HR to Drive Change with Karen Gregory

Karen Gregory: If you think about it, I can't talk a whole lot about it, but if you think about it simply as, how do you influence people's behaviors?

Quite frankly, to get them to want to make change.

Janine Ramirez: Hello. Listeners.

Today, we will be learning tons from Karen Gregory, a seasoned expert in organizational development and change management. So with over twenty four years of military experience and a background in behavioral science, Karen has worked as an influence operations manager in the US Air Force and serve the CEO of a government contracting company for ten years. Now Karen is helping organizations make the shift from traditional outdated and dare I say cringy HR to a more transformative developmental approach that empowers leaders to build thriving teams. So get ready to be inspired by Karen Gregory. Welcome to our show, Karen.

Karen Gregory: Thank you. Appreciate it, Janine.

Janine Ramirez: So excited to jump right into the conversation because we don't have that much time and there's so much that we can discuss. So I wanna start by saying, I'm so sorry that I have this naive view of the military because of all the movies that I've been watching. But it's like for me an organization that is kinda set in their ways. So I was really surprised and pleasantly surprised when first had their conversation and you were so bubbly and so passionate.

From Air Force to Organizational Dev’t & Change

Janine Ramirez: So could you just tell us a little bit more about your role in the air force as an influence operations manager and how he transitioned to working in organizational change and development.

Karen Gregory: Okay. So, I ended up Basically, the culmination of my career was as an influence operations officer. And so sort of the build up, I'll kind of have talked to that because I think we'll allude back to it in some of this discussion and kind of why I say the things I say and kind of where I'm coming from. And so I entered the Air Force. As a behavior scientist and one of my first jobs was more aligned with industrial organizational psychology and personnel management, actually. And so we did test construction, so developing especially knowledge tests for our enlisted troops because that's part of their promotion point. So, how they get promoted, they can actually test that they know their job. So, that's how I started.

From there, I did other jobs. I actually was afforded the opportunity to teach at the Air Force Academy. So I became a course director for organizational behavior out there, but I also touched on, basically, like HR, organizational behavior, and other courses, obviously, as needed out there. And so, it really got the knowledge and the education. And, obviously, a lot of time on the platform. So, they usually say, hey, if you're gonna teach others, you better know your stuff. And so it's a great opportunity as a young officer to really get to know my stuff. So really more came from that academic and personnel management background initially.

Kind of continued that, honestly, after that assignment. I was afforded an opportunity to become an organizational assessment and development psychologist. And so, came with division chief, And what was I doing? Developing climate assessments. And I don't mean the weather kind. I mean, the culture kind, right? The kind in the organizations. Throughout the Department of Defense (DOD). So all of our DOD agencies, organizations, whether a civilian or military, actually are required to take an annual climate assessment. So, it's called the deox in the DOD. So, I was able to help develop that and administer come up with basically action plans and recommendations for organizations across the globe in the DOD. So, that was another just great opportunity to really get to know, like, all the different types of organizations that were out there. And kind of like, in a way, entrepreneurial, right? And sort of intrinsically looking at like how do we help ourselves. And so almost in consulting fashion in a sense.

So, I did that. From there, it was probably about halfway into my career. You'd mentioned the twenty four years, and so it came about halfway. I thought, okay, to make it the other half, because I was aiming for the twenty years. Okay, I got to go more operational. And so that's how I got into the influence operations. Information operations background. And so, if you think about it, I can't talk a whole lot about it, but if you think about it simply as, How do you influence people's behaviors, quite frankly, to get them to want to make change? And I'll give a quick example that I can give, but that's basically what influence operations is. Obviously, we could use this in other types of activities, those would be activities that I can't talk about, but where I can talk about is training our own what we call blue folks. And so our air force, we've called them blue, right? And so if you think about how do you influence a, an air force operator's behavior. So, say they're doing something that maybe tends to lend to sharing information that maybe we don't want to share openly, just put it out there. So, what we would do is training, right? So, we would do some of that covertly, and then we would share it overtly. To just say, hey, these were some of our findings. So if you think about almost like an evaluation of like, hey, let's just go out there, figure out what's going on, or what's not going on. And then be able to come back and train our own folks on, hey, these are some of the things that we noticed. These are some of the areas that we might want to tighten up on. Again, just trying to influence them, you know, and their behaviors, to change the behaviors so that we don't make ourselves susceptible quite frankly to an adversary. And so, that was more of the operational context. So, you can see, like, sort of, all building blocks.

