Jason Fraser, Product and Design Leader - Going Farther Faster and with Far Less Drama

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi! I'm Shannon, Lucas, and.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: I'm Tracy Lovejoy. We're the co-ceos of catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break, burn out where we speak with catalyst executives, about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. And today we are very excited to have time with our friend Jason Frazier. Jason. Welcome.

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Jason Fraser: Aye.

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Jason Fraser: good. I'm happy to be here.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Just a little bit of background, and then I'm going to let Jason introduce himself and tell his own story. But Jason is a product and design leader with a mission to save the world. Amen. Yes, he spent the last few years building and operating a 60 person team of product and design consultants.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: helping clients identify, build and deliver high value software products for people who need them. He's also. And we'll talk about this, the co-author of farther, faster, and far less drama, an actionable guide to equip a new generation of humble, humane, and collaborative leaders, and I have to share. I just felt like the book was so like spiritually, philosophically, tactically, practically aligned with the work that we do in our book. I'm just thrilled to have you here today.

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Jason Fraser: Awesome. Yeah. Well, the feeling about the books it. It's a mutual mutual love here. When I read move fast, breaks it burn out. I was like amazed that we hadn't been best friends for 15 years.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: 100, and then, when we got to do the catalyst happy hour, it was even more clear, totally all right. So I gave the cliff notes. But we'd love to hear about your catalytic journey. Maybe a few career highlights that you're proud of. That helps us see that catalyst journey that you've been walking.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah, great. Well, I mean.

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Jason Fraser: you kind of summed up a lot of a lot of the career. So the last

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Jason Fraser: I'm gonna say, 10 years or so. I've been working in product and design leadership at a consulting organization. And really, the last 7 years of that I've been focused exclusively on working with Government clients, and most of that has been with Federal government. Some of it has been with State and local governments as well, and I think you know, when we're talking about things that we're proud of

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Jason Fraser: mean, these folks in the government have been doing really incredible work. I. I had the opportunity to help a team of people from the Air Force set up the very 1st software innovation lab for for the Dod.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Great story in the book. By the way.

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Jason Fraser: Oh, yeah, thanks. It was. I mean it was. It was such an honor and a privilege to be able to help these people set this up, and it was profoundly disruptive.

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Jason Fraser: To the way the Dod acquires software. You know, they were building it for themselves instead of hiring another large, you know, vendor to do it for them, which was typical, you know they would. They would contract something out. They'd spend years gathering requirements and then bring in a vendor, and the vendor would spend 10 years building the software, and it would be hundreds of millions of dollars, and eventually they would deliver it, and it would be out of date

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Jason Fraser: already, or you know, or it wouldn't work the way people expected it to work, and there would be change orders and more money. And really, what the Air Force was trying to do was to be able to control their own destiny with software and to be able to deliver product features at the speed of combat right where you can't wait 10 years for a feature to be delivered because people are getting

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Jason Fraser: hurt like right now. And so it was really really special to be able to have that opportunity. Another thing you know, my wife and co-author, and I have been leading workshops at the White House for the office of Presidential personnel. We've done that through 2 presidential administrations. We're actually, we're about to do another one in July.

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Jason Fraser: And that is also one of those things that I'm just super proud of, and honestly like walking through the Secret Service checkpoint to get onto the grounds. The White House like that never gets old like you. You get through that checkpoint. You're like, okay, like, I'm here, I'm doing this. And the people who were helping in those workshops

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Jason Fraser: are again doing just really meaningful work like work that like we had a team last time who was trying to get a better understanding of why there were so many veterans of color who were not taking advantage of all of their veterans, benefits particularly the burial, the death benefit

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Jason Fraser: and like. They wanted to help people take better advantage of benefits that were owed to them for their service

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Jason Fraser: like you can't, you can't beat that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What is more meaningful than that.

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Jason Fraser: And like, if we could help, if we could help those people

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Jason Fraser: see their work in a different way like, give them just a little bit of insight that helps them make progress in that work

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Jason Fraser: like that's profoundly life changing.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah. So that's the stuff I'm proud of is those opportunities to like really do stuff that matters. And

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Jason Fraser: one more thing I have like

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Jason Fraser: over the years had people approach me

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Jason Fraser: and say, Hey, that conversation that we had

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Jason Fraser: like that mattered.

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Jason Fraser: And that's the thing that I'm also super proud of, like I feel like one of my.

