Curiosity, empathy and and cross cultural innovation with Cliff Scott

Bill Duane: 0:00

Hi, welcome to the heart of innovation Podcast. I'm Bill Duane former Google engineering executive and Superintendent of wellbeing and courage consultant and speaker on innovation strategy. We're going to be diving deep into the internal innovation that unlocks external innovation, and the surprisingly practical ways we can become better innovators. We'll be in conversation with innovators from many different backgrounds and contexts including business, science, social change and technology, and not only benefit from their expertise, but also their personal stories of their innovation journey. Today, we get to talk with clip Scott cliff is a seasoned consultant in helping organizations through transformations enabling them to succeed and new levels of complexity. He supports leaders and their ability to rise to the challenges of rapid change when prior ways of eating seem to fall short. He believes those who find deeper connection to their purpose and practice ways of deepening their self awareness are able to see and let go of beliefs and assumptions limiting their effectiveness as leaders, he finds joy in helping others look inward with courage to encounter what holds them back to release themselves from what hinders their greatness. Join us now, as we talked about ways that cross cultural interaction presents risks and opportunities for innovation. All right, so welcome to the heart of innovation podcast cliff.

Cliff Scott: 1:20

Well, thank you for inviting me. It's a first for me to be interviewed this way. So this is fun. Oh, excellent. Yeah, hopefully, I hope it will, it will be fun.

Bill Duane: 1:30

So when we first met via an organization called cultivating leadership, one of the things that really jumped out at me was the degree to which you do your coaching and strategy work cross culturally, mostly in Asia, I'm wondering how that came to be about how as a, as an American guy, you ended up one having an interest and then to spending so much of your professional life there?

Cliff Scott: 2:02

Well, it's actually very serendipitous I was working as the project manager for a global leadership development program that we had created for major high tech company and in Santa Clara. And the they had an institute, they have their own educational center, and the manager and the head of the management wing of the institute was Filipino. And he had witnessed how I had taken the supply chain organization through not only a course, but we decided to purpose that course to help that team come together in a way it hadn't been before, it led to a wholesale reengineering of their operation, which, which totally improved them and made them a rock star in your own company. And, and then shortly after that they had a layoff because there was a bit of a downturn. My mic, my manager, you know, my, my client manager, went back to the Philippines and took a job as the head of human resources. For the second the largest telco, telco in, in the Philippines. And when he got there, this is 2004. He, he realized the executive team was kind of in a mess. They, they had, they had the curse and the blessing of having achieved a five year strategy and three years flat, and they were were floundering, like what's next. It resulted in a kind of anon wiki setting in and some politics and so he asked me if I could come and help them come together and re examine their vision and stuff. And he said, Look, it'll probably be a week, every month for about six months, nothing more than that, will you be willing to do it? And I thought, Well, why not? And so I took it on. And, and very quickly found that the level of engagement that the senior managers that I was interviewing was super high was as if they were hungry for help with some kind wide open. And in so it's very rewarding. The the, the engagement, gone about three months in and and they began to ask me to do other things. I mean, very soon I was cascading programs down into different business units. And well, before I knew it, I had joined the Asian century, if you will, and I was full time working with them and not employed but I was on my as a consultant, I was flat out. And I asked myself, What am I doing here? And I thought, well, I you know, anything else I've been doing up until now? I've is repeated everything else I've ever done. Why not try this?

Bill Duane: 5:05

And how old were you? When, when this opportunity opened? 63? Right. 5353 Yeah, so it really speaks to this idea of leaving things open. So a few things, even immediately out of that story jumped out at me. One is the sometimes subtle ways that having diversity in senior leadership opens up paths that wouldn't already be there had your head the, you know, your client boss, in the consulting effort not been Filipino, there would have been no idea of there would have been no bridge, there would have been no obvious way to transit, the skill set you had to this other domain. And then it doesn't take too much imagination to say, you know, if if the senior leadership is sprinkled with people from different backgrounds, what other not just ideas or points of view, but like what other room what other contexts, context shifts might be available?

Cliff Scott: 6:12

Well, they The Philippines is by and large, a mono culture. So everybody on the executive team was Filipino, born born and bred. So the diversity was me. And, and, and, and I encountered over the ensuing months and even years, the, the, the fact that I was the only white man in the room, and I was the minority. But at the same time being a Westerner, you know, it comes with a cachet, and people have a high regard for us. So it wasn't the same as being marginalized. It was really this what it was is do you really understand us? How do you distinct How do you understand the heart of the Filipino? I would say that there was a lot of effort that I needed to put into really listening deeply to the logic that supports the, you know, the ideas and or the the belief systems that they were operating with as leaders. Where it comes from, I had to do some reading. There was a great sociologist who had really written some good books around what what does it mean for Westerners to do business in the Philippines? And what do you need to know about Philippine psychology as a, as a post colonial country, totally overwhelmed by the Spanish and depressed by them for hundreds of years? So there was there was a lot of learning there and a lot of suspending my own sense of what are these right answers, because they're not, for instance, I was I met a woman who became a sidekick of mine to help me with some of the projects and she was transiting into a role as an OD consultant and asked me to help her learn how to do that. And I was using the word accountability, you have to you have to really honor the accountabilities that you're given, blah, blah, blah, she said, Don't say accountability, it comes with judgment and risk. The sense of the sense of you have something that if you don't achieve it, you'll be punished for it just it just strikes the Filipino ear that way. She said, don't hold them accountable, hold them successful. That's beautiful, isn't it? Hold them successful, every bit of criticism is because I have your back, I want to see you grow. I didn't see potential in you. I'm simply trying to help you get there. As opposed to you're doing it wrong. Again.

