Episode 150 - The Living Organization with Norman Wolfe

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Leadership window podcast with Dr. Patrick Jenks. Each week through a social sector lens, Patrick interviews leaders and experts and puts us in touch with trends and tips for leading effectively. Patrick is a board certified executive coach, a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, a best selling author, award winning photographer and a professional speaker. And now here's Dr. Patrick Jenks. [00:00:30] Speaker B: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Leadership Window. This is kind of a milestone episode. It's number 150150. So Norman, you got in on a special one. We are, we're gonna jump right in pretty quickly here. Our guest today is Norman Wolf. And this whole topic is so relevant in my coaching world that we're talking about today. It is, it's all about the organizations we lead. And you know, we, I mentioned it in the last episode that it turns out organizations are people. Well, they're, they're made up of people. And so these last couple of episodes we've had an opportunity to get sort of into what I call the people side of the work. We spent some time on some technical things and now we're back to just leadership. And I just, there's just so many questions that I have for our guest. Norman is the founder and CEO of Quantum Leaders and he is the creator of the Living Organization Framework, which is what we're going to talk about today. And it's a framework that CEOs actively use to move through execution breakdowns and lead amidst uncertainty. Anybody? Anybody lead there? Anybody been there? You have any relationship to uncertainty and execution breakdowns? This is for you. After 40 plus years in leadership, including executive roles at Hewlett Packard where he ran a $1.2 billion global operation. So this, this, we're talking about a qualified, experienced person here who's got this framework and this theory and this experience in the crucible leadership. But during that time it became clear to him that organizations are not just machines. And this is going to be the heart of our conversation. They are living, evolving beings, these entities, these living beings and leaders need new tools to see and influence what really drives results. So Norman is based and he's coming to us from Vancouver, Washington and that's right across the river from Portland, Oregon. So up there in the Pacific Northwest. And he comes to us with, I just can't wait to Norman, thank you so much for one, reaching out to us and letting us know the work you're doing. I've not yet read the book, but I just got it, so I'm going to read it. I've started reading it. The concept is absolutely Amazing. [00:03:18] Speaker C: It's. [00:03:19] Speaker B: It's the Living organization. People can pick it up probably from your website, but also on Amazon, which is where I got it. And we'll promote this again at the end of the show. But quantumleaders.com and actually now the livingorganization.com two places you can go to connect with Norman and his work and see more about what he's doing. Norman, thank you. Welcome to the leadership window. [00:03:47] Speaker C: And share my ideas with you. [00:03:50] Speaker B: Norman, hold on, hold on. I had you on mute, so I'm going to go back and say that again, and then I'll edit it back in. So, Norman, welcome to the show. [00:04:03] Speaker C: Thank you, Patrick, and it's an honor to be here. And thank you so much for having me and sharing my ideas with your audience. I look forward to our conversation. [00:04:12] Speaker B: Well, boy, I do, too. And I want to try to unpack this in a way that. That resonates with people who might not have read the book yet, but I just think all this is so relevant. Let me start by asking you just say a little bit more. I mean, in my introduction, you know, I talked about how your work at Hewlett Packard and your. Your four decades in leadership kind of led you to this realization that organizations aren't machines. Can you say a little more about that? Go a little deeper into what has brought you into the work you're doing now? What were those signs and signals that told you that. That gave you this. This epiphany, so to speak? If that's what it was. [00:05:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I would actually call it close to an epiphany. Thank you, Patrick. I guess my starting point, as I reflect back, happened really early in my career. I was working for Pratt and Whitney Aircraft at the time. I was a young engineer just out of the university, full of excitement, full of promise of what was to come and looking forward to a new career. And I remember the supervisor I had at the time was talking to one of my co workers, and he made a comment that puzzled me. His comment was, when you come to work, you leave your personal life at the door. I couldn't understand that. What do I leave at the door? Do I take off my right arm? My left arm? How do I. How do I extricate myself from my personal life? [00:05:51] Speaker B: Yes. [00:05:52] Speaker C: Not long after that, not long after that, we, a group of us working in the. In the lab, were talking about just how excited we were for what we were doing and for the work we were doing and how much we love it. The same supervisor came in and made the comment, if work was meant to be fun, you would be paying us to come here. Workers work. This is not Disneyland. I mean, I was literally flabbergasted. I was probably what, 22, 21, 22 at the time. But that really actually gave me insight, unconsciously, of course, to what I was going to face for many, many years. This, this belief that people are. Get the results necessary for the organization and not to have fun, not to feel engaged, just to get the work done. And that pattern kept revealing itself over and over again. Later on in my career, I had the opportunity to work in for non profits, to, to be part of some really engaging, interesting non profits. A couple of times I was invited to be the chair of the nonprofit, as I am actually right now. And one of the things I noticed in the nonprofit world was people would come to the nonprofit after spending a whole day at work, where they left work exhausted, unenergized, they come into the nonprofit and they come alive. Like, wait a minute, why are people at work feeling low energy and people coming to the nonprofit feeling excited and energized all of a sudden, where did that energy come from? And so it was like, why can't we have that at work? Why can't we have that in a normal day to day business? Of course, I also noticed that the nonprofit world tends to lack some of the, what you might call business discipline associated with what we consider, you know, business. And so a lot of these kind of events and then, and then I think the, the epiphany moment you were referring to is in the early part of the 2000, around 2002, 2003, two things happened to me within a year of or so of each other. One was I was rethinking my consulting practice. I've been consulting since 1988. So this is about 12, 13 years into the practice. What am I going to do? What should my focus be? What, what have I done that's made an impact? You know, we all go through that periodically, revisit what we're all about. I was talking to a client who I've worked with for probably a decade by that time, and asked him, why do you keep hiring me as a client? And he said, norman, that's easy. You help me execute faster. And I realized, wow, that's what I do. And then, not, as I said the second moment, not too shortly after that was a friend of mine was asking me again, what did I do? And I was explaining, I'm a consultant and I focus on helping organizations execute faster. She asked me the question, what