Operating models, organisation design and change with Roger Kastner of Starbucks - OrgDev Episode 36

How do you help an organisation reimagine new ways of working in order to achieve aggressive strategic goals? How do you create greater  accountability in organisations? That is a difficult task in itself but even more challenging in an with over 350,000 employees. We're joined from Seattle by Roger Kastner, Organisation Design Strategy Lead at Starbucks and also Host of the "What Do you know to be true" podcast. It's a fascinating conversation as Roger shares his experiences, insights and stories from 25 years as a leading edge Organisation Development consultant

💼 About our Guest
Roger Kastner

Connect with Roger here:   / roger-kastner 
Follow the "What Do You Know To Be True" podcast here:
https://whatdoyouknowtobetrue.com/
Subscribe to the podcast here:   / @wdyktbt   

Roger Kastner is the Organization Development / Organization Design Strategy Lead at Starbucks, where he collaborates with leaders and teams to create innovative, high-performing work environments that support business success and employee well-being. With over 25 years of experience, Roger is known for his research-based approach that blends systems thinking, human-centered design, and co-creation to deliver impactful solutions in areas like strategy activation, leadership development, team effectiveness, and culture transformation.

In addition to his role at Starbucks, Roger is a skilled leadership coach, working with clients to help them overcome obstacles and reach their full potential. He is also the host of the What Do You Know to Be True? podcast, where he engages with everyday people who possess extraordinary talent and make meaningful contribut

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Transcript

Transcript:
(00:00) welcome to the org Dev podcast so how do you help an organization imagine new ways of working to achieve aggressive strategic goals now this is a difficult task in itself but even more challenging in an organization with over 350,000 employees we're joined from Seattle by Roger casner who organization design strategy lead at Starbucks so obviously as a coffee lover I cannot tell you how happy I am to have Roger join us today he's also the host of what do you know to be true which is a brilliant podcast which you can
(00:33) actually find and we'll add the link in the show notes today now Starbucks if you don't know it is the biggest coffee shop chain in the world but it's also a strong values-based people focused culture but it also needs to balance financial performance about this which makes it a fascinating organization to work with so Roger works with leaders and teams to achieve transformational results by taking on the most challenging business problems and unlocking higher performance and he's fascinated about the subject of Joy at
(01:01) work and making work suck less that's Adam Grant isn't it I can it is as a host of his podcast he applies his insightful inquisitive approach to interview practitioners with talent and making it a meaningful impact he's had an incredibly fruitful career in in the past he's been a board member of global Visionaries and he's LED Transformations at ey and other Boutique consulting firms as well and he's also a published author he's the author of the project Success Checklist we love a checklist
(01:28) here um and that's all about how to produce results and reducing the risk of project failure so so welcome and thank you so much for joining us Roger well thank you so much for that wonderful welcome appreciate that and yes thank you for your [Music] patronage well it's lovely to have you join us Roger thank Youk so just to kick us off just tell us a bit about the work that you do what's your what does your role involve I refer to myself as an org development practitioner and usually people have no idea what that means and
(02:02) so when I'm at parties on the golf course and people like what what is that I tell them if you've seen the movie Office Space I'm like one of the Bobs but if you remember the Bobs identified what the problem was with that organization again if you're familiar with the movie The org development piece I tend to think of is a combination of leadership development team Effectiveness change management op model org design and you know by that time I usually get eyes glazing over and you know people
(02:35) don't want to talk to me anymore or they want to geek out and I I I hope this is a conversation where we're going to geek out I tend to focus in the area of op model or design because I see it as the fulcrum in that Continuum from vision and strategy to the Daily work experience lived experience of the workforce and that strategy by itself looks great on post ERS and t-shirts but unless it's embedded in the work and how people show up and work together we're not going to see it and then it seems
(03:09) kind of like a missed opportunity or you know leads us to disappointment and then we could really over engineer how people are supposed to work the tools or the roles we could really over engineer on that but if people don't have the clarity of the vision don't see how their work contributes to strategy see their work actually having meaning well then that's just going to hurt performance so there really needs to be something that ties those two pieces together from strategy to work and I think op model org design work actually
(03:44) does it and I'm very intentional about saying op model org design as you can tell not because I'm trying to trademark or sell anything but when we think org design people tend to think boxes and lines structure and I will sometimes say structure is irrelevant if we get the op model piece right now of course there's you know that that's not something I'm going to die on the hill for but op model if we think about it of understanding Clarity not only in the vision but then what are the capabilities we need to produce the
(04:16) value of that Vision then we sequence those capabilities so we understand how work is going to flow from inputs to outputs within that workflow we identify what are the decision rights um and you know where are the key decision happen who gets to make them what's the approach we're going to use it because that's that becomes the basis of our governance and then also in that workflow identifying accountabilities and responsibilities which gives us Clarity in who does what once we have that then we could talk about structure
(04:47) then we could talk about how do we want to organize around the work I think if we get if we have Clarity of connection alignment to Vision capabilities workflow decisions roles we could do it really poor job on structure and yet we're still going to probably have a higher performing team but if we don't get clarity on that then structure actually can usually doesn't help and a lot of times just gets in the way so it's it's something about really grounding the work that we do as OD practitioners in the the realities of
(05:17) the business and the Strategic goals and the you know financial performance and all that and really making that front and center of what we do and I think like a lot of things in life when we're focused on one thing on the thing we're trying to achieve we actually don't achieve it because we forget about all the things that help us get there and so if we're only focused on goals if we're only focus on achieving that business strategy and yet we forget that we're working in human systems we forget that people need to
