Supporting Human Adaptability

Matt Perez:

I always wanted to dance to that music. But anyway, my name is Matt Perez. I'm in we're here in RHatchery live today with my partner Jose Leal and Dawna Jones. And I have known Dawna for a long time. She's a really good person, and she seemed too professional, she started as a professional facilitator. And it is more into finding breakthroughs with people now. And it comes, from a lot of experience. And, so teaching that real opportunities and stuff like that and finding those breakthroughs that that people don't know they want. So, with that, I'll leave it up to Dawna to explain what she does a little bit about her business. And, and then about 10, 50 minutes into it, we'll try to see how that couples with the craziness that we came up with, the radical and, and all this stuff. Okay.

Dawna Jones:

Thank you. You'd like me to start, or Jose, do you want to…

Jose Leal:

No, I the only thing I'd throw in there is I personally love the personal stories. So as much as you feel comfortable sharing I think that's important because we want to understand you not just what you do, but who you are. And I think that's, that's key.

Dawna Jones:

Thank you. Well, I mean, to me that's the key question is who you become through the experiences you've had in life. And, and that was sort of a question that I asked myself every time I had a setback, and there were a lot of them. And I, I realized they, there was a lot of them because I thought differently. Now, I didn't get that initially at all. I, I just thought I thought the same as everyone else. So, I thought I would look at things and I think, well, you know, this is obvious. Let's just do it that way. And in this case I'm referring to really adapting you know, business thinking, adapting to fit the context we're in. Because for a long time, business thinking was very linear, still is very linear analytic. If we do this, this will happen very predictable, very controlled engineer outcomes, all of those things. And so, in my facilitation work, which cut across all these different sectors, you could really see where that wasn't working at a cultural business culture point of view because they were forcing outcomes that obviously didn't fit the humanity of the situation nor the longevity of the situation. You know, is this going to last or, or is it going to just be a temporary band-aid fix because it's easy and, you know, and all of that. And, and it makes, we could do a photo op out of it, for example. So, my experience then as a facilitator was I equate it to being like in a learning lab, you're just in a lab with every team. You know, I was in construction policy, you know, public consultation strategy, a variety of different kinds. I did a lot of interactive games in, in the work I did. And you just watch, you know, there's two parts of you. There's, there's self as witness, there's, you know, what's going on in me? Because if I can't handle that, then I can't adapt to the situation I'm in. Or can I, and nor can I help the people, you know, the group itself as it's moving through something because I could be the problem. So, I have to, you know, observe myself all the time and, and see, you know, there's a little bit of a, a toggle switch between my observing and also being in the dynamic and, and working with it. So, I came to see, long story short, I came to see this kind of work as basically being involved energy and, and how we use it. Conflict could be used for separation, for force, for desperation. Equally. It could be used for beautiful creative purposes if we, if we were aware of that and made a more intentional choice. So, the, the longer, you know, the, the segue then is, is how do you, like, in, in my case, what, what I did was put, put a lot of programs together that I thought would be logical for personal growth, business growth. Because It's personal growth for business, essentially. It, it's fractal. What we do for, at the personal level applies at the organizational and team level. It's, it's just different scale, essentially. And there was just like crickets. There was nothing going on. So that's when I started the podcasting in 2008. And, and I will share that I became homeless in 2009. And when I hit the road, it was for nine years, I wrote Decision Making for Dummies on the Road. I wrote you know, a couple of contributions to three different books. The Intelligence of the Cosmos with Systems Theory of Serve Lazlo, a chapter in from hierarchy to high performance with the Great Work Cultures team. And then another chapter in another book. And I blogged. And, and the, the reason why I did that is, is having had experience with darkie motions and as a deep thinker and a and a sensitive individual, I learned how sensitive later. But, but when you, when you don't know that you just know you have to do something other than get depressed. And so biologically expression is the antidote for depression. And when I figured that out, I thought, okay, I, I can just write, produce, create, and, and that will solve two problems at once. First it gets, it gets me feeling like I'm making a contribution and providing some value. And it also prevents me from sliding down that dark slippery. So, so today, you know, what the work is about is, is about that core level of emotional health. How do we stay well emotionally when faced with really complex, challenging conditions without running back to the comfort zone where, where we can stagnate, where, you know, it's easy to, to be stagnant. Stability equals stagnation. Sometimes it, it isn't always the comfort zone, it's sometimes just flat stagnation. And how do we work with the conditions that we've got to become more fulfilled, you know, live a fulfilling life and, and, and contribute a very high level of value to what happens next in our future. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. Does that give an overview? Does that, how do you feel about that?

