PPP 512 | Science-Based Principles to Lead Change That Sticks, with Julia Dhar and Kristy Ellmer

Speaker A: Hey Xandy.

Speaker B: You know, welcome to episode 512. Before we get started, I want to let you know you are about to listen to our absolute worst audio maybe

Speaker A: in the history of the podcast. And it's kind of a long story.

Speaker B: After the interview, I shared a little

Speaker A: bit of what went on.

Speaker B: But I gotta tell you, this interview with Julia Dart and Christy Elmer, despite the audio being so bad, hang in there. I think you're going to learn a lot from it.

Speaker A: Thanks for joining. Hi Sandy. You know, I'd like you to think back to times when you were part of a change at work. I mean, maybe you're trying to roll out a new process or system or you're delivering a new product or service and you're trying to get people to adopt it with, let's say, the same enthusiasm that you or your team had for it. I mean, I can think of changes over the years where senior leaders were trying to implement large scale reorganizations. At the beginning of these, change maybe sounded like a good idea, in fact in some cases maybe obvious one. But then somewhere along the way, things got harder. Um, people heard the same message, but they took away different meanings. Leaders thought there was agreement, but there was more tension underneath the surface than what they realized. And people may have been included, but they didn't feel ownership. What sounded clear in the kickoff or announcement email just didn't translate into follow through. Those of us leading teams and projects, we are in the change business perhaps more than we realize at times. And since so many change initiatives fail, um, today's conversation is for us. I'm joined by Julia Dahr and Christy Elmer, um, co authors of How Change Really Works. Julia is a managing partner and director at Boston Consulting Group and founder of its Behavioral Science Lab. Christy is a managing director and partner at BCG as well, where she leads BCG Transform in North America and co founded, uh, the Behavioral Science Lab. In today's discussion, we're going to explore why leading change can just be so hard. We're going to talk about change, distance and false consensus, what it really means to give people agency, and why behavior change has to be earned rather than assumed. We'll also get into the role of stories and symbols and so much more. It's a thoughtful and practical conversation and I think it'll resonate with any one of us trying to lead projects and teams and change efforts more effectively. Can't wait to share it with you. A quick note. I want to invite you to join our Lead52 family. It's a global Group of leaders who are committed to transforming our ability to lead and deliver. It's 52 weeks of leadership learning delivered right to your inbox, taking less than five minutes a week, and it's all for free. Learn more and sign up@getlead52.com thanks. Let's jump into our discussion with Julia and Christy about how change really works. Hey, Julia Christie, thank you for joining us on the People and Projects podcast.

Speaker C: Thanks for having us.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've been looking forward to this. You know, Kristi, you mentioned the acknowledgments that your parents taught you to embrace change. I thought it's interesting that you said actually seek out uncertainty in life, which I could not say necessarily for my parents. What's an example of how that happened and perhaps how it still shapes how you think about change today?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: Yeah. I love that you call this out, because I feel like it's foundational to sort of how I think about change. And this idea of, uh, you know, very early on, my parents sort of instilled the idea that, uh, if you lean into uncertainty, if you actually take that sort of road, less travel, you don't know where that could be. So it might feel uncomfortable, but ultimately it's going to make you a stronger person. And so they were both military, and so they leaned into that. You know, we're going to kind of put ourselves out there and see what we learn. And they traveled the world with it. And so they sort of raised us very early on in our family to say, like, there's a couple of choices. Which one's going to be the most important that might give you more opportunity than you think. And so for me, that's played out throughout my entire life. I've always looked at every choice and said, I don't know what that's going to be. I don't know where that's going to lead. But I do know it's going to make me different, stronger, different version of myself. And so it actually, in my career, played out. When I first got out of college, I was offered a job at Delta Airlines, and they were in bankruptcy. And I remember people asking me, like, why are you going to a company that's in bankruptcy? Like, you know that that means they're going to let people go. And I thought, well, you know, I'm in my early 20s. Like, imagine what I can learn in this process. And to this day, that experience has been so foundational to everything that I do and how I think about my career and how I execute My programs,

Speaker A: you told me before we started recording. It actually almost spoiled you in the sense of you saw change done really well, and then you go elsewhere and you see change isn't done quite as well. So, uh, good for you for making that call, Julia. I thought it was interesting to learn how you compete as one of the world's top debaters before your time at bcg. And so I'm just curious where your interest in debate began for you and maybe how that shaped how you think about leading teams today.

Speaker C: You know, not only was I a debate kid on the Australian debating team, I was also a debate coach for, uh, another country when I first came to the United States for Harvard University as well. And I think that experience is actually what really shapes me. Many of your listeners will probably be

Speaker D: familiar, like, with the idea of a

Speaker C: debate or you've seen one in Southern Benchmark during an election campaign.

Speaker D: But we have a big idea on

Speaker C: the table, uh, and two teams or groups of people go back and forth about something. And that was always compelling and interesting to me. But the thing that I think was really formative about it was in order to do that really well, be skilled at doing that, to teach other people to do it really well, the thing you have to get right is some shared reality. That's what social psychologists call it, shared reality. We have an agreed set of facts. We're really clear and specific about the problem solving. Obviously, in competitive debate, we agree on nothing outside. For every point. You have a set of arguments, I have my set of arguments. But even more importantly than that, the only way for you to win is to directly respond to yours, to actually enter your reality and say, having heard where you are coming from, here is my response to that. And I think that idea of saying, first we got to define, let's draw a circle of a reality that we share. And then once both parties have agreed to step inside that circle, now let's be curious about where the other person is coming from, why someone would believe what they believe. And I think as a foundation not only for thinking about change, which obviously we do a ton, but actually doing change in the real world, helping human beings say, the thing that I believe right now doesn't have to be the thing I believe ever. And it's entirely possible that I can change my mind about an idea, another person. I can change my mind about myself and who I am, too.

Speaker A: It's so rare these days, though, Julia. Right. I feel like. Like we had some friends, their kids were in Chicago not too long ago. They were participating in a debate thing, and they go, you have to argue this side of it or that side of it. You don't even have to agree with it, but you have to argue that learning to get someone else's perspective and to be able to argue well, that is so rare. We're just arguing our own position, not trying to understand other people's.

