Hello, everyone. Welcome to Real Talk with Tia and Jill. Hello, hello. Welcome to Monday. I think I say that every time. Yes, yes. I feel like Mondays deserve the welcome to Monday. I think so, too. Right? It's like, that's why we do this on Monday, because we are kicking off the week together. And if you're listening to us on the podcast, yes, it could be, you know, it might not be your Monday, but that's when this is taped and goes live. So That's right. That's right. So if it's not your Monday, then happy Tia and Jill real talk. Yeah. And happy welcome to March day. Right. Yes, that's right. Wow. We are officially out of February. That means that this is the last month of Q one. Yeah. Look at us. I mean, like in general, right. As an industry, we are coming out of Q one, depending on when your fiscal year is, but calendar year, at least one. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Q-one in fiscal, in this year, fiscal one. Yes. I might need a little bit more coffee to get my brain all wrapped up and running today. I know a lot of people are probably thinking like, is it my Q-one? Is it my, they're all on fiscal years. I'm at calendar Q-one, but it's like a, it's, it's almost like a check-in on all the things you said you were going to do in Right. We have you have one more month left in the quarter. Right. How are you going to use these next? Well, I was going to say thirty one days, but now we're at twenty eight days, twenty nine days. Yes. Yeah. But, you know, I think this is the time I don't know about you. And this is a little sidetrack from our stuff. But this is when you really start getting into the year and you're like, I only have nine months left. Mm hmm. And I know that sounds really goofy, but I know a lot of people who are still at three months going, how am I going to do this project or these goals this year? Yes. Yes. And that's real. And I'm going to shamelessly plug. This is why we have our cohort starting in two weeks, because to get all that stuff done that you want to get done. Gosh. How about we approach it a little bit differently than before to have different outcomes? Yes. Yes, exactly. It's one of those things that kind of fits into our topic as we think about charts and all the reorgs that's been happening across the industry. But that's something that we are so used to, especially at this point. We're so used to reorgs. But really, the problems don't go away. No. And thank you for tying that together, because that was not my intent. But it's absolutely true, because this is when people start going, things aren't moving ahead the way that we think they should, or the way that we wanted to, or it's not clear, we don't know. And sometimes the response that's given by an org is, well, it must be time to reorg so we have better clarity and accountability and alignment and all of that. But that's a myth. That is a myth, right? For those... We're going to bust today. Right, right. And we've... I mean, put in the comments, have you been through a reorg? If you've been through a reorg and you're like, actually, yes, that worked so well, all of our problems went away because we did this reorg, let us know. But I know we've been through some reorgs, right? Where... the issues that we're seeing, they're not going to go away. Even if the reorg was great, right? Like we need to reorganize the way that we report in. We need to reorganize how we, you know, have our talents, our talent pools, our resources. Some of it is like, yes, that makes sense. But it doesn't really solve your leadership issues, your communication skills, how you build relationships, how you show up for one another. And I feel like this is not revolutionary. We didn't come up with this. There's so much data out there on how organizations use reorganizations, reorgs in their organizations. to try to solve these leadership issues, but it does not work, right? It's really not a tool for that. Well, and I do want to do the big old, like just timeout. Cause if you are one of our clients listening in who are like, yeah, but you told us we should like redefine or reorg. We're also going to talk about, there are many, there are certainly valid times to do this. Yes. It's just with the right intent and the right game plan. Absolutely, the things we want to talk about today are things like you'll often see this and i'll start kind of at the top, a new CEO comes in. stakeholders board members are expecting results they don't see those right away you'll often see within like two years or reorg because those. stakeholders and board members want to see something visibly happening. Yes. So sometimes the reaction is, well, we don't quite have all the outcomes we want, so let's reorg and see if that makes it better. And then people think, oh, good, they're doing something. Right, exactly. We're not talking about reorgs for that. Right. When we talk about reorgs, we talk about, like you just talked about, we're doing clarity and alignment. But if you're one of our clients, you know, reorgs are always paired with, leadership development support yes yes absolutely absolutely you're right you're right we're in the middle right now of going through a reorg with one of our one of our clients but it's partnered with like you said developing your leaders because sometimes you need to restructure but how are you supporting your team and giving them the tools that they need in order to actually solve the culture issues that you're seeing that's what we're talking about That's what we're talking about. So in the comments, like we can see your comments on YouTube. Please put them in. Let us know. Do you love reordering? All right. Have you seen a successful one or are they all kind of thumbs down for you? Yeah. Right. Some of them fizzle. So, you know, and if this is your first time joining us, welcome. This is Real Talk with Catalyst Food Leaders, where we like to have honest conversations to lead people forward in food. If you can't tell already, we really are not scripted, although we do have a topic to talk about today. Yes, we do. Fixing your org chart isn't fixing your culture. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And Jill kind of talked about, you know, the hopes of reorganizing your organization, right? Have better outcomes, lower costs, faster execution. And those are things that might happen and you need to do. But we're really talking today about those leadership gaps and how structures really don't help solve the inefficiency, the frustration, and the missed results if you are missing those leadership skills. Mm-hmm. And the connection to culture, too. I feel like a lot of people, they first go to, we need to shift our culture. How do we shift our organization to fit the culture we want to see? It's not a bad question. But when you see that people really lack the skills and you focus on the org structure, then that's when we run into issues. And you start seeing that you're not really seeing the culture that you need. A few weeks ago, we showed a clip from Simon Sinek, and he was talking about a culture that's built on a personality. You have this really strong leader, they're there, everyone loves this person, and they're kind of doing things for that person because they like that person. But then the person leaves, right? And the role is open and someone comes in and they don't have the same leadership style or maybe they don't have the same leadership skills, right? And we see, it kind of falls off the rail. It fizzles because it was really only built around that person, not really an organization that's building these skills, building these leaders so that whoever steps in, they have the skills to be able to lead. Yeah. And I'm going to add this in to you. I think this is what we're commonly seeing here in the food safety realm, where this is something that I pulled off probably LinkedIn. And if you're on the podcast, I'll read this for you. But it says, we're looking for a senior director of food safety and quality assurance to help shape and lead our food safety and quality strategy across North America. This is a high impact leadership role focused on driving excellence, strengthening our quality culture, and supporting the customers and bakeries we serve every day. Cool. That sounds like an amazing role, doesn't it? It does. How many technical leaders have we prepared to do that? A great question. One thing that I love about this post is that it speaks straight to leadership, right? And this was a senior director. So it should be majority leadership that you want from this person. But then you're right, Jill, like enroll. right? Or people that we hire in this role or people we promote in this role, we really haven't given them the tools to be able to, what, shape and lead our strategies or strengthen our culture, drive excellence, supporting customers. We really haven't given them those soft skills, leadership skills to be able to do that effectively. Yeah. And I did copy and paste the rest of this, but it was the standard grocery list of You are responsible for food safety and quality management system. You are responsible for customer complaints. You are responsible for HACCP and regulatory blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? The groceries, which at the end of the day, that may be true, but leadership was not at the top of that list. Right. Leading a team because one of the things that we often see is our many roles seem to be very task driven versus leadership driven. Yes. And then we don't understand why the rest of the org isn't picking up their end of food safety and quality. Right. Yeah. It's like no one's leading, right? Everyone's executing. Really, the leaders of the organizations are not really leaning in there. They are in the weeds, right? They're doing tasks that other people honestly can do in the organization versus I've had this conversation a few times over this last week or so, which probably why this is trending, is that senior leaders in the organization, they're the only ones that can really do that high-level strategy work because they're the ones that are privy to the information. The other stuff in the organization, there are many people that can do that work. There's many people that can step in and lead a frontline team or lead food safety for a line. If you're a large enough organization, you might have hundreds of people that can do that role. But only a handful of people can really do senior leadership in the organization. So when I see an organization and the senior leaders are doing more executional work, I'm asking the question, who's leading? Right. Right. Who's leading in the organization? Because that is a special skill set. And those are the things that sometimes maybe aren't fully present, which then lead organizations to say, I think we need to reorg. Right. We need to realign so that we can maybe refocus or elevate or have awareness. And once again, those things inherently are good. Yes. Those are good things to do. as long as the follow-up after reorg is in place for the support to follow it. I'm reading this comment that we have in the chats that someone had a bad experience with a reorg because most of the time it cuts heads and causes other managers to take on more responsibility. Ooh, yeah. The famous, we're reorging, but really you're doing it as a cost. Cost savings, right? It's not really to help with flow or communication or, you know, all the other reasons. It's really a cost savings initiative. It is. Which is one of the worst types of reorgs, especially when you think about the impact of culture. It is. And I, you know, I think the other part is sometimes as you navigate through those things, since we've done a couple with clients where as things distribute, people do go, gosh, I feel like I've been given more responsibility. We're like, yes, you have. You are in a more senior leader role in this organization and you do work through people. So your scope of responsibilities has matched where you're at and where you're building capabilities. But that's also because you're doing more work through people, not you doing all the individual tasks. Right. And that should align with like as you're thinking about because we know cost savings. That's a part of our industry. That's a part of how we work right now. That's really not going to shift in the next ten years. But like you said, I love the way that you said it, Jill, in the sense of if I am taking