My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback in an utterly wrong way - which is also an idea we dive into later in our conversation today.
Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development.
His book, "The Problem with Change: and the Essential Nature of Human Performance" is about what we might call lie number 10: the idea that change is good and that leaders must lead change in order to be good leaders. Wholesale belief in this lie has created what Ashley calls “Life in the Blender” - driven by what I’ve heard some folks refer to as “The Reorg of the Day”.
I love love love the musical analogies Ashley uses to describe leadership - not as the lead guitar or first violin, but as the Ground Bass - the principal structural element of a musical piece. The Leader can help teams navigate change by playing a backbeat of stability and consistency, supporting a range of free expression and variation. Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here (which he mentions in the extended version of the analogy, later on in the conversation).
What is that Ground Bass? For Ashley it’s about helping people feel seen, connected, celebrated and clear on the story of the meaning of their contributions to the work.
This perspective aligns very well with the message Bree Larson offered here some years back. Bree is a Partner at SYPartners and shared her framework around the challenges of designing organizational change - that most change can easily result in one or more of the Six Types of Loss she identified:
Loss of Control
Loss of Pride
Loss of Narrative
Loss of Time
Loss of Competence
Loss of Familiarity
All of which Ashley suggests leaders can deflect or reduce through 9 key leadership skills that he outlines in depth in his book:
Make space
Forge undeniable competence
Share secrets
Be predictable
Speak real words
Honor ritual
Focus most on teams
Radicalize HR
Pave the way
Prior to releasing the book, Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece which is a blockbuster and is an even more succinct, poignant and straight-on condemnation of modern corporate leadership - it is also highly worth reading. This book feels a bit like a Burn Book - Ashley is pointing out fundamental misconceptions at the heart of corporate life in a direct and unvarnished manner - in the hope that some leaders will listen and start doing things differently - Leading in a way that takes into account how humans really are and what we really need to thrive at work.
Ashley is very clear: companies need to look beyond wellness initiatives and corporate cheerleading and shift their focus to the fundamental environment of daily work.
The effects of a corporate life caught in constant change are more than clear to anyone who’s been through it: uncertainty, a lack of control, a sense of unbelonging and of displacement, and a loss of meaning
As Goodall says, “The ultimate job of leadership is not disruption and it is not to create change; it is to create a platform for human contribution, to create the conditions in which people can do the best work of their lives.”
Also - do listen for an extended exchange around minute 40 where we talk about the power of praise and the Paul Hollywood handshake - if you’re not a Great British Bake off fan, there’s still time to watch a few episodes to get in the mood - or at least witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here.
Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed which is a blockbuster
Take a listen to Ashley and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback utterly wrong.
Canon in D Major by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Witness the effect of the Hollywood Handshake on Friends star David Schwimmer here.
19:48 Leaders feel that change is their core job - and have no sense of the challenges change creates on the front lines of an organization
The leaders typically saying, either we have no choice, or this is how we should do things, or this is our job. Change, disruption, turn things on their head. A new one of these, a new one of these, a different one of these, reinvent this. Look at this again. And people on the front lines going, this makes my life really hard. So I found my way into that idea. And then one of the very first things I did was I invited people to share their stories. And I didn't say, share me your horror stories. I said, just tell me about change at work. I'm here. I'd like to interview people. If you've got a story about change at work, reach out and tell me your story. And firstly, within 24 hours, I was oversubscribed. I had too many people that I had time to talk to. And then when I got through, all the people I had time to talk to, 100% of them had a horror story. Now, two of them also had a happy story. But if you were doing this sort of election polling, you would go, there's a problem here, because a lot of people invited to share their experience without judgment or precondition said, this thing is really, really tough. And it was when I got through all those conversations that I was like, okay, there's a thing here that we need to shine some light on, and we need to talk about more broadly.
33:58 Leaders should provide stability through change for improvement, like a bass line in music
I'm trying to delineate the improvement space as a thing that's different, a subset of the change space. And then the last thing I'm trying to do is to say, if you actually look about at the improvement space, you're going to have to do a couple of things. You're going to have to find out the conditions under which human beings do their best work, because the improvement ain't going to come from the sky, it's going to come from the human beings. And when you look at that, under which conditions do humans do their best work? You find out that whatever you want, the word I've chosen for it is stability. Stability is the foundation of improvement. So now we've come a very long way in a few sort of short bites from change is all good to change. Change isn't all good. Improvement is good. Improvement means we've got to look to the humans. And when we look to the humans, where they do best is most consistently and most frequently is under conditions of stability. So if you want to improve your organization up and to the right, build stability, get really smart about sources of stability for people at work, which, by the way, are also sources of stability for people not at work, because it's all the same people. Yes. So how can a leader provide that kind of stability through as, which is a through line or a backbeat or a bass line? I don't know what the appropriate musical analogy is like that drumbeat of stability through the inevitable change that hopefully is driving improvement. I think the musical and analog I would reach for is probably either a thing called a pascalia, which is a piece of music on a ground bass. So think Pachabel's canon, famously bass line repeats, everything else changes over the top or. Slightly more adventurously, a sort of theme and variation. So think Bach Goldberg variations, which is 90 minutes of gorgeous, 32 variations or so on one theme, and the theme is there all the way through. You never leave the theme. It's a stable, eternal presence. But what it allows you to do, this is the interesting thing. What it allows you to do is invent. What the Pachelbel ground base allows Pachelbel to do is invent figurations and different variations, different instrumentations, different rhythms that sit on some sort of organizing gravitational force sonically so that everyone knows where they are. Take that away. Then all the invention doesn't actually make any sense. It doesn't go anywhere. It feels very life in the blender. I suppose we should have. We could do an audio podcast, and we could now play people cannon with the bass line turned off, and you'd sort of get that there's something going on, but it's also weird. And then you play the Goldberg box, Goldberg variations without playing the aria at the beginning and without any of that harmonic consistency all the way through, and you'd go, this is noise. Yes.
39:45 Teams are important for stability, showcasing abilities, and social support
We think of organizations as things, as sort of uniform, homogenistic things. But in fact, again, if you spend any time inside an organization and keep your eyes open, it strikes you pretty quickly that most of the people in the organization don't know most of the other people in the organization. It's like you don't know if you live in a town of any size, you don't know most of the people in the town. You know, a tiny little subset, but you're very comfortable going, my town is like this, so you can refer to the entity of your town without actually, you know, here I am in Montclair, New Jersey, what, 30,000 people, 40,000 people. Weirdly, I don't know them all, but I've got a point of view on Montclair. But actually, if you push me, I'd have to admit that my point of view is the few people I know here. So the local, the small, the intimate is massively and predominantly significant in our experience of the world. And we're very comfortable extrapolating from that to what the other things are like. But if you want to change our experience of the other things, you have to change our experience of the local first, which is to say, in corporate terms, if you get the teams right, you've built a good company. If you don't get the teams right, good luck, because there's no company there without the teams. Yes, you've got to live in the teams. And the insight I had, and it felt like an insight when I was working on this book, was that teams are a wonderful source of stability. And this is probably another reason that they are so important to us, to we humans, and to work and to organizations, because teams are, you know, if you've been on a team for any amount of time, people know what you're good at. So they are a place to showcase your ability, which is very stabilizing, gives you agency, reduces uncertainty. People give you social support, people you can gossip about things. You get a lovely sense of belonging from a team. You get. The ability to see that you've had an impact in the world because there are people around you who can say, hey, that thing you did was really good, or that really landed or someone told me about. So all of these things have a very natural home on teams, but not on day one of a team, on month three, maybe, or month six or a year to figure out in a time to build that right. And so if you shuffle all the teams every six months, none of the teams are ever going to figure out all of the beautiful things that teams can do for humans. And therefore, all the humans are going to be adrift most of the time, which is, of
40:10 Praising with human specificity is more effective than conventional (ie negative or "constructive") feedback
Daniel Stillman There's another question I wanted to dig at, which is sort of like how we recognize and reward people. There was a story you talked about, about forging undeniable competence, that the Paul Hollywood handshake, which I thought was a really beautiful, I feel like praise. We think we people need feedback, but this is a sort of a leadership skill that I'm seeing, is something that people could be thinking about differently. People don't need feedback. They need to be praised for what they're doing really, really well. Many, many years ago, one of the first executive coaches I worked with defined leadership as the ability, the quality of recognizing specificity in others to not just say, hey, good job, Ashley. Hey, nice book. Right. It's not the same thing as saying, this passage here is quite musical and. And hard hitting. It's specific and powerful. Praise. Yes.
