Rebels at Work Edge Talk full transcript - 2 October 2015

[Derek.Captioner is Live]
JANET WILDMAN:
We have got a really fantastic lineup. Welcome to the Edge Talks, and we have got Lois Kelly and
Carmen Medina all the way from the United States, who is actually going to be leading this session for
us.
The title of the session today is Necessary but Not Sufficient: Undervalued and Overlooked
Approaches for Creating Change.
Before we start, I would like to introduce myself, I am Janet Wildman, a research associate at NHS IQ
Horizons Group. I am also going to be part of the team supporting the Edge Talks this morning, and I
would like to introduce the Twitter monitor, who is Jodi Brown. In the chat room we have Dominic
Cushnan, and we will look after you this morning, in terms of making sure that you can feed in and
participate.
I would like to also let you know that you can contribute throughout the webinar. And please just raise
your hand to join the discussion.
Also, please tweet using #edgetalks, @schoolforradicals. You can also join our Facebook group,
Schools for Health and Care Radicals, School for NHS. After the session, there will be a summary of
the discussion on each of the presentations. And we will have this on our website.
I am going to just introduce the speakers for today, so we have Carmen Medina, and Lois Kelly.
Carmen Medina is a former CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence, a 32 year veteran of the intelligence
community. She is known for her expertise in intelligence analysis, strategic thinking, diversity of
thought, and innovation and entrepreneurship in the public sector.
She is also the author, or co-author, of Rebels At Work. Joining her is Lois Kelly, also the co-author of
the handbook Rebels at Work, a handbook on leading change from within.
She has also led digital marketing and public relations agencies before becoming an author. She is
also a specialist in organisational change, and an executive leadership coach.
They will be telling you a little bit more about their work together, but I am going to quickly hand over to
Carmen Medina, initially, to take us through her presentation, and her talk today.
Over to you, Carmen.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Thank you very much.
Edge Talk Webinar (UKEDGE2707C)
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Good morning to everybody across the pond. My name is Carmen, and Lois Kelly is also on the line, I
don't know if you want to say hi, Lois.
LOIS KELLY:
Good morning, everyone.
CARMEN MEDINA:
We are excited and happy to engage in a conversation with you all today. We know many of the
people in the NHS. We are very thankful for your engagement with the Rebels at Work and
organisational change topics. And I know, I can speak for Lois, that we appreciate learning from you all
today, as you learn from us.
We want to make sure that the conversation today is relevant to you all, so we want you all to ask lots
of great questions. And to start off, just to make sure that we understand the audience, we want to ask
you some questions.
So we are going to have a series of questions that we are going to ask you, polling questions, so get
yourself ready. I promise you, they are not too difficult. So here comes the first one…
For some reason, Poll 2 is showing, but not Poll 1.
JANET WILDMAN:
We have Poll 1 on our screens.
CARMEN MEDINA:
I don't have all of the options in front of me.
SPEAKER:
On the polling option, where you have one, three, four, seven, which ever you can have, the last
should have a down arrow that shows all of the missing polls.
CARMEN MEDINA:
It is not doing that for me. It shows me Poll 3. Poll 1 is out of order for some reason. Are you all able to
see Poll 1 now? I can read the question, which one of the following best characterises you, and I have
given you three choices.
Trying to affect change a non-leadership position, trying to effect change from a leadership position,
and learning about change in general.
We will wait a few seconds while everybody answers.
OK, some people I see are putting their choices in the chat room, rather than on the poll.

PAUL WOODLEY:
Open it, and everyone should be able to see it.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Sorry. I see.
OK… So it looks like we just have a couple more people to answer the poll. And we notice, right now,
and I will now make it available to everyone, so when I close the poll, Paul, will it become available to
everyone?
PAUL WOODLEY:
Correct.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Hopefully, at this moment, you can see the poll results. And it is pretty close between those trying to
affect change from leadership and non-leadership positions. Not too many of you are trying to learn
about change in general, and there is a good amount of people who didn't answer, either because the
question did not give you an option that met your situation.
If you could indicate, if you have any concerns, indicate that in the chat or a different kind of category.
Now we are going to move to the second poll. We are going to ask you to think about the change effort
that you are involved in in the NHS, and we have given you three choices. I am going to open the poll
now.
We are asking you, which one of the following best characterises your change effort.
Are you lucky enough to be leading a group of committed change agents?
Or, are you pushing the ball uphill a little bit?
Alright, just a couple more seconds to see. There are a couple more people voting.
Alright, so I am going to close the poll. And now I will share with you the polling results. And we can
see that almost 50% of you are trying to influence people resistant to change.
And actually, a very strong majority are trying to do that, or trying to get complacent people to care.
And I would say, Lois and I would think that this is fairly typical of what we see when we talk to sector
groups about… Just a second here, I need to share the poll results. When we talk to people about
their change journey, these are very common characteristics of the group.
And now we have one last question to ask you, so with any hope… Or any luck, the technique
improves with each attempt. So here is Poll 3.

