0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to the show. I'm

0:03

Rodney Evans and that guy with big

0:05

old hair according to him. It's Sam

0:07

Sperlin. Hey Rodney, I think

0:09

my hair looks pretty normal actually, so

0:11

thanks for the call out. Okay,

0:13

so it's not a stressful day then,

0:15

according to the hair meter. No, it's

0:17

pretty, it's pretty down. By the

0:19

end of the day, it might be kind

0:22

of up and I don't know how my day

0:24

went. That's how we know. Welcome back

0:26

to At Work With The Ready.

0:28

This is a podcast about modernizing

0:30

organizations in preparation or for the

0:32

present, future of work. This

0:34

is the seventh episode of our

0:36

mini series on DeafFunny. I went back

0:38

and counted. I think that is

0:40

right. Hopefully it is right. Oh my

0:42

God, I love this. And this

0:44

might be a failure of my ability

0:46

to do that simple task. But

0:48

I think it's the seventh. We're

0:51

on the back nine, as I say. Ronnie,

0:53

what are we going to talk about today? I

0:55

don't know. We're going to talk about stewardship,

0:59

Sam. Stewardship. A

1:01

word that has met with

1:03

mixed reviews, which I don't care

1:05

about the reviews. I love

1:07

the word. I'm dying on

1:09

this hill. We're going to talk about

1:11

stewardship today. Wait, is this episode

1:13

just you yelling at people who have been giving

1:15

you a hard time about stewardship? Yeah.

1:17

An important part of stewardship is

1:20

listening to your customers. So

1:22

this is where I get to respond to

1:24

them. Check. Before

1:26

we dive in, let's answer one

1:28

of Sam's famous check -in questions. I

1:31

wanted to go real hard hitting on

1:33

the check -in question today, just to like

1:35

really meet the moment. So what is

1:37

an underrated condiment? It's

1:40

so hard because so many of

1:42

the condiments that I love are... untrend

1:44

like chili crisp and

1:46

everything bagel seasoning and sriracha,

1:48

but like I Think

1:51

underrated is Old Bay.

1:53

I Fucking love Old Bay.

1:55

I love Old Bay on popcorn.

1:57

I love it on Chowder. love

2:00

it on any kind of protein I

2:02

think Old Bay is a near perfect

2:04

condiment and I don't think people use

2:06

it enough Okay. The pedant

2:08

inside me wants to argue about

2:10

whether a spice or a condiment,

2:12

but that's fine. Oh, no. It

2:15

will perhaps not surprise you that I

2:17

don't know the difference. I'm like,

2:19

I don't know. Is some you put on food? Yeah,

2:22

I don't know that I have a really

2:24

crisp definition either, but in my brain, I'm like,

2:26

that's not a condiment, but you know what? Condiments

2:28

come in a packet like mustard. to

2:30

keep this thing going? I'm okay with that. He'll

2:34

accept my answer. Okay, great because I don't

2:36

have another one. I get I literally it

2:38

was a stretch to get to Old Bay

2:40

I don't know about food. I know about

2:43

food, but I don't engage with food in

2:45

the way that I That's true. We've

2:47

heard that. Yeah. Yeah Okay, what about you?

2:49

What do you think is under? I

2:51

can't wait. I feel like your answer is

2:53

gonna be Midwestern. Mmm. Nope. It's

2:55

Canadian actually malt vinegar. Oh

2:58

Why say

3:00

so good on fries? And it's

3:02

so underrated that I forget that it exists and

3:04

I never buy it for myself. But when

3:07

I go to Canada or places where it is

3:09

normal to put malt vinegar on fries, I'm

3:11

like, this is so good. I can just buy

3:13

this for myself if I wanted to. Maybe

3:15

I will. It's literally in every store. Do want

3:17

me to get it for you? No,

3:20

thank you. I appreciate

3:22

the thought though. Let me know if

3:24

that changes because you shouldn't have to like

3:26

cross state lines. Or international borders.

3:28

You shouldn't need a passport to get

3:30

Mall Vinegar for your French prize, man. I

3:33

think maybe that's what's keeping it special for me. Like

3:35

if you had it all the time, wouldn't

3:38

it be? Yeah. Exactly. All

3:40

right. That's really fun. I'm so checked

3:42

in. Same. Hard same. Let's

3:44

do this thing. So today we're going to

3:46

talk about stewardship. I've been reworking

3:48

the depth finding talk because I have to

3:50

give it a bunch and I've given it a

3:52

bunch and now I have to fiddle with

3:55

it by which I mean change 80 % of it. And

3:58

a lot of what I've been trying to

4:00

parse is like, what is

4:02

it about how systems were

4:04

designed in history and how

4:06

leaders showed up to those

4:09

systems in history and how

4:11

all of that combined to

4:13

impact the work experience that

4:15

is important. And I've

4:17

really been trying to like parse

4:19

this out as backdrop for stewardship

4:21

because I have a really intuitive

4:23

understanding of what stewardship is and

4:25

means. And I know it when

4:27

I see it. And I also

4:29

think because it is a concept

4:31

that's relatively new for most people

4:33

in the world, it's important that

4:35

you and I can explain it

4:38

clearly. So that's what we're going

4:40

to try to do today. Right. Boom.

4:42

Every episode I guess is a little bit

4:45

like this, but this one maybe feels

4:47

even more a little bit like a working

4:49

session Where we're gonna like kind of

4:51

hash this out a little bit more rather

4:53

than like we've got the thing figured

4:55

out and here you go Yeah, this is

4:57

one of those moments where we're gonna

4:59

learn it by teaching it to someone else.

