Michael K. Spayd & Marie Murtagh

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:45

Who is Michael Spayd?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  00:50

That’s a good question. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a long time. Can I get back to you Miljan? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  00:58

I’ll get back to you in the next lifetime. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  1:00

Yeah, that’s a good idea. That’s a date. Well, I’m a lot of things like everybody. Most significantly, for your audience probably I am the co-founder of the Agile Coaching Institute, with Lisa Adkins back in 2010. The shaper of the designer really at the Agile coaching competency framework that people know that the X Wing diagram was facilitating coaching, mentoring, teaching. And one of the original definers of the enterprise coaching track for icy agile, and the co-author of Agile transformation using the integral Agile transformation framework to think and lead differently. 

And I’ve been involved in this field for about 21 years, actually, just the same year, the manifesto was signed, it was when I was first a coach. And so I’ve kind of grown up with this industry, and have tried to bring a different kind of outsider’s perspective to an outside seeking and training like professional coaching, like organization development, that would be like culture, like leadership development, unlike systemic constellations. So I’ve tried to I’ve tried to enrich the agile environment, which was concerned with Agile transformation so much which is not a technical thing to do. Right. It’s a very odd thing to do. And I’ve recently started something new. I think that’s probably good. Anything else you think you want to ask me that would be helpful for people to know? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  03:16

No, it’s just, I usually like, like you said, people struggled to define sometimes who is and there’s a lot more, I think, a lot of things that you said, people know, what are the some of the things that people may not know about Michael?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  03:31

Yeah, right. Well, they might not know about Michael, that he has been a student of esoteric wisdom for many, many years, including Tibetan Buddhism, including different kinds of I hesitate to call it a cult but you know, non traditional kinds of schools of thought, spiritual schools of thought of different kinds. Shamanism. I’ve been a student of shamanism for many, many years. I don’t always say that in public. Fortunately, just the three of us here, this is the confidential room. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  04:23

For now. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  04:24

Yeah, right until we published. I don’t know, I try to come up with something else but I don’t know what will be useful right now.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  04:40

No, thank you for sharing that. And I think you’ve been very generous when you’re describing yourself. I think the impact that you’ve had on the Agile community and the way that you’ve helped Agile community defined a lot of this stuff and give us a direction. At least I appreciate I know many others appreciate and especially with your new work, I think this is something that will be a guide for future agile coaches and practitioners how to integrate some of these concepts they’ve been around for decades, I just think a lot of things in Agile we’ve adopted, so I just want to say thank you and for being generous in your description, or who is Michael, but I think you’ve done a lot for our community. And thank you for that.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  05:37

Well, thank you very much appreciate that Miljan. I know it, I can see in students eyes that it’s really impactful to them. And it’s like the most meaningful work that I could possibly do. I’ve had a series of what I call downloads of a vision for starting an organization for the last year and a half or so, actually, almost two years, but even longer than that. And it’s called the Collective Edge. And it’s about working at the edge of our consciousness and what we can do, in relevant things that affect, the whole planet, really, and our human ecosystem. 

And I  originally drafted, Michael Hamon  and Lisa Adkins to help ground that and reunited after a long time apart, in 2019. And we went through a series of things together. And Lisa eventually found out sort of a more distant position from the whole thing, she wants to have a lifestyle business, rather than really growing a company seriously. But Michael and I, Michael Hamon and I had a long term partnership in in creating things together and having a really good time teaching together. And he and I started to spend a lot more time together and, really emerged  an enterprise coaching school. So that became the first business line of the Collective Edge. And it’s owned by Michael, I’m his partner, and, helping develop programs and stuff, but he’s really leading there. And so in parallel to that, for the last I’m sorry, this is so long, but I think it’s going to be useful. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  07:42

No, it’s really helpful. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  07:43

And pretty much during the exact same period, Marie and I were hanging out together a lot, we met about the same time that the downloads were coming in. And she was very curious about what was going on in the Collective Edge. She’s new to agile, but you would never know that. I mean, she studied so much stuff in Agile, it makes my head spin, it makes my head hurt, actually. I mean, the amount of time she sends me something in text, like, you got to watch this. I’m like, when do you have time to do anything else, I’ve just listened to the last thing you sent an idea. So she’s been stretching my personal thinking for a year and a half, really.

