We have seen the catalytic power of conversations in the work that we do, as well as the impact that it brings to our world.
Our Living Room is a space for us to connect, to explore thoughts and learnings, in a relaxed and very human way. Through this channel, we look forward to an engaging dialogue and resonance with our guests, and bring a breath of fresh air to the space we occupy in this virtual world.
To our listeners and followers, we hope to create an opportunity to candidly eavesdrop and chime in to one of the many interesting conversations around the space of teal, agile and the future of work.
Our guests:
Breeze Dong is serving as an enterprise agile coach in Roche Pharma International transformation office, she is passionate integrating her various facets of business insights with the art of paradigm shift in complex systems. Meanwhile she follows her flow of energy to bring more integral organizational practices in OD, leadership development, and coaching. She aspires to create space for authentic, mindful and purposeful organizations. Breeze has a master’s in industrial engineering from Cambridge university and over a decade of experience in Fortune 100 companies.
Lynn Strang is an enterprise agile coach within the Roche Pharma International transformation office, where she regularly draws upon her background of strategy consulting, coaching and leadership development. She is passionate about engagement, and all the ways we can connect people across an organisation with the specific mindset, behaviour and structure changes required to achieve a shared vision; and about the profound evolution of leadership that is required to support self-managed teams with increased empowerment and accountability. She has an MBA from London Business School and divides her time between London and Edinburgh.
Living Room Conversations: Breeze Dong and Lynn Strang
RHEA = Rhea Ong Yiu (Host)
BREEZE = Breeze Dong (Guest)
LYNN = Lynn Strang (Guest)
RHEA: Hello! Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to our viewers of the Living Room Conversations. We are now airing episode 24 of the Living Room Conversations. My name is Rhea Ong Yiu and I’ll be hosting the conversation today. So what is a Living Room Conversation about? It is about basically having deeper conversations with folks similar to us who are engaging in topics related to the future of work to Teal and just really coming alive from from that place where we are resonating with each other we have seen the catalytic power of conversations and would love to you know, welcome our friends and our colleagues in our living couch just to talk about stuff that mean a lot to us. And for this afternoon we have a very special guests- we have two very special ladies who actually have this bigger vision of bringing Teal
to one of the largest pharmaceuticals all over the world and they are really doing an amazing work of living out the principles of Teal. Not basically calling a Teal but really just embodying those principles in their day-to-day work and we’re going to explore a little bit about that so
let me introduce our first guest into the couch Breeze Dong, she’s an enterprise coach within Roche Pharma. Welcome to the couch, Breeze!
BREEZE: Thank you Rhea. I’m really happy to be here to explore the topic of Teal with the community. Really happy to be here.
RHEA: Thank you. Tnd our next guest is also together with Breeze in the transformation team at Roche. Lynn, welcome.
LYNN: Hello, thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure to be here and it’s actually my first Living Room Conversation so I’m really looking forward to this and to catching up on the 23 I’ve missed.
RHEA: Yeah, definitely. We love having you ladies on our couch today and just really just exploring what does it mean to be a part of Teal at Roche and part of moving that needle for the organization. Before we deep dive a little bit I just want to say hello to our guests on Facebook and Youtube for joining us this afternoon. Please don’t just stay quiet, let us know where you’re coming from, say hello and if you have any questions go right ahead and drop it on the chat and we’ll make sure that they get answered in the course of our conversation. And so yeah with that I just want to throw in kind of a first intro question to our guests so, you know, we’ve heard Teal at Roche last year after Teal Around the World and I know Breeze you were working on this. Why did you create this movement and how did it come about? Maybe just a little bit of opportunity for us to tap into the or the history of how it happened?
BREEZE: Sure, yeah. And actually it’s really not just me, it’s a lot of passionate colleagues starting the conversation you know, about me specifically I just really was inspired by Frederic Laloux’s book back in 2016. And in my work then I started some grassroots movement and have
you know, just this experience of how Teal in daily life kind of felt like really changed my career path you know, and our our grassroots initiative actually gained board level recognition and changed a lot of the people’s view of how does really Teal how is still lived so you know, back in 2021 when me and along with many other Roche colleagues joined the two Around the World conference, we discovered ourselves during the sessions, I said wow we are actually actually in Roche but we did not really know each other back then so then a colleague of mine, Jacob Warpings also found the team of the transformation office in Roche, we started an internal discussion panel and LinkedIn a group. So that’s really the initial sort of starting point of this community, with the aim of like connecting with each other, learning and sharing from various pockets of the organization and really just stay tuned of sort of what we can apply in our daily life right? Yeah and would you like to share a bit more Lynn because you were in that movement right? From the beginning? How about you?
