Stop Fixing Processes. Start Designing Systems.

Speaker A: On this episode of the show, I have with me Kit Krugman. She is SVP of people and culture at, uh, Foursquare. And we're going to be talking about people leaders as system thinkers. And obviously, you know, there's a lot of process in the roles and sometimes we lean a little too heavy on them. But we're going to talk about what it means to be a system thinker and how you go through rethinking, structure, process, and how do you affect that change and how do you actually reincorporate it back in to the teams that you're working with and how do you make sure it's all working out? Well, Kit, thanks for taking the time.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Uh, before we start, can you tell everyone what Foursquare does?

Speaker B: Most folks might know the name from when we were originally a check in app, um, back when we were founded, um, but essentially now we've become the location layer of your tech stack. So we build geospatial technology, uh, and what that means is kind of best in class location technology, which helps businesses use location and location intelligence to power products and make smarter decisions. So in action, that looks like two directions. We provide kind of the places layer, um, through our places data set to organizations like Uber. Um, when you type in, uh, location, that's foursquare data. And then our other primary product is attribution. So helping marketers make more impactful and effective decisions.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I definitely remember the uh, old four squared and obviously the new one we're all probably using. It just weren't aware until you just described it. So that's fantastic. Um, this episode we're going to be talking about system thinking and um, I guess let's start off at the top in case someone is not familiar with the concept of, uh, system thinking and what that means. I guess in your view, uh, to call somebody a system thinker, what does that mean?

Speaker B: So I view systems thinking as essentially big picture thinking about how systems work together to drive whatever result you're trying to drive in the people function. The way I view it is that we are systems designers because we are responsible for the people layer of systems in an organization that's actually inclusive of all of the technology, all of the organizational infrastructure, all of the organizational design, people, processes, structure, all of those are interlocking systems. Systems that when working really well together, actually drive the outcomes you want to see for the business and when in conflict or intention, can work against your goals.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And I guess you know We've traditionally viewed some of the role as being process heavy. Right. Obviously there's a lot of process and that goes into place and it becomes entrenched. And obviously you get very used to that when you have that, uh, people leader lens. How do you avoid getting stuck into just process and kind of missing some of that system thinking? Because it does require a bit of a context switch between those two styles of work.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like this is where the trap of the role is, to be honest. I think the trap is you are responsible for policy level decisions for an organization, for a group of people. You're responsible for maintaining equity in an organization, for creating something that is fair overall. And when you are faced with the multitude of decisions that you need to make on behalf of people related policy on a day to day basis, it's much easier to point to, let's develop a policy, let's develop a process, let's develop something that we can repeat over and over that actually maintains a standard that enables us to be much clearer with people to say, this is the policy, we do not deviate. Um, so it actually decreases the complexity of the conversations that you need to have on a day to day basis. Um, but what I believe and what Gary Little, our CEO here believes, and this is kind of what connected us originally, was there is an altitude above that which is principles based. And if you have a clear, if you're able to communicate clearly the principles that the organization operates on, then there is a way to not be leaning as heavily on process or policy, but to work on socializing a deep understanding of the principles that the company operates on so that you solve that equity issue, the fairness issue at that altitude, rather than having to lean very heavily on the processes and the policies that support it.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I love the way you put that. I guess maybe just, yeah, a follow up to that because I think, you know, people will probably be listening, going, well, you know, I am responsible for process and you know, it's there for a reason. And I understand, um, when you are a people leader, you're putting in process that affects a lot of people. There's very few people that actually in a company, you know, can implement that kind of impact and change. Right. I mean, even the CEO, uh, even the CTO only has a section. But as the people leader, your policy impacts, uh, everyone. I guess when you think of that little analogy, it's a mini nation, uh, state. Obviously you're trying to do the best you can for the most people, but obviously there will always be people that will not fit whatever the program or process is making those changes. To be a system thinker, you have to go in and look at these systems, try to reevaluate them. Moving that needle, though, it feels like it sometimes needs some surgical precision. Because if you do it incorrectly, all of a sudden the people that were happy are going to be unhappy. And then who's the people that actually got left out? Again, that seems like a bit of mix of art and science there.

