0:00:00.0 Kurt Baker: Curious about what it takes to turn change into strategic advantage? Ken Roberts is a master at guiding businesses through agile transformation. As the owner and lead trainer of Better Ways Agility, LLC, he’s helped companies of all sizes boost profitability, improve customer satisfaction, and elevate employee engagement. Driven by a commitment to fostering learning environments. Ken empowers leaders and teams to not just adapt to change, but to thrive in it. Known for his collaborative growth-focused approach, Ken is here to share insights on agile management and the power of modern leadership. Let’s welcome Ken Roberts, a true expert in building resilient, adaptive organizations. Well, that’s awesome. We definitely need resilient, adaptive organizations, with what’s going on right this minute, right? [laughter] So.
0:00:56.5 Ken Roberts: Yeah. Kurt.
0:00:57.9 Kurt Baker: Welcome to the show, Ken.
0:01:00.0 Ken Roberts: Thank you Kurt. I really appreciate being on here. For the first, 15 years I’ve been helping teams and organizations successfully adapt to a changing world, being able to sense and respond to what’s going on, both inside the organization and out. And that includes things like operational challenges as well. You know, how do we scale and grow effectively? How do we stay aligned as an organization to what the things that are important, that we need to react to, that we want to try to make sure that we’re incorporating in, that we’re looking at strategically. And then also cultural changes. How do we deal with things like turnover? How do we deal with working through the generational differences in the workforce, which I’ve heard a lot about recently. [laughter]
0:01:41.2 Kurt Baker: Many changes in the workforce these days. For sure.
0:01:44.1 Ken Roberts: And then understand the leadership and the impact on the culture as well.
0:01:48.5 Kurt Baker: So, how did you first like, get in? I mean, this is an interesting side. This is kind of the operational side of business, at least, for me being an entrepreneur, I was kind of like the passion, like, oh, I see something, I wanna go solve a problem and do it. And I’m like, oh, you gotta run a business too to make all this actually happen. [laughter] So you start just, you start fitting the pieces in to like back up what you’re trying to do, right? It’s kind of, oftentimes ahead of your, over your skis, they say, right? [laughter]
0:02:10.9 Ken Roberts: Right.
0:02:11.0 Kurt Baker: So, you’re the guy that’s actually got the skis and making sure we don’t like, fall over and crash and burn, right? So, what was your passion, kind of that side of the business personality, so to speak?
0:02:24.0 Ken Roberts: Yeah. So it was one of those situations, like I used to be a software developer.
0:02:27.7 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:02:27.8 Ken Roberts: And so I was very engaged and involved tactically on a day-to-day basis. And what I found over time, because I transitioned from software development over to project management, to digital project management in a marketing company to doing training, all sorts of different things. And one of the challenges that I saw is that culture makes a big difference and an impact to how well we’re able to deliver. And if we’re looking things myopically in terms of just what it is that we need to do in our job, we’re missing a whole bunch of things that are just critically important to delivery. So, what I’ve found over time, it’s important to address multiple aspects. The operational aspects are important. The other things that are important are the culture. The other things that are important related to that are the leadership. You look at also things like, how is the company aligned with what the actual customer needs or wants?
0:03:27.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah. So, let’s start with, you got a bunch of stuff going on here.
0:03:27.7 Ken Roberts: I got lots of stuff.
0:03:28.3 Kurt Baker: So why don’t we start with…
0:03:29.6 Ken Roberts: Yeah. Lots of things.
0:03:30.4 Kurt Baker: Let’s kind of start at the, well, I’ll call it the top, even though it’s all important about the leadership and the importance of having the bright leadership in place and how you develop your own leadership, and how do you bring in other good leaders to help you move along? ’cause that’s kind of key. Things kind of work from the top down. So if you often see this where you’ll have a great company, and then the CEO switches and all of a sudden not so great, and you’re like, what happens? It’s the same, like 50,000 people. How did, like one person like, but it all like, kind of flows out from the top and it really has an enormous impact, either positively or negative. I mean, I’m thinking of like Steve Jobs, right? He was in and he was out, almost went bankrupt and where can I get in. Now it’s like one of the most valuable companies in the world, right? So, it’s kind of fascinating when you see these things happening and that’s why leadership is so important. So, can you tell us a little bit about that and what qualities kind of make a good leader and how you can help develop those yourself or in others?
0:04:23.0 Ken Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And I’ve seen the impact of what you’re talking about too, like with things like acquisitions, like where you’ve got a company that’s got a really good culture, they’re really delivering on all cylinders and everything like that. And so a venture capital company or something comes in and buys them, and now all of a sudden they wanna shift the leadership and then all of a sudden the company’s not doing so well, right?
0:04:45.2 Kurt Baker: Yeah. I just had a client just, not a client, a friend of mine, that that exactly happened. His brother had a very profitable business, sold it to a bigger company, which is typically what happens. They thought they were doing strategic purchase, and he says in less than two years, the company has basically crashed.
0:05:00.9 Ken Roberts: Yeah. Yeah.
0:05:01.0 Kurt Baker: And he was like, I can’t believe it. We had the thing running like, great. And everybody started leaving. All their top people started leaving once their lockout period was done, ’cause they didn’t like it anymore. They didn’t wanna work there anymore. So, how do you recognize when you’re doing it right? ’cause a lot of us don’t look in the mirror often enough and say, Hey, the problem just might be that guy on the other side of the mirror or girl [laughter]
0:05:21.9 Kurt Baker: Yeah. Well, like we all have these biases and we all have these internal ways of working. Like, one of the leaders I talk with talks about as being like an internal operating system, right? For example, if your internal operating system is about looking at things in terms of expertise, like expertise is the most important thing, you go into the company, you’re running the company that’s gonna have an impact on the culture. Because what’s gonna happen is, or what could potentially happen, is that everything in the company is now valuing expertise. So, people that are perceived as being experts, then get the higher amount of attention and a higher amount of budget, all of that. People that aren’t perceived as experts are not. So, now all of a sudden people are being concerned about showing up that they’re experts.
