The Ownership Approach: Building Your Best Culture from the Bottom Up

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show hosts. Thank you for choosing W

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Forcy Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the

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answer to this question. People ache
for meaning and purpose at work, to

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contribute their talents passionately and know their
lives really matter. They crave being part

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of an organization that inspires them and
helps them grow into realizing their highest potential.

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Business can be such a force for
good in the world, elevating humanity.

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In our program, we provide guidance
and inspiration to help usher in this

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world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, Doctor Release

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Cortez. Welcome back to the Working
a Purpose program for exter turning it again

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this week. Great to have you. I'm your host Doctor Elie's qrtes during

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Your Life from Dallas, which is
my home base. If we've not met

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you yet and you don't know me, I'm a management consultant, organizational logotherapist,

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speaker and author by team and I
at least Cortes and Associates help companies

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to enliven their operations by articulating their
purpose and building inspirational leaders and cultures activated

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by meaning a purpose to turn those
companies from a flatline EKG to a vibrant

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workplace. There, people are intrinsically
motivated to perform with their best, grown

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to their full potential, and are
committed to stay and help deliver on the

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company's mission. You can learn more
about us and how we can work together

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at least cortez dot com. Getting
in today's program with us today is Frank

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Divine. He's the founder of Accelerated
Improvement, which specializes in creating a high

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performance and continuous improvement culture from the
bottom up. Is the author of Rapid

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Mass Engagement Driving Continuous Improvement through Employees
Culture Creation, which is what we're talking

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about today. Frank lives in England, though he's actually joining us today from

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Ireland, where he's visiting clients.
It's quite late there, so Frank,

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welcome to working in purpose and staying
up for us. Thank you, my

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pleasure. So great to have you. I really you may know and our

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exchanges. I love hosting the show. I've been doing it for eight years,

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and i'd largely bring on authors like
you who can really advance the conversations

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on creating those workplaces that we want
to work in and we can thrive in.

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So I absolutely loved reading your book. It's chock full of really really

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interesting, fascinating information, and your
approach, of course to culture creation is

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fantastic, which we want to talk
about today. But before we get into

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all that, I read the first
part of your book as well as the

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rest of it as well. But
what I want you to get into is

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I want you to talk about your
background and why you're so fixated on culture

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and where this book actually came from. Yeah, and the purpose. I

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feel like my purpose in writing a
book was to make fewer I feel like

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mothers lose their children because of forced
immigration. And there's nothing wrong with immigration.

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If people decide they want to pursue
their life in another place, that's

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great. But I think there's a
difference between choosing to leave your homeland and

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having to leave your homeland because of
economic necessity. And the values within the

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book are inherited, I think from
my mother, and a little story on

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that is as a single mother in
the late fifties, my mother was working

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for Johnson and Johnson in England.
We'd we'd had to leave Ireland because of

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some of the violent problems around Ireland
at the time. And because my mother

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was a single mother, she worked
through a lunch and she picked me up

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from school and then shops in the
late fifties early sixties would close at five

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o'clock in Europe. They didn't have
the flexibility that you'd be used to in

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the States. And I remember we
arrived at shop and the cleaners were already

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in the shop because about to shut, and I just happened to use the

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word cleaner, and my mother just
said to me, she said, Darling,

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she said, don't see the lady
as a cleaner. See the lady

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as a woman who's doing a cleaning
job. At the moment. She may

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have more than one job, and
the reason she's doing the job is to

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feed her children. Like I go
to work to make sure you're okay.

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And that message I was five years
old, I think roughly that stayed with

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me for life. Not to see
human beings, not to define them by

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anything, by their job, by
their color, their skin, by their

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religion or anything, but to see
them as unique individuals. And if you

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take that approach, it takes you
a long way. Now, the book

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is talking through a forty year journey
of experimentation in how the best way to

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make that kind of approach to people
work in a globally competitive type of environment

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where you have to produce profit and
be successful in order to afford to do

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all the good things that people write
about in books. So, but you're

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focused on culture specifically, Frank,
why culture? I mean of all the

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things? Actually, yeah, okay, yeah, Well what I found in

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corporate life, I mean I started
in Shell in oil and went Unilever,

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are various sort of big corporates,
was that I found that it was extremely

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frustrating trying to change cultures. We
would make lots of progress and then the

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thing would slip back. Personally,
I found that when I was promoted to

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another location, another division, or
even to another company, when I look

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back, some of the progress we've
made it slipped backwards. So it was

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too dependent on a small number of
individual leaders and maybe their charisma or whatever

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it is they did. But then
they move on and then it falls back.

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So so the I said to myself, there must be a better way

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of doing this. So the thinking
was that if you think about changing the

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culture as pushing a big rock up
up a steep hill, instead of a

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small number of people pushing the rock
up, other people watching, and then

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other people sitting on the rock making
it heavier right further down. You know,

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if we had a much greater coalition
of people across the organization all pushing

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it up the rock up the hill. And because shop floor employees, etc.

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They tend to stay longer in organizations, whereas leaders tend to move of

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their career and move on, it
would be much more sustainable if we could

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create a culture that did not depend
on senior leadership. So the ultimate vision

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is that you create a culture that's
so strong and so owned by the workforce

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that changes in senior leadership don't affect
it very much. Now, that's extremely

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difficult because senior leaders can undo a
lot of good work very quickly. You

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know, new senior leaders can change
things quickly in the wrong direction, and

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that happens when they don't appreciate what's
already been achieved and they want to put

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their own stamp on it, for
example. So that was why I focused

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on culture change and realentially it was
top down because that's the way we did

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things right. And then then realize
that there's a better way of doing this

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right, and so I completely align
with your whole, your whole bottom up,

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and you're going wide and deep through
employee commitment that can quit it,

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but much more quickly as well and
more sustainably. I really really aligned with

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that, and I appreciate too that
you're what you're especially when you notice that

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leadership does change increasingly. I'm seeing
Frank and my guests that more and more

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people are talking about the need to
really fully mobilize everyone in the organization,

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not just the few leaders. There's
just too much happening in the world,

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too quickly, too much change to
rely on and expect that a small cache

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of leaders can actually move the need
to lead everybody, as you say,

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pushing the boulder up the mountain.
So I want to talk about your approach,

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your your rapid mass engagement approach,
are in approach? Can you say

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a little bit about that, because
I know it really rusts on three prongs.

