Martina Hodges-Schell: Understanding your operating model

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:01]:
Martina, welcome to the show. It is so great to officially have you here. We've had so many wonderful conversations. I am delighted to finally bring you to the ears of our listeners. How are you doing today?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:01:17]:
Thank you, Andrew. I'm really excited to be here with you today. I'm doing great. I have a cold. I hope your listeners will accept my apologies for the raspy voice, but I'm really excited to finally have this conversation with you.

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:30]:
Awesome. Yeah, well, they're a forgiving bunch and you sound great. So not to worry. Not to worry. So, you know we're going to cover a lot of ground today. I know we're going to talk a lot about leadership. We're going to talk about transformation. That's a big topic in the air right now in our world.

Andrew Skotzko [00:01:44]:
But before we get into all of that, I actually thought it'd be fun for the listeners to get to know you a little bit better. And if I'm recalling correctly from some of our earlier chats, one of the things that you're quite interested in, and I think you do some work with is horses, and particularly about how that relates to not just doing it personally, but also with some of your clients and helping people develop as leaders. And I think you're the first person I'd ever met who'd said something like that. So I was like, tell me more. What is that about?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:02:11]:
Absolutely. It's quite. It sounds quite ephemeral and quite quirky. I, a few years ago, got introduced to the concept of equine assisted coaching. More people have come across this sort of concept around equine assisted therapy, especially with younger people. This is adjacent. It's for coaching, for coaching contacts. It's just consider it a coaching session, a coaching conversation co facilitated by me, your coach, and a horse, and you're on the ground, in a safe space in a round pen with a horse, having an interaction around a coaching question, and then we're going.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:02:53]:
And then to. We're having some coaching conversation around that experience.

Andrew Skotzko [00:02:59]:
Okay, this is fascinating. So walk me through an example of this. So if I came to you, if we were having. If I was your coachee and I was struggling with something, let's say I was struggling with, what am I hearing from a lot of people lately? Decisions about where they're going with the future of their business. Right. Like the world is changing rapidly. A lot of AI stuff happening. We'll come back to that later.

Andrew Skotzko [00:03:20]:
Put a pin in that. But lots of big questions floating out there about where people take their organization, whether they're speaking about a product or within a company or an overall company, if they're a CEO. So let's say that was the context, and I came to you with that question. What would this actually look like? What would we do?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:03:37]:
Absolutely. So we might have a coaching conversation around. I would start with unpicking your intention around which direction, but perhaps it's a question around decision making, or what's the underlying challenge that you're seeing there? Is it working with ambiguity? Is it working with figuring out how to make better decisions? We will anchor one of those questions in and figure out, okay, what would we like to be a little bit different? And with that question in mind, you would go and have a one on one interaction with a horse, and you might want to do something with them, like send them to walk in one direction or trot in another, or you want them to.

Andrew Skotzko [00:04:24]:
Am I on the horse or am I walking it by the reins?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:04:28]:
Actually, the horse is at liberty. That means no reins, no nothing. So the horse is in a paddock in a sort of space. You're in that space with them so you can interact on the ground. So no riding, no prior experience with horses necessary. I wouldn't recommend it. For people who are super frightened of horses, that might be really overwhelming, but, you know, we could do something.

Andrew Skotzko [00:04:54]:
Yeah, I can see that.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:04:55]:
But if you're open and comfortable to share a space with a horse, these are obviously very well mannered and well trained horses as a safe space to then interact with them. So to try and explore. Okay. Decision making, perhaps. What comes up for you? How you're trying to communicate with a horse and with. I'll observe that for a while. We'll come back together to have a conversation around what are you noticing in your interaction, know, in relation to that topic. Something will come up.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:05:31]:
Something always comes up, you know, and often it's tapping into, you know, a behavior pattern you're noticing about yourself or a certain sort of belief that any kind of thoughts that might, might be a pattern that you're recognizing and how you're, how you're interacting with this topic in mind in the space with the animal. And the interesting thing is because you can't talk to the horse, right. We can have a conversation with words. You know, we can rationalize our communication. I can tell you a great deal about my decision making and where I'm taking my business, and I'm really excited and confident about it. But the feedback you're getting from the horse is very much on how you show up. You know, how congruent you are with how you're behaving, how you're communicating, the clarity of that. They're very good at sensing and mirroring what you're sending out.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:06:29]:
So essentially you're getting unfiltered feedback because the horse doesn't tell stories. Horses and political, you know, not like.

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:39]:
Not like a colleague in my line of B's.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:06:42]:
Yeah, exactly. I often like to say horses are great bullshit barometers, you know?

Andrew Skotzko [00:06:48]:
Yep. Yep.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:06:51]:
A real feedback on how you're showing up right now. And that might be incongruent with how you think you're showing up, how you think you're dealing with a situation. And those are really interesting coaching conversations. You know, where else does that show up? How is that influencing perhaps the decision making or the, you know, the direction of the organization? Are you, you know, we will unravel sort of the, sort of underlying concerns and questions that you have around that. And like in any normal coaching conversation, trying to figure out, okay, what might we want to do a little bit differently, coming to some actionable sort of outcomes that you're taking away with you from that session as well. What I also really like is it's not just getting feedback on what you do, but also safe space to try something different. How does something different look, what feedback are you getting from the horse if you try it in a different way? Communicating might be one thing, you know, is it clear? Is it calm and collected? Is it sort of decision making to me, feels very much like, you know, how am I dealing with ambiguity? That that's what comes up for me, you know, as we're just talking about that topic.

