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Welcome to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast, where we bring you the latest insights and practical tools for enhancing soft skills training within your organization. This podcast is brought to you by HRDQU.com, and I’m your host, Sarah, Learning Events Manager at HRDQ-U. And today have Jeff Heil, CEO at Breakthrough Learning, joining me to dive into the world of team learning methodologies as we discuss the webinar that he recently presented over at HRDQ-U,

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The New Leader: Moving Beyond Silos to Optimize Performance. Thanks so much for joining me today, Jeff. Thanks, Sarah. It’s great to be here.

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So Jeff, this is your first time on our podcast here for folks who are not familiar with yourself. Can you share a little bit about your background, what you do, how you got to where you’re at today? Yeah, sure. So, uh, I’m CEO here at Breakthrough Learning, and we’re a small company based in Portland, Oregon. We develop innovative methods and tools for team learning. And, our flagship product is a team learning simulation game called Friday Night at the ER.

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And we developed it actually more than 30 years ago. This is a product that has not only stood the test of time, but it’s actually more relevant now than ever, uh, in at least a couple of different ways. so Beth Gardner, uh, Breakthrough Learning’s founder and the creator of Friday Night at the ER was really ahead of her time when she came up with it and first launched it back in 1992. Um,

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I took over the company about 10 years ago to help modernize this product and to help grow the business. My formal educational background is in product design and psychology. Although I like to say I have real world degrees in two other subjects, business as a small business owner and in systems thinking, which is what Friday Night at the ER teaches at its core. And this is a field and a practice that I’m continuously

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fascinated by and that I think is just absolutely essential these days more than ever for people, leaders in particular, to grasp and to be able to apply in their work. And so it’s a primary focus of what we do.

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Absolutely. Thanks for sharing that and a little bit more about yourself there. And this question here, I love to ask all of my guests that join me is what changes do you see happening in the L &D space right now? Yeah, so we’re seeing a few trends, I’d say, that stand out and that are relevant to the work that we do. The first one I think everybody is aware of is the need for training and learning and development more broadly.

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to be virtual. As we all know, virtual was in high demand during the pandemic, and it seems to be here to stay as people have made the switch to it. And it’s hard to undo that, especially for the bigger efforts that have a lot of infrastructure now built around the delivery of virtual learning and development. And of course, many people are now permanently remote. In most organizations, there is at least

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Certain teams or functions that are now remote for the longterm and in some cases, entire organizations have made the shift. So, um, you know, no surprise virtual is, is a trend. Um, but I think at the same time we’ve noticed a bit of a pendulum swing there. People also seem to be craving opportunities to work and connect face to face. And I think that’s response to the influx in virtual. all.

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Know the term zoom fatigue now that’s a common term that we all know. It’s certainly true with your average work meeting, but I think it’s even more of an issue when it comes to training or any educational or professional development activity, especially when the topic is something like teamwork or collaboration. When you’re asking people to come together, metaphorically speaking, it seems to be much more effective and appropriate and enjoyable.

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If people are literally coming together in person for that. So, uh, at least from my perspective, although I think most people would agree, we need to offer both. And in cases where the learning is happening virtual, we need to do everything we can to make those experiences really special, where people are really engaged and immersed so that they can feel connected with the people that they’re.

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sharing this online experience with, which is challenging and a new frontier for people um in L &D. And you had mentioned during the webinar that to cater to this virtual space that we’re in, that you’re developing a virtual version of the Friday Night at the ER product. Is that correct? Yeah, that’s right. em We first launched a version of that using Mural, which

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Probably many of your listeners will be familiar with or Miro or Miro is another one that’s this on online whiteboarding space that’s real time and collaborative. we, we tried in the pandemic to quickly adapt, um, and launch a version of our product, which people were asking for that was virtual using mural. And we had a successful launch with that. It worked as a really good proof of concept that, Hey, if we go develop our own software,

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Um, we can make this same simulation game, the same learning experience that’s been effective for 32 years now, um, an effective learning experience online. And so we’ve, um, been working, um, around the clock for, I think it’s been six or seven months now, and we’re about to launch, um, our own software that we’ve built from scratch that will enable people to play Friday Night at the ER, this team learning.

