Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. Podcast dedicated on a mission to make change more approachable, more consistent, and more strategic. In a sense that so it actually gets us somewhere where we want to go. Guys, I cannot be more excited to have an amazing guest joining me on today's podcast episode. If you've ever walked out of a strategy off site feeling inspired, or if you did some personal goal planning and a month, two, three months later realized nothing actually changed and stuck with you, this episode is for you. It's a strategy season ending. We are at the beginning of our year, and there is still this spirit of goal setting, of strategizing, of envisioning things that we want to accomplish to make real, to improve our lives, our workplaces. What are we gonna create in this world? Companies are setting bold five-year visions, ambitious growth targets, culture, and technology transformations. You can be setting your own goals to transform your work life, career, relationships. Many ambitious and transformative words are flying around. But here's something that research and real-world practice shows us. A lot of our aspirations on a personal, but especially on the organizational level, uh we have great strategies and visions and plans. That's not where we lack. But somehow those transformations barely happen. They fail because we never make them executable. We never set ourselves and other people that need to make the change for success. Today's guest, Andrea Olson, well, she's the person who lives, breathes, and works in uh this strategy execution gap, helping leaders, helping individuals to make the vision not just something we talk about, but something that we leave and something that creates impact in the world. Andrea is a writer, professor, founder of Change Agency, contributor to Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur Magazine, and the World Economic Forum. She's built and scaled at a company from scratch to 10 of millions in revenue, led digital strategy inside global corporations, and for over a decade has helped organizations activate real strategic change. So, what's envisioned is actually executed and then creates positive impact. She's also the author of a new book coming out called Execution Drift. This phrase alone tells you what we're going to be talking about and what Andrea's work is focused on. And this conversation will unpack things like why abstract goals, like hire the right people, collaborate better, or any of your personal abstract goals, don't end up being executed on and realizing your vision, your aspirations. We're gonna talk about how to translate high-level strategy into concrete mindset and behaviors from CEO to janitor. But again, you can also apply it to your own life. Why empowerment without clarity creates confusion, not ownership? How to reduce resistance to change by defining what actually needs to be done differently. What leaders must do to build confidence and belief in their teams, especially in ambiguous AI-driven environments, and why strategy and culture aren't separate things but intertwined systems of behavior. One of my favorite parts of this conversation with Andreas was the idea of creating kind of rosetta stone for your organization to for approaching change and turning strategy into execution again. A way to translate the slofty visions and intentions into some something people can live, breathe, and act on every day. Something to talk about also is that people don't resist strategic intendo vision. They resist confusion that often comes with it. They don't resist change, they resist cognitive overload that also comes with a lot of strategic stuff. People don't need more communication, they need more clarity to know how to do differently. If you lead a team, run a company, sit in the middle management, or just feel stuck between be more strategic and just get the work done. Maybe, just maybe, it will finally help you to close that gap between what's written, what's envisioned, what's talk about, and what actually happens inside you and inside the team that you lead, the organization you are part of. So let's dive in. Andrea Olsen, welcome to Change Wired Podcast. So happy to have you here.
SPEAKER_00And yes, thank you so much for coming uh to the show. No, thank you for the invitation. I'm so glad we could get this going.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you know, it's 2026 uh strategy season for the year and for a lot of companies for five years, right? And I think there could not be a better time than to talk about your work and what you're passionate about, excited about to bring into the world. To give our listeners a little bit, maybe background. Uh, where are you connecting from? And uh what would you like listeners to know about you before starting the episode?
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh. Well, I'm technically connecting from the United States in the state of Iowa, which I'm located about two hours from Chicago, right on the border of Iowa and Illinois. Disappointing that the Chicago Bears did not make the playoffs for NFL football, but that's okay. They did have a great season. I would say a little bit about myself. I do a variety of things. I'm a writer. I published three books with the fourth and fifth one actually in the works right now. One is at review with the publisher, and the other one is still getting typed out as we speak. And then I also write for a variety of business publications: Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, World Economic Forum. I know Davos is going on right now, so that's fairly relevant. I'm also an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa teaching applied entrepreneurship. I'd say that the other two things I do are having and leading a change agency. So it's basically a consulting firm that helps organizations navigate and implement strategic change. And then I also on the side uh have a nonprofit that puts on TED Talks here in the Midwest. So nice variety, something that's different. Different every day and all the time. Well, quick prolific, how do you manage all of this? As long as it doesn't all happen at the same time, yeah, it's it's fine. Those days where it does is are very difficult.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing uh a little bit of that background and what you're up to. How did you get to do this work? Where did you start? Perhaps maybe uh passion in high school or college and a little bit of history, like from there to fast forward today and all this amazing work that you do. How did you let that happen?