We are going to ask you to identify what your top three challenges are in leading change. We have
given you a choice of six. This one may take a little bit longer. And I will just read them as you are
thinking, I am afraid I might hurt my reputation.
My boss resists most new ideas.
I hate dealing with conflict and controversy, and I certainly did.
Working through approval process, not your cup of tea.
My ideas go against culture.
Or you feel unprepared, you don't know enough about how to lead change.
So again, I will wait a little while and let you all sort through this.
I believe you can pick three challenges, three choices. Up to three choices.
PAUL WOODLEY:
I think it will only allow people to answer one. It was my mistake when I created it.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Pick the one you care about most, then.
Alright, I will give it about five more seconds.
Now I am closing the poll.
I can see there are a lot of great comments in the chat room about our list of impediments for making
change. And one of the great things about WebEx, whether you are active or lurking in the chat, you
can learn from other people. It is a multidimensional experience.
So I will share the poll results with everyone. And hopefully, everyone can see the poll results.
Fascinating that nobody… I get a 0% on that it might hurt your reputation or career. And then, the
culture and approval process are neck and neck. Each have 25%, roughly, of the participants.
I agree with someone in the chat that says it is really positive that hurting your reputation or career is
0%. What Lois… And I am about to turn it over to Lois, and I, might say that it is always good for
change agent, Rebels at Work, to be realistic about the potential cost of this on your career path. And
certainly not to let it hold you back.
Thank you very much for your responses, and for your patience with the technical issues, and I will

turn it over to Lois.
I am passing the baton right now.
LOIS KELLY:
Great, thanks, Carmen.
This morning, we are going to give some context that we are seeing about change, whether that
change is leading change within yourself, among your group or with your boss, or other people you are
influencing.
How do you change the mindset of an organisation? The second is idea of communicating, and the
third is looking at habits. People ask us how to change the culture of their organisation.
I laugh a little bit, because we say you can't change the culture. However, you can change habits. So
we will go through the sections, and after each section, we will take a pause and ask some questions.
So just the start, I am sure many of you have heard of these and love this chart that we shared, 50
reasons not to change. People have lots and lots of reasons why they shouldn't change.
And often, as changemakers, we create, and we look at the urgency of a situation, and we create
really good solutions, and then roll them out.
And often, despite all that work, nothing happens. One of the things we want to suggest this morning is
that urgency and good solutions are necessary, but they are not sufficient. So what we mean by that?
If we take a step back that and think about why is change so hard, and the real reason that change is
so hard is often because there is a lot of discomfort for people, or people are looking, they just want
certainty. "Tell me that this will absolutely work!" They are afraid, or they feel like they don't have time.
Or they love the way things used to be.
Often people say, "Change is hard." But for reasons that they can't articulate.
This is an important point, that the real resistance to change is often hidden. People don't even know
why they are resisting. So one of the important things is to make sure that you get the problem right.
What is really going on? Why are people really resisting?
And if you don't know what that is, you can do brilliant solutions, and communications, and work really
hard, and very little will change.
[Robert.Uk.Captioner is Live]
The big thing here is, and I love this quote. "The biggest failure of leadership is to treat adaptive
challenges like technical problems." When this was first introduced, what does that exactly mean?

Technical changes are more black and white things. It might be a new technical… System that you are
trying to use. Or it might be a new way to follow a process. This is the information you need. With
adaptive change, we have to stretch into a new way of being. We are asking people to change our of
their comfort zone, all we are asking the organisation to challenge a deeply held belief.
And it is often the adaptive change that trips us up. Let me give examples. The issue is that we want
students to learn and to become learners. In the United States, anyway, one of the things that we have
done is create standardised tests. And teacher evaluations, which is really a technical solution to a
much bigger adaptive change too.
Another issue might be our workplace, our workforce the people are disengaged. And companies and
organisations have employee surveys and they say this is what they learn. Again, a very technical
solution and not getting out adaptive issues.
Another one might be people in a certain profession need to adapt more quickly to changes.
Organisations roll out learning platforms, and that is it. That is part of the solution that is necessary but
not sufficient.
So in adaptive change, in technical change you can have an expert or it can be from a top-down. Here
is what you need to do. In adaptive change, we have to involve the people affected in creating the right
solutions for them.
So there is… Back in the 1960s in the United States, there was a saying that if you are not part of the
solution you are part of the problem. So many of the change efforts if you are not part of the problem
you cannot be part of the solution. As change agents, parts of what makes it effective is inviting more
people are with us to create a way to improve the situation.
For many organisations, it feels very uncomfortable. We are used to the people with the expertise
figuring it out and introducing it to everyone else. In fact, as we have so much adaptive change we
have to involve everybody.
Another approach to uncovering what the problem is, I'd like to introduce this to you. It is called
'Immunity to Change' and it was introduced by two professors from Harvard. This book is a process
that uncovers big a-has. It is like a map or X-ray that covers and organisations hidden immune system.
What is holding people back from change. I'd encourage you to look at this book, minds at work is the
website. They run a program that is pretty good.
The process looks at what is the change control that you have. Open uncovers what are you doing
against achieving that goal. Then uncovering hidden commitments and big assumptions. In this
example, a teacher knows what she should be doing. She is not doing it because she is afraid if she
does that she will create a problem with her manager.
Another example is, when I recently did this process with a group, there was someone who was head
of an advertising agency. His big goal, for the last five years he said he wanted larger clients and

