Leading Change | Jennifer A. Chatman, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Hi, welcome everybody, um, as you start trickling in. All right. OK, so we're going to go ahead and get started. Hello and welcome to this deep dive on leading change featuring Jenny Chapman. I am Christopher Parsons, founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture. And this is the first online K-Connect event in our conference's 11-year history. Many of you folks on this call have been to a K-Connect conference in the past, and you know that we have kind of a twin mission in the events that we produce. They're about sharing ideas and connecting people. We try and find ideas that are really useful and get them out into the community, and we try and create a place where you can learn from and with your peers and build your network. And so our goal on this deep dive is to do both of those things. So we're going to start with an interview with a really interesting person on a topic that matters, Jenny Chapman on leading change, and then we've provided an optional Hangout for you afterwards to connect in small groups and talk about your experiences leading change. So the logistics today, we've got about 35 minutes of discussion with Jenny and I, and then we'll have dedicated Q&A time toward the— toward the back end of the hour. And for those of you that have signed up for the 45-minute Hangout afterwards, we'll be leaving this webinar and heading over to a Zoom meeting so that we can use the breakout feature. If you're on this call and you didn't sign up for the Hangout but you'd like to join us, don't worry. You're invited. There's plenty of room. Just click on the link that I share at the end of the webinar so that you can join us. So this deep dive portion of the program, the first hour is being recorded recorded and will be available on our website in the near future. Susan Strom is on the call, not visible but here. Many of you know her. She will be taking notes during the session in a Google Doc. So please feel free, it's wide open to all the folks on this call. I'm going to put it into the chat right now. And feel free to jump in, take notes alongside, put in links if you want to. It's there for you. So this is our first deep dive. So we're asking for a little patience. As we try some new things. We're on our maiden voyage, and we're glad that you're here with us, and we look forward to hearing your feedback and improving as we go. So with all that being said, why don't I go ahead and introduce Jenny? So Jennifer A. Chapman is the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management in the Haas School of Business. She's also the Berkeley Haas Associate Dean for Learning Strategies, the co-founder and director of the Berkeley Haas Cultural Initiative, and editor of the premier research series, Research in Organizational Behavior. She's also designed and produces the Berkeley Culture Initiative's annual Berkeley Culture Conference. So every summer, I do an exhaustive search through my network and the internet to try to find speakers from outside the AEC industry who can bring perspective to this community and share their passion and their insights. And I found Jenny through just such a search. And after watching hours of her on YouTube, giving lectures, giving talks at various organizations, I was convinced that she'd be a fantastic person to come speak with us about leading change. Jenny, as some of you following along at home know, was scheduled to be our opening keynote speaker at K Connect 2020, whose theme was, after all, the art of change. And I'm very happy to welcome Jenny Chapman to K Connect. Jenny, will you please turn on your camera and unmute yourself?

Hello.

Welcome.

Hi, hi everyone.

It's so nice to have you with us.

It's great to be here, thank you.

I, I'd like to just kind of jump right in and, and, and at a very high level, when organizations and individuals are really good at leading change, what do they do differently? And in a corresponding way, when organizations and individuals really struggle with leading change, what are they doing differently?

That's a great question. Well, so, so I'm a social psychologist and I think about things really at the social psychological level. So at the core, when people are really good about change, they don't take it personally. Let me explain what I mean by that. One of the biggest obstacles to change is our own psychological resistance to it. And there are a number of good reasons why we're resistant to change. One is that we're unsure of how we're likely to perform in this new altered future state. We already know we're kind of good at what we've been doing. We would rather stay with the certain bet of something that we can do well. So there's this psychological piece to it. There is also an implicit piece of change that has the possible intonation that something about what you were doing before isn't right or isn't good or isn't effective. And that's a complete myth of change. Really, the reason why we typically change is that something in the external environment has changed and we need to do something different. The problem is different than what we were solving for in the past round. And for which we developed our current protocols and practices and behaviors. And so to the extent that we can take out the personal aspects of change, I think people would have a much more open mind toward the possibilities for change.

And you—

right, you can think of that, it's so salient right now with the COVID crisis. And I think the reason that people have had such an easy time changing— I'm not— I don't mean easy, but the fact that people have been responsive and have found different ways of making things work is because it's so obvious that the change is external, what we call exogenous, external. And so there's no blame. It's just obvious that what you were doing before is just not possible right now. And so the only option is to draw from your ingenuity and figure out some new and scrappy ways ways of doing things. So in fact, one of the silver linings, I think, to this crisis is that organizations who are thoughtful will recognize that they have the capacity for change that they didn't think that they had. And they'll be able to reach back to this moment in future times when they're facing hopefully less awful kinds of—

Sure.

