Pernille Hippe Brun: 0:04

Welcome to Work in Progress, a podcast series where I pick the brain of thought leaders within the field of people and culture. My name is Pernille Brom and in these talks we explore the latest trends shaping the future of work and the evolving landscape of modern organizations. In this episode, I'm speaking with Julie Reiter, who is VP of Human Resources and Sustainable Development at Clarke Public Health Mosquito Management Solutions. Welcome, julie, it's very, very nice to see you here today. Can you tell me a little bit about your own background and who you are?

Julie Reiter: 0:42

Sure. So Julie Reiter and I am currently in the role of Vice President of Human Resources and Sustainable Development for the Clarke Group. We can talk about the Clarke Group just quickly. It's a public health mosquito control company providing solutions for mosquito and mosquito-borne disease, the issues of mosquito-borne disease around the world. Mosquito-borne disease the issues of mosquito-borne disease around the world. I've been with the company for 25 years and my background in terms of my career is HR. Yes, it really is in the 25 years that I've been with Clarke that I think the role that I'm in and the career that I have has blossomed into something that is, in some ways, beyond what most people think about in terms of HR, and maybe it doesn't, because I think there's plenty of high-level HR. Lot of things that I focused on really seemed to, for me, set me in terms of the role that I have, apart from a lot of folks that I know at HR who might have a more traditional path.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 1:56

And already now. I'm so curious to hear more about that because a lot of listeners might not know what appreciative inquiry is all about. I'll try and explain it.

Julie Reiter: 2:06

So appreciative inquiry, in the simplest of terms, is this idea of appreciating the strengths of the organization and being curious about how, if we apply those strengths in a real and concerted way, what we could create. So being curious about, if we let leverage the strengths of the organization, what might be possible when you started out in hr what?

Pernille Hippe Brun: 2:31

what was it that brought you to the field and why? Why did you want to work within hr in the first place?

Julie Reiter: 2:38

yeah, you know, that's interesting, um, because I think that for me and this is going to sound really corny, but it's a theme that I see throughout my career and so, at the risk of being corny, it almost feels like it was a calling. Okay, so I was starting out at a very low level, doing clerical positions, and I really faced the path level doing clerical positions, and I really faced the path and this was, you know, to be perfectly honest, I was a college dropout, so I hadn't finished my degree and I was uncertain about what my career path would be. And I was working in a company that offered me a kind of a split job One was in manufacturing, in a clerical role, and the other was in personnel, in a clerical role. And after about a year I was given a choice where did I want to go? And and I just had this overwhelming feeling that that I could do something in this personnel role, even though at that time and you know, that's kind of the history of the evolution from personnel to human resources and what it is today, even though at that time it was much different but I had this gut feeling that I could make a difference, yeah, in the lives of the people that were working for the company.

Julie Reiter: 3:56

Yes, if I took that path, it took me quite a long time to get to Clarke, um and and I. It was really a series of different types of organizations where I would spend three to five years and I went back to school and got my degree in business with a focus in management and I had a series of jobs and some of those jobs were really great and fulfilling and some of them were awful and I learned a lot of people would say they said I learned as much from the awful ones as I did from the fulfilling ones. The awful ones certainly told me, um, what I never wanted to be and what I wanted to keep from happening in any organization that I ended up in um, and it was coming out of one of those awful ones that brought me to Clarke. Clarke has been in business for, oh gosh, 75 plus years and at the time that I joined the company so it's just about 25 years ago it was a small, so it's family owned company In 2000,. It was very, very small, had about 50 or so employees and it was and it was had never had formal HR before. So there was a lot of things in terms of challenges.

Julie Reiter: 5:16

I was looking to move out of this awful situation I was in. I was in a very dysfunctional company with a high level of kind of bullying and kind of abusive climate and I wanted out and and and I was struggling. It was it was 2000, the market wasn't great, and and again, and I and this, this is that feeling of a pedigree. I didn't have the pedigree necessarily to go where I thought I wanted to go, which was into bigger companies, which is kind of brand name. So I was connected with a guy by the name of Dr Lyle Clark and so the recruiter I talked to explained and I was like no, it doesn't sound like something I'm interested in. I really need to go to one of these big companies. This is my destiny. And he said just meet with this guy.

