Create Thriving Workplaces By Asking Better Questions | Garin Rouch

TRANSCRIPT

Roger:  Many people believe the role of an expert or consultant is to come in and tell people how to solve their problems. And unfortunately, many consultants think this way too. This might be why consulting has such a bad reputation. So if telling people how to solve their problem is not the answer, how should consultants go about doing their job?

Garin: You know, you can't plug a USB in their head, like in the matrix and download Kung Fu. You've got to get them to own it. So you have to do it through questions and insight just at the right time and giving them insight, but also making sure that there's action. Insight without action means nothing.

Earlier on, I would have thought, great, we've delivered the insight. They've had the a-ha moment. Great. The work is done, but it's just the beginning.

Roger: Garin Rouch is an organization development expert with over 25 years of experience, working with leaders and teams to unlock the barriers that prevent higher performance.

What he's learned in that time is the best solutions come from within those organizations by the people closest to the problems and tapping into their sense of agency and ownership to develop and implement solutions.

Garin: Organization development shouldn't be just the, the, the exclusive domain of practitioners.

We fundamentally believe that if everybody in organization had an orientation towards organization development, then our organizations would work so much better. You know, there would be so much less unnecessary suffering in organizations and, and probably just a lot more as you sort of describe it, joy, you know, the joy of work and, you know, to be able to work on really difficult things together.

The really, really critical things that happen in an organization aren't necessarily the big set pieces, the, the big, right, let's define our new accountability program. This is what it looks like, you know, let's do a town hall. Fine. Fine. Yeah, it happens in the mundane.

Roger:  Garin is quick to point out that the value of being an effective consultant is not in having the right answers, but it's in asking the right questions.

And in the space of organization development, those questions are not driving at something trivial. This work has real life impacts.

Garin: You do see a lot of suffering. You see a lot of people at breaking point, people that aren't sleeping, people that are having distress personalized to people that are in really bad health condition, because work can do that to you when it's not going well.

And the, and the joy often comes from helping them just start to feel a sense of agency.

Roger:  Hi, I'm Roger Kastner and welcome to the, what do you know to be true podcast. In these conversations, we talk with ordinary people about their extraordinary skill, but also. Their superpower and the meaningful impact it has on others.

The goal is not to try to emulate or hack our way to a new talent. Instead, the intention is to learn more about their experience with their superpower. And in doing so, maybe we can learn something about the special talent in each of us that drives us towards our potential. If you're ready, let's dive in.

Hey, Garin, thank you for joining me today. It's great to be here with you.

Garin: It's great to be here again. Thank you.

Roger:  I know you to be an organization development practitioner, an entrepreneur, an author, a leader of an org dev community in London, and you're the co host of the org dev podcast with your colleague, Dani Bacon.

I'm excited to learn more about your superhero power of simplifying complexities into actionable insights. But before we get too far. What's important for us to know about Garin?

Garin: Well, yeah, well, thank you first so much for inviting me on. It's really great to be here. Well, I'm an organization development consultant and have been for just under 20 years now.

Um, and we work with organizations of all different sizes, all different sectors from working with, you know, Uh, space technology companies trying to get a satellite into space on Elon Musk's rocket, uh, to sectors, charity organizations, and everything in between as well. Um, and we do lots of work with organizations in terms of like strategy and decision making and team excellence and organization effectiveness.

I guess it's the thing that it falls all under as well. I do it with my business partner, Dani Bacon, and we co facilitate Almost everything that we do, which is a great experience. Um, we do a lot of work through, um, facilitation and coaching and consulting as well.

Roger:  And I'm sure there's something very joyful about that partnership with Dani.

And this is the season of joy. So what sparks joy for you in doing the work of org development?

Garin: So many things, underpinned by all of it, because organization development is a really broad field. It's been around for about 70 years now. Yeah. Um, and it's often described as the magpie profession. So we, we love to collect wonderful theories and approaches and practices from other fields, from sociology to biology to psychology to, and everything else.

And so there's just so much to learn. And so, although it's always in the service of helping our clients, helping our organizations, helping the individuals that we work with. There's a lot of joy that comes from just learning, because you're also trying to figure out the world as well. So, so Garin, 20 years ago, when I first taken my steps into this is very different to, to, to me now, because you've learned so much, so that's.

That's part of the joy. Um, and another part of this, and this is something that Dani in particular enjoys is, is, is often the research phase, and that's where we go into an organization and we, we kind of have to try and figure out or make sense of what's going on. So, so the client comes to you and says that there's a, there's an initial challenge that we're having.

Uh, there's something over there that's happening that shouldn't be happening, what can we do? And we'll go through a process of understanding and. You know, pulling that, the layers of the onion and sort of said, what's really going on here? You know, is it around dynamics? Is it structure? You know, well, what is it that might be happening?

Often it's a, an aggregation of all those different things. So, so that's a great thing. And then obviously the sort of the final part is when you actually are truly working with the client and you're giving them ownership and agency over what they need to do to their organization. And with organization development, It's about being temporal scaffolding.

So you work with them for a fixed period of time, and then you basically give them the capability to do it themselves. So it's when you start to pull away and then they continue the work after you, but do it in lots of unexpected and wonderful ways. So again, there's sort of three main areas that we get lots of joy from it too.

Roger:  I love what you just said about ultimately the client owns the problem and the solution. So if they're not involved in helping us design and implement those solutions, it's not going to be sustainable.

Garin: Even when you've just done a particular program with a client and you've given them a particular tool and it's really resonated with them, you can literally pick up the same tool and put it in another organization and it's And it won't work because the organization maybe has a history.