 And it’s sort of finally came together as, during the pandemic, the whole thing was really quiet, right, it was just nothing was happening, almost next to nothing was happening. And then this year, it started to heat up, you could feel a shift happen. And we’ve been trying to find what’s the right seat for everybody in the Collective Edge. And the right seat for Marie is to be the Chief Operating Officer. So we haven’t right now. You can’t tell anybody going on because we haven’t announced that yet. But by the time you folks are seeing this, she’s been announced as being a COO. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  09:19

Congrats. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  09:20

She’s just the perfect person for this job. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  09:26

That’s great, that’s a good segue into so who is Marie? A lot of people might be asking who is Marie Murtagh?

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  09:36

Oh, wow. Most effective way to answer that question is I’m me. But a little bit about my story anyways. So it’s 1993 or something I started into organizational IT, actually as a developer and then I graduated from there into project management and had pretty healthy career that started off and, and took me from a medium sized organization and over to the west coast for an adventure with a startup organization. And from there, I ended up going to London to the UK, and did project management within Deloitte for a few years. And in around well, a few years ago, or around 2011, or something like that, I decided to leave that because I was successful as a project manager. 

And I felt my team was really sort of electrified, and enjoyed, you know, working with me, but I felt that there was just this sort of incongruence with project management, and I was very confused by that, like, what is going on here and experienced some pain sort of in the corporate environment at that time. And so anyways, I life took me in a few other directions, which is always fun, just to see where life sort of leads you. And then, around four or so years ago, I went on this deep journey to look very deeply at what is here, who am I? Who are other people, what is going on? What is the universe? 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  11:29

Down the rabbit hole huh? 

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  11:33

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  11:34

She dug the rabbit hole.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  11:40

And around two years ago, I heard about agile, and oh, my God, and lit such a fire inside of me, because I saw like, Oh, thank God, finally they get it, that we’re humans inside of this organization, right. And the humans are what make up an organization. And as I sort of journey deeper into that, and sort of reflecting back on my previous experience, realizing that, you know, I was kind of working in organizations that treated people more like machines, or more like resources. So it made sense to me then why I didn’t exactly love it. And so then it’s become, with all these things that I’ve learned and that I’ve been taking in and then the healing and then cetera, then take your look at my life, and what am I really doing with it? 

And what’s the impact that I want to leave here, how do I want to help people and working inside or with organizations to help them transform and helping people to live more into their humanity so that we all have, you know, more fulfilling lives. And step more into of course, our potential. You know, agile is where I sort of settled, and with stumbling across Michael and Agile of 2019, and a couple of other big concepts that sort of came across my plate at that time, too. It’s been, you know, I was on a certain path, a trajectory anyways, upwards, but since then it’s gone really very straight up and I’m just to be honest with you, I’m just really very delighted and honored, excited, a little nervous, all of that about the role that I’m stepping into here. Yeah, I’m happy it is,

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  13:38

It is interesting. And I think a lot of this is emerging too, like some of the things that Michael has been doing and this is not the mainstream, right, some of the stuff that we’re talking about is the next level of coaching or transformation. And it’s connected to a bigger movement. This is much bigger than agile, this is much bigger than us. 

And the way that I understand a lot of times oh, not a lot of times but especially in the context of what Michael is doing with Collective Edge is what others have been trying to do outside of agile, outside of business. So as much as to some this might seem like a completely new thing. It’s not necessarily new and there are many people across the globe that are trying to contextualize these things in their context. So maybe before we kind of dive deeper into some of this stuff, what is Collective Edge? How would you describe it. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  14:48

You want to go first Marie?

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  14:49

Ah well, I feel like anyways, in terms of where a lot of us have found ourselves and maybe find ourselves today, it’s in living and being in a certain way that doesn’t feel really true to our nature. And there’s a sense I think, inside of all of us to that there’s more to life or something should be different. Come on, there’s got to be something else, right and away. And I’m not speaking just from a seeking sort of perspective. But also there’s this unknown part of things. 

And there’s a conventional way, right, that we’ve all been living and stepping into and working. And this Collective Edge is outside of that conventional. But that can show up in so many different ways. Right? But and I think, too, we’re always kind of living on an edge anyways, and being sort of deliberate and conscious about it, and thinking, what is the right edge anyways, what’s the right boundary, and I need to push within myself that I can help others to push, right, that’s going to expand everybody’s understanding appreciation, the ability to navigate in this very complex world, so that we can all benefit and thrive.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  16:25

That just made me think of, maybe before we get Michael’s thoughts, but just maybe to share my thoughts on what you just said. And I’ve heard Collective Edge a lot of times, but I didn’t see it from that perspective. And now, almost like a little light bulb went on. And I don’t know how true it is. But a lot of what I think Collective Edge stands in this moment is about the new paradigm, I think what you’re describing is…. one of the things that you have in front of the website, quote from Lion Twist, the old structures and systems are no longer serving us. And not necessarily that they’re bad. 

