Michael K. Spayd

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:51

Who is Michael K. Spayd?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  00:55

 Junior, actually.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:57

Junior..

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  01:00

Well, I’ve been in the Agile space for 21 years. The year the manifesto got signed is when I started unrelated and because I had training and psychotherapy, in change management and organization development, OD in Culture and leadership. And later integral in professional coaching, I brought all that stuff into the coaching world as much as I could, I mean that’s been a focus of what I’ve done, is systematically bringing in stuff about culture, about change, about how organizations develop, about how leaders grow, all things outside of the scope of agile as a methodology. Totally, but highly needed, right? Because it’s not just about practices, it’s about the environment that it’s practiced in. So that’s what I’ve done it at a coaching institute at transformation at collective edge, current company.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:10

What was your journey into this space?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  02:14

Well, so like specially to specifically integral and kin, I actually tagged along with a psychologist friend of mine, back in probably the mid 80s, to Ken Wilbers birthday party at his house. And it neither one of us knew him. But…, and that this was a long time ago. And that was my first interview, I had heard of him, because I was in a contemplative psychotherapy, master’s program. And he was in Boulder, I grew up in Boulder, and he used to live in Boulder. He lives in Denver now. But, and we, in the main impression that I had from him in that was his massive collection of books. He had the coolest damn collection of books I’ve ever seen. I mean…,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  02:10

What did it look like? 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  03:20

It was just like bookcases full of books.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:26

 Little Library?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  03:28

Yes, like a library, like something you see in a movie or something.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:35 

I was going say like, a James Bond movie or something like that.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  03:39

James Bond. And so anyway, I didn’t read it, at least one colleague of mine in this master’s program was reading his stuff, up for me back then. And I just wasn’t interested. I was aware of it. But I wasn’t interested at the time. And I think it took me, I don’t remember exactly when it was when I started reading some of the, well, I bought sex ecology and spirituality in, I think, when it came out in 96. So I was aware of something then but I wasn’t really paying attention to it. And then there must have been something in the early 2000s. And I’m pretty sure I went to the integral spiritual conference in 2007. And, met him in a pretty small conference, maybe 100 150 people and met a lot of the players in that world and then subsequently went to a number of conferences, they had some really good deep conferences, okay. I sort of dabbled with it, I guess, I would say before about 2013.  So, I wrote the book proposal for…, what was this book? It was called coaching the Agile enterprise time. And somebody in the, it was in Mike Cones book group. And so all the all the authors in the book group get to look at people’s proposals to see whether they’re okay with them being in or what suggestions they have, because you’re applying to be in that series, as well as it appears in publisher book. And somebody I think was Kenny Rubin said something like, you need an organizing principle for this book, similar to Mike Cohn did in succeeding with Agile, I think, which is quite a ways back. I remember sort of being annoyed with it at first in my protective style, but it stuck in my craw, so to speak, it was a great suggestion. Thank you, Kenny. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that. And then it will hit me like a ton of bricks. Integral. Of course, because I did write original proposal for the book what integral had. And then it was so obvious in hindsight like the fuck of course, I got to do …,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  06:30

That the only way to look at it, if you want to approach the enterprise, that’s the only kind of framework to put it on.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  06:36

Yeah, that’s the only thing that doesn’t distort what’s going on, it has a place for everything. I mean, that’s the integral framework is about having a place for every perspective, it’s not about voting. This one’s better than that one, or this one’s the right one, because interviewers don’t believe that they believe that all perspectives are true.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  06:58

 Truly.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  07:00

 And so, the integral framework in general integral theory, ACO model, gives you a place to put everything and so it became so obvious that, I shaped it into this before I had a co-author, I shaped it into the AI quadrant in integral, I called specifically first leadership and engagement, and then later leadership and mindset, to focus, that was consistent with the AI quadrant, but it’s not the full scope of the AI quadrant, you could have all kinds of things there. But they’re not relevant to doing organizational change work particularly. So, then, I know that wand kind of in terms of my relation to Ken culminated for me in Michelle, and I did an interview with him in about July 2019, or something, as we were sort of trying to finish up the well, we finished it six months later, the first draft. And it was a really…, Ken was so generous with his time, he loves to talk about this stuff. Yeah. It was really sweet. then he wrote that praise piece, which was, because he has such a busy schedule, and so many…, 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  08:27

Well, that’s it. Yeah, I was surprised that he didn’t see that we got ahead, what about leadership circle? How did you…, because leadership circle is based on not necessarily the integral, but more of cognitive development and some of the work from, Craig graves and spiral dynamics and all of that. So how did you get to the, to Bob Anderson and leadership circle show?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  09:02

