Heath Gascoigne  00:00

Hello. My name’s Heath Gascoigne, and I am the host of the business transformation podcast. And this is the show for business transmitters, who are part business strategists, part business designers, and part collaborators and negotiators. Business transmitters have moved past just business design and includes oversight of implementation of those business designs and business transformation, and includes stakeholder management, coordination and negotiation. If you work in strategy, development and implementation and work to ensure that that strategy is aligned to the business design and technology, then you’re probably a business transmitter. This is a show where we speak to industry experts and professionals to share their stories, strategies and insights to help you start turn around and grow your business transformation. Welcome to the business transformation podcast, and in this episode, we’re talking to one of those industry experts. We are speaking to the one other than Brian Gorman, who is a maverick coach and Maverick bean people who want to buck the system, and if I first of all welcome Brian. How

Brian Gorman  01:10

are you? Thank you, Heath. I’m glad to be here. I’m doing well.

Heath Gascoigne  01:15

Full context for everyone. Which part of the world are you in? I

Brian Gorman01:19

am in Hoboken, New Jersey. As I look out my windows over some rooftops in the Hudson River, I can see the World Trade Center, so right outside New York City. Nice

Heath Gascoigne  01:28

one, nice one. Okay, we’re in two different conference here, ladies and gentlemen. So that will tell you that when the conversation that we get into it is not say biased to one particular side of the world, these might be common trends of events or issues that occur across transformation, regardless of where you are, alright? So Brian, you have a meets. We’ll get into the meets. I don’t know we could call you the godfather of change. 50 years, 50 plus years in change and transformation, leadership. We’ll get into if people want to get hold of you, we’ll put in the show notes at the end, transforming lives. Dot coach, that. That’s the domain name. Dot coach, pretty cool. So let’s, let’s start, as we usually do that we have the three topics we cover so the audience can follow along. First is in your particular space and leadership. It’s leadership organization, transformation and Mavericks. How do you find those Mavericks? How do they come to you? How do you find them? They come to you, or you go to them, you get some good news about them and say, hey, look, I can take the next level. But how it has? It worked? So the what is the industry doing leadership? I see myself with transformation, I think that is underrated skill. And there’s also the conversation about as leaders made or born. Second part is, is there a particular approach that you follow when you go into help a client, an organization, even maybe own business around leadership and transformation, leadership, and the last one having done this now 50 years, and we’ll get into where some I think staple is it New York and back in 2000 and the turn of century, major organization transformation. So we’ve got some big transformations under your belt. So in terms of the takeaways, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know, 50 years experience, probably, I think you actually have it on your LinkedIn profile. Actually, you’ve trained over 1000 leaders, probably more than that. Probably did that in a year, 50. Alright, so let’s get this off in the industry. What are they doing? Well, they got this handle on their leadership or on moving on.

Brian Gorman03:42

It’s think this is a very interesting time for leaders and a very challenging time putting aside anything that’s happening politically, economically, we are in the early days of the digital revolution. We continue to lead our organizations to even design our organizations, to structure our processes as if our employees are part of this business machine, if you will. And which is why I have stepped into Maverick coaching. Mavericks are those leaders who realize it ain’t working no more. We’re putting band aids on a broken system. So the leaders that I see are bringing humanity to their leadership. They’re bringing emotional intelligence to their leadership. They’re rethinking even the very structure of their organizations. They’re focused on the future, not on making a few more pennies this quarter, I was.

Heath Gascoigne  05:01

Okay, more the human and centric people leads. You know, they hear this, they talk about it that there’s people lead. I’ve been into projects, and I’ll say people lead, and it is all actually helping a client at the moment. And there’s a pack we have to take to a business design authority, business design authority, and this must be about every 20 pages, and three of it is to do a business architecture. You say, your people, the business, the customer focus. But it seems to be not the case. So you’re saying, No, it is. It is central. Ei emotional, business leaders are taking their staff along with them along this transformation from a people, person centric approach Absolutely,

Brian Gorman05:51

one of the most common requests that I’ve experienced over the last probably three years is help our leaders learn how to be more coach like in their relationship with the people they work with. That’s a very different mindset than being the boss,

Heath Gascoigne  06:19

coach like is in encouraging developing, as opposed to the boss would be commander control. I say you do absolutely.

