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Leadership BITES
Leadership BITES
Cultivating Living Organisations with Paul Lambert
Summary
In this episode of Leadership Bites, Guy Bloom interviews Paul Lambert, author of 'Alive', discussing the concept of living organizations and their importance in today's corporate landscape.
Paul shares his personal journey, insights on leadership, and the characteristics that define a living organisation. He emphasises the need for purpose, trust, and adaptability within organizations, drawing on real-world examples, including Barack Obama's campaign, to illustrate how living organisations can thrive.
The conversation highlights the challenges and benefits of adopting a living organization mindset, ultimately advocating for a more human-centric approach to leadership and organisational culture.
Takeaways
- Paul Lambert emphasizes the importance of purpose in organisations.
- Living organizations are defined by their adaptability and human-centric approach.
- Trust is a fundamental element for effective teamwork.
- Organizations should be viewed as living systems rather than machines.
- Barack Obama's campaign exemplifies a successful living organisation model.
- The average lifespan of organizations is decreasing, highlighting the need for change.
- Leadership should be plural, involving collaboration and shared goals.
- Effective teams require a mix of trust, diversity, and effective ways of working.
- Living organisations can lead to better employee well-being and productivity.
- The concept of living organisations can be applied across various industries.
To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.
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Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
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Guy Bloom (00:01)
often running. So Paul, absolutely great to have you on this episode of Leadership Bytes. Welcome.
Paul Lambert (00:10)
Thank you, Guy. Glad to be here.
Guy Bloom (00:13)
Well, you know, I'm really happy to have you here as well. Lots of things that we're going to talk about just in the sense of leadership and you have a book which I want to get into as well called Alive, which I'm excited about, especially when something comes through the post and I go, I'll give it a quick read and then I go, no, I won't be giving this a quick read because it requires a little bit of attention and because it's got some really great things in it. So I'm very excited to talk about that.
I clearly know who you are. don't generally introduce people. I just get them to say who they are. So if I met you at a social gathering, I said, Paul, hello. What do you do for a living? What would you tell me that you do?
Paul Lambert (00:55)
Probably start with
saying I'm the father of two ⁓ adult girls now because I think that's a profession in and of itself but I would add I'm an author as you mentioned writing a live all about living organisations. I teach at Henley Business School, I lead the People and Change programmes and I also run my own consulting firm Living Work Consulting having worked in the big corporate consulting world and now running my own shop.
Guy Bloom (01:25)
So when you say two adult goals, does that mean they're like nine or they're in there? Because I know.
Paul Lambert (01:30)
No, we've just celebrated
our second 18th birthday in the last week, yeah, proper adults.
Guy Bloom (01:34)
Right.
adults because I got a 12 year old as far as I can tell he's 28 I'm not sure so listen give me that ⁓
Paul Lambert (01:42)
Hahaha
Guy Bloom (01:49)
Give me that sense of your journey, Paul. I'm a firm believer that when you listen to what somebody has to say, as much as it may be on point, it really helps if you can rationalize where that person's come from to have those opinions. So just give us a sense of your journey to today.
Paul Lambert (02:13)
Yeah, it's always interesting to reflect on these things, isn't it? How did we get here? There's instance, if I look back even back to kind of university, I did engineering and management studies and in the third year, I was lucky enough to go to Cambridge and do, and we did the management studies course, but they'd study a lot of these organizations locally. There's a whole kind of
tech zone then I think it's called Silicon Fen these days and with the sort of early tech era, I won't give away my age but it was a while ago, interesting organizations have kind of grown up and they, so a lot of people in the department studied them, you know, they've got small start-ups, organizations that try to be a bit different from the regular ones and you know, quite communal in nature, very active.
know, agile, which wasn't really so much of a term then. And meanwhile, we were studying one of the kind of recommended books was a beautiful book called Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan. And the first two images of organization were Organization as Machine and Organization as Living Organism. So you might kind of spot some of the parallels with what I've written about. There were wonderful other things in that book, Guy, like
Organizations as political systems about power, organizations as psychological prisons, you know, where we kind of work out who we are through organizations. And I think I, my mind was opened early on to that kind of, well, I'm going into, I'm probably going to land in corporate world. So I went off to, consultancies, I worked for IBM, I worked for Logica CGI. So it started off in the tech world.
And some nice organizations, particularly the CGI one where people had to be people and there was lots of social stuff going on and they were quite open. And then actually working in some of these bigger organizations and finding both the freedom and the restriction of kind of targets and do it the corporate way. And sort of this internal.
Fight might be a bit strong, it's kind of like, know, moments of doing great work and then moments of kind of feeling quite restricted by it and sort of going, well, we've got a great idea here. Well, you know, it's not going to pay off next month. And it's just like, well, isn't this organization something bigger or better than this? So it's sort of grown out of that sort of tension.
which I think first at university, actually at university, I got a language for about this machines versus living organisms. And then it's played out in my career. And I've tried to, I've run smaller consultancies in the past, sort of 10 people. I've worked for people like Cornferry with 7,000 people. I think probably the biggest people in all consultancy in the world and enjoyed many other things in places like that.
I think also seeing people locked into systems and the creativity that they brought to work being squeezed out of them and being locked into a system and thought there must be a better way.
