447. The Hive Mind at Work: Transforming Organizations with Dr. Siobhan McHale

Welcome to episode 447 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Siobhan McHale, author of the Hive Mind at Work. Ready? Let's get started. You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer. Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Siobhan McHale. Growing up on a farm in a small village in southern Ireland, Siobhan watched the bees as they swarmed in the orchard of her family's farm. This fascination with bees led her to investigate the intricacies of human ecosystems and she would go on to spend three decades studying groups the workplace. This experience taught her about the power of harnessing the hive mind and the group intelligence needed to create meaningful and lasting change. Over the past 30 years, Siobhan has helped thousands of leaders to create more agile and productive workplaces. Her approach comes not from the ivory tower, but from her insider role as the executive in charge of transformation in a series of international firms. One of these inside jobs was a radical seven year change initiative at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. ANZ bank that transformed it from the lowest performing bank in the country into one of the highest performing and most admired banks in the world. Professor John Cotter used her work with Anz as a Harvard Business School case study designed to teach MBA students about managing changes. I love this different perspective and looking at human behavior in the context of the behavior of bees. It's fascinating and you're going to love it, I'm sure. Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch with Siobhan and myself and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com447. Now let's jump right in. Dr. Siobhan McHale, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Melina.

Absolutely. I am so delighted to be able to chat with you about bees and brains, I guess is the right way to bring that together. Can you share a little bit? For those who don't yet know you about yourself and the work that you do. Sure.

I've got a background in organizational psychology, but I'm also an author who has just written a book called the Hive Mind at Work. And essentially I've had a career in two halves. The first half was a decade as a management consultant, flying in and out of hundreds of organizations trying to help leaders to implement change. And then the second half is when I decided I wanted to roll my sleeves up and get involved in change as the executive in charge of transformation in a series of international firms.

It sounds like your fascination with bees started at a young age, and so we'll definitely talk about that. When did you get know that you were really interested in change and did it have to do? Did you ever consider, you know, studying bees as a career or going into, you know, honey making or anything like that?

Yeah, as a. As a child, I was fascinated by the bees as they swarmed in the orchard of my family's farm in Ireland. And that fascination with natural ecosystems led me to a career studying human ecosystems, and that's really where that emerged from. I. I'm very interested in how human ecosystems perform, how they adapt, how they grow, and how that's different from how we behave as individuals.

And so I know in the book you talk about, you know, we have the iq, eq, and then getting into this, understanding the more complex group of gq, I guess, is right as. As we look at companies. So do you mind, like, talking a little bit about how those things come together and kind of where. Whether it's our own natural instincts or just what we've been told over, you know, generations, that this is how businesses aren't just like machines and people aren't, you know, coming together that way of kind of like, what's wrong with some of that standard thinking when it comes to solving business problems?

Sure, Melina. So traditionally, I suppose we've thought of organizations as machines where we can apply IQ or intellectual intelligence in order to solve problems, fix things, pull levers for performance. And then the second way was really thinking about organizations as social networks. And this emerged from an anthropologist called J. A. Bynes studying a fishing village in Norway. So really it was all about connections and the number and strength of connections that you had in the social network. And in order to have those powerful connections, you needed eq, or emotional intelligence. So that was the ability to understand your emotions and the emotions of others. But what I'm saying is that you need a third intelligence, which is gq, or group intelligence, which is really the ability to Understand and intervene in groups in order to help them to deliver, grow and adapt?

Definitely. And you have a ton of really interesting case studies in the book. Do you like to kind of kick it off with this is where it can go wrong and then like work into a best case scenario? How do you like to approach looking at some of these kind of. I guess we start with mistakes, right. To see what's not quite right.

Yeah. I think when you're doing this work and complex human ecosystems or groups, what you want to be able to do firstly is to diagnose what is happening. An example I give in the book is where I worked at Anz bank and that's Australian New Zealand bank, which was the worst performing bank in the country when I joined. And seven years later we'd moved it to the highest performing bank in the country and the number one bank on the Dow Jones Sustainability index. So really we began that work by forensically diagnosing what is going on in this organization. And that helped us to intervene in powerful ways.

