Power, Systems and Performance with Jeff Boudro - OrgDev Podcast 25

In this week's episode of the OrgDev podcast we explore the fascinating world of organisational dynamics with Jeff Boudro, the Executive Director of Power & Systems, Inc.  In this interview, Jeff reveals the secrets to transforming companies by effectively working with tops, middles, and bottoms. Learn how to enhance leadership, build resilient cultures, and unlock your team's full potential with insights from the company founded by the legendary Barry Oshry

Jeff Boudro
  / jeff-boudro-4440a66 
Power + Systems Website:
https://www.powerandsystems.com/
Book an event with Power + Systems here:
https://www.powerandsystems.com/works...
Barry Oshry's Books:
https://store.powerandsystems.com/
Jeff Boudro is the Executive Director of Power & Systems, Inc. A graduate of the renowned Power Lab and Master Certified in all Power & Systems workshops, Jeff has a proven track record of partnering with a diverse range of organizations to leverage Power & Systems workshops, fos

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Transcript

Power, Systems and Performance | Jeff Boudro, Power + Systems | OrgDev Podcast #25 - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib7mIJh5oCU

Transcript:
(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so how do you strengthen the capacity of your Workforce to meet the increasing demands you fa today and in an uncertain future and how do you create stronger more effective middle managers capable of working together to deliver on your organization's goals so but what if there was a way of seeing your organization that identified ways to address these challenges so in this conversation prepare to have your view of how organizations work to be provot and challenge we're going to introduce
(00:32) you to the world of tops middles and bottoms and it's a really intriguing theory developed by Barry oshy over 50 years ago delivered across the world by power and systems now full disclosure this is something that Danny and I have actually been through which is the organization workshop and for me personally it was a really transformational moment in terms of understanding organization so when we made our Dream list of guests we'd love to have on what we really wanted to do to was to invite Jeff along today who is
(00:58) the president of power and the executive director so we're delighted to have Jeff join us today Jeff is responsible for blowing our minds when it comes to seeing how organizations work um he's been executive director at Power and systems since 2017 and he assumed uh leadership of power and systems after the retirement of Barry and his partner Karen oshy and Jeff is going to give you a much better explanation but Barry committed over 50 years of his life to unlocking the sort of the Mysteries and of power and powerlessness in
(01:26) organizations and has developed sort of large scale simulations for for organizations and teams to work through as well it's going to be a really fascinating conversation and thank you so much Jeff for joining us today oh it's my pleasure thanks for that big introduction brilliant it's lovely to have you with us Jeff thank you so to get us started just tell us a bit about your role what what does it involve what do you do sure well as the executive director I'm kind of responsible for the whole
(01:56) enchilada and uh that's been actually the biggest growth opportunity for me personally because I've always worked in my career 30 plus years in od roles for large companies now it's kind of a a big fish small pond scenario where I have to do everything from sales to curriculum development to trainer relations to client engagements and everything in between so my role is really I kind of think of it in three main buckets one is to really make sure that we're engaging with clients as a direct company or
(02:31) subcontracting to people in our Network that are either better positioned geographically or expertise wise to help that particular client so that's one whole bucket of of task and focus another one is really working on certifying people in our many workshops there's the organization Workshop that Garen referred to but we have others as well leading from the middle when cultures meet the Power lab Etc and really getting people who either bring this work to the organizations they work within or if they're in a Consulting
(03:05) role to the organizations they serve and so how do we deepen their knowledge and their ability to use this intellectual property and then thirdly we're constantly innovating and changing and transforming and adding to our intellectual property to make sure that uh we're ever evolving to meet the changing need of organizations around the world and to make sure that we're staying relevant as organizations shift and change from decade to decade year to year sometimes I to keep you busy that it does it does it's been really
(03:39) gratifying so can you tell us bit more so for people who don't know the the model the model and the workshops you deliver what what what what are they involved and how are they different to kind of other experiences people might sure that's a great question so power and systems as the title implies really focuses on power or powerlessness as Karen said in organizations and what are the Myriad of ways that we as individuals teams entire organizations fall into very predictable patterns in organizational life and I guess the best
(04:11) way to describe it is we put a very systemic lens on the organization specifically focusing on people so you've heard of systems thinking before well Barry's special genius is really understanding how do groups of people in organizations act what predictable path patterns do we fall into what ways do we disempower ourselves or others oftentimes quite unintentionally and this work is really intended to help people have what he refers to as system sight to no longer be blind to the patterns we fall into
(04:46) but instead uncover remarkable opportunities and insights to increase our power our influence our impact on the organizations that we're part of so it can be quite transformational both individually but also Oran organizationally a lot of leadership development a lot of even OD work is often done at the individual level you know when you're working with a leader it's about what are his or her individual competencies or success factors or maybe you take it to the team level with a 360 degree feedback or
(05:16) something of that nature but we're really operating at a systems level to really look at how does a leader work or navigate the very complex organizations that we all live in in in a daily basis such a good explanation and I think once you've been through one of the workshops you can never unsee what you see in that Workshop you can never see things in quite the same way can you yeah that's very true I mean one of the things that I love about Barry's work and one of the reasons I was drawn to it a couple of
