Episode 12
12. Systems Thinking, The Power of Imagination, and Generational Wisdom | Dr. Richard Hodge
Are you trying to make lasting change happen, but you feel like you’re banging your head against a wall of short-term dramas and siloed thinking?
This episode will help you to rise above the fray and hone in on how to be valuable, stay relevant, and play the longer game.
Dr. Richard Hodge is one of Australasia’s preeminent thought-leaders in systems thinking. He’s been in the workforce since 1970, with wide experience in science, engineering, public sector policy and the corporate world. Richard was one of the founding fathers of a major strategy business in Canberra, growing it to 80 staff and >$20M in revenue in 6 years. In 2007, he moved from advising GMs to being one in a global engineering business until he was sacked in 2010, one week after completing his PhD (part time). Since then, Richard has established his own practice helping leaders engage - not manage – complexity with the help of systems sciences.
Together, Richard and I dig deep into:
- Why understanding value is crucial for effective leadership and decision-making
- How relevance is determined by how well we align our actions with our values
- How the long tail of consequences highlights the impact of our actions over time
- Why community engagement is essential for sustainable change
- The importance of efficiency not overshadowing ethics in organisational practices
- How generational wisdom plays a crucial role in systems thinking
- Why imagination is essential for envisioning change
- How making small, incremental steps can lead to significant transformation
- How defining 'enough' is vital for personal equilibrium.
- Why connection and relationships are at the heart of effective leadership.
If you're looking for ways to have a more lasting and sustainable impact in your work and life, this episode will give you lasting pearls of wisdom.
Time Stamps:
(00:00) - Imagining Better Leadership Through Systems Thinking
(03:05) - The Dragonfly: A Metaphor for Leadership
(08:09) - Understanding Value, Relevance, and Long-Term Impact
(14:21) - The Role of Community in Effective Leadership
(21:38) - The Five E's of Leadership: Beyond Efficiency
(24:51) - Personal Stories Shaping Systems Thinking
(30:41) - Challenges in Implementing Systems Thinking in Organisations
(33:09) - Systems Thinking: The Spirit of Adventure
(35:37) - Imagination and Possibility Thinking in Leadership
(38:57) - The Long Game: Transformational Change in Organisations
(44:26) - Personal Growth: Applying Systems Thinking to Individual Development
(58:58) - Defining Enough: Values and Life Choices
You can find Richard at:
Website: https://www.drrichardhodge.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrichardhodge/
Article: Play the Long Game https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts/play-the-long-game
Check out my services and offerings https://www.digbyscott.com/
Subscribe to my newsletter https://www.digbyscott.com/thoughts#subscribe
Follow me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/digbyscott/
Transcript
My guest today is Dr. Richard Hodge. Richard's known as the mentor's mentor, and I can certainly attest to that. I first met Richard around eight years ago when I was looking to amplify my voice around what I want to share with the world. I remember I was in this big room full of smart people and somehow Richard and my paths crossed and we got into conversation and through that conversation, he listened intently and then graciously and powerfully cut through my waffle.
Dr Richard Hodge (:You
Digby (:to get to the heart of what I now see I'm about. And I felt seen, heard and validated by this generous and perceptive fellow. Richard holds a PhD in the area of systems thinking and has had a wide ranging career since 1970, covering science, engineering, public sector policy and diplomatic posting amongst other things. And he's evolved into one of Australasia's most preeminent thought leaders in the area of systems thinking, working in an educator,
as an advisor and a mentor with a wide range of organizations, their leaders and future leaders. Richard, welcome to the show.
Dr Richard Hodge (:I dig that it's wonderful to speak with you and join you here today and lovely. I'm sure we'll have a great conversation that I hope your listeners will find fascinating in some way.
Digby (:Well, if I put myself in the shoes of a listener, I would say every time we talk, it's fascinating. And that's why you're really I want to start with maybe a kind of left field question. But what does the dragonfly mean to you?
Dr Richard Hodge (:You've been doing your research a bit, haven't you, sir? Just a little. Look, and there's, if anyone's watching this, I don't know if there's a video, you'll see two dragonflies on the door over my...
Digby (:Just a little.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And they symbolize self-realization, transformation and new beginnings. And I think that this is part and parcel. We're all at some point of that or some elements of that always happening, you know, in an active life where we're seeking to try and do things without harm to others or that we are trying to create a better world for our children.
despite all the meta crises and everything else going around. And this little fellow has survived, sorry Diggs, in some way for over 350 million years. You know, so it's not necessarily what we can learn from the dragonfly. Maybe there is something there. But one thing that fascinates me about it is that it spends 80 % of its life as a nymph in water.
Digby (:That's.
Now carry on.
