Doing The Right Thing for The Right Reason

Spencer: Welcome to the Conscious Community Podcast. I’m Spencer-

Janae: And I’m Janae-

Spencer: … and today we’re speaking with Richi of Axialent about conscious business.

Janae: Welcome Richi to the show. Well, the first question we have is we would like you to define what conscious business is, and how is that different from the traditional business model that people may be familiar with or what they perceive is what business is.

Richi: Yes, well thanks for having me, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today.

Janae: Yes, thanks for being our first international guest. Actually no we yours when he was in Costa Rica.

Spencer: Yeah, but he was an American.

Janae: Yeah

Richi: …Non-american in a non-american country… Well the way we define a conscious business is a way of doing business where you pay attention basically to the decisions you’re making to how you’re dealing with a business as such creating something of value for the market, paying attention to the stakeholders, the ecosystem where you are working on, being at the service of some purpose. We believe conscious businesses have a noble purpose you know, which is to create some service and to better the lives of people.
And we just claim that paying attention, not only to what you’re doing, but to how you are going about doing business, it makes all the difference in the world and can create a virtuous circle around business, which has grown some problematic reputation in the past.

Janae: For the preparing for this interview, we actually look at the book conscious business by Fred Kofman and how do Fred he’s the founder of your company correct?

Richi: He is a founder yes. Actually we’re both founders, we met each other when I was in the corporate world. I was working with EDS electronic data systems back in 1996. And back then EDS together with a consortium of companies had hired Fred as a consultant to work on some of these
principles and that’s how it ought to know Fred. I learned about conscious business and the principles and the philosophy, then I started using those in my own business in the corporate world I became a super fan of all that. He and I became good friends and then in 2003 we decided to create a company that would embody these principles and take these principles to the world and then we created Axialent that’s a global consulting company.

Spencer: I’m curious if you could explain a little bit about some of the principles of some of the management principles and how they would differ from what maybe what many people are familiar with when it comes to business.

Richi: Yes. Well, actually I would rather call them like a meta management or meta principles, which because it’s not that they do pretend to replace any of the management practices but we claim is that based on these principles, this philosophy of being and doing all the management practices can happen from a different perspective, you know, when you change the principle is when you change the way you look at Things, the things you look at change just like Wayne Dyer used to say.
So we have a series of philosophical ways of looking at the world, which challenge the traditional way. For example, we say that coming from a place of curiosity and humility when approaching a new challenge is better than coming from a place of certainty and usually arrogance you know, and a lot of our clients have been extremely successful providing good answers to the problems they were Facing. And the thing is that today the questions have become much more important than the answers. So I’m a leader or a manager that is able to ask good questions, and to really listen, and to really embrace what he’s listening with empathy, with humility, with vulnerability, is much more likely to succeed in the world of today that somebody that comes with a lot of certainty about what needs to be done. Because normally that certainty is based on experiences from the past, and something that we are learning and it’s becoming more and more evident today is that the future is not a projection of the past. So, if you want to embrace a new future, it’s a lot better you know, first to come from that place of openness, curiosity, humility vulnerability, if you will. And also to you know, to own your part of the system.
One of the things we see a lot in corporations is that when things go wrong or do not go well, there’s a lot of finger-pointing. It’s always not my responsibility, it’s always who screwed up or who did something Wrong. We invite leaders to make themselves part of the system, part of the problem, because then that gives you a lot of leverage to become part of the solution. The principle is if you are suffering, you have the biggest incentive to do something about it. And those principles as you can see are ways of looking which then enable you to act in the world from a different perspective.
So it’s not so much the tool as we work with a tool user, and and then you can build like metals skills as I was saying before that is for example how you have constructive conversations over difficult issues. One thing we notice a lot in companies is that the people tend to go into an stance in the face of a difficult issue, or into if you will, an avoidance stance. So, none of those work well, in order to face the facts talk about the issues make good decisions come to a conclusion : Do what you need to Do, but at the same time, build relationships and feel proud of what you’re doing you need these skills that are based or build upon this certain, these ways of looking at the world, which changed actually how you show up in a conversation.
So, as you can see it’s not about so much the skills about how you do recruiting or how you do performance assessment or for you to pay compensation systems but more who is the person that is creating those systems and when the person shifts then all those systems also shift does that make sense?

