Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:24: Squiggly Career Calendar

00:03:50: Soft skills focus areas

00:05:08: Books and quotes on originality

00:07:47: Definition of originality

00:08:45: What makes you original

00:12:22: The things that threaten originality

00:18:49: Having the ability to adapt, whatever the size of your business

00:23:15: Involve, don't solve

00:28:42: The advice process

00:35:17: Ideas for action: idea selection

00:38:19: Idea for action: who, what or why question

00:41:54: Recommendations for readership

00:43:21: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and we hope give you, and definitely always us, some ideas for action and tools to try out that we hope will just help you to navigate all of the squiggles of 2023 and beyond, with a bit more confidence, clarity and control.

Helen Tupper: And one thing in addition to the podcast that we think might help you, is our new Squiggly Career Calendar; drumroll, insert!  [Drumroll plays]  Obviously well practised, everybody!

Sarah Ellis: As slick as ever.  We're starting the year as we mean to go on; super-slick!

Helen Tupper: Squiggly, but not so slick.  But this calendar, we did our first calendar last year, and basically it's 12 months of ideas for action to support you and your career development and we got a really positive response to it, so when we were thinking about how we could improve it this year, one of the things that we recognised is that often, making time to take action is one of the biggest barriers for people and their development. 

So, we've tried to make the 2023 Squiggly Career Calendar even easier for you to take action with. So, as well as the 12 different ideas, one for each month, we've included a button on each month, where you can just click it and it will add the action to your diary, because we know if it's in your diary it's much more likely to get done.  There are buttons throughout, but you can choose whether you want to add the whole calendar to your diary in one go.  So for the rest of the year, every Monday there'll be an idea for action that you can take and it's ten minutes for you to do; or, if you think, "Do you know what, August is a month I'd quite like to focus on my holidays and not my career", you can just pick the months that feel most relevant to you. Whatever works, we'll put the links for you in the show notes, it will be on our website, and you'll also be able to find it at Amazing If on LinkedIn, or on Instagram as well.

Sarah Ellis: I did it this morning, Helen, you'd be proud of me; I tried the functionality.  That sounds like I've not been involved with it so far.  I did help along the way, but Helen definitely created the very cool and useful tech that sits behind it.  So, Helen, I put some of your whizzy tech to the test this morning, you'll be pleased to know, and in January our focus is on feedback, and the idea for action is called Frequency Finder. 

And it's super-easy; if I can do it without having to WhatsApp Helen with a few questions, I promise you literally just click on the button, it shows you your calendar, I picked my Outlook calendar, which is what we use, and it was there straightaway just like any other diary or calendar invite. So, this is a bit of an experiment for us, because we are so keen to think about ideas and experiments that can help everybody make development part of your day-to-day, rather than something separate or something you never quite get round to.  So, our calendar is our first way of experimenting with, "How can we design things slightly differently?"  So, if you do have a go, if you have a chance to read it, if you're adding it maybe as a team, or if you're just doing it for yourself, please get in touch with us and let us know, how could we make it more useful; what's been great about it; are there any topics you'd like us to cover that we've missed out this year that we can do for next year?  We'd love to know what you all think.

Helen Tupper: So, over the next four weeks, we are doing a Soft Skills series, where we have looked at the World Economic Forum's recommendations for the skills that we all need by 2025 and we've decided to dive a bit deeper into them, and Sarah and I have done a review of two books on that topic, similar to something we did in the summer last year that we got some good feedback on, and just evaluated what we've learnt about it, what action might we take forward on it, what insights have we got that we didn't have before reading. We're trying to make it as practical as possible for you, so that you can develop these soft skills that we will need, but it's also definitely useful for us; we've got lots of insights ourselves from really focusing on reading around these areas.  So, what are our areas?

Sarah Ellis: So, the four we've chosen are Originality, which is what we're going to talk about today; Critical Thinking; Social Influence; and Stress Tolerance.  So, there are a list of ten, and we'll make sure that that link from the World Economic Forum is in the show notes from today if you want to look at all ten.  I'm not sure if you're allowed to say this about the World Economic Forum, but I feel like they do cheat a little bit because some of the list of the ten, they just put two or three together.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, Creativity and Problem-Solving; you're like, "That's two, come on, that's two!"

