Heather Hiscox: The Power of the Pause
Transforming Social Change Through Deep Care and Intentional Action
Listen
What wisdom lives in the spaces between action? What clarity emerges when we step back and breathe? What possibilities remain hidden when we're moving too quickly to notice them?
Our drive for immediate results has created a paradox in social change. We launch initiatives with the best intentions, yet often find ourselves recreating the very systems we hope to transform. We track activities rather than outcomes. We exhaust ourselves without achieving the deeper change we seek.
Today, our search brings us into conversation with someone who has felt this frustration firsthand—and transformed it into a practice for rethinking how change actually happens.
Her journey began with a simple recognition: despite our best efforts, the status quo remains stubbornly in place. Rather than pushing harder, she chose to step back, to question our fundamental assumptions, and to create a methodology that helps changemakers navigate complex challenges with greater certainty and less waste.
Through her organization and online community, she's gathering disruptive thinkers who are reclaiming their power through meaningful connection and thoughtful action. Her work suggests that sometimes the most radical act isn't doing more—it's slowing down long enough to find a better way forward.
This is a conversation about what becomes possible when we create space for reflection before action, when we bring intention to our impact, and when we gather with shared purpose that transcends what any of us could accomplish alone.
Guest
Heather Hiscox is a self-described "frustrated changemaker" with a mission to transform how we approach social impact. With over 13 years as an entrepreneur, she has launched five different ventures focused on dismantling ineffective change processes and creating sustainable solutions that actually serve communities.
As founder and CEO of Pause for Change, Heather has developed the PAUSE method—a proven framework helping organizations address complex challenges and pursue promising opportunities with greater certainty, fewer resources, and less time. Her approach shifts the energy from "designing for" to "designing with," ensuring stakeholders are involved throughout the process rather than surprised at the end.
In her book, "No More Status Quo: A Proven Framework to Change the Way We Change the World," Heather shares practical strategies for moving beyond what she calls "the giant triangle of waste"—the traditional problem-solving approach that often recreates the very systems we hope to transform. Her work is grounded in love, deep care, and the belief that all change is natural and possible.
Heather is also co-creator and host of the Possibility Project, an online conversation series and growing community of disruptive thinkers who are reclaiming their power through meaningful connection and thoughtful action. She speaks at conferences across nonprofit, local government, and philanthropic sectors about social impact disruption and innovation.
Resources Mentioned:
Pause for Change: www.PauseForChange.com
The Possibility Project: www.PossibilityProject.org
Book Website: www.NoMoreStatusQuoBook.com
Heather on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/heatherhiscox
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Transcript
[00:00:08] John: In a world that celebrates constant motion, what might we discover if we simply paused? What wisdom lives in the spaces between action? What clarity emerges when we step back and breathe? What possibilities remain hidden when we're moving too quickly to even notice them?
[00:00:27] John: Our drive for immediate results has created a paradox in social change. We launch initiatives with the best intentions, yet often find ourselves recreating the very systems we hoped to transform. We track activities rather than outcomes, and we exhaust ourselves without achieving the deeper change we seek.
[00:00:47] John: Today, our search brings us into a conversation with someone who has felt this frustration firsthand and transformed it into a practice for rethinking how change actually happens. Her journey began with a simple recognition: despite our best efforts, the status quo remained stubbornly in place. Rather than pushing harder, she chose to step back, to question our fundamental assumptions, and to create a methodology that helps changemakers navigate complex challenges with greater certainty and less waste.
[00:01:22] John: Through her organization and online community, she is gathering disruptive thinkers who are reclaiming their power through meaningful connection and thoughtful action. Her work suggests that sometimes the most radical act isn't doing more. It's slowing down long enough to find a better way forward.
[00:01:43] John: This is a conversation about what becomes possible when we create space for reflection before action, when we bring attention to our impact, and when we gather with shared purpose that transcends what any of us could accomplish alone. Heather, I'm so grateful to share some time and space with you today, to be in conversation with you and to learn more about what you do, why you do it. I'm always inspired and curious about why and where people came from. Was there something in your childhood growing up with parents who were more socially minded that sort of framed this approach that you take with your career and with the way you choose to walk through the world?
[00:02:30] Heather: You know, I think I was an odd child in that I thought about social problems really early. Like as a kid, they would vex and perplex me. And I think I was always curious about people and why the world was the way it was. My mom tells a story that when I was about seven, I was crying at nights, and so she went into my bedroom to see what was going on, and I was upset about racism. "I hate racism, mama, racism." And she just was like, "Okay, this is the child that I have. All right, here we go."