Janae: Yes, and one thing you said in there that I’d like to bring up is he brought the idea of taking ownership for your actions I think that is actually just a fundamental thing that all people in all situations need to do I was visiting my friend’s classroom he’s a music teacher yesterday and she has a sign, take ownership of your education in her room and saying those basic ideas written out for her middle school students like the idea that people need to have agreed in them young and no matter what field what they’re doing that leads to having more successful life.

Spencer: Yeah, life isn’t just happening to you that you have a stake in some control in what happens..

Janae: And that’s yeah crucial in all areas of life I mean no matter what you’re doing learning.

Spencer: So there’s a lot first of all in my experience in the business world I found that there is a lot of business management that happens out there in the world, that I is kind of running on antiquated models where you had like how management was done a hundred years ago in a very like stern disciplinarian, dehumanizing, management structure and very like punitive management tactics, and just like as soon as you hire someone you start building your file for how to deal with them when you’re gonna fire them, and I think that to some degree that’s not what’s being taught in business schools and a lot of I became familiar with some of these conscious business principles when I was in management school, and that I mean I didn’t go to a top-tier school or anything, but even there that these conscious business principles are being taught to people in business administration courses, and but when you go out into the working world a lot of times people they don’t have an MBA or they didn’t go to school for business or they just they went to school for something liberal arts or something and then they ended up in the corporate world and some kind of management role and, in my experience, they kind of based their behavior on how to be a manager for how they’ve been managed in the past.
So, in college they worked at a fast-food restaurant and they had a horrible manager and then they go and they get their degree and they end up in the corporate world and they will that my boss acted like that so that’s how bosses are supposed to act and they’re not really basing it based on what works or based on what gives you the best productivity or anything.
So to me like it’s really important in the corporate world to propagate these ideas because in my understanding that in the best business schools in the world this is the stuff that’s being taught because it works, and I think it’s really important to spread it and I think that’s one of the reasons I talk about it so much in my personal life and work and everything is because these ideas need to get out there, but going the other direction there is a lot of people who have, and perhaps for good reason, have a very negative connotation of business in general, I think that there’s a lot of issues in the world that need to be solved and that the power of enterprise is a really powerful engine to solve those problems.
I mean if you look at someone like Elon Musk who’s with his space program or other corporate ventures that are going out and using the power of enterprise to fix things that are wrong with the world, the very powerful thing so if we throw the baby out with the bathwater and we reject business as evil, then we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot as far as having a really powerful tool to fix some of these issues in the world and my experience is that there’s there are people who have really good some of the philosophical concepts that you talked about in conscious business that come from spiritual traditions and whatnot as far as like compassion and empathy, like in the metaphysical spiritual community there tends to be also a almost phobia of business.
I was just curious if you had any ideas of how the conscious business world can explain itself to that world where you have like holistic practitioners and yoga teachers and stuff like that on how important some of those business fundamentals are and why conscious business mitigates some of the negative aspects of the business world.

Janae: but like artists as well creative types they also fall into that category

Spencer: Yeah they tend to like refuse to do some of the fundamental business things because they do business in a negative light

