His record is phenomenal.
Tony:it's unprecedented, isn't it?
Tony:And everyone can say, Oh yeah, what a great crop of players he had, but so
Tony:called better managers had the golden generation prior and didn't succeed.
Tony:You could say Pep Guardiola has got unlimited funds so
Tony:he can buy the best players.
Tony:Could he get, could he have kept Burnley in the league, for example?
Tony:Who knows, it's a completely different proposition, so I think credit where it's
Tony:due, and it'd be good for him to, whether he bows out, whether they win or lose it.
Tony:Certainly I think it's the reaction the players have towards him is
Tony:quite telling that they use the word.
Tony:We love him.
Tony:We love Gareth.
Tony:I've heard a number of players use that terminology, which I
Tony:find quite rare and telling.
Clark:Yeah, we know that there are all sorts of different football
Clark:management types, aren't there?
Clark:He clearly is a sort of a father figure type.
Clark:After the game, after every game, he's gone up to every single player.
Clark:And given them a hug and clearly, that type of management works for him.
Clark:Alex Ferguson was never that sort of, was never that sort of manager.
Clark:And it's interesting because I remember when Stephen Gerrard was at Villa, and
Clark:Unai Enri came in, the change, and you always expect a bit of a change anyway,
Clark:because of the new management, manager thing, but clearly, there are ways that
Clark:work for different groups of people, and the key to management, is getting
Clark:the feel for what's going on within that group of people, reading the room,
Clark:and then reacting accordingly, right?
Clark:And he's clearly got that because when you listen to the after match comments
Clark:from players like Bellingham, Harry Kane, Olly Watkins, they have not got a
Clark:bad word to say about the whole setup.
Clark:So clearly, they're growing into this competition.
Clark:Let's face it, nobody expects him to win against Spain, but nobody expects
Clark:it, so I think the hard part's over.
Tony:Yeah, exactly.
Tony:The shackles will be off to a degree, because they'll have to be thinking
Tony:about we've got to dig in here, and if we can keep Spain out, we've got a chance.
Tony:Because Spain are obviously the most free flowing team in the comp.
Tony:Good to watch
Clark:Slick.
Clark:They're wonderful to watch.
Clark:The biggest problem I think the English team have always had is and it's also one
Clark:of their biggest attributes is the fans.
Clark:The fans are a wonderful, terrible bunch of people.
Clark:I remember I think I mentioned this before when David O'Leary said
Clark:called Aston Villa fans fickle.
Clark:He was right.
Clark:We are.
Clark:We spend our hard earned cash to go and watch These games and we expect
Clark:something, but good grief, don't get on the wrong side of an English football fan.
Clark:Yeah.
Rob:It's been interesting to see, last night was completely different
Rob:style of football from England.
Rob:Because they did seem stifled, they did seem like they had a really defensive
Rob:manager that was holding them back.
Rob:And yet like you say, none of the players, even the players that are left
Rob:out seem to be in, when they come on, like Trent came on Tony's come on and
Rob:they've all done their bit and it doesn't seem to be that problem of disunity.
Rob:I don't
Tony:think they would ever have said to Declan Rice, don't play the ball
Tony:forward quickly when the pass is on.
Tony:I think sometimes he's adjusted to a new role.
Tony:He doesn't play that role as a sole holding midfielder for Arsenal.
Tony:He's got players around him that get on the ball and do stuff that he can't do.
Tony:He's a galloper.
Tony:He likes to run and he covers big spaces quickly.
Tony:But he does things, it drives me nuts.
Tony:He slows the game down and doesn't have the technical ability to get
Tony:himself out of that situation.
Tony:He's not that type of player.
Tony:So he gets himself squeezed in and then we're in all sorts of trouble.
Tony:He gets away with it more often than not, but he gets away with it, which is neat.
Tony:Which is strange.
Tony:Obviously he's there because of his attributes, but one of his attributes
Tony:is not as the playmaker, in my opinion.
Tony:So as soon as they changed the system and there were more players closer to him.
Tony:So Foden's picking up deeper and more central and quicker
Tony:and getting on the half turn.
Tony:It's a whole different proposition.
Tony:He's got more people to pass to quickly, but every time he slows it down and does
Tony:a little drag back, he invites pressure that he can't get himself out of.
Tony:He doesn't see it quick enough.
Rob:That was the whole problem last time.
Rob:I remember they were attacking, they had a corner a short pass and then
Rob:they ended up getting caught and they had to go back to the goalkeeper
Rob:in about 10 seconds from attacking and that seemed to be the problem.
Rob:No one wanted to take that risk.
Rob:There were a couple like Mainoo, Bellingham, Foden were trying.
Rob:But yeah, there was, there's too much, seemed to be too much fear, but I was
Rob:just thinking like a manager, we all have a different idea and we can never
Rob:know whether our idea would work or not.
Rob:As the manager it's the same in any change, isn't it?
Rob:It's when to make a change, how to make the change, what change to make.
Rob:And it all comes down to a judgment call, isn't it?
Tony:Yeah.
Tony:All the managers try to do is predict the future.
Tony:And more often than not, it doesn't work out and this tournament, it has worked
Tony:out, the changes that have been made sometimes reactively yesterday, maybe
Tony:not so reactively, they weren't playing particularly well at the time he made
Tony:the subs, but it was like 10 minutes ago.
Tony:Let's do it's fairly late in the game, obviously paid off.
Tony:But all of those decisions you've made a conscious and calculated
Tony:decision to predict that what you're about to do is going to have
Tony:a positive impact on the result.
Tony:Obviously, none of us can know that because there can be stasis or it
Tony:can backfire as easily as it can turn around like it did yesterday
Tony:in the game with when Tony came on.
Tony:As fans who are watching with enthusiasm and high expectation living in the future
Tony:as well, if he makes these changes, this is what's going to happen in my head.
Tony:We're going to be much better.
Tony:None of us are right.
Tony:And none of us are wrong.
Tony:We just have expectations that and those expectations come with the pain that we
Tony:feel when our expectations are not met.
Clark:It's funny how we've got onto this subject because we were talking,
Clark:I was hoping last week that we might talk a little bit about change.
Clark:And the whole football scenario really lends itself to this idea of
Clark:change because you both of you guys and myself, we all work in change in
Clark:one form or another, and very often when you go to work with somebody, a
Clark:person or an organization or, in Rob's case, often couples, for instance, and
Clark:they say something needs to change.
Clark:When you're watching a football match, you may think to yourself
Clark:something needs to change.
Clark:And the question is what?
Clark:And how do you know that the thing you're going to do is going to be a change
Clark:for the better because surely change implies that it needs to get better.
Clark:And the interesting thing about as you just said, Tony you predict, the future.
Clark:You're suggesting that this change that we're going to make is going to make all
Clark:the difference and it's going to improve.
Clark:What's that based on?
Clark:You cannot measure a whole group of people interacting with each other and what
Clark:happens when you just change one dynamic.
Clark:So change is as much, An art as a science and having worked in manufacturing for
Clark:so long certainly in the lean business improvement where things like Kaizen,
Clark:the words that people love to throw around without really necessarily
Clark:understanding what that actually means.
Clark:There's another Japanese word that I've always liked called Monozukuri, which
Clark:means the art of making, craftsmanship.
Clark:It has to be beautiful and elegant to watch.
Clark:Otherwise, if it's clunky, something's not working.
Clark:And whilst you can scientifically measure processes and change different things,
Clark:you know when something's working.
Clark:That, to me, is the art.
Clark:And this is where somebody like Southgate, we cannot say that he's doing
Clark:something wrong when we just don't know all of the ingredients that are going
Clark:into the recipe that he's creating.
Tony:Even when he's wrong, he's not wrong.
Tony:He was just acting on his best intentions with the information that he's got at
Tony:that point in time, which is fascinating.
Tony:And the other Japanese thing I love, I use it a fair bit is Kintsugi.
Tony:Have you seen that?
Tony:Which is pottery.
Tony:So broken pot, instead of throwing it away they fix it with the gold in between.
Tony:So the pot becomes more beautiful in its new state, it's changed state than
Tony:it was when it was broken and it's obviously symbolizes the life journey.
Tony:It's like saying you might be broken or you might have suffered a big
Tony:setback, but put yourself back together and be more beautiful than
Tony:you were before before it happened.
Tony:It's a great analogy for change.
Tony:For me, it's the demonstration of what can be at the other side
Tony:of change when, it feels tough.
Tony:A great example for me at the moment, we've just moved house and you're in
Tony:a new kitchen it's the classic lean training exercise for me, you're in a new
Tony:kitchen, you've moved, you've been in the previous kitchen for five or more years.
Tony:You knew where everything was, you knew where the cups were, you knew where
Tony:the coffee and tea is, and the the cutlery drawer and stuff like that,
Tony:but the first week, I honestly, I haven't felt as stressed in a kitchen,
Tony:frustrated about where is it, where, and you're going from one side of the
Tony:kitchen to the other, looking for stuff that's not there, yeah, it's madness.
Clark:It's a hard thing to bring into such a conversation, but when you're
Clark:talking to leaders of organizations, especially people that are perhaps
Clark:engineers or finance oriented, when you try to introduce the concept of
Clark:bringing At least the idea of art into that conversation, it's a difficult
Clark:one, but I think it's important because you cannot get art wrong.
Clark:That's the point, isn't it?
Clark:That picture, that sculpture, that painting, that dance,
Clark:that song, it's not wrong.