[00:03:07] Heather: Just being sensitive as a kid, I think always being empathic and empathetic and just sort of noticing and watching. I think that's just how I was growing up. And my mom was definitely very social justice minded. She was an English as an English language learner teacher most of her career, mostly first graders, and she would teach all day, and then at night she would teach classes for their parents for free, for parents that were trying to get ready for the immigration exams. And so she would rent space at the church across the street or at the school, and she would teach at night. And so I saw her involvement in community.
[00:03:46] Heather: And then what was interesting is that the foil to my mom was my dad, who was Air Force military guy, who was all about structure. "And how are you going to do this?" And so it was a wonderful marriage between the two of them, because it was my mom, the dreamer, you know, Don Quixote, like, chase the wild dream, go after everything, pursue the impossible. That's always what she was talking about when we were growing up. My dad was just like, "Okay, but how do you pay your bills and how are you actually going to do this? And who was going to be there? And how are you going to fund this and how you pull it off?" So it was great because it was the possible and the imagination with the practical.
[00:04:32] John: Was there a moment where you realized that you were empathic, you were sensitive, that you had that in a way that maybe other kids didn't have that?
[00:04:42] Heather: Yeah, I think so. You know, friends of mine used to joke that their parents would joke I had book smarts but not street smarts. And I think that's probably true, but I think I was just always watching. And I'm the second child, and I'm about six years younger than my sister, just the two of us. And so I spent my whole childhood kind of watching her and my parents and like, "Okay, note: do not do that. You will get in trouble. Do you not say that? Do not act those ways." So, for better or for worse, I kind of learned to navigate different spaces.
[00:05:17] Heather: But I think I was always really just interested in my classmates and watching the interactions. You know, when like friend groups and seeing cliques form and how that all took shape and then seeing dynamics with my teachers and then being involved in a church community growing up, just seeing, you know, being with my elders, learning what those relationships were like. So I think I was just always kind of obsessed with relationships and connection and just watching that and being sensitive to what other people might be feeling or experiencing with that watching.
[00:05:51] John: Were you a floater? Did you navigate between different cliques and communities and older people and younger people?
[00:06:00] Heather: Yeah, I think so. I was I call it kind of under the radar. I was never trying to perform for anyone, and I was never feeling really cast out. I think I always was just kind of like, "Okay, I'm just doing my thing. I'm just trying to do this thing. Stay out of trouble. Be happy. Just find my people." You know, pursue what I want to pursue. I think I was sort of at whatever that middle ground is.
[00:06:27] John: What led you into working into social impact? What was that kind of path like for you?
[00:06:33] Heather: Yeah. I mean, I thought there was nothing else that I could possibly do. Nothing else makes sense. So, you know, when in high school, I was, you know, causing debates in classrooms, just really calling out my fellow students for racist or, you know, really troubling sentiments that they were sharing, really engaging in dialog. And so, I really got involved in journalism. I thought journalism would be my path because I really wanted to capture people's stories. And it was just a mode in which I could be compensated for my curiosity and for that storytelling.
[00:07:07] Heather: But I found very early, from a practical perspective, that was not going to be a fit with the stressful nature of that work and the per column inch reimbursement models. I would want to write these elegant long tales and they'd be like, "No, you got four inches and you get $2." So it was like, "No, this isn't cool." I went into sociology and was focused on social injustice and Africana studies was my minor. And then I really got interested in the politics and culture of African-American health. And that's what I focused on health disparities for my graduate program.
[00:07:41] Heather: So in the beginning, it actually was social justice with a health focus, which is really interesting, but that gave me exposure to patients and working with thousands of individuals in medical settings. And that really deepened my empathy and connection and those abilities to connect. And then what I also found was I loved having a hypothesis. I love saying "what if?" "I wonder if" or "what about." So that really drove another vehicle for my curiosity to be engaged and that just, I don't know, automatically connected me to grassroots organizing work, movement making, to nonprofit work, to philanthropy, to local government, to ecosystems, to find out who were in these spaces, who was having power, who is having impact through shaping our realities. And so that's really how it morphed from health into nonprofit. And then I learned about fundraising and how broken those systems were in engaging in philanthropy, and then more into the government space. So it just kind of morphed and flowed from there.
[00:08:51] John: I can see this background of your mother and your father, merging together and finding that heart centered space, but also that analytical side in your piloting questions and hypotheses to test them and see if they're working or not. And having that sort of guide, the sort of heart centered way that you've seen them move through the world. That's beautiful.
[00:09:11] Heather: Yeah. Definitely. It's like the angels on the shoulder saying, "well, I was thinking like, dream, practical dream" that was going back and forth.
[00:09:20] John: You know, as I've moved through the world and grown up, I have been inundated with the way that technology and software is built. And this phrase that as I was doing research on this episode, kind of kept jumping into my mind and I wanted to kind of bring it up. Moving fast and breaking things, that is, if you see something that is countercultural, but advocating for pausing in a world that's obsessed with constant action, get it done, get it done now.