on more responsibilities, do I have the resources to manage it? Am I now over a team that can help execute? Did some things come off my plate? And having those conversations, we talk to a lot of people that are in a very similar position where it's like, I feel overwhelmed. I have so much stuff on my plate now. you know we encourage having the conversation around this is where i'm at right with your with your leader right this is where i'm at what can come off what do i need to prioritize it's like the the balls in the air some are glass some are you know some are plastic you know some bounce back up to you really learning how to prioritize and i mean that's easier said than said than done because we have a lot going on um but those conversations are important Yeah. And so even as we talk through these today, I think the part that's important to understand is that when we do reorgs, we will still struggle the same before we did a reorg if we aren't focused on behaviors. Yes. And addressing bottlenecks and focusing on outcomes. So once again, reorgs inherently aren't bad. It's just if they don't have support and the intention behind them, then they can keep us stuck in the same things that have been creating problems for today. It just looks like it's in a different structure. Right, right, exactly, exactly. So we talked a little bit about why reorgs happen, right? And the pattern we kind of get in that reorgs is really just a reflex to, something's going on we need to make a visible change i love the example that you gave on the board is asking for something right the board needs to see change and this is our visible change you know to issues that we're we're seeing around clarity efficiency and maybe even alignment yeah and i i think the part that's important with this is when we think about you know structural changes like we just said are visible but we're talking about culture change right we said Reorgs won't lead to culture change. Culture work is not visible. Those are the things that are the behind the scenes, how we do things, who we are, how we show up every day. And so those can happen regardless of what your org looks like, but alignment does help things move easier. Yes, yes. I love that. Culture work is not visible. That is so true, right? We feel it, we know, like when people are like, how do I know I'm in a great culture or a toxic culture, right? We feel it. And some things, right, the symptoms might be visible, right? Or the outcomes might be visible, but that work to shift it a lot of times that's not visible. And we gravitate to the things that are visible. Like, ooh, let's put that metric down. Let's reorder our structure. Let's do these more visible things versus actually doing the work and shifting people's behaviors. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really important because even when we think about, SQF-Ten just came out, Edition Ten. much more prescriptive around some of the food safety culture actions needed, which. You know me, I'm a little bit bitter on it because I'm like, those are the same things that have been recommended for the past twenty years. I'm so glad we got those in the code. Way to go. Yes. We can create another checklist to check it out. Still get there in ninety eight or whatever. Yeah, we're trying to make it visible. We're trying to make it visible. And these are the things like, do we get along? That's not a visible metric. Do they communicate effectively? Once again, we can score those, but those are the things that sometimes we try to fix with the reorg. And those, once again, are just leadership skills. Right. Those are soft skills. It's one of those things that, you know, if we really wanted to see, then we should just look at how does an organization invest in the leadership skills and their people? Yeah. You know, what do they do around that? Yeah. Well, and I know we did like, we don't prep prep before this, but we do have a few notes. So we did make a list of a few things. Like when you do org structure changes, things that it won't help change. So if you're sitting in a spot where you're like, oh, it'd be nice to do a reorg. Cause we want to solve this problem. Let's be real about things that it won't actually change. Like it won't change. Number one, like how decisions get made. Right. Right. Like if you're like, oh my gosh, we're always doing. like this voting or majority or compromising or authoritarian, whatever it is, if you don't like it, all because you change lines and boxes, doesn't mean decisions are gonna be made different. No, it's not. You're going to see that the same people are making decisions, or how people get the answers to their questions seems to be the same way. That doesn't really shift. Another thing that doesn't change is how conflict is handled, how conflict comes up. That's one thing that org structures don't even call out. What happens when you have a conflict? Yeah. You mean if I don't just move that person that we think is the problem over somewhere else, I'm not going to fix the problem. Right. Right. I mean, I'm like hands up on how many times have we've had this conversation around, like we need to actually work with the person versus jumping that person around to different groups. Right. You're really just moving the problem and the people that are there left behind. they don't really know how to handle conflict. So when the next conflict comes up, are we gonna move that person or that thing or that software out of that group because they don't know how to handle conflict or have conversations? And that's hard. Like I've been the recipient of someone who people were like, they're not fitting here or fitting there. Oh, you guys have an opening? This person can fit there. And you're like, oh, okay. Right, right. You know, and it's not fair to move that person around because then I had a team that was all impacted by this person. Right. And then I was the one who had to work on, well, the team, supporting the team, performance managing this person. Right. But we could have done that before we impacted an entire another team. Right. Yes. Yes. so true so true it's like those times where okay we go straight to understanding performance and helping that either