The Power of Agency with Judith Katz and Fred Miller of The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring advice and insights. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group. You can learn more about us at NotoGroup.com. As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high performance leadership teams.

[00:00:27] Roy Notowitz: Now I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. Today we're joined by Fred Miller and Judith Katz, co-authors of the new book, The Power of Agency: Cultivating Autonomy, Authority, and Leadership in Every Role.

[00:00:49] Roy Notowitz: As leaders of the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, the oldest OD and inclusion firm established in 1970, they bring over five decades each -- a hundred years -- of experience in organizational transformation.

[00:01:02] Roy Notowitz: Welcome, Fred and Judith. Thank you for being on the podcast.

[00:01:06] Fred Miller: Thank you, Roy. Glad to be here. It's a pleasure being with you.

[00:01:09] Judith Katz: Yeah, it's great to be here. So excited.

[00:01:12] Roy Notowitz: I am too. But before we dive in, can you share a brief overview of KJCG, your role in the firm and the array of work that your team does with client companies?

[00:01:22] Fred Miller: Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group is named after Kaleel Jamison, since deceased, but I wanted to keep her name. She started the firm in 1970, so the firm's been around for over 50 years. We've worked with many, many, many organizations. Apple, Oracle, Merck, United Airlines, MacArthur Foundation, Eileen Fisher, several police departments, several startups. We've been involved in many organizations. 50 years -- you have the time to do a lot of things.

[00:01:48] Fred Miller: We're located here in Troy, New York, right across the river from Albany, and we're really thought leaders. We've been on the forefront of a lot of the thinking around people, organizations, and culture. We wrote the first book on inclusion, The Inclusion Breakthrough. We wrote that in 2002, and we've written five or six books since then, and we just published in November our latest book, which is, as you said, The Power of Agency: Cultivating Autonomy, Authority, and Leadership in Every Role. The organizations need to change, and I think we have some of the tools and technology to help them.

[00:02:22] Roy Notowitz: Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to diving in. I've read the book and looking forward to having the conversation here. So you've written that we need agency now in organizations. What made you focus on agency as the next crucial step beyond inclusion and diversity, or within the context of that?

[00:02:42] Judith Katz: One of the things that Fred and I have done, as he said, we are thought leaders in the field and have really continued to think about what's next. And we created a model years ago, On the Path to Inclusion, but we knew something was missing. And one of our colleagues, Vernā Myers, who we really respect, who's a consultant in this field, often talked about how diversity is being invited to the dance, but inclusion's being asked to dance.

[00:03:06] Judith Katz: And as we thought about that... it was something missing. It's like, well, we think that agency is co-creating the dance. It's really the ability to not just be a guest, but to really have the power, the autonomy, the authority to really decide with someone else, not alone, you know, who's going to be invited? What kind of meal are we going to have? What kind of music are we going to have? What does that look like?

[00:03:28] Judith Katz: So it's really the ability for the individual to have power. And we really saw that as agency. For us, that agency is that people feel both as an individual and within their team that ability to have the power and the freedom to make decisions and the power and the freedom to be a leader in their role.

[00:03:46] Judith Katz: And I think that for us is that no matter what your role is, what your title is, what your background is, that you can bring your full selves, everything that you can bring. And I think that's what's next beyond inclusion. So it's not just saying, "I'm including you, Roy." It's really saying, "I have that authority to make decisions as well. And so there's the independence and the interdependence that we both need."

[00:04:09] Roy Notowitz: Agency is such a powerful concept. And so given the uncertainty in the world, given all the other things organizations have to focus on, is this central to helping them succeed in the future and how?

[00:04:23] Fred Miller: I really do think it is central and we've been framing it as individual and team agency. So what's the agency the individual needs in the organization, and what's the agency that teams need in the organization? Organizations are going to have to move faster. Generative AI has given us the opportunity to get information quickly, quickly, quickly. And yet our organizations are slow, slow, slow. I have a couple of clients now that if they're making a decision about a project or making a decision about something that they want to send out into the world about how they're seeing something, or a position paper, it takes them six, seven, eight months to work through the process of internal approval.