(05:44) decades before I entered this role was that uh in addition to the just really remarkable and unique insights you get the workshops are all highly experiential so it's not just making sense to people up here cognitively but you have a gut level experience that not only does it have a bigger impact but it tends to stick with you longer because you really feel it down and down into your bones and uh people that have gone through the experiential workshops not only to your point can they not unse what they've now seen perhaps for the
(06:18) first time but even years later people remark on oh I remember that workshop and I remember what happened in the workshop and in fact that even became part of the Lexicon of our organization we talked about oh that's like taking away people's shoes and people make have have kind of benchmarks about their experience that they bring back to their real life both personally and professionally so it's pretty gratifying from that perspective yeah and it's also it's the intensity of the experience as
(06:44) well sort having done it a couple of times it's as OD Consultants you go into it going the second time you get well this time I'm absolutely not going to I know power of system I've got this the power of the system I'm going to sort of have a sense of agency but there's something in that experiential environment which is really created isn't it and all of a sudden you suddenly start to get the real forces that are at play in a system don't you yeah definitely I mean one of the things
(07:10) that we do quite intentionally but in a very safe why very safe way uh is we create intentionally a pressure cooker experience for the participants and increasingly the world that we find ourselves in whether it's personal or professional is uh described as vuka volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous and we intentionally create create a vuka experience for people and in that experience not only do they find themselves feeling things that surprise them seeing things that surprise them but even saying or doing things that
(07:41) surprise themselves and most people do have that experience that the first time they go through it like oh I get it now um but then if they go through the exercise a second or third or even a fourth time and I've been through it dozens of times at this point myself um both as a participant and as a facilitator it's amazing how powerful the system that we're in is that even when you see that train coming at you down the tracks it's still very difficult even when you see clearly the risks and the opportunities it's very
(08:13) difficult not to get sucked into that Dynamic and these patterns these predictable patterns that we talk about in people experience in our workshops are so powerful and so um ever present because um it's such a part of the human condition and so even when you see it coming it's not always easy um to undo it or to really expand on the possibilities that are available to you absolutely and um for those of you watching on video today we're actually you may notice that we're dressed slightly and we're in we're in Canary
(08:45) War up on the 14th floor of the building somewhere um but it's but we as consultants use this tool quite a lot so we often see and I guess we just invite you to sort of describe what tops middles and bottoms looks like we know we found ourselves in a situation today where that was absolutely motion and then a new level of hierarchy came into the room and then it kind of shap changed the shape of it again so so Jeff could you just explain to me a little bit about sort how and uh I would expand that to go tops middles bottoms and customers is
(09:15) typically uh the four worlds we explore and there's even other worlds that we explore beyond that but those are the four most commonly explored spaces or what we refer to as conditions that are in exort in an organization now often times people think oh tops middle bottoms that's just the old hierarchy that's the old org structure of so many organizations that we kind of inherited from the military thousands of years ago but we go much deeper than that in these experiential exercises and people get a
(09:44) chance to experience and get insights about what is the top condition because it's not just the sea Suite Executives in an organization it's anybody who is in the re in the in the responsible position for having to figure things out and be responsible for the ultimate results so even someone who's an individual contributor that doesn't have someone reporting to them if they're leading a project or initiative they're in the top condition in that particular context and these are conditions that we
(10:15) move in and out of with a great deal of frequency so someone who is in the bottom context well in order for them to get their job done in order for them to be successful and have impact in the organization well they depend on other people above them to give them the tools the resources the information the permission to do what needs to be done so all of us at times are in the bottom condition I uh I was just watching a documentary on my plane ride back from Dallas last night about Facebook and it was about Mark Zuckerberg specifically
(10:48) and they had a lot of footage of him when he was brought in front of the Senate and getting grilled by the Senate now here's a guy that invented a multi-billion dollar company I think he was the youngest ever self-made made billionaire at the time and yet he was very much in the bottom condition when he was getting grilled by Senators even if some of them didn't know exactly what Facebook was or weren't able to ask very probing questions because of their lack of knowledge about what social media is
(11:15) all about so the point is that all of us spend time in the top bottom middle and customer spaces and that each one of those spaces of what we refer to as conditions comes with some very powerful and very predictable conditions so we I'm in the top space it's Crystal Clear to us that we need to figure everything out we're responsible for solving the issues or exploiting the opportunities of the organization when we're in the bottom well we're waiting for them to figure out what we need um and don't
(11:49) they see the problems or or how we're not necessarily set up for success and what are they going to fix it when we're in the middle well we're stuck between executing the vision of the people who are above us and trying to support and give good direction and Clarity of mission to the people that report to us from the front line and when we're customers either internal or external customers of an organization well we're relying on that organization to give us the products and services that we need
(12:17) at the speed cost and quality that we we absolutely demand and have paid for so each one of these worlds come with predictable conditions and we as human beings have very predictable automatic reflex responses to those challenges of those conditions that can send us really deep into powerlessness and and and and um disenfranchisement so the workshops are a fascinating exploration of those patterns and those conditions but also a really uplifting and ennobling exploration of what else is possible how can you increase not only
