November 5, 2024 • 41 mins
Ever wondered how to turn your organization into a powerhouse of adaptability and innovation? Discover the secrets as we bring you a captivating conversation with Dennis Stevens, the visionary founder of OrgRite. Dennis takes us through his remarkable journey from technology consulting to pioneering organizational change, sharing his groundbreaking work with IBM and the importance of integrating AI and Agile methodologies. Learn how his expertise in organizational psychology and change management has been a game-changer in leading teams through rapid technological transformations.
Explore the powerful synergy between Agile methodologies and AI, which can revolutionize decision-making and foster a culture of continuous learning. Dennis sheds light on how getting data and insights deeper into the organization enhances adaptability and efficiency. His real-world case study of a successful Agile transformation at a midsize bank serves as a testament to the impact of strong leadership and strategic alignment. Understand how these methodologies, when combined, can empower teams to respond swiftly to market and technology shifts.
Ethical considerations of AI integration are not left untouched. Dennis emphasizes the pivotal role of middle management in ensuring transparency and improved decision-making through AI. Uncover practical tools for understanding team dynamics and the significance of emotional intelligence in leadership. Whether you're a leader aiming to design adaptable organizational systems or an employee looking to build better relationships with management, this episode is packed with insights to help you navigate the complexities of modern organizational life. Tune in for an enriching discussion that promises to equip you with actionable strategies for success.
Hey leader! Thanks for listening. For more leadership communication tips, check out https://www.thecommunicativeleader.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Leah OH (00:00):
Dennis Stevens, executive leader, entrepreneur
and founder of OrgRite, joins ustoday on the Communicative
Leader.
Dennis shares his wealth ofexperience regarding
organizational adaptability andinnovation, especially via agile
transformation and AI.
Let's dive in and have some fun.
(00:22):
Hello and welcome to theCommunicative Leader hosted Dr
Leah.
Omilion-Hodges, My friendscall me Dr OH.
I'm a professor ofcommunication and a leadership
communication expert.
On the Communicative Leader,we're working to make your work
life what you want it to be.
Dennis, thank you for joining metoday on the Communicative
(00:45):
Leader.
I'm really excited to learnmore about what you do and your
perspective and it's so cuttingedge.
And, before we get into that,what led you to be this expert
in organizational adaptability,ai integration and agile
transformation?
Dennis Stevens (01:05):
Yeah, good afternoon, Leah.
It's very good to talk to youas well.
I know I said afternoon, butgood morning.
So I started out withtechnology consulting like 30
years ago.
My first job was designingprobabilistic systems for
marketing platforms for IBM,which even then was like a form
(01:26):
of AI, and we were developingthese large scale innovative
solutions using emergingtechnologies to roll out there.
I went into two or threedifferent companies from there
where I did predictivemaintenance systems for
handhelds, I did remote sensingsystems for precision
agriculture, so sort of alwaysdoing new technologies as
(01:50):
they're emerging and learninghow to deploy them in a way that
was safe.
So there's a lot of riskmarket's uncertain, product's
uncertain, technology'suncertain.
You have to develop in smallerbatches and then validate them
with the customer all the time.
There's also a reallyinteresting part that came out
of my early work was I was alsoended up being responsible for
people actually using thetechnologies that we built.
(02:12):
So the organizational changemanagement piece became really
important.
How do you get people, how doyou understand jobs, design the
jobs with the new technology andget people to start to adapt
them and leverage them?
So I went back to college andgot my degree in organizational
psychology and development andwas really focused on the change
(02:32):
management part of it and itwas useful not just from a
technology standpoint but it wasuseful from leading teams and
leading customers right.
So you learn how people tobuild teams and build
organizations.
In 2005, I started a companycalled Synaptus and that was
doing large scale organizationaldesign and technology design
(02:53):
using business capabilitymodeling to design a customer
alignment, wrapping technologyand organizations.
So they were aligned and I'vegot an HBR article the Next
Revolution in Productivity thattalks a lot about leveraging
that to build adaptable andcomposable organizations.
But again, the implication orthe application of that required
(03:13):
a tremendous amount of effortto get leaders to understand how
to change and adapt.
We can make it technicallypossible.
Dr. Leah OH (03:20):
We can design it and make it possible.
Dennis Stevens (03:23):
But getting people to actually play was
really interesting.
Yeah, those pesky peopleexactly yeah, yeah so so in in
2012, I co-founded a companycalled leading agile, and
leading agile does large-scaleagile transformations and I got
to lead about 150 agiletransformations, actually
figuring out how to get leadersto understand how to participate
in that over the last 12 years,and so the change management
(03:47):
model that I started atSynaptics to start to solve that
problem became a critical partof what we did then at Leading
Agile.
What I found out as we werewrapping up at Leading Agile was
leadership is still a challenge.
Leaders don't know how to leadtheir organizations and how to
participate in change.
Don't know how to lead theirorganizations and how to
(04:08):
participate in change and so Ifounded Orgrite because I think
the coaching consulting ledchange is going to fail as
change becomes faster and fasterand I think we have to teach
our leaders how to designorganizations and lead
organizations that can adapt tochange.
Dr. Leah OH (04:20):
So that's kind of what Orgrite is is targeted at,
you know, empoweringorganizations to change rapidly
(04:45):
know the way, to show the wayand embracing change, and that
uncertainty kind of throws thatold idea to the wind and it's
really a scary place to be, Ithink, for many of those who
have come up under a differentmodel.
Dennis Stevens (04:55):
That's right.
I think that the way that wetreat I talk about the messy
middle in organizations a lot oftimes and the way that we
create that in organizations isby punishing people with
undisciplined change and thenholding them accountable for
delivering organizations a lotof times.
And the way that we create thatin organizations is by
punishing people withundisciplined change and then
holding them accountable fordelivering results in misaligned
, not well-designedorganizations, and then these
(05:16):
middle managers become verydefensive, very resistant change
because they're trying to keeptheir jobs, take care of their
families, you know be successfuland we've put them in really
challenging situations.
Dr. Leah OH (05:27):
Yeah yeah, I love that messy middle.
So apt, unfortunately.
So, dennis, you kind of touchedon this a little bit in your
background, but I'm wondering ifyou can give us your
perspective on whatorganizational adaptability
means today, when technologymarkets I mean just about
(05:47):
everything we can imagine isshifting at such a rapid pace.
Dennis Stevens (05:52):
Yeah, so organizational adaptability is
the ability of a company torespond swiftly and effectively
to changes in the market,technology and customer
preferences.
So can I design my organizationto be able to respond to
changes that are coming?
And I think there's some keyelements that we can observe as
we look at companies, and one ofthem is just the org design
(06:13):
itself.
Is it structured in a way thatdecision-making is clear and
rapid and that the team dynamicsare fluid so we can redirect
the organization?
I think the malleability of thetechnology is incredibly
important and I think thisconcept of informed
decision-making, so one of thechallenges that we have in
(06:34):
organizations is the only peoplethat have all the information
and understand all theconsequences are at the top of
the stack.
Yeah, so meaningful decisionshave to go to the top of the
stack.
One of the things we have tofigure out if we're going to be
adaptable is how to get data andinsights deeper into the
organization, closer to the worksurface, so people can make
decisions that are aligned withthe market, customer needs and
(06:55):
strategic intent and do it in arelatively safe way.
There's a cadence of purposefulinteractions as well, which is
one of the things you know.
At Agile.
We talk about standups andretrospectives and reviews and
all these events.
But those events are meaningfulroutines.
They're on a cadence ofinteractions to radiate
(07:15):
information and express intent.
It doesn't get implemented thatwell in most organizations but
the intent of those interactionsis built in there.
So organizational adaptabilityis just ready to pivot quickly
in response to changes.
So the whole company can changeas changes come up.
Dr. Leah OH (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking of, like the old ship
analogy that we use a lot, and,too, the importance of
data-driven decisions at everylevel and when we implement that
, how the norm of anorganization would completely
change and I would imagine, muchmore empowerment at other
(07:56):
levels, below, you know, oursenior leaders, which would be
really powerful.
Dennis Stevens (08:01):
Yeah, I think what's interesting is many sense
that many leaders are afraid todelegate decisions and give
information down the stack as itwon't be, interpreted correctly
or they don't have all theconsequences that are
responsible for us.
I think what's important to getsenior leaders to understand is
when you can guide and steer inthis new organization, you're
(08:22):
actually more influential andcan create more success for
everybody.
Rather than clinging to it,delegating it increases your
power.
Dr. Leah OH (08:31):
Exactly, I know I know I hear you on that one.
So we're going to keep movingand we're going to look at
adaptability via Agile and AI.
But before we can dive into thedetails there, can you
introduce us to Agile and I knowAI is pretty well known now,
(08:51):
but anything else that we kindof need as a foundation?
So, going forward, we're on thesame page.
