SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hello and welcome to the 925 Wellness Podcast. How are you guys doing today? How’s your lunch break going? Good? Okay. It’s gonna get even better. You know why? Because today we are talking about a topic that I believe you can learn so much from, and you will have new leadership skills in your toolbox by the end of this podcast interview. We are talking about can’t versus won’t, the hidden cost of corporate constraints. And you know what? I have been working as a corporate wellness consultant for the last seven years, and we just keep on saying we can’t, we can’t. I’ve heard that so many times from the leadership, from the managers, sometimes even from the team members. Oh no, but we can’t do this because, right? Pretty common. And so often at work, we just stop questioning whether the reason that we are giving is actually applicable, is actually true or not. What if most of the walls that we hit aren’t real at all? Just some choices that we are making, right? So in this episode, I have a super special guest, and I’m gonna read his introduction soon. He’s an innovation coach joining us to unpack canned culture in just quiet, often unintentional way leadership and sometimes teams just stop trying. So we’re gonna dig into why over 70%, let that just land, over 70% of organizational transformations fail. What separates companies that actually deliver innovation from those just who just talk about it? So without further ado, I do want to introduce you to our special guest today. Our special guest today is JL Heather. He is co-founder and managing partner of Centered and creator of the Canned Culture Framework, a lens for spotting how organizations disguise choices as constraints. A principal executive coach with over 20 years in the trenches, he has coached senior leaders at Ford, Pfizer, T-Mobile, Wendy’s, GE, and HP. I’m sure his list is so extensive we can’t go down that. But these are some of the companies in the forefront. And he has helped them build the leadership capacity to drive lasting innovation and cut cycle times in half. He is co-author of the Agile Code and Breakthrough Innovation. He co-hosts Breakthrough Innovation Podcast and holds credentials as an ICF Professional Certified Coach, Certified Professional Coactive Coach, and Leadership Circle Profile Practitioner. Welcome to the podcast, JL. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

I’m doing good. Thank you for inviting me, Aisha. Looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for finding time in your busy schedule and joining us for this conversation. Before we go into the topic itself, someone who’s hitting play on this episode right now, I want us to talk to them. And I want us to tell them what are they gonna take away from our conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

I think when you look at what can’t culture is, it’s more than just a business problem. It’s a little bit of the human condition. And I think the reason I find it so important is when we talk about things like empowerment and autonomy, things everyone wants, this really gets at the heart of some of the key things that get in the way that never get any attention because they kind of fly under the radar. So I think maybe the biggest thing that I want people to walk away with is some awareness of what are some of the things that are maybe holding them back in themselves, in the team they’re on, or in the organization they work in, and be able to at the very least start recognizing the patterns so they can start making some choices that maybe they weren’t making before.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Wonderful. I think that’s a great takeaway. So let’s dive right into it. Since we just talked about the can’t culture and what as leaders we are not recognizing, and or as team members we are not recognizing. So what do you think is the can’t, you know, the can’t culture? Is it a leadership behavior issue, a legacy process, something baked into how success gets measured in corporations and corporate culture? What’s going on?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