helping that person get the skills they need or sometimes they it's not a great fit right whichever one it happens to be but like you said moving people around jumping them around when we know that there's a problem here a conflict that needs to needs to be handled is only creating this whirlwind, this churn, you know, across teams. And what does that say about the organization too? We've, we've been there where this person is jumping around and everyone's like, yeah, you know, Tia, she's been here. She's been there. She's been there. The organization is not going to do anything with her. Right. Right. Yep. We have helped clients through that as well. Not the person that gets moved around. Uh-huh. I think the other thing I look at with organizations is they tend to take on way too many projects. Oh, yes. Right. It's the over promise of all the things we're going to do that maybe aren't all always external facing, but internal facing. Put a yeah, yes in the comments if you felt the whole like, oh, by the way, we only have twelve goals to accomplish this year. Right. Everything is a priority. Yeah, and reorgs do not shift how priorities compete with each other. Right. Not at all. If you have twenty-five priorities, you're still going to have twenty-five priorities when the organization shifts. Sometimes you might have more. I've definitely seen it where an org structure happened, functions were combined, and now there's you know, there's thirty top priorities. And I mean, no exaggeration, right? Literally thirty priorities. And you're trying to figure out who's going to do this work that needs to happen over this next year. Yeah. The restructure does not help with that, right? That's still one of those things that does blow my mind. I mean, it doesn't mean that I'm not like, I'm guilty of this too. Like, oh, Tia and I do this, right? We're like, oh, we want to do this and this and this and this and this. And then we're like, okay, reality check. Like, what are the things we actually have capacity to do? Which ones are actually priorities for our clients or for our business? Like, which, because I mean, we have things that we're like oh that'd be just fun to do and we're like cool not a priority right exactly you know and that's a hard thing for companies to look at because we do have all of these stakeholders that we're making promises to and that is important but it's also important to be realistic because the people that are also carrying these loads are the ones who either trying to sort through them or figure them out yeah i think it goes towards the comment that we had around the bad experience around org structure where heads were cut but people took on even more even more responsibilities so like how do we prioritize right we org structures don't help with those competing priorities no and i think that even goes into this last thing like org structures do not change how leaders show up under pressure like if you if you were in a spot already where you're like gosh my plate's full and now we reorg and it's not clear or we think that person will show up differently because maybe they have some different responsibilities it doesn't change the core behaviors all because you've changed boxes and lines right Even if you feel like this person needs to take on less or they've asked to take on less and you move them to less, unless you actually really explore that and understand what's going on and how to support this person, behaviors will not. Behaviors just won't change. Because org structures, that's not addressing the behavior of how this person shows up under pressure. that that's our that's probably the thing we want you all to take away today right like reorging does not change behaviors and in fact i think you know even as we talk about this the things that lead to you know when we think about behaviors like if i'm inefficient today we reorg i'm going to be inefficient tomorrow right if i have an inefficient process today it's still going to be inefficient tomorrow if i don't know how to build relationships today putting me over here is not going to solve my issue on building relationships. No. In fact, I think it even amplifies, you know, when we see the workarounds. Right. Like, gosh, at least in this current org, if even if it's dysfunctional, I know how to move work through. Right. But now if I change things now, I don't know. So that tends to have people move around things. if it's not clear where support goes. Right, exactly, exactly. And I think this kind of moves to our next point of like those leadership gaps that's just hiding under our chart, right? The ones that you think, oh, let's change the way we're structured, when in reality, it's a leadership gap. And, you know, one of those things, unclear expectations. Like, oh, if we move them over here to this group, expectations will be clear. No, you got to do a little bit more work than that. Right. Right. I mean, there's definitely more to that because, you know, I think sometimes we think it's going to be, you know, like in the new structure. But like accountability doesn't just happen because you like, wow, we moved. We moved Tia to be with this group, and it seems like that's a better fit. So now we think she'll be more accountable. There's been zero work done around accountability. Accountability is hard, number one, to do. It's hard to do at work. It's hard to do in our lives to hold someone else accountable. That takes skill to do. It's actually a skill. We don't learn. We don't just... out of the womb knowing how to hold people accountable and so we we have to develop that skill so moving someone over and saying oh they'll be more accountable over here we find that that's not true because they don't have the skills right number one they don't have the skills to hold themselves accountable most of the time they might not even um have clear expectations And then if you have leaders in your organization that's not holding people accountable, typically they're trying to avoid difficult conversations, conversations that are uncomfortable to them, conversations that are hard for them to have. Because most people don't want to say, hey, Jill, we expected this, but we got that. Let's talk about how