1-DEGREE/Shift: Small changes, big impact

What if your company could leverage AI to not only increase productivity but also improve your mental well-being? What if the secret to transforming your workplace culture and achieving extraordinary results lay in the smallest, most intentional changes? 

In this episode of The Catalyst by Softchoice, host Heather Haskin sits down with 1-Degree/Shift founders Suchitra Davies-Webb and Nick Foster to explore how small, intentional shifts in leadership can drive transformative change in workplace culture.  

From fostering conscious accountability to utilizing innovative AI tools, discover how their unique approach helps organizations achieve inclusivity, well-being, and high performance. Listen in to learn how small changes can lead to extraordinary results. 

Featuring: 1-Degree/Shift co-founders Suchitra Davies-Webb and Nick Foster 

The Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.

Transcript

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You're listening to The Catalyst by Soft Choice, a podcast about unleashing the full potential in people and technology. I'm your host, Heather Haskin. In today's rapidly evolving workplace, leadership and culture are more critical and more challenging than ever before. Organizations face increasing pressure to foster environments where people feel engaged, yet many struggle to bridge the gap between vision and action. What does it take to create a thriving workplace culture? How do leaders inspire meaningful change in their organizations while staying agile? Well, like any big change, it all starts with a small shift. One Degree Shift specializes in helping organizations achieve meaningful and sustainable change by shifting mindsets, aligning cultures, and fostering leadership growth. Whether it's about improving well being, driving accountability, or creating inclusive spaces, their expertise enables teams to thrive in today's fast paced world. Today, I'm joined by One Degree Shift founders Suchitra Davies Webb and Nick Foster. We'll explore how small, intentional changes and a very innovative application of AI can lead to extraordinary results and organizational performance. Nick and Suchitra, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very excited to talk with both of you. On The Catalyst, we always like to start off by asking our guests to tell us about their purpose at work, uh, the thing that drives them. So, Suchitra, I would love to ask you, what drives you as a leader? Heather, I've had the pleasure of working purposefully for a couple of decades now. It's so deeply fulfilling, and what that means for me is I've noticed that the pattern for me is if I get to curate warm, introspective space for leaders to get more clear, more honest about what's really going on with them. That helps us all live in more flow. All of us grow from that kind of reflection and honesty. Because I think if we're growing courageously and consciously from a deep sense of belonging, like from knowing that we're not alone, from knowing that we're not the only ones trying to figure this kind of thing out, that jazzes me. I'm on purpose if I'm doing any sort of version of that. So helping leaders live with less fear. In other words. That's very insightful. And it's not something that I would think that people would think about every day as a challenge for a leader living in fear. I think people just assume leaders are confident they don't have fear. So that's an interesting and important challenge to offer. Nick, what would your purpose statement be? Thanks, Heather. And building off of what Sujitra talked about, because they're very much aligned. For me, I have a deep passion for leadership and specifically to foster a renaissance, a redefinition of what leadership is and where purpose and growth are really at the heart of that leadership. And This is all about helping people, those people we're talking about, live out their best selves through their work environment. I think we're way past the point where leadership used to be defined by basically people producing results and driving hard for numbers. And when I think about what's going on with leadership these days, there's an expectation from the new generation coming into the workforce that leaders actually understand wellbeing, actually understand inclusion, actually understand way more. And at the core is that. Self awareness that they have to have, that they have to bring to leadership so that they are authentic in the way that they actually lead people. And so Suchitra's work is really at the core of all of the stuff that drives me in terms of that shift in leadership. Making conscious choices, right? Being conscious about what we're doing, not operating on automatic pilot. It has a profound impact. That's a very mindful way of thinking about it. Wonderful purpose statements. Thank you so much for sharing. Let's take a step backwards a little bit. I'd love to get to know you both a little bit better. So, Treacher, I've heard that you're a fan of adventure. What kinds of activities do you like to do? Here's why I'm a fan of adventure, because I feel like as a coach, I can't quit. be asking leaders to push their boundaries and get uncomfortable and therefore grow if I'm not doing it myself. So I have done a range of things over time. I mean, most recently I decided to learn how to ride a motorbike in my fifties and have owned several. I bought a trailer and had to figure out how to tow it and do all of the DIY that comes with that. So those are a couple of ways most recently where I'm just, I'm trying to put myself into uncomfortable situations where I'm forcing myself to stretch because that's what we're asking leaders that we work with to do. That's amazing. That's an insightful way to take your free time and improve yourself and improve your well being. Very fun too. Nick, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Do you have some activities that you like doing? Yeah, one of the things that I've been doing since 2006 is international volunteering. It sort of happened by