019: Shut Up and Let Me Enjoy What I Enjoy with Bond Halbert

0:10 Deborah: Welcome to the TomorrowZone Catalyst podcast. I'm your host, Deborah Reuben. The more complex our world becomes, the more important it is to understand how are we making sense of it? Every day, organizations are navigating uncertainty, integrating AI, responding to shifting markets, making decisions that don't always have obvious answers. Yet even when people are looking at the same information, they don't always arrive at the same conclusions. Why is that? So recently, Jennica and I came across this article that gave us a simple but surprisingly powerful framework For thinking about that question.

0:54 And as we talked about it, we realized its implications reach far beyond individual perspectives. It also has something to teach us about how innovation and strategic decision-making and organizational clarity, and how we design teams that are ready for what's next. So joining me today is TomorrowZone's director of operations, Jennica Burgh. Jennica has an incredible ability to uncover ideas that challenge conventional thinking while revealing practical implications for organizations that are navigating change. Jennica, welcome to the show. Jennica: Thank you. I'm excited about this conversation. Deborah: Yeah, let's dive in.

1:35 Jennica: Yeah. So I'm gonna share my screen just so that you can… the audience here can see the article that we're talking about. And the article that we're discussing is called Prickles and Goo, which is just… And I love this picture of- Yeah, Deborah: it's actually- the prickly and the goo … the Jennica: picture Deborah: caught my attention. Yeah. So yeah, good job to the author who did that. Jennica: Yeah. And the author is Bill Richmond. And we will include a link to this article in the show notes like we've done with previous ones if you wanna read it yourself. So I'm just gonna give a brief kind of summary of this article so that our audience knows what we're talking about here. So drawing on the ideas of philosopher Alan Watts, Richmond describes two different ways humans tend to make sense of the world.

2:15 Prickly thinking gravitates toward precision, structure, categories, boundaries, explicit logic, and gooey thinking notices relationships, patterns, context, intuition, meaning, vibe. And what I appreciated most is that this isn't a personality assessment. This article argues that every one of us moves between these ways of thinking, depending on the situation. Sometimes we're looking for certainty and definition, and other times we're navigating ambiguity and discovering meaning. You know, and as Deb and I were talking about this article, we realized the bigger opportunity wasn't just understanding people, it's also understanding organizations. How do these different cognitive approaches influence decision-making?

2:56 How do they shape innovation? What do they reveal about organizational clarity? And perhaps most interesting, what happens when AI enters the picture as an incredibly capable, prickly collaborator? And so that's the conversation that we're gonna explore today. Deborah: I love this so much. Jennica: I know. Well, you are the one that found this, and you were really excited about it. So what resonated with you about this framework, and why do you think this language feels so useful for organizations that are navigating continuing increasing complexity? Deborah: Yeah. Well, as I was reading this article, I was just like, "Oh my gosh, I see this all the time." And just like the ar- the author said, like once you see it, you can't unsee it.

3:38 Mm-hmm. You see the pattern all over the place, and it, it just gave words to something that I've been observing as I'm working with teams that are cross-functional, and they're coming from so many different perspectives, and they're, with the best intentions, trying to work together to make awesome happen. But, um, you know, they're still running into friction. And so the one thing I loved about it is that it's not, like you said, it's not a personality assessment. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: It's modes of thinking that we continually move between and don't even notice. And, and I think that, you know, when I read it, I recognized it, and I see so much prickly and gooey situations happening in every innovation initiative and every software implementation I've ever been a part of.

4:27 It's like this invisible source of just so much friction, but once you c- once you see and understand what's happening, you can do something about it. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: And also, it's a really fun name. Prickles- It Jennica: is … and goo. Prickles Deborah: and goo. Um, and so I just think that it's a really fun way to create a different level of awareness- Yeah for how we work together. And in my book, Enter the TomorrowZone, I talk about how often, uh, transformation fails when we don't have shared language in cross-functional teams, and I think this gives us a, a shared language to understand the modes of thinking that we might be bouncing between- Yeah … without realizing it and gives us- permission to, to just pause for a moment and say, "You know, I think we may be in different thinking modes right now," instead of just arguing or assuming bad intent on the part of someone else.

