Phronesis: Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen

Shaun Rozyn - Executive Development

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 241

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Shaun Rozyn has almost two decades of global experience developing enterprise leaders across the globe. Shaun is currently a Managing Director at Duke Corporation Education, the corporate education arm of Duke University based in Durham, N. Carolina. Duke CE has been consistently ranked number one in the world for delivering customized executive education.

Shaun previously was a Managing of Custom Programs at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Before that, he was the Head of Global Executive Development at the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), overseeing the development of the top 1,000 executives, and Executive Director of Executive Education at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in South Africa.  Before this, Shaun worked in the management consulting, defense, and higher education sectors.

Shaun is also on the Board of the University Consortium (UNICON), a leading membership organization of business schools globally. His academic credentials include a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Stellenbosch, an MBA from GIBS at the University of Pretoria, and executive education programs at Harvard Business School and IMD in Switzerland.

Shaun is deeply committed to empowering leaders to drive positive change in organizations and society.

A Quote From This Episode

  • "Are we thinking about how to proactively develop management capabilities as people enter first-line and second-line management roles?"


Resources Mentioned in This Episode


About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

  • The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Register for ILA's 26th Global Conference in Chicago, IL - November 7-10, 2024.


About  Scott J. Allen


My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00  

Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phronesis Podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. As I've done recently, a little bit, I'm recording from outside, so you might hear some birds. Who knows, someone might start doing their lawn. We don't know what's going to happen in the next little bit of time today; what we do know is that we're going to have a fun conversation. And today, I have Shaun Rozyn. And he has almost two decades of global experience developing enterprise leaders around the world. Shaun is currently a managing director at Duke Corporate Education, the corporate education arm of Duke University based in Durham, North Carolina. Duke CE has been consistently ranked number one in the world for delivering customized executive education. Shaun previously was a manager of custom programs at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Before that, he was the head of global executive development at the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation, overseeing the development of the top 1,000 executives, and executive director of the Executive Education at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in South Africa. Before this, Shaun worked in management consulting, defense, and higher education. Shaun is also on the board of the University Consortium, UNICON, a leading membership organization of business schools globally. He has a master's degree in economics. He has an MBA. He has attended executive education programs himself at Harvard and IMD in Switzerland. He is deeply committed to empowering leaders to drive positive change in organizations and society. Shaun, thank you so much for your time today. Maybe before we begin and jump into our formal conversation, what else should listeners know about you? What's something not in your bio that may pique their interest?

 

Shaun Rozyn  1:39  

Thanks, Scott, and thanks for having me today. What's not in my bio? Well, it's quite a mouthful it takes a couple of minutes to get through those two decades. I guess, at the level of helping leaders and leaders in organizations, I myself am a lifelong learner, so I've been very privileged to travel around the world. I've traveled to 45 countries. So, what maybe isn't in that bio are the wonderful experiences about experiencing global culture, global food, history, that's really a true love and passion of mine.

 

Scott Allen  2:08  

I love it. Well, you're in the right business then; the learning business if you are a learner yourself. I love that you are modeling that, and that you have a passion for that because I was saying to you before we jumped on and started to record, I don't think we've had a conversation around this executive education space. One of the most transformational learning experiences I ever had was at Harvard, at the Kennedy School. I attended Ron Heifetz's and Marty Lensky, the art and practice of leadership development, and literally, that ten days was just this immersive, transformational, incredible learning experience. Robert Keegan came in in the middle of it. It was just this whole incredible ride. So, in 2006, I understood the power of executive education and what it can do for individuals. There were folks from the FBI, there were folks from health care, all different sectors, all different industries, in a room learning, engaging, and just a transformational, probably the most transformational learning experience I've had, kind of in a shorter form version. So, I just have great respect for what you do and how you're helping these individuals. You've got this really unique perspective of we're embedded in an academic institution, but we're interfacing with people doing the work, and how do we do that work? So, I'm excited for the conversation today.

