Kurt Nelson 0:00 Kurt, welcome to behavioral grooves, the podcast where behavioral science meets application. I'm Kurt Nelson and I'm Tim Houlihan 0:13 Tim Houlihan. Today we're thrilled to share our conversation with Michael Morris, the chavkin Chang professor of leadership at Columbia Business School, Kurt Nelson 0:22 and Michael is one of the world's leading experts on cultural Psychology and Organizational Behavior. His research on how cultural instincts shape human cooperation has been published in top academic journals, and his insights have influenced leaders across many Fortune 500 companies, as well as in many social movements. Tim, Tim Houlihan 0:41 we dove deep into his latest book, tribal how the cultural instincts that divide us can help bring us together. And Kurt, I have to say, this conversation completely shifted how I think about human cooperation and cultural change. Kurt Nelson 0:54 Yeah, it was really interesting, and there were a couple things that really stood out to me. Tim first, Michael reveals that our tribal instincts aren't just a modern social phenomena, that they're actually three unique evolutionary adaptations that have developed over the past million years or so, and he calls those instincts, Tim Houlihan 1:13 right? So the peer instinct is the one that enabled our ancestors to coordinate what was known as persistence hunts for speedy animals such as antelopes, to the hero instinct that drove people to take risks for the group's benefits. And lastly, Michael discusses the ancestor instinct that allows us to cooperate with complete strangers based on our shared traditions. Kurt Nelson 1:37 Yeah. And another thing that I thought was really interesting in this conversation, and it really blew my mind in our discussion with Michael, was his very careful and thoughtful comparison of two CEOs needing to make major changes at their companies and doing very similar things to achieve them. However, the situations end up completely different, with completely different outcomes, and we discussed this top down strategy that he calls the shock wave effect, Tim Houlihan 2:06 right, right? The CEO situations feature Mary Barra at GM and Ellen Powell at Reddit, and as Kurt had just said, like they needed to do major changes to their organizations quickly and decisively. But Bara dress code edict succeeded because she was an insider who understood GM sacred values, while Powell's content moderation efforts at Reddit failed because she inadvertently trampled on the company's core beliefs in free speech. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 2:34 this is truly a masterclass in how context influences so much in leadership. And maybe the most fascinating part of this conversation for me was learning about how Abraham Lincoln and the invention of Thanksgiving. I had no idea Tim that we what we think of as this colonial pilgrim tradition was not really that. It was basically a Civil War era political strategy in Lincoln? Yeah, Lincoln basically combined some scattered historical threads and wove them into what we feel like an established tradition to help heal a divided nation. And it's also a very brilliant example of inclusive populism in action. Michael Morris 3:16 Yeah, Tim Houlihan 3:18 we're going to dig deeper into that particular insight in our grouping session after the interview, but right now, sit back and relax with a generous pour of high test coffee, maybe not 10 daily espressos like Our guest, and enjoy our conversation with Michael Morris. Tim Houlihan 3:42 Michael Morris, welcome to behavioral grooves. Michael Morris 3:46 Thanks for having me here. Tim Houlihan 3:48 It's really a pleasure to have you here. And let's get started with a few light and easy questions, like, Would you prefer to ride a bicycle or a unicycle? Michael Morris 3:58 Definitely a bicycle. Okay, Tim Houlihan 4:00 okay, because of comfort, are you not a unicycle rider? Just to clarify, Michael Morris 4:06 I'm a, I'm a lifelong lover of bicycles. You know, I used to race bicycles, race bicycles when I was young. I've done a lot of long distance cycle tourism, you know, I so I have a deep love of bicycles. And I, I've tried unicycles once or twice, but I just, it seems more of a performative thing. It doesn't, you know, I really like if the efficiency of a bicycle, the way that it translates, you know, human, you know, human energy, into movement. So Kurt Nelson 4:37 I find it, it's interesting. I the way that you just mentioned that it's a performative thing, I think that's very true. I mean, people who ride unicycles, it's not utilitarian. They're not seeing people riding to work on a on a unicycle. They're they're doing it in some sort of show or performance. And that's that's a really interesting take on that. All right. Second question, Michael, are you a coffee drinker or a teacher? Drinker Michael Morris 5:02 primarily coffee, and I drink, I drink large amounts of coffee. I drink tea also, I do drink free, also iced tea often, but I coffee is a coffee is my primary Tim Houlihan 5:18 quantify, large amounts. Are you talking about gallons or pints or Michael Morris 5:24 Well, I usually drink two cups a day. Yeah, yeah. I I drink, I usually drink espresso, but I drink doubles, and I drink probably 10 of those a day. And also, and I don't have this kind of, like, don't want to drink another cup of coffee because I won't be able to get to sleep issue, you know, I can drink so Kurt Nelson 5:55 you don't have to cut it off at like, 11am so You're not drinking 10 early in the morning. Michael Morris 6:00 I'm always impressed with those people who have these fastidious rules you know about, you know, caffeine, because I just maybe my caffeine receptors are just so blown. But, yeah, okay, Tim Houlihan 6:19 all righty, third speed round question, true or false? Tribes are rigid and homogeneous groups of people with clearly identified leaders and clearly identified practices. Michael Morris 6:32 Sometimes, you know, but I mean is, it's not definitional to tribes that they are rigid, or that they have, you know, one leader, or that they're sort of unchanging over time. You know, I think, if anything, the standard case with tribes is that they are evolving, and that people belong to more than one of them, and that not everyone in the tribe is invested in all of the things that the tribe does. You know that we have sort of plural and partial identifications with communities. That's the normal human condition. Kurt Nelson 7:12 We're going to talk about that. We will dig into that more as we go on and but I get the last Speed Round question, and this is given today's divisive environment. Is the best cure for divisive populism, inclusive populism? Michael Morris 7:33 Well, it's one it's one cure, and it's a cure that's been used, you know, at other times of times of crisis, or even poly crisis. You know, as we often hear today, I mean, it's common to hear statements, you know, op eds that start, you know, the American electorate has never been this deeply divided. And, yeah, that's written by somebody who has not studied history, the American electorate much more divided than right now. You know, there was this thing called the Civil War, and, you know, states seceded, and Abraham Lincoln was elected, you know, with less than 40% of the popular vote. And so you think we have legitimacy crisis today. I mean, that's, that's a serious legitimacy crisis. And, you know, we, we think of the holiday of Thanksgiving as being something that was devised by prescient pilgrims. You know, in their in their clairvoyance, you know, who knew exactly what multicultural America would need, you know, 400 years later, and so they held a multicultural celebration by inviting the Native Americans and sharing different foods. And, you know, Tim Houlihan 8:55 wait, are you saying that that's not what Michael Morris 8:59 right like? Oh, your cuisine. But that wasn't really what the Pilgrims did, but it's what we it's what we retrospectively have projected onto the pilgrims. And the person, one of the people who was very involved in that event that happened in the 1860s primarily, was Abraham Lincoln, as well as some of the literary leaders of the time, like Mary, Mary Joseph Hale, who was the author of Mary Had a Little Lamb and who was like a major magazine editor and publisher of the time, and she had this campaign to create a new national holiday that would Be a Thanksgiving holiday in the autumn. That would be something that the whole country did in common and brought people together, because the country had been growing growing apart, you know, through