Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Dr Andrew White

Intro: Hi, I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to “Change Happens”, conversations with influential leaders on leading change and the lessons learnt along the way. This discussion was with Dr Andrew White, a senior fellow in management practice at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. Andrew is a Leadership Coach to top CEOs and he leads the Advanced Management And Leadership Programme at Oxford. His research, which is focussed on what it means to lead successfully in today’s world has been published in the Harvard Business Review. His work has also been published in the Financial Times. He’s a contributor to the European Journal of Information Systems and the Future of Business Schools. Andrew has a podcast series and LinkedIn newsletter, both called Leadership 2050. He speaks to visionary leaders with the business community who have been on the front line of positive change. Clearly this is something that Andrew and I have a shared podcast mission to understand. In his most recent research, we at EY collaborated with Andrew and the Oxford Saïd Business School to research the human factors that drive transformation success and failure and I have to say, I think that research is fascinating. There’s no question that this was a chat with a person who knows more than a thing or two about leadership and change and he had as many questions as he did answers on the very complex worlds of leadership and change. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to tap into that deep well of knowledge in this discussion. I hope you get as much out of this insightful conversation as I did. Here’s Dr Andrew White.

Jenelle: Hi Andrew, thanks so much for joining me for today’s discussion.

Andrew: Jenelle, its wonderful to be with you. I think talking about a subject we both have a real interest in and I’m really looking forward to … I’ve been going through your questions and, you know, understanding more about the podcast, so thank you.

Jenelle: Yeah, very good. Now look, I’ve very keen to dive into your research and your coaching insights but before I do that, I’d love to start just by getting to know you a little bit more. Can you start with giving me a bit of a whistle stop tour of you, your earlier years and how you found your way into research and academia.

Andrew: So the kind of headline of where I am now is I’m a faculty member at the University of Oxford in the Business School. I research leadership and transformation and that’s what we’re going to be talking about. I guess the question is “how did I get here?” and I probably haven’t gone on a kind of an orthodox path to get into an elite institution. I started life, I didn’t do well at school. I kind of was someone who worked hard but the grades just didn’t come. I was fortunate in that both my parents were teachers and so they really helped tutor me. I ended up going to a University where I had a great time but it wasn’t one of the elite Universities in the UK and I studied there and then something changed and I don’t know whether it was a physiological thing in my mind or I just went from hitting Cs to hitting As [overtalking] …

Jenelle: Andrew, somewhere in that background was dyslexia … am I right?

Andrew: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. So I was dyslexic and I think what I learned through all of that, I suppose was two things. One, I benefitted from laptops and laptops were really, you know, coming into the world and so the problems with my handwriting disappeared because we all write in the same way now, when we’re on text and that’s become a universal thing but it was changing when I was at University.

Jenelle: That’s the power of technology in there!

Andrew: Exactly exactly and also I learned to play to my strengths and my strengths, I think, are seeing patterns in things, of seeing the big picture, of asking the right questions and so … and the more and more I’ve gone through life, I think the more and more I focus on those strengths and I think somewhere in all of the things we go through when we’re in our early 20s, I had good support but I also found something I really enjoy and found something I’m good at and so yeah, it wasn’t easy but it’s kind of, for those two reasons, technology but also finding how I could use that dyslexia in a … as a strength, not as something that held me back.

Jenelle: It’s a really powerful thing. I’ve had a number of guests come through where what would normally be seen as, you know, the moments of adversity or a disability or a, you know, a tough time, they have turned those, you know, those adverse circumstances into their super powers and it sounds like you have done the same with your background.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s interesting that you put it like that. I think you’re probably right, you know. I love talking to people about complex situations and trying to understand what they are, what the big questions are, where’s the challenge, where’s the opportunity and I think particularly in the world of business, so many businesses particularly when you talk to the C suite, the CEOs, the boards, the senior people, they’re struggling with this complexity of where their organisation hits the external world and being able to see patterns in that, being able to see the system has become a really important skill that I use as both an academic doing research but also as a coach as well.

Jenelle: I think that’s a real gift and I think it’s a real gift to be able to separate complexity from complicated. So very often when people will look into complexity and they come up with really complicated ways of dealing with that and now, taking complexity and understanding complexity for what it is but making that simple or digestible or consumable or broken down to something that someone can do something with, that’s a real gift and no doubt we’ll talk about lots of complex things coming up. You started your research journey almost 25 years ago. What’s driven you to continue in the research spheres for such a long time. Did you by any chance have any personally bad experiences with change, for instance, that made you keep going down this path of research and discovery?