Andrew Skotzko [00:08:07]:
Oh, yeah, for sure.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:08:08]:
I mean, the horse will not give you hard business advice. Right. It's not going to sit you down.

Andrew Skotzko [00:08:12]:
Oh, man.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:08:13]:
And here is your opportunity, solution, tree, or, you know, whatever else.

Andrew Skotzko [00:08:18]:
I was really hoping that it would be like a mister ed situation where the horse just gives me the answer. That would be. Would have been so nice.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:08:25]:
Absolutely. But what it does give you is an incredible opportunity to, you know, actually get some, you know, get some real time feedback on, you know, how we show up, which I think is very rare. It's also outside of the office. It's not in that, you know, we're rationalizing with words what we're doing and about what we do, but also really tapping into what are these underlying things. What are these, you know, here is a pattern that I find really sort of a recurring pattern that's coming up for me. Maybe it's a limiting belief. Maybe it's something, you know, something where I stumble in other sort of contexts as well. That kind of stuff tends to come up relatively quickly, much more quickly than, say, in a normal coaching conversation that I have with people sort of face to face, voice to voice, human to you.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:09:14]:
And, and with that often, really transformational sort of change happens quite quickly because people tap into these kind of noticing things about themselves that they otherwise might have not noticed.

Andrew Skotzko [00:09:27]:
Yeah, no, that makes all the sense in the world. And I love where you ended that with the topic of transformational change because that is kind of, you're sort of speaking about an individual level of transformation, which, when I think about that, is sort of a precursor to a larger organizational transformation. Right. I don't remember who it was. I read when I was doing a bunch of research on this recently, but it was this idea that the journey of transforming an organization starts within. Right. So it's sort of an inside out journey, but I don't know that that's how it's usually talked about. Is that how do you frame it for people, actually?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:10:00]:
I agree. I find this notion about you need to change yourself before you can change everybody else. It's really true for me. It also actually, it just reminds me of a pattern I see with a lot of people I work with, with a lot of organizations and teams I work with. It's often the instigators of the transformation of the change. Often a senior leader always feels like everybody else needs to change. But I'm golden. I already.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:10:31]:
I'm forward thinking. I'm already in that future space, so I don't need to change at all. It's just everybody else who needs to change. And without fail, it's often that behavior that's actually holding a transformation back in the organization.

Andrew Skotzko [00:10:48]:
Oh, I want to zoom in on that. So let's talk about that, because one of my big operating beliefs as of now, of everything I've learned and seen with transformations and starting with the leadership, I think we were speaking about this before we hit record, but this idea that the leaders have to be personally involved with the change, you can't outsource this, right? And of course, this is all, and I'm sure we'll come back to this. This is all timely given Marty Cagan's new book, TRANSFORMED, came out, I think, about a month ago. So there's a lot of this going on. I'm sure we'll get more into that. But say a little more for me about that, because what you just described, that pattern of this forward thinking leader, and maybe they really are, they are thinking about the future probably much more than your average middle manager who's consumed with execution of the day to day. But what is it that they have to change? Because it does seem like there is value that they are mentally already in the future. So say more about that for me.

Andrew Skotzko [00:11:43]:
Unpack that.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:11:44]:
Absolutely. And as you might imagine, it's very individual for each person what that change might look like. But almost always, they also still have patterns or behaviors or mindsets, areas of their mindset that is still in that space they're currently operating in, in the space that. That they've been successful in so far. Right. And then the question is, how can that person also, together with everybody else, do a full mindset shift, do a full changing how they show up as a leader in this organization to be the leader of the future state that the team needs to help them succeed. Quite often it's something around the letting go of decision making and that directionality being more supporting this sort of the coaching leader, you know, rather than the directing leader, because quite often, you know, that's what's got you interesting, your leadership role over the last, you know, decades and got you. Yeah, got you supported, got you successful so far.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:13:07]:
So there's usually something still that needs to shift and change as we're moving into a different way of, like, for everybody into a different way of working because otherwise they often wouldn't be in this, you know, they're also working in this space right now.

Andrew Skotzko [00:13:21]:
So it sounds like the change you're describing that this leader has to undergo isn't necessarily, you know, hey, stop thinking about the future and think about the present, but rather more of a mindset, a way of showing up, like how they're being with people through this process. And it sounds like that's where there is perhaps some letting go of control, which is scary for leaders because what's the famous saying? What got you here won't get you there.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:13:49]:
Exactly.