the mid 1800s and Abraham Lincoln responded to her overtures and made a proclamation. Where he referenced, you know, the Puritan themes that the Pilgrims believed in. You know providentialism That you know we we've been given this wonderful country for a purpose, and we need to live up to that purpose. And he also referenced, you know that George Washington had held a one time Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving was a Puritan ritual. You know that you would, when something good happened, you would hold a Thanksgiving. And George Washington held one after the War of Independence. And so Lincoln by referencing, you know, the early settlers, and by referencing Washington, what he did, you know, 90 years before, he made it seem as though the Thanksgiving holiday was was already an institution. It was already established. It was it was just something that he was formalizing, but that had already been in place. And by doing it in that way, he he gave it instant gravitas. It instantly, instantly we felt like when we celebrated Thanksgiving, that we were reenacting the ways of our forefathers and the previous generations, and so we felt all this sense of meaning and reverence that comes when we are maintaining a tradition, and it wasn't an actual It wasn't an actual tradition to have an annual National Thanksgiving, but there were enough elements that it could be constructed that way. And so that's called the invention of tradition. So that Lincoln, Lincoln was an example of a leader who used populism, you know, reference referencing the good old days of the past, you know, to support what he proposes currently, even though it's a change, you know, and but he was doing it in an inclusive way. So populism is not inherently wedded to divisiveness, and it often takes the form of, you know, these foreigners are responsible for your problems. So let's unify, like in the old days, but it doesn't have to have that these foreigners are the problem element that is, you know, can be a part of populism, but doesn't have to be. Tim Houlihan 12:15 Michael, let's get to the heart of the thesis of the book. Let's just start by talking about, what does it mean to be tribal, and why are tribes so important to human cultures today? Michael Morris 12:26 Well, what it means to be tribal is living in a community that is united by shared ideas, and those shared ideas might be ideas about the social contract. They might be idea a sense of mission, about creating change in a social movement. It might be a shared esthetic. If you know the community we're talking about is surfers or, you know, Hells Angels or burning man camps. You know the these are all tribes in the sense that it's a large community, many of the members of the community may be strangers to each other, but there's a lot of trust and common feeling that comes from the predictability of other people who share your concepts and your ideals and some knowledge of traditions of the group when, when people are predictable to you, you can trust them and living in tribes you know our species, humans, we we can form larger communities and societies and organizations that bring great advantages. They bring great advantages in terms of surviving. And one of the big adaptations is that, you know, we, we have these adaptations for tribal living, and they enable us to live in communities of millions and even billions, whereas chimps can live in a community of 40 to 50, and then it becomes too large, and they can't, they can't trust beyond kith and kin. You know, it either has to be your relative or somebody that you've had bonding with, you know, mutual grooming or other kinds of bonding. And there's no, there's no, like, shared knowledge frameworks in a chimpanzee community that gives them a sense of trust for fellow members of the community in the way that we have. So there, there is, there is evidence that culture already existed, but then humans formed adaptations to kind of form this super culture, you know, this really rich culture that serves all these other functions than culture serves in other species. Kurt Nelson 14:49 You you write about the three layers of tribal instinct, this idea that there's this peer instinct, the hero instinct and the ancestor instinct. Can you? Can you elaborate on that? For our listeners, and kind of give us an overview of what they are and why they matter. Michael Morris 15:05 Yeah, so, you know, in the field of evolutionary anthropology and in the, you know, some fields of psychology, like comparative psychology and cultural psychology, there's been a sort of convergence in understanding that there's there are adaptations, innate systems in our psychology that enable us to be culture sharers and culture users. And for me, it breaks down fairly clearly into three major waves, so more than a million years ago, in the time of Homo erectus, there were some changes that greatly affected how the early humans at that time were able to coordinate. You know, at a certain point, you start to see evidence of coordinated teamwork in foraging, you know, in hunting and in in gathering, as well as in, you know, self defense, communal self defense. And you can see evidence for this in in footprints, you know, footprints that have been petrified in Lakeside mud that show like, you know, groups of young men moving quickly in the direction after the tracks of antelopes. And so that tells you that it's evidence for a gender specific group activity. And it doesn't look like water gathering, because the footprints are parallel to the lake shore, so it looks like it looks like hunting, but there's a technique that is still practiced by some indigenous groups, including, like say, the Bushmen of the Kalahari, that is called persistence hunting, where they can kill an antelope. But antelopes are designed by evolution to be sprinters, not marathoners. And if you can separate an individual from the herd and startle them, you know, 15 times in a row, they they keel over from exhaustion, because they're just not built to recover. And then you can, you know, you can kill them with a rock, because it doesn't do any good to chase different antelopes around all day. You have to have a common, common plan. And so, you know, there's, there's increasing evidence now, from footprints and from other things, that that's something that started to happen. But moving to be able to consistently hunt antelope, you know, enabled that enabled big changes in our physiology. You know, you in the time that erectus lived, the human stomach and jaw shrunk compared to, you know, previous you know, APE ape men and it and their brains greatly expanded. And brains use 20% of all the calories that we ingest. And so you see this. You see this decline in in the means of production, you know, the the Tim Houlihan 18:23 like, the fuel system for what, what's, what's provided energy, yeah, like, if, Michael Morris 18:30 if the jaws are shrinking and the stomach is shrinking, well, how are they getting all the calories that they need for the brain and this? And the answer is that they were hunting and they were also cooking, you know, it's another coordinated activity that you need several people working with a common agenda to roast the antelope. And what I argue is that that reflects an adaptation for coordinating that I call the peer instinct. You know, some anthropologists call it, you know, conformist learning or averaging. You know, it's the idea of, you look around at what other people in your group are doing, and then you just kind of internalize those behaviors or the beliefs that they that they imply, if nobody else is eating the brown berries. Okay, I don't eat the brown berries, you know. And so it's, it's, it's a way of spreading adaptive knowledge that some people in the group have learned, you know, to the whole group. And this Tim Houlihan 19:33 is deeply embedded into our DNA, at this where we are in the evolutionary story, yeah, Michael Morris 19:39 yeah. It's the foundation of culture, you know, in in chimpanzee groups, you know, these, these elements of culture, like breaking a rock, breaking nuts with a rock, you know, it may be characteristic of a group, but maybe only 30% of the group actually does it, because they're just not that good at learning from what their neighbors are doing. They're just, we say, monkey see monkeys do, but they're just, they're just not nearly as aware of what their peers are doing as humans are. We are the we are the real copycats. We are the real imitators. And we have this, we have this kind of social radar that that gives us a representation of in