LYNN: Yeah! Yeah, absolutely, thanks Breeze. And it’s kind of my understanding and inspiration by Teal is more recent in that I only found out about the book when I was just joining Roche which was two years ago and it was incredible to me I mean I don’t surprisingly for someone with a many years experience as a strategy consultant don’t really read a lot of business books. But I’d become much more interested in organizational effectiveness and leadership effectiveness and change management and all of these topics as the kind of enablers of strategies so I suppose I was becoming more interested in books about coaching and culture and leadership. But this was the first one that had an introduction by someone like Ken Wilbur and talked about the evolution of humanity and I thought wow this really is different. And I was kind of reading about the principles and everything thinking you know, it’s a beautiful description but not very realistic and so this the other thing that really blew me away about the book itself was the tangible examples. The really tangible examples of specific organizations in different
industries of different sizes with different histories and this really kind of blew my mind. And so and then to join Roche which I feel really is an extremely purpose-driven organization, with lots of experiments happening around self-management and with lots of attention being paid to whole leadership, and being our full creative selves as leaders, I just thought wow it’s amazing and so then to join the Teal Around the World conference last year and to find out just how many of us are in taking inspiration from similar sources and sharing this amazing vision you know, it was it was very easy to be to join the Teal at Roche community and to continue to take inspiration from it.
RHEA: That’s really very inspiring to hear how you took your journey from the moment you read the book and also being part of an organization that actually kind of dares to live it, dares to embody it. It’s very exciting to see that. And yeah so I’m curious, one year has passed. What’s going on? Tell us a little bit how is Teal at Roche and what are the things that you’re
you’re kind of doing within that small little movement? Or I don’t know how big it is now. [Laughter]
BREEZE: Yeah indeed and just exactly as you said Rhea that dare to live it right? So actually what I am very inspired by and actually every day when I’m working in Roche, is how much we have picked up these principles of Teal in various parts of the organization. So Teal at Roche community, I would say, it is a self-organized community and it really consists of people from around the world and in various different parts of the organization. And we loosely connect through that community so we do have like every now and then sharing and learning and what is important for me is how we actually live it so in our work, well both of me and Lynn and a group of people actually we focus on systemic interventions to support the way we work so that we collectively could contribute to the healthcare ecosystem and embodying the principles, we might not necessarily sort of always call it Teal, you know, but actually a lot of the work that we do are aligned with the Teal principles.
So for me, the community actually serves as sort of a connection thread of many things that we do deep in the organization and we continue this sort of like learning and sharing within that, within Roche and with the LinkedIn group from about Teal and Roche, we actually connected with some also other colleagues who are passionate in this movement. From large or small
organizations and it’s just such an exciting learning journey. Anything to add Lynn?
LYNN: Oh no, I mean I think you’ve summed it up brilliantly. But I guess what I would add is that you know, we work in the sort of transformation function. And we’re one of many many kind of practitioners across the whole organization that are trying to support these new ways of working around being more patient-centric, more customer-centric, maybe more pragmatic and you know, experimenting and learning rather than kind of overthinking and not making progress – like really sensing the need to have impact now for patients and society rather than kind of thinking for a long time about it. And being obviously not at the risk of patient safety or license to operate, but being more focused on progress over perfection. And so the Teal principles are part of that bigger story and we’re sort of two small, two members of a very large community of people trying to make this happen. And so you know, making progress every day but at different paces and in different ways.
