October 31, 2024 • 46 mins
What can business leaders learn from the high-stakes world of professional motorsports?
Find out, in this conversation between Thinkydoers host Sara Lobkovich (whose "other life" is in professional motorcycle road racing) and organizational change expert Jurriaan Kamer, co-author of "Formula X: How to Reach Extreme Acceleration in Your Organization" and his new release, "Unblock: Clear the Way for Results and Develop a Thriving Organization."
We cover a lot of ground here -- from how pro racing teams approaches to goal clarity, mistake recovery, and rhythmic learning can transform your leadership practice, to creating blame-free cultures, and mastering the art of strategic alignment.
In this lively and engaging conversation, you'll discover how racing's high-performance, high-stakes principles can accelerate your business performance—whether you're a motorsports fan or not.
Episode Highlights:
- Three core principles business can learn from racing teams:
- Crystal-clear goals and their role in driving focus
- Balanced autonomy and alignment in high-performing teams
- Rhythmic learning: how racing teams turn every moment into an opportunity for improvement
- Creating blame-free cultures in high-stakes environments
- The power of "even over" statements in explicit prioritization
- Decision-making frameworks: understanding "hats, haircuts, and tattoos"
- How consent and choice drive organizational ownership
Notable Quotes:
"Failure avoidance is more dangerous than failure recovery." - Jurriaan Kamer
"If you look at Formula 1 teams [...] execution is not 99% of the thing. They understand that everything they do is an opportunity to reflect and improve. These meetings, these rituals, are built into their cadence. It's not something somebody has to plan - it's just part of how they operate." - Jurriaan Kamer
"If you try to convince a group of people, the first thing you need to do is not tell them why you think you're right, but ask them what they think is going to go wrong. And then you can start to build conviction together." - Jurriaan Kamer
"We have to take a systemic perspective when things go wrong... As an outsider, you think 'Oh, this person needs to be fired, because they blew the chances of a victory.' Which is just very short-term focused because [mistakes] will repeat [themselves] if you don't understand all the factors that were at play." - Jurriaan Kamer
Guest Information:
Jurriaan Kamer is an organizational change expert based in the Netherlands and author of "Formula X: How to Reach Extreme Acceleration in Your Organization" and "Unblock." Drawing from his unique access to professional car-racing teams and extensive experience with self-managing organizations, he helps leaders worldwide create high-performing, adaptable organizations.
Jurriaan's Resources Mentioned:
- Formula X: How to Reach Extreme Acceleration in Your Organization (Book by Rini van Solingen and Jurriaan Kamer)
- Unblock: Clear the Way for Results and Develop a Thriving Organization (Book by Jurriaan Kamer)
- Website: jurriaankamer.com
- Unblock book website: unblockbook.net
Sara's Links and Resources:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Thinkydoers podcast.
Thinkydoers are those of us drawn todeep work, where thinking is working.
But we don't stop there.
We're compelled to move the work frominsight to idea, and through the messy
middle to find courage and confidenceto put our thoughts into action.
I'm your host, Sara Lobkovich.
(00:23):
I'm a strategy coach, a huge goal settingand attainment nerd, and board certified
health and wellness coach, working atthe overlap of work life well being.
I'm also a Thinkydoer.
I'm here to help others find moresatisfaction, less frustration, less
friction, and more flow in our work.
(00:47):
My mission is to help changemakers likeyou transform our workplaces and world.
So let's get started.
Hello and welcome.
I am so excited that we're shiftinggears for a bit of a worlds colliding
episode for me at the intersectionof motorsports and business.
(01:10):
You might not know this aboutme, but I have an other life in
professional motorcycle road racing.
But this episode isn'tjust for racing fans.
We're going to uncover how the strategiesthat drive F1 teams can unblock your
own leadership and business performance.
My guest, Jurriaan Kamer, is anorganizational change expert with a
(01:33):
unique perspective based on both hisfandom of F1 and some time behind
the scenes of F1, and having workedin self managing organizations
over the course of his career.
We'll discuss how clear goals, shameand blame free cultures, rhythmic
learning, and other accessible,useful principles from his work
(01:54):
can transform your leadershipapproach and how you lead yourself.
So whether you're a seasoned CEO or anaspiring leader, Give this one a listen.
Let's start with an introduction: who are you what do you do (02:05):
undefined
and where are you based?
Yeah, so I'm Jurriaan, based out of theNetherlands, in a place called Utrecht.
some people will probably knowAmsterdam—it's not that far from here.
I'm an organizational change expert.
I help leaders all across the world changehow they work, to improve the conditions
(02:26):
in their organizations for better results.
We're going to start with Formula Xbecause that was How this conversation
came to be—we crossed paths on PodMatch.
And then I asked you a very silly questionwhen I saw that you were a Formula 1 fan,
and asked you if you would like to comeon and speak with me about what business
(02:47):
can learn from Formula 1, and Your answerto that question was very graceful,
given my ignorance of your book history.
You wrote Formula X, —it's afable, is that the right word?
Yeah, leadership fable.
A leadership fable about aleader learning important lessons
(03:07):
from an F1 experience and team.
I just have to hear the story of howthat book came to be—what was the
origin, and how did that book happen?
I was watching Formula 1 as a fan formany years before writing that book.
I was just on the couch and sometimeswent to races to to see it live, but my
(03:28):
whole perspective on the sport changedwhen I was able to go behind the scenes.
I was invited by one of the sponsorsof Red Bull Racing to come and
speak to a bunch of leaders thatthey invited to to the factory.
I was just asked to do a speechon the evening before the
factory visit, just as a warmup.
At the time, I was speakingabout agile ways of working,
(03:50):
organizations with high levels ofautonomy, and those kinds of things.
I said to them, "I want to come,but there are two conditions."
First condition is I goto the factory as well.
And the second condition was I wantto try to speak about Formula 1 that
evening before we go into the factory,and use that as an opportunity to do a
lot of research about how these teamsactually function—because I had no idea.
(04:11):
Next day, we went into thefactory and my mind was blown.
Just being there and seeing how huge theoperation is completely blew my mind.
Then, my co-author, Rini Van Solingen—inHolland , he's a famous management
book author, and his publisheractually reached out to him, he
said, "You know what, Formula 1 isgetting more popular, this guy called
Max Verstappen is getting popular.
He's getting better.
Maybe you should do your nextmanagement book about Formula 1 and
(04:32):
something around organizational speed."
So, he started researching forthat topic, he found my work, and
we connected and eventually wedecided to write that book together.
That's wild.
I was actually talking to my husbandlast night, because I have to admit,
when I saw a business book, learninglessons from racing, as someone who has
(04:53):
another life in professional racing.
when I saw the book, Iwas a little skeptical.
I sat down, and started reading,and it was quite quickly I was like,
"How does this guy know this stuff?"
The view of the teamsand how they operate, the
behind-the-scenes was so good.
(05:13):
I thought, either he's workedwith a team as a team member, or
you're really good at what you doin terms of observing behavior.
Because there are so many little things inthat book, just as a fan, you don't get.
Like you really have to be in it.
And I think the first time I wrotein the margin, "wow", was page 75.
(05:37):
When, with the amazement whenhe walks into the working
paddock for the first time.
I was really impressed.
So that is a way to say, like, for folkswho might be considering working with
you in your day job capacity, as a fellowpractitioner and a motorsports person,
I would say you are the real deal, myfriend, in terms of being able to observe
(06:01):
behavior and then draw insight from it.
if you pick a couple of topics, whatare maybe three major themes that
you would say business can learn fromracing teams and racing operations?
Yeah, so the first thing isthe level of clarity of goals.
I mean, with Formula 1 teamsall the sports out there, it's
(06:23):
pretty clear what the goal is.
In this case, it's win racesand win the championship.
That's the only thing that matters.
That just translates intoa huge amount of focus.
You can cut out all sorts of wasteand people know what the objective is.
Not only people knowit, it's more than that.
It's also that everyone else in theworld can see how you're doing against
(06:44):
that goal every week, after every race.
And that is not easily accomplished inbusiness, but I think if you're able to
accomplish that, it just drives a lotof focus and, is super helpful to have.
So, this clear and inspiring goalthat works as a compass is the
first part of the thing that wecan take away from F1 racing.
The second thing that comesto mind is a combination of
both autonomy and alignment.
(07:06):
If you look at how team principalsoperate, there's lots of interviews
with them, there's lots of blogposts about how they talk and
think about their leadership style.
They're pretty clear that they are hiringsome of the best talents in the world,
and they're not there to tell them exactlyhow they're going to do their jobs.
It's really about hiring great talentand just letting them do their jobs.
However, it does need to add up somesomehow to the bigger picture, right?
(07:29):
You have to create this Formula 1 carwith a 1000 to 2000 people, and all
the parts need to somehow fit together.
All the specifications have to align.
So if you make some changes in thegearbox, you need to make those changes
in the electronics as well, et cetera.
So it all has to fit together.
So, as a pattern that you see inFormula 1 teams, also in other
fast-moving, innovative companiesis this idea of aligned autonomy.
(07:52):
They are able to create highly autonomousteams where people don't have to tell
them exactly how to do their jobsand what is exactly on the road map.
They know what they own, they knowwhat they can do to make things better.
There's also high level of autonomywhere there's enough strategic and
goal awareness in the teams, sothey do the right thing without
needing to ask for approval.
(08:12):
So that's the second concept that Itook away from looking at the sport.
And the third bit is whatI call rhythmic learning.
There's a fixed rhythm inside these teamsthat allow them to constantly reflect
and improve on everything they do.
For example, the races, they takeabout 90 minutes to two hours.
After the race, they spend over two hoursdebriefing everything that happened.
(08:36):
They go through, detailedchecklists, trying to figure
out how were the pit stops?
How was the fuel efficiency?
How were the tires?
How was the comfort in the chair?
How was the balance?
All those things are going tobe evaluated and looked at.
And it's interesting because in mostWestern business cultures, execution is 99
percent of the thing, and reflection andimproving is just a very small percentage.
(08:59):
And these teams, they flip it around.