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Jason Fraser: I don't know if we're talking about being a catalyst. I think one of my catalyst superpowers is is helping people see things differently like, I said, being able to help them just shift their angle of view a little bit, and and gain insight and make progress. And when people come back to me and say that that was meaningful for them, like having had an impact on an individual life

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Jason Fraser: that I'm super proud of that. So.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: You go.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: So what is the topic of the workshops that you are leading? Right when you work with workshop, with.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Personnel.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah, so we do a standard lead startup assumptions and experiments workshop with with folks at the White House. And this is something that

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Jason Fraser: We started doing, Janice and I, my wife and co-author. We started doing this when we ran an accelerator program which we founded back in 2,010,

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Jason Fraser: and we were working with early stage founders.

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Jason Fraser: Who often were sent to us by their investors. Their investors were like, you're really good at software. And you've got a really interesting idea. But you don't know how to turn this into a product. So I'm gonna send you to the Frasers, and they're gonna like, run you through their program. And so

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Jason Fraser: we worked a lot with Eric Reese, who is kind of the founder of the lean startup movement and we started doing these workshops for our startup founders that would help them identify the riskiest assumptions

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Jason Fraser: in the work that they were trying to embark upon and then validate that those assumptions were true. So the idea was to find the holes in your strategy before they become harmful.

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Jason Fraser: And

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Jason Fraser: it's just, you know, you can do a long version

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Jason Fraser: over days, or you can do a short version. We do a short version. That's about 90 min at the White House, and we just knock through a brainstorming session around assumptions. We assess the risk level of those assumptions. And then we teach people how to devise really quick experiment that will help them validate whether or not that assumption is true.

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Jason Fraser: Oh, yeah.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Using.

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Jason Fraser: And and yeah, we get very positive feedback on it. People come back. And they're like this, like

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Jason Fraser: this changes everything like changes. How I'm thinking about this. So.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Love, that.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: And does it relate to your book at all? Farther, faster, and far less drama, the workshop, or a big pivot for you.

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Jason Fraser: So. I you know it's all related. We've been doing this kind of work for such a long time.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Jason Fraser: It's all kind of ingrained. And you know.

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Jason Fraser: the farther, faster, and far less drama.

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Jason Fraser: The book started as a facilitation tools book.

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Jason Fraser: When we were 1st thinking about it. And we had an agent we were very lucky to have a really really interesting agent who pushed us a lot and said, No, I think this book is bigger than that. I think this is an idea book, not just not just a tools and techniques book and

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Jason Fraser: And so we started kind of abstracting the ideas out of the tools and bringing it to a higher level.

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Jason Fraser: But

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Jason Fraser: the

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Jason Fraser: you know assumptions and experiments. Workshop used to be the workshop that we would run during our facilitation tools, training session

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Jason Fraser: to teach people. So we would like run this workshop, and then we would go back and sort of at the Meta level. Talk about. Here's what we did when we worked you through this workshop. And here's why this workshop works. And here's how you know the brainstorming, the the pattern of externalize organize focus which.

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Jason Fraser: like the the pattern or the the way that people do. It comes kind of from design thinking this idea that you can like brainstorm. But I think when people come at it from the design thinking lens. They're often thinking about it in terms of creativity like this.

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Jason Fraser: Creative.

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Jason Fraser: And we take it and we shift it into a. This is a tool to be productive about taking anything that's inside your head, putting it into a workable space.

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Jason Fraser: organizing it in a meaningful way, and then focusing on the parts that matter. And so we did.

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Jason Fraser: We did this facilitation training workshop, where we talked about all of this stuff, and how people could leverage this stuff to make progress with their teams really farther, faster, and far less drama is book about making progress.

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Jason Fraser: And and it's based on all this experience that we have with helping teams, you know, from all the way from the Startup. Early stage startups through the White House and the Dod and all of this stuff Janice works with a bunch of fortune, 100 companies and things like that. And it's not helping how we have helped those teams make progress.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: It's incredibly inspiring to get to hear, you know, kind of snippets across your professional journey, and how you are shifting people and mindsets and behaviors, and we haven't. We haven't had you defined like, what does catalyst mean to you? How do you relate to this concept?