When I first started thinking about all this, it kind of started with a single engagement. I was working with a leader at an organization where he was, this person was really struggling to push a product innovation through. So whether that was process, whether that was approval, like whatever it was, it was really just getting stuck. And I remember kind of sitting back and thinking it was strange because no one had said no. There wasn’t no one had refused, like there wasn’t anything that he could really point to that was a concrete decision that was being made. And I kind of remember thinking it’s almost like the culture was saying can’t more than anything else. And that kind of hit me a little bit like a lightning bolt. It was one of those light bulb moments. And I started going back to like every client I work with, every uh engagement I’d been on, and I started seeing the same pattern. It was rarely the individual or a person that was saying no. It was almost like the culture. And in all honesty, that’s how that phrase can’t culture was born, at least for me. I don’t think anyone else uses it. But it kind of reminded me uh of something we all do as individuals that maybe we don’t fully realize. Because I think as individuals, we like to think of ourselves as very rational beings. Like we’re gonna think it all through, we’re gonna examine both sides of an issue, and we’re gonna make a really rational choice. And the reality is a lot of times we make the choice and then go find all the supporting evidence to justify that choice. And that sounds bad, like when you say it out loud, but the reality is it’s a very human thing to do. Like it’s kind of how our brains work. It’s one of the ways we avoid cognitive dissonance and kind of function on a daily basis without overheating, for lack of a better word. But in organizations, you see the same thing. The refusal comes first, somehow, somewhere, in some form of can’t. But the can’t isn’t the refusal, the can’t is just the peak of the iceberg of the justification. So, in a lot of ways, that’s why when we get into this, we’ll talk about this more. Why fixing, we can’t just tell people don’t say can’t anymore. Fixing the word that that never works. Because by the time the can’t shows up, in whatever form it takes, that decision has already been made somewhere else in the system. So when you when you talk about behavior, process, or measurement, all three feed each other. It sometimes, usually maybe, it starts with a behavior. So how a leader reacts to the first time someone brings them bad news. I guarantee everyone on that team is watching in that moment, and that reaction gets built into the process. Once that happens, things get measured. So the way people are evaluated start to get measured based on that process. And then that measurement starts turning into the organizations. For example, we tend to measure things that protect the current system, that protect what exists, not necessarily for building what doesn’t. So when we look at this, is it a behavior, is it a process, or a measurement? All three are at a play there because it’s really this mindset, this human condition behind it that’s kind of running things behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

I just want to highlight and underscore what you just said, that we make the choice first or we make the decision first, and then we’re trying to support it. And it’s funny that you said that because this weekend I was talking to my dad over the phone and I was like saying something very similar. I was like, you know what? The things that we want, you know, to happen subconsciously, we are actually finding proof for it.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, it’s a confirmation bias.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Exactly. Confirmation bias, yes, some way or form of it. I would start finding podcasts on the topic. I would start finding books on the topic out of nowhere. Yeah. Like subconsciously, it’s happening. So I totally agree that this is what’s happening in our work, in our corporate culture as well. Let’s talk about the gap between the constraints that leaders actually face. Like, you know, within the corporation, within the company, of course, there are certain boundaries. There are certain constraints. Sometimes, especially the budget is a big one, right? A lot of times when I talk to leaders, their biggest concern, I should say, I don’t, I don’t want to say complaint, their biggest concern is that those boundaries, those constraints are holding them back. But I’ve started questioning the leaders, and I want your take on this one. I’m like, have you tested, have you, have you tested the other, other route? Test it like in a small form and see where you land, you know. So what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

So uh there’s a story I I tell hopefully not too much, hopefully not a lot. We’ll we’ll see. And this is gonna date me just a little bit. Hopefully that doesn’t hurt too much. But uh, when I was a teenager, I was working at McDonald’s. I worked in the drive-through, I must have been, I don’t know, the big Mickey D. Yeah, there we go. And at the time, pretty much everyone in America had had just completely lost their minds over beanie babies. Uh yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

