Jessica and Douglas Rauch from Aquadec on tradesmen and teal

Lisa: So Douglas, Jesse, welcome to the Leadermorphosis podcast. Thank you for being here.

Douglas: Yeah, wonderful to be here. Thanks for inviting us.

Jessica: Yeah, thanks for having us.

Lisa: Yeah, my pleasure. So I thought maybe we could start by what prompted this decision to go on a transformation journey in your company Aquadec. You know, what was it that started the thinking behind making a change?

Douglas: Yeah, so I guess it was me initially. I, well, got to a point of despair I guess. We work with a lot of young guys, young tradesmen, and really got to a point where I was just weary of, you know, young guys getting to a point where they would just blow themselves up or something significant would happen and they would check out. And I’d find out retrospectively that stuff was going down in their life or that something significant had happened. And always tending to find in the aftermath what actually went on. And was really getting to a point myself, so disappointed with the industry I was working in that there wasn’t any—there weren’t any options. So I was really getting to a point myself of—do I shut my business down and go and do something else? But wherever I looked alternatively, it’s like things are not much different. So yeah, so that was really the point of despair of “got to do something different.” And then… yeah, Jesse, were you going to add something?

Jessica: No, I won’t at this point because the beginning really was—it really was Dad picking up and saying, “Yeah, what can we possibly do?” And then the next point in the journey was just happening to meet Dean and learn about Reinventing Organizations and that little spark of hope of “Oh, things could be different.” That really was the catalyst.

Douglas: I think reading the book for me was—it was just an eye-opener of never having come across case studies of organizations that were radically different, that just treated people in a different way, that just viewed the act of doing business in such a radically different way. And the spark of hope of—we, in our small little business on the other side of the world, could actually do something similar.

Lisa: Yeah, great. And having read Reinventing Organizations then and perhaps had some conversations with our mutual friend Dean Williamson, how did you then start? What was your approach?

Douglas: My approach was classic Doug approach of “This is what we’re doing, this is the program, everyone read the book. Once you’ve read the book, we’ll all be in the same accord and it’ll be done.” You know, giving yourself about three weeks to achieve this goal. And maybe Jessica, articulate a little bit of the approach?

Jessica: I just remember some of the first meetings getting the team together in an environment where we never had team meetings. We started with breakfasts and everybody would trudge in bleary-eyed at 6am before the work day started. And we’d sit in silence until Dad started the meeting, and then he’d talk for an hour practically. I mean, he’d pause and ask questions, and there’d just be crickets because nobody had anything to say. It wasn’t a safe enough environment to speak. And so it was just agonizing.

Oh, so it’s fun to look back at that and remember starting out and just the passion and vision that Dad had, and then the disconnect of “How do we get anywhere other than here?” And the stuckness from my point of view of—it’s obviously possible, but just no clue how to move, no clue how to be any different than the boss who tells people what to do and how to do it and what to think and how to think about it. Yeah, it was just this chasm between what was possible and where we were.

Lisa: I know there will be people listening to this podcast who will be laughing in recognition of that, of that kind of classic natural assumption of how to approach a transformation like this. You know, that if I read a book and enjoyed a book, then everyone else just needs to read the book and everyone else will read and enjoy the book. Or, you know, if I say we’re going to do this, then everyone will get on board. And I’m curious, at what point did you start to realize that that approach wasn’t working? Or how did you then—he said you didn’t know how else to do it, so what changed then?

Jessica: Well, initially nothing. We literally—well, I literally almost beat our staff to death for about what, four months, Jesse?

Douglas: Yeah.

Jessica: And we had, you know, we had a very orange chart of what we were going to work on and how far we were progressing with each thing. And at the end of each check-in meeting with Dean, it would be “Right, so how far have we gotten and what are we doing next?”

I think what really changed over time was actually Dad changing, just meant that the approach changed. It was just, we just took one step after another in “Okay, what are we going to try now and what are we going to try now?” And all of it was focused on making a healthier workplace and a better work environment. And some of those things helped, but what’s been—what’s really shifted I think has been Dad.