Guy Bloom (05:49)
It's very interesting, I think, when you call it Dorothy looking behind the curtain or the matrix, whichever pill you take. I think it's very interesting when, A, you have a lens to look at things through that give you a line of sight that sometimes, obviously, it can come to you later on in life. But I think if you get it quite young, it can really set the tone.
for you looking at things beyond the superficial. And that could come to you in many, many ways, but whatever it is. So I am quite fascinated by people that get the frame of reference for how they see the world.
And sometimes that can be ideological for people and it sets them on a very linear path but also then when it's quite encompassing because actually you're more interested in the You're more interested in how the clock works rather than which clock it is if that makes sense. Does that make sense when I say that?
Paul Lambert (06:55)
Yes, precisely. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and I think it's fascinating also when you see that, you know, the thought behind Alive and the idea of living organizations is they're reflective of humans. You know, we, they're full of humans, a good organization. Despite AI, we still have organizations full of plenty of people. Yeah, hopefully there'll be some people left in the organizations, but, you know,
Guy Bloom (07:18)
You know what I'm come back in 50 years and we'll have this conversation.
Paul Lambert (07:28)
You meet somebody, we've recently met and you kind of start to get to know somebody and their personality and you get to know their drives and their motives and what they're good at, what they're strong at and physically what they're like. yet we've never, and yet organizations are full of people but we've not treated organizations like that. We've treated them like some giant car engine.
where we can kind of swap in the new carburettor or whatever. And so I'm fascinated when organisations that I'm in, teams I'm in, they have personality. kind of, one of the exercises I get my Henley Business School students to do is just pick out an image of how they would describe their organisation. So rather than going to words, which I think are limiting,
And it's fascinating what they pick up. Some people show pictures of prisons, other people show sort of vast open landscapes. And quite clearly, actually to approach this, I think it's quite exciting if we've got a language to describe it, but often we've not. Or we've got a very old fashioned, boring Victorian language about machines.
Guy Bloom (08:49)
and we're gonna dive into I had just last week, or earlier this week, I've slightly lost track, but I had Margaret Heffern on just, and we talking about her.
Paul Lambert (08:59)
Hmm?
Guy Bloom (09:01)
getting her back, God bless her, she said she'll come back for her newest book, Uncertainty, which I actually got her on to talk about, but because I'd read Willful Blindness, we spent nearly the entire time on that. But Willful Blindness, I think, is quite an interesting thing because there's this thing about, maybe it'll come out in what we're gonna talk about as well, which is we can have these conversations about the reality of seeing things as a living system and...
Paul Lambert (09:13)
you
Guy Bloom (09:29)
But also I think there is this kind of, ⁓ call it willful blindness for the want of a better phrase, which is where a lot of senior people don't really want to have that kind of conversation because it doesn't serve them to actually acknowledge that some of these things may be true because it gets in the way of the commercial strategy or actually makes their lives harder because the system
does work to give them an output that they look for. And if they embrace this kind of thinking, then actually it's going to become a lot more nuanced and it's going to become a lot more, maybe not, you know, well, it's going to become harder for them because actually then they have to maybe acknowledge their own behaviors within that. So again, I find these kind of things, you know, being quite relevant, I guess, when I think about it.
Paul Lambert (10:25)
Yeah, can I just comment on that guy? mean, it's very interesting. My metaphor would be, it's like ⁓ me moving to Italy. So ⁓ I've fallen in love with Italy in the last few years, having not been there since I was like 19 on an interrail trip. But I think part of that's...
Guy Bloom (10:27)
Of course.
Paul Lambert (10:51)
You talk about leaders, it's not serving them. It's like we've grown up in, I've grown up in Britain and I moved to Italy. We're going to learn a new language. I've got to maybe see the world a little bit differently. It doesn't mean the world's, my world's going to fall apart, but it is a bit scary to move to Italy because for a little while I'm not going to speak the language very well. I'm probably not going to be as good at cooking as them.
It's just going to be a different landscape because, and I had this, I had my book launched the other evening, I had the same question, know, this is great, but does it work commercially? And it's like, have you ever asked the question the other way around? Does this, you know, people are scared because they think, well, it might be hard, I'm just about making my returns or I'm making my...
you know, the returns that my CEO expects of me. Well, I would like to say is actually if you let people be people, have some freedom in the work and shape it around purpose, then actually you can be more successful rather than less successful, rather than sort of killing your people and killing yourself. So I would say I could completely relate to what you say about
I just want to get, there's some interests in staying the same because it might be working for some, so maybe some in leadership and it might also break your sense of control. I think that's a really important thing. If in a living system, just like kids, we started talking about having two kids, it's like they're not quite so neat and tidy, they? Well, they're never neat and tidy, but they are.
we're going to have to learn some new skills. In fact, I almost describe it as organisational parenting in a way. We have to kind of learn to use our hearts as much as our heads in leadership, you know, what stage of development we are. So I think a message that's resonated with quite a lot of clients I've talked about quite recently is organisations grow up just like our kids do, from being a start-up as a kid to kind of being, you know,
maybe the gawky teenager with lots of potential but hasn't quite got there to a maturing adult. And it's, I think we have to learn a new set of leadership skills, a new set of ways of seeing the world to be successful in this world.