Andrew Skotzko [00:13:51]:
Got it. So control, is that the main place that this really hits on or what are the big themes?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:13:57]:
To me, that's one of the main themes because, I mean, I guess control can be equated with power. Right. So if you also, if you're on the hook for delivering, if it's your responsibility to deliver on something, it's only natural that you actually want to take an active part in making sure that we're going to be successful. But what I find, yeah, quite often that's just not necessarily the best way to set teams up for outcomes driven empower, teamwork within the parameters of leadership goal setting. But yeah, I often see that as the sort of main sticking point. But of course, other leadership in the organization often needs to, you know, needs to do a lot more changing in that respect than perhaps the person who's instigating all this, all this change and transformation. But they're also currently operating in this space. Usually they're hardly ever just brought in to create this change and they're working in a, you know, I was going to say vacuum.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:15:12]:
That sounds wrong, but, you know, on a blank sheet of paper, they're also working in this current state of the, of the organization.

Andrew Skotzko [00:15:19]:
Yeah. You know, as you're saying that, it reminds me of two things. The first one is the thing you were saying about the leader, who's often they are in the future in their mind. Right. Is this idea, and I think this comes from, I think this comes from John Cotter's work on change management and leading change was this idea that the change is unevenly distributed within an organization. So the idea is by the time you get to like, initiating a transformation, the senior leaders have already, they've been there mentally for a while, and so this is normal to them, but it's like brand new to everybody else. And so there's going to be this, you know, for them, it's like obvious at this point because they're forgetting all the mental processes they had to go through to get where they are now. But it's going to be a shock to everybody else to some extent.

Andrew Skotzko [00:16:07]:
And so this idea of, like, the way the change propagates through an organization seems. Seems related to what you're pointing at.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:16:14]:
Yeah, absolutely. It feels like, you know, the future is already here but unevenly distributed.

Andrew Skotzko [00:16:19]:
Yeah.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:16:21]:
Yes. And I think sometimes there I see just that impatience of senior leaders. Well, for us, this has been crystal clear for such a long time. Why haven't you, you know, why hasn't the rest of their organizations that have followed suit? Why not today? And why haven't we finished transforming when. When we're barely at the starting point of transitioning from a to b? Absolutely true. There's that sort of impatience. And living in the future as well can also create an interesting dynamic and challenge for. Yeah, just making room and space for.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:16:56]:
It takes time to move a number of people, to get a group of people from doing things one way to doing something different. Cultural change mindset shift thrown into the mix.

Andrew Skotzko [00:17:10]:
Yeah. I remember many months ago I was having some chats with different folks I know who specialize in change management, and I was like, hey, I'm starting to do a lot more transformation work. I know I need to understand just the change process itself, which is, you know, it's a major component of doing a transformation, although it's like, it's not, you know, it's necessary but not sufficient. Let's call it that. And I was like, what do I really need to understand? Who do I really need to read to, like, make sure I'm not sending a client down, like a really bad trajectory or something? And one of the ones that came back really consistently was the book Managing Transitions by William Bridges. Are you familiar with the Bridges model?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:17:49]:
I have not been using that. I should read up on that more.

Andrew Skotzko [00:17:53]:
Ok, check this one out. So what I love about this model, actually, it's also really great for personal change. So they have a book called just Transitions that's all about, like, transitions in life, right? Like all the stuff that we go through as humans, as we move through our lives. And the thing just. You can boil actually, the whole model down of just the transition model to something very simple, which is actually that it starts with an ending. That's actually, like, the hook for the model basically is it doesn't start with a start, it starts with an ending. And so there is always loss involved in a transition of any kind. And that, I feel like is something that we just, at least in western culture, is almost constantly overlooked.

Andrew Skotzko [00:18:35]:
And so I'm really curious, like, how do you see that showing up either with the leaders you work with or within the organizations where, you know, I imagine with the kind of changes we're talking about here, even if they're good, right. These are good for the. It's gonna be good for people's careers. There's probably, I'm assuming, like, a lot of loss or fear. What do you see? And also, how do you, how do you help people with that?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:18:58]:
It's true. And yes, and I think this goes straight to the, you know, I know the very well known adage of, you know, change is hard, and people don't like change. And I think they don't like change because it really is a, is a loss. It is an ending of something comfortable or something familiar, something that they know well. And then we're asked to do something unfamiliar, something different, something that they perhaps don't feel confident about yet or, you know, they were an expert at something else. We're asking them to sort of begin to do something different. I'm not surprised at all that people feel uncomfortable about being asked to change, especially, you know, we're asking a whole organization to change. There's a lot of people there who didn't ask for change.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:19:45]:
They were doing just fine, or they had their own ideas about how things could improve. And it's not as if I ever work with a team or an organization where, you know, there aren't a lot of amazing ideas already happening about, we could be doing this. But this is really a thoughtful, sort of organized way of a systems view way of bringing all of these things together, thinking them through so they fit together well, and then moving towards that, I guess helping with that, trying to catch people's good ideas and good intentions and aspirations. But I don't believe you will ever find an organization where everyone's ready to just let go of what they're doing right now and try something different. I think all about just being aware of that, acknowledging that, and picking everyone up where they're at right now. The people are really leaning into this and excited about it. Get them to participate. The people are really uncomfortable about it.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:20:50]:
Design interactions. Design a path from a to b. That sort of helps support that. I think that's where your change management comes back in. To me, that's a, you know, how do we get from a to b and bring people along the way so they don't, you know, drop off or disengage along the way. But to me, it often doesn't look at, usually doesn't look at the content of what we're actually changing rather than how. Right. So I think those two really well.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:21:21]:
But yes. Always see people who are worried about change, and I think very normal. They didn't ask for it, usually.