Yeah, you know, in college, I mean, I I actually was into a lot of art, had an art scholarship that I did not take into college, and ended up just getting a liberal arts degree specializing in communications and psychology. That was kind of more my bent, but I still didn't know what I wanted to do as a career. And a friend of mine who had graduated at the same time, he said, Hey, do you want to start a tech company? And at the time, everyone was starting a tech company. And I had nothing else to do. I, you know, I was still floating around and I said, sure. And we built that company over almost 10 years from nothing, like just us in a rented office that was not in the best part of town, all the way up to having 25-30 employees. You know, gosh, I'd say 20 to 30 million in revenue by the time I left. It was a quite something success. It was fantastic, but we had so many pivots, we had so many terrible moments where you thought everything was going to collapse. You had to learn everything on the fly, and and you had to be accept making mistakes. But most importantly, you had to really have a vision, a strategy, and your finger on the pulse of what your target audience wanted. You didn't really have the freedom to go do whatever you wanted and focus it on yourself, but it was more about growing the business. So when I left there, I actually went and worked at two different global companies. They're actually international manufacturers. So it was a big shift heading up their digital marketing strategy and sometimes sales teams. So that was a very big job, but it gave me a new perspective on how corporate looks at strategy, how corporate implements that, how corporate understands customer needs. And I found that there was this huge gap between the scrappy startup and the two large companies I worked with, but the same goals and frustrations. They wanted to differentiate better. They wanted people to understand and implement strategy. They wanted people to identify and embrace customer needs and integrate that into the products and services they offered. So the challenge was what is missing? What's the problem with getting people to understand what they need to do? What's the problem with getting people to accept and implement and embrace change? And so after all of that, I decided to start a firm. And we've been in business for I think uh almost 12 years now at this point, doing just that for a wide variety of industries and and companies. Yeah, what a journey.
SPEAKER_01And if you were to look at your work from now on the backwards, do you perhaps see some through line that was you know sort of a theme through all of this journey that I still carry into today?
SPEAKER_00I would say that the big thing with that, and and it does carry through to today, is this dissatisfaction with the status quo. You know, we can't just rest on our laurels. And when people wanted to make change, they weren't looking at some core big picture. It was always very self-centered. This this department wants to do this to look good. It was never really around the business. And even to this day, I find that so frustrating where we are all in the organization to grow the business. And the layers of confusion, the layers of resistance and politics all thwart that.
SPEAKER_01And speaking about ambiguous strategy, as you know, this uh what I call strategy season, where a lot of companies are gonna go away or just went away for their strategic offsites and they're probably gonna plan the next uh five years. What would you say was almost certainty, most of the companies, what are the mistakes that most of the companies will still do while doing this strategic planning? What are some of those mistakes maybe?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think it it works as a pyramid. And so as soon as you start with a mistake at the top, it trickles down throughout the organization. And I believe that core mistake is having whether you call them goals, pillars, objectives, it doesn't really matter. If those are too abstract and obtuse and don't provide any basically mindset or behavior change direction for the organization, nothing will change. So a great example recently, I was working with a client and they said, Well, we have our strategy, we have it ready for 2026, and we're ready to roll it out. You know, we want to make sure people understand it, see it, adopt it, and start taking action. And one of the strategic pillars they had was getting the right people in the right seats, which is not uncommon. A lot of companies say that's what they want. And they may put metrics under that to support it. We want to hire 10 people first quarter, maybe they're salespeople, you know, all these other measurable things. But the gap is what does right people mean? What is the definition of right people? What is the definition of how that selection impacts the strategy, impacts the organizational goals, whether that's growth, whether that's saving time and money, whether that's unique skill sets or knowledge and technology to help differentiate further? So these lofty aspirations without any context with them, of course, people are gonna say, well, I don't know. Have we not been hiring the right people? Have all these people been bad? And what do we mean by that? How are we going to measure what right means? And that often gets kicked down to middle management, where now they have to decipher that. And oftentimes each silo in the organization will really interpret that differently.
SPEAKER_01And how would you suggest leaders to make you know the strategy less, I guess, abstract, ambiguous, so there is no this like I think you have this phrase execution drift on different levels. And yeah, well, what do what can companies do to avoid it, to prevent it, or to to do it well?
