Kristyn Peterson - Interim Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Zendicoded INC

In this episode of Tim Talks: Behavioral Health, Timothy Zercher sits down with Kristyn Peterson, PhD, BCBA, LBA, LSSMBB, behavioral scientist, OBM leader, and Interim Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of Zendicoded INC.

Kristyn shares how she found behavior analysis by accident, why she pivoted into organizational behavior management, and what she has learned working at the intersection of behavioral science, process improvement, and software development. The conversation explores burnout in ABA, how better systems can reduce friction at work, what radical transparency looks like in leadership, and why curiosity beats hard selling when building business relationships.

They also discuss psychological safety, cross-functional team alignment, AI in the software space, and how small consultancies can stand out in competitive markets.

This episode is a sharp, practical conversation for leaders in behavioral health, ABA, and beyond who care about building better systems, stronger teams, and more sustainable growth.

Transcript

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Timothy Zercher 0:00

All right, Christian, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your valuable time with us today.

Kristyn Peterson 0:05

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Timothy Zercher 0:07

Absolutely. So first question I always like to ask is what pulled you into behavioral analysis? And then in your case, what also then pulled you into the OBM?

Kristyn Peterson 0:15

Yeah, absolutely. So originally I found behavior analysis sort of on accident. We had a family friend who had a child who was diagnosed with autism and needed a lot of support. And I was a teenager at the time. And so I was de facto babysitter. And I actually didn't really like kids at that point in my life, but I really grew to love this kid. And he went to a school that eventually I went and applied for a job at. And it was not actually a school, it was an outpatient clinic. And they were like, Do you know what we do here? And I was like, not even a little bit. And they gave me a job anyway. So that was like back in 2009. And I just really fell in love with the science, saw how effective it was on a day-to-day basis and how great it was at creating really meaningful outcomes for the kids that I was working with. A couple of years later, fast forward a little bit, one thing that I found working in the ABA space longer term was that I really didn't feel like the business models were super aligned with my personal values and that I really wanted to be able to make a macro level impact. And also I was just experiencing, I think, what a lot of BCBAs do with feelings of burnout and compassion fatigue and stuff like that. So when I started my PhD program, I went like headfirst into the OBM stuff and was really committed to that path and have had to work through some of the bumps and some of the hiccups with that. But that's how I found myself here.

Timothy Zercher 1:36

That's awesome. I found that almost everybody has an accidental discovery or an accidental finding of the passion.

Kristyn Peterson 1:43

Yeah, I think that's right for sure.

Timothy Zercher 1:45

That's awesome. So you sit kind of at the intersection of behavioral science and also kind of product building. What's one people problem that you think software can and should solve?

Kristyn Peterson 1:57

Yeah, I think that one of the things that I do a lot of also with that is process improvement. And I think one thing that so many organizations really struggle with is either they fall in one or two categories. They're either wildly over-designing their processes and how people are supposed to get their work done. There's so much micromanagement, there's red tape and bureaucracy, and that's really slowing people down. Or on the other side, it's that processes live in people's heads and nobody actually knows what to do, and it's not very sustainable and it's really confusing, and quality goes down and efficiency goes down. So even though those are like two sides, I think they are the same coin where kind of this middle path where I think software can help is really providing more automated, but also more seamless processes so that people can actually get that work done and be able to spend more time on things that that matter, less time on paperwork, less time on admin, and more on the actual work that's like whether it's in the ABA space or I do a lot of work with banks and nuclear energy companies, very different, you know, being able to help people get the outcomes that they need for their customers.

Timothy Zercher 3:02

Absolutely. Without wasting time and energy and or losing it where it needs to be spent.

Kristyn Peterson 3:07

Right. Exactly.

Timothy Zercher 3:09

Yeah. So you've led teams across developers, architects, behavioral scientists, nuclear scientists, right? What is one of your playbooks that helps you get kind of alignment quickly without losing some of that really important nuance?

Kristyn Peterson 3:21

Yeah, I think one of the ways that I try to show up as a leader is with radical candor and ultimate transparency. I think when people have a really strong understanding of why are we doing this, they're so much more willing to jump on board. And even if it's something that is unknown or it's on the edge of your competency or it's scary, just having that why and knowing that there are people there to support you, I think is really powerful. I think that really speaks to psychological safety as well, like being able to know that, yeah, this is like something none of us have done before, and none of us really know exactly what we're gonna do. And we might trip and fall a little bit, but we have the opportunity to be able to dial stuff in as we go. Because I like lead those cross-functional teams, like I can't necessarily be in the position of helping a software developer with a software problem. Like that's not my scope of competency, but I still have to figure out how to be effective and like motivating for people and help try to remove barriers versus being able to help them figure out how to do their job. So I really view that playbook as like, how do I be really honest, share the why and like why that matters and remove barriers as quickly as I can for people?

