E76 - Rethinking Change: From Behavioural Conditioning to Regenerative Transformation - Podcast with Carol Sanford

Behavioral psychology says there is no inner process . Humans don't have one . They only have conditioning based on the external world , rewards and recognition . And so well , you can't bring about change , like you're claiming you can , here , without others outside conditioning them .

And so most of I would say right now , 90 , 95% all change is based on behavior theory , and you can hear it in people's language . They can't like influencers and impact , right ? Those kind of things are suggesting that from the outside we can change other beings . Now , it's true that we can , but it's without developing people .

They can learn to change themselves . So my efficacy is for people being developed , that inner capability that , because of behaviorism , no longer gets to develop . Every company has some kind of reward , recognition , incentives , all of which are behavioral theory .

The other thing that is false theories is much of what happens in scientific method research which we follow . People say I want a fact-based base or an evidence base or a science base . Well , there's more than one kind of science and we have lost the connection to other sciences .

So now we have scientific method , which is kill something first , I kill the frog , dissect it into parts . Now say one part why you hold . Everything else still move one thing . So we have no systems thinking in that process . It's not dynamic , it's not dimensional and it's not as though people change .

I work with something called the science of holes and we've done this with nations , with corporations like DuPont and Google , where we work with looking at a hole moving in a system , and it comes from indigenous theory and science and also quantum science and wisdom sciences . So if we can't look at holes , we can't look at anything living .

We can only dissected , and that's where behavior theory actually came from . Also the study , not of humans and their frontal lobe capacity , but the study of animals , mostly dissected or using a study which had them only looking at one thing at a time . So that's kind of an intro to them , but that's what that means on my website .

You can't even talk to me without a referral , and the reason is I want people to know what they're getting into , so I'll give you a chain of referrals to give me an example . So years ago I was working with Keys for Charcoal and we changed their ecological footprint , their marketplace and not only market share but return on investment .

They recommended me to Colgate and so I went into Colgate and we did that all over the world , including during the South African Revolution against apartheid , and they did so well . They recommended South African Revolution Against Apartheid , and they did so well . They recommended me to DuPont and also Google .

All of these go one after another after another , and I never give advice and don't ever take advice . I say to people educate yourself to think better and you can figure out what you need and you will know your context better . So people are all different levels . I rarely work with brand new startups because they're so distracted .

They can't really , although we've had a few and a few that have been written up in books and magazines . Once in a while they're in terrible shape like the bottom of their industry , but usually they're doing okay . But they either want to do better to be able to grow the company or they want to switch to living closer to some kind of mission or vision .

And so they hear the stories about the folks I've worked with and when they do that . So mostly we say to them well , what you're asking to work on is too small and it's a part of something . So we have to shift them thinking about working on the whole of the business and it doesn't have to be a whole company . Like in DuPont and Google .

They had business groups going . You need a P&L so you can track , because we grow companies about 35% to 65% per annum for about the first five years and you need the whole of a business . Like in DuPont , that wasn't a whole company but it was four different businesses Sodium , cyanide , freon , paint Group and electronic group .

Now that takes quite a few years to make the change . The basis we work on is three to five or eight years before , like DuPont , was able to replace Rion and make it open source , so that India and China didn't make Rioners , and so how in the world we needed it replaced .

So it can take a few years to do big , big , big change , but the change starts to happen within about six months . It's pretty significant .

And what I would like to know how would an organization , for example the higher education , how would they look at your regenerative principles and apply them ?

So the head of Stanford's what they call it management and engineering has studied with me for 40 years . She's changing everything based on all this . Same thing is true with people who had leadership groups in MIT and business change in DuPont I'm sorry in Harvard . And then I have a bunch of small companies and what usually happens is like in what's the group ?

Saybrook and Glasgow University both have people who study with our institute and they come in groups . We require three people minimum from a group so that they can work and develop

together and then try and make change .

So I've had a few hundred university heads and lead faculty who have studied with us and they sometimes use what I call the good side of the Chinese torture method Drip , drip , drip , drip , drip method , drip , drip , drip , drip , drip working on a focused way and how they teach , how they manage the courses , how they manage the institute and quite a bit changes

in about three to five years . So it's educate the educators .

spread the message is actually educate the educators and you create champions , or whatever you want to call them . I want to ask you , carl , about you mentioned something around allowing change to happen over a period of time . Change to happen over a period of time .