Dennis Stevens (08:58):
Sure, agile has a couple of different aspects to
it.
There's a sort of hard aspectto it.
It's teams designed aroundbusiness problems or customer
needs that are able to haveeverything needed to deliver an
increment of value.
Operating in a very disciplinedcadence of developing and
finishing things in smallerbatches, it creates a lot of
ability to respond to change anddrive risk down early.
(09:21):
And there's some soft aspectsto agile which in the industry,
in some regard have overtakenthe systemic aspects of agile.
But like a culture ofcollaboration and continuous
learning, these interactions andrituals, transparency and
safety.
So those are kind of in thespace, but somehow we don't
(09:44):
always get the practical actionsand get our leaders to
understand how they cancarefully form teams and guide,
how they interact, how adaptiveplanning, creating space or
safety for learning, how thethings that the leaders have to
do to make it work.
They're not getting educated on, how it makes them more capable
.
So Agile is small teams able toadapt rapidly and learn.
(10:07):
So AI is interesting too,because a lot of people look at
AI and they think it's chat, gptor they think it's some of this
new generative AI.
But AI has been around for along time.
It's using algorithms andmachine learning to enable
machines to perform tasks thatwould normally be done by a
human being.
So things like data analysisand decision-making predictive
analytics, those are all AI aswell.
(10:29):
When you watch a car drivingdown the road and your car is
avoiding the sides, that's AI,artificial intelligence.
It's not all this generative,and I think what becomes
interesting about AI is how doesit apply to the human continuum
of interaction?
So some things are humans mightreference AI for information.
(10:51):
Some AI might assist withinsights, like your car
suggesting you don't pull intothat lane and hit that car, but
you're actually still in controlYep Right.
Or there's collaborativeinteractions, where AI handles
all the tasks and humans mightoversee it.
We're starting to see that insome of the new self-driving
cars, where the cars aregenerally being driven by AI,
(11:11):
but when an instance comes upthat AI can't resolve, the human
being takes over and drives thecar, and then there's the full
automation where AI operatesindependently.
So there's a whole spectrum ofitems there.
Dr. Leah OH (11:24):
Yeah, and that's really helpful because I think a
lot of people say AI and equalschat, gpt, and they're one and
the same and thank you forexpanding that for us.
Dennis Stevens (11:36):
There's one important thing there.
It's just the difference betweenAI and what some people think
AI is, which is this artificialgeneral intelligence.
Most of the AIs that we'reusing today are trained to do a
specific task from a specificperspective, and they're only
allowed to operate within thatnarrow bound.
So the large language modelslike ChatGPT are just trained
(11:57):
with much bigger data sets, butit's still just predictive.
It's not really learning on itsown, and so this idea of AIs
that are going to take over theworld and control everything,
that's a whole nother wave ofthings that doesn't exist yet.
Agi is what people mightrightfully have some concerns
about, but it's several years inthe future.
Dr. Leah OH (12:17):
Okay, Okay good, so we can sleep well for a little
bit longer.
So, Dennis, you've kind ofhinted at these things and so
now I'm wondering you knowyou've talked about how you've
been working with these, theselearning models, and you've been
on cutting edge technology foryour whole career and then I
love that you went and broughtin the people side with the org
(12:38):
psychology degree.
So I'm wondering if you cantalk to us a little bit about
these kind of experiences thathave led you now to say you know
, I really appreciate this agileapproach and I really
appreciate AI learning in thisway and these two together, when
we marry them, they're reallyhelpful at looking at
(13:01):
adaptability.
Dennis Stevens (13:03):
Yeah, so, when you start to look at the ability
to delegate decisions intoteams, they can operate more
autonomously, but do it in avery purposeful and disciplined
way, so still aligned with thestrategy, still aligned with
intent, the agile practices arereally effective at that.
What we've lacked in someregard is the ability to have a
third brain at the table, haveall the other intent involved in
(13:26):
all the decisions, because it'sbeen very difficult to gather
that information.
I think at Synaptics, we builtsmall teams that were focused
around specific problem domains.
At Leading Agile, we startedmaking those practices be really
, really applied, but the gapwas still the ability for people
to understand the consequencesand the considerations they
(13:49):
should take for all thedecisions being made.
So decisions still stay toohigh in the organization, one of
the things that AI has beenable to give us is the ability
to bring more information downand provide more meaningful
sentiment and performanceinformation up.
So we're bridging a gap that wasvery difficult to bridge in the
past.
Dr. Leah OH (14:11):
Yeah, that makes so much sense, and I was even
thinking too in terms of whatthat does for keeping knowledge
in organizations.
When people at middle managerlevels are feeling empowered and
they're part of thoseconversations, even if it's in a
tangential way, we have themtraining in very real ways for
(14:32):
when there is other attrition orvacancies opening.
Dennis Stevens (14:39):
Yeah, that's actually a really important
aspect.
There's a part of that on theagile side which is one of the
things we do to make technologyvery malleable is we write a lot
of tests around it.
The tests can survive developertransition or a vendor coming
in and building something andleaving.
If the tests are there, then alot of the knowledge about how
things work and the surety thatit's going to continue to work
(15:01):
are built into the technology.
This concept of maybe with AIwe can start to build those
sorts of digital twinunderstanding of our
organization and maintain theinformation.
But also, are things operatingthe way they're supposed to?
Dr. Leah OH (15:18):
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting, very
insightful.
So we've talked about Agilequite a bit and you've talked to
us about some of these coreprinciples.
I'm wondering if you can let usknow how you've seen some
challenges that will pop up whenwe use Agile methodologies and
how organizations can kind ofpivot and adjust to continue,
(15:42):
you know, steering that ship theway in which they want it to go
.
Dennis Stevens (15:46):
Yeah, I think that when I look at the
resistance we often run intosometimes it's from the teams,
but sometimes it's fromleadership support it's just
resistance to change across theboard because people don't
understand how they're going tobe safe in the new model that
(16:09):
agile gets implemented in a lotof places.
First off, it's treating agileas practices or training.
We don't actually change theway that we interact or how
decisions are made or how peopleare empowered, but we're doing
these new things that the booksays to do, but we're not really
an agile company.
The second big failure modethat I see is when we treat
change as an event.
So people come in, theyrestructure, do a course and
leave.
(16:30):
But we haven't changed how werelate to each other, and
understand the problem and I dothink outsourcing change to
experts has huge consequencesbecause our leaders don't know
how to run the new system wejust installed and it will go
back to what they understand ifwe don't do it through the
leaders.
Dr. Leah OH (16:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is really really helpful.
And so now, thinking againabout Agile, I'm wondering if
you can share a successful casestudy with us when you have seen
and certainly you don't have toname names if you don't want to
or aren't comfortable with, butwhen have you seen this really
improve adaptability in anorganization?
Dennis Stevens (17:12):
So we've got a hundred measurable successes of
doing this, but I'm going topull out like a specific example
.
Great, it's a mid, it's amidsize bank in in in the
Midwest and they had acquiredsome other banks.
They were growing prettyrapidly.
They were adding new products totheir product suite and their
(17:33):
IT department was really longtimelines, system outages,
inefficiency in delivering valueto customers, and so they were
trying to grow.
They were positioned from abrand to grow but they couldn't
deliver on the brand promisebecause it was taking too long
and their technology wasstopping them.
What they didn't understand wasthat the way they designed
their organization, funded andled their projects was leading
(17:55):
to that poor technology.
So they invited us in to do anatural transformation.
We restructured the teamsaround the business problems.
We helped align the technologythat was being leveraged to
develop that to align with thoseteams.
We put in a lot of adaptiveplanning and risk mitigation
processes on the top and then weput in some tools for doing
(18:21):
analysis of the performance ofthe team versus their future
expectations.
It was a bit of predictiveanalytics If the team could do
this in a short period of time.
What can they do in the nextperiod of time?
How big is this problem?
What should we actually expectto deliver?
Because one of the problems yourun into is you overload these
teams with 10 times more thingsthey can deliver and then
(18:42):
nothing gets delivered.
So we want to be able to alignthem.
And so we went in there.
What was really cool about thisis we did it.
Super, super strong CIO, superstrong leadership team.
He hired a lot of them as wewere doing the transition.
Everybody reapplied for theirjobs in the new teaming
structure, so it was veryinvolved in it.
They quadrupled the amount ofwork that he could get done in a
(19:06):
period of time.
They actually, in the firstyear, delivered twice as much as
they were forecasted to, andthey're already behind on their
forecast, but they actuallydelivered everything they were
going to four times.
They went further down theroadmap than they ever imagined.
Now they didn't delivereverything on their roadmap
because not everything wasactually going to provide
strategic value to them, so theywere able to pick those most
(19:27):
important things and move theimportant things forward.
And what's really cool aboutthat is, eight or nine years
later, that CIO still has agreat leadership team.
They have a great culture.
They've expanded and grown asnew ideas come in or new
technologies come in.