doesn't get around to doing it. We went through the process and the listed what he doesn't do. He
micromanage his teams and gets involved in every decision.
What came out for him was that he didn't fully trust his team. When you get those big a-ha's, it invites
you to say is that a correct assumption. If you know what that real resistances, it allows you to address
it. I worked with another group, sometimes it happens between people if you have very highly
educated physicians and people with less education in the health system. There are issues.
I had one recently with two teams, the issue with changing is one group felt they were much smarter
than the other team. Because underneath they thought they were smarter, they were listening. Once
that surfaced, the two teams could top that through and addressed the real deal.
I would suggest to you it and think you are going after what is the real problem you are trying to solve.
It is a really interesting question. Sometimes we get caught up in tactics. We want people to do X, Y,
Z. But what problem are you trying to solve? What goes with that is what do you and people need to
be able to do that. What are the skills and mindsets and behavioural changes. What do you need to
acknowledge to solve that problem?
That is just a little bit of context. Again, I think a lot of times people are trying to solve the wrong
problems. In summary for this section, we often applied technical solutions to adaptive, more complex
people challenges. We get the problem wrong so we try to solve the wrong thing. And our community
system prevents us from seeing the real resistance to change.
That is some context to set us up. Then we will… Let me quickly to this poll. In the poll, just from this
beginning context, it would be interesting to note in your organisation which one of these do you
encounter the most? Have you applied technical solutions to adaptive challenges. Or does your
immunity system prevent you from seeing the real resistance? Just take a second to do that.
Such a good group, everyone is busy answering the poll. Just one more second. I will close the poll
and we can see the results. It is busy closing.
And can everybody see those poll results now? So it looks like, it is interesting that it is pretty evenly
split. Applying technical solutions to adaptive problems, getting the problem wrong and the largest one
is the immunity system presenting people from seeing the real issue.
We are going to move now, I will hand it over to Carmen but what do we need to open mindset. We
have many ideas, we will go through them fairly quickly. You can access this later. We were going to
threats in the organisation, thinking styles.
Carmen, I will pass this to you.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Thank you, Lois. We will go to the next section, but as promised, we would like to hear from the
moderators of the chat room and Twitter, whether there are interesting questions or comments that we

should comment on.
JODI BROWN:
Hi, it is Jodi. Can you hear me?
Twitter has been hotting up. People are joining in, on the WebEx as well. Responding to some of the
comments. Really, the overriding opinion is how great it is to hear these ideas from outside the NHS
and then to overlay them on the problems we are experiencing at the moment in the NHS and how
great it is. That is, that Michaela made.
Hannah came in and said he is not aware of any solution for improvement, that is a good challenge we
are up against. I like the comment from Richard Corder, use of resistance to change, if you are not
part of the problem you cannot be part of the solution. I think it is a valid point about how we can avoid
being part of the solution and that conflict and things being up in the air. They did a great chat going on
and it is building as we get further into the WebEx. I look forward feedback for later. Thank you.
JANET WILDMAN:
Thank you for that. What about in the chat room?
DOMINIC CUSHNAN:
A lot of interesting things so far. Ideas and cultures are important, that was a good point. Getting hold
of data to support entering data is tricky. It is something we find when talking to people. People want
data to support what they are doing. We are going onto the second half. If you are not part of the
problem you cannot be part of the solution. The people with the problem that have the skills, I did know
if you have any comment on that.
JANET WILDMAN:
Were there any surprises on the results that came through?
DOMINIC CUSHNAN:
It has to be oriented around a problem. And above the customers.
JANET WILDMAN:
Thank you both.
CARMEN MEDINA:
You may want to comment, Lois. You have to be part of the problem to be part of the solution, where
does that leave getting a fresh perspective from outside? That is a valid point. I don't think we are
suggesting that there is no… You shouldn't get an outside perspective, but our experience and
certainly mine in government and private industry is that often people within the group, there is the
rebel in there that has some perspective on the solution. They need to be given the opportunity to
contribute. Those, do you have anything to add on that?
LOIS KELLY:

I think often we openly rely on experts. Many of the answers set right there with us if only we would
involve people and really listen to them.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Another thing I saw in the chat room, I love chat rooms so I am always lurking, a comment was made
that people suggested that we are framing the change journey in terms of the organisation doing it.
This is important in healthcare because it is an ecosystem involving the patient, right, the families, the
community. I know, Lois, you have a lot of experience with this dimension of health care. You want to
comment?
LOIS KELLY:
I will comment on that as we get into the more specific things. I think it is very valid and important
health and it starts in the healthcare system, how we invite people into the process and make it safe
for everyone to be involved. Too often, it is the experts not quite making the families and patients feel
as though their views, and worries, and concerns are valid.
CARMEN MEDINA:
I will give the ball to you, Lois, in the next section, but I think... I care about cognitive diversity. What
often happens in organisations is a situation where some people are authoritative and everyone else is
supposed to listen that the only positive change is in the organisation. It is about a much broader
ecosystem. With that, I will send the ball to Lois.
LOIS KELLY:
To start the mindsets, one thing as an individual talking with people, or as an organisation, one of the
most important things we can do is to make it safe for people to have meaningful conversations, and
suggest ideas.
But often, we create threats. And when we create those threats, the prefrontal cortex in people, it just
shuts down. One thing with the mindset, I find David Rock, from his book 'Quiet Leadership', I find it
really helpful when we think about what we are introducing. He says there are five things that either
can create threats, or conversely, attract people towards us, and open them up to want to learn and
think about things.
The first is status. "How do I stack up against others?"
Autonomy is the feeling of being in control of the situation in your life.
Relatedness, is this person a friend or your enemy?
And fairness, am I being treated as well as other people?
We all have one or multiple triggers, that trigger us. And also sometimes you will see themes in

organisations with these things.
They are useful to remember, so that, with status, the way that we can make it feel safe for people, or
not make them pushback, is to acknowledge achievements, or not make them look bad.
Certainty, giving people as much information as possible about changes, or options as soon as
possible. It calms them down, opens their mind up for thinking.
Autonomy, giving people choices.
Relatedness is developing social connections, and the importance of relationships.
Fairness, when we feel that decisions are being made fairly, we are much more receptive to them.
So in organisations, when these get triggered, people just shut down. They stop looking at things. Do
we wish they worked that way? Of course. But acknowledging the reality often helps us navigate
around them.
There was a large project I was working on, and the team worked so hard, reaching great solutions.
People were very excited. And the person who needed to approve a big budget number just was very,
very resistant. And people were very frustrated. "What can I do?"
After a meeting, walking to the parking lot, I saw a person get into a very expensive car. I thought,
"That is interesting…"
I went back to the group and said, "I think Jack, the status is important to him." While we talked about
the benefits of tens of thousands of people moving ahead on this, and we had all the rational, he was
resistant. So we played into the status.
We suggested to him that this was such an interesting, innovative approach, that if we could do it, it
would make a tremendous Harvard Business School case study. The budget was approved 10 days
later, because we appealed to status.
Understanding these threats and using them for positive will often overcome some resistance.
Carmen, I will hand it back to you now.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Thank you. Great. Thanks, Lois.
I want to talk a little bit about probably what is my favourite topic, about being a rebel at work, being a
change agent. And that is the importance for you to really understand your organisation, both the
written and unwritten rules of the organisation.
We are all creatures of our upbringing, and experiences, and I guess this was so important in a

Byzantine organisation like the CIA, that is why it became an obsession for me, understanding the
organisation better. And I think a lot about that.
Someone commented earlier, I think maybe it was on Twitter, that all change issues tend to, in the
public sector, be redefined as structuring issues, right? And I think that is a fair comment.
To get beyond that, one of the things you have to do is, you have got to do two things, generally. You
have to understand the emotional temperature of the organisation. What does it really care about?
Second, you need the practical insight about how new ideas actually get approved. And one of the
things that we suggest is that you actually meet with the master bureaucrats of the organisation, or the
people that have been there a long time, are well tenured, and can tell you, when we had a significant
change occur, how was it done.
I think that understanding the organisation… We use the word organisation, I think we mean it more
broadly. In the medicine context, in the NHS context, it also has to be about understanding the
patients, right? And community in the family, who are in fact part of this organism.
One of the ways that you can understand your cohort, your peer group, one aspect of this is
understanding their thinking style. You know, having the same approach to problem-solving,
assimilating and gathering information.
There are lots of very interesting instruments out there, one that we encourage people that are going
to attend this session to take is the past, present and future thinking.
You can all see the population. There are 230 people that have taken this test. You can see that there
is a significant number of people who are future thinkers. It is the predominant thinking styles. Many of
whom are passed thinkers. Not so many are present thinkers.
My profile is I am a strong future thinker. My secondary mode is a past thinker. So what happens to
me, and this is what the thinking styles mean again. What happens to me, now that I know this and
have taken this test, it is much easier for me to understand my own thought processes. Someone
presents a new idea to me, and the first thing I do is investigate whether or not it has ever been done
in the past, and how that happens. What led to its success or failure?
So you have, you know… All these thinking styles are good. The fact that there are not as many
present thinkers in this Rebel population that has taken the test points to what are sometimes issues
for change makers.
We can be persuasive, but carrying through the actual process of going from A to Z becomes difficult
for us.
You do get a sense, empirically, if you can, but you can learn by observations and interviews. People
love to be interviewed, actually.

