Putting People at the Center of Organizational Effectiveness
Introduction
Michael Daehne: Hey y’all, welcome to Inflect. I’m Michael Daehne and on today’s show I’m talking to Lynda Garcia. Lynda is a passionate HR executive with a proven track record of developing and implementing organizational effectiveness strategies across a number of industries. I got to know Lynda through a mutual friend and was so impressed by her pragmatic, people-first approach to org design and talent management.
In our conversation, Lynda and I discussed the value of real world, on-the-job training, the often-overlooked common-sense test, and some tips and tricks for talent calibration and succession planning. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Opening & Background
Michael Daehne: Hey, Lynda, welcome to the podcast. How are you?
Lynda Garcia: I’m doing great today, Michael. Thank you so much for having me.
MD: I’m so excited to have you. I have really enjoyed some of our previous conversations and I’m so glad you agreed to, to jump on the podcast and do one of these while we record so you can share some of your insights and pearls of wisdom with some of our listeners. I’m really, really excited about the conversation.
LG: As am I.
MD: Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your career journey and some of your superpowers, so to say.
LG: Yeah, absolutely.
So, my name is Lynda Garcia, and I currently reside in Cincinnati, and I have been so incredibly fortunate to have had a career that has been progressive, it’s been very organic and most importantly, it’s been really, really fun. I have been in a number of different industries, including manufacturing, internet services, higher education, entertainment, and a couple of different healthcare organizations.
Most recently, I served as the Vice President of Talent Development and Organizational Effectiveness at a large Cincinnati healthcare system. And I will share that I never set out to be an OD professional. I will tell you that I was doing organizational development before I was aware that it even had a name.
Discovering Organizational Development
LG: When I think back to my roles, I was at Network Solutions, which is an internet services company. And that was a pivotal role for me because it’s when I started to develop my expertise in leadership development and engagement and recognition programs and succession planning. And I thought I was just really lucky to be able to do all the cool stuff in HR and not all the, all the hard stuff.
And, you know, when Network Solutions was bought out and I was looking to leave, I thought, well, I’ll never find a job like this again. And I started looking and realized that, oh, this is a thing. It actually has a name. And people are going to school to get degrees in this.
Lynda’s Superpowers
LG: But I will tell you that I think that being self-grown across a number of different industries has really been a superpower of mine. I always consider myself a business professional first and look at, what are the business needs, what are the important metrics, before you even consider yourself an OD professional or an HR practitioner.
And if I were to say, another superpower, I think that it’s knowing that engagement is at the heart of everything and having the ability to build really strong teams with the culture that as the stress and the work goes up, the humor and the laughter does as well. And I think, I mean, you know this, when people are having fun at work, no matter how stressful it is, then it just doesn’t feel like it’s that hard, hard environment.
MD: Yeah, absolutely.
And I, you know, something that really resonated with me when we talked a few weeks ago and you, you hit on this in your comments there, as you talked about being a business professional first and an, an OD or an HR specialist second is, I think a lot of times we fall into the trap of thinking about concepts like org design and talent management as these academic or philosophical or framework-heavy things, of like, I need to go get a certification to figure out how to do this.
When in fact, I think something you and I are very aligned on is, it is about people and engagement and business value, and like, core concepts, right, that transcend education or certifications. Not to say that those things are not valuable, of course, but I think the most successful folks in the org design space or org development or any of these people-centric aspects of the business are the ones that think through it from a common sense and pragmatic and people-first approach versus getting caught up in the academics of it, if you will.
Experience as the Best Teacher
Michael Daehne: Tell me more about your perspective on that and maybe an example or two from your career where you or others on your team have learned on-the-job, so to say, in that pragmatic type approach versus in an educational setting.
Lynda Garcia: There is a woman in my mind who is the poster child for experience being the best teacher. So, she was a lady who was a training specialist on my team, and she was promoted into an OD consultant role. Now, while she had been in the training space for several years, she was a nurse by trade. And she had been a very successful clinical leader, as well as she also had a separate part-time job with the joint commission, and that’s the entity that goes in and surveys and certifies hospitals.
So, you work with a lot of consultants, right Michael?
MD: Yup, you got it.
LG: Okay, so let me ask you this. Here’s somebody who has direct operational experience. She has a successful history in leadership, and she has demonstrated ability to communicate and influence on the senior executive level. How excited would you be about hiring her?
MD: I would jump at the chance, right? That’s like the perfect combination of skills and experience.