Karen Gregory: All about influencing.

Janine Ramirez: Your career has come full circle, you know, like you start, okay, like I enter, okay, no behavioral science, and then you you get to teach which is kind of a self-reflection, right, of like, okay, how do I communicate this and get this message message across and you know, understand the concept in a different level because you have to teach them. And I find that when you have the teacher present something, It's always different. Like you get to know it in a deeper level. And then you get to like assess and compare different organizational cultures until you end up influencing and motivating people. That's so cool. Okay. Like we have a lot. We have a lot that we can turn from you.

Karen Gregory: That is the building block though.

Janine Ramirez: But like with all your experience, what would be like your top lesson that you took from you from the Air Force and working in the Air Force to what you do now in organizational development?

Top Lessons to Influence Change

Karen Gregory: Yeah, I think this is probably a lesson. It's not even necessarily specific to what you know, what I do, like in the HR world or even organizational development, I think it's just good leadership practice. And I was always taught, like, basically, delegate and move out of the way, right? That's a great way to build other leaders. And so, for me, and you know, when you think about change, we've got to trust people. Got to be able to hand things over and know that the rest of our folks, our team members can help us get where we need to be.

I won't a lot of time to trust because we can spend an hour or two or three on trust alone. Right? And why that's such a core fundamental thing that, you know, organizations and teams need to have. But I would say, yeah, delegate, leaders delegate.

Trust your folks. And if you're not sure if they can get them the training or help, you know, provide OTT, whatever it is to get them where they need to be. Then delegate those tasks, those activities, and move out the way, because it's like compounding effect. It's not just me, Now, I've got ten people working with me, because I never say for me, we are a team.

It is my job to allow them the opportunity to grow and develop, and we do that by moving out of the way.

Janine Ramirez: I love that. Trust, delegate and move out of the way. Now, let's go to the meat of the conversation and what we really wanna like dig into, which is that shift from a traditional administrative HR to organizational development.

Shifting from HR to Organizational Development

Janine Ramirez: Can you tell us before we dive into that discussion like why? Are you so passionate about this? Like you mentioned it's like, it's like a movement. You know, you wanna convert people to get into this. So why are you so passionate about this shift in mindset?

Karen Gregory: I think, for me, it's because it's just taking a different viewpoint. And so, when we think about HR, we all rather think people, right?

And so, I think, you know, from an organizational development perspective, we're really looking at the organization, not just the people, that's component of, but the entire organization as a whole. So, it could be the people, it could be the processes, it could even be things like facilities, for example, hot desk which we know we've had to you know, we're sort of getting back into the hotelling, hot desking, we got a hot desk in the military.

You know, if sharing and remote work situation, right? And so, it looks at all those things. But in the end, who does the work generally speaking? Not always, because we have a lot of AI and other things that are coming into play now. But people are the core of making a mission work or not, right, successfully.

And so, I say, you know, OD is a, generally, is more of a strategic perspective looking at the organization as a whole to include the people. Whereas HR is looking at just the people, and I'll add, you know, I've been in this space for a long time. And I would say, easily, three decades now, we've said, and I'm sure you've heard it, you know, HR has to be more strategic. And I remember there was a whole big push twenty years ago, how does HR people get to see at the table and things like that? This is how I understand that this is strategy, HR is a piece of that, and what is the strategy is to look at it under the organizational development lens.

Janine Ramirez: It's funny you mentioned that our some members of our team at Erudit just went to the event unleashed in Vegas. And one of their key like learnings, their takeaways that they're so excited about is that the HR industry, they're thinking that COVID gave HR a seat at the leadership table and they don't wanna give that up. Like finally your relations are taking notice and listening to what they have to say and they do not wanna give up that power and influence. And HR is critical, they are all about the people, piece of it, and we cannot be successful as organizations without the people.

Do people cringe when they hear HR?

Janine Ramirez: But in our in our first conversation, I recall vividly using what, like sometimes people cringe with with a term HR. So can you clarify what the US traditional more cringey HR and versus like organizational development and what's that shift supposed to look like?