—of responses.

And actually use this capacity. Remember when, you know, I think about my university, our faculty was able to go offline for 2 days and then restart completely remote, right? Which is something we had never done before. And this has gone, I mean, it's not everybody's preferred mode, you know, But our students are graduating. They have learned the content, you know. Sure. Right? And so I think remembering that we have the capacity to actually be scrappy when we need to be can build in a kind of adaptability and resilience that I think will be very, very useful for organizations over the long run.

I'm glad you said that because one of the things we wanted to talk about at K-Connect, and I want to make sure we talk about today, is both individuals, and I think in some ways I took a lot of what you said to be about individuals, but how does that translate to organizations? So the initial title for your keynote talk was Designing an Adaptable Organization. So it's kind of the same question but about the organizational level. Like, what makes an organizational— we've seen this, right? We've seen some governments or some organizations or some companies respond to this moment in very different ways. What What's an adaptable organization and how can I become—

how can we become one? Yeah, and I wish I had an esoteric answer for you. The answer is quite mundane and straightforward. It's obvious. And so it's going to be things like building the case for change. Like, why should I change, right? Why is it necessary at this point in time? Helping people understand what the future state might look like so that they can start to adapt to that and solve for that. Offering consistent messages throughout the organization, particularly among leaders, about not just the logic for change, but what the ideal future state might look for. Allowing people to have some input into the specific practices and adapt— adaptive approaches that make sense in their context. These are not rocket science, but what distinguishes the effective organizations from the ones that are less effective is that they actually are deliberate in, in using those steps and holding to it. So one of my favorite cases— I, I, it was so such a great case that I, I wrote it as an official case— is one of my former students who was a leader at Genentech, which is a biotech or pharmaceutical company. Yeah. And they had these 5-year strategic goals that were very, very ambitious for the organization. And this leader, my former student, actually pulled out, you know, her coursework and really did it by the book. She brought her top team together and the top team agreed on you know, what they wanted to do and what the strategic case for change was. They also agreed about how much, you know, input they needed from the rest of the organization. So there was a top-down component, but there was a built-in bottom-up component as well because the leadership team wasn't going to be able to solve all the problems, and it's good when people participate anyway. She cascaded that through the organization. There were, you know, all kinds of levers that she used, including who they selected, you know, selected people for the new organization that they were developing, how they trained and oriented people. Even the reward structure changed, and not the formal reward structure, but the informal reward structure, what people were celebrated for. Leadership changed their behavior and articulated why they were doing what they were doing. Within— so this was a 5-year strategic plan. They hit their goals within 11 months. And so, right, it's a magnificent story that again is not rocket science, but is a demonstration of what it looks like when organizations take these change practices seriously. And what I would also say— what I'd also say, and I know this is a long answer, but what I'd also say—

No, no, no, I love long answers. This is great.

What I'd also say is that that organizations who, who build in the work into the change process itself. So change shouldn't be a separate orthogonal thing, like, okay, now we need to work on change management. It should be woven into the actual work that you need to do anyway. And, and so These, I think, are practices that many organizations understand conceptually, but few have really been able to embrace and be very, very deliberate and dedicated to.

And do you have a theory as to why that is? Why— I mean, these— the things you're talking about have been written about as best practices for as long as I've been reading books about how to run a business. So why hasn't that just become the normal way that, you know, organizations run?

Well, there are a number of organizations that do a really good job, I would say. And, you know, here in the Bay Area in particular, I think many organizations are extremely thoughtful and careful about, about doing things. And we have like this phenomenal list of organizations that are not just financially successful, but you can see that their success is really tied to their thoughtfulness and deliberateness. So So there are many organizations and many more organizations that were doing it 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And so I think there has been some uptick. But I think that the natural resistance is, you know, it seems obvious. You should be able to make the case once and people should be able to say, oh yeah, I see why we need to change. Let's just do it. Right. People really underestimate the psychological resistance and all the many forms that it takes. You know, change that dies the death of a thousand cuts, where people don't even realize that they're resisting, but, but somehow they, you know, it's easier to stick with what you've been doing, right, than it is to venture out into something new. And that's why I think it comes down to this basic psychology. And if you understand the basic psychology, then you can develop organizational practices that really address that resistance. Making the case for change. You know, supporting people as they transition to the new practices and praising them for even small steps and small wins. Giving them the training they need to make it happen. You know, painting a vivid picture of what the desired state is going to look like and how exciting it will be for everyone. Right. Right. These are things that really are worthwhile. They really pay off in terms of making it happen.