Well, it was almost certainly in 2012. Because that’s when I took my certification for the leadership circle. And I probably, I remember hearing about it from people I did worse. Organization relationship systems coaching. I did my certification back in like 2009 and 2010. And people in the Oz community talked about the leadership circle, as a really beautiful leadership 360. And superlatively, me, that isn’t best from whoever I was, it is multiple people said that. And that was one of those things where you’re starting to…, I wasn’t interested in it or whatever, but it was starting to come into my awareness. And I was…, I’m not interested in that, but I do Notice that it keeps showing up. And then it might have been Pete Behrens. That meant I don’t know, somebody I’d say triggered the thought to investigate it more fully. And I didn’t have Bob in my certification do I think he was in the I think he was in the same hotel or something teaching something else. I’m pretty sure he was. I didn’t meet him for another few years. But, and so just on the level of investigating, it was just clearly it’s such a beautiful design. It integrates the whole field of leadership. I mean, it really doesn’t it does what he says he did. And that’s what he did, universal model leadership is synthesizes most of the great leadership thinking and research. And, in getting to know him, more at like they have a leadership summit, either annually or every other year, and getting to spend more time with him. He’s just a beautiful, man. He’s like a programmer that…, some programmers go home from a day’s work coding, and they work to relax, they write more code, in their own projects, right? He wouldn’t do that. But he would go home and play with spreadsheets, because that was joy. I’m like, Dude, that is so not me. But…,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  11:37

Well it’s interesting, especially when it comes to human behavior. And when start looking at this stuff, it’s very interesting. So, it must have been done in 2015, when LaLu came with reinventing organizations, and you referenced the Lalu in your book, what type of reaction did you have to that? Because when I read it, that was a trigger point. For me, one of the “Aha” moments or realizations, it resonated so well with me. And I remember talking to Michael De Lamass. I don’t know if you know, Michael De Lamass. Like, why are you so crazy? You know, how Michael is? He was curious why I was so crazy about the book. And he really had a profound impact on how I see things, how did it impact you?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  12:30

Well, I already knew all the spiral dynamics literature before he came out with his book, so I knew what it was based on. I had been reading the never-ending quest cleric graves book that was published posthumously. And is really hard to get right now, is that a print and, so I was, I was enamored with Graves’ research especially. But, what I really loved about what Lalu had done was to focus it specifically on organizations. I mean, spiral dynamics is written for…, the research was done on individual people, not on societies or anything like that, is done back and Chris Cowan, expanded it into more social kind of situations, and culture, and the history of people and whatever. But, I had that base, but what will Lalu did was two things, One was make it specific to organizations and say how it showed up, at Amber, orange, green and teal, and, obviously, specifically doing the big case studies on, the 12 Whatever it is, doesn’t, clients or organizations that are using peel practices in the end and his careful documentation and in the commonality between them was really

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  14:03

Did you know the correlation between the consciousness of a leader and houses, organization, that connection that LaLu made in the sense of…,

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  14:14

Right, yeah, the consciousness of the chief executive and the board, for instance, is the constraint on Yeah, I think, I don’t remember honestly, specifically, I think that that probably made some sense to me, but not as crisply as, Lalu stated it. And so, I quote that a lot. And, also it dovetails beautifully with the leadership circle, because it’s, I call, it I don’t even know what they call it anymore. Versailles that wants to change. You’re the first problem to solve. You’re the first mind to expand because you have the constraint, right. So, it’s always going to be bottlenecked by you. So, you’ve got to raise yourself in order to raise your organization around you. And that’s so embedded in the leadership circles, philosophy and approach it in a totally dovetails with what Lalu said. So that was like…,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  15:19

So maybe before we dive into the contents of the book, Michelle, and how did you meet her, and how did that collaboration and co-creation emerge for the book?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  15:31

I met Michelle actually, in about 2005 or six, at a client. She wasn’t a coach at the time. And when I knew her back then in Richmond[15:51], and then I lost track of her for many years and then re met her at agile 2015. In Washington DC, at the, whatever they call it, aquarium or whatever it is, and caught up with her about how much…, she had subsequently become an Agile coach, and was with essentially leading a consulting practice in at a company she was working for, and I was like, she would be a good person to leave…,  because I already had the vision of what I’m doing now. And back at ACI, to have training side, and then to have a coaching, consulting side that did the kinds of things that we talked about in the training. That was a vision. And I started out being the CEO of both organizations and Lisa was the president of ACI. And Michelle was president of transformation. So, that’s how we came together. And then sometime later, from that…, because I was having trouble finishing the book, I dropped it for more than a year a couple times, I think. I had released a draft of the first 100 pages of it in 2014. Before all of this, and… 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  17:27

I can relate to that, because I’ve been doing the same thing. It’s so tough, and it’s been…, especially I keep making excuses. Even the reason I started the podcast, I tell people, it’s, not the right…

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  17:40

As a way of procrastinating from writing.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  17:44

 It’s so I can definitely relate. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  17:51

So, yeah, Michelle helped get it done. Yeah. I mean, just having another person there is really obviously useful. And, Michelle had a lot of experience with enterprise coaching work and a different take than I, we were teaching together, Agile transformational leader class at the time. So we were teaching people integral a lot. And, it’s always a different voice when you have a collaborator, there’s challenges and there’s benefits to having a collaborator and thank goodness she helped me get it done.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  18:35

That’s awesome. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  18:37

It was such a relief to actually get it out. It was here raising at the end,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  18:43

I can only imagine because I know at least I was one of the people at least waiting and probably emailing saying where is going it to be, I have set alerts on Amazon. So, let’s dive into the book. So Agile transformation using the integral Agile transformation framework