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Jason Fraser: Yeah, I mean, I I love the term catalyst you know, as a linguistics person. You know, I come from a linguistics background. All my education was in linguistics. And I I've done classes on metaphors. I I wrote a paper on Zappa tech body metaphors. Which is really cool. Actually, Tracy, you might be interested in that one.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Oh, oh, yeah.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And even know what that means. Jason, what is that.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah. Well, okay. They use parts of the body as location metaphors. And even as time metaphors. So we won't spend. Spend just a second on this. If you want to say hello to someone, it's basically good day. You say, Zack, T. Right, and she is day, and Zack is like good or nice, or whatever. But if you if it's midday.

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Jason Fraser: you say Zach Ledegi

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Jason Fraser: and Latin means belly

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Jason Fraser: in Savite, and so.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I don't know what Zaba Tech is.

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Jason Fraser: Zapotec is an indigenous language spoken in Oaxaca, southern.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thank you. Thank you.

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Jason Fraser: And so let end means belly. So if you wanna say good afternoon, you're saying like good middle of the day, good belly

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Jason Fraser: right? And so. And they have multiple other metaphors where they're like using the hand as a metaphor. And most of them are are locative in some way, like they indicate a location or

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Jason Fraser: sort of meta, metaphorically, a location in time, or things like that. So beginning middle end, you know, from head to toe that kind of thing, anyway. Super cool stuff.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Because I am. I'm gonna hazard a guess, and we don't have to go down that that study helped you think about how to teach

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: right cause. I'm hearing it. Even in your Meta Meta way, you were teaching people to facilitate super interesting to see those dots. So thank you for throwing that in.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah, of course. And I I use metaphor all the time.

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Jason Fraser: Just in in trying to help people understand concepts. Because I think it's like it gives you a cognitive hook to like hang the idea on right. So anyway, the metaphor of catalyst right? A catalyst is a thing that triggers a reaction.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Yep.

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Jason Fraser: It's not the thing that reacts

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Jason Fraser: right. So heat is the catalyst to create fire. Heat causes the oxidation of carbon

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Jason Fraser: right? And so it's the carbon that changes.

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Jason Fraser: and it's the oxygen that changes. And

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Jason Fraser: it just so happens that that's an exothermic reaction. So it creates more heat, which means. As long as there's carbon and oxygen present, you're gonna continue driving that reaction as a human catalyst.

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Jason Fraser: Right?

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Jason Fraser: We are the heat, like, you know.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Right.

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Jason Fraser: Role to come in. And we take the organization that's like the log or the lump of coal, the the bit of carbon.

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Jason Fraser: And we trigger a reaction in that organization that

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Jason Fraser: makes a state change.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Them.

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Jason Fraser: It. It is completely different. After that, reaction is triggered, and if we're lucky, the reaction generates more heat and is self sustaining. So you know, we talked about finding other catalysts in an organization and and and helping to trigger those other catalysts. Right? That's what heat doesn't fire. The fire makes more heat while it's oxidizing the carbon, and that additional heat oxidizes more carbon right. And so the fire just keeps going.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm! No.

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Jason Fraser: And I like to be the person

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Jason Fraser: who brings the match. You know, I'm the person who's like, yeah, nice log.

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Jason Fraser: What if we got a fire.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I can see the transformative power of that piece of wood. Yes, I can.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing. So most of us experienced some challenges along the way. I'm just wondering if you can share, you know, one or 2 of the challenges that you faced as a catalyst executive. And what's helped you most in overcoming those challenges. Yeah.

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Jason Fraser: Awesome.

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Jason Fraser: so I think.

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Jason Fraser: a bigger challenge when you're trying to drive change in an organization

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Jason Fraser: is

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Jason Fraser: people's

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Jason Fraser: reception to that change

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Jason Fraser: right? You often. Catalysts are brought in from the outside. Someone in the organization sees a need for change, and they say I'm gonna bring in somebody to help help drive this thing, and that person comes in and if they're not careful.

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Jason Fraser: They can be perceived as a really significant threat by everyone in the organization up and down. Right? So you come in. And there are leaders in that organization who have been leaders sometimes for decades.

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Jason Fraser: And they're looking at you going. Wait! You're telling me that I'm doing this wrong like you can't tell me how to do my job. So right off the bat. You're insulting an entire class of people just by your very presence, right? And then you've got all the line level people in the organization. The people who like do the work.

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Jason Fraser: And when those people hear the word change.

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Jason Fraser: the 1st thing that they hear is reorg and reorg automatically, like translates to reduction in force.

