1525 – Learning to be what Your Company Needs with Cross Impact’s Betsy Kauffman

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0:59with us right now it's betsy kaufman betsy you are an organizational expert you are a speaker and you are the ceo of cross impact you are found on the web at cross impact coaching.com betsy thank you for joining us hi josh thanks for having me i'm so excited to be on the show today Yeah. So talk about what you do as, and I don't know that I use the right term, but you basically help organizations with their organizations. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we're an organizational design firm. And so we go into companies and we help them to really think about how to transform or evolve into what they're trying to create next.

1:40So we do anything from looking at the people side of it. Do we need to upscale our people? We look at processes. We look at culture. And then we really think about all those different dynamics as to how do we start to change how the company shows up, how they operate. Some examples, we work a lot in the tech space. So many organizations like project management organizations and portfolio management organizations are trying to figure out how do I continue to stay relevant and provide value to my company? And we help them with that. What does the framework look like? What do the processes look like?

2:12What skills do your folks need to have in order to continue to stay and navigate this new world as organizations start to change and evolve and grow? What are those factors that we might look at how we've structured our organization right now? Who's kind of in the chain of command? How are we staffing in certain departments or areas? and those like needs change and organizations are expected, people are expected to adapt. And what I'm curious about is maybe some of the, maybe like the top, like if we're playing Family Feud, show us the top factors. We've got the top answers on the board. These are the top either external or internal factors that necessitate change.

2:58What would be on the board if we were playing right now? Oh, goodness gracious. Top five. There's so many here. I feel like I need to like, I'd love to do a survey and see like 100 people said. But, you know, I think there's a couple of different things. One is if you've actually gone through a merger and acquisition. So if you've decided to purchase another company, how do you bring them into the mix? Right. If you're changing the strategy of how you're organized, traditional organizations can be very silo based and they're realizing, hey, we're not having good cross communications. Do we need to reorganize and kind of turn our organization on its head in order to make sure that we're having better conversations.

3:35We're actually working together. So we're not HR and marketing and finance, right? We're actually a cross-functional team that helps do that. So that's another thing that a lot of organizations are undergoing right now to say, are we actually set up correctly to work together? And are we servicing our customer right in the right way? So that's a third thing is we start to look at the customer journey. Let's say, you know, as a customer, how am I going to approach the company? How am I going to use your services or products? and have we made it difficult for our customers to do our work, right?

4:06And so to work with us and to use our products. And so that's a third, I would say, as to are we customer centric? And if we're not, we start to change and transform that way. It could be that they're also launching a brand new product or offering, right? And they're trying to figure out like, how do we do it? What makes sense? What do our people look like? Or we're no longer relevant in the marketplace and we're losing market share. What do we need to do? So those are kind of like the five, I think, top five that companies are looking at when they're thinking about how do we change the way that we show up, we work, we offer to our customers, our products, our services, or we're going to acquire or potentially sell a part of our business off.

4:46Yeah. What do you think keeps leaders maybe fearful of adapting? What would be maybe the top friction points that we might be able to be a little bit introspective and ask ourselves, yeah, I think we might be experiencing a little bit of that. Or just emotionally, you know, I might be, I know, for example, you know, having to let people go is awful. I mean, that's terrible. You know, so that fear, you know, and so, you know, maybe I'm just curious if you experience where there might be some difficult decisions that need to be made. And it's not that we're being timid or weak. They're just real emotions involved.

5:33Yeah, so, you know, leaders are having to really think about taking this from a business perspective, right? In order for our business to stay relevant, what is the right move that I need to make? And so, as we're seeing right now, we're having hundreds of tech layoffs, right? Hundreds of layoffs in that tech space, because I think leaders are trying to figure out, hey, we think there's a recession looming or we're in the beginning of recession. I've got to make some big decisions. And usually it could be about people, right? Do I need this job family of people? And if not, I'm going to let it go.

6:08But then once they let it go, what we're seeing is like, oh, wait, these folks actually did something. They were really relevant. So leaders are faced with some of these hard decisions. I think sometimes it is pulling on the, we have to make a business decision, right? Is it the right decision? And what is the impact that's going to have on the people and on the company and on the culture of what we're doing here. So those are the things that I think that's the biggest thing that leaders are faced with, as well as being able to step back to say, you know, sometimes, you know, you have, you actually have to maybe give up an area that you have responsibility for, because it just makes sense for it to go to another leader.