Uh, maybe it has an experience. Maybe there's a lack of trust, all sorts of different things. So these all contribute to, um, to these things not working. And the temptation is basically, you know, you see the problems and you can apply all your organization development experience, but clients are on a different journey to you, they're not ready.

You know, you can, it's almost like, you know, drinking from a fire hydrant, you can give them so much input, but what is reasonably possible. And, you know, they, our clients have such different mental models of the world to us. Now, the way they see the word, their biases, their preferences, all those different things are so different to us.

So you really, I think that's probably part of what it is, which is like really. Putting yourself in the shoes of them, understanding from the different perspectives, understanding the organization they're in and all the different forces that are at play in there, and then carefully selecting the right method, approach, insight, tool, whatever it is for that person at the right times that it makes sense and being patient that you then once you've kind of applied that.

Then you can give them the next piece or if that didn't work because there's no guarantee of success, okay, well, what did we learn from this experiment? Okay, well, we've learned this. That's great. So that's, that's learning. Let's keep going. Let's try something else. Um, almost like we're learning together.

Roger:  The younger Roger, some of the firms I worked with or teams I worked on, we were always looking for that A plus solution. It was almost like a science fair. We're looking for the A plus solution for a client. And didn't spend the time to realize, Oh, the client could only handle a C plus solution yet.

We're so excited about what we do. And we dig into the neurobiology and the latest for, you know, trends and you know, the, the stuff that the grandfathers of OD and the shoulders that we stand upon, how do we bring that in? And pretty soon we've, we've cooked like a 14 course meal. And the client, you know, just wants a sandwich.

It's all they can consume right now. Maybe, yeah, maybe they have dietary restrictions and maybe I'm taking that metaphor. And I'm going to get hungry soon.

Garin: When I did my masters, one of the sort of the main tutors on the course was from the Tavistock, um, and the Tavistock in the UK, um, is world renowned in terms of how.

It's work in sort of group dynamics and whatnot as well. And, and she was always like, it's the next step to better. We really took that as a hard, we do a weekly newsletter and it's called the next step to better. I often find, and I'm sure you're probably the same way is that we often come across people that are potentially highly intelligent, very smart, always been successful, but they are, they feel stuck.

Whatever they've tried, it hasn't worked and they've tried lots of things. So if you give them too much, it's almost easier than to withdraw a little bit as well. So how do you build those kind of, those small steps that they can, they can apply.

Roger:  So as a recent guest on your podcast, the org dev podcast, I love that you and your co host Dani Bacon asked the question at the end, what advice would you give to people starting out in OD?

Why is it important to you to help and support? And inspire new OD practitioners.

Garin: This podcast that we do is almost like we designed it as the podcast that we wanted when we started out. When you do a podcast, you're never quite sure what's going to happen to it. Cause you kind of produce it and then you give it to the world and then the world consumes it in its own way.

But what we really wanted to do is organization development is one of those professions. It's variety and it's diversity is its strength, but it's also one of its most. Biggest challenges. So you're not licensed or registered as an OD practitioner. So, you know, anyone today can call themselves an OD practitioner and off they go, that first few years that you're doing it, there's a lot of imposter syndrome, you know, there's a lot of, well, what is it?

Am I doing it? Am I doing it? Well, we put ourselves under a lot of pressure because we're, we're, the stakes are really high. The OD is not for the faint of heart because you really are working at an individual team and organizational cultural level, um, that you want to do it right. And I think, um, the. The reason why we ask that question is to sort of reduce that learning curve, that there is no one way, obviously, there's some principles that can really help, but it's also really important to have that support in place and also to be patient, like with most professions, you know, if you went into the medical practice.

There's, there's so much jargon that goes with it. So when people actually mix with experienced practitioners, it can feel quite intimidating and quite feel overwhelming because people are talking about just start and inquiry and all sorts of different things. And I'm like, well, what is this whole new world of language?

Um, and so what it is, it's just basically, so how can we get started in a way that makes it open to more? And also the organization development shouldn't be just the, the exclusive domain of practitioners. We fundamentally believe that if everybody in an organization had an orientation towards organization development, then our organizations would work so much better.

You know, there would be so much less unnecessary suffering in organizations and, and probably just a lot more, as you sort of describe it, joy, you know, the joy of work and, you know, to be able to work on really difficult things together with, with people. a very diverse group of people.

Roger:  Not only would there be more joy, but I think, you know, we, and this might be sounding a little self serving, but I think we would agree that most organizations and the research supports this would be higher performing if there was a better understanding of the human part of human systems.

So what are, who inspired you to have this superpower? Of simplifying complexities into actionable insights.

Garin: I'd always been curious and done lots of learning throughout. Um, but there was a particular kind of, uh, trigger that sort of inspired me, um, to then go and on a bit of a journey to, you know, develop new skills.

And, and from there came the ability, came the discovery of organization development, and then the ability to actually use this consistently as part of my work as well. In my sort of mid to late twenties, um, I was headhunted to go and work for an organization. This organization, um, was on a sort of a growth spur and they sort of bought three different organizations together and they basically brought me in to bring these three disparate organizations to three different things to bring them together, um, to provide, um, A kind of seamless unified kind of service to the market at the time, you know, I did everything I thought I could with the knowledge that I had to, uh, bring these things together.

You know, even read every business book that was around at the time. Uh, I spoke to lots of different people, you know, I'd use my own sort of native wit and all that kind of stuff as well to try and do it. And it just, it didn't work. Everyone has like a, uh, something that happens in their career, which is, you know, yeah.