Andrew: Yeah, so I started researching what was called “disruptive innovation” or “disruptive technology” and people like Clay Christiansen had written “the innovators dilemma”. There was other research which was largely hidden in the academic journals but I thought was really really powerful around cognition and around how managers and leaders get stuck in todays ways of working and in a sense, the more successful they are, the harder it is to break out and I was fascinated by the human dimension of change back then but what I also observed back then is that disruptions were quite rare and you either were incredibly unlucky if you were in a large established firm and you got hit by one or you were lucky if you managed to kick off a business that really rode the wave of one that was happening and I think, if I fast forward to where we are now, I don’t know of a business or a industry that’s not in disruption, not been in disruption for quite some time or doesn’t have disruption on the very near term horizon and that human dimension has just become more and more important. I also, in my career, I stepped out of research for ten years when I was in a leadership role. So I understand the difficulties of change, the difficulties of digitisation which is hitting us in education as much as it is in every other business. So I’ve kind of done it and I’ve seen it and I’ve researched it, if that makes sense.

Jenelle: Hmm, it does make sense but why are you still so passionate about it, after all these years. Like I know that you’ve said you’ve done it and you’ve researched it but you keep going and you seem to have every bit as much passion as I imagine when you started with if not more. Why?

Andrew: So I think for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think change is as difficult as its always been and so we’re not really seeing a movement in the number of successful change programmes, that’s the first bit. So there’s a need for this amongst the business community that I work with. The second reason is, I don’t think there’s ever been, in recent history, a greater need for change and when you look at the big challenge of facing companies in terms of digitisation, in terms of climate change, in terms of diversity inclusion belonging agendas. Essentially the world technology and people, if I could put them into those three buckets, never has there been so much of a challenge and therefore the pressure that leaders are under from shareholders, from regulators, from consumers via social media, from employees – it’s difficult and therefore if we can demystify how do you really bring about transformation, then I think that’s where, you know, we as a business school, you as a consultancy, we can really serve the world and we can really serve not just the clients we’re working with but the societies and the communities and the people that they go on and impact.

Jenelle: I’m going to come back to that “demystifying” the elements of change shortly but before I do that, I’m interested in just … you have a podcast so I’m quite conscious that I’m interviewing a podcaster themselves, so no pressure there for me …

Andrew: [laugh].

Jenelle: … but your podcast is called “leadership 2050” and in the opening of your podcast, you say 2050 is a critical date. Why is that?

Andrew: So when I came back into research when I finished my period as an Associate Dean, I thought well what's going on in the world and so I started to read a lot and I started to see that there was a lot of reports around 2050 being a critical date from a science point of view. In terms of we will have either solved climate change or we won’t. What I wasn’t seeing is a great deal of research on what type of leadership do we need and what type of transformation do we need between now and then to ensure that we don’t get a catastrophic result but we get a good result and as so the podcast really is focussed on leaders who I think are making some significant practical contribution towards that agenda and they can lean toward tech, they can lean towards the people agenda, they can lead towards the climate agenda. I sometimes… I think all three are kind of interwoven and that’s really what I’m interested in and I’m not interested in people who have got ideas about that. I’m interested in leaders who are actually doing things.

Jenelle: All right then. So what happens when we get to 2050? Do you retire? Does your podcast end? Will the world be all worked out?

Andrew: [laugh], you know what, I think I don’t know but I think when I look back over history, there’ll be something else interesting to focus on [laugh].

Jenelle: [laugh], leadership 2060 [laugh].

Andrew: Yeah, something like that [laugh].

Jenelle: If you think about the last 25 years that you’ve spent studying leadership and working with those leaders who have not just talked about it, as you say, but they’ve actually done it and you’ve got some really really great names out there. What would you say have been the enduring truths about leadership, you know, the things that will always be true and required of leaders versus the newer elements that have evolved over the last decade?

Andrew: It’s a great question. Let me go onto the newer bits and then I’ll jump back, if I could take it that way.

Jenelle: Sure.

