Dr Jen Frahm:
And hello everybody, welcome back. In something that wasn’t quite planned, but it actually has played out this way, I am now coming back to you with yet another fabulous person that I worked with nine years ago. So, the last episode you would have heard with Anton de Weger, I worked with Anton at Aurecon. This week I am bringing to you the ever so amazing David Arnold, who we also got to work together in Aurecon. David, welcome to the podcast.
David Arnold:
Hello, Jen, and lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me, and it’s great to catch up again.
Dr Jen Frahm:
As you know, we’ve been trying to do this for some time, and when I spoke to Anton I was like, “Right, I’ve got to get this,” because it took me back in time. And as I was preparing for this, David, I was thinking, “I don’t think we often pay credit enough to organizations like Aurecon who set up such a permissive environment, that a number of us have kind of done our best work there.” And so, you end up having work colleagues where you know that you did amazing work with, and a lot of that, if you think about the type of things that we could do as a change team, that was because of that permissiveness around creativity, and innovation, and making mistakes, and trying things, and being agile that Aurecon was really good at.
David Arnold:
Yeah, absolutely. I listened to that episode with Anton, it’s really fascinating, and learning what he’s doing now. Yeah, the atmosphere and the environment you work in is so important. And back in the day, for those who don’t know, Aurecon is a more corporate entity. And certainly we were able to take on huge challenges and try new things, and see what worked and what didn’t, and navigate our way through doing big implementations globally. But I think it’s the environment, as you say, doesn’t really matter what industry you’re in, which organization. We’re more in a community-based organization now, and the same environment and opportunity exists even with high ambition to achieve things and create change and improvements, to be able to then say that you can go about it in a way that is flexible, dynamic and you’re trusted is really important.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah, yeah. I think when you’ve worked in it you take it for granted perhaps, and it’s only been doing these reconnecting with both of you that have gone, actually I do think that some of maybe the reason why I’m so passionate about agile change was because of the opportunities I was afforded in there, and you could just do such good work and really enjoy it. Anyway, let us focus, because as I said, I’m a bit excited about this so I need to bring it in. Take a breath, be calm. You did our Agile Change Leadership Certificate in 2021, I think. Were you-
David Arnold:
Yes, I think that was my lockdown hobby. I actually thought, “What can I use this period of isolation to do constructively? I know, I’ll go away and learn something.” So, I did the certification then.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah, fabulous. Now, you are known for working out loud on LinkedIn, so you often share a lot of the really cool stuff that you’ve been doing, but I thought it would be really interesting to run a quick retrospective with you to say, “Hey, in the four years since you did the certificate,” three questions.
First question, what has really worked for you in terms of your change, leadership capability, skills, way of thinking?
David Arnold:
Yeah. Well, the last thing you said there, I think the way of thinking is what it’s all about. And I mean, we’re all in organizations large and small. They may have their own preferred methodology, and there are numerous ones out there, and they’ll do their thing. But I think it’s more about the skills that I have now to navigate what’s in front of me and bring different elements of that out. And the capabilities I have and the tools that I use are much more flexible and dynamic to the situation that I see before me. It’s not a case of step one, step two, step three, step four, it’s, “Oh, these people need this now, what have I got? Ah, that tool, that part of the methodology, that capability, that strategy would work in this situation.” So, it’s just having the mindset to go with that, and see what works and what doesn’t.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah, it’s liberating, isn’t it?
David Arnold:
Yeah.
Dr Jen Frahm:
What then, have you found really difficult in that time?
David Arnold:
Yeah, it’s a good question, because if by nature if some things are dynamic, you’re not quite sure what to do next in some cases and you’re unsure how people will respond, there is no set step plan to follow. So, you’re leaving that support in that sense behind, and you’re freestyling it a little bit. And that is a challenge if you rely on your traditional ways of working and think, “Well, that’s how it has to be done,” when the whole world and organizations these days are so overloaded with change and so dynamic, and it’s so relentless. And the change team is small, and has a lot of work in their inbox and thinking, “Well, what can I do right now to be of the most use?” So, trying to keep up with the pace of changing environment, and then just being comfortable with, as I say, freestyling almost, and leaving behind the huge great detailed plans we all know and love from back in the day.