6:44Are you okay with letting go of that? Right. There's sometimes a power thing that leaders, there's an ego thing and a power thing. And I think a lot of times leaders do struggle with that. Like, Hey, I have a, my organization is a thousand people. I'm just throwing numbers out there, right? Oh, wait, if I give you a portion of what falls within my responsibilities, because it makes sense, then I may only go down to 700. Wait, I'm no longer powerful, which is not the case, right? Because again, we need a shift as to what's the best thing for the organization. And how do we as leaders show up that way?

7:17Because when we mimic those behaviors, our employees can see that, right? And they will start to say, okay, they're trying to make decisions on behalf of the company, not on behalf of the leader and their ego and their power. And that's a really interesting dynamic that we, I mean, going, as you can imagine, going into organizations, there's a lot of politics, right? And so that's all the underlying stuff that we have to kind of sift through to see like, what's happening here? Who's like, what's going on here? And a lot of times we're working through the political side of the organization, as opposed to like, how do we make sure that we step back and see what is best for the organization as a whole to make it money.

7:51Yeah. How do you see leaders best, say, either implementing change or, you know, kind of leading in culture in a world where perhaps all of your team members, your employees might be pretty transparent on social media? I'm curious maybe what you've seen historically there where, you know, especially I think I've, you know, seen some headlines of unfortunate, you know, like layoffs, for example. And guess what? That's all going public, you know, potentially, you know, let me just sum up the TLDR version of this question. here, stop mandarin here, is that does, you know, the fact that I think a lot of organizations are a little bit more glass house, from my observation, than we have in the past?

8:50Yeah, how does that impact our ability to do what we need to do? Yeah, you know, I think it's, this is the thing, I want to put out there, being a leader's tough, right? You know, I think we as employees think, oh, I want to be a leader and I want to make all this money and this type of thing, right? Being a leader is tough and they're having to make hard decisions. And sometimes leaders are making really good transparent decisions and taking pay cuts and saying, hey, I'm feeling this pain too, where others are not, right? And instead they're actually laying off thousands of people. So I think as a leader, sometimes it is really important that you need to look yourself in the mirror and say, okay, if I were that employee that I'm getting ready to lay off, Right.

9:32What would be what is the what is the impact that it's going to have and how do I lead them through this? Right. What's the right thing that's going to happen? And so, you know, there is social media out there right now. There's all I mean, you can there's all kinds of information. And, you know, it comes across my feed as to this company had X amount of layoffs and this leader handled it really well. Right. Because they were very forthcoming. They gave us all packages. They've given us information on how do we continue in our job search. They are taking a pay cut. They're not taking their bonus, whatever it is, right?

10:03So they're trying to also do what's best for the company. And then we have on the other side, leaders that are just letting people go and maybe not giving them anything. Like they lock the doors. You can't come in. You're potentially on maternity leave or paternity leave and on vacation. And all of a sudden you longer have a job, right? And then they're not taking any type of hit, right, from those impacts. And so I think as a leader, you need to really like, who are you? And how do you show up and how do you lead through this, these types of big, hard, tough decisions? And it is some empathy, right?

10:38And it is some also self-reflection to say, okay, I need to do what's best for the company, but I also need to maybe make some sacrifices on my part. And it maybe isn't always just financial, but again, thinking through some of those other factors, because again, people don't leave, you know, when you can leave a company on your own, you know, the whole thing is you don't, people don't leave companies, they They lead their leaders. They lead their managers, right? And so I think that goes all the way down the whole stack from the C-suite to the first line leaders. When we think about how we work together as a team, again, as a culture, I'm sure you've seen a lot when it comes to having to now adapt to distributed workforces and the reality Whereas I think maybe there was some glimmer of hope that we were going to put the toothpaste back in the bottle.

11:32That's become increasingly, where do you think we're headed when it comes to remote work, you know, allowing more and more, you know, allowing people to work from home remotely or, you know, where, you know, laptop life, you know, where do you see us going there? And how can we stay ahead? Yeah, it's tough. I think we're headed towards a hybrid. I really do. I think most companies are going to try to figure out some sort of flexible plan, right? So if we work from home three days a week and come in the office two days a week, I know that doesn't make a lot of people happy, but that's kind of becoming the norm of what we're seeing now.

