S6 E2 - From Thinking to Action Part 2 - Dr. Bill Bellows and Lori Strom

In this episode of the Profound Podcast, I continue the conversation with Dr. Bill Bellows and Lori Strom, moving deeper into the origins and intent behind the In2:In Thinking Network and what it truly means to “think about our thinking.”

Bill shares the lesser-known backstory of how In2:In Thinking came to be, from its early roots as the West Coast Quality Forum to the deliberate choice to move beyond Deming’s name alone. He explains why creating new language matters when changing systems, and how words like “quality,” “thinking,” and even “together” can trap us in old meanings unless we consciously redefine them.

The discussion turns to incentives, commissions, and performance management, one of the most difficult and controversial areas of applying Deming’s philosophy. Through real-world examples from sales organizations, manufacturing, and leadership roles, we explore how individual incentives often drive behavior that harms the system as a whole, even when intentions are good. Bill and I unpack why these problems aren’t about “bad people,” but about systems that reward the wrong outcomes.

Lori introduces curiosity as a unifying theme, curiosity not just about external problems, but about our own assumptions, beliefs, and patterns of thinking. We connect curiosity to empathy, beginner’s mind, and the ability to see work as “part of” a larger system rather than isolated tasks. From parenting to leadership to organizational design, the conversation highlights how asking better questions can unlock better action.

The episode closes by reinforcing a critical point: In2:In Thinking is not about endless reflection. Thinking about thinking must ultimately lead to better decisions, better cooperation, and better results. This balance between mindfulness and action, reflection, and delivery is at the heart of Deming’s work and the mission of the In2:In Thinking Network.

Transcript:

Dr. Bill Bellows: [00:00:00] Which is not just Deming's work. 'cause we thought that we had, 'cause at Rocketdyne we're already using the Bono's ideas. We had invited Russ in, but we also were very big into the Taguchi's work. And so we started going down this path and in the very beginning it was called WCX. F West Coast X Forum.

We liked forum, we borrowed the forum from the Ohio Quality Productivity Forum, but we didn't know what X was. Yeah, but it wasn't called Demming. It was deliberately bigger than that. We got a 20 or so volunteers and a number, many of whom are part of the rebirth, and we got together, formed groups to go off in Rudy.

Hernandez was on the team assigned to come up with our, what is X? And Rudy came back and he said, we're gonna be the [00:01:00] in thinking forum. And I thought, brilliant. We already had the in thinking phrase. That's cool. And then when we applied to the state to become a legal entity. State of California.

Then they came back and said, your name is too similar to this other group. Why don't you modify. The name and then Rudy and the team came back with I, capital I, small n and the number two. That was their genius.

John Willis: Hey, bill, is the, was it the in thinking was already too close to somebody because I think, I didn't know what it was, but let me 'cause I think in a lot of ways you buried the lead, 'cause in thinking was the right name by itself.

'cause he, his, 'cause I, yes, this is the first time. I've heard that story. And so to me, when I see the term into in thinking, I just think of it as a clever [00:02:00] play on words of thinking. I don't think of it as the singular, we have reinvented a new word 'cause in thinking, which to me is way more powerful of a message.

In that how, how you use the word thinking or to that point of the Bono which is the, that idea that you you create a new word and you get the sort of license, if you will.

Dr. Bill Bellows: That's, and you get license. Absolutely. Yeah.

John Willis: And but again, I think that there's some, so like even though the In-2-In thinking is a clever play, I think it, like I said, buries the lead, which is.

That the point of this is in thinking.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah. The point. Yeah. But that's the backstory. And then we but the, a couple things about that. One is that with Rocketdyne, there was a thinking about thinking movement. We didn't have the name yet, right? Yeah. And were the name.[00:03:00]

Morriss, I was teaching for four years, a graduate class in quality management at Kellogg Business School, uni Northwestern University's, Kellogg Business School, which every year is the number one or number two business school in the United States with Harvard, back and forth. And so a, several coworkers left.

Rocketdyne went to get their masters. At university invited me to speak and then that led to me doing a graduate class in quality management. And after four years of doing that, where the class was called TQM and I didn't like the name, but that was the assigned name and nobody was gonna change after four years, the people in charge of the program said.

This is bigger than TQM we ought to change the name of the course. And I said, that's what I've been telling you for 14. [00:04:00]

Lori Strom: Yeah.

