Episode 1
The moment when everything changed
Julia and her guest have both had “aha!” moments, where steering a particular course of action no longer seemed viable in the face of a dramatically changing world.
Lorna Davis is a coach who co-creates spaces with her clients to explore how we’re really made. She shares her experiences of shifting perspectives and moving towards generative thinking, which took her from a global food brand to working one-to-one with people to help them discover their own insights.
Things to consider
- Solving problems can be fun.
- Change comes from insight.
Links
Transcript
Welcome to Generative Leaders, a series of conversations with leaders, generating
Speaker:positive outcomes for society, the planet, and future generations to inspire
Speaker:challenge and have fun with what's universally true of the human mind.
Speaker:I'm your host, Julia Rebholz and this week to help me I'm in
Speaker:conversation with Lorna Davis.
Speaker:And I'm really excited to have this conversation cuz it's with a
Speaker:dear, dear friend of mine who I've actually never met in person , but
Speaker:she's become such a great friend.
Speaker:And uh, it really showed me how that can happen in a, non-physical format.
Speaker:So Lorna tell people who you are today.
Speaker:Isn't it interesting your point about us being so close and never having met.
Speaker:and it's making me think about how we make up so many stories about
Speaker:what knowing people requires.
Speaker:and one of the gifts of COVID I think has been we've unintentionally broken
Speaker:a lot of those assumptions that, that we had to actually physically
Speaker:meet people before we knew them.
Speaker:And it's simply not true since we're all an invention anyway.
Speaker:It's interesting that you asked me to explain who I am because I'm
Speaker:noticing that I'm in the place today of, there's this great Joan Didian
Speaker:quote that says I've lost touch with a number of people that I used to be.
Speaker:And when I look at my resume or my CV, I think, wow, who is that person?
Speaker:And yet a lot of what I've spent my time doing has informed the way that
Speaker:I look at the world in all sorts of interesting and useful ways, as
Speaker:long as, as well as some not very interesting and not very useful ways.
Speaker:So today it makes sense to me to say that I am a coach of people who come across
Speaker:my path who feel good to work with.
Speaker:I am a director of a couple of boards BCorps.
Speaker:I'm passionate about business as of force for good and I like working
Speaker:on businesses that are trying to do something new and interesting.
Speaker:I speak, uh, to companies about the journey toward purpose, if you like.
Speaker:Some people find out about me from a Ted talk I did a few years ago
Speaker:on collaborative leadership, and while in some ways I look at that
Speaker:Ted talk and I think Hmm, wow.
Speaker:I know more about delegation than I do about collaboration.
Speaker:So that's been an interesting journey for me to notice how, uh, how full of
Speaker:shit I am, but I do speak to companies like I've got a couple speeches
Speaker:next week to talk to companies about how they might get on the journey.
Speaker:And the sort of the things that I do aside from that, which are those
Speaker:things are effectively revenue producing for me to pay my rent.
Speaker:But there are a couple of other things I do that actually cost me money.
Speaker:One of them is I'm totally passionate about rhinos, rhino conservation,
Speaker:and so I spend a lot of time trying to transform that system that causes
Speaker:so many rhinos to be slaughtered.
Speaker:And I am very interested in indigenous wisdom and what indigenous elders
Speaker:have to teach us in the Western world.
Speaker:Through these conversations we've been exploring the question of,
Speaker:business being a force for good.
Speaker:And you mentioned that you are really trying to get people on that journey.
Speaker:And it's, we talk about, businesses as if they're an entity, but really
Speaker:they're groups of, people that come together to do something.
Speaker:And so what do you see about people that are starting to go on the journey
Speaker:of using business as a force for good?
Speaker:and, and what does that look like to.
Speaker:People are remarkable.
Speaker:We, humans are remarkable.
Speaker:we are so wise.
Speaker:given how the world looks to us.
Speaker:So we are wise within the context of what makes sense to us and when people
Speaker:who are leading businesses and given that I led businesses for more than
Speaker:20 years, I'm particularly interested in people who lead businesses and, big
Speaker:and powerful ones because they have the opportunity to make a difference.
Speaker:When people think that their business is a separate little isolated entity that
Speaker:doesn't have anything to do with anything else, that is captured in a PNL and a
Speaker:balance sheet, and that the humans that work in it are called FTEs or full-time
Speaker:equivalents, and when they see the resources of the planet that they use to
Speaker:produce whatever they produce as lines on a P and L they do a whole bunch of things
Speaker:that make sense to them in that context.
Speaker:And I understand it.
Speaker:I did it myself for many years.
Speaker:But when they see the truth, which is that they're not
Speaker:separate and we are not separate.
Speaker:That the financial results of a business are a tiny little slice of a made up
Speaker:accounting system that says nothing about the actual health of a business, that the
Speaker:people who work in their organization are not FTEs, they're actual humans, that the
Speaker:resources that they have the privilege of using from the planet to convert into
Speaker:whatever goods and services they produce need to be replenished and regenerated
Speaker:in some way for us all to have a healthy future, they do different things, cuz
Speaker:different things make sense to them.
Speaker:And so basically it's it's really simple.
Speaker:When you see things differently, you do things differently.
Speaker:And the thing that's amazing about humans, the thing that's wonderful about humans
Speaker:is that's all we are is we just create our world moment by moment by moment,
Speaker:depending on our thinking and the moment.
Speaker:And so when we see that as individuals, everything changes.