makes you different than any other consultant? And my response actually, in many ways surprised me. Without even thinking, I said, I think it's because I see an organization different than others. I see it as something alive, with a purpose, with a soul, a purpose to make a difference in the world. And she said, you should write a book, which put me on a path that I am still on today. So it was those. Those experiences that. That led me to question, why is business failing at 70% in terms of executing strategy? And that statistic has not changed for four decades now. So that's kind of my story, Patrick. [00:10:03] Speaker B: Wow. Well, it makes sense that you're doing what you're doing now, given that story. Boy, so many. I thought of several things as you were telling that story, and I've probably forgotten three of them already. But I just. I want to get into. One of the things you talked about was, you know, do I take my right arm off? Do I take my left arm off? You know, check yourself at the door. [00:10:29] Speaker C: Yep. [00:10:30] Speaker B: What? One of the terms that you hear a lot is work life balance. [00:10:33] Speaker C: Yes. [00:10:34] Speaker B: And how. And the whole premise of that phrase says that your work is different from your life, when in reality, no, it's a major part of your life. There's not work life balance is. Is implies that, you know, you can. You can wear the hats exclusively, and you really can't. And so I, you know, people trying to find work life balance are often struggling because they're. They're putting it in terms of time spent at the office or how much overtime am I working or how much time am I spending with my kids. Those are all important. They're great. But it's. It's just balance by itself is the word. Right. We're just trying to create balance in our lives. [00:11:22] Speaker C: Absolutely. And. And balance comes from doing things we find meaningful. This goes back to my little experience with the non profits that I was talking about earlier. Balance comes from finding things that are really meaningful. Even the term balance feels a little off for me. Nobody goes around saying, do you have parenting balance, parenting life balance in your life? Do you have spot of soul life balance in your life health? [00:11:53] Speaker B: I mean, health life balance. [00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, nobody. Nobody asks those questions. So why do we ask the question about work life balance? And it's because work has been constructed as if it is something other than a. As you said, a very significant part of our life, which it really is. I mean, think about the number of hours we spend at the. What we do to provide for our families. You know, it would be funny if, if back in the day we went to people and said who were back in the hunter or gathering days. Do you have hunting life balance? When you stop thinking of it, it really is silly, isn't it? [00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so there's, there's so many other concepts we could use. You know, I, I like that. I love the term energy which you use. Yes. Because finding balance, you could also say is, is a function of managing your energy. [00:12:57] Speaker C: Yes, it is. [00:12:58] Speaker B: And, and finding those things that I tell people that the ideal place to be. And I know everyone's not there and sometimes it's systemic things that keep people from getting there. But to me the ideal place to be is when your job, which, when your job gives energy as it's taking it. So for me, my energy is circular. It takes energy to do what I do and to do what you do. It's, it requires energy, thought and, and work and facility. Whatever the stuff is, it takes a lot of energy over a period of life. And so someone told me once that time is not replenishable, but energy is. And so how do I, how do you get your energy back? Well, the ideal place is if what is actually consuming energy is also circularly giving it back to you when your work energizes you. That's a powerful thing. [00:13:53] Speaker C: You know, Patrick, I had never thought about it in those terms, but you're 100% correct. I look at my life and my life is full of energy, full of excitement, full of a lot of things to do. But the things I do don't train me. And I hit, I think as I reflect on your, your image, your, your framework there, what makes it circular. I think a lot of it has to do with whether we are doing it, whether we are doing that which we want to do or that which we have to do. The notion of doing things we have to do drains us a lot. The notion of doing things we want to do, even, even to the point of excitement because we get to do these things, that, that energizes us, that that means we're feeling positive about our lives. We're excited about the efforts we're putting forth and we're fed by that excitement. And I think that's, you know, it goes back to what I said about the non profits world. People get energized when they're doing something they volunteer for. They do it because they want to do it. And I think that makes a big difference. And that's, that's hard to achieve. When you think of the organization you're in as a. As a machine, be optimized. Because in that framework, that way of thinking, people are really nothing more than component parts. And, and it's hard to get excited about coming into work, leaving my personal life at the door and becoming a component part of a machine. The old cogs in the wheel kind of notion. No way can we feel energized by that. [00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that. So one of the phrases we use a lot is systemic. Right? Systemic thinking, systems design. I'm, I'm doing systemic coaching, systemic team coaching, for example, those kinds of things. And you know, we, we are systems. Our bodies are systems. We have a respiratory system and a nervous system and a skeletal system. We have all these systems. And, and as a human, we are part of a system. We're part of humanity, we're part of Earth, and as part of Earth, we' of a system which is a. It means systems within systems within systems. [00:16:17] Speaker C: Yes. [00:16:17] Speaker B: And when we think about systems, it's hard sometimes to separate that from. I'm going to come back to your word machine. [00:16:24] Speaker C: Yes. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Because often when people hear the word system, that sounds mechanic. Yes, it does, and it somewhat is, but it is also living biology is systems within systems. [00:16:39] Speaker C: Here's the difference in the machine paradigm. And, and I use the word paradigm a lot because it represents something very deeply significant paradigms, me mean. The term paradigm means the model that I have that represents the world and my role in it. [00:17:00] Speaker B: The lens. [00:17:01] Speaker C: Yeah, the lens by which I see reality. And, and so it, it forces our thinking to be a certain way. So in the machine paradigm, it is a system. My coffee maker is made up of component parts that work together as a whole system that takes coffee grinds and produces a cup of coffee that I am enjoying right now. So it is a system. Everything in life is a system. Here's the difference. You can have a mechanical system or you can have an ecosystem. Which, which lens are you going to look through? If I look at the system of business, or more broadly, the system of organization, and I correlated to a machine, think about how you're going to look at that system and you're going to analyze that system and identify that system. If I look at it as an ecosystem, there's a different component part. I could say that. And it has to do with the interdependent nature of the parts of the system. My living organizational system, called my body is a system. There's no doubt about it. The heart, the lungs, the respiratory system, the nervous system, the Digestive system systems are within systems within systems, each a living entity. The microbes in my, in my gut, as we are learning more and more, have a huge impact on everything in this system. But the system also has a huge impact on the microbes in my body. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Right, right, right. [00:18:46] Speaker C: So I like to look at organizations. I like to look at life in general as ecosystems within ecosystems within ecosystems. [00:18:54] Speaker B: We. [00:18:55] Speaker C: Very different way of looking at it. [00:18:56] Speaker B: We have talked about. There's a, there's a book by Alnor Ibrahim on measuring social impact. It was one of my, one of the books I used during my doctoral research that was so helpful. He describes different kinds of nonprofits in this, in this particular case. And there are, there are four of them that he describes. The first one he calls is a niche organization. This really. I want to get your take on, on how this relates back to your living organism or your living business model. So the first is niche. And that's just an organization that, a nonprofit. Very clear. This is who we serve and this is what we do. Like a food bank. Very niche. We do one thing. We give food to people who need food today, period. That's it. We're not, we're not measuring their, the success in their life long term. We're not connecting it to anything else. We're not helping them with housing. We're not. This is it. We feed them meals. We are a food bank. That's what we do. Very niche in those organizations. It's really, it's much easier for them to measure their work because the output is the outcome. How many people do we feed today? But then he talks about the next level of organization, which is what he calls integrated strategies. And these are organizations, they do more than one thing, but all toward one fairly insular mission. So, for example, if you take Boys and Girls Club, okay, their mission, they affect the kids that are in their program. So it's fairly insular. But they might have multiple programs that they're throwing at the same mission. They might have a parental engagement program, a youth fitness program, a leadership program, an after school tutorial program, all the same organization. They're doing more than the food bank is doing in terms of number of strategies, but they're all integrated strategies toward a bigger mission. And then he gets to the organization that we're talking, that I believe we're talking about. I've just thought about this correlation. So. And it's called the ecosystem organization. And that's the organization that realizes that they are not in a vacuum. That if you're, if you're in the work of affordable housing. You're part of an affordable housing ecosystem that includes everything from HUD to education to economic development and municipal strategy of community development, neighborhoods, faith, community. I mean, you're now homeless organizations, shelters, transitional help, wraparound services. You are part of an ecosystem, and you realize that you have to work in sync with, to the degree possible, the rest of the system and hope that the rest of the system also realizes they are a part of the system and you are a part of the system. And that's that living, breathing thing that makes. Not that niche organizations, by the way, aren't also living and breathing, but they very much are. [00:22:13] Speaker C: Yes. [00:22:14] Speaker B: That ecosystem organization now is not. Not only is the organization a living entity, the system that they're in, all of their stakeholders and stakeholder groups, all of it's a living system, not a machine. [00:22:31] Speaker C: You know, it's a wonderful way to describe it. And I would say they're not really separate elements that, that model the niche, the integrated in the ecosystem. They're unknown callers, components and subcomponents of the same more complex system. What we're really talking about is components of a very complex ecosystem. And I use the word complex because what you really described is not very distinct elements, but increasing complexity. Right. So the niche organization that you talked about, the niche nonprofit, the food bank, whether they know it or not, they're part of an ecosystem. [00:23:26] Speaker B: That's right. That's true. Yeah. And I don't want, I don't want people, I don't want our food bank leaders out there going, hey, wait a minute, we know we're part of an ecosystem. He's talking about, you know, sort of business structure too. [00:23:38] Speaker C: So, and, and so if we put that in place of any organization and we can put it in the same model of, I call it increasing complexity. And he did a really good job. The way you describe it. I think the model is very helpful. My niche parts of me are things like my heart. Yeah, my lungs, my digestive system was a niche. They have very clear roles to do. My. My heart does not pump my lungs. It feeds my lungs, but it doesn't pump my lungs. Right. So if I'm just a heart, I am just focused on what I do, and I want to do that really well. Now I also ideally would recognize that I am in relationship in an ecosystem, relationship with my lungs. I don't want my lungs to become a heart, but I do want my lungs to do what they do, and I want that to feed me the oxygen into the blood that I'm going to pump around and I want to feed it the blood that it needs to use. It's the same thing in all aspects of life. And the thing I want to introduce into this conversation is the notion of maturity. Because what you're really talking about is levels of maturity, which is a ability in one way. It's the ability to understand where we are in a very complex ecosystem and how we are contributing to it. And I use the term maturity. I chose that because it's easy to relate to a parent developing the maturity of a child at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, maybe up to 8 years old, probably 3 or 4. The, the child only knows their little niche and they focus on that and it's all about me, me, me, mine, mine, mine and so forth. As it starts reaching 8, 10, it becomes sort of an integrated system. I'm part of a family, right? What I do affects everybody and what they do affects me. And as we grow more and more mature, it's like, okay, it's family, it's work, it's friends, it's multi generation. I mean it's. The complexity increases and we can handle. The more mature we are, the more view of the complexity of the ecosystem increases. Those are two very key elements within the living organization framework that I, that I built in. Just the way we're talking about it, A individual in an organization is a niche organization in and of themselves. They bring a certain focus. They're part of a team. [00:26:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:34] Speaker C: The team is part of the various departments. The departments make up the whole organization. The organization itself is part of an ecosystem of the industry. The industry is part of an ecosystem of our country. Our country is part of the ecosystem of the youth of the world, etc. Etc. Etc. [00:26:53] Speaker B: Yeah, and you mentioned the word team. And one important thing there in, in my experience and, and learning is that for a system to operate as a living organization, you have to understand the difference between groups and teams. [00:27:11] Speaker C: Yes. [00:27:11] Speaker B: And what is the team doing? That is the team is almost like an individual in that it has a role as a team, not as each person on the team has their own role, but the team has something that it's doing that only, that can only do as a