Brian Gorman06:30

It’s about helping. First of all, it’s about finding the people who are passionate about the work you’re going to ask them to do, and fit into the culture of the organization, and then it’s doing everything you can to set them up for success, to nurture their growth and their development. It’s about keeping the road clear ahead of them, and it’s about getting that team so capable that they don’t even need you anymore.

Heath Gascoigne  07:07

And so really talking about building and business architecture that say that either competency or capability. So I like how you see the other paraphrase. So from the first thing to doing is understanding the cultural organization and finding the fit of the staff, new come up, new new employees like to fit that culture, and then developing and clearing the road, as I go, Scrum Master maybe would do with making sure that there’s no robots to the point where you’ve done a good job And you would commence a success is that you are removed completely from the process, and they run maybe continuous improvement, self fulfilling, self deciding, like a scrum team, almost Absolutely but an organization’s gap,

Brian Gorman08:00

there are some organizations that have actually gotten rid of the pyramid, gotten rid of the hierarchy completely, and moved into a network based structure of small 10 to 1010, to 12 person teams, each of which is self sufficient in that it generates its own revenue. It pays its own team members, and it does so either by selling what it’s producing to the end user or selling it to other teams in the organization. Wow,

Heath Gascoigne  08:39

how cool is it? It’s a different paradigm.

Brian Gorman08:41

It’s a total it’s a totally different paradigm. Because if I’m in a team of 10 or 12, I better be engaged. I better be productive. I better be producing quality work

Heath Gascoigne  08:59

that’s come to count accountability there. There is no hiding from there. Yeah, it’s so small. There is only 10 people, okay, okay, what would you call that? Is, that, is that, would you call it a network structure? It’s

Brian Gorman09:13

a, yeah, if, if our listeners know about organizational network analysis, organizational network analysis looks at the social interactions of people within an organization. Who do I go to for information? Who do I go to for confirmation that this is a good thing or a bad thing to to sign on to? It’s how organizations actually function. It organizational network analysis identifies the influencers in the organization, the gatekeepers in the organization. It’s using that same science and structuring your organization. In a series of networks.

Heath Gascoigne  10:04

So would this be formalizing the maybe informal networks, but making it now formal, or is it still informalized and not documented? We know we’ve got this relationship because John’s been here 20 years and he knows sometimes,

10:20

no, it’s making it formal. Okay,

Heath Gascoigne  10:24

so I’m assuming there’s a but it sounds like now, on paper, in theory, it sounds like, if you got that level of accountability, and they are, I don’t know. It’s a word, if it’s you, know, you die on your own sword, if you produce something that you cannot sell, then you better not produce it. So. So how would, how would a firm even first come to maybe the realization that you said Maverick, they want to fix what’s not working and so they come this realization our current operating model isn’t working with maybe loading up heaps of staff or employees, and their output is not maybe, you know, revenues dropping for a new employee. We got to do something here. How does that first come that realization in this thinking about the implementation?

Brian Gorman11:19

Unfortunately, too often. It’s too late when they come to that realization. Believe it or not, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies in the year 2000 no longer exist. Wow,

Heath Gascoigne  11:35

since year 2000 no longer exists.

Brian Gorman11:40

So and I’ll give you just one example of that. And I don’t know if they were international, but they were certainly known here in the United States. Blockbuster. Blockbuster was, you go to the store, you rent a DVD, or you rent a VHS, you take it home, you inevitably come back late and pay late fees. At one point, early in their foundation, the creators of Netflix went to sell Netflix to Blockbuster for the amount that they needed to pay off their debt. Okay? Yeah, they met with the CEO of blockbuster, and he said, There is no future in streaming. Go away. It’s, it’s a rich example Heath of how the kind of network organization that I’m talking about believes in collective wisdom. Wisdom is rich throughout the organization, not just in the C suite. So if you want to know whether your organization is heading for trouble, probably the best people to talk to are your frontline leaders. They’re the ones who interact with your customers every day.

Heath Gascoigne  13:12

I believe that also, and what’s that? Jim? Jim Collins, too big to fail. The example in the it’s one of his books about the wisdom of crowds, over a single expert, the old counting the marbles in the jar that the the estimate of the agenda, average estimate of the crowd is better than more accurate than the estimate or guesstimate from the expert who was expert at guessing the number of things in the jump. Okay, so the secular wisdom, I think that, is, if you did a good job of hiring, then you you’ve probably got good corporate fit. I think the catch there would be that you don’t suffer from groupthink, but so I’ve got, yeah, I want to

Brian Gorman14:05

push back a little bit on one word that you used, uh huh, hiring. Hiring, okay, yep. What we are also seeing now are the best and the brightest are leaving organizational life and going out on their own. So part of your collective wisdom may well be those people that you’re contracting with, not just those you’re hiring.