Speaker B: Yeah. And to clarify, I'm not anti process. A lot of times my team and I will talk about, hey, we need to clean up the process here, right? We're seeing issues related to, um, leave administration, where we need to clean up the process, et cetera. So I'm not, I'm not saying tear it all out. Um, however, I think that when it is the. It's kind of like I have a young son who is constantly asking me for a band aid. And it's kind of like if everything is a band aid, if every boo boo is a band aid, then you just end up like throwing band aids at everything versus genuinely asking yourself and the organization what is the root cause of this challenge? And is it truly a process redesign that's needed, a, a pulling together of the people to look at the inefficiencies or the pain points of an existing process or policy? Or is it that, ah, it doesn't even need to be there, or that the whole system behind it and guiding philosophy is off? Um, I can give a concrete example of this with performance. When I came into the organization a year and a half ago, um, I spent a while, the first kind of six months auditing what we were doing with performance. As I was doing that, I started to map out, literally physically draw out the different things we were doing on performance. Whether that was anytime feedback, the removal of classic performance reviews, um, the way that we were managing performance, or managing performance, uh, improvement plans in the organization. When I was finally at the end of mapping out this ecosystem, I saw a system that wasn't fully communicating the same things consistently across the board. And it was an incongruent system. And so what I ended up talking to the team was already downstream managing the symptoms of an incongruent system. And what I ended up pulling up with the team about is we actually need to go back to the beginning and say, what is it that great performance looks like? How do we administer that today? Do all of our does, our technology does, the way that we talk about this is what we reward how we compensate. Does this all actually stack up to the same thing to send the same signals to our people so they know what success looks like and are set up to succeed?

Speaker A: I like that. Uh, and I guess in that scenario, as you're going through that change management, obviously you're going to be affecting work. I, um, mean, you're going to be affecting how people used to do something. There's got to be a little shift. That change management to me sometimes is tricky because that's really where the adoption happens. Because if they don't feel like it really benefits them, we've all seen it. People be like, wow, forget that. I mean, it's new, but I'm going to stick to what I used to do. How do you, A, work on change management and B, how do you measure that adoption? What's the feedback process look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think, you know, it's a great question and there are a lot of philosophies on change management. Um, when I was studying organizational psychology, obviously I spent, um, a fair amount of time looking at the different frameworks and all the models and um, and then there's also the reality of implementing change on the ground and the different leader kind of ethos about how that should be done. So, you know, one of the, one of the great learnings. I remember my first week when I was doing my org psych program at Columbia was, um, Dr. Warner Burke, who is kind of a renowned leader in the space, was saying that, you know, for really effective change there has to be kind of massive perturbation. It's kind of a funny word, but that's genuinely the like, technical term. Um, and that is defined as like a major disruption to the system. So I think about things like hybrid and remote work and how much, how many people were championing that for years and years and facing resistance until the pandemic. Then all of a sudden someone figured it, like everyone figured it out. So it's just, I'm not saying that change has to happen at that scale, but in organizations there's kind of two ways to do it. You sort of incrementally make changes or you do massive change that then requires the full cycle of grieving, recovery, and kind of classic emotional management of, uh, more dynamic change. But you get to the other side faster. And so this is always the thing that I spend a lot of time thinking about intellectually, which is, does this change call for incremental change or does this change call for kind of disruptive change in order to get us to the outcomes faster. And that's a strategic decision. So that doesn't answer all of your questions, but just to give you kind of the philosophical framing of how I think about change, um, the thing about changes on performance systems. So let me give you a concrete example of what we dealt with at Foursquare too. Before I came in, we had implemented anytime feedback. We had actually removed a classic performance review and put in anytime feedback, which a lot of organizations are trying to do because the rate of change is so continuous and so that you know, if you do an annual review, you kind of, you're suffering from recency bias. You're pulling up kind of data that is stale, um, and you're not having candid and honest conversations that are operating at the pace of change of the business in the world today. So it's the right instinct. Um, however, shifting from a kind of accentuated moment where you really focus on performance to continuous expectation that people engage in difficult conversations often is a massive behavioral change that requires kind of a full scale like behavioral, uh, change in order to actually incentivize it. So you have to really put people on the hook for it. So when we redesigned the system, we tried to strike the balance between that, which is to put in technology that made giving feedback anytime, uh, whether it's positive or constructive, really lightweight and really easy. And we also added in multiple check in moments that were more formal throughout the year to actually create accountability that was tied to performance measurement, calibration and merit and compensation increases. Because at the end of the day, if you don't have genuine consequences for not participating, you need to incentivize people to actually engage in a system.

