Get Reworked

If someone asked you to define design thinking, would you be able to do it?

In this episode of Get Reworked, Andrew Lindsay, global head of enterprise design at KraftHeinz, discusses why that lack of a clear definition is in part why design thinking has been called into question and advocates for why it's more important than ever.

"In the absence of a design practice and design strategist and user researchers, engineers and product teams and business stakeholders are the hippo — the highest paid person's opinion — who drive those types of decisions. And so having that third-party perspective, that nonpartisan view coming from the design team really helps the teams take a step back, lead with data and insights, and then make more informed decisions," Andrew said.

• What critics of design thinking got right and where they missed the mark.
• Why Andrew views design thinking is one form of business development.
• What goes into choosing which problem to solve when with design thinking.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

Compassion isn't typically a focus of board-room discussions, but maybe it should be.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Dr. James Doty, neurosurgeon, author, founder of the Center of Compassion and Altruism Research at Stanford University and founder of Happi.ai joins me to discuss the research behind the creation of his mental health avatar and why companies should learn the science behind why compassion in the workplace pays off for everyone.

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"The reality is that there are many corporations which are functioning on an old paradigm, which is motivation through fear. And when that is the paradigm, it leads to several negative aspects. One is it decreases productivity, it decreases creativity, it increases healthcare costs, and it has a negative effect or increases, if you will, human resource costs. So if the corporate entity in and of itself is not a compassionate place, that will dramatically increase problems related to mental health issues," said Jim.

• Why an identified need for self-compassion in part drove the creation of Happi.ai, a mental health avatar.
• The scientific and financial argument for why compassion matters in the workplace.
• How technology can both help and harm our efforts to build connections in the world and the workplace.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

100,000 employees, 15 intranets and who knows how many individual department SharePoint sites.

That's the challenge that Chris Harrer and his team at Comcast faced when tasked with bringing this fragmented digital ecosystem together into a seamless digital employee experience with the relaunch of the company's intranet, ComcastNow.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Chris, former AVP of digital internal communications at Comcast and IMPACT award winner gives us an inside look into how he and his team untangled the fragmented digital ecosystem that was ComcastNow, the company's intranet, to deliver an unified digital employee experience.

"We did a lot of research. We did surveys, obviously, and we did many individual stakeholder sessions. I think we did 36 stakeholder sessions, and that went from everywhere from literally the CIO, the CHRO, all the way down to department heads. We did end users in general, all the way from the frontline all the way up. Everyone's a user in the end," said Chris.

• The unexpected challenges that came up during the project.
• The response to the relaunched ComcastNow.
• What Chris wishes he knew when he started that he knew when he ended.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

Think back to your first day at work. You met your new colleagues, learned about the corporate culture and maybe got some branded company swag. But did you get the tools you needed to actually accomplish your job?

In this episode of Get Reworked, Spencer Mains, head of digital workplace experience at Pacific Gas & Electric shares how he and his team pushed tech enablement onto the orientation agenda after witnessing how long it took for some of their colleagues to receive their work computer.

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"A year ago, we had people coming on board, and it could take an average of five days before you are actually connected to the network with your equipment. And that's a bit of a shame and kind of an embarrassment. It's not right for our ratepayers, it's not right for their colleagues. So we quantified that as lost productivity. We showed the numbers, it was in the millions of dollars of lost productivity, we have people who were actually sitting idle. And we changed that," said Spencer.

• Why IT needs to be part of orientation.
• Why Spencer uses joy as a key metric.
• Why IT leaders need to practice breakthrough thinking to support their colleagues.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at [email protected].

Conflict is an unfortunate truth in life, society and the workplace. Some might call it a necessary evil. But is it really that bad? Without healthy tension, diversity of thought and spirited debate, we can't have innovation, growth or change within our organizations.

Karin Hurt, CEO of Let's Grow Leaders and author of the book, "Powerful Phrases For Dealing With Workplace Conflict," joins the podcast to discuss what she's learned about addressing conflict with care-filled words and building brighter, bolder cultures in the office.

"If you both care about something really passionately, you're gonna have conflict. It's how you manage the conflict, and so care filled words can make all the difference. And that's really why we wrote powerful phrases for dealing with workplace conflict, so that you can have more productive conflict up, down and sideways in your teams."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• The four dimensions of productive conflict.
• The role that building human connections plays.
• How hybrid and remote work have reshaped our approaches to conflict.
• What can be done at the organizational level to normalize disagreements between teams and colleagues.

Plus, hosts Siobhan Fagan and Nidhi Madhavan chat with Karin about why traditional approaches to providing feedback ("I" statements, sh*t sandwiches) don't work, the G.O.A.T phrases to use instead, and overcoming physical barriers in a remote environment.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

The number and variety of tools in our workplaces have steadily grown over the last 10 or so years, but their ranks exploded during the pandemic. With that explosion came confusion over which tool to use when, with the default often being using all of them for everything.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Designing Collaboration director Andrew Pope discusses why asynchronous work can help us claw back some of our focus time and shares how to get started.

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Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why we need to be more deliberate in choosing which collaboration tools to use when.
• Why team charters can change how you collaborate and communicate for the better.
• How you can convince people to change their habits.
• Where to get started with asynchronous collaboration.
• How working out loud supports asynchronous work.

Plus, hosts Nidhi Madhavan and Siobhan Fagan talk with Andrew about how asynchronous collaboration can help democratize idea sharing, when it's important to work in sync and why building up capabilities like asynchronous work sometimes beats big transformation projects. Listen in for more.