And can you expand? I know that of course there are things that we can't always share about what we really did inside of organizations all the time, but can you share a little bit? Whether it layers in, you know, the hive lens or those nine lenses or, sorry, the nine laws that you talk about in the book to expand a little bit on what worked in that process? Sure.

So when we looked at what was going on in the bank, the executive team had restructured. They'd been trying to bring about change, trying to improve customer satisfaction and engagement and a whole raft of issues. But the restructure only served to take the organization backwards. And what we noticed was actually going on was that head office, the corporate head office, had stepped into the role of order giver and they were giving instructions to the 700 bank branches who had stepped into the role of order taker. And the pattern or hidden agreement in the organization was that the branches take the orders from head office. And that was leading to a loss of energy, to disengagement, to a feeling within the branches that they were just victims and ultimately to very low customer service and customer satisfaction. So once we diagnosed that pattern that was running the organization, we could intervene in a powerful way. And one of the ways that we intervened was by redesigning the organization's operating model and reframing the role of head office from order giver to service provider and enabler, and the branches from victim or order taker to the leaders of customer service. And so that was a very powerful Redesign and reframe of roles at the collective level.

And throughout the book you give examples of, you know, you're sitting down with someone and they have an idea of what they think the problem is. And then someone say, well, let's maybe ask some questions. Can I, you know, go in there, meet with some people, can tell that it seems like you have a very hands on approach to talk to some people, ask good questions to try and find what's really going on. We talk a lot here about how, you know, it's way too easy to find the right answer to the wrong question. Right. So it's worth investing the time to make sure we're working on the right stuff. I saw a lot of that in your book. Can you share a little bit about, you know, how you approach finding to make sure you're working on the right stuff? You know, how do you diagnose what's going on when it's different than what it may seem on the surface?

Yeah. So another example from the hive mind at work was a manager, a recently promoted manager at an infrastructure company who is based on issues with falling customer satisfaction. And she really needed to pull out the stops and perform in this new role. So she said to me, siobhan, I think what's the issue is that we've got outdated equipment, the whole fleet and the equipment needs to be upgraded. I said, well, hang on, before we spend millions of dollars on a new fleet, maybe I'll take a look around some of the infrastructure projects. So made my way to Country Victoria to one of the her key projects, which was laying fiber optic cable in a town for Internet access for the residents. And spoke to the project manager who said, yeah, we're experiencing delays, the customer is really frustrated, but there is hard quartz rock in this region and it's really slowed us down. And I said, well, didn't you anticipate that in your proposal? Didn't you say that there was hard quartz? He said, well, we should have, but we didn't. And what I noticed as I went around more of the projects was that there was this reactive pattern in many of the projects within this company where people didn't plan ahead. Then they flew in the firefighters to compensate for their lack of planning and they became the heroes. And the whole cycle kept repeating itself and repeated reactive thinking, flying in the firefighters as the heroes to save the day. And nothing, nothing changed. So once the new manager, general manager saw that pattern, instead of buying new fleet and investing in new equipment, she could start to redesign her operating model. And reframe the roles.

Yeah, I did enjoy reading the different stories in the book. And I know for that one was one where it was like, oh yes, we have some hero complex plexes around here that people love to kind of swoop in and save the day. But seeing that actually your customers don't enjoy that process, like that's kind of your own ego feeding or something. And so when we can fix that, it'll just help everybody to actually be getting those pats on the back instead of being really expensive and upset customers and, and, and all those sorts of.

Problems that, that come from that totally. And sometimes we see a whole host of firefighters within organizations whose job it is to, to fix the problems. And what would they do if that pattern, that reactive pattern didn't exist? So in some ways the pattern is serving the ecosystem. And you can also become blind to these patterns, which is one of the, the laws you mentioned, the nine laws, group dynamics. You must understand how groups operate. And one of those nine laws is pattern blindness. We become blind to the obvious within human ecosystems.

Definitely. Well, it feels like a pretty decent segue. Do you want to share more about what those nine laws are for these group ecosystems to help unpack that a little bit for us? Yeah.

