Why Alignment Matters: Insights on Building Unified Organizations

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:00]:

Welcome to the Strategy Gap, a show for leaders who want to bridge the gap between strategy creation and strategy execution. I'm Jonathan Morgan, and along with Joe Krause, each episode we have conversations with strategy and operational leaders on key issues in strategic planning and strategy execution. If you're looking to actually accomplish your goals, this is the show for you. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Strategy Gap. Joining us today is Ken Saggendorf. Ken has over a decade of experience in senior leadership roles as a strategic leader and innovator across education and business. He actually began his career in higher education, where he served as an associate professor and Director of Faculty development at the US Air Force Academy, and then at Regis University, where he led the center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and later the Innovation center role. He actually still continues today.

Jonathan Morgan [00:00:54]:

He's also currently the Chief Strategy Officer at True Alignment, a company that helps organizations align their culture, strategy and execution. Ken is passionate about alignment and fostering a culture of innovation and learning. Proof of that is Ken is actually also the host of the True Alignment podcast, where he regularly has conversations about alignment across both professional and personal applications. Ken, welcome to the show.

Ken Sagendorf [00:01:17]:

Thanks for having me. Jonathan and Joe, good to be with you.

Jonathan Morgan [00:01:19]:

Perfect. Well, Ken, based on your intro and of course our previous conversations, you've done a little bit of everything throughout your career. Now doing some on the consulting and strategy and alignment side, but starting more in the education world and a lot of things that come with that. I actually want to kick off the conversation just by getting your story on how did you land in a more of a strategy specific role? What was that journey like for you?

Ken Sagendorf [00:01:42]:

Yeah, you know, Jonathan, thanks for the question. As we were having this conversation, you and I, before we got on the podcast, I think my entry into strategy is a little bit different because people saw me as the person that was doing all the execution. And I want to talk about kind of strategy and execution as two parts of the same cube, because strategy is both meta and local simultaneously. And I think that part is people in my organizations recognize me as doing the execution. And I tell the story all the time that when I started the Innovation center, that Dean at the time came over and he said, I want you to start this for me. And after I argued with him about what innovation was, I said, I think you got the wrong guy. And he said, no. He said, I want somebody that can come and do these things.

Ken Sagendorf [00:02:27]:

And everybody around here saying, go get Ken to help when we want to do things. And so it was really an opportunity to go and do innovation. But it was innovation as strategy. It wasn't disconnected. So those two things are together. And that's happened over and over and over, as a matter of fact. True Alignment. My first interaction with True Alignment was to be the operations person.

Ken Sagendorf [00:02:47]:

And because I could get stuff done again, it just kept coming up again and again. And so I got invited into different kinds of conversations by leaders when they recognized that their strategy could be achieved through the execution of doing things.

Joe Krause [00:03:01]:

You hear the term operator, especially in the tech space. It's like, I'm an operator by the virtue of that title. And based on your experience, do you think that in order to be an effective operator, you have to be more of a generalist versus a specialist? Because you're going to be interacting in different departments that maybe don't have as much expertise, but you have to have at least functional domain expertise in order to engage with them? Like. Like what level do you have to level up in different departments in order for you to be able to speak the same language but not spin your wheels to be trying to become an expert in every area? Because that's not. That's not going to happen.

Ken Sagendorf [00:03:35]:

Yeah, Joe, I think that's a fantastic question. So let me say a couple of things. I think generalist gets a bad rep, right? Because generalists makes it sound like you don't know expertise in any specific area.

Joe Krause [00:03:47]:

Agreed, 100%.

Ken Sagendorf [00:03:48]:

And so I think the modern generalist is really somebody that can develop expertise in multiple areas. Part of this big conversation, a friend of mine that we had on our podcast, Claudia Batten, who's kind of a tech entrepreneur herself, she was doing some research and she shared this with us. The idea that human beings are the only people that can hold multiple disparate thoughts at the same time. And the ultimate generalist is able to hold those multiple disparate things at the same time. Because you go in with your knowledge, you're not in their space to prove that you're in their space. You're in their space to be both in their space and bring your space to theirs. And that's the part of being a generalist that really is the necessary component, I think, to work across an organization effectively is you can't be all the time saying, this is my thing and that's your thing. They're both are things.