Ashley Goodall 40:30
And it's attached in some way. And so the idea, though, you know, for those who don't watch the great British Bake off, and they're missing some.
Daniel Stillman 40:39
Very relaxing, wholesome television.
Ashley Goodall 40:42
What's funny is that, you know, just to describe what happens, there are all these bakers. They're all in a tent. It's never been quite clear to me why they are in a tent, because it's in England. So it's going to be either too hot or too rainy or too miserable in the tent. But anyway, they haven't been to tent.
And then the judges go around and judge them, and then one of these judges, guy named Paul Hollywood, he's a very good baker, and if he sees something that he loves, he stops and there's a big long pause. And if you've seen the show before, you sort of know what might be coming and you're like, is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? And then he just smiles and he stretches his hand out and shakes somebody's hand. And it's so. It's goosebump inducing every single time you see it. None ever times you get it. No one's ever like, well, you should have moved that thing or do this differently, or, why did you use the word arm a lot? It's never. So this is the sum frisson of impact and import and beauty and respect and all rolled up in one, but it's also pointed at a moment of excellence, not pointed at a moment of deficit.
Daniel Stillman 42:53
Yes.
Ashley Goodall 42:54
And I think you can unwind that a little bit and go, well, our idea that everybody needs feedback the whole time in order to get better is based in part on an erroneous assumption about what humans are motivated by and what we're like. Most people actually want to do a decent job and enjoy doing a better job. So most of us aren't like, sitting around going, listen, I suck at this, but that's fine by me. That's not a very human no stay. And it follows that, actually what we're really crying out for is somebody to say, this is the thing you're aiming for. This is the top of the mountain, this is daylight. This is excellence. Let me help you see that. And then you're going to have all sorts of ideas about how you could attain that. But the most helpful thing we can do for others in building their own confidence, which is, back to the point, a source of great stability.But the thing that I want most in pointing myself towards that is a beautifully clear definition of what excellent looks like from somebody who's sort of qualified to know. I mean, it's interesting. It's Paul Hollywood. He's a really good baker.
Daniel Stillman 45:08
It's not just the blue eyes.
Ashley Goodall 45:10
It's not? No. And it's not random bloke we found wandering outside the tent either. It's actually somebody who's an expert, who's saying, this is really good, and then he'll say a little bit when he shakes the hand about why it's really good and whether it's the flavor or the texture or the appearance. Clearly, I've spent too much time watching the show, though. You get some specificity. Yes, but you must. I always ask myself, I always want to imagine, what does the person on the other end of the handshake think? What's going through their head? And I can only imagine it is. Oh, my God. Yes. Now, how do I do that again? Which is what we want to work. We want people with at work going, how do I do? Great. Again? How do I do that again? How do I do that again? And answering for themselves in an idiosyncratic and emergent and motivated way. What we don't want is a whole bunch of people going, I wish you would knock it off with the criticism, because it's crushing me, and I have to sort through the thicket of how much of it makes sense and how much of it doesn't make sense and how much of it is just, you don't really like me. And how much of it is. You were told you had to give feedback because the HR system makes you give feedback, so you had to make some up. That's not what we. That's not getting us there. Yes. What gets us there is to respect the human need to be good at stuff, and then to help them get there in the simplest way. And the simplest way is to tell people when they did something really good. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 46:47
Which is surprising, because we do believe this is, you know, we call it a lie about, you know, leadership. This idea that, you know, we must tell people what they're doing wrong, but telling them what they did right. It's really, what's interesting about it is that you mention this in the passage, that it's about the work. We're saying the bake was good, the bottom was, you know, but what the message that gets comes through is I did a good job, I feel good about myself, and I hear from you the sort of stability that that creates because it, in a team, I know that I have this quality and that people can rely on me for it, and that's just really powerful.
Ashley Goodall 47:34
And then because they're doing the relying on me for it, I know I have impact in the world. And so I have a sense of meaning. And, you know, we haven't talked a lot about meaning, but again, meaning is another thing that gets very weird at work because it tends to get translated into our company must have some noble mission that is clearly connected with improving the state of the world and the universe, which is fine, hallelujah. But actually, that's not what meaning means for people on the ground. What meaning means is I know my work makes a difference to some other human in some way that's kind of useful. It's a much humbler and simpler thing. And so if somebody says, hey, good job, if somebody shakes your hand, that's meaning as well. It's not just performance, it's meaning I did a thing. I've had an impact that's enormously.
Daniel Stillman 48:29
Yeah. Shareholder value, let's be clear, shareholder value is not individual meaning. Meaning is person to person. Seeing the impact that your work has, either within the team or within the community.
Ashley Goodall 48:44
Yes, but that's an exercise, not of uplifting oratory or inspiring prose or beautiful video footage of the things that our company did. That's an exercise of connection.
More About Ashley Goodall
Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. His book, The Problem with Change publishes May 7, 2024.
A.I. Summary by Grain
The meeting discussed the importance of stability in organizational change and the significance of teams in providing it. Ashley Goodall emphasized involving people in the change process and starting with understanding and honoring existing contributions and structures. The significance of specific praise was also analyzed.
Key Points
• Daniel Stillman reads back a passage from Ashley Goodall's text, highlighting the poetic quality and familiarity of the described organizational challenges, prompting Ashley Goodall to analyze the musical rhythm in the writing. (5:37)
• Ashley Goodall delves into the purpose of companies beyond just economic profit, suggesting that the primary focus should be on enabling people to collaborate effectively rather than solely pursuing financial gains. (9:31)
• Daniel Stillman praises Ashley Goodall for providing a voice to those experiencing organizational change, leading to a discussion about the disconnect between leaders' perceptions of change and the reality faced by employees on the front lines. (11:13)
• Daniel Stillman seeks advice from Ashley Goodall on how leaders can navigate change in a more humane way, leading to a discussion on the distinction between change and improvement, emphasizing the significance of stability for organizational enhancement. (24:43)
• Daniel Stillman and Ashley Goodall delve into the significance of teams in providing stability, showcasing abilities, reducing uncertainty, and fostering a sense of belonging and impact. (32:49)
• Daniel Stillman and Ashley Goodall analyze the significance of specific praise using an example from the Great British Bake Off, contrasting it with traditional feedback methods and highlighting its impact on excellence. (40:30)
• Ashley Goodall suggests that leaders should start with stability by identifying what will not change within the organization before considering improvements, emphasizing the importance of grounding discussions in existing values and rituals. (53:57)
• Ashley Goodall emphasizes the importance of involving people in the change process, starting with understanding and honoring existing contributions and structures before seeking improvement. (56:41)
Full A.I.-generated Transcript
Daniel Stillman 00:01
I will officially welcome you to the conversation factory. I'm very excited because I think this is a wonderfully dangerous topic that we're going to engage in. So thanks for making the time.