0:06:06.8 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:06:11.1 Ken Roberts: Another leader may be focusing on achievement. So, if they’re looking at achievement, then the ripple effect to that in their company would be, we gotta get everything done and we gotta get everything done quickly. So, what’s the impact of the culture on those two different mindsets? Well, there’s a major one, in terms of what people want, what people are looking for, how they show up. The other thing though, the thing that you wanna do as a leader is try to find out how to use the right approach or right culture in the right situation in the right place.
0:06:44.2 Kurt Baker: Yeah. That’s pretty complicated. ’cause you have areas that expertise does matter, right?
0:06:46.8 Ken Roberts: Yes.
0:06:47.5 Kurt Baker: And other places where culture definitely matters because if people don’t want to come to work and work with each other, you’re gonna have all kinds of ripple, negative ripple effects, right? So.
0:07:00.4 Ken Roberts: Yeah.
0:07:00.8 Kurt Baker: So, how do you decide when it’s working and maybe when you need to take another look and say, maybe we’re not approaching this in the best way possible. What kind of metrics do you typically try to follow to see if you’re not drifting? ’cause all of us drift because we think we’re going on one direction and everybody does that. So, that’s why you have to constantly have these re… Yeah. You gotta kind of reset yourself every once in a while just to make sure you’re actually doing what you think you’re doing. And so what would you recommend as far as making sure on the right track and even after that, making adjustments as you pointed out, things are changing. So what work today, 12 months from now may not be the optimal way to do things. We don’t know yet. Right? There’s a lot happening in the world today as far as business goes.
0:07:39.5 Ken Roberts: Yeah. So, one of the things I think you and I were talking about earlier is like experimentation, right? What would it look like for me if I put on a different hat today? Maybe I’m not so focused on expertise. Maybe today I’m focused on achievement. Maybe tomorrow I’m focused on connecting with people and the culture. So, being able to shift that. And then things like, I’m sure you’ve read or heard of Atomic Habits, right?
0:08:01.0 Kurt Baker: Oh, absolutely.
0:08:02.2 Ken Roberts: So, what are the habits that we have that are associated with these new behaviors? Are we following through or not? So you can do journaling and all that kind of stuff to monitor that. The other thing is to do is ask the people that surround you, how am I showing up? Find your trusted advisors, right? And get their input on what it is that you…
0:08:17.1 Kurt Baker: And you have to encourage honest feedback, right? You don’t want to be, ’cause some places you go and you ask for feedback, you’re just gonna get the answer you want to hear. And that’s not healthy.
0:08:25.7 Ken Roberts: And that ties to the culture, right?
0:08:28.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:08:28.6 Ken Roberts: So one of the companies that I worked with, we ended up doing a psychological safety workshop. And it was one of the…
0:08:35.1 Kurt Baker: Psychological safety all right, I hadn’t heard that term before.
0:08:36.4 Ken Roberts: Team psychological safety. Yeah. Amy Edmondson out of Harvard has done research on this.
0:08:40.2 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:08:41.0 Ken Roberts: And the Google’s talks about it as well. It’s the impact of the teams being able to have open and honest communication with each other. The company that I was working with, they had a change in leadership. Is one of those situations where maybe the old culture wasn’t exactly what was most productive, because of the old leaders that were there. So kind of command and control kind of situation, you know what I mean?
0:09:05.8 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:09:06.8 Ken Roberts: Which isn’t helpful if you’re trying to adapt to a new world. But they came in and they recognized the problem. So, what we ended up doing is taking leaderships through a workshop to talk about what can we do to show up as leaders that people want to talk to. And then we also did it with the teams to say, okay, where are the concerns? Where are the fears? What are the challenges? Hey, it’s okay, let’s have some good conversation. And also to have some healthy conflict that’s beneficial, right? Be okay with that healthy conflict. And we’re not gonna beat you up if you’ve got a different opinion.
0:09:42.8 Kurt Baker: But isn’t that easier said than done? Because if I’m “the boss”, is it, they have to feel safe telling me I’m not doing my job very well. I mean, honestly, how do you, ’cause we all, none of us is perfect. I mean Everybody can be improved on. And I’m thinking how do you balance the right amount? I certainly don’t want my people that are reporting to me to come in every day and say, well, you screwed this up. You messed up this, you didn’t do that right. I’m like, dude, man, I’m just [laughter] chill. So, but you do want certain feedback. So, do you like solicit that on a periodic basis, or do you, you have to have some kind of structure, I think is what I’m saying, to do that, so, you know, it’s constructive.
0:10:22.2 Kurt Baker: So you have a, they know the environment is, it’s, this is an okay environment to have those conversations where maybe not on the day-to-day “on the line” while you’re actually doing the work, you may not have, you can’t get interrupted and change your processes right then. But you can certainly have a break and say, okay we’ve got our numbers for the month or the quarter and let’s go back over and say, Hey, so how did we all do, you know? From the leadership on down. And so I guess from a logistics standpoint, how do you kind of, how do you embed that in the company itself? So it’s kind of an ongoing part of our conversation.
0:10:57.7 Ken Roberts: Yeah. Well, I mean, the opinion about you as leader’s out there already, right?
[laughter]
0:11:02.3 Kurt Baker: What is that? Your reputation, what people say when you’re not around? [laughter] Something like that. Right?
0:11:06.5 Ken Roberts: Exactly.
0:11:06.7 Kurt Baker: Your brand. Oh no, your brand, your brand is what people say about you when you’re not around. Right. That’s your brand. Right?
0:11:11.3 Ken Roberts: Right. But it’s about changing and shifting the way that you show up. You’ve gotta be able to say, you know what? I’m here to listen right now, and mean it. And it is, it is one-on-one conversations that you’ve got. It’s also monitoring the culture, maybe doing a little bit of a survey. What I tend to do when I go into companies to try to assess some of this is actually have one-on-one conversations with people. If you’re familiar with design thinking principles, we can go into that if you want.
0:11:40.0 Kurt Baker: Sure. Absolutely. Let’s do it.