(12:58) your own individual ual power and impact and influence but actually really maximize the powerful potential of the entire organization that you're part of so that's what gets me so jazzed about this work and I so consistently see people getting really lit on fire about the insights that they gain and the relevance of those insights to themselves both professionally and personally illustrates to people when there isn't good health in the organization so like the tops will often feel a sense of Burden
(13:30) the bottom will feel done to and The Middle's often a sign of is that they'll feel torn as well and I guess this is about giving them more Choice isn't there about the different options they can take to actually yeah a notice the signs and B to to move the organization forward yeah in fact I'd even back up a step and say that often times when we're in the top or bottom or middle or customer condition we don't even feel like we have a choice that being in the top means to be burdened we don't even
(13:56) see that our reactions to that complexity and that responsibility that we have when we're in the top condition we actually do have a choice about how we handle that we don't have to automatically end up burdened and same thing with the middles to be in the middle by definition means I'm going to be torn you know people from above me want things people from below me want things customers want things I'm getting it from all directions and so automatically just say oh that's the nature of the job and we don't
(14:24) necessarily see the more powerful options available to us and that's what I think Workshop so brilliantly does for people yeah and we've read quite a few of the books so uh seeing systems leading systems uh in the middle as well and there's one of the things that sort of stood out for me in there is that when it's not working when not working it feels very personal to the individual like there's something wrong with them and so they therefore stop thinking about the system as the issue is that is
(14:53) that something that you see quite a lot quite a lot although I would characterize it slightly differently to say often times people when they're in the grip of organizational difficulties they tend to take it quite personally and they tend to see problems with others actually that if only this person would treat me differently or this person uh gave me more been in our meeting Haven you then then things would be different so you know if I'm uh a person in an organization with a great idea about how things could be better and I spend my
(15:29) time nights and weekends writing together a great proposal very insightful and very provocative to the organization and I send it up to my Superior in the organization um if I don't take into account that they probably have 13 other complications already begging for their attention I might take it personally if I don't hear back from them like what a brilliant idea that was Jeff um and say oh well that top wouldn't know a good idea for him him or her on upside the head and I'll never spend my time doing that
(16:01) again we tend to take it very personally when in fact that person is probably struggling to survive in that condition that they're in whether it be top bottom middle or customer so yes this work can really help people stop taking things personally and not get derailed or sidetracked by the stories that we as human beings tend to make up and instead stay focused on the partnership and stay focused on how can we all collectively be in service of a better organization and better results so Barry and Karen developed this model quite a long time
(16:35) ago now how the workshops and model kind of changed or evolved since it's quite a bit I mean a lot A lot has changed in organizational structures with phraes and and uh all sorts of different approaches to self-managed teams and things of that nature and there were times even in my career what I where I wondered um is Barry's and Karen's brilliant work going to be less relevant and somewhat ironically somewhat counterintuitively it's become more relevant over time rather than less that even when you have an organization that
(17:08) doesn't have a traditional hierarchical structure the conditions of top middle bottom still exist if not even more strongly because there's always someone that has to feel responsible for the results there's always someone that has to deliver roll up their sleeves and get the work done there's always someone in the middle there's always a customer and so when you separate that from a more traditional hierarchical structure those conditions still exist but they're even more U masked they're even more
(17:40) invisible to people and therefore can be even a more vexing problem for people to solve so we've had to evolve the work that we do and change the language that we use for example to stay relevant we've also had to change how we deliver programs uh for example it used to be pretty common place for people to go to our power Labs which were a week-long experience and you had to be without your laptop and without your phone which people can't do that for an hour nowadays number one 10 minutes but number two um during the pandemic for
(18:18) example we already had a virtual or what we call live online version of our workshops and that became really important and in unexpected ways relevant because all of a sudden everybody was having to work virtually in most organizations that weren't directly serving the public for example and suddenly how do we create an organization where we're you know building a shared understanding of our vision and how we're going to operate together when we're all working in different locations and increasingly
(18:50) that's the way the world of work is going anyhow where people are working across different time zones different geographies and yet we still have to Cooper operate and have deep Partnerships highly effective Partnerships despite the fact that we're not often collocated anymore yeah we've had to constantly look at the world we're in and the world we're that's emerging and make sure that this work serves those new realities equally as well as the when this program was first formed obviously what was your journey
(19:22) into this how did you like personally discover sort of power and systems and how did you come to be the person that now sort of holds the torch for barri and Karen 's yeah there there's three parts to the answer to this so I'll try to make them all very concise first of all OD was not something I even knew was a career opportunity when I was in in University so when I came out of college I was in um the buying area for a large uh business and it was consumer electronics and so I didn't even know
(19:53) adult education was a possibility and yet as I got into that career very early on on I found myself becoming the go-to person for product knowledge about everything to do with consumer electronics and so I kind of naturally organically fell into training people first on product knowledge then on sales then in management development then leadership development and then OD that was my path into OD um specifically on power in systems I was working in my career and I always felt there was a piece missing and I found it when I