Speaker:so the reason that I am particularly focused on the individuals in businesses
Speaker:and particularly in big business is just cuz that's where I have resonance.
Speaker:That's where I relate.
Speaker:And so when I'm speaking to somebody who is trying to see things in
Speaker:a new way, it's kind of helpful for me to have seen some similar
Speaker:things, but it's not a requirement.
Speaker:Well, I got goosebumps when you were just talking about that because it, it was so
Speaker:resonant with me about that moment that I had working in a corporate environment
Speaker:and just being hit round the face with what our company was doing to the planet.
Speaker:And I, I remember that moment so vividly and it was like, one moment the world
Speaker:looked one way and then the next moment the world looked completely differently.
Speaker:So it sounds like that happened to you.
Speaker:too.
Speaker:Do you remember it?
Speaker:No, I'm so intrigued that yours was an actual moment.
Speaker:And I, I wanna know, can you tell me what happened in that moment?
Speaker:Yeah, I, I remember I was the head of strategy for a very large energy company
Speaker:and, uh, I was working in north America.
Speaker:and was working on a sort of, you know, strategy piece around,
Speaker:you know, how, how could we get more customers into our books.
Speaker:And um, I remember looking at all of the data and just having this,
Speaker:blinding insight was that we were losing all these customers, and
Speaker:then we were having to spend a load of money on getting new customers.
Speaker:And I was like, well, why don't we focus all of our time and
Speaker:attention on actually keeping the customers that we've already got?
Speaker:Wouldn't that be an interesting strategy?
Speaker:And why did we never think about this before?
Speaker:And then I started to look at all of the energy demand that our customers
Speaker:would have if we kept them all.
Speaker:And I realized that we had a huge, huge energy supply problem and that
Speaker:there wasn't going to be enough gas in the gas fields that we had access to.
Speaker:And then when I started to look into that, I realized there wasn't
Speaker:gonna be enough gas for everyone.
Speaker:You know, Not just our company, but everybody's company.
Speaker:Because the demand was just going through the roof.
Speaker:And then I started to look at how many years left did we
Speaker:have of gas as a human species?
Speaker:and it was about 60 years.
Speaker:And then I looked at, well, how many harvests do we have left?
Speaker:And it's about 60 now, and it was about 80 then.
Speaker:And I was like, holy fuck.
Speaker:We're on a trajectory to not be able to heat ourselves, cool
Speaker:ourselves or feed ourselves.
Speaker:We gotta do something dramatically different.
Speaker:And if we don't start now, we are gonna run out of time.
Speaker:And it was, it was like being punched in the face
Speaker:And it was a day?
Speaker:And it was a day.
Speaker:All of the, all of what I just said to you happened.
Speaker:I started looking at the numbers, I think around two o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker:And by four 30, I had that realization.
Speaker:Because my mind started to put dots together, and I started to ask
Speaker:questions I'd never asked before.
Speaker:And that was the conclusion.
Speaker:And then it was a case of, well, who do you tell?
Speaker:And in what manner do you tell them?
Speaker:It's like that film Don't Look Up
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:having watched that film, it very much felt like that
Speaker:so, so what were the.
Speaker:What were the personal implications?
Speaker:I mean, when you saw that, did you think, well, what about me?
Speaker:What about my family?
Speaker:I mean, what about my job?
Speaker:Like how, where were you in all of this?
Speaker:It was really interesting because I actually didn't feature.
Speaker:It sort of wasn't about me.
Speaker:It just was a realization that this was about the 7 billion other
Speaker:people that were on the planet.
Speaker:And as a company executive stewarding a very large organization that had
Speaker:responsibility for 30,000 people and touched the lives of, 30 million
Speaker:people, we could help, we could do something, you know, what could we do?
Speaker:And then, And then it sort of, you know, very quickly went from despair to, well,
Speaker:wow, this is a real opportunity for us to inspire and really make a difference.
Speaker:And we sort of pivoted to making our purpose about making a positive
Speaker:difference in people's lives.
Speaker:And that was sort of the journey.
Speaker:And then I, I decided that, for me, it was important to, to take the rest of the
Speaker:company on that journey and sort of take on sustainable business with our CEO.
Speaker:So it was that series of conversations to sort of share with people.
Speaker:This is what I've realized.
Speaker:What are you seeing about that?
Speaker:What do you know about that?
Speaker:What do you realize about that?
Speaker:And um, I remember um, going and interviewing all of my board's children
Speaker:and having that idea to do that because it might help for them to see
Speaker:how things, how their children see.
Speaker:It's a fabulous story and so different from mine.
Speaker:Because I think in retrospect, I was so unable to reimagine my own role in
Speaker:life that I batted away a lot of data.
Speaker:But it gradually it was like a car getting clogged and clogged and clogged.
Speaker:And so eventually it just gives up.
Speaker:And for me it was tiny things.
Speaker:And I can remember for ti, small things, but I can remember a few of them.
Speaker:One of them is I was, a similar calculation to yours.
Speaker:I was in China.
Speaker:I was living in Shanghai and I, went to go on a road that I had gone on quite often
Speaker:before and the whole road had disappeared.
Speaker:Like sometimes in Shanghai it felt like Martians came down overnight
Speaker:and just did stuff, it was so quick.
Speaker:And I saw that they had redirected the whole motorway in another direction,
Speaker:which was a huge infrastructure project that had happened in, in, in weeks.