Andrew: I think on the newer bits, what I’m noticing is that if I go back 25 years, there were many cases of where companies literally had a burning fire around their feet and they still found it difficult to change. So the industry, the company was crumbing and they were still holding on to old models. I think that’s changed and in the research I’ve recently done, there are far more people seeing what's coming – ten years, five years, three years, two years – down the road and leaning into that and I use this phrase “they consciously detach from the status quo”. They get themselves into a place where they can begin to see the future and begin to see what’s happening and if I then pivot back to where things have always been, I think good leadership has always been about, you know, two things. It’s been about vision and where are we going to go and energy and motivating people and inspiring people to get there and I think they’ve been the enduring things. What's different now is this whole element of disruption and how, as a leader, you know, you’ve got to step back, see where the future is going and then help people go through that emotional journey of change which isn’t easy. We invest, many of us, so much in our jobs and if we’re told our jobs are going to fundamentally change, it can throw us into panic and anxiety. You know, we can become passive/aggressive, we can become angry. Some of us are excited and see a great opportunity but there’s a whole rainbow of human emotion that can come up and good leadership now is about leading people through that disruption and so I think there are some differences to what we’re seeing today than what we’ve needed in the past, I think, and I would put it as “the past was broadly about leading within the status quo”. Yes, profound change, big increases in performance, competitiveness and all of that but today is really about leading through the disruption and the transformation that’s needed to go through that disruption.

Jenelle: Its really interesting to think about those two paradigms because arguably you would think that if you’re operating from a burning platform, it’s almost easier or more compelling to make change happen because hey, its burning, the thing is coming down. If you are trying to lead change from a burning ambition, you’ve got to muster up more, you’ve got to build more and if we struggled with it before, when arguably the platform was easier, what’s your thoughts about our likelihood of success under this newer construct?

Andrew: If I’m honest, I’m pretty hopeful and the reason I’m hopeful is because so many things have happened, I would say in the last 12 – where are we – in the last 14 years, starting with the financial crisis, when there was a, let's called it a minor earthquake and I use the word “minor” carefully because for some people it was major but it kicked off something and I think there were some people that said “when are we going to return back to a new normal” and that’s never happened and then if you think about what we’ve gone through in the last few years, ever increasing amounts of digit change, every increasing amounts of evidence around climate change. We then had covid which kind of threw so many operating models up in the air. We then the situation in playing out with Ukraine. We’ve got other kind of shifts in the geo-politics of the world. You know, people are talking about deglobalisation as opposed to globalisation. So I think people are … if there’s a muscle that we have that is our awareness of change, its being exercised quite a bit. Therefore I think its kind of easier to make the argument, therefore that we need to change as a business, if people or if employees are observing so much change in the external world.

Jenelle: So I want to just pick up that referencing change as a “muscle”. By that I assume that means it’s a capability. Something that can be exercised and strengthened and presumably something that you can also lose strength in. Is that right and if so, how does one go about building and maintaining that change muscle.

Andrew: So I think it works as a way of describing change and all of us know that if we don’t exercise, then over time muscles can atrophy, they can weaken and if we do exercise, whether we go running or we do strength training or we do yoga, these muscles can build both … they can build resilience and they build strength and I think the same is true with change and the more an organisation does change well, the more I think it embeds that into its cultural norm and it gives it confidence and it gives people confidence that they can go through things like this and yes, it will be uncomfortable but there will be a good outcome and its not an abyss that you drop into and I think sometimes it can feel like that.

Jenelle: So since we’re on the topic of change, you along with Oxford Saïd Business School embarked on some, what I think is really interesting research in partnership with EY. What was the catalyst for that research? What did you see as the gap that needed to be looked into?

Andrew: So myself, along with Adam Canwell who’s a partner out with you in Australia, I think the two of us sat down and we both realised that the … the stats on transformation weren’t changing. The need for transformation was getting bigger and both what we were seeing coming through from our executive education clients, what you were seeing coming through from your consulting clients was that there was a need to demystify this. To understand, you know, some companies were doing it really well and other companies not. What were those companies doing that were really succeeding and we needed to really understand that and bring an intellectual research focus to understanding that, across industries, across geographies and across successful and unsuccessful projects.

Jenelle: So look, spoiler alert here and albeit, I think it’s a very position spoiler, that research found that by truly putting humans at the centre, organisations are two and a half times more likely to be successful than those who focus elsewhere. Now I’ve long lamented a fairly enduring statistic that’s sort of bene well over two decades, it says 70% of transformation programmes fail. This research showed that there would be a two and a half … or could be a two and a half time uptick on success rate, if you do put humans at the centre. Pretty compelling stuff I reckon. Could you unpack that research for us a little more? What does putting humans at the centre really involve? It sounds like a great sort of tagline but what … when you unpack that, what does it actually mean?

