Shownotes
Lipmanowicz H. and McCandless K. (2013) The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures. Liberating Structures Press.
Kaner, S. (2014) Facilitator’s guide to participatory decision-making. Jossey-Bass.
Transcript
Kate: Welcome to season 2 of Leading in Conversation. I’m excited to be back for a second season, but sadly I’ll be kicking off without Nelis, who is unable to join us today. However, I’m really glad to be joined by Josiah Watters. Hello Josiah!
Josiah: Hi Kate. Good to be with you.
Kate: Thank you. Josiah is from the US, but living in Thailand, and he works in people development and organisation development and also does consulting and coaching across Asia. Nelis and I both met Josiah through a leadership course where he’s on Faculty. One of the first things I noticed about Josiah is his stellar facilitation skills. He always asks really interesting questions to get people talking. So, I guess I want to kick off with that, Josiah. When did you first get interested in facilitation, and why?
Josiah: I think the first part of that journey for me was actually watching my dad. So my dad is a linguist by training, but he is also a teacher. And I remember, as a kid, watching him in different contexts, the difference in the engagement in the room when he would get up to teach, compared to others. Oftentimes people seem to be tuning out when I would watch other people speaking. And then when my dad would get up, people would lean in. And I realised, looking back, a lot of that had to do with the fact that he asked questions. From his perspective, it was maybe more of a Socratic method that influenced him. But he would ask great questions and his method of teaching involved a lot of dialogue among those he was teaching, and between him and his pupils. So that shaped me early on, and in university, I got involved in an outdoor education program on the side of my studies. And that’s where I really first began to facilitate groups. So we would take groups of people ranging from students, young students, all the way up to professional corporate groups, that would come and have these outdoor experiences together. And then we would facilitate discussion and discovery and dialogue. And so that whole process of learning to facilitate those groups really shaped how I went from then on.
Kate: That’s really fascinating. So, something you picked up almost subconsciously, maybe, as a child watching your dad, but then had an opportunity to hone as you got older. So, conversational leadership… when we were chatting the other day, you mentioned how discovering dialogic organisation development was transformational for you. Can you tell us a bit about that? What was so impactful for you?
Josiah: Yeah, it was, it was a bit of a slow unveiling is how I experienced it. I was working with an organisation in Asia. We were trying to see more engagement among all the members in shaping the future together. We were thinking about how to involve people in co-creating the future. We were using that kind of language. And I came across a book called Liberating Structures, it’s actually The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures and it talks about how often we think of changing organisations by changing the macro structures. But they said actually, what is even more important is to look at the micro structures, the way that interactions happen in organisational life every day. And if we see change happen there, in those micro structures, all kinds of things become possible. And so, I was really intrigued by this book. We began to implement a lot of the Liberating Structure practices in our organisational life, and saw a great impact from that. And then I was at a little bookstore in Calcutta, India, and I came across this book that was on the shelf, called Dialogic Organisation Development. And I just picked it out. I thought I’d look through it and I began to read through it on the plane. And I realised it was the underpinnings of everything behind the Liberating Structures, why they were having the kind of impact that they were.
Kate: Was that the book by Bushe and Marshak, that came out in 2015? That book was really impactful for me too. When I found it, it was like, oh, this is what I’ve been looking for, this makes sense. I’d read a lot of Ralph Stacy’s work before and I found it a little bit lacking in the practical application for leaders. And then when I came across Dialogic OD, and particularly that book, it was like a light bulb turning on for me.
Josiah: So we had already begun with processes and practices that reflect the mindset and values of dialogic OD, without knowing the term dialogical yet. But we were recognising that all transformation is linguistic, that change happens through language. Everything in the one sense that we consider as an organisation occurs to us or rises through the medium of language. And how we began to explore that and that actually shifting what was happening in organisational life together requires different kinds of processes than what we had previously experimented with or become accustomed to.
Kate: Absolutely. I think the power of language, the power of narrative, how you talk about things, changing how you talk about things can then change everything else within an organisation, and like you say, going from the macro to the micro. We often think that, where traditionally change has been viewed as a sort of top-down approach, that’s going to be successful. The leaders decide what the change will be and it’s usually the big stuff. But actually, seventy five percent of change processes fail, partly because they don’t involve the people at the micro level. I’d love to hear more about this. How have you been using these processes in your organisation? Can you tell us some stories? Give us some examples?