But I think what’s happening is our paradigm is changing. And it’s changing the way where our world is becoming more complex, where things are becoming messier. And I think when you just described Collective Edge, it was at that edge of the new paradigm, I don’t know, if you guys are familiar with Tom Kuhn cycle, the guy that came up with the word, a paradigm, where at the beginning, I think of something else that’s going to emerge. So the Collective Edge is that, at least for me, what resonated is the new science, what he calls the new science, or the new normal, the new paradigms. And that’s weird to a lot of people and a lot of stuff that people hear, like when I first and when I talk to some of people a lot of stuff that, maybe Collective Edge my stand for, be like these guys are smoking something or doing something and the they allow.. and that’s okay. Like, a lot of times, that’s what it sounds to people that embedded in the current paradigm, they can’t really see their own paradigm. So now I like to Collective Edge. Now it’s making more sense to me as far as what it is. I don’t know if that’s what you meant, but that’s…

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  18:30

No, well, I don’t know if I was like, wow, yeah. I mean, you hit it on the head, I mean, in terms of the being a new paradigmatic thing. So it’s not understandable. Within the frame of the old paradigm. It’s just not, I mean organizations can’t get purpose driven organizations. They don’t understand it doesn’t make sense. And you seem stupid to them, or fuzzy headed or whatever. But we’re in Frederick Mallos terms, reinventing organizations, we’re starting a teal organization, or, more precisely, technically, I would call it a second teal organization. It’s not necessarily just teal, but people will know it, potentially as teal and that’s the idea. Its purpose driven. It’s not money driven. 

It’s not materialist driven, not that we don’t plan to make a lot of money, but from like a consensus is really started, I was thinking from a consensus reality point of view. Because the Collective Edge, has a center, and it has multiple business units, about four of them have been defined. In some levels detail, one of them is actually an instance, is a real business in a real sense, making an action that Michael has, Michael Hamon has. There’s another one that’s sort of starting to come online that I’m not going to talk about. It’s too early to talk about that. But it started to form and the other ones are more, there’s energetic imprints that suggests it might happen, but we don’t know who the leader is of them, or whatever. So, there is meant to be a turquoise in spiral dynamics, incubator of businesses. 

And so it’s meant to have a tension between the ownership like the Collective Edge doesn’t own the whole thing as a Collective Edge. Actually, we haven’t worked out the details of this, but it’s going to be a minority partner in the business, so that the business could detach, could buy itself out and become independent when the two or four is ready to.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  20:47 

So what that’s really… I want to pause here, because we live in an orange world where legally, we have to structure by orange rules, and you’re trying to create an organization that’s teal or turquoise. And how do you fit it like something like that into..? 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  21:10

I mean, one, you have to think differently obviously, you have to be at a different level of development to be able to let go of certain kinds of ego things that really are getting away and are very prevalent are characteristic of orange. And I have a really good lawyer. And what he taught me is that what you’re doing with a contract is you’re making private law. 

So you’re making a law that can’t violate everybody’s law, obviously. But it can be exactly how you want it to be within those things. So we create private law around how those organizations fit together to give them by structuring into the operating agreement, buyout clause we haven’t worked out all that detail, because it hasn’t been pressing to do that yet. And when you’re doing a startup, you’ve got way too much. So, there’s four business units that have sort of appeared, one is operational, and Marie and I hold the center. So Marie and I are in the center of this, which is sort of the umbrella of it. And Michael leads ISA and I’m his partner in that. I’m, one of his principles, so I love doing that kind of work, but it’s his business.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  22:42

So could we talk a little bit about…., so maybe we can explore. So the TCE Center is in the center, the Collective Edge center. And as you said, when I saw this diagram that was shared with me, it reminded me, obviously, of [inaudible] [23:01] and sociocracy, holacracy. So it’s more of a when we’re talking about going back to the quote from Lyon Twist, the structure and systems are outdated. We’re talking about more a decentralized network type of organizational structure. And if you’re saying you’re pushing towards turquoise, you’re probably pushing even sociocracy, holacracy. I’m assuming to another level, maybe not.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  23:32

I think that’s really plausible. But I wouldn’t want to stand behind that. Yeah, because I don’t know. But I think that seems pretty likely. Marie, you’re trying to get in, I think, before

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  23:47

To comment on your question, actually, Miljan, about  coming from second tier in the orange world, and one of the things that just sort of came up for me is you have to, so acknowledging and noticing, right, the orangeness of what we’re all trying to navigate and then you have to kind of step outside of it and look at it sort of objectively and from the outside, and there’s where things like what Michael, his lawyer, organized in terms of, you know, seeing it with a new lens and doing a private law type thing. 

