Latest / The Growth Project / Episode 386: Building Better Organizations with Dr. Alissa Zawacki

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Episode 386: Building Better Organizations with Dr. Alissa Zawacki · The Growth Project

• 0:00
  if you ask a leader or a manager of like, what does he or she know what they're supposed to be doing. Of course they know what they're doing.
• 0:06
  Yeah of course they do. Yeah. Really. Have you asked them. Yeah. And then the sooner you go ask the other person who we're talking about here. It's not clear.
• 0:18
  Welcome to the Growth Project podcast brought to you by AMP. Was fired up for this conversation today. It's always exciting as we are welcoming new team members not just to AMP but also to the growth project. So yeah. Doctor Drew Brandon today joined by Doctor Alissa. So wacky. Yes. Correct. All this, welcome. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
• 0:42
  Yeah. We are so thrilled. And just for our listeners benefit, Alissa just recently joined the team last week. Yes. So we have wasted no time, none to to jump on here to the growth project. But as we've added team members in recent months and years and now introducing them to the growth project, we've always wanted to start with your story.
• 1:04
  Yeah. And helping our listeners better understand who you are. The things that you were into that were kind of formative and foundational for you as a human. And then we'll eventually we'll get into why psychology. Right? Obviously. Yeah. As we're trying to help people, pursue better within and in the realm of psychology, and everyone kind of has a different story, I think, of how you found yourself in there.
• 1:26
  So, yeah. So let's go. Fundamentals basics here. Okay. Tell us about your background. Where'd you grow up? What was it like? What were you into take us through that. Yeah, absolutely. So grew up in Wisconsin, Eau Claire, Wisconsin specifically. And, I'm a huge Packers fan. Go Packers, your horizons. Because we have probably been kind of college football people.
• 1:48
  Yeah, NFL we love the NFL. Yes we do. So grew up in Wisconsin and growing up was pretty active, involved in a lot of different things. You know, sports. Volleyball was my kind of main sport that I played all the way through high school. Different, you know, volunteer activities, things like that. So I loved all of that growing up.
• 2:08
  And then I went to the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater for my undergraduate degree, where I got my bachelor's in psychology with a minor in H.R.
• 2:17
  Okay. So let's stop there. Plenty of majors available. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Why? Psychology. Yeah. So I actually switched within my first few months of being there. I love the human mind. One of my favorite things to do is ask people questions.
• 2:33
  I love learning about people. I love learning the way they think. And so very early on, you know, psychology was kind of just like an easy path for exploring the mind more. So we're turning the tables on today because we're asking you all, yeah, yeah I know. Okay. So you were undergrad very interested in studying and better understanding the mind and all the psychology offers.
• 2:58
  Now, some people who get an undergraduate degree in psych decide, I want to do more of this. I want to pursue graduate education. So Donald, how did you make that decision of I want to keep moving forward more education. Yeah I think a lot of the opportunities with a bachelor's in psychology can definitely expand quite a bit once you go the graduate route.
• 3:19
  And so I think pretty early on when I switched to the psychology undergrad degree, I knew grad school was probably on the table. I didn't quite know which area of psychology I wanted to do when I made that initial decision to do psychology. But I did kind of know in the back of my head, like, okay, I'm probably going to be in school for quite a bit longer.
• 3:40
  Yeah. And realize that if you want to be a PhD level, psychologist, it's going to take a while. Yeah. Is not for the faint of heart. No, not at all. All right, now, let me take a moment here and talk with our for our listeners benefit those people that decide to pursue graduate education. Yeah. In psychology, there are a number of different paths that are out there.
• 4:04
  Yeah. So clinical psychology or counseling psychology is, as I would probably call it, the most traditional path. Yeah, this would be for people that want to get into different types of, could be counseling, therapy, clinical, services that apply to mental health. Yeah. And there are other things you can do as well. But that's the most common path.
• 4:23
  And as you think about, pursuing or seeking out psychological services in a mainstream way. Yep. That's how a lot of those folks are trained. Yeah, absolutely. You know, here to us, traditionally we've been comprised of that type of training as well as sport performance psychology training. Neither of those were your path? No. So you chose I-O?
• 4:43
  Yep. Explain to us what that means and what that world is and how you chose it. Yeah, absolutely. So broadly speaking, when we use the term IO, we're talking about industrial organizational psychology. And essentially we study human behavior in the workplace. So we apply a lot of those basic psychological principles and the science behind all of that and the rigor, and we take it to the workplace to help understand people problems that organizations face.