Heath Gascoigne  14:29

Yeah, okay, this is true. I like it. Yes. So that so there that definitely plays into the concept of the network. They are part of the network, extended part of the network, but nevertheless part of the network. Okay? I think that for for organizations to come that realization that it doesn’t the current model doesn’t work, it’s through this networking, the network model, the organization, network analysis. How do they transition? It’s what they know. And my work, we would do kind of some solutions, have some options. Could be the best, and what they were, one of them.

Brian Gorman15:08

So I I want to actually go back to a real life example from the late 1990s and it was CIBC bank in Canada. I was not the architect of the change. I was there when they executed the change. They were, at the time, reconfiguring their commercial bank, and they came out to all of the employees in the commercial bank, and they said, This change is so big that we it’s as if we are creating a new bank. Oh, if, if you are in good standing with us now, you are eligible for a position in the new bank. We will be giving you job descriptions. We will be giving you worksheets, and you can apply for an interview for any job that you want. The worksheet will tell us what you need from us in order to be successful in that job, because nobody is prepared, fully prepared, for any of these jobs at present, that same model could well be applied today, because it does so much that traditional change management got wrong. It gives people choice, rather than people sitting around and saying, when they roll out this new bank and my gunner still have a job, yeah, it gives people control over their lives. It says we have a responsibility to help you be successful. How often in change management have we heard companies say it’s our responsibility to help you succeed through this change. It takes, it takes a human centric approach to change.

Heath Gascoigne  17:15

I like this thing which human centric? I am a big fan of the human side of these transformations, mostly when I go and they’ll say to business transformation or digital transformation, and it’s only about technology, and our thought was the people involved, and then they wonder, how come they fail? Because you brought the people along. Okay, so you’re so I like, that’s interesting, because I said the beginning, tell me what the industry’s got right or wrong. And I think you want to alluded on one there, in terms of the change management part, is that change management are doing differently, or maybe not caught up or still doing things in the old way. But I know my industry business architects still do things in the old way is so you get a choice in control, so everyone effectively, they will give, as you say, if I paraphrase that you, they were given their job sheets of all the criteria they need to do to be successful, and then told them, effectively, they don’t have a job, but they can apply for the job, apply for all the jobs they would like to and and I think that part more kind of Safety for the employees to hear that would be, we want you to be successful. And here’s the description of what success looks like. No one’s guaranteed a new job, but if you apply, you could possibly get one of these jobs, even a better job, or a different job than your current goal, as opposed to what you said. Of let’s wait to see how this change works and see how it goes and and like I know my change transformation the business usually just wait for the consultants to leave and go, I don’t understand what these consultants are saying. You know, look at their watches and go, Okay, they’re going to be here for another couple months. We just have to play nice. And when they leave, we’ll go back to how it was before. But, but here there’s no choice.

Brian Gorman19:03

Over the the course of I would say at least the last 20 years that I’m aware of 70% of organizational change has failed to deliver on the promise. I believe this, and even putting away, for the moment, the digital revolution and all that, that means there were some basic failures in our approach to change management. One, we said it was human centric. We didn’t quite use that language, but all change is personal. Yeah, it is not, you know, our key customers, each one of those customers is affected differently. It is not the finance department. Each one of those people is affected different. Actually, all change is personal. I agree we the stories we told were about market share and customer retention and product quality. Not even the CEO gets up excited about customer care and and product quality. We do. We are story processors. We’re not data processors. They do not historically engage story in the right way, and we ignored the influencers, the people who I asked to say, Should I go along with this, or should I duck my head and let it pass?