Douglas: Yeah, and I think, you know, it’s an interesting process for me because I am naturally a reader. I love to read and love to explore. And working with a bunch of tradies who are hugely skilled—like, unbelievably skilled with their hands and technically skilled, and can pull gear apart and put it back together—and most of them have never read a book since primary school. Literally. They’ve gone out of the workplace and then learn not by reading. They learn by doing.

And just the whole process of me foisting that upon them was just so foreign and it just built resentment in the organization. If there wasn’t enough resentment already, I just compounded it by just bringing this in. And really got to a point where this horrific revelation that wherever I went, the organization went. Whatever I portrayed, it was reflected in some way through the organization, which is horrendous as a boss to realize that the mess that I’m looking at is actually an expression of myself in one form or another.

And, you know, just Jess works with me in the office and I think had the opportunity to observe from arm’s length, me wrestling with this thing of “Let’s be teal!” and “Let’s put it together in a very orange way!” And I remember Jess put up on the wall one day a chart, and it was a scale chart. And there was to the right-hand side, it was a picture of Ahab wrestling the whale. And to the left-hand side was a picture of a Zen master at peace, at one with nature. And then she had an arrow and a scale on where Doug was at at the particular time. And mostly I was over in the red of just wrestling with this thing.

So that they really got to a point of coming to grips with—how am I showing up?

Lisa: Yeah, that’s really powerful. Listening to you both, the image I have is like that there was a hope that you could sort of install teal in the organization. You know, we just do these processes and structures, change those, and then hey presto, we’re teal! And it must have been very confronting, as you said, to realize that the organization became a reflection or was a reflection of you. And that there must have been some realization then that something needed to change in you, or perhaps something started to change in you. And then—I don’t know which came first, the chicken or the egg—but that something needed… like an inner shift was needed also.

Jessica: My observation was that there were many small shifts over time. Being father and daughter, we have a close relationship, and working together as well. So I would be watching and realizing—I mean, when you’ve got that close relationship, you can look at the other person and go, “Gee, you’re orange today!” And sometimes I’d say that, and a lot of the time I wouldn’t.

That observation of almost—there was almost a process where Dad was trying to install teal in the organization, and I was standing back and trying to push him a little bit more into teal as I watched. There was this moment where I realized, hang on a second, you have so much power. And when you’re in orange, we all are—including me. Like, the gravitational vortex of the person who has the most power being a particular way is huge.

And so there was this period of real tension where I was noticing that and kind of trying to push and prod. And some of those things included saying “Hey, you’re really orange today.” Some of them included putting up a picture of Ahab from Moby Dick. So some things have helped and most things didn’t. But I think the real transformational moments, they happened one step at a time and they were often moments of pain. I think for Dad—I mean, you’ll be able to speak to that yourself.

Looking out from the outside, it seemed that things would build up and there’d just be a lot of tension and a lot of pain and a lot of “Why are things like this?” And then there would be a realization of “Oh, this!” And we just went through that over and over again for a while, I think, until things started to feel like they were really shifting.

Lisa: Hmm.

Douglas: Yeah, and I think one of the catalysts for me, I do recall a meeting that we had—we decided mornings weren’t good for anyone, so we decided to start doing afternoon meetings. And the guys appreciated that because it, we started having beer and pizzas in the meetings, which helped everyone. But this one meeting, I was just so messed up with trying to make this work and getting meeting so much resistance, that I just started the meeting with—basically, “Guys, I’m at a loss. I am in a mess and I just—like I have this hope for what we could be, but…” Yeah, it just really expressed how deeply I was struggling.

And just struck by one of the young guys who had been so resistant to me demanding teal—just stepped in and started to speak what was upsetting him and what was causing him to be resistant. And it just seemed to—yeah, it was like a threshold that we all crossed of “Doug doesn’t have all the answers. Doug’s not actually running the whole show.” And yeah, I don’t know if you’d recall that, Jess?

Jessica: Yeah, I do. I don’t think I recall it as clearly as you do. What I do—I do have that kind of vague recollection of that moment, or that meeting, where yeah, there was that vulnerability from you and then the opening up of some of the guys of “Well, this is what we’re struggling with.” Yeah, it was beautiful.