Digby (:Well.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And at some point, it decides to leave the comfort of that watery environment, climb out onto a stick and transform itself through metamorphosis, gain its wings so that it can then become the dragonfly that then does absolutely everything in flight from hunting, prey, kill, eat, mate. It does the lot.
and it is an apex predator. So the highest of any in the animal kingdom, over 90 % success rate, if it's got its eye on a bug, that bug has only a one in 10 chance of surviving. And it's doing a lot that's right for it and it's super efficient in the way in which it does it. So I hear a lot of organizations say, hey,
We're building the plane while we fly it. And you go, well, hang on. The dragonfly does everything in flight. Have you thought about what it is about the dragonfly that you could learn from?
Digby (:And what are the typical responses to that? What are the what are the lessons that people can grab from that metaphor?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Well, first I would draw from the indigenous people and the whole idea of a totem and that they are either given a totem or they assume a totem in life, whether or not that's dragonfly, kangaroo, emu, know, the platypus, whatever. And then it becomes their responsibility
to make sure that everything is done to support the life of their totem. So always taking care to ensure that no harm comes to the totem in the way in which they think and act and live their life. And I think that there's something really useful for us to draw from the indigenous worlds.
And this is, whilst I refer to the Australian context, it happens in many indigenous peoples around the world that they accept these totems because the responsibility is beyond themselves. And I think that that is, it's a leadership role given at birth. And I love that idea. And I came upon the dragonfly quite accidentally through some modeling I did.
circles, and you and I have done plenty of modeling, that sort of modeling. And I ended up with an infinity loop in my model that had what looked like a head and a tail to it. And someone in the group said to me, that looks like a dragonfly. And then the more I found out about the dragonfly, I thought, you're right. And so this notion of the dragonfly as a totem and what we can learn from it, then
Digby (:that sort of modeling. Okay.
Dr Richard Hodge (:transformed itself to being an anchor for the way in which we can connect things in our thinking.
Digby (:Yeah. And that's a massive thing for you, obviously with a PhD around systems thinking, right? It's about the connectedness. Before we start recording, you mentioned parts of the dragonfly, the body. And I was really struck by the lessons or the ways of thinking about us and our journey and how we lead. Can you just share that again? Cause I'm really interested in that idea.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, happily. Well, I'll start with a, you know, there's the old quote, if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. the idea then of there being three body parts on a dragonfly and the head is where it is. And there's been nature articles.
of how it can model its flight to actually attack and achieve the success rates that it does. So the dragonfly has already got that bit sorted in terms of being able to know what it values and then be successful in getting it. So the head for me is in the way in which I interpret it into my modeling is about value. We've got to know how we conceive value, how we
contribute value and how we count value. Because if you're not counting value, if, sorry, if when you're counting value, you're only counting dollars, then anything you say about the other two really is pretty meaningless. So that's the first bit. The body part is then which is where the wings or the abdomen where the
Digby (:Yeah.
Digby (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:the wings attach, really then is about relevance. So there's a whole lot of noise in the world, but if you know what you value, then it's much easier. You've got a yardstick to determine relevance. And you know the value you're going to contribute. You know the value you conceive in terms of the behavior of people. So therefore you can see whether or not the person
or the idea is relevant to what you, the value you want to contribute. So relevance is really crucial.
Digby (:That makes a lot of sense. It's almost like the value is the abstract, but then it applied to a problem, a person. That's where relevance kicks in. Makes sense.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Absolutely. And then the long tail or the thorax of the dragonfly is, and I love the fact that it's long because the consequences of our actions have a very long tail as well. Each of us matter a hell of a lot more than we think. We have greater impact than we give ourselves credit for.
And that's typical of things in life. If you get into complexity science, you learn early on that small changes in the initial conditions have a large impact years out.
Digby (:it's, I think that point in particular is so critical. The, I remember actually it was one evening. I think you were there. It was back in Melbourne, probably, five or six years ago and it was a Friday night and we'd come out of the building that we'd been in all day and we're on the streets, Collins street or something like that.
And this woman comes up to me and she said, Digby Scott, hello. I'm like, hello. And she said, you won't remember me. I'm like, no. She goes, 25 years ago, you were my audit training instructor in Canberra at the Arthur Anderson two week residential training course for auditors. And and that course.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Hahaha.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Wow.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right?
Digby (:And your training had this massive impact on me. Now she's a partner of some accounting firm. And, and I remember that that was a pivotal moment for me in my career when, I'd been an auditor working with Anderson's for three years or something. And this is the first time I'd ever trained anyone. And I remember lighting up at being in a room, helping other people learn.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Isn't that fabulous?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:which is kind of what I still do today, all those years later. And there's the long tail. Right. The the impact. Yeah. And I think there's something about when you're playing in relevance, then that long tail can be more potent. And I felt like I was more relevant in that training role than I was as an auditor. And. Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right on.