(20:28) discovered the organization Workshop that was my first exposure to power and systems was the organization Workshop or ow as we often call it for short and uh I went through it in an organization that I was working in and then years later when I was working at a company called Staples they hired me to begin Staples University to found Staples University for the organization and I brought power and systems organization Workshop into that to bring that systemic lens um into the university setting it was tremendously well
(20:59) received in the organization and we developed such a good partnership with power and systems as a user as a as a partner that we ended up being a beta test site for some of the other programs like when cultures meet and did a lot of pro Bona work for deserving organizations that couldn't afford the work and that sort of stuff how would that be sort of introducing it into a large organization like Staples like how did you start to see it start manifest itself in how people were sort of beh yeah there were really three main ways
(21:28) um so initially we brought it in as one of our curriculum offerings and we had different schools within the University technical Knowledge Management development etc etc and uh we used it as kind of a public offering for anybody that wanted to go through the experience and to really think more think and act more systemically and it got such great reviews that we started getting requests for it for intact teams that we're trying to transform how we operate or how we drive initiatives through the entire organization because Staples was
(22:01) in 25 countries it was a $25 billion company it was a large complex organization that was growing so rapidly that um you know managing that complexity was a was a pretty common Challenge and so intact teams really use this to say how do we unlock the full positive potential of our organization as we try to do work in the larger organization around us and then the third iteration of it or third application of it it was when we started doing programs that were specifically designed for either new managers or high
(22:35) potential mid-level Executives and and so more of a cohort BR a slice of the organization if you will um we ended up using it for those cohort-based programs and it worked extraordinarily well to say what are the unique challenges of a mid-level executive who's high potential um what are some of the the traps that they find themselves in and what is some of the untapped potential for power and influence inuence and impact in your level of the organization so in all three of those ways it really served the
(23:04) organization well so much so that every organization I worked in or consulted to I brought this as a common common offering to the table and more often than not it was extremely relevant to the organizations that I was serving final part of the story was back in 2016 my wife and I implemented what had been a 5-year dream which was to quit our jobs for year and travel around the world with our youngest child and our two older boys um having older children we realize how quickly that goes and all of a sudden they're driving a car and
(23:40) they don't see them anymore they're in college before you know it and so instead of kindergarten we put our daughter into uh what we called called her a road scholar and we traveled around the world for a year uh literally had three summers in a row by by following the sun around the world and the reason I even bring this up is that when I got got back from that Barry and Karen who I had known at that point for 20 years said we followed your trip with great interest would you be willing to talk with us about it because we're
(24:08) finally going to retire um and we don't have a plan and we want to know how you pulled that off and what you really loved and how logistically you did this and I kind of laughed because I said I don't I didn't I didn't think you're going to retire the entire 20 years I had known them they talked about retiring and Barry at that point was in his 80s and still was working every day so he had a lifelong passion for this work long story short I went and talked to them and I asked them what are you
(24:32) doing with power and systems and they said we have option A and option b and I said a simple question which one do you love and they looked at each other and said they're both adequate Solutions but we don't love either one of them and we explored that and um I ended up becoming option C and so it wasn't something I had foreseen or expected it was one of those career progressions that um in hindsight made sense but I never would have seen it coming necessarily and so that's how I end up here brilliant such
(25:00) an interesting story and you know fate took you there really didn't it it really did you it made sense I mean even from my earliest if I think about the essence of what brought me to OD or training in general I really like it when the light bulb goes off for people there something that's really gratifying to me about that and seeing someone get an Insight or a new skill or a new ability that's really going to serve them well is what really you know empowers me and um Power and systems this work just
(25:32) is so closely aligned with what my personal mission is and what my personal um gas tank gets filled up by that it it's really been a great marriage for me that's preempting my next question I was going to ask you if you enjoy most about your role so you've articulated that beauti yeah well to some degree I could also get more specific too because I really love two things about my job I'm like I'm at my happiest when I'm doing a certification for other people that want to get certified in this work and
(26:00) they're really deeply invested in understanding systems and barries Brilliance um so I I really really enjoy and learn quite a bit from when I'm doing a certification so it never dries up for me either and then the other scenario because I was thinking about this in advance of this discussion is when I have a client that doesn't just want an event or a program but is really looking to make meaningful impact either it's some kind of transformation for the business or some kind of evolution of
(26:32) their culture or the way that they work with each other or the results that they focus on together that those are the certifications in that type of client are definitely my my most favorite moments in the job and when you think about the wider field of kind of leadership and organization development what's what's particularly interesting you at the moment looking into what you excited about reading about or learning about well uh what's been in my on my windshield a lot over the past year and a half or so since the pandemic finally
(27:03) subsided is that the the tug of war going on about return to office and what does that really mean for the people running the business what does that really mean for the rank and file in the organization and if we don't return to office with any regularity how do we still have a very robust system where people are engaging not just on the things you might expect like the pre-ordained regular staff meetings but what about the spontaneous hallway collisions that you have that result in a great Insight or a perspective that
