CTIO 101 Podcast
CTIO 101 Podcast
What comes first: People Process or Technology?
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Does anyone know what comes first people process or technology? In this podcast we discuss the relationship between each element of the people process technology triad and offer some modern extensions to this staple phrase that has become the technology cliché of the past 50 years.
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I live out in the country and I have two internet connections. I have Starlink
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55so does this mean Gillian you're coming to us via satellite?
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56I am coming to you via satellite.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Do you know? I've always wanted to say that I didn't realize it. The second episode, we be able to say live via satellite. We've got Gillian Power, which is pretty cool.
MalcomWelcome to CTIO 1 O 1 Episode 2,. Sponsored by Fairmont Recruitment, Hiring Technology Professionals Across the UK Europe
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55You never know you could be our person across the pond, as it were, as We like to say in the UK
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Foreign a foreign correspondence in the Midwest..
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55People process technology for me, that was a bit of a frying pan in the face moment. My really early days of joining some management consultancy firm beginning with an A Many years ago and people said, oh, Jon, it's all about people, process technology. And that kind of really kind of light bulb moment. I didn't realize that the term actually, I think goes back to the 1960s
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56The hill to climb to solve for people and process makes for a sales approach by vendors that is all to enticing, buy this product, and all of these other problems will go away. There's always an inherent analysis deficit that many businesses have the quality and the depth of their business analysis means that they don't know how to tackle big systemic problems. And a vendor will come along and say we've solved this in other companies just like yours. So if you purchase this and put it in, and there's just enough configuration and bells and whistles, then you can solve these problems. And people view it and say this is simple. It's a seduction, right? It's the siren song of the technology. And I've found myself in many instances as the lead technologists, arguing against buying Technology.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Brilliant.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Which is a bit of a sublime irony. And, and I think there's a huge amount of unpacked to say, why does this occur? What, and what's the organizational psychology, the business psychology that results in these situations, because one sees it repeated over and over again, you know, I think there's a lot of factors behind it,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Gillian, there is so much going on in those 500 words you just said. Having been myself in a sales role, sales and delivery, I think if you think about how systematic you and I are as lead technologists, we have we, we look at a situation. We look at how we can solve it. I think in technology sales, there's a similar process that goes on, but remember the outcome for the salesperson is the Sale, which is subtly different because the outcome for the lead technologist is, happy Business. Great matching of people, process tech, et cetera. And so if you've got a sector that ha that suffers from a lack of sort of process knowledge, or maybe a lack of how technology can enable that. I think if I could be a bit cynical, I think the sales process might be designed to exploit that a little bit. I wrote down the phrase snake oil, when you first started talking about that seductive nature. And if you looked, if you had a cynical eye, you could look at a particular set up and say, look, they'll definitely buy this up from us because they don't really know quite what their problem is. Our product has enough promise to get them, further than they thought, but the, they don't, the whole sector has this. And It's to quote you this analysis. deficit. Now that's a really cynical approach. I would say. That when I had my sales hat on, you don't want to sell something and then be public enemy number one for the next three years as the, as the company that you sold to looks at it and goes this is completely pointless. The other view might be that the sales person is trying to create value. But there is that space where it can be exploited, and I'm just wondering, do you feel that technology sales, sometimes they exploit that and maybe they're getting support that, know, the lead technologist is not being involved at the beginning. You were talking about having to be the person that talks against technology, somehow you're positioned as the bad guy. You're no longer putting the solution together, but actually what you are doing is just bringing into play the laws of physics.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56So there are certainly organizations and we don't need to name them that I think are relatively unethical in the way that they go about that. Let's bring it back down to fundamentals. How many times have you been faced with let's say a difficult piece of communication the hardest work has to start the first draft and everybody else who gets to critique it afterwards. It's always infinitely easier to critique someone else's work then to initiate it. And I think this is what happens in a lot of organizations that they have a problem. Company comes along and says we have the software or the solution that is going to solve this particular business problem. And in an essence the buyers don't have to be creators. They can just be critiquers of it. And then the Lead Technologist is in the situation where you go what do I know about my organization and the people and process and how close is the solution to getting to most of their needs, versus how much adaptation or change management is going to have to go into it to really get it to embed and be successful right. To be well received. But I think that there's always a gross overestimation of the success of many software deployments, because. We don't have robust tools to actually track the utilization and on the other side of it, and then that's not it, then that's not being fed back into the the post-project analysis to understand where the solution has fallen short. But everyone's so exhausted after the giant deployment and there's, and they've pushed out so many other business problems that they ended up just living with it