They're able to absorb them andjust roll with them and they're
the leading bank in thatMidwest region that they're in
(19:47):
and the markets that they're in.
So they've been very successful.
Dr. Leah OH (19:51):
Yeah, that is so incredible.
I love so much of that.
I love the reapplying for a job, because we want people who buy
in right, because if this isnot for you, then it's probably
better if you self-select out,because it's going to be a
different ride than the one youoriginally signed up for.
And I like, too, that youacknowledge some of those
initial strategic goals.
(20:13):
Once they started performing,we recognize that this is not
actually.
This needs to be adapted or wehave already blown this out of
the water.
What's next?
Dennis Stevens (20:24):
That's right.
Dr. Leah OH (20:26):
And the pigs have quadrupled their output.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, my brain just shortcircuits trying to think about
if I could do four times theamount of work that I currently
am.
Dennis Stevens (20:38):
Yeah, when you think about the amount of
defects and errors that arecreated when teams are not
well-formed and the technologyis not well-designed and we
don't know how to delegateintent.
Dr. Leah OH (20:47):
So we make bad decisions.
Dennis Stevens (20:49):
There's so much waste and churn in the
organization.
You just smooth it out.
Almost everybody doublesthroughput Almost everybody gets
significant improvements rightout of the box.
If you do it, if you just leaveeverything in place the way
that it was and don't fix yourtechnology or your interactions
and just call things by newnames, you get the same results
you've always gotten.
Dr. Leah OH (21:10):
Yep, yep, yep, that makes sense, and so my next
question.
So I kind of want to shift moreinto AI and I think you've kind
of already touched on this inthe success example you just
gave us, when you were talkingabout tools for analyses, like
throughout.
But I'm wondering if you know,maybe you expand on that.
But I want to think about howAI works in conjunction with
(21:32):
these agile methods to enhancethat adaptability.
Dennis Stevens (21:37):
So I'm going to give you three different sort of
places where AI is reallysignificant yeah.
The first place is we areseeing really significant
improvements in quality andthroughput for developers that
are using ai effectively to helpthem develop their code.
Now effectively actually meansit requires more thinking about
(21:59):
architecture and systemsengineering and writing test
cases but, once you do the hardthinking and designing of the
software.
Ai is really good at writing thecode, typing the code to
fulfill those things.
When, when it's used poorly,people are asking to do the
design, not creating theconstraints, not architecting
well, you end up with a mess.
So you have to use the codewell, but when used well,
(22:19):
tremendous improvement, right?
The second one that I think isreally interesting, and it goes
to this place around how do weget middle management to have
the information they need to doa better job of delegating and
empowering teams, as I did?
Strategic empowerment and AIcan go, look at so much
information and find patternsand bring it back.
I can use the abilities thatwe're seeing in some of the new
(22:43):
AI tools to provide much betterinteraction models for middle
managers.
So enabling and elevating theburden on middle managers is
really important.
The transparency that can comefrom that actually can bump into
this conflict between defensivebehaviors and trust.
So things are messed up.
(23:04):
I can't tell people things aremessed up because I'll get in
trouble, but if I can keep itcovered up and hide it long
enough, maybe somebody else willmess up before I get caught.
So there's a lot.
There's some risk in creatingtransparency in the data, but
getting it out there is reallyreally useful because, then we
can make better decisions.
Very few executives actuallywant their organizations to be
(23:26):
completely out of control, right, and they don't understand how
awful it is.
And then just the concept ofprioritizing and delegating
tasks and improvingdecision-making by having the
right.
How am I performing?
What is my capacity?
Like all that's veryinteresting.
We do a lot to really helpmiddle managers and I think
there's an interesting aspect ofa tool that I had started
(23:50):
building before was readingproject communications and
trying to sense the sentiment onthe project.
If I had 10 or 15 projectsgoing on, I couldn't tell which
one was in trouble, and statusreports were all there to
obfuscate any risk or problem tokeep me out of business, and so
there was no real value.
Dr. Leah OH (24:08):
We're doing great boss risk or problem to keep me
out of people's business, and sothere was.
There was no real value.
We're doing great boss.
Dennis Stevens (24:12):
Yeah, but what if?
What if I?
What if I could read the Slackmessages and the emails and the
communications and analyze thedata and have AI do some of that
pattern matching?
I think there's some really,really powerful use of tools to
help us decide what to payattention to.
Then the secret is we have toget our executives to then go.
The problem is not theindividuals.
The problem is the design ofthe system I put in place.
(24:34):
What do I fix to improve thesituation?
But they actually are solvingthe real problem because they
have insight into it.
There's a balance there to getpast that defensiveness and
trust to create that.
Dr. Leah OH (24:46):
Transparency?
Yes, exactly, and, like yousaid, then, helping like that,
prioritizing and putting inthose systems to continue to
grow.
Middle managers that we cutdown on yeah, that's phenomenal.
I'm working on a paper rightnow called Stuck in the Middle
and it's all about middlemanagers and they, you know,
(25:07):
they have some extra autonomy,but not very much, and they
they're encouraged to betransparent, but they can't
share too much.
So it's just that that is atricky position to be in in
organizations.
So I love when people like youare doing really cool things to
help reward them and continue totrain them and empower them.
Dennis Stevens (25:29):
Yeah, they should be the leverage point
that we're using to grow ourorganization and instead they're
the messy middle, they're thefrozen middle.
They're the problem, butthey're the problem because we
put them in an impossible job.
Dr. Leah OH (25:42):
Yes, yep Agreed, so this is a nice segue to ethical
consideration.
So what are some things thatorganizations, that their senior
leaders, some questions thatpeople should be asking and
thinking about when they'reintegrating AI into operations,
especially when we're thinkingabout team dynamics and decision
(26:02):
making?
Dennis Stevens (26:04):
Right.
So there's a whole big topicaround bias and fairness in the
data.
Like I talked about earlier,all these AIs you're using today
, they've all been trained bysomebody and they've all been
trained with data and aperspective that absolutely
brings bias and this is now biasitself is not bad, because if
it keeps you from making a badchoice, that's, that's good,
(26:25):
like it keeps you from drivinginto the car next to you.
Dr. Leah OH (26:27):
That's a bias, it's interpreting.
Dennis Stevens (26:29):
It's interpreting that data that
that's not desirable over thisother condition, but there's the
balance of sort of fairness init and how it impacts the brand
of the company becomes veryinteresting.
So you really have to stop andthink about the decisions and
the interactions you're havingAI do and analyze it, to think
about ways that it couldpossibly be going wrong and have
(26:51):
governance in place to beauditing and paying attention to
mitigate those biases.
You can't just go buy it off theshelf, throw it into your
customer center and have peoplestart using it.
You have to really havedisciplined governance in place,
paying attention to it.
There's a bunch of stuff aroundprivacy and data security which
is also really critical forexecutives to be thinking about.
(27:14):
If you don't have your dataunder control, if you don't have
the right PII rules andcustomer rules, if you don't
have the right containers aroundaccess to data, ai can
introduce some real risk and so,ethically, can introduce some
real risk.
And so, ethically, you're notsupposed to be paying 4,000
(27:38):
people's mortgages by accidentbecause you accessed data
through a virtual.
It's a real story, right.
You're not supposed to besaying horrible things or
letting people's social securitynumbers out in the wild, right,
or filing up.
Yeah, all those things happen,and I think, generally, our data
is so fragile in the worldtoday that this is a chance for
(28:02):
us to really investigate and tiedown the data that we want to
use and then actually, using AI,give responsible access to
those tools, to that data, tothat information, rather than
giving give responsible accessto those tools, to that data and
that information, rather thangiving people just raw access to
it.
So I think there's a balancingthere, but you have to really
understand it.
Then the other one that I thinkis really interesting and I
don't have a good answer on isthe impact on employment.
(28:23):
Ai is going to replace some jobs.
Ai does that mean it's going todisplace some workers?
Probably, is it eachindividual's company ethical
responsibility to create newjobs that get displaced, or is
it their responsibility to haveprograms to develop people so
they can find new jobs?
Or is it government'sresponsibility?
(28:45):
Or is it each individual'spersonal responsibility?
That's a a really interesting,rich sort of category to go into
yeah um is the employment one.
I personally think um in themarket today, you should be
understanding how to makeyourself ai ready, because I
don't know if you can count onyour company or the government
yep to make decisions in yourbest interest.
(29:07):
But it reminds me of when, whenuh farming uh became automated
and we went from having allthese people on farms to people
moving to the cities and takingmanufacturing jobs and getting
new education.
They started requiring you goto high school until the 10th
grade, so everybody had to havelike a an employable level of
skills.
They'll move into the newmarket and there was a
(29:28):
disruption for a moment, but weactually landed in a pretty good
place overall.
The quality of life went up,the economy went up, people's
lives were generally better, butI think that's a really, really
great area that that doesn'tget enough attention, but it's
not a reason.