Lisa: It makes me think about—there’s a really lovely quote, I think it’s Jurgen Appelo who says it, which is that “People will let go only of the things they have given voice to,” or something like that. In other words, once people have a space to be able to share the things that they don’t like about something, or their protests, or their concerns, or complaints, or something, and they’re allowed to be or they feel heard in them, then something shifts and there’s this kind of collaborative energy.

You know, there’s another quote that “People don’t resist change, they resist coercion.” So I love that there was something, and I love this thing you suggested about that it often came in moments of pain. That perhaps, Douglas, it was like as a last resort, “Well, I’m just going to be honest about that I’m at a loss and see what happens.” And actually that was a real catalyst for people shifting to, okay, more of like a partnership atmosphere of like, “Well okay, let’s do this together then maybe.”

Douglas: Yeah, yeah. I think so. And I appreciate both those quotes—both very valid. It was an opening up of the organization because it wasn’t just a dynamic from me to all the staff. It was a dynamic across the staff, like all these unspoken animosities and these unspoken power hierarchies of—the guys that have been here the longest, there was this automatic deferral to whatever the senior guy said. And all the way through up to up to me, of—there’s a really strong hierarchy. And there was just natural animosity in that.

And just, natural animosity and such a habitual ingrained culture of coercion. I love that quote about coercion because that’s—I mean, that’s all we knew. All we knew was we want things to change, so how do we exert force to make that happen? And I think it’s exactly what you named, that in the moments of pain where there’s a vulnerability and a dropping of the force and “Hey, can you join me in this space? I’m struggling.”—that’s when there’s been lean in.

And I think in recent months, we’re so much more often in that space and so much less in that space of coercion or “How do we make this thing happen?”—as compared to a “Here’s where I’m at, here’s what I’m bringing, will you join me?”

Jessica: And let me add to that Jesse, I think even space to “Here’s where I’m at, feel free not to join me. Feel free to articulate that you think I’m an idiot.” Using, you know, all stronger words than that. Just this real—letting people be what they want to be even if it’s at odds with the vision and the dream.

You know, and when we—like I know for me there was this point of not resignation, but just this letting go of the organization of “Maybe we’re not going to get there because no one else wants to go there.” But this realization that where we’re at is actually a hell of a lot better than where we’ve come from. So if this is where we land at, then hallelujah, the change that we’ve seen to date is just extraordinary.

You know, the number of guys who’ve called it quits or blown up, or the lack of animosity we have in the organization. But productivity—even the way we measure how healthy we are has just changed. We’re just not a numbers-driven organization, which to me is just a huge shift.

Jessica: And the conversations—for me, the conversations and the connections are the biggest—bring the most joy and the biggest indicator of change because they have that very clear memory of those first meetings. And now, the meetings—as soon as anybody comes into the office, there’s chatting and joking and laughter. Nobody’s sitting waiting for the meeting to begin. There’s just this environment where we all connect. It’s just magic.

Lisa: That’s really inspiring. Yeah, I wondered like, could you talk about some of the moments where you started to feel like, “Oh wow, this is different! Like, this is a shift!” or like, “Something’s working here!”

Douglas: Oh, that’s such a great question.

Lisa: I’m trying to…you go, Dad.

Douglas: Well, I can name it. You might have to edit out the language, but…

Lisa: No, it’s—language is fine.

Douglas: Well, there’s two market changes. The first one: we’d come from a place where there was a lot of manipulation and control through the organization. So way back at the start, we changed our work agreement and we actually put in place—then the guys helped us put it in place—and it’s actually called the “no bullshit policy.” And it was just a paragraph in there that basically, you know, paraphrases “We won’t behave like assholes.”

If we are behaving like assholes, there’s full permission to call it for what it is for anyone in the organization, including the boss. And if it’s identified outside of the organization in our, you know, in people that we’re working with or contractors, it’s called. And part of my role is actually to step into those situations as a CEO.

So that was—that was radical. And every time I bring that up, when there’s discussions in the industry of what we’re doing, it’s met with laughter, and then what an extraordinary thing that is that that is just being named for what it is.

The other thing: we had a meeting where there was all sorts of undercurrents. So we basically agreed to call the meeting where everyone bought their grievances out on the table. And one of the young guys named the day, so we had a “bullshit day”—

Lisa: I love that.