team, as an entity. There's a. I gotta throw this one in here too. Your analogy back to our just sort of life journey, back to this niche, integrated system and ecosystem is. There's a fourth organization that Ibrahim talks about and that's called the emergent strategy organization. [00:27:48] Speaker C: Yes. [00:27:48] Speaker B: And these are organizations that are piloting things that haven't been tried yet. Yet. They're experimenting, they're testing, they're bold, they're taking risks, they're trying to stretch the boundaries and push the envelope and all those things, they're doing things that are not yet best or evidence based practices, but they're emerging as potential strategies to do things. And that. What made me think of that again, as I had forgotten it earlier, is your word maturity is. Or you have to be at a pretty mature place to operate in an emergent strategy space. [00:28:27] Speaker C: Absolutely. That's exactly what I was going to say. So again, if we think of it from a person's point of view, we move from living by process and structure and rules to following something a little bit more. Hesitate to use the word faith based because I don't want to imply religious orientation, but a belief in something so strong, such a strong belief in something that we're willing to move down that path without really knowing the path forward. And that requires again a level of maturity, confidence, belief in what you believe, you know, solid belief in what you believe in or your vision, whatever you want to call it. It's different level of maturity to be able to engage that. So level of thinking and living. [00:29:22] Speaker B: Really good. Let me if I can dive into a real practical aspect here. Now coming back to the book and the idea of the living organization. [00:29:29] Speaker C: Yes. [00:29:30] Speaker B: You're differentiating between a machine and a living organization. [00:29:34] Speaker C: Yes. [00:29:35] Speaker B: So here I'll just throw this out there as kind of a challenge. Right. A coach, a provocative thing. [00:29:40] Speaker C: Go ahead. [00:29:41] Speaker B: Are they not both? So, for example, if we think about the business, the machinery part of a business, like the business model, the way that we go about finding our clients, our systems, our accounting system, our HR systems and legal systems and revenue and expenses and how we've set up our structure and our brand identity and those kinds of things, there are very mechanical aspects of business. And then there are also the, the people that make the business unique, make the business work, make it what it is, make it a living organism. So is it, is it an either or, or? Is it a both and. [00:30:35] Speaker C: Yeah, that's one of the biggest mistakes we've made over the last century and a half. In terms of the paradigm of business or the model we follow? And we hear it all the time. We hear it in terms of the people side of things versus the, the business side, the hard side versus the. [00:30:56] Speaker B: Soft side versus There's a, there's a good word we use. [00:30:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly. It's the either or thinking, look, my body is both mechanical, emotional, spiritual, psychological. It's not one or the other. It can't be. Now unfortunately, even in our healthcare system we have tried to focus only on the mechanistic aspect of our bodies. We don't integrate the psycho spiritual dimensions of our bodies into our healthcare system. Right. And we separate them. We have doctors that work on the physical part of the body. We got psychologists that work on the mental state of our being and we have spiritual teachers that help us. Very different approaches. Nobody says I'm a psycho, spiritual, physical doctor. [00:31:52] Speaker B: We even do it within, within each of those. Like that's right. Why are our teeth and our eyes not part of our health? Like what does that come. [00:32:02] Speaker C: I was talking to somebody who reminded me that what's happening in my gut could very well be causing my shortness of breath. Yeah, you know, it's, it's an integrated system. So let's bring that now back to business or any organization. It is very important to have good, sound business processes. Remember I said one of the challenges I've always had in the non profit world is they're so committed to their purpose and mission and passion for what they do, which brings out the energetic side of being part of it. But you know, they even believe in the word. We're a non profit so we're not supposed to make profit. That was something one of my executive directors said to me once. So yes, we absolutely need the processes, the systems, the structures. But we want to look at it again from a different perspective. The, the and perspective, not the either or. You know, we, we, we even structure our organizations to separate it. I as the CEO am worried about the business aspects of it and that's the focus we have in our strategy and what have you. And then I relegate to the HR department, the people side. Well that's really, that's absolutely ridiculous that we do that. I, as a leader of an organization, vice president of my department or team leader, the people who work for me depend on me to help them be successful. Why should I just worry about the work they do and let HR worry about them as people? That, that's like the very thing I heard that, that, that cognitive dissonance and early in my career it just makes no sense to me. But that's the way we are structured. That's the thinking we have in the machine paradigm that we're trying to break in the living organization paradigm. You know one of the things, a simple statement. I try to explain the difference in the machine paradigm we look at using people to get results. In the living organization framework we frame, we do it differently. We look at the results we need to get. The challenges of achieving those results serve as the catalyst for the development of the people. And when we develop the people, we've increased the capacity to execute and achieve those results and even greater ones. Simple reframing of a narrative, if you will, changes everything. [00:34:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And even, even the fact that, I mean, those two differentiations you made still come back to the results. [00:34:49] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:34:49] Speaker B: But the question is the why. [00:34:51] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:34:52] Speaker B: And, and the development of people for the sake of developing people is one thing. The development of people for the sake of meeting my business objectives is another. And again, we're back to can't we do both? Shouldn't we do both? [00:35:09] Speaker C: We have to. We have to do both. Look, you said it earlier. People are the organization. They're not separate from the organization. I even wrote an article that argued people are not our most important stakeholders. There's a whole conversation around stakeholder models and stakeholder frameworks. And they say employees are our most important stakeholders. Well, a stakeholder is something different from the organization, is something outside the organization. So if people are our most important stakeholders, they're outside the organization, which makes the organization simply the owners and maybe the leadership team. But here's the reality, right? I can have take away investors, that's an important stakeholder. I can take away customers, they're a really important stakeholder. I can take away suppliers, they're also a very critical stakeholder. I can take all that away and I can still have an organization. I take away the people. What do I have? Nothing. I just have a maybe a dream, a vision. Unless