October 31, 2023 • 59 mins
Meetings are a microcosm of organizational culture where all social dynamics are in play. Join us as we talk to Tabea Soriano, Partner at The Ready, for an exploration of organization design. We talk about the past, present and future of work, and how process, practice, and principles are the core of creating the meaning of work. How, by making the implicit explicit – like who talks when, how agendas are assembled, and what meetings are actually about – we can experiment with small changes and create trusting workspaces where people can participate, contribute, and make more time for the craft of their work, ultimately reshaping how organizations work. For more about We Interrupt, please see our website at www.weinterruptthis.com for show notes, links, credits, and other episodes. Contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
It requires the slowing down of the decomposition of the things and the structures, be they internalized or not,
be they the actual processes or not in a company, and building them back up again.
That's where I land with the interrupting.
It's like having the built in pause to be able to become more intentional about our working places.
(00:25):
Meetings are a microcosm of organizational culture where all social dynamics are in play.
Join us as we talk to,
Tabea Soriano, partner at The Ready, for an exploration of organization design.
We talk about the past,
present and future of work and how process, practice, and principles are the core of creating the meaning of work.
How by making the implicit explicit,
(00:48):
like who talks when how agendas are assembled and what meetings are actually about,
we can experiment with small changes and create trusting workspaces where people can participate,
contribute and make more time for the craft of their work,
ultimately reshaping how organizations work. Thank you so much for joining us today.
(01:20):
I'm really looking forward to this conversation! Just a little bit about you.
You come to us from The Ready.
I've been listening to their podcast for the last,
I don't know,
three years and I love it every time it spins up on my podcast list,
I'm like,
oh,
I'm in for a treat.
So it is an
absolute pleasure for me to talk to somebody from The Teady and particularly for you,
(01:42):
given your experience.
I'm wondering if you can spend a little bit of time at the beginning of this podcast telling us about who you are and how you've gotten to your current position.
Thank you,
Laure.
I think there's an elevator pitch version of this.
But let's see,
let's see how we do.
So,
I'm Tabea.
I'm an org designer and transformation consultant at The Ready,
(02:02):
which is a org design and transformation consultancy.
We've recently also added future of work to that roster.
And what we do is help companies get from current state to a future state in the broadest sense of the word.
There's a lot of strategy work that goes into that.
A lot of design.
I'm also an executive coach and advisor within that scope.
(02:25):
So more one on one conversations,
there has been a long meandering path in my career so far and I've been inquiring into the through line of it for the past several years and I've come to the pithy motto of "Leave it better than you found it".
Awesome.
And I think the question that always is what does better mean,
right.
Correct.
(02:45):
And who's defining that. So one of the things on your list of things that you've done is participating in something called a relay cohort with WIN, standing for Women in Innovation.
And I would love for you to talk a bit about what that experience was like.
So Women in Innovation is an NGO that put on this WIN relay program for more senior leaders.
(03:10):
And it was a cohort based program in which I believe about 25 or so of us women,
15 plus years into our careers,
had a chance to not only meet weekly and have peer coaches within the cohort but had a series,
a speaker series or a conversation series almost of leaders join us a week,
(03:31):
week over week to give us more of an insight into their leadership styles,
the things that they were grappling with.
And it just opened a dialogue and served as a backbone to have conversations about work with individuals and women specifically who were kind of at the same at the same level.
So less entry level,
more mid and senior level women. In retrospect,
(03:54):
what came out of it was a more genuine way of networking.
I'm still in touch with a lot of the folks who were in that cohort.
We talk about work stuff.
It's interesting because there's not many people to talk about work stuff with,
you know,
the,
the work that one does that is not your partner or your family,
and friends,
but is also not necessarily the colleagues with whom you are in the work.
(04:18):
Yeah,
so that's,
yeah,
that was kind of the the lasting impression and still continues to this day from that,
from that program,
having those colleagues that aren't your colleagues in a way that are kind of at the same place in their career.
There's a different feeling from and coaching is wonderful,
but it's a very different feeling than,
hey,
here's somebody else at the same career stage that's fighting the same fight and may have had a slightly different contextual experience to help me figure out maybe how I can do with this over here.
(04:46):
Absolutely.
What originally got you interested in organizational design?
And we're gonna talk about what Org design is in a little bit.
But how did you end up here?
Oh,
I'm,
I'm harkening back to that long meandering road.
I started in start ups,
generally speaking.
And I remember in 2015,
(05:07):
which was the last year I worked full time on a salary for a company before my current employer The Ready.
So there was a long period of time where I was an independent consultant and had my own LLC.
And I think that gives you a little bit of a clue into how I got here.
The start up life and start up world is generally speaking in the chaotic realm of complexity theory.
(05:34):
So not that many procedures and processes,
lots of putting out fires,
lots of urgencies.
It's the literal opposite of big bureaucracies and slow moving red tape everywhere,
kind of places of work.
And I remember back then in 2015,
my brother
had a similar experience also working for start ups and had clued me into Frederick Lalo's "Reinventing Organizations".
(06:01):
So that was the first time I came in touch with Org design or,
you know,
how,
how organizations could possibly be set up in a more humane way.
And,
but I didn't make moves really until right before the pandemic in 2019 to take an executive program at Georgetown University to get a little bit underneath the change management thing.
(06:25):
And I think by that point,
I had done enough pivoting and,
done adjacent possible types of work to which then another side came where I was working with bigger bureaucracy,
you know,
more legacy type organizations doing strategy consulting.
And it was very much the OK,
this is a very beautiful deck and how are we gonna organize all of these humans to get after it?
(06:47):
And we were talking about sustainability strategy consulting,
you know,
having a new website color wasn't gonna cut it.
So that's that all of those things,
those experiences together kind of brought me to where I am today for those people who may not know what is Org Design.
I think people have heard about things like product design and website design.
And now we're talking about actually designing an organization and clearly this is what the ready does.
(07:14):
It's actually a bit of a piece of what I do on the nonprofit side of things.
How do we do?
But,
but how would you describe to people,
what organization design is and,
and why it is,
I guess.
Yeah,
it's so funny.
I had to look up a couple of definitions to be a little bit more succinct.
But essentially,
(07:35):
it's,
it's aligning the purpose and vision on the one hand,
but really the strategy of a company and all of the things that go into it.
So more like processes,
procedures,
practices.
On the one hand,
we call that in some parlance is the hardware technology kind of falls into that too.
And then on the other hand,
more of the software,
(07:56):
the behaviors,
norms,
values,
interactions,
you know,
the people side of things and it's really setting up and
that sounds like such an easy thing to do.
It's not as easy as it sounds,
but setting up and aligning the organization to be able to get after the goals and,
and ultimately the vision and purpose that it's set out to do.
(08:19):
So do you guys also do work on,
let's say agreements inside an organization,
how people work together,
how people explain how they want to be worked with,
and work with others?
Is that a big part of what you guys do?
Yeah.
Yes.
What you're talking to right now is you know,
just a sliver of different kinds of engagements,
(08:40):
but also,
you know,
outcomes of meetings and,
and that's working agreements.
What agreements can we make?
Do we want to make as a team,
or even just as two individuals together working on project to have a home for a lot of these things that we don't talk about at work and,
or things that maybe haven't worked in the past.
(09:01):
So how can we agree to establish a better sequence of practices and behaviors that then ultimately become habits?
I've seen a lot recently and maybe it's probably started long before the pandemic,
but I feel like it's getting more and more now where I see more and more companies that are going on vision quests.
(09:21):
I'm gonna call them,
right?
What is our vision as a company?
How do we define our values as a company?
And I think a lot of times this thing comes into DEAI initiatives,
diversity,
equity,
inclusion and belonging initiatives.
A lot of what you do in org design is try to build the personnel infrastructure,
the people infrastructure so that a company can actually live its values.
(09:44):
And I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about what your experience has been and what works well when a company is working on value statements.
So the company is really trying to do inclusion,
actual inclusion in the workplace.
What are your strategies for working with companies in,
in that visionquest I'm matching this to my sustainability experience,
which is,
(10:05):
it can't live in its own silo because then we've already missed the point in,
in that sense,
especially for DEI or we call it JEDI and sustainability in that sense too.
I would say the pursuit needs to be that it is synonymous that these efforts are synonymous with your processes,
practices,
principles.
(10:25):
All the key words that make up how humans interact with each other in the organization.
And there's a big disconnect between the values on the posters on the wall and how humans do interact with one another.
And,
and so the reds whole philosophy of change and theory of change is kind of the start small start by starting experiment in your way into the new.
(10:49):
Now,
that would also be true for,
for DEI and sustainability in some senses.
Now,
a lot of companies have the aspirations and the way that I used to work was with a PDF slash powerpoint of somewhere to go in terms of sustainability.
So they have those as,
as goals.
(11:11):
So then a lot of our work becomes about the design principles like OK,
well,
what would that mean?
And what would that look like?
Actually from there,
you start to design whatever or redesign even those behaviors that show up in meeting types,
meeting formats,
little things like what does it mean at,
for,
at the hiring level or,
(11:31):
or to reduce bias?
We were just having a a conversation yesterday about setting up an experiment around reducing bias in hiring and making it part of the operating system.
So that's really what the already talks about.
So making it less dependent on individuals,
but really baking it into the operating system of the company.
That's been my challenge with DEAI. I know that it is important to have an inclusive workplace.
(11:57):
It is fundamental to have an inclusive workspace.
But I feel like a lot of the DEAI initiatives or the JEDI initiatives have been kind of tacked on window dressing and not integrated into how the organization does its work.
And it becomes really easy for people to just tune out of it and say somebody else is is doing that I don't need to participate, whatever.
(12:18):
So yeah,
trying to,
as you say,
integrate inclusivity into the DNA of an organization and actually getting in and working on the guts and mechanics of how people actually interact with each other is so so important.
So when you talk about org design,
you know,
it's not just the governance structure,
it's actually the governance process,
it's the interaction process that people go through.
(12:40):
And so you guys will actually sit in a meeting and watch people and critique or will you design the meeting and then have people exist in this new meeting space?
How does that work?
I mean,
do you do all kinds of stuff?
Yes,
we're,
we're more,
well,
we do all kinds of stuff depending on what phase of the engagement we're in.
More,
more the latter,
more more actually getting after,
(13:02):
what are the outcomes for this meeting?
What are the design principles designing into that and then facilitating and then asserting a point of view if it's appropriate and it's becoming more and more appropriate in our,
in the future of workspace that we inhabit of,
you know,
things such as default to transparency or reduction of bias or equal talking time as principles that will get us to these espoused values that a lot of companies are talking about now getting into the work into the work,
(13:36):
you know,
that's more about advisory and,
and one on one design of how can we make this better.
So it's,
it's like a both and to,
to that question.
Yeah,
but I love that,
like you said before,
you're starting small,
right?
This isn't changing the whole corporate culture.
It's saying let's come in and play with a meeting,
let's start with a meeting.
(13:57):
It's not as threatening and it gives people that experience of what it's like to be in a meeting where people get equal talking time.