(27:41) really broadens your thinking about something you're working on what about those um invitations to the cafeteria where you really get to talk in depth with someone that's maybe outside of your day-to-day sphere so I'm really intrigued by how is the world of work and organizations even outside of work whether it be a community group or a faith-based organization how do things get done how do you create a shared sense of purpose and Mission and how are you doing that in the Ever Changing context in which we engage with each
(28:16) other so that's probably the the thing that is most present in the things that I'm getting curious about and really noticing it's it's kind of refreshing to know because in the UK the the hybrid discussion continues doesn't it and it feels like the the balance of power is tipping towards trying to bring people back into the office again isn't it and and not necessarily for positive reasons often it's for for trust and control control and those things as well like how how are you sort of seeing the
(28:42) picture over in the states there yeah well yeah I would say similar Dynamics are at work in general I think the sea Suite Executives want people in the office more often and they have very good legitimate reasons for a lot of that there is something undeniable about be people being together in the same space and uh again in the in the more random but equally critical connections that we make with people um to get our work done and have a a shared sense of purpose and it's undeniable that um if if I'm an employee do you really want me
(29:18) to spend five or 10 hours a week in the automobile or on the train to get to work that's that much more expense and time that could be invested better for the company as well as for my own personal life and you know companies had to rely on people to get their jobs done during the pandemic when they weren't there in person how come suddenly that's not okay anymore so there's a lot of good arguments on both sides of it I would say and I think there's a pendulum swing much like in the real estate
(29:48) market sometimes it's a buyer's market sometimes it's sellers Market there's a pendulum that swings back and forth in organizations between oh we need to be very responsive to customers and drive decision-making so we got to be decentralized oh we've got to have more consistency and we've got to reduce cost we've got to be centralized the pendulums on a number of different Dynamics swing back and forth back and forth what I am more interested in is saying how can we balance both of those
(30:14) opposite yet very uh synergistic conditions that we have whether it be the centralized decentralized whether it be the work from home and and the independence of that and and the get together periodically to make sure that so Barry has fascinating and really powerful language around individuating and integrating it's not like you should do one and not the other how can you do both and how can you have the wisdom of when to do each at the right time that's really going to lead to a very successful very fulfilling organization
(30:51) it's not just about results it's also about you know engagement and making sure that people feel fulfilled and feel loyal to the organization and want to stay as well so I'm really intrigued with I don't necessarily think we're going to go back to the way it was pre pandemic in terms of how often we work in the workplace but we do need to find ways that work whether we're working virtually or in person that serve us and the organization and its customers well I I can't leave that can you tell us
(31:20) more about individuating and integrating so yeah sure what is it and can you do too much of both like is it attention to be managed like how does that it's attention to be managed I think of it as a polarity I don't know if you're familiar with any of Barry Johnson's work around polarity management but it kind of fits very squarely uh into that category for me uh so yeah Barry in talking about robust systems systems that are really robust and are actually more powerful than the some of its parts
(31:47) he has four strategies that we explore deeply in when cultures meet and some of the other work that we do one of the pairings is individuating and the other is integrating so think of a Continuum and you might be square in the middle or you might be over individuated or over integrated individuating is when people or groups are really looking at the uniqueness their individual contributions to the organization it might be an accountant or a group of accountants or trainers or Consultants or marketing people that are really
(32:22) using all of their talents and all of their wisdom and all of their experience and all of their technical expertise to the benefit of the organization when we're integrating however that's when we're coming together and it's not just because people have the same job role as us but we're coming together as an organization it might be as a department with lots of different roles in it it might be as an entire company it might be a subset of the organization but integrating means we're coming together
(32:49) and we're helping each other have a fuller picture of the entire puzzle we each have our piece of the puzzle but when we're integrating we're sharing information we're diagnosing problems in the organization we are creating best practices together as opposed to creating silos and Reinventing you know Solutions all over the place so integrating is an important way of being individuating is an important way of being how do we make sure that we are individuating and integrating not or so it's an and not an or I forget who it
(33:24) was that was talking about the um I think it was F Scott Fitzgerald that said the the Hallmark of a First Rate mind is to be able to hold two opposing ideas at the same time in your mind and someone else talked about the tyranny of or and the genius of and and that's kind of what polarity management for me is all about and in addition to integrating and individuating is also the concepts similar polarity of differentiating and homogenizing and so an organization can be too differentiated and that leads to
(33:55) chaos or too homogenized and that can be too bland and too unable to really react to the different needs of the organization and the clients it serves how can we differentiate and have different strategies for how we interact with the organization in its goals but how can we homogenize and have a spine tingling shared Mission about how we do things and and the commonality that we build on in the organization so these strategies um are really a very powerful way of powerful lens for looking at how do we collectively and individually
(34:33) operate and are we doing so blindly reactively or are we doing it very mindfully very intentionally with very specific results in mind I sorry question so got I'm gonna just two questions on that so I guess um so so number one is that there's a certain amount of skill in integrating well just because people are coming together doesn't mean that they're going to do it effectively and I guess another thing that we see is that the middles when things aren't working well will often be quite isolated from each