I remember the same generation, I think.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, and it was insane. Like we had a rule that no one could order more than five happy meals at a time because we had people coming into McDonald’s literally trying to clear out our stock of baby babies so they could sell them on their little eBay store. And I worked in the drive-thru at the time, and we had you know, we had this little wireframe uh rack with with shelves on it that we can put all the toys in that we would hand out and all that sort of stuff. And it was just kind of crazy. Normally, when I worked there, we had two toys. And this, again, this is back way back. You know, we used typically had a toy that was traditionally for girls and one that was for boys. Beanie babies kind of broke that model. And for some reason, where we’ve traditionally had two toys to hand out, all of a sudden we had three types of beanie babies to hand out. So my manager was trying to stock the drive-thru. So we had all the beanie babies to hand out, and you he had all three boxes for each of the beanie babies, and he’s looking at it. And then on these drawers, we had three drawers. One was for all the condiments, one was for toy one, one was for toy two. And he was opening the boxes, and you could just kind of see him doing the math. Wait a minute, I’ve got two shelves, two drawers, and three toys. And it just kind of hit him that all of a sudden he didn’t quite know what to do. You know, he I could almost see the thoughts going across his face. You know, I can’t uh move the condiments, like we have to have condiments. I don’t have any more drawers. I can’t mix the beanie babies because God forbid we give someone the wrong one. You know, there was panic starting to set in because lunch was starting, like literally cars were lining up in the drive-through. People were hanging out in the lobby, waiting, waiting for lunch to start so they could order their five happy meals. And he was just, you could tell he was kind of panicked. And he he looked up at me. I’m like I said, 15 years old. So this 30-something guy is looking at this 15-year-old with a little bit of panic in his face. And the reality is I had none of his stress. I was there for gas money, and that was it. So while he was there short circuiting, I just kind of looked at him. I looked at the drawer, and then I reached down to one of the boxes and tore one of the parts of the box off, shoved it in the in the drawer, and all of a sudden we had three spots for beanie babies. And he looked at me with this kind of weird mix of gratitude, a little bit of awe, and some severe irritation around the fact that this grown man had just kind of been rescued by a stupid little 15-year-old kid, right? From that day on, though, he saw me as a problem solver, which was an interesting shift in my job, but kind of besides the point. In that moment, though, he, like every leader you work with, could just easily list off every cant, every constraint. You know, I have to have condiments. I only have two drawers, I can’t mix them. Like the constraints come fast and hard. And the reality was he was not a dumb guy. He was probably smarter than me as a 15, 16-year-old kid, not a problem. And and I didn’t solve it because I was smarter than him. The reason I solved it is because my stakes were different. Perspective was different. So when we’re thinking about this gap, a lot of times what it really boils down to is, again, the mindset. Like, how are you looking at the things that come across your desk? Because again, every leader can rattle off the constraints. The harder question is when have they been tested? Like you said. And what the way I refer to it for people that kind of helps with the visualization is when you look at these constraints, it is which constraints are a load-bearing wall. If you tear that that wall down, the roof comes with it. And which ones are more decoration? Maybe they’re feng shui, like they’re they’re channeling the room, like yeah, whatever, but maybe they’re also just getting in the way. There was a period where everyone wanted kitchens closed off and then it changed, where everyone wanted that that open floor plan. Oh, yeah, the walls are coming down.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Right. And that was great as long as those walls weren’t load bearing. So I think when we talk about this with leaders, what we have to help them do is understand what’s load-bearing and what’s not. And so we talk about it from three frames of reference. So can’t, the genuinely impossible. So the load-bearing walls, gravity is a can’t, like those are the things you can’t move no matter what. The won’ts, so a choice someone has made that they have to stand behind, that they have to own, it’s legitimate, it’s there. And we also love to have the won’t should have a review date, like we’re going to review it quarterly, annually, whatever it is. And then the third is a haven’t. So it’s a gap that we haven’t crossed yet. And the way I like to do this with leaders is give them three questions. So the first one is just to ask yourself when I look at this, when I’m considering this constraint, is it genuinely impossible to review? Is it gravity? And I think when I ask these questions, I like to have people write them down because there’s something powerful in writing. But write down the answer to that, and why is it impossible? Why isn’t it? More often than not, to your point, the can’ts aren’t actually real constraints. They’re a decision that was made. So if it actually could be done, the next question is has there actually been a decision that was made? Or was this momentum or was this the way we’ve always done it? And if there’s a decision that was made, that’s awesome. It’s a won’t. Name who that person is, identify them as the decider. And if you need to, go have a conversation with them to understand the why. If there is no decider, if there is no decision that was made, but that constraint is still there, then it kind of goes into the world of haven’t, or maybe shouldn’t. You don’t really know yet. So if no one’s decided, the question I always ask people then is it’s not impossible. We could do it. Now the question is, what would it take? So when you go through that, you know, is it impossible? Can it be done? What would it take? That really helps you consider is this a load-bearing wall or is it decoration? If you’re in a conversation, a short form of this, and you can just ask people, hey, is that a can’t a want or a haven’t? You may have to define those terms with them. But start having that conversation and just those little things that starts closing the gap and helping you actually decide what you should. And I and by the way, I love the word tested. We we typically recommend running experiments because experiments are far less threatening than changes. Right. So I think that’s really good word choice. But otherwise, those are the three questions. We have a conversational form, but just learning how you can start challenging those and identifying them. Like in our choose framework, the C is catch the can’t. Like that’s kind of where we’re starting. Like, how do you actually catch the can’t and get good at seeing it? Because then that helps you close the gap.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah. I have to say, first of all, yes, I remember the Beanie Baby press. Oh my gosh. I had a full collection. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