That’s what I was saying  and I appreciate very much, sort your particular question there around sociocracy and holacracy. And what really comes up for me is those are fascinating. And they’re doing a lot of amazing work, right? And also in sort of shifting and bringing in new paradigms and giving people new options of a way of working in a being thank God right. And I feel like anyways, also to that from my perspective, and where I sit sort of in the Collective Edge, I look at organizations like that and I feel that it would be good for us to have a good. 

Like, I don’t want to call it a…. it’s not a working relationship, but be organizational sort of buddies, whatever. And when I think about even like how I am with my buddies, right, there is this whole sort of really truth telling right to each other and having fun. And there’s also a little bit of accountability right. I wouldn’t expect any organization to step in or to take that on per se. But that’s where I kind of put a flag in the ground for me anyways. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  25:34

So what you’re saying is, and I think, let me just paraphrase. So like sociocracy, holacracy, represent this new paradigm. So what you’re saying is really, like we all believe, or have similar beliefs in the sense of, we should be partnering and talking to each other and finding out ways to collaborate. When I was talking to James freeze, he was specific about because I was trying to push him a little bit like, why S3 is not expanding a little bit more, in a sense. 

And one of the things he was saying, hey, I have a niche, right. And which is totally understand totally, but he understands similar stuff that we’ve talked about, he has the same perspective, same understanding of the emerging future. And it feels good, at least to me, the doctor, is not in everyday life, I can get a chance to talk about some of the stuff that’s emerging. So is that really what you’re describing when you said, like, we need to partner and things like that, that it’s more of a that type of partnership?

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  26:40

I think it’s interesting. So, partnership and in a way, I don’t necessarily have a whole lot of expectations on that. But I feel like it’s a playfulness. And it’s more like a buddies and buddy system..

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  26:52

Well, and then what Marie was saying before, James Priest is actually on our list of.., we’ve identified a number of what Marie was talking about organizational friends, like you have friends, and then if you have a spouse or whatever, you have couple friends, right? And organizations can have friends too. And not that not just strategic business relationships. I mean, that might happen, but it might not, you might just want to hang out with each other because you do similar kind of things, you could learn from each other without an agenda. Right?

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  27:29

Exactly. And that’s what I meant, like, you know, maybe what I… don’t know maybe partner wasn’t the correct term. But yeah, that’s exactly what I meant more like a friend.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  27:39

No, it could lead to a partnership, for sure. But that’s not the criteria for doing it. The criteria for doing it is you share purpose and you like each other.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  27:49

And it’s different from the orange paradigm. Right? It doesn’t have a competitive nature. It’s not a competition. There’s no shortage of ways to help.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  28:01

Yeah. True. 

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  28:06 

Cool. That’s very interesting. Maybe I thought we could explore. And no, Michael’s not here. But like the school of integral sense, making an action. Because they think that’s important. And that’s another example, I think that we’re not necessarily Agile community, but pushing things to what’s coming, what we need to focus on, I think, I believe, if I was in your shoes, I will be doing that. So it’s like seeing you do it’s like, oh, this guy or this group is thinking in the same lines as me. And why was it for you, maybe just to see your perspective, and maybe you can speak for Michael Hamon as well. What was behind the school of integral sensemaking? And, I want to focus on that integral sensemaking in action.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  29:00

Sure. And I’m going to also kind of a theme I’d like to explore is how we’re using our own methodologies to start and run the Collective Edge. That’s really important, I think.  So integral sensemaking in action is a transformational leader, training and Development Program, often enterprise agile coaches, but they could be a transformation lead from a company or something. We have to two parts of the core curriculum. One is called Master camp, which is like a five day thing that’s spread over two weeks plus, there’s a follow up a significant follow up session, a couple of weeks later, so it’s got a fairly big container. And it focuses on everything about enterprise coaching at the learning level, not at the competency level, but at the learning level, right? 

Systems entry, how to do leadership development, what’s your own leadership development style, like in terms of leadership circle, which is our standard tool for that. How do you work with culture? Where’s the culture math? How do you work with structure, all those kind of things, actually exploring the four requirements from the book. So the really the program is a synthesis of my book and Michael’s book. So Michael wrote a book called involve agility. I wrote Agile transformation. And we sort of mash them up in integral sensemaking in action and actually we have started to include human systems development Glenda Young’s [30:49] work. Marie, I knew about Glenda, but like, with a lot of things I knew about Glenda. But she was in the session, we actually met without knowing it in Glynda OEMs session at agile 2019. And then Marie took the certification in HSD. 