Dr. Bill Bellows: He said let's change the name. I said, okay, I'll get back with names. And so a couple weeks later, the guy in charge of the program said what do we, why don't we call it Six Sigma Quality?

And I said, absolutely not. I said, that is the prevailing system of management. And I said the name I gave him counter was, investment thinking, spending time to save time looking at things. And he said, sounds like a finance class. I said, okay, I'll get back to you. So I went to Rudy and I said, Rudy, I need a name for my class at Northwestern University.

And then I went to another friend, Austin Kim, who was a summer student. I said, Austin need a name. And so in parallel, Austin and I were bouncing ideas off each other. Rudy was over there in his world and within one week, Austin and I came up with, we were thinking of central nervous system, central thinking system.

Something thinking something thinking. And I remember being in my office at [00:05:00] home looking at books because I'm just thinking something thinking. And came across a book called The Adaptive Enterprise. Within Boeing Enterprise, Boeing was moving using this enterprise phase because the consultants at Boeing saying you're not a company.

Company means Boeing. Enterprise means suppliers customers. So within Boeing Enterprise was a big deal. So I said, Austin, enterprise thinking, and Austin's yes. Next. Then I call up Rudy, and Rudy says, in thinking, and I'm like. We've got two names now. And so I went back to Northwestern and said we're gonna call the course enterprise thinking.

And then the strategy I had was, let's call collective awareness, enterprise thinking, and let's call individual awareness in thinking. So we decided to use both phrases. And then Rudy was on the team that then used [00:06:00] the phrase in thinking which matched the forum better. Because at the forum where a bunch of individuals from the respective organizations and the strategy was, each of these individuals wanting to bring.

That thinking to their organization. So organizationally, they'd be doing enterprise thinking within, they themselves individually. And that's the path we're going down. And at Rocketdyne, the course I was teaching was called Enterprise Thinking until found out that somebody owned the trademark and threatened to sue Rocketdyne.

Oh no. Oh. For several years threatened, and then we said, okay, let's just call the whole thing. Within Rocketdyne, we kept, we dropped the enterprise thinking, but the in to thinking network use of, in thinking never changed. And that's where we've been all along is becoming aware [00:07:00]of our thinking patterns and what does that bring?

And I'd say a couple things building upon. What is saying is, we get hired in organizations to go do, which is these?

How often are you in a meeting where somebody says, what do you think? If anything, that's whoa, that's forward of you, Lori, we asked you to go too and you're not telling us what you think. Just wait a minute.

John Willis: Yeah. This is a big problem with CIOs today, right? Like you, so you. You you get you get they go after you.

You said like in the banking industry, capital One was a darling forever. So your security, your CISOs and cis are all getting oh, let's bring that person in. So you'd have professional head hunters like try to bring them in and then they'd come in with these great j it's like being the football player like you come in, but a little bit different because you have to produce right away.

And so the first thing you're, you can't do [00:08:00] or is very, it works against you is Joe ask a ton of questions 'cause you just got hired to be the person with all the answers. They and so you, you see these sees falling into that trap of the first thing they do is instead of investigate the projects that might be working.

They get rid of all those, oh, everything gold was bad. And they're not in, quote unquote in thinking in the role. Because they've got this back pressure of, Hey, wait a minute, why are you asking questions? I, we brought you in because, brick and mortar retail's getting hired, you supposedly did a great job over at some, e etailer type of, anyway.

Yeah.

Dr. Bill Bellows: The, just to add, I, what both of you're saying just reminded me is, and what I do in seminars is try to, I think trying to explain to somebody why you should use Deming's ideas is not the way to go.

Lori Strom: It's yeah.

Dr. Bill Bellows: It's like telling somebody, let me show you how to do something.

And it's again, if Lori invites me, that's one thing. [00:09:00] But still just, just, somebody to come in and say, let me show you how to do it. That's a little offputting. So the strategy was, what if I can ask you questions and then with the appreciation that there's multiple answers and just say.

Tell me about your answer. Where does your answer come from and leading to? What I like pointing out to people is we are different people at home than at work. And one basic thing is at home when it's planning a wedding, planning a vacation, planning a project in the backyard, we are not only the ones who come up.

With this overall when it's done model, but we then go off to figure out what are the elements of that, and a lot of those elements we're responsible for, we make sure the elements come together for the system. So at home we are the master conceiver. We break it down into the elements. We work on the elements [00:10:00] with an understanding of the master.