So did I, but I cheated. I worked there.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

So you were lucky.

unknown 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

My mom just gave it away. She was like, Do you want to give to your kids? And I’m like, I don’t think so.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah, I don’t think so. They want that.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

So another thing I want to say over here, which you gave me, it’s almost like a gift, and I hope our listeners and viewers find it as a gift too. Are the three buckets that you just mentioned? Can’t, won’t, and um, sorry, the last one was haven’t, haven’t. Okay, just making sure. Um if we just started, you know, thinking about a lot of the decisions like we make in our life, in our business, it at at our work with just that filter, like, is this can’t? Like, is it really impossible given where you are today, the resources you have within your work framework, within your organization and or your life? Um so yeah, just put it into the can’t bucket. Like makes sense. Is it a won’t? Like, you probably can, but the amount of bandwidth it requires of you right now, you’re like, uh, maybe we can just pass it for another six months, right? Yeah. And and I love how you just said that revisit that won’t list or bucket, right? Everything you put into the won’t bucket, revisit it, whatever time frame, like three months, every three months, every six months, whatever. Mostly organizations do like quarterly, so you know, every quarter. Go back and see, maybe this is the quarter you can take it on.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Right? It it is so like when you think about the uh the legal system in the US. I don’t remember what the statistic is, but there’s a certain number of laws that get added every day, week, month, whatever it is. And it’s more than you you would probably expect. There’s also research around what they call the bureaucratic mass index. Uh, I may have it in my notes. We’ll have to see if we if we get to it. But the idea is over time, the can’ts and the won’ts and things start to pile up. One of the things I I love to recommend to organizations is as you start identifying the won’ts and giving them an owner, and then also saying, hey, we’re going to review it quarterly, annually, whatever it is, part of what you’re doing is you’re making that mass felt. Like most organizations have a high bureaucratic mass. Like from a bureaucracy standpoint, they weigh a lot, but they don’t feel it. Right. It’s like it’s just rolling along and building up momentum. So what we’re trying to do now by by saying, hey, every quarter, every year, you actually have to review some of these things and decide whether we need them or not. It starts to make the pileup of rules of you know the cants felt. And now there’s pressure rather than just saying like can’t again and again, again, there’s pressure to remove some of those can’t lower the the bureaucratic mass index. And I think that’s a big part of this is can’t culture has a momentum all of its own. And a lot of it is like just floating down a river. You don’t realize you’re moving. You Realize that things are happening, but they are. So now we have to make those felt because awareness is the first step of changing things.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think having those conversations too within the organization, I really think that it comes down to taking the time to ask that question, which is keeping us behind. But I want to touch upon haven’t too. And I have a different or a new perspective that I want to bring over here. And I want your take as the expert here. So going back to the example you gave us, that you were working at McDonald’s, you’re this teenager, you know, just working there to make money for gas and whatnot. But now you you were in front of this customer who’s trying to see, you know, how we can fit the three beanie babies and whatnot. I I bet the reason you had a different perspective was because you don’t think like that person. And you touched upon that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

And I want to tie it into organizational culture here. And I think it’s a very important point to understand and tie in. Right now, we are working in a multi-generational organization. So I see boomers, I see Gen Xers, I see millennials, and now we have Gen Z. Okay, so we have these four generations now trying to work together where millennials and Gen Zs think very differently than the top two generations.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

And I think there’s no right or wrong between these, you know, two sets of people. However, I have seen now and again the reason a lot of things are still in the haven’t bucket is because the leadership here is not giving the opportunity to the newer generation to test. What do you think of that?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