Ashley Goodall 00:14
Good to be here.
Daniel Stillman 00:15
Thank you. First of all, congratulations on the New York Times op ed.
Ashley Goodall 00:23
Thank you. There were a lot of comments. I don't know whether you saw. Yeah, there are a lot of comments. Until they stopped allowing comments, which I didn't other times actually ever did. And it wasn't because there was a flame war breaking out in the comments. It was because 900 people had said, I think probably 850 of the 900 people said, yeah, too much change. Too much change. Too hard to be on the receiving end of this stuff. This is the ones that meant the most to me were the people who said, this is what it's like to be inside a large organization. I think one of the things I'm trying to do is to be a witness and bear witness to all of this stuff, so that people just feel that they get the sense that they're seen and understood and not alone, which.
Daniel Stillman 01:16
Is, of course, what life in the blender can feel like. I have a sort of author's question for you, because taking a whole book and turning it into, like, you know, we call it like a tight ten and then. And then shaving it down, it's like that old. I'm sorry for the long letter. I didn't have time to write a short letter. Yes, you wrote. I mean, it's a. It's a. It's a hard hitting type. I mean, it's very well written in it, and it summarizes the message of your book, you know, quite, quite succinctly and quite impactfully. What was that like for you to do? Was it fun? Was it hard? Was it something else?
Ashley Goodall 01:58
It's like all writing is for me. It's hard and fun and rewarding and frustrating, and you finish up with more grey hairs at the end than you had at the beginning. And those all, in my experience, are all necessary parts of the process. It is necessary to simultaneously be super annoyed at your editor for sending yet another round of edits and to be super grateful for your editor because he or she is doing a fantastic job of finding the core thing inside the words that you threw out on the. On the page. That there were many drafts of that piece. Many, many, many, many drafts. And that's sort of the way it goes. And I don't know. As we got north of 20 drafts, I actually started thinking of some of the slide presentations that I'd done in my corporate days or some of the other things that took double digits, drafts. And what drives me nuts about it is it's a really hard process. And if you're honest, you can't deny things get better as a result, until.
Daniel Stillman 03:16
They stop getting better. And that's when you stop.
Ashley Goodall 03:19
At some point, you sort of reached the point of no returns. But I was actually, I actually went back when that piece ran, and I'm like, okay, let me satisfy my curiosity. How good was the first draft? The first draft wasn't very good, so it got a hell of a lot better.
Daniel Stillman 03:41
Yeah. And this is change that you invited. This is a change you participated in. You and your editor have a dialogical relationship that you are. You've brought him into it. It's really the opposite of somebody sending you notes and being like, you know, yeah.
Ashley Goodall 03:58
What's the life in the blender version of writing an article about life in the blender? That's a really interesting question, isn't it?
Daniel Stillman 04:04
Yeah.
Ashley Goodall 04:05
So firstly, you're going about your business, doing some other job, and then from the sky comes this. Please write an article because it's a good idea. We've decided it's a good idea and we're not really going to tell you what it's all about. And then you write something and submit it, and then some other person you never met before in your life goes, well, actually, this got passed around to me, and you need to do it this way. And you're like, I don't. I'm not in control.
Daniel Stillman 04:28
Yeah, not in control.
Ashley Goodall 04:30
So I don't know. You can imagine a sort, fairly easily a sort of nightmarish version.
Daniel Stillman 04:36
I don't have to imagine. I think we've all, everyone who's listening probably has been in that situation. And so I have a document off to the side, and there are some large chunks of your text that I foolishly want to read back to you because they, they are so, they're so tight. And I think we'll summarize to the reader some of, and then I'm hoping you can sort of, like, say yes and to some of them, because I was reading and I was like, life in the blender. The unrelenting uncertainty. I mean, it's like a prose poem. It's great. The unrelenting uncertainty and the upheaval that has become constant features in business life today. A new leader comes in, promptly begins a reorganization, and upends the reporting relationships you're familiar with, or a consultant suggests a new strategy, which takes up everyone's time and attention for months until it's back to business as usual, only with a new mission statement and slideware, or everyone's favorite, a merger is announced and leads to all of these and more.
Ashley Goodall 05:37
So there's the first. It's fascinating to listen to one's own words read back to one. I haven't done that before, actually. I read them out loud, but I read them to me, obviously, and I'm there and I'm, you know, so it's different. The first thing that strikes me is that, or the first thing to sort of unpack about all of that is not a content thing, it's a technique thing, because there is music in that. And I don't know whether you know, but I was trained as a musician. I was a music major in undergraduate, and for the first 20 years of my life was completely convinced I was going to be a classical musician. And to study music is to study rhythm.
Daniel Stillman 06:20
And what was your, what was your instrument?
Ashley Goodall 06:24
Started with the piano, then the violin, then the viola, then the pipe organ, then singing in a choir, then conducting a symphony orchestra. So, you know, I covered a fair bit. Yes. Oh, and I wrote some music as well. And weirdly, I'm not very good at writing music, but I can write prose informed by how a musician thinks.
Daniel Stillman 06:45
Yeah, this is a musical. There's a pacing.
Ashley Goodall 06:47
Much better. Yeah. So in that first sentence, there are lots of unwords or words beginning with you, and they pile up a little bit and then there's a little break, and then you get the word upend, which is actually where all of those words are pointing to. So there's a little bit of that. The other thing that strikes me about the passage that you read is that for anyone who's lived inside an organization, those things are utterly, utterly unremarkable. There is nothing. So what's interesting about the passage, and as we've been talking about, got a lot of attention, is this describing something that everybody already knows, that everybody knows is the reality? Yes. And, you know, I was talking before about all the comments on the article, the 50 or so or 40 or however many who were not, weren't particularly glowing about what I had written, really. They weren't saying, you're wrong. They were saying, you're right, but people need to suck it up. This is life. So the total count of comments that said, it's not like this was, I think, roughly none. Yeah. So there's a, there's a hidden in plain sight about. My point is there's a hidden in plain sightness about all of this. Yes, it's fun to try and describe it artfully and precisely and with clarity, but that is a necessary act towards, or a necessary step towards helping people actually imagine a different way of doing work.
Daniel Stillman 08:28
Yeah, yeah. Well, before we do that, and we. And we would like to, and we need to, I, um. You do talk about the cult, the idea of disruption that is metastasized, the credo of which holds everything must be disrupted all the time. And as you said, people are like, this is the way it be. And in fact, I shared the article with a group of other coaches and consultants I'm on a chain with, and somebody said, yeah, like, I talk about what we call the change fatigue. And they're like, yeah, I've been telling some of my clients about this, and they are saying, this is the job. Grow up. And some people think, like, it is the job of the leaders in an organization to kind of, like, suck up the change and kind of, like, manage the disruption and just keep everything going.