0:11:41.8 Ken Roberts: Which is, I use something called what’s that? Okay. No.
0:11:46.5 Kurt Baker: We’re good.
0:11:46.8 Ken Roberts: It’s all good. [laughter] All right. I use something called empathy interviews, or what I call them is context interviews, which are one-on-one interviews where I just basically take, sit down with somebody and I ask a bunch of questions. I just listen.
0:11:57.6 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:12:00.8 Ken Roberts: I try to map out where I think things are in terms of the culture, and I also ask about things like, how are the leaders doing? And then I reflect those things back to a leader in a gentle way so that way they can start to see some of those things. But it really does depend upon the culture. In a command and control culture, it’s a lot harder for those people that are not used to speaking to speak up.
0:12:19.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:12:19.9 Ken Roberts: If you shift the culture, if you managed to do it over time, then they start to be more willing to have open and honest conversations, which ties back to that team psychological safety stuff that we were talking about.
0:12:30.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah. You say command and control. That’s interesting. ’cause I immediately go to like the old style of like top down management. And I think now it’s more, at least the companies I see very successful tend to be a little bit more of a collaborative brain, right? I mean, we all do our part and we all work together to make it happen. Obviously there’s still a leader, but there’s a lot more back and forth between how we all optimize what we’re doing best. So what, when you go in and have these conversations and you solicit kind of your, I’ll call your frontline people and then, you feed that back up to leadership when they have a traditional command and control personality type, what types of responses do you typically get when they first hear back from things that probably would have never been told to them before? Most likely, unless it was their wife or their husband or something. Right? [laughter],
0:13:18.3 Ken Roberts: I think that’s what I should start doing…
0:13:18.4 Kurt Baker: They’re very honest with them. [laughter]
0:13:19.8 Ken Roberts: That’s what I should start doing, is going to the spouses and and start talking to them.
0:13:21.9 Kurt Baker: Go to that one first. So you get the loadout, right? Like, what’s the real story?
0:13:26.8 Ken Roberts: Get the real true story. Right?
0:13:26.9 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:13:27.3 Ken Roberts: And also maybe they can do deliver the message sometimes.
0:13:30.6 Kurt Baker: There you go.
0:13:31.8 Ken Roberts: It depends like some leaders are open and receptive to it. I mean if their company is back up against the wall, if they are up against the wall, they’re more likely to listen at that point. Right? But I…
0:13:41.4 Kurt Baker: Well, they kind have no choice. Right. [laughter] or they’re in trouble. So you’re gonna listen to everything at that point.
0:13:46.9 Ken Roberts: Maybe.
0:13:47.5 Kurt Baker: Well, well true. You’re right about that. That is true. They should be listening.
0:13:49.8 Ken Roberts: Maybe. Yeah. Like I have been in companies where I’ve reflected something back to the leaders and like, I don’t wanna hear it, I’m done. And and nothing’s changed as a result of that. I’m like, okay, well it’s up to you whether you want to buy into it or not. It’s up to you if you want to connect it, whether or not, but I can tell you based upon what I’m seeing, here’s what I’m seeing, here’s what I believe the impact is. Okay? Do you want to address it? Like how do you want to handle it?
0:14:14.0 Kurt Baker: So, what are some examples of like what your frontline people might think is not so good, but a command and control person might say, well this is just how we do things. Right? So what kind of feedback, I mean obviously just be generic about it, but what kind of feedback do you typically get that maybe leaders aren’t aware of that the people that work for them are like, this is like, we talk about this all the time and you’re not, they don’t, they’re apparently not getting the message right?
0:14:38.1 Ken Roberts: Yeah. So, I can think of an example. Like one of the companies that I was engaged and involved with, what we tried to do or what we did do is implement review processes on a regular basis so that way every time the team got some work done, maybe every week or two right? We would go in and say, okay, show us what you’ve done. We’d really love to see how far you’ve gotten what you’ve done. And the goal was to get some feedback. A lot of what I do is about presenting something, getting feedback, let’s try to figure out what the next steps are gonna be. It’s that sense and control loop. Right?
0:15:08.1 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:15:08.8 Ken Roberts: Or sense and respond loop. And we had situations where the leader was coming in and he’d be lambasting the team. You didn’t get this done, you didn’t get this done. And I don’t know what the heck you were thinking on this. It’s not what we wanted originally. So, what’s the impact on the culture of that? During the reviews, are they gonna show you everything at that point? Probably not.
0:15:30.1 Kurt Baker: Right. Right. Right. Right.
0:15:31.1 Ken Roberts: So, I had to sit down and have a conversation. I said, look, when you shout at the team [laughter],
0:15:38.4 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:15:39.2 Ken Roberts: When you shout at the team on a regular basis, the impact on them and on the situation is that they’re going to be less likely to show you that work and give you all the dirty details. So you’re not gonna get all the information that you need.
0:15:49.0 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:15:51.8 Ken Roberts: Given that, what do you think?
0:15:58.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:15:58.7 Ken Roberts: Okay. Because then I have to see whether they’re buying into what I’m selling them at that point. Right?
0:16:02.6 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:16:03.1 Ken Roberts: I’m not gonna be able to force it on them. They have to choose whether they want to change or whether they want to deal with the situation or not.
0:16:11.9 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:16:12.1 Ken Roberts: Sometimes they’ll jump in and say, okay, what do I need to do? How do I shift this? Okay, maybe you can ask some more open-ended questions. Maybe not go in quite so angry could talk, coach them through that. Other times there have been one or two times I’ve been fired because the leaders don’t want to hear it and then nothing changes.
0:16:26.0 Kurt Baker: Yeah. That’s the issue. ’cause I mean, common sense says at least that the people who know what the issues are, are typically closest to the problem.
0:16:34.0 Ken Roberts: Yes.
0:16:35.7 Kurt Baker: And when you’re not willing to listen to what they have to say, even though you don’t want to hear it, they’ll just gloss over it. Right? They’ll paint over the rust until the thing comes apart. [laughter] right? [laughter]
0:16:47.7 Ken Roberts: They will. Yeah.
