Stop Managing Employee Behavior. Design Systems That Drive It, with Dustin Snyder

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Dustin Snyder about his book, Sink or SWIM: Stop Managing Employee Behavior. Design Systems That Drive It. Dustin Snyder stewards the trajectories of companies navigating critical inflection points. As founder and Chief Advisor of Wayforward, he personally developed Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping - the diagnostic methodology that defines the standard for organizational behavior consulting - and wrote the book on it. Sink or SWIM: Stop Managing Employee Behavior. Design Systems That Drive It is the definitive framework for diagnosing and solving workforce dysfunction at its root, deployed across organizations nationwide - from family businesses navigating generational transition to Fortune 500 multinationals launching new divisions. Dustin's client portfolio spans mid-market companies in manufacturing, healthcare, professional services, agriculture, distribution, and hospitality, alongside divisions of large enterprises in aerospace & defense, SaaS, and advanced manufacturing. He works extensively with executive teams charged with managing challenging, multi-stakeholder operations, to build structures that can sustain aggressive growth while preserving founding values. He serves on the AWS Workforce Development Advisory Committee and the Harvard Business School Research Advisory Group. His practice bridges psychology and executive business leadership. Prior to founding Wayforward, Dustin served as President of Aurubis AG's 600-employee US manufacturing division, leading it to profitability through an organizational transformation. Earlier HR leadership roles spanned tier 1 automotive supplier Oetiker Group, Kaleida Health, and Roswell Park Cancer Institute. He also founded an axe-throwing venue chain that was acquired in 2019. Dustin holds an MBA from SUNY Buffalo, an MA in Industrial Labor Relations from Cornell, and a BA in Organizational Psychology from Canisius University. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt and Myers-Briggs certified practitioner. His next book, Learn to SWIM, a practical field manual for HR executives, is currently in development. Outside work, Dustin practices muay thai, competes in strongman and shooting sports, and is an avid mountaineer working toward the goal of summiting the highest peak on all seven continents. Wayforward specializes in organizational diagnostics and change management for companies at critical growth or transition points. Its Strategic Workforce Insight Mapping (SWIM) process provides leadership teams with the most actionable insights and implementation roadmaps that consistently generate workforce buy-in on change. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts. We're your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Dustin Snyder, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm very happy you're having me.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  It is a real pleasure to sit down with you. You're joining us from New York. I'm south of Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we're going to be talking about leadership, organizations, you know, systems thinking, systems theory, and the systems methodology within organizations, and how to just have well-functioning organizations and employee behavior within those organizations. And, you know, we all want well-functioning teams. We all want well-functioning organizations. And I have six children, ages 12 up through 22. And I always tell them, like, because they're dealing with teenage stuff and young adult stuff, and they always, you know, talk about like, when I, you know, get out of high school, things will like be, you know,

• 1:25Speaker 00

  normal, and like, I won't have to deal with like, the high school drama and stuff like that. I'm like, sorry to break it to you, but, you know, when you get out into work, into their quote-unquote "real world," that stuff doesn't go away. Like, you still have drama, you still have pettiness, you still have immaturity, you still have bad behavior, you still have people who, you know, don't do their work, you still have freeloaders who like rely on other people to do all the work on your teams. You still, like, all the stuff that you deal with, and like, college projects that you hate, or like, high school drama, or all those things, all that stuff still happens. And that's why you have managers. So that's why you have leaders, and that's why you have people trying to herd the cats when you go into the workplace, because it all still happens. And I wish it didn't. I wish.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  I wish we just had mature adults showing up to work each and every day, doing the work and reinforcing each other and having good behaviors. But we all live messy lives. We all have competing priorities. We all have things pulling us in a bunch of different directions. I will say, and I tell this to my kids, I think most people are good people. I think most people, you know, are just doing the best they know how. I don't think most people wake up in the morning thinking, huh, I wonder how I'm gonna take advantage of people today and how I'm going to, you know, piss people off and how I'm gonna be a jerk. And, you know, I, I think most people genuinely are trying to do a good job and are trying to do the best they can. But, you know, everyone has their baggage and everyone has their stuff and everyone has their complicated lives and, and it just

• 2:55Speaker 00

  is what it is. Like, it's, it's part of the human condition. And so that is what brings us to this conversation, is the complexity of the human condition in the workplace setting. What can we do about it? I'm excited to dig into this and to explore this with you. As we get started, I wanted to share a little bit about Dustin and his background with everybody. Dustin Snyder stewards the trajectories of companies navigating critical inflection points as founder and chief advisor of WayForward. He personally developed strategic workforce insight mapping, the diagnostic methodology that defines the standard for organizational behavior consulting, and wrote the book on it. Sink or Swim: Stop Managing Employee Behavior, Design Systems That Drive It is the definitive framework for diagnosing

