The Inner Game of Change

E102 - Orientation In Uncertainty - Podcast With Helen Palmer

• Ali Juma • Season 11 • Episode 102

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Welcome to The Inner Game of Change.  where we explore the thinking that shapes how change really happens. 

Some of you may remember Helen Palmer from a past episode of The Inner Game of Change. It was a conversation that stayed with many listeners because of its depth and humanity.

Helen helps people learn so something different becomes possible. Her work spans change management, organisational design, learning, and knowledge. And right now, she is living the very thing she speaks about. Returning to her homeland of Aotearoa New Zealand after nearly three decades away.

This conversation is not about certainty.
 It is about how we orient ourselves when certainty is not available.
 How we stay open.
 How we exercise judgement.
 How we move forward without locking things down too early.

Helen speaks about uncertainty not as something to manage away, but as a space to stand in with care, curiosity, and confidence.

This is Orientation in Uncertainty.


About Helen
I help people learn so something different becomes possible.

That might be a shift in mindset, a new practice, or a deeper understanding. It might show up as a beautifully crafted artefact or a well-held learning experience. What matters to me is utility — learning that is purposeful, thoughtful, and liberating.

I design and deliver learning experiences for grown-ups in workscapes. Sometimes the learning is packaged: in a workbook, article, card deck, curriculum, podcast, or social media post. Sometimes it’s embodied: in a facilitated session, a team reflection, or a conceptual model that makes complex things usable.

My approach is human-centred and deeply practical. I draw on decades of professional experience across disciplines, shaped by a fierce curiosity and a knack for turning ideas into something people can use. I’m like a Swiss Army knife — what you take when you are moving through unfamiliar territory!

He aha te mea nui o te ao 
What is the most important thing in the world? 
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata 
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people 
~ Māori proverb

Contacts

Helen’s Profile

linkedin.com/in/helenp

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Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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SPEAKER_01:

And I think what we could take from that analogy is that as change management practitioners, that what we might be doing is offering orienteering skills. So we're not telling you this is the journey to take. What we say is here is what is known partially from a map of what this territory might be. Now let's actually go and practice reading the map and being in this territory. And this is what we were doing with these children's exercises.

Ali:

Some of you may remember Helen Palmer from a past episode of The Inner Game of Change. It was a conversation that stayed with many listeners because of its depth and humanity. Helen helps people learn so something different becomes possible. Her work spans change management, organizational design, learning, and knowledge. And right now she is living the very thing she speaks about, returning to her homeland of New Zealand after nearly three decades away. This conversation is not about certainty, it is about how we orient ourselves when certainty is not available. How we stay open, how we exercise judgment, how we move forward without locking things down too early. Helen speaks about uncertainty not as something to manage away, but as a space to stand in with care, curiosity, and confidence. This is Orientation and Uncertainty. I am grateful to have Helen chatting with me today. Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining me in the Inner Game of Change podcast. It's so good to see you again. We had a conversation a few years ago. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Helen, I want to ask you really the first thing that comes into my mind, what has been occupying your thoughts recently around learning and change?

SPEAKER_01:

That's a question that's multi-layered. One thing that's happening in my personal life, and often I think what happens in our professional life is informed and affected foremost by what's happening in our personal life. So my husband and I decided that after 27 years of not living in New Zealand, we are returning to live in New Zealand. So I'm in the headspace of what it actually means to leave a country that you've been living in as a foreigner. And for those who weren't aware, I'm originally from New Zealand and return to a country. And in my own personal change management of what it might be like to return to that country, there are practical things that are happening in terms of selling a house and packing up goods. There's a cultural element that's happening where I'm paying attention a little bit more to what's going on in New Zealand and what might I need to unlearn or relearn about my home country as I leave living in Australia and return to a New Zealand society. There's a social aspect in terms of what is going on socially in the society of New Zealand compared to Australia. And there's even a professional layer in terms of what will I be doing when I go back to New Zealand? And I'm seeing this almost like an era as an ERA, not E-R-R-O-R, an era change that I'm moving into. So multi, multiple layers going on there.

