Embrace Not Knowing with Arvi Dhesi
Arvi Dhesi, Senior Client Partner, Korn Ferry
Carlos: And welcome to teaming with ideas, the podcast about people at work, working together. I am your host and resident contrarian, Carlos Valdes-Dapena. And I am delighted today to welcome as my guest an old friend and colleague. Arvi Dhesi. Arvi, how are you?
Arvi: Hey, Carlos. Great to see you and great to hear your voice again.
Carlos: I'm delighted to have you. Arvi's based in the UK. He is, like many of us at this point, working from home as pandemic precautions continue to hold force. I'll give a quick intro to Arvi and that they just want to get him talking to you about his feelings, thoughts. Arvi is currently working for Korn ferry in the UK, but he's got 25 plus years working in corporate, working as a consultant. He focuses on helping organizations perform better through working with senior teams. He's brilliant at talent strategy and organization succession management. He’s an experienced coach to top leaders and organizations. He's also an amazing speaker; he’s delightful to be in a room with, and he is a passionate advocate he says - and this I'll read directly from the bio - for what he calls the Magnificent Middle. So again, welcome Arvi. I'm so glad to be talking to you as colleague, as friend, but also as someone who knows a lot about how organizations and the people in them function. Now, I warned you about this. So let's start with the Magnificent Middle. What do you mean when you say that? Where's that? What is it? And where’s it come from?
Arvi: Well, my wife always thinks it means that it's referring to my waistline. So, I have to correct her there. So it's…
Carlos: Sorry! I missed it. I missed a rim shot there. I should have been on top of that. Carry on.
Arvi: You can, you can attest to that, right? It's really about the middle of the bell curve. If I'm honest, it's not about the middle in terms of hierarchies. Although it can be applied to that, it can be applied to, are we talking just about the top of the house, C-suite, or are we also talking about the so-called middle layers of management and leadership in organizations. It's an area of passion and expertise for you, and I'd be very happy to talk about that. In addition to the hierarchical view, it's also a reference to the often forgotten masses in our organization who don't make it into any so-called “hi-po” category and they don't get the notice and attention of being in any way, under-performers, but untapped, often forgotten, and that this might sound rather soft, but there is a very hard commercial, mathematical edge to it. Because if you do think about it as a bell curve you probably have a hundred times as many people in the middle of the bell curve as you do at either extreme. And a 10% improvement from the middle is probably far more likely and cumulatively delivers a much bigger return than simply focusing on the smaller numbers that you see at the end. So that's my real passion.
Carlos: And so what I remember, I think you wrote an article about that some years ago, didn't you, published in that in a paper in London?
Arvi: I did, yeah
Carlos: Good. That's very cool. So, as we sit here - by the way, in the U S it is a bank holiday. We wouldn't call it that, but you, you foreigners would, it's Labor Day. And for our listeners, by the way, Arvi and I have years of history together. So, when you hear me, give him a hard time, it's only out of the deepest love.
Arvi: And expected
Carlos: And it should be an, I expect the same from you. So, anyway, it's Labor Day here and poignant in some respects, because labor has changed so much over the past - what's it been - seven months now since we went into lockdown. The pandemic has had its biggest impact. And so we're going to talk a little bit today about what you're seeing as a result of that. From your perspective, how has work changed, especially how has collaboration changed? How have the ways your clients work together, how have they had to adapt and what are you seeing that's both problematic, and at the end of the day, what's working? Because I think we're going to be dealing with this for some time to come. So, we're looking for some thoughts about what do we do more of? And what do we stop doing?
Arvi: Yeah, yeah, I mean my headline over the last seven months has always been - the emerging headline has been - you know, with the dark clouds come lots and lots of unforeseen and unexpected silver linings, as well. And I think the balance of appreciating the both is really, really important. In terms of the world of work and labor, yeah. I mean, I don't want to add to the list of clichés and hyperbole that we've heard already, right? But the reality is that this is, and I have said this before in a previous writing, this is one of those epoch changing events. But by that, I mean, it is the kind of thing that we will tell our grandchildren about in years to come. And we will be able to say, let me tell you what life was like before this. And they will look at us like we're from a different planet as my children do.
Carlos: They do anyway, right?
Arvi: They do, anyway. But I mean, when, whenever we use that phrase, epoch changing, it's like my teenagers now look at me when I describe, when… I don't know what it was like for you, Carlos; I'm thinking it’s the same. But when I started work, you know, we didn't even have PCs or laptops on our desks and my children…
Carlos: I believe you used a slate, right, and chalk.
Arvi: I had an Underwood typewriter.
Carlos: Yeah, of course.