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Can you tell us about those and
really kind of the gist of it.

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Yeah, Well, the rapid is
about the speed, the speed of

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the change. So conventional thinking is
that culture change takes a long time.

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It takes years and years and years. And I I was involved in elite

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sport. I wasn't good enough to
make it as a professional soccer player,

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but I came close to making and
I could see at micro level you could

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make a massive change in sport.
And originally, naively, I thought we

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could just take what we had in
sport apply it to organizations. Everything would

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be fine. It doesn't work like
that. So if you have sport business

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and say the military, for example, there's lots of lessons from all three,

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but the ven diagrams are not the
same, you know, there's there's

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some differences, and what organizations tend
to do is they tend to assume that

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someone who's successful in sport is helpful
running organizations or the military. There are

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lessons to be learned, but they're
not the same. So the rapid thing

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is about how quickly can you make
the change? The mass means everyone in

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whatever them you're trying to change,
so you don't leave anyone out, so

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everybody owns the change. Nobody can
say afterwards, well that was just the

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project team, but that was just
the people in in the experiment. Everybody

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has to and that's facilitated. Everyone
has to contribute and also make decisions,

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which that's very different. They're not
just participants. They're making decisions, so

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they're exercising power that they didn't expect
to have. And the engagement is differentiating

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from involvement. So simple, simple
way of looking at that is if you

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have bacon and eggs for your for
your breakfast, the chicken is involved,

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but the pig is deeply engaged and
commit Yeah the old, the old one

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about commitment. Yeah, but but
it's actually true. And how do you

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get people engaged? Well you have
to in a sense, you have to

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create solution space, space for them
to make decisions, not just go to

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management and request things. It's a
kind of dependency thing. It's like a

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child parent relationships. So we've got
to turn that into adult adult in transactional

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analysis sets. So the employees in
rapid mass engagement together with the senior team,

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actually make decisions together by consensus.
They don't lobby government for changes,

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they don't lobby Congress if you like, they're actually in Congress making decisions with

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them in the room. And and
that's the essence of the three. It's

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quick everyone, and it has to
get to people at more deeper emotional levels

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than you would normally associate with work
of just one. Yeah, sorry,

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no, I'm not worries. I
just have one technical response to what you

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just said there, and that is
a resounding amen, especially the bit about

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really really you know, allowing an
enticing each employee to be able to make

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proactually make those decisions. And now
I know for some leaders, and then

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you talk about in your book too, that probably scares the living do the

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gvs out of them. And that's
when we get to that five letter word

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trust, which we'll get to later. But I just really want to be

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able to first surface just how how
in many ways what you're talking about probably

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will sound radical to many and yet
it's so necessary. Yes, And the

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interesting thing about it is there's a
relations of correlation between the degree to which

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leaders are prepared to be vulnerable.
Yes, in front of their workforce and

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accept the way the system works.
So more potential clients don't end up working

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with me than potential clients do.
And that's because in order to do something

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like this, you have to be
really prepared to expose yourself in a way

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to very public criticism which is mediated
by me but it is still strong in

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some cases, and be brave enough
and humble enough to say, yes,

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I got that wrong. A senior
leader in Coca Cola got called Richard Davis

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was so shocked by the feedback from
his own workforce that after a number of

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workshops, he actually he came to
every workshops, which great show of leadership,

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you know, at the end to
hear the feedback, etc. Not

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to discuss, but just to listen
and understand. But he actually apologized that

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at the end of every workshop,
he actually said, I am ashamed that

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this is what has been going on
in my organization, and I apologize and

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we're could have worked together to fix
it. So that level of humility and

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acceptance that mistakes have happened in the
past is something leaders are afraid to make

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often because they think it will damage
their career, it will be career limited,

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but in terms of for employees it. The first thing is that it

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surprises. So if the employee is
skeptical, then they don't expect to who

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leaders do that. It's not the
way normally leaders work. So when they

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see leaders that opener and that humble, it makes them curious. This is

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different, something different is going on
here. I didn't expect this. For

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those employees who were cynical, all
their predictions of what was likely to happen

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are undermined by the authenticity of the
process, and that reduces their influence on

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the workforce. So it is like, if you think about the Second World

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War, part of this is that
we're dropping arms and intelligence into the resistance

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to fight the Nazis, if you
want to look at it that way.

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So I work heavily on providing stories
and anecdotes ways that ordinary people can engage

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their peers to overcome skepticism and particularly
cynicism, And then when I train the

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internal facilitators, I train them how
to do that, how to create those

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stories and use those If you think
about how Hollywood works, how literature works,

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people are interested in stories. They're
interested in things that move them emotionally.

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So if you can do that genuinely
with authenticity, and obviously there's a

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skill in that, and you have
to train the internal facilitators afterwards. But

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if you can get there, the
culture is sustained through those internal facilitators and

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the leaders in the work. And
I align with everything that you're saying,

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and I could add to that,
although let's grab our first break because I

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want to make sure we get as
much as we possibly can. Time for

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our break. I am Elise Quartez. We've been on the air with Frank

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Divine. He's the founder of Accelerated
Improvement, which specializes in creating a high

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00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:19.559
performance, continuous improvement culture from the
bottom up. Is the author of Rapid

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Mass Engagement, Driving Continuous Improvement through
Employee Culture of Creation. We've been talking

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a bit about where this book came
from and why it's so important who embraces

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it. After the break, we're
going to get into some of the actual

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steps of system changes that he brings
out in his culture in the book.