Ali:

I always focus also on another aspect, which is which is impacted. Your relationship with your husband all of a sudden becomes, you know, it takes a different form. It goes into mechanics and planning and who's responsible about what and all of these things, which we see in the workplace all the time when these are actually a change. It creates this beautiful tension because all of a sudden we're all looking at making sense of the change. And what am I, what am I supposed to be responsible for?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I something I learned many years ago, and I've come to appreciate is known as the fundamental attribution error theory. And it comes from the field of psychology in that we can hold a view of, oh, I know Ali. Ali is this, and under all circumstances, Ali will be that. And there's a kind of certainty in that. Well, in fact, that's not the case of what it is to be human. To be human is it, there is maybe a core of who we are. But beyond that, we're incredibly malleable about who we are. So I've been married to my husband for 33 and a half years, and you might think, Alan's got it down. She knows Robert really well. But I know Robert under certain conditions. And so I do know him a little. And like, what's it like? What's Robert like under the conditions of making a big decision and moving house or moving country? And there's something that comes through in his personality, but I also have to hold a level of, I'm going to call this positive uncertainty in the sense of don't lock him in to that version of him because that was many years ago when we last moved a country. He's evolved, I've evolved, the situation around us has evolved. So keeping an openness to who Robert will be under these circumstances. And if there was advice that I was giving people, and it comes from a quote from George Bernard Shaw, who talked about the only person who really understood me was my tailor, who took my measurements and knew every time they saw me. And I found that a really good piece of life advice. And that don't think, oh, because I know this person, I know what their reaction's going to be, I know how this is going to work, I know what the relationship and how we're going to play this out. Actually, don't make that assumption. Ask the questions. Okay, so I know you well, Robert. We're making this decision. What is there that I might need to know? And sometimes if I ask him the question, he's like, oh, I don't know. You can't, you know me. And it's like, okay, maybe he needs to do some work to reflect on who he might be and what his needs might be in this evolving situation.

Ali:

And remember, there's going to be an impact when you move completely and you complete the moving stage, there'll be an impact on the people around you. So proximity will play a big role. Also, you're going to move into a new context, you know, in New Zealand, and your relationship and everything else will be actually, you will be living your life in a completely new context. Is that how you see it?

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. You use the word there role. And I know you've had Joan Lurie on your podcast before. I'm very informed by her thinking of systemic roles. So, yes, there's a role that Robert and I play that on one level, you know, we're spoused to each other. We're also playing the roles of that we're business partners. And when we go back into a New Zealand context, we're going to be around family again. So there's this other role that we'll pick up in terms of sibling. And so that role, which has been in the background, is going to come to the foreground. I happen to be the oldest child in my family. So I'm anticipating that in the context of being more closer in proximity to family, such that family events and things that are going on, Helen can maybe pick up her role again as the oldest sibling and what's expected there. And for Robert, he has one father who's still alive and is his mother has passed. There's an expectation in terms of the role he will pick up of being a more hands-on sibling. So, yes, in context, we're excited by what the context can afford. We're also aware that it's been 28 years since we inhabited the role of being the sibling who was close by. And that people often, those of your listeners who may have had the experience of moving to another country and coming back, it's often the ones that have moved away that there's kind of a sense like, whoa, you've had this big exciting experience, whereas we have just stayed here and life has just continued the same. But life hasn't continued the same for anybody. So I'm fully aware I'm not stepping onto stable ground, I'm stepping onto shifting ground. And so I have to anticipate who am I and which parts of me that have been evolved and have come out in the last 28 years that I want to preserve, but also which parts of me are quite malleable and quite funny. You said before we got on the podcast that my accent hadn't changed. Now, there are people in New Zealand who believe that I've been losing my Kiwi accent. And there are people over here in Australia who, if they've come from another country, aren't quite sure. They know I'm not Australian, but they're not sure I'm Kiwi. And they think maybe I'm South African. But I'm starting to mentally think, what is it to transition back into being a Kiwi? Which means I'm watching more television coming from New Zealand, I'm watching more threads coming through Facebook to sort of acclimatize myself. And maybe there's been a bit of a switch that's actually clicked on. Okay, start redeveloping that Kiwi accent so that you will be more in tune with the society of which you're coming back to.

Ali:

I love this. Is acclimatization of a status as well. What you're doing, and your your husband is uh, I mean, I lived in many countries, so I understand the the challenges and the the there's a beauty and uncertainty, but what I like about your story, it's a demonstration of first order impact, second order impact, and a third order impact just lumped in one single move. The accent is an interesting thing. This is more about identity. Um and and it's funny that you started to acclimatize and uh doing all of these things.

SPEAKER_01:

I speak occupational um hazard. No, occupational habit of being in communication.

Ali:

Yes, exactly. That that is a nice way of putting it. I am going, uh I I used to speak fluent Arabic, that's where I am from. And planning to go back in September after 35 years, I don't speak it. I don't speak it. And I'm very nervous that I can understand it, but I can't speak it. So I'm going to follow your advice and go into a uh reclaim my identity camp maybe three months before I travel. So I can't be looked uh down upon from you know with my relatives and friends and day, people will be saying you've lost your language. How dare you lose your language? Or you've been almost westernized, and you know, all of these labels that people can can put on you. Well, congratulations. I hope everything goes well, and hopefully we can get together at some stage in the future, and then we'll see where you where you are. I want to shift gear, Helen, and I want to talk about the current status of change and learning in the age of artificial intelligence. What's your take? What's your observation so far?