We come across organizations that just want things to happen in a few months , and somebody like you and myself I always know that change needs time to happen . So you did talk about your three to five to eight years ,

the principle of time when it comes to implementing change and transforming an organization . How critical is that to embed change and see the results ?

People were that there would be violence , and there was in most companies . In Colgate we , within six months , reached that goal where we had 95% black Africans where there had been 95% white and none of it was with a program to go after that directly . It was with a program to go after that directly .

We educated people on how to run a company and we were meeting very intensely . I have very detailed well not every a lot of the details in my most recent book . We didn't tell anyone they had to change . We said say so to the general managers . I want to build a great country while we build a great company .

If you start with something bigger which includes everyone , everybody wants to apply . We did it all with education , none with restructuring , and we've done that with every place . We've worked and within six months major changes happen , but it won't get deep and permanent in six months Every place I like .

Even with Crowns , I was back years ago one of my earliest clients . We took them in one year from . Let's see what were they at ? 24,000 or 25 in their industry in revenue . I think that when we say it takes a long time , people have the image nothing happens , nothing . Nothing . It's building , building , building .

So three to five years is a study , or three to eight I think it is Harvard did a study which I to eight , I think it is Harvard did a study which I cite in several of my books , that it's like a layering and if you know how to do it , a lot happens early and you have momentum and then you layer . You have momentum and then you layer .

I have six phases which are not explainable in a short podcast , but they work as layers to bring about change .

And so there's one real disruptive opening that builds a shift in how you learn , and then there's a shock to the system that builds a different way of making decisions and then one that changes how they work with customers , and so it's not a long time to do applications . Every phase is applied immediately , not an application taking eight years .

The phases are introduced and applied , introduced and applied . So it's a very layered process .

If you instead educate people and work on something huge which is really important , something too big to do alone , it's all very fast . Nothing I've done is slow . I think the whole idea that it takes a long time and there are some things you have to build toward . The first things I do are quite disruptive and once people are unstuck you can be in education .

But stop all the restructuring . That will kill the speed .

And so education is a lot about interprocessing , which we were stopped doing with behaviorism , where they did only external behavior management . So we go back to you have to believe that people can grow and change , not by incentive but by self-direction .

So the entire process of building a self-managing , self-determining , self-directed workforce where every individual can see the whole . And so we start with in every case using it in an applied way . So people come into sessions in natural work teams , not as individuals , and they go apply what we are doing with them .

We don't teach them what to do , we teach them how to think about it , and then they make choices and have other evaluation frameworks where they get better and better at thinking for themselves . And we're slowly moving away from traditional structures like top-down management and functional groups , supervisors and delegation .

In my third book , the Regeneration of Business , there are 30 toxic practices , so we're slowly moving away from those and having people substitute their own design based on certain different kind of principles , not based on behaviorism , but based on self-determining capacity in humans . So that's what I mean by education .

They're learning to think differently , but they're not learning what we think they should do , only how they get better and better at thinking . I'm just trying to get tired , so we're going to have to be careful in the use of time .

Geek , that has the name of leadership no delegation . I took a bunch of DuPont guys to Keatsford one time . I used these as an example because they're easy to see . We were in a charcoal plant where there's black dust everywhere , and the team I took from DuPont was TO2 titanium engineers and operators which make all white powder , and they were in a room .

I went to the tour and then they were in a room with a core team , which is what we call the leadership process , and they were asking questions and we all got in the van and left and they said why didn't their boss show up , or bosses ? I said , well , they were in the room . They said , well , you couldn't tell who they were .

I said I hope you got that . It was about self-to-self conversation , not role-to-role , not authority-to-follower , and so I quit taking people on tours because the entire process changes it . So leadership is a process , not a title , not a job description , and people have self-determining capacity to initiate things .

We call them promises that they make to customers , not to a boss . They have no development plans to the boss , only to the market and the customers , and they can be self-directed inside of a strategic plan with a team that's helping them do self-assessment of the effects in the market and on the business . So that's my leadership . It gets redefined .

However , I'm the most patient man on earth and I'm always interested to hear the thought leaders like yourself . You're sharing your time with me and I'm eternally grateful . We're going to put all your information in the podcast details , carl , and I certainly will be promoting your work .

I love um all of these principles and I hope I can take 5-10% out of it and apply it in my way of thinking around change going forward . So that's my promise .

They get somebody ahead of someone . So , ali , thank you for inviting me .