151: Maureen McCarthy and Zelle Nelson

Agile.FM

Transcript:

Agile F M radio for the agile community.

[00:00:04] Joe Krebs: Thank you for tuning into another episode here of Agile FM. Today I have two guests with me. We are a trio today that is Maureen McCarthy and Zelle Nelson are with me. They both are we're going to go really deep on this the creators of the method that's called the Blueprint of We and they can be reached at collaborativeawareness. com. Welcome to the podcast, Maureen and Zelle.

[00:00:28] Maureen McCarthy: I am so thrilled for this conversation, Joe, because. The weaving between Agile and the work we do in the world is brilliant. And I love having the conversation about how that goes on. So

[00:00:39] Zelle Nelson: really happy to be here.

[00:00:40] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. Thanks.

[00:00:41] Joe Krebs: Awesome. Yeah, we will be talking a little bit about that blueprint of we, but before we do that just to set the stage a little bit with everyone, why the blueprint of we exist, why your work exists.

There is a very sad history to this, and that is that Maureen, you found out that you have a rare genetic lung disease, and you are. Operating on 10% lung capacity. Is that correct?

[00:01:11] Maureen McCarthy: That is true. I've been on oxygen for 20 years, but nobody lives as long as I have. So it's a, it's very rare. Most people are dead.

Within 10 years I've had it 35

.

[00:01:21] Maureen McCarthy: So I've had since I was very young. But it's not a sad story. It's actually a very creative story.

It's not, I don't, there's lots of crazy stuff that goes on with it, but I don't feel sad about it. We've done so many, we've made the stress of what.

A health challenge can be into a creative process of How do you thrive even when stuff is going on that's nuts.

[00:01:43] Joe Krebs: Yeah the reason why we connect a little bit the blueprint of we the work you guys are doing and facilitation collaboration is directly tied to this to the lung disease. Can you guys elaborate a little bit on.

How this all started for you guys and how you are, obviously your behavior changed as a result of that diagnosis

[00:02:08] Maureen McCarthy: we actually met the year my doctors told me that I would die. So it was my 10 year mark of when most people are dead and meeting somebody. We both had our own individual businesses at that point, but meeting somebody the year you're supposed to die, you don't measure anything up against forever.

You have to look at what's here right now and decide what you want to do with it. And we realized like the normal path when you meet someone is, do you want to date and get engaged and get married and have a white picket fence? Like you actually have those things that just project in your mind, because that's expected, to at least ask those questions.

[00:02:44] Zelle Nelson: There was nothing for us to pull off the shelf to say, this is how you do it.

[00:02:48] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah.

[00:02:49] Zelle Nelson: So we had to design it for ourselves

[00:02:51] Maureen McCarthy: and we created this. Document this relationship design document. We realize we've got to design something that's so specific to us and there's things that we want to No one understand about ourselves, about each other, but most specifically about who we are together.

If this isn't what doing what you normally do when you become a couple, what the heck is it? So that design process we wrote down, we're like, let's do a design process, a design document, let's make it iterative and changeable and. Upgraded over time to, to show us who we are when we learn more about ourselves, about another, when we go through the chaos of in and out of the hospital and losing more lung capacity and massive levels of pain and just crazy things.

You've got to be agile. You literally have to be agile. And without the design document, I think we could have gotten lost. In a path that can be very chaotic, especially because lots of people around us got worried. It made me understand the difference between worry and care. Like when people worry for me, all my pain gets worse.

It's harder to breathe when people care about me. It's two different ways we're using our neurocircuitry, right? And care is a way to support other people. Worry is a way to add more stress and fear and the weightiness of all that. And when you've got 10 percent lung capacity. You feel weightiness unlike other people.

Yeah, this is, I'm like a little like a little experiment of my own body of what it means to be like collaborative and connected, because everything that's going on in my body, we use as a way to be part of the design. Like this, there's chaos going on in here. How does that mirror the chaos of the world and how do we design healthy relationships and healthy interactions based on, what could be considered chaos?

[00:04:40] Joe Krebs: Yeah, so this blueprint you guys, we're going to go a little bit deeper here. It's really something you build, it's a process. It's a relationship design process used to build resilient, collaborative relationships in startups, communities, and organizations worldwide.