Quite a catalyst for things. And often it's built around a failure or what they perceive to be a failure at the time, but often it's, when you look back, it's not a fail. It was actually, it's a huge opportunity to the, but in my mind that it didn't work. And I was just so frustrated and all those things. I sort of felt that feeling of being stuck and working so hard and it just not.

Just not working. Um, so then I went out and, um, basically decided to work globally. So I went over to, um, to Shanghai and worked over there and got exposed to lots of other organizations, um, and then moved to Australia and that's where I discovered organization development. Cause I was working in a, a leadership consultancy.

Um, and then for me, it was just like really just honing the skills, like just absolutely devouring organization development, all of a sudden things really made sense. Why, Organizations don't work in the way that they work. And that then just opened me up to loads of different theories and practices that I hadn't been aware of, you know, systems thinking, you know, all these things that you kind of understand it.

But then when you do see it, it seems so obvious. Um, and then the challenge then was then how do you then apply it with. You know, leaders or people out doing work. And so part of that was then learning, how do you work with them in a consultant capacity? How do you learn, work with them in a coaching capacity?

And then how do you, you know, you can't plug a USB in their head, like in the matrix and download Kung Fu. You've got to get them to own it. So you have to do it through questions and insight just at the right time and giving them insight, but also making sure that there's action and supporting them as they start to take action, because with the action is risk and they become visible.

And often when you're working with people that, you know, they don't feel at their best. So that was when I started to really understand what How you can use it, how you can use it well and, and then just really started to measure the results because you have to learn and, you know, through supervision, uh, working with different individuals and organizations and teams and, and really seeing what worked really well.

And when it didn't work so well, how do you keep them? Because things don't just happen in a linear fashion.

Roger:  There are powerful lessons in failure.

Garin: Yeah. And I think, I do hear it thrown around so much in organizations. It's okay to fail. And is it really, um, you know, would they really tolerate someone failing?

On an individual level, there's an identity piece. So when I failed or whatever it was, um, according to the metrics, um, it, it really, it, it went counter to my narrative about myself because, you know, it's Mid twenties, you know, you're, you're on an upwards trajectory and, you know, you'd only known sort of promotion and, um, sort of success until that point.

And all of a sudden it's like this wall and it can be really profound, you know? And I think, you know, the, the agile methodology, which is like, you know, to fail fast, I, I didn't think you should fail fast, particularly for your first one, you need to really take the lessons from it and become, you know, get a sense of perspective from it as well.

The other thing that also makes failure really difficult in organizations is it's part of the human condition that we love to scapegoat. We, organizations love to do it. Um, it, it helps us process trauma. It makes it easier for us. So what do you do with that? And how do you create an environment where people actually are aware of the dangers or, or the pitfalls of, of scapegoating and what it actually does to individuals and how it can then basically, okay, they may make it through it, but it doesn't think afterwards, they were a little bit more reticent.

They're not quite so bold. So, you know, you can definitely create organization cultures that. Do that, but it takes a lot of work. But you can't just say empty rhetoric, saying it's safe to fail. You've really, as a leader, you've got to prove that it is okay. And also put some boundaries around people. So when the failure comes, that it's, it's almost like a managed failure.

It's really handheld through it rather than just allowing them to, a lot of organizations don't do that. Like people just do what they do and their role expands and it's kind of sort of. Guilty, not guilty until apprehended. And so when the failure comes, it's, it's quite unmanaged, isn't it?

Roger:  They become a lot easier when you do define them.

When you do define what accountability looks like, when you do define clarity in what you do versus what I do, and where are the handoffs and where are we do, where do we have. Uh, opportunities to make decisions and maybe make them differently than we've done it before when we, when we actually define, um, processes, procedures, behaviors, terms, life becomes easier, work becomes easier, flow becomes easier.

Garin: Yeah, the really, really critical things that happen in an organization aren't necessarily the big set pieces, the big, right, let's define our new accountability program. This is what it looks like, you know, let's do a town hall. Fine. Yeah, it happens in the mundane. I think Peter Fuder, um, an Australian consultant, he sort of says expectations fall into a third, a third, a third, which I, which I sort of, I quite like as a heuristic.

So a third of expectations are really clear and understood. So you understand what I want from you and vice versa. We've said, it's really clear. A third of expectations are kind of, they're, uh, they're conscious, but they're, you know, they're basically. You know, uh, not explained. So, um, I kind of know what I want from you, but I either, I shouldn't have to tell you because you're a professional.

You should know, or I'm not going to tell you because you really don't want to know that. Like I'm thinking, um, I just don't want you to mess up like the last person or whatever. And a third of expectations are unarticulated in, um, and unconscious. So I generally don't know what I want until I see it. And then you present me with the thing and then I'm really disappointed.

And again, that, if you wind the clock back with a lot of conflict or breakdowns due to accountability, it's often due to that piece there where people haven't sat down and really articulated what does that accountability look like? What is it that I really want here? What is it that we need to create together?

Um, and that can prevent a lot of things. I think OD worked used really well. Oh. It's often, it's brought in too late a lot of the time it's brought in because generally OD people are quite good at solving crisis and problems and, you know, taking the temperature down and going back to first principles, but it's actually a much better preventative tool to actually put the foundations down to get people talking to agree expectations up front to, you know, for people to kick the tires on things up front and really stress test things and put the right structures in place.

That's when you get OD at its best to help organizations.

Roger:  So well said, and I love the idea of expectations falling into thirds, if my math is correct, 66 percent of expectations will be disappointments.

