Ian Wright, Founder & CEO at Disruptive Innovators Networks - Navigating the Seas of Change

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi! I'm Shannon, Lucas, and I'm the co-CEO of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world. This is our podcast move, fast, break, burnout, where we speak with catalyst executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And today, I'm super excited to have Ian Wright with me. Ian is the founder and CEO of the disruptive Innovators network. You can understand why he's here today a forum he established in 2018 for leaders wanting to understand and respond to disruption threats

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and develop their corporate innovation capabilities. He's worked as a senior leader at the Senior Executive Level as a deputy Chief executive and director for the last 20 years, most recently at House mark for the UK social housing sectors, data and business improvement, organization welcome and so good to have you.

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Ian Wright: Thank you very much for that warm welcome, Shannon, and great to be speaking to all the lists executives that are out there.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: All right. Well, let's start because I'd love to hear you share a little bit about your catalytic journey, maybe a few career highlights that you're proud of that. Help us see your catalytic nature.

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Ian Wright: Okay, then. Well, I mean my journey, as I say, started 40 years ago now. So that was when I came into the world of work didn't have a clue. What I wanted to do. I probably some people would say, I still don't have a clue, but the journey has been a really interesting one, and anybody who sort of started out, I would always.

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Ian Wright: you know, say to them, Look, please just enjoy the journey as much as the destination. As you go as you go through this as well. So I started off working in public sector predominantly in what's called the housing sector here in the UK. The affordable housing public sector in the UK. And the Us. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot about people I learn a lot about the kind of things

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Ian Wright: that can help you in your work environment, the ability to communicate the ability to empathize the ability to understand the problem that you're trying to solve. So, as I say, I worked in a small council here in the UK. And the local authority sector. I looked after the housing stock, my local Mp. At the time, Tony Blair, I don't know whatever happened to him. But you know that's probably for another podcast I suppose, but

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Ian Wright: a lot of the things that you learned there, particularly when you're in a front facing part of the business, where you are talking directly with

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Ian Wright: clients, customers, consumers, things like that. You really really learn about what's important. And, as I say, the way I learned was, I made mistakes, not everything that I did went well, in fact, quite a few things went wrong. Nobody got hurt, I should add, but I was in a position whereby I was doing things that I thought was in the best interests of people. But it's because I hadn't took time to understand what was the problem I was trying to fix.

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Ian Wright: and that was, that was a very, very early lesson that I sort of learned the second lesson that I learned, and this will fit with the whole catalyst values was the importance of paying things forward. And what I meant by this is the human relationships that we form. People will, you know won't remember what you say, but they will remember how you made them feel. And I I do sort of remember.

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Ian Wright: you know, the amount of times where somebody asks for help and say, Yeah, I don't know if I can help you. But yes, I will do that, and it's something I've I've deployed throughout my my sort of career. If there is something that I can share, I can help, I can involve people with, because I know that's an area of interest, I will invariably pay that forward. And the sort of social platforms that we've got now makes that so much easier that your reach is just

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Ian Wright: global. And I love people who will say, Oh, I was just thinking of you. And I saw this video. I saw this document, or would you like to come along to this sort of session around that. So I did that, and I built up various membership networks. I suppose it was a natural place for me to go. So I'm mainly known for building communities of interest. I grow them. I scale them and that's just basically about providing services for people. So I suppose you would say

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Ian Wright: in the service industry around that and then my last sort of real job. Was Deputy CEO and I retired from that. I say retired. I left because basically, I was probably becoming unemployable because, you know, in the environment which we operate. You see that many good examples of good businesses, good cultures, and things like that

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Ian Wright: that. You know, you don't really have the patience to sort of get involved in things. And and, to be honest, I've probably been asked to to lead on and deliver too many change or transformation programs. And you know, a bit like, you know the work that you'll be involved. You will see a lot of examples of reinventing of the wheel and doing the wrong thing right kind of thing, and I just thought, well, look, you know, it's time for somebody else to take over.

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Ian Wright: And I set up the disruptive innovators network, which was, you know, shamelessly pinched from the Claire Christensen

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Ian Wright: research and book, and I thought I would try and help and build a community within my sector. We did that we're now 6 years old in August this year, and we're now a thriving community of innovators or people who are interested in innovation. So we've set up a subscription as a service model. We've got a nice little community of 100 organisations

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Ian Wright: in statistical terms. That's about 1.7 million homes. 40% of the marketing in the Uk, which is more than big enough for a man of sort of you know my attention span and things like that. So so that's my story. And the and the journey continues. And I think the one thing I would say is, if you are running like yourself, you're running your own business.