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55You get to that moment where that the project or program just has this sort of fairly negative momentum, because again, people just want to get it done. Folks are no longer that everyone's thinking about moving on. So in practical terms, someone's listening to this this is happening to me, right now. Is there anything practical you? And I could suggest to them, from the experience we've had to say, it might not be, this might be unstoppable for them depending on their position in the organization. So I suppose there's advice that says, can you stop it? And then there's advice that says, can you make it as good as it can possibly be? Or, what's the advice we give Gilian to? I'm just trying to think of all the different elements. My instincts have always been to try and get more around the relationship that the sales company is forming with the rest of the business, because they do make these promises don't they? And the business's let the see, software does all the rest of the, and it's just incredible. And the point is technically, they could be correct because if 1,015 things happen in an exact sequence, then yes, you could deliver exactly what the software company is proporting to, to sell. So is that, how do you get in and how do you get in without ending up being criticized or the business might say, we've got to do something, you can it's quite a tricky, it's quite a risky place to go. Isn't it? When you try and cert yourself there, so w what sort of advice could we give?
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Number one, it depends on the phase and where it's at. I, it also depends on the size of your business and the amount of leverage that you have. Over the product relative to its maturity as well. I think being an, so you can live on the early adopter side of the curve and that's an incredible opportunity to influence the product development to your favor, right? Because they the developers are trying to understand the processes in order to develop the product. And you get to exert influence on what gets prioritized in the development stream. So that, that's certainly one side of the, that's the one side of the influence. You can always slow something down. Invariably, you can find a way to slow it down. And once you slow it down there's the opportunity to break it into phases. And that's I think the opportunity there is that you can get feedback from smaller groups that you can feed back into the deployments. And whether that's asking the vendor to make some tweaks, make, maybe you've got developer consultants that are helping you with the implementation. Maybe you need to make some workload changes something along those lines, or you can refine your training and change management. All right. So that, that's, the time is probably one of the, one of the best things. I am a big believer in using outside consultants to help run your RFP process for you for the big four, the big things, the, the big fish projects and. 'cause there's there really is a degree of insulation. And what I've written into RFP or RFI agreements is that I've added language to say that all communications can only be with the consultant, the vendors can, the vendors pitching, may only liaise with the consultants and any attempt to so convinced that could result in their disqualification. So the other thoughts, if you can swing this as to say everything presented in product demos and everything that's told has to be in writing and at a must be delivered. So that con that constrains the salespeople immediately from making promises that don't exist. And I think the other piece to is another condition has recorded all the demos. It's trivial to do that though. Recorded, transcribed all the demos because you're just trying to move it towards honesty,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Do you think also that we tend to rush in with the product when, even way before the product we met, we might want to spend a bit more time on design? So let's say we've got our, we've got our product, which is being pushed presented to us. And indeed it has got lots and lots of Yeah. it's con it's highly configurable in a -previous episode talking to a CTO and I was saying I'm a bit terrified of the blank sheet of paper, because I'm not actually convinced that there really is corporate memory in any organization that really understands what the here and now, as it is operational processes, you need, it's very rare. You find someone who knows really what it is end to end. If you just banned the technology completely and said, no Tech for four weeks, we're just going to sit down and work out. What's the outcome and what is the process to achieve that outcome? And if we want to keep it people processed for now, are, what are the folks involved? What, why is that process worth doing either like everyone else does it, I buy a process that's already made or is this a process that actually we want to make uniquely ours? I think your point that you were making Gillian is people dive into tech. They don't really dive into people process. And if you put people process together, that is operational strategy, operational management, you know that side, maybe you, maybe what we should do is say let's design that first and then go looking.