[00:09:52] Heather: The moving fast and break things. I used to be really active in the startup world and startup culture and what I kept noticing and raising about was about externalities. "Okay. Creating this x y z. What about that unintended ripple effects that you're not even pausing to consider? You're not thinking about by what you're creating, how that will impact people's lives and the ecosystems that they live within." People just didn't care. A lot of the startup folks were so focused on capital and scaling and growth and ego and posture. It was just like they couldn't even go there for these conversations. So I learned quickly that those were not my members. Those are not like folks. I didn't want to participate in those spaces because what I have done, you know, before I knew better. And what I have seen continuously is when you move fast, the breaking things is you break people, you create harm, you hurt communities, you break trust, you dismantle and destroy relationships.
[00:10:57] Heather: You set back that progress that is generated by reciprocity and mutuality when everything's like, "who's the winner? You know who's the best, who earns the most, who moves the fastest is who creates. I don't know the most." What's lost is humanity. What's lost is actual truth and connection and relationship. And so I just learned really early that that was just not my jam, that nothing good is coming from that. And then when we keep participating in those practices, we're just really devolving our potential ourselves in our work.
[00:11:28] John: Which I'm assuming might be why you call yourself a frustrated change maker in that sense. I'm curious if you see this idea of being a frustrated change maker as an opportunity, and what that opportunity kind of looks like to you?
[00:11:44] Heather: Yeah, I think for me, it's like raising a flag or sending a signal to my people to say, "if you're frustrated, I'm frustrated too. If you're committed to being a change maker and making a difference and learning and growing and transforming your communities, great. I'm here too. And you can be angry. You can be so full of hope and you have a dream of who you are as an individual, but who you are collectively. And you're frustrated, you're angry, you're upset, you're outraged. We can hold it all. We have space for that."
[00:12:25] Heather: So I think that's what has really, that's what that phrase means to me, is so I'm not giving up, but I'm pissed. So how do we handle that? How do we live in those spaces where we can imagine a brighter, bolder future that's for everyone while we also want to tear down where we are right now? And so operate in those spaces that we want to dismantle and destroy because they're not serving all of us, but we have to still function Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 in these areas of tension. So this really with the phrasing this symbolizes to me.
[00:13:06] John: I love that frustrated changemaker idea. And then I was doing some writing before this episode and the other word or sort of another phrasing of that popped in my head about a relentless optimist. Seems like the kind of person that you seem to be.
[00:13:21] Heather: It really is a riff off of, I have to give attribution to George Ave from Greater Good Studio in Chicago. His line that he has on LinkedIn is "pissed off optimist." Yeah, what that was like. Yeah I, I feel that like that that lands a certain weight to me. And so when I was working on the book and working on, you know, just really getting more rooted in my work, it was like, "Okay, it's always been change making. I've always wanted to change the world, even since I was a seven year old, you know, crying in bed." But there's a frustration level there. There's that you're hitting against something. There's that tension that I needed to explore and express.
[00:14:07] John: I love that you bring up Greater Good Studio there. What they do and I look at you as a designer. I don't know if you see yourself in that sense, but I've noticed that you use this term co-design and collective and the idea of co-designing seems like such a beautiful idea. How does that work into your pause framework and kind of just jump into the meat of that idea of what that framework is?
[00:14:31] Heather: You know, the co-design is really about. And I think there's also, there's a spectrum of co-design. It's really interesting. There's some people will say some people aren't practicing co-design if they don't follow a certain structure. Other people will be like, "you're only a co-designer for doing these different elements." So it's a murky space. But to me, the definition and why I'm committed to the practice is that it really shifts the energy from designing for to designing with. To creating for and creating with.
[00:15:04] Heather: And that's what the PAUSE framework is about, is really dismantling the current status quo problem solving strategies that most people use in nonprofit, local government philanthropy, which I call the giant triangle of waste. It's being initiated by some sort of fear or an issue or challenge or hope. And then we jump to solution. We do a bunch of research. We look at our peers, we look at best practices with blinded option. Someone with institutional power makes a decision about the path forward. And then through one size fits all solutions and change management, "you must fall in line. Everyone's going to build this thing that we've agreed upon, and it's the only thing that we have."
[00:15:43] Heather: So it feels like the stakes are so high. "We have to design. We have to launch and get ready." But often when revealing this process or policy or program stakeholders have had nothing to do with it. They're outside of this silo, this echo chamber of saying, "we're going to build and design for you, and then we're going to reveal it to you with excitement." And then there is a huge risk that you're going to say, "I don't want that. Okay. I have something else. I've already tried that. It didn't work. I'm already using a different strategy" or whatever it is.