Dr Jen Frahm:
So what I’m hearing there, what’s worked really well for you and what has been the most difficult is two sides of the same coin. The freestyling, the being flexible, the being in the moment is what’s worked for you, but it’s still come at a cost, it’s a challenge.
David Arnold:
Yeah. I mean, there are some obvious starting points. We all find out what the initial change is, what does the current say, what does the future say, how are we going to get there? It’s the basic things we would all start with, but along the way who knows where that will take you and what is the part of your preferred methodology, whichever it is, that you’ll use at any one time? Or what tool or what skills will be useful in the moment? So, there are things that I always do, and there are things that I always rely on, but within that there’s that opportunity just to, I guess move around all the different frameworks, and all the different capabilities, and all the different strategies and tools that we have at our disposal and think what’s going to be the most effective right now?
Dr Jen Frahm:
So, what in that time has surprised you?
David Arnold:
What a good question. Surprised is sometimes how effective they are, because we all have self-doubt and we’re not quite sure how’s this going to go sometimes, particularly if you’re trying something new. And if you’re taking on some of these agile tools and starting with a different mindset, you might not quite be confident in how this turns out. And then, so often I’m pleasantly surprised by how it goes and the response I get from the people I’m engaging with, or who are participating, or the people who are reviewing the work, and I walk out and go, “Oh, that actually went really well. Okay, cool. I’ll do that next time as well.” So, sometimes it’s pleasant surprises or ugly surprises, I’d say.
Dr Jen Frahm:
And we’ll get into some of those things that have worked really well for you, but I think before we do let’s contextualize it. You work in local government. Can you paint a picture for the audience around what is that like to do change in? How many change people do you have? Just what does your work environment look like in local government?
David Arnold:
Sure, absolutely. So yeah, local government, so very community-facing, very values-based. A lot of empathetic people under that organization, because that’s the nature of the industry we’re in. I guess when we think about local government people might think, “Oh yeah, things don’t change that rapidly. Things remain constant.” The old stereotypes of a council worker come to the fore. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I’ve worked in corporate, but I certainly work as hard if not harder in local government than I ever did there, and that’s because we have a high ambition to support our communities. We have high ambition to keep evolving in our organization, but we also have limited resources just by the nature of the industry.
And so, I have a couple of colleagues in my change team, a leader, and then myself as full-time and a colleague as part-time, and that’s it. Now, there are big programs that go on, and they bring in their own specialists, but in local government, if you’re in a major city you may have one, maybe 1.6, maybe two change managers. You may have just half a part-time person, you may have none. It may be incorporated into the HR function or something like that. And if you’re in regional or rural areas here in Australia, there wouldn’t be a change function. And so, you’re dealing with the same high ambition and the same desire to evolve and be, provide the best services as you can for your community, but recognizing there is a limited budget, there’s limited resources, but the expectation is still there.
So, that’s why in some senses you actually have to, I found I had to become a more agile mindset change practitioner simply because I couldn’t navigate everything that was expected in any other way.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Interesting. Needs must, needs must. Let’s unpack some of the really good things that you’ve done or the things that you’re quite proud of, and some of the things that are coming to mind, first of all, building a change practice from scratch. Tell us about that. So you’ve got in there, you’ve all got this purpose around community, high empathy, and my experience with local government is there is always incredible ambition to do a lot of change.
David Arnold:
Absolutely.
Dr Jen Frahm:
What comes next? Tell me what that journey was like for you.
David Arnold:
So, there’s a lot happening as you say, and you arrive and you’ll say, “Well, you’re the change team.” “Okay, cool. What have we got in place? Very [inaudible 00:12:56] but we have a preferred methodology that we’re probably going to sign up to. Good. Anything else? No. Okay, so that’s just me and I’ll start then, shall I?” And so, you’d literally open your laptop and think, “Well, where do I begin?” And then you draw on your own experiences, and I was fortunate to have the experience of working with you. And I must admit those first few days I was thinking, “What would Jen do here?” But very quickly you start to build a picture of the organization, you get a sense of what’s going on, and you get a sense of what could be helpful.
