Disruptive Conversations

About Disruptive Conversations

Disruptive conversations is a blog series where I record conversations with people who are working to transform or disrupt a sector or system. Sometimes I do in-person interviews, but they are usually online.

Publisher

Keita Demming

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

8 Oct 2016

Latest episode

15 Sept 2021

Latest episodes

108 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Sept 2021

   Ep: 101: Rethinking everything you thought you knew about facilitation. A Disruptive Conversation with Adam Kahane.

   In this episode, I speak with Adam Kahane about his new book, Facilitating Breakthrough, Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together. In the conversation, several things stood out for me. Here are a few What does it mean to be a facilitator? Many years ago, when I first received training, I thought about this question a lot. Since then, I have taken its meaning for granted. Adam got me to take a second look at the word and its purpose. For Adam, his work is about facilitating collaboration with groups from different organizations and sectors who may not agree with, like, or trust each other but think they need to work together. In this book, he is trying to upgrade the meaning of facilitator so that anyone can be a facilitator. Secondly, it is a way of helping groups of people collaborate. The facilitator as a partner. In this part of the conversation, we refer to the insider/outsider tension that often pops us in change work. Adam reminds us of the notion first pointed to him by Bill Tolbert. It is not that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Instead, and more interestingly, is the idea that if you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution. Your capacity to help a situation is limited if you cannot see how you are part of the problem - even if it is a small part. Otherwise, you are trying to bring about change by force. To facilitate effectively, you must move between an outsider and insider stance with whomever you work with. Adam calls this partnering. The role of polarities Facilitation does not involve choosing between one approach to facilitation over the other. It is knowing when to use a particular strategy rather than another direction. Adam reminds us to lean into tensions and avoiding the tendency to collapse polarities rather than hold their tensions. Perhaps most insightful about both the conversation with Adam and his book is the new casting of facilitation. He argues that there are only five dimensions of facilitation. These five dimensions involve ten moves. Dimensions Moves How do we see our situation? Inquiring and Advocating How do we define success? Advancing and Concluding How do we get from here to there? Discovering and Mapping How do we decide who does what? Accompanying and Directing How do we understand our role? Standing Inside and Standing Outside

2. 

   15 Apr 2021

   Ep: 100: Creating a flywheel? A Disruptive Conversation with Paul Desmarais III.

   In this conversation with Paul Desmarais III, we talk a lot about Disruption. In this episode, he shared many unique insights. Here are a few that stood out for me. What is Disruption? Naturally, this podcast has explored the word Disruption and what it means. Paul describes it as adding more people into the majority. He even said it was like growth. This idea that Disruption is about breaking things needs to change. The idea that we are going to dismantle entire industries is not helpful. It should be about creating value and pausing patterns that no longer work for us. Exploring Disruption is fruitful. Playing the long game. As a coach, I often work with my clients to help them raise the level of their gaze. Help them play a long-term game. Paul Desmarais III is part of one of the most successful families in Canadian business. One of the things he points out in this episode is that one of the benefits of being part of a family-owned group is taking a long-term view. For those of us who can play the long game, it can genuinely change our destiny. Families in Business Paul reminds us that they are not a family business. They are family in business, and that is an important nuance. As Paul notes, being in a family business ties you to a specific company, industry or business. When you are a family in the connection is to values and a particular philosophy. A family’s goal is to transfer the entrepreneurial and philosophical approach to the next generation so that each generation can reinvent themselves. When family businesses can avoid the shirtsleeve-to-shirtsleeve pattern, they can truly build something great. The specifics of the business matter less than the entrepreneurial spirit. Focus on what you can impact. Particularly this year, I have been coaching my clients to draw three columns: Complete Control, Partial Control, and No Control. What you need to do is move as many things as possible into the complete control box as possible. Paul told a story about dining with David Rockefeller. David told him at the dinner to only worry about what you can impact. To worry about the things you can have no impact on is a waste of time and energy. Instead, the goal is to focus only on what you can impact. Over time, you succeed at what you are doing. Concentrate on the things you can have no impact on can be harmful to the here and now. Focus on what can I do not to impact my current reality? The power of infrastructures of service One of the conclusions I have come to is that it is tough to disrupt infrastructure businesses. For example, it is challenging to disrupt whoever owns all the fiberoptic cables of the internet. They own the infrastructure. As a strategy for Disruption, what if you take a page out of Pauls book. He describes how the entire world of financial services was going to change in the years ahead. He also notes that most companies are playing a zero-sum game. With a small amount of capital, you could create a delightful experience in today’s world and could change how consumers interact with financial services. So instead, what if you focused on an adjacent area and find profit pools there? Creating a flywheel. I have always thought about innovation as affecting the way we live. With Paul’s Flywheel notion, he suggests that by partnering with marketing defining companies, they can create prosperity in the communities in which they invest. For example, in Canada, they want to make many jobs and a lot of wealth. They are creating a flywheel so that those entrepreneurs can create wealth, philanthropy and employment. So in their goal to create five unicorns companies, they are making a flywheel of prosperity. What is your superpower? Paul described his superpower as networking. He tries to deploy his network for good. Recently Paul co-founded the...