0:16:47.8 Kurt Baker: And, I think one of the issues I think we all have is, we wanna think things are going well and you wanna kind of force your and say, look, just make it work. And they’re like, Hey, but we maybe have, maybe we need some help here, right? And I think the bottom line is, I believe everybody wants to do their best job, naturally. We all want to be successful in our own way, no matter whether you’re just starting a job or you’ve been there for a whole career. And I think if people value your opinion, no matter how relatively small it may be in the scope of the entire system, I believe now you’re on the lookout for trying to discover other things you might be able to improve as well. And before you know it, you might be come up with stuff that’s actually pretty important.
0:17:32.5 Ken Roberts: Yeah.
[laughter]
0:17:34.9 Ken Roberts: But some people hold and hug on to things, you know what I mean? You know, there’s history and reasons why people hold on to the old behaviors and old ways of working. Right?
0:17:41.1 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:17:42.7 Ken Roberts: And so how do we help make it safe for them to step out of that comfort zone sometimes is what’s important. But what you’re saying is really critical. I’m thinking about that. Like some of the conversations I’ve had recently even this morning with a colleague, and we were kind of talking about a little bit before, is like the newer generations and as they enter the workforce and get engaged and involved, they are expecting to be heard from.
0:18:04.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Because I think there’s some pluses and minuses in this whole thing.
0:18:09.8 Ken Roberts: Yes.
0:18:11.1 Kurt Baker: And everybody’s like, well, they’re doing this great, but why don’t we, ’cause there are some pluses to the old way of doing things.
0:18:16.0 Ken Roberts: Yes.
0:18:16.5 Kurt Baker: So why don’t we kind of go through that a little bit and if you wanna just describe how that blend really can come together in extremely positive way if we kind of take the best of both ways of thinking, so to speak. Right?
0:18:30.0 Ken Roberts: Yep.
0:18:30.6 Kurt Baker: So, what have you seen in your work with different companies about, what’s kind of that right mix of putting the two together and making it work pretty well.
0:18:38.4 Ken Roberts: Well, it’s kind of looking at it from a different dimension. So how can we get both needs met and find something that’s uncommon that we can work on? I think about, I think with a lot of the younger generation, they wanna make an impact on the world. They wanna be listened to because they feel like they’ve got some things to say. How do we help them to present this information in a way that people that are maybe older or, not used to it are able to listen to it in combination with how do we help the people that maybe do have a fixed way of doing things to say that, you know what, maybe it’d be good to try to change things or experiment a little bit and do things a little bit with some safety in it, so that way you don’t have to feel like you’re taking too much of a risk.
0:19:25.4 Ken Roberts: There’s a balance that needs to be done but the example, I had this morning, it’s real simple. This woman was talking about how she had her son and he was working at two different restaurants. And one of the restaurants he came in, nobody asked him what was going on, how his day was. They wouldn’t even ask him like nothing. It was basically just get to work. You know, do your bus work or whatever, your waitering, whatever you’re doing. And then another restaurant that he was working for, they’re like, oh, I heard over the weekend you’re doing games and stuff that you’re playing. What’s going on with that? How are you doing? Like, what do you think about the situation in the restaurant right now? How’s it working out with the customers and all that kind of stuff? So that sense of curiosity is what I think we can all bring in, especially the leaders regarding this. Being able to ask good open ended questions is critical because if you’re able to do that, then you’re able to hear them more clearly and people are gonna be more willing to talk to you rather than just getting yes and no answers.
0:20:25.5 Kurt Baker: And I agree 100%. So what do you say to the people that are like, well, I don’t want people just chit chatting all the way through work and we got work to do, get to work.
0:20:30.8 Ken Roberts: We got work to do. Yeah.
0:20:31.6 Kurt Baker: Right. So, but that’s what some of them are gonna say is like, I don’t want you guys just chatting about what happened last weekend. I need you to go bust that table.
0:20:40.5 Ken Roberts: Exactly, right.
0:20:41.0 Kurt Baker: So how do you address that position for people.
0:20:45.9 Ken Roberts: I get it, and I get it too, right? The thing with that is, there can be conversation while they’re doing the work. On the flip side. On the flip side, though, yeah, you need to be able to measure progress and see the results of that. And I think what’s as important as measuring progress is measuring outcomes. So is there a way that we can look at and see how much work is flowing through the system from an organizational perspective? Are people able to talk on a regular basis about the value that they’re providing and how they are making a difference and getting feedback on that? So that way, it becomes not a conversation about, why are you chit chatting, and more of a conversation about how are you doing in terms of the outcomes? I wanna see what it is that you’re actually providing.
0:21:32.1 Kurt Baker: You brought up a great concept, which maybe you can go into for me, for the audience and everybody, is that, How do you analyze the behaviors you’re looking for and then reward them? ’cause every job, if you look at it, if you break it down all the way down, there’s some kind of behavior you’re hoping to get out of the person, right?
0:21:50.8 Ken Roberts: Right.
0:21:51.6 Kurt Baker: That’s gonna make the company do better. So first, how do you kind of analyze that a little bit? And then once you come up with that, just give us some examples. How would you start incentivize, obviously a salesperson’s simple. You make a sale, I’m gonna give you a commission. Boom, done, right? But other people, they’re not necessarily looking for dollars and cents. So how do you do that through the whole structure where everybody, whether it’s a busboy or whether it’s the manager, whether it’s the district person or whatever it is in the company, if we’re talking restaurants for a minute, how do you make sure everybody’s pointed in the right direction and that’s their goal is to make this thing better and they’re rewarded in some way, shape or form, right?
0:22:27.0 Ken Roberts: Yeah, and some of the extrinsic awards, external things like money, that may not resonate with people. And I think I’ve even heard on your podcast where you talk about how some people just leave not because they’re not making money.
0:22:41.3 Kurt Baker: Very true.
0:22:42.6 Ken Roberts: But they’re leaving the managers, they’re leaving the culture because they wanna find someplace where they are being valued, right? Where their conversation, everything’s being valued. So it’s about the intrinsic motivation.
