#ICPODCAST | Episode 46 | | Lindsay Uittenbogaard | Founder, MirrorMirror

Welcome to the Inspiring Change Podcast, where we talk to leaders about all things internal communications, engagement, leadership, and change.

If there's one word I'd like people to take out of this, it's about relevance. The necessity for the, the red thread to the strategy, and in terms of how people will collaborate, has got to be relevant. The way people interpret things in their own ways for, for the organization to be able to truly get that strategy implemented properly.

Hello there. My name's Scott McInnes, and you are very welcome to this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. You know, we spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about communications, talking about leadership, and more latterly, we've spoken to a number of guests about strategy and strategy communication, and how ensuring that your people are on the same page is so critical to strategy execution in terms of making sure that your organization can achieve what it needs to achieve, because people want to see that red thread between what they do every day and how what they do is contributing to the bigger goals of the company. It doesn't matter if you work in a head office or if you work in a retail outlet or even online in the, you know, in the outback in Australia. We still want to be able to see that the job that we're doing is contributing in some maybe even small way to the overall success of the company. Now, at Inspiring Change, we spend a lot of time with our clients helping them to do that, helping them to write their strategy in a more engaging way that maybe just even using language that connects with people a little more emotionally that can really help. Um, often that takes the form of a corporate narrative or a story, um, that can really help to connect people to your strategy by outlining where your company is today, where you're going, what you're going to do to get there, and most importantly for me, the role that the people in your organization play in getting you there. However, of course, having all the foundational elements in place is one thing, uh, having all the things in place, whether it be communications or leadership upskilling or whatever it might be, having all that in place is great, but actually what what you want to be able to do as well is track how you're doing, track your success in aligning your people with your overall strategy. That's another thing altogether. And that's why today I'm really pleased to be talking to Lindsay Outenbogaard from Mirror Mirror. Um, Lindsay's based in the Netherlands, um, and she set up a company, uh, a few years back which helps companies to do just that. So Lindsay, good morning. Good morning, good afternoon even.

Good afternoon, Scott. Thanks. Nice to be with you.

Thanks a lot for coming on. Listen, why don't we kick off with a really easy one first that I start all my guests on? Just maybe you telling us a little bit of your background, where you've come from, and maybe a little about Mirror Mirror.

Yeah, sure. So I'm from the UK and came over to the Netherlands 16 years ago or something. Married a Dutchman with a very complicated surname. But before I came over, I worked with a lot of small businesses And I started my own businesses and really enjoyed doing the entrepreneurial thing. And somebody spotted the sort of marketing and PR work I'd done and said, hey, why don't you go and do employee comms at a large oil and gas company based in The Hague? And so I thought, well, fantastic, that's great. And I clicked my heels and off I went, wondering how the big league works and how they're all so successful and what I could learn about communications. And when I got there, I found it so tricky because it was so much more complicated than an organization of 10 people, and there was fog all around. That's what I call it. It's just ambiguity, it's, you know, people not being on the same page, and I spent the subsequent sort of 2 years when I first came over trying to figure out what it was that I had missed, because I really felt I had missed the point. Everybody else was walking around briskly with pieces of paper looking perfectly comfortable, and there was me going, what the hell's going on? And as a communication person, I had a responsibility to do something about it, of course, if you're trying to create clarity and confidence and community. So I, you know, went, did a lot of work with IABC, learned a lot about communications, moved to different organizations, and soon came to realize, of course, it wasn't me, it wasn't that organization, it's everywhere. The fog is just part of a busy corporate life. So it led me to do what I'm doing now, which is, I think, helping organizations communicate in a way that's a lot more relevant to performance, relevant to the individuals, relevant to teams.

Brilliant. And of course, when it comes to that fog and when it comes to alignment, it's interesting because we spend a lot of time talking about what good alignment is in organizations. But actually, of course, we don't talk so much about misalignment. And I wonder, you know, when I think about misalignment, how does that present itself? What are you looking for when you're thinking about misaligned teams?