Julie Reiter: 6:04

So Lyle and I had lunch and Lyle described his organization that they were in a state of growth and there was a lot of stuff happening the emergence of mosquito-borne disease in the United States in a way that we had never seen before, hurricanes all of this stuff was happening. And he described this company and he described it as pretty scrappy and needed a lot of work, needed somebody to help guide its growth. And he said to me. He said you know? He said I have a PhD in entomology and so I know this business, but I don't have a PhD in business and so I need to. I know that I need to surround myself with people who understand business.

Julie Reiter: 6:45

I came away from the conversation I said no, but I have this nagging feeling in my mind I could probably do some really meaningful work here. Yes, so I ended up coming to the, to the organization, and that first year was tough. I had a lot of things pulling me out, like to say, because then I was getting the call from the big company saying come on an interview with us. And so I went down and I entertained that and I had family members, even my own father, saying what are you doing, kid? What are you going? You should be doing this, not that. And I and I just kept thinking there's something here and I don't know what it is. Um, and I went and visited those big companies and I was like that's not me. No, that's not me Now, and this is part of the story is that at the time that I joined the company, we weren't thinking about appreciating.

Julie Reiter: 7:34

We were so far from that. We're a pesticide company. That's all we thought about. Yes, we weren't talking about global public health. Um, we weren't talking about um purpose. Um, it was, it was very, it was very traditional, it was very, very conservative and and so and I had good work to do and and what was it that, despite all, that, you know pesticides and stuff what attracted you?

Pernille Hippe Brun: 8:09

What was the gut feeling that told you there's something I can contribute with here?

Julie Reiter: 8:13

Well, I think it was that, because they'd never had formal HR, I had this sense that I could create it. Yes, and so I'd been in these organizations where the organization was telling me what I should be. It was somewhat of a blank slate. And so there was that I really liked him. I really liked what he had to say. He was honest and authentic. I was drawn to his integrity. I like the people that I met. There was this strong bond amongst the people. Um, so I was drawn to that, and and and drawn to the fact that I could make a difference.

Julie Reiter: 8:58

Yes, yeah, which, which, as I look back at in some ways that it was just the idea of making a difference was just scratching the surface, and I think it was the autonomy to create it, the way that I wanted to help create it and to help him create the company that he needed.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 9:16

Exactly. And then the years went by and you implemented what you needed to implement in the beginning, and then what happened? Yeah, you implemented what you needed to implement in the beginning, and then what happened? What happened? Yeah.

Julie Reiter: 9:25

So, if I look at my career, those first, probably eight years was very traditional and we look at it through the lens of HR and even traditional even by today's standard. It was pretty traditional. So it was putting organizational structure in place, writing policies and benefits and all of the stuff that anyone in an HR leadership role would do. So nothing wrong with that work. It was really good work. It was really important work to us about this burden that he felt of responsibility for the business that we were in as a pesticide manufacturer and pesticide applicator, that he recognized that the general public had a negative view of the industry and, at the same time, the industry had an adversarial relationship with that reputation in terms of fighting against the people who didn't support what we were doing. But more importantly was the sense and he described this as this feeling in his gut that something was missing and that something was wrong. And it was really this sense of the why of what we do.

Julie Reiter: 10:47

And so it was a remarkable time. It was our kind of epiphany moment the CEO saying I don't know what it looks like, I don't know where we're going, I want to do it differently and I want you to help me get there. Yes, and I want you to help me get there. And so that was this just incredible moment of both inspiration and uncertainty and anxiety, because some were thinking, oh my gosh, you know he's gone off the deep end. This is not an industry that was asking us to be this way. And so we were swimming upstream and I'll just keep talking about this, if it's okay, because this is a great story.

Julie Reiter: 11:28

And so we started working on this and I didn't necessarily know what my role was in it and I wasn't sure how I felt about it, because you know, we were all going through the change together, the change, but I kept gravitating toward this role of kind of organizational leader. Yes, and you know, after about a year or so, so we've done a lot of really good work, activating the workforce and putting together green teams and all of that. But what I began to see as an organizational person was this disconnect between the people that Lyle was speaking to directly, and it was mostly the younger, the 20-somethings, that generation. So they were all excited, but the leadership team and all the middle managers were like get back to work. So there was this gap, there was this organizational gap of engagement and we were heading toward a cliff on this and so I started to do some research and I reached out to some other companies that had made progress.

Julie Reiter: 12:29

We pulled a team of people together, we went and talked to them. So we went and talked with um, uh, other companies that had already made progress and um, so I, so I just kind of fell into this role of ad hoc um organizational leader around this and then and then there reached a point where I I approached him and I said I'd like to formalize this. I'd like to formalize this in a couple of ways. One is I want to put together an organizational infrastructure of committees and a sustainability advisory board and all of this of committees and a sustainability advisory board and all of this. And I would like to shift my role, expand my role to vice president of human resources, which is the role that I had at the time, and sustainable development.

