Building Organisational Health: Strategies for Success with Dr. Jonathan Westover - OrgDev Episode 22

In the latest episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we were joined by Dr. Jonathan Westover all the way from Utah, USA who shared invaluable insights on how to cultivate a healthy and dynamic workplace. As a seasoned expert with a background that bridges academia and real-world practice, Jonathan brings a practical approach to making workplaces better and our conversation focuses on practical strategies leaders and HR professionals can use to improve company culture and employee engagement.

Dr. Westover emphasises the importance of ethical leadership and provides accessible advice on how to make complex academic research useful for everyday business challenges. Whether you're leading a small team or managing a large organisation, this episode offers essential tips and inspiring stories to help you create a more effective and fulfilling work environment

 Jonathan's Podcast:
   / @innovativehumancapital   

Dr. Jonathan Westover is a 4X #1 best-selling author, award-winning podcaster, and the top-ranked global thought leader in HR, Innovation, Leadership, Culture, and Future of Work (Thinkers360). Ranked #21 in Organizational Culture and #19 in Management globally by Global Gurus, he is also featured on LeadersHum's Power List of the Top 200 Voices in Leadership.

Founder and CEO of Human Capital Innovations, Dr. Westover hosts and produces shows on the HCI Podcast Network and serves as Chief Academic and Learning Officer of the HCI Academy. He is Chair and Professor of Organizational Leadership and Change at UVU's Woodbury School of Business and holds multiple leadership roles, including Academic Director of the Center for Social Impact.

An experienced OD/HR/Leadership consultant, Dr. Westover has transformed organizations worldwide. He is a CIPD Academic Fellow, HEA Senior Fellow, and Visiting Academic at Oxford's Harris Manchester College. His accolades include being a Fulbright Scholar, POSCO Fellow, and a Visiting Scholar at the Wilson Center. His work is widely published and cited in top media outlets like Forbes, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal. 

Thanks for listening!

Distinction is an evidence-based Organisation Development & Design Consultancy designed to support modern, progressive organisations to bring out the best in their people and their teams through training, consulting, and coaching.

Our professional and highly skilled consultants focus on delivering engaging, results-focused and flexible solutions that help our clients achieve their business objectives.

Find out more at https://distinction.live/how-we-can-help/

💡 Stay Connected:
Looking for a consistent source of leadership & OD tips? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link below and receive valuable leadership tips directly in your inbox:
https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch/

Transcript

Transcript:
(00:00) hi welcome to the org Dev podcast now when Dr Jonathan Westover accepted our invitation to come on the podcast we were absolutely delighted because Danny and I have been following Jonathan for quite a while now so he joins us from Orum in Utah in the US and probably describes him belf best as a scholar practitioner which is a really nice brand of being an academic and also being out in the field and creating meaningful and significant change in organizations across the globe he's a four times bestselling and award-winning
(00:29) author and his books include the future leader and leading for transformation and in the show notes you'll find links to all of his books he's also a prolific podcaster and this is how I found him was through the human capital Innovations podcast which is just a really generous collection of interviews with practitioners um across a whole range of different subjects and also solo podcasts that he runs as well where he does deep dives into some really interesting subjects but that's not even a quarter of what John actually does so
(00:59) he's also profess of and chair of the organizational leadership and change in the Woodbury School of Business um he's also academic director of the center for social impact he's the senior director of the academic Service Learning and faculty fellow for ethics in public life and ethics is something that John holds in really high regard he's also CPD academic fellow which is which is our association here um an haa F senior fellow and visited academic at Harris Manchester College University of Oxford
(01:30) of course all of his experience is underpinned by extensive academic qualifications so he has a bachelor's and master's degree um from bringham Young University and a doctorate from the University of Utah as well and for two decades on top of this he's worked to help transform organizations across the globe as an experienced organizational leadership people management and OD consultant managing partner and principal at human capital Innovations and I'm feeling lazy just describing all of this he also has five
(01:58) children on top of this do is there anything I've missed because I've had to edit some of this because there's been so many achievements and and people would love to know your secret to productivity and your output as well uh the only thing I'll add is I actually have six children um so slight slightly uh older bio probably that you saw the five children but uh I have six children my youngest is 10 years old and my oldest is 20 and so they're all kind of packed in there we had like two kids
(02:26) every two years for quite a while um I'll also just highlight my wife real quick she's amazing um she's also a professor here at uh Utah Valley University she teaches quantitative courses so like business calculus introductory and advanced statistics those sorts of coures her path of course was different than mine you know she she was like the the one supporting me as I was going through grad school launching my career um while she was largely a stay-at-home mom having children and I was trying to support her as best I
(02:58) could but she she took the non-traditional path and went back got her Master's Degree got her doctorate and is a full-time Professor here as well so anyway she's incredible I I feel like I I've done a good job with my career but I think she's she's the the awesome one and those kids have inherited good jeans well welcome and thank you so much for joining us Jonathan thank you it's a real pleasure so that was quite the introduction so there's a lot lot that you're involved in so you just tell us a
(03:29) bit more about that in a more detail about what you do what your role looks like yeah so I mean first and foremost I'm a professor um as You' mentioned Garen I I see myself as a scholar practitioner I'm a traditional 10e track faculty I'm a full Professor I've been at Utah Valley University for over 16 years um and so I've done the the academic thing and and I'm a professor I teach I do research um you know I I travel to different parts of the world visit other universities do that kind of
