eCornell has joined forces with our longstanding enterprise partners at AT&T to explore together what truly drives team performance.
We’re joined by AT&T’s Katie Keser, Assistant Vice President, Technology, with Unified Front Door who, among other things, will bring insights on leadership and emotional intelligence from her perspective at AT&T.
And on the Cornell side, we’ve got Professor of Management Robert Bloomfield from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, who, as a longtime friend and Keynote guest, has always offered unique perspectives on organizational systems and accountability.
We’re going to examine both the human and structural elements that make teams successful, and our guests will likely challenge some common assumptions you may have about how teams actually work.
This transcript was generated by AI and has not yet been edited by a human for clarity
Transform Your Team: A Leader's Guide to Peak Performance
Chris Wofford: [00:00:00] On today's episode of Cornell Keynotes, eCornell partners with AT&T to explore what really drives team performance. Our guests are AT&T's, Katie Keser, who is an assistant Vice President of technology, and on the Cornell side we have Professor Robert Bloomfield. The two examine the essential elements of building and supporting successful teams.
This is very much a practical podcast for those of you who are aspire to do so. What's great about this discussion is that our experts take the opportunity to challenge common assumptions about teamwork. With Katie, sharing her insights on emotional intelligence and real customer-centric leadership at AT&T while Professor Bloomfield explores.
Big picture organizational systems, and also he delves into a signature specialty accountability. Together they reveal how a well considered and motivated team can actually deliver on results, and just as importantly, be satisfied and happy in their work. You'll learn the difference between true collaborative teams and [00:01:00] interdepartmental coordination, which is not the same.
You'll discover how accountability systems actually work, and you'll gain practical insight into team formation and dynamics at play in the workplace. So be sure to check out the episode notes for links to Professor Bloomfield's, management 360 and Executive Leadership certificate programs from eCornell.
And now here's our discussion with Katie Keser and Robert Bloomfield.
All right. Today we're going to examine both the human and structural elements that make teams successful and our guests will likely, ideally challenge some common assumptions you may have about how teams actually work.
I'd like to get right into it , Katie, do you have like a broad philosophical or sort of an overarching, practical way that you think about teamwork at AT&T?
How do you do things over there?
Katie Keser: Gosh, teamwork is so important. In fact, there's not anything that I do in my day that is not with my team or thinking about my team or for my team, it is truly the core of what we [00:02:00] do, uh, on the inside. And I would say on the outside the core of what we do is for our customers.
And so, um, we truly believe that if we are doing the right thing by our customers, we are doing the right thing for our team members, then we're doing the right thing. And that's. That's really just our core belief period.
Chris Wofford: You know, that's, been my experience, uh, , speaking to all of our friends at AT&T is the customer centricity.
, there's no overstating it, right? It's the thing. Robert Bloomfield, , how do you think about teamwork?
Robert Bloomfield: Well, let me start by saying, Chris, you said we were gonna challenge some assumptions and I'm guessing there are a bunch of people here wondering why they're hearing from an accountant about teams. And so, so I want to just start by challenging your assumptions. Not so much about teams, but about accounting. , because you might think it's all about numbers, but really the reason accountants care about numbers is because they are part of. What we use the the toolkit we have to make people [00:03:00] willing and able to live up to their obligations.
That's really what accounting is about. And so when it comes to teams, the way we need to think about this is how do we make the team as a whole willing and able to live up to their team level obligations? And then you turn inside and you say, how does the team make every individual. Willing and able to do their part, uh, within the team.
And, you know, Chris, you mentioned earlier, accountability and yes, that's a huge focus of mine. I. But accounting adds ability to accountability. Accountability is really about making people willing to do their jobs. but we really need to give them the assets they need, the resources they need, so they're able to do their jobs.
And, and both of those, uh, teams just pose, uh, unique challenges.
Chris Wofford: Speaking of accountability we need some audience input on this. Yes, we have our questions and our prompts and [00:04:00] our, responses here among our, uh, this team that we have for this keynote.
But actually the audience is a big part of this. Let's ask the audience, because we can fairly assume that we have a lot of people here who work in teams. So we're gonna do a quick poll. Here's the question. Here's the prompt. Is your team's performance driven primarily by the people that are in it and their particular talents or their expertise?