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Stay with us, We'll be right
back. Doctor Release Cortez is a management

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consultant specializing in meaning and purpose.
An inspirational speaker and author, she helps

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companies visioneer for a greater purpose among
stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning.

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Infuse cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce.

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To learn more or to invite a
Lease to speak to your organization, please

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visit her at Elise Cortez dot com. Let's talk about how to get your

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employees working on purpose. This is
working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortez.

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To reach our program today or to
open a conversation with a Lease, send

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an email to a lease a l
I se at Elise Cortez dot com.

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Now back to working on Purpose.
Thankteresting with us, and welcome back to

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working on Purpose. Before we get
back on the program, I do want

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to announce something that I'm very excited
about. It is the launch of the

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Purpose Enjoyed Tour. This is a
collaboration with Joily, an organization that teaches

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mindful practices to build a happy,
healthy, and resilient world. My firm

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at Least Quartz, and associates that
exist to waken people to their passionate purpose

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and build leadership and cultures that support
these efforts. Together, We're going to

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thirty three cities across the United States, starting in Dallas in March and finishing

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the Virginia Beach in October to find
our tribe and build a community of people

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who seek to elevate their lives and
businesses by cultivating meaning, purpose and joy.

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You can find the list of cities
and dates and planned events at Gusto

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dashnow dot com. So, if
you're just now joining the program today,

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my guest is Frank Divine. He
is the author of Rapid Mass Engagement Driving

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Continuous Improvement through Culture Employee Culture Creation
from your host, doctor least Quartz.

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So I want to dive now deeper
into your actual methodology here, Frank.

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But before we do that, I
think it makes a lot of sense for

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us to be able to talk about
your specific definition of employee engagement. It

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is the most complete and descriptive I
think I've ever seen. So how's that

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for a little pressure to lay that
right on you? But will will you

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talk to us? You have there
are six pieces to what you talk about

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in employee engaged? Will you give
those to us? Yeah? Well,

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the actual definition you're talking about there
is one that an employee yet Boston Scientific

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working with me created and I actually
thought it was the best I've seen,

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you know, he gone through this
process. He was doing a master's at

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Universe. Name is PAULI gave and
he describes it in in he defines it

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in his words. So I wouldn't
want to take credit for that. Yeah.

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Well, he was describing what he
had experienced going through rapid mass engagement.

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So if do you want to just
go through each of these six bits

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and then I'll yeah. So yeah, So first I'll just say for our

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listeners and viewers, and by the
way, listeners viewers, I really want

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to invite you into this conversation.
If you are really listening to what Frank

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is saying, this is a tremendous
invitation to completely elevate your leadership game and

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alter radically you're organization. And yes, we know it's very hard work,

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but I really just really want to
invite you into the space. It's incredibly

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gratifying and fulfilling. So imagine this
definition of engagement which Frank has in this

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book. It's the demonstration of high
performance behaviors based on the collective emotional,

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psychological, mental, and physical resources
of employees focused toward organizational goals. And

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so then if you would first speak
to the emotionally connected, Yeah, so

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This is the point we made just
before the break that it's not enough to

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get to people logically, so you
have to get to them at a much

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deeper level. So, for example, the individual who created that definition as

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part of his master's I was one
of the lectures on the master's course.

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What really impacted him was part of
the higher purpose that we created. I

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facilitated it, but they created it
was about the west of our island and

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the effect of emigration after the famine, and so what we talked about there

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was a future for our family and
friends in the West, which is the

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part of Ireland that was most heavily
depopulated. So when we when we were

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talking to the employees about this,
they would they all had family histories of

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people going to the States, to
Canada, to Australia, to the UK,

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or other relatives arriving dead in the
familyships. So that that level of

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historical feeling about what happens when the
society breaks down there's not enough jobs in

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that case, caused by a natural
disaster that resonated with people in the area.

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So touched them emotionally connected them to
what we were doing. So we

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weren't just economists talk about capitalism,
about maximizing profit. I don't know anyone

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who's really thinks that any successful leader
that talks about maximizing profit in terms of

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employee engagement, profit is a necessity, a bit like red blood cells in

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order to live. But we don't
live in order to produce red blood cells.

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So the employees want to know the
purpose of why we're doing this,

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and when you can with authenticity talk
about this is about preserving jobs, This

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is about creating jobs. So in
that particular location, we added an extra

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factory, you know, an extra
one thousand jobs during a period of about

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five years. Now it's not just
this process that did that. That takes

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tremendous leadership takes you know, a
lot of other things, but that's what

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happened that was related with. So
that's what we mean by emotional connectedness.

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And there's a physical and they if
you like, cycle logical side to that

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which comes later in the you know, the physical side the work itself and

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working really hard to make it easy
for people to be successful. So when

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you're talking about manual work, that's
about you know, removing things that make

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people tired, things that have repetitive
strain, injuries, things that are boring,

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you know, so you know,
which therefore makes you more tired.

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And then the emotional thing is this
sense of this work matter as we're doing

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something. And that last one.
If you're working in a medical devices organization,

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that's relatively easy. You can see
that if you make people's lives better

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with some sort of hard device so
they can now walk and run previously couldn't

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breathe, it's relatively easy for people
to see that that's a good thing.

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If you're working in the arms business
and you're creating missiles, then it's harder

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for the employees to see that.
But what's going on in the Ukraine demonstrates

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that without the alms business, a
lot of people would now be dead in

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the Ukraine, etc. So you
can find purpose regardless of the sector in

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business. You just have to look
for it more in a different way.