So one of the laws I talk about is the law of role. And often we've been taught that personality governs all behavior. But role has a powerful impact on our behavior and on the behavior of groups. And let me give you an example of Anna, who wakes up in the morning and greets her husband in role of partner spouse. Then she walks down to the kitchen where she gets her nine year old twins ready for school. In role of mother, she jumps on the train in role of commuter and heads into her job as head of department at a New York hospital. The first meeting of the day, she steps into role of teacher with a group of students. Her next meeting is with her boss where she steps into role of negotiator to secure funding for new equipment. And then later that day, she steps in into role of advisor to give a second opinion to a colleague. That evening she catches up with some old schoolmates where she steps into role of friend. Now, is Anna the same person in each of these interactions? Yes, she is the same authentic Anna. But her behavior changes according to the role that she steps into. So we must understand these roles that people step into in groups. And we also have the power to reframe these roles in order to bring about faster change with less noise.

Definitely love talking about that. We've had different people on the show talking about the power of us and how we look at these different shifts in identity throughout the day and how often we. We're shifting. And even, like I know you, this is a simplified list of how many roles Anna is going through throughout the day.

Right.

And it feels like, oh, my goodness, this is just like continuing. But it's the, like, even, you know, where you identify with the. When we layer in brands. Right. Or the roles we have within you. You had some within the company, but it's, you know, if you go to a specific coffee shop or the outfit you choose to wear that day and what it says about you and how you relate to different people when you inter with them. There are just so many identities. And whether you think of them as a mask or something is fine, but really, we're just constantly shifting. And this is why context is so important whenever we're communicating. Right. Because are they in. If they're in mom mode and we send an email, they're going to hear this totally differently than when we're in a meeting and they're in negotiator mode or, like you said, advisor mode or whatever that happens to be. And so awareness of how often we're shifting and is something that's easy to just sort of conveniently forget if we're not careful at work.

Yeah. It's such an excellent point. And we each hold mental maps. I talk about mental maps of our role, and sometimes these mental maps, like a software program, can become outdated, particularly during change. So we're trying to bring about change, but people have an old mental map of their role. Like, they might think, well, I'm the firefighter. Well, actually, we don't need firefighters anymore. We need proactive planners and proactive thinkers. So that is a reframe. So often when you're experiencing resistance during change, it's that the individual and collective mental maps of the role are still stuck there in the past tense. And you've got to update those mental maps in order to. To bring about change.

And building on the aspect of the different roles. This is a great point to bring it back to our friends the bees.

Right.

As far as not everyone is built for this, to do all of the things right. So we have built a lot of businesses with a lot of, you know, other duties as assigned. Multitasker. Everyone's doing every job all the time. It can sort of feel like. But that's not necessarily the best approach.

Right.

Where we have, you know, specialized skills that can help us to do one thing or a couple things really, really well. And if you can get people into those proper roles, the whole group can work better. Can you share a little bit about good time to talk about some, some bees and then also how that ties into our roles at work?

Yes. So the bees are remarkable because when they sense that the hive is over crowded, they make the decision to swarm in search of a new home. And I actually follow the bee's journey in the book as well as giving many business case studies. But when they swarm, they step into different roles. So rather than the foragers and the nurses and the cleaners in the hive, they step into different roles. For example, about 200 of the bees step into the role scouts to search for new, for a new home. So they're like real estate agents and they go to, you know, old barns and fallen branches to search out to measure the size of hollowed out areas that might become a new home. And then they come back to the temporary staging area that they've settled on as they swarmed to report their findings about potential new homes. And from all this sort of hectic milling around and dancing, they vote on one home that they decide they would move to. So just a remarkable example of group intelligence.

Definitely. It was really interesting to be learning about the just astonishing life of the bee that you don't even recognize. Like you were saying about the. So the waggle dance. Right. The thing that they do to be able to communicate with one another and how this is and the, I think, you know, where the, the queen has the different pheromones to be guiding a group this way or just how they can even communicate is just pretty fascinating when you learn about it. Of course, you know that. You wrote a book about it.