[00:16:20] Heather: And so there's a huge amount of risk in time and assumptions and just keep creeping up more and more and more into months and years of work, only to collapse because stakeholders were never involved in the process. And this refers to internal and external folks. So it could be people within the organization that no one talks to, often called frontline staff. It could be community members, volunteers, partners in the community that are never talked to, that are never included.
[00:16:50] Heather: So that's what the PAUSE framework is about is saying, "Okay, we have to get alignment before we can move forward. We have to really understand the challenge and who all is impacting with those individuals. We need to identify what we know and what we don't know. We need to understand deeply what the current state of affairs is really all about. And then we can brainstorm in abundance. And then before we pursue one of maybe 30 different strategies. So we're not just based on one in scarcity. We're going to try to break our solution. We're going to intentionally try to tear it apart before investing a ton of resources and test the key assumptions. And then we're going to make decisions based on evidence so we can start to dismantle and pull apart those power dynamics where a hierarchy decides what will happen, even when there's a lot of disconnection from lived experience. Sometimes in those positions, we're going to make decisions with confidence and clarity about what we know will actually change people's lives."
[00:17:45] Heather: And so that's why I teach organizations and teams to do is to recognize and challenge their existing behaviors and to see how those are not getting us where we want to go, and then helping them and guiding them with coaching, support and training to use these new skills.
[00:18:01] John: People seem to really dislike actually challenging things. And I'm curious, I'm included. I know that I've never met a human doesn't have a fear around change. And one of the things that really impresses me is that you seem to swallow that idea and accept it, but also keep moving forward and just keep going and saying, "we can do this." How do you make space for facilitating change like that with people? Whether it's yourself or with other people, because it seems like you're quite good at it.
[00:18:35] Heather: Well, I'm going to read you the ending selection from my book. And this is, this really encapsulates how I think about change. And it's what I talk to my teams about. And it feels a bit woo-woo when some of my teams are like, "what training I'm going to do?" And then I make sure they understand my perspective on change. And it's part of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower: "All that you touch? You change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change."
[00:19:13] Heather: So what I tell my teams is that, you know, when you inhale and exhale, while you're sitting here listening to my voice, that is change. You are changing the physiology of your body. If we look outside and there's a breeze through the trees, it's changing our physical environment. You know, the sun and the moon rising. Our daily practices, life overall. Right. We're seeing the change of seasons. We're seeing our animal friends. We're seeing the sky. That's it's all change. Literally everything we have is change. So if we know that that's all that is, that's all that exists is this continual regeneration and transformation. We can look at it differently. It doesn't have to be something. The fear is, can be seen as something that's the most natural state of all beings.
[00:20:02] Heather: So why don't we just root ourselves in that and know that with love and care, we can appreciate our team members. We can appreciate all the folks we're trying to support. We can just kind of take a breath. And so by leading with that passage, I think it sets a different tone with, you know, who I am and what my expectations are. But I also redefine success. You know, success to me is learning. Do we learn something that we didn't know before? Awesome. We are rocking it. Great job. So I redefine those expectations that people think that I'm there like they have to prove to me or prove to their bosses.
[00:20:36] Heather: I level set with my clients right away like I'm a different type of consultant. I have no idea where this is going to go. We can launch an amazing idea. Or we could just say with clarity that something should not be built, and that's an equal win. And then I added a singular framework just about, I don't know, seven years ago where I added focus on uncertainty. Let's really name what we don't know and let's celebrate it because that is the fuel and the journey ahead. So that's going to lay out our learning journey map, where we're going to take what we don't know, and we're going to transform it into more clarity and understanding and connection. And so by just laying out these different breadcrumbs that are really intentionally challenging how we think about change, I think it really starts to shift the mindsets of the folks I get to support.
[00:21:23] John: That's beautiful. I noticed in our conversations and mean just in reading up on you, there's this phrase deep care and love that keeps popping up. And as someone who you know, I literally have love tattooed on me. And what that idea plays into your work, the idea of love.
[00:21:45] Heather: You know, I think it's interesting, when I was writing the book, I had sent the book, some early drafts to a colleague, and I said, "can you read this and just give me your thoughts?" And she's a great writer, great communicator, great at structuring and helping organizations. And she said, "you seem really angry in this writing." And honestly, the first part of the book, about 30% of the book and the initial part of it is about what I think is, you know, messed up in the sector and how we got there. And then about 70% is all about inspiration of how we can be different with lots of stories and examples.
[00:22:21] Heather: But she read that initial part and it really just stunned me in a way that it was supposed to. She was supposed to read that. I was supposed to hear that message because it made me sit back and say, "well, that's not who I am. That's not how I show up to this work." I mean, there's the frustration that I never show up with anger. And so I thought, "I need to really think about and read, reread my writing and really think about, okay, what is the base from which I lead?" And it is love and it is care. And so it helped me reshape the wording. And then now I just use it as the guiding principle for all my work.