I think it goes beyond generational. I think it at its most basic form, it’s the differences in lived experience. Um, I think generational is one of the big ones, right? But there’s also racial, there’s also cultural, there’s all these different things. And there’s good data that shows diversity from in every dimension is valuable within an organization because again, those different perspectives see things from different, different ways, see things in different ways. It’s kind of like that joke where you have like five blind guys all touching an elephant and saying, oh, it’s a snake, it’s a spear, it’s a tree, like depending on what part they’re touching. Like you need you need five blind guys touching the product to figure out what it actually is, how it’s gonna work. You need those different perspectives. And that’s why more than anything, diversity is important, right? You you need that because you are selling your product in a diver, diverse world. You are solving problems that are created by very diverse perspectives. And if you don’t match that diversity within your organization to some degree, you’re gonna miss a lot. So I think generational, absolutely. But I think you have to look across the board. Like, how are you making sure you have highly qualified, skilled people with great mindsets and attitudes solving your customers’ problems for you because you can’t do it all yourself?

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Absolutely. Absolutely. So here’s my follow-up question for you. And I have a little story. I was just talking to this friend of mine, and she was talking about how, you know, they hired a bunch of Gen Zers this year. And she said, very talented, very talented kids on the team, and they work just differently than then, right? And she’s a manager, and she’s like, you know, and I’m really loving having those Gen Zers on the team. And the reason I’m still sticking to the generation is because I’m gonna tell you one of the comments that she made, which stuck with me. And I was like, I’m gonna bring this to our conversation today. She’s like, you know, there was this idea about a project, and it’s kind of like very different than what we have done in the past, as far as, you know, the way we do stuff or run projects in the organization. It came from the team members who are newly hired. When I say newly hired, they’re like uh a year in. Okay. She’s like, I presented to my boss. And you know what his answer was? His answer was that’s not how things are done here.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Yeah. Oh, those set of words.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Okay, let’s I yeah. And I was like, well, then how will we innovate then? So you tell me.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Well, the reality is so innovation can happen in a lot of different conditions. Some are more ideal than others. So one thing I I don’t want to do is villainize, demonize managers who are doing things in a way that they feel like keeps their organization and their people safe. And I think that’s where a lot of the this is how we do things comes from. Like, hey, we figured this out. We know this works. We know when we do this, we get that outcome, and that outcome is good enough. Uh that said, the pace of change has accelerated. So Kodak, you know, decided not to invest in digital cameras 15-ish years, something like that later, they’re out of business. Blockbuster decided not to buy Netflix, I think it’s like five or six years, they’re out of business, right? So you see this trend of the forcing functions in business are coming faster and harder. And AI is kind of the tsunami of them all, right? It’s the biggest forcing function we’ve seen and it’s only accelerating. So while I can understand that mindset and I can empathize with it and I can see where it comes from, it’s also the thing that’s going to kill companies. Like that’s just the reality of it. I I look at it the same way as I look at helping my kids with math. Because both my kids, when they were my youngest is in fifth grade now, when my oldest was in fifth grade, they both have some point told me for completely different reasons that they couldn’t do math. Like, you know, I think almost every kid has that moment, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