Josiah: Sure. You know, I think one of the first things we ran into was the sense that the more people were involved in helping create something, the more they had a sense of ownership and engagement. And at the same time there seemed to be real limits on how many people you could have meaningfully involved, at least with the traditional structures, the traditional micro structures, things like a presentation or a facilitated discussion. Facilitated in the sense that I’m managing the discussion as the facilitator. There’s real limits to what’s possible there. You might only be able to work with, you know, six or nine, maybe twelve people at the most.
Kate, Yes, otherwise, meaningful conversation sort of breaks down and you get question and response and comment…
Josiah: Right, and so what we loved about the Liberating Structures practices were that they allowed any size of group to meaningfully participate. And so we begin to use those. One early example was, I was in charge of organising our regional conference for our organisation and those conferences have been pretty traditional like any other conference you might imagine and in the preparation for it, we started talking to lots of people who had been previously to that kind of conference and asking them what were the best parts for them. What was the most meaningful, what would make it worth it for them to attend again, and so just really listening. And over and over, we heard, you know, the best was the things that happened in the margins. So we said, what if we move those things out of the margin and put them front and centre. So that was one of our first experiences was redesigning this conference. Really, it became an unconference, some might call it.
Kate: Can you explain what an unconference is?
Josiah: Well, I don’t know a formal definition but it’s a conference without a planned agenda, without plenary speakers, without specific experts coming in to deliver certain topics. What we did was we tried to get the kinds of people there that we wanted interacting with our personnel. But we had to come up with a different contract with them. So, we invited them but we said, we’re not inviting you to come and teach a session. We’re not inviting you to come and speak in a plenary talk. What we’d like is for you to come and just engage, be there, be available. Engage in conversation with the participants and…
Kate: That’s really important, isn’t it? Framing, setting expectations. You used the word “contracting”, you mean setting expectations, framing their role, telling them how you want them to interact, especially if they’ve traditionally been used to downloading information on people, sharing presentations. It takes some deliberate thought and action, to help people shift into a different mode of interacting, particularly when you’re using something like Open Space Technology. I’ve observed, it can be quite destabilising for leaders who are used to a traditional role in such events. Where is their opportunity to speak, to share, to download the information? And sometimes participants feel a little bit shaky. Like where are all the presentations? What, you mean, we’ve got to come up with the content? How did people receive it? How did it go down?
Josiah: Well I think you’re exactly right. We had some of the guests that we invited that declined because they weren’t interested in that expectation that we were setting. And then others that accepted but did struggle during the event to adapt to a different way of being useful. And then others that really thrived. And for the participants by and large there was a very positive response. There was so much energy unleashed in the room across those few days. And some people that also struggled with running out of energy, which was interesting because they said, can we just actually, one person came up to me and said, can we just have one session with a talking head? Because I’m getting exhausted, from all this engagement there!
Kate: Especially the introverts, it’s huge for introverts. If you’re doing all the engaging, you come to an event, you’re used to just sitting and listening, it can actually be quite relaxing, just letting the words wash over you… but, no, this is a very different…
So we kind of need to set the expectations for participants as well, you’re coming and it all depends on you. You’re coming to engage, to share your wisdom, to set directions, etc.
Josiah: Yes, that’s right. And I’m an introvert actually myself and I’m going to actually encourage and try to model managing your own energy during the event and so there were some sessions where I just needed to go have a rest and have some quiet because then I had something more to contribute in the next session.
Kate: I’ve had to do that, as well as you know, I’ve got Long Covid and sometimes I just have to say to myself, “Right, Kate, take a step back. You can’t actively participate in this session. You just need to rest while still being present and listening.” That’s quite hard for me as an extrovert. So, that was your first event, this conference, and did that go down well enough that you have repeated this?
Josiah: We have, we’ve repeated it with some modifications over the years, so we’ve done more of a blend in recent years, between some kind of traditional, plenary types of sessions but then with Liberated Structure processes for everyone to engage around the content and around the topics and then we still had places that were opened up for anyone to continue conversations.
Kate: Yeah, that’s really interesting. So I literally just heard today of an event in our organization where they were using open space technology and they’ve actually just decided at the request of the participants to put a few presentations back in. I think it’s getting that balance between sharing information because the information you share frames and sets up the conversations, gives some input. So getting the balance is really important isn’t it.
Josiah: That’s right.
Kate: What have you learned in the process, what has worked, what hasn’t worked?