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experience in virtual environments anywhere in the world. Wow, that’s really exciting. so what other things are exciting things or is breakthrough learning up to next? Yeah, so that’s a big one for our little firm to be focused on. We also, at the same time of starting to develop this digital version of our product, we’re continuing to get, as we sometimes do, inquiries from customers who

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Want their own version of Friday Night at the ER. So what’s happening in this Friday Night at the ER game is, um, you’re managing a hospital. That’s the scenario, but you don’t need to have a healthcare experience or background. It’s really not about how to manage a hospital. It’s about how to work effectively across boundaries when there’s a quote crisis, whatever that is, everybody has their Friday Night at the ER.

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And people tend to default to their immediate teams as opposed to thinking about the larger system in which they work. that creates all kinds of problems. So anyway, Friday Night at the ER works as an example that people can play, take an active role in seeing that issue play out and in the simulation environment, learn what didn’t work and what they could do differently to improve their performance. So, we get inquiries.

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requests from our customers, even though this is generic and universal for their own version of Friday Night at the ER. Um, and we’ve always politely declined those requests because we’re a small company and, we really believe these things are generic and universal. Um, however, with the development of this software product, um, we now have resources as a company in development.

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And we’ve gone ahead and accepted um a couple of those requests now. And so we’re starting to build custom versions of Friday Night at the ER for clients. These are big efforts that are really stripping away what’s happening in this Friday Night at the ER simulation game, stripping away that hospital scenario and putting in place of it the scenario that is relevant to the client. What are the challenges?

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What is the crisis? If you want to think of it that way that they deal with in which they need to do more than just their ordinary collaboration and the work they do in their silos, they need to have extraordinary collaboration. need to reach across boundaries to be successful. And that’s been a fun new development here to get back into designing uh simulation.

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learning tools that are really unique to our clients issues. Yeah. It sounds like you have some really exciting projects in your pipeline for the 2024 year. Yeah, eh absolutely. So we recently did the webinar together on the new leader moving beyond silos to optimize performance. Can you share what the key takeaways were for our registrants at that event for anybody who didn’t get the chance to listen to that episode yet, that recording? Yeah, sure. So this was about

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The need for a new leadership approach. Um, one that involves systems thinking this practice I’m talking about. And, um, I covered, uh, what systems thinking is and the benefits of it and, and left people with some actionable strategies to apply systems thinking in any organization. Um, and if you’d like, I explain systems thinking for

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your listeners who may not know about it. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. So, um, I’ll try to keep this brief. So, um, systems thinking is a holistic approach to problem solving and learning that views problems as parts of an overall system rather than dealing with them in isolation. Um, and one easy way we can all relate to this, uh, which is what I described at length also in the webinar.

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Is when we’re thinking about organizations is the issue of silos. We all intuitively know that working in silos causes problems. And people tend to frame silos as a communication issue, but really it’s bigger than that. And when we go to work on communication in a cross-functional group to try to remove silos as barriers, we might not be so effective at.

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breaking down those silos because we’re really only addressing a symptom of the problem rather than the root of it. And so the issue of working in silos is a failure in recognizing that the work we do independently within distinct functions of a business, for example, that work is in fact interdependent. And when we lose sight of that, in particular in large organizations or in dealing with

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societal or environmental issues involving many different organizations, perhaps, and other stakeholders. We do things that benefit our share of the problem without realizing all the ripple effects and sometimes negative consequences that happen elsewhere in the quote system. So it’s the problem of missing the forest for the trees that systems thinking is helping us address. And I think a big reason for this um

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actually going back to your question of trends for this becoming more popular in learning and development and organizational development is that the world has become more developed and connected in lots of different ways, which means it’s more complex than ever before. And it’s only natural for people to break complex things into parts to try to manage them. We have.

