What are PERSPECTIVES and how do humans use them
What are Perspectives and how do humans use them
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Tahira Endean: [00:00:00] You when you want to move forward, it's gonna be good to have another perspective. We live in a world of 8 billion people. Nobody's alone. So ask for help.
Anthony Vade: Who is this person or this group of people based on everything that happened before, not based on what I'm putting them into.
Podcast Host: The world is changing. For most human beings, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address. Whether you are a startup working on agile processes or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the mindset and skills to adapt has never been more vital. The team from the strategy table want to help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management, helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible to [00:01:00] everyone.
This is Accessible disruption.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of Accessible Disruption. I am one of your hosts, Anthony Vade, co-founder of the Strategy Table, and joining me as always, uh, my fellow hosts and co-founders, Tahira, Andy and Ryan Hill. Welcome team.
Tahira Endean: Well, thanks Anthony. We're gonna start us off with a quote today, Anthony.
Anthony Vade: Dig through your memory.
Banks of all the deep philosophical thinkers who have shifted the world in, in, in their, uh, insightfulness. And tell me who said this. It's amazing how over time a person's perspective can be altered. Oh man. The idea might have said that.
Ryan Hill: Gotta be like Dr. Seuss or something.
Tahira Endean: Oh my goodness. Hmm. I am not sure.
Anthony Vade: Yeah, it was the one, the only philosopher of our time, Fred [00:02:00] Durst, the lead singer of Limp Bizkit. Wow,
Tahira Endean: that's amazing.
Ryan Hill: I have not been getting him enough.
Anthony Vade: Fred. Many listeners out there might have the perspective that Limp Bizkit hasn't done a lot for philosophical thought, and they probably wouldn't be wrong, but I'm very curious.
Ryan, can you tell us why do perspectives matter so much? Perspectives.
Ryan Hill: They are an intrinsic lens that perceives the world through our filter of experiences, what we've gone through, and since everyone experiences the world differently, even we even experience the same events slightly differently. We could be standing right next to each other and have two totally different takeaways.
It's important to acknowledge that when we're approaching change, because you, me, and Hir could all be experiencing the same event and have fundamentally different takeaways, so I can't. Assume you're going to 100% share my perspective unless we talk about it. And so it's one of those things that because it's intrinsic and to [00:03:00] each individual, it's something we have to ask about, something we.
As a prerequisite for effective change, uh, and not assume we understand without having those conversations.
Anthony Vade: Hir and I in particular come from a very heavy focus in the experience design space and in the world of experience design. It's all about understanding and navigating perspectives of users and participants, uh, as they encounter perhaps the services we design, the software, the technology or the events that we invite them.
To participate in. So with that in mind, around understanding past experiences and how they inform present behavior and potential future behavior, tira, how do you see, uh, the, the role of perspectives and their importance, uh, with that experience design lens?
Tahira Endean: Well, there's no way to. Not consider perspectives of different people and, and understand that everybody is going to come with their own perspective.
So when we're doing work with [00:04:00] organizations, if our leaders are the social architects of our culture and the people that are building the framework that we're going forward with. Then everyone else is the engineers. So it doesn't matter what role you have, you have to be building towards something, you know?
So if I look at it from specifically an experience design perspective, I would say that we would be the event engineers, but that. Is, you know, that includes all of the storytellers, all of the crafters, all of the builders. And you know, you can't build something without, you wouldn't build a house with only a general contractor.
So you can't build an organization with just one voice. And the more voices that you have that can bring you unique perspectives, like I am consistently. Delighted and surprised when I meet people that, you know, you think of them as having one role. So you know, we might have somebody who is, you know, ahead of [00:05:00] finance and they're gonna bring a perspective to a business that is, you know, a financial perspective.
They're gonna wanna meet certain goals. But maybe they also play the bagpipes. And so maybe they understand how hard it is to do something like learn how to play the bagpipes or get through change. Um, and they might also understand what it's like to march in step in a pipe band. So I think that there's just many different ways that we need to be considering the perspectives of the people that are gonna be involved in and affected by change.