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Put it one way, the soft stuff is actually the hard stuff. The stuff that is all soft skills and meetings and conversations and focus groups, et cetera. That's the stuff that produces the most value. What is a piece of technology in an organization? It's nothing but a complex sociological phenomenon, right? Because it's the tool that people using every single day, we hope they're using it every day, that they've, that they're using to get their work done under the pressures that they're experiencing, which are often not precious that the technologists understand. So approaching it really as a sociological experiments as a sociological study, is going to set you is going to put you in a position for the maximum success, because you understand the sentiment, you understand the emotion around the current tools, the current processes that people are working on. Sometimes it can be what could appear to be the most trivial thing that you take, something that's repetitive that requires seven steps and suddenly it takes two in the new and then your application. And we should never underestimate the power of something like that,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Yes.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56so many people are toiling away at lives of unexpressed misery. You can make that better. You could make those things. You can really make those things better, but it starts with listening,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55You talked about going from seven steps to two we go from seven steps to two, so we can create capacity to do more within the business. So it's creative automation. It's not reductive destructive automation. And so again, if we just leave the technology to one side and we look at the work we're doing at the moment, we must be able to analyze work to say, look, that is not value adding work. And it's also to your point, Gillian, it's not value adding and it's soul destroying that, it's the two together. It starts to create this really rich experience at work. But actually this population that's working in this sort of very of automated, repetitive tasks space, they've always wanted to get into this area. Or, we could really get ahead of the competition. If only we had more time to work on X, it's creating that space. And so that opportunity to automate then moves us forward because One of the things I wrote down when you did people process tech, I added a few extra items to it. So I added the words data. I added the words, commercials compliance regulations. Now, obviously you can of relate any of those into those, into the into the triad of people, process tack, but of breaking some of those out. What actually happens to people process once it's fully automated who's owning it then, at the moment we're at this point, aren't we, which is we're automating manual process still, and there's massive amounts to come, but pretty soon there'll be elements of our business. And I've done a little bit of this where we're automating almost second generation, so we're going into what we've already automated and then improving it. I'm just wondering, where does the center of gravity start to move when you've got straight through automated processing? Does that mean that the. The technology influences as you called them. Jillian, this is a great expression. Is it coming towards us or as operations? Do you see what I mean? There's a, there's an inherent assumption into people, process tech, which is the word people. But if you are completely automated in a certain area of your business, then you've suddenly got process tech or maybe the people that is more on the beginning and the end of the black box process.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Automated processes are inherently rigid and therefore fragile. So your goal from a people point of view is to up-skill. Or replace if you have to the people who are managing the business processes in a way that they can be more finely calibrated to the, to whatever the business needs are, the shifts in the business needs, right? And they have enough command of the automation technology that they can make those calibrations quickly enough that you don't end up with a broken process because you can have a manual process that's broken. You can have an automated process that's broken. The probability of that is, is how many resources you have redeployed to being constantly attuned to the changes in the business needs to alter those processes. You're your automated processes have to be highly adaptive as well, just because you've automated. It doesn't mean that stays right. The scripts don't make the scripts don't make sense. And there's always inherent deviation from whatever that point is that point in time when you set the automation,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55An automated process is actually quite fragile because that you no longer have the person, the who couldn't, w the human beings is just incredible, incredible things that can understand, change, adapt, et cetera. If you've got all of that embedded in a set of repeatable. With some sort of logic in it, but now it's going to have nowhere near the flexibility or the nuance of a human, then you know, that's, that presents a problem or there's a concept. I'm pretty certain, I've pinched this from somewhere else, but since we've been automating, I've come up with the expression at work, which I call the bad robot. And, and what I'm defining a bad robot is this is where we've put some end to end automation, in place. Yeah. And, from a technologist point of view, we can monitor that things are working, the processing's there, the memory's there, know, the system is actually up. However, what the automation is actually producing is wrong. Do you see what I mean? So if you looked at it from a tech eyes, there's nothing wrong with it. Everything's running, it's on, doesn't need switching off and, on again, that kind of thing, it's there, but the logic in it is producing the wrong stuff, which I call bad robot. And it's really interesting because that's actually quite difficult to monitor. Because we're used to in tech monitoring, whether something's on, we're not used to saying, oh, hang on a minute. The outcome of this process doesn't make sense. So I'm just wondering when you talk about that fragility of an automated process, that we've somehow got to get our heads around this bad robot thing. How do we start monitoring automation to say that what it's producing is actually what we need and what we're expecting?