Guy Bloom (13:32)
Yeah, and I think I come across a lot of organizations that are the teenager growing up, which is different to being the adult seeing the teenager growing up. And I think that capacity to hold, I say this quote quite a lot, because it's the only one I can remember, but it's the...
Paul Lambert (13:47)
Yes.
Guy Bloom (13:58)
the sign of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing truths and still function. I love that. Which is this ability to go, I have to be able to understand that that might be my reality that I'm in, the hamster wheel that I'm on or whatever it is. But actually as an observer of, which I think when we start to talk about systems and et cetera, it's hard to be in the system and observe the system.
And that may be, that is maybe if you're going to say, what is leadership? Well, it might be many things, but it is also the capacity. And maybe that's, you know, being a parent and being, you know, a mum or a dad, they're slightly, you know, if you said what would be the difference? Well, the mum and the dad is the person that's making the toast, running around like a goddamn lunatic. But when you step into parent mode, you've got to step out of.
Paul Lambert (14:23)
Absolutely.
Hahaha.
Guy Bloom (14:46)
the do and look at, okay, what's actually happening here. And I think those capacities to hold these two truths at the same time until function is why I like that parent analogy. I am your father, I'm also your dad. You know, it's that kind of, I'm your mum, but I'm also your mother or your parent or, you know, this capacity to do that I think really resonates with me.
Paul Lambert (14:50)
Yes, absolutely.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I think it can make leadership much more interesting when you have to step into that, as you're kind of metaphor there is I have it, you have the aggro of the day to day with with operational work in businesses, just like you would with your kids. But then you sit back and like and you can sit where we've come quite far. Where are we now? You know, what's the opportunity now?
And you can see, but you also see examples of bad parenting as well, which is kind of the constant tell. You don't mature your approach for the next stage. So when they're little, do say, don't stick your hand in the fire. But later on, it's like, where would you like to go today? It becomes a more open conversation until hopefully when you're all adults, they start to become your friends.
Guy Bloom (16:11)
maybe just to push this analogy to its last point, at the right moment, is I think as a father-parent, go, I wish that had been on YouTube, because that was some damn good parenting. But I also go, it's a good thing social services didn't see that, because that was bloody awful. So I think that's that ability to self-reflect, that capacity to actually step outside of yourself, and all these kind of things become part of this process. So I'm going to lead us into your book, Alive, which
Paul Lambert (16:25)
Hahaha!
Yes.
Guy Bloom (16:42)
alive, cultivating living organizations for success in a digital age. So all the links will be where one would expect them to be. But let's jump into this. I'm going to ask what might seem a kind of relatively banal question, but I'll start off there, which is, think, writing a book. ⁓
It's a little bit like saying I'm going to get fit. It's a good idea. ⁓ Intellectually, you go, right, that's what I'm going to do because I know that's what I did. And then I started writing it and I was like, sweet Jesus, what have I done? it's normally, and maybe for me, who's not an author. So I, you know, the fact that I have a book doesn't make me an author. Right. I found it quite hard. I think the second one might be easier. But what was, so I think you've got to have a motivation, you know, I think you've got to have a motivation. If it's just to get a book out, then you're
Paul Lambert (17:07)
You
Guy Bloom (17:34)
probably achieve that but to be something that people want to read that adds value there's got to be a point and a purpose so if I said why why the bloody hell did you write a book Paul what was that what was the driving force behind that for you
Paul Lambert (17:50)
So it's interesting because I've felt like it for quite a long time, I realize, you know, like over 10 years. And a few people have said, why don't you write a book? I get interested in ideas, that's one. Two, I feel passionately about, you kind of see it in organizations and you think this place is killing them. I mean, in...
Definitely metaphorically, sometimes actually, know, when you see burnout in people because they've been, you know, constantly, you know, the hamster wheel was, you know, cogs in a big machine that's driving them and both in the direction they don't want to go and at a speed they don't want to go or they're not built for. So I think it was born of a mixture of, there's probably a little spot of anger actually, you know, it's kind of.
which is an interesting motive. Secondly, I like words. I like words like communicating ideas and discussing ideas and getting thinking right because I think that's, there's an awful lot of wasted consulting out there, for instance, where the ideas aren't clear and I think you need to have clear ideas to create successful solutions. And actually, Guy, I really enjoyed it. I just booked out.
Friday mornings, nine to one ⁓ for about, I guess, nine months, six to nine months or something like that. And I had a broadly, with like three pages or four pages of kind of the flow and stuff like that. But it just kind of came and the stories and most chapters reminded me of a story. And I think...
If things are human, they're stories. We communicate in stories more than we communicate in theory. So those are all the reasons why.
Guy Bloom (19:52)
Beautiful.
So when we say a living organization, it's easy to have a catchphrase. And I use words like systems and living organization. And then somebody says, what do mean when you say that? think, bugger, I've got to explain myself now. So living organization.
What does that mean for you in sense of maybe a traditional organisational structure? What are these kind of differences that somebody that some people be very steeped in this, others will be coming to this as they're just stepping into a leadership space, what system, what does he mean a system? What does he mean a living organisation? That maybe, you know, the first time they've ever been offered that way of thinking, just bring that, bring that to a live.
