Why Kumbaya and trust falls won't work and what's needed to avoid toxic cultures ft. Glenn Bergsma (Evolve Leadership)

In this conversation, Glenn Bergsma, an organizational and leadership development consultant from Evolve Leadership, shares his insights into organizational design. Bergsma notes that his consulting engagements often involve organizational design, which is one of the many areas of expertise that his firm specializes in.

Bergsma emphasizes the importance of deep listening when identifying organizational issues. According to him, leaders need to play the video, or think ahead to future growth and scalability, to identify potential problems and areas for improvement. This approach requires leaders to be proactive and forward-thinking, which is essential in today's fast-paced and constantly changing business environment.

Another key point that Bergsma stresses is the need for organizations to develop a culture of change. He believes that companies should not rely on external consulting firms to redesign their structures, as change is happening too fast and organizations need to respond quickly. Instead, he suggests that leaders develop org design skills in-house to respond quickly to change.

Bergsma also highlights the importance of clarity in roles and responsibilities to avoid toxic cultures. He emphasizes the need for deep listening and understanding the underlying issues within an organization to identify areas for improvement. Leaders must be flexible, adaptable, and forward-thinking to ensure that their organizations remain effective and successful in the long term.

Overall, Bergsma's insights highlight the importance of deep listening, foresight, and adaptability in organizational design. By fostering a culture of change and developing org design skills internally, leaders can ensure that their organizations remain agile and responsive to change, which is critical in today's rapidly changing business environment.

Transcript

Tim Brewer: 0:00

Welcome to the Org Design podcast. So good to have you along. Look, we'd love you to share a little bit about Evolve Leadership and your own journey, becoming an org design practitioner. Helping so many other organizations get their org structure right, for where they're heading, their purpose, their mission, their values.

Glenn Bergsma: 0:21

Great. Yeah, no problem. Firstly, thanks for, thanks for having me, Tim and Amy on the show. It's great to be able to yeah, share some thoughts and certainly still lots of learning to come from me. But Evolve Leadership, we are an organizational and leadership development consultancy, fairly boutique and we work across Australia and also throughout the US. We specialize in org design obviously is one, one thing, but also strategy, leadership development and organizational culture development. For me, thinking about org design, it was something that I probably fell into more than sort of set out to become an org design specialist. What what for me, I love is I really love seeing leaders and their teams sort of discover and find their potential. That's, I know that's a bit of a cliche word, potential, but I love seeing people and or their teams and organizations go from where they are, to where they could or where they should be and you and fulfilling their sort of hopes and, and aspirations. So that, for me has been that's sort of a lifelong journey, along, along the way. But it started at that sort of individual team level, organizational level. But what I recognized was that how we, where we wanna go and how we wanna achieve success and what that looks like very much comes back to, well, what are the functions, what are the roles that, that people play in order to, to see that happen. And one, I read a great book, Michael Hyatt's'Free to Focus', and the idea of people working in their energy. So, where are people passionate and where are they proficient? And for me, it's then getting, thinking about that at an individual level and then going, well, how, how, how are our organizational structures catering for that? How are they allowing for people to work in the places that give them energy, and the areas they are proficient. It's a great, I guess premise to, to, to enter into org design is individual, team, and company-wide sort of success. And that's sort of how I, I think I landed into it, that mixture of culture, strategy, leadership, people, and then going into into org design. I did do some studies along the way as well, but yeah, lots of, lots of falling into it.

Amy Springer: 2:49

Yeah. Thanks Glenn. So you did start to touch on how you approach org design, but I'd love to go back in time a bit and dig a bit more into,"falling into org design", then eventually choosing to study, as you mentioned, but can you share us a little bit more detail about how you fell into it? What has been your personal experience org design in the past?