[00:05:03] Fred Miller: I have people who are high performers in an organization who still feel like they have to go to their manager to get approval. I ask them, "so how often does your manager say no to you or change it? Oh, never." But they still are going to their manager every time. So speed is going to be more and more important.

[00:05:20] Fred Miller: We're going to have the information faster, and the humans can't be the slow part of the process of making things happen in our organization. I think the other thing is that people in organizations, because of the pandemic, [are] thinking about who I am, my life, my work, myself, my home life, people are wanting to be clear about how they're adding value in the organization.

[00:05:40] Fred Miller: That being at the organization, whether I'm working from home or working in an office building or in a factory, that I'm not wasting time. So I think there's a real pressure to say when I'm working, I want to make sure it's valuable. Having unnecessary meanings. Having authority loops that aren't helpful is waste in our organizations.

[00:05:59] Fred Miller: So I see people saying, "I want to have an impact. I don't want to waste my time. Life is short, and I want to make sure that I'm having the meaning that I need to have in my work life so that I feel like I'm adding all the value that I can, not just the value that the organization is cherry picking."

[00:06:16] Roy Notowitz: And for the company, they're maximizing the performance and capacity within their teams.

[00:06:22] Judith Katz: Yeah, absolutely. I think what's important about agency is tying it to the mission, vision, and strategy of the organization. And you know, as I was thinking about -- inclusion's about individuals being able to do their best work, but we think that this raises the level of performance, both of the individual and the organization. We'd like to talk about betterment, you know, it's the betterment for the individual, but it's also the betterment for the organization. And those two things coming together.

[00:06:45] Roy Notowitz: And the positive intention that you can have within your teams and each other, and the trust probably ties to that as well.

[00:06:53] Fred Miller: And to the degree that people know they have agency, they'll bring that positive intention. To the degree that I feel like I'm being smothered and not able to contribute, then I start making a smaller and smaller contribution to the organization.

[00:07:05] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, powerful stuff. So in your work, you make an interesting distinction between empowerment and agency. Can you break down that distinction why it matters for leaders and organizations?

[00:07:18] Fred Miller: Yeah, so as we were writing the book and doing research, our publisher said, "but isn't this similar to empowerment? What's the difference between agency and empowerment?" Empowerment is something that's bestowed on somebody. "I'm going to empower you. I'm going to give you the opportunity to be empowered," and as we thought about agency, people have agency.

[00:07:40] Fred Miller: They get messages in organizations, "don't do this, don't do that. Don't exercise that." But we're born with agency and born with curiosity, and what we need to do is unleash that in our organizations. People shouldn't have to wait their turn to be empowered, but they should be able to bring that agency to everything they do.

[00:08:00] Fred Miller: Managers allow people to act. When you talk about empowerment managers support people in acting when you talk about agency. You know the thing about empowerment is people's self-esteem and self-confidence increased by being given permission from others. Whereas agency, people take initiative and exercise decision making and autonomy, which leads to feeling trusted and able to fully contribute. So in our way of thinking, they are vastly different. One really is allowing people to do their thing in organization, and another is constraints and blocks and challenges, and some people get bestowed.

[00:08:38] Roy Notowitz: I can imagine it's difficult if you're a manager or leader or director in an organization being able to let go of that decision making or authority. That's probably one of the biggest hurdles I'm guessing.

[00:08:51] Judith Katz: It's a huge hurdle. I mean, how do you have managers and leaders think about their role differentially, that their role is now coaching? That their role is supporting? That their role is removing barriers? For many leaders, they thought that they had to be the smartest person in the room, that they had to make all the decisions.

[00:09:06] Judith Katz: I mean, there's a great example: we worked with a marketing and sales organization on the West Coast, and for a time the leader of this marketing and sales organization had to decide what color green an ad should be because everything had to bubble up to the leaders as opposed to trusting the people who were closest to making that decision and creating that ad to make a decision about what color green.