Figure that out. When we go to work, we're either working on the elements of somebody else's master or we are the integrator at the end. Rarely are we doing all of that. And so at home we have a natural ability to look at things as a system and the. The point I use is that at home parks don't exist.

Everything at home is part of, there's an of. And then we go to work and the of is invisible and part wanna, where I wanna go with this is the same person does both and. What we like to convey through the Intimate thinking network is what if we became more aware that environment is shaping who we are?

We have the ability to look at things in isolation, if that makes [00:11:00] sense. And we also have the ability to ask what does that part of? And so part of the transformation, which I think fits in well with what Dr. Deming's talking about, is that when somebody at work says. I'm working on this part. What I heard was part of, I'm thinking about the of, or I can even ask this one.

Tell me what that's part of. So this awareness piece and so in part what I wanna point out is we're I point out to be able, whether it's a one hour seminar or a full semester course. What I'm trying to convey is a vocabulary that explains what people do in different situations that they already do, and then they become the judge as to whether it's the appropriate thing to do and knowing it's appropriate is about making choices.

And so I was doing a seminar [00:12:00] earlier this week and I pointed out zero defect quality is looking at things in isolation. And the question was, are you saying that it's okay? No, what I'm saying is that's a choice. Deming, define quality in terms of how is it serving the other people, which is through relationship quality, zero defect quality is looking at things in isolation.

What I'm saying is there's a place for both.

John Willis: But you know what this gets to the core thing we talked about earlier, why it's so hard, right? Because at home you own all your decisions. Whether you like it or not. Every decision you're on

Dr. Bill Bellows: the decisions, but you're not aware of the ownership and you're, there's a lot of subconsciousness at home, but

John Willis: at home.

But the ability to see further out is because all decisions you make at a minimum, even if you're an isolationist or you don't even see any, you have no sense of system. Think. You're still seeing three layers away. The if I [00:13:00] decide to only spend money on this and I have no gas, I'm gonna figure out really quick that I'm not gonna be able to get to work.

Or, and then we can go through, you've done some great examples, but at work it is, almost by definition, impossible to own your decisions. And so the two ways that people try to solve this problem is, and the one that always was incredibly hard for me to understand and I gotta admit it.

There's one thing in Demings preaching and talking about that I still have a lot of angst about is the idea of not paying commissions. Yeah. And so Amazon tried this, but it didn't, it only worked for a little bit of time where everybody had everybody at one point made the same salary.

Because then you, the one way is financial can we force and Dick Steel talks about, and so it sounds like Dick Steel's company has successfully run what Deming preaches, which is basically Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No loyalty. No, like no bonuses. Everybody's working from the same pool.

Dr. Bill Bellows: There is

John Willis: profit sharing, [00:14:00] which goes right exactly.

And that becomes, you own it, right? Because that, yes, if you can do that, this is in I would dare to say almost impossible. And some have tried at a, 50,000, 80,000, a hundred thousand person level company because because the layering is so complex. To, they try bonus and profit tools, but and again, even Amazon tried it wherever it made the be salary, but then if you wanted to get an executive, you had to put 'em in a bonus pool, right?

Which was different than say a worker, so that, that way of doing it through profit sharing only works. And again, there are certain positions that you just have to go out and pay. And the problem I've always had is because I've done a couple of software companies. I don't see a way to be successful as a startup software company to become a non-start a larger company without having incredibly great salespeople and incredibly great salespeople do not work on non-commission.

That's [00:15:00] right. And so off the bat, you're a faced with a this is an impossible problem. And that's not even trying to solve the 90,000 person organization. Where everybody is a cog in the wheel, unless you're an executive. And then the other was there's the financial attempts that companies made, like Amazon and again, I think Dick Steel's, and I think it's brilliant what he's accomplished, but I think there's a, there's an.

Easement in numbers there because that becomes way harder if you're like 10,000, 50,000, 30,000. And the other one is back to what I said earlier, and again, I don't know that this works, so I've never seen anybody try it. But giving everybody a copy of Danella Meadows system, thinking from the top down and try to say, Hey, at least we can get everybody to start thinking like this.

Maybe you will think about at least more than two or three orders of magnitude of part of the

Dr. Bill Bellows: The challenge is to get people to.

You have to find people that fit the system and on this whole commission [00:16:00] thing one story that comes to mind as you're sharing that is one of the first CEOs to seriously challenge commissions was the closing keynote speaker at the first end-to-end forum. Rob Rodin. He was CEO of company in, I forget the name of the company.