OK?
That's actually possible to do.
And here's how we can do it the next time,
which gets me to this next part,
right?
Where for most people when you go to work,
(14:18):
it's a bit like a dictatorship.
You have set rules,
there's work hours,
you need to wear certain things,
although that's changing a little bit.
Now,
your job description is set when you're hired,
there's an annual review process that you just buy into because the process is already there.
And usually employees have very,
very little to say about this.
And I mean,
certainly workers unions have had a great impact on how many a week to work,
(14:41):
but a lot of the unions have been focused on the structure of the workplace and not the structure of the work itself.
And so,
you know,
see any challenge to the status quo is seen as this radical departure and threat to productivity.
The the question I have really is around this idea of work and productivity and how those two are tied together.
(15:02):
How do you sell the idea of inclusivity?
Is it,
hey,
this is gonna make you more productive.
Is that always the line that we have to use or?
Hey,
this is actually gonna change how you do your work and make people happier at work?
I mean,
is it actually possible to sell Org Design because people will be happier at work?
(15:23):
That's a good question.
There's,
there's kind of two threads here.
I'll start with selling org design.
It's both a yes and a no.
It depends on what the client is expecting.
Fortunately,
or unfortunately,
sometimes the metrics are,
we need to cut costs in half and get twice as fast or such a thing.
(15:44):
And,
and that might be the company,
the over arching company strategy.
And then we're still,
we're still slicing executives needing those metrics and RO I and all of the,
you know,
all of those things.
And then there's also the vast majority,
who are wondering how is my day to day going to get better?
(16:07):
There are different forces at play there for some companies and they,
they tend to be the,
the smaller more principles aligned companies.
It is interesting to hear from us that these practices and these different meeting structures and redesigning a process can make their and their employees lives and by and large for the larger companies who are beholden to shareholders.
(16:32):
It's a little bit more about the hard numbers but they're not mutually exclusive either.
We have stats that say agendas on the fly,
democratizing who owns the meeting where previously a leader owned the meeting,
giving an update in terms of a triage list.
I don't remember the stat.
No,
but I think it's something recently with a team that I worked.
(16:54):
It was 16 hour on average reduction of slides,
making slides for the pre meeting of the pre meeting of the meeting.
So I don't think they're mutually exclusive and we're working on those insights as a way to even say that they are absolutely compatible.
And maybe that if that we could get to that conversation or that selling point of,
(17:16):
hey,
actually,
org design is a more equitable inclusive way of running or,
or getting to that place is possible and it will save the money and the time.
Yeah,
that's the fact that we're on internally.
We believe in that.
I think I told you,
I was reading this book called "Work" by James Suzman.
And one of the things he talks about is, over time,
(17:38):
the meaning of work has changed dramatically.
And particularly during the heyday of the industrial revolution,
you had a lot of artisans coming into cities,
working in factories, and the meaning and craft of their work went away.
And it was just these rote tasks,
repetitive tasks that people were doing and work just became means to earn money.
(18:02):
And in many cases,
the money was used to buy the products that those workers were producing in the factories,
basically investing in their own jobs.
But that, that meaningfulness,
the craft of the work went away.
And I feel like over at least over the past 30 years,
that's changing that there's a little bit more artisanship,
(18:24):
not just in craft industries,
but also in the workplace itself.
And maybe this is for me as a knowledge worker that that craft piece is coming back and we can like you and I have done set up your own entrepreneurial shop and do craft work,
which is pretty awesome.
This comes back to this idea of work as in this puritanical society that we live in,
(18:47):
in the United States.
As being the thing you have to do because we all have to work.
We have to work to find food and build shelter,
to provide for a family, and we have to work and we have to work hard and if you're taking any time off,
you're lazy. And it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
And one of the things that Suzman talks about in his book is, before the Industrial Revolution,
(19:08):
people didn't work 80 hours a week,
right?
They worked,
they foraged,
they did what they needed to do to put food on the table,
but they were working like maybe 20 hours a week.
And then they had other time where they were doing other kinds of activities which could have included any number of things.
And building community was a big part of that.
(19:29):
Your whole job is defining work and defining new ways of working.
And I'm curious how you think about what work is.
Oh,
I love this question.
The,
the time element, which is big in what you've just mentioned is something that we're,
(19:50):
I wouldn't say grappling with,
but trying to be more intentional about currently.
And yet still,
there are even legal implications of what part time can mean part time in the United States has to be a minimum 20 hours a week.
We're not wanting to necessarily say full time means 40.
So we're giving an array of 35 through 50 only so that we have some kind of baseline understanding of what our colleagues mean when they're available.
(20:19):
Part time,
full time.
This is something that will be rolling out that,
that,
you know,
having the part time consideration in which individuals can choose that for themselves and do a lot of the other things that you're mentioning,
including also child rearing.
Obviously,
that's a whole separate topic in our society.
Anyway,
the child rearing or the lack of support there,
(20:42):
what we're trying to design for is optionality of either the individual and or the teams that are working on a specific client.
So it's almost like not necessarily going the other way,
going from full time down to part time or reducing from those 40 hours back to 20 hours.
But how do we in terms of JEDI and making systems and processes and operating systems more equitable?
(21:08):
How do we allow for the optionality of folks and,
and what they're needing in their life and what they're wanting in their life,
what values they want to live within their work?
And that,
that becomes such a more complex design problem.
I think we can get there for us because we aren't all maximizing for time and money.
(21:30):
And I agree with you that,
I do even within my own career,
have seen the value shift from maximizing earning potential for a very short sprint by the way,
because I would have made many other,
I would have made completely different decisions.
If that were the the thing driving me to what is good craft,
how can I continuously learn?
(21:50):
What can,
what new things can I bring to the client?
What new things can I learn from the client and then bring somewhere else in the synthesis and divergence and convergence that comes through that.
So for me,
in many ways,
work is that it is how can I integrate and weave in maybe even my Clifton strengths of strategy and you know,
(22:11):
lifelong learner and the other stuff I like; that ebb and flow and the weaving in and out of my day to day, and The Ready does allow for that.
And a lot of more progressive companies allow for that.
On the one hand,
there's this utopia I think that we could talk about,
but there's also just the baseline things,
folks just want a optionality and if we even get away from the hours worked,
(22:32):
it's,
it's just having autonomy to choose what they're doing from moment to moment that long period that I took off and only work for myself from 2015 to 2021.
That was the,
that was the driving force as I'm talking through this and processing with you out loud.
I almost wonder what's the next adjacent possible and,
and starting small with what individuals in a company want,
(22:55):
what do they want?
What do they actually want rather than this panoply of different things?
That they might want because it's en vogue.
What,
what do your employees actually need and want to feel while they're working?
Right?
Creating that meaningful experience.
I think part of this came up during pandemic when the folks that could were working,
(23:16):
not in the office,
wherever that happened to be.
And there was so many discussions about,
I want my person to be there and,
you know,
the manager says my person needs to be there from 9 to 5 or whatever the hours were,
right.
And if they're not locked to their desk,
then we're gonna start installing cameras in the house to make sure these people are actually working.
How do I know they're working?
(23:37):
I used to run a fully virtual organization,
never had a building, with people all over the world. And we never worried about is somebody working because there were certain things we needed to accomplish as an organization and everyone was pulling towards that.
And it seemed odd to me that so many workplaces just wanted a seat,
(23:57):
you know,
in seats during the day, and they weren't thinking about what is this person actually accomplishing and how does it align with the strategic or tactical goals of the company?
And they didn't have task based management.
It was just that is somebody sitting over there in that cube.
How are you seeing,
are you seeing more companies moving to or are counseling more companies to move to task based work management practices.
(24:25):
Yes.
So not so much task,
but really what we break down into his roles and a job description does not equal a role.
So a job description could actually have many different roles en encapsulated within it.
And more importantly,
an individual who holds many different roles may not have those roles forever and ever the roles are meant to spin up and spin down be relevant to.
(24:50):
As exactly as you're saying,
the outcomes,
the strategic outcomes of either the team or the company at large.
It's a much more fluid and dynamic way of seeing a job,
especially for us,
knowledge workers,
right?
I can't speak too much to manual labor.
I think that's a different,
a different thing,
maybe,
maybe not.
But we're talking about roles that have different responsibilities associated with them,
(25:14):
different domains and decision rights that are included and what we're trying to get to.
We,
we call it roles,
not souls.
So we don't want to make everything dependent on the individual,
that person with this name,
but really make the decision rights and responsibilities and different areas of,
(25:35):
of not only influence but but task related areas dependent on the role.
We're seeing it even with different software solutions of breaking down a job into actual roles and then vetting candidates,
skill sets and prior experiences against the capabilities that those roles need.
(25:56):
Rather than does my resume check all the boxes of the static job description for us,
we're already seeing the writing on the wall of the,
the culture change that is inherent with that is exactly what you mentioned,
a complete movement away from the seat.
It has to be because we are becoming much more dynamic with the quote unquote output of the individual holding all of these different roles and maybe next quarter holding a new set of rules.
(26:25):
Not to say that we're jumping roles all the time because there is org debt,
organizational debt inherent in that.
But we're getting away from the friction of when work output just doesn't mean anything.
Yeah,
it's not pointed to anything other than this,
this facade or semblance of --
I don't even know what. It's not productivity.
(26:45):
It's,
I,
I don't even know what it is.
Well,
it's like you say, the powerpoint for the powerpoint for the pre,
pre meeting.
And you're like,
what we are doing is so goofy?
You touched on something that has come up for me as a manager where you're asking people on your team to flow and adapt with the work and some people are totally OK with that and some people are not a want to know exactly what they're doing and they want to do the same thing for a longer period of time.
(27:20):
They get really bent out of shape when you're asking them to change what they're doing.
How do you,
how do you deal with that in work?
Design it a little bit,
it comes back to the conversation that we're having about time and optionality for what you're speaking to.
My mind
immediately went to having the forums in which to make that clear.
(27:45):
A lot of what we do is to facilitate that conversation as a kickoff to get clear on preferences like that because there's value of having those folks who are very,
This is my lane.
I'd like to stay,
you know,
within 10 degrees in either direction.
And these are the things that I'm good at and you know,
I have 100 other things to do at home.
(28:07):
I have kids,
all of these things.
So really a lot of it is about making the implicit explicit in that way and having the forum at work to have those conversations and,
and not only the forum but doing role chartering and team chartering,
that's a very specific container that we use and allowing for that.
I wouldn't even call it divergence,
(28:28):
but just different lived experience and different preferences of,
of how people want to be at work.
You mentioned this idea before about careers and,
and people,
as you just mentioned.
Now,
they have other things they're doing in their life.
Yay.
Right.
It's not just,
I don't just live to work.
So that's really good to hear.
And one of the things that many people,
(28:48):
not all, don't just live to work is they also have a family,
right?
And they would like to be with their family,
whether that's through caregiving to youngsters or being with their brothers and sisters,
being with their,
you know,
found family or being with their parents.