Speaker C: Right. I think the, ah, tragedy of it is that we so often find ourselves in situations and including in projects where we're basically just waiting for our turn to talk. Like, as soon as Christy's making her point, then I get to say my thing and let me really focus on that rather than internalize what she is saying. One of the leadership teams that I work with a lot, who I love, actually really embraced the idea of literally debating. And so where they knew there was a lot of disagreement in the team, made the project manager, who was very in favor of doing the project, as many project managers are, argue against doing the project, brought in the skeptical team, made them argue, um, for doing it m as a way obviously of building trust between people, but also saying, look, there aren't two teams here. We're all on the same team. What we're looking for is the very best answer for how to direct the time, energy, passion, resources of our organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I love that. And once again, rare. But you can see the value of something like that. You know, I think of change discussions we've had on the podcast. I think you both have probably endlessly read, uh, books and research papers to get ready for this. There's no shortage of advice about this. But Julia, let's start with you, then I'll follow up with Christy. Julia, what's something leaders are often told to do that sounds completely reasonable when it comes to change? Change, maybe even wise, but in practice tends to just not get the results that they hope for.

Speaker C: There is so much attention in the beginning of, uh, any kind of change, any large project from a, ah, leadership team around just getting started. Like, if we can get past all of the meetings and just get started, um, and do it. But one of the things that we trip over or we miss is something that I think debate actually teaches us really well, which is do we have a true agreement? Like, if you walked out of the room and I said, what have we agreed to do? Why did we agree to do it? And then how precisely is it going to get done? Would I get more than one answer, um, to that question? That's the trap that we talk about as a false alignment trap. You get to the last five minutes of the meeting, I've heard the plan. Um, usually someone very senior, uh, looks around and says, okay, are we all right? And then someone is thinking, I am really not. But we don't have time. Someone else is thinking. So I like the general idea, but I don't think this plan is going to work. But I don't want to derail it. Someone else might have a whole other set of questions or concerns. And it's so easy for us to say, I am aligned. So we want to disrupt that behavior. Uh, and say a really simple thing you can do is just say, instead of talking about whether or not we're aligned, start asking, do we agree? Start describing specifically the things that you are agreeing to and not. And that extra psychological step of commitment. Agreement still psychologically very real to us. Generally speaking, we want to try and keep your. The agreements and commitments that we make to ourselves and one another helps you overcome that trap at the beginning as saying, well, let's just get going. And one of the things Kristy reminds us all the time is that also is a moment for the leaders to look inwards and say, oh, maybe I also will have to change as part of this. Like, it won't be the kind of change where I get to tell everyone else that they have to change while I get to stay with a second.

Speaker A: That's good. I think there's advice that endlessly says, get alignment.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: It seems reasonable. It's even wise. Or here's a set of questions to ask. But it's not as simple as just saying, get alignment. And that's just as simple as asking these specific questions. You have to be deeper. And I feel like your book does a good job of that. Christy, what else would you add that maybe is common advice. That, uh, maybe, though, sounds wise, sometimes false flat.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's. There's a couple of them. I think probably the one I would say is most important next to what Julia said, was the idea of involved employees. So there's always when you kick off a big change, right? Have you gotten the employee feedback? Right. Have you talked to employees about this? And often it can be kind of what I would call like a tick box exercise. Somebody looks at it in a meeting and says, hey, we're working on this change. Does anybody talk about the employee? Let's get their input. Maybe a survey is done, maybe a workshop's done. And then we say, okay, we have the input and so let's go forward. Right? And we make maybe some shifts or Changes. That is not the same as what we sort of identified as a need in successful transformations. We identified it as you need agency. And so there's one thing to involve people, and that is an important step. So don't get me wrong there. You want involvement, you want influence. But really successful change really creates agency with the employee base. And that idea of, uh, they actually own a piece of it. And so there might be a workshop that you are running and you're getting that feedback. But then what I would suggest is actually saying, okay, now how do we break down that project and create little pieces that the people that were in the workshop can actually own, because they're actually going to do more if they feel they're part of the change? And we talk a little bit about this in the book, um, around a study that was done called the IKEA Effect. And what it found, basically, is that people who built IKEA furniture actually had a higher perception value of that than furniture that was actually more expensive.

Speaker C: And it was really.

Speaker D: Because it was sort of your blood, sweat, tears put into that. Right. And I'm sure anyone that's built IKEA furniture, you have a harder time letting it go, or if you're going to put it on Facebook Marketplace, you put it at a value that's higher than it's probably worth, have a harder time getting rid of it. And so the idea of, uh, you know, we tell leaders, go get involvement, go hear from employees, M. And they'll go do it. But it kind of feels like theater if it's just hearing from them versus what, uh, really good leaders do and what really strong transformations do is really give agency to those employees.

Speaker A: Yeah. The difference is fundamental. I can think of times where we were all in the meeting, we were involved, but it wasn't agency. And, you know, I thought of when you talked about the IKEA Effect because I just smiled at that section. I just thought it was so insightful. When our youngest kids are involved with making dinner, it's the best dinner they've ever had. What? Because you support what you create, you know, it's, uh. That's the IKEA Effect. Uh, Julia, your book makes it clear that there's this thing called the Invisible divide, which I never heard it said quite that way. And it's called the change distance. Right. So what. What do you mean by change distance? And then I'll ask Christy for an example.

Speaker C: Well, I can actually show you right now, Andy, if you're open to it. Could we do a version with you of an experiment that We've now run a few thousand times or so. Andy, uh, a change is coming to your professional life, and you don't yet know the exact type of change, its impact on, um, you or the people that you care about, and even specifically what it will be. But just really quick first reactions. How do you feel about it? Negative, neutral, positive.

Speaker A: Yeah. So you know the equivalence and I'll answer the question. But a lot of people listening will be like, AI is going to change this. And I'm feeling nervous about this. Right. So it's a, uh, maybe a negative bent to it.

Speaker C: Yeah. And actually, when we survey individual contributors, the vast majority of people in organizations all over the world, they're not allergic to change. Almost no one is very negative about change. But a good number of people are neutral, slightly positive. When we survey senior executives, often the C suite leaders who decide change, do you want to take a guess about how many of them say, oh, I feel positive about that.

Speaker A: I see recall from the book that the leaders had a much different, like there was a higher, I believe, when they were running the change. Right. People are going to love this idea.