Ashley Goodall 09:18
And so, not far beneath the surface of all of this article, and the book as well, is actually a question of, well, what is the job? And I don't think the job is instigate change every Monday morning and every Tuesday morning as well, and do a little bit more on Wednesday lunchtime, just for giggles. So what is the job? And then the behind that is the question of what's a company for? Now, that's like the great existential question of all business. What's the point of a company? But there is an argument to be made that if all the companies for is economic profit, then that's a slightly weird choice, because a lot of us spend a lot of their time there at work. And you can argue that companies exist to help people do things together that they couldn't do alone. And therefore, the helping people do things together is the point of the company, and the economic viability is the oxygen that it takes to keep that process going. But the point isn't the economic viability. The point isn't the profit. The point is the helping people do things. Yeah, that's not a common argument, but I think it's completely sustainable on the evidence.
Daniel Stillman 10:43
Yes, and I want to talk about the evidence in a moment. I also want to go back to something you said before we hit record, because I think it's a really beautifully said thing of some of the function of this book and the work that you're doing is to bear witness for change, to bear witness to the people who are experiencing this life in the blender, who, who are the on the receiving end of it, not the instigating end of it, and who are being told one must suck it up. And to be told by someone who has been there and done that, this is not the best way to do it, is grounding, normalizing, humanizing. Like, all of the comments on that op ed are like, thanks for saying. Thanks for saying that. What I've been feeling.
Ashley Goodall 11:33
Yes, yes. And some of the most moving ones. Exactly that. Thanks for telling me. I'm not wrong. Essentially, I began writing the book because I began working on all of this stuff because I suddenly realized, I think fairly suddenly realized, that there was a big disconnect in organizations between what the leaders thought change was for and the experience of change every day on the front lines. And I'm sort of drawn, my curiosity is piqued by things in companies that leaders think are great and that everyone else thinks are horrible. And yeah, this probably makes me a very, very annoying person and very hard to hire and a little bit of a thorn in the flesh, but I can't help myself. So this is why I got all interested in performance management and ratings. Because the people at the top of companies are like, it's fantastic to give everybody ratings on a scale, and they're really going to like it and they're.
Daniel Stillman 12:47
Good at it and they can do it.
Ashley Goodall 12:50
The bit about me liking it, no, not so much. Not liking all of this. And then the people at the top like, we should give everybody candid, constructive, critical, whatever feedback that'll. People will love that, won't they?
Daniel Stillman 13:05
They'll be all grow and develop.
Ashley Goodall 13:07
The people are like, no, could you knock it off? With all of the judgment raining down on me from all quarters every day. And this one came from a similar place. The leaders typically saying, either we have no choice, or this is how we should do things, or this is our job. Change, disruption, turn things on the head. A new one of these, a new one of these, different one of these. Reinvent this. Look at this again. And people on the front lines going, this makes my life really hard. So I found my way into that idea. And then one of the very first things I did was I invited people to share their stories. And I didn't say, share me your horror stories. I said, just tell me about change at work. I'm here. I'd like to interview people. If you've got a story about change at work, reach out and tell me your story. And firstly, within 24 hours, I was over subscribed. I had too many people, and I had. That I had time to talk to. And then when I got through all the people I had time to talk to, 100% of them had a horror story. Now, two of them also had a happy story. But if you were doing this sort of election polling, you would go, there's a problem here, because a lot of people invited to share their experience without judgment or precondition said, this thing is really, really tough. And it was when I got through all those conversations that I was like, okay, there's a thing here that we need to shine some light on, and we need to talk about more broadly. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 14:46
You know, I hadn't really thought about this, but we should mention as a sidebar, you were sort of doing a summary of a couple of elements of nine lies about work, which is a blockbuster book, as you know, and a great title and really drives home. I mean, it's. I love it when a book says, what's on the box? What's in the box is what says on the box. It's like, oh, it's chocolate cornflakes. It's like there's nine lives about work, and inside are indeed nine things that we all think are true about work and that, and are just not.
Ashley Goodall 15:17
That.
Daniel Stillman 15:17
We can't actually review other people. We're reviewing ourselves. There's, you know, where there's hard graders and there's. And they're soft graders. It's like, I don't know how you are.
Ashley Goodall 15:27
Yeah, the words will mean different things as well. So, you know, if I have to grade you on your. On how good of a podcast host you are, then what's the first thing I need to do? I need to construct a standard of what I think a good podcast host is. And it's my standard. It's not.
Daniel Stillman 15:44
I will be sending you a customer satisfaction survey because I know how much you love filling out.
Ashley Goodall 15:49
I love those.
Daniel Stillman 15:49
You love that.
Ashley Goodall 15:50
I'm a big fan. Fan of those of.
Daniel Stillman 15:52
So we could call this book the 10th lie about work. In a sense, this is.
Ashley Goodall 15:57
It had not, the possibility had not escaped me that maybe this is the 10th lie. And then, of course, you're like, well, God, what's the 11th? Is there another one coming? The other funny thing is that in the second part of the book, I suggest a number of principles for how we could do, essentially how we could build stability back into organizations as a sort of countervailing force. All of the changey change stuff. And I wrote it, and then I counted them. And, of course, there are nine. So it's not. I was like, we can't call it nine principles, because then people will think, I can only write lists of nine things, but there are actually nine principles. So there's something I don't know.
Daniel Stillman 16:34
Oh, my God. That's right. A through I are nine things.
Ashley Goodall 16:37
There you go. Don't tell anyone.
Daniel Stillman 16:39
So, I do want to ask you again. This was not on my. So, when I wrote a book which involves nine elements, that is sort of an operating system that drive conversations, if you want to make it different, you can change the cadence, for example. It's a lot. As a musician, you understand this bit of prosody and this bit of cadence and the threads, the place that the conversation happens. And I got feedback from people saying, nine is just too many for a business workbook. People can't remember nine things. It's got to be three, five. Seven is best selling. So, how did you guys get away with nine and make a best selling book? Look at that. Apparently, my reviewers were wrong.
Ashley Goodall 17:22
I have no idea. Well, actually, no, I have one very specific idea. The way that we got to nine was we started with ten and deleted one that wasn't good enough. So, yeah, again, I mean, we're back where we started. The editorial process is the thing. It improves things, but at some point, you just have to. I've actually always felt that you have to let the content read form. And, yeah, I was writing. In this case, I was writing about stability, and there were eight things, and one of them was two things, and so eight became nine, and I'm like, I'm back at nine again. How you get away with nine, I have no idea. I think the serious answer is you make them good, and that's very easy to describe and actually very hard to do.
Daniel Stillman 18:11
Yes, it is a great book. And also, I'm just thinking in terms of musical prosody. Again, nine lives is nine lives. It's. It works, and I'm. But it's so.
Ashley Goodall 18:21
But it started as ten. We sent our way back in the midst of time. Marcus and I sent our editor a proposal called ten lies about work, which sounds so weird for anyone who knows the book. Yeah, yeah. And then they're like, delete one. And we're like, nine. Like, ooh, that's good. And you suddenly realize it isn't that fascinating, but sometimes, you know, you get gifts from the world.
Daniel Stillman 18:46
So I'm gonna read you another passage. It's sort of in the middle. It goes between the sort of Schumann to human into the sort of rethinking. And it, it kind of flows as one passage. It's probably a little too long for me to read, but I can't take any bits of it out because I'm a terrible editor. And so I hope you'll bear with me. It might be about like, you know, almost a minute, but I think it's great stuff, and I'm hoping that this is our lead in to talk about. For anybody listening who needs scientific proof, who needs to know what it, you know, what you know about humans that tells you that this is not the way to go. I want to talk about that. I feel like you set it up and summarize it so nicely here and now.