Garin: Yeah. And what a waste of human energy.

Roger:  We're setting ourselves up for disappointment by not articulating expectations.

And it is unfair to try to hold someone accountable for something you haven't articulated as an expectation.

Garin: Go back to the sort of the superpower that is about getting people to A lot of people, it's very easy to think in black and white terms in organizations, you know, even, even sort of them and us and, you know, all those kinds of things.

Um, what, what it, what it does is it kind of, it takes something complex, which is the fact that, you know, we're all contributing to it. We all have, we all, um, contribute to the context that we find ourselves in presenting in a simple way to give them a tool to do it. But in the process of it actually making the world a lot more complex, like a lot more gray.

And actually, do you know what, there is no simple solution to this. Like, yeah, maybe they did drop the ball on this, but it's not as simple as that. We need to understand what really, really happened. Um, and so it is like, how do you create more complexity and more gray areas of people's worlds? Because things aren't either or, you know, the world is and isn't it?

Roger:  Yeah. And being comfortable being in the gray.

Garin: Yeah, you had a really good episode that you did on polarity. Um, so yeah, just, just acknowledging that really good episode and sign posted people to, if they want to go deep on to that.

Roger:  Yeah. Asla occur. Um, the guest is every conversation I have with her is amazing when she talks about polarity management and it gets, it just intrigues me so much to honor, understand.

And it's kind of a misnomer the way she talks about polarity. Polarities in that it's really calling these two things being distinct. And she says, actually, the, the management is really the energy between them and bringing them closer together and really looking at the, more of the commonalities and the, the, the context in which those two things exist.

And that energy is so much. So much more valuable than the idea that you have two polar opposites.

Garin: Yeah. And we get brought into a lot of organizations where there was a really strong polarity going on in there. You know, there's, you'll have, you'll find that within an organization, there's people may be falling into two camps around certain issues.

So it could be old, traditional ways of doing things in the organization and new and many new managers have the playbook of, because they've been given a mandate to go in there and make change. So in a way, the CEO or whoever the hiring person has a huge responsibility in creating a huge clarity because they're like, you know, we need to go in there, we need to disrupt things.

I want you to, you know, they're, they're not very good. They're too slow. You want you to go in and shake things up. So this person goes in hard, um, with new. And the natural human response when people have been in there for a while and they've mastered something and they've worked really hard is actually these traditional ways do work.

And so what happens is because we're unable to sort of go in the middle and say, well, what are the upsides of bringing new and fresh ideas in like new ideas from the market or, you know, um, be able to break the status quo. And. What are the brilliant ways that we found that really efficient that we've, we've learned the hard way that these things don't work.

So that's why we're doing it. So that's why you often get these huge polarities and there could be a range of things. It could be that short term, long term. It could be, um, again, when we see quite a lot is, um, leadership team versus team of origin. So where a leader is like, kind of, how do I, You know, who do I sit with on this one?

So I think Polarity is a really powerful tool because again, it's something that's very complex. Uh, but when you give it to someone and it starts, it's, it's almost like the science of the aha. It's a cathartic moment often where it's like, Oh, right now I get it. And in a reflection, Polarity probably, if someone had sat down with me as a coach, when I was in that situation in my mid twenties and gone, you know, You are in the middle of a polarity.

My tactical approach would have been absolutely different to that whole thing.

Roger:  So where and how does Joy show up for you with your superpower of simplifying complexities into actionable insights?

Garin: Part of it is figuring out for yourself, what is the complexity that you're seeing and how, you know, what is a way of seeing it?

There's something about making sense of it for yourself, um, and often using a team around you to come to it. So Dani and I will work through a lot and go, well, what is really happening here? Um, and so there's joy in that and us figuring it out and Dani sees the world in a very different way to me. And we have to, you know, we, we've worked really hard to get our relationship going.

To a really good place. And we do see the words, we kind of compliment each other, which is really nice. So there's a lot of joy in like bringing two sort of brains together to work it out. Part of the joy. And it says, cause as an English person, we don't really use the word joy very much. We wouldn't say satisfaction, but I, um, I'm embracing the word joy, which is like, cause I think that's probably the right word.

There is a joy, like when you're with someone and they do feel stuck. I do, you know, in this, in the nature of the work, I think. You know, many of us in organization development are deeply empathic. We do feel how others feel. We, we also have lots of emotions projected onto us. And that's part of the skill.

It's like, how can you hold that emotion for someone who's anxious, stressed, angry, whatever, hold it for them and give it back to them. Um, you know, and we are starting to help them see things in a different way. And then they start to feel a sense of agency. You know, um, you, you do, you do see a lot of.

suffering. You see a lot of people at breaking point, people that aren't sleeping, people that are having distress personalized to people that are in really bad health condition because work can do that to you when it's not going well. Um, and the, and the joy often comes from helping them just start to feel a sense of agency.

Uh, we have to really keep a check on it. You know, you've really, cause, cause OD isn't about having an ego and going, you know, I want to be the hero, the rescuer and all this and getting in the drama triangle, you've got to get them to own it. I think one of your sort of previous, uh, speakers was it Bennett Bratt, um, said no one washes a rental car.

So you've, you've got to help them take ownership of it. When, when you're working with them. You do feel a great sense of that's brilliant, but don't get too invested that it's all about you because you're not doing the work. They've got to go and do the work as well. And then the joy, I think I sort of mentioned this earlier is, is, is when you, you do work with them, we work in sort of short, intense times.