0:22:53.5 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:22:54.4 Ken Roberts: How can we measure that? How can we measure, do you feel like you’ve got autonomy in this? You know, when you need to do something, do you feel like your team is supporting you and trying to get that work done? Are we all aligned on working on the same thing? That ties back to the psychological safety, right? Because if you’re feeling better about your team and about the way you’re able to communicate and being valued, it’s not just the chitchat at the water cool that you’re getting out of that. You’re getting a lot of people that are working together and feel like they wanna work together to make a difference. So you just ask the right questions. You could do that via surveys, you could do that one-on-one. There’s a list of seven questions that Amy Edmondson has regarding psychological safety. What would it look like if you took those and used those and asked those questions in your company? What would the results be and what can you learn from doing that? So there are ways you can measure it.
0:23:45.1 Kurt Baker: Right, exactly. And I didn’t hear any money in there at all. You’re just listening to what they have to say and responding to it. And at least acknowledging it. Even if it’s not a great idea, at least acknowledge it, well, that’s you know. I’m glad you’re thinking about these things, right?
0:24:00.8 Ken Roberts: Yeah, exactly.
0:24:00.8 Kurt Baker: And I believe there’s value in just acknowledging that. And I think one of the ripple effects for this whole process is you end up, ’cause every company has its own social cultural capital within the company. And sometimes companies don’t understand that social capital in a company is extremely critical, one, for retention, but also for recruiting.
0:24:24.0 Ken Roberts: Huge.
0:24:25.0 Kurt Baker: Because where, when you start looking, think about it. If anybody out here, just think about when you go to look for a job or a business partner or anything like that, or even like to get married or something, right? You’re always looking for how is that symbiotic relationship gonna work with me as a person so that I can actually function as a professional within that culture, right?
0:24:47.0 Ken Roberts: I learned that lesson the hard way when I first started my career. I didn’t ask those questions. I learned the hard way when I got into some cultures that that’s not where I wanna be.
0:24:55.4 Kurt Baker: Right, right. So you wanna tell us a little bit about it if you don’t mind sharing with us, like, What things hit you like, oh, what did you think going in? And then when did you first realize that, oh, wait a minute, this is…
0:25:06.3 Ken Roberts: Yeah, yeah.
0:25:06.4 Kurt Baker: ‘Cause, I mean, you didn’t take the job thinking I’m gonna hate this, right? I mean, hopefully you didn’t. Hopefully you didn’t go in like that. I mean, when you start a job, you think it’s gonna be good. I mean, hopefully or you wouldn’t take the job.
0:25:16.0 Ken Roberts: You look at the internal motivation too, but you’re also looking at the externals like the money and that kind of stuff. Oh, they’re gonna make more money on this. Maybe I should make the leap, right? And then you make leap and you realize you’re not being… Like there was one gig that I had recently where I came in and my intention was to help them at an enterprise coaching level to help them with their organizational structure. Really large company. And they said, no, we’re gonna have you work on metrics and developing reports and stuff. And I’m just like.
0:25:41.4 Kurt Baker: You’re a spreadsheet guy now.
0:25:43.2 Ken Roberts: I’m a spreadsheet guy. That’s pretty much it. Yeah, spreadsheet guy.
0:25:48.1 Kurt Baker: Oh, goodness.
0:25:48.2 Ken Roberts: Spreadsheet and PowerPoint.
0:25:49.5 Kurt Baker: Oh, and PowerPoint. All right.
0:25:51.2 Ken Roberts: So let’s be really clear about that because you got to be able to show it.
0:25:51.3 Kurt Baker: A little diversity there.
0:25:53.9 Ken Roberts: I’m like, that is not the gig. That is not what the impact that I wanna make on the world is. So yeah, I left. And just two weeks ago, I had somebody call me about another job that I had had and said, how is it working there? And I’m like, yeah, think about it. Here’s some of the things that I’ve seen. Maybe you’ll get something out of it. Depends upon what you want. But this is what I’m seeing in terms of that type of job. Your call, you know?
0:26:15.3 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:26:17.3 Ken Roberts: But you’re right. I mean, people talk like the thing we talked about with the boss. Like, there’s a reputation in one way or the other.
0:26:22.3 Kurt Baker: Everybody has a brand. Everybody has a personal brand, whether you wanna admit it or not. Yeah. So what else do you recommend? So we got the business, the leadership. You had other areas you wanna talk about. Go ahead and…
0:26:37.1 Ken Roberts: Oh, there’s so much, but.
0:26:37.2 Kurt Baker: Yeah, go.
0:26:37.7 Ken Roberts: One of the things I’m thinking about in terms of the leadership, one of the things that I’m experimenting and working with right now is actually using improv.
0:26:44.8 Kurt Baker: Oh, this sounds like fun.
0:26:45.4 Ken Roberts: Yeah, it is.
0:26:47.4 Kurt Baker: So how do you use improv in leadership development? This sounds like a lot of fun, actually.
0:26:49.9 Ken Roberts: Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do because I think it’s one of those things where the way that we learn becomes more effective if we’re having fun.
0:26:58.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, absolutely.
0:27:00.6 Ken Roberts: You think about our psychology, right? I mean, if we’re stressed about something, but there needs to be some…
0:27:05.3 Kurt Baker: So how are you using improv? When you said that, I’m envisioning, all right, now you’re gonna be the boss and you’re gonna be the lineman, and we’re gonna let you run the show and then tell him or her what to do, and they’re gonna be like, oh, crap, what are they gonna tell me? It’s like, But I mean, it’s kind of like…
0:27:19.9 Ken Roberts: It’s gotta be a fun exercise to do.
0:27:20.0 Kurt Baker: I envision role reversal. I’m not sure that’s exactly what you’re doing, but tell me a little bit about how you would use improv to try to elicit some better ideas and get people… I assume you’re trying to do this to get a lot of stuff in the open so people kind of understand how they work together, what the thoughts are.
0:27:34.8 Ken Roberts: That’s part of it, but a lot of it is about, from a leader’s perspective, self-reflection on how you show up.