Or is the performance driven by the situation or the systems that those people are put in? So I'm gonna let that populate for just a moment. Any thoughts on this one? , I'll just leave it open without steering our audience. Into one response or another.
, how do we talk about these kind of two dynamics? 'cause this is kind of a fresh one, and I think it's a, cool perspective to kind of think about life isn't binary quite like we've done it right here, but, I don't know. Any thoughts on the question itself? You guys?
Robert Bloomfield: Um, well, I'll start with this because I mean, we are a team, Chris, and, Katie and I, are a team, and we got together to talk about this.
, and one of the things I found really interesting [00:05:00] is , the difference in perspectives between Katie, and me because. I'm really focused on that situation. As an accountant, I'm not going to be able to get in there and give someone the personal training they need to make them a better team member, but I can make sure that the team is put in the right situation, uh, that they know what they have to do, that they're being held accountable in a reasonable way.
They have the resources they need and all that. But Katie, I, you know, I'll kick it over to you. Uh, you're, you're more focused on the people.
Katie Keser: Yeah, it's definitely a bit of both, Rob. I'm very fortunate. AT&T they give us a lot of opportunity to support our own individual growth as well as our leadership growth.
, most recently we've been really focused on the emotional, uh, intelligence aspect of it, right? And what that, brings to the table. Strategic leadership, how to be an effective communicator. All of these things are really important as. Team [00:06:00] members, but it's also important to have these skill sets as individuals.
, I kind of lend it to business acumen, core business acumen. Can you understand the, root of what you're trying to solve for and how do you bring that insight to a team to then determine how you move forward? , and I truly think, again, kind of going back to my customer obsession, I think that at the end of the day, if we're thinking about what's important for the customer and then everybody's consensus from a team is driving to that outcome.
Then we're all going to be working for that same goal. And I do think that's a really important part of teamwork.
Chris Wofford: Okay, good. We're gonna look at these, results. , in short, , people have won out in this case, right? You could see this. , we don't have exact percentages, but we're like, you know, 20, 20% more of our audience think that it's primarily driven by the people, their talents, their expertise, what they bring to the table, versus the situational, systemic, side of things.
Anything further to say about this one from either of you two? I'm gonna leave it open. Rob, did you cover the attribution, component?
Robert Bloomfield: Yeah. I, I, so I wanna say those [00:07:00] results don't surprise me at all. and as Katie said, you know, both of these, right? You need, both to make the team work.
but I do just want to put a caution out there for those of you who are really focusing on the people, uh, there's. A very, uh, robust result in, uh, psychology called the fundamental attribution error. So attribution is about causality. You know, who, who gets credit and who gets blame, or what gets credit and what gets blamed.
And there's a really strong tendency for people, uh, especially when they're looking at someone they don't know that well, they're much more likely to say the person. succeeded or failed because of who the person is, because of their character, because they're smart or not, or, you know, , well-trained or not, or whatever it is.
And, it's very easy to forget the importance of circumstance, [00:08:00] especially again for people who are far from you that you don't really know that well, you know, when it's ourselves. The bias changes a little. If we did well, it's because, you know, well, I'm amazing. My mom tells me that all the time.
And if I do poorly, well, I'm still amazing 'cause my mom tells me, uh, so it must be bad luck, tough circumstances, and so on. so you just, you know, it's just a constant caution you all, whenever you're gonna blame someone, pause for a moment and ask whether it was the situation.
Chris Wofford: We've already dived into the pool, but I wanna step back and baseline the conversation.
So how do each of you define, , what a team is? Rob, why don't we start again with you.
Robert Bloomfield: you Know, pulling from the academic literature, a team is a group of people who have frequent, close and personal interactions. Within shared tasks. And that's the really important part is it's gotta be the [00:09:00] shared task.
Like if we are in a kitchen making bread and I go off and I mix the dough and I hand it to Katie and she, you know, I. Puts it in the oven and deals with it after that. We're not really a team. We are more like an internal supply chain, and I'm the supplier and Katie's the customer and maybe she sends it on to someone else who's gonna, you know, put it in a pretty wrapper.
, it's only if we're, you know, both getting our hands in that dough at the same time that we really become a team.
Chris Wofford: Katie, over to you.
Katie Keser: I really like that. , it makes it meaningful and it makes it able to resonate with, I think for me, when I think about a team coming together, we have common goals and objectives.