(03:58) stuff all of that's wonderful and I really love it and I love Academia I love um you know I love publishing and I I publish a lot of academic articles and and stuff like that the problem is that the most people don't read academic articles and so you know if I put I don't know 500 hours into like some research project and publish a paper off of it that's wonderful if I'm lucky hundreds maybe thousands of people will read it um and so what what I've really tried to focus on over the last I don't
(04:29) know half decade is is to focus more on the practitioner side and the application of the research that I do uh so whether that's podcasting or writing practitioner oriented articles for Forbes or other outlets I I still do plenty of research like traditional academic research but but I I've done more and more of the practitioner side trying to translate that research in into ways that it's going to be useful to to organizations and the people within those organizations I mean my my hope my goal is to make a small impact
(05:04) on helping organizations be better um I think most leaders wake up in the morning wanting to do right by their people I don't think many people wake up thinking how am I going to exploit my employees today you know but but the problem is people get busy they get overwhelmed they get burned out that applies to leaders just like it applies to line level employees and and then bad things happen um things that maybe weren't intended bad communication toxic culture um poor behaviors all those other things then happen because we're
(05:36) all human and so how can we change that how can we adjust that trajectory and have really Dynamic cultures really healthy environments that's what I want to see within organizations and I'm just trying to do my small part and and bringing that forward oh yeah so important and I think so many people get thrust into that leader role don't they without any kind of without any training or understanding of what what it really entails they're kind of in it before they realize what they've got themselves
(06:01) into yeah okay I know when we listen I was listening back to a podcast you did and you you said you come from an organization sociology background how does that shape your practice and your OD practice and your view of the world yeah well so on that front I I'm a business professor I have been for over 16 years and I actually don't have a business degree so um I I I did my bachelor in sociology I did a MERS in public administration and then I did a master's in PhD in organizational sociology Uh I that was a very conscious
(06:33) Choice um that when I was going on for for various degrees you know I knew I wanted to focus in those areas in all aspects I always focused on people Dynamics organizational Dynamics um and so I think all that translates well over to the research that I do the teaching that I do the Consulting that I do but it does mean I I bring a bit of a different lens right to to I think a lot of those YP of issues and contexts I'm not the only one but I'm one of maybe a handful out of maybe 120 plus full-time fa in the School of Business here at the
(07:09) University that doesn't have a business degree you know everyone else has more traditional business phds or whatever and uh I can think of a couple others that have like maybe a psychology degree or you know something that's kind of adjacent uh and that's that's what I see um you know my my PhD in sociology being um not only of course did I do my coursework in in research around organizational sociology and work in organizations but I got the the broader sociological spectrum of cours offerings
(07:43) and and those sorts of things so I just I don't know I I think I tend to view the world differently um I kind of have a different worldview and mindset than a lot of people um who are in the business um in the business school uh and I think ultimately that's a healthy thing because diversity is healthy and diversity of thoughts healthy so it's not to say that my mode of thinking is better but I I think if you have a bunch of people around the table it's it's you're going to have more creative um
(08:10) you know ideation and generation of of possible solutions when you have people that do come from different backgrounds uh one of the things that was mentioned in in kind of my introduction was my work with the social impact world I oversee all the social impact um academic programming on this campus and I do you know a good amount of social impact Consulting as well and that's something I feel very very strongly about um but that also is a different lens you know like one way to bring about social impact is through social
(08:41) entrepreneurship uh which is a really great Pathway to do that but there are so many other um ways to accomplish that as well and I think sometimes we get especially in the business Community we get too narrow-minded on on things like that so if we're wanting to make meaningful sustainable impact in the world you know a lot of times we think social entrepreneur social entrepreneurship is the way to do that it's it is a way to do that but it's not the only way to do that and oftentimes it's not the best way to do that so um I
(09:09) don't all this is a long-winded response but all of that kind of feeds into how I I tend to approach the work that I do so does it mean that you say it depends a lot yes it always depends that's that's the thing and and you know it's it's one of kind of my bias so when I'm working when I'm teaching students or working with a client you know I there there aren't easy answers to most challenges if there were like if there were easy answers formulaic ways to respond to the most challenging issues that we face in
(09:41) organizations and in society we would have solved it already like there's lots of brilliant people who who have tried all sorts of things and the reality is formulaic responses just don't work um and so like from the organizational development and change perspective you know there are some great Frameworks out there um I I love prai for example really great organization does great stuff for org change um we but we don't want to get dogmatic right with with the types of tools that we're using the types of
(10:12) Frameworks that we're using because I as a OD consultant I could go into let's like here in in Utah we have something called silicon slopes it's kind of our version of Silicon Valley so we have a pretty hot Tech Hub um in the US here just up the road for me 10 minutes um let's say I'm working with three different tech companies let's say they're the same industry same general size same kind of growth trajectory like we can check a bunch of boxes saying these organizations are very very