Julie Reiter: 13:13

Yes, and I remember people saying to me and and saying, why would you want to do that? I actually I actually had my then because I wasn't reporting to the CEO actually say that to me, why would you want to do that? And this is that theme. And I said, but if not, I said, well, if I don't, who will? Yes, so, and I said that's what's driving this, is that we're not going to get there if somebody doesn't lead it, and I don't see anyone else positioned to do this and I won't let it fail because I because I'm now at a point where I'm seeing the energy level in the organization, I'm seeing everybody light up and and and Lyle and I are working together on this and it just starts to become this powerful, energetic, exciting time where we're figuring out how to engage the entire workforce and we probably had at that point we were upwards of maybe 140 people, so we had more than doubled in size, and there was a point early on where we tracked the engagement.

Julie Reiter: 14:26

We had like 70 plus percent of our workforce actively engaged in a very direct way with the work that we were doing to build out our sustainability efforts and to build out this culture work. And so I didn't know what I was doing, like I had no idea. And I remember thinking that and it kind of resonated with what Lyle said in the organization, where he said I don't know what it looks like, I don't know where we're going to get there, and I remember thinking the same thing.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 14:55

But you had a guiding star. It sounds like right. You had like something out there guiding you that this can be done in a different way. This can be better. We can be part of the solution rather than the problem.

Julie Reiter: 15:10

Yeah, I think you know so. We had gone, we had a group, so I was, you know, I was just really energized by the things I was learning. Lyle and I both were really energized, you know. So we went out to Case Western, at Western, at Western University in Cleveland, and we met David Cooper Ryder and we met, um Chris Laszlo and we, you know so. So we were meeting all of these people and, um, I think it was, in some ways, it felt like we became converts, um, converts to this idea of changing the way you look at something, yes, and changing the way you lead an organization to bring out all voices and to really truly authentically invite the every person to connect with this, yes. So, like I said, I didn't know what I was doing, but, you know, we borrowed a few models and there's just, and then, and then I developed this kind of mindset which was we're going to try some stuff and some of it's going to work, some of it's not going to work, but we're going to give ourselves permission to try stuff.

Julie Reiter: 16:19

And so that just became this like really powerful, creative period of new approaches, new policies, new way of doing things. We had quarterly sustainability advisory board meetings. It was a blast. Now, this was all before appreciative inquiry.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 16:38

Yeah, because I wanted to ask, because, for those who might not know who Davy Cooper is and Chris Laszlo and the Weatherhead School of Management and their whole, you know the Fowler Center what brought your attention towards that way of looking at organizational development?

Julie Reiter: 16:55

Well, that's a bit of a backstory because you know, lyle was working on his. He was behind the scenes working with a marketing company in Chicago and really trying. So he had connected with this marketing company and he was really trying to figure out. It was almost like the marketing company became his coach Because he was trying to figure out what was going on inside of him and what to do with it. And so the marketing company said, well, we should have an event of some sort. And so they said you know, we need a keynote speaker.

Julie Reiter: 17:33

And at that point the marketing company connected him with Chris Laszlo and Chris Laszlo co-author of the Flourishing Enterprise, who really kind of posited this idea of the multiple levels of sustainability engagement, from compliance to full system. So he meets Chris Laszlo and he said you know, I'd really like you to be a keynote speaker at this event we're going to have be the change event. And Chris Laszlo was very arm's length. It was very much like wait a minute, let's not assume anything.

Julie Reiter: 18:09

And chris laszlo reeled him okay, um, to really test him to, to see whether this was the lyle was was he meant it or it was just a happiness event or something like that yeah, that he really understood because, you know, chris is a very principled person around the ideas of sustainability and environmental responsibility, and so he passed that test and Chris ended up being a guest speaker at this first event, really talking about the need for change in the world. And then, through Chris, we were connected to David and to the work that David and Ron Fry were doing at Case Western around this new, this emerging model. Right, they were out of their PhD program, obviously, and and they at the time Case was doing a certificate or not a certificate? An appreciative sustainability program?