My oldest, there was a real gap, right? He missed some material. He had a teacher that didn’t do a great job of teaching some things. So we got him a tutor, we filled that gap, and he’s been fine ever since. My youngest knew it. I sat down with her and I went through the math with her, and she’s like, Yeah, I got it, I got it, I got it. And she showed me how to do it. I’m like, Well, I don’t understand why you missed this. Oh, well, I didn’t understand, I didn’t read this part. Oh, so it’s not that you can’t do math, it’s that you’re not slowing down to fully read the problem or the instructions. Got it. So both of them came at me with a can’t, but they were for very different reasons. And I think it’s the same thing in organizations. When you see the can’t, you can’t just react to it as a can’t. If I had given my my youngest a tutor, wouldn’t have helped her at all, right? Because she already knew the math. It’s the same thing in organizations. When you hear that can’t, you have to dig in a little bit. You have to understand the why, you have to empathize, and you have to help not only understand where they’re coming from, you also have to help them understand where you’re coming from. And I think this is not specific to any generation. Every generation, when they’re younger, struggles with being understood. Every 16-year-old kid does not feel understood by anyone, right? So, like we all go through this moment in time where we struggle to be understood. And I think the hard part for younger generations is taking that step back. And rather than being offended that we just got shut down or that we got told that’s the way we do it here, we have to try a different approach. Right. Not everything is go get a tutor, go educate yourself, kind of thing. Sometimes it is a little bit of a different empathetic approach. And that’s that’s the hard part. So when you hear that’s just how we we’ve done it, don’t just write it off as, oh, that’s the boomer way, right? Go in there and talk to them, learn from them. And learning never goes one way. When you sit down with someone who’s older than you, more experienced than you to learn from them, they’re gonna learn from you too. Getting to know each other better, they’re gonna build some mutual respect. I think you have to take those moments to build those bridges rather than just jumping to the conclusion that, oh, it’s a camp that shouldn’t be there. It’s unfair, it’s not right. Like, sure, it may be those things, but you’re not gonna fix them until you actually connect, build the relationship and find a way to find common ground. And I think that’s a lot of what we miss when when we we see those moments.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I think having making time for conversations like that and keeping the door open for leadership, I think it’s very important. If they can keep the doors open so that everybody can approach them and have that conversation, that’s key. Okay. I do have a follow-up question for you, which might sound like a little pushback. How do leaders unintentionally punish the behavior they claim they want more of as far as innovation is concerned?

SPEAKER_00 32:06

One of the real answers that so many leaders struggle with is as simple as body language. So for instance, you said this might feel a little bit like pushback, right? You know, which one full transfer, I love the pushback. Like this is how we learn, this is how we explore ideas. But if you said this is going to feel a little bit like pushback, and the moment you said that, I leaned back in my chair, I crossed my arms and kind of looked a little away. Like everything about my posture, everything about my reaction just told you that’s not okay. Don’t push back on my ideas. So little things add up, and that’s even before you get to the big things. And some of them are just structural, right? Hey, I’ve got a project. It’s really, really valuable. We need we got to get it done in four weeks if we want it to work. Oh, that’s great. Here’s the six-week approval process you have to go through. Okay. I guess that’s a no, right? Like, you know, there’s so many things that we don’t realize are pushing back. A story I like to tell um about call centers. So uh this person found on invoices the wording for a line item on an invoice resulted in X number of extra calls a month. And it was significant, like would make a material difference in the spending in that cost center. They take it to their manager, their manager’s like, yeah, totally get it. This is really important. We should change it. Uh, you got to go through finance to do that. She goes to finance, they’re like, totally makes sense. Uh, we just have to be really careful about how we change the invoices because we broke it, you know, like a year ago and it was really bad. All these horrible things happen. We do this biannually now, so you just have to go fill out this form, and then it’ll get evaluated in the biannual thing, which is coming up in a month. So they go home, they start filling out this form, they grab a glass of wine, whatever, right? They sit down and they’re filling it all out. And one of the questions is what is the revenue impact? All centers are cost centers. There is no impact to revenue. There’s uh an impact to cost. That’s not what the question’s asking. And this leader like sat with it for a little bit and was like, you know what? I literally cannot show how it would change our revenue because it probably won’t. It would lower our costs, but it wouldn’t change our revenue. I can’t defend this if I get up in front of my boss and the people I’m finance, so they dropped it. And I am sure right now in that organization, and this is a little bit of a conglomerate of a bunch of different stories, but in these types of organizations, those types of things now become a truth about how customers are, not a thing that we could fix or change. So there’s all these different things that we do that that drive the can’t in. There’s research uh by Chamberlain, Newton, and Le Pine from like 2017, and they talk about this difference between promotive voice and prohibitive voice. So if I come to you with a, hey, we could solve this problem, or here’s a great new idea, we reward that. If I come to you and say, Oh, I found a problem, or hey, there’s an issue over here, we tend to punish that. Yeah. So all that sort of stuff adds up, and very quickly, it’s never a conscious, I’m gonna punish you, I’m gonna demote you, or anything like that. It’s a million little things, it’s a million processes, it’s a million different metrics that we measure that all kind of pile up and make the can’t, the refusal, the default answer and the punishment that comes along with that is almost implicit.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Yeah. Yeah, I think it all comes down to how you’re communicating. Are you making the time for communication first and then how you’re communicating? And you know, I think a lot of times, as you just mentioned, it takes time, and we are not always like willing to invest that kind of time in that process that you’re mentioning, too.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Um it takes time, but it’s also there’s an asymmetry in cost. So a yes to something, our name is on it, and that’s a risk. If it goes badly, we get impacted. A no to something flies under the radar and doesn’t necessarily get seen. So a big part of what organizations have to do is equalize the cost. So it becomes cheaper to say yes, and it becomes more expensive to say no. So those things get a little bit closer. And that requires changing the way we we we manage, it requires changing the way we measure.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s a great way to put it, that we want to incentivize yes as well, you know, so that experimentation people can see that not only are their ideas valued, but that the leadership is willing to test them, to experiment with them, as you said. So if a leader is listening to this conversation right now and they suspect that their own team has quietly built a canned culture now that they have heard our conversation and they’re like, oh no, all these boxes are checking off for my department, for my organization. Where should they start looking first? What sh what would be give them like two tips, you know, two practical tips. They can go like later today after lunch or tomorrow to their teammates and say, Oh, let’s start. You know, I have an idea. I listened to this conversation that Aisha had uh with JL on 925 wellness podcasts. And I think, you know, we need to rethink these things that we are doing. So we what should they do?