Douglas: Where it was—and everyone brought their bullshit out and we just put it all out on the table, all sorts of grievances, all sorts of upset. And it just—it broke this unspoken rule that we’ll hold, you know, agreements as pain or animosity, but we won’t talk about it. And I think those two things moved us across into “Now we’re going to talk about it.” If you have any thoughts on that?

Jessica: No, I just totally agree with that. Since—since “bullshit day” that was maybe a year or two ago now, there’s just been such a shift. The guys have said many times that there’s just such a sense of togetherness, like we’re all one team rather than being little micro groups. And yeah, that was a real turning point.

Lisa: What I love about that is that the fact that you know the language, like we’re laughing and stuff, but it’s that—to me is a really great sign of ownership, right? That “let’s use our language.” You know, to us it’s a “bullshit day” or it’s the “no bullshit rule.” And I think that’s a really good indicator in organizations when something has become just the way we do things—is when we give it a language that’s ours, uniquely ours, that we all own, that’s how we speak, or what resonates with us.

So it to me, that’s such a—that’s such a marked change from, you know, “Here, read this business book!” to “Let’s call this bullshit day” or “Let’s have this no bullshit agreement.” I think that’s beautiful.

Douglas: Yeah, yeah. It is. And you—like we’re one or two years on from that now and we’re having discussions now about “What do you need as individuals? What do you need? What do you want? What do you see?” And like, everyone’s engaged in it. Like we’re having one-on-one discussions and then we’re having group discussions.

And the whole thing of—the boss saying “This is what you need and this is what you will receive” is just so far gone. Like I’m now actually one of the team who’s having the one-on-one interview and saying, “Well, you know, me as a human being, this is what I need and this is what I see.” Like, I’m—we’ve got 20-year-olds in our organization. I’m now 56, heading towards the end of my career, and they’re markedly different needs.

But it’s not that my needs take pride of place. It’s like everyone has an expression and a viewpoint, and then that reflects what the company’s going to look like into the future. That’s where we’re moving towards.

Lisa: You had some really great examples both from when you both spoke at the Teal Around the World conference and also on the podcast interview you did with Dean about some of the kind of decisions that have shifted from being with you both—whether it’s like a finance decision or, you know, decision that you, Douglas, previously would have owned or driven—to kind of being co-owned or decisions that are then made by the team. Like, you know, hiring or saying no to customers, for example.

I wonder if you could share some examples of how that’s shifted from decisions being made at the top to decisions being kind of owned by the team?

Jessica: Yeah, that’s been such a fun process. Hiring—hiring just naturally shifted. We kind of just took it off Dad. It wasn’t even a process where he gave it over. We were shifting so much and we had—we had started—I think it first shifted when I kind of sat back and went, “It doesn’t make sense for me and Dad to be interviewing potential guys for the field team. We’re not working with them every day.”

And so we started inviting the guys onto the interview panel. And slowly that expanded into most of the team being on the interview panel. And then it shifted to, “Why are we interviewing in the office? Let’s do it out on the field.” And through that process, it became—everybody weighing in and then more or less the guys making the decision themselves, until it just organically has become a process now where actually the guys do most of the process themselves.

I do the admin and I kind of organize the logistics. And we actually send new interviewees out onto into the field, they’re totally with the boys, and the boys say yes or no. The last time we hired someone, Dad was on holidays and he got back and we said, “Oh, we’ve hired a couple of people, just FYI.” It’s just been—it’s such a fun shift in that ownership and the way that it’s just grown and happened naturally.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah. And I’m wanting to speak to the other thing that you talked about, and I’ve forgotten what it is, Lisa.

Lisa: There was the—saying no to customers?

Jessica: Saying no to customers. Do you want to speak to that, Dad? That was a big one.

Douglas: No, I want you to start off and then I want you to… I’ll weigh in.

Jessica: We had such a crunchy point where there was a customer who we were struggling to work with. The team was regularly saying “This is just hard work.” I was saying “They’re not paying us on time.” We had so much work on our books, but we had never ever said no to anybody. We were operating under this philosophy that if you say no when you’ve got a lot of work, then when there’s not enough work, you won’t have the customers that you need. And I’ll hand over it, hand it to you, Dad, here.

