# Transforming Culture: Overcoming Human Biases in AI Adoption

**Podcast:** Tech Lead Journal
**Published:** 2026-06-15

## Transcript

When people resist change, that's because it's an emotional response more than a rational one.
We are just full of stories that we tell ourselves about what's possible, about why things are.
But under the surface, the massive, hidden, powerful part of the iceberg are the hidden stories.
Today's guest is Ronica Roth, co-author of Practice Makes Culture from IT Revolution and co-founder of The Welcome Elephant.
She spent 25 years uncovering why most culture change fails and what leaders at any level can actually do about it.
percent of change efforts actually fail because of these funny things about people, right about human.
These aren't character flaws.
They're just patterns in how all humans process information, assess value, and respond to change.
It's the cognitive biases that we've learned from neuroscience, from behavioral economics.
Many leaders, they always opt for this route of, I just declare a new culture.
One good speech is not going to change a hidden story.
20 plus years of doing this, it turns out you really can include the people, address the people, and the human factors.
You can create the culture you want on your team, in your group, in your program, in your organ, at whatever part.
Practice welcoming elephants every day and invite others to practice with you.
Every organization is embarking this AI change transformation.
How a company can successfully make this change happening with their people, changing how they work.
With AI, everything goes to 11.
Everything we've ever said times 10, times 100.
It's a massive emotional elephant.
You have to make space for people to be uncomfortable, to express their discomfort and make that okay.
One of the most powerful things I've seen is when a leader can be vulnerable.
I'm excited and I'm nervous too.
For the first time in my life, I'm leading a change and I don't exactly know what the end state is.
Hey, quick pause.
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Hello everyone.
Today I have with me Ronika Roth, IT Revolution author of a book titled Practice Makes Culture.
This is kind of like a new book that is coming from the IT Revolution.
As the title says, we're going to talk a lot about, you know, making good culture, doing change, transformation and all that.
And we all know these days what is happening is AI is transforming a lot of organizations.
So hopefully we can learn a few practices from Ronika's book on how we can make this AI transformation also successful for all of us.
So Ronika, thank you so much for your time.
Looking forward for this conversation.
Yes, me too.
Thank you very much.
Ronika, let's start maybe by talking about the book.
I think talking about culture, there are so many books available out there, although many are probably not from the IT technology space.
So tell us the background.
Why do you actually coming up with this book?
That is the first question we asked ourselves.
In fact, they tell you to make sure you know why you're writing a book.
a sense of purpose, right?
I really do want to change the world of work.
I hate it when people are frustrated in their workplace of work by change that doesn't lead to results or by change fatigue or by places where it just feels hard to create great results together.
And honestly, not even just work.
I, you know, I volunteer with a community, kind of an arts and culture community that And essentially it puts on an event.
There's a whole bunch of people who help put on that event, but they get frustrated, you know, and sometimes there's just a lot of friction.
And it can feel like you don't have any control over that.
And the truth is, in 20 years, 20 plus years of doing this, 25, I can't do the math.
It turns out you really can include the people, address the people and the human factors.
to create much better change experiences and to create great, great results.
And at the end of the day, I can only work, Christine Hudson, my co-author, we can only work with so many companies.
And I really want them all to change.
And I really do feel like we've found a way to break it down into a really accessible approach that, and it's not a method or a methodology or a system.
But it's just some really practical advice that a leader at any level really can change their organizational culture for whatever part of the organization they can influence.
And I want those leaders to have that chance to shine.
And to your point about AI, I think the shifts from the AI world are adding to the urgency.
I mean, it's more critical than ever that we're conscious.
in how we bring along the humans as we consider how AI is going to remake organizations.
Yeah, I think that's a very great mission that you elaborated just now, right?
So I think definitely also you are running a company behind this book, right?
So tell us about the funny name that you have for your company.
The Welcome Elephant?
Well, you're going to, as we kind of dive more into the book, you'll...
One of the key, one of the, we have kind of a three-part approach.
The subtitle of the book is how welcoming elephants, creating ownership and facilitating daily practice, transform organizations.
And that, creating an environment that welcomes the elephant.
So welcomes the elephant in the room, right?
And like, think about, think about places you've worked.
Think about some of the best places you've worked and maybe some of the, more frustrating places.
How often have you had an environment where you can bring the bad news and you're not going to get shot down for it?
You're not going to get punished for it.
Everyone's going to say, boy, thank you.
Okay, let's roll up our sleeves and solve that problem you just mentioned, right?
So we work with leaders to create environments, to create cultures, to create organizations.
that not only welcome those elephants, those elephants in the room, but also that welcome emotional elephants.
So funny thing about people, humans, we are far more emotional than we like to think we are.
Even you, dear listener, is thinking to yourself, yeah, but I am very rational.
I want data and I want science.
And I'm like, yep.
And data and science give you feelings.
And it turns out that even that CTO or CEO or board president who wants the hard data to tell me why we're embarking on this change, whatever it is, at the end of the day, they really make decisions based on emotions.
When people resist change, that's because it's an emotional response more than a rational one.
Because we're emotional humans, we make up stories.
If we're missing information or say you give me a bunch of data about AI, a bunch of information and a great vision.
Henry has this idea about what we're going to be capable of once we fully adopt AI to help us build our products.
But because I have feelings about that and I'm a little bit scared and I'm nervous about...
the skills I might not have, right?
Or I'm worried I won't be able to do it.
I will literally change what I hear about your story because of my emotions.
And I don't know I'm doing it.
It's just a human.