Yeah, I know that's a really good question, and I want to start with answering that by saying that there's a lot of definitions of alignment. I mean, having a conversation is an alignment exercise, if you like, but let's take the organisational setting and let's look at some of the research that's around today. I mean, alignment isn't just when individual goals match up with the team goals and the organisation goals, and there's a nice red thread and everybody's aligned, put it on paper and shove it away. Alignment is much more about taking the principle of dialogue where it's Alignment can only be between people. You cannot have an individual who's aligned. Alignment is something that's between people, so it's about their understanding of the strategy, which is the common one, of course, but it's about how they interpret that in the context of their own work with their colleagues to deliver the strategy. What's between people, sort of like horizontally, if you like, in order to deliver. And you can even get, of course, alignment from the individual, does the purpose and what you stand for align with the kind of organisation that you're working for? So that whole sort of much more systemic alignment process is what I'd like to define as being alignment. And it's important to say that alignment isn't just about— it's not just about people thinking the same thing. Of course, it's the very opposite. It's— alignment is more about compatibility, about people thinking things that are compatible with each other so that they can bring in the different perspectives that everybody's got to offer. So then let's go to misalignment. Misalignment, conversely, is then— it's not compatibility, it's conflict. It's some kind of conflict between the way that people are seeing the world or the way that people are interpreting things. And the way that that manifests itself in organizations is things like people saying yes but nothing really happening, delays on approvals or decisions, people not really quite getting the cooperation they need, different teams doing different things. And I think we all recognize that horrible feeling that you get in many organizations where it's just like trying to push stuff that's just not going anywhere and it's really frustrating, you feel you're going backwards. That's how I'd see, that's how I see misalignment presenting itself, which ultimately results in demotivation. Low engagement, project failures, mistakes, cost, time, and effort, people leaving. All of those things, I think, come back to misalignment.

Yeah, yeah. And it's one of the things for me, you know, one of the big issues for companies right now is attracting and retaining, you know, often the best talent they can. And I think that if talent is coming into the organization, and they're able to see really clearly where they're having an impact, and they're able to see really clearly how what they're doing is making a difference, that can, that can have a huge impact, huge positive impact.

Yeah, absolutely. Alignment is— you can almost say that if you start with alignment, then a lot of other things will follow on from that. So engagement, for example, will probably be a byproduct of an aligned team, assuming that they're motivated by their challenge, of course, because they get to understand how different people perceive things and how it all connects. And that's that helps them be understood and understand and feel valued because they have a role to play in that, which is, I think, where the fundamentals of engagement will come from.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think about, you know, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this podcast with guests, and actually I did a bit of research a month or two ago just around what people wanted to hear on the podcast, and a lot of that was around culture. And I wonder how the whole idea of alignment and culture square off, which which comes first? Does culture drive alignment, or does alignment drive culture?

You know, that's a really good question, and I actually say that they're part of the same thing, because people can align in their behaviors, and behaviors contribute to the extent to which they can develop shared mental models. So, for example, if you are accepting different points of view, if you are respectful of people, if you are allowing people to bring themselves to work, then you're more likely to develop trust. And if you develop trust, you're more likely to accept these different perspectives and build these better shared mental models. And behaviors are just an expression of culture in the end. So you're mirroring— the behaviors are mirroring the actual culture at play. So, and the other thing is, I think people talk about culture as if it's a thing. There are many sub little bubbles of cultures and they change and morph every day based on the dynamics between people in the room or in the interaction. At any one given time. So you can have an overwhelming organizational culture, you can have a variation of that within a team, but it's all live and evolving as we go on, because it's all about how people are doing things and how people think, what people think is acceptable in that environment at any given point in time, which makes me come back to the principle that alignment is only a state. It's just a snapshot at that time. You know, it's not, "Oh, we're aligned, now we're done." It's something continual that people need to look at.

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, I think, you know, I think at any stage in the lifecycle of a team or an employee or an organization, you're going to have different levels of alignment. And for me, you know, when you're going out and doing a bit of research to find out how aligned teams are, or equally, you're doing a bit of research to find out how engaged they are, or you're doing a bit of research, just the annual company survey, actually, people get quite exercised about those things, particularly leaders and teams. And actually, for me, I often say to my clients, look, I don't really care about what the scores were in the survey. What I care about is what's going to happen after. What I care about is the conversation that comes after the results have been published. Wow, I'm amazed that this says this, because I thought after the last survey, we'd agreed that we'd do a lot of work in this area, and we did. So amazed that it's still what it is. I wonder why that is. And that whole idea of having conversations, I think, is at the very heart of driving alignment or engagement on teams.