Ken Sagendorf [00:04:38]:

And in order to get that work done, you have to be able to bridge that gap, no pun intended, with the title of the podcast. But you need to be able to take that space and make up the difference between those two spaces, for those.

Jonathan Morgan [00:04:49]:

That are watching video, one of the books behind me is the book Range that talks really in depth about this topic. If you haven't read it, I definitely recommend doing it. But there's so much out there, I think that applies across the world of strategy and across really leadership in general is how do you apply generalist principles to growing your career, to growing your organization? And I think one aspect that's often overlooked is that ability of being able to zoom in and zoom out of conversations. Right. Because you're not just specializing in one particular area, as you mentioned, Ken, you have expertise in multiple domains that enables you to take that operator mindset and apply it across a different strategic framework. To me, honestly, that's how I think about a personal level of alignment. I know alignment is a big topic for you, Ken. It's the focus of your podcast.

Jonathan Morgan [00:05:35]:

It's the focus of the conversation. Kind of where we want to go next with this piece is thinking about alignment as a whole. Unfortunately, it's overused as a buzzword, particularly in strategy space. It means something different to everybody, to every organization, starting simply. Ken, how do you define alignment? What does that mean at the simplest level?

Ken Sagendorf [00:05:55]:

I'm going to give you an image that I use all the time in our work around alignment, because I tend to think in these pictures, so I'll lay down some tracks here. So I think alignment for me is the image that comes to mind is standing on a subway platform and the subway slows down just enough. Joe, you appreciate this back in New Jersey, we don't do this as much here in Denver, but the subway slows down just enough for you to see very clearly through the window at exactly what is going on. That is the moment of alignment. The buzzword is hard because I think we confuse alignment in like a Zen like state. I use that subway imagery because the subway starts moving again. Alignment is not a stable thing. Alignment is something that we are always after and looking for because the conditions change all the time.

Ken Sagendorf [00:06:44]:

If there was ever a leadership mantra, I mean, I'd want them to know that people are experiencing changing conditions all day, every day, all the time. And so to approach any kind of leadership, but especially leadership around alignment as something static, means that somebody's going to miss the majority of the time. So alignment is really this space where the things that are internal to you and the things that are external to you start to make sense for where they're both going together. What we say in true alignment all the time, alignment really easily Jonathan, and this is probably the best definition I can give you, is the absence of fear. You're not afraid that something else is going to happen. You're not afraid of the other shoe to drop. You're not afraid of what your coworker might do or what your boss might think. It is the absence of fear.

Joe Krause [00:07:33]:

The fear is related typically to change to your point, because there was an old story I saw at a conference a long time ago, and it was about change management. The speaker was saying, raise your hand if you in the audience feel that you. You hate change. Change. Boo. And everybody's handling up right.

Ken Sagendorf [00:07:48]:

Everyone.

Joe Krause [00:07:48]:

Boom.

Ken Sagendorf [00:07:48]:

Change.

Joe Krause [00:07:49]:

And he was like, all right, well, here's a little thought experiment. He goes, today's your lucky day. Before I got here, I was able to secure $1 million for each of you in the room that you can use however you'd like. And everyone's like, yeah. And he goes, and the better news is in my right pocket, I have a note from the Treasury Secretary where every one of you is going to get that million dollars tax free, and it's a million dollars straight up right to you. And so by show of hands, how many people here think a million dollars would change their lives? And like, everybody's hand goes up, and then he goes, put your hand down if you don't want the money, nobody put their hand down. So the point of that story shows that people are not scared of change for change's sake. They're scared of change because they don't understand what's in it for that.

Joe Krause [00:08:27]:

So in the million dollar example, everybody knows their life would change dramatically with a million, but they automatically assume it's a good change because they could make that, that mental leap where we're rolling out changes that mess with their theory of alignment. Because your, your concept of alignment is important because it has to do with a lot with the how you feel. I did a webinar yesterday around the same topic, around, you know, what are some things in your plan that are difficult when you're creating a strategic plan? And of all the people on the webinar, the number one thing was we struggle with alignment. We can't draw a direct connection between we're doing this project to impact this metric, and this metric impacts this goal, and this goal impacts this particular focus area. And that probably comes from a lot of what you're talking about where they don't feel sure, they don't understand that there's fear involved. And so what you're mentioning is all together, so how do you coach leaders on making that process a little bit simpler? Maybe making a simpler plan or communicating that the change is good for them? How, what techniques have you seen that get the thing that pushes the fear out of the equation as best as you can?