We are, we are striving towards a common goal that we can, clearly benchmark and say, Hey, we're making progress. I do think part of our human nature is that we need acknowledgement. We need support along the way to say, Hey, you're doing a good job, whether it's your mom or your boss or someone [00:10:00] else, another teammate.
, and so I do think that's part of our human nature is like we can't just. Do the work all the time. We have to have the human element. We have , to be there for each other, we have to trust each other. We have to have fun, right? I'm at work a lot. , during my day, I'm away from my family, and so I need to be having fun with the people that I work with and making sure that the things that we're working towards are the most important, most meaningful things that we can for our group and for our company.
Chris Wofford: Very good. Time for audience input. Again, we're gonna go back to the, to the, causality, the attribution type theme.
Let's do a quick poll and learn to what degree a problem is caused or worsened due to. Two things. Again, life isn't binary, but for the function of what we're trying to talk about today is the problem, , either exacerbated or created due to general chaos, within the team, or is it due to something like finger pointing?
people scapegoating trying to identify the problem within a team [00:11:00] in the form of an, of an individual, right? So let's identify a problem at work and consider whether it's due to either general chaos. Or finger pointing within the team. We can see that things are still populating here. I'm gonna give it a second before I report back, but I'm seeing, I think I have enough data set.
I think we have critical mass to say that, overwhelmingly we're at something like 60% are attributing it to a chaos or disorderly conditions on the team, right? So this is a system thing as opposed to pointing fingers at individuals. You can see the, you see the results right there, right?
There's a little bit of creep either way, but I. I don't know. Any thoughts? Anything jump out at you here? Is this the answer you expected, Rob Bloomfield?
Robert Bloomfield: uh, no. Uh, but you specified that it's within the teams, you know, well, even Katie, I'm sure a bunch of, you know, although so much of your work is teams and in your leading teams, you also have stuff that you do on your own.
And, and you have a department that interacts with other [00:12:00] departments and you two departments are not a team. And so like the way I think, I think of chaos and finger pointing as being sort of two ends of the spectrum, driven by how much responsibility a unit is given. And what happens is like, if you have one department and it has to do a million different things, you are now in a world with chaos.
. And so you want to, you know, to rationalize things. And this happens all the time with reorganizations that you say, you know, you know, we just need this to. Department to focus on whatever, uh, this one set of things and, and we're gonna scope it down. Then you end up with this problem, of finger pointing that when you scope things too small and you say, If all I'm doing. Is, baking bread? I'm just, you know, kneading the bread, but I'm [00:13:00] counting on people to give me high quality ingredients. And maybe that's right. That's no longer my call. , and so I get to point my finger at them, and then when I hand substandard dough to Katie, she gets to point the finger at me because we're all doing our little thing.
And so, one, perspective on teams is it splits this difference. It, it tries to find that sort of Goldilocks point with not too big, not too small. So less chaos, less finger pointing, uh, but you still get a little of each course.
Chris Wofford: Yeah. Thank you for the recontextualization uh, Katie, do you have any input on that one?
I see you nodding there.
Katie Keser: I do. Um, yeah, so as you were talking about this. It really resonates with me because something at the end of the day, I take pride in what I do and everything that I do, I try to give it my best, right? It's not the a hundred percent, it's the 110, 150%. but I expect that of my team.
I carry very high expectations of [00:14:00] myself and of my team. I walk the walk and I talk the talk. But what that means is that we are a part of an ecosystem. We're part of a larger. Purpose, but we are a part of that. And if we don't live up to our end of the bargain, if we fall short, if we don't get the right ingredients to the table to be kneaded and at the end of the day the bread comes out poorly, that's a reflection of me and that's.
Reflection of my brand and my team's brand. And so that's something we continuously talk about is how is our rate, our brand being perceived? Um, how are people reacting to us? Do we come across as empathetic? Do we come across as responsive? I tell my team all the time, if you've not responded to an email within a day.
That's way too long. Like for me, it's probably within the hour. We need to be responsive. We need to be making sure that even if we don't have the answers, we're assisting the, the partner, the team member, the customer whomever's asking how we can go find it. Right? We're part of that team, we're part of that process.
Chris Wofford: I love it. Uh, one more [00:15:00] for our audience. Uh, this one's interesting. I'm gonna ask it, but I'm gonna ask you two, to unpack the responses for me based on what we see here. So I'm gonna ask our audience, do you think performance at work. Would benefit more if your unit was structured more like a team or less like a team.