They have to because they cannot spend50 hours on the track every week.
They just understand thateverything they do is an
opportunity to reflect and improve.
They have these ideas, thesemeetings, these rituals, they
are built into their cadence.
It's not something that somebodyhas to plan like, "Oh, maybe now
it's a good time to evaluate."
No, it's just part of how they operate.
It makes me think of one of the thingsthat has been a mantra for our team.
(09:22):
My husband is our crew chief,I serve as team principal
and I'm assistant crew chief.
So I crew.
And one of his principlesis: we are always racing.
We are racing when we're on the track,we are racing when we're in the shop
prepping the bike, we are racingwhen we are schlepping tires, we are
racing when we're loading the trailer.
(09:42):
We are racing in our debriefs,and that doesn't mean when I say
we're always racing, that doesn'tmean we're always going fast.
It means we are always focused on how wemake that bike go faster for the rider
around the track the next time we go out.
Each of the themes that you justmentioned, as you were talking,
I was like, "yep, yep, yep, yep!"
(10:04):
The role that mistakes play and theway that teams work with mistakes
and learn from mistakes has been oneof the most transformative things
for me to see as a business personwho also operates in motorsports.
And I think actually youmentioned, blame- and shame-free
culture in your second book.
(10:25):
The consequences of what we do areso astronomically high—the odds of a
serious injury are low, given safety,and gear, and safety gear that's now
standard —but it is something that'sdifferent about my life in motorsports
compared to my life in corporate business.
(10:46):
A human being's life—and really multiplehuman beings lives because they're not
out there by themselves—depend on everysingle person in our team and each of
us doing what we're there to do at theabsolute best of our ability, given
the conditions we're operating in.
So, tell me a little more about what youlearned about mistakes, in both being a
(11:09):
fan and then also in writing this book.
Yeah, another consultant years agoput this image in my head, which
is about failure avoidance is moredangerous than failure recovery.
Because if you're going toconstantly try to avoid failures,
you're not going to innovate.
You're just going nowhere.
And if you're not innovatingin this sport, you're basically
crippling and you're dying.
Innovation is the only way tostay alive and to get the results,
(11:33):
because everybody else is doing it.
It's a rat race.
These organizations, they are really goodat recovering from failure and making
sure that they understand what happened.
They put measures into placeso it doesn't happen again.
The other thing is, becauseyou're going really fast, you
should expect failures to happen.
Because you're going in allsorts of directions, things
can go wrong in a split second.
(11:53):
It's not a stable environmentthat some businesses are in.
It's really like very volatile.
And that means that we alwayshave to take a systemic
perspective when things go wrong.
In the book, I use an exampleof a pit stop going wrong.
So you see a pit stop for Mark Weber outof Grand Prix a couple decades ago, and he
stops at the end of the pit lane after apit stop—with only three wheels attached.
(12:15):
So he's super angry and frustrated.
The first thing you think is, "Oh,something went wrong at the pit stop,
the wheel gun operator must have made amistake when he reattached the wheel."
But the fact is the wheel gunoperator did everything right.
What happened there was, first, amechanical failure because the wheel nut
that he tried to reattach was broken.
(12:35):
That was something thathappened in the factory.
It's not his fault at all.
The second problem was he accidentallyhit a button that that gave a green
light signal to the lollipop operatorthat the car was safe to drive.
So that was an ergonomical problem— hetouched a button that he shouldn't have
been able to touch easily in this way.
So, they had to change that design.
And there was also procedural error.
There was not an extra fallback.
(12:57):
"Do we need to do a double checkbefore we release the car?"
So, the wheel gun operatordid everything right.
And still, this accident happened.
That's a really well-documented incident.
As an outsider, you think, "Oh, thisperson needs to be fired, because
he blew the chances of a victory."
And I work with some organizationswhere making a costly mistake can
actually get you fired pretty quickly.
(13:18):
Which is just very short-term focusedbecause it will repeat itself if you don't
understand all the factors that were atplay when something like that happens.
One of my favorite stories from one ofmy motorsport mentors, Dave Alexander,
before his "retirement", which I putin air quotes because he's been retired
for a while and I still see him inthe professional paddock every year.
Dave Alexander told me a storyfrom his career that when he was
(13:43):
working, if he made a mistake, hewould call out, "I made a mistake!"
in the middle of the garage.
And, folks would, if theywere new to working with them,
it's like, "What's going on?"
But his point is we all makemistakes, and it's better to
announce them and catch them.
Because You want to catch yourmistake before it leaves the garage.
Normalizing mistakes, especially whenthe consequences of an issue could be
(14:09):
really high lets everyone recognizethat when we make a mistake, we fix it.
The supervision is so differentin the paddock, and I am
only assistant crew chief.
I don't know how my crew chief does itbecause he's executing and he's also
observing enough of what's happeningwith anyone touching the bike that he
(14:33):
catches a lot of issues that could happen.
I do think executive leadersand corporate leaders could
learn from that, non-judgmentalobservation of what's happening.
And remembering that when we arein that non-judgmental observation
mode as leaders, we're also coaches.
The way that we handle giving ourfeedback to our team or our crew
(14:58):
affects how we operate from there.
Yeah, I mean, especially if you'revery high up in the organization and
something big happens, the defaultresponse in some organizations is,
"I wanna get to the bottom of this.
I need to know exactly whathappened, and I want to make sure
it will never, ever happen again."
That makes it pretty unsafe to speak up.
It's pretty intimidating if that'sthe response, and the chances are
(15:20):
it will happen again, but you won'tknow who did it because now you
set an environment where people arelike, "Ooh, I did something wrong.
I better sweep it under the rug."
And I use another example in the book of aDutch web store, one of the biggest here.
It's like the Dutch Amazon, Bol.com.
They have a ritual at their monthlyall-hands meeting where one of
the leaders, they go on stagedressed as a priest and asking
(15:43):
confessions from the employees.
Does anybody here make any mistakesthat they want to confess this month?
And it's a bit of asilly, hilarious thing.
And they often make sure that oneof the other leaders go first, and
it's like, "Oh yeah, yeah, of course.
I messed this up.
I completely misjudged this,"or something else happened.
It's a way to make it easier and more fun.
And it sends a very serious messagethat, at Bol.com, we ask people to admit
(16:06):
their mistakes and to learn from it.
I'm glad that you mentioned leadersgoing first because it takes a
high degree of psychological safetyto create conditions for it to
be safe to for people to do that.
But it's also really important thatleaders model that intellectual humility
that it takes to share a mistakeand share what we learned from it.
(16:27):
Exactly.
When you talk about rhythmic learning,that also really stands out to me.
Both the cycles of learning, thatwhen teams are operating, and when
high-performance teams in any fieldare operating, we are always learning.
It's a constant and steadystream of observation.
And what can we learn?
Because we do have to get that 1 percentbetter every time we go out, or multiple
(16:50):
percents better every time we go out.
We can never maintain our status quo.
I also just love the combination of thewords, rhythmic learning, because in a
little bit different way, it's reallyhard for new team members to join a
team that's working, even if they knowthe subject matter of their discipline.
(17:11):
Because every team movesa little different.
Every team has a little different pace.
There's a little different vibe.
How you speak in the paddock, whetheryou're louder or not, is different.
So there's also a lot of observationallearning, that has to happen in
paddocks, and I don't see that as muchin the corporate workplace because
we're focused on our goal or our job,and that observational learning and
(17:36):
figuring out how to team and how tofind your place in the team is another
area that's element that I was thinkingabout when I was reading your book.
Yeah.
And again, leaders play a reallybig role to onboard new members.
In my second book, I talk about apractice called ICBD: Intentions,
Concerns, Boundaries, Dreams.
One of my favorite ways to create anempathetic conversation that grows
(17:58):
psychological safety was inventedby Bob Gower and Alexandra Jamieson
in their book, Radical Alignment.
It's a four-part conversation where,for example, when a new team member
joins the team, everybody sits downand reflects on, "What's my intention?
Why am I part of this team orwhy am I part of this project?
What's in it for me?"
You can share your personal ambitions andyour personal ideas of why you're here.
Then you can share your concerns: "This is what worries me about (18:21):
undefined
this; this is what might go wrong."
Just putting that on the tabletransparently really helps.
And then we can share boundaries: "What do I need to be at my best? (18:28):
undefined
what rules or guardrails do we needto agree on together so that we can
actually create this result together?"
And then finally dreams like what inyour, in our wildest dreams, if this
goes really well, what would be possible?
So yeah, this is, it's afour-part conversation.
And if you do that, when a team memberjoins or when the team goes on a
new initiative or maybe at the startof the season, it really helps, to
(18:50):
accelerate collaboration in a team,It grows psychological safety and
just creates a lot more understandingbecause we're at work, everybody does
things that are sometimes irrational,or maybe we think it's irrational.
But if you look below thesurface, then there might be
something driving that person.
There might be a concern that wedon't know about, or there might be
a boundary that they're trying toprotect that we don't know about.
(19:11):
And, to make those things explicitand to talk about them is a thing that
leaders can really do to let a team gel.
But not only leaders, everybodyin the team can do that.
Yeah.
That, that practice I squirreled awayin my group facilitation notebook, like
for off-sites and things like that.
—but You mentioned the clear and inspiringor defined goal, that when we are racing,
(19:34):
there is a championship to be earned.
There are races to be won.
And in working toward those goals,there are goals for podiums to begin
with, or goals with regard to position.
And we are all trying to gofaster every time we go out.
(19:55):
So the goals are so clear in motorsports.
most business leaders Don'toperate in an environment
where the goals are that clear?
what would you say to business leadersthat they can learn about goals and goal
setting from the motorsports paddock?
It's an art form that could be masteredand that could be very beneficial
(20:16):
if you're getting really good at it.
I describe the practice of strategicintent which is a way of articulating
a goal that is both concrete andinspiring, and that's often lacking.
Like, it's either very concrete,which like, "these are the 10 projects
we need to complete in the next 12months"—which is okay, sure, we do
that, but it's not so inspiring.