(10:42) similar right the tendency of a lot of people leaders Consultants whatever is to look at that and say oh well I've done this in this organization it worked so now I'm just going to replicate it over here the problem is that almost never works why because depends because context matters because every situation no matter how similar on the surface it may seem there's always deeper uncovered issues um that are influencing the Dynamics within that organization so you always have to take a fresh look at the
(11:15) organization no matter how similar it may seem on the surface to other organizations you've worked with whe again whether you're a leader a consultant or whatever and and that's where I think a lot of people get in in a trap they they get caught up in kind of their dogma of like a particular model framework a particular tool they think this is the answer this this is the The Cure All and I'm sorry it just isn't uh I I at least I've never found one I I've never found something that's
(11:44) the cure all that's going to fix the problems that are ailing us you have to tackle each problem a new and it's hard because it takes work it takes time it takes resources and uh people are resistant to change etc etc all that makes it challenging but if you want to have meaningful long-lasting sustainable change I don't think there's any alternative and you you bring this wonderfully rigorous academic approach to the the corporate world or the different sectors that you work in as well I guess the question is is when you
(12:15) bring that and then a lot of the way in which people behave or act in in work environments is heuristics or like these kind of myths that grow legs then because what kind of things do you notice in in organizations that that maybe aren't necessary evidence-based and they could M take a different approach to oh I mean there there are just so many different myths that that persist and it almost always is some form of overgeneralization right so maybe that's what I would say is just generally speaking anytime you're
(12:50) overgeneralizing it it's going to have shortcomings and I I don't care what it is like you can take the best research-backed model of whatever and say and then apply it to a new situation every model has weaknesses and every model by the nature of a model it's it's trying to take a complex system and and Mak and and put it in a way that people can make sense of it that's because that's how humans work and that's how human brains work and and we need to have a way to connect with that content and so whether you talk
(13:26) like let's take a model everyone is super familiar with like a map like a like nowadays we have apps on our phone but like we're all old enough to remember back when we actually had to have like a map in your car and you would like pull it out right that map is a model that map is not reality um and no matter how detailed the map is you could get a map of your neighborhood that's blown up to scale and like you're looking at it in fine detail it's still not reality um a city map a state map a
(13:56) country map a world map whatever the the more you zoom out the more of a model it becomes and I I think often times we think no this is reality and it's just not it's a tool for trying to understand a complex situation uh and if we can acknowledge that and just recognize that almost anytime that you hear someone make generalized statements uh there's going to be gaps in that um now that doesn't mean we can't use buckets to to to organize information like we all do that we're human um but we just need to
(14:30) understand the limitations of it and and not like I said a couple times don't get overly dogmatic about that you know and and just recognize that this is one way to think about this bucket of information but there's going to be a lot of nuance within that you know if if we look at people for example we have all of these different types of groups groupings of people we talk about race ethnicity gender sexual orientation gender identification etc etc etc like all these different things and that's great like it help helps us do analyses
(15:01) to understand equity and diversity and inclusion all that's wonderful but you look you zoom in on any one of those groups and there's tons of difference within that group so we're not a monolith right like so I'm a straight cisgender white dude I a very different straight cisgender white dude than a lot of other straight cisgender white dudes right and and take any category um that you want to talk about or take any business unit take any any product service whatever so that that's really just a long-winded
(15:32) way of saying like you said earlier it depends there's always nuance and I think we're doing ourselves a disservice if we can't at least acknowledge that we still have to put our best foot forward and that means we're going to have to make some we're going to have to take some shortcuts we're going to have to categorize and we're going to have to try to make sense of a complex world but let's do that with like a healthy skepticism let's do that with like a healthy you know intellectual humility
(15:59) around what we're dealing with so that we don't fall into the Trap of you know what often happens with well-intended really smart intelligent well-intended leaders who fall into the Trap uh of of being overly reliant on a myth an over um generalized conclusion or whatever I was going to say I think that's one of the challenges isn't it with OD practice is often our clients want us to make their lives simpler and create certainty come up with a quick fix so you're you're kind of holding that tension all
(16:28) of the time about but that's not really the reality that OD work is messy and emergent and we have to it is and that is hard you're right because yeah once this was many years ago this was over a decade ago um but i w i was I had a client that I've been doing a lot of work with I've been working with them on a variety of things for probably over a year year and a half um so we had a good relationship we've been working with each other for a long time but we got to one of these points where they wanted to
(16:54) do something and and I said okay I understand what you want to do I understand what the Gap is is I understand what the challenges you're trying to face from my perspective you kind of have this range of options like one through five five being like the most rigorous you know like if I was going to publish in an academic Journal this is what you'd have to do all the way down to like number one which is just like the super quick and dirty you know survey or whatever right and and then you have a range in between and