It's not a reason to stop it.
Um, because because here's theother thing if we don't do it
(29:49):
here in the us, there are othercountries that are probably
going to do it and we'll take aless ethical approach to it and
we'll actually hinder us.
So it's complicated,complicated space.
Dr. Leah OH (29:59):
Yeah, yeah, yep, and one that I think changes
every day.
It is so many different, likeyou said, so many different
perspectives and levels, andimagine one we're going to be
talking about for a long time,which is probably good, like you
said, if we're thinking, then,bringing in governance in a way
as well, that's right.
So, dennis, this question'sreally for me.
(30:22):
As a leadership scholar, I amreally interested in the work
that you do and I'm wondering,across all of these different
organizations that you've workedwith, all of these leaders,
what are the traits that you'reseeing that are being really
crucial to foster that cultureof adaptability and innovation
in, you know, the ever-changingorganization of today?
Dennis Stevens (30:46):
Yeah, leadership becomes less and less, at a
certain level, about being thebest person in that particular
job.
Jobs are more complicated,require a lot more interaction.
Jobs are changing frequently,so you can't stay ahead.
So I have a list of things thatI try to build curriculum
around and teach to leaders.
The first one is just thisconcept of systems thinking.
(31:07):
So looking at the probleminstead of looking at it as a
small local problem, what aresome tools and techniques for
looking at it as a bigger, moreholistic problem and what are
some frameworks for that?
I think that there was stuff,you know, when I was young Peter
Senge was out, Arjur was outthere.
There were all these peoplehaving deeply thoughtful
(31:27):
discussions aroundorganizational design as a
system, and I don't think we seeit as frequently in leadership.
Today it becomes about P&L andplans and accountability, and so
I think there's a challengethere and I wonder why.
That's not critical, but thepeople that I see that are
naturally systems thinkers, orthat you can get them to start
(31:48):
to think differently become muchmore effective leaders, and I
think it becomes a moreimportant skill as we move
forward.
I think strategic thinking,which is different than systems
thinking, strategic thinking isgiven limited capacity, limited
dollars and a strategic intent.
What tradeoff decision am Igoing to make?
I think that leaders that can'tmake strategic decisions end up
(32:12):
working on everything at thesame time and delivering nothing
, end up telling everybody it'sall going to be fine.
But, is it really fine, right?
I think that ability tothoughtfully consider.
You know that decision you madeto give that person a $5,000
bonus for finishing that job wasnot a $5,000 decision, it was a
$100,000 decision because youhave 20 other people that will
(32:32):
do the same thing in the nextyear.
We have to get people to thinkstrategically.
The other people that will dothe same thing in the next year.
We have to get people to thinkstrategically.
I think EQ and EQI becomesreally, really important.
It's interesting to me, the onething that people can uniquely
do that computers can't do aswell as people is be human and
so getting really good at beinghuman.
(32:53):
How do I feel about this?
How do they feel about it?
How can I respond to that?
How can I help them respond toit?
These ideas around EQ arecritically important, and then I
think there's some thingsaround imagining the future
instead of nailing things down.
So some tools and time in theday to imagine what might be
possible.
(33:14):
So sort of the concept ofvisionary thinking to imagine
what might be possible, so sortof the concept of visionary
thinking.
And the last one I'm going toput in there is just team
dynamics and social dynamics inorganizations.
I don't think enough emphasisgoes into managing team dynamics
and how important it is.
If I design the team right, getthe right expectations on that
(33:38):
team, develop the rightcompetencies within them and
then start to delegate withintent, I get those teams to do
dramatically better contributionthan they're probably doing
today and they're probablyhappier in their jobs and it's
more fun to lead a team that'sset up right than is one you're
fighting with every day.
So just that how you create theconditions for healthy teams is
(34:00):
really really important, and Ithink all these skills can be
taught right.
Dr. Leah OH (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, I completely agree with
you and I'm just thinking aboutwhat a powerful force that would
be if someone can bring this inand thinking you know that
systems thinking but integrateit with the strategic and the EQ
and the visionary and teamdynamics.
I mean I would put my CV in thering for that organization any
(34:27):
day.
To work with someone who'sdoing that.
Yeah, that's really incredible.
I was thinking of some researchI did with team dynamics and
essentially what we walked awaywas the relationship you have
with.
You know, in quote marks,because we need to recognize
that people are really savvydiscerners of these interactions
(35:03):
and they make differentassumptions and the more that we
can connect with individualemployees, but also as the team,
the better we're going to be.
Dennis Stevens (35:14):
There's a, there's a tool that I teach
leaders called inference hacking, and and it requires you to
thoughtfully have empathy forthe other people in the room.
But in empathy, in empathyhacking, I take, I take Arjus's
or Shon's ladder of inferenceand I go here's the option I'm
seeing, here's the beliefs, andI walk down to why would they,
why would that make sense tothem, like, why would that, why
(35:37):
would that behavior be what theythink is right?
And if you can't understandthat, you can't lead them.
So I want to walk down theladder of inference, I want to
find it with them.
Then I want to explore how toreframe the problem for them or
me, or both of us.
So, we can reach a betterconclusion.
That's a very practical appliedmental model that you can use
(35:59):
to go have those conversations.
Dr. Leah OH (36:01):
Yeah, and think about enhancing your EQ and that
strategic thinking.
Then, when we're able to thinklike others, the system works
better.
Yeah, I love how you tie thoseall together in such a beautiful
way.
So my two final questions foryou, dennis.
These kind of are intertwined.
So the way we end all of ourepisodes of the Communicative
(36:22):
Leader is with advice.
First for our formal leadersout there managers, directors,
ceos you know those folks, youknow who are truly tasked with
that decision making, theaccountability of it.
So it can be advice, it can bea tip, it can be a challenge.
And then the second part isthat you know those tips are
(36:44):
challenges for employees of allranks across industries.
So what do you have for them?
Dennis Stevens (36:50):
So for the title leaders, I'm going to say it's
crucial to understand thatorganizational systems produce
precisely what they are designedto produce, and your job as a
leader is to design that system.
If you're not getting out ofthe organization what you want
out of the organization, youneed to understand why you're
(37:10):
creating the conditions for thatto be how people are operating.
There's, again, hard aspects toit and there's soft aspects to
it, and there's ways to thinkabout it.
That ladder of inference is asoft tool that you can use to
evaluate that, but you aregetting the result that you and
your leadership team havecreated because of the system
that you've produced, the onethat I think is really
(37:33):
interesting, and so your job isto create an environment where
people are aligned, theyunderstand their role and people
feel safe to act decisively.
So you have to be able to trustthem.
That means you have tounderstand what it would mean to
have a trustworthy team and howyou can establish that, and
those go into those other topics.
For general employees, I thinkthere's two parts to this.
(37:54):
I had two different answers.
I kind of went back and forthon Generally employees.
I think there's two parts tothis and I had two different
answers.
I kind of went back and forthon.
But your leaders don't trustyou and treat you micromanage.
You hold you in space that youdon't want to be in because you
don't operate in a trustworthyfashion.
(38:19):
What would it look like tobecome able to build a trusted
relationship with yourleadership, to understand their
needs and what they're trying toaccomplish and how you can help
them be successful?
You can help your organizationbe successful and elevate your
leader.
I don't think we sit and thinkabout that very often when we're
just trying to get through ourday.
So employees want to be trusted.
They have to figure out how tobe trustworthy.
The other one I was going to gowas a little less dramatic than
that.
It was just.
(38:39):
If you're an employee of anyorganization able you are to do
basic AI things, the more likelyyou are going to be still
(39:02):
employed in six months or ninemonths.
But there's some mobility youhave to be looking for.
So start to envision that andfigure out how to get that
training and how you want toparticipate in the next phase of
these companies as they change.
Dr. Leah OH (39:18):
Yeah, oh, that's really, really helpful, dennis.
And with that, do you have, arethere places you kind of refer
people to if they're saying, hey, I want to think about that.
Is there you know sometrustworthy, even if it's just
dipping a toe sites or resourcesthat would be helpful?
Dennis Stevens (39:37):
Yeah, what I can probably do, of course I would
say go to go to org rightcom.
Yes, you know, and these arethe things that I'm talking
about there, because it's not aswell developed, but there's
some content out there.
There's a.
There's an organization calledthe agile network that I can
also point you to.
If to somebody's interested,reach out to me and I'll send
(39:59):
you a code for that.
But the agile network is adeveloping network of experts.
There's they pick 50 expertsfrom worldwide to help develop
the next evolution of agile onthe agile network I'm one.
I'm one of those experts andwe're talking about these and
you can go subscribe andparticipate in that community.
(40:19):
It's very interesting.
Dr. Leah OH (40:21):
Very cool, oh, I imagine, I imagine that is a
huge responsibility, but also,for someone with your training
and experience, a whole lot offun to be a part of that shaping
that conversation.