Karen Gregory: Right. So I don't cringe with HR let me just clarify for folks I hate to admit it.

I am a proponent for an organizational development perspective, HR is so critical. And I do think, you know, to that traditional, like I've taught many times and folks would come to me after be like, oh my gosh, you presented this and, you know, this HR stuff. In such a different way that I wasn't like, I don't want to listen to this, you know. And so, I think we've got to get away that stigma.

You know, those of us in the people business need to get away from that stigma, and that goes back to taking more of a strategic perspective. Because I think traditionally HR, if you look at it outside in, you just look at it, and I think of it like the HR life cycle. So we think of things like recruiting and hiring and performance management, sort of those traditional HR functions.

Unfortunately, performance management, part of it is the disciplinary thing. Right? Or the the rules that people don't want to always abide by or don't like. So that's why you get that like HR, you know, I get to deal with the old stoke vibe HR.

And so, again, you know, twenty, thirty years ago, we were talking like HR needs to think more strategic. It's not just thinking. We need leaders, and I think we're gonna about that. Hopefully, we make it to that.

You know, leaders need to change their mindset and how they see HR to give them the opportunity to prepare things, present things in a more strategic manner. And so I think, again, it's just been looking at it sort of this traditional. We're doing a lot of talking about how it should look. And some organizations are making that shift to more of a strategic You could touch on this already.

Janine Ramirez: You mentioned like the leaders. Is that the first step in making this change, like what If if we're to do, okay, "everyone do this first step just so we can move towards the future of HR."

Step 1 to Evolve HR

Karen Gregory: The first step is definitely having our leaders, and I'm not even saying get on board, because usually we're like, we need our leaders on board, but I would say embracing, living eating, breathing, living, you know, change, they need to be the example of the change.

I've seen in many organizations, you know, in my consulting work and history that, you know, we've talked a lot about we need this, we need that, but it it points the finger everybody else in the organization.

And I am hard on leaders, because ultimately they are a big maker or breaker. We can't do it without the people, the masses, But the leaders are the ones that set the tone. They're the one that says basically to everybody else by through their behaviors more than anything of what is acceptable and what is not. What does change look like?

And so first and foremost, yeah, leaders need to be exuding what that change looks like, be involved, roll up their sleeves, show what it looks like. Right? Be actually involved in the change, not just saying, oh, they yeah. Yes.

We need a change, and they're the ones gonna make things happen.

Great Leaders in Remote Set-ups

Janine Ramirez: But these days it's like remote working, hybrid office, like in the past I feel like I'd see the leaders, I'd see the bosses, and be like, okay, like it's easier for them to influence the rest of the organization. How has that changed now that we're shifting to remote?

Karen Gregory: So, I will say, I actually gave this some thought.

So, I think leaders who let me just say it this way. Leaders who lead well, do it well no matter the work environment.

Yep, they will find a way. Because I can tell you my experience has been that the good leaders, and I'll give an example I know sometimes that's a little bit more, you know, people can kind of get their arms around it.

But in my current organization that I work with, we had a senior leader Sadly, he's not here anymore, but we've got awesome leaders in the organization. But this one specific leader, as we went through change, he was that person literally. And we were This was in the last three years. So, it was during COVID, all remote, plus we're geographically dispersed all over the world.

And so you're -- so we were already sort of working, you know, at least geographically separated, some are in offices, some are homes, some are all over the, you know, who knows where. And so, But this leader specifically, he was really great, because he would hold, we'll call them like town halls, but he would hold sessions, even your leader sort of, we call them sometimes coffee in conversations or ask me anything, we do that quarterly. And so, he was excellent at just getting out there and staying connected.

Folks and he put it out there, hey, I don't care who you are, if you're looking for somebody to help mentor you, call me, I am me, send me a message on team, you know, whatever. He was in the thick of it literally, rolling up the sleep, showing what it look like and how to be a good leader through change.

The organization I'm working at, they are in and many organizations are like this. That is the change, right? The change is the constant thing. Change, change, change, they're constantly pivoting.

And, and so he knew if he were not to keep a pulse on the organization and pulls on the people and what's working, what's not, okay, we're getting some resistance, know they're on board. How did he do that? He was checking in with them regularly.