The strategy. Maybe you've been doing that a long time. There's a ton of great methodologies out there that exist. So I don't want to reinvent the wheel with that. But once you have that strategy, you will have a series of, again, goals, pillars, objectives that are incredibly high level. And what you need is a tool to say, how do we translate that from this abstract concept to moving that down to kind of the key things that we are not going to compromise on? You might want to call them, you know, core commitments. And then how do those translate into mindsets and behaviors for every single individual across the organization, whether it's the janitor, whether it's the CEO, everyone in between? So you're translating, let's take the example of you know the right people in the right seats. What do we mean by right? And maybe that's two or three core things that are universal across the organization. And then what do those things mean in regards to the actions and the way people think and the way we want them to behave? Because any change that you want to have in your organization requires behavior change. And behavior will change if people understand that something is not only different, but how they can participate and influence it. So if you don't have that map, you just keep yelling into the void of I want, I want this to happen, and no one truly understands what that means.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And how would you perhaps do it on the implementation side in a sense that okay, you define this behaviors that you can now cascade through different levels, like how the process of cascading it, how can leaders implement that, right? So everyone to, especially large organizations, so everyone to the level of janitor actually knows that this is what they're supposed to do.
Yeah. So I think there's two parts to that. One is that that architecture needs to be communicated and shared with the entire organization. That's fairly easy and tactical, but that also has to be rolled out in a way where you have exercises that people start to go through and understand how does this apply to me and my area of responsibility? So you might roll out that framework and say, okay, janitor, let's look through this and find out how does this apply to you? What do you think you could do in your area to take action or do something different or support that strategy given this framework? The second piece, and I think which is even most important, and I did write an article for Harvard Business Review on this, is that each department, or maybe it's a business unit, depends on how you're architected. They need to develop their own strategy to support the overarching strategy. And they use that framework, that you know, core commitment mindsets and behaviors to say, what are what actions and mindsets are we going to apply to achieve what we want to grow our area? So if it's marketing, let's just say, instead of saying we're going to just do three campaigns this year and we're going to hope that we get this engagement number or this click-through rate or whatever those tactics are, we're moving it up a little bit and saying, but given that objective, what do we want to actually do? What behaviors do we want to change? What mindsets do we want to change in our target audience? So let's say that could be something like we want people to understand that we are relentless allies for our customers. Well, what does that mean? That means maybe two or three core actions. And then what does that mean in regards to every single person's behavior? Now, using that framework, you can develop a unique strategy. You're leveraging that to say that's the experience we want our employees to have. We it's the experience we want our customers to have. And now it's not just about tactics, it's about approach. How do you create that? The tactics just support the approach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It makes sense to have this like overarching strategy and then allow autonomy, I guess, in different departments and on different levels of the organization to decide what that strategy would look like for that specific department and team, etc. And uh in your experience, do they then communicate or somehow align that uh to make sure that it is how they were supposed to understand it and it's not something that they just skim up with and it might not be even the right translation.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Or they or they might conflict or they might overlap. So the nice part about having a supporting strategy is that is the core document that you can now have a conversation around. Think about those meetings where you have multiple departments and sales says we're going to focus. Focus on this geography or marketing says we're going to roll out this campaign for this product or service. But there is no strategy there. There's a huge gap between whatever goal the company has and then the tactics that are being implemented. So if each department or business unit has their strategy, that's the discussion that you bring to the table. And you have those strategy discussions where you can say, oh, we're looking at that same thing, let's collaborate, or we're doing that, but this might be a conflict here. Maybe we need to adjust that accordingly. So instead of talking about tactics that people don't understand, fine, you know, promote this product. But how does that tie up to that bigger picture experience and objective that you're trying to create? So I think that becomes that gap filler.
SPEAKER_01And do you think it feels like to me that using this approach allows to marry this strategic clarity and autonomy in contextual autonomy in different departments and teams because ultimately they get to decide how exactly they could what tactics they're going to use to implement this strategy.
SPEAKER_00Right. No, you're exactly right. I think the intent is to get people not only to have ownership, but start changing the way they think and getting them much more business-minded rather than just making widgets or checking boxes. So it is a shift, but it is much more impactful than just general empowerment. If you tell someone, hey, you know, we want new ideas from you and you can do whatever you want and just let us know, it is so broad and amorphous that it's very difficult to have something of real substance and impact that comes to the table. You end up being and picking small things like let's streamline this process or let's have you know pizza day on Fridays. These are all very nice, but you want something that impacts the success and health of the business. So to get there, you need people thinking in a business sense. The only way they can start doing that is to start thinking strategically and connecting what they do to what the organization wants to accomplish and having some specificity to that.