(05:46) understand and have Clarity into why they're doing what they're doing and who they're doing it with we're probably not going to achieve those business goals so yes the you know every company has to achieve those business goals but if we can create the if we know know the elements that create not only that Clarity for the workforce but actually create workforces that can Thrive that means they performing at a higher level we're actually going to probably exceed those goals and Garen mentioned at the
(06:12) beginning you you host youring podcast how did that come about what was what was the driver for that so uh a little over a year ago I was um trying to think of what's my next move so after 18 years of doing external Consulting and I I refer to it as the Goldilocks experience where I worked for a very small firm a medium-sized firm and a very large firm and decided yeah not it's not working for me so I need to figure out something next and I was trying to think do I start my own thing do I go corporate or
(06:43) what am I going to do I started talking to other people who were very skilled at running their own business there was something about the thing they did and and really their strength their superpower that compelled them to leave a firm or leave a company and go do that thing full-time that not only they had trust in their capabilities but that they were compelled to do that thing full-time and I really wanted to try to understand that so I went and had conversations and I thought these conversations were fascinating and more
(07:15) importantly inspiring and I was thinking to myself 20 years ago I had read Marcus Buckingham's First Break All the Rules where he shares that 80% of employees don't get to use their strengths any single day and as they Define strengths it's the combination of something they're good at and something they're passionate about and that was heartbreaking and then I'm having these conversations with people who are not only working in their strengths every day but they're like taking a risk
(07:45) investing in themselves to go do that all the time that's their full-time job and I found that to be not only inspiring for me but it was how can I amplify these stories to inspire other people people going back to that 80% who aren't working into their strengths and not to try to get everyone to start their own business but what can they do once they're inspired what are the actions that they can take to find their purpose to be able to find that Superhero talent and do more of it align their work to what's meaningful to them
(08:20) and then go have an incredible impact with others so in these conversations a couple people said hey let's we should do a podcast I'm like okay well the project you know I'm I'm a recovering project manager so I started thinking about what would it take to actually have something that was produced every week that you know had a theme had interesting topics had something that would pull an audience in and again this is another conversation I would have with people where their eyes glaze over as I'm telling these individuals who
(08:51) suggested the podcast and they like no no no I just want to hit record like okay cool I would want to do something a little bit more so I thought okay I need to create the structure for having something that would be compelling that tells that that in that story that amplifies the individual hopefully inspires others and serves as a a a resource for OD practitioners coaches mentors and leaders who want to not only get inspired themselves but are in roles where they get to inspire others to unlock those barriers that are
(09:27) preventing them from achieving their goals one of the question we like to ask is like how people how practitioners begin so obviously You' you've started at Starbucks and it's an enormous organization with a a huge foot Global footprint when you begin like how do you clarify the scope of the role and what's in and what's out and get that potential permission to to operate like what was the process for that well it's the same process I've taken through throughout my career doing org design model work and
(09:58) that's understanding like what does what does the vision look like what's our strategic Narrative of what this team is trying to achieve and why it exists and then once we are crystal clear on that message and it's compelling not only to the leaders but to other people in the team then it's the process of identifying okay what needs to be true to achieve that Vision so what are the capabilities we need today what are the capabilities we're going to need in the future um and do we have those
(10:29) capabilities and how well are we doing those things so do a little maturity model on those capabilities and figure out what's our growth plan if we have it today but it's you know not not at the level we need it what's the level we need it at and by when and that becomes part of our road map then we start mapping out how do we sequence these capabilities from from left to right and what I mean by that is based on the inputs and let's make sure we're clear on the inputs let's get really nerdy and
(10:57) understand what are the entry CR criteria for those inputs so we can set expectations with our our customers or Partners upstream and then let's you know as we like to say at Starbucks let's run the marble and understand how does work flow from left to right how does work and what are the capabilities that are engaged to produce that work so we'll look at core processes for any team and start mapping that out and we don't get very detailed we're talking you know level two maybe level three level
(11:32) processes so we keep it really high level for a couple reasons one it would take too long to do the process mapping on everything and two we just want to create Clarity so the leadership team understands okay this is how work flows through the organization how well do we do it today and then what do we need to empower the teams to actually improve the conditions of those capabilities so I'm get I'm already getting a little too much in the details on that one but once we map out those those workflows then we
(12:03) identify where are those key decisions and look at how do we make those decisions today who makes them what's the approach um in the Pacific Northwest we are very consensus based in in our decisionmaking and it makes a lot of sense to have use that approach when you know the the leader either lacks the expertise or the authority to override decisions if buyin is really important and everyone needs to follow yeah consensus might be a fine way of making that decision but if a leader has the expertise and has the authority and buy
(12:41) in isn't as important well that leader could probably make the decision themselves so in the places where we know there's routine decisions let's go ahead and just call out who has decision rights what are the various decision rights who gets to make the decision who gets to provide the recommendation who gets to support the decision let's identify what's the approach we're going to use in the time frame of how those decisions get made because then that becomes the basis of our governance now
