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Connect with Tirzah Enumah and Mike Arauz
Episode Transcript
Lisa: So Mike, Tirzah, welcome to the Leadermorphosis podcast.
Tirzah: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Mike: Thanks.
Lisa: So I thought maybe we could start because the thing that we initially connected over was one of the many great white papers you’ve been putting out there lately around the topic of psychological safety. And I think it’s like a real buzz word at the moment. And I also get the feeling that there’s a lot of misconceptions about psychological safety, what it is and what it isn’t. So maybe we could open up there. You know, what are your thoughts about psychological safety, common misconceptions you’ve come across with clients and people that you’re talking to and what are some sort of distinctions that you find helpful when we kind of talk about this topic?
Tirzah:: Do you want to start, Mike?
Mike: No, you go ahead jump in. Okay.
Tirzah: One way I hear folks conflate, one thing I hear folks conflate psychological safety with is what they would call a quote, a safe space, or just a sense of safety in general, which, as they describe it means a total sense of comfort at all times, like just the ability to not really experience much discomfort and not really be kind of pushed into that in any direction, which, in some which, in some cases is useful. Like, there’s definitely moments to, you know, that you want to just feel that total safety. And I think a key distinction is that in a space that has psychological safety, you might still feel discomfort, but it’s defined as a space in which you can say things that might be kind of disagreeing with other folks, or might be a little uncomfortable, or kind of push the edges and not be afraid of being punished for saying that. And I think there’s just a difference between feeling a little discomfort and saying something and like experience or witnessing others experience punishment for saying something that goes against what everyone else thinks.
Mike: Yeah, and psychological safety has been really, it’s been a real kernel of our work at August since we started the company in 2015. And it’s been so important and interesting to us, because, I think, to me, it’s because of its relationship to both inclusion, but also to adaptivity and innovation and just knowing how to, you know, helping teams figure out how they’re going to get through a moment when it’s not obvious what the right answer is going to be.
The best work and some of the best writing and research on this comes from Amy Edmondson, who’s an author, a professor at Harvard Business School and an advisor of ours at August, going all the way back to a book that she wrote like maybe three or four books ago called Teaming, and then Fearless Organization was a little bit more recent than that, and just this year, she came out with a great new book called Right Kind of Wrong. And her early research goes back to studying how teams worked inside of hospitals, which I always come back to because, you know, in many of the organizations we work with, and just kind of the most common situations that people are kind of confronting or thinking about psychological safety in their work, they can be very common and relatively low stakes, and yet can still feel like it’s still hard for me to speak up and say, I don’t agree with that, or I don’t think that we should do it that way.
And Amy’s early research was looking at hospital teams and thinking about, let’s say that we’re in a surgery room, you know, someone’s—it’s literally a matter of life and death, and psychological safety is about whether or not the most junior person in that room, person with the least experience, the newest person on the team notices something that we need to address, we need to do something about, and whether or not they feel like they can raise their hand and say, hold up. There’s an important thing that we need to talk about here.
Lisa: Yeah, I interviewed Amy for this podcast, actually, and I posed this question to her too, because I think she has this great four-box model, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, where she has these zones where you’ve got, like, obviously, like the anxiety zone, if you have, you know, high kind of accountability, but low psychological safety, you know, the apathy zone, if you have neither. But then there’s this comfort zone, which you know, is what you were talking about Tirzah, so that, like, it’s so easy to end up there when we, especially, I think, in organizations that are trying to be more more progressive, more human, more, you know, less decentralized. Sorry, more decentralized, that we can end up in this comfort zone, space where we sort of we want it to be comfortable and nice, and if you’re British, like me, also maybe you want to be polite, and, you know, must be polite and so on. But it becomes at the expense of learning and of challenging and innovation and, ironically, inclusion too.
So she then has this fourth box, the learning zone, where you have both, where it is uncomfortable, but it is also sort of, you know, with empathy and care and so on, but also kind of directness and like, you know, it’s that radical candor thing too, you know, to quote another model, and I really see sometimes this shadow side is like, it’s not something that a lot of folks are aware of when they’re exploring new ways of working. So I’m wondering, what is your advice to groups when you see that they’re in that kind of comfort zone through good intentions, they’ve ended up there, how do you sort of encourage them to kind of move from, I guess, like a safe space to like a brave space.
