The Failure Gap

Julie Williamson, Ph.D. (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap where we talk with leaders about closing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Jo Adroois. Jo has 30 years of experience working on technology enabled change and transformation programs. She combines a unique knowledge and appreciation of the power of technology with a deep understanding of what makes humans tick as she advises and supports senior leaders through some of their biggest challenges.

passionate runner, reader, and open water swimmer, which personally I think sounds like an awesome triathlon. Jo also is a campaigner for teaching mental health as a science in schools to normalize mental health for future generations. Jo, welcome to the Failure Gap. Thank you, Julie. It is very exciting to be here. I feel like it's taken us a little while to manage to organize ourselves, but yeah, it's great to be here and talking to you. Yeah, we got ourselves here, right?

Speaking of getting ourselves places, I would love for you just to give our listeners a little recap of your background and how you came to be where you are today. Tell us a little bit about your leadership journey. thank you. Whenever I sort of talk about my leadership journey, I feel like it sort of goes in three sections or three acts, I suppose. I sort of think of it as the first act is very much about what I would call quite a traditional

journey, which is all about doing well at school, doing well at university, doing well in that, I'm going to say like the first 10 years or so of work where you're just building credentials and experience. And you're kind of building experience of different subjects and you're building experience of what it's like to do real work with real people, real companies. So I very much.

did an engineering degree. then went to work for a big consultancy and I just started out doing quite a lot of technology consulting and was just building on that, meeting new companies, taking on new challenges, learning a bit more about enterprise leadership, I suppose, in terms of kind of covering quite a lot of different areas within the business. And that went on for about, I'm going to say about 10 or so years. And then I kind of come to the next act, which I would probably...

put in the category of challenge. So I would say that was the point where I had one of the biggest challenges for me in terms of my career, which was I basically had a complete breakdown. So I reached that point where I didn't really know which way was up. I just knew that work was, it was just too much. And I just couldn't.

get out of bed and go and do what I had been doing for so, you know, the first 10 or so years of my life. So that for me is very much that middle section is kind of going down. So I've done my traditional going up and then I reached this point where I'm just not sure, A, if kind of the corporate world is for me, is this what I actually want to do going forward? Or if it is what I want to do.

am I still capable of doing it? And I suppose as we ever say, it's experience that builds resilience. And although that time was very challenging, as I came out of that, I had a lot more clarity on, well, what do I actually want to do? And the subsequent sort of 20 or so years of my career have been almost the third act, which I just described as like the bounce back, I suppose, which was, you know, I...

gained a huge amount of self-awareness in terms of what do I enjoy, what makes me tick. And then that enabled me to actually work on myself. And then I was able to work on my team and I was able to work with other people as a consultant, leadership consultant and advisor to really help other people in terms of how they grow and develop their own teams successfully. During that period, Julie, that's when you and I met.

And we've done some amazing work together around helping leaderships move towards alignment. So very much around doing a lot more of that work with other leadership teams. And then I think the main part for me in terms of, where am I now? I think I would really describe myself as a servant leader. And I think, you know, we hear that term bandied around, but

I'm not a leader who kind of wants to be out there in the limelight all the time. I am much more of a leader who wants to make sure that the people around me are equipped to achieve the best they are capable of and the things they are looking to do with their lives. So I see myself very much in that servant leadership role. And I would say, you know, we often talk about head and heart.

And I would say I'm definitely a heart led leader, but I have a lot of the sort of logical, rational head side that tempers it as well. And my career across all of those 30 years, that's been very much, I started out as an engineer, I started out with an engineering job, but it's been mostly in the world of consultancy where I've been kind of privileged to work with some amazing big global corporate, corporates and...

learned so much about different industries, different organizations, different leadership teams, and a whole lot more. But hopefully that gives you and the people that will log on to listen a bit of a sense of my journey. That's the rapid fire route. You know, Jo, I really appreciate that. And I love how you've broken it up into this initial experience building, which a lot of people

get into that and they think, okay, now I've figured out what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna stay on this path, right? But life throws us all sorts of curve balls and talking about going into this period of challenge, I think a lot of people do run into that period somewhere around 10 years in and there's a lot of questions about, is this the right thing for me? And I appreciate your authenticity in sharing your experience with that time and what that felt like and what that looked like.