5:20 Jennica: Yeah. And you know, it, I, I love that the artic- the author, he makes a point that when we're in one mode, it's very easy to look at someone in the other mode and go, "They're wrong." When in reality, both are super important and both bring value. And just, a- again, having that shared language of recognizing that, okay, the prickles are important to me right now, but the goos are important to you, and how can… You know, they, they're both important. So you know, and this moves into alignment. You know, you mentioned your book, Enter the TomorrowZone, and alignment is something that you talk a lot about, and it's a really important aspect of the TomorrowZone system. And this article highlighted that alignment isn't getting everyone to agree.

6:03 That's not what it means. So how can organizations not just create, but really ensure alignment with a team that's fluc- of fluctuating prickles and goo? Deborah: So it is, it's not easy, um, because, you know, just as a reminder, like, the, the, the prickly mode is where we have sharp edges. There's black and white. There's precision, certainty. And then the gooey mode is more fluid and, you know, it's, it's, it's not, it's not that. And, and we're looking kind of bigger picture. We're looking at interconnections.

6:44 And so the challenge is both of these modes are vital- Jennica: Yeah … Deborah: to succeed at any innovation initiative, especially if technology's involved. Jennica: Mm-hmm. Deborah: And so alignment is not consensus. Alignment is when we have shared understanding of, of why, while making room for different ways of seeing it. Yeah. And that's where it's important to bring in the different perspectives, the different backgrounds, different expertise so that we're looking at, uh, the problem that we want to solve and why we want to solve it from all of the angles that matter, rather than getting, you know, narrow, um, narrow-sighted or shortsighted- Yeah in what we're trying to do.

7:29 But then the other piece is that, you know, alignment Is about shared understanding and creating that shared understanding, but also validating that it exists and not assuming that it exists. And I think I see this often happen when, um, when I see often with technicians that are in prickly mode thinking. So, you know, they're, they're showing all of the, the features and the functionality maybe of, of like some software tool or something, and they're very technical about it, but the people that are processing it and taking it in might be in gooey mode, and they're not thinking in the same way in terms of black and white.

8:10 They're thinking, "What does this mean to me, and how is this gonna impact me in the future? And how do I connect this future thing that's uncomfortable to how I do things now, and what is it gonna look like?" And, and so then at the end of the presentation, you know, "Hey, does anybody have questions?" And they hear crickets, and they, they mistake the silence to mean, "Oh, I did a really great job here," because everybody's thinking in prickly mode. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: And they understand it. And so we're assuming that si- the silence is an assumed alignment, and it's not. It's actually a trap. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, we can, um, we can go, we can do a lot just, just by making sure that we're having bi-directional conversations and that we're validating shared understanding and alignment rather than just assuming it and moving on.

9:03 Jennica: Yeah. That's good. You know, one of the things that Richmond points out is that as individuals, we shift between prickly and gooey thinking ourselves. And what does this mean for executive decision-making? Deborah: Well, this, this got me 'cause, like, I, I constantly do this. I'm constantly shifting between prickly mode and, and gooey mode thinking- Jennica: Yeah Deborah: I mean, most days. And I bet most leaders are doing it, too, and don't notice it. Yeah. So, I mean, I am prickly when it comes to process and architecture and intentionality and strategy. I'm gooey, though, when it comes to culture and energy in the team and in the room and, and sometimes I'm leveraging both modes in the same meeting.

9:50 And I think that, you know, there's risk when it comes to decision-making from one mode without realizing it or without considering that others might be coming from those other modes. And this, this sounds like such a woo-woo and soft thing, but, like, once you see it, it can just, you know, make subtle changes in the types of questions that you ask or the way that you might engage your team in the conversation and how you make the decision. And, you know, the, the guiding principles And, and strong facilitation in these situations, they, they go a long way to bridging the gap between this prickly and gooey mode and making sure that we're on the same page, so to speak.