Andrew: So, and it is a great stat and I think it really grabs the attention – it certainly grabs my attention to understand what’s underneath that. So let me look at, first of all, the role of leaders. What we found was putting humans at the centre means as a leader you’ve got to focus on yourself first and what we found in many cases of people who led successful transformations, they had literally taken themselves and put themselves in another physical place from which to observe their organisation. So examples of this would be an entire executive team going and spending ten days in Silicon Valley to understand how the digitisation agenda would affect them. The CEO of a retail business going and spending a significant amount of time with the Ella McArthur Foundation to understand the circular economy and how that would affect their business. So you know, its about physically going somewhere, its about having the humility to recognise you don’t have the answers. Its about putting aside serious amounts of time to really go on that journey of inquiry and some of them were very honest about how that made them feel. You know, they felt like they were at the beginning of a learning process. It was out of alignment with their status in the business but they had to go through that process of human emotion and facing into that human emotion …

Jenelle: And actually your point about consciously detaching from the status quo, which you talked about earlier, it’s doing that – right?

Andrew: Yeah exactly and that’s by consciously stepping out of it, putting the time in place, going through those processes of really understanding the world and from that, creating a vision, a compelling purposeful vision around why are organisations or our function and where our part of the business exists. So I would say that’s part one and that’s very much in terms of what the leaders do with themselves. There’s then part two which is how do you lead an emotional process of transformation and I describe this as kind of the left and the right hand. Let’s think about the dominant hand is the hand that does the project management. It understands the budgeting, it understands the KPIs, it understands the time scales, the activities, the classic project management approach and somebody said this to me recently. He said “we spent months doing all of that and we completely forgot the people” and what … I think what the research is telling us is that, you know, many of us have a non-dominant hand and not many or us are ambidextrous and that’s what we’ve got to learn and that’s the human process and that’s the process of listening, of leaning into difficult emotions, of having the humility to recognise you don’t have all the answers and leading people through an emotional process of change and using technology to do some of that at scale and understanding where is the organisation and what are the KPIs we will use to assess the emotional state of the organisation and where do we need them to be by certain points in the process. Essentially, in a nutshell, that I think what it means to put the human in the heart of the transformation process.

Jenelle: Its amazing. I feel like that makes a lot of sense but I’m trying to imagine it. Like I’m trying to imagine I’m sitting with a programme manager, I’ve got a transformation, you know, that we’re leading and I can see what the project plan looks like. I’m trying to imaging what an emotional or a human journey map looks like against that. Is it something that you’ve actually seen physically done? What does it look like?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a great … because its not a project plan. Its far more organic. To be honest, when people do it, they tend to bring graphical artists in …

Jenelle: We should qualify this further. Is there a single human journey map or emotional map because people will feel things at different points in time.

Andrew: Exactly exactly.

Jenelle: So how does that look in aggregate?

Andrew: And that’s why you’ve got that point, you’ve also got organisations will be in different points. So this is where, you know, listening as an individual leader is a capability. Listening as a group of leaders is a capability. Listening via tech is a capability and then what are the KPIs? How do we describe where our organisation is in aggregate, in different parts and what practices will we use to really move the emotional state of the organisation to be in the place we need it to be for the rational part to move forward. Almost hand in glove, if that makes sense. So I think we’re at the beginning of really trying to understand what this looks like as interventions and I think we’ll see over the next few months and years, I think a whole suite of technology is actually developed that help us codify this in the same way we’ve learnt to codify, you know, project plans and things like that.

Jenelle: So what’s surprised you about this research?

Andrew: Um, I think what surprised me most was two things. One is the degree to which leaders are leaning into this. They’re not waiting for the burning platform. They’re getting ahead of the curve. However we want to describe it. That would be number one. Number two was, I suppose, there were two things. People started to talk about leading a social movement and I thought that’s interesting language because social movements don’t really have anything to do with businesses. They affect governments but they don’t tend to come out of governments. Things like the environmental movement or black lives matter over the last few years. They don’t have strong organisations around them and yet some leaders were talking about this kind of language and I think its because they were using the skills of a leader of a social movement, which is essentially about purpose. Its about listening, its about leading people on an emotional journey where you don’t have hierarchical power. Now, they do have hierarchical power but I think what they’re doing is they’re recognising the limitations of it. That was the first thing that surprised me. The second was when I listened to how these leaders describe how they listened, I thought this sounds like therapy [laugh] and … so the advantage of being in Oxford is I can go and search and journals on social movements which are not in the business area. I can go and search the journals on psychotherapy. So I went into the journals of psychotherapy and I kind of found what is called a literature review which is a … when people look at multiple bits of research and I came up with a list of best practices around what psychotherapists do. I thought this is what those leader are doing. They’re not trained in it. They don’t know they’re doing it but essentially they’re listening to emotion. They’re playing back “I’ve heard that you’re feeling this”. They’re using processes that allow people to explore their emotion and then somewhere in all of that there, some transformation happens and those two things really interested me because it was ideas that, you know, I think historically have had nothing to do with business. They’ve been in very separate worlds and yet they’re starting to be useful frames to understand what leaders are doing.