Richi: Yeah. Well, I think all those are great thoughts and they’re more than questions they’re their reflections I was listening to you and it’s true that many of these principles are being taught in the schools, in colleges and in the MBAs.
Now, we make a very important distinction between cognitive learning or intellectual learning and then are you able to do it, because you can talk about it you can have the language but the question is you are in the middle of a difficult conversation how do you show up? Do you show up trying to control the conversation or do you open up to understand where the other person is coming from.
I know it sounds even almost silly because he of course you would say well I would like to open up but then you’re in the middle of it and there is this normal tendency where humans are under threat that they tend to go into a unilateral control kind of behavior where they try to control the conversation because we feel pulled to defend ourselves more it becomes more about ourselves and about the ideas being addressed in the conversation.
So what I would say is that what we bring to the business world is this congruence of how do you bring this as you mentioned these principles that are from other traditions principles that many of us learned in kindergarten be kind, say thank you, appreciate other people, really acknowledged the help ask for help, extend your helping hand too.
How can you bring those principles into the business world when the stakes are high. This is exactly the work we do we bring congruence into the business world that’s why when we train leaders or managers or senior executives it’s very difficult to embody these tools is the skills these principles if you yourself are not going through a transformation process too.
So this is not just material that we offer to the business world, what we hear from our clients many times is that what’s helping them in the business, is also helping them outside of the business with their families with the children with the friends with the neighbors because this is a philosophy for life it’s not a philosophy only for business.
Of course we claim and we have many examples of clients that embodying these principles they have become incredibly successful in what they do why because they also have a great business model they have a product or service that the world needs or wants but then the way they take this to the world has become incredibly successful because they have built it into the culture into the principles of the company many of these philosophical tenants.
Now it’s we as excellent what we claim to do mostly is to bridge that gap between the traditional Western world management and leadership and if you wish the Eastern philosophies, which we believe are totally integrable and one and you can be and behave in a way that get you what you want the growth the results you are standing for, but also builds a community of mutual support of solidarity where people hold each other’s backs and where people feel proud of what they do you were mentioning in your comment that you somebody learn how to he was managed in a fast food a job and then he goes into the corporate world and then he tries to manage like that.
Our experience is that if all what that gets you at the most is compliance people will do what you ask them to do out of fear of they don’t want to get fired that they have a family to support so they will do what the least I need to do to keep their jobs now if what you want is it for people to give you their hearts and to have full commitment to the mission to the purpose that cannot come from the outside. our experience is that you have to inspire that people will give you their hearts because they want to, not because you ask them to. And for that you have to become a leader that inspires a leader that is able to to articulate a narrative that will inspire people and that will say that will make them say yes I share that dream I want to go there with you let’s do this together but they’re gonna say that you cannot impose that, it’s impossible. this is our experience I don’t say this is true.

Spencer: Um, I was curious I lost my train of thought for a second luckily we have the power of editing-
Janae: About… you guys have worked with Ken Wilber, and I think it’s interesting that you’re part of his integral theory, we actually spoke with Ken Wilber

Richi: Yes.

Janae: I’m just interested in how you see your role fitting into

Richi: Oh, well. His whole theory of the equal theory, the integral theory is totally built into our models, that’s exactly the model we take to business.
It’s a simplified model, because I think one characteristic of Ken, is that he’s extremely, I think he’s a genius, and at the same time people find it sometimes difficult to understand his models. So we have simplified the model, actually our I, WE, IT model, the one we take to business, it’s a simplification of the equal model of Ken, it’s exactly the same model we take to the business world.

Spencer: So do you feel that there, I think there’s a lot of belief in the business world that people who aren’t familiar with these principles that you have to compromise profitability, or if you have to compromise your business’s ability to survive in a highly competitive environment, if you take on some of these principles that there’s a kind of trade-off happening and that you can either be cutthroat and highly cotton, or you can be compassionate and do the right thing, but you’re not gonna make as much money.

Richi: The way you’re asking the question, you are creating, for me, a false polarity there. I don’t think there is a polarity. I think that one is at the service of the other, because you are trying to create something for your stakeholders, for your employees, for your clients, for the ecosystem where you work, for your vendors, for your partners, because you’re trying to do that, the way the forces that are going to deal with these for you to achieve your aspirations are much, much greater.
And I’ve seen incredibly successful companies actually when you look at some of the companies that are part of the conscious capitalism movement. You probably heard of that or was Sisodia there and he’s a very good friend he’s in our advisory board, and Nawroz wrote the book Conscious Capitalism and Firms of Endearment. And those are two great books that I recommend, which speaks, they speak to these principles.
It’s not an either/or, it’s not that you have to become cutthroat to achieve your goals, you can do that in a way that furthers your goals but also furthers the ecosystem and it’s at the same time at the service of your purpose.
So it’s not a polarity, I see that as part of the one and the same, but you see the way even the way you ask a question, you create a polarity through the question, and I don’t think there is a polarity.
Spencer: Well, I just some sometimes it seems like when I try to explain the concept of conscious business people say : “Oh well that sound good but what are we getting out of like I gotta worry about my bottom line here I can’t be awesome with that kind of stuff I think what’s so important to communicate is that it’s not a trade-off, that you can do you can manage your company you can be profitable you can grow at the same time it’s really a better way of managing, not necessarily at a trading one thing for another”