Yeah, it's absolutely right.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Absolutely.
Dr Richard Hodge (:So when you can, yeah, sorry, mate. So it's when you combine that relevance with the long tail, then you can get into questions of sustainability very easily, right? Because...
Digby (:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you can't do it all.
Dr Richard Hodge (:because it's constantly measuring against the value. Are we contributing the value that we set out to achieve or has circumstances changed whereby we now reframe our value proposition? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, right? As contexts change, our value set changes. And it's just that lovely dynamic. Now, so there's the three elements of the dragonfly.
Digby (:Yeah.
Digby (:Absolutely.
Digby (:We're waiting for the final parts.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And the other four, so now given that, that's almost like a stake in the ground, right? That the value you want to achieve, being able to determine relevance and understanding, you know, the consequences and perhaps like with medicos, if we set out to first do no harm, then that's, you know, perhaps a good thing. Now, how do you fly through the world? How do you fly through the day?
And then you've got the four wings. I draw an infinity loop across the four wings of the dragonfly. And it pretty much goes in order of why, how, what, if. So with the why, really get to the meaning of things.
in the how you really need to understand the connectedness that we're not starting with a blank sheet of paper ever. You know, there were generations of people before us. Our epigenetics has influenced who we are. So let's recognize the connectedness of the communities that we're in and the communities we serve. Then co-create with them what we seek to change.
improve their situation. And if we do that in a way where people have been involved in the co-creation, they will self-direct. And now there's a lovely story in Sandtalk from Tyson Yonker Porter, who's a senior lecturer at Deakin University. But he's also a member of, I think, the Araluin mob.
in far North Queensland. could have that wrong. Apologies, Tyson, if I have. But at the end of his book in Sandtalk, he makes reference to a conversation he had with one of his elders, Mama Doris. Mama Doris, who I understand now lives in Dubbo, actually has had 50 years experience of essentially white intervention into their community. And she has said they do it
Dr Richard Hodge (:essentially the wrong way every single time.
Digby (:I can translating it to here in New Zealand, that is such a common story about local communities, whether it's Maori or otherwise, about get your central hands off our regional decisions. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Ryan.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, too right. And the more that we get to community-based decision-making, the better. But Mama Doris says that typically what white man has done in her experience is come in and directed a solution. And when it's gone wrong, they've then gone, why and what went wrong and why. And then only in the process of reflecting on that do they then
deeper connect with the community to understand, you know, law, both L-A-W and L-O-R-E, ancestry, connection to community, connection to water, air, the ancestors' story and dream line and all of that that goes into the existence and the way in which Indigenous communities run. And then they leave with respect, you know, and go.
Digby (:Hmm.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Now, if, so she has four words and if only they do it in reverse order, come in with respect, connect with community, then with community reflect on what needs to be done and what we can do together. And then if we all agree on that, then we can participate and actually drive the change that's needed. So,
Mamadoris' four words were reflect, connect, sorry, respect, connect, reflect, and then direct action. But 50 years, they've gone in precisely the wrong order of directing and then reflecting, connecting and leaving with respect.
Digby (:I love it.
Digby (:There's a there's a saying over here, which is me before my over here, meaning New Zealand. And that means it's essentially connect first and then get into the work. You could say it's connection before content, right, is another way in the kind of the training field, they might say as well. It's the same idea. And it's interesting, isn't it? These ideas that transcend specific cultures, but it's the experience that
Dr Richard Hodge (:yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:There you go.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right on.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:It's the human condition that requires this to work. It's fascinating. Can I I want to just pause a little. Yeah, go, go, Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes.
Yeah. Well, sorry, before I leave that story, can I just finish you with Tyson's four words that he prefers to Mamma Doris's? whereas Mamma Doris was respect, connect, reflect and direct, his spirit, heart, head and hands. And I love that.
Digby (:Mm-hmm.
Digby (:Yeah. And in that order, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that, too. You often hear head, heart and hands as a saying, but having spirit in there as well. And then they order that you've shared them. That makes so much sense. And it's interesting, right, because we in Western culture are often valuing the hands getting to do. You know, I write a lot.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And in that order.
Spirit Heart Head Hands
Dr Richard Hodge (:Totally. That's what we measure.
Digby (:Yeah, we measure, we value. write a lot about unhurried productivity and the idea that I reckon we need to get in to our own heads and hearts is the idea of productivity as we define it is only one way of thinking about being valuable, which is action and direction and making stuff happen. Whereas in fact, we need to get into reflection to be able to
Dr Richard Hodge (:right.
Yeah.
Digby (:get into creation of what's possible. Right. I read one of your more recent blogs where you were talking, you kept using the word imagine, imagine, imagine. But we can only imagine if we stop. And we let go of the doing part, the hands part for just a little while. And I find that it's it's hard. know, I've talked and took a sabbatical a few.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:ha ha ha. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes.
