The Recognition Factor: Transforming Workplace Culture | A Scratchie Podcast

Creating Motivated Teams: Jurriaan Kamer on Leadership, Motivation and Psychological Safety | Episode 14

• Scratchie • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Ready to unlock the secrets behind truly transformative workplaces? Join us as we chat with Jurriaan Kamer, the organizational transformation expert and author of "Unblock," who is redefining the way we think about recognition and motivation in the workplace. Kamer shares his fascinating journey from IT, highlighting why self-organizing teams are integral in bridging the gap between complex problem-solving and the traditional management approach. Discover how embracing frameworks like Kinefin can offer valuable insights into navigating complexity, not just in software development, but across all business environments.

We also explore the intricate dance between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, challenging the common belief that intrinsic motivation always takes precedence. Drawing inspiration from the work of Deci and Ryan, we delve into how strategically applied extrinsic rewards can actually enhance intrinsic motivators by fulfilling psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Learn from Julian how leaders can create environments that encourage autonomy, mastery, and purpose while using structured reward systems to foster alignment and recognition. This episode underscores effective communication as a pivotal tool for leaders to convey values and expectations, building a motivated and engaged workforce.

To round off our enlightening discussion, we consider the importance of psychological safety and its impact on team dynamics. Listen in on a beautiful exercise involving personal user manuals that foster empathy and support, and how humor can create a safe learning environment. Julian also shares compelling stories of adaptive companies like Tesla and Roche Pharmaceutical, which are breaking the mold with innovative approaches to job roles and team structures. We wrap up with Jurriaan's insights on overcoming organizational obstacles and nurturing a thriving culture that values both cultural exchange and professional collaboration. Don't miss out on these invaluable strategies for transforming workplace culture.

Ready to take the next step? Visit https://www.scratchie.com/book-a-demo to see how Scratchie can help you recognise and reward safe behaviour on your projects. The future of construction safety starts here.

James Kell:

Hello everyone, this is James Kell. Welcome to a conversation about transforming workplace culture through positive reinforcement and recognition. I'm James Kell, or, as you Dutchies would say, I'm Yames Kell, and I'm joined today by Julian Kama. He's an organizational transformation expert and he's the author of Unblock. So we're going to explore how modern workplaces can create environments where both employees and businesses win, moving beyond traditional compliance-based approaches to build cultures of recognition and autonomous decision-making. It's a fascinating area and I'm really happy to be talking to Yurian today. So, Jurriaan, as a kickoff question, what drew you to study organizational transformation?

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, I started out in IT. I was a software developer for many years and then at one point in time I was asked to lead a bunch of software developers. We had no idea what we were doing at the time, but I became increasingly fascinated with human problems rather than computer problems Because I took on some other roles that are like chief technology officer, some big project management, uh stuff and um. So, yeah, I I had to figure out how to, how to get large groups of people that are making software uh create something amazing and uh, that's when I started becoming really interested in how humans work together and uh how you can uh create organizations.

James Kell:

And what did you see as the biggest barrier to creating?

Jurriaan Kamer:

you know that kind of positive culture that you're after? Oh, that's a very broad question, but to connect it back to my history, here is you know, in the world of IT there was a lot of pioneering work in terms of self-organizing teams. Very early on, they recognized that software development is not something that can be managed top-down with command and control style work. It's also very unplannable in a lot of ways. It's highly complex. So people had to reinvent how they managed that, and they did so.

Jurriaan Kamer:

The whole agile movement came from IT and I was accelerating digital areas of large organizations at one point and I continuously bumped into the blockages in the rest of the organization, or rather the management culture of the rest of the organization, which was still very much top down. I decide something and you, you follow, you execute. What do you mean? It's not done yet. You know those kinds of things. And so, yeah, I've been, I've been trying to bridge the barriers, or bridge the gaps between between the world of complexity and the world of traditional style management for years between the world of complexity and the world of traditional style management for years.

James Kell:

And why do you think technology has had that sort of topsy-turvy approach? Is it because the power is held by the programmer, Whereas in traditional top-down kind of almost army-type organization?

Jurriaan Kamer:

the power is held by the boss. Interesting, interesting, yeah, I think it's an interesting provocation. I'm not sure if it's about the power of the programmer. I think it's more about the complexity of the problem space that they're working in. So, if you're building a house, you, you can more or less plan it, you know. You know you can calculate the amount of bricks you need. You kind of get a sense of how long it takes to lay each brick, and you know you can just uh, plan it out and and follow the orders.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Uh, or follow the plan. Rather. Um, well, in software development, um, you've, you've, you get a lot of unexpected things to happen. Uh, you open up a new, you know, open up a module and you, you, you want to add a functionality there and you discover that it's not been looked at for years and it's more like renovating a house rather than building a house, which which means that there's lots of surprises. Um, and that means that, um, as a software developer, you need to be cautious of of what you, what you say, and you have to always be um, working more iteratively, meaning like I'm gonna do something and from doing something I can learn something, and from learning something I get wiser, and that means I can now plan better, because I now know more about the situation, which is more the step-by-step approach that is more suitable for achieving software projects.