Then you have the lofty purposestatements like, "Our company exists
(20:39):
because we're going to transform thehuman condition, blah, blah, blah."
Which is very inspiring, butthat's not concrete, right?
It doesn't create any alignment,and I have no idea what that means
for me today if I joined a new team.
So strategic intent sits atthe intersection of both.
It first requires leaders to get reallyclear themselves on what they really need
to have, what they really aspiring to.
(21:00):
What really helps is if you don't focuson 12 months, but if you focus on two
to three years, which is more long-term.
It's still mid-term.
It's not like 50 years, but it'sstill, long enough that we can
be putting some pretty lofty,pretty ambitious things in there.
A colleague actually said, often,we highly overestimate what we can
do in a year, but we completelyunderestimate what we can do in two years.
(21:24):
There's something about the two- tothree-year period which allows us to think
a bit more dreamy and more aspiring, butstill, you can think back of what does
that mean concretely that we need to do.
It could be we need tobuild this capability.
It could be we need toreally master this outcome.
Then you need to get really concreteand action-oriented in your description.
For example, in the book—and there'sa lot of good and bad things being
(21:47):
said about Tesla and Elon Musk-he'sa bit of a goofy guy these days.
But the fun thing about Teslais that a lot of their strategic
language is actually out in the open.
At one point, he—or I don't knowif he was the person writing it,
but he definitely presented it.
When they were presenting their projectto do autopilot, like self-driving cars,
you could put the strategic goal like,"Launch the first version of autopilot."
(22:08):
It does make sense.
Okay, we have autopilot, it needsto work, and we have to launch
it, which is very output-oriented.
But the strategic intent version ofthat was, "Develop a self-driving
capability that is 10 times safer thanhumans through massive fleet learning."
Yeah.
So that is interesting.
It's an inspirational because10 times safer than humans,
that's a pretty high bar.
(22:30):
But it's also pretty concretebecause it says we're going to do
it through massive fleet learning.
So that is the choice we're makingthat's our bet that we're doing
it through massive fleet learning.
It's just one example of a strategicgoal that is super clear, super
inspirational, and you can imagine itdrives the work of thousands of people.
This simple sentence.
So when we work with leaders— and Ithink you do some similar work —when
(22:52):
you create a strategic intent, try tobe super concrete and inspirational, and
also acknowledge that it is a fractal.
You can have a strategic intentstatement at the top line of the
organization that still needs tobe somehow translated and connected
to the day-to-day work of everyone.
But also don't make the mistakeof cascading those goals, which is
the other challenge I see a lot.
It's like, "Okay, we set the goal, nowwe just have push it down, and then
(23:15):
people need to understand what happens."
No.
If you have highly autonomous teams thatare highly aligned, you can ask those
teams or departments to say, "You knowwhat, this is our overarching strategy.
These are our goals, our hypothesisof what we want to achieve.
Now you set your strategic intent basedon what you know about what you're
owning and what you are learning.
So what would you do and what would youset as a goal in the next two to three
(23:36):
years to feed into that overarching goal?"
And then it becomes like atwo-way conversation and it
becomes almost like a marketplace.
If these things are transparent, we canlook at them and say, "Oh, interesting.
I see some things that are divergentor something that are unexpected.
Let's talk about that."
When I was reviewing your secondbook, I highlighted the word fractal
because I'm a strategist, but abig part of my toolkit is OKRs.
(23:59):
And the picture of how OKRs cascadedown through an organization
has always, even deciding whatpicture to put in my own book.
I had the thought last night that I'mreally, Glad that we are not yet in layout
because I might have to ask my designerto depict that as a fractal instead of
(24:20):
as a boxes on a flow chart kind of style.
I do think that is really a muchbetter way to describe productive
localization goals—to recognizethat It's not the org chart, the way
that strategic goals get aligned,or even the teams in the org chart.
(24:42):
It really is that goals fractal outall the way through to the individuals.
So that was just a reallycool way to see it described.
Yeah.
And the other thing I talk aboutin the book, and I wrestle with
the language for a while becauseif it's not cascading, what is it?
Like, how do you call it?
So, I landed on two terms.
One is self-alignment, which is likewhat I described before, here is the
(25:04):
thing and what you're responsible for.
Can you align yourself towards this goal?
And the other one is integration, whichis more like a two-way conversation.
Because if you're in a C-suite, youdon't know the details of what's
happening on the ground, or evenbetter, at the edge of the organization.
If you see it more as a peach, witha heart bit in the middle, and the
outside is interfacing with the marketand the customers, the outside is
(25:27):
learning day to day and they knowwhat is happening and what is needed.
The people that are in the center, theyhave the overarching picture of what is
happening and they could see things andtrends that people on the edge don't see.
So it's just a different perspective.
And those perspectives need tobe integrated to make sense.
Otherwise, what you have seehappen often is there's a strategy,
and people are like, "Oh, great.
(25:47):
I didn't know how this impacts mywork," or "I already learned that's
not going to work, so whatever."
And it has no effect or it has theadverse effect, where people are
like frustrated and say, "You knowwhat, this doesn't make any sense.
You're asking me all these goalsand all these principles, and
you're not prioritizing what Iactually needs to do my job better.
So how are you going tohelp me with the strategy?"
That is one of the challenges in strategicalignment across the organization.
(26:10):
Yeah, listening to this is making megrateful that I decided that my book is
It's going to be a print book, and thereis also going to be a Notion-based wiki
version that I can continually update.
Yeah.
Because the term that I use in OKRpractice was one I first learned at
WorkBoard, one of the OKR platforms,they use the term localization, which I
(26:35):
think is a great choice of language todescribe that translation of goals, down
or down-and-out through the fractal.
I use "rolling up" for thatself-alignment and then "rolling
down" for the goals that roll down.
But I don't have a termfor that integration.
I use alignment, but I thinkintegration is a more precise term to
(26:58):
describe that two-way responsibility.
Yeah, I think alignment is a state,and integration is a verb, right?
It's a thing we do.
Integration should lead to alignment,at least until, it won't be a perfect
alignment, but at least be alignedenough so that it makes sense.
That's what I think.
Awesome.
I think I could talk about motorsportsall day, but I do want to get into
(27:20):
your second book because, I think it'sa very important read for leaders.
And your second book is called Unblock.
It outlines six elements of unblocking.
And so first, tell uswhat the six elements are.
Yeah.
So the subtitle is Clear theWay for Results and Develop
a Thriving Organization.
(27:41):
It's a practical guide for leaders thatwant a certain result or are ambitious,
which is probably almost all leaders.
This is very geared towards creatingan organization that is able to deliver
the result that you have in mind.
And that's why it starts with strategy.
We already talked about that quite abit—strategic intent is part of it.
it's also about prioritization (28:00):
How do you set heuristics so people know how
they can prioritize themselves, whichis a big problem in many organizations?
We try to do too many things at once.
The second big topic is steering—inparticular continue steering,
which is all about both settinggoals that are outcome-oriented.
I have a small chapter on OKRs in theretoo, but it's about 90-day outcomes.
(28:24):
It's about using metrics to yourbenefit, and it's about constantly
feeding into that loop of learning,and experimenting, and trying.
The third one is decision-making.
So how do we acceleratedecisions in organizations?
It's also a big part of my first book,because that's also about accelerating
organizations, creating organizations orcreating decisions that are acknowledging
(28:45):
decisions that are reversible, and makingthem just a lot faster, and getting
to consent rather than consensus inteams is what that chapter is about.
The next one is on developingan organization where
ownership is a big thing.
So it's a big frustration of many leadersthat they don't see their people taking
ownership, and that chapter is allabout acknowledging the fact that it's
(29:07):
usually the system and the organizationthat are lacking, and not the people.
I really believe people want totake ownership if they can, for
the most part, they do it in theirprivate lives all the time, but
many organizations don't create theconditions for that to happen at scale.
So that is in one part about decisionrights and making clear what types
of decisions can we make, what typeof risks are we allowed to make,
(29:30):
and making those boundaries clear.
And it's also about.
creating marketplaces where people canchoose what they want to contribute to,
because another big part of ownership ismy emotional investment in the work I do.
If I can choose, then the good chanceis that I will be engaged and able and
willing to take ownership of that work.
Next one is teamwork.
We already spoke about that a little bitabout developing psychological safety
(29:52):
and developing habits for reflection,and giving and receiving feedback.
And the final one is about meetings.
Which is a lot about replacing fullcalendars with unuseful, undesigned
uh, meetings with a cadence, like therhythmic learning that we talked about.
It also describes a specific meetingpractice that we just love, which
(30:14):
is the unblock meeting, which is away to have a weekly meeting that
is super effective and efficient.
Together, all these elements,I believe, are necessary for an
organization to consistently delivergood results, and good outcomes.
But don't ask people to work onall six at the same time because
it's not a fixed framework.
It starts by understanding which of thesesix elements do I need to unblock first so
(30:36):
that I can move the needle a little bit.
I appreciated that right upfront you said this book doesn't
have to be read linearly.
Something that I also say in mine.
that makes it a very useful book,giving people permission right away.
And then now I know the challengeof writing a book to not be
necessarily read linearly.
There were a couple of things that reallystood out to me in the six elements.
(31:00):
People are going to have to read thebook to hear about the air sandwich,
because I think that is a conceptthat folks need to become aware of,
You mentioned trying to do too manythings at once and the practice of
prioritizing with specific trade-offs.
I'd love for you to talk just alittle bit about that concept.
(31:21):
Yeah.
If everything is a priority,nothing is a priority.
And it's a challenge that we face a lot.
And often prioritization is donethrough management layers, right?
It's the managers that have to constantlytriage, "Oh, are we going to do this
or that, or are we going to do both?"
And we want to do all the things all atonce, because it's very hard to choose,
and it's very hard to say no to certainthings for social reasons, but also
(31:43):
sometimes we just have too much ambitions.
The practice of making trade-offsexplicit is one that we
call "even over" statements.
It's about describing short sentencesthat can be used as a heuristic where
you make clear what are you willingto trade off to get something else.
There's a couple ofexamples in there of brands.