And then moving into that bounce back phase, knowing that when you're in that period of challenge, there is that opportunity to bounce back and to figure out how might I take what looked like 10, 15 years ago would be a straight and narrow path. How might I take that in a different direction that is more fulfilling from a heart and head perspective continues to challenge me intellectually, but also fuels my soul and my heart in that space. And I think Joe, it's such a wonderful example of

how we can as humans be open to that throughout the course of our careers. I don't know about you, but so many, especially younger people who I talk to, they just want to have it figured out and know what the path is. And I just feel like there's not a path. There's not always a path. We do come across that, don't we? As both coaches and leadership sort of consultants, we come across a lot of people saying, well, what's the answer?

give us the answer and then we'll do it. And yeah, you're right. We come across a lot of people that just, this is my path. And I know, you know, I'm not a big one for giving out loads of advice. I think it's better to coach people. It's better for people to reach their own conclusions. But, you know, if you do sort of take something away from some conversations, I think it is really important to recognize that you probably don't know what the end looks like when you start out.

and you definitely don't know what the path that's gonna get you there is gonna look like. And being okay with that, I think it makes life easier and definitely happier. 100 % agree with that. And as you know, at Carrickans Group, we like to say that sometimes action precedes clarity. Sometimes you need to take some steps and see where it leads you and then have that resilience to continue to move forward. So yeah, what a shining example of that.

So let's take a look at this idea of moving from agreement to alignment. And I love some of the stories that people have been willing to share. And I'm curious for yourself, when you think about moving from agreement to alignment in life, what are some examples maybe that you can share where you feel like you've tried to tackle learning something new or maybe in this bounce back, like doing things differently, and you've been able to go from, sounds like a good idea. I'd like to be able to do that to bringing it to life and

Maybe an example of where that hasn't worked so well. And what does that space look like for you in your world? I think, I mean, I always think that when you kind of go through life and you're constantly thinking, right, there's something new to do, there's something new to try, there's something to take on as a challenge to sort of grapple with. And

As you ask, as you're asking that question, I sort of, something sprung into my mind that was, is fairly recent. So as, as is often the case is that the sort of the recency kicks in. But I was not, not too many weeks ago, just before Christmas, I was on holiday. And every time we go on holiday as a family, we get in the swimming pool.

and my daughter will always, always, always, she'll go on. It feels like she's going on and on and with me. Mommy, mommy, learn to swim like a mermaid, learn to swim like And every day before we go, she's like, mommy, are you gonna learn to swim like a mermaid this time? And I'm always like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, And we talk about it then we get in the pool and then she's always like, mommy, you're not really very good at this. And she sort of loses attention and off she goes and does something else. And this time when we got in,

She was like, mommy, this time you are really, you know, I really want you to do this. And I actually, I actually properly stopped and thought about, okay, what has happened all the times before when we've kind of got in and I've just gone, this is fine, you know, I'm a, I'm a good swimmer. So I kind of assume that it'll be fairly easy. And so I was, I was thinking to myself, you know, what?

what am I gonna need to do differently? So we kind of set off and I was like, it'll be fine. And I came sort of did a little bit and came up and she goes, you just look ridiculous, mummy. You're not doing right. And I thought to myself, I thought, yeah, I felt a bit ridiculous. But you know what? said to her, I said, okay, so what am I not doing right? And she goes, I don't, it's quite hard to explain mummy, because you're not really doing any of it right. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna talk you through it. Now, this is my 12 year old who I've never,

She's not very patient. mean, 12 year olds generally not very patient. She's not very patient. And I was just blown away. Cause do know what she did? She literally stepped me through. Right. The first thing you do is you hold your arms like this and you go underwater like this. Right, mummy. You practice that. Right. Once you've got that right, you add in the next bit. Now this is where you go, you dive down. So you don't dive down until, and she literally break it down for me into like 10 steps. Honestly, it was so easy.

It was so easy. within five minutes, it was like, Mommy, you're great. You're doing it. And I just thought to myself, my goodness, why didn't we ever do it like that before? You know, we've been doing this. She's been trying to persuade me to do this for the last five years, maybe more. And suddenly, because we'd taken a completely different approach to it, we had a completely different result. And we were swimming around as mermaids.

I was just really, really simple. It sounds like a really simple thing, doesn't it? And appreciates a very, it's very sort of personal sort of example, but it was just uncanny between not being able to do something and being, yeah, we really want to do this to actually being able to do it.