[00:09:28] Judith Katz: So for many leaders, it's learning how to be a different kind of leader, and it's what the workforce wants, it's what the workplace needs. But in many ways, what we're finding is ceding control. The leader is like, "okay, I have to protect the organization, so the only person who can do that is me." As opposed to, "no, I've got a lot of people here who can support the organization and they're here to do their best," but it is a shift in role, and it's interesting because for many managers and leaders, it means unlearning how to be a leader in a new way.

[00:10:00] Roy Notowitz: For CEOs, boards, investors, and executives hiring for their own leadership teams, I think this is something to pay attention to as you're thinking about who you're hiring and the work that we do with executive recruiting and selection. These are the things to look for in a modern leader.

[00:10:18] Judith Katz: Absolutely.

[00:10:19] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, absolutely critical.

[00:10:21] Fred Miller: And this is what the next generation and the generation in the organization now expects. They expect to act. You know, a generation where they debated with their parents about what they were going to do or how they were going to be. They could disagree. They could present an argument in the workplace of [the] past.

[00:10:39] Fred Miller: If you did that, it was seen as insubordinate. And the workplace of today asking why is part of being a smart person in the organization. And people are going to not only ask why, but they're going to want to more fully understand why they're doing something than ever before. And leaders are going to have to be more engaged with their people than before.

[00:11:00] Fred Miller: More explaining what they're doing and why they're doing and why they need it, and then having a discussion so that everybody can get on board. That is a major shift for many organizations.

[00:11:10] Roy Notowitz: Does this mean that organizations will become flatter or that roles will become broader? What does this mean for organizations from that perspective?

[00:11:19] Judith Katz: You know, it's interesting, when we were doing the research for the book, there's been a lot of research being written now about at one point, you know, larger spans of control for managers and leaders, et cetera. But what was interesting was there's some research recently about how this role is changing and that actually they need more managers, not less, who can really coach and develop and remove barriers in the organization.

[00:11:39] Judith Katz: So it's a shift in role. It's a different way that the leader doesn't have to be the checker and checking people's work, but they do have to spend time developing people and coaching people, and mentoring people and providing the container.

[00:11:52] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, the remote and hybrid world right now is really making that obvious and evident that that's a powerful way to sort of optimize your team who don't have the benefit of being in the office five days a week like generations before.

[00:12:06] Judith Katz: Absolutely. And don't have the visibility to even understand how we do work here. What does it mean to interact and engage? I mean, I think that's one of the major shifts that we're seeing and experiencing, and unfortunately, some leaders think the only way is to go back to the way it was, which is everybody coming into the office. But you know, sitting in the office and being on Zoom calls isn't the answer either all day.

[00:12:28] Roy Notowitz: So that leads into my next question, which is [about] the pandemic and how it's dramatically changed how people think about work. How has the shift influenced your thinking about agency and organizations? And do you have any examples of organizations that have effectively harnessed the power of agency to enhance culture or drive innovation or gain a competitive advantage?

[00:12:51] Fred Miller: I think part of the pandemic was to speed up some of the changes that were already happening in the workplace. I think people were already starting to work from home. People were already starting to not necessarily do the five day work week or the work hours, and I think what the pandemic basically said to people is, "go faster." All these changes we're making to go faster.

[00:13:12] Fred Miller: For many people for that year or two years that they were sequestered in some way, they reflected, they were reconsidering the workplace. They were reconsidering work, they were looking at their options and what was the meaning of work in their lives. So things have moved significantly forward as a result of the pandemic, and that means that organizations have to operate a lot differently as they're moving forward.

[00:13:37] Fred Miller: And I think it's the dual workplace. There are some people coming into the office not five days a week, but a few days a week or a few days a month. And there are some people [who] relocated during the pandemic and are further away. And commuting is not a possibility. And I think for organizations, it's like how do we make sure that we are addressing the needs of all our people and how are we making sure that everybody is able to fully do their work and has the agency?

[00:14:02] Fred Miller: I think we're still exploring this. I think we're still trying to figure it out. But we know that the old way will never be the same again. .

[00:14:09] Judith Katz: Yeah, I've got two great examples. One CEO that we work with leads a $3 billion privately owned company, [he] talked about how he needs people to be an owner in every seat, you know, so when there's a problem or an issue, his thing is, if you were an owner of this company, what would you do?

