Summary

In this episode, Christine Pizzo discusses the family table model and its impact on management, engagement, and performance. She shares her experience at DesignIt and how the company has grown rapidly by leveraging its ability to provide innovative design solutions across various platforms. Christine emphasizes the importance of valuing and empowering team members, and she introduces the concept of the family table model, where everyone has the opportunity to contribute and be involved in decision-making. She also highlights the significance of strategic delegation and matching individuals' passions and skills to maximize their potential.

Key Takeaways

• The family table model allows everyone to have a seat at the table and be involved in decision-making.
• Strategic delegation empowers individuals and allows them to excel in areas they are passionate about.
• Building a strong leadership bench is crucial for scaling the organization and developing future leaders.

Timestamp

00:00:00 Introduction to Christine Pizzo and Design It

00:01:00 Reflections on the rapid growth of Design It

00:04:00 The game-changing realization of valuing people as the best tool

00:06:00 The family table model and giving everyone a seat

00:08:00 Avoiding decision paralysis and involving everyone's input

00:10:00 Balancing focus and prioritization of initiatives

00:13:00 Juggling bespoke engagement models for each initiative

00:15:00 Putting people in situations they may not realize they're ready for

00:17:00 Creating a leadership framework: graveyard workshop, matching passions and skills, building a leadership bench

00:20:00 Focusing on highly engaged and motivated team members

00:21:00 Importance of addressing emotional baggage and prioritizing initiatives

00:22:00 Growing leaders internally and considering external perspectives

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[HR Impact] Christine x CT

And she's on the business side, is a leader who cares deeply about her team and engagements. Welcome to the show, Christine.

Christine Pizzo: Thank you. It's really exciting to be here. My previous podcast experience was talking about motorcycles on a chopper podcast as I ride so nice to do something a bit more official this time

Christine Pizzo: So my background sits primarily within digital product creation. So I've been at quite a few startups and then one of the largest companies in the world, right? Building and designing highly custom user centric. Experiences that span multiple platforms. So whether that is native mobile apps responsive web design Alexa experiences, watch experiences, right?

So any kind of digital touch point, and then thinking about the full ecosystem around that as well. So what's really captivating of now being in design it for me is that we have the ability to end so we can. Look at a campaign to launch that digital experience and then do the analytics behind it and continue to iterate.

One of the newer arms that is scaling up rapidly because we have quite a few clients that we're able to prove our capabilities end over end. So I think what's been really interesting

CheeTung Leong: That was very exciting story of growth. Could you share a little bit more about your, the profile of clients that you work with, particularly in the Americas?

Christine Pizzo: Any client you can think of that sits within either fortune 500 or even small startups.

Like Deloitte, Accenture, others. And then we can also be really nimble and flexible to sit against some of the more boutique agencies or advertising agency space as well, because we have the ability to do again, design and All the way through the creative process. That flexibility has been really fascinating because our client profile then really changes because we can be really lean with our teams.

And then we can also do very expansive, high touch experiences because we can land a full team and even use our global talent to fill out, say, for example, we just, we're going to be working on a Brazil based banking company. And so we're making sure a lot of our designers are bilingual, right?

And we have such a high diversity within DesignIt that is really amazing to make sure we're putting the right talent for the right scenarios that we get out amazing quality .

You, you really need to almost be like a leadership ninja to be able to... to drive your teams to perform well in all like literally all sorts of different situations client situations creative situations, business situations. What For you, what was that game changing realization or discovery that really helped you to craft skill of building high performing teams?

Where it's not. Anonymizing people. It's actually bringing them to the forefront and making people, the thing we care about the most, because when you have amazing, high quality talent, that's how you get out the work. And so I think finding and retaining that talent is probably the hardest thing for every single manager.

For me specifically, I talk about this family table model, as you mentioned, which it's interesting because that term is super controversial right now. And that your work is not your family. The company does or doesn't really care about you, right? It's all over all the social media. And I resonate with a lot of that, but I think the model I like to portray is taking the concept of what it means to sit down at a table with folks that you find are equal and interesting and different to you, but they all have the ability to be a part of what we're doing.

So it's really a. Highly focused advocacy model. And I'm pretty strict about it. For example, if we are making our strategic decisions for the year, like what strategies we want to work on, what are our goals or KPIs, et cetera. I could go in a box and maybe even with a few leaders come up with what those should be.

