In this insightful episode of the Org Design Podcast, Steve Garcia, co-founder of Contemporary Leadership Advisors, shares his expertise on building resilient organizations in today's rapidly changing business landscape. Steve discusses the evolving nature of organizational design, emphasizing that it goes beyond traditional structures to encompass processes, culture, and informal networks.
Key highlights include:
- The impact of AI on productivity and organizational connections
- The importance of integrating strategy and execution for adaptability
- The value of starting with a listening phase to understand challenges broadly
- The need for continuous organizational adjustments to remain competitive
Steve offers valuable insights for leaders feeling overwhelmed by ineffective traditional practices, advocating for more agile and iterative approaches to strategy and execution. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to enhance their organization's effectiveness and resilience in our fast-paced business world.
Listen: YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcast
Show Notes
Contemporary Leadership Advisors - https://contemporaryleadership.com/
The End of Leadership as we Know it - Amazon
Transcript
[00:00:00] Tim Brewer: That, that little intro section, you're bound to say something super clever when we're not recording and we'll both be like, no,
[00:00:07] Steve Garcia: Murphy's Law. And then when you try to recreate it, it just doesn't have the same,
[00:00:10] Tim Brewer: yeah, it just didn't work. Just, just say that thing.
[00:00:13] Steve Garcia: Yeah, like a bad actor.
[00:00:16] Tim Brewer: Right. Well, welcome to the Org Design Podcast. Joining me here today is my co-host, Amy Springer. Welcome Amy back from vacation. Good to have you back. And we are excited to have Steve Garcia with us, co-founder and author. Steve, thanks so much for joining us today on the show.
[00:00:35] Steve Garcia: Thank you, Tim and Amy. Really pleased to be here.
[00:00:38] Tim Brewer: Well, look, I'm going to hit you with the same question we hit everyone. How the heck did you get into org design? Tell us a little bit about the journey getting to where you're at today.
[00:00:49] Steve Garcia: It's a, it's a good question. I think in some way we're all in org design. They say that, the organization that you have today is perfectly designed for the results that you achieve. And I think as leaders we're all, always trying to improve results and so in a sense, we're all always thinking about how do we redesign or optimize the design of the organization? I think I, I got into it in a more formal way, people started, reaching out and asking for help when I became a consultant and it became apparent that pretty much all the problems that we were trying to solve for you know, had their roots, in how the organization was designed and the people that were part of it. So It was really when I became a consultant back in probably 2005 that we really started to focus in a not just on our own organization, but on others as well.
[00:01:45] Tim Brewer: Yeah. Did you study, I always wonder what people studied to get into org design. Steve, where did you start your career life?
[00:01:55] Steve Garcia: Well, I'm, I believe it or not, I was an English literature major as an undergrad. And then after working for a little while on Capitol Hill in DC, I, I broke up with my girlfriend and decided I needed to go back to school, do something different. So went and I got my MBA, And then I became a marketing guy. My job was to influence others, convince them that they should buy our company's products train the sales force, get the press to write about us, and I realized that all of that was really around using learning or education as a tool to influence. And so I went back and I got my doctorate in adult learning with a focus on, how organizations learn and how you can use that as a way of improving change and innovation in organizations. When we hire, we look for people who both have a business bent, but also people bent as well. when we find that combination, we're pretty quick to pounce because we find that works really well in the work that we do.
[00:03:01] Tim Brewer: It's really cool. Tell us a little bit more about the work that you're doing right now and the organization that you've founded and leading, and I know you authored a book just recently, maybe cover off a little bit about that and how are they both going? I've always been interested, is it hard to write a book? I feel like that would be really like a heavy lift.
[00:03:18] Steve Garcia: It's hard when you wait till the last minute and you only have, you have less time when you've got ADHD you procrastinate, it is definitely challenging. So the organization we founded, Contemporary Leadership Advisors, it is a leadership and organizational effectiveness consulting firm.
My, my other co founder and I, we were previously at another really large consulting firm. We were on the leadership team with their organizational effectiveness practice and we just decided to be more fun to do it on our own. So, we made the leap and started Contemporary Leadership Advisors, which we call CLA and that was about eight, eight years ago, 2016. So it's about eight years ago and the work is really focused on you know, working with individual leaders to help them and their organizations be more successful. And particularly in what we perceive as a really different environment. There's a statistic that I was, introduced recently that, you used to go get an engineering degree in school and the expertise, the knowledge you learned would, last 35 years. The half life would be 35 years, be relevant for 35 years. Today it's like two and a half years, right? So it's, it literally takes more time to earn the degree than the knowledge that you gain lasts, and that is really striking. And I think it just goes to show that the pace of change has accelerated so rapidly that a lot of the ways that leaders have operated and the organizations they've built just can't keep pace in that environment. So a big part of our focus is how do you get leaders and their organizations to really, work better and ideally thrive. In environments that are incredibly complex, where you can't, it's really hard to understand cause and effect, and it's really hard to predict outcomes over time. How do you, how do you succeed and win in that environment? And so the organization that we built is really geared around helping leaders address those challenges and then the book we wrote, The End of Leadership As We Know It, is really around taking what we've learned and trying to make that more explicit and sharing it with a wider audience.