But it sounds like a lot of work, right? So the objection is, come on, we did a communication, like, they're smart people, they'll get with it, right? And discounting the heavy lifting that needs to be done to help them see the world in the way that you see it, right? And why you think it's important.

Right, and I think one other reason which might be relevant to this group, because my guess is that there are folks with architecture backgrounds but also engineering backgrounds. Yeah. And that kind of rational mindset is fantastic for, you know, solving three-dimensional space problems and all the rest of it. But it can sometimes overlook these non-rational ways that we behave that are in many cases predictable, but in other cases a little bit obtuse and hard to understand. So You know, I think about as I teach my MBA students, they come into my classes which were more about the social psychology of organizations, the psychology of leadership and managing people and motivating them. It really, you need to not just think about sort of the technical solutions like, okay, we need to go after, we need to offer more services to our clients, so we're gonna set up you know, a different group that's going to support our, you know, technical group and they're also going to, you know, offer a wider array of services. That's a technical solution, right? The— what has to come along with that is what I call kind of the horizontal plane, which is what about the people and what about the culture? What if, you know, they don't respect each other's expertise? Right. How much integration is needed? What if people perceive it as a power threat and you're taking some power away from one group and giving it to another? Those will kill any fantastic technical plan dead, right, in its— Yeah. And in that way, I think it's vital to think about both of these aspects together.

Kind of the organization's emotional state as well as the kind of like the logical, rational direction for it.

Yeah, and you know, not even emotions. I would say the— just the— I would call it the social aspects of organization, the interpersonal aspect, because it's not really about emotions. It's about influence and power dynamics. I see. Yeah. And, and changes in, in predictable behavior, cultural norms, all of those kinds of things, which can have emotional ramifications. Sure. But I think it's more broad-based than just emotions.

Yeah, fair. When the new students come into your MBA program, and like, what do you feel is like the biggest light switch that you're flipping on for those students that they hadn't seen before in their career? Like, where's the moment where you're like, oh, they're seeing something new for the first time?

Yeah, I'm laughing because I'm thinking of this wonderful student I had, and he was an engineer, um, pretty early in my career, which now has been a long one. And I used to start my class by asking the question— I always taught in the fall— I would ask the question, okay, now imagine that it's the, you know, the day after the last day of our class together, driving up to Tahoe to go for a ski trip and you finished all your work and you're looking back at this class and you're saying, "Wow, that was a great class because..." And I would have the students sort of finish the sentence, right? And it's pretty transparent. I'm trying to figure out what they think the class is going to be about. Yeah. You know, when our MBA students are coming in, many have very technical backgrounds. They're taking a lot of technical classes, accounting and finance, you know, microeconomics, data science, all of this stuff. And then they have this management class, this leading people class. And so I want to know what they think it's going to be about. And I remember one of— this one student who I kept in touch with for many years afterward, he raised his hand and he said, you know, it taught me how to be a human because up until this point, I'd just been winging it.

Winging being human?

Winging being human, right? Right. So I think, you know, it was sort of the perfect thing because I think he had made this adjustment, right? He knew that it was going to help him make this adjustment from predicating his decisions and the behaviors of others on a purely rational basis to also thinking about, you know, all of the irrational ways in which we interact and, you know, in which things can go south on us.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll stick with leadership a little bit. I'm curious, specifically in the time that we're in, you know, how are leaders— because part of what we talked about is crafting a vision, right, that people can get behind. But how do you craft a vision when the future seems pretty murky and unclear right now?

Yeah, I mean, this is a really, really difficult time. I'm on a board of a school that has a leader who just started the job this year. My own dean at our school has been in the job just over a year and a half. It's— I mean, I know of people who were transitioning leadership roles just as the pandemic hit. It's a really, really difficult time to be a leader. And the stress that leaders are under, the responsibility they feel for, you know, not just keeping people physically safe, but for keeping them calm and feeling psychologically safe. I just think it's a really difficult time. And what I'm— seeing among the most successful leaders is that they're striking a kind of a set of balances that, that, that seem important. One of those has to do with being realistic. This is going to be complicated. This is going to last for a long time. You don't know exactly what's going to happen. We don't know what we're going to look like at the other end of this, right? You have to be realistic. You can't let people believe that, you know, everything's going to be just fine because it's too obvious that it's not. But at the same time, you have to offer some reassurance. I'm going to put your interests first. It's, you know, as employees, this is, you know, Your fate matters tremendously to me, and we're going to try to find, you know, the best overall solution for the organization and for all of you. I'm grateful at the moment, you know, people are safe. You know, people have homes for the most part in organizations. So it's this balance between realism and reassurance. That I think is very, very important to strike. And that's going to look different in every context because organizations are at different levels of vulnerability for— Yeah. —you know, for the conditions that we're experiencing. But I'm hearing that human thing again.