Ashley Goodall 19:34
I'm trying to guess which bit you're going to read. I have a guess. I'll tell you at the end of the road. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 19:38
The problem with change, in a nutshell, is that it assaults the things that anchor us. Humans do better in life when they have some degree of certainty about the future, some sense of ability to control it, some sense of ongoing connection to the people immediately around us, some part to play in the daily rhythms of the places we live, and some sense that events fit into a coherent narrative from which in turn, we can draw some clues about the why of our lives. Without these things, we struggle, and we and our employers and our colleagues and our friends bear the cost. What all of this science tells us is also, of course, what being alive tells us. We know from our own experience and intuition that uncertainty is stressful, that predictability is reassuring, that powerlessness is hard, agency energizing, and loneliness is toxic, and belongingness grounded. Yet at work, we have somehow decided that these fundamental ingredients of human good functioning are optional. So we can have foosball and free food. When it comes to the rudiments of healthy human workplace. Of a human workplace, sadly, these seem too much to ask. And this last little bit, I think, is so like it's one more dig in the. It's one more knife in the ribs of, of all the leaders listening. These things matter not so much because they are the cause of psychological health when we have them or distress when we don't, but because they are a reflection of our ability to do our work. We can think of predictability, control, belonging, place, and meaning together as the feelings that it's worth putting in an effort, because actions lead to results, and because any action will make a difference, that I know my way around a place and how to work with my colleagues, I feel my efforts are a useful contribution to the world. These are surely not only what we want our people at work to feel, but moreover a minimum of standard like it is required. It's the baseline. So I think some people think psychological safety. Oh, well, that's nice.
Ashley Goodall 21:33
Exactly. It's a luxury good.
Daniel Stillman 21:35
Yes.
Ashley Goodall 21:36
It's a luxury good at work. Economically defined.
Daniel Stillman 21:39
Yes. So I apologize for assailing you with your own words for such a long time, but there's so part of me feels like somebody needs to read a scientific report to be told these things that we feel that we all know.
Ashley Goodall 21:54
And the science is right there and it's quite easy to find. Yes. And I'm, you know, I'm not. I know my way around the outer reaches of the scientific literature, but I'm not. I didn't, I don't have a psych major. I'm not, you know, I'm somebody who knows where to. I'm somebody who knows how to pull on a thread, if you like. So you find something interesting and you read the references and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. But if I can find it, then lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people can find the articles, the research, the experiments that demonstrate all of these things. And you know, it's not insane to say there are some people who, who want to see the evidence. That's good. I would also make an argument for the various sorts of evidence. And in fact, that extract that you read points to scientific evidence, but it also says being alive teaches us these things as well.
Daniel Stillman 22:59
Yes.
Ashley Goodall 23:00
So the evidence of experience and the evidence of our own eyes and the evidence of anecdote all point in the same direction on all of this stuff and it's. That change is harming our ability to do work. Yes. So it's not, you're right, it's not a. It's not a nice to have. It's not a. I don't know, it's not a. Well, let me, let me say it slightly differently. Very often you hear people go, what's the business case? For which I simultaneously respect and understand and resent? Respect and understand. Because, okay, we should make rational arguments for doing things in the world. And sometimes those are called business cases. Resent. Because do we actually have to argue that doing right by people needs some sort of exogenous justification? Do we actually have to argue that doing the right thing needs math attached to it so that we can figure out the roi of doing the right thing? So it's, it's a sort of, you know, there are. There are standards of evidence in this case, happily, we can say, take your choice.
Daniel Stillman 24:20
Pick.
Ashley Goodall 24:21
You want the science? Here it is. You want the evidence of your own eyes, here it is. You want the ethical and moral case, which is that we should do right by humans, because we are humans, and that's what we've got on this planet and in this life, there it is. They all point in the same direction. We've got to do less of this disruption stuff.
Daniel Stillman 24:43
So, to a leader who's listening, who is convinced by, you know, the first three pages of your book are, you know, just like, as you said, this endless assault of stories of change gone horribly, horribly wrong, and there are more of those than the other type. But on one hand, they were like, yes, I get that this is an assault, but they still have that feeling of change is part of life. It exists. We must innovate, we must develop, we must change. We must respond. And they know they want to do better, and they can't read all the way to the last chapter of a book. When you say, here, make space, forge undeniable competence, share secrets, be predictable, etcetera,
Daniel Stillman 25:39
how should they start thinking? How would you coach them to start being the kind of leader who can shepherd people through change in a human way, or to do change in a fundamentally different way, or to stop doing it altogether, which most people who are hearing would say, that's just not possible.
Ashley Goodall 26:01
Yeah. So I think the first step is to define a little more precisely the area of debate that I'm trying to frame here. Yeah. I am not by any means saying that all change must stop and is a bad thing and that humans should be static and society should be static and we should just stay exactly as we are forever, and then happiness and. And productivity will ensue. That would be a ridiculous argument for anyone to try and make. And I am not trying to make it. I am making the argument that change and improvement are not necessarily the same thing. And so it behooves us to understand at the moment, changes are sort of proxy for all goodness and up to the right, and you can get a long way in the world of business. And by the way, I think probably the world of politics and probably the world of sport as well, by going, things got to change around here. And everyone goes, hooray, hallelujah. Change. Change. Now, of course, what that means is things have got to improve around here, but we say change, and then what we do is change. And we don't always end up with improvement. Yeah. So the second thing about the space I'm trying to argue in here is it's the. I'm trying to delineate the improvement space as a thing that's different, a subset of, yes, the change space. And then the last thing I'm trying to do is to say, if you actually look about the improvement space, you're going to have to do a couple of things. You're going to have to find out the conditions under which human beings do their best work, because the improvement ain't going to come from the sky, it's going to come from the human beings. And when you look at that, under which conditions do humans do their best work? You find out that whatever you want, the word I've chosen for it is stability. Stability is the foundation of improvement. So now we've come a very long way in a few sort of short bites from change is all good, to change. Change isn't all good. Improvement is good. Improvement means we've got to look to the humans, and when we look to the humans, where they do best is most consistently and most frequently is under conditions of stability. Yes. So if you want to improve your organization up until the right build stability, get really smart about sources of stability for people at work, which, by the way, are also sources of stability for people not at work, because it's all the same people.
Daniel Stillman 28:55
Yes. So how can a leader provide that kind of stability through as, which is a through line or a backbeat or a bass line? I don't know what the appropriate musical analogy is like that. That drumbeat of stability through the inevitable change that hopefully is driving improvement.
Ashley Goodall 29:18
It's. I think the musical analog I would reach for is probably either a thing called a pascicalia, which is a piece of music on a ground bass. So think Pachelbel's canon, famously bass line repeats. Everything else changes over the top or slightly more adventurously, a sort of theme and variation. So think Bach Goldberg variations, which is 90 minutes of gorgeous 32 variations or so on one theme. And the theme is there all the way through that. You never leave the theme. It's a stable, eternal presence. But what it allows you to do, this is the interesting thing. What it allows you to do do is invent. What the Pachelbel ground base allows Pachelbel to do is invent figurations and, you know, different, different variations, different instrumentations, different rhythms that sit on some sort of organizing gravitational force sonically so that everyone knows where they are. And if you take that away, then all the invention doesn't actually make any sense. It doesn't go anywhere. It feels very life in the blender. Yes. I suppose we should have. We could do an audio podcast, and we could now play people the cannon with the bass line turned off, and you'd sort of get that there's something going on, but it's also weird. And then you play the Goldberg, Bach's Goldberg variations without playing the aria at the beginning and without any of that harmonic consistency all the way through, and you'd go, this is noise.
Daniel Stillman 31:04
Yes.