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  19:06

To think and lead differently

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  19:08

To think and lead differently correct. So integral Agile transformation framework or IATF. How did you come up with a name? And I mean, I know how it makes sense. Related to integral and agile but did you think about any other different names or the natural…

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  19:28

Yeah, I know I had…, that came fairly early as I recall. It wasn’t anytime recently, I played with different names. Actually, one of the most interesting things that happened is, at the time that we…, that I released the first part of the book, the first 100 pages the integral foundation of it, and we even had some book clubs on it, for People, a couple of them. Back in 2014, come to find out. I think when we did this program for enterprise coaches way back, we were the first people out of the gate doing enterprise coach training back in 2014. And we did a thing called integral Agile wizardry, a five-day boot camp, and we had people do the leadership circle full, the full 360 profile. And we taught them a lot of integral stuff at an organizational level. And we taught them the integral Agile transformation framework, as such as it was the time. And come to find out that somebody else because he wrote me, [name not clear] [20:44] his last name, had just a coined the term integral Agile, as had in parallel without knowing about each other. And he, I don’t know what he saw, he saw some kind of post or something. I don’t know, I don’t remember what it was now. And, he wrote us in, was like, [holy shit]. And we invited him to be an assistant at this at our first boot camp, actually, which was cool to meet him. So, I couldn’t use integral Agile, just by itself, and transformation framework made sense. I’m actually in the middle of it with Michael Hammond of redoing that into a new version into a sort of an emerging version from our integral sense making it action work that we do and took the training, the coach training to do now. So, for me, it’s still emerging, it’s still…, there’s still other components, like putting a sensemaking component in really specifically into the framework is for me.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  21:59

Yeah. it is a sense making kind of framework. And a lot of times I tell people the way that we use Canadian to understand the context system, maybe this is like a much bigger… So, let’s dive into it. So, I don’t know if you noticed, but behind me here, four quadrants, Agile to Agility. Maybe we can start…

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  22:23

I’ve seen that thing, 100 times. I didn’t get a microphone in the middle of.. I didn’t realize it was quadrant.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  22:28

And you see what it says…

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  22:28

 Green, black and teal. Are the three levels? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  22:34

Yeah, it’s green. Well, it’s teal, systems action culture. Yeah, so I thought, I don’t want to bring up anything in the sense because I don’t really like share a screen but we can use what’s behind me to kind of have a context and discussion. Okay. So maybe do you want to walk us through the framework and just, from an integral, maybe the quadrant. And then maybe we can allude to the…with green and teal to the outer things?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  23:09

Yeah. So, the full, it’s the other name for integral is AQAL, all quadrants, all levels, AQAL. And it really means all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types. So, it’s like a classification system of pretty much anything in the universe. And we’re the perspective that it makes sense in or that we’re that people… is a mapping system, right to shape how people are viewing something. So, for me, the most important line is the vertical line in the diagram behind you, and the logo behind you and in the requirements between the right side. Not sure this is coming out. Right. And….

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  24:01

It is yeah, I mean, people will be seeing so…, and this goes back to like doing Agile versus being Agile, in a sense, the right side.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  24:10

Yeah. I don’t like to reduce it to that. I don’t I wouldn’t argue with doing versus being. There’s some truth in that for sure. But it’s a little too narrow for me. Yeah, I mean, so, yes, more or less, but, it’s also the, the tangible things that people can see and verify. Like, behaviors, like structures, things, the org chart, like…

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  24:41

Policies.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  24:43

Practice, like a policy Yeah. So they’re things that people can print or somehow touch in some way or view, its subjects the senses, whereas the left hand is intangible, and has to do with, how we think, what we think, how we feel, the ways that we feel, and the way that we make sense together, collectively. So, the right side has… excuse me, complexity. And the left side has depth. So, we talk about, you could talk about consciousness becomes more complex, but it’s probably more accurate to say consciousness becomes deeper.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  25:37

Deeper. So, culture and consciousness or mindset and culture become deeper, but behaviors and systems become more complex.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  25:48

Yes, driven by deeper consciousness, or constrained by, so people can do a stand up practice, right, and they can sort of “the rules,” but if they don’t have the consciousness to support it, they’re not going to do it properly, particularly, right. That’s why it turns into a status meeting to the to the scrum master or, where they check out and they don’t listen to each other. That’s not doing… I mean, that’s going through the motions of it. It’s enacting the behaviors on the right-hand side, but it’s not having the consciousness or the attitude or the intention on the left-hand side. So, especially because different kinds of cultural codes, at different levels, prioritize or marginalize right-hand versus left-hand, the thing that’s useful about integral is it brings that back to us that, structures sure as hell are important, the org structure is definitely important, the policies for performance management review and stuff are really important. And, practices that people do are really important and coding standards and whatever. But also, so are people’s attitude towards or people’s, emotional intelligence, people’s thinking patterns, and whether they can see through their thinking patterns, whether they can intentionally make sense together, do sensemaking together, or whether they group mind is…, we’re sensemaking in a sort of illegitimate way, we all we always come to the conclusion, rather than actually look at the data, for instance, that’s a left hand side thing in large part. So, upper left is the I quadrant, the internal of individual, you, everybody. And the lower left we quadrant is…, in the book, we call it, culture and relationship, organizational culture and relationship. It is about how we share.., we have a shared experience…, how you go into a team room, back in pre COVID days, you probably you remember, actually working with teams in person, perhaps, maybe you’re not that old. And, you feel a different thing, when you go into a given team room, it doesn’t feel the same as going into a different teams room does it different? And that’s the we space, that’s the we, perspective, is where we sense, we evolve to sense other people’s feelings and intentions and whatever. And on the right hand, we have practices and behavior, upper right “it” third person singular. And in the bottom right, we have its” third person plural, which there’s technically not a such a thing, can kind of made it up. But if it makes sense, I mean, it’s a collective versus an individual thing. And we call that organizational architecture, which includes structure and policies and governance and all those kind of things.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  29:18