(13:09) we understand okay here are the decisions are those decisions being made are we making them in a timely way are they being carried out and are they working once we have our decisions and we understand the processes then we could start identifying who does what and how do we group that work into what roles and what teams which then we can you know this sounds overly simplistic but by looking at work volume times roles we now can build out the front line of any org structure around the same time we're also doing work from top
(13:40) down of understanding what's the best way to organize around this work so we're looking at primary organizing characteristics are you guys playing Bingo I'm trying to hit all the buzzwords we're looking at those primary organizing characteristics see should we be you know most a lot of organizations are a combination of function and process well what makes sense for this team and managing the work so we'll do that top down bottoms up and then we'll talk about spans what's the right number
(14:06) of employees to managers and you know if we have to retrofit where maybe maybe our spans got a little out of control and we have you know 30 people reporting to a manager is that going to hit our goals and our values around personal development professional development if we have one or two people reporting to a manager is that people read leader really a people leader or they just the player coach and they're getting the idea might be they're getting experience being a manager but are they really getting the experience or the you know
(14:38) the training wheels still on that role so we'll we'll look at spans we'll look at what what are the right roles and what are the right expectations for those roles and that informs our our structure all the way along we're taking notes about the things that we need to do in implementation to create the new or that we're going to need so whether it's training whether it's relationships connections whether it's new mindsets and behaviors and how we're going to identify those throughout not only
(15:10) identify but Implement throughout the implementation in all of this we're taking these things back to the leadership team and say hey what what are the behaviors that you need to see what are the mindset shifts you need to see in this organization for us to live into this new vision and what do you guys need to do right now to start creating the the conditions and the environments for those behaviors to show up so an example of this is I'll hear leadership teams talk about accountability and this is my favorite
(15:43) buzzword because if you ask five people what what accountability means to them you're going to hit you're going to hear six def different definitions and it's anywhere from hey when you make a mistake you call it out you have a plan to how you're going to fix it and then you're empowered to fix it two at the Other Extreme you don't admit to a mistake because you're afraid of getting punished and ultimately I think most people would agree that they want the fer and yet they don't identify the
(16:12) behaviors and actions around that around not only how do you how do you create the environment for people to do that on their teams but they're not doing those actions themselves so it's let's identify those mindsets and behaviors and let's be really clear on the dos and don'ts you know outside of a lot of of fast food restaurants they have those signs no shoes no shirt no service and it's really clear on those expectations and yet the first guy who walks in without shoes or or a shirt is able to
(16:40) order food now everyone says oh okay that that sign is meaningless well I don't think we need signs ins outside of our team saying no shoes no shirt no service but we need to be clear on what the dos and don'ts are and it needs to start at the top and the top needs to follow those rules to make sure that it's to tell the rest of the organization these new mindset behaviors actions are not only really happening but the leadership team is so dedicated to them they're going to start showing it as an example right Simon sck has
(17:14) that book about you know Leaders Eat Last well that's probably the last thing leaders should do leaders should always act first in order to drive those behaviors and mindsets they want to see in the organizations so stars is described as like a people focus values based organization how did you go about sort of because you've worked in lots of different contexts how did you go about sizing up the Starbucks culture when you went in there to think this is this is how they do it here so this is this is
(17:40) the the standard good practice Playbook that you can Implement here but this is a little bit different this is how we just Tred to navigate the landscape yeah so you know after 18 years of Consulting and even before that when I was working in large technology companies but as a project manager I was going in and working with you know with various teams every 3 months six months it was a different team different set of stakeholders different subcultures of organizations and you can see what people value in their actions and the
(18:12) values on the wall is very different than the behaviors that show up for a lot of organizations and you know my my relationship with Starbucks is you know goes back a long way because I've been doing a lot of Consulting here in Seattle might have been a couple engagements that I've done at Starbucks might have had a few employees that have been there so I knew a lot about the values going in and I knew as it compared to a lot of the other organizations that I've spent time with I think the part of the asset the value
(18:43) of this opportunity was that these values actually are lived out on a on a on a very frequent basis and so that was one of the attractions of going in there but I think anytime stepping into any organization it's one of the first things I'll do on any any project is to do those stakeholder interviews and usually within the team sometimes with the customers of teams and it's to understand like what's working well what would make you more proud to be a part of this organization or what would you
(19:15) know increase levels of satisfaction working with this team if they're external stakeholders and really understand okay what are what's the what's the lived experience and what are the values coming out of that and then when we talk about about decision criteria or design principles the idea of identifying those principles in design is so when you get to make difficult decisions those decisions are a little easier and you know if we come up with statements such as like we believe in trust and accountability that's meaningless it's
(19:52) meaningless how is that going to help you inform any decisions later on it's like okay where if you had to choose between Trust and accountability which one do you favor more than the others and how is that different than you're behaving today now I don't know where or how or when you would ever have to choose accountability or trust over one or the other but I mean one that I hear in a lot of organizations is around speed and availability like cool like if you had to choose between one which one