Ken Sagendorf [00:09:28]:

So there's a couple things. We do a lot of work in true alignment around change as well. And we tend to take change and morph it into talking about transition. And we do this big giant activity, much like the million dollar one with the reframing, and ask people to look at each other, really, really look at each other closely, like uncomfortably close, in pairs, and then turn around away from each other. And then change five things about their appearance. And they do that activity and then they turn around and we try and get them to see what changes that individual has made. And then when we're done with those five things, we make them turn around and change five more things. The moral of the story is always, and we've done this with thousand people in a room.

Ken Sagendorf [00:10:09]:

The moral of the story is most people think about change as a loss. So you're going to take your hat off, you're going to take your glasses off. We've seen people in large crowds take their pants off, for Christ's sake. This is the idea that change is loss. And so we reframe the idea of transition, not as just loss. There's going to be some added things. I mean, what if an organization changes its strategy so that it can increase its revenue and pay all its people more? That is not the first thing that comes to mind. What comes to mind is what am I going to lose? And so part of this is coaching the leaders to know that this transition is going to be in effect the other thing here.

Ken Sagendorf [00:10:49]:

And I'll talk about the true alignment framework. And this ties into my background in higher ed. And so for 25 years I spent trying to help faculty in colleges and universities become better teachers. You want to know what the key is? To not think like you, to think like the students that you're teaching. And so we use this. Jonathan will probably appreciate this maybe more than Joe, but Joe, I think this will make sense too. We use an analogy in that teaching space, that teaching is like preparing to help somebody hike a 14,000 foot peak here in Colorado. And when you show up at the trailhead at a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado, it's an amazing study of humanity because somebody will have the absolute best climbing and hiking gear that you've ever seen.

Ken Sagendorf [00:11:38]:

They prepared for four different seasons, they have enough water they have enough food and all the technical expertise needed. And right next to that human being will be somebody standing there in 30 degree weather in shorts and flip flops with no water.

Joe Krause [00:11:52]:

That's Jonathan. Actually.

Jonathan Morgan [00:11:55]:

He's not. He's not lying. It's the absolute truth. Any hike you'll be not about me. No, Ken's not lying. Any hike you'll be on the truth.

Joe Krause [00:12:01]:

The truth.

Jonathan Morgan [00:12:02]:

Any hike you'll be on, there'll be somebody or barefoot even sometimes, and then somebody that looks like they're climbing Mount Everest.

Ken Sagendorf [00:12:08]:

Your job as a teacher is to get them both to the same place, right? I mean, I think that is something that you have to give a teacher some understanding. And I think the same goes for a leader where strategies fail, especially an adjustment to a strategy. And this is a really, really important things. So strategy has a long term component to it and the tactics get in the way. And I have to share this story really quick. I'm teaching a marketing strategy class right now and one of the activities where we dig deep into strategy is for them to talk about their workplace or where they used to work and if they knew what the strategy of the organization was. And so here I have 15 people all in a zoom meeting with crestfallen faces. And one meek soul says, what if my business didn't have a strategy? I mean, I think that leader would be mortified to think that their employees do that.

Ken Sagendorf [00:13:03]:

But that's what I mean. When strategy is both meta and local, it can't be either meta or local, it must be both. And that's really Joe to your, to your question is what are you going to help leaders know? They need to know that it's both meta and local. They need to know how the work actually gets done so that somebody's not trying to put a wrapper around the work that we used to do and call it something different. Right? If you're asking people to do different things and that's the change or the transition models, if you're asking people to do different things, you have to know what their work actually entails because you're going to need to change the actual work. Can't get different outcomes from the same work. You're going to actually need to change the work. And I think the leaders need to be able to.

Ken Sagendorf [00:13:45]:

They either need to have the managers in place, but there needs to be this connection throughout the whole organization. So we did that work with teachers to recognize thinking about the student's perspective. The work we do in True Alignment really is it Comes in through the leaders. Most often comes in through the executive team or the executive suite or the CEO themselves. But the work of true alignment really starts from thinking about the customer and what that customer experiences. Specifically, what emotional need is that product or service from that business going to meet? And then we work backwards to how does your brand intentionally deliver upon that? That conversation opens up a whole different conversation about the work that gets done. And then we say, what kind of culture do you need? What kind of aligned culture do you need to deliver on that brand intentionally to meet that customer's human emotional need? And then finally, what kind of leadership do you need to lead that kind of culture that delivers on that brand intention that meets that human emotional need for the customer? And I think we. Business is human.