But the last couple of years I've made sure across every discipline we have that we actually go through all of that and more of a design thinking type model, which, so maybe there's my backgrounds coming in, but we'll do workshops and we'll talk about what's going on in the industry, what's happening in our business,

and what do we want to focus on as a team? The top things we want to tackle. And obviously there's a hundred things as usual.

CheeTung Leong: It sounds like the core of that family table model is that everyone has the opportunity to pull up a seat. And it's not that. Everyone's in this Kumbaya environment in the company, but I really like how you phrased it. You have the opportunity to pull up a seat and contribute.

You're not just there for the ride. You're there to give your voice. You're there to help to steer the direction. If you're 60, that, that requires a very different process. For compared to when you're a team of 400,

Christine Pizzo: There's multiple different frameworks, right? I think the first thing you have to do is decide which aspects of what you're working on should you bring everyone together, right? The strategies is a really great example, but then when you're going after, say, maybe career architecture, And looking at how are we restructuring titles and doing a reorg, which was the first thing I did within two weeks of coming on at design it, that needs to be a much smaller team and you have to then pull in those other leaders and those SMEs and you are still.

allowing others the opportunity to weigh in, right? But you are making sure that it's the moments that matter in terms of what audience you have and who you're yanking into the fold. And I think, we've also tried to employ a few other frameworks that make sure that the feedback is there even if they can't actually be involved in the decisions to get to maybe what they're providing feedback on.

And. Being able to weigh in and act as a board for the company, even if you might not yet have a position of authority and that makes sure that the leaders are in check and we get a lot more diverse perspectives. We're pulling in say maybe the tech innovations that some younger generations are so comfortable with comparatively.

All of these frameworks, I think, are really fascinating, and you have to be really specific and careful of, like you're saying, opening up that gate and making it too much of a, everyone has a decision or nothing gets done because the decisions are taking too long.

It's very similar to design thinking with clients or innovation work with clients.

CheeTung Leong: Do you have some kind of, I'm

Christine Pizzo: I've just tested so many different aspects.

Wants to hear from the user, wants to hear from stakeholders, wants to hear the client's business values revenue needs for whatever we're working on, and it's taking all of those points and then able to filter them, to rebucket them, to. I've taken that same model and leadership and I tend to be pretty nimble and like fast with, okay, let's spin up this new initiative and see if this will work and test that, but be willing to crush it later if it's not operating well.

The one thing to be cautious of and very similar to the family table model, even as you have to be mindful of how many initiatives, right? You really have to keep a tight focus and a prioritization. And if we tackle enough things, then we'll tackle more. But it can't be all the things at once. I had a designer once that had it.

You really need to dig in if you want to make true impact. And I've. Yeah. Try to do that same model with myself, even in terms of what, how I get involved and what I get involved in. I can talk a lot about how I've been really strategic with what plus ones I even take on myself as a leader and how that defines the impact I have in the scale, because I think as a leader, the number one thing we struggle with is context, switching constantly.

Work within that, and I think be really capable in terms of context switching that actually nets out actions.

CheeTung Leong: You sound like one of a very rare breed of leaders who can, on one hand, tackle and manage all of that context switching that comes with being a senior executive, but at the same time have the bandwidth.

To, to invite others to, to impact you. And if I'm hearing you correctly, it's almost as if every engagement or team engagement model is pretty bespoke to the situation and you iterate along the way which. It's great because it's so unique and catered to that situation, but at the same time, that's a lot of cognitive load that you as a leader have to bear with every single initiative.

And I'm almost imagining that you've got to design a new engagement model for every single major initiative.

Christine Pizzo: I do not have Beyonce or the rocks hours. They like, I don't know, some magical sense of time. I do have a lot of models and I, it's funny, I wouldn't even call them that officially, but it's just how I operate and assess the situation and like who I yank in for different things.

But I have a few that, are tried and true through the years that have worked really well and I'll pull it, to a new company, design it. But there is this bit within there that I've talked a lot about over the last few years around strategic delegation. And I know I keep using the word strategy a lot, but that is how I think of my role is every single bit of it is a puzzle to figure out.

But this concept of delegation is obviously like 1 of the top leadership skills you need to learn, but I think there's a way you can do it. To just another degree that it again and empowers people and allows more to be involved. I've been known for saying a lot that I put people in situations that they might not even realize they're ready for.

Is hitting at their specific skills, not just their role, not just their level. Not just what they have been doing, but what they are intrinsically passionate about and capable of doing, because what that does and I'm a seven on the Enogram scale, which means I very much to see the big picture to set it up, to innovate, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, that's where I struggle to stay present.