Yeah, it's nice to domeaningful work, right?
Yeah, exactly's nice to domeaningful work right, yeah,
exactly, excellent.
Well, dennis, I have had such ablast with you today.
(40:42):
I've learned a lot.
I know this conversation isgoing to be really helpful for
our listeners, so thank youagain for sharing your expertise
with us.
Dennis Stevens (40:50):
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to come on
and share my thoughts.
This was this was veryenjoyable to come on and share
my thoughts.
This was very enjoyable.
All right, my friends.
That wraps up our conversationtoday.
Until next time, communicatewith intention and lead with
purpose.
I'm looking forward to chattingwith you again soon on the
Communicative Leader.
Dennis Stevens, executive leader, entrepreneur
and founder of OrgRite, joins ustoday on the Communicative
Leader.
Dennis shares his wealth ofexperience regarding
organizational adaptability andinnovation, especially via agile
transformation and AI.
Let's dive in and have some fun.
(00:22):
Hello and welcome to theCommunicative Leader hosted Dr
Leah.
Omilion-Hodges, My friendscall me Dr OH.
I'm a professor ofcommunication and a leadership
communication expert.
On the Communicative Leader,we're working to make your work
life what you want it to be.
Dennis, thank you for joining metoday on the Communicative
(00:45):
Leader.
I'm really excited to learnmore about what you do and your
perspective and it's so cuttingedge.
And, before we get into that,what led you to be this expert
in organizational adaptability,ai integration and agile
transformation?
Dennis Stevens (01:05):
Yeah, good afternoon, Leah.
It's very good to talk to youas well.
I know I said afternoon, butgood morning.
So I started out withtechnology consulting like 30
years ago.
My first job was designingprobabilistic systems for
marketing platforms for IBM,which even then was like a form
(01:26):
of AI, and we were developingthese large scale innovative
solutions using emergingtechnologies to roll out there.
I went into two or threedifferent companies from there
where I did predictivemaintenance systems for
handhelds, I did remote sensingsystems for precision
agriculture, so sort of alwaysdoing new technologies as
(01:50):
they're emerging and learninghow to deploy them in a way that
was safe.
So there's a lot of riskmarket's uncertain, product's
uncertain, technology'suncertain.
You have to develop in smallerbatches and then validate them
with the customer all the time.
There's also a reallyinteresting part that came out
of my early work was I was alsoended up being responsible for
people actually using thetechnologies that we built.
(02:12):
So the organizational changemanagement piece became really
important.
How do you get people, how doyou understand jobs, design the
jobs with the new technology andget people to start to adapt
them and leverage them?
So I went back to college andgot my degree in organizational
psychology and development andwas really focused on the change
(02:32):
management part of it and itwas useful not just from a
technology standpoint but it wasuseful from leading teams and
leading customers right.
So you learn how people tobuild teams and build
organizations.
In 2005, I started a companycalled Synaptus and that was
doing large scale organizationaldesign and technology design
(02:53):
using business capabilitymodeling to design a customer
alignment, wrapping technologyand organizations.
So they were aligned and I'vegot an HBR article the Next
Revolution in Productivity thattalks a lot about leveraging
that to build adaptable andcomposable organizations.
But again, the implication orthe application of that required
(03:13):
a tremendous amount of effortto get leaders to understand how
to change and adapt.
We can make it technicallypossible.
Dr. Leah OH (03:20):
We can design it and make it possible.
Dennis Stevens (03:23):
But getting people to actually play was
really interesting.
Yeah, those pesky peopleexactly yeah, yeah so so in in
2012, I co-founded a companycalled leading agile, and
leading agile does large-scaleagile transformations and I got
to lead about 150 agiletransformations, actually
figuring out how to get leadersto understand how to participate
in that over the last 12 years,and so the change management
(03:47):
model that I started atSynaptics to start to solve that
problem became a critical partof what we did then at Leading
Agile.
What I found out as we werewrapping up at Leading Agile was
leadership is still a challenge.
Leaders don't know how to leadtheir organizations and how to
participate in change.
Don't know how to lead theirorganizations and how to
(04:08):
participate in change and so Ifounded Orgrite because I think
the coaching consulting ledchange is going to fail as
change becomes faster and fasterand I think we have to teach
our leaders how to designorganizations and lead
organizations that can adapt tochange.
Dr. Leah OH (04:20):
So that's kind of what Orgrite is is targeted at,
you know, empoweringorganizations to change rapidly
(04:45):
know the way, to show the wayand embracing change, and that
uncertainty kind of throws thatold idea to the wind and it's
really a scary place to be, Ithink, for many of those who
have come up under a differentmodel.
Dennis Stevens (04:55):
That's right.
I think that the way that wetreat I talk about the messy
middle in organizations a lot oftimes and the way that we
create that in organizations isby punishing people with
undisciplined change and thenholding them accountable for
delivering organizations a lotof times.
And the way that we create thatin organizations is by
punishing people withundisciplined change and then
holding them accountable fordelivering results in misaligned
, not well-designedorganizations, and then these
(05:16):
middle managers become verydefensive, very resistant change
because they're trying to keeptheir jobs, take care of their
families, you know be successfuland we've put them in really
challenging situations.
Dr. Leah OH (05:27):
Yeah yeah, I love that messy middle.
So apt, unfortunately.
So, dennis, you kind of touchedon this a little bit in your
background, but I'm wondering ifyou can give us your
perspective on whatorganizational adaptability
means today, when technologymarkets I mean just about
(05:47):
everything we can imagine isshifting at such a rapid pace.
Dennis Stevens (05:52):
Yeah, so organizational adaptability is
the ability of a company torespond swiftly and effectively
to changes in the market,technology and customer
preferences.
So can I design my organizationto be able to respond to
changes that are coming?
And I think there's some keyelements that we can observe as
we look at companies, and one ofthem is just the org design
(06:13):
itself.
Is it structured in a way thatdecision-making is clear and
rapid and that the team dynamicsare fluid so we can redirect
the organization?
I think the malleability of thetechnology is incredibly
important and I think thisconcept of informed
decision-making, so one of thechallenges that we have in
(06:34):
organizations is the only peoplethat have all the information
and understand all theconsequences are at the top of
the stack.
Yeah, so meaningful decisionshave to go to the top of the
stack.
One of the things we have tofigure out if we're going to be
adaptable is how to get data andinsights deeper into the
organization, closer to the worksurface, so people can make
decisions that are aligned withthe market, customer needs and
(06:55):
strategic intent and do it in arelatively safe way.
There's a cadence of purposefulinteractions as well, which is
one of the things you know.
At Agile.
We talk about standups andretrospectives and reviews and
all these events.
But those events are meaningfulroutines.
They're on a cadence ofinteractions to radiate
(07:15):
information and express intent.
It doesn't get implemented thatwell in most organizations but
the intent of those interactionsis built in there.
So organizational adaptabilityis just ready to pivot quickly
in response to changes.
So the whole company can changeas changes come up.
Dr. Leah OH (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, I was thinking of, like the old ship
analogy that we use a lot, and,too, the importance of
data-driven decisions at everylevel and when we implement that
, how the norm of anorganization would completely
change and I would imagine, muchmore empowerment at other
(07:56):
levels, below, you know, oursenior leaders, which would be
really powerful.
Dennis Stevens (08:01):
Yeah, I think what's interesting is many sense
that many leaders are afraid todelegate decisions and give
information down the stack as itwon't be, interpreted correctly
or they don't have all theconsequences that are
responsible for us.
I think what's important to getsenior leaders to understand is
when you can guide and steer inthis new organization, you're
(08:22):
actually more influential andcan create more success for
everybody.
Rather than clinging to it,delegating it increases your
power.
Dr. Leah OH (08:31):
Exactly, I know I know I hear you on that one.
So we're going to keep movingand we're going to look at
adaptability via Agile and AI.
But before we can dive into thedetails there, can you
introduce us to Agile and I knowAI is pretty well known now,
(08:51):
but anything else that we kindof need as a foundation?
So, going forward, we're on thesame page.
Dennis Stevens (08:58):
Sure, agile has a couple of different aspects to
it.
There's a sort of hard aspectto it.
It's teams designed aroundbusiness problems or customer
needs that are able to haveeverything needed to deliver an
increment of value.
Operating in a very disciplinedcadence of developing and
finishing things in smallerbatches, it creates a lot of
ability to respond to change anddrive risk down early.
(09:21):
And there's some soft aspectsto agile which in the industry,
in some regard have overtakenthe systemic aspects of agile.
But like a culture ofcollaboration and continuous
learning, these interactions andrituals, transparency and
safety.
So those are kind of in thespace, but somehow we don't
(09:44):
always get the practical actionsand get our leaders to
understand how they cancarefully form teams and guide,
how they interact, how adaptiveplanning, creating space or
safety for learning, how thethings that the leaders have to
do to make it work.