Douglas: So the boys basically brought up in—or one of the guys brought up in the meeting, and all of them agreed—so this customer is just the worst. Like, they treat us bad out on site, they don’t make space for us to do our job. Like, everything was stacked against us. And like—it wasn’t phrased this way, but basically the instruction came from the field staff: “We will not—we do not want to deal with this customer anymore, Doug. Would you sack them?”

And it really was a point of massive conflict for me because I—yeah, my role, one of my roles in the organization, is to win work and to win clients and to negotiate jobs, fairly large jobs across their line, and maintain relationships. And for the first time ever, my role was reversed and I literally had to go to the CEO of this very large organization and say, “Look, I love your heaps, I think you’re wonderful, your organization’s bullshit, and we don’t want to work with you anymore.”

And it was shocking to me and it was shocking to him. He was really taken aback of us really being the first crowd to basically say “We don’t want to work with you anymore.” And we’ve not worked with them since. He’s—it was quite fascinating actually, his parting words were—I was expecting rage and vilification—but he was so shocked, he basically said, “Well, you know, if we change our organization, will you have us back?” Which was extraordinary. So to date they’ve not changed and we’ve not gone back. And we’ve not left for work either.

So since then, we’ve done that a couple more times. Clients who are not operating in the space that we’re operating in. We are fairly clear on “This is where we want to move to.”

Jessica: And I’d like to name as well that that’s opened up so much space within us to really focus on a relationship-based way of working with our customers. We’ve always—it’s always been a value that we’ve held that we don’t just provide good quality work, we build relationships with key customers. And because in construction and contracting, it’s cutthroat. Usually it’s all dollar-based, it’s the lowest quotes, it’s a zero relationship.

And so we had that value and we did hold it, and there was also this scarcity that kept us in that contractual space. Since we’ve started—yeah, since the team kind of all banded together and said we just can’t do this anymore, and we’ve taken that step a couple of times, I’ve seen us be so much more relationship-focused. And I think that’s really flowing through the whole team. I’ve seen it picked up by the rest of the guys. There’s just a different orientation.

Lisa: Hmm, that’s such a great example of how when you start to shift inside the organization, it also starts to ripple out into your relationships with customers, with suppliers, with everyone. Because you start to realize—I guess you start to break down those assumptions of “Well, why should it be that way? It could be another way.” You know, “There’s another possibility here.”

Douglas: Yeah, yeah. And I guess it’s sparking me that at a point, also came across a book called Non-Violent Communication, which for me just shifted me so far away from where I was. Read the book and then we’ve done a couple of courses since, really in-depth training courses, and just shifted my—I guess you call it worldview—on how we relate to each other.

And the premise of culture that it’s a dominance culture and an adversarial culture, where people are clashing and fighting for space and fighting for scarcity, and rolling it over into a place where we can articulate our needs and our feelings and have an awareness of each other and actually get all needs met. And just such a huge shift. And as Jesse said, it’s just a such a cutthroat industry. Just by moving a really small amount has had huge results for us.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s really inspiring. And I know I was really shocked by some of the statistics that you shared in your talk at Teal Around the World in terms of mental health and the suicide rates in the construction industry, which is largely, you know, men in their twenties. Is that right?

Douglas: Yeah.

Lisa: And so, you know, what—that to me is what’s so powerful about this example, is that these—becoming a more relationship-oriented organization and creating spaces for these men to share things, share their pain and be heard and seen. Like, oh, we need so much more of that in the world, I think.

Douglas: Absolutely, yeah. You know, “For people who—if you’re ill, have a day off. If your spouse is ill or your children are ill, they are the most important. Take the time.” Even making space for people to make bad decisions, to mess up. Yeah, just an extraordinary shift of a lot of small things just creates such a different feeling in the organization.

Jessica: Yeah, yeah. I really—a clear example that’s coming to mind for me actually is a few years ago, one of the team had their first baby and he hadn’t been with us for long, and he left shortly afterwards. But I remember the conversational tone being kind of “Oh well, too bad. Like, we know he’s tired, but he’s gonna have to suck it up and get the job done.” This is well before—or actually maybe a year or so before starting this journey that we’ve been on.