[00:22:56] Heather: So if I have a presentation that I have to give, or I'm reshaping some of my content to fit in an event or a speaking engagement, I really think, "what do I want people to feel? What's the love that I want to convey without my whole presentation, you know, being like googly eyes and hearts and things. And I'm not saying I love you, I love you, but how do I infuse that?" If I start with the basis of love and care for these fellow changemakers and how I want them to feel seen and heard and appreciated and understood, and I want to guide them to what's possible, I need to infuse that with love. And anytime I get stuck, I have writer's block or I'm not quite sure where I want to go with the presentation. It just helps me if I stop and say, "Okay, what's that love? What's that feeling?" It just helps unlock my next steps.
[00:23:50] John: And it's not often you find the term love being thrown around in such a powerful way. I think that that's a certain amount of wisdom that we can look back on and say, this is a way that we can lead and move forward through whatever technological changes that we're seeing or differences in society. I'm curious what led you to write this book?
[00:24:13] Heather: Oh, the book, I say was living under my skin. It was just sitting there ready to pop out. I wanted to write it. Well, first of all, I'm a writer. I have written since I was a kid. That has always been my form of expression and processing. So, you know, if I had a rough day in school or there was a conflict in the family or anything that was going on, I always would just write pages and pages just to get it out and just sort of get my thoughts together and out of my body. And so I've just always done that. That's been my default.
[00:24:46] Heather: And so I had a business partner who I love dearly. To this day, we're not together anymore, but we launched two different ventures together. And I said, you know, "I really think there's a book. I really want to write a book." And she was more reserved around marketing and kind of outreach and putting yourself out there. And she said, "well, let's just do blog posts. Let's do articles." But like energetically, that just wasn't what I wanted to do. And we did a couple, just like most people do. But I felt like there's something here. So when she stepped away during COVID and I took over the business, couple years ago, I said, "Okay, I think it's time. I really want to explore."
[00:25:19] Heather: So I use my own framework to go through my own uncertainty, to say, "I never written a book, I don't really know what's involved." And so I started interviewing people that had written, you know, with book deals, hybrid self-publishing, because I just want to learn what was out there. And they were so gracious and kind and sharing their lessons learned and advice for me. And I just was able to integrate all of that love and care that they shared with me. And so I chose to do hybrid and, those first 30 pages I sent to Paige Joseph Stein, who one of the co-founders and, she read it and said, "I think there's something there." And then once I just had that like agreements or approval or permission to keep going, like there was a there there, I wrote the book in three weeks.
[00:26:09] Heather: It was just right there. It was just under the surface ready to come out. And so it just gushed forth and became that first draft. And then of course, all the editing, all the not so fun things that came after that. There were practical pieces right beyond the early creation. And it was just ready to go.
[00:26:33] John: Three weeks and a few decades of experiences leading up to.
[00:26:38] Heather: Yes, yes. Oh, it's just like this. I knew exactly how to say this. I know I've done so much teaching and training, which is my absolute love. I love doing these teaching in any sort of way. I had such experience to your point. Right. So I really I wrote as if I was giving the most detailed presentation of my life, so there were no time limits. I could say anything, do anything. And then I've always been a collector of stories. So I wanted to infuse the book with not only like the practical step by step ways that anyone can access the framework, but I wanted inspiration and story interwoven because I know from being a practitioner the first thing is "yeah, right. How can this be? How is this even possible?" So I want to share lots of different examples from lots of different clients and spaces and places. To say "no is possible. I know you've had the same challenge or something adjacent. It can be done. Here's a story." And then just sharing some of the really heartbreaking experiences that I have also witnessed in this sector about the harm and about that frustration, all those sources of that. So I was able to include that in the early part of the book to talk about "I see you, I've seen it and felt it. You're not alone. And here's what we can do different, better."
[00:27:55] John: Amazing what stories can tell you and to teach you, in ways that just a normal science book or any sort of, like, nonfiction thing can I just feel like it falls little flat in that respect? I'm assuming that that's what led to you starting the Possibility project?
[00:28:12] Heather: Well, yeah, I mean, yes. And it was really for my own, like a salve to my soul, I think is why it was, you know, when David and I started that we had the glimmer, the idea in early 2020 when, you know, the world was absolutely falling apart, that time you were in like an earlier time when the world and, you know, we were connecting with our colleagues and we were just feeling so held and supported just by having conversations because we felt like we're so, you know, we were literally disconnected from folks.