Tirzah: I love that. And I love that shift in the language of safe space to brave space. I think one of the first ways I do it is just naming it, naming the thing, making it explicit what we’re seeing happen. And literally, like having a ground rule in a meeting, that we are going to lean into discomfort, we’re going to experience discomfort, or we’re going to shift into a brave space.
And I think a distinction too, like to just put an equity lens on it, is naming who is used to feeling comfort and who is used to feeling discomfort, and asking folks who are used to feeling comfort, who tend to be people with more power, more social power because of their social identities, or more positional power in the organization because of their role or their tenure, asking those folks who typically have been comfortable to lean into that discomfort and reminding them in the moments where you see they’re starting to get uncomfortable, we have this norm, remember, we’re gonna lean into discomfort. And that is just like one little nudge that can help shift folks in the right direction.
Mike: Tirzah, a lot of what you’re talking about there, which I completely agree with, there’s an element of facilitation that keeps coming back. And I think that having some sort of facilitation, giving somebody permission to kind of pull people or push people in certain directions, is really important and designing—you know, I think about designing or very intentionally including or using specific questions and prompts can be really, really powerful. I think sometimes teams overlook that, like it doesn’t really matter how we ask the question or how we open up the conversation, but asking very specific and pointed questions can really help.
Like in our anytime we do some kind of learning moment as a team or with our clients, we always use these questions, what works? Where did you get stuck? And just that question, where did you get stuck? Using that phrasing, asking that question out loud, and inviting each person to answer it in turn, makes it much more likely that you’re going to hear things, and make it easier for people to kind of step into something that might require a little bit more bravery and step out of that comfort zone.
Lisa: Yeah, it’s reminding me of, I don’t know if you’ve read the paper that Amy Edmondson wrote with Michael Lee about self-managing organizations. And actually, it’s not in that paper. It’s in another one that he wrote, I realized, but it was about research, a piece of research he did about how to encourage teams to take interpersonal risks and create more of a positive kind of dynamics. And he had these two things that I, that stuck with me. I really liked them about safe spaces and interaction scripts, and what I hear in both of what you’re both saying is like creating norms or creating like interaction scripts, like i.e. questions, or, you know, complete the sentence, or, you know, things that sort of just push in a helpful way, into doing things that are maybe a bit out of the ordinary or uncomfortable like that, sort of just help, you know, like, lower that barrier to doing that a bit. Yeah.
Mike: That’s exactly it. And interaction scripts is definitely the same, the same thinking.
Lisa: I want to pick up on something you said, Tirzah, about you brought in this kind of equity lens. I want to dig into that a little bit because, for example, in your in the paper that you wrote, you had this great wheel that had different aspects of, you know, your identity and background and stuff. And there were some things for me that I didn’t realize were kind of, you know, comfort areas for me, like the fact that in my team, for example, I’m a native English speaker, and most of my team members are not, and it had never occurred to me how much like my default of comfort then, is kind of larger than my colleagues, just by virtue of the fact that we’re speaking English, and that’s easier for me.
Or the other way, that’s that most of my team work together in Sweden, and then there’s a few of us that work remotely, so then we’re sort of at a discomfort or a disadvantage in that sense. And so there were, like lots of other dimensions that I wasn’t really aware of until I read your paper. So I wonder if you could say something about psychological safety and equity and maybe some other distinctions there that are useful for, I guess, in particular, leaders, also to be aware of, or for people, as you said, who, who do have power or kind of privilege, you know, what can they do, or what they can they be aware of in order to create, you know, climates of psychological safety?
Tirzah: That’s a great question, and that’s a really big question. I think you really just modeled, I think, what the big invitation to leaders is in sitting with a tool like that wheel, and like looking at each of the kind of the little triangles, and reflecting on your identity and considering how aspects of your identity, especially ones you don’t think about the most, are showing up and giving kind of granting you more psychological safety. I think the reflection, I think, is a big invitation to leaders.
I think one of the things I fall back on the most is really taking a moment to consider all those different aspects of your social identity, which are some of the example, or you gave the example of being a native English speaker versus not. And then there are the kind of structural aspects of where you work and your seniority and things like that. The thing I fall back on a lot is like, a little clue to where I’m enjoying extra psychological safety. Are those elements that I don’t have to think about. Like, I think about being a woman a lot. I think about being a person of color, a black person a lot, but like, I also don’t think about being a native English speaker very much. I also don’t speak. Think about the fact that I don’t have any disabilities very much. And so when you start to think about those things, you really see what you have.