Arvi: But they can't believe it. They said, well, how did you get anything done, you know. We kind of said, well, we did. And describing the world of work now, I mean like many, many of your listeners on this podcast, you know, I was one of those people that on a typical day spent three hours of my day, every day, in some kind of commute. That included a long walk, a train ride followed by a tube journey. And then another long walk. That took an hour and a half door to door, to be with other people in a major conurbation and a major center with beautifully architected, tall buildings, lines at the elevators. And somehow, somewhere we've managed to demonstrate - certainly in my line of work and as a knowledge worker - that we're looking back and saying was that all really, really necessary? Some elements of it are without doubt. But part of these and you know, one of the silver linings I would include in these seven months is I've done more global work in the last seven months than I have done in the last five years.
Carlos: So for a guy like you working at senior levels organizations, global organizations that are dispersed at business capitals around the world, that's a real boon. Does that have any kind of knock on effects to folks reporting to the folks who you ended up working with most directly?
Arvi: I think it does certainly in some industries and we should also appreciate the reality for many, many tens of thousands of jobs out there in the world of work that by necessity require some element of face-to-face interaction, whether you like it or not. It came to the fore really with the top team I was working with where well over 75 or 80,000 of their employees are frontline workers.
Carlos: What industry was that, Arvi?
Arvi: Retail, food retail. So this is absolutely at the very forefront of society's response to the pandemic. I mean, in the early days, if you think back to March when there was panic buying and there were people going crazy about toilet roll, there were people who had to get food and other materials on the shelves, no ifs, no buts. And, with, with that particular team there is naturally been a desire for the top team to demonstrate to their tens of thousands of employees, who have no option but to go into work, that we are side by side, that we're with you. That we appreciate that when the infection rates were their highest that these employees were in many respects, possibly even putting themselves in harm's way. But in that element, you know, you see the bravery and the dedication and the service that emerges. And that I would also class as one of the silver linings people stepping up and saying, “Here's my service. Here's my contribution to this terrible time.”
Carlos: So, what did that look like? So if I'm on a senior team and I've got thousands of employees in the face of the public with mask or without, every day, what are the sorts of things that one does to lead based on that desire to show support, to show gratitude, to show leadership to those folks in the front lines, just on a behavioral level.
Arvi: It's all of the above and you articulated the list very compellingly there, Carlos, what you just said. I wish I had written it down.
Carlos: There you go. Push, rewind!
Arvi: That’s right. Everything that you just said…I think it's about, you know, being visible. Over communicating and then expressing the heartfelt, genuine, authentic messages of gratitude and thanks. I think that does go a long way both symbolically and verbally, to be able to say that we're with you.
Carlos: Would that include in the case of these leaders going into these retail sites and being, instead of just visible the way you might be on Zoom or Microsoft Teams but visible in the building, in the space?
Arvi: Yeah, absolutely. And, actually some great examples of where then actually letting it be known throughout the workforce through electronic channels to say, “I'm here. I visited here I am with,” and I think that goes a long, long way. The key thing here is that part of that magnificent middle and making sure that those people are feeling supported, appreciated and listened to is to say, “I've been alongside you.” And the real danger here is that, you know, the smug satisfaction that you and I could have, which is to say, “Hey, my life hasn't changed much at all” Right. I can, I can run my business sitting in my, a comfortable home office. but also saying, have I been, have I understood and appreciated and heard from those people who, without who, let's face it, we would have been in a serious mess. You know, imagine not being able to get food on the table, just imagine on top of every other crisis here that we are talking about.
Carlos: And that's certainly happening for large swaths in countries where there are big wealth gaps. For example, it’s certainly true in the U S hunger - is a huge issue. Even in my relatively affluent town, there's a food bank that's being run out of a local park. So it's, it's, it is a tough time. So aside from that, the list you just provided, are there other things you're seeing leaders do that are particularly effective? We're staying focused on the silver linings here because I think as you suggested earlier, there's enough negative stuff we could blab on about. What else is working in terms of, even in the room? So, for a moment, that broader idea of leadership to my thousands of employees is really important. Bring it into the room. What are you seeing senior leaders do, or leaders of any level do, with their teams at this point? I would imagine they're working with their teams remotely, especially the global ones. What else? What do you see?
Arvi: I mean, the thing that appeals to me personally, and I've seen some amazing examples. The client I alluded to earlier, but in many others as well, just a breathtaking…breathtakingly impressive ability of some, not all leaders to, run towards the fire.
Carlos: Wow. Okay.