And that encouraged me to take it. So I crashed the party joint. So the thing about evolve agility, Michael’s book is about deliberate sense making. And the whole mindset, the whole I leadership quadrant, is about sensemaking. How we make sense, right? And there’s, the interval levels describe, from Amber to orange to green to teal describes a different way of making sense. Not necessarily about the content, but the how one thinks and how one makes meaning, how one makes…, what’s the patterning of how we tell stories to ourselves, we always tell stories to ourselves about who we are, which are, frankly, false stories, but we believe them. And they shape our lives very well. So one of the things we teach in the master camp, and we continue it in the expert cohort program, is delivered sensemaking. So the expert cohort program is like an eight month program, to become an IC agile expert in enterprise coaching, and to also get our certification in enterprise coaching. 

So it’s a competency-based program instead of a knowledge-based program. So deliberate sensemaking is a thing for us, right? And so we’re using that in the company, I mean, we have a practice ourselves of deliberate sense making of revealing, and getting, I’m finding myself getting a little nervous right now, I’m finding myself getting anxious to say this, we’re not sure, revealing our own…, what’s coming up for us, because that’s part of how we make sense. So that it becomes public in the meeting, or whatever. And then everybody can understand their own sense making better and we can make better decisions together. Orange argues for its point, it debates. Second Tier wants to construct wants to co create.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  33:31

Well, that’s the thing. And there’s a couple of things that I guess, need is kind of the coming up for me and sense of like, what’s going through my head. One is that sensemaking I think from a perspective of maybe next organizations next coaching, especially in Agile, to me, it’s really essential like for us to understand that. So for instance, if I’m going in and understanding organization, what type of leaders I’m dealing with, if I can get people to do exactly what you described now, what you describe as people being vulnerable and being open because I have to have courage and be vulnerable to say that, hey, I’m nervous. 

This is what’s going through my head. So that amplifies that collaboration, that amplifies that co creation. So I think from that perspective, that’s a huge gap that in the business world, across the gap that we have, that I think is being fulfilled, or at least being made aware of more from that perspective. So that’s what came to mind from that, but what are you seeing when it comes to applying this to your collected edge and you have several partners, you have several of these structure, how are you using sense making with each other?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  35:12

Well, let me let me talk about a slightly different angle, if that’s all right, it’s. So one of the things that we wrote in the book, and that I have emphasized in my consulting for quite a while is, what I really understood from working with the leadership circle for the past nine years. Which is that if you’re a leader of an organization, if you’re the top leader of an organization, that your consciousness constrains, what can possibly happen in the organization, you’re the upper limit. So things could go above your developmental level for a little while, but they’re not going to last. 

So what that translates into is what I call me first problem solving, that if I’m the leader of an organization, that I’m the first problem to be solved. And I know this directly in this case, because I tried to do this six years ago, I tried to start the equivalent of a Collective Edge six years ago, and it didn’t work, didn’t work at all. It was a very painful experience. And I can feel that in the six years since then, that I’ve grown into a different person into a different leader. And part of why I’ve hired Marie, is because so find the first problem. You need somebody to be aware of that you need somebody who can give you really intimate and detailed and not pulling punches. Yeah, candice, and Marie does that. Marie does that for me better than anybody I’ve ever known in my life. 

So she can get inside my defenses, and tell me how it is. And that’s, like, so important as a leader, usually people comply to senior leaders, right? They just oh, yeah, that’s a stupid idea. But I’m not going to tell you that because I might get fired, or you’re acting like a jerk right now. I mean, you don’t tell senior leaders that most time, but that’s bullshit. That’s like so not right. Yeah. So Marie, you want to say anything about that? Don’t make me spit out my water, okay.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  37:55

So first of all, I would say,  it’s not, and I would say quite like that. Because things you used there to describe, how I do… And, it gets reflected back in the system, too, right. But I also just want to say what I feel like anyways, and all of this, and I think congruent even with what you were talking about Miljan, is well, you as your own leader, and how are you having conversations with yourself? What are you talking about and what are you ignoring? What are you depressing? What are you glossing over? What, are you bigging up? What are you putting down? This conversation within myself, is what I’ve been having, and what I continue to have? And what is sort of my guide to for how to have that same conversation with other people.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  39:00

So essentially, I have to work on myself before I can help others.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  39:05

Exactly. That’s the premise, both  of the ISA enterprise coach training program, and it’s also the position of the transformational coaching that we do in consulting.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  39:22

So now I get it, I heard you say, Michael, that we’re screwed as a society. Now I get why we’re screwed as a society. How many people do you know that want to work on themselves, how many leaders of the ceiling and what you’re saying is also….