(35:04) other so they don't do that that integration that actually is require the bane of The Middle's existence is that they're so busy managing up or managing down or in some rare cases they're really good at managing up and managing down that they have very little time or quite frankly very little interest in integrating with their peers across the organization and yet ironically there's a lot of power that for them and actually if they're going to end up in the sea Suite someday if they have
(35:32) aspirations for Senior Management it's critical that they're able to look left and look right and understand the strategy of the other parts of the organization that they're adjacent to because if they are deeply expert in their area whether that be marketing engineering HR or or whatever they're going to be to one-dimensional in their thinking and their ability to really Drive organizational performance and success middles we often find we do a lot of integration work with and there's two challenges that I guess I would
(36:03) highlight on that real briefly if that if this is relevant one is Middles often are so busy managing up and managing down they don't think they have time to integrate oh what am I going to do invite my peer that works over in that department to lunch and get to know them I guess that's helpful but that's that's a nice too thing not a need Tod do thing they often fail to see that that person in another function another business unit another part of the organization ation actually has an incredibly
(36:30) valuable perspective that would broaden their ability to be more strategic and More impactful in their role if they only knew how to tap into it so it's not a matter of get to know you for the sake of getting to know you but from your perspective because you're in the same system I am but you have a totally different perspective than I do you're going to come at the things I'm trying to do the problems I'm trying to solve from a completely different invaluable perspective the other thing that's
(36:56) really vexing I think about the middle integration is that oftentimes middles see other midd at best as irrelevant to them and at worst actually as competition for them oh that person's going to be my competition for the next promotion or the next high-profile assignment or the next recognition in the company so there's often a perceived self-preservation or reason to not integrate as opposed to I just don't have time for it it's like oh even if I had time I wouldn't so we often often have to first help mid people in the
(37:30) middle condition free up time figure out how do I spend less time running back and forth between the top and the bottom or the customer and the supplier in the organization it's very busy but it's not particularly effective to do that how do I save time from that that I can then invest in integrating and developing a more Enterprise perspective on the organization and have more of an Enterprise leadership impact and then job number two is to get them to see the relevance of if they free up time to do
(37:58) that what's the benefit what's the payoff and how long does it take and we literally will show them and have them experience again head and gut that they will have tremendous valuable insights to gain in 15 minutes or less if they integrate in a very intentional way with their peers across the organization and you've kind of touched on sort of the next question we want to ask which is in a sa enough way you are transforming people's paradigms of the way in which they see the world and it's not necessarily
(38:27) linear process what kind of challenges do you sort of see in in the room when people are trying to work through these kind of where their mental model of of the old world doesn't match with the new world what kind of challenges do you face and well the good news is most people say although this exercise is not real for me it's not it doesn't you know mimic my everyday life the the patterns that I'm seeing and the feelings that I'm feeling and the insights that I'm getting are eerily familiar you know
(38:55) when we talk about the challenges of top bottom bottom middle and customer uh often times clients will say do you have video cameras in our hallways because this sounds exactly like that meeting I was just in you know minutes ago uh or last week and so the biggest challenge that I find to relate to your question is that oftentimes people will see the Dynamics of the organization but the hardest thing for them to shed is letting go of the stories we make up and because the stories make sense to us they fill in the mystery or they explain
(39:29) a way that discomfort and the stories feel very real to us and in our stories we're always the hero or maybe the victim or the or the Martyr but we're certainly not the bad actor someone else is the bad actor and so the hardest thing we find is for people to let go of that it's If Only They would change or if only the organization would get less crazy things would be better that no I have to look at what am I doing knowingly or unknowingly that contributes to this thing that we all agree is not the most productive or the
(40:01) most fulfilling for us and that's so important isn't it it's that whole element of taking responsibility be your part and uh some people can make a career of not taking responsibility or most of your it's not an easy invitation there's a lot of people out there that um I am fond of calling on the job retirees that they have given up hope that anything will ever be different or that they can ever really do what they think the organization needs done and uh that's really a sad waste of of of of
(40:28) people potential so more broadly how do you measure success them from the work that you did what what's a sign that you know you're making an impact well on a really visceral standpoint when clients come back and ask for more that's you know usually a good indicator that it wasn't just oh an entertaining workshop for them but it had real value and real meaning for them going back to what I said before about my my favorite clients are those ones that really aren't looking just for a program or an event
(40:57) but they're look looking to evolve their culture or evolve their leadership principles or um become more Innovative um another Paradigm another U another one that I bump into a lot in terms of a polarity is organizations that want to be more Innovative but they're also very stuck in the way we've always done things and again it doesn't serve the organization well to throw the baby out with the bath water and say oh we're going to throw all of the things that led to Our Success out the window but
(41:29) nor is it helpful to say this has always worked for us in the past so therefore we're going to keep doing it into the future whether it's relevant or not so having that ability to again be Innovative but not let go of the things that are really truly part of the fabric of what your values are and what makes you successful so it's both preserve and protect what's valuable and relevant but also be willing to adapt and learn and take on new ways of thinking and even invite F you know New Perspectives new