James Kell:

Got it and is there a risk that the solution in that environment doesn't flow through to other? You know more traditional environments, and I'm thinking of the whole four quadrants. You know, to leadership, one of the frameworks where and I love it where, if you don't, if you're sort of leading someone who has no idea, you're very, very directive. If you're leading someone who has a very large degree of competence in the area, then you're very, very directive. If you're leading someone who has a a very large degree of competence in the in the area, then you're much more kind of suggestive, consultative, that sort of thing yeah, I think.

Jurriaan Kamer:

I think that is still applicable also for software development, um, but I think I'm thinking of a different model actually, which is the kinefin framework which talks about, which talks about complexity, and that's highly applicable in this case. So in a lot of cases the problems are complicated, meaning that an expert can solve the problem by training, by being smart about it, but the problem space is actually more complex, where only in hindsight you can know what worked and what didn't work, and that's true for business as well. So you asked if there was a risk if it wouldn't work in the other spaces. I actually think it is necessary in all the other spaces Because in business, if you want to become the number one app in the app store, business, if you want to become the number one app in the app store, that's not something you can plan for.

Jurriaan Kamer:

You can try a lot of stuff, but you cannot know exactly how to influence the charts. You don't know exactly what people will value in your app, how people will use your app. Just an example of where a business outcome is not necessarily possible to plan for. Outcome is not necessarily possible to plan for, and I think it's true for a lot of places where the world, there's so many factors in business that are moving, so many moving parts, that you cannot plan your way to success in a traditional sense. And it was possible that when in the 1900s, when management models were invented basically where most of the current management practices were invented the world was much more simpler. We were just trying to scale up our production factories and we didn't have to deal with all these complex factors. So, yeah, that's a big shift and I've been navigating and helping leaders navigate that shift so they themselves adopt a more sense and respond. Type philosophy.

James Kell:

So what's the cost of this? What's the cost of disengagement in?

Jurriaan Kamer:

your mind In disengagement? In what way do you mean, James?

James Kell:

Well, if people are not, if the culture is not ideal, you know, is it life and death of the business, is it? You know what sort of scale are we talking about? How fundamental is this?

Jurriaan Kamer:

I mean, if you look at some statistics, if you look at the longevity of companies I don't have the statistic ready here, but I remember something like 80% of the companies in the S&P 500 are less than 10 years old, and 50 years ago most companies were over 50 years old in the S&P 500. So the longevity of companies is going down rapidly and I think that is partially because the world is changing faster and businesses are started faster and easier, and at the same time I think it's because old institutions are not adapting fast enough and they're literally just dying.

James Kell:

Is the longevity going down or are these new companies just rapidly growing so much Like? Do those old companies still exist, is what I'm saying, you know, and the new tech companies have just sort of usurped them in the list. You know what I mean.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Well, some companies are still around, but they become irrelevant really quickly and ideally a company should try to keep their market position. If they're a healthy company, they should be able to try to satisfy customer and shareholder needs, even when there's disruption out there. So, yeah, if there's new. Oh, sorry for that. Just pause here for a second I was wondering where that noise was coming from. But it was actually my door and my kid was like well, daddy, what are you doing?

James Kell:

um, I thought it was you, but it was my me.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Sorry for that and uh, hopefully you can pause and cut this out.

James Kell:

I don't know. If you can, should be able to, I mean all right. Well, uh, all right for who we are, yeah, yeah, I so.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, just for context, it's 7.15am and my kid just woke up and she was like what's daddy doing? And actually my door is really squeaky. So that's what you heard. Nice, it's authentic, it's real. I think if you want to be successful as a leader in a company these days, you need to be complexity conscious, meaning that you need to understand what type of problem you're dealing with. You need to apply management methods that are a good fit for that. And if you still, like I sometimes going back to parenting like if you want to learn how to ride, ride a bike, you're not going to plan your way into that. You're not gonna, you know, analyze the problem. You know, make plans, this debate, the perfect steering angle and the perfect starting velocity, and you're not going to make a plan of all the moments where you're going to steer uh, you know, along the way. No, you have to just uh, try it 50 or 100 times, following your face a bunch times, and that's how you learn how to balance.