And so in many cases,
it is seen as a career interruption.
When somebody decides they want to spend more time with their family,
(29:13):
then they want to spend doing salaried work.
And so this podcast is all about interruption.
This is one of those interruptions that comes up that in my mind shouldn't really be seen as an interruption.
It's a life choice and that person may just be changing their allocation of how they are prioritizing their time.
(29:35):
But at the same time prioritize their time.
But their workplaces,
like if you're giving up on us,
we're giving up on you from your experience at the ready your experience as a,
as a,
as a consultant.
When you talk a bit about this continuum of how many work hours somebody is able to want to work.
How do you guys navigate and negotiate those conversations?
(29:55):
Not just with the folks deciding what their priorities are,
but also the management team.
How does this come up?
How do those conversations sound when you're talking about allowing for flexibility in prioritization of work?
Yeah,
there's a,
there's a few levers there.
So anyone in the company and we're relatively small,
(30:15):
we're about 40 ish 50 people can,
can make a proposal period and a proposal usually it's either a governing type of doc,
it could be the specific strategy that a team has come up with that they want consent for.
So the proposal goes through consent by whatever constituents makes sense.
Usually it's the teams or the organizing structures around the role that is that is bringing the proposal.
(30:42):
So that's how both parental leave and sabbatical leaves have come into existence.
And our barometer for consent is safe to try.
So yes,
it's safe to try and on the back end,
what then happens is being able to allocate or at least have a pulse on consultant capacity for forward looking.
(31:03):
And also obviously taking into consideration the opportunity cost of a consultant not being deployed in a transformation project.
But those are all knowable things again,
making the implicit explicit and being able to forecast and just using basic tools to get after that.
The other thing is is we never work in less than duos on a client project for exactly this kind of reason.
(31:29):
And that's,
that sounds a little bit more intuitive maybe for for short term or smaller,
you know,
vacation type things and but usually individuals will signal what's coming up for them in a timely manner and maybe we'll trio or maybe they'll even be four people on a project to be able to have that coverage.
So I think we're generous with our probably what in Europe would would be considered baseline extras and what I like about them.
(31:57):
And what's generative about them is that they do arise when you have attention,
you can,
you can make the proposal and then it becomes part of our,
our system and it becomes part of our,
our processes.
And yeah,
it,
it,
it's up to the individual.
We,
we put a lot of authority to the edge.
So it's up to the individuals / their teams,
their consulting teams to navigate any kind,
(32:17):
kind of time off or any kind of other things that might be needed.
And what's good about that is,
is you're actually, there's not some mandate,
but you're in a human relationship with your colleagues having the discussion of your human needs and your family's needs and you're just being more human and,
and something about the autonomy and the decision making rights being at the edge there makes it -- to me anyway --
(32:42):
makes it a little bit more fluid than if it were just coming from somewhere.
So I hear that and I hear there has been some kind of redistribution of power structures in the workplace that it's not just the employee manual making a decision for people.
It's a,
as you said,
an explicit discussion of needs for an individual or a team.
(33:05):
When you take that into one of your client sites.
What does that look like?
Because I feel like a lot of the discussion about JEDI and DEAI,
is really having to do with power redistribution in the workplace.
A lot of discussion about flexibility of work hours and transitioning from,
(33:25):
you have to be here from 9 to 5 to,.
This is what we're trying to accomplish as a team.
And this is our,
this is how we're going to communicate,
blah da da da.
And this is our timeline for getting it done.
That also comes down to who holds power.
I think it also comes down to how managers are trained or not trained to deal with these changes or changing ways of communicating in the workplace.
(33:49):
So when you're working with a client,
how does this come up?
How do you guys start talking about power rebalancing or do you just use different words?
It depends,
you know,
I feel like I've been using that a lot today,
but it does depend,
it depends on the client.
More progressive clients are willing to talk about power and use that word and then some aren't.
(34:10):
And but a lot of the opinions that we do have the subject matter expertise that we do have tend to veer because of who we are.
And you know,
our core DNA and our purpose tend to veer into the more flat,
more distributed authority to the edge,
equal talk time optionality kind of space whether we state it out loud or not.
(34:33):
And we mentioned it earlier and it's by no means the only thing that we do.
But these meeting structures,
I mean,
people spend 80% of their time in meetings.
So some of these meeting structures even just starting with that change starts to change behavior and it,
it,
they're,
they're kind of micro shifts on the one hand and then you'll hear an anecdote and say,
yeah,
you know,
our,
our leader used to own the agenda and we'd always have to show up prepared for what could be.
(34:58):
And,
you know,
and,
and then that changes and it's like a big this big unlock.
Now.
What's interesting?
This is me maybe future casting a little bit.
Our point of view is with managers,
(35:20):
you mentioned managers being maybe not trained.
We believe that managers and leaders of the future are going to have to become better org designers themselves.
That's a big bias that we have and how we come in and show up.
And a lot of that has to do with the fact that what is being called to be done is not so much these governing constraints,
(35:41):
these top down mandates but enabling constraints.
What loose enough boundaries can we put on X thing that give exactly this optionality and still allows for coherence.
So that's the from-to shift of,
of the governing constraint to the enabling constraint.
And that's a lot of times where we'll just start our work depending on what the tension is or the problem to be solved in some cases that can explicitly be about power.
(36:09):
And a lot of times it's more about decision rights,
even though that's also about power.
But we'll say decision rights,
living with roles and maybe having a leader not have decision rights over every single decision.
But giving it to the folks who have the most information,
who are typically closer to the edge of wherever that work is happening.
(36:29):
Can you explain or give some examples of what you mean by a role we have as an example.
There's one team,
it's a pretty large team and there's a role called the catalyzer.
And then there's a role called the SME, the subject matter expert.
A catalyzer is,
it's,
it's a mix between project management type responsibilities,
(36:52):
client lead type responsibilities and just generally just keeping the thing moving with the client.
And it says it in the,
in the title,
right?
It's kind of you're catalyzing the engagement and keeping that spark alive.
Whereas the SME maybe comes in with their subject matter expertise on X domain.
And then let's say another role might be facilitator and workshop designer,
(37:16):
facilitator,
workshop designer is also what it says you'll work with the client to design the workshop based on the outcomes that they want and then possibly also facilitate it.
A lot of times the catalyzer and the workshop designer and facilitator,
they tend to be the same folks and sometimes the SME is also a workshop designer and facilitator because they know exactly,
(37:38):
you know,
they,
they know org design because they work in our company,
but they're also subject matter
experts or happen to be on that particular topic.
So it's,
it's much,
it's much more dynamic.
I might be a s me in one context but not at all in another one.
And that's based on prior work experience.
And so then where does the manager go?
(37:59):
Who's the manager?
Right.
Exactly.
Who's the manager?
Right.
So how does that current role
one thinks about an organization,
you've got your worker bee managers and all those levels of hierarchy?
What happens to the manager that will get distributed?
Does that person start to do more craft work now that people aren't spending eight hours a day in meetings,
(38:21):
the folks that were managing have more time to spend doing their craft in the organization.
So is that where you see this going,
where that manager is giving up the meeting time?
They're giving up the in a way,
the the decision power in those meetings.
But they're getting back the sense of meaning in their work.
(38:41):
I was going to say that and hearken that back to our conversation about craft.
I,
I do think that's the case if they so choose,
there's a lot of different ways to specialize coming out of this manager role.
And I think craft is,
is the big one and that shows even where we are with The Ready,
you might be actually doing the client work even as a more senior person,
(39:04):
you might actually be also doing sales calls,
but then also perhaps,
you know,
having peer coaching with other seniors so that I think it just opens the aperture a little bit as to what one can do.
That isn't just when individual contributor becomes a manager and then becomes,
if they're lucky VP or C level,
(39:25):
which isn't even,
you know,
in a pyramid that doesn't even work numbers wise.
So I think it just allows,
again,
this word optionality is coming up a lot today.
But I think it allows for more specialization away from this thing that we're calling managing,
which in a lot of ways is just shuffling the metaphorical papers around and in this day and age,
(39:46):
what we would say is the information is just more readily available without that human intermediary.
So yeah,
if it happens to be craft,
it can be craft.
If it wants to be more leadership and going the route of C suite,
that's possible.
But it could also be completely other avenues.
Perhaps someone was more of a knowledge worker in one specific zone,
(40:07):
became a manager.
And maybe now they want to teach how great would that be to have that possibility be open?
A lot of things are going to have to change with comp structures and hierarchical sticks and boxes to make that possible for sure.
But I,
I do think that that's where we're going,
especially with information being as flat as it is and,
I mean,
(40:28):
wouldn't be a podcast of 2023 without saying AI is coming our way.
Well,
yeah.
And so many people have not suggested but shown that using information technology,
you want to call it AI. whatever. to help streamline some of the tasks at work.
And a lot of those tasks are,
they're like,
uh,
I've got more paperwork.
(40:48):
I need to shuffle through.
I've got to file expense reports.
Yeah.
How about it?
AI. Absolutely,
that's where Suzman is getting to in his book.
It's like we've gone through this period of industrial slog work where people are slotted into these particular parts in an organization.
And maybe,
(41:08):
maybe finally,
we're coming out the other side of that being assisted by the very machines that we built to streamline some of that easily automated work so that humans can do what humans do,
which is the creative.
That would be awesome.
(41:30):
So we've talked about Power redistribution.
I,
I wanna go back a little bit to your experience as a solopreneur,
reflecting on my experience,
I started in the solo business three years ago and I cannot tell you how many times people have asked me,
when are you gonna hire somebody?
What's your growth strategy?
What's your exit strategy?
(41:52):
Are you planning on getting funding?
And I'm like,
what?
And,
and,
and so when you know,
my answer to all the above is no. It's relevant to what I'm doing because I really enjoy being me and interacting with customers in that way and I will bring on other people as needed.
If there are additional skills or experience that's needed for a particular project instead of a talent marketplace inside the bounds of a company,
(42:20):
it's a very free for all.
Hey,
there's this really cool project and so,
and so can help me.
So let's come together and bid on it.
You've gone from working in corporate to working as a solopreneur.
Now you're in a place which isn't really corporate and it isn't really solopreneur kind of brings together components of these two.
How do you think about the talent marketplace?
(42:40):
Yeah.
So the talent marketplace,
I mean,
I think we'll be seeing a lot of movement even in big corporations about that.
And I think that remains to be seen how that plays out.
I agree with your assessment that the ready is kind of that in between place.
We have a talent marketplace and it's also in terms of the distribution of authority is the most probably solopreneur.
(43:04):
I could be while being at a company and I like it that way.
And to your question about the up and to the right.
I mean,
it's so interesting because,
you know,
our purposes change the way the world works and we're also needing to define what that means with our values of both people,
positive and complexity,
(43:24):
conscious and then also our underpinnings of JEDI and sustainability and that just requires intention.
I think a lot of the up and up into the right.
I,
I was at a,
I think they were called Zebras United Conference years ago and,
and they were just talking about how up into the right and liquidity event is a literal internalized patriarchal terminology,
(43:46):
you know,
overlaid onto cap and,
and our capitalist activities.