Sarah Ellis: So I feel like really, it's a longer list than ten, and it is certainly quite an eclectic mix.  So, some of them are more techy-type skills, and then some of them are more things like originality.  So, what we've tried to do is pick things that perhaps we've not talked about loads before, that are either new to us, or things that we also hope are going to be universally useful.  So, we hope that these four, all four of them, whatever job you're in, whatever role, whatever stage of your squiggle you're at, we felt like these four should feel relevant for all of us.

Helen Tupper: And the structure for all these episodes is, we're going to talk about a quote that has really stood out for us; then, we're going to talk about three things that we've learnt from reading; then, we'll move on to one idea we're definitely going to action; then, our final point we're going to do is, who would we recommend reading these books to.

Sarah Ellis: So, for originality, the book I've read is called Corporate Rebels: Make Work More Fun, by Joost Minnaar and Pim de Morree.  I apologise in advance if I've not quite pronounced those correctly.  Brilliant book and I'm really excited to talk to you all about it today.  Helen, what have you chosen?

Helen Tupper: I unoriginally chose a book about originality called Originals, which is by Adam Grant, and just gives me any excuse to read a book that Adam Grant has written, which I will always want to do.

Sarah Ellis: So, shall we start with our quotes?  What was the quote that stood out for you from the book?

Helen Tupper: Here's mine, "Originality is not a fixed trait, it is a free choice".

Sarah Ellis: Adam Grant --

Helen Tupper: I know, he nails the quotes!

Sarah Ellis: -- he's so quotable, isn't he?!

Helen Tupper: But I like it because we often talk about, skills are things that you can develop in.  So, something like confidence, for example, a lot of people make the assumption that it's something you've got or you've not, and that's why it's one of our Squiggly Skills, is that we say, "No, it's something that you can learn", and I think that's exactly what he's trying to get across with this point of originality, that some people think, "That's just a naturally original person.  They're just good at that and I'm not", and he's saying, "No, it's a choice you make".  And there's lots of insight into how you can develop it once you make that choice.

Sarah Ellis: My quote is, "Action is the most powerful antidote to the corporate disease of analysis paralysis".

Helen Tupper: "Corporate disease"!

Sarah Ellis: I think that sort of sets the tone in some ways to what Corporate Rebels is all about.  And I wouldn't want you to think it is a negative book, because actually it is the exact opposite; it is a very optimistic and positive read.  It's something I really enjoyed reading over Christmas.  But that quote just did really stand out for me, especially because I think I recognised, from having worked in lots of big companies, that analysis paralysis, where structures get in your way, where things are done in a way because they've always been done that way, you know, lots of things that it's no one individual's fault, it's structures and systems that don't really serve us any more. That quote really summed up for me, if you don't take action, nothing will change.  And I think whether you apply that to corporate environments, or whether you apply that to your own career, I see that that continues to be true in every part of your life; nothing changes if you don't do something.

Helen Tupper: I'm looking forward to learning more about this book, it's not a book I've read.  Okay, so my three things that I learnt from Originals, I've got a definition, which I think is quite useful, in terms of originality

Sarah Ellis: Of course you have!

Helen Tupper: Of course, a definition to start things off.  And then the other things that I learnt were, some factors that make you original and then what threatens originality.  So, they're my three things that I will go through. So, the definition first of all is Adam Grant's definition, and as we said, I think he just does a definition well.  So, the definition from Adam Grant is that, "Originality is about introducing and advancing an idea that's relatively unusual within a particular domain and that has the potential to improve it".  So, it's got three points to it.  It's something new that doesn't have to be brand new, it's just a bit unusual in its domain. 

So, you could be stealing an idea from a completely different area and bringing it into your industry, it's just new to you really, and there's an opportunity to make it a bit better. The reason I liked that definition is, he talks quite a lot about this doesn't have to be a completely blank sheet of paper.  That idea of borrowing an idea or building on something from a different area, that's still being original, and you almost take the pressure off originality when you look at it from that perspective.  So, that was the first thing that I learnt which I thought was useful. The second was what makes you original, and I don't think there are any big surprises here, but in the book there are some really good examples.  So, the things that I picked out, and then I'll talk about them a little bit more, on what makes you original, are taking initiative, being curious, taking considered risk and experimentation, so those four areas. 