Speaker A: I mean, I, uh, that's a great example and I, and I love how it kind of sets the frame for, for the conversation. And I guess when you look at that, when you look at identifying something going about, making the change, obviously we're talking systems thinking. So you have to evaluate and forecast out and map out your, your process, your solutions. When you guys identified, obviously the anytime feedback wasn't working, was there one symptom? Was it just a lot of people? Because sometimes I think what's really hard is identifying what the root cause is. I think sometimes people identify the effects and that's what we hear. But to actually go back and find that root cause and to be a system thinker so that you really solve the problem, that's a little tricky. Was there anything in particular that stood out or was it just a lot of little things? Or what was the Culmination for change.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it was actually a very specific thing that was a catalyst for seeing that there was potentially a problem here. It was the amount of performance improvement plans we were doing and the, um, success rate in coming off of them. Performance improvement plans. PIPs are, uh, a compliance tool. They're a risk management tool. Ideally. You don't want to get to the point where you need to deliver one, frankly. So, you know, what Gary and I talked about is how do we live in a post PIP world, a world where people are so clear about their performance standing that a PIP is not required. By the time you get to, um, the point where you would give a pip, you're already having a termination conversation because it has been so clear and in order for that world. So then you have to work backwards from that. In order for that to be possible, you need feedback to be given frequently, candidly, and specifically way upstream. And so to me that was the catalyst to say the only path to a post PIP world, which to me is a symptom M that we don't have a culture where people are giving enough feedback. If people are coming off of these things, that means that this is the first time that they've gotten clear, constructive, structured, documented feedback. So that was the catalyst to realize that we as a people team, we're too downstream. We were stuck downstream administering process and risk infrastructure versus being the leaders of a strategic conversation about great performance and how to facilitate it in the organization.

Speaker A: Interesting. I, uh, guess as you this example that we've been talking through, how often or how frequently do you then go back to M monitor, evaluate the changes that have been made to ensure obviously you want better results. You don't want different results, you want better results. But how do you make sure that the different results are better?

Speaker B: I grew up in the creative innovation space. Um, I bring a design thinking and experiment design lens to all my work too. And so even when I set out to take this role at Foursquare, I felt very strongly that we as a people team needed to identify a north, uh, star contribution to the business and ladder all of our work in a very dynamic way to that meaning that we should have a North Star of the contribution we would make as a people team. And we would be doing a series of what I called big rocks and prototypes to achieve that goal. Now. So we landed kind of in the first. We did an offsite in November. Uh, we landed on increasing two things in the organization, velocity. And so that was velocity as applied to speed to action. Um, Product velocity, kind of all velocity across the organization, speed to decision making and increasing vibrancy, which is the. We defined as kind of the connection. Like it's. To me, that's a better word than engagement. Engagement. I don't know. Engagement falls so flat to me. I'm so over the word engagement. I want vibrancy, I want enthusiasm, M. I want energy, I want passion, I want mission for the cause of what we're doing and the reason we're organized. And so those two words, we kind of coalesced around those. And having that clarity, we were able to then do two things. One, ladder, ah, our initiatives to that. And then two, we pretty immediately like. So I came in in October. Um, we redesigned the engagement survey in January to align fully to those two metrics and to our leadership principles, which our CEO had rolled out before I came in. So I do not believe in engagement surveys that sheerly measure engagement or other metrics that are irrelevant to what you're trying to do as a business. So my thesis was if we only measure the things that we are trying to move the needle on, then we'll be able to get an actually realistic answer on whether we are successfully driving progress against those vectors.