Ashley Goodall 31:05
So, you know, that's a very metaphysical answer to a very practical question.
Daniel Stillman 31:11
Which I appreciate. I appreciate.
Ashley Goodall 31:14
I think all these things in the world have things to teach us, to be honest, and the lesson of what is the bedrock on which we create newness and improvement and innovation and joy and dance and all of those things. Those are really good questions to be asking. And I think, in psychological terms, the answer is pretty much stability. So as to how you do that,
Ashley Goodall 31:47
in a way. And, you know, I suggested, as we said, nine things in the book, but what they have in common is that they all respond to the psychological needs of humans that are violated by constant change. So they're all things that increased certainty, for example, or agency, or a sense of belonging. The things that increase certainty are things like rituals. You know, we talk a lot about the weekly staff meeting, or the weekly check in conversation, or the monthly all hands, or the things that have a rhythm create a little bit more certainty in the world. Hey, it's Wednesday. Do I know what will happen on a Wednesday? I do. We have a thing. I like the thing. It's called the staff meeting. Get to see my friends. Okay. Get to see my friends, by the way. So there's belonging for you. So team things are. The teams are the maestros of belonging, if you like. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 32:49
You talk about this in nine lives as well. Like the team, often we think that it's the reorg is the source of value, and that we can just shuffle people endlessly, but that a group of people who know how to ask each other for what they need is the actual font of productivity, of effectiveness.
Ashley Goodall 33:11
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 33:11
Of creative output.
Ashley Goodall 33:16
We think of organizations as things. As sort of uniform, homogenistic things, but, in fact, again, if you spend any time inside an organization and keep your eyes open, it strikes you pretty quickly that most of the people in the organization don't know most of the other people in the organization. It's like you don't know if you live in a town of any size. You don't know most of the people in the town, you know, a tiny little subset, but you're very comfortable going, my town is like this, so you can refer to the entity of your town without actually, you know, here I am in Montclair, New Jersey, what, 30,000 people, 40,000 people. Weirdly, I don't know them all, but I've got a point of view on Montclair. But actually, if you push me, I'd have to admit that my point of view is the few people I know here. So the local, the small, the intimate is massively and predominantly significant in our experience of the world. And we're very comfortable extrapolating from that to what the other things are like. But if you want to change our experience with the other things, you have to change our experience of the local first, which is to say, in corporate terms, if you get the teams right, you've built a good company. If you don't get the teams right, good luck, because there's no company there without the teams. You've got to live in the teams. And, you know, the insight I had, and it felt like an insight when I was working on this book, was that teams are a wonderful source of stability. And this is probably another reason that they are so important to us, to we humans, and to work and to organizations, because teams are, you know, if you've been on a team for any amount of time, people know what you're good at. So they are a place to showcase your ability, which is very stabilizing, gives you agency, reduces uncertainty. People give you social support, people you can gossip about things. You get a lovely sense of belonging from a team. You get the ability to see that you've had an impact in the world because there are people around you who can say, hey, that thing you did was really good, or that really landed, or someone told me about. So all of these things have a very natural home on teams, but not on day one of a team, on month three, maybe, or month six or a year to figure out.
Daniel Stillman 36:06
It takes time to build that right.
Ashley Goodall 36:09
And so if you shuffle all the teams every six months, none of the teams are ever going to figure out all of the beautiful things that teams can do for humans. And therefore all the humans are going to be adrift most of the time.
Daniel Stillman 36:21
Which is, of course, something that happens. You know, there's plenty of organizations I've worked with that talk about the reorg of the day, which is, of course, a. An exaggeration, but not quite.
Ashley Goodall 36:34
Not quite.
Daniel Stillman 36:36
And this is some of the numbers you talked about it takes six months for teams to cohere, and then we do a big change. And then another 18 months, we do another big change. But we never actually reap the benefits of change. One.
Ashley Goodall 36:50
No, because you never actually reap the benefits of having teams that support one another. So all your humans are individuals and not teams. You're denying them the most important unit by which their collaboration can be enhanced and lifted up and magnified.
Daniel Stillman 37:11
There's another. Oh, sorry, there's more there. I apologize for talking over you.
Ashley Goodall 37:16
No, no, I was just. We train leaders. Certainly years ago, the standard was that a company should rotate its leaders every two years or so so that they would get exposure to all the different facets of a large business. And then beyond this, you'd go, all right, well, Ashley's had two years here, so we'll put him over here now. Okay, Ashley, go run this bit of organization. A and Ashley will show up and go, right, well, here I am. I've been anointed the leader. So clearly what I need to do is redefine for these poor people the strategy and the chart and the teams and the flow of work. So I'll get on with all of that. Because if they'd have been any good, no one would have sent me over here, would they? So I gotta, I gotta shake it all up anyway, so I'll do that a little bit. We'll do six months of planning. We'll do six months of staggering implementation. That really doesn't get us anywhere. Then we'll do twelve months of frustration at it. Didn't really quite work, but I hope no one notices. And then someone will tap me on the shoulder and say, ashley, it's time for another job. Go learn this part of the business. And that's only a very slight and slightly cynical exaggeration of how we move leaders around organizations and how, in fact, the very process of exposing a leader to different parts of the business will tend to result in almost endless churn of strategy, of organization, so on and so forth, cascading the whole time. And I think that's where a lot of this actually comes from. Apart from the sort of big d disruption stuff that emanates from the C suite. The idea that leaders need to be moved around to become any good at leading is creating an awful lot of change.
Daniel Stillman 39:10
That's quite profound. That the way that we're training leaders and this is in large organizations, because this is a habit, there are enough people to do this in a quite large organization that it's creating this idea of, you must go, you must get your sleeves rolled up and actually make an impact, which sort of. There's another question I wanted to dig at, which is sort of like how we recognize and reward people. There was a story you talked about, about forging undeniable competence, that the Paul Hollywood handshake, which I thought was a really beautiful, I feel like praise. We think we people need feedback, but this is a sort of a leadership skill that I'm seeing, is something that people could be thinking about differently. People don't need feedback. They need to be praised for what they're doing really, really well. Many, many years ago, one of the first executive coaches I worked with defined leadership as the ability, the quality of recognizing specificity in others to not just say, hey, good job, Ashley. Hey, nice book. Right. It's not the same thing as saying, this passage here is quite musical and. And hard hitting. It's specific and powerful. Praise. Yes.
Ashley Goodall 40:30
And it's attached in some way. And so the idea, though, you know, for those who don't watch the great British Bake off, and they're missing some.
Daniel Stillman 40:39
Very relaxing, wholesome television.
Ashley Goodall 40:42
Yeah. And they're probably also a bit. A bit lighter than they would be if they watched all these desserts being made and then got tempted to go and try them for themselves. But if you don't watch that show, give it a go. Find a couple of episodes. They're all on, most of them on Netflix these days, but watch it as an exercise in performance and development and not at all feedback. And just see if you can see what I see in it when I write about Mister Hollywood and his. His famous handshake. And what's. What's funny is that, you know, just to describe what happens, there are all these bakers. They're all in a tent. It's never been quite clear to me why they are in a tent, because it's in England. So it's going to be either too hot or too rainy or too miserable in the tent. But anyway, they haven't been to tent.
Daniel Stillman 41:34
It gives you a chance. You really can't get the dough to rise properly. They want to give them that extra challenge because if it was air conditioned, they couldn't be like, oh, so tent.
