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Hey everyone, welcome to Shift.
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I'm your host, Kyle Avis.
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Earlier this season, I talked with Jos de Bloch about his organization, Bertzorg, where self-organizing nursing teams take ownership of the care they provide.
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No managers, no supervisors, a system built on trust.
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At one point in our conversation, he mentioned that he had met someone in Vancouver who was writing a book about his style of leadership, the one that enables leadership across organizations rather than holding onto control or power themselves.
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The author was Sonali Sharma, and she's my guest today.
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Sonali is the author of the 90% code: Rewriting Power for the AI Era.
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Sinali became a mother at 19 in a fairly orthodox environment in India, and she says that experience taught her what it feels like to have very little say in the decisions that shape your life.
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Her career has been anything but a straight line.
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And through all of it, she's been asking one question: why do we keep building systems that give so much power to a few when there's so much capacity and intelligence that could be used to change and improve systems?
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I think this conversation is very applicable to healthcare.
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As much as we talk about patient-centered care, empowerment, engagement, the truth is this is often seen as an optional activity, a nice to-do, or a way to tick off a box around consultation.
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But the truth is decisions are mostly in the hands of a few formal leaders, with little input from those it affects most.
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The truth is we lack trust, and without trust comes control.
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Every minute tracked, every activity accounted for, every decision requiring multiple layers of approval.
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Approval that takes weeks, months, even years.
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It's a complete barrier to innovation and improvement.
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In this conversation, we use the Three Horizons models to walk through her book: the hero leadership model that's losing its fit for purpose, the future she calls distributed abundance, and the messy middle in between.
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I love this conversation, and I think he will too.
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So let's get into it.
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Here's my conversation with Sonali.
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Hi Sonali, how are you?
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I'm doing well.
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How are you?
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Good, good.
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It's so nice to see you.
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Congratulations on your book.
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Absolutely exciting.
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Thank you so much.
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Um this month's been crazy.
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The feeling is still sinking in.
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Yes.
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So what goes into launching a book?
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Like, what do you have to do?
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Just do lots of promo and interviews and just get the word out.
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Well, it really depends, right?
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If you're you're a celebrity, then you do things differently, of course.
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But if you're a debut author, for me, it's all very uh distributed at small and small level.
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I didn't plan one big launch, um, but it's been you know a lot of effort working with the community.
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Like last week, um, I did a keynote at BCIT around 120 people, and then I combined it with book signing, so that was pretty good.
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So slow and steady, but yes, I'm doing a lot of podcasts.
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I did a couple last week.
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There's one more scheduled this week.
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Um so just yeah, I think it's gonna be a very slow and steady thing for me, which continues, but not like one big bang.
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That's not gonna be a good one.
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Yes, yes.
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Well, thanks for coming on my podcast.
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I really appreciate it.
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I heard about you through Jos DeBlock, who was on earlier this season talking about his Bert Sort model, and he said he had connected with you in Vancouver and was telling me about the book you were writing.
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And then I was like, well, maybe I should reach out to her and see if she would be interested in talking about it here.
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And you were, so I'm super happy to have you because I think, you know, sort of trying to capture the lessons of unique and interesting systemic leadership in the way that Jost de Bloch does it and putting that into a book and putting it all together, I think is very, very valuable.
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And I loved reading your book.
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I thought it was super interesting and sort of like the book the world needs right now.
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Thank you so much, Kyla.
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You know, getting this first-hand feedback from readers that means everything to me because you know when you're in a silo, you're developing all these ideas and uh frameworks, but the real test is when readers get back with feedback and and yeah, those words, yeah, they mean a lot.
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And yes, Josh is a darling, Jos and Michelle both and I recently met.
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Then I'm I'm a big fan, and uh I've been uh researching Bird Soc and their model uh for the past couple of years, and meeting them in person was like a big wow moment for me.
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And I'm so grateful that he mentioned me, and that's just so special about him, you know, uh as a leader.
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He's all about uh building others.
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Yes, for sure.
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Okay, so like I'm not a journalist, so I never know how to interview people who have written a book because I'm like, I want people to buy the book to read it.
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So I thought we'd just sort of have like a higher level conversation so that people can get a sense of what you really dig into in really good detail in your book, and you give really good personal examples of all of these concepts you're outlining.
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But today we're gonna give them a sense of what's in there and then people get the book to get into it a little bit further.
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So that sound good to you?
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Oh, sounds great.
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I'm excited.
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Awesome.
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Okay.
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So you talk about in a book how you became a mom at 19, and you said you built your career in spaces you say weren't built for you.
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And so I was just wondering if you could touch on how you got to the point of like deciding you wanted to write a book to put all these experiences together.
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Yeah.
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Uh I I became a mother very young in a fairly uh orthodox environment in India.
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And um, before I had any language for power or systems, I understood what it felt like to have uh very little say in decisions that shape your life.
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And it was those, you know, early experiences I'd say that gave me a good dose of vulnerability and courage.
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And interestingly, they both kind of feed off each other.
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One teaches you how much little control you have, and then you have courage that uh tells you to keep moving uh despite all of that.
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And I think that may uh to some extent explain why my career, if you look at the graph, it's less strategic and it's more like uh, you know, let's see what happens if we question the entire system.
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So I started as a teacher, then moved into enterprise development, got inspired by social impact, worked for one of the largest non-for-profits uh in Asia.
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Then after my MBA, I got obsessed with building uh business with impact in its front and center.
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So I uh we used to live in uh one of the big cities in South India, Bangalore, which is also called the Silicon uh City of India.
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We sold off our house and we moved to an extremely remote location in South India where we built one of Asia's first circular forest microfactory alongside indigenous Kuruba artisans, communities that had been excluded from the existing economic structures.
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And a lot of uh what I write in my book about uh the power of community uh trust and how you prioritize regeneration over extraction comes from my ears there.
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And uh then came Canada, worked in public sector innovation, colled provinces, tech commercialization strategy, and have been a mentor with founders and of late working on AI strategy.
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So I often say that uh, you know, there's no logical career path here.
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But what's what was there was uh, you know, a lot of curiosity, and uh in my local language, there is a word called Kira.
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Um, literal translation means a bug, you know, that annoying little thing that uh doesn't uh leave you alone.
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And for me, it was to uh find out why we as humans keep building systems that give disproportionate amounts of power to few when there is so much utilized capacity and intelligence everywhere.
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And in 2024, I felt that philosophical kira that I had that stopped being philosophical anymore because of what was happening in the world.
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AI was rapidly changing how we work, and then we have this strong men geopolitics that's changing the markets, is tariffs, there's glorified layoffs, there is hatred towards immigrants, and uh lots of doomsday books in the market.
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Um, so as a systems nerd, I uh wanted to, you know, think about uh how do we build things differently, and that's what became the book.
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That's what is the 90% code.
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And a lot of people ask me that what is 90% uh in the 90% code?
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A lot of people also get confused, is maybe this is a coding book or something.
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So, you know, uh it's it's very interesting because 90% is really a uh, you know, uh play on the stark inequity that exists in how power in ownership is distributed today.
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You know, if you look at by any logic, top 10% today owns more than the bottom 90% combined.
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There's less than 10% of uh workers that have equity in the companies that they uh work for.
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So I'd say 90% is not uh any precise demographic.
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It's anyone, anyone of us whose capacity to contribute exceeds what the existing systems can capture.
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And in one sentence, if I have to say, then the book is all about how do we build a world that runs on the intelligence capacity and agency of the 90% rather than uh on the authority and control of the few.
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Brilliant.
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And I think what I kind of understood from all of your experience that you connect throughout your book is that whatever space you were in, you kind of kept seeing the same paradigm.
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And she worked with that community in India, that really shifted your paradigm kind of thinking about the way that that systems work and communities work, and how you could leverage that style of working and that style of leadership in contrast to the ones that we're most familiar with, which is often more of a command and control and hierarchical kind of system.
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Absolutely.
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That uh community definitely played a very important role.
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However, I think everywhere I worked, there they were learnings and a lot also dependent on, you know, what my perspective was in understanding how systems work.
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Like in one of the first places, uh organizations that I worked when I was in my early 20s, I was handed over to books um, Good to Great by Jim Collins and the Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.
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That played a very, very important role in uh especially the fifth discipline and in understanding how to build a learning organization and how we can uh uh when we're looking at solving problems, are we looking at uh the root cause of the problems rather than just you know coming up with shortcome solutions to patch the system, which we do most of the time?
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Okay, so I thought it would be cool to kind of tie your thinking to the Three Horizons contract, which is a Bill Sharp model that I love.
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And for viewers or listeners who haven't, who don't know anything about the three horizons model, I recommend you going back to my early, early podcast and listening to Andy Wilkins conversation about it because I think he describes it really well.
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But I thought we could use that as a framework.
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So we talk about Horizon One, it's kind of the system that's going out of style, the one that's sort of losing its fit for purpose.
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Um, and you talk about the hero model as sort of the one that is fading or not being able to kind of meet the demands and the challenges of today.
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So, could you talk more about that system and what that looks like?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And uh, you know, I was looking at your summer series title, The Center Cannot Hold.
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Yes.
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I think that's basically the subtitle of my book.
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So I kind of really was really interesting.
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So uh we've built um most of our institutions, government communities around uh simple assumptions that a few people at the top should think decide for everyone else because they know better.
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That's the hero model in simple terms.
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And my argument in the book is blunt that that hero model is dead.
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It's failing the people below it and also failing the people at the top.
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And it's dying for two major reasons.
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One is, I'd say, moral.
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Uh, you know, I believe that the purpose of leadership is to build more leaders, it is to create conditions where other people can grow and thrive.
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But what we have today instead are power holders that are dressed up as leaders, uh, people that keep pulling more authority, more ownership, and more reward towards themselves.
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And this data supporting that, uh, you know, if you um if you look at uh late 1970s, the average CEO to worker pay ratio at that time was 30 is to one.
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And today that is 400 is to one.
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In the same period, the worker productivity has grew more than 80%, but the worker average worker wages have grown only 15%.
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So I think that's insane.
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And uh, you know, a model that concentrates so much power um at the top, it's not just unfair, but it's also unsustainable.
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Reason that I share in the book uh why hero model is dying is more functional.
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You know, in the industrial era, hero model had logic.
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At that time, information was scarce, communication was slow, and um change was happening at the pace of human cognition.
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And uh hierarchy was really uh solving a real coordination problem, and a hero on the top would see the whole picture make sense of what's happening.
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But that's not the world that we live in anymore.
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Uh today technology has made the landscape too fast-paced, it's too interconnected, too dependent, and honestly too big for a few people to make sense of it.
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And uh, you know, we have today organizations that are larger than countries, and uh we have algorithms uh that take decisions faster than any human mind can process.
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So, speed, if you look at it as a factor alone, it's making that hero model crumble.
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And then on top of that, uh you add AI to that picture and uh what AI right?
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So, what AI does is it kind of breaks hero's last monopoly, which is that I'm the smartest person in the room.
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You're not the smartest person in the room anymore.
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Um, uh because what AI does, it distributes intelligence and it distributes expertise and it brings it to the edges.
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Now, when we introduce AI in high organizations that are rigidly hierarchical and centralized in their control, we've created a fundamental gap or a mismatch.
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And one of the reasons why organizations right now are struggling with the AI adoption.
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And I think some of the younger, newer organizations are catching on because they're building differently from day one.
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It's the older legacy, big elephants, institutions uh, you know, that are struggling the most because um the architecture is deeply ingrained, not just physically in design, but also in our minds.
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And so it's difficult to get out of it.
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So would you see that happening in healthcare organizations?
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Like when we think about sort of the the hierarchy, the orders that are giving, the religious and the militaristic structures that healthcare was sort of built around.