[00:28:48] Heather: We just loved it so much that we said, you know, "this is sort of selfish that we get to have these nourishing conversations. We're so buttressed and, you know, buoyant and so energized after these conversations, like, what if we share these with more people?" And so we talked to our friends and we talked to friends of friends. They're friends of friends. So it's become this web and the most beautiful humans that want to talk about really challenging topics. And it's the conversations are just fantastic. So I think it's yes, the storytelling. And that's how we saw every episode is by each of the speakers telling a story about themselves, which is just amazing and instantly connects us all to them.
[00:29:29] Heather: But it's also the connection, the hopeful connection of, "yes, what's dysfunctional and what's possible." Those are the two binding questions that we use mostly every episode. And, it's just lovely. I, it's just such a fantastic community that's just grown and developed in ways beyond my expectations.
[00:29:50] John: Is there a story that hits you first and like, "oh, this is something that I feel like will stay with me for the rest of my life."
[00:30:00] Heather: Oh, gosh. I know it's hard. You know, there's so many. This is not a great story, but I think it's a great illustration. And I just shared it in a workshop that I gave on Friday, this couple days ago. I was talking about bias and I was saying, you know, "if you bring your brain to work, you bring your bias to work, and there's 180 forms of registered bias, right, that have been peer reviewed, that peer reviewed journals published all those things. So you can't say I'm not biased because we're all biased." Right. And then we talk about the positionality wheel and Doctor Leslie and Noel's wheel of positionality. And you know, how where we grew up and the languages we speak and the jobs we hold in our genders and all the things shape our lived experiences, which also, you know, go into that bias of how we see the world. We think everyone sees the world.
[00:30:50] Heather: And one of the people that was part of that workshop was not challenging, but they were they were sort of like, "well, how do you really talk about bias in the workplace? Like, is these kind of nervous about and especially in this current political climate?" And I said, "let me tell you a story about how bias shows up." And so I was telling one example that I was working with a client, and they asked me to be on a hiring panel. They were trying to build their innovation team, and they wanted to bring on a staff member. And because I had helped build the Office of Innovation strategy from the very beginning, they wanted me to be involved.
[00:31:22] Heather: So we had a whole group of applicants. I think we saw like six people one day, very exhausting. And we had this guy, and he showed up for the interview and we were asking about his role. Oh, and he had worked in section eight housing. And section eight housing is an affordable housing program where people were provided vouchers, you know, for affordable housing. And his job was to get the structures that houses ready for the next tenant. So making sure that the water, electricity, you know, everything was functioning, everything and repairs were made that sort of thing.
[00:31:56] Heather: And so he's telling us this and he says, "well, these are places that none of us would ever want to live. And it really doesn't matter because everyone that has section eight is crazy." And he's saying this in a job interview. And all of us, the three of us were so were taken aback. But we proceeded professionally. And then after he left, we were just like, "what just happened? Oh my word." And then later that day, we had a woman come in and she was interviewing for the role. She also worked in section eight housing, and her role was to help people with the paperwork and like the qualification, qualification stage, like preparing for their voucher and, you know, the waitlist process.
[00:32:35] Heather: So she says, "I am such deep respect and admiration for these individuals because it is a years long process of such tenacity, and it's so hard to get the paperwork combined and compiled. It's such a frustrating and depressing process waiting on these giant wait lists. It's very confusing for people when their time their number is pulled and it's like ready to move. It's just a lot that goes into it. And I just deeply respect these individuals for, you know, what it takes to go through this. And it's such an honor to do my job."
[00:33:08] Heather: And so tell these two examples and I say, "how do you think these people showed up at their work? How do they approach community members? How do you think they talked about their work in their role with their friends and family? Well, how do you think about these people? Right. Can you imagine how they show up and walk in the world?" And I think like was story, I can say much more than saying "all of us are bias. Watch out for your bias because it'll influence how you receive people's, you know, feedback and listen to stories. When we do our empathy interviews," that story is powerful, and I think it's one that most people will also never forget because it's so clear about how our bias absolutely impacts our beliefs and our behavior.
[00:33:55] Heather: I even think about not your bias of being raised with people who are socially minded and taking that sort of that amount of love into the work that you do. And I think bias can be a positive and negative thing.
[00:34:09] Heather: It is absolutely something to see, you know, oh, you talk about teaching and your love for it.
[00:34:16] John: I'm curious about these learning cohorts that you're doing because it seems like you have a real knack for not just teaching, but bringing people together.
[00:34:24] Heather: Yeah, the cohorts have been a really fun experiment. So I think of them as "okay, how will this come together?" Because typically I work within an organization. So within an organization I work with teams. So a group of people that work across department, cross-functional teams that come together around a challenge they want to address together. And then I do intensive training and I do lots of coaching with those teams. So it was the new experiment to say, and I've done a little bit, you know, throughout the years, but I really wanted to rededicate my focus of bringing people from different places and spaces together that were working on very different challenges and who didn't share same culture. Right. They were coming from different cultures, their different organizational cultures or their own cultures to come together. And it is a beautiful thing.