BREEZE: Yeah, indeed. And what I love about this and actually a part of my learning is
really the systemic principle- that like the systemic view because Roche is a very large organization and in operating in a quite complex environment and I also do have a lot of compassion on people’s journey. You know, if you can imagine, like leaders who are you know, who are successful, in a way that they serve as a problem solver maybe even for decades right? And then we when we come and say you know, how about we actually like bring the
decision-making power to the custom like to the to the customer facing roles how about we
actually simplify the organization and promote more self self organization? And I just really noticed like it’s so necessary to take care of all the living parts of the whole system so that you know, as we talk about living Teal, it’s really an evolution. So it’s really not mechanical for me it’s really like a living organization and we are supporting you know, in a way we are sort of holding we are holding the container for sort of more Teal way of working even if we don’t call it Teal, to come to life so that we can actually collectively serve the ecosystem right?
RHEA: Yeah. Yeah, that’s really beautiful because when you solve a lot or you could create
some solutions around the systemic changes you see that it kind of resolves the smaller pieces
that are part of the entire ecosystem right? Maybe I just want to ask you Lynn or Breeze if there is a one example of a systemic change that you’ve had to kind of solve and that you can truly say like ‘oh we have taken this into a next level’ in terms of mindsets, in terms of behaviors
what would you say as a really good example that you have experienced?
LYNN: One that comes to mind that I think we are really looking at systematically is thinking in terms of outcomes. A lot of planning traditionally has been kind of grounded in the continuation of activities that might be associated with my role description. So I have this role and I think about my quarter or my year ahead based on what’s in my job description and I kind of create plans to keep myself busy basically. And the whole you know, certainly within our part of the business we’re really committed to moving away from that and moving toward thinking in terms of the outcomes that we want to support or bring about outcomes for patients, outcomes for society, outcomes for our organization and what it’s like to work here.
And so we by thinking in terms of outcomes we kind of let go of that attachment to activities that we might have typically performed or what’s in our job description and that kind of creates a bit more flexibility around how we kind of swarm to those outcomes and how we prioritize and how we maybe even think differently about how- who we can partner with how we can work to bring those about that isn’t kind of grounded in sort of more traditional activities and patterns of planning and working. And then another sort of associated part of thinking in terms of outcomes you know, long term midterm and short term – two other parts. One is really being paying attention to the signals that will tell us whether or not we’re on track and those signals can be much broader than the traditional metrics that we might have associated with running a business like sales for example. So you know, we have people out in the field that are no longer incentivized by sales that is not what they’re expected to be that’s not what they’re paying attention to. It doesn’t it’s not what they’re trying to do they’re trying to improve outcomes for patients – looking at the end-to-end patient journey and collaborating with partners in the healthcare system like healthcare practitioners or payers or other patient groups to really improve patient outcomes and they’re looking at a much broader set of signals to help them understand whether or not they’re on track to realizing those outcomes.
This is profoundly different from volume and sales metrics of the past and then the third piece of that you know, in addition to the outcomes and the signals the third piece is transparency. So we are really emphasizing more transparency within the organization and even outside the organization of these outcomes. What are we trying to do in different markets in different contexts and that transparency helps us collaborate internally, resource according to the most important to the highest impact that we can have, and in cases even simplify radically which is one of the operating principles that we’re really trying to live by. So those are- that’s one sort of area of what I would say is really systemic. We’re really trying to do that everywhere.
RHEA: Yeah. I love that you’re able to make this transition right? To refocus from ‘How do I fulfill my job description?’ to being more patient-centric and to be more focused on the outputs and outcomes of the overall instead of me individually. It requires kind of a different mindset but it also requires a different reward system. You mentioned something about some of the salespeople who are no longer incentivized for the sales but really for the overall outcome. How does this look like for your performance management ecosystem? Is there a direct connection to what you’ve been changing in that area as well?
BREEZE: Yes indeed. So really when we think about the systemic aspects we are talking about the organization, all parts of the organization that brings medicine to patients that’s 13,000 people around the globe. And when we are- when we are working on this transformation so
we look at really all the aspects that are most important. You know, the parts of the organization that directly connects with the healthcare ecosystem the hospitals, doctors and also our internal
organization that we aspire to work in a networked way to like to really fulfill those needs of the ecosystem right and to hold all of these to actually like a red thread with all of these is our people right? So just as Rhea, what you mentioned, how do we actually you know, like foster a learning culture you know, a learning organization culture so that the people actually are able to work in this new way.