Sure, we could say that, you know, being in person, you don't have that constant sort of, and I would say some don't anyways, depends where you work in the organization.

But you may not get to see that leader, you know, more often. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's not. Again, it depends where you work in the organization.

But he was really good about hosting those sessions of no kidding, just sort of transparency and just being real with people. And remember even one time somebody did ask a question that he was not we had actually prepared. We kinda have a sense of what is going on. That's our job.

So what was going on in terms of you sort of the climate. It's only a problem. So you knew it was kind of sure enough at the question and get asked. And and he basically just responded, You know what?

It's my prerogative to not answer all the questions. Those that I feel comfortable and I will, and people respected that because they knew he was just an authentic good example of a true leader. And so, it can be done, but it's got to be purposeful and deliberate. It can't be an afterthought.

Right. And people can get creative about it like there like, okay, maybe now town I mean who knows? What what tools and, you know, enough of things people are going to come up with the -- I mean we've done social hours. I mean I'm sure you've seen a lot of this in the last two or three years.

You know, do something, I guess that's the short of it, do something. Let's not blame COVID or remote work because now sorry to see the pendulum swing the other way is like, oh, is remote work or telework becoming a problem and creating a negative culture? Well, only if you let it, so which means usually because you've left people out on the island and we're not checking in and we're not being deliberate and purposeful about connecting.

Sure. Virtual is not the same. We know that.

But it's the next best thing. And then and we won't go down this rabbit trail, but, you know, when we talk about retention, this is a way to want to attract the best because you can find them from anywhere, and then, two, retain the best potentially, because there are some workplace flexibilities So, but every organization is different, it's not a cookie cutter.

Janine Ramirez: It's true, but what is similar in all organizations, I think, is that people appreciate the effort. Right? They appreciate the effort of leadership when they see that, okay, there's an effort to get to know like how we're doing and to support us, like, that is always appreciated. And we move towards empowering leaders now. When we were doing our back and forth for the guide questions just for listeners to know, I was like asking questions more about leadership development and you were like, making that distinction of what's organizational development and what leadership development is. So for those like me who aren't so aware, can you give us kind of like a little description of each.

Leadership Development for Change Management

Karen Gregory: So I would say, we couldn't kind of tied it in already right to say, first of all, even to think about making some of the exchange, gotta have leaders on board, and leader development, and even education is so critical.

To to change management, honestly. Because organizational development is really about that. It's about how do we improve the organization, you know, some of it being people, some of being processed, some of you work design, there's all kinds of things that would fall in OD, in organizational development. And that leadership development is really, and I'm a call it leadership education and development, because sometimes we still have leaders that aren't aware of what organizational development is and how they could really leverage that to improve their, you know, organization overall.

And so, so there is a difference. I sort of, you know, I sort of, and I think I shared this with you all we talked initially is I kind of look at things, and I am a bit disruptive. That's sort of what I do. You know, turn things on their head, like, in traditional mindset, we go like, okay, we've got HR, we've got leaders, right?

And we've talked already about like, do they all sit at the same table, you know, things like that? But I said, let's flip it on their heads, right? And look at it from a very strategic leaders need to be on board, so let's educate them on what Od can do for them. Because HR is a component of that.

And then our HR practitioners, our HR leaders, again, look at it from a strategic lens, from that OD organizational development lens, not just the transactional things like, you know, payroll, very important, benefits, important. We need those sort of tactical, military, termite, tactical, level things, or we're gonna have a mutiny, which is gonna be a different issue.

Those are important. But they're very tactical. And so, definitely different. I look at his OD, I was saying, turned on his head, o d being kind of sort of the top of the pyramid and everything else flow down.

You develop your leaders. You develop your employees. Well, somebody will say, well, that's HR. It's more the strategy you know, the action plan for doing it, the execution would be HR or your training team, or however you have your organization aligned.

Janine Ramirez: Got it. Thank you so much. We touch on leaders and how important they are to make sure that you're you're developing and changing your organization the way you want to. So, I guess now one of the the roles of HR will be to spot the leaders like the influencers within the organization.

Spotting and Empowering Great Leaders

Janine Ramirez: So how can they spot the leader and how can they continue developing their their skills and abilities?

Karen Gregory: Yeah. I I think organizations are doing this differently. But, you know, when I was reviewing the questions, I thought, you know, why haven't you like the apprentice program?