And what— in your answer, again, it was even speaking to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Building the organization up from the base of financial security into, you know, psychological safety, et cetera. That I think you're saying leaders are having to do more of this work.

Yeah. Typical. Yeah. And again, another sort of obvious recommendation that holds in normal times too, which is to communicate really regularly with people so that it's way too easy when you don't communicate with people. It's way too easy for people to make up much worse scenarios than what's actually happening. Yeah. I also am recommending that leaders have regular communication times so that people can predict, okay, every Monday at 2 o'clock, you know, we're going to get an update on where things stand. I know not all my questions are going to be answered, but I'll get some sense of what's happening. And then when you call a meeting and you do make an announcement that you're going to communicate something, people's, you know, hearts aren't going to beat out of their chest. Right? They know it's a predictable event and the bottom hasn't dropped out every time. So I think those regular kinds of communications are essential.

Mm-hmm. What— I like that. I think that's right. I mean, I think we've been seeing that in this community emerge from some of our leaders. And I think as a leader, probably it's even helpful for you to create that structure so that you get some continuity. Right? And you don't feel like you're just responding every 5 seconds. You can have these kind of cadenced things. You said something that we were talking about that made itself into the description for this session about leaders creating the context for others to do their best work, you know, even in this kind of trying time. I'd be interested if you could kind of elaborate on that a little bit.

Yeah, so I mean, in this case too, it's not just about keeping people calm. It's, you know, keeping them calm so that they can actually be productive and figure out what they can do under these circumstances and how they can continue to advance the organization forward. And the other suggestion I've been making is provide people with short time horizons. Like, here's what we're going to do this week, right? Or here's what we're going to do in the next 3 days. Because the long term is still so, so uncertain. I think people need that shorter time horizon so that they can actually focus on something. And then when you get there, feel a sense of accomplishment in that they're actually making some progress. So, you know, feeling calm is not just for calm's sake. There is, there is a functionality to that that would help. Organizations as well. What can we do?

I got a very interesting question from someone who registered for this session. They asked, you know, we've been talking a lot about what leaders can do for their organizations, but what can organizations do to better support leaders navigating, you know, this change? Like, what will be your dream scenario for a client of yours to empower their leaders to be better here?

Yeah, wow, this is— that's a really great question, um, and I hadn't thought about it that way. I would say, um, two sort of structural suggestions off the top is, um, I'm on two boards, one of a, as I said, an independent school, um, and the other— there's an airplane flying by— the other is a public publicly traded company, and I feel that the board's responsibility is really to, in this time, not just serve as a kind of entity for helping to make big decisions, but also as a support system for leaders. So I think organizations that have advisory boards or boards of directors should really be drawing on those folks for support of leaders. You know, the other thing is if employees have the bandwidth to support leaders, that's fantastic. I think it's harder to think about employees as a source of leadership support. You know, I'll just be really honest about the role of leaders, there are times when it's a really lonely job. Yeah. As a leader, you don't have the luxury of being able to, you know, make shoot-from-the-hip kinds of comments. You don't have the luxury of being able to, you know, have side complaining to people. You are really— people are looking to you for inspiration. They're looking to you for the organization's position on things. And even now they're looking to you as a source of strength and stability in this very weird and unstable time. And so, yeah, I think to ask employees who in many cases are worried about the very existence of their jobs in the future, it would be a lot to pile on them to say, well, you know, you should be really nice to your leader because she or he has a responsibility. So I like the idea of finding other entities, whether leaders can form peer support groups. I know a lot of leaders are doing that, meeting on Saturday Zoom calls to talk to other leaders, whether they're in their industry or outside of their industry. Sure. There's a commonality to leadership right now. That I think, you know, having that kind of support is really, really essential.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, whether it's your— if you have external board members or a peer group, fantastic. You've talked a lot about this idea of a cohesive culture in a company, and we're kind of going from leadership to culture, although we're not totally changing topics, right, by doing so. What in your mind is culture? How do you describe it? And what is a cohesive culture, and how does an organization get one?

