The answer is staring you in the face

Julia: 00:00:00

Welcome to Generative Leaders.

Julia: 00:00:03

If you really want to know how to change happens and how to lead others to find answers to impossible problems at a system, organizational or individual level, this is the episode for you.

Julia: 00:00:18

Today I am in conversation with Jim Clifford, and over his 40 year career, he's been creating positive outcomes in all of these areas, as well as adopting 10 children.

Julia: 00:00:32

For his work Jim was awarded an OBE, and he's a delightful person.

Julia: 00:00:41

So Jim what are some of the big changes that you've been involved in in your career and what are you leading now?

Jim: 00:00:48

It's a struggle when you are asked to list out the areas or the things that you've done that have created change when some are large areas of change that have created big policy shifts and others are what appear to be small areas, from when I look in at them after the event, but actually were meteoric and mind blowing for those involved at the time.

Jim: 00:01:18

Over 30 or 40 years, which is how long I've been In the professions, in the social sector, in business, working and supporting organizations, I've encountered all sorts of people coming forward and talking about human problems, about environmental problems, about business problems.

Jim: 00:01:39

And so often I find that what they see as a problem is often not really a problem.

Jim: 00:01:49

It is just that they're looking at it from the wrong end or looking at it from a strange direction.

Jim: 00:01:54

So whether we are dealing with children's services, domestic violence, nursing, arts and culture, gambling, care services, so often the answer is staring them in the face.

Jim: 00:02:11

But they don't see it, can't see it, have convinced themselves that the answer isn't there and they can't find it.

Jim: 00:02:20

So whichever fields I've been working in, what I'm bringing to the picture is often seeing and reframing information and communications reframing the problem, explaining to them what the problem really is or what it looks like from my perspective.

Jim: 00:02:41

Helping people to see that they've got assets and strengths there for use that they didn't realize were there.

Jim: 00:02:51

even that they, what they see as problem is actually an asset and re-exploring the whole situation from a different direction.

Jim: 00:02:59

Let's pick one particular example from a number of years ago.

Jim: 00:03:03

So this was best part of 10 years ago now, eight years at least.

Jim: 00:03:07

Children's adoption in the UK was facing an enormous challenge in that they had more children seeking adoption than they were managing to get placed.

Jim: 00:03:21

And because the parents that were coming forward for those children were on the whole seeking normal white male babies.

Jim: 00:03:33

That meant that the children that weren't like that were getting disadvantaged and left behind.

Jim: 00:03:38

And yet those were the ones that most needed the support.

Jim: 00:03:41

Huge problem, huge challenge.

Jim: 00:03:44

And the conventional approach and the way the Department for Education, the Secretary of State and a lot of the adoption services organizations, both charity and public sector were thinking about this was how do we get more more parents in the door?

Jim: 00:03:58

How do we push it harder?

Jim: 00:04:00

How do we advertise it better?

Jim: 00:04:02

Some of that sort of conventional, let's follow our process.

Jim: 00:04:05

Very process driven.

Jim: 00:04:06

But working with a friend of mine who was then head of one of the adoption charities, we reanalyzed the whole situation, but looked at it from a different perspective, from a markets perspective for want of a better term, a sale and purchase perspective, supply and demand.

Jim: 00:04:24

And realized that what was going on here, you've got humans in that situation where there was a mismatch of what the children needed and what the parents needed.

Jim: 00:04:36

And you've got a power imbalance in the system in that it was being driven by the parents seeking the children, cuz they were in the minority and they had the ability to select what children they thought they want, wanted.

Jim: 00:04:49

But the parents were coming forward with their own mindset of wanting to meet their need for a child and they'd possibly come from trying for children themselves, wanting their, their children born to them.

Jim: 00:05:04

So they'd got babies in their minds and were looking for babies.

Jim: 00:05:08

And they didn't necessarily know that there were lots of older children needing placement.

Jim: 00:05:13

They didn't know that they could parent them.

Jim: 00:05:16

They didn't know how to parent them.

Jim: 00:05:18

They were scared of parenting older children because it seemed too difficult.

Jim: 00:05:24

So what would happen?

Jim: 00:05:26

We thought if you could change their mindset, the parents' mindset and some parents might, if they knew it was an opportunity, be up for taking older children.

Jim: 00:05:38

If you bring in support to help them, real support and real information, which c convinces the parents that they can parent these children, and that whole supply and demand bit, if you turned it from being a, a supply of parents' market to a supply of children's market, by getting the children effectively to be the purchaser.

Jim: 00:06:03

So if we had a child-led market rather than apparent lead market, that would tip things upside down.

Jim: 00:06:09

But we're not gonna change the whole thing, as that would be frightful and take years and it probably wouldn't work.

Jim: 00:06:14

So what about if we created a UK-wide virtual market, which worked the other way up with all the faults in the main market removed for those children that needed it And you could then, rather than only having one way of finding families for children, you'd got a choice as to which of the two systems you worked in.

Jim: 00:06:38

One work one way up and one work the other way up.

Jim: 00:06:40

And that did work.

Jim: 00:06:42

And it was launched.

Jim: 00:06:43

And it did find families for children.

Jim: 00:06:45

And has left a lasting legacy in various aspects of the way we approach children's adoption today.