(20:21) would you choose like no no no we need both like but what if you had to and let's have that theoretical conversation early on and if it's okay five time or six times out of 10 we're choosing availability Okay cool so now in two months when we have a very difficult decision we're going to know that when things weren't emotional when things weren't tense we said we're going to choose availability six times over 10 how does that inform today's decision and so it's really T that process of
(20:53) understanding what are our stated values what are what's our lived experience and then what do we want that to be moving forward for this team because you know every team has its own subculture that should be connected to and driven from the larger organization but each each organization needs to have that Clarity around what are the values that we want to uphold and what are the things we're willing to let go of and and what was your journey into OD a question weally curious about did did it find you did
(21:23) you find it like what was the story I started off in project management um early in the career and I think that's just because I've always been curious about systems and I know that sounds cliche but it comes from a very I moved around a lot um as a kid and I needed to understand how systems work so I can not only fit in but also be able to you know try to rapidly show value and you know as as humans we all want to be recognized for what we bring for what we offer for what we can achieve so I think that was something that was developed
(21:58) early on when I join when I started my professional career I went into being a project manager because I seemed to be the one person that was interested in organizing work and I understand you know I already had a base understanding of systems so I could work with people who had deep technical skills and coordinate their work um and then after a couple years I started noticing the areas of bad friction whether it's within the team context organization context the you know supplier and customer relationship started thinking
(22:33) about okay what are the things that we're doing on a frequent basis that's making the job more difficult I worked for a technology company that had an annual software release that leaders of the product organization would say hey we're going to put a hundred features in this in this next release and we only need 3% of them to be hits with our customers so that meant 90% of the stuff we were building was useless it's like how much more work would it take up front to identify what those three things could be and could we actually
(23:06) reduce like what if what if it was 30 features that we developed and we developed them really well and what if in developing really well more people got value at them so then you had like maybe five or 10 of those features were actually the the value drivers but just just this idea of this surplus of disappointment that people who were working really hard and really like got you really a sense of value and meaning out of the work that they were doing to have it be yeah nonv value added what a waste that is and what a miserable
(23:39) experience that is and I found myself oh I'm actually leading teams down this path and so it was this idea of the what's the role of leadership of organizations of ways of working that's creating waste and what are the easy things we can do to try to eliminate those things in design what are the things we could actively do when we're executing on work to eliminate or smooth out some of that bad friction and so I started thinking of that as in a project management program management perspective and started thinking about
(24:12) okay what could we do around leadership what could we do around um identifying clearer ways of working and then I realized I had this other Epiphany around project management where the focus was on scope schedule budget it was all about scope schedule budget and that was really important to everyone else until we launched something and then after launching something no one cared about scope schedule budget it was all about adoption it was did we get the value out of it did we did we achieve the r out of Roi and no one
(24:39) cared about the eye and I'm like wait a minute I just spent 12 months busting my butt and busting a lot of chops try to hit that eye and now no one cares and I realized this I was working on a couple agile projects where I got to see and users involved in stating the problem and doing the design work in helping with the build and helping with the test and helping with the implementation to the point where users and users are asking for this product or service before it's even ready to be released and I started thinking wow
(25:10) that's there's something working really well in this process how do we get end users involved in identifying problems designing Solutions and then owning those Solutions and that felt a lot like change management so I started doing change management work and then realized oh there's a way we could actually take these same learnings from from the space of building products or services to how we organize around work how we help leaders be more effective at you know making strategic decisions communicating
(25:44) those decisions supporting their teams how can we make team leaders more efficient at ensuring their people are well taken care of and able to produce and have everything they need and individuals to be able to produce the work that's meaningful to them that's for the company and that they're developing and growing and so I you know to some extent when I look back over the last 30 years I think I'm an OD now because of the sins I committed early on in my career but I really think of this natural progression of just
(26:15) understanding things and seeing things in a different way and then just gravitating towards oh I can I can run projects and programs and ways that actually reduce friction and in the lane language reduce the muda the the waste to oh change management everyone cares about adoption and that's the metric that organizations care about a lot more than scope schedule budget so got into change and then realized oh these beautiful things we're doing to drive change actually we could do it and how we Shape Up workforces and
(26:48) environments that's how I got into OD did you give yourself permission to keep expanding and moving your the variety of your role or what what was the the driver behind that yeah if you talk to anyone I've worked for probably most people I've had relationships for this word permission I don't know what it means it's one of those things where I think I see an opportunity and just ask okay why not why not do it that way and the answer is there's there's no good answer to that so it's like okay let's
(27:21) go do that and so I will I will quickly move into doing things in a way that makes make logic iCal sense to me and then find out oh I should have got buyin from other people along the way to bring them along so it's usually I'll act and then come back and be like oh yeah H okay here's the problem to solve here's what I'm thinking how we would solve it do you agree okay cool okay this is what we've what we've already done and this is what's in front of us so that that's a recurring theme I'll own that and what
