WAYNE BROWN: Hello, I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world, whom we’re affectionately referring to as ‘Team ET.’ Today, we’re back in the city of London and chatting with the Director at Periwinkle Consulting, Mr. Simon Copsey. Simon is on a mission to help organizations understand and unwind complex, cross-functional obstacles, enabling happier staff to deliver better software to customers sooner. Simon’s career has taken him from being a developer in the trenches to helping various organizations take pragmatic steps from the place of chaos and paralysis to one where it becomes a little easier to see the woods for the trees. Coaching at the organizational level, Simon promotes lasting organizational change, requiring us to find and replace downward spirals with virtuous cycles. However, as Simon says, organizations are complex, and no single person can see everything. Failing to tackle these downward spirals can lead to pains across the organization and, in particular, within IT. Failing projects, increasing costs, and reducing trust within the business, as well as ongoing attrition. Thankfully, Simon reports that surprisingly easy to find an uproot downward spiral patterns, removing all pains in one fell swoop. During our conversation, Simon explores some of the common downward spiral organizations face, as well as the tools that coaches and individuals can use to surface and discuss them in a way that allows for systemic change, even without formal authority. In our conversation as well, you’ll hear us unpack the real-world anatomy of a downward spiral, what it looks, sounds, and feels like in a struggling organization. Simon shares how his unique journey from hands-on developer to strategic consultant allows him to diagnose systemic issues others might miss. We delve into practical tools for creating psychological safety so teams can surface the real problems without fear. We discuss the critical mindset shifts leaders must make from firefighting commanders to systems architects who cultivate virtuous cycles, and Simon leaves us with actionable high-leverage techniques that anyone, even without formal authority, can use to start untangling complexity and sparking lasting positive change. It’s truly a master class in moving from chaos to clarity. So, let’s join that conversation right now with Simon Copsey.

INTRO: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

WAYNE BROWN: Hello, team. You know, many organizations find themselves trapped in that cycle of firefighting. I’m sure we’ve all been there ourselves, right? A situation where projects start to stall, costs start spiraling, and talented staff get burned out, it’s a usual scenario that we find ourselves in. And as leaders, we know something is fundamentally broken, but the complexity of the system often makes the root cause impossible to see. And our conversation today is going to explore how to break those costly downward spirals, and as our guest likes to say, to replace them with virtuous cycles of productivity and innovation. So, to guide us, we’re joined by Simon Copsey, a delivery and transformation consultant, Simon, hopefully, I got that right. specializes in helping senior leaders do exactly that, to unwind complex obstacles and to do it in weeks, not years. Simon, welcome to the ET project.

SIMON COPSEY: Wow, you explained it better than I could. Thank you very much for having me, Wayne. I look forward to talking about this. 

WAYNE BROWN: Why don’t we start by just getting a little bit of background, what you’re doing, and what has brought you to where you are now?

SIMON COPSEY: You know, sure, Wayne. So, I was a developer, and I slowly became more interested in what was happening behind the screen rather than on the screen, how teams can organize themselves around problems, and what gets in their way ultimately. And that led me into consulting across the full software development lifecycle from please to thank you. And in doing so, find some really interesting obstacles and their origins along the way, just as you’re touching on firefighting being a wonderful example of such an obstacle. 

WAYNE BROWN: What is a typical complex obstacle or a downward spiral? I mean, what does that look like for a leader?

[00:05:00] 