Speaker:And I remember the calculation of a billion Chinese getting the cars
Speaker:that they needed, that the number of cars per household and how many that
Speaker:would mean and how much highway people would need, if that was gonna happen.
Speaker:And I remember the calculation blowing my mind, but putting it
Speaker:away and carrying on with my day.
Speaker:So that was kind of the intellectual level.
Speaker:If you like, then I remember my stepson who was living with us in Shanghai, and
Speaker:at that time I was working for Mandel Lee and I was committed to making Oreos
Speaker:the biggest cookie brand in China and was doing a good job by the way of converting
Speaker:people to Oreo land, including teaching people, how to twist, lick and dunk.
Speaker:And my stepson who was about 14 came to me and said, you know, I'm really
Speaker:ashamed of what you do for a living.
Speaker:And I said, what do you mean?
Speaker:And he said, well, you're just making Chinese people fat, you and I remember
Speaker:being a smart ass and saying, well, listen kid, it's, that's the money
Speaker:that's paying for your fancy school and your little scooter that you
Speaker:wanted and those really nice shoes you're wearing, because I couldn't let
Speaker:that in, but it, it came in anywhere.
Speaker:I couldn't let that in through my intellect that it came in.
Speaker:And then another experience that comes to mind, I was visiting.
Speaker:I was now running the north American Danone business, and I was, uh,
Speaker:visiting one of our big dairy farms.
Speaker:And I was standing there, with the farmer and we were in the kind of
Speaker:nursery where the babies are with cows, give birth and the cow gave birth and
Speaker:she licked the calf dry, and then she walked away and the farmer said to
Speaker:me, yeah, this is an excellent cow.
Speaker:And I said, what makes her excellent?
Speaker:And he said, well, she cares enough to lick the cow dry, the baby dry, but
Speaker:she doesn't care enough to stay and complain when we take the baby away.
Speaker:And another part of me died.
Speaker:And so it was like, there were these little parts of me that got
Speaker:killed off until at some point I just sort of slid to my knees.
Speaker:I didn't fall to my knees on a Wednesday afternoon like you did.
Speaker:I just slowly slid to my knees, uh, to where I am right now.
Speaker:And I think what's important about the contrast in our two stories is
Speaker:I think, it comes to us differently depending on where we are.
Speaker:And I was just so invested in my sort of status and social position and practical,
Speaker:financial position and so on, that I just didn't want to let that stuff in.
Speaker:And now, I mean, I let all of that in and it breaks my heart each time.
Speaker:Each of those facts break my heart a little bit more.
Speaker:And um, I think getting our hearts broken is the only appropriate thing
Speaker:It's like our good friend Lorna Um, Jspry says, is almost like you gotta
Speaker:burn down all of those heartbreaks in order to, to see something new.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I do think that all of our hearts break at slightly different places and
Speaker:I'm, I must say, I must give credit to Glennon Doyle for this sort of
Speaker:notion because she's the one who talks about acting where your heart breaks.
Speaker:So for some of us, it's the environment.
Speaker:For some of us, it's animal welfare.
Speaker:For some of us it's child slavery.
Speaker:And for all of us, there are many things that happen in the world
Speaker:that are worthy of heartbreak, but they happen to not break our
Speaker:particular heart for whatever reason.
Speaker:And I think that's a really great kind of guide.
Speaker:So for example, rhinos, I was at a dinner a couple weeks back and I
Speaker:said something about rhinos and a woman said, but isn't it too late?
Speaker:I mean, they're all gone anyway.
Speaker:And I tell you I wanted to punch her, man.
Speaker:I dunno how I stopped myself from, because simultaneously my heart was breaking and
Speaker:I was so angry that she had given up.
Speaker:And of course there was enough about that statement that was sort of
Speaker:borderline true, that it really hurt me.
Speaker:And I am not giving up.
Speaker:And I accept that almost all of the people listening to this
Speaker:podcast are gonna be saying rhinos?
Speaker:Why rhinos?
Speaker:Well, I don't know.
Speaker:I don't have to explain myself to anybody.
Speaker:They're my being, they're my species.
Speaker:And we all need to be acting wherever our particular place is that the place that
Speaker:fuels us, that nourishes us, that warms us, intrigues us, inspires us, whatever.
Speaker:I, I love what you're saying, cuz it's, recognizing that we are all unique.
Speaker:You know, we're having a unique experience of life and whatever insight and
Speaker:realization we've had that's brought us to wherever we are, it's intelligent, right?
Speaker:It's intelligent and it's having us act and lead and point in a space that most
Speaker:brings out our own unique capacities.
Speaker:and I think what's really powerful about the point you make, and the point
Speaker:about intelligence is that there's this beautiful dance between the fact that
Speaker:all of us are made exactly the same way.
Speaker:The way that humans work is the same.
Speaker:That we create our experience in the moment through our
Speaker:thinking that we live inside of.
Speaker:And that we are all part of this extraordinary universal intelligence
Speaker:that's holding this whole system together.
Speaker:This is, part of why you and I can be in love with each other and
Speaker:never have actually seen each other.
Speaker:So this is how we are all, I mean in real life.
Speaker:So, so this is true for all of us.
Speaker:And so it's actually impersonal structurally impersonal.
Speaker:But the way that it shows up is deeply, profoundly personal in each of us.
Speaker:And so as we kind of go backwards and forwards, what I notice is the power
Speaker:of like really experiencing, I mean, I can't talk about rhinos without crying.