Julia: 00:06:54

I've heard you say on, on many occasions, Jim, that the impossible isn't impossible.

Julia: 00:07:00

It sounds like what you're talking about with what happened with this adoption services is that you sort of took that view that the impossible isn't impossible, and you got some new insight.

Julia: 00:07:12

You got some new ways of, of seeing the problem that then opened up a significant change.

Julia: 00:07:18

So this sense of the impossible, not being impossible, is that something that's always been with you?

Julia: 00:07:24

Is it something that you realized at some point in your life?

Julia: 00:07:28

What led you to that?

Jim: 00:07:30

I would accept that there, there must be some things that are impossible.

Jim: 00:07:35

But I've become convinced over the years that they are a rarity.

Jim: 00:07:40

A lot of things can look impossible from one particular perspective.

Jim: 00:07:45

Some of those maybe the Escher pictures or things that you see, um, pictures of things from strange angles, and it looks like it's one thing and then you look around the other side of it and it's actually something completely different and you hadn't realized cuz you couldn't see the whole perspective.

Jim: 00:08:03

So, not only has experience over the years taught me that very rarely are things truly impossible, but also I've become firmly convinced that looking at the problem or what appears to be a problem from a different direction, often a direction that is invisible to one, one of the people viewing it, frequently unlocks the problem and tackles it in a totally different way.

Jim: 00:08:33

Another example which is very dear to my heart because I, I wonder and admire, wonder at and admire the care organization that went ahead and did this, was we talking with a, a care group, residential care group supporting and accommodating people with multiple.

Jim: 00:08:54

Difficulties, different types of difficulties, some elderly, some learning difficulties, complex comorbidities they like to call it in that sort of field.

Jim: 00:09:06

But people with lots of things that are challenging.

Jim: 00:09:09

And they, like so many were facing downward pressure on pricing, on the amount that the health services and care services would supply, and yet growing need, and sooner or later you are, you are looking down a narrowing tunnel.

Jim: 00:09:27

Sooner or later you come to the point where you can't service people's need with that amount of money.

Jim: 00:09:34

And you're then reducing the services below the level which you think is necessary, which is a horrible problem to have.

Jim: 00:09:39

Now, we looked with them at how could we reimagine what we are going to do?

Jim: 00:09:47

It's beyond reframing because it's just going round to a totally different side of it.

Jim: 00:09:54

And what are the things that we are assuming?

Jim: 00:09:58

What if those are not true?

Jim: 00:10:00

How do we reimagine this?

Jim: 00:10:02

And two big changes that really unlocked services for them and enabled them to do things in a different way.

Jim: 00:10:11

One of the things that they were assuming, which is in embedded in our care systems, is to see cared for people effectively as a cost center.

Jim: 00:10:23

They're recipients of care and they need the care, and we deliver them and we meet their needs, and it's very one-directional.

Jim: 00:10:29

What if they're not a cost center?

Jim: 00:10:32

What if they are an asset in their community?

Jim: 00:10:37

And they are community members for the other people in the care home, and are part of the mutual care environment?

Jim: 00:10:47

That then means that rather than a care home accommodating 30 people or, or whatever it might be, you've got 30 extra resources in caring for 30 people and supporting each other in the community.

Jim: 00:11:02

If you've got somebody who has various care needs and is nonverbal or hard to understand, it's hard for them to communicate their needs, the people living next door to them in the next apartment or the next room, probably going to understand them rather better than people who are coming in and out as carers, or would certainly add to their understanding.

Jim: 00:11:29

So if we involve everyone in everyone else's care environment and they care for each other within a community, that really unlocks and reframes how you care for people.

Jim: 00:11:41

The other thing is care homes work, as with a health service in many ways, in a sort of command and control structure.

Jim: 00:11:50

It's hierarchies of management, putting in controls and safety and risk management and so on.

Jim: 00:11:56

It's very top down managed.

Jim: 00:11:58

Yet the people who understand what's going on in that care environment are the ones in the front line.

Jim: 00:12:04

And if they weren't so good and so insightful at what they were doing, they wouldn't be employed there.

Jim: 00:12:10

So what if we group them together in clusters so that they support each other when their minds drawing a blank and they can't work out how to complete a task, maybe they ask their Pearse, the other people alongside them, and they sort it between them, and then what became top-down management becomes enabling the communication in those clusters, and enabling the documentation and the sharing of acknowledge

Jim: 00:12:38

that tips upside down not only the community in which you are caring, but also how the care staff operate.

Jim: 00:12:47

And this particular organization put through both those changes across the the Covid lockdown period and the huge challenges that care homes were having then.

Jim: 00:12:56

And they concluded that both of them worked, made a fantastic difference, enabled them to manage costs, to keep within budget through those and challenging times.

Jim: 00:13:10

They had just as the lockdowns and Covid was starting, they had an outbreak of covid in one of their homes and it was managed top down with the managers dealing with it and resolved.

Jim: 00:13:21

And then later in that cycle, they had a further outbreak at a different home, almost inevitable, you would, sooner or later.

Jim: 00:13:29

That was all managed in the frontline clusters and the management just looked on and it was handled perfectly, resolved really quickly, resolved more quickly than the top down version.