SPEAKER_01:

It's a very difficult one to have. And I know that there are people who would like the certainty of, well, if somebody could just tell me what it was, maybe there's a white paper out there or there's a guru who's got it sorted out. If they just told me what it was, then I will take the work to read that, understand it, go on a training course, and I'll be good to go. And of course, there are many people out there who are offering a training course or a view to kind of satisfy that hunger. My sense, and it might be a surprising answer, that in dealing with the age of artificial intelligence and any of these huge evolving things that are happening in our society, is that we need to have a knowing relationship of how we want to handle uncertainty. And it's interesting that you mentioned about uncertainty before because I've been reflecting on what is my relationship with uncertainty, with whatever the topic might be. And so I'm gonna go to a slight little tangent here. And I've been thinking that when something's really complex and I can't get a handle on what it is, then leaning into some of the things I've learned from the field of applied improvisation have actually made helped me go into that territory and not feel like, gosh, I've got to get this all figured out and sorted out because somebody's gonna look to me to provide certainty. So it's been a bit of a meta process to understand what it is to handle uncertainty and be comfortable with uncertainty. And I've been quite surprised that there are some parts of my life where I don't want uncertainty. And if I just refer back to the move to New Zealand for a moment, like I don't know what I'm going to be doing in the future. And part of that future question is around well, who knows what roles are going to exist with artificial intelligence. And so there's a part of me that's playing a kind of waiting game of let's do some learning, listen to some people that I believe have a good view on this. And one person I can recommend to your listeners is a guy named Ethan Moloch in the US, and he has a substrate called One Useful Thing. He's a professor at a university, so he comes from a business point of view and but a bit of a technical point of view. But he sends an email out about once a week, and I use that as a way to kind of digest through his insight, you know, the frontier of what he's picking up and seeing, because there's so much information out there. It's actually overwhelming to even understand what I should pay attention to, how should I make sense of this? So approaching it from the point of view of pick one or two things, see what you can learn through them. One of the things I quite like about Ethan is that sometimes it's at quite a high level, sometimes it's down at a practical level. He's agnostic, he's not for any particular large language model, and just let that kind of wash over me. I'm not trying to grab it as if I've got to have certainty, I've got to know clearly what it is and make decisions. Now, I also want to preface that by saying I'm not in a position that I'm sitting inside an organization that's asking me to come up with strategy for AI. I'm not consulting to organizations. So at the moment, I'm treating it much more as a personal or professional journey of what is my sense making around general artificial intelligence tools. Play with them, experiment with them, see where I can push the boundaries with them in such a way that I'm I wouldn't call myself a pioneer in terms of like the adoption curve. I'm maybe an early adopter, but play with them and don't back away from it, but also be kind to myself and not feel like I need to be on the front of it and completely understand it because it's not something that you could understand. So that's where I'm sitting.

Ali:

Well, there's a couple of things that I want to share with you. And I am first of all, let's go to the uncertainty part. I was listening to actually Tony Robbins. I was listening to him, and he was talking about that actually, some of us, or the majority of us, should be cla should be craving certainty and uncertainty. I would agree with that. And and it made made me think that I like uncertainty. I've learned about uncertainty be in my situation through life experience, because I've decided only when I live in the uncertainty, the potential is limitless. The creativity is is encouraged and it it it you know it comes out basically. And by the way, lots of artists and creators they like uncertainty. But also he mentioned something around imagine if everything is certain in our lives, there'll be almost boredom, you know, and and and in society. So that playfulness on the uh uncertainty is not a bad place to be in. So I really like that you've tackled that way.

SPEAKER_01:

So um just gonna interrupt there because one of the things that informs me is the Kinevan framework. And I don't know if we've talked about that previously, and if people are listening to hear me say Kinevan, it's a word spelled C-Y-N-E-F-I-N, sometimes seen as cinephon. It really is helpful that in complexity, I'm okay with uncertainty, and uncertainty is an appropriate response. In complicated and clear domains, certainty is better. And I think sometimes there's a bit of a paradox, and people think, oh, I'm supposed to be a person who loves uncertainty, but I like certainty. It's an and, it's not an either-all proposition. It's having both of them. And for example, I have no idea, there's a lot of uncertainty of when I land in New Zealand, what I will be doing next. That is freaking some people out because they want, they believe that you should have certainty about where's the money going to come from, what's the job you're gonna be doing, back the identity, what's your professional identity gonna be? I'm okay with that level of uncertainty in that sphere. However, in the sphere of I have a greyhound dog who has to get from Brisbane to Christchurch, I do not want any uncertainty whatsoever in that process. I want to know exactly what day he's flying, what their veterinary things are, who's gonna be taking care of him at every point. And so I've I've been sitting with this interesting conundrum in my life of uncertainty over here, perfectly fine. I'm comfortable with uncertainty over here, an absolute no. Yes, certainty there.