As leaders, especially,
Anthony Vade: we often talk about understanding human behavior, like why do people behave the way they have? Because we, we often see that behavior and then we say, what made them do that? And I think that starts to link us into trying to understand their perspective. But it's really hard to understand their perspective, as you've both alluded to.
If, if [00:06:00] we don't understand that everything that led to that moment, that that behavior that we saw, the antecedent, as it often gets referred to all of those experiences from the past that informed how they feel in that moment and therefore the behavior that that they display. And I think getting to grips with perspectives is.
Is key to sort of understanding who is this person or this group of people based on everything that happened before. Not based on what I'm putting them into, but everything that led them to turning up to that hotel for a check-in experience or attending an event or sitting in the boardroom around a table that they are not comfortable at for whatever reason that might be.
And that. Forces upon us as leaders of change, the need to understand the individual's perspective of that initiative, of that disruption or whatever's in front of them. So how do we go [00:07:00] about understanding the individual and engaging at that individual level while still keeping a connection to the bigger goal for the, for the wider community as well?
What have you seen in that space, Ryan, that's allowed you to get to grips with the individual but not lose? Side of the whole,
Ryan Hill: given that my context is a lot more military, almost exclusively military and not corporate, I don't know how well this idea will translate, but one of my favorite quotes, general George Patton, who said, never tell a man how to do something.
Tell a man what you need to have done and let him surprise you with his ingenuity. Maybe paraphrasing a little bit, I don't know the exact quote, but General George Pat gets to. Concept of not micromanaging, so to speak, in the perspectives of our followers, the ones that are actually gonna be doing the heavy lifting in the trenches, in those different departments or divisions.
The ability to take the final vision, the final goal, process it down into their [00:08:00] own sphere of influence and determine how to accomplish it. We are introducing opportunity for resentment or failure because we're not allowing them to. Infuse their perspective into the greater change, into the greater vision.
So I think we can have suggestions, make ourselves available as leaders. You know, if they're struggling with gaining traction towards a certain outcomes, but if at all possible, then whenever possible we need to give them the end state. Maybe a very broad left limit and a right limit. Like, Hey, don't go this far left of center, this far right of center.
'cause you gotta stay within your lane of authority or influence and then let them drive it. You know, give them some space to process and internalize that vision and tell you how that looks for them.
Tahira Endean: You just said two things.
Ryan Hill: It's
Tahira Endean: a, you know, your authority or your influence, and those are two different things.
Ryan Hill: Yeah. Is there certain things that I would love to change that I don't have the authority to change? I. And there are certain things that as a leader, sometimes I don't technically have the authority to change, but [00:09:00] I have the ability to influence the change in that direction because I might have good rapport built with the decision maker, or it might be something that is an individual decision to change, but a collective cultural thing.
And so I can influence what that culture looks like at a team level or a, you know, a middle management level without changing the entire military, so to speak. I think there are things that we have authority over and we can just dictate and empower. And there are other things that we don't have authority over, but we do have influence and it's important to recognize how to employ that influence for good.
And when to employ it.
Anthony Vade: I think it's also a question of how do we perceive our influence and how do we perceive our authority, both of those elements within the context of the greater team. Tehir, I'd love to hear your perspectives on individuals and leaders and and how those perspectives tie together or maybe.
Distance. But, uh, I think back to a, a very insightful leader who once told me that, that their role as leader is to set the [00:10:00] direction, set the guide rails in place so nobody falls off and they're safe as we head towards that direction and then get the heck out of the way. And let everyone get there.
What's your perspective on individual's role and leader's roles?
Tahira Endean: So wouldn't we all love to have that leader that actually says that and then follows through on that, so, you know, because that, that is exactly what a leader should be doing and your leader should be able to do those two things, like set the direction and then say yes.
You know, here's the, you know, as Ryan said, far left far right, but. It is. So often the leaders don't clearly share their perspectives or they share them with a very small circle of people who then don't necessarily, it gets a little bit telephone, right? So lost in translation. So I think it's setting those clear guidelines and then having things set up around that so that people clearly understand the goals that you have and what, how they roll into those [00:11:00] goals.
