– Welcome everybody to today’s Building My Legacy Podcast. I have with me today, Jan Barlow. Jan Barlow has an organization in which she is working to reimagine work. She particularly targets graduates of foster care and vets, but she works with organizations of all kinds, and also with our various HR organizations looking at what do we need, how do we need to work with employees and organizations to build a workplace that works for everybody? So welcome Jan.

– Thank you so much, Lois, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

– So Jan, we were just talking a little bit before we got started about some of the changes that are happening and what you see on the horizon. What have we just come through and what do you see on the horizon?

– You know, the pandemic just really was the straw that broke the camels back, right? I mean, this has been going on for decades. So really it hit the mainstream back in 2015 when Harvard Business Review did their July August issue, and the cover said, it’s time to blow up HR. Right, so, but this is something that I’ve been noticing since my very own transition and then working at a global pharmaceutical company. So again, this is not something new, but the pandemic really put everybody on a level playing field and put all this under the spotlight, if you will. So the future is like, this has been, people are really coming to the realization that they’re not willing to sacrifice anymore and they’re willing to stand up. The changes need to happen. So this veil is being lifted and the old wheel, if you will, of the past is crumbling.

– Wow. You know what? And I think Jan, as I’ve looked at things, there have been really two worlds in which we’ve operated, the world of management and of business, big corporate business, largely that said, we can manage this ’cause we control the jobs. You need to pay your mortgage, we’ll help you do that but this is the way we operate. And you’re right about COVID waking people up, but how do you think it’s gonna change then?

– Well, what’s interesting, it’s evolution, right? So it’s no different than any life threatening experience. You know, when people go through a near death experience, that’s really what all humans, what we’re experiencing right now.

– Yeah.

– So that puts people from a human behavior perspective in either love or fear, meaning they’re gonna get more courageous and stand up for what they want and being braver to ask and get what they want or the people are going to lower their level of behavior, and they’re gonna be more in fear and intimidation. So what we’re seeing is this, when you talk about that gap or that two worlds if you will, we’re finally seeing people stand up and say, look, we took over a year to sit on the couch and not be distracted, right? We couldn’t have all those superfluous distractions. So we were sitting on the couch and in the room or the house, and looking at our lives and had to do a lot of introspection, what do we want? Am I willing to settle? Right? Am I willing to, you know, what’s my purpose? What do I feel called? All those questions and introspective questions and clarifications have really spoken loudly to people. And I just see where, you know, the old, I mean, companies, you’re still gonna get, operate the way from the industrial revolution. I mean, we got linear thinking still, linear thinkings from 16th century Newtonian law. We live in a quantum science world, right? So everything’s gonna evolve in different ways, in different paces. So nothing’s black and white. So you’re gonna see this evolution of various methodologies and hierarchies changing. And then you’re gonna have those traditional that still are gonna be run the same old way that they’ve always run. So I just see more and more, the change is in the employees, right, the prospective job candidates because they’re the ones that say, okay, what do I want my life to look like now? Right? It’s the work work environments are going to have to accommodate or, it’s the market, right, that’s the customer, that’s the client. So some are gonna accommodate, some aren’t.

– You know, Jan, one of the things I love about you is you talk about, if we’re going to create a better workplace, we have to also get past shame and blame. So as workers, workers shame and blame in a sense their employer, their manager, the structure of the organization that is doing this to them. And then you have the manager who’s blaming and shaming the employees. So we’re seeing both of those happening, and you’re right, we’ve gotta get past at that sense of who is to blame for this to have an honest conversation. Tell me, you’re doing a lot of work on this, you’re thinking this through in terms of how we can have those conversations. What are some of your thoughts on that?

– You know, when we talk about a shame and blame free, or creating a shame and blame free environment, we have to really understand human behavior. And this is back in 2018, we Better Job Fit, I had literally trademarked behavior diversity. So when we look at conscious, as far as traditional conscious bias training and DEI training, it’s not working, right? Because it’s being perceived as shame and blame. People are getting defensive, so psychologically as you well know, what happens is, psychologically when that subconscious feels defensive, literally it affects our physical hearing. Like literally there’s a wall of understanding that, or a wall that keeps us from changing our behavior, we can understand the information that is being presented to us or communicated to us, but it does not seep in and really get absorbed to change behavior. So when we have this shame and blame environment, that really stops all advancement of change behavior, change culture. So it starts with an individual decision. You know, you gotta be okay with not taking offense. You gotta control your own emotions before you can change that environment, right? But again, creating a shame and blame free culture and creating a psychologically safe culture to where you can discuss and find, it’s a solution oriented situation with empathy, you’re creating that trust, right? Authenticity, empathy, and really solution oriented is creating that trust triangle.