12:11I also think the more progressive companies are going to say, we are fully remote. You don't have to come into the office and we're going to figure out how to make this work. What the companies are faced with is they probably have a lot of real estate that they're paying a lot of money for, right? So what do we do with that asset and how do we actually either leverage it? I know a lot of the companies that I'm supporting currently are pretty much full remote and then they will bring people in like once a quarter for onsite. And they become very rich, two, three, four day working sessions where the team comes together.

12:44So they've actually shifted where they're spending their money on the travel and on the onsite as opposed to, you know, being in the office, staying in the office and having all the amenities of an office worker. And I mean, to be honest with you, people, I think majority of the folks enjoy working from home, right? We've come to see that. We've come to how to figure out. We were able to continue to do business. It's been very productive. And so and we've also now created this new balance in our life that we're like, hey, I'm not sitting in traffic for an hour or two every day. It's lovely, right?

13:13However, I am also now able to be online much longer, which can be a little bit harsh as well. So I think there's a balance there between that companies need to figure out. But I do think you're going to see folks that want to stay and work from home more. So in the future, the digital nomad thing is very appealing. So, you know, and those are some of the things I think, you know, that some companies have to think about, like, are we OK if one of our employees works in Portugal or Spain? As long as they're doing their work, do we care? Right. And so that's there's an interesting conversation. It's probably a whole nother podcast that we can go into with this.

13:48But that's been a lot of the conversations that I know I'm having with many leaders and many companies. Betsy, you've worked with a lot of big enterprise-level companies, for example, Bank of America, UnitedHealth Group, Allstate, Duke Energy, Family Dollar, Microsoft, a real extensive list. What does engagement typically look like with you? How long are you working? What kind of outcomes are you looking at? you co-create with your client? Yeah, we do. We do all kinds of different types of engagement. So for example, some of our clients right now, we've been working with them for four or five years, which some entrepreneurs are like, wow, that's crazy.

14:30However, we're solving different problems in different parts of the organization. So for example, for those types of clients, we're going in and helping to really look at how do we transform an area, right? How do we put in a new process? How do we change and change out job skills and job roles and that type of thing? And so we kind of do very statement of work based. And usually the statements of works are six months, nine months, 12 months. And those are more of our consulting type engagements. We also do leadership coaching. So we will go in and do one on one leadership coaching where we have a full six, nine or 12 month package.

15:05And we do 360 leadership coaching and we get that feedback from them. And then we coach that leader everywhere from emerging leaders all the way up to C-suite. Right. And then the last type of engagement that I really love is I love doing what I just talked about, these facilitated on sites and on sites or off sites, depending on where you are. But it's two days, three days, four days. And we just come in and we really craft a phenomenal workshop where we can get to some of the big elephants in the room and we do the tough work. Right. They're spending the time, they're spending the money, they're focused and we do the tough work on what are some of the decisions and actions that we need to make.

15:43and how do we continue to move forward as a company? So we have different various types of engagements. And I think that's why we have been able to be successful is that it's like, hey, we need to solve for this. Well, let's just do a workshop. That's just a two day. Okay, well, we need you to come in and we've got this big honking thing that we're trying to transform. Great, let's go. That's like, that's a statement of work. That's six months, that's nine months. So what's nice is that we've got, I was telling my team yesterday, I'm like, I think we have all of our offerings could potentially solve most problems that companies are facing, right?

16:15And so it's been kind of nice that we've started to evolve into that from our company's perspective as to, let's pick and choose what would be the right thing for you in order to support you. Yeah, Betsy Kaufman, your website again is crossimpactcoaching.com. When somebody goes there and someone's been listening to our conversation and they're like, all right, I need to get on a call with Betsy and her team or they're just interested in learning more about how you could potentially help maybe solve some imminent things that they know that it's got to be addressed. What would the kind of the next step for them after this podcast be?

16:53Yeah, go on the website. And I believe there is a contact us form. Again, I'm being terrible because my team is probably going to kill me, my marketing team, but I'm sure there's the contact us form and that will go into our team box and then we'll reach out to you and figure out how we can support you. The other way is to find me on LinkedIn and just send me a connection request and a direct message. Betsy Kaufman, K-A-U-F-F-M-A-N. You can just reach out to me directly. And I would love to hop on a phone call and just figure out what's going on. What are some of the things that you're working with and how do we support you?

17:25Sounds great. Again, Betsy Kaufman, you are the CEO of Cross Impact. Your website is Cross Impact Coaching, an organizational redesign firm. Betsy Kaufman, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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