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Yes, I completely agree, and
of course that's my jam too. So

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I the meaning and purpose space is
critical and I and that's but it's how

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we talk about it, right,
It's it's presencing it so that people can

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understand it. It's in their language, they can access it. And you

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talk about that so beautifully in your
book as well. I won't go one

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of the other ones because I want
to make sure that I have you talked

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through the ones, because I just
want to make sure that we have time

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for these other questions. But let
me just quickly read them for our listeners

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and viewers. So he really does
detail the emotional connection, physical involvement,

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the participation in decision making which you
talked about before being mentally absorbed right in

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the work. I have a positive
perception of the work and behavioral direct,

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behaviorally directed, really thinking about this
notion of directing our behavior story, incorporating

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humility and challenge and respect, future
focus, all these kind of accountability.

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And then high discretionary effort speaks to
giving more to the work in terms of

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time, talent and resource, resourcefulness
and thought. So there's if you think

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about how much you could activate in
a human being, it's pretty incredible.

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So just think something like that at
least that. Yes, what we often

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miss in business is that we're in
a competition for discretionary effort. So an

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employee decides how much of their discretion
they voluntarily choose to give to their work,

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and that's in competition with their family, with their interests outside of work.

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So a nice example was in Vicardio
Martini and the general manager said to

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me one day about this female employee
who had been promoted I think twice already

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within the first six months. And
he said to me, she's in the

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same body, but she's not the
same person. I love how you said

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that in the book. Yes.
Yeah, Now I said to him,

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well, let's think about this.
She was always the same person. Now

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she believes that what the organization is
doing is meaningful for her and her values.

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So now now you're seeing her at
her best by the way, she

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went on to be promoted more.
But and in terms of diversity, just

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slightly going to a tangent, the
best diversity and inclusion thing you can ever

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do is make sure that every single
person gets the opportunity to show their maximum

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discretion we have. Otherwise you don't
know the talent you've got. So the

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most tangible thing you can do for
diversity is do this kind of thing.

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And you and management's off always surprised, you know, they say things like

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I did think she had an inner. She always had an inner. You

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just didn't see it right. You
didn't know how to activate it, how

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to actually access and and mobilize it. Yes, And so one of the

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things I talk about in my work, Frank is just is teaching everyone,

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especially the leaders, to go looking
for what's special unique about people and find

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a way to actively and give them
the spotlight, allow them, encourage them

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to shine. So you and I
are lock and step on this. Building

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on that the the enablement bit that
comes in later in the book, the

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twin of engagement. If you just
work on engagement and by the way,

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rapid mass engagement and enablement will be
too long. So that's it's not that,

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but it just be a bit of
a mouthful. But but there's a

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twin. Engagement has a twin which
is enablement. And without the enablement,

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the highly motivated engage workforce will simply
get squashed up against restrictive policies. I

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used to be an HR director,
but my own profession accidentally creates barriers.

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You know, we won't recruit people
unless they have a degree, We won't

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recruit people unless they do this,
we won't write all of these restrictive thinking.

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There's a lot of talent among people
who are not academically intelligent, but

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are incredibly intelligent. So this kind
of race to over academic. You know,

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I'm not against universe. I speak
at universities, but it's not all

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We're not businesses, are not academic
faculties. We're not there to produce was

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research. We're there to make organizations
more competitive so they beat the global competition.

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That's our job. Two things are
that really quick? And you and

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I could talk a long time prank, But first I want to say to

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our listeners and yours and what you
just said there. I had Saren Kaplan

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on my radio show a few weeks
ago, and he has a book out

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on experiential intelligence, talking about just
that. It's not about the degrees,

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it's what have we learned in life
that's unique that we can bring to the

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world. Then how do we activate
that? Second thing? Is I got

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I got, I got your next
version of this. So you're right now

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you talking about RM. You could
say R M E squared, So right,

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engagement the party. Well, there
you go, it's that's your that's

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your little gift for coming on my
show RM squared, Frank, that's where

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you're going next. Um, Because
the engagement and the enablement kind of leverage

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each other. I know, That's
why I thought it was so fun.

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Um okay, well, let's just
quickly because I got just maybe we've got

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four minutes or so I left on
this part of this, but I just

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if you would quickly go through the
six stages of you have the RME change

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system, change system culture simultaneously,
and you have six stages to do that.

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Could you just quickly walk us through
those six stages for our listeners and

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people. Well, first of all, you have to create the kind of

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purpose why are we doing this?
And in and that and that means in

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normal every a language, the kind
of language you talk to your friends when

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you at the weekend stuff rather than
corporate speak. Then then you have to

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create a process which um you know, involves every single employee in the process.

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Like we said before, you have
to and the actual sequence can vary

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client to client, but it includes
things like um um. The approach itself

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has to be aligned in terms of
the last part of the process about systems

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alignment. But you also have to
make sure that the management process that you're

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using for your leaders is the kind
of one that aligns with what you're what

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you're doing with your employees. So
make sure everybody's involved, make sure the

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process itself is genuine, open,
authentic align everything. You've got to make

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sure that the three leavers that you
push our continuous improvement and leadership as well

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as engagement and enablement, and then
rounding the whole thing up. Everything has

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got to be aligned. And what
happens, in effect is that as you've

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developed the culture, the culture goes
ahead of the process, so you actually

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create the culture before you formally start
to create the culture. The very experience

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that the employees have at the beginning
of the process, when they're all engaged

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in the workforce, starts to change
the culture before you actually formally do it.

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So have I got time to just
give one simple example if you do

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it quickly, very quickly. We
were in a break in one of the

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rms. We've only done about eight
workshops, and the canteen manager and they

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weren't involved because they're not employees.
She approached me in my co facilitator and

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said, can I have a word
with you. My staff have spoken to

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me about what you're doing in the
workshops. So if you're a man of

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a certain age and a lady comes
to you and says, I want to

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talk to you about what the staff
have said, you assume you've done something

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wrong. That's wrong. So I
was, oh my god, and she

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said kept a straight face, and
she said, please, whatever you're doing

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in those workshops, keep doing it. So I called that the bow wave

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effect. So the effect of engaging
the workforce and even discussing what we're going

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to do before we've actually done it
had a direct effect on the way employees

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treated the people at the checkout in
the restaurant. They were more polite,

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they put them their cell phones away, they made eye contact. So the

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staff notices. They weren't even involved
in the protests in the process, but

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they said, you know, whatever
that guy's doing in there, please keep

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doing it. So the process has
stages to it, like you said.