 

Shaun Rozyn  3:28  

Fantastic. I'm glad you had a great experience at the Harvard Kennedy School, a great program, and I had the privilege of engaging with Ron Heifetz's colleague and co-author, Marty Linsky, who we brought to South Africa. And what a great conversation. You touched on just a couple of core themes to get us going. As an organization and any enterprise, be it government or NGO sector, is looking at expanding its impact, delivering on its purpose. And to do that, it needs, obviously, great technology capabilities and people to underpin that. So, the world of executive education is sort of divided broadly in terms of enterprise and transformative change, then building strategic capabilities, and then developing people. Academic institutions or private institutions have, basically, sort of structured themselves in designing either customized sort of solutions, open solutions, so that's more sort of B2C, something that you attended, and then sort of skills programs underpinning that. And, obviously, most recently, underpinned by the digital and technological innovations to deliver that to the clients. And as I mentioned, yeah, I sit on the board of UNICON, which is made up of the top 116 business schools around the world that primarily deliver customized and open solutions. So yeah, it's an extremely dynamic environment.

 

Scott Allen  4:44  

Well. And so, I think from the seat that you're in, obviously, working with Duke Corporate Education, just a flagship organization, is said in your bio ranked number one consistently, that is just an incredible perspective to have on kind of the space. And so, as you look at the landscape right now, how are you thinking about the strategic imperative for developing leaders and leadership? What are you seeing as you're working with clients, not only when you were in Virginia but now at Duke? How are you kind of analyzing the landscape right now?

 

Shaun Rozyn  5:15  

Yeah, that's a fantastic question, Scott. So, I guess we are being called into a number of conversations at present. Broadly, I think it's fair to say that most current C-suites are very concerned about the future of the organizations which has come out of a pandemic, it goes without saying. It's really about where's the growth going to come from, and that sustainable growth, given all the hiccups that we've seen, disruption, obviously, technology is on everyone's minds. Currently, I would say that organizations are big picture in the impact of, for example, AI, automation, use of big data, etc., but how are we really going to bring it and input our business models to really be the anchors for future growth, obviously, closer to home? How do our people, both globally and domestically work together on issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, well-being, coping with burnout the pandemic, and then all the flurries around sort of return to work, and all the policies around that? And then, at the individual level, purpose, performance, resilience, grit, all those words, that's most of the conversations we're having, just on that technology issue. I think a key thing are the capabilities that are going to drive our enterprises forward. So, whether you're the FBI or NASA, or whether you're a leading financial services organization, how do you build those people capabilities to marry technology, systems, processes, and people to deliver value? So, those are reallykey buckets for us at the moment. 

 

Scott Allen  6:48  

Well, what you're saying is resonating. I spent yesterday with an organization in Northeast Ohio really talking about technologies enabling disruption, because we might talk about artificial intelligence, but really there's a whole landscape of technologies, whether it's sensor technology, whether it's AR-VR, we can go down the list, synthetic biology, nanotech. A lot of these things are converging to create new business opportunities and business models. And so, really, are we building the tech literacy, the digital mindset of our leaders? And this was a group of HR leaders. And if we're looking at how we're going to staff the organization, how we're going to upskill, how we're going to think about the future, are these folks, do they have that tech literacy? And then, today, I'm with them again, and it's really all about that advanced problem-solving. The Snowden and Boone. Look, we have simple problems; we have complicated problems. How are you navigating complex problems, and are you prepared to do that work? Because you're just existing and swimming in this complexity where no one person in the world has the answer. There's no authority figure we can call to give us the answer we are co-creating a path forward. So, everything you're saying is making perfect sense, and then everything you're saying, I loved the framing there of, “At these different levels, here are the conversations we're having. It might be an enterprise strategic conversation, but it just might be Scott and how we better prepare him to maintain a growth mindset in the face of adversity, to create a space where there's some psychological safety for his team to actually have the really difficult challenging conversation? Because, if I'm not creating that space, I'm going to be challenged. And we've all been in that meeting where everyone had things they were thinking, but no one said it. And the leader thought they walked out of the room with everyone on the same page, but they didn't. And it's not a good place to be, especially today.