And then more recently, one of our team members—a different team member—has just had his first baby. And it’s just been such a hugely different process where, in the last meeting, he was able to name, “Look guys, we’re struggling a bit and I need to work closer to home and be able to head home if they need me.” And the whole team just—every person spoke up and said, “Yeah, well, we care about you. We’re here for you.”

And it’s that sort of thing where people matter. And yeah, when I think about those—those awful statistics where the suicide rate is so incredibly high, and in this toxic culture in the construction industry where nobody has a voice or any humanity… Yeah, I just hope for more of this.

Douglas: Can I can I just add to that, if I may, that this guy expressed—had the place to express his pain. He was in pain, and his wife and daughter were in pain. It was not my decision to make space. Like, every guy—we at that point were actually working three hours away on a project, and the guys themselves organized the whole project, the way they went about it.

I was aware of the whole process going on and played my part in “Whatever I need to do, whatever space we need to make for you.” But it was actually the team themselves that just reorganized all the projects so that this guy had space to be within a half an hour of home.

And from his point of view, it’s like—he didn’t miss a beat, and they didn’t miss a beat. Some days he’d just drop a phone call in or even a text message midday is like, “Going home.” I didn’t actually need to reorganize anything because the boys had already communicated and picked up the shortfall, and they were just giving me the courtesy of informing me as the boss that, “Hey, this is what’s going down.”

Just an extraordinary shift. In times past, it would have been me personally feeling the deficit and having to reorganize everyone to pick up the shortfall. But because it’s now all of us, it’s not that there’s not a shortfall, but the impact of it is just absorbed into the organization.

Lisa: Well, I wonder if it’s also because it—what’s also really beautiful about this story is, you know, this father-daughter relationship. And I’m thinking about you, Jesse, describing your kind of lovingly challenging attempts to give feedback to Douglas. And I wonder, has your relationship changed? Has this process impacted on your relationship in your family?

Jessica: Yeah, radically. It’s—oh, I feel so much joy actually being asked that question. There’s been a huge shift. When I first started here, I mean, we were very hierarchical even in our father-daughter relationship. I would—I was always “Yes, Dad.” You know, “Get the job done.”

And yeah, I really clearly remember when things started shifting for me, and I started going, “Oh, I don’t want to always be shifting how I’m feeling and how I’m responding based on what he’s feeling and what he’s doing.” And that was part of those times when I started seeing, “Oh, you’re super orange over there, and I don’t want to be in that space anymore.”

So there was that little bit of Robin figuring that out, and then shifting into—yeah, there’s such a sense of just being equal partners, equal players now, and friends even, rather than there being the hierarchy. And there’s still the father-daughter love, and so much more closeness and so much more openness, transparency, and beautiful deep conversations. It’s been wonderful.

Douglas: Yeah, really filling in. Initially feeling the challenge of—was it the tearing apart of paradigms or the stereotypes of “I’m the dad and you’re the daughter” and vice versa. And makes me laugh—there’s a meeting before last where you stormed out and mouthed off on your way out but I was definitely wrong, and you were going to tell me in no uncertain terms how wrong I was as you slammed the door.

Jessica: Literally, literally stormed out.

Douglas: But like, even in that context, I mean, it was just the the humor in it and the joy in it of—what is it, the space to actually be that? That we’re not so deeply enmeshed that we have to slot into a role or a paradigm. It’s like, you know, if you disagree, you disagree. If you’re having a bad day, you’re having a bad day. If you’re whatever—it’s like, that’s what you presently are and that’s what you’re bringing to the table, and that’s what we’ve got to work with.

Jessica: So it works. And the space of—where everybody knows—I think there were two other people in—it was just such a comfortable space. I stormed out, had made a joke on my way out, came back in, and everybody had a laugh. And there’s this general understanding, and someone named that at no point is there any doubt that Dad and I will just be great after the meeting. That there’s just this relationship where we can just be whatever we are, be angry, and then figure it out.

Douglas: Yeah, just loving it. It’s the pressure that has come off me to fulfill that role. Like, when I think back on the role of “Dad” (in quotation marks), the role of the boss, the role of the CEO, the role of the Chief Financial Officer—all these hats that I slotted into. And then envisaging how you are to be in that, and then presenting that for other people to follow, has just—it’s actually evaporated around me.