Yeah, so let’s explore these, I thought like we start with the I or the mindset, the top level, because you have three sections in the book and one section, the section two is pretty much all about the I and development. And one of the things that you…I’ve heard actually before, but and I actually like it, I’ve used it in some of the writing done during the referring to the mindset as an operating system and then also as a culture and operate. So maybe we could start with that, in a sense like that first acknowledging that we run different operating systems as individuals and as leaders. And yes. Could you maybe just touch upon that?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  30:03

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Great. Thanks. Good question. Useful question to me as the interviewee. So, that you asked about altitude. So that’s where we get into altitude. So, the quadrants are different perspectives that are all sort of at the same level. They’re not. They’re not more or less complex…,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  30:23

But just for listeners, now we’re talking green versus steel here. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  30:34

Yes. Yeah, yes. So. consciousness, any given thing from any quadrants perspective, increases its complexity or its depth over time, often, or there’s a natural evolutionary impulse in the universe to evolve. And so, consciousness, individual consciousness, progresses the way we mapped it in the book, there’s not hundreds, but there are scores of ways that you could denote the progression from Amber to orange to green to teal, in consciousness itself in I. We, use the leadership circle, reactive creative integral, which is I prefer in some context to talk about Bob Keegan’s work, and socialized mind to self-authoring mind to self-transforming mind. So a leader who’s at socialized mind is going to or anybody not just a leader, but is going to make decisions and take action based on what they think other people will think, based on an internalized kind of cultural constraint or meal you that they’re and they internalize, basically, so is a stage of development that children go through. Maybe sometime in teenager hood, early or late, maybe depending on the person and the culture they’re in. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  32:10

But this is the shift from subject to object, right? So this, we’re talking about…, you talk about telling stories, and in this context of evolving from that socialized mind is where everything’s what others say, you only see things from one perspective, you’re not kind of transcending that. Yes. what’s the bigger picture here?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  32:35

Yes, yeah. And I would say it specifically technically, you internalize the views and beliefs and opinions of your…, you that you’re in could be a religious male, you could be a work male, you could be your family. In obviously, it changes at different points in your life in your surroundings. And so, you internalize that and so if somebody else criticizes you, you feel criticized. If somebody else praises you, you feel praised, and you end up sort of bias.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  33:14

I’ll give you a perfect example. And this is kind of like what I had an aha moment. So, growing up in Sarajevo, right, you have Muslims and Christians fighting? Yeah. So, if you’re Christian, your perspective and if…, Russians, or somebody support you, you’re like, Yeah, anything that has to do with Muslims you’re like, doesn’t matter because you’re part of that culture. And I think you talked about how our culture shapes so you’re brought up as it doesn’t matter, it goes both ways. But once I started taking myself outside of that situation, and not looking at myself as one but just stepping out and saying, look, there are two groups or three groups of people that are pointing fingers at each other and looking from a different perspective, but they…, when you look at it…, they’re saying, you suck you suck, but it’s really with the bigger picture is like we’re more alike.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  34:15

Yeah. And in socialized mind, you can only take the Christian perspective or the Muslim perspective. And you vilify…, that’s basically an amber kind of thing to do. Right? It’s, Amber, Claire, Claire graves found that Amber was the most vicious in attacking another system than any of the other levels was why you had the holy wars, the crusades, most genocide has been done in the name of the Church of whatever church or religion more than anything besides.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  34:58

So, we still see that type of stuff, just related back to organizations, those type of operating systems, even people in government and some of the organizations, and then, how do we transcend that into the orange or…?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  35:14

So that’s where the subject object thing that we mentioned comes in his development altogether is moving from what I’m subject to the what I look through my, the eyes that the lens that I looked through, and what I look at, right. And at different stages of development, there’s a different subject and a different object. So, when those change, when the former subject becomes the new object, then I develop, grow significantly. So for instance, when I moved to self-authoring mind, self-authoring mind is like the sense of “I am my own person.” I’m my own man, I’m my own woman. I don’t depend on other people to tell me what’s okay. I listen to what other people say. But I make my own judgments. And so I have seen what I used to look through, I’ve seen the social you that I’m in, and it’s values and stuff, and I start critiquing it, I say, I agree with this thing. And I don’t agree with this thing. So that’s, going, I’m rejecting that. And I’m importing this for myself. And I developed my own philosophy. 