And coming to the topic of performance or you know, performance or mindset and that’s a essential part of this transformation because that’s really what would
actually in many ways- like drives behavior so what we are doing now for example is you will see that we have you know, colleagues who are working you know, focus on the customer you know, focusing on creating customer value. We have, you know, colleagues who are enabling these other functions to support this. And to support their practices we actually are reframing you know, or experimenting, reframing the way that we even like we think about contribution. So instead of talking about performance management we actually don’t really use the word at least in our parts of the organization we are experimenting not to use the word performance management because we believe we are contributing and it’s a learning journey in the whole year to so that colleagues can be happy learners while creating impact for the for the patients and while collaborating seamlessly internally as a network.
Of course you know, I realize I might be just by nature quite optimistic right so in real life there are of course a lot of hiccups. But what we try really is to experiment in looking at our contribution and looking at also people’s careers not in the sense of climbing the career ladder, but actually how do we expand our capabilities so that we can swarm to the work that we feel most passionate and create the most impact, right? So in a way we need to reframe many of the people practices you know, so that such practices could support the systemic transformation and people practice is one part. There is also other supporting mechanisms you know, governance mechanism, operating models you know, I guess that’s in essence why I tend to use the word systemic a lot. Because that’s really not just one piece that can turn everything right?
RHEA: No, definitely. It’s many connected pieces within an organization that also solidifies your position as an organization but can also create room for change right? One practice and applied in a good way. I’m curious there’s a question from George on the screen and he’s like ‘I’m very interested, has learning and practicing Teal at work help in your personal lives?’
BREEZE: I can answer that George. Yes, definitely. I mean I think my experience in a Teal way of working has really shifted my career so I studied Industrial Engineering as a background and while I supported initiating some grassroots movement I have just experienced people unleashing their potential. It is just beyond my imagination and at that time when I was sort of it’s an internal network and when I experienced that I could swarm to the areas of passion I could actually even negotiate my way you know, at that time of my day job to do work that benefits the other parts of the organization, and that group got such a recognition internally.
I’m like wow it’s possible it’s even possible in large complex organizations. And that really supported my career transition in a way that I want to do this really as my main contribution. How about you Lynn? I’m sure there are a lot of stories you will share as well.
LYNN: Probably the- I mean in my personal life, I would say that it’s particularly the really being
focused on purpose and outcomes. You know, really thinking about it because that’s obviously one of the big parts of a Teal organization is being purpose driven. And thinking about purpose and outcomes you know, I do that on a personal level as well as in a work context and I suppose the other one is sort of whole leadership – the idea of whole leadership and just being as authentic and true and open, I suppose about what I’m experiencing or thinking or feeling in any context. Not just in a work context. And I suppose those are the ones that I really practice the most. I mean I’m in a small family we don’t- my husband and I don’t have children so I suppose we’re pretty self-managed. No boss between the two of us so I guess those are the ones that I practice the most personally. [Laughter]
BREEZE: You just inspired me, Lynn. I actually think you know, I have a daughter and I realize indeed the two principles have improved my relationship with my daughter as well. Because I noticed I actually, you know, I treat her as a whole human being you know, really the concept of wholeness is such a beautiful it’s just beautiful to live by and I realized the way that I guess the reason why I loved you so much is it brings our inner wisdom to life. You know, maybe
this sounds philosophical, but I just- I just feel like if we could live authentically and just feel comfortable with who I am, of course I’m not perfect. But actually living in this way I just feel
quite relaxed you know, and I just think it would be so beautiful if you know, all of us could live like this. Certainly, I wish my daughter to live a life that she could embrace her you know, her all different sides of herself and just live authentic life and purpose for life. And if she can bring some benefit to others, that’s a beautiful life, I guess.
RHEA: That’s very interesting. You know, I could connect. I don’t have kids, but I have a a colleague where she applies self-management and training her kids so basically what she does is you have this much hour for play, regardless whether it’s gadgets or what. You can self-manage around that how you use that hour and you know, and then the kids really like take into account this decision-making for example okay we’re going to get a dog but these are the
accountabilities of having a dog. Are you going to sign for this and play your role in it? And it’s really like you said taking a human being for its whole self including the decision making pieces, whether they’re young or they’re having much wisdom they should be able to decide on certain boundaries and it’s very interesting to see that actually. Yeah and I think why not bring this to the organization right? Where you have the most amazing, the smartest individuals who are pushing the needle for change and innovation in your organization and just entrusting this decisions in, of course, a different context. So moving into that, I would actually
like to- I’m very curious as you’re doing this transformation, what are the shifts in decision-making that you have seen come to life in the organization?
