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Navigating Change with Courage with Mark Stelzner
8 Plays7 days ago
In this episode, Curtis sits down with Mark Stelzner, the founder and managing principal of IA, to explore what truly drives meaningful organizational transformation. With three decades advising C-suite leaders, Mark shares how his “no-codependency” approach empowers organizations to build capability, act with courage, and pursue change without relying on consultants forever.
Mark and Curtis dig into why org design is being reshaped by AI, how to uncover inefficiencies leaders often miss, and why transparency and truth-telling matter now more than ever. They also discuss employee-driven signals for change, the pitfalls of long-range planning, and the skills leaders need to navigate a rapidly shifting workplace. It’s a candid, human-centered look at what it takes to lead through uncertainty and help organizations evolve with intention.
About Mark:
Mark Stelzner is the founder and managing principal of IA, an advisory firm that helps organizations of all sizes and sectors achieve their transformation goals. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Mark is a trusted advisor to C-level leaders, offering unbiased and candid guidance on complex and strategic initiatives.
As a recognized thought leader in the HR technology and transformation space, he has been featured across hundreds of major media, industry, podcast, webinar, and live event platforms. Mark co-authors a monthly column on HR transformation for Human Resource Executive, has been named a Top 100 HR Technology influencer for seven consecutive years, and is passionate about fostering relationships, sharing insights, and creating value for his clients, partners, and peers.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build'
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to Mustard Hub Voices Behind the Build. Here I talk with the people building, backing, and running better workplaces. I'm your host,
Meet Mark Stelzner: Founder of IA
00:00:14
Speaker
Curtis Forbes. Our guest for today's chat is Mark Stelzner.
00:00:18
Speaker
Mark is the founder and managing principal of IA, an advisory firm that helps organizations of all sizes and sectors achieve their transformational goals.
00:00:30
Speaker
With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Mark is a trusted advisor to C-level leaders, offering unbiased and candid guidance on complex and strategic initiatives.
00:00:42
Speaker
As a recognized thought leader in the HR technology and transformation space, he's been featured across hundreds of major media, industry, podcast, webinar, and live event platforms.
00:00:53
Speaker
Mark co-authors a monthly column on ah HR transformation for human resource executive. has been named a top 100 HR technology influencer for seven consecutive years, and is passionate about fostering relationships, sharing insights, and creating value for his clients, partners, and peers.
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome to Behind the Build, Mark. I appreciate you joining us today. Thank you, Curtis. Pleased to be with That was a lot to listen to. You know, and i I have a suspicion that it probably only tipped the iceberg that I could probably talk for hours on everything that you've done in the space.
00:01:30
Speaker
um my goodness. Yeah, I'm thrilled. Looking forward to today's conversation. Thanks for having me. before we before we jump in...
Shared Background: University of Texas and Career Path
00:01:38
Speaker
I do have to say and give a shout out. I love that you went to the University of Texas.
00:01:42
Speaker
We share the same school. ah You are stuing studying aerospace engineering while I was probably playing gigs on 6th Street. um So i I know I'm going to be getting a lot out of this conversation.
00:01:58
Speaker
But I'm super curious Bring me up to today and just tell me briefly about your journey from studying engineering all the way to being a top 100 HR influencer.
00:02:12
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. i don't know if we have enough time. you yeah Can you sum that up in 60 seconds? Exactly. So um I studied aerospace. I interned at NASA. um I was supposed to be an astronaut, or so I thought. Now, this was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and so there weren't a lot of missions to be had.
00:02:29
Speaker
I suddenly realized um this is likely not my journey. This is likely not my career. And like a good person who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and paid his way, but was just time to leave and get to work. So that's what I did. And one of one of my first jobs, I always liked this story, was working for Hewlett Packard.
00:02:47
Speaker
And I worked for HP when there were large call centers, you know, the the groves were taken down, HP had large call centers in the Bay Area, which I've lived in for about 25 years on a couple of tours.
00:02:58
Speaker
and what we used to do is I was hired way ahead of my skillset, which is to analyze these call centers and look for opportunities for efficiencies. And what we do is there's about 1,000 seat call centers and we'd meet on the weekends because the call center was closed. And these are call centers where you'd call for information about your printer or your toner, but imagine, you know, the Wayback Machine.
00:03:18
Speaker
So one day i brought in the donuts and it was my turn to lead the meeting. And I see this older gentleman kind of wandering on the perimeter, kind of looks over his shoulder, kicks open the donuts, takes a bite of a powdered donut, kind of wipes his face. And of course I'm indignant. What am I? 23, 24 years old.
00:03:35
Speaker
I walk up to him on break. And I was really clear excuse me, sir, those are our donuts. We're having a very important meeting. i Really appreciate it if you just move on. And he you know wipes the powder off his face and off his clothes and said, I'm so sorry, let me introduce myself.
00:03:51
Speaker
My name is Dave Packard. Oh, great. That's a moment. It is a moment. So I show that to say that my life has been a very odd journey. I did not choose the path that puts me where I am today, some 30 years later. But what I did is I just continued to kind of stay in the river that either I was thrown into or jumped into. And when the river forked and I made a choice and I continued and I continued and i continued. Lo and behold, now all these years later where I've been running this lovely advisory firm called IA for about the last 20 years. But um yeah, lots of stories in between, as you can imagine.
00:04:30
Speaker
I can imagine. And we're definitely going to have to have some follow-up time after this too, so I can dig into some of those. um So to ki to to kick things off, tell me about IAHR.
00:04:43
Speaker
What is it? What is the the origin story? What drove you to found IAHR?
IAHR's Impact on Global Transformation Projects
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah, so we do large scale, primarily people transformation projects for the Global 1000. Our clients range in size from 500 to 600,000 employees, but our median client is a 75,000 person enterprise in 70 or 80 different countries.