And I…, in leadership circle terms, I come to become outcome creating, focus on creating a vision of something not artistic creativity, but I focus on doing something making the world different in some way. And most people are in the transition between those two operating systems. They’re between socialized mind, the self-authoring mind. Now, plenty of people, especially people that succeed in business, have moved to self-authoring, that’s not really uncommon, but it’s not, it’s also not highly common. And then the next transition to self-transforming is quite uncommon. Self-transforming, then goes further than self-authoring. And now I critique my own philosophy of life. And I question my own assumptions. And I open up to things that I used to reject in myself, like Shadow Work, is bringing in things that I don’t like about myself that I project onto others, or I just repressed, or whatever, and there’s all kinds of energy tied up in that. And I is self-transforming is about opening those floodgates, and letting in all of who I am. And, and sort of being okay with that.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  37:45

And that’s a huge thing, is our complexity. So, it’s almost like, I was trying to think about how to use the analogy, but it’s like, I was joking around with somebody that was talking. It’s like, running Windows ME in 2021. Windows ME was good at certain point, in certain context was trying to run it today. Things have evolved the complexity. So when it comes to leadership, you talked about, the cap or we talk, maybe I didn’t start recording, but the organization depending, so which operating system your leader is running, like how much essentially ego shows up and there’s a lot right, that goes, right, the current goes into this. How’s that related to the effectiveness of organization and agility? business agility?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  38:38

Yeah, good question. So, you can’t in the reacting, in the problem reacting mode, socialized mind mode, Keegan’s socialized mind, leadership circles are problem reacting, you can’t create change. It’s a negative feedback loop. That’s status quo enforcing, it shifts you back to the status quo. I mean, that’s what it’s…, it’s the very design of the systemic structure is a negative feedback loop. Outcome creating is a positive feedback loop. So, it allows the creation of change in the direction of your vision. It’s just the way people work. So, if you’re if you’re trying to have business agility, you can’t do that. It’s actually impossible to run that on a reactive or socialized mind operating system just doesn’t make sense. So, to get into the game, essentially of Agile leadership, you have to be at outcome creating the data because you just can’t run the app on that on that operating system. It’s a really get to servant leader and transformational leader you really pretty much need to be, in the range of self-transforming mind.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  40:02

And the way they transform, I think what you said and maybe just to, come back to this kind of how do you upgrade between operating systems? So, there’s something that you wrote in your book, when along the lines of awareness is the beginning of the pathway to in their development or this upgrade, right? Yeah. Right. So how…, can you maybe talk about the awareness because I think that’s something that’s a lot of times we talk about awareness, but we don’t really know what we’re talking about. When it comes to awareness.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  40:31

It’s a way of becoming first mindful. So first one becomes mindful, like in Buddhist tradition, I was trained in, meditation practice, creates mindfulness, or is a practice of mindfulness. And when we start paying attention to our thought stream, and how it actually works, and shows up, we start to become aware, in a bigger sense. So, mindfulness leads to awareness. And when we keep doing that, especially if we have an intention to grow, or to shift or something, you know, we do, I mean, we might take working with a coach or with some meditation practices, or some other kind of practices. It’s helpful to interact with somebody who’s functioning from a higher level, because they can ask you the questions from that mindset. Right.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  41:34

But that awareness is also about shifting your beliefs and assumptions. You’re also right about that. And I think that’s a really important key part of that upgrade, is that you, you transcend the old beliefs and the old assumptions, right? For instance, just maybe give people an example what we’re talking about, because it’s like your choice, if you believe the world is predictable. And that runs like a machine, you transcend, you start believing that the world is more like, I think you also referenced this, in your book, write about this in your book, it’s more like a complex, adaptive system. And it’s more unpredictable than predictable. So those are the type of beliefs and assumptions that you make.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  42:30

Yes, that you start to use. So, the first step is starting to see that you do that. And the second step, so to speak, is to see what it costs you to do that, that’s a deeper part of the mindfulness awareness is first seen that it happens, and then second, seeing what the deficit of it is. Because there is there’s almost, there’s always a limitation, and a cost, both to you, personally, and to the people around you and to the work. I mean, at a lower level, our leadership effectiveness, for instance, is not as great if we’re reactive, it’s just not.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  43:10

Yeah, so I mean, what you just made me think about is another thing that may be sticking to the left side here and moving down to the culture because I agree, another thing that resonated with me in the book is that you said, there’s too much focus over the years on the right side, on behaviors, actions, and assistance, but not as much, especially in the West on the left side culture and mindset. So, one of the things that you mentioned that earlier, collective leadership development, but you said collective consciousness of most senior leadership teams is not complex enough to lead in the world we find ourselves in. Could you elaborate on that and talk about what you meant by that?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  43:54