For example, let's look atPatagonia, a well-known brand.
(32:06):
They have clearly prioritizedsustainability, even over profit.
Which gives everyone in the organizationthe permission when they are faced
with the choice to do either thesustainable thing or the profitable
thing to go for the sustainable thing.
It's this simple heuristic that is bothknown on the inside and the outside that
drives a lot of day-to-day decisionsand day-to-day prioritizations.
(32:27):
But it could also besomething else, right?
It could be like, are we going forthe best quality or are we just
going for meeting our delivery date?
And if you write down, "qualityeven over meeting the deadline,"
that's a very clear choice.
It makes it explicit that we arealways going to go for quality.
A good even over statement is reversible.
where it's like, "We need tomeet a deadline, and we're
willing to sacrifice quality."
(32:49):
It's about the conversationabout setting those things.
Again, it's a fractal, so you can setit at a company level, like we said
with Patagonia, but I also encourageteams and departments to set their own.
They change all the time, so it couldbe just prioritizing a certain behavior
or a certain thing for a coupleof weeks, for a couple of months.
And then you're like,"That's for this quarter.
We're really going for quality andfor next quarter, we're really going
(33:09):
to go for meeting our deadlines."
It could also be behavioral.
So, honesty, even over comfort.
Which could be a thing that a team setsto everyone to speak up more, and on a
weekly basis in your meeting, you canask, like, "Did you do it this week?
Did you prioritize honestyeven over comfort this week?"
Those are a few ways to use the practice.
(33:29):
While you were talking about evenovers, I was going through my mental
checklist of the even overs thatwe have been operating with without
communicating them in our team.
Oh yeah.
You know, of like, uh, Honesty overcomfort is one, or performance over
comfort is one that is really difficultto, On board new people to in the
(33:52):
motorsports paddock because it can beincredibly uncomfortable and we still
have to execute our jobs as crew at 100%.
The riders, they're having togo ride the bike in whatever
conditions we're operating in.
Um, and it's...
And then when you say comfort, is itthe team comfort or also the rider's?
No, um, human comfort.
Things like, if we have a schedule change,we might wind up working through lunch.
(34:15):
If the rider falls down, we may missdinner time, And we do our best to
take care of our humans at all times.
And there is also an element of what hasto happen because we are always racing.
We are always on the clock.
But the first one that popped tomy head was power over longevity.
specifically with engines, Butagain, that applies to our humans to
(34:39):
of do we need to be in power mode?
Or do we need to be in longevity mode?
And it's a good exampleof that back and forth.
And what you say is really interestingbecause often those trade-offs are
already in the culture implicitly.
It really helps making them explicitand inspecting them time over time and
say, "Are these things still useful?"
(34:59):
Instead of you joining a teamand you try to figure out like,
" what are the priorities here?
What are people doing?"
Then you learn that throughexperiences maybe after a few months.
But it's so much faster if you write itdown and people are like, "Oh, this is it.
I know it now."
As humans, we get habituated.
So we get into a habit.
And I think that concept that oureven overs might switch back and
(35:20):
forth, or they might be able to beswitched is a really good reminder.
Because when we're always racing, we'realways racing but you also do have to
recover and sleep and rest as well.
And it's just a good way to communicatetransparently with each other, which of
the modes that we're in at any given time.
(35:41):
There are two other thingsthat I wanted to mention.
Can you tell us about hats,haircuts, and tattoos?
Oh, yeah.
That's my other favorite thing.
All right so this is about acceleratingdecision-making, and it's a concept that
was first written down by James Clear.
And he says there are only threetypes of decisions: there's
hats, haircuts, and tattoos.
(36:02):
So a hat is a thing you can buy.
And if you don't like the hat, youcan either bring it back and get your
money back, or you can just buy lotsof different hats and try them all out.
There's not a lot of consequencesfor getting it wrong.
If you make that decision,it's not so costly to reverse.
But if you get a haircut, it mightnot work out the way you want, right?
You can feel embarrassed for a while.
(36:23):
You can be frustrated about it.
But for most people—not me ifyou’re looking at the video—but for
most people, the hair grows back.
And in a couple of weeks, a couple ofmonths, you can get another haircut.
There's no need to analyze upfront allthe possible barbers in a country or
in the world and figure out what isthe exact, precise, perfect haircut
that I'm going to get, because evenif you do that, you're not sure how
(36:44):
it will turn out precisely, right?
Because even the barbercan have a bad haircut day.
And there's also tattoos, which are typesof decisions that are not so reversible.
They are technically reversible—Ihave no experience with that—but
what I heard is that it's goingto be painful if you reverse it.
It's going to be costly.
It takes a lot of time.
You get a tattoo, you better needto take the time to figure out
(37:04):
what do I want, where do I wantit, and who is going to set it.
For those types of decisions, itdoes make sense to spend a little
bit more time analyzing and thinking.
But the problem in many businessesis that we treat a lot of different
decisions as if they are tattoos, whilein fact they are either hats or haircuts.
So it's a really helpful frameto have the language to say,
"What type of decision is this?"
(37:26):
and "Do we really need to make adecision or do we really need to
spend five hours of meetings and fivemonths of delaying and thinking and
analyzing to try to get it perfect?
Or should we just do somethingand see what we learn from that?"
I didn't see it the first time I readFormula X, but as I was going back through
my notes last night, getting ready fortoday, one of the takeaways that I had
(37:46):
is both motorsports and in business,there's value in building in public.
Like, in motorsports, we have no choice.
We are building in public.
That is how we operate.
There is no other way.
We're constantly in developmentalong with everyone else in the
paddock, and we have good days andbad days in development in public.
(38:08):
Where in business, there's a evenover around building in public and
pace and building in private andreputation preservation or image
preservation or something like that.
And so that was one of the big takeawaysthat linked to the decision framework
in my brain—that we have to makesmart decisions about when to build in
(38:33):
public and when to build in private.
Exactly.
Yeah.
The last thing I wanted to bring up,I was so excited in your second book
when I got to the part where you weretalking about consent, and then the
role that choice plays in ownership.
I have not read every book in theworld, but having those two concepts
together, I think, is prettyrevolutionary and pretty unique.
(38:56):
How did you come to havethose two concepts in the book
connected the way they are?
Yeah.
So I've worked both with clients,but also inside organizations that,
that are completely self-managing.
So there's no boss or there's no hierarchyof people telling you what to do.
You don't report into anyone else, whichmeans like in these organizations, there
(39:19):
are definitely rules and agreementsand maybe even more than in traditional
organizations, but it's all about consent.
So if I don't want to do something,nobody's going to force me to do it.
This has some advantages.
It has the advantage that things thatnobody in the organization wants to do
sometimes they just die because it's nothappening, while in other businesses, in
(39:39):
traditional organizations, we just keepdoing it or keep forcing us to do it even
though everybody thinks it's a bad idea.
Obviously, there are chores, likethings that nobody wants to do
and still need to happen, but thatthose can often be outsourced.
So that's a different thing.
but I'm really talking aboutvoting with your feet: So,
what is it that I want to do?
What is it that I want tocontribute that I think is valuable
if I spend my energy with it?
(40:00):
Which creates a lot of entrepreneurialenergy in an organization like that.
The other thing about consent, ifthere's no, so a way to get out
of the problem in self managingorganizations, you either have.
The problem that everybody needs toagree before you can do something,
which is very paralyzing andreally slows down everything.
So, there's a couple of smartpeople that have been experimenting
(40:21):
with the concept of consent.
I think even in the Quakers and then inthe sociocracy, and it was popularized by
Holacracy, which got a lot of attention.
And now it's often used as a separateframework, which I also offer my book,
where it's like (40:33):
Can we make a decision where everybody can live with it so
that we don't have to all fully agree.
And, the concept is all about gettingto a place of "safe to try" where,
we don't ask, "Does everybody agree?"
We ask, "Is it safe to try?"
And that lowers the bar forsteps, and that lowers the bar
for taking action and learning.
(40:54):
And it also highlights theconversation that we need to have
sometimes, which is, what is safeto try, and what is not safe to try.
And those things shouldbe combined, right?
We wanna make sure that what happensin your organization doesn't create any
objections, that are, that are severeand we don't endanger the organization,
but we also wanna create as much space aspossible for people to develop the things
(41:17):
that they think need to be developed.
And that's why I think indeed thosetwo concepts are pretty powerful.
Jurriaan, your books describe thecorporate culture that I always
wanted to work in, as an employee, Ithink it's really exciting that you
pack as much pragmatic, practicalheuristics and clear things to do.
(41:41):
this isn't philosophical.
Your books are very useful.
And so you pack a lot of usefulinformation into your two books
and I'll put the links in mybookstore and in the show notes
so that folks can find your books.
I really hope people will use it becausethat's the only thing that matters, right?
there's lots of ideas out there—ideabooks, which are like very inspirational
(42:02):
or case studies, which like, "Oh,that company is doing something
really cool, but that is very hardto translate into everyday practice."
And, with these books and especiallythe last one, I try to write down
everything that I've learned.
After trying it for 5 to10 years with clients.
So I know they work, but theywon't work for everyone because
every organization is different.
And we also have to acknowledgethat every situation, every
(42:24):
organization is different.
So every framework is by definition wrong.
And I think if it comes to the, sometimesthe snake oil that, that we, which I
also say you and I are sometimes selling,we, leaders have to be aware and make
their own choices based on what they see.
We shouldn't fall into thetrap of huge certification
programs, all of those things.
Taichi Ono is the founding fatherof the Toyota production system, the
(42:48):
lean philosophy that was popularizedin the Western world as well.
And he at one point said, youknow what, you have to look at
your problems, think and thinkdeeply and then decide what to do.
It's really up to you as leaderto figure out what do I need to do
and what can I ignore, as advice.
Just to dovetail off of something youjust said, these practices might not work.
(43:10):
But if what you're doing right nowisn't yielding the result that you need,
then doing something that might notwork might help you learn what will.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Where can people find you if theywant to learn more about your work?
Yeah, so I'm pretty active onLinkedIn, so just, follow, type in
my name and you'll find me there.