accident. The employees at Soft Choice decided they wanted to raise money after they saw the tsunami in 2004. And they raised 85, 000 through all kinds of activities. And when it came time to spend the money, one of the things that popped up was this opportunity to go and actually build houses for people in Sri Lanka. So we spent two weeks building houses, and it kind of affected me deeply. And I went back personally for another trip in 2006 to sort of figure out why it affected me so much. And on that trip, we were actually handing out the deeds for some of the houses, and somebody said thank you to me. And honestly, I said, oh, it's nothing. Because what I really meant is, compared to my life, what I've done here is very little. And this guy took umbrage with my comment and said, what do you mean? It's nothing. It's everything. This is a house where people are going to bring their kids up. They're going to study. They're going to have weddings. They're going to, you know, he went on and on. And I was embarrassed a little bit, but I realized it got me thinking that in my life, how much had I really done to give back? How much had I really done for others? And my leadership, probably, if I was really honest, I would say to that point was defined on what was good for me and what I could get, and it shifted everything for me, but it really shifted me more than I think anything else, which was brilliant and changed my leadership. As a result of that, I started to think about. How is it that I'm impacting other people? And how is it that we as an organization, we're having an impact on the world. And so it became very much more externally referenced rather than internally referenced. And all about, was I doing right by the people that I was leading? And you know, that's a very human feeling. I know it sounds selfish. What's in it for me, but that's a very normal human feeling that we all experienced. It's not something to be ashamed of, it's evolution, it's survival of the fittest, it's why we're all here. But, but when we can evolve and think about others first, I think that just creates such a more quality experience if everyone is doing that, so that's a wonderful, mindful viewpoint. And we believe, Heather, you have to do both, because if you're not taking care of yourself, or taking care of the what's in it for me, you become either a martyr or burnt out. So it has to be both. But what Nick's pointing to is at the heart of our work, which is helping leaders better understand their impact. What's your actual impact? And how does that line up with what you might have intended? What's the gap there? That's very interesting. I almost wonder, how does that work? How do you do that? So let's talk about One Degree Shift, the company that you both co founded together. I'd love to hear about the starting story. The name is amazing. It definitely makes me pause and think. And I think you both actually met at SoftChoice, correct? Yes, SoftChoice is the origin story in a sense of One Degree Shift. You know, if I go back and I remember, SoftChoice was founded by David Holgate and Joan Panavis, and they were both motivated to build an environment unlike anything that they had experienced in their careers. And David loved to challenge old norms. And Joan constantly pushed people to step up to their highest ideals. Neither accepted talk. Uh, they wanted demonstrated actions that produced results. So they were, you know, committed to doing it differently, but also wanted it still to have a meaningful impact. At a certain point, when I was at SoftChoice, we decided to risk the whole company on a U S expansion. And after we got over the riskiest period, I realized that poor management was the greatest obstacle. To our success, if the management didn't grow faster than the company, then they would figure out a way to slow down the growth of the company. And so we decided to build a management development program ourselves and enter Sujitra, who was hired to build that program and run that program for leaders. And so we built a management one on one and a leadership one on one program, which was unheard of in its day. And people went through this program with us. And we learned so much about them, and they learned so much about the mindsets that we wanted to use to run the company. And so it was just, um, an amazing time of, of growth for both of us in putting something like that together. I'm loving this story about One Degree Shift. When did you two decide to go off on your own? So together, we spent several years giving each manager that intensive training that Nick just talked about, because we were convinced that they needed to grow in order for the company to grow. And, and then. Through that explosive growth, Soft Choice went from like five to 40 branches. I realized that I wanted to spend more time coaching. So I was doing some coaching as part of that process, but it was more training than coaching. And I loved this, this journey of helping people uncover what they were thinking about. So the mindset shifts that were required for the actual change versus just the skill training that we often just overlay on top of the existing things that leaders are telling themselves. So while I was still at soft choice, we started a program called Morpheus and it was a bit of a follow on. experience to help further develop those leaders that wanted more into that inner journey of mindset shifts. And then I, I left Soft Choice to become a certified coach, but I continue to partner in offering Morpheus, but as an outside partner. That's incredible. And how risky of you to do that, but at the same time, very much part of what you've been telling us is centric to the business idea. So very inspiring. And just to fill that out, Heather, after spending 18 years myself at Soft Choice, building a culture from scratch and struggling with developing our people and our leaders, I realized that my experience could be useful to others who wanted to build healthy, vibrant cultures that outperform. I ended up reconnecting with Suchitra at that point and two other people that