You know, let's go back even before my time because I haven't seen that. He's usually more of a technical kind of thing, but I thought, well, why not?

And, and so, you know, because I look at it from the perspective. I've worked a lot and primarily actually with STEM related organizations.

In my military career, in in the consulting company, you know, all of that. We really focused on STEM. And when I look at that, what I would see a lot of time to happen is we'd find and I'm just going to use this as an example, not always the case, but for example, an engineer.

And they go, oh, this person is a great engineer. Let's promote them. And I'm not gonna say that supervising managed and leadership are synonymous. They are not in my mind.

And so, it could be one, but not all.

But what we would see happen is that you take an engineer who is a really good, you know, technical SME, right? An engineer, and promote them into a leadership type role, whether it be again supervisor manager or something like that. And and then realize down the road like, oh, maybe they would have been better as, you know, the, these engineering subject matter expert given whatever title, but not necessarily a supervisor or management in that type of leadership role. And so I think, again, it kinda there's the whole debate of, like, you know, is leadership sorta in a and you come with people are just really good leaders to begin with or is it something you could develop? You know, I believe it can be developed, where there is a want to be developed.

And so I think for for there are some really natural leaders out there, really good natural leaders out there, but I think there's also plenty that, you know, we're looking to continue to focus on and further developing. Even those that are great, they recognize, like, I'm, you know, there's no pinnacle. We continue to pivot as individuals and hopefully organizations. I I can't say that I, you know, like, hey, use this program.

It's gonna, you know, develop the best leaders. I think the biggest thing is, like, who has you know, who who can balance sort of the get the work done, sort of that you know, operational kind of lead the operations, the mission, right, which takes some of the people based skill sets like empathy and like transparency to actually come across as authentic, which then full feeds into the other, right, the operational side of the house. So, I know that's sort of a nebulous answer. It doesn't really give the, you know, hey, do this, or they do their leaders, you know, or the organizations that do it really well, do this.

I think it depends on every organization. What I am saying is to caution folks from promoting folks that are really good with technical expertise into leadership roles where they need, you know, sixty percent of their skill base needs to be more on the people skills.

And and and maybe not be the technical SME instead.

And it takes time, like, you know, supervising a team, supporting your team, making sure they have what they need. Like that takes up a lot of time and energy that if it's someone that's so great, and like an expert at a specific thing, it will eat away from that. You know what I mean?

I mean and that's a true challenge. I could say, you know, for the work in that I work in right now. It is a true challenge and I'm gonna strictly like hone into supervisors specifically in that leadership role because they, many of them are, we'll just say, operational subject matter experts. And so they're promoted, now they're supervisors, and a percentage of their time is supposed to be spent super by for the reasons you just said, right?

It takes time to do, like, administer media that nobody maybe wants to do, but you have to do it.

To actually spend time talking with your folks, helping to develop them, giving guidance, you know, whatever.

And so, it is a challenge to juggle the the demands of being a supervisor and still, you know, having some operational component that you're responsible for.

Janine Ramirez: So based on your experience, like how do you see the future of leadership? Like, do you think there's gonna be a split in that, okay, like people that are stronger or have the strength of, like, empathy and just being able to support people and communicate in in a way that, you know, inspires people versus the more technical type leadership, more operational.

The Future of Leadership

Karen Gregory: I would love to say that I wish it would go that way. I think the reality is that the organizations that recognize, you know, those effective, I'm not gonna say good because define good. Right? But those effective leaders are going to continue to, you know, pour into that.

I think you know, in in my ideal fantasy world, it would be for organizations to recognize that not everybody's meant to be in a leadership role. I mean, there's other ways like, hey, you know, for career development, and this is what I share with a lot of in the past with clients and even now where I work, but even me and my husband at the dinner table talk about this for his organization because he is an engineer. And so where does he go? If he And some folks want to stay in the technical, they don't want to supervise people.

And so again, sort of changing the mindset and this is where organizational development is specialist can help, because again, we're all about, it's really about change and improvement for the organization. Somebody like myself who is an OD specialist will look at this and go, okay, well, how do we get from here to where? You know, so define where you want to get And so, if you need however many leaders, which, in my case right now, is they're either defined as a supervisor or a manager, generally speaking.