(27:52) do you enjoy most about the work that you do what what really brings you Joy I like to say that I'm unlocking my potential when I'm working with others to unlock their potential and I will often find that like in the stakeholder interviews or when I'm having coffee with um a leader or a membership of the leadership team or someone who's in in these teams and they just start sharing their hopes and dreams and start talking about different ways of working and if like if we could just smooth out this area of bad
(28:23) friction or if we can just stop doing this thing or start doing that thing life would be so much better and then it's like okay well let's let's go make that happen and being able to help leaders teams individuals think through okay what's getting in my way and it's usually these limiting beliefs it's usually stories people are telling themselves and through history I mean there there there's probably evidence to support those stories but you know could we be the author of our own stories in
(28:54) ways that you know there are different ways of doing it maybe we might have to spend a little bit more time getting other people to buy into our story um but those things are possible and so why wouldn't you do it and if it's beneficial for you most times it's going to be beneficial for the group especially when it comes to these Team Dynamics or ways of working together so why not identify that thing that probably a lot of people are thinking about and spend a little time actually implementing it to make it true you said
(29:23) one of the things you talked about is the fact that sometimes like leaders can be like overly focused on one thing like the business strategy or a Target I guess the thing I was just wondering is what in your mind creates that kind of binary thinking and how do you encourage leaders to take a broader View and actually look there's a lot of contributing factors that actually enable people to achieve those things it seems like a simplistic question but I think it's really complicated and I think it really gets into not only those
(29:53) limiting beliefs the stories we're telling ourselves whether they're conscious or or or or unconscious stories that we're telling ourselves I think it also goes to how we measure success and our definitions of success and you mentioned that book that I wrote the project Success Checklist this was this came out of a process I realized again I mentioned how as a project manager I thought it was all about scope schedule budget only to be disappointed over and over again when we built something and we hit those metrics but
(30:25) then no one used it and people thought of the project as a f failure and I thought about my team of how horrible it was for that team to go through that experience of working 40 50 60 hours a week for months to produce that product that feature only to have it be deemed a failure when it actually worked perfectly by Design and I felt like a failure because we didn't produce something of value but I nailed scope schedule budget like mic drop moment but no one cares no one was there to hear that mic drop so this idea of what does
(30:56) it mean to be successful and I started doing this thing of like okay how do I gamify this so I would go around and talking to leaders and stakeholders and understand like hey in this environment what makes project successful and for this Fe for this thing we're building what would make it successful so I'd get those definitions UPF front early on and then I would just Co less to figure out okay here are the top 10 things that are going to make this project successful okay that needs to be in scope we need
(31:25) to achieve all those 10 things that needs to be in our risk management plan because the converse of those things will lead to failure so we need to be doing those things we need to be measuring against those we need to be resourced against those things and if we hit those top 10 things but maybe slide on a a few other things well those other things are like you know 11 through 100 like people don't care about those things they care about the top 10 things so let's let's achieve those top 10 things I think that's an example of
(31:53) using metrics for good but it required a conversation where I think what I see with leaders whether you know at the team level organization Enterprise level is there's a certain certain metrics that they have to hit and those metrics have make a lot of sense but if you get so myopically focused on those metrics and you're not focused on the other things that help you get there or hurt long-term performance hurt long-term relationships become you know bad friction for the future you might be getting a short-term metric but you're
(32:29) you're you're you're hurting yourself for the long term and if you're really focused on that one thing you not be you might not be achieving the other things that you're trying to achieve but it's the thing like if we're so focused on that metric we might be losing focus on the other things that are important that help us achieve that metric and so I think I think what I see is a lot of leaders think about the two or three metrics they're trying to hit and not thinking about everything else that they
(32:55) need to that needs to be true to not only achieve that metric for the short term but also create longer term sustainable success when you think about a kind of a good OD practitioner what do you think of the essential qualities that that you need to operate effectively there's there's a few things and I think I I can you know stand on the shoulders of giants on this one uh Edgar Shin's uh advice around never forget that it's the client who owns the problem and the solution I think early on in my career I wanted to be the one
(33:27) coming up with a solution I thought that was my role and always disappointed when that solution would never make it off PowerPoint or if it was implemented it was implemented sort of half ass and never achieved what it was supposed to and then coming to the realization of like you know not only do teams actually come up with pretty good suggestions in the realization of hey I've been thinking about this problem for three weeks and they've been thinking about this prom you know every day for three years like they're going to know a lot
(33:57) more about the prom they're going to know a lot more about the constraints and the context they're probably going to come up with a better solution for their situation and then it's their solution they're going to have a little bit more agency there's going to be a little ego tied in a little more agency and a desire to make sure it's successful because it's their solution so I think there's some wisdom there I think there's also uh I I recently heard Peter block talk about all facilitation
(34:22) is political which you know I was thinking political in terms of like politics and that I don't think I've come to realize it's not what he meant he meant that we all have our own biases and we all have our own agendas and perspectives and we might you know I have a friend who likes to say this and it's it's so true all perspectives are valid and partial and I think about that including mine as the facilitator so I need to be really careful about my biases and what I'm trying to achieve
(34:53) this is where I lean a little bit into my coaching practice around coach the person not the problem allow the team that we're working with to be focused on the problem and creating the solution for the problem I'm just there to help facilitate them through the process I'm there to ask them questions I'm there to keep them on track with what we're trying to do but be open to explore the things that they need to explore I think there's also something really important about managing the container using more