And in the book, just a few of the things that stuck out for me, on initiative, Adam Grant gives this example of people in call centres who had higher performance in their roles for being original, so in how they solved customer problems, for example. When they did some research into what makes some people better at going off-script and helping people and solving problems in new ways, one of the things that they found was the people that were the most original, in terms of how they helped customers, applied for their job on the internet browser, bear with me, using Firefox or Chrome; and the people that were less original basically used Internet Explorer or Safari. They deduced that basically, if you had taken the effort to use an internet browser that wasn't the one that was automatically installed on your computer, if you'd basically gone, "That would work better for me, I've been bothered to try a better solution, that was an indicator of initiative, and people who had higher levels of initiative were more original in terms of how they solved problems and generated ideas, which I thought was quite interesting, when you're looking at hiring and stuff like that. Curiosity, really interesting point that I loved, he said that, "We are driven to question defaults when we experience vuja de, which is the opposite of déjà vu.  So, déjà vu is obviously when you feel like you've experienced something before; but vuja de is when you look at something that you have done before with a fresh perspective.  So you say, "How could we do this differently?  What would a different frame be?"  So, I thought that was quite interesting. Then, just the last point on experimentation, he said that, "The more experiments you run, the less constrained you come by your ideas from the past".  When you experiment, you let go of this idea of it always being right and always doing the same thing.  What do you think; do you think that's a good definition of originality?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think there were two things that sprung to mind there.  One was creating the conditions for originality.  You can already start to see the benefits of why you want people to be more original in organisations, because the whole "what got us here as an organisation won't get us there", you need people to spot opportunities and solve problems in new ways.  That's how we, as individuals, add value to organisations.  So, you can see how much value originality must contribute to organisations. Then, I suppose I'm connecting the dots then to the book that I read, which was more about culture, and then going, "Actually, Corporate Rebels describes, I think, the sorts of cultures where you would get lots and lots of originals", if you want to call them that, as a group of people in terms of, it's more of a mindset and a mode of approaching work and the way that you do things.  So I was like, "There's almost a bit about what you bring as an individual, but also the environment you surround yourself in must help you or hinder you", I'm guessing.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and there's actually, as well as the examples that there are throughout the book, right at the end of the book there are a really good couple of pages on actions, and some of it is like, "As a leader, how do you create the conditions for originality?" which may link to the bit that you've read. The last thing that I've learnt that I kind of captured for this was the things that threaten originality, so I guess counterculture things that you could have in an organisation or a team.  This one was interesting.  So there are three things: achievement; idea selection; and middle-status conformity.  So let me go through those.  I thought achievement was interesting, because it's one of our values; both of us have got this one.

Sarah Ellis: It's our most significant value for both of us, so I was like, "This sounds like bad news"!

Helen Tupper: I've copied and pasted this from the book.  It says, "When achievement motivation goes sky high, it can crowd out originality.  The more you value achievement, the more you come to dread failure".  I was thinking, I don't know if we dread failure and I think we learn quickly, but I think it's that idea that maybe the more focused you become on achievement, the less open you are to experimentation.  So, as long as you can balance those two things, I think it's probably okay; but if this need to achieve comes at a cost of doing things differently that you've not done before because you fear you might fail, I think that's where it creates an issue.

Sarah Ellis: As you were describing that, I think I particularly recognise that in the first ten years of my career, where I don't think I was experimenting much, I think I did have a high fear of failure.  And because I'm achievement-focused, that probably got in the way of me being as original as I can be.  I can think of lots of examples now where I think that's me at my best, being curious and experimenting and developing different ways of approaching things; I'm good at asking those kinds of questions now.  But I wonder if it also takes a certain amount of confidence.  And knowing, being prepared to be original often means doing something differently or suggesting something different, and I would be interested in the link between how confident, or how much self-belief you need to then also be -- is that a condition for originality? If you're not feeling confident, all those things you've described are a really hard thing to do, whereas if you've got good levels of self-awareness and you're confident in yourself, which is I think how I would describe myself in probably the second 10 to 15 years of my career, that was probably one of the biggest differences, then I would say my levels of originality intuitively feel way higher.

Helen Tupper: Well, he talks about this idea, so one of the other threats was middle-status conformity.  So, this is basically where conformity chooses people to pick tried and tested over the danger of the original, is what he says.  And if you think about it in terms of career stage, he said that at that the start of people's careers, they've in some ways got nothing to lose because they've not done it before, so they can do different things; and later on it people's careers, because they've maybe got tenure or they've got a network --

Sarah Ellis: You've got a lot to lose.

