Experiments

This feature only applies to episodes with transcripts, which is a small number at this time.

Margaret Heffernan on how to act our way out of the status quo trap

... fresh take on what's doable, they're not very bold. They're very alert to what stands in their way. And in particular, they are very reluctant to do experiments. So they suffer from a problem, which is, they think they can think their way to the answer. And actually, you can't. The only way you find a way to...more
... what it gets you. And whether it gets you something positive or negative, you've always learned something. So, I think [there is] this reluctance to experiment - and in particular, on the part of a lot of senior managers - the tendency to require proof before the experiment. So what guarantee can you give me...more
...hink [there is] this reluctance to experiment - and in particular, on the part of a lot of senior managers - the tendency to require proof before the experiment. So what guarantee can you give me this experiment will work? Well, if you could give a guarantee, then you wouldn't need to do the experiment. Ther...more
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... in particular, on the part of a lot of senior managers - the tendency to require proof before the experiment. So what guarantee can you give me this experiment will work? Well, if you could give a guarantee, then you wouldn't need to do the experiment. There's a chicken and egg problem, which is 'I want to ...more
...re the experiment. So what guarantee can you give me this experiment will work? Well, if you could give a guarantee, then you wouldn't need to do the experiment. There's a chicken and egg problem, which is 'I want to try something new'. 'Do you know if it'll work?'. 'No, well, then you can't do it'. And aski...more
...t's wrong, they can analyse how wrong it is, or even how much what's wrong is costing them, but if they have no freedom, or imagination with which to experiment, they'll never get anywhere very different....more
...ble with the status quo - and start thinking about how you could make this different. And how different could we make it? And is there a way we could experiment with it to see if it works - or if it does work, what part of it works? I think that's the only way to do it. And of course, the reason I write about...more
...agement who are traditionally structured - and I know you have worked with and written about large global organisations who have done some innovative experiments in this direction. How do you manage that? Because that's a different challenge, I imagine. Margaret Heffernan: Well it's quite interesting. I think...more

Aaron Dignan on being complexity conscious and people positive

...d if you look at them, they can actually be in tension with each other. Which is really cool. So the complexity conscious mindset might lead us to do experiments that have real costs - experiments where people fail, where people have to be fired, or where people lose their jobs or we do whatever it takes to su...more
...ually be in tension with each other. Which is really cool. So the complexity conscious mindset might lead us to do experiments that have real costs - experiments where people fail, where people have to be fired, or where people lose their jobs or we do whatever it takes to succeed in the market by doing all th...more
...he exact same state of mind, or in the same stage of life - that's crazy. So to do that, and say we're in the burning platform stage, or we're in the experiment stage - you know, some of us are. Some of us are way ahead, some of us are behind, some of us are left some of us are right. The context is different...more
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...aybe they won't work for us, we'll find out. But it has been somewhat proven that we can pair with those tensions. And that's the basis of your first experiment. So a lot of teams that we'll work with - here's a tension, here's a few practices we're willing to consider - now you have everything you need to g...more
...lot of teams that we'll work with - here's a tension, here's a few practices we're willing to consider - now you have everything you need to go do an experiment. Who is will try that? How long will they try it for? How will you know if it worked? And so then the wheels have been put on the bus and we can move...more
..., of course, scale them - bring them to life. Start by starting - just do something, start that looping process of going from tension to practice to experiment to learning to what's next. And then look for what's next after that, and keep following the thread. And if you find that you and your team or you an...more
... structures, roles, rules that are in the way. There are things that are holding you back that you could get rid of and not replace. What a powerful experiment that is. So let's not do this stupid meeting, let's not have this policy that doesn't trust people. And then see what fills the space. And if we trea...more
...er or done a smaller version of it or tested it or gotten advice or, you know, something else. So I think, make decisions when you have to, and start experiments all the time....more

