S1 E6 | Katherine Thompson | From School Administrator to Principal at The Rewired Group

I realize now how much we all of us say words without much thought or meaning behind them. And when we take a step back to unpack even what we mean, let alone what someone else means, we become more self aware. I find I've become more self aware using unpacking on myself. What do I really mean by that? What do I really want out of this purchase? What progress am I trying to make? And that's what I say when you know we're coaching or working with clients all the time. I think if there's one thing for people to take away in the busy context of a corporate or nonprofit, or I'll say real world work environment, discipline yourself, train yourself to take a step back when you hear some of those words. Like we often use the example healthy or safe or easy, those types of words that we say all the time without thinking, train yourself, discipline yourself to pull back the onion peel and really seek to understand what you mean or what someone else means.

Welcome to the Circuit Breaker podcast where we challenge the stick of innovation and new product development. We'll talk about tools and skills and methodologies used to build better products and make you a better consumer. I'm Bob Mesta and I'm the co founder of the Rewired group and I'm one of your co hosts and we're joined by Greg Engel who is my co founder and chief, Bob interpreter. Join us now as we trip the circuit and give you time to reset, reorganize and recharge your brain to build better products.

Today I want to introduce somebody that works with us. I guess the title is principal. I don't know, we changed them all the time. Who knows? Somebody, a colleague at Rewired, Katherine Thompson who came to us about two years ago.

Sounds about right. Two, two and a half.

About two years ago she came to us and I want to just kind of. It's kind of a get to know you kind of podcast and kind of what was she doing before? What does she learn now? And how would that change her perspective? So it should be a pretty light conversation. Hopefully. You never know.

It's never a light conversation, let's be clear.

But Kathryn, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, the elevator pitch of who you are and where were you before you came to rewired?

My odyssey, as they say. As I learned to say in business school, I come from a background in education. I spent eight years working in pre K through 12 schools, a day school and a boarding school working in admission financial aid. I Was an advisor to students, a dorm parent, a coach of track and field and skiing, although I don't actually ski, so that's a fun fact about me. I moved here to Michigan about four years ago to work at a school just down the road from the rewired group. And I like to say I'm your pretty much only walk in traffic, which you pretty actively try to prevent.

So that's correct.

I'm sorry to have.

Burst the bubble here on Kirchebull.

Who's coming up the stairs and what do they want and why won't she leave?

Two plus years later.

While I was working at a school here, I went to business school on the weekends and ultimately.

Go ahead, say it.

Made a decision.

Tell them where you went, tell them where you went.

I went to the University of Michigan. Bob and I have a little rivalry because he's a Michigan State. Go blue. Go blue. But ultimately decided to make a switch, leave the education world, form a new notion of progress for myself. And I've been working with these guys ever since.

So I wanna start there. Why did you decide to go back to school? What was going on in your life that said, you know what, I'm going to work full time and then go to school part time, which is really full time because you have to do all the homework and everything. What was going on that said, I'm going to do that?

Well, when you put it that way, it does sound crazy, doesn't it?

But the context creates, you know, makes the irrational rational. So we got to understand your context.

Right. It felt very rational to me. I had reached a point, you know, in my prior life at a school in Pennsylvania where I was doing a lot of financial aid, managing a large financial aid budget, working with the business office on tuition, revenue, budgeting, things like that. And I came from a background, an educational background in history, so I felt woefully unprepared and uncomfortable and out of my depth as I started to dive into sort of the back office and the finances business operations of the school. But I also found that I loved it and was very curious and wanted to learn more and love that type of work. So I decided that business school would be the place to go to supplement my liberal arts education and learn the language, learn the lay of the land in order to work as a school administrator who could help schools run better as businesses. That was another piece of it that I observed that many schools hate to think of themselves as businesses, abhor, I would say, and are thus not well managed and can Benefit from people who have a bit more acumen.

So that all sounds like pull like you're pulled to this. But there was some push. What was some of the pushes that pushed you to say today's the day?

Well, actually it goes back to.

Some of my coaching commitments. Part of it was my commitment to coaching track and skiing that was put on my plate at the busiest time of year for me in the admission office and finding there was not much flexibility on that part, on the part of the school to make my life a bit easier. Feeling a bit burned out on boarding school life, which I loved and still have very fond memories of in many ways. But it is a demanding environment, 247 environment and wanting to. Feeling like I didn't have much time for myself to learn and grow and feeling like I was just kind of on the merry go round doing the same thing over and over again.