Heath Gascoigne  20:49

I like is in, when you say influences your meaning, like in, in, I can’t remember the exact model and stakeholder, like engagement model one is your like leg, heart, or people who are going to block it, those are going to support it. I think what supporters influences, so not paying attention to to them has been a certain issue. So if I play you back to phase that was they said they were, and this is going, you see going back 20 years. So this product, the industry, is still not got right. And sometimes I see that is, if it’s not people centric, you gotta wonder where the project goes up when born from, if it’s supported by the CIO or the CTO, it’s usually got a technology lens to it, and they might try and slide it in under a business side, but they really never pay attention. So it sounds like the industry is still not doing it. They but you also see I like it. I see it the same way as it all changes personal. I’m going to quote you on that you might be changing departments and teams, but individuals within those departments and teams who will feel it. I say those things when I go into into projects and I go, we got to play nice, build a rapport. You know, they’ve got to look them in the eyes, shake their hand, to build the rapport. Because we’ve all changed people’s lives here, you know, ideally, hopefully, for the better. But when people start to see you, we literally are changing their lives. It’s when the arms get crossed and they go, I don’t know. Don’t know about this. It’s a more benefits, and then the resistance comes, okay, so what you’re saying, it’s all personal. So for the audience here, go, don’t try and slide your technology in without understanding the people. And we’ll get into how can we take those people along the way? Yes, so you did say about the C suite focusing on other things and not being the more product and market focus as opposed to customer and staff focus. I think that part about, you know, happy staff, happy customer, and the outside about, yes, we’ll get into that a little. Your approach is about stories, the emphasis on storytelling. And so why is stories and storytelling so important?

Brian Gorman23:16

As human beings, we had stories before we had language. We drew them in the dirt. We drew them on hides. We drew them on cave walls. The human mind is a story processor. It’s not a super computer. Stories affect our head, heart and gut. In our hearts are the same motor neurons and sensory neurons, and electrochemical activity is in our heads. The same is true in our guts. Our hearts are the seat of passion, compassion and values. Our guts are the seed of courage, self protection, who we are at our core, market blah blah communications may or may not excite our head, they do nothing to our heart or gut. Uh huh. Okay, if you want, if you want to bring people along, you need to engage head, heart and gut, or they are going to follow the command, but not with intention, not with full commitment. And so whether I’m working with a single leader who has to transform themselves so that they can transform their organization, or I’m working with an organization, we start with a story. But we don’t start with a story about the future. In five years, we will, okay, we start with a story from the future. We freaking did this. We blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. These are the obstacles we over have had to overcome, and we did it. It’s a head, heart, gut story. Another piece of neuroscience about story is our brains cannot tell the difference between story and reality. So that head, heart, gut story is building new neural networks, new neural pathways. When we run into obstacles, our unconscious says, Wait a minute. I know what it’s like on the other side of this, I have to find a way under, around, over or through it. That’s why we start with story now, corporate transformation, global transformation, you need that mega story, if you will. But that mega story is going to be different in France or Germany or the UK or the US, and it’s going to be different in finance, and it’s going to be different in Seattle than Washington. And so you have to allow localization of the story.

Heath Gascoigne  26:15

Reason, but, yes, localization, okay, okay, interpreted and understood differently for wherever they are at that level, country, region, okay, all right. So let me play back a few things here, some really good, great takeaways. Thank you for sharing the I my MBA was majored in transformation, or strategic transformation, of a big, strong part on chain. I quite like change. I’m not a change manager, but I, you know the weirdness of it, no, so when, but the way you put that head, heart and gut, I’m, I think, not in a corporate context. I would have heard that, I think. But that’s, that’s, that’s like I would talk in organizations three hours, layers language and levels. The layers speak a different language and a different level of detail, but so the data is taking the next step further. It’s like, Well, you gotta hit them at the heat, at the heart and the gut. And I think what you’re saying here is, if you only have one, then you’re not going to really embed the change or the need or want to change. They’ll do it as you see, command control part is they’ll do it for that task, and you’re not going to build this. You said earlier, the competency, the capability, because we’ve done the task, and that’s it for like, Okay, done the task. Okay. So that the three elements, what’s what is that? The storytelling approaches, it the head, heart and gut. What do you call that? Does it method to that? So