Bring that to life for us.
Paul Lambert (20:42)
Yeah, well first and foremost I define a living organization as an organization that embodies purpose So what that means just like a human, know, you kind of Would say, you know, I I'd love to kind of I'm a person who loves to see People achieve their potential sports potential coaches, whatever
I think a living organization is primarily defined by that sense of mission and purpose properly, not a mission statement, a genuine, we got together, me and Guy, we decided to start a business because we believe this, know, humans are important in the future of work and we started a business to make that reality. So purpose and then embodiment, just like a human being in
Physical ⁓ attributes, so flexible kind of structures and processes. ⁓ Flexible, which is kind of, you know, an adaptive cognitive, you know, some natural, yeah, natural abilities that it brings with it. So if we wanted to go into a coaching business, I'd expect us to be good at some of those things, good listeners, good communicators, good ⁓ sort of understanding people.
you know, and, you know, that'd be the kind of organisation. So there's physical, the cognitive I talk about in the book and emotional cultural, you know, it's like, what, what is it? We need a, a heart and a kind of mindset around, around this. So we, you know, it might be under, underpinned by certain beliefs that we think people have potential, but also a passion and, ⁓
a kind of a way of being that does that. So if we're running our coaching business or something together, it's because we have a heart connection to it and that runs through the veins of the organisation. So is it a system? Well, it's a system just in the way that a body is. It works together. We've got a mind, we've got a body, we've got an emotional, we've got a heart to ourselves.
And just going back to our growing up analogy, you know, a kid, you think they've matured, they've got a sense of purpose. We often talk about them having a sense of purpose, and I look for that in organizations as well, do they still have a sense of purpose?
Guy Bloom (23:24)
If I use the phrase, a human organisation, would that mean...
what you've just said, as in yes, you've used one word there, but actually I would bring that to life by then saying what you've just said. Would that be enough of a connection for you?
Paul Lambert (23:40)
Yes.
Yeah, it's human as it's, you know, an organization, the fundamental building block of an organization is humans. You know, it's a network of relationships around a shared purpose. And it's fractal, if I'm not my big word for the day, it's like that sort of, you know, exists at the individual level, but then we see it in a team, particularly a leadership team that mirrored in an organization.
department, an organization, and even beyond organizations. So it's a kind of, it's the Russian doll thing. It's like you keep, you know, within the organization, we've got the team, we've got the individual, but they're all reflective of this. And part of our job as leaders is to line that up so that we understand why we're all here. And they're particularly new people. They join something, going back to a...
our fictitious coaching business guy, know, if somebody joins, they need to kind of understand what brought us together in the first place. And they need to kind of have empathy for that and eventually own that.
Guy Bloom (24:57)
So when we use the word fractal, it's almost when a light is shined in one end and it splits into multiple areas. If we use the word human and then the descriptors that you've utilized, you're saying yes, and then those show up in all other parts of the system, of the business, of the system. Is that right? Yeah.
Paul Lambert (25:18)
Yeah, I like the
picture, yeah.
Guy Bloom (25:20)
Okay,
I'm just keeping up with the main party here, Paul. So I'm aligning my language to yours as well and just making sure that I'm following along. So ⁓ yeah, that's really interesting. ⁓ There's then something for me around, you know, I talk about doing and being, it's an easy concept. That's what we're doing. ⁓
as individuals, what we're doing as a team, we're doing as an organization, and then there's who we're being as an individual, who we're being as a team, who we're being as an organization. So I always think be like Frank and I thought I was thinking Frank's saying a dooby dooby doo, right? It's that, who we're doing, what we're being, it's a little life hack thingy. But I think that's quite key. Easy to say. So living organization. What's the reality of
I'm a senior team and I work with senior teams and if I, which I do, I'm trying to come from a place of kind of naivety so I don't not ask questions to help people understand, if I then go, this idea of a living organisation, and somebody went, what do mean we've got human beings in the organisation? Yeah, I get that guy, know, tell me something I don't know.
It's an easy thing to say, where your consultancy speaks so you can charge us more. Hold on a minute. Yeah, you might be right. We'll find out in a minute. But the point is, if that topic is brought up, if that topic is verbalised, what's it bringing to the party that even before we get into some depth, if we start to say...
Paul Lambert (26:36)
Yeah.
Hahaha
Guy Bloom (27:03)
a living organisation. What's the challenge in even starting to think like that? If I was an HR director, if I was somebody who, whoever that might be, an obstetrics, doesn't matter, CEO, and I'm looking at it and go, this idea of a living organisation, why would I start to think about it?
Paul Lambert (27:24)
Well, let me give you a real example because I mean the challenge is, know, what practical value is it if it's, you know, is it just an idea? So I'll take as an example an engineering organization, a couple of thousand people, quite a new leadership and they've got a really important mission. They're kind of in safety critical industry.
and they really need to do some important stuff together about the future of this industry, research and development, and supplying that insight to others across quite a major industry in the UK. And on that leadership team, were eight of us, me and my boss went to see them and they...