Ken Sagendorf [00:14:47]:

All of business is human. We live in a business society. And so this construct of. Typically when I'm facilitating these kinds of conversations, I ask people to put themselves in the shoes of a customer for any business they go to, what do they get from the car they drive? What do they get from the stores they shop at? And put them in that role in that other worldness, that coming out of self to seeing other. I think it's not different than the exercise we do around change. It puts them in a different position and it kind of does some shock and awe to the brain to help them see that.

Jonathan Morgan [00:15:20]:

Yeah, I think going back to where we started the conversation, kicking things off, it was. Alignment is a buzzword.

Ken Sagendorf [00:15:25]:

Right.

Jonathan Morgan [00:15:26]:

And that's because I think people think about it at the company level. What we're advocating for here today is think about it from the personal level. And that's really where things matter. And you made a great point earlier when you talked about people think about change as far as losing things. And I think about my own personal life. Right. If you're ever stressed or worried about something, it's some negative change. Right.

Jonathan Morgan [00:15:45]:

Maybe you get a little bit hopeful about future things to come. But most is like, oh, what would happen if I lost my job or I got into a car accident and didn't have a car? Or something came by negative. That's the change that we're feeling hearing as opposed to the positive aspect, relaying. That's actually going to go back to Joe's mention of the webinar yesterday. That perfect state of how you relate to the personal level at a company is when you're building your plan. And Joe's words, as you move down a plan, you're asking, how.

Ken Sagendorf [00:16:14]:

Right.

Jonathan Morgan [00:16:15]:

How are we going to do that? We're going to do this strategy, we're going to measure it by this metric, we're going to do this initiative. But you also have to think about it from the individual level, moving from the bottom up, thinking about why, okay, if I am this employee doing this certain thing, why am I doing this? Okay, there's clear alignment to what this accomplishes up the organization. That to me is the perfect state. But there's obviously a lot of gaps in between there.

Ken Sagendorf [00:16:39]:

Right.

Jonathan Morgan [00:16:40]:

And as much as you're open to it, Ken, I'd love to learn how, if you're going in an organization, they've got no sense of alignment. What are the basic steps that an organization can take, take either through the True alignment framework or through another model to begin laying this out for their organization?

Ken Sagendorf [00:16:57]:

I'm hearkening back to a story where we had a company really on the verge of a, of a gigantic financial milestone. We had them. And when I say them, it was their founders and the 18 folks in their kind of executive orbit for this organization and their private equity group came with them. They came in with their roller suitcases and they're like, we're not going to be here for the two days of this strategic plan thing you're going to do. We have a 10:30am flight. And then all of a sudden at 9:00 they were, they were on their phones and they were, they're like, no, no, no, we're staying to watch this. Part of it is you give a framework. And I, I often talk about this idea of two versus three point communication.

Ken Sagendorf [00:17:38]:

So Jonathan and Joe, when we're talking to this thing, whatever you think about me, Ken, oh my God, that shine off Ken's head is killing me. Like it is in our conversation when we look directly at each other. That's two point communication. When we think about an organization, it provides a wonderful third point. And if we can get people to back up, away from looking at each other and having each other's issues in the way. And that third point of the company and the company's success, that's really one of the things that we do. So we introduce that framework to introduce third points, right? And then we talk about relationships that are necessary in order to accomplish these things, which I think is really at the heart of your question, Jonathan. And one of the things that we always say is you have to set intentions for relationships.

Ken Sagendorf [00:18:25]:

And we have a model, we call it the competitive advantage spiral. And I think this is a little bit of the shock and awe that True Alignment does With leaders, we really posit that your competitive advantage is born out of listening, not listening. The way that we kind of talk about listening in corporate speak, but really listening with vulnerability. It's not listening for the things that you think are nice, the things that are necessary, but it's really being open to that. Because when you listen with vulnerability, what you earn from that conversation, and this is really the work we do with companies, Jonathan. We teach them how to listen with some vulnerability, set the intention for the relationship, teach them a little bit of the skills about how to listen with vulnerability. Because out of that becomes trust. And when you have trust, then you can have honesty and openness.