And so, I took the preferred methodology they had in place, thought, “Okay, great. There’s something to build around. What can I do with this? Can I start introducing that to some projects that are just starting so they start to see what the service is all about? How can I expand the change function throughout the organization if I’m just one person? And how can I articulate and bring visibility to the amount of change that is going on, and provide executive leaderships with a view of, ‘Hey, you’ve got all this ambition, you’ve got all this stuff going on. This is what the people are experiencing, how might we best support them?” And from that, the conversation started to grow and we were able to, as I say, work out our way of doing change and build upon that step by step.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Can I jump back to that point you just made about how do you surface to leaders and explain? Can we get a bit more granular? Were there particular tools or practices that you … Because that’s a real common pain point for a lot of the audience, so I’m keen to hear how you did that at a practical level.
David Arnold:
So, one of the things that I’ve learned through the certification and through working for you was the change radar. And I thought, “Well, I need situational awareness for me of what’s going on, but also I can bring that situational awareness to executive leadership.” And I need it to be very visual and I needed to be a picture they can look at and immediately grasp change. So, imagine an airport radar, all the flights going on, and all I did was ask people to send me a list of all the changes that were going on. And it turned out that there wasn’t really a central list at any one point, all that. So, suddenly we had visibility of what was happening, and I could plot that on a radar of all these little dots, or big dots if they were major programs, and say, “Look, this is high, medium, or low complexity.”
And the use of visual representation split up between divisions or departments so you could get a grasp of what the load was. And then, as well as situational awareness from the change team, what that brought was interesting conversations. “Oh, those two projects might be related. We had no idea that was going on.” “Oh, okay, well let’s have that conversation, and why are there three rostering system projects happening at the same time?” And so, you start to see those connections, you start to see those impacts, and obviously they’ll go a lot deeper. But that radar was just that situational awareness for everybody involved, what was going on. It’s hard work, had to talk to a lot of people to put it together, but the effort was worth it.
Dr Jen Frahm:
It’s so effective, isn’t it? I think that is one of the tools that is so effective. And I used it recently with another client, and that aha moment when 30 people in the room start to see the visualization of actually this is what we’ve got going on. And to your point, what are the interdependencies for the first time that’s so important?
David Arnold:
Absolutely. If you’re alone in your change practice and you feel that there’s a business case for more support in whichever form that takes, here’s a visual representation, it starts to build a business case as well.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah, nice. So building on that, one of your standout successes has been the establishment of your change bees. Tell us the story of the change bees, I’m super curious about the name. And yeah, what happened? From the start to where we are now.
David Arnold:
Sure. So, this is where you find me sitting alone with my laptop thinking, “I’m change support. Oh dear, I’ve got a lot to do.” So, how can I build capability across the whole organization, and at the same time get change support out there to the people if I can’t be in 12 places at once? And so, we’ve all familiar with the term change champions or change agents, the influencers around the organization. And I thought, “Well, if I put a community of practice together and build that capability, I’m spreading that throughout the organization and taking the skills out to directly supporting their peers, I’m providing professional development for people. And let’s be honest, I don’t have to be in 12 places at once. So, that’s kind of cool.” So, what we did was say we’re going to have that network, the change bees network.
Where does the name come from? Well, change champions, change agent, we’ve all heard them, and I just found those names a little bit dull, just my personal … And then, I was reading about how bees work in a hive, and how they move around the garden and pollinate, and come back to the hive, go back out again. And actually, if you look into the science of how that works, it’s very similar to how a change agent or change champion network would operate. The key difference for us was that we offered professional development for our participants. We got them a certification in change management and said, “Hey, this is for your development, this is for your resume, LinkedIn, for your future career. You can apply this now in our organization, we’re backing you to do that.” I started with 12, asked them to apply. I looked for two things. Do they have an empathetic outlook on people, and can they influence and work with senior leaders and junior team members at the same time?