5:01

Yeah, cool. Yeah Before we like really

5:03

dive into it just to like be really

5:05

clear so we've been talking about dev

5:07

finding now for a couple of episodes we've

5:09

been going zone by zone and you

5:11

may think well that's the whole thing right

5:13

you've got these different zones that help

5:16

you understand what's going on in an organization

5:18

and that is the bulk of it

5:20

but there is this other component which is.

5:22

the stewardship side of things. So just

5:24

what is the relationship, I guess, between the

5:26

zones stuff we've been talking about and

5:28

this new kind of body of work that

5:30

we're going to talk about today? Yeah,

5:32

great question. First question, I

5:35

don't have a clear answer to. Yeah,

5:37

great. So I think

5:40

that if we conceive

5:42

of organizations differently and we

5:44

actually articulate and

5:46

admit the reality of how

5:48

complex they are, we necessarily

5:50

have to think about our

5:52

role in them and with

5:54

them differently. And that's where stewardship

5:56

comes in. I fundamentally

5:58

think that part of we

6:00

have a business, but

6:02

also part of why work

6:04

is like so fundamentally

6:06

broken is because so many

6:08

people in charge right

6:10

now were taught a leadership

6:12

playbook from a different

6:14

age. And we're

6:16

not taught about how to

6:19

work in a complexity conscious

6:21

way. We were not taught

6:23

about what it meant to

6:25

take care of an organization

6:27

and steer an organization and

6:29

evolve an organization. We were

6:31

taught about controlling an organization

6:33

and about winning loyalty and

6:36

about You know, we weren't

6:38

taught to be designers. We

6:40

were taught to be inspirational

6:42

or great managers or great

6:44

connectors or great disciplinarians or

6:46

whatever. But like the

6:48

moves that we learned and that

6:50

many, many, many people have

6:53

spent decades honing aren't working no

6:55

matter how well they're deployed. Yeah.

6:57

And so the idea of stewardship

7:00

is what is the way of

7:02

leading in the intelligence age? if

7:04

we can admit that the way

7:06

that Jack Welsh led in the

7:08

information age is not cutting the

7:10

mustard, which is a condiment. FYI.

7:14

Nice callback. Thank you. I

7:16

like that a lot. As you

7:18

were talking there, I was thinking, how

7:20

would I answer that question? And

7:22

it's not as good as what you

7:25

just said, but the kind of

7:27

the. More general version that's bouncing around

7:29

in my head is that if

7:31

you engage with this depth finding thing

7:33

that we've been talking about now

7:35

for many weeks, it opens up a

7:37

lot of potential paths, avenues for

7:39

interacting with an organization in a different

7:42

way. And I think

7:44

stewardship is our answer for

7:46

what does it mean to

7:48

use the insights that you

7:50

generate? in depth finding in

7:52

a productive, better way that

7:54

honors the complexity of the

7:56

organization and the environment that

7:58

you are in. It gives

8:00

you some new mental models

8:02

and actual moves to use

8:05

as a leader, as a

8:07

steward of an organization. Yeah,

8:09

totally. All right. So

8:11

I know you've been working on the

8:13

talk, so that means you've been deep

8:15

in the history of this. Do you

8:18

want to do the super quick history

8:20

lesson here? Here's how I think we

8:22

should do this. I'm gonna tell you

8:24

about an age and then you're gonna

8:26

tell me how you see the ghosts

8:28

of that age haunting us now. Nice.

8:32

Okay, so I'm not gonna start before

8:34

the Industrial Revolution because I don't

8:36

think that's so so important. I'm gonna

8:38

start in the early 1900s with

8:40

the Industrial Age. So if you think

8:42

about the turn of the last

8:44

century, I think an organization and leader

8:46

quite emblematic of that time was

8:48

Henry Ford at the helm of the

8:50

Ford Motor Company. And

8:52

that time was really signified by

8:54

the advent of the assembly line. What

8:57

was dope about the assembly line was that

8:59

it was the first time we could scale production.

9:01

It was the first time we could have consistency. It

9:04

was the first time there was like real efficiency. And

9:06

for example, the production time of the

9:08

Model T went from 12 hours to 90

9:11

minutes. on the assembly line,

9:13

which is for the time in

9:15

particular was truly like mind boggling.

9:17

The downside that we don't hear

9:20

about quite as much is

9:22

that veteran workers who were accustomed

9:24

to assembling whole cars on

9:26

a team now were meant to

9:28

do monotonous singular tasks as

9:30

fast as humanly possible. So the

9:32

organization was run like a

9:34

machine, and it was fed basically

9:37

by human beings. And Henry

9:39

Ford, perhaps apocryphally, was quoted as

9:41

saying, every time I ask

9:43

for a pair of hands, unfortunately, it has

9:45

a brain attached. So the

9:47

idea here was basically like managers

9:49

stand above or to the side.

9:51

They watch the doers. who are

9:53

not meant to ask questions or

9:55

huge judgment. They're just meant to

9:57

go as fast as possible. The

9:59

managers are meant to hold clipboards

10:01

and stopwatches and tell them where

10:03

they could be faster or better

10:05

and never the twain shall meet.

10:08

And this is the time in

10:10

which org charts are invented

10:12

and which performance starts being measured.