Helen Tupper: Well he says actually, it's the middle bit that's the worst.  So, they've almost got more confidence; to your point, you've got more confidence in your later career that you can recover, that even if it goes wrong, it's not the end of the world, that actually you fail, you learn, all that stuff.  He says, "You know that when you're a bit more tenured", and at the start of your career, you don't know it and you just do it.  He says, "This middle-status conformity is the biggest threat to originality", because you're trying to play it safe, there's the pressure of progression, people are trying to maybe fit a mould a little bit more.  So, it will be interesting, the Corporate Rebels, how does that link with this middle-status conformity; how do you help those people to be more rebellious, because Adam's saying that that stage in your career, when you're in this middle layer, is the hardest point to do it.

Sarah Ellis: I also wonder, in that middle stage, whether you see them as in your control or not, but a lot more maybe obligations might not be the right word, but where you've maybe got kids, you've probably got high rent or mortgages, you've got quite a lot of costs, you've maybe got older parents who you may be looking after.  So, there's a lot of that kind of squeezed middle, that sandwich bit, the sandwich generation, as it's sometimes described. Yet, I heard a lot of people towards the end of last year, you know when you feel you've had the same conversation but with very different people, but people talking to me about wanting to progress but felt like they couldn't because they needed flexibility; or, they'd quite like to do something different, but they needed the money that they got from their current role, all of those kinds of things which are very real challenges, and perhaps that's when they happen, those challenges. 

It's quite hard to be original, to make a different choice, when there's lots of factors that feel like they're working against you.  It's interesting. I do think though, I don't think I was very original in my early career.  I actually think quite quickly, maybe because we were both in big organisations, but I think I conformed very quickly and it almost felt like I was like, "No way do I want to fail", almost that pressure of starting out.  So, I didn't recognise the first bit, maybe I'd be different now.  Maybe people starting in work are different now, but I think I was very conformist early on and got less and less so the older I got!

Helen Tupper: The last thing then, just on what threatens originality, idea selection.  I thought this was interesting, "The biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation, it's idea selection".  And he does go on to talk about how important it is to have a volume of ideas.  But the idea that it's not just having lots of ideas, it's picking the ones that are right for that team right now, and this ability to be able to sift through ideas to find the right ones is, he said, what is really critical, otherwise you've just got loads of ideas and he says that sometimes people fall in love with their ideas, and it might not be a good one; or, you fall in love with someone else's idea because they're particularly persuasive, but it doesn't mean that it's a good idea, it's just they've sold it in a very compelling way, which I thought was quite interesting.

Sarah Ellis: And what does he say in terms of, what helps to improve idea selection?  Is it connecting it to company purpose and objectives, thinking about how you're going to measure it? Helen Tupper: I'm going to tease you, Sarah, because that's my action to take forward!

Sarah Ellis: Oh, okay! Helen Tupper: So, I'm glad I've hooked you, I'm glad I've hooked you in that question!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you have!  As you were describing it, I was thinking, "I'm definitely good at generating ideas", but I was challenging myself, "Am I quite as good at selecting the right ones?" I don't know.

Helen Tupper: Well, you'll have to wait for the idea for action!  Right, help me understand about Corporate Rebels, what do I need to learn?

Sarah Ellis: I think one of the things that is really good about Corporate Rebels, that's really compelling when you read it, is the range of organisations they've visited.  So, early on in the book, they basically, these two guys, sat down and made a really long list of people and organisations that they saw as pioneers, as corporate rebels.  They are from all over the world, some of them are more individual, so it might be an incredible thinker; and some of them are really traditional manufacturing organisations that have been around for 100 years that are making fridges, or civil servants. So you know sometimes, particularly when you read about Joost and Pim, who both sound lovely and brilliant and drive around in a Campervan and clearly like going surfing; and so you know when you're like --

Helen Tupper: Together?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think so.  Actually, I'd love to talk to them.  I think they would be great podcast guests.  So, they've physically been and talked and visited all of these companies that they then describe.

Helen Tupper: In their Campervan.  Did they rock up at the fridge-maker in that?!

Sarah Ellis: I'm not sure they did them all in the Campervan, to be fair, but I think they definitely did some of them, and they obviously like surfing and things.  And so, the slight cynic in me, I was like, "Oh, they've just been to all these companies where it will feel very hard.  If you're 150 years old, or if you're a bank, is this going to feel really difficult to do anything with?"  But the exact opposite is true, because they use such a wide variety of examples and they are very clear. The first point I learnt is, you know it's always really tempting to look for, "Well, if I do this, then all good stuff will happen"?  They are very clear that there is no playbook, there is no one-size-fits-all.  But what all of these organisations do have in common is that success belongs to the fast learner.  These organisations are just incredibly good, and these individuals within these organisations, at challenging the status quo and continually adapting.  Their ability to unlearn and relearn is really motivating to read, especially because some of these organisations have been around for so long, or done things in a certain way, so it feels like nothing is off limits; they are really prepared to, rather than saying, "We can't do this because…", you feel like what they all have in common is, "Well, imagine if we did it this way. 