Speaker C: By the way, thank you so much for doing the homework. We really appreciate it. You're exactly right. About 2/3 of executives, actually very much like Christie, they say, oh, I feel positive about that. And there are lots of good reasons for that. They probably had the benefit of, uh, positive experiences of change having a lot of control over change in, uh, their own lives. So about 2/3, 70% of them, feel positive about change. For thousands of employees, that number of people who feel positive about change is less than half. And the reason we run that experiment is to say, that's neither good nor bad. But remember, you didn't have any information about the change. And so it is extremely important that instead of talking about change, why don't we instead talk much more about the humans and how they behave and invite executives to say, what might the people in this organization be thinking, feeling, doing as soon as they start to hear that a change is coming? Because that experiment that we use to illustrate change distance might sound a little silly, but I bet for a lot of us, many of your listeners, that is for sure the way a lot of the time a lot of people find out about a change coming in an organization.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, probably more than we'd like to admit. It seemed to me for a while now that there's like this inverse relationship between power and perspective taking. Like, the more you get that, it's like, I forgot what it's like to be them. So this seems like a brilliant idea, but I've lost that perspective. And I don't know, Christy, I mean, you could probably have an endless number of examples of this, but can you think of a way in a real change effort? You've kind of seen this divide.

Speaker D: Yeah, it plays out a lot. And, uh, you know, it's interesting. And you said as you get born at that level, you kind of forget what it's like to be them. The interesting part, and we talk a little bit about this in the book, and I talk about this with CEOs all the time and C suite leaders, is the idea of there's also. Even if you were at that level, you're somebody who's made it to the top, and so you've probably actually benefited quite a bit from change and you have a positive experience with it. So often what we find is they sort of project that feeling of like, oh, well, when I had a change opportunity, I took it. But you also have to remember that person might not be looking to get to the top level, and so their perspective is different. And so even when it's sort of, you know, this idea of it's good for them or forgetting what it was like to be there when they were there, they were probably wired a little bit differently. And so that distance becomes even larger, if you will. And what we see it really play out is early on in a big transformation or a big change. Because where you have is, if you think about just the word of what Julia said, we're going to go through a big change. How do you feel that is the starting point. Usually you have the top team who's been thinking about this anywhere from a couple of months to maybe even potentially over a year. And so they've been identifying what they're going to do. They're thinking about how they're going to do it. They're trying to come to agreement. And so then they finally launch. So not only do they start in a place of saying, I'm positive, just with the idea of it now they're working on it right back to that agency point they've been building it. And so when they go to then announce the transformation or the change, there's usually some big fanfare around it, and they're sort of going, okay, great, now everybody's excited. That distance just got exponentially wider. And so what we see is that idea of, uh, it gets harder when you first start because you have executives who feel like they've been doing change and transformation for a Long period of time, are, uh, very excited about it. They feel like they've done their part, they've launched.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker D: Like, we've launched, we got communications out, we do the roadshow, we get 60 days into it, and they're sort of going, okay, Like, I feel kind of done with my part. And it doesn't mean that they don't want to be part of it or sort of challenge it, but they feel like a lot of their heavy lifting is done. And the reality is the organization just getting used to the idea of it, and it's the organization. Right. And I always talk about this as flipping the bear bed. If you're at the senior top and senior leaders and a chance change effort, uh, you need to flip it and think about, I work for them, I work for the employee base because they're the ones that are going to have to do all the change. And so therefore am I building a

Speaker C: system that works for them.

Speaker D: So if you've just kicked, um, off, you've built all this excitement, they're just getting used to the idea, and they're the ones that have to change. You have to really think about, am I closing that distance, am I getting them on board? And there's probably a lot more time needed to actually keep closing that distance. Even when you think you've done all the right things and you've gotten started, reality is like, you are just warming m up. Right.

Speaker A: Uh, that's so good. I see Nicolas in that section, which to me is like one of the top five ideas in the book, at least for me, was ironically, these people close the distance with customers. I think was that in that section, they realize that's important, but we don't think of our employees as customers. I don't know if that's truly part of flipping the pyramid, but I think that's part of it. Right. We're looking at it differently.

Speaker D: Yeah. Andy, it's such a good point. And I think this is something Julia and I have been talking about for a couple of years, is like, if you look at organizations that we work with the level of intensity, they think about their customers or clients about, like, the effort they put in the data, the research, you know, the panels. And then we sort of say, we're going to do this huge change, we're going to change how we operate, it might be in service of those customers, or find that we're going to do all of this great work and we announce it and then we come to the sort of internal side and just go, we expect Everyone to kind, uh, of do take it up and realize it's going to be a good idea doesn't mean there aren't still some good communications and some skill building. But the comparison of how much is invested on the sort of client side versus the internal side is rafting. And the reality is you're never going to get the outcomes if you don't put that effort into the internal side.

Speaker A: I thought that was a really good connection. Ralph said yes. Now that makes even more sense. You know, Kristy, you mentioned a former BCG colleague who's known for saying context drives behavior, which drives performance. And, and I'm just curious, from your perspective, what does that mean in practice? And why does it matter so much when leaders are trying to drive change?

Speaker D: Yeah. Eaves Moreau, he wrote this idea of sort of smart simplicity and the idea that basically, if you think about culture, the context people are operating in is that's what's actually driving the performance. So if you set a certain environment around them, they're going to drive different behaviors. So think about it as incentives. Right. Depending on what you want to incent, you change the incentive. You hope to see a behavior shift. And so the idea is in a transformation or any change you need to be thinking about, uh, what is that context that I'm setting? What is the environment I'm setting? There's a great story we tell in the book about World War II pilots. And actually there was quite a long period where some of the top pilots were actually getting many fatal accidents. And so they actually hired a guy, the government hired a guy named Paul Fitz, where he really was a psychologist. He was trying to figure out why were the pilots making all of these errors. And what he actually discovered as he got into it is the cockpit had such poor design. It was actually confusing human instincts. So they had this great cockpit that they spent all this time building, but it wasn't designed with the user in mind. Basically came to the conclusion that the plane was failing the pilots. It wasn't the pilots failing the planes. And so what they did is actually redesign the controls in the cockpit around human behavior. So they made switches bigger. They put the ones that are sort of the most important ones close to the hand. And then what they saw was a big increase in sort of success of these pilots not making these errors. And so we take that story and we think about it as, okay, what, as a leader, are you doing to build the right cockpit to drive the change that you're looking for? And so that idea of the context Driving behavior. What is that cockpit of, uh, how are people going to pick up this change? How am I supporting them? Do I have the right things in the right places for them to be able to make it easy for them to make the change that they, they need?