So turning up to work, some days it’s like “What am I doing here?” from the point of view of, we’ve got to make the organization work. But there’s like—I don’t have the pressure of “have to” that I used to have. I don’t even know I’ve clearly articulated that. It’s just the joy of not being the boss all the time is extraordinary.

Lisa: I mean, the image I have is sort of moving away from like the Captain Ahab to—“This is the direction we’re going!”—to arriving each day and being like, “So what’s needed today? Where do we want to go? Where is everyone at?” Sort of sensing and responding instead of kind of directing and…

Douglas: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what it is. And I think—I mean, we’ve had conversations in the past where I’m actually a resource. Like I’ve got years of experience. I know how projects run, I know all the ins and outs. And we have 25-year-olds or 30-year-olds running massive projects now and actually referring to me as, “This is what I’m doing, what are your thoughts?” And my role now is, “Here’s my opinion, but at the end of the day, you make the call.” And in so many facets.

I think one of the first breakthroughs for us was that we—one of the young guys brought up “We need some more vehicles.” So this is—it wasn’t—he was 20 at the time. It’s like, “Okay, go and buy them.” So 20-year-old spends—I think was it eighty thousand dollars?—and just went and did the research and worked out with all the other guys, “This is what we want.” It’s like, “Okay, go buy them.”

And then just the watching the joy on their behalf of buying these new vehicles and playing around with what they want, and then handing back these grotty old destroyed vehicles which they’d been using for five years or whatever. Yeah, it was just a joy to watch, and was so much more fun than me or Jess saying, “This is what we’re doing.”

Jessica: I think what’s sparking for me, and that I really want to name and honor, is how you’ve really intentionally shifted. Some of that—it has been such a shift from the Captain Ahab “We are going in this direction!” to now, almost every day, there is just that showing up and “Okay, what needs to happen now?”

And there’s been such an intentional holding of that. I’ve seen that in Dad, of slipping back into the default (because we always do) back into those old habitual ways of “I’m the boss, here’s what’s happening.” And then as more and more awareness comes, the way that you’ve picked up on that and reoriented, and picked up on it again and reoriented, and shifted back into “Okay, now I’m letting go of this,” or “Okay no, I won’t tell them what to do, I’ll ask more questions.”

There’s just been so much—I don’t know whether it’s been hard work actually, that would be speaking for you—but I’ve really seen the intention and the work that you’ve put into that, and it has made such a huge difference.

Douglas: Hmm, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it has been not so much hard work as catastrophic work. I did it—like I did it last week, I slipped back into orange last week. And reflexively, I think I was telling you or Dean that I managed to piss everyone off in the organization in about 15 minutes. I just slipped straight back into like overbearing, manipulation, coercive—just foisting my opinion on everyone.

And then within an hour, it’s like, “Wow, that’s where I’m at.” And then going back to the guys and having them reflect that—one of the guys was like, “Yeah, like, when you were talking to me, I was like—I won’t use the exact language—but ‘What the fuck?’” And “Doug, I was really pissed off with you and I just wanted to let you know I’m pissed off with you.”

And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m really sorry.” It’s not how I want to be. And just this—wasn’t just the airing of “This is where we’re at, this is what I’ve done to you, I’m annoyed with it. Where do we go from here?” And within say an hour of me stuffing things up, everyone was flying again. It’s like, how extraordinary!

And how extraordinary—like the absence of me having to—what is it—having to case it in something or to protect myself, or to manipulate the situation into something that everyone knows it’s not. It’s like, “Nah, face value. I stuffed up, sorry guys, where can we go from here?”

Lisa: I love that story because I think sometimes people put a lot of pressure on themselves—you know, people listening to this who are on journeys of their own—that “Oh, one day I’m supposed to suddenly be this Zen master. I’m supposed to never go back to that kind of top-down way of being.”

And the reality is—like, I love that you both share this—that we’re human, and of course we’ll always slip back into those things when the pressure’s on. And we’ll always have our reactive moments. And those are such rich learning moments, I think, because then it’s so much about what you do then. You know, do you pretend it didn’t happen? Do you defend, justify, rationalize, etc.? Or do you be honest and say, “Whoops, I messed up. I slipped back into this, I’m sorry, let’s talk about what’s needed now” to kind of clean this up?