Happy to follow, follow or connect.
(43:31):
And if you wanna learn more about thebooks, you can go to jurriaankamer.com
or go directly to www.unblockbook.netwhich is the latest book.
Fantastic.
thank you so much.
I hope to see you someday in Assen.
Yeah, would be nice.
I hope this episode has sparked some newideas for your own leadership journey.
(43:53):
Remember, whether you're on the racetrackor in the office, success comes down to
clear goals, continuous learning, anda team that's aligned and autonomous.
If you've found value in today's episode,share it with a fellow Thinkydoer.
We love your reviews.
And for more resources andinsights, visit saralobkovich.com.
(44:14):
Or if that's too hard to spell,there's a shortcut at findrc.co.
All right, friends, That's it for today.
stay in the loop with everything goingon around here by visiting findrc.
co slash newsletter andjoining my mailing list.
Got questions?
My email addresses are too hard tospell, so visit findrc.co/contact
(44:39):
and shoot me a note that way.
You'll also find me at@saralobkovich on most of your
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For today's show notes,visit findrc.co/thinkydoers.
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And if you know other Thinkydoers who'dbenefit from this episode, please share.
(45:01):
Your referrals, your word of mouth,and your reviews are much appreciated.
I'm looking forward to the questionsthis episode sparks for you, and I
look forward to seeing you next time.
Welcome to the Thinkydoers podcast.
Thinkydoers are those of us drawn todeep work, where thinking is working.
But we don't stop there.
We're compelled to move the work frominsight to idea, and through the messy
middle to find courage and confidenceto put our thoughts into action.
I'm your host, Sara Lobkovich.
(00:23):
I'm a strategy coach, a huge goal settingand attainment nerd, and board certified
health and wellness coach, working atthe overlap of work life well being.
I'm also a Thinkydoer.
I'm here to help others find moresatisfaction, less frustration, less
friction, and more flow in our work.
(00:47):
My mission is to help changemakers likeyou transform our workplaces and world.
So let's get started.
Hello and welcome.
I am so excited that we're shiftinggears for a bit of a worlds colliding
episode for me at the intersectionof motorsports and business.
(01:10):
You might not know this aboutme, but I have an other life in
professional motorcycle road racing.
But this episode isn'tjust for racing fans.
We're going to uncover how the strategiesthat drive F1 teams can unblock your
own leadership and business performance.
My guest, Jurriaan Kamer, is anorganizational change expert with a
(01:33):
unique perspective based on both hisfandom of F1 and some time behind
the scenes of F1, and having workedin self managing organizations
over the course of his career.
We'll discuss how clear goals, shameand blame free cultures, rhythmic
learning, and other accessible,useful principles from his work
(01:54):
can transform your leadershipapproach and how you lead yourself.
So whether you're a seasoned CEO or anaspiring leader, Give this one a listen.
Let's start with an introduction: who are you what do you do (02:05):
undefined
and where are you based?
Yeah, so I'm Jurriaan, based out of theNetherlands, in a place called Utrecht.
some people will probably knowAmsterdam—it's not that far from here.
I'm an organizational change expert.
I help leaders all across the world changehow they work, to improve the conditions
(02:26):
in their organizations for better results.
We're going to start with Formula Xbecause that was How this conversation
came to be—we crossed paths on PodMatch.
And then I asked you a very silly questionwhen I saw that you were a Formula 1 fan,
and asked you if you would like to comeon and speak with me about what business
(02:47):
can learn from Formula 1, and Your answerto that question was very graceful,
given my ignorance of your book history.
You wrote Formula X, —it's afable, is that the right word?
Yeah, leadership fable.
A leadership fable about aleader learning important lessons
(03:07):
from an F1 experience and team.
I just have to hear the story of howthat book came to be—what was the
origin, and how did that book happen?
I was watching Formula 1 as a fan formany years before writing that book.
I was just on the couch and sometimeswent to races to to see it live, but my
(03:28):
whole perspective on the sport changedwhen I was able to go behind the scenes.
I was invited by one of the sponsorsof Red Bull Racing to come and
speak to a bunch of leaders thatthey invited to to the factory.
I was just asked to do a speechon the evening before the
factory visit, just as a warmup.
At the time, I was speakingabout agile ways of working,
(03:50):
organizations with high levels ofautonomy, and those kinds of things.
I said to them, "I want to come,but there are two conditions."
First condition is I goto the factory as well.
And the second condition was I wantto try to speak about Formula 1 that
evening before we go into the factory,and use that as an opportunity to do a
lot of research about how these teamsactually function—because I had no idea.
(04:11):
Next day, we went into thefactory and my mind was blown.
Just being there and seeing how huge theoperation is completely blew my mind.
Then, my co-author, Rini Van Solingen—inHolland , he's a famous management
book author, and his publisheractually reached out to him, he
said, "You know what, Formula 1 isgetting more popular, this guy called
Max Verstappen is getting popular.
He's getting better.
Maybe you should do your nextmanagement book about Formula 1 and
(04:32):
something around organizational speed."
So, he started researching forthat topic, he found my work, and
we connected and eventually wedecided to write that book together.
That's wild.
I was actually talking to my husbandlast night, because I have to admit,
when I saw a business book, learninglessons from racing, as someone who has
(04:53):
another life in professional racing.
when I saw the book, Iwas a little skeptical.
I sat down, and started reading,and it was quite quickly I was like,
"How does this guy know this stuff?"
The view of the teamsand how they operate, the
behind-the-scenes was so good.
(05:13):
I thought, either he's workedwith a team as a team member, or
you're really good at what you doin terms of observing behavior.
Because there are so many little things inthat book, just as a fan, you don't get.
Like you really have to be in it.
And I think the first time I wrotein the margin, "wow", was page 75.
(05:37):
When, with the amazement whenhe walks into the working
paddock for the first time.
I was really impressed.
So that is a way to say, like, for folkswho might be considering working with
you in your day job capacity, as a fellowpractitioner and a motorsports person,
I would say you are the real deal, myfriend, in terms of being able to observe
(06:01):
behavior and then draw insight from it.
if you pick a couple of topics, whatare maybe three major themes that
you would say business can learn fromracing teams and racing operations?
Yeah, so the first thing isthe level of clarity of goals.
I mean, with Formula 1 teamsall the sports out there, it's
(06:23):
pretty clear what the goal is.
In this case, it's win racesand win the championship.
That's the only thing that matters.
That just translates intoa huge amount of focus.
You can cut out all sorts of wasteand people know what the objective is.
Not only people knowit, it's more than that.
It's also that everyone else in theworld can see how you're doing against
(06:44):
that goal every week, after every race.
And that is not easily accomplished inbusiness, but I think if you're able to
accomplish that, it just drives a lotof focus and, is super helpful to have.
So, this clear and inspiring goalthat works as a compass is the
first part of the thing that wecan take away from F1 racing.
The second thing that comesto mind is a combination of
both autonomy and alignment.
(07:06):
If you look at how team principalsoperate, there's lots of interviews
with them, there's lots of blogposts about how they talk and
think about their leadership style.
They're pretty clear that they are hiringsome of the best talents in the world,
and they're not there to tell them exactlyhow they're going to do their jobs.
It's really about hiring great talentand just letting them do their jobs.
However, it does need to add up somesomehow to the bigger picture, right?
(07:29):
You have to create this Formula 1 carwith a 1000 to 2000 people, and all
the parts need to somehow fit together.
All the specifications have to align.
So if you make some changes in thegearbox, you need to make those changes
in the electronics as well, et cetera.
So it all has to fit together.
So, as a pattern that you see inFormula 1 teams, also in other
fast-moving, innovative companiesis this idea of aligned autonomy.
(07:52):
They are able to create highly autonomousteams where people don't have to tell
them exactly how to do their jobsand what is exactly on the road map.
They know what they own, they knowwhat they can do to make things better.
There's also high level of autonomywhere there's enough strategic and
goal awareness in the teams, sothey do the right thing without
needing to ask for approval.
(08:12):
So that's the second concept that Itook away from looking at the sport.
And the third bit is whatI call rhythmic learning.
There's a fixed rhythm inside these teamsthat allow them to constantly reflect
and improve on everything they do.
For example, the races, they takeabout 90 minutes to two hours.
After the race, they spend over two hoursdebriefing everything that happened.
(08:36):
They go through, detailedchecklists, trying to figure
out how were the pit stops?
How was the fuel efficiency?
How were the tires?
How was the comfort in the chair?
How was the balance?
All those things are going tobe evaluated and looked at.
And it's interesting because in mostWestern business cultures, execution is 99
percent of the thing, and reflection andimproving is just a very small percentage.
(08:59):
And these teams, they flip it around.
They have to because they cannot spend50 hours on the track every week.
They just understand thateverything they do is an
opportunity to reflect and improve.
They have these ideas, thesemeetings, these rituals, they
are built into their cadence.
It's not something that somebodyhas to plan like, "Oh, maybe now
it's a good time to evaluate."
No, it's just part of how they operate.
It makes me think of one of the thingsthat has been a mantra for our team.
(09:22):
My husband is our crew chief,I serve as team principal
and I'm assistant crew chief.
So I crew.
And one of his principlesis: we are always racing.
We are racing when we're on the track,we are racing when we're in the shop
prepping the bike, we are racingwhen we are schlepping tires, we are
racing when we're loading the trailer.
(09:42):
We are racing in our debriefs,and that doesn't mean when I say
we're always racing, that doesn'tmean we're always going fast.
It means we are always focused on how wemake that bike go faster for the rider
around the track the next time we go out.
Each of the themes that you justmentioned, as you were talking,
I was like, "yep, yep, yep, yep!"
(10:04):
The role that mistakes play and theway that teams work with mistakes
and learn from mistakes has been oneof the most transformative things
for me to see as a business personwho also operates in motorsports.
And I think actually youmentioned, blame- and shame-free
culture in your second book.
(10:25):
The consequences of what we do areso astronomically high—the odds of a
serious injury are low, given safety,and gear, and safety gear that's now
standard —but it is something that'sdifferent about my life in motorsports
compared to my life in corporate business.