When you say, "I would love to get your ideas about something." It is very flattering. And incorporate
that in how you are going to approach your change journey.
One thing I have been doing recently, and if you read our blog, perhaps you have seen a couple of the
posts, I have been reading this massive academic text called 'Rebels in Groups'. It is available on
Amazon, and in the US, and it is quite expensive because it was intended as a textbook. And it
summarises all the research on differences and deviants in groups, rebel behaviour.
One of the big take aways that several of the studies make is how important it is for you to understand
your colleagues as you try to implement your change agenda.
So we talk a lot in Rebels at Work, the book, about understanding the bureaucrats, and navigating
your organisational landscape, understanding how decisions are made. And we talk a lot about
gathering supporters around you, but we don't really talk about understanding your colleagues.
The reason why this is important is that, when you go into a change initiative, the detriment of your
colleagues will determine the norms of your colleagues, determining how receptive they are doing.
Or sample, the group that you are in our cohesive, i.e. they have confidence and feel like they are on
the right path. This might seem counterintuitive, but because they are not more receptive to change
ideas than groups that feel threatened and defensive.
The second point, tenured. If the group has been together for a long time, and they are very
experienced, they are going to be resistant to a new person with a new idea. And the social research
shows that, often times, an in-group member, when they present a new idea, they will be met with
scepticism by a tenured group. Are they afraid?
If the group feels threatened, they will likely become defensive. That will produce their appetite for new
ideas. The external pressure point is interesting. When a group have been asked to do something new
if they are first primed with a discussion of how outsiders see them, a lot of this research was done in
the UK and written and edited in Australia.
Individuals, if they are primed by understanding what is going on around them in the ecosystem, they
are more likely to agree to go in a new direction than if you ask them to think about it only from an
internal dynamic. That makes sense. In the medical context, we have a stronger correlation with the
external dynamic is very strong because of the patient and community aspect.
With that, I think I will turn it back to Lois who will walk us through… There we go. The next few slides.
Lois?
LOIS KELLY:

Yep. This is just a quick thing. This is more on organisational change. When people say a lot of
objections, but people here. We want to get some of those objections and look at what might the real
meaning the versus what people are saying and ways to respond to that.
Some of the most common is that there are no resources. And when you keep getting hit with this,
often that is a point and I think it is useful in a group to say that we fund the things we believe are
important.
If there is a meeting where people keep talking about there are no resources, to have a conversation,
and say this is not a priority. If it is not a priority, what does that mean? If it is a priority it changes the
conversation.
Second thing, if it gets to the desire for certain to be, how will it affect this and that. Things go around
and around because there is no proof. In those conversations, it is really important to talk about what
is known, what we can learn, what can be learned and what is unknowable?
Some things are not knowable but that should not prevent us from trying it. The upside could be so
potentially valuable. We need to talk about the value of doing new things.
Some people ask what is the ROI? What they mean is, it is not always the ROI, but they make this
complex ROI model and often the real question is how do we know this is working?
If we open up a conversation of how do we know this is working, we can create mergers that are not
traditional ROI measures. But we can put things in place to track what is working and be able to adjust
accordingly. The last big objection that I often hear is let's develop some consensus on this.
Sometimes it is worth exploring. That means people are uncertain of the merits or SCARF issues
going on.
I would open up a conversation to say what can we do to see value and move this further rather than
going around and having more meetings on consensus. The question I would open up when you get
stuck, what is the most common objection in your organisation and what might be the meaning under
that rejection. How can you surface it and talk about it.
And this is just… I'm going to skip this but this was something done with the United States Air Force
which they were stuck on changing. I just mapped out what their existing culture was and how the rest
of the world viewed things. Within that SCARF model it really opened up thinking and helped them to
understand why they are resisting and perhaps why they should get over that.
The last thing is optimism. Optimism, the positive psychologist will tell us that optimism develops and
tenacity. It is not just a feelgood thing but it develops tenacity. It is so hard for us to develop, to really
embrace change and adopt new ways.
So the interesting thing about optimism is it isn't just something we are born with. If only. There are
ways we can develop optimism and what it really helpful, individually with our groups we are working

with, is the self talk that we gave ourselves. Do we have a negative narrative going? Do we have that
narrative and can we turn it around.
One way to turn that around, optimism, is to turn to, when we are struggling with things, "I wonder why
I am thinking that?" I wonder why this person is struggling with that and what we might be able to do.
Turning on that curiosity and wonder allows us to think about things in new ways and be empathetic.
Perhaps one of the most important skills for us as change agents is to be empathetic and to be able to
tune into what people are feeling. To wrap up this section, many things with our mindsets, what they
are and some suggestions on how to groups may be able to deal with them. I'm actually going to skip
this poll so we can get into communicating. We will stop this here, is there anything from the chat or
Twitter? Questions we should address?
JANET WILDMAN:
Hi, Jodi, can you give us an update?
JODI BROWN:
Yeah. We are having some interesting discussions on Twitter. The flipping out of the WebEx and
telling people in. A little bit of controversy, but it is all good as Carmen says. Through much cognitive
diversity in action going on on twitter.
The Twitter room is properly quieter than the chat room, from what I can see. It is probably more
valuable to hand over to Dominic to give some feedback on what is happening there.
DOMINIC CUSHNAN:
Understanding where people are coming from. Jon Bryant left a great comment that I think should be
taken forward. He said citizen rebels have a longer journey because they are outsiders of the NHS.
Karen Day makes the common that there is a lot of tribalism among healthcare professionals. The
conversation is following that. It is interesting to see.
JANET WILDMAN:
Great, thank you.
LOIS KELLY:
We will move on to communicating issues. So one of the first things on communicating is... Often
when we are in healthcare or whatever our field is, we get so deep into it, we understand what we
want to communicate but it is for them to other people.
Two suggestions, frame your idea and connect to what is understood. There is a book on
screenwriting and what I learned from this book is in teaching a screenplay, you have to make the new
idea familiar. When you look at many new ideas, people connect to what is understood. When Phil
Taylor and Alan Webber for introducing the book Fast Company. People did not understand it, they
said it combined other magazines, the best of Rolling Stone and Harvard Business.

