Using Psychometrics for Strategic Decision-Making with Araz Najarian

In this Business Simplicity Podcast episode, Araz Najarian joins Chris Parker in a conversation about how psychometrics can sharpen leadership and strategy.

The key to organizational longevity? Staying connected to customers and adapting continuously - not industry trends or luck. Araz highlights the difference between value creation (as perceived by customers) and value capture (extracting returns). Companies focused only on capture lose relevance when markets shift.

Araz debunks the myth that strategy is a one-time, top-down exercise. Instead, she champions "strategizing as learning" - a dynamic, inclusive process. Psychometric tools help leaders understand team dynamics, revealing biases (e.g., avoiding tough decisions) and aligning diverse strengths. These tools aren’t for labeling but for asking better questions and fostering psychological safety. The episode also underscores the importance of skilled debriefing to turn psychometric insights into action - like adjusting meeting habits that are biased towards certain preferences over others or recognizing team blind spots. And Araz debrief Chris’s personal Strategising Preferences Report with him live in this episode.

For executives navigating complexity, this conversation is a reminder that staying relevant requires constant connection to the outside world and the discipline to create value as perceived by customers. These insights matter now more than ever as leaders face markets defined by rapid change and must organize themselves not just to survive, but to pay people well, reinvest intelligently, and drive compounding growth across generations.

Learn more: https://ebullient.com/podcast/psychometrics-araz-najarian/

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello, this is Chris Parker and I just had a conversation with
Araz Najarian and she is a partner with the ELP Network.
And we got into psychometrics and we talked about
psychometrics in the concept of strategizing.
And I took ASPIA strategizing preference indicator, I think it

(00:20):
was called and we unpacked that about me as well.
So we talked about what are psychometrics?
How can it be used in leadershipteam dynamics?
How can it make or you know, these small teams make better
decisions in their strategizing process?
And then we dove into my own preferences.
It was it was really cool. So let me ask, why would it be

(00:42):
valuable for people to listen tothis conversation?
I would say it's valuable because we also talked about the
principles of like where and howto use psychometrics.
And I think that that was a really important outcome of a
recent conversation we had with our with our network.
And then how you could actually apply those principles in terms
of being able to use psychometrics within a

(01:02):
leadership team to build more understanding of your decision
making dynamics about how you work together and how you lead
the organization. And sometimes psychometrics can
be criticized for different things, but you know, I, what I
found really great about this conversation is, you know, this
is like an expert practitioner talking about how to do this
well and, and what, you know, some of these principles on what

(01:26):
you shouldn't do as well. So it's so it's really, I
thought I found it was very, very interesting and rich and.
Welcome to the Business Simplicity podcast, where Chris
Parker explores how leaders cut through complexity to accelerate
strategy execution and growth with calm, clarity, and
confidence. Welcome back to the Business

(01:48):
Simplicity Podcast. This is Chris Parker and I'm
having a conversation with HerazNajarian and she's a partner
with the ELP Network and I'm associated with the ELP as well.
And I've done some projects withthem over the years and they are
really working. Their tagline is realizing
breakthroughs and I know them for working with management

(02:11):
teams and executive teams, particularly in scale up, you
know, change large strategic shift moments.
And in a moment, I'll let Araz share deeper into what EOP is
doing. But recently part of the
network, I had a conversation about psychometrics and that was

(02:37):
hosted by Raz and Michael Newman, another, another
associated member with, with theLP.
And I thought it was really fascinating.
And some of the insights that came back, I just couldn't
resist. But then said, hey, Raz, can we
please talk about this and can we unpack this because I want to
go deeper and I love having these conversations because this
is what I learn and connect. And so we're going to dive into

(02:59):
psychometrics in the context of business leadership,
strategizing, decision making, and hopefully when not to use
them or how not to use them as well.
And, and soon we'll define what psychometrics actually are.
But Aras, thank you so much for joining.

(03:21):
Maybe if you want to express a bit deeper about ELP and, and
what, what are the type of work you do there and then, and then
we'll turn the corner in to figure out what psychometrics is
all about. Super, super.
Well, I joined EOP quite some time ago actually, but it was in
the midst of the, I don't know, the first according to me, the

(03:44):
first financial crisis of of the2000s period.
So that was back in in 2008. And I was also at a period
where, you know, I was searchingfor what, what my next step was
going to be and a mentor of minefrom the Isaac Network that I
was involved when he said, you know, maybe before jumping into
a single company in the private sector, why don't I introduce

(04:04):
you to the partners of of ELP network?
He was this is Fernando Lanzer. I don't know if you ever met
Fernando, by the way, but he said, I'll, I'll introduce you
to, to Nick Van Heck and to Tom Cummings at the time, who were
both partners. And why don't you actually try
that out? And what really attracted me in,
in, in terms of why I joined, but then why I ended up kind of

(04:27):
staying so many years later and then joining and, and becoming
part of the partnership was whenthey created the company.
There was kind of two main drivers for why they wanted to,
to found it. One was asking the question, why
is it that some organizations managed to stay relevant,
continue growing for like 100 plus years and others, you know,

(04:49):
fade away? What is it that actually really
makes the difference? And the research that's also now
been kind of renewed a couple oftimes showed that, you know,
it's nothing to do with kind of industry differences.
It's not like macroeconomic factors or external factors.
Even if you look at kind of, youknow, companies across the
different markets and different,different geographies, it all

(05:12):
comes down to how are you able to stay connected to the outside
world? How do you continue to kind of
create value for others and value in the eyes as perceived
by the customer and value beyondjust price.
Price is way of, of then showing, you know, I value, but
there's other things, there's other attributes for which
you're you're valuing. And then if we're able to, you

(05:33):
know, successfully organize ourselves to kind of make money
so that we can pay people and wecan pay our suppliers and we can
keep reinvesting in the business, continuing that kind
of pattern of renewal, that's actually what's going to to help
fuel that growth. And to enable that, they started
to see that actually some of thepractices in organizations were
being run in a very disconnectedway.

(05:55):
So if we, you know, we're going to run our strategy process, oh,
all of the, you know, senior people go away with, you know,
and we do this egghead type of sorry to put it in that way, but
you know, this very brainy exercise.
And then we come back and we tell everybody, you know, here's
what we're going to do, here's why we're going to do it, here's
what you're supposed to do. So it was very much strategy as
execution, which is, you know, it it it, you know, more and

(06:18):
more we see that that actually really does not work.
Strategy is not some static, youknow, yeah, you will document
some things, but it's actually strategizing.
It's strategy, you know, as learning.
So it's, you know, learning and learning from that.
And on the other hand, if you look at a lot of what was being
done in kind of executive leadership development, you
know, people would go away on these wonderful, you know,

(06:39):
offsites or go on like a safari and a kind of a leadership
journey, have profound insights.Yet when you'd come back and
then you'd look at, you know, whether you'd look at engagement
scores or you'd look at, you know, great paces to work or any
other kind of sentiment, it was in some cases abysmal in terms
of how people in the company were feeling.
You know, how do I feel about mymanager?

(07:00):
How do I feel about the, the context?
Do I feel that I'm, I belong here?
Do I feel I'm invited? And, you know, if we're creating
that kind of workplace, it's very, you know, that's a
workforce that you have to kind of drag along to get results out
of versus everybody showing up every day so excited, you know,
feeling I'm ready to to really contribute.