(10:46):
A human being's life—and really multiplehuman beings lives because they're not
out there by themselves—depend on everysingle person in our team and each of
us doing what we're there to do at theabsolute best of our ability, given
the conditions we're operating in.
So, tell me a little more about what youlearned about mistakes, in both being a
(11:09):
fan and then also in writing this book.
Yeah, another consultant years agoput this image in my head, which
is about failure avoidance is moredangerous than failure recovery.
Because if you're going toconstantly try to avoid failures,
you're not going to innovate.
You're just going nowhere.
And if you're not innovatingin this sport, you're basically
crippling and you're dying.
Innovation is the only way tostay alive and to get the results,
(11:33):
because everybody else is doing it.
It's a rat race.
These organizations, they are really goodat recovering from failure and making
sure that they understand what happened.
They put measures into placeso it doesn't happen again.
The other thing is, becauseyou're going really fast, you
should expect failures to happen.
Because you're going in allsorts of directions, things
can go wrong in a split second.
(11:53):
It's not a stable environmentthat some businesses are in.
It's really like very volatile.
And that means that we alwayshave to take a systemic
perspective when things go wrong.
In the book, I use an exampleof a pit stop going wrong.
So you see a pit stop for Mark Weber outof Grand Prix a couple decades ago, and he
stops at the end of the pit lane after apit stop—with only three wheels attached.
(12:15):
So he's super angry and frustrated.
The first thing you think is, "Oh,something went wrong at the pit stop,
the wheel gun operator must have made amistake when he reattached the wheel."
But the fact is the wheel gunoperator did everything right.
What happened there was, first, amechanical failure because the wheel nut
that he tried to reattach was broken.
(12:35):
That was something thathappened in the factory.
It's not his fault at all.
The second problem was he accidentallyhit a button that that gave a green
light signal to the lollipop operatorthat the car was safe to drive.
So that was an ergonomical problem— hetouched a button that he shouldn't have
been able to touch easily in this way.
So, they had to change that design.
And there was also procedural error.
There was not an extra fallback.
(12:57):
"Do we need to do a double checkbefore we release the car?"
So, the wheel gun operatordid everything right.
And still, this accident happened.
That's a really well-documented incident.
As an outsider, you think, "Oh, thisperson needs to be fired, because
he blew the chances of a victory."
And I work with some organizationswhere making a costly mistake can
actually get you fired pretty quickly.
(13:18):
Which is just very short-term focusedbecause it will repeat itself if you don't
understand all the factors that were atplay when something like that happens.
One of my favorite stories from one ofmy motorsport mentors, Dave Alexander,
before his "retirement", which I putin air quotes because he's been retired
for a while and I still see him inthe professional paddock every year.
Dave Alexander told me a storyfrom his career that when he was
(13:43):
working, if he made a mistake, hewould call out, "I made a mistake!"
in the middle of the garage.
And, folks would, if theywere new to working with them,
it's like, "What's going on?"
But his point is we all makemistakes, and it's better to
announce them and catch them.
Because You want to catch yourmistake before it leaves the garage.
Normalizing mistakes, especially whenthe consequences of an issue could be
(14:09):
really high lets everyone recognizethat when we make a mistake, we fix it.
The supervision is so differentin the paddock, and I am
only assistant crew chief.
I don't know how my crew chief does itbecause he's executing and he's also
observing enough of what's happeningwith anyone touching the bike that he
(14:33):
catches a lot of issues that could happen.
I do think executive leadersand corporate leaders could
learn from that, non-judgmentalobservation of what's happening.
And remembering that when we arein that non-judgmental observation
mode as leaders, we're also coaches.
The way that we handle giving ourfeedback to our team or our crew
(14:58):
affects how we operate from there.
Yeah, I mean, especially if you'revery high up in the organization and
something big happens, the defaultresponse in some organizations is,
"I wanna get to the bottom of this.
I need to know exactly whathappened, and I want to make sure
it will never, ever happen again."
That makes it pretty unsafe to speak up.
It's pretty intimidating if that'sthe response, and the chances are
(15:20):
it will happen again, but you won'tknow who did it because now you
set an environment where people arelike, "Ooh, I did something wrong.
I better sweep it under the rug."
And I use another example in the book of aDutch web store, one of the biggest here.
It's like the Dutch Amazon, Bol.com.
They have a ritual at their monthlyall-hands meeting where one of
the leaders, they go on stagedressed as a priest and asking
(15:43):
confessions from the employees.
Does anybody here make any mistakesthat they want to confess this month?
And it's a bit of asilly, hilarious thing.
And they often make sure that oneof the other leaders go first, and
it's like, "Oh yeah, yeah, of course.
I messed this up.
I completely misjudged this,"or something else happened.
It's a way to make it easier and more fun.
And it sends a very serious messagethat, at Bol.com, we ask people to admit
(16:06):
their mistakes and to learn from it.
I'm glad that you mentioned leadersgoing first because it takes a
high degree of psychological safetyto create conditions for it to
be safe to for people to do that.
But it's also really important thatleaders model that intellectual humility
that it takes to share a mistakeand share what we learned from it.
(16:27):
Exactly.
When you talk about rhythmic learning,that also really stands out to me.
Both the cycles of learning, thatwhen teams are operating, and when
high-performance teams in any fieldare operating, we are always learning.
It's a constant and steadystream of observation.
And what can we learn?
Because we do have to get that 1 percentbetter every time we go out, or multiple
(16:50):
percents better every time we go out.
We can never maintain our status quo.
I also just love the combination of thewords, rhythmic learning, because in a
little bit different way, it's reallyhard for new team members to join a
team that's working, even if they knowthe subject matter of their discipline.
(17:11):
Because every team movesa little different.
Every team has a little different pace.
There's a little different vibe.
How you speak in the paddock, whetheryou're louder or not, is different.
So there's also a lot of observationallearning, that has to happen in
paddocks, and I don't see that as muchin the corporate workplace because
we're focused on our goal or our job,and that observational learning and
(17:36):
figuring out how to team and how tofind your place in the team is another
area that's element that I was thinkingabout when I was reading your book.
Yeah.
And again, leaders play a reallybig role to onboard new members.
In my second book, I talk about apractice called ICBD: Intentions,
Concerns, Boundaries, Dreams.
One of my favorite ways to create anempathetic conversation that grows
(17:58):
psychological safety was inventedby Bob Gower and Alexandra Jamieson
in their book, Radical Alignment.
It's a four-part conversation where,for example, when a new team member
joins the team, everybody sits downand reflects on, "What's my intention?
Why am I part of this team orwhy am I part of this project?
What's in it for me?"
You can share your personal ambitions andyour personal ideas of why you're here.
Then you can share your concerns: "This is what worries me about (18:21):
undefined
this; this is what might go wrong."
Just putting that on the tabletransparently really helps.
And then we can share boundaries: "What do I need to be at my best? (18:28):
undefined
what rules or guardrails do we needto agree on together so that we can
actually create this result together?"
And then finally dreams like what inyour, in our wildest dreams, if this
goes really well, what would be possible?
So yeah, this is, it's afour-part conversation.
And if you do that, when a team memberjoins or when the team goes on a
new initiative or maybe at the startof the season, it really helps, to
(18:50):
accelerate collaboration in a team,It grows psychological safety and
just creates a lot more understandingbecause we're at work, everybody does
things that are sometimes irrational,or maybe we think it's irrational.
But if you look below thesurface, then there might be
something driving that person.
There might be a concern that wedon't know about, or there might be
a boundary that they're trying toprotect that we don't know about.
(19:11):
And, to make those things explicitand to talk about them is a thing that
leaders can really do to let a team gel.
But not only leaders, everybodyin the team can do that.
Yeah.
That, that practice I squirreled awayin my group facilitation notebook, like
for off-sites and things like that.
—but You mentioned the clear and inspiringor defined goal, that when we are racing,
(19:34):
there is a championship to be earned.
There are races to be won.
And in working toward those goals,there are goals for podiums to begin
with, or goals with regard to position.
And we are all trying to gofaster every time we go out.
(19:55):
So the goals are so clear in motorsports.
most business leaders Don'toperate in an environment
where the goals are that clear?
what would you say to business leadersthat they can learn about goals and goal
setting from the motorsports paddock?
It's an art form that could be masteredand that could be very beneficial
(20:16):
if you're getting really good at it.
I describe the practice of strategicintent which is a way of articulating
a goal that is both concrete andinspiring, and that's often lacking.
Like, it's either very concrete,which like, "these are the 10 projects
we need to complete in the next 12months"—which is okay, sure, we do
that, but it's not so inspiring.
Then you have the lofty purposestatements like, "Our company exists
(20:39):
because we're going to transform thehuman condition, blah, blah, blah."
Which is very inspiring, butthat's not concrete, right?
It doesn't create any alignment,and I have no idea what that means
for me today if I joined a new team.
So strategic intent sits atthe intersection of both.
It first requires leaders to get reallyclear themselves on what they really need
to have, what they really aspiring to.
(21:00):
What really helps is if you don't focuson 12 months, but if you focus on two
to three years, which is more long-term.
It's still mid-term.
It's not like 50 years, but it'sstill, long enough that we can
be putting some pretty lofty,pretty ambitious things in there.
A colleague actually said, often,we highly overestimate what we can
do in a year, but we completelyunderestimate what we can do in two years.
(21:24):
There's something about the two- tothree-year period which allows us to think
a bit more dreamy and more aspiring, butstill, you can think back of what does
that mean concretely that we need to do.
It could be we need tobuild this capability.
It could be we need toreally master this outcome.
Then you need to get really concreteand action-oriented in your description.
For example, in the book—and there'sa lot of good and bad things being
(21:47):
said about Tesla and Elon Musk-he'sa bit of a goofy guy these days.
But the fun thing about Teslais that a lot of their strategic
language is actually out in the open.
At one point, he—or I don't knowif he was the person writing it,
but he definitely presented it.
When they were presenting their projectto do autopilot, like self-driving cars,
you could put the strategic goal like,"Launch the first version of autopilot."