Yeah, they, they are fascinating creatures and they can teach us a lot about change. And they, you know, they work collectively. So I think one of the things I'm trying to do in this book is get away from just the focus on IQ and eq. Yes, you need both of those. They are necessary but not sufficient for the complexity we face today. Which is why we need gq, which is group intelligence, which I say sits at the individual and the collective level. So the group can have group intelligence, but also leaders can develop group intelligence as individuals. So you can develop your ability to understand these nine laws of group dynamics. And you can also enhance your ability to intervene in groups in order to bring about change. Because often we intervene in groups and we get unintended consequences because we don't really understand groups. Because we hadn't been taught. We've been taught about iq, we've been taught about eq, but not about gq.

I'm glad that that transition came up. I was going to ask about, you have some examples of the unintended consequences where we don't think about, you know, well, this looked like the obvious thing. I pulled the lever and then, oh no, we didn't even realize we broke this other thing or more likely four or five other things. Can you share a little bit about the problem with those unintended consequences?

Yeah, sure. So back to the Anz bank example. The leaders with all the best intentions decided that the solution to their problem of the worst performing bank in the country was to restructure. So often we get leaders who have been taught that these technical fixes on what they should do. So you restructure, you put people through training and sheep dip them or you put in new policies and procedures and actually that can take the system backwards. And in the Anz example, they saw that staff were even more disengaged because of the restructure. And we see this all the time in another company, the same infrastructure company that I was working for. They had a safety issue and a decline in safety and an increase in accidents and incidents. And the safety team were really confused about what to do and they said we just need clearer policies. But they asked me to have a look at it. And when I went in to have a look at it, they had over 5,000 safety policies that nobody was reading or nobody could even fathom because there were so many of them they couldn't even navigate them. What was really going on was a push for productivity was causing a rule breaking pattern. So people, you know, employees were working around the rules and supervisors were overlooking or condoning that behavior. So you have this agreement between supervisors and employees that we overlook the rules, rules in order to get the job done. So this rule breaking pattern was what the safety team really needed to see and to intervene in order to rewire that pattern. Yeah.

And I know from the example in the book where it goes into then say, you know, coming back and saying, okay, so maybe we don't need more policies.

Right.

Or even clearer. But being able to then say, hey, like you're going to get written up, there are problems like no more skipping out on safety regulations. And once that became really clear that like boss says no, we're cracking down on this thing that it was able to turn around, we'll say relatively quickly and easily when you identified the right actual Problem.

Yeah, that's such a great point about how you can turn the situation around relatively quickly and easily. And it goes to one of the myths because I've been an insider and the executive in charge of change, what I've found is we often have these myths about change but actually when you're there on the ground making change happen, what I found is I had to bust some of these myths. And by reframing role from condoners, some manager is condoner of rule breaking to actually managers, safety leaders, we were able to get a very quick turnaround in safety stats with relatively little noise. So change doesn't have to take a long time.

Yes, that's I've always said, you know, when you understand those behavioral levers, when you're working with the brain, you, you know, change can actually be really easy. We change all the time. But you have to know what's really going on and focus on those things. And so yeah, if you keep just writing, you know, 5001 policies. Yeah it's not gonna move the needle very much. Right. And you think, okay, we need to train the entire team and we have to go through all of these things and you know, maybe not like what if it, what if you didn't have to do all of that? What if there's something else that is, is going wrong? And knowing I, I have an episode on the cobra effect and how there's always a loophole, there's something people are going to find there's some, some juice in the squeeze of what they're working on right here to be prompting them to be taking the actions they're taking right now. So if we can find out what they're getting from it in this current scenario, we can see where we might take a couple steps back and make a little shift and how it can change so much.