Bill Duane: 9:01

There's also a bit of paternalism in that frame of I know, and you don't, and I'm going to correct you until you get which then especially can really play into some of those cultural racial dynamics of I know when you don't.

Cliff Scott: 9:20

Yeah. And when you do that their sense of risk rises very high, the sense of possible shame. When when the Filipinos are put in a situation where they're caught being wrong, or incompetent, they don't lose face, they, they, they it's worse than that there it goes right to the center of their identity where they can feel like I have just been shamed in front of others. It's something that's harder to recover from. And so they try very hard never to get into that situation. I think it's probably Probably a style of self defense that is waning when then in the in the younger generations. But I think it's also because that culture of oppression was still lingering, the trauma of that I think was still lingering worth. It's never, never okay to be wrong.

Bill Duane: 10:23

Yeah, it's come up in multiple conversations around cultures that have a really big shame component. And I think it's it's generally true a lot of talking about a huge diversity of cultures to say that Asian cultures tend to orient more towards that, that idea of shame. On the one hand, shame is really good at creating social cohesion because it's so powerful social cohesion of a certain point. But yet, actually, I ran into this also working in Russia, where failure was punished so severely, so you have this sort of these undercurrents, these underground currents that shame is not only bad, but when you bring it to the level of identity, it's that it's annihilation. It's worse than screwing up.

Cliff Scott: 11:13

Yes, right. And I think they're that is the thing, the fear of being annihilated, they're, they're who they are, their value, their, their persona collapsing, and then who the hell am I anyway, I'm not anybody anymore. Literally, there have been situations where somebody criticized but walk out of the job and not come back. No.

Bill Duane: 11:34

Yeah, I get it. I mean, in my own personal work, you know, there's the stuff I'm afraid of. And then there's the stuff that triggers annihilation fears, which is non rational, there's a lot of situations where I would literally rather be dead. Like that would be and I think, you know, when I think about people who are, you know, really in the desperate ends, I can only imagine that's the calculation that's taking place. And, you know, to understand that I think this mapping of like, well, what's my annihilation, like, where, where's that point, and if you've ever read Dune, but there's a line in Dune, there's a space within us that we're afraid to even look into. So. And I think what's different is that the nature of that, which again, goes beyond fear, to understand that, that the tendencies for that to reside in one situation would differ from individual to individual, but also that those individuals are trained by cultures. And the the point of getting around to is, so many methods of managing complexity and ambiguity, for innovation, absolutely require you to make concrete moves when you don't know. And, you know, in the case of my clients in Russia, they were very interested in becoming an agile financial services organization. And but at the same time, punishment was so severely SRE failure was so severely punished that everyone kept their little projects hidden until they were survivable, and then revealed them to the rest of the world, which really puts an inhibitor on cross division cross functional ideas that might serve the entire organization as opposed to that, but I really wanted to honor I mean, this was this his spare bank, the largest bank in Eastern Europe, and sort of I had a moment like your point, I'm like, Well, man, they really need to get over this. And then I thought, holy shit, Stalin was their main stakeholder for a point. This is a bank that's 120 years old, and I'm like, okay, okay, maybe maybe I get it a little more. But yeah, that idea of of what are the cultural points and it's interesting, this is stuff that you see in, in western stuff, the book difficult conversations mentions that there's three levels to a conversation the what level which is where Western business usually operates at the feelings conversation, which is sometimes but then that third part is the identity and I think the identity is the greatest source of power like a union shadow, but also the biggest point of just these no go areas that we may not be