A lot of people could not understand. It was the combination of Facebook and SharePoint. You need to
share it in ways that people understand, make it familiar.
In understanding and talking to people, we often say, "What is the messaging?" There are three ways
to think about things. It is the what, so what and now what. Why should people care and what is the
stake regarding what you are talking about? It is not just to paint a picture of what could be but to
make the status quo and appealing.
The way I am doing things for myself today, I get it. The third thing is the "now what?" Show people the
idea can work, because people support behaviours they think and work.
I think it is very important. Another issue is we get excited about a big idea, but people wonder how it
works. We are very general. In communicating, be real. Show it can work and show the doubts. It is
helpful to look at what is needed to succeed, what might slow us down, how can we prepare, how can
we evaluate.
Another important one, what can we stop doing or doing less of? I don't know about you, when new
things are piled on these things and we are not subtracting anything, it can be overwhelming and the
desire to take on one more thing without understanding what we can let go of, it makes me want to
say, "I can't do one more thing. If you can tell me what to do less of, I might listen."
It helps to talk about what might not help. But what might not work? We tend to focus on the benefits.
What psychologists have found it we create a worst practices list, people remember the information.
Whether it is with a patient, people will remember that. Or if you are introducing something big into an
organisation, you say that these are the worst practices. We have looked at this process, in the NHS,
we looked at this in health care organisations in Norway or France or the US, here are the worst
practices. It makes people think you have done your homework and this is more credible.
Often people say what are the best practices, it might be worth looking at the worst practices. So, how
well do you know the mistakes that others outside of your organisation have made in introducing ideas
similar to yours? Very helpful in introducing the progress. Carmen, I will hand over to you.
CARMEN MEDINA:
Good, there is some great information that should be very encouraging to change agents everywhere.
That is that you probably don't have to convince everyone that your idea is going to get traction. There
is incredible work being done in research institutions about the dynamics of groups and, in fact, social
opinions, social norms change in a logarithmic way. It is not linear, it is logarithmic. If you can get a
certain percent of the people in your organisation to support your idea, really support it, not lukewarm
supporters, you can leverage that to support the entire organisation.
As a change agent, I looked at how my speech would affect others. That is likely to happen, you may
not convince the 30% to 40% right away. But if you are willing to do the grassroots work to get people
behind your idea, that is a more effective strategy.

What happens in term of getting people in your organisation, it will be somewhere between these two
polls.
"These people are so stupid." That is not a useful conversation to have. Where you want to be is more
in this, getting people to think about possibilities. "I wonder if…" Open-minded.
There is good research in this Rebels at Work book, the something that change agents can do in an
organisation to level set people about what they know, right? As opposed to what they believe.
What information is important to you in shaping your views? What information am I considering that
you are not considering?
Oftentimes, we don't even know why we disagree. And we sometimes don't even have a
disagreement, as much as we have a different in perspective, because of different information that we
have.
Aiming to create open mindedness in your group, by asking what if questions, "I wonder if…" That is a
less threatening tactic for a change agent to use.
You know, again, your creative wild pack, figure out who in your organisation are your allies. And
attract them through one-on-one conversations. And be open-minded as to who can be your ally.
One of the story hotel in the book, Rebels at Work, is about someone, I just thought, a bureaucrat, and
I never really thought that she would be a supporter. There came a moment when I really had to turn
to her for information, and I learned that she was excited to be able to apply those arcane skills in a
new idea.
So all sorts of people can be part of your wild pack. The introvert may not necessarily voice support for
your idea in a meeting, but afterwards, they will come afterwards. With that, I will turn it over to Lois.
There you go.
LOIS KELLY:
Great. Thank you.
The other thing with communicating too, we all know this but it is so easy to fall into it, to really get rid
of all the blah, blah, and rhetoric, and institutional, and talk like humans. To talk like a human when we
are having a conversation, but often when we try doing presentations, when we are doing emails, we
start talking like machines.
So in order to invite conversation and get good feedback and participation is to make ideas easy and