Speaker:This is me human Lorna in this body right now.
Speaker:That particular experience brings me to tears.
Speaker:And I am fully aware of the fact that it is my thought in the moment
Speaker:that's creating that experience for me, and that your thought in the
Speaker:moment is creating your experience.
Speaker:And I can hold both of those.
Speaker:I know both of those things are true.
Speaker:And so it allows me to be fully in all of it.
Speaker:Sometimes understanding the miracle of the design and other times weeping
Speaker:into my pillow about rhinos, fully.
Speaker:So, yeah, it's amazing, amazing thing this.
Speaker:Yeah, is, it is an amazing thing.
Speaker:And I, you know, I'd love for the rest of our conversation to sort of focus
Speaker:on that because, I think you know, we both come to the realization as
Speaker:coaches, as leaders, that if things are really gonna change, it's people having
Speaker:those insights and those realizations.
Speaker:And understanding that dance between the way all human beings
Speaker:work and our personal experience.
Speaker:To me, it looks like the key, but I'd love to hear your, take on that.
Speaker:Like how does really understanding how humans work, how the mind works
Speaker:universally for people is so important to regenerating what needs to happen in this
Speaker:world for humans to continue to thrive?
Speaker:Well, you know, understanding how we are made changes everything, because it gives
Speaker:us freedom at the personal level that I don't think's available to us if we don't
Speaker:understand how it's made, because we get so caught up in our thinking in the
Speaker:moment that we think that that's real.
Speaker:And that we are effectively trapped inside that thinking.
Speaker:So I'll give you an example because at a conceptual level, this is
Speaker:very quickly people phase out.
Speaker:So I went for my annual mammogram this week, earlier this week.
Speaker:Now all of the women on everybody knows that's what people are supposed to do.
Speaker:And every year I go along and every year I have thinking about that, I
Speaker:have practical thinking about that as in, I don't really like the process.
Speaker:I don't like what happens when you have a mammogram, I feel
Speaker:uncomfortable and it's not really fun.
Speaker:And every year I have some thinking that this might be the
Speaker:year that they find something.
Speaker:And I have a lot of information that would reinforce the points, the
Speaker:statistics, and all of the stories.
Speaker:But I know that that's how we work.
Speaker:So the thing comes up in my schedule.
Speaker:I plan it.
Speaker:The thought occurs to me, oh God, I'm gonna have to go and
Speaker:get squashed into that machine.
Speaker:And I think, ah, I don't need to think about that for one more time because it's
Speaker:gonna happen, but it's not happening now.
Speaker:It's gonna happen when I get to that place.
Speaker:And when I get to that place, it's gonna take five minutes
Speaker:and then it's gonna be done.
Speaker:And so that frees, that freed up my thinking to do other things.
Speaker:And then the day occurred.
Speaker:I went, I did the thing.
Speaker:And then as I walked out, the thought occurred to me maybe it's the time.
Speaker:This is the time they'll catch some, they'll find something.
Speaker:And I thought, yes, because this is how it works.
Speaker:That thought is gonna cross my mind.
Speaker:There is nothing to be done.
Speaker:They will send me an email and either they will have found something or they
Speaker:will not, but there's nothing to be done because that email has not yet come.
Speaker:And so then I was free to go about my day.
Speaker:Now, there was a time when I didn't know that that's how it worked.
Speaker:And so I would have thought about the discomfort for over and over and over
Speaker:and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
Speaker:and over in the, in the lead app.
Speaker:And then I would've thought about all the gassy scenarios that could
Speaker:have happened over and over and over and over and over in the, in the
Speaker:aftermath, by the way, I'm clear again.
Speaker:But when I think about the extra capacity that I have had to dedicate to the people
Speaker:and the causes that I love in my life this week, because I didn't spend all that
Speaker:time thinking about imaginary scenarios.
Speaker:I think that's pretty damn cool.
Speaker:And freeing.
Speaker:Completely.
Speaker:So it's the understanding that that's how we work that allows that new freedom
Speaker:of intervention in that thinking and that, and of course, in some cases it
Speaker:works the same in some cases, different.
Speaker:In some cases we get caught for a lot longer in some
Speaker:cases get caught for shorter.
Speaker:But I know even in the depths of a bad feeling that it'll pass
Speaker:and I didn't know that before.
Speaker:And so because of that, I can fully give myself to whatever it is that occurs to
Speaker:me, including the weeping, the anger, all of the things that we experience.
Speaker:You know, there was a time when I wouldn't cry because I was afraid that I would
Speaker:cry for the rest of my life if I started.
Speaker:Well, I know that now that even if I try my hardest, I can't cry
Speaker:longer than five or 10 minutes.
Speaker:Kind of gets boring and it's sort of, I run out of tears and the thought's passed.
Speaker:But sometimes those five or 10 minutes are very, very, very intense
Speaker:and they have their own beauty.
Speaker:And so the understanding of that changes everything.
Speaker:It changes the speed with which we react to things.
Speaker:Just before this conversation, you and I had a conversation that I was destabilized
Speaker:by, and I said to you, oh, man.
Speaker:I got, I made, I had a lot of thinking about this conversation
Speaker:we just had and I'm a bit off balance, I thought huh, and I had a
Speaker:slightly tense feeling in my tummy.
Speaker:It occurred to me to tell you that that was what was, think what I was thinking.