We'll do a day or two or three days with them or a session. And then you come back a few weeks later and they say these things have happened and they're just really unexpected outcomes. They've made a connection. They bridged what we would call like in organization design terms, a difficult link, so two different parts of organizations that they naturally intention because they've got conflicted priorities and they've been able to work a way through and move forward.

And I think that's, that's a real sort of sense of, of joy that comes with it. And then, and then what's really nice as well, cause I think once you've been doing it 20 years, for a lot of people, that's a big part of their career. So you can actually see people that you've worked with many, many, many years And they've gone forward and they've put what we've.

Worked on into their own organizations, their own teams. And so it's sent to the power of 10, then you're starting to create more cultures and more places in really unexpected ways as well. So I think constructive behavior is really contagious and that's, that's deeply satisfying and I'm getting more and more that as the, as the longer I've been doing it as well.

Roger:  So you said something in that response that, that has me thinking, how do we bring more joy to England? We need more joy in the, in the, in the UK and satisfaction just doesn't sound very satisfactory when it comes to joy. Joy is so much bigger than satisfaction, but you know, now we're, now we're getting into semantics, which is probably not a joyful place to be.

Garin: I, I know that I'm going to, if anyone in my, many people in my field are going to be horrified that I've just said, well, there's within, within OD, there's. There are a lot of people that really express joy. I don't know. Maybe it's my own sort of upbringing in that I'm, um, uh, I'm from up North. I'm from Lancashire, which is a very down to earth kind of, uh, industrial part of the world.

Um, and it's quite a humble place to come from as well. So, you know, We were like, you do feel it and you do feel it satisfying. Um, but we, we, we definitely do feel joy. We definitely feel happiness as well. Um, and I think particularly like younger generations as well, are much more expressive, much more progressive, um, than older generations where, you know, you very much kind of sort of kept your emotions to yourself, you know, you didn't necessarily share things too much.

Um, so yeah, so there is definitely work to be done, but I think I'm probably being a little bit hard on our nation.

Roger:  Well, I mean, I remember not too long ago asking a group of leaders, um, on a scale of one to five, how effective was the, the, uh, activity we had just done and everyone gave it a five. You know, Americans, we're, we're, we only know one or five.

Um, whereas the one Brit in the room gave it a four. And so as, you know, as I've been taught as a facilitator to ask, Hey, you know, you gave it a four, what would, what would it take to give it a five? And she's like, I'm from the UK. I don't give anything a five. Nothing's a five.

Garin: There isn't a five.

Roger:  Yeah. No, no, no. It does not happen. It's kind of like when Derek Seavers talks about, um, you know, these people who use the term awesome all the time, like, then what do you, what do you say? When something actually is awesome, you don't have anywhere to go after you've already used your five or already used the term awesome.

Garin: Yeah. Well, I think, um, it's, it's an interesting cause it like in the OD field, you can, you know, it's, it's very easy to be deficit focused. You know, you're brought in. And you're looking for what's not working. And one of the fields I sort of practice is appreciative inquiry, which is what is working, you know, because there'll always be things that aren't working.

Like it's just, I'm yet to see the perfect organization. So it is really easy to get caught into that trap where you're just looking for what's wrong. But really, you know, if you really want to energize people, then, you know, focus on what is working. And I think that can really, um, That can really warm things up for people quite quickly.

Even when things are difficult. If you start to, okay, well, let's just put some boundaries about what isn't working. Okay. We acknowledge that, but what is working really well, and that can be like a huge air change in a room.

Roger:  Yeah. People, people don't want the whole laundry list of everything that they're doing wrong.

They want to be acknowledged for what they're doing. Right.

Garin: Absolutely. And also people can weaponize the bad, you know what I mean, again, it's like,

Roger:  I mean, that's why we're there in the first place because they probably already have weaponized the bad. Right.

Garin: That's true. But I think, yeah, I think it's actually a really important bit, whatever account someone's giving you an organization, because You know, people generally call us in when there's a challenge, it's, it's just so tempting to, to get in there with them and go, Oh, you're absolutely right.

You know, but you, you have to look, cause you need all the skills or things that have happened to create the good, to actually reverse what isn't working as well. And in all of that good that is working, and there is often a lot that people just don't see it or choose not to see it. Then, then there's just so much agency in there and that gives them the confidence to really lean into the very difficult things.

And also. Give him to be, to live with what's not working. I think sometimes that's, that's another thing we have to be able to live with what's not working.

Roger:  Yeah. I love, I love how you connect the acknowledging the good as a way of sort of trying to ramp up and tap into agency. You've done it before. Now we're going to focus over here and you can bring those same skills and same capabilities and relationships that you did to create the goodness here.

Now it's time to apply it to this area.

Garin: The other thing that you learn is in organizations that they're generally full of people with good intent. Like very rarely when you go back is someone actually intentionally trying to destroy company value. It, it, it very rarely happens except when people feel exceptionally wrong or whatever reason.

So you have to wind the clock back with people's relationships and say, well, you know, when it was going well, or getting to look at it from another perspective about why someone has done what they've done, that they haven't done it as a malevolent. thing and they're not their nemesis, you know, that we really do need to try and recalibrate these relationships.

So I think going back into the good really helps as well. And taking that back to a time when they did have that respect and they did like them as well. Um, and that can really help. That's a huge part of our job as well.

Roger:  We tell ourselves stories about why we think, you know, why Garin is doing that and he's trying to sabotage me and yada, yada, yada when it's furthest from the truth.