So if your goal is to sell more things, that's a very big, lofty goal. Everyone should probably have that. You know, many organizations would have that as a goal, but if you haven't created the place where people understand what they need to do to achieve that and what is and isn't acceptable with, you know, to do that, like you, you know, you want to be sensible and sustainable about things generally as well.
So. Set the guts, you know? So set the set, set the direction, give people clear targets, and then go back and get the feedback on, do these targets make sense? You know, so the, because quite often you're just given things to do and the workforce can be like, eh. That's, that's
Ryan Hill: a, that's a really great point. I think that's one of the things I've seen people struggle with is they're like, oh, I, I have to micromanage because last time I gave them autonomy, they totally missed my vision.
And I think there's a little bit of [00:12:00] a misunderstanding with what it means to be an engaged leader and what it means to be a micromanaging leader. An engaged leader will have periodic check-ins and touch points, not to necessarily tell you how to do your job, and not because they don't trust you, but just to make sure that.
It's a check for them. Did I communicate as a leader effectively enough? If someone keeps missing the mark, then at the end of the day, the first question I'd have to ask myself is, where did I slip up in communicating what I needed? Now, if you can go through that and you can say, I definitely communicated beyond a shadow of a doubt with a hundred percent clarity exactly what the expecta expectation was Then.
Great. Then you can start looking at, okay, is this a a performance issue? Is this something that requires a little bit of like extra coaching or intervention, or is this just willful resistance? You know, and those are different conversations, but the first thing we have to do as leaders is identify that.
Just because we give them a target and we want to be empowering leaders and not micromanagers doesn't mean that we [00:13:00] go silent on comms and not check in until two days before the deliverable is due and then suddenly panic because what they interpreted versus what we said are out of alignment. So I think that it's important to develop.
What that looks like for those individuals, those subordinate leaders along the way. 'cause everyone's gonna need different amounts of feedback and engagement. Uh, I'm not one that likes to do rough drafts and check-ins often as a follower. But I've had followers that absolutely want to run every single thing by me to make sure that they're still on track.
And I try not to be annoyed by that. I try to like lean into it. That's how they receive feedback and learn. Right. But I'm sure that you guys, from a corporate setting, like how have you seen the balance between micromanagement and engagement as a leader?
Anthony Vade: It's like you asked that question knowingly.
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Podcast Host: Our world is changing. For most human beings, change is uncomfortable and challenging to address. Uh, keeping up in a competitive business environment requires confidence in your team's. Adaptability. Leaders are expected to lead adoption initiatives, evolve team member skills, and build resilience with intentional change management strategies.
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Anthony Vade: Uh, there's the classic case study recently too of Wells Fargo, uh, and their whole debacle around, uh, these fraudulent accounts that were set up. Leadership set the goal, the target to have a certain growth rate within, uh, account acquisition and, and expansion. The workforce allegedly on their own accord.
We can get into the debate about how much leaders knew and how much they didn't went ahead and opened up a bunch of fraudulent accounts in order to [00:16:00] hit their targets. And that I think was a case depending on who you believe or not, where, where there wasn't enough oversight or wasn't effective oversight.
And perhaps there was a little bit of panic in that as well. And I, I love the. That micro management's come up and that this, this whole conversation around, okay, how do leaders perceive their behavior in whatever that initiative is, that change that, that innovation, because often when we see this negative leadership behavior come up, I think it comes from a place of vulnerability that that leader feels uncomfortable.
Where they are along that change journey, they're not hitting targets. And when we get stressed and when we get uncomfortable as leaders, we fall into a very reactive mode or we disengage as, uh, as you've hinted at. And that can then compound the challenge that we face because we we're not comfortable turning to our team and saying.
Hey, [00:17:00] like you, I'm a human being like you. I feel stress and uncomfortable when things aren't going the way that I expect them. Let's work on this together. That at least perceptually diminishes their authority over the group by showing that level of weakness and vulnerability. And then I think we start to fall into these disruptive.
Patterns as leaders where we start to manage our teams ineffectively because we perceive that weakness in ourselves and then it manifests in that negative behavior. Uh, what else do you see in terms of workforce, uh, Tahir? You've managed to, you know, intersect with a lot of different organizations and associations and groups over, over the years, but how does the workforce perspective.