Andrew Skotzko [00:21:29]:
Yeah. There's always somebody who's like, why did you mess up my nice life?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:21:32]:
Exactly. That was fine. Great. I was doing great.

Andrew Skotzko [00:21:36]:
Things were awesome. Thanks. Yep. Always a thing. So I love that you just brought what you just touched on there, because I feel like there's, you know, when we're considering a transformation, there's so many layers that are at play in parallel right processes. There's business models, there's the human side of change, like fear, loss, everything we're saying here. And then one way of speaking, a little more of the content of the change, I think, is the word that we like to use is an operating model. And so actually, let's take a step back really quick and let's talk about.

Andrew Skotzko [00:22:11]:
I would love to hear how you frame it for people in terms of like, okay, we're talking about this quote unquote transformation thing, right? And we can call that a digital transformation. We could call that a product model transformation. There's kind of a lot of buzzwords out there, but they all roughly pointing in the same direction. How do you frame that for people if somebody's like, hey, Martino, what does it mean to transform? And what is this operating model? You talk, what do you mean by operating model?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:22:36]:
No, absolutely. I think it's a great question because it's hard to just put one word to it, and I'll explain that because you'll very quickly get really hard eye rolls. It's agile transformation, or it's digital transformation, or it's product led transformation, or we're going to have a human centered organization. We're going to be.

Andrew Skotzko [00:22:59]:
I can feel the eye rolls already.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:23:01]:
Absolutely right. I can hear them quite loudly. And I find it really hard to also just put one label on it because I think all of these words are so loaded these days. People have gone through so many experiences of attempted change as well. That hasn't gone very well. So there's all this built up. Oh, goodness. We've been there.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:23:22]:
We've tried that. It was awful. You know, so much collective. Yeah. Bad experiences, you know? Sure. How. Yeah. So I find it also hard to have a label on this.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:23:35]:
I was listening to Marty's, a couple of his podcasts lately as his new books come out, and I realized I'm just, I'm repeating what he said there. It's like for the longest time I have tried to not put a label on it at all, but it is transformation towards lean, agile, user centered, products oriented, but of course, products and services. There's so many caveats to build on this one spiffy. But how do we, in a modern way, deliver value and innovate? Deliver value to our customers? And I think on the one hand, that's what we want to transform to, to be great at that, right? To align ourselves on that and our organizations. But also for me, an operating model is how are we coming together to deliver value to our customers? Obviously, again, there needs to be a caveat, just like the it depends answer. That's always just another thing, you know, deliver value to the customer that makes sense to the business. Of course.

Andrew Skotzko [00:24:41]:
Yeah, absolutely. I like that definition. So when inside that context, this idea that, at least the way I think of it, my current way of explaining this for people is that it's sort of the difference between efficiency and growth, right? Whereas like two of the terms that get, I think, really confused a lot, especially if you're someone who's just like popping the hood on this whole, like digital transformation, can of worms. You see these terms get used interchangeably a lot like digitalization or digitization or digital transformation, and probably 15 others. And the way I usually boil it down for people is like, well, really what we're talking about that makes it kind of a true transformation is a change in ultimately the business model of the organization. So how do we create, deliver and capture value, which often boils down to a new value prop or a better value prop that changes how we serve customers? Does that match what you see?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:25:37]:
So there are four lenses I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about operating model, how are we coming together to deliver value? And that's through the structure, how we organize to collaborate. Then the ways of working, what do we do to actually create customer experience, products, services, et cetera? What is the mindset? What are the values that we have as an organization then? Also the capabilities. What capabilities do we actually need? We often have titles that all sound very similar, but certain capabilities are not yet present in the organization that we need to develop that are really critical for us alongside of the ways of working. Also the decision making, their essay governance. But how do we know that we're deciding to work on the most valuable thing? How do we prioritize? How do we know that we're making progress? How do we know that as we're bringing all of these things together, it's all laddering up towards our organizational strategy and vision. So those things in terms of operating model. But then we're also talking about business model, I think, and they're huge opportunity for organizations to reinvent themselves and really innovate on how do we actually make money? What do we sell to our customers? What value are we actually, what value are we creating? In what way? And there are lots of new and interesting ways to do that. And I'm thinking especially AI as the latest trend in all these new technologies.

Andrew Skotzko [00:27:16]:
I was wondering if we get there.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:27:18]:
Yes, I'm sure you're seeing this, too. Yeah, most of my clients are scratching their heads trying to figure out how do we make the most of embracing AI? What does that mean for our organization? How do we bring it into the fold? How do we bring it into the company? From my perspective, how do you do it? Well, so you're actually maximizing the value you're getting from that rather than bolting another practice, another function on that is poorly integrated and languishing in the system. And then, of course, what do you do with the product as well? What actually makes sense from an AI perspective? And you as a business, how can that add value? So lots to begin, as always.