Well, I mean, I’ve worked with a, quite a few leadership teams, and they, if you measure their collective effectiveness, like what the leadership circle, which has a scientific, measurement to it, basically, they’re not, they’re not very effective. And that’s because some of their socialized mind patterns with each other, their reactivity to each other, they’re being triggered by each other, blaming each other. And they’re deep conversations to uncover that people don’t go to normally. I mean, business teams don’t, talk about collective sensemaking very much or my projections or whatever, but they need to, because it traps them into a certain way of being with each other and a certain set of is where, it’s related to the idea of groupthink, right, is that we all believe certain things together, we’re pluralistic ignorance, which is…,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  44:55

It also we talked about, you talked about calling on sensemaking by So it’s really about collective sense making down the culture and we write and being able to make sense as a leadership team, and then also being able to align our values and beliefs, because we could still have leadership team that’s made up of just in terms of, somebody’s thinking from that, you know, Amber, or orange and have couple of people, maybe they’re thinking, we’re operating from another operating system that’s green or teal. And How do you deal in that situation where, probably people with those newer, higher up or higher, it’s not the term, right term, but like, how do you get group of people that are running different operating systems? To make sense of things?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  45:53

Yes, that’s a real challenge.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  45:56

So I don’t know I last time we spoke and I think you said or somebody said, we’re screwed, in a sense, because it goes back to, what the Robert Keegan wrote about, in over our heads, meaning like, our environment is more complex than we can comprehend, or most people can comprehend.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  46:19

Yes, yes, it’s probably more complex than any of us can comprehend. But some of us are, I mean, if you’re, if you shifted to a center of gravity that’s higher on the developmental scale, you’re probably going to be more effective, you’re almost certainly going to be more effective than you were maybe not than somebody else, per se, but you’re going to be more effective than you were before, it’s going to increase my own leadership effectiveness. If I move up from reactive to creative, there’s no question.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  46:53

So, what’s interesting to me is you also call the operating system that’s running at the we are culture. So bottom left, so now we have operating system, leadership operating system that’s running in i or the left, so how, that is really like that depth that you talked about? Now, we’re talking about, culture is really, made up of these collective operating systems, which is really collective beliefs and assumptions.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  47:29

Yes. Yes. So, but the trick is that it’s not per se, your individual results and my individual results, and her individual results, and somebody else’s individual results all added together. It’s more mysterious than that, it comes out of like, in an organization, it comes out of the founding out of the founder, or founders, out of a culture that was developed way back, which might not at all fit to as leading now. Right. But it but it’s state, there’s a persistence to it, because systems have their own living quality. They’re not, it’s not one plus one is two, right? It’s…,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  48:18

It’s that I mean, another thing that reminds me at least of back home, it’s the culture, for instance, for people that grew up anywhere by in the Balkans, it’s the vision of the people that started the country or the experiences. So, when you’re born into it, you’re kind of affected by the history. So, in that bottom, right, yes. It’s the history and all the rituals and everything that’s impacting that operating system.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  48:45

Yes. Yes, we are in both the right and left, I mean, it’s the cultural feeling about things. And it’s the specific structures like, we have certain holidays, to celebrate certain religious things, or cultural things that are important that the ceremony of that, the structure of it, the actual enactment of it.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  49:10

Yeah, so, so these are in the book, he also talks about five integral disciplines. Consciousness change, evolving consciousness, conscious change, sorry, which is different than involving consciousness. We talked about involving consciousness or I, that will be the top left evolving systemic complexity, which is actually the we, which we just talked about. Then we have evolving adaptive architecture, which is the bottom right, the systems, right? Yes. And then we have evolving product innovation, which is the eye top right, so let’s maybe spend a little bit of time here just on it. And it’s evolving adapting architecture and product innovation. And then I would like to finish maybe, with the conscious change and leading change, as you kind of finish with a book. So Well, based on what we just discussed on evolving the mindset and culture. How does that relate to the right side of the quadrants of practices and structures?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  50:16

Oh, how does evolving consciousness relate to that? Yeah. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  50:21

So for instance, if I’m a leader, what I’m getting at is if I’m somebody that believes in a stable environment, and how does that going impact the right side? What type of policies do I do?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  50:37

Sure. So, so two kind of basic issues, there is obviously the consciousness of the person or person, him or something that define those adaptive structure, those non adaptive structure those organizational architecture structures? Well, obviously, a reactive mind is going to design a reactive structure. I mean, that’s just pretty obvious. But so that’s one issue is the level of evolution theater. But the other one is the culture itself. Right? It doesn’t matter, like you see it in government, a lot. Government is, especially in IT, I think, has drafted a lot of really visionary CIOs and CTO kind of people that have really progressive visions for what to do. But they’re unable to do that, because they’re working in government. I mean in a culture that’s much more powerful than they are as even if they’re the top leader. I mean, you can’t if you have 1000s, and 1000s of employees that every day, recreate the culture. Yeah, it’s hard to make a dent in that.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  51:53

I agree. I was working one of the biggest public agencies in California, and that’s exactly it, doesn’t matter. They brought somebody that really does and reflects in practices. I mean, what else? I mean,  how does the left side impact the right side? And what have you seen? What other examples? Can we do this? 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  52:15