What would happen if…", and they sort of embrace the uncomfortableness and the challenge that comes with making those changes. When you read about it, some of these changes that some of the organisations, let's say they've gone from hierarchical to self-managing teams, which is one of the examples, those things don't happen overnight, especially not in big companies; or the civil servants that they describe, where they completely change the culture, it took three years.  And I know, and we both know, having been in big companies, the continual commitment to doing things in a different way, it's not a flash-in-the-pan initiative, it's not the latest shiny object in an organisation; this is people really believing that there is a better way to be, and not being committed to the structures and systems that have often been in place for a really, really long time

. That was the first thing I learnt, how easy it is to fall into the trap of working in a certain way, because it's what you assume is the right thing to do.  And I even recognise that in Amazing If where I'm like, "We are a very small organisation compared to some of the people I was reading about", and there are some things that I found quite confronting where I was like, "We already do that and we've got less than ten people".  I was like, "Why do we do that?"  Sometimes I think it's just, you haven't thought about it.  It really made me think, "We just didn't ask that question, we just assumed that's the right structure or that's the right approach". So, as you go through, you ask yourself a lot of questions about, "Are we fit for purpose as an organisation for the future? 

Have we really thought about, are we creating value in the right way?"  So, that's the more general point.  You get all these really interesting case studies, but they're not too long, they're really digestible, they're really interesting stories. Second point, to get a bit more specific is, we've talked about this idea before of "involve, don't solve", and you see that with these organisations.  One of the things that they all consistently do well is involve employees.  And so, this gets rid of things like bottlenecks and it means there's much more transparency, much more accountability.  So you know lots of, I think we did an episode on it last year, where managers would often get quite frustrated there's not enough accountability.  And then probably what you default to, as a manager or as a leader, is then trying to maybe go to more top-down leadership, or you try and take more control.  I think that's probably what I would try and do because I'd be like, "Okay, well I need to get more involved or control more".

Whereas actually, what you see in this civil servant organisation is, do the opposite, involve people, get people to come up with the solutions, let people self-organise, be really, really transparent in an almost uncomfortable way.  You can describe these things and you're like, "This all sounds great", but there's some really interesting research that they talk about, when you involve people, how much it affects productivity.  And in most cases, it goes up by 30% as a minimum and 40% at best. When they then describe, at the start of the book, they talk about 20% of people feel like their career is useful.  You know like, "I've got a career that is useful in some way", and it's a bit like that engagement score that you sometimes hear where people are like, "Only 10% or 15% of people feel engaged in the work that they do", but I quite like the useful one, "Does your career feel useful?"  And they were saying that when you involve people, people are so much more motivated, and it's often harder; but the satisfaction levels from people go up so much more. So, it's this idea of you giving away control, particularly senior people. 

It's almost like levels disappear in place of very specific and transparent roles and responsibilities, and therefore everything's so clear.  You know, there is so much clarity and there's a lot of effort and energy put into that, which you can imagine feels time-consuming and lots of organisations don't do because you're like, "Oh, we'll get to it when…"  Whereas, these organisations seem to understand that if we really involve people, if we actively embrace challenges and problems and spend time on them, it's almost like the payoff's going to be more than worth it.

Helen Tupper: There's two overlapping examples actually in Originals, which I think support that point.  So, one of them is a glassware company, if that's what you call them, Warby Parker, the cool glasses-by-post people, and he talked about that involve, don't solve.  They had a very transparent way of sharing ideas, I think it was in a Google Doc, that the leaders, when the organisation was first starting, they just shared all of their ideas that they were working on in a Google Doc, that people could just build on, which I thought was quite interesting in terms of that transparency point.  And then, employees could upvote the ideas.  So, they got this constant view of what ideas they're working on and what ideas do people support, which I thought was nice. Then also, there's another example of a project Adam Grant did with Google on job-crafting, which I noted for us actually as something to look back on, and they did a study with how engaged, I think the metric was, people were with their work.  They had a control group that just did the job that was defined by their job description, and another group that had the opportunity to redefine their role around things that they thought were useful and relevant.  And it was the people that did that that were -- I think they measured it six months after.  I think it was impact and engagement, or metrics to that extent, but they were significantly higher because they'd been involved in defining the detail of their job.  So, really interesting examples of what happens, how you can take that involve, don't solve, with ideas and people's jobs, and then the benefits, and the crossover of those two points in the books.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, job-crafting also comes up.  And there is a great quote actually I was just looking for there by David Marquet, you know he writes about leadership language and comes from I think it's a Navy background.  So again, in an environment where you'd have thought you can't involve people, my assumption would be, "You can't do that, because you've got to have very strict systems", but he really challenged that, and I think he was put onto some underperforming boats to turn those boats around.