Glenn Bergsma: 3:11

If I'm honest, I'll, and I'll be I'm, I'll be honest here. Can I also just mention how I, I, I think the production crew has done a fantastic job getting us all to where khaki today by that was actually all by coincidence, it's quite funny. So I was doing a strategic planning piece for an organization and, you know, great mission, great purpose, great sense of vision. They were, you know, significant size had gone through some, some challenges had started to plateau. And so we, you know, I was brought in to help with their strategy. And then on the back of that, it was then became became this well what, what's Glen gonna do? And what's Tim gonna do? And what's Amy gonna do? And it's like, it was sort of around the wrong way, and rather than focusing on purpose, the focus was on personalities as it related to the execution of that strategy, and for me it was that, that sort of defining moment in the middle of that piece to go, hang on a sec, guys, your structure has to support your strategy, not the other way around. You know, we can't be thinking well, we can only work with the personalities we have, we actually have to think about, okay, what do we need to do to achieve success? And what's the structure we need to have, in order to deliver that? And for me, that's really then opened my eyes to to getting the organizational design piece, and I don't think we called it that back then. But, you know, org charts and getting all those things to go, hang on, we need to think about this differently, it's not about personalities, it's about ultimate purpose, vision, and success, and then what are the key or core functions that we need to deliver that, and then what are the roles and responsibilities and further functions needed within each of those areas in order to achieve that? That was probably that defining moment for me when I did my Master's of Business Leadership, we did organizational behaviour, organizational development and designs in that through through that studies and that, that started to really reinforce for me the importance of organizational design in companies. Yeah, so that's probably a little bit more.

Tim Brewer: 5:26

Yeah, I Glenn, super interesting that you actually started with strategy through to then kind of how that's well executed through an organization. What are the things that you've seen go wrong? Like how do you, when you are walking into an organization meeting with a CEO, board and then the leadership team, what, what are the kind of symptoms you see that your spider sensors start thinking, oh, I'm not really a hundred percent certain that the structure is serving what they're saying they wanna achieve, or you know, what, what are those, what are those things that you sense or see or understand to be the case that people could look at and see as symptoms maybe.

Glenn Bergsma: 6:08

Yeah, well, it was, it was again, just bringing back to a story, it was a, another, another client, it was actually a large not-for-profit client that had parachuted me into to, to deal with culture. So they had a significant culture issue. And, and this is one of the, the things that I think, people often don't recognize is they see things like strategy and they see things like organizational structures and, and they don't recognize the impact that they have on on culture. So this particular situation I was brought in to deal with a cultural issue. There was a toxic culture that was developing within the organization. And they were like, Glenn, come in. We want you to do, kumbaya sessions, we want trust falls, we want all this stuff, we want the team working, you know, working really well together because the culture's terrible. And I'm like, can, can I just talk to people for a bit? Can I just actually get a better understanding? And what was interesting was at the heart of this, toxic culture was actually their, their org design, and was their roles and responsibilities, was the fact that they'll have people scrambling over jobs, multiple people doing doing the same thing and then competing and fighting for, you know, fighting for the, the resources to get that done, and there wasn't clarity of structure, there wasn't clarity of accountability, there wasn't clarity of ownership of particular tasks that need to get done, and that for me was that recognizing that, is going we, we think about culture and, and that, so I'm saying that to me was the symptom a, a toxic culture that wasn't people that were evil, people looking to make each other's life a living hell. It was actually people that were scrambling over roles and responsibilities. So after that deep listening exercise that we did, I actually stood, stood back. Stood back and said, guys, trust falls aren't gonna do it. In fact, they're probably gonna let people just fall on the head. This isn't gonna work. You know, kumbaya around the fire, there's gonna be people try to push each other into the fire. That's not what we need to do. What we actually do it back, bring it back and get it to a place where we can get clarity of who's doing what, what do we need to do, who's doing it, who takes ownership, who's accountable to who, and, and therefore led into an org design piece. So that was a symptom, was that sort of toxic culture.

Tim Brewer: 8:43

That's interesting.

Glenn Bergsma: 8:46

Yeah, well it, it was fascinating'cause it's not normally how you would get to get to that, that point of org design. Normally, org design comes from either it's a, you know, we need a downsize or we've got scalability issues, and they're more the typical aspects of it that, but there are other symptoms as well is a company plateauing, and, and, and seeing that, so, so for me, if, if that company has got to a certain point and isn't growing, then I'll have a look at that org design and go, well, tell me, actually, I'll start with probably process, talk to me about how, you know, what is it you do? What are your products? How do you deliver those? What are the services? How are you then running that as a process, and then who's doing what within that? Where are the bottlenecks that that happen within that. Is it a front end issue? Is it like at a sales and marketing function issue? And, and is that, is that the part we need to focus on? Is it the operations that are, or on onboarding where it hits, hits that point of entry into the contract signed and they're delivering and then all of a sudden it, it's stops there? Is it the, the ongoing serviceability of, to that client does it, does it hold to their, so actually looking at the, the processes and looking at their ability to, to scale to, to grow is, is probably another, you know, is another symptom that I, that I see. So, just trying to think, culture scalability, sustainability is another one, you know.