Clark:You may not be to your taste.
Clark:And when you look at an organization that's not functioning as well as
Clark:you would like, the question then arises, Was it good before and now
Clark:the standards dropped and you need to get it back where it was or are you
Clark:just trying to push on and get better, in which case we need to approach this
Clark:whole thing radically differently.
Clark:We're talking about football, but I'm just thinking that we've just
Clark:changed government in this country.
Clark:In a
Tony:very
Clark:British way.
Clark:Nobody really noticed.
Clark:Everybody's touched in and mumbling and muttering about it.
Clark:But nothing really has changed.
Clark:And the interesting thing I find is if you were to come from another planet,
Clark:from another dimension and turn up and say this is how you guys run your country.
Clark:Then there's 60 million people you've clearly just got rid of one group of
Clark:people that are running the place.
Clark:So obviously these are new guys are better.
Clark:Oh no.
Clark:They're not better.
Clark:They're just different.
Clark:We just don't like the old lot.
Clark:And you say, wow, this is thousands of years of civilization.
Clark:Civilization have gone into this concept where we replace one group
Clark:of really mediocre people with another group of really mediocre
Clark:people because that's change.
Clark:Yeah.
Tony:Yeah, it's fascinating.
Tony:I was working for a Microsoft tech company, CRM.
Tony:We, a primary customer were buying big chunky CRM programs.
Tony:So typically going from manual processes to technological things.
Tony:So you've got people that have built their own shortcuts for years.
Tony:On how to track customer experience or whatever it was.
Tony:And you're promising all of these great changes to the way they function,
Tony:how much more efficient they're going to be, how much more money they're
Tony:going to save, whatever it might be.
Tony:But the biggest failure in a big CRM project is user adoption.
Tony:People just don't accept the change that they've been given and the benefits that
Tony:they've been given because the number of projects we picked up were failed previous
Tony:projects because they never lined anything up to what the value proposition was.
Tony:What was the business value that this change is going to serve?
Tony:And the value has to be met at various levels within the business.
Tony:Of course, the commercial community.
Tony:There's a reason why you're going to spend 150 grand on a new tech product
Tony:is because it's going to be commercially viable, but it's got to meet all sorts
Tony:of emotional pains that everybody else is experiencing at their own level within
Tony:the business where they're going to interact with this new beast of a machine.
Tony:So there's a whole heap of work to be done.
Tony:To onboard people to the idea, readied them for the chain, all of those classic
Tony:sort of change readiness projects.
Tony:But it was amazing that the number of projects that had been sold in by other
Tony:companies who were just selling tech and then leaving them with this big white
Tony:elephant that no one knows how to use, they just go back to the old ways quickly.
Tony:So they've spent a fortune and nothing's changed.
Tony:Other than people got very angry for a bit and upset with each
Tony:other that it's not how it used to be and nobody likes it anymore.
Tony:So it was a great example of this predicted vision of the future and
Tony:the value that it's going to provide when it's all working, the value
Tony:of making the subs in the game it's the promise of doing this, you need
Tony:everyone to be on board with it.
Tony:Otherwise it's got no chance of working.
Tony:Even when everyone is on board.
Tony:It's going to be tough.
Tony:It's going to be hard.
Tony:Everyone we're looking to tend to look for, ah, this is going to be great.
Tony:It's going to be easy, but it's the bit I think where people need to be helped.
Tony:It's actually going to be really hard to adopt this new way of working.
Tony:So let's work together to solve the problem.
Tony:I
Rob:think any technology, it's such an uphill battle to learn anything new.
Rob:Like things used to be simple, but the more that we have technology
Rob:to do things, They enable us to do so much more, but there's that
Rob:learning curve and it's tough.
Rob:It's that struggle.
Rob:This is me, I've decided that this is something I want to do.
Rob:There's that whole change curve, isn't there, where you're down at
Rob:the bottom and it's Oh, am I ever going to be able to work this?
Rob:For someone working in a company, it wasn't their decision.
Rob:They didn't have any control over it.
Rob:They didn't really want it.
Rob:It's so difficult, but I think the other part, because immediately what,
Rob:when we were talking about football, what came to my mind was the election.
Rob:Like you say, I don't think anything really changes.
Rob:It's just every 10 years or so we change from labor to conservative
Rob:from whatever, and they overturn everything that's been done.
Rob:So we just end up in this stasis.
Rob:What I always think about elections is I think there's a problem with democracy
Rob:because basically the vote will go to the lowest common denominator.
Rob:the same in organizations.
Rob:Most people who are on the front lines aren't going to understand
Rob:the full complexities of the reasons behind the decision.
Rob:And sometimes they may know better.
Rob:Sometimes the decision doesn't make sense, but there's that distinction
Rob:between, understanding, like everyone wants politically, everyone wants a
Rob:great health service, social service, welfare, all of that stuff for lower
Rob:taxes and the two can't balance.
Rob:So what we end up getting is we get people who are willing to promise
Rob:something that they can't deliver.
Rob:And this is why I think people who are honest and would state what it
Rob:really takes wouldn't get voted.
Rob:Maybe we should bring it before the adoption.
Rob:So that people understand the thinking behind why it changes.
Rob:And maybe if we got people on board before we introduced the change.
Tony:That requires telling the truth, doesn't it?
Tony:In order to.
Tony:Ready people for say a health care change.
Tony:For me, having lived in Australia for a long time, medicare's like their
Tony:national health scheme, but everybody's making a contribution to Medicare.
Tony:So it's already partly privately funded in a way.
Tony:It's another taxation element but it makes it sustainable.
Tony:Whereas in our current state where it's a provision and we now have obviously a
Tony:high volume Of more people accessing it and a steadying level or lesser level of
Tony:practitioners and nurses and all the rest of it to fulfill the increased demand.
Tony:It's on its knees a little bit, so a change is required, but for politicians
Tony:in a election campaign to come out and say, actually, we do want to change it,
Tony:but we need to be really honest with you.
Tony:And then here it comes.
Tony:We're punching the face with the real facts, I think people might
Tony:find it difficult to come to terms with that because, oh, the impact
Tony:on me, is it going to take more out of my pay in order to Get something
Tony:that was getting for free before.
Tony:It's tough, it's complicated.
Tony:I think the changes that our politicians have to make are enormous
Tony:right now because of where we're at.
Tony:We're not in a great state, are we?
Clark:The thing there, Tony, though this idea of telling the truth, I find
Clark:really interesting because you can imagine, I know you guys both have these
Clark:conversations on a regular basis, but certainly myself in a factory setting
Clark:and a manufacturing organization, you very often got a group of people around
Clark:the table who are putting their point across with regards to how something,
Clark:and there are vested interests.
Clark:Obviously, there are silos where people are working within there's a cliques
Clark:because obviously the engineering department has a lot more to do with
Clark:operations and say the HR department.
Clark:So there are all sorts of dynamics going on.
Clark:This idea of the truth though, this is why I'm just in the process of finishing
Clark:the introduction to my it's driven me mad because I'm trying to encompass
Clark:something that's actually quite fluid this idea, as I've just mentioned,
Clark:Monozukuri, this idea of bringing a a sense of art and creativity into an
Clark:arena that gets extraordinarily messy.
Clark:Change is messy.
Clark:Sometimes it goes off without too much of a hitch and sometimes it goes
Clark:completely pear shaped because people don't buy into the messiness of it.
Clark:But when you're talking to a group of people who've all got their views on how
Clark:this change is going to manifest itself, the idea of being honest is a difficult
Clark:one because not everything is seen.
Clark:Not everybody knows everything that's going on.
Clark:For me, a really good illustration of how this whole change process works is a time,
Clark:and I've mentioned this before, where I was stood on the shop floor, it was
Clark:chaos, they were moving an assembly line, which was a big change, they still had
Clark:to keep getting product out of the door.
Clark:The general manager had put me in charge of this change process, and he came down
Clark:about three days in and it was mayhem.
Clark:He stood there next to me and I think he was being sarcastic,
Clark:he said, how's it going?
Clark:I said, it's going well, it's going as well as can be expected considering
Clark:that this is a major upheaval.
Clark:He said, it doesn't look like it's going well.
Clark:I said, of course not.
Clark:All change, there's a point between leaving one way of doing
Clark:things and starting another.
Clark:There's a gap.
Clark:Sometimes it's really small, sometimes it's massive, where it's absolute chaos.
Clark:That's the key to managing change, dealing with that liminal space between the old
Clark:way and the new one and honestly telling the truth about such a situation is a
Clark:very hard thing to do because nobody knows exactly what's going to happen.
Clark:You're quite right.
Clark:You need to be honest with people and say, look, this is going to get messy.
Clark:I need you guys all on board with this, but the problem with managing
Clark:that process is that you need to make sure that everybody involved,
Clark:whether they're on side or not.
Clark:Or agree with it or not.
Clark:I'm not hiding anything and that when you talk about if there are other agendas
Clark:involved, that's where you've got a real problem in this introduction to the book.
Clark:I'm talking about the 10th man of somebody who is the arbiter of change, somebody
Clark:that mediates that process and says, listen, you may have something in mind.
Clark:For instance, you often see during the voting process or the lead up
Clark:to an election where people are trying to tear their opponents
Clark:down because they want to win.
Clark:But the downside of that is that everybody may end up losing.
Clark:You could end up bringing in a situation where there's an hung
Clark:parliament or whatever, and it causes all sorts of problems down the line.