 

Shaun Rozyn  8:42  

Yeah. So, Scott, I'm talking to you from New York City today, where, just yesterday, I was with a Fortune 20 financial services organization down here in Wall Street, and it was exactly this to discuss a large intervention around an AI Academy. Just as you were talking, three things jumped out around  that conversation broadly so that at the one level it was a discussion about strategy and how we will and how we will incorporate these wonderful technologies into our future business model. The second discussion, and exactly as you said, with the group of  practitioners are, at the first level, what are meta competencies that we need to further develop and refine? And so, it's critical decision-making because a lot of these are large investments, future-orientated. And are we going to embark on this journey? And then, the last piece of that is just kind of risk. With previous investments in technology infrastructure, the risks have been quite known. The sort of the trajectory, 3, 4, 5, is out. If we're going to put $500 million on the table, I would venture a greater level of certainty, where, at the moment, I think it's just harder to understand how some of these big bets are going to provide returns. So, I've seen two main personas, some that are leaping into this, doing a lot of experimentation at the fringes, and making strides. And frankly, there are some very large organizations that have said, “Not now.” They've shut down GPT off for their current associates, and it's just really at the conversation level. And maybe in a year or two, they'll get there. We do know, at the speed of transformation, that, sadly, those could have serious repercussions for their businesses and their future success. 

 

Scott Allen  10:19  

Well, yes. Even with this group yesterday, I asked at the end, “What are some words going through your head?” Yesterday was just the conversation around technologies enabling disruption, and the word was ‘overwhelmed.’ And I wish there was a word, maybe you know of a word in all of your travels across the globe, you've come across this word, but the word for the emotion of everything, it's worrisome, it's scary, it's awesome, it's incredible, it's… Oh, it's everything. It's this emotion of everything. And, at least, how I tried to truncate it down a little bit, I brought it back down to just ground level, and I said, “Look, are you subscribing to newsletters? Maybe the MIT Technology Review, and they have a daily newsletter. And are you at least starting to learn, get up to speed, and get familiar with this space? Are you exploring the margins of what's hot in HR tech right now? Are you, again, exploring that space, and what's the HR tech industry best-in-practice conference that you could be attending so you can at least begin to learn and better understand the space and capabilities? And then, as you're bumping into some of these challenges, are you thinking, and do you have that digital mindset where you can say, ‘Well, how could a chatbot…?’ If we happen to put our employee manual in a chatbot, well, then maybe we wouldn't get all of these questions all of the time; an employee could just ask the chatbot. So how could technology help aid some of the pain points that we have, that digital mindset?” But, all of that, and we have all these different levels, and we could take this conversation in so many different directions right now. I'm going to go, like, really, really back to basics for a second. And you have something that I kind of want to go down this path, but, at a base level, again, we could go into the stratosphere of strategy and how organizations enterprise level, but we could also then go back down to the individual level. And ultimately, what we're trying to do, in some ways, is prepare individuals to do this work. And you have something that piqued my interest, which is this leadership philosophy. And, in the latest version of Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Challenge seventh edition, they state this little data point that suggests that leaders who have a leadership philosophy and communicate it frequently, 95% of their followers view them as an effective leader. So, this leadership philosophy and the importance of knowing who you are, what you stand for, what you're trying to do as an individual and as a leader, and communicating that to your team, I kind of liken it. You're a Duke now, so Coach K. Coach K had a philosophy, andhe communicated it to the team. There were no surprises about what the expectations were. And, guess what? You got what you got. And I think it's the same thing with leadership sometimes, but we don't have that same mindset when we're building that type of team at times. So, let's talk a little bit about leadership philosophy, and just so that is like a base level. Do you have an explicit philosophy for your leadership? Are you communicating that philosophy? Let's talk a little bit about that.

 