10:15

And so I say this as

10:17

backdrop because even though now a lot

10:19

of the OS trappings of

10:22

that time are significantly

10:24

more than a century old,

10:27

I think we still see them. When you

10:29

think about orgs that you work

10:31

in and around, including ours, what

10:33

are some of the industrial

10:36

age trappings that maybe are not

10:38

so good for us? Yeah,

10:40

you mentioned a couple already. Just

10:42

the idea of an org

10:44

chart being the best way of

10:46

visualizing how an organization works

10:48

or exists, I think is a

10:50

ghost of that time. Another

10:53

one that came to mind

10:55

as you were talking is kind

10:57

of this performance management as

10:59

an individual focused activity. not

11:02

really looking at it in terms

11:04

of teams or how you kind of

11:06

fit into the larger organization, but

11:08

you as the human robot doing some

11:10

sort of task, like how good

11:12

are you doing that? And

11:15

then just one last one that

11:17

came to mind is that

11:19

when I see efforts to like

11:21

get hyper specific about role

11:23

clarity, I sometimes

11:25

get flavors of industrial

11:27

era organizations. Say

11:30

more about that one. Yeah. So

11:32

can we take a role and

11:34

get so specific about what it

11:36

should and shouldn't be doing? That

11:38

starts to look a lot like,

11:40

Hey, your job here is to

11:43

put that screw here and this

11:45

screw here. And don't worry about

11:47

this other stuff. So there's obviously

11:49

complexity conscious ways to do role

11:51

clarity. We, we, I think a

11:53

lot of them, but you can

11:55

kind of follow that path all

11:57

the way back to the 1900s.

11:59

And now we're just. hands on

12:02

an assembly line again. Yeah, I

12:04

think that's right. I think the

12:06

TLDR that I've taken from this

12:08

age is the idea that the

12:10

purpose of a manager is extraction

12:12

was born here. Yeah.

12:14

And that human beings

12:17

are resources from which

12:19

to extract value. Like

12:21

that wasn't an

12:23

idea in the artisanal

12:26

or agricultural ages

12:28

before the industrial age. That

12:30

became an idea here that like a

12:32

human being was something to squeeze juice

12:34

out of and a manager's job was

12:36

to get the most juice. And we

12:38

still see that. Totally. I think the

12:41

only wrinkle that I'll throw into the

12:43

pre -industrial era that goes against what you

12:45

just said, which I think we've maybe

12:47

talked a little bit about before, is

12:49

literally human slavery. Like

12:51

there are ideas in

12:53

human slavery that

12:55

show up in industrial

12:58

kind of management of organizations that were,

13:00

you know, pre the artisanal stuff and

13:02

people who were not, didn't have a

13:04

whole lot of say in like how

13:06

the work was going. There's tinges

13:08

of that in the early 1900s.

13:10

a great call out. And, you know,

13:12

like the Gantt chart was born

13:15

in the time of slavery. That was

13:17

what it was created for. So

13:19

it is a perfect call out. We

13:21

should do more research as to

13:23

like the connections between that entire system

13:26

and the assembly line. Yes, there

13:28

are scholars who have made those connections

13:30

that we could definitely dig into. Okay,

13:33

so that's the industrial era.

13:35

So we've got a bunch

13:37

of command and control shit

13:39

and just like allegiance to

13:41

the hierarchy, total compliance. These

13:44

idiots just on the assembly line don't need

13:46

to have their own thoughts. This is like the

13:48

prevailing wisdom of this time. Can I just

13:50

throw one word that is like bouncing around in

13:52

my head that I think really describes this?

13:54

That's why a podcast host. It's exactly. Just to

13:56

say the words that bounce around in my

13:58

head. Industrial era

14:00

organizations and management of those

14:02

are like, it's all

14:05

about certainty. can predict

14:07

exactly how much work you're going to

14:09

do. And we can optimize

14:11

that. And Frederick Winslow Taylor is

14:13

standing there with a stopwatch. And

14:15

we know exactly how everything is

14:17

going to go. And that's what

14:19

we are optimizing for. And I

14:22

think we're going to see that

14:24

certainty start to dissipate as we

14:26

move closer to present day. It's

14:28

a great point. And in fact,

14:30

something that I was reading in

14:32

doing this research for the talk

14:34

was about the fact that any

14:36

variation that happened as part of

14:39

assembly was a bug, not a

14:41

feature. And

14:43

so the idea of

14:45

like experimentation or happy

14:47

accidents or sort of

14:49

a kismet of innovation

14:51

was like to be

14:53

squashed. at all costs. You

14:56

know, just in keeping with the theme of

14:58

certainty, like part of the certainty was also

15:00

in the quality of the product and the

15:02

consistency of the product. It was like very

15:04

Conway's law straight through from how the humans

15:06

behave to how the cars ended up. Yeah.

15:09

Dope. All right. Information age. What's going

15:11

on here? Part two. So

15:13

look, I made up

15:15

these ages, names and timelines

15:17

based on how I

15:19

see history. But I think

15:21

that the information age

15:23

came really to bear with

15:25

enterprise computing. So I

15:28

think that when we got

15:30

to a point where essentially organizations

15:32

had more data and more

15:34

information than they had ever held

15:36

in history, I think we

15:38

saw this really shift. And

15:40

I don't think that there's an

15:42

organization that is more emblematic than GE

15:44

under Jack Welsh. I think

15:46

he was sort of like the king

15:48

of the information age. And what it

15:50

gave us was strategy as a religion.