Helen Tupper: I think they're called ships in the Navy!

Sarah Ellis: Okay, sure!  And he says, "I'm not going to give any more orders because when I give an order, you follow it, and if I give the wrong order, we're all going to die".  And he's very clear about, the people who know best are the people who are closest to the engine in the engine room, or I don't know, the steering in the steering wheel room, to use another technical phrase there!

Helen Tupper: The steering wheel room; I love it!  I don't know of a better room to call it. Sarah Ellis: Exactly.  So, it is interesting, you know that sort of I imagine the challenge back from a lot of CEOs would be, "Oh, that's all well and good, but it's not going to work here".  And I think if you could, and we'll come onto who should read this book, but certainly that challenge is really overcome with the range of examples, which I found really interesting. Then the third thing I learnt, which is I was zooming in and getting more specific as I was going through, is this process called "the advice process", which I'd not heard of before.  So in organisations, decisions tend to be made in one of two ways.  So, lots of organisations, you get top-down decision-making; in some organisations, people recognise, "Okay, maybe that's not the way to go", and people go for consensus decision-making.  But the problem with that is that's really time-consuming, can slow people down, you feel like you have to involve everyone. Actually, I've been in both of those types of organisations and usually it's quite nice to work in a consensus-seeking environment, because you're trying to include people.  So, I think it often comes from positive intent, but it does mean that you can be quite slow and that you miss opportunities.  What they talk about with pioneers and progressives, as they label these organisations, is they often use some form of what's called an advice process.

This means that for decisions, as an individual, if you've got a small decision to make, you just make it, just get on with it; if you've got a medium or big decision to make, you go and seek advice from two sets of people, people who are going to be affected.  So, "I'm going to make a decision about something, you're going to be affected, so I should seek advice from you", and maybe I'd go and seek advice from Vivi in our team because she's got relevant experience.  So, she's maybe not going to be affected, but I think, "Oh, I think Vivi did something a bit like this before in her previous organisation, so I'm going to learn from her and almost get a bit of challenge and build from her to influence and affect my decision". But ultimately, that advice that you've been given, they say advice is just advice; it's essentially, you're gleaning perspectives which you consider, but ultimately it is still your decision.  So I could choose to think, "I know you're going to be affected and you've told me this is how it's going to affect you, and that might not be your choice".  But I might go, "I think that's an acceptable risk, I think that's okay. 

So, I know you're not going to be happy, but I have talked to you and I can also explain it to you, but it doesn't mean I have to follow everybody's advice". One of the things that they were saying about this is, it really increases initiative and accountability, because it is very clear who the decision-maker is.  It reminded me a bit of when you spoke last year to someone else who I hope we get on the podcast this year, called Rob Pierre, who runs a company called Jellyfish, where he talked a lot about knowing who's responsible, who's accountable, who can make which decisions.  And so again, it's back to this clarity point about going, "How do we get stuff done?" Now, in our kind of organisation, when you are a bit smaller, this perhaps feels a little bit less relevant, but we could definitely fall into consensus-seeking decision-making, where you feel like you have to involve everyone, because we want to be nice and friendly. 

But if you're in a really big organisation, or even they said something like the tipping point is quite small, over 15 people, where you end up adding unnecessary structures and involving too many people, that's when it cuts out meeting for meetings' sake and steering groups and working groups that no one really needs to be in; and it just gives people a lot more sense of ownership over their role and their ability to make stuff happen. What's interesting is they said, when people first start doing this, most people, especially if you've been in a more command-and-control or top-down environment, find it really hard because you've moved from, "Well, I just did whatever Helen told me to do", to, "Oh, I have to figure out what I think we should do".  So they were saying, actually people initially do need quite a lot of coaching because, back to confidence, you've got to have the confidence, you might feel quite scared. 