SIMON COPSEY: Ah, that’s a good question. So one might be, for example, if… so, when I say downward spiral and virtuous cycle, I’m kind of… forgive me, this is probably way ahead of me, Wayne, I respect your background. But just to be clear in my thinking, I’m thinking in terms of cause and effect. So, for example, you might enter an organization, you might see that there’s lots of conflicts between teams, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s very interesting.” But then one of the things you ask yourself is, where is that coming from? Why are these teams conflict? And conflict doesn’t just happen on its own; it’s caused by something, you’re arguing about something. And if you start to work backwards, you might see that one cause of that could be that there’s no agreed-upon overarching goal across teams. So different teams prioritize different work at the same time, but they value different work. So, they’re arguing, saying, “well, we should be focusing this on this, and not that.” But these teams need to work together to go all the way from please to thank you to actually finish the work completely, get out of the door, that delay, those arguments are costly to the organization. And often when teams conflict, senior managers need to step in. And if they step in, they get further removed from strategy and thinking, what are we doing and why, what is the overarching goal? They don’t have time to think about that. We can’t keep in this downward spiral where leaders, there’s conflicts in the teams, leaders step in, leaders have less time to think about the overarching goal, as a result, there is no goal, the team is complex, et cetera, et cetera. So, we have this downward spiral that each time around it gets worse as opposed to a virtuous spiral, which is the opposite. What comes up to you Wayne? Did that make sense? You’ve probably seen many things like that before.

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. Beyond the obvious failing projects, how do you see that downward spiral manifesting, probably in a day-to-day experience for the clients you work with? You know, do they have typical cycles or situations that arise?

SIMON COPSEY: Let me venture an answer and then just tell me if I’m kind of hitting the notes you’re expecting. So, a lot of these patterns is I think you’re kind of indicating is patterns that you only see over time. Or not only see, but that which is also only visible over time and through asking why, why are people arguing? Why are there conflicts? And so, when you work backwards through that, you realize this thing is part of a longer kind of timeline. In a day-to-day, I guess, you generally just see the symptoms, like a patient or a doctor. You don’t necessarily know where things have come from, but what’s visible to you right now, the visible symptoms are the effects that you have in place today. But that’s the danger, I think, is if the symptoms or the effects are the only things that are visible, it takes you further away from the cause. And if you’re not focusing the cause and you’re only treating effects, it’s like taking painkillers when you’re having some serious illness. 

WAYNE BROWN: Right. 

SIMON COPSEY: Yeah, sure, you feel a little bit better, but probably you’re just… probably you didn’t get to the bottom of things. So, I guess, you know, the kind of typical symptoms on the day to day are, you know, managers unable to focus because there’s just so much going on; there’s firefighting, focusing improvement everywhere because there are so many things that feel wrong and it’s hard to know where to focus if everything is a symptom, there’s always more symptoms than causes. And I guess delivery slowing down, attrition increasing, productivity progress to a goal, we’re not really getting closer to it, we probably don’t know what our goal is often because it has not been defined. But yeah, I could take, you know, all these symptoms probably sound familiar, but the patterns underneath and underlying cause is often quite different from organization to organization. But that was a bit of a tour. Did I hit on your note, Wayne? Tell me. 

WAYNE BROWN: No. So, I was just thinking while you were outlining then, if we brought you into a company and said, “okay, Simon, you have free reign,” how do you go about the… how do you start the process? Is it through conversation? Is it through setting up team meetings? Are you talking with the C-suite level to start with? What’s the actual process? 

SIMON COPSEY: Oh, I appreciate that Wayne, thanks for clarifying. So, I think the first question is, what is the goal? Because an organization or a team or anything is… you know, when we say better progress, transformation, they only hold meaning relative to a goal. So, unless we know what the goal is, my idea of improvement might be very different from yours. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah.

SIMON COPSEY: And until we are in agreement on that, we won’t agree what the action that we should take is. So, the very first thing is what’s the goal? What’s the one thing that we’re trying to optimize for? And in order to do that, there might be much several things that we need at any one time, but there should be one goal, one thing that we’re aiming for. And so, in an organization often is, you know, in many cases is improve profits now and the future, or kind of provide a more satisfying and secure workplace, it depends on the company, whether it’s, you know, a charity or what. But you have one goal to be optimizing for and recognizing to achieve that there’s several things you need, you can’t have a profitable company without happy stuff, because that staff will leave. 