Speaker:It occurred to me to take a couple deep breaths and here I am fresh.
Speaker:Now there was a time when I wouldn't have recognized that that was thinking.
Speaker:I would have thought it was you.
Speaker:I would've made up even more stories about what you said versus what I said.
Speaker:Then I would've made up stories about how I reacted, what I thought you said.
Speaker:And then I would've been off.
Speaker:Now.
Speaker:It's like it passes like this.
Speaker:So I guess freedom is the best way to describe it for me.
Speaker:Freedom in the moment and, and creativity that comes out of that freedom.
Speaker:Creativity to solve the problems that face us today.
Speaker:The real things that we want to be up to, rather than me spending the whole
Speaker:week worrying about a possible mammogram result, I've been able to do a bunch of
Speaker:other really interesting things this week.
Speaker:so you, you have a new client that comes to you and says, yeah, Lorin,
Speaker:I've started to have these thoughts that, maybe the world isn't kind
Speaker:of going in the right direction.
Speaker:You know, I'm hearing on the news that, climate change is now a real
Speaker:thing that we kind of need to pay attention to and that people are gonna
Speaker:be displaced by this climate change.
Speaker:There's not enough water.
Speaker:There's maybe not gonna be enough food.
Speaker:There's all these things.
Speaker:And I, and I'm worried.
Speaker:, but I also am wondering, how do I help people in my organization see that?
Speaker:How do I start to, maybe think about the organization in a different way.
Speaker:How would you coach someone through that
Speaker:That happens to me a lot, actually.
Speaker:I know it does.
Speaker:And, and I know that you and I have talked about it a lot together.
Speaker:So, um, it is really great to hear, cuz I'm, I'm guessing that
Speaker:lots of people who are listening are, they're up against this,
Speaker:So I, I mean, I think we start with, I'm always starting with the
Speaker:human that's in front of me, right?
Speaker:This person.
Speaker:And my first question always is, does this person know where
Speaker:her experience comes from?
Speaker:How does she think she is experiencing the world?
Speaker:And much of the time people think that their experience is either coming from
Speaker:the outside, like real things, the world, you, me, my boss, whatever, my husband,
Speaker:my kids, whatever, or their own broken thinking, their own kind of conditioning.
Speaker:So, uh, uh, let me explain that another way.
Speaker:What I've noticed a pattern in some of my clients is, and it's
Speaker:certainly been true for me is.
Speaker:once it dawns on us that the, our experience is not coming from the outside,
Speaker:because there's enough variability in that experience, and there's enough,
Speaker:we've become aware of the fact that we can't control the outside, and
Speaker:sometimes we get the thing we thought we wanted, and then we didn't feel
Speaker:the way we thought we would feel.
Speaker:So the outside starts to look a bit, we get suspicious.
Speaker:So often the second place people go is their own makeup.
Speaker:So they say things like, well, I must have been broken somewhere.
Speaker:I, something must have gone wrong with me before, before that's,
Speaker:I've gotta go back and fix.
Speaker:I've gotta kind of go at have therapy and discuss my relationship
Speaker:with my mother and all that.
Speaker:And while there's lots of useful things to, to see about, our conditioning, we are
Speaker:magnificent and perfect, like right now.
Speaker:So I'm interested to see how people see their life, how they see their experience.
Speaker:And if it occurs to me that they think it's either outside or in
Speaker:their past, we spend a lot of time working out, discussing how we
Speaker:really do create our experience.
Speaker:So that's kind of our first place to go once we really see how humans
Speaker:create their experience, and once we have some of this freedom that
Speaker:I was talking about before, it's remarkable how much new thought, fresh
Speaker:thinking, new creativity has space now.
Speaker:Because now we are not in trying to fix an apparent problem from the outside.
Speaker:We are not trying to fix an apparent problem from our past.
Speaker:We're now genuinely curious about this moment and what might be
Speaker:available to us in this moment.
Speaker:And once we're in that place, I mean, I just finished with a client.
Speaker:So this particular client started off with an intention of a particular
Speaker:kind of company that she wanted to run, and got sidetracked servicing a
Speaker:client that didn't, wasn't consistent with what she was trying to achieve.
Speaker:And so it occurred to her that this didn't make sense anymore.
Speaker:And so she actually fired that client and halved the size of her
Speaker:business and reoriented it in the direction that she wants to go in.
Speaker:And today's conversation was.
Speaker:How am I going to, create my new job now?
Speaker:Like, where am I gonna spend my time?
Speaker:And it was a beautiful, creative, thoughtful generative conversation
Speaker:about how she spends her time.
Speaker:And that's available to her because she understands how much freedom
Speaker:she has, which she didn't understand when she thought she was trapped
Speaker:in needing to pay the bills with a client that didn't meet her needs.
Speaker:So what I notice is that once people really, really see how we're made,
Speaker:it's just one creative solution after the other, that comes their way.
Speaker:And I, you know, we can't predict what that's gonna be in any one particular comp
Speaker:company in any one particular situation.
Speaker:because it happens.
Speaker:The wisdom happens in
Speaker:And so, you know, kind of using maybe some slightly different words, but what
Speaker:I'm hear you hearing you say is that when leaders get caught up in a whole bunch
Speaker:of thinking this either to do with them or to do with things that the company
Speaker:has, has to do or should do, or must do, that it limits the amount of intelligence
Speaker:that's available to that particular leader or group of leaders and, that by
Speaker:recognizing that and seeing that, because it's so insidious, you know, we just
Speaker:don't, it's like, we don't see all of the limits that we put inside ourselves.