(42:00) experience transferable skills transferable Industries into your system and really consciously mindfully again doing that it makes for really fascinating work and and some of the clients that I love working with are just doing amazing things and really um the speed of change has always been fast but it there's no more return to normal anymore it's one change overlapping on top of another on top of another there's no recovery time there's no back to normal it's it's really kind of uh a
(42:30) state of constant change that we now need to be on top of and and navigate you work regular internationally think you're you're taking this call with us even though you just flown back at 2 am in the morning the previous night and it's warning where you are now so so firstly thank you how how do different cultures consume organization workshops and and the work or are there sort of commonalities and similarities regardless of culture and on those kind of things yeah yes it's it's another end
(43:02) I would say that there's remarkable commonality about the human experience that um being a top has unique differences if you're in Southeast Asia compared to North America or northern Europe um but there's a lot of commonality as well and you also have to pay attention to for example if you're in for example a high context culture in South Korea or Thailand or China or Japan um where there's a lot more difference given to People based on their age or their organizational level or their education or their socioeconomic status
(43:37) for example you have to take that into account and you have to be aware of that and treat those topics appropriately to not be out of Step or Out Of Tune with the culture and on the other hand I'm amazed that no matter what country I'm in when we describe the challenges of top that you wake up in the middle of the night you're pretty sure you're the only one up worrying about that thing that you're you that's making your hand sweat in the middle of the night that's a pretty Universal human thing and and
(44:07) the temptation to suck up responsibility to yourself because either you're the best one to do it in your view or you'd feel guilty about delegating yet another thing to your team because they're already overloaded and you end up inadvertently becoming a bottleneck in the organization cuz you can only focus on one thing at a time so you can only you you can only f on this or then this or then this and so things have to slow down to go through you and so inadvertently when you're sucking things
(44:33) up in the top space you're disempowering the organization around you in fact you're preventing people from having the opportunity to take risks to learn to grow to contribute to the organization and then when you do need that from them well you've kind of trained it out of them so in in often invisible ways we disempower not only ourselves but the entire system that we're part of that is a very Human Experience yeah the road to hell is paved with good intention often in organizations isn't it lots of well
(45:03) intention it's not it's often not about uh sometimes it's about ego or greed but oftentimes it's not it's good intentions that are very far apart from the impact that those good intentions have you know sometimes our intentions are impact like this sometimes it's like this yeah brilliant that's it's really resonating for us actually this has been good grounding for us too hasn't it and in this really fascinating career that you've had working in multiple contexts in multiple cultures doing really
(45:35) significant and meaningful change with different organizations and individuals what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned along the way well in the context of the way you just asked that question I would say listening and not assuming I know enough about the situation that when you show up as a consultant that's a fifth Space by the way um when you're the internal or external consultant and you often have a predictable condition there that people are coming to you to hire you as the expert or the good servant to do what
(46:08) they ask you to do oh we need team building and I've learned to say perhaps we need you need team building but let's dig into this and let's stay in a co-creation partnership as we explore that and figure out if that's the right thing or not because I've also earlier in my career run into this situation where where I either did what I was asked or I said oh I've seen this a hundred times before I know exactly what you need and I show up as the expert and um I find myself then struggling to deal
(46:39) with the fact that Midstream other information became clear that said that original path we set down was not the right one it's really important to stay curious stay humble don't think you have the answers always dig dig and then dig some more so that in a general sense is my biggest lesson I would say I think the the need the need to I guess someone said this to me once when I worked for an insurance company and I didn't think the person was a particularly good leader if I'm being completely candid but what they
(47:16) said was brilliant and so it stuck with me and they said I've learned that context is worth 50 IQ points and I couldn't agree with that statement more that is a really profound statement if you examine it because no matter how smart you are no matter how much experience you have without the context of what's really going on in that specific situation you're missing a whole lot of value and a whole lot of insight so I don't necessarily think of myself as a super smart person but I do see myself as someone who's doggedly
(47:53) determined to get as much context as I can love that so good so just a couple more final questions for you um so how do you invest in your own learning Learning and Development what how do you how do you keep up to date how do you keep yourself kind of inspired that's one of the beautiful things about my role um is that it's kind of built in every time I do a certification I and this is not this is not an exaggeration I learned tremendously from our exploration together that I have to open myself up to be not just the expert teaching them
(48:26) this work but also what am I going to learn about it from their organizational context from their organizational experience from their ways of interpreting Barry's work every time I'm working with a client and get a chance to um really work deeply within their culture and I love it when a client says to me you're like an extended member of our team and I was just with my favorite client yesterday and that's how I feel about them and they feel about me and and that's that's something gives me an
(48:53) opportunity to learn all the time and that's very that really is one of the things empowers me to stay working as opposed to retiring is that learning from different companies different Industries different cultures different geographies is a NeverEnding source of energy uh and and motivation for me and then on top of it for example next week I'm going to the odn conference in Glascow Scotland as I mentioned to you earlier in this conversation and so I'll be surrounded by other like-minded professionals who are deeply interested