[00:10:00] 

SIMON COPSEY: And then you won’t be able to improve profits in the future because you lost your biggest asset. So yes, but you need to know your goal, if you don’t know your goal, you won’t be able to make progress, productivity is progress towards a goal. Once you’ve got that, and once everyone has agreed on it, then you can move to the next step, which is saying, “what is getting in the way of that?” And the great thing is knowing the goal, it means you can filter what you look at, to just the things that are between you and the goal. And then once you know those obstacles, you can say, well, obstacles are generally just effects of something, as we discussed, where are they coming from, you find underlying cause, and that’s where you then focus your efforts. So, agree your goal, because if you don’t agree your goal, you’ll be having different, you know, if you try to move in different directions, you won’t agree actions. Then once you’ve agreed your goal, understand what are the obstacles that are relevant, they’re in the way of it, and where are they coming from and then you typically whittle yourself down to one or two underlying causes. Yeah, is that similar to how you’ve worked?

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah, I was just wowing to myself, because I was thinking of a situation we had recently, one of the challenges that we often come across is the willingness of the people within the company to actually open up. 

SIMON COPSEY: Yeah. 

WAYNE BROWN: It often takes time to really get to that root cause and I like the concept of starting with the goal, because that becomes the focal point and it sort of takes the blame scenario away. And so, “okay, let’s look at that target that we have and what are the obstacles getting in our way,” is what I have heard you say. So, I think that’s a nice method. 

SIMON COPSEY: Yeah, no, Wayne, you put it really well, I’m sorry, I didn’t answer the other part of your question, which is how do you typically do it? I generally do it in small conversations, as you say, to hopefully allow people to speak more freely. But you’re quite right, if people aren’t comfortable speaking up, more goes unsaid, if more goes unsaid, you’ll never get to the bottom of issues. But I think that even deeper in what you say, the main thing here is that people don’t come to work trying to cause problems, people aren’t the problem, it’s the conditions in which they work. As Deming said, I think, you know, 90% or 95% of problems that we see are to do with the system at work, as opposed to the people. After all, the organization hides these people, so they must be very competent, they’ve gone through this hard process to get into the organization. So really what the typical obstacle, the typical root cause of a lot of these problems, to be honest, is generally an assumption in the mind of managers, managers who set the rules, managers who kind of govern how things are done. Not because managers are trying to cause problems, it’s just very hard for them to see when they make a decision, the impact of that decision for quite a long period of time. But yes, from what you said, people are good and understanding that what’s getting in their way and where it’s coming from allows us to help them towards where they want to be in the organization. 

WAYNE BROWN: And do you find that being an external consultant, whether you’ve been brought in for a period of time or you’re just coming in to get an assessment, do you find that people are more likely to open up to you because you’re an external or are they more reluctant because they’re not sure what your relationship is with the senior executives and just what they can say safely? 

SIMON COPSEY: Yeah, that’s a good question Wayne, I think it depends on the setting. So, I’ve generally not had a problem with that, but I think it depends on how it’s framed, I would guess. So, for example, normally all conversations are anonymous and I never tell anyone what anyone said, sometimes I use quotes and things with permission, but otherwise it’s completely anonymous. But I think how the leaders frame me or a consultant is really, really important. If a leader says, “look, this isn’t because anyone has done anything wrong, we’re not doing a witch hunt here, but what we’re trying to do is work out how we can make work easier for you so you can spend more time what you enjoy doing as opposed to all the stuff that gets in the way, that’s what we want because that’s good for us, it’s good for you.” And it’s a much easier conversation. But yeah, and I think I’ve been very lucky to work with leaders who frame it in that way. So yeah, so that makes it very easy. 

WAYNE BROWN: Let’s dive into what I see as the core concept, which is trying to get rid of those downward spirals, whatever that definition might be with what you term virtuous cycles. What do you mean by virtuous cycles? And then do you have an example that you can share? 

SIMON COPSEY: Ooh, that’s a good one. So yeah, virtuous cycle is just kind of the reverse where over time it gets stronger. Ooh, that’s a good one. Maybe one might be, I’m not sure if it’s a virtuous cycle, but it’s definitely a nice feedback loop is something that you may well be more familiar than me with, which is, is it error budgets in software development?