So when I've been in organizations that really embrace, you know, our whole selves as, you know, emotional and rational, then it takes some of the power out of that emotion.
I can look and say, oh, thanks for acknowledging that this is a little intimidating.
Now that you said it out loud and I can say it out loud.
Whew.
Okay.
Now I can, now I can listen better.
Right.
So it's not about, I don't know.
It's not about like, oh, I'm going to become super emotional at work.
It's actually about just.
Let me, you know, acknowledge all the different sides and then we can engage better.
And there's a third elephant that we're trying to welcome, which is the systems elephant.
There's the old Indian story or parable, Southeast Asia, India, of the six blind men and the elephant, right?
And the blind men, they each are touching a different, they've never seen an elephant or they've never encountered an elephant.
They're touching each part.
And they're arguing about it.
It's like, no, an elephant's like a wall, says the guy touching the side.
No, an elephant's like a fan, says the guy touching the ear.
And no, the elephant's like a snake, says the guy at the trunk.
An elephant's a pillar, says the guy at the leg.
And they start sort of fighting with one another, arguing until a sighted person arrives and says, well, actually, you're all right and you're all wrong.
The elephant is all these things, right?
And this is exactly, in my experience, this is what happens in every company and every organization.
And I don't think there's anything you do to prevent it.
It's just human nature.
We can best see what we're closest to.
Our day-to-day work kind of keeps us focused in.
And it's a different kind of thinking to pick your head up and look at the horizon and look at the whole organization.
And we often build habits around who talks to whom and how easily can I go talk to that group over there or, you know, how well do I understand that group over there and can I anticipate what might go wrong?
And so the most effective organizations, building on the work of Deming and Lean, they're the places where we build.
habits, we build organizational structures and habits that help us see that whole system and just get better.
So we're trying to welcome all those elephants.
And that's what's in the book.
And that's what our company does.
Right.
So thanks for explaining what the meaning behind elephant.
So it's like elephant in the room, right?
So I think you also mentioned these funny things about human, right?
Funny things about people.
And in your book, you open it up by saying that 70% of change efforts actually fail because of these funny things about people, about humans.
And it's actually very true.
I believe it's even higher than that because almost in every organization, when you deal with people, there are a lot of uncertainties, ambiguities.
Different people react differently because maybe emotions play a big part in what they do and what they decide.
So tell us about these funny things of people.
That always seems to be like a gotcha for every change, transformation, organizational culture.
You know, it's funny.
All credit to Christine for hitting on that phrase, the funny things about humans, as we thought about, you know, answering that question, why do change efforts struggle?
And once we started really thinking about it and digging into it and looking at the research, the list kept getting longer and longer.
I mean, really what we're talking, I mean, the thing is, it's not about, these aren't character flaws, unless they're flaws of humanity.
They're just patterns in how all humans process information, assess value, and respond to change.
And really, it's the cognitive biases that we've learned from neuroscience, from behavioral economics.
And so...
We've already mentioned a couple that were more emotional than we think we are.
We tend to filter new experience.
Initially, we'll filter new experiences and new information through the thoughts, our old ways of thinking.
So it's called selective interpretation.
Belief, there's something called belief bias that causes us to sort of cling to old beliefs.
I probably shouldn't say this out loud, but at the very beginning of kind of the AI stuff, you know, I had an emotional reaction that was a little bit of the fear of, I don't know if I know how to do this, that made me create some beliefs about the nature of AI.
Like, oh, it's not, it doesn't work.
It's all these false, false, you know, hallucinations and blah, blah, blah.
And of course, AI is changing so fast.
If you're not reading about it every day, you don't know what's true.
And so some of the things I believed were true in the beginning.
And I would read new stuff and I still was like, nah, it's never going to work.
You know, and we cling to old beliefs.
Now, it turns out that to get past that, those beliefs, I had to get past the fear.
I got past the fear.
by finding people to work with to play with it.
So, and there's a few other that are particularly important for change.
We're very social creatures.
In fact, I love Harari's work in Sapiens about our only superpower as people might be our ability to collaborate.
And when humans have sort of made great strides.
It's because we've figured out ways for more people to collaborate together.
I mean, that's kind of what this agile world is about and this process world, which is great, but it also can kind of be our weakness, right?
So a social threat activates the same neural pathways that govern our responses to physical survival.
So the idea that I might look bad or look dumb or that you might think less of me, you know, So you can tell me I'm supposed to welcome elephants, but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to get yelled at, so I'm not gonna.
And, you know, it's a really, it's a really very powerful response, right?
It's not a just get over it response.
And related to that, social standing, that's why we avoid conflict.
So some people are better at conflict than others, but most of us have some boundary.
Where it's like, nope, I can't have that conversation.
I can't bring that up.
I'm just going to, we'll just, let's not talk about that.
Yeah, I think hearing what you said, right?
A few examples, we can definitely acknowledge that.
I think we can feel it in ourselves.
We can see it with our colleagues, friends, even family members and all that, right?
So I think this funny thing about people is something that we have to work on, definitely, right?
Speaking about culture, I want to ask this probably difficult questions because everyone talks about culture.
Everyone wants to build a good culture.
But how would you define it?
How do you describe a culture?
I think in your book, you also mentioned these layers of culture.
How do you differentiate?
Because I think it's like a spectrum thing for culture.
You can't really describe it very succinctly in just one sentence.
Maybe tell us what's your definition of culture.
Well, again, another place where we spend a lot of time thinking about what we've seen and experienced and also reading, you know, a lot of very smart organizational psychologists and whatnot.