Ashley Goodall 41:44
Because anyway, so they're in a tent. They're baking in a tent, as regular people do. Never. And they get a task to bake or whatever. Sometimes they're allowed to rehearse. Sometimes they're not allowed to practice. And then the judges go around and judge them, and then one of these judges, guy named Paul Hollywood, he's a very good baker, and if he sees something that he loves, he stops and there's a big long pause. And if you've seen the show before, you sort of know what might be coming and you're like, is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? And then he just smiles and he stretches his hand out and shakes somebody's hand. And it's so. It's goosebump inducing every single time you see it. Which is interesting, because feedback is goosebumping inducing. None ever times you get it. No one's ever like, well, you should have moved that thing or do this differently, or, why did you use the word arm a lot? It's never. So this is the sum frisson of impact and import and beauty and respect and all rolled up in one, but it's also pointed at a moment of excellence, not pointed at a moment of deficit.
Daniel Stillman 42:53
Yes.
Ashley Goodall 42:54
And I think you can unwind that a little bit and go, well, our idea that everybody needs feedback the whole time in order to get better is based in part on an erroneous assumption about what humans are motivated by and what we're like. And it's sort of like we don't really care about getting very much better. So someone needs to tell us the way there, because we're. The thought of how to. How I might do this better had not ever occurred to me. I'm just sitting, I'm sort of phoning it in. I'm a bit of a blob. I should probably be told how to get better, because I couldn't possibly be thinking those thoughts for myself or answering, asking myself those questions. And most of the people I know are exactly the opposite of that. Most people actually want to do a decent job and enjoy doing a better job. So most of us aren't like, sitting around going, listen, I suck at this, but that's fine by me. That's not a very human no stay. And it follows that, actually what we're really crying out for is somebody to say, this is the thing you're aiming for. This is the top of the mountain, this is daylight. This is excellence. Let me help you see that. And then you're going to have all sorts of ideas about how you could attain that. But the most helpful thing we can do for others in building their own confidence, which is, back to the point, a source of great stability. I have things I can do that no one can ever take away from me. Whoa. Now I've now got a little bit of armor against change and disruption in the world, because whatever. People can fire Ashley from all the jobs in the world, but at least I can write three paragraphs that aren't awful. So I've got that. But the thing that I want most in pointing myself towards that is a beautifully clear definition of what excellent looks like from somebody who's sort of qualified to know. I mean, it's interesting. It's Paul Hollywood. He's a really good baker.
Daniel Stillman 45:08
It's not just the blue eyes.
Ashley Goodall 45:10
It's not? No. And it's not random bloke we found wandering outside the tent either. It's actually somebody who's an expert, who's saying, this is really good, and then he'll say a little bit when he shakes the hand about why it's really good and whether it's the flavor or the texture or the appearance. Clearly, I've spent too much time watching the show, though. You get some specificity. Yes, but you must. I always ask myself, I always want to imagine, what does the person on the other end of the handshake think? What's going through their head? And I can only imagine it is. Oh, my God. Yes. Now, how do I do that again? Which is what we want to work. We want people with at work going, how do I do? Great. Again? How do I do that again? How do I do that again? And answering for themselves in an idiosyncratic and emergent and motivated way. What we don't want is a whole bunch of people going, I wish you would knock it off with the criticism, because it's crushing me, and I have to sort through the thicket of how much of it makes sense and how much of it doesn't make sense and how much of it is just, you don't really like me. And how much of it is. You were told you had to give feedback because the HR system makes you give feedback, so you had to make some up. That's not what we. That's not getting us there. Yes. What gets us there is to respect the human need to be good at stuff, and then to help them get there in the simplest way. And the simplest way is to tell people when they did something really good. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 46:47
Which is surprising, because we do believe this is, you know, we call it a lie about, you know, leadership. This idea that, you know, we must tell people what they're doing wrong, but telling them what they did right. It's really, what's interesting about it is that you mention this in the passage, that it's about the work. We're saying the bake was good, the bottom was, you know, but what the message that gets comes through is I did a good job, I feel good about myself, and I hear from you the sort of stability that that creates because it, in a team, I know that I have this quality and that people can rely on me for it, and that's just really powerful.
Ashley Goodall 47:34
And then because they're doing the relying on me for it, I know I have impact in the world. And so I have a sense of meaning. And, you know, we haven't talked a lot about meaning, but again, meaning is another thing that gets very weird at work because it tends to get translated into our company must have some noble mission that is clearly connected with improving the state of the world and the universe, which is fine, hallelujah. But actually, that's not what meaning means for people on the ground. What meaning means is I know my work makes a difference to some other human in some way that's kind of useful. It's a much humbler and simpler thing. And so if somebody says, hey, good job, if somebody shakes your hand, that's meaning as well. It's not just performance, it's meaning I did a thing. I've had an impact that's enormously.
Daniel Stillman 48:29
Yeah. Shareholder value, let's be clear, shareholder value is not individual meaning. Meaning is person to person. Seeing the impact that your work has, either within the team or within the community.
Ashley Goodall 48:42
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 48:42
Brings it home for people.
Ashley Goodall 48:44
Yes, but that's an exercise, not of uplifting oratory or inspiring prose or beautiful video footage of the things that our company did. That's an exercise of connection. It's an act of. And again, this is why teams are so good at it, because your team leader needs to be able to say, look, Daniel, that thing that you did, did you see how it went over with those other people over there? Do you understand why what you did is so important? And you can go, well, because you told me to, or because I think. And they can go, yeah, but what you don't see is that this led to this, led to this, led to this, led to this, led to all of these other things as well. And an organization leader can't actually do that if the organization's, I don't know, 10,000 people, because there are 10,000 different answers to that question. But a team leader with ten people on a team can go, Daniel, your work had this impact. Ashley, your work had a different impact. Your work had an impact over here and led to these things. And it's led to connected to. That's what meaning is for humans at work.
Daniel Stillman 49:54
What's so interesting about that, actually, is my thesis is that the fundamental unit of change is a conversation. And what I'm hearing from you is that literally on the conversational level of leadership, like conversation to conversation, praise, storytelling, are skills of a leader that can create the kind of coherence and stability that allows a team to function day by day and week by week.
Ashley Goodall 50:25
And the thing that still sort of scrambles my brain is that these are human skills, not leadership skills. Or rather, these are human skills before they are leadership skills. Better said,
Ashley Goodall 50:41
ask anyone who is a parent about how you help kids get better at stuff, and they will tell you that each kid is different from each other kid even in the same family, and that telling them good job is a really important thing to do, and then explaining why is a really important thing to do. And yes, sometimes they're going to burn themselves on the oven. And so you give feedback and you say, stop that right now, and you prevent disaster. But preventing disaster isn't the same as building a healthy and growing human being. You talk about the fundamental unit of changes, of conversation, which is a beautiful phrase. Those are things that we're all very good at doing, for the most part, outside work. But then there's this weirdness that at work we have to speak gobbledygook to one another so that nobody really understands what's going on. And again, we're sort of unsure of our footing and all of these things. So humans are pretty good at figuring this stuff out. There's a. We could be more deliberate about it. We could be more clear eyed about what it is that we're actually trying to do for our fellow humans at work and beyond work. But what I'm arguing for is not a divergence from human nature, but a return to it. That's why the science is so important. That's why all the psychology findings are so important, because they define for us what a human is like. And we don't actually get to choose. We get to choose how to respond, we get to choose how to act, we get to choose how to interact, but we don't get to choose how people alike. And there seems to be a lot of made upness about humans would be good if when we tell them what to do, they get on with it. Okay, doesn't work. They're not that simple. Or humans would be good if the more we pay them to do x, the more they do it. Which is not true either. And there are all of these things. But, you know, at the core of what I'm arguing for is a return, a return to a world that understands humans and is giddy with excitement at how fun it is to understand a human with all their foibles and all their glory.