[00:15:00]

SIMON COPSEY: Which is where in software development, you define the amount of uptime you want for your system, like how many nines, 99.9999% and that gives you a budget of minutes per year, which your system could be down. I don’t think it’s a virtuous cycle, but the reason that I find it quite interesting is it introduces a very helpful feedback loop where if the system that that team is working on exceeds the error budget, it’s down for more than the number of minutes per year that they’ve agreed, it forces them through an agreement to spend time on maintenance. Because the opposite of that, when that’s not in place, the typical approach is when a system is unstable, it’s firefighting, but they continue to invest and that firefighting takes their time away from delivering new features, but they still have deadlines in place that force them to deliver those features. So, they have to take shortcuts, which means they make the system even more brittle and having more fights on firefighting, the team gets more and more diluted and torn between firefighting and trying to get these things over the line. Whereas the error budgets force them to focus or give them the space to do what they want to do, which is, hey, we really need to focus on maintenance now and have leadership backing and things. So, it’s not really a virtuous cycle because it’s not amplifying every time around the effect, but it is kind of a nice feedback loop to illustrate how we can use these feedback loops and think about them to make sure when things go wrong, it shifts behavior in the right direction or shifts attention in the right direction. 

WAYNE BROWN: Got it. So, would you sit down with the client, team, individual and say, “what are the potential things we should be trying to work towards?” To use the virtuous cycle wording, but what are the things we should target here?

SIMON COPSEY: Ah, okay. My choice of tools and there are so many different tools out there, but the choice of tool I use is the Theory of Constraints just because it’s so straightforward, the thinking processes, and all they are is a way of visualizing the goal, the current reality, what is getting in the way of the goal, and then a future reality planning for what we do next. And the reason I like it is, firstly, it’s just so simple once you’ve seen it. And secondly, it’s visual. So, you can then put it in front of people and say, “hey, I’ll tell you a story, I think these are the problems that you’ve said we’re facing and I think this is where they’re coming from.” And it’s really just a cause-and-effect diagram, the Current Reality Tree. And so, the people go, “no, no, you’re wrong,” very, very easily. So, the goal tree allows us to work out what is the goal and what do we need to get there? What are the conditions that need to be true to have us have more of the goal? The Current Reality Tree helps us diagnose the current situation, understand where the problems are coming from that matter. And then the third one, the Future Reality Tree says, okay, well, if that’s the problem, what is the minimum amount of change we need to inject to make sure that we take all the current obstacles and invert them into actually positives, their inverse, in most cases. And so generally, what I’ll do is I’ll sit down and say, “okay, well, if we look at the Current Reality Tree, you know, why are we where we are? Here are the downward sparks, these are things that are amplifying the current situation. And when we move to the Future Reality Tree, we can then say, we want this not just to be a solution, but we want this to kind of amplify itself, we want it to be sticky, because that really makes a solution stick around if it’s reinforcing itself. So how can we design some feedback loops in such a way that over time we kind of see this magnification? So generally, I just use those tools that allows us together to design rather than just being, from my mind because I could be wrong, I can only see a few things, no one can understand reality, it is too complex, particularly systems like organizations. But when we put lots of minds together and get lots of scrutiny that helps us make it better and help us see things that we wouldn’t otherwise see, we get into something that might work. 

WAYNE BROWN: Great. And when you talk about systemic change, is that part of that outcome or that process? 

SIMON COPSEY: Yes, yes. And when I say systemic, really what I mean by that is looking beyond first order, looking beyond symptoms to where they’re coming from, and looking beyond immediate effects to think about what might happen. So, we could, for example, reduce the chances of negative consequences. 

WAYNE BROWN: Right. When you’re in that scenario and the fire is burning all around and the pressure is on from a consultant’s point of view, well, the client has the pressure on the consultant, I should say more accurately, to deliver a result, how do you sort of calm the water first of all, to get enough clarity within the group to start to make some headway, to start to really say, “okay, we acknowledge where we are and we’re ready to move forward?” Is there a methodology or a way that you approach it personally?