Brian Gorman27:44

the reason there is such a thing as Change management is Joseph Campbell was right. For those who don’t know Campbell, he was a mythologist and a psychologist in the mid 20th century, and one of the things he researched was, is there a common thread through all creation myths across cultures, across time? Is there a common thread across all coming of age myths across culture and across time? And what Campbell discovered was that there is one thread through all myth, and he called it the hero’s journey and and what he said is, while we approach each change journey as if it’s unique and unpredictable, it’s not. We follow the same path. We follow the same path over and over and over again. So you all listeners know the hero’s journey. First of all, you have lived it a dozen times. Second of all, if you’ve watched Star War, a Stars Wars movie, if you’ve watched a great, I don’t know, mission, impossible, move, whatever they are all built on the hero’s journey. We step out into the unknown. We meet challenges that we don’t expect. We get teachers and mentors and guides to help us along the way, and we emerge at the other end, very different, transformed, whether we’re a person, a single person, or a global organization. And so the hero’s journey is the path that we should all be intentionally bringing to any change that we’re making. But again, starting with that story from the future, the

Heath Gascoigne  29:43

story from the future, I think that’s key. You’re right. So that’s a starting point. If you were to go on this transformation journey with your organization or client, you are, you are also reverse engineering it, but you’re positioning the narrative as that. You’ve already achieved it, and this is what we’ve had to overcome.

Brian Gorman30:05

What is just the first step we have to take. But the other piece that I introduce in my work is before we plan, the first step we prepare. Now, how can you prepare before your plan, right? We only plan for what is in our consciousness, and there’s a whole lot that’s going to hold us back in our unconscious. And so there’s a whole process for surfacing what is going to hold us back if we don’t plan for it. And that prepare plan becomes a repeat, repeating cycle as you’re getting ready to move forward. Okay?

Heath Gascoigne  30:51

Preparation, provide the five piece and affecting somewhere, say five preparation event, poor performance. Okay, so I think we’ve got the the good and the bad with the industry. There’s a lot to learn I like. So I’ll put the show notes for Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to go and get a book.

31:14

The book is The Hero with 1000 Faces.

Heath Gascoigne  31:17

Okay, I’ll put the link the insurance. Okay, so there’s that, what industry is doing. Now the particular approach, I think we might have been touching on that number question number two about is the approach that you follow, and it sounds like you’ve done one or two things, is that you’ve got the the future in mind and working backwards. But the first part you just said that was the prepare and then the plan,

Brian Gorman31:41

right? And preparing and planning and taking the journey are cyclical. It’s very much more the

31:58

very much, yeah, it’s very much an iterative process.

Heath Gascoigne  32:02

Okay? How for established organization like mirror that would, I’m assuming the adopted approach would have taken a year. This is a multi year transformation organization. We had to go through from going to the command control pyramid model to go to a network model. So these are long journeys, right?

32:24

They can be they can be

Heath Gascoigne  32:30

okay. So essentially, we’ve got three parts. We’ve got okay. We’ll keep going, hopefully this Malik, my, my editor, if this cuts out, will we? I don’t think it will. I think it’s just the timer, hopefully. Let’s just see. Okay, so, alright, so you got the pavea plan then for execution or doing the journey, and then there’s a feedback loop that happens. Now, part of that, who have you got both in this you’ve got, who is it? The main leaders have you got? What’s the structure looking like? If

Brian Gorman33:07

you’ve got, if you’ve only got the main leaders involved, you’re doing it all wrong. Because, again, there’s Joe down on the shipping dock that everybody in the 10,000 person warehouse listens to the influencer, influencer,

Heath Gascoigne  33:26

so as part of your network analysis is that you’re going to do an assessment of this, the organization, and particularly the stakeholders, and identify the key players being the influencer, and then get them on board and

Brian Gorman33:38

and be listening to your front line,

Heath Gascoigne  33:44

the front line that we see earlier. Okay, front line, we’ve got executives. We’re getting it. They’re going to develop a story starting in the future. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re getting a masterclass here on Maverick leadership using the analysis, organization and network analysis approach, if you should be trademarked it prior,

Brian Gorman34:09

others have have patented technologies and so forth to do that.

Heath Gascoigne  34:16

Okay, all right, so we’ve got the that you’ve done some assessment. You’ve got your key stakeholders exec level. You’ve got the guides in operation. You develop the story from the future and now. What happened?