Speaker:Like the company has to make a certain profit level or you know, or it has to
Speaker:be seen a, a certain way, or it has to do a certain thing or, that actually that
Speaker:kind of like, it makes everybody stupid.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, that's one way of saying it.
Speaker:I, it, the way it looks to me is it clogs the pipe, You know?
Speaker:so it's like, like if a pipe is clogged this not, there's almost no
Speaker:space for anything to come through.
Speaker:And so I think we start to get a feel for it.
Speaker:There are certain areas of our businesses that feel free.
Speaker:The water of creativity is flowing smoothly and that's easy and
Speaker:there's new things happening.
Speaker:And people are enjoying their work and things are going well.
Speaker:And then there are other areas where it just feels like, oh my
Speaker:gosh, this is just not working.
Speaker:And all that's telling you is that there's some unrecognized
Speaker:thinking that's blocking the pipe.
Speaker:As you say, there's some limits that we put on ourselves.
Speaker:There's some invisible jails that we are sitting inside of.
Speaker:And you don't need to go looking for them.
Speaker:Just noticing that sort of soggy feeling, that heavy feeling is
Speaker:an indication of some unhelpful thinking, it unblocks by itself.
Speaker:A lot of the time, uh, it's remarkable, really, you know,
Speaker:So in that situation, leaders being able to spot the areas of
Speaker:their businesses where things are not flowing, not creative, feel
Speaker:heavy, feel difficult, I mean, all businesses have dashboards, don't they?
Speaker:You and I had KPI dashboards coming out of our ears.
Speaker:But for me, what I'm noticing now is that, you know, as a leader, having
Speaker:that feeling dashboard, you know, almost kind of going through each area of the
Speaker:business and saying, well, how does this feel really gives you an indication
Speaker:of, what's flowing, what's not flowing.
Speaker:And if it's not flowing, as you said, it's the, what are all the things that we
Speaker:are thinking that might be blocking the pipe of, of intelligent creative access?
Speaker:And what's so interesting that you say this, Julia, cuz this morning
Speaker:I was being briefed on a sort of presentation that I need to give to
Speaker:a board of a big company next week.
Speaker:And the person doing the briefing was explaining the situation of the company.
Speaker:And I was listening to the words, but I could feel that I wasn't,
Speaker:like there was a sort of an unease in me as I was listening to her.
Speaker:And I, realized that there was something that she wasn't saying
Speaker:it like the thought occurred to me.
Speaker:There is something that she's not saying.
Speaker:And as soon as that thought occurred to me, it occurred to me to sort of
Speaker:start to look at that like, look there.
Speaker:What is she not saying?
Speaker:Not what is she saying?
Speaker:What's she not saying?
Speaker:And then it occurred to me, like a question came out of my mouth about the
Speaker:secrets that this company is keeping, that they are determined to keep a particular
Speaker:piece of information, not public.
Speaker:And then, and actually in reflection, now that I'm saying it at the very beginning,
Speaker:she made a big deal out of that she had special permission to tell me something.
Speaker:So then I said to her, it occurred to me and this is important to say it
Speaker:occurred to me because the pipe unblocked at that moment, I felt the discomfort.
Speaker:I noticed the discomfort.
Speaker:The thought occurred to me.
Speaker:There's something she's not saying.
Speaker:And then it's like a gush of new thinking came to me and I said, what would
Speaker:they do if everybody knew this fact?
Speaker:And everything in the conversation changed.
Speaker:Cuz she could see that was the, that was a really important question.
Speaker:And she, and I could also see that it wasn't gonna take long for
Speaker:other people to know this fact.
Speaker:And so that's kind of how I'm noticing it works a lot.
Speaker:That there's a feeling once the feeling is acknowledged that there's
Speaker:something that's not flowing well, then the blockage unblocks itself.
Speaker:Now I'm really curious about the conversation that we're gonna have
Speaker:next week, because that actually is gonna be the foundation of that
Speaker:conversation with that board is let's assume that everybody knows this one
Speaker:fact that you've been trying to hide.
Speaker:And it's such fun, right?
Speaker:The thing goes from, oh my God, this is a secret we've gotta keep to ooh now what?
Speaker:And in that expansiveness solutions occur, new ideas come.
Speaker:It's, what you're sharing is it's so deeply practical in being able to attend
Speaker:to all the things we need to attend to.
Speaker:Cuz sometimes people can feel like I've gotta deal with this and I've got this and
Speaker:I've got this and I've got the other and then there's that overwhelming feeling.
Speaker:And I love what you're saying because it's like that overwhelming feeling is a
Speaker:moment to just see all of this thinking that you are creating in this moment.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, overwhelming is a great dashboard light, I get overwhelmed.
Speaker:I mean, I now like overwhelm because that's like but I, it just means that I've
Speaker:got like some major thinking about it.
Speaker:But what, I have noticed because of how we are made, because I mean, it's such
Speaker:a genius design this thing called being human is that I used to think overwhelming
Speaker:was just, well, that's how life was.
Speaker:I was always overwhelmed.
Speaker:And I had to kind of fight through it all.
Speaker:Then I started to get this understanding and I was like, uh,
Speaker:okay, overwhelmed means that I've got a lot of thinking about something.