Richi: No, the way we explain it is we talk about it as having distinctions, business has this dimension, it has a technical dimension we call it the eighth dimension that the technical the objective dimension of business, which is profit growth market share portfolio growth etc etc… I know that is incredibly important, but then the business also has a human dimension, which we divide into a collective dimension, which is the we dimension the interpersonal and then I dimension, which is a personal dimension.
And the way we explain it is look, if you feel proud of what you’re doing, if you feel happy, if you feel expanded, as a human being, as a leader, and you create a community where people support each other, what is the likelihood that you’re gonna achieve your goals, I mean it’s intuitive, I mean it’s not about giving up your ghost this is not a social club where you go to make good friends. The way to address a team of leader says look you are not friends, you are friends in purpose, what brings it together is you are pursuing a common purpose, and for that there are strategies that are going to further that purpose rather than other strategies, and we claim in our model that working on the human dimension is a leverage to achieve the technical dimension. It is not competing priorities does that make sense?

Spencer: Yes. Do you feel that these conscious business principles are compatible with the issue that always comes to mind is, I would say, kind of misleading or deceptive advertising that is one aspect where I, particularly in America, the United States where people who have a negative impression of business often one of the most common ways they interact with the corporate world is through advertising and it tends to be very deceptive and manipulative you think that a company that’s trying to embody this conscious business principles needs to change the way they look at advertising?

Richi: Well, I don’t know, and at the same time, the way we work with companies is we invite people to reflect upon their actions, and to ponder or my behaviors aligned to my values. You cannot control what you get because what you get has the influence of other control factors, you cannot control the outcome of your actions but you can always choose how you want to respond in the face of a challenge, in a way that is aligned with your values. And we have a profound trust in the core of human principles, the ethics of human behavior.
The more and Ken Wilber talks about this to be the only way you can tell whether a person is more conscious is by her or his level of compassion, and his level of openness, so we work on that we invite people to become more open, to become more conscious, to pay attention to your actions, and we trust that when they start thinking like that they will not be able to do like deceptive marketing, because that will speak against their own values.
Now, we don’t have an opinion about which kind of marketing or such should be should be done or not, we would offer our principles and if people want to embrace them we know that that will self-regulate it will help people make more conscious choices.

Janae: I think that what you’re talking about what I thought is looking at the book here is basically it just takes people like you were saying take ownership and I saw that my friend’s classroom it’s just the idea of just be and have integrity be a good person and everything else you do will fall in line with that essentially first be conscious yourself that-

Richi: It’s that and also when you’re faced with it with a challenge when you’re faced with a situation you can either react to the situation and and then you do what you do, or we call it to push the pause button. Are you able to push the pause button and say okay this is what’s happening now, how do I want to respond to that, in a way that honors my values, in a way that moment by moment, owners what I believe is true, it’s important what I value. And then and I know that sounds pretty simple but it’s the key of everything, if you’re able to push the pause button, then you have infinite options, if you’re not able to do that then you will respond the way you have all rules.

Janae: Yeah-

Richi: And when we go to companies we are not asking people to change what’s working for them, if something works for you I mean if you’re happy just continue doing whatever you’re doing. Now many times you’re not happy with the outcome, you’re not satisfied, okay then you might want to consider an alternative and when you are not happy with the outcome, that’s the moment to take a breath and to just pause and think how do you want to respond in this situation, who don’t want to be come through my behaviors, because you’re always in the process of becoming through your behaviors.
And yes, as you say it’s very simple but it’s not easy now this is not what you see every day and that’s why accident is so successful in the business world, because what my opinion of what our clients see in us mostly is that congruence that it is possible to embody the principles that we speak about in a way that does not compete with the economic results of the company at all, on the contrary it leverages the ability to achieve those.

Spencer: Um another concern that I have is that I don’t know if you’ve heard the term green washing where rather than actually becoming sustainable or addressing environmental issues at a company where they use public relations and marketing to appear as if they are being environmentally friendly when in fact they are maintaining the status quo, I am somewhat concerned with paying lip service to conscious business well not actually in embracing the principles.