You're right, because a piece, a piece of data doesn't create alignment. You cannot tell people to align. People have to make sense of things in their own way. It's based out of the social constructionism research that was done back in the '70s. Because people make sense of their work environment through language with others, they are constantly aligning with people as they're talking. Now, if you have a focused dialogue addressing alignment gaps, allowing people to put in their own opinions and ask questions of each other, etc., they're more likely to close those gaps. So alignment is definitely something that's done between people. It's definitely something that needs dialogue, which is why an alignment process has got to be dialogue-based.

And why are leaders, why are team— and I have often said hundreds of times, and people that listen to this podcast frequently, I hope there's one or two of you out there— I hope that, you know, leaders are are fundamentally probably the most important people in an organization. They're the glue in many organizations because they're the ones that can contextualize and can translate key messages that are coming down from on high versus, you know, from, from, uh, central communications teams. And I just wonder, when it comes to alignment, what's the role of the leader in, in ensuring their team is, is truly aligned? And, and really— to use the terminology from earlier on— really understands and sees that red thread?

So, absolutely, leaders are in the best position possible to be pivoting between what is happening at a higher level of the organization and how is that relevant to the team. I think leaders have a hard time though, because they have their own social constructionism and their own fog. It's probably foggier in the middle management level than anywhere else. And they're not given tools to create alignment. It's just like, "Okay, go now, align people." So if we come back to our idea where alignment is about a shared meaning between people, the leader cannot just take responsibility for doing that because, again, employees carry their own burden of having to be responsible to ask questions and participate in alignment process. So you can't say, "Oh, the leader's doing a bad job because their team are misaligned." I mean, the team also need to be saying, okay, 'we're not clear on this, can we have a conversation?' Now, of course, there's a hierarchical influence usually at play that we need to take into account, but leaders are good for setting the frame, leaders are good for briefing people on why are we here, why were we all recruited to these roles and these positions, and what are they, what are they for. That's fine, that is a tell, but the bit where it comes down to alignment is really a facilitation role, and the leader's not in a great position to do that because Because, like I said, they have their own subjective view on what's going on and how and who's who, and they have a power role. It's difficult to facilitate from a power role position. So, I would say that it's all very well to say that the leader should organize alignment, but I think they need support. I think the role of the communicator can come in here and extend their scope to look at this area.

So, do you think that, you know, because often I think we see internal communications teams, and one of the very first blogs that I wrote wrote back in probably 2017 was quite unpopular among internal comms people, I think, because it basically said that if we're doing our jobs really, really well, then actually what we should end up doing is making ourselves redundant. Because what we've done is make those people leaders across the organization really good communicators. We've passed on the skills and the knowledge and the confidence to do that. But I guess what you're saying now is there's a role for internal comms teams to take, to perhaps be that facilitative voice for teams when it comes to alignment, and lending their skill sets to doing that locally, not just creating big org-wide communication plans?

Yeah, I mean, I think the big org-wide communication channel-based messaging approach that we all know so well is essential, because you can't turn it off, because then you're turning off the kind of the belonging and the brand to employees. So, organizations are stuck because they need to use them, but they don't like them, and what else is there, and who's supposed to be doing what. We're in that point where organizations have become so much more complex, and so much more diverse, that the channel-based messaging really isn't working because it's not that relevant, and it's not interactive, and you can't get the dialogue from it. So there's this huge sticking point, and I can sense the frustration from communicators everywhere, really wanting to add value. Knowing how important communication is, but being in a context and situation where that's so difficult. However, given that the fact that the channel-based messages is not going to go away because it does add value, we need to put that in context. So we do need people to operate an intranet, to be writing copy, to be having the kind of technical skills that are needed to— and other skills needed to emphasize and reflect what's going on. But I think the real communication work is coming down to broadening the scope of things, reducing the noise on channels to its bare minimum so that it's there and it's effective, but actually channeling a lot of energy into supporting line managers and supporting teams and between teams in connecting everything up and not owning communication. That's, I think, where the main problem is. Delegating communication to people who are supposed to have done it on behalf of others just isn't the point, because everybody needs to communicate and participate in the communication process.

Yeah, I don't think any internal communications professional that you or I speak to would admit to liking being a gatekeeper.