Josiah: We have experimented widely and one of my strengths is like discovering, learning, exploring, and so I was really gifted to partner with some other leaders who were great at taking things from idea to action. I love the world of ideas and on my own I could probably stay there at times but I was working with some partners who were very action-oriented. So anytime I would come across a new idea, they would say, “How about we start it… today?” And I would feel the need to get more proficient, to learn more before we tried to put it into practice, but we would usually jump right in and start learning as we went. So we have learned a lot along the way experimenting with different processes but I think a foundational piece for all of these is listening. We started doing some coaching training, received some coaching training, began to be involved in individual coaching, one-on-one coaching. And the power of just practicing intentional listening as a gift to another stuck with us and we saw that over and over being the foundation for all these other kinds of group processes that we wanted to engage in together.
Kate: Definitely, because if you’re not listening to what someone else is saying, and I think we see this happen a lot in those kinds of conference contexts, you’re actually sitting there preparing the thing you want to say. And I think, often in the old style conferences you used to have people speak from the floor at the mic and everyone would be lined up with their thing to say. It wasn’t really a conversation, it didn’t necessarily build, because people were coming with their different things. And what I love about a conversational approach is what happens when people do listen and build on each other and you get this whole different thing growing rather than everyone just coming up with their own idea.
Josiah: Yeah. I think for me and my role as a leader in our organisation at the time a real challenge was that I wanted to model being a learner. I wanted to open up the space for the unexpected to emerge. I knew that the things that mattered most to us couldn’t be directed and planned in a linear way. And yet I was functioning in this role that often, I felt like I needed to live up to a sense of expertise or a sense of knowing the answers.
Kate: I can so relate to that. Could you say a little bit more about the things needing to emerge rather than being planned?
Josiah: Well, I think the difference for me is someone that’s trying to create a learning environment where they have a destination that they want the learners to arrive at, that presumes, you know the right destination and you know the path to get there. And that works for some kinds of situations and some kinds of challenges. But the things we were engaged in there wasn’t a proven, right answer or a proven path of how to get there. And so as a leader in that space the temptation to knowing the answer is a leader is still there. And culturally there’s a lot of bias towards that, like I felt pressured to have the answer but I knew that none of, no one of us have the answer. Somehow together we needed to discover it and that wasn’t going to happen if I was playing this role of the person with the answer or a person with a plan. And yet it was very destabilizing at times for people, for me in the leader role not to acknowledget having the plan, not having the answer. So we had to learn how to kind of create a sense of safety, or enough safety within the group to explore together. And that was a journey and it was, I think I’m still learning how to do that. And one of the challenges I think is that you can’t teach someone who already knows. So this idea of leaders being lifelong learners sometimes feels like a dichotomy because the more you lead, the more experience you have to draw from. It can be easy to stop learning because you think you already know and the feeling of not knowing, the feeling of learning can actually be really disorienting and uncomfortable. I’d much rather know the answer than not know the answer.
Kate: How have you found this in the Asian context where I think it’s particularly harder for leaders to embrace this kind of leading as learners, as co-participants when culturally they’re expected to know everything and be that sort of more hierarchical leader.
Josiah: One thing I’ve seen is leaders that are able to have that top voice, to frame a direction of travel without saying this is the exact path to get there, that we’re going to need to discover it together. And so they’ve been able to have that voice and that influence from the top and then allow a process to emerge within the group they’re leading, as they figure out how to move forward towards that goal. That’s one way I’ve seen and then another would be a bit more subversive or indirect. For example, I got hired as a coach for an organization that was working in the eastern part of India developing different factories and it was growing pretty rapidly. And they were trying to train a whole layer of middle management to keep up with their growth. And so they wanted me to be a coach. Now, in my mind coach has a certain framework around it, it is very facilitative. For these clients that I was working with, they saw me as the guru. So rather than fighting that role I embraced it, I owned it, but then I engaged them in a facilitative way. So, for example, I would say “You’re so fortunate, you found me. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know. You’re going to be such a better leader after working with me”.
Kate: That must have felt uncomfortable for you?
Josiah: Maybe not quite that extreme but along those lines, you know, that’s what they were looking for, that reassurance. And then I would say, “But for me to help you I really have to understand more about what you are working with, what you are experiencing and then I would just start asking all these questions. And things would start to be unearthed and I would ask them what they saw the possibilities to be, what their sense of the right move forward. And so over time, then they were able to see, well, actually we did this ourselves, but it didn’t start that way. I couldn’t convince them just by describing it. They had to experience it.