this situation, my group does X, you know, we sort of carry our peers inside us in these in group norms that we learn implicitly, and that means that we're, you know, I think of us as a much less lonely species. And so much of human creativity and human accomplishment is is from coordinated activity from, you know, being on the same page with other people. And, you know, you start an idea, and then I add to it, and that comes from the peer instinct, from the fact that we were kind of tapping into what other people are thinking, what other people are doing, and using that as a means to coordinate. Kurt Nelson 20:58 So what about the hero instinct and the ancestor instinct? Then how are those elements kind of parlaying into this, this aspect? Michael Morris 21:09 Yeah, you know, ultimately, they all work as a as a system, but about a half a million years ago in the archeological record, you see a bunch of new behaviors that weren't there before. You see the hunting of really large game, not just an antelope, but like a wooly mammoth, or, you know, a rhinoceros and and the elephants and rhinoceros of that time were were twice the size of today's, you know, they call it megafauna. They were, for some reason, just much bigger. And, and, and to me, those all point to something in common, which is that, you know, when you hunt a large animal like that, somebody is not just enough to be on the team and engage in teamwork. Somebody's got to take one for the team, or, you know, get right in the take a personal risk for the good of the group. If everybody hangs back like a game, like a strictly rational creature, would, you know, then everybody is vulnerable, because, you know, the beast can charge. But if somebody, if somebody is willing to risk their life, then usually, the beast is stunned and and it's safe for everybody else to rush in and it so this, this, this reputation game that humans play, of of trying to be valorous, or be, you know, be someone who invents something new that pays off for the group. It, it enables you to have more children, and your children, to have more children and to have the resources to survive. So that is a new side of our psychology, not just being normal, which was the parents thing, but being normative. You know, wanting to be exemplary, wanting to be prestigious and to have status in the group. It involves some cognitive abilities, like being able to learn what the group values. And one way we do that is by looking who has status. You know, they must be doing something right, and emulating the people with status is a big part of our psychology. It can, it can lead to superstitious learning. It can lead to lots of silly behaviors, like, you know, eating the same cereal that LeBron James eats, or, you know, buying LeBron James says that you should, but it can also lead to a lot of smart decisions and decisions that wouldn't you couldn't make any other way. So the hero instinct. You know, we may deride it as status seeking or as hero worship, but it it is a big part of our psychology, and it was something new half a million years ago, and it enabled new social breakthroughs. It allowed for living in larger groups, and it allowed for higher levels of collective action, because people weren't afraid to be they weren't afraid of free riders, because they understood there was an advantage to being the one who was giving and then the the ancestor instinct is the newest one. It's, it's something that he came about in the last 100,000 years. And people debate about when you know, was it 50,000 years ago in Europe, as many people thought or or was it 100,000 years ago in Africa, as some evidence suggests. But the homo sapiens, you know, came from Africa to Europe in the last 100,000 years, and it seems that we, you know, we out, survived them in one way or another. Even though you know when, when their skeletons were first discovered, they were portrayed as these, you know, brutes, you know, as these, these us knuckle dragging. You know, half, half, Simeon creatures, they had bigger brains than you and I have today. Right? And they were stronger than we are today. An individual homo sapien against an individual Neanderthal would not have survived, you know, either in a battle of the wits or a battle of muscles. But groups of Homo sapiens were far more effective at living, you know, in the mini ice ages than the groups of Neanderthals. My conclusion is that at least part of it is that the homo sapiens had this other psychological mutation, which was a mutation to kind of be really interested in the ways of the past, to hang on the word of the elders, to reproduce the dance and the artwork and the songs of the past generation. And this quirk, you know, this curiosity about the past and this deep sense of satisfaction in perpetuating traditions. It It not only enabled them to hang on to wisdom that the past generation come up with, so that they didn't have to reinvent the wheel every generation, but it also enabled them to to bond with neighboring groups, because they would have some some traditions in common, you know, greeting rituals, or Some common religious beliefs that they could build temples around and and around this time you, you had another increase in the scale of social organization, where you, you had gone from only living in bands to then living in bands that were embedded into clans. And at this time you really start to see tribes, which is, you know, clans, you know, bands are 30 people who are closely related, who live and hunt together. Clans are, you know, people with a common origin that live in a given area, and that bands kind of form flexibly from the clan. And then tribes are much larger groups of people that are only united by the fact that they have some common legacy of ideas, you know. So they have some common elements of language, or some common elements of tool building, and then they can share the material trade, the materials used in those tools, or some common religious beliefs that provide the occasion for, you know, a common ceremony, or building a temple together. And this was the, this was what enabled this greater expanse of the circle of trust, so that you had trading your groups, groups that were hundreds of kilometers apart were trading, you know, you find, you find seashells hundreds of miles from from the ocean. So it, it seems to explain why Homo sapiens were able to out survive Neanderthals, even though Neanderthals had been adapted for to Europe, you know, for 100,000 years before and Homo sapiens were newcomers. Michael Morris 28:04 Yeah, Tim Houlihan 28:06 we'll be right back after a quick break. Kurt Nelson 28:11 Hey, grooves, we want to take a moment away from our conversation to thank you for listening to behavioral grooves if you enjoy the conversations we're having and want to help us keep the groove going. Here are a few simple ways that you can support the show. Tim Houlihan 28:24 First off, subscribing to our sub stack is a great way to stay connected with us between episodes. The weekly newsletter provides you with cool insights that are beyond the episodes, and they get delivered straight to your inbox, Kurt Nelson 28:37 and if you haven't already leaving a review or a rating of the podcast on a platform like Apple or Spotify or YouTube, helps other curious minds discover us, and there's two great things about that. One, it gives us a boost. And two, it costs nothing Tim Houlihan 28:53 and it only takes a second, but it makes a huge difference for us. Plus, we love hearing from you, so don't be shy. Leave us a review or give us a quick thumbs up. Kurt Nelson 29:03 We're coming up on 500 episodes, and we're doing this because we love the conversations we have with our guests. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 29:09 We also want to do it because we love bringing you insightful behavior changing content every week, and we hope that some of those insights will help you find your groove. We're speaking with Michael Morris about his latest book, tribal and how the cultural instincts that divide us can actually help bring us together. And Michael we want to talk more about the practical implications about the book. It's easy to intuit that major cultural changes can happen, really they come about by powerful CEOs at the top right. And we want to talk more about some examples of top down changes that worked and didn't work. But before we get to that, can you speak about the successes of bottom up, grassroots approaches? Michael Morris 29:50 One of the general themes of the book is, is that culture is dynamic, and that the culture of every community is a dynamic. Force, and that we as leaders and activists and teachers and coaches and managers, we we can harness culture by understanding the dynamics. And one of the dynamics is sort of a short term dynamic, what, what I call triggering, and I've already mentioned a couple times, and that is the idea that, you know, we all contain many internalized cultures, and so they can't all be active in the front of our brain at once. And the way that we're wired is that when we're in an immediate environment, a social setting, where there are physical cues, perceptual cues to one of the cultures that were identified with, that springs to the fore of our brain, and it guides our interpretations, and it guides our actions, and that helps us behave in a way that meshes With and is appreciated by and is, you know, congruent with traditions, you know, to the to the people around us at any given point in time. So it helps us fit in. It helps us be appreciated. And in the book i i structure the book around these three instincts, the peer instinct, the hero instinct and the ancestor instinct. And then I talk about, well, what are the triggers that are particularly potent for peer codes related to peer instinct, for hero codes and for ancestor codes? And there are, there are different triggers, and those, those three triggers, there's a lot of information, but it's a it's a behavioral science group, so Kurt Nelson 31:43 that's okay, Michael Morris 31:47 more than I would otherwise. But, you know, I argue that the primary triggers for for the peer codes are the the other people around the audience, and we see that in when we talk about code switching with politicians, right? Like a politician like Barack Obama, when he gets in front of a black church congregation in Selma, Alabama, he lapses into a different dialect. You know that he has learned at different times of his life from communities that he's been a part of. Then, when he's in front of a group of white farmers in Kansas who remind him of his grandfather. You know, it's, it's spontaneous code switching. A lot of my academic research has been about that, showing that cultural code switching happens, not just in the way we speak, but also in the in the biases of our interpretation. So we we engage in different kinds of sense making when we are reminded of our identities as professors or our identities as parents, or in the case of a bicultural person, our western identity or our eastern identity. Now there's a longer term dynamic, which is, which is that the ideals in a group also evolve. And the key to understanding how these different layers of culture Evolve is what I call tribal signals. And tribal signals are forms of social information that each of these instincts is sensitive to, you know, it's changed to the to the kind of central elements of a of a culture. It usually involves having to change some of the peer codes or the in group norms, some of the hero codes or the ideals, the shared ideals in a community and and possibly even some of the traditions or institutions or policies. So traditions are next door to institutions, and institutions are next door to policies. The next step is laws. But these are, these are increasingly formalized beliefs about, you know, the way things have been done consistently over time in the group. And it's, it's kind of a truism in the political change literature and in the organizational change literature that 70% of change initiatives fail, and they fail because there's a lot of inertia, you know. And you know, not everybody buys into the change, but there's also something that we call active resistance to the change, and that is that, you know, people who've gotten to the middle of a corporation, they've gotten there by being good at the status quo, being good at the way things concurrently, and when an outsider CEO comes in with some new ideas about how things are done elsewhere and how they could be done differently, most middle managers, they just. Try to wait it out, you know, they, they may, they may say yes, but then they don't do it, you know, they or they, they change the label of something, but they, they keep doing it the same way. Y'all at the same time spreading gossip about the What a joke the new CEO is what a bozo doesn't really understand. Out of touch, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and so it's hard to create deep change in a community because you're, you're, you're, you're changing all you have to change all three of these levels at once. And there are some successful change initiatives, and they usually come about through some sort of organized campaign that that is thinking clearly about making changes to these three layers at different points in time, as opposed to trying to do it all at once. When people try to rush a change initiative, it, you know, it ends up being a set of chaotic mixed signals, and it almost always fails, or it creates change, but not the, not the one desired. Now, not, not every bottom up movement succeeds. Occupy Wall Street is an example. It was extremely successful in terms of peer codes, right it? It was in something like 250, cities, you know, worldwide, and there they had very strict norms that were based in anarchist theory about, you know, not, not using megaphones and not having any leaders and not they also had this strict idea that we are not we are not descended from any prior protest group, you know, but I think some of their rules may have hindered them from the bottom up progression that a grassroots movement needs To ultimately change the institutions because not having clear leaders prevented or hindered them from having their message come across clearly. Most people didn't really know what they wanted and and not not identifying with any past groups made it harder for them to argue that there are long standing precedents for what we are arguing. You know, that's, that's an activist best friend to say, this is not a radical idea. This is an idea that has been around since the Boston Tea Party, right? That's what Kurt Nelson 37:29 Lincoln did, right? When he brought in the history, right? He's like Thanksgiving. It's not, it's we've, we've been doing it, right? Yeah, you Michael Morris 37:37 know, every bottom up movements do gain advice, and they gain resources from, you know, from those in power. And that doesn't mean that they're that they're fraudulent, you know, if they do become organic, you know, they they gain, they take on a life of their own. Then, then we shouldn't dismiss them just because they had help, because almost every organization has help. Tim Houlihan 38:03 Okay, so that's the bottom up approach. Tell us about the top down approach, and in particular the shockwave strategy. In one case at GM, you noted that it worked great, but at Reddit, the shockwave was a big failure. Can you tell us about the shockwave? Michael Morris 38:19 It's often associated with my colleague at Columbia, Jeffrey Sachs, who advised a lot of governments, you know, in the late 90s who were trying to, you know, dealing with stagflation and, you know, you know, sort of non, non functioning command economies to he basically had this belief that an economy is like a heart patient that has lost its heart rhythm. You know, giving a small shock gradually over time will not help it at all, but if you give it a massive shock all at once, it resets the equilibrium, and then the heart can start to beat at a normal pace. Again, CEOs talk about sending a shock wave through the organization, and it's like doing something rash, you know, doing something that's like sudden, and that affects everybody, and then it just causes people to question lots of other things. And so that can be effective, but it seems to require certain things to be in place. And now these two examples you brought up are, I think, reflective of the same dynamic. So the first one Mary Barra at GM. She is a lifelong GM er. You know, she's someone who came from like, two generations of GM workers in Detroit. She went to GM University. I don't know if it still exists, but it did exist. Probably has a new name for her undergraduate. She started working there at age 18, like inspecting offenders at a pond. The Act plant, or something like that. She was, you know, dyed in the wool GM person, and then had a career there where she worked in different departments, as an engineer and in human resources, and, you know, maybe finance a few things. And she knew the problems of GM as well as anyone, and she went into the C suite right around the time that they were facing bankruptcy and reorganization. And this was a time of