Yeah, it's it's you know, all this. It reminded me of like a few clients I had in in big organizations who were on this like more or less executive positions, and they would say, Well, our bosses want us to be more strategic, but we don't really know what we need to be strategic about, meaning like there is no clarity. And so they had they were like locked in between this, like trying to be strategic, but then never really understanding what biggest strategy is, and then having to come down to the level of tactics because that's the only thing that they could were able to do.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, and I've seen this too. The the challenge becomes threefold. First, the the big strategy is is so abstract, it's hard to understand what you're supposed to do different. And it's it's not even just what you're supposed to do, it's it's not about telling somebody, here are the three actions you need to take, or forcing, let's say, business unit leaders to interpret what that abstract strategy means. It's about really helping people apply those concepts in a way that's relevant to them. But number two is forcing people to have craft a strategy and have a tool to do so helps them learn. That's how we learn in school. That's how we learn in just you know self-education, where it starts with here's a tool, here's how to apply it, here's how to apply it in your context. And we just keep this gap floating out there between something that's so high and broad, and then suddenly it will cross the chasm into here's what we're going to do different. And and I think that's what I've heard is people struggle so much with. If you say, Oh, we want to grow or we want to hire the right people, but what am I supposed to be thinking about and doing differently than I was before? And that's often never articulated. So you need a way to get people to start thinking about what they could do differently without being prescriptive.
SPEAKER_01And um, you know, you also in your work, you're in general, you talk a lot about language and how leaders need to be less abstract, less jargony, and there should be more clarity and precision. The question I have is very often uh the comparing like different goals, let's say you have SMART goals and then you have the your aspirational goals, right? And aspirational, they're aspirational because they you they inspire you. And something is something like a smart goal is not necessarily the most inspiring, even though it is a lot more concrete and a lot more actionable. So what is I I guess the question is what is the the way to approach the language? So it's still aspirational, it's still motivational, it still uh gives people this like bigger picture and something they can uh aspire to to reach, and at the same time, you know, having that clarity about what do I do on Monday.
Well, I I think the aspirational goal, let's start with that, is it still has to have something that you could read and go, this is how I connect to that. So if you have a goal that says we're going to improve the synergy and collaboration between the departments in our organization. I'm kind of making this up on the spot. Okay. Of course, we all want to collaborate better. Of course, we want to have synergy, but that declarative statement doesn't say anything, it doesn't say about what you really want to accomplish with that. You don't articulate what you want to change and why, and you don't articulate what you want to sustain. So if you don't have a reason and you don't have clarity as to what needs to be different, I mean, I don't, I don't, you can set up a SMART goal and say, okay, we're going to meet with all these departments once a week, right? It's measurable and ensure we communicate okay, and we're going to do it at this time frame. That doesn't solve the problem because we haven't defined the problem. So I think SMART goals are great if you really have already backtracked into what the problem is, thought through all the ways that you could solve it, picking an approach and then measuring that approach. So it's just so many steps away from what a typical strategic goal is. Uh, it's very hard to apply it there. So I think it's not just about metrics and it's not about doing the measurement. It's first analyzing the problem and breaking it down to its core parts, and then you can apply a measure against that. I guess what I'm hearing is it's different levels.
SPEAKER_01Like you might have still some abstraction and North Star goal, but then at the same time, you can translate it for Asian department, and then also you can translate it down to smart goals and tactics and KPIs that are yeah, just more concrete and numbers driven and not as aspirational. As long as everyone, what what I'm hearing is as long as everyone understands understands how it connects to what the company is ultimately trying to do.
SPEAKER_00Yes, but there's two parts of that. It's connecting what the companies are trying to do and trying to achieve, but then also it's your own individual context. So a janitor's context is very different from the director of marketing's context to the uh field salesperson's context. So you have to have that way, that tool to help people see those objectives and go, okay, how do I translate that to my area of responsibility? That's what that framework is for, to help kind of bring them along to say, all right, now you have a little more information and understanding of what we want to achieve. How do you see that applying to you versus something that just is so you know lofty that it has no relevance?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the the next question you know that came to my mind was around culture and values. Is it going to be this is the same process? Like you have your culture definitions and those values that are more abstract, lofty words, and then there needs to be some work done to translate it into something meaningful for each department and each level of the organization.