Digby (:last year. And one of the challenges around that was the both the inner stories for me about not doing, and not being busy and also the societal expectations of, well, what are you spending your time doing? I was like, sure yet. And that was kind of a hard thing for me. And I know others who are doing the same thing because it's, we're just so conditioned to do. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Ha
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, quite so. And to be efficient in our doing. Whereas really, you know, five E's, I would put efficiency last. Well, and it fits nicely with the Dragonfly model. The first E is efficacy. Are you doing the right thing?
Digby (:Efficiency. Yeah.
Digby (:Or what are the others? You've now baited me, haven't you, Richard?
Dr Richard Hodge (:The second E is effectiveness. Knowing the right thing or you're doing it well. And that goes to something my grandfather always honed into me as a little kid. You know, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And then E, ethics. In all that we're doing and doing well, is there anything about that that's either, you know, breaking the boundaries of morality or
you know, equity, equality and those sorts of things so that ethics gets a high prominence. Then aesthetics and that's an AE rather than that because basically we like things that are beautiful. Right. And don't give an army guy a truck unless it's painted green. They love green. Right.
Digby (:Close enough.
Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And look at the decor around us, you know, and that we will spend more money to get things looking nice and feeling nice. And then given those four E's now, let's not waste a penny in the delivery of those four things. And then you can bring efficiency into play as a constraint so that you can not spend money on more things than you need to so you can go and do more of the right things.
Digby (:So efficiency is still important, but it's not the most important. Yeah, I love that.
Dr Richard Hodge (:No, but the trouble is, the modern world has flipped it. And when efficiency comes first, then often, and that is typical when companies are chasing profit and profit increase quarter on quarter.
Ethics fails. You're creating the conditions for ethics to fail.
Digby (:How so?
Dr Richard Hodge (:because people will do almost anything to achieve the profit margin because typically that then is what's driving them. Maybe that is what they're incentivized to do and then people do what gets them rewarded. You can look at the Enron crash and you could look at the Qantas loss of goodwill.
Digby (:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:over the COVID situation, bloody difficult time for airlines. But they killed so much goodwill because the management was solely focused on shareholder returns and left the pilots and cabin crew and the ground staff to try and look after the source of their revenue in the customer. And there was a huge gap between the two.
Digby (:Absolutely.
Digby (:Yeah. And that. There's a long build back there. There's your I love your I love the way you codify stuff. It helps me think much more deeply and broadly about some of these ideas. I want to. When you talked about kangaroo, emu, platypus, et cetera, you they're all Australian animals, right?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Ha ha ha ha!
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:Now, we we didn't even mention in the lead into this that where you live is Australia. Yet your accent does not seem to be Australian. Where where does that come from?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right. No. Mate, was born on cows at the Isle of Wight, which is an island off the south coast of England, just about 10 or 11 miles off the south coast, home of yachting. My father's love of yachting.
Digby (:Aha!
Digby (:Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:led us to take his ashes back there just two years ago. And it was a wonderful opportunity to go and touch base with my ancestral home. having left there, you know, I was 10 when I left England, and now I'm nearly 70. That burr in the R, you know, it doesn't go.
Digby (:Is that an Isle of Wight thing? That the the bird? Yeah. Interesting.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes, yeah, and because they've got a little bit of a West country accent and all around the bottom of the island, there are lots of different chines, know, like Black Gang Chine, and it's really smuggler territory. A chine is a like a large cliff that'll have then an inlet with a little sandy bay where
Digby (:What's the chime? What is the chime?
Digby (:Ha.
Right.
Dr Richard Hodge (:boats could go and pull up and then they would have to lug their, they'd lug their booty up the cliff and what have you, you know. So they could be really quite well hidden depending on which chine they were in.
Digby (:So you've got pirate heritage, is that what you're saying? That's awesome. So and you mentioned your grandfather earlier on and how, you know, there's clearly there's a shaping force there. What are some of those early shaping forces that you think led you? I'm really curious about led you into the field that you have expertise in today around systems thinking. Where does that come from? That fascination with
Dr Richard Hodge (:Somewhere there.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:this idea of relational and seeing the system, seeing the whole, where does that all come from?
Dr Richard Hodge (:look, my grandfather was a great mentor. It's my maternal grandfather. He was...
Dr Richard Hodge (:He talked a lot of his early days in the aircraft industry. He'd grown up in Sunderland in the far north of England, but come the Great Depression, lost his job. Sunderland at the time was the biggest shipbuilding town in the world. Then Korea took over. he wandered England and found himself
Digby (:wow.