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more specialists and subdivisions in our organizations, each managed separately, each with their own knowledge, each with their own set of tools and ways of communicating. And all of this is very silo producing. It’s only natural for us to want to focus on just our part, not realizing all the ripple effects and consequences that are happening on the bigger thing that we’re a part of. So uh in the webinar, I

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talked about this as an issue and introduce systems thinking as a solution. And uh it’s, uh there are three core strategies that I talked about that we distill from key principles of this discipline of systems thinking that are very practical and relatable and conceptually understood by people.

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Um, that helped them put systems thinking into practice and those are collaboration, innovation, and data-driven decision-making. And we teach through Friday Night at the ER and, and other, um, methods that applying these three core strategies and you have to do them all together, um, will optimize the performance of any system because you are essentially applying this discipline of systems thinking.

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And so silos sounds like a big one, but are there other signs that an organization needs leaders who can apply systems thinking in their organization? Yeah, silos does kind of jump to mind. But really, it’s any issue. Well, there are many issues that we would call indicators of systemic problems.

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Um, things like conflicting goals between units, um, or people being interrupted in their workflow or experiencing backlogs, or if there’s an organization that’s routinely missing deadlines, or there seems to be a resistance to change in the culture. Um, all of these things, uh, are symptoms of a larger problem that is tending to be systemic. And a good question.

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to ask is, are we as an organization, uh, experiencing persistent problems that are affecting organization wide performance and that aren’t going away, that we’re not able to solve despite our best intentions. And if the answer to that question is yes, then you’re probably dealing with a systems problem or a systemic problem that requires not just responding to those symptoms.

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like missed deadlines or resistance to change, but getting at what’s happening underneath it all, what we call structure. What are the elements of structure, the underlying framework? This is policies, procedures, and organizations’ cultural norms that may be causing uh these systemic problems to emerge. And what about the leadership level?

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Which leadership levels is something system thinking best form? Is that the middle managers, C-suite, you where does that fall? Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s important. I think that leaders up and down the organization are doing this all together. um We say often that there needs to be a critical mass. First of all, there needs to be enough people in an organization that are trying to do these things that are aligned in these.

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efforts to be more collaborative, innovative and data driven. For example, if you want to distill it down as we often do to those three things. um So it’s not enough to just have your C-suite doing this or to just have your frontline or middle managers trying to do this. um You need that critical mass. the other thing you need is a diverse set of stakeholders that are involved in the process. So

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to uh end a Friday Night at the ER learning program, we often do something that’s called a force field analysis. And that’s how we start to expose these elements of structure that may be getting in the way of people being collaborative, innovative and data driven. So what are those things? What’s that framework? How do we start defining the different pieces of the framework that are causing these systemic problems in organizations and

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a really great exercise and I mentioned this and described it during the webinar is this thing called a force field analysis, which some of your listeners may already be familiar with. it, way it works is you, you put your desired behavior at the top of a T chart. So let’s say collaboration is a desired behavior in an organization and you list out the things that are driving it and the things that are barriers, the things that are inhibiting.

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that behavior. And what we find when we run this exercise with different levels of leaders within an organization is the things that people identify as drivers and barriers to collaboration, for example, are really different from one group of people to the next. They’re talking about the same organization, but the things that people that are identifying people at the C-suite level are identifying

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Might be entirely different than what people at other levels are noting as elements of structure that are causing, um, that are either driving or, or inhibiting. So the point is you need a diverse group of people. need not just a critical mass involved, but a critical mass across different levels of leadership and, uh, uh, different functional areas of the organization. So that what you’re getting is a more complete picture of what’s going on.

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And you’re getting a broader, more complete data set, qualitative data set to respond to when you start to try to take action, um, to improve in these areas. So, um, long answer short, uh, it’s really for everybody and really requires people at different levels in organizations, which is why this is a difficult thing to pull off. It’s hard to get a culture, um, to.

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really embrace this em way of looking at things and to be committed em and willing to experiment and learn from the application of a more systemic view of the organization. And what about when this is applied to real life situations? What changes do you see when leaders start applying systems thinking in their actual jobs?

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Yeah. So you see this, uh, lots of different effects, um, of systems thinkers, um, in organizations. I think the first thing we notice and what’s great about a simulation game like Friday Night at the ER is you actually get to observe these things in this simulation environment. Um, and then you hear about it also. Occurring in their actual organizations, but you first, while you have them in a room, start to see these changes play out.