became founders of One Degree Shift. And we realized we had this shared passion, which was really all about what is our purpose statement as an organization. And that is catalyzing conscious leadership to inspire transformative and healthy growth. And that became the basis of the work to build One Degree Shift. As we look at that framework that you've built for One Degree Shift, I'd love to dive into that a little bit more. What would be your leadership framework at One Degree Shift? After working with more than a hundred organizations, we started to realize that our primary focus was in helping build cultures that drove high performance. And COVID brought our awareness to the key that wellbeing is not a detractor to performance, but actually the absence of wellbeing was. And so well being became part of our, our focus as well. And cultures that were welcoming and inclusive, they created a community where people felt a belonging. And without this, work could easily feel like a transaction, not a meaningful relationship. And so what came out of that was this key focus on three pillars, which was high performing organizations, Wellbeing at the core and inclusion in, in that belonging sense. That was the three components of what we did. And, and we feel headed that needs to happen, of course, at an organizational level, at the team level, but in the, in the center of that model is you, the individual, and we're very purposeful about that because healthy growth. requires leaders to be doing their own work, to examine the unexamined. And without that kind of reflection, it's just so easy to not look at the unexamined. And the unintended impact of that is that we create unintended consequences that mess with the results that we want to create. So you as at the center, of our model because we feel that all evolution occurs at that level. We have to change ourselves in order to serve more effectively as leaders. In other words, there's so much stress coming at us. If we're not aware of what triggers us and what default behaviors we resort to when we're not at our best, we can't change that. So this all comes back to me. I keep thinking about the conscious part of what you both were speaking about and to not be reactive or emotional, but to pause and be proactive. It's an amazing, simple concept that can definitely create that shift and change. So as we look at some of the ways that you both came up with this framework, things have changed a lot in the last several years, the business has changed, the way people work has changed, and even just, you know, our country's economy, as we think about that approach now, how has it changed? Thanks so much. Thanks. The leadership approach that you both take changed to keep up with all of these changes. Yeah, it's quite a swing, or it has been quite a swing, as we've thought about the major events that have happened over the past five to six years. A lot of awareness has come to, uh, well being and inclusion. But I think we're actually seeing now a swing in the other direction, which is, People are getting more focused on results with, you know, the potential of the economy being in recession. Results matter. And, you know, this is not something we ever said didn't matter. We actually have always believed that results are important. And it's in the balance of how you produce those results that's so critical. And when we think about one of the core elements of performance, clear accountability is one of those things. And quite often people think of accountability the wrong way. They think of it as who's going to pay when something goes wrong. And so we're actually enforcing or reinforcing the idea that fear should be part of that equation and accountability. We have a program we call Conscious Accountability, which is all about inviting people into the possibility of working together with a chosen accountability around the key things that you want to accomplish. And in that environment, mistakes are okay, as long as we learn from those mistakes, that's the key piece. And so building that kind of culture of accountability is fundamental to creating an organization that outperforms. And so we've been doing a lot of work on that topic of accountability with many organizations. We love to talk about results in the business world and in IT. So, um, are there any areas that you both like that one degree shift tracks as far as KPIs, which feels counterintuitive for something like this when you're talking about emotions and leadership and being conscious. But at the same time, I do wonder if we're thinking about those results. What can we track to understand if we are bettering ourselves or if the program is working? That's interesting because probably the most meaningful KPI we use is whether or not an organization becomes a great place to work, which really is the ultimate measure for us. And we don't overdo it in terms of, you know, taking credit for that shift because so much of it is really their own intention to get there. And then following the roadmap that we've given them or worked with them on, it's larger than us. But it is a key thing that we get very happy about when we see another one of our clients that's been named a great place to work. I always appreciate being a part of an organization that has that rating. It truly does mean a lot. It's an interesting thing to measure, Heather, isn't it? Right? Because it's the quality of all the interactions that are happening throughout any given day project. decision. So engagement scores, which are part of Great Places to Work, it's how are people responding to the work? How engaged are they in the work? How purposeful does the work feel? And so a lot of that is, is qualitative. It's in the antidotes. It's in the, it's in the energy of the company and how people are showing up, how much of themselves they're giving versus just being on autopilot. That's the reason why I feel like it's so difficult to understand how you can improve those things. Because some of them are hard to track on paper, but you can feel it when you show up, you can feel it in