James Kell:

You know, and I think business that was the 10, you know, the 10 bucks. The easiest $10 I ever learned was when my mother said teach your sister, your little sister, how to ride a bike. And we didn't know at the time, but she's a world champion at, she's just this sporting kind of prodigy. And so it was literally the me, the big brother, getting her on a bike, giving her a push, and she was like she can ride all good 10 bucks right, there you go.

James Kell:

Yeah, but I know what you mean learning to ride a bike is something you just do. Um, you cross the river by feeling the stones, as the chinese saying goes. So yeah, I love that, yeah yeah, so, so.

Jurriaan Kamer:

So what I teach leaders is to build in a lot of reflection and improvement in their rhythms, and not individual, like personal development stuff which is important too, but I'm talking about building into how you work with your with your leadership team and with all of the teams to, every four to six to eight weeks, sit down one or two hours and talk about what went well this last period and what should be improved the upcoming period. And it sounds like a very simple practice, but there's so little people that actually do it because it feels like it's not productive. It feels like we're wasting time by sitting and talking about the past. We want to just go forward and execute right, but the fact of the matter is, if you don't improve every day, you get worse every day. So, yeah, so it's an important part of becoming better to deal with complexity is to have conversations in a group about what's going on.

James Kell:

Right, so let's segue then that to autonomy, and with that, just before this podcast, we're talking about self-determination theory. Decky and Ryan, or Desi and Ryan, however you describe them, their names. Now, what's your familiarity with self-determination theory? What is it? I know you speak about pink who, uh, daniel pink who who, um, but based his books on on sdt.

Jurriaan Kamer:

so yeah, I have to hear you talk about that yeah, my, my first introduction into that work was definitely daniel pink, uh, with his book drive. Um, I admitted that I never actually read the sources with ryan and decky, but, but Drive is just a really good summary and they talk about three basic needs that humans have. And if they have them, they are intrinsically motivated. And it goes against a lot of the theory where we need to either give people characteristics for them to do anything, or the idea that leaders need to motivate their people. No, people can motivate themselves pretty well, they just need to have the conditions being met for that to happen.

Jurriaan Kamer:

And the three conditions or the three factors that they talk about is well, pink calls it autonomy, mastery and purpose, and Decky and Ryan calls it autonomy, competence and relatedness, connection and belonging. Yeah, so it's basically the same, yeah, so if you look at a lot of the successful companies out there that are highly innovative, that have highly engaged people, they score high on these three elements. They create a workplace where autonomy, mastery and purpose are very big.

James Kell:

It's an interesting one because we started this debate before where what's intrinsic and what's extrinsic and my feeling is that Pink gets reductionist to say, and a lot of people do is to say that intrinsic is good, extrinsic is cheaper, so to speak, is lower quality motivation. Therefore, discount that one and, and you know, kind of like, raise the intrinsic. Um and and what I found in in my sort of work it hasn't been through any um study apart from studying decky and ryan is that a lot of the time intrinsic can beget extrinsic can beget intrinsic. The two of them can sort of increase or decrease each other, depending upon some of these other factors. Should we talk around that? Is there anything any light you can shed on that?

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, I mean, you're the expert in using extrinsic motivation as well to build on that, I think. So you should definitely talk about that, and I've learned from your work with Scratchy of how that works, so that was definitely interesting for me. I've been mostly focusing, indeed, on the intrinsic motivation factor. I think it's, and that's also because I'm also positioning the work we do a bit opposite to traditional management practices, and there's a lot to say about creating those conditions. In my new book, I talk about not only autonomy, but also aligned autonomy to add an additional factor to it. I think alignment is important, and maybe that goes well also with extrinsic recognition, where it's like you know what you can decide for yourself, how you're going to do your job. That's the autonomy piece, but we also need you to be aligned to either the work that needs to happen, the expectations that we have of each other, but also to the strategy and the strategic goals that we have in this company and in this department. Great. So there's always like, yeah, go ahead, yeah.

James Kell:

No, it's exactly what you were saying, so I might kind of explain this thread from my perspective in sort of a one-minute version, if I can keep it to one minute.

James Kell:

And the curious thing is, as you just mentioned, dekike and Ryan has said that there's three needs psychological needs and if they are met, then our intrinsic motivation, our willingness to do something, goes up. If we feel autonomous, if we feel as though, as you said, we can make decisions, then our motivation goes up. If we feel competent, if we feel like we're good at something, our motivation goes up. If we feel like we're relating with other people, then our motivation goes up.