No, and it's very demoralizing because I think internal comms people get a lot of criticism because they're in a situation where they can't really be as effective as they'd like to be these days I went to an Agile conference, and we were in a room of people, and I was sitting there, and it was my turn to introduce myself, and I said I had a corporate communication background, and everyone went, "Ooh, so boo!" They had no idea that actually it's got a really bad rep. Really bad rep, because people see what it's trying to achieve, see their own reality on the ground, and don't see the connect. But communicators have got their own issues because that's what they are being employed to do by the people who are paying their salaries. It's like, we want you to come in and we want you to make this work. So I think engagement, when it started out as a vision, moving on from PR-based communications, is an amazing vision. It's all about how people are treated at work, valuing and inspiring and recognizing people and providing context so that they can make sense of things. And I think it has come a long way, and there's a lot of effort that's gone into it, but it's the application of employee engagement is compromising itself too much. It's having to be compromised by its budget, by its kind of sponsors who say, well, no, you can't go to every team, don't be ridiculous, we're far too big, that's not going to make any difference. And, you know, we just need to make sure they get this message, as if that's the end of the conversation. You know, so it's all compromised, and I think alignment is a very inspiring way through, because it's really turning upside down and saying, let's start with employees about how they're perceiving things, so that we can address that, because that's what will connect.

Yeah, yeah, and I think, you know, when you go back to the work that was done by Dave McLeod and Nita Clark back in 2009, you know, a lot of the things that they talked about, those 4, 4 enablers that they talked about in, in a previous, uh, episode of this podcast, you know, that whole idea of having a really good compelling corporate story, a really good compelling corporate narrative that people can actually relate to, having really strong employee voice, exactly what you're talking about here, uh, having really engaging leaders, exactly what you're talking about here, and having integrity, exactly what you're talking about here. So having the nous to agree as a team, we're going to do these things, and then doing them.

Yeah, but I think it goes one level further because I listened to that podcast actually with Nita Clarke and David McLeod.

So you're the one, you're the one that listened to it. Excellent. Thank you.

No, I mean, it was great to have them on actually, because they really have formed part of the history of how things have moved on and what's needed and helped to alert people the importance of communication as well, but I think what with those 4 enablers, if you look, if you can imagine those 4 enablers coming down from the top of the organization, just with the way that things are going, they sort of stop halfway because they cannot make the connect. It's not that they can't make the connect to be relevant to each team and each employee, it's just that the budget and the way that the channels are organized and the way that the tools are organized doesn't make the connect. They're hoping line managers will pick it up and push and make it relevant down to the, to the, to the coalface, but that doesn't happen. And that's where I think a lot more can take place if we augment all of that effort with alignment tooling to take it to the— to bring it all home for people. It's just these messages like, for example, let's go digital, makes sense in the boardroom. They've been talking about it for months as part of the strategy. It's got an entire meaning behind those words for the people in the boardroom, and they assume that when those messages come down, everybody will know what it means. It doesn't mean anything to somebody who's in a team doing work, who's not being asked to stop doing their work. I mean, I'm telling you this, I know you know this, Scott McInnes, but, you know, people aren't being told to stop doing what they're doing. So they're kind of listening to this message going, well, I'll just wait to be told to do something different then, because I don't know what going digital means I have to do differently. So it's actually taking the principles of engagement and just adding on that extra piece to bring in the relevance that I think makes a huge difference. And I'm calling that alignment because it involves alignment practices. It involves people absolutely aligning to each other in terms of what they understand about the shared challenges, and how they will deliver together better.

Yeah, and I think building on that whole idea of the message coming from the top of, let's, you know, we're going digital, or let's go digital, I think that person, you know, equally as likely to be waiting to be told what to do, might also be thinking, well, that's me screwed. That's me out of a job because I work in a role which is easily replaced by technology. It's a manual repetitive job. Active job that doesn't need any thought put into it. It just needs to be done. And then without that alignment piece of, well, where does our team fit in that? What does that mean for our team? What are some of the things that we can do when it comes to going digital, to continue with your example? What are some of the things that we can do as a team to be more digital? Because actually what's behind the let's go digital thing is probably more about money saving, budget saving, doing more with less. Reaching new audiences. So whatever the reasons are, that's just not coming out in that, in that kind of 3-word marketing line, if you like.