Speaker A: Because you could easily blame the people of your organization. Right? They're the pilot. Like, it's, well, hey, our people. Like, I'm trying to think, Julia, what's a. What's a most common one? I think it'd be like our people just don't like change. Is that, Would that be it? Like you blame the people?

Speaker C: Yeah. Like if you get. Well, it turns out that people just

Speaker D: don't like to change.

Speaker C: That's a really high common cliche. People are just not that motivated or not that engaged or, uh, people just cannot appreciate, like, how good this is. They know how lucky they are to get to be part of my change program. Or they're just like, not, like not quite skilled enough, not quite smart enough to really get what we are trying to do here. And it's so easy. Blame is often a really natural, not as not good, but natural response to mistakes that we push that outwards when

Speaker D: things are not going well.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, it's so much easier for me to see this in other people, but when I'm doing it, it's a little bit more difficult to see. But that's why I like this book. I hate it. I like this book because it just. I have to look at the mirror as well, you know, like, when am I doing this sort of thing?

Speaker C: And that's the exact invitation. And so to give everyone an example that potentially you've experienced in your, um, real life this week, we call this the fundamental attribution error in behavioral economics, which is someone is late, maybe like quite late for a meeting with you, and maybe it's the second time, for example, in a row that it's happened. And you start to say to yourself, my gosh, they are disorganized and not committed. And I just cannot get it together and to be there on time. And maybe you're the other person in that situation. And you might say to yourself, oh,

Speaker D: well, I had like, a very like,

Speaker C: reasonable, like, set of things happen to me, like, totally out of my control. Like if there was traffic, some other external interruption caused me to be like, maybe even, um, something more important. But I am still a good, conscientious, committed person. And our desire to maintain our own image as a good, conscientious, committed person, committed contributor is much, much More common than our instincts to be empathetic, forgiving, understanding, when exactly we observe exactly the

Speaker D: same behavior in others.

Speaker C: And so, as Christy would say, first the, uh, leaders have to look within.

Speaker A: Yeah, your book does a good job of that. Someone told me once they said, avoid the BSL narrative. Bad, stupid, lazy. Because when you go to the BSL narrative, it's usually not appreciating the context. It's really the fundamental attribution. Right. We're jumping to character instead of context.

Speaker C: A younger person in my life said to me the other day, maybe a good thing to assume, um, is that it's an issue, not an ish them.

Speaker A: I like that a lot. That's good. Julia, one of your first principles in the book is get true agreement, not false alignment. And you write that humans seem to be hardwired to overestimate how unpleasant disagreement will be. I can fall into that trap. So why does that make true agreement so much harder than leaders realize?

Speaker C: This was a fun puzzle, actually, because we started out this research agenda and we, our co author, Phil, asking pretty simple question which is, are, ah, people allergic? Are they averse to change? Clearly not. But they want it to be done well. And when it is, people really want to participate in being better themselves. However, are, um, people allergic to conflict? Averse to conflict? Clearly, yes. And that is the very hardwired, uh, instinct not to disrupt the ecosystem of which we are a part. Of course, there are a ton of other hierarchical and social and cultural elements that play into how that shows up. But generally speaking, we fall into a cognitive trap, um, in a category called faulty effective forecasting errors, which is we hugely overestimate how unpleasant it will be to have a conflict or to have a difficult conversation. And another Julia, Julia Linson at Harvard University does some phenomenal work on just bringing that forecasting error, uh, to the surface. We worry about ourselves. We think it would be really unpleasant for me to have this conversation. Also that it will be unpleasant for you, for the other person, and it might lead to you liking or trusting or respecting me less, it seems like the opposite is true. That actually productive, respectful conflict focused on solving a problem that comes from a place of mutual respect, shared goals not only makes it much more likely to solve the problem like the number one way. There are not many guarantees in life,

Speaker D: but I guarantee you the number one

Speaker C: way not to solve a problem is to avoid talking about the problem 100% of the time. Not an effective strategy. But the more that we talk about it, not only are we more likely to Be successful. But very often people report two things happening. Number one, they say, that was a huge relief. I'm so happy that I did that. I don't know what I was worried about the whole time, but that actually having the confrontation, having the conversation, increases the trust and respect between individuals over long term.

Speaker A: So ironic, I think of. I mean, I'm married, above myself in so many ways, but my wife's family would have, like, these big fights over dinner while we were dating, but by dessert, everything was fine. In my family, it wasn't like that at all. So I'm like, well, it just happened here. Like, takes me like a week or two to get over it. But by learning how to disagree in. In that case, a loving way, like, in a respectful way it was dealt with where it just. It is interesting. I imagine family culture can lead into this, but we just have, like, we're hardwired. Like, we can't have this discussion. And so it leads to the problems.

Speaker C: And such a.

Speaker D: Such a good, real world example.

Speaker C: I feel like your wife is also very lucky, by the way, and I'm glad you have also joined this family. But we don't say, ah, enough. Oh, this is just someone's personality, like,

Speaker D: uh, good at conflict or bad a

Speaker C: conflict, obviously not like it's, uh, a learned skill or it comes through exposure. And so I could imagine, even as an adult, that you show up in this context and you are saying to yourself, oh, my gosh, this is the most awkward thing that has ever happened. The family is falling apart. It's so terrible. How quickly can I leave again? But actually, over, uh, the decades of sedimentary rock, that is, like, family dynamic, it's become quite a productive way to

Speaker A: deal with things sometimes. Who are you and what did you do with the guy I dated, but we joke about that, but, you know, it is fun. And, uh, I really appreciate that point that with this, whether it's disagreements or any of this, it's not like a DNA thing.

Speaker B: Like, we can learn this.

Speaker A: And it's predictable. There are patterns, and your book is filled with that and even vocabulary. I mentioned this earlier about the vocabulary. Christy, you have vocabulary in there about the false consensus effect. And how do you personally try to. Because I've talked about how I struggle with some of this stuff. Like, you know, Christy, how do you personally try to catch yourself when you're falling into that? So if you'd explain that.

Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely, I think so. The false consensus effect is really this idea of, you know, I think in the book we talk about Ice cream. It's like, if I love vanilla ice cream, I assume that more people like vanilla ice cream, right? And it's an overestimation of how many people actually like it. Because, again, I'm living my lived experience, my world, and I assume everybody does. And so what you see in the workplace, too, is people doing the exact same thing, whether it's at home or in the business, right? It's like, I think this. Of course, everybody must think this. And so the thing is, we kind of referenced this a little earlier. You need to recognize that about yourself. And it's not a, you know, it's a, uh, problem with Andy. He's always thinking about himself, right? It's actually how you're wired. The brain is wired to be solving for you at all times. And so this idea of I think this, so more people must think this.