Jim: 00:13:41

And yet they couldn't get to those answers because they couldn't see round the other side of the problem, and see that the people living there are assets in the community, and that the people in the frontline delivery are where the real insight and energy and action can happen.

Julia: 00:14:00

So Jim, you've talked about these two examples of leaders changing and generating different results.

Julia: 00:14:07

What do you think it takes to be a generative leader?

Jim: 00:14:11

Well, we mentioned earlier on this idea of what we think is impossible, almost certainly isn't.

Jim: 00:14:18

So you have to, you do have to believe that you will never go and look around the other side of a problem if you don't believe there's something to be seen around there, and that it'll look different.

Jim: 00:14:28

Believe that the impossible, very rarely is that's important

Julia: 00:14:32

So there's something about believing that capacity is available to every, you know, to you and to everyone to solve these problems.

Jim: 00:14:41

Yes, very much.

Jim: 00:14:43

so.

Jim: 00:14:44

Believing that people can solve the problem, and believing that the problem is able to be solved.

Jim: 00:14:50

Believing that people often know things that they don't realize they know.

Jim: 00:14:55

We are very good as humans at disregarding or disrespecting our own knowledge and insight.

Jim: 00:15:03

And sometimes it takes others with us.

Jim: 00:15:06

And this is a part of key, part of generative leadership to help us to recognize that those ideas may bear fruit.

Jim: 00:15:16

They may be far more important than we realize, enabling us even to see those ideas and that insight, and then bring it to bear on the problem.

Jim: 00:15:25

So we access, we reframe our knowledge and access that knowledge as new ideas.

Jim: 00:15:33

If we feel safe to do so.

Jim: 00:15:35

and if there is a, often, if there's an external stimulus to help us do that.

Jim: 00:15:41

The idea that comes through in policy change that you only get changes in policy and practice if you get new people coming to the table, or you get an external factor that changes the thinking environment so that every people can't think as they used to.

Jim: 00:15:58

So you've gotta have that change instigator.

Jim: 00:16:01

And because you need freedom of thought and creativity going on, people have got to feel safe.

Jim: 00:16:09

We talk about empowered, but it is a much simpler level.

Jim: 00:16:13

It's that they are, they accept their own ideas, that others accept their ideas, and that they don't feel they're gonna get slapped if they come up with a suggestion.

Jim: 00:16:26

So how you create an environment in which one person's knowledge that they didn't think was useful matches with another person's question with another person's ability to see that the answer to the question is this bit of knowledge, that's so important to creating the right environment to enable change to happen.

Jim: 00:16:52

it's important to create an environment where it's okay to be passionate about things, and it's okay to bring emotion into it.

Jim: 00:17:00

a shared passion is a, a uniting and exciting thing.

Jim: 00:17:07

When part of the work around developing the solution for harder to place children in adoption was to bring together a network of adoption agencies who could deliver that service.

Jim: 00:17:24

And we brought together 18 who were prepared to stand together and, and do this together.

Jim: 00:17:31

You can only keep a group like that together, not really by logic, not really by contracts, but by a shared passion.

Jim: 00:17:41

And I remember when we were having the meetings with that group, getting them to work together, we would come back to one key point of, there's a group of children in our society, because they're a little bit older, over four years old, they've got a sibling, they've maybe got a disability, they are hugely disadvantaged and they don't end up with a parent.

Jim: 00:18:04

Hands up, anyone in the room who thinks that's fair, Hands up.

Jim: 00:18:08

Anyone in the room who wants to do something about it.

Jim: 00:18:11

Everyone's hand goes up.

Jim: 00:18:13

Okay, now we can get back on with it cuz we're getting back into that shared passion.

Jim: 00:18:19

We're gonna fix this.

Jim: 00:18:21

And you've gotta have that emotion engagement to be able to do it.

Julia: 00:18:25

I love what you just said there, Jim, cuz it's, it's that coming back to what problem are we really trying to solve?

Julia: 00:18:32

And the unlocking the emotional energy to then make decisions about how we go and solve that.

Julia: 00:18:37

It's that one uniting component piece.

Julia: 00:18:40

Is this decision gonna get more children that don't have parents?

Julia: 00:18:45

Is that what we are doing here?

Julia: 00:18:47

Is that is that what we're trying to achieve?

Jim: 00:18:49

in business problem solving, in social sector, service delivery, in, in so many of these areas, policy development we, we get strangled by the complexity and lose sight of what we are really here to do.

Jim: 00:19:05

That old adage about draining swamps full of alligators springs to mind.

Jim: 00:19:10

But often what we're trying to do here is simple and is good, and is right.

Jim: 00:19:19

And as humans, we naturally unite around those things.

Jim: 00:19:24

If somebody can show that it's not only good and right, but it's also possible, so often you've got your audience and your support around it.

Jim: 00:19:34

And so the leadership in it is, even if you don't have all the answers, to keep encouraging reframing the problem, and keep alive that belief that if we keep walking around this long enough and looking at it from different angles and take different people with us to look at it differently, we'll spot the crack in the problem that we can widen into an answer.

Julia: 00:19:56

I think so many, there's so many of the people listening to this, they're working on the world's biggest problems.

Julia: 00:20:02

You know, they're working on the world's to-do list.