(22:08):
It does make sense.
Okay, we have autopilot, it needsto work, and we have to launch
it, which is very output-oriented.
But the strategic intent version ofthat was, "Develop a self-driving
capability that is 10 times safer thanhumans through massive fleet learning."
Yeah.
So that is interesting.
It's an inspirational because10 times safer than humans,
that's a pretty high bar.
(22:30):
But it's also pretty concretebecause it says we're going to do
it through massive fleet learning.
So that is the choice we're makingthat's our bet that we're doing
it through massive fleet learning.
It's just one example of a strategicgoal that is super clear, super
inspirational, and you can imagine itdrives the work of thousands of people.
This simple sentence.
So when we work with leaders— and Ithink you do some similar work —when
(22:52):
you create a strategic intent, try tobe super concrete and inspirational, and
also acknowledge that it is a fractal.
You can have a strategic intentstatement at the top line of the
organization that still needs tobe somehow translated and connected
to the day-to-day work of everyone.
But also don't make the mistakeof cascading those goals, which is
the other challenge I see a lot.
It's like, "Okay, we set the goal, nowwe just have push it down, and then
(23:15):
people need to understand what happens."
No.
If you have highly autonomous teams thatare highly aligned, you can ask those
teams or departments to say, "You knowwhat, this is our overarching strategy.
These are our goals, our hypothesisof what we want to achieve.
Now you set your strategic intent basedon what you know about what you're
owning and what you are learning.
So what would you do and what would youset as a goal in the next two to three
(23:36):
years to feed into that overarching goal?"
And then it becomes like atwo-way conversation and it
becomes almost like a marketplace.
If these things are transparent, we canlook at them and say, "Oh, interesting.
I see some things that are divergentor something that are unexpected.
Let's talk about that."
When I was reviewing your secondbook, I highlighted the word fractal
because I'm a strategist, but abig part of my toolkit is OKRs.
(23:59):
And the picture of how OKRs cascadedown through an organization
has always, even deciding whatpicture to put in my own book.
I had the thought last night that I'mreally, Glad that we are not yet in layout
because I might have to ask my designerto depict that as a fractal instead of
(24:20):
as a boxes on a flow chart kind of style.
I do think that is really a muchbetter way to describe productive
localization goals—to recognizethat It's not the org chart, the way
that strategic goals get aligned,or even the teams in the org chart.
(24:42):
It really is that goals fractal outall the way through to the individuals.
So that was just a reallycool way to see it described.
Yeah.
And the other thing I talk aboutin the book, and I wrestle with
the language for a while becauseif it's not cascading, what is it?
Like, how do you call it?
So, I landed on two terms.
One is self-alignment, which is likewhat I described before, here is the
(25:04):
thing and what you're responsible for.
Can you align yourself towards this goal?
And the other one is integration, whichis more like a two-way conversation.
Because if you're in a C-suite, youdon't know the details of what's
happening on the ground, or evenbetter, at the edge of the organization.
If you see it more as a peach, witha heart bit in the middle, and the
outside is interfacing with the marketand the customers, the outside is
(25:27):
learning day to day and they knowwhat is happening and what is needed.
The people that are in the center, theyhave the overarching picture of what is
happening and they could see things andtrends that people on the edge don't see.
So it's just a different perspective.
And those perspectives need tobe integrated to make sense.
Otherwise, what you have seehappen often is there's a strategy,
and people are like, "Oh, great.
(25:47):
I didn't know how this impacts mywork," or "I already learned that's
not going to work, so whatever."
And it has no effect or it has theadverse effect, where people are
like frustrated and say, "You knowwhat, this doesn't make any sense.
You're asking me all these goalsand all these principles, and
you're not prioritizing what Iactually needs to do my job better.
So how are you going tohelp me with the strategy?"
That is one of the challenges in strategicalignment across the organization.
(26:10):
Yeah, listening to this is making megrateful that I decided that my book is
It's going to be a print book, and thereis also going to be a Notion-based wiki
version that I can continually update.
Yeah.
Because the term that I use in OKRpractice was one I first learned at
WorkBoard, one of the OKR platforms,they use the term localization, which I
(26:35):
think is a great choice of language todescribe that translation of goals, down
or down-and-out through the fractal.
I use "rolling up" for thatself-alignment and then "rolling
down" for the goals that roll down.
But I don't have a termfor that integration.
I use alignment, but I thinkintegration is a more precise term to
(26:58):
describe that two-way responsibility.
Yeah, I think alignment is a state,and integration is a verb, right?
It's a thing we do.
Integration should lead to alignment,at least until, it won't be a perfect
alignment, but at least be alignedenough so that it makes sense.
That's what I think.
Awesome.
I think I could talk about motorsportsall day, but I do want to get into
(27:20):
your second book because, I think it'sa very important read for leaders.
And your second book is called Unblock.
It outlines six elements of unblocking.
And so first, tell uswhat the six elements are.
Yeah.
So the subtitle is Clear theWay for Results and Develop
a Thriving Organization.
(27:41):
It's a practical guide for leaders thatwant a certain result or are ambitious,
which is probably almost all leaders.
This is very geared towards creatingan organization that is able to deliver
the result that you have in mind.
And that's why it starts with strategy.
We already talked about that quite abit—strategic intent is part of it.
it's also about prioritization (28:00):
How do you set heuristics so people know how
they can prioritize themselves, whichis a big problem in many organizations?
We try to do too many things at once.
The second big topic is steering—inparticular continue steering,
which is all about both settinggoals that are outcome-oriented.
I have a small chapter on OKRs in theretoo, but it's about 90-day outcomes.
(28:24):
It's about using metrics to yourbenefit, and it's about constantly
feeding into that loop of learning,and experimenting, and trying.
The third one is decision-making.
So how do we acceleratedecisions in organizations?
It's also a big part of my first book,because that's also about accelerating
organizations, creating organizations orcreating decisions that are acknowledging
(28:45):
decisions that are reversible, and makingthem just a lot faster, and getting
to consent rather than consensus inteams is what that chapter is about.
The next one is on developingan organization where
ownership is a big thing.
So it's a big frustration of many leadersthat they don't see their people taking
ownership, and that chapter is allabout acknowledging the fact that it's
(29:07):
usually the system and the organizationthat are lacking, and not the people.
I really believe people want totake ownership if they can, for
the most part, they do it in theirprivate lives all the time, but
many organizations don't create theconditions for that to happen at scale.
So that is in one part about decisionrights and making clear what types
of decisions can we make, what typeof risks are we allowed to make,
(29:30):
and making those boundaries clear.
And it's also about.
creating marketplaces where people canchoose what they want to contribute to,
because another big part of ownership ismy emotional investment in the work I do.
If I can choose, then the good chanceis that I will be engaged and able and
willing to take ownership of that work.
Next one is teamwork.
We already spoke about that a little bitabout developing psychological safety
(29:52):
and developing habits for reflection,and giving and receiving feedback.
And the final one is about meetings.
Which is a lot about replacing fullcalendars with unuseful, undesigned
uh, meetings with a cadence, like therhythmic learning that we talked about.
It also describes a specific meetingpractice that we just love, which
(30:14):
is the unblock meeting, which is away to have a weekly meeting that
is super effective and efficient.
Together, all these elements,I believe, are necessary for an
organization to consistently delivergood results, and good outcomes.
But don't ask people to work onall six at the same time because
it's not a fixed framework.
It starts by understanding which of thesesix elements do I need to unblock first so
(30:36):
that I can move the needle a little bit.
I appreciated that right upfront you said this book doesn't
have to be read linearly.
Something that I also say in mine.
that makes it a very useful book,giving people permission right away.
And then now I know the challengeof writing a book to not be
necessarily read linearly.
There were a couple of things that reallystood out to me in the six elements.
(31:00):
People are going to have to read thebook to hear about the air sandwich,
because I think that is a conceptthat folks need to become aware of,
You mentioned trying to do too manythings at once and the practice of
prioritizing with specific trade-offs.
I'd love for you to talk just alittle bit about that concept.
(31:21):
Yeah.
If everything is a priority,nothing is a priority.
And it's a challenge that we face a lot.
And often prioritization is donethrough management layers, right?
It's the managers that have to constantlytriage, "Oh, are we going to do this
or that, or are we going to do both?"
And we want to do all the things all atonce, because it's very hard to choose,
and it's very hard to say no to certainthings for social reasons, but also
(31:43):
sometimes we just have too much ambitions.
The practice of making trade-offsexplicit is one that we
call "even over" statements.
It's about describing short sentencesthat can be used as a heuristic where
you make clear what are you willingto trade off to get something else.
There's a couple ofexamples in there of brands.
For example, let's look atPatagonia, a well-known brand.
(32:06):
They have clearly prioritizedsustainability, even over profit.
Which gives everyone in the organizationthe permission when they are faced
with the choice to do either thesustainable thing or the profitable
thing to go for the sustainable thing.
It's this simple heuristic that is bothknown on the inside and the outside that
drives a lot of day-to-day decisionsand day-to-day prioritizations.
(32:27):
But it could also besomething else, right?
It could be like, are we going forthe best quality or are we just
going for meeting our delivery date?
And if you write down, "qualityeven over meeting the deadline,"
that's a very clear choice.
It makes it explicit that we arealways going to go for quality.
A good even over statement is reversible.
where it's like, "We need tomeet a deadline, and we're
willing to sacrifice quality."
(32:49):
It's about the conversationabout setting those things.
Again, it's a fractal, so you can setit at a company level, like we said
with Patagonia, but I also encourageteams and departments to set their own.
They change all the time, so it couldbe just prioritizing a certain behavior
or a certain thing for a coupleof weeks, for a couple of months.
And then you're like,"That's for this quarter.
We're really going for quality andfor next quarter, we're really going
(33:09):
to go for meeting our deadlines."
It could also be behavioral.
So, honesty, even over comfort.
Which could be a thing that a team setsto everyone to speak up more, and on a
weekly basis in your meeting, you canask, like, "Did you do it this week?
Did you prioritize honestyeven over comfort this week?"