(17:22) every organization has to wrestle with the utility what they're having their Consultants do for them right whether that's data collection or OD intervention or whatever you're always making those looking at the cost and time you know versus what you think the change will be Etc and and so I try to provide a range of options to people and just be very transparent about like what can you reasonably expect from these different options um and and what struck me though and I you know I assumed when I was having this conversation with them
(17:54) we'd work together well for a long time um I assume that they'd probably go with like option number number three kind of in the middle more rigorous going to have better outcomes for them it's going to be a little bit more time intensive um but not you know as much as like other things I might suggest doing but no their their response is no we're just going to do number one I I use the term quick and dirty and the the guy turned to me and he said no no no it's not quick and dirty it's quick and
(18:20) quality um and that's that's the tension that's the challenge that we face is I'm like no it's not quick and quality it's it's it's quick and crappy um you know like you're garbage data in garbage results out like there you can do it fast it's not going to cost you much but you're going to end up building resistance within your team because people are going to see that this isn't valid and you're you're not going to get good information from it uh and so it's
(18:48) it it actually is more expensive in that sense because it's a complete waste of time you're not going to get anything meaningful from it and all you're going to do is build up resistance to the next time you're going to try to do some sort of change initiative right and that's really important isn't it because like you know it's it's the ability to have the courage to have those kind of conversations particularly up front as well because sometimes you can end up colluding with them can't you in order
(19:08) to whether you're an internal practitioner that's maybe sort of conscious of your own career or whether you're a consultant Keen to get more work you're always in that sort of ethical dilemma aren't you so it's it's the importance of having those conversations so they they're giving their informed consent when they when they step forward with things yeah and and and I get it like that that is a challenge I think that is one of the Privileges that I have in the Consulting work that I do that I do have you know
(19:32) my main job I'm a professor that that's like the most stable type of career that you can have so I always have my home base so so I'm in a I'm in a privileged position where I can walk away I can say no I can say no I'm not comfortable with that and I recognize that's a little different than a lot of people find themselves in where they're like trying they need this client to be able to pay their mortgage to be able to put food on the table for their kids I've been fortunate to never be in that kind of a
(19:59) situation um and but I I recognize it I acknowledge that tension and it's hard for people uh for me it it means I I tend to be I kind of have my Line in the Sand and I'm like okay I'm GNA work with you to a point and then at that point you know I'm not comfortable I'm gonna I'm G to walk away and let you do what you're going to do you know um but everyone has to everyone has to deal with that and everyone has to decide what those points are for them and what they're comfortable with and you know I
(20:27) don't there's again it depends there's no easy answer to it you had a lot of sort of career choices along the way what is it about organization development that's that's drawn you to it what was it about the the field of practice that appealed for you I I backed my way into this um as I think a lot of people do actually uh I had switched my major as an undergrad student I'd switched my major a number of times um but I'd landed on accounting and I I was really good at it and I was
(20:52) at a uh school I was in I was you know a top it was perpetually ranked top one two or three in the country for best accounting program um so you know it was a it was a good opportunity and I was going to come out of that program you know probably with an excellent placement um you know working at a great company great trajectory great opportunity Etc and then I'm in the middle of this program so I i' done my first year of of this upper Division coursework and uh because I had served a mission a two-year mission for my church
(21:29) uh I had lived for two years in South Korea I'd learned the language uh the culture Etc um i' I'd spent time there I came back I you know I was at the University but the next year the next summer uh I was taking Kine courses um because I minored in Korean language and my Korean Professor walked in the room in in a class one day and he just said hey who wants to go back to Korea this summer for an internship I'm like sure sign me up I I didn't even know what I where I would be what I would be doing
(21:59) company I would be with I'm just like yeah sign me up and what I ended up doing I I was assigned to the corporate organizational development office of LG Electronics in Kumi South Korea just outside of pan and yeah I mean like and my eyes were open so I spent a summer there uh accounting I was good at it it wasn't like the most exciting you know hats off to accountants we need good accountants but you know it it wasn't exciting to me but it was something I just thought was a good career and after
(22:29) spending a summer in this diverse corporate environment a really huge organization they're doing lots of cool stuff I got to do lots of things that I'd never done before I came back from that summer uh and I went and talked to a bunch of professors I'm like I want to do that how do I do that and they said you can't like there's we don't have programs for that um and and so that's when I switched my major for the last time I had one Professor he's like go go do a social science uh and so I I
(22:57) switched to Sociology and and that was the last time I switched my undergrad um and at that point I did that and that was my mindset I'm going to do this this is what I want to do when I went into my master's program uh I had an opportunity over the years to work both as an internal consultant with like internal OD or human resource development offices but also as an external consultant working with an external you know consult management consulting agency uh a firm and and so I had those experiences and I'm like this is really
(23:29) what I want to do um and then one day as I'm finishing up my master's program I'm thinking I want to uh I want to to have like a really great gig but I've I've been in the external Consulting world I've seen that lifestyle I've seen the travel you know at the time at least I think this has changed some during the pandemic but at least at the time external Consultants would travel 80% of the time right and and that's just not what I wanted by this point I I was young but I was was married I had a