So let's look at the way that humans operate then, in order to take that further. So there's some really interesting research from neuroscience that talks about— Carol Dweck, I think, is behind most of this— she talks about the fact that our brains are prediction machines and uncertainty makes us uncomfortable. So we need to be able to kind of predict the future. And if we see something, we don't know what it means, we make up a story in our heads, an explanation, so that it makes sense, so that we can move on. I mean, it's literally— if we cannot make up a story, we're stumped. We're sort of, you know, we need it to make sense. And then the second— if you combine that research with some other, some more recent stuff coming out of Bush and Kenwood's work about conflicts in the workplace, their work says that 80% of conflicts at work occur because of stories that people have made up about what's happening and why, and then use that as the basis of actions. So it's kind of comical in a way that, you know, people have to make stuff up because it just doesn't relate. And then probably that's untrue because it's unlikely they're just going to hit bullseye with the truth every time they make an assumption that's invisible and unconscious to them. And then they will act on that because that's— until they see something else that will substitute what they're thinking. That is the truth, you know, the holding pattern truth. And it just makes me think, you know, we're getting more diverse, we're already totally remote, and that's a whole other subject about remote work and the impact of remote on alignment. It creates a lot more misalignment. So really, the necessity— if there's one word I'd like people to take out of this It's about relevance. The necessity for the, the red thread to the strategy and the, and in terms of how people will collaborate has got to be relevant. The way people interpret things in their own ways for the organization to be able to truly get that strategy implemented properly.

Your feedback is important to us, and I'd really appreciate it if you could please take a couple of minutes to rate this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast and perhaps leave a few words of feedback. Thanks so much. Let's, let's delve a little bit into something you just touched on there very briefly in the whole idea of remote working, because obviously now we are 6 months almost to the day, certainly in Ireland anyway, since we went into lockdown. It looks like Dublin, unfortunately, unfortunately, has taken a step backwards. We are going back into a tighter lockdown. And it doesn't seem to me as though people will be going back to work anytime soon. So, you know, when I think about that, and I think about remote working, and I think about alignment, and the tools that we have at our disposal, which, let's be fair, you know, Zoom's pretty good, Teams isn't quite as good, but they're pretty one-dimensional. And it's very hard to really create a connection over Zoom. It's very difficult because we just don't have— you know, we're seeing people from the head and shoulders, you know, basically from the shoulders up, and that's it. So I just wonder, from an alignment perspective, from a connection perspective, you know, how is remote working affecting that?

Yeah, I mean, we— there's apparently, you know, people are actually 2.5 times more likely to perceive mistrust and broken commitments and bad decision-making with distant colleagues than those who they would be co-located with. But I think the really interesting piece in the research here is that they take 5 to 10 times longer to address concerns when they are working remotely. Which means that that piece about assumptions that we're talking about kicks in. So people are making a lot of assumptions. They are less likely to give the benefit of doubt to their colleagues, so they're perceiving broken promises, you know, why wasn't that delivered, you know, they must be neglecting things, whatever. And then they don't want to address it. How do you do that on a Zoom call? How do you do that easily? Because it's so difficult to deal with emotions when in remote settings. The impact of remote from an alignment point of view is quite striking. We've worked with several teams in different parts of the world all through this last 6-month period, from Australia to Indonesia and the UK and Germany, and what's common for all of those teams in our reports is that the— in the lowest 5 behaviors is reported the ability to participate in conversations that provide clarity on direction and remit. What's also common in the lowest 5 behaviours is reflection on progress, and that I could not believe across all of these different cultures and across all of these different situations where they were suddenly remote, right in January in Asia, right through to now a bit more acclimatized to working remotely, those two pieces came up in every single report. So we want to gather more data to make that sort of solid finding rather than just an interesting insight. But, um, yeah, A) misalignment is much more rife amongst remote teams, B) misalignment is easier to sort out on a remote basis. Because when you're remote and you can put data in front of people and have them focus on topic at hand and take the emotion out of a conversation, as you do with an alignment process as we run it, you can get issues on the table and address them and move on and get people aligned, actually, I think, better online than you can in the room. So it's funny.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, for me, the big challenge is, you know, the tools that we have at hand. I think we're still trying to take the processes and the ways that we did things in a co-located setting, where we're sitting beside our colleagues, where we're having weekly team meetings, all sitting around a big table, having a cup of coffee and a donut and a chat, and kind of chewing the fat and sorting the world out. We think that we can just simply transfer that to Zoom, or we can transfer that to Teams. And it just doesn't work. We're trying to fit a very round co-located peg into a very square remote working hole. And I think that if this is going to go on for some period of time, or we're going to end up probably fairly likely in a situation where we're going to have much more flexible teams, not just in terms of the hours that they work, but actually in where they work, geographically diverse teams, which is good for organizations, but we won't— that's a whole other podcast probably. Um, we're going to have to think of different and better ways to do it because I completely get that conflict is hard to sort out. I completely get that there's a lack of trust because this actually, the whole Zoom thing is a bit of a hurdle. It's a bit of a fence to have to leap over. You know, I said to somebody, I was doing back at the very beginning of COVID I ran some sessions, just open free sessions for anybody that wanted to attend, just for some hints and tips for leaders on how they could lead remotely. And one of the biggest things was that people are probably going to stew. They probably are going to not come to you with those tiny little problems that they may have, you know, just walked past your desk and said, oh, have you got 2 seconds? Just want to run something past you because we're both here. That's not going to happen anymore because actually doing this turns it into a bit of a thing. Can I book some time in your diary? I have to send you a Zoom link. I have to then get onto Zoom. I have to find a quiet space in my house, which is maybe my bedroom or my dining room. Maybe my partner's working there, maybe I've got the kids running around. So it all suddenly becomes a bit of a big thing. And then when you get to have the conversation, suddenly it feels like the most minuscule, ridiculous reason to have to get somebody on a Zoom call for. And your boss is probably going, "Sorry, we arranged all this for that? Seriously?" But it's a really important thing for you. But the whole palaver you've had to go through to simply have that conversation has made it a much bigger thing than it need be. Therefore, you just won't do it.