Julia: 00:20:04

And, you know, I know certainly in my, a number of conversations that I have with people and our good friend Liam would also say is, you know, what is that why?

Julia: 00:20:14

What is that that you're actually passionate about?

Julia: 00:20:17

And that you know, that kind of personal momentum will get you so far.

Julia: 00:20:24

But actually having a simple way of framing what you're trying to do, why that's important, and how you can bring other people that it's also important to together is what unites the possibility of this, of this change.

Jim: 00:20:41

Yes.

Jim: 00:20:42

As you say, that to me, it's got me thinking about the communication.

Jim: 00:20:47

We're trying to get groups of people, hopefully diverse groups of people and I mean their diversity and experience as well as in cultural heritage and, and various other such points.

Jim: 00:21:00

Diversity of points of view.

Jim: 00:21:01

We're trying to get 'em to work together.

Jim: 00:21:03

And shared senses of justice, shared senses of fairness, shared senses of what should be better if we could get organized are good uniting points.

Jim: 00:21:16

But to avoid us getting dragged off into technical complexity and lost in the maze of all that.

Jim: 00:21:25

I've realized over many years that stories and storytelling are key to that.

Jim: 00:21:33

We all like stories.

Jim: 00:21:35

We like to hear about things that our friends have done, about new people that we've met, and their story and their journey.

Jim: 00:21:44

And stories bring to life social and environmental problems, successes.

Jim: 00:21:52

As we tell stories to somebody else rather than in a vacuum, and they challenge us and they umm and uh and they ask us questions, you didn't really did you?

Jim: 00:22:04

Oh, and how did that feel?

Jim: 00:22:05

And so on.

Jim: 00:22:05

And we, we re-export our stories and get further depth outta them.

Jim: 00:22:11

And in those stories and their intricacy and their delight, we can find answers more easily than often by technical processes.

Jim: 00:22:22

So in my professional work, in my work with clients, I use storytelling a lot.

Jim: 00:22:29

Use it in a research function, but also in a problem solving function.

Jim: 00:22:34

It not only, can the listener explore that story and maybe spot value and hidden solutions in it, but by the telling of the story.

Jim: 00:22:46

You reexamine it, you tell it slightly differently, you explore it, and you can often see the solution yourself.

Jim: 00:22:55

I like using good questions with people, with my colleagues, with my staff, with my clients.

Jim: 00:23:04

I like asking them things and listening to their answers.

Jim: 00:23:08

I like encouraging them to go on a journey of exploration and I find fascinating the different way people think, and the different way they come around to their answer, to their problem.

Jim: 00:23:24

So if I can use my questions to steer their journey through their thoughts, they will often come up with answers that I wouldn't have because I don't have their insights.

Jim: 00:23:37

And answers that they wouldn't find because they didn't realize they were there.

Jim: 00:23:41

But that's something in the Power of Good conversation, power of good questions, and it says something very important about leadership.

Jim: 00:23:52

Going beyond the, I enable my staff, my colleagues, to think, into the real how practicality of how you do it whilst helping them to inspire themselves that they've got an answer here.

Julia: 00:24:09

Yeah it's so much more powerful, isn't it, Jim, when people come up with their own solutions?

Julia: 00:24:15

Because they're inspired by them, they have energy behind them, they want to take them forward and that's where action starts happening.

Julia: 00:24:24

Whereas if I.

Julia: 00:24:26

tell you my idea, for changing something, it's kind of a bit mere for people,

Jim: 00:24:34

Yeah.

Jim: 00:24:35

Just jumping slightly sideways, but following that thought process, Sonnet, the organization that I run, and that is a it's a consultancy that is focused on helping organizations that want to create impact will help them scan the environment, work out what they could do, what's facing them, we'll help them plan what they're going to do about it strategically.

Jim: 00:25:00

We'll help them design interventions, design actions, and build business models, control and govern them.

Jim: 00:25:07

We'll help them resource them, we'll help them measure and improve.

Jim: 00:25:10

To enable us to do that, we realized, I realized early on, colleagues with me realized that we needed a diversity of skill and insight, and some more of it, to be able to make that work.

Jim: 00:25:24

We needed accountants, we needed corporate financiers, we needed economists, we needed social researchers, we needed those who understood domestic violence situations.

Jim: 00:25:34

We need those that understood arts and culture situations and so on and so on.

Jim: 00:25:39

And that really pulled us away from traditional structures of professional firms, to a pool of knowledge and understanding.

Jim: 00:25:48

And on different, depending on what project we are doing, different people are in the best place to be the hub of solving that problem.

Jim: 00:25:56

Picture a triangle with the boundaries held and kept safe by the directors.

Jim: 00:26:02

They make sure we've got enough money and we've got insurance and we've got all the infrastructure, but also that there is sensible and helpful interface with clients.

Jim: 00:26:11

Within that space, everyone can operate safely.

Jim: 00:26:15

As we get a new project in somebody, in that group of people is going to be the best person to lead it.

Jim: 00:26:22

They won't have all the knowledge for delivering it, but they may be the best person to make it happen.

Jim: 00:26:28

And they could be the most junior person in the team.

Jim: 00:26:30

They could be the most senior, or anything in between.

Jim: 00:26:33

They come to the center of the triangle, and they then look around the rest of the pool of people and they decide who they need to help do it.