Dr Richard Hodge (:down on the Isle of Wight in the very nascent aircraft industry in 1932. And of course he was plating and of course an aircraft today is still riveted together, right? So that it gives a movement in. But the thing is they didn't really understand fully the theory of flight and yet they were building these things to actually fly. So it was build a bit, test a bit.
build a bit, test a bit more. And no. And frequently, like through World War II, engineers that have made modifications, they took the test flight with the pilot, right? And in the game. But also my grandfather, whilst he was a foreman in the plating shop,
Digby (:Not quite building while you're it, but hoping it will fly.
Digby (:That's skin in the game.
Dr Richard Hodge (:would regularly talk about conversations with the general manager of the whole business. So the general manager of the whole business would come in and constantly have conversations about from different parts. And yes, but if you're doing that, have you talked to the next people down the line or the people that you're coming from? Are there demands that you need to make on them to make sure that you can do your job right? Because we don't know what
Digby (:Cheerio.
Dr Richard Hodge (:will fail and it's only how we all come together with an understanding of this thing called flight that we, and of course, that was inherent in my grandfather's teachings. And then he would just, he had a shed, he was retired by the time we came out to Australia and just gave us freedom to build things. And we would build Billy carts out of
anything. But then it had to pass grandfather's test as to whether or not we had constructed it and had we thought about how these different elements of this simple system were going to hold up if we were going to put our bodies on it and fly down a hill with no brakes.
Digby (:Wow.
Digby (:Wow. Yeah. Again, skin in the game, get in that cart and show us. Wow. That's amazing. I love the story that that's come from not just one generation back, but two and that it was passed on to you through experience yourself. And it makes me think, Richard, that.
Dr Richard Hodge (:right on. That was super.
Digby (:Systems thinking I don't see enacted very often or very consistently in organizations around us today. What's going on? What are we missing?
Dr Richard Hodge (:No.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Well, I asked my brother that. Now, my brother's 13 months younger than me. So he and I were in the same sort of upbringing with our grandfather. Dave was and is dyslexic. And if you were a dyslexic kid in 1960, the education system more or less said, no, you're a dumb ass. Pardon my French. And he was pushed aside. So at 15, he went Jackarooing. And what have you. So again,
Digby (:Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:and Jackarooing in Australia really is a hand on a ... He was at Rawlinner, which is Australia's largest sheep station, of well over a million acres. He was just left out to go fencing and do almost anything, a Jack of all trades. That's a Jackaroo, a Jack of all trades. You've got what
Digby (:That's what a Jackaroo is. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:resources you've got available if you're in the middle of the Western Australian deserts. so anyway, years later, Dave's done 26 years at Australia's wall processing factory, and he became known there as the professor. And you'll know within our thought leaders community, sometimes they give me that moniker as well. And I reflected to Dave, I said, so what's going on?
Digby (:You do get that.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And Dave could think about anything to do with that wool processing factory. And he said, well, it started with the managing director and he was the founder and owner of that wool processing factory in Adelaide. Just having a simple measure that all he wanted was one dollar profit from every kilo of wool processed. And then he left it to his people to manage the whole system.
from receipt of the wall to it going out to and being sometimes flown out to places like Benetton in Italy. And Dave therefore knew exactly the constraints of the whole system. And I said, so how is it that you've come to systems thinking without the education that I've had, but yet we've had the similar foundation? said, mate,
I think it comes down to the spirit of adventure we were allowed to have and that we took on fully as kids. Right? That spirit of adventure.
Digby (:Yeah.
Digby (:I want to can you make join the dots between those two ideas, systems, thinking and spirit and adventure? Because intuitively I feel it, but I really need to hear you say it.
Dr Richard Hodge (:you set out to achieve something, whether it's simply building a billy cart or on a station, fixing an exhaust on a tractor or what have you. But you're limited to the resources you've got available. What can you do with what you've got? And there's a spirit, there's something about invention and looking, there's a resourcefulness that's required to being able to look
Digby (:Dr Richard Hodge (32:44.564)
at things that typically do one function, but you go, now if we combine that with that, then we can get this, whatever it is to happen. it's this process that's actually a synthesis of joining things together rather than as we're taught in the education system to break a problem down. You're trying to, it's the other way of synthesis and integration.
Digby (:Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:that you do on the fly and it's much harder to codify and because it is an in fact you can't codify it because it's a creative process.
Digby (:Yeah. And how do we. Given the value of seeing the whole and the interconnections and their interplays, we know it's important and we know we don't do it, we can trip ourselves up. How do we practically weave that thinking? I don't know, say I'm a manager or a leader of some function in some organization and I'm feeling siloed and I'm feeling like.
I want to join more across and I want to join up the dots and I want my people to do that. But it's just I can't. There's an inertia. How do we how do we even start to build in more systems thinking into our leadership practice?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Well, perhaps it starts with an idea or an imagination, if you go back to the last post, that you can imagine a better revolution than the one you're currently going through. Because if you can't imagine that, you know, it's sort of like Einstein with the theory of relativity. He said he could never have come up with that if he hadn't first been able to imagine himself riding a light beam.