You know Amy Edmondson talks about fear, you might feel quite fearful of being like, "I'm now very clearly owning this decision.  What happens if it doesn't go well; what are the consequences of that decision not going well, now that it's very clearly my decision?  Does that mean I'm not going to get a very good review or bonus?" or those kinds of things. They were saying, depending on where you're starting from, it can feel like quite a tough transition.  But I found that really interesting.  It's something I'd not heard of, they describe how it works, and then they give a few resources if you wanted to find out more.  So, that felt like something to dig a bit deeper into, because it was new news to me.

Helen Tupper: What it makes me think, as a small organisation, is that the "affected by a decision", I feel we would know; but the "experienced in", that might prompt me to look outside the organisation.  Because we're a relatively new business and we're certainly doing a lot of things, even though we've been around for ten years now, Sarah, we're still doing a lot of things that we've never done before, so we might not have experience of that thing in our organisation, it's definitely just a pause point, isn't it, when you're making a decision thinking, "Who do we know who's got experience of this that we could talk to before we make this decision?"  I think it's just a nice prompt.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's a really good prompt.  And actually, I think we have done that in an ad hoc way. 

I think the thing that you realise about these progressive pioneers is they definitely experiment, but everything they do is quite thoughtful and intentional.  So, I think it's fair to say that occasionally, between you and I, we try this one thing but then we don't write it down, and then we do something slightly different; we're never short of an idea or an experiment, we're always quite open to change and challenge. 

But you know the intentional, almost slowing down to speed up and going, "Right, how do we approach this?"  It's all very transparent, you clearly have articulated everything, I think you and I often get so either excited, or we like to move with pace, you miss that out. Actually, by missing that out, you probably miss out on some of, what they would argue, some of the benefits, some of the outcomes; you probably don't stick with some stuff for long enough; you probably don't have a good enough idea about what's working, what's not.  Like you say, actually it's the repeatability, because for lots of these organisations, like I said, they stick with this for years and years and years while still learning really fast, but they know where they are.  And I think that's often one of the things that you and I struggle with is, because we're not very good at capturing as we go, you then sort of don't know where you are at any one point, and then you can actually waste time and effort because you have to repeat, which you never want to do.

Helen Tupper: So we're going to move onto the action bit now, and the idea here is that if you want to increase your originality in the work that you do or the team that you work in, what is one thing that you can take away from these books.  So, the idea that I think you could try out from Originals is all about idea selection.  This goes onto that point that I mentioned earlier, that the issue with originality isn't the amount of ideas you have, it's selecting the right ideas.  I thought this is something that we could experiment with and that listeners could try out too. Adam Grant says that very often, when people are selecting ideas, what you do is you have a whole load of ideas, so like, "What's a new product we could launch?" and everyone generates loads of ideas. 

And then you go, "What's our criteria to review these ideas?  Like, it's got to be delivered by December; it's got to cost under this much money", etc, and then you review the ideas.  He says, "But what that makes you do is you're almost too critical".  Because you've gone, "Idea, criteria, review", you've got this very critical mindset that goes against the creativity and the originality. He says that a better way of doing this, if you want to improve your idea selection for ideas that are likely to be more original, is you do the criteria first so, "Okay, for this product we're going to launch, what does it need to do; 12345?"  Then, you get everyone in creative, original thinking mode, "All right, what are all of our ideas, what are we thinking?" and then you do the review because he says you're more likely to build on each other's ideas.  Because your brain has stayed in that idea open space, there's much more challenge, build; that original mindset is much more present. I thought it was a really simple change to how you could select better ideas.  You do the criteria for what it needs to be; then you get into idea generation mode; and then you do the review.

Sarah Ellis: Interesting.  I'm going to need to -- the reason I say "interesting", and actually you said to me, before we even started this podcast, you were like, "You need to read this book", and actually you and I have both bought the book, but you decided to read it.  So I was like, "Well, I won't, because I quite like the surprise of these conversations!" and I was reading something different.  What I was trying to reconcile with there when you described that is, I feel like lots of my ideas come out of the blue, but I hope they don't; they come from connecting dots, not from a criteria.  I was almost falling into fixed mindset as you were describing that, I was like, "I don't want somebody to give me a criteria".

Helen Tupper: No, I think he's saying a criteria, then almost separate it, like go, "There's the criteria", but not use that to then define the ideas, but you've got the criteria; then you get the ideas, you stay in a free head space; and then you connect the two at the end of it.  But because when you're trying to select the ideas, you're still in a more creative space, you're not being reductive.  Whereas he's basically saying, if you start with ideas and then go criteria, you become gradually more reductive in the outcomes.