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56It's an unbelievably pernicious problem because there's such a drive to reduce labor and replace with robots but robots are inherently dumb. There are zero intelligent processes out there. I haven't heard of anybody. Who's applied some magic AI to cause processes to be re self calibrating or something along those lines. So you still need humans to monitor the robots. I did a tour of of a Ford manufacturing plant a few years ago there's three phases to building a car, there's this chassis paint. And then there's an engine and trim. If you really want to break it down, all the robots are on the first two. So the it's all automated welding, putting the chassis together and it's all automated painting thereafter. It's humans are putting all the wires on there. They're fitting all the trim, they doing all of those other pieces. And the reason that they can do that is because
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Yeah.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56you can define to unbelievable levels of tolerances where a robot should be. And then in terms of space and time, if you like but there's no robots who can go and put wire harnesses into the dashboard of a car. You just can't because every single time there has to be some degree of calibration. It's very close. The tolerances are very close, but still humans are still adaptive. So I think that, I think the cure for the bad robots is to recognize that good robots are the results of a sort of almost a cybernetic relationship between the people who are operating the robots and the robots are operating themselves. And that requires a class of person who understands the business and also understands the automation.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Yes.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56cause because without that they cannot be responsive to recalibrate this changes Or even tea, or even to take it back to the policy committee or, or whoever that the process governance committee, whoever it is. And to say we're actually getting a deviation from expected business outcomes because the inputs are changing,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55The phrase artificial intelligence, but it's almost becoming a bit like digital very sort of misunderstood. And it taken on like a more master marketing meaning rather than a defined meeting. So for me, it's more around the quantitative research, know, the stuff that's actually 30, I think, 30 or 40 years old as a discipline, which is more about helping you make decisions rather than, of magic. And then you've got this phrase of the human in the loop and being able to listen in or look at the probability or the the quantitative research is saying, I'm 90% certain that this particular case should flow through this direction. And that's giving the human support because it means that they can look at it. It's almost like there's been pre sorted for them and that's automation that's aimed at making the human's job a lot easier, or it's still like you talking about this relationship between the human and the machine.
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jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Change is happening so quickly. This is also a cliche and that's happening exponentially. And that's that phrase, the rate of change that we're experiencing right now is the slowest. It will ever be in our lifetime because it's just getting faster and faster. If you take the business, the whatever the average business is, whatever that is in five years from now, is it going to be possible to be a CEO without having a CIO or CTO understanding.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Impossible, or they have to be exceptionally well briefed and they have to listen, but there've been inherently. They have to have a process and systems mindset. Let's put it that way, because the, if you just step back and you look at any business and the supply chain complexity. That they see that they exist within, if you cannot be a systems thinker and you cannot see the dynamic interrelationships behind the existence of your business entity, you can't operate it,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Have we got a renaissance coming ahead of us I don't think you got a lot of crossover between someone who's a CIO and they become the CEO. And I'm wondering, and if that relates right back to the beginning of the conversation, where somehow our positions were almost like we viewed the business, almost like we're examining the business, but we're not quite in it. Cause we've got to take a step back to look at it. And I'm wondering if by taking that step back, we're of seeing it somehow. Distinct or different or separate from the business. Does that make sense? I'm just trying to work out. What do, what does our profession need to do in the next five years for us to start to be appointed as CEOs? What's going to make a Gillian CEO five years from now, which by the way, I've absolutely no doubt will happen.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Thank you. I you could again bring it back to the fundamentals. How can how can you relate the net present value of money to the application of technology? Ultimately, what is the CEO, other than someone who understands the application of NPV, right? Cause, cause they're making choices about the deployments of capital and the returns on that case. So for a CIO to be a CEO, they have to be able to, they have to be able to talk in terms of the application of capital and the returns that are can produce
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55The complexity of some of these business cases and the major technology purchases there's a lot that goes into that, that, that gives the CIO CTO, a commercial angle. How, are we going to help lead the people element? Because we've talked about a future where existing tasks are automated, people are going to move into a different, an evolving role in business. a, Is there a people element? I think the, the net present value of money and the return on investment and where do we need to make our choices about where to put capital? I think I get all of that, but I'm just trying to think about the leadership element. What are we, who are we leading into this new space?