I cannot forget that speech because it was so, it resonated so much.
That was still the heyday of,
of venture capitalist money where it
didn't even matter what the actual bottom line was.
It was just the hypothetical of what your money could potentially make at some point in the future based on fake numbers.
(44:09):
Yeah.
II,
I mean,
you'll hear,
I mean,
you can hear it kind of my opinion even in that statement,
I don't,
I just don't think that that is in itself sustainable or tenable.
Coming back to the,
the intentionality is I think for different companies,
it's gonna mean different things.
But for us growing slow and steady and,
and being more intentional about what our,
(44:29):
how our purpose actually breaks down and how we might reach quote unquote the world.
It requires the slowing down the decomposition of the things and the structures be they internalized or not be,
be they the actual processes or not in a company and building them back up again for you.
That resonates of not wanting to,
(44:50):
you know,
kind of shirking the Oh,
no,
not hiring.
I mean,
it's,
it's such a heavy lift again,
it needs to be done with intention no matter what it is.
And I think you had mentioned um it's a little bit like folks having asked back in the day or still to this day actually,
of when are you having kids?
So it's just so unconscious,
still some of these concepts.
(45:12):
I was talking to a colleague about this notion of a 20 hour work week in preparation for this.
And we both agreed that it is entirely possible within our lifetime for that to be the new norm,
but it needs to be done intentionally and then how people earn enough,
earn enough money on a 20 hour work week.
And you know,
that comes back to this need for growth,
growth,
growth,
(45:33):
and people to buy more and more and more and like how much of this stuff do we actually need?
And who breaks that cycle of,
of consumerism?
Which is gonna be tough because we're so ingrained in that.
Oh,
look at that cool thing in the window.
Let's pop in there and get it.
So,
and I think you're right.
I think if anything,
this is a complete behavior shift more than more than anything else like systems wise,
(45:57):
I think we can absolutely get there.
But behavior wise,
I agree.
Part of me wonders if the big jolt of the pandemic might be that push towards getting there.
I don't know,
it could just be a blip.
We're talking a lot about change,
vision ideas for,
as you say,
the future of work,
(46:17):
the present of work when you go into,
I mean,
The Teady is 40 people.
Mighty Red Barn is one person.
So I'm always up for change. When you work with larger companies,
as you know,
with org design,
as you get above about six people,
the need for communication and the nature of communication changes dramatically.
And there's another touch point around 20-25-30 people.
(46:41):
And then there's another inflection point around 40 to 50 people.
And then everything goes haywire after that.
And those higher structures come into being from managing information flow and decision making.
As you talked about that information flow is now getting flatter.
How do you deal with components of organizations,
people within organizations,
(47:01):
let's say people with decision making power inside of organizations,
people with the ability to stop things.
How do you deal with folks who are maybe not ready for change?
How we manage people that might be a rock in the stream?
Yeah,
it depends on where in the system the rock is showing up.
(47:21):
One of my colleagues,
Carol Mace,
she talks about middle up down and so we come in in the middle,
you work,
work our way up and then it kind of trickles down.
That's been true for a lot of our corporate clients.
If we speak about kind of where in the organization we have started and how we're moving.
And it's also true that there have been some quote unquote rocks or folks along the way who haven't been typically bought in.
(47:47):
And we're as much process consultants as me in the future of work consultants.
It's the antithesis to what we do and how we do it to make anybody do anything.
And it's also true that if there's not critical mass,
then the culture will stay the same.
So what we try to do is help the client create the conditions such that some of these principles and new ways of working can take hold and,
(48:13):
but we can't,
we can't promise that per se either,
we're getting a little bit better as to naming both internally and with potential clients,
what we would need to see in terms of readiness.
And it's also true in that certificate program that I did.
I remember one of the instructors said after most significant change efforts,
(48:33):
at least half of the team will be gone.
I think that's also true.
And maybe that's a little bit the reconfiguring what we think about departures and new beginnings and all of these things.
That's,
that's part of also this mentality of what worked,
you know,
what worked up until now won't work going forward or you know what got us here,
won't get us there and making that less of a,
(48:55):
of a thing.
And less of a failure,
definition and much more of an,
an opening.
Even that stance of it's not failure.
It's just learning or it's not an end.
It's a new beginning.
Even that shift,
sometimes folks aren't,
aren't ready for it,
but it's the stance that we take and it's the,
and it's how we approach change.
(49:15):
Yeah,
we've been talking a lot about interrupting the culture of work,
disrupting the,
in many cases,
standard hierarchical structures and redesigning how organizations function,
which is to me,
so exciting.
I think it's wonderful to have organizations like yours,
(49:37):
people like you that are able to go in,
who have the patience and the knowledge for.
How do we approach these,
these questions at the same time,
you're you're invited in the door.
So at least there's somebody there who's willing to listen.
How do you think about interruption?
How would you define that within organizational design?
(50:00):
Well,
that's such a good question.
I mean,
the most banal thing that comes to mind again is meetings in terms of facilitating,
being able to interrupt.
And I have a colleague,
Sharon Ball who wrote a very good internal facilitation.
It's called, "On Interrupting".
Even that gets back to that equal talk time being in service of the team rather than in service of myself.
(50:25):
If I'm the participant,
we have all of these shifts,
these from two shifts from the individual or even my ego to what's good for the collective or what's better for the group at large.
I'm trying to think more meta than that meta,
more meta than a meeting.
I think what's coming up for me.
And even in talking about how we approach change,
we have this thing called the change loop where we're sensing attention and then we experiment against it and then we sense a new one and it's just this constant loop of learning and experimentation and perhaps interrupting is taking that time to be able to make meaning of those tensions that we feel because we all feel them,
(51:03):
but we are conditioned to override them day in and day out by internalized everything,
internalized systems,
internalized programs,
whatever the thing is.
And a lot of our working culture is not intended to take a pause and,
and have a moment of reflection in order to steer we've been kind of talking directly and indirectly about those,
(51:24):
those cultures that or even the culture within those organizations.
But I,
I think that's,
that's where I land with the interrupting.
It's like having the built in pause to be able to become more intentional about our work.
I mean,
you're building in meetings.
It's not the no,
(51:45):
it's part of how you work.
Have you found other things and you're restructuring the meeting,
you're changing,
who holds power in the meeting,
how the agenda is set in the meeting?
Have you been restructuring teams to bring different,
intentionally bring different perspectives into teams to help organizations experience what it's like to have a different set of perspectives on a team and then help them to shift to a new set point,
(52:13):
I guess within their teams.
Yeah,
within their teams.
Absolutely.
Especially with,
with strategy meetings and not necessarily to set the final end all B strategy,
but to bring in multiple perspectives,
if not an entire extended team to the sense making part,
it's just better input,
(52:35):
it's better input because it's more diverse or it's more provocative input because it's more diverse.
Now,
someone at the end of the day,
and I had a stakeholder interview a few weeks ago who approached their strategy in this way and their big real realization was,
oh but at the end of the day,
someone still needs to synthesize and make meaning and then make the final decision.
(52:56):
Yes,
that's true.
And hearing from more voices about the problem space is so much richer and will literally make a more informed,
better strategy at the end of the day.
So yes,
in terms of who gets to participate in here to,
for,
you know,
kind of closed spaces that changes very quickly from day one almost.
(53:20):
I'm also thinking about how people process information. For myself,
I know that I don't process that well on the fly.
So for myself,
an interruption that I take even internally is to allow for a moment after a question to just kind of write down my notes, and I think you might be seeing me watching,
you do that.
Yeah.
So I have an anchor and on the flip side there are other folks who,
(53:42):
you know,
just want to be gesticulating and volleying an idea back and forth different ways.
You know,
the more that we're talking about interruption,
the more they're,
they're kind of everywhere.
Yeah.
So that's cool.
Yeah,
they are kind of everywhere.
Yeah.
I would actually be really interested in hearing more about your colleague's memo on interruption because there's this sense of interrupting somebody's verbal sharing of something,
(54:04):
but that also can be adding on to what that person is talking about.
So there is an interruption that's additive and then the interruption that is from a place of No,
I want to be the only one heard right now.
And I'm I'm wondering if where we get to with these adjustments and organizational design and culture of meetings where we may actually get to a place where the people know and trust the spaces for enough that the positive form of interruption can actually exist in those spaces.
(54:43):
So this is actually where I'd like to get to.
Is this idea of trust.
Are you explicitly trying to create these safe places or trusted spaces in these meetings where there can be more authentic or richer sharing of ideas?
Is that where you're heading to?
(55:05):
I would say absolutely in the sense that even these micro moves of a check in round where everyone's voice gets into the room at the top.
Again,
another the micro move that I just mentioned of giving a beat so that everyone maybe more internal processors can gather their bearings before we go into the conversation.
And the things that we haven't necessarily touched on as much is also things like making the meeting about the information in the meeting and the work to be done and less about the power holders or the folks with the authority.
(55:41):
This is very much design thinking like getting after the task at hand,
unless after the person who has the task in,
in any way,
positive or negative.
So it's really recalibrating in a lot of ways,
this heroic manager leader narrative and much more about the jobs to be done,
(56:01):
which gets us back to this idea of as a company,
as a group,
as a team.
There is this thing that we're attempting to do,
attempting to accomplish.
Exactly, and less about there is a group of six people,
one of whom is making decision here.
This is very,
very different approach to getting done and then that comes back to do.
You really need to be in your seat from 9 to 5 or are we really looking for milestones en route to this thing that we're working on as a team?
(56:28):
And I think the other piece that you got to is this idea of mistake making and sense making and the learning. And when you have that,
in my opinion,
when you don't have that task oriented,
future oriented,
how are we working together,
and for what purpose,
the mistake does become a learning moment.
And then as a group,
you can then readjust differently.
(56:50):
I don't know if I'll say better but differently than when you're in a leader oriented team,
where the leader may be invested in the outcome and unable to hear some of the feedback that optionality for the individuals on the team.
But I think also the optionality for the team itself to be more able to listen and hear, to hear
(57:12):
which work is hitting the mark and evolve that work over time that I think comes all the way back to your comments on sustainability.
And what is this team?
What is this organization really trying to do?
Is it trying to create a product that's gonna sell or is it trying to create a product that's really gonna make a difference in somebody's life?
(57:33):
I think we might actually be able to shift a little bit towards the second one.
I agree and hope for that too.
Yeah,
I really appreciate you making the time to talk to me today.
Thank you,
Laure.
It's been such a pleasure.
I love these interruptions in the workday to have a little bit of a philosophical and deep conversation.
So thank you for the invitation.
(57:54):
Thanks so much.
Thank you for joining us. For more about "We Interrupt",
please see our website at
www.weinterruptthis.com for show notes,
links and other episodes.
Contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
(58:15):
This podcast produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee,
Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to Elders,
past and present and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you to Emma Levinson for her artwork featured on our website. Segue music is Moire by HansTroost,
(58:39):
licensed from the Tribe of Noise BV.