Ken Sagendorf [00:19:11]:

Okay? In an organization, this is so important because a line employee can't, doesn't always feel free to say to their boss, you're asking us to do this, but the conditions are that, and I can't make this connection. I actually need some help. The listening with vulnerability is not saying, well, you have everything you need because that shuts down the conversation, but it allows and invites that part so that you have some openness and some honesty. And then when you have that openness and some honesty, what happens is you start to rely on one another and then you get some individual accountability, you get some team accountability, and then you get some organizational accountability and that becomes your performance. And so I hate to simplify it that far down, but you have to be able to listen. And what we do is we teach people kind of that intention setting. We show them that other successful organizations historically have processes for really really simple things. Well, really really difficult things.

Ken Sagendorf [00:20:10]:

They've made simple problem solving, conflict management, decision making. The most innovative organizations on the planet. People know the processes to do those things, right? It's not held with their manager, it's not held with their boss where they got to go ask somebody, they know how those things work. Those are the meta things in an organization. And I think that's part of what you need to have happen in an organization is that's part of the culture. Culture often think of only the fun part of personal relationship building. But the other part of culture is having these processes in place that are noticeable. They're not taglines on the wall in your corporate office.

Ken Sagendorf [00:20:50]:

They're actually how people experience the work getting done on a day to day basis. And that's the part to explore of most leaders, foremost leaders.

Joe Krause [00:20:57]:

It's interesting you bring up the listening because in a previous podcast, one that just came out today, we talked about the Starbucks new CEO commuting from Southern California and we're talking about, like, do as I say, not as I do. So I was kind of sour on him a bit. But then actually, like, two days ago, based on listening, he realized that their brand is completely shifted from what it was. And where people don't feel welcomed in Starbucks anymore. And I feel it all the time. Back in the day, I got through basically my first grad degree at Starbucks. I felt like they knew me, I knew them, and that was a nice place to be. And that shifted right before COVID And Covid shifted into overdrive.

Joe Krause [00:21:31]:

His letter to the employees said, we got to get back to it. We got to get it to the point where mobile orders are fine, but that can't be the focal point. We're not like a mobile order company where the third place, we're the place that you're supposed to want to come spend time at and have life's memories and meet new partners for business and getting back to their core ethos. I'm pretty sure multiple CEOs have heard that. And they go, no, no, no. Let's just worry about mobile orders. So this new person comes in and says, let's listen to what people are actually saying. And to your point, I think is a lot of times it's right there in front of you.

Joe Krause [00:22:00]:

I'm sure multiple people, it's like, can we get back to, like, making it a cool place to hang out where there aren't bathroom codes and all the tables are put away? Like, can we have it where it's a place I want to spend time and that might solve the majority of our problems. So two things there. I think it's listening and then also not losing faith. At some point, one leader is going to finally list it. So making sure you tell that story over and over again. But how have you worked with people so they don't get discouraged? They ask maybe two times and nothing happened and they're not going to ask a third time. And then they're kind of downtrodden and maybe either quiet, quit or leave the organization. Like, how do you, like, keep people moving forward even if they're being met with maybe not people that are people that aren't listening as well as they should?

Ken Sagendorf [00:22:42]:

Yeah, Joe, I think that's a wonderful question. And here's where I want to bring up the concept of quantum alignment. This is. I will tell you, I walk every morning with my wife. Our dog just passed away. But we continue that walk every day. And honestly, it is a conversation about our work lives and the intersectionalities with our personal lives for the entirety of that walk. And with all the conversation around the world now about remote work in a post Covid world.

Ken Sagendorf [00:23:10]:

So quantum alignment is the entanglement, and that is an intentionally messy word because it is the entanglement of the values and beliefs that you have as a personal for personal alignment, intersecting and entangling with the things that are happening in your professional world. Those things are not separate. They are together. Whether we want to name them together, we often say work life balance is a misnomer. It's not that you balance. That one's over there and that one's over there. On the sides of the scale, they are together and we talk about that and then we use a framework. Joe, I just have this vision of a woman in one of our workshops, and she just goes like this, right? I mean, with the head exploding, it is all about you.