Andrew Skotzko [00:28:07]:
Yes, lots there. So let me just pause for a second and just make sure I'm with you here. So we're talking about transformation is sort of ultimately changing how you serve customers. Right. Which it shows up in value, props and in business models. And then how that happens seems like it's through a change. Ultimately, it's a change in your operating model. And the way you were laying that out was that it was kind of, I think, loosely speaking, four parts.

Andrew Skotzko [00:28:31]:
And I think you said structure, ways of working capabilities, and then decision making. Was that right?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:28:37]:
Yeah.

Andrew Skotzko [00:28:38]:
Okay, awesome. So now that we have that, we've got a nice foundation here for anyone who's with us. So let's actually, if it's interesting to you, what if we, let's like, let's apply this inside the AI ification of business right now, because that's, you know, that's the hot thing right now. That's on every, you know, every CEO in the world is getting asked about this by their board. So this is probably quite timely for people. So let's, let's actually, why don't we zoom in on that, if that sounds interesting to you? I'd love to kind of use that structure you laid out around the operating model and maybe explore what would it look like to, you know, transform, taking advantage of this new enabling technology with generative AI and maybe play that out just to kind of make it really for people. How does that sound okay to you?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:29:18]:
That sounds great. Let's think that through on the fly. I haven't prepped that. Yes. So let's start with structure. First question, of course, and let me just step back. Before we dive in, let's assume it's more than just using chat GPT to, you know, just to enhance your productivity. So the question is, you know, how can we get ourselves some AI capability into our organization? And my first question then would be, okay, structurally, if you're bringing data scientists, AI people into your organization, how many do you need for your ambitions? Where do they sit? How does that impact their ability to influence organizational strategy, but also delivery in terms of, if they're not invited at the right level to participate in feeding into what is our direction, what are we prioritizing? What are the most important, most valuable things we could be working on, able to influence that as much as do we have critical mass to actually create what the capability we're thinking of? Who are those people? Where do they sit? Often I see put on parts of the organization that have a hard time collaborating well with others because they're kind of siloed somewhere.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:30:58]:
So here's a real opportunity to think through who, where. How do we make sure they're fully integrated so we can get full value out of this new practice that we're introducing to the organization?

Andrew Skotzko [00:31:11]:
Okay, so we're in this first bucket of structure. And as you step through these buckets, are there common patterns that. So let's say we're considering this AI change. Are there common patterns of, oh, don't do that. That's probably not going to work, or this seems to work. Do you see those sorts of patterns within each part of the operating model?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:31:36]:
Less so, drawing you a few. And here is how you should structure your organization. I think that's quite contextual to each organization. I think there's patterns in that, too. But I'm thinking more of the, you know, don't silo the team, you know, somewhere to the sidelines. Make sure they are, you know, structurally, somewhere where they can also, they have the same voice as the other practices in developing, in, you know, discovering new opportunities, in developing product. How do you make sure there they're in a place where they can work without barriers with everybody else also thinking about, just as you structure that, any structuring decision is inadvertently a decision on how easy it is for that person to work with others, to communicate with others, to be seen. It's hard in the abstract to talk about.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:32:41]:
It would be really great to organize it this way versus that way. But I feel often just at the very rudimentary level, I see teams that are not well integrated at all.

Andrew Skotzko [00:32:54]:
And by integrated, do you mean integrated with the rest of the organization in a cross functional way?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:33:00]:
Yes. Thank you for the question, because to me it seems so obvious I'm not even spelling it out. Yes. So they can be part of cross functional team quite easily, necessarily a barrier between this group and others. I've seen teams where, you know, there was a complicated communication system to request whether we can have a resource to possibly answer something. So weeks of email chain or other, you know, lots of barriers that the organization sort of puts between people. And from my perspective, this works really well if you bring AI into your, if it's part of your, if it's part of your cross functional product team, you want to solve problems together, you want to identify opportunities together. And to me, that's super.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:33:50]:
I think that's where you get most value out of your new AI practice.

Andrew Skotzko [00:33:58]:
Okay. I love it. And also for the listener, I'm going to reference a couple short, two short episodes that came out at the end of last year with a guest named Chris Smith that were specifically about AI. Specifically, how do you, how do you bring AI into your organization and think through those decisions, especially as a leader, if you're thinking about, like budgeting, for example. So we'll link to all that in the show notes, but I just wanted to call that out since we're on topic.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:34:23]:
I'm looking forward to reading up on that as well. Actually, Noel Saldana and I, a good friend of mine who's also a data scientist, we've just written a bunch of blog posts that address this in more detail as well.

Andrew Skotzko [00:34:37]:
Wonderful. Please. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. If you send me the links afterwards, we'll definitely include that in the show notes for folks.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:34:43]:
Brilliant.