Matt Perez:

Yeah, so you, you, you learn from your experience bad as it was, and you managed, managed to get out of it. And that's, that's more than amazing. That's you know, reminds me of the, the story about Rollings the, she wrote these books and all stuff that she was also homeless and living off the charity and stuff like that. And but she turned around and, and you turned around. That's there's more than anybody, any of us experience and <inaudible>. And so, so one thing that you mentioned we're talking before was did, did that taught you how to observe carefully, not only you, but the dynamics of what's going on, and then you, you teach that adaptability to people. How, how does that work?

Dawna Jones:

Well, I mean, it's interesting cause my facilitation skills unknown to me. We're, we're actually it's like a training ground for, for more personal navigational skills. I mean, personal, but I could only take a group as far as I could take myself. So, if, if I ran into a conflict in the group, I had to be able to step back from that conflict and not get pulled in. You know, I had to be able to detach and observe in order to support moving through it, moving through the fear, moving through the tension, moving through the, you know, positional stances that people had, finding ways to unlock that so there could be more compassion and more understanding, and then we could really get somewhere. So, so that, that basic toolkit was, was a fundamental starting kit. And then what got added to it in the course of the setbacks. And you know, I mean, my, my operational thing in the, in the middle of a setback would be, okay, this is not fun. Not having a good time here, and, and I'm responsible for that. You, you know, I, I just have to figure out how and what I did. I mean, I full responsibility for it. And how do I move through it? Because if I can successfully move through this, then this can serve someone else. So, if there's not some higher purpose to what I'm experiencing or anybody else is experiencing, if there's not some value that can be gleaned from it, then it's a lot, it's a lot easier to slide down the, the dark slope into the darkness. And so, you know, essentially the work today is about let's just use the skills we have. We're busy deferring to AI for our thinking and deferring to a lot of other places for it, but we cannot defer the feelings. We cannot defer the emotional health. We cannot defer the need to actually work directly with how we're feeling. And that's what sets us apart. I mean, we're complex beings. That's the reality. So, working with our emotions more directly is the way to, to forge ahead from my point of view and be very adaptable. Obviously emotional and mental health are deeply entangled. But emotional health from an evolutionary perspective is, is what keeps you, you know, what keeps you alive. It's, it's, it's served it to your intuition. And if you can't hear that, then you, you really don't have the, the survival instincts you need. So, I, I, that's, that's essentially how I see it now. So, what I'm about to, to be sharing in the, in the new year is, is, is very much around how do you coach yourself through these things? How do you work? It's developing a, a higher, much higher level of self-awareness, but also contextual awareness, because certain contexts, like where the one we're in are perfect training grounds for doing things differently. They're perfect training grounds for trying something else instead of falling back into the old habits. And I, to be honest, that doesn't matter whether it's a personal thing or an organizational thing. Organizations have deep ruts in their systemic habits, and the invitation is the same for them. It's a harder one to respond to because it takes a much higher level of, of individual and collective leadership. Yeah. But it is essentially the same thing. So, if it goes back to what Jose and I talked about in an episode we did, it's about using fear not to pull back on innovation. Not to be, you know, run backwards from any bold moves, but to use fear as the powerful energy it is to move, move through it.

Matt Perez:

Yeah. Long time ago, I learned to listen to the little voice in my head as okay, I won't do that. I will do something else. And right now, I, I have cancer As I I'm speaking to you, I had cancer, and I just told this guy that I was talking to, and he started, he, he wanted me to cry. I don't know what he wanted, but he wanted me to cry and, and be, you know, oh, keep your hopes up. And I go, I don't, I don't need hopes. I'm alive. I'm going to be alive. And the worst that can happen is I can die. Big deal. So, so yeah. No, I understand some of what you're, what you're going through. So, tell us about what you're going to do about coaching yourself and.

Dawna Jones:

Well, I mean, I think what you've just did in, in saying that Matt is an important aspect of it, because I've seen people who's had, who have had their lives interact. I called it life's interruptions, you know, like it was all smooth along and running along in routine, and then bam, something happens, whether it's a pandemic or, or cancer in, in your case, which, you know, I'm, I'm obviously not happy to hear about that. But either way, it, it's, do I accept re the reality I'm being faced with, or do I fight with it? And a lot of people invested much time in fighting with it. It, you know, it was, well, we, we just need to get back to normal. We just need to run back to the familiar, we just need to do anything but work with it. And, and I think we have to work with it. We, we have, in order for it to move through it with any kind of integrity, with any kind of self-actualization leadership aspirations with any kind of goals in mind, we've got, we've got to move through it. We've got to accept it for what it is, and, and then you can work with it. So, you've just beautifully given a wonderful example of how to accept it and then work with it.