Jenelle: I was going to ask you about that actually because I could see the risk coming from people who are maybe ill-equipped to open people up to those emotional journeys and not know what to do with that once they have surfaced those things. So maybe there’s a two-fold, one as an observation that there is a risk and how do you then build the capability and the safety, maybe psychological safety or the skills to be able to navigate that emotional journey which might be, you know, something that’s quite outside one’s normal capability set.

Andrew: I think you’re quite right to kind of highlight this as a risk and I think it suggests a couple of things. Firstly that there’s a set of leadership skills that we haven’t really trained people in. Secondly, what safeguarding do we need to put in place around those processes if we’re going to do that and you know, what support services do other … do organisations bring in to help with those types of activities and I think the other thing to remember is that organisations are not therapy groups and so one of the executives had a wonderful phrase. She said “its about pace and patience”. It is not endlessly talking about things. Its going through processes for a reason, for an output but ultimately its about the pace and its about improving the pace of the delivery, improving the pace of, you know, getting to that transform state.

Jenelle: So if we just stay on this theme or, you know, your insights from your literature review in psychotherapy and all of that, I have heard you say that when you go through disruption, it forces you to evaluate who you are and why you exist and for whom, which I think is really interesting. Its probably something that has resonated for leaders far more now, having navigated covid than what it might otherwise have done. I know that when I went, I mean I did go through a real personal crisis of confidence and identity when covid first hit. You know, it was - was I the right person to be leading, have I really had the right kind of experiences to be credibly standing in front of people saying follow me when I’m actually really not sure where the hell it is we need to go but then I did collect myself, with a reminder of, you know, I know who I’m here to serve and why I standing in place to be able to do exactly that. So I understand the “why you exist and for whom” but how should I be using the “who I am” evaluation to have greater impact and how do you sense check that along the way?

Andrew: Yeah, it’s a big question. In my experience, I don’t think we ever fully answer the question “who am I” because that’s changing as well.

Jenelle: I was wanting to cross that off my list of self fragilisation list!

Andrew: Yeah exactly because we go through change in life, you know, we rethink things, we understand different aspects of ourselves as we interact with different circumstances but what I do think where I see … as you’re describing, when you go through difficulties and covid was a great example, whether that’s in work or in our personal lives, it does raise these questions more to the surface and therefore if leaders are to take their organisations through these processes, they have to go there themselves because I think this can be a source of resilience. It can be a source of crisis but it can also be a source of resilience and often the crisis leads to the resilience, as we have a deeper sense of who we are, why we exist and what we really care about when we look at the world. So it’s about creating the space and the time for those questions and I’m currently in Oxford working with a group of 40 leaders from 30 different countries and probably 30 different industries and these are the types of questions we’re asking of them and they’re asking of themselves, alongside teachings on strategy and twenty-first century challenges and transformation which they’re going to be looking at today. In my experience, we ask them of ourselves or a crisis will come along and, you know, we’re forced to ask ourselves those questions and as I say, they can be difficult but they can be hugely resourceful when we have a sense of who we are and what we really care about when we look at the world.

Jenelle: I mean there’s a lot you kind of outlined around, you know, the environment that we find ourselves in, this constant disruption, this need to really think about the emotional journey, there’s quite a big ask on people to look at themselves, outside of themselves, all of that. Is there a new archetype of leader that you would say there needs to be or indeed, is there a single archetype, are there multiple? How do you think about that?

Andrew: That’s a great … another great question Jenelle, so thank you [laugh]. You’re really pulling a lot of stuff out of me today. I think there is. I don’t think its just one archetype. I have frequently thought this when I’ve been writing up my podcasts as LinkedIn newsletters which is also called “Leadership 2050”. I think the leaders that are really exhibiting elements of a new archetype or archetypes, they’re very purposefully driven. They know … their businesses are not there … they make money but they’re there to do so much more. They have an ability to do things which you look at and you just think “wow”. I’ll give you two examples. One is Audette Excel who I think you’ve interviewed on this podcast …

Jenelle: Yes, I’ve interviewed her as well!