Clark:So the truth aspect of it, to me, is all about, Everybody needs
Clark:to get their cards on the table.
Clark:And whether you agree with it or not, I think it was Colin Powell that said, we
Clark:can argue as much as you like in this room, but once we walk out of that door,
Clark:you all need to be on side because we cannot have somebody in the background
Clark:trying to bring this thing down.
Clark:And that really, I think, is the key to change.
Clark:And that's what Southgate's done, isn't it?
Clark:Regardless of how things pan out, everybody's on side.
Clark:And that probably, I Is the most crucial factor to any change
Clark:program that everybody wants it to work because everybody wants
Clark:it to be better for all of us.
Tony:Yeah, I agree.
Rob:It's the idea of British government, isn't it?
Rob:Is like the prime minister's first among equals and it's every
Rob:decision is made by the cabinet.
Rob:That, that's the whole principle, isn't it?
Rob:Argue everything out.
Rob:You make a law.
Rob:You vote for it.
Rob:And once it's passed, it's agreed and that's it.
Rob:And then everyone's behind it.
Clark:There's a problem with that though, isn't there?
Clark:I was writing about this in my introduction, and I wrote it about four
Clark:or five times because I couldn't quite nail down what it was that I didn't like.
Clark:And it's this whole idea of an antagonistic approach to solving problems.
Clark:The problem with it is we tend to come to a solution after two people or two
Clark:parties or two groups of people have argued to the point where one wins, and
Clark:we assume then that the person that won is the person that's right, or they're
Clark:the group or the party that's right.
Clark:However, they may just be good at arguing.
Clark:They may just be really good at twisting the truth or twisting
Clark:the facts, and that's a problem.
Clark:This whole idea of reaching a consensus by virtue of whoever wins
Clark:the argument is a massive problem.
Clark:For me, this is where I think, again, the 10th man comes in,
Clark:because you may be really good.
Clark:Look at the whole Trump Biden debate.
Clark:The fact that one of them couldn't care less about whether
Clark:he's bending the facts or not.
Clark:Let's put it that way.
Clark:I'm not saying that the guy lies or anything like that but certainly
Clark:he doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good persuasive argument.
Clark:And then the other person, I don't think he knows what day it is or
Clark:what are you up for breakfast?
Clark:The problem with that is, it's all about perception.
Clark:When two people are arguing about the best way to go about doing something,
Clark:we all have to look at them and think, oh, yeah he made the best argument.
Clark:Maybe.
Clark:But he might be completely, completely wrong or completely mistaken
Clark:or misunderstand the situation.
Clark:There has to be.
Clark:a better way of doing change.
Clark:Because I come from a particular perspective when it comes to change, all
Clark:lean practitioners value this thing called Kaizen, gradual incremental improvements.
Clark:And the supposition behind that is that it's already okay.
Clark:So let's just keep making it better.
Clark:There's another thing called Kaikaku, which is Similar to
Clark:Kaizen, but it means big changes.
Clark:This clearly isn't working.
Clark:We'll do it a different way.
Clark:But there's another thing called Kakushin, which I look
Clark:for, which really means reform.
Clark:Just throw everything out the window, throw sort of
Clark:the rule book out the window.
Clark:Let's try something else.
Clark:And of course, you need to think this through, you really need to
Clark:do the change on paper before you actually put it into practice.
Clark:But the idea to me of Kakushin, where you say, look, we keep electing people.
Clark:They're all rubbish.
Clark:Let's face it, none of them are serving the public, they're serving
Clark:themselves or other agendas, and we are not benefiting from this.
Clark:Let's try a different way.
Clark:And whatever that might be, and how do you actually make
Clark:that happen is another thing.
Clark:This is a revolution, revolutions happen, right?
Clark:People just say, we're done, we're taking over.
Clark:And that's nearly always as bad, if not worse, than what was already there.
Clark:But the idea of completely reforming the situation to me is
Clark:a very interesting one because.
Clark:How many times you have to do it wrong before you realize that doing the wrong
Clark:thing more or harder isn't going to work?
Clark:Let's do something different.
Clark:That really is, to me, what change is all about.
Clark:With regards to Southgate, he put three at the back.
Clark:That was innovative.
Clark:It was a big change.
Clark:He reformed the way he was doing it and it transformed the
Clark:way the team played, I think.
Clark:But certainly, even yesterday, when they went back to a back
Clark:four, it slowed down again.
Clark:The idea of reform and innovation is fascinating to me because when you talk
Clark:to a group of people about we want to change things, they nearly always talking
Clark:about making the same thing better.
Clark:But why not do a different thing?
Clark:And that to me is what the 10th man is all about.
Clark:He's the person that turns up and says, Why don't we try this?
Clark:And, it's a conversation to be had, but most people don't even have that
Clark:conversation, certainly not in politics.
Tony:It's a great subject.
Tony:I think, for me, when they're in that state of debate and like some of the
Tony:examples we've used there when I mentioned the truth before, there's not a lot
Tony:of truth coming out on either side.
Tony:They just put a peg in the ground.
Tony:This is what we stand for.
Tony:And they say, this is what we stand for.
Tony:And they're trying to whip up support external, which has got nothing to
Tony:do with how things are going to work.
Tony:How well they're going to work.
Tony:And it's never then about a middle ground or a compromise or, cause
Tony:none of that makes any difference is what is it that we want that will be.
Tony:And a big step forward that we can agree on.
Tony:And then what are we gonna do about it?
Tony:And how are we gonna at least take the first step towards what good looks like?
Tony:So for me, there needs to be absolute clarity right at the beginning about
Tony:what it is that we're debating.
Tony:What are we talking about?
Tony:I'm telling the masses that this guy can't remember what he had for breakfast.
Tony:I'm telling the masses that this guy should be in jail, and it's got nothing
Tony:to do with how to run the country, and yet it's the game that they're playing.
Tony:So I think when most people are not in that high stakes game, they're in
Tony:a business environment or a sporting environment, and Something's not
Tony:working or could be working better and they need to shift change of
Tony:personnel or change of approach.
Tony:They sit around the boardroom table or in a team meeting room and start to debate
Tony:what it is that we're talking about.
Tony:And I sometimes think they don't have absolute clarity on what is the topic
Tony:of discussion, so they start to exchange opinions and differences of opinion.
Tony:Often about without having agreed what is this contentious issue.
Tony:So you end up having dialogue that can quickly disintegrate into right and wrong.
Tony:I win, you lose type conversations.
Tony:Everybody leaves dissatisfied.
Tony:And the real issue that needed to be talked about didn't get even tabled
Tony:because it lost it's way too quickly.
Tony:So for me, the truth is about getting as much absolute clarity of the situation
Tony:that we can and absolute clarity about what the next step or the end
Tony:of this change process looks like.
Tony:That everybody whether they like it or not agrees is the thing that we're
Tony:at and is where we want to go, I think if you can get to that point even in a
Tony:relationship with two people that are in a state of disconnect and then there's
Tony:room for improvement in the relationship.
Tony:It's critical to get absolute clarity because not all the relationship
Tony:is to be thrown out the window.
Tony:What is it that we're talking about that needs to be better?
Tony:Can we have a mature conversation about that?
Clark:Yeah, that idea of what are we talking about?
Clark:I love that, Tony.
Clark:That's, when you're sitting down with a group of people and you
Clark:say hold on what, why are we actually trying to accomplish here?
Clark:Because I do come across sometimes as a little bit paranoid, a little bit cynical
Clark:and skeptical when I say that there are often agendas on the table that everybody
Clark:else in the room is not aware of.
Clark:The problem with that, for instance, looking at the way elections are run
Clark:they tend to be one or the other, this whole line, and I know there are a
Clark:lot of people voting, for instance, at the moment for people like reform,
Clark:just because it's something else.
Clark:You've got this either or situation, and somebody that can come in and
Clark:look at a situation and say, hold on what's actually going on here?
Clark:What are we talking about here?
Clark:Because, This confusion this frustration that people are feeling in the
Clark:room is serving somebody's purpose.
Clark:As long as nothing changes, even though everything changes, then
Clark:somebody's benefiting from that.
Clark:As a British person, I refer back to the Magna Carta.
Clark:There was a point in time when everybody said hold on, we're done with this.
Clark:You're just messing us about.
Clark:Nobody's benefiting.
Clark:It's all to your benefit in this case, it was the crown that was benefiting.
Clark:And they said, no, we're done.
Clark:We've got to change that.
Clark:So we want to agree what it is we're actually trying
Clark:to accomplish as a country.
Clark:And I think that was a game changer.
Clark:700 years ago now, but it was something where people said, hold on,
Clark:what are we actually talking about?
Clark:Let's look at the agendas that are in the room, point them out.
Clark:I've done this myself, I remember being in a meeting a couple of years ago you
Clark:could see what was going on, it was not something that I could actually
Clark:say, look you're up to something.
Clark:So I engineered a conversation during that meeting and eventually that person told
Clark:me to go and F myself and walked out of the room because they had been unveiled,
Clark:if you like their true purpose behind the conversation had been made clear, and it
Clark:was not to the benefit of everybody else.
Clark:It was just to the benefit of this one person.
Clark:And they don't like it when the actual truth about the situation comes out.
Clark:That's absolutely key in any situation, certainly in elections.
Clark:Football's probably by the by, but certainly when it affects people's lives
Clark:and things like the health service.
Clark:These things need to be discussed openly and whoever, it's the
Clark:Emperor's new clothes and when the kid points at the Emperor and says,
Clark:hold on a minute, what's going on?