(07:21):
And that's essentially where we try to play is to support that
kind of renewal of growth and bring, you know, strategizing
and leadership together. Yeah, no.
Did you, do you guys find a, a causality from that second order
of, of let's call it engagement with that 100 year ambition of
healthy company? I, I guess I hope that's true,

(07:45):
but I don't know like 'cause like like in order, like if, if
the, if, if the, the intention is what makes these long term
sustainable healthy companies connection with the outside,
which is a leadership action. And then in strategizing and
engaging those two things are the main bodies, I guess of, of,

(08:05):
of concepts that contribute to long term, long term
sustainability, do you think? Well, what we looked at is we
said that those dynamics are actually quite, they're quite
leading and quite like quite a heavyweight in terms of the
actual ability to, to be able tocontinue to find new ways of
creating value because you know,the world around you also

(08:28):
changes. So, and you see that with, with
companies that have been successful, but when either
competition comes along or new technology comes along or you
know, something happens around you and you're unable to adapt
it or to be kind of at the forefront of kind of making and,
and creating it, then it can actually be, you know, you're in
a difficult situation in terms of you're playing kind of kind

(08:50):
of catch up. And I think what we're always
continuously doing, you know, interms of our connection to
academia is to kind of continue renewing that that research, but
also research into the practices.
So how can some of those practices that are less, you
know, you cannot tangibly measure them the same way that
you can measure certain times asfinancial metrics or, you know,

(09:12):
assets that we say that we can, we could leverage and, and, and
and so forth. But you know, those practices
will, you know, they'll, they'llgive a sign of whether, you
know, are we actually healthy and on the path that's gonna
eventually also show up in our in our financials.
Did I answer your question? Did.
I yeah, I think so. And you mentioned academic

(09:33):
because it's my association withEop's where I I met Amy
Edmondson from Harvard around psychological safety and and
let's call it positive failing. And we heard more recent work.
And I remember when I first met Nick Van Heck, the partner you
mentioned was well, probably 20 years ago when I was with lease
plan and an executive program and simplifying some of these

(09:54):
concepts like value creation versus value capture.
You know, those were, you know, I think people talk about that a
lot nowadays, but it was, it wasto separate those, those
intense, it was profound for me at that time, you know, like,
you know, so it's it, that's part of the work.

(10:16):
Would you mind diving into that and talking about value creation
versus value capture? And then I'm then I'm curious
what, how does psychometrics fitinto all this?
Yeah, that's a, that's a very good question.
I mean, in, in terms of then, and I'm just thinking if you, if
we had also like Paul Verdan here, if we had, if we had a few
few of the others, I mean this you could do hours and hours on

(10:37):
on this because it's it's, it's it's really one of our, our our
favorite things. And I think when you when you
dive into also value creation, it's also very it's based on the
eyes of the customer. So you're not going to get a
something that you can kind of consistently and easily measure

(10:59):
necessarily because it is, it isvery much a perception.
And where I've seen mostly the value of kind of decoupling
those two 'cause if you look at,for example, Michael Porter,
Michael Porter a few years back,he started to also talk a lot
about shared value. And, and for a lot of people
that was also eye opening. You know, and I understand why,

(11:19):
because then you look at you decouple also value creation
value purely from shareholder value in terms of the obligation
of registered businesses or stock listed in terms, of, you
know, what you have towards your, your shareholders.
But there is a what I like aboutvalue creation, value capturing
and how is it also then separates and shows, well, those

(11:40):
stakeholders have potentially sometimes competing interests.
You can make. There are businesses that make a
lot of money, that are probably profitable, that are making
their shareholders very happy, that maybe have a customer base
that isn't so satisfied. And they may feel like, well, we
don't really have an alternativeor an easy alternative and we're

(12:01):
a little bit stuck. Monopolies, monopolies, yeah.
And so, and what happens is thateventually at some point when
there is competition, then you start losing your, your top line
because the captive, you know, customers you had, if the
switching costs are, you know, if you take Porter's classical
analysis, if those switching costs are, are down, or if
there's an advantage that, you know, somebody else starts to

(12:23):
have or a patent expires or whatever it is, that could could
then happen. Then as soon as your revenue
starts going well, then you might start playing with your,
with your bottom line, restructuring, buying, buying
revenue by, you know, through acquisitions, but you're not
fundamentally looking at, you know, who is my customer, what
am I serving and how am I, you know, looking at value for them.

(12:45):
Yeah. Can you tell me a, a bit of a
story of the types of engagements or maybe give an
example of engagement when you're talking about sustainable
business, sort of, you know, ambition, you know, helping that
organization assume its leadership, connecting to the
outside world while, you know, strategizing to engage, let's

(13:11):
call it the the the rest of the company, the whole company and
keeping an eye on this value capture, value creation is, is
this really the essence of the engagements that the LP would
step into and, and help an organization with?
Yeah, it's definitely one of thethe iconic pieces because, and
the reason why is because you know, you, you talked about our,

(13:33):
our tag line realizing breakthroughs.
And for us also it's realizing breakthroughs in the context of,
of growth and of, you know, we, we also talked about something
on our website like creating space for growth.
And I think that's that's what alot of us also in the network
kind of connect to is that we'relooking at growth not purely as

(13:53):
you may end up bigger, but you know, that's not necessarily the
purpose of of the growth. Growth is all it's not just
purely more of the same. You know, Rodger Martin talks a
lot about, you know, are we exploiting or are we exploring?
You know, so there's also the part of growth that's
exploration and that's very mucha transformative.

(14:14):
So I think then are the type of engagement we have that really
depends on what's happening actually in the organization and
where is the where is an entry point in terms of based on where
you are, where could we pick youup in that journey and where
would we actually want to go next.
So in a lot of cases, I would say it does also start with the

(14:36):
leadership team because they arethe ones that is, is setting the
context. And I think one of the most kind
of crucial things about, you know, for leadership teams.
And then I think this will ties into then psychometrics is some
cases when you know, you, you especially when you're preparing
for, you know, let's say we havean engagement, we're going to

(14:57):
meet a team, we're going to havelike an off site together with
them. That's that's, you know, teams
are doing off sites all, all thetime.
Now, before that, you want to talk to people, you want to get
to know, you know, who's all in this team, who's going to be
there? How are they looking at the
current situation? And one of the most, you know,
often times I've heard coming back from these interviews is

(15:17):
this kind of feeling of doubt oflike, well, I think we're, we're
more or less aligned on this topic, but I'm not really sure.
Or, you know, we have a plan, but I, I don't know, I don't
know how they're feeling about it.
And I see some behaviour that I'm not really sure that
they're, you know, that they're walking the same path.
There is this kind of underlyinglike what's sitting under the
surface that doesn't necessarilycome up in the day-to-day

(15:40):
business. It doesn't come up when we're,
it's the things that are left unsaid, but we don't bring up in
a management meeting because time is too short or because of,
of the reasons that Amy rightly points out in terms of
interpersonal link, you know, interpersonal risk that I take
within a group, you know, can I actually bring something up?
And people are not going to perceive me that I'm being
negative if I'm, you know, if I'm, if I'm objecting to

(16:02):
something or if I'm saying I have a, a criticism for it, or,
you know, if I'm bringing something up that's challenging,
like, Hey, maybe we should reconsider how we're actually
doing this. Now, teams have offsites all the
time, not every offsite. Sometimes offsites become like
an extended management meeting. And I think that's also such a
pity because those are like the only moments that we have as a

(16:25):
leadership team to really actually createspace for
ourselves to surface all of those things that maybe we're
not even conscious of that are sitting underneath.
And to get really aligned on where are we actually today
because we start moving. And then we all have a
different, you know, definition of what is actually the
challenges that we're facing, Like what are really the assets

(16:47):
that we should be leveraging? How do you think that we should
be doing that? And then some of that comes down
to there are fundamentally different preferences and
behaviors that we have of how wewant to problem solve.
And I think that's where I find,you know, the conversation that
we had a while back with the network on, on psychometrics, so
fascinating because I think these are these teams are

(17:09):
probably the ones who should be most preoccupied about how do I
decide? Because you're taking decisions
all the time. You're taking decisions on
behalf of people. You have information coming at
you. And you also have to enable a
context for others to not continuously escalate decisions
to you, you know, because you get no 0 speed out of that.