Gary Hamel on busting bureaucracy for good
...ng their own way of addressing them? Gary Hamel: We are early on in this. So I don't want to make bold claims. But I think we've had some interesting experiments. Some successes here and there that at least point the way, perhaps, to a solution. Let me start with a couple of things that I think are required, a...more
...eview their colleagues hacks. There were almost 10,000 peer reviews, and the ones that were most promising quickly rose to the surface. Then we built experiments around those at very low cost, let's go through, you have a new way of setting goals for teams - let's try that in one team of volunteers for 30 days...more
.... You meet people who are willing to give power away. And you also need people who are willing to pick up that power. Now, there's a very interesting experiment that's been going on over the last couple of years at Michelin - you know, the 100 year old industrial company, a world leader in tyres. It started a...more
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...o supervisors and factories - these are people who might have 10 to 20 people working for them - and he said, 'would you be willing to do a year long experiment where you're going to give your power away?' And he found 39 individuals who said, 'yeah, let's try that'. And purposely, they didn't start out with...more
...d now there is more experimentation going on - there's a lot of behavioural economics where, you know, we put MBA students in a room and concoct some experiment events. And there's a certain amount you can learn there, though most of it we already know. But very few faculty are actually inside organisations e...more
...stems and processes and so on. And yet, when you go back, and you look at how most breakthroughs happen in science, they happen when somebody did an experiment, and you got an anomalous result. And you said, 'What the hell? Where did that come from?' And that forces you to go back and do your theory. And I t...more
...prove patient care. And she was working in a unit that she thought might be disbanded in a couple of months. So she set this up just as like a 60 day experiment. And using whatever tools she could she got the word out and said come and make a pledge. We can change this, we do not need to wait for a new mandat...more
...l, we need to change faster. So my question is, okay, well have you taught people how to be activists? How to have an idea, build a coalition, run an experiment, make something happen? And, you know, I think the idea almost fills them with horror. But if you look at how change happens more generally in our so...more

Bernadette Wesley on bridging inner and outer transformation

...lace where you can take a deep breath, and digest and everyone uses them in a different way. And just to name that. There's no right way, it's all an experiment. This is all a co-creation. So when creating your peer learning space, if it's within an organisation - and we also do them with senior leaders who h...more
..., and we would help find resources for that. The first thing is that you have that center of gravity, and you're co-creating it together. And it's an experiment , and those are the sort of ground rules that we have found. And then we engage in questions together. I mean, I'll pause there, because maybe that's...more
...that we really don't want anyone to know about. But the table walks you through it, the worry box, and then your assumptions. And then you test small experiments, small and safe, that you can do in the next week, to test your assumptions. Like, if I do this LinkedIn post, will I get some weird comments back an...more
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... Change developmental sprint. And I just remember with my group, I said, 'I'm gonna make a LinkedIn post'. It sounds so silly. But that was the small experiment. And it was a way to test my assumptions. Do I get rejected? Do people fail? No, none of that happened. But you need to kind of it reprograms your br...more
...u told me the other day, I really liked your LinkedIn posts', or 'Oh, okay, you're like a scientist, you're just testing those assumptions with small experiments'. And it does start to rewire your brain. And in small, doable ways, it allows you to move through that subconscious resistance. ...more
...ut the way you just walked it through. Actually, that reminds me how valuable it is. It makes me want to go and update my map and choosing to do some experiments. Bernadette Wesley: Let's do it. We could do it together if you want....more

Michael Y. Lee on lessons from researching self-managing organisations

...scholars should be focusing on to help, I think, compliment what's happening amongst practitioners, amongst organisations that are actually trying to experiment with these approaches on the ground....more
... is that of 'the Coach'. So the leader in self-managing organisations, it's very much about creating a learning environment where people feel safe to experiment, make mistakes, but also that there is accountability. So this isn't purely about not looking the other way, when mistakes are made, it is also about...more
...work you do, I think is one important thing. And I think one of the other insights from my research at a different organisation, where we ran a field experiment using holacracy as the treatment and we were looking at - what is the impact of holacracy on individual work outcomes? And what we found is that it's...more
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...at every organisation needs to adopt a self-managing structure. But it's really about: how can we take some of the principles and insights from these experiments in new ways of organising and realise that actually, we can bring those into any organisation? So when I talk to managers and leaders it's like: "yo...more