And intro
and extro music is Bartok's "Melody with Interruptions" played by Alan Huckleberry for the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project.
The podcast image is a public domain CC0 image from rawpixel, Maquettes de theatre i.-xv. by Alexandra Exter.
It requires the slowing down of the decomposition of the things and the structures, be they internalized or not,
be they the actual processes or not in a company, and building them back up again.
That's where I land with the interrupting.
It's like having the built in pause to be able to become more intentional about our working places.
(00:25):
Meetings are a microcosm of organizational culture where all social dynamics are in play.
Join us as we talk to,
Tabea Soriano, partner at The Ready, for an exploration of organization design.
We talk about the past,
present and future of work and how process, practice, and principles are the core of creating the meaning of work.
How by making the implicit explicit,
(00:48):
like who talks when how agendas are assembled and what meetings are actually about,
we can experiment with small changes and create trusting workspaces where people can participate,
contribute and make more time for the craft of their work,
ultimately reshaping how organizations work. Thank you so much for joining us today.
(01:20):
I'm really looking forward to this conversation! Just a little bit about you.
You come to us from The Ready.
I've been listening to their podcast for the last,
I don't know,
three years and I love it every time it spins up on my podcast list,
I'm like,
oh,
I'm in for a treat.
So it is an
absolute pleasure for me to talk to somebody from The Teady and particularly for you,
(01:42):
given your experience.
I'm wondering if you can spend a little bit of time at the beginning of this podcast telling us about who you are and how you've gotten to your current position.
Thank you,
Laure.
I think there's an elevator pitch version of this.
But let's see,
let's see how we do.
So,
I'm Tabea.
I'm an org designer and transformation consultant at The Ready,
(02:02):
which is a org design and transformation consultancy.
We've recently also added future of work to that roster.
And what we do is help companies get from current state to a future state in the broadest sense of the word.
There's a lot of strategy work that goes into that.
A lot of design.
I'm also an executive coach and advisor within that scope.
(02:25):
So more one on one conversations,
there has been a long meandering path in my career so far and I've been inquiring into the through line of it for the past several years and I've come to the pithy motto of "Leave it better than you found it".
Awesome.
And I think the question that always is what does better mean,
right.
Correct.
(02:45):
And who's defining that. So one of the things on your list of things that you've done is participating in something called a relay cohort with WIN, standing for Women in Innovation.
And I would love for you to talk a bit about what that experience was like.
So Women in Innovation is an NGO that put on this WIN relay program for more senior leaders.
(03:10):
And it was a cohort based program in which I believe about 25 or so of us women,
15 plus years into our careers,
had a chance to not only meet weekly and have peer coaches within the cohort but had a series,
a speaker series or a conversation series almost of leaders join us a week,
(03:31):
week over week to give us more of an insight into their leadership styles,
the things that they were grappling with.
And it just opened a dialogue and served as a backbone to have conversations about work with individuals and women specifically who were kind of at the same at the same level.
So less entry level,
more mid and senior level women. In retrospect,
(03:54):
what came out of it was a more genuine way of networking.
I'm still in touch with a lot of the folks who were in that cohort.
We talk about work stuff.
It's interesting because there's not many people to talk about work stuff with,
you know,
the,
the work that one does that is not your partner or your family,
and friends,
but is also not necessarily the colleagues with whom you are in the work.
(04:18):
Yeah,
so that's,
yeah,
that was kind of the the lasting impression and still continues to this day from that,
from that program,
having those colleagues that aren't your colleagues in a way that are kind of at the same place in their career.
There's a different feeling from and coaching is wonderful,
but it's a very different feeling than,
hey,
here's somebody else at the same career stage that's fighting the same fight and may have had a slightly different contextual experience to help me figure out maybe how I can do with this over here.
(04:46):
Absolutely.
What originally got you interested in organizational design?
And we're gonna talk about what Org design is in a little bit.
But how did you end up here?
Oh,
I'm,
I'm harkening back to that long meandering road.
I started in start ups,
generally speaking.
And I remember in 2015,
(05:07):
which was the last year I worked full time on a salary for a company before my current employer The Ready.
So there was a long period of time where I was an independent consultant and had my own LLC.
And I think that gives you a little bit of a clue into how I got here.
The start up life and start up world is generally speaking in the chaotic realm of complexity theory.
(05:34):
So not that many procedures and processes,
lots of putting out fires,
lots of urgencies.
It's the literal opposite of big bureaucracies and slow moving red tape everywhere,
kind of places of work.
And I remember back then in 2015,
my brother
had a similar experience also working for start ups and had clued me into Frederick Lalo's "Reinventing Organizations".
(06:01):
So that was the first time I came in touch with Org design or,
you know,
how,
how organizations could possibly be set up in a more humane way.
And,
but I didn't make moves really until right before the pandemic in 2019 to take an executive program at Georgetown University to get a little bit underneath the change management thing.
(06:25):
And I think by that point,
I had done enough pivoting and,
done adjacent possible types of work to which then another side came where I was working with bigger bureaucracy,
you know,
more legacy type organizations doing strategy consulting.
And it was very much the OK,
this is a very beautiful deck and how are we gonna organize all of these humans to get after it?
(06:47):
And we were talking about sustainability strategy consulting,
you know,
having a new website color wasn't gonna cut it.
So that's that all of those things,
those experiences together kind of brought me to where I am today for those people who may not know what is Org Design.
I think people have heard about things like product design and website design.
And now we're talking about actually designing an organization and clearly this is what the ready does.
(07:14):
It's actually a bit of a piece of what I do on the nonprofit side of things.
How do we do?
But,
but how would you describe to people,
what organization design is and,
and why it is,
I guess.
Yeah,
it's so funny.
I had to look up a couple of definitions to be a little bit more succinct.
But essentially,
(07:35):
it's,
it's aligning the purpose and vision on the one hand,
but really the strategy of a company and all of the things that go into it.
So more like processes,
procedures,
practices.
On the one hand,
we call that in some parlance is the hardware technology kind of falls into that too.
And then on the other hand,
more of the software,
(07:56):
the behaviors,
norms,
values,
interactions,
you know,
the people side of things and it's really setting up and
that sounds like such an easy thing to do.
It's not as easy as it sounds,
but setting up and aligning the organization to be able to get after the goals and,
and ultimately the vision and purpose that it's set out to do.
(08:19):
So do you guys also do work on,
let's say agreements inside an organization,
how people work together,
how people explain how they want to be worked with,
and work with others?
Is that a big part of what you guys do?
Yeah.
Yes.
What you're talking to right now is you know,
just a sliver of different kinds of engagements,
(08:40):
but also,
you know,
outcomes of meetings and,
and that's working agreements.
What agreements can we make?
Do we want to make as a team,
or even just as two individuals together working on project to have a home for a lot of these things that we don't talk about at work and,
or things that maybe haven't worked in the past.
(09:01):
So how can we agree to establish a better sequence of practices and behaviors that then ultimately become habits?
I've seen a lot recently and maybe it's probably started long before the pandemic,
but I feel like it's getting more and more now where I see more and more companies that are going on vision quests.
(09:21):
I'm gonna call them,
right?
What is our vision as a company?
How do we define our values as a company?
And I think a lot of times this thing comes into DEAI initiatives,
diversity,
equity,
inclusion and belonging initiatives.
A lot of what you do in org design is try to build the personnel infrastructure,
the people infrastructure so that a company can actually live its values.
(09:44):
And I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about what your experience has been and what works well when a company is working on value statements.
So the company is really trying to do inclusion,
actual inclusion in the workplace.
What are your strategies for working with companies in,
in that visionquest I'm matching this to my sustainability experience,
which is,
(10:05):
it can't live in its own silo because then we've already missed the point in,
in that sense,
especially for DEI or we call it JEDI and sustainability in that sense too.
I would say the pursuit needs to be that it is synonymous that these efforts are synonymous with your processes,
practices,
principles.
(10:25):
All the key words that make up how humans interact with each other in the organization.
And there's a big disconnect between the values on the posters on the wall and how humans do interact with one another.
And,
and so the reds whole philosophy of change and theory of change is kind of the start small start by starting experiment in your way into the new.
(10:49):
Now,
that would also be true for,
for DEI and sustainability in some senses.
Now,
a lot of companies have the aspirations and the way that I used to work was with a PDF slash powerpoint of somewhere to go in terms of sustainability.
So they have those as,
as goals.
(11:11):
So then a lot of our work becomes about the design principles like OK,
well,
what would that mean?
And what would that look like?
Actually from there,
you start to design whatever or redesign even those behaviors that show up in meeting types,
meeting formats,
little things like what does it mean at,
for,
at the hiring level or,
(11:31):
or to reduce bias?
We were just having a a conversation yesterday about setting up an experiment around reducing bias in hiring and making it part of the operating system.
So that's really what the already talks about.
So making it less dependent on individuals,
but really baking it into the operating system of the company.
That's been my challenge with DEAI. I know that it is important to have an inclusive workplace.
(11:57):
It is fundamental to have an inclusive workspace.
But I feel like a lot of the DEAI initiatives or the JEDI initiatives have been kind of tacked on window dressing and not integrated into how the organization does its work.
And it becomes really easy for people to just tune out of it and say somebody else is is doing that I don't need to participate, whatever.
(12:18):
So yeah,
trying to,
as you say,
integrate inclusivity into the DNA of an organization and actually getting in and working on the guts and mechanics of how people actually interact with each other is so so important.
So when you talk about org design,
you know,
it's not just the governance structure,
it's actually the governance process,
it's the interaction process that people go through.
(12:40):
And so you guys will actually sit in a meeting and watch people and critique or will you design the meeting and then have people exist in this new meeting space?
How does that work?
I mean,
do you do all kinds of stuff?
Yes,
we're,
we're more,
well,
we do all kinds of stuff depending on what phase of the engagement we're in.
More,
more the latter,
more more actually getting after,
(13:02):
what are the outcomes for this meeting?
What are the design principles designing into that and then facilitating and then asserting a point of view if it's appropriate and it's becoming more and more appropriate in our,
in the future of workspace that we inhabit of,
you know,
things such as default to transparency or reduction of bias or equal talking time as principles that will get us to these espoused values that a lot of companies are talking about now getting into the work into the work,
(13:36):
you know,
that's more about advisory and,
and one on one design of how can we make this better.
So it's,
it's like a both and to,
to that question.
Yeah,
but I love that,
like you said before,
you're starting small,
right?
This isn't changing the whole corporate culture.
It's saying let's come in and play with a meeting,
let's start with a meeting.
(13:57):
It's not as threatening and it gives people that experience of what it's like to be in a meeting where people get equal talking time.
OK?
That's actually possible to do.
And here's how we can do it the next time,
which gets me to this next part,
right?
Where for most people when you go to work,
(14:18):
it's a bit like a dictatorship.
You have set rules,
there's work hours,
you need to wear certain things,
although that's changing a little bit.
Now,
your job description is set when you're hired,
there's an annual review process that you just buy into because the process is already there.