Then how do we create those? Well, then we need to balance out because we do need them to have that operational background. You can lead a team when you have no idea what they're doing, right? Because you don't have a background in that technical area, but we also need to give them the space to be good supervisors and managers.

And I feel currently what I see a lot of is there's just a lack of bandwidth to do that because we get pulled back into that operational like, well, the mission's got to happen and we've got to get it done. Well, part of the mission is making sure your people are taking care and they're equipped to get the mission done. And so I think when organizations truly commit to that, goes back to what we said, leaders, you know, educated and trained and developed, because they are first and foremost. They're the ones that can be the difference makers and what is going to happen in the organization or not.

And they lead by example. And so if they're exuding that same type of development, and space, if you will, to do sort of both, to be able, to be enabled to do both. I think that's where we'll see the difference. I have hope for that. There are some that are doing that very well and there are as always room for improvement in some others. And so but I think that definitely will pay dividends in the long game.

Janine Ramirez: Nice. I got so many like insights and like a change in the way I thought of like success and leadership, right? Because now it's like, oh, like for you to succeed in a company, for you to grow, you gotta be a leader. But not necessarily.

Rethinking Success and Leadership

Karen Gregory: It doesn't equate to success being a leader. Maybe you're you're better, you know, I don't know, like being there. Subject matter expert in something that everyone just goes to and they need information, you know. Yeah.

So I'm -- Thank you. -- and Janine, I pause it like What is the definition of a leader? We're really talking about positions, right, career development, we're talking, you know, we want to sort of move up the ladder to certain positions.

You can be a leader as a subject matter expert. It's just an informal leader because you do not have that supervisory or management, you know, term, if you will. You know, in other words, you're not accountable necessarily for other folks, because usually that's what we see, obviously, the supervisors and managers. But anybody in an organization can be a leader. Do you have influence? You mentioned influence, and not just for my job, but, you know, basically, that's what leadership is about, influence. And I think I think anyone in an organization can be an influencer.

If they choose to be.

And so I think that's right there, the difference, because currently in my role, I have no subordinates.

I am a subject matter expert, and so I lead from that, right? Because I know my stuff. And so So, it does not mean, you know, it's just a different role, but it's something to be looked, you know, to look to move up too, right? Because now I am that matter expert for my organization.

And quite frankly, in some cases, shh, don't tell anybody, but it's easier!

That's all I got to worry about is me and doing a good job. All right. And it just goes back to you like, okay, balance like your job, what you've got to actually do and balancing the supervising component, right, of the people. And so now, my, hundred percent, my focus is just knocking it out on the park on organization.

Development. You know, that that's what I do. So, again, so I love it that you said that and you recognize that, you know, when you think of, you know, kind of going up the ladder so to speak. What else can you look for?

It's not necessarily the old school again mentality of like what's a leadership position. Oh, I need a supervised people. No. How about be a subject matter expert?

And I think and I am gonna be very pointed about the STEM related organizations. Because I think they need to do that a lot more often, have smeeze as leads.

Almost like team leads, the guru, the go to, whatever you wanna all them, and then have other folks who have either been developed or naturally inclined to lead in the soft skills. Or in the people, because I say soft skills are not soft skills, those are usually the hard skills, actually.

But actually, you know, supervised and manage the people.

Janine Ramirez: Awesome. Yeah, and celebrated. Right? And appreciate all of it, like all the different types of leaders in the organization.

Great, Karen. Thank you so much.

Karen Gregory: That would be exactly because we would pigeon hole folks, you know, one way, like you gotta be this or you weren't successful. No. That's not true.

I feel very successful. I'm a subject matter expert. That's success. And so, yeah, it is something to be celebrated, definitely.

Janine Ramirez: I'm super excited we got together today. Yeah, we do. Again, thank you so much for sharing your stuff and sharing your incredible insights. And experience us with us today.

For our listeners, I highly encourage you to connect with Karen on LinkedIn because she's like super friendly and you you can message her and and, you know, like, continue the conversation whether it's really a lot of fun talking to her, and you can learn more about her work and into her enthusiasm that's gonna feed your energy as well. So thank you again, Karen. We've only scratched the surface, so I hope we can connect again for another episode. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate it, Janine.