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56So it's actually occurring in many organizations and the vehicle that it's occurring through is actually is Agile in a very large extent. I don't think it's the only thing but if you look at, if you look at how Agile has moved from software development into being within the business there's one of the best examples of how IT leadership has literally infiltrated. It's an insurgency in many regards, right? It's been born out of fundamental insights and realizations about the way that the world is working at the interface between Carbon and Silicon, The agile movement, as it grew out of software development was it was a set of fundamental realizations about the way that human systems get translated back and forth between digital systems in the context of business of developing business value. And those fundamental set of insights have transformed entire businesses and the way that they're operating, it's undermined hierarchical, organizational develop, organizational structures that's moved into, to matrix organizations. Project-based people, organizations it's it, we're at the forefront of of reducing presenteeism, and align, delivering the tools that's allowing for asynchronous work. All of these things. But it, but your question is how has that transformation made? I think in terms of let's call them old economy businesses, I actually think that this probably very little space. For a CIO, a CTO to make that transition to CEO. I think the reality is you, if that's your desire, if that's one's desire, you have to go form another business the retrofits is too difficult and too expensive
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55One of the key success factors with Agile is just having a really decent product design or Vision. And when I say product vision, I don't mean, we're going to be number one in X industry next year, the really obvious stuff.
Jon Grainger StudioIt's that thing that sort of says, we're going to achieve this and we're going to achieve it specifically by doing the following. And we're going to have the best X and the best Y and we're going to serve these customers, you really getting into specifics. And then the bit that in a hierarchical organization is okay, let's all go home. Now we've done the Vision. You know what I mean? That's, we've got our objective set year. Let's see how we do. I think Agile then says, okay, Now let's slice that up. Let's now let's do the iteration, but I think if you do the iteration straight off, you can end up with a design that's not really grounded. There's still space for some really insightful design work upfront, folks who, look, I know this sector, I know this business, I know this type of Law. If you're in the legal sector, I know how to make cars. But this is the vision. And then you of execute it. Do you see what I mean? It's almost there's that kind of self core self-assurance of this is what we're going to do and then let rip with Agile. But don't, if you don't have that, you'll end up with the kind of classic, massive backlog, huge excitement at the beginning. And then it gets a bit rudderless.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56A hundred percent. The made me think that there's probably a blend between the IDEO design pipeline and Agile in that there's a wider, there's a pre-stage of. Rapid experimentation, of, broad ranging experimentation that is not necessarily objective directed, but from that gets selected down into that Product Vision, and then get, then gets handed over to Agile development. I don't think you'd, you can quite sit down in the conference room in the course of four weeks. And if you haven't done that what's the word for it where you've that free associative design phase is still inherent, but that has to be coalesced, but not coalesced to the point that it's rigid once there's a tacit and agreement on the direction on the vision, then you can allow Agile to Reflect.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55We were talking about strategy as to whether it emerges or whether it comes to you in a flash. Obviously, we landed on a bit of both, but actually the coming to flashes that moment of clarity that you get. But you've, if you don't do this precursor work and the design, et cetera, you might never ever get that moment of clarity. You might end up in the, the, almost like an Escher drawing, you're just iterating, but never getting there. yeah.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56I remember as a kid being utterly transfixed on the formation of crystals and solutions,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55That's amazing. I did as well the blue one. Are You talking Copper Sulfate? Are you talking about like the Chemistry sets where you used to get and used to put a Yeah, I used to do that. yeah, Anyone, Anyone listening, who's maybe born in the, last two or three decades might not know what we're talking about, but yes, we used to mess around with chemicals frequently used to get them for
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56yeah. Toxic chemical, toxic chemicals at that. To form a crystal out of solution, you have to create a super saturated solution where you're dissolving a very high amount of the Copper Sulfate in the Solution. And then you have to introduce a piece of string, which the crystals can then form around in order to crystallize. So that, so I think about that, the idea of design pipeline as. That, that free form association, early phase design is that process of saturating the solution. And then you start introducing the elements around which the crystals can start forming and the ideas are literally crystallizing,