So you go to University of Michigan, you get your degree?

Yes, thank you for mentioning the name again.

The Ross School of Business, I think it's called.

That's right.

At that point, as graduation was approaching, what was your plan? Graduation coming up, what was your plan?

Well, I'd already quit. I ended up quitting my job at the school 15 months or so into the two year program with the desire to take a break. At that point I was very burned out of the week of work and weekends of classes. I was in a pretty tough work environment and I needed some time to reset to figure out what I wanted to do next. And I felt like I wanted to spend the final nine months or so of my program focused on the program, not just going through the motions to cross each stage gate. I quit that job though, with the expectation that I would go back into a school environment somewhere else. It was about that time that I called up Bob and said, hey, can I do a little work on the side for you? I'm not looking for anything full time. He was quite clear that rewired was not looking for anyone full time either. So in that way it was a good fit to begin to work together in a incremental kind of way.

I think the title we called you was you were a fellow.

I was a fellow.

Right, because you weren't an intern. It was past undergrad. It was a graduate. So we call graduate students fellows. And so you just helped on a few projects and you started. Little did you know how immersed you were going to get into the way we work.

And to give a little bit more context too, I'd first been exposed to jobs to be done not only to these guys, but jobs to be done in their work through projects they'd done for schools. And now I realize quite a little bit of knowledge of jobs to be done, quite a little bit of knowledge of what rewired does compared to where I am now and what I've since learned. But I had some notion of the magic that happens here.

So you graduate?

I graduate.

You come here full time? As full time as we get.

And what have you learned since being here?

A couple things I've learned. Let me talk actually on a personal level about the progress I've made for myself and my mindset. I think one of the big lessons I've learned here that I continue to work, to internalize is disabusing myself of the notion of perfection. And that's been something. You both have been helpful to me in calling me out.

On my recovering perfectionism. I now kind of have the language and the paradigm to think about progress, not perfection, to think about prototyping, not perfection. I am much more able. Whereas I had been mired in the world of perfectionism, of feeling like I had to deliver a fully enrolled school under budget, run the school's marketing and admission efforts by myself without making a misstep, I now have a much more balanced view for myself of what's realistic and how I measure my own progress. I think from a kind of operational, practical standpoint. A huge thing I've learned here too is reminding myself to.

To, as we say, as Bob says, uncover demand, make sure I'm understanding the demand in front of me. Whether that was in my old life, of what progress are the parents who are looking to enroll their kids here trying to make or here in my current job? What progress are our clients trying to make and how can I best serve that?

Is there one tool or mindset you wish you knew then that you know now?

I would say unpacking has been the most profoundly helpful way of thinking.

It could be also detrimental because now you want to unpack everything.

That's right. That's right. So sometimes we, we. We get down those rabbit holes. But you know, I realize now.

How much we all of us say words without much thought or meaning behind them. And when we take a step back to unpack even what we mean, let alone what someone else means, we may realize we become more self aware. I find I've become more self aware using unpacking on myself. What do I really mean by that? What do I really want out of this purchase? What progress am I trying to make? I think, and that's what I say when we're coaching or working with clients all the time. I think if there's one thing for people to take away in the busy context of a corporate or nonprofit, or I'll say real world work environment, discipline yourself, train yourself to take a step back when you hear some of those words like we often use the example healthy or safe or easy or what have you, those types of words that we say all the time without thinking, train yourself, discipline yourself to pull back the onion peel and really seek to understand what you mean or what someone else means when using those.

Can you think of an example that happened when you were at the school that unpacking would have helped with?

I think we often left our understanding of parents progress. They were trying to make it a very superficial level like we would reduce it to features and benefits. So for schools that might be a feature, might be the lacrosse program. Great. Your kid likes lacrosse. Let me tell you everything about our, our lacrosse team without taking a step back to unpack. Well, what does that mean that they want a lacrosse team? Does that mean they have aspirations that their, their child's going to go play D1 lacrosse and needs to compete at a really high level to get looks from collegiate coaches? Does that mean their progress is they just want their child to be part of a team, to develop that teamwork and camaraderie and not feel left behind. Examples like that, that was my old M.O. and now I, now I see how unpacking, just asking a few more questions can help match offerings and match match to the progress the parents are trying to make.