I'm a single person solo entrepreneur, I don't have an organization anymore. So the people are not stakeholders. They are the organization. And if the, if they are the organization, and then I want to improve the ability of the organization to achieve the results necessary to manifest our vision, then my focus as a leader should be developing that organization, which is equivalent to developing the people. And I don't mean just the capability of the people. I mean the capability and maturity. Because remember we said maturity is correlated with increased complexity. And if you don't develop the maturity of the people, the collective maturity of the organization, the organization cannot achieve the level of complexity today's worlds requires. [00:37:13] Speaker B: So we're talking all around the macro level of this concept. [00:37:20] Speaker C: Yes. [00:37:21] Speaker B: What's the micro stuff that you're helping your clients with? How do you help a leader see their, their own lens that they're seeing through this machinery lens and not living organizational lens. What are some of the mindset shifts, behavior changes, habit changes, lenses that you're helping leaders switch at a, a little more practical and micro level now and not just conceptual. [00:37:52] Speaker C: So great question and I'll, I'll talk about it in sort of two ways. One is what are the skills leaders need to allow them to lead from a different perspective? Because they're very different skill sets. In the machine paradigm, you want to have strong problem solving skills. You want to be able to design the organization, you want to be able to be very analytical. It's all rational, logical base. So let's say it's, it's thinking based, it's mind based. When you're dealing with people, rationality doesn't really play a very big part. I don't want to call it emotional, I like to use the term connection. And people want to feel connected with. There's a, there's a saying, you know, I want to be seen. Right. People want to be understood at the, at a human level, not the technical skill level. Right. So one of the key skills we teach is you got to learn how to connect with people. And there's a, there's a secondary byproduct of that which I'll get to in a second. So that requires not just living in the head, it also requires living in the heart. Right. That, that place of compassion, of empathy, of understanding. And there's a lot of books out now that are come out that speak to that point itself. Here's an interesting thing about moving from the head to the heart. It also opens us up to that insight, intuition, inspiration and deeper sense of wisdom. It increases our ability to sense what's going on in the organization and even in the marketplace that logical, rational, big data analysis cannot give you. There's a way we humans have of intuiting what's happening that is highly valuable that the old paradigm has really rejected. Actually our whole scientific methodology has over emphasized objectivity over subjectivity. And again this is a either or condition that has caused us a lot of grief and harm. It's not an either or, it's a combination. So we teach heart centering, we call it heart centered wisdom so that we can have both the head and the heart brought to each decision. Of course, once you have heart centered wisdom and you can move into that state of, of intuition and insight and inspiration and connection, you can have heart centered communication. So that's the second key skill we. [00:40:47] Speaker B: I. You mentioned that you didn't want to use the word emotional necessarily in that description. And I think what you just described does go beyond the scope of just what we think of it with emotion, but emotion is a major component of that. I've, you know, we do. One of the things we do in our coaching work in one of our early assessments when we're launching an engagement with a coachee, is an assessment of the coachee's emotional intelligence, for example, Daniel Gohman's work. And one of the reasons we do it is not just to get the metric and say, here's your measurement of emotional intelligence. We do that because it gives us the opportunity to say to them, there's a reason we assess that. It's actually the ability to teach the model. And my, what I have been saying is, to me, the number one most critical component of an effective leader is emotional intelligence. It's not strategic thinking ability, it's not business acumen, it's not charisma. It's not the ability to be a great speaker. It's not the best project manager or the, or the most innovative creative person. It's the person who has the strongest emotional intelligence to do all those things through. And that's, that's my take on the emotional part of that. [00:42:16] Speaker C: Let me totally agree with you, Patrick, and let me expand on that a little bit. In the model we. I formulated what I call the three energy fields of the living organization model. And I'm going to bring that up now because it's correlated to what we're talking about and it kind of gives a framework to what we're talking about. And so the three energy fields is what we do or what we call activity. That's the physical domain. That's where systems, process, efficiency all come into place. Then there's the relationship energy, and that's where what you're talking about, the empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence. Who am I in relationship with? Other people. And then there's a third domain, which is who am I with myself? How do I know myself? How well do I understand who I am and what drives me? What are the underlying belief systems I have evolved through my life's experiences that cause me to respond to life unconsciously a certain way. And we call that the context field. So we have an activity relationship and context and context. One might. So you talked about emotional intelligence. You can look at IQ or spatial or physical intelligence as relating to the activity field. You can use EQ as relating to the relationship field. And there are some assessments out there that really haven't taken hold yet, called Spiritual intelligence or sq. Which relates to how well do I understand myself? You know, the old Delphi oracle said, know thyself, right? [00:43:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:00] Speaker C: And so all three elements are important, and not only important for a leader to know themselves, but if you think of an organization as a living person, then these same three elements apply to that organization. And whether you talk about the organization as the whole organization or department or a team within it, they're each living persons in an ecosystem with all those other living persons. And that's the proper way to think of an organization. And that changes the role of leaders. So again, going back to more specifics, not the macro, we want to teach leaders one of the key things that is important to understand about people when we want to create results. Let me back up a second. We are highly organized and optimized to create the outcomes we're creating. [00:44:57] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah, we're, we're perfectly organized to create the outcomes we're experiencing. [00:45:02] Speaker C: It's a miracle of the human psycho, spiritual, physical aspect. We are optimized throughout our life. We have experiences, we make choices and we optimize ourselves to behave a certain way that gets us the results we want. And those results are usually driven by the desire for safety and success. Both of those are important to us. Organizations do the same thing and they create the combination of activity, relationship and context. So if I want to create different results, we know something has to change. Right. The old