Ken Sagendorf [00:23:53]:

And that is a big conversation that we talk about in many of the organizations we work with. It's all about the CEO, it's all about the line worker, it's all about the manager all day, every day. And this is one of those things that we talk about, really where the control is. Because when we talk with leaders and they say, I have a difficult employee that keeps raising some issues about things they don't like. So there's two things we should hear in that conversation. One is the leaders having a difficult time really listening to what the issues are. The feelings they have around that human being are kind of in the way to that open listening. But listen, each one of us in this podcast right now, we have our own sets of values and beliefs.

Ken Sagendorf [00:24:35]:

And when those values and beliefs run into an experience that we have, we have a bunch of emotions. We have to help the leaders know that it's not the emotions that are wrong. Okay, Emotions are yours. Listen, as a dad, this is the hardest thing I do on the planet is when my kids have emotions. Trying to not say, don't feel that. Right? I mean, that sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, but this is what often happens in a work environment is we tell our employees, you shouldn't feel that seeing this over and over and over again. Now, the behaviors that are a result of the emotions, those are the things that we're really interested in, changing those behaviors. And so we often talk to those employees that have gone and they've said multiple times, here's what I want.

Ken Sagendorf [00:25:21]:

We talk about setting the intention for the relationship. We explore really what those emotions are and where they're born from. Because that's the key to alignment. If those emotions are born from something that's running up against or contrary to their values or beliefs, that's the work that we need to do. It's not about punishing the behaviors. It's backwards. A step into the, the intersection of those emotions. And that's, as a leader, that frightens a lot of people.

Ken Sagendorf [00:25:48]:

Right? I mean, and this is why, this is why we, we have this kind of. Joe, you're there on the East Coast. I'm a native East Coaster. You have this kind of puritanical distance with each other where you don't really want to know each other too well. Right? But, but you have to. I mean, if you're going to spend all this time with each other and we just. That quantum alignment theory, that your personal and your professional worlds, the alignment of those two things is a really entangled mess sometimes, then we want to let them both in. Then the leader has to work in that kind of space.

Ken Sagendorf [00:26:22]:

And I will posit to you that even though we kind of have a world that is still based in kind of an industrial, even as we move into tech spaces, we're still kind of an industrial age model approach for lots of things. There were some things, I remember working with the Carrier Corporation and seeing the retirees of Carrier right when United Technologies was buying them out. But they talked with the best fondness you've ever heard because their families were invited to all these functions and their communities were built around this organization. And they just, they felt connected and tied and heard and seen all of these things that we're talking about in modern, in modern society. And I think we ought to, we ought to examine what it was when we did that people had voice even in an extreme hierarchical organization. And please, manufacturing is an extremely hierarchical organization, but people still felt seen and had voice. We ought to discover a little bit of what was in the magic there.

Jonathan Morgan [00:27:23]:

I think it's all great points, and I'm not going to lie. As we first started talking about quantum alignment, I heard about your podcast. My head immediately went to quantum physics, quantum mechanics, the Ant man movies. I'm like, I'm not understanding the connection here, but when you think about the basic principles of. And this is not me giving a quantum physics lessons for anybody out there listening. But the theory is it's breaking down natural phenomena at its most simplest level, right. The subatomic particles and what actually makes these things happen. And maybe this is where you got the definition from.

Jonathan Morgan [00:27:55]:

But when you think about alignment, you don't need to think about it at the corporate level, right? You need to think about what is the simplest piece, what is making this move forward. And that's the people, that's your employees, that's your customers. Thinking about it from that lens is ultimately what's going to create the alignment and breaking down to the individual level. One quick follow up on it, though. So much of this that we've talked about today is like a, I need to think about this as an individual. I need to listen, I need to understand, I need to focus on my customers. How much of that can be built into an actual organization versus, hey, you have to convince all these leaders that it's important, important for them.

Ken Sagendorf [00:28:30]:

Personally, I think that this is about the practice. This is the hardest part about the alignment work because people will come to a webinar and then they'll, or they'll buy the book and they'll want to go home. And we have a joke on our podcast that I always bring up a movie reference, but the movie reference that comes in here is that model's like the original Karate kid movie where Mr. Miyagi comes in to fix the sink and he's trying to teach him, trying to teach himself karate from the book. That's often how we do a lot of leadership and organizational development. Let's give you a framework. Come to a workshop, come to a webinar. You have it good, go home.