And if they tick those two boxes they were in, and I could teach them everything else about change. And it’s grown now to be, I think we’re 40 strong in an organization of 1,500. So, the ratio between a certified change bee and the staff is really encouraging. And it was a brilliant way that we could build capability when we don’t have the resources to have a team of 10, or a team of 20, or a team of 30 if you’re a major organization. So, it’s been a huge success and we’ve been doing it for five years. There’s always a waiting list for it, because people can see the benefit it brings and the opportunity afford to the professional development. And it’s a bit of fun. We have honey lollipops, and we lean into the hive, and we’ve got badges on our lanyards that signify we’re a change bee and people can approach us. So, we do lean into the theme.
Dr Jen Frahm:
So, my quick check of the calculator right then for those watching the video and seeing me get distracted, with 1,500 people, you are 5 people off hitting your 3%. So, the stat about if you have 3% in the organization that are knowledgeable and capable in change, you’ve reached the percentage that you need to influence the whole organization.
David Arnold:
Yeah, absolutely. And if you add that to the central practice I mentioned before, the three people that we have here-
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yep. Well, there you go.
David Arnold:
… we’re pretty much there.
Dr Jen Frahm:
You’ve hit your 45.
David Arnold:
Yep.
Dr Jen Frahm:
How cool, that is fantastic. Can you tell me a little bit about building the business case to get that funding? So, I think there’s going to be a lot of people in the audience who go, “This is exactly what I want to do, but how did he get the funding?” What was the conversation like?
David Arnold:
Yeah. So, the conversation was back to the load that was on and people could feel it, but they couldn’t really articulate and see it until I started building that change radar, talking about the difference it could make, and talking about the risk to the ambition of how well change was being executed, and how are we getting value and seeing the benefit of the investments we were making? And could that be improved a little bit by from all sorts of local support? And if you do the math, as you’ve just done, the cost of the certification, even if you multiply it by that amount of people, if you then compare that to employing one or two change managers, you get the same local support-
Dr Jen Frahm:
Clever.
David Arnold:
… throughout your organization, or you just get two more very busy people at the same cost. And suddenly that pricked up a few ears going, “Oh, hang on. Maybe we could give this a go.” But we spent 5 years getting to 40. We started with 12 and we said, “Let’s just try it with 12, see how it works, and then build upon that.” And when people were seeing the benefit of having it, and then even more major change came, well, do we need to get a few more change bees? Oh yeah, that’s probably a good idea. And then you start to see that benefit even more.
Dr Jen Frahm:
So, iterative development of capabilities. So you do the first 12, get the results, you use that to back up further investment.
David Arnold:
Yeah. And many of the first 12 bees are still there, they’re still in the hive every month, our community practice, they’re still contributing. And I think the leaders see that, and it’s been extraordinarily successful. I think everyone who’s been through the program, they’ve all given it a glowing review at the end and so, it does have a bit of a reputation as being a way of doing it. Yeah.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yep. And I love the story of the bees, because again, you’ll be familiar, one of the things we teach in the Agile Mindset course is biomimicry, and how do we use biomimicry to think about things differently? Which you’ve just provided the most beautiful example of biomimicry in action, so thank you for that. Now tell me, the other thing that I think has been really interesting and really, a lot of people talk about it, they don’t necessarily do it, is the starting of the podcast. How did that play out with your building change capability practice story?
David Arnold:
Yeah, this is a really good example of all these things coming together. And so, we had a cohort in our organization who we wanted to provide change support to, who couldn’t leave their workplace. So our posted workers, they [inaudible 00:25:06] out on the floor every day, they simply could not come in for a two-hour session. Even online training was difficult. By the very nature, they’re out with the community serving those people all the time. You can’t take people away from that. So, the problem I had was how do I provide change support if they’re going through a major change with those restrictions in place? And so, I actually took it to the change bees and said, “Look, here’s my problem. So, working out loud-
Dr Jen Frahm:
Working out loud, yes, tick.