your meetings, you can feel it in your one to ones with your leaders. And so it's definitely there, and it's definitely a hugely important aspect to all the other things that we do track. It trickles in and affects them. Now I'm curious about what types of companies you usually work with. What kinds of issues do different companies seem to need the most help with and what are the biggest challenges in changing the corporate culture? So I know that's a couple questions. Yeah, Heather, we typically work with organizations with probably at least 100 people in the organization and maybe as many as 3, 000 people. And that would be, I would consider that the sweet spot. That said, we have worked with organizations that have 30, 000 employees and organizations that are. Tiny that are 10 people that want to set the right foundation so that when they get to a hundred, they've got the culture already built clearly from the beginning. There's lots of different areas where we can impact an organization. And one of the areas that is showing up a lot lately is the dynamics on the leadership team. And sometimes there are interpersonal issues that are getting in the way of highly aligned, high performing leadership teams. And sometimes we're working with those teams to help them to understand the unintended impacts of their own behavior on the rest of the leadership team. And so it can be working with groups as small as seven to create impact. But in those cases, what we know is they're going to impact 3000 people, if that's the size of the company. And so it's so critical that they get aligned and there's no politics and Backstabbing and noise that goes on the executive team. So we're happy to work with big organizations. They're just way more complicated and there's way more moving parts and way more people that have to recognize that internal work. We have a phrase, we like to work with owners. And owners doesn't mean the person that actually owns the company, but somebody who's going to be accountable for the decisions that are being made. We want people that are going to own the change that they're talking about. We get all of our power from the strength that the leader gives us. And so when they are. committed to the change. We build our power with all of the work we're doing off of that. It's just a question of can we get enough people that are solid on the change they want to make so that we can create the leverage, if you will, that gives the whole program strength. So that their investment lasts, right? So that the change is sticky. We've 10 years now together and we've certainly learned that without that ownership, Heather, if the senior leaders aren't. Completely bought in and modeling and, and being transparent about their own learning or how they're working on themselves, being transparent and honest and vulnerable, I think just models permission for everybody else to be in it together, right? A culture of learning. High performing cultures don't make less mistakes. They actually make more mistakes than low performing cultures. But they own up to them, as Sajitra said, and they learn from them as quickly as possible. We love an organization that's willing to be that kind of vulnerable. So when you talk about mistakes, tell me some of these examples, because I'm imagining A slew of things. I'd like to get a little more specific. Are we talking about emotional leadership style mistakes or mistakes in the business, like areas of go to market? It could be all of that. If somebody, for example, blows up in a meeting and is actually able to come back to that group and say, I apologize. There's a story here that keeps affecting me, then here's what I'm trying to learn. And, um, so if you notice me do it again, you know, help me out here because I'm trying to change that. That's wonderful modeling of what we're talking about. The mistake could be that somebody sent an email to a client that shouldn't have gone to that client. Something as simple as that. But in some organizations, We hide it, we pretend that didn't happen. We blame IT, it was a technology issue. We find all kinds of ways to point fingers and shift blame. In a high performing organization, they'll say, oops, that's on me. I blew it. I shouldn't have done that was something I will learn from. And you know, it'll never happen again. Imagine sort of, okay, now I moved that quickly with that kind of error versus all of the investigations that happen. Okay, let's go and examine IT, find out what's going on with the systems. We waste time. Chasing boogeyman that aren't really real because people were trying to blame somebody else. And so it's low performing because it creates silos, right? It creates people working against each other in the same organization, trying to outperform out wit, you know, whereas if everyone's aligned and working on the same page and there isn't that need to blame or to hide mistakes, things happen more quickly, more readily. It all comes down to trust, to me, you know, if you have a leader or an organization's culture of trust, where you can own up to those mistakes and feel that you will not be harshly reprimanded for something that you're working to change and have that trust, and then it also comes down to ego, so being humble and being willing to admit those errors or even just being Being mindful and seeing them, that conscious, trusting environment, um, can only bring better results. So then we enter artificial intelligence to all of these things that we talked about. Having and utilizing the incredible AI tools that are available today, how does that help with this work? We look at AI as a way of extending what we do or supporting what we do and creating scalability and speed, but change happens in organizations at all levels and for us to create awareness and sometimes it's skill development. At all levels in an organization, one of the ways we have been playing with is using artificial intelligence. And what we've been doing is building bots that actually help people go through a process that otherwise they might go through with a coach, but