• 5:11
  So rather than diagnosing an individual, we might diagnose an organization and understand, you know, oh, you're having some issues. Why is that? And really looking into some of the talent strategies that might be impacting that, some of the systems that are in place and kind of seeing what adjustments could we potentially make to make the people here happier to make the organization more productive?
• 5:31
  So it spans into a lot of different areas. When you speak obviously broadly about the organization, and why was that the right path for you? Yeah. So I initially had, you know, considered the clinical route, obviously, as you had said, that's kind of like the baseline place. A lot of people go. And something I learned about myself very early on is that I love to be a problem solver.
• 5:55
  No surprise. Great hire.
• 6:01
  And one of the things, obviously, as you reflect on clinical psychology and counseling psychology in that space, when you're, helping individuals through mental health challenges, they are not things to be fixed, right? They are not problems to be solved. You provide resources, support treatment to them. But they're not problems to be solved. And I realized problem solving was something I really loved doing.
• 6:27
  And when I looked up, I looked at that from an organizational context. I realized I oh, psychology was such a good path for me to leverage that skill.
• 6:36
  it makes a lot of sense. Right. So you were very much intrigued by being able to enter an organization or perform, assess, calibrate, understand what's going on.
• 6:46
  Yeah. And then ideally help them solve the problem. Yes. And move on to the next one. Yep. Absolutely. Was there something about kind of the the finite nature of that and the clarity of that that was appealing to you? Yes, I definitely think so. There's definitely more of a starting and end point, but I would say to be careful with my wording is that it's not a hard stop once we exit.
• 7:09
  Right. One of the important things, I think, in the world of consulting, being someone who does, you know, external IO work is we go in and we help the organization, but then we want to make sure we have systems in place so that when we step away, those good practices can continue to evolve with the organization. Right prior leaders I've worked with have called organizations, you know, they're living, breathing entities, like they are constantly changing and evolving as well.
• 7:33
  So we want the systems and the changes that are put in place to continue to adapt over time as well. So but I think, yes, from my work that I do, there is definitely more of a start and a finish that you see. Talk a little bit about your your PhD program and like why you chose it. Yeah, the highlights from it.
• 7:51
  Yeah, absolutely. So I got my master's in PhD, in psychology from Auburn University where you go, where you change. Yeah. I when I was down there, I mentioned this to you back when we were talking and, work through the interview process back in the spring. Yeah, but when I was there in March with my middle daughter doing admissions tours, I don't know, I lost count maybe 50 times.
• 8:18
  Yes, 24 hours. Yep. I heard people say that. Yep. And again. And so anyways, we're fine with you being oh thank you, thank you. Spreading the SEC love. So initially, you know, when you're applying to PhD programs, it's a pretty, competitive process. And so I had applied to a number of different schools. And when I went down for my interview weekend at Auburn, it was the people that immediately drew me in.
• 8:46
  The folks at the in the I o program at Auburn were incredible. The students, the faculty, they really clearly cared about each other. And I think grad school is obviously not for the faint of heart. And, it really just felt like a group of people who could help me be better, in my education. But then also as an individual, I'd just be a really great support system to, you know, have fun with it, which is a big deal.
• 9:13
  Yeah. Graduate school years. I don't, you know, it's really matter whether you're pursuing a degree in law, you know, medical school, account as a matter like the tough. Yeah. Yes. People that you surround yourself with are hugely impactful and critical for your well-being. Yeah, 100%. All right. No, let me take a little sidebar here for just a moment, because I want to talk about one of the reasons we're so thrilled to welcome you to the team has been historically with the employers.
• 9:42
  We've been working in organizations for a long time. The services we've been providing have been focused on what I would call culture improvement, mental skills development, leadership training, a lot of, work to develop people and teams to the highest level. Yeah. You bring to the table, a set of skills and services that are super complementary to that, I think are going to really deepen the breadth and depth of what we're able to do as a team here to help us.
• 10:10
  For those that are listening, that maybe are less familiar with the types of things that I o psychology deals in, within organizations. Yeah. Can you touch on that a little bit in the sense of like, what are the, the mainstream, wheelhouse services and competencies that I o trained people are doing within organizations. Yeah. So the, the list is long.
• 10:37
  So I won't be able to touch on all of them, obviously, but, few things kind of initially come to mind. So when I look at all of the different talent management processes, we have the ability to go in and provide measurement expertise and provide process expertise in terms of how some of those systems might best run.