saying, do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results is insanity. So new results require new behaviors, which is really a combination of activity and relationship. But the activity and relationship, our behaviors are really driven or determined by our context. So unless we as leaders know how to reframe context, which again, getting to specifics now more to the micro level, we have a training program to help leaders learn how to reframe context and how context gets set up and what, how it works and how do you reframe it so you align the underlying determinant of behaviors with the behaviors you need to get the outcomes you want. Without that combination, one of the reasons 70% of strategies fail is we don't know how to do that. [00:46:39] Speaker B: This is mostly some, some of this is really good new insight for me. The idea of, you know, again, the, the machinery paradigm is so, so powerful. Some of this is affirming for me because you're saying some things that I've learned and picked up, but described in a different way. Right. Like one of the matrices that we use is alignment and engagement, which I think you're talking about activity and relationship. They. They really are sort of the same. There's alignment work we have to do as a leader. [00:47:11] Speaker C: Yes. [00:47:12] Speaker B: And then there's engagement work we have to do as a leader. And. And you can't just do just one of them. So I. I really appreciate that. Yeah, go ahead. [00:47:24] Speaker C: I was going to say an alignment is not just relationship aligning is aligning the underlying determinants of behavior, what we call context, with the strategic objectives or the outcomes we want. [00:47:36] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:47:37] Speaker C: And aligning that with engagement, which is both activity and relationship. [00:47:42] Speaker B: Yes. And then the word culture comes in. So now we're into organizational culture. And does culture align with the strategy and the business model? Do we have the right culture? [00:47:55] Speaker C: The way I look at culture is. Culture is the observable manifestation of the underlying context. [00:48:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:05] Speaker C: So culture is what we do around here, right? [00:48:08] Speaker B: That's right. [00:48:09] Speaker C: Classic definition. [00:48:10] Speaker B: The way we do things around here. [00:48:12] Speaker C: The way we do things around here. And context is why we. Why that's the way we do things around here explains the why of the doing. That's a way of thinking of the relationship between culture and context. And so to change the culture. [00:48:28] Speaker B: Can I pause on that? Oh, yes, that's real. You just. That opened up. Up. That was so good. [00:48:33] Speaker C: Thank you. [00:48:34] Speaker B: Because it. Now we're talking about a system again. [00:48:38] Speaker C: Yes. [00:48:38] Speaker B: I love that you just tied culture to the observable behavior. But context is why that behavior is showing up. [00:48:47] Speaker C: Yes. [00:48:48] Speaker B: Oh, that's so good. That is, That's. That's important. I just. Sorry I interrupted your train of thought, but I think that got me. [00:48:58] Speaker C: Thank you for stopping me at that point. Because you just highlighted the significance of why context is so important and why training leaders on how to understand what it is, how to read it, how to discern what's the underlying context, and then how to reframe it is absolutely critical. And all the work we're doing on culture is trying to address it from an activity level, not a intuiting, sensing level. And it's why heart centering, again, becomes a very critical skill because you. You required. Context is not something you can measure. It's something you sense. Sort of like walking into a room of people. And before anybody says anything, there's something in the air. [00:49:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:48] Speaker C: That you can sense and you can tell whether this group is positive, negative. [00:49:53] Speaker B: Happy, joyful, depressed, literally reading the room. [00:49:57] Speaker C: Reading the room. Right. And so you want to be able to really hone in and develop that skill that allows you to read the room of why we're behaving the way we're behaving. Listen to the stories, the narratives that underpin the choices we are making unconsciously as a collective. That's. That's a key skill essence of, of leadership in today's world. [00:50:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And that requires presence and attention. [00:50:28] Speaker C: Absolutely. Which is all part of heart centering. Those are the. Those that's what happens when you learn how to heart center is presence and attention and insight and intuition. And all the subjective elements we have worked so hard to throw out, we're now bringing back in. [00:50:47] Speaker B: So for context and culture in that relationship. I think of the work, some work that I've done in the last few years with Dr. Peter Hawkins, who's big guru in systemic team coaching. And one of the questions he asks that I've learned to ask. An example would be a coachee is telling me, Patrick, my. I can. In our organization, the, the employees accountability is a problem. Like we can't get them to turn in their reports on time. [00:51:21] Speaker C: Sure. [00:51:22] Speaker B: Okay. How do we get them to turn in their reports on time? And so now we're. We're coaching to that behavior. The observable behavior. [00:51:30] Speaker C: Yes. [00:51:30] Speaker B: Rather than coaching to the systemic issue. And so Hawkins question would be that I've learned to ask is what's broken in the system that is allowing for this behavior or that is encouraging this behavior? What's the systemic piece that has opened the pipeline for the kind of behavior you're seeing? [00:51:51] Speaker C: I would totally agree with that. If in the system. When we talked about the natures of systems, if the system you're looking at is the system that includes activity, relationship and context in that. [00:52:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:05] Speaker C: If you just look at the system of the activity we're doing, you will typically overlook the real driving dynamic that's causing the behavior pattern. [00:52:16] Speaker B: So good. So good. It's not just we need to, you know, change the policy on reporting, you know, move it from Thursdays to Fridays. Yeah. [00:52:25] Speaker C: No, let's put in an incentive plan. [00:52:27] Speaker B: Right. Or a discipline plan. Yeah. That's good. [00:52:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:52:32] Speaker B: That's so good. What else would you say about the book? Because we, we can't go deep into it. What else would you say is sort of a central tenet that people will get if they read the book? [00:52:49] Speaker C: I. I would say the. Reckon we've. We've covered on most of them already. The, the notion that an organization is actually best thought of as a person. And how do you view helping a person. A leader should ask the question how do I help this person become more effective at what they do. That's probably the key paradigm shift going back to the early part of our conversation. Stop thinking of it as a machine that optimizes and makes efficient the conversion of inputs to outputs. Think of it as your. To draw on a metaphor, you're the parent of a child that wants to grow up and you want to help it become a self sufficient mature adult. What does it need to move from where it is to another level of maturity? That's a critical reframing is just a reframing without falling into the trap of making this, oh, this is soft side versus hard side. This is people versus