I'm really interested to see how this outcome, uh, what kind of results we get here. Let's sit tight because I think we're gonna get a pretty reasonable data set. Pretty much right out of the gate here. I can't believe that this is the response, but 100. At, at the moment, uh, 100% of our audience says we need to be more like a team.
Yeah, I, I, I would expect that the less would be, somewhat of an outlier. Maybe 30% or less. Okay. We're at 90% more like a team. So is this a common problem? Is this something that maybe you hear in practice or work? Rob Bloomfield in your world?
Robert Bloomfield: Being a professor is, is an unusual job.
You wear all sorts of different hats, and I'll just say, right, I am a teacher, I'm a [00:16:00] researcher, I'm a mentor. I am, uh, right now chair of the accounting faculty. I'm on all sorts of committees, right? and I do things like this and develop, eCornell courses and some of those really would not benefit.
From being a team, you know, when I teach, when, when I develop a course for eCornell, , I have a very particular vision of what I want that to be. What I think students should be learning, how they will learn best, and. I don't want to be part of a team for that. I want to realize my vision and so I'll have people help me, but it's not so much team like. But when I am teaching students, one of the big things I do is make sure they are in teams.
And I'll just say that's, that's a big thing at the Johnson School, especially in our executive MBA programs where literally part of the program [00:17:00] you get credit. You get grades for being a good team member because of the way, you know, it's, it's much easier to learn when you're all in there kneading the dough together.
and so, you know, teams have their place, but I don't think. 90% of work would benefit from being transformed into teamwork.
Chris Wofford: Well, our audience says 93% would prefer if things were more like a team. Katie,
Robert Bloomfield: more like a team.
Chris Wofford: Yeah. How does that line up with your experience and what you like to see?
Katie Keser: That resonates very well with me. I'm a people person by nature. Um, I love to collaborate, quite honestly. I think I get to my best ideas when I hear different perspectives and ultimately for my own, but I'm doing so with the input of those around me, right? Because I don't know it all. And I think the more that I can listen to others and hear how they're approaching a problem, what ideas or suggestions that they have.
Somewhere in the mix between all of those ideas, something good's gonna come out of that. [00:18:00] And so that's what I love to see. So sometimes that chaos of a new team gets me the most energetic because that's when the ideas flow almost, you know, openly. Team members are excited. They don't quite know what I'm supposed to be doing yet.
And so they're a little bit, um, you know, they'll, they'll put themselves out there and they'll take some risk and share some things. And so I always try to capture those early moments of a new team where team members have the opportunity to engage in a different way than if they've worked together for 20 years.
, the other thing I like to do is when I have a new team member join, I always ask them to capture their ideas. What are the things that stand out to you? What are the things that you're like, this is awesome, and then what are the things that you're like, oh, this could probably use some help. , because I wanna know those things.
I think those, quite honestly help me to become a better and stronger leader, and ultimately a stronger, high performing team by taking in that feedback.
Chris Wofford: Now, Katie, you've got a lot of experience getting teams up and running, spun up, and let's, let's get into action. What are some [00:19:00] typical challenges, , that you see quite often and, how do you address them?
Katie Keser: So I learned something back in grad school about the Tuckman ladder model, which is the, forming, storming, norming, performing. I've always been a high performer. I have a very kind of high expectation for myself. I didn't quite understand that there was this whole nuance to it, but once I understood that there were these stages, and that was a very normal part of becoming a team, it made me feel so
much better because not everybody's going to get along. Not everybody's gonna understand point of views. I think that when you think about a team getting together for that very first time, like I said, you're gonna have excitement. You're gonna have maybe a little apprehension, but then all of a sudden you're gonna start having opinions and ideas and maybe butting heads a little bit, and that sometimes can feel uncomfortable.
But quite honestly, that's that chaos that I mentioned, that when you start. Seeing that and people really start getting passionate about what they believe and how they believe it, and how we should [00:20:00] approach things. I think that's where the true goodness comes out, and that's where you see some of your best ideas.
And then ultimately, once you've been a team for a while, you can start kind of norming to that high performing team. Sorry.
Chris Wofford: No, my bad. I saw Rob Bloomfield nodding so much. He needed to be let out out of the gate. How do you respond to that one?