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Do you think healthcare has come to terms with this new world specifically?
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Or can you speak to that?
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Well, I'm not an expert on that, but my experience over there would be more in terms of how I have experienced it as a customer or as a patient for that matter.
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So definitely it's it's playing catch-on with a lot of things.
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Uh, there is a capacity problem.
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We keep emphasizing on that.
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And a lot of those, those issues that we are facing can definitely be dealt with in a different way with a more distributed architecture.
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But that would really mean trusting people that and and also questioning what our assumptions and underlying feelings are about how things should be, especially when it comes to something so sensitive as healthcare.
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Oh, yeah, yeah.
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I think you know, healthcare is really in my experience with being a nurse too, like it really runs on the idea that the doctor or the clinician has the knowledge, right?
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Like they, you must come to them.
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They are the specialists.
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Um, you don't have the same information or the same education I do.
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So I hold power in that way.
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But now I find I'm asking AI all kinds of things, all kinds of navigation questions, all kinds of medical questions.
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I'm getting good information back, I'm getting good questions to ask for my appointments.
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I mean, that that is kind of like you said, it's a bit crumbling, that idea that just one person holds the knowledge and has the power.
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And we are seeing it, we are experiencing it, that it's not effective.
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And uh, conversations that I've had with people in leading institutions, including healthcare, is that everyone realizes that, you know, that those people on the top, that uh they are also struggling a lot.
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It's not that uh the model is really benefiting them.
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There's data supporting that, uh, that they are burnt out because there's too much pressure.
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And so as as systems, it's very ridiculous that we actually ask too much of the few and trust too little of the many.
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So it's it's kind of a ridiculous arrangement, but we've been trusting it for way too long.
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It did serve a purpose in the industrial age, where um it it uh it was celebrated also, but now a lot of people are realizing it doesn't work, but it is so deeply ingrained and it reproduces itself because it reinforces, right?
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When there's uncertainty, we feel safer when there's hierarchy, especially when there's uncertain times because uh, you know, we're like, oh, there's somebody on the top that's gonna change everything for us, but that doesn't really happen.
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So it requires a lot of work on questioning our basic assumptions.
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And uh that's what I've tried to establish in the book, uh, in the collective intelligence framework.
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Everything starts from within yourself, the inner alignment wherein uh you can start questioning yourself when you're operating from autopilot and you know, start seeing how we can actually uh hold more than one perspective in our mind and understand that it, yeah, I don't have all the answers.
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It's it's it's a collective uh, you know, that can create that impact.
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And yes, in healthcare, it would mean trusting more people, not directing every decision back to the most qualified person in the room, but also thinking that if proper information, proper guidelines, proper authority is distributed, then a lot of work can be done and shared by others as well.
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Okay, that's a great segue to Horizon three, which is the vision of the future and what that looks like.
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You use the term distributed leadership, which I find the most sort of accessible for me.
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So if you could maybe describe what your vision of the future, what leadership of the future looks like, that would be awesome.
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Well, uh, so in the book, the horizon three is uh what I call distributed abundance, a future where intelligent ownership and decision making are widely distributed and the value that everyone is creating it flows back to many, not just few, which is kind of what's happening there.
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And the engine that uh allows for that to happen is collective intelligence, which I think has a branding problem because when people when people hear it often, they're they're like, oh, it means we're gonna get everybody in the room do kumbaya.
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Yes.
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Nothing, nothing really gets uh accomplished.
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And uh that's not what I mean.
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Collective intelligence is uh the ability of a group to perceive, process, and respond to complexity in ways no individual can achieve alone.
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And my favorite example for that is what you recently featured, Birdsock.
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If you look at them, 15,000 nurses and 1,000 self-managing teams, and what they have is transparent information, there's real autonomy, and there's distributed accountability.
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And uh no managers, beautiful.
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Um, it's also the first field note in my book under Collective Intelligence at Scale.
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And when I met Justin Michel, one of the things he mentioned, which I found fascinating, he said that growing up, he never experienced authority as control.
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To him, the purpose of authority was to inspire.
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And that's the distinction that shaped Birdsock for him.
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And uh that's the thing that I'm reinforcing in the book that distributed doesn't mean disconnected.
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:21.440
You distribute the authority, you distribute ownership, information, but you have feedback loops, rapid sensing, all of that that is required for a distributed system to work.
00:21:21.759 --> 00:21:26.480
But you keep at center the inspiration, the shared meaning, the shared purpose.
00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:39.680
And understand that the purpose of center and hence the purpose of leaders is not to control, it is to create the conditions and field effect so that the collective intelligence can work at a scale.
00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:42.640
And I think that's where the difference lies.
00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:44.160
And that's the future I'm imagining.
00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:59.359
It's kind of like a system of shared power, of shared influence, of shared conversation, getting all the wisdom that's out there and kind of bringing that all together to find a path forward instead of a group of people sitting in a boardroom trying to decide.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.960
People to trying to decide that for an entire group of people or an entire province?
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:07.200
Like that's really the shift, right?
00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:08.240
Absolutely.
00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:08.960
Yeah.
00:22:09.119 --> 00:22:09.440
Okay.
00:22:09.839 --> 00:22:20.720
So, in your experience then, um, what are some examples that you've seen or uh ways in which people are working that are working well?
00:22:20.880 --> 00:22:31.200
You talked about Bertzorg, but are there other ways that communities or or structures are kind of dismantling that old hero model and moving into a different way of working?
00:22:31.519 --> 00:22:32.720
But that's a great question.
00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:36.319
The book does share uh quite a few of those stories.
00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:44.880
There are uh things emerging, not just right now, but I would also uh, you know, book draws majorly on a lot of older governance traditions as well.
00:22:45.039 --> 00:22:50.319
Um but if you look at examples of today, Mundragan is an example that I share in the book.
00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:56.799
It's one of the largest cooperatives and again, really built on shared structures.
00:22:57.039 --> 00:23:04.880
They also have this one-sixth ratio, wherein the person that's earning the highest and the lowest, the gap shouldn't be more than one-sixth.
00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:17.200
And when the global financial crisis happened and a lot of companies were laying people off, this was one of the organizations that did not lay off its people but moved them within the whole co-op network that they had.
00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:27.359
So democracy in small ways and places is involving more and more people with the help of technology so that we can experience more participatory democracy.
00:23:27.599 --> 00:23:38.960
Spotify, they've been known for this, they're autonomous squads, um, wherein there are teams with full information, authority, and accountability with a shared purpose.
00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:45.920
When Spotify scaled, then they realized that the distributed autonomous squads uh are kind of getting a bit fragmented.
00:23:46.079 --> 00:23:57.440
So they they then evolved into a fleet first model wherein teams still have the autonomy, but there is a shared structure that is connecting them, shared purpose, what we just spoke about.
00:23:57.759 --> 00:24:00.960
Um so yes, the change, the shift is happening.
00:24:01.119 --> 00:24:08.400
And one thing about change, you know, that I often say is that uh it's not something that starts at the top or at the center.
00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:12.400
It's always something that starts small on the edges.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.920
And when it succeeds, when the evidence is there, that's when it picks out.
00:24:18.160 --> 00:24:20.880
Um so it's is that change, change is happening.
00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:21.119
Yeah.
00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:26.319
So there's little pockets that are sort of emerging of people trying to do things in different ways.
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:35.920
And then, you know, the idea is those pockets converge and those pockets kind of join up and share what they're learning and share their knowledge, and then that builds into a new system.
00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:36.960
Absolutely.
00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:41.759
And I think um, I think that's how I uh this country also got its Medicare, right?
00:24:41.839 --> 00:24:45.440
It started small in the Swift uh current region of Saskatchewan.
00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:48.160
So I think it's a similar practice, right?
00:24:48.319 --> 00:25:00.240
Um it was something that started small by people, and then because it it was it was something good, then the center got up and then it became province-wide, it became like a example.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:07.680
So the same thing is happening um in how organizations are structuring themselves and how leaders are thinking about their role.
00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:16.960
Yeah, and one of the questions I keep coming back to is does someone have to build that structure to connect them and to build that together, or does it happen organically?
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:22.720
That's what I'm most focused on right now is do we need people convening?
00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:26.319
Do we need, you know, people that are facilitating conversations?
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:29.680
How do we set up our technology so that the information is shared?
00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.359
How, you know, because even with Bertzorg, they set up their own website, right?
00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:37.279
With everybody connecting and how do you get people to get into that technology?
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:49.680
So that's what I'm really interested in right now is what takes this from pockets of innovation and new ideas into morphing into the new way of doing things or the new model.
00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:50.559
Well, absolutely.
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:56.720
I've written a whole book about it, the how of it, how you should achieve it as an organization.
00:25:56.799 --> 00:25:58.240
And there are ways to do that.
00:25:58.400 --> 00:26:01.839
But coming to your question, I think it's a bit of both.
00:26:02.079 --> 00:26:08.880
When when there's times of rapid change and there's a lot of uncertainty and chaos, and with AI, there is a lot of chaos.
00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:12.240
Um people are feeling anxious, people are feeling scared.
00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:20.400
And I'd say the people in power or people uh that are leaders right now, they're responsible for creating that chaos.
00:26:20.559 --> 00:26:37.440
Because every day we're listening to a different narrative, and a lot of what I shared in the book and the AI Trust framework, that's also a part of the book, is about answering these questions and how much awareness we can create in people as well as in organizations when working with.
00:26:38.559 --> 00:26:45.200
I also coming to realize that the things that we're talking about for the future, what we need for the future, are very much rooted in the past.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:51.200
And in indigenous ways of knowing and ancient culture philosophy.
00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:52.960
Could you touch on that a little bit?
00:26:53.039 --> 00:27:01.920
Because I think what we're often talking about is not something new, it's something that's been rooted in many cultures for many thousands of years.
00:27:02.079 --> 00:27:07.119
And you had such an interesting experience working with the community in India and learning about that.
00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:09.119
Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:10.640
Yeah, yes, of course.
00:27:10.720 --> 00:27:15.039
You know, I want to be careful here because I'm not an expert on indigenous knowledge systems.
00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:21.279
But what I do have, as you rightly pointed out, is lived experience with the Kuruba communities in South India.
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:27.039
And while researching the book, I spent a lot of time looking at uh older traditions of governance.
00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:38.400
And uh, one thing that stayed with me was that a lot of ideas of what we call distributed leadership, participatory governance, or long-term thinking, they're not new at all.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.200
They're actually very old uh ideas.
00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:45.279
Um, take the Hodenushauni Confederacy, for example.
00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:51.359
It is one of the oldest uh participatory um governance systems in the world.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:58.720
And one of the ideas associated with their tradition is uh what we now call the seven generations principle.
00:27:58.880 --> 00:28:00.559
I talk about that in the book.
00:28:00.720 --> 00:28:09.599
It's what decision that we make today as leaders, we think about its impact on at least seven generations that come after you.
00:28:09.920 --> 00:28:21.519
And I think I find that very, very significant, and uh, especially when we look at how we are looking at AI systems and its impact on people, community, and violence as organizations.
00:28:21.599 --> 00:28:26.240
Are we thinking about not just us and our kids, but seven generations in the future?
00:28:26.480 --> 00:28:32.079
And I think what was also really interesting about this idea was it was just like a nice idea that they had.
00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:36.720
They had built a full accountability structure around it in the Confederacy.
00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:47.920
They had clan mothers and senior mothers who had the authority to appoint chiefs and also to remove them if they were no longer serving the people well.
00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:54.640
So the men were deliberating, but the women had a very important role in deciding who would fit to lean.
00:28:54.880 --> 00:28:56.640
So I find that really fascinating.