And I'm unbelievably passionate about it, but I had a designer on my team who really, she wanted to step in a strategy, hadn't really found that space to do so yet. And I was like, why don't you just put together the initial thoughts of what we could do for this process? And she ended up overhauling it to a degree that I still think is one of the best representations I've ever seen of creating a full suite of supportive tools for an interview process.

So cheat sheets. By level even talking about what is our philosophy of design so that we can use that information in our interviews. And I've ended up using that deck about 100 other times with clients as well, because you just created such a depth of richness within the work that. I don't think I would have had the time to focus on as a leader because I have other things that I'm accountable to

I don't think about just the box. I'm maybe supposed to play in. And so I have to keep my own bandwidth very protective, like you said and I keep myself focused, but that delegation, I think, is the biggest piece of how I can get a lot done. And again, it's that empowerment piece, and hopefully that's the advocacy that folks then are able to want to connect with the company and the retention increases, when you allow them to be a part of the solution.

How would you break everything down that you've said into some kind of... Like almost leadership framework, like if you were advising another C suite leader or a head of people here's how you can implement this family table model. Here's how you can become that much more inclusive. In the kind of decisions that you're taking organizationally, is there a framework or something simple that you want to communicate to the listeners ?

Christine Pizzo: I had an amazing executive coach a couple of years back, and we worked through this kind of leadership manifesto in a sense for myself. And I first had to define how do I operate best and what do I believe in as a leader?

If everyone is getting stagnant and if you're hearing a lot of feedback around. We used to do X, Y, and Z. So I Graveyard has put up every single initiative, every single thing everyone cares about up on the board, whether it's sticky notes, what have you. And then you really either put some to rest that no longer need to be worked on or are no longer relevant.

And then you collectively prioritize which ones we're going to resurrect or which ones we're going to renew and create something new. So what this ends up doing is again, everyone understands why we're going to not focus on the thing anymore. And you can start to pull people out of the past and look forward to the future.

You can even have them raise their hand by themes. So these types of things I want to work on or raise their hand specific to that actual defined initiative. And then what you have to pay attention to next as a leader is There are many people who are very passionate and they don't know that maybe that isn't actually where they are the strongest.

And so their performance doesn't always match or the opposite, right? They far exceed coming in as a leader when they might be more of an early career individual and not in a leadership position and they just naturally took it on. And then those are the people that. You do that strategic delegation with next, like those are the ones that will supercharge the rest of your team and pull everyone with you.

The amount of things you can do is exponential, which is really the exciting part when you see that work.

CheeTung Leong: I'm going to boil that down to three key steps. It sounds like one, I really liked the idea of a graveyard workshop. I'm going to. Go dig it up and, pun not intended, and put it in in the show notes. I think there's got to be some some way or methodology to be able to conduct this.

directly and at the same time put them put some to rest and at the same time take forward what needs to be taken forward the second piece that you mentioned was around Matching passions and skills or competencies. So there are some cases where people just need a reality check you maybe you're super passionate about some part of design, but actually you're not that great at it.

Or the other way, right? You might be super good at something, but you just don't know that you're good at it. And that's where strategic dedication comes in. And then the third piece that I was hearing from you was really building a really solid leadership bench, because at some point you can't scale your own leadership.

And the only way to do that is to build other great leaders around you, which actually means that you start developing these leaders yourself. When your team is still smaller, and then as our team scales, these guys can then help you with their leadership as well with the new people that are

coming in.

So I always make sure to keep an eye on that, but I think this model has very much seen to grow leaders and discover who they are, because that's something not everyone knows if they want to manage until you get in it and. For me, it's not always just the people aspect of the managing. It is so much of that puzzling, solving it, figuring it out, that testing and the iteration, like that is where controlled chaos is maybe a good way to say it, that I think is where I shine and maybe it's from working in the restaurant business and so forth when I was younger, but yeah.

CheeTung Leong: I

Christine Pizzo: yeah, if you type my name in, hopefully you'll find it pretty simply. I'm on all the social media and most of them are open. So if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram as well, like those all get almost instantly.

But, I teach on the side. I also have a lot of lifestyles or hobbies, right? That I'm passionate about. And so please feel free to contact me about anything. And I really love to mentor or can connect you with someone as well within your lane of skill sets.

CheeTung Leong: Thank you so much for hanging out with us today christine and for those who are listening Hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure you drop us a review and tune in next time on the hr impact show Where we'll have another great leader sharing with us the best practices in building an elite team.