Robert Bloomfield: Well, I wanna go back to something Katie said, uh, right up front, in that, in that response, which is, I don't know it all, , and you could add to that
I can't do it all. And that's really, you know, when I think about developing a team, you know, those, those two points, no one knows it all. No one can do it all really is, is a great guide, to thinking about, , team development. So just , to bring a little accounting in here from my, management Accounting for Leaders course in, in eCornell, people have two types of assets , that, that come with their role. , and their role could be a [00:21:00] team member. There are the assets that are assigned to them. So maybe you have people working under you, you know, you've got your technology, you've got your space and your computing, and, and all of these things that are assigned to you by your organization.
And then you also have your personal assets, the features of yourself that you can't, give someone else. Your smarts, your strength, your expertise. They follow you around wherever you go. , and those, it's those personal assets you really need to think about when you're developing a team.
, you know, who has which expertise, who has which information and skills, and I I'm really looking forward to hearing, , Katie talk more about emotional intelligence. , but you know, there are a lot of different. Very challenging personal interactions that you need to manage. And different personality types are gonna be better at some than others.
So for example, [00:22:00] uh, you know, accountability is a big thing if someone in your team messed up. There's gotta be someone who has the skills that those, you know, personal abilities to make it clear they messed up to figure out how to have that not happen again and not ruin the, you know, these relationships that are so difficult to build and easy to destroy with a couple poorly chosen words.
Now the person who's good at that is probably not the person who's like, rah rah, let's motivate everyone. And today's the day, and we can do this. That's probably a different person. So you need to think about all the personal assets that people might bring, and make sure you have a working recipe.
Chris Wofford: Katie Keser I wanna give you a chance to respond before I take some audience questions here.
Katie Keser: Yeah, I love that. Um, quite honestly, I think about strengths and weaknesses all the time, both [00:23:00] personally, professionally, individually as a group. , when I find myself struggling with something, maybe a perceived weakness or an area of opportunity, I like to surround myself with those that I feel are stronger 'cause I can learn from them, um, and they compliment me, right?
And so similarly, if there's something I know I'm very strong at, I'm very strong at. The people side of things, the relationships, building rapport and trust. I try to get the team members that I feel may be less confident with those types of skills and include them in meetings so they can see how I'm using it in conversation.
They can see how I'm using it , in my relationships because I truly believe we can teach someone, we can tell them they can do training, but to see it in action brings a whole new level of understanding. And I, I try to bring that situational awareness to, not to put myself in those situations to learn personally, but also with my team and those that I mentor.
Chris Wofford: I've got a question from, uh, listener Joe [00:24:00] who chimes in and asks, this is a little bit of a side quest. We may be getting our ahead of ourselves a little bit, but I want to, I wanna hit this one while it's in because some of the things Joe brings up, we've just been talking about, Joe asks, how are teams compensated at, AT&T.
Is there an individual performance component? Does the entire team get rewarded equally based on team outcomes? I have concerns about the free rider effect. Katie, how would you address that one?
Katie Keser: So it's not a simple, straightforward answer. There's multiple ways that teams, uh, depending on the role, the responsibility that you have.
We obviously have some team members who are in a sales role or on some type of commission. , for my team specifically, we do have an individual component. We set goals at the beginning of the year. We check in quarterly, maybe even more frequently, that. Says, how are we doing to those goals? We have the opportunity if you're truly standing out amongst your peer group and you're doing things above and beyond, I as a leader, have the opportunity to give that credit, um, and [00:25:00] acknowledgement to my team members in a variety of ways.
I can give them a kudos, I can send them a note opportunities through, leveraging some of our brand stores. So we have different ways that we try to recognize and celebrate our team members. , the financial aspect of it is of course one of those. I think to answer your question about the freeloaders, I think that's an important part of what leaders do is they see when you have a team member that may not be pulling their weight, they need to be working with that person to figure out what is going on. Is there something deeper? Right? What's the root cause? Is it a lack of understanding? Is it a lack of. Skill is a lack of will. Or maybe there's just something else personally going on with that person.
And then I also think it's up to every single team member to hold each other accountable. I talk about this a lot with my team. I can't be the only one holding us accountable as a team, we have to collectively be doing that. And that sometimes means my team's coming to me saying, Hey, you didn't live up to your end of the bargain here.