LG: Exactly, exactly. But she came in and she was convinced that she wasn’t qualified to be an OD professional because she thought that there was something in the theory or the science or the tools that was magical. And I would ask her on every project, her first project was a 360 with a physician leader, and then later on she developed deep expertise and engagement. And every time she said, well, I don’t know what to do. And I would say, well, what do you think you should do? And her common-sense answer every single time was right on. Her entire career had been like an internship for a role she never, never, ever had thought of, again, probably didn’t even know existed. So, yeah, I think that, that I, I agree with you. And again, that’s not to say that we shouldn’t be excited about people who are getting an IO psychology degree. I found that some of these degrees prepare people really well, but then there always is the bridge of practicality and considering the culture of the organization and the environment first.
MD: Yeah, absolutely.
Trusting Instincts Formed through Experience
MD: And I, I think I, you know, something that, that struck a chord with me was when you said that her, her common-sense answer was always right. It was always the right thing to do. And I’m reflecting on an early career experience I had with one of my, my then managers who has become a mentor my whole career and a dear friend.
And after a meeting at a client one day, she, just in passing, she said, how would you handle X? And I gave her my answer, and she said, yep, that’s great. Your instincts are always spot on. And that was the most empowering comment any manager ever gave me, because I felt, like, unleashed from trying to worry about the perfection of a framework, or an evaluation criteria, or the science of something, right?
It’s like, it’s like, what do you think makes sense? You’re probably right. You won’t always be right. We all make mistakes. But that idea that we’re all there for a reason and have expertise and skills to bring and good decision making, that can unleash so much goodness in an organization, again, complemented by the education and the process and the approach.
But at the end of the day, most of the organizations I work with, and I think the organizations you have, have been a leader in, most of the workforce is there for, for their expertise and their knowledge and their decision-making, not to just fall into what a checklist needs to say on the really hard decisions.
LG: Yeah, absolutely. And I will say this too, that the environment in organizations is changing so fast right now there is no model or framework or education that can keep up with that rate of change. So we really do have to rely on the instincts that we have formed through our experience.
MD: Yeah, well said well said. You know something else you mentioned in your bio is your work across a number of different industries right, in the casino industry and health care and manufacturing, technology. What are some things that you’ve learned about the people side of change that transcend industries or businesses that you see everywhere?
Developing Leadership Skills
LG: Yes, where my mind first goes is to leadership because if you don’t have strong leadership, you can’t implement any change, you can’t really do anything. And I have found in every single industry, there are people who have a craft or expertise that works against them being comfortable as leaders.
Now, that’s not to say that they can’t be leaders, but the very skills that make them very good at their craft are not the same skills that make good leaders. So, an example of this is at Network Solutions. It was Systems Engineers. So these are engineers. They are about programming. They are about structure and processes. And that leaves very little room for the gray area and nuances of leadership.
At the casino, it was chefs. Michael, have you ever watched a cooking show with a professional chef?
MD: I love cooking shows, much to my wife’s chagrin. I have Food Network on all the time.
LG: Okay, well, if you’ve watched professional chefs, you know that they are not raised to be collaborative.
MD: This is so true. Yeah.
LG: And in the healthcare space, it’s nurses. And nurses are truly a unique breed of people that our world could not function without. And they are programmed to give care and think about the patient first, always. So, when you then promote a nurse into leadership and you’re now asking her to think about budgets and productivity and metrics, well that’s working against what’s at the very core of what she does.
And so, I think in every industry, you need to look to see, well, these practitioners need to become leaders, and how are we going to get them there?
Because you have to think about it as, not that they can’t, but if they have a desire to, then the path might look a little different than for people whose first skill is communication or first skill is engaging with others.
MD: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think, I think, too, in those scenarios where you, where you have a nurse growing into a management role or a chef or, you know, with a lot of our clients, it’s technologists, right, that are going to that leadership role. If you can work with them and equip and help them grow into that role, that’s when the magic happens, because that’s when they’re bringing that. That deep understanding of the work that’s actually happening, right? The empathy with the other nurses, with the other chefs, the other technologists. And so, you know, when, when you can support them in that journey and help them build up those skills that may not feel natural based on the role they have been in, if you can help them get there, that’s when you, I think, really often find those outstanding leaders that can have really, you know, expansive impact on their organizations.
LG: I completely agree. I think the other thing that organizations need to do is also provide growth and development paths that aren’t leadership. So for those practitioners that truly love what they do, the more you love your craft, you know that the higher you go in leadership, the less you get to do it because leadership becomes your craft.
And we need to continue to provide opportunities for people to grow and advance their skills and their income without being pushed into leadership because it’s the only route.
MD: Yeah. Well said. Got to carve out those professional paths where you’re leaning into that skill or trade or expertise more and the, the management leadership type opportunities, because, different folks will want to pursue different types of growth in their careers.
LG: Exactly.