to close that gap. That feels uncomfortable to people, especially if they don't have the skills to do it. Yeah. You know, it, it almost reminds me of, um, you know, one client that we had worked with and, you know, they were talking about, you know, something that was like hiding under the chart was, you know, they had a leader that had like fantastic engagement scores within their team. But this leader was also supposed to be doing system wide leadership. And outside this team, that person didn't have the most favorable, um, like three sixty feedbacks. Right. And I think those are sometimes what happens when we think about org structures where, you know, we were optimizing locally, but We all work cross-functionally. So if we work well within our own team, that's great, but we have to be able to collaborate really well outside our team as well. Absolutely. And a lot of times it's because we feel like we're not going towards the same goal. We have this goal in food safety and quality, operations has this goal, safety has their goal, maintenance has their goal, and it seems like we're not marching towards the same goal. So we split. Right. And we love the people that have the same goal as us. Right. We're rocking and rolling with them. But how do we handle hard conversations? How do we handle conflict? How do we help hold someone accountable that's not a part of our function? You know, how to even situations where we're really not escalating decision making the way that we should. escalating too quickly. We're escalating all the time. We hear this all the time from our clients. We talked a little bit about senior leaders earlier on like they're down in the weeds, but some of our senior leaders tell us we are down in the weeds because escalation keeps coming to us. How do we stop that, right? How do we stop this escalation so I can do my job around leaders? So it's not because they want to be in the weeds, right? It's because the organization is not structured in a way, not org structured, but really people do not have the skills to be able to handle conflict where they are. So they escalate it all the time. Yes. You know, that goes into this bigger picture. Like sometimes when we reorg, part of it is Usually, if it comes from a CEO, it's, well, we need to be more profitable, so we're going to realign things and allow things to flow better. But even with that, money, if it's leaking in an area, it's still going to be leaking. And that's a great example where we're not able to do our roles. I mean, there's gaps in what we're doing. And that creates these workflows where we're repeating work that somebody else should be doing, potentially. And so we're duplicating, so we're spending money twice when we don't need to. And you can see it when we do org structures for cost savings. Most of the cost savings is in the person that left, right? Or the person they're not hiring or whatever happens to be. Not really in where we need to focus to save money, right? To drive out inefficiencies, to drive out duplicate work. You know, all the things that you said. The focus is not really there. The focus is in really the benefits and salary of having a headcount. When in reality, we should be focused on how do we eliminate work or systems or people in the sense of how I'm working, people behaviors. How do we eliminate those things that's causing the organization to lose money and not just a little bit of money? It's a lot of money that's out there in organizations if they just would invest in their leaders. Yeah, these are like leadership design problems. Yes. That create like duplicate work, slow handoffs. You talked about it, like senior leaders being pulled into decisions that they shouldn't be making. It's constant rework. It's let's have more meetings to talk about the meeting or let's talk about more meeting, you know, have a meeting to resolve something not clear. Like all the meeting, meeting, meeting, meetings, how many people are like, I don't have time to do work. I'm in so many meetings. There is a sign right there. There's a sign. That is a sign. And most of the time when we go into meetings, you know, you, first of all, you can't do your own work outside of the meeting, but real work is not even really happening in those meetings, right? Like we, it's really more of a discussion versus decisions are being made or work is being done within the meeting, whatever it happens to be. We just kind of waste that time and therefore money. And that, does not go away even when you restructure. Yeah. I think that's one of those things when we talk about a reorg won't make culture problems go away. Like once again, that even when we think about it from a cost reduction standpoint or a profitability, it doesn't come from fewer boxes or more lines. It comes from clearer decisions, from ownership, from increasing capability. Yes, yes, yes. So I know we spent the first half of the show really talking about reasons why we do org structures, the issues that we're trying to solve. And we know that those things don't work because we've all been a part of it. But why don't reorgs just feel so much easier than the cultural work? Like you said, cultural work is not visible at all. Yeah, that's the hard work to do. That's the real work that needs to be done. But why does it feel good for leaders to be like, we're going to restructure and this is going to solve our issues? Like, how do we end up down that road? Yeah. I want to go into that. I do want to do the one little caveat, though. Like, you can have an org structure that sucks. Oh, yes. But if you have strong leadership skills, you will be able to navigate that anytime. Mm-hmm. And twice on Sunday, like every day of the weekend, twice on Sunday or whatever that little saying is. I love that. And you can, you know, how many times have we? It'll be super easy all the time, but you can. Leadership skills can help you navigate through all of these spaghetti orgs that don't seem to make sense. Absolutely. And then when the right time is, the org structure should definitely happen. But we've we've worked with people with organizations that they know their org is wonky or maybe they don't see it yet. And we're like, it's a little wonky, but