the bot becomes the coach. And so we're training bots with all of the information and all of the skill and knowledge that we have so that those bots can approximate us, which means we can actually deploy those bots throughout an organization. And maybe they're not going to be as great as we would be, but they'll be pretty darn good and help people get experience that's necessary. That, that creates some self awareness for the change that we're talking about. And so that's an overarching view of what we're thinking about. Well, an appreciating purpose was our first bot, Heather. And it was something that we actually started with Softchoice about a year ago, because they realized that each person having a purpose statement was. The foundation to role alignment and ultimately to performance. Everyone's really clear, right? On why they're doing what they're doing, how that overlaps with the organization's purpose, it lights everyone on fire in a good way. So this bot that we created walks the user through a series of questions that encourages each individual leader to discuss. their most important meaningful motivations. And the beauty of this is that this bot can scale across hundreds or even thousands of people in a short amount of time. So they then come into a workshop with us and we help them humanize, but further personalize, uh, and deepen the meaning. But they have a really solid draft as a starting point. I feel like that could be useful in So many arenas, even just someone that's looking for a job, trying to figure out their purpose. And when people bring those purpose statements to the initial workshop that we run, especially if the people around them know them somewhat, they can actually say, you know, it's more of this or that word's got a lot of energy for you. Say more about that. And what comes out of that is a refinement that takes sometimes a generic sounding purpose statement and makes it sing. It's a wonderful process to watch. When it's done that way. And so that heavy lifting of that first time using the bot creates immense leverage for a group workshop. And then our value is really in the group workshop, which is key. That's great because you can use that bot and then humanize it and get that person to person feedback. And so it's really enhancing the quality of the work instead of replacing the human part of the work. So that's really cool. I've also heard that you have something like a summit bot. Is that in the works? It's actually deployed with a client in the U S right now and several others that are testing it. This is a bot that, you know, if you really think about most managers, one of their key responsibilities is to build a coaching plan for their direct reports. But if you really ask most people, do they have a coaching plan? They don't. And when you sort of look in the depth of that is it's a lot of work to create a coaching plan for an employee. So what we did is we created a bot, which is really a process that leads the manager through this relatively simple set of questions. And by answering the questions and reflecting and giving their own experiences with. The employee, what it does is actually assembles information in the background and helps the manager build a coaching plan that they can co create with the employee because the employee has to be part of that same process. But it gives you, the manager, these. Chances to say, okay, what I'm really worried about is this, you know, what if I tell them what I really think and they cry, or what if they get angry? What if they leave the room? And the bot actually gives them the opportunity to play out those scenarios in the conversation with the bot. And think through how they're going to respond. If something happens in the bot, we'll give them suggestions and ideas of how they might respond if something happens. And so it allows them to think through the difficult questions, the difficult conversations that are going to be had quite often in coaching plan discussions. And it takes all of the energy out of the worry and all the fear that, that comes in, which is the reason people don't build coaching plans. And so this bot actually walks them through the process. And if they just follow it, they end up with a coaching plan for their employee. So it's really simple and it's having a huge impact with one of our clients that's been using it. They want to take it broader because they're seeing, Oh, this is really helpful. And the feedback from the employees is they feel like they're having a career conversation. Which was sort of a surprise to us because we didn't really think of this as career planning. But when you're actually getting good coaching, I understand where I'm going and how I'm going to get there and what do I have to do to get there? And the number one reason people leave organizations is that people don't have a plan for where their career is going. So this actually solves that problem. And it's simple. As we wrap things up here, I'd love to learn a little bit more about where listeners can find you and maybe invite other One degree shift to participate in some of their leadership activities. Our website is one degree shift.ca, so that's one dash degree shift.ca. You can follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, you just search one dash degree shift, or email us at info@onedegree.ca. You can find us through any of those channels. One degree shift is revolutionizing leadership and workplace culture by helping organizations make small, meaningful changes that lead to massive results. From fostering trust and inclusivity to utilizing innovative AI tools. They're showing us how slight shifts in perspective can unlock powerful transformations. I want to thank Nick and Suchitra for coming on the show and thank you for listening. I'm Heather Haskin, and this is The Catalyst. See you again in two weeks. The Catalyst is brought to you by Soft Choice, a leading North American technology solutions provider. It is written and produced by Angela Cope, Philippe Dimas, and Brayden Banks in partnership with Pilgrim Content Marketing.