Well, actually, can we go the opposite way? So how does the right side impact the left side? So, because we haven’t talked too much about the right side? So, there’s an old saying, in, in business, that where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit, like what department you’re in? So, what you what you stand for, is dependent on what department you’re in. Where, what organizational perspective, you’re in, are you in marketing? that’s a different perspective than customer support very different well than engineering. I mean, there’s conflict, there’s tension, often in systems at those boundaries, because they don’t see the world in the same way. Right. So, you are, the structure that…, you’re in who you report to, makes a difference in your consciousness? I mean, you don’t, with some people you’ll develop as young people, you’ll have to shut yourself down. Right? So the structure molds, our consciousness, as well as, consciousness design, all of this, systems, but is it the quarters, there’s never a sense of, there’s one quadrant, that’s the best, they all have power, and they all influence each other.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  53:38

I mean, that comes liker, in the sense of, if we go to the top, right, imposing change versus co creating. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  53:46

Right, right. Right.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  53:47

 We’d a lot of times, see how, sometimes if we’re imposing change, it’s going to impact the mindset of people. And if we co create, it’s going to impact it. What else? I mean, from a perspective, what else would you like to share from the interplay between the four quadrants.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  54:12

Well, we do a cohort for people to become masterful in enterprise coaching an IC Agile IC EC program, and just had a one of the people in that report in the most glowing kind of a few sub terms. His conversation with camera was the CIO or SVP, but somebody in the leadership position in walk him through both halons, the level of, individual, Team department organization And so he walked me through halons and the quadrants, and they found all kinds of, this person responsible for the transformation, they found all kinds of insights from that. I mean, it blew up in a, in a good way. And it was just it was just another reminder about we tend to have a, we have a groupthink bias about, we’re probably biased toward the left hand quadrants. Most people are biased towards the right hand quadrant, but who are organizations, or at least, people in the Agile community actually are much more left hand quadrant oriented. I’ve found, but when we always miss, looking from a different quadrant perspective, and there’s always interesting stuff, useful stuff to uncover. If we shift perspectives from our natural one, for me, my mind is we. When I shift to looking from an its point of view, or from an “it” point of view, I see new stuff. And so, quadrants are all about the….

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  56:09

Holistic view, maybe,

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  56:11

Yes, in an holistic and comprehensive, it takes this the fundamental things that are in, can team up with, or realize, really, the four quadrants by looking at, hundreds of different systems of thought, throughout mankind’s history, and going, oh, there’s a commonality there, either a first person perspective, or a second person or third person, and that’s part of why they argue with each other so much. So, the advice that we take from that is, have a have a multi quadrant, change team. So that you have people with different expertise, some people are really good at it, some people are really good at we, some people are good at it. All those perspectives are valid and useful. And so how can you…, that’s part of how you do Conscious Change is you have a change team or whatever, steering committee or what have you, that has an orientation toward all the quadrants because they were, and all the altitudes, because it reveals.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  57:21

And we don’t see that. So maybe as a last thing here, let’s talk about this conscious change, training and coaching using the framework. So what are some of the things that when it comes to teaching, when it comes to coaching, when it comes to conscious choice, usually using the framework as a sense making framework to drive that change to teach people about, how they can make better sense of things that are going on? So how do you maybe let’s start with teaching, what are some of the things that you alluded earlier, but what else?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  58:02

So, Michael Hammond and I, teach a workshop called Master camp, which is for people that are transitioning from being team coaches to being enterprise coaches, or who are already doing enterprise organizational level work and want to up their game that way. And we use the integral framework and his evolve agility sensemaking framework, because they dovetail really nicely together, we take people through, exercises and whatnot, with that in case study of a really serious case study project that they have to do. And we use the integral, the basically the framework from the book with, I say, added stuff was in that sense making and also actually with human system dynamics work with adaptive action. And so we have them do exercises like design an integral assessment of your organization, look for have things that address all four quadrants, not just your favorite, right. So that I mean, which creates a stretch for people, I mean, whatever quadrant or two it is that, some providers is going to be a stretch for everything for anybody. 

We do sensemaking conversations, we teach them a practice to do deliberate since making a very simple practice, but one that highlights how I make sense for me to see how I make sense of things, what I make up, what the story is behind it, and then adaptive action, something we didn’t cover in the book that I’ve come across subsequently and really fallen in love with his adaptive actions in, the HSD framework is containers different verses and exchanges, you have to make a change in a self-organizing system in either its containers, or its differences or exchanges. And you don’t just when you…, don’t believe that you can plan change, because you can, you can adapt to change, you can dance with change, you can create an intention, right, and you can do experiments, you can change a container, like, Agile is all about defining clear containers, like a team plus or minus seven people, right is a container. And it’s, Agile is about really good container differences, exchange practices, in a lot of ways. That’s part of a lot of why it works really well. And that’s the currency, you have to change stuff in an organization, you change how one of those parameters works. And you see what happens? You don’t think that you’re in control? Because you’re not?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:00:57