shame, because GM had been the largest corporation for most of the 20th century. It made the most cars of any company. There was tremendous pride in its scale. And that was the problem, you know, that they were, they were more concerned with the number of cars being made than profitability. And they were not, they were there was all this bureaucracy that came from the size that made decisions really slow. They weren't nimble. They couldn't keep up with, you know, competitors, and so she first was the head of human resources. And there were huge HR issues, you know, on the table or on the horizon at least. You know, there were, there was going when you have a reorganization that often involves changes in the pension plan. It involves layoffs. And so what did she decide to do first? What she decided to do first was not anything immediately necessary as a function of the situation they were in. GM had this dress code, which was a booklet that had grown over time by accretion, it was become like 20 pages long. Most of it was, like, incredibly outdated, and a lot of it was about how women should dress. But it was like, obviously written by men, and it everyone at GM, kind of you had to give it to every new employee, and people had to follow the rules, but it made no sense, and everybody just treated it with a shrug. And so what she decided to be her first act was she she publicly ripped up the dress code, this booklet that everybody knew everybody had a copy of on their desk, and she replaced it with a new dress code, dress appropriately. And the middle managers panic. They're like, when are you going to get when are you going to issue another memo saying what appropriately means, you know, 14 pages long, hopefully, because they didn't want to have to interpret the word take responsibility, perhaps get blamed for something. And she said, I want every group to have a to have a meeting and to talk about what appropriately means in their part of the organization. So the legal department may have to dress in a different way, because you meet with government people, then the assembly line. And the assembly line, you know, it may place. Some places may be hot, so people should be allowed to wear shorts in the summer, you know. Other places maybe not. But I want each group to decide and then own it, then live with it, you know, and make adjustments as necessary, make it a living document, and they, everyone was really uncomfortable for a few weeks, but they did it, and then suddenly people were coming to work dressed differently than they had been for, you know, for decades, including Mary Barra, you know, she, she wears, she likes to wear, like leather blazers. Looks very different from, you know, the the previous GM executives, you know, from the Roger and me, the sort of images of images of the GM executives and their blue suits walking down the corridors and in in this immense headquarters. And so it it changed. It immediately sent a different signal, which was, you know, we are diverse, we are up to date. We are, you know, expressing our authentic selves at work and and groups. Got used to making a decision and then living by it. And then, as she became CEO, they they hit another safety scandal, and she handled the safety scandal very differently than it had ever been handled before, with a lot more transparency and people were open to it. And she's, she's gotten them into autonomous vehicles. She's gotten them into electric vehicles. She's, you know, spun off lots of non profitable divisions overseas that were selling lots of cars but weren't really contributing to innovation or profits. So she's she's been able to create really radical change in in an organization that is usually the stock example of inertial or. Organization, and I would say she did it through successful top down change, where she she changed her tradition, and that created a sense of disruption, but in a way that caused people to slightly rethink their identities, you know, slightly rethink their values. Now the very same year in Silicon Valley, which is a place that you think of as being open to change, right, an organization called Reddit, which, you know, at the time, was something like the sixth most visited, you know, site on the internet. It, you know, it's right, and there's an unfiltered quality that gives Reddit a freshness and authenticity that you don't see on other, even other bulletin board sites there. There's also problems that come with that lack of editing. And in in 2014 you had two big ones. You had the the leak of celebrity news happened some of some of whom were underage, on on Reddit. And then you had GamerGate happening largely on Reddit, which was this attack on female coders in the gaming industry. And so both of those things were, you know, really pernicious, illegal, problematic. And so Reddit decided, okay, we need someone. We need an adult in the room. You know, we need a new CEO. So let's, let's hire someone with relevant expertise. So they hired Ellen Powell, who was a prominent attorney in Silicon Valley, and someone who had worked for the most prestigious venture capital firm, and the first thing she did was something about revenge porn. She said, like, okay, California is about to pass this revenge porn law. Let's be proactive and shut down these Reddit threads that are mostly revenge porn because they are going to be illegal. And they are, you know, there's a reason for it, and the community accepted that. And so she thought, okay, good. They like my approaches is, is accepted Kurt Nelson 47:03 and got a win, I gotta win. Michael Morris 47:07 And then she thought more, and she said, Okay, well, which of these, which, what other threads are kind of more are objectionable and have more problems than than merits. And there were many of them. And so she went through them and she Michael Morris 47:24 said, Okay, Michael Morris 47:25 there's these 13 or so Reddits or threads, some of which had hundreds of 1000s of members, are going to be eliminated. They're going to be just erased because they contain, you know, abuse towards individuals, not just ideas about concept. And they are, you know, they they look like harassment to me and and she thought, Okay, well, that who could object to that? You know, well, who could object to that? Approximately 10 hundreds of Tim Houlihan 48:03 1000s of people, lots of people did Yep. Michael Morris 48:06 And there were, there were hundreds of streams objecting to what she had done and and just ridiculing her, sometimes in very racist and sexist ways. You know, they called her Chairman pow because they saw her as, you know, imposing, you know, imposing censorship, etc. And she, she issued another memo saying, I guess I didn't communicate clearly. I'm sorry, you know, which is a CEO should do that, and but, but that memo just got downloaded immediately, and the the parodies of her got up, voted to the front page, and within a few days, there was a change.com petition with millions of signatures saying that she needed to step down. And so there was no choice. She had to step down. And so, you know, in some ways, what she did as top down change might seem less objectionable, or at least more justified than what Mary Barra did, but Mary Barra was an insider, and she knew how to make a top down change that would be shocking, but wouldn't trample on core values. You know, she was, she was changing the thing that was already collectively regarded as kind of dumb. You know, it's a dumb thing that we do. You know, every or every community has things like that. And Ellen Powell, as an outsider, didn't have that insider sensibility to know the difference between the first thing she did and the second thing she did. So I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition. I'm sorry that that answer took a half an hour, but, you know, Kurt Nelson 49:49 but it touched on a number of different pieces, right? And it kind of goes into this whole aspect of of the way that we approach something. Is. Is, is deep. You know, there's all these dependencies and and because of the the cultural background, the cultural history of having that insider knowledge, of being an outsider, of bringing in this grassroots, up versus top down, component of creating a shock wave that's big enough that is going to disrupt everything, but not too much that it disrupts so much that we can't do there's all of those components that come in which makes this really tricky and not oh, here's here's, this worked here because of a, and this didn't work here because of B, there's multitudes of facets that come into this, and I think that's