Daniel Atlin- Radical Collaboration in the face of Complexity

Daniel Atlin, guest · [04:37]And another story I have is actually, in my positions, I think I've been hired largely because I do bring a little bit of a different quirky perspective to things, which I'm very thankful for. So, I was working for a very large university in Canada, actually the largest one, the University of Toronto. And, I was brought into a, to, to a conversation because a large donor had committed to making a historic donation to the university to rename a building and, and to create a humanities institute. And that donor was given a brochure that had actually the family name carved above the lintel above the door, whatever. Unfortunately, It was a historical building. So everyone at the university was saying, you couldn't do that. You can't do that. You can't change that. So it was brought to me. I said, let me see what I can do. I hate when people say no, something can't be done. It actually put my back up. And so this time I actually went to the city hall and I spoke to the local councilor, I spoke to planning staff and And, and brought it back to people on, on, on site at the university and said, there is a way we can do this. It's going to be a little complicated and we have to line up all these different ducks, but we can do it. So I worked with the people, some of whom it said it couldn't be done on campus, and we actually had a plan to go through this, the heritage and committees and, and work through council, work through the planners, come up with plans to be able to make sure we could, we could treat it with this historic building with, with respect. And we actually ended up having that name sort of, sort of replaced. We had to keep the existing stone because it had been already renamed something else, and we had to store it on site, but we able to have that done. So it's a great story to use because when people say things are carved in stone, there actually is a way to place them too.

Daniel Atlin, guest · [07:05]So complexity to me is actually, you know, to be honest, I think actually that's the nature of life. I think we've spent a lot of time trying to make lives and business and leaderships more neatly than it, than it actually should be. And that was one of those ahas that I had from my dissertation when I, when I let people understand that after interviewing 25 leaders from the UK and Canada and Australia and New Zealand, you know, I, I, I sent it back to them. And one of the key findings was that leadership, especially at universities, is very messy. And that's that word that actually, you know, had its genesis. And, what I heard back from these leaders, they said, thank you, thank you actually for naming the mess, mess, because so often we're trying to apply simplistic and linear sort of approaches to complex organizations. So naming the net, the mess is actually so important. And it made me realize, and I've done a lot of, you know, as you know, writing and thinking and chatting with people about this, is that we, we Keep on trying to simplify everything when sometimes we should actually be recognizing the complexity of things. Like, it's all about change, and yet people say that, that, that people are afraid of change, right? But change is, is in the nature. We're always adapting. We're, you know, our, our, our own cells are living and dying, not to get to a granular state, but, you know, change is part of life. And, and we might as well get used to it and be able to understand that. And I think we're seeing a level of complexity even increasing in, in current day, as technology has increased far more, social changes are, are, are happening, probably because they're amplified from technology and, and, and we're seeing things a little bit faster than we wouldn't otherwise. So I think that complexity is, is, is just part of, of life. And, the more we can try and make sense of it rather than tame it or simplify it, I think actually would be better.

Daniel Atlin, guest · [12:56]Yeah, well, that, that sort of brings to the model, I guess, Tamara, if you want me to sort of go into that a little bit, because What I realized, I must admit, talking to people and involving my own views on leadership and how people actually manage to get through it these days, because it is, it is far more complex and, and that being a leader and actually being an employee these days, right? So, so what I realized from, from all my discussions with people is that, is that, you know, they, they're, they're practicing, you know, this way to be able to navigate the complexity, but, but through, through sensemaking. And so, so in my conversations with people, first in my dissertation, and then, you know, continuing with, with conversations in, in messy and in other forms, I am seeing that people are, are, are using, you know, an inner and outer sensemaking model. And that comes back to actually what we were talking about earlier, that people first of all have to make sense of themselves, right? They have to observe and be aware of their emotions. They have to be able to regulate sometimes their own responses. They have to be able to, be resilient sometimes and, and, and actually pause as well. And they also have to be able to, to, to adapt and change their own emotions at some point. And, and Junction with this, there's actually outer sense-making, which is how we make sense of others as well. And this is basically bringing the sense of organizational sense-making traits to leadership, which is where leaders have to be very good at exploration and not making as well. So they have to go and get some information from the world around them, bring it back, and they create a little bit of a plan. Through that, they tell a story and create a narrative, and they also, you know, need to be able to, to, to bring invention and improvisation into the mix as well. And constantly they're going to be able to have to adapt and, and collaborate in order to bring both these two lens-making, sense-making aspects to, to bear. And, and this is something they have to practice all the time. And I think it comes down to, and one of my podcast guests, you know, said it's a, I think it said a beautiful sort of analogy with that. And he said, it's like when you get on the plane, they tell you, you know, in, in an event of you losing of, of oxygen, you know, your mask will drop, but, but put the mask on yourself before your child or someone else. It's actually recognizes that leadership has to begin with yourself, that you actually An impact on the system, you have an impact on, on others as well. So you have to recognize that as well and keep that in check always. So, so very, very important. And both these two, you know, things about Sensemaking with yourself and with others have to be wrapped around purpose as well. We've all heard about the importance of purpose. Your purpose should be aligned with that of the organization, your values as well, because without that, you're going to, I think, be lost as well, and you're going to be actually have a lot of, of challenges leading. So that, that, that's, you know, how I see that you're able to actually navigate that sort of mess as well.