And I think what's, so I just read that out. That's, I saw that, but what's important about that is that you'll have a very personal story. This process is something that was created between you guys to find out how you guys going to transition.

And now you're taking this process and bringing it back to the world.

So there's these things live every day to the fullest, and make the best out of every day. You are making the best out of every day. Is that part of your blueprint? Can you give like listeners to Agile FM? So what's the difference between you as a couple, right? Different to or not necessarily different, but maybe similar to how teams should be operating or when they're working in pairs, let's say.

[00:05:44] Maureen McCarthy: This was an interesting evolution of the document. So the blueprint of, we began because of this design conversation, we thought it was just going to be for us. Then we did it with their kids. Their first blueprint they wrote was when they were four and six years old. We did one as a family. Then we started realizing, so we both had our separate consulting businesses.

And we woke up one day and said, traditional legal contracts felt like they didn't have the spirit of what we were designing in our life. And so we made what we thought was the scariest choice imaginable. We said, you know what, we're going to stop using traditional legal contracts. And only use the blueprint in our contracting process because it takes both everything you're agreeing to and who the people are and how you're going to do it together into consideration.

And so we made a list of colleagues, we could send any of our clients. Our clients are, governments and universities and international corporations like they're, they live and die by their contracts, right? And we were really nervous to say, yes, thank you for wanting us to do your contract and we're going to do a blueprint instead, if that doesn't work for you, here's a list of colleagues that you can contact and we thought we'd lose most of our clients and we never lost one in all these years.

And so it moved into the situation there where now companies, people we were, doing work with started to understand that because we did a blueprint with them. That's how we created a contract. And then they turned around and said, can you come in and teach us to our organization? Can you bring this whole concept for the groups and people and teams and things that are working together?

So it was really the organizations telling us. Oh my god, we're missing this piece of how we work together.

[00:07:22] Joe Krebs: Yeah.

[00:07:22] Maureen McCarthy: And then it just spread. We were asked to speak at an international peace conference in Russia. And that you had to either speak English, Russian, or bring an interpreter. I think there were 39 countries represented.

And suddenly it spread like wildfire. So it took on a life of its own.

[00:07:38] Zelle Nelson: Yes, it's really about having clarity in each individual having getting as much clarity as they can, and then having a conversation where you can ask questions and get curious and actually. Have a artifact that holds what is our conversation and how are we going to be together in any relationship?

There's at least three entities. There's you, there's me, and there's this third entity of we, and we need to give energy and understanding to how these all will work together and how we're going to come together to Do what we want to do.

[00:08:14] Maureen McCarthy: We have this term we call the WECO system. It's the ecosystem of the we, and the notion is that in any work situation you're in, there's an entire ecosystem of all the different pieces and who's working on what and what our roles and responsibilities and who's the customer.

All of that, but it often doesn't take the relationship of the people and who we are together into consideration. So when you get a team to start looking at okay, you've got even like the working agreements that happen in agile, right? Those are agreements on all the different pieces of the ecosystem, but the people are not built around that because.

I know agile is all about people first, right? So if you think about that, we need to have those as part of our agreements. Who are you? How do you work best? What do you look like when you're stressed out? What can I do for you to help you get you out of it? You tell me what your stress looks like.

You tell me what the best inflow day you've ever had looks like. And then we can exchange some information. You could know that about me. And then when Zelle talks about the artifact. I can be self aware myself, you can be self aware yourself but together there is no artifact. I hold me inside of me and my brain.

There isn't anything for this we, for who we are together. So we coined the term collaborative awareness because that is like the design and understanding of who we are together. And you can build that. The blueprint becomes a document, an artifact, a process that you're actually, but it's like open space.

It's simple, it's elegant. It doesn't have a lot of. There's not a lot that you have to do to really make it sing like we'll, we can do an open space. We use open space, world cafe, different large group dialogue tools to actually have people do their blueprint in a really short amount of time, like fast paced process.

So it's not some but you, it's iterative. So you're constantly upgrading it as you grow is all the different elements change. Because you need to be adaptable.

[00:10:11] Joe Krebs: Yeah. Do you have an example for that? Like for the iteration piece of your process of where you do like certain loops and refinements of some sort?

Because we assume it's not static, right?