00:05:06
Speaker
Big, messy, highly distributed, some of the biggest brands in the world. You'll never find a perfunctory NASCAR logo slide of who we work with, but suffice it to say, some of the brands that we know and love every single day.
00:05:18
Speaker
What we do for them is really four things. We help the CPO, CHRO with her strategy, her roadmap, her organization. Basically, what do you do in what order with what dependencies?
00:05:29
Speaker
What's the best and highest use of your internal and external resources? How do you secure the capex, the opex? Often today, the opportunity cost to pursue your key care abouts, your vision for the people function for the future.
00:05:42
Speaker
One distinction in that category, Curtis, every business case we've ever written has been approved. Every single one. So we are really, really good at deconstructing and reconstructing a story that the entire C-suite and the board can fund, get behind, provide the resources and really the impetus for change.
00:05:58
Speaker
Once you have your eyes on the prizes, we run a lot of RFPs. We're helping to demystify this super messy, dynamic, complex provider ecosystem of tools and technologies and services.
00:06:10
Speaker
So we help organizations then select the capabilities that the market offers that'll serve as an accelerant to whatever those key careabouts are. We help them with process optimization. A lot of people have great tools.
00:06:22
Speaker
They have great technology, they have great people, but they haven't ever declared a position relative to, I'll pick the process that everybody and nobody owns onboarding, right? So how do you map the current state, the idealized future state? How do you develop a roadmap to take advantage of the investments in people and tools and tech and services you've already made?
00:06:42
Speaker
And then one vein of the people functions existence is good project and program management. So you're doing all this, but then program management is often governed by who maybe doesn't have as much of a people focus.
00:06:55
Speaker
So we offer this as well. But we also own IHateConsulting.com. So if you go to IHateConsulting.com, it redirects to our website, which kind of goes to your question, which is why did I do this in the first place?
00:07:08
Speaker
Why did you do this? I've worked with and around and partnered with some of the biggest consulting firms in the world for most of my career. And and I mean, no disrespect to these amazing storied brands and the millions of capable resources, but the impetus for consulting services today is to find a point of entry, get your hooks into the organization, penetrate and radiate and never leave.
00:07:32
Speaker
When I had a chance to start a firm of my own, I had a couple of things that were critically important. One of which is no codependency. right I do not want you to become dependent on me. I am there as hopefully a rocket ship, a sounding board, a reflective surface to get you through whatever this moment is.
00:07:50
Speaker
But your job actually is to fire me. The best measure of success I have is did you terminate my contract early? And I know that sounds like antithetical to this for-profit entity that I've been running for a while.
00:08:02
Speaker
But the goal here is my job is to teach, is to empower, is to enable. So if we do this well, then we can do so and bring speed and and, frankly, independence to organizations where consultants have been in their back pocket for decades in some cases. I'm sure that's a key contributor to your success, right? just Especially when it comes to just alignment, right, with the companies that come to you for your help to understand that that's what they can expect, right? Your ethos ethos of teach a man to fish, right?
00:08:31
Speaker
Don't just feed me. Right. And that's it. Like I'm, I'm you. It's an interesting demarcation line, Curtis, when we're working with an organization and we start to use the term we, we meaning us and them together, but meaning we are part of them for this moment through their journey.
00:08:48
Speaker
And then the RFP stuff, you know the RFP is this transactional instrument for this transformational moment. We hate the RFP as much as people like responding to them. So this is about creating relationships.
00:09:00
Speaker
So we're trying to foster connection and we use transparency, but I don't derive revenue from this, meaning that I don't have providers that pay me commissions or a short list of preferred technology. I am there to really bring the best fit to our clients.
00:09:18
Speaker
And there's a lot of bias and preference in the market. So I also wanted to be fiercely independent. I didn't want to be beholden to really anybody but the employer because at the organization, that's who we work for.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I think that that's actually really important. I'm curious about... What was that first moment, right? that That sort of origin. Did you find yourself in a position where you had within your network, you know, a connection to a leader or an organization that needed help and you simply had the the time, the bandwidth, the resources to be able to pour into that relationship and hopefully help them find the outcome that they were looking for? Or was it far more strategic than that?
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's always interesting when I talk to people now who regrettably, there are millions of people that are finding themselves unemployed, you know, whether it's their choice or not. It's always a question of are you leaving something or moving towards something?
00:10:13
Speaker
and i And I think in my case, I was doing both. I worked for an advisory firm that ultimately became, ah was acquired by one of the large consultancies in the world. um I didn't want to be part of that.
00:10:25
Speaker
So I was leaving that because intentionally I did not want to be part of that journey and the ethos and the way that that organization was intended to run itself. But I also was moving towards something different. And and I think that intentionality And the realization that I don't need everyone to be my client. I need a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the market to want to work with me.
00:10:48
Speaker
and I, you know, patient zero, whoever that first, you know, viral client will be. We don't generate business by, you know, marketing or lead generation in a traditional sense. It's typically referrals or mobility.
00:11:00
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So because I center in and my my amazing team, I'm like the least important member of my team centers on these deep relationships, of course, relationships were the nexus for how I got started.
00:11:12
Speaker
And what's interesting, Curtis, is the catalyst for change for needing sort of independent support and advice are everywhere. In this particular sense, the catalyst for change for my very first client was they were about to double in size. They were about to merge with one of their largest competitors.
00:11:28
Speaker
It was not a merger of equals because there rarely is a merger of equals, sadly. But they were about to double to about 35,000 employees. And they wanted someone to come in and really help them think through that process. That's a common catalyst for, listen, I've got an acceleration for change.
00:11:44
Speaker
I have an identity. Identity is automatically by virtue of 15,000 other people showing up tomorrow, going to morph into something not new. How can we get some advice and guidance to navigate through that?