Fall away in conflict or, or work against that leadership perspective from your experience?
Tahira Endean: My experience is, is that when you have a leader that people admire and the values are aligned across the [00:18:00] organization, that then you're gonna have a workforce that wants to do the work. Um. And wants to do it to the best of their ability and wants to do it generally collaboratively.
Um, when you have organizations where it's, you know, and your Wells Fargo example is a great case, they set up a competitive environment, not a collaborative. Here's how we will do sales together. So when you have a lot of individuals being rewarded. Individual reward, don't get me wrong, individual reward is a huge part of every organization.
It's why incentive exists. It's why there's merchandise, rewards, travel, rewards, you know, bonuses, um, all kinds of stepping stones to individual success. But if those individuals are not, are succeeding as. It only individuals, then that is not gonna be good for your organization because ultimately you need to have many, many, many, many individuals, [00:19:00] quite often around the globe who can be successful together.
So by, you know, not micromanaging, but by providing a safe space for people to receive feedback on how they're doing. In a way that allows them to grow and share ideas in a way that doesn't feel like you're being judged. So if say we said you need to make 100 sales, and so you would say, okay, so how am I gonna make 100 sales?
And maybe you've set targets together ideally. So now you're. 50 sales, but, and you're 50% of along the way, great. Boom. You're like, you're right on target. You're doing a great job. Bravo. But how are you gonna get to those next 50? And what are you gonna do to build the relationships that are gonna allow those next 50 sales to be successful?
Because we're not generally selling widgets at that point, right? You're selling something that's gonna require some kind of relationship based selling. And so when you say to [00:20:00] people. I'm here to support you in a collaborative environment. So now I'm comfortable going to work. I'm comfortable having conversations with all of my external people that I'm trying to sell something to or to work with, but I believe in where I work.
I'm coming with a more positive, collaborative, engaged attitude to every part of my work self. Um, that's also gonna translate into your home self. But as soon as you start to set up things where people feel denigrated, where you're not recognizing their contributions, where they don't feel valued, that's gonna have a negative impact on the way that they're working with other people in the organization.
On the way that they're working with your clients and potential clients and also on them at home. And that's where you start to get into issues of mental health, burnout, stress, and anxiety, which is another whole conversation if you're going to implement change or even just keep a status quo. You need to be making people feel and supporting them as valued contributors [00:21:00] along the way.
Anthony Vade: I feel like there's another episode coming up on some of those points where we just need to expand upon them, uh, a lot more, but I'd love to get you both to. Build a little bit on this idea of external perspectives as well. Uh, we as consultants for organizations are often brought in to help unlock perspectives of groups.
Yes, they like to hear our perspectives, but majority of time we're there to help the people around the strategy table with us share their perspectives in a, in a more accessible way. What do you see and what's been your experience with the benefits of bringing in external perspectives outside of the team, uh, navigating that change or that initiative together?
I'll, I'll give you an example before I throw to you. My wife works in the video game industry and as you know, that. Space in terms of technology. Both has a very loyal customer base and is constantly evolving at really, really fast speed. They're [00:22:00] always bringing out new software, new gaming consoles, and so what her organization has done to get ahead of this.
Is put together a task force that will look at understanding the perspectives of the consumers, the buyers, the engineers that are gonna create this new groundbreaking technologies. And they're doing that by bringing together a global team. They didn't just get the engineering department in the room together.
They didn't just get the sales org talking about how they're gonna sell the new thing. They got people from across the entire organization who have different roles in different geographies, different cultures, and they put. A structured process together to analyze what they need to do to bring these new products to market in the near future.
And the value in that collaboration, which I think we're gonna uncover in another episode coming up, is having those unique perspectives and bringing in external team members who maybe didn't normally work [00:23:00] together within one organization to navigate that challenge and share their perspectives in a way that.
Gave them all better understanding of, you know, the broader viewpoint to what it means to bring that product into the marketplace. What examples have you seen when external participants have come in, and what benefits do they bring in navigating these kinds of perspectives?
