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Welcome to The Adaptive Mindset. I'm Bret Gallant, cybersecurity thought leader and founder of Adaptive Office Solutions. Here, we don't just talk tech. We unlock the strategies, stories, and mindset shifts you need to stay secure, lead boldly, and thrive in a digital world. Let's get started. Welcome back to The Adaptive Mindset. I'm really pleased to have with us today Richard H. Carson. Richard is the founder and CEO of Carson and Associates, Associates, and an author, consultant, former public sector executive, and researcher in organizational change management. Richard's career has included senior roles in municipal and regional government strategic planning, organizational development, and consulting. Richard has also conducted doctoral research at Washington State University. in organizational psychology and organizational change management. That research eventually contributed to the development of his trademarked People-Sustained Organizational Change Management model. It's a 3-phase, 10-step model designed to help organizations navigate change throughout its life cycle, life cycle. Richard is also the author of The Book of Change, which brings together decades of thinking, and research around organizational

change. And at the heart of his work are what he calls the 3 E's: 1:29

performance efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and cultural empowerment. And I think that last one is particularly interesting because organizations can buy technology, they can rewrite processes, they can restructure departments, They can create strategic plans, but eventually people have to change. Richard, welcome to The Adaptive Mindset. Hey, thanks. Thank you. So Richard, um, you've been— you've spent a huge part of your career studying change, so I'm going to start with the biggest and perhaps the simplest question. Why are we so resistant to change, people? Well, I think, I think it's just human nature, you know. I mean, we, we, uh, kind of establish patterns in our lives and repetitive patterns, and sometimes we do things and, and don't even think twice about it, uh, and if there's any, you know, any change in that pattern, really Is, is uncomfortable. It can be something very minor, uh, you know, like, you know, you're walking downstairs every day for, for 10 years and one day you trip and bang, you know, you, you— that kind of thing is, is— it could be minor, but it could be, uh, internal, or it could be existential. We just went through COVID, and that was a major existential change. Yesterday, Bill Gates posted on his website a long story about the dangers and the blessings of AI. And I had already thought about that because Earlier, I think it was this month, Stanford used AI to create a bacteria to fight a virus. And one of the things that Gates talked about was that one of the existential AI changes possible is bioterrorism. Yeah. So that's really scary because It wouldn't, you know, it basically means that a dumb terrorist could use AI to create something that was kind of a cross between COVID and Ebola. So he also talked about— Very scary. Yeah, very scary. He also talked about potential unemployment that, you know, there's a lot of people saying that unemployment could go to 50, 60, 70%. I'm not so concerned about unemployment in the sense that it may create more of a kind of luxury class, if you want to call it that. People who only have to work a day or 2 days a week, that have a minimum kind of income that people have talked about for a long time. So I think that humanity could adjust to that. But the, uh, you know, another possibility, uh, bad one, um, my wife worked for a major electrical company that handles basically electrical transmission in the western U.S. Yep. And, you know, the electrical grid, I mean, everything that you and I are doing right now is powered by electricity. Yep. You know, the video, the sound, uh, you know, every— our environment in terms of heating. You were talking about, you know, snow in Canada. Uh, you know, if somebody took the grid down, uh, we would be, you know, helpless. I couldn't think of any other way to say it, but we would be totally helpless. So I mean, that kind of a magnitude of existential changes. So you could have something as minor as a change in your personal life, like a divorce, something like that, or getting married, having kids. All those are almost as scary as bioterrorism at times. Yeah. So in any case, I mean, It's very hard for us to deal with change. But, you know, we have to. The evolution of humanity is all about long-term change. It's interesting because, you know, I speak to a lot of business leaders and I look at myself. Look at my career, and I've seen it all the time. Like, we have change, change in how I did things as my business, change, even changing a phone system. I remember early in my career when I was working for an organization before I started my company, you bring in something new and people react. It's, you know, fear. Maybe it's fear of failure that these things that come up that, you know, the change— we have fear that it won't work out, fear of failure, and the uncertainty. Is resistance