Shaun Rozyn  13:17  

It's such a great topic, Scott. I was just on a design… At Duke CE, we've got this notion of design logic, so really being crystal clear on an organization's objectives and how that then leads to, ultimately, is the coaching in the program really the nuts and bolts of design. So, this notion of leadership philosophy. So, maybe the other fun fact about myself is that I've started a Ph.D. three times I never completed, mainly just because, as you heard in my bio, I've moved around the world, and things have been derailed. But I did a bit of research on emotions and the emotion of surprise. Of the sort of six broadly accepted emotions, the surprise is the one that can both have a positive balance and a negative balance, i.e., surprise can either sort of excite you and mobilize you or let you freeze. And I'll be sure to draw the link to leadership philosophy now. And I went down the rabbit hole of going through the literature, but what I kept on bumping against is that followers most often appreciate consistency, clarity, and understanding of the direction that a leader gives. Specifically, if we look at leadership moments broadly, and this is maybe more retrospective, but the leadership environment has generally been… So, let's pick a number, sort of four out of five days, it's generally been stable. You've set your strategy, and as an enterprise leader, you're leading the strategy. And yes, there's the sort of, not that it's a day of the week, but as a percentage, one-fifth of the time it's obviously all hands on deck, there's a significant challenge. And in that environment, yes, followers aren't looking maybe for that certainty, that straight line; they are looking at what's going to be the response, that sort of battlefield, all hands, and how we're going to respond. So, turning that into kind of more of a response, as a leadership philosophy, there's the time when you're leading a stable environment, and that's where followers really appreciate that clarity and that certainty. And there are those times when it's all hands on deck. And then, just to the research, you can think of corporate leaders or political leaders who have utilized surprise to sort of shock the system, creating that burning platform to mobilize change and then a new trajectory. So, those are two ways that I've thought about it; just on that, obviously, I have closely followed the work of Herminia Ibarra at London Business School around leadership identity and linked to Ron Heifetz and the step into the adaptive leader. I think it is so, so and even more critical that as we develop leaders, there is a very, very strong sense of self, a sense of purpose, what you stand for, and also what you, therefore, won't stand for as you then step up into the senior roles.

 

Scott Allen  15:57  

Yeah. And what's fun about this conversation, too, is I think leadership philosophy that can be at the individual level for me and my team, but I'm sure you come across organizations in your travels where, maybe as an organization, they weren't really clear about a leadership philosophy. At that level as well, there wasn't a lot of clarity of, “Hey, this is what we're looking for.” So, can you talk a little bit about that?

 

Shaun Rozyn  16:20  

Yeah. As I've sat around boardroom tables with senior leadership teams, it's always interesting to sit back and see the interactions. Obviously, a lot of the interaction is set by the way of working, which is sort of developed over time. And out of that is, again, not that it's just sitting around the leadership table, but it's really a large part of where leadership philosophy is set as those C-level leaders go to their leaders of businesses, and those leaders of businesses go to their leaders of functions and leaders of leaders into the organization. And what we do see is that definitely does permeate, and more and more in the environments that we're in that are extremely, extremely challenging, the philosophies that are really about nice and creating certainty and creating order being more and more replaced by cultures of candid conversations, giving feedback, being really truthful and honest to reflect the importance and the challenge of issues that we're dealing with. If you can imagine sitting around the boardroom of a Fortune 50 company and the pandemic's hitting, you've got to look at the statistics every day and make critical decisions around the world about whether people will return to work. How are you going to support the issues around vaccine mandates and these life-and-death scenarios? So, leadership philosophy is critical about how that top team works and how then it cascades to the organization. 

 

Scott Allen  17:41  

Yeah. And if there isn't clarity on that, I think, again, it's all over the board, and it's just all these implicit rules that people have in their head that other people are trying to guess. So, when you go back to Kouzes and Posner’s research, it's really fascinating. This is millions of 360s that they're pulling from, and it's amazing to me that we haven't done a better job at times. I think, a few moments ago, you said, look, people generally want consistency. They want clarity. You want that from your parents, you want that from your coach, you want that from your leader, right?

 

Shaun Rozyn  18:16  

That's correct. And I remember sitting working with a global telecommunications company -- and this is maybe an extreme example, but just an example of work done, where we had the CEO of the business in Rwanda, in central Africa, and he was just sharing as we're talking about leadership philosophy, those crucible moments. And he was reflecting that, five years back, there had been a coup in his country, the military was outside the headquarters, and sort of the general had come to the business and had sort of asked for a check for them to leave the building alone. And that building housed 500 people, and how he and his senior team met every morning and had to make key decisions about how they protect the lives of their employees. So, at the one level, yeah, it's about the business and strategy, identity, all the very, very real cases about how this really plays out in life and death moments. And it was a fascinating conversation with the senior executive.

 

Scott Allen  19:10  

Well, I always appreciated the work of Heifetz, and he said it at Art and Practice of Leadership Development. It was amazing. And, for listeners, if you've not investigated that program or Duke Corporate Education, please do because there are so many just incredible learning opportunities. But I'll just never forget; it was the first time I'd kind of heard this said; he said something to the effect of, “Look, my folks in my classes are not always going back to safe environments, and I'm not going to pretend that leadership is easy, and it's always dandelions, buttercups, and chocolate bars. It's not. It's hard, it's difficult, it's challenging, it's stressful, it's dangerous.” And, to your point right there, I think, yes, there's places where you're dealing with very, very real, and back to Snowden and Boone, kind of a chaotic situation of, “Look, the military's at the door. What are we going to do? How are we going to react?” It gets very, very real, very quick.