Cliff Scott: 14:37

aware of. Yeah, yeah. Well, I the first, the first four years of my my journey through three and a half years through in the Philippines, had me constantly engaged in more and more expansive work not only was expanding down through the ranks in You know, where I was asked to help to business business units learn how to work together with some trust and that kind of thing. And, and, you know, designing workshops that really got people to learn how to listen deeply to one another and develop some compassion for one another. One of the things that happened was, you know, can you coach exec a particular executive as flagging. And I, up until that point, I never really thought of myself as an executive coach, in other than I was really more of a systems change agent. cultural change. And in the course of doing that, I knew that the top leader, at least I had to guide as by teaching them what it means to be a change leader, because they've only ever been managing a stable situation. And so I was beginning to coach and I think they'd be, they just started handing me some of the more difficult cases, one of the things I learned is that the standard kind of 360 assessment can tell them what they're strongly weakened, but that doesn't really help. Because when they try to become stronger, more self assertive, more, more vocal about their own perspectives, they were constantly taking the risk that what would happen is others would become disaffected, they would be unhappy with them, you weren't pleasing anymore, you're supposed to, you know, you're you're putting us on the spot, and that makes us feel like we're wrong. Because you're, you're chastising the organization for a system that's broken. And so they would very quickly retreat into their old style, and I was stuck trying to figure out, what can I do here, that gets underneath the surface, so that they can begin to see their belief system. And that led me to the leadership circle assessment. And, and that, that just changed the game completely. Because what it did is, is expose their belief system, in ways that was undeniable, it would show that, in fact, they have huge scores and all the function all the aspects of complying, pleasing paths of belonging, and that made it possible to discuss why is that what's at risk for you, if you stop being that way, and that changed the conversation completely. And what I found was that, because I was an outsider, I wasn't a part of any social circle within the Philippines, they would be willing to tell me things that they wouldn't dare tell anybody else because it would hit the gossip circuit, in the great gossip culture. And and so suddenly, they began to see there is a way outside a way out of the pain and the suffering of me trying constantly to be not caught out not Not, not lose my place. My Status, my stature, my, my positive regard, I get, there's a way I can do this, there's a pathway and, and my entire coaching process began to shift, basically, based on also learning a lot about adult stage development, there a very hungry culture for that kind of help. And, and then I also discovered something else that if one person is feels it's too risky to change, why not talk the company into taking the entire cohorts of leaders who are interdependent together, through the program through a program. So the way you're an outlier is if you don't get on the boat, that takes that journey of self awareness and, you know, collective commitment to change in a sense, that hooks their deep need to be belong, to put them on a boat that's going to show them how not to need to belong anymore. And so I learned that working with leadership teams, opened up avenues and horizons and created a safety in numbers kind of experience where the, what people went through in terms of coaching and there's learning concepts that that are attached to the you know, what makes a highly effective leader. They just were very hungry, very earnest, and really worked their asses off to to shift their behavior. Because they they had they had they had come by on their their their brothers in Then the whole journey with them. So those are some of the learnings that made me kind of effective there. And I think what I would say to them is, you know, believe a lot of Western ideas, and a lot of them don't really work in Asian cultures. But unfortunately, the world's global economy is running more on a Western template. So if you are connected company intends to be regionally or globally competitive, you've got to be able to keep pace with the chain adaptiveness and innovation, that companies from other parts of the world that are actually invading your territory are. So it's, it's remember, what's what's dear to you about your own culture can stay within any Can you can revel in it at home and with friends. But when you come to work, you're probably going to have to be more courageous, and more open and more vulnerable and not take it personally not believe that if you're wrong, it means you're no good, but rather, you now know something you didn't know before, which is, this doesn't work. Let's try something else. Right? So.

Bill Duane: 21:13

So a couple of things really stood out at me. One is, I'm just, I'm just very impressed with those stories. Because each each thing I'm gonna comment on is a potential hole that you didn't fall into via skillfulness. And so the first one was, white dude comes in tells brown people how to do it, right. And even if you don't have that as your intention, it can certainly even even with quite pure intention. So you know, the thing you said that was quite beautiful, is anything that is offered is offered in service of your well being. So I think I think that is an orientation. And then you didn't mention this explicitly. But I heard it implicitly, I'd love to know if I, if I'm guessing, right, is that when you landed, you saw that as a possibility, and had a sense that that's not functional, that there are other factors at play, that I can observe, I'm not sure of what they are, or what their causal relationships are, but they're there to be felt are observed and noted. And I suspect they're going to get in the way. So one is that awareness. And then two is how do you deal with it before it would have been Oh, just snap to what I learned in business school, because that's the best practice. Instead, what I heard is, you know, you managed to do the UNO reverse card on on the white dude working with brown people and instead said, Oh, I am the minority. Let me let me say how I might be of service in this situation. And the last thing I wanted to comment on is that, you know, in going through this deep learning experience, there's such implicit in what you're saying is, there's such a respect for the people in the culture, but also a willingness to call out the shadow of, you know, the shame doesn't serve you doesn't serve us. And then so instead of really leaning into the corrective intention, and mindset, instead, the service mindset, and the last thing that I really heard was the conjoining of those of like, if you're alone, it's not safe. If you're with us, we are as a group, safe, and what a skillful way to use everyone's culture, or, you know, the dominant culture that you were talking about, of de risking it. And because I think one of the things that's so challenging in doing any of the kind of work that we've been describing, which I think is particularly true and innovation when what you're trying to do is new and disjoint from what was done in the past, was how do you switch from me to we, when confronted with ambiguity and change and the stuff we're good at no longer being effective for us? Be we collapse, I'm projecting probably I collapse I can collapse into I me mine, whereas solution sets that involve we so what I heard you say in that specific is, you're actually using the tool set of the culture around you to say, It's better with we,