Clark:He's got no clothes on.
Clark:When you can actually highlight what's really been brought into the conversation,
Clark:then I think that's a game changer.
Tony:And there's adventure in that though as well without it being a game, there's
Tony:adventure in seeing where that goes.
Tony:Because the alternative if you hold back.
Tony:Is across multiple times of holding back.
Tony:There's the accrual of resentment.
Tony:So every time you leave that meeting, not having said what you said, not having
Tony:gone on that adventure of I'm going to speak my mind and see what happens.
Tony:You can end up being really resentful.
Tony:And over a long period of time that can become really toxic.
Tony:So I think that's happening a lot.
Tony:The number of meetings where people have agreed on the surface.
Tony:Yeah, we all get along great.
Tony:Whoa.
Tony:And nobody really spoke their mind, or when they did, it was about something
Tony:that was really easy to speak their mind about, not about the real underlying
Tony:thing that they wanted to have said.
Tony:So they go away feeling, depending who they are of course, to different
Tony:degrees of accumulation of resentment.
Tony:And then it becomes I'm going to get them.
Tony:I'm going to get them.
Tony:This silo that they're saying we had, I'll show them what a silo is.
Tony:I'll show him what, I'll show him how much what engineering knows
Tony:about how this place is run.
Tony:And the operations guys thinking lean and on this path to divorce.
Rob:It's interesting in mediation and in relationships.
Rob:Most people don't really know what they're fighting for.
Rob:Because there's I think it's Howard Markman talked about the hidden issue
Rob:in relationships, that there's an eruption and they fight about an issue,
Rob:but there's a deeper hidden issue, which is something like control, care,
Rob:love, respect, something like that.
Rob:I could imagine it being very true in the boardroom because there's
Rob:all these kind of underlying.
Rob:So it's a lack of self awareness and some of that awareness only
Rob:comes about through conversation.
Rob:Like when we're having these conversations, it deepens my
Rob:awareness of what we're talking about and takes it to new levels.
Rob:And I think going back to what you said about, Clark, about the competitiveness.
Rob:The original societies had an emperor or a king and often that king was a god.
Rob:And so it was a dictatorship.
Rob:It was the Greeks, Socrates and Aristotle that created the Republic.
Rob:Basically our democracy is based on that Greek idea of adversarial, so the
Rob:legal system is adversarial, political system is adversarial because it comes
Rob:from the idea that the best idea wins.
Rob:But sometimes it doesn't.
Rob:In conflict management, there was some research, I was just looking
Rob:it up when you talked about it.
Rob:It was Kurt Lewin and a student of his, Morton Deutch, who were the first ones
Rob:to really come up with a win idea and they differentiated conflict between
Rob:when we have a shared goal, which really as a a nation, we have a shared goal.
Rob:And when our goal is competitive.
Rob:So if we're two different companies, then we don't really have a shared goal.
Rob:But when we're within the same company, we're two departments, our well
Rob:being and our health and our future security depends on working together.
Rob:Ultimately have the same goal.
Rob:And it's the same thing in relationships.
Rob:The key with relationships is everyone thinks someone's just like us.
Rob:Oh, we want the same thing.
Rob:10 years down the line, they want different things.
Rob:And one's pulling if they could just do this, they'd be perfect.
Rob:And the other ones if they could just do this.
Rob:It's because we have a, it's like you say, Tony, we have an idea of
Rob:in order to progress and develop in the relationship or to develop in
Rob:conflict, we have to let go of that.
Rob:And we have to recognize that all of us are going out in the world and
Rob:wanting to make our dream happen.
Rob:But we're all the heroes of our own narratives.
Rob:We clash with other people.
Rob:And we don't realize that they only see us as a supporting actor.
Rob:We're the villain or whatever it is in their narrative.
Rob:So ultimately it all comes down to, when you're talking about people have
Rob:hidden agendas, it's because they see their future as being better by them
Rob:getting what they want, when actually really the best future has come when
Rob:we let go of our ego and our ideas of what we want to be which comes back to
Rob:what you were talking about, Tony, in the curiosity of going on the adventure.
Rob:I suppose it's the fear that all of us have this idea of what we want
Rob:and we're afraid to let that go.
Rob:But actually we fixate on what we want.
Rob:We fixate on a certain mechanism.
Rob:Like money is a typical one.
Rob:People fixate on more and more money without really knowing what the
Rob:money is for is why you get miserable billionaires and lottery winners who are
Rob:more miserable after having the money.
Rob:So the basis is understanding that we have shared interest and.
Rob:the personal growth in being able to let go of what we think
Rob:we want for what could be.
Clark:I think you nailed that, Rob.
Clark:I've been thinking about something the last couple of days.
Clark:I'm reading a book at the moment by a philosopher.
Clark:I can't remember the guy's name, but the book is just called Truth.
Clark:And it's called A Guide for the Perplexed or something like that.
Clark:And it's about the idea of what's true.
Clark:Clearly because I'm writing this thing about the 10th man who I believe
Clark:is the person that stands in the middle of a room and says, hold on
Clark:a minute, as Tony's just said, what are we actually talking about here?
Clark:What's really going on?
Clark:And as a consequence of reading this book, I've been thinking to myself, and
Clark:I've always said this, when people talk about whatever their political, religious
Clark:beliefs in UFOs, ghosts, fairies, whatever it might be, it's all just guesses.
Clark:Everything's a guess.
Clark:And I was there's a guy that I, again, I can't remember
Clark:this guy's name either, but he.
Clark:He's another philosopher because this whole conversation comes
Clark:down to a philosophical viewpoint of, why we do what we do.
Clark:But he basically said that every theory, every religious belief, every
Clark:political idea, they're not mirrors.
Clark:They don't reflect reality as it actually is, just as we would like
Clark:it to be or the way we think it is.
Clark:And the problem with that is, when, for instance, let's say, and I'll take
Clark:an extreme example, when the National Socialist Party 30s decided that they
Clark:were going to take over the world.
Clark:and kill half the people in it.
Clark:To a lot of them, they thought this was a good thing.
Clark:They had a belief that in the end, we would all be better off if we
Clark:all walked around in jackboots and, Hugo Boss uniforms and all that.
Clark:And the same for any political ideal, communists all thought that,
Clark:this is the way we should live.
Clark:It's a belief that doesn't necessarily reflect reality because The minute you
Clark:put anything into dogma, it excludes all the people that live outside of
Clark:the boundaries of that belief system.
Clark:And one of the things I, the very beginning, the first chapter of my book,
Clark:as I go from the introduction out to the rest of the book the title of the first
Clark:chapter is The Map Is Not The Territory.
Clark:Whilst it's a representation of what you think is going on around you, it is
Clark:not actually what's going on around you.
Clark:And, you said, Tony.
Clark:We need to know what we're talking about in this situation.
Clark:We need to know, what's actually going on.
Clark:And it really comes down to what do people believe.
Clark:You may believe that if we do it this way, if all the engineers took over,
Clark:then the place would be run perfectly.
Clark:But that completely forgets HR, and it completely forgets finance.
Clark:It completely rules out, like so many belief systems, it excludes
Clark:a whole group of other people.
Clark:The idea is that there needs to be always somebody that says what if this?
Clark:What if we do it this way?
Clark:Interestingly, this whole idea of the 10th Mandate I keep banging on about.
Clark:The Israelis never called it that.
Clark:It's just a Western invention of the name.
Clark:What the Israelis call it is Ipcha Mistabra.
Clark:Which means, on the other hand, or alternatively, and there always needs to
Clark:be somebody that says hold on a minute.
Clark:Yes, communism is great for this.
Clark:But obviously also democracy is good for these other things.
Clark:And there are other belief systems that also work.
Clark:We must not just dump everybody into this one belief system
Clark:because it is not a reflection of how people actually function.
Clark:And as you said, Rob, even in relationships, the wife may say, oh,
Clark:you don't pick up your clothes, you don't do this, you don't do that.
Clark:She has a belief about why that's happening.
Clark:And it's nearly always wrong.
Clark:All the beliefs that we have about each other are nearly always completely wrong
Clark:because it's from our own perspective.
Clark:And so there needs to be somebody that lays everything bare.
Clark:And that's the thing about change, isn't it?
Clark:That's why change is painful, because we have to admit the things.
Clark:We have to open the doors and let the skeletons out of the closet.
Clark:We have to make everything transparent.
Clark:And that's where it's really difficult because nobody
Clark:likes to have their beliefs.
Rob:It's interesting that you bring up religion because I think religion
Rob:just explains it in a, in most wars have been fought about religion.
Rob:And I'll, when you look at the currency, what do people get from religion?
Rob:Why do they believe so fervently in it?
Rob:It's because they want some certainty of how the world works.
Rob:They want to believe that the world is a certain way.
Rob:But when you look at like religion, Christianity has 32, 000 different
Rob:denominations of so they say even people who believe in Jesus can't agree on What
Rob:is the right way and Buddhism is the same?
Rob:But what's so interesting about them is Buddha wasn't a Buddhist and Jesus wasn't
Rob:a Christian if you look at the Sermon on the Mount, what Jesus actually said,
Rob:if that's a true account, he actually said exactly the opposite to religion.
Rob:He said, don't go to the church and do this.
Rob:Don't pretend to be a good person.
Rob:Don't follow the, don't.
Rob:mindlessly follow ritualistic words.
Rob:And what do Christians do?