Right. If you are in love with your value statements, and you are, you know, really wanting people to embrace that, you could use that same framework for culture. The problem is that you now you have two separate frameworks. And which one do I choose when I'm trying to make a decision? So I believe that strategy and culture are completely intertwined. And that framework, because we talked about mindsets and behaviors, if it's defining that universally, isn't that something that then becomes the framework for culture? Because we talk about values and we talked about them in a very abstract sense. We talk about integrity, communication, and maybe there's a sentence or two that says, you know, we always are we always are listening and empathetic to our customers' needs. Okay, but but what does that mean in regards to an outcome? What is the reasoning behind that? And what do we want to see in each and every person's behavior? So I'd say that that values can integrate into the framework, they're part of it, but you should think of your values as opportunities for differentiation, and that's why it ties to strategy. If we have to tell people that we have integrity, I'd be concerned about why we have to articulate that. If integrity in some form of that can be leveraged as a differentiator, then let's expand that and talk about what we want to see people doing and what shapes that integrity experience and why it's important.
SPEAKER_01And you know, there is this phrase, uh, strategy, well, culture, it's strategy for breakfast. So what I'm hearing is you don't see them as like separate entities that exist separately. You see companies, like the company has the mission, has a vision, and then it gotta be translated into a more tangible uh behaviors and more localized strategic moves for people to act on them. And then what you call it culture and strategy doesn't really matter. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00So whether you have a formal strategy or not, you still have a strategy, it just hasn't been documented or it hasn't been communicated. And if you have a strategy, a formal strategy, you still have a culture. It doesn't mean that they are intertwined, it doesn't mean that they are complementing each other or working together, but they always both exist. Sometimes it's weak, sometimes it's counterproductive, sometimes it's just misunderstood, and they operate independently, but they always exist. And I think that they always influence each other at different levels and at different intensities.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that makes sense because yeah, at the end of the day, you still just have people doing things in a specific way, and then however you call it, it's still the same process that's happening. And then speaking about behaviors in general, people tend to do the thing that they've always done and don't really like changing the thing. In your experience, uh, what did you find like in your experience with working with companies, with leaders, with teams? What did you find work for changing certain persisting behaviors that are not necessarily desirable behaviors and in fact maybe hurting the future vision that the company now has? Like how to change what people do without much resistance and struggle.
I I think that sometimes it all starts with the fact that certain things were tolerated for a very long time. So let's say those behaviors, we don't want to see them, we want people to change, but we had been accepting that for 15 years. So now we suddenly think that because we are now making a statement saying this is now not tolerated, the next day people will come in and behave differently. They won't, because we really need to look at it more from a behavioral science, human psychology perspective. You know that any change is, you know, brings a cognitive load. Think about when your IT department rolls out a new software. You've been kind of doing things a certain way and you have a certain rhythm, and now you have to stop, you have to really think and process. And it's not that people are against challenges, it's not people that are against new things, it's it is a cognitive burden. And the second part is that sometimes the change that is asked of them, they don't again kind of goes back to the beginning, uh they don't know what is expected to change. So if you say we're going to be again more collaborative, well, what is expected to change? Do we want more meetings? And then we start having more meetings, and they say, no, no, we now we have too many meetings. So there was no articulation of what we were trying to accomplish with that collaboration. When we say we want to collaborate more, it's it's why and what we want to accomplish. And then we can start looking downstream of measurements of that. But it's it's still something that's abstract, but you have to put a little more meat on the bone with it, because otherwise people will not change and they will then continue to resist change.
SPEAKER_01Any other advice or tape? Because that's what I also hear like from leaders, also middle management team leaders who you know work with people. Like any other advice on incentivizing the right behavior versus, well, let's let's take you know this big word AI and adopting more AI and reimagining you know, whole systems and workflows and people really not liking it because you know there is like it's gonna take my job or I'm just not comfortable with that, etc. Uh, how like what are some maybe best ways that that you know of so working to help people to do to make this process working of adopt new technology or changing like what they do faster?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I again I think it goes back to, but what do you want the AI to do? What is what is the objective of that? So maybe it's something where you small where you say, hey, marketing, why don't you try using Chat GPT to speed up content development? Okay, that's one thing. There could be another thing where you say we want AI to parse through a bunch of data that we have and pull some reports and give us some insight on problem A, B, and C. These are wholly different things. The marketing team, that to me is much more of a trial and error. That's a everything will be status quo. Why don't you try working with it, playing with it, see what you like about it, see what you don't, and have an ongoing conversation about what benefits it's showing in that very small tactical space and what challenges it's creating, and refine how you potentially can use that tool, and you will see benefits of it. The other side, the you know, data parsing, that is something that's much higher level and bigger. And those folks, when they get a report from that saying here's what it spit out, their role now is to assess, review, and evaluate that and still draw strategic conclusions. So I think it's all every change is very contextual. And I think you still have to go back to, but what are we trying to do? instead of that sweeping statement of, well, we can have some more magic efficiency. Just everyone use AI to make your job faster and put out more. It's not always about quantity, it's often about quality. And you need to have a strategy to say, how are we going to leverage this? It doesn't mean that you can't do trial or pilot projects, but again, it goes back to what are you really trying to accomplish?