(17:30):
You want to make sure that decision making is also
happening at the right level, that the right context is there.
So I think that's where tools like, you know, psychometrics, I
think depending on on how we usethem, could actually be so
powerful in a team setting because we get a kind of a
language to understand why are you thinking that way?
Or why do you approach? Why is it that every time you

(17:51):
make a presentation, you start, you know, in this setup?
Because that's not the setup that I expect you to be.
I, I was first introduced to psychometrics, well, I guess in
the NBA through DDA Marlier, but, but later when I was
running a, an international project for lease plan, we did

(18:16):
run the Myers Briggs type indicator for the whole team.
And it was really revealing. And it, and it sort of peeled
back another layer of, of understanding self.
And, and through understanding self, you could also comprehend
how others might experience me. And then I, and then I can also

(18:42):
see people in a different lens. And when you start also
understanding how do people's personalities shift by context,
like if they are at work or at home or if they're under stress
and some sort of shadow dimension of their personalities
coming? I think, I think it creates a
space of, of acceptance and, andsometimes forgiveness, you know,

(19:07):
'cause like, oh, that's who thisperson is.
And even though they're behavingoddly here, I can see beyond the
behavior of now because, you know, I know there's this, this
complex, amazing, you know, human on this journey near me.
And no, I, I don't know for me, the, the, I've always been

(19:30):
interested in these things really to, to understand myself
better. And if there is a way of having
a, a language that you can also Orient with people as well, you
know, introvert, extrovert and stuff.
And, and, but maybe can you giveit a stab of, of what is
psychometrics and what are some examples there?
I mentioned Myers Briggs, but there's there's a whole, you

(19:52):
know, menagerie of different approaches and.
Concepts. Before I do that, can I also
take the liberty that I ask you a question?
Back. Oh yeah, go yeah.
So when when the first time thatyou actually also like what you
just described, It also sounds to me like the first time you
were you were introduced to something like an MBTI was in a
kind of a team context. Yes.

(20:15):
Yeah. And and was that also then kind
of you were guided through it? Absolutely.
I think, I think the first time was at Naira to the NBA with DEA
from who who's, yeah, a cousin of EOP, if you will.
And that was then in the cohort of the NBA class.
And they, you know, the process was, it was described to us,

(20:39):
what we were doing. We were giving the, you know,
the assessment after the assessment, it was described to
us. And, and we were also given a
number of warnings as well, you know.
Yeah. So it was done and, and I think
I found that really interesting.And also, you know, 'cause that
was an NBA setting, so, you know, we were able to share and,

(20:59):
and it was a bonding thing. I think it was also, it was a
bonding thing that we were like,oh, I understand you better now,
understand me better. And so then when I was tasked to
create a company in Ireland and we had about 50 people coming
together, internals and externals, and we were
recruiting people from all throughout lease plan who'd
never worked together before. I was seeking connection and

(21:23):
understanding quickly. And we did some off sites.
So we went actually back to Niorota.
I remember that was there. And we did some, you know, some
OK with this, you know, talking about why we're here and who are
we And, and, and that was the first time I used it, this type
of thing for a team that I was responsible for.

(21:44):
Yeah, no, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was a
conversation starter. I think that was the biggest
thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was curious about that becauseit also, I think, I think so the
first time that I was ever introduced to to MBTI was not a
good experience. And I think for me, part of it

(22:05):
was because the debriefing was actually not done very well.
So we couldn't like we didn't get out of it what you got, what
you described getting out of it in terms of building kind of
understanding curiosity. It actually, I mean, it didn't
go so bad in that direction, butit did run the risk of kind of,
you know, stereotyping and, and,and labeling.

(22:27):
And it was later on where then Iwas in a different context with
a different team, but then I wasreintroduced to, and I think it
was still MB TIII. Can't remember now if it was
MBTI, if it was insights, like it was another kind of Jungian
type of tool. And the debrief made such a
difference in terms of being able to have the quality of

(22:47):
conversation and to also have somebody who could give warnings
in terms of like, why are we actually using this?
What is it going to say about you?
Keep in mind that it's a limited, like no human can be
boxed and completely categorized.
I mean, we are way, way more complex and everything that
creates us is is way more complex.
And that's why I was curious because it sounds to me like

(23:10):
also your first introduction, having had a good guide through
that actually brought brings benefit rather than, you know,
with any kind of tool. It's like it it becomes kind of
medicalized or a label or you see like I'm like this.
And then we might feel, no, I'm so much more than, you know,
it's like I'm so. Much more than and.

(23:30):
Comedian or a female, and you know what I mean of of.
I certainly didn't feel boxed and in mine because I've, I've
taken it and I and I've been involved in projects that have
used it even though I'm not, I'mnot MBTI certified, so I don't,
I'm not a practitioner. I don't do it myself, but I've,
I've been in teams that have hadtrained practitioners and for me

(23:52):
it's been very consistent over the years.
So I'm an INTP, I'm an, an, an, an introvert, intuitive thinking
perceiver as a natural state. And I think the, the book that
he was like what colours your parachute, I think was also
based on LBT. Yeah, if you remember that.
I don't know if it exists anymore.
I don't. Know if it's in print still but.

(24:14):
I, I don't know, I think, I think he came out of it.
I don't know, but it was, it was.
I also started to identify as itin a lot of ways, cause that
archetype is a bit, you know, kind of a, an, an, an, an
architect type, you know, it's kind of a visionary architect
problem solver. And that I, I guess it also, it

(24:34):
gave me a like, oh, OK, so I'm IA validation.
I guess, you know, like, oh, youknow, like, oh, I feel
comfortable in my skin when I hear those words.
But I also realized in work I had trained myself to be an AJ,
meaning. AJ, AJ it's a skill.
Yeah. And so I, so sometimes when I
take it and I and I noticed it, 'cause we're gonna, we're gonna

(24:54):
talk about this SPI report that I did.
And I'm curious to see how we process that.
But I, I, when I read through that, I think there's some J
coming out of that as well. And, and for people that don't
know MBTI, the, the last little acronym perceiving and judging
is, is basically, do you, do youlike to keep things very open,
have a lot of options, or do youlike to close and becoming very

(25:16):
definitive? And in my normal life, I, I like
keeping my options open everywhere.
And then but at work, you know, you, I've had to learn to know
you got to make a decision, you know, And so maybe that was a
survival response in, in the corporate world where having
options open forever isn't always appreciated, you know, So
it's, yeah, there is a dynamic there.

(25:37):
It's it's. Also a very human thing.
It's like, I mean, as humans, wedo, you know, a part of us wants
to keep, wants to explore, has that, you know, exploration and,
and there's another part where, yeah, I want to organize the
world. I want things to, I want to
bring clarity. I want to bring stability.
I want to, you know, be able to take take decisions and and

(25:57):
close things off. And they have a preference.
But And, and I think that's where with with, you know,
there's a difference between of I have a preference for
something versus I have a skill like, and I'm able to to learn.
And because sometimes people canhave a preference and they can
be completely incompetent in, you know, that preference.