Digby (:there you go. So it's imagination. often. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:So there's some sense of imagination. You've got to be able to feel it. And then you go, now, how do I make that real?
Digby (:rather than, rather than here is the world as it is, how do I manage this existing world, right?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Nah, you're going to something new and then you're trying to bring the world to that new.
Digby (:Yeah.
I often talk about possibility thinking versus problem solving. And I think, you know, most efforts are around problem solving. Make this problem go away so we can get back to normal. Right. What is normal? Yet possibility thinking, which is what you're talking about, is let's put that first, which is kind of like, where where do we actually want to be?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Totally.
Digby (:What's the possibility we want to live into? The other word that might start, that starts with P as well, that might be relevant here is purpose. What's the overall purpose? And I think we caught up in being excellent problem solvers to get back to make this go away and back to normal rather than a better future and a riding a light beam idea, right?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Haha.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right.
Digby (:And I suspect you talked about you can't codify this. And I wonder whether a propensity to measure and codify and standardize and systematize things is getting in the way of allowing us to operate in that imagining sort of way and that systems thinking way.
Dr Richard Hodge (:So once you can imagine something, you can go, well, OK, now you've got to come back to the real world. What have we got around us? Do we have any spare time on Friday afternoon? Is there a fun activity that we can do where we can now get out around a whiteboard or get out a big sheet of paper and then put this little imagining as a rich picture on a paper?
Digby (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And then all of a sudden you've now taken it out of the brain and putting it on the wall and something that people can add to during their week. Right? Right? Practical. And then you go, and maybe within that picture, we could at least start there. What if we stopped doing that and started doing that? Would it make any difference outside of this world that we're currently inhabiting? But it might make our life easier.
Digby (:I love that. That's practical. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And then you go, yeah, well, OK, you're sort of playing around at the productivity end. But that may then give the freedom in time to spend a little bit more time looking at other parts of the puzzle as well.
Digby (:Love that. I love that it doesn't have to be a complete pivot away from, but more of a find a space to play.
Dr Richard Hodge (:No, change never happens that way. see too often transformation is talked about, know, is this thing over there and we've just somehow got to, that's why a lot of mergers actually, you know, are very difficult to succeed because they have this, you know, on this day we're no longer that bank or something else and so on. Now,
Digby (:Yeah, it's the Gantt chart, right? Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, absolutely. Whereas change really does happen, it's propagated like a virus. And so there's a lot of little activity happening and blossoming. And you could be doubling that little bit every week.
Digby (:Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right. And it could have just started with a half hour session around a whiteboard where you all together drew a picture. And then the next week, you spent another half hour on it. And then suddenly you found that you've made a change that now gives you an hour a week that you can regularly commit to looking at this future. And within a year, you could now have every Friday is nothing but driving this new future.
Digby (:Yeah, small things. I often use the analogy of a Petri dish, you know, that, you know, it's the culture is what's in the Petri dish. And if we can have the bacteria all active in some way and then joining those bacteria up, bacteria, clearly the people. Right. And then if we can be then we there's an exponential shift that you may not see to start with, but it kicks in.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, perfect.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:So if totally and schools should teach more about exponentials than the world would. We'd know a lot more about the harm that we've initiated and we'd be able to have the patience we need for the good to propagate.
Digby (:Mm-hmm.
Digby (:yes, it's it's the effort versus return equation, isn't it? It's the, you know, put in effort without necessarily seeing return until you do. And then it's it's that's I think a learning patience. Right. What a virtue that we again, coming back to unhurried productivity. It's it's the what's that quote attributed to either Bill Gates or Tony Robbins or 100 other people. You know, we.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes. Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes.
Digby (:overestimate what we can achieve in a year and underestimate what we can achieve in 10. You know, it's that idea, isn't it?
Dr Richard Hodge (:yes.
Yes, that is very true. I was lucky in mid-career when I had proposed a change that had built around a systems engineering idea, so essentially the four wings of the dragonfly, and around how we could do strategic planning better within defense. I'd gotten my boss on board.
and his boss was the secretary of the department. So lo and behold, there I was in front of not only the secretary of department, but the chief of the defense force as well, explaining what I thought this idea could do. And lo and behold, they got it. But Paul Barrett, his name was, Paul looked at me and he said, Richard, if you're going to be successful at this, it's going to take three years. Are you up for that?
Because if you're not in this for three years, we're not even starting.
And there it was, know, commitment from the top, recognizing that this was a long haul strategy to actually change the way in which the strategic behaviors within the department.