Andrew Skotzko [00:34:43]:
Fantastic. So let's move on. So we sort of hit pillar one, which is structure. Let's move on to number two. So we're talking about AI ifying our company. What does this mean? So we talked about structurally, we want to make sure we've got those people, account for where they are, integrate them in a cross functional manner. But talk to me about ways of working. What does that actually mean?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:35:03]:
Absolutely. From my perspective, again, what does this new practice need to actually work at its full potential? How do you set them up for success? And really understand what each practice needs. And in that respect, AI team is no different than any other team. I feel most of the time I see one dominant practice and everyone else kind of needing to bend around that and work their way around that. From my perspective, again, I'm very much in favor of a balanced team. It's really peers working together. So figuring out if we're looking at our ways of working today, is there anything that we're doing that would, you know, hinder the AI folks to be, you know, do we need to adapt or adjust anything? Is there something in timing or is there something in who does what? When are we bringing them into, you know, too early, too late, etcetera? I can't imagine too early, but there's questions to figure out what are we doing right now? And is that the best possible way to enable these new folks as well?

Andrew Skotzko [00:36:15]:
Okay, perfect. That makes a lot of sense. Do you find that, I mean, AI is such a, at least it seems like such a disruptive technology and enabling technology. I can't think of a better example of a technology that can drive changes in your business model going to the, it's almost the perfect case for transformation because it's like, yeah, this is a total game changer technology. It's going to, people say change everything and who knows? But what a good example. But do you find that something like this is also going to cut deeper into. That sounds much harsher than I meant. It cut deeper sounds kind of negative, but is it going to more deeply affect the organization in terms of mindset or values, for example?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:37:01]:
I believe so. And I think it's a good question of, again, I hate this. It depends. Apologies for that right answer. It depends on what we made it.

Andrew Skotzko [00:37:12]:
Most the way through this without a solid. It depends. That's pretty good for something in this topic domain.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:37:17]:
Absolutely. I was having high hopes. I wouldn't say it at all, but it was, yes, I believe it fundamentally can change a lot, and I believe it's a great catalyst for innovation. So I think what we're looking at in terms of opportunity to innovate, we need to look at how is the organization set up for innovation practices and capabilities. This is very much design process. This is very much product practice as well. How do we bring all these people together and actually make the space for innovation as well? I work with a lot of organizations where we talk a lot about innovation, but innovation practices have, over the years perhaps waned a little bit in terms of, in favor of moving towards predictable delivery with stable large products that are successful. Here is the question of how do you go back to actually looking at what are the real possibilities here, really early ideation to figure out what could we be doing with this? What value could we be creating for the organization? And with that, perhaps some really quite drastic change.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:38:41]:
And as you're saying, different business models having the capability and the openness to that, to actually see, you know, embrace that and deliver on that opportunity. I think for a lot of organizations, that's not, that's not their comfort zone anymore.

Andrew Skotzko [00:39:00]:
Yeah. And it's funny, we sort of naturally slid into the third one, which is the capabilities. And, you know, I think when people consider something like AI, the obvious thing is like, oh, well, we don't know how to do that. We don't have people who know we don't have that talent right now. That's like the obvious answer. It's, okay, fine. So that is one thing, but it sounds like you're actually hinting at something more deeper. It sounds like you're hinting at something deeper than that, which is saying, for example, it's not just that a company may not have people with the necessary skills at this point in terms of data science and algorithm design and this sort of thing, but to your point of, many companies have kind of lost their ability to innovate.

Andrew Skotzko [00:39:43]:
They've lost that muscle of exploring the unknown and innovating in that space. This seems like it could be potentially a trigger for having to rebuild that muscle, or how do you think about that?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:39:55]:
I would highly recommend that because how I see it is otherwise, you're just working on our first best idea. Someone had an idea and let's go and make that happen. To me, it feels like you're optimizing in a dead end, in a cul de sac. It's, you're looking at a local maximum. Rather than having a broad perspective on what are all the possibilities, and then having a rigorous process to figure out of these possibilities, what actually makes sense for us? What are we able to do right now? You were just speaking about capabilities. Where are we at with our own, not just the people, but where is our data at? Where is our instrumentation at? What can we actually do with what we have today, near mid term versus longer term goals that might need a lot of heavy lifting underneath as well. And what makes sense from our brand perspective? What do people trust us to do? I'm reminded of when the App Store came out or even just when the Internet started and everyone needed to have that same thing. I think I don't want to go to my bank for the next social network.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:41:10]:
I've certainly been asking any brand under the Santa Claus. We need to build a Facebook. Quite a few years ago when that was the hottest thing.