Speaker C: And that's true. So I think one is just knowing

Speaker D: it, and then two saying, okay, when that's going to happen, how am I going to actually solve the system around me to make sure that I'm not falling into that trap? And so often for me, what this looks like is I find people that are more disagreeable with me, right? There are people who I naturally want to go to to sort of validate things or ideas. There are other people that I know

Speaker C: will always challenge me.

Speaker D: And so making sure I surround myself with a couple of those people, it's not as fun, by the way, but sort of saying, like, this is what I think. What do you think? And hearing them. But I've actually asked those people to say, even if you agree with me, right? Give me the perspective of what somebody else might be thinking. And then in other ways, I'll see. Go to other people that I know that typically agree with me and say, I know you might agree, but right now I need you to play a contrarian for me, right? So tell me what those things are. And, you know, it's funny because you mentioned learned behavior. You can actually get better at this. And I work with a lot of leadership teams on how do they get better at this. And it feels really weird at first, right? We do some very funny things. So, you know, if there's going to be a real big problem that nobody wants to talk about because no one wants to have the hard conversation or debate, and everyone's kind of like, it's fine, it's fine. We actually will put a stuffed elephant in the room and have somebody say, no, I'm going to put the elephant in the room. And they physically. You can imagine C suite leaders putting an elephant, like moving a little plushie into the center of the table. And it's on them to bring up the hard conversation to make sure that they aren't so. And sometimes you'll actually say that has to happen in every conversation. And it kind of comes back to what Julia said. Like, you might agree, but your job is actually to make the case for people who don't agree with.

Speaker C: And then what you start to do

Speaker D: is build that muscle over time.

Speaker C: Of, uh, course you don't agree.

Speaker D: And so now there's a smooth thing to do it. It's kind of funny, feels a little weird. But actually we've named it and we have a ritual around it. And so it makes it easier for me to then say, I actually do disagree, and be able to put it on the table.

Speaker A: Um, you know, don't we all know people that we can go to them and they're going to agree with us? Right? They'll be like, brilliant, Christy, Brilliant Julia. Like, we know this. So I can think of somebody in particular, and I won't say the name because they may listen to the podcast, but sometimes people don't like this person on their team because they'll say the things that you don't necessarily want to hear, but you need to be surrounded by some of those people, or at least I think, if I understood you well, are willing to play that role if necessary. And so we don't just lawyer up with people who will, uh, back us. And I've actually heard some people using AI Personas that try to describe alternative Personas and then run scenarios by those Personas, you know, Julia, do you have any thoughts on it?

Speaker C: The idea of, uh, the useful nuisance in a team, the antagonist in the system, is so important. Some of you might be thinking about your teams and saying, ah, I know who it is. And the second really dangerous thing behaviorally that can happen is it's one person at all the time, they are the difficult person, and we come to plan on them to provide all of the conflict. And so this idea of saying we're going to make it easier, but also expected for everyone in the room to raise questions, concerns, put a hard issue on the table, is super important, while also welcoming criticism, like welcoming concern that people have, as well as continuing to do either way, what really good international negotiators do, people who negotiate on behalf of their countries, which is continually refine and update all of the things we are agreeing on. We could at least agree that it would be good for us to make progress on this issue. Can we agree it would be good if we understood one another? Okay. And so I'm progressively expanding the amount of reality that we are sharing without ever assuming that you are agreeing with me.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. We've talked a little bit about your second principle about, uh, increasing agency, not just involvement. And, Christy, I'm sure there's all kinds of examples of how we can do that poorly, and we talked about some of that just by inviting them or not. But can you think of any additional things, Christy, that practical ways that people increase agency just to get a sense of some of the ideas from that chapter?

Speaker D: Yeah, as we think about it, just, you know, there's true ownership of the actual work. But then if you think about the change being a bit of a movement in the organization, if you will, so this idea of, can you rally around very specifically what we're trying to do? And so how do you create moments within that that allow people to have agency? So one of the things I like to do anytime we're going to have a kickoff and we're going to announce this transformation once m. We first launch it. The first few weeks, I actually ask people to vote on naming the transformation, and then you crowdsource the ideas, and then people can sort of vote, yes, no, Right. And then somebody gets rewarded for being the person that names it. And then you actually bring them in to think about, okay, based on that name, how else could we brand this? What else could we do? So now people had a chance to kind of weigh in. That's involvement. But now you create an agency with sort of one or two people that actually feel like it, and it's simple. You're going to name it something anyway. So. So how do you find these little moments where you can pick something up and let somebody sort of own it? Another idea is we would actually highlight in one of my transformations every month, the business problem of the month. So we would say, here's three or four problems that we're struggling with. People would vote on them and then come up with ideas on how to fix it. And you could see it very publicly, and then whatever one was selected as one, that group of people were given resources to go tackle that problem. And so it sort of reinforced for people, too, that if you keep raising issues, we're actually willing to invest in fixing them. And we're going to make you part of helping fix it, because it meant enough for you to raise it that you were willing to put yourself out there. And so I'm always looking for, what are these? There's, uh, the very specific, how do you break down the transformation into smallest pieces so people can own a hit? But then how throughout, are you looking for moments where you're going to do something anyway? So why not open it up to the entire organization and allow them to own pieces of it?

Speaker A: And the book has so many good ideas of that. We talked about agreement, we talked about agency. But even if those are in place, it doesn't always mean that things are going to stick. And so I was not personally familiar with the phrase take up. So, Julia, that's in your domain for sure, actually both your domains, for that matter. But what do you mean by take up? And what does it look like maybe when it's missing? And when it is missing, what do leaders tend to think the problem is?