let's work on these leadership, these core leadership skills so that when you make the org structure change, people are ready for it. They're actually ready for it. They welcome it. And it doesn't just feel easier. It is actually easier because it's supporting the culture work that they're doing, that they're already doing. Yeah, but I think like you said, like orgs like to do reorgs more than culture work, because as we said from the beginning, it's visible. People are like, yep, they're doing something. It feels like we've made a decision, right? We made a decision. Oh, we're having these issues. This is our decision. And we can, like we keep going back to that is visible. We can see it. Like that means something to our human brains that we can see that this is happening, that it seems like work is being done. Yeah. And I think the other part is you're like, you know, however much time you put into creating prepping and understanding your org change, then it's announced and you're like, whew, we did it. Done. Yes. And we can measure it, right? Like you accomplished something. Exactly. We can check it off. We can say, yes, all people are in their new roles. We can say, yes, we reduced this headcount to this. We added this headcount. We can measure it. And you know how much this industry love KPIs, even KPIs that don't really drive much of anything. We love them on a scorecard. And this is something that we can put on a scorecard. This is something we can measure and report out on and say, see, look what we've done this year. Look what we've done to correct these issues. Most of the time is the issues that we just called out that's not actually being fixed. But these are the things that we're that we're doing when in reality, it's not fixing your culture because it is not actually cultural work. Right, like the things that are missing in that are you know, as leaders and as humans, like the self, the reflection that got us here. It's sitting in the discomfort that you talked about earlier, where there's going to be times it's not going to be easy. And it's about consistency. Culture is about the day-to-day intention that we're doing versus like, whew, we blew it up and now it's good. That's not what leadership and culture are. It is the moment by moment things that we're doing. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I also want to add another thing where it really takes investment from the organization, right? There's this investment piece, whether it's a lot of times it's going to be money, right? It's going to be time, time to where people have to take to invest in their skills, but also not just gain that knowledge, but to practice those things. So even when you think about, I need to, Tia's working on influence, so I need to give her projects where she can practice that influence. that has to happen from the organization in order to grow these key skills. And so, which takes work, right? It takes work to say, we're going to put this amount of money in the budget to invest in our people every year. Yes. So I think the part that people might be wondering is like, I mean, we've alluded to it, right? Like leadership skills need to shift if we want to have success either in our unoptimized org structure, Or even in a more optimized work structure. But if you're out there, you're probably wondering, what are the things that we should see actually shift to drive some of the real change that we've talked about in whatever structure you're in? Yes. What do you think is the top one, Tia, that people are going to see? Or that need to happen to be able to shift outcomes. Yes, yes. I would say the biggest one is clarity, right? Being clear is kind, right? Isn't that Brene Brown? Clear is kind. And it's not just kind, it actually helps lift weight off of people when you have clarity. So I would say clarity and role and clarity and decision making, which is really that authority to make decisions, needs to be clear. That's what I would say is the number one thing. Yeah, I'd say that's one of the things that we hear most from clients when they're like, I'm just not really sure where, like, who's doing that or who's doing that? Or am I supposed to be doing that? Right, right. And then there's so many meetings and time spent on I'm not even naming that as the problem, but kind of skirting around those issues and talking about it versus just saying, who is the owner here of this? Right. Exactly. And it's interesting, too, when people find themselves in the situation of, well, do I own it or do you own it? The way in practice, what we see is that everyone is kind of sitting in these meetings, right? So is it me? Is it you? Well, we're both there. We both know what's going on, but neither one of us is making decisions because we don't know if it's our decision to make. So I've tied up two of my team members to sit in the same meetings, but no decisions are being made. Yes. And I do want to caveat that. It would be fantastic if all of our leaders were able to be like, you're on that, you're doing that, you're doing that, you're doing that, you're doing that. We all know in the reality that's likely not going to happen, even with the best leaders. Right. And I'm going to say that because within roles, there are so many details. Yes. Not everybody can know those. And so that's why us as individual professionals also need to be in our role and go. you know what, it seems like it would make most sense in this workflow for me to own this part. Right, yes. How do I have a conversation with someone about that? And if we can't resolve it or it doesn't seem clear, then can we bring in our leader or somebody to help us understand how this should flow? Yes. So I do want to put that in there because I think at times people think, well, my leader should tell me every little detail about my job. Mm-mm. No, because everybody says I don't want to be micromanaged. Right. Fantastic. This is where you have agency to step in and say, you know what? My role, I'm going to define it as steps one, two, and three. I'm going to make sure the person who's doing four, five, six, Like we understand this touch point together. Yes. And when, what you're talking about, it makes me think that if