Cliff Scott: 24:45

yeah, well, recognizing that there's value and we and you know, because they prize the way they prize harmony, they prize fellowship and they they will suppress conflict. to their detriment, because it seems. So professionally, it seems like it's going to risk everything. And, and because they haven't built great capacity to handle conflict, well, they're, they're actually right. But if you can talk to them and teach them how to listen to one another in ways that let go of defensiveness. And allow yourself to say what you need to say. And notice that you've really been heard by the other without criticism. Without naysaying, but rather just playing back, here's what I understood, is that what you meant, yes, that, that elevated that kind of dialogue, you know, elevated the level of trust very rapidly. And what they began to feel like this is, this is us being we, but it's a stronger way. So that the what, what I did was I flipped the risk of belonging, using the of not belonging into joining the effort to become more, more, more, well, more open, I don't like the word vulnerability, but yeah, it acts as if it's almost a statement of weakness, the person who can be open is stronger than the person who can't be. And the being we're able to show a vulnerability and withstand or stand through it, I think is, is really one of the key lessons that they would learn during, in the work that we did together. And it wasn't a theme that would have ever come up and work with a western audience for sure. But but it definitely, you know, was for them. And so now the gift in their need to belong together is that when they switch into a highly effective team, where they're very open about what they're seeing, that needs to be improved, what and very willing to admit what needs to be approved. It's astonishing, just how fast and how seamlessly, they can accomplish things that you would expect it take a lot longer. For instance, the bank that I mentioned to you and I was visiting with you that went through a transformation from of, you know, an old blind retail outfit to essentially a large FinTech at least in terms of all of their consumer side, not the, you know, not the business side or the investment bank. The when the leadership as a group, were able to let go of their sense of, I must be this or if I'm not this, I'm, I'm screwed. And this might be always the one who knows better, or always the one who's too super in control. Because, you know, you can end up with a very hierarchical patriarchal, you know, the people who rise to the top, they weren't so worried about whether they belong because of their status, they could become brutally autocratic when they realized that that wasn't helpful, and, and the people who are more compliant realized that wasn't helpful, and that they didn't need it anymore. They were able to embrace an agile engagement with one of the major companies that does this at Deloitte. And it was, it was a super fast transformation, everything they learned they could immediately recognizes, this is what it means to be creative, not reactive. This is what this is, these are the ways in which we can do it. In other words, it gave them a way of operating together that operationalize their shifting mindset. And the result of that was they had had a, they went from a period of time in which over nine months, they had, in very dysfunctional ways released new projects that fail products that failed repeatedly, to in the next six months, releasing seven or eight products that were winners. And, and they just never stopped. I mean, at that point, they just they just revolutionized what people think of as banking in the Philippines. It was a very fast transformation. I had another client in the US actually that had a manufacturing group in in the Philippines. It was building components for air, airlines, you know, Bathroom, bathroom structures. This group was handled by a white manager from the US who I think had a very similar mindset to mine. deeply compassionate a want to learn how, what what makes what makes you feel good, and what success looks like for you. And that that group of 30 people turned into a manufacturing powerhouse, they achieved something that the home office was just blown away by, they couldn't figure out how did you do that? From a empty warehouse to a fulfilled order for a major airline. In, in, in six months and nine months, I think it was nine months and, and was just a blowout success. What I noticed. So I guess what I'm saying is that there are stories about Filipinos that when they pull together and they lose their fear, they have awesome capabilities. Just awesome. Keep very innovative thinkers, very creative. You know, figuring out, well, they have these Jeepneys on the road, right? These things that caught your eye. A lot of these cars are 20 or 30 years old, they keep them together, like they with very low budgets. So it's an example.

