A Radical Fireside Chat With...

Jose Leal (00:08):

Oh, welcome to the Radical World Podcast. My name is Jose Leal, and we're going to have one of our radical conversations today. Our guest is Tim Lockie. And I don't like to say guest because really we're just going to have a conversation.

Tim Lockie (00:25):

I'm family already, right?

Jose Leal (00:26):

Family. Give me a hug. Gimme a hug. Tim thank you for joining us. I know we had a bit of a schedule conflict with you for our time an hour ago, but we're still happy that you were able to join us. 'cause I think this is a conversation I've been looking forward to and would really like to dig into how you see much of what we see as well but from a perspective that maybe has a different language and, and also you're seeing it from within organizations and we're kind of looking at it from within people. But I think the conversation's going to be great nonetheless. So tell us a little bit about what you do and how you do it, and then let's dig in.

Tim Lockie (01:16):

Yeah. I mean, what a great opener that our technology failed us, right? And, and so my apologies for missing an hour ago, and I'm so glad that we could still make this time work. My name is Tim Lockie. I am the CEO of the Human Stack. I've been in nonprofits my whole adult life. All really, I can tell you what I care about is making the world better. I'm not saying I do it well, but it is what I mean to do. So I'm at least failing at something I think is important, right? So like that, and, and as I was working in nonprofits the place that I was best was at the data level and the technology level. And I just kept seeing over and over, especially in the early OTs, how much of a difference, something like the difference between pop mail and imap, right? Like, just everyday things now made a huge difference in organizations if they got it right. And after working in an organization for about 10 years, I started now at Matters, which was a company focused on helping nonprofits use Salesforce. Really liked the platform. I became an MVP, traveled the world talking about Salesforce, worked with organizations that were four people down the street from me in Bozeman, Montana, all the way to large international NGOs that are, you know, billions of dollars serving hundreds of countries across the, the world. I don't think it's actually hundreds, at least over a hundred lots of countries. It doesn't matter, right? And, and one, so in 2019, though, it all kind of came to a screeching halt. And I had this Jerry McGuire moment. Did you ever see that movie? You know, okay, I have this Jerry McGuire moment when I was at a conference and somebody put up a slide that said 90% of organizations, and this was a nonprofit study, 90% of organizations collect data, but only 5% use that data to make decisions. And I, it felt true and wrong, right? All at the same time. And I looked around the room at other partners of, of mine competitors, but friendly competitors that I knew well. And I realized we all know that this is a huge issue and none of us are really doing anything about it. So we're often the second largest expense of an, of a nonprofit, you know, a new CRM. And it was like, I, I had this moment where I realized if I knew that they only had a 5% chance of using the technology, like actually doing what they intend with it, right? Would I do this the same way? And I just realized I can't live with myself doing this. So I spent the next six months figuring out a different way to introduce organizations to technology. I lost that business in pursuit of helping organizations do this. Cause It is a new category. And I eventually started the Human stack as a way to say, the real issue with technology is actually human. The, the problem is tech, but the solution is human. And actually, the, the problem is that 50% of information systems are human and 50% are tech. And so, and the way I describe that is if the tech, if the tech stack solves human problems with technology, then we need a human stack that solves technology problems with humans. Because for most of humans, technology is the problem, not the solution. So that, that's what I do. That's why it's called the Human Stack.

Jose Leal (04:46):

And, and that leads us to our topic today which Carlos is going to throw right on the bottom right now. 5, 4, 3, 2 Okay. It didn't work. Oh, there, it's, it's, it's there. It's, yeah. How to change, how we change technology. And when I, when we first talked about what you're doing and you were kind of using that language, it, it really resonated because for me and, and the work we're doing at Radical, it, it's it's about realizing that when we're trying to change systems, we're really trying to change how we see ourselves in each other, which then changes how we see systems, right? Because ultimately the way we see system, if we're looking at them from the wrong lens Yes. Then we end up screwing up. Absolutely. And I think what we've been doing in the technology space for a very long time, right? We've been building technology and forcing people to use it, right? I mean, that's,

Tim Lockie (05:54):

That's well said. Yeah, exactly. And sorry, I, you're just resting there. So I, I'll say more after you go.

Jose Leal (06:03):

No, I was just going to say it, it, and it, and it speaks to the, you know, the, the stuff we're seeing at the structural level, not just the technology level, but the organizational structure level, same thing. It's, so, it's as if what you're talking about on the technology front is really sort of happening across all of the domains, right? And technology is especially egregious because it's, it's touching everybody in every, almost every moment nowadays, right? Yeah. but it's really that kind of conversation, right?