When most people say culture, and we think of this as little c culture, they kind of mean like, how does it feel to work around here?
How easy is it to get things done?
Or how hard is it to get things done?
How well do people get along?
Are people really nice to each other?
Are they so nice they can't say, you know, give real feedback?
That's what, and most people would say like, well, I can't define it, but I know it when I see it, right?
That, you know, culture can be, everyday culture can be, you know, how much do we defer to hierarchy or not?
How much do we, it's endless.
And yet we've learned there's so much more than that.
It's also your business operating system.
Right.
So the values that are up on a poster, everything that's in the HR handbook, the shortcuts, the processes we do because the official process doesn't work.
That's part of our business operating system.
Yeah.
The kind of rules, processes and habits about how we do things.
Right.
If you think of, I love a good iceberg metaphor.
If you think of that everyday culture, little C culture, and that business operating system are what we see.
They're very visible, right?
That handbook is on your desk.
That batch process runs every night.
Those are, you know, we interact at the coffee station every day.
That's what we see.
But under the surface, the massive, hidden, powerful part of the iceberg are the hidden stories.
So, again, as humans, as story-making machines, we individually and collectively are just full of stories that we tell ourselves about what's possible, about why things are.
And we often don't even know that we have them.
Right.
It's this constant filter that you're assessing.
You know, it could be, I don't know, a company is wants to go on, become more innovative.
Right.
The big transformation is we're going to be the leading insurance company, whatever it is.
And in innovation.
But the hidden story that people believe is, well, we're risk averse by nature.
And so we're never going to do anything.
that feels risky.
And those stories are powerful, no matter how many initiatives and speeches.
Well, I shouldn't say not no matter how.
We have to recognize that one good speech is not going to change a hidden story.
And if I have a hidden story that as part of that, that I'm going to get my hand slapped if I, I don't know, if I try some new way of interacting with the customer.
I would have to not get my hand slapped.
I would have to be praised for that behavior many, many, many times before I'm going to change my story about it.
You know, sometimes we know those stories.
It's like, well, it's happy hour when you're having that.
Well, you know how things really work around here.
You know that John is never going to change the way he talks to us or whatever it is, right?
So they're very, very powerful, and they build up through time.
They've built up through shared experiences.
So we have shared stories.
We have stories.
Our team has some stories about that team.
And again, unconscious.
And then also me personally.
Because of the way my life has gone, I have stories and beliefs.
So culture is the everyday culture, the business operating system, including the unofficial parts and the hidden stories.
Yeah, I like your analogy of this iceberg, right?
So like what you mentioned, the visible one, right?
The everyday culture, the values handbook or whatever that is that you have in your organization.
The way you work, the workflow, the habits, right?
Those that can be easily seen at the tip of the iceberg.
But the hidden stories are actually, you know, the majority, the bulk of how you define your culture, right?
And I think many, many leaders actually, I think they feel it's hard to change a culture, but they always opt for this route of, you know, maybe when new leaders come in, especially, I just declare a new culture, you know, set top five cultures.
This is how we're going to change.
And they start from there.
Is there a better way of, you know, for leaders, especially new leaders to come in?
to come in and make a change rather than doing that.
There is a better, well, I will say maybe a better way to say it isn't, it's not that there's a better way.
It's that that way is just one piece.
That's insufficient.
It's necessary, but insufficient.
So if you want to change the culture to be, I don't know, we want to embrace AI.
We want to become more innovative.
We want to, you know, I don't know, move fast and break things, whatever it is we want.
It is important to state that and to be really clear about it and to have a vision, a compelling vision that you can tell with a story that appeals to emotion as well as logic.
And it's really powerful to acknowledge and recognize that this thing we want to do isn't just a process change or a business operating system change or a technology change.
It is a cultural change and we know that.
So to all of that is important.
It's just insufficient.
And honestly, it can be paralyzing, I think, especially the farther down, either down or at the center of the organization, however you want to think about it.
It can feel big and amorphous and I don't know how to change our culture.
What does that even mean?
So, yes, so there's a better way.
Yeah.
So I think many people that I've seen or many organizations, how they approach change, obviously declare, you know, state clearly, this is the vision, this is where we go.
Eventually, sooner or later, they will, you know, try to use power hierarchy to actually enforce those culture.
So I think there's a better way, definitely, which comes to your, kind of like the framework, you know, you have these three pillars of...
how you can approach this culture transformation much better.
Tell us about your three pillars in this framework.
Yeah, perfect.
Well, I'll start with, again, welcoming elephants, which I kind of talked about the three types.
So we have learned, it's funny when I tell people that part of what I do is help with culture change, culture shift in organizations.
I often want to sort of my caveat is, I mean, it's not just any culture change.
I'm not going to help you become, you know, a protective, conservative, you know, disempowering hierarchy.
You know, I want to help create organizations where they do welcome the elephant in the room.
And so this is a part of it.
And so now that I explain the three, let me give it a little more like example.
So like the emotional element, elephant, excuse me.
So let's imagine we're going to have, it's a simple change.
It's not even big.
We're going to have a new approval process for something because we want to prevent errors.
So we say that.
But the reaction that people have, you think it's a little thing.
It's not even going to matter.
But people are like, don't you trust me to make good decisions?
Why are you doing that?
Why are you introducing this?
Why are you disempowering me in the area I'm an expert?
expert in.
To welcome that emotional elephant would be to bring in stories that address some of that emotion.