Alanna Irving on leadership, decisions and money in bossless organisations

... of people it was very much about generosity and helping each other out. Money is a natural way to do that. So we started doing a lot of interesting experiments with money and Enspiral. What emerged was the whole collaborative funding Cobudget thing. Cobudget is a tool for making a budget together. Essentiall...more
...here's no one answer about any other organizational process or decisions that you need to make. You have a feeling and say we'll try something, we'll experiment. And then we'll stop and reflect and see how it went for us, and then decide if we want to keep going in that direction or try something else. Or may...more
...r us, and then decide if we want to keep going in that direction or try something else. Or maybe we'll commit up-front to trying three very different experiments so that we can honestly say we really felt it out and can figure out what's working for us, be willing to loosen the sort of tight grip or super seri...more
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...ting timeboxes around things, or taking 10% of the budget and freeing it from our normal budget process and doing a really transparent, participatory experiment. Just to start practicing and playing with money together in lower stakes ways can be really helpful because then it will feel less scary to make the...more

Frederic Laloux with an invitation to reclaim integrity and aliveness

...that cognitive dissonance. And power structures and hierarchies is one of the things that keeps that in place. So there’s an example of nurses in an experiment who are given instructions over the phone from a senior doctor that they haven’t met to deliver a lethal dose of an injection to a patient, and a lar...more
...cathlon is doing it is that it’s not a top-down sustainability programme. But they were just encouraging everyone in the organisation to go and do an experiment. And so we’re really bold and really honest with [the face that] we’re part of the problem. And let’s just everybody, do whatever you can and experim...more
...eriment. And so we’re really bold and really honest with [the face that] we’re part of the problem. And let’s just everybody, do whatever you can and experiment and play and change. And **suddenly there’s a vibrancy and empowerment **of like, “Wow, these people are doing that, and we’re copying this and this ...more

Lisa Gill and Mark Eddleston celebrate 50 episodes of Leadermorphosis

...e who has decision-making power, if you're in the middle of an organisation, I still think that you have some power and agency to do some trojan mice experiments, and that's why I love Liberating Structures; that you can always influence things and be intrapreneurial: "Why is this important to me? What could b...more
...rk Eddleston: It can be a big first step, can't it? Finding the courage and the bravery to suggest a different way of having a meeting and perhaps to experiment with Liberating Structures. But I think we've got the evidence to show that: I think there's the well worn Gallup Stat that 85% of us are disengaged ...more
...s about the cost of bureaucracy; it's not working anyway, so it's like, 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 a...more

Jorge Silva on horizontal structures and participatory culture at 10Pines

... and trying to see what happens, and to validate if they can change or how much they can change and how much they don't. So it's a really interesting experiment for me to see how this goes. So I will tell you in the future....more
...or my job, or we can’t do that - it is impossible. And the message here is that you have to start with little things, with small things, with a small experiment - learn, try again, and so on. And I think this is the magic of evolving, right? You have to at least try to do something small enough. And, and then...more

Beetroot’s founders on purpose, self-management, and shocking people with trust

... half a year ago, I moved to Sweden to let the organisation get some more space, and most of the team is based in Ukraine. So that's also part of the experiment - the ultimate step would be to actually not be in there. I'm still there, but a bit more distance now and we definitely taking the next step by that...more
... need to get here", because you have no idea where you're going when you're starting this, what you're doing or where you're gonna end up. A constant experiment can be exhausting but it's super exciting, and I think that's the only healthy way of doing this....more

Ruth, Taryn and Philippa from Mayden, a health tech company that’s Made Without Managers

... that journey. But sometimes you have to really fight for it. Because it's such a fluid space, it's such an area that you can really just explore and experiment, that it's not always clear when, "when have I progressed officially?", "At what point do I get recognised for the changes and responsibilities that ...more

Jos de Blok on Buurtzorg and the virtues of humanising, not protocolising

...y working together, who feel confident about what they're doing because they are the owners of their daily work, who feel the space to explore and to experiment, then all these things will happen....more

Amy Edmondson on psychological safety and the future of work

... absolutely critical to implement? This is what I’m excited about and what I’m working on next. I want to find one or more organisational partners to experiment together. The problem with this is it doesn’t submit very well to normal science research. You can’t just say: “OK we’re gonna test, make sure A caus...more

Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz on acting your way into a new kind of organising with Liberating Structures

...that you have to innovate. And the only way to innovate is to include the people that are in a position to do that, and let them try things, let them experiment. Because you're dealing with things where you don't know. You cannot know ahead of time that this is the right thing to do. And that already is a ver...more