[00:10:23] Maureen McCarthy: It's oh my God. No, the document that Zelle and I first did years ago, we've been together 25 years now. So that document was actually. Looks nothing like our document today. It has changed drastically over time because we've changed. The reasons why we're in have changed.

What matters to us has changed. And so that keeping track of that means it's a little more mindful of why are you here? Why do you want to be part of this? Keep that lit up. I want to know how you've been evolving because of all the stuff that's gone on in your life. So part of it is a group will come together.

They first write something called the blueprint of me. Each individual is a set of questions in the five components that make up the blueprint of we and me. And those five components are first is the story of me. This is in the blueprint of me version where you're writing about yourself. So what is the story of me?

What got me here to this work, this team, what I'm about in the world. The second is called interaction styles and stress messages. So this is where I share Hey, this is what I look like when I'm having an inflow day. This is what can help me stay in that space. This is what's important to me.

Sometimes it seems like here's how I want to be contacted. Don't call me before this time of day, or make sure that we write it all in an email as well as talking about it, because I need documentation. Whatever those things that make me do my job best to make me feel like my whole self can be here. I want you to know those because otherwise we end up going into these modes where I think everybody's a little bit like me, so of course, you're only just going to want it like I want it.

[00:11:55] Joe Krebs: Yeah.

[00:11:55] Maureen McCarthy: And we all know that's not actually true and our brains are operating. So we call this the filing system of the mind. If you think about how we engage the world, we basically take in all the bits of data and information that goes on around us. And it's like filling a metaphorical filing system in our mind.

Everything someone said as we were a child, what our co worker said yesterday, a book, a movie, whatever it is. We file things away. Okay. And that's why our brain is basically a meaning making machine.

[00:12:27] Zelle Nelson: All these files filter what we see, what we perceive, what we interpret as what other people do. So in the blueprint, why not exchange and give you my files of me?

You don't have to make assumptions about who I am, how I show up. What makes you,

[00:12:42] Maureen McCarthy: you're using your filing system in order to make sense of him.

Don't do that because you might be mistaken. Let him give you the files of who he is.

[00:12:51] Zelle Nelson: So again, we start with a blueprint of me where each person shares their files of me.

This is who I am. So I show up the third component is custom design, where we look at. What are our values? What are the principles that we want to design from? And what are, we start with some, maybe some opening design questions of this is what I think we're doing. And this is, my suggestions,

[00:13:16] Maureen McCarthy: but it can also be roles and responsibilities

[00:13:19] Zelle Nelson: it evolves.

[00:13:19] Maureen McCarthy: You add that over time, but this is the section where you're saying, this is what matters to us. So it's, what are the what are your values, but what do you want to feel? Every time we're working together. What kind of energy do you want to bring into this? Because that's a great lens to say, Hey, we're at the end of this meeting.

Did that feel energizing? That's one of your words. We can check in right then and say, Yeah, it did or no, it didn't. Okay. How do we iterate the design? So we have more of that energy next time. But it also includes what traditional legal contracts can include. So anything, in fact, there are lawyers, mediators, judges that are huge fans of the blueprint around the world.

There's a couple of law schools that are teaching it. You can use the blueprint process as a traditional contracting process, and it will hold up in a court of law, the same as any other contract.

But it has the people involved, which I think if a judge had to see it, it would feel quite different.

[00:14:16] Joe Krebs: This is very interesting because you just mingled a few things together in your design process, but also in the team agreements and the me and the we, right? It would be a much easier and easier to understand world if everybody would be thinking exactly like me. Wouldn't it? I wish. You wish, right?

But it would be easier, right? So we do need tools like this, but just to give listeners a, an example what I came across, which is fascinating is that the two of you guys don't really have a working agreement. I don't want to call it a working agreement. That sounds too business-y for this. But I learned that Zelle is actually asking you every single day if he if you still want to marry him.

[00:14:53] Zelle Nelson: Yes,

[00:14:53] Joe Krebs: that is a daily

[00:14:55] Maureen McCarthy: literally for 25 years. I'm not kidding you every single day or

[00:14:58] Zelle Nelson: she will ask me.

[00:14:59] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah, 1 of us just said

[00:15:01] Zelle Nelson: it doesn't need to be 1 or the other, but 1 of us will ask the other.