What was quite clear is they had the classic elements of a slightly dysfunctional leadership really. I would say, and a lot of leadership teams are like that, not because they were very able people, but they were really what I would call a team of managers rather than an enterprise leadership team. So a team of managers, each had it. I'm the ops manager, I'm the ops director, I'm the
R &D director, I'm the production director, I'm the this director, that director in there. though some of them have been there a while and some not, they really knew very little about each other. All good engineers, some with a long track record of management, actually getting them to a point, the fundamental point of leadership of kind of a shared purpose, a shared leadership, which is
We need to be the centre of research for this safety critical engineering. We need to supply that expertise all across the UK industry and beyond. And we have a shared mission around that. Them getting hold of that meant that they could have leadership teams where they stopped talking just about their own, a report on their own local area. know, production's down 5 % this month.
you know, are we produce one more research paper or whatever? And they bought into actually we need to help revolutionize the way this industry works. New kind of, they were in the power industry and we need new kinds of ⁓ power production plants and we need to define those. And getting that sense of shared mission first of all made them much more productive. That's the first thing that it did.
⁓ And I talk about in the book, you know, some of the other pieces that are essential to that, which are about this fractal nature. So there needs to be trust. So in a human, you know, we talk about having self-confidence, but we need confidence in one another and releasing that trust in one another. So they needed to get to know each other at very simple level. They needed to know, you know, what was everything from what's their favorite book to what motivated them.
so that they could work better together. So they could buy into that shared purpose, shared goals, trust one another to work together and use, and I talk about diversity integration, I mean it in the powerful sense, which I think people should use more in D &I, of pulling on each other's strengths. You know, we're diverse and that's great.
and then find a shared way of working, which is we're all different, but we have to find a way to galvanize that energy. And we also have to believe the final thing I talk about is that growth mindset. Obviously, the coward work was the famous person writing about it, but it is a mentality that believes there's more in the sum of the parts. And we can build something together.
So I think it's got real tangible value and it certainly did to them because they were a pretty diverse group of people and there'd been failure before and there was strength afterwards.
Guy Bloom (31:49)
So there's something here then about recognising that there's probably two truths. There's the job in hand, which is one of my favourite programmes, was a programme called Ad Men, I think. And there was a ⁓ question that was raised to one of the senior people, you you never say thank you, you never say, you never appreciate me. And he went, that's what the money's for.
And I thought, exactly, exactly. I went, God, it was set back in the day, right? And that's a very interesting thing, isn't it? Which is, for some people, the job, that's what the money's for. Everything else is just an externalised thing. have to, like health and safety, where you have to kind of do it, don't you? Or, you everything else is superfluous to an outcome. And then there might be something else that says, well,
then there's the experience we have getting there. Do we leave people damaged along the way? Does this have a place in society? Are we actually, never mind corporate social responsibility, just what about social responsibility that people go home and when they go home, they don't infect when they get home, they have a positive affect when they go home and all these kind of things. And actually when we're together as a team, what's the experience we're gonna have of each other?
job in hand, which is process and outcome and the symbols of success, but then it's are we, you could say buying into or signing up for or do we see the value in it being more than just getting a physical outcome.
gets us paid and probably very handsomely bonused. So there's a very powerful pull and do we buy into but the vehicle for our success is the and that goes with just the focus of hey we could all just kick ass and get stuff done but actually do we believe it's going to get it done better and easier.
Paul Lambert (33:50)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ha ha ha.
Guy Bloom (34:00)
if we take on board, we're a living organisation, it's fractal in the sense of, this appears everywhere and do we buy into that or is that just too big for our brains to take on when you see how much work we've got to do?
Paul Lambert (34:13)
Well, yeah, I mean, the premise so often behind these kind of questions that we were just, I know we're talking, this debate came up when I launched the book the other evening at London School of Economics. It was like, this sounds great, but sort of can we afford it in a world that kind of rewards short term reward? And I just want to turn the question around and say, can you afford not to? I mean, one of the most
One of my favorite books is Built to Last by Collins and Porras. For those people who've never read it, read it, it's great. But it's a rigorously, rigorously analyzed set of data about the most successful companies in the world. And they are purposeful. The ones that last, you the average length, the average life of a organization these days is falling below 20 years. I think it's about 16 now.
And you have to read the book to get the most accurate figure I think and but it's If we're doing the kind of thing that you said You know do this and it's actually if you don't do the end you ain't got nothing to produce the output from you know You we can't you know, if you just you know, take the analogy of the human body because I think it's direct correlation
If all we do is we run around at 100 miles per hour at some point and we don't eat properly and we don't take some rest, we'll just burn out and we'll be, you know, we won't be productive at all. A living organization and a living person knows how to pace themselves, knows how to build for the future as well as for the present. So I think the whole premise of that success is
Unless you're paying attention to being a purposeful organisation, you'll die after a while. And that's exactly what Collins and Porras's research shows. And it's like, like I say, they took some of the, they took data from the last 25 to 50 years from the S &P index of the firms that sustained outstanding success. And they had purpose at their core and they had these features.
Guy Bloom (36:39)
This also leads to not leading, not needing, inverted commas, the great leader syndrome to apply. If actually the organism is healthy, it values having a great leader who can add value to and steer, but the organization doesn't require the leader to be healthy because it's built into the system.