Yeah, and the kind of huddles are probably advantageous, but, you know, people need spontaneity to come up with, well, what's on my mind, and what's that question I had? And it's not like Monday morning, what's on your mind? Um, yes, actually, I had wondered if, you know, is It's kind of difficult. So we really do have some adjusting to do. And I don't think it's impossible to work online. It's just very different, very different indeed. And alignment doesn't come with it. So I completely agree.

Yeah, when you said earlier about it's much, much harder to get teams aligned when they're remote, have you seen any— you don't have to name the clients, obviously— or examples or scenarios or people that have been doing it well? And what are some of the practical things that they've been doing to help keep their teams aligned?

Well, so I can speak from a position of relative authority on how you can help teams align using tools and stuff. What I can't speak so much for is how teams can use remote tactics to align themselves. So when you said teams find it difficult to align, Teams find it difficult to naturally align remotely. Yes, I can understand, but I also say that the right alignment process is actually better online. So that's where I'm coming from. So I'm coming from the, the what can we do about misalignment, rather than— but I mean, I suppose there are some natural things I would suggest, you know, for example, make sure that alignment is on the map. With your team, you know, what it is. Some people just don't think of alignment as a focus area or something that needs to be managed, and there are definitely good feedback processes that you can use to make sure that people talk about what they observed, what it means for them, and what they want, rather than, you know, what— this went wrong, what went— you know, and interact with each other in a less professional way. And, you know, the behaviours that support alignment will always be the same. It's always about respect, openness, inclusivity, and, you know, listening, properly and giving people time to interact in their own ways. So, there's plenty of rituals out there also in the agile space. There's things that people can do, but there are also some great experts out there on how to work effectively remotely that I think people can clue into.

It's interesting that you touch on agile there, actually. It just sparks a question in my head because, you know, at the moment, you know, COVID aside, which is obviously a a massive change globally for everybody. There's nobody really that it hasn't touched, unless you happen to live in one of the South Pacific Islands, in which case it hasn't touched you. And that would be a nicer place to be right now, actually, than in the rain and fog of Dublin. But when you think about those people, change is happening all the time. COVID is just yet another great big giant change that's been layered onto us. But companies are asking us to be more open to change, more change-ready, more agile, all that stuff. So if a landscape is changing that much, how do you continue to keep people aligned on your team with something that might be a bit of a moving target?

It just needs more effort. I mean, you just need to put— if that's more that's changing, the more that needs to be aligned. But you can get better at it, and it can be a quicker practice. Some of those things I was talking about, all the tools, the alignment tools that are out there, If that's built in routinely and that's accepted as part of professional management practice to enable alignment and have people exposed to alignment opportunities that will help them. The more change there is, the more it has to happen, I think.

So you're thinking rather than doing what might be an alignment session annually, which I think is probably where most people start off, what do we have to do this year? To make sure we're aligned with overall company strategy and plans, that that becomes 6-monthly or quarterly or bimonthly or maybe even monthly, just as a check-in.

Yeah, indeed, but I would say that because alignment is a relatively new field, not many people, A, do alignment, if you like. If they do, they probably take the very one-dimensional route, which is, okay, what are our goals and do they match up? Which isn't really proper alignment, that's just goal setting. So, I think what people are needing to do is look at comprehensive ways of making sure that the alignment space is properly managed, and integrating it with the situations appropriately. Every team is different, and every team's needs are different, and. I think that takes a bit of awareness, a bit of education, and the right tools.