James Kell:

Here's the crazy paradox that I've found by giving an extrinsic reward at the right time raises all three of them. And the example is you know, you're in the workplace and your boss says I want you to do this. You know, do this, do this. So that's compliance mentality and it's reducing your motivation, obviously because you're saying something in you goes wants to fight back, whereas in this other workplace, the, the supervisor says look, yes, we've got this compliance regime here, you've got to do these things, but if you can do these things, it's your choice, we'll reward you. And so, automatically, I think well, that sounds like a game I want to play, right. And so, yes, there is a material reward, but my autonomy goes up and then you can choose when I get right.

James Kell:

And when I get recognized for it, my boss is saying, james, well done, you're a legend, you just did that, that piece, well. Competence goes up. And then guess what happens to relatedness when my boss, when my boss, says to me you're a legend, right. So the giving of an extrinsic reward raises the intrinsic motivation. That's the crazy paradox.

Jurriaan Kamer:

And when people on the surface say, oh, but it's an extrinsic reward, you say, yeah, but it's only part of this, this much bigger process, yeah, well I think, I think, um, I, I agree with you and I'm also, uh, I also not fully agree with you in how you frame it, because I think, in one way, this reward system that you built is about a leader giving clarity of what they value. Yep, so it's a communication mechanism, I think, for the leader that is setting boundaries and explaining the, the in raising the awareness of people of what is the right thing to do. Um, and that is not so different from from how I look at those three factors. So it, yeah, of course, there's a, there's a financial or non-financial reward connected to to that behavior, which, which is indeed extrinsic, but I think, but, yeah, maybe we should ask Ryan and Deku this, because, in the end, I teach leaders how to create the environment for autonomy, mastery and purpose, and that is a lot about creating clarity of what they want. And I'm being very explicit about it.

Jurriaan Kamer:

And that is a paradox for people, because some people think, well, if you want to create a workplace where people are highly autonomous and they're free to act, uh, I should, uh, you know, I should be laid back a little bit and I should give them space. Um, because that, because what, what they've learned is that they need to give orders and they have to be directive, and I have to you know, uh, make all the decisions so that, if, to get out of that paradox, they still need to be clear about certain things.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Uh, for example, you know, uh, these are the things you can choose from. Or, uh, if you do this, I actually find it highly valuable, because that shows that we're doing high quality work. Competentness, um, competence, um. So I think, yeah. So what you're describing for me is also a communication mechanism to making it easier for leaders to communicate to the rest of the organization what they value, what they want and what boundaries there are.

James Kell:

It totally is a communication, and communication is important. And I think that one of the problems is when people hear about something like the positive rewards, they think, oh, it's just kumbaya, and you know, it's just like. Let's all just peace, love and harmony, whereas we're saying not at all, like the compliance regime is very necessary, like you still need to have, especially in a high-risk industry like construction or mining, you still need to have these. If you don't do these things, or if you do these things wrong, whichever way you want to characterise it, then you will get reprimanded, right, right, yeah, it's just that until there's never been a formal version of its opposite, of the Jungian shadow, right, right, right, it's only ever been a negative thing. And so workers go. Eventually, workers go. This is actually no fun, like I'm not going to let my supervisor or the um and he might be clear talking supervisor about boundaries, he might be a really good communicator, but I'm not going to look him in the eye, I'm not going to engage with him, because it's only ever negative, right, right. So, whereas, when there's its opposite, and if you do these things, firstly it's aspirational, sorry, it's abundance thinking, so there's no limit to the upside, right, right, and so then you go. Well, actually, if I do the right thing, I could get this reward.

James Kell:

And what we found is that without the vehicle, without the tool of rewarding, people tend to do it less so, especially in an industry perhaps in the tech industry, but certainly in, say, construction, which is majority male it's not such a communicative how are you feeling today? It's just not really what builders tend to do. They like concrete and steel and that sort of thing, whereas if you have a tool, a mechanism to to do it, you either give a scratchy or you don't. You know, yeah. And so then the supervisors can be measured on this clarity that you talk of. Otherwise, they you say are you clear? Yeah, I'm clear. Did you say a good thing? Yeah, I did. And then you ask the person like no, they didn't.

James Kell:

So there's this we kid ourselves, yeah.

Jurriaan Kamer:

No, it's a really good. It sounds like a really smart way to give people the tools to do the right thing, and I'm talking about the leaders doing the right thing in this case.

James Kell:

Yeah, totally.