[00:14:24] Judith Katz: And that's kind of how he's instilling agency. And one of the things he found was they had great strategies . In terms of kind of thinking about the next year, what they wanted to do. But for a long time people couldn't enact the strategy. And as they're getting more agency, what they're finding is people are able to implement and execute quicker because they can make decisions and they feel that freedom. So they're definitely seeing a change in terms of execution, in terms of the ability to really implement their big ideas.

[00:14:52] Judith Katz: Another organization, a zoo that we've been working with for a long time, when we first started working with them, everybody was siloed. You know, if there was a problem that somebody saw in another department, it was like, "that's not my department, that's somebody else's." And as they're having greater agency, people are feeling a greater responsibility and the ability to take actions instead of being punished for taking an action. Now people feel more collective sense across the organization to address issues or to raise issues when there's a problem.

[00:15:20] Judith Katz: And in town hall meetings, when previously people wouldn't say anything, there were crickets. Now people are willing to speak up. They feel the interaction safety to raise issues because they know they'll be heard. They know they'll be listened to, and so they're seeing a huge change in the spirit. Now, many more people are volunteering to be a part of the zoo, which is critical for their ability to reach out to the community.

[00:15:42] Judith Katz: So lots of different ways in which that spark has ignited people to really step up in ways that they hadn't before. It's like, "that's not my job." As opposed to now, "I feel that ownership of being a part of this zoo and this organization." So it's exciting.

[00:15:58] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. It's powerful stuff.

[00:15:59] Judith Katz: Yeah.

[00:16:00] Roy Notowitz: In your book, you talk about six crucial factors that foster a culture of agency. Could you walk us through those factors and why they matter?

[00:16:09] Fred Miller: First, it has to start with trust. Do I feel trusted and do I give trust in the organization? So number one is really trust. Second is people are having a choice about how they do things. The "what" might be clear, but "how?" In the olden days people used to tell you the "what" and tell you how to do it. And with new technology, new ways of looking at it, new thinking, other generations in the workplace, it becomes very important to let people do it their way as long as they're going to get to the result. And that's a major shift. And again, they can do that when they know the "why."

[00:16:44] Fred Miller: People experiencing autonomy is number three, having autonomy and having an authority to act, which is the essence of what we see around agency. It means people being responsible. It raises the bar on people's responsibility. If I don't have the checker checking the checker checking the checker, and then the last checker is a responsible person, then I become the responsible person. And so being accountable and being responsible for my work, which I actually think helps people do a better job.

[00:17:10] Fred Miller: There's a worry that if we don't have checkers, everything's going to go awry. We're going to make mistakes. Well, one is organizations make mistakes now.

[00:17:17] Roy Notowitz: Right. And that's how people learn.

[00:17:19] Fred Miller: Absolutely. And the other is people will be more diligent when I know that I have the responsibility and autonomy. So experiencing ownership, people feeling like, "I own this. This is mine." It's like, if this was your company, what would you do?

[00:17:34] Fred Miller: So that's number five. And the last one is having the authority and the power to address issues in your area of responsibility and things that you see in the organization at large. I think in most organizations, if it's a safety issue and I'm walking through it and I see a safety issue, I'm going to call out that safety issue.

[00:17:52] Fred Miller: I'm walking through an area and I hear a conversation that's not aligned with our values or a conversation that's off mission. I don't speak up. I said, "Well, that area's going to do what it wants to do." We're saying "no, if you hear anything in the organization where you think you can add value related to mission, vision, and strategy, you need to speak up because you are an owner in the organization like others."

[00:18:14] Fred Miller: So those are the six areas that we think are critical.

[00:18:18] Roy Notowitz: Great. Your work discusses the systemic transformation needed for agency to thrive. What results have you seen when leaders commit to this shift, and to what extent do they worry about creating a runaway train or an organization without guardrails?