Timothy Zercher 4:30

Yeah, which makes complete sense. And also if you have that radical transparency, it also creates psychological safety in and of itself because they know they can trust what you're saying, even if it's not, even if it's not the best feedback or the most positive news.

Kristyn Peterson 4:43

Right, exactly. If you show up and you do what you say and say what you do and have like good alignment with that, I think that that really helps create that environment of psychological safety, which helps us provide better services.

Timothy Zercher 4:55

Absolutely. And operate better as a team as well. Yeah. Absolutely. Shifting gears a little bit, you have a pretty diverse and unique set of clients. How do you go about being new partners?

Kristyn Peterson 5:06

Yeah, so I am not a salesperson. That was definitely not something that I, as a behavior analyst, ever thought I would be in that role. And it's honestly it's not my biggest strength. So I rely a lot and delegate a lot. So I actually have just we recently hired a head of sales. This is our first time we've been able to grow our team to be able to have that role, which I'm so excited about. But a lot of it has been through reputation, a lot of it's been through referrals. I'm actually a very introverted person, which sometimes people are surprised if they know me to hear that. But a lot of it is like going to events and being willing to put yourself out there and have those conversations. But my approach is a lot less sales-driven, I guess, and more like approaching people with curiosity to learn more about what are the problems you're experiencing, tell me, you know, what's going well, what's not going well, versus me trying to like hawk a product at people and really like focused on rapport. And I feel like for me personally, that's been a more comfortable place and a more effective place for us to build those relationships in our space because it is a very competitive space.

Timothy Zercher 6:11

Absolutely. Speaking of someone who has been primarily the sales role in, I don't know, three or four different companies now, actually solving problems and paying attention to what people are actually feeling, actually going through works so much better than hawking any product ever. And it doesn't matter. Even if your product was incredible and solve all their problems tomorrow, and it doesn't really matter what their problem is, we can solve it. They still wouldn't buy it if you didn't actually take time to understand them and understand their problem, right? That is the core. So you're doing it right, according to at least according to me, but I think according to most good business development people too.

Kristyn Peterson 6:45

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. So it's definitely something that I still don't feel super confident in. I'm trying to grow my skills in for sure. So I appreciate that.

Timothy Zercher 6:53

Absolutely. And then last question, this is more on the marketing side since we are marketing specialists in this space, and we always have to ask at least one of these types of questions. What is one marketing tactic that you're either considering applying in inside of one of your teams or that you're just really watching very carefully in the marketplace right now?

Kristyn Peterson 7:10

So I guess two things that makes me think of one thing is being in the software space. AI is sort of all of the rage right now. And so we're definitely really closely watching what is happening with AI. I definitely think there are ethical and good ways to use AI. And I also think that there are some ways to use AI that maybe fall flat on that a little bit. So we're definitely trying to figure out how do we want to position how we would be assisting organizations who are utilizing AI. So, I mean, that kind of harkens back to one of those first questions that we talked through, where we want to make sure people are able to spend the time on the things that matter. And I think AI can really enable that, but I also think it has the propensity to potentially burn people out if it's used not well. So that's definitely something that we're working through right now. I think one of the challenges that we have had is more of that B2B side marketing. Like any of my marketing background has been more B2C. And so I've had a lot more success and like just more practice with that. And so I think we're constantly trying to think about how we can leverage some of those B2B things as like a small boutique consulting agency. So right now we're kind of considering some more like gorilla style marketing tactics in our local community with some banks and some different organizations that we have on kind of a short list that we've never tried before, but I'm interested to see the payoff with that. We have to kind of figure out how do we make ourselves stick out as a small fish in a big pond with big competitors that have different resources than we do.

Timothy Zercher 8:47

Yeah, it makes sense. It makes sense that it's not easy at all uh to stick out. Although as a small consultancy, you have a lot more flexibility, which is nice, right? You can try new things and big groups just can't.

Kristyn Peterson 8:58

That's right. Yeah, we can be like a lot more agile with that and you know, invest a little bit, take some data, see like, was that effective? Is that driving what we need? If not, let's put it down and try something different, which is really nice.

Timothy Zercher 9:10

Exactly. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining. We appreciate having you on. And I think a lot of your customers and a lot of the people working inside of your customers' companies appreciate the work that you and your team does.

Kristyn Peterson 9:19

Thanks so much. It was so great to talk with you.

Timothy Zercher 9:21

Absolutely.