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But the more emotional side is you're
actually changing the culture by the way in

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which you run the initial workshop the
first time, and that creates a little

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wave that goes ahead of you,
so that people are coming into the workshops

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00:33:23.160 --> 00:33:29.799
less and less skeptical, less and
less cynical, more curious, and when

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they're curious and much more open and
receptive to what you're trying to do.

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00:33:34.480 --> 00:33:37.920
Beautiful, And on that note,
let's let our listeners and viewers think about

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00:33:37.960 --> 00:33:39.759
that. I'm your host, doctor
Elias Cortez. We're on the air with

405
00:33:39.799 --> 00:33:45.079
Frank Divine, who's the founder of
Accelerated Improvement, which specializes in creating a

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00:33:45.160 --> 00:33:49.200
high performance, continuous improvement culture from
the bottom up. He is the author

407
00:33:49.240 --> 00:33:53.319
of Rapid Mass Engagement Driving Continuous Improvement
through Employee Culture Creation. Steve with us

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00:33:53.319 --> 00:34:13.880
will be right back for more.
Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing

409
00:34:13.880 --> 00:34:17.760
in meaning and purpose. An inspirational
speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer

410
00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:23.159
for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop
purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that

411
00:34:23.199 --> 00:34:28.960
elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment
within the workforce. To learn more or

412
00:34:29.000 --> 00:34:31.760
to invite a lease to speak to
your organization, please visit her at Elise

413
00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:37.440
Cortez dot com. Let's talk about
how to get your employees working on purpose.

414
00:34:43.000 --> 00:34:46.159
This is working on Purpose with doctor
Elise Cortez. To reach our program

415
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:51.840
today or to open a conversation with
Elise, send an email to Elise al

416
00:34:52.039 --> 00:34:57.360
i se at Elise Cortez dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

417
00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:06.559
Welcome back to working on Purpose.
I mentioned in the first break that we

418
00:35:06.559 --> 00:35:08.880
were launching the Purpose and Enjoy Tour
and the last two latest two books that

419
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:12.760
I wrote are actually on that tour. So one of them is called The

420
00:35:12.760 --> 00:35:16.079
Great Revitalization, How activating meeting and
purpose can radically enliven your business, which

421
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:21.199
helps leaders to learn how to build
elevating and high performing cultures and leadership.

422
00:35:21.599 --> 00:35:23.719
The other latest book, these both
came out in marsh of twenty twenty three,

423
00:35:23.840 --> 00:35:28.519
is called Coloring Life, How Loss
invites us to live more vibrant lives,

424
00:35:28.840 --> 00:35:31.800
which helps people navigating loss to transform
into growth and vitality. You can

425
00:35:31.800 --> 00:35:36.039
find them both an Amazon if you're
just now joining the program today. My

426
00:35:36.039 --> 00:35:38.519
guest is Frank Divine. He's the
author of grapp and mass Engagement, Driving

427
00:35:38.519 --> 00:35:44.119
Continuous Improvement through Employee Culture Creation.
I'm your host, Doctor Elie's Cortez.

428
00:35:44.840 --> 00:35:46.039
So one of the things you've already
touched on, Frank, but I would

429
00:35:46.039 --> 00:35:49.760
love for you to say more because
I think it's really in many ways it's

430
00:35:49.800 --> 00:35:53.039
quite revolutionary. Which I really appreciate
is that you have this phase of and

431
00:35:53.119 --> 00:35:57.840
you mentioned it before, but you
haven't actually said the sexual phrase yet,

432
00:35:57.880 --> 00:36:01.920
but you're really it's your process.
R andMe is designed to maximize solution space.

433
00:36:02.320 --> 00:36:06.039
Can you see more about that?
Yeah, well, if you think

434
00:36:06.079 --> 00:36:08.800
about the conversation just before the break, we're talking about it in a kind

435
00:36:08.800 --> 00:36:14.800
of emotional sense. But about the
six stages. So the idea of the

436
00:36:14.840 --> 00:36:19.719
six stages is first of all and
the solution spaces. When the senior team

437
00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:24.079
gets together at the first stage,
they will often want to make decisions,

438
00:36:24.719 --> 00:36:28.840
you know, first stage, the
diagnostic. When the senior team get together,

439
00:36:29.159 --> 00:36:30.760
they will want to make decisions.
They will want to plan because that's

440
00:36:30.760 --> 00:36:34.760
what that's what we do in senior
management. So what I have to do

441
00:36:34.880 --> 00:36:37.760
is take more Hang on a minute. You don't need to plan that.

442
00:36:37.679 --> 00:36:39.800
You know this is what you need
to plan, but you need to leave

443
00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:44.920
in a high level lot of space
for the employees to fill that gap,

444
00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.920
that's solution space. The more you
plan, the more of that solution space

445
00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.119
you take up, the less ownership
the employees have. So that means at

446
00:36:54.119 --> 00:37:00.239
the second stage of the process,
where you've got the workshops you maximize is

447
00:37:00.440 --> 00:37:04.960
the amount of decision making power,
if you like, the employees have so

448
00:37:05.599 --> 00:37:08.880
they decide, they decide in those
workshops. What are the main obstacles to

449
00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:14.800
stop in the higher purpose, they
decide what are the key behavior data on

450
00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:19.719
which we'll create the culture, and
they also decide they elect themselves who's going

451
00:37:19.719 --> 00:37:23.800
to go to the decision making event, the consensus day where we make the

452
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:30.559
decisions. So an in consensus day
stage four the process, if you like,

453
00:37:30.079 --> 00:37:36.639
then the solution space is everything.
So as long as it's within scope,