• 3:40Speaker 00

  and solving workforce dysfunction at its root, deployed across organizations nationwide, from family businesses navigating generational transition, to Fortune 500 multinationals launching new divisions. Dustin's client portfolio spans mid-market companies in manufacturing, healthcare, professional services, agriculture, distribution, and hospitality, alongside divisions of large enterprises in aerospace and defense, SaaS, and advanced manufacturing. He works extensively with executive teams charged with managing challenging multi-stakeholder operations to build structures that can sustain aggressive growth while preserving founding values.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Only scratched the surface like there's so much more I could say about Dustin and his background and all the cool things that he has done and is doing. But I'm going to pause there. Dustin, anything you would like to highlight by way of your own background or personal context before we move on?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  No, um, I, I will say that the way that I got into doing what I do today was, was rather accidental. Uh, I would love to say that I, uh, I designed, uh, things intentionally right from the beginning. Uh, but really I, I stumbled into realizing, um, that a very rudimentary version of the way that I do things today, uh, worked within an organization. And then started to dive into the science to understand why it was working so effectively and so consistently.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I, I, I think that's great. And I, I think that's probably true for most of us. Like I think most people, uh, tend to have somewhat of a nonlinear kind of zigzaggy. Way of getting to where they end up. Um, like everyone except my wife, my wife figured out what she wanted to do. Like in high school and then she like exactly literally went at it and then like she, that's what she's doing now. But that's like the super rare exception. Most people don't do that. Most people are kind of zigzaggy. Um, but yeah, it's fun to hear about like, um, you're a little bit about your own path and we can explore that a little bit more as we get into this. Uh, certainly that's true though about me. Um, so I can relate kind of as you're describing that a little bit.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  Uh, and I love as I'm reading your bio and as you know, we're talking a little bit in the pre-interview, I just love hearing a little bit more about. Um, the work that you do because it really is such a challenging thing within organizations. Uh, because people are so complicated. Uh, I often tell, you know, whether it's my kids, whether it's my students, whether it's clients. I often tell people like a lot of what we talk about, a lot of what you write about your book, a lot about what I teach or you know, you know, these conversations that we have. It's not rocket science, like this isn't like incredibly complicated stuff, but it's really hard to do. And it's hard because it just requires consistency and consistency is really difficult for humans.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Um, you know, like it, it tends to be fairly simple principles. Like if we can just do these, these things consistently over time. Um, we can nip a lot of the challenge, like the, the, the, the, the things that manifest over and over and over again, we can tend to nip those things in the bud. A lot, but but we don't and we don't because we can't do those things consistently. And and then we just see the same things flare up over and over again. That's true in home life and marriage. That's true in communities. That's true in organizations. And so, uh, yeah, we just tend to, that's why we have therapists. That's why we have HR specialists. That's why I have consultants. That's why we have all the things that we have, um, because humans are humans and because humans are messy.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  And there's always going to be a need, uh, for for these conversations and for this work. Uh, so anyways, I I appreciate all the work that you're doing, uh, to to help move the needle on this, uh, so that we can make workplaces more of more healthy, more productive, more, um, more an environment where people want to be. Uh, we spend most of our lives at work, right?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. The, uh, the wild thing is, you know, I I thought about it that way for a long time, John, um, that things were messy and that things, uh, the outcomes that we were getting from employees, from workforces, uh, was this, you know, this mysterious soft science that really couldn't be contained. And, uh, the realization that I came to that, uh, informs the the workforce insight mapping method that I use today, uh, it, uh, is that it's actually not so messy as we as we like to believe it is. Uh, our human behaviors are very much a hard science and that's, uh,