Richi: Yes, I think that’s a very valid concern, and in the same way when you were talking about spiritual teachers, there are many spiritual teachers out there, and some of them they pay lip service to it and the same thing happens in the business world so there are good and bad and polished spiritual teachers, and then there are good and bad businessman.
And my inspiration is that what action can bring to the world is an invitation to look deep inside and think about what you want to accomplish how do you want to contribute to the world what’s your contribution, what’s your service like, when you retire, or when you leave the business world is it better than the world what you found when you came into it and it’s the same with your life, how do you want to live your lives, how do want to be remembered.
Some of the exercises we do in our programs you reminded me of that is we do either a retirement party or where when we go really deep, we do like the of your funeral, and we imagine that you were gone, you lived a very long and happy life, and then you come you have a work early, you have a boss, you have somebody from your family, and they are they all make a speech about you, and you have to work how you would like to be remembered and then people read that speech back to you.
And that’s very motivating, it’s not a rule that you will not pay lip service to ecology, I think we are at a crossroads today, we can better the planet or we can destroy it, we have the ability to destroy it today, no doubt about it.
Now in my opinion the only thing that will save us from that, is consciousness and making conscious choices and really thinking what’s important, what impact am I having through my actions, and there is no guarantee, but I think it’s the only way.

Janae: Absolutely, that’s actually the mission of our magazine really is-

Richi: Is it?

Janae: To elevate consciousness yeah.

Spencer: It was a very serious connection that I ended up working with the magazine as well that I had come to pretty much the same conclusion on my own independently and then the job of the magazine just kind of fell into my lap and everything just kind of happened just synchronous just the right moment where I was is that I felt that one of the places that needs the most work in this with these principles as I mentioned advertising that really the fundamental techniques and practices of the advertising industry have always been based on deception. That advertising if you go back before twentieth century public relations theory was developed and you look at an advertisement in a newspaper from the 1890s it’ll say buy this, buy this cart, it has wheels, it has this, it has this, it is this… and it’s just very a very matter-of-fact listing of the features of the product, and then you go jump forward 30 years, it’s you’re inferior, you should feel insecure, you should feel fearful, but this product will solve that and they learn how to manipulate people’s emotions very sophisticated manner

Janae: …development a propaganda that you’re speaking of the advertising

Spencer: …business and both

Richi: It’s a promise of happiness services.

Spencer: But really, I of all the types of businesses out there that need a lot of work, I felt that the advertising industry that there is you can do a food business or a restaurant, you can incorporate these principles, you can retail business, you can have a service business, you can incorporate these principles, but advertising businesses themselves, advertising agencies once that conscious business wants to go advertise they’re going to need to advertiser an advertising agency that entire mode of operations is based on deception and they don’t they literally

Richi: I think you’re touching upon an issue that it’s much broader than that, because if you think about the food industry, or think about the pharma industry, how does the food industry advertise, and I don’t know if you learned about nutrition, but if you start looking at the science of nutrition, a lot of what is so today is not healthy, and ECT epidemics that other is today is largely in part to the manufacture of the processed foods that are being sold and consumed, day in and day out and the science of nutrition has been known for hundreds of years already.
It’s not a fat it’s a sugar, everybody sells you sugar today where the fat has become the evil the culprit and everybody is blaming the fat and that’s absolutely deceptive because it’s not true.

Janae: Mm-hmm (Affirmative).