Yeah, so actually let's make an explicit link between leadership and culture. Because of any single individual in an organization, a leader has the most impact on a culture as compared to any other single individual, though everyone can have an impact on the culture. And when I say leaders set the context for others, what I mean exactly is that that culture actually provides a roadmap for people in an organization to figure out what to prioritize. Culture really comes into play when people have competing priorities, and it helps them figure out, "Oh, I'm going to worry more about our clients than I am about costs or about being on time," or, "Well, this time we really need to worry about the budget, so we're going to go in that direction." A culture is really an organization's strategy execution tool. And a good, you know, consistent culture ought to be both strategically aligned. It ought to emphasize the behaviors that are actually important to getting you across the finish line strategically. It ought to be strong. And what I mean by strong is cohesive, meaning that people agree that it's important. Yeah. The high priority behaviors. And it ought to be adaptive, meaning that when things happen, you can actually adjust behaviors and priorities as needed in a reasonable way. And these are the three criteria I think of as vital for developing an effective culture. The cohesion piece is important because you can actually think about the strength of culture having two— here's where I get kind of nerdy and academic, and we've done —You're in the right crowd here. —a lot of research on this and, you know, published peer-review stuff that's all quantitative and like I'm a statistician in my day job. But there are two aspects to a strong culture. One is how much people agree about what's important. And the other is how much intensity there is around the culture. And so you can imagine a 2x2, right? This is the currency of academic, the 2x2. Where you have high and low for agreement and high and low for intensity. Right. So if you're low on both, you have a weak culture. If you're high on agreement but low on intensity, you have what we call a vacuous culture. This is like the U.S. Postal Service. I don't want to pick on them because actually I want the Postal Service to survive, but— Sure. The U.S. Postal Service stance on customer service It's like, yeah, sure, we agree. We agree about customer service, that it's important, but nobody has any intensity around that. That's not something that anyone's going to kind of break their back over. Likewise, you can have high intensity with low agreement, which I call warring factions, where people just simply don't agree about what the true priorities are.

And that might be, we've got a leader in this department or this region who has different priorities than that one and they're not aligned, but there's intensity around that or something. Yes.

And you see that all the time in Silicon Valley firms. We often see that between engineering and marketing, right? Engineering folks want to make the perfect product and marketing folks are like, well, but here's what our customers want, right? I know that that's not the perfect engineering solution, but this is what they want, right? So that can be— so that happens a lot. But, and then you can be high on both, which is what we call a strong culture. Right. So if I were to ask you which of those 4 options is the most prevalent across organizations, what do you think?

I— oh man, I'm on the spot. I'm going to go with the second one.

We can ask our people.

Let's ask our people. Oh, it's in the chat. All right. In the chat, vote for— so option 1 is low on both.

So low on both is a weak culture. High on both is a strong culture. High on intensity but low on agreement is warring factions. And high on agreement but low on intensity is what we call vacuous cultures. Which one of those four is the most prevalent across organizations? Because we've actually measured this quantitatively across all industries.

I'm seeing a good split of vacuous and factions. Oh yeah. It seems to be— it's pretty split. What are you seeing? About the same? Vacuous, factions, factions, factions, vacuous, factions. 2 and 3. Yeah, so yeah. Nobody's voted for 1 and 4 yet, Jenny. So it's all 2 and 3. They're right.

They're actually right not to do that. Weak is not it because culture is too faddish now for people to say they don't have any. And strong is still, you know, a minority of the organizations. Warring factions is number 2. The number 1 most prevalent is vacuous beliefs.

Kind of like a passive-aggressive agreement that like these things are—

yeah. Yeah, it's actually simpler than that. It's just passive. There's no aggressive. There's no aggressive. It's, listen, you're asking us to agree with pretty good things, right? Pay attention to clients, or be fiscally responsible, or get things in on time, right? Or high quality. Oh sure, I like quality. Yes, sign me up for quality. Sure. It's easy. It's easy to agree with these things. It's much harder to have an intense value for upholding those as the highest priorities. And intensity is often the weak spot for organizations. It's much more difficult to show that intensity. And intensity requires a level of consistency and comprehensiveness that, again, is not rocket science, but that most organizations don't have the attention span to maintain.

Mm-hmm. To maintain. But then I think what I'm hearing you also say is make trade-offs to say, Right. Look, clients are more important than quality, or people are more important than the product we ship, or whatever it is, to make the hard trade-offs and stand by them. Right. Right. But I'm taking away from this, right? Right.

And that's, that's super insightful for you to recognize that. In fact, to me, one of the biggest mistakes— I actually didn't answer your very first question, the second half of it— one of the biggest mistakes that organizations make when they're trying to change is rather than saying we have a new set of strategic circumstances, right, like right now. Like this. Yeah. Right. And that means we're going to need to make different tradeoffs. For most organizations, change is not brand new initiatives, brand new areas of focus that they've never focused on before. It's rather a reshuffling of the things that are already high on your list. And the biggest mistake that organizations make is rather than reprioritizing that list, they just make it a little bit longer.