454
00:37:37.320 --> 00:37:40.079
within the original scope or what the
organizations trying to do, everything's up

455
00:37:40.119 --> 00:37:46.239
for grabs. And the whole decision
making process is by consensus. So the

456
00:37:46.320 --> 00:37:51.159
leadership team is not allowed or neither
after trade unions, the trade unions are

457
00:37:51.159 --> 00:37:52.960
not allowed, but the employees are
not allowed to have in the German and

458
00:37:53.000 --> 00:37:57.800
go and talk on their own.
Everybody is in a big circle. So

459
00:37:58.119 --> 00:38:02.079
in one of these imagine one hundred
people with seventeen hundred data points, trying

460
00:38:02.079 --> 00:38:07.719
to reach consensus took twenty four hours
of contact time. But the amount of

461
00:38:07.760 --> 00:38:13.920
solution space there is always maximized.
So when when I'm facilitating it, I

462
00:38:14.119 --> 00:38:17.039
know, the more important the decision
that's made in the room, the greater

463
00:38:17.079 --> 00:38:23.199
the ownership and the greater the sustainability. And by that stage the leaders get

464
00:38:23.199 --> 00:38:27.599
it as well. But it takes
them a while to relax and say,

465
00:38:27.599 --> 00:38:30.840
well, actually, with this group
of people, the best people in the

466
00:38:30.920 --> 00:38:35.199
organization, elected by their peers,
the senior people, with good facilitation,

467
00:38:35.960 --> 00:38:39.760
good data, we're going to produce
a really good change plan here. Now

468
00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:43.400
it might not be the one the
senior team would have come up with,

469
00:38:43.440 --> 00:38:45.519
in fact, it won't be,
but it's going to be really really strong

470
00:38:47.480 --> 00:38:52.320
Eventually. Then you don't have to
train the managers, train the facilitators,

471
00:38:52.320 --> 00:38:58.360
and create sustaining mechanisms to make the
thing continue over the years. It's so

472
00:38:58.440 --> 00:39:01.119
beautiful, Franks, so beautiful pole
with you. And you said this before,

473
00:39:01.480 --> 00:39:04.679
at least you allude to this before, But I really want to want

474
00:39:04.679 --> 00:39:07.000
to emphasize this point. And it
came out in your book when you were

475
00:39:07.000 --> 00:39:10.119
talking about how you had been You
were speaking at a conference, and of

476
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:14.639
course you've got to elect you speak
right after lunch, and so you in

477
00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:19.079
the conference was on how to change
culture. So you you opened your talk

478
00:39:19.119 --> 00:39:22.480
with cultures don't change, yes,
and that's really right right. It made

479
00:39:22.519 --> 00:39:27.119
people to sit there and think and
kind of rustle with it. Except and

480
00:39:27.159 --> 00:39:31.199
then you wanted on to explain individuals
change when enough individuals change their behavior in

481
00:39:31.199 --> 00:39:38.039
the same direction, we notice retrospectively
that the culture has changed exactly. Yeah.

482
00:39:38.079 --> 00:39:43.760
So the atsom if you like,
or the change mechanism for culture change

483
00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:49.280
is the individual. Yeah. Yeah, that's what drives the approach to leadership.

484
00:39:49.400 --> 00:39:54.920
That's what drives the focus on managing
over commitment, on appreciation, on

485
00:39:55.280 --> 00:40:00.679
real coaching, not the conventional approach
to coaching. That drives the approach to

486
00:40:00.719 --> 00:40:07.000
constructive feedback. So all of that, the leadership has to be created in

487
00:40:07.039 --> 00:40:14.440
such a way to manage a workforce
that is highly, highly active and suggestive

488
00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:19.079
and wants to make change. So
you can't have corporate policies and things that

489
00:40:19.119 --> 00:40:22.039
oh no, you can't do that. No, no, no, let's

490
00:40:22.079 --> 00:40:24.360
not start with the machine, says
no, let's start with well, let's

491
00:40:24.400 --> 00:40:31.440
explore they see whether whether it is
possible. Mindset, it's possible. But

492
00:40:31.639 --> 00:40:38.679
the search for maximum solution space gets
you to very interesting innovation and the creativity.

493
00:40:39.239 --> 00:40:45.280
Mmmmmm. So in along the way, this is another really great thing

494
00:40:45.320 --> 00:40:47.119
to talk about in your book,
that which you did actually allude to somewhat

495
00:40:47.119 --> 00:40:51.880
earlier, but this really speaks to
when we're in the thiicadous stuff here you're

496
00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:54.360
in you're having conversations with the team
about all these things that are that you're

497
00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:58.400
trying to you're trying to mobilize people, et cetera. And you talk about

498
00:40:58.440 --> 00:41:02.880
this this idea of justified senior skepticism, which is so incredible. So you

499
00:41:02.920 --> 00:41:06.559
tell us why that's a good thing
and how it can be leveraged. Please,

500
00:41:06.719 --> 00:41:10.360
right, Actually, it's dangerous when
the stage one of the processes,

501
00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:15.719
the diagnostic day, for the senior
leaders to decide, you know, is

502
00:41:15.760 --> 00:41:21.199
this is rapid mass engagement for us? Is is it the right approach for

503
00:41:21.239 --> 00:41:22.960
our business in our circumstances. And
often the answer to that is not.

504
00:41:24.280 --> 00:41:29.119
And sometimes the answer is that is
not quite we need slightly different approach.

505
00:41:29.360 --> 00:41:34.719
But that in that conversation, it's
actually dangerous when everybody thinks, great,

506
00:41:35.079 --> 00:41:38.880
let's go for a harapid mass engagement, because that could imply what I might

507
00:41:38.920 --> 00:41:45.679
call superficial consensus. Yes, superficial
rather than deep. They haven't thought enough

508
00:41:45.719 --> 00:41:49.880
about to realize what's at stake and
how much of a challenge it is for

509
00:41:49.920 --> 00:41:53.679
individual leaders. Or it could mean
they're simply following a powerful leader that has

510
00:41:53.719 --> 00:41:58.280
decided to go down this path.
So either way, it's not good.