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Ian Wright: It is very different to working in a corporate, and some of the things that you need to pay attention to are just as important, but very, very different to the corporate environment. I haven't written a board paper in 6 years.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What's it?

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Ian Wright: Board paper these days. Kpis, what's a kpi? But there are other things that you've got, because ultimately you are judged on the service that you give to people, and if you don't deliver value well, people will leave. And suddenly you haven't got a business.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing, amazing journey. And I'm guessing that a lot of our listeners can relate to the yeah, how long do I stay in the corporate world where we're reinventing the wheel and having to like, bring the patience every day to go through the mechanisms of driving change in large organizations. So, thanks for sharing that. And I love the key takeaways, you know, trying, making time to figure out what you're really trying to fix, and the importance of paying it forward. So thanks for those

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'd love to understand for you what it means. Like sort of, I guess. Taking a step back, how you relate to the concept of catalyst. And then how does that, being a catalyst support you as an executive? I heard some of the challenges. What are some of the upsides? Maybe.

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Ian Wright: Yeah, I mean for for me, for me, Shannon. It is the number one thing anybody who wants to get on in life who wants to sort of make a difference. The ability to connect is absolutely the number one thing, and and my experience around that has always been. If you ask. So so you know, we were ended up talking and doing this podcast because people have connected us and

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Ian Wright: and brought us together around this and and 90% of the time when you are wanting to do something, or you're wanting some help.

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Ian Wright: If you ask somebody, even if they're a very, very senior leader or a chief executive, and things like that, if you ask in the right way, and there is some value in it for them sometimes, even if there isn't value in it for them, they will say yes to you, and I think a lot of people are put off connecting because of that fear of a rejection.

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Ian Wright: Once, you know, you know, 10 years ago, once I got to realize, actually, I've been rejected loads, and I'm still standing here. It it almost becomes of yeah. Some people aren't gonna want to engage with you. But that doesn't stop you asking. And I think from a catalyst executive perspective. It does 3 things for me. 1st of all, it provides that. I suppose that peer network and community, which is really really important.

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Ian Wright: Nobody is an island, and you're not on your own trying to solve the problems you've got an exceptional resource to tap into. But the 3rd thing is probably the biggest thing in terms of when things aren't going a quarter plan, and when you are working on your own for a large part of time it can become quite challenging. It's that little bit of inspiration to say, Yeah, you know what? That's exactly what I need. And I'm off again. Kind of thing.

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Ian Wright: So I think for me. Those are the 3 elements, the inspiration, the community, and the resource that when you pull that together you've got a really really powerful mix.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's so important. And we are also community builders. So I totally hear you on this level. The catalyst Leadership trust is for catalyst execs. But when we ask people, the executives what value they're getting out of it. There's a story that they have to tell to their business to maybe justify the membership or whatever.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But when they talk about what it means to themselves, having the peer network for the troubleshooting, but also connecting that peer network back into the inspiration like the catalyst they're like. I can go other places to get the domain expertise for the title that I am, but there's no place, else that I can go to get that juice from the other catalyst executives. And they're like, Yeah, you can dream bigger. And you can connect dots faster. And all of this stuff. Do you see that in your network, too.

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Ian Wright: Absolutely, Shannon. You know you think you are unique in terms of trying to solve a problem with an issue and then variably, you know. Now whereby? Yeah, I've heard that one before. Go and speak to this person over there. They've been there in a situation around that. And I think. Yeah, you know, I think, as I say, this, thinking that we've always got to start from scratch you. Don't you know there are people out there, and you would be amazed

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Ian Wright: how people love telling their story of how they actually got there. They just want a A, an audience and be able to tell. You know how they got to where they are around this. And I I think if if you are a natural sort of community builder, you recognize, and you get that importance of paying it forward and sharing. You know, it's Re. It's really powerful stuff. It's really, really powerful.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Totally, and I've already experienced your generosity. But it's like catalysts also show up with. They're like I might not have anything to contribute other than I'm excited to help the person in front of me solve that problem right? And so that paying it forward, and that connection is sometimes a motivator enough by itself.