I need you to go and do this. And they have every right to do that. We are part of the [00:26:00] team. We've all agreed to different , goals and, and to different commitments. And we have to lean in and do those together.
Chris Wofford: What does the accountant say?
Robert Bloomfield: So I want to talk, uh, uh, medieval history for a minute here, and talk about a practice called Frank Pledge.
So in medieval times, you know, there were no police. Right. You had your, your nobles and your knights and things like that, but it's not like you had your, police walking down the street and, and checking on things. And so, , to deal with crime, what these places would do, and this, this is all across, , Northern Europe , and Britain.
, they, they'd, they'd go to, uh, some small village somewhere and they'd say, okay, you all need to form groups of 10 households. And if anyone in those 10 households is found guilty of a [00:27:00] crime, anyone in those 10 , could be held accountable. And so basically, I mean, this is sort of the, the way teams operate now, and I think you know much of what, what was implied, with Katie's comments.
No one outside the team is going to be making sure every team member is doing their job. , that's left to within the team, , , and outside. It's only the team that is as a whole, that that is being held accountable and. There are ways to, , you know, break that down. But honestly, they tend to be counterproductive because remember, in a team you have these people who are sharing tasks.
It's this close, frequent personal interaction. It's about relationships. And you do not want to stick your nose in there because you just don't know enough. It's only the [00:28:00] people within the team that can really understand what the issues are. and, uh, I'll stop there, but I do have some advice, uh, on how to figure those issues out.
Chris Wofford: Okay. So presuming there's no Frank Pledge policy at AT&T Katie, how, how do you think about these particular dynamics? I see you, uh, shaking your head and nodding over there.
Katie Keser: well, so one thing that's very important to me is that I like to have facts. It's hard to argue with facts. And so for me, when I have something, um, maybe it's an uncomfortable conversation, accountability issue, some type of problem that I need to address.
I think understanding the data component of it and being able to go to the table and say, and be empathetic, um, and be open and be a good listener, but also have facts to support what I'm sharing. I think that's always. The best kind of start then I always like to make sure that when we're having opportunities of improvement or personal improvements, I think it's also important that we are [00:29:00] taking ownership as a collective group.
I hear so often, well, that's not my job, or that's not my purview, or I'm only. Responsible for this piece, kind of going back to the bread, make analogy. Well, that's fine, but you're still part of the larger ecosystem. At the end of the day, me, as an employee of AT&T, I do everything that I do for our customers, and if I fail my part, then I could be failing our customers and I want every single person on my team to have that same passion and that same philosophy that we can make a huge impact.
Chris Wofford: Hey, regarding the ownership component, we have viewer, Thomas, who checks in and asks, uh, I think a really good question. How can a team leader prevent in the context of various teams on a single project, prevent one team from defending the fort or becoming defensive over their aspect of the project?
Is this something you see? Rob Bloomfield? I'll kick it over to you. What do you think?
Robert Bloomfield: Yeah, so, so accounting, , starts with you've got a large [00:30:00] enterprise, it has things it needs to get done and right there, which I call enterprise level obligations, right? Profit and customer satisfaction and all these things.
And then they break that down into pieces and they say, okay, you're gonna take. These obligations, and we're gonna give you these assets to deal with it. And you're gonna take those and you're right. , this, uh, question really points to this issue that people get used to their turf.
In, in psychology, we call this functional fixation that, that you just get fixed on this idea that this is our job. , I don't know that it's necessarily, worse with teams than it is with individuals. But the larger the, the organizational unit, the harder it is to change direction.
So, right. The company as a whole changes very slowly. You can get an individual to change pretty quickly. [00:31:00] Teams are, , a little tougher. I want to, I want to bring in a new word, , because this also speaks to something Katie, uh, was talking about with getting those facts and figuring out what the problem is.
Uh, the word I want to talk about is deliberation, so you can have deliberation, negotiation, and debate. Deliberation is, is seeking a shared and justified understanding of what the problem is and what the best solutions are for it shared and justified understanding. It's very different from a debate, which is, I'm right and I'm gonna show you're wrong.
And it's very different from a negotiation, which is, I have this power and I'm gonna flex my muscles, , to get my way. And you really need to, deliberate when you're dealing with a team problem. It's not about right and wrong. It's not about getting your way, [00:32:00] it's about getting that shared and justified understanding.
and this is actually, I'll just say this is like. Central to all my research now, uh, central to my management accounting for leaders course. What questions do you ask? You know, going back to Katie, it's great to have data, but what data do you need? What facts do you need? You've gotta start with the right questions and you know, is the problem, as you said, Katie, is it one of ability, is it one of willingness?
