re audited or if you have kind of quality and compliance audits and accreditations and stuff, similarly, they’re not designed for these kinds of organizations. So I really hope that the next wave of this movement will be developing more fit-for-purpose structures and ways of setting up as enterprises and organizations that serve us much better.

Mark: Yeah, and there’s already some interesting examples of organizations that have different governance structures and approaches. So what are some of the ones that you look to as examples of how it could be?

Lisa: Well, I know that there are a few folks in my networks who have legal backgrounds, and they’re doing some clever things. It’s not my area of expertise, but I know that there are some cool things going on about how you can set up governance structures from the beginning so that almost like the company’s purpose is boss, and everything is about fulfilling that rather than accumulating wealth for a few people.

I know that people like Matt Perez, who’s one of the founders of Nearsoft, is interested in looking at employee ownership, for example, and how—because I think a lot of people, you could say, if you follow a logical conclusion, if you follow self-management, is to get to employee ownership.

I don’t necessarily think that’s—I think that’s an option, but he’s really interested, and I know others are too, looking at employee ownership. In itself, it’s not a cure-all; it’s not an antidote. You can do that in a way where employees are co-owners of a company, but it may not mean anything different in terms of whether they can actually influence strategic decisions or not. So then really, it can become a bit of an empty gesture.

But how could we look at employee ownership in a way that’s really holistic? I guess, not just like on paper, but actually what that means and really having a co-owner mindset that stems from real, actual co-ownership rather than just something symbolic.

Mark: Yes, great. Now a few questions ago, I asked you how has the podcast changed your thinking over the years. And kind of conversely, I’m curious how has it reinforced your thinking? Are there assumptions that you had when you set out with Leadermorphosis that have really been reinforced by the conversations that you’ve had?

Lisa: I suppose a few things come to mind. One is this constant reinforcement that it’s really tough, it’s hard, but it’s so worthwhile and so rewarding. So the kind of commitment—you know, it really is a practice; it’s a lifelong learning journey. Everyone I speak to says that, so that I think that’s been a confirmation from something that I already had a pretty strong sense of.

I think it’s quite common that people are bumping up against some of the same challenges. It seems like most of these organizations struggle with recognizing that some kind of feedback system is really important, for example, and to be able to know, as Miki Kashtan says, we learn by knowing our impact on others.

I know that Brian Robertson is of a school of thought with different thoughts about feedback, but there is still an emphasis on development, but that’s also really hard to do. So no one has cracked this relational human stuff, mindset stuff, how to be as a leader, how to create that paradox of how to create environments where everyone is powerful, and yet at the same time allowing for natural leadership and hierarchies to emerge. That’s really tricky, and there’s no magic pill for that. So I think that’s also been something that that’s been confirmed time and time again.

Mark: Yeah, yeah, I’d say it’s probably the hardest work I’ve ever done. I think there’s no pill, there’s no capsule that you can swallow, and that’s it—you’re self-managing. And for organization B, the tonic might be fatal. The tonic for organization A could well be fatal for organization B. I think that’s quite frustrating perhaps for leaders when they’re chatting to people working in this space. When they ask, “What do we do? How do we do it?” and we respond with, “Well, that depends.”

I was having a chat with a friend just this week about kind of invitation and how—because I’ve had different experiences with organizations, some that have kind of turned to this way of working as maybe a last resort, and some because they’ve heard that it was on trend, and some because they’ve really done their research, and this way of working spoke to them, and they’ve been frustrated by the traditional ways.

The conversation we had was around—because he was working with a group where it wasn’t so much invited by the whole group, just by one who found it really, really—it was a lot of hard work because the invitation wasn’t there.

So I’m wondering, are there any—when is a good time to begin experimenting with this stuff? Because if the listeners—I think some of the listeners might be like a lot of the people that come along to Reinventing Work: some are curious but they’re not quite doing it. Is there a good moment to begin this journey?

Lisa: Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Is there a good moment to begin this journey? I think I find myself turning to Frederick and his infinite wisdom in this, and I think his insights for the journey videos are such a brilliant resource that have followed on from the book.

He has some really wonderful questions for people to reflect on, particularly if you’re a founder or a leader, around what’s your personal purpose, like why is this interesting and important to you?

I also think if you aren’t someone who has decision-making power, if you’re in the middle of an organization, I still think that you have some power and agency to do some trojan mice experiments. That’s why I love Liberating Structures—that you can always influence things and be sort of entrepreneurial, but to start with: why is this important to me? What could be possible if we did this?

Because I find if you come from that place rather than a place of, “Oh, this is what we need to do to become to remain competitive,” or “This seems to be the latest trend,” or whatever, I find that people connect with a very personal sense of purpose and a kind of compelling vision of, “This is just my hunch, I think it could be interesting to explore. What do you think?” And kind of find some fellow travelers for the journey.

Even if you don’t—I’ve heard really touching stories of people, particularly in the public sector, for example, who are feeling really lonely, like, “I’m the only one in my organization that is into this stuff and gets this stuff. What do I do?”

I think that’s why the Reinventing Work movement is so great because finding your fellow travelers, whether that’s in your organization or outside your organization—find your islands of sanity, as Margaret Wheatley says—because you need that tribe. I think to find people to learn with together and just to be so curious, exploring whatever medium suits you best.

But I find conversations are like the smallest currency of change. If you can have lots of different conversations with people, then your path—at least your first step, you don’t need to know the whole path, right? Just a sense of what might be possible and a first step.