Rob:They took something that they didn't understand.
Rob:I often think of life is like a river.
Rob:It's just flowing and it's moving.
Rob:What we do is we try and capture a bit of it and put it in a box and
Rob:siphon it off and say, this is sacred.
Rob:And we take all the life out of it.
Rob:We stifle the life out of it.
Rob:It then becomes stagnant and it loses the vitality and the beauty that it had.
Rob:And I think that's what we do with truth.
Rob:Truth is inconvenient, but if we're not building on truth, then
Rob:we're building on a house of cards.
Rob:At any moment, the truth is going to reveal itself and the whole thing
Rob:is going to come tumbling down.
Rob:People don't seem to understand that if you're not really building on something
Rob:that's solid, then nothing else can last.
Rob:It's only a matter of time before everything can crumble.
Rob:To your point about everyone, I can't remember exactly what he said, but
Rob:it came to mind that sociologists, early sociologists thought that the
Rob:world should be run by sociologists.
Rob:Whichever viewpoint you have, everyone thinks everyone should think that.
Rob:But all of us have different values for a reason, and we all
Rob:have different perspectives, but we're all part of the jigsaw.
Rob:It's only by working together that we can get the bigger picture.
Clark:But Rob, here's the thing, right?
Clark:This is a conversation I have fairly regularly.
Clark:Obviously since when I had the motorbike accident, I had to transition across
Clark:to quite a bit more one on one work.
Clark:And that was interesting for me because having worked in
Clark:organizations for such a long time to understand how groups of people and
Clark:organizations are just a macrocosm of what's going on within people.
Clark:I always want to know this when I talk to somebody, even just casually,
Clark:if I'm just having a coffee and talk to somebody, my first thing
Clark:is, what do these people believe?
Clark:I want to know what they believe, because believing something is
Clark:not the same as knowing something.
Clark:If I believe in God yeah, okay.
Clark:You don't know he exists, though, do you?
Clark:I believe that if the communists took over the world, we'd all be better,
Clark:yeah, but you don't know that, because it's never actually worked, has it?
Clark:All of these things you believe, it almost seems to be like a self persuasion.
Clark:I really want this to be true.
Clark:It's like a, it's like a really deep help wish.
Clark:And, if you can say to a group of people, to an organization, when they
Clark:talk about their values, for instance, as an organization, the organization is
Clark:basically saying, this is what we believe.
Clark:And you start to interrogate that assumption and I do this, very often
Clark:with bosses when you say things like why don't you devolve more authority
Clark:and initiative down to the shop floor?
Clark:Oh they couldn't handle it.
Clark:Why couldn't they handle it?
Clark:What do you believe about these people that make you think they can't handle it?
Clark:Are they idiots?
Clark:Why did you hire them then?
Clark:All these people that you're paying good money to, to run your company,
Clark:why are you not giving them a little bit more initiative and authority?
Clark:Are you better than them?
Clark:There's a belief, that people very often are not prepared to face up to.
Clark:And when you talk to people and they say, oh, this group of people are bad.
Clark:What is it about those people that you believe that makes them so bad?
Clark:Because I think what we're talking about is not so much them, but you.
Clark:Because the fact that you believe that thing is probably the problem, not them.
Clark:That to me is the most interesting thing about change.
Clark:You speak to somebody and they say, we need to change this.
Clark:It's terrible.
Clark:There are too many immigrants in the country.
Clark:Okay what do we believe is bad about immigrants then?
Clark:Let's have a look at that conversation first before we decide that this
Clark:actually is a problem that needs solving.
Clark:And that's the thing, isn't it?
Clark:When people talk about change, they're basically saying we have a
Clark:problem that needs to be resolved.
Clark:And that problem is based on the belief that we have that this other thing is
Clark:no good, that you're rubbish at doing this thing and we would do it better.
Clark:Hold on a minute.
Clark:I think that really says a lot more about you.
Tony:It starts with that, doesn't it?
Tony:It's that self reflection piece, which is, okay, I've
Tony:identified that there's a problem.
Tony:I'm going to have some agency and take some responsibility for fixing it.
Tony:So I need to actually understand what part am I playing in the problem
Tony:that we're living in at the moment.
Tony:It has to start there.
Tony:Otherwise it becomes an outward looking problem.
Tony:It's everybody else's problem.
Tony:I've just got a great idea of how to fix it, but actually I'm in the middle of it.
Tony:And the more people can actually take responsibility for even the things
Tony:that out of their direct control.
Tony:I must have done something somewhere that's had some sort
Tony:of impact on this thing over here that I don't like at the moment.
Tony:What was my role in that?
Tony:Can I find something that I can at least Give me something to go and
Tony:take responsibility for there's so much growth in that so much
Tony:pain that goes with that as well.
Tony:Actually, instead of it being an externalized set of problems that
Tony:other people are bringing to the table.
Tony:Now, I'm going to take that responsibility.
Tony:And if you do Clark, and if you do, Rob together, we will really take ownership
Tony:of what the next step looks like.
Tony:What that vision looks like.
Tony:Once we've agreed on the vision we can start to map the journey towards it.
Tony:And that's when all of the positive chemicals start kicking in.
Tony:That dopamine kicks in when you're in pursuit of something exciting.
Tony:You don't get the hit When you win, you get the hit when you're playing, you
Tony:get the hit when you move in towards it.
Tony:And then you set, Oh, we didn't make it.
Tony:Let's go again.
Tony:When you get another, Oh, come on, we can do this.
Tony:We're together.
Tony:All of that sort of stuff starts, all those chemicals that are relevant to how
Tony:we connect, how we pursue what we want.
Tony:All start to manifest in a positive way once we're clear about the
Tony:vision and we're together on it.
Tony:We become that unstoppable force that everybody wants to change project to be.
Tony:But very rarely get there because it's your fault.
Tony:Anyway, it was not nothing to do with me.
Tony:I think, we could be better.
Tony:We could be better.
Tony:But you guys, honestly.
Tony:this is what we should be doing.
Tony:This is what we should be doing.
Tony:I'm absolutely adamant of what good looks like through my own eyes, through
Tony:my own crazy optimistic eyes that people go, yeah, but all the real clinical
Tony:rational Thinkers will go, yeah, but Tony, don't you know if we did that
Tony:would happen to these people over here?
Tony:Like I need to balance myself out with the collective wisdom in order to get to the
Tony:place where it might never be utopia but the place we all believe is worth going
Tony:through the hardship to get there for.
Tony:Otherwise, we'll just keep it.
Tony:We've got the shortcuts.
Tony:We're at the moment serving my needs to stay as we are.
Tony:Emotionally, I'm fine.
Tony:I've got security.
Tony:I got my wage.
Tony:My relationships are good.
Tony:I go for a beer on a Friday with the lads, whatever it might be.
Tony:This is just perfect.
Tony:What might be around the corner, the uncertainty of that this change
Tony:project that people are talking about really scares me, but I'm not
Tony:going to tell anyone about that.
Tony:I'm too cool for that.
Tony:So this is what we should be doing.
Tony:Something that serves me even better than it, than I am.
Tony:And I'm okay right now.
Tony:There's a lot of that stuff going on, I think.
Rob:The problem is trust, isn't it?
Rob:Is because communication comes from the root word of making common.
Rob:And that's really what we need to do.
Rob:Put everything on the table.
Rob:So everyone knows what everything is.
Rob:But it's the trust we talked about vulnerability.
Rob:So the more social media comes across, the more judgment there is,
Rob:the more social anxiety there is.
Rob:And so the more fake people become because they don't feel able to open up.
Rob:Especially if you're in an environment where where it's very
Rob:competitive and dog eat dog then it's very hard to show any weakness.
Rob:Because again, there's all these ingrained beliefs that not being able to do my job,
Rob:everyone else is doing better than me.
Rob:I'm just not doing well enough.
Rob:I'm not up to it.
Rob:They'll find me out.
Rob:There's so many doubts that people.
Rob:It does go back to that emperor's new clothes thing where people want to go
Rob:along because they don't want to be seen.
Rob:And that's so strong.
Rob:We saw it in the Nazis and there was a whole lot of research.
Rob:I don't know if you've ever seen the Asch study where people
Rob:clearly know something is wrong.
Rob:And you can see the anxiety that they go through and they're watching
Rob:it and watching everyone say what they can clearly see is wrong.
Rob:And almost all of them just go.
Rob:Yeah, it's that.
Rob:And no one stands up and says, no, it's not.
Rob:And the same thing happens in in obedience what's the famous study
Rob:where they electrocute people?
Rob:I can't remember the study, but.
Rob:Milgram, that's it.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:And basically people will go to the point of killing people and they're not doing
Rob:it lightly that you can see their stress.
Rob:But because there's certain archetypes like authority, like someone in a
Rob:white coat telling you it must be done.
Rob:And there's something in that I think often people like.
Rob:The comfort of knowing someone else is in charge and I'm just doing what I said.
Rob:But it's so strong in human groups.
Clark:I hate to keep bringing up the 10th man, Rob, but it's,
Clark:this whole idea of groupthink.
Clark:We are herd animals to a certain degree.
Clark:And I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson that, that actually wrote
Clark:about the concept of nonconformity.
Clark:Because when you refuse to conform until you know you're doing the right
Clark:thing then you're in a safe situation because if the herd's charging headlong
Clark:over a cliff, and you're going because everybody else is going you're going
Clark:to suffer the same fate as everybody.
Clark:One of the things when I have to make change very quickly.