15:53

This was a time where if you

15:55

had all of this data and all

15:57

of the information, then the point of

15:59

a leader is to make a plan

16:01

to make use of that data that

16:03

returns value predictably every time. And

16:05

this is where we see the rise

16:07

of things like succession planning. the rank

16:09

and yank idea, I

16:11

mean, the hunger games, like super heavy

16:14

emphasis on peer competition, and essentially

16:16

the idea that rather than making things,

16:18

you're making leaders, and that

16:20

the right leader with the right training

16:22

and the right pedigree can do

16:24

anything. And so I think

16:26

this was a real significant shift from

16:28

the role of manager to the role of

16:30

leader, and rather than treating people as

16:33

cogs in a machine, The information

16:35

each asks leaders to treat people

16:37

more like fish in a tank, where

16:39

the idea is to observe and

16:41

analyze and tweak the environment to get

16:43

the behavior that you want from

16:45

people. Yeah. When I think about this

16:48

age, I think about basically it's

16:50

the fetishization of leadership, of

16:52

kind of the ego cults

16:54

around leaders and just everything, all

16:56

of the trappings that come

16:58

along with that. And I think

17:00

Jack Welch is probably the

17:02

most emblematic of that era and

17:04

of that kind of cult

17:06

of personality that he was able

17:09

to create around himself and

17:11

I think was held up as

17:13

the what all senior leaders

17:15

are supposed to be trying to

17:17

do. Yeah, which I think

17:19

is bad for us. Not great. I

17:21

just don't think I think that

17:23

was a bad experiment. You know,

17:25

did you read this article? Someone

17:27

sent this around a while back.

17:29

There was a study done where

17:31

people with immense amount of explicit

17:33

powers were put into MRI machines

17:35

to basically measure like their executive

17:37

function and their judgment. And as

17:39

it turns out, power has like

17:41

a neurological impact

17:44

on the brain that is

17:46

negative. Basically, it has

17:48

eroded people's brains. Yeah,

17:50

basically, outsized power has eroded people's brains.

17:52

And I think to your point, this

17:55

sort of heroification

17:57

of an individual over

17:59

a system that

18:01

is vast and interconnected

18:03

and incredibly complex

18:05

was one of the

18:07

worst trappings to escape

18:09

the information age and keep

18:11

us infected now with the Zuckerbergs

18:13

and the musks of the

18:15

world. Yeah, I mean, inherently, it's

18:17

quite a fragile way to

18:19

think about an organization. Basically, we're

18:21

going to create a system

18:23

that hinges upon a single person

18:25

or a small group at

18:27

the top, making the right decisions,

18:29

at the same time, preventing

18:32

them from not getting that brain

18:34

damage that you just talked

18:36

about. We have all these systems

18:38

in place to kind of

18:40

tell them what they want to

18:42

hear. And even when

18:44

they're trying to not surround themselves

18:46

with yes people, it happens because

18:48

that's how generally happens in hierarchy.

18:51

So at the same time, we are

18:53

relying on these people to make the

18:55

right calls. We are making them less

18:57

capable of making those calls. Totally.

19:00

And I think that in

19:02

the information age, because of

19:04

the attention paid to leadership

19:07

development and the manufacture of

19:09

high performing leaders, we get

19:11

a lot of OS hangover

19:13

that is not fit for

19:15

today. I have a real

19:17

beef with succession planning. And

19:20

the reason is not because I don't think

19:22

we should think about the future. And certainly,

19:24

I think that leadership should turn over more

19:26

often than it does in most places. Succession

19:29

planning assumes in some ways

19:32

that the work isn't going

19:34

to change. And

19:36

I just think that the nine box

19:38

grid came from GE, the 10 % rank

19:40

came from GE, the emphasis

19:42

on executive succession planning. And those

19:44

things all feel like very

19:46

complicated frameworks for human complexity that

19:48

often does not take the

19:50

larger environment and the way that

19:52

it's changing into account. And

19:54

I would fundamentally say that the

19:57

reason that GE fell

19:59

apart is because the world started

20:01

moving faster than strategy can. But

20:03

it's for these other reasons too. It's

20:05

because you can't like nine bucks grid

20:07

your way into an agent human hybrid

20:09

workforce. Yeah, totally with

20:11

you. OK, so now we're into

20:14

intelligence age. And this is where

20:16

the idea of stewardship is right

20:18

front and center. What's the TLDR

20:20

on this? And then we'll dive

20:22

into kind of what stewardship might

20:24

look like in more specific detail. Yeah,

20:27

so here's why I like

20:29

this idea of stewardship. We moved

20:31

the ready into an employee -owned

20:33

trust this year. And

20:35

the idea of a

20:37

trust is that it has

20:39

beneficiaries and that the

20:41

people who have control over

20:43

the trust are meant

20:45

to steward it for future

20:48

generations. The point of

20:50

the trust is to protect what's

20:52

inside of it from anybody using

20:54

it as an ATM machine. effectively

20:56

and whether that's your family's fortune

20:58

or that is, you know, a

21:00

private park or that's a company.

21:02

I like this idea that the

21:04

job is to continue to evolve

21:06

it, continue to steer it, continue

21:08

to shepherd it so that it

21:10

meets its purpose and so that

21:12

it exists and so that it

21:14

is something when you're gone and

21:16

not to just sort of like

21:18

get what you can from it

21:21

before you. retire? I don't

21:23

know. A lot of the stewardship

21:25

thinking. evolved as we were

21:27

going through this process and

21:29

really conceiving of the difference between

21:31

stewarding a trust and owning

21:33

a company. Because the idea

21:35

of ownership is very different than

21:37

the idea of stewardship. And American capitalism

21:39

is based on ownership. And

21:41

so it's really, it kind of like

21:43

breaks your brain to start to move

21:46

away from the idea that the only

21:48

way to lead and prosper from and

21:50

interact with a company is if it's

21:52

yours. Yeah, exactly. What

21:54

I was gonna hop in there

21:56

and say is what I really

21:58

like about the idea is that...