Arvi: Figuratively speaking to say that it's in these moments of crisis that there are some individuals who say, “What are my choices here? Do I, do I hunker down and wait? Do I run away or do I run towards it?” And that's what I'm talking about. The drive, the energy that can elevate groups of people to say that this is not of our choosing, it's not by design. But nevertheless, we're called upon to respond to this situation in a, in a way…that's what I would really allude to that, that I found the, the most impressive.
Carlos: Yeah. So tell me a story about that. Is there, think of one leader and let's keep names out of it for now, but the image of running towards the fire is very powerful. How does that look in reality? There isn't an actual fire.
Arvi: I mean, there isn't an actual fire, but in terms of the scale and the magnitude and the potential disruptive force that we're living through… I mean, compared to the other epoch changing events I've lived through, this is probably the single biggest, right? So, the ones that you and I… I'm thinking of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the end of the cold war, you know, 9/11, the global financial crisis. So, the running towards the fire is a willingness to see that... and again, this is an oft used, now cliched, hackneyed phrase, but, there is no more going back to normal. We have to reinvent and reconfigure and rethink how we're going to operate. And for many businesses that has included, doing what needs to be done in order to survive in the short term, and take some quite painful action and see what needs to be done there. But also simultaneously thinking about saying how can we then make sure that we can get through this, you know, we can turn into this… I mean, I don't want to give too many quotes, but…
Carlos: Quotes are good.
Arvi: The Churchill one, I love I'm a big fan, as you will recall, “Never waste a good crisis.” which is the… it's the embracing the opportunity that this presents. Now to some ears that can sound opportunistic and almost even, can be interpreted as being somewhat mercenary. You know, if you're, if you think about commercial organization. But it's still saying, on any topic, there are opportunities that need to be explored. Right? As I mentioned earlier, why are we doing more global work now is, guess what? I'm not stuck in airport lounges and on planes for significant chunks of my month means some more available and we can take the opportunity to connect. It's less ideal. but we can connect, take the opportunity to connect around the world. And we can see how that will reimagine the whole world of work. Now, obviously there are whole industries that are facing existential threats because of that very thing that I'm now talking about.
Carlos: Travel for one. Yeah. I mean all the related…, so that's airlines, that’s the airports themselves and the businesses, etc., etc.
Arvi: I mean, even if you think about the larger conurbations. So, apparently here in the UK, it's affected smaller cities less. But in larger conurbations, big cities, you know, there are huge implications for just the day-to-day maintenance industries, cleaning, security, reception, catering, lunches. The local sandwich shop. Here in the UK with there's already evidence that smaller towns have been affected less harshly than the bigger corporate centers and bigger conurbations.
Carlos: Help me understand that. That's interesting.
Arvi: In smaller towns there was there's, there's been a more rapid return to work in percentage terms. The return to work meant that there were more local anyway, and that's been less of an issue. And probably smaller buildings, I'm guessing. But in cities like London where there was a longer commute and many millions of people who are living in the dormitory towns around, and I count myself in those, there is a bigger knock on effect of the ancillary industries that support larger concentrations of people coming together.
Carlos: I love your perspective ‘cause it's global. It's sort of a 35,000 foot look at this. I'm going to take us back to this idea of running towards the fire. Is there a particular leader - again, we'll keep names out of it - you can think of who did that? I'm not sure if it's about courage or just pragmatism, but who inspired you by his or her action in terms of how they stepped into what this pandemic is creating rather than stepped back in waiting mode.
Arvi: Yes. I'm going to share with you an amalgam of three people - at least three, possibly four people I've got in my mind. The reason why I'm going to do an amalgam is it's not to embarrass anyone of them and because they are also the types of leaders that would scoff that I ever used them as an example and say, “Hey, I didn't do anything that anybody else wouldn't.” They don't realize it. They would also say that they're not perfect. And I think that in itself tells you a lot, right? Which is in the midst of this crisis, is there is no playbook. Nobody knows for sure what they should be doing.
Carlos: Yeah. No one has been through an executive training program or a management development program that teaches what do we do when there's a global pandemic, right? It's not, it's not in the curriculum.
Arvi: Yeah, that's right. And, I think, so, one of the things that running towards the fire is embracing the “Not Knowing.” And the other quote that I love is, “Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is responding despite the fear.”
Carlos: So what…I’m really…what is, Embrace the Not Knowing? So, so just think about, I'd like you to reflect for a second, in the room with eight or 10 people where someone, whether it's the leader or someone around the table embraces not knowing. I guess I'm asking because I want my listeners to be able to emulate that if you will, in a kind of a specific way.