[00:20:00]

SIMON COPSEY: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then just to be clear, I’m still learning and I’m definitely not the smartest guy in the room, by any means. So, everything I do is not necessarily right. But I’ll tell you the way, because I’m sure there’s ways it could be improved. So, the great thing about the Theory of Constraints, similar to when you go to a doctor, establishing an underlying cause of a problem, at least in theory, suspected underlying cause is quite quick, right? You can have a conversation and very quickly, the doctor will consider different differentials, different particular underlying causes and say, “okay, well, if this is that underlying cause, I’d also expect to see these other things. Do I see those things? Oh, yes,” then that increases the chances of that underlying cause. And if that’s the case, let’s do this screening. So, that kind of diagnosis is very, very quick. Just a few conversations and you start to not just agree to symptoms, but what the underlying cause could be. And once you establish that, being able to visualize it and show why you believe that to be true using cause-and-effect logic, it allows you to then build that confidence very quickly as well, because you can start playing it back saying, “ah, this is where I think it’s coming from.” So really, what I’m saying in a very long way is there’s always pressure, there’s always problems, but being able to very quickly diagnose and with reason allows us to kind of shift the focus a little bit from the short term to the long term as well. But that being said, you still need, you know, staff still need time and the leader still needs to be able to create that space, needs to have right relationships with their stakeholders across the organization to say, “hey, we need to slow down to go faster and this is why.” So, it’s nothing about me, it’s about the leaders that I’ve been fortunate to work with, they’ve created a space and environment. The advantage is that the tools that I’ve learned from… these are Eli Goldratt’s tools, they’re not me, they’re very quick to help understand the situation and get that… reach consent on a correct diagnosis. 

WAYNE BROWN: And how often do you get involved in the project themselves, like you’re on board to help them work through the project? And if so, what’s the methodology that you bring? Do you use Agile or Lean to the project? 

SIMON COPSEY: That’s a good question. Yes, I’m fortunate to sometimes be involved in the delivery projects and in doing so, help projects deliver themselves by using that same kind of improvement approach, the transformation approach. But it’s completely depends, normally I just do whatever is native and then look for where the constraint is. So, for example, one organization… and if we think of, you know, a project delivery or kind of delivering work from please to thank you is like a pipe, the one thing about a pipe is always a bottleneck, there’s always a narrowest point by definition. And that’s the same in organizations, when you’re doing the project, there’s always one team or step in that process that’s the most capacity constraint that will do the least in the most amounts of time. And that’s not their fault, that’s just the conditions in which they work and the nature of their job. So, there’s always going to be one. And then the choice of whether Agile or Lean or something more kind of holistic and not so localized is the right choice depends on that. So, for example, if… yeah, so I think it just depends. I think understanding where the constraint is in the process and understanding whether introducing Agile or Lean will actually help could be informed by that. Most of the time I find just translating to Agile or Lean is kind of almost like a lottery process, unless you understand the problem underneath. And many times that won’t be the solution, the solution is often kind of further upstream, for example, in helping bringing the people who have an idea of understanding of the problem into the team that’s creating the solution so you can reduce the feedback loops there, reduce the waste. But yeah, what I’m saying in a very long way is it depends. 

WAYNE BROWN: The difference between the public sector and the private sector when you’re working as an external consultant and you’re brought in to work with the public sector, do you find that the speed of engagement and the speed of willingness are different than when you’re working with the private sector? 

SIMON COPSEY: Ooh, that’s a really good question. I’m not sure about the speed, actually, I’d say in some cases, because there’s generally in the public, I’ve only had maybe two, three years in the public sector, I have found that bureaucracy exists. I have to say the people are incredible, they’re some of the best people I worked with and the most willing to try things out. So, I absolutely loved my time in the public sector. But, you know, the processes generally have, you know, lots of checks and balances that have been added to over time. 