Digby (:It's something about our relationship to time, isn't it? You know, that the if we have a short time frame to achieve a big thing. Yeah, I love creative constraints. Yet at the same time, the law of exponentiality is potentially just as powerful, if not more. Right. This idea of. Yeah, this is a three year game. A client I work with here had a 10 year transformation.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right on.
Digby (:And they needed all of that 10 years to shift their entire organization to transform their organization and they knew it would take 10 years and if it was a two-year game, they'd be back to removing chairs around on the Titanic sort of thing,
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right. Yeah. Yeah, isn't that?
Dr Richard Hodge (:That's very insightful of that organization and the leader that charged you to take them on that journey. Because I don't know how you find it, but if I look back over 70 years, I sort of categorize them in waves of about nine years, you know, and then there's this hollowness of sometimes two to three years at the bottom of the peak where you go, well,
Digby (:Hmm.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Here I was floundering away, not really knowing what the hell I was going to do, but just waiting to catch that next wave, know, some of which I hadn't ever imagined were possible.
Digby (:Can you can we take this idea of playing the long game? And we've sort of been talking about it in an organizational sense. And I'm wondering about if we bring it back to the unit of the individual. You know, and my my own transformation, right? I'm you know, I'm listening to this podcast and I'm thinking that's all very well and good. But what about me? How do we apply some of these ideas to my own growth, my own development?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, sure.
Digby (:How do we think about that?
Dr Richard Hodge (:A little story. I was once invited to speak at a conference on the dry subject of governance in Canberra. And in Canberra. Well, and it had heads of a of the smaller agencies talking about it as well. But in my bio, I had said I was a systems thinker.
Digby (:in Canberra, so really dry. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:And as the MC introduced me, they said, well, he says he's a systems thinker and I have absolutely no idea what a systems thinker is. So my planned introduction to my talk went out the window as I then explained what a systems thinker was. And it was this way. And I said, I've got my first systems thinking lesson that I didn't realize at the time.
Digby (:Ha
Dr Richard Hodge (:from a 17 year old girl. And I was sitting on the lawn, I had fallen head over heels in love with her. we were sitting on the lawn in Victoria Square in Adelaide, waiting for our bus home. And we got on talking about life ahead and whether we would like children and so on and so forth.
wife, stopped me in November:our children to know and see and feel our loving relationship so that they too could also have that.
And I'm tearing up here almost because here we are two generations down and I see my grandson now engaging in those sort of behaviors that is setting him up for his loving relationship with his new partner.
Digby (:I love it.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Both of our daughters met and married their loves and the women in our family have such a strong bond around this notion of keeping their family at love and moving forward. And that's their value model. That's their head of their dragonfly.
Digby (:Hmm.
Digby (:I was going to say that's the dragonfly right there in that story. It's beautiful. The long tail of the dragonfly multigenerational, which says to me, if we come back to that question, how do I apply this? It's coming back to what do I value and what do we value? And then how do we bring that to life so that it's relevant? You know, and then what's the long tail that we are?
Dr Richard Hodge (:right there.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Right.
Digby (:looking to create, to see. And I love this idea of it being multi-generational. You know, I think whether it's about family or whether it's about the impact of your work, it's, you know, it's the old, what's the tree that you will plant the seed for, but may never sit under, you know, that idea that drives, if we come back to systems thinking, the way I make sense about this is that it's well, if that's what matters.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Mmm.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:then you'll need to take into account all of the different aspects that contribute to creating that long tail. Yeah, that's a powerful story.
Dr Richard Hodge (:That's right. Yeah, exactly right. you know, and it's not to say that, you know, there aren't temptations in life that pull you away from it, but in all of that, you know, the decision making becomes easy because if I did X, you know, would that amplify or detract?
from my relationship with my wife and I didn't prioritize. So my priorities in life and my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my children and grandchildren, and then my relationship with my work. And if you're in that top two, then if my phone goes off and it's one of them, then I'll be saying, sorry, Diggs, you know, just a moment. I need to see if this is urgent. And
But that's the way in which I've led my life constantly. And I have told my leaders, my CEOs that I've worked for that, that's it. You're number three, sorry. And I've even said that to some CEOs in front of their wives for them then to go, so why are you taking calls at 11 o'clock at night, Alan?
Digby (:Ha ha ha!
Digby (:That that's a bit of that pirate energy coming through, I reckon. That's awesome. I love it. I love it. That's that's a beautiful story to reflect on. think it's you it comes back to what do I value, you know, and and then what how is that embodied literally using that word as the dragonfly and then and then what's the long tail as a result of that? It's just it's just so powerful. That's so powerful.
Dr Richard Hodge (:HAHAHAHA
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:But it's also enabled us now, as I was saying to you before we started recording, it's very easy for us to have answered the question, well, do we have enough and what is enough for us? that, well, my wife and I have just recently decided that we will.