00:11:56
Speaker
And again, i need somebody on my team. um And often over the years, Curtis, I've been offered jobs. Like, why you just come take the job? I imagine so. Yeah. work with it And this isn't me trying to self-aggrandize, but I'm actually more effective not working for the organization.
00:12:13
Speaker
Because if I take a job, if I lead the transformation office, let's say, what it prevents me from doing is having courage. And objectivity sometimes. 100%, because I'm going to protect my role, my responsibility, my team, my investment, my own career, because I've chosen again to, again, jump into this fork in the river and that's now my path.
00:12:34
Speaker
And so I like the fact that we can say anything to anyone. Yeah. you're you're and By working for the organization, you may be de-incentivized to deliver it a particular way because of, like you said, you want there's a whole bunch of different things that you need to protect. In the position that you are now, you can really work towards that mission that you've set for yourself and really both personally and professionally, and I say that because i can i can I can feel it, right? I can feel it jumping out of the screen, right? When you talk about why you do what you do and what was important to you. And it feels like so far, what I'm hearing as part of this story is that every moment, every moment where you had a decision and a choice to make, you were really guided by, you know, this principle, right? That you was so important to you. And it really hasn't, at least up to this up to this point in the story, it hasn't been compromised.
00:13:24
Speaker
No, and and it's tempting to compromise. and and And I see that every day. I mean, we all have to make compromises. There is no straighter or perfect path. I mean, we live in a very dynamic and tumultuous world.
00:13:36
Speaker
But what's easy is to take the easier path. Honestly, I could be a much bigger firm. I could have made a lot more money, right? I could have grown to a multiple of my size by taking revenue from places that I know I shouldn't.
00:13:51
Speaker
um We had an opportunity with a very large brand name pharma company recently that we turned down. The organization wanted to build a five-year plan. And our point of view is no one should have a five-year plan.
00:14:04
Speaker
right now. There's no organization that can look in a crystal ball and with any level of prediction, guess what the world's going to look like in 18 months, let alone in five years. And that's not what the organization required at that moment. So we wish them well, we got out of their way, we gave them our perspective and advice and guidance, and we still avail ourselves to them if they need that shot in the arm.
00:14:24
Speaker
um But at the end of the day, we're not a good fit for them. And, and really my thought process is
Client Relationship Philosophy at IAHR
00:14:30
Speaker
fit matters. I mean, fit yeah fit matters intrinsically as people, we know, you know, when it comes to friendships or relationships, but for work fit matters too.
00:14:38
Speaker
Um, and what's fungible and flexible and what's a movable. And there's a couple of movable things, which is I'm not going to take your money for the wrong reasons. I could give you what you've asked for, but I know, know, deep in my being that that's not really what you need.
00:14:54
Speaker
Um, and had to get to the best of my ability. I um ah want to revisit that about the five-year plan and the 18-month plan because it's really interesting.
00:15:05
Speaker
um It's a really interesting perspective to have. So I want to kind of jump into that a little bit later when we kind of talk about talk about the future and and what leaders need to be thinking about in the future and what the future even kind of looks like and what they need to be preparing for.
00:15:21
Speaker
um Before we jump into that, i'm I'm kind of curious – Who is that leader in the organization that's the one that generally shows up on your doorstep? we We work with the C-suite. Our primary point of entry is typically the chief human resources or people in culture officer.
00:15:39
Speaker
But of course, what we do bridges into finance and IT. And of course, we'll see chief administrative officer, COO, as the roles and responsibilities may change. and And the reason I think...
00:15:49
Speaker
You know, we do more than ah h r and people transformation, but I think the reason why the CPO or CHRO is our primary point of entry is because of the three roles that she typically holds. One is she is the strategic business partner to the CEO.
00:16:05
Speaker
So but at the end of the day, the CEO needs to turn to one trusted advisor that is that truth teller and that truth teller, that strategic partner needs to be that chief people officer. Two is you're the flag bearer for the culture of the organization.
00:16:19
Speaker
And that puts a lot of pressure, by the way, on these senior leaders. But at the end of the day, you are to speak to the population writ large and you are to try to embody to the best of your ability the culture values that you espouse on behalf of the organization.
00:16:34
Speaker
And three is you're a P&L owner. You run HR function. You run the people function. You own those capabilities. You own those resources. And oftentimes I think there's tension in the system between the three roles that that CPO or CHRO is asked to play, depending on the dynamic or moment that the organization finds itself in.
00:16:55
Speaker
I don't find that level of dynamicism in other C-suite roles quite as often as I find it in the people function, which makes the work inherently interesting. ah I'm curious then, so to that end,
00:17:09
Speaker
example of some of these more specific challenges that kind of bring them in? You described one of them earlier, right? If if if there's this, you know, moment that they're they're going to be having, right, um where they might double in size, right? that That's obviously an enormous and enormous challenge that they're probably going to need some outside consult consulted for. But um what are some of these other challenges that are bringing them to you? What are what are some of the pain points that they're experiencing that sort of force them to your door where they know that there aren't you know things that they could be doing otherwise? Yeah, great question. and And some of the catalysts are pretty obvious, as you said. If we're going through a major divestiture, M&A, these are big moments of of manifestation of identity and change and execution. So those are those are often you know good ways in which we're brought into the house.
00:17:56
Speaker
The second is expansion, meaning that organically we're entering new markets, new geographies, new capabilities. We're working with a retailer right now, primarily a North American retailer who's going to primarily double in size from 35 to over 80,000 employees 18 months.
00:18:14
Speaker
And they're going to do so by entering 42 new markets, primarily in new countries. Okay. Think about the the challenges for an organization that's primarily worked in English or let's say French Canadian or Spanish that's going to now support a federation
The Role of Digitization and Employee Feedback
00:18:28
Speaker
of employees around the world where you're not going to have the geographic affinity that got you to where you are.