a lot of times a rational response, or Like, where— what's your viewpoint on that? Well, it's kind of like the, uh, you know, fright or flight response. Yeah, people have, uh, you know, it's— you, you have to really create, um, mentally an adaptive mindset. Yeah, you know, I've spent my— basically my career has been opportunistic. I'm not a person who said, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna grow up and be a policeman or a fireman, or, you know, I basically kind of seized the day or seized opportunities as they came along. So I started out in architecture, uh, I kind of, uh, morphed into— ended up as a policy advisor to 3 governors on economic and environmental issues. moved over to be a planner, the planning director for the Portland metro area of about 2 million folks. So, if you take that adaptive mindset, then you will be much happier. The problem, I do a lot of performance audits, organizational audits, and people's reaction is to start with is always, well, we always did it this way. That's their fallback is, why are you here? Why do I need to do this? We always did it this way. The key— Dangerous words. The key to that process is basically to say, look, we're going to involve you in making the changes. It's going to come from the bottom up. You're going to help us make those changes, and we're going to take your rec— you know, look at your recommendations and involve— so you involve people culturally that way. So they don't, you know, because they're like, like you said, their natural reaction is, what, why are you screwing with me? Why do I have to do this? I don't want to do this. You know, and so they're getting people to their buy-in, their involvement. Yes. It's really critical. It's also for you and I to adapt that mindset that, okay, let's look at this in different ways and see if there's a way to do it better. You look at organizations that just did not embrace change. Uh, I'll give you a couple examples. Blockbuster, the video store. Yes. Oh, I mean, it's just like totally— Or BlackBerry with the iPhone. Yeah, or BlackBerry or Kodak. I mean, people who just did not look over the horizon. Uh, and you know, one of, one of the things like I try to get people to do is Every organization, large organization, has somebody that's called a risk manager. And their job is damage control, make sure we don't get sued, there aren't accidents, that kind of thing. One of the things that people need to have is, instead of being reactive, is have a change manager, a person who's proactive, whose job is to constantly look over the horizon, talk, be a feedback loop. Because if you talk to your line staff from the front counter up, if you talk to your vendors, if you talk to your customers, you'll get a pretty good idea of what's changing in your ethos, in your environment. But a lot of people don't do that. A lot of people, you have very top-down dictatorial organizations where the boss basically thinks he or she knows best, and they don't get any really good feedback about changes in, in the universe. That's interesting. I had a, I had a question, but I'm going to take that question. Sure. And pivot a little bit from my thoughts. You know, a lot of times What you're saying, yes, sometimes employees just don't want to change. But we haven't really— I think we need to really look and say, hey, together we're stronger as an organization. Involve the employees. Involve the team and make that change an effort that you do together where you get the best feedback and results because you have a better pulse on it. And a lot of times leaders, maybe we're seeing blind spots and we're at— and we, you know, leaders say, hey, my employees just don't want to change. Well, perhaps you haven't really involved the employees, your team, in the change from the very get-go is what you're saying. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, if you have a kind of dictatorial top-down management style, which is almost like in a military sense. There's positives to that. But if you're just totally blind to basically reality because you think that you're the smartest guy in the room or the smartest woman in the room, you know, I've dealt with— I've gone into organizations where the There's— I went into one organization that the kind of board of directors brought me in, and they had a problem with one of their work units. And it was after a great deal, a number of interviews, I found out that this director was making his staff report their activities in 15-minute increments. Oh, geez. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were spending more time reporting than what they were doing than doing. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, I mean, you get people that are just totally out of touch with reality in terms of what they— what their expectations are. I found that one of the things I learned the hard way is that one of the best skills that you can have is listening. And people don't— that's a skill a lot of managers don't have, which is— and I had a boss tell me that once. You know, I was sitting down talking to him and he just said, shut up and listen. I want you to listen to what I'm saying. And I thought, well, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was good advice. I mean, you know, If you spend all your time pontificating and not listening, then you really are blind to the reality of what's going on around you. Like I said, if you really need input from staff, vendors, stakeholders, customers, and you need people who— in the last organization that I was in where I was the boss, I had an office on either side of me. Okay? On one side was my human resource manager, and her job was to keep me having more empathy for reality, for what's going on around me. And on the other side was my change manager who spent her time getting feedback about what was going on in the environment. that I needed to know, whether it was economic, political, environmental. You know, you have to basically understand, you know, basically understand everything internally and existentially if you're going to be adaptive and if you are going to be able to embrace change. Yeah. And I think And you touched on a bit of that earlier when you brought up Bill Gates and that article. I've yet to read it. I just glanced on it. But in a world of AI, you know, where we've just been going through a technology revolution, now we're in the AI revolution. We're in for a wild ride. I wanted to— I want to make sure I bring this up. The name of your model fascinates me, Richard. Yeah. People-Sustained Organizational Change Management. Well, the thing is that, I mean, first of all, organizations consist of people. Yes. And if you don't involve people in the change management process, then you're going to fail. You know, McKinsey study basically said that some 70% of change management initiatives fail. Whether that's a good number or not, the point is good. And that is that most change management initiatives fail because Number one, they're not getting input to make a successful change. Yeah. The other problem with is that, and I've seen this too, where somebody wants, you know, they go through a change management process of some kind. It ends up being a shelf document that goes nowhere. You know, and so what I mean, one of the things that I really emphasize is that not— you have to, first of all, to be successful, you have to involve people, but you also have to hold people accountable. Yes. In other words, you can't just say, well, we're going to do this. Well, that, that doesn't do anything. What you have to do is create a strategic plan with a multi-year budget, but what you have to do is Have a task, assign it to a person, give them the resources, and hold them accountable to accomplish it. And know who they're ultimately accountable to. Exactly. To follow it. So that, like, is that part of where you tie in, you know, the, the 2 keywords in that is people sustained? Is that how you sustain it by doing this? Or like Um, why was that important for you to put that in your model name? Well, first of all, I'll, you know, I, I looked at, as part of my research, my doctorate research, I looked at maybe 100 different models. I came down to 22, and now it's 23. I added one. Um, and, you know, I found a lot of them kind of superficial. A lot of— some of them are basically, uh, loss leaders for consultants. Okay, I don't do that much consulting anymore, so I'm not going to try to use my book to sell my services. Yep. But in terms of people sustained, I mean, really, you have to give— like I said, you have to give people the resources to, you know, to get the job done. And it has— the reason I said multi-year budget is, um, you can't always do everything at once. So you can phase it, you know, if it's, if it's a major change, you may need to phase it in over 1, 2, depends, 3 years, uh, because you may not have the resources to do it all at once. Uh, so it's, you know, it's organizations are all about people. I mean, one of the things that I ended up doing is, at the heart of the model is diagnosis of the issue. And what I ended up using was the National Institute of Health in the US created a diagnostic system. And I found that it Since organizations consist of people, I found it was really interesting and it worked really well in terms of— there's like you had mentioned earlier that my model is like 3 phases, 10 steps, and 39 activities. But at the heart of those activities is the process of diagnosing the issue. What is the problem we're dealing with and how are we going to solve it? It's funny, you— I say this all the time with what I do. I do, um, my day job, I do cybersecurity, uh, for small, medium business and government municipal. And I say it all the time, you cannot prescribe without diagnosing. Yeah. You're blind. Um, So, can, can an organization appear to have changed while underneath everything is basically the same? Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, you can— a lot of times what I mean, what can happen is, uh, an oversight board, board of directors, city council, private, public, whoever it is, Yeah. Thinks there's a problem. And I've had this happen where, you know, basically they said, well, here's what we want you to do. We have this problem and we want you to help us solve it. Well, sometimes in that process, I find out that they're wrong, that the problem they think is the problem isn't the problem. And there's something, there's something else underlying that they really need to deal with. So, I found that sometimes I've been in the unfortunate situation of going back to a, say, a board of directors or other— not the CEO or the director, but the oversight group. Yeah. And basically say, look, well, what I found out is that you're the problem. You folks are the problem. It's not them. It's not the director. It's not the staff. You are the problem. And, you know, and that's, that's difficult, to say the least. Uh, but like I said, sometimes also though, they sometimes— a lot of times that needs to be heard and told. So, right, it's just truth to power. Yeah, yeah. Like, how many times do we need to hear something that we've really— maybe we already knew, but we needed to hear it again from someone else to let it finally sink in. Like the, um— I'll give you an example. I, I did some work for a nonprofit, and, uh, I finally went back to the, the board of directors and said, look, The problem here is really, uh, it's not the staff. The problem is that you folks meet every Monday and have coffee in a restaurant. You've been doing this for 2 decades, and the problem is you've calcified. You know, you really are out of touch with— well, I didn't say out of touch with the reality, but basically I said, look, applied. You need some new blood, some new ideas. And so, I, you know, they eventually established term limits in their own organization that you could only stay on for so long and something, you know, somebody else had to come in and replace you. So, I mean, you know, like I said, it's not always what you think it is. No. And sometimes you need to step back and look from another view, like from 30,000 feet. I heard this expression. I had the great privilege of going up to Northern Canada in the Arctic a few times, and there was this lady, an elder speaking, and she spoke about the Inuit culture, how when they would travel on the land— and I know I'm not doing this story justice, but I'm going to try— the elders would go on the top of the mountain to look, to get a wider view for what was ahead, so they could see the bigger picture. Because sometimes when you're on the ground, you only see what's ahead. When you get up, you see a wider view, right? Another perspective. So, so— Well, that's why it's so important when I, you know, going back to this idea of people sustained, is that, you know, that you have to involve not just your staff from the front counter up, but really people that impact the organization or outside of it in terms of that, you know, you have external stakeholders, you have vendors, you have, you know, you have your customers. So, that wider view is really important to really understand the kind of environmental economic issues around you, you know. And in, in the private sector, in the private sector, you go through economic cycles, okay, recessions. Yes. In the public sector, you go through election cycles. And one of the things that I was just fascinating to me is in In the US, you have elections every, you know, basically, uh, local level every 4 years. Yeah. And every 4 years somebody gets elected and they, they ran on a platform of change, right? They're, you know, so they are duty-bound to change things even if it's stupid. Uh, and, you know, I mean, it's interesting because the people that are in the organization, it's like Here we go again, you know. So somebody's gonna— oh yeah, I remember that idea, we brought that up in 1992. You know, it's just like, it's, it's, it can be positive, but it's also, you know, scary. Well, some— I think sometimes people get jaded because, hey, yeah, we brought that up in 1992 or 2 years ago, but no one ever took action. It just became like what you said earlier, it just sat on the shelf and no one executed Yep. It was recycled, not used. Yeah. We're always trying to invent another way, but you already had the knowledge. You just never executed on it. And it wasn't sustained, perhaps because you didn't involve the people or the stakeholders. And I never thought about the stakeholders, like the external, the vendors, everybody. like the outside view. So— Well, they are part of the environmental scan because the folks outside of the organization are the ones like Blockbuster that'll tell you, oh, by the way, while you're so busy selling video cassettes, there's something else. There's something called download off the internet. And that's something that would come from, you know, the outside. That's important. I think that's a scary place to go when you talk about change because we hold on to the old ways. Yes. And you mentioned Blockbuster. And yet, there are examples of people that have taken radical change and thrived. And I'm thinking right now because I love this. I study it a bit and read it and it fascinates me. Are you familiar with what Kimberly-Clark did? Um, Kimber— Kimberly-Clark was a pulp and paper mill. Yes, yes. They did the exact opposite of Blockbuster. They, they sold all their mills, which was the cash cow, and they went heavy into products. So no longer holding on to the manufacture, the, the pulp and paper. They, they're— I'm