inviting. I will probably be slapped for sharing this slide, that a school that I went to recently, a couple
of weeks ago, sent out an email inviting people to participate in a new program.
This is the part of the email that I got, which just sounded so institutional, and boring. I mean, if I hadn't
wanted… If I hadn't been so fascinated in communication, I would have deleted it. It doesn't sound like
they are talking to me as a person.
It doesn't really tell me what is in it for me. So we would just encourage you to avoid rhetoric, and
communicate with people.
This is a fun slide, in the last United States presidential election, there was a lot of experimentation
with different language, and subject lines. While there was one instance where the subject line was,
"Hey." There was a much bigger open in the email, and a much greater contribution, as a result of that.
A lot of people said, "Saying 'hey' isn't presidential." But it connected with a lot of people. It is important
to remember, we are people connecting with people and to get out the boring jargon talk. And also to
remember, sometimes we fall in love. When we create a new approach, sometimes we fall in love with
it. And we start, we go into talking about all the tactics, and how it is going to work. And we forget to
connect the ideas back to what the aspiration is that people have, or how it supports their belief, or
how it supports organisational strategy.
More often than not, if you can keep going back to the big idea, it is very helpful.
Another interesting point that comes from the cognitive psychologists is that there are different
communications approaches, depending on, are you getting people to buy into an idea? Are you try to
get people to follow through and do something?
If you are trying to get people to buy in, you want to make the steps as flexible as possible. And you
might want to ask people to commit to the program, not today, but maybe a month from now. Make it
easy and flexible.
On the other hand, if you are trying to get people to do something, and follow-through, that is where
we have to be as detailed and structured as possible, of what has to happen, when. And explain it in a
very straightforward, uncomplicated way.
The other thing with communicating that relates a little bit to that when we want follow-through, the
more specific we can be, the more likely people are to make changes.
So asking people to commit to specific actions. Asking people to create a specific plan for when and
where, and how, they are going to do what they are committing too.
When people say, "I am going to do this by this date…" Then they are more likely to do it. If you give
people specific deadlines, they are more likely to hit the deadline. Instead of saying, "Get back to me in

two weeks." If you say, "Please get back to me in two days.
If you say a specific time, people will more likely get back to you.
Another thing that is helpful is to indicate the percentage of people in the same town or region,
organisation, who have committed. It has been a huge boost. And the more specific you can be, so
that if you say, "In this neighbourhood, 80% of people have started doing this." Then the chances are
that that person will adopt that behaviour.
And lastly, people like choices. But when you give people choices, you might want to point out what
would be lost, or what is at stake, if they don't choose the choice that you want them to take. Being
specific with people actually get them to commit.
This is an interesting example of someone wanting, a change agent, getting other people in her
organisation to do something. She did not have a position of authority, but she was very specific in
asking people, and telling them what to do. "Can you publish this letter?" And then how they could do
that. And giving the materials they could use to do that.
Being very specific, people actually followed through and supported this idea.
Often, people want to help, and want to do things, and the easier we can make it and the more specific
we can be, the more likely they will be with us.
We'll skip that.
That is that summary. Maybe we will take a minute to do a check in on a poll here. And this poll is a
check in on the communicating. Which of the ideas you think might be most helpful to you in your
organisation.
Is it framing your idea? Messaging? Showing lists? Let's see what people are saying.
Just a minute, people are… OK. We are going to close that, I'll show you… Share the results. And so,
it is pretty mixed in what people find helpful. With that, we will move on. Carmen, I will pass it to you in
our final section.
CARMEN MEDINA:
I think it makes sense that they got the same sort of support, those options. We are going to talk about
new habits. I know we are approaching the end of our time together, I will move quickly through this.
We have already talked about changing the kinds of questions that you are asking of the group and
asking the group to think forward rather than backwards about the situation you are in.
I love Finding Nemo, I'm excited there will be a sequel soon. There is a great scene in the film when

they are caught in fishing nets, all the fish swim down together to break out. It is about doing it together
rather than by yourself.
A new habit is at work, working out loud. The other word people use is transparency, but working out
loud is a crunchier phrase. Get people in your organisation to share what is going on, ask questions,
get new perspectives. A lot of what I have seen happening in the chat rooms during our conversation
is people have been commenting on some of the stuff we have presented. You have been working out
loud and people have come to give ideas for you about those issues.
What we do as an exceptional thing in a webinar is something we need to acquire and do as much
more of a habit in the workplace.
And there is actually a term… Another American business book on the issue, 'Working Outloud'. As
change agents, we are not about imposing our views on other people. What we are about is building
the group and people's capacity to solve problems. We are about capacity building not change
imposing.
Lois, you want to take it from here?
LOIS KELLY:
Sure. Just quickly, one of the really wonderful things we can learn is people talk about listing. We often
try to solve someone's problems. What I would suggest is what if we listen more to help people find
their own answers and what is best for them? What if we learn this as a real skill, so people thought for
themselves and created their own solutions.
The other thing to develop is developing an attitude and culture and gratitude. It is one of the simplest
things. With groups, we have a howl out and talk about the progress we have made. We help one
another. I want to suggest that people need to be more passionate, perhaps a better and more
sustainable energy is to give our attention to curiosity and what is going on and what does that mean
and what does that invite us to do differently.
A very important thing that is near to my heart is how do we show up as ourselves. What happens
when we share more of our vulnerability? And our uncertainty? Brene Brown says vulnerability is the
birthplace of creativity.
A few weeks ago I published a book called 'Naked Hearted'. It's about how bullshit, Parkinson's and
John Lennon changed my life. It is about being courageous and how do we be more honest as our self
and show up as ourselves? And tell our stories?
The more we can allow that vulnerability in, the more people will listen to us and feel safe to take
difficult chances. I'm going to skip the poll. Carmen, do you want to talk about advice for leaders?
CARMEN MEDINA:
People talked about leaving groups. A lot of this is about the work in rebels in groups. Advice for