Paul Lambert (36:51)
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (37:07)
and that means then that you're
the system itself is more self-perpetuating, more organic, more able to self-administer, self-correct, because it's not just something that's being applied as in, well, I know we say this, but if you met my manager, he's a goddamn lunatic, and I know we're all measured against this on paper, but in truth, that's not how I'm managed. So I think there is something here about if something like this can become
Paul Lambert (37:29)
Hahaha
Guy Bloom (37:41)
inherently true at a almost DNA level, then we start to see organizations and I think you talk about Nissan and Apple and hair and I'd love to kind of touch on those a little bit, particularly hair which I'm quite fascinated by, but there's something between it being in the system versus
a visual demonstration of, you know, sort of for the brochure and for the portfolio. But in truth, the CEO or the senior team put it in. ⁓
Paul Lambert (38:11)
Yes.
Guy Bloom (38:16)
But actually, they haven't got a finger on the pulse and they don't recognise that they're being managed themselves, I sometimes find, as to the reality of what's really happening. Because if you go and speak to people, they go, yeah, I know we talk about that guy, but in truth, that's not how we're managed. And I think it's be careful what you do, because actually you'll make it worse by saying, this is what you could have won.
which makes it more dangerous than actually so either don't do it and just acknowledge that's not what you are but if you pretend to do it you'll cause more damage so you've got to go all the way or just don't bother so I don't know how that kind of resonates with you
Paul Lambert (38:40)
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting when you pick up on the link between the culture, the organisation and leadership. I do believe in leadership. I use it in the plural a lot because what we just talked about is that shifting from a team of managers to an enterprise leadership team. There's also some characteristics, I think, which is and I'll come to some of the examples you talked about, like hire and others.
But I'm actually I'll give a current an example because I'm working with a legal firm Mid-size legal firm nearly a thousand Working in UK and a little bit into Europe And I think they've got a real sense of purpose. They've been established with more Quite a social purpose. They are one of the fastest growing legal firms and they
They have sought to be a bit different. They've kind of limit the chargeable hours. know, legal firms, particularly the sort of big ones, Magic Circle are famous for like, you know, how many hours can you bill and can you spend your whole weekend working as well to fit it all in? And because they've been mission driven, first of all, they've not required such heavy handed leadership, as you said, you know, the kind of leadership is...
But it's built in. They talk about things like being kind, but also brave and entrepreneurial. And because that's been seeped in from the first moment you walk in there and you can tell it in the office, you know, it's just like the layout of the office. You walk into a beautiful barista bar as you arrive and that's for clients and for employees and for anybody.
And there's this kind of sense of we're in this together, we're doing something and there's pictures on the wall of some of the things, the difference they've made in society. So by being mission driven, they have, and by being entrepreneurial and pretty flat structured and having leaders who they listen, they kind of really listen to people at all levels and there's not that sense of hierarchy. I think they've built something that's different.
And it is a mixture of leadership and organization. And Guy, you mentioned Hire, so I'll elaborate a little bit further. the Hire is a bit of a poster child, I think, of new organizations. Hire is, for those people who don't know, I think it's now the biggest white goods firm in the world. It's Chinese. Got a brilliant origin story.
I think the founder Zhang, not the founder, sorry, he was a manager there, famously, must have been about 40 years ago, he was a manager of one of the factories and he went in and there was a line of these sort fridges up against the wall and it was kind of like...
And he said, well, where are all these? Well, these ones have been returned because they're broken straight away. And this one doesn't work even though we just manufactured it. And he said, right, mean, they carted them out into the courtyard and he had a sledgehammer and he gave them sledgehammers and they smashed up these things. He said, we're going to smash these before they smash us. Because if we don't believe, we don't have a shared sense of we need to build quality.
we need to work together and collaborate and continue to innovate, then this is going to break us. What they've created today is one of the most innovative organisations in the world. They bought GE Appliances in Europe, so many of our fridges and freezers that we'll be talking about will actually be made by hire. But what they've done is effectively structured the firm, it as flat as they can. It's the subject of Gary Hamill's and...
Michel Zahini's Humanocracy book. And they've formed it more like a network organization where there's a series of kind of micro enterprises, they call it, almost like small businesses all collaborating in a network. So I think the interesting thing is there is that is a living organization. One of the, I talk about seven characteristics of living organizations. And one of them is this sort of, this being based around sort of like cellular structures.
know, cooperating teams linked together with interlocking mechanisms. So like a body, you know, we feel something on the surface, you know, we feel hot and we take our top off or whatever, we react. So their businesses are, they talk about zero distance to customer. They feel the heat of like something's changed in the market. So they start producing new goods and one unit will start innovating.
So what we've got there is new structures, a new leadership attitude and a new culture, all leading to a very successful firm by being a living organisation. So I think it's interesting. It's not the only way to, I think, to build a living organisation. I'm careful not to say one structure is the answer, but I do think Hire is a great example. The law firm, is slightly different.
still very entrepreneurial and we're having to bring a little bit more structure at that point because they're, going back to our earlier analogy, one of the other characteristics of living organisations is they're in a new growth stage. They need to kind of have a little bit more coordination. They can't carry on being so much like a start-up because they're not. They're sort of 700 to 1,000 people having very quickly grown from a couple of hundred.