10:33 Um, and so I think that, you know, the, the challenge is, is recognizing it and maybe, you know, asking where might we be in prickly mode when this moment actually calls for gooey mode thinking? Um- Yeah … and I think that, you know, we talk a lot about the messy middle of innovation, and that's the time where it demands both modes. You need the rigor to hold the plan But you also need the intuition to read what the team is actually needing in the moment. Yeah. Because you're, you're taking something technical, but you're making meaning for people at the same time.

11:15 That's a gap that's tough to bridge if you don't have your team prepared to go through that well. And so I think that, you know, when you, um, when you're not prepared for it and all the prickles and the goo collide, then you end up with an even bigger, more expensive mess in the messy middle, and maybe some unnecessary drama. But I think that this, this topic is so interesting because it kind of wakes you up to a different level of awareness in how you think, but also how others might be thinking. And as I was thinking about it, I think it can bring another level of, of empathy to the table as you're, as you're dealing and, and in the past where you may have assumed ill intent- Jennica: Yeah Deborah: on the part of someone else, you could tell a different story in your head about what might be going on, and that could spark some different types of questions and conversations that can get things moving along positively.

12:14 I was thinking about a situation I'm advising a team and they're working with a, a software partner, and a piece of the config and development work came back and it just didn't look exactly like this business leader expected. And, um, you know, and when I think about it through this lens, we had the prickly mode technician executing exactly on maybe what was specced, handing it back, "Here it is, this is what you asked for." And then a business leader saying, "This is not what I wanted. You should just know what I want because you're in this industry." Um, and that's goo thinking.

12:54 Jennica: Yeah. Yeah. Deborah: It, you know, it… This is obvious. Well, to somebody who's in that technical, prickly mode thinking, it's not obvious. Yeah. And so my advice was this is an opportunity for a conversation. There's no ill intent on either side. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: I think what you have here is a mismatch in definitions of what good looks like or what success looks like, and this calls for a conversation. And it's a gentle nudge, "Hey, what happened here? This isn't the quality I was looking for. Did I miss it in, in what I specified? Did you miss it? Let's talk it through." It's not, it's not accusation.

13:35 Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: You know, it's just getting clear together. Multiply that by the hundreds, maybe even thousands of times that those situations come up across a single initiative. And if you can see this and you can catch it in the moment, you can save yourself so much time, money and drama. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: It really changes things Jennica: There, there was a quote, and I was trying to find it, um, but the, he, he makes the point that sometimes the argument that you've been having with someone else is actually the argument you've been having with yourself. Deborah: Mm. Jennica: Because of that shifting in between, right? And, and I was like, man, that is so powerful as a leader to just take the time to, to step back and do a little bit of self-evaluation and recognize, where am I struggling in this?

14:25 Like, where am I having a hard time finding what the happy medium is between the prickly and the goo? And am I projecting that onto someone else when in actuality it's something that I'm trying to resolve myself? And, you know, as leaders that, man, we're moving so fast, and there's so much coming at us, and r- really just taking just a pause to, to kind of do a little bit of self-evaluation. You know, is this an, is this a me problem that I'm putting onto someone else? Um, I don't even want to say problem. It's just conflict, I guess, you know, kind of trying to find that resolution, um, because we do. And, and there can be times where both the prickly and the goo are vital, and how do you, how do you bring them together?

15:12 And when we do bring them together, that's when we have something beautiful, and that takes a little bit of, of work. So, um- Deborah: Yeah. It takes intentionality. Jennica: Yeah. It does. It does. So where do you see this framework having the greatest implications for the future of organizations? Deborah: I mean, I don't know if this framework, like- will have massive impact for organizations. Um, I, but I, I see value in it. I mean, it's just an article that I, I came across. I'm like, ah, that is really unique and interesting lens and a different level of awareness- Jennica: Mm-hmm … Deborah: that could really help teams that are going through these tough situations.