Hey, we've had some pretty big misses lately that might have been prevented by slowing down and like getting a second pair of eyes on things, right?
So now I'm bringing an emotional story that empathizes, that brings us a shared goal.
We all want to not make mistakes and feel like we're on the line.
It makes it really hard to make decisions.
So the idea is, you know, we're trying to create a safety net around decisions that actually lets us go a little faster.
Right.
OK, great.
So now we have this.
Now, what about the systems elephant?
Well, the new approval process didn't consider the fact that we just created a bottleneck because we asked the systems architects to become the deciders, the approvers.
And now they're in this uncomfortable position.
Everyone's going to get mad at them.
But if we came at it with the idea of welcoming the systems elephant from the beginning, we would have invited more groups to help us think through the problem space.
What is it we're trying to accomplish?
And what are other ways we might tackle it?
Maybe if we had done that, the systems architect would be like, look, it's not really about a particular set of eyes.
It's just about...
a second set of eyes what if we created more you know blah blah whatever it is right um so that's so that's welcoming the systems elephant we're bringing people in sooner um and then in terms of the elephant in the room so imagine imagine we're kicking off this little new approval process initiative um and there's this great story that welcomes the emotional elephant about how we're trying to make it easier to make decisions and be successful.
And silence.
Nobody reacts.
And you're like, uh-oh, what's going on?
And the hidden elephant is, at the VP level, the engineering and architecture leads battle all the time.
And as a result, there's this trickle down.
Those two groups don't even get along currently.
And now you're going to ask us to collaborate on decisions?
What the heck?
So if you welcomed that elephant as the person announcing the change, you might say, look, I know this isn't just a process change.
This is a people change.
Those two VPs own this initiative together.
And their first tasks will involve getting everyone together to build a shared vision about what we're trying to accomplish.
So welcoming elephants.
So really paying attention in many interactions, in all our interactions, to...
How can we not just acknowledge, but embrace our whole emotional and logical selves?
How can we constantly seek ways to consider the entire system?
How can we constantly find ways to improve the psychological safety that will allow us to welcome room elephants?
And we do that, but I'm actually going to skip to the third pillar, which is facilitating daily practice.
So we don't do it again, like you said, it's not a big grand gesture and announcement.
Every day, what are little things we could do that would make it real, right?
So I'll take the systems elephant, actually, because that's a little easier to think about because it's a little more logical, right?
Well, we don't normally, we do our planning and then we go talk to that other team, which is painful.
And it always changes our plan.
Okay, what if we invited that team to our planning?
Right.
That might sound like a big change.
So what might be a small change?
I'm a team lead and in the Slack, in our Slack channel, whenever we're talking about you know, this area, I'm just going to, I'm going to ask a kind of non-threatening, curious question.
Hey, have we asked, have we, what did the widget team say about that?
Not, did you ask the widget team, which will make someone defensive?
Yes.
No.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Or, or, or sounding impatient, right?
Like, so daily practice, me as a leader.
I'm going to write down the open, curious question on my desk or on my computer.
What did the widget team say?
Or what was their input?
And then so that I don't sound frustrated by writing in the moment.
And then I'm going to keep asking that.
Every time this comes up in Slack, I'm going to ask that question until the team tells me before I can ask.
Right.
And if that happens, now I've turned my practice, our practice becomes a habit, right?
And we can change something else.
And so that facilitating daily practice, it turns out it's how we learn, right?
We build, I mean, how many times have you gone to some kind of training or had a discussion about how we want to do something differently?
And then if you don't immediately do it, if you don't build some of that muscle memory.
This is part of where change fatigue comes from, right?
So we don't do it often enough, but I constantly have to remember.
So every, I don't know, every six weeks we work on that one thing where I'm supposed to talk to the widget team, but I don't know, we don't talk about it that much in between and I forget, you know, and so it takes, it's very effortful.
Whereas if we want to turn systems thinking, welcoming systems elephants into habit, And every day I'm looking for a way to invite us to think about other teams or every sprint planning.
We're going to build a habit of where, you know, we have certain people in our planning or we do a planning set, you know, whatever it is, but you create this repetition.
That's where we sort of take it out of the very effortful space.
I'm watching the sun change while I talk.
We might have to figure that out.
Yeah, you're getting dark as well.
Do you have another light?
Let me see if I can fix it.
So yeah, the other piece about facilitating daily practice is going back to hidden stories.
It takes many new shared experiences to change a hidden story, right?
So we'll go back to welcoming room elephants.
We say, the leaders say they want every crazy idea.
But anytime we come up with an idea that's a little too out there, it gets shot down immediately.
Right.
So that's going to reinforce the hidden story that I have that the leaders don't really embrace innovation.
One leader reacting well once will not change that story.
I'm going to be like, great.
He just didn't notice that my idea was crazy.
Because he doesn't really know the tech that well, you know, or whatever story we have.
Or bad news.
A big one for me is bad news, right?
Inherent in modern ways of working is the idea that we're trying to learn faster.
We want to learn faster that customers don't really, we're not solving the right problem or customers won't react to that thing or this design won't work.
We're trying to learn really fast.
And I...
I can't tell you how many companies I've encountered where they're like, yeah, yeah, we want to learn fast, iterative, iterative, iterative.
But they can't ever hear, oh, that didn't work.
We tried a thing, it didn't work.
We're going to try another.
What do you mean it didn't work?
How many customers saw it?
That was a real quote from a real client, a stakeholder who was struggling with the idea of iterative.
There has to be the safety and this welcoming of, well, that design didn't work, but thank goodness we found out now.