Jim: 00:26:41

And they can get help from me or they can get help from somebody at their own level or somebody in between in terms of age and experience.

Jim: 00:26:51

But it's their still their responsibility for delivering the project.

Jim: 00:26:55

And the directors holding the safe space will help 'em to do that as needed.

Jim: 00:27:00

So you can end, if you accept that as a working method, you can end up with me at my agent experience working for reporting to, in effect on a project the new 21, 22 year old who's just come down from university, but who's responsible for delivering this particular project.

Jim: 00:27:20

And that's great because they are the best people to make it happen, and they know what support they need from me, and they can draw that in.

Jim: 00:27:28

That's scary for people who've grown up in a professional environment, which is very hierarchical.

Jim: 00:27:35

It is utterly liberating for getting good answers to challenges, to projects.

Jim: 00:27:43

And it's exciting if rather scary for less experienced members of the team, as they find somebody who's apparently got a lot more experience than them reporting to them in a project and supporting them on delivering their project.

Jim: 00:28:01

The leadership in that is to create a safe space and to make it clear by words and actions that this is okay, this is good, it can work, it's fine.

Jim: 00:28:13

Go for it.

Jim: 00:28:13

Let's see how it's done.

Jim: 00:28:15

And to let people work in that sort of environment you need to have good conversations going, not watching over their shoulder every five minutes, but an open communication that enables them to reach out for support, a responsiveness where everyone is committed to supporting everyone else on their projects when they need it, and a sense not of why should we do that?

Jim: 00:28:42

Justify that to me, but why not?

Jim: 00:28:48

I might not have thought of it, but why not?

Jim: 00:28:51

Is there any reason why we shouldn't, might be a good idea, which is liberating and interesting.

Julia: 00:29:00

And a very different way of leading

Jim: 00:29:04

it is.

Jim: 00:29:05

It is a different way of leading.

Jim: 00:29:07

And it doesn't take you away from the point that sometimes you need to make decisions and you meet, need to make decisions clearly and openly and decisively.

Jim: 00:29:20

And sometimes things need to happen and just be decided upon then and there.

Jim: 00:29:26

But if we're working in a community setting like that, like the one I've described, then I'm accountable in my decisions to everyone else who's working with me, just as they're accountable to me for their decisions and to each other.

Jim: 00:29:41

So that accountability within community is really important within that.

Jim: 00:29:48

I was thinking a little while ago about that point about accountability of decision making and it, it, it's easy to draw yourself towards the idea that I have to explain all my decisions if I'm accountable.

Jim: 00:30:02

No, you don't.

Jim: 00:30:03

Because some things are either dis things that people just genuinely don't need to know or are not interested in and others are that simply their decisions that have to be made.

Jim: 00:30:18

What I think is more important is to give people a narrative.

Jim: 00:30:24

And this is a, it's a phrase that comes up strongly in working therapeutically with children particularly that, go back to ideas of child development.

Jim: 00:30:37

When a mom or dad has a baby in arms they'll often chat to them constantly through, through the day.

Jim: 00:30:45

As the child is lying there in their cock gurgling, or as they're picking them up and carrying them round uh, they'll comment on the world, oh, I wonder what's outside.

Jim: 00:30:53

I wonder what Missy doing.

Jim: 00:30:55

I wonder what's going on here.

Jim: 00:30:57

And expressing in words their view of the world and their inquiry of the world.

Jim: 00:31:03

Whilst my staff really don't want me to be looking out the window and saying, I wonder what the business over there is doing, nevertheless, giving a narrative to them, to colleagues of what I'm thinking, what I'm puzzling over is really helpful.

Jim: 00:31:22

it models behaviors for them, behaviors of inquiry, behaviors of self challenge.

Jim: 00:31:29

It validates that it's okay to have self-doubt, to be puzzling over something, to not know the answer.

Jim: 00:31:38

And so it helps them to deal with their situation, the puzzles that are facing them.

Jim: 00:31:45

It also gives them useful messages as to what am I puzzling over?

Jim: 00:31:50

What am I trying to solve at the moment.

Jim: 00:31:53

I don't recommend doing that in telling them absolutely everything because we'd never get any work done.

Jim: 00:31:58

But a little bit, little bit of just commenting of it, of giving the narrative is really helpful and enables people to get engaged.

Jim: 00:32:10

We frequently at sonnet we'll do that on the, on our early morning check-in calls before we start the day, which built up when we were all working online.

Jim: 00:32:22

And now our hybrid working is still very useful.

Jim: 00:32:26

Where after we've talked about what we're each doing and what we're puzzling over and what help we need from others, we'll then just add a point on and here's something that's going on that I'm just thinking about this, or I've got to puzzle through this, that, and the other today.

Jim: 00:32:41

And I'm expecting over the next couple of weeks we're going to get to this sort solution.

Jim: 00:32:45

That's really useful.

Jim: 00:32:46

Gives them insight and it knows that things are being thought about if not necessarily solved yet.

Julia: 00:32:53

You've talked a lot about sort of child development, adoption, the care system, the impact that you are that you are creating.

Julia: 00:33:01

And it sounds like you've really learned a lot about human beings in that process, that we probably don't have time or justice to to do to it.