David Arnold:
… I’m stuck a bit of vulnerability. How do I do this? What were your ideas?” And as I was talking, someone wrote in the chat, “Do it as a podcast.” And I think my eyes must have gone as wide as saucers. And before I could say, “Oh, grief, no, no, no, no, no,” about six people had jumped in the chat like, “Yeah, we’d listen, we’d listen.” And so, then I thought, “Well, maybe that is the accessible way of doing it.” And the discussion with the bees went, “Well, if you did it as a podcast, we could listen to it when we’re driving. We could walking the dog, doing the dishes.” And so, then it became a case of how do you do a podcast? And talk about going back to a beginner’s mindset, I was literally Googling, “How do you record a podcast?” And then I thought, “Well, I can’t really do it on my own.”
And the colleague of mine, or a business partner of mine, Fleur Mouchemore and I have been working together off and on for many years, and we quite often had conversations in the cafe where we went through everything we were experiencing. And I thought, “Well, what would happen if we just brought a tape recorder along?” A tape recorder, that shows my age, doesn’t it? A fully digital online recorder. And just put those conversations as Adapting to Change program online. And what if we did 12 episodes about the Adapting to Change program that we would have done in a meeting if they’d all had half a day to spare, and did 12 episodes, and then drop those episodes on milestones along the project timeline, what would happen?
Turns out it was the birth of a podcast called Coffee with Fleur, where we’d literally sit in the cafe and talk about what’s on our minds, all things change, well-being, positive psychology and neuroscience, all those kinds of themes that we deal with every day, and people can just tune in on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and listen to us. We have a little rule, which is it’s only as long as it takes us to drink our coffee, which is usually about 15 minutes. And it’s just our thoughts on what we’re seeing, and strategies and tips, and it’s proved incredibly successful. And it all came from that initial going to the change meeting, “How on earth do I do this?”
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah. Sometimes I get speechless when I see the things you’re doing, because it’s like you bring to life everything we teach. So, in the Agile Change manager certificate, we talk about using audio and doing internal podcasts and stuff like that, but so few people ever would do it or would ever take it at that really simple level, which just says, “What would happen if we did?” Or it becomes really complex for them where it’s like, “Actually no, just go out and eavesdrop with a recorder.” This is what it’s about. So seriously, kudos to you, David. You have a level of, I was going to say courage, but I don’t know it is, because I don’t know that you ever have to feel brave to do this. Tell me, does it feel like courage? What is it that’s driving you to do the things that other people don’t?
David Arnold:
What a good question, what a good question. There’s a bit of courage in there. There’s an element of being prepared to take a bit of a risk and try something new that has not been done before. And curiosity. What would happen if? But I think it’s just a, “Well, how can I get it done?” I’m so used to dealing with constrained resources, constrained budgets, but the obvious need to support people, and that’s my purpose. So, how can I square all that up? And it just so happens that my brain seems to come up with creative ways of doing things that I think you go-
Dr Jen Frahm:
Like?
David Arnold:
But I think as well, it comes back to that environment that we were talking about at the start. If your leaders are happy to give something a try and you’re not quite sure how this works out, but we’ll give it a go, see what happens, then it opens up the possibility that it might just work.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah. And again, for our audience sake, in David’s first year in change, he brings into me a complete branding of the change work based on The Jetsons that was done so creatively, because it was a future-ready project and it was all in brand color. It was just perfect. And then follows up with an adaption of a Monopoly board. Was it Monopoly? It was Monopoly?
David Arnold:
Yeah, I think so. Forgot about that one.
Dr Jen Frahm:
I know, right? But it was a fully fleshed out prototype of change Monopoly to bring to life what we were doing in that program. And that was your first year of change.
