The Problem with Change and the Power of Stability, Humanity and Praise with Ashley Goodall

My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - the idea that people need feedback - and how most managers think about giving feedback in an utterly wrong way - which is also an idea we dive into later in our conversation today.

Prior to Cisco, Ashley spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development. 

His book, "The Problem with Change: and the Essential Nature of Human Performance" is about what we might call lie number 10: the idea that change is good and that leaders must lead change in order to be good leaders. Wholesale belief in this lie has created what Ashley calls  “Life in the Blender” - driven by what I’ve heard some folks refer to as “The Reorg of the Day”.

I love love love the musical analogies Ashley uses to describe leadership - not as the lead guitar or first violin, but as the Ground Bass - the principal structural element of a musical piece. The Leader can help teams navigate change by playing a backbeat of stability and consistency, supporting a range of free expression and variation. Find a link to Pachelbel's Canon here and listen to the Goldberg variations here (which he mentions in the extended version of the analogy, later on in the conversation).

What is that Ground Bass? For Ashley it’s about helping people feel seen, connected, celebrated and clear on the story of the meaning of their contributions to the work. 

This perspective aligns very well with the message Bree Larson offered here some years back. Bree is a Partner at SYPartners and shared her framework around the challenges of designing organizational change - that most change can easily result in one or more of the Six Types of Loss she identified:

Loss of Control
Loss of Pride
Loss of Narrative
Loss of Time
Loss of Competence
Loss of Familiarity 

All of which Ashley suggests leaders can deflect or reduce through 9 key leadership skills that he outlines in depth in his book:

1. Make space 

2. Forge undeniable competence 

3. Share secrets 

4. Be predictable 

5. Speak real words 

6. Honor ritual 

7. Focus most on teams

8. Radicalize HR 

9. Pave the way

Prior to releasing the book, Ashley wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece which is a blockbuster and is an even more succinct, poignant and straight-on condemnation of modern corporate leadership - it is also highly worth reading. This book feels a bit like a Burn Book - Ashley is pointing out fundamental misconceptions at the heart of corporate life in a direct and unvarnished manner - in the hope that some leaders will listen and start doing things differently - Leading in a way that takes into account how humans really are and what we really need to thrive at work.

Ashley is very clear: compani