They just add on to it.

Yeah. They add on to their wish list. And they ask people, OK, well, I know we had our 3 most important things. But now we have our 5. And now we have our 7. And now we have our 9, and that's ridiculous. People can't possibly optimize for 9 different priorities. Right. Right? It's hard enough to prioritize for 2 or 3 different priorities. So I'm going to say the roadmap of culture is really this way of helping people, again, when you have competing priorities, at core, what matters? And in fact, during the pandemic, we are actually seeing a lot more of organizations prioritizing what really matters to them. I mean, I'm not happy about the idea that we're kind of up against the wall to make this happen. Another lesson that organizations can take away is, you know, when the going got tough, what was important to you? What ultimately mattered in your organization?

That's right. Yeah, so I like that. So if I can try and summarize what I think I'm hearing is you've got an opportunity— because the exogenous changes have happened, there is a chance. It's not maybe for all organizations, but for some, they're going to have to restack their priorities and an opportunity to be very clear about which 3, not which 9, which 3 and in which order, which then potentially— I mean, it sounds like what you're arguing is that's also setting a new culture, a culture that says our people come first, this other thing comes second, this other thing comes third. And I think what I'm also hearing, correct me if I've misheard this, is, and that could lead to the intensity, an organization that puts a stake in the ground and says this thing first, always, period. And if people don't want to work there, don't work there.

Right. Right, and the intensity comes from not just saying it once or twice or, you know, 3, 4 times, but building it into everything that you do in your organization. Building into how you prioritize criteria when you're hiring people, what you emphasize in training and development, who is rewarded and what characteristics they have in common or what accomplishments they have in common. What you celebrate, what you identify as being a success story, what your leaders are commended for and what they're saying. So there's a whole list of things that go along with it. We actually, in a rare attempt to practice what we preach, the Haas School of Business has become a strong culture organization. We developed 4 defining principles. Or I should say we codified 4 defining principles that matter a lot to us. Confidence without attitude, beyond yourself, students always, and question the status quo. And these are— we're living these internally. The students that we graduate, we accepted them based on their interest in these. We expect them to display these qualities when they leave. And at last count, I actually wrote a case about this, but at last count we had 180 different processes that essentially represent the 4 defining principles.

So it's operationalizing that, right?

It's deeply embedded in the organization. That's fantastic.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take some questions. And for those of you guys listening, there's a Q&A panel, and I want you to just take a minute, and if you've got a question for Jenny that you'd like to ask, add it there. If you don't have a question, you can do either of these things. You, you have the ability in the software to vote for the questions that you want us to ask the most. So there's a little like button next to the questions in the Q&A panel. So as questions come in, you can vote for them, but if you've got one to add, you can add that. And so I'm going to give you about 30 seconds to do that, add questions and vote, and then we'll just keep looking at this list.

Great.

And if you're looking for the Q&A button, it's down on the bottom of your Zoom software. All right, I'm just going to start with the first one. You guys can keep going. The question is from our friend Jim Martin, and Jim I'm going to unmute you so you can ask your question. Go for it.

Hi, Jenny. Thanks for being here. I'm just curious if you can talk a little bit more about exactly what building the case for change looks like, because I agree, you know, I know I've certainly struggled with that over the years, and the more times I've had more success, it's gotten better.

Thanks for that, Jim. So I actually— so at a very nuts and bolts, and let me know if this doesn't quite address what you're asking for, because you could either ask this as a big question or you could ask it literally as like, what is the first thing that you should do? And I think the first thing that you should do is really get a handle on your vision of the future. It should be informed by your strategic analysis of what the marketplace is going through and what your offering is. You know, I'm from a business school, so we talk about the SWOT analysis, the strengths of your organization, the weakness of the organization, the opportunities and the threats. Whatever model that you use, you need to have this be strategically informed. And based on that strategy, develop your kind of vision for where you want the organization to be in the future. And then I actually talked to some Hollywood writers at some point to try to help my students think about becoming more visionary and more inspiring to their people in being able to convey that vision. And what the Hollywood writers told me is that the best way of conveying a vision is through kind of story form. Right, were kind of tuned up to really let imagination get going in, in story form. And they actually talked about trying to develop a story where the current state is, is your recognition of whatever the kind of pain people experiencing is, whatever is challenging right now, what You know, what people are frustrated about. You know, if you're not getting the client engagements that— if you're not winning the bids, you know, that you had desired, or if there's not enough of them, or you're not doing the work that you want. What is it that is not going well? And identifying the main character of that vision, which is not you. It's not the leader. It's actually the people in the organization. Right? So that's the main character. I understand we're at a place where, you know, everybody would like to be different. And I feel that pain and I understand it. And, you know, I see what's happening there. And my vision for the future is this, right? Very enthusiastic, positive view of of what things could be going forward and injecting that with some emotion. Now, you know, if you've listened to the speeches that inspire us most, and of course one of those is the speech Martin Luther King gave at the Lincoln Memorial in 1961 or 1963.