• 10:57
  So, for example, the selection system, the hiring process, what does that look like? So some of my prior work has been around the interviewing process and actually creating objective criteria to measure candidates against.
• 11:10
  Okay. So let's just was delve deeper. Yeah. Every organization, every industry all over the world. Yeah. What are the most common things people are getting wrong there?
• 11:24
  I was interviewing thinking that they don't need any structure. Okay. So let's say more about that. Yeah. I think a lot of people are successful in their careers, right? Certain leaders will get to certain positions in the organization because they have certain competencies. They're, you know, successful in several different areas. And they think that that will automatically apply to their ability to accurately hire someone for a role, kind of just based on the feeling and the vibe.
• 11:49
  And that's not true necessarily. The research shows that, that using, you know, a structured interview process is actually highly predictive of high performance in the long run. So I think that's one of the pitfalls people fall into is assuming, because they've been great in their career thus far, that that also applies to interviewing. I haven't been in that precise conversation.
• 12:11
  Yeah. So let's talk about here's an example, and I'll be curious to see what your your thought or your responses on this. I remember a couple of years ago, we were, involved in helping an organization refine what I would call kind of refine some of its hiring practices. Yeah, not overhaul, which is probably where we should have been focused on some things.
• 12:30
  Yeah. And, although we were not providing what you would call a structured interview guide. Yep. We were trying to bring what I would call an added degree of structure, to the interviewing process. And it was met with so much resistance. Yeah. Particularly at the senior leader level. Yep. Where a lot of the senior leaders were saying things like this.
• 12:55
  I've been doing this for 20 years. How are you going to look at me and tell me how I should be interviewing? Yep. That. Yeah, absolutely. How do you respond to comments like that? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty common, right? That's a common response. And I think step number one is education. So helping them understand what the research shows in terms of some of the common biases that individuals might, you know, unbeknownst to them, be dealing with when they're going through the interview process.
• 13:27
  And pointing to also, I think that when we can clearly outline, you know, the specific competencies that someone needs to be successful in their role when we can clearly outline that, then you know, all of your hiring managers have an accurate idea of what they might need for their teams, and they're measuring against, you know, consistent criteria.
• 13:49
  So it creates a lot of consistency and fairness within the hiring process. And those are obviously really important things.
• 13:55
  else. Okay. Let me ask this to the and help us understand it. Like I'm seeing that we're gonna do a whole another episode on this. Yeah. He said an interview, but just at least one more question here.
• 14:08
  How much wiggle room? So think of this way. I'm interviewing someone. Yep. And I have a structure interview guide that's been provided to me. Yeah, I'm following it. Yeah. How much wiggle room is okay for kind of the humanity in me of like, oh, we have a common ground with respect to this thing. Yeah, I want to talk about it with this person.
• 14:28
  Yeah. What's some perspective on how much of that is okay versus how much is too much. Yeah. So there's going to be, you know, the gold star perfect standard, which would be we want to follow a structured process. You should be having the same conversations with each candidate because you're creating consistency in that drives fairness. I understand as well the, the desire to have that level of, you know, human, human connection and, having those conversations.
• 14:56
  So.
• 14:59
  It's, you know, some structure is better than no structure, right? So when we look at it, it's a continuum. We can have that all the way up to the most structured perfect process. And then, you know, a step down from that is going to be semi-structured, which is still going to be better than unstructured. So I think finding the sweet spot for organizations again, from an IO perspective, the gold standard would be structured.
• 15:21
  this to the test in the future when we have our next candidate who's from Wisconsin. Yeah. Yes. You to interview. Yeah. Yes. To see how will you stick to the script.
• 15:29
  Yes. Correct. No. It's true. I'm not allowed to bring up that I'm the Packers then
• 15:34
  unless you talk about the place in the.
• 15:36
  Yeah. All the things you have in common with this other native Wisconsin. We'll see. Yeah, yeah yeah. No, no. All right. So that's good. We went a little bit deeper on the interview piece, which I think is great. Yeah. We got there by you mentioning that in the talent. Yep. Selection space. What are some other common, areas that the IO world really deals in?
• 15:56
  Yeah, absolutely. So selection we deal with performance management. We deal with training and development, which is one of our obviously big areas of overlap. We look at organizational culture. We look at employee health and wellness, you know, stress, burnout. There's so many different topics that IO touches on, which was something that drew me in to the field.
• 16:21
  What about performance management? Say more about that. What does that mean?