Matt Perez:

Yep. And in the, in the meantime I finished the third book, and you know, life goes on until it stops and then it goes on for other people. So, I'm not particularly broken up or anything. It's more of, like you said, it's the bam happen and, and just accept it for what is. So, the, the, the where the 15-minute mark, so let me, do you understand radical and where we're coming from and all that stuff?

Dawna Jones:

Well, if it's the same conversation that, that Jose and I had some time ago on radical purpose on my episode, on my podcast, yes.

Matt Perez:

Well, this goes beyond the purpose of the individual, right? This, this, this applies to organizations, which is made up of individual. And it's really an alternative to the current system. And the current system is what we call the fiat system, which is based on fear is strictly based on fear. Move that box from there to here to there. Why? Because I say so or else. Okay. And, and you may say it with a nice, oh, because I say so you may, you might adorn it that you want to, but it's the fear of losing your livelihood is the fear of ending homeless is the fear of I'm going to lose the familiar, I'm going to lose the stuff I'm used to. And is that fear that it holds over you? So, and that's the whole system, the whole, everything that's happening is revolves around that. And so, we came up with, with is an alternative, which is based on a very simple foundation, is three or five things, depending on your count. And that's that the rest of the richness of it comes out of people. So, but, but it, it gives you a foundation not to fall back that would help you not to fall back. It's just not to, if at the end you choose to go back, then yeah, you go back. But it, it gives you the tools to not go back and from purpose and stuff like that. We picked up other, other tools as well. So, we, we get to introduce each other. I, I hate to use the word correctly, but correctly and in order to help each other, if…

Jose Leal:

I could jump in here, cause what you described, Dawna, the work of communicating with people and, and teams and doing the facilitating that often isn't well done. Because We don't listen enough. We're always so busy trying to fix, trying to do, being fearful and everything else. My question to you as it relates to radical, as Matt just pointed out, is that for us, the reason we call it radical is everything we do in work has a root in us. It's rooted in ourselves. Every effort we've made, every intention we have, every behavior we do is rooted in us. And so, the question that I have for you is, in your work of facilitation, how does, how do you see that manifest itself in both the positive and the negative conflicts, behaviors, actions, outcomes that that with the teams that you work with?

Dawna Jones:

Well, it's a big question.

Jose Leal:

It's a huge question.

Dawna Jones:

So, I'll, I'll have a shot. I mean, as I mentioned, when I was in the room facilitating, I would notice that I was getting intuitive hits. I was getting visuals coming from the group, and it, it would be almost like they, they'd hit a certain point and then they'd stop. And, and there wasn't, you know, there was something blocking them. And, and it wasn't until I kind of started perceiving more deeply, you know, just saying, okay, what's going on here? What's behind that? And it could be anything from, we love coming up with generating actions, but we, none of us want to do any of this stuff, which was the, which was the stuck point. Or it could be, there's a process in place, nobody's paid attention to it, and it's still blocking things. So, you know, one of my favorite stories was examples was I was at a sales event one time, and I'm, I'm terrible at sales. So, I, I went there to hopefully have some of it rub off on me. And, and I was talking to somebody, and they said, you know I, if I do nothing today, I make 1 cent more than I did last year. And they've just revamped the whole sales process. So, this is where these underlying processes, just run the show. And, and no one's paying attention, right? Because they're in love with the process and not with the results, not with paying attention to what it's doing. So, I mean, you had a group of salespeople are just saying, hey, I can see what this is doing. I'm, I'm out of here. I don't need to be a part of this. And so that's the one part of it was, you know, paying attention. It's a universal principle. It's been around since, you know, before certainly our, our, you know, the modern long before modern times, it is a universal archetypal principle. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. And when I started working with those universal principles, then I began to see patterns in a whole new light, because it gave me a way to understand, we've got these processes that are driving certain outcomes, but they're not outcomes that are, going to last, or b, don't have the, they don't have the support of, of, of the people who they're going to be impacting worse. They're going to harm the people that are, you know, being impacted. And so, when you, you know, all it takes is one anchor principle like that, and you, all of a sudden, or at least I began to see, ah, there's some interesting patterns here. So, pattern spotting, which is a flow state outcome as well. I didn't realize that then, but I've since learned that. But it's very handy for seeing what are the things that these processes are generating that nobody's paying any attention to. They're just letting them run on autopilot because they're, they're, you know, you set 'em up, you put 'em in place, and then you forget about them. And it's kind of like, when you're first learning how to drive, you're very intentional and conscious about, yes, I do this, and, you know, I turn, and all those things. And then after you've driven for a while, you forget the whole thing. And sometimes you even forget how you got to a destination if you've been doing it over and over again. It your subconscious does the driving for you.