Speaker:And then I kind of in a way, I mean, I couldn't help myself.
Speaker:I then tried to go after what that thinking was like what is
Speaker:it that's making me overwhelmed?
Speaker:And then that would make me even more overwhelmed.
Speaker:Cause now I've like laid another job on my, my little personal self right?
Speaker:Now I go, oh, I'm overwhelmed.
Speaker:Oh, back off, wisdom needs some space to sort this out and then do something else.
Speaker:Or something.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:It depends, but oftentimes it's just like, like don't make
Speaker:any big decisions on this one.
Speaker:Don't make any decisions at all on this one because I'm overwhelmed.
Speaker:And then something new occurs to me.
Speaker:And then off I go, you know, with the different feeling.
Speaker:And would you say that if we come back again to kind of business leaders who
Speaker:are trying to make decisions about things that are a long way in the future,
Speaker:what does that look like to you now?
Speaker:Like, you know, if you could imagine yourself being back in the
Speaker:place of business leader, kind of having to make decisions on things,
Speaker:what would you advise people?
Speaker:Well, what I wouldn't advise them.
Speaker:I would just remind them that's, that this sort of dance between
Speaker:the long term and the short term is what humans do and have always done.
Speaker:You know, one of the reasons I love business is that business people are
Speaker:constantly thinking about the short term and the long term and, sort of, I, I, I
Speaker:use the word dance rather than navigate cuz that's kind of how it feels to me.
Speaker:But I also use parenting as a metaphor a lot, even though I'm
Speaker:not a parent, because most of the adults that I deal with are parents.
Speaker:And parenting is the ultimate long term short-term dance.
Speaker:Every parent is constantly going, you know, should I, you know, let
Speaker:him go out with his friends tonight or should I make him study because
Speaker:of the long term short term thing?
Speaker:I mean that's, and it's not a perfect science.
Speaker:Because we are not supposed to be perfect scientists, we're humans.
Speaker:And so we go day by day, moment by moment issue by issue.
Speaker:So I would remind, I remind people that's who we are.
Speaker:We're made for this.
Speaker:So, so chill.
Speaker:That's one thing.
Speaker:The second thing I, I notice a lot as I'm speaking about it
Speaker:is one of the big illusions in business, I think is about time.
Speaker:So we'll do stuff like we'll write this strategic plan, three year, five year,
Speaker:10 year, 30 year doesn't really matter.
Speaker:And then we have this illusion that that's done now.
Speaker:And well, I mean, first of all, I've gotta get it right.
Speaker:Whatever right.
Speaker:Is, and then I'm putting that away forever.
Speaker:Well, until next year.
Speaker:All of that's made up really.
Speaker:I mean, there are, sometimes you have to have, uh, decisions about investments
Speaker:or commitments, finance resource allocation is really what causes us
Speaker:to make decisions for the future.
Speaker:But we shift those much more frequently than we think we do.
Speaker:So we will deploy an asset or we will buy a piece of capital or we will
Speaker:invest in something or the other.
Speaker:And oftentimes it gets repurposed or shifted, or we
Speaker:change our minds or whatever.
Speaker:And it's not nearly as heavy a decision as we think it is.
Speaker:And so I think it's quite useful to point that out.
Speaker:Because we make these things called businesses, so real don't we?
Speaker:Hilarious and yeah.
Speaker:And it's like the world's changing all the time.
Speaker:We're getting new information, new data.
Speaker:We're starting to see things differently.
Speaker:And we have to adjust and change as our thinking evolves and changes,
Speaker:which it inevitably will do.
Speaker:It's one of the reasons Julia, why when I'm talking with businesses about
Speaker:how to change or, how to shift is I almost always encourage people to
Speaker:get allies upstream and downstream.
Speaker:Because the reality is that anybody, like, if anybody is listening to this podcast
Speaker:and they currently make some sort of widget, they sell that thing to somebody.
Speaker:They buy the components or whatever.
Speaker:And this is true for services as well, right?
Speaker:They buy the ingredients of the, this thing.
Speaker:They convert this, the ingredients into something and
Speaker:they sell it to somebody else.
Speaker:I can tell you that if your customer stopped buying them from you, you would
Speaker:have remarkable amount of creativity in pivoting, cuz that's what you're made for.
Speaker:You would like, oh my gosh, my customer doesn't want my thing anymore.
Speaker:Well then what else can I make?
Speaker:And I've been in the situation.
Speaker:On the subject of capital, I used to be in the biscuit business for a long time.
Speaker:I was in the situation where I had factories that had been built, in the
Speaker:late 19 hundreds, in the late 18 hundreds.
Speaker:And people didn't want the stuff that those machines had been made to produce.
Speaker:Oh, it's remarkable how much you can modify and shift and add this
Speaker:piece of equipment to that piece of equipment, to make a thing because
Speaker:a customer actually wants it.
Speaker:So focusing on what your customer wants and getting your customer to be your
Speaker:ally is a really useful way of shifting your organization because companies
Speaker:are used to, to being customer focused.
Speaker:And the same is true of suppliers.
Speaker:You know, If suddenly a major ingredient of your good and
Speaker:service was not available anymore.
Speaker:Well, you'd go looking for other alternatives because you are a
Speaker:practical, in innovative business person.
Speaker:So in those conversations with the customers and the suppliers in
Speaker:service of whatever new direction you want to go in, the options are.
Speaker:Amazing that what comes out of it.