Tim Brewer: 10:21

Mm-hmm.

Glenn Bergsma: 10:25

Busting their ass, trying to get everything done that's on their plate, and that often is also a trigger to me about, ah, maybe this is an org design issue. Rather than, you know, rather than whoever gets, whoever shouts the loudest gets the, you know, the gets the, the human resource. It's like, well let's bring it back to to, to looking at the, structure itself.

Tim Brewer: 10:53

Glenn, you, let's say you get in that situation you know, we're sitting around the table. Me and Amy have brought you into our imaginary organization. We are probably gonna have to come up with a good one for these questions, Amy, so we'll have to think about that. But we, we've come up with a, an organization that we've got you in, we've talked through the symptoms. You're like, Hey guys, you've got an org design problem. Where do, where do you even start on that org design journey, Glenn?, what, what does it look like when you start like, okay, we've all in agreement that we have a, a structure problem. Like who reports to who, what they do, where they do it? Maybe have an accountability misalignment, or lack of clarity as you talked about. What's the, what's the first couple of steps that you engage? You're like, where do we even start? Do we just start drawing on a whiteboard? Do we like, what, what, what's your, how do you tackle that?

Glenn Bergsma: 11:43

Yeah. No. Yeah. It's a great, great

Tim Brewer: 11:45

Each other across the boardroom table, sorry, sorry. Apart yelling at each other across the executive table that I need more resource and Amy's wrong or Amy yelling at me saying, you know.

Glenn Bergsma: 11:55

Now I, I, think there's, there's, for me it always starts with listening. Like it's, so I have this sort of philosophy and what, what I do is, which is around sort of, listen, listen, learn, lead. So you know, you, you wanna come in and often people come in guns blazing. We're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, or you know, lemme pull this textbook off here and open up the textbook and go, well, you know, this is what best practice should be because the textbook says so. I often find the best way to start is to go and listen. Deep listening, go and meet with people, eyeball people, interview them, do surveys, however you gather that information. To really understand what are the underlying issues that are, are, are going on here, because what management may present, or what the CEO may present may not actually be the case. A lot of the times they're onto it and they're switched on and they're, you know, they're, they're good listeners themselves. So they're able to bring that bring that narrative to the table to listening. Place I would start to try and look for sort of themes and patterns. And I'm thinking about one particular was, it was actually in the education sector. And it was a large it was a large school that was having some challenges in terms of, its, its leadership structure, its organizational structure and whilst the, the particular leader had some ideas on what they thought it could be and had done some research, we actually started that process of, of, of listening and, and recognizing that some of the deeper issues were the two, the two deep issues that came from that listening was communication and it was also ownership of responsibilities. And there was this sort of scapegoating, blaming, making excuse, the excuses, like you said, it's Amy's fault or it's Tim's fault, or it's Glenn's fault, and, and that lack of ownership and the lack and poor communication came out through that listening. So that then helped us to go, okay, well whatever we do, and there was actually like, I think there was like eight sort of key findings that came through that deep listening. What that then allowed us to do is to then go, okay, well, whatever model we design going forward we have to ensure that it addresses, the, as many of these challenges as possible. So we then went into the, the process of doing some, you know, we did some research, what are some other models that it could look like? And we put together three different design options. That what that organization could look like, and then we started to engage with the, the leadership, middle management, the board to go, Hey, these are some of the, the options that we're thinking about, and this wasn't a, a cost cutting activity. We weren't trying to get rid of FTEs in this process. This was about a, a efficiency and effectiveness. So we then went about that process of, of of interacting those designs, the options with stakeholders, gathering their feedback ensuring, you know, working with the director of corporate services to make sure that you know, that it was all feasible and financial and making that clear at the start that whatever we do, we have to ensure that this. It, it, it's realistic and it's doable. And then we went through that process of, of, of just decision making around what the best option was. And then we started to, to work with that option and then started to fill that out in terms of roles and responsibilities and how that would change. And then that's just phase one, right? You guys know this. You, you do all the design you like. It's the change management process itself, which which is equally as important in how you bring about that change. Hmm. Does that make sense?