511
00:41:58.599 --> 00:42:00.920
So one of the examples given a
book from one of them is the guy

512
00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:04.480
said to me, okay, consensus
day. Let me think about this.

513
00:42:04.679 --> 00:42:07.519
We're going to have a hundred people
in a circle, so we're going to

514
00:42:07.559 --> 00:42:13.239
be outnumbered about twelve to one.
Yeah, or whatever it is, and

515
00:42:13.639 --> 00:42:15.880
we haven't got the power. We
haven't got the power to decide anything.

516
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:20.280
We have to convince it, you
know that it's got to be by consensus.

517
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:24.519
And we have no say on what
the agenda is because the only people

518
00:42:24.559 --> 00:42:29.239
in the process that don't put ending
on the agenda the senior leadership team.

519
00:42:29.320 --> 00:42:31.519
They create the scope, they create
the process, but they don't put anything

520
00:42:31.559 --> 00:42:37.239
on the agenda. So the entire
agenda is owned by the employees. And

521
00:42:37.280 --> 00:42:42.320
then we're committed to implement whatever comes
out of that process. So you can

522
00:42:42.360 --> 00:42:47.800
imagine, you know, he wasn't
convinced at this point. That was extremely

523
00:42:47.960 --> 00:42:55.840
healthy, extremely healthy because it led
to a real adult conversation about risk,

524
00:42:57.599 --> 00:43:01.840
about how you mitigate risk, how
the process works. So by the end

525
00:43:01.880 --> 00:43:07.440
of that vigorous intellectual process came out
the other end as an absolute champion.

526
00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:14.320
Far better says, oh it worked, here worked in Coca Cola, worked

527
00:43:14.320 --> 00:43:17.360
in Rolls Royce, it worked pccardi. It will work in my organization.

528
00:43:17.559 --> 00:43:21.360
All I got to do is let
Frank come in and talk to my workforce

529
00:43:21.559 --> 00:43:23.920
and everything will be wonderful. It's
not like that. It's not like in

530
00:43:23.960 --> 00:43:28.119
the movies, and the senior guys
have got a big role in it.

531
00:43:28.199 --> 00:43:34.880
So justified skepticism is actually healthy.
I would imagine people listening to this think

532
00:43:35.960 --> 00:43:38.400
a lot of them will think that
sounds too good to be true. And

533
00:43:38.519 --> 00:43:43.559
in life, things that sound too
good to be true are usually too good

534
00:43:43.559 --> 00:43:49.440
to be true. So that's absolutely
justified. But the intellectual exchange around that

535
00:43:49.519 --> 00:43:54.360
is recommended. And I have actually
walked away from clients and said, look,

536
00:43:54.400 --> 00:44:00.199
I don't think you're ready if they
haven't engaged with the difficulties. Lovely

537
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:04.480
example in Boston Scientific, he said
to me, we have three thousand and

538
00:44:04.519 --> 00:44:07.119
two employees, two hundred employees on
this site. The biggest you've ever done

539
00:44:07.159 --> 00:44:10.960
before is six hundred and fifty.
Can you guarantee that this will work for

540
00:44:12.039 --> 00:44:15.960
three Will it scale from six hundred
and fifty to three thousand, two hundred?

541
00:44:15.199 --> 00:44:20.400
And I said no, I can't
guarantee it but what we can do

542
00:44:20.599 --> 00:44:25.199
is problem solve what we need to
do to maintain the momentum over a much

543
00:44:25.239 --> 00:44:30.280
greater number of people, you know, so we have bigger groups essentially,

544
00:44:30.559 --> 00:44:32.079
you know, we won three workshops
a day. We work seven days a

545
00:44:32.119 --> 00:44:36.440
week, so we get there quicker. So we deal with momentum that way

546
00:44:36.559 --> 00:44:42.280
and we just problems solve our way
around it. But initially it was can

547
00:44:42.320 --> 00:44:45.920
you guarantee? And you can't guarantee
because this is real people in real businesses

548
00:44:46.559 --> 00:44:52.480
talking about real stuff. Yes,
okay, so we're coming to a closure.

549
00:44:52.519 --> 00:44:53.559
We have just a couple of minutes, but we have to talk about

550
00:44:53.599 --> 00:44:57.039
this. So you say in your
book, and I completely agree, you

551
00:44:57.119 --> 00:45:02.360
said earlier engagement alone is not enough
for en continuous improvement in leadership capability or

552
00:45:02.440 --> 00:45:06.800
necessary. So if you think a
bit more to the enablement piece here,

553
00:45:07.320 --> 00:45:15.280
yeah, Well, the enablement piece
is removing artificial obstacles that prevent the engagement

554
00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:22.519
of the workforce coming to fruition.
So if you have restrictive ideas around,

555
00:45:23.400 --> 00:45:30.599
for just one example, with childcare
in one particular place, to move from

556
00:45:30.599 --> 00:45:34.960
one area of the factory to the
other, it wasn't in the interest of

557
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:40.039
the local management because they'd have to
train the new employee. But if they

558
00:45:40.079 --> 00:45:45.880
moved to a different part, the
employees could reduce childcare costs. So we

559
00:45:45.920 --> 00:45:49.840
took it away from local management,
said we were going to deal with it

560
00:45:49.920 --> 00:45:53.599
at macro level and say, the
presumption was that we would find a job

561
00:45:53.679 --> 00:46:00.880
for somebody on a different shift pattern
to enable them to reduce their child care.

562
00:46:00.039 --> 00:46:04.559
So when you think about policy that
way, yes, in the short

563
00:46:04.679 --> 00:46:07.280
term it is awkward to train people
when they move from one shift pattern to

564
00:46:07.360 --> 00:46:10.719
another. Of course it is in
the short term. But in the long

565
00:46:10.840 --> 00:46:16.800
term you're increasing the standard of living
of the employee by reducing their childcare costs

566
00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:21.239
by enable them to work in the
shift pattern that enables them to do that.