Yeah, absolutely. And knowing how to diagnose a human ecosystem I think is one of the most important things with leaders with group intelligence. And often we're taught our technical skills. So the safety team would be taught, well, you do policies or you do training or you know, these technical interventions that often don't change anything. More policies is not the solution. But what you need to do is be able to see what Gregory Bates and the great systems thinker said is what are the patterns that connect. So how is this ecosystem functioning? And once you see, ah, there is a rule breaking pattern here that the system is co creating, essentially it's a perfectly co created pattern with different parts of the ecosystem stepping into a role to Keep that pattern alive. So supervisors are the condoners, employees are the rule breakers, and that pattern goes round and round and no amount of policy making is actually going to change it. You've got to reframe the role and you've got to ensure that people understand these new roles. So that ability to see the system, see the patterns that connect and intervene in groups in a way to bring about change is. It's a new lens. It's not one we've been taught, but we can rewire our brains in order to be able to see the world in this way.

Oh, perfect. Well, I'm sure everyone listening now is saying, I love that and where do I start? Right. So if I want to be activating that lens for myself and starting to think about those group dynamics in a different way, take that step back and try to diagnose the, that sort of bigger underlying problem, you know, where would you recommend that someone start if they know something's wrong. Right. And they're looking at their own KPIs, whatever they happen to be, and, and they want to try and understand that underlying group dynamic problem, where would you recommend they start?

Yeah, I, I probably would say get a copy of the Hive Mind at Work, my latest book, which is really about group intelligence. So what that will give you is the nine laws of group dynamics. We covered one of them today, which is the law of role, but it will also give you the four steps that you need to go through in order to firstly diagnose what's going on, but then intervene in a group in order to bring about successful and meaningful change. So that's a good place to start. There aren't many people bringing this lens to the world. It's, you know, I talked about Gregory Bateson and some of the great systems thinkers, but it hasn't really been applied in, in a lot of workplaces. So this is really an applied practical lens with lots of examples that can start you on this journey or hopefully progress the journey if you're already on that journey.

Yeah, well, and one of the things I think I've always been a big advocate in, asking good questions. Right. And thoughtfully, just being able to be curious and knowing that you don't have all of the answers. And the way you see the problem isn't necessarily the whole problem. And I can tell. So you, you didn't have a ton of examples where you actually said so I went and asked this and it helped me to get to this point. Right. But I'm confident that you have maybe a way when you're meeting someone for the first time, that helps them to be diffused a little bit, that they're like ready to open up to you. Do you have some go to questions when you are doing, doing those? Like you're going to go out and meet with the head of whatever department or that gets them to feel safe in having a conversation with you?

Yeah. I think one of the most powerful techniques you can use in order to diagnose what's going on in a group or human ecosystem is to map the system. So you take it away from something that's personal and about the person you start mapping. So for example, in the case of, of the safety problem, you know, it's basically working with a group of people to say, well, what's going on here? And they say, oh, well, everybody's breaking the rules and it's the employees fault and we need more policies. You map that. You say, okay, employees, what role are they stepping into? And you figure out collectively, oh, they're the rule breakers. Oh, okay. The natural tendency would be to stop there. Oh, well, they're the problem. Let's send them off on training. But then you broaden and build. You say, what, what, what is their behavior connected to? Ah, their behavior is connected to the supervisors. And what role are the supervisors stepping into? Ah, they're the condoners. Okay, right. They're condoning this behavior. And what, what rule, you know, what role is safety in? Ah, they're in the role of the policy writers. Ah, so they've been writing 5,000 policies. So they're just over here running the policies. And then the three roles you start to connect. What is, what is the pattern here? The pattern that connects all three parts of this ecosystem is that we break the rules in order to meet the deadlines and the financial expectations. So, you know, taking it away from finger pointing, what's he doing? And why did, why did she break that rule? And let's punish her and sack her because she, she broke the rule. It's, it's more about understanding what is going on uniquely in this ecosystem. And let's map it. Let's, let's make it what we're subject to. Make that object and allow the system to see itself and hold up a mirror to the system, essentially.

I love that. And that's a good place for people to get started as they're sort of thinking about what's going on. Right. And testing some of this themselves as they have the hive mind at work next to them. Right. As they're reading about those different roles and laws and, and things that they can start to be asking that one more question. Right. Go beyond where when you think, okay, okay, we've solved it, this person's doing this and this is their role. Like something else is probably connected to that. That if we go back at 1, 2 or 3, you know, we'll find different entities within the organization that are working together to create this problem. And there may be something, you know, a couple steps back that you can be working on to help unravel it in the, the right way.