Julia: 00:33:10

But what are some of your insights about how the human mind works that has helped you have some of these realizations about how to solve problems, how to make change, how to create impact in the world?

Jim: 00:33:25

I was thinking as you were saying that about some of the other situations that we've considered.

Jim: 00:33:32

And one that particularly comes to mind was working with a with a global construction group that was keen to change the way they worked together, the way projects were scrutinized and challenged and the way they moved through systems as well.

Jim: 00:33:50

And that came a lot down as we analyzed it to mindsets and forms of interaction.

Jim: 00:33:57

And was down to how the human mind works.

Jim: 00:34:01

There's a very strong point within this that we, we have our own sense of reality, our sense of what is normal, our sense of what we expect, and that's we learn that through development and we keep learning that as life goes on.

Jim: 00:34:16

But we can end up trapped in a false reality by it.

Jim: 00:34:20

Because we constrained and narrow and refine our mindset to the point where it disjoints and is utterly unhelpful.

Jim: 00:34:27

So that organization had got into a situation of where it wasn't, everyone through the organization was reluctant to challenge other people.

Jim: 00:34:37

And so there was a lot that had happened that was not talked about.

Jim: 00:34:43

I've got a problem on this project.

Jim: 00:34:45

This one's going horribly wrong, and I don't know what to do with it.

Jim: 00:34:49

Are you getting in that situation?

Jim: 00:34:51

These were bits of narrative that just didn't happen because of people's mindsets.

Jim: 00:34:57

The human mind does get into those mindsets and does get into patterns of behavior, and creates its own reality, which is often a false reality.

Jim: 00:35:05

Another example of that, which certainly springs to mind.

Jim: 00:35:08

A number of years ago working on unpicking what had happened with a, an insolvency practitioner who had mismanaged his cases and had been stealing from them, essentially.

Jim: 00:35:25

He was subsequently convicted.

Jim: 00:35:27

And yet, He had convinced himself that he was managing them properly and that it wasn't stealing, it was taking fee payment in advance or borrowing or something, none of which was right.

Jim: 00:35:44

The money didn't get replaced, but he created his own reality, which justified it.

Jim: 00:35:50

So getting those fixed frames and fixed behaviors as a result is a real challenge that the human mind creates for us.

Jim: 00:35:59

And the two biggest blockers for good action in the business world, good action in the social sector in, in our private lives as well, I've come to believe are our own beliefs and our own framework as to what reality looks like.

Jim: 00:36:18

That can just block us off from doing anything remotely sensible if we're not careful.

Jim: 00:36:23

And the other factor is fear.

Jim: 00:36:25

And that can be fear of failure.

Jim: 00:36:29

It can be fear coming from factors outside.

Jim: 00:36:33

It can be fear coming from a sense of loss.

Jim: 00:36:37

It can be fear environments that are created as corporate cultures, which are caustic and just stifle good work and creativity and really drive value outta the door as fast as you can.

Jim: 00:36:52

So our belief system's very powerful fear, very powerful driver.

Jim: 00:36:58

Um, different people think differently.

Jim: 00:37:02

And that's okay.

Jim: 00:37:04

And what I mean here is not that they have different belief systems, although people clearly do, but that they think around a problem or think around a logical conclusion or find their way to, through a train of thought in a different direction.

Jim: 00:37:21

And if we can stop and listen, not just to the conclusion they've come to, but how they got there, we'll get a lot of learning and a lot of different insight.

Jim: 00:37:32

The human mind likes learning and I've seen that the people function much better if they are learning.

Jim: 00:37:43

So that may be structured learning, that may be doing further education or degree course or something, or it may be simply just challenging new problems, and finding new ways of solving them.

Jim: 00:37:56

That way of being around learning and the sense of there's more to know, there's more to ask, there's more, there could be a different way of doing it, gives us a wholly different mindset when we come to everyday problems and challenges.

Jim: 00:38:12

So that learning bit is really important.

Jim: 00:38:16

Human mind, we respond really well to a question.

Jim: 00:38:21

And a good question I've found may actually quite often be more powerful than a good answer.

Jim: 00:38:28

If one of my staff or one of my colleagues comes to me or a client comes to me, with a big wobble and they dunno what to do and they dunno how to solve this problem and it all looks too big and what have you, most of the time I would want to respond with a good question.

Jim: 00:38:45

And if I can follow that up with some other good questions and I can lead them around to the other side of the problem or to framing it differently or looking differently at what they already know, I will either get them to a point where they can spot their answer, in which case that's really powerful cuz they feel great cuz they've solved it and they feel it's good chat with me and they feel they can do stuff.

Jim: 00:39:10

Or I can get them to that point where I can see the final little bridge to get them to link up two things and make an answer.

Jim: 00:39:17

So, good question.

Jim: 00:39:19

Really powerful.

Jim: 00:39:20

We should ask questions mu much more than we should tell.

Jim: 00:39:23

And that really emphasizes the point that the human mind thrives on interaction.

Jim: 00:39:29

It thrives on new energy.

Jim: 00:39:32

It wants to create new links, new ideas and it loves conversation and interaction with others and with other situations.

Jim: 00:39:42

Final bit on the human mind is you can't just keep using and using and using it without putting some energy back into it, some nurture back into it.