Clark:Or when I'm dealing with a group of people and the problems are quite profound
Clark:and causing all sorts of problems.
Clark:One of the things I do is introduce something that I learned years ago, and
Clark:it's a sales technique, funnily enough.
Clark:There was a book, I think the guy's name was Neil Rackham, who
Clark:wrote a book called Spin Selling.
Clark:When I read that, and we were talking a good 20 years ago, it was radical in its
Clark:approach to how you deal with a problem.
Clark:I've used it ever since.
Clark:And the idea behind spin selling, because a salesperson, one assumes,
Clark:is trying to solve a problem.
Clark:There's a need, they sell the thing that fixes that problem.
Clark:So it's about problem solving.
Clark:And spin selling, basically, it's an acronym, S P I N.
Clark:And it asks four questions.
Clark:What's the situation?
Clark:So this goes to what Tony was saying, what are we talking about here?
Clark:What's actually going on and when you ask somebody first of all, so
Clark:just tell me what's going on like a doctor tell me what's the problem
Clark:that gives you an idea of what their belief system is What is their belief
Clark:about this particular situation?
Clark:And once you've asked them that, the next thing you say, that P is,
Clark:so what's the problem with that?
Clark:And the, it's a brilliant thing because it's such an easy thing to teach people.
Clark:S P I N.
Clark:What's the situation?
Clark:What's the problem?
Clark:And the minute somebody says, oh yeah, but it's because it, P smells.
Clark:Okay why is that a problem?
Clark:How is that affecting you?
Clark:How is that affecting production?
Clark:How is that affecting efficiency?
Clark:Tell me why you think that's a problem.
Clark:You straight away get into the root of the situation and then
Clark:the next one, I, is what are the implications then of that problem?
Clark:What does this mean?
Clark:Not what you think it means, not what your religion tells you it
Clark:means, what does it actually mean?
Clark:And then the end is what's okay, so what do we need to do?
Clark:What's the need?
Clark:You can teach it to a group of people in five minutes.
Clark:And the minute people start saying to themselves, why are
Clark:we all running for the door?
Clark:What's the situation here that everybody's running for the door.
Clark:I don't see any fire.
Clark:I don't see any crazed ax man.
Clark:I think I'm just going to stand here a minute.
Clark:Cause there's a problem with this situation.
Clark:And that is.
Clark:that they're all going to get crushed in the doorway or whatever.
Clark:The minute you can help people to start asking themselves, the critical
Clark:questions that relate to the situation they find and conformity really
Clark:basically just comes down to handing over your authority, your autonomy,
Clark:your agency to a group of people.
Clark:You're basically saying I don't know what's going on.
Clark:They're all running in that direction.
Clark:Clearly they know what's going on.
Clark:I'm going to follow them.
Clark:They usually don't.
Tony:Yeah.
Tony:Good old spin.
Tony:Spin was a good model.
Tony:Yeah.
Tony:I did Miller Hyman.
Tony:Did you do Miller Hyman as well?
Tony:Have you seen those?
Tony:With the blue sheets and green sheets.
Tony:Like spin, for the interface of selling, whereas Miller Hyman
Tony:was for strategic selling.
Tony:It's like stakeholder mapping really.
Tony:You're trying to work out what their needs are at each level.
Tony:How you meet those needs and all of those kinds of stuff, but both together
Tony:really strong set of sales tools.
Clark:Sometimes it's really useful to keep things simple, I never disagree
Clark:with you Rob, but I will take issue with that point that you made about
Clark:all the wars being caused by religion.
Clark:It's an assumption that we make, but actually most wars are territorial.
Clark:The Nazis had no interest in religion.
Clark:Stalin had no interest in religion.
Clark:Pol Pot had no interest in religion.
Clark:It's basically power.
Clark:And the interesting thing about these assumptions is that we buy into them and
Clark:people say, oh yeah, it's because of this.
Clark:No it's not.
Clark:We all think that it is, and we all agree that's a paradigm, and it's true.
Clark:Things like the Inquisition and the Crusades, which were based on
Clark:religion were catastrophic for people.
Clark:But it's only part of the picture and very often, somebody, and, I get this
Clark:a lot, for instance in, In meetings where HR nearly always says we need
Clark:to empower people to do this thing.
Clark:And we all go, yeah, of course we do.
Clark:We've got to empower people.
Clark:And, when somebody turns around and says, oh, hold on a minute.
Clark:What does that mean?
Clark:What are you going to do?
Clark:Do they actually get a say in how things are run?
Clark:No, I don't think so.
Clark:The problem with empowerment and one of the things I take issue with.
Clark:is that it assumes that you have the power and you're giving them a little bit.
Clark:There's already a problem there, as far as I can tell.
Clark:So why have you got all the power?
Clark:Oh I get paid more.
Clark:I'm the cleverest.
Clark:I'm the boss.
Clark:I think that's what we really need to talk about.
Clark:Not that they need empowerment.
Clark:It's the whole thinking behind that is an issue.
Clark:And, they're simple things.
Clark:When somebody can start to look critically at the assumptions
Clark:that we made, this whole idea of beliefs, the map isn't the territory.
Clark:I think that's when we can really start to, and we all do it.
Clark:I constantly do.
Clark:I assume that anybody that supports Birmingham City is an absolute idiot.
Clark:What's wrong with them?
Clark:But, there must be at least one or two decent ones amongst them.
Clark:Okay.
Tony:There's a a great analogy there.
Tony:I think if you think about the term, oh, he's lost the dressing room.
Tony:So when a manager's lost the dressing room, there's a person who's been
Tony:given a key to the kingdom in terms of authority is in the position of
Tony:power as designated by the board.
Tony:But it's the players decide whether you've got authority over them or not.
Tony:It's the same in business authority is given by those people.
Tony:Who are by decree subservient to you, so you might have the title, but
Tony:your authority comes from the people that you are leading effectively.
Tony:They'll let you know if you have authority over them.
Tony:They'll give you the confidence to lead them.
Tony:They'll let you know that it's okay.
Tony:You can lead me into this situation.
Tony:I'm with you.
Tony:Or they won't.
Clark:Yeah, there's no traction, right?
Clark:I find that interesting because I wrote a post a long time ago based
Clark:on that old Pirelli tire advert that said that power without control
Clark:is useless or something like that.
Clark:And the point of it was that their tire is the thing that transfers the
Clark:power from your car onto the road.
Clark:The 600 horsepower engine in the world is no good if your tires are spinning.
Clark:And I actually made the point in the post that, there are some And I see
Clark:you two as this, I think I said this last week, that you guys are I start
Clark:the fires, I poke things with a stick.
Clark:Which is no good, if you're basically just poking a beehive and all the bees come.
Clark:Somebody then needs to do something about that and that's the point of this whole
Clark:this idea of an arbiter or a mediator.
Clark:He's the person that is the interface between the power in the organization
Clark:and the road the organization, the people that, that it's serving,
Clark:there has to be some traction.
Clark:As you said, if when you lose the changing room or you lose
Clark:the support of the employees.
Clark:That's when your tires are spinning.
Clark:You're applying all this power, nothing's happening.
Clark:And one of the most important things to do is to engage the one with the other.
Clark:You need to be able to find a way of gaining some common ground where the
Clark:belief systems of both people are aligned.
Clark:They may not agree with each other, but they're both going to the same place.
Clark:And that's the point, isn't it?
Clark:That somebody needs to be that interface.
Clark:I find you guys are the people that, you're like the steering wheel,
Clark:you're the driver, you're the people that, that car's taking off down
Clark:the road, but where's it going?
Clark:It's people with the experience and knowledge that you guys have got that
Clark:actually make sure it doesn't end up crashing into a lamppost, that it
Clark:actually goes somewhere productive.
Clark:People like me just get the traction and you could go spinning off
Clark:and fly into a wall, but you need people that have got that ability
Clark:to steer it in the right direction.
Clark:For me, that really is the key skill.
Clark:The fact that you guys and people like yourselves who are strategically
Clark:minded and are able to guide the situation somewhere positive and useful.
Clark:I'm useless in a situation like that.
Clark:I can point things out, but then it's up to the organization
Clark:itself to do something with that.
Clark:And if a boss or a manager of a football team loses, the the change room.
Clark:You might as well just leave since it's happening from that point.
Clark:And it's a
Tony:classic, and that's a classic scenario where you only need to
Tony:hear the rhetoric of the pundits about their own past experiences to
Tony:understand where that issue lies.
Tony:If in those scenarios the manager's always blaming the players or the
Tony:board or the fans or whatever it is, all of the above missing the point.
Tony:What is it that I'm doing that's not working?
Tony:And they're difficult conversations to have with yourself, no doubt about that.
Tony:But having somebody To ask the right questions is a massive help.
Tony:I don't think anybody should be without it.
Tony:So the 10th man and all of that type thing because it's not something
Tony:that, because the in internal people have all got vested interest.
Tony:They've all got a stake in the game.
Tony:They've all got something to lose if it goes wrong, whereas the
Tony:independent person that sits alongside you with the same shared vision
Tony:of what good looks like, but has.
Tony:It doesn't matter if you can't fire me I'm not looking for a promotion.
Clark:Yes.
Tony:My aim is to co create this, go on an adventure with you.
Tony:Let's create together what this looks like.
Tony:It becomes an absolutely critical piece.
Rob:Yeah.
Rob:It's so important.
Rob:I read some research that the biggest problems CEOs face.