Guy Bloom (45:06)
I do really like this because I see it a lot where somebody almost looks at it as if...
It's when a finger touches something hot or cold, how quickly does the brain get to know about what it's just touched? And if everything's at a cellular level, i.e. small but still connected, the brain gets to feel it almost immediately. But if it's not, then, you know, if the finger had to talk to the finger joint and the finger joint had to then go and have a word with the wrist joint, so to speak, you you might not know you're burning for a couple of hours, which would be no good.
Paul Lambert (45:19)
Yeah.
Spot
on. think that's happening all over our corporate world, isn't it? We almost laugh at it. We kind of go, well, guys down here, the customer's complaining like this. Don't you get it when you call a call center and you kind of go, I would, sir, but the rules say this and I can't do this. And I have to ask my supervisor and my supervisor is not empowered to authorize that. That's the bureaucracy killing off your organization.
Guy Bloom (45:48)
Yeah.
And I do like that higher kind of, if we keep everything small but totally connected, then as we're small enough that if I feel it and we can make changes at a local level, then our reaction to, and then if the other inverted comma cells see it and react, as a manager, I can see.
the way that I can see the dominoes, can see the flow of the river change, I can... but actually if there's only one conduit, if there's only one linear view, then in truth...
Paul Lambert (46:39)
Yes.
Guy Bloom (46:40)
you know, the King thinks the world smells of paint because there's somebody three feet ahead of them painting everything. If I managed as all CEOs are, as all senior teams are to some point, even if they're managed well, then actually I'm getting a filtered version of. And I think that's, I find that quite, and if I was going to, if that, what we've just done there, if we were going to say what living is, actually I would say, yeah, we can talk about human, we can talk about purpose and fractal and all those kinds of things. But in truth,
was truly living it would mean that actually just like your body your senses are all connected the brain is aware of everything the body is experiencing and actually when you're out of kilter
you don't sense that. And you can tell somebody that's aware of their body, they can go, I don't feel right. The doctor says, no, you're fine. Well, I'm 56, I've never felt like this before, therefore it's not right. Because I know what good looks like, I have a sense of myself. And I think that kind of thing is quite key. Now, if I was going to ask you about an effective team, if I was going to say to you, okay, I have lots of listeners who are in
teams, have a team, maybe one day they're going to get one, they're all in different places and spaces in their career. What does an effective team mean in the context we're talking about?
Paul Lambert (48:12)
Well, I think I go back to that engineering example. I mean, I talked about five things there really, are first of, well, I think two very closely related things. You have to have these two things, I think, as a starting point. Shared purpose and goals. we're in, we've got something that together we're committed to over and above our individual objectives. So in that case, it was to, you know, provide
market-leading research innovation to this wider power industry because very specialist, very safety critical, only they could do that. But at the same time, we've got to release trust. So we can all have, we've all worked in, well, a lot of people have worked in, I've certainly worked in organizations where you have a good idea, but you know, if you share it, somebody will pinch it rather than share it.
And actually there's that trust building of trust. it's to have shared goals, you've got to have trust. And then I think I've talked about three things that really support that, which is like recognizing the diversity and the inclusion of that, of the different contributions that the team members bring. And also spotting where we've got gaps. And we've got a set of effective ways of working. That might be just actually how we meet, how we...
work together, how we collaborate and then we have ways of growing the capability of the team over time. So I think those the the essence of the leadership team and that I think is then replicated in that those kind of elements are then replicated at an organisational level as well. We need to see all of those things that like in the fractal nature of it kind of the at the organisational level we need trust between people.
shared mindset, shared purpose, et cetera.
Guy Bloom (50:12)
In the book you reference the Barack Obama campaign's organization and I, again he's another fascinating character so I won't get into the politics of it, but just, because again everybody's got, back in the day you used to be able to have an opinion and we could both leave as friends. Now if you verbalize your opinion people lose their marbles, which is a whole different thing. Maybe that's a completely separate podcast. But just in terms of that campaign and the organization's, how it exemplified the
Paul Lambert (50:23)
Hahaha
Guy Bloom (50:42)
principles of a living organization. Just give us a sense of that because I think this will tweak or pique people's interest and I think make a lot of sense to people at an everyday level.
Paul Lambert (50:57)
Yeah, think Barack Obama's campaign back in 2007, for me, is a great example of how living organisation, living systems do change properly. one of the bits of research I went to look up is actually, you know, that classic bit of thing, classic statistic about 70 % of change efforts fail to achieve their intended outcomes. It's McKinsey stat.
But it was last, the last time it was quoted, I think was about three or four years ago, but the first time they did it was like 25 years ago. So it's a little bit sad really, isn't it? It's like, hey, we all realise that, you know, the ways, our top-down ways of doing change, despite our all reading Cotter and leading change and other sort of classics on this, we've not got that much better at it.