Jurriaan Kamer:

So it's a behavior change for leaders to be rewarding people explicitly rather than implicitly or not at all. Yeah, yeah, rewarding people explicitly rather than implicitly or or not at all. Um, yeah, yeah, and um, I think, um, there's, there's another thing that came to mind when you were talking, like, about that, like the, especially in safety, high, high risk environment, where safety is important, um, a big factor of of incidents being uh, resolved before to happen is speaking up, you know, being able to, to say something when you see something that is off. Yeah, and in a culture where, where you're always punished for, for, for incidents, people might start to think that, well, if I bring up this, this thing, that might become problematic or even worse, worse. I made a mistake and now someone else is going to trip over that spill I made. Yeah, I, I might, I might push it under the rug rather than speak up.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Worse, I made a mistake and now someone else is going to trip over that spill. I made yeah, um, I might, I might push it under the rug, um, rather than speak up. So this is like an a counterbalancing way to encourage people to speak up. So when people speak up, you should give them a scratchy right.

James Kell:

So I think that that makes a little sense yeah, it's funny, you know, I promise like to the listeners, I promise you I didn't see this, but we're actually coming out with a feature early next year called convo card, and it does exactly what you were just talking about. It gamifies, uh, hazard, um uh, awareness and hazard notification, and so all of a sudden, it encourages um the worker on the coalface to take a photo, make a little dictation, and it's a large language model that makes sense of what he or she is saying, and then it goes to the appropriate person immediately.

James Kell:

So it's funny. You should say that that's coming out, that's in Feb.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Awesome, yeah, and I think that makes a lot of sense. It's a way to build psychological safety Totally, and psychological safety, I think, is a big factor in physical safety. Well, let's talk about psychological safety.

James Kell:

The psychosocial is the latest kind of you could argue buzzword in in safety circles.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Okay.

James Kell:

What is it really? You know that, that feeling of yeah, go for it, yeah.

Jurriaan Kamer:

The feeling, the feeling of I can be myself, I can. Uh, yeah, go for it. Yeah, the feeling, the feeling of I, I can be myself. Um, I can, I can say what I think without needing to censor myself and, more importantly, without being afraid of being ridiculed by others. Um, in particular, my, my, my superior or my, my leader or boss or manager, however you want to call it. Um, I, I'm able to, to admit mistakes and I'm able to share ideas that are very early and unformed Ugly babies, so to say and that is important not only for safety, but for a lot of things, including innovation, for example.

Jurriaan Kamer:

If people are withholding their ideas and only want to share it when they're sure that it's going to work, or when they're sure it's going to be perfect and forms, they're going to spend a lot of times behind in their own heads. And innovation, for example, requires teamwork, requires groups of people thinking together and building on each other's ideas. So you need to have a situation where, if you bring up a very stupid or an idea that's very out there like stupid is already a label, but like something that's pretty radical and unexpected people should be looking like that and like, hey, that's interesting. That is definitely not going to work, but it gives me another idea, which is this and then you kind of navigate that together.

James Kell:

Is there such a thing as too much psychosocial safety? I mean, I fear that when something gets labeled and we say that's a good thing, we automatically the pendulum swings and we find the other extreme and it actually does a disservice to the actual concept which you described, I think, really well the feeling of I'm not going to be attacked, I can be be myself. Yeah, um, where's it? What's? What does it look like when there's too much psychosocial?

Jurriaan Kamer:

safety? I'm not sure. If it's, then so. So yeah, what does get weaponized sometimes is this idea of I. I should be able to say anything. I think I should be able to share my opinion. Like free speech reigns here, so, uh, this is just my opinion and you have to deal with it, like that can become. That's not, that's not psychological, that it's, it's not the case, and then that there isn't too much psychological safety. But people might think that that's what it means and they start doing that.

James Kell:

Um, or is it also safe spaces at universities? You know, oh, you know, I can't um, I'm getting offended from this. I'm feeling unsafe. Yeah, it's a just a normal, robust conversation. Yeah, at what point is it?

Jurriaan Kamer:

yeah, uh, you know, yeah there's, but there have been cases also with with, for example, uh, radical candor as another concept, pretty similar like I need to be able to be very direct and honest that that.

James Kell:

That is silicon valley. Did you watch that uh?

Jurriaan Kamer:

oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Kell:

The series. Yeah, oh, mate, it was so good. They talk about medical candor. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Well, that's exactly the problem, right, and I'm from the Netherlands, I live here, I'm Dutch.

James Kell:

So being direct is pretty easy for me. That's part of it.

Jurriaan Kamer:

But I also had to learn over time myself that psychological safety also means that if I have feedback for someone, that I need to give it in a way or provide it in a way, so that the other person can choose if they want to have it and that I can share it in an environment where they cannot be hurt by it. So if I'm in my team meeting with 15 people and I say, well, you know, james, I'm going to give you some feedback now and I'm just sharing this very harsh or direct thing that's not so safe, that doesn't build psychological safety, and I can say, well, that's, and it's pretty dumb.