0:27:39.3 Kurt Baker: Right, right, right, okay.
0:27:42.5 Ken Roberts: So, for example, you think about what we do typically with good improv. We’re up on the stage. We’re communicating with a partner. We’re coming up with a joint reality together, and I can’t plan ahead. I am in the moment. If I plan ahead up on the stage, I’m dead because it’s gonna take too long, and I need to make sure that my ideas are getting across to the other person. But there’s an underlying communication that’s going on as well in terms of what is the game of the scene, what are we gonna play, how are we gonna make this work together, right? So, you need to be present. Right? You need to be present. You need to be listening deeply, okay? You need to keep your judgment out of the situation, and we talk about doing yes and, where you accept the things that are coming from another person on the improv stage, and you were saying yes to them and then adding to them in a way that’s effective. All those things apply in business. Like if you’re trying to have a good relationship with your employees, with your customers, with your business partners, all of those things apply. You need to be able to be present, listening, and say yes, and also add to this.
0:28:48.8 Kurt Baker: And that’s true. I mean, whether you’re on Broadway doing improv or whether you’re in business running it, it’s all yes and, right? I mean, you can’t jump out of the middle of a transaction. Something is gonna happen or a situation, right? So you have to literally accept whatever is sent to you and now go, okay, this is the next thing, right? This is how we’re gonna go. So how do you typically kick this off? I mean, what are some scenarios? I’m just curious where you start off with. You say, well, here’s the scenario. What are we gonna…
0:29:20.0 Ken Roberts: Well, one example exercise I would do is have them get together with a partner and we’re gonna plan, I don’t know, a wedding or something. What I want you to both do during the session is plan the wedding, but I want you to say no but to each other. Everything that everybody suggests, just say no but.
0:29:38.9 Kurt Baker: It’s gonna be an interesting wedding.
0:29:41.7 Ken Roberts: Right? How effective were you in that planning at that point? By the end, how did you feel? What was the relationship with. Okay, let’s do the same thing and maybe we’ll do yes but, right? Which isn’t quite what we want, right?
0:29:53.6 Kurt Baker: Right, right.
0:29:53.7 Ken Roberts: Or then we’ll do it again and say yes and or yes also, And we’ll see how far along we get on that one, right? And it’s just a different, it’s not just a matter of getting further along in the planning. It’s a matter of a different feeling about the way that you’re showing and the way that you are reacting and viewing the other person in that transaction.
0:30:11.4 Kurt Baker: And I think the idea creation is much larger. When you do yes and like, oh, we’re gonna maybe have flyers. Yes and, maybe we’re gonna have like a balloon ride outside. Oh, yes and, we’re gonna have a boat ride. And yes and, we’re gonna ride ponies. And yes and, right? So if you just keep going, then before you know it, I never would have thought of half of this stuff. But you’re just, your creative mind and your creative juices start to turn on because it’s naturally, you’re challenged to come up with new stuff even if it doesn’t make any sense, right?
0:30:40.1 Ken Roberts: Yeah, and new ways of thinking about it.
0:30:41.2 Kurt Baker: But that’s part of how our brain works. You’ve got to kind of get it flowing and then just more stuff just starts to come out and come out. And that’s kind of part of the creative process. That’s what they teach you like in writing and improv and all these things is that put everything out there and you can always like bring it back. So if you’re in business, especially now with things being more competitive and there’s all kinds of changes happening, you can’t assume that your business model that works now really, really well is gonna be the same business model that might work 12, 24, 36 60 months from now because all these other forces are gonna be coming at you that you need to be like, hey, right, we could do this for the customer. And you have to kind of break that. This is the way we’ve always done things kind of scenario because there’s a lot of very large entities out there that are much smaller now, let’s just say. And they held on to something that worked for a long time. And then a disruptor comes in and just kind of takes them out and fast, right?
0:31:33.0 Ken Roberts: Yeah, it’s pretty, super fast.
0:31:37.3 Kurt Baker: I mean, really fast. And now they have the momentum.
0:31:41.7 Ken Roberts: Yeah, for as long as it lasts until the we talked about the capitalizing company and then they put another leader that’s old school in charge.
0:31:47.5 Kurt Baker: Oh, right, right, right. So, yeah, you’ve got your entrepreneur leadership and then you have your operational leadership. But you have to have, you still have to have that.
0:31:56.0 Ken Roberts: You have to have…
0:31:56.2 Kurt Baker: You still have to have that piece in there because if you don’t continue. Let’s talk about that for a minute, because I think companies will say, well, okay, everything works great now. Right. How do I do that, ’cause you have to keep testing, if you don’t. I mean, the ones that succeed are the ones that fail fast, recover, move on. Right. So you have to put in their culture of saying we got to try things, try things, try things. So even if everything’s working really, really well, you still have to go out there and keep trying iterations of maybe what you’re doing and focused on what is your true job. Right.
0:32:32.7 Ken Roberts: Yeah, that’s part of it.
0:32:32.9 Kurt Baker: What are you really doing for your customers, your clients?
0:32:35.8 Ken Roberts: Yeah, the way I kind of talk to people about is there’s different horizons on that. Right. So absolutely there’s got to be that innovation horizon of what do we need to do differently? You know, how are we gonna experiment? What are we gonna try out and everything like that? And be okay with that failing or not succeeding. Try a bunch of things. Let’s see what hits. Then you find out what succeeds. Then you try to find a way to say, okay, I’m gonna take that now. I’m gonna do a little bit more work and then start to operationalize it. But there’s also the bread and butter, the things in a longstanding company that are funding everything else.
0:33:09.1 Kurt Baker: Oh, absolutely.
0:33:10.6 Ken Roberts: Right. So there is innovation that occurs there, but it’s a lot less. You know, there your innovation may be how do I make this more operationally efficient, Or what can I do to try to make sure that I’m serving the same need, but with less cost and with new innovations and by doing something to automate this stuff, right.