LYNN: So there’s a- there was there’s a deliberate- we are deliberately trying to bring decision making closer to the customer. Empowering the people that are working directly with healthcare
practitioners and stake other stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystems to be able to make decisions about how to approach a challenge or an opportunity how to prioritize given what’s going to have the greatest impact locally and what’s I suppose, also what’s most achievable
and that’s really different. Like many organizations we have a history of a more hierarchical kind of organization where priorities were set more at the top, key decisions were sort of elevated to people who had kind of control over resources and strategy. So we’re trying to do that deliberately.
I think what we found is it’s a really- and Breeze I think you alluded to this a little bit earlier. It’s a really difficult transition to make if you’re a senior leader who’s successfully relied on 20 or 30 years of making decisions, allocating resources, giving direction. And then so that trends the transition from that to what’s needed for this to work is a tricky one it’s partly just hard to do and it’s also partly because we haven’t necessarily quite grasped what that looks like. And I’ll give a an example that comes up pretty regularly is this experience of empowerment without the kind of conditions or the accountability or the guard rails that really support empowerment with accountability. And so we’ve worked with a lot of teams on you know, how do you have the kind of contracting conversation where you share the context of you know, what you understand what you’re hoping for and you also hear back from whoever you’re talking to about their context and then you kind of explore what are the conditions to be able to do this you know? To be able to take on more responsibility or to be able to step out and let’s say be less involved in certain decisions what are the conditions that need to be in place for both parties or all parties to feel yes this is you know, this is a good way to go? This is safe. This doesn’t put our business at risk, this doesn’t put our license to operate at risk, this you if you’re making a decision you have everything that you need to be able to make you know, a sensible decision so I think that you know, bringing empowerment and accountability closer together is one of the one of the examples that we are you know, constantly learning around.
BREEZE: I definitely resonate with that. I mean, actually when we look at self-organization you realize actually we need more leadership. We need more leadership quality right? So it’s not about top-down decision-making I feel it’s it’s really more for the people in working in a self-organized team. It’s a dance. It’s really a dance of like how much do we actually enable for local decision making how much do we need to guide and coach to more support so it’s really constant dance so I really do lean as well you know, we coach many country leadership teams and this is a topic that really constantly come up so what I hear is it’s I often at least my personal experience is the leadership you know, the traditional people management team it’s not that often cases it’s not that they don’t want to kind of enable the local decision making often cases I experience people they they really care about the business. They really want like you know, that we deliver our promises to the healthcare ecosystem – so where we are to let go and enable people and unleash people’s potential and where to actually guide more, right? So that’s what I think in terms of what’s needed and what kind of leadership quality is needed in such an environment. It’s really a topic that we need to pay attention to.
So I’m sure you know, many of our colleagues has mentioned that we talk about the VACC leadership. So a leader acting as a visionary setting you know, really setting the future direction and north star, an architect of looking at the architectural sort of the structural piece of organization catalyst and coach. So this is a role that is very different or the quality is very different compared to a problem solver or you know, the hierarchical decision making I personally resonate a lot and I have seen many examples and these are really a lot of of you know, in country teams that they experiment and they experiment with with various sort of initiatives projects and gradually gaining the confidence and at the same time supporting people to build up their capabilities and to support the sort of kind of governance aspect of making sure if you really do empower you do have you know, the people empowered will have the resource needed to do the job right?
RHEA: Yeah this is very interesting when you talk about the dance. I also know that when you’re doing a dance for example if you think about a tango right? you both need to know the steps in order to move to the next part of the dance floor right? So it’s kind of- it gave me the feeling that you need to practice it’s not something that beyond contracting there has to be a practice and a constant conversation around these type of kind of delegation sort of it’s moving decision making power to another person. But the context of how that person operates needs to be conditioned as well right? You need to prepare the environment for that is it safe enough to try is it you know, do I have because I have this decision making power what does that mean for me personally and does it invade my safe space or do I have the right skills even for it right? sometimes that’s also the question right so how do you bridge this? Because it’s one for the leadership to give off that accountability and then for the other to receive it right?