15:53 And, and we know that not everybody thinks exactly the same. And, and, and so I think it's a, it's an interesting tool that, to have in your toolkit as a leader. If you're leading innovation, if you're, if you're accountable for the success of an innovation initiative, wherever you are, if you're an individual contributor on the team, whatever level you're playing from, I think that this is a framework that could really help you. But then I also was thinking about it related to the, the five shifts of the TomorrowZone System that I wrote about in my book. You know, the organizations that are gonna be able to thrive for the future and take on continuous transformation are embracing and living the five shifts that I talk about: align, imagine, co-create, empower and evolve.

16:36 But if we, if we zoom into the imagine shift, imagine is deeply gooey. It is. And you have to be willing to not know, to be able to hold ambiguity, to ask impossible questions. But executing on what you imagine, that requires the prickly discipline of guiding principles, of role clarity. You gotta have both. Yeah. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: But you sequence them with intention And, and it's not that one is better than the other. W- we need both to, to make this happen. And so I think that maybe, maybe the, the biggest implication to think about for, for leaders that are, are taking on and shaping the future is that when it comes to this framework, we need to be bimodal.

17:23 We need to be fluent in both modes, and recognize and, and, and leverage this to kind of shift the types of questions or interactions that we're having, and, and just get skilled at understanding which one the moment is asking for based on the context and the situation. Jennica: That's good. Towards the end of the article, Richmond makes the observation that really expands the conversation, and that's about AI. And he, he makes the point that AI is remarkably good at prickly thinking, and really there's not so much with the goo. And that, you know, and he talks about how sometimes the, the struggle that we have with AI is we're- we want it to make the inferences, we want it to be gooey, and it's simply not.

18:08 It's the most prickly thing out there. So if that's true- Very literal. Very literal. So, you know, if that's true, what becomes even more valuable about how we as humans collaborate with AI? Deborah: So this kind of hit me hard. I've, I've experienced this directly in my collaboration with AI over the years. But, but recently I've, um, I've come up with some workarounds to deal with this. But also lately I've been seeing a lot of people are discovering the prickly nature of AI and laughing at it. Yeah. And it's also amplifying just what makes us special as humans, which I think is kind of fun, but, like, there's some really funny meme videos out there I was gonna share- … but I don't have permission to share them on this show.

18:57 But I saw one just yesterday that I was trying to share with my husband, but I'm like, he's not really deep into AI. Like, it's, it's one of those, like, if you know, you know kind of things. Yeah, yeah. But, but it was a guy, um, talking to, um, a duplicate image of himself behaving as if it were the AI, and, and he's trying to split a sandwich in half. Now, when we say that, in our minds, we imagine the, the sandwich, imagine like a submarine sandwich, and you're gonna chop it in half in the middle, halfway, um, you know, in the- Yeah … length of that thing. But the AI doesn't know that. Has no context of what it means to be human.

19:39 Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: Or that when we say we want to cut the sandwich in half, that that's what we mean. And so the, you know, he was having the conversation with the AI, "Cut the sandwich in half." And the AI was like, "Yes, I will cut the sandwich in half." And it was like, you know, splitting it in the middle where all of the lettuce and the meat are- Yeah. … and stuff. Like that, right there, I'm cutting it in half. Sure. It's in half. "No, not like that. Do it better." "Okay, yes." And then it like turned it around, and it's like doing all these crazy things. But, you know That's a really great illustration of the difference, and, and I, I run into this in my own collaborations with AI, where, uh, you know, I wanna, I wanna get a point across.

20:23 And one of the things I'm learning is you can leverage AI to help sort out your gooey thinking, to make it prickly so that it works in AI. And so I even just did this this morning. Um, one of the workarounds that I found, I'll, I often will pit Claude against ChatGPT, um, for fun. And, you know- … they're just, they're just AIs. It's just machine intelligence. Yeah. Maybe it doesn't even know I'm doing it, but I don't care. So one of the workarounds that I've found is I'll, I'll, I'll ask one AI to build the prickly instructions based on my gooey spoken description of what I want to achieve. And then I take those instructions from that AI and I give it to the other AI, and I can get pretty darn close to what I want on the first try.