Andrew: … yeah, and most of us look at the world of investment banking and develop and we think they’re oil and water, you know, the only place they really come together is at a fundraising event, when the investment bankers write big cheques for the charities [laugh] and yet Audette combined the two and its remarkable in what she’s done …

Jenelle: One serves the other which is fantastic.

Andrew: … one serves the other, yeah. So that would be one example. Another example is a company called The Plastic Bank and again, most of us look at plastic in the ocean and we look at low income coastal communities and we kind of, you know, its something that affects us but we don’t know what the answer is. David looks at it and says “no abundance, I’m going to take money off the big consumer goods companies, I’m going to pay people in those low income communities to collect that plastic”. That puts money into their household incomes, into schools, hospitals. The plastic becomes social plastic which is trademarked. It goes back into those consumer goods and its plastic with a purpose. So I mean it doesn’t get rid of plastic but it does transform a whole situation which, you know, to me, I’m looking at that thinking wow. If we had more businesses like David’s and Audette’s, the world would be in a different place. I think between those two individuals, there’s something of archetypes or an archetype and there’s plenty more that I could talk about as well who are doing things which I think are path-breaking, are different and are pivoted a lot more towards solutions and I think to your earlier point, there’s something simple about them. So they take a very complex challenge in the world that most of us look at and think “how on earth would we address this” and they come up with a really simple but deeply profound solution to address that.

Jenelle: Yeah agree. They are so really really phenomenal examples of what can be done. You know, when I think about the research that you, in conjunction with EY has done, when I think about a lot of the points that have been raised, you know, putting humans at the centre, listening to people, listening listening. It seems very obvious to me, with no you know, disrespect to either of our contributions in that space, but I guess it’s the same thing that I would say, you know, I know that I need to eat different types of foods to have a better outcome on my body, to go to the gym etc and yet, I still don’t seem to do it, at least not consistently and there’s countless of other examples of people, you know, know the impacts of smoking will still smoke anyway. What … why … in the context of change, why don’t you think its happening? I mean the Audettes and Davids are great examples but they still seem to be the exception, not the rule. What is it that is stopping us from doing this?

Andrew: I wonder and I don’t have hard and fast answers to this but a few people we’ve spoken to as we’ve talked about the research. I think particularly when I was with you in Australia, I wonder if we’re still living with a legacy of a 20th century model of working which has largely come out of the manufacturing of cars and the heavy industries of the first part of the 20th century and what we’ve done is we’ve intensified. We’ve professionalised and we’ve created organisations which are largely about predictability and order and structure and governances and all of these things which are great in themselves and that model goes through what I would call episodic change or infrequent transformation. What we’re talking about is organisations that go through or really are in a state of continual evolution and I just don’t think we were understood what the organisational framework is for that yet really and I think that’s probably where we might go in terms of the next phase of the research. How do you live in a state of evolution? You know, when I think about nature, nature doesn’t ask this question. Nature goes from spring, summer, winter, fall. You know, the trees go up, they grow their leaves, they shed their leaves. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. Its in this state of evolution. So this, you could argue, is our nature status people. So I think this is possibly the edge we’re at in terms of organisations and we need organisations that learn how to live in this continual state of change and the ones we’ve created, I don’t think are really set up for that and we know people respond to the structures in which we put them.

Jenelle: Yeah its interesting, isn’t it, because even language suggests, like if you say “I’m doing a transformation”. It feels like its got a start/middle and end point and then we’re done, we have transformed and in fact, we are transforming. Maybe that’s just the constant … the only constant state there is, the state of transforming.

Andrew: Yeah and we’re playing with language and what language really works here because even when I put … I started to use the word “evolution” I put continual evolution.

Jenelle: Yes!

Andrew: Well evolution is not … you don’t need to describe it … it is a continual thing.

Jenelle: It actually is, yeah, it’s tautology.

Andrew: So yeah, I think your language is breaking down, organisational forms are breaking down. There’s new leadership archetypes here. So we’re in the middle of something and I don’t have all the answers but its great to kind of play in the space and we need more people really bringing their experiences, their experimentation. So this is why I think people like David and Ordette are interesting because they are … they’re experimenting with stuff, that’s where we really see the language and the organisational forms crystallise, that others can then adopt.

Jenelle: So just turning to you as a person, Dr Andrew White. Thinking about you who has navigated your own moments of change and you’ve led change so you’ve, you know, stepped out of academia ten years, you went back in, you … when you think about your personal moments of change, what would be your .. the “ah ha” moments that have really stayed with you. Separate to research, what have been those moments that you’ve gone “okay this is what we’re talking about here”.