• 16:23
  So understanding kind of from an employee perspective, what do I need in order to progress within my career at a specific organization? There are certain processes we, as Io's would help an organization go through to help really outline and create a blueprint for what success looks like at an entry level versus someone more mid-career versus someone who's a first time manager.
• 16:48
  You know what success looks like is going to be different. So by helping organizations kind of create this blueprint for what is, you know, proficient behavior at a particular stage, employees have better understanding and insight into what they need to do to move to the next step. If I'm thinking about that from the organization standpoint, yeah. And if someone approached me and said it could be a small organization of a local small business with ten employees.
• 17:18
  Yeah, a massive organization, multinational company with 100,000 employees. Yeah. Either way, someone asked me, do you have a performance management process or protocol in place? No, I really don't. What are the reasons why I should consider that. Is the ROI of having an explicit and well thought out performance management system. Yeah. What I had just mentioned clarity from an employee perspective.
• 17:47
  Right. When they have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, that creates more clarity on their end, I'm going to do a better job. Yep. As the employee. Yep. It's clear to me and I can hold something in my hand. Read this s what I would call kind of like the success blueprint of the success factors of what.
• 18:04
  Here's what, here's what looks like you. Great job. Yeah I know what's expected of me. Yeah. Which I think is a human right. Because we've seen this. So many times over the years where
• 18:11
  if you ask a leader or a manager of like, what does he or she know what they're supposed to be doing. Of course they know what they're doing.
• 18:17
  Yeah of course they do. Yeah. Really. Have you asked them. Yeah. And then the sooner you go ask the other person who we're talking about here. It's not clear.
• 18:26
  Right. Correct. Okay. So clarity is one. What are some other factors. Yeah. Well I think that other piece about bringing in the manager is another aspect that can be really important in the performance management cycle.
• 18:38
  And system. Right. Is that usually an employee is being rated by their manager. So by creating that clear pathway they can have better conversations about what areas do I need to further develop. Right. What areas do you see that maybe I'm not doing as well as you're expecting me to do or oh, I didn't even know that was an expectation of mine.
• 18:59
  Right. So by putting a good performance management system in place, you're creating room for conversations about growth and development to these are, I think, fascinating concepts. And, you know, I can put the small business center hat on here for just a moment that no one's tapping you on the shoulder in a given day and reminding you to work on things like this.
• 19:23
  Yeah, right. There's there's no added time that someone puts on your calendar to say, hey, you really need to think about the infrastructure and the systems of what you have in place to power your organization. And that's true for small business owners. We, we typically think of in smaller businesses than having even less margin for that.
• 19:43
  It can be true in massive organizations as well. Right. So yeah, you'd like to think is the organizations getting larger, you have more formal dedicated leaders that are then able to think about how we're doing everything. But whether you're small or large these are musts. Yeah. Right. Yep. Thinking about how do you set your people up for success.
• 20:03
  Yeah. It's a lot more than just give them a pat on the back and saying go get on. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. You got to be thinking about the structures that you've created, whether that's performance management. Protocols. Certainly from a hiring interview standpoint, that's kind of where it all begins. Right? Yep. How good is your process to decide who's coming apart.
• 20:21
  Yeah. Yep. All right. So any other thoughts or anything else you'd want to touch on related to where we see the work of AI, of psychologist showing up in the workplace? Not anything specific. I think that there are again, I have psychologists have such a broad background in so many different areas, and I feel like almost any people problem that you're facing within your organization, if you can find an IO psychologist, they'll probably be able to talk through a few options of potential solutions for you.
• 20:53
  Yeah. Okay. Let me put you on the spot with one last oh, no. That's fine. Right. Yeah, yeah. A common saying that I know a lot of organizations think about is how do I create a plan to hear from our people? Yep. How do I find out what everyone's thinking. Yeah. How they're feeling and what might be going on.
• 21:15
  I think most business leaders owners etc. hopefully have a reasonable pulse on that. Yep. But you can also get it wrong. Yeah. So can you talk a little bit about what are some of the options that are out there that are good mechanisms to just sample the voice and the pulse of the people in your team?
• 21:34
  So I mean, the classic version is through an engagement survey, right? That's something that usually goes out annually. It's pretty lengthy usually. And it gathers a lot of data. Yeah. Beneficial. Right. But I would say the best way to understand what your employees are thinking and hearing, or saying is to gather from several sources. So your engagement survey might be one of those sources.