So being able to get people to not only share their stories, but then to share the times when we have been able to work together to rewrite that story of what happened and then co author a story of what could be feels powerful.

Garin: Yeah, and, and an angle that we often take, so you've got two people that might be having a real difficulty and when a thing happens and they've invented or created a narrative around it, they don't go to each other to make sense of what's just happened.

Can I just check my, I'm thinking this, what, what. It's like, is this what's really happening that that very rarely happens unless there's a level of maturity or safety there. And that's where we, we work to get clients to what they'll have to do is they'll have to go off and talk to person C over here and say, Oh, you won't believe what they've done this time.

And this person doesn't, this person C doesn't realize. What an intrinsic part of the issue they are because they have the ability to actually pathologize the problem so badly by allowing that person to talk unfiltered and not challenge them or, you know, get them to take another perspective. They actually create a huge divide in the organization.

So we try and make it as three dimension as possible. So it's actually, you know, if you're. You know, this is almost like bystander effect. Like you have a responsibility to, to challenge them and to help facilitate them back into that so they can work it through as well. So again, that's another drive about why these things happen and why they start to then have camps.

And it becomes kind of sort of self fulfilling because the more they talk about it, the stronger they feel, the more distance there is between this person as well.

Roger:  When you think of joy. As a, or satisfaction as an outcome of using your superhero power. Do you also think of joy as a motivator? To employ your superhero power, or do you think of it just as an outcome?

Garin: Even after like doing it for nearly 20 years, you know, how it's going to feel afterwards, but I do think that there's a lot of performance anxiety that comes into it as well. And the anxiety, I think I've sort of learned to embrace. Through this, which is like, you know, as you're trying to put it together, as you're trying to do the research, and often these things are quite time limited, that, that the anxieties with it, but there's actually a kind of joy in there as well, which is like, kind of like, I know this is going to be hard.

I know we've going to have to really work hard to get this right. Um, you know, and then having a battle saying, look, it doesn't have to be perfect, we have no control over how they're going to consume this. There's only so much we can do. So all of those things is just starting to really enjoy the process of actually You know, research at speed, engaging all the stakeholders, getting buy in, making sure that people feel a sense of ownership, all those kinds of things.

Um, before it would have filled me with, you know, it would have been a really turbulent few weeks because it was a fast job. Now I've come to really enjoy it just to get on the ride and just know, and also just to, to be in the room and know what, whenever anyone comes up, even if it's. You know, not necessarily what you anticipated it to be, and they might even challenge you really hard, that that's okay because that's the system talking to you and you need to listen to the system and that's really important data and, and often those sessions where you do something and someone just like that, there's a thing that happens.

Um, and it goes against what you'd sort of planned. Those are the really big moments. Those are the big moments when you really earn your money and you go, right, okay, this just happened.

Roger:  Yeah, I love those those moments where say it's a two day Workshop or even even a workshop where you have a break and in that break the client or maybe your colleague comes up to you and they're wide eyed and they're scared because Something just happened that Blue up your agenda for what happens next.

And there is a little bit of like, you know, you said, enjoy the ride, like riding the OD dragon. Um, this is going to be like, this is what, this is where the energy is taking us. This is where we need to go. We need to dive into this issue because this is the thing that group wants to talk about, not the thing that maybe the client told us that we need to talk about, or, um, the thing that we discovered in our.

early interviews. There's something in the room that needs to be addressed. It's a, it's, you know, flashing red. It's, you know, the breaking news. That's where we're actually going to make a difference. Now, sometimes it could just be someone coming from, from, you know, out of, out of left field, out of the blue with an outlier issue that doesn't, that doesn't land with anyone else.

And we need to be able to discern that, but we can tell. Like, you can tell the energy in the room when everyone agrees, like, Oh yeah, we need to talk about this. And, and I love that, you know, having to dance in the moment to address that need.

Garin: And I think, you know, sometimes you just have mental models and you might say, sort of, um, things.

And I think I'm going to misquote. I think is it Mataruna? Um, they came up with the, um, the domains model, which is like, it's the domain. You're kind of tending to three domains at the same time in the room. Yeah. And this is why sort of experience helps you as an OD practitioner, because this, you're trying to focus on content and process, like you're trying to give them content so that they can then take what they've got and do something with it, but you're also managing a process, which is awesome.

Steering a process or facilitating a process. Um, and there's kind of three domains that you tend to say that you've got the domain of production, which is the delivery bit, like you're trying to deliver an outcome. You've got the domain of exploration, which is you're trying to explore what's going on.

And then you've got the domain of aesthetics, which is, you know, what does it look like? What's the experience? And, and, you know, you'll have sessions where you're really focused on, you're exploring what's going on. And these are not pretty sessions, you know, these are, these are ugly sessions. Like where we're not quite sure how to go on, like we're stuck, but we're starting to identify patterns and we've gone off the track.

And often those are the big things that sort of release you. So I think those are sometimes where you deliver the big breakthrough moments in the room. And I think, you know, there's been quite a few times where, you know, I've come out going, Oh my gosh, that was really tough, but it's delivered change because it can't go back.

They can't go back now. Things have been said in a way that have been really constructive, but you can't go back because it's been said now. Um, and those are the kind of things you're kind of working with.

Roger:  Yeah, that toothpaste is not going back in the tube.

Garin: That's a great metaphor.

Roger:  So what do you know to be true about simplifying complexities into actionable insights?

Garin: Insight without action means nothing. Earlier on, I would have thought, great, we've delivered the insight. They've had the ha ha moment. Great. The work is done, but it's just the beginning because again, the, the, the toothpaste is out of the tube.

