Keeping the Human in Human Systems in Focus | Pay Attention with Kellee Franklin

Organization transformation, whether driven by strategy or technology imperatives, will often attempt to treat the human side of change as an afterthought or something to be managed.
And that is why most transformations fail.
Transformation and innovation consultant, Kellee Franklin, understands that most transformation efforts needs to flip the script. They are not adding humans to a technology or strategy system, they are inserting technology or strategy into human systems.
To design successful transformation, Kellee knows that it’s the human system that needs to be understood, respected, mapped, and attended to.
And the best way to do this, is to pay deep attention.
On an individual level, when everyone craves human connection and want to be seen and be heard, the most valuable and powerful thing we can give someone is our attention.
Once we’ve been able to do that, when the other person feels truly seen and heard, and you’ve being doing the seeing, what becomes possible together then?
Kellee Franklin is a consultant, a leadership development advisor, a coach, and an instructor. While she helps businesses design and implement advanced technology into their organizations, she emphasizes that those organizations as human systems. The technology has to fit inside those human systems – and not the other way around.
Kellee shares what she knows to be true after years in consulting, years advising business and technology transformations, and years teaching in the classroom. You might think from all that experience and knowledge she’s accumulated, she shares nuggets of wisdom she’s gathered along the way.
But instead, it’s how she shows up and how she attends to the people and their needs within those spaces.
In this episode, Kellee answers the following questions:
- How to give attention to someone?
- How to attend to someone’s needs?
- How to show you're paying attention?
- How to be radically present with others?
My favorite quote from the episode: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
From the Mary Oliver poem “Yes! No!”
What I know to be true about the episode: Kellee is probably in a lot of spaces where she is the smartest person in the room, and others where she’s rubbing elbows with geniuses, but her approach to paying attention does not waver because of a deep belief in the value of each individual, what they can contribute, and what can be learned from them.
What I learned from the episode: It is further reinforcement of several threads we can pull on in these conversations where Kellee and other guests, all super-high achievers and people who enable and support highly accomplished people, highlight the powers of curiosity, empathy, and being radically present with others.
The resources shared in this episode can be found at https://whatdoyouknowtobetrue.com/video/how-to-pay-attention-to-one-another-pay-attention-with-kellee-franklin:
- Book: The Mind of the Leader by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
Music in this episode created by Ian Kastner.
"What Do You Know To Be True?" is a series of conversations where I speak with interesting people about their special talent or superhero power and the meaningful impact it has on others. The intention is to learn more about their experience with their superhero power, so that we can learn something about the special talent in each of us which allows us to connect more deeply with our purpose.
"What Do You Know To Be True?" is hosted by Roger Kastner, is a production of Three Blue Pens, and is recorded on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on,