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Ian Wright: Yeah, I mean, you know, there, there are people out there who are just natural givers, you know, who don't want anything in return. We don't do with any sort of expectation around that. And but equally, you know, if there's something that you've got that's of some value, whether it's a presentation, or you know just, you know, a lender, friendly ear. People see that as value as well, and I think you know what, from a catalyst sort of perspective. And what one of the biggest

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Ian Wright: differences I find between active catalysts, and perhaps those who are not quite ready for the journey. That is, there's a phrase that I use is, you know, if you don't leave the harbour you'll never discover new shores.

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Ian Wright: And yeah, and I can't remember who I sort of picked that up from. But it really sort of struck me that, you know. If you want to keep doing what you're always doing, we'll just stay close to the shore. Don't take any risks. Don't try, and, you know, upset anything. But actually, the people who are gonna really build something who are gonna

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Ian Wright: find new things are those who are prepared to just put themselves into that little comfort zone of uncertainty where they don't have the answers for things. But actually they've got an aspiration to find out what those answers are.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And it's so interesting because sort of one of the attributes from our research that defines catalysts is, other people will describe us as being comfortable with risk and ambiguity. But often when the catalysts hear that they're like, I don't know if that's true. But then will say one of the catalyst reframes for the organization. Once they see the vision of change that they need to create is that it's risky not to do this thing

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: right? So it's like, there's this sensing piece. It's like, Okay, I'm in the harbor. I could go a bunch of directions. But there's a hurricane over here. So like, let's leave the harbor and get out of the way, because it's risky to stay here. Do you see that in your work.

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Ian Wright: Absolutely, and depend on what sector you're in. You perhaps don't need to leave the harbour to continue to have a you know, a good career and a good quality of life. I think I think part of the challenges for leaders. The further up an organization you go

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Ian Wright: you can start to exhibit. I suppose, behaviors whereby courage is, is sort of is is knocked out of you by fear and by fear of how far you've got to fall. So hang on! It's took me a long time to get to the top of this, and I'm in the executive suite and things like that. My word, if I upset the board here. Oh, look how far I've got to go down, and and particularly when that's tied into some of the hygiene facts.

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Ian Wright: actors that you have, whether it's mortgages, schools, holidays, all of those.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Relay.

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Ian Wright: It can. It can take the courage out of you, and I think you know we are still on a journey to understand about how, when you get to a top of an organization, you can still think like an entrepreneur and you can still exhibit those behaviors because, people people

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Ian Wright: do what they see you do not you say you do? And.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Right.

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Ian Wright: Acting cautiously. You know that your direct reports are more likely to to mirror what you're doing there.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: 100 totally so important. It's a conversation we don't have. Enough is the sort of financial, you know, impact of being a changemaker. But it's a great segue, because I'd love to ask you like. So can you share one of one or 2 of the biggest challenges that you faced as a catalyst exec. And what helped you most in overcoming those challenges.

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Ian Wright: I suppose my my biggest challenges are ones where I had an idea. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but nobody else did. And you know what it's like. The challenge you got between stay in the course, but actually pivoting.

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Ian Wright: and it's probably only in the last sort of you know 6 or 7 years when I've got to a comfortable state that no matter how much I'm invested and tied into a brilliant idea or a brilliant solution. That actually, if people don't want it, or it's not the right time and innovation for me is all about timing. It's absolutely all about timing is that I've now got a much better ability to let it go.

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Ian Wright: And it might be something that I let go for a period of time might be something I let go forever and sort of come back with. So I think one of the key things that I've learned is that ability to sort of play our pass.

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Ian Wright: And you know I'm still learning, and it still vexes me. If I'm not in a position to to deliver this brilliant event or this brilliant leadership program, or things like that. But ultimately

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Ian Wright: you only want to be sort of half a page ahead of your sort of client base and not a page ahead. And I think this is some things that I've certainly made these mistakes over the years that I'm saying. Well, you need to know about this

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Ian Wright: but actually, they're struggling with the day-to-day job and it's it's quite hard to sort of get them to do anything more more than that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yes.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: totally. This is it exactly. I mean, this is what we what we teach in the class. And there's a thing that we call like the not right. Now list. So that's 1 thing like where you know to your point, you don't have to let it go like maybe it's just that. It's not the right time. But I also love coming back to what you were talking about earlier about, like the connecting and listening people, and trying to figure out what problem you're trying to solve, like, what what is going on in the organization that's aligned to what you can help with. I love, that

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: is there a second one? You have.

