Hello there, I hope that you and yours are well,
My friend Hung Lee, founder of Workshape and curator of the weekly newsletter Recruiting Brainfood which goes to over 20,000 people per week, created a special, yet mildly insane idea, to run a 24-hour non-stop virtual marathon of speakers and conversation across 14th and 15th April 2020, and for the 14 hours that I dipped in and out, it was brilliant.
I was originally due to host at around lunchtime on Apr 14th, but due to some changes, I ended up being invited on as a guest to talk about how we can all ‘contribute to the new normal’ whatever that may look like post-crisis (like the action shot!? lol)
Here, you can access the playback of the 27 mins conversation between myself and host Liz Lembke, but what was interesting was that through our separate sense of the world, a lot of the conversation, whether the topic of the problem with narrow job descriptions, unhealthy organisational cultures or the opportunity to step more into our individual and collective power, for example, I could not help but see clarity around the fact that if we are not doing the inner work, realising that change is an inside job, then we are spending incredible amounts of time stuck in our heads and/or focusing on ineffective action completion or processes to avoid having to look inside.
Does that resonate with you or would you challenge that?
Full book layout (as of now)
I have now scoped the final part of the loose skeleton of the book which means that it currently looks as follows:
Contents
Introduction
Why I wrote this book
Who is this book for?
The Regenerative Collaboration Flow
1 Consciousness shifting
The world is waking up
Acknowledging externalities
The Interconnectedness of all things
Researching the heist
2 The perceived internal and external influences on change
Perceived internal influences on change
Perceived external influences on change
The planning fallacy
3 Why organisations fail to change
Innocently looking in the wrong direction
Change model overload
The danger of rinse and repeat
Prizing busyness over connection
Planning the heist
4 When organisations change well
Engaging heart and head
Like-hearted vs like-minded leadership
People-centered organisational design
Executing the heist
5 Leading from the inside-out
Understanding how the mind works
Challenging belief systems
Feeling and acknowledging emotion
6 Change as business as usual
We are change
Moving to job roles from job descriptions
Employee voice as a superpower
Igniting whole-person being and working
Successful Getaway
7 Assessing your ability to deal with iterative change
Transparency
Love
Curiosity
Trust
Listening
Courage
Sharing the SWAG
8 What next Connected systems
Supercharged social responsibility
Healthier lives
References and useful resources
Acknowledgments
The Author
The relatively slow progress on the book this week has been a bit of mild procrastination around research and energy.
That said I did manage to complete the first draft of the intro which totals 2900 words and having sense-checked it with two trusted peers, I have a sense as to where I need to keep the language more neutral.
That said the flow was pretty good and the words came together rather well thus far.
3-part series with HR Zone
I was grateful to write a 3-part series for HR Zone around the conscious employee meets the conscious organisation.
With a strong wellbeing and inclusion lens, I am curious what you take away, what you may challenge and how much of the messaging, which was released before this book idea confirms or denies what you are reading so far?
Next-generation leadership on the Value through Vulnerability podcast boosted by HumansFirst
My collaborator Mike Vacanti and I released our second ever multi-person conversation on the Value through Vulnerability platform and it was truly spell-binding with sustainability strategist Samantha Suppiah and inner genius coach Alexandra Enke.
Some of the examples if wisdom that these young leaders, our future global leaders, shared includes:
I cannot change someone else’s mind. It’s more of who can I become that I inspire change, that I am a leader of the change, that maybe somebody takes a glimpse of what I do and takes it to change themselves – Alex
In addition:
Every individual can be a leverage point. Every individual needs to find their genius in order for them to be effective in fighting the war we need to fight, not against each other, but against our own undoing – Sam
Without any prompt or lead from me, I truly believe that these are two sublime examples of young leaders that already ‘get’ that change is an inside job, something that took me over 40 years to understand and sense into.
On the one hand, I, therefore, have the momentary ‘is it really worth writing this book as it is obvious, as Sam and Alex are showing, that change is an inside job,’ but then I am reminded of what a stranger advised me on LinkedIn recently when I looked to ‘let go’ of the book idea:
Meqa held, someone completely new to me, up the mirror up to my thinking with this powerful reflection:
Just because we see things clearly doesn’t mean that others do
We all have our own experience of life in the moment and our own journey of discovery, sharing that is not good or bad, it is just a mirror to another person’s thinking if they are open to looking into it.
2nd book interview with Rich Cooper
I was grateful that financial crime analyst and coach Rich Cooper kindly joined me to be interviewed for the book yesterday.
Rich offered such a depth of insight as to what change means to him, a very personal and vulnerable example of a change in his private life and what good and bad change look for him.
From the two interviews so far there has been a very strong tendency towards the fact that we all have way more freedom to act and move forward than we often like to admit.
I wonder if that is you as you read this?
Interviews for the book
Interviews for the book will hot up with four more this week and five next week.
Be well and thank you for staying this journey with me and as always, any and all feedback is welcome.
Best regards
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