Jose Leal:

Just hit on, on what Matt was just referring to very clearly meaning, right? You, you, you talked about it's about the meaning, right? Yeah. And, and for us, there's another, you talked about impact which of course is, it's also about, because you need to focus on what it is that you're, is the outcome of what's happening, right? Yeah. Because if you don't focus on the outcome, then you end up going through the motions simply for the sake of having a system continue itself. Not because you know what the outcome is, but the other that we speak to is belonging, right? Because when we are together, if we're not paying attention, not only to the meaning, but also to the belonging, then again, our focus is on the system and not on each other, not on ourselves, not on each other. And so, your focus that you've just mentioned about how we're so fixated on letting the system do its thing that we don't pay attention to ourselves or each other or, or the meaning that we're supposedly making, right? And maybe not right.

Dawna Jones:

Well, exactly. And I mean, I'm, can I answer a question? I see Sam posting there.

Jose Leal:

Sure.

Dawna Jones:

Yeah. Sam's got a question about pattern spotting versus unintended consequences. Pattern spotting to me, in my experience is it's that place where, where things are just being done over and over and over again. And there it's a habit, essentially. It, it's a habit that that's been formed. So, when I wrote Decision Making for Dummies, I, I interviewed, I went, dad was wandering around because, you know, I could and I went down and I met with a, a consultant who'd been spent about a thousand hours in organizations. And he said, I could tell in 15 minutes what this company's going to do next, because their decisions have a pattern, and this is what it is. Similarly, there's risk aversion patterns that you can see in more, you know, a more conventional companies who are afraid of loss. So, and I mean, psychologically, all humans are, but companies have the same fractal pattern as well. They be fear lost the more established they get. So that's what I mean by pattern spotting, unintended consequences are you make a decision, you consider impact. And I think what humans are really good at is we're good at saying, well, if we do this, then this will happen. So that's direct impact. What we're terrible at is, and fair enough, because it's complex, but what we're not particularly good at is observing the unintended consequences. And when we do observe them, we're starting to move into systems thinking. We're starting to see the complexity in the environment we're in, in, and that is, I think, very exciting because it starts, it, it helps us see, you know, using a much wider lens. You can't be, you know, if you spot those things, if you say, oh, that's an unintended consequence. It could be negative, it could be positive, it could be neither. It could just be whatever it happens to be. But it is the place where you think didn't expect that to happen. Let's watch and see what else emerges, because, you know, now we're starting to talk about emergent results in, in, in any given system. So, I hope, I hope that helps answer Sam's great question. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you, Sam. I hope, hope that helps to Answer it.

Jose Leal:

Sam so happens that Sam is a friend from high school.

Dawna Jones:

I love it. That's fantastic.

Jose Leal:

Thank you for joining us, Sam. And, and for, for your question, you know, what you just said, Dawna reminds me of this doctor. It was John Gottman who he could tell when a couple comes in. He was a couple's therapist, researcher, and a couple would come in and he'd ask one question, they would look at each other in a certain way and he'd go, yeah, they're about to get divorced. 90% accuracy. Yeah. Yeah. Just because he could read the patterns. And the pattern he then described, as you said, you learn, you feel the pattern first, and then you describe it later. Yeah. The pattern he then described was they had lost respect for each other. Yeah. And I think that happens in our workplace as well. And I think that's the belonging piece, right? Where we start to focus so much on getting it done and on the, the system that we lose sight of the fact that we're picking up patterns from each other and we're not listening.

Dawna Jones:

That's beautifully said. I mean, I have this thing called signals and cues. That's as a facilitator, any environment I'm going into, and I mean, bear in mind, I don't have to be in a formal facilitation role. I just am a nerd about observing these things. So, so I'll be going into any particular environment, and I'm looking for signals and cues. What are the signals that give me a clue as to what's going on? And my optimum visual for, you know, adaptability is a murmuration, you know, the sandpipers do it. And, and, and they're always paying attention to these subtleties. And yet I've never seen one. Like if you look at how we describe that's a Don't hit anyone, would be the fourth step in the sequence. And like, you know, they're flying it, you know, so it, it's yeah, it's that, it's the signals and cues that you're picking, and that's a very sensory intelligence. It's not an intelligence that comes from mentally running through data sets or anything like that. This is what humans can do that tech will never be able to do, because we're still figuring out how to just drive like a human. So, you know, we've got a long way to go to duplicate that level of sophistication in, in, in being able to perceive reality and make sense out of it pretty much simultaneously. So, you know, he, he's picking up, knowing it or not, he's picking up on, on the cues that the signals and cues that, that tell him exactly what loss of respect looks like in a relationship, and he's seen it so many times, and it, you know, it's, it's a strong pattern. It's not a, a lightweight one. Right. He knows exactly what's going to happen next. So that's yeah.