 

Shaun Rozyn  20:04  

No, you are correct, Scott. And, as you were talking, I was reflecting back. I was privileged to do an Executive Education course, also at Harvard, but the business school, and it was a fantastic program led by Linda Hill. Just a world-class teacher of leadership and leadership development. However, we did a case study on the ruler of Dubai, which really transformed the United Arab Emirates in general. And there was a global audience, and there were a lot of comments about negative aspects. There was an impact on the local culture, going from sort of a nomadic culture to now this tourism logistics hub in the middle of the desert. The impact, obviously, on the environment. And sitting as someone who is actually originating from Africa, it was just very interesting to hear maybe some of my developed world counterparts because what isn't a given, just on the topic of leader and leadership development, is that -- maybe it's not leadership because it doesn't fit the true definition -- but people in power, it's not always a force for good and a multiplier of good. It can often, and very often, be destructive and cause significant harm. And this is kind of the topic of leading transformative change. There are negative impacts, but how broadly can those be mitigated? In this case, the example of the development of Dubai, that the kind of the core objectives of reach, and how has, in this case, the leader leads that transformation, addresses all the issues, but has a North Star, and takes, in this case, a country from an A to a sort of a B position. It was just a fascinating conversation. 

 

Scott Allen  21:37  

Well, again, it exemplifies that you are a lifelong learner that you are attending these programs. And I was just in a conversation with Ron Riggio recently. In so many of these other professions, we have continuing education. It's required for a medical doctor, it's required for an attorney. We don't have an equivalent in management. And I think that's tragic in many ways because I think if we had some of this better organized, more systematized, we could really better prepare people to serve in these roles. It's incredibly challenging. And just even some of the topics that you mentioned at the front end of this conversation today, again, back to that word, ‘overwhelming.’

 

Shaun Rozyn  22:18  

And talk to CHROs, heads of talent, heads of learning, I think that is one of the challenges that organizations are dealing with if you look at sort of the organizational triangle. Like organizations like the military, where most development happens at the bottom of the triangle, as you onboard new leaders and then also sort of functional individuals in arms of service, organizations have generally invested too late. They invest at the top of the house and have wonderful retreats around the world but have often missed the middle, and we can open the conversation on leadership and management as the same thing. Regardless, as people progress in enterprise organizations, it's critical that we build many things: skills, management capabilities, and leadership capabilities. Not when someone’s sort of beyond the level, but when they're entering that level. I think probably about 10 years ago, before technology was going to be the solution, there would be a lot of first-line manager programs, and new manager programs would be delivered digitally. Sadly, what that did miss from a design perspective was great content, but there wasn't the chance to engage as a cohort, hear from senior leaders, potentially receive coaching and feedback linked to the line manager, etc. So, organizations, are we thinking about how we develop management capabilities proactively as people enter first-line management roles and second-line management roles? And think some are really getting it right, which is fantastic.

 

Scott Allen  23:41  

And I think you probably see this a lot. I think it's a blend. It's a blend of, are there some self-guided learning opportunities? Are there some cohort-based learning opportunities? Are there some online learning opportunities? Are there some self-paced and discussion-based learning opportunities? It's probably, in some ways, a little bit of a blend of all of these developmental assignments, all of those types of things, to kind of create this well-rounded learning experience. But, to your point, it's just one of those. Again, even if we're trying to create a world-class surgeon, you're not going to have a world-class surgeon just by sitting in a room talking about it; there's going to be some other experiences in that learning. We need to actually start on a gallbladder and building our way up, doing it, and building skill. Now, one thing I do want to get to, and just maybe we can scratch the surface, and this might prop up a future conversation for us, Shaun, but as you think about impact, this is such a big conversation. And, as I said, this could really take up a couple of 2, 3, 7, episodes. How do we show impact? What are some ways you're thinking about showing impact as you design these learning experiences? Because that's a hot topic, and it has been for decades, it's a little bit of a challenge in this space of leader development. But how do you think about that? What are you seeing kind of on the ground, in the field, as you're doing the work? 