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Jason Fraser: So they're like, Oh, change. I'm gonna lose my job

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Jason Fraser: right? So you've got this one class of people who's just pissed off that you're there because you're telling them that they've been doing it wrong.

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Jason Fraser: And then you've got another class of people who are there who are terrified that any recommendation that you make is going to result in them losing their job.

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Jason Fraser: And so.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Is there any winning, Jason? What's how do you overcome that? Damn? That sounds hard.

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Jason Fraser: Lot to deal with and and I think you know this maps to your experience and organizations as well. And so you know, Janice and I.

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Jason Fraser: When we're working with teams, we have this thing that we talk about in the book we call it ubad, and it's UBAD,

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Jason Fraser: and it stands for understanding, belief.

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Jason Fraser: advocacy and decision making.

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Jason Fraser: And I think when you.

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Jason Fraser: when you want to drive, change

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Jason Fraser: at.

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Jason Fraser: you, need to make sure that people both understand what is happening.

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Jason Fraser: And believe in it.

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Jason Fraser: And if people don't understand or believe.

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Jason Fraser: they will remain either frightened

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Jason Fraser: or insulted right? And so it's like.

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Jason Fraser: I think, Cotter. You know, Cotter is one of the big transformational writers. Right? Is like done a lot of work in this area and talks about

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Jason Fraser: sort of

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Jason Fraser: helping people understand the need for change

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Jason Fraser: right? And I think that that is absolutely essential like, you have to start helping people see the problems

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Jason Fraser: and and see how things could be better.

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Jason Fraser: Right? And you know, in in working with the Air Force. Like

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Jason Fraser: the people who started

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Jason Fraser: that program. The program was called Kessel Run. And and still it's this.

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Jason Fraser: oh, Matt!

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Jason Fraser: And they saw real problems.

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Jason Fraser: They saw literally, they saw people dying

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Jason Fraser: because of bad software and bad process.

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Jason Fraser: and they put everything on the line in terms of their careers in order to make change, so that those bad things didn't happen anymore.

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Jason Fraser: And

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Jason Fraser: for them, you know the the the pain of the current situation, the pain of the status quo was obvious.

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Jason Fraser: right? And I've seen people I won't say which organizations I've seen them in, but I think this is actually common for several who have, like custom, built software that's supposed to be, you know.

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Jason Fraser: suited directly for their purpose.

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Jason Fraser: But they do all their work in excel and Powerpoint and sharepoint, and then they literally will translate that work into the system of record later.

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Jason Fraser: And it

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Jason Fraser: you shouldn't have to do that

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Jason Fraser: anywhere, and you especially shouldn't have to do stuff like that when like every minute

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Jason Fraser: that that goes by while you're doing your work process means that somebody else could die. Ultimate ultimate consequences of failure here. And so these folks, the Air Force

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Jason Fraser: comment

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Jason Fraser: really like.

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Jason Fraser: saw the pain. And so

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Jason Fraser: educating the founders of this organization was not an issue.

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Jason Fraser: But there were people in other parts of the Dod the software security folks, the acquisitions. People like all of these people, are are going. This. This is not how we do this right. And there's a reason, by the way, that we do this, the way that we do it.

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Jason Fraser: and so one we had to help those folks understand the pain that was being experienced. And how their process was actually shipping risk to the people who are on the front line.

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Jason Fraser: Oh, man!

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Jason Fraser: And we had to give them a vision, for what better could look like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Jason Fraser: And we had to work with them, not at them. And we talked about this in the book, too. You gotta work with people, not work at people because you work, and they just wanna push back right work with them.

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Jason Fraser: Then you're side by side the whole way. So we had to work with people in the security organization and in the procurement organization.

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Jason Fraser: In order to demonstrate to them how

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Jason Fraser: how the organization could meet the spirit of the rules.

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Jason Fraser: and in some cases better than other people who were meeting the letter of the rules, but not necessarily the spirit. We had to demonstrate that the process that we were using to make our software secure and stable was a good process and did achieve the outcomes that their rules were trying to achieve.

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Jason Fraser: But we didn't actually follow the rules to get there

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Jason Fraser: and and so it was a lot of bringing people along. So one developing the understanding of the risk

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Jason Fraser: to developing the belief

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Jason Fraser: in our path. The belief that the way that we were doing it was actually okay.