(26:17):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If you are, you know, if you
like exploring options, you may be very cool poor at the quality
of options that you actually explore.
So I think that's also an important distinction.
I mean, it's also for for psychometrics overall.
What I, what I found interestingin the in the conversation we
were having with with the network was recognizing that all

(26:37):
psychometric tools, you know, even because, for example, MBTI
is heavily criticized, also because young is, is also
criticized and and many of the tools are based on it.
Then if you look at Big 5, whichis the more kind of robust and
predictive in terms of that alsocomes under criticism because it
is still self reporting. And that secondly, when it is

(26:59):
deployed can actually be more punishing towards people because
then it's, you know, oh, we perceive that this tool is
highly predictive of the outcomes of your behavior.
That doesn't take into account the fact that we've proven that
our brains are neuroplastic alsoolder in our lives.
So therefore there is no kind of, you can't teach an old dog
new tricks. Your brain is wired to be open

(27:22):
to change and has that ability. So that's also there.
You know, if we take it purely as predictive, then we say, well
then people cannot change out oftheir behaviors.
That's not true. We can always have that capacity
to to grow and stretch ourselves.
Now we, we've mentioned this, this meeting we had and I think
it's a little unfair for the forthe listeners to because we

(27:44):
weren't there. So why was this meeting held?
I, I, I'm some, I was just, I mean, I'm interested in the, in
psychometrics as a, as a, as a, as a concept.
So I checked in, but there was probably 15 people on the call.
People were deeply skilled in it, you know, so this was, this
was a very rich conversation. And so I guess, I guess why was

(28:07):
that meeting held and and for you, what was the main outcomes?
I mean, for, for me why it was important and I would say it's
actually something that I would want to keep doing.
It's also, if you like 1 is psychometrics have come under
criticism just like any other tool, not just psychometrics,

(28:30):
but any kind of models or tools that we're using to guide
business, you know, whether that's balanced scorecard at
some point came, you know, undercriticism or you know, many
others that we could actually actually name.
So, so the second one is, is it's also a developing field.
You know, there's a lot more insights now if you look at what
what's happening in neuro leadership, you know, we didn't

(28:53):
have Stephen Okonoa. He would have also joined the
call but wasn't able to. But he's also been more involved
with something called Neuro color that's also been developed
by Doctor Helen Fisher, who and Dave Lapno.
They, they actually had developed it based on, you know,
putting people through MRI scansto be able to see which parts of

(29:14):
our brain system actually light up.
So it's really kind of going down into the source.
So I think for that second reason, then that's important to
kind of, you know, stay up to date in terms of what's our
evolving understanding about thehuman brain and how that
influences our decisions, our our behaviors, the way that we
interact with each other. So for me, those were kind of

(29:35):
the the two main kind of leadingreasons of of why we wanted to
have that that conversation. I.
I think it's, and with the with the advances of technology, I
think the fact that, well, psychology in general, sociology
is, is expanding as we are understanding more about how our
brains actually work. So, yeah, a great point to that

(29:57):
this is, this is evolving. You know, I think MBTI is
probably 40 years old or yeah, Idon't know, It's, it's not a new
thing, but and then and then there's the different colors and
the discs and then the bell blows and the there's, there's
so many and what, what was the outcomes?
Cause 'cause what we were seeking and I had the list in
front of me. So but.

(30:17):
Yes. You know, so then there was 4
main outcomes of principles. And I think and, and what I
liked about that was, was OK as practitioners of, of these
methods, what are some principles?
And I think for me, one of the reasons why a lot of these
things start becoming criticizedis they're used inappropriately.

(30:42):
You know, like, like in my world, Agile, Scrum, Safe are
criticized, but in my experience, it's so rare that
someone actually took the time to understand what the fork it
was actually about and what it'snot.
And somebody comes in and does amechanical implementation of we
have to show up to these meetings and we have to do these

(31:03):
tasks without any understanding of the intention of, of these,
of, of these activities and ceremonies and, and, and
practices. And I and I think a lot of
really great ideas are ruined ina way because they're just used

(31:23):
inappropriately. But let's go back to the
principles like like what, what are the highlight principles
that came out from this, you know, expert group of leadership
development people talking aboutpsychometrics?
What are some some principles tohold in mind?
I mean, you one of them, the onethat we were just talking about,
Chris, is spot on in terms of like, why are you actually using

(31:43):
a psychometric? For what purpose?
What do you actually want, want to get out of it?
And when that's not clear, then it can be used kind of
inappropriately. And I think that the, the main
kind of principle or conclusion coming out of the group is that
there are, these are tools that are better used for development
than they are for selection. And there is sometimes that

(32:07):
tendency of people then get veryeager and then they suddenly see
their team picture and they're like, oh, then we're missing
this and this profile. I'm like, no, that's not the
point. Like you're not going to use
this as a way to be able to populate your team because these
are not predictive. And they're, they're telling you
a fraction of, well, you know, what, what this says about what
this says about a person. I think that's, that's

(32:29):
absolutely one of the most crucial things like why are we
using it? How do we follow up with it,
especially that it's then not like a one off one time, one
time thing. The other thing was actually
what we also spoke about earlier, Chris, was like the
importance of debriefing that it's that it's not something
that, you know, you just take away for yourself, but actually

(32:52):
having somebody, an experienced professional that can help to
debrief that report. And I I've seen it many, many
times. There are things that a
professional can actually take out of a report that are not
written in a report that are that if you simply read it
yourself, you would not be able to get that meaning and
understanding because there's experience, because that person

(33:14):
connects to and understands you,your team, your context, because
there's a moment of reflection and there's asking questions.
The richness of that, that is that's really what's valuable.
The report is a, is an input into it.
It's it's a kind of a documentation, but yeah, that
that one also that that really stood out to me as as one of the

(33:35):
important things. Plus, you know, what you said
also earlier of like you were introduced to psychometrics in a
team context. So it actually helped to build
understand like curiosity to understand each other and kind
of, you know, moments where I can also ask for forgiveness
from others and say, you know, Iam.
We are all work in progress. And as humans, all of us would

(33:56):
want to feel accepted for who weare.
And at the same time, we all do need to take some responsibility
for the impact of our behavior. Cannot just say, well, you're,
you're choosing to feel that wayabout my behavior.
Come on. Like, yeah, we all, we all have
a responsibility to, you know, maybe not take things
personally, but also to be able to speak up and say, you know, I

(34:16):
can accept you for who you are, but I don't appreciate that it's
or we need to find a different way of, of relating to that.
And I think that's, that's also where it's very powerful in, in
kind of team, team settings, leadership settings,
organizational settings. And I loved what, what I loved
that came out of this conversation was that we kind of
landed on use psychometrics to ask better questions, not to

(34:40):
give answers. And again, for me that, that
that stayed with me because it was that the questioning, the
curiosity, the, you know, not accepting something as in like a
little bit what you also said about, you know, with your, with
your MBTI, you kind of may go back to it from time to time,
but it doesn't like it's not rigid.

(35:01):
No, you know, you see yourself. Can you go into ask better
questions, like ask better questions, ask like instead of
providing answers? Yeah.
Can you give an examples of that?
Like what do you mean? I mean, for me it comes down to
asking questions to be able to understand each other better, to

(35:22):
be able to get to the. But why is it that you're doing
it in that way, not just stayingat like one time Y, but like,
you know, a little bit like whenyou say in in you do like the
fishbone exercise or you do likethe five YS we go deeper in to
be able to get that kind of clarity and understanding.