Speaker C: I'm on a publicity campaign for the idea of take up is one of the underappreciated concepts in behavioral science. And one of our former colleagues, Cass Sunstein, and one of his research collaborators. Take up is incredibly simple. It is where we know that there are things that will be good for people to do. It would be beneficial for them to do them. Often people don't do them. There's a very famous line from the movie Field of Dreams where you say, if you build it, they will come. Um, and it turns out that in real life, if you build it, often they still don't come. That's the problem that take up is actually trying to address. And the really simple way in which we try to ask leaders to pay attention to this. Okay, we've defined the change step number one. What are these specific behaviors that we are expecting an individual or a job title or a location or a shift to do differently in the future? Can we get really specific about the behavioral change that we expect in order to get this benefit? And then question number two. Is that probable? Not even is it certain. Is it probable that given the amount of, um, available resources, by resources, it's really important to note that we, of course mean money, but we also mean time, attention, the amount of cognitive load for a person, given the current level of, uh, skill, like actual technical capability on doing the thing, the extent of motivation, engagement for the change, is it probable that people would do this? And you talked earlier about our concept of customers of change is a bit like asking the question, why would anyone buy this? And if you don't have a great answer to why would anyone, um, buy this? That's an invitation to go back to the drawing board and say we don't need a business case, what we need is a take up plan. And until we have a really good quality plan to get take up from the people who we are expecting to change, we shouldn't go any further. Uh, and it often doesn't show up in quite that way. You often get the opposite of that. Co author Phil on an alternative title for the book. Um, you'll see in a moment where we didn't choose it which words shut up and change. And it's so often instead of saying let's pause for a moment, let's ask ourselves why would anyone buy this? We don't exactly say shut up and change but other expressions like people will just have to get on board or people will need to find a way or we'll just deprioritize some other things but without ever actually deprioritizing them. And so we want to bring the humans way further up in the change planning process and just ask what do we need people to do? Is it probable that they will do it? And assume that if you build it there's still a really good chance that they won't come unless you make it easy and attractive, natural for them to do so?

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, even when you know it's going to be good for them but that doesn't mean they're going to come. And there's so many things I like about the book but you also include examples of people who do this well and so Christy used ah, Etsy as an example in the book. What did they do to help create take up.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's a great example. It was one of our favorites. Just why we kind of as we were looking for stories to bring to life picked them because you know, so Etsy, it's hopefully most people are familiar with it but you know it's a bunch of collection of small business owners who sell sort of their um, own projects, their own actually services on, on the Etsy platform. And so you can imagine so Etsy has this big platform, it's all online and they were having some challenges actually with the website stick. So you have a lot of very unhappy small business owners who are sort of depending their livelihood on some of these things and um, what they were struggling with is how to fix it. And what they were finding is as they were asking what was going wrong with it, there were a lot of people not speaking up.

Speaker C: They didn't talk about mistakes, they didn't

Speaker D: share what was happening. And really what Etsy did was actually identify the real barrier to what was happening was the fear of speaking up. And how do they actually systematically remove the fear of speaking up? Because by having that there, we weren't actually just able to solve it. So what they really did is actually redesign what they called the environment, kind of back to the sort of cockpit. Right? How are you redesigning the cockpit? So they created these very specific mechanisms where every time there was an outage, they would bring together these sort of what they call blameless postmortems. And it was really not. The questions weren't who caused this? It was all, how did this happen? And then really, you know, coming up with actions against how did it happen? And then what they would do is actually create rituals around this transparency so they would have internal messages talking about what was broken, how did it happen? Then they structure, like a review process, but again, very specific questions around this idea of, how did it happen? Not, huh, who did this? And that was actually removing the fear. So you had many more engineers who had made even themselves raise that. This is what happened. And so it became much more a learning environment that then ultimately led to sort of fixing the problems that they were having. Had they not actually changed that environment, they would not have been able to fix this because people were so fearful of raising the challenge that they were or the mistakes that they had made.

Speaker A: I think there's a quote attributed to Deming, who said something like, every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. And I love that because I think whether hardwired or it's our nature, we sometimes want to go to the blame. But if you do what Betsy did and what you're talking about here in the book, really, throughout the book, it's look at the context, look at the system, what allowed the people to do that, involve the people.

Speaker D: And Andy, I think you're so right on this. And the thing that we found, it kind of comes back to that, like the customers of change idea, because executives don't come at this, again, trying, um, to sign up for failure, Right? If you look in our data, you have the 75% that are failing. If you look at what executive executives think, it's almost 70% of the time. They actually think it's when they start these things that it's going to go well. So I think they go into it, but they're designing for the outcomes that they want, not necessarily designing for the process to get to the outcomes and that focus on that. And are we building the right process in the right context, then drives the outcomes but so much as leaders, we're so focused on outcomes, um, which, by the way, that's how we're measured. That's exactly how it works. The context we're being put in and. But that idea of actually to win and to get to those outcomes, um, I need to focus my time differently on am I creating the right context, the right cockpit and the right process for people that's actually going to get me to those outcomes. It's actually something Julia and I talk a lot about things that we want to change or we often joke around fights we want to pick. And, um, I'm on this mission right now to get boards to think very differently about transformation and change. Because so often, and I sit in so many board meetings, the conversation is, how are we against the measures? Right. And the measures are all on these what things? What are we changing? Are we delivering the numbers? Is it ebitda, Whatever those measures are, so much time is spent on it. There's very little time spent on is take up happening. How are employees feeling? And the reality is, all the data shows if you focus on that, you're going to have better outcomes on the things that they're actually looking at. And so we're sort of on this mission to also retrain boards to create a better context for their leadership management teams to say, no, it's not just on the outcomes. Like, you should be thinking about how you're incentivizing to make sure the process is really good and the employees are really taking up, because then you're more guaranteed to get to your, um, outcomes.

Speaker A: You know what that reminds me of when you say that, Kristi, is your principle on sharing stories and symbols, not just dollars. And you know, I, uh, don't know, Julia, anything that comes to mind to you of what is it that makes it stick? Because when I hear those metrics or those outcomes, it doesn't stick with me as much. Right. It's more focused on that as the story isn't simple. So what is it that makes a story stick? And maybe an example of a leader who you think did that?