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Jason Fraser: and and maybe even way better.

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Jason Fraser: and the A and the d. I'll go back to you. Bad understanding, belief, advocacy, and decision making.

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Jason Fraser: You know that you have understanding and belief

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Jason Fraser: when you start seeing people independently advocate for your solution. Right?

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Jason Fraser: So when people are saying, Hey, this is the path that we should be on when that

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Jason Fraser: catalyst contagion, you know, catches up mixing metaphors there when when the reaction spreads, you know when you get more heat, right? You that's the advocacy right. And then, you really know.

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Jason Fraser: when people start making decisions, this is when people with authority

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Jason Fraser: Right? We are investing our time. We are investing our energy

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Jason Fraser: we're taking. We're shifting staff from here to here, right? When you see people who are actually making decisions that support the path.

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Jason Fraser: Then you know that you're all in. People talk a lot about buy-in, you know. Do we have buy-in from this person, or buy in from that person.

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Jason Fraser: and really it was Janice who came up with you bad cause she was so frustrated with people

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Jason Fraser: saying, Well, I really thought that we had buy in. But then we just didn't have the buy-in that we thought we had.

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Jason Fraser: and it's like, Well.

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Jason Fraser: how did you know? Why did you think that you had bought.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: What is, what does buy and even mean with brass text totally. And I love in the book I love the example that you have about. I think they were a medical provider, and they had this new product. And he goes. And that example actually walks through the whole you bad thing, but when they so he takes his customers on a journey. It's this massive piece of equipment that all of his customers like I'll do, and they're like, well, even we're signing up to buy them. But then he's like.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: do you have the space in your place

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: in your institution? What in your building? Because you're going to probably need to build a new space right? And it's like something that I wouldn't have thought about in terms of like that last level of buy-in all right before I hand it over to Tracy, though I have to talk about painful step for a catalyst number 3, and how you deal with it, because

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: it can take so long of us, doing the belief, the understanding, and the belief, cultivation, and encountering a lot of resistance as we do that. And there does come this weird switch. When people your words that you weren't allowed to say 18 months ago, start coming out of other people's mouths.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I find that super frustrating as a catalyst. How do you self-manage? And what advice would you have for a catalyst at that stage.

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Jason Fraser: I mean.

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Jason Fraser: let's be honest. That happens more to women than it does to white men.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Interesting.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thank you for that.

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Jason Fraser: I don't need to tell you that that's probably been your experience.

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Jason Fraser: I'm a

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Jason Fraser: but

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Jason Fraser: you know, there's there's this whole notion of

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Jason Fraser: I think it was some

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Jason Fraser: President or general, or somebody who said, You can get a whole lot done as long as you don't care who gives credit, or who gets credit for it.

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Jason Fraser: and yeah, that's true.

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Jason Fraser: A.

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Jason Fraser: I derive my value

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Jason Fraser: from

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Jason Fraser: individuals

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Jason Fraser: who come up to me and say.

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Jason Fraser: you know I mentioned this before that interaction that we had mattered to me like a thing that you did changed things for me in a positive way.

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Jason Fraser: and

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Jason Fraser: organizational credit.

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Jason Fraser: Is nice

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Jason Fraser: but for me it's nonessential.

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Jason Fraser: You know

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Jason Fraser: my leadership journey at the last company that I was at took a very, very long time.

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Jason Fraser: And

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Jason Fraser: you know it was one of those organizations where

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Jason Fraser: roles and leadership were constrained right and like people didn't leave the company very often. So it's like somebody had to die in order to open up a slot, you know, at the leadership level.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Literally, though, yeah.

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Jason Fraser: And and so promotions were tough

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Jason Fraser: and I was, you know, I had come into the organization at a leadership level.

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Jason Fraser: And then, for reasons that we won't get into here, I stepped away from that role and into an individual contributor role for a couple of years, and it was really difficult

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Jason Fraser: to

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Jason Fraser: get the organization to see the kind of contribution that I was making there and move my way back into the leadership role.

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Jason Fraser: And but then I had. You know, I had one really great boss who was like.

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Jason Fraser: I see you like. I've been watching you since you got here

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Jason Fraser: and like, I'm starting a new thing.

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Jason Fraser: Do you wanna join me in my new thing? And I was ready to leave at that point. And and this one person basically saved my career at at that organization. And I, I was able to get back into a leadership role and really

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Jason Fraser: do the thing that I felt like I was there to do

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Jason Fraser: but again, my experience is is always going to be that of a a white guy.

