Show Notes
Episode 198: Dustin Snyder on What's Actually Going Wrong With Your Workforce Most leaders diagnose their people challenges alone, behind a closed door, with a spreadsheet. Dustin Snyder does the opposite. As founder of Wayforward, he goes into companies at major turning points and maps what is actually happening inside the workforce, using a method he created and named Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping or SWIM, for short. He wrote the book on it, Sink or SWIM. He comes to this work with the scars to back it. Before Wayforward, Dustin served as president of a 600-person manufacturing division that he led back to profitability. Earlier in his career he founded an axe-throwing company that was acquired. Outside of work he competes in strongman, trains muay thai, and is working toward the tallest peak on all seven continents. Key Insights
Behavior at scale is a rational outcome. A company that suspects it hired twenty percent bad apples has a math problem rather than a character problem. Widespread behavior is an adaptation to conditions, and it maps and predicts from the variables in the environment. People change behavior as the environment changes. Told to change while the conditions hold, their own brain overrides the instruction as a survival risk, because that behavior is what the environment taught them survival requires. The map starts at the top. Dustin opens every SWIM engagement with senior leadership to learn the strategy and the pain point, then moves to a representative sample of the organization and traces the behavior back to the root cause. Intervention design reduces to one question: how do we make the right thing the easy thing? Change the variables until the behavior you want becomes the rational one. Empathy operates as an objective discipline rather than a feeling. Stand in their boots. Learn what the day is actually like and what makes it harder than it needs to be. People leave because they fail to feel successful in the conditions around them. Pay is the trench they retreat to when something more important is lacking. Blind spots come with the seat rather than with the leader. Executives watch the market, the customers, and the long strategy, which is their job, and that vantage point can only see so far into the field. The fixes are usually small. Dustin's clients rarely need a capital budget. They need a clarification that has yet to reach the front line.
Do One Thing This week, notice one behavior showing up across your team rather than in one person. Then ask yourself Dustin's question: "What if this behavior was rational?" What if this is an adaptation your people make to the conditions around them? What if you would do the same thing standing in their boots? If the behavior was rational, what would be driving it? Ask that, and you start solving the root cause instead of managing the symptom one more time. Connect With Dustin Find Dustin on LinkedIn, at Wayforward, and get his book,Sink or SWIM: The Human Systems Theory Approach to Business Performance. Your Next Step Dustin maps what's going wrong for companies at a turning point. You can start that map yourself this week. Take the free Work Positive Culture Assessment and find out what your culture is telling you.
Connect with Dr. Joey & Work Positive Work Positive Podcast: workpositive.today/podcasts Free Work Positive Newsletter: workpositive.today/newsletter
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@workpositive7529 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drjoeyfaucette/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WorkPositiveToday/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workpositive.today/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.joeyfaucette
Enjoying the show? Leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts so more people leaders discover the Work Positive Podcast. It takes a minute and helps the whole community. Know a leader who would be a great guest? Send your recommendation to [email protected].