(35:43):
And I that that really struck meis that it's not then now I have
an answer so I can completely understand myself.
No. Now I have some like a kind of a
map that would allow me to continue to explore the
territory and it's like a give and take between between those
two. Well, I, I think for, for me
that it, it's also looking at understanding myself first as

(36:08):
well. So it also allows me to ask more
questions about myself and something I've learned over time
in, in introversion, extroversion, you know, as, as,
as you know, an energy type of topic, the way I describe it, I
love performing on stages and I love doing workshops and stuff.
And I know I will be drained afterwards, you know, and I, and

(36:33):
I have now the language that I can tell people that say, yes,
I'm going to be, I'm going to beperforming, I'll, I'll be
rocking it. And I will need to introvert
afterwards just to give me some time, you know, just to go, you
know, do my thing, read my book,whatever.
And, and I, I, I've never taken the tests or do anything like
that with my, my two boys, but I, I can see one is such an

(36:54):
extreme introvert and the other and, and, and, and, and an
extrovert. And you can just watch these
conflicts happen. It's just like, like, Oh my.
OK. So it helps, it helps me
understand. And then, and then you can start
to bring that language in and, and, and, and from that also
give forgiveness. You know, it's kind of kind of

(37:15):
like, OK, we're all tired. And when you're tired, you want
to talk a lot more. And when you're tired, you want
to go in a hole. And those things are not
compatible. So why don't we forgive each
other and, you know, and find ways to give, give each other
what we need. And yeah, I know.
It's just. It's just.
It's, you know, Chris, what's very interesting about this, if

(37:36):
you look at kind of classical brainstorming, you know,
processes or you know, strategizing processes, some of
them can be very heavily biased towards extroversion.
And that, you know what, what that always annoyed me because I
also felt that like, you know, what, what happens is that then

(37:58):
the people who have more of a tendency to think out loud, to
like think while they're talking, don't give any space
for others who actually need some time to 1st reflect and
gather them thoughts and be ableto write it down.
And actually, you know, both of those ways of thinking are
tremendously valuable. You know, there is a tremendous
value that even if you're an extroverted thinker, you know,

(38:20):
take the time to actually extrovert on a piece of paper
with yourself and then be able to bring that as a kind of a,
you know, now I come into the conversation second generation.
And I find that sometimes because we bring, you know,
people bring groups together or they come together in a meeting,
then they feel a meeting has to be all about talking, you know?
And actually silence in meetingsis golden.

(38:43):
Like when we say, OK, we didn't,there was something sent out
ahead of the meeting. Have we had a chance to read
that? OK, rather than talking about
something we haven't read, let'stake 5 minutes and actually all
sit silent. And read it.
And read that together or. Or postpone the meeting and tell
someone. Or postpone the meeting.
Yeah, yeah. Or for example, you know, I've

(39:03):
done exercise of before when we when we gather lots of input and
we want people to go and absorb that input and like the energy
that comes in a room to have that silence and have people
going, reading, thinking, writing their thoughts down
before you kind of sit together with and actually extrovert
that. It's tremendous.
And people are, some people are very scared of it.

(39:26):
We don't like silence. We don't like timeouts.
We don't like breaks. I wonder if there's, there's a
cultural dimension here as well,because I'm, I'm going to just
be, you know, grossly generalizing here, but it's kind
of the American English Anglo hierarchical approach where,
where, you know, the more, you know, typical, you know, a type
ESTJ leader dictating, as opposed to what I see in the

(39:50):
Netherlands, which is much more consensus.
And, and I, I don't know, I'm, I'm maybe the consensus model
because there is an expectation of interaction.
I think, you know, I think to show up and be silent is kind of
not appreciated here. It's like, wait a second, we all
have opinions. What's your opinion?
You know, And so there's, there's kind of this invitation
of like, OK, we all have to rantand complain and, and, and have

(40:14):
our opinion before we can go on.Yeah, we all have to have our
say. And I don't know.
So maybe there's there's a balance for for.
Structurally, including introversion in these things,
but then properly facilitated workshops, you know, of course
are designed for this. OK, let's make sure that The

(40:34):
Wallflowers are engaged. Let's let's ensure that you know
that there's the right time for the right energies and things.
Yes, absolutely, yeah. Yeah.
But also understanding that in ateam, for example, makes it
easier for like if you know, if I'm an extroverted thinker and
I'm with someone who's more of an introverted thinker, then I
can also label to them, look, there's something that I would

(40:55):
appreciate to have your view on,but I would like to think about,
you know, I'd like to share it with you out loud.
Is this the right moment to do that?
You know, especially when you'reapproaching someone and it's
outside of a normal meeting context, that makes it then
easier to understand of like, you know, are you coming to me
with a completed 'cause if you're an introverted thinker,
when you're speaking, you have already completed all your

(41:15):
thinking and you're simply stating your conclusion.
An extroverted thinker is thinking out loud and therefore
they're not sharing with you their conclusion yet because
they want to get to a conclusionthat can be very confusing for
because then the introverted thinker is wondering like is, is
this an opinion? Like what are you sharing with
me? Well, it's actually one of the

(41:36):
things that I think, and, and I'm not solely a coach, but when
I do engage in coaching, I, I, Ithink my, my introversion in
this one, at least, at least it,it sets me up for that because
I'm listening a lot, listening alot and then able to maybe not
come up with conclusions. But then look for those

(42:00):
unexpected queries that could say, you know, like, wait, we
seem to be fixed in a certain line of thought here.
How can I, how can I jiggle thisa little bit?
And also in that meeting and which resulted in this podcast
conversation is you mentioned SPI strategizing preferences

(42:21):
indicator and you mentioned strategizing as a verb.
And So what I would love to do is, OK, can you introduce us to
SPI? And, and because I'm just very
curious about these things, I said, let, please, please let me
do it. Let me do it.
And we now have my results, if you will, the outcome, the

(42:46):
output. So can you introduce SPI and how
you use this psychometric in thestrategizing process?
And then I then I'd like to openit up a little bit and see what,
what do we see about me? What what questions can we ask
about me from from this? Yeah, Yeah.

(43:07):
I think before we look at your results, I think it's just
stepping back and saying like what is the SPI all about and
what? Yeah.
What is SPI? How how do you use it in
strategizing processes? Why does it exist?
And then we'll actually then we'll pop it open and say, OK,
this is this is Chris's. Yeah, this was, it was developed
by Michael. So who you met?
Well, you know him already for some time.

(43:29):
And specifically what what it's actually looking at is it's
diving into dimensions that are most relevant for problem
solving because strategizing is essentially also problem
solving, whether you or you could call it problem solving or
opportunity creation, depending on you know, the point of view
that that you want to take. So and it is Jungian based tool.

(43:53):
So then you can see then the connection to, for example,
MBTI, which is also a Jungian based, it takes kind of the two,
two of those dimensions and the first dimension it has to do
with, you know, how do we, what's the kind of information
that we like? How do we like to receive
information? How do we trust the information?
And then there's, there can be more of a preference towards

(44:14):
the, the sensing, you know, am Itaking it through all of my, you
know, 5 senses and very, very factual, very literate, very
concrete, very realistic? Or am I more on the intuition
side that I like to take things in from big picture, like to see
connections. I like to hear the bigger story.

(44:34):
Sometimes communication style means that if I'm leaning more
towards the sensing preference, I will communicate sequentially,
whereas for intuition preference, I may communicate
more broadly like big picture before I actually go go into
details. And of course, if I say it this
way, you know, every human has five senses.
So we live in the world of senses.