Jose Leal:

And that's obviously a pattern that we see in, in the workplace and in you, you bet. In teams and groups.

Dawna Jones:

Yeah. exactly.

Matt Perez:

So, if I can jump in what's next for you? What's, what's the future? What, I know it's not in the moment, but what is, what is coming for you?

Dawna Jones:

Thanks Matt for asking. Well, I mean, I had another setback in January of last year where I had a brain bleed, and I came out of that. I'm still, I'm still alive, so that's great. And that's when I, and I became out with a much higher level of sensitivity, which is good news, bad news. Good news is, it's a lot easier to do certain things. Bad news is, it's a lot harder to manage life as, you know, you just have more work to do. But the next step, then, what that means is I'm doing a lot more online work, some in person, but I'll do more online work and, and I'm, you know, launching, as I say, I'll launch this program. Ultimately, it'll be called Adaptive Minds, but the beginner part of it, the emotional health mastery section of it, which is basically relevant to anybody who is ready to admit they have emotions and want to be responsible for them. That's the next step. Let's, let's start, because the, it, you know, if you look at the thinking skills, and as complexity increases, these are, they, you know, I, Dave Snowden's kind of a model on the four quadrants, there's one word in each of the four quadrants that describes the different context. And that word is sensing. And we're not using that. I mean, those of us that have done that are doing it, but most people are just trying to get through with their mind. And there's this whole other dimension of something. We don't talk about that. cause, you know, that's not, that's soft skills. Well, you know typically it's soft skills because they're hard, hard to master. So, if you, if you, you know, it's a great way of saying, I don't want to do that. Looks too, that looks hard. But it, you know, it is time for the hard stuff. It is time for really learning how to work with what we're really good at as humans, because the tech will look after the rest.

Matt Perez:

Yeah. We're one of the things in our foundations is decentralization and transparency. And that sounds like transparency to me. Yeah. And transparency, not only you know, I got this much money in the back, but transparency also of what I'm fitting. You know, you did this, and you did that and interpret it this way, and I'm feeling bad because whatever that's important to know. I mean, organizations are made up of people. That's, that's the bottom line. And the end organizations cannot be better than people. So, they're very good at being worse than people. But they can be better. They cannot.

Dawna Jones:

It's a great way of putting it. I'm, I'm reminding mindful of a, you know, the team IQ where you put a whole bunch of people in the room and the team IQ goes down. Versus put a bunch of people in the room and the team IQ goes up. So, it, it's, it's really how do we become better at working with diversity? I, I think one of the things that, that happened that when I realized it later, I thought, oh my gosh, you know, all this conflict resolution stuff means that they weren't utilizing conflict to deal with difference at all. They were trying to get, you know, I mean, generally these practices. And I took mediation and understood it and said, I'm, I'm not, I don't want to do that. I want to work with people when they're still wanting to be in the room, and we can still have conversations and, and arrive at a level of understanding. So, so I think that's the other, the other part of it, we're moving from conflict resolution into conflict utilization. How do we use this? So that we can work with these phenomenal, diverse perspectives and, and really make things better, not only for team thinking, because you need to have that, otherwise you've just got group think going on. And or at an organizational level where we've got certain things that need to be absolutely routine and stable, and then other things that need to leap off the innovative edge, the other company will die. So, I think there's an opportunity to really use the diversity of perspectives and thinking that we have in the room, you know, in the organization, in society, to do much better things than we're currently doing.

Jose Leal:

I was just going to say, Matt, if you don't mind, I have one more question, or were you going to wrap it up?

 Matt Perez:

I was going to announce next week. Go ahead.

Jose Leal:

I think, Dawna, there's another thing that I'd like to, to say that I know you are involved in, in a big way. And we had a little bit of a back and forth on LinkedIn last week about this, or maybe even this week, I can't recall about the, the work of the future of work and the, the groups that are out there working on this and the idea of, of starting to work together in a, in a more powerful way. And I loved the fact that you, you suggested some, some folks pay attention to that conversation, but also the questions you posed, and maybe you can speak to, to that a little bit and what your thoughts are about the idea of how are you seeing the need, the need, not, not necessarily how it's going to happen, but what's the, what do you see as the need of, of different groups working together in this in this emerging way of working that isn't the current way of working?