Speaker C: Well, we know what doesn't for anyone, which is really narrow, focuses on financial targets or numbers, they almost none of us are getting out of bed for another 25 basis points of margin. Even, by the way, when we study people who are highly financially sensitivized people, very experienced finance or investing professionals, the human brain is wired for stories and symbols. We want people to tell us and to, uh, show us you all have a sense, by the way, What a great story is. People who are video game players, you all like know what a really well architected story is. Like fans of like action movies for example. Really compelling stories do I think three things. They capture your attention, they are told in a way that facilitates your recall. That is they're easy to remember but even more importantly they're easy for you to repeat. Right? It doesn't sort of get muddy as it goes all the way through your organization and they activate your motivation and your behavior, uh, their invitation to actually do something. Generally speaking that means your story should be short and specific. We say there are basically three types of stories that you want to tell in the context of um, change. And you can start by saying what is my strategy? What is the actual project? One is a threat story. We must change or we will die. We have to shift. The second is a fitness story. We need to continue to get incrementally better in order to keep up. We need to maintain our overall fitness. And then the third type of story is a destiny story. By taking this action, we can become um, who we were always meant to be to realize our full potential and reconnect to the purpose of the and um, the possibility of the organization. Threat, fitness, destiny stories. And note that they don't say and by the way, we will also continue the transformation m of the hardware infrastructure engineering team which we somehow want to get an extra bullet point on the page. And so people who do that really well, uh, incredibly audience focused, are really sensitive to the experience of the audience. We were very inspired often throughout the specifically here by Delta Airlines. And one of the things that Delta Airlines has now been doing and for many years is a program that is an annual storytelling called Velvet. And Velvet is basically an opportunity for uh, employees all across the airline, 100,000 people who now work at Delta Airlines to interact with senior leaders and executives to not only hear their priorities and to provide feedback to understand the current story of the airline, but also to be appreciated for what they are doing to contribute to that agenda. And at the heart of that is a really simple story which is at Delta Airlines, if we take really good care of our people, they will take impeccable care of our customers. And that is basically the job of leadership and our specific priorities strategy can change in response to changing circumstances. Leaders take really good care of their people, who take really good care of uh, our uh, customers and collectively everybody is able to thrive. Such a simple story. And then when you reinforce it with symbols like executives, like you are not only welcoming hosting appreciating really consistently, like throughout the year, uh, throughout the business cycles, there are employees, people start to say to themselves, oh, uh, not only is that story true, but I am a character in the story.

Speaker D: I understand the way in which I

Speaker C: have been told and also show what matters here.

Speaker A: And I was thinking when you were saying that the, uh, Ford story with Alan Mullally, and everyone likes a good comeback story, right? Was that how it ended? And it was short. It was. You actually believed this is going to work, right? You could buy into it.

Speaker C: Exactly. I think that idea of just asking, is there a heroic mission here? As one of our colleagues, Martin Reese, would say, what is the heroic mission? Because while people might say, I have complicated thoughts and feelings about change, if you say to someone, do you want to be better? And would you like to be a part of something bigger? Generally, people would say, I would. I very much want to be better and I would love to be included in something bigger.

Speaker A: So many things I'd love to talk to you both about. But let's end with this because we have a lot of parents who listen to the podcast and Chris, you talk about how important it is to understand emotions during change. That was actually one of the other principles. Any advice for parents that can change the way they respond to their kids as, ah, they're going through a change?

Speaker D: Yeah, it's a great question, Andy. One of the things that we've loved so far we're hearing in the feedback early from readers, is how much they're taking some of these insights at home, right? The idea you're talking about the IKEA around you, the kids making a meal, it's their favorite meal when they've made it. Right? So that idea of, uh, some of these principles have been so helpful for people at home. And, um, you know, I think one of the things that's always been a struggle for me when I've been a transformation officer, when I've sat in that seat, is this idea of everybody wants to heat map things, right?

Speaker C: This idea of we have too much

Speaker D: going on and like, how do we know if the organization's tired or, you know, we often hear leaders saying, like, the organization's tired.

Speaker C: I can feel it.

Speaker D: And it was driving me crazy because I kept saying, like, we don't know that. And so it, um, became very clear. I wanted a way to measure what we call cognitive load, which is really a foundation of emotions. And so how are we measuring emotions to figure out where people are at? And so what we've spent a lot of Time in the research is learning that, like, these emotions can change, right? And they can change with new information. They can change with your confidence level. And so as we've kind of come up with this tool that we're using, we've really identified 12 different feelings that people experience through change. And so when you think about it at home, identifying that actually, what are these emotions and how can I help shift them? So, for example, you know, if somebody is feeling very anxious, one of the best things you can do is actually create confidence. Um, so, you know, if someone's taking on something new, think about your kids taking on something new that they're nervous about, right? And you feel that you feel the anxiety. The idea is actually the anecdote to that is confidence. And so how can you actually help build the confidence just with, like, a compliment of, like, you can do this, right? Actually giving them an example of two or three things they haven't done before that they were able to accomplish. And say, you know, you've done this before, right? And name off two or three things that they overcame when they had anxiety before. And what you're going to see is that confidence build, because you're not just complimenting them, you're actually giving them an example of you've overcome these things before. And it starts to build confidence. And so what that does is the anxiety goes down. And so I think coming up with, like, what are those few things that can build confidence when you're having some

Speaker C: of those emotions through change is really

Speaker D: what helps people kind of get it, still be there, but they'll be able

Speaker C: to move, move a little bit faster and a little bit more comfortable with it.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's so easy to see that in a work setting, but also outside. I appreciate how you connected that, Julia. Another idea from the book that you found maybe surprisingly helpful outside of work

Speaker C: for yourself, try to remind myself that for all of us, everybody wants to be the hero of their own story.

Speaker D: We all want to be part of,

Speaker C: uh, something significant, um, and important. And none of us want to be a victim. Everyone wants to be a hero. None of us want to be a victim. And the beautiful thing about relationships and projects and the communities that we live in is each of us has the opportunity to be a hero for someone else. Like the invitation to let people be a hero, to feel the agency, to have designed an environment where change is actually really natural, where we get to tell that story to a bunch of

Speaker D: other people, uh, who might find it

Speaker C: inspiring to celebrate, um, that success. And so I hope that one of the things that people take away is to say any of us can take on the title of hero maker and it's not enough to be a hero. Instead, I really hope that people think

Speaker D: about how they could be a hero

Speaker C: maker for someone else.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a beautiful way to end it. You know, for those listening, we've only touched just really a few ideas available in Julia's and Christie's new book. If you'd like a practical, empowering guide to, um, help you lead changes that truly stick, get a copy of their new book, How Change Really Works. Put links to the book and the book's website in the show notes for this guest. So, Julia, Christy, thank you for joining us. People in Projects podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you for having us.

Speaker D: Thank you very much, Andy Foreign.

Speaker B: Special thanks to, uh, Julia and Christy for joining us here on episode 512 of the People in Projects podcast. Okay, so here we are, 512 episodes into this podcast, and guess who forgot to hit record on my end when the conversation started with Julie and Christie,

Speaker A: who do you think? Yep, it's this guy.