Jurriaan Kamer:

It's dumb yeah it doesn't work, it's unhelpful and it's almost like bullying, right? So what I should do instead is hey, tap, tap you on the shoulder and say hey, james, I have some feedback for you. Um, what is the best way for you to hear that? Um, do you want to have a private conversation, I assume? And are you ready to hear it? Uh or not? And uh, so.

Jurriaan Kamer:

So psychological safety is also about acknowledging people's preferences and work styles. So one of the exercises that we do with teams a lot to build psychological safety and to build empathy for each other is to create personal user manuals where it's like you know what Everybody sits down. We have a template, one page template, where we write down like oh okay, so how do I communicate? What are things that people misunderstand about me, what are some of the pitfalls? I'm working, working on trying to work on improving. How do I best receive and give feedback, how, how can you convince me of something?

Jurriaan Kamer:

And people write down those things and they and they and they read it from each other. Sometimes they, they, they add more color with some backstories of how these traits, the personality traits, came about through their upbringing or through their experiences, and that just builds, builds a lot of empathy, and then that means that if we have these manuals, the next time we have a situation we can be like oh interesting, I can see this pattern. Or ah, I I learned from from uh, from the manual that that James is really trying to improve this thing. I see he's struggling with it. I can go in and help. It's a really great way for people to be explicit about how people can help each other out and, yeah, that's just one of the practices that builds psychological safety yeah.

James Kell:

You know, as you were saying that, because I teach sailing, I've got a sailing business and psychosocial safety. I really hate that word. There's got to be a bit in it. I love the concept, but it's just such a clinical word. Yeah, but you know, when these sailors we call them sailors when the students come, there's sort of five sailors, students in one boat and the the instructor, and one of the first things you need to do is and everyone's going to be pretty crap at sailing, right, and because they're learning, and so one of the first things you do is celebrate shitness, basically celebrate right, being bad at something, um, and you're setting the tone. Setting the tone and one of our instructors is an english guy, super dry humor, and he's got this way that I'm sure the psychosocial experts would say he's um, bullying them, but it's in fact a beautiful way for someone to laugh at themselves.

James Kell:

He's got this you know, you know what I mean. Um, he's got this directness and this dry humor and this irony and it all works well, right? So, yeah, yeah, really different styles. Um, if, if they had the, the, um, the psychosocial police that would come down on him and yet he creates this really good environment right so there's, yeah, yeah it's just a.

Jurriaan Kamer:

it's an interesting one and I really hope we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater that's in this push, yeah, but I think that he probably also does some contracting at the start with the group where he says you know what I'm going to do this, you can expect me to be like this and I'm doing this because I you know, or maybe he doesn't, but he doesn't. Well, maybe people just get it, they find out okay, he's english and they find out and they're american typically yeah, and they kind of go.

James Kell:

Okay, this guy's hilarious and yeah, I think I don't know what it is, but there's some really subtle cues that he has. That eventually, because ultimately, I think you want to know that you're superior and this on the boat it's the instructor. Yeah, um, you want to know that your superior kind of likes you in a in some way, right, yeah, and if you feel that they don't like you or they have it in for you and they're all related, then all of a sudden you're, you don't feel safe, right psychologically, yeah, um, and so he provides that safety.

James Kell:

It's just in his own unique way.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah.

James Kell:

Yeah, so that's, that's the thing, yeah.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's true. And, um, it reminds me of another experiment that was done um many years ago and again, I don't have the source ready. It's in my book somewhere, but it's the playground study. I don't know if you've heard of it, but this idea of there was a playground where there was a study where people were trying to figure out children's behavior on different types of playgrounds. And a typical playground had a fence around it, a boundary around it, and people would play there.

Jurriaan Kamer:

And at one point somebody said well, why don't we go into the forest and remove some of the boundaries and see what happens? And they were expecting that kids would be going beyond, going further away and going really into the woods and play with everything and play with everything. But because the lack of physical boundaries, the kids were actually looking at their teacher and sticking close to the teacher to figure out am I safe? Am I doing the right thing? Is this okay? Can I go this far?

Jurriaan Kamer:

While when the boundaries were there, when the physical boundaries were there, they were exploring, they were even jumping on the fence and on the boundary, but they knew that they were safe within that space. So their behavior was much more entrepreneurial, initiative, taking free, and that's a paradox in itself, because sometimes we think that setting boundaries is is is constraining people. But but actually you have to set boundaries to set people free and to, to allow them to to to behave. And it just reminds me of the instructor and the teacher, like if you know that somebody is caring for you, you can relax and you can just try stuff and be in a learning mode, rather than not knowing if you're safe, right, you will take less risks and you'll learn less fast.