Tahira Endean: So I have two thoughts on this.
One is that when we bring in external viewpoints, sometimes it just feels safer. So when you bring in somebody you know, who's, who's just gonna come in and give you a specific set of viewpoints and a specific set of tasks, take you through a specific change management piece, that's often better done externally because it's not somebody you don't feel, um, in any way judged by what they're bringing.
And it's not gonna have a perception would be that it's not gonna have a long-term impact. If I say something in this room, [00:24:00] it's going to stay in this room and it's not gonna sort of go out. And so sometimes having that external consultant is very valuable. I agree 100% With what you know they've been doing there.
Because when you start to bring in people with different. And I'm gonna be interested in Ryan's view on this. If you look at sort of a, a military viewpoint where many people have, that was their first job and they came up through the ranks. Um, and so your external is gonna be a little bit different when in.
Every organization, especially now as so many people flip jobs just like this, they aren't coming to you with one set of experience that runs across 25 years of being in an organization. You know, the reason that we can do what we do with this is because we've had decades of experience. In different organizations, seeing how different organizations run, seeing, uh, successes, seeing obstruction points, seeing change management points, and you know, [00:25:00] having that viewpoint.
So when you are in one organization and you bring people around a table who are from different global offices are from different departments to solve one problem, you know, look at, if you look at Apollo 13, we have astronauts stuck in space. They have a sock and two tennis balls. Well, we're not gonna just send three people into a room to solve that problem.
We're gonna get as many people into this room with as many socks and tennis balls as we can to figure out how to get them home safely. So we need to be open to those different, still makes me cry every time. I like, I'm a mess. But the, you know, we, we can't rely on one viewpoint to solve problems. That's full stop.
Ryan Hill: So, yeah. But before I get into like that internal perspective on external perspectives, I think it's interesting to think about external perspectives as kind of a tiered approach, right? There's things that are external to your team, you know, okay, we're bringing in different departments, different professions.
There's things that are external to your [00:26:00] organization, completely bringing in an outside consultant, and there's things that are external to your specific project, to your industry. Bringing in people that they might be engineers, but they're not. Aerospace engineers, you know, they're working on something different and so they're used to different considerations and different personalities and all that.
All those different types of external perspectives can be leveraged in different ways. Right. And I think about a couple years ago, I was listening in on the Creative Education conference that's put on by Buffalo State and one of the presenters, I really, I'm gonna have to look her up and find her name at some point, but she gave a presentation about her studies in what is diversity.
And the value of diversity. And I think a lot of people went into this thinking, you know, we're talking about racial diversity, gender diversity, you know, things that on the surface we immediately equivocate with things like DEI initiatives where we're trying to be more inclusive, overcome systemic inequities and, and bring everyone to the table.
But one of the interesting takeaways that her research found was that [00:27:00] racial and gender diversity had far less impact on creative output in a group setting than did other. Elements of diversity. Uh, she called functional diversity. So the diversity of people's job and their, uh, experiences in those conversations, the amount of time they've been in the organization versus not, not necessarily their amount of work experience, but okay, maybe you have 30 years of experience, but you've been with this company for two years.
You have a totally different perspective that you're bringing to the table than someone that's been with this company for eight years. But that's the only thing they've known. So that was a very interesting revelation to me was that, uh, when we think about diversity and how we maximize external perspectives, like we don't always have to look at all of the, the superficial stuff, the surface level stuff, we can start looking at, you know, that functional diversity to gain different external perspectives and really inform, you know, the direction of our project or our initiatives within the military.
They kind of get at to hear us thing. I think the military has acknowledged, at least in the [00:28:00] Army, I'm sure it exists in other. Organizations, there is some drawback to spending your entire life in one organization. Obviously, we are a meritocracy and there is a hierarchy, and if you do the right thing and you do a good job, then you know the level of your potential as you.
You demonstrate that potential On active duty to the full-timer side, this is reinforced a lot more cleanly because you are not allowed to stay necessarily, especially as an officer and as a leader. You are not allowed to stay in the same division at the same base your whole career. You will change it up, and usually that's at your education point.