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  39:39

I’m working with one right now. And there are significant, I mean, they’re a small company, but they’re significantly growing and they’re decidedly successful. So, it’s not anybody… Well, I can’t even say that I want to say it’s not fortune 1000. But that’s not completely true. I mean, the leadership circle has clients, Roche, pharmaceuticals, Honda, Disney, where the very top leaders are taking a really serious look at themselves. I’m not involved in that work.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  40:15

You’re familiar with the with the percentage of people that are part of that second tier or thinking or seeing from the… so it’s a very small… So that’s why I joke around because the complexity in our world is increasing, it’s a big ask to get people in organizations to focus on developing themselves focusing on that inner work so they can help others because they don’t even see themselves as a bottleneck, they don’t even see themselves as the ones and a lot of times people have right intentions from their perspective. It’s just that they’re not seeking.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  40:59

You know, and I just want to say, too, I wouldn’t want to place blame necessarily on anyone except for our Western culture, to be honest with you, because I think it really sets everything up from the way when we’re born and how we’re developed in our education, etc. All of that is very externalized. Right? All external work. And I think in Eastern cultures, they have kind of the opposite, it’s a little lopsided, possibly in the other direction. I don’t know, I’m making something up there. 

But I do want to say so I think for us anyways, it is, this self in a way is kind of the next frontier. But I also want to say, though, I feel and what has been my own experience is that it’s through myself, right, that I can help others. But it’s also because then you recognize the Unity ,the interconnectedness, like in a really deep level of all this. 

So I feel like and within the ISA, there’s another course or cohort program, right, the inner path, which is beautiful, right, leading into the self and looking, taking really deep looks about nonjudgmental as well, right, compassionate looks at ourselves. But then I feel like, what seems to happen is then and even actually congruent with the integral or spiral dynamics, right? Yellow, you’re kind of self and systemics, sort of oriented, right? And then when you go into the turquoise, right, then you integrate that with the unity consciousness.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  42:42

So maybe that’s a really good point, and maybe to bring it back to Collective Edge and how you’ve structured so essentially, is the second theory type of organization. The governance and ownership is something that is pretty interesting in how you have.., essentially, you’re creating a platform for partnerships for friendship, for people that have that same purpose. There’s also that battle between agency and communion. And how are you balancing that as far as that structure and what we want individually versus as a group, what we want to show?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  43:26

One of Marie’s favorite topics. So I want to talk about the advice process. Do you want to say something else first, about Asian communities more general?

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  43:42

Just, of course that it really leans of course, into the polarity nature of the universe, and that the agency, right is really the masculine in the communion usually being associated with the feminine. And anyways, the point is, is that in all of us, and everything, there’s sort of a spectrum of that, and I kind of look at all the same ways, and you look at the Dow right, and the flow and things of that nature, right. And you’re going in between and out of the other one, and I’m sorry, I’m getting a little bit lost, but I’d come back around. What I’m saying I think with it is that, change..  

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  44:25

It’s a balance, right? 

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  44:26

It’s a balance but things are constantly moving, changes constantly happening. You are flowing from one to the next. Balance, I think, is largely, it’s my favorite thing to say that it’s asymmetrical. And then I also feel that from the other research and things that I’ve done and what I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to test out here in the Collective Edge is that when a system is imbalance, change is simple.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  45:01

That’s a really good point. So how do you.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  45:04

Easy is right, is one of our watchwords. If it’s easy, it’s because it’s right.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  45:15

So like, maybe just to explore that. And I think I touched upon it before, but right is defined differently from different perspectives. So when we talk about Collective Edge, it’s a collection of like-minded people looking possibly, or wanting to look from that second tier. How do you add the versity and avoid groupthink, yet, at the same time, acknowledge that we need to look from that second tier in order to deal with..?

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  45:52

Well, so I want to come back to the advice process and agency communion, that’s what I think, from at least partially addressed, what you’re asking. So what Fredrick Lalo described in teal organizations was that they don’t make decisions by you know… the person in charge or their rank or something, makes all the decisions. But they also don’t make decisions by consensus, because that’s what pluralistic green does. And frankly, little is more annoying than being stuck in consensus Hell, where you can’t get to consensus. It’s not  at all useful. It’s a stage that people go through, it’s reasonable, and it’s better than autocratic decision making. But it’s completely inefficient. 