The Common-Sense Test
Michael Daehne: We’ve talked some in the course of this conversation just about this idea of, the common-sense approach to people and engagement and change and that sounds so basic, like, you know, make sure this passes the common-sense test, but often we fall into the trap of over complicating things and ending up where you are doing things that make no sense at all when you bring them into reality. We shared a couple of fun stories when we talked before. Tell me one of your experiences with this, of failing the common-sense test, maybe in an organization.
Lynda Garcia: Yes. So, when I was at Pinnacle, which was a casino entertainment company, and I was in St. Louis, and there’s a casino in South County St. Louis, so it’s really Midwest suburbia, and a colleague and I were doing a Kaizen, rapid change event, and we were focused on the beer ordering for the casino floor bar.
So, as we are assessing the current state, part of our data was to look at all the printouts of the orders. And we were focused a lot on the busy, busy weekends. So, Michael, with what I’ve told you, Midwest, suburban casino. Think about a busy weekend night, lots of people in a casino. What would you guess that the top alcoholic drink that people order most often might be?
MD: I don’t know. I’d guess like a Bud Light or a Miller Light .
LG: What if I told you that the record proved that it was a Blue Hawaiian?
MD: I’d tell you the records are wrong, that makes no sense to me. Nothing against a Blue Hawaiian, but that doesn’t, that doesn’t pass the sniff test.
LG: There’s no pool. There’s no beach. There’s a river being pumped under the casino floor, but we knew that it had to be wrong. So as we went and we observed what was really happening, what we found out was that a Blue Hawaiian cost $4.00. A domestic draft beer cost $4.00. On the point of sale system, the Blue Hawaiian button was on the first screen, while the draft beer button was on the second or third screen.
And if you have ever worked in food service or bartending, and you’re busy, and it’s five deep, like any operator in any industry, they are going to find the quickest route from A to B. And they wanted to do the right thing and charge people the right thing, but they were using that Blue Hawaiian to ring up domestic draft beer.
So, that told us two things. Number one, like you said, our data was complete garbage. We did not have any data. The second thing it told us is that we really needed to develop our leaders to have more of a sense of curiosity, because we should not have been the first ones to call that out. And the first step we took was to reprogram that point of sale system so that the domestic draft button was on the first screen. And it was something that simple.
MD: Yeah. And you, you know, something that’s embedded in that story that has been really important in the work I’ve done and my team has done with different organizations is this idea of doing like a Gemba walk, going to where the action is happening and seeing what is happening, because to your point, you know, when you’re thinking about how to, how to frame out a point of sale system, what buttons should be on what pages, when you’re sitting in a conference room or an IT department or wherever, it’s one thing to think about how all that should go and there’s different ways to think about how to order different buttons and colors of buttons and all that.
It’s very different when you go and you put yourself behind a bar on a Saturday night with five deep, like you said, right? And think about the noise and the pressure and the lighting and the volume of customers, of course, that, that may change the behavior a little bit. I just think there’s so much value in going to where the value is being created, to where the work is happening.
Because I think from a user-centric design perspective, that empathy exercise can just work wonders. I have seen that over and over.
LG: I agree. And what you and I discussed before is that frontline operators are great efficiency experts. And so if they are using the fastest, most efficient route, and you’re trying to put something else into that process, you better have a really, really good reason why it’s necessary. Otherwise, you’re not going to get commitment to it.
MD: Yeah, exactly.
Talent Calibration and Succession Planning
Michael Daehne: Well, I’ve got one more question for you, and then we’ll do a little lightning round.
But one thing we haven’t really talked too much about, but you have a lot of experience in, and I think it’s relevant to a lot of our client executives as they’re working through this with their teams, is, you know, these, these processes of talent calibrations and succession planning, such critical aspects of the talent management approach.
What are some tips and tricks or best practices from your career that you would share on either or both of those topics?
Lynda Garcia: Yeah, I think I have two top tips when I think about those because, as you said, I think that organizations cannot be successful if they are not continuously assessing the talent of their leaders and planning for the future of leadership.
Hand off Ownership to Operations
LG: And the first thing I think to be successful, these cannot be viewed as an OD or an HR process. They have to evolve to be owned by operations. And you won’t get there the first year that you launch talent calibration, say. I remember leaders in a healthcare organization passing me in the hall and saying, “Oh, oh, Lynda, I still, I know, I owe you something. I still have to get you your nine block stuff.”
It’s like, well, it’s not mine, it’s actually yours. But I will say that it will take a couple years. It will probably take up to three years to really shift this to operations owning it. And at one of the healthcare organizations I was at, we knew we were successful when we really morphed from the OD consultant who was the facilitator, in the beginning, that person was the one who was challenging leaders as they were presenting on performance and potential of people on their teams.