Is there some obstacle in their way? and then you just work through that to figure out the root cause and, and work your way toward a solution.
Chris Wofford: Lots to build on there, Katie. Uh, I'll let you have your pick on anything that Rob just mentioned there. Function, fixation, ation, et cetera.
What do you got?
Katie Keser: Lots of good stuff. So I do think this boils down to culture. I do feel like that. If we are establishing a culture that encourages open communication, that we respect each [00:33:00] other, we have that empathy. We encourage feedback, we encourage ideas. You're going to have a little bit less of that finger pointing.
Is it gonna happen? Sure. It's a natural tendency, however. Can you move past it? Can you look beyond the, well, this is mine. I'm always right. Or I know this, I've been doing this for 20 years. I hear that often. I've done, I've always done it this way. I'm like, okay, but that doesn't make it right. Um, and so I am very, uh, very quick.
To challenge those around me. Are we looking at this with an enterprise mindset? This isn't a marketing decision or a sales decision or a technology decision. We need to be looking this as a company and as an enterprise mindset. What's the right thing for our shareholders? What's the right thing for our customers?
And is that the angle that we're looking at this with? And sometimes just that. Simple question and taking a step back with the group will almost reset us enough to where we can keep moving in the right direction. But there are those times where you [00:34:00] truly just have to take a time out and you just can't get on the same page.
And that's okay. And again, I think that's where leadership comes in. Having a facilitator that can understand that. There's going to be passion there. There's going to be reasoning underlying some of the, uh, passion that lies. So getting a little bit deeper into that, maybe having a hallway conversation to dig a little bit deeper, find out maybe somebody's just having a bad day, right, and they just really just want to be right for the day, and that's okay.
And we come back to it another day.
Chris Wofford: Rob Bloomfield. Um, sometimes when things go sideways as just described, we can point to the accounting actually being bad. Uh, tell me a little bit about,
Robert Bloomfield: well, you know what, but before we get to that, I want to talk about, so Chris, you and I had a keynote a while back called Game On, where we talked about.
Using gamification, bringing game-like elements into the workplace in order to get people to engage. [00:35:00] one of the things we talked about was giving people a sense of purpose. And here I want to, to take a different. Take, on this, , because having this bigger sense of purpose, Katie, I gather for you and AT&T it's really that customer focus is sort of a, that's the central guiding principle.
And so, you know, right when you're, when you're driving down the freeway, you don't just stare at the car in front of you, you look down the road, right? You have that long visioned. See what's coming up , and so, you know, having a sense of purpose in, in your case, it's customers. I, I just want to quickly tell this story about the moonshot.
Uh, so when Kennedy said we are gonna go to the, you know, land a man on the moon in 10 years, all the experts actually thought that was crazy and it wasn't gonna happen. and. They worked really hard to develop this sense of [00:36:00] mission and then to connect everyone's routine, daily tasks to that greater sense of, of long-term purpose.
and so there's a story which I doubt is true, but it's a wonderful quote. Where Kennedy was touring NASA late on a Saturday night, saw someone mopping the floors, what are you doing mopping the floors, uh, you know, late on a, on a Saturday night. He said, I'm not mopping the floors. I'm putting a man on the moon.
he was able to connect what he was doing to that long-term purpose and, The more you can do that, the easier it is to get people to adjust their daily tasks. 'cause now they're, they're not saying. I do this thing this way every day. You know, this is how I move the bread from the bowl onto the, counter.
It's, we are trying to give someone a great experience of fresh baked bread [00:37:00] and they'll be much more able to, to shift their everyday tasks, , to handle that.
Chris Wofford: Good. I see Katie nodding there. I'm gonna take one more audience question here. Again, a little bit of an off ramp side quest, but I think it's worth exploring.
Uh, we have a question in from Carolina who asks, Katie, I'd love to hear your thoughts if you're the only woman on a team within a male dominated department. I'm uncertain the dynamics on your side, Katie, but, what soft skills or leadership qualities do you think are most important to develop in order to lead effectively?
What has served you in your career? Katie Keser.