going to get the names wrong, but the story is essentially the same. They did, you know, the toilet paper, the all these other products that we buy today. Had they held on and not changed and involved people sustain, they would have been Blockbuster. They wouldn't exist. They actually embraced it. So, um, yeah, well, certainly, uh, being able to organizationally change is not a recipe necessarily for success. Uh, you— because you can make— you can make, you know, basically you can make terrible mistakes. You can go off in a direction that you think is going to anticipate some kind of reality and just, in the end, just totally fail. I mean, there's a lot of organizations that their change was not a good one, bottom line. I mean, So, I can't say that organizational change, if you go through a particular process, is always going to be successful, especially if you're going to go off on what I would call a tangent, right? Yes. You're going to go someplace that no one's ever gone before. And maybe that, you know, it was kind of, you ended up going off a cliff. So, You know, if you're going to change, basically, if you think about change, if you're getting substantial input from folks, right? Yes. Then I would think that the success rate would be much higher than if basically somebody gets a wild hare and says, you know what, we really need to do something totally different. Burn the ships. Exactly. Sometimes going that far. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I mean, there's, there's also enough folks on the, like you said, on the landscape that have succeeded and not succeeded. It's kind of like Edison and his 1,000 light bulbs. Yeah, yeah. 999 times and he finally got it right. Well, there's also a lot of people that have invented a lot of things that went nowhere. Exactly. In all of this, you know, we talked about people sustained and we talked about employee involvement. Yeah. But what stage is it absolutely critical to have your team, your employees involved? Oh, from day one. Okay. Yeah. Well, I basically— I thought you would say that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, basically what I— the way I've approached this is, um, I mean, I'll meet with the board of directors, whoever the oversight, the, the director, but then I will sit down with staff and say, you know, I've been brought in to help you, you know, change the organization for one reason or another. But, you know, what I'm here to tell you is that from starting today, you're going to be involved in the process. And you're— which, and basically what we've done is set up teams around particular things that need to be done. Yeah. And those teams generate the recommendations that go up Right. So they have buy-in because it was their recommendation, as opposed to the other way around where somebody comes in and says, well, starting today, you're going to do this whether you like it or not. So if you get folks understanding that they're going to be involved from day one, then the fear factor goes down. A lot. In fact, absolutely, you know, some people really embrace it and just say, all right, it's about time. It's about time somebody asked me what the hell's going on around here. Just hungry to give feedback. And sometimes, you're missing your biggest cheerleaders that want to see their organization succeed and they want to help. Well, that's why, Pat, you have used those folks in groups to kind of moderate, you know, the, the fluctuations and ideas, right? In other words, they almost become a jury. Yes. And as a— they have to make a group decision or decisions. So it's not one person who's going off this way or that way, who's had this idea in the back of their mind for for a decade. It really has to be a consensus of the group. And that's the whole thing about people sustained is that you don't do this one time. You basically create a process, not change for the sake of change, but you basically create a process where particular, you know, you can form, reform groups to deal with particular issues over time, to deal with, uh, you know, what needs to be changed. Yeah. Um, I've— I'm thinking about all the times in my career where I've seen people resistant to change. And, you know, we've talked a lot about sometimes being the employees, but what happens when the person that's most resistant to change is one of the leaders? They get fired. No, I'm serious. Like, okay, okay. I had took over a position as a head of an organization. And the first day I sat down, I talked about what we needed to do and how I would go about it. And one of the team leaders basically said, I don't necessarily agree with you, but I understand that I'm either on the bus or off the bus. Yes. And that's the truth. I mean, basically, if you have somebody in an organization who is so recalcitrant that they're almost toxic, or they're not going to embrace change, then they may have to go. Basically, if they are not part of the team effort, Yes. Right. Then they may, they may need to find other employment. Yeah, that's— you're making me think of, um, you know, yeah, not being part of the team effort. I— there's this businessman that I respect that's, uh, since no longer involved in his