And usually employees have very,
very little to say about this.
And I mean,
certainly workers unions have had a great impact on how many a week to work,
(14:41):
but a lot of the unions have been focused on the structure of the workplace and not the structure of the work itself.
And so,
you know,
see any challenge to the status quo is seen as this radical departure and threat to productivity.
The the question I have really is around this idea of work and productivity and how those two are tied together.
(15:02):
How do you sell the idea of inclusivity?
Is it,
hey,
this is gonna make you more productive.
Is that always the line that we have to use or?
Hey,
this is actually gonna change how you do your work and make people happier at work?
I mean,
is it actually possible to sell Org Design because people will be happier at work?
(15:23):
That's a good question.
There's,
there's kind of two threads here.
I'll start with selling org design.
It's both a yes and a no.
It depends on what the client is expecting.
Fortunately,
or unfortunately,
sometimes the metrics are,
we need to cut costs in half and get twice as fast or such a thing.
(15:44):
And,
and that might be the company,
the over arching company strategy.
And then we're still,
we're still slicing executives needing those metrics and RO I and all of the,
you know,
all of those things.
And then there's also the vast majority,
who are wondering how is my day to day going to get better?
(16:07):
There are different forces at play there for some companies and they,
they tend to be the,
the smaller more principles aligned companies.
It is interesting to hear from us that these practices and these different meeting structures and redesigning a process can make their and their employees lives and by and large for the larger companies who are beholden to shareholders.
(16:32):
It's a little bit more about the hard numbers but they're not mutually exclusive either.
We have stats that say agendas on the fly,
democratizing who owns the meeting where previously a leader owned the meeting,
giving an update in terms of a triage list.
I don't remember the stat.
No,
but I think it's something recently with a team that I worked.
(16:54):
It was 16 hour on average reduction of slides,
making slides for the pre meeting of the pre meeting of the meeting.
So I don't think they're mutually exclusive and we're working on those insights as a way to even say that they are absolutely compatible.
And maybe that if that we could get to that conversation or that selling point of,
(17:16):
hey,
actually,
org design is a more equitable inclusive way of running or,
or getting to that place is possible and it will save the money and the time.
Yeah,
that's the fact that we're on internally.
We believe in that.
I think I told you,
I was reading this book called "Work" by James Suzman.
And one of the things he talks about is, over time,
(17:38):
the meaning of work has changed dramatically.
And particularly during the heyday of the industrial revolution,
you had a lot of artisans coming into cities,
working in factories, and the meaning and craft of their work went away.
And it was just these rote tasks,
repetitive tasks that people were doing and work just became means to earn money.
(18:02):
And in many cases,
the money was used to buy the products that those workers were producing in the factories,
basically investing in their own jobs.
But that, that meaningfulness,
the craft of the work went away.
And I feel like over at least over the past 30 years,
that's changing that there's a little bit more artisanship,
(18:24):
not just in craft industries,
but also in the workplace itself.
And maybe this is for me as a knowledge worker that that craft piece is coming back and we can like you and I have done set up your own entrepreneurial shop and do craft work,
which is pretty awesome.
This comes back to this idea of work as in this puritanical society that we live in,
(18:47):
in the United States.
As being the thing you have to do because we all have to work.
We have to work to find food and build shelter,
to provide for a family, and we have to work and we have to work hard and if you're taking any time off,
you're lazy. And it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.
And one of the things that Suzman talks about in his book is, before the Industrial Revolution,
(19:08):
people didn't work 80 hours a week,
right?
They worked,
they foraged,
they did what they needed to do to put food on the table,
but they were working like maybe 20 hours a week.
And then they had other time where they were doing other kinds of activities which could have included any number of things.
And building community was a big part of that.
(19:29):
Your whole job is defining work and defining new ways of working.
And I'm curious how you think about what work is.
Oh,
I love this question.
The,
the time element, which is big in what you've just mentioned is something that we're,
(19:50):
I wouldn't say grappling with,
but trying to be more intentional about currently.
And yet still,
there are even legal implications of what part time can mean part time in the United States has to be a minimum 20 hours a week.
We're not wanting to necessarily say full time means 40.
So we're giving an array of 35 through 50 only so that we have some kind of baseline understanding of what our colleagues mean when they're available.
(20:19):
Part time,
full time.
This is something that will be rolling out that,
that,
you know,
having the part time consideration in which individuals can choose that for themselves and do a lot of the other things that you're mentioning,
including also child rearing.
Obviously,
that's a whole separate topic in our society.
Anyway,
the child rearing or the lack of support there,
(20:42):
what we're trying to design for is optionality of either the individual and or the teams that are working on a specific client.
So it's almost like not necessarily going the other way,
going from full time down to part time or reducing from those 40 hours back to 20 hours.
But how do we in terms of JEDI and making systems and processes and operating systems more equitable?
(21:08):
How do we allow for the optionality of folks and,
and what they're needing in their life and what they're wanting in their life,
what values they want to live within their work?
And that,
that becomes such a more complex design problem.
I think we can get there for us because we aren't all maximizing for time and money.
(21:30):
And I agree with you that,
I do even within my own career,
have seen the value shift from maximizing earning potential for a very short sprint by the way,
because I would have made many other,
I would have made completely different decisions.
If that were the the thing driving me to what is good craft,
how can I continuously learn?
(21:50):
What can,
what new things can I bring to the client?
What new things can I learn from the client and then bring somewhere else in the synthesis and divergence and convergence that comes through that.
So for me,
in many ways,
work is that it is how can I integrate and weave in maybe even my Clifton strengths of strategy and you know,
(22:11):
lifelong learner and the other stuff I like; that ebb and flow and the weaving in and out of my day to day, and The Ready does allow for that.
And a lot of more progressive companies allow for that.
On the one hand,
there's this utopia I think that we could talk about,
but there's also just the baseline things,
folks just want a optionality and if we even get away from the hours worked,
(22:32):
it's,
it's just having autonomy to choose what they're doing from moment to moment that long period that I took off and only work for myself from 2015 to 2021.
That was the,
that was the driving force as I'm talking through this and processing with you out loud.
I almost wonder what's the next adjacent possible and,
and starting small with what individuals in a company want,
(22:55):
what do they want?
What do they actually want rather than this panoply of different things?
That they might want because it's en vogue.
What,
what do your employees actually need and want to feel while they're working?
Right?
Creating that meaningful experience.
I think part of this came up during pandemic when the folks that could were working,
(23:16):
not in the office,
wherever that happened to be.
And there was so many discussions about,
I want my person to be there and,
you know,
the manager says my person needs to be there from 9 to 5 or whatever the hours were,
right.
And if they're not locked to their desk,
then we're gonna start installing cameras in the house to make sure these people are actually working.
How do I know they're working?
(23:37):
I used to run a fully virtual organization,
never had a building, with people all over the world. And we never worried about is somebody working because there were certain things we needed to accomplish as an organization and everyone was pulling towards that.
And it seemed odd to me that so many workplaces just wanted a seat,
(23:57):
you know,
in seats during the day, and they weren't thinking about what is this person actually accomplishing and how does it align with the strategic or tactical goals of the company?
And they didn't have task based management.
It was just that is somebody sitting over there in that cube.
How are you seeing,
are you seeing more companies moving to or are counseling more companies to move to task based work management practices.
(24:25):
Yes.
So not so much task,
but really what we break down into his roles and a job description does not equal a role.
So a job description could actually have many different roles en encapsulated within it.
And more importantly,
an individual who holds many different roles may not have those roles forever and ever the roles are meant to spin up and spin down be relevant to.
(24:50):
As exactly as you're saying,
the outcomes,
the strategic outcomes of either the team or the company at large.
It's a much more fluid and dynamic way of seeing a job,
especially for us,
knowledge workers,
right?
I can't speak too much to manual labor.
I think that's a different,
a different thing,
maybe,
maybe not.
But we're talking about roles that have different responsibilities associated with them,
(25:14):
different domains and decision rights that are included and what we're trying to get to.
We,
we call it roles,
not souls.
So we don't want to make everything dependent on the individual,
that person with this name,
but really make the decision rights and responsibilities and different areas of,
(25:35):
of not only influence but but task related areas dependent on the role.
We're seeing it even with different software solutions of breaking down a job into actual roles and then vetting candidates,
skill sets and prior experiences against the capabilities that those roles need.
(25:56):
Rather than does my resume check all the boxes of the static job description for us,
we're already seeing the writing on the wall of the,
the culture change that is inherent with that is exactly what you mentioned,
a complete movement away from the seat.
It has to be because we are becoming much more dynamic with the quote unquote output of the individual holding all of these different roles and maybe next quarter holding a new set of rules.
(26:25):
Not to say that we're jumping roles all the time because there is org debt,
organizational debt inherent in that.
But we're getting away from the friction of when work output just doesn't mean anything.
Yeah,
it's not pointed to anything other than this,
this facade or semblance of --
I don't even know what. It's not productivity.
(26:45):
It's,
I,
I don't even know what it is.
Well,
it's like you say, the powerpoint for the powerpoint for the pre,
pre meeting.
And you're like,
what we are doing is so goofy?
You touched on something that has come up for me as a manager where you're asking people on your team to flow and adapt with the work and some people are totally OK with that and some people are not a want to know exactly what they're doing and they want to do the same thing for a longer period of time.
(27:20):
They get really bent out of shape when you're asking them to change what they're doing.
How do you,
how do you deal with that in work?
Design it a little bit,
it comes back to the conversation that we're having about time and optionality for what you're speaking to.
My mind
immediately went to having the forums in which to make that clear.
(27:45):
A lot of what we do is to facilitate that conversation as a kickoff to get clear on preferences like that because there's value of having those folks who are very,
This is my lane.
I'd like to stay,
you know,
within 10 degrees in either direction.
And these are the things that I'm good at and you know,
I have 100 other things to do at home.
(28:07):
I have kids,
all of these things.
So really a lot of it is about making the implicit explicit in that way and having the forum at work to have those conversations and,
and not only the forum but doing role chartering and team chartering,
that's a very specific container that we use and allowing for that.
I wouldn't even call it divergence,
(28:28):
but just different lived experience and different preferences of,
of how people want to be at work.
You mentioned this idea before about careers and,
and people,
as you just mentioned.
Now,
they have other things they're doing in their life.
Yay.
Right.
It's not just,
I don't just live to work.
So that's really good to hear.
And one of the things that many people,
(28:48):
not all, don't just live to work is they also have a family,
right?
And they would like to be with their family,
whether that's through caregiving to youngsters or being with their brothers and sisters,
being with their,
you know,
found family or being with their parents.
And so in many cases,
it is seen as a career interruption.
When somebody decides they want to spend more time with their family,
(29:13):
then they want to spend doing salaried work.
And so this podcast is all about interruption.
This is one of those interruptions that comes up that in my mind shouldn't really be seen as an interruption.
It's a life choice and that person may just be changing their allocation of how they are prioritizing their time.
(29:35):
But at the same time prioritize their time.