Tim Lockie (06:42):

I think that's exactly right. And I think what it took me years to understand is that it's zeroes and ones, right? Because technologies, like digital technology was mostly what we're talking about here. Digital technology is just a big calculator. It just is calculating true false statements. I mean, I don't understand how a true false statement can create an audio signal that goes across the world and is live. Like, it's just crazy that it works. But at the end of the day, it is just zeros and ones true false. And so for a while, I wondered how important, like, is the human stack, is it just marketing? Is there something real behind it? And I ended up concluding, no, it's real because the base code of humans is not true. False. It's not, you know, zeros and ones it's belonging. It's in or out, right? Am I in this group or out of this group that search for significance, for belonging? It is so core to who we are. You don't have to teach kids how to trade, you know, how to lie in order to fit in, right? Like, they'll trade truth for belonging every day. And that's just because that's how important it is. And as I looked at the way that we approach technology, it's like we shed all of what we know about humans, and we just assume that humans are an extension of the technology, right? And that when we do a technology project, humans are just another task or milestone that we need to complete. And that leads to a lot of really major problems at the outset that are very hard to recover from. And so I think that we align on that way. And you're right, it's not just technologists, it's everybody in organizations,

Jose Leal (08:27):

Right? And then, and for, for us, we see meaning even before belonging because very often what we use as our means of who do we want to belong with is what is meaningful for us. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. Because if we don't have a sense of meaning, then finding that group of belonging, I mean, obviously if, if we're desperate, we'll belong to anybody, right? If nobody wants to.

Tim Lockie (08:57):

I'll say, that's such a great idea. I've never, I've never thought about that. I love what you're talking about. Oh my gosh, yes. You're exactly right. At nonprofits, you are. I No, I just interrupted you. I'm sorry. I got really

Jose Leal (09:07):

No, no. That this.

Tim Lockie (09:08):

Is it at nonprofits, you are going there because what they're doing means something to you. And, and so I think that this is even more true in nonprofits than it is in for-profits, because they're impact focused on making a difference in the world. And then it is so sad to watch that level of passion and and desire flame out, like just, just because of tech. Right? Exactly. And I'll tell you, here's how it happens. We need new tech. We're really frustrated. Our systems don't work. So they go bring in a new big platform, right? And in order to meet time and budget and, and all of that, they end up increasing the amount of disruption that staff have, which was already a lot, right? And that disruption, humans have such a negative reaction to disruption. Can I tell you a story really quickly about, actually.

Jose Leal (10:01):

Before you do I want to hear that story, but it just occurred to me as you said that, that you said, you know, we're talking about technology, you know, zeros and ones, and it just occurred to me that we're talking about technologies zero and ones, and we're also talking about the soft technologies. It is technology as a whole that we have used for governance For how we collaborate, how we, you know, manage blah, blah, blah. It, it's, it's, we're just repeating the same problem with the zero and ones technology. That we're already doing catch with the soft technology. Right?

Tim Lockie (10:39):

Yeah, I agree. And it's, it's also soft infrastructure as well, right? Yep. It's soft technology and it's soft infrastructure, which frankly we don't know how to invest in, which is, which is a core issue here.

Jose Leal (10:55):

I'd love to hear your story. What's your.

Tim Lockie (10:56):

Oh yeah, I forgot. Okay. Yeah. My story when my daughter was really young, she went on a trip with her grandmother and everything went wrong. Just everything went wrong. Wrong airport, wrong flights, wrong destination. And my daughter was six years old at the time, and she held it together all day long because her grandmother said, when we get to, you know, the end of the day where we're going, I'm going to buy you chocolate ice cream. And when they got to the front of the line and they ordered chocolate ice cream, the man said, we're out. And my do. Right? Exactly. Does your heart just break for that? Her, she just dropped to the floor in a he heap of tears. There's a couple of takeaways relevant here. One is, when you, when you create more disruption than humans have capacity for it, that's called change saturation. And when they hit levels of change saturation, humans respond negatively. But predictably, you can count on humans to have a, a negative reaction. They should, if they're working right, they should have a negative reaction to change saturation. If that's extended for a long period of time, it turns into trauma. And so when you have high amounts of disruption in an organization, not just tech, like the new CRM will create some, but it might be a pandemic and maternity leave and, you know, like family strife at home, a new kid, like, all of these things go into the bucket on how much capacity Absolutely. Humans ever change, right? And so, 0.1 is just humans can only handle so much of it. Point two is, if I were in the line like four people back, I'm ashamed to tell you, I would've thought my daughter was just a spoiled rotten little girl because, you know, all I saw was, you know, chocolate ice cream and falling on the floor and having a tantrum 'cause she didn't get her way right. I feel like leaders don't understand that the people lower down in their organizations, boots on the ground, technologists and just everyday operators at their businesses. When their technology doesn't work, they, they express, Hey, I can't do this. And there's a low amount of empathy from leadership on that. They don't understand just how challenging it is or how hard it is. And I feel like that's the second takeaway is leaders need to understand and appreciate that what they're doing is actually really making life hard for, for people in their organization. And that should be approached with empathy, right?