– So Jan, in a sense, what we’ve got is a short term solution we’re gonna have to come up with because things are moving rapidly and then maybe a more long term. ‘Cause I think trust doesn’t happen overnight. That collaborative relationship doesn’t happen overnight. How do you see that we can begin to address this in the short term? ‘Cause we’re gonna need to pick up fast on this.

– Well, what’s interesting is because things are shifting, constantly shifting and moving. So like any natural disaster, there’s a three dimensional time element that progresses. So think of what you well know is mergers and acquisitions. As we know, right? Once a company or MNA goes into place, you got a one year, a two year, three to five year, though that natural progression of time and change that happens, it’s no different, this pandemic is no different. So you got the six, the 12 months or really it started like the eight or nine months, then you got the 16 to 24 months. So then we’re gonna go into that next level or what we route, in 2022, we’ll go into that third level of change. So that’s why I really need to look at short term goals. Long term, you can have a long term vision, but that’s a moving target. And right now you can’t use old processes from the past in strategic planning. That was one of the things that I love that you brought up today in the LinkedIn post. You can’t use an old process of strategic, how you approach strategic planning back in 2019 and before, that process that you use before is not applicable now. It’s not. And so we have to think differently about how do we strategically plan, and that doesn’t just mean long term, that’s short term. So how do we look at this 30, 60, 90 day plan, six months to a year? I mean know about you, but knowing that this is a moving target, any company that is holding and rooted in a long term plan beyond six months. I mean, I know companies that, like you can say, even in three months, this is what we like to accomplish. When they don’t hit those goals, then there’s repercussions, people start seeing failure and that’s the mindset that needs to change, this isn’t failure, this is about, okay, what do we feel we can accomplish in three months? And it’s about connectional intelligence. You know, we talk about, back the 90s, emotional intelligence. Now it’s about connectional intelligence and about those collaborations, how do we leverage relationships to create a win, win, win? And that’s where we are right now I believe.

– So, I think there’s two places where work really needs to be done. One is at the corporate company level, small midsize businesses are more flexible in terms of adjusting and adapting, big companies, not as much so. There’s I think a sense it’ll maybe, they’re big enough to wait out the storm, it’ll pass, it’ll be gone and it’ll be okay. I don’t think this storm is passing. Not without leaving a path of impact behind it. So that’s one, and then the other is the employee who’s trying to look for something different. So let’s separate out those conversations and let’s look at the company first because I think companies, if companies are beginning to see this, what are some suggestions you have to them? Where do they begin? How should they start having these conversations and beginning to address this?

– That’s a great question because I love how you bring up Lois, like how do they need to look at, they may have the financial stability, right, to wait out the storm.

– Right.

– That’s great. Okay, that’s a plus, but it’s the internal element of growth, you know, has a 10 stages of corporate growth model, right, and so, but even the mature company and stages of growth have nothing to do with how long a company’s been in business, how much money it had, that has nothing to do with it. So our old mindset or paradigm of saying, this company has 15,000 employees, that’s a large company, they make X amount of dollars, that doesn’t apply. You know, that has nothing to do with level of growth or where they are. You can have a mature company, but they really need to have elements of infancy and go-go within, in that company of, that innovation and being able to look at the big picture and then the more fluid what’s happening now. So it’s not linear one or the other, with an established company, you need to have a very flexible and fluid element of that company that stays on the pulse of what’s going on in the future. You know, your R&D but even R&D, if you’re a medical, if you’re a sum product company that produces a product, physical product, you have your R&D group, but even that’s linear thinking. You have to really within your stable organization, a large organization that is financially stable, you need to create and harness your people who are creative, entrepreneurial and people service to really leverage that connectional intelligence about what we need to do in the future, or really now, how do we need to pivot now? So that’s what I would say with the established companies that have the luxury financial support of waiting it out, right, keeping and retaining, keeping that boat afloat, but really now they need to harness the creative entrepreneurial people, service people, that talent within that can come together using connectional intelligence to keep them really ahead of the game, right.

– So let’s talk about connectional intelligence. What all is that?

– You know, what’s interesting, it’s from a psychological perspective, in quantum science what’s so funny is we think that’s woo woo, or we think it’s future, this science and fact based element of science has been in the realm and in academia since the 70s, right? So this is not woo-woo and it’s not new, but connectional intelligence is about really putting the psychological science and quantum science behind when people get together to exchange ideas, right? So the focus of what’s the intention, what’s the focus of each individual, and then collectively, what do you wanna come together to talk about, right? It’s bringing minds to together and leveraging that connectional intelligence to come up with a solution.