Bill Duane: 31:06

Well, it's, it's funny, one of the things I love about Jeepneys in the Philippines is the wild and amazing creativity. So in addition, as you mentioned, keeping these you know, very simple I think a lot of them are two stroke engines going you know, it's sort of like the the cars in Cuba, it's a really good engineering, you know, sort of MacGyver enterprise, but to a person seemingly someone said, Yes, you know, the Jeepney runs well, and it's consuming little enough fuel for I can make, you know, I can make money off of it. And I can run my route. But very clearly, it is lacking Hello Kitty splashed everywhere on the outside, or Iron Man and Marvel Cinematic Universe, there might be a whole nother discussion about the use of intellectual property and the GPU population for Olympians. But one of the things I'm in love with is that of course, it should be fun. Like, of course, it should be there should be some element of joyousness. But I want to jump back before we get too far down favorite cheap knee and, and Tuck Tuck preferences. is, you know, what you were describing earlier was also sets the stage for two way conversation. You know, I like to say like fish don't know they're wet. And I think until people who are involved in some sort of enterprise for profit nonprofit, until we go work in environments that are quite different, we don't realize just how just that there are some very sharp assumptions built in. And it's funny, if you had a chance to see Marc Andreessen published this manifesto on AI, that really does a beautiful service of pointing out just how I me mine, that if we optimize for the individual, then the group will automatically benefit. And so one of the things I've really learned is, you know, this balance between the power of the drive the individual and self interest, you know, the return on investment of that individual drive becomes neutral in the negative depending on how you count. So for instance, you might say, I me own a hat factory. And look at my p&l statement, the hat factory is wildly successful, everybody downstream from you is barking at the moon from mercury poisoning. But that's not within the Imy my realm that somebody gets an externality that somebody else's thing. And so one of the things, I think that, again, with a view towards strengthening, in particular American or American themed enterprises, is to learn is to learn the lessons from other cultures have a more contextual sense of me, of how does me become we and one of my clients as a stealth, Indian startup, and we're really saying what are the most beautiful parts of Indian culture in particular, that the atomic unit of business is not individuals pursuing their self interest, but groups of people pursuing a group interest? And it seems like you were just mentioning that also and also being you know, you know, the, you know, de Tocqueville, the French guy cruised around the United States wondering why the American experiment and democracy seemed to be being pulled off with a lot less mass beheadings in our version of democracy, and what he came up with was there's this real balance between the group and the individual and if you optimize too much for the individual, the Commons will suffer and so this is the person who has a PhD. actory that poisons the landscape. But that's somebody else's problem. And he really said, you know that if you're too indexed on the group, then you lose that power. And I think this is what people trying to implement Marxism proved. And at the same time, there's been a couple experiments in Kansas and that place up in Vermont or New Hampshire, where they're trying to set up these libertarian enclaves, that almost immediately tipped over into, yes, you know, anything that shared, collapsing? Has there been anything in this experience that makes you want to then take this back and be like, hey, I really learned this about innovation in Asia about letting go. And in particular, one of the things that's that strikes me as an outsider is very important. Well, this is happening worldwide, but particularly in Asia, as enterprises are being handed down from the premium is in the US, what would be called the boomer generation into the Gen Z and millennials who have a quite different set of values. Yeah.

Cliff Scott: 36:01

Well, no, I'm not particularly disposed to come home, if that's what that would take, you know, working with American operations, although haven't shied away from opportunities that have been offered to me due to support some, you know, some, some local engagements, some US engagements, but they don't take primacy over the work I'm doing abroad. And what I'm finding is that there's a lot about Colombian culture that is very similar to the Philippines. And I think, again, you're dealing with a culture of, there's a culture of what's what I learned about in civil rights classes when I was in college was that the very often black folks are operating with a kind of a culture of oppression, which is its deep sense of self doubt, especially among men in the 70s and 80s. I don't know if it's still true. But the fact that when you have your own roots ripped away from you, and being told that you're not good enough to have those, those aren't good enough, that the only way you can be good is if you can approximate the white, the white overlord. In other words, we don't let you keep your names, you have to have our names. We don't let you keep your language or your cultural artifacts and icons, we strip it all away and you lose it. It takes a lot of time post the departure of the oppressor for that to ever heal. And I think both our country is still in that process of healing. And so is so are the countries in Asia that were colonized Brunei, Philippines, the ones that were colonized by the Dutch were didn't suffer as much. So there's not much of a legacy there. But, but eventually, it starts to wane. Now, the the millennial generation and the generation following that in the Philippines is showing quite a lot of what I call self authorship, they don't fear for their value, that their value as a human being is only as good as the persona that you can project. They don't buy into that at all. In fact, if they get, you know, pushback for having a voice, and, and expecting that they do meaningful work, they simply walk away and go somewhere else, they're not afraid that there's not going to be another place to go, they have far more confidence, because they have grown up in a generation where there's a little bit more money than there used to be, and that parents are spending on things that demonstrate to them see you have talent, for instance, they go to, they have art classes, they learn how to play the piano, they become a tennis champion, or there can become a gymnast that can compete and regional, regional meets all over the all over Southeast Asia. And when they as they grow up, they realize I have quite a strong sense of self. And and, and so I think that is washing away slowly. But this is the thing that one of the things that I learned that I think made me much more alert to the way in which white people can have have no experience and really seeing or living life through that lens. And it makes us rather unconscious and and in ways that show up as arrogant. One of the things that folks would tell me constantly about America is that they're both everyone It admires America and everybody is annoyed as hell with America. America is heedless of the harm it does. When it when it stumbles, and, and often just steps on things that they, you know, with no interest. I think that one of the things that really helped me, I guess, Bill is that I've always approached my client work with a mindset of an anthropologist, and I did this before I got to this Philippines, which is, first understand the system, understand the the dynamics that are driving the politics within the system. Really know what at the heart, people believe the theory of their businesses all about, and, and help identify and pay attention to the degree to which there's dissonance between the individuals goals and purpose, and the and the organization's goals and purpose. And what the source of that dissonance is. That I think I had to really sharpen my skills in the Philippines, you know, to do this, because now I was doing it on the backfoot of my expertise, I had to suspend that. You know, before we got into the call, you asked about what about, you know, what did you have to let go of essentially. And what I had to let go up was my expert mindset. Because when I used it in as a consultant, it in the US it got me respect. And if I didn't come across with a strong sense of expertise and certainty, then there were a whole lot of folks who would say I'm why are we paying this guy saw this much money, he's, he's a, he's a rookie, you really had to demonstrate that you knew your shit, and see better listen, that's, that doesn't work overseas in any context, if you're an American, the Australians don't want to hear it. And even even though they're very much like us, nor do nor do you notice any other Asian or culture that I'm familiar with, is