Jim: 00:39:53

So if you are expecting mines to work well, they work best.

Jim: 00:39:59

In people whose wellbeing is maintained, who feel good, who are told they're good, who are admired, who are liked who feel safe.

Jim: 00:40:09

All these positive sort of things actually make great thinking happen.

Jim: 00:40:15

So never be afraid to give credit, never be afraid to mention people's achievements, however small they may be.

Jim: 00:40:24

It's empowering and makes the minds work even better.

Julia: 00:40:28

So I guess I would ask you the question of if you were someone that was starting out, wanting to create social change, wanting to make change in the world, what would be the question that you would ask that person in front of you?

Jim: 00:40:45

It's very hard to create positive social or environmental change.

Jim: 00:40:50

If you don't focus on something.

Jim: 00:40:54

Positive change is interchangeable with the idea of a need is met.

Jim: 00:40:59

Change is positive if it improves things for somebody.

Jim: 00:41:03

Ideally if it improves things for somebody and doesn't disadvantage someone else.

Jim: 00:41:08

So have a clear view of where the need lies.

Jim: 00:41:11

And understanding that need is nine tenths of the challenge, not inventing the answer of working out what you're going to do.

Jim: 00:41:23

One of the areas of work that I and colleagues at Sonnet are involved with is supporting the Enactus program, which works between, it's a global program actually working between universities, but we support on the UK one.

Jim: 00:41:40

Getting undergraduates to come together and use their various skills from their different departmental studies to solve environmental or social problems that need fixing and using entrepreneurial skill, inventiveness, careful risk taking, which is also important to make those permanent solutions for things.

Jim: 00:42:04

And one of the key areas of training that we do with them we, we run training programs on design and also on impact measurement for them.

Jim: 00:42:15

But on the design end of things, key thing, which they don't get without training is work out what the need really is.

Jim: 00:42:26

And then, rather than you assuming you know what it is from your wisdom, which may or may not be well founded, look at what's going on and listen well to the people who are there experiencing it.

Jim: 00:42:41

And you may get a different view.

Jim: 00:42:44

So understand the need, but understand it from the perspective of those experiencing it.

Jim: 00:42:50

Even if you then look in from the perspective of an outside stakeholder to see a wider reality around the situation that helps you to solve it.

Jim: 00:43:01

Then, and I spoke about this in talking about leading team, give the narrative.

Jim: 00:43:08

The greatest resource.

Jim: 00:43:09

I probably said this far too many times in my career to too many people.

Jim: 00:43:13

The greatest resource in delivering a service or product or whatever is the recipient of it, the customer in a business sense.

Jim: 00:43:25

The beneficiary, if you're delivering social services if you want to help someone outta their situation, their effort and energy is necessary to make it work, and you shouldn't be diving in and doing things to people to improve their lives.

Jim: 00:43:41

You should be doing it with them.

Jim: 00:43:43

So explaining what you're doing, explaining why you're doing it, why you think it's the right thing to do, and getting into a dialogue with them about whether it is and whether it works, that's so important.

Jim: 00:43:56

So don't just dive in and do things without a narrative, without speaking about it.

Jim: 00:44:04

And then as you're doing it, watch, look, listen, and keep that conversation going.

Jim: 00:44:10

Cause some of your assumptions genuine though they might have been well research though they might have been, may be wrong.

Jim: 00:44:16

or they may change.

Jim: 00:44:17

One of the things we've certainly learned since 2020 is that the world can look different tomorrow, and we all have to change the way we tackle things.

Jim: 00:44:27

So it could be different.

Jim: 00:44:29

You need to monitor what's going on, keep listening to the stories.

Jim: 00:44:35

I emphasize again, the stories of what's happening, not just data sets, and challenge yourself at intervals.

Jim: 00:44:42

Is this where I'd expected it to go?

Jim: 00:44:44

Is this what's needed?

Jim: 00:44:46

Is it still needed?

Jim: 00:44:47

What else is going on?

Jim: 00:44:48

So keep thinking, keep challenging.

Jim: 00:44:50

Don't just blindly do and chunter along and find you steamrollered over somebody's lives or sensibilities.

Jim: 00:44:58

Then the other thing that is important when you are doing this is to recognize that.

Jim: 00:45:05

if you've learned something from it, either that this didn't work, or hopefully this really did work and it's really great and people loved it, talk about it.

Jim: 00:45:16

It's really, really important to share your learning so that other one, others can do the same.

Jim: 00:45:24

And you are trying to do that in a couple of particular ways.

Jim: 00:45:27

You, you may do it, and this, this comes from the thought behind impact measurement.

Jim: 00:45:33

So having delivered something that's positive in impact terms, either you are going to want to lead others and enable them to do the same thing in different areas or different countries.

Jim: 00:45:45

It's a leadership role.

Jim: 00:45:46

Here's how you do it.

Jim: 00:45:47

Come on, come along and you do it too.

Jim: 00:45:50

Here's, here's how we can resource it.

Jim: 00:45:52

Or you want to influence people.

Jim: 00:45:55

And the influencing bit to me is just calling something out.

Jim: 00:46:00

This is what I've discovered.

Jim: 00:46:02

This is the reality.

Jim: 00:46:03

Did you know that?