Andrew: So I think one thing I’ve learned to be much more comfortable about is not knowing. If I think back about when I went through the last big personal change which was stepping out of the leadership and back into the academic role, I didn’t even know LinkedIn had newsletters. I didn’t know I would be where I am now with four and a half thousand subscribers and a great community of people who listen every two weeks to … or read what I write. I didn’t know I’d be working with EY on a research project. You know, there’s so much which is emergent. So being in a place of not knowing, I think allows you to see what is emerging much more clearly and I think also from that, it’s easier to understand the different phases of transformation. Now what do I mean by that? There was one point when I stepped down … I went from ten committees to one. I went from a diary that was absolutely full to whole afternoons where I didn’t have anything and I was preparing a number of different projects. Now they’re all at full flight and I’m back up to a full diary but at the time …

Jenelle: I hope you enjoyed it when you had that blank diary [laugh].

Andrew: I did. Well I had … I felt guilty. I felt this … you know, what's going wrong here and then I just said “Andrew, you don’t have anything on, you have worked flat out, go for a bike ride, go for a walk, enjoy this time where these things are forming because its not going to last forever” and it hasn’t lasted forever. So … and when I would go for a walk, I would start to go into a more creative space. So I think what I personally understood is that there are phases in life we go through and its about being present to the emotion, present to the circumstances and you know, not cramming an agenda full for the sake of it and being busy for the sake of it but being tolerating not knowing, tolerating that … what the emergent might be and using that to go in deeper into who am I, what is my purpose, what do I really want to do because I think spaciousness is a really important part of that.

Jenelle: Its interesting. I was about to ask you how do you get comfortable with not knowing because that’s obviously one of the greatest sources of anxiety for people. It’s the not knowing but your language even just changed there. You said you went from “get comfortable with to be tolerant of” and maybe even that is interesting because maybe some people won’t be able to get comfortable with it but maybe you can be tolerant of it and recognise it is what it is.

Andrew: Yeah and different personalities as well.

Jenelle: It seems more accessible to … yeah I think so.

Andrew: Yeah, great call, yeah great insight.

Jenelle: So zooming out of change that happens at an individual level, like I’ve just spoken about with you or at an organisational level, looking at change that needs to happen at an industry or even a societal level, say for instance in the energy transition space. What observations would you make about what could or should be done to make that kind of macro change happen?

Andrew: One thing I’m noticing in the podcasts is that another dimension to the archetype that we spoke about is more and more of these leaders are leading systems. So they’re not just leading organisations, they’re taking a role in the system or the industry. I think we are at a point in history where there is so much opportunity to create new industries. The question is how quickly are we going to pivot to those. If you look at things like wind and solar and battery technology, its almost there or there in terms of technological functionality and the return on investment cases. So there is a process of moving capital. There’s a process of training people and there’s a huge upside in some of these things and the more we can get some of that entrepreneurial energy into the transition, I think the quicker it will go. There are numerous … I mean you could probably, you know, talk about several, I can talk about several, new businesses that we’re seeing that are really leaning into that, really understanding what those transformations look like and I invest and follow a company called “Pavegen” which generates electricity from footsteps. So they put these paving tiles into hospitals, into shopping streets, into shopping malls where there’s high footfall and then with every footstep, it generates electricity in the same way the solar on the roof is generating electricity.

Jenelle: That’s incredible!

Andrew: Now, I’m not saying that’s the answer. Its one element of it. A great example of a business that is really about the upside. Other businesses that are producing solar glass, so glass you can see through but it still generates electricity. So these are the businesses whether they’re in energy, whether they’re in food that in a sense that we see more of than we’re going to see change and any other I would say is there’s some large companies that I think are doing some super interesting things in terms of looking at their footprint in the world. One is Microsoft and its climate action plan, you know, super detailed, super interesting. They went right back to their start. They looked across the whole system of impact that they have. Not just in their own operation but in the consumers’ homes, I think. It’s a great example of a company taking its carbon footprint seriously and then the other one is Nueterra, the health and beauty company. If you really want to see … if any listeners really want to see what ESG, you know environmental, social and governance, an impact looks like, Nueterra’s plan to me, is one of the best developed in terms of detailed KPIs, detailed interventions about what that means. So yeah, I think that would be a kind of, you know, leaning into the entrepreneurial energy rather than going deeper into the angst [laugh] I think and that’s what … you know, that’s what gets people on board and that gets movement and that gets ideas, that gets money moving and that gets the products and services that the world needs.

