Cambridge-trained physicist on why capable people stay stuck.
The story behind the work: theoretical physics at Cambridge, two decades working out what was happening in oil fields deep underground, and three decades studying how people change.
The physicist
Anand Rao trained as a theoretical physicist at Cambridge.
The habit that training leaves is a way of looking at a system: what is it doing, and what would have to be true for it to behave that way? It is the habit he brings to a stubborn pattern.
The oil fields
For two decades he worked out what was happening in oil fields deep underground from a few indirect measurements. A reservoir cannot be looked at directly, so the picture is built from the measurements available and then checked against how the field behaves.
The same habit shows up in his work with people. In his words:
If you want to model a system accurately, … what would have to be true such that their behavior makes sense?Anand Rao
How people change
For three decades, overlapping those oil-field years, he has also studied something even more complicated: how people change.
Three of those years were spent teaching at a coaching school, around thirty coaches a week. Psychotherapists and psychiatrists now come to him for their own development and for new capability with clients.
He has worked with executive leadership teams since 2019 and founded Developmental Mastery in July 2022. He has also taught for adult-development researcher Terri O’Fallon.
Surprisingly Elegant Change
Anand Rao describes his passion as a search for Surprisingly Elegant Change: a way of working in which a struggle carried for years can change in weeks, once fighting it is traded for a smarter approach.
What clients describe afterwards tends to be a struggle gone in weeks, without the fight they expected, and with no technique to keep practising once it has gone.
You don’t negotiate against yourself.Anand Rao
Who he works with
Founders, executives and doctors, who tend to arrive already successful and stuck on the one thing success hasn’t fixed.
Coaches, therapists and psychiatrists, who come for their own development and for new capability with clients. A coach uses methods and processes; someone has to invent those, and that is the work he does.
The same work, seen from two sides.
Already successful, and stuck on the one thing success hasn’t fixed.
What it’s like to work one to one, who has done it, and how we’d work.
For leadersAlready skilled, and ready for the next level of change work, in yourself and with clients.
Three ideas about change, who learns from him, and the ways in.
For practitioners
If this sounds like your kind of problem, start with a conversation.
We look at what has been stuck, whether this work suits you, and which way of working together would fit your life.
You’ll get a personal reply, usually within a couple of days.