Jim: 00:46:04

What do you make of that?

Jim: 00:46:05

And let people create their own change around it.

Jim: 00:46:10

A number of years ago we worked with a fantastic charity, step change death charity headquartered in leads but UK-wide who support families with problem debt.

Jim: 00:46:23

And they guide them and help them get their heads around it, help them work out what they can pay, various things like that.

Jim: 00:46:29

And the prime bit of the project was to understand is it creating permanent change?

Jim: 00:46:35

How is it done?

Jim: 00:46:35

What are the most effective bits?

Jim: 00:46:37

Some of these things that are really useful to know to establish effectiveness.

Jim: 00:46:42

But in doing that and putting financial values on the changes that were being achieved, we could ex extrapolate a minimum value of what problem debt was costing the UK economy annually, and it was 8.4 billion pounds a year, which makes a, a dent in any departmental budget in government terms.

Jim: 00:47:06

We just called out that fact together with the charity.

Jim: 00:47:09

Didn't say, and so government, you ought to be doing this or, and so, so and so, you ought to be doing that, but just called out the fact.

Jim: 00:47:18

There you go.

Jim: 00:47:19

That's absolute bare minimum.

Jim: 00:47:21

It's costing the UK economy at least 8.4 billion pounds a year.

Jim: 00:47:27

And we were on the Today program the next morning, which is probably the ultimate statement of whether you are saying something relevant.

Jim: 00:47:33

And within months, the Financial Conduct Authority had used that evidence to, together with the government's sitting back somewhat in horror at the cost, to lobby for legislation capping payday lending rates.

Jim: 00:47:55

It didn't solve the problem of payday lending and some of the challenges of it but it did make an important step towards it that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise if we hadn't recognized that by just telling publicly something, which is important, people should know, can itself create change.

Julia: 00:48:14

So Jim, you and I could talk for hours and and we have on many occasions.

Julia: 00:48:19

But just in terms of wrapping up our conversation today, how can people get in touch with you if they want to know more, and how can they find you?

Jim: 00:48:30

I would love them to get in touch with me.

Jim: 00:48:32

I'd love them to ask me for more information about what we're up to, but also I'd love to hear from them about their experiences of what's going on, because it's, as I've said, it's by listening to others, it's by answering their questions that we learn.

Jim: 00:48:53

And I'm an avid learner.

Jim: 00:48:55

You can follow me on LinkedIn.

Jim: 00:48:58

Jim Clifford fairly easy to find on link, LinkedIn and I do post thoughts and ideas of fairly regular intervals.

Jim: 00:49:06

You can come and visit Sonnet's website, Sonnet, S O double N E T, impact I M P A C T dot co dot uk uk.

Jim: 00:49:16

And do come and look at us there.

Jim: 00:49:19

And through the website, through LinkedIn.

Jim: 00:49:22

By email on the contact forms on the website, you can drop me a line, and we can have an at and that would be great.

Julia: 00:49:29

Thank you, Jim.

Julia: 00:49:30

It's been an absolute honor and pleasure spending time with you and, um, I look forward to continuing our story together,

Jim: 00:49:40

Thank you very much.

Jim: 00:49:41

Thank you, Julia.

Julia: 00:49:43

Wow.

Julia: 00:49:44

That conversation with Jim was just full of so much rich and deep wisdom that's been garnered over a lifetime of, of doing this work.

Julia: 00:49:57

What I took away from this conversation and Jim's wisdom with which he spoke so simply and elegantly about is that a problem is only a problem because of the way we look at it.

Julia: 00:50:13

When we can see round the other side of a problem, there's clarity, there's insight, and there's simplicity.

Julia: 00:50:22

But we get mired into the complexity of a problem, rather than looking at it from multiple different perspectives.

Julia: 00:50:31

People suffering the problem are usually the ones with the answers.

Julia: 00:50:36

They just do not know that they have them.

Julia: 00:50:39

I thought that was such a fascinating and interesting point that we make all these assumptions about how we should go about solving problems, how we should create solutions, and that actually, if we realized that the people who were suffering the problem, although they're suffering, they've also got this deep intelligence to be able to come up with the solutions and the answers.

Julia: 00:51:07

They just don't know.

Julia: 00:51:09

And I guess linked to that point is that the mind is designed to solve problems.

Julia: 00:51:16

The insight is always there.

Julia: 00:51:18

There's always the possibility of that happening.

Julia: 00:51:22

And if you really believe that, then you can find a solution to any seemingly impossible problem.

Julia: 00:51:32

The other point that really resonated with me is that really good questions, really simple questions, but really good questions lead to solutions.

Julia: 00:51:46

But the gap is in the listening and that ability to really listen to your own thoughts to.

Julia: 00:51:56

is going on inside your own head, but also in others is what sparks insight.

Julia: 00:52:04

It sparks realization, it sparks change, and in fact, it's the only place that change actually happens cuz it has to happen in the human mind before action can be taken to change a system or to change an organiz.

Julia: 00:52:22

And I found that really fascinating the way that Jim shared that on the call today.

Julia: 00:52:28

So if you've enjoyed this conversation and you've got something from it, share it with someone else that you think would benefit too.

Julia: 00:52:37

You can do that by going to generativeleaders.co, or wherever you find your podcasts.