[00:05:30] Amy Springer: Yeah Steve, I think, the title of that book really strikes a chord for me. The heart of the Org Design Podcast is about helping everyday leaders design better organizations. There's no perfect organization, and as you said, everything that they do is changing in this incredibly fast cycle and basically we're here to help all of those people. I want to jump to what's a skill you'd recommend, but actually, first of all, you know, I might be a leader, I don't know a company like yours exists. What might I be feeling? Like, like what might my day look like, or what's keeping me up at night that makes me think, oh, I need to start thinking about org effectiveness, organization design.
[00:06:16] Steve Garcia: I think leaders, a lot of leaders feel really exhausted and burnt out and the sort of the best practices, that they know that the education that they received, the advice they got from mentors doesn't work as well as it used to, and they're trying harder and harder, but they're not getting the results they once did, and that is, incredibly disheartening and frustrating, and so I think, you know, those are the leaders that we, We really want to help. Those are the ones who I think, people come to us when they've exhausted the guidance that things that have worked for them in the past and they're not sure that they want to try something new.
[00:07:05] Tim Brewer: Steve, you talk about the pace of change, someone going from digging in a little bit, the pace of change going, someone studies and the time it took them to study that what their knowledge they've gained while they're studying last less than the time that it took to study. Everyone is talking about AI at the moment and the impacts of AI on not just org design, which we'll ask normally but on the whole of companies. Leaders sitting in the middle of organizations that are changing constantly, how does that wrestle up against what used to experience being in org design effectiveness, where everyone got to look forward to a re-org every three years. Are you seeing a shift in how people are thinking about how to even approach their organization structure where the environment's changing, at a rate that they probably have not ever experienced in their kind of leadership journey to date, particularly if they're not an old leader where they studied at university and their knowledge lasted for 20 to 25 years, so their experience is so different to what is happening on the ground right now.
[00:08:13] Steve Garcia: Yeah, I think AI is interesting for a few reasons. One is in one respect it's the perfect example of how, chatGPT was released two years ago, and it's had already a massive effect on, how many of us work. So it's in one way, it's an example of the phenomenon that we're talking about. It's also, an incredibly useful tool. I talked to one firm on Friday that, has seen like an 11 fold increase in productivity based on their use of generative AI, which is just phenomenal. I can't think of another technology that has done that, and then at the same time, it's also really kind of scary in the sense that there is a danger that as we outsource what we do to AI, we're going to get, you know, we're going to lose our capability to do those things, and so, that's not ideal. AI is, it's not always as we well know is not always right. It hallucinates. So you can think you're getting the right answer, but you're getting a poor answer. I think what one of the things that concerns me about it is, when you combine the pandemic with AI, people are turning to AI as opposed to turning to one another and in an environment where everyone's remote and we're now turning to AI to help us solve problems versus reaching out to our colleagues or, other individuals who we haven't met yet. I think we're going to see this, crisis of connection where it becomes harder and harder for people to actually interact and connect with one another, right? And org design in large part is about how do you get the right people interacting in order to achieve the outcomes you want. So if we're relying on AI as opposed to relying on one another, I think that definitely creates a challenge that we'll have to find a way to navigate and address.
[00:10:07] Amy Springer: Do you think that challenge will have not only, I guess like the people and culture side of that, do you think that will lead to poor business outcomes as well.
[00:10:15] Steve Garcia: I, I don't think we know the answer to that yet. So, in a scenario where we stopped talking to one another, and we just, we're just talking to the AI and, and it, that's one issue. If we're talking to the AI is not right, that's another issue. As we play with the technology and we think about where it fits we're gonna better understand, what the outcomes might look like. But I think, I think we don't know. So it's important, I guess the guidance would be, yeah, everyone has to be experimenting with it. It'd be crazy not to, but we need to do it in a really considered way and we need to be careful not to just outsource and rely on it and we need to be really thoughtful and consider about how we maintain connection across the organization.
[00:10:58] Amy Springer: I guess a lot of leaders tend to think of org design as structure. I think you're hinting at it going beyond that, scope wise. Would you say that's becoming more and more important in this context?