That design didn't work.
Well, now how late are we going to be?
It really requires the repetition of leaders who can say, take a deep breath.
And again, program manager who's like, well, the schedule is going to slip by two weeks.
And they're like, okay.
If you're going to learn to not get that look on your face or sound frustrated, then you have to practice that kind of with intention and over and over again.
So that's the practice piece.
The third pillar.
So we're welcoming elephants.
We're making change by facilitating daily practice.
And we're creating ownership.
So, you know, a lot of leaders try to create buy-in for new tools or processes, I don't, I've never quite liked that phrase, but you know, um, how much, how much do you need?
How much, how much do you need me to buy in?
Um, when we talked about creating ownership, this goes back to one of those funny things about humans, which is ownership bias.
So we tend to value more the things we perceive that we own and, and it doesn't, we don't have to literally own it, right?
Like it feels like my project because I've been working on it for six.
I don't own the project.
Someone else owns it, but it's mine.
Because I've invested time and effort into it.
You know, we can also, we could talk about, I own, that's my seat on the bus.
That's my park.
My park over there at the end of the street, right?
So we have this sense of ownership.
And things that we even have a sense of ownership for, we just, we value more.
And if I will, once I feel ownership of something, I will assume, I will consider it to have more value than a thing I don't own.
And that, so that ownership makes, makes all the difference.
And it, a lot of senior leaders hear that and they're like, well, it's, they, they don't own the initiative.
I, I'm the one who's, whose bonus is on the line for these results.
But what we're really talking about is a sense of ownership and psychological ownership.
And we create psychological ownership by giving people, just giving people a chance to fully understand something.
So taking a little bit more time.
you know, with people to explain what it is we're trying to do and help them understand, you know, whatever it is, whether it's understanding the reason or taking them through the evaluation process that we went through with these tools.
It can be giving people a chance to just give feedback and poke holes in something, right?
So maybe this is the group, this rock, this task force, you know, created a plan for, AI adoption or whatever, even if it was right to get this small group, we now need to include the larger group.
And we don't just include them by telling them and being inspiring and telling a great story, although we need to do those things too.
We have to really give them a chance to kind of understand it and spend some time with it and interact with it.
And that can be true for a change.
That can be true for...
for a product initiative.
It could be true for all kinds of things.
When, when that sense of ownership is created, people will give more time.
They're more invested.
And so, um, they're, they're more willing to practice.
They're more willing to, they'll find more elephants in the room and, and they'll be willing to, to do the extra work to, to engage in healthy conflict because Well, this change is important.
So I know I feel that it's important because I own it.
I co-own it.
And so it all actually becomes quite a great reinforcing loop.
Because I have a sense of ownership, I'm willing to dig in to deal with the elephants in the room.
I know that that requires constant attention.
to new ways of speaking and reacting and reacting.
And I'll do that.
And because we do it in small, little changes, they're very doable, which is another piece of the facilitating daily practice.
As humans, we tend to underestimate the value of small changes, yet habit research tells us that it's the small changes done frequently that have a significant impact.
Yeah, thanks for elaborating these pillars.
So I feel definitely what you mentioned makes sense, makes a lot of sense, right?
So especially I love about the ownership, right?
Because like what you said, coming back to the funny things about people, right?
So we kind of like take pride about what we own, what we produce, right?
What we can probably create together as a team, right?
Rather than bolt it on from the top, you know, saying, for example, you have to use AI every day, right?
But if we cannot find something that we own by using AI, I think definitely the change is not going to stick, I would say, right?
So I think ownership definitely is very important.
And I mean, for leaders out there who try to make a change, don't forget that you need to create that kind of ownership.
Maybe not the full accountability ownership thing, but it's about psychological thing that, you know, people will need to own something.
So speaking about daily practice, right?
I like it.
You also mentioned, you know, habit changes always be, you do it iteratively in small changes, right?
One thing that I particularly kind of like intrigued in your book when you mentioned about this daily practice, you come back to this meeting.
Meeting is something that many people probably dread, especially if you're doing it, you know, in a big groups, you know, talk about no agenda.
So how do you actually use this meeting as a powerful way?
for making changes in the daily practices.
I mean, I like to think that people hate meetings because they've been in a lot of bad ones.
And the good news is if you begin to think of meetings as a place to change your culture where you welcome emotional and room and systems elephants, they will suck less, which will be helpful.
This also might be the moment when I give a shout out to my mentor was Jean Tabaka, who passed too young.
Gosh, 10 years ago, I think almost.
But she really showed me and showed Christine the power of, if you think of meetings as, it's the place where your culture is most visible and therefore most able to be changed.
And if you think of meetings as a place where we can practice the culture we want, then they both improve the culture, but also the meetings themselves improve.
And so let me give an example, perhaps.
I had too many examples in my head.
So we say we want to welcome bad news.
Or actually, I'll do it this way.
We say we want to learn from mistakes or that we want to be a learning organization.
But that's, you know, that's not always gone well.
So I'm going to use, we have a weekly team meeting, let's just say.
And I'm going to use, I'm going to add an agenda item to the weekly team meeting that says, we're going to share what we learned.
And I'm going to make a plan.
about how I invite that so that it's clear that I really mean it.
And maybe I'm even going to tell a couple people in advance so they're ready to bring.
And I'm going to lead with something and I'm going to model an example where I learned by getting something wrong.
And maybe I'm also going to kind of have some words written in front of me to help me respond well.
you know, thank you, whatever that looks like.