BREEZE: Indeed that’s really a great question. I think that’s actually how we are dancing every day right now right Lynn? So because I mean my personal my experience is that it really depends on the maturity of the team and the maturity of the leadership’s understanding of self-organization. And that’s why we actually use the word sensing a lot so it’s really sensing and responding. We do see signals you know, we sense into the system, we see the signals and we respond according to that situation. And just today you know, just before this call I answered a question from a colleague working on operating principles and we do have pockets of the organization using holacracy principles and he’s reading the sociocracy maturity we’re exploring the ways what would fit the best and for me that’s where a living- sort of a living organism comes into play so there’s really not one size fit all it’s yeah depends I guess. What do you think Lynn?
BREEZE: I think there are two I mean I agree with all of that. It’s definitely contextual. And this is where the power of a simple conversation and this you know, one one of the tools that we share with teams that we work with is this very simple concept of three C’s. And I alluded to it a little bit earlier where it’s a two-way conversation about the context you know, I’m asking you to take on more responsibility or I’m inviting you to be empowered to make a certain decision and here’s why I think it’s important and here’s the context in which that decision needs to be made or that accountability needs to be held. And also I invite the same from you – like how do you feel about it? What are your priorities? What else have you got on your plate? What’s your experience in this area? What are your fears? And that’s all about that two-way conversation about context but then there’s a two-way conversation about the conditions like what would you need to feel okay about this? What would need to be in place? Who else would you need on the team? Who else would need to be involved? What resources? What information? What touch points?
And it’s almost like it’s almost like an agreement about you know, what can we both commit to ensure that this is gonna work. And we can probably be almost certain of one thing which is that we might not get it all right. You know, we won’t cover everything, we won’t think of everything, we won’t necessarily come to the best possible agreement and therefore the other big piece of it and this is what you know, we think of when we think of being a learning organization is to be really committed to continuous feedback and retrospectives. Like the discipline of regular retrospectives where we explore what’s happening what impact are we having what’s intended and unintended and what are we learning about how we work together and you know, the sort of
agreements that we’re making with one another. So I think those two like having really well-structured robust conversations up front and then having those kind of regular retrospective conversations along the way as well as unstructured opportunistic feedback conversations
all help as we kind of learn our way into how we’re trying to work more and more.
BREEZE: And as a holistic story you know, when we work, when we say we want to foster learning organization we really talk about you know, you’re starting from me. You know, any transformation journey starts from me so we look at what is my identity you know, leadership identity what is the mindset that we need to embrace and then coming to Lynn what you mentioned about team rituals right? So we do regular outcome based planning, we
do impact retrospectives and we have really kind of we want to foster a feedback culture and
like really you know, and set up sort of conditions like the contribution you know, what we typically call performance management and looking at a career that is expanding your your your career and we look into an ecosystem level of how to how do we actually create the environment for the organization to thrive so when we when we talk about the network organization it is what I would you know, it is really about how do we create the condition- it’s like gardening you know? Sometimes we use this analogy of gardening so how do we you know,
foster the soil to have the right conditions for the plants to grow? And I feel that’s the reason why I feel very passionate about patio principles because the Teal principle really connects very well with this analogy of creating the environment. So the environment that we are creating in that sense you know, we are bringing more sort of kind of intention. Intentionally supporting the possibility of collaboration across any boundary yeah so we are we want to create fluid teams
working on work packages that they do have sufficient financial and knowledge sort of resources to work across you know, across the organization we create the condition of learning organizations so that colleagues while they are swarming to different parts of the work, they can be happy learners so like I saw often cases use the word happy learners and on this journey we also create the condition of like people practices you know, talking about performance, talking about career, maybe even financial in a financial architecture so that we enable the whole organization to be more fluid to so to really imagining it’s it’s it’s a living system and of course that consists of teams and individuals with that you know, with what it did has mentioned the rituals and mindset and practices.