Rob:Is feeling they're not getting the right information, feeling
Rob:that they, there's too many yes people, there's too many people
Rob:telling them what they want to hear.
Rob:But I just want to go back a minute to what you pointed out about religion.
Rob:I knew this was going to come back to me.
Rob:No.
Rob:Not to contradict, but I think it's a great point.
Rob:I will not have it.
Rob:I will not have it.
Rob:I'm used to this.
Rob:Anyway, I've got to go.
Rob:In the Bible.
Rob:No I think you're absolutely right.
Rob:I think the point is religion has never really been about religion.
Rob:It's been about social control.
Rob:So the way it relates is that organizations, I think CEOs aren't
Rob:getting the full picture because there are so many structures, even if
Rob:they're open to it, there's so many structures that have been typically used.
Rob:And because we haven't challenged their assumption, because we haven't
Rob:looked into them, we accept them as, okay, that's just the way it is.
Rob:There's a fascinating Psychiatrist called Thomas Sasz, and I think he's dead now.
Rob:Oh, yes.
Rob:And basically, he said that there've always been people that don't fit in.
Rob:He said, there isn't mental illness, there's just people
Rob:that just are how they are.
Rob:They are a threat to society.
Rob:And because they're a threat to society, we've medicalised it
Rob:and made it a mental illness.
Rob:We shut them away.
Rob:I think it was, I think it was Richard Bandler talked about, from
Rob:NLP, talked about the way you make something unquestioned as you make
Rob:it sacred, you make it important that you make it something else.
Rob:There's three things.
Rob:And basically when you look at like the Royals, the pageantry that we have of
Rob:the Royals or when a president visits or something like that, all of that is so
Rob:that no one will stand up and oppose them.
Rob:No one will be that little boy in the Emperor's New Clothes.
Rob:We create all of these structures that make it deliberately difficult
Rob:for someone to challenge us.
Rob:So over thousands of years, we've created this conformity and I
Rob:suppose conformities, I think some of it is probably genetic.
Rob:We're now fighting that tide.
Rob:When you're talking, my work is the furthest from working in a factory.
Rob:I know teams from individuals because I know what works in
Rob:individuals and beyond a small team.
Rob:Like where it's not about relationships and it's about processes and things like
Rob:that, like I don't have expertise to talk, but I understand what works individually.
Rob:Organizations don't work to the individual.
Rob:What we need is more from the individual now.
Rob:Whereas factories, I think you can get away with bad relationships
Rob:as long as the factory line works.
Rob:On the front line, you don't need people to necessarily to be brought in as long
Rob:as they're keeping the factory line going.
Rob:I may be wrong, but that's my assumption.
Rob:But where it's really key is where it's creativity, where it's insight, where
Rob:it's analysis and where we need real human insight, that's where we need people
Rob:performing more and that is where the organizations that we've had don't work.
Rob:I think we have to challenge all of the structure of our organizations
Rob:because a lot of them are designed to stop people from challenging.
Clark:I think one of the things that happens in most organizations now,
Clark:whether it's a factory or, because I've worked in call centers and places
Clark:like that, and what I've found is that most all of the roles within an
Clark:organization are about what they do what's your job, so I manage the money
Clark:I'm in charge of HR, so I'm supposed to make sure that everybody's happy, but
Clark:actually where I am is the policeman for the organization, I'm the ops guy.
Clark:I make sure that the stuff comes in and goes out on time.
Clark:It's all about what they do, not about what they are.
Clark:And the interesting thing, and I may not be right with this, because
Clark:I'm really just in the process of thinking how this might work.
Clark:But since I started really investigating this book about the 10th man, it
Clark:made me realize, because that person has an important, although limited
Clark:role within any organization.
Clark:If things are going well, you don't need you just need him to be looking.
Clark:But I then started to realize that actually, that's an archetype.
Clark:It's interesting that throughout human history, these
Clark:archetypes keep cropping up.
Clark:In mythology and in stories and fairytales and all that sort of thing,
Clark:and we talk about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey and that
Clark:sort of archetypes keep cropping up.
Clark:What I realized was, here's me been banging this drum for years about the
Clark:10th man is just one archetype within a large group, and I've actually
Clark:written down now, I've got nine.
Clark:I was hoping to get 10 because it really fits neatly with my 10th man
Clark:thing but I can only think of nine.
Clark:But these nine archetypes are what I've thought of.
Clark:There are people within an organization who are necessary, not because of
Clark:what they do, managing the money or getting product out the door,
Clark:but because of what they are.
Clark:The 10th man is somebody who is authorized to dissent, to disagree.
Clark:to ask what the alternatives are.
Clark:That's what they are as a person.
Clark:There are people like that within every organization and you want
Clark:them to be able to speak up.
Clark:But then there are other people.
Clark:One of the archetypes that I thought of and then looked into it and started
Clark:realizing these people crop up everywhere is the sacred fool who is an archetype
Clark:who basically is the one that when you want change, when you want ideas,
Clark:when you want innovation, they're the people that come up with the mad ideas
Clark:that actually turn out to be brilliant.
Clark:This person that's super creative within an organization, you need a
Clark:pragmatist, who are the sort of the real engineers, they get stuff done.
Clark:There are the alchemists that are all about change, how we change things,
Clark:how we make things work differently, the way such as Gareth Southgate did,
Clark:for instance, with the England team.
Clark:But all of these archetypes, I think, I may be wrong, seem to crop up in
Clark:organizations constantly, regardless of the type of organization.
Clark:Business that they're involved in.
Clark:I think I've only just really scratched the surface because you
Clark:were just talking about Tom Szasz there Rob, and I love that guy.
Clark:I find him fascinating.
Clark:One of the things I like particularly about him is the way he attacks
Clark:psychiatry and psychology, because, that's just another belief system.
Clark:My mom was a psychoanalyst.
Clark:She had a particular viewpoint.
Clark:She was very much of the Freudian school and so were most of her colleagues, but
Clark:she could have easily been Adlerian or Gestalt or Jung or whatever, and they
Clark:would have had their own belief systems.
Clark:But he attacked them and basically said that, all of these therapies
Clark:and the psychoanalysis, they're just talking interventions.
Clark:Which is a role that used to be fulfilled by priests and pastors.
Clark:They perform a ministry to people.
Clark:They're just perform a talking role and that is necessary within humanity.
Clark:We need somebody that is the person that will listen to us and maintain
Clark:our confidentiality when they're dealing with that problem and so on.
Clark:All of these archetypes keep cropping up and I'm starting to think that we need to
Clark:change the way we look at organizations and how they function, certainly
Clark:within, politics, because all these politicians say we're going to do this.
Clark:Yeah, all right.
Clark:But what are you?
Clark:Who are you?
Clark:What do you stand for?
Clark:What are the values that you ascribe to?
Clark:Because they're really the most important thing.
Clark:And I think I'm starting to formulate An idea myself that
Clark:maybe we need to start looking at things a little bit differently.
Tony:For sure.
Tony:Interesting stuff.
Tony:Can't wait for the book.
Clark:Nor can I.
Clark:You're driving me mad.
Clark:When you start to write anything, and I know you're doing that yourself,
Clark:Tony, and you've already done it, Rob.
Clark:You have to start to examine quite deeply what you really think about a thing,
Clark:is this going to stand up to scrutiny and, a lot of what I say doesn't.
Clark:Certainly I will make comments about things based on certain assumptions.
Clark:When you examine them you suddenly realize, hold on, I have no way of
Clark:knowing whether this is true or not.
Clark:And so you have to make that clear or you at least have to dig into it
Clark:and make it a little bit more robust.
Clark:So it's fascinating because for all the research I've done on the 10th
Clark:man, there's not a lot out there.
Clark:Obviously the Israeli intelligence used it as a as a device within
Clark:their intelligence organization, but there's not much else about it.
Clark:I'm very fortunate.
Clark:I've been in contact with some people in the Israeli intelligence
Clark:community that have helped me.
Clark:with this, but I'm learning more myself in writing it than
Clark:anybody that ever reads it will.
Tony:Yeah, it's great.
Tony:I'm in the same place it's not the same type of book, but because
Tony:I've been researching for the last probably four years now all of
Tony:the different psychometric tools and whether they're good or bad or
Tony:indifferent, they're very popular.
Tony:So I've been building my own tool.
Tony:I'm now finally, maybe six weeks ago, maybe a bit more, I landed on
Tony:the thing that unlocked everything.
Tony:I've been torn for years on, had ideas and kept researching and
Tony:had ideas and kept researching.
Tony:I was looking at where these things I layered them all over
Tony:each other because they're all trying to do the same thing, right?
Tony:They're all trying to put you in a room and say this is what you like.
Tony:And this is how you can get on better.
Tony:And this is how businesses can benefit.
Tony:But they all claim to be measuring different things
Tony:and doing different things.
Tony:And we know it's incredibly, it it's impossible to really
Tony:measure psychology in that way.
Tony:It's lots of neuroscience now that helps and stuff like that.
Tony:So I've been researching this to the hill anyway.
Tony:I'm in a purple patch.
Tony:It's just come flooding out now.
Tony:I've landed on this model and I, I absolutely love it.
Tony:It's all validated.
Tony:It's great.
Tony:I can't wait to share it with you.
Tony:I shared with Thomas a little bit of it yesterday in terms of
Tony:how my own profile stacks up.
Tony:And he was like blown away.
Tony:Thomas comes from that industry.
Tony:Thomas was in learning and development.
Tony:He was with insights.