(23:59) child I had the second on the way um and I'm just like that's not the lifestyle I want to have so I'm thinking maybe I'll just do this as an internal person like within an internal OD office and I had some great interviews and great opportunities um but again I kind of walked away one night realizing I I I don't want the lifestyle of working 80 hours a week moving every couple years to different parts of the country like I I I want more stability for my family um I I I want to you know if I choose to
(24:28) work hours a week that's fine but I don't want to be in a place where I feel like I have to in order to to keep my job and so that's when I decided to move on for a PhD always with the mindset that I would love to land in a business school be a professor doing teaching research in a business school and doing consulting work on the side and that's what I've done uh since then what do you think the qualities are of a great OD practitioner uh curiosity uh intellectual humility you you have to I
(24:55) mean basic things like you got to be good at time management project management client relations um all of those types of things are just necessary skill sets to be successful um but there's lots of people that are good project managers or time managers that aren't good ODed Consultants so like there obviously you have to have the knowledge and the skills around OD and change and understanding those Dynamics but you know for me personally I found as I as I work with students who are preparing for this as a field uh whether
(25:27) it's myself personally that yeah curiosity and humility like it it's just too easy to get too caught up in yourself and and get arrogant about like what you think you know and and what um you know how you're going to go fix everything you know my purpose as I said at the beginning like I want to make an impact I want to help organizations but I also know it's not about me and it's not like I have the Magic Bullet and I'm not going to swoop in you know with my Superman cape and like fix everything
(25:57) for everybody like the only way and this this is actually something I pull in from my social impact work the only way you can have meaningful change whether it's within organization or within communities is by building collaborative you know coalitions of people developing buyin and getting people on board with what you're trying to do that means you have to go in you have to listen hard you have to pay attention you have people have to feel Hur they have to feel valued uh in the process and if they don't it's just going to work like it
(26:29) almost never works uh unless you create that environment first uh and that again from the social impact world there's so many examples of like really well-intentioned well-meaning people that go into communities thinking they're going to fix that community's problems and they just cause more harm they they make things worse and you have to go in and listen to the people you have to you you may you know I have I have lots of expertise I have lots of college degrees I published a lot of research I do you know lot lot of things
(26:59) I have a lot of expertise but what I don't have is an intimate knowledge of whatever organization that I might be working with I only can gain more of that as I talk to people listen to people uh collect data and and try to make better data informed decisions I have to listen to The Living experts within that context and if I if I I'm not willing to do that or I'm unable to do that or I'm not skilled in doing that I'm not going to have a lot of success yeah yeah and you touched on something
(27:30) very similar to this in one of your podcasts actually um I think you was talking about the fact that the organizations are often full of very well-intentioned managers that actually want to do a good job and they want to be Progressive and they want to invite people into the change process because they see that as as as integral but there isn't the psychological safety there for that so without requiring the help of like an external Consultants come what what can managers in that position because it's
(27:55) intensely frustrating isn't it for them what can they do help create that psychological safety yeah it is frustrating and and I I do believe I I really do firmly believe that most people are well-intentioned I mean yes there are sociopaths there there are people that are just jerk bosses like that does exist but I I think the vast majority of people really just are doing the best they know how they're usually thrust into positions that they weren't prepared for um usually they had some sort of technical expertise or
(28:25) functional expertise so they're promoted and now all of a sudden they find themselves leading people they have no idea how to do it right so I try to come with grace to that kind of a situation and just recognize yeah people are probably trying to do the best they know how with that as a starting point then I think you're able to interact with people in a more productive and healthy way and toxicity I think often comes from well-intentioned people um but that doesn't excuse the behavior and that
(28:53) doesn't excuse the impact uh I I'm thinking of one particular executive that I've been working with recently the nicest person like just a a really warm Soul like just a wonderful person terrible terrible leader and and it it's very apparent like causing all sorts of Ripple effects negative problems most people on the team feel like this person is toxic Etc pulling back the curtain a little bit like I really do I I believe this person is a genuinely just good kind-hearted person who's completely in
(29:28) over their head and and and so you know trying to level set and get people to the point where you can have some open dialogue around the challenges that people are facing one of the things I found and you've probably seen this too is people like to Grumble people like to complain and so a lot of times people on the team might be feeling toxicity they might be feeling the lack of psychological safety they may feel disempowered they may feel disengaged and demotivated and the leader doesn't even really know um
(30:00) especially if they're not that good of a people leader because they they don't have maybe the emotional intelligence or they don't have the connection with their people um in the way that they could and so they they're kind of oblivious and they don't even know that right under their NOS there's all this perceived toxicity or experienced toxicity and so getting people to be able to feel safe enough to to have conversation to have feedback loops to just start some open dialogue uh can