Now I've just turned a meeting into a place where we're practicing a learning culture.
So I've talked to a million teams and team leads who say, I just wish that my team would talk in retrospectives.
I can't get them to talk.
I can't get them to contribute.
You've got a kind of culture.
One is I would want to, what do you know about why?
Is it because it's not safe?
Is there a lack of safety?
What creates that lack of psychological safety?
Is it just because there's people on the team who are uncomfortable with speaking in front of a group even though it's just our team?
It could be all kinds of reasons.
Is it because that one person on your team?
like jumps in and like talks over everybody and say, you know, what, what is it?
Right.
So you figure out what that is and then you can design the meeting specifically to be a place that doesn't just ask people to contribute, but makes it safe and makes it easy to contribute.
So maybe in that retro, we're going to, um, maybe we need a working agreement around how people react to ideas.
Or maybe we have a working agreement around everyone having everyone make sure we hear from everyone, which is both a responsibility to draw for all of us to draw people out and the responsibility to make space for others and a responsibility to use your voice.
But then we also can design the meeting like.
When we're collecting ideas, reflections on how the sprint went, we're going to use a pass the pen technique, right?
We're writing, so now it's not talking, it's not fighting for attention.
You just pass the pen and everyone can, you can say no, you can pass your turn, right?
And that's a way that helps us hear from everyone.
Maybe when it's time to generate ideas for improvements, we're going to give everyone a couple minutes to write on stickies.
quietly, no talking, so that quiet thinkers can think.
And then we'll have a speaking part so that out loud thinkers can think.
That's me.
And then maybe we're going to adopt a decision, a decisioning mechanism that, again, it depends what the problems are, but maybe addresses safety.
So maybe we create some anonymity around it or maybe we...
Maybe one thing that's gone wrong in the past is we don't have a bunch of options.
Like, you know, we want to make a bunch of options and then make it clear what they are and then give us a chance to vote, right?
Clarity on how decisions are made.
So all of these things, if we implemented all those things in one meeting, which is not starting small, but if we did that, now we'd have a meeting where maybe there's a little more psychological safety.
It'd be a little richer conversation.
We'd have better ideas.
And suddenly a retrospective is not so annoying and it's fun, you know?
And then maybe there's another improvement.
Maybe the next improvement is we have a retro and we choose improvements and then we never check in to see how they went.
I've worked on that team.
I've worked on that team many times.
And so now the next improvement is we're going to start the meeting by talking, checking in with our last improvements, right?
Something like that.
And if you want to start smaller, you do each of those improvements kind of one at a time, right?
Or stacking them up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel hearing what you said, definitely it's a big opportunity if you can leverage meetings, you know, where smaller groups of people interact with each other.
You can definitely see how you welcome the elephants in that meeting, right?
How do you actually make small changes, right?
Facilitating daily practice.
But I feel also quite important is that the leaders should also embody what they preach, right?
What they declare in their values, in their, you know, vision and mission.
So I find sometimes leaders who declare those values, they actually also haven't embodied that themselves.
So I think meetings is also a place where they can actually showcase, you know, maybe try.
you know, how to embody those values and all that.
And I think in your book.
Oh, go ahead.
I was going to say, there's some funny research that we found around people think their own meetings, it was, and I can't quote it precisely right now, but it was, you know, thousands of managers.
And basically they think their meetings are fine and good.
And they think other meetings are terrible.
And they see no irony in that, you know.
We tend to be blind to these things.
I will say the book very much, you know, we talk about starting where you are and we are talking to leaders at all levels.
You start by practicing yourself.
How do I want to behave differently to create the environment I want to create?
And in order to address hidden stories, in order to make it safe to practice, You kind of need to narrate what you're doing because you're not going to get it right every time.
Right.
And then, oh, that's nothing's changed around here.
That's still how that person reacts.
But if you tell people, hey, I've realized I haven't been listening very well and it's causing a lot of frustration.
So I'm really working on my listening skills and I'm doing it.
I'm starting with our team meetings.
And this is exactly what I'm trying to do.
And I invite you all to give me feedback and tell me when I'm succeeding and tell me when I'm not.
And that takes a lot of courage.
So I don't mean to like make, I said it's a simple model for changing culture, but it's not always easy.
It's a little, there's a lot of vulnerability required here.
For sure.
Yeah.
So definitely in your book, you have a number of other hacks, right?
That people can also explore in terms of making this cultural change.
I want to go to this elephant in the room, so to speak, right?
Because almost every organization is embarking this AI change transformation.
I don't know whether you have some good success stories or case studies, how a company can actually successfully make this change happening with their people, embedding AI, changing how they work and things like that.
So maybe if you can share some of your experience out there, that would be great.
Yeah.
Well.
I'll first say, I don't know if I have true success stories yet because I think we're all a little too early on the journey.
But I've had the great privilege through IT Revolution to interact with some amazing tech leaders who are, they're all trying to find the right answer.
And I see...
a lot of things that are grounded in the principles that we've been talking about.
So, um, it's an elephant in the room.
It's a massive emotional elephant, right?
So step one, you have to make space for people to be uncomfortable, like to express their discomfort, um, and make that okay.
And again, I, one of the most powerful things I've seen is when a leader can be vulnerable, I'm excited.
And I'm nervous too.
I don't actually, for the first time in my life, I'm leading a change and I don't exactly know what the end state is.
You know, it's not true everywhere.
I mean, some people have a pretty clear idea, but it's all changing so fast.
So that kind of making space for that emotional reaction.