James Kell:

No, that's great. That's a really good analogy. So, changing tack a bit, where do you see workplace culture going? Where do you see, yeah, especially with AI and robotics and all sorts of things, changing very quickly, yeah, yeah. I think companies need to be a lot more adaptive to new technology trends with AI and robotics and all sorts of things changing very quickly.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, yeah, I think companies need to be a lot more adaptive to to new technology trends. Um, for many years, the digital transformation movement was there, is there, is still there, um, but that is just, you know, shifting gears to uh to accelerate even faster, um, so, so, so companies and leaders need to become much more comfortable with with, uh, with with faster changes in how people work. What technology is available, uh, what roles are there and what roles are no longer there? Uh, because it's automated quickly. Um, it's, it's a, it's a big wave that's coming, and so companies that are able to adapt quickly and are fluid inside will probably be better suitable to survive this wave.

James Kell:

Okay, so what does that look like to a construction company or a trucking company or something like that?

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not an expert in those fields. In general, I would say that in situations where roles are fluid and work is fluid to connect it back to self-determination theory and autonomy what we found works really well is if people can vote with their feet. Autonomy what we found works really well is if people can vote with their feet. So that means that they're able to choose what work they will do and won't do anymore, while feeling safe that they don't risk of losing their job. So the types of companies that are highly adaptive. They allow people to say you know what? Here are 15 or 20 projects or key initiatives that we want to get done in the next year.

Jurriaan Kamer:

People just vote and go do the things that you think is most valuable and that's best suited for your skills and competence, and you can choose how to fulfill those missions. But you can just pick yourself and there might be some missions out there that will not be chosen and that's interesting data that tells you something about. Is that work valuable or are we missing the people to do this? It also means that when a project is ending or a function or a type of work is no longer valuable or can be done very differently. People can let go of that work and say you know what AI is doing that. Now for me, let me just focus on something else. And they just move fluidly, rather than the more fixed job description type functional hierarchies that we have, where if you want to change jobs in a company it's risky, you might get fired or you have to reapply for a role. Like we're very rigid inside of companies often when it comes to switching roles.

James Kell:

It's an interesting idea you you put, because at first blush, when I hear that, it sounds kind of preposterous really, and that is, um, you know, say to people, hey, we've got these things to do, you, do you? Um, right, and at first that just sounds like a chaos. But then you think, hold on, we've got, uh, tesla's optimus prime robot a year and a half away, maybe two years away, at for mass production. All right, we're not talking a couple hundred of these things, yeah, and? And so now we've got like, um, what is it this week? It's ChatGPT 01 Pro, which is writing code which is unbelievable, right? So this sort of thing changes week by week. So that suggests that the workplace is changing that rapidly that I think having the individual make calls is not as crazy as it sounds, because you've got to be that quick to move.

Jurriaan Kamer:

And I think Tesla in itself in their car manufacturing factories is an interesting example because they basically already completely automated middle management. Automated middle management so middle management typically is tasked with figuring out priorities, putting people's time and money towards those priorities, following progress, reporting back. That's a big part of middle management and what they have in their factories. They have workstations and at each workstation there's a computer there and the computer observes how many square feet is this workspace using, what are the materials that this workspace is doing and what is the business problem that they're trying to solve, or what is the metric they're trying to optimize. So people who work there they enter, like you know, we're trying to optimize this metric and this is how we're going to do it and this is the problem we're trying to solve and the computer automatically calculates if the ROI of that activity is positive and if it's not, it will tell you and you are expected to abandon that workspace and workstation and find another problem to solve in the factory.

James Kell:

It's literally like Fascinating, yeah Right.

Jurriaan Kamer:

So it's literally that it's like you know. You come out to work, you find the most valuable workspace that you can be in, that is a good fit for your skills or the thing you want to learn, and you do that work and the moment the system tells you you know what this is no longer needed, this is no longer useful or valuable. You go and do something else and there's no human intervention there.

James Kell:

So my understanding is that, from what I've learned because they kind of took Agile and put it onto a car assembly line, didn't they? I think they can have sort of 20-odd updates to their vehicle assembly line per week, whereas the legacy manufacturers do sort of 200 every year or two. And these guys are just continually refining, iterating that sort of thing. Yeah, and it sounds like you know a bit about it. My understanding is you and I are two Tesla engineers. We come to work. You say, hey, I've got this thought, james, that we can make the paint a bit thinner and it'll save this, and that we feed our proposition into the, like you say, the computer which is an.

James Kell:

AI and it comes back to us and says that's worth two months of your time, have a crack. And so we go spend two months and we find that it works and we feed that back in and the next week, to oversimplify it, the cars have that improvement. Right yeah?

Jurriaan Kamer:

yeah, exactly that's how it works and that allows them to be super innovative, super adaptive. It does require some skill.