really the fascinating piece of all of this. And I hate to say it, I was on an earlier call today with a client, and who was asking me some questions. And I go, I'm going to give you the consultant, you know, or the researcher. Answer is, it depends. There's a you know, what you what you're asking for isn't yes or no answer. It is a there's a whole bunch of gray in there. And what I'm hearing you say is, there's a whole bunch of gray in a lot of these concepts, but there's, there's some key aspects that you can look at from this tribal and cultural Michael Morris 51:17 perspective. Yeah, I think you know, where we add value is, is not by giving an equation. It's always it depends on x, but we, we have to have a good X, right? We have to have some. And I think that you know, what does top down change depend on? Well, don't change the sacred values of the community. Only do it if you're a leader who has legitimacy. Legitimacy. Legitimacy is another tricky concept, but it can be broken down. There are, you know, bases of legitimacy that are pretty well understood. And you know, if you do have to change something that involves core values, and you know, same sex marriage was an example of that, well, then then do it bottom up and expect that it will take a decade or two. You know, it's not going to happen overnight, right? Yeah, Tim Houlihan 52:09 you know, we'd like to first. This has been a fantastic conversation. Absolutely loving all this. Glad you've spent every moment on all of this. We like to end our conversations by asking about music. And we didn't really set you up for this here, Michael, but we like to just have a did you did you listen to any music Michael Morris 52:30 while you're writing the book? I was writing the book for a long time, so I listened a lot of Tim Houlihan 52:36 music while you're actually at the keyboard. Is it the kind of thing that like when you're working? Do you like to do you like to listen to music? Or do you prefer? Are you more of a silence? Or I like Michael Morris 52:50 to listen to music. I do find that lyrics can be tricky when you're writing, so I often when I'm composing, I often, you know, listen to instrumental music of different kinds. Michael Morris 53:10 So Michael Morris 53:12 one, one band that I listen to quite a bit during the final stages of this book is Kurt bin, because I listen to it quite a bit. I listen to cron bank a large fraction of the time. You know, Tim Houlihan 53:27 it's great stuff. It's really it's really great stuff. So, Michael Morris 53:31 yeah, but I listen to jazz when I write, and I listen to classical music when I write. Tim Houlihan 53:41 Yeah, that is super cool. If you, if you ended up on a desert island and you and you could only bring one artist with you, you say you get their whole catalog. Would it? I won't put, I won't put a word in your mouth. But who would you bring with you? Michael Morris 54:00 Well, that's tricky. Michael Morris 54:04 Artists, you know what I'm already thinking like, you know, sort of utilitarian. You know, which artist has enough albums, enough different? Kurt Nelson 54:13 Yeah, large enough and varied enough you're going to be. Michael Morris 54:20 I mean, Dylan is I recently, I bought a house in the mountains, and it's right near where Bob Dylan used to live. And I went out to and right near big pink where the band recorded in Woodstock, yeah, and so, and I was up there for Memorial Day, and there were all these old guys, like in their 80s, selling their vinyl, you know. And so I just bought a turntable. So I was sort of like, okay, what should my first vinyl purchase? I haven't been listening to vinyl in a long time, and I purchased a whole lot of Dylan because I thought, Okay, well, these are, you know, these, these are, these are from people who, you know, hung out with Dylan, live with Dylan in the old days. Is, but Dylan can be a little monotonous. You know, Dylan doesn't have that many different moods, whereas the Rolling Stones have, you know, many different eras with slightly different music. So it might be the Kurt Nelson 55:15 yeah from the early, mid 60s into the 70s, where the, you know, very different sound of Yeah. Mean, streets versus, you know, some of the other Tim Houlihan 55:24 to you, yeah, dramatically Michael Morris 55:26 different rescue. I mean, people think it's Yeah. People think it's corny. You know, people critiqued it at the time, but it's got a couple good songs on it. Those are, those are, like, when I'm when I'm at a jukebox, I often end up going to the stones. So, yeah, the stones might get the nod. If it was just one group. Tim Houlihan 55:47 I think that would be a good Kurt Nelson 55:49 call, as you have a big enough catalog, as you said, varied enough and hey, it's, there's some upbeat stuff there. So when you're, you know, alone for a year, you know, you need that, but you also get that, you know, the downbeat stuff too, that you can go, Okay, I just need to, I just need to have a little bit of, you know, sorrow or whatever time here to to, Michael Morris 56:11 I mean, I love, I love Lana Del Rey too. But, you know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a very common theme, or common, you know, mode, yeah, whereas, yeah, Tim Houlihan 56:25 gone, not enough variety, yeah, yeah. Michael Morris, thank you so much for being a guest on behavioral grooves today. We have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Really appreciate it. Michael Morris 56:35 I've enjoyed it too, and sorry for some long winded answers to questions. Kurt Nelson 56:41 They're gonna be good. So I mean, again, you cover a lot of different topics, so we're very thankful for you. Thank you. Michael Morris 56:49 All right. Thanks a lot for having me. Welcome Kurt Nelson 56:59 to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our conversation. With Michael. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our multitude of tribal brains, Tim Houlihan 57:10 multitude of tribal I like that, because this is a great shift in this conversation where Michael reinforces the idea the tribes are important, but it doesn't but, but pulls me away from, it's not just one tribe you belong to, right? We belong to many tribes. We belong to Kurt Nelson 57:30 a multitude of tribes. And our brains are wired to, I'm part of a I have my family tribe. I have the, you know, my political tribe, I have my sports tribe, I have a organizational tribe. And inside of my organization, I have, you know, it's almost like the different hats that you wear to a certain degree, right? It's like I'm wearing a multitude of hats, but it's this communal aspect of that there is a community around each of those. And I thought that was really fascinating. So Tim Houlihan 58:02 I also love to just quickly these instincts, you know, the peer instinct, the hero instinct, the ancestor instinct. Like, I think that these are really good to be reminded of. I'm not, you know, I think that it's good for us to remember that this whole peer thing, this like that comes up in the persistence hunts like this is a really cool idea, that we learned cooperation way better than any other animals on the Serengeti. And I think that that's just really cool. Kurt Nelson 58:32 Which is, which is the reason that we are here today, and our other, you know, humanoid brothers, the Neanderthals, and whoever other different human ancestors that we had are not right, we, that's right, absolutely destroyed the community aspect and some of these other instincts that there were Tim Houlihan 58:54 nine different human, you know, species, so like, we weren't The Homo sapiens weren't the only ones. It wasn't just us and Neanderthals or nine and we kicked their ass man Kurt Nelson 59:10 and as and we didn't do it alone. As I forget who the person that we had on that said we were just meat bags out there until we hunted together. Tim Houlihan 59:20 That's right, that's right, that's that's where that peer instinct comes in. I think, okay, Kurt Nelson 59:23 okay, so instincts were fantastic, but I think for our grooving, let's take a deep dive, if you're okay with this, on this idea of when it's important to make a change in an organization, a big change, and even if we think about this from a team perspective, do we do that with the current people that are in there, or do we bring somebody in from the outside, right? Yeah, those that was a really fascinating conversation in the differences between the, you know, GM, and. Read it Tim Houlihan 1:00:00 a great it's a great contrast. And I thought that Michael did a great job of representing it. It's, you know, Michael framed