They were, I wanna say a middleman in. Consumer electronics Yes. Or so if you're Hewlett Packard. Yeah. He was in my

John Willis: de book. I covered that. Then

Dr. Bill Bellows: You go to Rob's company and they help you on the supply chain. They help you on the design and they were between you and your suppliers providing a lot of value.

Yeah. Avnet was his company. Yeah. And and. Over the course of several years realized so much of what he was doing was the antithesis of Deming. And in a short [00:17:00] period of time when he could do something about it he got the green light to get rid of an individual compensation incentives and all that.

And one of the stories he told at the In-2-In Forum when he spoke was. There was a senior guy in sales that was an old friend of his, maybe from another company, and he said Rob's going out to Boston. They're gonna go visit a big customer in New England area. And he said he. Picks up Rob at the airport and he says to Rob something have you gone?

Have you gone nuts? And said, you fricking idiot, when we were in college, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. How dumb this is, we're gonna lose people. And then they went to the customer meeting and this guy explains the new system they're working on and what a genius Rob is. Right? And then they get back in the car.

Onto the next one. Rob. Rob. Rob. And point with Rob Strange. It took this guy a while to realize the [00:18:00] genius because what you're missing is what's in it for me? What's in it for me? What's in it for me? What's in it for me? And yeah, you may be the world's best salesperson, but the company needs more than that.

And that behavior will drive the company out of business. And that's what Rob was finding is he had people in sales. That were selling things to people that had low credit ratings, but who cares? He somebody be like, I'm the salesperson, John, and I call you up and I say I need you.

We got a big incentive, a big sales promotion going on, John, I need you to go buy. And you're like, bill I can't buy it this month. I can only buy it next month 'cause I bought everything I can this month. It's the end of the month and I need you to buy it now, John. And you're like and.

Sense what he was doing was the sales person was booking the sale on Friday for this month, couldn't [00:19:00] deliver it until a Monday.

John Willis: It

Dr. Bill Bellows: just a bunch of crazy

John Willis: behavior. But I can give you example in non-sales, exactly the same where Oh yeah. Is judged by some KPI, by how they deliver some something on a line.

And they fluff the how that book wheels, which also I covered in my book, like the, the in, in Detroit, right? You didn't wanna ever buy a car on a Friday and you didn't want a car. A car was built on a Monday, right? And so again, I think that's a symptom, and this is an idealistic symptom is not a symptom of commissions.

It's a symptom of bad hygiene of a sales organization, which would be similar to bad hygiene of any sort of like system that, that literally, again if. If it is commission for commission's sake, I'm going, go on here. When you build leaderboards in a company, you're gonna get that kind of behavior.

If you go in the back on any car dealership and you get to go in the rooms where you don't get to see the rooms where they go, I'll be right back. I'm gonna talk to my manager. In every one of those walls is a leaderboard, [00:20:00] a monthly leaderboard. That's bad hygiene. Yeah. But then you're, but then there are sales organizations that don't have leaderboards, that still have commissions.

And that is there's the, there is a common agreement of like, why we're gonna do this. And but you're still commission based. I guess my like, meta point is that and I did actually cover Marshall Industries, was is the, what's his face? Marshall? That that, that, the, again, there's the bad implementation as the example of why you can't do this is usually not, 'cause I can give software delivery people even what's going on with AI right now just to keep, not keep bringing AI into it, but a lot of the awards that you win in open source right now is based on how many sort of software changes you make.

So people are building AI bots. To do scans of known problems across buildings so that they're getting these, now they're lining up on the top of the leaderboard. So it's the leaderboard that causes the problem, or the kpi or the MBOs.

Dr. Bill Bellows: And the point is the people [00:21:00] that you get a few people and it's all about me.

Does an organization benefit from having people that are so singularly individually focused? Answer is no. Can you really afford, can an organization afford anyone who is so selfish? If they're selling what serves them, but not what helps production, how is that helping the organization?

And that's what I believe Rob spoke about is the very top salespeople. He might have lost, but you know what? It was good riddance. Yeah.

John Willis: But again there's

Dr. Bill Bellows: Extremely talented, but it's not serving the rest of us.

John Willis: And I, I just would argue that, a top salesman isn't a person who sells for the short term. And this goes back to the good to great Jim [00:22:00] Collins stuff, right?