0:33:32.5 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:33:32.7 Ken Roberts: So, you’re still doing innovation, okay, but it’s a different type of focus, but you need all of it. You know, you need that innovation, you need that edge innovation of, hey, what can we do different? What’s coming down the line? How are we gonna integrate AI into this? What kind of expert…
0:33:45.8 Kurt Baker: AI is everywhere now.
0:33:47.5 Ken Roberts: Everybody’s talking about AI, right? Everybody’s talking about it.
0:33:47.6 Kurt Baker: You knew it’s gonna come up at some point. I didn’t bring it up this time. Usually I bring it up.
0:33:52.5 Ken Roberts: Nope, I’m bringing it up this time.
0:33:53.9 Kurt Baker: Good job.
0:33:54.5 Ken Roberts: Thanks. You know, how do we, like, I think about that, you and myself, okay, how do I integrate AI to make myself more effective, but…
0:34:00.0 Kurt Baker: Correct. And I think that’s the key. How do you integrate it to make yourself more effective? Everybody’s worried about losing their job, but honestly, you’re gonna only lose your job to somebody who’s not adopting that tool. It’s just a tool, in my view, and you just have to understand how to use it because it’s not gonna replace you unless maybe you’re a receptionist or something. I mean, there’s some jobs it might, but most jobs you’re still gonna need to iterate.
0:34:23.7 Ken Roberts: I actually started to take like, I did take a course on AI. I started taking one and they talk about how it works under the hood. And what they talk about is AI has hallucination. They do hallucinations. That’s what AI does. It creates hallucinations.
0:34:37.2 Kurt Baker: That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that before. That’s interesting.
0:34:38.9 Ken Roberts: Yeah. So sometimes those hallucinations are close to reality. Maybe they’re not always. You need a human being to be able to, at least with generative AI, you need a human being to be able to go in and assess to say, is this true? Is it not? It’ll get facts wrong all day.
0:34:53.5 Kurt Baker: Oh, it comes up with very odd stuff sometimes. That’s true.
0:34:56.4 Ken Roberts: But it’s also really creative. Like it gives, like, I’ve done that recently with some of the work I’ve done with the applied improvisation. I was like, okay, you’re an expert in applied improvisation when I say this to the AI. You’re an expert in applied improvisation. Here’s the outline that I came up with. How can I improve it? What other ideas might you wanna add? And it comes up with ideas. I’m like, oh, that’s pretty good, actually. I think I’m gonna grab that. So it adds to what I’m providing, but it doesn’t replace my judgment and my ability to see things that it’s not able to see.
0:35:26.2 Kurt Baker: I would agree with that. Now, you touched on it just a minute ago, but we talked about leadership and your culture within the company and staying innovative. Now, what about that feedback loop with your clients, your customers? How do you make sure you’re serving them the way they need to be served today? ’cause again, maybe what you’re doing today is exactly what they need, and they’re extremely happy. But you need to make sure you’re continuing to solve that need, that problem, that pain point, whatever it is you’re doing for somebody in the most effective way. Or somebody else is gonna come in and do it for them. Right. So you have to be conscious of that.
0:35:57.6 Ken Roberts: Yeah. You know, you got to consider what are the jobs that you’re doing for them. Right. What are the things, the results that you’re providing for them on a day to day basis? What I typically work with companies to do is map out the process from the time the customer starts to engage with you. Like even before they walk in the door, how are they engaging with marketing? Let’s just map it out. And I’m not saying to a deep level, but let’s just map it out all the way to the point where you’re able to build them and get the money or whatever. Step by step. What’s going on with them? How are they feeling in each step of that process? What are the challenges and issues and things that they’re facing? Right. And how do you wanna address them and what do you wanna shift and change to adapt to that? So keeping that in mind constantly. The other challenge that I find though is that that may be done out here in some sort of section of the company with the leadership and it never gets down to the folks that are actually doing the work.
0:36:49.7 Kurt Baker: Ah, Interesting.
0:36:50.2 Ken Roberts: Right. Or the folks that are doing the work may have insights that those leaders don’t have because they’re not in the tactical. So while we’re doing that work, how do we make sure that it gets down to all of the people that are doing the work and how do we make sure that they’re engaged and involved with creating this map? Because they’ve got a lot, they’re close to the customer, like you said. They know a lot of the details that you don’t know. You’ve got to be strategic in that stuff. But how do you measure to make sure that communication is getting down and out when you come up with your objectives and key results for your company?
0:37:22.7 Kurt Baker: So do you get like the front line people, are they getting in some of these scenarios, are they soliciting feedback from the customers? Sometimes we do like surveys as for certain things. But I’m not sure everybody, very few companies can I think of that do a good job of ongoing Feedback from people. They might do it like you bought a car, they send you a survey. Did you like the car? Yeah, I like it. But what happens like three years from now? Do you have anything to do with like the car anymore or not? I don’t know. I never got a survey three to five years after I bought the car. So is there a way to kind of try to keep up with people? Because that’s your best data point is what your customers are feeling, your clients are feeling, right? They’re gonna tell you if you’re…
0:38:00.6 Ken Roberts: Yeah. There are tools out there for measuring things like Net Promoter Score, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of NPS or not, but…
0:38:04.4 Kurt Baker: Oh, yeah.
0:38:05.2 Ken Roberts: Promoter score And that sort of thing that you can use. But tied to that is honestly just open and honest communication. Make a point of going out and doing interviews with your customers occasionally. Create a small little focus group or something and just have a conversation. Sometimes that’s enough. And sometimes it generates ideas also that you can use to feed your innovation pipeline.
0:38:24.9 Kurt Baker: Correct.
0:38:28.4 Ken Roberts: Right? So a lot of it is just the communication and collaboration, right? But yeah, it’s also in combination with the marketing surveys and that kind of thing. Yeah.
0:38:35.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah, it’s a lot to it, right? So where do you see businesses headed now? ’cause we talked about how innovation and change is happening. A lot of people I know have, they’re either very excited or very stressed out about AI and how it’s gonna affect us all. And it is gonna affect us all in some positive ways and not so positive ways. What are your thoughts about that and what should businesses be doing to address those issues and taking advantage of what it does? And maybe being aware of how it may have a negative side, so to speak, as well.