00:28:56.880 --> 00:29:16.240
And when the founding fathers in America, when they were building the American constitution, they appreciated the Hodenoshawne um confederacy and uh they took inspiration from the ideas, but they left behind the two key elements, which is the role of women in governance that was kind of taken off, and the seventh generation thinking.
00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:22.079
So I often say that they practically took the soul uh you know of accountability out of it.
00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:35.440
So those are some of the traditions I talk about in the book, and uh closer to where I grew up, the Vedic traditions, so we had Sabha and Samiti, which meant that major decisions in the villages were taken by uh deliberation, not by decree.
00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:39.920
And because we are talking about health, I'd like to bring Ayurveda.
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:45.519
And by Ayurveda, I don't mean bringing ancient remedies into modern medicine.
00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:51.200
I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about Ayurveda's core principle, which was prevention, not cure.
00:29:51.440 --> 00:30:00.240
The role of ancient health practitioner, uh, who we used to call Vedia, uh, was to make sure that within their community nobody gets sick.
00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:04.880
It wasn't to just cure illnesses, but to actually prevent.
00:30:04.960 --> 00:30:16.720
And I think um uh that's one of the questions that uh we should ask uh when we are designing healthcare systems that um are we designing our systems around preserving health rather than just uh treating illnesses?
00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:24.480
So in the book, I try to integrate all of these ideas into the capacities that we need to build collective intelligence.
00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:33.519
So there's two capacities system stewardship and ethical foresight that directly draws from various older uh traditions and systems.
00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:51.680
So I'm not arguing that we should somehow go backwards, but I think it's important uh as civilizations to sometimes stop and reflect that what was it in the past that we knew that was working and we've just forgotten about it or left it behind?
00:30:52.319 --> 00:31:02.000
So when you are talking about the ideas in your book, you are really challenging power structures and power holders.
00:31:02.319 --> 00:31:06.319
How is the reaction that you're getting to the concept and idea?
00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:07.839
How is that going over with people?
00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:13.519
Do you find there's a readiness to accept this new way of being, a new way of leading, a new way of doing?
00:31:13.759 --> 00:31:18.720
Or are you still finding structures pushing back on the ideas that you're introducing?
00:31:19.279 --> 00:31:24.319
But oh yes, I I I had to get a pushback and uh I've been fired a couple of times.
00:31:24.559 --> 00:31:24.880
Yes.
00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:28.720
So there's empirical evidence that there is a lot of pushback.
00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:35.759
But on a serious note, pushback is really someone saying that, oh, I love concentrated power and I'm not gonna give it up.
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:39.359
That's not the kind of pushback I get, but it's usually much more subtle.
00:31:39.599 --> 00:31:44.880
Uh people agree with the idea in principle, collective intelligence, yeah, it sounds great.
00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:48.240
And distributed leadership, yeah, and empowered teams.
00:31:48.319 --> 00:31:51.039
Yes, we are all for team empowerment.
00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:55.519
But then in the next sentence, it's like, oh, why don't you come and run a workshop, my team?
00:31:55.599 --> 00:32:00.000
And and I'm I'm thinking, yeah, maybe uh you may be the workshop, right?
00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:00.559
Right.
00:32:00.880 --> 00:32:18.079
So because overall I've seen that organizations are very comfortable in distributing responsibility downward, but keeping the authority upward, which is like, oh, you own the outcome, but you don't control the budget, you don't control the processes.
00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:22.559
We encourage you to speak up, but there will be consequences if you speak up.
00:32:22.799 --> 00:32:26.480
And we value your voice, but uh, oh great, can I change anything?
00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:28.160
Oh no, uh, you can't.
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:33.279
So it's it's more like you know, we value the feedback, but we don't value your agency.
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:44.240
In the book, I call that as empowerment hit, wherein you know, teams and organizations want to distribute accountability but keep the power still centralized.
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:44.720
Yeah.
00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:54.160
And I would say in healthcare, we don't even have the structures to really kind of have collective intelligence, even with the providers, let alone the patients that are getting the care.
00:32:54.319 --> 00:33:02.640
And I mean, that's even the next level of taking it into communities, taking it into neighborhoods, you know, understanding from that perspective.
00:33:02.799 --> 00:33:12.720
And again, I think there's little pockets of things that are happening, but often what I find is people that are involved in communities or or patients that are involved, they almost get co-opted into the system.
00:33:12.960 --> 00:33:19.200
And then there's like power structures that kind of hold them back or they become cheerful of speaking up.
00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:26.559
So, you know, you kind of, you know, suck them into that uh horizon one kind of way of working, right?
00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:42.640
So, you know, I think there's a lot of attempts to do the empowerment work, there's a lot of attempts to listen, but it's not really built in in true collective intelligence and participatory decision making that I think you're proposing and you know, giving steps to guide people into that direction.
00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:45.839
Yeah, I um I I agree with you.
00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:52.640
And I think uh what really makes a difference here is horizon two as to how you do that.
00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:55.119
You know, that's that is the real bridge.
00:33:55.200 --> 00:33:59.599
Um, and I think probably um uh that is the hardest horizon.
00:33:59.680 --> 00:34:02.559
Uh, because horizon one, it's easy to diagnose.
00:34:02.720 --> 00:34:05.279
People naturally already understand, they see it.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:09.679
And horizon three is something which is uh exciting to imagine.
00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:13.039
Oh, we want that world of distributed abundance.
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:18.239
Horizon two is where uh your Monday morning happens, right?
00:34:19.039 --> 00:34:24.239
You're like, uh, okay, now I have to think about building new systems while still running the old one.
00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:28.320
Thought itself is very tiring for most of the people.
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:38.239
And I think the biggest trap here is that we are mostly treating the symptoms, and then we call it that it is transformation.
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:56.400
And a way to look at that, and I will uh you know link it to healthcare as well, but um, I I'll start with uh sharing a bit about uh look at some of the biggest polychrisis problems that we have that have stayed leader after leaders, despite so many different strategies that have been tried.
00:34:56.480 --> 00:35:00.000
So I'm gonna talk very briefly about two poverty and climate problems.
00:35:00.400 --> 00:35:01.280
If you look at that.
00:35:01.760 --> 00:35:06.880
Um so poverty, we've spent decades responding downstream.
00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:12.079
We talk about giving benefits, subsidies, and job trainings, and all of that is important.
00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:27.519
But if the majority of the people have no pathways to actually build ownership and rely only on wages that do not increase at par with inflation, the system is going to keep reproducing the same inequity.
00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:31.199
And downstream efforts are not going to solve the problem.
00:35:31.760 --> 00:35:37.440
The deeper shift here is uh creating more opportunities to build equity for people.
00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:38.880
And we're not doing that.
00:35:39.360 --> 00:35:41.920
What we're doing is treating symptoms.
00:35:42.159 --> 00:35:45.280
We're not looking at the cause of the problem, we're looking treating symptoms.
00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:47.119
Same thing is with climate.
00:35:47.599 --> 00:35:53.039
What we do is we're setting targets and uh you know reduce emission targets and carbon credits.
00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:53.760
Great.
00:35:54.559 --> 00:36:07.760
But what is producing the climate problem is an underlying system and architecture that rewards short-term profits and extraction, which is the first place why we're building data centers right now.
00:36:08.079 --> 00:36:08.719
Yeah right.
00:36:09.039 --> 00:36:14.079
So again, uh we are fighting the consequences, but we are not changing what produces them.
00:36:14.559 --> 00:36:26.719
So for me, what really makes a difference in Horizon 2 is asking where in the system or what in the system is producing the outcome that we are trying to change.
00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:40.400
And that's really a hard question because that means we are asking you to question your underlying incentives, your underlying assumptions, why a system is built in a certain way.
00:36:40.800 --> 00:37:01.519
And what I've tried in the book is I've I've shared a systems change canvas, and system change canvas tells you to identify where exactly your system is stuck and at what level the intervention is needed so that you're not just patching the system with a small uh policy tweak or with a small uh uh you know new uh beneficial.
00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:04.320
New program, exactly, new project.
00:37:04.880 --> 00:37:10.559
But you are actually you know asking what is creating that problem in the first place?
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:14.320
How do we uh change what the system rewards?
00:37:14.480 --> 00:37:22.880
Because the system produces what it rewards, you are rewarding profits, you are rewarding those companies that are going in a fast pace, destroying climate.
00:37:23.199 --> 00:37:28.320
So just coming up with different ways to reduce emissions is not gonna work.
00:37:28.559 --> 00:37:31.039
You have to stop rewarding the companies that are doing that.
00:37:31.360 --> 00:37:32.559
That's when it is going to work.
00:37:32.639 --> 00:37:34.880
But we are not, we don't want to face that.
00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:42.880
And the same thing, uh, you know, if you use that in the healthcare personal experience, emergent emergency room wait times.
00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:46.559
We've all experienced eight to ten hours average.
00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:54.639
Now, the immediate response is you add more bets, uh, you know, better stuff, and use maybe better triage technology.
00:37:54.960 --> 00:38:10.880
But um, and and and yes, sometimes you absolutely uh need those things, but Horizon 2 um and the systems canvas is going to make you go a level deeper and ask that why are so many people actually arriving in the emergency room in the first place?
00:38:11.039 --> 00:38:18.800
Maybe they don't have a family doctor or they don't have accessible walk-in care, or they definitely don't have access to specialists.
00:38:18.960 --> 00:38:22.800
And the only way for them to access is going through emergency.
00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:28.719
And when you do that, then you realize that it's actually an access problem, not an emergency room problem.
00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:32.800
And we are putting uh our efforts in the wrong leverage points.
00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:36.159
We need to solve the access problem in the first place.
00:38:36.559 --> 00:38:46.079
Um so that's how I think uh, you know, uh we gotta really focus on how we are going from horizon two to horizon three.
00:38:46.320 --> 00:39:01.679
Most of the efforts that are happening right now is just treating the system and patching some way or the other, and we're just kind of not looking at what the underlying uh issue or the problem is that is producing that outcome in the first place.
00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:02.320
Yes.
00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:12.880
And I would say, like I I talked in a previous episode about finite and infinite games, whereas finite games are about winning the game and infinite games is about how long you can keep playing.
00:39:13.119 --> 00:39:18.719
And I think for politicians particularly, they're very in love with the finite game.
00:39:18.800 --> 00:39:29.760
The winning every four years, the the policy announcements, the bills that you pass, like those are all the finite games that they like to win and then like to promote in their brochures.
00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:32.400
It's the infinite game of the long term.
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:35.360
The players change, but the game keeps going.
00:39:35.519 --> 00:39:38.159
The conditions change, but the game keeps going.
00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:46.880
Like that's the goal in you know, keeping our systems alive and healthy and our world healthy is this playing of the infinite game.
00:39:47.039 --> 00:39:54.159
And so the more we can think about in that paradigm, which is your seven generation kind of thinking, right?
00:39:54.400 --> 00:40:00.960
That is the goal of uh of my podcast, anyways, is to shift into that way of thinking.
00:40:01.039 --> 00:40:02.480
How do we shift the narrative?
00:40:02.559 --> 00:40:05.119
How do we make that shift in our own thinking?
00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:08.000
Um, yeah, even when it comes to health.
00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:09.280
Yeah, absolutely.
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:10.880
And uh guess what's witching here?
00:40:11.039 --> 00:40:12.400
Clan mothers, I'd say.
00:40:12.639 --> 00:40:13.280
Yeah, exactly.
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:15.119
To tell the politicians, right?
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:18.320
When they're looking at hold them accountable, exactly.
00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:20.639
Then they're they're no longer serving the people.
00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:22.159
It is very evident.
00:40:22.320 --> 00:40:23.679
Where are the clan mothers?