SPEAKER_00 37:55

So maybe maybe before I get to the two things, there is a um a famous line of research on learned helplessness. So the idea that that we learn how to be helpless over time. Uh, I think it was I don’t I don’t remember the date. I’d have to go and look. But the authors revised it after a little while, uh, because the default actually turned out to be giving up. The default turned to be turned out to be helplessness most of the time. And what people actually have to learn is that we have control. Um so Kant isn’t learned. Kant is the gravity, it is the law, the laws, physics, it’s the human nature. So as a leader, maybe the first mindset you need to shift is can’t is already there, you know it is, you don’t even have to go look. Uh what you do have to realize is can is the learned behavior. And when you start thinking about that, that should change the way you you think about how you engage with people. Because if they’re already more likely to default to can’t, because again, human nature, that is the learned helplessness happening right there. It means we have to lead in a way that makes can the learned behavior. We talked about it earlier the first step is awareness. So one of the things I always have leaders do is once a day, once a week, write down a can’t, whether or not the word can’t is used, but write down that can’t moment in as much detail as you can and later pick it apart. Ask yourself those questions. You know, is it impossible? If it’s not, who owns the decision? If we can’t tell, is it a haven’t? Why haven’t we done it? You know, what would it take? Go through that process a few times. And what you’ll find is as you do that, it starts to become a way of thinking for you. So you can see it in the moment and you can start directing the conversations and you can start showing up differently. The other thing I I recommend doing for leaders to help with the listening side of things is something we call a curiosity walk. And I recommend you do it with peers, not necessarily direct reports, uh, because it doesn’t work as well with direct reports, but it just helps people understand the power of listening rather than telling. Because so many leaders, by always having the answer, they are instilling a version of I can’t make a decision because my leader does it. So we we’ve got to change that mindset a little bit. And the the way a curiosity walk works is you pick a somewhat emotionally charged issue, work issue, and you have a peer and you walk for 20 minutes, 10 minutes out, 10 minutes back. On the way out, one person talks about their struggles with that issue. And the other person, all they’re allowed to do is ask questions. They can’t make suggestions, they can’t uh, they can’t hide a suggestion in a question, they can’t do any of that. All they can do is seek to understand better. And then on the way back, they they switch roles. I’ve done this with a good number of leaders at this point. I don’t even want to think about how many. And every time we start, every leader is like, oh my God, this is a waste of time. Can we just do five minutes? All the excuses come out. Every time they come back, and the answer is like 10 minutes wasn’t enough. I’ve never been listened to like that. I’ve heard that multiple times. Because the reality is our default, our can’t default, makes us feel like we don’t have the time, that we don’t have the ability, that it’s not going to be useful. But when we actually force ourselves to do it, like it, it’s somewhat life-changing in a way. And I think what I like to have leaders do is do it once a quarter with one of your peers to continually remind yourself the value of listening. And those types of things change behavior better than anything else. If I go and tell you, Aisha, like, hey, go out there and catch the can’t and count, count them, analyze them. You can do that, but that’s very technical. But if I say, go out here, do this thing, this curiosity walk, it’s going to make you feel something. That’s going to change the way you behave in a more natural way. So, leaders, when you’re listening, one realize can is the thing, is the learned behavior you want, not can’t. Can’t is the default. So it’s there. That means can’t culture is already there. Go look for it because as you see it and find it, that’s going to create pressure for you. You’re going to see how much of it is there, and it’s usually a lot. And then go out there and start feeling the value of listening, maybe with a curiosity walk, maybe with something else. But you have to go out there and feel that value because those are the things that are going to change your behavior in a positive way, more so than any tip or trick I could give you here.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