00:18:34
Speaker
Massive catalyst for organizational operational policy service delivery change. um Another is digitization, right which certainly is carrying a lot of water right now, which is oh yeah we think AI can change the world. Is it a tool trying to fix a problem or do we have a problem where we're looking for a tool?
00:18:52
Speaker
yeah um So depending on which way you look at the world, the fact of the matter is we always have new investments in tools and technologies and HR is getting smaller and being asked to do more like every other corporate function.
00:19:05
Speaker
And so these financial or operational or even experiential differentiators can often serve as a catalyst for transformation as well. Even employee listening. And this is the coolest, I think, in some respects. You know organizations claim that the voice of the employee matters.
00:19:22
Speaker
But we have had projects that were born out of the employee voice. Tell me about that. There's enough sentiment around a need for functional, operational, financial. our Our pay is not where it needs to be. Our benefits are not competitive.
00:19:37
Speaker
We're bringing value to our family, however one defines family. um We're not getting developmental opportunities. We're not getting learning interventions. you know The pillar to post from recruitment to retire is not really living up to the promise of what we espouse.
00:19:54
Speaker
And almost in some cases, Curtis, like weaponizing the employee value proposition, right? The cognitive dissonance between like, we say we stand for this, but we all know in the fields that this is what we've all worked for organizations like that, where you kind of roll your eyes because you've got the laminated things stuck in your cubicle that this says these are our values or now it's behind you on your frozen Zoom screen.
00:20:15
Speaker
which I've seen more often, certainly like this is who we are. It's like, really? um So, so again, you know, through listening, a statistically significant part of the population raises their ire to say, this is, we have an identity crisis.
00:20:29
Speaker
We've, those projects are super interesting. And the reason why is because it's born out of the voice of the collective. Like we're actually saying that we listen to employees, that employees matter. It, it, it begs a question and it's something I'm always curious about when I talk to folks in in consulting roles, right?
00:20:46
Speaker
and And this is sort of also goes back a little bit to what we talked about before, you know, in terms of your ability to for you to walk into a situation and have, you know, genuine objectivity.
00:21:00
Speaker
when you think about a lot of the organizations that come to you, or maybe this is more of a general question and it's not necessarily only for IA, know, do you see that it's quite often, um leaders may have identified issues that they might be having or that they're facing and they think it's related to X when the reality is, is when you go in and and and you do all the discovery that you need to do that there probably isn't really X it's really y And,
00:21:26
Speaker
I mean, what what do you, how often do you see that? Is it generally almost all the time? And how do you deliver that kind of news? Yeah, I love this question, honestly. I'm so glad you asked this because we're kind of like HR and people private investigators. Like if we do our job really well, our goal is to ask that next best question, is to unearth the thing that nobody knew they were looking for. Obviously, there's a reason why we're there.
00:21:52
Speaker
And obviously leadership as a hypothesis, they have a theory of moving from a to B, X to Y to Z, whatever their journey may be. So our job is to you know collectively, along with others in the market, if we're running selection processes, is to validate or invalidate whether that journey is viable.
00:22:09
Speaker
But because of this process optimization work that we do, We unearth things and show the unshowable in a way that you can't look away. You can only imagine. We document every step of every process. And I'll give you a couple examples without going on too long because I do get paid by the word, it seems like.
00:22:28
Speaker
um But we did ah we did a ah process transformation around a payroll process for ah a tribal nation. They had 1,450 steps for off-cycle payroll. Off-cycle payroll is basically the mistakes you made between one pay period or the next pay period, and therefore you have to pay someone in between pay periods. It's off-cycle. 1,450. Yes, 1,450 steps.
00:22:50
Speaker
So we printed it out on plotter paper, because this is ugly. Like, it's horrible to see. So one of my team members, she stood on it, and she unrolled it over her head. And I'm not exaggerating, the CFO started to cry.
00:23:03
Speaker
And the reason he started to cry is not because of the inefficiency. He's not a stereotypical CFO. He started to tear up because he thought he had an open door policy. In this organization, payroll reported up to finance. About 50% of organizations pay reports to finance.
00:23:19
Speaker
And he said, that explains everything that explains my, my team is unhealthy while they're not taking holidays, why they're not, why they're working weekends, why they're working nights. They're killing themselves because no one ever gave them permission to stop these processes that we should have stopped.
00:23:35
Speaker
A really long time years ago. yeah In that case, like leading with heart, leading with finance, um, back to a different retail organization, we were doing process optimization for onboarding and we went.
00:23:48
Speaker
Headquarters had a theory of how it works. We mapped all that. Then we went to a retail store and we went behind the scenes of a retail store and there's file cabinets. And we said, well, what is that? They said, well, we take the paper.
00:23:59
Speaker
like, okay, paper, note, paper. We take the paper and we make a copy of it. And we put a copy in the file cabinet. Then we digitize it and we put a copy on our SharePoint drive. We take another copy and we FedEx it back to headquarters in San Francisco.
00:24:13
Speaker
And then Iron Mountain comes and they digitize a copy and they take it offsite and store it offsite. So, okay, we'll like picture us on a cartoon plane. We go back to San Francisco. We said, well, where are all these FedExes? And sure enough, there's a person with a stack and stack and stack of individual FedExes from about their 500 stores that they get in all the time.
00:24:31
Speaker
said, well, what do you do? She goes, I'm so glad you asked. We tear open the FedEx, we grab the paper. We take a copy of the paper, we put it on the share drive. We take a piece of paper, we're gonna put it in the file cabinet. And we have a file mountain come and they pick up a copy and they take it off site.