Yes. Fundamentally, I guess people will need to think more and decide more and yeah, just own a lot more things, uh, which you know brings me to the next question. Decision making in ambiguity, in uncertainty, and with what I also am hearing uh often is well, now that we don't need people to do a lot of like clicking the buttons, so to speak, but instead we need them to think more and design more, and we need to scale this process, like, but then things are always changing, and we roll out one thing, and then you know, next week there is another thing that we have to roll out. How do you know the leaders would ask how do we teach people to make decisions in such a fast-paced change and ambiguity and certainty when we're not even sure what's the next thing coming? Do you have any advice on that tool leaders? Like, how do we navigate this space?
Well, I think you know, yes, I would agree that change is happening faster than it used to, but there's never been certainty in in the history of the world, right? We all we do want certainty and we love certainty, but we cling to that to ensure that we don't make a misstep in a decision. We don't make a wrong decision or a bad decision. And that's why we really want to have certainty. And when we use that as the barometer, we will not take action until we know 200% that certainly this is the right decision. But people don't change that quickly, right? We we can want our leaders to make faster decisions, but those decisions have trickle-down effects. If you say, all right, and we're gonna make a fast decision that we're gonna pick this platform and we're going to integrate it into our organization. It is a very long arc to have other people use it, adopt it, you know, work out all the kinks of that. Maybe there's changes to it. So sometimes speed of decision making isn't as important as the quality, which goes back to your question of how to get people to make better decisions. Again, I think you need to help teach people to understand how to evaluate a situation and how to weigh different options based on that bigger picture view. It's not just about your department, let's say IT installing this software because it makes their lives easier. It's understanding the bigger picture of how does that change marketing, how does that change sales, how does that impact reporting and start having those conversations. But I also believe the other piece is practicing this again and again and again so people get comfortable with ambiguity. If you've never had to make an ambiguous decision in an ambiguous context, and then suddenly you're thrust into it, it's going to be fight or flight. So we have to encourage our teams to say, yes, make a decision and understand the context and ramifications of that decision. And the small things that don't work, it's fine. That's the way life goes. And the bigger decisions, it's not about telling people what to do, but helping constantly educate them on knowing and asking the right questions. So, in essence, I think a leader's job to help their teams make better decisions is almost like being a parent, right? If you make decisions for your children, they never learn to make decisions. And if we assume all our employees have learned this skill, we're really overlooking the fact that it's very possible they never were taught this in their previous employer or in their life, or they only have a small sample of experience in making decisions in ambiguous environments. So leaders' job is to teach people how to do that and help through prompting and discussion and asking questions that force them to think of different questions and process things a different way. So to me, it's it's repetition and really true leadership that that can make that happen.
SPEAKER_01A lot of these things like learning decision-making process or teaching decision-making process and helping people to take more ownership, a lot of these processes uh require a lot of psychological safety, a lot of trust. So all of those things, all of those changes, all of this, you know, taking ownership and decision making, helping people to own more and to be more proactive without that fear to be punished in some way. Like how do you install that? What would you suggest leaders do?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I think I think a lot of the frameworks that are out there for empowerment and change and decision making are a little too academic. You know, people are are very emotionally driven. And I think that the thing we overlook when we say, well, okay, we're going to empower you. You know, here's here's a you get this much money and this much time to go find a solution for this and implement it. There's still a risk of failure because you don't know what the expectations are. I think the biggest key to getting people to change their behaviors is two things confidence. How can you instill and continually instill confidence in someone by not just giving them feedback, but giving them honest feedback, really good candor, things for them to think about. And then number two is belief. Communicating that you believe in somebody really builds their confidence and strengthens that relationship. They will always come back to you for feedback, advice, input, and they will build their own self-momentum in moving into spaces that are new and uncomfortable. I mean, if you think about a mentor or a person that you admire or a person that you have a great relationship with, or even maybe a previous leader, I think those traits are the biggest and strongest and most unique ones that you really believe in that individual and that you support them in their education, learning, and growth, and that you help instill confidence in them. And then over time, they will really become a fully fledged, independent person that is not afraid to go into, you know, very ambiguous environments where decision making can be risky.