3. 

   2 Apr 2021

   S3: Ep. 99: Why we need philosophers in the board room? A Disruptive Conversation with Christian Madsbjerg.

   Christian Madsbjerg is a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he teaches German and French philosophy from the 20th century. He has also founded a company called Red Associates. Red Associates is a Social Science-based or anthropology-based company to advise on human behaviour and how humans make sense of the world, and what is meaningful and important to them from the level of experience. In this conversation, we explore perspectives on the role of social science in business. Here are some of the things that stood out for me. Design systems, products and services for humans? This might sound obvious or, as Christian described, banal. Yet, much of the thinking around organization has come from management science. In many ways, management science attempted to bring the rigour of science to the business world. As a result, the field has been influenced by disciplines like economics, engineering and Mathematics. Social Science has much to contribute to the study of human arrangements. The proposal is simple. Reduce risk by using social sciences to produce new products and services in the business world. Do not pass judgement too quickly. Understanding people is about waiting, careful observation and not passing judgement too quickly. To find insight, we have to observe humans slowly, intentionally, and patiently. We need to be open to the first judgement not being true. Building your capacity to suspend judgement is the core to finding good insight. Seeing things work. When you see things work, it can be transformative. Using slow observation, you can find frugal, novel or simple insights that can be transformative. Disappointment is a better source of innovation than wonder. Where do people find inspiration in their search for innovation? It is an interesting provocation to ask the question, what disappoints you? What are you disappointed in, and how can you change it? Think for a second about where you find your inspiration. Where are the philosophers? The technologies of tomorrow will transform our future in ways we cannot imagine. What if we had philosophers at the decision-making tables? For example, what if there were philosophers in the room when we first launched Facebook? What questions might they have asked to help curtail some of the unintended consequences of technologies like social media? Insights can spread like wildfire. When an organization can find beneficial insight, it can spread throughout the organization. Insights can be fuel for transformation. Who is too comfortable in their power? Christian gave the example of what happens when Finance and Technology are too comfortable in their power. When one of these becomes too comfortable, it does not end well. This might be true of any domain. When people are too comfortable, especially too comfortable in their power, it can increase their blind spots. How do you notice when you are too comfortable in your power? Be interested in humans. We often find comfort in abstractions, models, or systems when we need to be focused on humans. When need to be interested in the things humans do, feel and say every day. We live in a world that has placed enormous trust in abstractions that don’t often get us as far as we thought. You are probably wrong. Christian tells a beautiful story about working with Samsung. At the time, he thought it was a terrible idea to put a camera on the phone. What he learned is that it is better to go with observation and analysis than intuition. Tap into talent as it is globally. It cannot be that the best people in the world all come from the same country as you. It does not work that you tap into talent globally. Learn to tap into global talent. Questions can change...

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