We can do a fact check in the chat.

You can fact check me. Oh my God. No Pinocchios here, hopefully. It's a fantastic speech because if you pick it up at about minute 17, King actually goes off of his written notes because it's not going well. And he starts speaking extemporaneously. And he really starts talking about the pain that the Black community and the country at large has been going through because of the injustices of discrimination and racial prejudice. And he really helps people understand that. And then he starts talking about his vision of the future. And then he inserts his ask to people. Right. So you do this contrast between here's where we are, here's where it's not working for us all the way, or here's where we're missing out some opportunities. Here's what we could be doing in kind of strategic and emotional terms, right? And to get there, here's what I'm asking from you, and here's what I'm gonna do. So you'll hear Martin Luther King saying things like, you know, come with me, you know, protest with me. Here's what I'm asking you to step up and to do, and here's what I'm willing to do as well. So this is a very— and you have to tell us whether this is addressing your question, but I think working on what I call your vision speech actually matters. And you're going to be giving that vision speech not once, not twice, but like literally every day, some version of it. You'll have your, you know, 30-minute version, you'll have your 5-minute version, you'll have your 30-second version. Where you're constantly cueing people to, here's where we're trying to go, and here's what we need to do in order to get there.

What was interesting implied in that anecdote you gave, right, is that he was able to speak with credibility about the current state and tap into the kind of deep emotional facts on the ground, like where we really are, because he did the— I mean, it's different for some leaders, but they're not maybe necessarily in that situation as much. They have to take the time to really understand the current context in order to set up that story. Yep, great point. Ahmed, you've got a question. I'm gonna turn your mic on.

Thank you, Jenny, for all the information, helpful thoughts. Question for you is, we're seeing such a wide smattering of responses from leaders in our industry. Some taking really dramatic changes and some standing very, very still. How do you navigate through where leadership should use change capital? Are there any tips in the analysis?

Sorry, I just missed the last part. Where leaders should use human capital? Is that what you said? Change capital. Oh, change— change capital, like when they should change versus not change?

There's only so many sort of different things that they can change in an organization at a given time, right? And so shooting where it matters and making an analysis where, you know, a company is not getting completely overhauled in a blink of an eye. And so I'm sort of just curious as to, you know, what are your tips in the analysis of where to use that capital? And, you know, where does it pack the biggest punch?

And you're asking with regard to the pandemic?

In general and, you know, in today's marketplace. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, Let me first sound a warning cry that I'm sure most leaders are well aware of. When you're pursuing change, investing in change, it's really important that you are thoughtful about where you're trying to go and what you're trying to do. And To me, just with regard to the pandemic, whatever you decide to do now is going to have not just lasting implications because of the specifics of what you're changing, but it's going to have lasting reputational implications. So let me give an example of this. From my own dear university that I've devoted my career to, but I also can use as an example here. In the economic downturn in what— I mean, we had a lag from the sort of 2008, 2007, 2008. By 2010, University of California was suffering from some very serious budget deficits. And one of the first things that they did was they imposed a salary cut for faculty. And the salary cut was an interesting one. They— the salary cut was a 10% cut for the most highly paid faculty and a 2% cut for the least highly paid faculty, suggesting that, you know, if you're high paid, then you can afford to lose more. Right. And I understand that logic. Right? There's a— there's a— there's a—

there's a— It's not uncommon. You see organizations do it.