They were the ones who were prompting other leaders to ask questions. They were bringing up some of the, the nuances and connecting them. Well, by the third year that we were doing that, that role of the OD consultant in the room, that person was still the facilitator, but really what they were doing was keeping the conversation on track, moving it along.
All the challenging and the conversation and the questions were coming from the team of leaders themselves. I think that’s something really important to look for because you can’t be as HR or OD trying to hold on to that process because it needs to be owned by operations.
Choose Your Lens Carefully
LG: And I would say the second thing is talent calibrations and succession planning often get really lumped together and talent calibrations are necessary for good succession planning. But what really helped us evolve was to think about the lens that you look at these processes through.
With your talent calibrations, you’re looking at it through the lens of people. And it’s who are our current people? Who are the people that it’s absolutely critical for us to retain? Who do we believe is the future of this organization? What do these people need to develop?
And then when you really go from there to think about succession planning, it’s a good idea at first to turn off any thought of the current people that you have. And look at it very objectively through the lens of the organizational operations and the positions that you have. So which positions are the most critical to operations? They’re all important, but which of them could we not function without? And do we have the positions that we truly need? And if not, what are we missing?
And when you take these two different lenses on these two related processes, and then put your information on top of each other, you can uncover some really interesting things. For instance, you might have your highest performance and potential talent in your less strategic and critical roles.
And if that’s the case, then you, that’s something you want to look at. Cause you may be doing a disservice to the organization and not preparing the people really with the intensity that you need to.
MD: Yeah, so spot on. It’s that classic idea of where are we deploying our best resources, where are we allocating our time? Do we have the, not just the right people on the bus, but the right people in the right seats on the bus?
LG: That’s exactly right.
MD: And I think too, you know, when I reflect in the course of my career, on the talent calibration, succession planning, even performance reviews, which we haven’t talked much about, but I think, I think oftentimes it’s easy to get wrapped around the axle on like the tool or the framework and in reality, I think I think what is always true is, these things always take time and thoughtfulness. To do them right, you have to invest the time and the energy and the intentionality because it’s not it’s not something you can or should do while multitasking in another meeting thing. But it doesn’t necessarily require turning it into a science project, right? In terms of like, like the approach, it’s, it’s really getting back to what’s our strategy, what are our objectives, and then how are we aligning our people and empowering and equipping and up-leveling those folks to help meet those objectives and that vision.
LG: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And with all of these processes, talent calibration, succession planning, performance appraisals, I think the challenge is to land on the most simple, straightforward tool you can possibly use and make effective because otherwise you start performing to the tool and you take your focus away from the nuts and bolts of what you’re trying to accomplish.
MD: Yeah, absolutely.
Lightning Round
Michael Daehne: Okay, I’ve just got three quick lightning round questions for you. I always like to ask a few fun ones at the end, so, outside of work, what’s your favorite thing to do?
Lynda Garcia: Travel internationally and immerse myself in the culture. Stay at local hotels, eat the local food.
MD: Ooh, love that. Now I’m hungry too. What’s the best book or podcast you’ve read or listened to recently?
LG: There’s one that I keep coming back to. It’s a book and it’s called Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. It is by Ethan Cross. One of the best tidbits I took from it is, if you’re in a stressful situation, you should distance your self-talk by referring to yourself in your head in the third person.
So, if I were really stressed right now, and I were to say in my head, What should Lynda do right now? It depersonalizes the situation and helps me think more objectively.
MD: I’m going to have to try that. That’s a great trick. And I’ll check out the book too.
And then my favorite question to ask folks: what would you be doing do you think if you had not pursued a career in, in OD and talent development?
LG: Well, like every other little girl that grew up when I did, I thought my career was going to be the next Nadia Comaneci, but there’s about 35 reasons why that was never going to be. I will say that it would be doing something that lets me see dogs every day. I was a vet tech while I was getting my master’s degree, and I will tell you that there is no bad day that a puppy can’t make better.
MD: Amen to that. I’m going to go see my golden retriever as soon as we, as soon as we finish up here. And hey, very, very good timing on the on the gymnastics references. We’re in the middle of the Olympics right now. So, love that reference.,
LG: Yes, it’s amazing. Amazing stuff going on.
Closing
Michael Daehne: Hey Lynda, thank you so much for making the time for this discussion. It was great to chat with you and hear more about some of the pearls of wisdom and tips and tricks from your career, and I know they will be very valuable to all of our listeners.
Lynda Garcia: Well, thank you again for the opportunity. This has been a great experience for me.
MD: Great. Thanks, Lynda.
Mentioned
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It (https://www.ethankross.com/chatter/)