But their workplaces,
like if you're giving up on us,
we're giving up on you from your experience at the ready your experience as a,
as a,
as a consultant.
When you talk a bit about this continuum of how many work hours somebody is able to want to work.
How do you guys navigate and negotiate those conversations?
(29:55):
Not just with the folks deciding what their priorities are,
but also the management team.
How does this come up?
How do those conversations sound when you're talking about allowing for flexibility in prioritization of work?
Yeah,
there's a,
there's a few levers there.
So anyone in the company and we're relatively small,
(30:15):
we're about 40 ish 50 people can,
can make a proposal period and a proposal usually it's either a governing type of doc,
it could be the specific strategy that a team has come up with that they want consent for.
So the proposal goes through consent by whatever constituents makes sense.
Usually it's the teams or the organizing structures around the role that is that is bringing the proposal.
(30:42):
So that's how both parental leave and sabbatical leaves have come into existence.
And our barometer for consent is safe to try.
So yes,
it's safe to try and on the back end,
what then happens is being able to allocate or at least have a pulse on consultant capacity for forward looking.
(31:03):
And also obviously taking into consideration the opportunity cost of a consultant not being deployed in a transformation project.
But those are all knowable things again,
making the implicit explicit and being able to forecast and just using basic tools to get after that.
The other thing is is we never work in less than duos on a client project for exactly this kind of reason.
(31:29):
And that's,
that sounds a little bit more intuitive maybe for for short term or smaller,
you know,
vacation type things and but usually individuals will signal what's coming up for them in a timely manner and maybe we'll trio or maybe they'll even be four people on a project to be able to have that coverage.
So I think we're generous with our probably what in Europe would would be considered baseline extras and what I like about them.
(31:57):
And what's generative about them is that they do arise when you have attention,
you can,
you can make the proposal and then it becomes part of our,
our system and it becomes part of our,
our processes.
And yeah,
it,
it,
it's up to the individual.
We,
we put a lot of authority to the edge.
So it's up to the individuals / their teams,
their consulting teams to navigate any kind,
(32:17):
kind of time off or any kind of other things that might be needed.
And what's good about that is,
is you're actually, there's not some mandate,
but you're in a human relationship with your colleagues having the discussion of your human needs and your family's needs and you're just being more human and,
and something about the autonomy and the decision making rights being at the edge there makes it -- to me anyway --
(32:42):
makes it a little bit more fluid than if it were just coming from somewhere.
So I hear that and I hear there has been some kind of redistribution of power structures in the workplace that it's not just the employee manual making a decision for people.
It's a,
as you said,
an explicit discussion of needs for an individual or a team.
(33:05):
When you take that into one of your client sites.
What does that look like?
Because I feel like a lot of the discussion about JEDI and DEAI,
is really having to do with power redistribution in the workplace.
A lot of discussion about flexibility of work hours and transitioning from,
(33:25):
you have to be here from 9 to 5 to,.
This is what we're trying to accomplish as a team.
And this is our,
this is how we're going to communicate,
blah da da da.
And this is our timeline for getting it done.
That also comes down to who holds power.
I think it also comes down to how managers are trained or not trained to deal with these changes or changing ways of communicating in the workplace.
(33:49):
So when you're working with a client,
how does this come up?
How do you guys start talking about power rebalancing or do you just use different words?
It depends,
you know,
I feel like I've been using that a lot today,
but it does depend,
it depends on the client.
More progressive clients are willing to talk about power and use that word and then some aren't.
(34:10):
And but a lot of the opinions that we do have the subject matter expertise that we do have tend to veer because of who we are.
And you know,
our core DNA and our purpose tend to veer into the more flat,
more distributed authority to the edge,
equal talk time optionality kind of space whether we state it out loud or not.
(34:33):
And we mentioned it earlier and it's by no means the only thing that we do.
But these meeting structures,
I mean,
people spend 80% of their time in meetings.
So some of these meeting structures even just starting with that change starts to change behavior and it,
it,
they're,
they're kind of micro shifts on the one hand and then you'll hear an anecdote and say,
yeah,
you know,
our,
our leader used to own the agenda and we'd always have to show up prepared for what could be.
(34:58):
And,
you know,
and,
and then that changes and it's like a big this big unlock.
Now.
What's interesting?
This is me maybe future casting a little bit.
Our point of view is with managers,
(35:20):
you mentioned managers being maybe not trained.
We believe that managers and leaders of the future are going to have to become better org designers themselves.
That's a big bias that we have and how we come in and show up.
And a lot of that has to do with the fact that what is being called to be done is not so much these governing constraints,
(35:41):
these top down mandates but enabling constraints.
What loose enough boundaries can we put on X thing that give exactly this optionality and still allows for coherence.
So that's the from-to shift of,
of the governing constraint to the enabling constraint.
And that's a lot of times where we'll just start our work depending on what the tension is or the problem to be solved in some cases that can explicitly be about power.
(36:09):
And a lot of times it's more about decision rights,
even though that's also about power.
But we'll say decision rights,
living with roles and maybe having a leader not have decision rights over every single decision.
But giving it to the folks who have the most information,
who are typically closer to the edge of wherever that work is happening.
(36:29):
Can you explain or give some examples of what you mean by a role we have as an example.
There's one team,
it's a pretty large team and there's a role called the catalyzer.
And then there's a role called the SME, the subject matter expert.
A catalyzer is,
it's,
it's a mix between project management type responsibilities,
(36:52):
client lead type responsibilities and just generally just keeping the thing moving with the client.
And it says it in the,
in the title,
right?
It's kind of you're catalyzing the engagement and keeping that spark alive.
Whereas the SME maybe comes in with their subject matter expertise on X domain.
And then let's say another role might be facilitator and workshop designer,
(37:16):
facilitator,
workshop designer is also what it says you'll work with the client to design the workshop based on the outcomes that they want and then possibly also facilitate it.
A lot of times the catalyzer and the workshop designer and facilitator,
they tend to be the same folks and sometimes the SME is also a workshop designer and facilitator because they know exactly,
(37:38):
you know,
they,
they know org design because they work in our company,
but they're also subject matter
experts or happen to be on that particular topic.
So it's,
it's much,
it's much more dynamic.
I might be a s me in one context but not at all in another one.
And that's based on prior work experience.
And so then where does the manager go?
(37:59):
Who's the manager?
Right.
Exactly.
Who's the manager?
Right.
So how does that current role
one thinks about an organization,
you've got your worker bee managers and all those levels of hierarchy?
What happens to the manager that will get distributed?
Does that person start to do more craft work now that people aren't spending eight hours a day in meetings,
(38:21):
the folks that were managing have more time to spend doing their craft in the organization.
So is that where you see this going,
where that manager is giving up the meeting time?
They're giving up the in a way,
the the decision power in those meetings.
But they're getting back the sense of meaning in their work.
(38:41):
I was going to say that and hearken that back to our conversation about craft.
I,
I do think that's the case if they so choose,
there's a lot of different ways to specialize coming out of this manager role.
And I think craft is,
is the big one and that shows even where we are with The Ready,
you might be actually doing the client work even as a more senior person,
(39:04):
you might actually be also doing sales calls,
but then also perhaps,
you know,
having peer coaching with other seniors so that I think it just opens the aperture a little bit as to what one can do.
That isn't just when individual contributor becomes a manager and then becomes,
if they're lucky VP or C level,
(39:25):
which isn't even,
you know,
in a pyramid that doesn't even work numbers wise.
So I think it just allows,
again,
this word optionality is coming up a lot today.
But I think it allows for more specialization away from this thing that we're calling managing,
which in a lot of ways is just shuffling the metaphorical papers around and in this day and age,
(39:46):
what we would say is the information is just more readily available without that human intermediary.
So yeah,
if it happens to be craft,
it can be craft.
If it wants to be more leadership and going the route of C suite,
that's possible.
But it could also be completely other avenues.
Perhaps someone was more of a knowledge worker in one specific zone,
(40:07):
became a manager.
And maybe now they want to teach how great would that be to have that possibility be open?
A lot of things are going to have to change with comp structures and hierarchical sticks and boxes to make that possible for sure.
But I,
I do think that that's where we're going,
especially with information being as flat as it is and,
I mean,
(40:28):
wouldn't be a podcast of 2023 without saying AI is coming our way.
Well,
yeah.
And so many people have not suggested but shown that using information technology,
you want to call it AI. whatever. to help streamline some of the tasks at work.
And a lot of those tasks are,
they're like,
uh,
I've got more paperwork.
(40:48):
I need to shuffle through.
I've got to file expense reports.
Yeah.
How about it?
AI. Absolutely,
that's where Suzman is getting to in his book.
It's like we've gone through this period of industrial slog work where people are slotted into these particular parts in an organization.
And maybe,
(41:08):
maybe finally,
we're coming out the other side of that being assisted by the very machines that we built to streamline some of that easily automated work so that humans can do what humans do,
which is the creative.
That would be awesome.
(41:30):
So we've talked about Power redistribution.
I,
I wanna go back a little bit to your experience as a solopreneur,
reflecting on my experience,
I started in the solo business three years ago and I cannot tell you how many times people have asked me,
when are you gonna hire somebody?
What's your growth strategy?
What's your exit strategy?
(41:52):
Are you planning on getting funding?
And I'm like,
what?
And,
and,
and so when you know,
my answer to all the above is no. It's relevant to what I'm doing because I really enjoy being me and interacting with customers in that way and I will bring on other people as needed.
If there are additional skills or experience that's needed for a particular project instead of a talent marketplace inside the bounds of a company,
(42:20):
it's a very free for all.
Hey,
there's this really cool project and so,
and so can help me.
So let's come together and bid on it.
You've gone from working in corporate to working as a solopreneur.
Now you're in a place which isn't really corporate and it isn't really solopreneur kind of brings together components of these two.
How do you think about the talent marketplace?
(42:40):
Yeah.
So the talent marketplace,
I mean,
I think we'll be seeing a lot of movement even in big corporations about that.
And I think that remains to be seen how that plays out.
I agree with your assessment that the ready is kind of that in between place.
We have a talent marketplace and it's also in terms of the distribution of authority is the most probably solopreneur.
(43:04):
I could be while being at a company and I like it that way.
And to your question about the up and to the right.
I mean,
it's so interesting because,
you know,
our purposes change the way the world works and we're also needing to define what that means with our values of both people,
positive and complexity,
(43:24):
conscious and then also our underpinnings of JEDI and sustainability and that just requires intention.
I think a lot of the up and up into the right.
I,
I was at a,
I think they were called Zebras United Conference years ago and,
and they were just talking about how up into the right and liquidity event is a literal internalized patriarchal terminology,
(43:46):
you know,
overlaid onto cap and,
and our capitalist activities.
I cannot forget that speech because it was so, it resonated so much.
That was still the heyday of,
of venture capitalist money where it
didn't even matter what the actual bottom line was.
It was just the hypothetical of what your money could potentially make at some point in the future based on fake numbers.
(44:09):
Yeah.