[00:25:00]

SIMON COPSEY: But I think the thing that strikes me and I think maybe that’s why the checks and balances have come about is generally… and I think Eli Schragenheim talks about this, he says, if I’ve understood correctly, in many organizations, the number one problem is there’s no goal. And with no goal, everything is, you know, there’s no way of prioritizing, which means there’s a lot of work in process, there’s no way of determining right from wrong in a way, you know, what we should be doing versus what we shouldn’t. And in the public sector, it’s even harder to set the goal because what is the goal of, I don’t know, the passport office? Is it to send out more passports? Well, no, not necessarily, because that’s just activity. You know, sending out more passports each day doesn’t mean that they’re doing a better job for the public. So, what should the goal be? It’s not to generate profits, which is why it’s harder in the government, it needs to be more creative. In the private sector, you can say profits are a proxy measure of success, whereas in the government, you don’t have that. So that makes it really hard. And so, I think then when I ‘s hard to define a goal from an effectiveness perspective, it becomes easier to set a goal in terms of efficiency, cost. And so, we look for where we can drive cost savings, and that becomes kind of checking, double checking, triple checking where we’re going to spend money before we do and that leads to bureaucracy, additional steps, everything taking longer, I think. So that’s the one thing I did see that, you know, if you want to procure something and it’s over a certain amount, it takes a lot longer, months versus days or weeks. But I think that’s just natural, because it’s harder to be creative and be clear on a goal for the public sector, if that makes sense, it made me think.

WAYNE BROWN: Is there a particular mindset that you see with senior leaders in particular that needs to change or shift for them to move from fighting the fire to actually architecturally designing these virtuous cycles? Do you have to spend time from a coaching perspective almost with those leaders? 

SIMON COPSEY: The shift here is, as you said, kind of moving from analytical to systemic and thinking, right? And the analytical mindset, which we’ve been taught and schools focus on is when we have a problem, we break the problem down to smaller pieces and we tackle each piece in isolation. When we have a toy, to understand how the toy works, we take it apart and understand each piece in the hope that we can understand how it will operate as a whole. But that’s not the case in organizations where, as you said, the ripple effect, you put it so well. If we have the ripple effect, we recognize that organizations are independent and a change in one place will affect another and so we have to understand it together, that comes from Aikov and this bit comes from Eli Goldratt, where he suggested, as kids when you’re… kids are really good at asking them why and parents will entertain them for a little while. Why is this guy blue? Blah, blah, blah. And parents will answer, but after a while they’ll say, “go ask your mother” or “go ask your teacher,” we get impatient. And as we get older, we kind of have the ‘why’ taken out of us, which is unfortunate because why is the question that we need as managers? Why helps us get from symptom to cause to understand where things are coming from. But unfortunately, in organizations, after the education we generally receive, we’re taught to treat what’s visible and assume effects are causes in themselves. If there’s rising attrition, introduce a retention bonus. If delivery is slowing, introduce scrum. If people are conflicting in teams, then we make all the processes the same. But we don’t really take the time to work backwards and say, “why is this the case?” So, I think that’s one of the biggest things; curiosity, but also knowing how to channel that curiosity into the right words. And as you say, all of that requires the psychological safety, requires people to be able to speak up and ask questions. Recognizing the world, is it more complex than our minds can comprehend? But we can get closer to it through asking why. So, I think, yeah, it’s that curious mindset that’s supported by the conditions of the organization. So, the question “why?” can be asked, perhaps. 

WAYNE BROWN: And ‘why’ can be framed in a number of ways. So, the skill of asking that, of course, is also important. But putting that ‘why’ to one side, is there a single most important question a leader should be asking about their portfolio or about the situation that’s going to help them uncover that downward spiral?  Like, yes, we need to understand why and we need to be curious in doing it. But if I’m a leader and we have all these different situations, scenarios going on, is there a framework I can use, maybe a better way of citing that? 