They're not getting educated on, how it makes them more capable
.
So Agile is small teams able toadapt rapidly and learn.
(10:07):
So AI is interesting too,because a lot of people look at
AI and they think it's chat, gptor they think it's some of this
new generative AI.
But AI has been around for along time.
It's using algorithms andmachine learning to enable
machines to perform tasks thatwould normally be done by a
human being.
So things like data analysisand decision-making predictive
analytics, those are all AI aswell.
(10:29):
When you watch a car drivingdown the road and your car is
avoiding the sides, that's AI,artificial intelligence.
It's not all this generative,and I think what becomes
interesting about AI is how doesit apply to the human continuum
of interaction?
So some things are humans mightreference AI for information.
(10:51):
Some AI might assist withinsights, like your car
suggesting you don't pull intothat lane and hit that car, but
you're actually still in controlYep Right.
Or there's collaborativeinteractions, where AI handles
all the tasks and humans mightoversee it.
We're starting to see that insome of the new self-driving
cars, where the cars aregenerally being driven by AI,
(11:11):
but when an instance comes upthat AI can't resolve, the human
being takes over and drives thecar, and then there's the full
automation where AI operatesindependently.
So there's a whole spectrum ofitems there.
Dr. Leah OH (11:24):
Yeah, and that's really helpful because I think a
lot of people say AI and equalschat, gpt, and they're one and
the same and thank you forexpanding that for us.
Dennis Stevens (11:36):
There's one important thing there.
It's just the difference betweenAI and what some people think
AI is, which is this artificialgeneral intelligence.
Most of the AIs that we'reusing today are trained to do a
specific task from a specificperspective, and they're only
allowed to operate within thatnarrow bound.
So the large language modelslike ChatGPT are just trained
(11:57):
with much bigger data sets, butit's still just predictive.
It's not really learning on itsown, and so this idea of AIs
that are going to take over theworld and control everything,
that's a whole nother wave ofthings that doesn't exist yet.
Agi is what people mightrightfully have some concerns
about, but it's several years inthe future.
Dr. Leah OH (12:17):
Okay, Okay good, so we can sleep well for a little
bit longer.
So, Dennis, you've kind ofhinted at these things and so
now I'm wondering you knowyou've talked about how you've
been working with these, theselearning models, and you've been
on cutting edge technology foryour whole career and then I
love that you went and broughtin the people side with the org
(12:38):
psychology degree.
So I'm wondering if you cantalk to us a little bit about
these kind of experiences thathave led you now to say you know
, I really appreciate this agileapproach and I really
appreciate AI learning in thisway and these two together, when
we marry them, they're reallyhelpful at looking at
(13:01):
adaptability.
Dennis Stevens (13:03):
Yeah, so, when you start to look at the ability
to delegate decisions intoteams, they can operate more
autonomously, but do it in avery purposeful and disciplined
way, so still aligned with thestrategy, still aligned with
intent, the agile practices arereally effective at that.
What we've lacked in someregard is the ability to have a
third brain at the table, haveall the other intent involved in
(13:26):
all the decisions, because it'sbeen very difficult to gather
that information.
I think at Synaptics, we builtsmall teams that were focused
around specific problem domains.
At Leading Agile, we startedmaking those practices be really
, really applied, but the gapwas still the ability for people
to understand the consequencesand the considerations they
(13:49):
should take for all thedecisions being made.
So decisions still stay toohigh in the organization, one of
the things that AI has beenable to give us is the ability
to bring more information downand provide more meaningful
sentiment and performanceinformation up.
So we're bridging a gap that wasvery difficult to bridge in the
past.
Dr. Leah OH (14:11):
Yeah, that makes so much sense, and I was even
thinking too in terms of whatthat does for keeping knowledge
in organizations.
When people at middle managerlevels are feeling empowered and
they're part of thoseconversations, even if it's in a
tangential way, we have themtraining in very real ways for
(14:32):
when there is other attrition orvacancies opening.
Dennis Stevens (14:39):
Yeah, that's actually a really important
aspect.
There's a part of that on theagile side which is one of the
things we do to make technologyvery malleable is we write a lot
of tests around it.
The tests can survive developertransition or a vendor coming
in and building something andleaving.
If the tests are there, then alot of the knowledge about how
things work and the surety thatit's going to continue to work
(15:01):
are built into the technology.
This concept of maybe with AIwe can start to build those
sorts of digital twinunderstanding of our
organization and maintain theinformation.
But also, are things operatingthe way they're supposed to?
Dr. Leah OH (15:18):
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting, very
insightful.
So we've talked about Agilequite a bit and you've talked to
us about some of these coreprinciples.
I'm wondering if you can let usknow how you've seen some
challenges that will pop up whenwe use Agile methodologies and
how organizations can kind ofpivot and adjust to continue,
(15:42):
you know, steering that ship theway in which they want it to go
.
Dennis Stevens (15:46):
Yeah, I think that when I look at the
resistance we often run intosometimes it's from the teams,
but sometimes it's fromleadership support it's just
resistance to change across theboard because people don't
understand how they're going tobe safe in the new model that
(16:09):
agile gets implemented in a lotof places.
First off, it's treating agileas practices or training.
We don't actually change theway that we interact or how
decisions are made or how peopleare empowered, but we're doing
these new things that the booksays to do, but we're not really
an agile company.
The second big failure modethat I see is when we treat
change as an event.
So people come in, theyrestructure, do a course and
leave.
(16:30):
But we haven't changed how werelate to each other, and
understand the problem and I dothink outsourcing change to
experts has huge consequencesbecause our leaders don't know
how to run the new system wejust installed and it will go
back to what they understand ifwe don't do it through the
leaders.
Dr. Leah OH (16:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That is really really helpful.
And so now, thinking againabout Agile, I'm wondering if
you can share a successful casestudy with us when you have seen
and certainly you don't have toname names if you don't want to
or aren't comfortable with, butwhen have you seen this really
improve adaptability in anorganization?
Dennis Stevens (17:12):
So we've got a hundred measurable successes of
doing this, but I'm going topull out like a specific example
.
Great, it's a mid, it's amidsize bank in in in the
Midwest and they had acquiredsome other banks.
They were growing prettyrapidly.
They were adding new products totheir product suite and their
(17:33):
IT department was really longtimelines, system outages,
inefficiency in delivering valueto customers, and so they were
trying to grow.
They were positioned from abrand to grow but they couldn't
deliver on the brand promisebecause it was taking too long
and their technology wasstopping them.
What they didn't understand wasthat the way they designed
their organization, funded andled their projects was leading
(17:55):
to that poor technology.
So they invited us in to do anatural transformation.
We restructured the teamsaround the business problems.
We helped align the technologythat was being leveraged to
develop that to align with thoseteams.
We put in a lot of adaptiveplanning and risk mitigation
processes on the top and then weput in some tools for doing
(18:21):
analysis of the performance ofthe team versus their future
expectations.
It was a bit of predictiveanalytics If the team could do
this in a short period of time.
What can they do in the nextperiod of time?
How big is this problem?
What should we actually expectto deliver?
Because one of the problems yourun into is you overload these
teams with 10 times more thingsthey can deliver and then
(18:42):
nothing gets delivered.
So we want to be able to alignthem.
And so we went in there.
What was really cool about thisis we did it.
Super, super strong CIO, superstrong leadership team.
He hired a lot of them as wewere doing the transition.
Everybody reapplied for theirjobs in the new teaming
structure, so it was veryinvolved in it.
They quadrupled the amount ofwork that he could get done in a
(19:06):
period of time.
They actually, in the firstyear, delivered twice as much as
they were forecasted to, andthey're already behind on their
forecast, but they actuallydelivered everything they were
going to four times.
They went further down theroadmap than they ever imagined.
Now they didn't delivereverything on their roadmap
because not everything wasactually going to provide
strategic value to them, so theywere able to pick those most
(19:27):
important things and move theimportant things forward.
And what's really cool aboutthat is, eight or nine years
later, that CIO still has agreat leadership team.
They have a great culture.
They've expanded and grown asnew ideas come in or new
technologies come in.
They're able to absorb them andjust roll with them and they're
the leading bank in thatMidwest region that they're in
(19:47):
and the markets that they're in.
So they've been very successful.
Dr. Leah OH (19:51):
Yeah, that is so incredible.
I love so much of that.
I love the reapplying for a job, because we want people who buy
in right, because if this isnot for you, then it's probably
better if you self-select out,because it's going to be a
different ride than the one youoriginally signed up for.
And I like, too, that youacknowledge some of those
initial strategic goals.
(20:13):
Once they started performing,we recognize that this is not
actually.
This needs to be adapted or wehave already blown this out of
the water.
What's next?
Dennis Stevens (20:24):
That's right.