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Um, they’ll, they’ll stop blaming each other is a big one. Um, so, you know, we find that it’s not that people don’t want to do these things. Uh, it’s not that people are trying to sabotage each other when they’re working in silos with competing ideas of what needs to get done. Um, it’s really the, this idea of structure that we need to be focused on. And when people recognize that it’s.

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these elements of structure that are causing the behaviors in organizations, it gives us a new thing to blame. It gives us a new thing to focus on that aren’t the people in the organization. It isn’t their decisions. That’s the problem. It’s what is causing their decisions. So that’s why it can just be so powerful to introduce people to systems thinking, teach them about structure. And you immediately have a culture that is, um, more understanding.

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of one another, more curious about each other, more empathetic about each other’s issues. And starting to recognize the need for understanding each other’s work and sharing the responsibility for each other’s problems. Because again, you’re having this holistic perspective, you’re seeing that everything we do is actually connected in ways we often

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don’t appreciate. I think a big one is they move away from blame. And, really, ultimately, they just become better problem solvers. um Especially, you know, when we’re talking about these kinds of problems, systemic problems, we struggle to deal with problems, when we break them up into small parts, which is only natural to do. But if we can

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have a dual focus on our part of the problem, but also seeing the larger context in which it’s playing out, we can be much more effective in dealing with the kinds of issues that are persistent and challenging to uh solve in organizations. And you did touch on this a little bit in the beginning of our conversation, but could you talk a bit more about how relatable is a Friday Night at the ER to non-health care organizations?

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Yeah, it’s this scenario that people are experiencing in this game uh is just a metaphor for any organization. uh I think we can all relate to this idea that we all know that organizations are bigger than any one department or function. uh And people in leadership positions uh

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high level leadership positions are often pushing people to see it that way. See us as one whole organization, not the part that you’re in. And we do share a common mission to see our organizations succeed. We all want that in our positions, whatever they may be. And yet when the pressure is on, like it is in Friday Night at the ER, when you have a shortage of resources, when you have limited time,

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Um, when you’re dealing with delays and backlogs and you’re depending on other people to get your work done and you feel like your own performance really matters, um, all those things that mirror reality. Um, what people do in the game is they default to their immediate teams and the organization underperforms. And that’s something that I think people in any organization, healthcare or outside of that.

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industry, um, relate to pretty readily. Um, and it’s why Friday Night at the ER works for non-health care organizations. fact, people, you can imagine people who work in hospitals will sometimes sit down to play Friday Night at the ER and they’ll struggle a little bit with the lessons that we’re teaching because they take the game. So literally it can be an advantage to actually not be in healthcare, say a manufacturing company or a technology company.

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to get to play this simulation of managing a busy hospital. And those high-level lessons that we’re teaching will just be much more salient, and you won’t be so distracted by how the details of this experience aren’t matching your exact reality that you’re all too familiar with in your actual work. So it’s something that we are always careful with when we’re working with a healthcare group is to encourage them to

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not take the game so literally and to really see these higher level lessons that I’ve been talking about. Well, thanks for sharing that. And before we sign off today from our conversation, where can listeners go to learn more about your work and connect with you? Yeah, sure. So the best place to go is fridaynightattheer.com. So that’s our flagship product.

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We have a blog there. have research articles there. We have all the information you need to know about Friday Night at the ER videos, um webinar opportunities. um And um you can connect with us through YouTube and LinkedIn and Twitter. All those social links are there on the website. So I would, I would direct people to fridaynightattheer.com. And if they want to learn about our company a little bit more and some of the other things that we do, uh

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I would suggest blearning.com is our company website. So blearning, as in BreakthroughLearning.com. Great. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Jeff. Great. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me. And we hope you enjoy listening to the HRDQ-U In Review podcast available on all major streaming platforms. If you did enjoy today’s episode, make sure to give us a follow and leave us a five-star review. Thank you all for tuning in to this week’s episode of the HRDQ-U In Review podcast brought to you by HRDQU.com.