Now you can't go back, but you need to give people a sense of agency that they can do it. So it's really important to balance it, you know, to make sure that, and also the word action sometimes can feel a bit strong, it's, it's almost like experiment. You know, they just start to do a few small things that, and often with systems, small things can often make all the difference, which is, which is again, quite a sense of agency.

The other thing to be true is, um, just because I find it really interesting, doesn't mean they will. They may not find it interesting and they may not be so keep trying a different way, keep finding a way to frame it. So it actually matters to them so they can deliver or get the value that they need in their world right there.

And then. I'm a big fan of, is it Derek, I can pronounce his name, Derek Cabrera, the, the systems guy. Uh, he says, he says things like, um, the truth will set you free, but it will piss you off initially. Which I think is great. That's often, that's part of what we're doing because, you know, people don't want to think about the human system because it's like, well, I've, I've told them to do it.

They're not doing it. And it's like, well, okay, I think it's time to induce a little gray here. And that reality that they need to learn to love. Can be really hard. And again, another thing that Derek Cabrera says, which is like, you know, reality will teach you a lesson and it will keep teaching you a lesson if you don't learn it the first time.

And so you have to help people to understand the human systems. But again, you know, there's a variety of reasons why they don't want to learn because they don't feel confident. You know, we, we, we work with a lot of very technical people that find themselves in managerial positions. I think that's just a fact of organization life.

You know, we, we like to promote people that are technically capable, um, but we don't necessarily have career pathways for them. So we make them a manager and therefore these people aren't orientated to human systems, so they don't know where to begin. Um, so again, that's a another thing that organizations could lot do, a lot more, lot more for their people, for is to resource 'em to take on these things.

Roger:  You were talking about leaders and the use of love. in the office as a way of having, you know, love for and affection for and care for the people, um, that they, that they, that are under their charge. What are you seeing as the role of love in the work we do in supporting leaders take responsibility, accountability for Leading teams.

Garin: Hmm. Yeah, it's a really good question. I think managers really struggle to show affection in the workplace when sometimes it's the most difficult. Important thing that they could do. It's interesting. So a lot of managers will confuse equality and equity, for example. So they will think that they have to be fair because that's the right thing to do.

But a lot of people in the organization will need different levels of support according to wherever they are on their journey, so they do show affection. For their people, but they don't necessarily show in explicit terms. They wouldn't say it, but you have to judge them by their actions. You know, the fact that they are trying to resource you, the fact they are going into battle, the fact they do pay attention to these things.

They can't necessarily say it because they don't yet have the words to say it. And we're working on that. We'll get to the point where they can show appreciation. Um, but, um, you have to see that in their motives and their actions, there's affection too. I've deflected the word love into affection here,

Roger:  which, which, I mean, it, it, it does still feel awkward to talk about love in the workplace.

I don't know how you can be an effective leader without having a sense of duty, care and affection for. The people that report, that report to you, maybe it needs to expand to the whole environment, not just the people that report to you. So you don't create, you know, a sense of tribes or clans within organizations.

Garin: Yeah, and I think we're, we make it really difficult for employees, don't we, um, in organizations because we say we want you to be passionate about your work. We want you to, you know, love what you do. Um, we want you to bring your whole self to work, but don't, we don't want to see all of it. And if you get really upset or you start to get emotion in the workplace, we don't want to see that either.

So we're kind of really creating this kind of double bind. For our employees. So I definitely think there's, um, French and I don't have the words. Uh, Dani, Dani speaks French. So, but French often is a much more subtle language than English. It has like different nuances in terms of different types of love.

I'm sure there's probably a better word for love that we could borrow from the French that would describe a, a really healthy, constructive love in the workplace that people can express. Without the other, you know, without muddying the waters or maybe we'll just feel, ah, that's a bit too much. I can't disclose that much.

It's an often overused saying, but people just work so much together, don't they? You know, you do form a bond whether you like it or not. And, you know, I think. The other side of love that's kind of lost in organizations is, you know, organizations, let people go for a variety of reasons. Um, and if you have really loved having a relationship with someone alongside you, that you've, you've worked together in really difficult things, you know, you've, you've overcome huge obstacles together.

And then that person isn't gone. We don't allow them to mourn. They just go and they're gone quickly and maybe they get an email saying they're going to pass just new, but we don't allow organizations to mourn and that kind of goes into that unprocessed trauma that goes into organizations as well. So, I think, and that can feed into a lot of conflict that we see where people then start to feel that lack of psychological safety because they've lost people that they've really had great relationships with that they've been really fond of, but they've not been allowed to mourn them as well.

Roger:  That's a very good point because I know in a lot of organizations when there's like a reduction in force the And as, as a, you know, leader, who's had to let large numbers of people go in the past, um, there's an idea of, Hey, you need to help your people move forward to the next thing, sort of, you need to get them through this grief or mourning period as quickly as possible by getting them focusing on the next possible action.

And that seems harmful. Because that sense of mourning grief, um, the, the, you know, end of love, um, like we've all had heartbreak before, um, and we know what that's like yet in the office. It's like, no, no, no, that's, let's go to the next meeting. That's work on the next deliverable. I'm like, that's denying our humanity right there.

Garin: Yeah, there's ceremony behind it, isn't it? You can't think of any other things in life where you spend eight to nine hours a day with a person. You literally communicate with them probably more than your own partner. And then the next day they're gone and never spoken about again. Like it's, it's just, it's a weird thing to just to do that.