SPEAKER_01This reminds me of not so much reminds me of, but makes me think about this fact that you know everyone is talking about what should be AI or more technology-driven and what should be more human-centric and humanized more. And I feel like we are actually entering this beautiful phase where we can outsource a lot of stuff to AI in different systems. But what gotta stay, and I think maybe should be expanded, is this like human element of communication, of creating these moments for building trust and for instilling confidence in people. I feel like when if it's done right, we actually can do a lot better than we could have before when you had so many things you you had to actually do.
SPEAKER_00Right. I I mean I completely agree because I think that human-to-human interaction, there's that's something you really can't replicate. And when you have that opportunity to spend more time, I think middle management, kind of going off on a small tangent here, is an essential role in organizations because of the human element, because they can talk with people, lead people, coach people, really help elevate the skills and talents of others, that can't be replaced. But they have so much work they have to do. Often working managers is what we call them because we want their time to be billable, basically, that we lose that value. And so maybe AI is going to give us that opportunity to bring that back, hopefully.
SPEAKER_01Yes, um, I am also very hopeful that AI can actually make us more human when we decide to put it in, you know, in the into the right usage and not try to automate everything that uh requires more human touch. Um that yeah, the question that I wanted to ask next was so your work is focused a lot on helping leaders to make strategy executable, right? So it's not just like some plan on the wall that uh we look once, I don't know, a quarter or once a year. Do you have a maybe high-level step-by-step process that you could share with us right now that leaders like, oh yeah, like you know, I can compare my notes and I'm not exactly doing that. Could you share this?
Yeah, sure. So it really starts with that initial conversation. You know, what do you have a strategy today? If so, what is that strategy? What does that strategy look like? And start talking about, you know, what does that look like in action? We have most executive leaders always want to talk about goals, yeah. Okay, well, we need to grow 10%. Okay, that's fine. And we're maybe going to let the sales team decide where they get that 10% from, you know, what industry, what product line, etc. That's fine. But when we talk about things that are a little softer, we want to fix collaboration, we want to fix communication, we want to fix customer engagement, they often struggle to really articulate, but but how do we do that? And so, what do we want to see different in the behaviors and mindsets of our employees from top to bottom that would make that a reality? And so that's where the conversation starts. Then the second step is we go through and try to find, and usually this is in a workshop with high-level leadership. Sometimes it's a mixed group with some middle management as well, talking about what is that core differentiator that you want to build the organization around that supports the strategy, that supports the culture, and that supports what customers want that separates you from the competition. Then that conversation builds out into what I had mentioned earlier, which was those core commitments. What are the three or four things that you will never compromise on? Meaning, never compromise whether it's an economic downturn, whether it's a merger, whether it's a whatever. These are the things that we will always be, no matter what happens. And then we get down to those actions, those mindsets, those behaviors. What do we want to see people do that brings that to life? And how does that tie to strategy? So we use that existing strategy as the starting point. We're not trying to rework anything you're doing, but what we're trying to create is a tool that everyone can refer to and say, this is how I should be thinking, this is how I should be having, be behaving, as well as I'm the head of marketing, let's use that framework to develop our supporting strategy. That's the spirit of what we want to achieve. So I think that is that kind of Rosetta Stone that ties all those pieces together and helps people translate something into action. So it's a in a sense, it's a very simple process, but it just takes a lot of thought and a lot of discussion to have something that's flexible but rigid enough that it has staying power.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that actually sums up to that vision or that aspiration that the company has. Right. It's amazing. If as we, you know, going to be wrapping up our conversation, is there something that you'd like to tell our listeners, something maybe you wish they asked, but I never did. The something that yeah, you would like to share that is very important to your work. If not, that's okay. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. Well, you mentioned execution drift. You know, that technically is a working title. The publisher may change that. But that is a book that I have out with uh Entrepreneur Press, their associated with Entrepreneur Magazine, and they're an imprint of Simon and Schuster, I believe. So the intent of that is a lot of what we discussed, kind of some of the behaviors, leadership behaviors that really thwart strategy execution, and then how to really make your Rosetta Stone to translate that high-level strategy into something that people can live, breathe, and use each and every day. And then also how departments can translate that into their own supporting strategies action, as well as, and this goes back to your other question of how to measure the impact of that. So it's it's the whole cookbook for that. We are planning on launching that in June or July of this year, so it's actually coming up very quickly. So we will definitely have announcements about that, but you can pre-order that book on my website at Andrea Belkolson.com. So yeah, that sounds amazing.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, where can I get this book now? There's still some time to wait. Is there anything else that you would like to share or to uh that we covered main aspects of your work that well into this conversation?