And I imagine there's a lot of people listening to the podcast that, that are in a similar situation as far as feeling stuck or not fully satisfied with the job they're in today and they're looking for different things. What advice do you give them? What should they do?

Be clear on the outcomes you're seeking. I think for me, I've been able to again unpack some of my outcomes and some of my priorities. For me, I always loved and continue to love working with students. As I said, I was a dorm parent in a dorm of 100 9th and 10th grade girls. I was a coach, an advisor and I loved that. And I always felt like that needed to be a defining feature of my job and an outcome I wanted from my job. That ability to interact with students. Obviously I, I don't have that here in the same way, although we do do teaching and coaching and other sorts of things, but not with the elementary school demographic? Not yet.

Yeah. And I don't know if we want to go there. I don't know if parents want us around their elementary school children too much.

So talk a little bit about that. Right. You knew education was important in your life. You knew that. You like being a coach, you like being a teacher, you like, you like that aspect of the give and take of learning.

Yes.

Both from the learner and from the teacher. And the give and take and the learning that both get out of that. How have you taken, how you, how have you taken that passion to us here at Rewired? What, what are you working on that would say that's scratching that itch?

I've been able to work with both of you actually in coaching and teaching clients. Whether it's, whether it's lecturing at Harvard Business School or other schools around the country, whether it's presenting at a conference or what I find I most enjoy, which is coaching clients in smaller sessions through. What are some of the techniques you can use in jobs to be done? Interviewing, how do you conduct an analysis? How do you do your best to divorce yourself from your supply side kind of biases and mentality? Those are ways here. I've been able to kind of scratch that itch. And I've also found on the side, I've been able to kind of make progress in.

My continued love of school and commitment to education by serving as a trustee at my own alma mater, volunteering for Big Brothers, Big Sisters. That, that to me was the kind of the huge revelation I made when thinking about all that push I had leaving my. My former job, all the anxieties I had. I was able to figure out how to kind of break, break all those important things apart and find them in different aspects of my life.

So we're, we're working on software here. Yes, that we're trying to develop something that will help people through jobs to be done. Through the process of jobs we've done. How have you taken your approach? I know Bob and I, we're focused on kind of the mechanics of it. Is it working right? Are we doing those things? But how has your coaching teaching hat influenced that software?

I think an important role I've been able to play with you two here is the almost the Jiminy Cricket or the reminder of where people are in their journey of learning jobs to be done and how we really have to use the word we talk about a lot in curriculum and education.

Chunk learning for people and think about how we graduate people through the process. What are the kind of building blocks and fundamental skills. Since we're in Michigan, we're often talking about hockey. I do think we agree we're Red Wings fans, Right. We may not agree on Michigan, Michigan State, but the Red Wings we could agree on. And I liken it to learning how to play hockey. First you have to learn how to tie your skates and then stand up on the ice and then skate, and then you can hold a stick and stand on the ice and then maybe move. It's kind of a similar process.

With respect to the software and learning jobs to be done. You got to kind of incrementalize it and help people along where they're at to help them make progress and successfully do a project.

So to that point, just to give a little insight in the thought process of the three of us, and Matt, also.

Bob often thinks when we're looking at the software that everybody kind of understands the process, right?

Yes.

It's easy.

Yes.

Right. And I'm the one that thinks it takes five years to learn this thing because of all the different nuances. And how do you help us? What tools, what, what devices do you use to help us get to that middle ground or get to the place where we can make progress?

We debate a lot. We debate a lot. We also talk a lot to our kind of alpha customers who've been using the software to help pinpoint their struggling moments. We debrief a lot after each kind of coaching session. Not only do do we spend maybe an hour or two hours coaching a client through, say, affinitizing one of the steps in a jobs analysis, but we also may then spend another hour or 90 minutes on top of that kind of talking through breaking it apart. Both the use of the software and our own coaching to help hone and refine and get that input we need from the actual users rather than from. From even any of us.

Yep.

And how is that different? The way we kind of develop that and the way we're doing that. How is that different than like your old work environments?

Well, I don't have to leave the office at 2 o' clock to coach skiing anymore.

And you can't ski and I can't ski. I can't ski. That can be a podcast unto itself.