[00:15:05] Maureen McCarthy: He asked me this morning. I said, yes, but I am that in. Every day, because we chose to be together for a day.

And then we choose again every day. That is, there is something really different about that because I have to ask myself every day, why am I in this? Why is this where I want to be? It could be, it could have been a crazy day. We could have gotten in a big fight. But I still have to sit back and go, do I want to be here?

And you do, because every day you're building up the trust, the respect. We define what trust and respect looks like. I know what that looks like for him. He knows what it looks like for me. And so the in, Now, granted, tomorrow, one of us could say no, but shockingly, we have a healthy, insanely live, like a live relationship.

And I could never have predicted that, especially with the chaos that living in this body is.

[00:15:59] Zelle Nelson: And then there was so much we didn't know at the beginning, and that's what made it so iterative. And such a learning process, not only learning about what the other person needs, but learning about what I need.

Like I would come up and, show up in a certain way. And, she'd be like why are you doing that like that? And I might say, I don't know.

[00:16:18] Maureen McCarthy: But it's not, you move from judgment to curiosity.

[00:16:21] Zelle Nelson: Yes.

[00:16:22] Maureen McCarthy: It's not a judgmental question. It's just it's just I'm so curious. Like you've told me about all these different things and Hey, I noticed this.

Tell me more about what that is. Like we're endlessly curious. Because our minds are open. We're not, we're, we don't live in a judgmental space anymore like we did when we first met. I couldn't have predicted that either. It's fascinating.

[00:16:42] Joe Krebs: Yeah. That's, it's very interesting, right? Because if somebody listens to this and again, like living day by day that was just a reminder when I heard that you guys are asking each other every single day that really emphasizes how you live in the moment.

And I think. If you're taking this to the to teamwork, also interesting. I learned something about the you tell me if it's the blueprint or just collaboration in general is that you're really promoting a switch within your brain from defensive stances to proactive connectivity.

What do I have to picture when I study defensive stance, proactive connectivity? How does that shift look like with your method? It sounds great and totally defensive.

What would be the ideal scenario?

[00:17:30] Maureen McCarthy: So what's interesting when you think about the filing system of the mind and how you take in all this data, we have two basic. Neural networks that happen in our brain that are, and they're the two ways that our brain is evolved to keep us alive.

[00:17:43] Zelle Nelson: That's why we thrive as a species.

[00:17:44] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. So we're either protecting or we're connecting and it's a whole set of neural circuitry that can look different in different people's minds. It's not just one certain path, right? So you take things in someone in front of me saying this, doing this, showing up like this. And I'm either using my, I'm really, it's more of a continuum of safety brain to connect to brain neural circuitry.

I can either take in what you're doing and feel that protection, the stress, the judgment, all those things that happen when we feel like we're at risk. And we have a world that has been built in problem solution thinking of scanning our landscape constantly for problems, and we get a dopamine hit with a solution.

But what we found over the years is with people. Problem solution thinking is not robust enough to hold us in fast paced environments. So we started thinking about the fact that if I've got these two levels of neural circuitry, I can wake up and doom scroll the news and add more files to the safety brain version of my system.

Or I can do something to actually add more files to our connected brain neural circuitry. And it means that when I stand in front of the person who's saying this and doing this, I can make meaning in two different ways. I need my safety brain. I want it on when it is necessary, but we've made it our main mode of operation.

We are so enthralled with protection, and victim mentality too, of like being afraid of whatever somebody else is doing, that we literally cut off. Here's one of the things that's so interesting. When it's very, it's more recent neuroscience research in social neural neuroscience that says when we're focused on a problem, our brain literally becomes tunnel vision.

Because initially it was like, if the bear is coming at me, I need to tunnel down. I can't be creative. I can't be empathic. I can't be connected. I have to zero down. But what happens when we're in that space. Is we have to beat out, weed out every single thing that doesn't say, I know you, I know what you're going to do, you look like me, you act like me, you're going to talk like me, I can't see those things anymore.

So then the person I'm working with, who works very differently than me, if I'm using my safety brain neurocircuitry, I can't let them in. They're not exactly like me. So that now I begin to create other and push people away. That's the protection part of it. If on the other hand, I'm moving from judgment to curiosity.