And we never speak of it again. You know, and if we do, then it's, it's seen negatively. And then we may tell negative stories about what that person did, you know, cause we'd like to then blame them because that's what human systems do. So it's such a strange things. We don't, we don't slow things down. And I guess if I had one wish for organizations is just.

Slow down throughput increases when you do less things, you know, the reason why people go, let's go to the next and go to the next thing is because we just have this kind of narrative that, you know, we must get so much done and be busy. But, you know, if you don't slow down to mourn someone leaving, and we're not talking about.

Over theatrical, but just giving a chance for people to just acknowledge and have something symbolic, then that goes into the system and will manifest itself in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways that will really come back to, to, to damage the organization at a later stage.

Roger:  Garin, are you ready for the lightning round?

Let's go. Okay. Fill in the blank. Simplifying complexities into actionable insights is a lifetime's work. Who in your life provides simplifying complexities into actionable insights for you? I've mentioned to a lot, Dani,

Garin: my business partner, um, to really just go. Have we looked at it from this angle? And that just really, really helps.

Roger:  Is there a practice or routine that helps you grow, nurture or renew your ability to simplify complexity into actionable insights? Weirdly, it's

Garin: exercise. Sometimes you just need to step away to get a sense of perspective. You know, you, you're exposed to things as you're doing it. You go away, you, you go to the gym or go for a run.

And then. I'll often then have some insight and go, actually, I think I know what it is.

Roger:  The way it's been described to me is you're kind of throwing the problem to the subconscious and you, you know, occupy the, the prefrontal cortex and the, you know, what you're gonna, what you're gonna be thinking about, but the subconscious continues to work on the problem.

And that's where we have those like Eureka moments, like when that brilliant idea shows up in the shower or on the run or whatever, you're not. Whatever you're doing that's not focused on the problem.

Garin: Yeah. The answer is very rarely. Let's throw more hours at it. For very, very few things. Does that work?

Roger:  Is there a book or movie that you recently read or watch that you would recommend?

That has simplifying complexities and do actionable insights as a theme.

Garin: I've just recently read, uh, polarity intelligence was just a really nice, refreshing way of approaching polarities. It's, uh, two really lovely ladies, uh, that are practicing it in the medical field and how they doing it. And it's just written in a really nice, clean way, which is exactly as it should be, don't make it too complicated.

Um, and I, I really. Recommend the ready, um, at work with the ready. It's a really good podcast that, uh, Rodney Evans and some of that we've had on the, on the, on the podcast called Sam's Berlin. And they, they're in the field that we're doing. They're, they're, they're knees deep in it and they just have a really practical way of talking about it and making sense of it and, and kind of labeling it in a way that makes it, okay, it's, let's normalize it.

Uh, and that's the thing about how we approach it. What

Roger:  is

Garin: one

Roger:  thing that gets in your way of your superpower?

Garin: Having too many thoughts about what it could be,

so, so over complicating it. That's, that's the kind of skill. So being very mindful of my energy so I can feel energized by an idea of that would potentially be a good way of looking at it and making sure that I don't get carried away with the energy that it's grounded in where they are. You know, it's going back to where they are.

So it is quite a lot of sort of like, you know, going back and being very aware of where I am and my energy levels. Um, a guy called James Longwell that we interviewed from Google goes through a process of grounding himself. I think those, those things are really important. Um, so sometimes in a session, you know, I'll just actually do like a little bit of exercise just to ground myself through a little bit of meditation or whatever, just in the moment, just so that I'm just more, um, more with them.

Roger:  No, I love that. If a listener wanted to ask you a question or follow you, where do you want to point them to?

Garin: We're very active on LinkedIn. So we sort of have a philosophy that we want to share our best stuff. Um, we want people to use it. So if you connect with me on LinkedIn, uh, it's a great doing it. We post a lot of things.

We'd love people engaging with us. Um, and as you very kindly mentioned, we, we're, we run, uh, the org dev podcast. It's a podcast that we, we run it's weekly. Um, and we interview brilliant practitioners. Like yourself, who are doing, making meaningful and significant change in their organization. It's basically, it's the org dev podcast, and you can find it on YouTube or all the normal, um, audio channels.

Roger:  Garin, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your superhero power of simplifying complexities in the actionable in insights. Um. I loved so much of what you said. And I feel like we're going to have to continue the conversation because there's so many things I wanted to talk about to go deeper.

And, um, so thank you for your time, for your wisdom. And I'm looking forward to the next time we get to talk.

Garin: Brilliant. I've really enjoyed it. It's been a really great experience. So thank you, Roger.

Roger:  Okay. Be well, bye bye.

Thank you all for being with us in this conversation. And thank you, Garin, for sharing your expertise and facilitating agency and ownership and problem solving through your organizational development work. The question I'm asking myself now after this conversation is where can I be better at stepping back from problem solving?

And be better at stepping up and facilitating others to own and solve their own problems. What do you know to be true is a three blue pens production and I'm your host Roger Kastner. We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on go to native lands.

ca. Okay. Be well, my friend.

Okay, my instinct is that we'll be faster than last time.

Garin: Yep.

Roger:  One of the reasons why I stopped being a project manager, I'm not good at estimating time. Okay. I think no one is.

Garin: It's just a case of just, you've learned the hard way.

Roger:  Well, you do, you do interview great, smart, Handsome, intelligent guests. And then there's me, but they can't, they can't all be winners.

Um, I do like how you have the one plant kind of like my, my one plant. I have you seen the comedy between two ferns? Yes. In like professional settings, people will say, Hey, is that you know, like between one fern?