Bill Duane: 42:15

do you think that might be true? I'm thinking of China in particular, were to be viewed as authoritative and scholarly, carries so much weight in the business world. But maybe that's different. Because what you were pointing was that which could when over extended be arrogant? Yeah, because maybe it's paired with humility quite a bit. Also.

Cliff Scott: 42:41

What? What leaning too far? Yes, they want to see that they want they want American expertise. So yes, they really want you to show up with knowledge. But if you act as if you know better than everybody else, if you act as if I'm here to correct your way, we're stupidity. That that immediately, risks. Others feeling like they're going to lose space, you're you're putting them in a position where they can't, their own sense of self esteem is not. It's not tenable in the in the conversation, that's not what and that's not what they want to hear. That's not what you came here for what you came here for was to learn about us to help us understand what we can what can work, what works for us, and to teach us as deeply as you possibly can, what works for you, and then let us figure out how to use that. And, and my experience with Chinese consultants and coaches with some of the master classes that that we ran last year, was that the more humble you were, the more self aware you were especially about the the fact that just because America's first and biggest doesn't make it best, and willing to admit that, in fact, we've got, we've got a lot of growing up to do that sharing that kind of humility didn't damage my authoritativeness it increased it because I was able to share with them that I really knew quite a lot about things like adult stage development and, and complexity and, and the tools that you can guide leaders to use that will help them be more effective. And at the same time said, you know, there's a lot about what we think of as authoritative behavior that is, can be generative. In other words, authority. Authoritative is I know my stuff, but I don't need to impose it. I need to cultivate others to step up in you know, an authoritative Lee There is one who recognizes that what I know I need to teach, as opposed to an autocratic leader. And, and, and that, that as a teacher, I don't have any illusions about the degree to which I may be misguided and this will be wrong, or misunderstand or not be able to fathom your experience. And so what I would wonder about is, when I teach these concepts, how might they work in your world? And might they work in your world differently than they work in ours? And that that is the thing I, you know, over and over, I would, again, I would make that very clear that that's the, that's the posture I want to take. The letting go of your certainty is an is absolutely a must, I think if for for folks who want to step out of their own culture and work in another.

Bill Duane: 46:06

Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a massive point. And two points, and I'd like to share a story that I'm, I'm aware of, then is, you know, it can be so counterintuitive, to let go of, of one's own knowledge and authority in, in service of, of curiosity. But then also with that intention of care. One, a very short thing. One of the best pieces I got of advice I got was, oh, the higher up I am in the hierarchy, the more I make a point to use question marks and emails. It is like if I get promoted again, who knows? Maybe it'll just be nothing but but questions and, and curiosity. So I think that's a succinct way of like, it's a good little cross check. But also the idea of informed curiosity, I guess I would put it so do you remember when Obama cares website launched? To use the vernacular of my industry? It shit the bed, which is sure did when you launch when you launch a technical thing, and things aren't going? Well, I think the meaning of it is pretty clear even to non technical people. So Obama called Eric Schmidt than CEO of Google. And Eric called one of my boss who then called my colleague and friend Mikey Dickerson, who said, Can you go over and help figure this out? Now, Mikey, was in sight, right Site Reliability Engineering within Google, the world's foremost expertise of a method of reliability that has since you know, really transformed the industry as a as a method. So my recollection of Mikey telling the story is, so he goes over to Washington, DC, and he says, Look, I know you know what to do. And my guess is that you have been stopped from doing the right thing. I am carrying as my own phrasing, a Louisville Slugger that has Barack Obama written on it, let me know where to swing it so I can help you.