00:24:46
Speaker
And she's like, have you never been to the 32nd floor? I'm like, oh my God, like what's on the thirty second floor? Market in First Street, downtown San Francisco. It's cages. It's cages of personnel records.
00:24:59
Speaker
So if you don't ask that next best question, if we hadn't sort of followed the bouncing ball, if we hadn't been forensic and be like, and then what, and then what, we wouldn't have found the $32 million dollars in savings that came from stopping the FedExes releasing that entire floor, like get all that stuff out of there. You don't need to do that. And so because the hypothesis is we've got an onboarding problem, but the problem was a different problem. It was an and, it was a different problem than subsequently what we were able to unearth.
00:25:32
Speaker
And we make this where you can't look away. yeah This is why we get every business case we've ever written approved is because when you see how work is done, you wanna help the people frankly, work more efficiently, work more productively.
00:25:47
Speaker
That's a great, that's a great story. um And it kind of makes me curious about, is there a, is, is every single client a unique snowflake with how you approach it? Or is there a general process or approach you follow with them? I mean, where do you begin to help drive that change in an organization that's working with you? And like, how do you get from these steps or is it everyone its own?
00:26:15
Speaker
yeah I mean, in a, In a perfect world, there would be a natural, linear, sort of timeless order to what we do. We come in and we help leadership and then leadership has a roadmap. And in order to build that roadmap, we deconstruct the current state processes and we take all that information and we put it in the ah RFPs and say, market, we need help to optimize and digitize these. And we find the great tools and services.
00:26:38
Speaker
And then we build the future state and you and instantiate those into those service providers and you organize yourself. And then you have a project and a program and you cut a logo cake and you wish everybody well. There you go. That right there needs to go. And there's your process. Everybody on LinkedIn who wants to be a consultant, you've got it right there.
00:26:54
Speaker
But the pragmatic reality is it's a hairball. You're in a swirl of like all this stuff concurrently. So for example, right now, there is more organizational define, organizational define, org design, org effectiveness work happening than there ever has been in the history of HR.
00:27:14
Speaker
But the catalyst for org design and org effectiveness right now is ai So if you think about like every job description for virtually every employee, for every organization in the world is now under scrutiny to say what percentage of that work could be digitized or automated using some level of orchestration or automation.
AI's Influence on Job Structures and Workforce Reskilling
00:27:35
Speaker
And therefore that's continuous. And we need to restructure. Like you read about restructurings. It's it's horrifying, honestly. Like with today, I didn't look today, but I imagined another 10,000 people from a big brand just found out that they're going to be out of work.
00:27:48
Speaker
and And I will tell you the unpopular truth, despite what people want to say, lot of these jobs will never come back. And I will also say, Curtis, we are not reskilling the populace writ large fast enough to control for the disruption that these tools or tech are going to bring.
00:28:05
Speaker
We're not stopping to say why or should we. it's It's we can. And due to capitalist tendencies and the need to drive bottom line efficiencies, you can't walk away from the P&L and people are too deep, honestly.
00:28:17
Speaker
They've invested too much and they're too deep. So this is gonna be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So because of that, new tools, new tech, new ways of working, new job descriptions, new org structures, new operating models, what does it even mean fundamentally to work anymore?
00:28:31
Speaker
Are we all dynamic cogs in these turning wheels that are just to be assembled? purpose of a particular outcome? And what's the best and highest use of sort of the continuum between high touch and high tech? And where do we all live in in that continuum ourselves?
00:28:47
Speaker
And so all these questions are getting accelerated at a speed that we've never seen before. So our point of entry, therefore, can kind of be anywhere and for anything across that continuum, what we offer, because we could come in spot, like drop us in like the seals and help us like get you organized, get you ready and get out of your way. Or we could be with you for the next year and a half because you're trying to sort of unwind and rewind what you stand for to end.
00:29:11
Speaker
Yeah. I, I, I can, as you describe it, I mean, I can see really progress in a, in a, and an engagement is nonlinear and it doesn't always start from beginning to end. Sometimes it starts in the middle and you're slowly expanding in concentric circles and see as long as you hit everything that you need to hit.
00:29:31
Speaker
But what happens when you run into, you know, that leader where there's, friction where you're trying to help them with their people yeah and you encounter someone who just becomes a roadblock for you.
00:29:47
Speaker
that' There's somebody in almost every organization. imagine so, yeah. In some cases, it's kind of their job. and And let me explain that in a little more detail. There are roles in the organization, their job is to filter, right? We can't take on all the initiatives, we can't do all the things. Oftentimes that's laid at the feet of the IT or finance function, right? We can only capitalize so many projects.
00:30:09
Speaker
um And we can only finance or fund so many different initiatives, not to mention change fatigue, right? Like just employees and managers and, you know, those senior leaders are dealing with change fatigue because everything all at once is changing constantly, constant swirl.
00:30:25
Speaker
So there are people whose job is to question the what, the why, the how, the how much, because that's why they're paid. That's why they exist in those roles. An interesting sort of side note is we heard a use case of a digital twin. I don't know if you follow this notion where people are creating identities, digital identities in themselves. We heard a use case of a CFO who created a digital twin because they were they were sick of giving the same feedback on asks for funding.
00:30:52
Speaker
and So we used AI to create a digital tournament. He says, Curtis is the CFO. He's going to ask you these 10 questions. So don't ask Curtis. Ask his digital twin. So they curated all the different different content and context that was available into a language model to be the digital twin of the CFO.
00:31:10
Speaker
So basically, if you made it through digital Curtis, by the time you got to real Curtis, we've already separated its kind of wheat from chaff. And we know that we've filtered down to your higher state of readiness.
00:31:21
Speaker
So we're actually having the conversation that the CFO wants. How do you feel about that? I live in both worlds, right? i I don't think that you can fully digitize context because context matters.