• 8:09Speaker 01

  that's the conclusion that a lot of different fields are reaching.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, let's break that down. Uh, yeah, it's, uh, tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Sure. So, um, so most, most leaders believe that they have a a people problem when they're looking at a behavior, right? Um, they're, they're looking at output and they're calling it a cause. And when you have, when you have outlier behaviors, you know, if just, if it's just Dustin or it's just John that's a jerk, right? Um, then yes, that's a character issue and you have to address that individual. Um, but if a common behavior shows up, uh, disengagement, resistance to change, employee turnover.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Low performance, the instinct shouldn't be to fix the person. We we so often move to retraining them, managing them out, you know, running the engagement survey, the culture initiative. But behavior, when it's a common behavior, when it's systemic within any any portion of the workforce, that means that it's downstream of something. It's it's information for us. And so what leaders are actually looking at is a a systems problem that has just found its expression in human behavior. So the people themselves can't be the problem. You can't fire everybody. You you don't want to fire twenty percent of your workforce if they're doing the thing that the company is us to do. The conditions those people are operating inside of, that's the issue.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  And when you learn to read that behavior, that common behavior as a signal rather than a diagnosis, to see it as a rational response from your people, that will help you stop treating symptoms and and wondering why nothing is holding.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  I love the the idea of being hard on symptom on systems, not on people. Because I think you're you're absolutely right. So often we are very quick to go to the individuals, you know, that are manifesting, you know, certain behaviors, certain, you know, they're not meeting quota. They're they're they're doing things we don't want them to do, or they're not doing things we want them to do. Okay, but what are the policies, practices, procedures that are creating the environment in which these behaviors are happening, right? What types of support or lack, what types of support or lack of support is there, you know, that is creating the environment in which this is occurring, right? All of that is happening, you know, is is part of the conversation, needs to be part of the conversation, absolutely.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  And yeah, humans, like, we we we function within like our bubble of constraints, right? So we have like this whole system around us that impacts how we make our decisions, how we behave, how we interact with each other. And so I think I think one of the things I really like about what you're saying is it's also very, it's a it's a useful and generous way to approach the types of employee problems and challenges that we face. Because it it's Leadership taking ownership, right, of the the systems and the challenges that the organization as the system is facing, rather than just passing blame down the line, down to, you know, say frontline employees and saying you're the problem.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Now we're just gonna lay you off or now we're gonna get rid of you, but we're gonna say, no, we own it. We have designed the system. This system has now created the environment in which you behave the way you behave. We have to reflect on, you know, why and and, you know, that that's a more uncomfortable kind of conversation for leaders to have. So it's it's no wonder that that we have the kind of approach that is predominantly, you know, in existence, like where where we we tend to just, you know, have a a performance improvement plan and we'll we'll just sit down the employee and say, you need to fix this behavior, uh, rather than actually say, okay, we have all these employees doing the exact same thing or or having this exact same type of symptom instead of looking at the deeper root causes, right?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. Um, and you you use the word, uh, you know, uncomfortable, and that is a very common initial reaction that I get from from people in in leadership roles. The I actually use the word ownership, you know,

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  because this means that you have a lot more responsibility and influence than you initially thought. You know, it what I mean is if you put me in your environment, I will behave the way your environment produces. Not because I'm weak or or difficult or checked out, but because I'm human and and humans respond to their conditions. We we always have, and that's not a character flaw necessarily in most people. It's it's hundreds of thousands of years of adaptation, doing exactly what it's supposed to do. So when I hear a leader say to me, my people are change resistant or they don't take accountability

• 12:57Speaker 01

  or people just don't want to work anymore, my first question is always, what does the environment reward? What is it? What does it punish? What what signals is it sending about what's actually safe here? And every time the behavior that's driving the leader crazy makes complete sense once you see the system those people are living inside and I'm able to connect those dots for that person.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and let's take that a little bit further. So, so you're having these conversations with, with leaders. You're challenging them a little bit. You're making them a little bit uncomfortable. Um, you, you've just made that comment back to them. How do they tend to respond to that? And how, how do you move the conversation forward?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Um, that's, uh, that's the cool thing. So I, my, the organizations I work with kind of fall into two main buckets. Um, that I do often come in when, uh, a leadership team is doing well and things are going excellently. And they recognize that there is, um, value in investing in this kind of thing to understand their organization better. Um, or it's when this is not a natural thing for them to look at. And they don't necessarily, um, they didn't come into it valuing it, but they are at enough of a pain point where they need that outside opinion. Um, and so I think generally they're at a place of, uh, individual acceptance of, okay, we need to understand