Jose Leal (13:23):

Absolutely. And that, that's the, essentially what you've just described is, is the two lenses that we, we talk about. But before I talk about the lenses, I I was just thinking about what you said in, in regards to our capacity for, for change, right? And the first thing that came to my mind was this morning, my partner Laura and I, we, we went for a walk and we came back and she's like, oh, I need to cut back this plant. I'm like, don't cut back the plant. You're going to kill the plant. And, 'cause she loves to keep things like orderly. And I'm like, no, let it be.

Tim Lockie (14:00):

What kind of plant is this? Like, is this a big plant or a house plant? Like

Jose Leal (14:06):

It's, it's a, it's a, it's a fairly large plant. It's probably about four foot tall. It's okay. Outside, On the patio. And it's some kind of bamboo, I forget what it's called. Okay. some, some ornamental bamboo or something like that. And so it can go kind of crazy, but she's already cut it back a little bit. But the point is that it's not just humans, right? When we change the light, when we change the water, when we change, you know, the exposure to it, the humidity to it all life, all of life needs some level of stability, right? We don't see ourselves as life anymore. We see ourselves as something outside of what life itself is, right? Like if I put pressure on this thing Yeah. It gets stressed, isn't it amazing that we use the word stress in physics in the same way that we do stress in human beings? It's the formation of us, right? And when we create stress for a plant, it starts to disease and die. Too much stress for a plant does that, right?

Tim Lockie (15:29):

Yeah, you're right.

Jose Leal (15:30):

But I can say, well, I gave it enough water, or I, you know, not too much water. Not too little water, but I don't know if Laura's been cutting the heck out of it, right? Yeah. I don't know if the other insects have been at it in the roots. I don't know if there's a fungus. I don't know if there's, you know, all kinds of other things that could be happening that are detrimental to that plant, to that life. And that's what happens to us as human beings, like you said, like as a manager of an organization, and I don't see how much you've got at home. Yeah. I don't see that you've got a mortgage that you're struggling to pay. I don't see that you've got a tax debt that you haven't been able to pay, and you're paying, you know, like all of those things are stress. Right? And every single one of those.

Tim Lockie (16:29):

That's such a great point. Yeah. Keep going.

Jose Leal (16:32):

I was just going to say, every single one of those adds up to levels of stress or change, right? Because change when it's from the outside, it's stress, right? Because I'm going down one path and you asking me to change my path. Yep. That's stress. You're literally forcing me to change paths. Yep. Right now there's getting me on board and getting me to figure out where we want to go. That's different than you coming down and saying, by the way, tomorrow we need to start using this new CMS and you like it or not. That's what we're going to use and let's get everybody trained.

Tim Lockie (17:15):

I, yeah. It's, it's so true. And, and that is disruption and that disruption accumulates. Here's where things get really interesting, and especially thinking about exponential and the root of, of that, which is radical, right? So a as I think about that two a couple of thoughts occur. One is community is the hidden X factor that western culture doesn't get because you can, when you start accessing collective use of and, and create community, the things humans can do together is so astonishing, even in the face of a high amount of disruption. In other words, you can use community and in, in a positive sense, community will create capacity for change. And it is just amazing how it does that. The second thing is if you time the disruption or the stress as you're talking about, if, if you time that regularly, that's called exercise and you create capacity. Like this is one of the things that's so interesting about humans, not just physical capacity by lifting weights or whatever, which is right. Weights are a form of disruption. But if you, if you actually regularly create ways of working together and experiencing disruption in predictable doses of here's how we're changing, you create capacity for change in organizations, right? And if you don't do it that way, you restrict the capacity that it has. And so the decisions that we make on how we introduce change to decrease disruption, maximize capacity, and start building that the amount of, of what that organization can do two years later is a, is completely different than if you just throw it all up front, stay on time, on budget, on the project finish. You know, create a bunch of tech trauma and then people go to spreadsheets because they're comfortable with them right? So which is the, which is the outcome.