And I think I like, there’s an impulse in me that wants to, you know, do what I can, to, like, make sure everyone’s experiencing psychological safety. And then my brain starts to, like, make up stories about what other people need. And I have had to learn to, like, stop that from happening and actually just go find out what other people need, whether that’s, just asking them, what would help them? Because it’s different for different folks.
Mike: One of the things that we noticed, and where this tool, this equity lens for psychological safety, came from, was a kind of pattern we started to notice we’re doing. You know, what is psychological safety? What can you do to develop it, cultivate it with the new teams, doing that kind of training and coaching with different organizations that we work with. And a pattern that we noticed over and over again was the most senior people, oftentimes very, oftentimes straight, older white men saying, you know, oh yes, I’m all for psychological safety. And in particular, I really like hearing different points of view. And in particular, I really like hearing dissenting points of view. And they were, they were both saying how much they wanted psychological safety, how much they were in favor of it, but also kind of being completely blind to the fact that it was so much easier for them to step into that discomfort and have that bravery we were talking about than it was for other people on their team.
And so we needed some way to kind of shed some light on that and help people kind of look at it from somebody else’s point of view, and imagine why it might be more or less, you know, easier or harder for some people to feel psychological safety in different moments. And I think one of the most interesting things is especially for like, not necessarily the very, very most senior person, but almost everybody else has different moments and different teams where they can identify with both experiences. You know, in this one meeting, when I’m meeting with my direct reports, I’m the most senior person, and I feel so comfortable and I can say anything, and then five minutes later, I’m in another meeting with the board of our company, and I feel like I have to be super careful with everything that I say. And so they can, they can imagine. They can empathize with both, both experiences.
Lisa: I really like what you were saying, because I have this kind of image, almost of like a pendulum also, and not kind of going all the way one way, or all the way the other way, because I can totally see that a pitfall would be, yeah, to be like, Okay, I want to, I want to make it psychologically safe in my team, and I’m going to go out of my way to like, you know, like, take care of everyone, and be kind of parental, and make all kinds of assumptions, you know, or the kind of other end of the spectrum being like, so come on. Like, you know, who disagrees? And then being like, no one. Okay, cool, moving on, you know? And then being why I’ve told everyone I want them to be open, but no one’s stepping in. I guess people don’t have anything to say.
So it’s like finding some balance between and for me, like the theme in both of your points is like, curiosity, right? To be curious about, you know, what would each of us need to step in and that will be different for us, and there, you know, we have intersecting identities and needs and so on. And so it’s not, it’s not a good idea to make assumptions, either, but to be really open and curious and and explore that together, and not kind of tip one way into, yeah, being kind of parental.
Tirzah: Lisa, you’ve just reminded me of a misconception I think that I’ve seen that I’ve spoken, I’ve talked to some leaders that I work with about around how they do or don’t create psychological safety, which is, you know, when we look at the definition that Amy Edmondson offers, there’s that, there’s that phrase like, for fear of punishment or retribution, several times now, I’ve had leaders say like, but I don’t punish people for like, speaking up like, I’ve never, I’ve never, like, done anything that’s like retribution. You know, again, someone for speaking up, and in their minds, they’re thinking like, like, such a high bar, like firing someone, demoting someone, you know, when it actually might be much more subtle than that.
I remember early in my career, one of my first roles out of school, I got to meet with the CEO, and I made like, a passing comment about how I, like, didn’t notice a lot of diversity on the team. And this, this leader, got so, like, defensive about it, and they didn’t say anything, but just their expression change. I remember their nostrils like flared for just a second, then they composed themselves and were like, you know, thank you. For raising that. I don’t really think we have a problem. You should go and gather more data before you, like, say something again. But like, I’m open to hearing it. But like, it took me five years after that to, like, build up the courage to say something like that. And it was like, just their just their expression, just the quick reaction, which the way I experienced it was not their intention. The way I experienced it was, like, just this little signal that, like, it was not okay to raise a concern like that. And so it’s something like that, like I didn’t share that back with that leader I was, I was junior, and didn’t feel like I could say that. But like these tiny moments that leaders might not even be aware of, of things that they’re doing that kind of create, like build psychological safety or chip away at it.