(49:24) in od and all that it can do for organization ations and so that's that's like you know swimming in in in warm bath water it's just really a great back amongst your people yeah yeah brilliant and that leads us on to the final question we we really want to ask so what advice would you give someone who's actually considering a career in organization development or it's just at the early stag they just beginning that Journey yeah yeah well this is my bias is going to show through clearly on this
(49:54) but really develop a systems thinking perspective whether you want to call it a more holistic view of the organization uh whether you want to think about it just big picture but for me OD is not in the details of a better performance appraisal it's really thinking systemically what are we really trying to drive here in the organization with performance appraisals and how can we do that in a way that doesn't inadvertently actually hinder the very impact that we want to have where people get all tied up and did a 3.4 rating or a 3.42 rating
(50:30) um you you can you can lose the whole the whole thread if you're not careful so really developing a more holistic or systems thinking approach and I guess thinking about don't just organize or streamline the work of the organization how can you have not a 10% impact on the organization but a 10x impact on your organization how can you really help the organization trans form or revolutionize or evolve what it does and how it does it just sorry I have one followup question for that okay sorry can systems thinking be learned or
(51:08) are some people just innate systems think because they can just see it or can can people actually learn how to be good systems think that's a really good question that I think I need to think about a little bit but I'll give you my off-the cuff answer and then I'm going to probably think about this after this call is over it's a very provocative question I think like with many things whether it be Athletics or a particular field of study some people are going to come to it easier you could even look at
(51:36) whether it's disc or Myers Briggs or something like that and say for example someone has uh a preference for intuition versus sensing in the Myers Briggs world I it's my understanding from Myers Briggs that intuition people with that preference tend to see patterns and tend to think more systemically natural but I've also over the course of my career met incredibly brilliant OD practitioners that have a clear preference for sensing as well so I guess in my view it can be learned there might be some people that are more
(52:11) naturally predisposed to think and act that way than others but I also would say that I'm really encouraged by two things that I've seen change over the last I would say 10 to 15 years which it used to be when I was talking to organizations about systemic thinking it was usually the seite executives or maybe the head of training or leadership development or something like that that I was having the conversation with and the rest of the organization it was kind of a either irrelevant concept or something of not great interest to them
(52:44) increasingly I've seen more and more people at line leadership levels not just in senior levels really thinking and working systemically and I think people are just getting more to the fact that a lot of things are baked into the systems and our way of doing and and thinking about things and that to really affect complex systems you need to think systemically so I think it's becoming more prevalent and more broad-based I guess I would say really glad I answer that question yeah thank you right well thank you so much Jeff for your time
(53:18) it's been really I can't speak for you Daddy but this been a really engaging conversation really enjoyed it thanks really great and and it's given us loads of insights to take away I guess some of the things I'm sort taking away from the conversation is if I'm stealing some of yours just say um I guess that kind of that that tension between individuality and integrating and the often the middles it's the power of them actually taking the time to integrate that it's not you know wasted time seeing the
(53:44) relevance of even integrating and then finding the time to do it yeah those are the two biggest challenges we run into in regard to that and I love the different sayings that you've got I'm going to take away the tyranny of all and the genius of and yeah that was not mine I did not invent that I think it's brilliant Insight yeah I'm cting you on that now Jeff that's great and and just fact that context is worth 50 IQ points that's that's so valid as well D what you taking away yeah I think for me it was the the
(54:10) comment you made the the start of the conversation about the the experiential value of the workshops that kind of feeling things in your head see understanding things in your head and feeling it in your gut as well in terms of helping you kind of bring the ideas to life I think the fact that the conditions the top middle bottom customer conditions they still there they still exist even in a non-h hierarchical organization and the fact that they're just less visible but you haven't got hierarch yeah in some ways
(54:33) it's harder to even sus out and and to figure out how to navigate it you know so that's that with mean and the import is staying curious and just keep digging and asking questions to really understand what's going on brilliant and we if anybody wants to reach out to you there's a whole portfolio of work and books and website an all range of things like how can somebody take those initial steps sort of reaching out to either you or power syst start to explore what's well the easiest way is to either call
(55:01) me directly email me directly or go to our website our website is powerand systems.com and um my name is Jeff budro B Dr and you can reach me at Jeff powerand systems.com so uh yeah I would welcome if anybody has just even curiosity about what we do or how this work might be relevant for them always happy to entertain a conversation right we should stay neutral this but generally organizations would work a lot better if would make our make this afternoon would have been much easier thank thank you so much Jeff and
(55:41) for those of you joining us for the first time we hope we earned your like um on this if you're watching this on YouTube please feel free to subscribe we're building an incredible library of brilliant thinkers and authors and practitioners like Jeff who are generously giving their time to share their insight and their hard one experiences as well so please do keep following and please do reach out to Jeff you got any questions about anything related to power and systems and and thank you for joining us and
(56:07) thank you again Jeff we really appreciate your time we've really enjoyed it's a pleasure to to spend some time with the two of you thanks so much for your your your interest in your great questions thanks Jeff thank you [Music] he [Music]