Arvi: Yeah. I hope the thing that I've learned from this amalgam of three heroes (who wouldn't call themselves heroes) is the willingness to step away from the central casting of leadership, the historical view, which is command, control, stand up on top of a tank and say, “I know for sure we're headed this way. And I know, and I'm correct. And I'm always correct. I'm the best there is.” And recognizing that that is not the kind of leadership that is inspiring in this situation. It’s to say in this moment, of madness and however much we may have planned before, but our role now is to lead even when the fog of battle is at its thickest. And we can't see but it behooves us to step up and take action and do what we believe is the right thing. Anticipate in the right way, anticipate at pace with a rapidly changing environment and be willing to say, “You know, what we thought yesterday is wrong. What I said yesterday is wrong.”
Carlos: Wow. Yeah.
Arvi: Because what we found out today is this.
Carlos: It would have been in the, in the leader-on-the-tank analogy that would have been seen as a weakness.
Arvi: Absolutely.
Carlos: In fact, what I think I hear you saying is that's a stunning strength.
Arvi: It is.
Carlos: That vulnerability; is that a good word?
Arvi: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there's the right balance between vulnerability is, you know, how do you… the vulnerability isn’t overplayed to the extent that it means that people say, “Well, what do I follow?” You know, I do believe that essential to leadership is some seed of optimism.
Carlos: Yeah. Okay. Yep, absolutely. Right. To get things done, one has to envision the things that need doing and the place that those things take you.
Arvi: Yeah. Nobody's going to follow you if you say, “Follow me this way, it's this disaster,” or, “It's gonna get worse.” Right?
Carlos: Well, they won't do that, you hope. Will they follow you if you say, “Follow me this way, I'm not sure where we're going?”
Arvi: Yes. If the, “Follow me this way,” is articulated with sufficient… and say. “I'm not 100% sure. But given everything that we've had to do at pace, in the moment, listening to all of the inputs of knowledge that we're getting and the best that we can do, I think this is the right way to go for now.” And that you are giving them sufficient reassurance that that's a thoughtful, “This way,” rather than just a wild guess, you know.
Carlos: Right? So that you're, you're giving evidence that you've given thought to it and it's not just a random, “Oh, well I rolled the dice and they came up with this. Let's go that way and see what happens.” Though, I might imagine from time to time that even that may be necessary. Let's back it up a little bit again. We've got this leader sitting at the head of the table who's embracing the “Not Knowing,” and we want to get to a point of choice saying, “Okay, we're going to do this.” And then you used a really interesting word there: “for now.” We'll do this for now, acknowledging that we don't know where it may land. What of those around the table - so I'm speaking here of the team - how does the leader involve them in this, “acting-while-not-knowing” process?
Arvi: Yeah. Well, so this, this is another allusion to the magnificent middle metaphor earlier, which is to tap into the collective genius of those around you. Right? Uh, that's absolutely essential. It's gotta be a partnership. In this kind of situation, all of those people, especially in a top team or in any team that feel a collective responsibility to the achievement of what we're trying to solve here. It isn’t just about an individual that was at the top of hierarchy. This has got to be a collective. This is almost…somebody that you and I are big, big fans of and have worshiped from a distance for many years, Peter Block. He talks about replacing the pyramid with a circle. But genuinely creating a circle and saying that, “How do we, each of us, partner and contribute our collective knowledge or collective duties, our collective doubts. So, have I given expression of doubt? “Hey look, I'm not so sure.”
Carlos: That is such a shift. Look, I think we've been talking about this kind of leadership for decades. And, speaking of silver linings, how can you lead remotely where you aren't in a physical room with people for…I mean these executive meetings I used to be a part of would go on for two or three days, right? It doesn't happen anymore. You have to let go. You have to do that thing that I think folks have been urging leaders to do for decades, which is….but you have to say to people, “I am not there. You've got to take leadership in the sphere that is yours,” right? You've got you have to. I have to give up my illusion of control and allow you to start to experience, that sense of you're the one with the ownership and the control here. Although again, the control being a bit of a messy word because they don't really control anything. Do we?
Arvi: No, not anymore, not anymore, but people do hold on to the myth of control.
Carlos: Desperately. And I, and I think that silver lining is so powerful. We just gotta let go. Much of what one reads nowadays is about the anxiety being cause
Arvi: Yeah. Yeah.
Carlos: I think some of that may have to do with the fact that I can't see my people. I can't feel that sense of I'm guiding where they're going in that old model of leadership, right, that says you've got to have your hand on the tiller at all times and guide this, the ship you're captain of.
Arvi: Well, I've got a particular thought on the, on the word anxiety. I think it's been overused. And I think we've inadvertently created something of an anxiety industry…
Carlos: Out of COVID?