Speaker:And I tell you in my time in, I can say I'm getting really excited about this.
Speaker:In my time in business, those were the days when we used to go out
Speaker:with people, you know, we used to go to events and dinners and stuff.
Speaker:Remember those?
Speaker:And I would meet a supplier at an event or something.
Speaker:And they would say to me, you guys really break our hearts.
Speaker:Not, they wouldn't say this in these words, they were
Speaker:big blokey blokes normally.
Speaker:They would say, you're basically not using all of who we are.
Speaker:Your purchasing people come to us and they say, can we have a, X spec thingy?
Speaker:How much is it gonna cost to buy a million thingies?
Speaker:And we meet that need because that's what you ask us.
Speaker:But actually, we've got all sorts of R and D people, and we're doing
Speaker:all sorts of things and we could really help you if you'd let us.
Speaker:It's true of everybody listening to this thing, they've got suppliers
Speaker:who are saying, pick me, I'll help you to reinvent your business.
Speaker:Just ask.
Speaker:So getting allies around you, help you, cuz you asked me a question about the long
Speaker:term, and those people will help you to get a perspective on the short term and
Speaker:the long term, and they will help you to pivot in ways that you never imagined.
Speaker:which is, sort of brings us to the conclusion of, the conversation, you
Speaker:know, and that's what all regeneration is about is finding new and innovative
Speaker:ways to use what we have in a different way to reimagining that reinvent.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And seeing it, coming back to the very beginning of the conversation, just as
Speaker:I am not a chopped up separate entity from you and a business is not a chopped
Speaker:up separate entity from the rest of the world, nothing is separate and chopped up.
Speaker:Nothing.
Speaker:And so it's actually, it's about seeing that's the illusion.
Speaker:It's about not making up stuff because underneath it
Speaker:all we know we're all joined.
Speaker:Anybody who, any human who has looked into a baby's eyes, picked a flower,
Speaker:eaten an apple, made love, danced, knows that we are not separate.
Speaker:And so it's really just seeing the illusion for what it is and
Speaker:laughing because you'll get caught again and again, cuz we all do.
Speaker:Well Lora, I know you and I can talk for hours cuz we have.
Speaker:and I know that we'll continue to do so.
Speaker:So you know, this probably is not the only time that you and
Speaker:I will talk on this podcast.
Speaker:There's gonna be many, many more opportunities to do so, but it's
Speaker:been an absolute pleasure today.
Speaker:How can people get hold of you or chat more if they love what
Speaker:they've heard from you today?
Speaker:Well, probably the easiest thing is to contact me on LinkedIn
Speaker:because that's kind of I'm there.
Speaker:I look at it.
Speaker:I'll I accept, most people, if they, if their invitation comes
Speaker:to me um, or you can go on my website, which is lornadavis.net.
Speaker:And I would be really happy to engage with anybody on any subject.
Speaker:Oh, I just adore my conversations with Lorna.
Speaker:We have conversations like this all the time and, uh, this is the
Speaker:first one that we have recorded and shared with other people.
Speaker:So what did you take from this conversation?
Speaker:If you've enjoyed it, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
Speaker:You can do that by going to generativeleaders.co.
Speaker:Things that have really stayed with me since that conversation is how
Speaker:much fun it can be solving problems.
Speaker:We can have this moment of feeling like a problem is really heavy and
Speaker:that it's difficult and challenging and something really heavy in our lives.
Speaker:Or we can have this moment where it's really fun, and we get to have
Speaker:fun with a lot of other people, exchanging ideas, seeing what makes
Speaker:sense, coming up with new ideas.
Speaker:And it's the human mind that does this.
Speaker:It's the capacity that we all have to come up with new ideas all the time.
Speaker:And it's really interesting in business that sometimes we can just
Speaker:point our minds in that direction.
Speaker:We can wonder and get curious and.
Speaker:Have a lot of fun doing it, or we can get really serious and really tight.
Speaker:And I wonder if you reflect on times when you've been your most creative, most
Speaker:innovative, what was it like for you?
Speaker:Was it fun or was it heavy and challenging?
Speaker:The other thing that I really take away from the conversation with
Speaker:Lorna is that change really comes from insight for any human being
Speaker:or a business to change anything.
Speaker:We have to have a new thought.
Speaker:We have to have a new idea.
Speaker:Otherwise everything stays the same.
Speaker:And we're all having new thoughts all the time.
Speaker:We're like this living process which is changing, cuz our
Speaker:thoughts are changing all the time.
Speaker:And sometimes it can be a series of slow moments of little insights and
Speaker:little changes that then turn into this realization that you've changed.
Speaker:Like Lorna was sharing about, you know, those moments where her stepson said to
Speaker:her you know, Oreos for people in China?
Speaker:Is that really a good thing to be doing?
Speaker:And it sort of shook up the way that Lorna thought about things.
Speaker:But things didn't really change until later.
Speaker:Whereas for me, it was, you know, an afternoon of my brain kind of rewiring
Speaker:and then having this big aha moment.
Speaker:But it's not always like that for me.
Speaker:Sometimes.
Speaker:It's a lot of very small changes.
Speaker:A lot of different ways of thinking.
Speaker:So what's it like for you?
Speaker:What do you notice about how change happens for you?
Speaker:I wonder if you started to notice and get curious about that, what you would see?
Speaker:Well, we'll be exploring this more in our next conversation of Generative Leaders.