22:00

it shifts the attention to the

22:03

trust, to the purpose of the

22:05

thing that we are trying to

22:07

do, and away from the person

22:09

or the people who are stewarding

22:11

that thing. And I think if

22:13

we have limited attention to place

22:16

on something, let's make sure it

22:18

is focused on the actual intention,

22:20

the actual purpose of the thing,

22:22

and less around the personalities and

22:24

the predilections and everything like that

22:26

around the people who are surrounding

22:29

it. A hundred percent. You know,

22:31

I think one of the things

22:33

that I see leaders struggle with

22:35

a lot is getting super crisp

22:37

on what they're prioritizing. And,

22:39

you know, sometimes that's short term

22:42

versus long term. And sometimes it's revenue

22:44

versus cost. And sometimes it's growth

22:46

or whatever. It's like, you know, life

22:48

is trade offs. It's hard. But

22:50

I think what's very clarifying about stewardship

22:52

is that you can get to

22:54

some macro. prioritization

22:57

principles, and at least

22:59

having gone through this process, like the

23:01

way that I see it now is

23:03

the first principle is the purpose of

23:05

the trust. So when

23:07

we're having to make a difficult

23:09

decision about something, that

23:11

supersedes what clients

23:14

want. It supersedes

23:16

what individuals want. Sometimes

23:18

it supersedes what's financially the

23:20

smartest in the short term. I

23:23

think part of stewardship is

23:25

understanding what your first principles

23:27

are, and conceiving of something

23:29

not as just like a

23:31

piece of property is helpful

23:33

in getting into that mindset.

23:36

Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. So

23:39

you started this by asking me a

23:41

question I could barely answer about how

23:43

stewardship works with deaf finding, but you

23:45

know. Even a blind squirrel finds

23:47

a nut, as a client of mine likes to

23:49

say. Now, why don't you

23:51

talk to us a little

23:53

bit about what stewardship moves look

23:55

like? Like, if I'm a

23:58

steward that's crushing it, what am

24:00

I doing? Bearing in

24:02

mind the how, the moves are in

24:04

the twilight zone. The

24:06

other things are not how,

24:08

but we're going to give

24:10

a little bit of a

24:12

playbook for how to think

24:14

about each zone as a

24:16

steward. Let's start at the

24:18

bottom. Okay zone. All right.

24:20

So let's do I mean, hopefully you don't

24:22

need a refresher because you've been listening

24:25

to all these episodes, but Midnight Zone was

24:27

a couple episodes back. So

24:29

this is the internal why

24:31

kind of the lived

24:33

experience of people in your

24:35

organization. So. As a steward,

24:37

what should you be thinking about?

24:39

What should you be doing as it

24:41

relates to the Midnight Zone? And

24:43

I think it's important to distinguish your

24:45

own Midnight Zone as a steward,

24:47

like what's going on for you as

24:49

an individual from what is going

24:52

on in the Midnight Zone of your

24:54

team or other individuals in your

24:56

organization. I think

24:58

our episode about it talked about

25:00

some of these things. What is specifically

25:02

not is you are not the

25:04

therapist of your team. Your job as

25:06

steward is not to kind of

25:08

go person by person and like help

25:10

them work through their shit. So

25:13

you can set that aside. If you

25:15

were afraid, that's what it means to be

25:17

a steward. I think we can pretty

25:19

definitively say like that's not. the the realm

25:21

that you want to get into on

25:23

the individual side on your own locus of

25:25

control on your own midnight zone and

25:27

the work to like do to make make

25:29

sense of that that's probably worth doing

25:31

and you should spend more time on your

25:33

own individual midnight zone than others. What

25:36

else is in this realm for you

25:38

in terms of if you were giving

25:40

advice to to a steward of an

25:42

organization what are the types of things

25:44

that you would be asking them to

25:46

think about regarding the midnight zone. Yeah,

25:49

I mean, I am really

25:51

an advocate for putting on your

25:53

own oxygen mask. I don't

25:55

think that you can help anyone

25:57

else if you're not emotionally

25:59

regulated. And beyond that, you know,

26:01

we've talked a lot about leaders doing their

26:03

own individual work on this show in the

26:05

past, but something that I've been thinking a

26:07

lot about lately because, you know,

26:10

things have been like stressful

26:12

for a variety of reasons in

26:14

the last bunch of weeks.

26:16

And it's really easy under stress.

26:18

for anyone who has any

26:20

authority in any system to regress.

26:23

And regression usually is going to look like Jack Welsh

26:26

moves. You know,

26:28

it's regression to like control

26:30

and assertion or aggression

26:32

or even just overwork, you

26:35

know, doing the things that lead

26:37

to burnout. And I've had some

26:39

interesting conversations with folks lately about

26:41

what the counterweight to that is.