[00:30:00]

SIMON COPSEY: Oh, see, yeah, absolutely. The Theory of Constraints, Current Reality Tree, and the cause-and-effect diagram, which just visualizes the why and allows us to then build consent. Because I think the other part of it is recognizing, is seek to understand before being understood. In that, if we do agree, the world is complex and therefore, there’s things that we just can’t see or perceive until we talk to other people making at least help us start to build a better understanding of the world, we need to incorporate their views. And so, I think, I’m trying to put it in another way, fundamental attribution error is dangerous, as a manager we promoted because we’re maybe good at our job but then it might be the Pizza Principle where we’re promoted and we’re not very good. And certainly, as a manager, I wasn’t very good, I failed because I thought, “oh, I’m a manager now, I must know what I’m doing, therefore, I should make all the decisions.” 

WAYNE BROWN: You should make all the decisions, yeah.

SIMON COPSEY: Exactly. But again, I have a team, the team knows the work better than me. Now I’m kind of removed from the work. And I start making decisions that are not informed by the reality of the situation because I can’t see it, only they can and together. And so, I think as a manager that there’s two sides to this; one is first understanding reality for what it is so that when we take action, we’re taking action that’s more likely going to create the benefits that we’re looking for rather than fall short or create negative ripples. And secondly, that just comes from trusting other people from believing people are good, that their views are important and asking why. But yeah, if we were looking at frameworks, solid frameworks, the current reality treatment through constraints or any cause-and-effect diagram that helps us understand where things are coming from and get that validated by people on the ground or invalidated so we can focus in the right place is probably what I’d recommend, it all starts with why.

WAYNE BROWN: Very good. Looking back at your journey from developer to transformation consultant, if you think down, we go full circle almost, but we come back to your original mission of trying to successfully replace like a major downward spiral with something more virtuous. What do you actually see and hear as you get to the end of that point where you’ve been successful? What’s the acknowledgement or the recognition that tells you that you’ve achieved what you wanted to? 

SIMON COPSEY: I think there’s probably a difference between what I want to hear and what I’ve heard, maybe. Although actually that’s not necessarily true, but I think what I want to hear, there’s that quote, I can’t remember, from Lao Tzu, that my father quite liked, which was something like, I’m going to get it completely wrong and try and apply it to management, but it’s something like, ‘when a good leader succeeds, his team says, “wow, you did it.” When a great leader succeeds, his team goes, “wow, we did it.”’ Because all the manager has done should be is creating the conditions for the team to succeed, the team succeeds. And I think more recently I got to that where I’m just creating the conditions for the team to succeed. But I think in my career, I was hearing more, if I was successful, if the team was successful, “well done, Simon.’ But if I’m really doing my job, you shouldn’t be able to trace anything I’ve done to the results, it should all be the team and me just getting out of their way. My friend say that the… and my mentor says that, “a manager’s role and a parent’s role is to get out of their kid’s or their team’s way.” And that’s exactly it, which means that really there should be nothing, there should be silence after me doing a good job. 

WAYNE BROWN: You almost got Lao Tzu verbatim I think with the quote

SIMON COPSEY: Oh, I’m not very philosophical. Yeah, I’m not very philosophical. But yes, that quote was beautiful. So yeah, it’s a really, you know, the silence should be the right thing, because I should have just been creating the conditions that should have already been there for the team. 

WAYNE BROWN: What’s the future looking like? Where are you aiming to be in the next 12 months? Anything on the horizon? 

[00:35:00]

SIMON COPSEY: So as for the last year, I’ve been mostly a parent, which has been wonderful and it has been a difficult market. But what I would really love to do, a lot of my focus over the last couple of years has been shifting into… sorry, my cat is coming to say hello, has been shifting into helping multiply the impact of managers as a consultant and I really enjoyed that. But what I’d love to do is I’m wondering if a lot of another way of doing that is from the inside, as a manager helping multiply impact myself, but also helping multiply the impact of those around me. So, my desire is to help staff to lead a better thing sooner, I’ve been doing that as a consultant, I’ve enjoyed it. But I’d love to be in for the long haul as a manager on the inside, helping other managers multiply their impact, helping, as we talked about, you know, move from analytical thinking to systemic thinking, but really focusing on the benefit for staff who are the largest stakeholders in organizations. 