it as like, these are board decisions. These is, this is the Board of Directors kind of level. But you could also think about it if you are in an organization and you're a leader, really, of even just a team, just five people that report to you, you might be thinking, I need to make these kinds of changes. Is it better for me to make them, and how am I going to make them, compared to, would it be better for somebody else to make those? And would it be better going somewhere else to make more radical changes? I think so. I just want to set that up is there's different ways of thinking about this. It is doesn't just have to be from the board of directors right Kurt Nelson 1:00:45 now. Now, let's take that and kind of keep it off on the side, yeah, because I think it's really important as we think about this, because many organizations board level, or even, you know, at the CEO suite level, realize that they need to make a change, that the path is no longer the same path that they were walking down or running down before, and in order to adjust, they're going to need to make some changes. And oftentimes they want to make those changes fast. So of course, many times what ends up happening in those situations, Tim, they bring in an outsider, they fire the current CEO, they fire their VPs of whatever, and they bring in new people. And partly because they go, we need a different way of thinking, and new people are going to do that. Now that's an interesting perspective. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:01:43 but well, so let's, let me think about it this way, when is it a good idea under what circumstances is it a good idea to bring in the outsider to make changes? Yeah, I think that there's a credible case to be made when, when the changes aren't going to negatively impact sort of the deeply ingrained culture, when, when, when, what needs to happen might be more process focused or or maybe, maybe it's restructuring, but that the core values of the organization aren't going to be touched. I think that it's okay, and maybe it's a good idea to bring in the outsider in in those situations. But get it does require that the core values of the organization need to remain intact. Yeah, Kurt Nelson 1:02:26 the core values, or some aspect of those core values, I mean, you can really do a lot of change, as long as people can anchor in on something that is consistent with themselves. And one of the other pieces that when you bring in somebody from the outside is that they can be that bad apple. They can be the they can be the big bad wolf coming in to blow down your houses of straw and different pieces of this that can actually be beneficial sometimes, but you do need to have some bricks houses that are consistent that the big bad wolf does not blow down Tim Houlihan 1:03:08 way to play the metaphor out all the way nice job like Kurt Nelson 1:03:14 so. All right. Metaphors aside, when do you when do you make changes from the inside? Again, looking at the examples that Michael brought up, yeah, what were the factors in in your mind, Tim, that really are important when wanting to make that change from the inside? Because sometimes that's hard. It Tim Houlihan 1:03:38 is. It really is hard, but the situation, I think, demands that not only are these, these core values, going to remain the same, but that you want to keep the fundamental brand and cultural pillars of the organization intact. So it's not a major restructuring. It's not a major process changes. It's not brand changing, all of those, all of those things are going to basically stay in place, I think back specifically to like the rhythms of the organizations are always, are always changing, right? We've done enough work with corporations where we've seen that culture is a shifting thing. It's constantly moving. But when I saw the creation of truest which was the merger of SunTrust Bank with BB and T Bank, they did a really great job of melding the cultures like they they kept the underpinnings of the cultures together. And so they set up a leadership structure where, where the very top guy was from one of the merging banks, and the number two guy was from another. So they split, and they they made this big signal to say, we're going to do this together. We're going to figure out how to bring both of these cultures together. We're not throwing the baby out with the bath water. Yeah. So, so I think that those are those. That's the situation. Situation where you want to absolutely do that work from the inside. Kurt Nelson 1:05:03 It's interesting, because I've been in organizations that have been going through mergers or acquisitions, and there, there is a difference in what you were saying, right? It was we. Not everybody does it right, we need to adapt the acquired, the acquiring, excuse me, cultural norms. So what ended up happening in that situation is that over the course of a year, you lost a significant number of those individuals who had been brought over from the acquired company. Tim Houlihan 1:05:49 What do you think the attrition rate was on that, on that merger? And it hasn't been quite a year yet, has it? It's Kurt Nelson 1:05:55 been over a year. Oh, okay, yeah, it's been going on year and a half, two years almost. So they lose. By the time this episode is out, it'll be over two years. Tim Houlihan 1:06:07 Did they lose 50% of the acquired Tim Houlihan 1:06:11 influence? More, maybe more than 50% Kurt Nelson 1:06:14 Yeah. And the interesting piece on this is they acquired it, and that's within one one division, there are a multitude of divisions. Obviously, that's happened, and so I don't have information on those other divisions. That might have been differently. But the idea that even small things like changing the start time of meetings to the old company had it where it started five minutes after the hour, to give you a five minute break to kind of do what you needed to do when we were stuck in meetings date, you know, hour after hour after hour, it was, it was hard to implement that. They thought that would be an easy cultural change implementation going in. It's not maybe at that core cultural piece, but it reflected some of those ideals of we need to really pay attention and respect the time of our employees, that we need to give them that downtime in order for them to come prepared and not be flustered one meeting to another. So the five minutes itself is not that big of a deal. It is more of the reflection of the values that the organization had, right and it tried to get implemented, and then it just got, it got outweighed by the acquiring companies, kind of just their, their forward momentum that didn't move. Tim Houlihan 1:07:42 It sounds like the difference that Mike Norton talked to us about the difference between a ritual and a habit, or a ritual and a routine. It wasn't just a routine that the organization started their their meetings five minutes after the hour. It was a it was a ritual like this was important. It had it had meaning for them. Kurt Nelson 1:08:01 Yeah, I wouldn't construe too much into that, that it was a ritual for everybody, but I think it implied the intent of leadership. And so there was a going back to Michael Norton. It was the intent of bringing up that cup of coffee to my spouse in bed. And maybe it didn't mean as much to the person who was receiving that, but they understood there was something behind it, right? So I think that was an important piece. It's interesting because when we think about how, as we talk about this, like understanding those cultural norms in a change initiative from a leader perspective, and the difference between, you know, how GM and what was it? Reddit, Tim Houlihan 1:08:59 Mary Barra at GM. Mary Barra did it Kurt Nelson 1:09:03 is really fascinating, because you have to make a change, and the change means that some of these cultural norms are going to be different, but it's coming from a place of understanding, and it's coming from a place of being there. So the other piece of that, Tim then is all right, understanding those cultural and Mary Barra was an insider, right? So that worked, yeah. And that is an interesting piece of this whole component, like who the messenger is, and where they come from and how much trust they have, yeah, yeah. Tim Houlihan 1:09:45 Well, because Mary was a trusted messenger, she was she was someone that the culture already sort of believed in. She's the one that that destroyed the 20 page. You know, how to dress manual, to dress appropriately. You, you know, you and I worked at a company that in the early 2000s decided to adopt a rule in the summer, wear