(44:56):
We all do it. And we also live in the world
that if I, you know, showed you a painting, most of us would be
able to also not only describe the painting and the colors and
what's there, but we could also maybe draw some conclusion out
of it. How does the painting make me
feel? How do I think it could make me
feel? Is it telling me a story?
Who is the artist behind this, you know, doing that kind of

(45:18):
exploration? The second dimension it's it's
looking at is looking at, you know, our attitude to the
external world. How do we Orient ourselves?
Do I go into the world and I look for options and I see all
kinds of possibilities and and connections and etcetera, or,
you know, am I going into the world and I see there's
decisions that I need to take and I need to bring order into

(45:39):
the world and where that shows up also in in in terms of teams
working together, is that if you're more on the order side,
then maybe your approach also towards a project is that you
work towards a project deadline in a very kind of sequential
organized, you know, even finishing before the deadline.
Whereas somebody with more of a open preference, kind of a

(46:02):
perceiving, exploring type of a preference would, I don't know,
be like a bumblebee, go around. And then finally, like in this
burst stress and energy be able to deliver that can cause
tension within teams in terms ofhow we problem solve.
Now there's, you know, benefits and, and, and, you know, if you
start early, you actually have, you know, more time or more

(46:23):
space or, but you could also close yourself off from other
information or other input, progressive insights that could
actually be relevant. And if you're too much at the
last minute, you could, you know, maybe not get the best
result that you could have gotten at the level if you had
actually been been more organized.
So these two dimensions, what you actually see back in your

(46:44):
report is depending on how you were answering the statements,
it was kind of seeing on which side, you know, is it up and
down or is it kind of left or orright?
And then you what you get back in the report is where is it
that your is your dominant preference, kind of your
starting point. And we have another colleague
who, who describes it, you'll see it in the colors is, is she

(47:06):
often then says your preferencesare a rainbow.
So you have your, you know, dominant, you have your
secondary, then there's your tertiary and then there's the
inferior. And usually the 4th 1 is where
we are maybe less comfortable orwhen we're under stress, it's
not the thing that's immediatelygoing to pop up.
So so. And when you're in an

(47:26):
engagement, working with the leadership team, strategizing
for, you know, realizing breakthroughs, as we said, say
there's like 6-8 people on that leadership team.
How, how would you use this in, in what context?
And like, like what happens whenyou, you and, and if I remember

(47:47):
it, this is like 1215 questions.It's not a huge.
Yeah, it's like 2020. Statements, yeah.
And and so it's not, it went by super quick.
So. So can you describe how you
would use it in reality with theteam?
So usually we'd, we'd invite everyone on the team to, to
take, you know, to complete the questionnaire the same way that,
that you did. And then what we do is that in a

(48:09):
live session, whether that's, you know, being done online or
kind of being done live face to face, we actually first start
with, with debriefing. And so we would debrief that
first by, you know, the explanation that I gave you.
So if I was, you know, doing that live, then I have some
visuals to support it. I asked people to kind of
reflect and, and think about that.

(48:32):
I have this nice exercise that also I I've seen used for, you
know, other preference tools is like, which hand do you write
with? So what's your dominant hand?
So I'm right-handed. So if I'm going to put the pen
suddenly in my left hand, I'm not skilled at that.
It's not my preference, you know, because I haven't trained
it, then I'm not as good at it. And my mom, for example,

(48:55):
left-handed, went to a French Catholic school at the time
where they were still, you know,beating you and punishing you
for being left-handed. So she's actually ambidextrous.
You know, she can write equally well with both her hands.
And to this day, she still tellsme, yeah, I prefer, I still
prefer my left hand. She will, you know, do things
with her, her left hand just simply because there's, there's
a preference. So there's a little bit of that

(49:16):
understanding. Then there's inviting everybody,
you know, take some time, read through your report and let's
because it's self reporting as as nearly all psychometrics are
self reporting. There's also a little bit of,
you know, validation of do I actually recognize myself or
maybe some people were in a moment of stress or, you know,
what other circumstances were happening around them.

(49:37):
Usually I find that many, the majority will say like, yes, I,
I recognize myself either a lot or, you know, OK, maybe it's a
little bit nuanced. What's interesting then is to
actually see the team picture. So then say, where are we all in
relation to each other Then often what I'd love to do,

(49:58):
Chris, is to say, OK, what if weput ourselves under stress right
now here in this room? We give ourselves a problem.
It's a problem that has nothing to do with our our context.
And what's good about that is that therefore nobody is going
to be the expert. We're not going to fall into our
usual trap of technical content and you know, all of the weight

(50:18):
and history and patterns, but it's simply a problem that we
need to solve together. There's a goal that we need to
define, we need to meet, and we need to figure that out and do
it immediately under pressure. It's so interesting to actually
then have such a setup like that, because then often what
happens is that when we're underpressure, we revert immediately
to our our default preferences. So you run a a simulation

(50:40):
activity right there, put them under stress and then and then
process that. Great.
And then we process that. And what's really interesting is
when we start processing that, we start having a conversation
about what do we think went welland why not from the content,
Because the content doesn't matter.
It's a puzzle, it's an activity,it's a it's a challenge.
We're never, we're not going to necessarily face that type of

(51:00):
problem again, but we are going to be under pressure and we are
going to be problem solving. So what do we actually learn
from that in terms of how are weinteracting and how we're
figuring out what is the goal that we what is not only the
problem, but what kind of a goalare we going to set?
Do we have an ambition to that goal?
You know, is the goal, for example, we're just going to
answer the two questions, or is the goal, we're going to answer

(51:20):
the two questions faster than anyone in the room, like other
teams in the room, or faster than you know, or as you've seen
other people do this. I, I rarely then get asked,
what's the fastest this has everbeen done?
You know, what could then be, you know, our level of, of
ambition towards that. And there's of course always a
question around, well, how did you notice?
Like if you think now of your preferences report and if you

(51:41):
look at others, where did you see that coming in?
And and you know, sometimes thenpeople who have like the
improviser preference will say, well, you know, we got the
puzzle and then we immediately started like, you know, without
even looking at instructions again, you know, started picking
things up, started getting into action, started playing around
where, you know, somebody else with perhaps an optimizer
preference is sitting there reading a brief in in very

(52:03):
detail and is bullet point like,you know, making making sense of
it. So I think that's where it
becomes very interesting. And what, what are some patterns
like? Like imagine, you know, there's
these six people and you had a agood spread of preferences, or
you had 6 people and they were all in one zone of preference.

(52:25):
Or there's a lot of visionaries and then one outlier.
You know, like, what do you do with these realizations then?
Yeah, yeah. What we do with those
realizations is, is a couple of things.
And I think and that's where it helps in, in kind of using this
in a longer term engagement because then there's several

(52:46):
moments that we can actually come back to it.
It's, it's looking at, you know,what does this mean in terms of
takeaways that we have for kind of principles of how we work
together and, and that often that that's a kind of a
contracting. So we contract and we agree with
each other. You know, here's what we could
actually do differently. Here's maybe what we should
continue doing. Here's what we should stop

(53:08):
doing. And then it gives a kind of an
anchor to then say, you know, inthe next management meeting, you
know, I can look back at it and say, how do we think we're
actually doing? We had these insights, we've
contracted these these things with each other.
When we've actually done this, has it actually helped us?
Because I think that's also the important thing is like we can
agree on a ritual and then we shouldn't just be doing the

(53:31):
ritual for the ritual's sake. It's, it's like what you said
earlier that like people implement agile, like, you know,
and they just focus on like the ritual, but not like or
meditation. And you're just, you're not
getting anything out of it. Well, because you're not, you
know, you're not actually doing,you know, or you should be
looking at actually doing something different.

(53:51):
So I think that's also an important part of the
conversation is saying, are we seeing that this ritual is
helping us? Is it making an impact in terms
of the quality of our decision, the speed of our decisions, the,
the, the environment that we feel we're, we're creating for
ourselves and, and for our team,our ability to respond to
changes that are happening in the market.
Those are all ways of of kind ofassessing it.

(54:12):
Did I answer your? Question.
Yeah, I think these these are things that wouldn't be normally
self-evident or self emerging from a from a six people who
have three different preferencesor, or even if they all have the
same preference because they're all probably getting along
famously and then have these huge gaps in potential.
And then if I. Saw sorry I interrupted you.