Normalizing the conversation around employee well-being is one positive outcome that came out of the pandemic. Businesses now understand the role they have in supporting employee well-being and the bottom line cost of ignoring this area.

In this episode of Get Reworked, AWS global head of HR Prudence Pitter discusses what AWS is doing to support employee well-being.

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"A leader who can share, 'I had this deliverable that I missed, because I got to this location, my luggage was not there. It caused a whole ripple effect where I was not able to be productive for two days. And so this is how I bounce back.' It's important for leaders to share some of the personal things that they're OK with sharing that help others recognize that it's normal, not only some of the ways that professionally they have fallen, if you will, but also importantly, how they bounce back. What are the ways that they redeem themselves. And I think that's a very powerful story to tell," said Prudence.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why it's important to build accountability around well-being initiatives.
• Why well-being accounts for the whole person, both in and out of work.
• How well-being initiatives will not go anywhere if they ignore the ways the workplace is impacting well-being.
• Why leaders need to model the behavior they're promoting.
• How to normalize the conversation around well-being to remove any lingering stigma.

Plus, hosts Siobhan Fagan and Nidhi Madhavan talk with Prudence about identifying where to focus well-being efforts, why some leaders may need coaching to have difficult conversations, and if discussing well-being without following through does more harm than good. Listen in for more.

Middle management has been the butt of jokes for years — and often bear the brunt of layoffs, as was the case in 2023. But in the right hands, middle management can act as the glue that helps employees see their role in a company's broader success.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Ryppl Effect founder Joe Makston shares how his experience as an employee experience leader and head of learning and development shaped his approach to some hard leadership conversations.

"When you start to understand, oh, the customer implementation process that I just took somebody through, contributes to the department goal of whatever and contributes to that line of business and ultimately rolls up to we're supposed to book $500 million in this specific category, if I can understand that by closing that implementation, that work contributes to actually getting to the $500,000 — that is gold for an employee, they see the broader picture. It's leaders understanding when you're writing goals, when you're talking about performance, how to tie it to, frankly, the strategy and that breakdown between strategy and the tactical piece," said Joe.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why now's the time to discuss how leadership is struggling.
• How shortcomings in leadership development led to the ongoing management boom—bust cycles.
• How management impacts culture, engagement and productivity.
• Why he thinks being a manager and an individual contributor at the same time isn't a good idea.
• How managers can give leadership a view into the day-to-day operations.

Plus, hosts Nidhi Madhavan and Siobhan Fagan talk with Joe about how organizations can identify who is right for management roles, why some people may need to be pushed to grow and the parallels he sees between being a pastor and being a leader. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

Managing change is tough. Now imagine managing a change initiative that involves overhauling 118 legacy systems for 750,000 stakeholders under the watchful eye of Congress.

In this episode of Get Reworked, Air Force enterprise change manager Heather Knuffke gives an inside look at what it takes to make change stick at the over 75-year-old institution.

"When you have an organization that's this big, and you have commanders in charge of units across the Air Force, and each commander wants to manage their own organization in their own way, it's not so easy just to say turn around and march, right? .... So we believe strongly in delegating responsibility down. And so we try to give our commanders at bases and commanders of units as much authority over how they run their organization so that they can effectively lead when it comes to HR policy, and when it comes to talent management and promotions, and awards, and things like that. That's within the commander's purview," said Heather.

Highlights of the conversation include:

• Why you can't just order people to change.
• The emotional component that's part of any change management initiative.
• Why her role is as much about being a translator between IT and HR.
• How she prioritizes across a variety of competing demands.
• The two skills she thinks every change manager should possess.

Plus, host Siobhan Fagan talks with Heather about training a cadre of change managers throughout the Air Force, how she approaches the multiple stakeholders involved in the change initiatives and what it's like getting a PhD in change management while working in change management every day. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].

What does commitment mean in the context of work? From an employee's point of view, it can mean a reduction in stress, increased meaning, as well as the capacity to do their best work. From the employer's side, it can translate into increased productivity and higher employee engagement — which directly impacts their bottom line.

In this episode, we speak with Andre Martin, author of "Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever," about why it's so important to discuss how work gets done in our workplaces so employees — and employers — can find the right fit for them.

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"Hiring managers have got to be more transparent. We have to be comfortable in being able to talk about the madness behind the method. Talk about the places where it's kind of hard to do work here because of these factors and talk about them in terms of we're always trying to get better — but that transparency is going to pay off," said Andre. "... We know that people more and more are looking for transparency, they're looking for vulnerability. They're looking for a place that is human and imperfect. And so my hope is that hiring managers will give talent a little bit more of a view into the company, because then they will find the right person and the people that opt out should have probably opted out."

Highlights of the conversation include:

• What's causing the crisis of commitment today.
• Why Andre wants to see a return to the 20-year career in one workplace.
• The difference between boredom and comfort in a job.
• Why a frank discussion of how a company works should be a critical part of any job interview — for the interviewer and the interviewee.
• How Andre differentiates between being the 'right fit' and 'fitting in.'

Plus, hosts Nidhi Madhavan and Siobhan Fagan talk with Andre about why the aspirational language companies use to describe themselves often do more harm than good, why he believes there's a company for everyone and why he thinks companies should re-recruit their employees on a regular basis. Listen in for more.

Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].