Jenelle: I’m certainly recognising that interdependency is critical there. Now you used the words “leaning in”. I … when you think about the frequency and the nature of changes that individuals and leaders continue to navigate … as you said, its just all the time now and the nature and the magnitude of the changes that the world needs to collectively navigate. You know, maybe its too broad of a question but what would be your advice about leaning in like that? How best does one think about doing that?

Andrew: It comes back to a couple of things we’ve spoken about already. One is ask yourself the question. This is very hard to do when you’re crazy busy and it’s very hard for some of us not to be crazy busy.

Jenelle: [laugh].

Andrew: So where are the spaces that we go to really stop and to go into what I would call “a place of being” as opposed to a “place of doing” where we can really go into that reflective space. I think we can do that individually. I think its more powerful when we do it collectively and we support each other. We see ourselves more clearly. We see our teams more clearly. We see our organisations more clearly. I think its easier to get into a perspective where you can really see what is our purpose, what is our impact and what transformation do we need to make and so in many ways its about finding that space and in my experience, you either do it yourself or life has a funny habit of forcing it on you [laugh] and so I think that’s probably the starting point. As simple as that sounds, I mean all kinds of things can come from there.

Jenelle: Very good and I know that you do observe those practices for yourself, a lot of meditation and mindfulness to give yourself the space to do exactly that. So the words aren’t coming from a place of non-practicing [laugh]. I know that you live and breathe it.

Andrew: And I’m, like you, sometimes I go, you know, I know the right thing to do. Sometimes I go weeks and then I kind of check myself …

Jenelle: I know I always do the right thing Andrew, what I say I do all the time, 100% of the time [laugh].

Andrew: And then some … and then you know, life brings you back but I think its having those tools in your toolkit to know how to get back into that place of reflection.

Jenelle: That’s fantastic.

The last three … three fast questions on change to finish the podcast

Jenelle: So I’m going to finish with a fast three questions for you. Don’t overthink it. What are you reading, watching or listening to right now?

Andrew: So what I’m reading is a fantastic book by Eckhart Tolle called “Stillness Speaks”. I go back to it over and over again, its simple and yet deeply profound and it’s probably one of my favourite books. So I kind of read it and then I leave it for a year and then I come back to it and I’m currently in a period when I’m coming back to it.

Jenelle: Yes, that’s been on my list for a long time and then I think about and then I don’t do it. I’ll think about it so I’ll reignite that on my reading list. What’s your super power? Now that can be something additive to the world or a useless party trick.

Andrew: Yeah, I’m not very good at useless party tricks [laugh].

Jenelle: A useful party trick then [laugh].

Andrew: Useful party trick [laugh], yeah, I’m not sure I’m very good at useful party tricks. I would say asking a really really good question. I think a really good question can be a wonderful act of service for another person and then help them go into a deep place of inquiry and I love good questions. I think good questions really unlock stuff and can be so powerful.

Jenelle: I couldn’t agree more with you. If you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would that be?

Andrew: Yeah. So it think it would have three elements to it. Listen to what’s said and not said. Get comfortable with not knowing and then do that to think about what you previously thought was impossible.

Jenelle: Wow, I like that a lot. Actually it makes me think about the Carol Week comment about “nothing is impossible yet” … always put the word “yet” on the end of that, it changes everything. Thank you Andrew so much for your time today and for your insights. I’ve loved the conversation. Many things I’ve taken away from it. The exercising our change muscle to build resilience and strength. The power and the need to listen as an individual, as a collective, with technology. Those are skills that we are all, I think, can improve upon and hone. You know, I’m really appreciative of your desire to and ability to demystify things, you know, you write about your superpower and seeing patterns and asking questions and leaning into the complexity. So that’s been really wonderful to see. I do think that its an important point about the ambidextrous capability that we all need to have in managing the rational and the emotional and you use the word “space” a lot and you used it in the context of creating space and time for questions. You used it in the context of creating space for being rather than doing. You used it in the context of finding space to ask questions and listen to even the things that aren’t being said. So I think that’s really important. You talked about your friend’s advice about pace and patience and I think those are two important virtues when it comes to change. You said on this discussion that you don’t have all the answers and I know that you don’t and I can see why that has spurred your research for so long but you certainly do have some important answers or clues and perhaps, even better, are the questions that you continue to raise and to challenge to all of us. I think the willingness to get comfortable with not knowing or at least be tolerant of not knowing, to be present to your own environment and be present to your emotions are things that we can all have a strong reflection on. So Andrew, thank you so much for your time.

Andrew: Jenelle, its been wonderful, thank you so much for having me.

The ‘Change Happens Podcast’ from EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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