Lisa: Yeah, totally. A colleague of mine had this great kind of reflection question that she introduced in the course with a bunch of leaders, where she asked them to reflect on, what are the ways in which you sometimes, perhaps unconsciously, put the lid on things, you know, like, when, like, we all have different versions of that, you know, my my version is that I might try to smooth something over or, or try to solve something rather than, like listening or letting something be so like we, you know, to start to Become aware of the subtle ways that we sometimes kind of put a lid on things when people bring up something that’s maybe a bit uncomfortable or, you know, we don’t know what to do with so that awareness, I think, is is definitely important. I love that question.
I’m wondering about, you know, inside August, like, what have you you know, since in the years that you’ve been collaborating together, what are some of the things that you’ve learned about ways of working or or practices that kind of support you to, like, I guess, eat your own dog food, to use a strange phrase.
Mike: Yeah. I mean, we’ve really since, since we started, we’re always searching for for new ways, I think, certainly more than any other place I’ve ever worked. Have a real we’re very conscious and intentional about, like, always trying to get better about things. And like, for instance, you know, we use a very structured decision making method that has in multiple rounds, where we invite each person to ask questions, to make sure that they understand what’s been proposed. You know, we have a reaction round, and each person gets invited to share their reaction.
But even beyond that, like we have, I think we’ve developed a good intuition and and more informal protocols about like, noticing that this, this decision, this proposal we’re currently discussing, it’s actually more charged than we expected it to be, and, and we thought we are going to, you know, spend this half hour, and we’re going to get to a clear commitment moment at the end of this half hour, but because of what’s bubbling up here, and because of like noticing each other’s face, noticing that somebody who we know has an important perspective on this is, for some reason reluctant to share it, in spite of how much psychological safety we’ve cultivated. In spite of the reaction around invitation to share their reaction, they’re still hesitant to to share it.
We noticed that. And we’ll, we’ll call time out, and we’ll say, all right, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to we’re going to pause this here. We’re going to have an alternative way for people to share feedback. We’re going to do one on ones in between. Now and then we’re going to come back again in two weeks to to take it a step further. So always like looking out for ways like, have we, have we done everything we could possibly do to make sure that different perspectives are represented and included in the especially the most important things that we’re that we’re doing.
Lisa: Hmm, I really like that, because I see also another pitfall in this kind of new ways of working movement, is people thinking that a decision making protocol or structural process that, you know, we just need to install that and then, you know, tick done, right? But I really like what you’re describing. Of, you know, yes, you have clearly agreed and mapped out decision making processes, how we make what decisions and so on, and making sure that we include perspectives and involve people, but also listening for like, Ah, okay, seems like this is more charged than we thought. Let’s sort of pause and decide what do we want to do here. Maybe we kind of exit this decision making conversation and, you know, address that a bit before we kind of rush or so.
I really like that. There’s a kind of soft skills element there too, of of not just like, Yeah, we have a protocol, and we always do that, but really also listening and paying attention to other subtleties here that are worth addressing.
Tirzah: I think the biggest, one of the biggest, I don’t know, like shifts for me, I guess in in joining August, I’ve been, I’ve been in August for a shorter time than Mike has been. Our like, we talked about curiosity earlier. I think just the openness and curiosity to learning and getting better, and willingness to let go of things that aren’t serving us. And I think that even the example that Mike just gave of, like, oh, we thought we’re going to do it this way. We want something new. We don’t, we don’t have to do it this way, if that’s not gonna get us to the best decision, we can kind of switch what we’re doing a bit to make the process better, to make it more inclusive, to get to you know, a better decision has been really different from the way that I had been used to working up until joining August and the kind of cultures that I was a part of.
Lisa: Yeah, I’m curious about that, because I think that I’m always interested when organizations, you know, have kind of unique ways of working that are maybe different to sort of, quote, unquote, traditional ways of working. I think a lot of organizations struggle then with a kind of recruiting and onboarding, you know, how do you support someone to kind of transition, or, you know, adapt to, maybe, like, ways of working on norms that they’re not used to? So I wonder it’s kind of nice to have, you know, someone who’s been at the company a while, and someone who’s fairly new. So what would you say about about August and the approach to onboarding, and how do you support people to sort of thrive? And also, I guess, sort of this thing that we circled back to at the start, about like embracing discomfort. Also.