(54:35):
Well, I, I guess in order to codify that to say, OK, well,
you know, because we acknowledgeour strong preferences over here
on Visionary, you know, maybe wedo need to codify in some of
these. OK, let's take 5 minutes to read
the brief, you know, before the meeting, you know, and these are
things that might emerge, you know, maybe because one person
has an idea for it. But in this case, it gives them

(54:58):
some sort of grounding and some basis to say, hey, this is, this
is the intention, this is a why that we're going to have this,
this, you know, let's call it ritual or ceremony.
No, Yeah. Cool.
Yeah, You know, I anecdotally, Iwas recently using it with the
team that I have. You know, I'm, I'm seeing them
every kind of quarter or so and they're they're you know,

(55:19):
they're all senior people have been in, but it's a kind of a
new collective. So it's a new, it's a new team.
That's that's fine. And coming together and and they
had, you know, spread across thepreferences, but several of them
who were dominant improviser. And then one of the things that
I kind of mirrored back to them and then they said said to me,
you know what, the day before when they were in a meeting,

(55:40):
they had been, you know, lookingat what are some of the
strategic choices that we're making?
And then they got to the end of the day and they de prioritize
prioritization. They de prioritize.
What they, they, they, they had,they had their options and they
had all. And then they said, we're not
gonna prioritize spending time on prioritizing what we should

(56:01):
prioritize, which I, I, I told them, do you recognize that
that's a bias in, in, in, in your team in terms of, and it
was kind of like the light bulb going on.
Oh my God. We just walked like into, you
know, our, our preference that we were all comfortable.
We were all OK with leaving. Whereas if you had had a few
more optimizer or visionary in the room, they may have felt

(56:24):
more uncomfortable with saying guys, or at least we should
leave. Agreeing on which date and in
which configuration and by when does this actually need to be
done? So then we, we were forced on
that moment to then agree. OK, guys, this is actually
important because we do need to give clarity to the rest of the
organization of what are the things that we are not going to
do and what are the things that we do want to give energy to

(56:46):
pursue and how are we going to measure and learn from them.
And, you know, we can go back tothose other things on a backlog.
Improvises would generally be OKwith that level of ambiguity.
But you cannot manage an organization purely with your
preference because there's. And, and I don't think we've
described it, but it's a four two by two, you know, you know,

(57:08):
matrix, there's there's and top left is visionary, top right
explorer, top or bottom is is left is optimizer and bottom
right is is improviser. And there's blue-green, yellow,
red colors. There's a little diamonds where
your default position is. And then there's a dotted line

(57:30):
within this, which is some, you know, this zone of comfort, as
it's called. So I'm curious with, with, with
myself. And what I'll do is I, I, I will
put this image on the show notes.
So if people want to go take a look at it.
And just so you know, because it's kind of abstract if you're
talking about two by two matrices with without seeing it,

(57:52):
and I am, let me see if I can describe this bottom left of the
explorer. So, so I'm on the top right
quadrant, but I'm the bottom left of that.
So I'm really close to the center of this square.
And then the the dotted line is pretty wide around that.
So it's, it's, it's but a littleto the north, I guess.

(58:14):
A little bit wider. Upwards.
Yeah. And it says my first preference
is Explorer, second is Visionary.
That's top right, top left. And my find it harder to use is
that optimizer because that's the furthest away from where my,
my diamond default position is. What does this mean?

(58:35):
So like, like when I, when I seeit, because when I've done these
things before, there's a little,well, let me tell you what,
when, when I, when I first looked at this is it was quite
close to the center. And I've done other psychometric
stuff. I find myself not extreme.
So I'm, I'm kind of tending towards the, the, you know, the

(58:55):
gravitational middle a lot. And I'm, I'm, I'm, you know,
just a pattern that I see a lot,you know, and as far as the
explorer in my personality, yes,you could call me an adventurer,
you know, you know, architect, adventurer type person.

(59:16):
So like, yes, I, you know, I, I'm drawn to that term anyways,
you know, so maybe that's my ownbias.
Yeah. So like, all right, I'm, I'm
happy with that. Don't know what it means, but,
you know, I want to go on explore something.
So, but I, I, when I read through the report, I'm like,
OK, yes, I, I can, I can see this.

(59:36):
But like as you said, it does need more processing.
Maybe the So what behind it? And, and there are two pages
afterwards, 2-3 pages that go into, you know, the explorer,
which is called the adaptable promoter and then visionaries,
the visionary decision maker. I think I would tend to be more
explorer just by those terms as well.

(01:00:00):
And then it talks about, you know, that they're best at, you
know, create global concepts andconnections, embrace and enable
change or authentic, see hidden and unimagined possibilities,
flexibility, generate options before deciding.
Embrace freedom for self and other, you know, like hell yeah.
You know, when I read that, liketick, tick, tick, tick, you

(01:00:21):
know, and then and then when I'mgoing crazy, you know, you can
become rebellious, you know, youknow, you know, you know, fear
of of unimagined, you know, problems and you know, that's it
goes into the dark. So it's really interesting to
see. But when you saw this
representation of my me at that moment in time, you know,

(01:00:43):
through this vehicle, what, whatare the few things that you
would shout out? Yeah, I mean a few things,
Chris. I think 1 is when, when you
showed me the, the, when we looked at that picture together
based on my interactions and andhow we know each other.
I, I also recognize that and I do recognize, I mean, there's,

(01:01:05):
that's also what's interesting about your zone of comfort is,
you know, you have a relatively wide zone of comfort because you
were kind of using all differentparts of the scale while you
were responding to the statementversus some other people can
have a more narrow zone of comfort.
But your zone of comfort is sitting stretches further into
the, you know, visionary explorer, which I also recognize

(01:01:26):
because in terms of, you know, all of what you bring also to
different organizations and to, you know, work that we've also
done together is to be able to then create new, you know,
create, explore, create for the future, identify, you know, new
paths forward for, and it could be for existing products or for

(01:01:46):
new products or new services and, and, and new innovation.
And you always, you know, out there saying like, what if I
tried this or what if I tried that or what if I got curious
around this? And I think what, what also in
terms of the visionary, there's probably that connection of I'm
living in the world of possibilities, but the visionary
is actually bringing a framework.

(01:02:08):
And probably part of that is also what you, what you've
learned. So you've kind of developed like
it's, it's kind of a preference that you're getting over over
time because being able to work in organizations, you also do
need to have a filter to actually a framework to be able
to filter and to take decisions and to say, well, I have
options, but I cannot make everybody go after all of the

(01:02:30):
different options. And then I would say for your
third one, then at some point itbecomes real of like, how do I
experiment and how do I make that happen?
And if I think, Chris, of the work that we've done, for
example, on on customer journeys, like there is that
exploration side of the customerjourney, yet you also bring that
back into what does that mean interms of overall governance?

(01:02:52):
What does that mean in terms of how you collect data?
Like there's that framework thatconnects to it, which gives
direction to experiments. It also allows us to then be
able to evaluate, you know, how are those experiments working?
I'm thinking that if if maybe when you have in the past or
would in the future encounter people who have a dominant
optimizer preference and that sits maybe outside of your zone

(01:03:14):
of comfort, that it could kind of feel like that that tension
between, you know, somebody who is more, you know, starts with
reality, starts with why the hell are we going to start doing
something different? Excuse my language, but you
know, when it's been proven thatit's been successful, there's
stability to that. There's something that we need
to leverage and exploit even more going forward.

(01:03:37):
If you're, you know, coming up with some idea that I don't see
connected to reality today, you don't know what the hell you're
actually talking about. I don't know if you've if you
have encountered that in the past.
I know that that's also not my preference.
So I think we we kind of are aremore similar in terms of
preferences, but that that couldalso create kind of tension.