Ken Sagendorf [00:29:04]:

The reality is it's a practice, Jonathan. You gotta come and you gotta practice it and you gotta put it in place, see what's working, adjust, have conversations. Joe, the conversation about Starbucks and return into the third place. There's a couple things in that model. All these restaurants, chains, a lot of them have changed pretty dramatically to honor the drive thru like we've never seen before. It's why we love the in and out models. It's why we love the Chick Fil a drive thru models. It's why when there was traffic jams, we're asking them to come fix it because they're so good at that part.

Ken Sagendorf [00:29:40]:

And so giving up on something that seems to be financially successful as your main thrust is going to raise a lot of eyebrows. But again, strategy is a long haul phenomena. Jonathan, your question. This is a long haul phenomena. It's not. I go into the next meeting, I declare this and it is fixed. It is work that you do. It is the way that you work.

Ken Sagendorf [00:30:04]:

You guys have a tagline, right? Let's actually do this alignment. Is that right? I mean, it's sleeves rolled up and we're going to actually do it. There's going to be times when it doesn't work. We tend to, once we start working with companies, have these relationships for extended periods of time. And that's so, so valuable because what we get is we're like, hey, did you see this instance? Here's what we could have done and here's what we missed. That person wasn't asking this. They might have been asking that. How do you know? You have to find out.

Ken Sagendorf [00:30:36]:

And I think that that's how you develop both the openness of the leaders and the openness of the employees so that that trust can be part of that stuff.

Joe Krause [00:30:44]:

Excellent insights. And as we draw to a close, wanted to dispel two things. Well, one thing, New York area people, we're not unfriendly. We're just taught to mind our own business. So we typically look at the floor. If you talk to us, we're perfectly happy, but we're not going to be. We don't want to bother you. That's number one.

Joe Krause [00:30:58]:

And number two, there's a reason why Inside out too, is that one of the biggest movies ever. My wife's a school counselor and uses that movie to teach high school boys, which she teaches, how to get in touch with their emotions in a better way. It's not a taboo subject. It's something they really need to teach us. Mindfulness. And you look at that from the outside, it's like, what are you actually teaching? And then she goes through the curriculum like, that's all stuff I wish I had when I was a, a 14 year old boy. Right. So it is interesting how that's not something that goes away.

Joe Krause [00:31:23]:

It's practice as well, in terms of how to get in touch with your emotions, to embrace change or whatever have you, what have you. But we, we close out every podcast with the same question for everybody. And ultimately, if you were able to go back to the beginning of your career and strategy and you were able to give yourself one bit of advice that would help you along your journey as you're beginning. What would, what advice would you give yourself?

Ken Sagendorf [00:31:45]:

That's a fantastic question. I wish you had warned me about that one. I think it would have been to have the big conversations faster, more often. And I think the advice to myself would have been to walk away when people don't know the answers to those big questions. I love working in big, meaningful things. It's one of the reasons where higher ed has had my heart for so many years. And that's a story of I went to a fairly decent sized university and I'm not sure the university knew I was there. And I think that for the money you pay, that that is shameful, frankly.

Ken Sagendorf [00:32:19]:

And I think we need to do it better. And that's been my kind of passionate cry in higher ed for a long, long time. But what I should have done as a student and what I should have done in my strategy work was have those conversations earlier. What are we trying to get to? How are we going to do it? To see if I could see those things of alignment, because I worked in a lot of organizations where you're. You're plugging away for a little bit to see if you can build something into something. But the idea of strategy work is that should be so clear. It shouldn't be that you're constantly selling the strategy. It should be that the strategy enlivens everybody.

Ken Sagendorf [00:32:57]:

And I wish I would have had those conversations earlier so that I knew when to walk away faster.

Jonathan Morgan [00:33:03]:

Love it. Well, Ken, it was a great conversation. Certainly it's always fun when you can find a way to mix strategy and alignment with hiking and quantum physics. And somehow we found a way to do it. So we'll have to have more of those fun conversations in the future. But thank you for joining us today.

Ken Sagendorf [00:33:16]:

Yeah. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Joe.

Joe Krause [00:33:18]:

Thank you.