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complexity

Episode 14: Jennifer Garvey-Berger on Simple Habits for Complex Times [The Amiel Show]

Episode 14: Jennifer Garvey-Berger on Simple Habits for Complex Times [The Amiel Show]

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What do you get when one of the world’s experts in adult development, an aspiring novelist, writes a practical guide for organizations on leading through complexity?

Simple Habits for Complex Times, the new book by Jennifer Garvey-Berger (co-authored with Keith Johnston). What I love about it: not only does it entice the reader to see organizational life through a powerful new lens, it’s a great read!

The book is built around two stories, both with leaders in over their heads in complexity yet willing to stretch their minds and habits to rise to the challenge.

After the great response (nearly 2,000 downloads) to my earlier interview with Jennifer, I just had to interview her about the new book. Fortunately, she was game.

Jennifer-Garvey-Berger

In Episode 14 of The Amiel Show, Jennifer and I discuss (times are approximate):
  • 5:00 How complex systems differ from simple and complicated systems
  • 10:00 Our hunger for cause-and-effect
  • 12:40 The “rich picture of now” brainstorm—and the importance of not being aspirational
  • 17:00 The purpose of safe-to-fail experiments
  • 23:00 Why pilot experiments piss people off
  • 27:30 How job surveys don’t just measure a system. They shape it
  • 33:00 How people create phantom rules that everybody hates
  • 38:00 How complexity principles work at every stage of adult development
  • 40:00 Looking for the attractors that contribute to compliance-based behaviors
  • 44:30 What we miss by assuming we are emotion-less Vulcans rather than human beings
  • 48:30 “We hire the smartest people” and other well-meaning habits that can block learning
  • 53:00 Creating more complex ways to think about performance at work

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Episode 3: Jennifer Garvey Berger on Leadership and Adult Development [The Amiel Show]

Episode 3: Jennifer Garvey Berger on Leadership and Adult Development [The Amiel Show]

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In the 21 years since I started developing leaders, I’ve come across a handful of truly game-changing ideas. One of these is adult development. It’s the notion that after our bodies reach maturity, our minds can develop through multiple stages. Each stage gives us the capacity to handle greater complexity, yet also involves a loss of something we hold dear—namely, the way of seeing the world that up until now felt like “me.”

In Episode 3 of The Amiel Show, I speak with Jennifer Garvey Berger, one of the foremost educators about adult development in leadership and organizations. We discuss:

  • The many ways we expect leaders to be both superhuman and supremely human
  • How awesome it is to have new capacities to look forward to as we get older
  • How learning about adult development makes us more compassionate and less judgmental toward others
  • The massive achievement of the Socialized Mind, when you first move beyond vast loneliness and self-centeredness and feel connected to others
  • How the Socialized Mind leaves you unprepared for many leadership situations
  • How much of emotional intelligence requires the Self-Authored Mind
  • The Self-Authored Mind, when you develop the code of your own life and realize that, no, people don’t “piss you off,” because you make your own emotions
  • How it can take decades for people to develop the Self-Authored Mind
  • The value of having a companion to help you deal with development’s uncertain gains and painful losses
  • The Self-Transforming Mind, when complexity and ambiguity become our natural playgrounds

Jennifer-Edited

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Yes, Your Mind Can Grow

Yes, Your Mind Can Grow

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I want to invite you to take on a new project in your life. It’s challenging, but has big payoffs. It’s weird, but will help you get along with a wider range of people with less stress. It takes effort, but will resolve many problems you are submerged in today.

The project? Grow your mind.

I’m going to wager that growing your mind doesn’t appear on any action lists, on your calendar, or even in your life design (if you have one). In fact, I’m going to double down and bet that this is one of the first times you’ve been invited to grow your mind. Unless, of course, you read this teaser.

There’s a reason why this is a foreign concept. Until recently, people believed that growing up ends at adulthood. As soon as you hit your full height, you might get slimmer, and you might get fatter, but otherwise you are done. The way you are at age 20 is essentially the way you’ll be at 40 and 80.

Buterfly

Or so the theory goes.

And, if you think about it, the theory works really well for people who aren’t open to developing. If you don’t like how I lead my team, the way I communicate, or how I handle conflict, tough luck. That’s how I roll.  ENTJ, thank you very much. Sure, I may change a few behaviors, but on the inside, what you see is what you get. I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam. Popeye said it in 1929, and many of us believe it today. [Read more…] about Yes, Your Mind Can Grow

The race of our lives

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The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.
—Bill O’Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance Company

We’re in the race of our lives. It’s not between the “good guys” and “bad guys” but between the complexity of our world and the capacity of our minds to manage this complexity.

Jim Collins’s survey of 1400 companies showed that transforming from “good to great” requires Level 5 leadership: a paradoxical blend of professional ambition and personal humility. We also know from longitudinal research of small- and mid-sized organizations that companies’ capacity to transform is directly related to top executives’ own capacities. In particular their ability to integrate different perspectives, use a broad repertoire of power approaches, and self-correct. [Read more…] about The race of our lives