David Arnold:
Yeah, but I think that was a real pivotal moment, that Jetsons moment, because we were working together and it was a future-ready project, which is a phrase that is quite well-used in change, and people think about that. And I was just trying to think, “Okay, how on earth with my …” What was it then? In my first year, so a couple of months experience of being a change person, “How on earth do you articulate this in a way people …” And I was just racking my brain one day thinking, “Well, who are the most future-ready people on the planet?” And somewhere out of the thin air came The Jetsons. And then overnight, I think that I wrote it up and kept bringing it on to you, “I think I know how we would do this.”
And I thought, “Well, this is either going to be the shortest lived change career in history, or it might go somewhere.” And thankfully, if you’re willing to take a risk and just go out there on a limb sometimes, the people you are presenting to like it. And I think without that moment I wouldn’t have been doing things like we’ve done now, I wouldn’t be doing all these creative projects that we’ve had success with. There wouldn’t be all of this going on. So, that moment was really pivotal.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah, I do think that one of your strengths is your, I’m going to call it pragmatic creativity, because you come up with creative ways of doing things that are doable as opposed to off the charts, “No, don’t be silly. We can’t do that.” Not that ever saying don’t be silly would be a good thing, but that get immediately rejected is probably more to my point, the stuff that you come up with is pragmatic and thoughtful. So, I think that’s a real strength that you bring to this space.
David Arnold:
Thank you, that’s very generous of you. I think the other project that really stands out as an example of doing that is the Evolve home and land project we did, which was building a big organizational strategy out of cardboard, believe it or not.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yes. Tell me about that.
David Arnold:
Yeah, so this was at the local government, and I was called in [inaudible 00:33:24] and they said, “Oh, we’re doing an organizational strategy and we’d like you to do a change in engagement, and embed it throughout the organization.” Like, “Okay, cool.” And I went away and thought about this, and then came back to the leaders involved and said, “Just one question. Do you want this to be read or unowned and embedded, or do you just want it written? Because we could do one of two things. We could write a strategy, have a glossy document, put it in SharePoint, no one will read it, and then in three years time we’ll do another one. But if you want it to actually be embedded and known by the organization, I’ve got a bit of an idea.”
Now, working in local government is amazing because we have all these different industries under one roof, all these different people we can tap into. And it just so happened that where I work there is a gallery, a small gallery, but a really high class and real high quality gallery, and an arts team. And they had an exhibition in there about from some world leading artists, and they were creating a future city out of cardboard for the community. And I thought, “Oh, I wonder what happens if I bring that inside and that’s our organizational strategy?” So, we worked with those artists and said, “Look, would you be willing to do an extra project?” “Yes, we would.” “Excellent.” We then said to our people, “We would like you to imagine what our organization looks like in five years time, and we’ve brought you a cardboard kit to build that vision.”
And this was all done during lockdown, so there’s a little bit more time on our hands. And we were able to look at it as a wellbeing project from that part as well, the connecting project. And we said to them, “What does the future of this organization look like in five years time? Build it.” And that was our engagement session. We never knew what would happen next, and what we found was people started building, whether it was a building with renewable energy, a lot of wind farms, a lot of schools, a lot of meeting places, and being really invested in their model. They then sent the models back in, we put them into an artistic installation, filled the ground floor lobby of our building. And as this thing grew, it became the visual representation of an organizational strategy.
At the end of each engagement session, we asked people to fill out a simple form of, “What have you built? Why have you built it?” Sent that off to the people writing the organizational strategy so they had real time input from their people on what to put into their strategy. How does this all play out? Well, of course you’ve got a great big cardboard city, it draws a lot of attention. People walk past it every day, people now want to get involved in it. But when we went to launch the organization strategy, we simply went around and said, “Do you remember those buildings you built? That line here reflects your building that you put into cardboard.” And people owned it. And they went, “Yeah, I can see that. That’s who we are.” And they immediately bought into that organizational strategy.