[00:11:11] Steve Garcia: Yeah, yeah, so
[00:11:13] Amy Springer: what are the other things people should consider when they're
[00:11:16] Steve Garcia: So yes, I mean, I think traditionally we think about org design, people think about org design, they think about sort of lines and boxes and I think the truth is org design is so much more than that. Org design is process, org design is culture, org design is, role profiles, and RACI matrices and decision rights, and org design is really how the organization comes together to get its work done on a formal basis. There's another issue there, which is all of those things are the theory of how work gets done in an organization, they're all sort of how we expect and how we want the organization to operate when you lay out who reports to who and what your responsibilities are and how I'm going to reward you and everything else. The truth is, is that, while that certainly has a big impact it is, it's, it's not the real world, like the real world is much more organic, right? The real world is the networks of relationships, and so that's a lot less formal, it's about when you have five emails and they're all priorities, who do you respond to, right? It's those relationships, and which of those are stronger, which of those are weaker, that really determine how the email works. The organization operates. There's a, there's a analogy I like to use, which is, graphite and diamond, two substances radically different in their properties. Graphite is like soft, it's opaque, it's used as a lubricant in industrial settings. Diamond is like transparent, it's hard, it's brilliant. It's used as a cutting tool in industrial applications. So radically different properties, but they're both made entirely of carbon. So the differences in how those carbon atoms are connected, interact with each other. In the case of graphite, they're in these sheets that slough off, and in the case of diamond, it's this tetrahedron configuration, which is like creates the strongest bonds in the universe, and so it's not always about what something's made of. It's about how it's connected that really determines the results and the outcomes. So organizations are the same way they're comprised of people, teams, divisions, how those teams are connected, interact with each other, determines the outcomes. You get the same people in one organization as in another, but if they're configured in a different way, your gonna get radically different results. Org design helps you understand, okay, how do we fit, those parts together? The lines and the boxes are certainly one way, but again, I'd say that's the theory of how work gets done. The real world practice is often much less formal, and I think leaders need to pay increasing attention to that.
[00:13:50] Tim Brewer: Steve, how, for those leaders that are sitting in their organizations, feeling the pain of things slipping away from their fingertips and feeling like this is not like the world that I was used to leading 10 or 15 years ago. What are the things that, people are talking to you about that they see? What are the symptoms that they're feeling in their organization outside the obvious things feel like it's changing all the time. I just can't get a grasp on it. When do you know that their organization's not dealing well with the pace of change that they see? what are the symptoms you're seeing when you jump in and start discovery in companies?
[00:14:28] Steve Garcia: We typically work with private equity backed portfolio companies, and with larger global, fortune 500 firms and in the case of the smaller private equity backed companies, when a company gets acquired by a PE firm, they've got the sort of investment thesis, they're planning to do the following things to get the results that, you know, so that they can exit that, that firm in approximately five years. When that plan goes awry. When they're not hitting the targets that were set for them and the investors believe, that the issues pertain to the individual leaders or the way the organization is structured is when we get called. In the case of those sort of smaller midsize companies, it's really about bottom line business results that are not on track in the case of, like much larger firms, it tends to be more around, people are leaving really good people are quitting, engagement scores are not where they need to be. Those are probably the two biggest indicators that either we're not hitting the numbers or our talent is leaving or is on the verge of leaving.
[00:15:38] Amy Springer: So if one of these people doesn't have a friend like you to call, to help them out. What is the first one or two things you would suggest they would do in that situation?
[00:15:51] Steve Garcia: We like to say that people own what they co create. And so there's no better way to get people on board than to involve them in the process. So when an organization is really struggling, what we typically would do as a first step is help them think about how do we understand, where the challenge is, as opposed to assuming we've got the answer, which I think, leaders who are really eager to get results can lock in on, this is a solution. Sometimes you got to go slow, go fast and I would say to understand from, a broader swath of the organization. What they perceive and what those issues, you know what they see is the challenges. So I think listening to really get a broader sense of what's going on and then bringing together, critical stakeholders to make sense of that data, right? To create a collective point of view that sort of sense making exercise but create a collective understanding and an agreed understanding of what are the challenges that we need to that we need to address. So that, that first step, it can be tempting to try and skip that discovery phase. But that context I think is really critical in order to solve the problem and you gain a lot of buy in when you include people in that process, which reduces the change management work you have to do on the backend significantly.
[00:17:18] Tim Brewer: Reminds me of the conference we were at just at Steve. Did you go to the talk about the getting off the dance floor into the balcony and from the balcony to the dance floor?
[00:17:27] Steve Garcia: Yes, exactly the same idea. Right. So to be able to take the time to sort of get above it and sort of see with a different lens or different point of view, I think is really important. But in the midst of that, like mosh pit that that's tough to do, it's tough to disengage from that craziness and that drama, and a lot of leaders frankly feed on that, and you have to be willing to let go of, take that other perspective. And that can be challenging to do just to, because your ego is invested in like solving problems. I think we all want it. We're getting things done and which is great, but sometimes it can backfire.