– So, you know, what’s interesting is in a sense, what you’re doing is you’re talking about, okay, we’re solving a problem, but these problems are much deeper, much more complex than our human resource problems have been in the past because we’ve kind of put a blanket over it, a shade over it, we haven’t had to see it. Now it’s fully exposed and we see the detail and the pain on all sides. And we also see the pressure companies are having, right. And so it’s that openness, it’s that willingness to take down the barriers that each of us have put up that have kept us from really being connected.

– Agreed. And that shame and blame that our media and society puts out there, cancel culture, what ever you wanna call it, again, psychologically that stops growth from happening because it turns off our hearing, it turns off our attention and we go into food, water, shelter mode, right? We go into defense modes. So it’s up to individuals to really work on themselves to be consciously advanced and with Better Job Fit, you know, our goal is to create help, our vision is to, through our mission and our purpose, our vision is to really create a consciously advanced workforce. That’s what our vision is. We wanna do through our education, our networking, our groups, everything that we put out, as far as our learning and development programs are all based around that vision of creating a consciously advanced workforce. So.

– Okay.

– Right, so it is individual work though. So I appreciate you saying that.

– So consciously advanced, I would like you to define it ’cause I think for some people that may be a new term.

– So, and it is, people aren’t used to hearing that term. So you have emotional intelligence, right? That’s been around since the 90s. Consciously advanced, so when we were put on the couch in 2020, and we’re seeing this gap of human awareness, meaning this awareness of ourselves, awareness of what we want, being consciously aware of what our needs are, that’s what I mean by consciously advanced and being able to communicate that. So people are noticing just like you said, the two worlds, you’re among the consciously advanced because you not only have taken this time to really do, it’s individually introspective. Right, but also seeing, hey, I’m not where I wanna be, this is what I want at that level. That’s consciously advanced, when you’re confident in what you want, you know, you’re clear you have you’re objective, you wanna learn, you’re curious, those are some of the descriptors of a consciously advanced individual.

– Okay. So Jan, I wanna switch just a little bit now to the employee. ‘Cause we’ve kind of taken a look at the company and some of the changes that need to be made there, but for the employee, the 10, 20, 30 whatever percent that has been let go, they have moved to other companies. Their mindset has perhaps changed. One of the comments that I hear is while I gave my soul to the last company, I’m never doing that again because what good did it do me, right? So there’s that sense of having been betrayed that some people as they go into a new job, but I’m also seeing, where do they go? There’s that concern on their part, where do they go? So talk a little bit about that with me. How do we structure things for this group of people who want something different would really love, I mean, I think when they say, I’m not gonna put my soul into it again, they’re really saying, open the door for me, give me a vision so I can do it ’cause I love being able to be passionate about what I’m doing.

– You know, that’s a great question and it comes back to again individually introspective. Okay, so the reason, when people are growing and expanding, right, consciously, like what 2020 has done for all of us, these contrasting experiences of being laid off, whatever, right. They’re faced with, what do I do next? Right, how do I create my next? And people say, well, I gotta find a job. That’s always their immediate response, I gotta find a job. Well, it’s not about finding a job, that’s just the mental programming that people automatically say that that’s what it is.

– Right.

– Consciously advanced individuals are now asking themselves the question, okay, what does my next look like? What does my life working, right, what does that look like? And you know, you brought up a great element or mindset that was a previous mindset that is being busted out. And that is, I gave my soul to the company. I gave everything to the company. Well, okay, that was an individual choice. What people are experiencing now with that contrast is, oh, well, I don’t wanna feel that way anymore, I now need to ask myself what’s important to me because nobody took it from you, you gave that effort, that’s your mindset. You placed the importance of your work and the company before you, before your needs, right. Now people are experiencing that contrast and they’re coming back and they’re saying, hey, remember the race of consciousness, they’re asking themselves, hey, I don’t wanna think that way anymore. What does my life look like now? What do I want? What’s important to me now? So that’s really where people are, is they need to really find resources where they can ask themselves and answer those questions. It’s the individually introspective side of things that people need, that they are doing that now.

– So Jan, we’ve created this gap between where the companies are, what their needs are, how they have functioned, what people are wanting. And there’s somewhere a bridge that needs to be developed because people need jobs. And it does give us purpose and meaning to have meaningful work, companies won’t make their numbers if they don’t have people, but we’ve got something that’s missing. The gap has gotten big enough, you can’t just leap over to get to the other side anymore. So what are those bridges that need to be put in place?

– You know, the same action needs to happen from both sides.

– Okay.

– Again, that individual introspection. So from a company standpoint, the hiring process in and of itself, remember when I was sharing previously about our human evolution and development has grown beyond what our processes are. So from a company standpoint, we need to look at, their companies need to look at their hiring process differently, think differently about it. I mean, from that perspective, and then individuals need to be clear about who they want to attract. What are the company, so because people will spend hours searching for jobs, right, and applying for jobs. Well, when you’re not doing it correctly, it’s not an act from the left side of your brain, there’s a whole different process that needs to be done, or a certain way that your job search needs to be done. This process needs to be different. And that’s where we are, both the process of hiring and both the process of selecting what you wanna do next, or what type of work do you wanna do? Next? Those are two different processes, but they’re processes that need to be upgraded. They need to be changed, right.