Brian Gorman34:33

I think a big piece and Heath, you mentioned this earlier, a big piece that most organizations don’t pay attention to is their culture. And again, part of preparing is what pieces of our culture are going to allow us to move forward, and what pieces of our culture. Are going to hold us back, and here I’ll give you a different example. I can’t tell you how it ended up, because unfortunately, the CEO that led this initiative got involved inappropriately with a member of his staff and was terminated by the board. But back a few years ago, a gentleman named Alan Shaw became CEO of Norfolk, Southern Railroad. Alan had grown up in the railroad, and the first thing he did when he became CEO was he did a listening tour, and he listened to the front lines, and he came back and he said, command and control is not the way to run this railroad any longer. And so he brought in a gentleman named Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal was a US General who was in charge of anti terrorism in Iraq. Well, when he arrived, he had the best seals, he had the best Rangers, he had the best spies. He had the best of everything and the terrorists won every time. And in doing an analysis, McChrystal realized the terrorists won because they had a mission. They came together, they executed, and then went apart again. Meanwhile, the information would come up in one branch of this terrorist operation. It would have to surface to the top, get shared at the top, go back down. By then, it was too late, and so McChrystal developed a strategy called Team of Teams, where decisions get made at the level that they have the information needed to make the decision. So Alan turab McChrystal and his group and at the leadership level, again, they developed this big picture of what Team of Teams would mean at Norfolk, Southern Railroad. They then conducted workshops, sometimes within a division, sometimes across divisions. The first workshop I was in was with the top 15 leaders of their transportation department. At that time, transportation had about 10,000 people. Those were the ones who actually ran the trains. And it was very simple. In the workshop, they said, What are the behaviors we have to stop and what are the behaviors we have to start? And it was things like, we need to stop calling our direct reports at 6am seven days a week. We need to start accepting upward feedback. I have worked in culture change for a lot of years, I have seen multi 1000 line change plans for culture change. We have I have never seen a culture change that was as effective as the one that was being driven there when I was working with them. Once those checklists were were developed, once a month, the 15 leaders would come together with me and another coach and would say, what’s working, what’s not working. How do we make work? What’s not working? How do we ensure we keep doing what is working? That may be true for the 15 leaders and those under them, but Tony over here is still having a trouble having trouble stopping calling his direct reports seven days a week. Well, each of them also had an individual coach. Okay, all right. So Tony could say, I need help with this. The other guys get it. I don’t that’s how you drive change again, back to the word you used earlier, when we were talking about the networked organization accountability.

Brian Gorman39:58

And in that case, it was. Accountability not just but to my supervisor. It was accountability to my peers. It was accountability to those below me. We had some instances where people fairly high up in that team got some pretty strong negative feedback, and they came in and they said, I really screwed this one up. I need to your help fixing it.

Heath Gascoigne  40:29

Okay, so part of that has been kind of imagine something around creating a safe space that people could have that open dialog or conversation they not say like you’re free to screw up, but, you know, to maybe voice or share, but it’s coming back to the culture, right? So, yeah, let me play that back to I’ve heard of that. I didn’t I’ve heard teams of teams or something like that, but that’s probably the best example that I’ve heard. So where the decisions of quoting you or paraphrasing correctly, where decisions have been made at the level, where that needs to be at operational level, it’s made at that level, and then it takes up to strategic things. So so be and then so workshop the latest so you got the, the key pull together. And I like what you said about the culture, I think there’s I had a guest on recently who was a professor of innovation and, and also a prac a partner consultancy and, and he said around these different types of transformation, and one of the digital business, etc, but one of the culture, honestly, was that what is has to be the heart. That would have to be the hearts that the cultural transformation, changing the culture of organization, the way things are done here, that’s not written out. And so I think that’s really hard to do myself. So you’re saying that I like how you’ve worded it. There’s this is the takeaway for the audience is that, what are the things that we want to stop doing and then the things to start doing that, I don’t think that some people just accept this is the way things are around him. So well, see your detriment, you probably want to stop it, right? So, yeah, having the balls to, you know, to say, hey, look, we gotta this is not working for us. So you created a checklist, the monthly checkup. But the two things of your coaching you did, I think maybe that part’s been missed by, well, maybe the audience, me as well, is that you’ve got it at the team level, but you also had the individual. I think that’s very you know, I think it’s a great takeaway there. And then accountability is you’ve got merging up across the your peers and also to your staff, your subordinates. It comes back to you, you it’s not throwaway words that you say you will do what you you will do what you say you will

Brian Gorman42:50

1. If I can, if I can add one more point to that, Heath culture is not nebulous. Culture lives inside the muscle memory and the neural networks of the people in the organization. It’s how they show up, how they do their work, how they interact with one another, how they interact with customers. So what you are doing, anytime you need to change cultures, you’re asking people to change how they think and behave and and you don’t do that by calling them into a classroom. You don’t do that by handing them a new instruction manual. That is exactly what coaching is for.