Arvi: Not out of COVID, but in general it was building up anyway. And I think we've got… I'm a big believer that anxiety is a pretty good signal that you are alive.
Carlos: Yes, the dead, rarely show up in psychiatric clinics and take very few drugs.
Arvi: Yeah. And imagine a world with zero anxiety. “I have no anxiety about anything at all.” You'd either be, you know, fast asleep or, as you say, under some kind of disguise about the reality of what's going on. So again, that comes to embracing that the anxiety is there as an action step, as a signal for you to respond, hopefully in an optimal and well equipped way. But not in any way trying to diminish or deny the prompt for that anxiety. But, and again, this is something that we've been talking about in our field of leadership development for decades now, which is, “I will respond to everything; I will react to nothing”, is the real signal there of the anxiety. I would say.
Carlos: Let me write that down. I'll respond to everything, but…
Arvi: I will react to nothing, react to nothing.
Carlos: React to nothing. Beautiful. That's a wonderful piece of guidance right there. Yeah. Let me speak for the anxious in the world because I have been one of those people and then I think we have to start to wrap it up. It seems to me that anxiety is about the future, right? I become anxious about what might or might not happen.
Arvi: Yeah.
Carlos: Living in this time when even the most gifted people, the most privileged people with all the resources at their control or who benefit from multiple resources. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't know if our kids are going to go to school. We don't know if we were able to walk out the door without getting sick. We don't know if we can go back to the stadium for the football match. By the way, you notice how you use that UK football match, not the American football game.
Arvi: Yeah.
Carlos: Just trying to work with you.
Arvi: I like it.
Carlos: It's completely connected, anxiety, to the thing I think might happen or worried it might happen. Right?
Arvi: Absolutely.
Carlos: You're right. My wife has a particular problem with pharmaceutical commercials, which in the US for years and years, you couldn't advertise on television for pharmaceuticals, and now you can. And all these drugs to make you happy, all these drugs to sort of shut off the anxiety channels in the brain.
Arvi: And the immediate commercial following it is from all the lawyers saying , “ If you used that drug 10 years ago, and you're suffering from any of these side effects, please get in touch so that we can be part of the class action lawsuit.”
Carlos: I take your point. There is an anxiety industry out there. I wake up every day thinking about the things I'm going to get done. Living in that fantasy of control, whether it's COVID or not. You never know whether in a pandemic or the world is in some new way of being or the way it used to be, control is just not real. It is comforting. It is comforting to think we are in control. So, enough on anxiety, but, look, I'd like to close with going back to something you said a minute ago, because the point of this podcast is to give listeners something that they can take home. And I had not heard before, “Respond to everything, but react to nothing.” I just think that's a beautiful, easily remembered piece of guidance. And I want you to just spend a moment on that, another minute or two. What's the difference between responding and reacting?
Arvi: It links back to the conversation we just had about anxiety, actually. And I'm going to paint another picture for your listeners. I don't know if it's a fact, but there is some evidence and this itself may be apocryphal, but the ancient city of Jerusalem had one of its gates in the walls of the city was so narrow that it was called The Needle. So they called the gate, The Needle or the Eye of the Needle. The only way you can get the pack camels through is by unloading them outside of the gate, get the camel through and you reload them. The two heavy burdens that we carry our anxiety about the future and regret about the past. These are heavy, burdens that down on us in any moment. Now, particularly in the moment of crisis in responding rather than reacting to any crisis is to notice these two heavy burdens that all of us as human beings - we wouldn't be human if we weren't carrying them. Anybody who says that they don't have any is a liar. The moment of responding is to consciously and choice-fully - if that's a real word. I've made it a word. Consciously choosing to put down those burdens of anxiety about the future and regrets about the past and noticing that the only way I'll get through this moment, the present…and It feels lighter, it feels lighter.
Carlos: There’s nothing you can do about either. I mean, in reality, right, really nothing you can do about it either. But you just put them down and go through the gate and see what's on the other side. Wow.
Arvi: Absolutely.
Carlos: That sir was a lovely way to bring this conversation to a close. I really appreciate that. So, so smart, so useful. Arvi, I'd love to get a link to the article you wrote about the Magnificent Middle. If you can, if you have that somewhere, we'll get a link, put that up there. Super good reconnecting with you. Maybe we'll come back and do this in six months or so. See where we've landed.
Arvi: See where we've landed, yeah, and all the things we didn't know. Right?
Carlos: All this stuff we didn't know. So, we continue to embrace not knowing. You have my, deep, deep gratitude for joining me.
Arvi: My pleasure, Carlos. Really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Carlos: Thanks again, Arvi Dhesi, Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry for sharing the perspective of an external consultant working with top teams and their leaders.