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Ian Wright: Yeah, I suppose, in terms of sort of overcoming challenges, a large part. The biggest part, the biggest issue we sort of come across is that this is not a technical issue, right? So technology, as you're aware, it is advancing at such a rapid state. Everybody's talking about generative AI, and how that's going to impact on business. But we fail to understand the importance of organizational culture, and particularly people within an organization.

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Ian Wright: And if we do not bring on board the people, and in a way which makes them feel safe and respected and valued doesn't matter how good the technological advancement is going to be, it will never take off, because people will never pick up and use it. And I've seen too many examples and too many mistakes where that has been the case that we've got this brilliant solution here. It's going to transform the customer experience.

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Ian Wright: you know, colleagues in the business just don't rise to it because they've not been involved with this. And you know, communication as a leadership skill is just so critical. And I I've learned this. My course. I've not been the best communicator, and probably people would say, I'm I'm still not but what I have learned. And again, if I was gonna share 1 1 key skill for catalyst executives out there, which is basically

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Ian Wright: become a storyteller. You know, techniques, techniques of good storytelling and the ability to sort of, you know, bring to life. What? you know what you're trying to do. So there's a great saying, you know, data tells stories sell. And I really really sort of believe in that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. Okay, I wanna go back to the 1st challenge that you shared. And I hear that you're you know you. You've you've landed on the place where, if they don't really want it, maybe it's not the right time. I love the play or pass sort of phrase, but that's hard for catalyst when you can see so clearly like we can feel in our bones like this is the thing that the organization, or whatever has to the direction that we have to head the challenge that's coming.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: How do you know when to? And this connects to your culture? When? How do you know when to push just a little bit or socialize a little bit more, to maybe bring more people on? Or when do you know that there's just too much signal that it's not the right time.

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Ian Wright: Yeah, I mean, a a lot of this. Again, can't necessarily be evidence. A lot of this is just sort of good instinct. And again, this is something else that I've learned that you know, you can spend a lot of time trying to gather data and evidence around things when actually as a as an introvert. You've got to trust your instincts, and you've got to trust you got to say, actually, does this feel right? Do I understand.

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Ian Wright: You know what the market space is for this particular business or this particular sort of product. And actually, you know, you've got to want to do it, and I think the the the best space for sort of panelists to sort of. I suppose

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Ian Wright: fishing is the area where, if organizations and people know they need to change, but need some help with the how.

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Ian Wright: And it's the how bit that I always find is sort of the hardest bit, because some of that can get quite technical. It's a new skill. So you've got to bring people in. That creates uncertainty. It creates fear. It creates the unknown in terms of how is this sort of going to sort of turn out around that? But ultimately, Shannon, you have to be in a position whereby you say

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Ian Wright: I can't convert you. I can't help you, so it's it's not my circus, not my monkeys kind of thing, and you've got to be prepared to walk away from that, and you've got to walk away from hard. I mean, you know I have a I have a phrase that which I won't use. Obviously on a a family friendly podcast like this. But basically in summary, it's, you know, never work with idiots because they'll grind you down and they'll beat you with experience.

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Ian Wright: and if people are sapping the energy out of you, and you can see that, and it's taken out of you. Well, that is not good. It's fine to be able to sort of say and say, Look, there's different ways.

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Ian Wright: Can I challenge you on that? Can we explore this sort of a bit further, but you do get a feeling whether the corporate antibodies in a business are so strong that no matter what you do when you come in. They're just going to overwhelm you, because I mean, we did some research last year, looking at the roles of directors of transformation in our membership.

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Ian Wright: And what was really interesting was, and there was a sort of an emerging pattern that came from this that organizations would bring in very senior experience. Directors of business transformation directors of change, quite often from outside of the sector, had been working at Amazon, Google Apple, wherever it is, because they wanted some of that magic fairy just sprinkling on their business

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Ian Wright: and the scenario. When something like this, you 1st spend the 1st 6 months doing some discovery, learning, seeing how the business works. Looking at some of the processes, you then present a report to the board and the Exec, and say, Look, this is what we found. This is what we think sort of needs to be done. These are the big customer pain points. And the feedback from the organization is.