 

Shaun Rozyn  25:10  

Yeah. Such a key question, Scott. Truth be told, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in this space. Dare I say, ROI. I've worked across multiple business schools, I've been on the buy side, and I see proposals from the world's top 10 business schools all sort of have an impact slide, but it's really quite broad. In addition, some organizations or providers are putting that as a separate line item. So, we'll do the program, and obviously, it'll be a great program, but if you want to do ROI, you've got to pass extra. And maybe, like you said, it will take more of a lift. I think, broadly at the level of capabilities and skills, practitioners will talk about The Kirkpatrick Model 4 levels of impact. Phillips came in; he had a fifth level of impact. Those are really best for training when it's a discrete skill, and you can kind of measure someone's skill before and after as it relates to sort of management and leadership development. I did a fantastic course, again, being a lifelong learner at the Rice Doerr Institute, which is oe of the best thought leaders on measurements of leadership development. And, like the scientific method, what we really need to do is have an isolated group and then a control group and look at the effect of what we've done, and that's really difficult because if you've got 500 leaders, you can't really put some through this intervention and some through the others. So, when it is that you can, and the [Inaudible 26:31] have done it, where, for example, they've had one cohort that maybe had a program but didn't have coaching, and had another program that did have coaching and they had permission to work with the organization. There, you can look at variable manipulation and ultimately measure impact. So, if that's possible, then you can go down that avenue. If that's not possible, and you've got sort of a cohort that you have to ultimately develop… I know that  other colleagues around the world are leaning into this, at the leader development level, how you can use a relevant assessment to look at what core behaviors specifically you are looking at developing. 360 feedback is specifically very good here. And then, you just gotta have your coding right, and make sure that you've got the same response group. So, ten people are responding to Shaun at point one, and then 12 months later you don't have cloudy data. So yeah, 360 assessments are one area that I think is useful. At the team level, team engagement scores, I know something that we've used in the past, that is a viable area for impact measurement. And then, as it sort of looks at people working together, I've been a huge proponent of action learning, and really there are broad categories of action learning, but having teams working on a business project that's often mandated from senior leadership, isn't a current solution, and then looking at the potential returns that that project can have. Often has a dollars and cents number that you can arrive at that you can then compare to the investment in the overall engagement and then look at the return on investment. So, there's a couple of buckets. I don't know if you want to probe into any of those, Scott.

 

Scott Allen  28:13  

No, I think those are great. I appreciate, again, some of the different levels and approaches because I think this continues to be such an interesting space. And, as you mentioned, it's a challenge because every business school, and you've worked at many of the best, what do we do? We develop leaders. Well, if we were, we'd be singing from the mountaintops, and we'd be showing the data, and we haven't yet. I haven't seen those papers. I haven't seen that research. That's one reason I have the podcast, and that's one reason I love this topic: it's a beautiful puzzle. I think about how we show movement, how we show results. And back to some of the technology conversations, I don't know, it's going to be really interesting, Shaun, when we have a VR-AR intervention, where I can be immersed in a conversation, a difficult conversation, and maybe, at some point, I'm certified in working at a certain level of navigating a difficult conversation. And the AI and the technology can certify that, just like CPR or something, I've moved through the process. It analyzed how I performed and how I behaved. So, I think there's some really… If we go really far out, you get into the Holodeck in Star Trek, but I think that's fun. I think those interventions will be some really cool opportunities for us to maybe do some innovative things. It sounds like you're thinking about it correctly. I don't know of a lot of other interventions. The only other thing I can think of is, at times, I've done interventions where an individual worked on a project, identified it in their space, led the team, and, in the end, presented to senior leaders what they learned about their leadership and the impact they had on the organization, their project. It was something that was approved. They couldn't get in trouble if it didn't go well. And then, you can show some ROI at the individual level. And this person led a team. But, again, sometimes organizations don't have an appetite for that. They don't want to get that invested in this, which is also kind of interesting.