II,
I mean,
you'll hear,
I mean,
you can hear it kind of my opinion even in that statement,
I don't,
I just don't think that that is in itself sustainable or tenable.
Coming back to the,
the intentionality is I think for different companies,
it's gonna mean different things.
But for us growing slow and steady and,
and being more intentional about what our,
(44:29):
how our purpose actually breaks down and how we might reach quote unquote the world.
It requires the slowing down the decomposition of the things and the structures be they internalized or not be,
be they the actual processes or not in a company and building them back up again for you.
That resonates of not wanting to,
(44:50):
you know,
kind of shirking the Oh,
no,
not hiring.
I mean,
it's,
it's such a heavy lift again,
it needs to be done with intention no matter what it is.
And I think you had mentioned um it's a little bit like folks having asked back in the day or still to this day actually,
of when are you having kids?
So it's just so unconscious,
still some of these concepts.
(45:12):
I was talking to a colleague about this notion of a 20 hour work week in preparation for this.
And we both agreed that it is entirely possible within our lifetime for that to be the new norm,
but it needs to be done intentionally and then how people earn enough,
earn enough money on a 20 hour work week.
And you know,
that comes back to this need for growth,
growth,
growth,
(45:33):
and people to buy more and more and more and like how much of this stuff do we actually need?
And who breaks that cycle of,
of consumerism?
Which is gonna be tough because we're so ingrained in that.
Oh,
look at that cool thing in the window.
Let's pop in there and get it.
So,
and I think you're right.
I think if anything,
this is a complete behavior shift more than more than anything else like systems wise,
(45:57):
I think we can absolutely get there.
But behavior wise,
I agree.
Part of me wonders if the big jolt of the pandemic might be that push towards getting there.
I don't know,
it could just be a blip.
We're talking a lot about change,
vision ideas for,
as you say,
the future of work,
(46:17):
the present of work when you go into,
I mean,
The Teady is 40 people.
Mighty Red Barn is one person.
So I'm always up for change. When you work with larger companies,
as you know,
with org design,
as you get above about six people,
the need for communication and the nature of communication changes dramatically.
And there's another touch point around 20-25-30 people.
(46:41):
And then there's another inflection point around 40 to 50 people.
And then everything goes haywire after that.
And those higher structures come into being from managing information flow and decision making.
As you talked about that information flow is now getting flatter.
How do you deal with components of organizations,
people within organizations,
(47:01):
let's say people with decision making power inside of organizations,
people with the ability to stop things.
How do you deal with folks who are maybe not ready for change?
How we manage people that might be a rock in the stream?
Yeah,
it depends on where in the system the rock is showing up.
(47:21):
One of my colleagues,
Carol Mace,
she talks about middle up down and so we come in in the middle,
you work,
work our way up and then it kind of trickles down.
That's been true for a lot of our corporate clients.
If we speak about kind of where in the organization we have started and how we're moving.
And it's also true that there have been some quote unquote rocks or folks along the way who haven't been typically bought in.
(47:47):
And we're as much process consultants as me in the future of work consultants.
It's the antithesis to what we do and how we do it to make anybody do anything.
And it's also true that if there's not critical mass,
then the culture will stay the same.
So what we try to do is help the client create the conditions such that some of these principles and new ways of working can take hold and,
(48:13):
but we can't,
we can't promise that per se either,
we're getting a little bit better as to naming both internally and with potential clients,
what we would need to see in terms of readiness.
And it's also true in that certificate program that I did.
I remember one of the instructors said after most significant change efforts,
(48:33):
at least half of the team will be gone.
I think that's also true.
And maybe that's a little bit the reconfiguring what we think about departures and new beginnings and all of these things.
That's,
that's part of also this mentality of what worked,
you know,
what worked up until now won't work going forward or you know what got us here,
won't get us there and making that less of a,
(48:55):
of a thing.
And less of a failure,
definition and much more of an,
an opening.
Even that stance of it's not failure.
It's just learning or it's not an end.
It's a new beginning.
Even that shift,
sometimes folks aren't,
aren't ready for it,
but it's the stance that we take and it's the,
and it's how we approach change.
(49:15):
Yeah,
we've been talking a lot about interrupting the culture of work,
disrupting the,
in many cases,
standard hierarchical structures and redesigning how organizations function,
which is to me,
so exciting.
I think it's wonderful to have organizations like yours,
(49:37):
people like you that are able to go in,
who have the patience and the knowledge for.
How do we approach these,
these questions at the same time,
you're you're invited in the door.
So at least there's somebody there who's willing to listen.
How do you think about interruption?
How would you define that within organizational design?
(50:00):
Well,
that's such a good question.
I mean,
the most banal thing that comes to mind again is meetings in terms of facilitating,
being able to interrupt.
And I have a colleague,
Sharon Ball who wrote a very good internal facilitation.
It's called, "On Interrupting".
Even that gets back to that equal talk time being in service of the team rather than in service of myself.
(50:25):
If I'm the participant,
we have all of these shifts,
these from two shifts from the individual or even my ego to what's good for the collective or what's better for the group at large.
I'm trying to think more meta than that meta,
more meta than a meeting.
I think what's coming up for me.
And even in talking about how we approach change,
we have this thing called the change loop where we're sensing attention and then we experiment against it and then we sense a new one and it's just this constant loop of learning and experimentation and perhaps interrupting is taking that time to be able to make meaning of those tensions that we feel because we all feel them,
(51:03):
but we are conditioned to override them day in and day out by internalized everything,
internalized systems,
internalized programs,
whatever the thing is.
And a lot of our working culture is not intended to take a pause and,
and have a moment of reflection in order to steer we've been kind of talking directly and indirectly about those,
(51:24):
those cultures that or even the culture within those organizations.
But I,
I think that's,
that's where I land with the interrupting.
It's like having the built in pause to be able to become more intentional about our work.
I mean,
you're building in meetings.
It's not the no,
(51:45):
it's part of how you work.
Have you found other things and you're restructuring the meeting,
you're changing,
who holds power in the meeting,
how the agenda is set in the meeting?
Have you been restructuring teams to bring different,
intentionally bring different perspectives into teams to help organizations experience what it's like to have a different set of perspectives on a team and then help them to shift to a new set point,
(52:13):
I guess within their teams.
Yeah,
within their teams.
Absolutely.
Especially with,
with strategy meetings and not necessarily to set the final end all B strategy,
but to bring in multiple perspectives,
if not an entire extended team to the sense making part,
it's just better input,
(52:35):
it's better input because it's more diverse or it's more provocative input because it's more diverse.
Now,
someone at the end of the day,
and I had a stakeholder interview a few weeks ago who approached their strategy in this way and their big real realization was,
oh but at the end of the day,
someone still needs to synthesize and make meaning and then make the final decision.
(52:56):
Yes,
that's true.
And hearing from more voices about the problem space is so much richer and will literally make a more informed,
better strategy at the end of the day.
So yes,
in terms of who gets to participate in here to,
for,
you know,
kind of closed spaces that changes very quickly from day one almost.
(53:20):
I'm also thinking about how people process information. For myself,
I know that I don't process that well on the fly.
So for myself,
an interruption that I take even internally is to allow for a moment after a question to just kind of write down my notes, and I think you might be seeing me watching,
you do that.
Yeah.
So I have an anchor and on the flip side there are other folks who,
(53:42):
you know,
just want to be gesticulating and volleying an idea back and forth different ways.
You know,
the more that we're talking about interruption,
the more they're,
they're kind of everywhere.
Yeah.
So that's cool.
Yeah,
they are kind of everywhere.
Yeah.
I would actually be really interested in hearing more about your colleague's memo on interruption because there's this sense of interrupting somebody's verbal sharing of something,
(54:04):
but that also can be adding on to what that person is talking about.
So there is an interruption that's additive and then the interruption that is from a place of No,
I want to be the only one heard right now.
And I'm I'm wondering if where we get to with these adjustments and organizational design and culture of meetings where we may actually get to a place where the people know and trust the spaces for enough that the positive form of interruption can actually exist in those spaces.
(54:43):
So this is actually where I'd like to get to.
Is this idea of trust.
Are you explicitly trying to create these safe places or trusted spaces in these meetings where there can be more authentic or richer sharing of ideas?
Is that where you're heading to?
(55:05):
I would say absolutely in the sense that even these micro moves of a check in round where everyone's voice gets into the room at the top.
Again,
another the micro move that I just mentioned of giving a beat so that everyone maybe more internal processors can gather their bearings before we go into the conversation.
And the things that we haven't necessarily touched on as much is also things like making the meeting about the information in the meeting and the work to be done and less about the power holders or the folks with the authority.
(55:41):
This is very much design thinking like getting after the task at hand,
unless after the person who has the task in,
in any way,
positive or negative.
So it's really recalibrating in a lot of ways,
this heroic manager leader narrative and much more about the jobs to be done,
(56:01):
which gets us back to this idea of as a company,
as a group,
as a team.
There is this thing that we're attempting to do,
attempting to accomplish.
Exactly, and less about there is a group of six people,
one of whom is making decision here.
This is very,
very different approach to getting done and then that comes back to do.
You really need to be in your seat from 9 to 5 or are we really looking for milestones en route to this thing that we're working on as a team?
(56:28):
And I think the other piece that you got to is this idea of mistake making and sense making and the learning. And when you have that,
in my opinion,
when you don't have that task oriented,
future oriented,
how are we working together,
and for what purpose,
the mistake does become a learning moment.
And then as a group,
you can then readjust differently.
(56:50):
I don't know if I'll say better but differently than when you're in a leader oriented team,
where the leader may be invested in the outcome and unable to hear some of the feedback that optionality for the individuals on the team.
But I think also the optionality for the team itself to be more able to listen and hear, to hear
(57:12):
which work is hitting the mark and evolve that work over time that I think comes all the way back to your comments on sustainability.
And what is this team?
What is this organization really trying to do?
Is it trying to create a product that's gonna sell or is it trying to create a product that's really gonna make a difference in somebody's life?
(57:33):
I think we might actually be able to shift a little bit towards the second one.
I agree and hope for that too.
Yeah,
I really appreciate you making the time to talk to me today.
Thank you,
Laure.
It's been such a pleasure.
I love these interruptions in the workday to have a little bit of a philosophical and deep conversation.
So thank you for the invitation.
(57:54):
Thanks so much.
Thank you for joining us. For more about "We Interrupt",
please see our website at
www.weinterruptthis.com for show notes,
links and other episodes.
Contact me on Twitter @HaakYak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
(58:15):
This podcast produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee,
Potawatomi and Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to Elders,
past and present and to emerging and future Indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you to Emma Levinson for her artwork featured on our website. Segue music is Moire by HansTroost,
(58:39):
licensed from the Tribe of Noise BV.
And intro
and extro music is Bartok's "Melody with Interruptions" played by Alan Huckleberry for the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Video Recording Project.
The podcast image is a public domain CC0 image from rawpixel, Maquettes de theatre i.-xv. by Alexandra Exter.
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