So you graduate from your initial training, you go to your first unit, you're there for four-ish years, but your next stop is your intermediate level training. And when you leave that training, you're, they're gonna send you to a completely different type of unit, type of environment, ideally to shake things up, to give you D perspective, to bring your experiences from unit A over to unit B and kind of circulate the, as it were I in the National Guard.
I'm fulltime in the National Guard, but. I'm in the National Guard, which means I work for the [00:29:00] state. And one of the things that I've noticed over the last four and a half years of being in the National Guard is that it is kind of a self looking ice cream cone because there's only one, uh, for example, there's only one field artillery brigade in the state.
So if you are a field artillery soldier or officer, you will be in this same unit at different levels, but the same general unit your entire career within the state. And that can be a little bit of a challenge. And so even the military created. Climate surveys, they call 'em OX or Defense Organizational Climate Survey, and we take 'em every year and they're meant to give them an opportunity to bring up the concerns we have, you know, either with leadership or with other program issues.
You know, if there's policy issues that are impacting us negatively. There's a lot, there's pretty broad spectrum of things that it can cover, but there's a lack of faith. There is true anonymity in this, even though it's facilitated by an external organization, it's not put on by the unit. It's facilitated by OX itself, which is its own entity that may collect the data and then they present the data in a [00:30:00] sanitized format back to the unit so that everyone's safe and protected, but they don't necessarily trust that.
And I think that's where having an external perspective can really matter in an organization where. You may not feel safe or may not feel totally protected in your anonymity to bring up issues. Having someone sit down with you in a small group or a one-on-one setting to collect that information, to provide it back to the leadership can be hugely informative and you might get more data points, more information, more perspectives out of that from your workforce, because there is that layer of protection, that psychological safety that the hero was mentioning, where they feel like they can say these things without fear of retribution or reprisal.
And that's such an important aspect of an external perspective provider, uh, at any level is creating conditions for an honest, candid, and safe conversation. 'cause if we're having to fib or lie, we're only gonna delay progress. We're gonna reinforce bad habits.
Anthony Vade: I feel like this could be a 15 part episode, just in understanding perspectives and how to [00:31:00] navigate through that in a team collaborative environment.
Which brings us to what we're gonna chat about on the next episode as we start to look at, uh, collaboration and, and why we need to have some structure and process. I'm gonna ask both of you to share your key actionable takeaways, some little bite-sized tips so that people can apply to understand perspectives more deeply.
Uh, I'll kick you off, and I'm gonna keep on this external perspective thing because I think there's a lot of benefit to bringing people like us into the conversations to help you navigate the perspectives for a couple of reasons. That external perspective isn't suffering from any institutional bias.
We're gonna look at bias in future episodes and what do we mean when we say bias? 'cause there's individual bias, there is cultural bias, and then of course there is institutional bias. The way we've always done things is the way that institutional bias generally comes up in conversations. So bringing those [00:32:00] external participants to the strategy table to talk about their perspectives and what the institution may not be seeing anymore because of their biases.
Is a big call to action. Get that diversity to the thought at the table. When you are talking about perspectives of a challenge or initiative, what's your takeaway? What's your key actionable piece for this? Ryan?
Ryan Hill: Have some thick skin and ask the hard questions. You know, and if you are getting the sense that people aren't being forthcoming, then find a third party person to ask that question for you.
You can be a peer from a different department. It can be. Anybody you trust to you know, have those conversations and bring you unbiased, candid feedback. Leaders that aren't digesting feedback regularly are very stagnant leaders.
Tahira Endean: Don't feel like you have to do everything alone. So sometimes there's gonna be reasons that you, when you want to move forward, it's gonna be good to have another perspective.
We live in a world of 8 billion people. Nobody's alone. So ask for help.
Anthony Vade: And with that, we'll leave you. Join [00:33:00] us on the next episode where we'll take a look at collaboration. Thank you for listening to Accessible Disruption.
Podcast Host: Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahira and Dean Ryan Hill and Anthony Vade. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Podcast production by experience design changing. An association with the change lead network. Find more information@strategytable.co.