Tirzah: I can share my perspective from like in how I was onboarded. I think a couple of things stand out to me. One is really holding space for learning. So when you join August, you have, you know, anywhere from one to three months before you’re put on client work to really just learn and absorb. I remember my first week in August, my first day it was a Monday, and we have a couple of our, like, regular, big, weekly team meetings on Mondays. And it was just like, I was just in there, just kind of thrown in there, and got to, like, observe and be part of it and just learn as we go.
And I remember talking with my onboarding buddy about, like, how I learned best, and like, that was a way I learned best. Like, I wanted some time to read some stuff. There’s a lot to read, but there’s a lot of choice. And for adult learners, choice is really important to be able to kind of guide your own path. And we have that in our system. And like, just being in the mix, being in the meeting, like do it, seeing the different ways that we were working, for me, took a minute to get used to. But I think the only way, I guess, in my experience, the only way that I could have done it was to just, like, be in there doing it. And that was really, that was really valuable, and that was really aligned with how August does things. Is, like, we just going to do it, and then will we do it and make a little better, but like, we’re going to kind of limit how much we talk about it before, you know, just get in there. And I thought that that was unique in my onboarding experience.
Mike: The two other two other things that I think of that that we’ve kind of very, you know, important decisions that we’ve made and how we design our system and how we operate that particularly help with onboarding. One is the role of the onboarding buddy, which is someone who’s your your partner, to kind of coach and guide you and be the person you mean, like, what’s going on with this thing? Like, they’re, they’re your person, and you can go to them for for anything and everything, through your first 90 days at August, before you transition into, like, our kind of more standard and ongoing development system.
And that the other piece is our default to open and our transparency. We try to be as open and transparent as we possibly can. And to the extent that we’ve been, you know, we tried to be open and share our work and our thinking externally, internally. It’s to an extreme kind of radical. And you know, things, things like, for instance, you know, every aspect of our finances, including like, how much cash we have in the bank and how much each person’s getting paid and, you know, bonuses and all that stuff is completely transparent, profitability and business performance. We look at that together every, every week as a as a full team, but then also things you know on the people development side, you know the default when we’re doing reviews.
For instance, I just did my review a couple weeks ago, when I collect feedback into a survey form, the answers to that feedback is non anonymous, and in a in a folder that everybody on the team can access and read, so anybody could read my feedback if they wanted to. And I think from an onboarding perspective, that there’s, like, there’s no aspect or part of our company that’s off limits, and for smart, curious people who join our team, that’s that’s a great way to, like, invite them into into our business, and invite them into the culture and and to assure them that like we assume that you will contribute here in ways that we couldn’t imagine or ways that we weren’t predicting or expecting. And you’re invited to do that. We’re going to try to make it as easy as possible for you to do that.
Lisa: Thanks for sharing that. I’m curious to know a bit more about how you do like these reviews then, because I get asked this question a lot, I got asked it a couple of weeks ago, like, you know, in a in a boss-less company, how do you do performance reviews, or whatever you want to call it like. So it’s a two part question, I guess, because one is like, how do you create a feedback culture and a culture of development in general. And seeing as you have a process for reviews, which you highlighted a bit there, how do you do that? And how have you evolved that? What was important to you in August about how you designed that process?
Mike: I mean, one thing I’m going to ask you, Tirzah, I think we’ve would you agree Tirzah that it is expected of everyone at August to get good at giving feedback to others.
Tirzah: Yes, I think get good at giving feedback to others. Give the feedback to others when asked even, like, I’m behind on a couple of feedbacks, including yours, Mike and I, even though it’s late, like it’s it’s gonna happen, because it’s really important. Everyone gives feedback to everyone, like it is, it is a norm. It is really important, and we really prioritize making time. It takes time to do it, but we we do prioritize, and there is an expectation.
I think a difference with August and other orgs is, the feedback is really thoughtful. It’s not like, check the box or do the sandwich or, you know, I’m gonna give—like, I remember a lot of reviews, and a lot of my reviews getting feedback, like not getting actually constructive feedback about what to do better, but getting feedback like you should smile more, like people think you’re not friendly, you should smile more, which is inaccurate, but also, like, not useful for my growth. So I think getting good at giving, like, thoughtful, intentional feedback, Yes, agreed.
Mike: Yeah. And I think we do have this, like the onboarding buddy. We have another role called the development advocate. Each member of the team has this other person who’s responsible for helping them to develop, and if you’re, if you’re expecting everybody to to speak up and share feedback and to be honest and candid with each other and step into uncomfortable moments, or, you know, more constructive or critical feedback, you have to, you have to give them some supports.
