1 min. with a Superhero: Jeremy Barty of MyCube
by Fred Roed on 16/09/09 at 8:29 am
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This morning we’re chatting to Jeremy Barty from MyCube, a change management process that provides business people with a unique tool to facilitate lasting change. Jeremy, please tell us a little about your product and what it’s meant to achieve?
MyCube is a product designed to help people deal with change – when change is happening, MyCube helps people deal with what is going on inside them so that they can make the necessary changes that are needed at part of the larger change process.
What is your background?
I was originally a chef (not a heavy one) then got into turnarounds of restaurants and hotels about 15 years ago became a experiencial educator working in the field of team development. I became a partner in Group Effectiveness Training, a very successful learning and development consultancy for five years… and then was captured by people’s inability to apply what they needed to change and joined Trojan Horse (my current company that owns the MyCube offering).
Consultants seem to be the new lawyers nowadays. How are you different from other consultants?
The kind of work I do is not typically consulting as I don’t have to be right and my client doesn’t have to be wrong. I really don’t bring a solution but rather a mirror…plus, lawyers don’t carry mirrors, it is always someone else’s fault.
You talk a lot about change; I think one thing many business owners use as a mantra is “something’s got to change!” yet, somehow, a year goes by and nothing ever does. What do you say to people like this?
I don’t really say anything, I just help them to see that what you say counts for very little in business; it is what you do. It’s true that people don’t change easily in our world today because the systems we adopted have allowed for people to bullshit their way out of everything. What’s scary is it’s generally the leaders that like these loose systems as they can then shift accountability to some poor worker.
Speaking of change, what do you think about the current entrepreneurial climate in South Africa? Do you think we’re changing for the good or the bad?
Firstly we have to recognise that entrepreneurs are 1 in a 1000. I believe we are sitting on a pile of gold and it’s not in the ground, it’s in the people. There is not a country in history that has been through a peacful transition like we have just been through. If we continue along towards the dream of a non racial equal-opportunity democracy we are going to have a very bright future. Perhaps one day we will be able to thank the Afrikaaner for getting us so lost and forcing us to find our humanness across the racial divide.
Then we should probably also thank the Afrikaaner for Kurt Darren. I’ve got a psychologist friend who tells me that sustainable, positive change is one of the hardest things for his patients to achieve. The reason being that most people don’t actually WANT to change, even though they know they HAVE to change. Do you think this is the same in organisations?
In some ways, yes. The big thing about sustainable positive change is that it’s not sustainable without reality – and reality tells you that as much as what you have got right as you have got wrong. So the trick for business to be sustainable is to be realistc and honest, to hold the tension it creates and then go on and be awsome anyway. We must be careful of happy clappy organisations, I don’t think they are real or sustaiable.
Finally, with MyCube, what’s your BHAG?
Well perhaps I can quote a friend who said in all her years of seeing Products, MyCube is a most unique product and she doesn’t know anything quite like it. We used it in an organisation of 2500 people and the shift was significant, so much so that they sent the test results back from America to check if they were correct. Sometimes I wonder if I am not just a pawn on a chess board – broken and blessed. My BHAG is to get this tool in the hands of the people who really need it.
Thanks Jeremy, pleasure to chat to you. Anyone intrigued about finding out about what the MyCube process is, and looking for lasting change in their organisation, get hold of Jeremy here.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
Tags: South Africa