Cliff Scott: 48:18

Barrier busting? Exactly. And

Bill Duane: 48:21

and so what that did was exactly what you were pointing to. And I don't you know, the difference between Washington political culture and Silicon Valley culture, that's a pretty big gulf. I don't think it's as big a gulf as post colonial colonial with with colonial cultures. But you know, what he did was in effect, what I heard you say your method was when his his intention was to help anybody in the system, everybody in the system, and attacking the people who had their hands closest to the cogs and gears or pushing them into it, you want to make sure it gets worse, but instead, this intention of care, combined with curiosity, and an offer to help and provide air cover, making it safe then for them the reality to emerge, and then there, and at some point, the expertise did come in. But in one of the things that I found genius about his approach that I also find genius about your approach is you keep your expertise close by, but you lead with the human machinery. And this is exactly why I have this podcast and my why my work is so heavily focused on this because almost all methods of innovation are more outward looking. Product Market Fit the ideation process, whereas you can't actually get to that until you get into how do you make the unknown and the legitimately fearful safe, not just for individuals but within groups. So I think I think Mikey did an amazing job of that. And by the way, Obama asked him to stay and create the United States Digital Service, he checked in with Mikey to make sure I saw the the meeting in the White House of whether or not Mikey would be okay with wearing a suit from time to time. begrudgingly, he said, yes. But then that curiosity then opened up the door for a slightly different statement of values, there now became this entity, the United States Digital Service, which is a home for people that really care about using technology at its highest expression, more oriented for the common good. So it's very common for people to do like a two year tour through the White House, and I've had the beautiful honor of doing some workshops with them. And so I wanted to tell that story, because it, it, it underlines that idea of having having your expertise close at hand, but then really concentrating on the making it safe curiosity, intention of non harm, as as a way of then supercharging, because what you told about in those stories is it's not just a linear, you're not just stopping something being broken, but it holds the thing of a nonlinear increase in capability. And joy. Also, yeah, who doesn't like being part of a successful, open hearted, curious group of adventurers?

Cliff Scott: 51:28

Yeah, exactly. There's a, there's an element of being a lever for increasing self awareness. And the essence of the work that I do at the individual level, and at the organizational level is to help them identify and make much more visible to themselves, what are the beliefs that are driving your behavior. So in fact, a lot of what I described was helping people see the ways in which their belief system was driven by centuries of oppression, in part, just in part, but still enough to matter. There are a whole lot of very personal belief systems that are independent of that, or may be shaped by it, but they're really formed in their own family, they're formed in their own growth, you know, from childhood, and to be able to see, the assumptions that support that belief that they've never tested, that they were only dimly aware of, gives them the power to make more objects in their field. In other words, the sense of Wait a minute, my personality, who I how I show up is really an artifact of everything I've learned. And there are elements of it that aren't helpful. And for the longest time, I've been very afraid of, or very cautious about X, whatever x is, and, and when they begin to test that assumption by behaving somewhat differently, and noticing that it doesn't blow up. Or by having a conversation with somebody they fear will judge them and to say, if I behave more like this, what would you think of me and to find out that what they would think of you was a lot more than they've ever thought of you before? That, that it makes them braver and more able to recognize that they they're not trapped, they're not trapped in having to always be what people told them, as they, you know, arrived into adulthood that they needed to be that they could be more and and I think that that that the ability for them to recognize that there are many influences that make us what we are, that we're that we we can we can have a collective discussion about. So how's that working for us? And are we willing to make take some risks and to change? And when they do, they find that their relationships and their families improve. And that is a huge winner. I've had people come back from workshops where they were given exercise and being much more mindful about how they show up is very critical all the time with others. And when they could see it and stop it and be and say, I'm going to replace that with deep listening. They discover, well, one guy came in and he says, I haven't done I haven't really taken the risk to be different with my workers. But I'll tell you, I'm with my 19 year old son who with whom I've been estranged for several years, it broke the barrier. We have a relationship and he started to cry. You know, I thought I had lost my son. And, and so for him, if it works there, then he sold it will yield he'll change everywhere, right? One, I guess what I'm driving at is that when you To find the thing that feeds the energy, and what what people at their heart want most, and you show that everything that you will offer them is aligned to that purpose, but aligned to help them get there more effectively, then you can push pretty hard for people to take risk. And because they trust that, in fact, the risk will be only beneficial, they, they built up a fair amount of courage. Again, I guess it's really about deep, deeply paying attention to what matters to the other, which might be very foreign to what matters to you, as you know, based on the culture you come from, so there's a lot of letting go of it couldn't be, you know, a sense of my own identity, frankly, a lot of truth that I had to face in terms of recognizing just what it means to be an American and in and how that impacts people in ways that are not really healthy. And a lot of humility about who we as a country really should be in the world that we we aspire to be in many ways, but we we don't know how to do it yet. For sure. Yeah,