And I think the like learning that we do together to help people get good at it is one piece that development advocate is a really important piece of the equation, because that’s somebody that if, if I have critical feedback for somebody, or somebody has critical feedback for me, and it’s it’s just—it takes some bravery to share it. Then the development advocate is somebody that you know you can go to and be like, I have this feedback I need to share with this person. Can I get your advice, or can I get your help in how we share it with this person in a constructive way that’s going to help them, help them grow.
Lisa: That’s super nice.
Tirzah: Also to one place I got a little bit stuck. And I’ve seen I’ve seen folks I work with get stuck, is in that kind of 360 feedback. Getting that feedback is really valuable. I personally—this is, I don’t—this is my personal view. This might not be August view. I don’t think 360 evaluations are a great tool, because while the feedback is valuable, using that for evaluative purposes can be full of bias and not very useful, and kind of flipping that to using that feedback just for growth, as opposed to tying it to your performance evaluation. I think is a part of what creates that psychological safety in giving it, and also in receiving it.
I do get stuck sometimes where I’ve worked with clients who are like the same thing, like the leaders asking for the feedback, asking for the honesty, and then when they they either don’t get it the way they’re wanting it, or they get it and they respond in a way that makes it that signals that it’s actually not safe to share that in the future, whether they’re, like, trying to guess who it was from, or like, trying to kind of like, discount, you know what the person’s feedback was and why it’s not really valid, and just these kind of patterns that make it harder to build a culture of feedback.
And it’s kind of no pun intended, but there’s kind of like a feedback loop, right? It’s like a spiral of like bad psychological safety so you can’t get the feedback and get better, but if you don’t have it, makes it harder to get that honest feedback, that it makes it harder to get better because you’re not getting the feedback about what you’re doing as a leader. And I still find, I still find I get stuck in that honestly, and when I see that pattern happening, how to always be supporting leaders, to break out of that.
Lisa: I’m really skeptical about how, for me, it just always seems like a red flag if that feedback is anonymous too, because and then and then I hear people say things like, well, it’s anonymous because people don’t feel safe to give the feedback. I’m like, well, that’s your challenge. Then address that exactly. Yeah. Like, please. That’s, that’s a really juicy thing to dig into. Then and then anonymous 360 feedback is not going to, like, be a band aid for that at all. It’s going to make it worse.
Mike: Yeah, I completely agree. It’s like, there’s, there’s a another, more important issue to address. Yeah, but that takes so much work, you know, and I keep echoing that idea of stepping from safe into the brave space, or this notion of comfort and discomfort. So many of the things that we’ve been talking about are reminder of, like, how, like how, how instinctual it is, how much it is human nature to cling on to that comfort and stay in that space that is more comfortable, and so you just have to it takes a lot of work and a lot of help and a lot of support, over and over and over and over again to keep getting somebody to step into this more uncomfortable space.
Lisa: Yeah, my colleague Kolar likes to say that our brains are wired to avoid pain, but unfortunately, all development, all growth, is usually pain, it’s uncomfortable. So we have to sort of create these hacks in a way, together and support each other, and create these structures, these interaction scripts, this kind of shared commitment, this shared like standing for and re-committing all the time to doing this, because we know it’s it’s going to create the things that we want. It’s going to create growth and development and innovation, and, you know, all of these things. Because, yeah, if we allow our brains to just kind of go into autopilot, like they will avoid pain, and we won’t do those things, right?
Mike: Yeah, useful for avoiding, like, wooly mammoths, yes, whatever, yeah, not as useful. And yeah, 21st century corporate life.
Lisa: Yeah, I remember reading this book years ago that blew my mind. I think it was called Social, with brains are wired to connect, and the brain experiences social pain in the exact same way as it experiences physical pain, so like someone punching me, or someone you know, flaring their nostrils at me in a meeting, it’s like my brain doesn’t know the difference. So it’s, in a way, it helps me be self compassionate, that I’m not overreacting. Then it’s kind of my brain protecting me. And then if I can choose to ascribe a different meaning, or choose something—
Like, I really love what you said, Tirzah, about like you said something, a kind of throwaway comment about what’s really important for adult learners is choice, and I think that’s true also for psychological safety in general, like feeling that you have choice, that you have agency. And also now in kind of—this is a stream of consciousness, but I love this quote that I read recently in a book that leadership is confronting each other with choice. Is like confronting each other with freedom. So sometimes when, when we see that someone we care about is sort of stuck in something, it’s kind of it takes leadership to confront them with a choice that they might have.