567
00:46:21.559 --> 00:46:23.760
So that kind of thinking, how
do we make this work, rather

568
00:46:23.800 --> 00:46:29.800
than that's against the policy, right
right, totally get it okay, And

569
00:46:29.800 --> 00:46:32.039
then if you could just say just
a little bit about continuous improvement as the

570
00:46:32.079 --> 00:46:37.079
second piece, Yeah, there's a
scientific, big, scientific element in rapid

571
00:46:37.119 --> 00:46:45.840
mass engagement. So if you had
unskilled, unknowledgeable approaches to how you improve

572
00:46:45.960 --> 00:46:52.039
systems, if you don't understand LEANSI
sigma, whatever way you want to call

573
00:46:52.079 --> 00:46:57.679
it, and you just try and
do this, you're going to severely suboptimize

574
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:07.320
if you don't have a leadership process
which is designed scientifically to drive moving the

575
00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:12.039
dial, you know, ensuring you're
more efficient. The productivity goes up,

576
00:47:12.079 --> 00:47:15.800
the absoluteers and goes down. The
quality is higher. It's it's serious stuff

577
00:47:15.800 --> 00:47:22.480
there. It's it's not happiness,
So you're what you're looking for. There

578
00:47:22.519 --> 00:47:28.880
is scientific methods about handling data,
handling analysis, handling diagnosis so that you

579
00:47:28.920 --> 00:47:34.559
actually make improvements that move the organization
forward, so you don't work on symptoms

580
00:47:34.639 --> 00:47:38.199
rather than root cause, so you're
spending time just dealing with symptoms. You

581
00:47:38.639 --> 00:47:45.760
are skilled enough and capable enough to
make changes that will actually change the process

582
00:47:45.760 --> 00:47:51.440
of the business and make it continuously
improving process so that it's competitive. So

583
00:47:51.519 --> 00:47:54.119
you need the leadership, You need
a continuous improvement. You need the enablement

584
00:47:54.519 --> 00:47:59.599
as well as the engagement. And
the ideal is that you pull all those

585
00:47:59.679 --> 00:48:06.840
leavers at the same time and you
don't have disjointed initiatives. So the continuous

586
00:48:06.840 --> 00:48:13.079
improvements run by whatever the function is. The leaderships run by HR, the

587
00:48:13.159 --> 00:48:19.320
engagements run by somebody else, and
they're all talking in different language. The

588
00:48:19.360 --> 00:48:24.840
employees noticed that the ideas everything is
aligned and comes in at the top rather

589
00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:30.199
than being disaggregated. If you like, Frank, There's so much more we

590
00:48:30.199 --> 00:48:32.159
could talk about. I have to
have you back on at some point because

591
00:48:32.199 --> 00:48:36.880
I love what you're doing and the
way you explain in say about twenty minutes

592
00:48:37.400 --> 00:48:40.239
that tour with you, you would
love I'd love to have you along for

593
00:48:40.320 --> 00:48:44.639
that right and saying about fifteen seconds, what would you like to leave our

594
00:48:44.639 --> 00:48:47.039
listeners and viewers with? Well,
I think I think the key thing for

595
00:48:47.079 --> 00:48:52.960
people is things that people say are
impossible are not impossible. If you have

596
00:48:52.079 --> 00:48:55.119
the right leadership, you know what
you're doing, you know how to handle

597
00:48:55.559 --> 00:48:59.800
data, you know how to do
the psychology, you understand in neuroscience.

598
00:49:00.679 --> 00:49:04.639
You open it up to people of
all sorts of backgrounds, regardless of their

599
00:49:05.800 --> 00:49:09.840
educational level. You will achieve great
things and you will save jobs in the

600
00:49:09.840 --> 00:49:14.760
West, You'll create jobs, you'll
contribute to communities, and you will change

601
00:49:14.760 --> 00:49:19.639
people's lives. M beautiful, Frank, we are lockstep on this. I'm

602
00:49:19.639 --> 00:49:21.880
so happy to know you. Thank
you so much for being working on a

603
00:49:21.880 --> 00:49:23.039
purpose. And you can run from
me, but you can't hide. I

604
00:49:23.079 --> 00:49:28.880
will keep up with you have a
great time on the tour. Thank you,

605
00:49:29.400 --> 00:49:31.719
Thankank. You absolutely listeners and viewers, you've all learn more about this

606
00:49:31.760 --> 00:49:36.719
remarkable man, Frank Divine, his
book Rapid Mass Engagement and the working his

607
00:49:36.760 --> 00:49:43.000
team are doing an Accelerated Improvement.
Do visit Accelerated Improvement dot co dot uk.

608
00:49:44.079 --> 00:49:45.039
Last week, if you missed the
live show it you can always catch

609
00:49:45.039 --> 00:49:49.360
to be recorded podcast. We were
on the air with Alton Mills, this

610
00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:52.679
time talking about his book Be Unstoppable, the eight es Central Actions to Succeed

611
00:49:52.719 --> 00:49:57.320
at Anything. Next week will be
on the air with Dustin Stager talking about

612
00:49:57.440 --> 00:50:01.360
his book called Blame. The book
rescue your workplace culture from toxicity and scapegoating.

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We will talk about the power of
culture, kindness and taking responsibility.

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See you there. Remember that work
as an integral and an important part of

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our lives and can be one of
the best adventures and means of realizing our

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potential and making the impact we crave. So let's Work on Purpose. We

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hope you've enjoyed this week's program.
Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose

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featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortez, each week on W four cy Together

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We'll create a world where business operates
conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and

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employees are fulfilled in work that provides
the meaning and purpose they crave. See

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you there. Let's work on purpose.