Digby (:Tell us about that.
Dr Richard Hodge (:I don't use the retired word, but become pensioners, but we had enough funds and situation in life for us to go, know what? We don't need to accumulate anything more in life. And we can just live in love together and add a little more each day.
ar, which from, you know, the: Digby (:I can certainly relate to that. And most people listening to this would relate. Yeah. Wow.
Dr Richard Hodge (:and most people would.
But that's because we have lost the framing of how much is enough. But you can't really answer that question until you're clear on what you value in life, how you conceive it, how you contribute it, and how you count it.
Digby (:Yeah.
Digby (:I've found myself having developed over the years just a handful of metrics around enough. And one of them is still money. One of them is relationships. And that's both the quantity and quality lens. There's a it's a very specific one, but time on water. Right. For me.
Dr Richard Hodge (:yeah.
Digby (:You know, it's like the broader one could be time in nature or exercise or a combination of those things. For me, it's time on water because of that is such a compounding activity for me. And, you know, just a handful of others and each of them has to have an enough thing. When I was younger, the time on water thing was I could never get enough time. You know, that time it was windsurfing and it was as a result, it's.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:But if I can define enough, then I'm in equilibrium. I've got a dynamic equilibrium between all of those things happening. I'm good. And, you know, the person who brought the concept of enough to me was Charles Handy, who, in fact, I learned died this week. was 93 and he, he was an incredible thinker.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, it did. Bless.
Digby (:And he wrote a book about how he and his wife defined enough money. They both had their own careers that for six months of the year, it would be about him and getting what he needed to earn and do to be enough for him. And she was a photographer. And, you know, she needed enough time to do that in the other half of the year. And they had this lovely way of weaving their lives to get enough. And
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yes.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah.
Digby (:We get driven. If we don't define that, we can just chase it because of a scarcity mentality. Right. Yeah.
Dr Richard Hodge (:For sure. Yeah, quite so. Quite so. I know it's this time of year, but I was once asked by one of the fellows I was mentoring, you know, that he had a little problem on the side of what to get his dad for his 70th birthday. And I said, well, my bet is that he would love just having lunch with you. So why don't you, for his birthday, jump on a plane to Perth?
and take him to lunch or something like that. Time with your parent. if that can work for you, it would work a hundred times more for him. And he eventually did that and then came back was very thankful. And his father had said to him that was the best present he could ever give was time.
Digby (:And time as a currency, right? It's it's it's it's finite for us, you know, and so, yeah, having having that conscious of what is enough time. Yeah, yeah, Oliver Berkman's 4000 Weeks book, which is we get around 4000 weeks to live, you know, well, there's our there's our enough. We're using that time, right? Yeah, yeah, it's a powerful idea.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Time has a currency.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, totally, totally.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Yeah, I know. Yeah, that is very true. That is very true.
Digby (:Richard, I feel like we could go for another hour and or more or a day and we don't see each other enough living across the Tasman from each other. I'd love to reconnect in person for now though, perhaps if we press pause as we close this. I'd love to ask you the question. What have you learned or been reminded of during our conversation?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Easy.
Dr Richard Hodge (:look, I think that reminded very much of the depth of feeling I have for my wife and how that anchors me so deeply to what I do.
because I can't help but feel that, you know, there's, and I don't want, I'm going to end up with a bit of a dichotomy between the patriarchy of the world that's killing it and the matriarchy of the world that could fix it. And indigenous societies typically live by a matriarchal way of synthesizing, of bringing together. And I think what I've
You know, what has been reinforced for me in this conversation is the power of connection more than anything else to things that are at times intangible and things that we do measure and that we tend to measure much that have hard numbers against as not really the essence of life and that the essence of life comes from the synthesis of things in which we find truth, beauty and goodness.
Digby (:That's so powerful. Thank you. A lot to reflect on there. If people wanted to learn more about you and your work, how do they find you?
Dr Richard Hodge (:Well, I have a website, drrichardhodge.com. I'm also starting a, or just started a new sub stack called No Problem Too Big. And I would invite people there, and this is where I'll be writing a lot about the dragonfly in the year to come, that really to give people both hope
and pragmatism, that no problem's too big for us to act and leave the world better for what we've done. And so my sub stack is no problem too big and hopefully that link will be connected below. And you'll also find me on LinkedIn at Richard Hodge PhD.
Digby (:Absolutely.
Digby (:Lovely, brilliant, Richard. I'm inspired as ever. My heart is warmed. My brain is bouncing all over the place. And I thank you so much for creating the time to spend with me to share with the world who you are and what you're about. Thank you so much.
Dr Richard Hodge (:Ha ha ha ha ha
Dr Richard Hodge (:Ha ha ha.
Dr Richard Hodge (:An absolute pleasure, thanks Digby.