Then there are things like, you know, the Ready have their attention and practice cards where you can start with a particular area, start experimenting there. Or there’s different schools of thought: do you go big and transform everything at once? There’s no one way to do it, but I think it has to start with self, and also to think about what’s my learning edge in this, what’s going to be difficult for me, and what do I have to let go of in order to do this? Because like it’s going to be tough—change is not something to do to other people; it starts with changing yourself first.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. You mentioned Liberating Structures there, which are one of my favorite tools now. Let’s pretend, Lisa, that you’re working in an organization and your boss doesn’t have time for all this stuff, but you’re quietly going out of your mind in a very hierarchical organization. What do you do if you don’t have that support, you don’t have so many fellow travelers, and you had a skeptical boss that wasn’t ready to explore some of this stuff? Are there any kind of—and of course, the answer really is “it depends”—but are there any kind of go-to tools or approaches or practices or maybe even resources to kind of explore?

Lisa: Yeah, yeah, well, I would say the best way to learn is by experiencing. So I think that’s why I’m such a big fan, like you, of Liberating Structures. If you know, it’s worth having a look on Meetup and seeing if there’s a Liberating Structures meetup where you are in the world. They’re kind of growing, or maybe you can set one up if there isn’t one.

But if you’re very new to Liberating Structures, the app, the free app, is a really good entry point. You could just propose in your next meeting, “I wanted to try something just for 15 minutes. The purpose is this. I think it might be interesting to see if it’s useful, if it’s valuable. Is everyone okay if we try this?” And then just try it.

The thing with Liberating Structures I like is that it’s changing—it’s acting your way into a new way of organizing. It’s doing; it’s changing by habits rather than trying to do some big culture change. So I think Liberating Structures are a really good active thing you can do.

And meetups, of course, like Reinventing Work—find a Reinventing Work meetup in your city or start one. That’s the great thing that you’ve done, Mark, is to make it a really spreadable movement that’s open source. You can just set it up and have conversations with like-minded people.

I’ve been to Reinventing Work meetups now in London, in Melbourne, and in Sydney. Someone’s trying to do bingo and on all the continents. Through that, you’ll find the different books and podcasts. Helen Sanderson has a podcast now, “A Cup of Teal,” which is brilliant, particularly examples in health and social care. Aaron Dignan has a podcast now, the companion podcast of the book “Brave New Work.” So there’s lots of resources out there.

Find the ones that work with you, but find humans, I think. That’s what makes the difference: find some humans to talk to or to learn with because otherwise, it can feel very lonely, and it can be tough. You can feel like you can kind of question your sanity a bit, I think, or feel discouraged. So it makes a difference to find your fellow travelers.

Mark: Yeah, and it can be a big first step, finding the kind of courage and the bravery to suggest a different way of having a meeting and perhaps to experiment with Liberating Structures.

But I think we can trust—we’ve got the evidence to show that—I think there’s the well-worn Gallup stat that 85% of us are disengaged in work. So I think with that, we can trust that people—most people are at least a little bit fed up and will be up for trying something new. And if you suggest it, the worst they can do is say no.

Lisa: Yeah, exactly. And I’ve had enough guests on the podcast where we’ve sort of laughed about the fact that there’s really little to no evidence that the old way of doing things works—this industrial paradigm. Like you said, the engagement stats, productivity stats—Gary Hamel talks about the cost of bureaucracy. It’s not working anyway, so what have you got to lose? It’s worth trying something, isn’t it? Do a pilot, experiment with something.

I think that’s a key mindset shift. It’s not about this kind of old way of thinking about change where you change the whole thing and then freeze it and then change it. It’s like much more adaptive, iterative, all of those good things.

Mark: Great. Now, is there anything that we’ve not covered that you’d like to share?

Lisa: I don’t think so. I think we’ve covered a lot of ground actually. My hope for the podcast is to continue to unearth these lesser-known stories and examples and to dig into some tough topics. I’m also trying to push myself in terms of my comfort zone as well, like not just to interview people that I agree with wholeheartedly but also to talk to people who have a different perspective and have a kind of healthy debate. So that’s also kind of part of my hope as the podcast continues.

I guess as a meta-learning from the podcast, it’s been how transformational conversations are—I’m not the same person I was when I started the podcast. Through these conversations, it’s changed me, it’s changed who I am and how I think. I hope that people experience that transformation to some degree, at least just from listening to them. But I hope it inspires people to reach out to the guests and have conversations with them themselves and other people. I really think dialogue is so key to this shift.

Mark: Yes, on the Reinventing Work resources page, we list tools, and I think ears are on that list and probably the most important, I would argue.

I want to say thank you on behalf of all the listeners. I’ve learned personally so much from Leadermorphosis over the last two years. I really, really enjoy the episodes and the breadth of, as you’ve said, of guests. So just to say thank you and really well done on creating such a fantastic resource. I think it’s a gift to this community; it really is. And we’re grateful—make sure you celebrate it because it’s for me, it’s a go-to resource, the go-to resource.

Lisa: Well, thank you, Mark. That means a lot coming from you, and I mirror that thank you back to you because I think you’re a real beacon in this movement. The work that you’ve done with this Reinventing Work movement, I think—I know already that you’ve influenced many people all around the world without even meeting them, which is just so wonderful. So I’m so happy that this happened and that it was you on the other side of the table interviewing me. Thank you for that.

Mark: You’re welcome. I’m sure it’ll be enjoyed by many. I had the idea a few months ago, and I completely forgot about it, and then reached out to you, and thought, “I think Lisa Gill would be a brilliant podcast guest.” So hopefully you enjoyed it too!

Lisa: You bet, I did.