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Jason Fraser: you know, and

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Jason Fraser: and I think that it is.

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Jason Fraser: It's hard for me to speak to the challenges that other.

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Jason Fraser: See, and.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah.

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Jason Fraser: Role. Cause. I,

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Jason Fraser: it's just different.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It. I appreciate it so much. So one, you know, for our listeners. If you are a manager or you're managing managers in your organizations. Everyone knows that people employees don't leave companies. They leave managers, but that's a 10 x thing for catalysts.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: because we can be so misunderstood and be perceived as a troublemaker. So, having that person who really sees you, we will follow them. I've done that. I followed one guy through 4 organizations, because, without having the word. I just knew that he could unlock me and get me the container that you're talking about, to do what I was supposed to do there, and also like side projects that I was able to do because of that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: And I want to go back to the self-promotion just really quickly, because it's like, it's important for catalyst to hear this. It's like, Yes, when the people are, do you say advocating the A I always forget the a advocating when the people are advocating for your thing, it can be bittersweet because you're like, Oh, finally, it's coming out of their mouths. And so there's the hurrah of. We've broken through some of the resistance.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and it can feel also really bad, because you're like, it's been 18 months. And I'm not here to do self-promotion. That's I just want the thing to get done. But the scars, the metaphoric scars that we have on our back from having, like gone through all of the resistance. It's like, damn! I took all the hits

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and catalysts often won't do any of the promotion, because they're just like I just want the thing to be done. But the thing I want catalyst to hear is

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: the position that you found yourself in because of your humility is that there weren't people who understood your value around the organization. And so just a quick story. There's this one guy that we love in our network. And he was very senior, and he was a servant leader, and he led this big transformation throughout the company, and his goal was to do that and level up all of his people. And so a bunch of his direct reports became peers. And then a C-suite position opened.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: and he wasn't even really considered. And he was like, I don't understand why I wasn't considered, and he's like, well, these people all did the transformation. He had done such a good job of highlighting it. Everyone else, which is a tool to create change. But if you want permission to create the next level of big, bold change, you have to do some of it right? So I guess, as a final question, any advice on how to do that really quickly, how to do that in a way that feels authentic to you.

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Jason Fraser: I think one of the things that I took away from the catalyst class that that I took with y'all recently, was the notion of breadcrumbing

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Jason Fraser: right like, leave a trail like there should be evidence of the work that you have done. And I thought that was really interesting conceptually. And of course I love the metaphor because metaphors but I think you know

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Jason Fraser: one of the things that that I did

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Jason Fraser: in our like.

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Jason Fraser: Janice and I joined this

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Jason Fraser: company that I was at at the same time we were basically acquired by by this company and

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Jason Fraser: we started a transformation effort there without really calling it a transformation effort. We just started offering this facilitation tools training. I was talking, mentioned the training kind of at the beginning of our session here today

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Jason Fraser: and we just offered it to anybody who wanted it, and there was always an invitation not to buy. It's like you don't have to come like if you're not interested, just, you know, don't come. But if you are interested we're doing it on Tuesday.

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Jason Fraser: So come, join us and you know, we thought we'd do like 2 or 3 of these things. And it turned out that the demand for it just kept getting bigger.

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Jason Fraser: And so I mean through my time there I probably trained over 350 people.

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Jason Fraser: and Janice trained.

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Jason Fraser: you know almost that many as well in her time there. And

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Jason Fraser: it! That was a thing where it was really obvious that, like Jason, are doing that thing. You can go to a an office anywhere in the world. We had offices in 22 countries.

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Jason Fraser: You could go to an office and you could see posted notes and 2 by twos on the wall.

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Jason Fraser: And no, those came from us like that's there.

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Jason Fraser: We taught people how to do that stuff.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hmm.

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Jason Fraser: And

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Jason Fraser: and that was really interesting in terms of

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Jason Fraser: sort of visible impact, like the breadcrumbs were big.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Right.