James Kell:

Literally agile.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, literally agile, yeah, and I think agile is a loaded word and I don't think it covers what they're doing. It's really beyond that in a lot of ways, but it's just an example of a way of organizing a company that to for for fast innovation and adaptiveness. Um, and there there's another example that I've been studying more. I recently, uh, interviewed one of the guys who is running that at Roche pharmaceutical company and they are, um, like, they're huge, like over a hundred thousand people in basically literally every country of the world.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Um, they are especially in the go-to market organization, so not in the pharma manufacturing, but in the market organization. They have a management team and a director in every country. So it's like small little companies in every company, like Roche, the Netherlands, roche, australia. They all have their own little organization and sometimes some of them are actually not little, they're big, but they're basically all solving similar type problems. So, so, um, they're trying to optimize the experience of a of either a healthcare professional or a patient of a certain type, and they're discovering things and they're learning things. And you know, humans are humans. So we, we have challenges.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Local market contexts and regulations are different, so that's why they're organized that way.

Jurriaan Kamer:

So what they've actually discovered and actually became really successful with is to launch an opportunity marketplace.

Jurriaan Kamer:

So if you are, for example, in the Netherlands and you discover or like, you're like, hmm, I'd love to spend some more time really cracking this challenge for this patient, and I don't have the resources in the Netherlands, and I'm sure there must be other people in the world that are facing this and there must be people out there that have good ideas about it.

Jurriaan Kamer:

And so you write down your opportunity, basically your pitch of what you want to do. You drop it on the marketplace and you try to recruit other people from all across the world across silos, across functions, doesn't matter who are willing and vote with their feet literally to join you in that team for six to nine to 12 months, and everybody who joins can spend 20 to 30% of their normal time, their day-to-day time, on the problems they want to solve themselves across the world. And you can. You can. Going back to self-determination theory, you can see how that really builds autonomy, competence and relatedness quickly. People you know love to work on the most complex problems. They love to learn about other people that are passionate about the same thing and they're and those teams are self self-organizing.

Jurriaan Kamer:

They don't have a boss that they have to report into. They are like professionals working with professionals trying to solve problems for patients. So they have built 1,100 teams across the globe. Thousands and thousands of people work this way.

James Kell:

Right right, that's great. Thousands and thousands of people work this way. Right right, that's great. And and for that sort of level, I think the, the tesla engineer, the uh, the roche kind of let's call it scientist or or engineer, or whatever it might be um, that autonomy just just builds upon itself, doesn't there? There is another whole other, another layer we call them, them hard hats and hairnets. That autonomy is not so readily available in what they choose to do, just because of the nature of their work. But it's fascinating, very exciting. Just to wrap things up, then, what final advice would you give leaders looking to transform their culture in their business? Any takeaways that you can provide?

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, it could be super interesting to ask the people that you work with, the people that are in your team, how you would score on autonomy, mastery and purpose. You can ask your people like hey, you know what mastery and purpose Um you can. You can ask your people like hey, you know what, how, how autonomous do you feel you are and would you like more of that? Or or how, how are we doing together on that phase? It's the same for mastery Are you learning the things that you want to learn? Are you able to develop your skills or not?

Jurriaan Kamer:

And if not, like, can we do something to to prove that in terms of purpose, relatedness, connection and belonging, like, how are we doing there? And so that's one thing, and I think a lot of companies that measure employee engagement and try to improve those things, and, yeah, I think it's important to keep those three factors in mind when evaluating engagement scores and figuring out what to do, because so often we I don't know we install a better coffee machine or we put a pool table in a place because people want to have more fun, but in the end, it's all about recognition and it's about you know, do I belong here? Can I choose what to do, can I develop my skills and do I care about to work here? And if you're able to improve those factors, you know you're off to the races nice now, yurian, how can more people find out about your work?

James Kell:

where can they find your book? That sort of thing yeah, so uh.

Jurriaan Kamer:

The book is titled unblock clear the way for results and develop a thriving organization. It's on Amazon. Direct link to Amazon is wwwunblockbooknet.

James Kell:

We'll provide that in the show notes.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Absolutely yeah, and I'm highly active on LinkedIn, so type in my first and last name there and follow me, and that's where you can find me.

James Kell:

Awesome. Well, jurian, thanks heaps for coming today. It was a really interesting discussion and, yeah, all the best. Thank you, james. I hope to see you in Holland, eh.

Jurriaan Kamer:

Yeah, yeah, and likewise I'd love to come to Australia. Cool, okay, see you later. Bye, thank you, bye.

People on this episode

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Garry Mansfield

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James Kell

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Jurriaan Kamer

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