(35:22) coaching language managing the container in which we're doing this facilitation um with teams and another friend likes to say no one has a monopoly on the truth and there's something so disarming about that within teams of like you might really hold on to your truth really tightly but realizing that everyone else has truths that they believe and that all of you know tying back to the other part about all of them could be partial like how do we find a Shar truth and how do we come up with a Future Vision or a future thing we're
(35:56) trying to achieve that we all Buy in and if we can create a container that allows people to be vulnerable um to show up fully and participate to have fun then we're going to we're going to create a container in which these things are possible now if we come in with tools and we come in with diagnostic like you know you guys rank three out of a 100 on trust or accountability those Diagnostics are valuable to start conversations but if we don't create the containers to have those conversations in a very healthy way those
(36:31) conversations are going to be very different are there any sort of tools or methods that you really enjoy using you just find they're like the Roger casner go-to kind of tool I would think the thing that I'm enjoying using the most that is the most Illuminating with teams right now is a process that I learned from a from a a trusted advisor friend that I I used to work with and and it's a process that she would refer to as semantic differential now when I was a a client that was or a consultant that was
(37:04) charging you know a lot of money for each slide and for each you know buzzword I would call it semantic differential because it sounds really smart and even has its own Wikipedia page but really it's it you know in more you know everyday people's terms it's this or that and it's really looking at what are two possible positive outcomes and where's our the question would be what's the focus today and where should the focus be in the future so an example for a leadership team we have Innovative
(37:38) and harmonious so the leadership team could be Innovative and everything that comes with that or it could be harmonious and what's the focus today is it very somewhat somewhat very and where the focus is today and where do we want it to be in the future now if the team is very harmonous today harmonious today and it wants to be very Innovative in the future it's like okay cool that's a big leap what do we want to agree upon as the behaviors of what it looks like to be Innovative this is not giving
(38:13) everyone cart blanch to come in and be a bunch of Jerks with each other we don't want that but what does it look like how are we creating space for us becoming Innovative so we we identify those two really values and then have a conversation about what that means now in some of these pairings there's usually 8 to 10 if the today's focus and future Focus are on the same thing cool we don't need to talk about that but the thing where there's that big spread between future and and where we're at
(38:44) today that's a great place to have a conversation and let's drive it into behaviors and actions and then let's let's check ourselves in three months are we showing up in that way are we showing up in ways that are Innovative without being a bunch of jerks as the example example what do you find most challenging about the work that you do yeah it's I think it leads to disappointments for myself in that when I'm in that space of helping teams imagine what's possible we paint very Rosy pictures we get really excited
(39:13) about what's possible and then as we're working through the details and constraints come in and realities come in and where we are today versus what's possible and there's people coming in and out of of the team over time this original vision gets watered down a little bit and so then maybe we achieve 70% of that original Vision or 80% which is really good based on where they were when we started off but I'm sitting there going yeah 100% would have been cool like I get really excited about
(39:47) that potential um and then I have to realize again the growth that they've made just in the conversations and then over time what they're able to achieve that's really good and I think that's that's the work that I do that stands the test of time you know our org structures our operating models those are like sand castles that will that will be disappeared with the E of of the tides um and just as new leaders will come in new strategy will come up orgs will shift and move in various ways to
(40:22) the point where that old structure that old operating model is no longer relevant I can live with that but if we've helped leaders actually understand what it takes to not only achieve business results but also create workplaces that Thrive and create leadership teams that can Thrive together if they take that away I feel like I've earned earned my paycheck for that day one question you kind of touched on a little bit but we just want to explore a bit more detail so how do you measure success in your role like
(40:48) how do you account for your the work that you've been doing it comes up in what you know what leaders say to me during and after the engagement so once we've once we've implemented the project and the leader comes up and says thank you for the work I know it wasn't easy we were pretty we were pretty hard to work with they all say those things and then they'll say something like you really pushed my thinking you made me think different you did make me a little uncomfort you made my you know go to
(41:21) places that were uncomfortable you poked and prodded and you helped me come up with a better solution thanks you when I hear that I know I've I I've done my job there are times I know I do that and I don't hear it from a from a from a leader from a team and that's that's a little disappointing but I know that their their org their op model is different because you know I push them uh that feels good the thank you the recognition also feels really good too and what would you say are the biggest
(41:52) lessons you've learned if you look back at your your career yeah I'm gon to go back to that the the the Edgar shine of letting clients own the problem and the solution being the the the biggest lessons and the biggest change in my work and when I first discovered it was like I need to work a lot less and then what I learned to be true is like oh no I I need to shift efforts from rather than coming up with solutions to creating the environment in which teams can have those conversations and really fruitful healthy ways that
(42:25) are actually setting up the team to operate differently in the future that they will own the problem and they will own the solution but the quality of their solution depends on that container I create and that's been true whether it's in the org design work I do operating model work I do all the OD work I do when I'm coaching clients again coaching the person not the problem letting them own that and it it it comes back to even podcasting the the as you guys know it's there's a structure to it