I want to know and understand what somebody's about. I'm doing a blueprint with them. So they give me a chance to get their own files from them. Now I have the space to be able to show up. And, be in good feedback loops and listen to other people's ideas and feel engaged by the fact that someone doesn't think like me because I'm going to learn something more about how we're going to do this project.

[00:20:28] Zelle Nelson: You're going to bring something else that I don't have.

[00:20:30] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah.

[00:20:31] Zelle Nelson: That I want to invite.

And I think there's a really kind of simple explanation or example might be. Take the behavior of someone closing their door in the middle of the day. To their office. That can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.

If I had a boss who anytime they closed their door, it meant they were talking about secret things and someone was gonna get fired. I would be really freaked out if someone closed the door in their office. But if I,

[00:20:57] Maureen McCarthy: not even the boss, just anyone else, anyone, my neural circuitry might say, that means there's a problem.

[00:21:02] Zelle Nelson: Yes, in if I were in, in the connected brain space. Someone closes their door. I might get curious about what's happening or why they might be closing their door. Maybe they need to focus. Maybe there's something going on with them that, they need a little privacy or maybe we've had a conversation in our blueprint.

Earlier that said, here's the times when I closed my door, I have a project. I really need to get finished. I need to focus. If you need to talk to me feel free to knock on the door.

There's you talk to, you start to have conversations about how do we set up? What do these things mean? I don't have to be upset about them.

I can actually be. Excited or curious about them and that engages my connected brain. When I get curious about who you are and how you show up and you do the same with me, it grows our trust. It grows our connection as grows our adaptability as well. And I can, if you have a closed door policy and that's really hard for me, we can have a conversation about, Hey, how are we going to make this work?

I need to have access to you and be able to talk with you and

[00:22:05] Maureen McCarthy: you start building bridges because there are differences. There will be more and more differences. Yeah. Because things are changing so fast. Yeah. So how do you, in calm moments, build the bridge instead of getting in stressful situations about it?

[00:22:17] Joe Krebs: It's also interesting when you say that with the door, I also saw the opposite, right? There were environments where there was no door. Yes. And then people felt, this obviously, like here and there, a situation where people felt uncomfortable because, They had to talk to a doctor or something like that, personal phone call and a very important one.

And they couldn't find privacy. Yeah. And it just felt like, where can I take this call? So they were not really focused on something. So it could, it could go either way, right? Where's this person trying to find a phone call, right? And it's not always that easy.

[00:22:51] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah.

[00:22:51] Joe Krebs: You just mentioned problems a little bit our companies are there.

Yeah. They're thriving on problems. We often look at problems. But in scrum, for example, when I work with agile teams, myself, I always remind people that people are not problems. The relationships could be a problem. How does your blueprint address something like this? That it's really like problem management and how you work with organizations that are Like, hyper focused on fixing problems and like seeing everything as a problem whereas the human side or people are not necessarily the problem.

[00:23:27] Maureen McCarthy: Yeah. It's, you are so spot on when it's helping people recognize that people aren't the problem, but actually even the relationship itself is not a problem. It's an opportunity to redesign. We call it stress as a messenger. So instead of stress being a warning sign, if you think about it as a message, it's like a text on your phone that just dings and you're like, Oh, this is.

Pinging me because this matters to me. I care about meeting deadlines on time and this person's not handing me something they need to hand me. So that feels Oh, there's a problem in our relationship. But it just means that the way the relationship is being created needs a little more mindful design.

But when you start talking about there's something up with the design, let's upgrade our design is a very different conversation. Then there's a problem here.

Why are you doing this?

[00:24:22] Zelle Nelson: Oh, Zelle, you're a problem. How much energy do I have to comment? Be better to be curious. It moves me into my safety brain.

[00:24:29] Maureen McCarthy: Yes.

[00:24:30] Zelle Nelson: I want to be in a design conversation where we find clarity around what's important. And that stress message, that ping, that ding on my phone is saying, Hey, something's important. Something could be more fluid here.

[00:24:42] Maureen McCarthy: How do we design for that?

[00:24:43] Zelle Nelson: Let's get curious. Let's find out what that is. And let's design something that works.

[00:24:48] Maureen McCarthy: And we've been using these tools with groups around the world. We have facilitators around the world and it's the same everywhere. Humans show up and need those design conversations because we're not taught that in a problem solution world. When you're focusing on the problem, nobody's actually taught how to design.