00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:24.800
Why don't we have that?
00:40:25.119 --> 00:40:26.639
Yes, absolutely.
00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:44.880
So if we have a listener that is listening and is in a leadership role, or maybe in an organization where they don't have a lot of agency, what would you recommend that they do or that they start thinking about or actions they could take to start making the shift into this 90% code?
00:40:45.199 --> 00:40:47.119
No, answer by the book.
00:40:47.440 --> 00:40:48.480
Yes, exactly.
00:40:48.639 --> 00:40:50.239
Yes, do that for sure.
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:53.199
Yeah, and don't give away all of your chips.
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:57.599
Maybe I was just kidding.
00:40:57.760 --> 00:41:13.760
But uh, you know, I'll I'll make someone else make the case for me because uh uh the book just got reviewed uh by Kirkus, which um anyone in the publishing industry uh knows it's one of the uh top book review organizations, and they're famously hard to impress.
00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:20.639
And they called it a reflective call to action for individuals, organizations, and humanity as a whole.
00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:21.360
Amazing.
00:41:21.920 --> 00:41:29.039
And they also said, and I quote, that no doubt it is served as a useful manual for organizations aiming to drive meaningful change.
00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:32.880
And uh that makes me so happy because that was my purpose with the book.
00:41:32.960 --> 00:41:34.880
Yeah, I wanted it to inspire action.
00:41:35.039 --> 00:41:42.320
So each chapter, you've read it, so you know that each chapter ends with reflection questions and practices that you can actually try.
00:41:42.559 --> 00:41:49.440
And what I've done, and what's really helping me, is that some of my favorite ones, I've kind of made them a part of my daily practice.
00:41:49.599 --> 00:41:53.440
When I get up in the morning, I like to journal and reflect a bit.
00:41:53.679 --> 00:42:00.239
And uh, that's when there's some questions that I can share that really help me, which uh might help the listeners as well.
00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:08.639
One is that where in my current work or life I'm actually reacting from autopilot rather than uh responding from awareness.
00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:15.760
And I use that a lot when I'm mentoring founders because it helps me to listen to their perspective rather than push mine.
00:42:15.840 --> 00:42:26.000
Many times we're just like so busy just pushing, even before somebody has completed what they're saying, we've already made a decision in our mind, which is our perspective and want to push it.
00:42:26.159 --> 00:42:30.719
So this practice allows me to hold more than one perspective in my mind.
00:42:31.039 --> 00:42:37.679
I also often ask that when I'm taking a decision, how is it affecting people that have no voice in it?
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:46.400
And the more I think, the more I realize that there's so many um decisions like that, and how can we be more conscious about that?
00:42:46.719 --> 00:42:55.840
And one other practice which really helps team leaders is when you leave a team, are you leaving it more capable?
00:42:56.239 --> 00:43:00.880
Because if you're not, then what you've created as a team leader is more dependency.
00:43:01.039 --> 00:43:06.480
Like they need to be able to work without you, and that should be the goal when you're working with a team.
00:43:06.719 --> 00:43:07.440
Uh yeah.
00:43:07.519 --> 00:43:11.360
I at the end of this podcast, I would say, sh systems don't change unlike you do.
00:43:11.599 --> 00:43:24.800
So um it is a personal journey, as much as it is maybe more so than it is making big, bold changes to a huge system that seems overwhelming and too complicated.
00:43:24.880 --> 00:43:30.960
It is about that inner piece, those inner pieces that help you see things differently and understand things differently.
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:34.159
So you make different decisions and have different choices.
00:43:34.480 --> 00:43:35.039
Absolutely.
00:43:35.199 --> 00:43:38.559
And in the book, I call that inner alignment, and that's where it starts.
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:40.400
Great.
00:43:40.719 --> 00:43:42.719
So, where can people get your book?
00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:45.599
And what are you up to after this?
00:43:45.760 --> 00:43:51.440
What are you doing after you promote the book, or what are your goals to keep pushing this conversation forward?
00:43:52.239 --> 00:43:59.679
Oh, well, the book is right now available through all major online stores Amazon, Indigo, Bans and Nobles.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:00.719
Bookshop.
00:44:00.800 --> 00:44:04.800
Um, and if you prefer an online version, it's on Kobo and Kindle as well.
00:44:05.039 --> 00:44:09.760
Um, easiest place is um to just visit my site, thenetycode.com.
00:44:09.840 --> 00:44:13.039
Um, it uh shares the frameworks and the other tools.
00:44:13.599 --> 00:44:18.800
And I'm also a lot on LinkedIn, uh, probably more than that's medically advisable.
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:24.880
Writing about systems AI leadership.
00:44:24.960 --> 00:44:28.159
I post a lot of videos so you can see what I'm doing there as well.
00:44:28.480 --> 00:44:34.559
I think as I shared earlier, I don't have a very clear strategic path as to where I'm going from here.
00:44:35.039 --> 00:44:50.960
Um, but it's gonna be uh, you know, I'm gonna keep doing my part, spreading the word, working with communities, organizations, and making the collective intelligence as an inherent operating system or design in how we work so that there's more equity.
00:44:51.119 --> 00:45:00.480
But I'm gonna end with uh this this line, which I really like, and it's I've shared in the book as well, is from Arunta T Roy, who's an Indian novelist and activist.
00:45:00.559 --> 00:45:05.599
Um, and she says that another world is not only possible, she's on her way.
00:45:05.920 --> 00:45:15.280
And I think that captures the spirit of book for me that uh we spend a lot of time asking whether the old systems can be fixed.
00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:17.039
But I think that's important.
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:25.119
But a more interesting question is whether we can recognize what's already emerging and see how we can let it grow.
00:45:25.280 --> 00:45:26.960
So that is gonna be my purpose.
00:45:27.199 --> 00:45:28.079
Yeah, the new system.
00:45:28.719 --> 00:45:29.599
Well, thank you so much.
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:30.639
Your book is brilliant.
00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:32.400
I enjoy talking to you so much.
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:47.840
And I really recommend everybody go out and buy this book if you're if you're working, not just as a leader, but anybody working in an organization or a system will really come to see their own ways of working in that and consider new ways of of being different within those organizations.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:52.880
And I think this book is really going to contribute to the conversation that people are starting to have.
00:45:53.039 --> 00:45:54.239
So thank you for that.
00:45:54.559 --> 00:45:56.239
Thank you so much for having me, Kayla.
00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:57.679
I love that conversation.
00:45:58.239 --> 00:45:59.199
Yes, thanks.
00:45:59.440 --> 00:46:00.159
Bye-bye.
00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:01.119
Bye.
00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:06.480
Sonolis, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your ideas with me.
00:46:06.559 --> 00:46:08.400
And congratulations again on the book.
00:46:08.559 --> 00:46:19.360
One of the most significant things I heard is when she said, in our current system, we download the responsibility of outcomes to the people who do the work, yet we don't allow them any agency to actually make decisions.
00:46:19.519 --> 00:46:28.079
That pressure, that moral injury that's created by not having any power to actually make changes in the system, that leads to burnout as much as the overtime does.
00:46:28.320 --> 00:46:31.360
And I was also really struck by her question about the clan mothers.
00:46:31.519 --> 00:46:33.679
Who are the clan mothers in our system?
00:46:33.920 --> 00:46:34.320
I don't know.
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:36.239
I've got to think a little bit more about that.
00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:41.679
If you want to dig deeper, and I really hope you do, the 90% code is available wherever you buy books.
00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:46.159
And you can find Sonali's frameworks and tools at thenindycode.com.
00:46:46.320 --> 00:46:58.159
I've put all the links in the show notes, along with the link to my earlier conversation with Jul Steblock about Burtzorg and Andy Wilkins, who gives more information about the Three Horizons framework that we use to guide this conversation.
00:46:58.639 --> 00:47:04.559
If this episode got you thinking, please subscribe and share it with someone who's wrestling with these same questions in their own work.
00:47:04.800 --> 00:47:07.199
And remember, systems don't change unless you do.
00:47:07.280 --> 00:47:07.920
This is Shift.
00:47:08.159 --> 00:47:09.360
See you next time.
00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.160
Hey everyone, welcome to Shift.
00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:15.919
I'm your host, Kyle Avis.
00:00:16.160 --> 00:00:23.760
Earlier this season, I talked with Jos de Bloch about his organization, Bertzorg, where self-organizing nursing teams take ownership of the care they provide.
00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:27.600
No managers, no supervisors, a system built on trust.
00:00:27.839 --> 00:00:39.520
At one point in our conversation, he mentioned that he had met someone in Vancouver who was writing a book about his style of leadership, the one that enables leadership across organizations rather than holding onto control or power themselves.
00:00:39.759 --> 00:00:42.960
The author was Sonali Sharma, and she's my guest today.
00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:48.479
Sonali is the author of the 90% code: Rewriting Power for the AI Era.
00:00:48.719 --> 00:00:58.799
Sinali became a mother at 19 in a fairly orthodox environment in India, and she says that experience taught her what it feels like to have very little say in the decisions that shape your life.
00:00:59.039 --> 00:01:02.240
Her career has been anything but a straight line.
00:01:02.320 --> 00:01:13.120
And through all of it, she's been asking one question: why do we keep building systems that give so much power to a few when there's so much capacity and intelligence that could be used to change and improve systems?
00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:16.319
I think this conversation is very applicable to healthcare.
00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:27.280
As much as we talk about patient-centered care, empowerment, engagement, the truth is this is often seen as an optional activity, a nice to-do, or a way to tick off a box around consultation.
00:01:27.519 --> 00:01:34.319
But the truth is decisions are mostly in the hands of a few formal leaders, with little input from those it affects most.
00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:37.920
The truth is we lack trust, and without trust comes control.
00:01:38.239 --> 00:01:44.079
Every minute tracked, every activity accounted for, every decision requiring multiple layers of approval.
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Approval that takes weeks, months, even years.
00:01:46.959 --> 00:01:50.159
It's a complete barrier to innovation and improvement.
00:01:50.400 --> 00:02:02.000
In this conversation, we use the Three Horizons models to walk through her book: the hero leadership model that's losing its fit for purpose, the future she calls distributed abundance, and the messy middle in between.
00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:04.560
I love this conversation, and I think he will too.
00:02:04.719 --> 00:02:05.680
So let's get into it.
00:02:05.840 --> 00:02:07.599
Here's my conversation with Sonali.
00:02:10.400 --> 00:02:12.159
Hi Sonali, how are you?
00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:13.439
I'm doing well.
00:02:13.599 --> 00:02:14.400
How are you?
00:02:14.719 --> 00:02:15.599
Good, good.
00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:17.199
It's so nice to see you.
00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:19.599
Congratulations on your book.
00:02:19.919 --> 00:02:21.360
Absolutely exciting.
00:02:21.599 --> 00:02:22.479
Thank you so much.
00:02:22.639 --> 00:02:25.039
Um this month's been crazy.
00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:27.759
The feeling is still sinking in.
00:02:28.080 --> 00:02:28.639
Yes.
00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:31.280
So what goes into launching a book?
00:02:31.439 --> 00:02:32.400
Like, what do you have to do?
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Just do lots of promo and interviews and just get the word out.
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Well, it really depends, right?
00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:43.680
If you're you're a celebrity, then you do things differently, of course.
00:02:43.919 --> 00:02:49.039
But if you're a debut author, for me, it's all very uh distributed at small and small level.
00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:56.240
I didn't plan one big launch, um, but it's been you know a lot of effort working with the community.
00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:05.039
Like last week, um, I did a keynote at BCIT around 120 people, and then I combined it with book signing, so that was pretty good.
00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:08.879
So slow and steady, but yes, I'm doing a lot of podcasts.