(42:58) but it's the the guest that is going to add is really going to breathe life into it you're just creating the container for them to amplify their message and to maybe even find meaning in the conversation obviously the podcast is a big part of your personal development how how do you invest in your own Learning and Development uh a couple different things so um one I'm in a book club where we read fascinating books and the the the types of books that we pick are are just are very random and we get
(43:30) introduced into a wide range of of of subjects um we read anakah Harris's conscious it's all about Consciousness um all the way to reading there's the books I suggest and not everyone loves those books but the conversations are great about them and sometimes the the best conversations come out of the books that we don't like but you know we're covering ground from you know Consciousness to maybe Adam Grant's hidden potential in all spaces in between I recently got trained in coaching so I joined a 9-month program
(44:04) to up my skills in coaching and it was fascinating to really learn more about myself than necessarily the techniques or tactics of how to coach and I think it's going to help me not only be a better Coach but also be a better OD practitioner um as we talked about uh creating the container and allowing clients to own their problems and their uh their Solutions and then um right now it's it's the podcast that is giv me the opportunity to talk to a wide range of people to understand what what is it
(44:41) about the thing that they do and why do they do it um that becomes so fascinating and yeah there's little like tips and tricks and I I I will state at the beginning of the podcast we're not trying to like learn a new talent but we are learning a lot of things from these clients about how they or the the guest about how they do what they do so there's there's definitely some value there but the goal is to get inspired about what is it that they have found to be true along their path of living into
(45:12) their potential and so this this whole first year of that podcast I've been learning about purpose what is purpose how is it formed what are some of the you know the origins of what happens in early stage development or you know are we actually born with a purpose so learning more about that to how do we fulfill that purpose and then is purpose enough to help us achieve our potential and the answer is no there's more to it purpose is our Northstar it's our Compass but what are the other things that we need that actually help us like
(45:47) achieve what our potential is what I need to be able to understand is like how do you define potential like how how would you come up with a a number or a diagnostic of what is your potential in in this skill or this capability or this mindset I you know I don't know if I want to take that on I'm just right now trying to learn what what's the foundation and what are the elements of potential and that's fascinating to me if you can crack that e it so we're gonna give you one quick bonus question because obviously we you
(46:20) talked about books and a lot of the people that watch this are inspired by the books that they read are there any particular books that you've read along the way that have like really either sort of challenge your thinking or you know sped or accelerated your your your learning ah well it's a bonus question do I get bonus answers do I get to give you more than one the first book that I think I recommend to you know more than any other book would be the Speed Of Trust by Stephen Mr cvy um not because
(46:46) it's it's not a great read it's probably like four pages of good content and then 250 pages of story The Elements of trust that are in that book is so accessible and so like everyone just will connect to it very quickly like the elements of trust Integrity intent capabilities results you know people who have a lot of Integrity intent but they don't have capabilities and results you're not letting them watch your dog over the weekend you know people with a lot of capabilities and get results but you
(47:17) don't know about their integrity and intent still not letting them watch your dog for the weekend you need all four of those things to be able to have someone who's really trusting the best way to earn trust the fastest way is through capabilities and results the fastest way to lose trust is violation of Integrity intent those are the four pages go by the book let's let's let's make sure Mr cvy gets some of his uh royalties but so valuable and we you know I'll set that up with every leadership team I work
(47:45) with I'll set that up I'll have that conversation and they're like oh here are the behaviors where we need to see more trust from one another the other book that I um that I read that I thought was really really helpful um was Dr David rocks your brain at work and in that book he goes into the threat and reward response that we have whenever we come across a new stimulus and the the the whole scarf model and if you're familiar with scarf it's status certainty autonomy relatedness and fairness and the the neuros science
(48:26) tells um alas tells David Rock and he makes it in puts it in plain language so I understand it is that people will either have threat responses or reward responses in those five areas and you can anticipate someone's response threat or reward based on those five even better you can go ask them questions and see hey if this thing happens you know how do you feel as far as like what what's that going to do for your reputation is it going to amplify it or be a threat to it do you know how to operate in this new world with this new
(48:59) thing does this new thing hurt or amplify your ability to make decisions and have choice of how you do your work does this does this thing take away your ability to work with your team or to be the go-to person and lastly Fair does it seem fair that this is happening you could have these conversations and it changes not only it improves the ability to understand what people are going to need through change but but it also creates connection between a manager who asks those questions of their people and that relationship only gets stronger
(49:35) through having that conversation and that's one of the big principles that I come across or that I I want to do in the work that I do I've talked a lot about Clarity super important I talked about co-creation how important it is to get you know the people close to the problem coming up with the solutions because I come up with better solutions that will be um implemented at a higher rate but this last piece around connections and this is something that's that we're getting further and further
(50:00) away in the workplace um from you know whether it's the you know hybrid work and remote work whether it's the use of technology and you know having meetings via Zoom or teams instead of being in per um in in in in the same room that loss of connection I think we see throughout society and we're seeing like some really scary numbers around you know rates of loneliness anxiety depression suicide not that work has to be the solution for some of those problems but our manager and you know spend five minutes on LinkedIn and you'll see the