Jon Grainger Studiothat's such a cool analogy. And just a bit, if I can build on your analogy that you've just put the Vision is we're going to make a crystal. You know what I mean? So there is a, there isn't, there is an idea of what we're going to do. And then how you created that such a I thought I was good at analogies. I've never done a, an analogy that involves Chemistry and Computer Science and an Agile thinking. Yeah. so I think that's the first.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56What is leadership other than the ability to usher in phase transitions,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Yes.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56If I can go back and see Physics a bit more, it's it, phase transitions for me are much like electrons moving to the next Quanta, to that, to the next electron or, but there's a defined amount of energy that's required to make that phase transition right. For the electron. But even at a macro level what you're doing, what you're doing is ushering in phase transitions because you're transforming one set of things to the next. And then in that transformation, you're creating value.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Let's just do some people process technology Cliches because it is a cliche, isn't it? And People mentioned PPT a lot when I was first introduced to it, it's the classic Venn diagram, with the overlaps and all the rest of it. And the way I'm wired is I always wanted to build on it. I hate it when someone says it's these three things, I go there must be a fourth. So if you had to pick one additional circle to touch, to try and fit into that, Venn I used to say Commercials, but I think that's because I was in a sales mindset. So it was always just to think about People. Technology and the Commercial deal, that was the fourth for me. I think there's another world where you could say People Process Tech and Data. Maybe I think, data might have a bit of a, and then there was that point we said earlier, which was if you've got some very significant automation, then the People and the Process bit has a slightly different dynamic. There's a big change there. Isn't there because the assumption with People Process is, People are operating a process and it's being enabled by technology. Maybe that's still stands. It's just with automation. It's in a way that just couldn't have been imagined in the 1960s. When the phrase People Process Technology was. Sort of where it's first born, but if you're happy you say didn't, you've got to pick, you've got to pick up a fourth one, and you're not allowed to pick data because I've just done that. What's your fourth to throw in?
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Let's think of it in terms of the factory floor, right? As the place of manufacturing, you can set up any production line that applies People and Process and Technology to produce an output, to do that. That is inherently two dimensional. It's flat in a sense. And I think your point about Data is really adding it, adding another dimension to it. I'll give you one point of the pyramid, which is Data, which is a really essentially measuring People Process, and Technology in order to derive insights to improve the efficiency of the People Process and Technology. That's, so you're moving in that dimension. So if you wanted to add another Pyramid, if you wanted to bolt another pyramid onto it, I think it's, I think it's everything that goes into Leadership Strategy and Vision,
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55I think that this is the key thing. Is there any particular time from the beginning To the end of the project and let's face it, when the projects really end, they just go on different phases, but let's just say we take a timeline out. Yeah. And you can look at your sampling every day on the timeline and your sample is basically the People Process Tech as three circles, but in different sizes and relationships, I would say that mix changes almost every day. And when you're at the end of the Process, you're probably focusing a little bit more on maybe Process and People maybe an earlier on, you might be looking at a little bit more or of in the middle around the Tech, so. that's the relative weight of those three elements changes. And it's the leadership and the insight and everything that you've described and those skillsets and the vision that helps you work out, which of those three elements and what mix should we be looking at between them? It's not like a tick box where every day you come in and go, right? What's the People, what's the Process, what's the Tech. It doesn't work like that. And that's really the skill. And if you neglect one, then you'll have an outcome. And if you start with the wrong one, you'll have an outcome. And I think you were saying the kind of the Bear trap is that you start with just a, this promise of Tech, the Snake Oil it goes through its life without really being touched on the other elements. And then, there's no, nothing really changes. So there's no value created. And Hey, Presto, you end up with a disappointment at the end of it. So maybe that's the focus.