And even now, if I went up to a few people who are still here in the organization and said, “What did you build for that project?” They could tell me exactly what they built and why they built it, and what a great demonstration of embedding the change that is. And as a sort of exclamation mark on the end, we had a number of leaders come up to us, or come to me personally and say, “You started with this crazy idea and I didn’t believe in it. I was wrong. It’s amazing. And just keep doing what you’re doing.” And so, that turnaround of leadership as well was just as important as the ownership and the fun of working with the gallery team.
Dr Jen Frahm:
So amazing. So amazing.
David Arnold:
Yeah, good times.
Dr Jen Frahm:
And look, I know you’ve got links to that, which I’ll of course put in the show notes so people can follow up that more, because I just think it’s such an extraordinary example. Last question for you. On a personal level, I would describe you as a lifelong learner. So, I’m curious about your thinking about learning, the courses you’ve done, the certificates, the diplomas, what they’ve been, what value do they bring to you? What is your thinking around, “How do I choose what I do in a formal learning perspective?” That was a very messy question, I hope that-
David Arnold:
No, I know exactly where you’re going, because there’s been a very messy history of my learning, to be honest with you [inaudible 00:38:29]. I mean, who knew? When I was at school, I was never a lifelong learner. Far from it. But in my career, I guess I realized that if I was going to start wanting to do this work, then I’d better know what I was talking about. And that started through projects, and then walked into change. And I guess it’s that, well, I’ve got to figure out what this thing is that I would like to learn more about, and then do those certificates. It’s just then got to the point where I realized that if I’m going to be a more well-rounded change professional, I really have to understand people. And so, I’ve done a few certifications on change and thought, “Well, right, I think I’ve got that down now. I understand what it is.”
But then there was the realization of looking at peers in the industry that, “Oh, hang on. I don’t really understand people from a psychology and wellbeing perspective. I better learn about that.” And so, that windy road led me into a couple of years of looking at that. And it really came because a number of people kept saying to me, “Oh, you’re like the organizational psychologist. You listen and you’re empathetic.” And enough people said that to me that I thought, “Well, if that’s what you want me to be, then I will be,” not taking it as far as being a psychologist, but certainly did positive psychology certifications, wellbeing practitioner certifications. And then that morphed into the brain-friendly change again, through Agile Change, to start learning the applied neuroscience with Michelle Teunis and yourself, and Lena Ross.
And that’s now giving me another avenue to become that well-rounded change professional that I realize I need to be. Along the way though, the by-product of that, it’s done a lot to support me being able to continue in this work, because we all know change is really hard and really challenging, and we go through it every day and then we collapse on the sofa at night and think, “Oh my goodness me, what was that?” And doing that work on myself whilst learning how to support other people had this massive personal benefit on me that I changed as well, and was able to navigate and cope with everything that was coming my way from an emotional people perspective, which we all find so challenging. So, I guess it’s been a winding road but there’s been some sort of plan behind it to be a more well-rounded professional, and bonuses along the way for me personally.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Yeah. What a beautiful way to end it. Gosh, David, gosh, you have given us a lot in this interview, specifically really applied examples of how it all comes out. You’ve given people inspiration of what can be, and then that really smart wisdom around a career, a sustainable career. What’s your ask of the audience or the listeners? What would you ask of them in return?
David Arnold:
Well, I think the main thing for listeners and viewers to consider is that, I guess I’ve got some stories there, and they’re related, and you can have a go. And if you embrace and just take that little bit of risk or just try something new, you never know what might happen. It might actually work. And so just being open, thinking of different ways to support people, and making sure that what we do is caring, and empathetic, and values driven, and is not overloading people. Now, we’ve mentioned the podcast, we talk about that. Yes, there’s a LinkedIn, you can see what we’re doing there. But I think every individual can probably just take a moment and pause, and think, “Okay, what is the best way? What do our people need right now?”
And then, maybe just have the courage to try something a little bit out there, see what’s possible, and just have that open mindset because it can take you a long way.
Dr Jen Frahm:
Fabulous. David Arnold, thank you so much for joining us on the conversations of Agile Change.
David Arnold:
Thank you so much, and lovely to catch up, and lovely to chat about all these things. Thank you so much.