RHEA: Yeah. I love this and it’s triggering a lot of questions to come in so let me bring one of the questions from Ville. Ville’s asking what beliefs in your experience right, so you have gone you have been overseeing some transformation that’s happening at Roche in large scale.
What beliefs do you see would be good to let go and mindsets that you would say this is recommended to pursue? Maybe Lynn, thoughts on that?
LYNN: You know, I love this question Ville and it kind of links to one that Eugenio also asked that I can see in the chat which is what would I say to my 20 year old self? And I think you know, the mindset that I probably had at 20 was you know, I’m here to learn from all these people that have so much more experience than me. And I think what I would say is yes and really focus on your experience, and your perspective, and your point of view because that also that’s also important, like let go of this idea that you have to learn from others or look to others before trying something yourself. So I think for me one one belief that I’ve had to let go of is is is the idea that I need to find the answer somewhere else someone else has a better answer and to sort of embrace the idea that no I need to sort of look inward for an idea and then try it and learn from it. So really just it’s almost like this just try and learn embracing that growth mindset and trust myself to be able to to come up with a sensible direction rather than looking elsewhere for that.
RHEA: That’s beautiful. And thank you for sharing that. Then I think I would resonate so much with that just to kind of reflect on your own right? What are the answers that I’m hiding inside of me that I could unleash right? So maybe I will move the next question to Breeze. The question is having the Teal experience you have now, what would you say to your 20 year old self?
BREEZE: Well that’s also a beautiful question. What do I say to my 20 year old self? Actually probably yeah trust my inner wisdom and you know, trust your inner wisdom, trust your intuitions and enjoy the moment I guess. Enjoy the moment. And I yeah I love the part about compassion as well have compassion of my of self, and compassion of the system so maybe you know, kind of connecting to the previous question Ville; what beliefs do I need to get let go of – I realize I definitely have more compassion over the years you know, you know, in really like in a way that is just because having self-compassion and compassion to the system, and compassion to others makes life more at ease. So maybe a lot of the some beliefs that I let go of
was sort of a set view that I have to be a certain way right? And actually working in a Teal
environment I realized we are all unique. We all have our talents. And we are creating the condition for all of us to thrive in certain ways. There are people who are happy just to do the engineering work and not to do anything else. Fine, you can do that, right? And there are you know, people like I’m certainly very curious, I want to do a lot of you know, a breath like a width of work possible so yeah compassion is my key word probably over the years.
RHEA: That’s really nice and thank you for sharing. There’s also another question for Marianna and she’s asking if you were going to start a transformation journey once more, implementation and all that, what would you do, what would you have done or what would you do differently?
BREEZE: I mean I can start. And then please jump in. What I really appreciate Roche has done in the past years is actually starting with a mindset starting with myself. You know, I have seen a lot of transformation that is you have to change you know, we even see this cartoon saying you know, just I don’t change you change. I really appreciate the mindset and I appreciate the courageous authenticity that our leaders are showing. So I you know, from my personal experience those leaders that I interact with daily I experience a lot of authentic leaders and I think that really thanks to the mindset work sort of building the ground, and building the soil. And the thing I feel actually a lot of other things come naturally you know, things like structures or processes we’re working on that it’s not easy for sure not easy but really this starting with mindset and starting building the soil and really connect to as linear always mentioned the purpose why am I doing this? You know, what’s really the outcome that we want to achieve? It’s not transformation for transformation’s sake you know, what’s the outcome? What’s the purpose that connect to my heart? connect to my emotions? That I feel I’m passionate to work on? That’s so important.
LYNN: So I’m sort of mindful of the word differently because I’m sure that this actually is happening somewhere across Roche with the transformation that we’re undergoing. I think what I personally would pay more attention to is and it’s kind of linked to what you were saying Breeze, which is making the transformation personal for everybody. And you know, I think we
we are trying to change so much like really everything about our operating model because you know, in terms of the system if all the different pieces of the system aren’t supporting one another then it’s going to be very hard to kind of work in the way that it’s meant to and so what that means is we’re sort of looking at everything at once and that requires a lot of attention and I think actually if we had sort of simplified it and personalized it well what I would do differently is I would carve out time for more simple personal conversations about why we’re doing this and what it means. You know, what is that? What will change at the individual level if we’re all working in this way and what is the personal impact of that. I think I if I were to do anything differently it would be to hold more space for those kinds of conversations.