business. I, I noticed something about him, uh, and I asked him I said, why have I noticed you change your team members a few times every now and then? And he said, Brett, I learned a long time ago, if I have a bad apple, it affects the culture of the whole team. So as much as I didn't want to make the change, I would make the change out of necessity. And so As an owner, as other leaders, sometimes we often don't even look at our own leaders that, that are resistant to change, which may be causing considerable damage in our organizations. Well, some people that are managers, uh, basically, um, and understandably are kind of— don't want to face that kind of an issue. Right. Yeah. But the fact is that if you don't understand that you've got a problem with an individual, you really come across to the organization, to your folks as being weak. In other words, you're just the people. You know, one of the things in organizations is people gossip. Right. And people just, and, you know, they're not always gossiping about nice things. But basically, it's, you know, people are saying, why does he put up with that? Yeah. You know, why does he put up with that crap? Or why does he put up with, with that, this person constantly saying, no, no, no, no, this, this will, this will never work. We don't, you know, doing this is a big mistake. So you really need To sit down with a person like— and I've done this, it's not pleasant, but I've sat down with folks and say, look, you know, I'm having a problem with you not participating as a team member in this process. And you really need to think about this in terms of your future employment and your participation. Either you're going to participate in a positive way, or you need to look elsewhere for work. And that's not— it's, you know, being a manager, uh, the last organization I had was 175 people and about $17 million in annual revenues. And, um, you know, stuff came up and there was people that, that, that, uh, Couldn't, wouldn't participate, and they had to go. Yeah, if I couldn't, you know, if I couldn't get them on board with the process, then, uh, you know, that's— then, then they become a problem. Before— there's something I'm, I'm skipping ahead. I had so many— Sure, go ahead. things I wanted to tell you, but I want to bring it back to AI. Richard, could you, uh, just— I think your camera turned off. I want to make sure we brought it back on for this. And if— and if— Oh, I'm sorry. Oh yeah, you're right. I don't know why I did it. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. Um, so I want to bring us back to AI for a moment because, sure, as, as we talked, there's tremendous change And, you know, I think a lot of organizations, based on what I'm seeing, I think some are making some mis— some mistakes how they treat AI. You know, they're treating AI adoption as a technology project instead of a change management project. And The one question I want to ask you is, how should leaders introduce AI without triggering fear right now? Well, there's certainly a number of— there's been— I've, you know, read about organizations that have, uh, embraced AI to the point where they overstepped. And had basically would lay people off and had gotten in a situation where they had to bring people back. So how to deal with AI is really difficult. You know, there's no— it's not— the problem with AI is, you know, a lot of changes are incremental. Yes. And so you can used a process like what we've talked about to be successful in those changes. Yeah. The problem with AI is it is going to be an economic tsunami. And, you know, I go back to when I was a teenager, I used to read Asimov, Bradbury, Heinlein, everything. If you really look at what those people were talking about, it's like Star Trek. Everything that was on Star Trek became real. Yes. So true. Flip phones, holodeck, even Data with the android. It's All those things were prophesied and brought us to this Odyssey 2001 with HAL moment. It's going to be very difficult to navigate. Organizations are going to have to be very, very careful about it because, you know, you can't just totally eliminate your workforce and replace it with computers and robots. It's just, you know, it's like there's going to be great changes in, say, the service industry, you know. Yeah. Fast food, I think those kind of lower-level jobs are going to— are basically, over time, whether it's a long time or a short time, those kind of jobs are going to disappear. Right. One of the things I always thought was funny— not funny, actually kind of sad— it was for the last few years, everybody's— there's folks been promoting a new field of people doing coding. Right? Go to IT tech and you learn how to be a coder. Well, those jobs are almost going to be non-existent because AI can do coding much better. I mean, instead of doing line-by-line coding, right, AI can do that probably seconds. Oh, well, now the programming language now for AI, for programming, is now the English language. You can just chat and create, vibe code something, right? So this is one question because we talked about people sustained. Should employees be involved in deciding how AI changes their work? Yeah, I mean, that's, uh, again, it