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Ian Wright: yeah. But that's too big. Let's go for some low hanging fruit. And then when you say, Yeah, but this is affecting 10 times as many customers here. Yes, but that's going to involve a lot of disturbance and disruption for a period of time. Let's go for something easier around this. And basically what ends up happening is you go and play over there with the beanbags and the table tennis tables, and you leave us to carry on running the business because

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Ian Wright: it's going okay. And I think that for me is one of the key signals that you know an organization is not right. And and what we found was that after 18 months. These business transformation sort of leaders just got burnt out. But they got stressed and they got well being issues. And eventually they just left. And the organization didn't blame itself. It looked at.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I'm very personally familiar with that. Yeah, totally. And it's but it's, you know. Okay, it's not exactly devil's advocate. But I would like to unpack that because it's like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: you know, if you put yourself in the role of the Cfo or the CEO, or even the CEO, they have to maintain operational excellence. And they're not wrong. That potentially the thing that the

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: catalysts that they brought in the shiny catalyst that they brought in to help with transformation isn't going to do disruption. If they're successful, there will be some disruption to the business or they're not. They're not successful in their remit. So how do you talk about that, or help executives understand that there can be an equilibrium, though, that it doesn't have to be all one way or all the other and help them navigate that balance.

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Ian Wright: No, I I think I think there's a number of things that some of the mistakes that we've made when we talk about transformation, we should ban the word of transmission. I see very little transformation.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But.

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Ian Wright: in in terms of you know, organizations. Yes, you've got to deliver the services to people is an ongoing thing. But you know, we make mistakes with transformation programs because we set a timescale or we've got an 18 month transformation program. We've got a 24 month.

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Ian Wright: The reality for me was like that 19 eighties movie, the Jim Henson one never-ending story. And I don't know about you. But I watched the never-ending story. It was a long movie, and I thought that was a good ending. But I'm pleased it's over now and then. What struck me was 18 months later. We had a never-ending story, too, and if you're working in sort of transformation, and you're on the receiving end of this.

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Ian Wright: you're waiting for these stories to end. So you can get on with how things should be.

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Ian Wright: and think that's a real challenge for.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Ian Wright: To do it. But to answer your question, basically, you need 2 teams in an organisation. You need a team to manage the past, and you need a team to manage the transition to the future, and one starts off very large and the other one starts off small, and it then starts to grow and get bigger and bigger as you move towards that future. But I think sort of, you know, preparing people, for

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Ian Wright: you know, business is no longer the same, we move it too fast to pace. Now you are always going to be changing. I think this is why I sort of like the whole concept of sort of corporate innovation and innovation as a skill as a mindset around this. Because, you know, if you're

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Ian Wright: if you're not innovating, then you're heading for irrelevance, and none of us like being irrelevant.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That's true.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: That is true.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's really hard. And we can get marginalized. I mean, it's the it's really true. It's really hard.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I love. I sorry I'm just. I love what you said about the team managing the past and the team managing the future. And so my brain is going 100 miles an hour, because I'm like, Oh, I want to have like an hour-long conversation with you about that, because there's no magic formula for that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And I'm like, Oh, what are some interesting org structures that have worked? But I'm going to move us on, and maybe we can co-author an article around that because that's a fascinating topic.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, please.

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Ian Wright: Hey? Well, no, I mean, I was hoping, you know, I mean again a lot of the stuff I mean a lot of the stuff you you talk about. Catalyst is is about research and evidence base and things like that. And again, you know, we're all just sort of learning. And and and when I sort of interview chief execs and organizations and look and say, Look, you know you've you've brought these consultants in. You've brought these experts in. Why did it? You were failed to achieve purpose. And I think

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Ian Wright: you know the the 1st thing is understanding. Well, what is the purpose you were trying to achieve and being very clear around that.