00:31:34
Speaker
But I will also say like silly little things, Curtis, that you wouldn't think that I'd spend my time on such as font or placement on a slide make the difference oftentimes between whether someone's paying attention or you're just another presentation.
00:31:47
Speaker
That's true. and And I think of things in distractions or accelerants. So part of this forensic understanding is to say, how do people consume information? If I know that you as a finance, you're still the CFO in this fictional situations, Curtis, congratulations.
00:32:03
Speaker
But if I know that Curtis always looks at the top left and the top left is where the financials should be, and the financials have to be structured in a certain way. And I always look for risks on slide four in the bottom right.
00:32:17
Speaker
If it's not structured that way and you're hunting around as the CFO, you don't have time for that. I got to make it easy for you to consume my story, my ask, et cetera. So again, an accelerant so we can get to the real conversation. So if there's a digital twin that serves as a practice, like it depends on how far this goes, if you can draw this visual occurrence,
00:32:38
Speaker
And that practice leads you to greater perfection in the 30 minutes you happen to get with real Curtis as CFO. I'm not opposed to that, but where do the we draw the demarcation line where it's too much?
00:32:49
Speaker
And we've taken it far. How often is it where you, you know, we've we've talked about this whole idea of, you know, maybe some leaders or, or, you know, some ah group within the organization really has sort of, or felt that they've identified, you know, a problem or, or where, or why they might need a change agent.
00:33:08
Speaker
um And, you know, through the discovery that you go through all those concentric circles that we talked about and where you've, you know, identify, um you know, that it might be something other than what they were thinking.
00:33:21
Speaker
How do you tell a leader that, Maybe they're the problem, you know? And what does that even look like, right? If it's something you encounter, right? And then they're the ones that where you see some of the biggest issues, you know, kind of coming from, how do you address that? And what comes next?
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it's i think it's content and context. Because context without content is almost indefensible. And content without context is unrelatable.
00:33:51
Speaker
so So everybody inherently is kind of a storyteller. People like real stories. And the good news, regardless of where you are in the hierarchy of an organization, is we all have shared lived experiences as employees. We've all been hired.
00:34:03
Speaker
We've all had to go through learning and training. We all received a performance review. you know I'm sure there are exceptions in the world, but most of us have had to. We've all enrolled in benefits. You know, we've left an organization or been asked to leave. We've had to you know be recruited and apply and so on. So if you look up across the people function, like those end end processes, we've all lived a lot of those. So part of it is to hold up something that nobody can look away from.
00:34:30
Speaker
And in some cases, some of the best sentiment we can get Is the fact that it's the leaders themselves that are having the bad experience. Now in many organizations, leaders are sheltered because they're coddled, they're cared for, you know, they get special de dispensation, but if you unpack the sausage making.
00:34:47
Speaker
and you show them factually this is how the work gets done. And then you provide the data and the stories and you tether it. Like it is inextricably linked to what we say we stand for and our mission, our vision and our key care abouts, the MBOs, OKRs, whatever you use that you cast in the organization.
00:35:08
Speaker
You can't look away. So either what you say you are isn't true What you say you stand for isn't true. What you're incentivizing in terms of behavior, outcomes, expectations, and performance isn't true. So where's the truth?
00:35:23
Speaker
And I'm telling you, Chris, this is literally the conversation. So if i if you're the if you're the person now who's challenging me, that's the conversation I would have with you. So these can't both be true. Yeah. Which one's true? Because either we need to, either this isn't true and you shouldn't pursue this and we have to change what we say we are or we mean what we say we are and this is going to be an enabler.
00:35:44
Speaker
It's almost like you present to them facts and then let them self-identify as the problem. Rather than having to tell somebody, you make it obvious and so that everybody kind of you know looks around the room and realizes that they can't point the finger.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, and you get clever. I'll be honest. like we had ah We had a client, we had an energy client where we figured out where the CFO got coffee every morning. And we created what we call the art galleries. We took those god-awful, messy, horrible current state processes that I've described on plotter paper, and we literally created a wall of them.
00:36:16
Speaker
And every morning, she walked by that wall. And every evening she walked back by that wall. And this went on for weeks before we ever got to her front door. so but the So you think about situational awareness, like availing yourself to information you didn't otherwise have.
00:36:30
Speaker
It's quite common for her to grab her cup of coffee and stand in front of one of those and look at the process. So by the time we got to her, she already had self-educated by virtue of just osmosis on what things really were like.
00:36:44
Speaker
and then you get to that you know like that other cfo that explains or that's why etc so there's all kinds of clever ways in order to cause people to be reflective and then in being reflective to force some form of action and outcomes um that's very i i I wish that I was you know sitting at the desk where everybody was trying to think about the different ways to the clever ways to reach them without reaching them, so to speak.
00:37:13
Speaker
um That sounds like ah they might have been some fun planning sessions. you know It takes more than obviously just leadership, right, to make the transformation happen. The whole entire organization has to be well aligned, right? Leadership, their workforce.
00:37:28
Speaker
Oftentimes, you know, there's a communication problem or or team dynamics, you know, that haven't really served the organization well. um How do you bridge that gap?
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean... If you think about what we're trying to impart, like one part of what we're trying to impart on these really complex, just amazing organizations is the fact that this is about continuous change.
00:37:52
Speaker
Like I know we joked earlier about the logo cake because you've arrived. The reality is we we will never arrive. Part the mindset shift is that we are constantly in transformation.
00:38:04
Speaker
And that we have to almost change like our mindset, our way of working, the way we show up every day to think about that. And it's dynamic and it's fluid and it's ever changing. and therefore the way in which we prioritize qualitatively or quantitatively as we think about the work that we're provisioning, we have to save some amount of capacity for the fact that something new is going to arrive, whether we created it or what is imposed on us, it's always going to be changed. How do we protect a little bit of ourselves in order to absorb that?