[00:18:04] Amy Springer: Do you have an example of a different scope of issue and how long that listening process might need to go for? Cause look, I've got some targets I gotta hit, I want to just listen for like a day. Is that enough?
[00:18:17] Steve Garcia: Sure. I would say it doesn't need to be, you're certainly gonna reach a diminishing returns, right? So listening forever is as bad of an issue is as not listening at all, trying to get the perfect answer is, I think, really problematic, particularly today, because by the time you actually figure out the perfect answer, have changed and it's no longer, it's no longer applicable.
So I would say it obviously depends on the situation, but sure. Yeah. Listen for a day, convene a bunch of individuals who represent different parts of the organization and, and take the day, do a little bit of work ahead of time, structure how you're going to spend the time, right? But, you know, have them collectively share the issue and have them collectively, recommend how they might go about solving it. So if you only have a day, great, take the day. And, maybe if you've got a week, that's better, but if you only have an hour, use the hour. But use the time that you've got at your disposal. But I think, but at some point, absolutely, you need to act and it's impossible to know these days what the right answer is. So there's a little bit of balance between being confident enough but not, not spending too much time because what's, you know, you're going to take a step and hopefully it's in the right direction. But if it's not, then you can pivot, right? And if it is in the right direction, it's still not gonna be perfect. So you're still gonna have to pivot. So when people say, we're changing the organization every, every three years, which I think Tim, you alluded to? Yeah. That's, that's part of the
[00:19:48] Tim Brewer: I, no, I said everyone looks forward to the reorg that happens every three years. Everyone looks forward to it.
[00:19:54] Steve Garcia: no, it's not, it is not a, it is not a fun process but we need to be sort of continually, incrementally. Adjusting as we go.
[00:20:03] Tim Brewer: Is that what your advice would be to people that are thinking like, Oh, no, we'll get to the reorg, when we run this like big cyclical event style change, are you help, is that part of what you're doing, helping people take more iterative steps towards being on track to their organizational goals?
[00:20:22] Steve Garcia: So we've got a chapter in the book called strategic doing, which is around how do you in the past we could sort of separate strategy and execution into two different buckets, right? Like we'd spend our time strategizing and then we'd cascade the priorities down the hierarchy and everyone would go and do the thing that they were assigned over the course of the year and then we'd see what the results were and reward people for their respective performance. And we start the process again, right? Well, again, when things are changing as fast as they are today, that problem or that approach breaks down for a lot of reasons. Like one, you can't accurately predict what outcomes will be over the over time. It's very hard to discern cause and effect when there's so many interconnected variables
and so, oftentimes you could, set your organization on a path that, even if you're right, even if the answer fell from the sky on a stone tablet, and it was like, this is the perfect strategy, right? Nothing's to say that that's not going to shift three months out and in the past, that was just much less likely to happen than it is today. So you know, that's one problem. Another issue is there's no mechanism for bottom up feedback. You get each silo in the organization has their own set of goals, which creates conflict between different groups. There's a whole host of issues that occur. So I think what organizations need to get better at is integrating strategy and execution, where they're trying something and they're continually monitoring, whether it's through OKRs, objectives and key results or some other sort of tool where they're really focused on specific outcomes they want to achieve, and they're measuring those and they're moving toward what works and moving away from what doesn't work based on the results that they're seeing. And that's how complex adaptive systems operate. And it's not always the most efficient approach, but it is the most resilient. And in today's world, I think we need to sort of rejigger the balance a little bit, maybe be a little bit less efficient and a little bit more resilient because just so much is being thrown at us all the time that , we need to continually adapt.
[00:22:32] Tim Brewer:
Steve Garcia. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. If I'm listening to the podcast, I'm like, man, that is the problem I have. I need to get in contact with Steve. What, how do people know that they're a good fit, a good fit for your work and your organization? You talked about PE backed firms of a certain size and big fortune 500s. Is there any other criteria that people should know that makes them a good fit for the, the great work you guys do at CLA Advisors.
[00:23:05] Steve Garcia: Thank you, Tim, for the opportunity to share that. If folks feel as if they're not sure what to do next, right? They believe they have an org design issue. They're not getting the results that they want to see and they don't know exactly what the right approach is and they're interested in trying some sort of new strategies then by all means, please reach out. Like we're happy to have a conversation, share what it is that we have seen work. People can certainly, read the book but we're happy to provide our experience and expertise on the topic and then if it makes sense to engage them, by all means, we're delighted to do that.
[00:23:39] Tim Brewer: Thank you so much for coming on the show with us today. Amy Springer, thank you for co hosting with me again today on the Org Design Podcast. We will see you all again soon. See you everyone.
[00:23:51] Steve Garcia: Thank you.