Bill Duane: 56:29

that awareness site. I actually I have a lot of optimism for the future, despite it being a time of dramatically heightened risk and upheaval partially because all those things mean that everything is on the table. Some of the stuff about race and gender, which was pretty locked in is up for discussion, although the for it to be up for discussion means it's a lot more directly observable, you know, some of the things around the biosphere and the global economy. So they're at risk in a way because they're destabilized. But that destabilization also allows for degrees of freedom. And the thing that I'm really optimistic around is that the systems have degraded enough where young people do not buy in to the story as readily. So you know, when I was teaching at the University of Cologne, business school at the row business dialogue, you know, after spending a week hanging out with, with the with the grad students, you know, I gave a lecture called meaning purpose and paying the bills, how to do it, because that's what they needed most. Because they are not accepting. I mean, I think in the US, most young people have said, the purpose of my education is to provide private equity, a good return on investments on those loans. That's the that's the that's the, they don't believe the story anymore. They don't believe Hey, if you work really hard for the corporation, they'll care about you. Yeah, right. Even even the the Googles of the world are like, Yeah, that's true, as long as you're useful. And so I think that disillusionment process is actually useful, in that the young people today in the US, and what I'm finding also worldwide are like, I don't believe the story, that the stuff and the status is what life is about, instead, meaning purpose and connection. And so I'm finding that they are standing very firmly on the ground of No, I'm not buying the story. What I do want is meaning and purpose where you and I were sharing our sort of backstories. And I feel like I came late to the figuring out what was most important to me in my life, if you had asked me and an executive coach did in my 30s, what's most important to you the and I had a great difficulty in articulating and I actually had to spend two years figuring out other than the cultural autopilot of what should be important. So I think right now, I'm very excited. And I'm seeing this in the generational handoffs of some of these enterprises. But despite everything being quite scary, I'm actually really optimistic that if and it certainly drives a lot of my work in consulting and coaching, in particular, to make sure that that happens for people that can't normally afford senior executives. And that is because, like if we can give them tools, there was a Gallup poll that came out recently that said, like, something crazy, like 67% of young people feel like that things are going to get better but It almost all of them don't know how to do it. For me, that is a bugle call for people like you and I using methods like we've discussed. Because, you know, one of the themes that emerged is letting go, we need to let go of the way it was done before. And even that idea of a letting go of our own expertise to create a playing field, for them, these young people to come in and innovate something better, and whether that be working on a product or social stuff.

Cliff Scott: 1:00:32

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm seeing it everywhere. And in some ways, or companies or countries, I think that are less well off than we are, and for whom money was, you know, a lot of money was unattainable. That they are having an advantage, they understand that life is about meaning and about purpose. And the purpose is generally the well being of all of us. And in our tribe, and our clan, or in our community. And, you know, it's, it's interesting when a Filipino goes overseas for work, it's by and large, mostly to earn enough money to send home to make the lives at home better 20% of the Philippine economy is from money that's remitted overseas, and about 15% of their population is overseas. And very often, people who develop a pretty good life in the US and or been gone for a long time come back, because they want to give something back. That's the thing they say most I want to give what I want to teach people, what I've learned is effective ways to run businesses, I'm come home for that, we could learn quite a lot from that, as a country, the notion that what matters more than our individual success is that, that we create success that is sustainable for the whole. And that a whole can be defined as the community can be defined as all human beings or the entire planet, though the entire ecosystem, and more and more that's being shoved in our faces. What What I love about the youngest generation is that they see this, they see this clearly. And if life hadn't gotten so bad, so fast. I mean, the number of crises that are just tumbling in, in other words, it took away the boiled frog effect. Right? In other words, this is this is somebody we're being torched, not boiled slowly, and, and they are the most readily able to see that the old systems are broken. And and so yes, I share your optimism in that sense. But I also think it's, it's probably going to be a very painful transition to the

Bill Duane: 1:03:02

different things. So I think so. And I don't wish that on, on people, obviously, particularly since we're talking about people in parts of the world with relatively less resources. And of course, the brunt of climate change is going to happen in Southeast Asia, where you know, a lot of people are going to need to hit the road. So I want to be very mindful that I'm not minimizing the pain and the suffering. And I think if it's not paint, like fat, dumb and happy is not a great place to make these deep changes from, you know, I think every, every time when I've had an up level of development, or awareness, or kindness, or the ability to see complex systems, it I mean, I always want to do it. But the thing that gets me over my own fear humps is generally it just hurts too much. To stay, that's fine. The stay the way it is. And I think that hurt can either come internally or externally. So while I don't welcome the pain that's to come, you know, the coming medical crises and all I think that's very, very real. Plus, just with even the increase in AI and other things at the same time, if there is going to be pain, I think we are far better suited to use that pain. You know, the the Buddha said, there's two kinds of suffering. They're suffering that leads to more suffering and suffering that leads to the end of suffering. So there's the suffering that says, Oh, my God, this is terrible that we have another glass of wine or let me watch my reality TV show. Again, I may be projecting or there's the kind that says, Enough, enough, enough, I remember that its meaning and that its purpose and that it's connection, and that we do not have an infinite amount of time to play this game. I'm going to take this pain and I'm going to turn turn towards something which I think is the the hardest letting go in a way. It's it's letting go of our habitual relationship with pain to step into something greater. Yeah,

Cliff Scott: 1:05:08

absolutely. And the familiar the things that are familiar and recognizing that some of them are harmful.

Bill Duane: 1:05:15

So yeah, right. And I think really recognizing the familiar putting ourselves in the presence of different cultures gives us an insight to be used for the benefit of others, but also to realize, oh, this is my own. These are my own stories. This is my own suffering that I've acclimated to. All right. That sounds like a great, great place to leave it on.

Cliff Scott: 1:05:36

Sure does. Thank you so much for the time. My great pleasure opportunity. I come away enlightened in every conversation and this is

Bill Duane: 1:05:47

wonderful, thank you so much.

Unknown: 1:05:49

Sure thing. Take care.