Kate: Yes. Absolutely. And that leads me on to the element that’s really important, I think, in conversational leadership Is creating a sense of safety, psychological safety for people, holding their anxiety. I think Stacey talks about holding anxiety for people. Can you tell me a little bit about how you’ve done that? You gave one great example there.
Josiah: Yeah. So for me, I think it starts with being more aware of my own anxiety, and acknowledging that and being able to hold that. Because it’s easy, I think, for me to come into a group that I’m working with and bring some of that anxiety myself. And so I need to be aware of my own and then I can be able to start to hold that for others. And I love the framework in the Dialogic OD book that talks about moving from… they talk about a container. And so the idea that a container is useful because of what it contains. So my coffee cup, it’s not so much about the cup, it’s about what it contains inside that gives it value. So the container could be temporary, it could be a discussion group, it could be a working team. But the process they describe is instability of the container, where it’s just starting to take shape, and then instability in the container, as a group that’s starting to work out how they relate to each other. And then you can start to get to real movement, interaction, after you get to stability within the container. And so, for my role, as a facilitator of a conversation or a group, I start off as as, in many ways, as the container for the group. I’m containing the anxieties, I’m aware of them. And people are looking to me to help manage the anxieties that they’re bringing. But as the group begins to form together, my role starts to move to the periphery. And so, instead of being front and centre, I’m starting to move to the edge more, as the group begins to do its work.
Kate: What do you do practically to hold anxiety in session? You gave the example from when you were working in India. You sort of framed your role and kind of met them halfway with their expectations of you. What else might you do to make people feel safe. They are coming to something quite new, maybe they’re discussing a topic which is destabilising for them. What will you actually do in the room?
Josiah: Well, some of it can be very simple in conversation. So at the beginning of a gathering, we might have people get into pairs for conversation and just briefly discuss what might keep you from being fully present today, fully present in this next session. What is it that matters to you most about this topic or about what we’re going to discuss and what might get in the way of you fully showing up? Just pausing to acknowledge that, to recognize, we’ll even do some brief things like a body scan, depending on the type of group. Just to notice, you know, what are you feeling, what are you bringing in with you? You know, tension in your shoulders, is your chest tight? You’re kind of holding your breath, not getting full, deep breaths? Some groups are more or less comfortable with that but I think it still can be useful to practice. But then for myself, being able to pay attention to what I’m sensing, internally, has been a learning process for me because oftentimes that gives me clues about what’s going on in the room. And then I can verbalize that, not project it on the people but I can say “I noticed this happening inside of me. I don’t know what that’s about. Does anybody have any thoughts about that? Or any comment, or…?” You know, I open it up, open up my own internal experience to the group and oftentimes then that will surface from the group, something that’s happening. And if the anxiety is pushed down and not acknowledged and we just try to move forward, it still leaks out.
Kate: Yes, it reminds me of, we’ve been in this book group, talking about this book Organization Development by Mee-Yan Cheung Judge, who I know has been one of your mentors and teachers. And she talks about the ‘use of self’. And I think that’s what you’re touching on, and something I’m really interested in. And in that kind of setting, that’s a huge amount of vulnerability and transparency, that people may not be comfortable with. Do you not introduce more anxiety when you ask people to be that vulnerable, to talk about feelings? I’m particularly thinking about, working with Western men, who might not be so comfortable talking about their emotions.
Josiah: Yeah. So you have to really try to understand your group, where they’re at, who you’re working with. And there’s a variety of things I’ve done to help make it a smoother on ramp for people. One would be if they’re people you have a particular concern for prior to a session to be able to have have some conversational engagement with them, to sense what might be helpful for them to fully show up and engage. It is going to be risky. And one of the ways that we deal with that is to move slowly, I think of it, kind of like a spiral or a funnel, like you cam slowly progress. So there was a famous study done. These people that said if you get strangers together and you get them to answer these, I think it was 35 questions, together over 45 minutes, they had a high likelihood of falling in love with each other.
Kate: Wow, okay.
Josiah: You know, the psychology study that was done. The concept behind it was, deepening mutual reciprocal self- disclosure. So that you’re slowly sharing a bit more about yourself and then hearing a bit more about the other person. So we do that in threes and you get people sitting close together, knees touching, really close proximity. And then you have several rounds of questions. It doesn’t have to be 35 and we’re not trying to get them to fall in love, but we’re getting them past the point of anxiety and to really starting to see each other as humans, so, there is a human to human connection instead of seeing each other as a role or as a persona.