So the advice process is about that the person who has the scope, where it’s their business, do something that you can’t just go out. And if you’re the event coordinator, you can’t just go over into the sales person’s business and make decisions for them. But within your sphere of what you do, you get to make your own decisions. And the rule is, or the guidance is that you have to have a conversation with the people who will be impacted, who are stakeholders in that decision. You don’t have to agree with them. And you don’t have to get them to agree with you. 

You have to listen to them. And then after you’ve listened to them, then you have to take accountability. Marie and were just talking about this last night, that the question to ask is from the outsider’s point of view, let’s say it’s my decision, right, to make, your each question to me is, so are you ready to take accountability for that decision? Which means if I’ve given you my advice, which might suggest that you slow down, and you’re deciding to do it anyway. Okay, that’s your prerogative, are you ready to take accountability for it? I mean, that’s like, the perfect balance for me of just seeing communion because, I can make my own decisions. I don’t have to be constrained. But I also have to take the communion consequences of it. I could screw up, it could be a totally a stupid decision. But if I have to convince everybody, I can’t trust my own gut, completely, and I can’t be autonomous, I can’t have really sovereignty.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  48:30

My question was to just to build on that if you have somebody thinking from a green that likes consensus, and that is like this advice, process, automate and you want to have people in green and orange in the sense to have a healthy system, you don’t want to just group of, you know, part of Collective Edge group of people that are just, you know, so that I’m assuming you haven’t dealt with that yet. But that’s something that you’re going to probably deal with, at some point.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  49:01

Just starting to. Marie were you trying to get in there?

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  49:04

Well, I want to say.. okay, right. So well, we all know too, or it hasn’t been presence or anything here yet. But of course, the developmental lines within all spiral dynamics and within integral, right, and so and kind of each and every moment, or each one of those developmental lines, right, people are individual self can be at different levels within  that intelligence and will. And so there is in a sense, a lot of diversity that’s already here. If you get that level.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  49:41

Which one dominates?

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  49:44

Yeah, and what’s happening in the moment, right, what are we talking about? What’s the subject? What’s the context? And I think also though, what is so funny to me and I feel the need to say is that with just being the really very centered sort of in green. What occurred to me as we were having this discussion, and what makes it such a difficult sort of, and we call it consensus, hell, right, is that if you think about us as individuals, we’re so freaking unique anyways, right? No two life experiences are the same, no two minds are the same. So for you to try to really go for with just a complete consensus-based organization. I’m going to wonder why.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  50:37

It is. And I think I’ve really liked the advice process. But you have to come from that. I think the advice process in anything below the second theory can be very challenging, because it’s judging, I think the you know… So that’s why I said in a sense, somebody from Orange will probably dislike the advice process. And there will be lot more judging than you would be, like, just saved from green or teal.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  51:15

Maybe so you bring it, you lead us to another point, which is we’re setting up a deliberately developmental environment, what Bob Keegan and Lisa Leahy talked about, and I never went organizations, which is people are put in an assignment both because they at least couldn’t be good at it, but also because it will develop and grow them. So you don’t just put somebody in a position where they’re great, and they just keep knocking out of the park that doesn’t help them at all, that doesn’t grow them at all. 

So part of having orange or green diversity in the Collective Edge will be in helping them be in the advice process, and get over their concerns about that, or help them sort of do a little hand holding of them through that process, including what they’re uncomfortable with, or whatever. And also a little push. She needs challenge and support both. So it’s like, if you don’t have enough people at second tier is going to be hard to hold it. Right. So you have to have a critical mass of people at second tier, I think to hold the whole structure. But then within that you could have people that are at different developmental levels, younger people or, whatever. I mean, that’s absolute [52:39], we’re about to hire somebody like that. Pretty sure..

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  52:44

Same way that we have people that are holding the orange, and you have different but yeah,

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  52:49

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  52:52

I just want to say, too, I think it’s very important to recognize, though, that all of those stages are absolutely necessary in all of our developments, right. And in our job within ourselves and with each other within organizations is to help the healthy side of that manifest.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  53:14

And full growth through those I think we haven’t had a chance to talk about the shadows and all that stuff. But full growth through those. And I think that’s something for a separate topic, but maybe to come back again to the Collective Edge. So in summary, what I understand it to be is a platform to experiment and understand what the second tears organizations would look like. So in a sense, what Loulou describes is that teal and turquoise type organizations, the mission for Collective Edge, I’m assuming, is maybe to show the world, what those type of organizations look like to incubate those type of organizations to bring together friends, partners that want to build that. Is that how you see it? Because through our conversation, that’s what’s emerging. And that’s what I’m seeing.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  54:14

Right, I’ll give you first crack.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  54:16