Speaker A: I like, I, I like the notion of vibrancy, uh, connection over engagement, because I think that's, you know, I think when we hear about engagement, it's, it does sound generic, it sounds sterile, and it doesn't sound like it really promotes what you're actually wanting from that engagement. So I think that's an interesting way of phrasing it. And when you go to your stakeholders, because obviously sound, it's, it's clear you have a different mindset when you're going to the stakeholders. I think it is very important in how you approach them with change and how you articulate that. Because if your aim is engagement, you might get it, but you might not get adoption just because there was engagement. And I think adoption is really what you are hoping for. So your vibrancy, that enthusiasm leading to adoption and usage is, is an interesting way. Do you approach your stakeholders differently? I guess if we were to go back, um, rewinding all the way to the back, when you are initially talking to stakeholders, how do you factor in knowing that you're aiming for that connection, that vibrancy versus engagement? Is it a different conversation? Is it a different approach? Just, is there anything different at all?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm, I'm a big believer. Again, like, I come from a creative background and so I know the value of Brand and I know the, the value of words. Um, I studied literature in college, so I'm truly like hardcore liberal arts at the end of the day. Um, and I think that in order to really affect change, you do also have to rebrand things. And so when I came into the organization, I rebranded the team from HR to people team. And when you, when you change a word, you have the opportunity to redefine it. That's kind of the gift of a rebrand. And so in that moment I was able to stand in front of the organization and say why I was advocating for that shift, what it meant to me and what I hoped it would mean to the organization. The same thing is true of vibrancy. If you use engagement, people have heard that word a million times. It becomes meaningless. Um, it kind of loses meaning. And so to introduce a less common word like vibrancy, it gives you again the opportunity to define it. And we did that. We stood in front of the organization and talked about vibrancy being kind of the connectedness, the amount of energy that we could coalesce around what we were trying to achieve. And that then gave us an opportunity to help the organization understand and help our stakeholders. And so I had to do that. At every level of the organization. In the people leader role, you have a very complicated set of stakeholders. You have the executive team who needs to really be on board with your strategy. Otherwise you're not going to be impactful and effective. You have all the employees, you have your team, uh, you have the board, you have external stakeholders as well. Uh, you have an entire candidate, potential candidate pool that you are trying to bring into the organization. So you just have this massive ecosystem. And making a concept like that clear across the stakeholders, even the action of doing it is very valuable.

Speaker A: I like that. Um, I think we could probably consider a follow up episode just uh, talking uh, about that because I think that in of itself is a massive discussion point. Um, when we are talking about that again, I think goes back to the statement I made that your impact is very broad. And I think talking about the system thinking and not process thinking, it kind of dots, lines, maybe to the even a bit a different angle to the conversation where people talk about this role. Um, and when we talk about this head of uh, role, you know, people, hr, whatever we want to label it, it's that business impact we want. But with so many different stakeholders it is very difficult. I feel like you do get kind of stuck in a place where you're like, if I stick to what's Working, I, I feel comfortable that I'm serving X. If I make a change, I will be upsetting a certain pool of that, that group of people. To become a system thinker, I mean obviously you're not immune to that. I mean you're, you, you worry about it. But to become a system thinker, how do you cope with knowing that you're a little bit damned if you do, damned if you don't? You're always going to have an unhappy stakeholders somewhere, but obviously your goals are for the betterment of the company. A little bit of a complex question there. Sorry.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean I think that's been my biggest, that's been my biggest tension point. Stepping into a people leader role from, you know, before, before I joined Foursquare, I was on the consulting side and had the opportunity to work with some amazing leaders and provide advice on how to innovate and change in organizations. Stepping into this role and, and taking responsibility as a, uh, as a people executive, I, I think attention that I was aware of, but I became more kind of acutely aware of, more acutely understanding is the tension that you are, you have to hold two truths at once. And those two truths are, you might be in an individual conversation where your single desire, what is pulling you is to solve someone's problem and to help an individual. Uh, you know, I get, I would say a ton of gratification around problem solving at all levels, at an individual level. And yet when you are a people leader at uh, any organization of any scale back to the policy conversation, you are, you are a policy setting and precedent setting in every decision and every communication you make. And so to hold the, those two realities and those two truths in a single conversation, to be able to speak to a person and say, I understand, I empathize with the challenge that you're facing. And I am not only tasked with making a decision on your behalf, I am, I am tasked with holding a standard for the rest of the organization that I can apply more broadly. Um, to not do wrong by someone else. Um, and explaining that complexity is I think one of the most challenging things of the role.