Daniel Atlin, guest · [15:57]Well, I, I think this inner Sensemaking piece that, that, you know, that people are sometimes Blind about, right? Sometimes leaders are told you have to go in there and just fix things. You have to actually, you know, build an aligned team. Here are the ROI, here's the KPIs. They forget actually about their own sort of operating systems in, in a lot of ways, how important that is to actually make sure that that is well, well Attuned to the situation. So I think that, you know, in talking to people and in my, in my conversations with senior teams and leaders, the recognition that, that, you know, the inner stuff is as important, if not more important, than, than actually the collective and team things and, and, and outer sense making, you know, that, that's been a little bit of a, of a, I'd say an aha to the leaders I'm talking to. Because it actually does burst a little bit of that leadership, the traditional leadership model, right? Which is all about the leader who's got charisma and just can, you know, by force of, of, of convening power, bring people along. That's, that's a myth I think we do need to bust.

Daniel Atlin, guest · [21:28]There's no question the business model that, that universities have established is itself challenged. Right, it's very place-based, based on, on expensive estates and, and, and infrastructure, full-time faculty that are tenured and, and a lot of staff for support. So it's a very expensive business model too. And governments now are in times of, of, of constraint, especially post-COVID and, and, you know, seeing the needs of other sectors, they're actually not funding universities as much as they used to. So I, so I think that's just created this situation where universities have to adapt or base perhaps alternative futures, and that could be actually going out of business. And then Tamara and I were speaking a little bit earlier today, just about how, you know, in the UK it's happening a little bit faster than in Canada. And that's because of, first of all, there's a different sort of mix of universities. In Canada, universities are much more homogeneous. They're all sort of comprehensive. Some of them are very research intensive, but by and large, you know, an undergraduate university degree at one institution is equivalent almost to another anywhere else. You know, vast preponderance So I think institutions in Canada are public sector, they're state supported or province supported. So there's a little bit of sameness there. There's also a little bit more scale. So, so we have universities that have over a hundred thousand students. And, I think the only university you have in the UK that's of that size would be the Open University. So it's just a very different sort of environment, but we're still seeing that now happen in Canada as well. So that the, impetus for change is essential. And in the UK, they're calling it, and that's a great term, I think, it's called radical collaboration. And we're seeing in the, in, in the UK that institutions are taking varying responses to this. They're actually merging sometimes with a, a complementary institution, sometimes with someone who, who maybe can give them scale. So that's one solution. And now everyone is scratching their head and trying to see what they can do for pedagogy and in-class teaching, right? Because, you know, they're recognizing that it's no longer work. And I have had a couple of great conversations with some people who even talk about Continuous education for your lifetime. So the 40-year degree, as it were. So I, I think that all those things are happening. I just don't know if the change is happening fast enough.

Daniel Atlin, guest · [25:11]We're in the middle of a very messy experiment, right? And, and we're seeing it play out. So on, on Mondays I actually teach a course. So I teach a course on change leadership for a polytechnic in Canada. And, it's, it's a very fascinating experience to me because it's an online course, and students have the, the option of seeing it live or viewing as a video afterwards. It's a very small class, but almost everyone views it afterwards. We have to look at new mo-modalities as well, and, and ways to be able to, to, you know, ensure that we actually have that engagement too, because without that, we're, we're having A real crisis, I think, of engagement. And I think that's a societal sort of thing. We could probably talk about this for an entire podcast. But I, I think the lack of engagement we're seeing, you know, is, is, is a signal. That's a stressing signal, I'd

Kathryn Gorman, host · [25:57]say. I, I entirely agree with you. And, and, and to take that point into, in, into school education, it applies at, at higher education level, it applies in the workplace. But at schools, there's been much talk in the UK post-COVID about an attendance crisis. And that was very loud for a little while. And then gradually voices started saying, no, no, no, this isn't an attendance crisis. That's the visual manifestation of it. This is an engagement crisis. And it, and it goes to relevance, how much people feel that they belong, that they're seen, which is the point that you made earlier. It goes to all of those things. And, and you don't deal with that by slapping penalties on people, you know, and dealing with it in that kind of draconian way. It, it calls for something far more profound than that. It's not about whether you're there or not, although some people would argue being there is You know, is, is part of the problem. Yeah, the, the engagement, do you feel that you've been met,

Tamara Zaple Rolfs, host · [26:51]you

Kathryn Gorman, host · [26:52]know, in that

Tamara Zaple Rolfs, host · [26:52]place? And the adaptation of the courses, like you're saying, Daniel, you know, the, the tempting thing is to offer that online and you can access it when you want, and, you know, that's That's easy, isn't it? And you can get the qualification, but if we're needing people to do that collective Sensemaking, and I love that term, radical collaboration, which we're going to need more and more, then actually they need to be in the same space for at least some of the time to do that work together. So, it's going to have to be very thoughtful and intentional around how to provide that for people in their learning, I suppose.