see it as an integrated question. How do I use the desire to get the results, the need to get the results? How do I use the challenge of getting the results to further enhance the maturity and capability of this living person? Those are the simple reframing that, that, that really, it changes the way you ask the questions. It changes the way you engage your, your organization. And then the next question is, what, what skills do I need to be able to do that? [00:54:40] Speaker B: And how do I get those skills? And how committed am I to getting those skills? [00:54:45] Speaker C: That's absolutely right. You, you've got to make that level. I will tell you, shifting the paradigm will not come easy. You asked me earlier, what do I do with clients once they begin. The first step is to get them to understand, like we now, what the shift in paradigm means the next step. And that's not hard to do. I mean, we're having a conversation now. People are beginning to get it. You're having some aha moments in our conversation. That's not hard to do. The hard part is living the paradigm shift. [00:55:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:55:17] Speaker C: And that's where we work with clients always bringing back why is this problem exist? This is the problem you've identified that's getting in the way of achieving the results. Now let's unpack it. Let's figure out is it an activity issue, relationship issue, context issue? What combination of those do we have to address? And then we address it appropriately. And a lot of it is helping the leaders rethink how they're thinking about what they're faced with. That's the on the ground challenge. [00:55:53] Speaker B: And if your clients are anything like mine, one of the biggest revelations comes in knowing that these are tiny, small behaviors and mindset shifts. [00:56:03] Speaker C: Yes. [00:56:03] Speaker B: Because when you hear this, it sounds so daunting and so overwhelming and so philosophical and nebulous as I get. I don't know. But, but in reality, it's the little things that that, that make that difference and that change those habits. And so let's start with a couple of those. Right. And build some success off of those. [00:56:23] Speaker C: It give you a perfect example. Having a conversation with one of the, my coaches, one of my vice presidents at a client. He was dealing with a couple of personnel related issues and he was struggling with how do I. How do I get this person? I think that's the way he phrased it. How do I get this person to understand what they have to do? And the coaching went something like this. Okay, first I want you to get yourself into the heart center and then I want you to see that person from within their context, understand what's going on with that person. Now that sounds simple enough, but that little shift in the way he's thinking on that little EP situation changed everything about how he viewed his relationship with people and the challenges he faced going forward. [00:57:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:25] Speaker C: Now somewhat more challenging. We have to come back to it periodically. There's a notion that's important for leaders to understand. I learned it as a parent raising my daughter. The world around us as leaders or parents is reflected, reflects back to us, who we are as people. So if I'm. When I'm in conflict, when I'm. When I'm struggling with a situation or a person, life is reflecting back to me the challenge I need for myself to grow and develop immature. It's not something to fix out there. It's often something to fix in here. And as a coach, you probably experience that all the time like I do. Right. I had a teacher that used to say, when you point a finger at something out there, there are three fingers pointing back at you. Right. And I love that metaphor. [00:58:28] Speaker B: The way we say it is you can't coach who's not in the room. So, you know, let's, let's not talk about fixing Susie or Billy or John. Let's talk about your role in this and how your work and behavior and mindset might lead to a different outcome or influence a different outcome. That's so good. You also made me think of Dwight Eisenhower's definition of leadership. The art of getting people to do things you want done because they want to do it. [00:58:56] Speaker C: That is so important. You know, one of the key principles of the living organization is a statement that I say engagement, which is really the amount of energy people are given to the organization. Going back to our initial conversation about energy, when we talk about wanting people engaged, what we're really saying is we want them to give all of their energy to the organization. Well, Engagement is driven by empowerment. If I feel empowered, I will be more engaged. Here's the piece that's often left out and makes it very difficult for leaders. And I'll explain why in a second. And to empower somebody, you have to give them the choice. They have to choose to want to do what the organization needs, which is exactly it. Which is what Dwight Eisenhower said. [00:59:47] Speaker B: That's right. [00:59:47] Speaker C: Here's the. Here's the on the ground difficulty for leaders. I know I need to get these results. I know I need these people to get these results. Right. Giving them choice puts me at risk. What if they choose not to? Well, that's. We can have a whole nother. [01:00:12] Speaker B: Yeah, we sure can. [01:00:13] Speaker C: On just that one. [01:00:14] Speaker B: Sure. [01:00:14] Speaker C: So just let me leave it with the notion that it's really important to learn how to balance what you need as a leader and the ability to let people choose to do that. We have a whole shift in the way we establish goals for organization from moving from a top down. I'm going to give you your goals and I'm going to evaluate you too. Here's what the organization needs. Let's start by having you tell me how you want to contribute. I'll emphasize the word want within boundaries, of course. You can't just decide, hey, I want to do something. Right. And so we begin at the very beginning with, here's the goals we have. You tell me how you want to play this game with us. And then we. And we call that contribution agreements. It's not the mechanism we use as much or the form or structure. It's the intention of having them be a choice for what they contribute. And we take that all the way through performance development. Because remember, we want to develop them. And I can't develop anybody. I can give them feedback, but they have to choose to want to improve. If they don't, there's nothing I can do to make them. [01:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And one of the things we say is leaders can't motivate people because motivation is already in there. It's intrinsic. The idea is we draw it out. So if I can connect the dots between what motivates you and what needs to be done, Eisenhower's thing, that's where the magic happens. And so what you've hit on is the importance of hiring over time. Hiring over time because you got to homogenize your own organization to, you know, people ask the question. I've been asked this question in job interviews. Why do you want to work here and in the. And in the nonprofit sector, people's Answer is, well, I want to make a difference. I don't want to just work in the corporate world. I want to make work somewhere where I'm making a difference. That's a pat answer. It doesn't tell me anything about your motivation. If I can get at what I love your question, what is it you could see yourself contributing to this? And why, why is that light you up? That, that's, that's when we start to get to it, because we hire to skill. Have you ever raised money before? Have you ever worked with. Tell me about a time when you've managed a conflict. Tell me about a time we want to know the skills, which is important, but we don't think to hire to the culture, to the motivation, to the purpose. You know, is this someone that's going to connect with the work and, and to use your term, engage man? [01:02:48] Speaker C: I, I will, I will say that over the course of my career I have found that skills are learnable. I'd rather have a person who is so committed to contributing to the success of the collective who doesn't know anything. I have found they will learn what they need to learn to make that contribution. And if I have people who are highly skilled and not driven, motivated, engaged, empowered, if they're not choosing to do the work, they're just doing what they have to because that's how they get a paycheck or whatever. You can't get them to change, to adapt, to do anything. I'd much rather hire for all the things you talked about. And skills. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Well, and then once you have them on board. Yeah. Skills. It's not. The skills aren't important, right? [01:03:44] Speaker C: Oh, no. [01:03:44] Speaker B: I mean, self determination is, is the self determination theory, which we talk about a lot, is that people want the greatest sense of autonomy and agency they can have. They want the greatest sense of mastery and competence. That's meaningful, creates value. And they want connectedness and relatedness to the mission and the people. [01:04:06] Speaker C: That's right. I say there are three innate things all human beings want. A sense of learning and growth, a sense of contribution and a sense of belonging. [01:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:17] Speaker C: Which is directly correlated. [01:04:19] Speaker B: Very, very close. [01:04:20] Speaker C: Yeah, very close. I want to add one thing because again, let's bring it down to the practical world we often talk about. People want agency, for example. They want to make a contribution. Totally agree. That's what we want. We're also afraid of it. [01:04:36] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. We want the safety of not having it. Yeah. [01:04:42] Speaker C: I want autonomy, but if things go bad, I want to go. [01:04:47] Speaker B: I don't want to be responsible for this. [01:04:48] Speaker C: Yeah. So there's, there's, this is a two edged sword. This is something we desperately want. And again, that goes back to maturity. So how do I as a leader understand that people do want agency and having full agency requires a lot of risk and responsibility for what? Taking ownership for one's life is very scary for a lot of people. Primarily because we've never trained them, we've actually trained them out of that. [01:05:15] Speaker B: That's exactly right. [01:05:17] Speaker C: From, from elementary school on, it's, we've taught people, learn what the teacher needs, give them that, because that's how you're going to be successful. Don't think for yourself. If you're a free thinking person, if you have your own points of view, you'll probably be ostracized. I mean, think about the way we have trained people in our society. It's, it's. Now, I know there's a lot of work in trying to change that at the elementary school and on up through throughout, but business has an important role. We have the opportunity to enhance people's sense of who they are, take responsibility for life, develop and mature. And just imagine if a thousand companies out there in the world spend time maturing their people and they had 10,000 employees. Imagine what that would do for our society in terms of having a different quality, different mature people making decisions for the collective as a whole, for our society. This work is not just about improving business. My work is really about helping our society become more mature, which is better for everybody. Ecosystem with an ecosystem. With an ecosystem. [01:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Boy, this is rich. Norman. We could go another three hours easily and not. And we're just scratching the surface, obviously. I wanted, I wanted to introduce our listeners to this idea and this concept, this paradigm shift that you're talking about from being an organization that's a machine to, to understanding that it's a living organism. And so I love all of this conversation. I want to encourage people again to get the book the Living Organization, learn more about it. There's lots of mapping and reference points and frameworks in there to help us think about this very nebulous topic if we're not careful. Norman There are two questions I like to ask all my guests as we wrap a show because I love the stories. And so just, just quickly, the first one is who immediately comes to mind as a leader or influencer in your life, whether you know them or not, or whether they know you or not, who's had what you would consider to be profound impact on how you view the World of leadership. And why? [01:07:40] Speaker C: Well, honestly, I can't come up with just one person because. Yeah, one person's gentleman named Jim Camp was an early, early mentor of mine when I was at HP and I was struggling in my first year as a leader. And his leadership style in many ways set the stage for me and helped me become successful, but also set the stage, the foundation for what I now believe. And his leadership style was what we've been talking about, a balance between. He was, he was tough, he was demanding, he was results focused, but he was also very compassionate and caring and empathetic and guided me and helped me mature and understand the dynamics in the world I was living with. He was a guide throughout my whole career at hp, from my first district service management position until I was a leader at the, at the region level and ran the region admin organization. And the other people I would say that I haven't met but have been a similar influence. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, people of that ilk, who led from the heart, who led with compassion, who led with the sense of uniting, not dividing. And those have been big influences in my life. [01:09:02] Speaker B: So you're saying if I've got this right, we can be results oriented, driven, hold high standards and still be empathetic and connect with our people? [01:09:16] Speaker C: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, you can't be successful without all of that. [01:09:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's really good. Last question. You're at the top of a mountain. Mountain. At the bottom of the mountain are all the leaders of the world. And you've got a megaphone and you've got 15 seconds to tell all the leaders of the world what Norman Wolf believes is the most important thing to remember about leadership. What's that? That top tenant, that 15 second Norman Wolf sound bite on the most important aspect of leadership. What's that for you? [01:09:50] Speaker C: Learn how to lead from the hip, head and the heart. Learn how to lead with focus, determination for outcome, with compassion, empathy and love. [01:10:05] Speaker B: Boy, I mean, and that sums up the whole conversation and it sums up this idea of the living organization. I love it, man. What a great rap, Norman. Thank you, Patrick, thank you so much for sharing, sharing your insight with this. What, what wonderful stuff. I wish we had more time. Maybe one day we will. We'll do it again, folks. [01:10:26] Speaker C: I look forward to it, especially since the second book is coming out. [01:10:30] Speaker B: Oh, good, Excellent. Well, for now folks, you can visit quantumleaders.com or you can visit thelivingorganization.com to learn more. In the meantime, you take your head and your heart with you and lead on.