21:08 But I've found that I need to leverage AI as a goo translator to get the prickly instructions so that I can get the results I want. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: Okay, without context, that, that whole statement just sounded really funny- … to me. Anyway. Jennica: But I know what you mean. You're, yeah. Deborah: Yeah. Jennica: You're s- you're sort of really like, like, you know, just dumping it all in one. Deborah: Mm-hmm. Jennica: Tell me what I need, and then you're- Yeah … taking those instructions and actually feeding it into Deborah: the Jennica: other one. Yeah. Deborah: So… And it's like, like, we can do that with humans really easy, 'cause if I, like, I do this to you, Jennica, all the time. "This is what I wanna do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, stream of consciousness," whatever. And then Jennica can, like, through her own special magic, like, translate that into project plans and timelines and roadmaps and, and tasks and priorities and all the other things.

21:59 And so I think that, you know, this, this article kind of nails it. Like, our, our teams, our organizations are often running on invisible goo, where we're expecting something more prickly or vice versa. And we talk a lot at TomorrowZone, and actually, you started bringing this up and reinforcing it continually. We need to make the implicit explicit, and that is one of the things that we run into when we're collaborating with an AI, because it's very literal and it doesn't, you know… It does have an inference engine, but it doesn't, like, infer the same way we would as humans. It's, it's doing that based on how it's been trained and what it's been trained on.

22:41 And so, you know, I think that's… It's just, it's, it's just another level of awareness. You know, I hear this, um, all the time when I'm working with teams. "Well, they should just know." And it's not that way with AI. No. Jennica: Well, you know, when you think about, uh, just humans being gooey and kind of that innate being able to feel someone else out, and then you think about some of the huge disasters that we've had where companies have just unilaterally replaced humans with bots, and in areas like customer service where you have people that are just oozing emotion that are coming, right? And there's no goo, that they're being met with zero goo.

23:23 They're just being met with prickles, and it's a nightmare. I mean, it's the worst possible experience. And so it's… I th- I loved that he pointed that out, that we innately as humans, I mean, even the prickliest person has some goo in them, right? We know how to Deborah: deal with the goo, yeah. I mean, even- Jennica: Yeah … Deborah: Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory- Jennica: Yeah, he, he got there … Deborah: figured out how to deal with goo. Jennica: Yeah. Deborah: I mean, he's a really great example of prickly thinking. Jennica: Yeah, exactly. But he got Deborah: there. But even he switched modes from time to time. Jennica: Yeah. Yeah. You know? And so- Just recognizing that the bot's not gonna do it, and that's fine. It's not what it's made for. Yeah. That's why we still need humans, right? So… Well, Deborah: yeah, and I think that that's, like, the whole point of this article, you know.

24:07 It's… Let's get back to the human side of in- innovation and really understand what we're working with, whether it's with other humans or, or with AI. There's a difference when we're coming at it from a, a prickly mode or a goo mode, and it's just a different level of awareness and a, and an interesting new lens. So I think this is- Mm … one I'll come back to from time to time. Jennica: Absolutely. And, you know, one of the reasons that this framework stayed with us was because it shifts that conversation. It gives us new language. And instead of asking how we get everyone to think the same way, we begin asking how organizations intentionally benefit from the different ways of making sense of complexity, because that distinction matters. Future-ready organizations won't succeed because they eliminate differences in thinking.

24:51 They'll succeed because they create clarity while making space for multiple cognitive approaches to inform better strategic decisions. And as AI continues becoming part of, part of how organizations operate, that becomes even more important. Technology contributes extraordinary capability, but humans can contribute, contribute… can continue contributing context, discernment, meaning, and imagination. And perhaps the opportunity isn't choosing between prickles and goo. It's intentionally designing organizations that know when each creates value. So as you leave today's conversation, consider this: How is your organization making sense of complexity, and where might a different perspective unlock new possibilities?

25:37 And if this conversation resonates with you, check out Deb's book, Enter the Tomorrow Zone. It's now available on Amazon and an audiobook on Audible.com. And if you see yourself in it, book a call with us, because we would love to explore shaping the future with you. As always, we love it when you like and subscribe and share our episodes with a friend. Thank you for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious and choose to make awesome happen.