WAYNE BROWN: Well, what’s a suggestion you have for our listeners then to help you fulfill that immediate desire? What would you say to our leaders who are listening today that they should or could do tomorrow that’s going to help them improve their role and their function as leaders? 

SIMON COPSEY: Ooh, that’s a good question. So, Wayne, I think we’ve talked about why, we’ve talked about seek first to understand before being understood so you get the other side of the story, because we’ll never understand the full story ourselves. I think there was one other one coming up for me, which was conflicts, every conflict can be evaporated, there’s no contradictions in nature. And I heard this a few years ago, again, from Eliyahu Goldratt, and I found it really hard to believe. So, people are good, all conflicts can be evaporated, seek first to understand before being understood. All those things go together and if we do put those together, that’s where we can evaporate every conflict. Typically, when we see a conflict in an organization, it either means that we’re trying to work towards different goals. But in an organization, over a longer period of time, if we’re all, for example, trying to increase profits now and in the future, there can be no conflict in the goals. And so that leads only to conflicts in the means of achieving the goals. But again, if there’s a conflict in the means of achieving goals, if we’re all trying to get to the same destination but we’re taking different routes, that means we have different assumptions about why one route is better than the other, but there’s only one reality. So, if we see advantages in different routes, it means there’s some assumptions that haven’t been verbalized and if we are able to verbalize those, ask why, say, “why you came that way?” We seek to understand for being understood, and recognize people look at, you know, that people have good ideas, that they’re smart. We can actually realize that… actually, we can probably jump in the same Uber to the same destination, we don’t need to take different routes. So, I think whenever there’s a conflict in either route, recognize it’s duality, recognize it’s false, it’s not really that way. And there is a way of getting a win-win situation in every case, for the organization, for the staff, for long term versus short term, there’s a win-win solution everywhere if we look for it, by uncovering those assumptions. So, I think, yes, I think, look for win-win solutions and conflicts by asking why, seeking to understand before being understood and recognizing your staff. 

WAYNE BROWN: Where are people able to connect with you if you’d like them to and where can they follow what you’re doing? 

SIMON COPSEY: I appreciate that. I am on the interweb at curiouscoffee.club, not.com but club. I’m on LinkedIn as well. And The Curious Coffee Club has articles, a free book, and videos to help people find ways to unwind the complexity in organizations, help their organization get out of their own way. And yeah, we’d love to learn from others. 

WAYNE BROWN: Excellent. Well, we’ll definitely leave a link to those. I have a question that I ask all our guests, and that is around technology and the future; where do you see the whole journey playing out? And I know that’s an open-end question and we’ll try and keep it as free as possible, but do you have a vision or you have a thought about this yourself? 

SIMON COPSEY: No, I think that’s a really good question. I think that there are two things that I believe about technology, one is that technology is a solution and technology is changing and the number of solutions available change at a huge rate but what doesn’t change generally at such fast rate are the problems to be solved. And so, if we focus on the problems, actually things are a bit more stable. But the second thing is technology is really good at solidifying processes that creates efficiency. But the problem is if we solidify the wrong process, we make it harder to change. 

[00:40:00] 

SIMON COPSEY: So, well, some interesting technology and the way to which it is changing is crazy, it gives us more opportunities for how to solidify our processes. I think the key thing that we need to ask ourselves is before we use any of those technologies out there, whether cutting-edge or not, is what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? And are we going to solidify the right solution with technology before we do? So, I think I answered that quite indirectly, but those are the two things that come up for me when we talk about technology and the rate of change. 

WAYNE BROWN: Yeah. I’m not sure there’s a right or wrong answer, it’s more of a research question on my part, I like to get the input from more of our guests to try and see where they see everything heading. But thank you for that, I mean, you’re probably much closer than many people I speak with to that lesson, so, thank you for that. Simon, an excellent discussion, an excellent conversation, we’re out of time. Thank you for being on the ET project. 

SIMON COPSEY: No, thank you for having me and for such an exploratory conversation, I feel fulfilled for being with you. Thank you, Wayne.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us on the ET project, a show for executive talent development, until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at ‘coaching4companies.com.’

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