It's such a great example. thinking about, I think it was Einstein who said insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I might have that wrong. But yeah, it sounds like for several years, you were like, this sounds like a good idea. I'm going to do it. And you just kept trying to do it the same way. And then for whatever reason, this year, you and your daughter had a breakthrough in, let's try it a different way. Let's try learning this differently. And that created the space for you to

learning to move your body in a different way. Yeah. Yeah. It was, was, it was that step. It was the breaking things down. It was the, so step by step, it was just building on those steps. And as ever, as we, as we always say with these things, it's about not being afraid to get it wrong and just try it, trying it. So yeah, a simple thing, but yeah,

I just want to ask one question, because I know this about you. You're a pretty good swimmer. And I wonder if historically that mindset might have gotten in the way a little bit of, I'm a good swimmer. Of course I can do this. So I don't need to break this down into 10 simple steps. Like, I'm a smart person. I can handle complex things. I'm a good swimmer. I know how to move my body in the water. And so I wonder if there was just an assumption on your part that you didn't need that level of

specificity in it and that you could just figure it out. And when you had a breakthrough where you were like, okay, let's take a step back and maybe your daughter pushed you into that and said, here's what we're going to do, that you were able to park that a little bit and say, yeah, let's go back to the beginning. Let's go back to basics. I fear, Julie, you've nailed it. And I also suggest that that will be why I'm the person who always thinks you can buy new things and you don't need to read the instructions.

Exactly. How far could it be? Definitely, Without that and do you know, like, because you were asking, weren't you? You were saying, have you got any examples of where it's been maybe more challenging and you haven't necessarily been able to move from agreement to alignment? I, as you were saying that, again, it was another

There was another example that was linked to my daughter. She's obviously very much in my thoughts today, but it was a scenario where I really, so she will be the first to say that she does well at school, but she struggles with maths. And she's got some.

exams coming up fairly soon as children often do around the age she is where she's looking to progress to the next stage of her education. And she's good, but she's maybe not as good as she might need to be. And so she was saying, I think I need a bit more help in maths. And I was very much, that's not a problem. Here we are, because both myself and my husband.

of very scientific, very mathematical backgrounds. And I was like, absolutely, this is going to be fine. And let's just sit down. in my maths brain, I'm all about breaking it down into its component parts. And that's what we did. And it didn't work. And she was just stuck. And my husband tried. And he was just like, I don't know what it is. She just doesn't.

And we were both like, she doesn't seem to just kind of know the basics. We were like, this is really strange. So, and obviously we don't like to have unsolved, unsolved problems. Grappling away. And then we realized, I mean, obviously we know. So, Mallory, our daughter, she's autistic. We've known that for quite a while. And we always pride ourselves. We're always like, you know, she's autistic, no problem. She's got a different.

a on the world. Yes, there can be challenges at times, but we always feel, you know, we're very tuned in as to her world. And you know what? I really, really realized when I stopped and thought about it, we absolutely were incapable of walking in her shoes when it came to the way she approaches math. So we were like, yeah, we understand that she needs certain things. So, you she's not necessarily very good.

from a sensory point of view. So she has to wear cotton clothes and she has to have her labels cut out and things like that. We're like, yeah, you know, we can walk in her shoes when it comes to that sort of thing. And she needs to be, maybe wear headphones if she's out and about because it could be quite overwhelming in terms of the noise. And we're like, yep, we know we will walk in her shoes in advance of going somewhere to think about will she need her headphones and things like that. And then we realized that when it actually came to maths,

We just hadn't, we had not stopped and thought about what it was really gonna take to walk in her shoes. And that had stopped us. So we were all in, you know, as a family, we were like, we can sort this, but we couldn't quite get there because we just hadn't truly understood what it was like for her. It's such a level of self-awareness, Jo, around

you and your husband both being innately good at math and having some pride in that and having some connection to that and knowing like feeling like, yes, we can get this sorted to be able to stop and reflect on that and say, you know, actually we were imposing that worldview on her and that's not her worldview. And that's where we're stuck. You know, that's a tremendous amount of self-awareness. I think on your part, I really appreciate you sharing that because I think a lot of people

don't necessarily take that pause to say, what construct am I imposing on this situation that might not be reflective of what the other person is experiencing? It's so true, isn't it? And obviously applies in so many different walks of life where taking a pause has got to be one of the most helpful things we can all do.