Richi: So it’s a food industry, it’s a pharma industry, and everything is based on a promise of happiness, you buy my product and then you’ll be happy, and then you’ll be more yourself, and so how do you deal with that? I think the only way to deal with that, is inviting people to be more conscious and make conscious choices, and when you become more conscious you take care of yourself you don’t need me to take care of you, and then everybody, and then we change the world but not because one person is going to change the world, but because a lot of people, they want to operate to them, and then you realize that well how much do you need to be happy and what kind of food do you want to put into your body and then you don’t need medicines to get cured of the illnesses that’s would you eat creating you, and then you don’t have the metabolic syndrome because you eat real food.But then, the businesses are out of business and then it’s not that does not have a very good press, and then the papers that speak about nutrition that they don’t get punished.
Spencer: There’s a common metaphor that I use we’re at the during the Industrial Revolution as steam engines came in that business is that we’re in the business of making canvas sails, we’re in a position, where the steam engine was clearly had arrived it was a technology that was going to become dominant it was going to change everything, and some of the companies that made canvas sales took their capital and their momentum when they still had a market uh and I could have put that capital into investing in steam engines or building sails ships or some somehow take advantage of the new technology in the new paradigm and that the businesses that didn’t who continue to make canvas sales in the era of steam they pretty much cease to exist.
And that’s kind of where I see as these principles come in I mean there’s so many there’s the way the Internet has changed Society there’s so many things happening right now but really, what I would like to see is that the businesses who are threatened by these changes rather than trying to fight them use if you’re in a food manufacturer you’re making a food that’s unhealthy and you have billions and billions of dollars in an asset and these factories and everything you could put those resources into making healthy food, and dominate that market with a product that’s good for people, or you could engage in public relations warfare to stop the healthy food movement, which is going to fail and you’re just gonna be the back

Janae: That’s the fast industry, that’s the automobile industry, that’s

Richi: Yes, every single industry. So sometimes people start doing the right thing for their for the wrong reasons, and for us that’s okay too, if you don’t have to believe that exercise is good for you, for exercise to be good for you, so if I’m your trainer and I and I want to improve your overall health I’ll tell you look go for a run three times a week let’s talk in two weeks no but I don’t believe in that well and care just do it, and then I know, when we talk two weeks from today, you’re gonna be another person and you’re gonna feel differently from.. So sometimes the reason companies start doing the right thing is for the wrong reasons, because they want to survive, but then as they get into that, that changes themselves and the same thing happens with some of our leaders.
Some leaders resist change a lot, and then I want to get into this process that is not so much a catalyst as it is an enzyme they’re not the difference between a catalyst in an enzyme is at catalyst is external to a chemical reaction an enzyme changes itself in the reaction. So this process conscious business change is the person that’s why many people resist going into the process at the same time they start the process because they want to accomplish some results and then when they start the process something starts to shift inside, and then and then they start doing the right thing for the right reason.
But it’s a permanent invitation as it do to leaders and to senior executives, how do you want to behave, how do you want to show up in the world, how do you want to be remembered, how do you want your business to be remembered, and I think that’s a very powerful question.

Spencer: Where did these ideas start? I’m assuming that at some point some business lead like Fred or someone else was looking for some meaning or something and stumbled across Ken Wilber or…

Richi: There are many authors there… it’s Ken, it’s Peter Sanger, it’s Chris Argyris… there are many authors that have created different parts of pieces of the puzzle and then I think what Fred did, and he did a fantastic job in bringing those pieces together and creating their comprehensive philosophy for business.
And if you really look at the first book, there is nothing in the first book that you cannot find in some of the traditions, or in even some of the other principles of some of the religions speak about that, now putting it together in a way that’s practical, and that’s applicable to business and that we have made it some frameworks that if you call the framers you do this and you do that and you do that, you end up transforming the business that is what I would say what you are now, the content, the principles, they are just principles of the traditions, there is nothing new under the sun.

Janae: Yeah, we actually spoke with a Rabbi Rami Shapiro and he talks a lot about the perennial wisdom and really that’s what this is getting down to is wisdom from all these traditions things yeah…

Richi: Exactly, I remember we started Axialent, we used to say that the only difference between a Buddhist monk, you gonna take a Buddhist monk into a well at least you could not 15 years ago, maybe today it’s different, but who this man dressed in his Buddhist rose, he will not walk into a corporation people will not listen to him, executives will say well yeah this is nice for your personal life, but it doesn’t belong in business.
Well it’s like we dress in suits or business casual today and we walk into the corporation’s we just we look like them, we talk like them, but the principles are the same, they’re not different, it’s they’re the same principles apply to business

Janae: Mm-hm (Affirmative).

Richi: It’s not different.