Tim Brewer: 15:51

Me and Amy talk a lot Glenn about, why do organizations end up needing to go through enormous restructures with institutional consulting firms that cost millions and millions and millions of dollars? Why couldn't they just make change when it's obvious? More regular more regularly? Do you? How do you, what do you think the hardest thing is for most organizations to, to make that change? Why couldn't the not-for-profit that you're talking about see those issues a year ago, two years ago when they first presented and just kind of naturally have that conversation and action change path forward that's not as big as a big restructure and, and needing to re completely reorganize their team to be more focused on performance and outcome. Why, why is that? Why do people shy away from change? Why is that change so hard, do you think?

Glenn Bergsma: 16:43

I with the, the word that comes to mind is, I know, I don't even know if this is a word, but institutionalization, I'm gonna call it. And that's where structures get established and people, you know, have that clarity of role and have that have that expectation on them, and then they go about their business and there isn't that, the pace of change and the external forces coming on that orgnization and the internal focus and thought around org design doesn't, they're not correlated, so you've got all these external forces which create this need for change, and we know that change is everywhere, it's the only constant, et cetera, et cetera. So you've got all this pressure to change, but internally there there isn't a there isn't the freedom or the agility, to be able to, to change quickly in that because of this institutionalization. We've been doing this for 10 years this way, so, so, you know, what, what's that gonna mean for my role? There isn't a a, a fluidity to who does what when they, you know, how they do it that people get very fixed and then you have habit. We know the power of habits. So then habits get entrenched within the lives. So we're all a result of our individual habits. But that's the same at an organizational level. So those habits just in, they just lay a cement on, cement on cement, and all of a sudden you've, you're stuck. Because that's just how you've learned to operate so I think, the lack of focus, and you mentioned it before Tim, about, oh, we gotta go get in, you know, spend millions of dollars to do this, this re- structure, my personal thought is organizations actually have to start to learn to do org design themselves. It's not, it's not for the, the big, the big five consultancy groups to come in and charge millions of dollars because change is happening so fast that we actually need to be able to respond to that as, as, as quickly as we can. Then they will find themselves being entrenched in a structure that, that finds it difficult to change because a lot of effort goes into it. Whereas, if you can create a level of, as I mentioned, the word fluidity, then it allows you to, to go, you know what, we're gonna test this. We're gonna test this model, see how it goes. We're gonna feedback loops we're gonna check in at three months and then six months, and then at nine months. You You know, if we need to make changes at any one of those points, then we can, and I think speaking on change, my two, you know, my two favorite authors on change are you know, John Kotter, we all, you know, we're all familiar with his eight steps to change and create a sense of urgency and a powerful coalition, blah, blah, blah. But another one is Peter Senge, who speaks about the learning organization, which you would've heard. He actually penned that term and he talks about change is a process, but change is a culture. So how do we create cultures of change that allow us to, to move and go, okay, this isn't, this isn't working, we're missing something here again, with our organizational purpose, vision and strategy leading the charge, what, what aren't we delivering and how do we need to modify? Our org design in order to achieve that. Now, again, if every time you have to do that, you have to bring in a consultant, then you know, then it's very ineffective. Well, it's costly and and can, can slow things down versus developing that skill internally through your, maybe your people and culture division. or at that executive level so they figure out that we actually can control this and we can manage this ourselves. So I think creating a culture of change, having a really clear process for change, as well as the two ways to, to help mitigate that, and move from the design phase into the, the implementation of that new design. But if we think that happens once and it's okay, let's revisit this in five years, then I think we, I think companies get stuck.

Amy Springer: 20:55

So Glenn, you've actually You've hit right at the heart of the mission of the Org Design Podcast, and that's making org design a key skill for leaders in every organization. If could click your fingers right now and we could give every leader one skill related to org design, what would that be for you? What do you wish every leader could do?