is best as kind of a group effort, right? Yes. In terms of a unit, a group, a team does something, and getting, you know, getting them to understand AI and, you know, integrate AI over time, whether it's a short time or a long time, is really, really important. I don't think you can just do wholesale changes without your staff. Because like I said, some organizations have done that, laid people off, and then had to hire them back because they overstepped the mark. Yeah, and we forgot to involve the people and really look at the impact. Richard, I have so much more I want to ask you and go with you. But I'm— I want to end on this. Okay? This is what I want to add. Because I've had, Richard, I've had a tremendous personal transformation and change. Mm-hmm. And so I've changed a lot in my organization. I've been involved in organizations. I've guided and helped organizations change how they embrace technology. But sometimes— and this is the question I have for you— after, after you spend decades studying organizational change, what has it taught you about changing yourself? Because there might be somebody that wants to change what they're doing. And, um, I'd love to get your Your thoughts and your— Well, you know, one of the things that, that I've come around to in my old age is, is, yep, um, not to judge other people in, in situations by my set of beliefs. Uh, and what I mean by that is, you know, how we view the world around us is all about how we were, how we were raised, what our life experiences are. But we could really make a mistake by judging. It's like walking in somebody else's shoes. You really can't make snap judgments. You really need to try to understand, which gets us back to listening. But you really need to be very, very careful about decisions you make, life decisions you make based on what you think is kind of like your morality, your standards. It may not fit in with reality or with other folks. So I'm really careful about making— let's call it snap judgments, right? I really try to understand the other person. the situation around me before, you know, I make a really important decision. Final question. You know, I mean, the thing is that one of the things I— my wife is Chinese, and one of the things I've learned is getting back to culture. Uh, just because I think a particular way, because I, I am a white male heterosexual American, right? Okay, that's my frame, that's my frame reference. Yeah. As opposed to a woman who was born and raised in, in China under a communist, you know, regime, uh, and with a totally different set of cultural values that I have— I'm clueless about. Uh, so that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, is you, you know, you really can't just say, well, I think this way, therefore it's right. You can't. Yeah, yeah. You can't, you can't do that. You really need to say, wait a minute, what's, what's going on around me? What, what is, what is this person's frame of reference? That's really what you need to be careful about. Yeah, and that's— I think that's part of what I've neglected to say too when I was talking about that story I heard from the Inuit elder when they climbed the mountain. But I forgot this. She was also talking about looking at other views, other perspectives. So last question, what, like, if there's somebody that, that was looking at making a change, you know, maybe in their organization, their business, their team, and they know they need to change, maybe it's, you know, like I said, themselves, what would you tell that person? Your final thought, the first step that you would tell them to take tomorrow morning. Basically that they need to get, um, get some help. In other words, they're very good at what they do. Yes. They're very good at producing a product, a service, uh, whatever it is. But really, they need some help in terms of somebody who can, uh, objectively— let's see, that's the other thing. If basically, if you, you know, it's like, don't do this, you know, Kids, don't do this on your own, right? Yeah, you really need somebody outside who's objective to help you through the process. Exactly. Um, how— what's the— Richard, I, I want to tell you this. I, I really valued our conversation. It was, it was Great to connect with you. How does our audience— how does our audience— how would our audience find you, connect with you? Anywhere you'd like to send them to? Yes, it's very simple. Uh, yep, the— my website is bookofchange.com, and I'll give them a free— I'll give them a free copy of the book. Okay. Uh, can they connect with you on LinkedIn or Instagram, Richard, or Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Richard H. Carson is on LinkedIn. So, LinkedIn, or you can go directly to booktochange.com. There's a video overview of the process of the book and how you can get a hold of me through there. Thank you, Richard. I wish you all the best for the rest of your day. Thank you so much for being a guest. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into The Adaptive Mindset. If you found value in today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready to thrive in the digital age. Stay secure, stay adaptable, and I'll see you next time.