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Ian Wright: The second thing is understanding the state, the the position of the organization in your business cycle. So, as I say, innovation is all I mean, yeah. And if you are in the middle of a big it program and things like that, you know, you can just overwhelm people, and

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Ian Wright: you know we still try and do what we call old map you know, old map in a new world kind of thing that we still try and get people to do things that there were 1015 years ago. The

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Ian Wright: next biggest thing I think we need to sort of share with with with cat. This is around the ability to unlearn. So what are you going to unlearn that you've been taught at all of these business skills

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Ian Wright: over the years that actually, you're never going to need now, because in a post pandemic world people's expectations have changed. If you remember, during Covid. And things like that, you know. Some organisations were brilliant at pivoting, changing direction, changing operating models, and still delivering to customers. You know there's a great phrase that one of my colleagues, Anthony slumbers have, which was summed up sort of covid for me, which was around. People thought they needed shops to go shopping, and

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Ian Wright: they realized they didn't, because Amazon and deliveroo and Uber and all them just

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Ian Wright: all of these sort of things. So so life and business sort of kept kept going on. I think I think one of the challenges. And again, this is just a hypothesis which I'm not fully sort of tested yet. But I do believe there's some some merit in it which is the

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Ian Wright: I suppose you know the competency. And what I mean by this is that organisations are competent enough to stay in business and deliver a service to their customers.

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Ian Wright: But they're not leading edge around this, and one of the best examples I heard and looked at sort of recently, was, if you think about the qwirty keyboard, the current keyboard that we use, and things like that, if you were just looking at that, you know. 1st time you think. Hang on, we've got an alpha. Why are the letters sort of laid out

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Ian Wright: in in in that in that sort of way, and when I was sort of looking into it and listening to sort of different examples around it, you know this story came. Whether it's a hundred percent true or not, I'll I'll share it with you. Which was basically in in, you know, in days long gone by. You had the typewriters, the typewriters, were mechanical ones that have mechanical rods and arms. The typist became so competent

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Ian Wright: that basically they kept jamming the mechanical arms because they were typing so quickly. So the engineers who were brought out to fix the the typewriters say, we can't keep doing this. So basically change the keyboard round to make the typos less efficient so that the key the typewriters weren't actually breaking. And we stuck with it ever since, and there are actually much, much better ways out there of

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Ian Wright: providing, you know information did. Now, this might all go with artificial intelligence. Your keyboards might be irrelevant in the future. But it did sort of strike me that actually. So there will be some organizations out there who are part of this competency trap, you know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Fascinating. Yeah, I remember hearing that story, but I love it applied to this particular scenario. Okay, quickly, because I have 2 more follow-up questions. I can't help myself. You mentioned some companies have been good at the pivot, are there? Top 3 companies that you're like? Those companies have really crushed the pivot.

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Ian Wright: Oh, I don't know about 3, the one that always comes top of mind. And again, it's a big one. People might not, might not sort of like it around that, but it's Microsoft, and what the CEO Satya has done moving the business into a learning culture.

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Ian Wright: And I've I've heard 2 or 3 examples of his story that he did. We actually had the director of of people, director of Organizational Development do an hour for us on Microsoft's change program. And it just really really struck me that particularly, this is particularly hard in a big organization. I see very few examples of of that large scale change.

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Ian Wright: but moving from a financial sales driven business to a 1 which is about people. Discovery, learning, experimentation, I think, is really really powerful, so that that would probably be.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Such such a great example totally. And it connects back with your earlier point about like you have to

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: probably 1st focus on the culture, because otherwise you'll end up with the qwirty keyboard thing where it's like disempowering you instead of empowering you. Okay? And also just going back to the part of the organization on the past part of the organization, on the future. And you talked about timing and the different business models.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's interesting, because if people are familiar with an S-curve an S curve sort of demonstrates sort of like, you know, revenue that goes down at the bottom because you're investing hopefully, you hit a good curve, and then it starts to decline. And usually when catalysts are brought in, it's because the organization can see that that S curve is at risk of petering out soon. If the catalyst is successful in their job, they may be activating the new S curve

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: before the organization is ready.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: So I'm wondering if you have any advice, or you've seen anything work in that particular scenario.

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Ian Wright: My only sort of, I suppose experience around that is, understanding how you do that. And the way that you can't do it is by somebody coming in and tagging on some special projects or some programs to say, right, okay, we're going to take you out of your day job for 2 days a week, and you're going to work on this particular one this project. It's going to be new. It's exciting, and things like that.