• 21:56
  You could do what's called the pulse check, which is, you know, shorter, quicker surveys, maybe weekly, maybe, you know, monthly, where you're not asking as many questions, but it's more of a in the moment reaction. How are employees feeling? It can be. You could have focus groups. Right. Gather, select number of employees across teams.
• 22:15
  Or if you know, you wanted to sit down with your own team, but gather and have set questions that you want to ask them about, maybe a new culture initiative just went in place and you want to start gathering their feedback and reactions to that. But something else that's really important as well is when we ask employees feedback, it's really, really important to make sure that the employees can see that action steps are being taken to address that, not just, oh, you want to hear my voice, but then what are you doing about it?
• 22:44
  If you are going to listen to the voice, you're better off. Yeah, yeah. I mean truly. Yeah. Yep. When people go through some type of process to gather the information. And then nothing changes. Yep. Don't do that. Yeah. What about collecting it through anonymous channels versus it's not anonymous. Yeah. I don't have like a particular take on this.
• 23:10
  But I, I think that both approaches can be good. I think there's going to be some it's just like an individual preference. Some people are going to prefer to, you know, be able to proudly stand up and voice their opinion, and they want that space to do so. And others are going to feel way more comfortable knowing that their name is not going to be tied to it, especially when you're asking questions that maybe the employees do have pushback on.
• 23:33
  And unfortunately, I think a common fear is that will, if I say something bad, that's going to show up on my performance management review, right? I'm not a team player. I'm not, you know, in support of the organization. And that's not true. We should always kind of be analyzing and thinking about, you know, like how can our organization be better?
• 23:50
  I think that's, you know, a fair question to always have in play. So I think there's a benefit to offering both options. And then one other thing too, that comes to mind as we talk through this, that I didn't touch on from an EO psychology perspective is just the people analytics piece of it. Another huge aspect of our training is in statistics.
• 24:10
  And so getting a lot of that really rich data from all these different sources and really being able to analyze it and look for trends and then take those trends and translate those into strategies. So that's another really important area example of a trend.
• 24:25
  Looking at like your turnover rates. Right. And understanding or starting to ask questions of why are we seeing such high turnover?
• 24:33
  Is it a particular team or department that we're seeing that within? Is it really quickly after employees start. Right. We have 90 high 90 day turnover. Why what's going on in our onboarding process or our hiring process that maybe we're not getting the right people. Maybe we're not being upfront about what the job entails. So there's several different factors we might look at when we start to see some of those trends.
• 24:55
  That's super interesting stuff. Yeah. Again, don't go start mining the data unless you're prepared to do something. Yeah, yeah. Years ago, of course, I will not name any specifics whatsoever, but there was a form of that going on where there have been let's call an uncharacteristic, uncharacteristic turnover within a specific team. And as they as this organization drilled down on that a little bit further, the common denominator became a certain.
• 25:26
  Yeah. And yet once they figured it out, they did nothing. Yeah. Ouch. So the people that were a part of the broader team and region here were well aware of the data that was going on. And they were well aware of the fact that at the end of all the digging, there was complete visibility into the common denominator, then nothing happened.
• 25:50
  You can imagine the erosion of. Yeah, absolutely. And trust within the organization and yeah absolutely those things happen. Yep. Okay. Well there's going to be plenty more to come I think I'm excited for future conversations to get even. I think more into the concrete, how we can help people be better interviewers. Yep. We can help them think about their overall people strategy more comprehensively.
• 26:14
  Yeah, absolutely. It's just I see this a bunch where folks are not thinking about that on the front end. And then they're looking up one day with this realization that they don't really have with who and what they need to be successful. Yeah.
• 26:30
  Well cool. Well I know that we're again really really excited to have you join the team and we're fired up about our ability within and implicitly Davis to take a whole new service offering to help drive change and growth and improve within organizations.
• 26:45
  Yeah. Thanks to be a fantastic partnership of the things that we've already had in place historically to to drive those things, much greater depth of understanding to how we're informing the picture for them, whether it be talent, whether it be systems, people, analytics, all that stuff. So we're excited. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Any final thoughts as you get ready to I mean, you're launching your growth project career today.
• 27:07
  I, I am easier than I thought it would. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, to our listeners, hopefully this has been informative. And now when you hear this, on the the podcast for a future episode, you know exactly who you're hearing. Yeah. From. So, thank you for tuning in. And we're excited and we'll be looking forward to our next conversation.
• 27:29
  Take care.