00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:10.400
I did a couple last week.
00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:12.479
There's one more scheduled this week.
00:03:12.639 --> 00:03:19.759
Um so just yeah, I think it's gonna be a very slow and steady thing for me, which continues, but not like one big bang.
00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:20.560
That's not gonna be a good one.
00:03:20.639 --> 00:03:21.280
Yes, yes.
00:03:21.759 --> 00:03:23.520
Well, thanks for coming on my podcast.
00:03:23.599 --> 00:03:24.639
I really appreciate it.
00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:36.719
I heard about you through Jos DeBlock, who was on earlier this season talking about his Bert Sort model, and he said he had connected with you in Vancouver and was telling me about the book you were writing.
00:03:36.879 --> 00:03:41.680
And then I was like, well, maybe I should reach out to her and see if she would be interested in talking about it here.
00:03:41.919 --> 00:03:57.919
And you were, so I'm super happy to have you because I think, you know, sort of trying to capture the lessons of unique and interesting systemic leadership in the way that Jost de Bloch does it and putting that into a book and putting it all together, I think is very, very valuable.
00:03:58.080 --> 00:03:59.360
And I loved reading your book.
00:03:59.439 --> 00:04:05.840
I thought it was super interesting and sort of like the book the world needs right now.
00:04:06.319 --> 00:04:07.840
Thank you so much, Kyla.
00:04:08.159 --> 00:04:24.560
You know, getting this first-hand feedback from readers that means everything to me because you know when you're in a silo, you're developing all these ideas and uh frameworks, but the real test is when readers get back with feedback and and yeah, those words, yeah, they mean a lot.
00:04:24.720 --> 00:04:28.800
And yes, Josh is a darling, Jos and Michelle both and I recently met.
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Then I'm I'm a big fan, and uh I've been uh researching Bird Soc and their model uh for the past couple of years, and meeting them in person was like a big wow moment for me.
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And I'm so grateful that he mentioned me, and that's just so special about him, you know, uh as a leader.
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He's all about uh building others.
00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:49.839
Yes, for sure.
00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:57.279
Okay, so like I'm not a journalist, so I never know how to interview people who have written a book because I'm like, I want people to buy the book to read it.
00:04:57.439 --> 00:05:12.480
So I thought we'd just sort of have like a higher level conversation so that people can get a sense of what you really dig into in really good detail in your book, and you give really good personal examples of all of these concepts you're outlining.
00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:18.079
But today we're gonna give them a sense of what's in there and then people get the book to get into it a little bit further.
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So that sound good to you?
00:05:19.759 --> 00:05:20.480
Oh, sounds great.
00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:21.040
I'm excited.
00:05:21.279 --> 00:05:21.680
Awesome.
00:05:21.920 --> 00:05:22.240
Okay.
00:05:22.720 --> 00:05:32.639
So you talk about in a book how you became a mom at 19, and you said you built your career in spaces you say weren't built for you.
00:05:32.879 --> 00:05:40.639
And so I was just wondering if you could touch on how you got to the point of like deciding you wanted to write a book to put all these experiences together.
00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:41.920
Yeah.
00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:47.199
Uh I I became a mother very young in a fairly uh orthodox environment in India.
00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:57.680
And um, before I had any language for power or systems, I understood what it felt like to have uh very little say in decisions that shape your life.
00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:05.279
And it was those, you know, early experiences I'd say that gave me a good dose of vulnerability and courage.
00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:08.480
And interestingly, they both kind of feed off each other.
00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:16.399
One teaches you how much little control you have, and then you have courage that uh tells you to keep moving uh despite all of that.
00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:29.839
And I think that may uh to some extent explain why my career, if you look at the graph, it's less strategic and it's more like uh, you know, let's see what happens if we question the entire system.
00:06:30.079 --> 00:06:38.879
So I started as a teacher, then moved into enterprise development, got inspired by social impact, worked for one of the largest non-for-profits uh in Asia.
00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:44.560
Then after my MBA, I got obsessed with building uh business with impact in its front and center.
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So I uh we used to live in uh one of the big cities in South India, Bangalore, which is also called the Silicon uh City of India.
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We sold off our house and we moved to an extremely remote location in South India where we built one of Asia's first circular forest microfactory alongside indigenous Kuruba artisans, communities that had been excluded from the existing economic structures.
00:07:09.439 --> 00:07:21.199
And a lot of uh what I write in my book about uh the power of community uh trust and how you prioritize regeneration over extraction comes from my ears there.
00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:33.439
And uh then came Canada, worked in public sector innovation, colled provinces, tech commercialization strategy, and have been a mentor with founders and of late working on AI strategy.
00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:37.680
So I often say that uh, you know, there's no logical career path here.
00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:46.240
But what's what was there was uh, you know, a lot of curiosity, and uh in my local language, there is a word called Kira.
00:07:46.879 --> 00:07:53.439
Um, literal translation means a bug, you know, that annoying little thing that uh doesn't uh leave you alone.
00:07:53.680 --> 00:08:07.120
And for me, it was to uh find out why we as humans keep building systems that give disproportionate amounts of power to few when there is so much utilized capacity and intelligence everywhere.
00:08:07.519 --> 00:08:15.759
And in 2024, I felt that philosophical kira that I had that stopped being philosophical anymore because of what was happening in the world.
00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:30.720
AI was rapidly changing how we work, and then we have this strong men geopolitics that's changing the markets, is tariffs, there's glorified layoffs, there is hatred towards immigrants, and uh lots of doomsday books in the market.
00:08:30.959 --> 00:08:40.559
Um, so as a systems nerd, I uh wanted to, you know, think about uh how do we build things differently, and that's what became the book.
00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:43.039
That's what is the 90% code.
00:08:43.279 --> 00:08:48.480
And a lot of people ask me that what is 90% uh in the 90% code?
00:08:48.559 --> 00:08:52.320
A lot of people also get confused, is maybe this is a coding book or something.
00:08:53.919 --> 00:09:06.080
So, you know, uh it's it's very interesting because 90% is really a uh, you know, uh play on the stark inequity that exists in how power in ownership is distributed today.
00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:12.960
You know, if you look at by any logic, top 10% today owns more than the bottom 90% combined.
00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:19.039
There's less than 10% of uh workers that have equity in the companies that they uh work for.
00:09:19.279 --> 00:09:23.519
So I'd say 90% is not uh any precise demographic.
00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:30.799
It's anyone, anyone of us whose capacity to contribute exceeds what the existing systems can capture.
00:09:31.200 --> 00:09:46.320
And in one sentence, if I have to say, then the book is all about how do we build a world that runs on the intelligence capacity and agency of the 90% rather than uh on the authority and control of the few.
00:09:46.720 --> 00:09:47.279
Brilliant.
00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:57.440
And I think what I kind of understood from all of your experience that you connect throughout your book is that whatever space you were in, you kind of kept seeing the same paradigm.
00:09:57.519 --> 00:10:19.279
And she worked with that community in India, that really shifted your paradigm kind of thinking about the way that that systems work and communities work, and how you could leverage that style of working and that style of leadership in contrast to the ones that we're most familiar with, which is often more of a command and control and hierarchical kind of system.
00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:20.960
Absolutely.
00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:24.639
That uh community definitely played a very important role.
00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:36.000
However, I think everywhere I worked, there they were learnings and a lot also dependent on, you know, what my perspective was in understanding how systems work.
00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:47.279
Like in one of the first places, uh organizations that I worked when I was in my early 20s, I was handed over to books um, Good to Great by Jim Collins and the Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.
00:10:48.320 --> 00:11:07.279
That played a very, very important role in uh especially the fifth discipline and in understanding how to build a learning organization and how we can uh uh when we're looking at solving problems, are we looking at uh the root cause of the problems rather than just you know coming up with shortcome solutions to patch the system, which we do most of the time?
00:11:07.519 --> 00:11:16.879
Okay, so I thought it would be cool to kind of tie your thinking to the Three Horizons contract, which is a Bill Sharp model that I love.
00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:28.799
And for viewers or listeners who haven't, who don't know anything about the three horizons model, I recommend you going back to my early, early podcast and listening to Andy Wilkins conversation about it because I think he describes it really well.
00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:31.039
But I thought we could use that as a framework.
00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:39.840
So we talk about Horizon One, it's kind of the system that's going out of style, the one that's sort of losing its fit for purpose.
00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:49.919
Um, and you talk about the hero model as sort of the one that is fading or not being able to kind of meet the demands and the challenges of today.
00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:53.840
So, could you talk more about that system and what that looks like?
00:11:54.159 --> 00:11:55.200
Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:55.440 --> 00:11:59.679
And uh, you know, I was looking at your summer series title, The Center Cannot Hold.
00:11:59.919 --> 00:12:00.480
Yes.
00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:03.039
I think that's basically the subtitle of my book.
00:12:03.120 --> 00:12:07.039
So I kind of really was really interesting.
00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:19.759
So uh we've built um most of our institutions, government communities around uh simple assumptions that a few people at the top should think decide for everyone else because they know better.
00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:22.000
That's the hero model in simple terms.
00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:25.759
And my argument in the book is blunt that that hero model is dead.
00:12:25.919 --> 00:12:30.000
It's failing the people below it and also failing the people at the top.
00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:32.720
And it's dying for two major reasons.
00:12:32.960 --> 00:12:34.639
One is, I'd say, moral.
00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:42.720
Uh, you know, I believe that the purpose of leadership is to build more leaders, it is to create conditions where other people can grow and thrive.
00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:54.399
But what we have today instead are power holders that are dressed up as leaders, uh, people that keep pulling more authority, more ownership, and more reward towards themselves.
00:12:54.559 --> 00:13:04.399
And this data supporting that, uh, you know, if you um if you look at uh late 1970s, the average CEO to worker pay ratio at that time was 30 is to one.
00:13:04.799 --> 00:13:07.840
And today that is 400 is to one.
00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:16.879
In the same period, the worker productivity has grew more than 80%, but the worker average worker wages have grown only 15%.
00:13:17.679 --> 00:13:20.080
So I think that's insane.
00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:28.799
And uh, you know, a model that concentrates so much power um at the top, it's not just unfair, but it's also unsustainable.
00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:34.720
Reason that I share in the book uh why hero model is dying is more functional.
00:13:34.960 --> 00:13:37.840
You know, in the industrial era, hero model had logic.
00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:46.159
At that time, information was scarce, communication was slow, and um change was happening at the pace of human cognition.
00:13:46.320 --> 00:13:54.720
And uh hierarchy was really uh solving a real coordination problem, and a hero on the top would see the whole picture make sense of what's happening.
00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:57.200
But that's not the world that we live in anymore.
00:13:57.279 --> 00:14:08.960
Uh today technology has made the landscape too fast-paced, it's too interconnected, too dependent, and honestly too big for a few people to make sense of it.
00:14:09.360 --> 00:14:21.679
And uh, you know, we have today organizations that are larger than countries, and uh we have algorithms uh that take decisions faster than any human mind can process.
00:14:21.919 --> 00:14:26.799
So, speed, if you look at it as a factor alone, it's making that hero model crumble.
00:14:26.879 --> 00:14:32.559
And then on top of that, uh you add AI to that picture and uh what AI right?
00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:39.679
So, what AI does is it kind of breaks hero's last monopoly, which is that I'm the smartest person in the room.
00:14:40.320 --> 00:14:43.120
You're not the smartest person in the room anymore.
00:14:43.279 --> 00:14:51.120
Um, uh because what AI does, it distributes intelligence and it distributes expertise and it brings it to the edges.
00:14:51.279 --> 00:15:01.600
Now, when we introduce AI in high organizations that are rigidly hierarchical and centralized in their control, we've created a fundamental gap or a mismatch.