26:43

And I'm going to just talk

26:45

a little bit about like my

26:47

own experience because I think So

26:49

much of having a healthy midnight

26:51

zone as a steward is doing

26:53

shit that is gonna look counterintuitive

26:56

to other people So like when

26:58

things are the hardest at work

27:00

are the times that I prioritize

27:02

stuff outside of work the most

27:04

Most leaders are like why are

27:06

we not pulling all -nighters right

27:08

now? But the truth is that

27:10

for me to show up with

27:12

a clear head be fully regulated,

27:14

be able to like be with

27:16

people in hard feelings and hard

27:19

emotions as their 401ks crumble, and

27:21

there's uncertainty in their projects. What

27:23

that looks like for me is

27:25

more swimming, more music, more

27:27

time with my friends, less

27:29

hours at work. And I have

27:31

to like fight my own

27:33

demons around this because I am

27:35

clinically over responsible and a

27:38

perfectionist. And it's really hard to

27:40

just be like, step away,

27:42

More is not more. Yeah,

27:44

my work actually my work is

27:46

not at work mostly and I'm

27:48

saying this not because I have

27:50

any kind of like formula that

27:52

I'm sure is gonna work but

27:54

because I don't think that a

27:56

lot of leaders are particularly aware

27:58

of their own state under stress

28:01

and what it really requires in

28:03

difficult or chaotic times to not

28:05

resort to your worst behaviors. Yeah

28:07

I love that. And I think

28:09

kind of connected to that. I'm

28:11

thinking about how you not only

28:13

do it for yourself in all

28:15

of the reasons you just said,

28:17

but also model that it's okay

28:19

for others to do that. Because

28:21

if you are the steward of

28:23

an organization that is like most

28:25

organizations, you are probably one of

28:27

the higher paid people in your

28:29

organization. So the out of touch

28:32

version of that is like, I'm

28:34

over here. busted my ass trying

28:36

to keep this company going. And

28:38

our steward is like off on

28:40

her third meditation retreat of the

28:42

month. Like that's that's like a

28:44

thing to navigate. It's a bad

28:46

look. But the idea is that this is true for

28:48

everybody. That exactly for everyone

28:50

to be kind of doing their

28:52

own version of that. And

28:54

to tie these points

28:56

together, it's worth saying

28:59

out loud that like

29:01

it's not that easy

29:03

to always be supportive

29:05

in the way that you're talking about. I

29:08

do it because I understand intellectually

29:10

and emotionally. I get it inside

29:12

of my body. And yet in

29:14

moments where someone is gone for

29:16

a bunch of time that I

29:18

want to talk to them or

29:21

need them around or whatever, because

29:23

they're on a meditation retreat, I'm

29:25

like, fuck. And because I

29:27

do my own work, I'm able

29:29

in that moment to go like, That's

29:31

good. That's where they should be.

29:33

We are all doing what we need

29:35

to do to cope and steer

29:37

and steward this place that we are

29:39

all responsible for. And her work

29:41

looks like that. And my work looks

29:43

like this. And us doing that

29:45

work is equally important. And that's part

29:47

of the Midnight Zone work. But

29:50

I can't do that shit if I don't swim.

29:52

That's right. Then I'm just mad because then I'm just

29:54

at my laptop going where the fuck is everybody? Yeah.

29:57

Yeah. And I know so many leaders who

29:59

are just that way. You know, just sitting

30:01

there being mad at two o 'clock in the

30:03

morning, just fuming about why nobody else is

30:05

up. Yep. And, and feeling,

30:07

I mean, this, we could like

30:10

really get done a rabbit hole

30:12

here. Like feeling unappreciated, even though

30:14

they probably make a multiple of

30:16

10 more than the average employee

30:18

at their organization, which is just,

30:20

it's setting you up for really

30:22

fucked up dynamics that are not

30:24

helpful to anyone. Not helpful to

30:27

anyone. That's right. All right. Twilight.

30:29

we're going to work our way up. We're going

30:31

to get more buoyant as we go. So

30:33

Twilight Zone is really where a lot of this

30:35

stuff, or most of the stuff that we're

30:37

talking about, even with the other zones live, but

30:39

because this is kind of

30:41

the how of like where are

30:43

most of our operating system

30:46

practices and patterns that we care

30:48

about cultivating actually live. So

30:50

when I think of a steward

30:52

really sweating the Twilight Zone, it's

30:55

creating the conditions and participating

30:57

in the Twilight Zone as

30:59

an equal. It's

31:01

like showing up to the

31:03

operating rhythm and participating. It's

31:06

creating a expectation and an environment

31:08

where we are experimenting, we are

31:10

iterating. Nobody is supposed to get

31:12

everything right on the first go

31:14

because we know the way we

31:16

create a healthy Twilight Zone. is

31:18

through that iteration and that experimentation.

31:20

So I think a lot of

31:22

it is like, how do you

31:24

hold the space for the Twilight

31:26

Zone to even exist at all

31:29

in your organization? I think

31:31

that's right. And I remember in our

31:33

default steward language at one point, this

31:35

might still be true. I have to

31:37

look, but there was a line in

31:39

there that was basically like, the steward

31:41

is responsible for effectively picking up the

31:43

slack if there is a gap. between

31:45

roles, and there's work that needs to

31:48

be done for the purpose. And

31:50

I think about this a lot,

31:52

because to your point, Sam, it's like,

31:54

if what we're finding is that,

31:56

take an executive team, that in the

31:58

executive staff meeting, people are

32:00

not bringing topics. I expect the steward

32:02

to bring topics, not in a

32:04

controlling like, I'm going to take all

32:06

the airtime way, but in a

32:08

way that's like, I am going to

32:10

hold this. So that other

32:13

people can get in here and

32:15

play Not like I'm gonna sit

32:17

here with my arms crossed waiting

32:19

for other people to step into

32:21

the space It's like it's this

32:23

balance between being the one to

32:26

go first if no one else

32:28

wants to making it the safest

32:31

Being the person who does the

32:33

thing that is potentially embarrassing,

32:35

potentially kind of cringe, potentially needs

32:37

a lot of improvement, not

32:39

just as a modeling, but

32:41

also because like you have the most

32:43

power and the most privilege. And so

32:45

it should be you. Yeah. No, I

32:47

like that a lot. It makes me

32:49

think about what I see happen in

32:51

a lot of organizations, everything around them.