(30:29) make a big difference it takes time and especially if you if you find yourself in an environment of toxicity building or rebuilding the trust is going to take time there's no like quick solution to it you're not going to bring someone in have a training and then like a day later all of a sudden Kumbaya that's just not the way it works it it it will take time but if if I I do think I also think people will often be willing to be generous and supportive and encour enaging of their leader who may be in over their head who
(31:01) may be overwhelmed who may be feeling burned out themselves if they see that they're trying if they see that they're making efforts to change and so if that toxicity exists psychological safety isn't there I mean just basic things to start to level set having some open dialogue and conversation starting if you're not already doing it having regular team meetings having regular te uh individual one-on-ones with your people to start to know them and start to establish a baseline of trust with them all that's going to be super super
(31:30) important yeah and and even just as as an OD practitioner just be able to create that space for them to have that different type of talk can actually just be the work in itself can't in terms of moving things forward do you find most challenging about OD practice when you think about your work with clients um we've touched on some of it I mean I think there's this constant tension of we I I'm sometimes jealous of other parts of the world because in the US we're so short-term oriented you know we're so individualistic and
(32:00) we're so short-term oriented and those are hard to break down sometimes um now I'm I'm not saying it's I think it's good like it's good for people to feel like they're individually empowered and that they have individual choice and autonomy like those are good things but you know I think sometimes in the US we air too far on the side of of um some of those kind of cultural and social norms and characteristics that can cause problems uh within an organizational setting uh and so yeah anytime you know
(32:30) that I I'm trying to work with a client I'm almost almost always I'm battling this short termism you know the the the presenteeism the this idea that I want results immediately and the problem is change work is hard work and it it takes time uh and you can do again you you can do something quick and dirty but is it going to have any sustainable impact probably not uh you might get lucky but it's probably not going to have any sustainable impact if you do something like that and so you have to be in it
(32:59) for the long haul you have to be willing and committed to it and you know when an executive is like worried about the next quarterly earnings report um you know and that's like front and foremost on their mind you know that's why you get things like over hiring in the short term and then Mass layoffs a few quarters later huge negative impacts on on the organization the people the morale all of that and it's all driven by short-termism and and like what's going to make me look better in this quarter Le earnings report so I can get
(33:29) my bonus or so the stock price ticks up a little bit or whatever and that I'm not sure how to fix that um but but that's that's a pervasive problem I think that's always a challenge and if you can't help leaders get to the point where they're thinking more long-term strategic kind of a mindset to to the challenges that they're facing you're you're probably always just going to be running around putting out fires and you're almost never going to be getting at the deeper stuff in the in the team
(33:56) and in the organization it's so important isn't it and I think one of some of the things we really enjoy about your background is that you have so many interests in different worlds how has being part of like the university system informed your view of like organizations and and how they work because they have a particular way of working don't they uh they do um I I will say you know government agencies and organizations highered institutions and organizations often get a bad rap um and in part it's
(34:25) welld deserved so like like it it it could be frustrating like it you have lots of really well-intentioned people um who you know I think for example at the University space lots of I think everyone's here to help students like we all want to better the community we all have a similar shared purpose in the work that we do and yet you know a it's it's run by faculty and a lot of a lot of Faculty I mean you could literally have someone who's like has a PHD in English who's now in some senior
(34:57) leadership role and they have no idea what's going on or what to do and so that that is an issue um and it says nothing about the quality of that person or like how good of a person they are they're a great person it just means maybe they're in over their head they don't know what they don't know they don't know how to carry things forward so I think institutions like universities have that challenge of course there's lots of bureaucracy lots of red tape um we just simply aren't
(35:24) usually able to Pivot as fast as you would see in the corporate world um which has pros and cons to it um but for the sake of this conversation around change change it it it's hard you know doing sweeping organizational change in a university setting is challenging to say the least um and so it it is good in the sense that it gives me a consistent like I get frustrated with it but it gives me a consistent reminder of like the levers of change the resistance to change um and and you know I I I guess I have day-to-day examples just here at
(35:57) the University of like oh that's something we like an organization probably shouldn't do that's something oh that's a good thing well this is how we can break down resistance this is how we can generate buyin um and to just see that live in action day-to-day definitely does inform you know how I approach teaching courses uh how I do Consulting work or research or whatever yeah and and you you were talking to Rodney Evans from the the ready and one of things you talked about there was the importance of policy pruning because
(36:25) often policy I think it's been described as like the scar tissue of things to rectify things that may never happen again what is the importance of that and and what are the alternative to organizations because often if you read the feeds of HR support groups it's just full of there's a problem put a policy on it what what other alternatives are available yeah and and in part you know I see that also in in relation to just the legius nature of society that has grown over time and so I see you know