[00:18:36] Judith Katz: Leaders have to put guardrails in place. You need to know what the boundaries are. So having that in place enables then people to play in that sandbox. Right? There's a CEO we worked with, and one of the things he talked about was he always says yes to people when they come with ideas because he knows that they understand the boundaries.

[00:18:56] Judith Katz: And maybe he could tweak something, maybe he could add something. But his major stance is, "I'm going to say yes because I know this is going to move the organization forward and that people are operating in the best interest of the organization." And again, when I know that I can contribute, there's so much more I can do.

[00:19:13] Judith Katz: There's an interesting study that Harvard did actually with children on a playground, and one of the things that they found was that when there was no fence, children kind of huddled in the middle of the playground because they didn't know where the boundaries were. And when there was a fence, basically they could play up against the fence.

[00:19:31] Judith Katz: And I think that's what agency does and the guardrails do is enable people to think much bigger. People have ideas, and particularly new people have a lot of ideas about what fresh eyes can bring to an organization or things they see that need to be fixed. And what we're seeing with agency is people are bringing those ideas, they're implementing those ideas, they're sharing those ideas. Whereas before, there was no space to be able to do that.

[00:19:57] Fred Miller: It's given people permission to bring their brilliance. I think many organizations today say, "give us stuff that's inside the box that we've put you in." Versus, "give us stuff that's, yes, inside that box, but explores beyond that box." That box is past thinking.

[00:20:14] Fred Miller: What do we need to do today to be able to expand that beyond? There's a tendency in our organizations to bubble things up, especially if the organization's risk averse or people are worried about taking the responsibility for it. And so by getting clear of what people's authority is, what their agency is, it allows them to do their job fully and it doesn't make things bubble up so that the leader at the top can be doing the job that she or he needs to be doing.

[00:20:42] Roy Notowitz: For leaders listening who want to start unleashing agency in their organizations, what are the first steps that they should take?

[00:20:51] Fred Miller: I think it's getting clear that we really are talking about organization better to help the organization be more successful, to really impact bottom line or the values of the organization as they implement it in the world.

[00:21:03] Fred Miller: So it starts with identifying the need for greater agency. Is there a need for more individual and team agency in the organization? I think that's a leadership team kind of conversation and buy-in. You've got to test the readiness for change. So the next step is to test that readiness. Is the organization ready to be different, to get different?

[00:21:23] Fred Miller: We've got to let people know that the way we have been doing things needs to be different in the future, and agency is one of the components of that. So what's the readiness for the organization to be doing something different?

[00:21:35] Fred Miller: One of the things we've been doing for our clients is creating a "from-to." Where are we today? Where are we going? Because people need a roadmap. People need to know. And this behavior we're talking about, or this action we're talking about is more about the past, the "from," than towards the "to." Identify a new organizational narrative. What's the story about the organization and how does this fit into the narrative of the organization?

[00:21:59] Fred Miller: What are those mindsets that are needed? Getting clear about that and then going to the organization and getting buy-in because this is not something you can just demand in the organization. This is not something that you can just say, "we're all going to do it." You've got to talk to people and tell people what's the advantage of it, how it's going to have them have greater autonomy and leadership in the organization.

[00:22:22] Fred Miller: How's it going to help us move faster? How's it going to have teams work together and create results that they can act on? So buy-in becomes very important. And once they got buy-in, then you move into the action plan to bring about organizational change.

[00:22:37] Roy Notowitz: Is there an assessment that measures or scores what level of agency exists within an organization, or how do you get at that?

[00:22:45] Judith Katz: In our book, there are a number of assessments, both at the individual level, the team level, the manager level, the senior level leader, and organizational HR systems and policies. So there are some self-assessments that the organization individuals can do. Usually in our interactions with clients, the first step is doing a discovery process to really assess the culture and the climate.

[00:23:08] Judith Katz: To see what are the ways in which people feel like they are unleashed and where they do have agency. What are those places where the organization can grow? Which is that first step that Fred talked about in terms of testing the readiness and understanding what those issues may be. So yeah, there are a number of tools, both which are in our book, as well as that we bring in our consulting firm.