Andrew Skotzko [00:41:18]:
It's like how everything is suddenly a community. Anything that has more than two humans involved in it is suddenly labeled a community. You're like, I don't know if this is not necessarily a community.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:41:29]:
Exactly. So to me, there's a question of not just what are the possibilities, but also what can you. There's exciting opportunities, really bold opportunities, but also what is credible for you as your brand, as your organization, to your customers, or perhaps also new audience. But I think that's also a reality check. You know, as we're, as we're embarking on a sort of exciting news, you can tell I'm a designer, as a candy store. Kind of breadth of opportunities here. I think also some reality check on what makes sense for your organization as well. But, yeah, really going back to the original point, this is an exciting opportunity.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:42:11]:
You shouldn't miss it. And you shouldn't just do a me too of copy and paste of somebody else. And you were asking about, you might not have the capabilities right now, but do you really want to be tethered to the capabilities of somebody else? What if that access changes? What if the access seizes? You know, all of a sudden you don't have that AI capability anymore. So thinking all of those things through and thinking about what investment do you need to make? Those are big changes for an organization, for sure.

Andrew Skotzko [00:42:42]:
All right, so let's come back to, let's come into the fourth. The fourth one of this model, which is, again, flows nicely from what you were just saying, which is decisions. Right. How do we decide what to work on? How do we know if it's working and advancing us towards our vision? How do you frame this for people? Because I feel like decision making is one of those. It's one of those things that we. It's so important, and everybody knows it's important, but they may not appreciate the scope of the change here. Right. It's not just changing how decisions are made at the leadership level.

Andrew Skotzko [00:43:09]:
This propagates all the way up and down and across.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:43:12]:
So how do you, how do you.

Andrew Skotzko [00:43:13]:
Help people get their head around this?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:43:16]:
Absolutely. I'm thinking about how to connect the loop back from the teams, all the interesting things they're discovering, back to the overall decision of which direction are we going to go in and what is the most valuable thing to work on. I think it would be remiss not to close that loop. That's usually where I start explaining, you know, all of a sudden, if you're working in this different way, you're going to have a lot more in insights about what's valuable, what's an unmet need, what could be interesting and being able to give that back to senior leadership to who are deciding on the overall direction of the organization, what are we going to, you know, what are we going to focus on? It would be, from my perspective, it would be tragic if we weren't able to bring all that wisdom in. So that's usually where I start. It's very important looking at from organizational vision and strategy all the way through to each team member on a collaborative team, making day to day decisions, how does that all work together and drawing that out along the, in parallel to the how do we work together from vision to day to day and delivery, here is the what's the decision making that's happening? What's the lightweight and tuned in, reporting back out how we're making progress towards the goals, really mapping all of that out. And as you might expect, the question around what are the most important, most valuable opportunities we're going to work on 1st? 1st bucket, second bucket? What are the opportunity spaces that we're going to give to teams to figure out how to create the most valuable solution in that? And then how do we best create that solution? What's the best way of delivering that value and then mapping out how does that flow? How do we communicate appropriately and make sure that people don't end up in endless meetings about status reports or spending more time on documenting what they've done and explaining to other people what they're doing than actually being able to do.

Andrew Skotzko [00:45:54]:
The work that makes all the sense in the world? So I want to ask, I have one more question and then we'll start to close out. But I guess my question, just trying to. We've covered so much territory in this conversation and thank you for sharing all of this. I'm imagining that some listeners might be going, okay, wow, that was a lot. And they're trying to digest all this. So I'm wondering if you, how do you, if you could offer the listener kind of like, hey, here, take all that. But here is where to start. Right here is maybe your first big milestone to target that.

Andrew Skotzko [00:46:22]:
If they aim for that, it'll move them through all these, you know, get them moving in the right directions and move them through maybe the conversations they need to have and some of the initial changes they need to make. Obviously, bearing in mind that it's probably a much longer road than this first milestone, but just giving people a concrete first thing to focus on, how would you. Could you frame something up like that? Does that make sense as a question?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:46:45]:
Yeah, and I think this is independent of whether we're talking about including AI or not. And you're absolutely right. There's a lot here. And what I would recommend as a starting point, because every organization starting point, as you might imagine, is. Can be incredibly different depending on what they're doing right now. Step one is just take stock of where you're at today. How is all this working together? Sketching this out, not just from your own perspective, but perhaps being able to invite in perspectives from other practices so you get a sort of well rounded sort of overview of today, of your operating model. Today I have a canvas that helps you with a few prompts because there is a lot here.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:47:31]:
I think it's helpful just to have a couple of questions that help you guide that sort of conversation. To me, that's the starting point, because then you can have a look at and where do we experience real pain today? And again, you might do that for yourself and go, I see where that is for me. But perhaps for other practices, that is a completely different topic. And start there because it'll be more contextual than me saying, hey, you should all look at your structure, collaboration structure. Or you should all look at your outcomes based thinking or working. I think it's helpful to look at. Okay, what are we doing today? Where does it hurt and what are our goals? Where do we want to get to? What are we not able to do today that we would like to be able to do?

Andrew Skotzko [00:48:17]:
I love that. I love that. And we'll definitely link to that canvas in the show notes. So. Well, this is fantastic. Martina, I want to go ahead and start to close out here with a couple of rapid fire questions. They're just fun ways to bring it home and no right answers. There's just whatever your answers are.