 

Shaun Rozyn  30:14  

Yes. I do see some technological advancements, as you said, on the sort of measurement of mastery, if you will. I've seen some great VR applications. There's a company, my previous organization, that we were chatting with Talespin about, and they had created some VR behavioral training. So, they started coaching, giving difficult feedback, and negotiating, and they started experimenting with giving scores around effectiveness or mastery. So, I think we're in the early stages there. I am interested in some work that's been done around the organizational algorithm as it relates to management/leadership, and some of this early discussion around an AI manager, i.e., could you ultimately create an algorithm that represents a Fortune 100 organization, maps out how, with all your resources, people, financial, and physical, how can you achieve a certain strategic outcome? And then intervenes with sort of the roadmap and leadership and management intervention that ultimately coaches the senior group on that journey across five years to reach an outcome. Maybe a little bit in the future, and ultimately, they'll still require human intervention and judgment, but these are all interesting sorts of fringe work that's been done. So, who knows?

 

Scott Allen  31:39  

Well, yes. I like the phrasing there, ‘fringe,’ because I think it's incredibly important to look forward and imagine and think through what the possibilities are important for u. And, again, that's part of that digital mindset of how we do this work more effectively, and what are the different tools that we can be using, whether it's sensor technology, internet of things, VR, AR, AI, how do we do that work? And ultimately, as I've said many times in the podcast, my passion is how we better prepare people to do this work. Because it's complex, it's difficult, it's challenging. And, oftentimes, we are not doing as much as we can to prepare people to take on some of these roles. So, the fact that you're in the space, that you're thinking about it at multiple levels, that you're thinking about, okay, how do we show that we are moving the needle, and what are the options there, and what's potentially down the pike, and what's coming in the future? I love the conversation. It's a lot of fun, and I have great respect.

 

Shaun Rozyn  32:33  

No, it is. Again, reflecting on your point may open up a whole conversation. So, for example, how are people who are required to do this in enterprises and organizations learning? How are they developing their craft? This is why Venice's podcast is so fantastic. I think I told you that during COVID, walking the Dog would be my go-to podcast, and that's how I learned about what's happening in the world of the fantastic people you chat with. And I think these are key issues. How are people designing interventions? Be it organizational change, organizational development, leadership and talent development, and then designing the actual interventions. How are they learning? Similarly, I think one of the reasons working at a business school, why AI has been so interesting, is that the research, logically, because it takes three or four or five years to get a paper written, it hasn't kept up with the rate of technological change and the impact on business. So, often, you bring in a leading speaker to talk on an issue, but that science hasn't developed sufficiently that they can give research-backed insights on what will be the true impact of AI chatbots, etc., etc., because we're still kind of at the macro level as data sets are emerging. And then, that's really fascinating. So, how do we bridge that gap between what academia is able to tell us about these topics? How do academics sort of fit into that gap? And then how do you sort of practitioners that make that relevant to business executives, how do they fill in that gap?

 

Scott Allen  33:59  

Well. And you are at, I think, this really cool intersection of. There's an academic perspective, but there's an immediate need f these executives sitting in front of you. And how does that space and that gap get bridged? Because, again, listeners have heard me say this a number of times, the academics are at 50,000 feet, and no one understands what they're saying, and they have their own language, and all of their works behind a paywall. And then, you have individuals out there. You look on LinkedIn, and there's the meme that says something like, “Leaders never follow,” and it has 10,000 likes, and it's overly simplistic, not right, and giving the wrong message. And how do we hover at 20,000 feet where it's still actionable, applicable, and relevant, but based on a little bit more nuanced complexity and critical thinking? Because, again, how do we better prepare people? And we both have that passion.

 

Shaun Rozyn  34:53  

So, so true. And then that is all wrapped. And part of where I see some of the best sorts of OD talent leadership people having an impact is just then going back to first principles around how do people learn. How can we drive intrinsic motivation around being lifelong learners, making the time, and making the trade-offs against all the other things on the agenda? Again, as I mentioned, I was with the chief learning officer of a very large organization yesterday. And, literally, as we were talking, a senior executive walked past and said, “Thank you for that piece of content you sent out.” So, I just probed the individual about what that was. And she said, “To reach our senior executives really top of the house.” So the top 25, 30 individuals. They are so time-starved and exhausted. So, around some core themes, she, over the last six months, has repackaged, and she called it Tiktok learning. But it was extremely effective to package some content insights with how you then apply it and how this can be valuable to you in a video with a little short crib note. And really, in total, three minutes of content. Thi just showed me that this individual had understood her audience, and could have designed a retreat taking people away, but had seen and understood that, again, to match in with our social media and how we consume content, a video, and a short application sheet, followed by a survey around like, “Was that valuable?” And just that, constant experimentation reached the objective. I think that's fantastic. And more of what we have to do as people like myself, people who are putting academic insights into action to truly impact our executives in significant enterprises. 