Daniel Stillman 52:56
So we are nearing the end of our time, and usually I ask people what I haven't asked them. It's one of my. Because there's so much I haven't asked you, and you're just talking about what's important to. And I heard you use this phrase in another conversation, what's important to know about humans out of the box that we just get out of the box, what's built in, to just understand how we're operating, what our operating system is. So I'm wondering for the leaders listening who are aware of the problem, who do, don't want who to be part of the problem, who you want to be more human. Leaders who have heard you talk about focusing on impact versus change, who are talking about the need for stability through ritual and teams and the power of praise and being human. Being human words. What else would you whisper into their ear? What haven't we said that ought to be said so that they can go back and start the revolution?
Ashley Goodall 53:57
There's an interesting question that I sort of stumble on in writing all of this that I would suggest a leader ask themselves whenever they are confronted with the need for improvement, let's say, which might feel like change, but actually they're after improvement, which is this, what would happen if you started with stability? What would happen if you first articulated for your team and your organization all the things that will not change now, that doesn't have to be all the, everything's because you're going to try and make some improvement. But what would happen if you would, if you would, you know, in the hypothetical situation that we were discussing a few minutes ago, you're the new leader. The board has asked you to come in, or the senior leadership team has asked you to come in and take something in a different direction. Now, most of us, and I've done this, will show up on day one and go, I'm here to take things in a different direction. Here is the direction. Here's a little bit about why, but frankly, the why is in the rearview mirror now, because I'm here. So clearly we're going to do it. And you're like, the number of votes that you've had in this process is precisely zero, and that number is not going to increase anytime soon. So off we go. Because I was sent here to do a job.
Daniel Stillman 55:14
Strap in.
Ashley Goodall 55:15
Strap in. That's the norm. And I've said pretty much those words. What would happen if you would say, listen, I'm here to lead, but the way I'm going to lead is by starting with all the things that will not change our mission, will not change the way that we describe ourselves to others, will not change our structure, will not change our rituals, will not change the silly game that we play whenever somebody does this, will not change those things. We will elevate, we will make them more central to who we are and how we go about our week. And once we've elevated them, then we will start asking ourselves, what can we do better? That's a just, that's a, that's a, all I did was, I said, we're going to change, but let's ground, let's rediscover the Pachelbel cannon ground base going on under the whole thing. First, let's acknowledge that that's there. Let's acknowledge that that's essential for everybody. Let's invite people into a conversation about given what won't change, what should we change together, what should we reimagine together, what should we point ourselves towards and what should we dream about. And it seems to me that that's a better way of addressing the whole thing, really.
Daniel Stillman 56:41
Involving people in the change.
Ashley Goodall 56:44
Involving people's, honoring people's psychological needs and then involving them in the change.
Daniel Stillman 56:51
Yes.
Ashley Goodall 56:52
It's like you've got to, you've got to start with scope, really, to use the business word. I am not here to change the sun, the moon and the stars. I am here to find a way for us to be better. I was probably brought in because I have some ideas or I've got some experience of doing sorts of similar things. But let me start by learning what you all rely on for your contribution here. What teams are the best teams and what they're like, how long people have been around, what the weekly patterns are, what the cadence is, how we talk about ourselves. Let me understand all of those things. And let me understand those things. Not because they're on the list of possibilities to be upended, but let me understand those things so that I can honor and elevate them. And once we've done that, we'll be ready for improvement. And some of that will come from me, and some of it will come from you and some of it will come from us. But we won't improve unless we first see our stability for the vital part of our roles that it is.
Daniel Stillman 58:06
And when you talk about using real words, honor and elevate are really beautiful words. And they sound a lot like the Paul Hollywood handshake. The thing that a person wants to receive, which is recognition of a job well done, is a leader looking at a team and saying, I'm going to honor and elevate what's great about this team, and we're going to do that first, which is a big flip. It seems like the problem with change is that we don't start with stability and elevate what's working, what's great, what makes it tick, how people orient themselves around where even to find the pens, how to get work done.
Ashley Goodall 58:50
I worked with a leader once who taught me how to find words for things in emails or in, you know, when you're talking to people in a group. And he said, it's very easy to just write the usual, the usual thing. I'm excited to announce that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or even there was somebody who was leaving an organization in slightly mysterious circumstances or slightly mixed circumstances, or wasn't very clear, that was a good thing. And he said it would be very easy to go. This person's a brilliant person and they've done brilliant things their whole life, and we'll miss them terribly. But he said, none of that's true. So what you actually have to do is find a way of telling the truth sincerely and humbly. And it's. That has always stuck with me. That was, I don't know, 20 years ago, that conversation. I can remember where I was sitting when he said to me, find the real truth. Find it without judgment, find it without blame, find the way, the full bodied honoring of another person and write those words down. And when you try and do that, when you try and find the truth, the words that come out are not business words. They are real words. They are human words. They are words like honor and elevate and respect and love even comes out. So there's a. Yeah, there's a. There's a lesson about stability in truth, which is stability in stability, and truth refracted in the words that we choose. And the words, do the words really matter? Yeah.
Daniel Stillman 1:00:31
Well, that seems like a really good place to pause.
Ashley Goodall 1:00:35
I feel like real shame to pause. We could do this for much longer.
Daniel Stillman 1:00:38
Well, yeah, I mean, there's a whole book's worth. There's two books worth my word. But you do have the rest of your day to get onto. As we, as previously mentioned, it's a gray day outside in the greater tri state area.
Ashley Goodall 1:00:54
Yeah. And I've got to go out and get wet, clearly. Yes.
Daniel Stillman 1:00:58
I'm really grateful for this conversation and it's really great to highlight this work. The book is coming out May 7, is that right?
Ashley Goodall 1:01:08
May 7? That's right.
Daniel Stillman 1:01:09
We're going to try and make this come around that time. How might people, after having listened to this, say to themselves, even through your best efforts to make yourself unhirable.
Ashley Goodall 1:01:24
If.
Daniel Stillman 1:01:24
They want to learn more about your work and how to work with you, where should they go?
Ashley Goodall 1:01:30
Where should they find out? Yeah, people can find out about me on my website, which is www.ashleygoodall.com. And of course, the book is available if it's before May 7. When you're listening to this, it's available for pre order on all the places the books are sold. And if it's after May 7, it's available for order order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, wherever good books are sold. And if you're interested in following me and my evolving thinking about the world of work and about what's fabulous about it and what's frustrating as well, I post quite a lot on LinkedIn, so you can find me on LinkedIn as well.
Daniel Stillman 1:02:09
I just followed you today. Long overdue.
Ashley Goodall 1:02:13
Thank you. I will try and say intelligent things there.
Daniel Stillman 1:02:18
I don't think it's possible. I mean, of course it's possible to not, but you've got quite a lot of, quite a lot of good things to draw from. As we said, turning a book into a couple of paragraphs is difficult, but it packs a lot of punch when you boil it down that way, doesn't it?
Ashley Goodall 1:02:36
Yeah, it's like a good. Now we're off. We're back to cooking again. But a good reduction will take you quite a long way if you're a source person.
Daniel Stillman 1:02:44
Yes, I am a source person.
Ashley Goodall 1:02:49
I think everyone Lacor is a source person.
Daniel Stillman 1:02:56
I'll officially end the conversation. I call scene.