32:53

empowerment. So a leader being like, I've

32:55

empowered my team and they're not stepping

32:57

into it. And that's kind of like

32:59

where it ends in a lot of

33:01

organizations that haven't really thought about this

33:03

more deeply. What you're describing

33:05

is, yeah, okay, people are empowered

33:07

and also I'm not just going to

33:09

sit back and wait for them

33:12

to step into their empowerment. Like I

33:14

am going to model. I am

33:16

just going to do the stuff that

33:18

needs to be done while there

33:20

may be this gap between people understanding

33:22

that they need to show up

33:24

in a certain way and actually doing

33:26

that. That's exactly right. And like

33:28

I'm kind of over the empowerment where

33:30

just because I think it's so

33:32

overused that it has lost meaning. But

33:35

the point that you're making,

33:37

I think, is really hitting the

33:40

nail on the head, which

33:42

is authority isn't just about having

33:44

agency or having power. It

33:46

is about using it. And

33:48

I think in the Twilight Zone

33:50

is where there is an

33:53

expectation that everyone is exercising the

33:55

authority that they have, and

33:57

they're using their agency. But

33:59

importantly, Stewards have

34:01

to do that too. And I see

34:04

leaders all the time go like, well,

34:06

I handed out authority like Halloween candy

34:08

and nobody's showing up to it. And

34:10

I'm like, are you though? Like, are

34:12

you holding your own agency in a

34:14

way that is vulnerable in a way

34:16

that is honest, in a way

34:19

that is clear? Or are you like,

34:21

I've empowered all of these people and I

34:23

recused myself from looking like an idiot

34:25

because that's not what we're talking about. That's

34:27

not helpful. Yeah. I

34:29

think it's also just in the Twilight Zone. If

34:32

you do think about your

34:34

company or your team or your

34:36

organization as a thing to

34:38

be stewarded, think about it like

34:41

if you were the steward

34:43

of a nature preserve. This

34:45

is Twilight Zone stuff. If a

34:47

wildfire tears through it, it is

34:50

your job to go and figure

34:52

out what to do. It

34:54

is your job to hold

34:56

the ways of working and evolve

34:58

them and experiment with them

35:00

as things change inside the nature

35:02

preserve. Neither to be an

35:04

observer on the side, like

35:07

someone watching a fish tank, nor

35:09

to just be someone inside of

35:11

the preserve going like, shit, fire.

35:14

It is your job to be paying

35:16

attention to what's happening and changing

35:18

the practices and the moves to deal

35:20

with it. To use that

35:22

example a little bit further before we have

35:24

to sunshine zone. In that case, it

35:26

may mean your work looks like organizing a

35:28

fundraiser or it might be get on

35:30

the trail with the chainsaw and like let's

35:33

clear some of these paths. And

35:35

like both it's not one or the

35:37

other. It's kind of matching the action

35:39

that is required with the moment as

35:41

well. Absolutely. I

35:43

think that's absolutely right. Sunshine Zone,

35:45

where all the visible stuff lives,

35:47

your strategy and all the plaques

35:50

on the wall and all of

35:52

those things. How does a

35:54

steward interact with the Sunshine Zone?

35:56

My first thought on this is

35:58

the phrase like having a light

36:00

touch. So not

36:02

fetishizing anything that lives

36:04

in the Sunshine Zone

36:06

and holding these artifacts,

36:08

these things lightly and

36:11

kind of consistently asking Are

36:13

these still serving us? Are these still right?

36:15

Do they still match reality? That's my first

36:17

swing at this. What comes to mind for

36:19

you? I think that's right.

36:21

And you know, if we think about

36:23

a thing that you shared that I

36:25

think is really smart is like, if

36:27

the default position of management was, here's

36:29

how to do it. And the default

36:32

position of leadership was, follow me. And

36:34

the default position of stewardship is,

36:36

what does this system need? Then to

36:38

your point, Sam, in the Sunshine

36:40

Zone, I think a steward's job is

36:42

to go, are

36:44

the things we look at,

36:47

are the explicit aims and

36:49

measures and assets of this

36:51

organization getting us what we

36:53

need? If your OKRs

36:55

are getting you the results that

36:57

you want, fantastic. Yeah,

37:00

if you're the edge case that

37:02

I don't know about where the

37:04

org chart is Maximally useful to

37:06

every person in your system and

37:08

work can't function without it print

37:10

that bad boy out You know,

37:12

it's like the idea here though

37:14

is to not be wedded to

37:16

any particular Visible trapping of the

37:18

sunshine zone the stewards job is

37:20

to go is it working is

37:22

working for us Yeah, and I

37:24

think if the kind of steward

37:26

role in your organization has a

37:28

correlation with tenure, which I think

37:30

is sometimes a reasonable thing to

37:32

have happen. So if you've been

37:34

around for a while, I think

37:36

another role that you have as

37:38

steward in the sunshine zone is

37:40

to kind of bring a temporal

37:42

perspective to things, basically help. the

37:45

organization understand why something was created

37:47

at a certain time and whether

37:49

the conditions around it have changed.

37:51

Because for folks who are newer

37:53

to the organization or aren't thinking

37:55

about these things or interacting with

37:57

these things as much, it can

37:59

be that you're just looking at

38:01

it in a snapshot. You're missing

38:03

the larger story about why something

38:05

was created, what problem it was

38:07

solving then, and whether it's still

38:09

appropriate for the current moment. I

38:11

think that's exactly right. All right.