00:38:33
Speaker
The second thing, it used to be maybe even you know five, six years ago, that protecting budget for change in communications, like change enablement, learning in communications was really hard. I'm finding particularly in the last two years, it's not as hard as it used to be.
00:38:47
Speaker
Because people recognize how significant it is and it can be. And if you don't get it right, going to be more expensive. Exactly. And you can declare and you can have the town hall and you know and you can, and and what I find is always fascinating is like, you know,
00:39:01
Speaker
an organization that has a town hall and says, we're open. know, this is about transparent communications. We want to share exactly where we are. And then the chat starts. Black and the team chat, the WebEx chat starts.
00:39:13
Speaker
and he so And people are asking really hard questions. so by the way, you're asking them with my name, like I'm Mark Stelzer and I'm challenging you leader, right? That's an awkward exit interview as it were, but I'm challenging you in the chat. And then when does the chat get turned off?
00:39:28
Speaker
Because if it doesn't get turned off and you just are willing to absorb it because you said you're a transparent organization, there's insight there. There might be pockets of dissatisfaction or dissent. It might be areas you need to hyper-localize on because you know they're not on board. Or it's people that are being negatively impacted and you just have to acknowledge it.
00:39:47
Speaker
What I wish we could do, this is like my wish for the world, is I wish we could just be more transparent all up.
Leadership and Workforce Adaptation Strategies
00:39:53
Speaker
And I wish we could say what we mean and mean what we say. And those are the best leaders and organizations that I've seen because at the end of the day, i you know i think people are realizing now because we're seeing these big examples from these big brands, like it's a little scary out there right now.
00:40:06
Speaker
yeah Why don't we just say it's scary out there right now? Why don't we get more comfortable saying, I don't know what's going to happen. But here's what I promise you, right? I promise you that I'll be honest.
00:40:17
Speaker
I'll promise you that I'll tell you something in the moment that I can, um that I'll be human centered. right to the best of my ability and i will do my best to care for you and your extended family and and but we all know we work and we all work for a business that has a now and has goals and operations and has to sustain you know the legacy of this infrastructure and we have to live in both worlds yeah he was trying to balance it and it's And it's easy for me to say that, right? Because I'm not sitting at the top of that Fortune 100 organization having to hold that flag up and and carry it. But at the end of the day, i think people are smarter than organizations give them credit for. And I think they can handle the truth because in lieu of you telling them, they're going to come up with their own answer anyhow.
00:41:04
Speaker
So this change in communications, this transparency is something I'm seeing more investment in than previously. And i'm I'm glad to see it I think it's hard for a lot of leaders to say, I don't know.
00:41:16
Speaker
um i think that a lot of leaders feel like they have to know, not just that they're supposed to know, but that they have to know. And there's an expectation by their workforce that they will or should know.
00:41:28
Speaker
And anything other than that is unsatisfactory. And I think that puts a lot of pressure on folks. And, you know, i think you know, maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but I definitely think that some folks find it difficult to say no. And I would agree with you that, and I think that we're lot smart, I think that, employees are a lot smarter than organizations might give them credit for. And probably the majority of them might appreciate some humility in at least acknowledging that we're in a tough time or an uncertain time, you know, and that
00:42:06
Speaker
We don't have all the answers and we're looking for them and can share them when, when we do have them. I want to tie back what we talked about at the very beginning about the future, 18 months, five years.
00:42:19
Speaker
You said something really interesting about how you don't encourage that, or maybe you actively like push against that. Um, Are there certain kinds of, so just keeping that in the back of your mind, I mean, are there kinds of upskilling or education or you would recommend for leaders who want to really do well or skills or competencies that they're going to need to learn because of what we can anticipate coming in the future? you have any thoughts for those who want to sort of set themselves up for success with their people even in these times of uncertainty? With that, you might have to at least be looking ahead to some point.
00:42:58
Speaker
degree yeah And there should be a true north, right? There should be some fixed or firm point in the sky that as we get lost navigating, you know, we might go this way or that way or up and down or more of a straight line. It doesn't matter. But we we all know.
00:43:13
Speaker
what we're really measuring is to try to achieve that. So it's not bad to have goals. It's not bad to have ambitions. In fact, it's helpful because we all know at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to achieve. And that, you that point in the sky can change and be modified, but at least we know there's one thing that is true and fixed and firm in the organization.
00:43:30
Speaker
um My wife taught, my wife is fascinating. I'm like the dumbest person in my house by a long shot. my My wife said something to me years ago about being both interested and interesting.
00:43:43
Speaker
And this is this is really something I've carried with me for years since she shared that in a different context, which is for leaders, you have to have both. You have to be curious.
00:43:54
Speaker
You have to be interested. You have to ask questions. You have to seek intelligence and insight and perspectives. You have to consume your own organization's information. The number of people that I meet with that don't listen to their own quarterly reviews or or quarterly reports, right?
00:44:11
Speaker
They don't read their own financials. They can't really articulate all the different lines of business that you're in. Like be interested in the organization that feeds you and and is your lifeblood.
00:44:25
Speaker
The be interesting part, and this is back to content and context, is have a point of view. So now that I've studied, I've listened, I now express that I'm interesting, right? In the context in which I occupied this particular role in which, as you said, I'm being held up as you know a higher level in the pyramid. And therefore those you know within the hierarchy are looking for some level of guidance, offer guidance.
00:44:52
Speaker
yeah Also offer curiosity to encourage everybody to be interesting and everybody to be interested, right so Now everybody else, you go consume in your context the information and let's push that back up. It's it's closing the distance between one's particular role that they occupy and whatever the hierarchical structure of the organization is, the more you can flatten that, the closer you are, frankly, to the reality in which you live, whether you believe that reality or not.