day to day when we're getting maybe a bit stressed, maybe a bit overwhelmed, maybe a bit anxious, a bit uncertain, things aren't maybe going the way we thought they should or would. Just taking that time to just step back and check in with ourselves as well as with each other. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what it reminds me of in a business world is I think about how often I've seen, and I suspect you have too, senior leaders who have

worked really hard on a strategy, for example, and the strategy is very clear to them, and they know and understand where you need to go and how to get there. And then they go out to their team, and they've had the benefit of having spent hours together as senior leaders crafting this strategy and figuring it out. And then they expect their team to understand it and to connect with it and to be able to deliver on it after seeing a one-hour PowerPoint presentation on it.

and hanging a poster on the wall. And then they're very confused and frustrated because the strategy makes total sense to them as senior leaders. And for some reason, their team isn't getting it. They're just not getting it. And it creates this dissonance in organizations that are trying to achieve a big strategic change. your story reminds me of that situation in the workplace. I'm sure you've seen that as well with some of the senior leaders you've worked on as you've gone through transformation programs.

Without doubt, whole kind of vision of a strategy is a great example, isn't it? Where, as you say, a lot of work goes on. You and I, work with many organizations to sort of help them craft maybe their strategy, maybe it's their values, maybe it's their behaviors, their purpose. All of those things that we know are so important.

to organizations and a lot of time and effort goes into that. And then it's like the big reveal, the moment where it becomes public and everybody in the organization, you're expecting everybody to be excited. You're expecting everyone to just understand, not just understand the bigger picture, but understand their role in it. When they've barely even seen it, they've not processed it.

it's been delivered in a sort of packaged up way. We forget that we have a lifetime or many weeks and months at least of time that we've spent on that. it also can become very dear to our hearts because we've spent so much time on it, maybe at the expense of other things. So, you know, it's become a big piece of work. And I think I've definitely worked with organizations where they have

followed that kind of approach of putting out that strategy. I remember when I was working on a new DE &I strategy and lot of time and effort had really gone into understanding what are the barriers to us creating a more diverse senior leadership team. How do we understand

There was a real acceptance of the value of this, which was a great step, but it was then very much, know, what are the barriers that are getting in our way of doing this? And it was hard to really understand the barriers because you had to take time for people to understand what it was you were trying to do. And it's taking, it always takes longer.

than we anticipate or many of the companies we work for. I think it takes time to process information to make it meaningful to you as an individual. And we can't underestimate how long that takes. I think we can't underestimate how long it takes to create alignment. It's easy to agree. You can agree very quickly to something.

but to align to it, to really lean in and be ready to take action on it, takes that time. it is, in my opinion, I think you share this, time in dialogue with others. That's how we create meaning is by talking about it. But, you know, I would say that the leadership teams that invest the time upfront to create alignment see huge acceleration on the backend when it comes to transformation or when it comes to something like DEI or, you know, significant

shift in priorities for the organization. You get the acceleration, but you have to work for it. However, if you don't put in the time upfront, then it ends up taking longer overall. And it's a lot harder because people don't have that connection to what it really means and how they're going to do it together. That's really fascinating. is, isn't it? And there are those different levels of connection, I always think.

So, you know, you've got your own individual connection that you need to build. You've got, then you've got your team's connection that you're looking to build. And then you've got the whole of the sort of the enterprise, the whole organization's connection. And all of those have to come good for a strategy or another sort of key piece, a key moment in time for that to actually permeate through the organization. And as you say,

to actually be, to come to life, to get to that point of real, with alignment, you kind of, you move from that point where when something's a good idea, it's quite easy to be committed to it. It's a lot harder to be committed to it when you're having to really, really work at it. It then, you know, it really has to mean something to you when it gets hard. Otherwise, we've got far too many things in our lives.

that it is something that will fall by the wayside. And I see so many organizations that will do a little bit time upfront on, okay, we've got a new strategy, we all need to get behind this, we need to get working on it. And they're not aligned at that point. They haven't really thought through what's it actually going to take. What am I as an individual going to need to do differently?

what is my team gonna need to do differently and what is the organization gonna do differently if we're serious about this? And I think it's not until you think those things through, there's a little bit of trying to walk in people's shoes, isn't there, of have we actually got this? Is this something that we all, if we're all committed to it, then it will stand the test of time. If not, it will be something that we go, oh yeah, do you remember? Do you remember that thing we did? Yeah, we didn't really do, but.