Yeah, I thought maybe in the kind of final portion of our conversation, maybe we could look at how you are experiencing the kind of the new ways of working movement. I never know what to call it, but I think you know what I mean when I say that. You know organizations and people who are interested in exploring more decentralized, more human ways of working, as you are doing in August, what is your sense of the landscape of that movement? Like, are you optimistic? Do you see kind of promising signs? What frustrates you? What do you think is like the, you know, the next horizon for the movement? Like, what’s the thing that we need to like, really, like shift or level up?
Mike: I’m very fascinated by by this question, because I think I find myself with my feet into what sometimes feels like two very, very different kind of poles of this, you know, obviously inside August, in the way that we operate, is that kind of one radical end of the spectrum, and kind of lives up to all of the most radical principles that I believe in about self management. And then we spend most of our time working in large, older corporations that are very far from that.
We did—we just collected some research on the way that we were framing it was the state of organizational agility and the transition that large organizations have been going through over the past 10 years or so to kind of adopt and spread principles of agile more widely across the organization. And the way that we defined it in the survey, it was pulling together a lot of different aspects, including things around psychological safety and self management and, you know, decentralized decision making and organizing and small teams, mission based teams, and lots of different elements like that and some of the stuff that we are noticing there.
First of all, I was surprised to find that many organizations are much further along in their transformation than I was giving them credit for. That was interesting to me, and that the ones that have gone through some kind of Agile transformation do, in fact, use many of these practices that that we consider, that August considers to be kind of core or central to it. So in that respect, it’s like, okay, this, this stuff has caught on much more than I was previously thinking. That’s the side of it that gives me optimism. And there’s also findings in the research to show that there’s even more the interest and commitment to that is not waning, if anything, it is increasing and seems to be even more important to people and organizations in the years ahead. So that gives me hope.
The skeptical side of it still, though, is that specifically when it gets to distributed authority and genuinely like organizing people and teams in a truly kind of adaptive mission based non hierarchical you know, network or system. It seems like the old ways of organizing that exist in most established large corporations is impossible to undo, like they can they can dabble in it. They can create little sandboxes where they where they do some of that. But basically, like, until Microsoft or workday, or somebody you know, adds it as a button, like it’s not, it’s not going to happen. What’s your impression Tirzah?
Tirzah: I like, I want to feel hopeful, like this is the work that we do. And I think the times that I feel most hopeful are those times when the leaders of these organizations are feeling pressure to be different, and that sometimes that pressure is a lot, and so they start to try something different. And sometimes that pressure falls back, and then they stop trying something new.
You know, they even though, like on paper, there’s a lot to gain from new ways of working, because, you know, they’re better, they’re better ways of working. They’re better for decision making, etc. But like we talked about, like the human psyche and human biases, like we’re fearful, we’re fearful animals, you know. So it’s doing something that we know doesn’t doesn’t work great. Still feels better than doing something that we just don’t know and leader, and like a lot of leaders, got to where they got by doing it that old way. So like that has served them, the status quo serves them so they don’t have as much personal experience and data to change.
I feel so like on my cynical days, I look at that. I think about how we are, I feel, I feel skeptical about it. I share that skepticism. I look at even like our moment in the world right now and when, like, you know, the way bias works is like when things are crazy, when we’re under stress, when we don’t have a lot of information is when our is, when our like logic shuts down, and our biases control the show, and just our muscle memory controls the show, and the old ways of working like that’s the muscle memory, and it just takes so many reps to do something different and space to like, try the reps.
So there definitely are days that I’m like, looking at even now looking at things, and I’m like, it’s just hard to break into something new. But you know, change happens, like other things have changed in businesses, and how businesses do things, and so I do feel hopeful that they’ll change. It just, it’s just going to take like the right person at the right time to like really be that signal for for other leaders, that it’s okay. Or as new people, you know, get into those roles and they have different experiences, and maybe they’re more diverse group of folks that’ll make it a little easier to shift. I go back and forth.
Mike: I go back and forth. Yeah, I hear you. I think I feel the same.