Yeah, and that, that makes me think about, just that now, maybe the just to bring in the coaching and consulting, making sense. A lot of times coaches have one size fits all, or maybe they even just coach you on the framework. And when I go in, when you start talking to a team or organization, you’re making sense, okay, who are these people? What is the organization? Is this orange type of organization? Is this leader or team made up? Yeah. And you’re constantly making sense of what’s going on? And your approaches are changing, right? Based on?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  1:01:29

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And, a way that that can go right in a way that that can go wrong, when I assess that an organization, center of gravity as an achievement, orange, for instance, is the way I can go wrong is for me to pigeonhole them into that and limit what they can do, and sort of have a prejudice against them really. And the way that that can be helpful on the on the other hand, is, if they do have an achievement, orange center of gravity, then I need to talk achievement, orange language, or I’m not going to reach that. If I don’t blend on some level with those values. I’m not going to be effective, right? So, knowing that is useful for just like, you know how to talk to people that are at a different age. I mean, you don’t talk to an adult, the way you talk to a six-year-old, and you don’t talk to most adults, the way you might talk to a 95-year-old person.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:02:27

So, do you think he talks about safe? He talked about safe in the book, do you think, Dean and safe is there’s a really good job of talking to people in their language and selling?,

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  1:02:39

Yeah, yes absolutely. That’s…, I mean, and they aim the framework in terms of the integral, safe, particularly, but to some extent, all scaling frameworks, but especially safe, I’m most familiar with safe rolling. They aimed it at the it’s quadrant at the organizational architecture quadrant in a lot of ways. The scrum framework, you know, is goes in the ID quadrant in it doesn’t need much. But it doesn’t have funding in it, doesn’t have governance in it doesn’t have all kinds of things in it that organization needs, and safe handled those things. And so, it took some of the role stuff, what do you call the people, that used to be directors of, IT or whatever? What do you call them in an agile framework? And, Dean gave them names, and that created comfort for people. And it’s a very orange, with shades of green kind of framework, that the altitude of it for in my experience. And I think I wouldn’t want to say that inherently true, per se, is the way it’s practiced, though, the way it’s practice is by achievement, orange organizations that adopted in a way to install the Agile.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:03:56

And that’s what I spoke with Dean couple of weeks ago now. And I think he gets it in a sense, but I think it’s also the side that people are one this and like, Hey, if you grab this, and it’s shiny object, and you want to do that, implement that from that orange perspective, then, go ahead and do it. But maybe to one of the things that I believe the book that you wrote here, and when I’m talking to people that I consider top leaders in Agile, we’re moving towards what you’re describing in this book, and I think the next 10 years, and what you’ve been talking for the last 10 years is about to get more traction. 

I think we’ll start seeing and slowly people are starting to see and it’s, it’s interesting that and maybe my question is around how do we in your ways, how do we actually simplify the understanding or concepts from your book. So, they become more of a nation. So, more people are aware of this framework and how it’s similar to how people…, I remember like, going through or when I teach about Canadian people start making sense of the framework and how they can use it. Right? This is in a similar way, now we can have make a sense of the whole organization. And when I introduce people, they go,[Holy shit], now I know why my organization is so messed up.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  1:05:32

Right? Yeah, yeah, that’s the experience I have, especially giving talks that people go, Oh, that’s what’s going on. It’s using the integral framework is so different than implementing safe. Because it’s not something that you teach to everybody in the organization, there’s no need to do that. You teach it to the coaches, or the transformation leaders that are going to be using it in the background. It’s not something you foreground with the client, particularly, it’s something that the coach knows how to do. It’s like a skill set of how to assess what’s going on in organization, what quadrant does it align with? And what altitude, Amber, orange, green, teal, does it align with because that tells you how to work with it? It tells you, if it’s an IF thing, it says, you might want to look for what are the WE components that reinforce that it’s saying? Or what are the IT or I components that do, and what altitude it comes from tells you what’s possible, in an orange organization, you’re not going to adopt holarchy. That’s a horrible idea. So Horrible idea for agile coaches to suggest to their clients to get to implement holarchy, unless they’re pretty darn small organization or have a really strong commitment, and are already, operating from pluralistic green. It’s just not going to work. It’s not going to make sense to them. It’s like teaching a six-year-old integral calculus. No, that’s a bad idea. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Doesn’t need it, not going to brains not going to have the cognitive capacity for it right. Now.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:07:19

Another thing that we didn’t talk about, and we don’t know, so by thing, just maybe to make a point, then in spiral dynamics that you can skip, so you can skip the upgrades from operating systems, you have to gradually upgrade, which is kind of tough. But maybe, as we kind of wrap up here, what message what would you like do inspiring coaches, change agents, leaders? What would you maybe invite them to do or…

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  1:07:49

Get exposure to the integral framework, from my book, from my classes, from other places around because it will change how you are able to see things and how effective you’re able to be? And the other thing that’s sort of related to it, or is the bigger subset of it is that the most impactful thing you can do, especially working at an organizational level, is to grow yourself? Because the coaches that is the greatest instrument of transformation that they have, more than any technique they know or anything else? So, if I’ve developed myself, I’m going to be more effective, I’m going to be less constrained and maybe less triggered by clients. I’m just going to be, and they can’t go further than I can go.