we never really finished it, we? You all that kind of thing. Or, yeah, we did that. But then, you know, it only six months and then we had another go. Exactly. Then we did something else too. The people weren't committed and they hadn't got behind it. And they didn't believe in it. It didn't make sense to them. You know, it does draw to mind for me, Jo, swimming like a mermaid and having this belief that I'm a pretty good swimmer. And so of course I can do this and I'll figure it out later. And like kind of being a little...

maybe not fully committed to it, and then this year breaking it down into 10 steps and saying, here's what I need to do to put it all together and taking that step back and that time to really understand that. And I think it's not a bad analogy for what we're talking about here, which is when you're trying to transform an organization, when you have a big strategy that you're trying to roll out, when you're trying to introduce things that are higher order on the scale of abstraction for people,

it's really important to take the time to help people to dial into what are those steps that we need to take and how might that challenge our current assumptions about what we're good at, what we're capable of and what we can deliver on. I think that what I'm hearing you kind of step into here is that's a really important part of transformation is helping more people in the organization to have that connection and that courage to really

hold the line when it gets hard. It's so true and it will always be hard. You know, I have never worked on a transformation that wasn't hard. Transformation are not easy. mean, fundamentally a transformation is about change, isn't it? And there's all of the psychology of change that tells us that, well, actually it's actually easier to stay doing something you don't really like, but at least you know it.

than it is to make that leap to doing it differently. Even though differently might be better, it takes a lot of energy to make that commitment, which means it's gonna be hard. And it should be, transformation should be hard, but it should be easy. We're doing it to be easy. We say that, we laugh a bit, you know, but I am...

Even now, when transformation as a sort of phrase has been around 25 plus years, we still get all the stories about transformations, only 70 % fail and only 30 % succeed. And since the original cotter back in the 70s, all that, we still hear that today. we will say, guys, it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be hard.

And to our mermaid analogy, which is now ringing ever more true, is gonna be done in steps. There are actually quite a few logical steps to this that can be followed, which can improve your chances of success. And actually it's really important to do things in a sensible order. Yeah, there'll always be some lucky people who can jump right in and could be mermaids straight away.

But the vast majority of us, even those who are good swimmers, will actually have to do it step by step and work at it. And sometimes it's the best swimmers who struggle the most. And I think that's a really important takeaway from this conversation, right? It's sometimes it's the people in the organization who are the best at their jobs who struggle through transformation because they have to let go of some preconceived notions about their place and their contribution and

You know, how they fit and everything about what they've planned for their carefully planned career path, right? And they have to be willing to take on that challenge and maybe take more of a beginner mindset in the process as you work to transform the organization. So I think that's another really important piece to pull through is this idea that it's not a straight line and you're asking people to get off the straight line that they've drawn for themselves.

so true in terms of consciously helping people understand that it is not necessarily going to fit that this transformation that we're talking about and introducing to the organization for a lot of individuals, it is not going to fit their plans, maybe their priorities, the things that they felt they had.

control over that they felt, you this is safe. This is my space. And suddenly you're asking me not only to step outside my space, but to bring my team outside that space. And there's a lot, there's a lot that goes on there, isn't there? And we, we so often, I always feel we're really privileged when we get the opportunity to work with organizations who recognize that

Transformation is going to be challenging. It is going to take time. That it will be really important to get senior people aligned and then getting teams aligned and all of those elements. And I feel it's a real, it is a real privilege when you get to work with some of those high performing individuals within an organization and you help guide them onto a different path and they're okay with that.

It's for them to, you you talk a lot about creating the space to be able to sort of jump in and approach things to think differently and approach things differently. And I always feel that that's one of the most worthwhile things we can do as consultants who are supporting organizations on their transformational journeys is help them to understand that's what's gonna be necessary.