Absolutely. So it's moving from this lens of singular root cause. Let's look for that singular root cause, that person that's the issue or that problem that is singular to seeing the connectedness and the relatedness between the parts. Because all behavior is co created. No behavior sits in isolation. And you must be able to map that ecosystem system and see the connectedness between the parts and the roles that the different parts are taking up in order to intervene and bring about change.

One of the last things I really wanted to be sure to ask you about has to do with storytelling. I was really delighted to see this show up in the book and giving some explanation as to why, you know, you could have. There are so many business books in the world, so many different things and, you know, it's a real choice to write a book about how bees are like, you know, the, the organizations at work and how this comes in together and explaining one is because you think they're interesting and you see the correlation, but also how that story is something you're more likely to remember and understanding how that works within our brain. Can you share a little bit more about the importance of storytelling when you're thinking about change and, and books and all the things?

Yeah, well, I'm really passionate about this movement from IQ to EQ to GQ group intelligence. So thinking about the book, rather than writing an esoteric academic thesis on ecosystems and systemic thinking, I really thought about how can I tell the stories that bring this theory to life and how can I make it accessible to people? And one of the, you know, lots of business related stories, but also the story of the bees as they face going into winter with an overcrowded hive and they make the momentous decision to swarm and to split into and to leave the hive and go in search of a new home. Now that's a dangerous change and a lot depends on it. But we can learn from how the bees make that change and the group intelligence that they employ. Obviously, humans aren't bees. But they have some lessons to teach us as humans. So that is a story in the book as well as numerous business cases. But as you said, this is how we learn. Our brains are wired for story and it's the fastest way to teach a concept. So rather than dry concepts like the nine laws of group dynamics, each one is brought to life with multiple stories and examples from my business, you know, my business experience.

Well, if you were going to leave us with one thing we didn't know about bees, maybe it's the most interesting, like, thing that surprised you the most or something, you know, that you like to share at cocktail parties or whatever it is. What's, what's the be related fact that will be interesting for people?

Oh. An Average bee flies 1 1/2 times the circumference of the earth in their lifetime to gather less than a teaspoonful worth of honey. So just remarkable creatures, hardworking and purpose driven and yeah, they work collectively for the good of the hive and the betterment of society.

Yeah. Amazing. Those little guys are going so, so much further than most any of us will ever travel in our own lifetime. Well, we will, of course have links to make it easy for people to get their own copy of the Hive Mind at Work and to your LinkedIn, but for everyone who's most excited to get to learn more about you, about the work you do, to connect, to follow, what's, what's their best path to do?

So, yeah, the best path is LinkedIn where I do publish regularly and the Hive Mind at Work is available on Amazon and all your favorite online and store locations.

Perfect. Well, Siobhan, thank you so much for joining me. It's been delightful to buzz about with you today. It's funny, I always say, and now we'll transition into when I do the outro after, but I always say, hey, what got your brain buzzing as you listen to today's conversation? And now it's like extra on point for the conversation. All right, well, thank you.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you again to Siobhan McHale for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I love when people take inspiration in seemingly disparate areas and bring it together in a way that we can learn about human behavior. How many people would have looked at bees and thought those don't have anything to do with business? But of course, if you take the time to look and really deeply understand anything, you can usually find a connection. I love that. And it's where innovation lies. What insights are buzzing around that you don't even realize could help with your experience at life? And what work? What can you learn from bees or sharks or plants or anything else? It's there if you take the time to look. What are you passionate about that you've connected to life or work that others might be surprised to hear? Please come share it with me on social media. I would love to hear about it. There are links in the show notes to my social media to make it easy. You can find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. Of course, you'll also find links to my top related past episodes and books in those show notes, including the Hive Mind at Work and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com447. And thank you again to Dr. Siobhan McHale for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy App episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful. Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.