More from Work Positive
EP 209 | Make Retention a HABIT | Dr. Sharon Grossman An engineer at Hewlett-Packard ran into his manager’s office with a breakthrough. The manager wanted to say thank you on the spot. He reached into his lunch bag and handed over the only thing he had: a banana. It became the Golden Banana Award. In this week’s episode, psychologist Dr. Sharon Grossman talks with Dr. Joey about the fifteen-minute daily habit that keeps your top talent on your team. Who on your team earned a golden banana yesterday? ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Sharon Grossman is a psychologist, keynote speaker and retention strategist. She helps organizations reduce turnover, strengthen leadership and create work cultures where people are motivated to stay. She combines behavioral science with practical systems that improve engagement, performance and retention, and she has for more than 25 years. Her executive coaching helps leaders recover from burnout, and her retention work extends that care to frontline teams. Her HABIT system equips people leaders to do five things in a fifteen-minute daily huddle: Huddles, Appreciation, Barometer, Improvement and Tracking. She’s the author of several books, including Don’t Buy Their Lunch! Buy Their Loyalty. You discover her books, speaking, coaching and consulting at drsharongrossman.com. Key Insights
EP 208 | You Invest. Your People Invest Back. | Katherine Kobs About a decade ago, a company told a young team member, "We wanna send you to college and we'll pay for it." Kate Kobs said yes. Nearly a decade later, she invests in people the way that company invested in her. In this week's episode, Kate talks with Dr. Joey about attracting top talent with total rewards and retaining them as you follow through. Who on your team waits for you to invest first? ABOUT THE GUEST Katherine (Kate) Kobs is a human resources leader who creates people-first HR functions. She created them across manufacturing, municipal government, energy, and retail companies. She loves translating compliance into practical guidance managers use to positively influence their culture. Today she leads HR for an organization with entities spread across Wisconsin. She also serves as a human resources sergeant in the Wisconsin Army National Guard. Kate lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She shares inspiring stories about work culture on LinkedIn. She welcomes your questions there. Key Insights
EP 207 | Slow Down to Grow Trust | Sara Valentine Halloween comes every Monday at Give Kids The World Village. Christmas comes every Thursday. Sara Valentine says your culture happens on the days in between, on ordinary Tuesdays. In this week's episode, Sara talks with Dr. Joey about the HEART framework she discovered as she watched her team serve Wish families, and how a culture climbs back from rock bottom one conversation at a time. What does your team hear from you on an ordinary Tuesday? ABOUT THE GUEST Our guest on this episode is a human resources executive, leadership speaker, and creator of the Heart Leadership framework. It's a simple approach that helps leaders like you and me build trust through intentional conversations and everyday actions. She's led people and culture for nearly 20 years, and is passionate about helping organizations like yours create work cultures where employees feel heard, valued, and empowered. She currently serves as vice president of talent and culture at Give Kids The World Village, and hosts the Heart Leadership podcast. She believes that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about how we show up for our people. Sara welcomes messages from the Work Positive community on LinkedIn. KEY INSIGHTS
EP 206 | You Go First. Then Your Team Follows. | Dr. Joey Faucette Every February at Dr. Joey's farm, the first crocus pushes through frozen ground before the daylilies stir. The crocus goes first. Then spring follows. In this week's episode, Dr. Joey coaches all five B.R.A.V.E. @ Work practices from the Work Positive Community Live Experience. Who on your team waits for you to go first? ABOUT DR. JOEY Dr. Joey Faucette is the creator of the Work Positive Culture framework and founder of Work Positive Today. He serves as a Positive Culture Architect, Executive Coach, and host of the Work Positive Podcast. He helps people leaders transform their work cultures so they attract top talent, reduce turnover, and grow productivity and profits. The bestselling author of 19 books, Dr. Joey brings more than four decades of culture coaching to every conversation. Each month he hosts the Work Positive Culture Live Experience, where he coaches the Work Positive Community through one framework at a time. He works from Pleasant Gap Farm in Dry Fork, Virginia. KEY INSIGHTS
EP 205 | Millions Hiding in Your Organization | Porschia Parker-Griffin Two sisters bought a pearl necklace at a Goodwill for sixty-nine cents. The appraisal came back at $50,000. Do you undervalue your team in a similar way? One designer at an architecture firm shared her underappraisal with Glassdoor because her owner had yet to ask. Porschia Parker-Griffin helps organizations unlock the millions of dollars of potential hiding inside their own teams. What would an appraisal of your team discover that you priced too low? ABOUT THE GUEST Porschia Parker-Griffin is the founder and CEO of Fly High Coaching. She helps organizations attract, engage, and retain high-caliber professionals through tailored consulting, training, and coaching programs that achieve their business goals and enhance their culture. She holds the ICF Professional Certified Coach credential along with numerous other important certifications, including master practitioner status in the MBTI and certification in the Hogan assessments. She holds two psychology degrees, including a master's in industrial and organizational psychology, and she hosts the Career 101 Podcast, which she describes as everything you were never taught about career growth, development, and change. Her company tagline is soaring to your full potential. She especially enjoys helping companies unlock the millions of dollars of potential hiding in their organization, and she offers the Work Positive community her case studies, her podcast, and an open LinkedIn inbox. KEY INSIGHTS