• 14:21Speaker 01

  this issue better because it's affecting our bottom line. Um, and we need a, a third set of eyes on this. And so, um, it's, it's challenging because I, if there's a, there's an emotional intelligence that needs to happen to, when I connect the dots for an executive to show them that, hey, um, you know, you're concerned that your frontline employees aren't displaying accountability. But when I sit in on your C-suite meetings, neither are you guys. And, uh, to show them, you know, behavior modeling is one of the things I see in a lot of organizations that the way leadership acts, you know, the VPs act and the way the VPs act, the directors act and the managers act and the supervisors act. And then, you know, it reaches the frontline because we're learning, you know, that psychology.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Our brain is seeing the behaviors of leadership and saying, okay, this is how I need to behave to be successful in this environment. Um, and so I think that, you know, it's not just me coming in. It's not just some guy saying, hey, you're doing things wrong. But it's connecting the dots for them to show them, to trace back to the root causes of why things are occurring and how their people are learning how to behave. Um, to show them that, and your, our brains are telling us, you need to behave this way to survive in the environment. And you can tell people to change their behavior, but the brain won't let them as long as the environment hasn't changed.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  So there's, there's a lot of like, you know, management science, organizational science around these topics, right? That's been out, I don't know, certainly fifty, eighty plus years in, in the, the management literature and whatnot. You, you also draw a lot upon like the clinical psychology, the family systems, um, literature on the work that you do. Um, tell us a little bit more about that. Like, why, why do you feel it's important to draw upon that body of work as well? Like, what's lacking in the org science work? And, and what, how does that, that complement it?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've, I've found that the, the org science literature out there, um, that is accessing this systems theory around human behavior, um, is not very widely recognized. Um, and I guess to answer your question more directly, org science has been trying to treat work like it was separate from the reality of being human. And I recognize that that was a losing proposition. You know, I've already said, we bring all these hundreds of thousands of years of evolution through that door every single morning. You know, you, like we said, we spend most of our time at work. Our brains can't opt out of that. And so much of HR and management practice is built on these frameworks that, um, that

• 17:01Speaker 01

  are kind of based on this fantasy that we check all that at the door. And that kept disappointing me, uh, because it, it works logically. You can walk someone through the logic, um, but then it just doesn't take root. It doesn't get traction with people. Um, so what cracked it open for me was when I started seeing systems theory show up in clinical psychology and the insight that individual pathology wasn't just about individual character. It was about the system that that person was embedded in, the, the family, the environment, the, the currents running through the whole thing. And I thought, if that's true in a clinical setting, why would it be any less true in an organizational setting, in a group one? You know, you're a group, you're in a family group, you're

• 17:44Speaker 01

  in a company group. And then I started looking across different fields to see if other scientific fields were reaching the same conclusion. And they were, um, behavioral economics, ecology, the, the family therapy angle, even hard sciences like physics. Um, the pattern just kept showing up that the, the system will beat the individual every time. And once I saw that, I really couldn't unsee it.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  That that raises an interesting point for me. So you have this interesting tension, I think. So you have like the the system pressures versus like the human rational like uh autonomy. So a lot of what you're talking about is is based on the assumption of rational thinking, right? Like I I as a human being, I operate as a rational being, I I make rational choices. And I operate rationally within the system that I operate, right? Talk talk a little bit more about that, though, because like within a deterministic system, right? Which which, you know, these systems theories all kind of uh operate on, like that's kind of the the the way they function.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, there there's a bit of that that tension. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Sure. Um, so it's uh. The way that I started seeing this, it's not, you know, it's not a predetermination, you know?

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  It's not that we're it's not that we're no longer captains of our own ship, so to speak. But it's that the variables in our environment will produce certain behaviors. And a really early example that started to clue me into this that hey, I would I as the person who, you know, considers themselves very high functioning and ambitious and driven and is in, you know, executive roles. When I started to realize that I would act the same way if I was placed in the shoes of, you know, the frontline employees that I was hoping would behave differently. I think absenteeism is a great example. I I've had the uh

• 19:46Speaker 01

  the great experience of having worked in a number of dysfunctional organizations as I came up through my career. And absenteeism was always a huge problem. I worked in one organization where over twenty percent of the employees were absent on any given day. And um the the research shows us that the tighter uh the stricter the attendance policy is, the more people will call off, which is very counterintuitive. And when I saw that, I I said, okay, why? Would that be because you know, there's a, there's a punishment there, right? That's you know, there's a reward system there. And I thought about my own experience and I thought, okay, you know, I will come into work sick as a dog.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  At least pre-COVID back when, you know, you could be sick at work without people worrying. Um, because I cared about the outcomes, I cared about um, the team, you know, a lot of my self-concept was tied into the outcomes I was producing at work. But you know, if somebody in, you know, uh, above me in the chain of command would do something that would disengage me, would you know, shut down a project or would make a poor decision or it would do something that would tick me off, I would probably call in the next day. Even though I would be there when I, you know, could legitimately use a sick day, you know, I would call in when I didn't want to be at work. And so I, I realized that the root cause of a lot of the absenteeism is people simply don't want to be there because of whatever the reason is.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And uh, and if so, if I would do that, you know, the person who giving two hundred percent every day, of course, you know, somebody else is, is going to do that too. So I think this is a very simple and, and micro example, um, but I hope it gets across the fact that, you know, people are influenced by their environment. And it will override your, uh, your overarching individual character and cause you to behave in ways that have to feel rational because we can all put ourselves in those shoes.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  And I, I appreciate that. And I, I think coming back to a little bit of what I said earlier, I think that also gives us a little bit more empathy perhaps. Um, around just the types of behaviors that we do observe, right? When we do see behaviors that we, you know, get frustrated with or I, you know, I tell my students, you know, a story about like the frustrations around doing team projects. Um, when I was a, a college student and now I'm a professor and I assign team projects and I know they get frustrated with them. Um, and you know, what was it? Is it the nature of team projects that they have to be frustrating and that they have to be dysfunctional? That some students are going to take advantage and not do anything while other students.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Get stuck with all the work. Does it have to be that way? No, it doesn't have to be that way. It it's a function of, well, some somewhat, it's a function of individuals on the teams. It's somewhat a function of um just human behavior, right? But it's also a function of how this the assignment is designed and how the course is set up and how the professor sets up the teams and how the uh how the accountability systems are set up uh around the assignment, right? And learning from my own experiences as as a student and the frustrations that I had, you know, I I spent a lot of time looking into how can I create effective, positive team assignments? So not only can my students have a good, positive experience in my class,