In fact, even, so there's a whole set of what we call our clear mind tools. Where both individually and collectively you upgrade your brains to be running more connected brain neural circuitry than safety brain. And in that space you begin to realize that this is not a this is not a world of problems and it's actually easy to start upgrading the filing system of your mind.

One of the great sort of visuals I created a while back. Was what we call pick up the sled and it's the notion that if you're standing at the top of a snowy hill with a sled in your hands, if you sled down the left side of the hill, just a couple of times, you creates a rut in the snow. You don't need to steer anymore.

It just goes down. That's an analogy for how neural circuitry is made in the brain. Okay. But what you need to do, so if the left side of the hill is my stressful thinking around that person I'm working with, the only thing I can do to change that, because that's stress on me, they do what they do. And I get to pick whether I'm stressed or not, but what I want to have is a path down the right side of the hill as another option more curious, relaxed open perspective on the same person, same topic, and then I want to create just like I could create a positive perspective on the right side of the hill, go down a couple of times and that can become a rut as well.

But what we do is we fill the filing system with things that are down the left side of the hill, right?

So what you first need to do is actually pick up the sled in an awareness phase. I can't drag the sled from one side of the hill to the other. It's too hard. But I can't stop for a moment and say, let me pick up that sled.

I just going to notice for a while. Oh, there's me thinking that way again, there's me feeling all that stress about what he did.

I want to notice first. I don't want to change it. I don't want to say it's bad and wrong. It's just what's happening. Okay. And what happens when you begin this awareness that you're doing these things, our brain, like the rut in the snow.

We don't wake up and choose to be stressed out. It's like it comes and grabs us and drags us down the hill. So when I pick up the sled or even just notice I'm stressed and go, Oh my God, I want to pick up the sled. I can't tell you the number of times I've said those words. Now I begin to move that storm of the stress two miles away.

I can start to see it and how I can handle something when I'm in the eye of the storm and how I handle something when it's two miles off the coast is different. And then once you do an awareness phase for a bit, could be a week, a month, however long it takes, you'll know when you feel like you've moved that storm and then you can start making a new path down the right side of the hill that feels more life giving and positive because what ultimately we're doing with our work is helping to give people options.

I don't ever want to not think negative things or not be stressed or whatever. There's nothing out there that we're against or demonizing or anything. They're all just opportunities for design. So how can I have as many options as possible? When that person shows up doing that thing, I want more options and how to react.

[00:28:03] Zelle Nelson: Again, it allows us to be more agile and adaptable to any situation when I have a broader scope of ways I can engage.

[00:28:11] Maureen McCarthy: And then everything outside of you can be fluctuating all the time and be chaotic. But when you can keep doing that, then you can feel more of the calm consistently. Or you can get out of it faster.

We still get stressed out. We'll still have an argument. We get out of it so fast. I'd be dead if I didn't get out of it fast.

[00:28:29] Joe Krebs: I just wanted to say that for you, it's a very important, personally, a very important decision on what side you're going,

[00:28:35] Maureen McCarthy: exactly. It is literally a life giving.

[00:28:39] Zelle Nelson: I've learned the nuances as well in my own self, because I got had Maureen as an example of, wow, this is stress. I can't run that. ,

[00:28:48] Maureen McCarthy: like the princess and the pea. I feel stress earlier than other people, but it happens to everybody.

[00:28:54] Joe Krebs: But I think we can agree to that. It's you have an immediate, obviously, essential reaction to that. But it doesn't mean that it's not helpful for everybody else. Now if people want to get in touch with you, Maureen and Zell e both of you guys are working on a book. You guys are speaking, you guys are facilitating, you guys are obviously working in the blueprint of we, and I just learned the me and we in this podcast.

I just want to thank you guys for carving out some time, especially, and I do want to say this for somebody who's Who you guys designed something for a day by day experience that you shared for 30 minutes of your day today with the Agile FM listeners. I'm extremely thankful for that. And you made them part of your day and vice versa.

And just want to guys for stopping by and sharing a story here on Agile FM.

[00:29:49] Zelle Nelson: Oh, you're so welcome. Thanks so much. Great to be here. And you can find us at collaborativeawareness. com.

[00:29:55] Joe Krebs: That's correct. Thank you guys.