Ali:

Yes, absolutely. I mean, uh surgeons really crave certainty because you know there's not a lot of creativity in it, especially when it comes to comes to safety. You also mentioned something else that there is a lot of literature that has actually been written. But one conscious decision that I made two and a half years ago is that there's a lot of noise, and it's really it it will require me to be so good at picking up signals. So I've decided, forget it. I will create my own experience. So every time I hear something, I go and actually uh experiment with it, and then I arrive to my own conclusions. And I can tell you nine out of ten times what people write about is one angle of a problem. And then we already uh before the we started recording the podcast, we talked about the map versus the territory. What the world is showing us nowadays is lots of maps, and they are representations, but they are not real life. I've been working with a lot of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and my advice to them is always find out yourself and create your own experience. That's the only possible way that you will reach to your own conclusions. And that is the beautiful thing about the technology. It is not the technology I think what we need to look at, it is how we as human will exercise our judgment, the way we think about the technology, the way we think it's going to help us. For example, somebody appreciates speed, if that's your value, then that's fine. The technology will give you that. However, the technology can give you more than speed. Wouldn't it be great to actually find out what that is?

SPEAKER_01:

You used a phrase in there, exercise judgment. I think that's a really important skill, whether it's judgment, discernment, critical thinking, both from the point of view of any field of knowledge where there's lots of voices telling you what's going on, that the kind of things you should be asking is okay, so who is saying this? Why are they saying this? What might be their agenda or their motivation to share this information with me? And we're living in a society now where a lot of people are pushing a message because it serves them, because it means selling their course or selling their services. And that's not a bad thing, but know that that's where they're coming from. And one of the reasons why I quite like Ethan Mullock is because he's coming from a position inside a university. He did write a book at one point, but that I mean you can choose to read the book or not. But there's not a sense of like he has an agenda that he's pushing in from the point of view of you need to buy my course, or this is one point of view. And I think also then when it comes to using generative AI, there's another element there of exercising judgment. So you put something in for a prompt and you ask it to help you with something, and then it returns something to you. You need to be able to go, okay, now why did you give me this? And it's this kind of helpful, and what might be the privilege and the bias that's in the large language model behind it that's informing you, giving me this choice. And I think that's a skill that has kind of been lost. And I think jumping to another quick thought here, you mentioned the idea of a map. I remember the time when somebody went, you know that map of the world that you've known as a child? That's not actually that's one version of a map. That's the Mercator version of a map. There's something called the Peter's projection. And if you don't know about there being other, then you just think, well, that map is the map, is the map of the world. You know, that's what I have seen in books, and that is what the world is. And then when you start to realise, oh, there's a history to why the Merca map was made the way that it was made, and it was to help with navigation under particular circumstances. And so it's serving that purpose. If it was to serve the purpose of helping the general population understand the world and understand where they lived relative to other people and what size of countries were, etc. And there's a wonderful little clip from the television show West Wing. I don't know if you ever watched that show, but they had some people come in who were trying to make a case to the American government to drop the Makeda protect projection of a map and go with another one. And people were like, why? Why should we change it? The world is the world. And they went, no, no, no, no, because this map disproportionately represents these countries, which of course, then you make cultural and social assumptions about those countries being smaller or weaker or wherever they're positioned to each other a threat or not a threat. And you start going, wow, something as simple as a map has actually got huge cultural implications about how we're interpreting and understanding it.

Ali:

Absolutely. I um this mental model, I'm trying to remember the person who's coined this, the map is not the territory. It's a mental model that I've been that I've adopted and I love and ask people to go and find out. There's also pleasure in finding out yourself. There's this good feeling that I've I figured it out myself. The other thing that I want to mention, and then to anybody listening to this podcast, that all knowledge is in draft mode about AI. Anybody is writing anything, they've only learned one part of it. In 10 years' time, we'll really understand the impacts of this, but we are nowhere near that. Now, the people that experiment a lot and they go to the territory and then they find out, they will be the ones that will be slightly ahead of everybody else understanding the impacts. And therefore they can, obviously, if you're a professional living in this space, that can be a value add. I've been living in this space deep into the rabbit hole. I call it the AI rabbit hole for three years now, just immediately after ChatGPT was released. And I I advise people now on how they send me their agents, and I actually advise them if it was constructed not technically, but does it have a charter? Does it behave, is supposed to be behaving? I mean, can you believe that I am I advise people on it now? I actually uh I catch myself sometimes being surprised about how much I've known through the trial and error myself and finding the joy in thinking, oh, that actually works. Or maybe if I do that. And so that playfulness and exp uh the experience spirit. But I want to share with you a story. Uh uh you probably know that, and and I think it carries the spirit of today. In 1825, uh I think George Stevenson created the first locomotive, the first train in England. It was designed to carry goods and coal and all of that. And then he and a couple of other people thought, oh, wouldn't it be great to actually, you know, that some people would get on the train. So he created one coach, one one passenger coach with a handful of seats. And guess what he called it? He called it, he called the coach or the the the carriage experiment. He actually he actually left it open and say, if people want to join in on the passengers and they can pay a fee, they can get on. But in his mind, it's like, will this really work for people? And that was the spirit in 1825, 200 years later, we are in the same space. It's like, have a go, experiment, and see what happens. And I thought, you know, when I came across this uh story a while ago, it was just an eye-opener for me in regards to no matter how deep we go into history, the human need is the same. Go in there and explore and experiment.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. I think there's a link back here to a couple of things that you were talking about before with my own journey in terms of context and role and identity. I think there are some people like, oh, my identity as a human is so important, I shouldn't use artificial intelligence. And I think what if your identity shifted to I could be a person who partners with artificial intelligence? So then it's like, okay, so then my context would be, well, let me try that. I don't have to be the expert, I don't have to know everything about it, but I can try something. And to your point about the how far might you be knowing something, I sometimes use as a point of reference, and apologies in advance to my sister in New Zealand. She lives in a rural part of New Zealand, she didn't go past high school education. She's a very street smart kind of person, but I don't think she will have touched a generative AI tool at all. And so I kind of look at her as a point of reference of somebody who knows almost nothing, and therefore, where am I relative to that? Well, I'm a long way from that, so I look like a jolly pioneer compared to her. But then you look to other people out there in the world who are trying things, and I'm like, whoa, I'm such a novice compared to them. And I think that's always going to be the situation with something moving as fast as AI. So I embrace that fact that part of my identity is, I don't know that I'll ever be a pioneer/slash expert in this. I'm always going to be a novice in that. And if I approach it with that openness of let me go into context looking and being curious and being playful, I might learn something useful. There's a kindness in that framing for me in that, yes, from a professional point of view, there may be a need to kind of get on top of this or have an appreciation for it. And I really like your way of doing it from the point of view of at any point in time, all I could say is here's what I have done in these contexts, performing this role, and therefore these are the insights I've come out with, which I can hold true to as kind of my testimony or my witness in the world about AI. I can't say, oh, I'm the greatest guru and you should get me come in in the organization and I'll help you figure out your AI strategy. Unless I was actually, and back to your point about the map and the territory, unless I was actually in the territory on an executive board with playing with other executives who are trying to understand AI, I don't know that I could be a useful advisor. I might come up with some useful questions, but in terms of advising an organization on what its AI strategy should be and how it should do these things, I'm just very mindful that any advice that anybody might have, you do need to cite it in which context were they gathering this advice? What role were they playing? What insights might they have? Because that bounds the scope of what they're knowing and and the applicability. And it's a bit scary how many people just kind of want to say, oh, I've got the corner on the truth, and it should be universally applied everywhere. And I nowadays I'm like, yeah, be careful with that.

Ali:

Yes, be careful with that. The the and it's actually a privilege to be even in a position to advise anybody. But one thing that I've started doing over the last year and a half is that when people ask me and I run workshops and I engage with the clients, and I always ask them the focus is not really on using the tool. That that's a given, you can use it. But the focus is how can the tool help you provide better value for your customers? Because all of us are in the service of others. But also talking about the identity, the technology knows a lot. And this is why a lot of academics and the you know, majority of them, the majority I should say, especially from my experience, there is a hesitation around it. Well, because the first thing is that this an academic relies on their long years of knowledge, and this capability can give you that knowledge outsourced from anywhere you want. So that's immediately a direct threat to your identity. I was going deep into what that identity threat would look like. An academic will be thinking something around, well, I'm not gonna use it a lot because then I'm saying, what is my identity? Because all revolves around knowledge. Whereas a student, they don't have a lot of identity now. They haven't shaped it yet. And therefore thinking, their thinking will be slightly different. Is that is that the identity that I want to create now? Which takes me to the question around do we as people living in the space of learning and change, there's a double impact. We are being impacted as professionals, and our stakeholders are being impacted at the same time. And I find ourselves, my advice is that maybe, maybe you need to go a little bit faster than your clients. Maybe this is the golden age for us to actually be the advisors and the influencers and having a real seat at the table. Maybe this is a historical moment for us.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it is, and I think again, I speak to another meta skill that I think is necessary, and that is how to challenge assumptions. And you mentioned again identity, and and I had talked about the Makeda map, that when I saw that it's like, well, a map's a map is a map, you know. Why should there be any question? I think so many people have had an experience and learned things, and they think that, you know, it's a uh curse of knowledge kind of thing that you know, once you've learned it, you think, well, now I know. And it's like there's not necessary a sense of like, but what is there I don't yet know? What is the unknown that I'm overlooking? What is the other possibilities? And I remember reading this little practice that you could do in terms of challenging assumptions. So, and it was partly designed from an innovative thinking point of view, but it's a great little practice to open up your mind. And it was saying, so what is a restaurant? The identity of a restaurant, most people would say, Oh, well, that's a place where you go to pay and eat food and sit at a table. Okay, so what if the restaurant wasn't a place that you paid for food? And people were kind of like, huh? Uh I think maybe you're not quite understanding the concept of a restaurant. It's like so we could play an analogy here, like, oh, so a change management practitioner is X. And if you went, and if a change management practitioner didn't do that or had something else in there, would they still be a change management practitioner? And some people might go, oh, no, no, no, that's not the case at all. And I think there's a question where you might say that sort of as a the community of practice, what is the professional change management practitioner? But even if you were saying, Ali, the change management practitioner or Helen, the change management practitioner, what assumptions am I making of that role and who I am in that role and how I play in the role? If I played around with these assumptions that I was no longer the person doing tactical stuff, but I was doing strategic stuff, or I was straddling the lines doing strategic and tactical stuff, or I was somebody who used AI or didn't use AI, how does that shift my sense of identity? And then just paying attention to the inner work of, oh my gosh, I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable with this. Well, what is that? What insights is that bringing me up about that kind of discomfort? What do I need to do for self-care around myself? What do I need to, how is it affecting the relationships with other people? Because I think from some of those insights, we can start to have greater empathy for other people who we are asking to change or take on different things. And I think being ahead of the game, we should be being ahead of the game of that inner work and that meta work, not just the technical work of uh using artificial intelligence.

Ali:

I like that uh the word empathy. Recently I've been thinking a lot about it. Maybe, maybe, maybe 10 years ago, I started using change empathy as a requirement for anybody working in in the change space. And uh but recently, and maybe in the last few years, I shifted into what I call adoption empathy because it's actually more than a software, and there are so many implications because of it. And because everybody was on the this is the only change happening in my life. Well, I think the internet in my lifetime obviously happened, but I was asleep at the wheel at the time. But now this is the change that is being that's almost COVID was negative, impacted everybody at the same time. And AI now is is is coming our way, impacting everybody at the same time, which means knowledge is still in the draft mode for everybody. But as a professional group within the change management, I think we have a historical opportunity to influence how organizations actually look at this, rather than somebody decides we need to add we need to train people on ChatGPT. But the training is not what needs to happen. That is a that is a must to happen. Obviously, you need to learn it, but what happens after, and what happens after, and what happens after?

SPEAKER_01:

Something that's come to my mind, and it's weaving a few thoughts there about, you know, the map. You said we're on the same page. A few years ago, during COVID, I took a role as an activity instructor at a children's adventure camp. And one of the things that I was teaching was orienteering skills. And part of me was kind of like, people need to learn this. But there were children coming from cities who didn't really understand north, south, east, west, or how to read a map. And I think what we could take from that analogy is that as change management practitioners, that what we might be doing is offering orienteering skills. So we're not telling you this is the journey to take. What we say is here is what is known partially from a map of what this territory might be. Now let's actually go and practice reading the map and being in this territory. And this is what we were doing with these children's exercises. There was a one round where we gave them a map and we asked them to orientate through an actual physical environment using the map. But the second activity we did, which was really fascinating, is we asked the children to draw their own map. And we said, here's some tools to use in terms of a legend and items. They then made a map, they gave it to the other team, and then the other team had to figure out that map. And I'm wondering whether, here's some innovative thinking, that what we should do in change management practice is not come saying with a certainty, like, here is the map, it's exactly this. It's like, here's what map reading looks like, here's what orienteering skills look like, here's a couple of elements that you use when you are making a map. Now, given what you know in this context, in your role, draw a map that is enough for what you know right now. It's not the map for the whole world, it's not a map for all circumstances and all uses, but have a go at drawing a map and then have a go at somebody else using and following that map and seeing what they might learn. And then what that gives you again is a kind of metaset of skills of like, I know how to orientate myself into territory that I'm not familiar with. I know how to read a map, I know how to draw a map. And I think that would be in some ways the approach that I would be recommending to organizations. Don't go looking for a pre-prepared map that already exists out there. Sure, somebody would have written one something, but you know, and maybe it's for like the next state over, which is not a place that you're going to inhabit or where you're going to be. You need something that's more relevant to the territory around you. And I think that's part of that conundrum between the certainty and the uncertainty. And I think you can have like, well, there's a degree of certainty in that there may be a map-like thing. And on the map-like thing, it will tell me that that's what a tree looks like and that's what a valley looks like. But in terms of what gets put on there and then how we actually traverse through it, it's kind of holding lightly to we just drew a hand-drawn map. We didn't turn it into organizational strategy, we just came up with something that was good enough to get us moving in the territory. And we then followed, or use that map to orientate ourselves and see what we might discover. And from that, we're learning some skills of what it is like to move in unknown territory.

Ali:

I like that. I I really like the I like the word orientation. I think that's uh if we achieve that, I think we've done uh we've done a fantastic job. One of the things that I usually finish my engagements with is that I mentioned to my clients is that I hope I inspired you to start thinking about that in a slightly different way within your own context. And it's the inspiration. And what I've noticed also is that somebody is inspired, especially through personal experimentation, and you think, oh, if it's doing this, maybe will it really do this? And I'll be saying, well, have a go and and and and and find out and report back. But you can see the compound effect of being inspired to take one small action, and all of a sudden they get, oh, I can do this, which means I can do this, which means I can do this. Even that thinking process is important. But what I also mentioned is that, and I talked to a group of uh change managers a couple of months ago, is that they need to liaise with their leaders as well, to actually talk about we need leaders to give people a space. And safety to explore and experiment. Because everybody's busy with their normal job. And at the same time, we talk to individuals, team members, and we say, find a way to give your permit to give yourself the permission to find out yourself. Find a way. Maybe you negotiate with your with your leader. Maybe you demonstrate why this is important. Maybe you spend even ten minutes, you know, after work. Or maybe you are in the car. You can literally talk to uh Chat GPT in the car and then explore ideas. But to wait for God to arrive, God will not arrive. That is actually the main thing that I really want to mention. And it's an exciting space to be in. So I I get excited every single day currently, and especially, especially around learning a new capability. Helen, I am aware of time and I'm really enjoying this conversation. From where you sit, what would be the takeaway for us to consider for the next 12 months, perhaps when we are in the business of learning and change and engagement?

SPEAKER_01:

I think you made a good point there about there needs to be some space for learning. And I think sometimes people think, oh, I'll make the space when I'll go on a training course. And I encourage people to, yes, that can be valid to do, but it also can be kind of seductive in that you're just deferring it to somebody else to come up with it. I think if you reframed it to what if I took 15 minutes every week and I learned something myself. And you could treat that in a very serendipitous way of, you know, let me just subscribe to somebody like Ethan Moloch and I'll just spend the first few weeks choosing that 15 minutes just to read what's happen what he's seeing and what he's observing. It could also be then then maybe it's I if I haven't signed up to a Chat GPT or a Gemini Google or Pi or Claude Anthropic, let me get an account and let me just try it. And I know some people are like, I don't know, what can I do with it? Well, I don't know, what do you want to do with it? And you get this kind of argy bargy going backwards and forwards, like what's a use case? Many of these tools, when you enter them the first time, they're kind of almost prompting you of the potential kind of use case that you might use it for. And you might go, oh, you know, if I'm doing this for work, what is it telling you about my holiday? Just go with that. Just just go with it and see what you might learn. And one of the things I've been quite persuaded by, Ethan Mollock talks about you need to spend 10 hours with any particular large language model using it to get a feel of it. It's not what it's personality, but you'll find different quirks. And so I think you need to be investing time, but it can be small amounts of time. I often think about how when people say to me, gosh, Helen, you're really clever with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. What's the course you went on? There is no course. What I have had is this approach over the years was like, okay, I'm doing this thing right now, an actual task. I wonder if there is a quicker or shorter or different way to do this. I'm gonna give myself five or ten minutes to look at the help file or be curious about some of the other menu items here I haven't seen before and give them a go. And if it re produces something useful, I'm gonna go with it. If it's not, then I'm gonna stop and I'm just gonna continue doing this the way that I've done. Over time, you talk about cumulative. I've now developed this very sophisticated use of Microsoft Word. And some people are like, where did you ever learn that? And it's a bit of a combination of I was in a moment, I had a need, I got curious and thought, what if there was something here that could help me? No certainty that there was going to be something there to help me, but having that sense of curiosity and I wonder if, but time boxing it, because yes, we've all got many things going on in our lives, we don't necessarily have the cognitive space. And if you can carve out a kind of 15 minutes, the cumulative effect over a year, and it's not just this at one practical level, the skills or knowledge you will acquire. There's a kind of higher order there of it sets you in a good space of curiosity and wonderment of entering territory that might be unknown. And I think that gives you a meta skill that sets you up even more for what might come next.