Tony:There's so much more granularity The typing systems and the matrix matrices
Tony:and the putting people in boxes and the labels and all of that sort of stuff.
Tony:So it's very exciting in terms of that.
Tony:But anyway, the reason I started talking about that is because we're talking about
Tony:books, but I had a conversation with Thomas yesterday touching on archetypes,
Tony:because out of this stuff that I sent him, prompted one of the conversations
Tony:that Thomas and I have, and it was from an organizational structural point of view.
Tony:If you get the alchemists, you identify who the alchemists
Tony:are within the organization.
Tony:And it's not all of the time that they're going to be creating the right
Tony:answers and the right solutions, but the time of the structured time when
Tony:you put the alchemist together in a room, lock them down to create gold.
Tony:It's not the fact that they may or may not come up with a brilliant solution on that
Tony:day or during that time, but the amount of empowerment, the amount of energy that
Tony:you because they're in their sweet spot.
Tony:You're harnessing their individual expression, you're
Tony:maximizing their potential.
Tony:So giving them the room to be who they are in order to do what
Tony:they do for me is foundational.
Tony:And this is what my book and my tool is all based on.
Tony:It's about giving people the optimal amount of, Opportunity to fulfill a
Tony:potential if we want to harness individual expression in the pursuit of a team
Tony:objective, which is what you want Trent Alexander Arnold to be optimal best.
Tony:How do we do that?
Tony:It's about that.
Tony:How do we harness what he's got in the context of the team structure?
Tony:For example, he's just an example.
Tony:So we use that idea that creatives are sometimes going to be stifled in
Tony:the day to day running of a business.
Tony:Because it's not asked for, it's not sought after, it's not recognized that
Tony:right now we need it, right now we need to get our hands dirty and fix all
Tony:this stuff that's in front of us and get these boxes out by five o'clock.
Tony:However, at the time when we give them their space to be who they are.
Tony:To do their thing.
Tony:Boom.
Clark:Can I just ask Tony does the model that you've formulated,
Clark:does that produce, Outcomes that align with certain archetypes.
Clark:You just mentioned the creatives.
Clark:For instance, just as an example, one of the things, one of the models that I like
Clark:is MBTI simply because it's a rough and ready, I like things that work quickly and
Clark:give me a rough idea of where I'm going, but it doesn't apply in all situations.
Clark:And you do have to get much more nuanced if you want Yeah, but
Clark:is it something similar to that?
Clark:That's what
Tony:my stuff's doing.
Tony:So it's taking that type of approach.
Tony:So what happens?
Tony:So with the big five, which is a very academic research for years model,
Tony:because it's so academic, it's very hard to make it applicable to the layman.
Tony:So if I try to roll the big five out as a tool onto a football
Tony:team, it's talking cackle, right?
Tony:Forget it.
Tony:But when you change the linguistics of it, but you retain the integrity of the model.
Tony:You change the language that's used, It's totally different.
Tony:So it's also because each of these things, so if you think of MBTI and
Tony:your extroversion, introversion as a dichotomy, I'm either introverted or
Tony:extroverted, extroversion is a continuum.
Tony:It's a measure of positive emotion.
Tony:On the one hand, how assertive am I, how adept at leadership might I be?
Tony:On the other hand, is how sociable am I?
Tony:Do I get energized by being in groups?
Tony:All of that sort of stuff.
Tony:It's a scale and it's very deterministic in terms of predicting job performance
Tony:in much more of a profound way than MBTI or DISC or any of those sort of what I
Tony:would call lower resolution things because you're asking questions that choose
Tony:between this and that, choose between this and that, choose between this and that.
Tony:So you try and take the social desirability bias out of your assessment
Tony:in the first place to minimize as much as possible and You get this rich output that
Tony:then the work that I'm doing is okay, so here's the output and all the granularity
Tony:that goes with it, how do I package that up to make it as accessible and have
Tony:as much utility as an MBTI or a DISC?
Tony:How can we make it simple to use, but much more valuable to the leader, to the team,
Tony:to the individual, to the relationship.
Tony:And it's honestly, since one of the elements of the programs that I've
Tony:been looking at for four years now.
Tony:About six weeks ago it landed and I'm producing a lot of
Tony:material that's really exciting.
Tony:And when I laid it over my own profile, I sent it to Thomas, he was
Tony:like, wow, that is something else.
Tony:That's interesting.
Tony:Are we going to get to see it?
Tony:I'll send you, I'll send you it's only a short thing.
Tony:I'll send it to you both on LinkedIn.
Clark:Yeah, please.
Clark:Because you just mentioned that I had nothing like that in mind when I
Clark:was thinking about these archetypes myself, just because rather than.
Clark:Taking a rationalist view, i.
Clark:e., if I do this and this should happen.
Clark:My thinking is always what's actually happening?
Clark:What's going on out there?
Clark:And when I look at organizations based on having to write this book about the
Clark:10th man, I started to realize that there are people, friends I have one
Clark:archetype that I was looking at I call Pathfinder, who is brilliant at gaining
Clark:clarity in a situation, answering that question that we said earlier
Clark:what's really going on and finding out what's going on and being fearless,
Clark:in gaining clarity in a situation.
Clark:Then I started to look around to see if this is an actual thing.
Clark:I have no way of measuring this in an organization.
Clark:I don't have the tools that you've just mentioned, but you see them
Clark:and you see these people and you think actually these people are
Clark:necessary within an organization.
Clark:There are people who are important for there's another one that
Clark:I call the sentinel, who is a guardian of the belief system.
Clark:What do we stand for?
Clark:What are our values?
Clark:What do we believe as a group of people?
Clark:And that's the person that has to stand there and say, hold on a minute, that goes
Clark:against everything that we believe in.
Clark:These people exist and they're not just part of organizations,
Clark:they're part of communities, tribes.
Tony:I'll tell you what my, I'll tell you what my tool can do.
Tony:I think I'll put a peg in the ground.
Tony:If you can just give me the broad characteristics of those nine types, I
Tony:will, I think I can source a 10th type.
Tony:Oh, brilliant.
Tony:That would make it so much, that would satisfy my OCD massively.
Tony:And that would be totally new.
Tony:That would be like Maybe not even, it might exist somewhere else but
Tony:that's definitely, because I've looked, I've modelled so as part
Tony:of the research, I looked at the Enneagram, it's got nine types.
Tony:I looked at the Belbin team role, it's got nine types.
Tony:And I can map my system against, so the beauty of my system, by the
Tony:way, is you don't need this, you don't need MBTI, you don't need
Tony:CliftonStrengths, you don't need Belbin.
Tony:It maps to all of those programs.
Tony:So this is why I'm excited.
Tony:It's got a real cut through in terms of cost effectiveness and utility.
Tony:So it's.
Clark:I think you've got a really good point there, because I remember
Clark:somebody mentioned to me, I just had my accident and I was sitting there
Clark:moping around, feeling sorry for myself.
Clark:And all these people have been saying to me, these things happen for a reason,
Clark:which I found profoundly irritating because the reason was somebody cut
Clark:across in front of me and ran me over.
Clark:But somebody pointed me in the direction of, and I'm not a woo person, but
Clark:somebody pointed me in the direction of this thing called the human design.
Clark:And I said what is this?
Clark:And they said, it talks a lot about how you, your characteristics are
Clark:imprinted before you're even born.
Clark:I said that's nonsense.
Clark:I'm not even going to look at that, which, and I had to challenge my own belief
Clark:system because they said, just look at it.
Clark:And I put the information in that it required of me, and I was shocked
Clark:at the things that it said about me because I thought, my goodness, and
Clark:what I realized is that the person that came up with this in the seventies had
Clark:overlaid, as you've just said, things Te Ching, astrology, some other things,
Clark:and that they're all ancient ways of trying to understand who we are.
Clark:I thought what they've done is they've synthesized because they're
Clark:all basically doing the same job, so they must be all operating according
Clark:to the same principles, but just according to different templates.
Clark:And that's exactly what you're doing.
Clark:I think, yeah that's
Tony:what my research did.
Tony:My research was how do I create a hybrid of all these things that's got value.
Tony:It's incredibly complex and a hell of a lot of research.
Clark:But that needs to happen, Tony.
Clark:I remember years ago, being in the military, obviously
Clark:it's a martial environment.
Clark:It's all about, fighting and combat and that sort of thing.
Clark:And back in the day, people used to say, which is the best martial art?
Clark:Is it boxing?
Clark:Is it kung fu?
Clark:And then MMA happened which was a synthesis of all of these things, and
Clark:it's better than all of them, and you realize that as time goes on, and what
Clark:will happen, of course, something else will come along to take over, because
Clark:we're constantly optimizing where we're at, but somebody does need to
Clark:come along from time to time and say, look, all of these dogmatic beliefs and
Clark:ideas that we have need to be Mushed together so that we can converse in you,
Clark:which is exactly what you were doing.
Clark:I will be fascinated to see how that actually functions in real life.
Tony:Yeah, it's exciting.
Tony:Definitely.
Tony:And I've written say written a book.
Tony:I've got all the material that I've got.
Tony:160, 000 words for the book, which I now need to, I need to
Tony:pull it into as probably 60, 000 word book is the main book.
Tony:Yeah.
Tony:I've done a sports version of it so it's just flowing now I've got it's got so
Tony:much applicability so yeah I'm excited I'll share that with you for sure but
Tony:if you want to share those nine things I'm sure we can find a tenth Archetype