Like the, the idea that like, you know. If I'm the CEO of a company, I'm trying to, and this is all idealistic 'cause this is very hard problems to solve but I'm not hiring a sales person who just meets numbers. John, mind you mind a sales person that makes a ridiculous amount of money because, but I do mind a sales person that makes a ridiculous amount of money because they're always working on the short term.

Yep. Never gonna resell. My company's never gonna resell. If I shyster somebody to get into this and for all the wrong reasons, then when I'm coming back for renewal, I'm losing that co company.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Now what you're saying reminds me of a sports example. The only. National Football League team to go undefeated the entire season, including the Super Bowl.

So New England Patriots went undefeated and lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl. I remember that. But in 1972, the Miami Dolphins went the entire [00:23:00] season in, including the Super Bowl, won every single game. Do you remember the name of their defense? That I do not. Was known as the no name Defense

A bunch of great contributors that played together as a system. I thought that was the Toronto Blue Jays. Oh, they were pretty damn good. And the, the Dodgers have a bunch of stars, but the Dodgers also have a bunch of great.

John Willis: Let's not go this direction. Yeah. I'm a Yankee fan.

Yeah.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Bunch of players that are willing to share the ball for who's got the best. Yeah.

John Willis: I don't disagree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Is right. As opposed to pass it to me. Pass it. May pass to me.

John Willis: We know that and should like, I mean we know that in sports, the greatest sports teams are the ones that actually can figure out [00:24:00] how the team mentality, right?

Like it's, most organizations try to bring in sports experts to be consultants. Yes. The team mentality, but yeah. So curiosity, Lori, you like you said, that was the theme. Yeah. Hey, and no no. But so I think it, in one sense it's blatantly obvious why it might be a great theme, but then the non-obvious.

What, why curiosity?

Lori Strom: I dunno, the non-obvious. We could, I could play out, I gotta make you watch for this

John Willis: a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Gonna make, yeah, I

Lori Strom: know. Like I could play that out so many different ways, but I think it's like. At some level there's that surface. Like I think we can all think about like curiosity about externally.

And I think the deeper element is also being curious about like, why we think, what we think, why we believe, like how do you continue and talk about this with my son too. It's like, how do you keep that like beginner's mind? It is actually very hard because there's as we, especially as we get older, there's ah, like I've, learned to do it this way.

This is the [00:25:00] right way to do it. And sometimes it's a lot harder to ask ourselves questions and be curious about I'm just very curious in general about like why we do what we do as humans. And what are those patterns? And each of us has different, a different approach, perspective, values like upbringing, but that all informs like how we see the world.

I see so much richness in if we can approach things, even let's say a lot of the division that's happening right now, if we could approach it instead of trying to be like, you're wrong. I'm right. To really try to understand and be curious about each other. I feel like we'd be having very different conversations.

Yeah, and I think the same way in the, in each of us, how we show up at work, but part of, I think the curiosity is it's on so many levels how we can, be curious and how to spark that curiosity. And sometimes like how to crack open long held beliefs and assumptions that we have. But how do we [00:26:00] like.

Inspire curiosity in ourselves and others and create a really safe place to do that.

John Willis: I think a lot about one of the greatest we, when we were defining DevOps right? And we were learning that we were evolving from a lot of lean and what a lot of us, including myself, didn't know that a lot of it came from Deming.

Wow, how do you imagine that? And there was a young, a gentleman I knew very well that wrote this article that DevOps is empathy.

And it was like, it just broke everything open because you're talking about curiosity, and I think curiosity is a great way. Are you always questioning why you're thinking?

Are you curious, like you said, the beginner's mind, like I can always sort of force myself to go back to I like it in what I think the theory of knowledge is, how do we know what we think we know? Like we should be able to ask every single time. But empathy is that sort of part where.

When we talk about division, if I can always force, and this is what I try to teach my kids, I don't know if I think reasonably successful, is can you always put yourself in the other person's mind of thinking and then think about how you're having [00:27:00] that conversation.

Lori Strom: Yeah,

John Willis: I think there's.

Lori Strom: Great power there.

John Willis: Yeah.

Lori Strom: Even John, what I think about too is like the I've thought, talked a lot about with my son and others about communication and there was I can't remember what book I was reading, but it was about really powerful message about the. How we all have some intent with our communication now, however that's received, like we have no control over that, but we judge other people on their actions and like what they say.