Pernille Hippe Brun: 19:02

Yes, and appreciative inquiry was a part of that yes, and it's interesting to me, in this podcast in particular, to explore the role of HR in that system.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 19:14

Right, because what happened here was like an event of colliding events.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 19:20

It sounds like where you had Lyle, on the one hand, the CEO, ceo who had this calling and almost this you know, there's something we need to do better in the world and this I want to leave a better legacy for my children, for the planet, in terms of the company we are running.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 19:38

And then you having your own calling and coming in from the HR side and wanting to support that calling and wanting also to do something better in the world. So there's almost like a headline here of doing a better business. Doing better business, where the Cleveland Clinic and the whole appreciative inquiry movement supports that systemic thinking of how can we then engage the whole organization in a different way to become a more sustainable company, maybe even an abundant company, where we don't use the word sustainability at all, where it's much more about how can we add more than we leave behind, exactly. And so I just think this is a beautiful story and I love the way you connected the dots for us about how it all kind of came together and then you found a priest of inquiry as an organizational methodology, which be different things in different organizations and, at a minimum, HR is a functional set of responsibilities that serve and help to empower the organization at a minimum right.

Julie Reiter: 20:59

And I think the way I've always approached HR and was just, it was just in my nature, and this goes to the whole systems thinking. I always approached my role as I am in service to the business, so certainly the coworkers and to the leaders, but ultimately I help to make the business successful, and so that was always in my mindset. Around HR is everything I do has to go through that lens, which allowed me to develop this whole sense, the sense of the whole of the business, and I think that that is where that's the maybe the next level up from you know HR as a transaction to HR as a you know seat at the table business partner. So I had that already, and then this work really amplified it. Yes, because it wasn't just and I think you referenced this before it wasn't just a feel good. No, it was really trying to figure out what we're beginning to do, and then we'll get into the whole appreciative inquiry. What we're beginning to do has the potential to transform who we are in the market yes, and how we approach the work that we do, how we approach the products we bring to the market, our reputation, our brand, everything, the co-worker experience, everything.

Julie Reiter: 22:27

And so it was very much, from the very beginning, a systems view, which has been thrilling for me, because if I had stayed in any of those prior jobs, I think my role would have been much more structured in terms of this is what you do. We'll let you know if we need you over here. Exactly Because of what I came with in terms of my own, you know, kind of mental mindset, and then the partnership with Lyle, the introduction of this idea of greater purpose. It allowed me to to bring my HR expertise and, in a way, that was also business for the business. So, but I also think that you can design for it. Yeah, in terms of speaking to the HR community about the possibility of um, the influence of your position, creating systemic, positive, systemic change and really leveraging the strengths of the organization, I still think you need you need a visionary leader who is on board with it, cause I think it would be very difficult to do it in an organizational where the leader wasn't aligned to it.

Julie Reiter: 23:52

Anyway, that's a bit of a, maybe a little bit of a bounce.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 23:56

The reason why I think it's very relevant you bring it up is that some people might have the inspirational leader but don't know how to design it. Another person might find him or herself in a position where they don't have the inspiration coming from the CEO, but the willingness is there if you bring it to the table. And then there's, of course, also the option that this will be rejected and that this is not something we have time for right now, or whatever you know, which is complete bullshit, Short-term thinking right, because when I look back at 25 years with the Clarke organization, it has been 25 years of influencing change.

Julie Reiter: 24:40

Yes, um, I mean, that's from day one. It's like okay for a set of priorities that I say need to be done. Let's talk. Why let's you and I talk about this? Let's and, oh yeah, okay, too fast. Okay, all right'll dial it. We'll slow it down a little bit, we'll make sure we'll do this first, and so I think that that's that state of constant change opportunity. Yeah, and I think there's there's, there's all sorts of ways you mix and match this. So it is very.

Julie Reiter: 25:13

When I talk to CEOs who are very interested in this, I will ask the question is there? Do you believe that there's someone in your organization that can partner with you on this to make this happen? Because you can't be in the sausage making, no right you, you, you need to set the, the tone and, to some degree, get out of the way. But you need, but you have to have somebody pick up the ball that you throw. Yes, when I talk to HR leaders who are very interested in it, it's what do you know about your CEO? And let's talk about how you approach your roles and influencer of change. Yes, because it maybe goes without saying. All of this requires a high level of mindfulness. I mean, the idea of appreciative inquiry is not something you can just introduce and you know, okay, and then it's magical and it all happens.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 26:09

You do a summit and you move on.

Julie Reiter: 26:12

No it is an amazing methodology so simple and yet so incredibly complex in terms of all of the things that you need to be mindful of, commit to and stay focused on.