[00:23:30] Roy Notowitz: That's great. So you mentioned unleashing agency requires removing barriers. So what are some of the more common barriers in the organization that you want to highlight that we haven't already?

[00:23:45] Judith Katz: I think the biggest one is that people don't have the interaction safety, or some people would call it psychological safety. We like to talk about is interaction safety to really speak up. So how do you make it safe enough to really enable people to speak up? And we think that agency really needs to be built on a foundation of inclusion. Do people feel included? Do they feel welcome? Do they feel valued? Do they feel respected?

[00:24:07] Judith Katz: If there isn't that respect, that's going to be problematic. And I think the other barrier that exists is a culture of fear as well as a punishing culture. So are we in a learning culture? Are we in a punishing culture? So if I make a mistake, am I going to get punished for it or slapped on the wrist, or am I going to be able to be learning from it?

[00:24:25] Judith Katz: Now if I make too many mistakes? That's a different conversation. And obviously, as we talked about earlier, leaders being willing to step into a different way of leading and to really exhibit those behaviors, which is also a part of those initial steps for change. So I think those are some of the biggest barriers that can get in the way.

[00:24:42] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. That's really fascinating. There's this interesting concept in your work about being kind versus being nice when it comes to agency. Could you explain the distinction and how that matters?

[00:24:55] Fred Miller: So we've done a lot of work in many places, but we've done a significant amount of work in Minneapolis area and in Minnesota there's a thing called "Minnesota nice," which is about not saying what you're really thinking, trying to communicate to get along, not upset the apple cart. It's not only in Minnesota, but it's in our corporations, throughout our organizations. I think the pandemic helped move that along. So I'm trying to be nice. I don't want to cause a disruption.

[00:25:24] Fred Miller: I don't want to be the person who's challenging things, because maybe that'll be seen as negative in the organization. I don't want to give you feedback because I don't want to hurt our relationship. [There are] a lot of reasons to be nice, but the outcome of that is people are not growing. They're not getting the feedback they need.

[00:25:40] Fred Miller: They're not getting the understanding of what's going on and what they're doing and how to get better. Feedback is critical. So nice is not saying what's going on. Being kind is really talking about what can help you be a better person. What can help you be a better partner, a better team member, a better employee?

[00:26:00] Fred Miller: If I'm only telling you what I think will not upset you and not challenge you, then I'm actually not being nice to you at all, and I'm not helping you grow and develop. I believe strongly that people in our organizations, all humans, but in our organizations, want to be better tomorrow than they were yesterday, want to contribute, want to feel better about themselves, want to grow and develop.

[00:26:24] Fred Miller: That's what organizations give us all an opportunity to do is grow and develop. And so in talking about the nice versus kind and people are raising their hands saying, this is something I have to change. I have to start doing different.

[00:26:37] Roy Notowitz: It's interesting, in my first podcast ever, five years ago, I was interviewing an exec from Stitch Fix and they have this operating system there that they use and they made a distinction specifically between kind and nice...

[00:26:52] Fred Miller: Nice.

[00:26:52] Roy Notowitz: ...in terms of their selection filter. So it's interesting to hear that. Looking ahead, how do you see the relationship between agency and the rise of AI and other technological changes in the workplace?

[00:27:06] Fred Miller: I think agency is absolutely critical. because we need speed and so having agency will speed up the organization.

[00:27:15] Fred Miller: AI is going to give us a lot of information and a lot of opportunity and a lot of possible decision scenarios. We can't be the slow part of the process of organization, so to me, we've got to marry agency and generative AI so that we can do our best work, do our best thinking, and move things forward as quickly as possible.

[00:27:35] Judith Katz: And AI is going to take over some of the activities that many people have. So the question is, what's our value added? And bringing our brains to work, bringing our thinking, taking in the data that we see in the organization becomes even more important in terms of the role that people play. And so the more we are able to exhibit our agency and use that, we can partner with AI, you know, we can partner with robots, we can partner in a way that we haven't done before, but it really means people stepping up. You can't just follow the rules. You can't just follow what somebody else tells you to do, because an AI can probably do that. So the question becomes really, what is the uniqueness that human beings bring? And I think agency is a really strong part of what that uniqueness is.