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Jason Fraser: All over.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Almost a brand identity you created internally, I would say.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah, yeah. And we have been. We have been credited with by other people. It's not a thing that I would say myself necessarily. But other people have said that we changed the way this company approached product, and we changed the way this company collaborated with each other. So we got credit

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Jason Fraser: for that, and we got credit because the thing that we were doing

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Jason Fraser: was visible

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Jason Fraser: right one. We had people constantly asking their managers, Hey, can I sign up for this training next week, like I wanna take a day and go do this training. So everybody heard about it, and 2, there was visible evidence

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Jason Fraser: in every office in the world that we had had this impact. And so, you know.

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Jason Fraser: some changes. It's not easy

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Jason Fraser: to have evidence that is like literally on the wall.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Totally.

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Jason Fraser: But

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: But artifacts are important. I think it is a really interesting way. At Vodafone we created these business cards just for the innovation catalyst, and everyone wanted them right and just like that. And they had to be part of the club. It was the same thing you don't have to join, so I think the artifacts can really help totally. All right. I'm going to hand it over to Tracy for the final fun question.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: As we wrap up this amazing conversation. Say, Jason, we'd love to hear

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: about your favorite catalyst, past, present, alive, dead, someone who has inspired you, and why they stand out.

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Jason Fraser: Oh, interesting!

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Jason Fraser: I mean, I talked about my Air Force Air Force folks a lot already.

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Jason Fraser: I'll like Circle pack to them really quickly and then switch to another one. So I've got I've got 2 that matter. There was a very small cadre of people, Brian, Adam, Tori Enrique Jeremiah! All like enlisted Air Force. Well, officers but uniformed Air Force people

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Jason Fraser: who

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Jason Fraser: were so inspiring to me in the way that they

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Jason Fraser: that they like. I said they put it all out there to make a big change that really mattered, and they had. They had a hell of a fight. There were so many people who were out to shut them down out to take their budget, you know, out, to make them adhere to the status quo and they just like

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Jason Fraser: they ran circles with most people. And and it was really incredible to watch. So I I really admire that that group of people and feel privileged to have been able to work with them.

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Jason Fraser: Otherwise, you know. I've always been drawn to like the edge of things. Normal stuff is just too normal for me, even as a little kid like I, we would drive through downtown Minneapolis and I would see punk rockers on the street with their 10 inch Mohawks, and I'd be like that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: My people.

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Jason Fraser: Yeah. And so, and the second, I heard the music. I was all in

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Jason Fraser: right. And as I got older

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Jason Fraser: and learned more about the music and the history of that music, and you know I was listening to Ben's like black flag and minor threat, and dead Kennedys and all of these people, and they were.

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Jason Fraser: and there were people who came before them as well. Right, who are all.

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Jason Fraser: Breaking the mold. But Ben's in this

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Jason Fraser: genre.

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Jason Fraser: We're

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Jason Fraser: really just totally upending the music industry, many of them, I mean the 3 that I mentioned all started their own record labels

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Jason Fraser: just as a like screw you to the record industry cause. They were like, we can. We can put music out

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Jason Fraser: right. And I think what what musicians in this genre showed was that anybody could make music

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Jason Fraser: and they

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Jason Fraser: broadened the possibilities for who you could be in the world, and how you could be in the world.

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Jason Fraser: And I think for a lot of people, myself included.

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Jason Fraser: The expression in the music was more authentic to who they were than the standard poplom that was out there. And like.

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Jason Fraser: I value

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Jason Fraser: the fact that that music was able to make people who

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Jason Fraser: we're already on the edge

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Jason Fraser: feel like they were validated

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Jason Fraser: right? So I think they were disruptors in an industry.

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Jason Fraser: But the thing that I really care about that really touches me is that they change people's lives.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Bring this right back to the beginning of our conversation. Right? So thank you for that beautiful circle around the combination of disruption, but doing it in a way that's really connecting people.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: to change lives. Jason, this has been an unbelievable treat to have this time with you today. Thank you so much for being here with us.

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Jason Fraser: It's been fun. Yeah, let's talk again.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: Oh, I think the conversation is for sure, just beginning, I have no doubt, no doubt.

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Tracey Lovejoy - Catalyst Constellations: and thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to learn more about how to create bold, powerful change in the world. Be sure to check out our book, move fast, breakship, burnout, or go to our website@www.catalyst constellations.com dot.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: If you enjoyed the episode like we did, we could continue talking for hours. Please take 10 seconds to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcast and of course, if you have other catalysts in your life, hit the share, button their way, send the link to them, and particularly for those Punk Rock catalysts out there. They might appreciate this conversation. Thanks again.