Andrew Skotzko [00:48:32]:
So we just covered the one I was going to ask you, which is like, what would the homework be for someone, for a leader, listening to this? So I'm curious if there's anything else you'd add on there of like, hey, here's just step one. Here's your homework. What would the starting point be? Is there anything you'd add on to what you just said?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:48:47]:
Yeah. Then the fun step to homework is what might the future look like? Designing the future state of that with having that systems view, having that sort of holistic sort of perspective, trying to figure out what could we be doing differently and, you know, and then figuring out how do we get there. So that sounds like a lot of homework, but, you know, I'm not expecting you to do that by next week with your next podcast.

Andrew Skotzko [00:49:15]:
Okay. All right, well, that's good. So just a couple of questions here, and these are not really about the topic weve been discussing. Theyre just sort of more general. So whatever life chapter you consider yourself to be in, if you could go back to the start of this chapter and start again knowing what you know now, is there anything you do differently or advice you would give your younger self?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:49:37]:
Yes, I was looking for succinct answers, easy solutions for people who are all looking for make it easy for us to transform and change, you know, moving towards this. And I think the realization, well, the obvious answer is this is just not simple, it's not quick, it's not, you know, silver bullet solution. And just be comfortable with that and just be comfortable with being able to say that as well. When people push on you going like, but no, seriously, we need a shortcut.

Andrew Skotzko [00:50:13]:
So basically embrace the complexity of this and the fact that it's just hard.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:50:17]:
Yeah, that's a beautiful way of summarizing that.

Andrew Skotzko [00:50:20]:
Okay, very good, very good. So I'm curious. You know, I find that two of the biggest factors, at least in my life, that shape how I think about things, how I explore things, are either the people who have influenced me or, and, or the questions that sort of get embedded in my mind that I'm asking myself on an ongoing basis whether I'm aware of that or not. And so I'm curious, are there any of those for you? Are there any particular people who have influenced you or any questions that you find very, very helpful as you navigate things?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:50:57]:
Yeah, it's an interesting one. I've trained as a designer, so for me, everything I'm doing is really applying design process to different questions. But organizations, businesses tend to have this kind of visceral sort of reaction to, oh, but design, no, that's not that. You know, that's not what we think is the solution to this question. Why would a designer have an answer to that? So it's really curious to me to always be coming back to this question of how can I bring more design practice into organizations and into different questions.

Andrew Skotzko [00:51:39]:
Is there a specific part of the design process you find especially helpful?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:51:44]:
It's this whole notion about, you know, who is your audience, what problem do they have? What solutions do they have right now? Where are the gaps? You know, what could you do to help them achieve their goals? And obviously that needs to be better than what they're doing right now. Right. That cost of switching needs to, you know, we need to be able to bridge the gap. And to me, that's the sort of essence of everything we do in product innovation, product development, organizational transformation, solving problems with ever changing technology.

Andrew Skotzko [00:52:25]:
Exactly. Exactly. Is there, I'm curious if there's any books or resources you find yourself repeatedly giving people or pointing people to that you just find and very, very helpful, whether that's for the topics of transformation and all the things we're talking about or just in general. Hey, this is one of these life level books that I think everyone should read.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:52:49]:
I really enjoy Escaping The Build Trap from Melissa Perry. I share that with a lot of people who are trying to get their head around different way of thinking about stuff. There are so many other books for so many good ones. The one you recently recommended to me, I'm really enjoying and recommending a lot lately is they're growing groups into teams. I really love that. Just the whole premise of people sort of embracing how they set their people up as better teams. Really amazing work. So many good works there.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:53:26]:
I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'm not doing all these amazing authors justice right now.

Andrew Skotzko [00:53:32]:
There's too many. I get it. It's a very hard problem because I love books, too, and I'm constantly recommending my friends give me a hard time about this. They're like, did you actually just make it through a conversation without making a book reference? I'm like, the answer is usually no.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:53:49]:
Hundreds of books stacked here and I'm like, I want to recommend all of them, quite frankly. Yeah.

Andrew Skotzko [00:53:53]:
Yeah. But great choice there with growing groups into teams. That's by Pam Fox Rollin and her colleagues and also a former guest on the show. We'll link to her episode. It's a lovely conversation. Well, okay. Just in closing out, Martina, first of all, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your wisdom and your experience. I love your take on all of this.

Andrew Skotzko [00:54:12]:
But just in closing out, what would you like to leave the listener with and how can folks be helpful to you?

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:54:18]:
Acknowledge the fact that change is a process and it's not an overnight thing. No matter how much project success pressure is put on you, it's really not surprising. We need to have this done already. Why aren't we finished? And how can this take months you just need to tell me it's going to be quick. This is the process and it'll take time. And how can your listeners be helpful to me? Have a look at the operating model, goals. Canvas. OMG, canvas.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:54:50]:
Let me know to improve it. In terms of questions, in terms of prompts. I want to be able to make this really, you know, it's such a broad topic. It's such a deep topic. I want to make it accessible to people.

Andrew Skotzko [00:55:03]:
Perfect. All right, Martina, well, we will link to all that in the show notes and thank you so much for what you're doing. Keep it up and we'll see you out there.

Martina Hodges-Schell [00:55:11]:
Brilliant. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.