Dawna Jones:

If I can, you know, reframe it in terms of, we're, we're taught, we're often, especially on LinkedIn, there's all this competitive stuff. You see a lot of competition, and you see it in the mindset of business as well, its com, com competition can be used to advantage if it's used to collaborate, if it's used for, you know, looking, like using it, setting it up as a constraint, but for a higher goal, for a higher purpose, a much higher purpose. So, in terms of going back now to the, to the question, I can't remember what I asked <laugh> on LinkedIn at all, but I do know that everyone is coming at it through a different lens. And I, I don't think we need anything organized at all. I think what we do need to know is who's doing what and what are the strengths of that, because there's some synergies there that could quite organically be, be combined. You know, again, the, the sooner, as soon as you formalize anything, it usually sends these networks underground. They, they just go down. That's not the goal. The goal is not to formalize, in my mind, it's more a matter of, if it's a very loose, informal, here's what we're working on, here's what value it has, here's how it contributes, and, and, and that kind of an approach so that, you know, in certain environments you can say, gosh, this is the perfect place for this. This is the perfect place, time, and stage for that kind of thinking to come in because this is what's needed here at the moment. So, I think we, you know, the diversity of thought that we, we are blessed with in, in terms of the complexity of being human is, is not being used to the extent it can be. I mean to a fair amount. I think there's been some delegation of thinking to somewhere else. I mean, whether it's AI or just some, you know, oh, the, the, the government needs to do that because they're the grownups and they're supposed to make these sound decisions and, and they're not equipped for it either. I mean, from.

Jose Leal:

You know, even less so.

Dawna Jones:

Less so. Yeah. From a bifurcation level, they don't have the thinking. The, the, the institutions are extremely old, and so there needs to be an upgrade there. So, I think the, the change in the leadership and how leaders take about is not going to be one, you know, it's not going to be the, the spider with the head. It's much more of a starfish. That metaphor was in a book a long time ago, and I loved it, but it's more of a star, a starfish, decentralized and distributed frame, you know, distributed mechanism. Or distributed organism is the right word I'm looking for.

Jose Leal:

Yeah. And just to, to bring you to that moment. It was, it was a conversation between [INAUDIBLE] and Neils about how, you know, how do we start talking to each other and how do we start working with one another? And, and I think the fact that you jumped in, I appreciated that that was that was good. It's nice to have another voice that agrees with what you just said, and I think that's important.

Dawna Jones:

Thank you.

 Matt Perez:

So, the, the reason the, the, the thing I would invite you to keep in mind is that we're like fishing water, and we live in a system today. So, and, and it is, it is so encompassing, encompassing that it's like talking water to fish, you know, to go what water, what water, you know, this is, this is normal. And to solve the, the big problems, the climate change, the misogyny, the, all the stuff we need to get out of the system and do something else. And, and it is going to be a lot of work. And the, the first thing that's we say in the book is in, in the various books, is not only self-management, which is, I think organizations there's a lot of striving for that today. There's a lot of talk about it. There's a couple of books out there. But that's, that's like the first tiny step. And the big step is going to be co-ownership. Where, where, and, and I found a, a video of Steve Jobs, and Steve was talking about early, he looked, he was like 26 or something kid. And he was talking about you don't know things until you taste them, until they become part of you. And you don't know ownership until you own something. And I'm thinking, well, if it's, if that good for you, wouldn't it be good for everybody else? And, and that's the step nobody wants to take you, not that nobody wants to take, is that the system does not allow for us to think that way. Right. and but that, that's, that's where a lot of solutions stand. Because in the end, I think the difference between individuals and communities for humans, for us people it, it, the community's everything you find, meaning in a certain community, you find certain different meaning in certain other community. And that's, that's what needs to change, is a group of people a community or something like that. So anyways, that's what I invite you to do is keep that in mind. And but I love the work you're doing and how you're progressing in terms of using conflict to get to collaboration. That was when you said that I went, ah, I'm in love. You know, because that, that's, that's our thing is, is collaboration is what counts. How do you get to it? And if you have somebody that knows how to use conflict to get to collaboration, that's very VA valuable. Very, very valuable.

Dawna Jones:

You Know.

 Matt Perez:

I thank you for that.