(36:55) some of the times I get frustrated for example with the University again good people but I see I see fear I see decisions based on fear and decisions based on you know trying to be compliant and usually at least in in in my University space we tend to be in my opinion overly conservative in how we're applying policy practice you know and what legal requirements uh and compliance issues you know and so whatever the standard is you know we're going to go quite a ways beyond that just to make sure that we're nowhere
(37:28) close to the edge um and so that only makes it more challenging to to drive change that means we have even more policies um that are in response to a specific situation that now they're trying to protect against in the future and so they generate a new policy for it so the pruning issue 100% I think most organizations need to do this certainly in the more bureaucratic organizations like a university in an institution of higher education uh probably there's a lot of pruning that needs to happen what's the alternative that that's hard
(38:01) you know it depends on the on the organization it depends on on the funding model Etc we are super you know we're a a State University you know so we about 50% of our funding comes through tax revenue that's allocated by the legislature um and so you know that that that's in part why there's kind of this General sense of like we we're fearful that we're going to get dinged so we're going to like go above and beyond to try to be compliant um because you know if if that 50% of our budget gets you know impacted if we
(38:33) take a 10% hit there or something it's going to have huge ramifications and so that's part of what's going on when you're you know when you're in a for-profit corporate environment you probably don't have that same type of constraint on what you're doing um which means you probably have more flexibility in trying to be agile and trying to to prune and just do what makes sense uh one of the things I I've said this many times and I don't want to Discount the challenges that the pandemic brought but
(39:02) one of the the positive things that came out of the pandemic for my opinion is that it it actually forced a lot of organizations to challenge assumptions to challenge practice and to do some of that pruning whether it was like policy pruning like actually taking out policy that didn't suit it the organization anymore or just the policy the the practice and internalization of the policy a lot of that shifted for a lot of organizations out of necessity during the pandemic uh which I think overall was a healthy thing uh because there's
(39:31) so many things we just do because we've always done them that way um when they don't act maybe they served a purpose at one point in time but they don't really serve us anymore and actually it's just holding us back it's hindering us sometimes that's just cultural norms within an organization sometimes it's actually written codified policy so whatever it is though we have to be very proactive about keeping a handle on what those things are and responding to them as close to in real time as possible so
(39:58) that we don't get just completely overwhelmed and bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy uh I I actually did a presentation at an academic conference a month or so ago U where I was talking about I I I'll butcher the name it's a Chinese model of of agile and I I'll butcher the name if I try to pronounce it because I do speak Korean I don't speak Chinese and anyways the the general gist of it though is it's it's it's a slightly different version of agile and kind of kind of flatter
(40:28) organizations it's all about empowering um employees self-managed work teams Etc a lot of those types of things that we often talk about and that's not for every organization but the point of it of the presentation I did at this conference was like let's look at some of these principles let's look at how they've been applied successfully in a couple different organizational examples and how could we apply some of those into our organization even if our organization is larger more complex more
(40:54) steeped in bureaucracy how can we start to unravel some of that that so that we do find ourselves in a position where we can be more responsive to the market in real time so that we can you know when whether it's the next pandemic or the next you know chat GPT disruption or the next whatever whatever the next disruption is that we're in a better position to respond to it and you know bureaucracy exists to maintain the status quo and to keep an organization functioning that's not a bad thing but in in a volatile complex everchanging
(41:28) environment the traditional bureaucracy does mean that you're going to have to fight harder to stay relevant uh as things shift around you this this interview's hurt my head because I keep nodding too much yes all this stuff violent agreement violent agreement so we time for um three quick fire questions for you is that okay so we're just gonna Danny do you want to hit Jonathan with the first one yeah so if you look back at your career what do you think are the biggest lessons that you've learned in
(41:54) your so far one an early lesson that I learned because I've I've always been you know from the time I was a kid I want to please people I want to do a good job uh I was good in school you know like I was an achiever and I so I've always been a good individual achiever and it it was after my bachelor's degree as I was starting my Master's Degree I had a wakeup call uh around how I interact with people and how I interact with teams and as many people do when you go into a master's degree a lot of times you're doing a lot
(42:23) of team work you're doing a lot of Team projects and that was the case in the program I was in and so we had an opportunity to to kind of or be oriented with our team that we're going to work with for the next two years all these different class projects and I won't go into the big long story of it but the short of it is I came away from that orientation with a real aha moment that changed my outlook and the trajectory on how I viewed teamwork um collaboration and I realized for probably the first
(42:53) time I realized that despite my individual success individual performance I often was the problem in team success and team performance because of the way I approached the people I was working with um the way I interacted with them I think I've always been a nice guy I don't think I was a jerk but I I just think the way I showed up in those situations wasn't the best and I and I that was something I was fortunate to have had that aha moment in my early 20s which has served me well since um another one I had one pop into
(43:26) my head and it just slipped to my mind so maybe I'll come back to it we want that L we'll come back to that okay we want it back so even if you have to ring us back we want to know what it is okay Danny what's your next one um yeah you've obviously done a lot of academic qualifications and and research and stuff how do you invest in your own Learning and Development now how do you keep a breast of what's going on you know I think a lot of academics find themselves reading I read a lot like a