Julie Reiter: 26:31

Yeah and stay focused on. Yeah so the appreciative inquiry all systems summit. You invite your entire system to come together and in our organization for a company it was we decided we would invite all of our co-workers so from all over the world, to come together. And then we said, well, that's, that's just one part of the system, because we live in a system of multiple stakeholders. We have customers and suppliers and members of the business community that we work in and inspirational leaders that we have this shared relationship with. So in 2012, we brought all of our co-workers together, a representative sampling of our customers, our suppliers, our business partners, inspirational leaders and we came together around this common topic which had worked.

Julie Reiter: 27:27

I talked about this cliff that we were heading toward right. We were heading toward right the disconnect between Lyle's engagement of the next generation of coworkers and the disconnect of the higher level leadership and all that. So our 2012 whole system summit, using the appreciative inquiry methodology, was around this focus of accelerating sustainability at Clarke, about breaking through this wall of. We have to change. We have to break through this if we are really going to make this happen, if we're going to move along Chris Laszlo's hierarchy of inventing sustainability in the organization, and that was fascinating. So we follow a 4D process. The first step is discovery, so it's really inviting everyone involved in this event to to be curious about when we are at our best. What does it look like? So tell me a story of your proudest proud, of your high point moment, of when you were you accomplished something that you might not have otherwise been able to accomplish, but you were. It was a high point. What was it? So it's this discovery and then, and then this sharing of. What do we learn from these stories in terms of what are the things around, our collective strengths as an organization, in terms of our capabilities to respond to our customers, to be there on the ground when there's an outbreak of mosquito-borne disease, to be the first to arrive to combat mosquitoes after a hurricane and the flooding that comes from that. So we were doing that work, the discovery process.

Julie Reiter: 29:09

And then you move into dream, this idea of, and so in Chris, or in david cooper writers the way he would approach it, he would say all right, now, imagine you fall into a deep sleep and you sleep for five years. It's the most amazing sleep and you will wake up. And when you awake, when you wake up. All of those strengths have been applied to create your ideal future. What does that look like? And it's this fascinating experience, because you have 180 people in the room all thinking about this. They're, they're all energized because we've we've we've gotten them excited around these, this, this, this point of strength, right, positivity. Um, now they're thinking about this future and they're designing this ideal future. And then, out of those, the dreams that these people are creating for us, we identify themes of opportunities, right, these opportunities around advocacy for the industry, around partnerships, around internal culture. So all of these great ideas.

Julie Reiter: 30:10

And then we move into the third D, which is design, and that's in a very quick, uh, time frame, very, very quick. We do some designing of, so, so some brainstorming around ideas and say, okay, like let's around this opportunity, um, what are some things we could do? We brainstorm, we ask them to pick one or two, they do a rapid prototype At the end of the two and a half day event. Then we begin to figure out now, how do we make this real, how do we make this part of our destiny? So the four Ds can be explained in many different ways, and one of the cool things about appreciative inquiry is it's not trademarked or patented, and so we generally approached it as discover, dream, design and destiny.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 31:03

Yes, all right, and you also just touched upon the fact that it's also design thinking, right In the prototype phase, where you actually prototype and you you follow some of the methodologies from design thinking.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 31:17

So it's also like borrowing from other fields of of you know, building out what on what's what works and what's best already, and then enlarging that and having the whole system engaged around it. And and for those who might not be able to visualize it, it's of course you don't have 160 people sitting there and then brainstorming together all of them at the same time, but you have subgroups, you have, you know, small divisions, but you gather the themes, like you said, and then you sum it up, and it's also always really exciting to see are there any commonalities? And there usually is. You know, I don't think I've ever tried that there aren't any themes that can come out of this, that that can kind of, but it's a magical moment right when you discover how much you yeah, it is, and if I could fill in some of the blanks, because this is where it gets hard for people to conceptualize this.

Julie Reiter: 32:09

Yes, um, you know, but imagine any other team building event you've ever been to within your organizations that you've been involved in. So that's a starting point. And then and then applying this way of doing it walks you through this process. It's playful, it's creative, it's fun, it connects people with people they don't normally work with. So it builds kind of a community of oh, we share this thing, we both think that this is a strength, or we both have this sense of excitement. So there's a lot of, there's so many things happening, happening. One of the things I've learned over the years of facilitating and helping to manage the whole system summits is the work of that. Two and a half days is really just the beginning, exactly, and this is absolutely essential to understand the commitment of this To your point it's magical happens that energy, that excitement, that enthusiasm.