[00:28:19] Roy Notowitz: And AI and technology in general, and access to information is really useful in the sense that people have more and more ability to articulate concepts, thoughts, and have knowledge and information synthesized in a way that aligns with what they're trying to accomplish.

[00:28:37] Fred Miller: Absolutely. And it can't be the workplace of old. We've got to evolve the workplace, and that's why we think agency is a really important dynamic that needs to be integrated into the way we operate.

[00:28:47] Roy Notowitz: This is the hot topic then, because this is how companies are going to thrive in the future having this type of model and agency.

[00:28:58] Roy Notowitz: So in thinking about the future of your firm and the work that your team's doing, what are you excited about?

[00:29:05] Fred Miller: I think we are in one of the greatest times of change in human history. I think generative AI is part of that. I think the people's need to have more meaning in their lives coming out of a lot of things, including the pandemic.

[00:29:22] Fred Miller: Organizations knowing they need to be different in the future. Technology, how they do work, all those things are absolutely critical. And we've got to change our organizational structure and process. It started at the Industrial Revolution. I mean, we've evolved two steps forward, but we're still operating with some very old, antiquated models that slow us down.

[00:29:45] Fred Miller: And I think our real challenge is how do we speed up still being smart, minimizing big mistakes? Letting people bring their brilliance to the organization is absolutely critical. Our firm is excited because we're getting a chance to talk about something that people are like, "yes, we want this, we need this."

[00:30:05] Fred Miller: And then we're trying to help them figure out how to make that happen and make it fast. This is not a 5 year, 10 year journey. Organizations are needing to make 6 months, 10 months. We need to be different 'cause the world's moving that fast.

[00:30:18] Judith Katz: When we first started talking about inclusion in the 2000s or even before then, we were embarking on a whole new area for organizations to think about, and I feel like we're on the cusp of that again, in terms of bringing agency to really change way organizations and individuals and teams operate.

[00:30:37] Judith Katz: This work is exciting because it is unleashing the potential that people bring and want to bring. And organizations need this right now, we're in that moment of potential.

[00:30:48] Roy Notowitz: I can see people at all levels getting excited about this work, and it makes a lot of sense. It's very logical when you lay it all out.

[00:30:56] Fred Miller: When we first talked about inclusion, some people in organizations did have inclusion. But it was a small select group of people, and our work was about how does everybody get included? It's the same thing about agency on an individual and the team level. Some individuals, some teams have had it, but it hasn't been universal.

[00:31:15] Fred Miller: In our organizations, if every person in every seat, whether they're working remotely or in an office setting of some kind or a factory, has agency, it's going to increase the performance of the organization. It's going to increase people's satisfaction in the organization, and it will take organizations where they cannot go under the current circumstance.

[00:31:37] Roy Notowitz: Mm-hmm, yeah, it's really awesome to have this conversation. I've learned a lot. I've known you both for many years now. We've done projects together. We had a podcast. I think two years ago that if anyone wants to check out is fantastic, but I really see this as meaningful work that's going to make a difference in the world.

[00:31:58] Roy Notowitz: And you've made a difference in my life, I know, over the years, and I appreciate that. And I feel like the work you do is so important and will have a lasting impact for decades to come. So thank you for creating this incredible book and for the work that you do.

[00:32:16] Fred Miller: Thank you Roy. And just to remind people, the name of the book is The Power of Agency, Cultivating Autonomy, Authority, and Leadership in Every Role.

[00:32:24] Fred Miller: And we are excited about it and we're learning. I think we're already ready to start another - a second book because this has taken off like crazy and we're learning a lot, but that book has all the people need to start down this journey and thank you Roy for having us.

[00:32:39] Judith Katz: Thank you. It's been great.

[00:32:45] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit HowIHire.com for more conversations about hiring and job search strategy. How I Hire is created by Noto Group. To find out more about us, visit NotoGroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly email job alert newsletter there, and find additional job search strategy resources, as well as content on hiring.

[00:33:09] Roy Notowitz: This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit ao mcclain.com.