Sarah Ellis: That makes sense to me.  Yeah, I think the point around, "What mindset are you in when you're making those decisions?" that makes a lot of sense.  So interesting.  So for me, from Corporate Rebels, what's the one idea for action if you want to increase your originality?  I'd almost be coupling two things together.  I would be looking at either my job or my team or my organisation, depends which lens feels most motivating for you, and asking myself, "What is a system or a structure or a process that we should challenge, that doesn't feel fit for purpose any more?" and nothing is off limits, be really ambitious about what that might be. Then I would be thinking about, "Who can I involve to", as Helen's described, "maybe create ideas about what we could do differently?" and don't start from where you are.  I think this is on a blank piece of paper, create without any limitations, without any constraints, what could this be. 

So, if you were going to get rid of hierarchy, if you were going to have full transparency in your team, if you were going to completely change how you make decisions, you almost need a propelling question to start; then involve people and then just think about, how can you experiment even on a small scale, because maybe the only downside of reading Corporate Rebels is, these organisations are so ambitious, I found it really motivating to read, but I'm reading it in the position where I'm the Co-founder of a company where I probably feel like I've got a lot of power and autonomy. I imagine if I had been reading it back in my Barclays or my Sainsbury's days, I might have been like, "I'm not the CEO of this brilliant Chinese company [or] I'm not at Harvard doing interesting innovative work on management thinking".  But again, I think that almost is doing ourselves a disservice about how original you can be, within your own context and within your own world. 

So I think, if you read this book, if you read Corporate Rebels, I think you will feel like, originality has a really strong business case for making a positive difference to people, purpose and profit, and I think that comes through really clearly.  But I wouldn't want people to think, "But I can't influence or impact that enough because I'm not senior enough", because change comes from people. Back to where we started, change comes from action, and I think we all have the ability to be more original within our own worlds, and the best thing you can do, I think, is just to choose something that would benefit; what would benefit from your originality.  I can see what would benefit from my originality in Amazing If, but I think when I think back to other jobs I've done, I can see there how things would have benefited from me having a bit more confidence to be more original.  So, I think it's maybe connecting those dots. You know if you just say, "I want to be more original", I think that feels too vague and abstract.  It's like, "Who, what or where would benefit from your originality?" and then it gives you somewhere to apply.  You've got to apply your originality to be able to take action, to be able to practice and to get better at it.  So, I would encourage everyone listening to be really specific about answering that question, "Who, what or where would benefit from your originality?"

Helen Tupper: I think that is the dream coach-yourself question that has come from this conversation, and we will include it in the PodSheet.  So, for all of our episodes, we do a PodSheet that you can download that covers a lot of the key points, the ideas for action, and it has these coach-yourself questions to really prompt your reflection.  You can get the link to that in the show notes, or it's always on our website.  So, yeah, I like that, it's definitely made me think. So, last but not least, who would you recommend it for?  Mine's really easy.  I feel like I could just go, "Everyone"!  But to be a bit more specific, I would say Originals is my recommended read to anyone who's interested in newness, maybe you work in innovation or problem-solving, which I feel is most people, or creativity or creative team cultures.  So, it doesn't have to be marketing, but I would say innovation, problem-solving, marketing would be the first people that I would go to to recommend this book to.

Sarah Ellis: I would love every CEO to have read this book.  I think the world would be a better place if every CEO had read this book.  And if you're interested in culture, in how things get done in organisations, I think if you're interested in challenging the status quo, in doing things differently, if you find that fascinating, and you want lots of examples of people and places that have done that, I think you'll really enjoy Corporate Rebels. I don't always enjoy a non-fiction read, I read a lot of fiction, and this was a book that I kept looking forward to picking back up again. 

And for people who listened to our summer series, I'm usually quite honest about whether I've enjoyed the book or not, as infamously there was one book I did not enjoy that much.  I tried to be polite-ish about it, but this was one where even some of the people who saw me over Christmas, the book was sort of following me around with a highlighter!  They were like, you know people start to ask you that question when you're giving them the classic book-off, "Is it a good book; is it interesting?"  I'm like, "It is interesting.  Please don't talk to me"!

Helen Tupper: I love your book-offs!  So, we hope you have found today's episode useful.  As we said before, it is the first of four episodes in our Squiggly Soft Skills series.  The next one is on critical thinking.  I won't tell you what books we've chosen, but similar structure to this, we've both read different books and we will share our insights with each other and our ideas for action for you as well.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again next week.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.