[00:35:12] Heather: It's so interesting how even though the challenges they want to address are different, probably most people have experienced them in their own organizations, so they can absolutely relate and learn so much from the other person, the other organization, and vice versa. Right? The flow of the learning just kind of goes everywhere. And I wanted to see about those dynamics, like what happens in those places, in spaces where, people can feel comfortable sharing not only the learning that they're getting, whether they feel like they're succeeding or failing. Right. Those typical definitions, but also be vulnerable and be able to have not therapy, but a soft place to land where where they can say like, "this is a really hard week. This is what I'm working through. I'm exhausted. Yes, there's the challenge of the hand, and I can show up with whatever I have going on."
[00:36:06] Heather: And so that's what I love about the cohorts. And the learning is just amplified it. So it's so interesting to see. And I think the thing with me about teaching and learning is, you know, they go together, but I just I'm facilitating their learning journey. I'm just providing the scaffolding and infrastructure to help support them. Like I said before, I have no idea where the learning is going to take them. I have no idea if they're willing to learn and what their appetite is for, you know, exploring change and transformation. So that's really interesting. I love the individual shifts. I love the team dynamics, I love the organizational mechanics, the movements. I love how it infuses what I do at the collective level and all the extra stories that I, you know, can gain and share with others. So it's I don't think that learning should ever be just for us. It feels selfish just to keep learning to ourselves so that as much as I can create containers and spaces for people to share learning, I love that.
[00:37:08] John: Is there anything unexpected that you learned from those cohorts that you didn't include?
[00:37:18] Heather: Yeah, I mean, I feel like I fall. I all honestly do. I fall in love with each of my clients. I fall in love with my team members. And, there's some team members that I go a little more above and beyond, and so I'm like, "Okay, I'm in a big deep. I need to go back to the shallow end. I need to figure out, not boundary setting, but I'm in the deep end. I need to figure out how to kind of recalibrate and adjust like the services and support that I'm offering." So, I'm honestly walked away with many friends that that are on teams, that my clients and I mean, most of my work now is word of mouth people just referring and telling other people about their experience or people coming back for more, which is excellent. I just love that. And so it's, yeah, that's the only time I have to be cautious. Sometimes I get a little bit too into it.
[00:38:15] John: You know, the reason I created this show was to really try to dig deeper into life's questions. And I'm curious that there has been questions in your own life that have guided you, that you feel would help other people, or would be a sort of navigational waypoint or whatever you want to call it that has helped you in your own path, winding as it may have been.
[00:38:38] Heather: Yeah, you know, the the question in the work that I wrestled with over the past couple years is the question of joy is what gives me joy. And you would think like you would be able to name lots of things. But if you're someone like me that's really deeply embedded in my work, and my work gives me so much joy and satisfaction and delight I've had to work as an entrepreneur. You know, I've been an entrepreneur on my own now for, I think, 13 years, and I started five different ventures in that time. So it's been busy using the in the most loving way. You can talk about being busy, that I feel like I had to step away and say, "what gives me joy outside of work? What gives me joy? With my family, with my friends, with the ways that I'm connected."
[00:39:27] Heather: And the past couple years have really brought that, to the forefront because my partner was diagnosed with cancer. And so all of the work and all of the purposeful nature that I, you know, structured my days and structured my identity and structure, my ego and my existence was a lot around work. So really, when I couldn't have that and I was in such deep stress and struggle and, and, you know, uncertainty, time was a million. I'm just trying to figure out like, "what does make me happy? What are those sources of joy?" And trying to write them down, trying to spend time thinking about them, trying new things, challenging myself, figuring out what I thought that would make me happy. And it didn't at all. So treating everything with these little micro learning experiments around, "does this give me joy? No, it does this give me joy. Oh my gosh, that's awesome. I love it, right?" So finding that spectrum and knowing what I can go back to when I'm starting to go a little bit into the work, deepened, how to pull myself out to more of a joyful space.
[00:40:33] Heather: You know, I have this practice that I do in the mornings, where when I wake up, before I go to bed, I practice a gratitude, idea where I start with my toes and I my toes, and I greet them, I say "hello toes" and wiggle them. And I'm grateful to have feet that I can move. And I work my way up all the way up to the different parts of my body. And so, like, it's my brain. And then I get that, I get out of bed and that idea of, practicing joy or practicing gratitude and then something that's really changed the way I move through the world.