whatever you want. Yeah, wear whatever you want. And guess no one dressed inappropriately, not a single employee. Kurt Nelson 1:10:15 Well, I might have, but, yeah, oh, wait, I wasn't an employee at that time. Tim Houlihan 1:10:19 You weren't that. You weren't there then, but, but it was so interesting. And I remember one, one guy writing on a social thing at the end of the summer when it went back to normal business dress code was his first time I've had to wear pants in, you know, three months or something. It's like, oh no, actually, I didn't mean pants, but, you know, but long pants Tim Houlihan 1:10:37 and it's, it's, you give people Tim Houlihan 1:10:41 some freedom dress appropriately, and they do, because there's social norms around Kurt Nelson 1:10:46 it, right? Yeah, okay, well, and that was interesting, as opposed to Ellen at Reddit, who, oh yeah, came in and was, again, she's smart, she was she wanted to do the right things. The first move that they made seemed okay. It was all came crashing down when you crossed the line right. It was the idea of going too far in this which, if you had been a Mary, you would have realized that might be crossing this line in the sand that we can't cross. We can push up to that, but we can't go over that line. And that's where I think, not having that insider knowledge around what is really culturally relevant and a dynamic part of our internal core. And this is to say, Tim, that not every Internal Manager, CEO director, even understands that right there. There's an element of self awareness that needs to come with this, yeah, that even if you have been with a company for 1015, 20 years, if you're not aware, if you're not open to understanding what those pieces are, then you can cross that imaginary, or that not imaginary, that line in The sand without knowing it. Tim Houlihan 1:12:22 I think that that's really a key part of this, is it's hard to be aware. And again, I don't, I don't fault Ellen Powell for for not trying and not being sharp and not being attempting to be aware. But she didn't, in the end, she didn't comprehend these sacred values that that her organization held true. So pro tips on this. What? What? What should we be thinking about for for organizations that that want to make change, right? Because, as you said, every organization needs to Kurt Nelson 1:13:00 change, yeah, I think, I think, for me, I think the leaders must be able to distinguish between core sacred values and those surface practices, or maybe even values that aren't at that core. Yeah. And if you can understand that and start shifting, if you have to change a core sacred value that's a lot tougher and will take a lot longer and can't be done in a single swoop of the pen, and changing up how this thing works that needs a long term change. Those others can be you can just run and do those to a certain degree. Again, you need to communicate effectively. You need to make sure you have trust to be able to do it. Yeah, there are lots of those types of surface elements that you can make a change from, yeah. How about you? Tim Houlihan 1:13:51 For me, a big lesson of this is it's not just assessing what needs to be changed, but it who. It's also about who needs to lead it, because organizations rely on the messenger effect in a very large way to understand sort of the value of this, of particular communication or changes. So an organization that really gets who should do it to sort of be the right messenger for it is going to be in a better position than organizations that are only thinking about what needs to change, and we don't care who does it. I Kurt Nelson 1:14:26 think one other really important piece for me that I took from this is involve employees in defining those new norms. I mean, Mary Barra did that when she did the dress code, and even though she had been an insider, she could have just came in and done it by edict, but instead, she involved the people create those opportunities to have employees participate in the cultural transformation and let them do that. Tim Houlihan 1:14:53 Something that you and I have seen time and time again in organizations that are trying to change is. There, there's always this push to we have to get it done faster. Faster is better. And when it comes to organizational change and cultural change, faster is not better. It really is better to take your time. This is like turning a cruise ship, not a speed boat. Yeah, big, big organizations need time to change and adapt to that change. All Kurt Nelson 1:15:19 right, so I know we talked about who leads the change and how that works. I think one other key insight I just want to dig into we talked about at the very beginning of this part was recognize that there are a multitude of tribes within an organization, and that I, as an employee, can be a member of a multitude of those tribes. And it is not static. It is constantly evolving. And so my identity is with maybe my my team, the larger organization, my function, if I'm an accountant or if I'm a salesperson, or whoever that is, with a subset of you know, a brand that we're working on, a multitude of those all live in the organization simultaneously, and we all have partial identifications with that. And leaders need to understand this so that they can tap into those differential tribal identities to make sure that their message, that change message is being heard and accepted. Is Tim Houlihan 1:16:27 that Kurt It makes me think about sort of this drive to belong, this, this need to connect. Do you think that this is also connected to leaders being able to identify sort of the right things to weigh in on when it comes to belonging, because, because these, these the tribes that they're associated with, are shifting, or at the very least somewhat dynamic. Kurt Nelson 1:16:51 So this is an interesting piece on leadership, and we're actually having some conversations in some future episodes with other guests about this, this idea Michael Morris 1:17:02 of Kurt Nelson 1:17:04 who like leadership and the ability to understand the human side is much more important than the technical side. It is not how good you are at accounting or even strategy, or even anything. It's the idea of how you are able to understand the people that are working for you, being there for them, showing that they matter, showing that they have, that you have the ability to be trusted, and a number of other factors that come into the social interaction. That social trust that we build, again, the messenger, the messenger, but it's about the messenger being able to show that they care, that, that they have the best interests of the organization, but the employees as well, in in their mind and with that, those are the leaders that do really well. So you're talking about belonging, and I think the belonging part is really key, and understanding, yes, they need to have that, that soft skill of being able to discern which groups are people feeling affinity for. And how do we, how do we work within that? Yeah, Tim Houlihan 1:18:32 yeah. Any anything else that you want to say about Kurt Nelson 1:18:36 wraps this up, Tim and and again, if you are an organizational leader who is listening to this episode and thinking about shaking things up where you work? Well, maybe you need to think about who should be the person who is shaking those things up right, and then understand and really focus in on trying to identify, what is it that your team holds sacred. What are the sacred values that your team has? Where is that line in the sand? And make sure that you can push up to that, but don't try to bust through that in a very quick and fast manner. Tim Houlihan 1:19:14 If you need help, if you're working in an organization where you feel like you need help in making changes, give us a call, drop us a line, slide into our DM. You know, give us, give us an opportunity to to have a conversation with you, because we might have some experience that could be helpful to Kurt Nelson 1:19:30 you. And lastly, even if you don't want to reach out to us, reach out to our group community page on Facebook. It's a well over 150 people now, and they are just a fun group of interaction, and we're getting lots of comments on different pieces, and we want you to be a part of that. So join us as we talk about our daily groove question with people, and keep you on your Tim Houlihan 1:19:56 toes Absolutely. So the big takeaway we get from Michael Moore. Us is this change requires a deep understanding of culture and of building trust, and we hope that you use that this week as you go out and find your groove. You Transcribed by https://otter.ai