00:15:01.679 --> 00:15:06.879
And one of the reasons why organizations right now are struggling with the AI adoption.
00:15:07.039 --> 00:15:13.120
And I think some of the younger, newer organizations are catching on because they're building differently from day one.
00:15:13.279 --> 00:15:26.480
It's the older legacy, big elephants, institutions uh, you know, that are struggling the most because um the architecture is deeply ingrained, not just physically in design, but also in our minds.
00:15:26.639 --> 00:15:29.600
And so it's difficult to get out of it.
00:15:30.320 --> 00:15:35.200
So would you see that happening in healthcare organizations?
00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:44.639
Like when we think about sort of the the hierarchy, the orders that are giving, the religious and the militaristic structures that healthcare was sort of built around.
00:15:44.879 --> 00:15:50.240
Do you think healthcare has come to terms with this new world specifically?
00:15:50.559 --> 00:15:52.159
Or can you speak to that?
00:15:53.039 --> 00:16:04.320
Well, I'm not an expert on that, but my experience over there would be more in terms of how I have experienced it as a customer or as a patient for that matter.
00:16:04.639 --> 00:16:07.679
So definitely it's it's playing catch-on with a lot of things.
00:16:07.840 --> 00:16:09.519
Uh, there is a capacity problem.
00:16:09.600 --> 00:16:11.279
We keep emphasizing on that.
00:16:11.519 --> 00:16:21.360
And a lot of those, those issues that we are facing can definitely be dealt with in a different way with a more distributed architecture.
00:16:21.519 --> 00:16:35.679
But that would really mean trusting people that and and also questioning what our assumptions and underlying feelings are about how things should be, especially when it comes to something so sensitive as healthcare.
00:16:35.759 --> 00:16:37.039
Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:46.960
I think you know, healthcare is really in my experience with being a nurse too, like it really runs on the idea that the doctor or the clinician has the knowledge, right?
00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:48.799
Like they, you must come to them.
00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:50.399
They are the specialists.
00:16:50.639 --> 00:16:53.919
Um, you don't have the same information or the same education I do.
00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:56.080
So I hold power in that way.
00:16:56.399 --> 00:17:01.919
But now I find I'm asking AI all kinds of things, all kinds of navigation questions, all kinds of medical questions.
00:17:02.080 --> 00:17:07.200
I'm getting good information back, I'm getting good questions to ask for my appointments.
00:17:07.359 --> 00:17:14.559
I mean, that that is kind of like you said, it's a bit crumbling, that idea that just one person holds the knowledge and has the power.
00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:18.400
And we are seeing it, we are experiencing it, that it's not effective.
00:17:18.559 --> 00:17:30.480
And uh, conversations that I've had with people in leading institutions, including healthcare, is that everyone realizes that, you know, that those people on the top, that uh they are also struggling a lot.
00:17:30.640 --> 00:17:33.839
It's not that uh the model is really benefiting them.
00:17:34.079 --> 00:17:39.680
There's data supporting that, uh, that they are burnt out because there's too much pressure.
00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:48.880
And so as as systems, it's very ridiculous that we actually ask too much of the few and trust too little of the many.
00:17:49.039 --> 00:17:53.519
So it's it's kind of a ridiculous arrangement, but we've been trusting it for way too long.
00:17:53.680 --> 00:18:08.640
It did serve a purpose in the industrial age, where um it it uh it was celebrated also, but now a lot of people are realizing it doesn't work, but it is so deeply ingrained and it reproduces itself because it reinforces, right?
00:18:08.799 --> 00:18:22.160
When there's uncertainty, we feel safer when there's hierarchy, especially when there's uncertain times because uh, you know, we're like, oh, there's somebody on the top that's gonna change everything for us, but that doesn't really happen.
00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:26.880
So it requires a lot of work on questioning our basic assumptions.
00:18:27.119 --> 00:18:31.759
And uh that's what I've tried to establish in the book, uh, in the collective intelligence framework.
00:18:31.920 --> 00:18:49.759
Everything starts from within yourself, the inner alignment wherein uh you can start questioning yourself when you're operating from autopilot and you know, start seeing how we can actually uh hold more than one perspective in our mind and understand that it, yeah, I don't have all the answers.
00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:53.920
It's it's it's a collective uh, you know, that can create that impact.
00:18:54.079 --> 00:19:11.440
And yes, in healthcare, it would mean trusting more people, not directing every decision back to the most qualified person in the room, but also thinking that if proper information, proper guidelines, proper authority is distributed, then a lot of work can be done and shared by others as well.
00:19:11.759 --> 00:19:19.599
Okay, that's a great segue to Horizon three, which is the vision of the future and what that looks like.
00:19:19.839 --> 00:19:24.480
You use the term distributed leadership, which I find the most sort of accessible for me.
00:19:24.799 --> 00:19:31.200
So if you could maybe describe what your vision of the future, what leadership of the future looks like, that would be awesome.
00:19:31.599 --> 00:19:49.839
Well, uh, so in the book, the horizon three is uh what I call distributed abundance, a future where intelligent ownership and decision making are widely distributed and the value that everyone is creating it flows back to many, not just few, which is kind of what's happening there.
00:19:50.160 --> 00:20:06.559
And the engine that uh allows for that to happen is collective intelligence, which I think has a branding problem because when people when people hear it often, they're they're like, oh, it means we're gonna get everybody in the room do kumbaya.
00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:07.599
Yes.
00:20:08.079 --> 00:20:10.880
Nothing, nothing really gets uh accomplished.
00:20:11.039 --> 00:20:13.200
And uh that's not what I mean.
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:23.519
Collective intelligence is uh the ability of a group to perceive, process, and respond to complexity in ways no individual can achieve alone.
00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:27.599
And my favorite example for that is what you recently featured, Birdsock.
00:20:27.839 --> 00:20:38.160
If you look at them, 15,000 nurses and 1,000 self-managing teams, and what they have is transparent information, there's real autonomy, and there's distributed accountability.
00:20:38.319 --> 00:20:40.720
And uh no managers, beautiful.
00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:45.759
Um, it's also the first field note in my book under Collective Intelligence at Scale.
00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:55.519
And when I met Justin Michel, one of the things he mentioned, which I found fascinating, he said that growing up, he never experienced authority as control.
00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:00.079
To him, the purpose of authority was to inspire.
00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:04.079
And that's the distinction that shaped Birdsock for him.
00:21:04.319 --> 00:21:11.680
And uh that's the thing that I'm reinforcing in the book that distributed doesn't mean disconnected.
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:21.440
You distribute the authority, you distribute ownership, information, but you have feedback loops, rapid sensing, all of that that is required for a distributed system to work.
00:21:21.759 --> 00:21:26.480
But you keep at center the inspiration, the shared meaning, the shared purpose.
00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:39.680
And understand that the purpose of center and hence the purpose of leaders is not to control, it is to create the conditions and field effect so that the collective intelligence can work at a scale.
00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:42.640
And I think that's where the difference lies.
00:21:42.720 --> 00:21:44.160
And that's the future I'm imagining.
00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:59.359
It's kind of like a system of shared power, of shared influence, of shared conversation, getting all the wisdom that's out there and kind of bringing that all together to find a path forward instead of a group of people sitting in a boardroom trying to decide.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.960
People to trying to decide that for an entire group of people or an entire province?
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:07.200
Like that's really the shift, right?
00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:08.240
Absolutely.
00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:08.960
Yeah.
00:22:09.119 --> 00:22:09.440
Okay.
00:22:09.839 --> 00:22:20.720
So, in your experience then, um, what are some examples that you've seen or uh ways in which people are working that are working well?
00:22:20.880 --> 00:22:31.200
You talked about Bertzorg, but are there other ways that communities or or structures are kind of dismantling that old hero model and moving into a different way of working?
00:22:31.519 --> 00:22:32.720
But that's a great question.
00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:36.319
The book does share uh quite a few of those stories.
00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:44.880
There are uh things emerging, not just right now, but I would also uh, you know, book draws majorly on a lot of older governance traditions as well.
00:22:45.039 --> 00:22:50.319
Um but if you look at examples of today, Mundragan is an example that I share in the book.
00:22:50.400 --> 00:22:56.799
It's one of the largest cooperatives and again, really built on shared structures.
00:22:57.039 --> 00:23:04.880
They also have this one-sixth ratio, wherein the person that's earning the highest and the lowest, the gap shouldn't be more than one-sixth.
00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:17.200
And when the global financial crisis happened and a lot of companies were laying people off, this was one of the organizations that did not lay off its people but moved them within the whole co-op network that they had.
00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:27.359
So democracy in small ways and places is involving more and more people with the help of technology so that we can experience more participatory democracy.
00:23:27.599 --> 00:23:38.960
Spotify, they've been known for this, they're autonomous squads, um, wherein there are teams with full information, authority, and accountability with a shared purpose.
00:23:39.039 --> 00:23:45.920
When Spotify scaled, then they realized that the distributed autonomous squads uh are kind of getting a bit fragmented.
00:23:46.079 --> 00:23:57.440
So they they then evolved into a fleet first model wherein teams still have the autonomy, but there is a shared structure that is connecting them, shared purpose, what we just spoke about.
00:23:57.759 --> 00:24:00.960
Um so yes, the change, the shift is happening.
00:24:01.119 --> 00:24:08.400
And one thing about change, you know, that I often say is that uh it's not something that starts at the top or at the center.
00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:12.400
It's always something that starts small on the edges.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:17.920
And when it succeeds, when the evidence is there, that's when it picks out.
00:24:18.160 --> 00:24:20.880
Um so it's is that change, change is happening.
00:24:20.960 --> 00:24:21.119
Yeah.
00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:26.319
So there's little pockets that are sort of emerging of people trying to do things in different ways.
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:35.920
And then, you know, the idea is those pockets converge and those pockets kind of join up and share what they're learning and share their knowledge, and then that builds into a new system.
00:24:36.400 --> 00:24:36.960
Absolutely.
00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:41.759
And I think um, I think that's how I uh this country also got its Medicare, right?
00:24:41.839 --> 00:24:45.440
It started small in the Swift uh current region of Saskatchewan.
00:24:45.519 --> 00:24:48.160
So I think it's a similar practice, right?
00:24:48.319 --> 00:25:00.240
Um it was something that started small by people, and then because it it was it was something good, then the center got up and then it became province-wide, it became like a example.
00:25:00.559 --> 00:25:07.680
So the same thing is happening um in how organizations are structuring themselves and how leaders are thinking about their role.
00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:16.960
Yeah, and one of the questions I keep coming back to is does someone have to build that structure to connect them and to build that together, or does it happen organically?
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:22.720
That's what I'm most focused on right now is do we need people convening?
00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:26.319
Do we need, you know, people that are facilitating conversations?
00:25:26.480 --> 00:25:29.680
How do we set up our technology so that the information is shared?
00:25:29.759 --> 00:25:33.359
How, you know, because even with Bertzorg, they set up their own website, right?
00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:37.279
With everybody connecting and how do you get people to get into that technology?
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:49.680
So that's what I'm really interested in right now is what takes this from pockets of innovation and new ideas into morphing into the new way of doing things or the new model.
00:25:49.920 --> 00:25:50.559
Well, absolutely.
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:56.720
I've written a whole book about it, the how of it, how you should achieve it as an organization.
00:25:56.799 --> 00:25:58.240
And there are ways to do that.
00:25:58.400 --> 00:26:01.839
But coming to your question, I think it's a bit of both.
00:26:02.079 --> 00:26:08.880
When when there's times of rapid change and there's a lot of uncertainty and chaos, and with AI, there is a lot of chaos.
00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:12.240
Um people are feeling anxious, people are feeling scared.