Jose Leal (19:25):

Yeah. I, I love that. I've been using my CMS just fine. But when it doesn't work well, I use my spreadsheet to back it up. Yep. Yeah. Right. And how often exactly have we seen this, right?

Tim Lockie (19:36):

Exactly. Yeah.

Jose Leal (19:39):

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And, and I think, you know, back to the lenses conversation, because part of what we recognize is that there is a, there's a worldview with which organizations and people in leadership in organizations see employees, which is, we are here to control the environment, to control the tools that you use to control the way you use them to control blah, blah, blah. And in essence, there's this mindset that we don't build an ecosystem for you to live in and work in. What we do is we regulate everything that needs to happen, and we give it to you in with this mindset that it's our job to give it to you because we are in charge. And so it, it kind of changes this idea of working together, right? Which is what is our human nature, as you described, community, right? To this role of being subservient to some structure, to some technology, to some model that is more about telling us what to do than engaging us in the doing and being communal about it. Right?

Tim Lockie (21:12):

There's so much there to unpack, and I really like it. And there's some mysteries around that as well. So a couple of things that I've discovered along the way. One is I, and as, as what you're saying relates to technology, we don't have an adoption problem in technology. Like adoption is a family system word. And, and we are in performance cultures, especially in exponential organizations, right? This is, this is the Olympics of organizations. This is where we are trying to get 10 x the results. And in order to do that, you have to have high levels of performance. And so part of what I think is really interesting in what you're talking about is how do you combine meaning, belonging and performance in a way that creates outcomes that go beyond command control structures. So, and I think that it, it becomes very interesting how you do this. I, and, and we're now way outside of what I usually think about, so, right. I'm probably going to say it badly or something. I know power's involved to some degree, and power needs to be used well, but accountability is also involved, you know, accountability and responsibility do have to go together in a way Exactly. That are in alignment. And the amount of the amount of people responsible to execute needs to be less than the people that are accountable for the outcomes. Just, just pure numbers and outcomes, like the way, the way it works. Right? I, I mean, a great example of this is coaches, like coaches don't even play, but they're accountable for the game. They lose the game. It's the coach that lost it, right? They never even step foot on the game or on the field. Right. And so I think that there's, I think that there's a, a lot to unpack there about that. And then when it comes to accountability, though, we view accountability as a often we viewed it as a critical or a command or in, instead of recognizing that in terms of behavior recognition of people doing what they're supposed to do, and highlighting that and saying that collectively, like, Hey, you killed it out there. Thank you. Like, that pulls humans forward towards that sense of belonging. Exactly. Inside of accountability and responsibility structures. And so I, I think that there's a lot there to uncover on how you do that collective work well, and stay aligned. And I, I love what you're saying about meaning, I think meaning is so important in that, so that that belonging attaches to something important inside of that individual,

Jose Leal (23:48):

Right. And two things come from that. One becoming and impacting so meaning, right? Impacting is us acting in the world, right? What do we act on the stuff that's meaningful to us?

Tim Lockie (24:07):

Yeah.

Jose Leal (24:07):

What do we belong to? People who think that both our stuff is important and that the doing is also important. you, we gravitate to people who see the same meaning and the same impact that we want to make. Yep. Right? Yeah. The, the performance we call becoming and becoming is really from a, a psychological neuroscience perspective is really how do I motivate myself to do better? Not as a conscious effort, but as, as a, an organism. And that is seeing my community give me feedback. Positive and negative, what you just said, right? And so part of what we've been working on is, is an app we call rads, which is a recognitions app. So as a community, how do I recognize what you are doing in a way that is a little more overt than it used to be, but also, how does it become a ha habit for me to be upfront and say what I really feel, which is that was great. Love it. Thank you. Right? And we don't do that enough because, and in our structures right now, doing that too much makes us look bad, right? I, I can't be complimenting everybody for all their good works because I'm competing with them. So the mindset of a community rather than of a hierarchy is very important because on the hierarchy, people on my level, they're not good. 'cause I'm the one that needs to jump up to the next level, and we've lost our ability to, to actually recognize each other in the way that we need to.