Speaker B: And thankfully, their publicist was also in the virtual meeting here, and they hit record separately. Like, uh, that never happens. It's usually just me and the author. So we have a recording. And I'm glad you may have noticed that the audio quality was not really what we might normally have. I'm just so thankful it was captured. Definitely a lesson learned on my end. And regarding the episode in the book, I'd say some key things I took away from preparing for this is, let's remember that every project is also a change effort. Uh, that may be obvious to you, but I don't think we always think of it that way. I mean, we often focus on things like scope and time and budget and risk and deliverables. But we need to remember that every project also changes behavior. We're asking people to adopt something new or let go of something old, perhaps, or work differently or think differently. Often it's shifting priorities. That's why it's so important to remember that project leadership is really ultimately deeply connected with change Leadership, like another big thing I took away from it and we talked a little bit about it in the interview. Is that false alignment? It's really bad. People often think we're in agreement when we're actually not. I mean, they can nod in meetings, they can say we're aligned, but they can easily have different assumptions and priorities and interpretations than what we think they do. So. So what they talk about in the Book, I think, really helps us understand that that is a true concern. And how do we get that alignment? And finally, I'll add this. Let's remember that involvement is not the same as agency. You know, we'll often ask for feedback, right? Or invite people to meetings and run workshops to include people, socialize ideas. But maybe people still don't feel ownership. And why? Because involvement without real influence, it doesn't create agency. Remember, a lot of times people, our, uh, teams, the people around us, they feel like these engagement efforts that we do feels kind of performative really. And maybe people comply, but that's not the same as committing. Perhaps they feel included, but they're not really empowered. And maybe we really need to think about this. Did people actually have ownership here? Do they have ownership or did we just communicate with them? That's certainly a big difference. If you get a copy of this book, I'd love to hear what you take away from it. You can reach me@showpleopleandprojectspodcast.com whether it's from the book or today's discussion, let me know what resonated with you. If you'd like more on this topic, I put links in the show notes to episode 343 of with Gary Lloyd. He wrote a book on change and it uses the metaphor of being a gardener, not a mechanic. And you know, there are a lot of helpful ideas in his book based on that idea. So check out episode 343. I think you're gonna like it. Episode 342 is with Krister Ungerbach and I think it's a great follow up as well. His take is that if we can change our words, we can change our teams and our organizations. Sometimes there's just little shifts that we need to make. I think you'll find that helpful as well in episode 42 with John Cotter. If there was a Mount Rushmore of change experts, perhaps only people in the US will get that metaphor. But I'm telling you, he'd be on that monument.

Speaker A: His face would be there.

Speaker B: So you can hear from the Harvard professor himself in episode 42. Look in the show notes to get links to each of those episodes. And of course you could have Pamela help you. You know about Pamela by now, if you've been listening for a while, it's Pamela, PM ela. And the PM stands for Project Management. The L stands for Leadership. It's our custom GPT that I've been curating for many years now. And it helps you understand podcast you've Got questions? Or if you've got questions about project manager leadership, check out links in the show notes as well as from our website, people in projectspodcast.com to learn more and talk with Pamela. You know, if you're interested in helping your teams level up their ability to lead and deliver, I'd love to hear from you. You know, I was talking to somebody just recently that was a listener, and they're like, you know what? Um, we've got some people, they're not necessarily project managers, but they want to get better at this, and that's what we do. We do it with companies all around the world. So reach out to me@showpleandprojectspodcast.com I'd like to start that conversation with you. Well, you know what? There are so many things you could be listening to instead of this right, Right now. So your support over the years. I've just heard from somebody that's been listening for years. Thank you so much for reaching out with questions and comments. It means far more than what you know. So on behalf of me and my team, thanks for listening.

Speaker C: Hi, this is Santosh from Bengaluru, India. I'm a listener of the People and Projects podcast because I like thoughtful conversations that blend people skills with practical execution. Thank you for joining us for this episode. Stay tuned for some outtakes. Have a great week ahead.

Speaker A: Hey, that's a wrap. That was fun. Thank you so much.

Speaker C: That was so fun.

Speaker D: Andy, I feel like we need to do this over dinner. I could talk.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was.

Speaker A: I was just hoping for, uh, Just a lovely conversation. I think we, uh, I think we got it. You both play well together. And I. And when I looked at the clock, like, oh, I'm taking more of your time than, uh, than I should. So I apologize for that. But I think we gave people a taste, right? I think we gave people a taste of the books.

Speaker C: Oh, I hope so. And thank you, by the way. I'm honored by, like, what a deep reader of the book that you have been. I hope it's a service to you.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, I, uh. Actually, you both made it very easy to do that, and for that matter, but it's just, you know, like, I interviewed John Connor a long time ago, and I just felt like I am struggling to get through this jungle here. And nothing against him, he's brilliant. But it's one of those things where a book that makes it practical. You're good storytellers, obviously. And so, uh, I just think actually writing a book together, it's one thing to write a book by yourself, but actually co authoring, like that's a project. Any project management tips from doing that?

Speaker D: I didn't say that. Dandy. Because when Julia was talking about the idea of, you know, starting to get the list of what are we agreeing on, we had to put some of these principles in place on ourselves through this process. Right? So when we started this process, we actually created a list of principles and how we were going to operate as an author team so that we could keep coming back to them. And you know, the idea of like, nothing's personal, so if Julia's putting an idea, and I disagree, it's not anything against Julia. So we had to keep coming back to these principles to make sure we were able to keep making forward motion. And then we actually put some of these principles on place in terms of the book, principles on ourselves and the tactics to make sure. Because there were moments where we disagreed, right. Or last minute, I want to change this or that. And it was sort uh, of like, nope, go back to first principles. How are we operating as a team? Just like we ask people to do in the agreement chapter, right?

Speaker C: Those are what we agree to.

Speaker D: We're going to operate that way. And then really through the debate discussion, you know, actually following those, that feedback on how to have good debate. And we even use the word like, we're going to have a debate on this topic. It wasn't a, we're going to come to, you know, I have an opinion, you have an opinion. It's like, nope, we're putting the word, it's debate. We're having debate time. And then it would open up every meeting with like, does anyone have any debates to put on the table? And so we really practice the self and ourselves throughout the process.

Speaker C: I love that.