leaders. You are leading a group and you want to take them on a change journey. One, ask people to
be explicit about the reason they support the status quo. Often you let people get away with saying
they don't want to change. You need to engage them in a friendly, exploratory conversation about what
it is. Unpack the support of the status quo.
Two, you need to support the people who are receptive to new ideas. The way you support them is
three, providing them with space. This gets to the point of structure. If you are a leader trying to lead
people who are resistant to change but you have someone in your group who is for you, or in any kind
of leadership position, you need to have a method agreed upon ahead of time on how you will
introduce new ideas. Too often in organisations, the leader is about keeping the trains running on time.
What you need to do the first week of your leadership journey is to say we are about introducing new
ideas and keeping up with the times. We are about making ourselves better. When someone has a
new idea, we will handle it like this. We will have new ideas on a Friday. The point is to make a
structure. When you create the structure, you create the expectation. The reason this is important is
that groups that don't have a structure about sharing ideas, they devolve into a spiral of silence. But
someone doesn't talk, person two doesn't talk and no one else talks.
What we find in the Rebels in Work group, even when a rebel is not right, if they just speak up, the
group that they are in, they get better results. They force everyone to examine their ideas more
carefully. It is an important obligation to create the space to let people express their ideas. Over to you
Lois.
LOIS KELLY:
We will wrap it up from here. This is something on my ball in my office. "Everything changes.
Everything is connected. Pay attention." The thing I love in the chat box about being gentle,
empathetic, it is to pay attention. Imagining what that might be and leading change may be in the
changing world we are in maybe the most important practice. There is no right way of one-way, but we
practise what can work so we get to be better listeners and are more empathetic. And we embrace
what we are doing in a spirit of love and good intentions. And I believe that possibilities can be made
real.
With that, we are almost out of time but I will open it up. We'd love to answer questions.
JANET WILDMAN:
There has been so much activity on the chat room, I wanted to know if we could hear from anyone in
the chat rooms or on Twitter about any questions they would like to ask. I noticed Celine has just
joined us, and anybody who has joined us a bit late. This has been a fantastic presentation, I have
learned so much. Anything from Twitter or the chat? Jodi or Dominic?
JODI BROWN:
It is Jodi here. No particular question, but I want to summarise twitter. There have been big
encouragement from the 10% principle, you only have to convince 10% to believe the idea. People

found that heartening. Elizabeth Wood said she would aim for groups of 10 in the future. I think that is
cracking.
There has been a lot of talk around authenticity and people have taken home the advice about talking
like a human and Richard likes how Kelly is leading as her authentic self. And Laura has created a
half-day class called #noblahblah.
Just to finish, being a rebel does not always mean being right, it means someone who cares has the
courage to express it. A fantastic chat.
JANET WILDMAN:
We have one minute left. Any burning questions from Dom?
DOMINIC CUSHNAN:
No questions but a lot of questions and energy that will go on from this chat session. I think people will
support each other.
JANET WILDMAN:
Thank you, John. This has been a fantastic presentation, I have learned so much. I'm sure all the
people who have tuned in, too, have learned a lot. There are lot of resources available, the
presentation will be up on the edge website for anybody who has missed this. Please keep in touch
and keep in touch with Lois and Carmen.
I just wanted to make some quick announcement before we close. I want to say congratulations to
everybody who received the certificate as part of the school. Kate said this is rebel fire, she reminded
to save this morning. I want to talk about Transformathon, which is coming up in January.
Watch for the updates on this one. I want to say a heartfelt thank you to Lois and Carmen for spending
the time, I don't know what time it is in the US, for putting together this presentation. Keep in touch with
the Twitter chat at 4:00pm to 5:00pm, you can go to Edge Talks hashtag.
Thank you for everyone for making this happen. Have a lovely weekend, no matter where you are in
the world. Stay in touch with the Edge Talks. The next one will be happening… Right click. I think it will
be the first week in November. The precise talks will be there to follow. Thank you Carmen, thank you
Lois and everyone who has joined today.
LOIS KELLY:
Bye.

Rebels at Work Edge Talk full transcript - 2 October 2015

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Rebels at Work Edge Talk full transcript - 2 October 2015