Yeah, and taking the time, as you said earlier, right, is so important. This idea, we talk about creating the space, it's that you have to be willing to talk, not tell. It's kind of what we say, right? You have to be willing to have the conversation and not just tell people the answer or tell people the end state, but talk through how are we going to get there together? And I think that's something that falls in that creating the space area is how do we

create the space to talk and not just try to tell people what the destination is. Telling has a time and place, but if you invest in talking it through with people, even at scale, even throughout a large organization, if you can find those opportunities to engage in conversation, then you start to see very different outcomes. And I think there's really good point actually that you're making there, which is

Part of it is about finding those opportunities and part of it is about actually engineering some of those opportunities. And it's about being committed yourself to spending time with your people. And I think COVID made that challenging sometimes in terms of, we talk a lot, we, in terms of are we spending time physically with people or are we connecting virtually? And sometimes virtually is great. I think, my goodness.

that has really accelerated the way we are able to do so many things in terms of our embracing and accepting of being able to operate virtually. But equally, there's a time and a place for investing the time and the effort in the complexity of what are usually quite difficult conversations. And then leading to the point which I feel is so often

I find it hard to do. I think many people do, which is to properly listen. So you've got that bit, which is I'm such a great listener because I'm quiet when somebody else is talking. That does not make you a great listener. Are you really listening or are you just waiting for the next opportunity to put your point across? Listening is not about being just about being well-mannered and waiting for the next opportunity.

it's about really hearing and then having that conversation. We call it full body listening. Yeah. Being fully present in that moment. Yeah. Well, you know what, Jo? I want to just take a minute. And we've been talking about how this all comes up in the business world. But I know also that you have a real passion for making sure that we're getting this concept of mental health into schools. And I want to give you a minute just to talk about

maybe some of the opportunities to move from agreement that it's a good idea that meant people understand mental health and like getting into alignment, that that's a worthy way to spend school time or that it's a great way for people to start to understand themselves a little bit differently. And I just, I know I might be throwing you a little bit of a curve ball here, but I do want to take a few minutes before they close out and just give you an opportunity to share your thinking on the importance of people moving from nodding their heads and saying, yes, know,

we should all have good mental health, to actually being aligned and bringing that to life for children and for adults as we all take on this higher order calling of how do we attend to good mental health? So it's, I'm never going to object to somebody asking me to talk about this, Julie, because as you know, it's something that I am very, very passionate about. And it's so,

I would say that over the last, I'm going to say roughly five years, but it is probably as much as as much as 10, that we have slowly but surely become more comfortable talking about mental health. So for many, many years, it was just a subject that didn't, you know, did not get raised, not really socially or publicly. now it's slowly becoming more of a conversation that's taking place.

But what I've been involved in is just quite a lot of research and this is actually quite a lot of this is to do with with boys. That boys are still less comfortable than girls talking about their mental health. And when we did a lot of the research into this, we discovered that it's because it's something that they haven't got a

sort of rational, logical connection to it. And the whole desire to teach mental health as a scientific subject is to give it a scientific background in the same way as we all have physical health, we all have mental health. If we break our leg, we can probably refer in some way back to our biology class.

and know some of our skeleton, know some of our anatomy, know some of those bones and understand that. Whereas if our brain isn't functioning very well, our emotions aren't functioning very well, we don't necessarily have a reference point for that. And this desire to move things from being something we talk about, but we don't necessarily understand scientifically to something that's

we have a really solid scientific grounding to refer to when we're talking about it is where the sort of the focus comes. And it's all, as you'd expect, it's very research backed and it's all very much around how do we better understand the science behind emotion and mental health. And we will always do better with that if we teach it.

as a school subject rather than, I mean, you can pick it up later in life. Of course, we can be adult learners. But if we do help children to sort of come on board with that, it just becomes normal. It's that normalization which removes any stigma. And then by removing stigma, it just becomes easier. And I think that when I first got involved, I was very involved. What a great idea.

So my agreement came very quickly. But the moving to alignment on it, and it's different in different countries in terms of the different education systems, has definitely been a challenge that I had never really, I definitely hadn't really, really thought through what it would take to align such a broad range of stakeholders.

and people with both power and influence to actually get that sort of a change to happen. So the curriculum, certainly from a British point of view, it doesn't get changed very often. So to actually sort of work on getting something new or different into that curriculum is complicated. It only gets changed if you're willing to take something out. my goodness, you know, but everything's important. We're not going to take something out.

We'll fit something else in. It doesn't matter. Oh my gosh. We are not good at prioritizing when it comes to a modern curriculum. So yeah, I mean, it continues to be something that I am passionate about, committed to, because I truly, all of the research and the evidence points to it having a great result. But the movement to alignment that actually gets people to

do things that are going in the same direction and moving things on is probably the hardest move from agreement to alignment that I've been on. But fun too, because I have met the most amazing people through the journey of the last few years that I've been doing it. Because all the business people that we come into contact with, but all of our politicians, all of our charitable

mental health charities met some, when we talk about leaders, we want you to show some vulnerability. And then they suddenly go, yes, I'm on board because I've had an experience where I struggled with my mental health and suddenly they're involved. So it has been a most brilliant journey in terms of getting to know people and hearing about their passions. But nonetheless.