Julie Reiter: 33:18

It's off the charts, right but the real work starts then, but it's but if you're doing rapid design, it is, it is possible that you're going to come up with this brilliant idea that's actually you're going to be able to bring to market or you're going to be able to deploy. But one of the things I've learned is it's as much about an exercise of developing competencies for design thinking, developing a competency for a mindset yes, um, developing a confidence in the fact that it's messy, I'm thinking is messing and it's going to take a while to get it right Developing this confidence that, um, that the creative process is okay, that you don't have to have the perfect answer, that, in fact, your idea may not work Uh, so there's all sorts of stuff going on in there Um, and then at the end of the event and I will share this in terms of just my own experience, so this 2012 event that we got to so I'd never done it before, um, I've been to one um, they're pretty, they're pretty intense in terms of making them happen in any big event is um, and I remember at the end, it was the last day we had done all this work. It was two and a half days and I was exhausted. We were all exhausted. We were also like, totally stoked and Lyle turned to me.

Julie Reiter: 34:42

We're in the back of the room, he's getting ready to wrap up the show and he turns to me and he said now what? Now what, Julie? And I said to him I had no idea. And he looked at me and he was just like he was just aghast. And I said I got to tell you. It's all that I could do to focus on getting us here. And I said but trust me, we're going to figure it out. I said, because the thing that I do know is if there isn't a plan and a structure going forward, all of this stuff was just fun. Yes, a plan and a structure going forward. All of the stuff was just fun. Yes, and perhaps one of the greatest things in my career is that moment of now. What?

Pernille Hippe Brun: 35:25

And allowing it to be okay that I didn't know, and I think what's very beautiful about how you actually highlight a moment of vulnerability and not knowing. You know being out there and now what? I don't know. It's like this fragile moment in your career and life, but that also just gives us hope, because what you were standing on there was the energy, the inspiration, the relationships that you've seen not only you created, but also other people created amongst them at this summit and that you trusted then that you would find a way together and you didn't have to do it alone.

Julie Reiter: 36:12

It sounds like, yeah, you know that's a really important point, which is that, as I said earlier, is that pre-ship inquiry in some ways, is very, very simple right Levels and strengths, dream for the future, design for the future. Okay, pretty simple. To do it, well, you need to make, you need, you need to need to commit to it. You also have and this is what we've just talked about is there's also a willingness to be vulnerable. It is huge, a willingness to say and this is at the leadership level, whether you're the head of HR or the CEO of the organization willingness to say I'm open to letting the organization tell me what I need to know, I'm open to whatever comes you design for it, certainly in terms of we design a thematic, thematic design to it, but, but that's something where I see it work is when, when there's a comfort with being vulnerable and give it and giving up control. Yeah, where I've seen it fail is is when there's a desire for this, but, but an unwillingness, either consciously or unconsciously, to to step into that space of uncertainty and trust the process, um, and the trust that he and I had with each other that I was going to figure it out. So I said just let me go away for a couple of weeks. I need to, I need it's been pretty intense, I need a couple of weeks and I need to. I mean, it's been pretty intense, I need a couple of weeks. And I just started to envision something.

Julie Reiter: 37:58

It's not rocket science, but it was a framework for how we take what we did and now we begin to institutionalize it in terms of embedding it into the organization. So, you know, identifying champions for these opportunity areas and identifying leadership sponsors for these opportunity areas and invite and then setting up for them some assignments that put them back into that process to really work through those great ideas, those great ideas and, um, that's what has just been amazing from um, the full optimization of appreciative inquiry, of embedding it into the organization. And we're not gonna, there's no way I can fully explain that in the time that we have. But the lesson, I think, the lesson learned, which is, I think, what's important, is, when people consider the idea of this, it's, you know, be curious about it.

Julie Reiter: 39:05

Do your research Understand that it is both magical and a commitment? And the most important thing Is that commitment of what happens after, because to really and the most important thing is that commitment of what happens after, exactly Because to really enjoy the full benefit of appreciative inquiry as a way of thinking and embedding it into the organization means that what you did in those two and a half days is really just a great fun event. It's what happens over the next three years, because my experience has been there's about a two and a half to three year shelf life for the momentum. If you design it right, you can get about two and a half to three years of momentum out of that energy that you've activated at this event, and then it reaches a point where it's just like okay, now we need to think about doing it again?

Pernille Hippe Brun: 40:02

Yeah, but this is also something right. Two, three years of momentum after an event right. How many times do you?