0:39:08.7 Ken Roberts: Yeah, I mean the tools regarding AI are out there. We’ve already seen that they’re making a major impact in the industry, right? It’s the humans relating to the AI that becomes a little bit of a challenge. Right. So what do we need to do to support those humans in adapting to a new way of working is really what the question is. And again, that’s core to a lot of the work that I do is how do we help them to create, how do we create circumstances for them to learn and grow in this in a way that they can step into without feeling too threatened but engaged and involved enough that they need to step over an edge, right? Because honestly, in order to grow, you can’t stay cocooned, right?
0:39:50.2 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:39:50.4 Ken Roberts: You push them too far over the edge, they’re not gonna be able to deal with it ’cause they’re gonna be too stressed. But there’s a middle point in that stress, of just enough stress, positive stress that helps them move along without being so much. So create circumstances that allow that. Go out and try, okay, ask your employee, go out and try this in AI. I’d love to see some results about a week from now about what it is, you know. Hey, I don’t need to be all in and all, but I need you to go in and engage with the tool, right, and show me what you think it’s possible to do. And I’ll give you a week or two to do that. Right? And then, okay, great, I see it, okay, this is, okay, I see some things here. That piece looks interesting. Maybe dig a little bit deeper into that. Like, we don’t need to go right into the deep end. Let them get into the pool in a way that works for them. Right?
0:40:39.3 Kurt Baker: I see, right.
0:40:41.1 Ken Roberts: And the younger millennials and that kind of stuff are the earlier folks may be like, yeah, I’m gonna do it right away. You know, you may get results quickly because they’re into it. You know, they’ve already been working with it, right? And the folks that are the experienced folks that you wanna have in your company because they’re the ones that truly know what’s going on, all that history and everything like that, and the collaboration, the context, and the expertise and everything that’s in their heads. You give them spaces that they need as well. One of the companies I worked with is prior to the AI boom was actually a mainframe company. You know, but it’s like, oh, mainframers they’re gonna take forever for to adopt new ways of working. How do those folks jumped right on it? Like because they feel that there’s a threat out there. They feel that there’s something going on. They feel that there is a bigger challenge in terms of competition and everything coming. And they’re like, I’m in. And some of the best cultures I ever worked with are some of those cultures where people are working through in a way that is supported, working through those inner challenges and stuff with leadership and management support, So they can step into that and then feel confident that the leaders and managers have their back as they do it.
0:41:50.9 Kurt Baker: Interesting you just say that, ’cause, I mean, I was probably one of the ones who was excited and scared. But now I’ve got enough going on in it where I’m actually excited. I mean, it’s gone from because you’re not even sure what tools to use. There’s so many of them out there. So you just got to kind of pick a couple and go with it. But how it can really like in a lot of things I work with, it’s like it’s not just this generic go out into the universe and find stuff out. It actually just helps you with your own database, your own information. And when I started realizing that all this stuff I have to know for my industry and industries that I’m working with, that’s a lot of information and nobody can know everything. And what it does is it helps me very quickly boil it down to something that’s digestible. So even if I’m gonna have a conversation with an attorney or an accountant or whoever, at least I’ve got a pretty good base framework knowledge around the subject matter, as it applies to the client or the situation where I’m gonna have a better conversation.
0:42:45.4 Ken Roberts: Yeah, yeah, that’s right.
0:42:47.7 Kurt Baker: Right, because ultimately, you still have to have people involved no matter how much I see a computer telling me something. I’m like this person’s been doing this for 30 years. They get all the iterations. They’ve dealt with that industry for a long time. I want their opinion on what this says. So I wanna make sure we’re not making an issue, an error, because everything has to apply to a situation. And AI, I don’t think is gonna understand that, at least not in the near future, let’s just say.
0:43:09.5 Ken Roberts: It may not get all the context, although it gives a lot more context than you would think. The way that it works is there’s underlying language models and stuff, and it groups things into what’s called tokens, which is basically combinations of words or topics or ideas that then get grouped together, which is one of the reasons why when you work with a lot of times you wanna say, hey, you’re an expert in this. So that way it knows what area of this huge language model to go into. But one of the things you could do, if you’ve got these concerns or fears of AI, what some of the folks do is they say, what hobby do you have? What are some of the things that, That’s what I did. I was like, okay, I’ve got a hobby.
0:43:46.2 Kurt Baker: That’s a great idea.
0:43:48.1 Ken Roberts: I’m gonna use AI to try to learn more about that hobby. It’s something that I love. Hey, AI, you’re an expert in this, I don’t know, pottery or whatever, right? You’re an expert in pottery, and I wanna be able to design a really good kiln or really good pottery thing. So go ahead and create an idea for me about how I could do that and some of the considerations and how I wanna design it. Oh, wow, you know what? This is kind of useful. That’s not working for me, but this other stuff here is kind of useful.
0:44:15.2 Kurt Baker: And then you can just take that, do plan B and give me this iteration or whatever. And I like the way you can drill down into it and stuff. So yeah, this has really been fantastic. So before we leave here, it’s flown by, I’m just flown by. Any words of wisdom, so to speak? Final words of wisdom. I know you used to give us a lot of wisdom, but some thoughts before we leave?
0:44:34.5 Ken Roberts: When it comes back to it for the leaders, again, I think one of the most important things is having those open and honest communications and being able to ask good, open-ended questions. The other thing I wanna say about this is being able to facilitate sessions and meetings with your people in such a way that you’re getting feedback from them. That’s huge. How do you set up a structure for them to get that feedback and listen to them in a way that they’re invited into? All of that, if you can do that, then you’ve got a better sense and understanding of what’s going on operationally in your company, and you’re better able to knock it out of the park.
0:45:06.8 Kurt Baker: Excellent. Thank you, Ken. It’s been wonderful.
0:45:09.3 Ken Roberts: Yeah, thank you.
0:45:09.4 Kurt Baker: All right. You’ve been listening to Master Your Finances. Have a great day.