SPEAKER_00If I just had one word of advice for leaders, because sometimes leaders that are C-suite or high-level executive leaders, sometimes you just lose sight of what it was to be the person that was making the widgets or doing the job or you know, creating the campaign and doing the hard work every day. I'd recommend trying to take a couple days out of your out of the month and having a conversation with some of those people and not asking what we can do different or what can we do better, but just almost a day in the life of like the I think it was the show called Undercover Boss, where you went and had to work, you know, work alongside the people that did the job every day. I think it's very important to keep that perspective in the back of your mind, understand the realities that employees have to face, and think about your time way back then in those roles, because you're still in a position where you don't have the luxury of just simply sitting in the ivory tower and saying, you need to figure this out. The best, six most successful companies are the ones that help translate that into action and genuinely empower their employees to do something, but they have to have the right tools to do that. You can't just really dictate or exalt that they are empowered and hope something happens magically out of that.
Yeah, I think you know, such an amazing piece of like truth that you can't really empower people if you don't really know what they need to be empowered, then you can't really know unless you develop a lot of empathy by somehow doing your best to put to put yourself in their shoes and walking in those shoes a little bit. Yeah, such a brilliant idea. I remember I was reading in one article, there was something around they were trying to figure out how to make the experience for students the best it can be. And what they came up with is they put a person into the shoes of the student and made them uh live through the day of a student, like run through lecture to lecture and you know go to to have lunch, etc. And yeah, they after that they realized how many actually mistakes they were making making without realizing that that was a real hassle for the student.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. You you know when you see it, and I think as you said, with AI, maybe that will give us more time to go and see it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's such a beautiful again end to our conversation, Andrea. And as yeah, to conclude our conversation, maybe tell listeners a a little bit more about your company and what you do and who you'd like to reach out to you, and yeah, then also what are where our listeners can learn more about you, your work, connect with you.
SPEAKER_00Of course, of course. So again, pragmatic, the pragmatic company is a is a change agency. So we help you with basically activating strategic change, no matter what that looks like. Typically, we work with uh larger organizations that has range on the small end to$300 million company up to a$36 billion company. So it's sometimes people say that's mid-market. I don't know how people define mid-market anymore. And usually organizations that have a lot of different departments, excuse me, that they need to really get everyone on the same page, excuse me, and going the same direction. Sometimes it's something we can do where it's it's a challenge in an individual apartment to make change or behavior change. Sometimes it's systematic. So I will say, excuse me for one second, of course. Also good. Get that down there. That you can connect with me directly through two ways. Well, actually, three ways. One would be my personal website, which has the book as well as a lot of articles and different content. That's Andrea Belk, B is and boy elk, Olsen, O-L-S-O-N.com.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna link it Olson, the show will not send.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wonderful, thank you. Or you can go to the Pragmatic Company's website, that's P-R-A-G-M-S-N Mother A-D-I-K dot com. Or of course, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm on there under my name. And of course, I'd I'd love to connect with you. And if you got questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, we're gonna link all this in the show notes. Any other resources on or things uh you'd like people to check out? I don't know your books, articles that we should link.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say you know, all the books are on my personal website, uh available for purchase pretty much anywhere. I would encourage you to check out a lot of my work. You can probably search it very easily on Harvard Business Review, Inc. magazine, entrepreneur magazine as well. Or you can just Google me. Honestly, I will give you a tip. Use my middle name, which is Belk. As I said, B is in boy elk. There are many Andrea Olsons out there, and I think for me in the United States, the first one that comes up as a lady that teaches you how to potty train. That is not me. I'm sure it's lovely. If you need potty training advice, she can help you. But yes, that that's not uh something I specialize in.
So but thank you so much, Andrea, for this beautiful conversation and all of your work. I feel it's needed more than ever that we can't really tolerate more ambiguity and fluffy words. We need to actually start getting things done and making those visions uh reality. So, yeah, thank you so much for this conversation, for your work. And I encourage listeners to check out your work, your articles, and connect with you. And well, all the best with your work. And till next time, let's make more strategy executable. Yeah, yes, you too.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. Thank you, Andrea.