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Ian Wright: And every time I've seen that example, 2 things happen. 1st of all, you only get half that person because the other half is worried about the day job that they're getting measured on, they're getting rewarded on. And if this new project is not that exciting what it starts to do, it starts to stress people, and it starts to sort of burn them out. And I think the only way

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Ian Wright: you can build something new is to by taking somebody out of their existing role for a period of time, backfill their existing role with consultants, whoever you want

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Ian Wright: right? And then take them and then give them that sandbox to say, right, okay, these are the problems. Make sure these are the right problems we're looking to solve, and then sit down and figure out. You know, some Pocs, or, you know, ways that we can actually solve those problems. Because that's where you will get the creativity. That's where you will get the buy in from this.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amen. Amen. I'm so with you. Yes, and it's like corporations get so scared. Well, we can't pull them out of the role I'm like? Do you have maternity leave? Do you have paternity leave? Do you have in the Us. We call it the Fmla like? Do you have family medical leave your organization has the capability to have people out for months at a time and still function without that person in the role so like, why wouldn't you do that leverage, that capacity to future proof, your organization? Yes.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: all right. Thank you for that. I want to get up and cheer more. All right. Final fun question, who's an inspirational, catalyst figure for you, past or present? And why.

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Ian Wright: Oh, there's there's so many. I mean, you know, the the advent of things like the Youtube and you know, podcasts have really opened the world to sort of, you know, to see that lots of other people are doing this sort of thing, so I could go through and name some of the people like, you know Professor Claire Christensen, who wrote the book on Disruptive innovation. I'm a big fan of Rita Mcgrath.

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Ian Wright: Tristan Cromer all these sort of corporate innovators, people who've also had really practical experience as well. But I'll give you 1 1 person across from here in the Uk. He's just been awarded

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Ian Wright: an Obe. In the King's birthday is Honors List. He's a youngish lad called Shamal Easel, and that's spelled CEMA LEZE. L. Okay, he was in financial services, and he was going to work each day, and he was seeing homeless people on the street, and they were begging, and they didn't have anything. And it really got to him.

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Ian Wright: And what he decided was, I'm going to pack my job in, and I'm going to find a solution for this, and the solution is so elegant and so brilliant. And you wish you think, how did I never think of this before. And basically he found an organization called Change Please, and where I named it like that was because the people who was walking past begging on the street were saying, Have you got any change, please? And his model was so simple, Shan, and what he did was

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Ian Wright: he helped. He got funding. He helped these people by buying mobile barista vans, putting those vans on the site where they were begging, and instead of people going into Starbucks or Costa, or for their daily coffee. Basically, they went to the mobile barista. And basically they helped this person change their life around.

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Ian Wright: And hence where change please came from, and I really like what Jamal has done. He's a really unassuming guy, and you know his. His model was picked up. Sir Richard Branson voted it wanted him as his entrepreneur of the year. Richard Branson is his mentor, and.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Wow!

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Ian Wright: Yeah, and you've got people like Will. I am giving him awards and support. And I mean, he's now coming across to the the us. I think he's he's looking to open change, please. Down in in California as well.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah, I was gonna say, San Francisco would be a good place to pilot that.

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Ian Wright: Yeah, apps absolutely. So so for me, he is a real catalyst inspiration, because he gave up everything. You know, he had a young family. And basically he's made a success of it by helping other people. And the key thing from this was, 1st of all, he would ask people for help. But, secondly, you understand what his purpose was. Once you understand what your purpose is. There are 2 key moments in your life, Shannon.

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Ian Wright: the day you born, and the day you find out why.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Mike dropped. Ian Fuck. Yeah, that was amazing. We will definitely link to him in the show notes and his, I'm assuming he has a website. So we'll get all of that in there. Ian. Thanks so much. This was an incredible conversation. Your depth of experience and wisdom, I know, will delight our listeners.

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Ian Wright: Well, hopefully. Look, I'm just sharing some stories from, you know, from an old man who's who's done a couple of things of interest in his life. But look as they keep doing the great work. And as I look forward to sort of many more podcasts and hopefully, meeting some of your catalyst executives as well. I'm more than happy if you want to reach out to me. I love talking to people as you can probably tell, but thanks very much for the invitation.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. And to our listeners thanks so much for listening. If you'd like to learn more about how to create big, bold, powerful change in the world. Be sure to check out our book, move fast, break, burnout, or go to our website. catalystconstallations.com dot. If you enjoyed the episode, please take 10 seconds to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher wherever you listen to your podcasts and of course. If you have other catalysts in your life, hit the share button and send the link their way. Thank you.