– Let me ask you another question along that, ’cause if you’re going to really rethink the hiring process, it seems to me there’s several levels that need to come together. The boards of directors who have their notion of targets that need to be met, and the profit margins that need to be maintained. Then you have the CEO who is under the pressure to meet those numbers and also develop and take a group of people with him or her on that journey, and then it’s the HR people who are trying to implement it all. So how does that come together so that their vision of this workplace, these new needs are more clearly understood?

– It’s about the relationship and the dynamics between those elements and companies that allow their board of directors to make hiring decisions, that rarely works out well. Okay, because they don’t have skin in the game, right, they’re not there every day, they’re not the ones that work with the people. So that’s a recipe for disaster right there to have boards of directors have vetoing and hiring power ’cause that, right.

– But it comes down to the relationship and that’s where with the HR disruptor summit, you know, with our group, we saw that gap and we have brought together the C-suite, we brought together HR, we brought together people that are on the boards, or on boards of directors, right. To bring those elements together, those people together in those positions. So they can have a dialogue and a safe dialogue because they’re not under the same roof, they’re not with the same company. Right, so now we’re able to share different information with one another and experiences and learn from one another. So really to be able to facilitate that to have those three different elements or pieces of a company come together in another venue, to come in another environment to where they can interact with one another safely, because again, they’re not under the same company, that’s the way we’re helping facilitate that situation. So I think it’s, if they can’t feel safe talking amongst themselves and there’s too much dynamics involved, I think for us, it’s creating that space to where people in those different genres can come together to talk about those issues.

– I think Jan, it’s maybe not so much not feeling safe as much as not knowing how to have the conversation or how to get out of the boundaries that you’ve created. And so having an opportunity, like what you have done with your Disrupter’ Summit, you’ve given people a place to have a conversation they didn’t know they needed to have.

– ‘Cause they’re in silos, right? Every has stayed in their own little silo. And that’s one of the biggest issues with, and really complaints from the HR industry, from the professionals, you know, they wanna be involved, but C-suite needs to look at them more than just paper pushers and administrators, right. This is the time again where we’re coming together to reimagine work, so we know what hasn’t been working. So we need to come together and say, well, what does this next look like? What does a new relationship look like? What are some of the things that we need to, what veils do we need to lift? And of it is really our perception of one another, right? Again, the C-suite sees HR as a non-money maker. You gotta move past that and you gotta really change the attitude or the mindset of how do you look at a board of directors and what their role is? How do you look at a HR and what their role is? But that’s the biggest block is C-suite looking at HR, not as a value proposition or added value, they just see them as they cost money, and they’re here when we need people. And when we don’t need employees, they’re just a hindrance to progress.

– You know, there’s so much on this. Just how do you have this disruptive in a sense conversation, how do you disrupt enough to pause, to reflect and recreate? That’s a huge conversation. And I think we better come back and have another conversation just on that, because it’s an important discussion. I think people are, what we’ve seen on LinkedIn in the last few days, people are just crying out for, please, just have a conversation. And I think everybody wants it better. Everybody at every level wants it better. It’s just how. How.

– Well, and it comes back to, getting back to the human element of it, right? I mean, it’s interesting. I belong to a women’s group here in Dallas and their tagline is, make friends first, business comes later. And I think we need to start taking that situation or that mindset when we work in our companies, right? Create relationships first, the business then comes, right, the progress then comes. We’re so used to reacting to what is, we’re not creating. And that’s where the difference is, we’re spending time reacting and we’re not putting the time and effort into the creation portion.

– It is so true. Jan, we have just a couple minutes, how would you like to close? What would you like to leave the audience with?

– I gotta tell you, it’s really all about #thinkdifferently, literally individually, introspective, but also what do you want it to look like? We need to be more a part of the creative process instead of kicking back of what is to really take back and to own that creative process and get the human back in, right. I mean, that’s really where I’m from is, reimagine work is about bringing back the human aspect of creation and reimagination.

– So think differently and reimagine work, love it. I’m going to have information about Jan and her company Job Fit in the show notes for you. So please feel free to contact her. My goodness, we need people to be thinking differently and Jan certainly will help you do that. So please feel free to connect with her, contact her and see what kinds of things she might be able to do to help your organization. And so thank you all very much for being with us on Building My Legacy Podcast today. And Jan, thank you so, so much.

– Thank you Lois I appreciate to see what wants to be created next.