Dawna Jones:

No, thank you. I, I really appreciate you hearing that because, you know, to me, it, it's so fundamental. It's the difference between thinking we know everything there is to know, which is a common practice, you know, like, I, I already know that. All right, it to learning, it's just that simple. I mean, we just need to be able to learn from everything that happens. It's just not that complicated. But in order to do that, instead of being afraid about what I might learn, curiosity, Stephen Coler once said that that you know, curiosity, if I remember correctly, curiosity and, and vi the, and, and fear on the same vibration. So, it's like the flip side, <laugh>. So, you know, <laugh> instead, instead of, you know, being fearful, it would be asking a question, let's, let me understand, instead of coming back with this reaction that, that positions people over there, they're left their deems there, there's a language in the states that I, I'm not, I'm Canadian for those of you who are not aware, but I mean, there's a language in the states that I still don't understand, but it's, it's got to do with all of that, you know, labeling and feeding people over in the corner and, you know, how do you have conversations when you're doing that as a practice? So, you know, I think, I think that that curiosity is, and, and just the willingness and openness to learn is so central to our evolution.

 Matt Perez:

But that thing that you mentioned about putting people in corners, okay I call it the edge, but it's the same thing. That's part of the system that, that to have wealthy people, and I mean extremely wealthy people, you need to pour you, you have to extract that wealth from somewhere. And if you're extracted from those people over there, they're poor. Now they're poor because I'm, I'm pulling it all up. So, it, it's systemic and we have to attack it as systemic kind of a system.

Dawna Jones:

But systems also respond to disruption. I mean, that's, that's why I was so, okay, probably shouldn't say this so too loudly, but I was pretty excited when the pandemic hit because I thought, okay, pattern interrupt. Now we can do cool stuff, we've got, we've got an opening, and everyone went out and bought toilet paper. And that was not what I had in mind. I just, I had some other vision in mind. So, so I mean, these patterns, the, these interruptions, it doesn't matter whether it's an earthquake or, you know, the, the earth system. This is how, you know, nature innovates as well. It's to create forest fires always traditionally were to reset the environment for new growth. And, and, you know, so, so it's really, I think, fundamentally simple in certain, in a certain way, and not to oversimplify it, but to understand the simplicity of complexity. Right. So, Sam's got a question here. Should we, can I?

 Matt Perez:

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Dawna Jones:

So, Sam, I see you've noted the key to productive organizational conflict is psychological safety. You know, I think the, the, it, that's an interesting one because what people have done is, is you got to be safe or you before you can't say, you know, there's a certain tension around safety, which is silly because in order to be safe, you have to take risks. You have to be willing to put your foot forward. And I, I think growth requires some acceptance of risk. I'm going to have to risk certain things if I'm going to grow. Now, if you want to stay stagnant, then of course, you know, stay safe. So, I think there's a number of layers that this can happen. And it's, I appreciate the, the academic research on psychological safety and all the work that's been done, Amy Emon and others on psychological safety. But I've also noticed when I'm facilitating, you can put up, I used to put up ground rules and there was always somebody, especially in public contexts who would just completely ignore them. And you think, okay, well that's not, you know, I mean, that was nice. It was, you know, maybe it, somebody held self-discipline for 40 minutes and then all of a sudden they lost it. And so, it, it, it's, I think it's got more to do with accepting responsibility for keeping others safe. It, it, I think that's what psychological safety is to me. As someone who's worked with a lot of high-end conflict, on in, you know, in public and organizational settings, it's just saying, I am, I want you to step out of your comfort zone. I want you to, to think big. I want you to step boldly, lead boldly, and I got your back. You know, it's that sense of belonging. I think, Jose, you mentioned it earlier.

Jose Leal:

Exactly. I was going to jump right back up to that.

Dawna Jones:

It's just saying, you know, we've got your back.

Jose Leal:

Yeah. It, it, you know, I think you know Kim, right? Dawna no, maybe not. But Kim is someone that we've worked in the past. She's, she's done things like conscious contracts and so forth. And one of the things that I love about what she's done in her community is she says, what I realized early on when I went out and spoke to people about doing the things in our community of, of integrative law, I didn't teach them anything. I simply gave them the permission to do what they already wanted to do. Right. And I think that's true in this space of belonging. People already want to help each other. People already want to, you know, be themselves and do the things they want to do. It's just that we don't give each other permission for it. Yeah. We don't back each other up. We don't support each other through that process. And so, I thank you for your answer to, to Sam, because I think that's one of the best answers I've heard. That feels right to me. We've blown psychological safety out of context. It's something that emerges between us, and we have to support each other through it. And it's not about putting padding all over the place to make everybody feel safe. It's about being there for each other. And that's a very different thing.