(01:04:00):
Well, I'm, I'm thinking of a, a particular person and she was a
head, head of operations. And indeed, we had very
different opinions about things.Yeah.
We're also able to do it in a very mature way, which was good.
And, and I think also in my own career path, I've been cause

(01:04:22):
also what I see 'cause I'm kind of navigating in the middle, you
know, I'm, I'm also kind of a professional generalist, meaning
I, I can adapt to a lot of different things.
I'm not sure if it has to do with this type of preference,
but that's, I think this is generally a true statement.
But I do tend towards times of change, you know, so like when,
when people call me and you know, and, and it just even

(01:04:44):
happened the other day, you know, I was called for an
opportunity. And, and one of the things I
described is if you're looking for someone to squeak out a few
percentages of efficiency over the next three years, I'm not
that person that I, I am not that person.
If you want to change, do you want to transform?
Do you want to break? Do you want to rebuild?
You know, you know, if you want to move in in in new directions,

(01:05:08):
I'm absolutely your person. And so there's you know, because
I I I'm also aware that there are much better people suited
for that really important job. That is just not me.
And I think I would have also through this when I come in,
because I work often times in, in IT digital beta stuff is it's

(01:05:29):
so easy to criticize the past, but realized that, you know, the
past was made by people that have these different
preferences. And there was a really good
reason back then why this decision was made because people
typically don't run around making bad decisions on purpose,
you know, and, and I think, you know, so the, the, the

(01:05:49):
technology maybe is no longer fit for a purpose, but that's
more because the time has changed.
And I and I, what I find is the people who are responsible for
these long, long term tech technologies are typically
optimizers, meaning it's been built 15 years ago and the
people still hanging out are thehardcore optimizers that are
just, you know, really keeping it stable.

(01:06:11):
And they have, you know, blood, sweat and tears baked into this
thing. And then you have to come in and
say, well, actually we're going to kill your darling.
Well, yeah, you know, expect a reaction.
Expect a reaction, you know, and, and, and, and you better
have your, your, you know, your,your case very strong because,
you know, they've been literallyworking on this for 15 years and

(01:06:33):
they all know it by far better than you ever will.
So there's, yeah, yeah, there's,there's, there's self-awareness
here for sure. Yeah, Yeah.
You know what, what, Chris, I was also thinking of of what you
were just saying about people. I think there's also people who
live in in, I mean, we all live in reality.

(01:06:54):
But if you're starting with dominant optimizer, then I also
noticed that there's sometimes this when there's a contrast to
it, it's kind of them feeling OK.
We tried that in the past, it didn't work.
And I actually think that that should be an invitation to then
further explore, like to not take that as a negative remark,

(01:07:16):
but then say, if we have tried something in the past and it
didn't work, let's make sure that we've really understood why
it didn't work. What were we actually trying to
do it? And because if we are then
trying to do something that looks similar to what we've done
in the past, have enough of the circumstances changed or are we
actually going to do something fundamentally different?

(01:07:37):
You know, that that could actually give a new way or a new
path or a new because I think that, and I think sometimes
people can then say, well, people with an optimizer, you
know, that's, that's a very negative thing to say.
And that's not a, that isn't, it's our interpretation of
thinking that it's negative. There's wisdom there of saying
that there is some learning fromthe past and we should actually

(01:07:57):
try to understand why is the system now the way that it is.
Because you see that like I remember with a a big food
retailer, they had this massive system change and data
migration. And what happened is that there
was, you know, certain voices that were not listened to.
And then when it went live, it didn't work.

(01:08:17):
Then as a retailer, you are stuck.
You cannot get goods in and out of your warehouses, of your
stores. I mean, it was a massive, huge
scandal, you know, so there's, there's a, a, a, a huge benefit
for the energy and for that stability on key processes that
we should make sure the preferences are there.

(01:08:38):
But also like even if the preference isn't there, you
know, let's not underestimate the importance of that on
critical, you know, critical infrastructure.
Well, I, I, I think in our worldwith, you know, like the
McKenzie statement that 80% of transformations fail and people
are saying that, you know, 90% of AI projects fail.
Something I, I love to bring into those conversations is, is

(01:09:01):
maybe a lot of those should never have started, you know,
because they're just bad ideas. And some of these people that
are, you know, like, you know, this voice of reason in the
organization and you can call them, you know, saboteurs or,
you know, resistance to change or, you know, corporate immune
system. And sometimes they're right.

(01:09:22):
Because sometimes that, you know, from that, from that
wisdom, you know, that they thatthey are really, you know,
calling it, you know, and, and, and I, you know, sometimes, you
know, there's this lazy leadership versus, you know,
what I call love leadership. And, and sometimes that love
leadership's hard because you got to really sit down and
listen and embrace to people that have a different opinion
than you. And, and OK, well, tell me more.

(01:09:45):
It makes me feel uncomfortable. Everything about this
conversation makes me feel uncomfortable.
But I will live in my discomfort.
So I can understand you because maybe intuitively I know there's
a nugget of truth in there and it's really important and it's
hard work. You know, I, I think I'm more of
a lazy leadership, but it's like, Oh yeah, you know, he's
just a troublemaker. Yeah.
And then you have this major scandal where you're, you know,

(01:10:07):
you're core systems don't work. It's yeah, it's, it comes down
to leadership. So in, in the, in, in the spirit
of, of wrapping up. If, if people out there are
inspired by this and they're going through their strategizing
process and and they're like, wow, actually it would be really

(01:10:27):
cool if we had some more insights into our preferences of
strategizing. How could they do that?
So like, like, where can they embark on this?
Is it I? Think probably the easiest is to
kind of get in touch for a conversation and to then
understand because I think for Ispeak for for myself and for for

(01:10:48):
my colleagues, we always want tomake sure that, you know, if I
go back to the principles, does it make sense to be using this
in this moment? Let's just not get excited about
like, oh, this is something new and shiny and let's do it
because there are sometimes where you say, well, actually
now is not the moment. It's not the right setup.
It doesn't make, you know, sense.
So I'd say first starts with a conversation to say, hey, let's,

(01:11:11):
let's talk about what's actuallyhappening, why you got excited
about it. How could we actually see it and
could we actually give follow upto it that it's something that,
you know, we don't just take it as one off, but something that
we could actually return. We would have the commitment as
a team to kind of return back toand and reflect on further.

(01:11:31):
That would be my suggestion, yeah.
And going back going, I think going back to the principles
have a very clear reason. I think also have guidance on
these things, you know, so you don't don't self administer
them. And, you know, I think having a
coach or a trained external kindof Sherpa on the way can can

(01:11:53):
help things going, keep things going.
I am learning, I mean, there areevolutions that are happening in
in AI coaching. So maybe you know, there will
also be kind of an AI coaching that will, you know, be able to
get to that, that level. I don't know.
But I would say certainly, you know, not debriefing these
things on your own. I would not do that in this.

(01:12:15):
No, not yet, but I can imagine the AI would would eventually
get there but but not yet. But even then, make sure it's a
well trained AI, you know, in a proper process you're doing
using it for the right reason. So, but you can get a get a hold
of Araz at itselpnetwork.com. I'll include that in the show
notes and also Araz Najarian on on LinkedIn.

(01:12:36):
I'll keep her her link in the show notes as well.
And so no fascinating. I I, I'm, I was really
positively triggered by the engagement with the ELP group
talking about this stuff. And then when those principles
came out like, oh, you know, we have to have this conversation,
yeah. And then?

(01:12:57):
I'm glad you reached that. Yeah, and then I also said,
well, let me let me do this SPI thing and and let me let's
process this in the podcast, which some people might say is a
bit vulnerable, but I think it, it adds a level of richness, you
know, for, for the listen, for me, for certainly, you know,
Hey, I'm just, I just got a, an expert, you know, review of my
my SPI preferences. But I think it also provides A

(01:13:20):
richness for people to understand what it actually is
and how it relates to someone and how you could actually use
it for a benefit of the individual and also the
organization. So, so eopnetwork.com, Araz
Najarian, thank you so much for this.
This has been thanks, Chris. This has been great.
Yeah, for me, thank. You for listening to the

(01:13:42):
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