00:45:23
Speaker
And so I always like that balance of interested and interesting. I like that. I think that's good that's good advice. You should keep her. um Not my call, right? She's got to deal with this every day. so um i want to I want to keep a future focus, you know, as we kind of wrap up here a little bit.
00:45:43
Speaker
Predictions on what the future of work is going to look like. um Any big changes in the workforce? You talked about AI, right? It's obviously the elephant in the room. Tell me about the big shifts in how and where we work.
00:45:58
Speaker
um Well, I would say it's fine. I was talking to a leader the other day who has a child who graduated from college a couple of years ago and her child elected to study computer science.
00:46:12
Speaker
And couple years ago, computer science was the degree, like that was the place you went. You'd be guaranteed a job in tech. And then when we look at the big tech firms, some of the jobs that are getting automated first are in fact, programming, designing, et cetera.
00:46:27
Speaker
And so what everyone's looking for is like, what's the safe haven? Like, where where are we, you know, in a harbor that's going to be free from the storm? And sadly, right now, there really isn't one.
00:46:38
Speaker
I would say, therefore, preemptively and proactively unpack your own work. And before someone does this to you, do it to your own work. Meaning each of us as individual contributors look at where we're likely exposed and therefore availed to potential automation, digitization, or wholesale displacement.
00:46:59
Speaker
And if we look at, you know, job descriptions aren't always a representation of the real world. Like how many people started a job and it's like, oh, forget that. Like now that you're here, this is like your real work. But if you deconstruct your real work,
00:47:11
Speaker
you know the the theory, of course, is that automation is going to complement your work. But the reality is that automation, in most cases, is going to displace your work. And so if you are at a high exposure rate as you break down your work product based on advances you see and use your tools, everybody, use those same tools to actually derive some of those insights, that's like the craziness of the world we're in.
00:47:35
Speaker
then you need to preemptively and proactively prepare yourself for what's next and take advantage of all the different programs that your current employer offers for reskilling, for upskilling, for continuous education, for ongoing degrees, whatever it might be, get ahead of it and use the other parts of the investment within the benefits programs or development programs to actually relearn on the backs of your current employer.
00:48:01
Speaker
So then you can preemptively raise your hand that you have reskilled and you are ready for what's next. And in fact, you're ready to move into it. And in some cases I've seen people even put themselves out of work. You don't need me to do doing this. We should automate it. On the flip side, the trades are back in a really cool and interesting way.
00:48:19
Speaker
And I love that. I'm the i'm the dad of an 11 year old. ah Yes, I will be 165 when he graduates high school. Thanks for asking. But at the end of the day, like the world's gonna look really different to him.
00:48:32
Speaker
yeah So whereas, you know, you and I grew up like you better go to college, you know, you better go to UT. It's a great school and you better study and you better graduate and you better get a degree. I don't know if that's the advice that we should be giving to this next generation. it's Many of whom are recent graduates that can't find employment. Why is a professor and a lot of her kids just can't find a job.
00:48:52
Speaker
And so at the end of the day, we need to open up the fact that there are all kinds of opportunities for people. And I'd say with the disastrous things that are happening to our country, unfortunately, there are opportunities and jobs that are open now that were never open before. And we need to embrace those as career paths, just like any other career path. So those are just a couple items, Curtis, that are top of mind.
00:49:15
Speaker
i like ah I like that advice, Mark. I think that that's insightful. Yeah. And I loved what you said about taking advantage of those programs in the organization and be ready to move on to that next role. The reality is, is it's, it could be that next role or it could be somewhere else in another organization that needs whatever it is that you've learned how to do.
00:49:33
Speaker
ah for time So, um, last question and where where I really do like to wrap up here sometimes, I feel like this will be a kind of a good one. You know, if it, This probably isn't even an if, because i'm I'm sure this has already happened a million times. you know when a When a leader comes to you for advice on how to really get it right, you know when it comes to doing right by their people, and you only have until that el elevator gets to the top floor and they walk right out the door, what is that one One piece of advice that you tell them, maybe you've never met this person before, maybe you didn't, you just have a moment and they're like, hey, I just need one little takeaway from our moment that we have together. I'm Mr. Packard, right? It's that situation where you just had a you just had a second with the with that person.
00:50:21
Speaker
What is it you tell them? I'd say the leader should ask, how are you? And then the pause, really? Like, how are you really?
00:50:35
Speaker
because our instinctive response to leaders is to tell them what they want to hear because of fear. um Because I don't want to get on someone's radar. you know I'm just trying to survive or hopefully thrive within the organization.
00:50:50
Speaker
But I think showing a little bit of vulnerability in that moment um because I'm exhausted. You can then add the, I'm tired. Like, this is hard. It's the human-centered approach that you talked about.
00:51:03
Speaker
100%, Curtis. and And that goes such a long way because people will storytell about that. Like, yeah, this is hard. Like, this is difficult. um And then encourage that to be the beginning of the conversation.
00:51:17
Speaker
i look and I know we can't all, you know spend hours and hours with thousands and thousands of employees, but let them know that I see you. You matter. um And I want you to be well and do well.
00:51:30
Speaker
On that note, did thank you, Mark. I mean, I really, really appreciate you being here and I'm grateful for all the time that you've ah spent with us and chatting with me today. Thank you, Curtis. Really had a lot of fun.
00:51:43
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. and All of you who are watching, listening to this episode of Mustard Hub Voices behind the build, subscribe, like, share, comment. Be sure to check us out at mustardhub.com to see how we help companies become the destination for workplace happiness and turn culture into a competitive edge and sign up to get started with Mustard Hub for free while you're there. Until next time.