And yet in other walks of life, they are better at it. know, it's civil rights movement. Martin Luther King was pretty good at ⁓ mass change. Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Barack Obama is quite a nice one because it changed the way political campaigns are done, particularly, you know, within the states there, because traditionally it was, you know,
Leader has big message, raises in the states probably billions and you know major sort of TV advertising etc. Classic kind of corporate way of doing change if you think about it we kind of all go you know let's talk about the organization becoming organization 2030 whatever that vision was and we'll all kind of stand in town halls and broadcast.
An awful lot of those go wrong, in fact, 70 % of them go wrong, at least. And that is because we're dealing with the machine metaphor, which says, well, the brain, the kind of brain of the organization, the top issues instructions and the rest of the troops obey. It's a very army type metaphor and armies don't even work like that these days. What Barack Obama said, no, it's...
It's the opposite. If you think about it as a human body or you think about it as a body, it starts with, in a way, a positive infection. So what Barack Obama assembled was a full-time team, experienced strategists in 2007, the famous hope and change message, the audacity of hope.
his book at the time. So he had this message and the message is important in it and they established a sort of strategy for data driven strategy for kind of knowing where the message had got to. So these group of strategists, so they set up field offices in key states, that was the next stage, with some full-time organizers. So these were paid people taking the message out but they trained local leaders.
and they decentralised these campaign operations. They had a system called MyBio, which is nothing to do with body spray, MyBarackObama, and it basically tracked like a sort of, you know, who we talked to. Paul had been out to talk to Guy, and he'd been receptive to this, even though he'd voted Republican before. So that started to, you know, the message got out and BarackO...
would go and visit a lot of the offices and a lot of his team and you know and then those field organisers then recruited volunteers and further sort of grassroots movements, local community teams etc and they they ended up with this vast network, vast network of volunteers you know hundreds of thousands in the states, lots of students took extra time and you know you can see all the pictures if you want to go online and by late 2000
and eight, he transformed from the outsider to the front runner. And it Henry Quinton and, you know, it transitioned to a broad social movement. And he got this historic swing in November 2008. And it was quite a margin. It was like it wasn't it wasn't up for contest. wasn't the sort of one percent. It was the 10 percent margins. So I think it's if you see it like an epidemic.
a positive epidemic. That's, think, how change works. But you can do it in organisations. know, we've got campaigns. watched in Oil and Gas Phone, we helped them roll out e-learning and rather than doing it as a, you know, we're talking about 60, 70,000 strong organisation, rather than just doing a big campaign, you know, launch this platform, please go on, lots of posters outside the lunch queue and stuff like that.
What we did was we got in people who were known to be, know, people's voices they listened to, came, that were listened to by other employees, came in, showed them some of the things, showed how to useful to their job, got them to adapt a little bit. They would then be the advocates of the system. So we got to pinch a bit of social media stuff. We got influencers and they would influence and we gave them resources.
And we see this start in drug-rubbing organizations and change networks, but it's based on a living organization metaphor, is it's cellular. It's about like a positive infection. It's like a spread and it's, you know, it quickly accelerates. I've got a little model in the book about how you can do it and what the conditions are. But I think Barack Obama's campaign is a great example.
Guy Bloom (57:10)
So listen, this keeps happening and I keep saying it, which is with a bottle of wine and a pizza, I'll keep you for the next two or three hours and then you go, Guy, I have a life to lead and I must now go back to my day job. So I'm just super alert to the fact that we're approaching an hour, which is generally speaking when it comes to, because I'm not the Joe Rogan podcast where people just sit and listen for three hours. So I'm just going to gently bring this.
Paul Lambert (57:19)
Hahaha
Guy Bloom (57:36)
to a close because I've got another thousand questions and I could just keep talking about it but I'm just super alert to that is what's the best way, first of all I'll put links obviously here but the book is called Alive, Cultivating Living Organisations for Success in a Digital Age and if people wanted to, I want to know more about Paul, again I'll put the links in but where do they go Paul?
Paul Lambert (58:04)
So yeah, can buy the book. If you type a live Paul Lambert into Amazon, it'll pop up anyway. My website has, which is www.livingworkconsulting.com, has ways to link with me. I'm just very interested in talking more. I'm thinking about sort of, you know, I love what you're doing with the podcast.
sort of a bit like the Barack Obama thing, creating a little bit of a movement and thinking around this. So feel free just to drop me a line. haven't got, be on the website and the book. I haven't got sort of a big community organized yet, but I sense some momentum behind this. And I think, you know, I'd love to meet other co-conspirators. So feel free to drop me a line. And thank you for this as well, Guy.
Guy Bloom (58:59)
safe yet.
That's been an absolute pleasure. It's a joy when I get to speak to people that I think ⁓ don't just offer an idea, it in a buzzword and then actually when I start talking to them I go, ⁓ unfortunately I think I know more about this than you do, which is a very dangerous sight to me when I'm definitely not the expert. So it's lovely to have a conversation with somebody that clearly has depth, clearly has lived experience in that space.
Paul Lambert (59:23)
Hahaha
Guy Bloom (59:32)
you know it means that I value that personally so I love that. So listen I'm going to bring us ⁓ to a close just stay on for a few moments just make sure everything loads up and ⁓ you know for me and ⁓ the people that are listening just thank you so much for your time Paul.