Dawna Jones:

It's trust it. The fundamentally it's trust. I trust you're going to have my back. I trust that if we hit a challenging point, we may get it wrong, but we're going to, you know, we're going to work that through. We're going to move through it. Somebody this was on a personal level, somebody said to me, well, I have a different perspective. And I said, good, let's get in the room and talk about it. And they didn't want to go in because they were playing the battle of perspectives. It was, my perspective is winnings over yours, that's pointless. You know, we, if we're really going to do this adaptive, adapt to the conditions that we're in and do it well, we have to be able to listen, grok feel someone else's perspective, and everyone needs to be responsible for it. There's just a whole lot of that that's not happening as well, that, that I think is pretty fundamental to, to leadership at any level, personal, right. Through to the much wider level.

 Matt Perez:

Well, there's another aspect to safety. There's a thing of, you know, I'm, if I'm a group of equals, then I have to be able to say something and, and, and say it and become vulnerable to, to the rest of the crowd. And you guys have done a great job of that, but it's also a safety of saying the wrong thing in front of the boss.

Dawna Jones:

Yeah. Well, that's good. You've got the wrong boss then.

 Matt Perez:

Because you have, there's consequences to that. And when people's, maybe it's my reading, but a lot of the things that I, that I read about psychological safety has to do with I'm in the room with boss and he's got a, a thing in his nose, and I can't tell that he is got a thing in his nose because even fire me. So, there's that kind of safety as well, which taking responsibility all you want is, is not going to solve it. So, we have to consider that, that part of it as

Dawna Jones:

Well. Yeah, no, I, I really hear that point. Well, because we, we used to, we've had facilitations where they, you know, the group works it all through that, you know, they spend it and the, and the boss walks in at the end of the day and said, well, you didn't give the answer that I wanted. So, you know, come back in tomorrow and do it for two more days until you gimme what I want. It's like, oh, come on. Yeah. So, this is what I call the very emotionally, there's a lot of emotionally immature people in authority, and I don't know how they got there, but there, obviously they were promoted <laugh>, but, so that says something in its own, but, but when they're there, the onus is to become more responsible from a, from an emotional standpoint. Otherwise, you can't do anything like that. You can't have those conversations that could expose opportunities for growth in instead of shrinking it down and trying to stay restricted to or rigid with what's happened already with what's happened in the past. So, yeah, I that, you know, I, I've heard that before in my work as well. You know, don't let the boss comes in the room. So, I started change. I just started using processes that were flat from a power base point of view. You know, it didn't matter who you were, you could participate. And if you didn't agree to that, well then you, we didn't do it work because, and we ne I never had that happen. But that was the, it had to be that there had to be a strong commitment to, to leveling out the power structure so that people could have power sharing it in that sense.

 Matt Perez:

Well, yeah the, and I'm sure you had experience with those. So, it's not just flat in terms of vice president of this and vice versa of that and p of the other, because to these guys are competing, they want to replace the boss when the boss dies or goes away or, or whatever. So, they're competing. So, if I say something in front of that guy over there it may come back and bite me. So

Dawna Jones:

I so glad you raised this because this is the, the, the competition at its worst, it, its competition driven by what's in it for me versus competition that is focused on how we can achieve something bigger together than we can by doing it alone. This is where radical purpose comes in. Because if you don't have something big to go for, then you're just competing to be in control versus contributing toward achieving something bigger. So, it's a complete, and you know, what we're describing here is a different focus. It's, it's more of a shared focus on achieving something bigger instead of all the motivations being driven by I'm the finest, I'm the best, I'm the boss, I'm in control. I mean, that's just nonsense. It's, it's over that part. We, we really have to be in control of ourselves so that we can work at achieving something much larger, more radical from a purpose point view. Yeah. Yeah. Purpose-Driven point of view.

Jose Leal:

There you go. Now that's a great last word from Dawna.

 Matt Perez:

Okay. So, I'm going to announce that next week we have Alicia Marina co-founder of Future of Organizing. Oh, there she is moving into the future with distributed powers. And I don't know if that's in English or Spanish.

Jose Leal:

It'll be in English.

 Matt Perez:

In English. Okay. And so, we'll find out what moving into the future with distributed power means from Alicia. Okay. That's next week. And I really appreciate, I really like you.

Dawna Jones:

Thank you.

 Matt Perez:

I really like Dawna. She's, I don't know, she's inspiring me something, but knowing that you went through this period of, of being homeless or whatever, moving around gives me more respect for everything you've done. So  yeah, I really enjoyed this and, and as you, as you were talking, I thought maybe the next book should be with her because what I'm planning to do is, is take some topics from the current books and expanding to send along books. And one in particular is, is up your skillset. So

Dawna Jones:

I'd love it. Let's talk, let's talk about that. That'd be fun.

Jose Leal:

Awesome. Alright.

Dawna Jones:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you both.

Jose Leal:

Thank you, Dawna. Thank you very much.