Yeah, for sure. And I think, I mean, I've often said that, you know, we end up throwing people into people leadership roles when they've no real, maybe, interest in it, passion for it, or experience in it, you know. And the analogy I've often used is, you know, nobody ever asked Usain Bolt to jump into a pool beside Ian Thorpe and expect him to win, because Usain Bolt's a runner, he's not a swimmer. Yet we take lawyers and IT people and compliance experts and people that work at risk, and we give them teams all the time, and we expect them to just become really good people leaders without the tools, without the experience, without the confidence to do so. And then we wonder why maybe alignment isn't happening, and we wonder why engagement's low, and we wonder why there's, there's high turnover. So yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there You know, there is an argument there that people need to be better skilled in these newer and different areas, for sure. Um, conscious of time, um, why don't you spend a couple of minutes just telling, um, listeners just maybe a little more about Mirror Mirror, um, and what your process is, what it is that you actually do to help align teams, to help them become more aligned?

Right, yes, thanks. So what we do is We have sort of various flavours of questionnaire depending on the team situation that we will send out and ask people to complete. A lot of them have got qualitative questions in, they're very open questions, you know, what is happening in your organisation that is affecting your team, for example, what impact do you think that will have on your team, what do you think the purpose of the team is, and have them rate behaviours, all sorts of open questions. Because that covers all bases and it's a sort of discovery process that when you put the results together and compare the extent to which participants have got common ground or differences, the alignment gaps can become clear. Because many alignment gaps aren't visible and they're unconscious, and it takes ages to discover them if you are actually going to say, okay, let's go and find some alignment gaps in pure conversational M. You have to have this kind of— so there are alignment reports will show those up. Those on their own don't make any difference to anything whatsoever, as you said, and it's really a facilitated discussion then to put that in front of the team and say, "OK, how do you want these graphs to look differently? Which ones do you think are important to your team?" There are going to be hundreds of minor and major alignment gaps between people, inevitably, but the objective is compatibility, and the objective is to blend perspectives so that you can build a bridge between one perspective and another, and get a new perspective between people that will take the team even further. That's the kind of Holy Grail of alignment. So we, we run the tool, MiraMira. We have— we train independent facilitators and in-house facilitators to run the workshops based on the reports that we run. Still in 2020, that's kind of almost free actually, because we're still building up our network. We've got over 100 people who are trained in 15 different countries, and we are looking for expert practitioners who would like to practice Maramara. And it's really exciting, and it's really interesting, because when we get to see data and trends, and when we get to look at what is the story behind that team— and when you put a reporter in front of a team, that is their story, actually. They're then looking at themselves thinking, oh, is what I'm thinking the same as what everybody else is thinking? And it's actually really revealing, and it's, it's gold dust, of course, to leaders, because then you can give this to the head of comms or the head or the HR director or whoever to say, well, this is what's really going on, and this is the real culture that's happening in these teams, because that's measured in the behaviors. So it's all about alignment leads to effectiveness, and our reports show not only how effective the team thinks that they're being on various axes, but also the extent of convergence and divergence of their views. How aligned are they? So we're just starting to get some very exciting responses from different parts of the world and requirements from very different organizations, and I'd love to hear from anybody who's interested.

Brilliant. And what I love about the approach is that, you know, it's not a case of like the old world annual survey where, you know, the survey is done of of 1,000 employees and then the company takes the results and does things to the people. The whole idea is that whatever the findings are within the report, then it's back to the team to say, well, if these are the gaps that you've identified in your team, how best do you believe that you could fix them? Which for me, in turn, that empowerment in turn drives engagement, in turn drives pride, in turn drives motivation and productivity.

Yeah, let's get rid of the phrase, we want them to do this, or we want to get them to think this. That's ridiculous. They're adults. Let's empower people. Let's see what they think. Let's bring it in. It's a huge opportunity and a huge opportunity to expand the scope of communications.

Yeah, they're adults. Let's treat them like adults. I think you're absolutely right. You know what, it looks like we've run out of time. So Lindsay, thank you very much for joining me on this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. It's been absolutely Brilliant talking to you.

Thanks very much, Scott. Pleasure to be here.

Thanks for listening. To hear the views of other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blog, or to find out more about Inspiring Change, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.