(50:38) studies that people are quoting around like your manager has a huge impact on your mental health like maybe maybe we need to equip managers to show up in ways that build stronger connections with their people we need to invest in that we don't do that you know I I've seen too many organizations that want to put a lot of money into leadership development and nothing into their Frontline managers and yet who do the Frontline managers work with majority of people in the company the people who do the work that produce the value of the
(51:11) work and we're not investing a single dime in those managers or at least if if the performance of the company is important which it is why are we spending money for leadership development When leaders have probably already received received that learning that training that assessment whereas the Frontline managers haven't they've been promoted because they're high performing individuals they've never had experience of being a manager and they've only seen what other managers have done before and we're not investing
(51:43) in those Frontline managers that's a problem and that's where connection is hurt in organizations and those managers get promoted to directors and they get promoted to VPS and then pretty soon you have people that have are all focused on technical skills and have you know very little adaptive skills that aren't building connections and yet the research is clear those adaptive skills are create higher performing teams the question we like to ask all of our guests and we finish off with this every
(52:09) time is what advice would you give to somebody who's considering kind of working in the OD field recently I had someone who had just graduated their masters in org development how are they going to get a job in or in org development and at least from what I've seen in the roles that I've seen in companies I've I've come into contact with rarely is there an org development role there are leadership Effectiveness org Effectiveness team Effectiveness Learning and Development change management org design roles but there's
(52:41) not an org development role um and so my advice was like the area that you feel that you have capability in go for those roles whether it's change management or leadership development go for those roles and then when you're in those rols look to see how you can you know sort of like spread your scope of work into those other fields um and start picking up that work um and getting exposure to it and being able to to to you know get some bullet points for the resume um of of experience in that work but I I think
(53:16) I think you know it's more likely that you're going to get a role in one of those pillars rather than in the umbrella I don't think umbrellas have pillars but you know what I mean um usually my metaphor games a little bit better yeah but um I mean that's that's what I've seen and that's kind of that was my experience and that's the experience I've seen of other people that you know change management as the gateway drug into OD you know it just expands from there rather than getting
(53:46) an OD rooll where you have all that work and I I think I mentioned this um at the top around org design and op model work the beautiful thing about it is you're going to see all the dysfunctions within an organization you're going to see all the places where they Thrive and all the places where they get in their way and so you know after you've gotten into you know after you've done change management and you pick up those skills and you understand you know what people are motivated to actually make change happen
(54:17) then come on over to org design uh because you're going to start seeing where you could apply those same skills and capabilities of helping people change behaviors change actions in the op model org design space because there's going to be plenty of opportunity to do that in the ways of working and the ways that people are creating either bad friction for their teams and organizations or the issues that leaders are having with one another that really show up in their teams I I I think the first step first step on that
(54:49) that OD train is change management and then whenever you can jump over to org design because there's there's a lot of fruit in that Garden brilliant well I want to say a huge thank you Roger thank you for getting up very early in the morning because it's a huge time difference congratulations of all the guests that we've had so far you are the furthest one away 5,000 miles so thank you but just want to really say thank you for just a really articulate clear you know real kind of sort of shedding a light on your method
(55:21) and your practice as well so I think people that are watching this have got so much value for that I know that we have as well Danny what are you going to be taking away from this oh huge amounts but I think a couple of things that really stood out were the um the importance of creating good containers for the the people working with to have good conversations and the importance of that the client owning the problem and the solution so important it's so easy to fall in a trap of of not doing that and trying to fix everything for them
(55:45) and the importance of setting expectations and being really clear on those thank you guys so much for this opportunity it's an honor and a privilege to be able to have this conversation with you both I've been a fan for a long time and I'm really really appreciate the good work that you're putting out into the world and helping other people learn more um about not only what it means to work in the OD space but I think there's also just some good work and value in od practitioners learning from other OD practitioners
(56:17) whether they're you know in year one or year 30 where we can learn from each other and get better to do the work that we love and and and get a lot of meaning out of so thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for the opportunity to be here brilliant and if people want to follow your work if they want to follow your brilliant podcast what's the best way for people to do that so the podcast you know this is a learning Edge for me I should have probably named it something a little easier but it is what do you know to be
(56:45) true so there's a website what do you know to be true.com it's available on all the platforms including YouTube apple and and Spotify um it's it's just such a passion play for me I love I love and you know it's it's just so grateful um to to be able to have stumbled into hosting that podcast and the the great conversations I have I my email address is roger3 BL pens.
(57:14) com maybe next time I'll I'll take up an hour telling you how I came up with that name um and then LinkedIn is also a great place to to engage with me as I um I'm no short on providing opinions when it comes to All Things OD and really around the spaces of clarity co-creation and connections well thank you so much your interview joins a very worthy collection of other OD practitioners as well and I know that people get a lot of value from it um if you want to follow we are literally launching a new episode every single
(57:42) week so Rogers will be out very very soon if you subscribe to the channel um then just be notified and again like Rogers it's available on YouTube and all the other platforms as well so so thank you so much for watching and thank you again for joining us all the way from Seattle my pleasure thank you take care bye-bye [Music]