Those are a few ways to use the practice.
(33:29):
While you were talking about evenovers, I was going through my mental
checklist of the even overs thatwe have been operating with without
communicating them in our team.
Oh yeah.
You know, of like, uh, Honesty overcomfort is one, or performance over
comfort is one that is really difficultto, On board new people to in the
(33:52):
motorsports paddock because it can beincredibly uncomfortable and we still
have to execute our jobs as crew at 100%.
The riders, they're having togo ride the bike in whatever
conditions we're operating in.
Um, and it's...
And then when you say comfort, is itthe team comfort or also the rider's?
No, um, human comfort.
Things like, if we have a schedule change,we might wind up working through lunch.
(34:15):
If the rider falls down, we may missdinner time, And we do our best to
take care of our humans at all times.
And there is also an element of what hasto happen because we are always racing.
We are always on the clock.
But the first one that popped tomy head was power over longevity.
specifically with engines, Butagain, that applies to our humans to
(34:39):
of do we need to be in power mode?
Or do we need to be in longevity mode?
And it's a good exampleof that back and forth.
And what you say is really interestingbecause often those trade-offs are
already in the culture implicitly.
It really helps making them explicitand inspecting them time over time and
say, "Are these things still useful?"
(34:59):
Instead of you joining a teamand you try to figure out like,
" what are the priorities here?
What are people doing?"
Then you learn that throughexperiences maybe after a few months.
But it's so much faster if you write itdown and people are like, "Oh, this is it.
I know it now."
As humans, we get habituated.
So we get into a habit.
And I think that concept that oureven overs might switch back and
(35:20):
forth, or they might be able to beswitched is a really good reminder.
Because when we're always racing, we'realways racing but you also do have to
recover and sleep and rest as well.
And it's just a good way to communicatetransparently with each other, which of
the modes that we're in at any given time.
(35:41):
There are two other thingsthat I wanted to mention.
Can you tell us about hats,haircuts, and tattoos?
Oh, yeah.
That's my other favorite thing.
All right so this is about acceleratingdecision-making, and it's a concept that
was first written down by James Clear.
And he says there are only threetypes of decisions: there's
hats, haircuts, and tattoos.
(36:02):
So a hat is a thing you can buy.
And if you don't like the hat, youcan either bring it back and get your
money back, or you can just buy lotsof different hats and try them all out.
There's not a lot of consequencesfor getting it wrong.
If you make that decision,it's not so costly to reverse.
But if you get a haircut, it mightnot work out the way you want, right?
You can feel embarrassed for a while.
(36:23):
You can be frustrated about it.
But for most people—not me ifyou’re looking at the video—but for
most people, the hair grows back.
And in a couple of weeks, a couple ofmonths, you can get another haircut.
There's no need to analyze upfront allthe possible barbers in a country or
in the world and figure out what isthe exact, precise, perfect haircut
that I'm going to get, because evenif you do that, you're not sure how
(36:44):
it will turn out precisely, right?
Because even the barbercan have a bad haircut day.
And there's also tattoos, which are typesof decisions that are not so reversible.
They are technically reversible—Ihave no experience with that—but
what I heard is that it's goingto be painful if you reverse it.
It's going to be costly.
It takes a lot of time.
You get a tattoo, you better needto take the time to figure out
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what do I want, where do I wantit, and who is going to set it.
For those types of decisions, itdoes make sense to spend a little
bit more time analyzing and thinking.
But the problem in many businessesis that we treat a lot of different
decisions as if they are tattoos, whilein fact they are either hats or haircuts.
So it's a really helpful frameto have the language to say,
"What type of decision is this?"
(37:26):
and "Do we really need to make adecision or do we really need to
spend five hours of meetings and fivemonths of delaying and thinking and
analyzing to try to get it perfect?
Or should we just do somethingand see what we learn from that?"
I didn't see it the first time I readFormula X, but as I was going back through
my notes last night, getting ready fortoday, one of the takeaways that I had
(37:46):
is both motorsports and in business,there's value in building in public.
Like, in motorsports, we have no choice.
We are building in public.
That is how we operate.
There is no other way.
We're constantly in developmentalong with everyone else in the
paddock, and we have good days andbad days in development in public.
(38:08):
Where in business, there's a evenover around building in public and
pace and building in private andreputation preservation or image
preservation or something like that.
And so that was one of the big takeawaysthat linked to the decision framework
in my brain—that we have to makesmart decisions about when to build in
(38:33):
public and when to build in private.
Exactly.
Yeah.
The last thing I wanted to bring up,I was so excited in your second book
when I got to the part where you weretalking about consent, and then the
role that choice plays in ownership.
I have not read every book in theworld, but having those two concepts
together, I think, is prettyrevolutionary and pretty unique.
(38:56):
How did you come to havethose two concepts in the book
connected the way they are?
Yeah.
So I've worked both with clients,but also inside organizations that,
that are completely self-managing.
So there's no boss or there's no hierarchyof people telling you what to do.
You don't report into anyone else, whichmeans like in these organizations, there
(39:19):
are definitely rules and agreementsand maybe even more than in traditional
organizations, but it's all about consent.
So if I don't want to do something,nobody's going to force me to do it.
This has some advantages.
It has the advantage that things thatnobody in the organization wants to do
sometimes they just die because it's nothappening, while in other businesses, in
(39:39):
traditional organizations, we just keepdoing it or keep forcing us to do it even
though everybody thinks it's a bad idea.
Obviously, there are chores, likethings that nobody wants to do
and still need to happen, but thatthose can often be outsourced.
So that's a different thing.
but I'm really talking aboutvoting with your feet: So,
what is it that I want to do?
What is it that I want tocontribute that I think is valuable
if I spend my energy with it?
(40:00):
Which creates a lot of entrepreneurialenergy in an organization like that.
The other thing about consent, ifthere's no, so a way to get out
of the problem in self managingorganizations, you either have.
The problem that everybody needs toagree before you can do something,
which is very paralyzing andreally slows down everything.
So, there's a couple of smartpeople that have been experimenting
(40:21):
with the concept of consent.
I think even in the Quakers and then inthe sociocracy, and it was popularized by
Holacracy, which got a lot of attention.
And now it's often used as a separateframework, which I also offer my book,
where it's like (40:33):
Can we make a decision where everybody can live with it so
that we don't have to all fully agree.
And, the concept is all about gettingto a place of "safe to try" where,
we don't ask, "Does everybody agree?"
We ask, "Is it safe to try?"
And that lowers the bar forsteps, and that lowers the bar
for taking action and learning.
(40:54):
And it also highlights theconversation that we need to have
sometimes, which is, what is safeto try, and what is not safe to try.
And those things shouldbe combined, right?
We wanna make sure that what happensin your organization doesn't create any
objections, that are, that are severeand we don't endanger the organization,
but we also wanna create as much space aspossible for people to develop the things
(41:17):
that they think need to be developed.
And that's why I think indeed thosetwo concepts are pretty powerful.
Jurriaan, your books describe thecorporate culture that I always
wanted to work in, as an employee, Ithink it's really exciting that you
pack as much pragmatic, practicalheuristics and clear things to do.
(41:41):
this isn't philosophical.
Your books are very useful.
And so you pack a lot of usefulinformation into your two books
and I'll put the links in mybookstore and in the show notes
so that folks can find your books.
I really hope people will use it becausethat's the only thing that matters, right?
there's lots of ideas out there—ideabooks, which are like very inspirational
(42:02):
or case studies, which like, "Oh,that company is doing something
really cool, but that is very hardto translate into everyday practice."
And, with these books and especiallythe last one, I try to write down
everything that I've learned.
After trying it for 5 to10 years with clients.
So I know they work, but theywon't work for everyone because
every organization is different.
And we also have to acknowledgethat every situation, every
(42:24):
organization is different.
So every framework is by definition wrong.
And I think if it comes to the, sometimesthe snake oil that, that we, which I
also say you and I are sometimes selling,we, leaders have to be aware and make
their own choices based on what they see.
We shouldn't fall into thetrap of huge certification
programs, all of those things.
Taichi Ono is the founding fatherof the Toyota production system, the
(42:48):
lean philosophy that was popularizedin the Western world as well.
And he at one point said, youknow what, you have to look at
your problems, think and thinkdeeply and then decide what to do.
It's really up to you as leaderto figure out what do I need to do
and what can I ignore, as advice.
Just to dovetail off of something youjust said, these practices might not work.
(43:10):
But if what you're doing right nowisn't yielding the result that you need,
then doing something that might notwork might help you learn what will.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Where can people find you if theywant to learn more about your work?
Yeah, so I'm pretty active onLinkedIn, so just, follow, type in
my name and you'll find me there.
Happy to follow, follow or connect.
(43:31):
And if you wanna learn more about thebooks, you can go to jurriaankamer.com
or go directly to www.unblockbook.netwhich is the latest book.
Fantastic.
thank you so much.
I hope to see you someday in Assen.
Yeah, would be nice.
I hope this episode has sparked some newideas for your own leadership journey.
(43:53):
Remember, whether you're on the racetrackor in the office, success comes down to
clear goals, continuous learning, anda team that's aligned and autonomous.
If you've found value in today's episode,share it with a fellow Thinkydoer.
We love your reviews.
And for more resources andinsights, visit saralobkovich.com.
(44:14):
Or if that's too hard to spell,there's a shortcut at findrc.co.
All right, friends, That's it for today.
stay in the loop with everything goingon around here by visiting findrc.
co slash newsletter andjoining my mailing list.
Got questions?
My email addresses are too hard tospell, so visit findrc.co/contact
(44:39):
and shoot me a note that way.
You'll also find me at@saralobkovich on most of your
favorite social media platforms.
For today's show notes,visit findrc.co/thinkydoers.
If there's someone you'd like featuredon this podcast, drop me a note.
And if you know other Thinkydoers who'dbenefit from this episode, please share.
(45:01):
Your referrals, your word of mouth,and your reviews are much appreciated.
I'm looking forward to the questionsthis episode sparks for you, and I
look forward to seeing you next time.
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