Tim Lockie (26:10):

Yeah. There that's really, that's really true. And it gets back to one of the things I've been surprised to learn this year about digital transformation, and you're thinking about like much more expansive concepts, but when it comes to how do we change the way we change technology and digital transformations like the moniker for that. Yeah. What I've been so interested to find out is that it happens best when you change individuals with technology. And those changes change in organization. I think we've been getting that backwards where we're trying to have organizations technology change organizations or organizations change with technology. Instead of seeing that the whole goal here needs to be developing individuals and making them successful at what they do with technology and having that add up and aggregate to a, a larger achievement. And and, and that's how you create impact.

Jose Leal (27:14):

I couldn't agree more because I think the, the baseline, again, back to radical, the root is us and our motivation. So if we're not dealing with that, then right away we're dealing with stress. Yeah. And if you're dealing with stress, then this function is not far from, from that, right? Yeah. And so what, when I've done it myself, I'm sure you've done it much more than I have, but the introduction of a new technology and rollouts and engagement levels and performance levels and, you know, all of that stuff, and it could take years to do some of this stuff.

Tim Lockie (27:58):

It can, and it should actually, the problem is that it doesn't often enough take years, and they're trying to squeeze it into weeks or months instead of saying, we can do the tech staff in, you know, really fast, but the human stack, it's going to be quarters and years. That's the way humans change. And just letting it be that, that way.

Jose Leal (28:17):

So we're running into a bit of a, a time here, otherwise I'd talk to you for another half an hour.

Tim Lockie (28:23):

I would love to this is all amazing.

Jose Leal (28:26):

So that said, because you know, we, we've played with two different kinds of languages and, and sort of a broader scale. What do you think is is the trajectory in, in what you are doing, which is new ground, you're breaking new ground and thinking about tech from a human stack rather than a tech stack. What, what does that take and where does that lead us?

Tim Lockie (28:56):

Yeah, I think that in the tech world right now, the big question is ai. And I think that I'm glad for the human stack to exist now because one of the questions that comes up a lot is in generative ai, that sounds so human, it's easy to get lost in the tech stack and the human stack. And like, what, what is this? Because it sounds so human. And so I actually feel like the base code answers that in a way that is important. So one thing it does is it grounds us in technology that is, that is solving true false questions. That's not human stack, that's tech stack. And it can be wildly successful and speak with us so well that it falls into the uncanny valley and maybe even out the other side, right? So that's amazing. So that's the first thing I would say on that. The second thing is wider recognition that there is harm we're doing to humans in the way we are introducing technology, that that damages those organization's ability to create the kind of impact they want in the world. And so it's in everybody's best interest to pay more attention to how, how can we do this in a way that creates better outcomes and more success for the humans at the organization and also for that organization. Because at the end of the day, I really care about Nancy and Connecticut, right? Right. Who's just been at this organization for so long, given her heart and soul doing so much for it. And people don't even recognize how valuable and important she is. And if they did, if those organizations really got it, they could double or triple the amount of impact they're creating in the world with no more fundraising just because they're able to use technology and, and create impact so much more effectively.

Jose Leal (30:43):

Yeah. Thank you, Tim, for, for all of those wise words because I think collectively all of us need to start making these changes to change.

Tim Lockie (30:56):

Yeah.

Jose Leal (30:57):

Right? Rather than forcing things in the way that we've been trying to do. So applaud you for the work that you're doing with Human Stack and applaud you for having the insight because I think it's taken, as you said, you had to give up what you were doing in order to be able to do this. And, and the idea of focusing technology on humanity is much like what we're doing, which is focusing work on humanity as a whole. And so I think that we speak the same language and very much are in sync. So looking forward to having future conversations.

Tim Lockie (31:37):

Likewise.

Jose Leal (31:38):

About this and, and, and other things. Just next week we've got our pioneers, episode two. So we will be, Matt and I will be having a conversation with Tullio and talking about radical and what radical, how radical has come about and where we're at and where we're going. Perfect.

Tim Lockie (32:06):

Thank you so much, Jose. Jose, I'm thanks again, and thanks for the work that you're doing and radical I think is so important.

Jose Leal (32:12):

Thank you. We'll talk to you again soon.

Tim Lockie (32:15):

Sounds good.

Jose Leal (32:16):

Okay. Cheers.