 

Scott Allen  36:35  

Well, you've said some words that just always resonate with me, whether that's design, how are we designing experimentation? We're getting certain results, and we know that we don't have the attention of these executives, so how do we design these micro-interventions that can at least help move the needle in a small way in three minutes? We're probably not going to watch a 20-minute TED Talk. Even a TED Talk seems long now.

 

Shaun Rozyn  36:58  

It's true. “Can you do be down to three minutes?” But I guess we're competing with all the social media pieces of content we're receiving. 

 

Scott Allen  37:05  

Well, Shaun, we will do this again, and this has been so much fun, but as we begin to wind down, I think my question for you is what's caught your attention recently? What have you been listening to, streaming? What's caught your attention? And it could have something to do with what we've discussed, it could have nothing to do with what we've just discussed. But what's on your radar?

 

Shaun Rozyn  37:24  

What's on my radar, Scott, and maybe, again, because I'm from the African continent, is just kind of talent. And I've been kind of watching and reading things around leadership transitions. So, I just reread ‘Leadership Pipeline' by Stephen Drotter, Ram Charan, and in the performance pipeline, just as it relates to performance. Love that book, and that's why I read it every sort of three years. Obviously, because I've changed roles, so I've read ‘The First 90 Days’ because that's been kind of interesting there. As it relates to kind of streaming, I've been watching these documentaries on sports heroes and country leaders, and again, just tracking the early journeys around things that impacted them, that set up what we spoke about this leadership philosophy, and helped form them as leaders, as being prominent positive leaders. Again, even at the level of sport, I was watching the Netflix video on David Beckham. I thought that was very interesting because it really tracked him from early life to his great successes. I even looked at Hitler again, his early life, and that was really, really interesting. So these kind of leadership crucibles that sort of set the leadership philosophy for leaders have been very interesting. So, those are a couple of books and a couple of things I've watched on streaming channels.

 

Scott Allen  38:35  

So much incredible content right now. I watched a four- or five-part series on Hitler on Netflix that had just been released. And, again, you wonder, okay, how someone rises and what the conditions are. What's happening in the context? What's happening in the minds of followers? What is this individual bringing to the table that is, for some reason, resonating in the population? And there is just an incredible amount. I've been doing a little blog post every week about some of the films that have impacted me recently, documentaries or even just films like ‘Whiplash.’ I don't know if you've seen that as a case study of bad leadership. It's an incredible case study of bad leadership, and can spark a lot of fun dialog. And, of course, ‘Leadership Pipeline,’ classic. For listeners, if you have not read that or seen that, it is an important one to have on your radar for sure. Shaun, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your summer. And you know what? I'm so thankful that we had this time. Thanks for the good work that you do. Thanks for the exploration that you're doing as we try to make this work better. You are helping people be more successful in these roles, and, for that, I have great respect, and you're interfacing with the real people doing the work and bringing that more theoretical perspective to it, but in an actionable way. And I think that's incredibly valuable. So, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

 

Shaun Rozyn  39:54  

Thank you, Scott. A great conversation, and thank you for what you do. You really produce podcasts, as I said, has been a staple for me, and just really all the voices that you've brought to the fore, sharing perspective, sharing research, and it's a privileged time. As Justin Trudeau said, “The world is changing so fast, and never will it change less fast.” I can't remember what the exact quote was, but we're at an extremely disruptive time, so this is really, really so important for the future of the world, our organizations, and our species. It's fantastic.

 

Scott Allen  40:22  

Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun. I get to speak with people like you every week. That's not work; that's just cool. (Laughs)

 

Shaun Rozyn  40:31

It really, really is.

 

Scott Allen  40:32

You may have heard some crows in the background, they want to speak with you as well.

 

(Laughter)

 

Shaun Rozyn  40:37  

Happy to have a conversation. 

 

Scott Allen  40:39  

We'll do it again. Be well. 


[End Of Recording]