Kate: That’s really special actually. That human connection at a deep level is something that we all naturally crave, we need, we’re made to need it, and yet our society, education, our cultures have sort of put barriers between us. But actually if you’re going to get anywhere in a conversation, in work, if you’re going to bring about change, then you need to, you need to get rid of those barriers. There’s walls that we put up between ourselves and put yourself in a vulnerable place. But I know that’s really hard for people. How has this all gone down in your organization?
Josiah: One thing that has helped us for us to model it. If I model it, if I do that hard work, and if I’m doing that learning and growing, then what I bring is a different presence to the room and that’s where the facilitator is as container can start to happen, where you’re creating a sense of safety just by your presence in the room, in your ‘use of self’ like Mee-Yan would say. But then also working with others that I had already gone deep with, we were able to model together a different kind of interaction and a different kind of conversation that would be different than what people had experienced before, especially like you said in certain cultural groups, that maybe don’t share that much, about their inner world. And so for us, we recognize that, some authors said, most people in an organization are doing a second job, no one is paying them for and that’s covering up their weaknesses. If you really pay attention , so much energy under the surface goes into managing or as they would say, covering up our weaknesses and when you are able in a group, in a team or an organization, to increase the safety it frees up some of that energy for other things, for creativity and productivity. It’s amazing what can happen.
Kate: Before the pandemic we used to have a lot more in-person meetings. A product of the pandemic is we do a lot more stuff online. Has that been the same for you? And if so, how do you go about creating that container in an online space?
Josiah: I think it takes more time online. It can take more time has been our experience, but having opportunities for people to connect personally and to begin to share from their world and finding small way to bring each other into your world. And there’s lots of creative, simple ways out there to do that. But one of the things we’ve seen is that it does take extra time in the meeting space or in the conversation to make that happen and sometimes we do that in the context of the large medium, sometimes we do it sequentially where there might be a series of smaller interactions that lead into a bigger conversation.
Kate: You almost have to create that margin time you were referring to earlier, like, when you meet in person you have the coffee breaks, you have the meal times, you have the evenings, you have the “Oh, I just bumped into you in the corridor and we were chatting for 10 minutes” kind of things, which you don’t have in online meetings, you sort of show up, you’re there and then you leave. I think we need to explore much more creating those margin opportunities and making them manageable for people, because often the last thing you want to do if you’ve been in several hours of online meeting is hang around and eat lunch with someone online as well.
Josiah: Yeah, and we found that people often need some support to know how to engage. Almost that good conversation can feel like a lost art at times. So just the fact that you arranged for three people to get together and have a small group conversation, they might not be sure what to talk about or they might just play out common scripts in a conversation without really sharing at a personal level or a meaningful level and so we try to give a bit of prompting for people to choose. They can still choose what they want to talk about, but it takes it another level deeper. But I’ve also found it’s important to verbalize and externalize what we’re experiencing online. Because body language is not as visible and so on.
Kate: If I’ve got my arms crossed and tense when you can only see my head and shoulders.
Josiah: Yeah. So it’s just stopping to ask people, to check in and say, “I’m curious after I said that what was going on for you Kate, you know, what were you experiencing?”. And just simple check-ins like that. And also for me to model doing that. I’ve had to learn to do that anyway because I tend to be not very expressive externally. And often people struggle to know what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling. So I have to work extra hard to let them know. So actually I was already practising that when we had to move online, but I found that it’s helpful for others to do that as well.
Kate: There’s a whole lot more intentionality and verbalizing things, and showing up in a different way, I think, is what I’m hearing you say, whether in person or online.
Josiah: That’s right. And it opens up a lot of possibilities at the same time. I mean, it has constraints for sure, but it has also allowed us to do a lot of things we wouldn’t have been able to do before. And working asynchronously. We do a lot through exchanging voice conversations that aren’t happening live in real time and actually find it really interesting to listen to a ten minute recording of a co-worker talking compared to listening to them talking for 10 minutes. In a meeting I might – if there’s five of us sitting around – I might start to get impatient or feel like we’re not equally sharing the space, I’m thinking about what I’m going to say. But if I know I’m just listening and I’ve got 10 minutes to hear them and I’m trying to really remember what I’m listening to so that I can respond in an hour or two – I’ll often do this on walks and will just listen to the recordings on the walk. I find myself really engaging in a deeper kind of listening.