Katie Keser: That is a great question. I have actually been in that scenario before where I've been the only woman. Um, I've actually been both a team member and a leader in that scenario. And I would say the number one thing that to this day, I know that is critical to my success is my confidence.
I have to know that what I'm talking about. I know what I'm talking about. I'm passionate about what I believe in. [00:38:00] There is a reason that I'm in the room with them, and so I have to keep that confidence no matter what, because sometimes conversations you may feel overshadowed or you may. Feel like, Hey, I don't have all the answers, but it would just be like any human being is in the room, right?
Just because they're all men or all women, shouldn't change the way you feel and how you feel about the, knowledge that you're bringing to the table. So having confidence is, is one. I also say trust your gut, right? And so if you have not, um, gotten into an opportunity to build relationships and rapport, these are people.
And so spending time with them outside of work, getting to know them a little bit better. That relationship also just helps you to understand there's a human element to this. and that also helps to my opinion, build rapport and trust that doesn't necessarily or naturally come right out the gate.
Chris Wofford: Thank you. Lovely. Uh, thank you Carolina for that, that question. Let's talk about the elephant in the room that happens, or, you know, that is there every time we have one of these conversations. We're five years on since Covid. [00:39:00] But let's talk about team types. I think it's worth exploring really quickly here.
everyone is either part of, in a, a remote and in person or a hybrid team. I don't know any any challenges or particular opportunities that you see now that we've been doing this for a little bit. Rob Bloomfield, any thoughts on this one?
Robert Bloomfield: Yeah, I, I've done a lot of work on, what I call the distributed workplace.
and I think the first thing to remember is that our workplace has always been distributed, uh, and people have always been. Remote in the sense of, you know, how many times do you see your boss's boss in a week? How many times are you dealing with people and working closely with them, but you are not in the same room at the same time?
And I think, you know, when, when the shutdown came and a lot of people who had never dealt with. Remote technology like Zoom or, or whatever. [00:40:00] Uh, you know, it seemed like a huge shock, because it was so wholesale. My number one bit of advice is, is that you need to just be very imaginative in how you can break jobs down into, right?
You've got a job, but you play many roles and every role has many tasks and you're interacting with many different people for many different things and some of those actually work. Wonderfully remotely. , and some of them, don't. Uh, and so I'll say like a lot of what I do is, uh, you know, we're, we are staring at computer screens while we are meeting because we're dealing with, oh, I don't know, an Excel spreadsheet, or we're looking through some code or something.
And you know, we have now figured out that even though we're all in the same building, we have a more productive meeting if we're all in our different offices. Staring at [00:41:00] our, shared screens that we can edit and all of that. So, Katie, you, you have I'm sure much more experience in, in dealing with, the relationship side of things.
, but when it comes to the actual tasks. I just say be creative, be imaginative. Don't assume that everything has to be done the way it was in, you know, the 2010's.
Chris Wofford: Katie.
Katie Keser: That's right. I think that, things will always change. And so just because we're going into maybe a, a new mode, a new normal, it's likely gonna change again and it may change multiple times throughout our careers.
And so I think having kind of an openness to flexibility, I love to look for opportunities and things, right? So when there's change. Sometimes people can clam up. They get apprehensive, they don't want the change. They've liked how things are, but be open to what opportunities may come out from this change.
And so, for example, prior to uh, [00:42:00] me being back in the office, my calendar was. Consistently full all day long. Now I find somebody can stop me in the hallway and have a quick five, 10 minute conversation, and I've just saved a 30 minute or maybe even an hour block on my calendar that I can go do other things, and that's phenomenal.
I love that aspect. Aspect of it. I also love the energy that, again, we get from just being together in the office. Most of my team is now consolidated to two major cities, and so I can quickly get between those two cities. I can be in person with them. Just those, again, relationships that you're able to build outside of a phone call or outside of a meeting are so important.
That human element of our relationships, and again, we work with our team members and whether it's school or whether it's in a, in an office. Probably more so than we're at home. And so it's really important to build those relationships and establish rapport and trust with those that are around the most.
Chris Wofford: Thank you for listening [00:43:00] to Cornell Keynotes. I want you to check out the episode notes for information on Professor Bloomfield's Management 360 and the Executive Leadership Certificate Programs both from e Cornell. I want to thank you for listening, friends, and please subscribe to Stay in Touch.
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