00:26:12.400 --> 00:26:20.400
And I'd say the people in power or people uh that are leaders right now, they're responsible for creating that chaos.
00:26:20.559 --> 00:26:37.440
Because every day we're listening to a different narrative, and a lot of what I shared in the book and the AI Trust framework, that's also a part of the book, is about answering these questions and how much awareness we can create in people as well as in organizations when working with.
00:26:38.559 --> 00:26:45.200
I also coming to realize that the things that we're talking about for the future, what we need for the future, are very much rooted in the past.
00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:51.200
And in indigenous ways of knowing and ancient culture philosophy.
00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:52.960
Could you touch on that a little bit?
00:26:53.039 --> 00:27:01.920
Because I think what we're often talking about is not something new, it's something that's been rooted in many cultures for many thousands of years.
00:27:02.079 --> 00:27:07.119
And you had such an interesting experience working with the community in India and learning about that.
00:27:07.279 --> 00:27:09.119
Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:10.640
Yeah, yes, of course.
00:27:10.720 --> 00:27:15.039
You know, I want to be careful here because I'm not an expert on indigenous knowledge systems.
00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:21.279
But what I do have, as you rightly pointed out, is lived experience with the Kuruba communities in South India.
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:27.039
And while researching the book, I spent a lot of time looking at uh older traditions of governance.
00:27:27.279 --> 00:27:38.400
And uh, one thing that stayed with me was that a lot of ideas of what we call distributed leadership, participatory governance, or long-term thinking, they're not new at all.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.200
They're actually very old uh ideas.
00:27:41.519 --> 00:27:45.279
Um, take the Hodenushauni Confederacy, for example.
00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:51.359
It is one of the oldest uh participatory um governance systems in the world.
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:58.720
And one of the ideas associated with their tradition is uh what we now call the seven generations principle.
00:27:58.880 --> 00:28:00.559
I talk about that in the book.
00:28:00.720 --> 00:28:09.599
It's what decision that we make today as leaders, we think about its impact on at least seven generations that come after you.
00:28:09.920 --> 00:28:21.519
And I think I find that very, very significant, and uh, especially when we look at how we are looking at AI systems and its impact on people, community, and violence as organizations.
00:28:21.599 --> 00:28:26.240
Are we thinking about not just us and our kids, but seven generations in the future?
00:28:26.480 --> 00:28:32.079
And I think what was also really interesting about this idea was it was just like a nice idea that they had.
00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:36.720
They had built a full accountability structure around it in the Confederacy.
00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:47.920
They had clan mothers and senior mothers who had the authority to appoint chiefs and also to remove them if they were no longer serving the people well.
00:28:48.079 --> 00:28:54.640
So the men were deliberating, but the women had a very important role in deciding who would fit to lean.
00:28:54.880 --> 00:28:56.640
So I find that really fascinating.
00:28:56.880 --> 00:29:16.240
And when the founding fathers in America, when they were building the American constitution, they appreciated the Hodenoshawne um confederacy and uh they took inspiration from the ideas, but they left behind the two key elements, which is the role of women in governance that was kind of taken off, and the seventh generation thinking.
00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:22.079
So I often say that they practically took the soul uh you know of accountability out of it.
00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:35.440
So those are some of the traditions I talk about in the book, and uh closer to where I grew up, the Vedic traditions, so we had Sabha and Samiti, which meant that major decisions in the villages were taken by uh deliberation, not by decree.
00:29:35.680 --> 00:29:39.920
And because we are talking about health, I'd like to bring Ayurveda.
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:45.519
And by Ayurveda, I don't mean bringing ancient remedies into modern medicine.
00:29:45.599 --> 00:29:51.200
I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about Ayurveda's core principle, which was prevention, not cure.
00:29:51.440 --> 00:30:00.240
The role of ancient health practitioner, uh, who we used to call Vedia, uh, was to make sure that within their community nobody gets sick.
00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:04.880
It wasn't to just cure illnesses, but to actually prevent.
00:30:04.960 --> 00:30:16.720
And I think um uh that's one of the questions that uh we should ask uh when we are designing healthcare systems that um are we designing our systems around preserving health rather than just uh treating illnesses?
00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:24.480
So in the book, I try to integrate all of these ideas into the capacities that we need to build collective intelligence.
00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:33.519
So there's two capacities system stewardship and ethical foresight that directly draws from various older uh traditions and systems.
00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:51.680
So I'm not arguing that we should somehow go backwards, but I think it's important uh as civilizations to sometimes stop and reflect that what was it in the past that we knew that was working and we've just forgotten about it or left it behind?
00:30:52.319 --> 00:31:02.000
So when you are talking about the ideas in your book, you are really challenging power structures and power holders.
00:31:02.319 --> 00:31:06.319
How is the reaction that you're getting to the concept and idea?
00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:07.839
How is that going over with people?
00:31:08.160 --> 00:31:13.519
Do you find there's a readiness to accept this new way of being, a new way of leading, a new way of doing?
00:31:13.759 --> 00:31:18.720
Or are you still finding structures pushing back on the ideas that you're introducing?
00:31:19.279 --> 00:31:24.319
But oh yes, I I I had to get a pushback and uh I've been fired a couple of times.
00:31:24.559 --> 00:31:24.880
Yes.
00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:28.720
So there's empirical evidence that there is a lot of pushback.
00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:35.759
But on a serious note, pushback is really someone saying that, oh, I love concentrated power and I'm not gonna give it up.
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:39.359
That's not the kind of pushback I get, but it's usually much more subtle.
00:31:39.599 --> 00:31:44.880
Uh people agree with the idea in principle, collective intelligence, yeah, it sounds great.
00:31:44.960 --> 00:31:48.240
And distributed leadership, yeah, and empowered teams.
00:31:48.319 --> 00:31:51.039
Yes, we are all for team empowerment.
00:31:51.200 --> 00:31:55.519
But then in the next sentence, it's like, oh, why don't you come and run a workshop, my team?
00:31:55.599 --> 00:32:00.000
And and I'm I'm thinking, yeah, maybe uh you may be the workshop, right?
00:32:00.240 --> 00:32:00.559
Right.
00:32:00.880 --> 00:32:18.079
So because overall I've seen that organizations are very comfortable in distributing responsibility downward, but keeping the authority upward, which is like, oh, you own the outcome, but you don't control the budget, you don't control the processes.
00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:22.559
We encourage you to speak up, but there will be consequences if you speak up.
00:32:22.799 --> 00:32:26.480
And we value your voice, but uh, oh great, can I change anything?
00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:28.160
Oh no, uh, you can't.
00:32:28.240 --> 00:32:33.279
So it's it's more like you know, we value the feedback, but we don't value your agency.
00:32:34.799 --> 00:32:44.240
In the book, I call that as empowerment hit, wherein you know, teams and organizations want to distribute accountability but keep the power still centralized.
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:44.720
Yeah.
00:32:45.039 --> 00:32:54.160
And I would say in healthcare, we don't even have the structures to really kind of have collective intelligence, even with the providers, let alone the patients that are getting the care.
00:32:54.319 --> 00:33:02.640
And I mean, that's even the next level of taking it into communities, taking it into neighborhoods, you know, understanding from that perspective.
00:33:02.799 --> 00:33:12.720
And again, I think there's little pockets of things that are happening, but often what I find is people that are involved in communities or or patients that are involved, they almost get co-opted into the system.
00:33:12.960 --> 00:33:19.200
And then there's like power structures that kind of hold them back or they become cheerful of speaking up.
00:33:19.359 --> 00:33:26.559
So, you know, you kind of, you know, suck them into that uh horizon one kind of way of working, right?
00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:42.640
So, you know, I think there's a lot of attempts to do the empowerment work, there's a lot of attempts to listen, but it's not really built in in true collective intelligence and participatory decision making that I think you're proposing and you know, giving steps to guide people into that direction.
00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:45.839
Yeah, I um I I agree with you.
00:33:45.920 --> 00:33:52.640
And I think uh what really makes a difference here is horizon two as to how you do that.
00:33:52.880 --> 00:33:55.119
You know, that's that is the real bridge.
00:33:55.200 --> 00:33:59.599
Um, and I think probably um uh that is the hardest horizon.
00:33:59.680 --> 00:34:02.559
Uh, because horizon one, it's easy to diagnose.
00:34:02.720 --> 00:34:05.279
People naturally already understand, they see it.
00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:09.679
And horizon three is something which is uh exciting to imagine.
00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:13.039
Oh, we want that world of distributed abundance.
00:34:13.360 --> 00:34:18.239
Horizon two is where uh your Monday morning happens, right?
00:34:19.039 --> 00:34:24.239
You're like, uh, okay, now I have to think about building new systems while still running the old one.
00:34:25.280 --> 00:34:28.320
Thought itself is very tiring for most of the people.
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:38.239
And I think the biggest trap here is that we are mostly treating the symptoms, and then we call it that it is transformation.
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:56.400
And a way to look at that, and I will uh you know link it to healthcare as well, but um, I I'll start with uh sharing a bit about uh look at some of the biggest polychrisis problems that we have that have stayed leader after leaders, despite so many different strategies that have been tried.
00:34:56.480 --> 00:35:00.000
So I'm gonna talk very briefly about two poverty and climate problems.
00:35:00.400 --> 00:35:01.280
If you look at that.
00:35:01.760 --> 00:35:06.880
Um so poverty, we've spent decades responding downstream.
00:35:07.360 --> 00:35:12.079
We talk about giving benefits, subsidies, and job trainings, and all of that is important.
00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:27.519
But if the majority of the people have no pathways to actually build ownership and rely only on wages that do not increase at par with inflation, the system is going to keep reproducing the same inequity.
00:35:28.320 --> 00:35:31.199
And downstream efforts are not going to solve the problem.
00:35:31.760 --> 00:35:37.440
The deeper shift here is uh creating more opportunities to build equity for people.
00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:38.880
And we're not doing that.
00:35:39.360 --> 00:35:41.920
What we're doing is treating symptoms.
00:35:42.159 --> 00:35:45.280
We're not looking at the cause of the problem, we're looking treating symptoms.
00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:47.119
Same thing is with climate.
00:35:47.599 --> 00:35:53.039
What we do is we're setting targets and uh you know reduce emission targets and carbon credits.
00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:53.760
Great.
00:35:54.559 --> 00:36:07.760
But what is producing the climate problem is an underlying system and architecture that rewards short-term profits and extraction, which is the first place why we're building data centers right now.
00:36:08.079 --> 00:36:08.719
Yeah right.
00:36:09.039 --> 00:36:14.079
So again, uh we are fighting the consequences, but we are not changing what produces them.
00:36:14.559 --> 00:36:26.719
So for me, what really makes a difference in Horizon 2 is asking where in the system or what in the system is producing the outcome that we are trying to change.
00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:40.400
And that's really a hard question because that means we are asking you to question your underlying incentives, your underlying assumptions, why a system is built in a certain way.
00:36:40.800 --> 00:37:01.519
And what I've tried in the book is I've I've shared a systems change canvas, and system change canvas tells you to identify where exactly your system is stuck and at what level the intervention is needed so that you're not just patching the system with a small uh policy tweak or with a small uh uh you know new uh beneficial.
00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:04.320
New program, exactly, new project.
00:37:04.880 --> 00:37:10.559
But you are actually you know asking what is creating that problem in the first place?
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:14.320
How do we uh change what the system rewards?
00:37:14.480 --> 00:37:22.880
Because the system produces what it rewards, you are rewarding profits, you are rewarding those companies that are going in a fast pace, destroying climate.
00:37:23.199 --> 00:37:28.320
So just coming up with different ways to reduce emissions is not gonna work.