I have to say I love both of these tips. And I want to highlight the curiosity walk that you just mentioned. I have read a lot of research again and again and again that when you are, you take a walking meeting, I call it a walking meeting. Actually, when you’re moving your body, your brain is more active and it’s more receptive to new ideas. And what they have found in research is that um walking meetings lead to more ideation and more creative and innovative ideas. If I don’t know if you’ve read uh his biography or not, uh Steve Jobs used to do that. He used to do walking meetings all the time.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

That’s how you would think. And uh so I want to underscore like just the evidence-based value of curiosity walks or walking meetings. They they work. They really work.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

And bonus points if you do it in nature versus like on a treadmill or in an office building or something like that. The nature, there’s a lot of research that shows it makes a real difference in your mindset, your attitude, all of it.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Absolutely. If you can get outdoors, definitely it’s it’s a bonus. And I want to close our conversation today with this statistic that you shared the other day when we have been going back and forth for our interview. And the statistic that you shared, it was so good. And I was like, oh, I have to bring it up in our conversation. And this is from BCG 2024 data that 83% of the companies call themselves like innovative, or they say that innovation is in the top three priorities, right? But only 3% are ready to deliver on that innovation. So today you have given us so many different tips and tricks to actually start converting that uh percentage in the opposite direction. So thank you so much. Where can our audience members find you?

SPEAKER_00 44:54

The best place to engage with me personally is on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active on there. Um, if you want to learn more about what we do, centered.work is a great place to find our business and what we work on. And then I do a lot of speaking, a lot of podcast appearances. If you’re looking for some of that, then it’s just good old-fashioned jlheather.com. Uh check me out there. But those are probably your three best places.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Oh, that is awesome. And I’m gonna include all of these links into the show notes, and our audience and viewers will be able to click on it right away from the podcast show notes and you know get more goodness from you because JayL is such a great expert. I have learned so much from our conversation today. I hope you did too. Any parting words, JayL?

SPEAKER_00 45:45

I I think the biggest thing is when we talk about can’t culture, there’s a lot of self-recrimination that can go on. And I I just want to stress this this is human nature we’re fighting. So it’s not about if you’re gonna find a can’t culture in your organization. It’s about how much. And the best thing way to look at it is it’s not your fault, it’s human nature. And this is now an opportunity for you, not a recrimination or or a uh a negative into the way you’ve led up to this point. So go forward with with a little bit of positivity and optimism rather than self-recrimination.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Yes, such a wonderful way to end the conversation because it’s so true. A lot of times we start thinking that, oh, it’s our fault, or you know, we don’t want to, you know, and sometimes we have a hard time taking ownership of something that we would believe that it’s something that um uh is our fault. And it’s not, it’s part of the process, and that’s how we all innovate and grow and evolve. Uh, so that’s a great point you made. Thank you so much for joining us on the 925 wellness podcast today, JL.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

No problem. This this was a blast. I enjoyed every minute.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Thank you. Thank you again to you, JL, for joining us, and thank you everyone for joining us live. And if you are listening to a recording of the podcast, which has gone out in the podcast format, thanks for tuning in. It is also available on video format at on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. So make sure that when you are at your desk, you tune in to the video content too. Thank you so much. Bye for now.