you're able to do that, you're pretty clear on how you contribute to the organization and how your role contributes, because you can say, this is mine and this is where I need help. Right. This, and like to get there. Things are working right. Things are going well because you're right. You don't need your leader to tell you if you are clear on your role. There's going to be times. I mean, there's many, many times through the year that you say, oh, that's mine. Or, oh, Joe, I see that you're on this meeting. It should be me. Forward it to me. Yep, absolutely. Or, hey, hey, Joe, I got this meeting. It should be you. Period. Right. Like those things happen all the time. That should be a part of normal operations because there's some people that don't know your nuances between roles. But if you are clear, then you can make those decisions without escalating. Right. We kind of talked about escalating conflict or escalating decisions. You don't have to escalate that decision because you are clear, you know, you should be doing. Yeah. And I think that helps because as leaders, if we're aligned on priorities, It does also, it should give us some clarity on like, okay, if this is, if priority A is what we're working on together, can we navigate through this together? Even if we don't have item by item, task by task clarity. Right. We can do that together because together we've, we understand it's a priority and we can navigate that. Yeah, I would definitely say lead, aligned priorities and making sure that leaders are aligned on priorities and leaders. I'm kind of looking at everyone, right? All of us are leaders in our organization. We should have these aligned priorities. I would definitely say like this is a close second and one that I see that many organizations don't do well. You know, we kind of talked about earlier the laundry list of priorities. Being able to prioritize is like a lost skill or like an underrated skill, really, where it's one of those things that we just take for granted when people know how to do it. But we live without it so much. And that leads to us being stressed and overworked and burned out. And part of it is the way we are structured right now, right? I could be working on my day and all of a sudden, bing, I get a text. Oh, yes. Oh, my gosh. Is that my new priority for the day? Or you get an email or a meeting request. Yes. And so it's also about once again, these personal leadership skills of how do I navigate through those things? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I'm just going to put a small plug for strategic leader. It's one of the cohorts that's starting in March. It's important to as senior leaders, you're aligned on priorities because as those little pings are happening for your team, you have to realign those. Yeah, especially if they're coming outside of your function. Functions have the ability to say, oh, this is a really cool project. We want to do this. We didn't identify it. It might not be on the strategy plan, but this is a big cost savings for us or the efficiency saver, whatever it happens to be. And it comes up and now, boom, your team is involved. Having the right skills to be able to take a look and say, I cannot put my people on it right now, but I can in a couple of months because this is what's going on. Or to say, yes, we need to jump on this. This is how we reprioritize. That is a skill. And as a senior leader, as a strategic leader in your organization, it's important for you to have those skills to do. Those are things that we're building in strategic leader. Yeah. And, you know, I think it leads to one of those questions where I heard somebody a couple of weeks ago that we were working with and they said, does that mean I have to ping that decision up to like my leader? And then they pong it over to that function and then it goes back down and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, what it requires. I mean, I should say maybe, but no, because the other thing is, and I've done this with my teams in the past where I'm like, obviously we want you to be able to work with other teams when they come to you and say, we need help. Awesome. But here's the list that we just agreed on. That is our list of priorities. If it's not on this list and we try to make sure that other we're covering the company. Right. It's not on this list. It's not a no. It's let's come back and see. Does it need to be on this list? Exactly. So you don't have to tell that person like, oh, no, you need to go to your boss and then their boss goes to my boss. Like you don't need to create that complexity in it. That's a misuse of an org chart. Yes. Yes. That's because we're using it in place of having this list of priorities and this understanding. Like my boss will always support me saying yes or no. But if I don't have these core things covered, I definitely have to come back to like realign. But if I got my stuff covered and they're like, can you help me? Go for it. Jump on in. But we can't take on additional work till we have our core done or we decide to shift it together. Right. Exactly. And I think that goes back to our first point around clarity. understanding what you're doing, understanding, you know, what your priorities are, having that true clarity of role allows for your team members to make those decisions quickly to say, oh, yes, I can help you take care of that this week and next week. You know, oh, yes, I can. You know, I have the room to be able to do this is because you're you're super clear on the work that you need to get done. Yes. And I think the example I just gave is an example of where leadership Skills are the important part, but an org structure should not compensate for a lack of leadership skills. Right. Exactly. In that example I gave, we're using the org structure to compensate for this lack of this leadership skill space. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And we see that all the time. Yeah. We see that all the time. So we want to reframe the way that we think about org structures within the industry, right? So that they can actually be a tool for us. There is value in them. There is value in them. Absolutely. We talked about it earlier. Some people have wonky org structures. Sometimes you need to realign resources because you've grown and it now looks differently or you acquired a different type of business. Whatever the reason is, there are very good reasons out there. but they really support you downstream, right? They're not the first thing that you do if you want to shift your culture. And I mean, you guys can guess like what the first thing should be, right? Your first thing is really in order to shift behaviors, you need to focus on your leadership skills. Leadership behavior is number one. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because without that, since leaders define systems, they need leaders that know the right skills and are practicing the right skills, so we build systems that are supportive. And then you ensure that your structure is there to enable your goals, enable your systems, Right. That's when you start saying, oh, this structure doesn't enable us to move quickly, doesn't enable us to give our people the best shot. They have the skills. We have the systems. But the flow is kind of weird. That's when structure comes in. And that's when we start seeing the outcomes we want to see when it comes to culture. Yes, that is a great reframe. Right. Behaviors, leadership behaviors that build systems that work for us. that then the structure supports. That seems like slam dunk for outcomes. Absolutely. Just saying. It is. It is. And there's data out there. I wish I had some more data to show. But people have literally written books on why you shouldn't read. I have some over here somewhere. I just haven't found it yet. But there's been books out around, you know, why focusing on your organization and how it's structured is not going to fix your culture issues, not going to fix your communication issues, your inefficiencies, right? Because that all stems from behaviors. Yeah. And, you know, I'm just going to look at it from a very practical lens. Like when you think about doing a reorg, there's a lot of paperwork and things that need to happen to make that happen. That's all cool. That's needed in the big picture. But if I take on better leadership skills and commit to better behavior, I don't have to wait for a new job description and for a market rating and for all of the technical things to be updated in the systems behind the scenes before I can step into leadership. Yes. I can do that regardless of what my org structure is looking like. And I'm not saying it's going to be easy. No. Yeah. Tia, you and I have both been in spaces where we're like, this architecture could be optimized. But the way we got through those and the way we navigated was by leaning into our leadership skills. And I love the point that you brought up that when you are shifting your own behavior, you don't have to wait for other things. You know, many, many people that. You know, would like to have a better culture. They're waiting, they're waiting on someone else. They're waiting on the organization. They're waiting on, you know, they're just wait, they're waiting. When in reality, we all have agency. Yeah. When we want an ownership culture, we kind of need everyone to step into the agency. Yes. so i think if you are in an org or you're in a spot where you're like gosh you're talking about another reorg just pause for a moment and ask yourself like what leadership behaviors are we hoping the structure will fix what outcomes are we not getting that we think the structure will fix yes those are the things that need to help drive what reorging looks like and perhaps, once again, the support for people to be successful, whether it's in your current structure or in reorg. And I would say, too, just thinking about this, I love the way that you put that, Jill, because I think that you all know we have quality backgrounds. people who are trained in quality are uniquely, I would say, tooled to have this conversation and drive the root cause. To really understand why are we having these issues and drive that to root cause through formal problem solving, it's not going to get to org structure. It's going to get to what behaviors need to shift. We are technically trained. We talk about it at Calus all the time of like technical skills are important. Leadership skills are important. You need both. We are uniquely trained to be able to take our technical skills to really understand what behaviors we need. And then we need to go out and get them. Yeah. Because that's not what we're strong at. Yeah. You know, I think in all of this, the bottom line is like, once again, reorgs don't fix culture, but leadership does. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So this is exactly why we do the work that we do. And while we have our spring cohorts coming up, our technical leadership, our leadership boot camp, sorry, and our strategic cohorts starting the week of March. Helping leaders really close these gaps that we know structure cannot fix. Yeah. Yeah, so I think about like if you're ready to stop trying to rearrange or fit in or you're sick of the chaos or just even that feeling of meh. Like I go to work and you leave and you're like, yep, I like what I do, but meh. This is the time that you can start leading differently. And we would love to work with you to show you how that can be. Yes, yes, and we see the progress happening, we see the progress happening when when our leaders are developing these skills to help. provide clarity to ensure to have priorities and here's what we know, like we know leadership isn't a one person show and culture doesn't grow on its own. It really does take intention. You have to intentionally say, I want to shift my behaviors. I want to shift the behaviors of my team. I want to sign up for Catalyst cohorts. Coming up, right? Coming up. And it really does take a system, right? An intentional system to ensure your leaders are getting the skills they need to shift your culture. Absolutely. Yep. Mm-hmm. Well, thank you for joining us for today's Real Talk. We hope you remember that culture doesn't change until leaders do. And with that, we'll say happy Monday or happy whatever day you're listening to us on our podcast. And we hope you have a great rest of your week. Yep. See you next time. Bye, everyone.