00:37:28.559 --> 00:37:31.039
You have to stop rewarding the companies that are doing that.
00:37:31.360 --> 00:37:32.559
That's when it is going to work.
00:37:32.639 --> 00:37:34.880
But we are not, we don't want to face that.
00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:42.880
And the same thing, uh, you know, if you use that in the healthcare personal experience, emergent emergency room wait times.
00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:46.559
We've all experienced eight to ten hours average.
00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:54.639
Now, the immediate response is you add more bets, uh, you know, better stuff, and use maybe better triage technology.
00:37:54.960 --> 00:38:10.880
But um, and and and yes, sometimes you absolutely uh need those things, but Horizon 2 um and the systems canvas is going to make you go a level deeper and ask that why are so many people actually arriving in the emergency room in the first place?
00:38:11.039 --> 00:38:18.800
Maybe they don't have a family doctor or they don't have accessible walk-in care, or they definitely don't have access to specialists.
00:38:18.960 --> 00:38:22.800
And the only way for them to access is going through emergency.
00:38:22.960 --> 00:38:28.719
And when you do that, then you realize that it's actually an access problem, not an emergency room problem.
00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:32.800
And we are putting uh our efforts in the wrong leverage points.
00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:36.159
We need to solve the access problem in the first place.
00:38:36.559 --> 00:38:46.079
Um so that's how I think uh, you know, uh we gotta really focus on how we are going from horizon two to horizon three.
00:38:46.320 --> 00:39:01.679
Most of the efforts that are happening right now is just treating the system and patching some way or the other, and we're just kind of not looking at what the underlying uh issue or the problem is that is producing that outcome in the first place.
00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:02.320
Yes.
00:39:02.480 --> 00:39:12.880
And I would say, like I I talked in a previous episode about finite and infinite games, whereas finite games are about winning the game and infinite games is about how long you can keep playing.
00:39:13.119 --> 00:39:18.719
And I think for politicians particularly, they're very in love with the finite game.
00:39:18.800 --> 00:39:29.760
The winning every four years, the the policy announcements, the bills that you pass, like those are all the finite games that they like to win and then like to promote in their brochures.
00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:32.400
It's the infinite game of the long term.
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:35.360
The players change, but the game keeps going.
00:39:35.519 --> 00:39:38.159
The conditions change, but the game keeps going.
00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:46.880
Like that's the goal in you know, keeping our systems alive and healthy and our world healthy is this playing of the infinite game.
00:39:47.039 --> 00:39:54.159
And so the more we can think about in that paradigm, which is your seven generation kind of thinking, right?
00:39:54.400 --> 00:40:00.960
That is the goal of uh of my podcast, anyways, is to shift into that way of thinking.
00:40:01.039 --> 00:40:02.480
How do we shift the narrative?
00:40:02.559 --> 00:40:05.119
How do we make that shift in our own thinking?
00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:08.000
Um, yeah, even when it comes to health.
00:40:08.400 --> 00:40:09.280
Yeah, absolutely.
00:40:09.360 --> 00:40:10.880
And uh guess what's witching here?
00:40:11.039 --> 00:40:12.400
Clan mothers, I'd say.
00:40:12.639 --> 00:40:13.280
Yeah, exactly.
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:15.119
To tell the politicians, right?
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:18.320
When they're looking at hold them accountable, exactly.
00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:20.639
Then they're they're no longer serving the people.
00:40:20.800 --> 00:40:22.159
It is very evident.
00:40:22.320 --> 00:40:23.679
Where are the clan mothers?
00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:24.800
Why don't we have that?
00:40:25.119 --> 00:40:26.639
Yes, absolutely.
00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:44.880
So if we have a listener that is listening and is in a leadership role, or maybe in an organization where they don't have a lot of agency, what would you recommend that they do or that they start thinking about or actions they could take to start making the shift into this 90% code?
00:40:45.199 --> 00:40:47.119
No, answer by the book.
00:40:47.440 --> 00:40:48.480
Yes, exactly.
00:40:48.639 --> 00:40:50.239
Yes, do that for sure.
00:40:50.480 --> 00:40:53.199
Yeah, and don't give away all of your chips.
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:57.599
Maybe I was just kidding.
00:40:57.760 --> 00:41:13.760
But uh, you know, I'll I'll make someone else make the case for me because uh uh the book just got reviewed uh by Kirkus, which um anyone in the publishing industry uh knows it's one of the uh top book review organizations, and they're famously hard to impress.
00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:20.639
And they called it a reflective call to action for individuals, organizations, and humanity as a whole.
00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:21.360
Amazing.
00:41:21.920 --> 00:41:29.039
And they also said, and I quote, that no doubt it is served as a useful manual for organizations aiming to drive meaningful change.
00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:32.880
And uh that makes me so happy because that was my purpose with the book.
00:41:32.960 --> 00:41:34.880
Yeah, I wanted it to inspire action.
00:41:35.039 --> 00:41:42.320
So each chapter, you've read it, so you know that each chapter ends with reflection questions and practices that you can actually try.
00:41:42.559 --> 00:41:49.440
And what I've done, and what's really helping me, is that some of my favorite ones, I've kind of made them a part of my daily practice.
00:41:49.599 --> 00:41:53.440
When I get up in the morning, I like to journal and reflect a bit.
00:41:53.679 --> 00:42:00.239
And uh, that's when there's some questions that I can share that really help me, which uh might help the listeners as well.
00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:08.639
One is that where in my current work or life I'm actually reacting from autopilot rather than uh responding from awareness.
00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:15.760
And I use that a lot when I'm mentoring founders because it helps me to listen to their perspective rather than push mine.
00:42:15.840 --> 00:42:26.000
Many times we're just like so busy just pushing, even before somebody has completed what they're saying, we've already made a decision in our mind, which is our perspective and want to push it.
00:42:26.159 --> 00:42:30.719
So this practice allows me to hold more than one perspective in my mind.
00:42:31.039 --> 00:42:37.679
I also often ask that when I'm taking a decision, how is it affecting people that have no voice in it?
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:46.400
And the more I think, the more I realize that there's so many um decisions like that, and how can we be more conscious about that?
00:42:46.719 --> 00:42:55.840
And one other practice which really helps team leaders is when you leave a team, are you leaving it more capable?
00:42:56.239 --> 00:43:00.880
Because if you're not, then what you've created as a team leader is more dependency.
00:43:01.039 --> 00:43:06.480
Like they need to be able to work without you, and that should be the goal when you're working with a team.
00:43:06.719 --> 00:43:07.440
Uh yeah.
00:43:07.519 --> 00:43:11.360
I at the end of this podcast, I would say, sh systems don't change unlike you do.
00:43:11.599 --> 00:43:24.800
So um it is a personal journey, as much as it is maybe more so than it is making big, bold changes to a huge system that seems overwhelming and too complicated.
00:43:24.880 --> 00:43:30.960
It is about that inner piece, those inner pieces that help you see things differently and understand things differently.
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:34.159
So you make different decisions and have different choices.
00:43:34.480 --> 00:43:35.039
Absolutely.
00:43:35.199 --> 00:43:38.559
And in the book, I call that inner alignment, and that's where it starts.
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:40.400
Great.
00:43:40.719 --> 00:43:42.719
So, where can people get your book?
00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:45.599
And what are you up to after this?
00:43:45.760 --> 00:43:51.440
What are you doing after you promote the book, or what are your goals to keep pushing this conversation forward?
00:43:52.239 --> 00:43:59.679
Oh, well, the book is right now available through all major online stores Amazon, Indigo, Bans and Nobles.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:00.719
Bookshop.
00:44:00.800 --> 00:44:04.800
Um, and if you prefer an online version, it's on Kobo and Kindle as well.
00:44:05.039 --> 00:44:09.760
Um, easiest place is um to just visit my site, thenetycode.com.
00:44:09.840 --> 00:44:13.039
Um, it uh shares the frameworks and the other tools.
00:44:13.599 --> 00:44:18.800
And I'm also a lot on LinkedIn, uh, probably more than that's medically advisable.
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:24.880
Writing about systems AI leadership.
00:44:24.960 --> 00:44:28.159
I post a lot of videos so you can see what I'm doing there as well.
00:44:28.480 --> 00:44:34.559
I think as I shared earlier, I don't have a very clear strategic path as to where I'm going from here.
00:44:35.039 --> 00:44:50.960
Um, but it's gonna be uh, you know, I'm gonna keep doing my part, spreading the word, working with communities, organizations, and making the collective intelligence as an inherent operating system or design in how we work so that there's more equity.
00:44:51.119 --> 00:45:00.480
But I'm gonna end with uh this this line, which I really like, and it's I've shared in the book as well, is from Arunta T Roy, who's an Indian novelist and activist.
00:45:00.559 --> 00:45:05.599
Um, and she says that another world is not only possible, she's on her way.
00:45:05.920 --> 00:45:15.280
And I think that captures the spirit of book for me that uh we spend a lot of time asking whether the old systems can be fixed.
00:45:15.519 --> 00:45:17.039
But I think that's important.
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:25.119
But a more interesting question is whether we can recognize what's already emerging and see how we can let it grow.
00:45:25.280 --> 00:45:26.960
So that is gonna be my purpose.
00:45:27.199 --> 00:45:28.079
Yeah, the new system.
00:45:28.719 --> 00:45:29.599
Well, thank you so much.
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:30.639
Your book is brilliant.
00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:32.400
I enjoy talking to you so much.
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:47.840
And I really recommend everybody go out and buy this book if you're if you're working, not just as a leader, but anybody working in an organization or a system will really come to see their own ways of working in that and consider new ways of of being different within those organizations.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:52.880
And I think this book is really going to contribute to the conversation that people are starting to have.
00:45:53.039 --> 00:45:54.239
So thank you for that.
00:45:54.559 --> 00:45:56.239
Thank you so much for having me, Kayla.
00:45:56.320 --> 00:45:57.679
I love that conversation.
00:45:58.239 --> 00:45:59.199
Yes, thanks.
00:45:59.440 --> 00:46:00.159
Bye-bye.
00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:01.119
Bye.
00:46:02.880 --> 00:46:06.480
Sonolis, thank you so much for sharing your stories and your ideas with me.
00:46:06.559 --> 00:46:08.400
And congratulations again on the book.
00:46:08.559 --> 00:46:19.360
One of the most significant things I heard is when she said, in our current system, we download the responsibility of outcomes to the people who do the work, yet we don't allow them any agency to actually make decisions.
00:46:19.519 --> 00:46:28.079
That pressure, that moral injury that's created by not having any power to actually make changes in the system, that leads to burnout as much as the overtime does.
00:46:28.320 --> 00:46:31.360
And I was also really struck by her question about the clan mothers.
00:46:31.519 --> 00:46:33.679
Who are the clan mothers in our system?
00:46:33.920 --> 00:46:34.320
I don't know.
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:36.239
I've got to think a little bit more about that.
00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:41.679
If you want to dig deeper, and I really hope you do, the 90% code is available wherever you buy books.
00:46:41.760 --> 00:46:46.159
And you can find Sonali's frameworks and tools at thenindycode.com.
00:46:46.320 --> 00:46:58.159
I've put all the links in the show notes, along with the link to my earlier conversation with Jul Steblock about Burtzorg and Andy Wilkins, who gives more information about the Three Horizons framework that we use to guide this conversation.
00:46:58.639 --> 00:47:04.559
If this episode got you thinking, please subscribe and share it with someone who's wrestling with these same questions in their own work.
00:47:04.800 --> 00:47:07.199
And remember, systems don't change unless you do.
00:47:07.280 --> 00:47:07.920
This is Shift.
00:47:08.159 --> 00:47:09.360
See you next time.