[00:41:04] John: Yeah, it's a journey of discovery when you start to really think about happiness and joy and what brings, because you have to challenge, "why do I do those other things that I thought brought me joy? Or, you know, why do I avoid this exploration? Or what is my busyness really signify in me?" And it means so much to all of us have to unpack.
[00:41:27] John: I want to use your own framework and turn it around on you for a minute.
[00:41:34] Heather: Okay.
[00:41:36] John: And say that, at the end of each chapter that you give pause to pause and consider how you feel like you've been changed through this journey of learning. And as I think about the infinite search, it's the same idea we're on this infinite search to to keep going through, change and learning and growth and just living life. I'm curious if you've walked through your own path in life, how you've changed.
[00:42:05] Heather: Oh my gosh. You know, I've just I just was thinking about this topic because the next possibility project episode is about the lineage. The lineage and ancestry of change making. I was thinking, you know, the traditional ways that I was originally thinking about the episode was like, you know, our ancestry in terms of seven plus generations that came before us. What does that mean to be a good ancestor and really plan for the next seven generations? You know who were also people? No, no, no. Known to us have struggled and triumphs and all that journey. And then, you know, who's all going to come after us. People will never have the beauty and the opportunity to meet their will. Also fight the good fight and do the changemaking work.
[00:42:51] Heather: But it also made me think that even within my lifetime, I had been multiple versions of myself. It's almost like I had this sort of, stages of change and development within my own lifespan. And where have each of those shifts, you know, where have they led me in what what's the meaning that I've pulled from each of those, you know, often struggle, right? They usually will shift us the most. And it really feels like really recognizing that and having what people call the growth mindset, why it's happening to me, instead of thinking more about what's happening for me. You know, that's helped with the cancer journey with my partner. It's helped with all those different transformations, but it has fueled my belief that anything is possible, that when I think back about how I was in my 20s, how I was in my 30s, in my early 40s, dating myself now I think about who I was with, the choices I made, what I allowed people to do around me, and the ways I allowed people to treat me, the ways I treated myself or barely recognizable to the person I am today. You know. It's amazing.
[00:43:44] Heather: And so that that really gives me such hope. And I was talking to a friend about this. When you're someone that's gone through the deep, dark valley and come to the top and seen the view, you know, and if you've done that all the times, you've you've plummeted and climb back up, you know that there will be a beautiful view ahead. You might now be in the than the depths in the darkness. But keep going, keep climbing, because there are beautiful, beautiful experiences and changes and who you are you cannot even possibly imagine. So that gives me hope and inspiration that you know, I don't even know where I'll be in another ten years. I never would expect that I'm living the life and feeling the way as I do now. You know, five years ago, four years ago. It's just really it's magical.
[00:44:56] Heather: And it's magical. There is this, there's this TikTok trend. I'm not going to I wasn't going to say that, but I'm going to use a video where. All right, they're essentially meeting themselves as they are today. But they're meeting themselves when they were like 15 or 6 or whatever. And just that idea of looking back and giving grace to the kind of person that you were, knowing that you are who you are today and why that winding path led you to where you are today, with the sort of understanding that you have in the present moment. I think is one of the most beautiful things I could possibly think of, of what it means to be a human.
[00:45:36] John: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That that awareness, the ability to look around and up and down and look back and and to know that you can align like you and I are so connected and to other people that have that ability to do that, that have been on a winding journey and evaluate and see the beauty and have hope for, you know, what's possible and what's, you know, unknown and potentially miraculous in the future. And I think in times like these, those are things we can know for sure when everything else is so uncertain and so tumultuous and so dangerous and so frightening, we can know that that we can be strong in our in our faith in what's to come, and then know that there's other people like us that are finding their connections, that are that are going to connect with us and elevate our own experience.
[00:46:26] John: Heather Hiscox is a self-described frustrated changemaker with a mission to transform how we approach social impact. As founder and CEO of Pause for Change. She has developed the PAUSE method, a proven framework helping organizations address complex challenges and pursue promising opportunities with greater certainty, fewer resources, and less time. Heather is the author of No More Status Quo: A Proven Framework to Change the Way We Change the World, and co-creator and host of The Possibility Project, an online conversation series and growing community of disruptive thinkers reclaiming their power through meaningful connection and action.
[00:47:02] John: She speaks at conferences and events about social impact, disruption and innovation across nonprofit, local government and philanthropic sectors to her various ventures. Heather connects organizations with the training, skills and resources they need to deepen their impact and create lasting solutions. To learn more about Heather's work in the PAUSE method to visit PauseForChange.com. You can also explore the possibility project at PossibilityProject.org, or learn more about her book at NoMoreStatusQuoBook.com.
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[00:48:11] John: The Infinite Search is a production of Chamber, a creative studio specializing in purpose driven branding, design and experiences for clients of every size. For more information, visit ThisIsChamber.com.