(43:50) lot of academics do I go to conferences I I I both present but also attend to learn and so there's all that kind of stuff one of the things I've just found to be incredibly fascinating fun informative was was my own POS podcasting I had been a guest on podcasts over the years probably going back even a decade and a half here and there on occasion uh and but then it it was something I decided during the pandemic so May 8th of 2020 early on in the lockdown I'm feeling like most people I'm stir crazy I'm at home um
(44:27) we're trying to like School our six kids while doing work from home me and my wife and and I I'm missing I'm missing the interaction I'm missing the opportunity to travel I'm missing the great conversations I could have with people and I'm like oh I've been a guest on podcast why don't I just do my own and I like I have no expectation for it I'm just going to like start something and just see and I'll do interviews with people um and that was something I started four years ago and with real no
(44:55) no expectation for it but it's just kind of grown organically over time and I've just had wonderful conversations with so many people I think I've done over like 1200 interviews um with people and it's just fascinating like people from all different walks of life all different Industries different parts of the world and my goodness like what a great way to just stay a breast and informed on like the current trends and like what's happening and I can't tell you how many times I brought those conversations into
(45:25) my classes uh and those sorts of things so that's something recent that I've done over the last four years that's been super helpful super informative podcasting is great you can you can brand yourself you can Market yourself as a thought leader you can it can help generate Consulting opportunities Etc all those were also have been positives but the number one positive that's come from it is just like this wealth of of new information and like just constant um insights from people from all over
(45:57) that's been wonderful well we we've learned a lot from this conversation so thank you for accepting our invitation as well so so last question is um you're talking about you know the the the landscape is changing what advice would you give someone considering a career in organization development either at early stage or considering it as a as a practice what advice would you give them yeah you know Embrace change I mean it it's it's cliche but it it's the world is is changing at a more rapid and Rapid
(46:25) Pace I don't see that um shifting back uh I think that's the world we're in you know when I got started in the field we talked a lot about change inter interventions and we talked about structured change strategies and they were like these events and and whatnot and I think how things have shifted over time is that we're in a we're in a situation now where it's more like constant so it's not change an individual change intervention it's not an individual like distinct change event
(46:55) like we're talking about constant change culture fostering constant uh willingness and openness to learning growth and pivoting and shifting and and being agile so um for any change practitioner in this day and age I think you have you you have to approach it that way um to help organizations really stay at the Forefront of of where they need to be uh I think long past are the days where we can just have like our rolling fiveyear plan strategy where we can like go into our M map out this 2-year interview
(47:27) vention and and then like set it in stone and then move forward like it just doesn't work um it may not have ever worked as well as we thought it did you know 10 20 years ago but it certainly doesn't work now and and so just stay curious continually ask questions um challenge assumptions I I teach my students lots of different theories lots of different models lots of different practices those sorts of things but honestly they're going to forget the vast majority of that stuff what I really want them to come away with is
(47:55) like a comfort a heightened Comfort level with ambiguity complexity and just an innate curiosity if they have those things I think they'll find success uh if they don't have those things no matter how much knowledge they have up in their heads they're probably going to get short circuited at some point in time brilliant and what a what a brilliant way to end our conversation today um there's just so many things that stood out for me so so three things for me so um just the real importance of
(48:21) being aware of generalizations and and the dangers that come with it the fact that a lot of people in organizations are actually well in entioned there's there's so much them and US isn't there it's that importance of that the importance of psychological safety and then you just put one final Zinger in there which is about just the importance of like you know being comfortable with ambiguity as well Danny anything that stood out for you yeah I think the importance of staying curious so I think
(48:41) I loved what you said about taking the time to really talk and listen to The Living Experts of their their context so you know remembering constantly we're not the experts it's the people in the organizations that are and also the fact there aren't any easy answers to these the challenges that we're working with we all wish there were we but not it's difficult and that's why we do the work and the context really matters so yeah they were my two thank you and on behalf of all us Consultants
(49:06) that we're trying to adjust to the new world during covid thank you for being there for us and giving us a North starter to cling on to as well so thank you for that and and thank you for joining us today and thanks for just you know you're just your amazing generosity everything that you do as well um if people are watching this how can they sort of access your work and potentially get in contact with you uh the easiest way I'm I'm like on all the different social platforms so you can look me up
(49:29) there's not many Jonathan westovers out there so if you look up Jonathan Westover I'll probably pop up um I'm probably most active on LinkedIn so feel free to connect with me there you can also check out uh my consulting firm website for human capital Innovations Innovative human capital.
(49:45) com or human capital innovations.com we'll take you there please feel free to connect uh let's chat uh I love having conversations thanks again for the invite this has just been a really fun dialogue and I love and so thank you so much brilliant thank you so much Jonathan thank you [Music]