38:13

Sky. We're looking at

38:15

the sky now, all

38:17

of the opportunities and risks

38:19

that are flying around

38:22

our ocean. As a

38:24

steward, what is your role

38:26

in this? Similar to,

38:28

I think we talked about this

38:31

in midnight zone, there's a

38:33

modeling aspect that is really interesting

38:35

here. Like, what does it

38:37

look like to your own sky

38:39

practice to be transparent and

38:41

really model the curiosity and the

38:43

engagement, the earnestness that you

38:45

need to have with this guy

38:47

to be able to extract

38:49

any sort of meaningful information or

38:52

patterns from it. Yeah. I

38:55

think that the disposition that

38:57

I've seen in the best

38:59

stewards that I know out

39:01

in the world are people

39:03

who orient more to learning

39:05

than to knowing. Yeah, because

39:07

knowing is backward looking and

39:09

learning is not. And,

39:12

you know, I'm thinking of one person

39:14

in particular who I am still quite

39:16

close with and worked with for a

39:18

long time as a client. And she

39:20

was just someone who always was paying

39:22

attention to wait for it, where the

39:25

puck was going, right? Hockey

39:27

metaphor. And

39:30

she was just someone who was

39:32

looking at adjacent industries. She was

39:34

paying attention to the market. She

39:36

was talking to customers directly. She

39:38

was a super nerd about technology. She

39:41

was a renaissance person

39:43

in a very traditional

39:45

organization with a very

39:47

trad executive job. But

39:49

I think what made her

39:52

truly like actually unique in this

39:54

system was that she was

39:56

a learner. And

39:58

you know, I just, I think people

40:00

like that. are the kind of

40:02

people who ultimately can kind of do

40:04

anything because they're the kind of

40:06

people who are so inherently, not

40:09

only curious, which I

40:11

think is a prerequisite, but

40:13

also have enough self -awareness

40:15

and I think this

40:17

self -awareness to know where

40:19

they are incompetent. I

40:21

think a lot of really wonderful stewards

40:23

are sort of consciously incompetent about things

40:25

and have a desire to close those

40:27

gaps. And also, candidly

40:29

have like the self

40:31

assurance to be in learning

40:33

because learning is very

40:35

uncomfortable. And I think it

40:37

makes most of our

40:39

egos inflamed in some way.

40:42

And so we have to

40:44

have the skill of

40:46

being like, that's normal. Learning

40:49

is the thing. And

40:51

looking outside at diverging viewpoints

40:53

at data I don't

40:55

like at competitors that I

40:57

find scary at information

40:59

that I find existentially threatening

41:01

is part of the

41:03

job. Yeah. And I think

41:05

the watch out that I would offer

41:08

folks, the version of this that

41:10

I've seen that looks a lot like

41:12

what you just described, but is

41:14

ultimately maladaptive is doing all of that

41:16

and then getting very grippy about

41:18

your interpretation of what is happening in

41:20

the sky. So it's doing all

41:23

of that and remaining whatever the opposite

41:25

of grippy is. around

41:27

understanding in your hypotheses of what all

41:29

of this means, because as soon as

41:31

you start to really try to get

41:33

your arms around it and put stakes

41:36

in the ground and build a case

41:38

for various things, you start to get

41:40

into the realm of, well, now I'm

41:42

defending a point of view that I

41:44

have, and I'm no longer in that

41:46

more of a learning state. I have

41:48

a really great example of this, and

41:51

I think it's been enough years that

41:53

I can tell this story. I

41:55

was it about me? You

41:58

tell me. No, I was

42:01

working with a client and

42:03

they had acquired a technology

42:05

company that did something that

42:07

was a very futuristic technology.

42:10

Of course, they wanted the rest of the company,

42:12

the acquiring company, to use that tech. The

42:14

problem was the tech was garbage. And

42:17

when people used tooling

42:19

that was more effective, the

42:22

CEO would get super pissed

42:24

and effectively punish them and be

42:26

like, you're taking us backward.

42:28

You're anti progress because you won't

42:30

use this shitty technology that

42:32

I've acquired. He wasn't wrong

42:34

about the direction, like the direction

42:36

that that technology was pointed at was

42:38

right. Like his sky sensing was

42:40

right, but the application was exactly what

42:42

you're talking about where he's like,

42:44

well, I bought this lemon and now

42:46

we're going to fucking drive it.

42:48

And that's where I think to your

42:50

point, Sam, we have to hold

42:52

what we believe lightly. Yeah.

42:55

I mean, you can hold it for

42:57

sure. Like it's good to have a point

42:59

of view, but also you got to

43:01

be. actively, not just open to new information

43:03

changing your point of view, but actively

43:05

seeking the information that you would need to

43:07

see for your point of view to

43:09

change. So we could talk

43:11

about this forever. There's so much actually

43:13

here that we didn't even cover, but

43:16

we are at time. I have to go give this

43:18

talk in four minutes. So one

43:20

thing that Sam, you prepared

43:22

for this, was a really

43:24

elegant, and I thought very

43:26

spot on side by side

43:28

of management versus leadership versus

43:30

stewardship. We're going to link to

43:32

that in the show notes so that everybody can

43:34

pass it around. Show it to some people. See

43:36

how it relates to your own depth finding. Awesome.

43:39

All right. Rodney, should we wrap from here?

43:42

Let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it

43:44

up. Hey, everyone. Please like, rate,

43:46

and review us. please. This

43:48

was, you know. just another

43:50

great episode. And if you agree, then

43:52

you should give us five star

43:54

rating on wherever Apple podcast, I guess.

43:57

And I would say more importantly,

43:59

If you have a gnarly cross -functional

44:01

problem that you would like to hear

44:03

about on this show you should

44:05

email us at depthfindingattheready .com. Somebody did

44:07

that last week It was an excellent

44:09

email with a truly gnarly cross -functional

44:12

problem But I'm excited to talk

44:14

about. I love how you've become our

44:16

primary hype person You're like here's

44:18

a great episode on top of another

44:20

great episode. Anyway, the music

44:22

for this miniseries is Yagadang BG

44:24

and coyote Radio. This show and all

44:27

the shows are produced by our

44:29

friend Jack -Amberg and engineered by Taylor

44:31

Marvin Our team the ready makes it

44:33

all happen. Thank you so much

44:35

for listening