Definitely a more complicated endeavor than I ever thought it would be. This is very complicated and I appreciate that you are on that journey of continuing to seek alignment across all of those stakeholders because it is no small task and alignment generally is not a small task. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of rolling up your sleeves and getting to work on it and it is an important topic. So I'm glad that I'm glad you're on the case, Joe, because I think that you're a changemaker for sure.

Hey, I would love to ask you a couple of just final questions here. One is, what are two or three things that you would say to a leader or somebody in the community who's trying to get stakeholders aligned to a shared vision, like bringing mental health into schools or transforming their organization or trying to learn something from their 12 year old? What does it take to get aligned? What are the two or three things you would tell people to really focus on? goodness.

simplicity, I think it is usually something really complex that we are working on moving from agreement to alignment. But as leaders, we have a role in simplifying it to make it easier for those around us to understand and to digest. And you know, that kind of sense that

It takes a lot more effort to put something, summarize something onto one page than it does to put 100 pages together. Because on 100 pages, you can just throw all your ideas down, but to actually synthesize and move to a narrative that is really, really clear and simple, that the time and effort it takes to do that is worth it. So I think that simplicity point is really important. I would probably, I think we're...

I always come back to trust that it takes, you'll never move to alignment without trust, in my experience. So it's about building a trust that people will trust you and you will trust them. So I think, again, it's a bit of a, let's take the time to build that trust, because without that, when the tough stuff comes along, we won't be able to have.

the grownup conversations that help us move through it rather than get stuck on it. So I think that simplicity piece and the trust piece. then, I would probably go, because I'm quite heart led, I would probably go with vulnerability and not being afraid to share.

or show some of your own vulnerability. I think that goes such a long way. It goes a long way to building that trust piece. So I think that they are well linked. But I think without that vulnerability, things can, they can get very stuck and very held up. So yeah, I think they would, if I were gonna do three, but Julie, there are thousands.

Thousands, I'm forcing you to do three. So I'm hearing simplicity, which I love. think it was maybe Mark Twain. said, I'm sorry for such a long letter. I didn't have time to write a short one. I think how do we just get things brevity, brevity in that I think is really important. I think this idea of building trust and taking the time again to to build that trust over time and consistently is so important. And then being vulnerable, I think does tie to that idea of how do we build trust, making yourself available.

to other people in a way that helps them to be equally available to you. So I love that three of those. think they're all important components of creating alignment, whether again, it's to a large scale social change or within your organization, a transformation or for yourself, something that you're trying to tackle. I think those three things can really come into play. So thank you for sharing that. One last question for you. If you could get some group of people, whether it's...

your family, your community, the world, whatever it might be aligned to focus on something and to bring change into the world. What would that be?

So I think it would sit around our understanding of mental health. And I'm learning a lot myself at the moment as to how the way our brains work drives our own emotions and...

meant mental health. And I think I would be like, I want us to put time, effort, funding, I guess, into, I want us to go as fast as we can in terms of understanding our brains and how mental health comes about. And really just making that happen faster than it is. I think it would make such a difference to so many people.

I agree. I agree. And like I said before, I'm glad you're on the case, Joe, because I think we need voices in brains like yours helping us as a community and as a world to embrace the idea that mental health can be as in some ways straightforward as physical health, right? There are things that we know about how our bodies work that influence that. And if we could get people aligned to digging in, leaning in, understanding that in a different way and removing the social stigma, I think amazing things could happen in the world for people. So.

Thank you for choosing that as your passion and thank you also for being here on the failure gap with us today. I really appreciate it. I want to encourage anyone who's listening to this to remember to like and subscribe and to share this with other folks in organization or in your network. We really appreciate your support. And Joe, I'll just close out by saying thank you very much. Any final words from you? Julie, just thank you. Thank you. It has been so great to, as always,

to spend time with you and talk to you. So yeah, thank you. It's been a privilege to be able to talk and share ideas. Now it's great to see you as always, and thanks to all our listeners and we'll see you next time.