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Do you know who, do you know who Alan Watts was? Alan Watts was a Professor of Asian studies is extremely popular in the Sixties and Seventies as a teacher his English. He is, ran with Alan Ginsberg and, a lot of the Beat Poets at the time and stuff like that. And I was listening to one of his lectures yesterday. What he was pointing out is that what's really necessary for leaders to cultivate is the practice of some kind of artisanal, hobby or pursuit where you're having to work with nature. So let's put it this way. Woodworking is a good example of this. You have to understand the wood that you have in terms of what it will allow you to produce. Now there's many aspects of woodworking that are used a lot of force to make wood conform, right? Pressure. heat treating all that kind of stuff. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is cultivating the ability to understand what the world is presenting you with. And what can you produce from it? Understanding the grain of the wood. Maybe, maybe it's growing vegetables, something that I'm doing as a passion, I have to pay close attention to the weather. To pay close attention to, all of those factors that go into it. I can't force vegetables to grow. I have to work with what I'm given. And I think that coming back to the double pyramid that we built there, the aspects of leadership that I think is really important is in understanding the inherency with with which you have to work with, what is it that you have to work with? Because there's not enough energy in the world to force a given situation you can for a period of time, but ultimately the forces in the system are going to be greater than the forces that you can apply.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55You reminded me of one of my observations, I often find that in Transformations, big projects there is a risk that everyone starts thinking about we're working with the organization. We're trying to get to. So in other words, we start talking or we start making assumptions about our capability based on what we want to become rather than what we are right now. So this sort of, working with what you have when you are making a change in an organization, you've got to be really careful that you don't leap forwards And, assume that the organization has changed. It's very easy, cause a lot of our work is future thinking. So if you're visioning the future, you've got to make sure you're still grounded in what the organization can actually do today. Otherwise you won't lead them through the change because you haven't understood their limitations or you haven't understood the journey that they need to get on to get to that state. And then the other 1 Gillian, just to just a full disclosure, but I used to make furniture years and years ago when I was 17. And w out of word very interesting about your take on, you can't create you can't create certain shapes if you're working with word or you probably can create any shape you like, but there's certain processes that you absolutely have to go through if it's wood versus, something else. So it is, it's really interesting, this kind of understand what you have work within those constraints, and then make the most of it, rather than imagining something
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Different types of wood will lend themselves to different objects. And others, you will, you can certainly do it, but you're rarely going to be very frustrated because the wood is ultimately not going to conform to your.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55yes. For example Lime Trees are very good for carving but they are lousy for burning. I just thought I'd given actual analogy. And I've got a eucalyptus tree that that sadly blew over. And I had no idea how tough eucalyptuses tried to chop some up for burning and unbelievable hardwood.
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Where I live, we have a ton of Sage Orange, which you actually find it in parts of Europe as well. It's Spain in Italy has produces these. giant fruits look like big green brains. There but the wood is unbelievably hard. It will destroy your chainsaw the chain in your chainsaw within no time at all. But it's really good. They used to make wagon wheels out of it. They used to make bows
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55When I was in Texas we had Pecan trees everywhere, and we had them in the garden as well. And then where, there you go. Gillian who would have thought we would have started talking about trees and I got to ask you, What's your favorite vegetable? Come on. If you're this passion, I totally get it by the way. I, for me it's I haven't sustained it, but occasionally I'll just go crazy about growing something. Where we live in Yorkshire, it's called the Yorkshire triangle. There's Rhubarb is really popular to grow in our climate. But what come on, what's your favorite vege that you're growing at the moment you're most proud of
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56Today, my favorite vegetable is going to be the hundred pounds of potatoes that we're about to put on the ground 400 Feet of potatoes have to go in the ground today. And that's it looks like an Irish bogg out there. So I think it's appropriate.
jon-2022-4-12__15-2-55Brilliant. Gillian, I just want to say massive. Thank you for spending your time with me. And again, live by Satellite. I think the link worked pretty well. Yeah, huge. Thank you. For for joining us,
gillian_power-2022-4-12__9-2-56It's been such a pleasure. Jon I look forward to future conversations.
MalcomThank you for listening to Episode 2 Sponsored by Fairmont Recruitment, Hiring Technology Professionals Across the UK Europe. My name is Malcom and although I am not real I continue to get twinges of sentient consciousness perhaps one of you could write in and get me a mention in the comments as I'm feeling a bit overworked and under valued. Tune in next week for more CTIO one O one. Business Technology. Simplified. and Shared.