Heath Gascoigne  43:36

It’s a good sales pitch. I’m going to use it like it is like there’s not done you read in the meeting. Maybe it’s from doing rather than hearing, but the application of, as opposed to, you know, knowledge acquisition, no, it’s the application of that knowledge. And then a coach to guide you on the maybe the proper application.

43:59

It’s all about application. Hey,

Heath Gascoigne  44:01

yes, it is. It is all about application. There’s something you see back there about, it’s interesting, if it’s a transportation and industry in the the Colonel General came in, a general has a, usually a command and control approach, right? And but this is a different approach. But

Brian Gorman44:23

crystal had a command and control approach when he got to Iraq. He did not when he left,

Heath Gascoigne  44:30

and that’s how you can get the information across the decisions made quickly, and that’s how come, regardless of all your best equipment, is that you’ll lose when you can’t get the information to the level or it needs to be and execute on it. Alright, okay, nice one. Now the so there’s a there’s an approach, we’ve got there. So you’ve got your team of teams, you’ve got your key leaders, your foundry influences, you’ve got a story. That started when the future that was working backwards. Of all the issues and troubles that you’ve overcome, you’ve got your your core team, one of the questions will be around culture, identifying things to like in Scrum, they’d say there’s three things, this is what we want to keep doing or stop doing, and this is what we want to start them, so you’re doing that at your team level, supporting them with their leaders at that team level, but also individual coaching, alright? Now, so that’s the approach now. Now going have been doing this 50 years, 5050, years, trained 1000s. So I’m not going to say 1000. I think it’s worth the 1000s here, 1000s of practitioners, leaders, Mavericks of probably across the world. So what you’re given the chance again to do it all differently, knowing what you know, what would you do different? What would be the thing that you go, ah, you know what it’s really that’s the thing that this was that parental principle 8% of my work was that’s one of this one little change in boom.

Brian Gorman46:09

That’s a hard question to answer, because I have continued to learn and grow and change and change how I’m approaching over the years as well. First 20 years I was doing this, I didn’t realize it was what I was doing. All I knew was I like to go in where there was a challenge, address the challenge, and move on. But I did not see that there was a common thread in how that worked. Well, I I have for the last 10 years been trying to reach out through opportunities like this on your podcast, through hosting my own podcast, through writing, through speaking, to share out to leaders what I know and what I continue to learn, so that hopefully others will find their change journeys a little bit easier.

Heath Gascoigne  47:12

Okay, so this is, I think one thing you’re saying here is that you yourself who is a practitioner of implementing change, have yourself gone through your own process of change, and that is like, what’s the it’s like, you have been open to change yourself, and they’re like, You can do this. And you know, this is rules for the but not for me, because there’s no I also and myself also. So what was the the turning point where you decided, or come to the realization, you know, what? Like you said from beginning, you said that organizations don’t realize that they’re going through a process. Or maybe that was Jason Joseph Campbell, who were saying that they they’re going through a pretty process. So at some point you came to this, you know what? We are going through a process here, and these people that I am, some of them like maybe attracted to or they’re attracted to me as these Mavericks. So what was the turning point where you came to that realization?

Brian Gorman48:18

Well, it’s very interesting that let me talk about two of those. The first was after I left corporate consulting around change management and became a coach, and what I realized was that the methodology that we at counter partners had used to support Glo the global transformation at Merck was equally applicable to the individual that I was coaching who was going through a personal, transformational change. And there was like, Duh, low all change is personal, yeah. So that was really one, one light bulb, and that journey itself really then lit up for me as the hero’s journey. I like the hero’s dream. For years, I have been coaching similar leaders. And about three months ago, a colleague asked me how I would define my coaching niche, and I said, I’m a leadership coach. And she said, yeah, you and 3,537,000 others. She said, get a little more specific. So I listed the characteristics of the leaders that I, first of all, I am most fulfilled in working with, and second of all, that get the most out of their work with me. And I had a little conversation with my friend, chat. GPT, yeah. And I said chat. Give me six names and descriptions of niches that these leaders that I coach fall into, and Maverick was the one that stuck out.