We don't peel back the onion to think about what their intent may be or ask questions about what is their intent. We have a reaction to what they say and do, but we are judging ourselves on the intent of what we said. So it's like really holding each other to different standards. But it's really fascinating.

And if we can like. Ask questions about like those interactions, whether it's like, it could be some simple, like we're really just looking at things from another way. But I do think like it's. It's hard in the moment [00:28:00] when, especially if you're getting heated, to be able to stop and to be like, equip yourselves with how do we unpack this and how do we, like, how can we see it a different way?

Like why I, how I challenge my son sometimes to when he is oh, this person did this and this was, bad. I was a like let's think of. Five other stories about what could be going on in their head to get into like intent of they could have just had a really bad day and they, whatever were being, making a snap comment at you.

It had nothing to do with you or they, their mind could be on something else. And so it, it just helps to put yourselves in other people's shoes in a different ways. But I don't think those are skills that we're all taught.

John Willis: No, and not to go, like I told you all in the beginning, I've been really deep diving on quantum computing, which goes back to quantum mechanics, which then leads me into another rabbit hole called quantum consciousness.

And what you find, which is fascinating is. How our language and communication [00:29:00] is such a small, minuscule part. All of nature. And back to even the idea of words, right? And so to your discussion about intent, right? The fact that like our toolbox for communicating the world around us is, like minuscule.

And somehow we, and then so you start finding out in quantum, like all these things we can't explain. And I and I think that's fascinating but even to the point of our conversation between two people, like we're using these abstractions of words and what this word means to us. And we have no idea what the historical background what the, where that person lived, where the person grew up, right?

The assumption and we're having this challenge of a sort of five characters or eight characters that literally were, playing like a mental ping pong. Yeah, and that, that idea that, that sort of language actually, or just whatever we consider the the envelope of communication mostly [00:30:00]Language is so limited. And we are so judgmental about that limitation. I don't know.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah. What you're saying, John, is think part of the premise of our thinking about thinking is how can we work together and learn together? If we don't know what together means.

John Willis: Okay.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah. That's right. That's right. And so until we can think about together, how can you think together until you think about what together means? Fundamentally about a connections, which is, goes back to seeing things as a system, which is about part of, and then as you're talking about understanding, being appreciative of.

The context in which people are, so the Red Bead experiment was about blaming the workers for the red beads without appreciation of the system they're in and how that can [00:31:00] constrain them.

John Willis: Yeah. It's funny because, as I think about what is another sort of constraint, it is time, right? In other words, like if I'm given a 30 minute presentation, I've gotta use my words if even in a podcast we gotta be really, like if we want, we're trying to do a great podcast between the three of us, so we're literally trying to pick the right word.

Our sentence so that we can, we don't like John, what do you mean about together? All right, now we're spending 20 minutes on it. Whoops. So we I think even in a way we communicate is always time derivative in that we've gotta, we've gotta force us to use the, what we think is the best word.

Now, I know Bill pretty well right now, and I knew when I saw said license the other day, or not the other day, 20 minutes ago. Like he got it right away, but that was lucky. I could have missed and he would've went off and I wonder what John meant was that right?

Anyway so time or the, those constraints and like you said, the red be game is like constant constraints. It's whoa. Wait a minute. Why do you get these defects? Like instead of whoa, boss, come on. It's funny, I've done the red B day [00:32:00] sometimes in, in the sort of DevOps and the sort of the community that I grew up with.

There's always this idea of a retrospective and we've been very retrospective, being able to sort sit back, okay, let's talk about what happened. I'm not saying we're great at this, and every time I've run it with that, the first would say, Hey, can we have a retrospective? Can we have a postmortem?

No, I'm the mean boss. No, there's not. No. So like there, there is no time to be able to question the boss in the Red Beat game. I design it, it's not that way. You're not allowed to say wait a minute, boss. Isn't there a problem with the suppliers here? You don't have to ask that question.

Dr. Bill Bellows: The, and basically what you're saying, what also comes to mind is

you relative to what we're trying to accomplish with an end-to-end thinking network forum. What we don't want is that it's viewed as a place where people just think about their thinking because eventually it has to turn into action.

Lori Strom: Yeah. So proposal

Dr. Bill Bellows: is that the time we spend mindful, the time we spend investing in the mindfulness [00:33:00] to think about our thinking and work with others.