RHEA: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks Lynn I was just reflecting like what would it mean for me to them I know Anna also was curious, for me I should have picked up the book earlier you know, it has been very inspiring for for both of you as well as for me and to also learn about Teal, and I but I don’t regret that I picked up the book at the time that I could actually live it, because then I picked up the book it was because I was coaching a team that was going through exactly the transformation and I could really live it one day at a time and it has been very impactful right? So taking those experiences, taking those failures, or not being able to see it right away is quite important.
And yeah, I’d like to invite both Lynn and Breeze back just looking at maybe the further horizon, what’s in the horizon for you?
LYNN: Yeah, I guess it’s you know, when I look ahead to the next sort of year to two years I think it’s really just embedding and deepening you know, what we there’s a quote that we love to share with one another because it just resonates so much which is a William Gibson quote from
some time ago, I’m not even sure where exactly, but it’s basically ‘the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.’ and so we feel like we know that there are pockets of self-management, authentic leadership, of lots of pockets of purpose driving the decisions that we’re making. I think for for me it’s about growing those pockets you know, so that they really feed one another, and inspire one another and connect in a way that means more and more of our organization is living in a- is operating in a way that really unleashes the full potential and creativity of all the great colleagues that we have and also with our partners within the ecosystems so that we’re really living that purpose of bringing more impact for more patients faster and to the extent that even transforming supporting the transformation of the ecosystems within where which we’re operating so it kind of goes beyond Roche. And actually if that means that we can see more and more of whole leadership and purpose-driven at a societal level and not just at Roche level I mean that would be amazing.
BREEZE: I resonate totally. And I guess one thing I would add is actually well one key word that I hold for myself for this year is integration. And that’s really you know, from the professional
level and also personal level. How do I you know, integrate and really live and breathe it every day? And then I yeah so yeah Lynn as you said so beautifully it’s just unevenly distributed. We connect with a lot of colleagues in many many pockets. And I feel it’s just the beginning. I just think there’s still so much potential and while doing that one thing that is also very close to my heart is actually our well-being. Our well-being as an individual person and actually well-being as a system. And there are system systemic causes of of certain issues
and that’s while integrating how do we care for our a personal and sort of systemic level of
well-being so that we actually bring this energy as you said Lynn from our team, our unit to Roche and to beyond Roche right?
RHEA: Thank you so much Breeze and Lynn. I think the conversation just flew by and time time really caught up on us it’s amazing we’re already almost at the top of the hour, but thank you so much for the insights and for sharing your whole hearts into this conversation it’s very much appreciated and also to our audience, thank you for engaging and asking your questions. I know there’s a few more questions that are coming in but we are already at the top of the hour so I just would love to say thank you to our guests Lynn and Breeze. And before we close I just would love to invite everyone to join us in the upcoming Living Room Conversation, it’s going to happen on the 20th of April, same time. This time I will be having it with Philip Atkinson, he’s one of our favorite friends in the network and he’s also hosting his Hive meetups regularly. Next there will be- actually not next week, this is already this week. On Thursday the Teal network is hosting the global Teal meetups for Europe so you’re very much welcome to join the conversation, same time on Thursday and we’d love to see you there. So, thank you so much. And for those who have questions still coming up in the comments, would love to engage you in a conversation on chat. I apologize that we are already over time. But yeah, so before we close
Lynn and Breeze I’d love to give the space for you to share your last words.
LYNN: I just want to say a big thank you. This has been such a great experience it’s such an I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and I’m looking forward to future Living Room Conversations as well so thanks so much to for the questions to you Rhea and to Ken and Anna in the background that have brought us together and thanks Breeze for joining me on the
couch today. Really enjoyed it. Thanks so much.
BREEZE: Thank you Lynn. Yeah, and really happy to connect with you and I you know, as always the community is where my heart lies and let’s connect and learn and share going forward. Thank you.
RHEA: Thank you so much ladies and it has been a pleasure hosting this conversation
today thank you to our viewers on Youtube and Facebook for your questions and your engagement and would love to see more of you coming back to join us in the future. Thank you
again and see you soon!
BREEZE: Thank you.
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