And then that, I think, is almost even more powerful than someone appearing to be this kind of zen master, because that’s sort of intimidating. So again, it’s—I think this is a superpower you both have of being really honest and really human, and sort of just naming things as they are. And then that’s contagious, and others feel the same, that they can also be that.

Douglas: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think—I mean, that’s touching on something that I’m unpacking personally at the moment—of phrasing it out of just showing up. It’s like sitting back far enough within yourself to actually observe what you’re thinking and what you’re saying, and is it actually ringing true with what’s happening right inside of you? And allowing that—allowing your thoughts are just your thoughts, they’re not yourself. What’s happening is right inside of me.

And then showing up with that of “I’m showing up in pain” or “I’m showing up confused” or “I’m showing up angry.” And for all the external pressures and internal pressures of being human, not just in the workplace, but actually in life itself.

And when I show up like that, it actually—whatever it does—enables others to go, “Well, if he’s going to be like that, this is what’s going on with me.” And I think it—a ripple effect, or whatever you want to call it—brings in this liberty of actually being human. And breaks away the whole dominance culture, breaks away even the whole cultural thing of—the thing we’re grappling with at the moment is everyone’s presenting this image. The Instagram and the Facebook of “We’re just marvelous!”—and it’s just crap. It is just crap.

And when we just drill down into human beings, it’s easier. I’ll pause there. Jesse, do you want to say anything to that?

Jessica: No, I don’t have anything to add to that. It’s been beautiful to watch and be part of. And then—yeah, there you go, I do have something to add. It does exactly that—when you show up like that, it makes it easier for everybody else. I’ve seen that.

Lisa: I guess in kind of wrapping up our conversation, I’m curious to know—what do you think is next? Like, what’s on the horizon? Are there things that you’re—new challenges that you’re grappling with, or “what ifs” that you’re wondering?

Jessica: Yeah, we’re exploring a couple of things at the moment. We’re opening up conversations with the whole team around “What does Aquadec need?” And that—that’s looking at all of our finances together and all of the ins and outs together, which we haven’t ever done before.

I’m really passionate about the environmental crisis and looking at our environmental impact. So I’ve floated with the team “Can we have a chat around this?” and hoping to move into that in coming months. Yeah, so a few things to explore.

Douglas: Yeah, I think we’re exploring with these one-on-one conversations of everyone expressing what their needs are, and just doing away with hierarchy all together when it comes to expressing what we need as individuals. And then looking at Aquadec as its own self—as Jesse said, “What does Aquadec need?”

We’re asking everyone individually, “What do they think Aquadec needs? What do they think they need?” And really holding open that the company doesn’t have to look like anything in particular—it can grow into whatever it needs to grow into. And that people can grow into whatever they want to grow into, and that we may be doing things in a few years time that we can’t even contemplate now. And yeah, that makes me really happy just to even say that, that I don’t know what we would look like in a few years time.

Lisa: I want to say—do you want to offer to people listening who are maybe also on their own journeys, anything that you would be sad that you didn’t get a chance to say?

Jessica: Something that I would have loved to have said at Teal Around the World is—in reflecting on our relationship and on the way that we have ripped off each other and grown in tandem—there’s so much power in identifying, I think, who the people around you are and connecting in.

I think we so—in our culture, in this Western culture, we default to this individualistic “I have to do it on my own, I have to figure it out myself, and it’s a weakness to do it with support.” Yeah, that’s something that I really care about and that I’ve seen over and over again, is when we do these things together and when we reach out or connect in in whatever way we can to those people around us, there’s so much power and transformation in it.

Douglas: There you go, love it. I think they should be the final words.

Lisa: Okay, well thank you so much, both of you. I so—I was blown away at Teal Around the World, and I’m blown away now just by your humanity and your honesty and your humor, and just how openly you share this story. I know it’s going to really, really resonate with people listening and really inspire people. So thank you for how you show up in the world.

Douglas: Thank you.

Jessica: Such a pleasure.

Douglas: Such a pleasure, so much fun. Thank you.