Lisa: I’m wondering what advice you would give to listeners. I think there are kind of two distinct profiles of people who tend to listen to this podcast. I think one is the kind of the radical bunch who are, you know, putting this into practice. Maybe they’re in, like, a small, self managing organization, and they’re, they’re doing this to some extent. And then there’s also people listening who are maybe in the middle of a, you know, a larger organization, or a public sector organization or something, and they’re sort of, you know, they’re they’re lonely, and they’re sort of, sometimes they feel like, am I the only one who sees there’s another way, and will it ever shift where I am? And so I wonder, if you have each of those kind of people in mind, what advice would you give each person in terms of, like, tips for the journey, or, you know, if they want to experiment, you know, within their sphere of influence, like, what, what would you recommend they do?
Tirzah: I think for the one of the things, I think more for that, that lonely, you know, leader or person who kind of sees it and other folks don’t see it, is just like trying those little steps, trying a little thing as a little proof point, trying a little thing with another person, seeing how it goes, learning together. And just those little like, those little experiments over time build up to a noticeable change, and like to give give yourself some grace, like it takes time. That comes to mind.
Mike: Absolutely, I was thinking similar, similar thing. Think about kind of fundamental principles that we always come back to: open learning network, that we want to make it as easy as possible for people to access information, that make it easier for them to contribute. Make it as easy as possible to learn quickly and iterate as we go and the network piece is about making it easy for people to contribute, regardless of who they are or where they sit in the organization.
And I think usually, you know, if it is that one individual who’s inside some large, older organization and they want to work in this way, but they don’t necessarily control how the whole organization works. In each of those buckets, you know, I think about the open piece like it’s probably within your power to share your own work as you go—work in public and default to sharing your work, not because it’s ready, but because that’s how you’re going to work. You’re going to make it open and accessible to others as you go and.
And learning—that it’s the small, small bets and experiments that Tirzah was describing—default to making things first and then learning from them and iterating, rather than planning first and then—just start the thing. Like, if, if you know, if there’s some new opportunity in your business, instead of spending three months working on the PowerPoint plan to convince your boss and their boss’s boss that they should let you try something, try some small thing that’s like, small enough that if you fail at it, it’s going to be survivable, and then bring what you’ve learned from that trial to that conversation with your boss, their boss’s boss. I tried this thing. Here’s what I learned. Here’s what I think we should do next.
And the network and making it easy for people to contribute. Use practices that are as simple as rounds. You know, where you in, the way that we run our team meeting, let’s just ask each person to speak in turn without interrupting each other, before we open up a broader discussion on this topic, something as simple as that, and making that the norm can become really powerful over time.
Lisa: Thank you. Tirzah, were you going to add something?
Tirzah: Yeah, I just, I just thought of one more thing that you sparked for me, Mike, which is for that, that team that’s like maybe a small team within a workplace that’s doing it, or a team within that’s kind of doing the self managed org, is just like acknowledging your wisdom and what you’ve learned. Like the this, you know, there are a lot of great tools out there and practices, and what they might look a little bit different in every organization, and what anyone who’s been doing this work in their organization for a while has learned about what makes it work in that organization.
And so I think just really acknowledging, noticing and like sharing what you’ve learned about what makes it work for your organization, and leaning on that as a way to like, using that as a starting point to bring others along in the journey, or kind of you know, spread it to spread it to others, because that, I think everyone’s like, we’re all snowflakes, right? We all think of ourselves as snowflakes. Everyone in every organization is like, their organization is a little bit different, and so just because someone wrote a blog post on it here doesn’t mean it’s going to work with us. But for someone who’s tried it inside, that is really, that’s, yeah, that’s like a proof point to build from.
Lisa: Nice. So in kind of wrapping up, is there anything that you came to say and haven’t or would be sad that you didn’t get a chance to say any final kind of words of wisdom or things that you want to share with listeners?
Tirzah: The only other thing that’s coming to mind is on psychological safety. You know, we talked so much about how it’s not enough to just say, speak up more. I would just encourage people to kind of hang in there, knowing that psychological safety is a team phenomenon. And yes, it is going to require you to step into some step into that brave space. It will also require your your teammates to step into that brave space. And different people are going to be, you know, it’s going to be easier or harder for different people to step into that brave space. So have some patience, have some grace in helping each other and hanging in there as people step into that because it’s it’s hard, just hang in there.