'Cause

what I remind of is our daughter. Is now living with her boyfriend, and I think it's the first time each, either of them has lived with another and they're going early on. I said, so how are things going? She said she says, it's, I have to be careful 'cause it's no longer my bedroom. It's our bedroom.

And I said, Allison, I said, what you're also realizing is no longer what you wanna do by yourself. And so this togetherness stuff is not just. I'm gonna go get things done. Yes. Does it take time to talk with Lori and you about things? Yes. But the idea is that lacking that, what time do we waste?

Lori Strom: So the,

Dr. Bill Bellows: Is that at an In-2-In forum? It's not just. We're gonna sit back and we, what we wanna get through to people is at the end of the day, it has to result in better action. It's otherwise, we're just sitting back pondering, pondering. So you can talk talk.

By Friday we have to deliver [00:34:00] and, but we're still talking about ideally thinking about more possibilities before the deadline. And yes, the deadline exists. Yes, we can talk about moving the deadline, but we're also talking about after the deadline, should things fall short. It's using that feedback to improve.

So there's mindfulness of finite resources, finite time, but also a mindfulness of a bigger system, period. And then the question is, what can we do within that? I see organization, lots of resources get wasted in organizations as is. And I think if we spent more time becoming aware of our thinking and working and learning together, we can consume fewer resources.

It short of that, just keep doing what you're doing.

John Willis: Yeah. No, and I think that the Pandora's box is the fact that you are thinking about thinking. That's right. [00:35:00] So yes. I'm just saying in the sort of the, that there is always the constraint and it's the threading the needle of.

Being able to, like you said, if we all shut up into and thinking this summer, and I definitely want to find out the dates and all that so we can act and I will be there this year or next year, yeah. But but yeah, if we just spent the whole like weekend talking about figuring out what the word together meant, like that we would accomplish.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah, that's right. We wanna track much of an audience. We spent all weekend thinking about what together means.

John Willis: But we, the fact that we go in with this open mind of thinking and that and I think another part too is like having respect, right? That's the one thing I've been fortunate enough to be in a lot of the forums that I go to.

There, there's very little ego because it just doesn't fit, it doesn't work. You are the sore thumb if you're in, if you're in a room of a bunch of people that should have egos, that don't have egos, and then somebody who shows up with an ego, it doesn't work. And then there's this sort of I'm gonna, I'm, when you say something, bill.

I have immediate [00:36:00] respect for or Lori, I have immediate respect for that. This is coming from a good intent and a learning principle that I may not agree with it. And then even if I disagree with it, you in turn say, I'd like to understand why John I totally disagree with him, but I wanna understand why John, there's something like he's, I have enough respect for him that there might be a reason I'm not aware of.

Get curious. Yeah. Yeah. Curious. Ah, there you go. There. That was a plug and Perfect. There you got it. Some for,

Lori Strom: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm

John Willis: still landing. Landing.

Lori Strom: If

John Willis: you'll Yeah, I'll

Lori Strom: do like for anyone who, we'd love to see you at the forum. It's July of next year. The weekend of Friday, July 17th. Okay.

Through 19th in Santa Clarita, California. It's gonna be an all in person event. This year we are, we're re-baselining in terms of how we engage folks, but we do have also a monthly webinar series. Folks can get on the email list in2in.org and they can get [00:37:00] announcements about the webinars and more information about the speakers.

But. John, thanks for having us today. It was great talking with you. And I am, I'm gonna have to drop off, but I'll really look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Yeah,

John Willis: we do this with Bill, Bill's. Bill sets the record for the longest ones and where has to dissect where the middle's gonna be and turn into and, but that's not my job anymore, yeah. That's good. No. Awesome. Take. Great. It was great meeting you. I can't wait to see. I, we will do this again. As we get close, we'll get some promos. I wanna definitely see if I can get more of my sort of my group. I know I got a couple people show up last year. Yeah. But I'm disappointed that we didn't get more, 'cause I think you know Rob Oh they were, yeah.

They and Shane. Yeah. You put those people in front of the, this, these other people that have never really spoken to each other. Yeah. It's just magical,

Dr. Bill Bellows: We gotta do this maybe is have a podcast. With Rob, with Shane. That's a

John Willis: great answer.

Dr. Bill Bellows: Yeah, that's

John Willis: a great answer.

Lori Strom: Take care. I have to drop.

John Willis: Alright, good enough. Yeah we'll definitely do [00:38:00] that.