Bob's intrigued.

Can't wait for that one. I think this is an environment in which time is set aside for that type of reflection, for that kind of debate and argument. There's not an. None of us have an expectation that things are going to be perfect from the start, whereas in a lot of environments, including the one I was in. And we certainly hear this from clients all the time. There's just not that time or that kind of license to prototype, and it can be hard to.

Feel the liberty to do so. It can feel like your colleagues might be judging you, or if you fail, you're going to have your job yanked out from under you. It can be very hard to practice those skills.

In that type of context.

Yeah. And I think also there's a notion that we talk about here, which is everybody talks about being on a team when they're in a job, but most of the time, it's actually just a bunch of individuals doing individual things.

That's right.

And we. We do that, but we also understand that we have to come together as a team, and where are those points of teamwork and individual work, and where do they tie together?

And you need a balance of both. I just. I remember very early on, and when we started the rewire group, the whole notion is like the aha that we had. Like, people think the meetings are the work. I'm like, the meetings are not the work. The work happens between the meetings. So we can't be in meetings all day. And so it's that notion of, like, we might have interaction, but the work is, how do we debrief it? What do we figure out we're going to do next? How do we actually figure out, like, all that thinking part of this thing? And so we realize that the thinking most people just know how to do, and what we would say is they need to actually practice the unpacking skills, the system skills, all these other things, to be able to help them kind of realize they can be way better, but they're hampered by. They have one shot. It's got to be perfect, and everybody just picks out what's wrong.

That's right. That's right.

So, Katherine, thank you for taking the time to talk with us about these types of things, of how you've changed in the last two years of your job and going to school and how those decisions were made. And I think the way we want to leave this podcast is kind of leave a question with people in the audience, which is, if you find yourself at a position where you might want to change jobs or you might want to bring in something new, you need to ask yourself, what is the progress you're trying to make? And try to fill out the forces of progress, but then also go back to another forces of progress, or at least talk about what do you. What did you what brought you to your job in the first place? So you actually have to look at it from both sides of what's next. But what made me happy by being here. So when you find yourself stuck in those things, that's the challenge I think Bob, Katherine and myself give you is can you actually divorce yourself of all the emotion and figure out what do you want next? But then also you have to figure out why did you get attracted to this first one? What are those important things? Because we often lose sight of the things that made us happy in the first job and throughout the whole baby with the bathwater, if you will.

I think one of the, I know that we're trying to wrap up, but there's one other point I want to make.

You just can't let someone else have the last word, can you?

Let you have the last word. But I think one of the things, one of the practices that Katharine and I have developed over the last, I'll say two years is every 90 days sitting down and talking about progress and having a good two hour conversation around the first hour is about what progress did you make in the last 90 days? And then me articulating what progress she helped me make over the last 90 days and then talking about then the next 90 days of what things she's want to do. And so there's been some really big kind of disconnects that have helped, I think both of us. Where one was the fact this is like, I got very, very busy at some point and I kept saying, all right, Katherine, you know, can you handle this? I'm going to go do something else. Right. And I kept feeling like I was dumping on her. I'm like, oh, this is not right. I can't do that. And in the conversation, you came back and said, like, I love the fact that you can let me fly, you know, walk without a net kind of, and realizing that you want to do more of that. And so the next 90 days we actually doubled down and got more coaching clients or beta clients on the coaching side. And that it was like, so I got rid of the anxiety of abandoning you and you, you actually had the chance to hone and refine your coaching abilities. And so instead of trying to put goals, you know, for the year, it's literally having these conversations just around progress and what, what are things that we want to shape? How do we want to shape the work? So, so I can actually go grab or create work that actually will help you make progress, but also help us make progress, because it's a two way street here as an employer. Not just, you know, Katherine do this job. It's like, I want to make sure Katherine's making progress as well. Because what I do know is the moment she stops making progress, she'll start to look for something else. Which is awesome, right? So I want to just keep you constantly being able to make progress.

Thanks for listening to the Circuit Breaker podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe so you won't miss an episode. If you know somebody who's stuck on the Innovation Treadmill, please share it. If you'd like to learn more information, visit us@the RewiredGroup.com to find out how we work, how we can help Some resources, some books, some software. Join us next time as we trip the Circuit Breaker to help you recharge, re energize, and refocus your new product development.