Julie Reiter: 40:21

hear about that. But what did you actually then do? What were the structures and how did you embed it into the day-to? Were not executives in the company? We didn't want them to be. And then we said, well, let's set up a cadence of check-in sessions and a commitment to that. And After FIRST Summit we built it all around an existing program of the Sustainability Advisory Board. Over the years and multiple summits it's now kind of evolved into something that I think is pretty special. We call it the Flourishing Leadership Council.

Julie Reiter: 41:06

So when we do an event and we call them Clarke Plus so company name is Clarke, but this is Plus, right, it's really elevating. So when we have a Clarke Plus event, we identify champions and they're nominated and they're invited and recruited and we're looking for people that are really ready for this assignment, that can help help and where this is going to be a great development opportunity for them. So let's say we have nine or ten opportunities coming out of the summit. We have ten or ten champions, or maybe multiple, maybe we have co-champions and then we have ten sponsors at the leadership level. Um, and then we set up a cadence of meetings and the first assignment to them is all right, take all of the material that you have from your original brainstormer and go back and do it bring, invite a committee of people to get together, put out a call for people who are interested in this um, invite them to come back together, resort your brainstorm and identify three to five things that you think have looks that you would like to see the organization pursue. So that's the first step, and so the first meeting is really the output of that, and then the second, and then we say to them all right now, go and do a little bit of research in terms of what's it going to take, is there a financial investment, is there time investment, resource investment, et cetera and build a preliminary project plan for it.

Julie Reiter: 42:41

So it's slow, it's building on, because we would typically do a summit in February, so we had the bulk of the year to get this ready for the next spend cycle, for the next budget season. So we'd have a series of check-in meetings and the last one being a refinement of your plan. So we'd come together, we'd bring this group of people together and it was the leadership team, the sponsors, the champions and other key people in the organization for now the Flourishing Leadership Council, and at these sessions. It's a roundtable, the teams make their presentations, everybody is invited to provide input, so again, it's a version of the whole system. And then we ask them questions, we invite them to give them feedback and ultimately we run them through a process of decision making in terms of pursue, don't pursue.

Julie Reiter: 43:36

And out of these events have come just a myriad of things, from going back to our 2012 event. Coming out of our 2012 event, we established a zero waste committee, all sorts of things. We changed how we approached our customers and our partnerships, and all of that we had a summit in 2023. Out of that summit, we introduced a paid parental leave policy. We were a little late on that, but the but the committee, our flourishing culture committee opportunity helped us help to make the case for why this was important.

Julie Reiter: 44:12

And it was like, without their input, this team of coworkers, without their input, I don't know that we would have gotten there. So we had started years ago of bringing appreciative inquiry into the performance discussion in terms of asking the coworker to do a self-review using the questions Tell me about some high pointpay moments of the year. What did you learn about, maybe challenge? What did you learn about yourself? And then we realized that we were still struggling with the old paradigm and how people were dreading performance reviews and rating systems and things like that, and that is really hard because the CEO still wants to come back to a rating and I'm like all right, we'll do that in a different way, but we're going to use these discussions as continuous dialogue.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 44:57

So that's the name for it.

Julie Reiter: 44:59

Build the competency within the coworker of managing their own career and their own performance, and create richer relationships and richer conversations between leaders and their people.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 45:10

So that's what you call it. That's a methodology for performance reviews.

Julie Reiter: 45:14

Yes, we call them quarterly check-ins and again, this isn't rocket science. So we do. The co-worker writes a journal. We create journals with a set of questions that always leads with your high point moments so what are you most excited about? And then drills down from there and we design them depending upon you. Know things that we might want to emphasize or highlight, but every coworker is having at least an hour with their manager every quarter talking about them.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 45:48

Mm-hmm. It's a very concrete example of how you implemented something very concrete out of, you know, this whole thinking behind appreciative inquiry right, which is just the framework around it, and then you can apply it in all kinds of different settings, like the performance.

Julie Reiter: 46:07

It's just redesign, rethink, because I actually think, through the implementation and the embedding of appreciative inquiry into the organization, it's actually gotten easier. We spend less time focusing on compliance, keeping people in mind, and more time harnessing their capabilities.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 46:26

And so it very much sounds like a bottom-up process where you have high involvement. You have also, I mean, you're listened to, you are able to bring your best self to work and also pitch. You know I want to run with this initiative. I think it's so important. I want to bring my best energy to this initiative, and are there someone who does not like to work under such conditions where it's so involving right? That would rather just have you know this is your daily tasks. Just go do so over the years.