Oh, I just was very excited, actually, what I was hearing so, and you were presenting actually something a little bit differently for me that I’m kind of set into a little different sort of thinking, and I’m going to have to get settled before I can say much. Thank you Michael.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  54:35

Mine is less intelligent than that. So I would say that that is aligned with our mission. I wouldn’t say that that is our mission per se. I mean, it’s aligned with our purpose, which is to work at the cutting edge and help other people work at the cutting edge, in the interest of anti-fragility, awareness and love. So I think that’s an instance of doing that. But it’s not like, we’re specifically trying to model as our product or whatever had to be a second tier organization. That’s an artifact a little bit. But, it’s all integrated, right? Because for us to actually use the practices we’re advocating to run our own organization just as like, drinking your own champaign.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  55:29

I mean, yeah, it’s like, the way that I see it is like, you can, we don’t know, but maybe we can imagine what it was to go into orange before… So like, there were a lot of companies that will probably look weird that we’re trying to figure things out, they didn’t know. And, you know, 100 years later, you can reflect back and say, this is what came out of that, this is how we have always learned, what I see Collective Edge I guess, or companies like Collective Edge, are trying to figure out how we’re going to deal with the challenges that, we’re currently dealing with, that we’re not doing a very good job of solving, but also how we’re going to go forward. And I’m assuming you don’t have all the answers, but you have a purpose, and you have a vision, you have a mission short, I’m assuming the way that I look at it is you have a broader purpose and vision, and then your mission is something more achievable.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  56:31

Well,  in teal, as Loulou, identified for us. People at that level, trust, the wisdom beyond rationality. So we’re being guided, where we’re going, we’re not inventing this out of, like, some kind of master plans or something. In the native traditions, they talk about becoming a hollow bone, that spirit can blow through. And that’s what I feel like I’ve been trying to do for 20 or 50 years. And I’m better at it than I used to be. I’m not perfect at it, of course, but I’m a lot better than I used to be. And so this is a new level of being able to manifest that, like this may be seem like a silly example. But, I ran a agile Coaching Institute, like a $2.2 million organization, and sold it to Accenture, which was, pretty, I was proud of that. But, now, my sights are a lot higher than that I mean, I hope to grow $5 million organization in a few years. And part of being serious about that is hiring people like Marie to challenge me. And also, like, completely trusting, you got to find the right seat for people, right? You have to find that.. you go here like the first one was Michael belongs as the leader of integral sense making and action, not us together. 

Even that was tempting to be us together. But that wasn’t the right answer was him on my job as a senator not that so finding those right people, and entrusting them, and the example I was going to give you with, like, marine I’ve talked about lately, like the importance of health, of diet and exercise, as you know, that got kind of totally blown out by the pandemic, all those habits and stuff got, you know, kind of crushed for me at least. But that would be if I wasn’t in really good health and, and whatnot, I can’t do this job as well. It’ll help me to be clearer and cleaner, like just turn me to a keto diet. Now, to burn cleaner fuel inside me, helps me get out of the way. It’s not just my laziness or my indulgences of myself.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  59:23

So, it does I mean, you’re looking at the whole thing you’re not just looking at the.. so, it’s a holistic without getting… you looking at it holistically as a whole person. So yeah, I mean, that is very interesting. And I think I’m excited to see how this is going to shape and where it’s going to go because I think it’ll encourage others to try similar so.

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  59:59

Yeah, I certainly hope so.

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:00:04

So what would be as we’re finishing up here, and I feel like we could talk for another two hours. What will be your message maybe to the community? Or maybe something that I didn’t know to ask you? What would you like to say in closing? Marie.

Speaker: Marie Murtagh  1:00:32

I think what’s coming up for me anyways, and the question that I asked myself as I am becoming myself, and of course, we’re all always in a process of becoming ourselves. And sometimes it comes more online and becomes more conscious and deliberate. But then same thing is happening, right for the Collective Edge. As an organization, it’s becoming itself. And, that, sort of when I think about any purpose of it, is not necessarily right for the Collective Edge to have be a star that,  when we go away, or whatever, or something, right, that it burns out, but how do we become ourselves at the same time, but builds something so that there’s a legacy? 

And I feel like too that this is where, it’s around the, the organizational buddies and friends and things like that and holding each other sort of accountable to that legacy. And yeah, right, which will become the thing right that a couple 100 years or whatever, from now people will look back and that’s what they will determine was, the benefit or what really came out of it, or what was the advantages of it. So

Speaker: Miljan Bajic  1:01:54

That’s a good way to put it, that talks about the mission, and the vision and the purpose. 

Speaker: Michael K. Spayd  1:02:03

Yeah, that’s why we’re ending with that.