Spencer: I was thinking the other day of Sun Tzu’s the art of war, which is both in the modern-day military world and the modern day business world it’s pretty much required reading, because there’s so many parallels between warfare in business and Sun Tzu was tasked with writing that document because the Emperor wanted a strategy of warfare that if you followed it you could not fail.
And if you can learn to interpret his text he’s literally laying it out in such a way like basically you never fight a fight that you don’t know you’re going to win there’s all these principles that he lays out, and it really is here we are thousands of years later and as well about two thousand years or fifteen hundred here we are many many many centuries later, and we’re kind of reinventing and coming back to those perennial concepts and I that’s kind of what I see in conscious business is that if you follow this you can’t fail, because of the inherent nature of how it works, like if you’re doing the right things, for the right reasons, in the right way you’re going to succeed.

Richi: Yes. Look, and even if you don’t succeed, if you knew, imagine you knew you would not succeed, would you still do it? So easy is what you’re doing something worth failing at

Janae: Mm-hmm (Affirmative) yeah don’t do anything

Richi: It’s a very powerful question and the answer is yes, then you do it and then the parallels is that the odds that you will succeed are much greater because you’re not attached to success, and because you’re not attached to success then you succeed. Does that make sense?

Janae: Yeah that’s fantastic and I’ll tell my music students..

Richi: The other principle of the you show up, you pay attention, you tell the truth, and then you release the outcome.

Spencer: It’s been really great talking to you, I could keep going and going here but we’re coming up on an hour, is there any other projects or books or anything that you’ve been working on or your associates have been working on you’d like us to know?
Richi: Well, we are working quite a bit with Lisa Lahaye and Bob Keegan, there are two Harvard professors that have developed this technology that’s called immunity to change, which we have incorporated in our programs and offerings, which it speaks about why is change is so difficult for people, and I strongly recommend their book it’s called “Immunity to change”, and it guides you through a pass but, things are not difficult for you to change in your lives. There are different things for different people for some people is starting to exercise, for some people you stop smoking, for some people is have good conversations with married employees etc… what is a technical challenge for someone it can be an adaptive challenge for another one, adaptive means that you have to shift the way you think about it in order to be able to change the way you do something and then the results you’re so it’s a very profound process that I strongly recommend and that deals with this stories we all tell ourselves about the how the world operates which sometimes help us and other times it will limit us because we live it is imagine you live in a very big house, but there are certain rooms in the house that you never go, because you think they’re dangerous.
So this expands your ability to look and to see that your your possibilities are much greater than the possibilities you think, but in order to do that you have to question the stories that you told yourself we all tell ourselves stories and we’ve learned how to do that from very young, and what Lisa and Bob offer us is a process to questions those stories and when you question those stories, surprise surprise the possibilities open up.

Janae: Absolutely that’s definitely something that’s true I mean..

Spencer: This kind of reminds me of something that I was gonna actually mention earlier not to jump back into the conversation but, one of the things I’ve been trying to conceptualize is that a lot of our traditional processes and systems are backwards looking, that we gather data and then we look backwards, and like you said try and predict future trends and what I would what I would really like to see more of is that instead of building systems that are rigid, and then trying to fit reality into those systems when reality is messy you build systems that can be adaptive and the way its conceptualized, like an organism where’s they can respond to stimuli and they can respond to the environment as it changes, because change is inevitable that with what you when you run into problems and I think one of the reasons why so many large companies are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo is they have this big cumbersome system in place and that as long as they can keep things the same they can keep running things through that machine.

Richi: Well you are absolutely right, we work in culture change projects we speak of all behaviors, symbols, and systems. Behaviors of the leaders mainly but also symbols and systems that support the infrastructure of the company now these systems are they are artifacts created by the culture but by the level of consciousness of those that create a system, which you agree. So, what we claim is look let’s shift the consciousness level of those that create the systems and then the artifacts the systems will reflect that level of consciousness that’s what you have today the systems reflect the level of consciousness of their system creators.

Spencer: Now I’m starting to think about artificial intelligence but

Richi: Well it’s been an hour.

Spencer: Really better that’s another my favorite topic. It has been really great to talk thank you where can our listeners find more information about you?

Richi: You can take our website www.axialent.com they’re plenty of research papers there, you can read about what we do and some of our clients..

Janae: Thanks you.

Spencer: Thank you so much for coming on.

Richi: My pleasure, thank you, bye guys.

Janae: Bye, have a nice day.