Right. There's a justification for that. However, you know, the University of California with its faculty operates probably closest to what we would consider to be a star model. And my guess is in architecture there may be an analog to this as well. You hire the faculty who are superstars in their fields. And so then you have this change come along. Where essentially you're saying, we're going to hit our stars the hardest, right? And so there was some dissonance from that. I mean, right, it was a hard spot for the organization to be in. And, you know, I'm not sure I would recommend something different, but it's an observation to say that that change was inconsistent with the general stance of the university. And it has had a lasting effect. So the faculty that we've recruited since that time, you know, they know that that happened in 2010. And they're like, wow, the next time a shortfall comes around, you know, is there going to be this kind of hit? Because other universities do it differently. And I might prefer to be somewhere else. So the point of this story is not to diss my organization, who I love, but rather to say that particularly in times of crisis, crisis, the path that you choose is going to have very, very long-term ramifications. And if you choose a path that looks like it makes sense in the short run, like laying people off, mm-hmm, you could find that in the long run it's going to cost you more. So the first thing I would suggest is that whatever you decide to do, make sure— and I know you don't have a lot of time now— but make sure that you vetted it with as many constituents as you possibly can. Does this make sense? What is the unanticipated collateral damage that's going to occur here? How can we anticipate that? Can we do some focus groups, you know, with different groups of employees and customers you know, and suppliers and, you know, our board and whoever, you know, professional associations, whoever we could try this out on. These are the ideas that are bubbling to the top. What do you think? What's your reaction? You know, I think that that is so important so that you don't get blindsided by making a well-intentioned change that has sort of side impact that you didn't anticipate and that has potentially very, very negative effects.

What I'm hearing is almost you're evaluating to see if you're going to take on long-term organizational debt, perhaps, right? Like, that's kind of what it sounds like your organization partly did, is like this is a bill they're still paying to make that choice 10 years ago or whatever it was. Yeah. That's right. I think we have one more— time for one more question. Our dear friend Andrew Trickett at AHRQ.

Hi, uh, Christopher Parsons, hi Jennifer Parsons. I think two things is obviously the whole world, world of work is now changing, and the question is, is you've given a very eloquent description, but how does that all change when we're all not in the offices anymore, where, or we're either not in the offices or we have a hybrid where maybe we're in 1 or 2 days a week. I know it's probably too early to tell, but have you got any thoughts on that?

Yeah, you know, and I think it's a really important question that we're going to be looking at very, very carefully for a long time. I mean, one prediction that I'll make, I would put money on this, is that most organizations are going to reduce their real estate holdings. I think that this pandemic has shown that people don't— people can be functional remotely in ways that a number of organizations hadn't realized. You know, we're here located— I'm not sure, Andrew, where you're located, but we're here in proximate to the Silicon Valley where, you know, remote work is more common for sure. But I think the notion of having private space for people that's dedicated, that's only used when they personally are there, I think that that's going to become much less common. And certainly for your industry, it has some interesting implications. I think what we're going to learn is that, you know, for the times that you don't need to interact with people, if you have comfortable, convenient space at home or somewhere else, or that you can rent, you know, or reserve in your, you know, broader office setting, I think that's a much more efficient solution. I think the idea of You know, getting in your car and driving for however long through, you know, mood-busting traffic is a terrible idea psychologically. It's a terrible idea for the environment. And I think that what we're going to learn is that— and this is something that's happening in education too, as our technological tools are improving. This notion of what we call the flipped classroom, where, you know, the transmit-only lectures where you're just sort of, you know, getting the knowledge or in your case, the individual work where you really need to sit down and just focus on some task yourself, that can be done anywhere. And we can enhance that with technology. The stuff you need to come to work for is the interactive stuff. And so my guess is, and I know your industry has been hearing this for years, those sort of public spaces, making them conducive to not just planned interaction, but perhaps, you know, accidental interaction that winds up being— mm-hmm. —and figuring out how to optimize for all of these different aspects. But, you know, like I'm thinking about at my university, our whole building is vacant. We all have landlines in there. You know, there's a— there's an office with my name on the door. You know, I'm the only one who has keys to it. I just think that that's not going to be happening anymore. So that's more of a physical state answer to the question. But there are lots of social implications as well.

Andrew, thank you for your question. Jenny, thank you so much for being with us on our inaugural journey. We— I— every time you and I talk, I learn new things, and today, no different. So thank you very much. For all of you on the call, we will have this session out soon. I'll also send out a link to the Google Doc that Susan's been running and a short survey on this session tomorrow morning. So that's it for the deep dive part of the session. Now we're going to transition into the Hangouts, and I'm changing my host here. And so here's the link in the chat to the Hangout space. You should have gotten it in your email if you preregistered. And again, as I said in the very beginning, if you did not preregister and you'd like to join us, you can click on the link and come on in. There's plenty of room. So when you click on that link, here's the warning: you're going to see a prompt. It asks you if you want to leave this webinar and join the Hangout. Say yes! And if you have any trouble getting in, please email us at connect@knowledge-architecture.com. Jenny, thank you again, and for the rest of you guys, we'll see on the flip side.

Thank you.