Kate: Oh, I really like that. That’s not a tool that I’ve used – I mean, obviously we send Whatsapp messages to each other but actually asking people to record themselves, say on WhatsApp or Signal, share that with the rest of the group. And then you each, you take the time to listen, That’s s quite a lot of listening time. If you’ve got a, like, our leadership team of seven people, if we all chat, right, 10 minutes. That’s quite a lot of listening. But still, it’s something when you’re in a different time zones, especially, you can do it asynchronously and then come to the meeting and you’ve already heard what other people bringing and then you start at a different place in the process.
Josiah: Exactly, that synchronous time is so precious especially for global calls where we’re going from the West coast of the US to Asia, you know, we’ve got about an hour an a half window. And so if we’re using that for each person to start off with their update or where they’re coming from, we don’t really get to much of the conversation and the follow-up questions and dialogue, that could happen.
Kate: And you know what I also love? Those of you in Asia, at least in our organisation, often end up being in meetings late at night… and it gives you a chance to record your thoughts at a time of day when you are awake!
Kate: I think one final question for you – although I talk for a lot longer on this topic – but the big question for us is always, how do you move from conversation to action? It’s not just talk is it? And that’s sometimes the accusation we get, “Well, conversational leadership is just talk. How’s that different?” How do you make that leap to actually making a decision, doing something?
Josiah: This is really an interesting one because I would say there’s an assumption in the question itself, that those are two different things or that they are separate and in our experience, oftentimes, they’re really not that separate. You know, would people be willing to consider that talk is action. And for us, we work with a lot of leaders who are fairly activist in their leaning, you know, they want to produce something, they want to see something happen, and at the same time, there’s a lot of energy that gets expended and then we have to start over again. And so the process of action and conversation being held together, I think, is really important for us. That we are starting to move forward based on the conversations we’ve had but we are paying attention as we go. We’re continuing to listen to each other and we’re expecting that there’s going to be a lot of adjustments and course corrections and things we didn’t anticipate that we need to learn from it, and be ready to adapt to. So it’s really both together in our experience that are important. The other thing I would say is so much of our focus has been moving to action. And when we move too quickly to action, we found it takes so much more effort to sustain that action. Whereas sometimes if we stay longer in the conversation, or some of our leaders are getting impatient, what happens is, coming out of that, the people involved move so much faster, and are so much more self-organised that they execute much more quickly. And it’s interesting, I remember reading a case study from the company WL Gore that makes goretex and other products. They talked about how they take way longer than other companies to explore possibilities. But then once they move to action, they outperform other companies by far, like their speed keeps their advantage. But their speed actually comes from slowing down long enough to explore together, to surface things that would have been missed otherwise, and for the energy of everyone in the room to be fully unleashed.
Kate: That’s really significant and it takes, again, a very conscious, deliberate patience to slow yourself down, to resist that temptation to jump too quickly to a decision. Sam Kaner talks about the groan zone, staying in the groan zone. You’re probably familiar with that and I think we’ve mentioned that on the podcast before. Don’t jump to the convergence, the decision-making, too fast because you might miss the thing you really need.
Josiah: Yeah, that’s right. I like that, the groan zone. Somebody else calls it the zone of productive disequilibrium.
Kate: That’s a mouthful, I’ll stick with the groan zone!
Josiah: But that’s really key, being able to stay there. And so for us, it’s the idea that you come up with a good enough plan and then you can just act it out, that hasn’t held true and so we have to keep the conversation open because we expect to be learning as we go and so we move from plans to planning as an ongoing reality.
Kate: Because things will emerge and then you need to respond and then you’ll move further and further away from the original plan. But it might actually be better, it might be where you really needed to go. I think the era of strategic plans that are in cement, or on the shelf, you know, that’s long gone, isn’t it? I think emergent planning is where we really need to be because things move so fast and we need to be responsive.
Josiah: That’s right. That’s been our experience.
Kate: Well, as I said, Josiah, I could talk for a lot longer, but I think we’ll wrap this up for today. Thank you so much for giving me your time today. Really enjoyed talking to you.
Josiah: It’s been fun to be with you, thanks Kate.
Kate: And thanks too to our listeners for joining us as we start our second season. As always please leave us your thoughts and comments at leadinginconversation.net. That’s all for now. See you soon!