Dr. Leah OH (20:26):
And the pigs have quadrupled their output.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, my brain just shortcircuits trying to think about
if I could do four times theamount of work that I currently
am.
Dennis Stevens (20:38):
Yeah, when you think about the amount of
defects and errors that arecreated when teams are not
well-formed and the technologyis not well-designed and we
don't know how to delegateintent.
Dr. Leah OH (20:47):
So we make bad decisions.
Dennis Stevens (20:49):
There's so much waste and churn in the
organization.
You just smooth it out.
Almost everybody doublesthroughput Almost everybody gets
significant improvements rightout of the box.
If you do it, if you just leaveeverything in place the way
that it was and don't fix yourtechnology or your interactions
and just call things by newnames, you get the same results
you've always gotten.
Dr. Leah OH (21:10):
Yep, yep, yep, that makes sense, and so my next
question.
So I kind of want to shift moreinto AI and I think you've kind
of already touched on this inthe success example you just
gave us, when you were talkingabout tools for analyses, like
throughout.
But I'm wondering if you know,maybe you expand on that.
But I want to think about howAI works in conjunction with
(21:32):
these agile methods to enhancethat adaptability.
Dennis Stevens (21:37):
So I'm going to give you three different sort of
places where AI is reallysignificant yeah.
The first place is we areseeing really significant
improvements in quality andthroughput for developers that
are using ai effectively to helpthem develop their code.
Now effectively actually meansit requires more thinking about
(21:59):
architecture and systemsengineering and writing test
cases but, once you do the hardthinking and designing of the
software.
Ai is really good at writing thecode, typing the code to
fulfill those things.
When, when it's used poorly,people are asking to do the
design, not creating theconstraints, not architecting
well, you end up with a mess.
So you have to use the codewell, but when used well,
(22:19):
tremendous improvement, right?
The second one that I think isreally interesting, and it goes
to this place around how do weget middle management to have
the information they need to doa better job of delegating and
empowering teams, as I did?
Strategic empowerment and AIcan go, look at so much
information and find patternsand bring it back.
I can use the abilities thatwe're seeing in some of the new
(22:43):
AI tools to provide much betterinteraction models for middle
managers.
So enabling and elevating theburden on middle managers is
really important.
The transparency that can comefrom that actually can bump into
this conflict between defensivebehaviors and trust.
So things are messed up.
(23:04):
I can't tell people things aremessed up because I'll get in
trouble, but if I can keep itcovered up and hide it long
enough, maybe somebody else willmess up before I get caught.
So there's a lot.
There's some risk in creatingtransparency in the data, but
getting it out there is reallyreally useful because, then we
can make better decisions.
Very few executives actuallywant their organizations to be
(23:26):
completely out of control, right, and they don't understand how
awful it is.
And then just the concept ofprioritizing and delegating
tasks and improvingdecision-making by having the
right.
How am I performing?
What is my capacity?
Like all that's veryinteresting.
We do a lot to really helpmiddle managers and I think
there's an interesting aspect ofa tool that I had started
(23:50):
building before was readingproject communications and
trying to sense the sentiment onthe project.
If I had 10 or 15 projectsgoing on, I couldn't tell which
one was in trouble, and statusreports were all there to
obfuscate any risk or problem tokeep me out of business, and so
there was no real value.
Dr. Leah OH (24:08):
We're doing great boss risk or problem to keep me
out of people's business, and sothere was.
There was no real value.
We're doing great boss.
Dennis Stevens (24:12):
Yeah, but what if?
What if I?
What if I could read the Slackmessages and the emails and the
communications and analyze thedata and have AI do some of that
pattern matching?
I think there's some really,really powerful use of tools to
help us decide what to payattention to.
Then the secret is we have toget our executives to then go.
The problem is not theindividuals.
The problem is the design ofthe system I put in place.
(24:34):
What do I fix to improve thesituation?
But they actually are solvingthe real problem because they
have insight into it.
There's a balance there to getpast that defensiveness and
trust to create that.
Dr. Leah OH (24:46):
Transparency?
Yes, exactly, and, like yousaid, then, helping like that,
prioritizing and putting inthose systems to continue to
grow.
Middle managers that we cutdown on yeah, that's phenomenal.
I'm working on a paper rightnow called Stuck in the Middle
and it's all about middlemanagers and they, you know,
(25:07):
they have some extra autonomy,but not very much, and they
they're encouraged to betransparent, but they can't
share too much.
So it's just that that is atricky position to be in in
organizations.
So I love when people like youare doing really cool things to
help reward them and continue totrain them and empower them.
Dennis Stevens (25:29):
Yeah, they should be the leverage point
that we're using to grow ourorganization and instead they're
the messy middle, they're thefrozen middle.
They're the problem, butthey're the problem because we
put them in an impossible job.
Dr. Leah OH (25:42):
Yes, yep Agreed, so this is a nice segue to ethical
consideration.
So what are some things thatorganizations, that their senior
leaders, some questions thatpeople should be asking and
thinking about when they'reintegrating AI into operations,
especially when we're thinkingabout team dynamics and decision
(26:02):
making?
Dennis Stevens (26:04):
Right.
So there's a whole big topicaround bias and fairness in the
data.
Like I talked about earlier,all these AIs you're using today
, they've all been trained bysomebody and they've all been
trained with data and aperspective that absolutely
brings bias and this is now biasitself is not bad, because if
it keeps you from making a badchoice, that's, that's good,
(26:25):
like it keeps you from drivinginto the car next to you.
Dr. Leah OH (26:27):
That's a bias, it's interpreting.
Dennis Stevens (26:29):
It's interpreting that data that
that's not desirable over thisother condition, but there's the
balance of sort of fairness init and how it impacts the brand
of the company becomes veryinteresting.
So you really have to stop andthink about the decisions and
the interactions you're havingAI do and analyze it, to think
about ways that it couldpossibly be going wrong and have
(26:51):
governance in place to beauditing and paying attention to
mitigate those biases.
You can't just go buy it off theshelf, throw it into your
customer center and have peoplestart using it.
You have to really havedisciplined governance in place,
paying attention to it.
There's a bunch of stuff aroundprivacy and data security which
is also really critical forexecutives to be thinking about.
(27:14):
If you don't have your dataunder control, if you don't have
the right PII rules andcustomer rules, if you don't
have the right containers aroundaccess to data, ai can
introduce some real risk and so,ethically, can introduce some
real risk.
And so, ethically, you're notsupposed to be paying 4,000
(27:38):
people's mortgages by accidentbecause you accessed data
through a virtual.
It's a real story, right.
You're not supposed to besaying horrible things or
letting people's social securitynumbers out in the wild, right,
or filing up.
Yeah, all those things happen,and I think, generally, our data
is so fragile in the worldtoday that this is a chance for
(28:02):
us to really investigate and tiedown the data that we want to
use and then actually, using AI,give responsible access to
those tools, to that data, tothat information, rather than
giving give responsible accessto those tools, to that data and
that information, rather thangiving people just raw access to
it.
So I think there's a balancingthere, but you have to really
understand it.
Then the other one that I thinkis really interesting and I
don't have a good answer on isthe impact on employment.
(28:23):
Ai is going to replace some jobs.
Ai does that mean it's going todisplace some workers?
Probably, is it eachindividual's company ethical
responsibility to create newjobs that get displaced, or is
it their responsibility to haveprograms to develop people so
they can find new jobs?
Or is it government'sresponsibility?
(28:45):
Or is it each individual'spersonal responsibility?
That's a a really interesting,rich sort of category to go into
yeah um is the employment one.
I personally think um in themarket today, you should be
understanding how to makeyourself ai ready, because I
don't know if you can count onyour company or the government
yep to make decisions in yourbest interest.
(29:07):
But it reminds me of when, whenuh farming uh became automated
and we went from having allthese people on farms to people
moving to the cities and takingmanufacturing jobs and getting
new education.
They started requiring you goto high school until the 10th
grade, so everybody had to havelike a an employable level of
skills.
They'll move into the newmarket and there was a
(29:28):
disruption for a moment, but weactually landed in a pretty good
place overall.
The quality of life went up,the economy went up, people's
lives were generally better, butI think that's a really, really
great area that that doesn'tget enough attention, but it's
not a reason.
It's not a reason to stop it.
Um, because because here's theother thing if we don't do it
(29:49):
here in the us, there are othercountries that are probably
going to do it and we'll take aless ethical approach to it and
we'll actually hinder us.
So it's complicated,complicated space.
Dr. Leah OH (29:59):
Yeah, yeah, yep, and one that I think changes
every day.
It is so many different, likeyou said, so many different
perspectives and levels, andimagine one we're going to be
talking about for a long time,which is probably good, like you
said, if we're thinking, then,bringing in governance in a way
as well, that's right.
So, dennis, this question'sreally for me.