Absolutely daily practice is, the question in an AI environment I'm noticing as I talk to people is, How do we make it safe to practice?
So it's not enough to say you have 10% time to play with AI.
That's almost too unstructured in most places, right?
What is it you want me to be learning?
What is it you want me to be trying to do?
What makes it safe and practical kind of depends on your current culture.
Is this a culture with a lot of guardrails?
Maybe you want to start by...
by providing guardrails.
Here are the guardrails that will make it safe to play.
Here are the guardrails that'll make sure we don't accidentally delete our production database.
Maybe you believe that the future culture of the company that is a little more AI ready or AI centered will be one that doesn't need as many guardrails.
And so you want to change how people feel.
So now you've got to have a plan.
How do we start finding ways to reduce, how do we work with the teams to understand, like, how can we give you more freedom and reduce some of those guardrails?
Because that's actually what we want to be going forward, right?
And so part of it, too, is this constant conversation.
One of the most thing that I've seen.
the most excitement around, I guess, and a lot of success.
I've talked to a few large enterprises who basically told the executive level folks, you need to vibe code something that we can put in production, which when I first heard it, I thought sounded insane.
But it's great because, and that goes back to that vulnerability and that it starts with the leader.
So, you know, this isn't something that we could have done in the past, but AI enables Vibe coding.
And so now, I mean, I've talked to some really excited CTOs who haven't written production code in 20 years and they're having a blast.
And they also have had the humbling experiences of that.
That was exciting.
I did it in a weekend.
Oh my God, that was terrifying.
I would have to be deleted the production database.
Right.
And so then there's just more empathy, right, and for what it takes.
And I think also creating chances for people to talk together.
This goes back to the ownership piece, right?
So creating some ownership.
I guess it's like a lot of other change efforts, right?
You want that community of practice where people can come together to share excitement, to share learnings, where it's safe to share failures.
I think, again, with AI, Everything goes to 11.
It's everything we've ever said times 10, times 100.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I guess coming back to the ownership thing too, especially with AI, things are changing so fast that I think you need, and this is a systems elephant too, you need as many people helping as possible.
It's too much for one person, one team.
to kind of, I think, keep up and keep envisioning what it's going to mean for our organization.
I also have to give a shout out to a colleague.
Melissa Reeve also has a book coming out from IT Revolution, Hyper Adaptive, Rewiring the Enterprise to Become AI Native.
Have you interviewed her yet?
Yes.
Okay, good.
We were working on our books around the same time and it was really...
And she and I live in the same city.
So we had a lot of fun sharing ideas.
Yeah, so if people haven't listened to Melissa's episode, so please do check it out.
So I think she talks a lot about how do you actually become a more AI native, AI radio organizations by using her hyper-adaptive model, right?
So I think also thanks for sharing some of the so-called maybe success tips for leaders to make this.
AI transformation much more smoothly, much more successful.
I like the way you mentioned about, you know, maybe the leaders should vibe code more that, you know, that is going to production.
I think obviously if you want people to use AI more, you know, you have to show them, right?
You have to be comfortable, be vulnerable.
I don't think anyone knows the actual answer how this AI will play out, especially in the organizations, right?
So definitely if everyone play along.
acknowledge because I think a lot of this is also emotion.
We feeling anxious about our job security, about the identity crisis, right?
For some people, because like for example, software developers, now we kind of like don't know whether what we learned before is actually going to be still useful.
So definitely love this emotions, funny side about people that I think we all come back again and again.
So a bit trivia as well, right?
Because I think your pillars, your way of thinking is kind of like implemented for organization.
Can we also use your thing for personal stuff, right?
Because I think, you know, making a new culture for yourself, is that something that you have also personally seen?
Yeah, I mean, and I have, we actually have some examples in the book of...
You know, we're all we're all in a personal growth journey.
Right.
And and it doesn't even have to be in the context of change.
I would like to be a better person.
I would like to be, you know, I would like to be a person who honestly, who is better at healthy conflict.
I would like to be a person at anything I want to change this idea of sort of applying the concepts from habit research.
of daily practice.
One of the things we mention in the book is the whoop method.
We talk about whooping it up.
So wish, outcome, obstacle, plan.
So oftentimes we want to make a change and we believe we can do it and we have a lot of positive intent.
And it turns out that that is not enough.
And in fact, a sort of optimistic view toward change can almost backfire.
We're so sure we can do it.
We don't take the steps.
And I've fallen prey to this often.
And instead, whoop, it's really a combination of first is getting really clear on what is the intention, what is the wish, and what's the outcome that you'll get from the best possible version.
If this goes as well as it possibly can, what's the outcome?
And that helps kind of ground your own optimism in a why.
But then you really kind of need to be a little pessimistic and imagine the obstacles, the internal obstacles that are likely to get in the way.
What's going to get in the way of me practicing this new behavior or showing up in this particular way?
And spend some time really thinking about all the things that can get in the way, but then what's the most important or what's the most likely?
And then have a plan for that.
And you kind of set yourself up.
You don't have to rethink.
You hit the obstacle.
You don't have to start again.
You're like, nope, I made a plan for this.
I know.
I'm going to do Y instead.
It's funny, one of the personal things I was trying to change not too long ago, I was just really, like I was working really hard and all of my texts to friends got really matter of fact and like no emojis and I'd forget to say good morning before I started texting somebody.
And I don't know what it's like in Singapore, but I was starting to realize that my texts were kind of rude.
And it was just because I was distracted.
So my wish and outcome, the world has moved to so much communication is through text.