• 23:08Speaker 00

  but they can also learn like a good example of like what they could do and carry forward into the workplace. You know, so when they're running teams, you know, they have a template even of like something that is positive and something that is proactive and something that is possible to, you know, that they could do. Um, and and it it makes all the difference in the world. And and just because someone, you know, may not be as inclined to speak up in a team meeting, doesn't mean that they're a freeloader, doesn't mean that they're, you know, someone who doesn't want to do work. It may may be that you're you as the one who wants to get the A are overbearing and you you're you're like talking down to them. And like there, there's all these different things that go into it, right?

• 23:49Speaker 00

  And so you have to build in um, you know, the the processes and the systems around how that that can function uh effectively and how there's accountability around that functioning, right? And it's amazing, once you do that, once you do that, it actually can work.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of times, the the cool thing about systems is that um the these the issues that come up within other parts of the organization, they're not intentional things that leadership is doing on purpose to, you know, to tick me off and make me call in. You know, but there are things that make people's lives harder than they need to be. There are things that get in the way of them being successful in the goals and the expectations that are placed on them. And they're very often just things that leadership doesn't realize, simply because we stand at different vantage points. Leadership isn't in the day to day. They're not doing the thing that you do because we have different jobs. We have different responsibility sets and we're spending our attention on totally

• 24:48Speaker 01

  different parts of the organization, different parts of the business. And so really just mapping these human behaviors for the leadership team and showing them, here's why you're getting the behavioral outcome that you are because of X, Y, Z variable in, you know, this division or this department. It's usually a really simple change for them to say, oh, I didn't realize that was happening. Let's fix that. And they, you know, they changed that one little thing and there's a completely different variable. And the fact that, you know, you're listening, just like you said, in the group project. Hey, I didn't contribute because I felt like I was, you know, I didn't have anywhere to contribute because, you know, Mr. Straight A's was, was just taking over the whole thing and I didn't have a chance to, to discuss the part that I wanted to do. I

• 25:32Speaker 01

  didn't have the opportunity to, to bring up this thing that I wanted to contribute to the project. And that's a very simple, easy fix in the, in the assignment design, like you were saying. And it's very often the case that tiny little changes that have nothing to do with compensation or benefits, or, you know, these, these worrisome expensive things that leadership things are going to come out. It's usually small, simple changes that just make people's lives easier and get barriers out of their way, which is really ultimately the, the entire function of leadership is to just get barriers out of the way of people that don't have enough influence to get them out of their own way.

• 26:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dustin, this has just been a great conversation. I know at the time I need to let you go, but before we wrap things up, I wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, where they can find your book, et cetera. And then give us the final word for today.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. I'm, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, not because I generate business there, but because I know my clients, employees like to check out this Dustin guy and see, you know, what the heck he's doing in this organization. And because I can't keep my mouth shut, I guess. But, uh, so I'm very active on LinkedIn, Dustin Snyder. My book came out last month. It's called Sink or Swim. It's on Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble and the audible version is is coming out in the next couple of weeks for the audiobook and the I was very lucky that the president of the American Medical Association sat down to write the foreword for the book for me. So that is a really cool perspective and you know, especially my my healthcare

• 27:08Speaker 01

  clients are very into that as well. But no, this has been a wonderful conversation, John, and I I really appreciate you sitting down and having with me.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  Thank you so much, Dustin. It's been a real pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Dustin can do for you, check out the book. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe, that you can find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe, and please join us again soon.