Glenn Bergsma: 21:20

I wish, I'm gonna call it this, play the video. So play, play the video or playing the video, and the idea there is, is we, we often as leaders, we are thinking so focussed on the now, We're going on, we've got inefficiencies, we're ineffective. How do we fix that? That, that, that's important that we address that, but one thing I'd love leaders to be able to do and is to play the video, which is going, what does this mean for six months from now? What does this look like for three years from now? And how do we build a scalable, sustainable and profitable business model so that we know. So workforce planning is probably another, you know, word if, if, if people could, could, could know that word. But play the video so that you know that if we are going to grow and if we are going to achieve our vision, then what does that need to look like and how does our model support that? And what are the, what's our workforce planning gonna look like? Not just now in order to deal with our inefficiencies and ineffectiveness, but also for the, the, the future growth that we wanna achieve. So that you know when, you know when revenue hits this and pipeline, you know, hits this, we know we need to, to make this decision, and when we need to make three of those decisions, we then need to know we, you know, there's another decision to make as it relates to that, that scalability of the, the company. So play the video would be my, one thing, if I could that to all the organizations that I work with and all that you guys do as ability to think into the future, and to ensure that the design that they have doesn't just work for now, but works for the next, you know, season ahead.

Amy Springer: 23:08

So if, you know you have a manager sitting with you today and they're like, all right Glenn, I wanna play the video for my business. What would that look like in three quick steps?

Glenn Bergsma: 23:17

Yeah, great. Well, I, I can remember working with an architectural firm and they had a, they, they were, they were a strong company already. And they wanted to grow. They had an appetite for growth. And so we, I said, so tell me about your growth, tell me about your growth ambition, and then we were able to look at, okay, well if you are wanting to grow, let's say by 30% over the next two years, what does that model look like from an org design perspective? Currently? So we had worked out and we, got, we had set them up into these pods, project, project managers who were part of that and created these little pods and we knew that each pod could be accountable for$5 million sort of worth of revenue. So in order to then think about that future growth, to go, okay, if we wanna grow by 20 million, let's say over the next two years then we know that we need to be working out a model where we just need more pods and each pod we have which we know can generate revenue. For each pod, when we have three pods, we know we need a new, we need a new account director who can then manage that pod and for each, you know, and, and therefore you can, you've sort of set up an equation. When A plus B equals C, then we do, then we do D. So starting to think about that from a business strategy, revenue perspective, and then thinking, right, well, what's the model, the scalable model that we, that, that we know, and we know we, we know what's variable and we know what's not. We know that every job needs this, this, this, and this. So we need to be able to factor that into the roles, responsibilities, functions of the, of the company, and then project that out over time.

Amy Springer: 25:11

You mentioned, you know, you, you go in as a consultant really to these companies. You're not there for org design. I'd love to know what percentage of the time, does it end up with an org design component? So you said could be cultural and execution or sustainability. How often in your clients do you end up doing org design?

Glenn Bergsma: 25:34

The majority of the engagements, yeah, the majority of engagements that I have would, would at some level, visit org design and it could be just the question, you know, has, and you can do that at the top level and look at the, the staffing ratios and you can look at revenue and you know, revenue per staff member, and there's, there's things at that level, but I would say each would engage, have some level of engagement with org design might just be, have, do you feel like you, your structure's working? What's your culture like? What's the, you know, is, is what's the profit like, what's the culture like? And looking at the soft and hard figures of sort of business health. I can't imagine that there's ever been a time, I'm just trying to think where, I haven't asked, what does that, what does the design look like? How are you structured? I remember this thing called the anatomy of organizational performance, and it was this sense of, how do you do, how do you do what you do what you do? How does work flow through your business and how do you structure your business to, to deliver success? I would say I would ask that question nearly all the time, nearly all the time. Amy is my, is my answer, and I just needed to take the

Amy Springer: 27:03

Perfect.

Glenn Bergsma: 27:04

need to take the scenic route to get there. But yeah. Yeah.

Tim Brewer: 27:08

You're with Tim Brewer and Amy Springer on the Org Design Podcast with our guest Glenn Bergsma from Evolve Leadership. Glenn, it's been a privilege to have you on the show. Thank you so much for your time and humility to come and talk to us about org design and the things that you see go on behind the scenes. So for people who would like to get in contact with Glenn or have him help out in the niche areas where he helps people with both strategy and by the sounds of it, almost always some interaction with how they've structured their organization. We'll have Glenn's contact details on our website with the podcast. But thanks so much for joining us, listening and learning as it relates to your org design skills as a leader, and it's a pleasure to bring people like Glenn on the show and have them share their expertise with us and with our audience. Amy, thank you so much as always for joining me, challenging me, and having fun as we get to interview such great leaders and practitioners, and working together to share that kind of knowledge so people can build better places to work.

Glenn Bergsma: 28:17

Thanks for having me.