Julie Reiter: 47:06

You know we've gotten pretty good at hiring for fit right and we do walk candidates through that in terms of some of the things you can expect as a coworker here, because there is a certain expectation and it's varying degrees of engagement and we've designed it.

Julie Reiter: 47:27

I mean, there's so many ways people can get involved and we purposely designed this to create opportunities that are across the spectrum of how a person might want to interact or what their comfort level is in terms of I'm comfortable leading, I am comfortable doing research, I'm comfortable helping to make a presentation or provide feedback. Make a presentation or provide feedback but everybody has some expectation of engagement. In fact, over the years, as we've really gone from being that scrappy company to who we are today and I often describe this as we were like black and white right, we were like shades of gray in 2000. And today is incredibly vibrant and dynamic and there's so much energy here and that's what we've created over the course of many, many years. And this commitment to this. Every coworker has a goal, is expected to have one of their annual goals around either a sustainability project or in support of what we call the culture of flourishing. So every single co-worker has an expectation that and it's not heavy-handed.

Julie Reiter: 48:47

You talk about it being bottomed up and I think this is the point of appreciative inquiry. It's, yes, there's a bottoms-up element to it, there's a middle. I mean it's the whole, it's the whole system. So there's still a bit of a top-down, because it's not chaos. Not every great idea, not every idea that comes out of this process is viable. Not every great idea is going to get the support, the investment or it's time for, and so there's still an authority piece to it in terms of somebody weighs in ultimately, and I think that that's something when we first did it, we had to navigate that to understand what that meant and get okay with that.

Julie Reiter: 49:34

Yeah, that I think I think a lot of people when they think about appreciative and they're like, oh, it's a free-for-all. No, it's not a free-for-all, um, but it is a way of tapping in the organization and unleashing the, the true creative energy and passion. And then if you've made that commitment, if you've made a solid commitment to it, of harnessing it. So the appreciative inquiry summit to some degree unleashes it. What you do after harnesses it. I never thought about that before, but that's how I would. That's a very good way of putting it.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 50:07

I think, yeah, it's very, very accurate actually, and I think I'm very curious to hear a little bit more about how you, as HR, supports that system and the whole thing that happens in the harnessing, because you designed your role to support this and it's amazing to hear how your company is now viable and adding and it's on two fronts right, so it's not only the sustainability part and having the higher purpose and really leaving a better legacy, but also in terms of how people feel every day when they go to work.

Julie Reiter: 50:48

Absolutely, absolutely, and that goes back to kind of that calling of it's, it's, it's all of that, um. So from the very beginning, I've I was incredibly fortunate to have um two of the people on my team within the existing HR team who were like this is fun, I want to be involved, I'm all in. And so when we designed our first recommendation about organizational structure, we called it Project Greater Purpose and it was establishing a set of committees and the Sustainability Advisory Board and it was really formalizing this as a structure the three of us myself and two team members ran at least three of the committees. So if we had six committees, we were running half of them. So we were very, very involved. So we were very, very involved, and so HR became really the, the, the foundational leader, leading energy in the organization.

Julie Reiter: 52:05

A lot of people talk about like the pinnacle of HR is having a seat at the table and really having impact. As having a seat at the table and really having impact and absolutely HR, through this process, became something that I think is incredibly valued within the organization and incredibly influential, and we never take that for granted, that we are always trying to think of the next thing to move this forward. No, I mean the team that I have. We couldn't have done this without them. I couldn't have done this without Lyle. Lyle couldn't have done this without me. I couldn't have done this without the commitment of these two team members and then a handful of other people in the organization that are still here, are still committed, are still running.

Julie Reiter: 53:01

These committees are trying to figure out how to and this is what some of the things we're working on today is how to bring that next generation of leaders into that, so that those leaders can get out of the, can step back a little bit, um, but but we still have the, as as one of my team members calls it, but the head of the five families. We still, we're all still here yeah interesting yeah, yeah.

Julie Reiter: 53:25

So hr has become, become has a seat at the table, is making a difference and I think, can be credited with having influenced and helped to shape the culture of this incredible organization and helped to keep the spirit of appreciative, inquiry and strengths-based leadership alive in the organization.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 53:54

Isn't this just the most beautiful ending? I think so, Julie. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been a true pleasure.

Julie Reiter: 54:04

As for me as well, and I appreciate the opportunity to connect. Thank you, Julie. Thank you.

Pernille Hippe Brun: 54:11

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