(30:22):
As a leadership scholar, I amreally interested in the work
that you do and I'm wondering,across all of these different
organizations that you've workedwith, all of these leaders,
what are the traits that you'reseeing that are being really
crucial to foster that cultureof adaptability and innovation
in, you know, the ever-changingorganization of today?
Dennis Stevens (30:46):
Yeah, leadership becomes less and less, at a
certain level, about being thebest person in that particular
job.
Jobs are more complicated,require a lot more interaction.
Jobs are changing frequently,so you can't stay ahead.
So I have a list of things thatI try to build curriculum
around and teach to leaders.
The first one is just thisconcept of systems thinking.
(31:07):
So looking at the probleminstead of looking at it as a
small local problem, what aresome tools and techniques for
looking at it as a bigger, moreholistic problem and what are
some frameworks for that?
I think that there was stuff,you know, when I was young Peter
Senge was out, Arjur was outthere.
There were all these peoplehaving deeply thoughtful
(31:27):
discussions aroundorganizational design as a
system, and I don't think we seeit as frequently in leadership.
Today it becomes about P&L andplans and accountability, and so
I think there's a challengethere and I wonder why.
That's not critical, but thepeople that I see that are
naturally systems thinkers, orthat you can get them to start
(31:48):
to think differently become muchmore effective leaders, and I
think it becomes a moreimportant skill as we move
forward.
I think strategic thinking,which is different than systems
thinking, strategic thinking isgiven limited capacity, limited
dollars and a strategic intent.
What tradeoff decision am Igoing to make?
I think that leaders that can'tmake strategic decisions end up
(32:12):
working on everything at thesame time and delivering nothing
, end up telling everybody it'sall going to be fine.
But, is it really fine, right?
I think that ability tothoughtfully consider.
You know that decision you madeto give that person a $5,000
bonus for finishing that job wasnot a $5,000 decision, it was a
$100,000 decision because youhave 20 other people that will
(32:32):
do the same thing in the nextyear.
We have to get people to thinkstrategically.
The other people that will dothe same thing in the next year.
We have to get people to thinkstrategically.
I think EQ and EQI becomesreally, really important.
It's interesting to me, the onething that people can uniquely
do that computers can't do aswell as people is be human and
so getting really good at beinghuman.
(32:53):
How do I feel about this?
How do they feel about it?
How can I respond to that?
How can I help them respond toit?
These ideas around EQ arecritically important, and then I
think there's some thingsaround imagining the future
instead of nailing things down.
So some tools and time in theday to imagine what might be
possible.
(33:14):
So sort of the concept ofvisionary thinking to imagine
what might be possible, so sortof the concept of visionary
thinking.
And the last one I'm going toput in there is just team
dynamics and social dynamics inorganizations.
I don't think enough emphasisgoes into managing team dynamics
and how important it is.
If I design the team right, getthe right expectations on that
(33:38):
team, develop the rightcompetencies within them and
then start to delegate withintent, I get those teams to do
dramatically better contributionthan they're probably doing
today and they're probablyhappier in their jobs and it's
more fun to lead a team that'sset up right than is one you're
fighting with every day.
So just that how you create theconditions for healthy teams is
(34:00):
really really important, and Ithink all these skills can be
taught right.
Dr. Leah OH (34:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, I completely agree with
you and I'm just thinking aboutwhat a powerful force that would
be if someone can bring this inand thinking you know that
systems thinking but integrateit with the strategic and the EQ
and the visionary and teamdynamics.
I mean I would put my CV in thering for that organization any
(34:27):
day.
To work with someone who'sdoing that.
Yeah, that's really incredible.
I was thinking of some researchI did with team dynamics and
essentially what we walked awaywas the relationship you have
with.
You know, in quote marks,because we need to recognize
that people are really savvydiscerners of these interactions
(35:03):
and they make differentassumptions and the more that we
can connect with individualemployees, but also as the team,
the better we're going to be.
Dennis Stevens (35:14):
There's a, there's a tool that I teach
leaders called inference hacking, and and it requires you to
thoughtfully have empathy forthe other people in the room.
But in empathy, in empathyhacking, I take, I take Arjus's
or Shon's ladder of inferenceand I go here's the option I'm
seeing, here's the beliefs, andI walk down to why would they,
why would that make sense tothem, like, why would that, why
(35:37):
would that behavior be what theythink is right?
And if you can't understandthat, you can't lead them.
So I want to walk down theladder of inference, I want to
find it with them.
Then I want to explore how toreframe the problem for them or
me, or both of us.
So, we can reach a betterconclusion.
That's a very practical appliedmental model that you can use
(35:59):
to go have those conversations.
Dr. Leah OH (36:01):
Yeah, and think about enhancing your EQ and that
strategic thinking.
Then, when we're able to thinklike others, the system works
better.
Yeah, I love how you tie thoseall together in such a beautiful
way.
So my two final questions foryou, dennis.
These kind of are intertwined.
So the way we end all of ourepisodes of the Communicative
(36:22):
Leader is with advice.
First for our formal leadersout there managers, directors,
ceos you know those folks, youknow who are truly tasked with
that decision making, theaccountability of it.
So it can be advice, it can bea tip, it can be a challenge.
And then the second part isthat you know those tips are
(36:44):
challenges for employees of allranks across industries.
So what do you have for them?
Dennis Stevens (36:50):
So for the title leaders, I'm going to say it's
crucial to understand thatorganizational systems produce
precisely what they are designedto produce, and your job as a
leader is to design that system.
If you're not getting out ofthe organization what you want
out of the organization, youneed to understand why you're
(37:10):
creating the conditions for thatto be how people are operating.
There's, again, hard aspects toit and there's soft aspects to
it, and there's ways to thinkabout it.
That ladder of inference is asoft tool that you can use to
evaluate that, but you aregetting the result that you and
your leadership team havecreated because of the system
that you've produced, the onethat I think is really
(37:33):
interesting, and so your job isto create an environment where
people are aligned, theyunderstand their role and people
feel safe to act decisively.
So you have to be able to trustthem.
That means you have tounderstand what it would mean to
have a trustworthy team and howyou can establish that, and
those go into those other topics.
For general employees, I thinkthere's two parts to this.
(37:54):
I had two different answers.
I kind of went back and forthon Generally employees.
I think there's two parts tothis and I had two different
answers.
I kind of went back and forthon.
But your leaders don't trustyou and treat you micromanage.
You hold you in space that youdon't want to be in because you
don't operate in a trustworthyfashion.
(38:19):
What would it look like tobecome able to build a trusted
relationship with yourleadership, to understand their
needs and what they're trying toaccomplish and how you can help
them be successful?
You can help your organizationbe successful and elevate your
leader.
I don't think we sit and thinkabout that very often when we're
just trying to get through ourday.
So employees want to be trusted.
They have to figure out how tobe trustworthy.
The other one I was going to gowas a little less dramatic than
that.
It was just.
(38:39):
If you're an employee of anyorganization able you are to do
basic AI things, the more likelyyou are going to be still
(39:02):
employed in six months or ninemonths.
But there's some mobility youhave to be looking for.
So start to envision that andfigure out how to get that
training and how you want toparticipate in the next phase of
these companies as they change.
Dr. Leah OH (39:18):
Yeah, oh, that's really, really helpful, dennis.
And with that, do you have, arethere places you kind of refer
people to if they're saying, hey, I want to think about that.
Is there you know sometrustworthy, even if it's just
dipping a toe sites or resourcesthat would be helpful?
Dennis Stevens (39:37):
Yeah, what I can probably do, of course I would
say go to go to org rightcom.
Yes, you know, and these arethe things that I'm talking
about there, because it's not aswell developed, but there's
some content out there.
There's a.
There's an organization calledthe agile network that I can
also point you to.
If to somebody's interested,reach out to me and I'll send
(39:59):
you a code for that.
But the agile network is adeveloping network of experts.
There's they pick 50 expertsfrom worldwide to help develop
the next evolution of agile onthe agile network I'm one.
I'm one of those experts andwe're talking about these and
you can go subscribe andparticipate in that community.
(40:19):
It's very interesting.
Dr. Leah OH (40:21):
Very cool, oh, I imagine, I imagine that is a
huge responsibility, but also,for someone with your training
and experience, a whole lot offun to be a part of that shaping
that conversation.
Yeah, it's nice to domeaningful work, right?
Yeah, exactly's nice to domeaningful work right, yeah,
exactly, excellent.
Well, dennis, I have had such ablast with you today.
(40:42):
I've learned a lot.
I know this conversation isgoing to be really helpful for
our listeners, so thank youagain for sharing your expertise
with us.
Dennis Stevens (40:50):
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to come on
and share my thoughts.
This was this was veryenjoyable to come on and share
my thoughts.
This was very enjoyable.
All right, my friends.
That wraps up our conversationtoday.
Until next time, communicatewith intention and lead with
purpose.
I'm looking forward to chattingwith you again soon on the
Communicative Leader.
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