And if this is how I'm maintaining relationships, there has to be a part in it.
And my obstacle was...
moving too fast, I'm too stressed about other stuff.
Also, the pleasantries were in my head, but not making it into the text.
And so one was, I had two things.
One was, don't send texts in the middle of other work.
So separate the two things.
So if you're sending personal texts, make personal time.
And then the other one was, I started doing talk to text more because then I said the warm things I was thinking.
Anyway, that was my whoop.
So yeah, it's all.
And the other one is the hidden stories.
This is work or personal, but coming to recognize all those hidden stories that we tell ourselves and that we make up.
And actually it's an incredible, I had three of us who were co-founders at a company and we were, having some challenges.
And we learned to say in a, in a difficult conversation, we'd say, I might say, uh, the story I'm telling myself is, you know, you're not responding to emails because your focus is over here, you know, which gives the other person.
So a, I recognize that I am making up stories based on emails or actions or whatever.
Um, But then it also gives that other person a chance to correct that story or tell their story.
Well, actually, what I was doing was something else and I made up a story that you were, you know, and it makes for a much easier conversation.
I find it's really a powerful hack probably, right?
So this phrase, the story I tell myself, I think.
making it explicit, right?
Because sometimes we don't tell it, right?
We always have it in the back of our mind, especially for personal habit, right?
Because we are only doing it with ourselves, right?
If we don't talk about it, acknowledge about it, I think those hidden stories won't get surfaced, right?
Yeah, for sure.
And all credit to Brene Brown for that phrase.
Right.
So, Ronika, I think we have covered a lot of things.
Is there anything else that you think is...
kind of important about the, you know, your practice, your framework and all that, that we haven't really discussed.
I will just do this as a teaser because I don't want to make this too long.
You kind of referenced.
So we have these five.
So if you want, we're talking about start where you are making small changes in your team.
I've worked with a lot of leaders who are like, I am trying to make fast change in my whole organization.
And, um, for those people, part three of the book talks about.
are five culture hacks.
And it's also meeting centered in a way, but it's, it's, you, you do a lot of facilitating practice, creating ownership and welcoming elephants when you brought.
So I'll use the example of, uh, if you do any kind of like quarterly, um, program planning or like a safe PI planning style thing, you're broadening participant groups.
It used to be that just the program managers planned, but now you include all your team members.
Except you've been doing this for years and now you don't include all your individual contributors.
And I'm going to tell you, you should.
And then you co-create working agreements.
So when people get upset, it's often because they had expectations for behavior, but we never said them out loud.
You can make all of your meetings better by having co-created working agreements for how people behave in those meetings or on your team, organizational agreements.
Number three, demoing work.
I know lots of groups that stopped demoing together.
They just demoed to themselves.
That's not really a demo.
We can welcome all kinds of room elephants by showing work and then explaining why we did or didn't do what we'd hoped.
Co-creating pressure-tested plans.
So going back to that PI planning.
Have you fallen into the habit of you make plans before you walk in and then you just...
then they don't change.
No, the whole idea is that we're going to poke holes in each other's plans and figure out why it won't work.
And it's a systems elephant.
All of our plans altogether need to lead up to the value and results we're trying to create.
And then finally practicing together.
So designing the agenda of a bigger meeting like that so that it practices many of the behaviors we're trying to have.
blaming less or taking responsibility or all kinds of things, better listening.
So yeah.
So part three of the book is all about how to scale impact through those five hacks.
Right.
Definitely check out those hacks, right?
Because we know changing culture is going to take time, right?
So if there are hacks here and there, probably I think we can also give it a try.
So Ronica, as we approach the end of our conversation, I really love some of the tips and hacks that you mentioned, right?
And hopefully people can make the cultural change much smoother.
Before I let you go, I have one last question.
It's like a tradition in my podcast.
I call this the three technical leadership wisdom.
Think of it just like advice you want to give to us.
So maybe if you can share your version, that would be great.
One, here's another phrase for you.
You are the kind of leader who...
You can claim the identity you want even before you've finished practicing and attaining it.
So you're the kind of leader who invites participation.
You're the kind of leader who, whatever, whatever that change is that you want, claim it.
That will help you get there.
The second one is notice your hidden stories.
And get curious about other people's hidden stories.
As a leader, if you can make those less hidden, then we can discover what news stories we want to write through shared experience.
And then finally, you can create the culture you want on your team, in your group, in your program, in your organ, at whatever part.
Practice welcoming elephants every day and invite others to practice with you.
Wow.
I like the last one, right?
You can make the culture change.
And hopefully, hopefully we all are successful in this because I think this AI cultural change is going to be massive, right?
For every organization, especially those traditional incumbents, you know, who used to do things in a certain way.
So I think this AI disruption is really real.
And hopefully, yeah, using your techniques, reading from your book, everyone can make this a successful transformation.
So thanks again, Ronika.
If people want to follow you, find more things about you, is there a place where they can find you online?
Yes, you can.
Thewelcomeelephant.co is our company.
Follow me on LinkedIn at Ronika Roth on LinkedIn.
And then we also have a sub stack, Practice Makes Culture.
Right now, we've been writing about monthly, but now that we're actually finished writing the book, we'll start writing sub stacks more frequently with the idea of lots more practical examples and tips.
Lovely.
So, yeah, I hope you are successful in your mission, you know, to make this cultural change more successful and people go through those changes, you know, in a happily, you know, kind of like a way rather than painful ways.
of changing so thanks again ronika yeah thank you henry appreciate it