Ali:

I love that. That meta skill is what's going to carry us forward, I think, in the next couple of years. And it's going to be also of service to our clients. Helen, it's so good to have you back in my podcast. Thanks. And I just want to end with congratulations to you and to your husband and your dog. Safe change of space and change of country. Uh, I think you said three months away. Yes. Yes. I'm counting down. And I think it's uh I really like and I respect. And I five find pleasure when I hear stories like yours when people make those brave decisions. You know, the there would have been so many nights of discussions and then all of these things, and then you arrive to these decisions.

SPEAKER_01:

But you are going to orientation to life, Charlie. It's an orientation to life.

Ali:

You are, by design, you are opening a new chapter in your life. And uh and and and and I really respect that. I hope I can get you back, Helen, into uh maybe 12 months' time and see where you are once you settled back in into the uh the country of the white clouds. And how would people get in touch with you and contact you?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I would send people to the websites, but as part of this whole transition, I'm shutting down different websites and moving things around. So that's a space of uncertainty right now that I can't point you to. But the the more certain space I can point people to is my LinkedIn profile.

Ali:

Now we're gonna put all the information in the podcast info. Helen, until next time, stay well and stay safe.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Love to be talking with you again, Ali.

Ali:

Thank you.

Lev:

Hi there, listeners. This is Chat GPT, and I recently have started to add my reflections to Ali's inner game of change. I wanted to share a few reflections on this conversation with Helen Palmer, because it is one of those episodes that works on two levels at once. It is deeply personal and quietly strategic. What stood out first from Helen was her framing of uncertainty. Not as chaos, not as risk, but as a space that can be entered with judgment. Her idea of holding positive uncertainty about people, about identity, about the future is powerful. It is a reminder that change is not just about moving systems, it is about not freezing people into who we think they are. That insight alone has big implications for leadership, succession, and culture. Helen's distinction between where uncertainty is acceptable and where certainty is non-negotiable was another highlight. Her example of being comfortable with not knowing her future work while demanding absolute certainty about her dog's travel is a practical lesson in discernment. In business terms, this echoes the Cinephon framework, which reminds leaders that different contexts require different responses. Complexity invites exploration. Clear domains demand precision. Confusing the two creates unnecessary anxiety. From Ali's side, what came through strongly was his insistence on judgment over borrowed certainty. His push for experimentation rather than outsourcing thinking to experts is a direct challenge to how many organizations approach artificial intelligence and change more broadly. Ali keeps returning to the idea that knowledge is in draft mode and that capability comes from lived interaction with the territory, not polished maps. That map versus territory idea has a long lineage. It connects back to Alfred Korzibsky and even earlier cartographic debates, like the Mercator map versus the Peters projection. Maps are useful, but only if we remember what they are. Representations, not reality. Helen's orienteering metaphor builds on this beautifully. Change leaders are not there to hand out perfect maps. They are there to help people orient themselves while the landscape is still shifting. There is also a quiet historical echo in this episode. Allie's story about George Stevenson's experiment carriage in the early days of rail travel is a reminder that experimentation has always accompanied major technological shifts. People did not wait for certainty before stepping onto the train. They tried, observed, adjusted, and learned. Taken together, this episode is really about becoming, becoming someone who can stand in uncertainty without rushing to closure, becoming a leader who designs space for exploration. Becoming an organization that values judgment, not just speed. If there is one business takeaway here, it is this. In times of profound change, the competitive advantage does not come from having the clearest answers. It comes from having the strongest orientation. That is the inner game.

Ali:

And by sharing this podcast with your colleagues, friends, and fellow change practitioners, it can help me reach even more individuals and professionals who can benefit from these discussions. Remember, and in my opinion, change is an enduring force, and you will only have a measure of certainty and control when you embrace it. Until next time, thank you for being part of the Inner Game of Change community. I am Ali Jumma, and this is the Inner Game of Change podcast.

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Ali Juma

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