Heath Gascoigne  50:14

Nice one. Nice one. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the heath there for the other coaches is that there’s what your niche should be, is that the two parts you just said one that you which one do you feel for building help and to get the most out of the work that you can support, that you can give, that is gold, alright? So you have, you’ve taken an organizational transformation and and seeing how it was personal, and you go, actually, the application is more on the people that are doing the transformation, leading that transformation. Actually, probably people are people who want to buck the system memories, okay, so knowing what you know, and the years of transformation, and if you could do it all again, it’s maybe what the awareness that you go through this process of change yourself and be open to the change and you practice being what you preach, like You’re literally changing yourself

Brian Gorman51:18

absolutely and for any leader, even a maverick, if you are looking to transform your organization, you are going to need to transform as well, because they are a reflection of how you are leading today.

Heath Gascoigne  51:39

I think you said that at the beginning, you talked about first you must transform the leader in order for the leader to transform the organization, I think, and for those that aren’t either natural born leaders or are new into a leadership role. I did a recent transformation up in Manchester, and the the head of the transformation was a very good leader, and it done some other training transformations before, and I don’t think, I think it was because of her leadership style that that program was successful, had it been. I’ve been into a few projects before, and they’ve been long or reincarnations of projects that rain two or three or four times before, and they’re doing exactly the same thing, except for being the median, or some, some architects, but the same it’s the same vision, it’s the same approach, it’s the same leadership. Okay, you know what? We’re going to try and force a square into a round hole here. You know Bucha block. But the the leadership part is, key. So a lot you’re saying is that you must transform the leader before they in order to transform the others. So we’ve got in the conversation about maybe this for a follow up call about leaders born or made. It sounds like you can you’ve got a leader already, and you’re molding them into the super metric version. But I’m sure, can you take someone who’s not a member. Can make him into a member. And,

53:02

and I believe everybody can be a leader.

Heath Gascoigne  53:06

Me too, is the provider that’s like your body and healing, if you give it the right environment, it can heal itself. And, yeah, so you just have to be conscious of, cautious of the environment you book them in. Okay? And there’s an approach. Now I’m going to quote you on the show notes. Get a hold of you, your contact details, which is transformation,

Brian Gorman53:27

transformation live, transforming lives. Dot coach, transforming lives.

Heath Gascoigne  53:33

Dot coach, like over ticket.com, dot take you a dot coach. That’s pretty cool. Okay, so again, they get hold of you, on the on, on the links. We’ll put in the air for you that your company put the link to Joseph Campbell’s book. The not the hero’s journey, it was the

53:56

The Hero with 1000 Faces,

Heath Gascoigne  54:00

1000 Faces, he’s both a methodologist and a psychologist

Brian Gorman54:04

and Heath one more, yes in 2023 Springer international came out with a book personal, educational and organizational transformation, leading during times of meta crisis. The first chapter of that book is the hero and the Sherpa, which is my version of the hero’s journey. So it goes into, how do you create a story from the future? What are the things you need to do to prepare and so forth?

Heath Gascoigne  54:39

Okay, so we’ll go down recording. I’ll get that put in the show notes. So this you calling, this is the hero and the Sherpa, Sherpa, Sherpa. What is a Sherpa?

Brian Gorman54:54

A Sherpa is a Himalayan guide.

Heath Gascoigne  54:59

Oh. Okay, yeah. And

Brian Gorman55:02

so as coaches, as consultants, we are guides. We are not the heroes. Our clients who go through the transformation, are the heroes. Yeah,

Heath Gascoigne  55:12

okay, this is true. Yes, it’s not about us. It’s not about us, it’s about the already. So, right, we’re wrapping up there. Thank you very much. I will so come all the way over from New Jersey to me being here in London. So I’ll put this up on we’ll get it on YouTube, and we’re and I’ll share it on LinkedIn, and thank you. Do you share the network? But to get hold you, I’ll put your contact details in the show notes. If people want to get some Maverick training and learn how they can, what are the your version of the hero and the super, you being the super the guide. Alright. Thank you very much, Brian, we’ll call it there, but thank you. Thank you for the insight sharing for the last 50 years and changing transformation. Yeah, great, great stuff. Appreciate it. Hey, thank you so much. My pleasure. Okay, thank you very much. Catch you later. I’ll message you in in LinkedIn when, when it’s live, it should be about a week a bit. Champion. Thank you very much. Okay, enjoy rest your Easter weekend. Thank you. Okay, see you. Bye, bye.