Speaker A: Yeah, honestly, I don't know if we, I don't know if it gets discussed enough. Um, so I like talking about it for that reason, but I don't think it, I don't think people leaders, um, for the most part I don't think people leaders get the recognition, uh, for the, the challenge that is management within that dynamic of the different stakeholders, the uh, different levels of stakeholders, because it's not that you're even, uh, as a cto, let's say you, uh, make a decision, it's going to funnel down to individual hiring managers or line managers to make this, you're pushing this across multiple M. C level units and then down to individual levels. And then also you're going to really affect everyone slightly differently. So it is an interesting dynamic that again, I don't think it's talked about about enough, I guess, coming from your background. And maybe this will be final question because I know you got to actually get back to work. Um, yeah, you know, in terms of, in terms of coming with that different background, in terms of coming to, you know, um, the problems from a different angle, do you think that's giving you an advantage in that system thinking? Because, you know, you don't know what you don't. Not that you don't know what you don't know, but you're maybe not as focused on thinking a certain way and you're, you're, you're trying to see problems in a different light because, you know, and so I can go on your LinkedIn obviously and take a look at your background. You mentioned being in the creative space, being in different, uh, in a consulting organization. Like, does that just give you a different mindset than, than you otherwise would have?

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, wait. I really want to answer that question, but I also want to offer a provocation to something you said before. Can I do that first?

Speaker A: Yeah, no, for sure. Go for it.

Speaker B: Okay. So one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking about people leaders don't necessarily get the appreciation for X, Y and Z. It just made me think about how for as long as I've been in this space, there's this narrative. I remember, um, reading an HBR article. This was probably like 10 or 15 years ago about HR and its kind of journey to try to be a more strategic player in the space and to be recognized and appreciated for all the value that we bring to the business. And my provocation to people leaders today is I'm kind of tired of that narrative because I'm sort of like it is on us as people leaders to um, demonstrate the value and demonstrate the strategic impact and to build the case studies and the evidence that we are driving massive strategic value. And I think that kind of ladders into your second question, which is like, does my background enable me to see things differently? Um, listen, my background, I'm super grateful for my background. I feel like it's a gift in the role that I have and also, I have a ton of blind spots because of it. I didn't come up in the traditional HR space. And so I have to be constantly humble and a dedicated learner on my blind spots and where I need to get smart really fast or to tap into experts, other leaders, people leaders who've done it before. However, I think the benefit that consulting gives you and working with lots of different executive leaders, lots of different organizations, is that, number one, you are, you are trained to learn. So I think of my job as. My job is to build a great team. My job is to learn. My job is to provide value to the business. As a consultant, your. Your job is to get really smart about how you can add value to the business. You are on the hook for it. You have to do it really fast and you have to do it in kind of chunks. And so if you think of this job as kind of chunking up the value that you add to the business, that's sort of how I think about my work here. So I think it gives you that gift. Um, and I do think, I do believe that more creativity in the people function and more kind of design thinking backgrounds. I think, I think we're actually seeing an industry shift overall and watching what's happening over at Airbnb, um, with a new people leader in there from ideo, and some people I know very well, like Clay Parker Jones, joined the organization, who's an incredible thinker in the organizational development space. So I think that the idea that this can be an innovation function, that is a really exciting. That is a really exciting direction for the space to take and consequently will attract more innovators to the space. That's the systems level industry transformation that I think could be really interesting.

Speaker A: I think everything you just said, um, I come to this world via, uh, the technology side. So I, I m. Much like everything you said, it echoes with me because I don't know what I don't know. But also I've learned to use what I don't know as my advantage because I can disregard some norms and go, let's tear it down and tell me why. Why is. Why is X done? Why is Y done? Because it makes no sense. So, um, fantastic discussion, Kit. I appreciate your time. If you said something people want to reach out to follow up on. I know we talked a lot of different things. Maybe they want to, you know, pick your brain a little bit further. What's, what's a good way of doing that?

Speaker B: Yeah, best way is to look me up on LinkedIn. I do check my messages there and um, we'll definitely respond. So find me Kit Krugman on LinkedIn and I'd be happy to hear from you.

Speaker A: All right, we'll make sure people, uh, hear that again. Thanks for being on the show. I appreciate it. That's it for this episode. Be back again, different guests, different topic. Until then, two things. One, I think, you know, this is a great episode. Talking about uh, being a system thinker within the people space, how to go about doing that. Give us some examples of uh, what she's done, how she's done it, talked about feedback, a little bit of her background as well and how she uses it to her advantage. Even though has some blind spots, she's obviously navigated and uh, figured out her own way. So this should be an example for others and share this episode with others. I'd appreciate it. Like subscribe, comment, let me know how the show's going for you. Until next time, thank you and goodbye.